COSKTAN H A 'ET,
OSMIAN HALL is an institution in the village of Florence (township of Northampton), Massachusetts, of which the New YPrk Tribune of July 14 gives a very curious account— and which interests us because its members appear to apply with something more than courage, with audacity, to the usage of what would ordinarily be called a religious association, that logic of facts on which all the modern practice of religious com- prehension is based. In England, no doubt, there do exist non- subscribing Presbyterian Churches which disown as a principle all theological creeds as the basis of unity ; but they are com- posed of Christian believers almost wholly of the Unitarian or some other heterodox type, and they would be, as a rule, much scandalised by any proposal either to invite them, on the one
hand, to listen to a professedly materialistic proof that God is a mere "sigh of the heart," or, on the other, to ask them to hear an eloquent appeal from some Roman Catholic or Evangelical apologist for the Church or the Bible. Indeed, in England, however eloquent may be the profession that creed is a completely open question, you may be quite sure that it only means open up to a certain point, and not beyond ;—open, perhaps, in some cases, on the negative side, but not on the positive, open towards deeper scepticism, but not towards a more antique, or what would be termed a more superstitious form of belief; or in other cases, again, open towards the side of more, but not of less, belief, open towards "Primitive Catholic" doctrine, but not towards the subjective individuality of Protestant convictions. All this, how- ever, is not so much comprehension, as incomplete exclusion. Many Churches admit all whose faces seem to them turned in the right direction,—whether that direction be the direction of faith or that of doubt. Those who are quite clear that the old Creeds ante: dreams will admit all who reject them, from the Unitarian to the Pantheist, and even speak with favour of the thorough-going - religious Know-nothing. Those who are quite clear that the decrees of the first four Councils are of divine authority, will admit all who accept them, from the moderate High Churchman to the Ritualist who outdoes Rome in everything but submission to the Bishop of Rome. But the root of comprehension in all these cases is merely an unsettled mind as to where moral certainty ends. The habitués of Cosmian Hall, Florence, Massachusetts, go fax beyond this. Their only principle is that there is no prin- ciple sufficiently certain on these subjects to warrant any exclu- - sion. They have all assented to the following article of agreement,.. "which is inscribed on a slab of white marble, and inserted in the wall, within the porch, and just over the large entrance :"— " Respecting in each other and in all the right of intellect and con- science to be free, and holding it to be the duty of every one to keep his mind and heart at all times open to receive the truth and follow its guidance, we set up no theological condition of membership, and neither demand nor expect uniformity of doctrinal belief, asking only unity of^ purpose to seek and accept the right and true, and an honest aim and effort to make these the rule of life ; and recognising the brotherhood of the human race and the equality of human rights, we make no distinc- tion as to the conditions and rights of membership in this society on account of sex, er colour, or nationality."
And so logically is this carried out that, according to the account in the New York Tribune, any person who addresses the congre- gation of Cosmian Hall may mould the service absolutely to his own will. If he wishes to pray he prays, and prays in whatever words suit his own convictions. If he does not wish to pray, and does not believe in prayer, he does not pray, but may just walk into the reading-desk and begin his discourse. If he prefers to have a hymn, he can arrange with the choir to sing any hymn he points out,—the choir apparently feeling quite at liberty to treat a hymn as if it were merely words set to a particular tune, and not considering itself committed to the meaning of the words. If he likes to read from the Bible, he "will find a Bible in the desk." If he does not, but -wishes instead to read a passage from the " Zendavesta," or the "Koran," Emerson, Martineau, Spencer, Browning, Whitman, or J. S. Mill, he is quite at liberty to bring those or any other authors with him and read at pleasure. Moreover, so absolute is the principle that if there be any legitimate authority in these matters, that authority must be verified by discussion, that directly the officiating spokesman of the day concludes, any member of the congregation is at liberty to rise and criticise his statements, giving his reasons either for concurring or for dissenting from them; and though this is not a necessary or fixed incident in the order of proceedings, and may often be wanting, the right to criticise is jealously maintained,— the contributors expressing their conviction that the expectation of this challenge "makes ministers more careful, does away with a deal of dogmatism, and is in full accord with every principle of democracy." (Note especially the implicit assumption which seems to be at the bottom of that verdict, that "the principles of democracy" are much nearer true intellectual and moral postulates than any conceivable doctrines unconnected with poli- tical institutions.) The preacher to this strange sect is called the Resident Speaker,' anyone else being allowed to speak if he chooses, and the first Resident Speaker' appears to have been a Mr. Bur- leigh, a strong Abolitionist, remarkable for eccentricities of dress
and hair, who was helped in his duties by Assistant-Resident Speaker' of the other sex, a Miss Powell, who, however, married and retired from public life before her first year of office was over. The present 'Resident Speaker' is said to be a young man excom- municated by one of the orthodox sects, and the Society contains materialists, spirit-rappers, vegetarians, heretics of all sorts, and
all the oddities of spurious and disobedient orthodoxy. The only deviation from the principle of regarding all forms of belief arrepen questions appears to be that in the Sunday-school the children are taught to repeat hymns, which must carry a good deal of positive religious conviction and feeling with them, unless, indeed,—which we are not told,—the children are carefully taught that these hymns represent only the opinions of the poets who composed them, and are to be learnt by heart merely as exercises of the memory and illustrations of poetic feeling and taste. The chairman or leader of "the adult class," which dis- cusses all sorts of social. and theological questions, "especially the latter," is said to be a man "whose philosophy evidently borders closely on nutterialism," and of whom the writer in the Trawls says that "most Church members would probably call him an infidel." It is certain, nevertheless, that however materialistic may be the predoininant tendency impressed upon this anarchy of all religions, there is no embargo placed on faith, however orthodox, though faith, of course, is very often too orthodox to desire a regular place in this chaos. Two Catholics (or perhaps ex- Catholics) are mentioned as belonging to the congregation, and ministers of orthodox denominations have been invited to preach in the pulpit of Cosmian Hall. The place itself appears to be as nondescript as the conditions of membership. The hall of meet- ing is lighted by windows of stained glass, and the choir is in the habit of singing anthems. But a dark curtain descending behind the pulpit cuts off a room often used as the stage for a theatre or concert-room, and in the other parts of the building there are the rooms suitable for a club, rooms for talk and rooms for refresh- ments, and kitchens for preparing the refreshments. The hall is decorated with paintings of eminent men like Shakespeare, Rubens, Humboldt, and John Brown. Indeed, the idea of the building might have been taken from the King of Bavaria's Valhalla, near Ratisbon.
