THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS
77
of life and men, and some women too, and I find that the most religious
and pious people are as a rule those most lacking in uprightness and
morality. The men who do not go to church or have any religious con-
victions are the best. Praying, singing of hymns, and sermonizing are
pernicious — they teach us to rely on some supernatural power, when we
ought to rely on ourselves. I teetotally disbelieve in a God. The God-idea
was begotten in ignorance, fear, and a general lack of any knowledge of
Nature. If I were to die now, being in a healthy condition for my age, both
mentally and physically, I would just as lief, yes, rather, die with a hearty
enjoyment of music, sport, or any other rational pastime. As a timepiece
stops, we die — there being no immortality in either case.
Q. What comes before your mind corresponding to the words God, Heaven,
Angels, etc.?
A. Nothing whatever. I am a man without a religion. These words
mean so much mythic bosh.
Q. Have you had any experiences which appeared providential?
A. None whatever. There is no agency of the superintending kind.
A little judicious observation as well as knowledge of scientific law will
convince any one of this fact.
Q. What things work most strongly on your emotions?
A. Lively songs and music; Pinafore instead of an Oratorio. I like Scott,
Burns, Byron, Longfellow, especially Shakespeare, etc., etc. Of songs, the
Star-spangled Banner, America, Marseillaise, and all moral and soul-
stirring songs, but wishy-washy hymns are my detestation. I greatly enjoy
nature, especially fine weather, and until within a few years used to walk
Sundays into the country, twelve miles often, with no fatigue, and bicycle
forty or fifty. I have dropped the bicycle. I never go to church, but attend
lectures when there are any good ones. All of my thoughts and cogitations
have been of a healthy and cheerful kind, for instead of doubts and fears
I see things as they are, for I endeavor to adjust myself to my environment.
This I regard as the deepest law. Mankind is a progressive animal. I am
satisfied he will have made a great advance over his present status a
thousand years hence.
Q. What is your notion of sin?
A. It seems to me that sin is a condition, a disease, incidental to man’s
development not being yet advanced enough. Morbidness over it increases
the disease. We should think that a million of years hence equity, justice,
and mental and physical good order will be so fixed and organized that no
one will have any idea of evil or sin.
Q. What is your temperament?
A. Nervous, active, wide-awake, mentally and physically. Sorry that
Nature compels us to sleep at all.
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THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
If we are in search of a broken and a contrite heart, clearly we
need not look to this brother. His contentment with the finite
incases him like a lobster-shell and shields him from all morbid
repining at his distance from the Infinite. We have in him an
excellent example of the optimism which may be encouraged by
popular science.
To my mind a current far more important and interesting
religiously than that which sets in from natural science towards
healthy-mindedness is that which has recently poured over America
and seems to be gathering force every day, — I am ignorant what
foothold it may yet have acquired in Great Britain, — and to which,
for the sake of having a brief designation, I will give the title of
the “Mind-cure movement.” There are various sects of this “New
Thought,” to use another of the names by which it calls itself;
but their agreements are so profound that their differences may be
neglected for my present purpose, and I will treat the movement,
without apology, as if it were a simple thing.
It is a deliberately optimistic scheme of life, with both a spe-
culative and a practical side. In its gradual development during the
last quarter of a century, it has taken up into itself a number of
contributory elements, and it must now be reckoned with as a
genuine religious power. It has reached the stage, for example,
when the demand for its literature is great enough for insincere
stuff, mechanically produced for the market, to be to a certain
extent supplied by publishers, — a phenomenon never observed,
I imagine, until a religion has got well past its earliest insecure
beginnings.
One of the doctrinal sources of Mind-cure is the four Gospels;
another is Emersonianism or New England transcendentalism; an-
other is Berkeleyan idealism; another is spiritism, with its messages
of “law” and “progress” and “development”; another the optimistic
popular science evolutionism of which I have recently spoken; and,
finally, Hinduism has contributed a strain. But the most character-
istic feature of the mind-cure movement is an inspiration much
more direct. The leaders in this faith have had an intuitive belief
in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the
conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative
contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously precautionary