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FRANCIS J.McCONNELL
BR 121 .M24 1912 McConnell, Francis John,
1871-1953.
The increase of faith
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ffilje Jtltcticii XecturJB (or 1911-12, Belibtnti aft
lie ©Ijio ©csUpaii anibetiitp, Sptil 21-26, 1912 \/£»,
The Increase of Faith
Some Present-Day Aids to Belief
BY/ FRANCIS JOHN McCONNELL
Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church and Ex-President of DePauw University
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM
Copyright, 1912, by FRANCIS J. McCONNELL
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Merrick Lectures 5
Introduction 7
I. The Scientific Spirit 9
II. The Philosophic Outlook 48
III. Soctal Movements 89
IV. The Ethical Advance 128
V. The Adornment of Doctrine 169
VI. The Demand for Christ 204
THE MERRICK LECTURES
By the gift of the late Frederick Merrick, M.D., D.D., LL.D., for fifty-one years a mem- ber of the Faculty, and for thirteen of those years President of Ohio Wesleyan University, a fund was established providing an annual income for the purpose of securing lectures within the general field of Experimental and Practical Religion. The following courses have previously been given on this foundation :
Daniel Curry, D.D. — Christian Education.
President James McCosh, D.D., LL.D. — Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.
Bishop Randolph S. Foster, D.D., LL.D.— The Philosophy of Christian Experience.
Professor James Stalker, D.D. — The Preacher and His Models.
John W. Butler, D.D. — Mission Work in Mexico.
Professor George Adam Smith, D.D., LL.D. — Christ in the Old Testament.
Bishop James W. Bashford, Ph.D., D.D.,
LL.D. — The Science of Religion.
5
THE MEERICK LECTURES
James M. Buckley, D.D., LL.D.— The Natu- ral and Spiritual Orders and Their Relations.
John R. Mott, M.A., F.R.G.S., LL.D.— The Pastor and Modern Missions.
Bishop Elijah E. Hoss, D.D., LL.D.; Pro- fessor Doremus A. Hayes, Ph.D., S.T.D., LL.D.; Charles E. Jefferson, D.D., LL.D.; Bishop William F. McDowell, D.D., LL.D.; Bishop Edwin H. Hughes, D.D. — The New Age and Its Creed.
Robert E. Speer, M.A. — The Marks of a Man; or, The Essentials of Christian Charac- ter.
The Rev. Charles Stelzle, Miss Jane Ad- dams, Commissioner of Labor Charles P. Neill, Ph.D., Professor Graham Taylor, and the Rev. George P. Eckman, D.D. — The So- cial Application of Religion.
The Rev. George Jackson, M.A. — Some Old Testament Problems.
Professor Walter Rauschenbusch, D.D. — Christianizing the Social Order.
INTRODUCTION
The lectures which make up this volume constitute a distinct addition to the litera- ture of the Merrick Lecture Course. They embody a conception of religion and of life which is greatly worth while.
The thesis which Bishop McConnell has set forth in his earlier works on "The Diviner Immanence/' and "Religious Certainty" re- appears here in new and charming form. With his penetrative mind he has bored into a great central and ruling principle, which dictates his message to our day. While his thought is so comprehensive that it cannot be caught in a phrase, this governing principle may roughly be described as this — religion the full and glad response of a complete hu- manity to a Christian Deity. In its applica- tion this principle, of course, touches the whole manhood in all its potentialities, intel- lectual and moral, aesthetic and social. It deals with all phases of life and thought and presents a vision of good times, great men,
7
INTRODUCTION
and a conquering God. It affords a sure basis for faith, and sets aspiration free.
The thought is vitalizing, and should bring to other religious teachers and learners (as it has already brought to many) something of the calm power which marks the author him- self. Herbert Welch.
Delaware, Ohio.
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
Before we begin a discussion of the various factors in present-day life which make for the increase of faith it may be well for us to ask the question, What is faith?
Many answers are at hand. The upholder of creed declares that faith is assent to the articles of belief. Yet assent must be more than intellectual. Sometimes the fundamen- tal propositions of Christianity are stated as if they were mathematical axioms. Assent to mathematical axioms does not require any moral virtue. The devils might well assent to intellectual propositions. Another defini- tion would turn around the thought that faith is the enjoyment of an inner experience. This definition is good except for the danger of suggesting that the experience is so wholly a matter of feeling that it has no room what- soever for faith in the sense of trust. Still another would have us believe that faith is a keeping of Commandments, which also is good
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THE INCREASE OP FAITH
if Commandments are not conceived of in a mechanical or artificial fashion.
All that is true in these definitions can be preserved, and all that is harmful avoided, if we say that Christian faith is Christian life. Every activity of the Christian bases itself upon trust — trust in the Christian idea of God, trust in the Christian idea of man, trust in the possibility of interaction between God and man. Out of such trust the life unfolds in certain practical activities, which lead to certain insights, which culminate in a general feeling of spiritual satisfaction. At the cen- ter of all is the will to do the will of God, and out of this comes knowledge which is more than merely intellectual, and experience which is more than the flow of superficially emotional states. It is the purpose of these lectures to show that various great factors in modern times are working to aid, at least in a general way, the progress of Christian faith.
The first factor we are to discuss is the scientific spirit of our day. It is part of present-day good fortune that we have passed beyond the era of so-called conflicts between science and religion. We can easily see how these conflicts arose. The latter part of the nineteenth century was a period of unpar al- io
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
leled scientific advance. The advance was so real and so unlike anything that the world had ever before known that science came quickly to an immense prestige. The glory of the actual discoveries, the charm of the evolu- tionary hypothesis, the practical benefits to be realized at once from scientific conquest, drew more minds to the consideration of scientific problems than had ever been drawn before in a similar period of time. Just think for a moment of the increase of the number of students of the sciences since the date of the announcement of the theory of natural selec- tion, of the increase too of the means of scien- tific advance. With science practically tri- umphant in sphere after sphere, and with students turning toward science by hundreds, it is not to be wondered at that the first inter- pretations of the new heavens and the new earth were in the direction of atheism. With matter apparently doing so much on its own account, it was put in the chief place with confident expectation on the part of the new science that matter would soon explain every- thing. One who was a student in a biological laboratory in those days has told us that he had in his laboratory what might be called a veritable experience of materialism. He
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
watched through the microscope certain bac- teriological developments. Suddenly the im- pression seized him that this was all — that the philosophers and poets and prophets were wrong, and that spirit was nothing. The ex- perience was as definite as a religious con- version. To instance such an experience is to suggest how far we have gone from the credu- lous, uncritical scientific procedure of those early days.
Some of the conflicts of those days came out of the overpowering of the imagination by the long flights of time which the scientists, and especially the evolutionists, felt to be necessary for their theories. True, the length of eternity used to be a favorite theme with old-time preachers, whether to frighten sin- ners or to comfort saints. But the moment the geologist and the biologist began to speak of processes running through millions of years the effect seemed appalling to religious thought. The reason now seems to have been not so much the conflict with the biblical reve- lation as the crude question as to where God was during the periods. The thought that God was in the periods did not find ready ac- ceptance. After a while, though, thoughtful men began to see that the crisis brought on
12
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
by the evolutionary hypothesis was by no means the most serious through which Chris- tian belief had passed. Far more serious had been the announcement and the acceptance of the Copernican system. The acceptance of the idea that the world is round was at one time a deadly heresy. That diagram on the first page of the school geographies to illus- trate the sphericity of the earth, the ship ap- pearing on the horizon with her masts first visible to the observer on shore — this is the costliest diagram in existence, judging by the suffering required to make men accept the truth it conveyed. But men not only ac- cepted the idea of the earth as a globe, but they accepted also the vast distances which the Co- pernican system called for and found these not incompatible with Christian faith. The late Goldwin Smith used to urge somewhat peevishly that dogmatic theology should have died with the announcement of the Coper- nican theories, that it would die sooner or later because its head had been crushed by that announcement. Still theologies of one sort or another live on. If they are to die, it will take something more than Copernicanism or Darwinism to kill them, for Christianity can adjust itself easily both to practically in-
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
finite stretches of space and practically infi- nite stretches of time. Thinkers of all schools have virtually agreed upon this.
Moreover, conflicts between science and re- ligion have in our day been seen not to be conflicts between science and religion so much as between scientists and scientists and be- tween different schools of religion. It would be very easy to make quite a showing of con- flict between science and religion by picking out all the progressive utterances of scien- tists and by putting them over against a mass of utterances of belated theologians. But if we were to take the utterances of scientists as a whole and the utterances of theologians as a whole, we should quite likely find that there have been progressive scientists and progres- sive theologians, conservative scientists and conservative theologians. Quite as bitter in- vective has been heaped upon progressive scientists by reactionary scientists as upon progressive scientists by conservative theo- logians. The battle is really between the spirit of progress and the spirit of conser- vatism. When a doctrine, whether scientific or theological, has organized itself into a system, it partakes of the over-conservatism which is a part of the original sin of institu-
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
tions. The Church is not the only institu- tion which suffers from conservatism. It is not fair, taking the whole Church into the account, to say that the Church suffers more from conservatism than do the political or in- dustrial or educational or social institutions. Our modern knowledge of institutions will hardly permit us to speak very seriously of conflicts between science and religion. The conflict is really the age-old, world-wide con- test between the spirit of progress and the spirit of conservatism.
And, again, certain victories by scientific thinkers over some arguments for Christianity have not been victories over Christianity, but over these particular arguments. For ex- ample, much has been made of the practical surrender by theists to-day of the old-fashioned design argument which had been thought po- tent since the days of Paley. The more de- termined of the earlier apologists would pick out some fact, preferably from the organic realm, and would show that the evidence of design in the fact pointed to the existence of a Creator working with a plan in mind. We cannot help feeling that these old-fashioned arguments still have a value that modern thinkers seem unwilling to concede to them,
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
but there is a sort of offensive cocksureness about them, and they often start more ques- tions than they answer. When an ambitious reasoner of this type declares that he can prove the existence of God from the design shown in a mosquito's wing, the question in- evitably arises as to why the mosquito should exist, at all — which suggests the difficulty which arises through picking out some one fact and looking at it alone. In our day we feel that design must apply to the system as a whole. We seek for signs of plan not so much in details as in the entire sweep and outcome of the vast cosmic process. This type of thinking has its pitfalls as truly as the other, but it is in the fashion just at present. In any case, we can see how little the mere change of emphasis in our argument can really affect the foundations of faith.
To come closer to the heart of our ques- tion, however, we must ask not only whether this or that body of organized scientific re- sults makes against faith, but whether the scientific temper or scientific spirit makes against faith. Through the positive scientific advances of the past fifty years, through the discussion of these even in the newspapers, through the familiarization of the public with
16
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
scientific processes, there has come and does come increasingly into our own life a scien- tific spirit which we can recognize even though we may not be able to define it. For the pur- poses of this discussion a formal definition is not necessary.
Our first main proposition is that there is nothing in the scientific spirit prohibitive of theistic or Christian belief. We shall have something to say later of the decline of the dogmatic spirit in theology. We must say here that, remarkable as has been the decline of the dogmatic spirit in theology, the de- cline of the dogmatic spirit among those who are looked upon as the real leaders of science is more remarkable still. In the later seven- ties and early eighties it was not so. Scien- tists then had a great deal to say about what could not be. Grant that the scientist to-day may so often say, "I do not know," that he may get himself into a chronic state of agnos- ticism, still this scientific agnosticism is better than the scientific dogmatism which denies outright the value of religious belief.
Among the real achievements of science in recent decades none is of more real value than the recognition of the limitations of science by every man of real scientific spirit.
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THE INCREASE OP FAITH
In fact, there is question as to whether a student can lay claim to the scientific spirit if he is not willing to recognize the limitations of scientific procedure. There is nothing more unscientific than to strive to build up a scien- tific orthodoxy which arrogates to itself the right to pass judgment in all fields. In a general way even popular thinking to-day recognizes the truth that it is the function of science to describe processes and the function of philosophy and religion to give them their final interpretation. What we call ultimate problems lie out beyond the reach of technical scientific processes. Suppose the discoveries of science to do away with matter as we think of it. Suppose we accept the modern scien- tific view that matter is, after all, but a mani- festation of Force or forces. What this Force or these forces are, whether personal or im- personal, and what the fundamental purpose of the Force is if it is personal, is not a prob- lem on which the scientist is finally the au- thority.
But science not only has certain limitations in the nature of the case. It also has limita- tions growing out of its own imperfections. Its instruments are not yet fine enough to make it the real authority in some realms.
18
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
Take the problem of human immortality. Many scientists have dogmatically affirmed that the life of a soul after death is impos- sible. But how can a scientist of real scien- tific spirit pronounce thus dogmatically? The scientist would probably answer that con- scious life is the accompaniment of certain forms of nerve structure, that the material conditions on this earth are the only condi- tions which make such delicate structures possible, that with the destruction of the tissue there is no reason to think that the life makes any other material adjustment. All of this, however, is assumption. No necessary con- nection has ever been shown between nerve structure as we know it and conscious activity. On the one side is nerve and on the other is consciousness, but there is just as much of a chasm between consciousness and nerve as there is between consciousness and stone, ex- cept that, as a matter of fact, certain forms of consciousness and nerve structure are found together. For the dogmatic scientist this fact of being found together will be enough, but the more reflective scientist will not be so sure. This latter observer has learned to dis- trust the mere fact of mutual accompaniment as of final significance. We cannot always
19
THE INCKEASE OF FAITH
judge consciousness by the company it keeps. If we lived in a world of just one language, the dogmatist might readily conclude that there is a necessary and inevitable connection between the characters l-o-v-e and the senti- ment which we know that these characters put together as a word express. We are held back from this dogmatic absurdity, however, by the fact that there are many languages, and that while a sentiment may be the same it may be expressed in writing by any one of many dif- ferent arbitrary symbols. The connection be- tween consciousness and matter, as we know it, may likewise be just one of many possible adjustments, or it is conceivable that con- sciousness may get along without any material accompaniment whatever. Our universe may be penetrated and interpenetrated by other universes which the instruments of our uni- verse may not be able to detect. In other words, a scientific spirit that understands it- self can say nothing prohibitive of a belief in immortality.
Nor can science say anything prohibitive of a belief in freedom. The scientist may object that the reign of law prohibits the belief in freedom. Every deed that occurs must be caught up into the web of law, to be sure, but
20
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
there are laws and laws, and there is nothing which a truly scientific spirit can find irra- tional in the thought of a choice between dif- ferent laws. If virtue is chosen, the path will be upward toward heroism or saintliness. If vice is chosen, the path will be downward toward sluggishness and degradation. But the struggle uphill and the rush down are both in accordance with laws. There is no way of escape from law, but we can escape some laws. Of course a man may break out that it is im- possible to show scientifically that we are not puppets jerked by unseen wires. But it is equally impossible to prove that we are. Sci- ence leaves the door open to belief in freedom. We have already said that proof of the non- existence of God is scientifically out of the question. The scientist comes down at last to forces as they manifest themselves in the world of space and time. He is not, indeed, able to say from a study of the forces them- selves that there is a God back of them, but he is even less able to say that there is not. Indeed, it is really easier to say that there is than that there is not — easier to declare for a God whose presence would account for the play and interplay of the forces than to stop with the forces themselves.
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
From the proposition that the scientific spirit is not prohibitive of belief we advance to the proposition that the scientific spirit is largely friendly to belief. We admit at the outset that we do not hope to establish this proposition by any supposed revelations from any particular facts. The aid is largely in- direct, but really all the more potent on that account.
We call attention to the fact that scientific inquiry is more and more human in its pur- pose and outcome. That is to say, the aim is to fit the facts of the universe more and more to the needs of the bodies and minds of men. In a later paragraph we shall give emphasis to the need of knowledge for the sake of knowl- edge itself, which is much the same as saying knowledge for the sake of the minds of men. Here we say that a large part of scientific ad- vance has come from a desire to relieve the pressing physical needs of men. No matter how much we admire the pursuit of knowl- edge for its own sake, we make mental reser- vations after all. We grow impatient with the search for facts which clearly have no human reference. We may sneer at the prac- tical aim in the pursuit of knowledge, but we qualify our scorn by reference to the lower
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
order of practical. We do not wish a scien- tist to work with so practical an aim as money- making, but if his work is bacteriological in- vestigation, for example, we do not object to his being practical enough to search for and trace out the life history of a deadly disease germ whose annihilation means the deliver- ance of the race from a plague rather than to track down a harmless germ whose life and death are devoid of significance to human be- ings. If we are to commend scientists for their devotion to science, we are a little more likely to choose as hero the man who died ex- perimenting with means of fighting yellow fever than the man who wore himself out de- ciphering prehistoric inscriptions.
Apart altogether from our scientific ideals on this point, great advances to-day are being made by those who bring the human purpose into their researches. And in the past the aid of science toward the growth of faith has been along the line of making conditions of human life really human. Full and rich hu- man insight is bound to result as science makes the burdens of life less heavy. Science, of course, makes possible a materialistic view of the universe. But there is another mate- rialism— that of sluggish and inert half-alive-
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
ness, where the body is forced into chief con- sideration by the burdens placed upon it. With the removal of these burdens some men begin to think in wrong channels indeed, but better have them do this than not think at all. The flourishing of materialism in times of scientific advance is a flourishing of thought that in times before science came to the aid of man was not thought at all, but a dull heavy sense of pain.
A recent traveler in China has told of the life of the chair-bearer, even when the bearer has employment which pays him as much as he asks — the heavy load, the dull monotony of the journey, the thin garments which afford no protection against the rain, the utter weari- ness when the day closes, the wretched relief of the opium pipe. Here is a picture of a comparatively fortunate laborer in a land where science has not yet been permitted to lend its aid for the relief of human misery. In such lands the higher faculties have practi- cally no chance. Beliefs do indeed grow in such lands, but they but accentuate the misery of the people. They are but reflections of the low vitality of the nation. Now, when it comes to estimate the value of science for be- lief we must not forget this indirect service of
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
aid to the conditions out of which belief comes. The shortening of the hours and the lightening of the burden of labor, the relief of communities from dread of widespread hor- rors like conflagrations and plagues, the pro- vision for leisure on the part of larger masses of men — all this is a help to belief.
In all of this we do not forget the danger of the control over material things which comes with the advance of science. Prosperity is often harder to endure than adversity. The psalmist said of old that the people who had no changes forgot God. We know the power of adversity to lead men to prayer, and we know how widespread distresses will lead to revivals of religion. We know too that when men lose hope in earth they turn toward heaven; but our contention holds good that unless we have the material conditions for a human life we cannot have a really human life, and that unless we have really human life belief which, on the whole, comes out of life at its brightest and best, is not apt greatly to flourish. We can readily see that a scientific control of the earth might be too lavishly com- plete for men at their present state of moral development, but there must be some control. A man can hardly think rightly about God if
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
he has no leisure to think at all. No religious advance worth mentioning came, outside the pastoral and desert peoples who had long op- portunities for brooding, until society got enough goods ahead to secure to religious leaders at least a measure of freedom from manual burdens. When science makes it pos- sible for the masses to have large leisure, multi- tudes may, indeed, waste their leisure in idle- ness or worse, but multitudes of others will lay hold on higher beliefs than they have ever known. Many of our beliefs to-day still carry with them much of the hardness of a bitter time. The idea of God as a taskmaster, the emphasis on the virtue of chastening, the sense of tragedy in much religion — all this is a repe- tition of days that were poor and bitter. The highest type of saintliness is not that which can get along without material things, but that which can control and rightly use ma- terial things. Sweet indeed are the uses of adversity, but the uses of prosperity are sweeter still. The meek are to inherit the earth and the saints are to judge the world. Modern science is to help the meek to their throne and the saints to their judgment seat. If the meek can remain meek when they come to their inheritance, and the saints can re-
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
main saintly while seated on a throne of judg- ment, the triumph of grace will be complete, and out of the triumph of grace will come a vision of the truth which will be complete. In a large sense science prepares the way for faith.
We return now for a moment to the con- ception of science as a system of knowledge on its own account. Not only has science made a way for faith in its utilization and control of material forces, but the habits of mind, the intellectual temper and outlook, which are part of the scientific spirit, have been an aid to faith. The scientists have moved through the fields of belief with keen blades cutting down the weeds. In any realm which has to do with religious belief it is very easy for the mind to run off into superstition ; and while superstition comes often out of the religious side of our nature, superstition is the foe of religion. William James used to say that the best way to deal with superstitions is to ventilate them, to break them open and let the northwest wind of science roar through them. So the northwest wind of science has actually blown away ghosts and goblins and witches and demons which used to infest the realm of religious thinking.
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
Understand now, this has not been achieved by the discovery of this or that scientific fact. Quite an argument might be made out for all these ghost folk, but the scientific temper brushes the argument aside. Let us not for- get this when we are tempted to cry out against the scientific spirit as a despoiler in the realm of religious feeling. Undoubtedly that spirit may be a despoiler. We have only to notice some of the wild things done in edu- cational realms to see what can happen if an overzealous scientific spirit gets out of its own realm — the dissection of a great literary classic, for example, from the standpoint of minute philological technicalities which miss the spirit of the author. But while the atmos- phere of the laboratory may sometimes prove poisonous in the library or the studio or the cloister, still that atmosphere is more deadly to hobgoblins than it is to angels. Unless we have large familiarity with the thought of earlier ages we cannot imagine how fortunate we are in being free from blighting supersti- tion in religion.
Moreover, there are other types of supersti- tion which the scientific spirit does much to banish. Men accept inaccurate and inade- quate generalizations which get themselves ex-
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
pressed in wise saws and which are then al- most worshiped as a part of a sort of ortho- doxy. To take one or two simple illustrations of no particular moral application, think of the old-fashioned fear of night air, especially in sick-rooms. Or, in another realm, that old saw, "Slow but sure." When it occurs to some statistical investigator to examine thou- sands of cases of "slow" people he finds that they are not at all likely to be sure, nor does he find that the "sure" persons are likely to be slow. In religious thinking we have ac- cepted misunderstandings of the laws of he- redity, mighty as those laws are, until they have become veritable superstitions. Simi- larly with notions about depravity, or about the possibility of saying that men and things are either in one religious class or another. This "either-or" superstition is very preva- lent. When men set themselves to look at the actual facts of this world in a scientific spirit they find both men and things to be pretty much "both-and" — pretty well mixed and tangled and complicated; so that hasty gen- eralizations, even if they have the dignity of long tradition behind them and enjoy the attractiveness of epigrammatic form, may be nothing but superstitions after all. The
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
matter-of-factness of the scientific spirit is sometimes too matter-of-fact, but, after all, we live in a world of matters-of-fact. So long as we live in this sort of world it is well to approach matters-of-fact in a matter-of-fact spirit. A large part of the religious life is of this matter-of-fact nature. Science aids us here in a right approach.
Of still further value for the increase of faith has been the scientific emphasis upon system and law. The late Francis A. Walker used to speak of certain psychological by- products of modern commercial institutions as of nearly equal value with the direct out- put of the institutions. He used to speak of a bank as a manufactory of punctuality, of great importance to multitudes of men in holding before them unescapable obligations which must be met at particular times. The bank does away with the old loose verbal agreement to be fulfilled any time more or less near another time, and also makes even the written instrument more binding. This educational effect is of immense value to the community. Now, it would simply be impos- sible to estimate the influence for good of the ideas of system and law as these are enforced by modern science. We all know the damag-
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
ing effect which is wrought by the conception of law when that binds down the mind by iron regulations. We know how easily the system may become hostile to religion, but it is of vast value to have the ideas of law and system held before the minds of men. Modern science is not the only force which has worked in this direction, and the later scientific emphasis is not more marked than the emphasis of the early scientists; but in our time the sheer abundance of the emphasis has become a com- pelling factor. Law has been familiar to men from the dawn of civilization, and there were worthy scientists in the earliest days, but the stress on law and system has never before been made so much a part of the common con- sciousness as now. On the whole, this is for good. It introduces system and regularity into belief. If belief is to be worth while, it must be sane, and the emphasis on the great regularities makes for sanity. In these ad- dresses it must be remembered that by the in- crease of faith we mean the increase of faith which is really worth while, not the rank abundance of all sorts and conditions of be- liefs.