One would have thought that "Chaotic Hall" would have been
• a better name for' this strange institution than "Cosmian Hall." 'Certainly the intellectual law of this Cosmos is not easy to detect. An institution in which worship, if desired by the speaker, is tolerated by one part of the congregation, while a demonstration of the superstitious character of worship, if that be the speaker's view of it, is tolerated by the other detnents of the congregation, is so odd and so completely out of relation to the ordinary principles of human nature, that one can only conceive it possible in connection with forms of faith so faint and so little rooted in the heart, as to be little beyond inclinations to believe. Yet the interest of Cosmian Hall' to us is that it fairly represents the state of most mis- cellarleOus companies assembled in almost any English dining or drawing-room, though not certainly in any English chapel or church. No one would be surprised in England to -find a strong Materialist or Atheist sitting on one side of him, an earnest Roman Catholic on the other side, a vehement Spirit- rapper opposite, and on either side of him, again, an Evangelical Churchman and a high Ritualist. No one would be surprised at this, and no one would feel entitled to assume, on the strength of knowing so much as this, that any one of the six was morally inferior to the others. In fact, Cosmian Hall,' though it does not represent the terms on which any. English society contain- ing believers in prayer would consent to meet for public service, does very adequately- represent the chaos of cultivated middle-class and aristocratic thought in relation to matters of frith, even amongst persons who meet habitually on friendly terms, and without the least pretension to pass moral censures on each other. It is this fact which makes the phenomenon of Cosmian flail' so interesting to us. That universal complaisance towards all forms of belief and unbelief which the Yankee society of Florence, Massachusetts, have admitted into their quasi-religious meetings, we English have admitted,—not yet into our religious, but certainly into our social meetings, and the question for both peoples alike is, "What step comes next ?" And the next step seems to unto be pretty clear. We only wonder how during twelve years the- existence of a society like that of Cosmian Hall' has not been endangered by the source of disagreement we fold in it, as we are told it has not been. The decompo- sition which goes down to the root not only of Christian, but of ethical systems, must result before long, and must re- sult, we would add, without the least bad faith, not exactly in licence assuming a mask, but in a real effort to think boldly upon, and to act on strong conviction by challenging, the ulti- mate laws of social morality, and by proposing some quite different basis than that which is in great measure the heritage of Christian beliefs and Christian sentiments. Haw would the members of Cosmian Hall' like sermons traversing, in whatever good faith, the accepted principles of moral sincerity and purity, or the attempt to establish a new theory of life, on more distinctly ' physiological ' principles, than any as yet accepted in civilised communities? There is, it appears, a physiological class among the Sunday-school classes in Cosmian Hall. Why should an attempt to recast social manners on materialist principles be more resented than any other honest application of carefully formed convictions ? It seems to us morally certain that the nett stage in the decomposition of belief which is going on so rapidly must involve the most profound, probably sincere, and yet alarming recast of principles of honour and principles of self- restraint, hitherto blindly accepted without sufficiently counting the large admixture of Christian tradition, sentiment, and author- ity involved in them. Whenever that crisis cornea in the history of Cosmian Hall, we suspect that the Yankee Cosmos will turn out to be a Chaos. And unquestionably something of the same kind must come sooner or later in the social history of England. And then, if either a new foundation for the old morality be not forthcoming —which seems to us very unlikely—or else a new access of belief in the old foundation, that society will not be any longer a 008M06, but a chaos. It is hoping against hope to fancy that there is any common standing-ground in practical morality for men who retain, and men who give up, the faith which has made practical morality what it is. For a little while longer the force of inherited feelings may keep the world of action comparatively secure against the invasion of radically new beliefs. But it can be but for a little while. Though we should earnestly maintain that the conscience has a distinct source of life of its own, which cannot suddenly disappear, even though the beliefs which are in most complete consonance with it vanish, we do not believe that that ordinary life can ever be completely independent of the intellectual inroads habitually made on it. The ethical basis of thought is, we believe, deeper than the dogmatic ; but unless it succeeds in moulding the dogmatic to its own temper, it -will suffer the decomposition inevitable through constant contact with a decomposing theory. 'Cosmian Hall' is a remarkable sign of the times. But it is not by any means a sign of the ages. It is a transition-stage between Cosmos and Chaos.
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