Felix Adler: Ethical Significance of Easter

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Adler, Felix: "The Ethical Significance of Easter"

THE celebration of Easter is not peculiar to Christianity. In the old Pagan religions there were festivals at this time. The Hebrew Passover is another in-stance in point. But in all the religious festivals in which the spring is the motive we find that the occasion is not one just of gladness, of full-throated joy, such as the awakening of Nature might suggest. The note of Easter is rather one of triumph. If there be gladness involved, it has the character of relief after precedent anguish. The Passion, Lent, with its deprivations, is in the background. In the Pagan times human sacrifices were brought to cruel divinities at this season. The Hebrew Passover itself is reminiscent of slaughter in Egypt, of flight and pursuit, of nearness to drowning in the Red Sea, and of bare escape on to a desert shore. Terrors and darkness are behind the Easter joy.

Rembrandt has left us a picture in one of the European galleries of Jesus Rising from the Tomb. The great realist expresses in this painting a deep human experience. It is one of the most matter-of-fact, and yet one of the most heart-rending, versions of the story. We see a man just out of the pit — hollow-eyed, with blanched cheeks, the chill of the grave clinging to him, the terror of what he has passed through still visible in the expression of his face.

Life has this note in it, and the religions in so far are true to life. Everything big has a somber background. All the great poetry of the world has this characteristic: the Greek tragedy, Dante's allegory, Shakespeare at his greatest, as in "Lear" or "Hamlet." Is there anything more profoundly touching than the "Tenebrae" of Palestrina, or the passages that precede the hymn of joy in the "Ninth Symphony"? True, in the end there is the triumph. Religion does not intend to leave man in the depths, but to uplift him; only the triumph is laden, as it were, with the experience that has gone before. Life at its best is rather to be thought of as grand; and Easter, as a celebration of Life, is not happy so much as it is grand.

The Christian interpretation of Easter has lost its interest for many people. New York is a city of four or five millions of people, and among all these how many are there whom the Christian idea deeply influences? Especially the Protestant churches are almost empty the year round, except on rare occasions. What is wrong with Christianity? And is there any use in such of us as are not in the line of that tradition discussing the Christian interpretation of Easter when Christians themselves are clinging to the outskirts of their religion rather than to the central teachings of it?

My reason for discussing the subject is twofold. First, I think that there is some-thing valuable in each of the great religions, something worth taking out of the mold into which it was cast, in order to recast, to restate it. Secondly, I think that the study of other men's religion is a means of defining one's own. The ethical interpretation of Easter can be made clearer in a comparison with that of Christianity.

The Christian interpretation is twofold. Easter celebrates the triumph over death — first over physical death, and then over what may be called moral death. There had been a previous belief in immortality, but it was unsure, not demonstrated. Now here was one, Jesus, who actually died, executed as a blasphemer according to the method then in vogue for criminals, on the cross, just as the execution would have taken place in the electric chair if it had occurred at the present time. This dead man lay in the tomb for three days. On the third day the place was empty, the stone rolled away, the man had risen. And so here we have a tangible proof that we, too, can rise after we are dead. The stone that was rolled away from the tomb is the corner stone of Christian orthodoxy.

Such stories have been told many times — the story of a man being dead and coming back. It is not surprising that there should have been such a story. This kind of proof of immortality, however, no longer appeals to those who have grown up in the modern atmosphere of absolute confidence in the inexorable character of natural law. This whole way of looking at the question of death has become foreign to us. What, then, is valuable in it?

To my mind the valuable thing is not the ghost story itself, but the fact that this particular tale should have persisted, unlike other ghost stories, which are repeated for a time and then forgotten. The reason is, I as I take it, to be found in the personality

ti ;of the Master, the Teacher. Here was a man, a young man in the first bloom and charm of manhood, of so rare a personality that those who were constantly associated with him — and is not this the test of a man, ' the opinion of those who are constantly with him? — regarded him as a supernatural being.

Even his own brother! A man may be a hero to anybody more easily than to his own kin. But Jacob, whom the Authorized Version calls James, was the leader of the followers of Jesus, the head of his first church. So wonderful was this Jesus that Brother Jacob believed him to be a super-natural being. One cannot help speculating on the unexampled grace of character that must have been his, aside from the beautiful words which are still remembered as coming from his lips. How much that is not recorded, how much that was infinitely lovely, must have been present in this rare youth to have created such an impression on the mind of Brother Jacob and of the others who saw him day in and day out in the intimacy in which a man cannot but expose such faults as he has!