All this, however, is somewhat indirect. Science has been of direct aid to faith in plac-
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THE INCREASE OP FAITH
ing in the hands of faith the scientific method which can be used mightily in religious effort. Just as religion uses the material instruments of modern civilization as an aid in building her church edifices, just as she uses the instru- ments of medicine and surgery to carry on her works of relief, just as she uses printing presses and express trains to send the gospel over the world, just so she uses the instru- ments of the scientific method to approach anew the facts which are the center of the Christian system. Truly scientific method, as illustrated in the hands of the great mas- ters, is a wonderful tool, even more wonderful than any material tool which has come of scientific study. The patience which can ex- amine huge heaps of details and sort them into order, the self-control which can suspend judgment until an adequate conclusion ap- pears, the discernment which can sift out es- sentials from nonessentials, the intuition which can finally seize and state a law — this, which in part describes the scientific method of our day, is a valuable instrument in the aid of faith. To refer again to a fact mentioned a moment ago, the Church appropriates more and more the appliances of modern physical and industrial and social relief for the bring-
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
ing in of the kingdom of God. She shows an increasing willingness to listen to scientific scrutiny of her own claims and her own faults. She is willing more and more, if we are to judge by the utterances of many of her leaders, to surrender claims of artificial authority of one sort or another if she can have the power that comes from righteous influence.
Again, the Church shows more and more willingness to allow the Scriptures to be sub- jected to the test of the scrutiny of the scien- tific method, or, rather, she seems more and more willing to accept the results of such study. We trust that we do not err from the way of strict truth when we voice our opinion that whatever harm has come through the scientific handling of the Scriptures has come, not from those who have been too scientific, but, rather, from those who have not been enough scientific. Dogmatism is not scien- tific. Too often the approach of the theologian toward the Bible has been with the announced predetermination that certain teachings must be found there. Too often the approach of the scientific critic has been with the predetermi- nation that these teachings must not be found there. Of course all thinking must have its assumptions and presuppositions, but it is not
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THE INCREASE OF F4JTH
the part of the scientific spirit to blind the eyes to facts for the sake of the presupposi- tions.
At the hands of men of true scientific spirit the Scriptures have been made new in our day with effects like that which must have at- tended their translation out of dead language into living language. The fact that the Scrip- tures were written in a prescientific age does not prevent our getting great good from look- ing at them through the scientific atmosphere. Thus viewed they have become new. Parts of Scripture once enigmatic have become clear; parts misplaced have found their true setting, and the foundations have been laid on a firmer basis. Even very radical New Testament study has found a basis for claim that some portions of New Testament writing go back much further toward the times of Christ than we had previously supposed, and radical study in its attempt to separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith has failed to come upon a time when the Christian writers did not view Christ essentially as we view him to- day. Looking at the facts of religious history as facts their significance becomes more and more important. The fact of the Scriptures and their influence, the fact of Christ and his
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
power, the fact of prayer and its effects for good, whether we call these effects reflex or not — all these come to new thrones when we approach them in the scientific spirit.
We have said that in the scientific spirit of our time there is nothing hostile to a proper religious spirit and that in many ways there is aid to religion in the scientific spirit. It remains for us to say that even where the facts of the world seem darkest for the spirit of faith the scientific spirit furnishes a challenge and an incentive to the religious spirit. For the scientific spirit is also a spirit of faith. Science proceeds upon the most daring assumptions. We may not call the faiths of science faiths : we call them hypotheses; but hypothesis is a form of faith. If we were to write an eleventh chapter of Hebrews for men of science, it would have to be a chronicle of the mighty deeds made possible through the spirit of faith. The scientist does not win his victories by going into a laboratory and by staring. He is animated by a mighty belief, and in that belief seeks for light. Columbus sailed west in obedience to a theory, and his quest was one of faith. There is a splendid daring about such faith to-day. Whether it be in the assumption that by invention we can navigate the air, or
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
in the assumption that we can drive tubercu- losis out of the world, or in the assumption that we can find out whether there are Mar- tians or not, the daring is the daring of faith. There is a faith of science, even more truly than there is a science of faith.
It will be observed that we have nowhere picked out any facts which specifically make for belief. We have been speaking of the scien- tific spirit and the scientific temper. We now admit the existence of many facts which at first seem irreconcilable with belief. We in- sist, however, that the approach of religion to these facts should be with the same daring as that with which the scientific spirit approaches them. For example, it is said that the very size of the universe is against the spirit of faith, that it may have been well enough to believe in the fundamentals of Christianity back in the days when this earth was con- ceived of as the center of the physical system. To-day science has shown that the earth is so small as to be of little account in a solar system in which it is a mere fragment. It was all well enough to believe in Christianity at a time when men did not think that man had been on the earth more than a few thou- sand years. But since Copernicanism and
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
Darwinism how changed from all this! How can Christianity survive the changes?
One reassuring feature about scientific dis- covery is that, no matter how big the universe is, and no matter how long it has been run- ning, it seems to be composed throughout of the same elements that we find in our world. If a chemist could be transported from the earth to the sun, and could live there, he would not have to unlearn much of the earthly chem- istry. The same elements that we know here are in existence there. If the geologist could go back to the ages before man, he would find the same forces at work which we find at work to-day. Air and water and heat working through long periods have wrought the great changes. If he could go back and live in the carboniferous era, he would probably find the situation there just what he might have ex- pected before starting. Now, these common everyday forces take on a new dignity when they are given field and time in which to act. Running water is not great taken on a few feet of river bed and for a few seconds of time, but give room enough and time enough, and a Grand Canyon is the result. It really re- quired some effort for science to see the im- portance of these everyday forces, and belief
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
in their power was at first an act of faith. En- larging conceptions of religious life act simi- larly for Christian belief. They give the com- mon forces space and time through which to act. Of course the larger world presents a larger challenge to Christian faith than does a smaller ; but is faith to be outdone by science in the boldness of its conceptions? If science can believe that comparatively insignificant forces around us can be the shaping tools of the planets, why cannot faith believe that the hopes and prayers of men are of vast spiritual significance? The very fact that man's abode is not the center of the universe makes, of course, a larger challenge to faith. Dare we believe that spiritual forces manifested in an out-of-the-way planet are the key to the under- lying forces of the universe? Dare we believe that righteousness and love wherever found are above all things else? Shall we be im- posed upon by the mere bigness and age of things? The larger universe which science reveals thus challenges us. The spirit of really scientific inquiry challenges us not to be lacking in a spirit of faith. Both science and religion must rely upon faith.
A still more perplexed doubter points out our helplessness in the presence of the great
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
fixities of nature. After all, how can we be sure that anything was made for our benefit? Some things in the world are usable by us, but what is there to assure us that these things were made for us? The stones were made by the slow geologic processes. We pave our streets or build our homes with them. It seems a little absurd to say that these stones were designed for us. We found the stones here and we used them. Similarly with the control of the forces of nature. We can direct the current a little, but we cannot radically change its course. We can control others and ourselves only by studying the streams of our lives, by immersing ourselves in them, and by slightly deflecting the flow here and there while swimming with the stream. Or, to change the figure, we are like children in whose hands the reins which guide the steed have fallen for a few blissful seconds, and even in our bliss we suspect that this privilege is allowed us because the horse can be trusted to go aright for at least a few rods.
We are perfectly willing to admit all this, perfectly willing to allow the argument to be stated even more strongly. It does look absurd to say that the physical universe was made just for us. It may have other uses than
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
just those which suit us. As a matter of fact, however, we can use the universe, and use it to good advantage. As a matter of fact, we shall use it to the full for our purposes, no matter what the absurdities in our assump- tion of our own importance. If there is any fact of the universe worth knowing, the scien- tist assumes the right to know that fact. If the universe can be put to any sort of use for human beings, we assume that it is the human beings, and not the material universe, which have the right of way. The great fixities of nature remain fixed, to be sure, but that not because we recognize in them especial sacred- ness. Just so far as we can we will change them, if we can do so to better human inter- ests. The old type of piety which detected an irreverent spirit in changing the course of streams, or in controlling electricity as in- terfering with the works of God, is dead and gone. We admit that we are powerless in the presence of some facts, but we are not power- less to protest against the facts. That old scoffer who said that if he had been present when the human eye was created he might have made some valuable suggestions may have been blasphemous in spirit ; but men who are .not: blasphemous actually do make im-
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
provements in eyes. What we are insisting upon, however, is not our success in dealing with nature, for that is little enough. We do insist upon the significance of the daring as- sumption that underlies our battle with na- ture. Let the world be thought of as ever so big. The magnificent distances may seem to correct and chasten the spirit of faith both in science and religion, but the discovery of any new world is a mighty "dare" both to science and religion. Science responds with the as- sumption that the new facts can be fitted into our system of knowledge, and religion re- sponds with the assumption that the new facts can be made serviceable to belief. The spirit of faith both in its scientific and its religious aspect survives and increases as new problems are set by the unfolding of the uni- verse.
But think of the limitations of our knowl- edge! Think of the insoluble problems! Well, suppose we do think of them. We find them hard enough. Every increase of knowl- edge is, as of old, an increase of sorrow, but, after all, the sorrow is not the sorrow of those who have no hope. We repeat that bad as are the facts of the physical universe, they are not prohibitive of faith; rather are they a
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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH
challenge and an appeal to faith. Insoluble though they may be to us, they are not neces- sarily insoluble to a higher intelligence, or to our own intelligence under more enlightened circumstances. That is to say, there is noth- ing inherently self-contradictory or self-evi- dently absurd in these facts, hard as they are. Are we distressed by the vast immensities of the universe and by their apparent meaning- lessness? On earth the wastes of desert and water and ice ! Throughout space the blazing suns and dead moons ! We admit that we do not understand, but is that a sign that these facts are beyond the reach of all intelligence? Are they such contradictions as the prop- osition that things which are equal to the same thing are not equal to each other? Admittedly we do not understand, but con- ceivably we may understand. The problem is not clearly beyond the reach of all intelli- gence.
Or are we distressed by the fact of physical pain in the world? Even before we come to man there is pain enough. How can we recon- cile the presence of animal suffering with the assumption that God is good? If there were to be some moral outcome of animal suffer- ing, the situation might be different ; but, tak-
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
ing animal life just as we see it, the problem is rather dark.
The problem is rather dark; but let us not make it darker than it is. Above all let us strive to avoid the error of thinking that the animals suffer as we would suffer if we were in the place of the animals. The tender mercies of nature are no doubt cruel enough, but animals are not men, after all. If we could abstract from our* pain all that the power of looking before and after puts into it, and could divest pain of all the terrors that many times come with our understanding of its deadly significance, the pain itself might be notably diminished, though a toothache, for example, would still be its own wretched self. Still, let us make the fact of animal suffering as dreadful as we can. Let nature, red in tooth and claw with ravin, shriek ever so loudly against our creed. If the creed is at all vital, it can hope on in spite of the shrieks.
The problem of human suffering — apart from the problem of moral evil, which does not fall within the scope of this lecture1 — is likewise not an insuperable barrier to faith. Here, again, we must be careful not to make the problem worse than it is. A favorite de- vice of pessimists is to imagine a sort of lump
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
sum of human woe constantly added to by the sufferings of man until it reaches one awful total. The total of human sufferings from the beginning is, indeed, awful enough, but this lump sum is a fiction of the imagination. There has been much sickness from the begin- ning, but, on the whole, as a shrewd observer has said, "the race has been in tolerable health." In spite of inequalities of social order pain gets pretty well distributed. Then there might be an increase of pain which would be a sign and result of material prog- ress. It is a well-known fact that the great losses in the human race are due to deaths in infancy. Suppose now, that science finds methods of increasing the chances of a child's living, so that for two who now die in infancy one would under the new order survive to ma- turity. Evidently, the survivor must die at maturity or beyond. This means, statistically, an increase in deaths from disorders of adult life, and might be made to seem very terrify- ing on paper. Again, in such case the death in maturity, because of the full development of consciousness and the possibility of looking ahead, and because too of the more numerous lines of connection with other human beings, would probably cause more conscious suffer-
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
ing to the person himself and to others than would have been possible if the person had died in infancy. Yet we are not willing to have the work of the diminution of infant mortality stop on this account.
We have no desire to make the problem of human suffering less than it really is. The fact that most of the people that have lived up to the present time have had no properly human existence, the probable fact that most of the persons on the face of the earth now have gone to sleep in the last twenty-four hours hungry, the fact of unspeakable hard- ship in the lot of individuals everywhere — all these are indeed facts. They are facts which throw many good people out of sympathy with the universe. Many look upon the universe as one long tragedy. They cannot find any clue to the meanings of nature or any insight into her moods.
Nevertheless, in spite of all this faith lives on. Belief undertakes one explanation after another and all alike fall short. In spite of the shortcomings of the explanations belief survives. Looking at the fact of faith in a scientific spirit, we must ask for some reason for the persistence of the faith. Of course the Christian will answer that it is God him-
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
self who is prompting men to believe in him in spite of all temptations to the contrary. Our problem just now, however, is not as to the doctrine that God works, but as to how he works through the modern scientific spirit. Our answer is that the modern scientific spirit furnishes neither the glare of the noonday or the deep darkness of the midnight. It is, rather, a twilight atmosphere and, no matter how far it goes, it must always be twilight. Where everything is sun-clear and admitted fact there is not faith, as we understand faith. Where there is dense darkness there cannot be faith. For a race whose beliefs are to come out of a moral venture we must not know too much and we must not know too little. So we say that the modern scientific atmosphere does not prohibit belief. It in a measure aids belief, but it does not compel belief. It puts the facts of the universe before us in such a way that they make appeal to faith as to an heroic quality in men. Some day, it may be, we shall have the full light ; but who- ever or whatever has that full light, science has it not. Science moves in twilight. But in a measure she furnishes men with tools and a spirit to move on in the twilight. And the twilight gives us light enough to take the next
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THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
step. As moral beings under human condi- tions that is all we need. What the moral re- sponsibilities of angels or other celestial in- telligences may be in the blaze of the full light there is no call for us to consider. Our busi- ness is not with angels, but with men striving by moral endeavor to find God. For men we may express a confidence that this world of twilight furnishes the challenge and the test by which faith shows its heroic quality and by which it grows from more to more. For some purposes twilight is better than noon- day.
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II
THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK
A familiar characterization of the progress of human history would have us believe that progress is never forward along a plane or straight up an incline, but that it is, rather, through the upward windings of a spiral with the gaze downward upon old and familiar facts seen ever from newer and higher alti- tudes. This characterization has especial force as applied to the history of philosophy. The charge is often made that philosophy is but a threshing of the same old straw, or a manipulation of the same old puzzles. The figure of the spiral is much truer. The prob- lems are, indeed, the same old problems, be- cause the problems are the great fundamentals of human experience. These problems are forever being seen, however, from a loftier height and in a wider circle.
Within the memory of persons not yet past middle life the study of philosophy has made practically a complete turn in its spiral as-
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THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK
cent. The problems of matter, of mind, of personality, of truth are to-day viewed from a standpoint more favorable to faith than they were twenty-five years ago.
It is commonly said to-day that materialism is no longer a living force in philosophy. This would seem to be an overstatement. Material- ism of the old fashion, with matter, force, and motion as they were conceived of in the early seventies, is not in vogue, but materialism which, wThile recognizing mind, nevertheless puts material processes so completely in the first place as to make mind dependent on matter, is still a factor to be reckoned with. There is reason to believe that the sympathies of agnosticism to-day are very close to. essen- tial materialism. To be sure, the agnostic re- sents the title "materialist," but too often agnosticism, apparently well meant and sin- cere, is a cover from which materialism emerges for a sort of guerrilla warfare and to which it retreats when at all seriously pur- sued. At least we may say that the camp of the agnostic does not hold many believers in the primacy of the mind. A mind which be- lieves in its own primacy will not long profess agnosticism.
In discussing the passage away from the
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THE INCREASE OF FAITH
emphasis on the older, more outspoken mate- rialism we must not forget the great lasting benefit which came from that discussion. In that discussion the theory of evolution as an ascent by natural processes took more and more hold of the thinking of the time, all types of mind and all realms of study feeling its power. The theory was more than scientific in the strict sense of the term. It became a full philosophy with application to all phases of thinking. Now, any theory of ascent through struggle fits in so naturally with the spirit of aggressive Christianity, and this theory was so attractive, that, in spite of the avowed materialism of many of its first ad- herents, evolution was seized upon as express- ing an essentially Christian theory of the uni- verse. Considered simply as historic fact, the theory of evolution, at least in those stages in which Christian thinking had become at all adjusted to it, must be looked upon as one of the real forces making for an increase of faith. Even when we come to look at the theory of ascent through natural processes from the more critical standpoint of the present day we find much in it that lends comfort to belief. In the previous lecture we tried to show how chary we must be in professing to find direct
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THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK
revelations from any realm of nature, but, nevertheless, the thought of natural processes as moving in accordance with a law which sweeps them upward is in accordance with a theistic and Christian view of the world. Ad- mitting that there is to-day no substantial agreement in the schools of the evolutionists upon a satisfactory definition of evolution, ad- mitting that there is some disagreement as to the relative importance of the various factors at work, admitting also that there is am- biguity in the use of the terminology of the evolutionists, as, for example, the oscillation back and forth between the survival of the fit as the survival of the merely fit to survive and the survival of the ethically fit, admitting that many facts which make against the theory are ignored or slurred over, still the truth remains that the present-day emphasis on upward movement described in evolutionary terms is a help to the view of the universe which faith holds.
On the whole, too, the advance which has come out of the discussion of the evolutionary philosophy has been on the side of faith. The old-fashioned materialism which saw in the evolutionary processes merely the play and interplay of material factors with mental proc-
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THE INCREASE OP" FAITH
esses as the shadowy and powerless accom- paniment of the material processes had, some- how, to meet the objection that, after all, the evolutionary theory itself is, on such a hypothesis, a shadowy attendant of no vital significance. It had to meet the objection that it is mind which has discovered and read off the process. If the most significant philo- sophical theory culminates in the contention as to the powerlessness of mind, the fact must remain that mind has been powerful enough to discover its own powerlessness.
This, however, the thoroughgoing material- ist would reject as a quibble, though on his theory even quibbles must point to some fact in the physical system. An objection that the materialistic evolutionist could not wave aside was the objection out of which came the dis- tinction generally recognized to-day between evolution as a description of processes and evolution as a theory of causes. In the former evolution may be just the method by which Creative Intelligence proceeds. In the latter we have Evolution capitalized and going of itself, the real factors, of course, being ma- terialistic. Then we have the puzzle as to how that which is only matter can ever evolve into anything else than matter. If we start with
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THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK
matter, we must end with matter unless some- thing is introduced along the line. Of course the impotence of the theory of materialistic evolution in this respect was clear to discern- ing students from the outset, but to-day there is pretty widespread recognition of the weak- ness. The distance between such a work as Bergson's Creative Evolution and the early statements of evolutionary theory is clear at a glance; but, apart from the utterances of philosophers like Bergson, evolutionary the- ory which denies power to mind is offensive in a day which lays great stress on intellectual force, especially on that high form of intellec- tual force which we call administrative ability. In the practical life of to-day administrative skill is so rare as to win the highest prizes. The power to make things come together so as to reach any sort of right outcome is just the power which the man on the street feels must be put into an evolutionary process to get from it anything worth while. The ordinary man feels that if things are left to themselves, they fall to pieces or run downhill. Now, this language is fairly insolent to the philo- sophical materialist, but it does express an objection which comes naturally to the sur- face when we see the infinitely complex
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threads of the universe so managed as to come to a measurably intelligible result.
How serious a problem this is for the philosophical materialist appears also from the fact of his insistence upon certain simplici- ties like cells and molecules and atoms and ions as the fundamental facts of the universe. If these are the fundamentals, all that we see is arrangement. Now, even though we abjure altogether the old-and-fast design arguments, we cannot get away from the suggestions of mental activity in the presence of arrange- ment. If it is urged that the arrangement is, after all, only in the mind, and is really illu- sion, we have to ask if the physical universe is such that its processes bring forth illusions. If the reply is that the illusion is born of mind, the reflection arises that mind must be rather powerful to beget such an illusion as that cells are arranged into plants and ani- mals.
It is really on this question of mind that all theories of materialism go to pieces. The recognition of the activity of mind is another of those great recognitions which make for faith. Materialists of all sorts have aban- doned the crude notion that the brain secretes thought. In their emphasis upon mental proc-
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esses as the accompaniment of physical proc- esses the materialists are unable to make the connection more than coincidence. Their statement cannot provide a theory of knowl- edge. We cannot have a real theory of knowl- edge until we reach some provision for activity of consciousness. We have no desire to quarrel about terms. Whether we call the activity that of a soul, or a self, or a conscious- ness, or a stream of consciousness, we can have knowledge only as an agent of some sort reads off a meaning or builds up a picture. Suppose we were to hold that the outside world is reported to the mind by being photo- graphed there. A photograph is in itself a creation in space with every point lying out- side of every other point. It becomes a photograph only as a mind sees it, and the mind sees by building up the picture through a mental process of incredible activity and subtlety.
And this begins to lead us off toward a dis- cussion of idealism as one of the contributing factors making for faith. Before we enter upon this phase of the discussion, however, we call attention to the truth that the empha- sis upon evolution and naturalistic processes makes an atmosphere in which the old sub-
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jective idealism does not thrive. Whether the universe lies outside of all thought or not, we are certainly most in harmony with the in- tellectual temper of to-day in insisting that the universe has its reality outside of our thought in the sense that we did not create it. The student of the evolutionary process is not likely to allow himself to be persuaded that the process is a process simply in his own mind. To say that the universe is grounded in thought is one thing. To say that it is grounded in our thought is quite another. It is this latter conception that is hardly likely to thrive in the mind of one who knows geol- ogy and biology and bacteriology. In ad- dition to the favorable atmosphere which the discussion of evolution has begotten for faith, we must see in the stubborn facts of material- ism a correction for faith. No one can tell what absurdity the spirit of faith might foster to-day if the barrier of a great objective order were not in the way.
As we have indicated, we need not pay much attention to subjective idealism. Still, there is a current form of idealism which is of mighty meaning. It starts from the fact which we have mentioned above — the consti- tutive activity of the mind in knowing. When
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one has really seen this another truth dawns upon one, namely, that nothing which mind cannot seize can ever be known. To be seized by mind the object must be penetrated by re- lationships which reach the inmost essence; that is to say, the object must be constituted throughout by thought. Here is the great con- tribution of idealism to the spirit of faith. Nothing knoivable can exist save as the ex- pression of intelligence. Here is the very heart of the modern argument for theism. Things must either come within thought or go out of existence. Any sort of hard-and-fast stuff apart from thought is out of the ques- tion. To affirm that any such sort of stuff exists is to bring it within thought relation- ships. So far as our minds are concerned, it would be too great a strain on a theory to make us, finite intelligences, responsible for the creation of the thought system in the midst of which we live. But we cannot understand the world until we affirm that whoever laid its foundations laid them in thought. A knowa- ble universe is one of the great supports of theism.
No sooner, however, had philosophy fixed on the constitutive processes of the mind as essential than it forgot the individual minds
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whose activities had furnished a clue to the problem and began to speak of thought itself as the controlling force. The philosophers did not say "Thinkers" or "Thinker"; they said "Thought," Thought, at least by impli- cation impersonal, was the great source and center of all things. The study of the move- ment away from this position, like the study of the movement away from the early state- ments of naturalism, is full of instruction. The contribution of this idealism to theistic thinking is, in all likelihood, an immortal one, but the clarifications which have come with the effective criticism of the system as a system are hardly less important. The ideal- ist of the type we are now considering thought of the universe as the unfolding of a system of logical implications. In the Hegelian lan- guage the movement was thesis, as when an affirmation is made, antithesis, as when the contradictory is developed, synthesis, as when a ground of reconciliation is reached between a proposition and its contradictory. The uni- verse is here conceived of as an evolution in logic. The evolution as set forth by the Hege- lian school was profoundly impressive, as im- pressive in its way as the materialistic evolu- tion of the early Darwinians. At one point
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THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK
the same criticism is to be passed upon the Hegelian evolution as was passed upon ma- terialistic evolution. In both systems it was impossible on the basis of the system itself to get more out of the system than the adherents, started with. If matter is all, there is no use searching for anything but matter in the out- come. If impersonal thought is all, imper- sonal thought is the outcome. In any strict logical procedure we cannot get more into the conclusion than there is in the premises. If the universe is the expression of the thought of a Living Mind, we can see how the evolu- tionary process moves from lower to higher — it moves as new factors are continuously in- troduced. If the universe is the expression of a Living Mind moving according to logic, that Mind must move as ours do to get anything like progress — it must introduce factors which are really outside of and above the strict logi- cal chain. Acute thinkers have maintained that even in the strictest mathematical reason- ing there is this introduction of factors from without the strict line of reasoning. But ideal- ism which turns around impersonalism is not entitled to put anything but strict logic in, and therefore can get nothing out but the premises with which the reasoning began. For
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religious purposes there is not much choice be- tween impersonal matter and impersonal reason.
A further difficulty with the idealistic systems of the impersonal type is that there is really no way of getting any movement into them. We speak, indeed, of logical move- ments, but the movement is not in the logic. Logic does not move. Something else moves according to logic. Logic is simply the statement of the rule of procedure. We can see how this illusion arises. In the world around us events do seem to progress accord- ing to an inner logic. We speak of the logic of a movement or of a situation. We say that the logic of the case forbids a man or a cause to stop at a particular place. There is a logi- cal necessity for going on. Or the expression of a proposition by one party does make neces- sary the expression of the contrary by the opposition, and the conflict between the two must finally be reconciled. But in all of this the movement is not in any system of imper- sonal logic. The movement is in men and in events. Sooner or later this is apt to dawn on the believer in impersonal idealism, and then he feels prone to dismiss the world of move- ment as appearance, perhaps as illusion. The
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final reality becomes the universe of fixed logical relationships. This universe, on the impersonalist theory, is not the vision before the eyes of a living God whose mental life is forever at the full. It is not a beatific vision which might be worth while for religious re- flection. It is impersonal — a framework from which everything of living significance has been left out. We do not even have a "ballet of bloodless categories." The categories are indeed bloodless enough, but there is no pro- vision for the movement of a ballet. In spite of what we have said about the logic by which men and events often seem to move, we must now say that this movement is not possible to pure logic after all. Life comes first and logic afterward, with the driving power in life. Now, however it may be with the highly de- veloped logical tastes of the strict intellec- tualist, the practical exclusion of the world of movement from life as appearance or illu- sion is not a result especially satisfactory from the religious point of view.
A further objection to impersonal idealism is its inability to furnish any sort of ground for moral distinctions. The idealist would in- sist most strenuously that logical necessity is stronger even than the physical necessity of
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materialism. But while there might con- ceivably be inequalities of pressure in a sys- tem of mechanical stresses and strains there can hardly be such inequalities in logical ne- cessity. There the necessity is distributed over all parts alike. In a necessity of this sort there is no justification for words like "free- dom" and "good" and "bad" in the moral sense. All things that are, are : that is the be- ginning and the end. Good, bad, and indif- ferent are morally all alike. All we can say is that the feeling for the good in us is part of the logical system, that the feeling toward the bad is produced by the same system, that the conflict between the two is produced by the underlying logic, that the "give-and-take" of all conflicts is the expression of logical neces- sity. The emphasis on the reconciliation in the final synthesis does not help much. The question is as to how the differences ever started. Moreover, reconciliation morally takes place as each side is willing to give up something in concession. Whither in such case do the dropped-out elements of the con- troversy go? If they are aliens, how did they ever get in? The way to get around all such questions is, of course, to ignore them. Under- stand, now, we are not discussing these ques-
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tions primarily with a philosophic motive. We are interested chiefly in religious values, and we have to record our feeling that there is not much aid and comfort for religion in a theory which by logical necessity puts all moral conceptions on the same plane.
By this time the purely verbal character of impersonal idealism ought to be clear to us. The reconciliations of contradictions are largely verbal. Everything is pasted together under one term like the "Absolute" or "All." Of course nothing is done to things themselves in thus giving them a name. By the way, it is worth while remembering that much of the skepticism of religious fundamentals which has come out of the Hegelian camp is really verbal. How can the absolute ever take up relations to the purely relative? How can the infinite come into contact with the finite without ceas- ing to be infinite? All this is empty. Re- ligion is not concerned to maintain an Abso- lute of this purely verbal nature. The passion for unity is entirely intelligible in its aim and purpose, but it is hard to see how so imperious a passion can be satisfied with so meager an outcome as throwing all things together and calling them "All." And while the way to- ward this abstraction is easy enough, the way
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back is sorely beset. We can get an "All" by calling all things all, but even with the most potent logic it is not possible to deduce the world of concrete things as we see them by looking upon the All. Admitting that every- thing in the conclusion must be in the prem- ises, and stocking these premises with all the possibilities of the concrete world, we find ourselves unable to deduce a single concrete item from our philosophy. We are told that logic reigns in all things, but we cannot de- duce a single thing. And taking the world of things inductively, we cannot tell why any- thing is after we find it. We cannot tell why any particular thing should be as it is and not otherwise. All this would not distress us so much if we were admittedly living in a world where logic played but little part; but in a world where logic is professedly everything it is embarrassing not to be able to make more use of logic.
Among the most concrete facts in our con- crete world is the individual person. Just how to get this world of persons out of a system of impersonal thought is a hopeless puzzle. By what processes of thesis, antith- esis, and synthesis can we make the in- dividuals whom we know fit into a system?
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The last thing we can do with the men and women and children whom we know is to deduce them. If logic is lame in trying to deduce a material universe, what can we say of it in connection with a universe of persons? The fact is that in all utterances about persons as deductions or specifications or generalizations of impersonal thought the thinker has his reasonings curiously reversed. Thinkers are really first and thoughts are second. But some thought was in the uni- verse before we in particular arrived, and hence it is easy for the mind to hide behind its own product, spelling Thought with a capital and making the thinker the product of Thought. Of course no thinker would be guilty of saying that he himself is the product of his own thinking, but it is easy for anyone to think of himself as the product of Thought which antedated himself — thence the conclu- sion becomes possible that Thought antedates all thinkers.
Some suspicion of the difficulty at this point seems to haunt the theories of all abso- lute idealists. The only meeting of the diffi- culty, however, is no meeting at all, but, rather, an avoidance of it. An ambiguous term like "Keason" is used. At one moment
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Reason is impersonal thought. At another moment Reason is a Reasoner. At one mo- ment Intelligence is impersonal thought. At another it is an active mind. Some idealists come out openly with the avowal that they do not believe in absolute idealism as an imper- sonal system of thought. They believe in Eternal Consciousness which wells up in in- dividuals. All men are parts of the Eternal Consciousness. Persons melt and fuse into one another or, rather, into an all-embracing Consciousness. This view has two considera- tions in its favor. First is the historic fact of the persistence of the view itself. It has probably been held over wider reaches of space and time than any other serious philosophical construction of the universe, not in the Hege- lian form indeed, but in various forms which show Oriental or semi-Oriental influences. Second, there is something in some phases of conscious experience which seems to support the conception. In moments of surpassing friendship it is possible for ono heart to enter into such sympathy with another that two personalities seem at least for the instant to be fused. Or in transports of feeling which sweep over men in groups the individual seems lost in the mob, or crowd, or group, or national
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consciousness. This suggests the possibility of like emotional approach to an Eternal Con- sciousness above and including what we look upon as finite consciousness.
But the philosophical objections come back with even greater vigor, especially the problem of evil. It is bad enough if all the evils in the world are deductions or specifications of our impersonal system of thought. It is worse, for religious values at least, if individual sin- ners are parts of an Eternal Consciousness. The desire of the sinner for his sin and his joy in his sin are not merely reflections of a desire and joy on the part of the Eternal Con- sciousness : they are directly and immediately the desire and joy of the Eternal Conscious- ness. The Eternal Consciousness is Eternal Saint and Eternal Sinner in one. Then there is the difficulty of getting the individual con- sciousness as we know it into any sort of re- lation to the Eternal Consciousness. The mis- leading expression "Stream of Consciousness" has played a harmful influence here. Streams can be diverted from the main channel and can be run through sluiceways even down to capillary proportions. But consciousness is not a stream, except by figure of speech. It is an active and indivisible unity. Suppose we
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drop the word "consciousness" and ask as to the possibility of so dealing with a man as to run him off into sluiceways which become other men! If we think of the Eternal Con- sciousness as a Creative Will we can say that the finite men are creations of that will, but one will cannot be part of another will.
And so we are back again to the finite wills which make up the world of persons. The mind refuses to yield to materialism on the one hand or to absolute idealism on the other. The way out is through personalism, the recog- nition of the living individualities around us as the points from which our thinking must start. We find ourselves in communication with other minds, and as we reflect upon the possibility of such communication we see clearly that the communication must have come about through the possibility of using the world as an instrument and medium for the communication of thought. But the world clearly is independent of our thinking. Back of it there must be a Thinker greater than ourselves. In attributing personality to the Cause of the universe we do not mean per- sonality with the limitations of human con- ditions. We seize upon personality as the very highest power we know, and think of
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the Cause of all things in terms of personal life.
The objection to the personality of God once took the form of emphasis upon the limi- tations of personality, whereas Cod must be thought of as the absolute and unlimited. Much of the discussion on the point was pure- ly verbal, but the point itself seemed to be valid. To-day there is a rather strongly marked protest against such absolutism in the thought of God. A God who is infinite in the sense that he is above all relations to the finite, absolute in the sense that he cannot touch the relative, eternal in the sense that all that happens in time is illusion for him, is not a God of the highest value religiously.
Two attempts to deliver the Power back of all things from the emptiness of absolutism are worthy of note. Professor William James gave the last years of his life to the doctrine of a finite God. It is fairly difficult to make much of a system out of anything that James did. James's whole soul seemed to be in a state of chronic revolt against any suggestion of system. At one time he seemed to be sym- pathetic with the philosophy of Mill and Bain and Spencer. At another he lent direct aid and encouragement to the most orthodox Chris-
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tianity. In a private letter to a friend he de- clared that in his belief of the reality of the play of spiritual forces upon the individual life he could out-Methodist the Methodists. It is clear that while James would have scru- ples over such a term as "theist" he was, nevertheless, a believer in God. But for him God is a limited person among other persons. James carried belief in pluralism to great lengths. He saw no objection to believing that the individual finite soul will exist for- ever, and quite likely would have been willing to hold a belief that the individual souls have existed forever. Among these lives, or streams of consciousness, God is the greatest. Just how to provide for unity in such a scheme James would not have cared. Quite likely he would have been willing to hold that time and space are a vast theater on which God and angels and men play their several parts. In all this James would have said that he was serving religious interests — that he was con- tending not for a barren abstraction but for the living God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. The philosophical objections to the theory are apparent at a glance. But the religious value is by no means slight. James would bring God within reach, even though
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he had to resort to dubious theological expe- dients to accomplish the result.
The other attempt is by Bergson. Berg- son's interest does not seem to be especially religious. For God in the ordinary sense of the word he would have no place at all. But he does speak of God as Life, Freedom, Move- ment unfolding in new and altogether unpre- dictable manifestations. Life is spelled with a capital and is responsible for the forward push which means progress. There is all the difference in the world between evolution as conceived of by Bergson and evolution as con- ceived of by the Spencerians. Spencerianism, and even Darwinism, for that matter, is no- where subjected to more searching criticism than in Bergson's Creative Evolution. Life is conceived of after the analogy of conscious- ness to such an extent that matter itself seems at times to be a product of consciousness. Yet consciousness is not the formal intellectual life as we know it. We can hardly tell just what Bergson conceives consciousness to be, but his suggestions point to intuition and feel- ing as nearer the heart of reality than is the speculative intellect. Bergson overlooks the truth that the concrete facts with which we have to do are just the individual lives. He
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throws a blanket-term, "Life," over all these. There is no way of getting from "Life" to lives. There is no attempt at answering the score of questions that crowd upon us when we try to come to close quarters with the sys- tem. But Bergson's view does have this great virtue — it is alive and it does provide for a real struggle with a growing reality. What- ever God Bergson would admit at all is him- self in the movement. God is himself move- ment and struggle and development. Just where Bergson would find anything to stand across the flow of life and measure the flow, or even discern the flow, is nowhere told us, but the impression Bergson produces is whole- some. We are in the presence of real forces engaged in real movement. Whatever God there is, is not afar off in the heavens, but is here now. God is not satisfactory from the standpoint of speculative intellect, but the speculative intellect is not itself satisfac- tory. The deep life-needs must be satisfied. If we are willing to put the critical under- standing to one side and resolve not to ask questions, there is much in Bergson's book that is stimulating and even bracing. His God too, if he has one, is a God of the living. But works like those of James and Bergson
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have their chief value as protests, and as pro- tests their value is great. It is the conviction of the present writer that religious thinking has suffered harm from the systematic theo- logians who have laid such stress on the meta- physical perfections of God that his value as an object to be sought for worship and com- panionship has been seriously impaired. To take a single illustration, the establishment of the doctrine of the ideality of time is a great philosophical achievement. It is to be doubted whether in the history of philosophy there has been more profound reasoning than that which has gone to show that time is essentially a mental form under which the mind works, that a man's present is in a sense equivalent to the range of his mental activity, that with the Supreme Intelligence there may be a grasp which makes all things present. Now, while this doctrine is clear enough to the metaphy- sician, it may be so stated as to harm religious life. It may be so interpreted as to mean that with God everything of life and movement is of slight consequence. Or it may be taken to mean that with God everything is jumbled into a confused happening together. The most serious result, however, is that which would make change mean nothing for God.
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God is changeless in what sense? In the sense that his own development is forever at the full, but not in the sense that the changes on earth and in men mean nothing to him. A satisfac- tory construction of the reality of change for God may be beyond us, but in that case we would better leave the question of construc- tion open rather than close it with a philos- ophy that does harm to the religious needs of the human heart. While we must not give ourselves up to contradictions of logic, we must follow James and Bergson in putting the claims of life above those of the strictly speculative intellect.
So then we accept the challenge of the modern protests against the absolute and the infinite and declare for certain limitations in a God who is to be a living force with men. It may appear later that these limitations are in part self-assumed and in part the expres- sions of moral fullness of life, but in any case we must get God near to men. It is worth while to make the Almighty mighty.
In the first place, a Creator of the universe is bound by the creations which he makes. We have spoken of the universe as founded in thought. If there is nothing in existence apart from thought, and the universe is a vast
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set of activities expressing thought, the thought must move according to a divine grammar and syntax and rhetoric if it is to be of service for men. Men must not be dis- mayed if they cannot understand all of the language, but they may expect to understand some of it. The universe may not be intelli- gible, but it must be more than a set of inco- herent ejaculations. This requirement would rule out arbitrary whim and caprice. Now, thus far there would seem to be no limitation upon the divine beyond the requirement that every utterance be rational, which is, of course, not to be thought of as a limitation. But when we think of the universe as a system we must think of the Creator as tied up to the demands of that system. That is to say, if there is to be system, the Creator cannot thereafter treat a particular part as if it stood by itself alone. He might treat it otherwise than he does if it stood alone, or if it were part of a smaller system, or if it were in a different system. Some thinkers have gone so far as to seek for an explanation of the problem of evil in the conflicts which may arise between the good of the parts of the system and the good of the whole of the system. Without subscribing to such extreme doctrine we may
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all admit that the carrying on of a finite system puts limitations on the Cause back of it. These limitations come to even clearer light when we think of the relations between the Cause and Ground of all things and the individual souls as we know them. Espe- cially is this true if we are to think of the in- dividuals as free. How to establish freedom speculatively we do not pretend to say, but the objections to freedom have usually been in the name of an Absolute or Infinite for whom or for which freedom of men would be a dis- turbing factor. If the world is Absolute Mat- ter or Absolute Idea, freedom for the individ- ual seems out of the question. If the World- Cause is a Person whose sovereignty must not be divided with any other will whatsoever, the freedom of the individual must be given up. But, on the other hand, freedom at least seems to be here as a throbbing fact in the life of the individual. We are all forced to admit the real limitations upon this freedom. It may be that many of our choices even when we seem to ourselves most free are the play and interplay of underlying necessities, but after every such admission we have to come back to the conviction of the fact of freedom in the individual. Over against this is the neces-
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sity of some limitation for the Back-Lying Power. Why not accept the limitation? If an individual is free, the Cause and Ground of things must accept limitations upon him- self as a consequence of that freedom. The old picture of the master leading a servant is in place here. The chain binds the servant, but it also limits the master. How much more real is the limitation if the servant is rebel- lious or sulky? This is only a poor illustra- tion, to be sure, but it has at least a sugges- tive value. If there are free individuals in the world, their wills must be taken into account in physical and mental and moral spheres. There is the possibility of conflict between the souls of men and the soul of God, or there is the possibility of cooperation. Even in the latter case, however, there is limitation for God. The best human will may be so slow as to impose delay upon a divine will. All this is at times obscured by the fact that after a clearly evil course has been chosen by human wills good seems to result in the end — which, of course, can mean only that a Higher Intelli- gence has made the best possible of a bad situation.
Furthermore, we can see that there must be limitation for God in any special work of
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revelation which he wills to undertake. If the movement is to show itself through a national development, the laws wThich govern national life must be observed. Now, it has long been the special claim of Christianity that God has for his glory that he is willing to take upon himself limitations for the sake of reaching men. One of the great attractions of the doc- trine of incarnation for men has been the thought that in the incarnation the gift of God has really meant cost to God. The Christian thinker has always maintained that the will- ingness of God to assume limitations has come out of the moral fullness of the divine life. One of the encouraging signs of present-day religious thinking is the movement away from the God of the abstract to the God of the con- crete, in spite of the fact that connection with the concrete means limitation.
But what becomes of the modern doctrine of the divine immanence if such considera- tions as those just adduced are allowed to have sway? Has not the doctrine of imma- nence as held to-day been a help to faith in bringing God near? Undoubtedly it has, but undoubtedly also it has wrought some confu- sion to faith. God is in all things in one sense, but not in all senses. There are degrees of
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nearness. God is in the world in the sense that the world is the expression of his thought and activity. But all thoughts are not the same thoughts. We have to keep away from that old fallacy of "Thought" spelled with a capital. The world is not so much Thought as thoughts. The value of the doctrine of imma- nence is that it does away with the idea of any sort of mechanical existence with laws of its own which God must break in order to reach men. This, however, merely furnishes a start- ing point. The thought of God in a particular situation can be determined only from a study of that situation. God is in the lives of men, but not in the lives of all men alike. He is in the lives of bad men. In him even the worst of men live and move and have their being. But in what sense is God in the life of a bad man? In the sense that he is giving the gift of life even to a bad man, and seeking to work through the life of the man to lift him out of evil. But God is not in the bad man in the same sense that he is in the good man. In one sense God is near all men alike. In another sense everything depends upon the man. There really have to be about as many phras- ings of the doctrine of divine nearness as there are different men.
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But all this seems to leave us at amazingly loose ends. We have not a system of the kind to which we have been used. No, we have not, but we have an open world before us. We have finite lives which can come progressively nearer to God.
And here we reach at last a final question. We have seen the movement away from the old materialism, through absolute idealism to personalism. It is in the lives of persons that we are to seek for fuller revelations of divine life. But what, after all, in the lives of these persons is to give us the clue to the truth for which we seek?
There is an answer ready at hand in a popu- lar movement which is called pragmatism. It may be well to approach this final question through some suggestions thrown out by this present-day system of philosophical thinking. Pragmatism is the affirmation that beliefs are to be tested by their consequences in the life of the believers. There is really nothing new in the system except the brilliancy of the treat- ment of men like James and the extraordinary vogue which the system, if it can be called a system, has reached through falling in with the urgent demands of the time for emphasis upon practical results and actual contacts
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with the life which we are now living. All that is important in the system reaches back to Kant. It will be remembered that Kant showed that formal proof of the existence of God and of the facts of freedom and immortal life is impossible. He did, however, insist that these ideas are the postulates of the practical reason. While we cannot formally prove them to be true, we, nevertheless, hold fast to them for their practical value. While they are not constitutive principles of the reason, they are in a profound sense regulative principles not only for reason but for life. The line of phil- osophical development, however, did not fol- low from Kant's emphasis on the practical reason. It went through Fichte to Hegel and the absolute idealist. Then came Ritschl in protest against the absolute idealists with his denial of any considerable place in theology for speculative methods of the metaphysical sort. For him religious ideas were "value- judgments" showing their worth by their value in life.
There is not much sign that the pragmatists of to-day know the Ritschlian system. There is nothing German about present-day prag- matism. It is impatient of that systemization which we think of as characteristically Ger-
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man. And pragmatism is not in the slightest degree theological in its origin. James him- self began his work with studies in physiology. It was only in quite late years that his reli- gious interest became outspoken. Moreover, pragmatism is quite ambitious. It would ask us to accept a criterion for truth in all realms. Like the believers in all new systems, the be- lievers in the all-sufficiency of pragmatism carry their claims to great extremes. And all sorts and conditions of men claim to be prag- matists. In some puttings of the belief it would seem that pragmatism would allow a man to believe all that works well with him, or that agrees with him, or that he fancies. A man might preach the doctrine of the brother- hood of man, or he might be a follower of Nietzsche, and still be a pragmatist. He might be an individualist or a socialist, a theist or a pantheist, or a polytheist or a pluralist or an absolutist. As a matter of historic truth the pressure of real or fancied life-needs has been back of all these beliefs. When we hear that a man is a pragmatist the next question may well be as to what else he is. Accepting prag- matism may mean that the door is open to ac- cepting anything or everything else.
The man who first hears of pragmatism
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may feel that at last the way is open for him to believe anything or everything or nothing, just as he pleases. A teacher in ethics has pointed out that one hearing the principles of Epicurus for the first time might imagine that at last the doors are open to all manner of pleasure-seeking with the sanction of ethical precept, but that such a one will find as soon as he comes close to his problem that, after all, many doors are closed. So with pragmatism, for pragmatism with its doctrine of consequences as the test of truth must recognize :
1. The existence of an objective order. The consequences must be the consequences of the long run. A man might declare that the con- sequences are best for him in denying the existence of a material world, and he might get on comfortably with the belief for a while, but not for long.
2. The pragmatist must make some conces- sion to logic, else there would be no sense in reasoning. It would seem rather absurd to try to find a system with no reliance upon logic. Of course some pragmatists go so far as to make even mathematical axioms prac- tical postulates, virtually denying the mind any power of insight on its own account.
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3. The pragmatist must concede the exis- tence of others besides himself, but with this concession there must be a social as well as an individual set of consequences for beliefs, and the two sets will often come into conflict. There is no relief here on the pragmatist basis.
4. The pragmatist must yield to the au- thority of consequences as these have revealed themselves in great individuals.
5. The pragmatist must take into account inner as well as outer consequences, else the system will sink into a low order of utilita- rianism. The most practical consequences are not necessarily outer.
Thus we might go on. Still, after we have said all this we must say further that the preaching of the pragmatic philosophy does pave the way for the preaching of an essen- tially Christian doctrine. The Founder of Christianity taught that discipleship means the doing of the deeds of the kingdom, that he that heareth the words and doeth them is the one who gets the rock foundation, that he that doeth the will of God shall know the doc- trine of God. Christ came that men might have life, but life has deeper roots than specu- lation. Life flowers out into Christian con- sciousness and Christian consciousness in
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turn sends new powers back into the root and tree and branch.
Our long discussion comes to this — that the movements of modern philosophy are not away from faith, but, rather, in the direction of faith. Nothing in philosophy itself can establish the Christian standpoint; but noth- ing in philosophy can block the way of Chris- tian revelation, and much can aid that revela- tion. There are no mechanical or idealistic systems which, standing in their own light, are a barrier to the demands of Christian life.
The demands of Christian life ! Life shows itself in its power to make demands and to seize what it requires to satisfy those demands. The Christian conception needs the idea of a material universe in which God shows at least a measure of this thought. While we might never suspect the presence of God in the world from an inductive scrutiny alone, we do find signs of his presence when we search for the plan which we feel must be there. We need the idea of a vast spiritual organism, a body of God, which is to set forth the immensity of the divine Life, and as we work with this de- mand in mind we find a satisfaction which we believe is an indication that we are on the path to the truth. We feel the need of the
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presence of God in the life of the individual, and we hold fast to the idea of prayer, not for extraordinary answers here and there, but for the increasing life in him who prays.
It may seem to some that we have made out a rather fragmentary and broken plight for current philosophic thinking. This is just the advantage which confronts the student to- day. The tight systems are broken up. The windows and the doors are open. It is per- missible for us to believe that the divine Spirit is near enough to us to find us and to help us on and up. Whatever seems to be on and up we shall reach after. And if we find ourselves moving on and up, we shall feel that we are on the right path.
