Men without Religion

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 7, 1886

Men without Religion.

WE do not know how much religion James Russel Lowell has, but we do know that there is an abundance of sound reason and common sense in the following, which he writes in the Springfield Republican, under the above heading:—

"I fear that when we indulge ourselves in the amusement of going without a religion, we are not, perhaps, aware how much we are sustained at present by an enormous mass all about us of religious feeling and religious convictions, so that whatever it may be safe for us to think,—for us who have had great advantages, and have been brought up in such a way that a certain moral direction has been given to our character,—I do not know what would become of the less favored classes of mankind if they undertook to play the game.

"Whatever defect and imperfections may attach to a few points in the doctrinal system of Calvin—the bulk of which was simply what all Christians believe—it will be found that Calvinism, or any other ism which claims an open Bible and proclaims a crucified and risen Christ, is infinitely preferable to any form of polite and polished skepticism, which gathers as its votaries the degenerate sons of heroic ancestors, who, having been trained in a society and educated in schools the foundations of which were laid by men of faith and piety, now turn and kick down the ladder by which they have climbed up, and persuade men to live without God, and leave them to die without hope.

"The worst kind of religion is no religion at all; and these men, living in ease and luxury, indulging in the 'amusement of going without religion,' may be thankful that they live in lands where the gospel they neglect has tamed the beastliness and ferocity of the men, who, but for Christianity, might long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea Islanders, or cut off their heads and tanned their hides like the monsters of the French Revolution. When the microscopic search of skepticism, which had hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society, and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a decent man may live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children, unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected, manhood respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard—when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundation and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move thither and there ventilate their views. But so long as these very men are dependent upon the religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in that Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of life eternal which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom."