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CHAPTER XVIII

INGLORIOUS PROPHETS

"Moral enthusiasm is not, uninstructed and of itself, a suitable guide to practicable and lasting reformation," is the conclusion of Woodrow Wilson after years of applied efforts, associated with culture, learning and experience, forming in themselves a combination and completeness rare in the world's history.

A little more than a hundred years ante-dating the writing of Professor Wilson's words and when the world was experiencing a similar awakening as that through which we have just passed, and which was followed by a series of wars surpassed only in intensity and cruelty by the one raging as these words are written, a Frenchman contemplating the ruins of ancient Assyria and addressing himself to the genius of the departed amid whose tombs he sat, asked this comprehensive question: "By what secret causes do empires rise and fall; from what sources spring the prosperity and misfortunes of nations; and on what principles can the peace of society and the happiness of man be established ?"2

We read in the Revelation of St. John: "And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it." On the determining of just what this light consists

1 When a Man Comes to Himself-Woodrow Wilson (Page 31).

2 Ruins of Empires-Volney (Page 13). (When this question was asked its answer had, no doubt, appeared in the principles of the "Wealth of Nations," by Adam Smith the greatest of the Inglorious Prophets.

3 Bible--Revelation 21:24.

and the method of availing ourselves of it depend the only hope of mankind. To place the realization of this beyond the grave makes of no effect the Lord's Prayer, which says: "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven." It is useless any longer to answer these questions by humanly defined words. The needs of the hour allied to general intelligence demand something more than explanations which do not explain and therefore fail to remedy.

Coeval with the decline of ecclesiasticism in the seventeenth century was heard a Voice which has grown stronger in proportion as ecclesiasticism has grown weaker. Its words have been the energy and nourishment of our western civilization and to it we are indebted for all we now enjoy. Its prophets have been slain sometimes by actual spilling of blood, but oftener by more cruel methods. In spite of this the Voice is still heard. Louder are becoming its Isaiah-like proclamations and more and more is it influencing our affairs in the form of applied efforts. These prophets, though unpopular and little understood, have in the face of the established order of things in little more than a century succeeded in marvelously regenerating the western world.

Only potentized words have the power to melt human habit and human hatred. From what source came this power accompanying a few words and making them a tocsin among a din of sounds? The answer is: Inspired words are potentized words and the secret of their potentialization is that the procession of the Holy Ghost does not cease with the Father, with the Son, nor with those to whom the Son imparts It, but It adheres to, radiates from and potentizes words spoken by those under Its

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influence and necessarily their words have power. This alone is the explanation of the phenomenon of the few overcoming and conquering to a remarkable degree the influence of the human ego. "God is no respecter of persons," we read in the Scriptures, and if this be true, why must we refuse to receive truth because it has not come through ecclesiastical or ecclesiastically authorized channels? If the world has been blessed there is only one source from which blessings come. Red-blooded men make for reforms, and not anemic white-blooded pietists. Moreover, a large part of what has been regarded as piety is nothing more nor less than the want of intellectual independence; a cringing cowardice born of the fear of punishment in the nature of human insufficiency. Moreover, if many of these people would break up their "fallow ground” (undisturbed beliefs) they would realize the cruelty they have been unconsciously a party to, and while shedding tears over the crucifixion of one prophet by one race of people they might find blood on their own hands.

While considering the word inspiration and its relation to the inglorious prophets it would be well to note that the word has been given, through the influence of sacred books, the significance of revelation. This is incorrect and robs both words of their highest significance. Inspiration as defined by the authorities on language signifies the animation or vivifying of something else. While on the other hand the revealed is not only something wholly apart from something else, but it possesses the faculty of making of no effect another activity. The 1 Bible-Acts 10:34.

2 Bible-Hosea 10:12.

inspired thought-out mind has the faculty of learning lessons from the past by which it is able to anticipate the future. It is the survival agency of thought which raises man above dumb forgetfulness. Inspiration awakens us from the sluggishness of human ecstasy to the realization of the law of probabilities through which come courage, invention, and human progress. Revelation, however, is a process wholly apart from inspiration and the confounding of the two has been the cause of much mystification. While inspiration is from the same source as revelation, it inspires human activities, enduing them with divine values. Revelation unmakes all things human or thought-out and leaves the felt-out mind free to grope in its blind ego untempered by inspired human wisdom. This effect, when understood, will account for the dark periods which always follow the appearance of prophets and their revelations, as well as explain the insufficiency of those under the influence of emotionalized religion.1

Instead of claiming to be the second person of God as implied in their form of proclamation, "Thus saith the Lord God," the inglorious prophets have been more modest and proclaimed in the name of Principle and Justice: "Thus say Principle and Justice." While they have not used the term God, which is unnamable, their teachings have been more effective because of their coming in the first person of God through Principle

1 (There is convincing evidence that God first expresses Himself through the emotions. But spiritualized emotions are not intelligent. We have yet to learn that God must be expressed through intelligence. Moreover, this intelligence must not be like the intelligence of nature which is God governed and is sufficient in the natural world, but it must be an intelligence about nature and our relation to our environment; an intelligence that prevents colliding with an invisible God, brute nature and our fellowman.)

itself. The absence of the word God in the Constitution of the United States of America has been often deplored by religious elements, but they failed to see in Substance what they wanted in words. The constitution might have the human word God written all over it to far less purpose than the Spirit of the Word which is so evidently in it. This is the root of the evil: desiring the human symbol rather than the Substance which expresses itself in usefulness, helpfulness and power.

There is a style of writing from which we derive Substance. It has been the life of the Bible; it has been the life of religion; it has been the life of science and it is the life of democracy. The declaration of independence from human absolutism, which uncovered the rights of man, has been the life of our feeble efforts in the line of democracy in the west. These declarations of truth bring power. This is the secret of deriving Substance from a style of writing. This explains the remarkable influence of these inglorious prophets in spite of the opposition from the established order of things, added to the fact that few people read their books.

Religions have always evolved out of an effort to establish an order of society. From this it would necessarily follow that an order of society would be in its correct sense a religion. The Jewish religion better than any other presents this phase. This is so well summed up and expressed in their "Ethics" by Professors Dewey and Tufts that we quote it: "The Hebrew presented rather the ideal of a moral order on earth, of the control of all life by right, of a realization of good, and of a completeness of life. It was an ideal not dreamed out in ecstatic visions of pure fancy, but worked out in struggle