Of course truth is truth and finally stands in its own right. But the final truth which thus stands in its own right is not the truth of speculative statement, but the truth of life. A life, a moral person — this is the good on its own account. If this is the good-in-itself, we have to consider speculative statements in somewhat of an instrumental capacity. They are the tools by which the mind takes its direc- tion and surveys its path. A belief may be useful for one time and not for another. Or, to make the matter more vital still, the belief
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is the food — or part of the food — on which the life feeds. The final test is the test of life. And thus the life moves on toward God. The world is open; the sky is free. Whatever the life finds necessary for its growth it will take. It cannot make itself at home in the world by denying the facts of science, or the truths of logic, or the foundations of social order. It will search for the truth in any system which has presented itself or which will present it- self. It will live upon the truth of the system so far as it can and will throw away the error. If some object that this is unsystematic eclecticism, the only reply is that life is al- ways eclectic. The living organism lays hold on air and sunshine and water and food in large variety for the sake of preserving and propagating itself. The great revelation is through the organism which we may call the body of the Spirit of God — the family of be- lievers in God. Formal statements are the outputs of the vitality of this organism. The statements must not be so held as to smother or crush the life of the organism itself. For that life itself is the center around which all else should turn. A revealing God must limit himself to the persons through whom he works, but through the lives obedient to him
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he makes an increasingly large and significant revelation of himself. The life of a good man stands in its own right because — paradoxical as the words seem — it points beyond itself to the life of God.
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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
It is the aim of this lecture to show that the widening of the social horizon works in aid of faith by bringing into prominence the great human ideals. Anything which lays stress on what we may call essential humanity works for faith. It may be that the upholders of ideals of human rights in political and indus- trial and social realms are not themselves adherents of religious beliefs. Agitators and propagandists of doctrines which work for lofty human ideals may themselves be agnos- tics or skeptics so far as religious beliefs are concerned, and yet, all unconsciously to them- selves, may be working for the increase of re- ligious faith. Anything which exalts our con- ception of what human life ought to be is a veritable revealer of God. We cannot enrich a human ideal without at the same time en- riching our idea of God.
At the very outset of such a discussion we are met by the urgent insistence of those who
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hold to the doctrine of the economic interpre- tation of history, that the effective force in
%j 7
setting hnman ideals high in the thinking of men has not been the perception of those ideals themselves. Physical necessities have been the great driving powers, we are told. Hunger, the demand for better houses and costlier raiment — these are the compelling forces. We do not feel any need to discuss this claim at length. We may, however, ven- ture one or two remarks.
First, if the theory is true it is rather an odd fact that these physical forces reach their highest effectiveness when baptized with a moral and ideal name. No one denies that hunger is a driving force in the life of society. Men who are working for human rights may frankly say that they are trying to get more bread for hungry mouths. But before the agitation is complete the movement takes on the form of a moral appeal. The cynic may say that all this is hypocrisy, but, neverthe- less, lifting the appeal to the moral realm gives it added power. But even this is some- what aside from the present purpose ; we shall return to it later.
We pass now to a second remark, namely, that we are not especially concerned with the
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order in which ideals emerge in the conscious- ness of men. It may be that the economic im- pulse comes first and the moral impulse arises as an afterthought. We are not thinking especially of before and after. It may be that men do not see the full significance of moral ideals until economic issues have been settled. To use the common expression, as long as there is money in a particular course the moral aspect may not have a chance to reveal itself. This economic view, with all its truth, is in these days much overemphasized, but, we repeat, we are not especially concerned with the sequence in which ideals emerge. The fact is that the ideals do emerge, and that they seem to us to make for faith. There is con- stant need of care against that old fallacy that we can judge the worth of an idea wholly by noticing the circumstances of its origin. Holders of evolutionary theory often fancy that they can get at the worth of an idea by determining its place in the evolutionary pro- cession. The main feature of a human ideal is not so much the path by which it has come as the direction in which it points. The ideal may arise from the earth, but if it arises to- ward God it is worth our study.
Perhaps the best start for our general pur-
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pose can be found in some illustrations from American history. It will be understood that there is no attempt here to trace a movement through history as a technically trained his- torical student would trace such a movement. We are, of course, dependent upon others for the facts here presented. All that we claim is that the facts point in the direction of an en- larging human ideal, and that they tend to in- crease our respect for men and humanity.
As a first illustration of a movement which would tend to increase our respect for hu- manity, and especially for democracy, we take the period of the American Civil War and the years which immediately followed the con- flict. We can imagine the gasp of astonish- ment with which some will greet the proposal to show from democracy's conduct in war a reason for faith in humanity and for respect for humanity. We trust that we shall not be supposed to suggest that there is anything ennobling or refining in war. It is just be- cause war in itself is hideous that we use the illustration. It may increase our trust in de- mocracy to see how it carries itself in seasons of grievous trial. We submit democracy to the test of severest conditions. It had long been said before the Civil War that the test
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of democracy would come in time of war. The fact that democracy stood the test well is an item to be set down to humanity's credit. Of course it will not be understood that we are committing so palpable an error as to identify humanity and democracy, but, surely, no greater promise for humanity could be found than to find a democracy of some twenty mil- lions of people acquitting itself with surpass- ing credit in time of strain.
To begin at a plane which is decidedly lower than the moral aspects we hope later to discuss, discerning critics have said that even in its military aspects the conduct of the war was a great item to be set down to democracy's credit. Spenser Wilkinson, a foremost Eng- lish military authority, has used the American Civil War as an illustrative commentary on the remark of the great Prussian whose work on war did so much to make modern Germany possible, the remark of Clausewitz that when a whole people go to war, animated to the last man with a common purpose, the war, while it may be hesitating in its first policy, will finally take on as distinct and definite and true a form as if it were being conducted by a dictator — by a vast military genius with pro- fessional soldiers obedient to his will. The
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only difference will be that it may conceiva- bly require a longer time for a nation in arms to get itself into effective action than for the dictator. Spenser Wilkinson applies this remark, as we have said, to the Civil War. Taking the whole four years together, the war may be looked upon as one battle on a large scale. The history of the war thus becomes quite simple. It will not suffice to say that the North won by sheer weight of numbers. The weight of numbers had to be skillfully ap- plied. The North won by turning the left flank of the Confederacy as a whole. One blow struck the Confederacy in twain along the line of the Mississippi. Another broke it from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Then while the head and front of the Confederate resist- ance was held fast in the East, the Northern armies moved east to the sea from Atlanta and thence north, piercing the vitals of the Confederacy in all directions. The contention of Wilkinson is that this plan is as simple and direct and as effective as if conceived by the mind of a Napoleon. It will not avail against this contention to say that, after all, the work was done by professional generals. In the beginning it was true that the soldiers of the democracy thought that one man was as likely
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to be a good captain as another man, and sought to fill official positions by ballot. As the war progressed, however, all this changed and the conduct of the war passed into hands trained to war. But the people themselves were responsible for this change, and the generals, after all, acted only in re- sponse to a popular demand. Grant, the gen- eral who cared least for the pressure of public opinion, on more than one occasion refused to turn back because the people were looking for advance in a particular direction and would interpret any sort of a backward step as a defeat. The plan, as a whole, reflected the will of the people. If it be objected that in a war between contestants who were practi- cally two peoples the Prussian theory would call for like unity and simplicity of plan on the other side, the answer must be that the other side was essentially on the defensive and had to adapt its plans to the plans of the offensive.
Now, all this may seem rather far-fetched, but Wilkinson has this much on his side — that, on the whole, the progress of the North was a miracle of victory, and would seem to indicate that even in the intellectual insights required in a highly technical field a whole
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people, under the stress of a great crisis, can come to an understanding which in a single individual would be superlative genius and to a force of will which in an individual would be entirely titanic. The significance of figures like Lincoln and Grant is partly in this, that Lincoln on the political side and Grant on the military side were incarnations of the good sense of the people. In the words of Lincoln the people heard their own thought and in the blows of Grant saw their own deeds. Neither was a man standing apart from his time. Each had his meaning in the democracy of which he was an expression and an agent.
But great as is the credit to be given de- mocracy on the more intellectual side at the time of crisis, the credit to be given on the moral side is greater still. Bad as is war in any case, this war was undertaken on both sides in the name of an ideal. We may say all we please about the pressure of economic forces and about the irreconcilable conflict be- tween two hostile industrial systems. We are willing to grant that the conflict was one be- tween corn and cotton as to which should be king, but that was not all of the meaning. On the one side was the broad appeal to human rights, and on the other the rights of certain
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States to rule themselves. Each side claimed to be fighting for an ideal of human liberty. One side may have been wholly right and the other wholly wrong, or both sides may have been partly right and partly wrong, with one side more predominantly right than the other. The essential fact is that the underlying, over- powering motives did not come to full force until they had been given a moral statement. Now, it is simply out of the question to say that the masses on one side or the other were playing the part of hypocrites. Human ideals seemed to be at stake, and this gave the con- test its desperate fury. No matter what we may say about the conspiracies and insinceri- ties of leaders, it is impossible to maintain that the people on either side thought they were fighting for other than a moral ideal. The progress of time has shown that the ideals of humanity for which the North stood meant more for the race, that the right of the people to rule was more closely bound up with the cause of the Union, that the final platform of the Union was for the broader charter of hu- man rights. It may seem strange to us that any man could invoke the aid of God in try- ing to secure bread earned by the sweat of another man's brow, but we would do well to
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heed the statesman's word that in this we judge not that we be not judged.
The war too was carried through in as hu- mane a fashion as possible. Atrocities com- mitted in prisons here and there, for which the scarcity of provisions and the desperate nature of the conflict itself furnished some ex- cuse, ought not to obscure our eyes to the truth that in spite of bloodshed beyond all parallel the warfare did not brutalize or vulgarize the mass of the soldiers. Outrages and rapacity there were in plenty, but when we reflect that with the war at its height a million of men were engaged on one side, the wonder is that barbarities were so few. When the conflict had ceased there was, indeed, some clamor for revenge, but the victor's hands were not stained with the blood of political prisoners. And when the armies were disbanded — wonder of wonders! — they went back quietly to the pursuits of peace. Now, we protest that we would not say one word in glorification of war, but the manner in which democracy went through this period of strain with so little of moral damage tends to increase our confi- dence in the loyalty of masses of men to high ideals. The period of reconstruction, horrible as it was, was amazingly brief for a period in
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the life of a nation, and was partly the out- come of a real, though partly doctrinaire, de- votion to a human ideal. The conceptions which philanthropists held of the freedman in those days seem very humorous to us as we look back, but the conceptions were a credit to the men who held them. Longfellow repre- sented the Negro's dream as carrying him back to Africa, where "once more a king he strode." The poet evidently knew very little about the dreams of the actual slave, but the misconcep- tion was really a tribute to Longfellow. The Negro problem is hard enough for us after nearly fifty years of experiment. There is little excuse for harshness in criticism of the failures of the first experiments. The idealists of the day lacked knowledge in a realm where there were no precedents. And they had to cope with outrageous adventurers and with the national reaction after four years of tremen- dous emotional upheaval, a reaction showing itself in indifference on the part of many as to how the nation should discharge its responsi- bilities. But, on the whole, considering the lack of detailed and accurate data on the working of social institutions in untried hands, the wonder is that so little damage was done. The working of popular thought,
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through the whole period, tends to deepen our respect for the people's respect for humanity. Passing from a period which is to all prac- tical intents and purposes closed, to one in the midst of which we are now moving, we call attention to the significance for American so- ciety of the passing away of the American frontier. Professor Frederic J. Turner has written with profound instructiveness on this theme. He even sets a date to mark the time when the nation passed out of one stage and into another. This he finds to have been the year 1890, when, according to the census, it had become no longer possible, at least in any considerable part of the country, to secure land free from all cost except just the cost of appropriating it. To be sure, there are still many parts of the country where essentially frontier conditions prevail, but these are be- coming fewer and smaller. The situation is somewhat as if a continent-wide stream which was moving easily toward the West had at last reached a check and had come to a stand- still or to eddying currents. So far as the exceedingly difficult problems are concerned, the real frontiers of to-day are the cities. The movement to-day is toward the cities, and the new problems are city problems.
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Professor Turner thinks that the passing away of the frontier will bring in — indeed, has already brought in — a new type of democracy, a type in which social elements are bound to predominate more largely than in the individu- alistic type of the frontier. In the old days of the frontier a settler was not likely to live near enough to his neighbor to be disturbed by him; there was room enough to allow the most quarrelsome neighbors to get along with- out too frequent clash. If the neighbor be- came intolerable, it was possible for the ag- grieved or disturbed man to move on to other lands to be had for the taking. That day has long since gone. It is now nearer the fact to say that our problem is to get along with the neighbor whether we like him or not. At most, all we can hope for by change is a change of neighbors. The neighbor is bound to us henceforth.
There is no denying that with the passing of the individualistic type of democrat we have lost much. There was a romance in the independence of the pioneer which is very de- lightful to read about. There was a resource- fulness, too, that never ceases to amaze us. There was an inner moral strength altogether surprising. But there was another side. The
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life was barren. In spite of the fact that some men can rejoice in solitude and can even be- come philosophers and poets in the solitude, life in the solitude is for most men barren. Pioneer conditions were frequently too hard to allow any real rest, and what spare time there was went to loafing and dozing. The pleasures of the frontier were often coarse and gross. There grew up a false sense of honor at times — a quickness for resenting insult that often left no chance for an explanation that might save a friendship and perhaps a life. Along with this went a development of a demo- cratic doctrine from which we have not yet re- covered— that every man is as good as every other man in every particular. The Civil War did much to show the fallacy of this idea through the mistakes which came with the notion that one man is as good as another in the leading of troops, but the idea still per- sists. The fallacy was partly responsible for the "spoils system" which appropriately enough was made potent by that king of frontiersmen, Andrew Jackson. While we of to-day have seen little of the pioneer, many of the pioneer's ideas descend to us as a heritage not altogether blessed. The worst legacy is just the idea that democracy is not an organi-
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zation but an assembly of units, each of which is what it is on its own account, and each of which maintains that it can do as it pleases. The fact that at one time such a conception was useful, and even indispensable, should not prevent our seeing the limitations of the con- ception for a later time.
The conception which we are fast approach- ing is the conception of democracy as an or- ganism. Of course this doctrine is as old as political theorizing itself, but it is to-day re- ceiving a setting forth on a scale the like of which the world has not before known. We have to adjust our life to that of our neigh- bors. Now, the latter type of democracy makes possible evils which cannot be found with the individualistic type, but the likelier possibility is that the ideal of human life will be enriched with the realization of democracy as an organism. In the next lecture we shall attempt some analysis of the content of the ethical ideal to which men are advancing in the present-day emphasis on social values. Here it will suffice to say that the ideal is, or at least can be, richer and fuller under the new conditions. Two persons living and working together can think of more things than either can alone, and the things are more
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apt to be good things than evil things. When numbers of persons move on into evil together the outcome is indeed apt to be more tragic than when they move as individuals. Groups of evildoers may occasionally debase the hu- man ideal worse than individuals following out their desires as individuals, but the groups are apt to be held back by some considerations of morality and sanity which may not weigh with an individual. In a healthy community the streams of life which reach down even to the least part of the organism are apt to be healthier than the private circulatory system of an individual. If we must believe that the normal life is the social life, it must follow that the ideals which come out of the social life are healthier than those which come out of the individualistic order. There is some- times safety in numbers for human ideals.
It may be objected that the great moral and religious insights have always started with some individual who has withdrawn from the life of the community and has brooded in solitude and silence until a revelation has burst upon him. Abraham leaves the city for the desert and John the Baptist grows up in the wilderness. But Abraham, according to the story, was seeking a city, and John finally
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drew to himself all Jerusalem and Judaea. Before a prophet becomes a positive force he must voice an insight or a need which the people have at least half felt or half seen. From what has been said in a previous ad- dress it will be remembered that we do not minimize the individual. The moral person is an end in himself, the only end we recog- nize. When we speak of the social organism we do not delude ourselves with the fancy that our language is scientifically exact, any more than the language is scientific in exactness when we speak of the individualistic theory as atomistic. Both terms are descriptive only in a figurative sense. The figure of society as an organism is true enough for our present purpose. The expression "social conscious- ness" does not mean that there is a conscious- ness apart from the consciousness of indivi- duals. We are uttering only commonplace in saying that society is nothing apart from the individuals that compose it, and we are will- ing to declare that the great result of the social activities is in the benefit of the in- dividual, but we insist that the individual comes to the largest life when he is so closely connected with others that he may be spoken of as a part of a social organ-
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ism. The fact, however, must not be lost sight of that while in a biological organism the parts exist predominantly for the good of the whole, in a social organism the worthy func- tion of the whole is the good of the parts. It is with this understanding that we speak of the social organism.
The transition from the individualistic to the more social form of democracy is deter- minative of our social problems and of the restless agitation that so generally prevails. If it be maintained that present-day agita- tion is world-wide, and that the difficulties come through the introduction into America of social ideals from Europe, the ready answer is that American conditions have begun to approach European conditions closely enough to make plausible the suggestion that Euro- pean ideas should be adopted here. Nobody can foresee the outcome of the present-day movements toward emphasis on social values and social control, but some general forces make for the atmosphere in which faith flourishes.
First among these forces which aid faith we mention the demand for Publicity. Under- neath this demand is the assumption, none the less real because half -conscious or uncon-
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scious, that the people can understand and that they have a right to know. In the light of publicity faith is apt to flourish. We real- ize that the modern democratic movement drags out into the light many things that would better be kept hidden, things trivial or harmful, but every year shows improvement. In the main, the modern democratic tendency is increasing the importance of that principle of discussion which Walter Bagehot found so significant for the advance of civilization. Though there are aspects of faith which are not best dealt with in public debate — and of these we shall speak in a later lecture — the broad foundations of the faith are served by the freest discussion. In the realm of faith much may happen in the secret depths of the soul, but faith does not thrive best when con- fined in a corner. The worst impression to give people concerning faith is that faith is a sort of secret for the initiated few. Let there be the fullest discussion. Let any man who has any theory about the Church or the Bible or religious experience feel free to publish. Nothing so quickly kills error as free discus- sion, and nothing so firmly establishes truth. The quickest way to deal with some forms of skepticism is to bring them to utterance.
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Some doctrines are so fragile that they break with the very attempt to give them articulate statement. Some are seen through as soon as they are expressed.
If we may indulge in what seems like a digression, we may call attention to the faith in the people manifested in the publication of the Bible in English three hundred years ago. It would be hard to find a parallel for this event as a revelation of sheer confidence in and reliance upon the mind of the masses as well as upon the content of the Book itself. When we consider the illiteracy of the people of the time, their natural proneness to mistake the letter of a revelation for its spirit, the pos- sibility of misunderstanding through the na- ture of the Book, we can only wonder at the boldness which could scatter the precious seed of the gospel on such a field. The result was not due merely to the particular type of people for whom the translation was made. The re- sult has been similar with all sorts and con- ditions of men and communities and races whenever a like venture has been made. It is worth while to trust religious reve- lations to the people. There may for a season be misunderstanding and turmoil and ship- wreck, but in the end the result is favor-
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able to faith. One test of the worth of a new religious doctrine, or method of study, or form of organization is to get it before the people for discussion. Light de- stroys some growths and quickens others. Modern discussion is light for faith — not the blaze of noonday, indeed, but light enough to reveal what is adapted to minister to the deep human needs and to set on high the great hu- man ideals. The moral factor is by no means slight in the modern popular demand for publicity.
A second great demand coming out of the democratic impulse is the demand for Sim- plicity— simplicity in action and expression. The people are much too busy to give them- selves over to elaborate intricacies. The de- mand on institutions of all sorts is that the truth for which the institution stands be brought at last to such simplicity that it can be grasped for popular use. Of course this demand may run into absurdity. Justice Charles E. Hughes has called attention to the danger for democracy in democratic impa- tience with expert opinion. But the impa- tience becomes less year by year, partly be- cause the experts themselves show more skill in reducing their revelations, at least in the
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practical phases, to simplicity. For example, the fight of the modern scientist against the world-old plague of cholera is based upon the knowledge obtained from minutely technical processes. Cultures and staining agents and microscopes and the whole modern bacte- riological theory and technique are necessary for the immense victory of our day. But the final message to the people in danger of the plague is quite simple. It is, for the most part, just an exhortation that they keep clean, eat only cooked food, and boil the drinking water. It would be interesting to reflect upon the good wrought for the formulation and perhaps even for the advance of scientific doc- trines by the need of meeting the popular de- mand that the practical statement of the truth be simple.
There is a manifestation of this same desire too in the current call for more direct methods of government or for a more direct instrument for the governmental expression of the popular will. How far some of these demands can safely be heeded is a problem for the expert in political institutions. Representative gov- ernment would seem to have behind it a long historic development suggesting its estab- lished usefulness as an instrument of de-
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mocracy. How far this system can be modified in favor of more direct government by the peo- ple is, indeed, a serious question. It is not difficult, however, to discern the moral spring back of the demand for direct government. There is always a possibility of evils creeping in when the path is too tortuous. When we must be too long in learning how legislation is achieved we are apt to become suspicious, just as we feel a tendency to suspicion when it takes a money-maker too long to tell us how he makes his money. A like demand for sim- plicity is seen in the popular protest against legal and judicial procedure. We all know the value of some set of checks in public move- ment. Public sentiment sometimes runs into a fever, and the courts serve the people by acting as a cooling and steadying factor. But the protest against courts is not so much against a system of brakes in a democracy as against the intricacy and lack of simplicity in procedures. When mere processes and de- cisions become overtechnical there is fear on the part of the people that mischief lieth at the door.
Now, all of this movement toward sim- plicity is both an indirect and a direct aid to faith. Just as faith thrives on the demand for
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publicity, so it thrives also on a demand for simplicity. The demand for simplicity enables the believer to put the nonessentials to one side and to fasten his thoughts upon the fac- tors supremely worth while. The people quickly weary of the too elaborate in religious doctrine and ritual and organization. It is well for faith that this is so. Faith thrives on the demand for the simple. The higher and more important the truth, the easier to state that truth simply.
The third demand is that which we have already mentioned so often, the increased note of emphasis on Humanity in modern demo- cratic movements. No doubt this emphasis has its economic side. The movement away from the individualism of the frontier has its economic phase. The drawing force in the life of the pioneer was free land. The exhaustion of the free lands would inevitably call for profound economic readjustment. But what- ever the cause which has worked for the bring- ing of people into closer relationship, the very fact that they are thrown thus together makes for a larger mutual understanding. While the economic movement is exceedingly important in itself, it often best shows its importance by accentuating the emphasis on humanity as a
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standard and test of institutions. Increasing stress is put on the question as to what kind of men are produced by the institutions of to- day. No institution escapes the searching in- quiry. Even the Church must not be looked upon as an end in itself. No claims for divine authority will long support the Church if it does not generate right influences for the up- building of men. What kind of man is pro- duced by the Church, or the ideal, or the social institution? This is the critical inquiry.
The transition from individualistic to social democracy is marked by the changing man- ners of democracy in the bearing of men to- ward one another. Elijah Pogram, of Dick- ens's Martin Chuzzlewit, may have been and perhaps was a caricature, but the sting of the caricature was in its truth. Part of the swagger had passed out of American manners fifty years ago, but somewhat of an overbearing spirit lingered on till later. The very fact that men have to be in closer mutual contact than formerly makes for larger mu- tual consideration. And in the deeper sense the accent on the most truly human ideals marks the spirit of to-day. Men seem quite willing to endure inequality of distribution of wealth. That inequality always has been, and
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quite likely always will be, though contrasts may become less glaring. But resentment against any show of arrogance on the part of the owner of wealth is abundant. Even vul- garity of display is keenly resented.
When we reach the more directly indus- trial problem of our day we find the same emphasis on the demands of humanity. The growth of huge business combinations is an illustration of the form in which the mon- archical principle persists in democratic sur- roundings. No kingly leadership has ever been more striking than the leadership of some who have made themselves the heads of vast industrial concerns. Democracy has much to gain from conserving the monarchical principle, at least in the sense of furnishing scope for kingly abilities, but must stand against any tendencies of the monarchical principle in modern industrialism to inter- fere with popular welfare. A great deal of useful discussion has gone on in recent years showing the violations of law by which some industrial kings came to their power. Evil doings there have no doubt been, but it will tend to a more complete understanding to say that when these great movements of concen- tration and consolidation began the social con-
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sequences had not been thought out or worked out. Now that the social consequences have become apparent, the worthy aim is that the consequences be such as to be in the full sense harmonious with the demands of humanity re- gardless of the effect on the industrial institu- tions as institutions.