My thought, then, is that what is valuable in the belief is not that the resurrection story proves the exalted nature of the man Jesus, but quite the other way. The rare personality of the man explains the fact that the story persisted. Those who had known him simply could not believe that such excellence as his could perish. And this, to my mind, is the only foundation of the belief in immortality. To me the foundation of any belief in the continuation and preservation of what is best in human life is the impression which certain people make — that such excellence as theirs cannot possibly perish.

Let us turn, however, to the other aspect of the Christian interpretation of Easter — that of the conquest of moral death. On this day the churches celebrate the discovery of an infallible remedy for the resuscitation of the morally dead. Christianity is a society for the morally handicapped, the morally dead. Jesus says, Rise! and they do rise. This is the effect he produces. Men who are bad are changed so as to become good, moral life replaces insensitiveness. The Christian idea is that Jesus ever and ever again accomplishes this miracle. By what means does he accomplish it? He is the way by which men ascend from a moral death to life. Let us endeavor to understand what the Christian believer really means when he says, "Christ is the Way."

Other religious teachers are like physicians who prescribe a certain regimen, or the use of certain remedies. The method of Jesus, on the other hand, was that of healing by contact. "This man," the believer said, "is health itself; health incarnate! Touch him and you will become like him. Virtue goes out from him, not from his prescription." The same qualities are attributed to him as to the Philosopher's Stone, of which they used to dream in the Middle Ages, and which, it was thought, could change any base metal into precious metal, or any common stone into a precious stone. The living Jesus was, in the mind of the believer, such a Philosopher's Stone; at his touch the morally base became precious, and the sick became whole.

Christ, for the church, is the great exemplar. The Christian method is the exemplary method. Now the exemplary method may be used in three different ways, of which the first is quite external, the second more intimate and inward, and the third most spiritual. A brief explanation will serve to make clear these distinctions.

An example, to begin with, is an illustration of a principle or rule. In teaching elementary mathematics, we tell the pupils the Rule of Three, then give them certain problems, and bid them to work out the rule in those problems for themselves. So with helping people morally by means of external examples. If you desire to impress the rule of punctuality, you are to be punctual yourself; or if the rule of order, you must be orderly yourself. You may not impose upon others a rule which conflicts with your own habits. If you desire your sermon to be effective you must illustrate it in your own behavior.

Examples of this kind, however, are not sufficient. The more valuable example is that which conveys to others the attitude that underlies the rule. The moral rules are all examples of a certain spirit, or of a certain attitude towards other people. You may perform a rule strictly, literally enough, but if you do not exemplify and illustrate the spirit you will not revivify the morally dead. You can, for instance, be just in your dealings with your employees, the wage-earners, according to the letter. That is, you can pay them what you have contracted to pay; you can live up to your contract. But the contract itself may be outrageous. You have perhaps taken advantage of the necessities of the poor, who must either accept your terms or starve! You are, then, just according to the letter, but nevertheless only "fair on the outside" and possibly "full of corruption within." The rules which we exemplify are worth while only if they are horn out of the spirit of respect for others, of the sacred evaluation of other human beings, of tenderness towards others.

There is a third stage, namely, the stage of discovery, when a gifted mind sees a new principle, an interpretation of life which no one ever had, at least in the same intensity and clarity, and himself stands out luminous in the light of the sun of righteousness which he beholds. Such a spiritual discoverer was Jesus of Nazareth, and in this sense he was exemplary in the highest degree. And the new aspect of moral truth which he saw so intensely — the germ of it existed in the Hebrew prophets, but it had never been seen in this serene, clear radiance — was the idea of the spiritual unity of men, the idea that there is the same spiritual nature in all.

The educated are not baked of other clay than the mass. The distinction on which the Hellenic mind insisted, that some are born with slave natures and others with free, is no longer tenable. The same spiritual nature is in all, bond or free, slave or master, Greek or Jew; all have the same inner possibilities, the same destiny. It was a wonderful new step, this idea now so familiar. Jesus himself did not fully declare the last consequences of his thought. But they were implied.

