As I myself have willingly confessed, the endeavour to make proselytes from unbelievers is deep rooted in the character of religion. Yet that is not what now urges me to speak to you of the cultivation of man for this noble capacity. For this cultivation we believers know of only one means—the free expression and communication of religion. When religion moves in a man with all its native force, when it carries every faculty of his spirit imperiously along in the stream of its impulse, we expect it to penetrate into the hearts of all who live and breathe within its influence. Every corresponding element being stirred by this life-giving power, they should attain a consciousness of their existence, and the attentive ear should be gladdened by an answering note of kindred sound. Where the pious person fails to awake a life like his by the natural expression of his own life, he will despise nobly every strange charm, every exercise of force in the calm conviction that the time has not yet come for anything congenial to appear.
The unsuccessful issue is not new to any of us. How often have I struck up the music of my religion, seeking to move the bystanders! Beginning with single soft notes, I have soon been swept on by youthful impetuosity to the fullest harmony of the religious feelings. But nothing stirred, nothing answered in the hearers. I have entrusted these words to a larger and more versatile circle, yet from how many, despite of those advantages, will they return in sadness without having been understood, yea, without having awaked the vaguest suspicion of their purpose! And how often, for all who proclaim religion, and for me along with them, will this fate which has been appointed us from the beginning, be renewed! Yet this shall never distress us. The difficulty we know may not otherwise be met, and we shall never be moved from our quiet equanimity to attempt in any other fashion to force our way of thinking either upon this or the future generation.
Everyone of us misses in himself not a little that belongs to a complete humanity, and many lack much. What wonder, then, if the number in whom religion refuses to develope should be great! Necessarily it must be great, else how could we come to see it in—if I might so say—its incarnate, historical existence, or discern the bounds it sets on all sides to the other capacities of man, or how by them again it is in manifold ways bounded. Or how should we know how far man can anywhere succeed without it, and where it sustains him and forwards him; or guess that, without his knowledge, it is busy in him.
But especially in these times of universal confusion and upheaval, it is natural that its slumbering spark should not glow up in many, however lovingly or patiently we tend it, and that, even in persons in whom under happier circumstances it would have broken through all obstacles, it is not brought to life. In all human things nothing remains unshaken. Every man must continually face the possibility of having to abandon the very belief that determines his place in the world and binds him to the earthly order of things. And he may find no other, but may sink in the general whirlpool. One class shun no concentration of their own powers and shout also towards every side for help, that they may hold fast what they take to be the poles of the world and of society, of art and of science, which by an indescribable destiny, as it were of their own accord, suddenly leap from their sockets and allow all that has so long revolved around them to fall; the other class, with a like restless zeal, are busy clearing away the ruins of fallen centuries, seeking to be the first to settle on the fruitful ground that is being formed beneath from the quickly cooling lava of the dread volcano.
Even without leaving his place, every man is so mightily affected by the vehement shaking of all things that, in the universal giddiness, he must be glad to fix his eye steadily enough on any one object, to be able to keep to it and convince himself gradually that something still stands. In such a state of things it would be foolish to expect that many could be fit to cultivate and retain religious feelings which prosper best in quiet. In the midst of this ferment, indeed, the aspect of the moral world is more majestic and noble than ever, and at moments there are hints of more significant traits than ever before in the centuries. Yet who can rescue himself from the universal turmoil? Who can escape the power of narrower interests? Who has calm enough to stand still and steadfastness enough for undisturbed contemplation?
But suppose the happiest times and suppose the best will not only to arouse by communication the capacity for religion where it does exist, but, by every possible way, to ingraft and to impart it. Where, then, is there such a way? All that the activity and art of one man can do for another is to communicate conceptions to be the basis of thoughts, and so far to associate them with his own ideas that they may be remembered at fitting times. But no one can arrive at the point of making others think what thoughts he will. There is a contrariety that cannot be eliminated from words, and much less can you get beyond this means and freely produce what inner activity you will. In short, on the mechanism of the spirit everyone can, in some measure, work, but into its organization, into the sacred workshop of the Universe, no one can enter at pleasure. No one can change or disarrange, take from or add to. At the most he may, by means of this mechanism, retard the development of the spirit. Part of the growth may thus be violently mutilated, but nothing can be moulded. From this sanctuary of his organization which force cannot enter, all that pertains to the true life of man, all that should be an ever alert, operative impulse in him, proceeds.