In all the more radical movements of social reform the same stress on human rights gives the movements their power. If we regard these movements as dangerous in their ten- dency, it will not suffice for us to point out the inadequacies of their logic. The inade- quacy of the logic may make the doctrines dangerous, but what gives the power is the emphasis upon certain human needs. Revolu- tionary and extreme socialism, for example, may be very dangerous to the community, but the wise man will not think he has done his whole duty in pointing out the danger. This is as if a man should call out that a car dash- ing along a particular road will plunge over a precipice. What we need is not merely to know whither the logic leads but to under- stand how to control the power which drives the theory. We may, if we so choose, call all these theories philosophies of failure, but fail- ure itself is so much a tragedy for human life
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that there is a protest against failure. We call for the most searching inquiry into the cause of failure, to determine whether such a large percentage of disaster is necessary. One significant feature of modern social pro- test is that it has arisen, in this country at least, in a period of comparative prosperity. Outside of the mere cost of living, which though serious is not necessarily calamitous, the times during which the current protest has come to power have not been crises of indus- trial depression. The facts which have called forth the protests have been just the facts which could be found at times which are called prosperous. And the protests have come not wholly from the men who have been them- selves under the burden of oppression. The recruits for revolution have come from all classes and especially from those who have had ample opportunity to study the structure of society. The spectacle of the mass of human failure has got not only on the nerves but on the consciences of many who are not them- selves failures. And the revolutionary the- ories, dangerous as we may think them, are red lights showing the disasters into which we may come if the underlying humanities are not heeded. The humanities have the right of way.
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It requires hardly more than a glance to detect the presence of the human ideal as the criterion of social institutions. Of course the evil-hearted are with us always, as are also those who delight to tinker with social machin- ery, and as are also those who have the itch for the new. But after we have made allowance for all these, the criticism which gets a hearing with the people is that which has behind it a genuinely human motive. To take a single instance, note the growing impatience with that protest against the education of women and the opening of the doors of economic op- portunity to women which gravely informs us that the true sphere of women is the home and that women were intended to be wives and mothers! As if educated women could not be as good wives and mothers as the un- educated. The more the doors are opened to women in the field of economic opportunity, the fewer the marriages likely to come from motives predominantly economic. If a woman is not to marry, we ought to rejoice in the con- ditions which to-day fill the single life with increasing opportunity for culture and service. If a woman is to marry, the increased oppor- tunities outside of married life make it pos- sible for marriage to be more and more a free
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choice. The ideal human elements come more largely into play and the compulsory elements drop into the secondary place.
It remains to speak briefly of the extent to which the strictly human ideals are playing their part in international relationship. Here, again, we would not at all minimize the sig- nificance of the economic forces. Interna- tional commercial considerations were never more effective than to-day in bringing the ends of the earth together, but when once the ends have been brought together considerations other than the economic begin to rise into first place. We may be permitted to mention three phases of international activity as showing the increasing emphasis by the people on hu- man considerations : the immigration question in our own country, the problem of the Chris- tianization of non-Christian nations, the in- ternational movement against war.
In immigration the effective force against legislative restriction has always been the thought of America as the refuge of the op- pressed. America has been thought to spell opportunity, and the effective obstacle against restriction has been a lofty ideal. But of late years we have come to see that the motive of desire for relief from civil or religious oppres-
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sion is not so effective in bringing the aliens to us as we had once imagined. The fact that there are worthy political or religious refu- gees does not blind our eyes to the fact that the motive with the masses of immigrants to- day is economic. Of course an economic op- portunity is a moral boon to men, and even when men sought America for political and re- ligious freedom they were not unmindful of the material chances here. But the class of men now responding to the lure of America is not the same as in other days. A great mass come to us who tend to lower the standard of living for American workmen. The "stand- ard of living" means much to us. It means more than difference between the grade of fish and meat and vegetables consumed by native Americans and that consumed by laborers from abroad. It is said that carp from the Illinois Kiver are shipped in immense num- bers to the immigrants in New York, but that the American laborer will not touch such coarse food. The difference in standard, how- ever, is not to be measured by a difference of attitude toward carp. The standard of living means almost anything and everything for the outlook on life. It means that there shall or shall not be books and pictures and schooling
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and recreation and the opportunities for the fullness of life.
We insist that it is its essentially human aspect which gives the immigration question seriousness in the minds of all thinking Ameri- cans. The spectacle of thousands of men brought from abroad to work in the mills is in itself bad enough, but the spectacle becomes worse when we stop to think that these force others who desire higher standards of living to accept a paltry wage. In the face of this outcome there are investigators who would restrict immigration very rigidly. If the argument is put to such students that they would force human beings, who now look to our country as the land of hope, back upon hopeless conditions in their own land, the re- ply is forthcoming that the very best way for America to serve the world is to maintain her ideals at every cost. If some immigrants who would with worthy motives come to us are kept out by any exclusion laws, this is, in- deed, a misfortune to those thus excluded and to us also, but this is an item of the cost which must be paid for the maintenance of human ideals. America cannot afford to cease to be an object lesson to the world as to what can be done when the right sort of civic and social
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ideals get a chance. It might well be that forcing immigrants back into their own lands and thus closing the vent from those lands outward toward our land would through the congestion and pressure in those lands work for reforms there. If there is oppressive hard- ship back of immigration, it might be that the restriction and confinement of the peoples to their home lands would blow the tops off some ancient evils. There are more students, of course, who think that the public schools and the standard of American life so promptly in- fluence, if not the newcomers themselves, at least the second generation of immigrants, that American ideals can be looked upon as safe. The point, however, upon which we in- sist is that there is growing impatience with any discussion of immigration which talks almost in impersonal terms of labor supply and ignores the effect on human ideals from the forced adoption of low standards of living. In the view of the world which comes with the modern outlook upon man a new respon- sibility falls on the Christian nations for hold- ing before the whole world the human ideals which make up the Christian thought of man. The existence of millions of human beings in so-called heathen lands under conditions which
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hardly permit human life from one point of view makes for pessimism. To frame a the- ory which will account for the hard plight of millions of men is beyond us. Truly the non- Christian nations sit in darkness, being bound in affliction and iron. But without attempt- ing to fathom the purposes of Providence in the history of nations, the truth seems to be increasingly manifest that the only power which will lift the heathen nations out of their plight is Christianity with that ideal of human life which is so essential to the Chris- tian system.
Suppose we glance at a land like China. It is customary for a certain type of traveler to tell us that the fundamental trouble with China is economic, that the pressure of the large masses of population on the land is in- tense beyond calculation, that it is the pres- sure which has stripped the hillsides of trees, and that has exhausted the vitality of the peo- ple till, as Bagehot says, the nation has been caked over with a hard crust of custom which is imperviously obstinate. Now, we avow again that we do not underestimate the power of the economic forces, but we insist that economic and psychological factors act re- ciprocally upon one another and together upon
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the total situation. What is back of the fact of overpopulation in China? The demand for sons. What is back of the demand for men? The demand for earthly service to be rendered by sons to fathers after the fathers shall have passed on to the company of the ancestors. In other words, China thinks more of a dead man than of a live man. In any civilization at all Christian this earth belongs by right of eminent domain to the people now living. But in China a false religious view gives rise to a false relation between the land and the people. Polygamy, concubinage, and promiscuity in sexual relations are encouraged, with the re- sult that perhaps -five generations are pro- duced in a length of time through which only four should be born. The strain on the soil becomes terrific. Nature falls back on those rough and merciless instruments which Malthus so effectively describes — famine, flood, and pestilence. The people hang on to existence by so flimsy a fringe that a crop failure means death to thousands. They crowd down into the river valleys so close to the embankments that a breach brings wide- spread disaster. They live so close together that the plague mows down its victims by en- tire communities. Nor must we allow our-
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selves to be misled by the fact that people living in such conditions develop a marvelous power of endurance. We must not accept it as a tribute to the people that they can live on next to nothing. Professor Ross has shown that a peculiarity of the Chinese is that they have demonstrated what a large part of the race can do under unfavorable conditions. This, however, is just a reason why the whole system should be changed. The race is not on the planet for the purpose of showing what can be done under unfavorable conditions. The conditions must be made favorable for the sake of the large human result which is to come.
So that the justification, from the social standpoint, of the attempt to Christianize the non-Christian nations is in the large ideal of humanity which is at the heart of Christianity. The aims of evangelism must be more than remedial. Suppose the resources of Western civilization are used to better the merely ma- terial situation in lands like China. It seems cold-blooded to say so, but these resources would only make the result worse, apart from the introduction of the Christian ideal which sets a higher value on human life. Polygamy, concubinage, and promiscuity must be done
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away. Life must be made more sacred. The birth rate must be lowered from animal to human proportions. This does not mean the Westernization of the Orient. It means the humanization and Christianization of the Orient. To say that such a chasm must al- ways yawn between the East and the West that an essential Christianity can never be introduced which will give the millions of peo- ple a chance at life on human terms is really to despair of the race.
We mention briefly the crusade against in- ternational war as a closing illustration of emphasis on the claims of humanity. A great change has come over the thinking of the world in respect to wars in the last half-cen- tury. A war which should be frankly and openly commercial and materialistic would hardly be tolerated to-day. The economic ele- ment is, of course, a force in every war, but to put the appeal squarely down upon a business basis would condemn the war hopelessly. To- day the cost in human terms is being urged more and more. Important as might be the world-wide disturbance of capital through a war or number of wars, the disturbance to the happiness of the plain people who have to do the fighting and the suffering is more im-
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portant still. In this connection let us be thankful for those international labor move- ments which stand against war. It has always been necessary to consult the men who were to furnish the financial sinews before going to war. Let us rejoice that the human sinews more and more insist on being consulted. If there is to be war, let the men who are to do the dying be consulted before the war breaks out.
But the telling factor against war is just its inhumanities. Of course there are inhu- manities of peace, and sometimes in a choice between inhumanities war must be chosen as less inhuman. But such crises are becoming less and less likely. The essential inhumanity of men's killing one another by wholesale is becoming more and more apparent. Note the impatience with which men meet the old plea that war must be relied on as a sort of moral tonic for the nations. The argument would have us believe that we must resort to inhu- man means to make men human.
We come to the end of this long and per- haps tedious discussion. The connection be- tween the working of the various forces at which we have looked and the increase of faith may_ not have been immediately clear. We
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must remember, however, that we are think- ing of life at its fullest and best, and that whatever makes for full and good life makes for faith. It does not require the detailed in- formation or the technical skill of the expert to detect the growing emphasis on human con- siderations in modern social movement, and this emphasis counts for faith. If it seems that all our stress has been on the thought of human values and none on divine values, we have to reply that the clearest insight we can get into divine life is through high human development. Believing in a system which teaches that man is made in the image of God, a system which places the incarnation at its center as its most essential article of faith, which depends upon a Bible which teaches social duty throughout, which builds a Church which aims at a redeemed humanity, we need not apologize for seeing in real humanness the sign of the coming of the kingdom of God. We are not now concerned with the progress of formal creeds. God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit. If there is anything in modern life which re- veals a larger spirit toward men it is not too much to claim that that larger spirit has a divine source.
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There is a widespread feeling to-day that the past twenty-five years have seen a marked advance in the moral spirit of Christian lands. In our own country especially it has been said that ethical change has been very pronounced, at some periods making strides ahead with a force which might almost be called the force of an ethical revivalism. We- would do well to be on our guard against any such sweeping claims. Man for man and group for group, we may well ask ourselves if we are really any better than were our fathers. To use the old expression, if we are to be as good as our fathers, we must be better. We are under the obligation to increase with every possible de- velopment. Considering the forces that make for material and intellectual betterment, we have to ask ourselves if the moral forces which work in us and through us are keeping pace with these material anl intellectual forces. Are we making the advance in moral life in our time that our fathers made in theirs?
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This essay does not pretend to be a discus- sion in moral philosophy. It aims simply at showing the stress in general thought to-day upon some phases of ethical spirit which in- dicate progress. Especially does it aim at calling up the elements in our ethical thinking which seem to make for faith in religious be- liefs.
It is cause for congratulation that there is at present both in philosophical and popular ethical thinking such substantial agreement on what constitutes the chief good. The chief good has been discussed ever since men began to discuss ethics, and the results have been confused and confusing. One school has found the chief good in pleasure, another in the pursuit of duty for its own sake, another in self-realization, another in self-renuncia- tion. The definitions of terms like "pleasure," "duty," "realization," "renunciation" have themselves been numerous and various. To- day, however, there is rather remarkable agree- ment that a vast deal of such discussion is barren and unfruitful. The term we hear most often in ethical discussion is "life." Our preceding essays have insisted that in modern philosophical and social theories the accent is put upon life as having an inherent right of
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way. But life is a broad and general term, and we must come down to "lives." The indi- vidual lives of men and women and children are the goods which stand in their own right and the chief good is these lives living out their highest and best possibilities. Of course when we use the term "highest and best" the debate begins to rage again, but it is some- thing to have discerned that the good in this world is that which is good for human lives, and not something which exists in and for itself in abstraction from the concrete lives around us. The good is a good life — not virtue for its own sake or happiness or any- thing abstract. A good man is an end in himself.
Further, there is a fairly universal agree- ment to-day that the good man does not be- come a good man by just trying to be good. He does not become good by making goodness an object in itself or by pursuing an abstract righteousness. He does not reach the highest and best by thinking about himself. He, rather, finds life himself by trying to find life for others. The thought and purpose must be outward. A man's own righteousness is a sort of reflex or by-product which comes out of his attempt to help others. The social or-
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ganisra is not a thing in itself, but it is a mighty instrument in helping the individuals who compose it to be good in themselves. The growth of what we call the social conscious- ness has helped us to this insight into the method by which life comes to us.
Still further, we can be thankful for the fact that we hear such emphasis upon con- science as the very heart of moral life. Much popular teaching upon fundamental moral issues is off the track and some even seems perverted ; but all, or almost all, teaching is in the name of conscience. Conscience is claimed for some queer, aberrant conduct, but it is at least significant that the word "conscience" is in all quarters claimed as the vital and signifi- cant word. He would be a hardy ethical teacher who would arise and declare that men ought to disregard and flout behests of con- science. A teacher might well say that the uninstructed conscience, or the morbid con- science, or the popular conscience, or the con- ventional conscience ought to be disregarded, but he would hardly dare teach that a man ought to turn deliberately against his own mature thought of what is right. Conscience is, indeed, used in most unconscientious ways, but we can hardly think that a moral school
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teaching the open disregard of conscience would win many converts.
As we look at some present-day demands upon that inner spirit which is the heart of the moral life we repeat that we are not espe- cially concerned as to how these demands have come about. We certainly do not think that in all cases the new sense of obligation springs up within the heart of the obligated man of its own movement. In one man the assumption of obligation may thus mark the spontaneous development of the moral life. In another man the obligation may be more like a demand from without or a law imposed by an external authority. But the new sense of obligation is in somebody's mind, and the somebodies are numerous, numerous enough to give the public moral spirit of our day a well-defined stamp. Whether individuals ac- cept these obligations willingly or unwillingly, the obligations are here. They are here as the expression of real conscience and they voice real moral insight.
We begin by calling attention to the vigor- ous sense of the obligations of poiver to-day. A doctrine more and more generally accepted is that the possession of power imposes obli- gations on the possessor. We might in a sense
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call the struggle to get this doctrine into the popular consciousness a sort of continuation of the struggle against the divine right of kings. The slightest acquaintance with his- tory helps us to realize that the fight against the divine right came because of the unwill- ingness of rulers to admit that their power carried with it any real responsibility. The king felt at liberty to follow out any whim that might come into his mind. The succes- sive movements toward popular government have not come just because the people have been enamored of the dream of democracy. The movements have come because the people have felt that the kings have not ruled with a sense of responsibility. If the kings had ruled well, it is not likely that there would have been movements toward democracy so early in the course of history. There does not seem to be anything inherently repellent to the human mind in the thought of monarchy. Let the king take his work with a sense of re- sponsibility, and in some quarters even to-day the kingdom seems to stand fast. But the real question is as to whether any man can have a sense of obligation to his people strong enough to entitle him to a kingship. If a man is to be a king, his sense of obligation must
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be unspeakably strong. The very fact that the powers are in his hand puts obligation upon him beyond all possibility of estimate. Even in these days of limited monarchy the question, we repeat, is as to whether any man can adequately feel these obligations or dis- charge them if he does feel them. The objec- tion to kings in our day might be put into the form of a statement that the obligations are so heavy that we cannot think of asking any single human being to assume them.
We get further illustration of the force of this same emphasis on the sense of obligation when we think of the responsibilities that a military leader would have to assume even in a democracy going to war. In a previous essay we spoke of the triumphs of our democ- racy in the strain of a terrible war, but such triumph means that sooner or later vast re- sponsibilities must be placed in the hands of individual generals. Of course when a pop- ular government votes for a war the underly- ing responsibility is with the voters, but the responsibilities on the generals are stupen- dous. Possibly the darkest single charge ever made against Napoleon was that which de- clared that he once ordered a perfectly useless assault just to satisfy the desire of a party of
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friends to see a little of actual war. Whether Napoleon was guilty or not we do not pretend to say. We can, however, understand the re- morselessness of the criticism of those who believe the charge to be true. Anything more cynically base than such an order would be hard to conceive. We can understand also the criticism passed on that other leader who was reported to have said that he was going forth to war with a light heart. Think of the obligations that the leader of hundreds of thousands of soldiers must assume! His slightest moves mean death to scores and per- haps to hundreds. One objection raised against kingship can likewise be raised against war. If a great war is to be success- ful, it must come into the hands of a single man. Unity of command is essential to suc- cess. But how rare must be the man who can feel the obligations of such leadership ! Here, again, the question is as to whether any such man could be found. In any case, modern thought has taken all the lightheartedness out of our attitude toward war. The great hero of war has to be the general and his heroism has to be the devotion to obligations so heavy that we may well ask if any man should be allowed to assume them.
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But the political power to-day has passed away from the kings to the' citizens. We hear as never before the responsibility of the ordi- nary voter, for the vote means power and power carries with it obligation. Accordingly, we hear that more than a merely property or edu- cational test is necessary if a man is to be a good citizen. Of course the man who has property is apt to have achieved some moral strength in the gaining of the property, and the man who knows enough to read is likely to know more about moral distinctions than the illiterate man, but, after all, the urgent stress to-day is upon the need of the sense of obligation. We hear much about the man who will sell his vote, but such men are, when the large number of voters are taken into account, very rare. Such men can be dealt with by the police and by the courts. The man whom we need to keep constantly be- fore us is the man who takes into his hand so mighty an instrument as the ballot and uses it without proper sense of obligation. We have had many good things to say of democracy, and our faith in the people is not small, but the danger in democracy is that power will be used without proper sense of obligation. We do not have to believe that there is any neces-
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sary and inherent right of the people to rule before we can regard ourselves as good demo- crats. We have only to believe that the people can rule better than can individuals to be democrats. We believe that the people can thus rule, but we may well be glad that we hear so often that rule by the people is only an experiment, after all. The people must rule with a sense of responsibility if they are to rule successfully. They must be willing to assume the obligations of power as well as the power itself. Among these obligations must always be included the duty of looking facts squarely in the face, of distrusting great outbursts of emotionalism, of standing for the doctrine that a thing is not settled until it is settled aright. In the midst of all present-day signs of restlessness which now and again seem to point toward revolution it is well for us to remember that, on the whole, the people seem to have a wholesome regard for the checks upon popular excitement. Very few popular assemblies will ignore the simpler and clearer rules of parliamentary procedure; very few will violate the requirements of fair play ; very few will trample upon the rights of a minority. By the way, one of the clearest indications of a healthy moral spirit in society is this re-
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spect for the rights of the minority. A mi- nority is even being looked upon as essential to the proper movement of a democracy. The old doctrine that government exists for the sake of whatever majority happens to win is about gone. There is even less emphasis than there once was on the doctrine of the greatest good to the greatest number. More and more we hear that the proper aim of government is the best, under the circumstances, for all. And this means an increasing sense of obligation on the part of the people. When the "ins" have their way they have only the advantage of certain strategic positions. The "outs" are not out in the sense that they are out of the game. Even when they are out they are an essential element. There is to-day a growing popular recognition of the truth that victory for a majority does not dispose of the minority which loses. The minority is not a foe which is to be annihilated or taken prisoner. The mi- nority is for the moment just the weaker of two forces which, working upon each other, bring about a certain resultant. Advances of popu- lar thought are seldom straight forward in a direct path. The advance of a majority can- not be stopped or turned back upon itself by the action of a minority, but it can be de-
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fleeted far to one side of the course which it might otherwise have taken. It is the recogni- tion of mutual duties by "ins" and "outs" which is one of the encouraging signs as we think of the immense power which the ballot puts in the hands of the voters.
But, after all, the monarchical principle comes back upon us, even after we have given the vote to the individual citizen. The citizen to-day is, indeed, a ruler of mighty force, but the monarchical principle is illustrated on a vast scale in the industrial realm. We have to deal with real kings in the realm of industry — railroad kings, corn kings, corporation kings. It was once said of a railroad magnate that he had conquered more territory with a coupling pin than Julius Caesar had won with the sword. The days when these kings could act according to their own sweet will — a will which often proved bitter enough to those who stood in their way — are fast disappearing. So much power must necessarily be lodged in the hands of such leaders that the doctrine of the obligations of power are preached to them with urgent insistence. In the old days — days not so very far in the past — a railroad king could set up or pull down a community or a city with a stroke of his pen through a schedule
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of freight rates. He could divert the currents of trade from their accustomed channels. He could stop the mill wheels and literally make the grass grow in the streets of the cities. Without military resources he could really levy tribute from millions of people as truly as if he had started armies to marching to- ward them. He could rebate a city into deso- lation almost as effectively as a general could starve it by siege. Now, all this power is just as truly in the hands of the railroads to-day, but it will never be exercised as in the past. Laws will do their part, commissions will do their part, public opinion will do its part. We may be permitted to believe, however, that by no means the least effective force in bringing about the result has been and will be the grow- ing adoption of the doctrine that power means obligation, and that the power belongs only to those whose development in conscience has kept pace with their development in skill over materials and men.
Even the possession of money — since money is power — brings with it responsibilities em- phasized to-day with new force. Money is a tool and must be used as a tool. Professor Carver has suggested that the meaning of the parable of Jesus about the talents is to be
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understood from the viewpoint of wealth as an instrument. If the talents were mere good things to be enjoyed, we can understand the protest when the talent was taken from the man who had only one talent and given to the man who had ten. If, however, the talents were to be regarded as instruments, there was only justice in taking the instrument from the hands of him who could not use it and giving it to him who could. Of course wealth is an end to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent. For the most part, it is an instru- ment to be used with a sense of obligation for the best things; and the best things, as we have tried to show, are human lives. There is a growing protest against a rich man's leaving money at his death to those who are apt to use it as an end in itself. Assuming that the prin- cipal of a great estate is to be kept intact, there is a growing objection to its being so disposed of by the legacy of its owner that the interest is to go to those who will enjoy money as an end in itself. Back of the objection is this realization of wealth as an instrument. The wealth is more likely to be used as an instru- ment in the hands of the trustees of a school or a hospital or an orphange than in the hands of those who are thinking of enjoyment. By a
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right as of eminent domain wealth belongs properly in the hands of those who can devote it to the most productive use. All this has been known from the beginning, but we are insisting to-day upon such definition of the ex- pression "productive use" as shall include the highest and best welfare of the lives that the money touches either in the making or the spending. The tools of modern industrial life are so powerful for good or for evil that we must allow them to get only into the hands of men who will use them with a sense of obliga- tion. Industrial forces are set to work by the slightest pulls on triggers or levers. Con- scienceless fingers must not touch the triggers. This sense of obligation is going still further. There are some qualifications of men in the way of inborn talents which are really mo- nopoly powers. No one else has such talents — it may be — and the talents are not to be al- lowed to go to waste. Possibilities of influenc- ing one's fellow men, capabilities for unusual work, even artistic skill — all these are gifts which partake of the nature of monopolies. A monopoly even of this kind carries its obli- gations. There must be serious consideration of how the talent can be best developed and best used after it is developed. This too has
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been known from the beginning, but the obliga- tion is receiving new emphasis. The placing of the life is as important as the development. If we may use an expression from political economy, a man is under obligation not to work too much against the law of diminishing returns. "The law of diminishing returns" means that after a certain point the returns from effort are not commensurate with the effort put forth to obtain them. Then, if there are other fields where the same amount of effort will bring a larger return, the obliga- tion is to cultivate those fields. We are not at present directly concerned with missionary enterprises, but, for the sake of illustration, we may ask as to the wisdom of sending one hundred teachers into America when the one hundred can do but little more than ninety could ; the extra ten could accomplish as much in China just now as the ninety can here. We do not pretend to pick our figures with mathe- matical care, but the question is suggestive. Jesus once raised the issue as to the morality of refusing to place a candle where its light would do the most good. In our day we see the obligation of paying our way and of so placing our lives that they will pay the largest return.