Why not, then, be a Christian? I would answer for myself, and my answer is: Be-cause the method on which Christianity depends is, after all, not sufficient. The Christian church on its ethical, as distinct from its dogmatic side, is based on the thought that the way to revive the morally dead is to hold up an example. But this method itself, the method of reviving by example, must be transcended. Example only conducts us a certain way. Beyond, it does not avail us. For there are no examples of the specific kinds of virtue that we most need to-day. I am discussing with a group of young people the type of the ideal merchant, but there is no example of the kind of merchant that I want them to be like. There are in every calling plenty of people honorable and honest according to their lights. But of the type we wish to see created in business, in the law, in medicine, in the church, there are no examples. The exemplary method simply holds us back, prevents us from seeking what is new, and confines us to the ancient, inadequate examples; while we are pledged to seek new types.

But before turning to the modern ethical as contrasted with the Christian means of moral redemption, let us examine more closely the character of Jesus as exemplar. It is already, I hope, clear what my attitude toward this rare personality is. It is one of moral piety, an attitude such is proper toward the incomparable geniuses of the race, especially toward a genius in the field of conduct, where genius is so exceptional. Yet Jesus said of himself, "Call me not good; there is none good save One." Surely he did not pretend to perfection. He was one in whom the Divine Power that works in the world manifested itself in extraordinary fashion. But the moment we admit that he was man, we imply that he must have been subject to the limitations of human nature in general, and also to the peculiar limitations of his age, and therefore that he could not possibly be exemplary to us in certain vital particulars to-day.

What is it, for instance, that we need more to-day than an ethicized conception of the state — an ideal of the state that can show us the direction in which we should transform our sordid politics? But can we find such an ideal in the New Testament, or any guidance as to the ethics of citizenship? On the contrary, we find only indifference to citizenship, or a positively harmful doctrine of submission. "The powers that be are ordained of God"; whatever the powers that be, the powers of the Russian Czar, for instance.

Again, our age needs an ideal of the right kind of womanhood. The world is divided to-day between two contending ideals: that of self-effacement and that of self-assertion; the ideal of woman as the custodian of life, the life of the race, the life of the family, and the ideal of woman as an independent ego insisting upon her "rights." There is something, doubtless, to be said on behalf of both ideals. There are elements in both that need to be combined. But how? Turn to the New Testament in the hope of obtaining light! On the one hand the exaltation of celibacy above marriage; and on the other hand, again, submission. As Christ is the head of the man, so man is to be the head of the woman — the Oriental view of woman! Perhaps the Master should not be himself held responsible for everything that the New Testament teaches in his name. But we can judge only of the teaching as it stands. And it is impossible to say that it is adequate.

Of course it is the theological dogma, the doctrine that Jesus is the God of this vast universe, that has maintained the idea of the ethical finality of his teaching. If he was God, then whatever he said or did must have been perfect. And even advanced liberals who hold that Jesus spoke the last word in ethics, and that nothing remains but to apply his principles, are under the subconscious after influence of the theological idea. In their case the theological belief has disappeared, but the ethical belief which was its counterpart persists.

It may be said, however, that as Jesus discovered the ideal of the spiritual unity of men and the presence of the spiritual nature in all, we can surely develop from this all those new ethical applications which the world needs. But if this be urged, then we shall be bound to go a step further, and to insist that the conception of the spiritual nature itself as found in the New Testament is imperfect. It was, indeed, an immense gain to discover the existence of the common spiritual nature in all, but the New Testament idea of what that spiritual nature consists in is quite inadequate. It cannot be developed in the new directions, because it is not capable of such development. The root idea is that spirituality consists in other-worldliness! The spiritual nature is that which denies this world, which passes through this world merely unspotted of the world, not an energy in us which takes hold of the world and subjects it to a positive spiritual principle. We cannot develop out of any root what is not potentially present in it. We can graft, or interpolate into a system like the Christian anything we may please. But the grafted interpretation will be in fact fictitious, and therefore in the long run untenable. The interpretation of ideas of which Jesus and his disciples never dreamed into the New Testament has gone on for centuries, and is still going on. The line of reasoning inspiring such interpretation is that since Christianity is best, therefore that which anyone considers best he is entitled to label Christianity, even though it be opposed to Christian doctrine. There has just appeared, for instance, a book on militarism by an English non-commissioned officer, in which he tries to make out that militarism is consistent with the true interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. For was not Jesus "the loyal and heroic Son of God"! And these words, "a loyal and heroic Son of God," serve for him as a bridge between the teaching, "Thou shalt not resist evil," and militarism.