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This modern spirit does away at once with the old heresy that a man's life is his own affair, and that he can make his choices as he pleases. More and more we see that the obli- gation to society reaches into the inner depths. If a man will not be conscientious even in those things which do not at first seem to affect the welfare of society, we speedily find ways of trying to establish a connection be- tween his conduct and the welfare of society. If a man could withdraw to some Robinson Crusoe island, making no drafts on society and living out of all communication with men, we might find something to say in justification of letting him go to the devil in his own style. But the ethical spirit of to-day will not hear of a man's going to the devil through indul- gence in vice with the plea that vice is a pri- vate affair. Opium-smoking is a distinctly private vice, but we have seen it nearly ruin a nation. The simple obligation to pay one's way means more with the increase of moral understanding. Every man whose working efficiency is impaired below a certain point is a charge on other men. Such a man must be shouldered and carried, or some one else must pull his weight or pay his fare. In a world where struggle for life is hard enough at the
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easiest, moral sense rebels at the injustice wrought through the failure of individuals to play their part as men. Being a man means keeping off the shoulders of other men. And as to going to the devil in one's own way, even if all the expenses are paid by the one who thus goes, even if there is no loss to anyone but the man himself, and the man's going is a good riddance, still the spectacle of man's go- ing to the devil is not helpful, for long before he has gone from this world the devil is in such complete possession as to affect the on- lookers. The presence of evil in a human life is not socially profitable. Even when evil men can be pointed to as examples of the outwork- ing of moral law the exhibition costs more than it is worth. Social obligation reaches to the innermost realms of individual life.
We have spoken of to-day's attitude toward the obligations of power. We may find further illustration of the same spirit in the emphasis on the obligations of knowledge. Knowledge itself is a power.
We all know the obligation on the man who can see farther than his fellows or can grasp an ideal with firmer certainty than can his fellows. The emphasis upon the obligation of such a man to live up to the highest light is
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not new, but it is well for us to remember that the opportunities for heroism of this sort are as actual to-day as ever, though possibly less spectacular. The opportunities come in the minor social groups — industrial, political, ecclesiastical. The reason why the heroism does not attract great attention is to be found in the thought that if a man cannot get along comfortably in one of these groups, he can go out. There is plenty of room outside. But this is very easy to say. Here is a man who has trained himself to a particular task. He is known to hold and to advocate views which are not agreeable to the company for which he works. He is an official of a transportation company, it may be, and a campaign is on against the saloon forces in a city through which this transportation company runs. The official receives a hint from headquarters that while he is free to vote as he pleases the com- pany does not expect its officials to take active part against the saloon. If the official speaks out after such a hint, he does so at more of a risk than that run by all the agitators in the town. The official is qualified to do a particu- lar kind of work. He may not be able to find work of just that kind anywhere else than in the employ of that particular company. Too
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much honor cannot be given under such cir- cumstances to the man of superior insight into the worth of an ideal who realizes and acts upon the obligations which the insight puts upon him. Or, to take a further illustration : here is a minister or a teacher enlisted in the ranks of one of the great ecclesiastical de- nominations. He feels that he must advocate improvements in doctrinal statement or church polity. Some leader advises him that his place is outside. If the change which he advocates is subversive of the aims for which the de- nomination stands, or if it is hostile to the essential spirit of that body, the man's place is outside. But if the change is one called for by the development of the body itself, the obliga- tion is upon the servant of the Church to stay in and speak his mind. If he does stay he runs a risk. He may incur the disfavor of church leaders, either ecclesiastical or lay, and his own advancement may suffer. The most carefully guarded and moderate statement from such a man may mean more than the most radical utterances of the man outside or of the member of the professedly radical com- munions. We need liberal bodies of believers, but there is no reason for calling the liberal utterances of bands of liberals especially
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heroic. If a man cares to be heroic with radi- cals, let him preach conservatism to them. We mention these illustrations simply to bring out the truth that there is abundant oppor- tunity to assume to-day the obligations which go with the knowledge of high ideals. And we speak with knowledge of fact and not out of merely enthusiastic optimism when we say that in the industrial and ecclesiastical and political groups there appears to be increas- ing willingness to assume the obligations which go with knowledge of commanding ideals.
But there is increasingly general recogni- tion also of the obligations imposed by the possession of more matter-of-fact and prosaic knowledge than the knowledge of high ideals. We have spoken elsewhere of the demands upon the possessor of scientific knowledge. Of course some treatment of the owner of great ideas to-day is little short of outrageous. Property in almost everything else is recog- nized and protected better than property in ideas. But even though this is lamentably true the scientific ideal is that beneficial facts become at discovery the property of humanity. If a scientist could discover some inevitably certain method of dealing directly with the
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germs of typhoid or tuberculosis, all right- thinking men would agree that such a dis- coverer should be suitably rewarded, but all scientists would recognize the duty of making the facts public property as soon as possible. There can be no question as to the obligation here.
Moreover, society in general is taking upon itself more and more cheerfully the responsi- bility for the discharge of obligations which come with increasing knowledge. The use of the scientific method has revealed to us the laws by which even moral evils get their foot- hold in the world. We have come to a new conviction as to the remediableness of moral situations, but the remedies lie more and more in the field of prevention. The urgency with which preventive measures are pushed upon the public to-day and the increasing readiness with which the new view is accepted are mar- velous. There is nothing spectacular about a work of prevention. Here is a village in danger through the use of wells placed too near the dwelling houses. It may be that there never has been an epidemic of typhoid in that village. On the chance that there may be an epidemic the wells are abandoned and an expensive water system is installed. It is
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always possible for the reactionary to say that nothing would have happened if the old wells had been kept open. Now, in less material manifestations this new spirit is abroad in the land. There is more and more general re- sponse to the obligations which come with the very knowledge of the ways in which moral disorders may be prevented. The protests against the overcrowding of houses and the overstrain of weak wills and against all ma- terial and spiritual conditions which practi- cally rob the human will of its freedom are instances in point. Now that public opinion is aware of the causes of some evils, there is increasing restlessness in the continued ex- istence of the evils. The knowledge increases that sorrow which cannot be abated till the obligation which comes with the knowledge is satisfied.
Under all this is the sense of obligation which arises from the knowledge that what might be called constitutional morality is woven into the very texture of the universe. That is to say, the laws which pick up the evil deed and carry it out to endless consequences are seen to be remorseless in their ongoings. There are laws which work for the relief of the evildoer who sets himself to work with
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them, but these laws never completely undo an evil deed. Bodies are scarred and souls are marked with the evil. Great achievements no doubt are possible to the life which has for- saken sin, but present-day moral insight will not tolerate the doctrine that the soul which has sinned can be as good as if it had never sinned. Modern morality is increasingly im- patient with any doctrine which obscures the deadliness of sin. The growing realization of this means increasing civilization. The po- litical economist tells us that civilization ad- vances as men "learn to discount the future at a low rate of interest" — as they learn to put some far-off morrow on about the same plane as to-day. We are learning anew that though God may not always pay on Saturday, he nevertheless pays. There is no healthier moral realization than just this, especially when the obligation which comes with the realization is assumed. The laws do not slip and they do not forget.
Lest, however, we may seem to have painted a system of unrelenting sternness, we call at- tention to the fact that the increasing knowl- edge of actual situations is bringing a chari- tableness into moral judgments which is of significance. In a sense, our knowledge of
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men has increased. We see more clearly the springs of moral action. Irrevocable as are the laws of the universe, they are not to be con- ceived of as working in the same fashion upon the unintentional evildoer as upon the delib- erate transgressor. If the effects of evildoing were chiefly and primarily upon the body it would be true that an evil done in ignorance would receive the same penalty as wrong com- mitted intentionally. The laws of the body carry on the results of sincere mistakes and deliberate sins alike. We are not thinking especially, however, of the physical evils. These are the most easily remedied. We are thinking of sins of the spirit — rejections of the truth and choices of the evil. It is here that sin is most deadly. The mind which turns against the light loses its power to know the light. In this inner realm, however, we feel more and more the need of charity. We are learning that the moral task for the human life is to make the passage over from the merely natural to the spiritual, or, rather, to lift the natural up to the plane of the spiritual by informing it with a right purpose. And so we find many lives in many stages of transi- tion— some having attained quite nearly to sainthood and others making the first attempts
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to rationalize and spiritualize their impulses. That deliberate choice of evil and cynical joy in evil are too common we all know, but the more closely we study human life the more clearly we see that much which seems like evil is not purposely and intentionally such. Per- fect intentions may mark even imperfect lives. And so the increasing contact with men to- day and the increasing knowledge of them puts on us the obligation to profound charity. Hence it comes about that the attitude toward the moral problem to-day has this double as- pect: insistence upon the inevitableness of penalty under the law and charitableness to- ward the vast mass of men who are striving to bring the moral spirit into their lives. The knowledge of the actual condition of men puts on us the obligation to charitableness.
Not only are there obligations of power and of knowledge, but there are obligations of sym- pathy emphasized in the moral messages of to- day. Any man who can sympathize at all must feel himself in these days under the obli- gation to come into some sort of personal touch with persons who are in distress. Of course any man's range of personal contacts is lim- ited, but there is good cheer in any movement away from impersonalism. One of the almost
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inevitable vices of our time has been a sort of wholesaleism in the treatment of men. The wholesaleism perhaps took its start in indus- trial developments. The modern stress on large-scale production has tended to obscure the worth and meaning of the individual man. The tendency has been to get away from the thought of the individual laborer to the consid- eration of labor in the mass. In such a system a laborer is fortunate if he is known even by number. Out of the success of modern indus- trialism has come a copying of some of the features of industrialism in realms where they have no right. The demand has been that edu- cational and charitable and industrial institu- tions be handled with business methods. While any sensible person can see the advan- tages of business methods in any of these ac- tivities, there comes a point where business methods break down in dealing with the great human relationships. A philanthropic institu- tion may get on well enough in dealing by wholesale with the bodies of men, though there is some question even about this. The physi- cian at work upon an unconscious patient does not think of the individuality of the pa- tient, but as soon as consciousness returns, and the task of nursing begins, the limitations
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of wholesale and card-case methods become apparent. So likewise with educational and ecclesiastical wholesaleism. Business methods in these fields have revealed their weakness. And so in these later days there is a swing back in the other direction. The personal touch is emphasized. In the schools the classes are broken into small groups that the individual student may be reached. Personal contact is more and more preached in the work of the Church. It is high time for this change, for impersonalism tends to a sort of dehumanization. With the swing of the pen- dulum in the other direction the old virtues which come out of warm human sympathy come to the old-time regard. This makes for faith. The gospel deals in large terms, but not in wholesale terms. It lays stress upon sympathy. We are under obligations to help men with material things and with whatever knowledge may be at our disposal, but we are under obligations also to give of ourselves. While a moral command to 'Sympathize with men, given in a mechanical fashion, would miss the mark, the obligation is to take such attitude toward men that we shall sympathize with them. Hence the condemnation on the man who in giving to a cause simply flings his
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money into the box. More is called for — knowledge of the situation which demands re- lief, imagination, which can make another's suffering real to oneself. Much of the appeal to imagination to-day is forced and crude, but the appeal is made and with great effect. Life as we know it is inevitably an affair of the sensibility. There may be beings in some other sphere whose life moves on without rela- tion to sensibility. Life for them may be effec- tive will-exercise with no accompaniment of feeling whatever. Or it may be a colorless knowing without any sort of thrill in its ex- pectancy or discovery. Such is not life as we know it. For us a great word is happiness; and happiness has no meaning apart from sen- sibility. Now the higher the meaning put into happiness the more closely we come to the realm of personal communion. The greatest gift a man can give is real sympathy. Like- wise, the greatest gift a man can receive is a sympathy which shows that others are doing and thinking and feeling with him. The moral consciousness to-day recognizes and enforces this truth.
We must say a word about another obliga- tion which is more and more forcing itself upon the moral consciousness. We refer to
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the extent to which the obligations of belief are coming into ethical consideration. There is in modern thinking a very decided trend away from the idea that religious belief is not a matter of grave moral consequence. We once heard much of the doctrine that it makes little difference to anyone else what any par- ticular man believes. Belief has so much to do with other-world destiny that if a man is willing to take the risks of the hereafter in any belief, the risk is entirely of the man's own concern. After that we heard of the doctrine that anyone should be allowed the liberty to believe whatever might agree with him. But this easy-going liberalism has not to-day the hold it once had. The emphasis on the social consequences of belief has made a difference. In some spheres society assumes a great deal of authority, not, indeed, as to what a man believes, but as to what he pub- lishes and puts into action. There are to-day various beliefs as to government, for example. Public opinion will not sit quietly by and allow beliefs subversive of all government to be proclaimed without protest. And when anarchy proceeds to act itself out into prac- tical expression the police take a hand in the argument. The plea of personal sincerity will
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not avail to establish a right to proclaim anarchy. While no one could ever justify him- self in an argument for a return to censorship of religious beliefs by authority, public opin- ion is recognizing that it makes a vast differ- ence to society as to what sort of religious be- liefs are proclaimed. It is being discovered that belief itself is apt to make for fuller life than skepticism, and that the larger beliefs make for the larger life. The better the belief the better the believer is apt to be. Moreover, there are distinct social consequences of par- ticular beliefs. Take the great catholic ut- terances of the creeds as to the nature of God and the dignity of human life. There may legitimately be all variety of interpretation of these utterances. The objectors may urge that the Church which has held to these doctrines many times has stood in the way of human progress, and may urge also that it has been hard to separate the truths from doubtful ac- companiments. But the large good sense of constantly increasing numbers is seeing that in the main and on the whole these fundamen- tal beliefs are mighty bulwarks of human order and progress. Hence it comes about that a skeptic or an atheist will support a church because it is good for the community,
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and that an agnostic like the late Goldwin Smith will, while avowing that it is disloyalty to the truth for a man like Cardinal Newman to declare assent to propositions because of the consequences of believing them, deplore the dawning of the day when disbelief in im- mortality will make the members of society struggle all the more bitterly for the things of the present. Now, it is hard to see how any man of intellectual integrity would not sooner know the truth no matter how unpleasant it might prove than to hold to a false belief just because of consequences pleasant for a time; but the confidence of the normal man in reason is such that he feels that in a realm where we cannot have positive demonstration one way or the other the fact that the social conse- quences of a belief are beneficial must be an indication that the belief lays hold of the springs of reality. And when once these so- cial consequences are seen streaming from be- lief as effects from a cause the social con- science of our time inclines charitably toward the belief. It is hard to see how a man who professes great sympathy for his fellow men, and who knows that those fellow men do not and cannot live by bread alone, can overlook the social importance of the catholic beliefs.
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It is hard to see how such a man, having once seen these consequences, can avoid the moral responsibility of at least examining the be- liefs, and examining them with charitable pre- suppositions.
We may properly close this lecture with a brief suggestion as to the more direct bearing of the obligation to belief on the form which some Christian beliefs should take. First, we urge the duty of laying hold on the best be- liefs. We can have any beliefs we choose. We are not in the realm of strict demonstration. The question is not as to whether A or B can be proved by demonstration to be an objective fact, or whether the formal processes of rea- soning will yield a result thus or so. If there is in fact or reason nothing against belief, and the great needs of life call for belief, then be- lief becomes not only a demand of reason but a behest of duty. And with the field of belief open the obligation is to seek the best beliefs. One belief is not by any means necessarily as good as another. One belief is larger than another, or finer than another, or in closer touch with the facts of history or experience than another, or more in harmony with the total spiritual nature than another. If be- liefs are instruments for the upbuilding of the
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life, the wise man searches for the best instru- ment. The truth of belief is like the truth of an instrument; an instrument is true when it is made of the finest obtainable material, when the workmanship on it is honest and sincere, when it comes nearest perfection in accom- plishing its proper work. Or, more clearly still, the truth of a belief is like what we might call the truth of a food. A food could be called true if it is really a product containing the great elements on which the body depends, and when it is so prepared as to nourish life. The body is a part of the physical universe. It thrives on the foods which most deeply con- nect it with the universe. The soul is a part of the spiritual universe. If it thrives on be- liefs, it must do so because these beliefs con- tain the elements out of which the spiritual universe is constituted. But there are foods and foods and beliefs and beliefs. Some foods and some beliefs are clearly more truly of the basic materials of the universe than are others and some are more wisely prepared than others. A moral imperative lies back of the search for the best beliefs.
Furthermore, in the search for the best be- liefs the demands of the moral life are to be used as the guiding light. If we are to have
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beliefs, we must have the best beliefs, and by best beliefs we mean the morally best. It is in obedience to a sure moral insight that the his- tory of theology is a story of the progressive nioralization of theology. As soon as men have attained to a fresh moral insight they have dared to attribute this to the Divine Being as a part of his character. They have believed that these insights are in a profound sense a part of the self-revelation of God to men. The story of the progress of moral think- ing is in any case interesting, but, as we have so often said, we are not especially concerned with the precise steps by which the insights come. If they come because growing material needs or advancing material prosperity make demand for a fuller thought of God, well and good, if only the insight stands in its own right after it does come. The guiding rule of religious thinking might well be phrased as an assumption that nothing is too good to believe about God.
We must be careful as we follow out this leading of increasing moral insight lest we be- come uncharitable toward beliefs of an earlier day. It is easy for us to speak of ourselves as the people and to fancy that moral under- standing will die with us. We must remem-
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ber that a good man is a good man in whatever age he lives, that the central element in a moral character is a good will, and that the larger knowledge of ethical values comes out of following the dictates of good will toward the larger interpretations of increasing knowl- edge. There should never be any reflection on the ancient saints in our speech about growing moral insight. The problem is similar to that of our relation to the wise men of other times. We know more than Plato, but it would hardly be a mark of superior wisdom to say that we are wiser than Plato. We may know more truth than he knew, but we are not apt to be greater lovers of the truth than he. WTith this caution before us we pass to some consideration of the progressive moralization of the idea of God.
Take, now, the thought of the increasing sense of obligation which obtains in our day and see how this is being applied to our con- ception of God. We have spoken of the obliga- tions of power. We are coming to emphasize the obligations which must be upon one who holds in his hands the forces of the universe. We preach the obligations of possession. The man who has control of the industrial forces of a time has vast obligations, but what are
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these obligations as compared to the obliga- tions of control of a world? We insist upon the obligations of leadership of armies or of States, but what are these responsibilities com- pared to the responsibilities of creatorship? Human beings are not in this world by their own choice. None of us had a vote on the ques- tion as to whether he would come or not. And when we awake to consciousness here we find ourselves in rather a difficult plight. We are not creatures endowed with merely passive sensibilities, nor are we able outright to shape our destinies. We have, however, enough freedom to make shipwreck possible. We are confronted by the most grievous inequalities of fortune between persons and between dif- ferent periods of our own careers. And just about the moment we feel ourselves in position to accomplish something worth while we are called from earth. Say all we please about human responsibility, the divine responsibility is greater still. God must be looked upon, in the light of our increasing understanding of obligation, as the most obligated Being in the universe. If he has not the power to control for moral purposes the forces of the universe, he must stand condemned by moral reason for ever having undertaken such an enterprise as
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the universe. If he has the power, he must use it. The history of religious thinking shows that the moral insight of the race has always recognized this obligation, each age express- ing it in the language of its own time. Accord- ingly, the Almighty has been conceived of as discharging faithfully the obligations which are upon him through the possession of power. If men ever thought of the devil as robbed of his due by what God had done for men, they thought of God himself as discharging what- ever obligation was due the devil. If God was thought of as a feudal Lord whose dignity had been affronted beyond the power of mankind to make reparation, God himself must make reparation. If any sort of a substitute must pay a penalty for sin because of the inade- quacy of any offering which man might make, God must provide the substitute. If a tribute must be paid to the dignity of the government of the universe by some one worthier than man, the problem must be solved by God him- self. If moral influences are to be set at work for men by some force higher than the human, God must set the forces to work. It all comes down to this, in a word, that God is under obligation to exert every means in his power to help men use aright the boon of freedom
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which has been coinpulsorily bestowed upon them.
Then there are the obligations of knowledge which we look upon as binding upon God. While we insist strenuously that there must be no abatement of the moral law, the increase of our moral insight leads us to larger charity in our attitude toward men. We do not min- imize the ill desert of the evil will, but the more we know of men the more we are inclined to charity. The dependence of choices upon en- vironmental conditions and upon hereditary tendencies and upon the physical condition, the limitations which come with inadequate knowledge or deficient imagination — all these deter us from hasty judgment, especially as to the motives of men. Likewise we insist that the judgment of God must rest down upon full knowledge, that his attitude can never be determined by anything other than the full light. Hence we hold ourselves in readiness to see many earthly judgments re- vised and many verdicts set aside. The doc- trine that has in any other than a merely prac- tical sense put judgment in the hands of men is looked upon as little short of blasphemy. The final destiny of men is in the hands of the God who knows, and he must act out
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the responsibilities which come with knowl- edge.
Finally, there must be upon God the obliga- tion to sympathy. If we are to cast ourselves with self-abandonment into the work of up- lifting men, much more must he. There is no room in the moral universe for a merely philanthropic God. God cannot be looked upon merely as a Benefactor. He must come to men himself. If he gives gifts, he must be in the gifts. If we are not to fall into the evil of impersonalism, he must not fall into that evil. He must not look at men as "masses," or "humanity," or "man- kind." He must stand toward men in the re- lation of "Father" and "Friend." He must be interested in men, not for what he is to get out of them, but for what they are in them- selves. If an obligation of this sort is upon us, it is much more upon God. He must fill human life to the full with his sympathy.
It is from the standpoint of this manifold obligation that we must approach the moral basis of the incarnation. The glory of the doc- trine of the incarnation is that God has freely taken the burden of human life upon his own heart. But it does not detract from this glory to teach that this free gift of love bases down
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upon moral obligations. God has with love and with passionate enthusiasm come as deeply into men's lives as it is possible for him to come. He has discharged and does dis- charge with solemn joy the moral obligations of creatorship and fatherhood. He is the leader of all in self-sacrifice; this is the glory of the cross. We can easily lose ourselves in theological intricacies when we attempt the- ories of Christology and atonement, but we must not lose sight of the clear moral aim which the framers of the theories — in so far as they have met any widespread demand at all — have had at heart. They have been anx- ious to show that God is moral above all others, that, having placed heavy responsibili- ties upon men, he takes the heaviest responsi- bilities upon himself, that in Christ and the cross he has laid bare his inner thought to show men that in the realest and profoundest sense he is with men.
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In the old days a wise Christian leader counseled his followers to adorn the doctrine of the Lord Jesus. Throughout the centuries there has been a real, though for the most part half-conscious, tendency to act out the impulse back of the apostle's advice. The aesthetic or artistic impulse has led to most notable crea- tions in the manifestation of religious spirit. We have only to instance the subjects of many of the world's greatest paintings and orations to prove this statement, and both church architecture and church ritual bear witness to the force of the same impulse.
We are liable to grave misunderstanding when we speak of the significance of an in- crease of a discernment of right form or of a sense of beauty for religious insights. Still, the growth and improvement of what might be called the artistic impulse really make for the betterment of theological statement. To begin with a consideration which is not
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directly artistic, the progress of mechanical invention helps us to see the need of right form, not, indeed, for purposes of aesthetic gratification merely, but for the sake of in- creasing effectiveness. Quite often the curve of greatest beauty proves to be the curve of greatest strength. But even from the stand- point of effectiveness alone it is essential that an inventor work toward an effective form. The inventor may have before him two pieces of glass of precisely the same quality. One is plain glass and the other is the lens of a tele- scope. The lens is a lens simply because it has been given a certain form. Its curve has been fashioned with mathematical exactness. Prop- erly mounted and turned toward the sky, it will reveal to the observer something worth seeing. A recent book of three hundred pages describing inventors at work gives over half its space simply to this consideration — that the process of invention has to do not so much with an attempt at creating new materials, or even new combinations of materials, as with the change in the form of old and familiar ma- terials.
As it is in the realm of material invention so is it also in the realm of literary invention. In fact, a production can hardly be called
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literary until the material has been thrown into the right form. A scientist may make a great and far-reaching discovery, but his dis- covery does not become effective in shaping the thinking of the people until, as in the case of Darwin's Origin of Species, for example, it is stated with some degree of literary skill. In the realm of social investigation we have at our hand to-day masses of facts terrifically dynamic in their possible power to arouse public attention, or even to start revolution. But these facts lie in unshaped masses in gov- ernment reports, in papers read before learned societies, in articles published in technical journals. What is needed is the appearance of some artist who can shape the material into effective form. Now, the progress of theolog- ical thinking in our time is somewhat a progress in the shaping of material. We have not discovered much that is altogether new. We have, however, learned how to change em- phasis and how to omit altogether, and how to cast aside the nonessentials, and how to fash- ion the essentials toward a statement with a cutting edge. The call of the preacher espe- cially is not so much to be an original au- thority in scientific, or philosophic, or social, or even theological investigation. The au-
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thorities in these various spheres are more apt to be the men of the schools; but the men of the schools are not apt to be conspicuously suc- cessful as masters of effective popular state- ment. It remains for the preacher to take the masses of fresh material which are delivered to him almost daily and to shape these into effectiveness. To do this work as it ought to be done will quite likely be enough of a task for any man called to the pulpit. Intellectual ability shows itself not more in the discovery of truth than in the cogent and well-balanced statement of the truth.
Lest we appear to lay too much stress on a phase of religious effort which may seem to have to do merely with the technic of the preacher's work, we hasten to call attention to the fact that the obligation here is not merely professional and artistic but moral as well. We hear a vast deal to-day about the honesty of religious teachers. We are told of the obli- gation upon the religious teacher to be honest with himself. We urge again what we have said in a previous lecture about the need of the leader's being honest to his followers. To be honest to the follower implies a willingness to fashion and refashion a statement of truth till it cannot fail of a true effect. The material in
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the statement may be true: the form of the statement may be such as to produce only falsity in the impression. From this point of view it might fairly be said that some men whose utterances are always true in their matter are always untrue in their form. The insignificant truth is made untrue when it is treated with as much emphasis as the im- portant truth. Putting truths all on the same plane comes in the end to positive distortion. Yet the distortion may come not from pur- posive desire but from indifference to perspec- tive and proportion. Among the religious thinkers of an earlier generation there used to be considerable debate as to the conditions of salvation. There was much support of the doctrine that no man could be summarily cast out of the kingdom who had never heard Christ preached. This was obviously a provision in behalf of the heathen. As soon, however, as an expedient of this sort was resorted to in behalf of the heathen the question arose as to what others had not heard Christ preached. Some took the ground that even faithful at- tendants at churches had not heard Christ preached. We need not revive this ancient debate to see the force of such a contention. A religious teacher might draw a portrait of
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Christ in lines every one of which might be true. Yet the lines might be so put together — or so not put together — as to result in caricature rather than in portraiture.
All this, however, may make theological statement seem more of an artificial creation than true statements are. Real revelations grow after the manner of organisms. The supreme beauty in this world is the beauty of a growing life. If the life within be full and free, the outward expression is apt to take on beauty of form to correspond. If the inner life is cramped or scantily nourished, the out- ward expression is distorted or deformed. The organs of a growing life make a twofold appeal to us — an appeal because of their effec- tiveness and an appeal because of their own inherent beauty. The erect body, for example, is stronger than the bent body. There is more chance to breathe, better distribution of the weight to be carried, an opportunity for the sight to range ahead and on both sides. The impoverished organism, on the other hand, has not strength enough to hold itself erect, and through this lack of strength it loses the chance to gain more strength. In a sense beauty may be said to belong to the very life of a growing religious organism. Beauty of
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form is the natural expression of a living re- ligious insight.
In the second place, the beauty of a state- ment— its correctness of form and its exact- ness of symmetry — makes an effective appeal on its own account. Quite apart from the fact that statements of truth can be put in effective form simply for the sake of effectiveness as statements, they should be given correct form for the sake of the appeal which the beauty itself makes. The masters of theological state- ment have always known how to put this impress of beauty upon their work. We some- times wonder how it has come about that sys- tems of philosophy have lasted beyond their day into times in which they are not altogether useful. We sometimes speak of succeeding generations as under the spell of systems of an earlier day. We speak more wisely than we realize. The spell is the spell cast by a genius for construction. The thinker has thrown his thought into form that makes it unescapably imposing. There is a unity about the system and a symmetry in its development which make men turn back to gaze. We can no more escape the charm of some of these systems than we can escape the charm of the Pyramids or the Parthenon.
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The recognition of this truth is ever before the higher order of religious prophet. He strives to adorn his doctrine. He knows, of course, that adornment is not something put on from without; it is the movement from within of a living principle. The prophet knows that when the principle comes to high- est expression it will minister to the highest in men. We have said that present-day philos- ophy seems to be moving on the sound prin- ciple that in our quest for truth we are to follow the lead of the highest and best in our- selves. We may justly feel that the craving for the highest and best will not be satisfied until the truth which in itself seems highest and best has been joined to highest and best statement.
Prominent among the factors which to-day are making for the adornment of doctrine is the growth of a sense of restraint. We share with others the alarm at the falling off in re- ligious activities. We do not feel alarm, how- ever, at the falling off of some forms of re- ligious expression. It is sometimes claimed that the religious spirit shows itself in an utter abandonment of the life of the believer to complete expression. This is true if by ex- pression we are thinking of deeds of self-
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sacrifice. Yet even here there are limitations imposed by the sense of the fitness of things. When we are thinking of religious expression as taking the form of literary statement we must give large part to the limitations im- posed by the fitness of things.
There is to-day a growing sense of restraint which tends to magnify the importance of the normal and healthy in religious expression and to prevent overemphasis on the morbid and unhealthy. While there is truth in the claim that art should be followed for art's own sake, there is even deeper truth in the further claim that nothing can be truly artistic which does not have back of it a normal and healthy pur- pose. It would be very hard for even a gifted artist to make much of a subject which all the world knew to be sickly or diseased. Certain processes in nature are called morbid when considered in relation to their bearing on hu- man welfare. Certain dangerous growths, for example, take place in the human organism and in the end bring the organism to death. The actual processes of these growths, when viewed by the scientist, may move according to the same bacteriological or physiological laws as do the healthy processes. The micro- scopic forms produced may be just as beau-
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tiful in their tiny lines and as symmetrical in their proportions as the forms which make for health. If, however, an artist should try to give expression to what he might call the inherent beauty of a morbid growth, he would find himself in difficulty the moment he tried to secure an audience. Of course it may seem that judging the sesthetic quality of a fact in nature by its relation to human needs is arrant egotism, but the world thus judges, neverthe- less. If our contention be just in this illus- tration, much more must it be just in the realm of religious expression. The world will not finally tolerate emphasis upon the unnatural or the unhealthy in religious utterance.
Discerning critics have more than once called attention to the element of restraint in the gospel narratives. Think for a moment of the story of the crucifixion as told by the evan- gelists. Here was every opportunity for mor- bid and harrowing treatment of ghastly de- tails, an opportunity which later ages did not fail to improve. In the gospel narratives the dreadful event is passed over as quickly as possible. Moreover, the few touches, swift as they are, set before us not the horrible aspects of the story but the spiritual significance. This part of the gospels, by the way, is but
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little short of a literary miracle. The writers very likely knew nothing about Greek re- straint, but they had the spirit of restraint, nevertheless. The glory about the cross of Christ is a normal and healthy glory, the reve- lation of that spirit of love which is forever at the heart of things. The writers so brush away the dreadful as to leave the love of Christ streaming forth unmistakably.
The movement away from the unhealthy must bring about better spiritual conditions both for society and for the individual. It is to these back-lying conditions that we must look as we think of the religious expression of a particular time. We can best see this im- provement by contrasting our own century with some earlier centuries. How much chance would monasticism, for example, have of taking root in our time? We would not disparage the good of monasticism. Many benefits came forth from the system which have been of lasting good to humanity. Quite likely we could date many productive prin- ciples of modern agriculturalism back to the gardens of the monks. It was — though of course in much later times — to Mendel the monk that the world owed the long series of experiments which resulted in the scientific
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formulation of the biological law of heredity. But advantages like this are largely incidental. We may at least say that in our day monasti- cism on a large scale would be looked upon as aberrant and unnatural. Here and there an individual who has taken the vows of celibacy, or who has even consecrated himself to the life of a hermit, may give utterance to loftiest religious expression; but, on the whole, cir- cumstances which lie apart from the main current of normal human life cannot be pro- ductive of best religious statement.
As it is in the lives of communities so also is it in the life of the individual. It may cause almost a smile to say that our age has turned away from habits of spiritual introspection. This would seem to put the present-day con- dition very mildly. It may cause astonish- ment when a professedly religious teacher declares that there is danger in religious intro- spection. The danger does not seem to be especially imminent in our time. But while the movement away from introspection to-day may be just an expression of indifference, such a movement may rise from true religious instinct. The needs of the individual soul must certainly not be neglected. It is very easy, however, for the devout believer to carry
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introspection to an unhealthy excess. The more devout the believer the greater the danger. Suppose a man should ask himself at the close of each day's religious effort whether during that day he had done all he could for the advance of the kingdom. Ordi- narily, this question is wholesome. It is very easy to see, however, that the question might be too frequently repeated. And too fre- quently repeated, the question might easily lead to morbidness. This danger is especially imminent when the mind is given to self- scrutiny as to its own sincerity, or as to the signs of the presence of the divine within it- self. Utterances born out of an unhealthy mental state violate that sense of fitness which should mark religious utterance. If we do not directly discourage the habit of overmuch religious introspection to-day, we at least favor reticence in speech about such introspection.
The adornment of doctrine implies likewise a restraint from any degree of exaggeration. In a previous lecture we spoke of the increas- ing emphasis upon simplicity of statement. There we were emphasizing the need of sim- plicity in statements addressed to the under- standing of the vast masses of the people. It is in order in the present connection to insist
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that simplicity of statement must characterize religious utterance if that utterance is to min- ister to the finest feelings of men. In the su- preme crises of experience the great minds seem by a certain innate perception to move toward simplicity of expression. There is no room in such minds at such times for anything exaggerated or gaudy or spectacular. Mr. Charles Francis Adams has a fine passage concerning the bearing of Grant and Lee at Appomattox. Mr. Adams points out that not a single word was spoken by either actor in the scene to detract from a quiet simplicity which marked all the details of the momentous transaction. When we think of the vast mean- ing of the event we might at first glance feel something of a craving for at least a touch of the dramatic in the final scene. An immense war had been fought through to an immense victory on the one side and an immense defeat on the other. The people of the North had fought with the conviction that the destinies of democracy were involved in the right issues of the campaign. The people of the South had sustained themselves through unparalleled privations with the belief that they were fight- ing for the sacred cause of liberty. The meet- ing between the chief actors might well have
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been regarded as one upon which the after ages would delight to look. Considerations like these might have prompted the ordinary leader to a little self-conscious posing. But there was no posing. The reason was that the actual leaders were far from ordinary. Without purposely doing so they instinctively did what the real fitness of things called for.
A passage in the Old Testament instructs us that on the day of atonement the priests laid aside their lavishly embroidered robes and clad themselves in simple white. Some- thing of the same restraint is becoming in ex- pression which aims to deal with the highest religious ideas. There are, indeed, splendid flights of oratory and magnificent poems in the Scriptures. But even in these the quality of restraint is marked. If we were searching for indications of inspiration in the Scrip- tures, we might find that inspiration revealing itself in a contrast between our Scriptures and other scriptures written at substantially the same times. Not only are the Hebrew Scrip- tures healthier in moral tone than the others, but there is a dignified restraint about the former in contrast with the abandonment of at least parts of the other. Abandonment has its place in a Christian system, but the aban-
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donment is never that of wantonness or reck- lessness.
Insight into the true demands of the re- ligious spirit also has a tendency to keep us from the curious and artificial. Keligion is in a sense profoundly natural. It is the out- come of really primal feelings. Like every- thing else, it has its merely curious phases, and, like everything else also, it lends itself to artificiality. But religion in its highest reaches has very little place either for the curious or the artificial. It may be that a half-conscious perception of this truth underlies present-day impatience with fine- spun theological theories. In looking back to the period of scholasticism, for example, we are sorely tried at the over-systematiza- tion of doctrinal statements. The teachers of that day dwelt much on essences and sub- stances and processions in dealing with the divine nature. Each of these terms has very likely something of vital meaning even for present-day theology. But in medieval days the terms were handled with an overelab- oration which practically put them out of touch with anything real in heaven or on earth, though perhaps we would better say that such expressions would suggest nothing real to us
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to-day. Scholasticism did great work in show- ing the futility of overcarefulness and punctil- iousness in doctrinal exposition. The student of philosophy will give all credit to the scho- lastics for working out a terminology some of which is lasting in value, and for fashioning some philosophic tools whose usefulness we have not yet outgrown ; but the curse of scho- lasticism was and is its artificiality.
Many theological dogmas fall into disfavor through being too complete. The very fact of their completeness suggests the artificial. We have no doubt that the so-called evangelical churches would insist quite as strongly in 1912 as ever upon the religious truth which must lie at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity. There is in this doctrine a suggestion of fullness of moral life in the Divine which the churches would not give up without a struggle, or even after a struggle. But in every church there is increasing unwillingness to hear doctrines of the Trinity which are overelaborate. We will not listen as com- placently as did our fathers to discussions as to just what the word "Person" means when applied to the Persons of the Holy Trinity. We would protest, on the one hand, against any interpretation of the doctrine which would
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empty it of vital significance; on the other hand, we would turn away from a too com- plete discussion, for example, of what the different functions of the Persons of the Trinity may be. No doubt very many logical arguments may be adduced in discussions of this kind. But the more logical the arguments the more restless the listeners. To be over- complete in such a field of theological discus- sion jars upon our sense of what is really be- coming and fitting. The celebrated divine who fifteen or twenty years ago in discussing the divinity of Christ established three main propositions, namely, pleromatic divinity, pleromatic humanity, and hypostatic union, might be just as cogent in his logic now as then, but he would hardly get much of a hear- ing to-day. Thinkers of his kind might pro- claim that this is because of the increasing in- difference of our day to theological discussion. But the objection to this sort of discussion does not come from the indifferent. The in- different are too indifferent even to object. The protest comes from those who are really interested in the statement of the religious truth, but who instinctively shrink from a too clearly artificial exposition of what at least ought to be profoundly natural.
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The sense of restraint also is keeping us back from some of the rougher and cruder ut- terances of early days. We do not speak thus with any desire to belittle the religious phrase- ology of our fathers. We would give much if we could put into some of our more refined ex- pressions the mighty energy that rushed forth from the speech of our fathers. So far as our Methodist branch of the Church is concerned, the fathers had little time for the refinements. Methodism was born at a time when only the most vigorous shaking could arouse the Eng- lish nation from its lethargy. The sins of the nation were drunkenness and licentiousness and theft and murder; these were the evils against which Methodism launched itself. In assault on such sins there was scant room for the niceties of religious speech. When Meth- odism was transported to our country it made its chief conquest in pioneer conditions. The pioneer life is not a parlor life. Out of the roughness of pioneer conditions came a rough- ness of speech that was exactly fitted to the time and place it was intended to serve. The pioneer sins were apt to be rough sins, like brawling and fist-fighting. The success of men like Peter Cartwright lay in the fact that they could attack pioneer conditions with in-
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st rumen ts which reached and transformed the pioneer. In the journal of Francis Asbury are repeated references to his conviction that he must be "dreadfully loud and alarming." Quite likely he succeeded in being both. And very surely the preaching that lacked the loud and alarming quality would have been futile. We must not forget that preaching is, after all, an instrumental statement of the truth. In estimating its success we must judge it by the effect it produces. The glory of Methodism has been the energy with which it pushed its conquests on the frontiers. The leader in these conquests was the pioneer preacher. For him plainness of speech amounting to roughness was an absolute necessity. The roughness was not assumed. It was sincere, coming out of a toughness of fiber begotten in him by the conditions of which he was a part.
In what we say about this rough vigor we do not mean to imply that there is not room in modern preaching for such plainness of speech. Thousands upon thousands of men cannot understand anything else. Thousands of men to-day are in sins as gross as any which John Wesley saw. We are not to be classed among those sensitive souls who shrink back in horror when a preacher uses language which
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may seem to the conventional to be very sensa- tional. The success of some sensational preachers arises out of the fact that what to some persons seems sensationalism may meet a real need. There are men in all ranks of society whose real thinking is in essentially coarse terms. The question which the evan- gelistic preacher has to consider in presenting the gospel to such minds is how to speak a language which such men will understand. The alternative is to throw out this rough hempen rope or to let the men go down. In the presence of such an alternative we can even bring ourselves to endure a crudeness and slanginess of speech, if this is the only speech that the men to whom it is addressed can understand. But there are limits here which regard for the fitness of things and some meas- ure of good sense ought to impose.
In Zion's Songster, a Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs Usually Sung at Camp Meetings and Also in Revivals of Religion, published by J. and J. Harper in New York in 1831, is the following hymn :
When the fierce north wind, with his airy forces, Rears up the Baltic to a roaring fury, And the red lightning with a storm of hail comes Rushing amain down;
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Now the poor sailors stand amazed and tremble, While the hoarse thunder like a bloody trumpet, Roars a loud onset to the gaping waters, Quick to devour them.
Such shall the noise be, and the wild disorder, If things eternal may be like these earthly; Such the dire terror when the great archangel Shakes the creation;
Tears the strong pillars of the vault of heaven, Breaks up old marble, the repose of princes: See the graves open and the bones arising! Flames all around them!
Hark! the shrill outcries of the guilty wretches; Lively bright horror and amazing anguish Stare through their eyeballs, while the living worm lies Gnawing within them.
Thoughts like old vultures prey upon their heartstrings, And the smart twinges, when the eye beholds the Lofty Judge frowning, and a flood of vengeance Rolling before him.
Hopeless immortals, how they scream and shiver! While devils push them to the pit wide-yawning, Hideous and gloomy, to receive them headlong Down to the center.
Stop here, my fancy (all away, ye horrid, Doleful ideas!), come, arise to Jesus: How he sits Godlike, and the saints around him Throned, yet adoring!
Oh, may I sit there, when he comes triumphant, Dooming the nations! then ascend to glory, While our hosannas all along the passage Shout the Redeemer.
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We do not know how large use was made of this particular hymn; and it is fair to say that this is not a sample of the phraseology or imagery of the entire collection. Many of the hymns in the book are the great hymns, which will probably be used through the centuries. Moreover, we recognize a rugged force in this hymn, and we can feel something of the power that it must have had with a congregation eighty years ago. We recognize also the eter- nal truth which is embodied in the hymn. Apart, however, from the presence or absence of poetic quality we could hardly think of this hymn as likely to endure through any but a special period of the Church's life. No matter what the effectiveness of the stanzas may have been in other days, we should hardly expect much effectiveness from such style of compo- sition to-day. In spite of all the extravagance and exaggeration and crudeness of utterance in the time in which we live, the most effec- tive statement is apt to be restrained. Merely for rhetorical purposes understatement is apt to be quite as powerful as overstatement. The passage which suggests by a touch here and there is quite as productive of the right im- pression as the passage which comes forth in attempt at complete expression. When such
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completeness is aimed at the impression finally left is one of crudeness.
And all this leads up to the unwillingness of some very worthy religious thinkers to at- tempt to put some insights into speech at all. Some truths are better suggested than defi- nitely declared. We ask indulgence for re- peated harking back to the principle of effec- tiveness in a discussion which professedly aims at emphasis on the fitness of things in itself, but the fit expression is, after all, the effective expression. Some truths or facts are too great to be described. We lack as yet the speech instruments for their description. The best we can do is to point a learner toward the mood in which the significance of the truth can be sensed rather than declared. One of the sublimest passages in Victor Hugo is his de- scription of the battle of Waterloo in Les Miserables. The description is an attempt at definite and measurably complete setting forth of the battle. Upon one type of reader the effect is no doubt overwhelming. But an- other reader feels, after all, the incompleteness of the labored attempt at completeness. A student of Thackeray has somewhere remarked that perhaps quite as effective an impression of the greatness of Napoleon is to be obtained
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from the few references to Napoleon on the pages of Vanity Fair as from any direct de- scription by other writers of the battles of Na- poleon. The significance of Waterloo is al- most as clearly seen by Thackeray's story of what was passing in Brussels on the day of the battle as by the direct statement of the prog- ress of the battle itself. Yet Thackeray's chapter has its force merely in suggestion. From some incidents of confusion on the streets of Brussels — incidents that could be fully described — we can imagine that tumult and shouting of the captains at the front which could never be described.
Likewise in the realm of religious life there are some experiences which are beyond de- scription. There are some truths which can- not be compassed in theoretical statement. Take, for example, that final setting forth of the love of God which we have in the cross of Christ. Why is it that we feel so uncertain about theories of atonement? Is it because we are indifferent to the love of God obviously set on high in the cross of Christ? Very likely the cross means more to-day to devout believ- ers than it has ever meant. Just because it means more there is distrust of theory. No one theory is adequate, and after all the the-
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ories have been added together and the good of each accepted at its highest value we still feel that the formulations are inadequate. We look upon each theory as the attempt of a par- ticular age to phrase that age's best thought of God in the highest and best utterance. But the voice of no one age is complete, and the voices of all the Christian centuries are not complete. And beyond all this anything which is a theory of the cross cannot in the nature of things be complete, for the cross is more than theory. Anything which has to do with divine moral passion is more than theory. So while we frame for ourselves attempts at scien- tific formulation of the doctrine of the cross, we do so with the inner reservation that these formulations must be taken as mere sugges- tions or adumbrations of a truth which we cannot express. The greater part is the unex- pressed part. The sense of fitness prevents us from trying to express the truth too com- pletely. There is a vast realm here which is to be explored by reverent and reticent senti- ment rather than by scientific and logical ex- pertness. In this realm there is something almost irreverent, something almost imperti- nent about too definite a statement. Henri Bergson in his Creative Evolution makes the
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point that as soon as we harden a living ex- perience down into articulate logical state- ment we have moved away from the peculiarly living quality of the experience itself. Berg- son finds fullness of life only in the actual moment of living. As soon as we get far enough away from the experience to talk about it we have taken a step away from life, and by the time we have reached logical articulation the living quality is almost gone. However this may be as concerns life in general, Berg- son is on the path toward a truth as concerns religious life. The language cannot keep pace with the life.
This truth becomes all the more apparent when we think of the relation of the indi- vidual soul to God. There is always need of testimony to the presence of God from lips touched by the power of God. There is need of fuller public confession of sin on the part of many who profess to be disciples. It would do the world good to have fuller glimp- ses into the inner life of the saints. The or- dinary man would be helped if he could open the closet door of the saint and see the saint upon his knees. Vast benefit would accrue to believers everywhere if they could know how widespread is the fact of communion between
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the greatest lives and the Divine Life. But there is in these experiences themselves an ele- ment that transcends speech, though we are not now referring to experiences that are transcendently mystical. There are some ex- periences which are common to all; any intel- ligent Christian can understand them; but there are other experiences which are peculiar to the individual. These experiences partake of the nature of confidences between the finite soul and the Infinite Soul. They have a sacred- ness like the sacredness of the intercourse be- tween two friends of high and refined feeling who respect each the confidences of the other. We may well be thankful for the emphasis upon the need of friendship with God. We hear much about the love of God, but love in the sense of mutual affection is possible be- tween two persons who may not be able to commune together in the full sense possible to friends. We hear much about men as children of God in the sense that men are the little chil- dren of God. We should be grateful for the growing emphasis on that conception of men as the sons of God which implies the possibility of that maturer companionship which we think of as holding between friends. Now, friend- ship does not show itself altogether in out-
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right utterance. Understanding between two friends may be so complete that frequent speech is not necessary. Two friends may be separated by the width of the globe, with no communication passing between them, and yet each may feel at every instant that he thor- oughly understands and sympathizes with the other. While we believe that God is always near us, there are times when in a sense he seems to be at a distance. He may for the moment seem to hide himself, or his ways may be past finding out; still, there is possible for the saint even at such moments an unshaken trust which is like the trust which holds be- tween friends. These experiences cannot well be talked about, but the very fact that there are such experiences, and, we believe, such ex- periences in increasing number, makes an atmosphere in which restrained and dignified religious expression seems more and more satisfyingly beautiful.
We have made much use of the term "re- straint." We would rather, after all, insist that as we stand in the presence of what is fine in itself the very fineness may make us realize the impotence and futility of our expression. Suppose we stand before a great picture. Any attempt to describe the picture will fall short
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of the picture itself. We have all noticed the silence that prevails in art galleries. The silence is fitting. Loudness and volubility are out of place in the presence of a surpassing work of art. So with any manifestation of transcendent genius. A celebrated American man of letters has told of the evening when with a companion he went over from Cam- bridge to Boston to hear Edgar Allan Poe read a new poem. Poe appeared before the au- dience and announced that he would not read a new poem, but one with which his hearers were already familiar. There was at first a rustle of disappointment in the audience, but all became quiet as Poe started to read. For the auditors perceived at once that Poe was in the creative mood out of which the poem had come. As Poe read on through the stanzas his hearers realized that they were hearing a genius at the very top of his power. When the reading finished, the audience dispersed with hardly any man speaking to his neighbor. The two friends who had come over from Cam- bridge walked back across the Charles without the utterance of a word until they had reached their home. The reason was not that any mystic spell had been cast over the audience, but, rather, that each appreciated so fully the
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surpassing manifestation of genius that he felt that any word would be out of place.