So certain socialists speak of Jesus as an authority for socialism — because he taught fraternity. Yet Jesus' conception of brotherhood was very different from the meaning which has attached to it since the days of the French Revolution. Charity for the poor he enjoined, so as to save them from the indignity of suffering extreme want. But wealth he considered a snare. He taught wealth for none; can he be made the sponsor of socialism which says wealth for all! Should not those who indulge freely in the reinterpretation of ancient teachings consider that there are limits beyond which the right of reinterpretation cannot safely or truthfully he carried?

But if even the example of Jesus, regarded from the human point of view, is thus found not to be sufficing, whither shall we turn for a more adequate exemplification? Wherever we turn we shall have to consent to deductions and abatements. There is none so wise and great and good as to illustrate perfect wisdom, greatness and goodness. Thomas More is one of my heroes. How many admirable qualities were united in him, and in what marvelous combinations! Yet there is a stain on his shield — his dealings with the Protestants. Marcus Aurelius, too, persecuted the Christians. The calm Washington, we are told, was subject at times to outbursts of almost ungovernable fury. There was undoubtedly a certain strain of coarseness in the make-up of Abraham Lincoln. We are embarrassed by the difficulty of finding suitable examples, especially in our ethical teaching of the young. Young persons are incorrigible hero-worshipers. They insist on seeing black or white, angel or fiend. The Word for them must, indeed, become flesh if it is to satisfy their desire to show unstinted, unqualified admiration. And yet their demand cannot be satisfied without a measure of inveracity. The most that can be done is to select different personalities illustrating different virtues, and make of them a florilegium or mosaic pat-tern of virtue. But a collection of partial moral excellences cannot represent that supreme, unitary thing called the ideal of moral perfection. Especially, as has been said, is there the greatest dearth of examples in regard to those situations in life where examples would be most helpful. We should like to set before the eyes of young men who intend to devote themselves to business the pattern of the righteous merchant — that is, of some one whose life they might study in all its details in order to model their own upon it. And there are, of course, many honest and honorable merchants, but the "righteous merchant" in the meaning which the new sense of social justice attaches to the word righteous — where shall he be found? We think, perhaps, of Robert Owen, one of the great pioneers of co-operation, but can we commend Owen's ideas as a whole? Can we say to young men: here is one who represents the type, eho embodies the new conception of industrial righteousness; follow confidently in his footsteps; take him as your example?

The final outcome of our reflection is that the exemplary method itself must be transcended. It is eminently helpful as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. It leaves us without guidance precisely in those new situations, where we need guidance most. Yet the absence of satisfying examples, of divine friends and helpers whom we might lean upon, is not a misfortune; on the contrary, the predicament in which we find ourselves discloses to us that there is a nobler way of salvation even than that which the Christian past has known, and of this I would now briefly speak.

If Jesus was great because he was a discoverer of higher moral truth, if he achieved his own salvation by means of such discovery (and if we regard him as human we must put it in just this way, that he saved men by first achieving his own salvation), then we are to undertake our moral redemption by becoming discoverers of new moral truth in like manner. It matters not that we are infinitely little as compared with the great Masters in religion. It matters not that the increment of new light which we may be able to see is but the faintest glimpse. It matters not that we are rightly overwhelmed with a sense of our inner darkness and unworthiness. We are, nevertheless, to press through the darkness, we are to tend in the direction of the light. We are to overcome our blindness and become seeing, not through the touch of some magical personality outside of us, but through the craving for light from within ourselves! In a word, the ethical interpretation of Easter as I here submit it is, that the change from moral death into moral life is to be accomplished through the act of creating the new moral ideal, which we and our age need. We, too, like the greatest who have preceded us (in the moral world the distinctions between great and little are only provisional), are to be-come luminous in the light of the Sun of Righteousness which we behold. Moral redemption is a process. The inner trans-formation is accomplished in the act on our part of seizing the new and truer rendering of the moral ideal.

It is in this fashion that moral values are to be revalued, that the moral coinage is to be forever reminted. It is in this fashion that we are to reinterpret the ideals of the personal life, of marriage and the vocations. We shall be saved in the process of reinterpretation. And it is in this way also that the relation of people to people, the concept of humanity, is to be reinterpreted. And I would close my address to-day by dwelling for a moment on this last point.

This is Easter, 1915. What Easter means in America, what it means on the battle-fields of Europe, weighs, oh! how heavily, upon our mind and heart. We cannot get away from the horror and the sorrow of this appalling bloodshed. Is there any silver lining to the cloud? we ask. Is there any compensating insight to be hoped for as the result of this immeasurable catastrophe? As we study the causes that have brought about the war, we take account of the primal ferocities of human nature, the unquenched hatreds that still subsist under the surface of civilization — we think of the emergence of nationalisms, of the overfed pride of race, of the competition for colonial markets, and the hardness of heart displayed in the conduct of the stronger towards the weaker peoples. But we are also bound to consider the insufficiency of the ideal of peace itself as a restraining and educative influence. We are bound to realize the absence as yet of any just or any adequate conception of what international relations ought to be. And how can there be progress toward a goal when the goal itself is so indeterminate and vague?

There are at the present time two conceptions of international relations contending for the mastery, neither of which is true, neither of which is adequate. The one is the cosmopolitan, which regards mankind as a vast aggregate of individuals with-out regard to national distinctions, and would assure to each separate person a pain-less and pleasure-filled life. Suffering and the loss of physical existence and warfare (because of the suffering and loss of life), appear from this point of view the most unpardonable crimes. But against this conception the patriotisms, standing for a wholly different ideal, rise up in arms. They say that prosperity and happiness as life's chief goods are being over-emphasized. that there are things in this world worth dying for, that suffering can never be eliminated, that it is a great and noble thing to bear suffering for the sake of the impersonal ends which are attained by means of it. And the patriotisms are right when they maintain that there are things worth dying for; but they are wrong in saying that there are things worth killing for. They are right in saying that suffering cannot he eliminated, that suffering is the price that must be paid for any great achievement — the suffering of the reformer, the anguish of creation as undergone by great artists, the heavy brain toll attending the great discoveries in science; but they are wrong in saying that the suffering must continue of the kind that is witnessed to-day on the bloody fields of Northern France and of Poland.

The compensation we look for will be found in the reaction produced by this war on the best minds of our time, a reaction like that (only it must be far deeper) which occurred after the Thirty Years' War, and which led among the Dutch to the first formulating of the principles of international law. And the reaction must be against both the conceptions that have been mentioned. It must consist in the creation of a new, a spiritual ideal of humanity. We think too secularly of the international bond, too, as a means merely of securing order, or undisturbed commercial relations, or tranquillity for nations that exist side by side, each in juxtaposition to its neighbors, pursuing its own detached ends. This is a profane, a meager notion of international relations founded on the overvaluation of prosperity and happiness. It is no wise a spiritual conception. We must create the new spiritual ideal of humanity, and in the process of creating it gain the strength for realizing it. We must learn to look upon humanity as Jesus helped us to look upon the individual, as a holy thing, as a corpus spirituale, as a spiritual commonwealth or organism, the members of which are the nations, each of them being a depository of the divine power in some one of its modifications, each of them being endowed with its own specific gifts, standing for some type of civilization indispensable to the whole; and each of them also required, to the mortification of its national pride, to recognize the existence of grave defects in its own psychic type, and called upon to eliminate these defects by the spiritual method of fitting itself to elicit the excellence in other types.

The human race may be compared to a writer. At the outset a writer has often only a vague general notion of the plan of his work, and of the thought he intends to elaborate. As he proceeds, penetrating his material, laboring to express himself fitly, he lays a firmer grasp on his thought; he finds himself. So the human race is writing its story, finding itself, discovering its own underlying purpose, revising, recasting a tale pathetic often, yet none the less sublime.

These are heavy thoughts for Easter morning, heavy with the load that now lies on the world, but pregnant, if they be true, with the hope of a new birth. The ideals which I have barely sketched are far re-moved from those which were visible or possible nineteen hundred years ago. They lie in a new direction. Let us advance in that direction, let us set our faces bravely forward, responding to the call of the God-head that cries out of the future — nor lingering too lovingly under the spell of the sweet voices that echo out of the past.

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