What, now, is a manifestation of literary genius compared with a manifestation of a spirit of nobility or of self-sacrifice in its power to chain the attention of the world by the very fineness of the deed itself? If we were to drop out of literature and song the inspira- tion which has come from the contemplation of deeds fine in themselves, we would have very little left. The traditions of armies and navies which nations most fondly cherish are not altogether those of splendid equipment or of excellence in drill or of effectiveness of onslaught on the field of battle. The mind of the nation singles out some scene of outstand- ing valor, some moment when a leader has forgotten his own peril in the glory of aban- donment to his cause, some instant when a hero leaps to inevitable death for the sake of his flag. These are the eternal moments and the eternal scenes in the sense that they have about them the quality of eternity. Or some man gives his life for his fellows in time of plague or surrenders his place to another in the lifeboat of a sinking ship. These are the fine things, but they are fine beyond all de- scription or expression.
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The world is coming more and more to see the fineness of the kingdom of God as a thing in itself. Even on the theoretical and specu- lative side there is an element of protest against atheism, for example, which is deeper than logic. Our sense of balance presses for a fuller universe than the atheist would give us. We feel that the material must be bal- anced by the spiritual. We feel that things must not be left at loose ends, that there must be Some One for whom and by whom the loose ends are gathered up into some significant meaning. We crave a universe with a fineness of symmetry on its own account. We wish for individual lives an opportunity to come to fullness of proportion. We feel that the quality of the universe must be protected by a force that will give it an inherent nobility. Especially do we crave some power in human lives to make them really worthy ends in them- selves.
As we read through the Gospels we find abundant indications that Christ was think- ing of his kingdom as a kingdom of ends in themselves. He valued men not as invest- ments, not as instruments altogether, but as ends in themselves. He would have men serv- ants of God, but after the men have done all
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they can do as mere servants they are un- profitable servants. Men come to themselves when they come to be sons of God. Men have value in the sight of God not because of what they can do for God so much as because of the fact that they can enter into appreciative com- panionship with God. When we think of the kingdom of heaven as an existence hereafter we dream of a realm where things stand in their own right and on their own account. In our earthly sphere the instrumental phases of existence necessarily engross our attention. We are putting this and that together so as to get something else. This, however, cannot be the final phase. We long for a realm where the fine things are valued simply for their own fineness.
The words of Jesus are fine on their own account. His life was a life fine on its own account. Both his teaching and his life come to their climax in the cross, and the spirit of the cross is fine on its own account. A dis- tinguished philosopher once said that Chris- tianity may be only a beautiful dream, but that if so, it is the most beautiful dream that has ever come to the minds of men. We be- lieve that Christianity is more than a dream. The insistent pressure that would make Chris-
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tianity more truly actual is a craving for the fitness of things. We cannot be permanently satisfied with times that are out of joint. Somewhere we must reach unity and consist- ency and symmetry and fineness. The idea of God as set before us in Christianity is a beau- tiful idea and reaches the height of its beauty in the revelation of Christ.
Jesus once spoke of the kingdom of heaven as like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls. We are glad that Jesus spoke of his kingdom as pearl. He used other figures of speech to set forth the predominantly useful aspects of the kingdom. He is the Physician who will heal sick souls. He is the Bread of Life upon whom all may feed. The kingdom of the Cross is medicine for disease and bread for the hungry. But it is pearl also. When we think of pearl we lose sight of the more practical orders of usefulness. The pearl min- isters not to disease and not to hunger, except to that nobler hunger for what is fine in itself. The teaching of Jesus, the cross of Christ, the revelation of God — all this is pearl. We shall always need the presentation of the cross as redemption from sin and as sustenance for laboring, struggling souls. Out of the doctrine of the cross as redemption and nourishment
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there will come increasingly forceful puttings of the doctrine of the kingdom. All these put- tings, however, will be inadequate if there is not also some realization of the pearl-like beauty of the gospel. The man who sees this beauty may not be as outspoken as the prophet who would bring the gospel to sick souls, or as the leader who would minister to the massive material needs of men. But he will be no less effective than they. He will bring to men an atmosphere of appreciation of the beauty of the gospel, an atmosphere which will inevi- tably mellow and chasten the hardness and barrenness of much doctrinal statement.
To conclude: anything which begets a real sense for and appreciation of the beautiful will make for the increase of faith. The crav- ing for beauty is so much a part of us that it must come from the divine source of beauty. Men will not long allow the good and the true and the beautiful to stand in separate spheres. The beautiful is so closely linked to the good and true that if the beautiful is given a chance to reveal itself, it will reveal also something of the true and good.
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VI THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST
One of the striking features of theological discussion during the past fifty years has been the renewed prominence given to Christ. The biblical studies have as their net result the teaching that all parts of the Scriptures are to be judged by the spirit of Christ as the test and standard of their final worth. The Church in present-day theory has its value as an in- strument for getting the Christ spirit and the Christ thought and the Christ life into effective working relationship with the forces of the world. Any theory or system which aims at the uplift of the world takes on new power when it can claim for itself the sanction of the Christian spirit or can baptize itself with the name of Christ.
This prominence of Christ must be due to the satisfaction of demands arising out of hu- man needs. We cannot feel that Christ has in any artificial fashion been pushed to the front. His doctrine and deed and spirit must
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minister to the needs of to-day and must satisfy some imperious demands. What are some of these demands, and how do preaching and teaching Christ satisfy them?
In the first place, Christ satisfies the de- mand for some final fixity, at least of mean- ing, in the unceasing flow and transformation of the universe. An impression which we bring back from scientific study is that in the natural world all is movement and change. In our own bodies we live through an inces- sant storm of change. Organs which seem part of our very selves are renewed day by day. All organic nature sweeps along from change to change with incredible swiftness. Even classifications of forms which we yesterday looked upon as hard-and-fast are now seen to be merely provisional and temporary. If we think we can find fixity even in the inorganic realm, we find that we must correct our expec- tations. The physicist tells us that the most inert masses beneath our feet are throbbing with energies which constantly change their direction, and the chemist smiles when we ex- press our naive belief that the elements are necessarily final and must remain as they now are forever.
We are aware that this is no new problem.
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The Greeks wrestled with the puzzle of change and fixity. But the problem is really vaster for us to-day than for the Greeks. The ma- terial universe is much more overwhelming. The distances are longer and the stretches of time are measured in terms which would have staggered the Greeks. We must give up the attempt to find any really fixed point in the physical system itself. What seems to us to be permanent is only activity repeated accord- ing to a law which calls for repetition. The permanence of any phase of the physical sys- tem is like the permanence of a flame which may stand for a time at a given height and burn with a given intensity, but which, never- theless, is in constant movement. The slight- est change in any one of a dozen forces work- ing through the flame will modify its intensity or its color, or extinguish it altogether. The apparent solidity even of a mountain is, when viewed across the stretch of a geological period, largely illusive, depending upon the steadiness of forces which race along with vast speed. Somewhere, we know, there must be a relatively permanent factor standing across this flow of things. Else we never could become aware that there is a flow. Existence would be sliced into inconceiv-
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ably thin sections, each of which would perish as soon as it was born. Familiarity with the problem of knowledge shows us that the permanent factor must be in the realm of spirit. Without entering into the metaphysics of psychological existence, we know that there must be within ourselves some power to abide from moment to moment, some power to weave complexity into unity, some memory to gather up the past and make it live in consciousness. We do find in the very act of knowing some ability in ourselves to stand across the stream of change and to know the stream as a stream.
But this does not help us much. To begin with, change enters into the very heart of our inmost life. We are the same that we were when we were children, and yet we are not the same. Our spiritual powers rise to strength and sink to decay. More significant still, our ideals know both increase and loss. The social institutions of mankind, the ideas which fash- ion man's companionships with his fellows, his conceptions of religion — all these are sub- ject to influences which lift them up and cast them down. Both the realm of nature and the inner life of individuals and communities offer little in the way of a permanent resist-
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ance to the stream of changes in the midst of which we live.
It is in Christianity that we find any meas- ure of relief from the dizziness of contemplat- ing the world of change. The relief is spir- itual. We come at last upon an idea of God and an idea of man which brings at least a measure of meaning into the vast procession upon which we gaze. The theistic metaphy- sician arrives at the end of his reasonings at the idea of a God who founds change without himself being involved in change. The theist holds that God is above change, not in the sense that change means nothing to him, but in the sense that change brings nothing to him of either increase or loss of power. Men are above change in the sense that they are able to hold in consciousness the varying in- stants of the stream long enough to under- stand the meaning of the movement, but men are in change in the sense that they are under the law of development and are dependent upon the changes of the universe for the at- tainment of their own fullest life. While carrying forward the changes of the uni- verse, God is above change in the sense of possessing power to keep the entire stream before his mind and to withstand any suction
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of the stream which would draw him into its current. We are not, however, so much con- cerned at this juncture with the God of the mere theist as with the God of the Christian. Christ set before men an ideal of an unvary- ing love at the heart of the universe. He did not pretend to construe this love in terms of theoretical statement. He simply told of the love of the Father in heaven, whose love fail- eth not, and he set this love on high in his own life and death. There is a sense in which even this ideal of Christ changes, but it changes in a fixed direction. It changes in the sense that men understand it better as the years go by. The love of God knows no change, but the heart of man reaches after and attains unto that love by rhythmic pulsings. God is Love. God is the Father of men. Christ's ideal is that men should come to such purity of heart that they can enter into com- panionship with God forever. Our thought of God and of Christ and of man is under the law of change, but the change is in a fixed direc- tion from glory to glory.
Again, there is a real though perhaps uncon scious demand for Christ to-day — that is to say, for the thought and deed and spirit of Christ set before us in the New Testament —
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as a supplement and corrective for the results of the scientific method in the study of the Scriptures. We are not likely to overempha- size the importance of modern biblical study for the better understanding of the Bible. These studies have given the Book new vital- ity. They have helped us to discern a new permanence in both the Old and New Testa- ments and to cast out the incidental and non- essential. We see as never before the trend of the old national life of the Jews toward Christ, the satisfaction of their hopes and of the hopes of the world in Christ, and the mighty mo- mentum of the early apostolic enthusiasm. One of the greatest achievements of modern science is the success which has followed the application of the scientific method to scrip- tural study. Even where the students of the Scriptures have been somewhat hostile to the claims of orthodox Christianity the final re- sults have been good. The most hostile critic has often brought forth a theory worthy of consideration, and the discussion of the theory has put the Church on the path of a truth whose existence the hostile critic may not of himself have suspected.
Very little harm has been done by the hos- tile critic of the Scriptures. Some harm is
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continually wrought by the student who is an exponent of the scientific method and is noth- ing else. Such a student is apt to look upon the Scriptures merely as an intellectually con- trived mechanism. He does not sense the vividness and warmth of the life which plays across the pages of the Scriptures; nor does he often enough reflect that the Scriptures were written by human beings. Dealing with the Book thus as a merely intellectual contri- vance, he may reach all manner of astounding conclusions. If he finds passages in a scrip- tural book which seem to him to be contradic- tory to each other, he will have it that the passages must have come from different periods of history or have been written by different hands. If he discovers analogies be- tween scriptural accounts and accounts in other literatures which are evidently solar myths, he is apt to conclude at once that the scriptural narratives are largely solar myths. He forgets that it is perfectly possible to move even through current history and resolve many of the men of our own time into solar myths! Students of the curious in literature will remember that an acute Frenchman once wrote a satire to prove that Napoleon Bona- parte was a sun myth. Napoleon had been
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dead only a few years when the satire was written, but the author proved conclusively that the Corsican wTas a myth. Napoleon, for example, prevailed in the south, as in Egypt, and lost in the north, as in the Russian cam- paign. The sun likewise prevails in the south and loses strength in the north. This argu- ment is fully as conclusive as the argument that Jacob must be regarded as a sun myth because on one occasion the sun rose upon him ! We would not deny the worth of scien- tific study which proceeds upon the principle of analogy, but we would insist that scientific study must be supplemented and corrected by an understanding of the motives and proc- esses of real life. The method of the division and reassignment of scriptural documents be- cause of differences discovered in passages which we have thought of as constituting a unified whole is fruitful. But the differences must be really significant. If we find side by side allusions to customs of a particular time and allusions to customs of two centuries later, we know that the document cannot have been written at the period of the earlier cus- toms. Or, if the ideas in the different parts of a single document are widely divergent from each other, the parts must clearly have
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come from differing periods. But so far as minor differences are concerned, these can easily be found in the works of a single author. Men speak now with one set of phrases and now with another. They become possessed of certain ideas which hold them for a time, and then they are captivated by another set. We would not have to go far into the authenticated reports of speeches delivered in this year of nineteen hundred and twelve to discover the most glaring contradictions in the utterances of this or that public leader. A merely in- tellectualistic critic could on the basis of these utterances split more than one public char- acter to-day into at least a dozen characters.
All this is true of biblical study in general. When we come to the study of the Gospels we must be careful to supplement the scientific method with genuine appreciation of the spirit of Christianity. Some students in our own day have made a good deal of stir by profess- ing to have proved that Jesus never existed. The reasoning may seem very conclusive to readers of a certain type. The best corrective against such excess is in an attempt to seize the spirit of the gospel narrative concerning Jesus — to take the portrait just as it stands and try to realize the spiritual content, to
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attempt to understand the implications of Christ's doctrine of God and of man. When the Gospels are approached thus we have a sense as of having come into touch with some- thing actual and real. If the Scripture is studied by a man who is trying to order his life according to the spirit of the New Testa- ment, such a man has a corrective against the excesses of the purely scientific method like the corrective which contact with real life always affords.
The scientific student becomes very im- patient with the popular indifference to some of his theories concerning the beginnings of Christianity. He wonders that even intelli- gent Christians do not seem to appreciate the results of his investigation. The popular im- patience is not with the scientific method as such. People in general recognize the virtue of that method. The indifference arises out of the fact that there is on the part of the Church as a whole a general knowledge of Christ and a general demand for him. In specific items this knowledge and demand need correction, but likewise the specific findings of the scientific student need correction by a general appreciation of Christ's thought of God and of man and of his setting on high of
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that thought in his own life and death. The real dangers in the scientific study of the Scriptures are the dangers of scientific study anywhere, the dangers which beset the special- ists. If it is true that the specialist in me- chanics or medicine or law is safe only as he is familiar with the general and fundamental truths which lie at the base of his science in common with other kindred sciences, so it is also true that the scientific student of the Scriptures is likely to lose himself and lead others astray if he has not that power to see truth steadily and to see it whole which should mark the thinking of the Christian disciple.
Lest all this may seem critical of biblical students, we again profess our admiration for the results of biblical study. We have said that we do not fear the hostile critic of Chris- tianity. May we be permitted also to say that we do not much fear even the too technical, over-specialized critic? For the general im- pression which the Christ life as a whole makes upon modern life as a whole, and the general satisfaction of modern life with that impres- sion, is a corrective and safeguard against any evils likely to come from scientific biblical re- search. The very extremeness of the utter- ances of some biblical students has made a
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fresh demand for the presentation of the Christ-life and teaching in their large and fundamental outlines. As a reaction from overemphasis on microscopic detail there is renewed demand to-day for emphasis on the outline ideas of Christian teaching. After minute study of the trees men are again call- ing for a survey of the sweep and majesty of the forest.
In our second lecture we sketched the prog- ress of modern philosophy from materialism through idealism to personalism and pragma- tism. We here note the impulse which pre- vails in practically all schools of philosophy to attempt to connect philosophic systems with the teaching and spirit of Christ. All the world knows how Christian thinking has of late been friendly to the evolutionary hy- pothesis, and how welcome this hospitality on the part of Christianity has been to the large body of evolutionists themselves. The reason is not merely that philosophic critics have drawn a distinction between evolution as an order of progress and evolution as a theory of causation, and have pointed out that there is nothing hostile to Christianity in evolution as an order of progress. The scientific thinkers realize the hold which Christ has on the life of
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the world. If such scientists are not them- selves materialistically inclined they feel that this grasp of Christ is one of the great cosmic forces, and they feel also that evolution has not come to its final statement so long as it does not take account of this grasp. More- over, the evolutionary process by itself pre- sents rather a grim spectacle. We cannot help being impressed with the enormity of the cost with which the evolutionary factors do their work. Many evolutionists, indeed, teach that there is another aspect beyond mere strug- gle for survival, namely, the struggle for the life of others. But the emphasis on the strug- gle for the life of others can hardly be effective without reference to the teaching and spirit of Christ. The evolutionary procession itself raises many questions. From where to where is the procession moving? Who is leading the procession? What is the aim of the proces- sion? Why should there be a procession? WTho gives it marching orders and sets its pace? Has the procession any halting place? All these problems clamor for an answer. There is no answer simply from contemplat- ing the procession itself. Hence there is a rather general agreement to-day that prin- ciples at least measurably Christian must be
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called in before we can make much of evo- lution.
Another student may choose to remain an idealist in spite of the modern movement away from idealism of the stricter sort. But any really serious-minded person soon feels that idealism is rather barren if there cannot be an answer to the question as to whose ideas or what ideas are constitutive of reality. There are ideas and ideas. All ideas are not on the same plane. Hence it is not surprising that the more morally and spiritually minded ideal- ists find delight in the prologue to the fourth Gospel. They turn to Christ as the Word that really utters the universe — as the Reason, which, immanent in the universe, comes to personal expression in human terms. The doc- trine of the Logos is especially attractive to members of the Hegelian school. The Hege- lians also seem willing to use such terms as Incarnation and Atonement. True, they do not ordinarily use these terms in the orthodox sense, but the very use of the terms shows the ready willingness of this school of philosophy to reach out a hand almost of supplication to- ward Christianity.
Those who have broken away from idealism and have become personalists likewise feel the
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need of some exemplar or leader who shall really interpret the meaning of personal ex- istence. Suppose that we grant for the mo- ment the extreme claims of some personalists that all individual souls have existed in their individuality from eternity. Even with this admission we must be impressed with the dif- ference in persons. If there is to be develop- ment in persons, the most thoroughgoing in- dividualist would have the worst persons catch something of the spirit of the better persons. We cannot find a suitable ideal in ourselves or in our neighbors or in the mass of mankind. Almost any fair-minded student will admit that, without regard to the historical and critical issues involved in the study of the Gospels, the acceptance of the portrait of Jesus substantially as that portrait is put be- fore us in the New Testament is the most im- perative duty for any doctrine of personalism. The doctrine of personalism must stand or fall with the type of person the theory accepts as standard. If personalism is to mean the wild lunging about of selfish individuals, each acting out the lower impulses of his own life, we have anarchy ; and any system which leads to anarchy must be cast out. If the normal in human life is put above the actual or the aver-
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age state of men, we must find the normal most adequately set forth in the great individ- uals of human history. The personal moun- tain peaks must give direction to the move- ment of men through their earthly pilgrimage ; all of which makes a demand for human per- sonality interpreted in terms of Christ as the Supreme Norm and Standard.
If personalism must finally turn toward Christ, so also must pragmatism. We have already enumerated some conditions which pragmatism must meet in order to satisfy the largest human demands. Too many pragma- tists speak as if their creed means that a man may believe whatever happens to agree with him. Before we accept such a statement we must know what the word "agree" means. The doctrine that a man may believe whatever agrees with him is not much more intelligent than the doctrine that a man may eat whatever agrees with him. "Agree" ought certainly to mean more than to taste pleasant. Some foods taste pleasant, but are poisonous or in- nutritious or unsubstantial. A man may, in- deed, eat whatever agrees with him, but if he is a normal man the food must partake of the fundamental elements which nourish and build up the body. Likewise a man may believe
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whatever agrees with him, but his belief ought to nourish and build up his entire life. Here, again, we need a norm and a standard. Chris- tianity uses the pragmatic method, but finds the norm and standard in Christ. Without sub- scribing to the doctrine that pragmatism has other than merely instrumental value, we may say that pragmatism does seem wonderfully fitted to be a useful tool for Christianity. Every man that willeth to do the will of God comes into sympathy at least with the spirit of Christ. But Christianity brings elements into pragmatism that may not be acceptable to the philosophical adherents of the system. Christianity accepts the truth that we learn by doing and that the final tests are the tests of life. In real life — by which we mean life at its highest and best — cross-bearing plays a part. Not by accident did the Master say that any man who would be his disciple must take up a cross daily. Now, the objection to cross- bearing is that it seems to ask us to believe and do what does not promise to agree with us. We come again upon the age-old paradox of Christianity that a man who would save his life must lose it. The danger with pragmatism is that it tends to become too easy. In the presence of hard philosophic problems it may
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turn away from a rugged wrestling on the ground that rugged wrestling is too hard. So in the presence of the cross. The pragmatist may, like Peter of old, glimpse a truth which means the highest and fullest life, and yet in the next instant deserve a rebuke for an un- willingness to master the implications of the truth in cross-bearing. If pragmatism is to remain respectable as the statement of a philo- sophic method, it needs something or some one to keep it in the straight and narrow path. The temptation of pragmatism is to slip over to the broad way. There are many pragma- tists in the broad way. Pragmatism needs to be kept difficult. Before it can be discipline even for human minds it must exact some- thing of the steadiness of mental effort which the great idealistic systems require. Before pragmatism can be a discipline for the entire life it must see and lay stress upon the signi- ficance of cross-bearing for the attainment of spiritual insight. Much learning, indeed, comes out of reflective brooding; much out of vigorous and persistent doing ; much out of un- selfish suffering. Bearing the cross does not imply asceticism; against asceticism or any other unnatural abnormality we strenuously protest. Christianity does not enjoin need-
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less suffering. It does not even exalt the spirit which would seek after suffering, but it does compel men to accept and walk in the straight and narrow way which leads to life. If prag- matism ever attains to great power, it will have to heed the world's demand for considera- tion of that cross which represents the divine willingness to bear burdens for the sake of others. Upon one occasion Jesus told his dis- ciples to rejoice when men persecuted them and said all manner of evil against them falsely for the sake of truth, "for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." The words would seem to give us some hint as to a method of coming to an understanding of the prophets. There might conceivably be many ways of studying the life of a prophet. One might read, mark, and inwardly digest all the words of a prophet. Then one might visit the scenes of the prophet's life and attempt to reproduce in imagination the great events which the force of the prophet had brought to pass. In other words, one might learn some- thing of a prophet by looking backward at the prophet himself. But one could learn more by looking around upon conditions like those which made the prophet burn with wrath and then by casting oneself against the evils which
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call for a prophet's fire. When one had met something of the resistant force of evil after attacking that evil, when one had been perse- cuted for the sake of the truth, then, indeed, one might begin to understand the prophets of old. The best way to study Elijah is to rebuke evils like those which Elijah rebuked. What- ever the real prophet does he does not follow the line of least resistance. He cuts new channels even if he has to receive upon him- self all the shock which comes to the cutting edge. Pragmatism as method of learning the truths supremely worth while must keep off the line of least resistance. Whatever else Christ may or may not do as a leader of men, he will not lead them along the lines of least resistance.
The modern social movements also make a demand for a vigorous statement and restate- ment of the thought and spirit of Christ. Such a statement is clearly needed to help us keep our balance between the swing toward masses which would submerge the individual and the opposite swing toward individuals which would ignore the organic dependence of individuals on each other. We may say, on the one hand, that Christ discovered the in- dividual— or, rather, that he discovers individ-
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uals — and, on the other hand, that he gave new force to the social relationships of in- dividuals. There is little in the words of Jesus to suggest such terms as "masses," or "hu- manity," or "mankind." If he wishes to speak of mankind he says "all men." Yet even the prayer which the Master holds up as a model is predominantly social. "Our Father," "our daily bread," "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive," "lead us not into temptation" — ex- pressions like these do not suggest unrelated individuals. They suggest an organism which, in the thought of the Founder of Christianity, is to be coextensive with humanity. Yet Jesus does not suggest the term "organism" or "hu- manity." He suggests the idea of men as mem- bers of a family.
The contribution of Jesus to the social move- ment is the force which he has put into the thought of men as members of a family. Bio- logical terms like "social organism," mechani- cal and artificial terms which abound in many theories of the state as a deliberate creation, legal expressions like "rights" and "implied contracts" — these do not have the force of the emphasis of Jesus on men as members of a family. Social theories depend for much of their force on the religious ideas back of them
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or implied in them. It is hardly too much to claim that no social theory becomes really dynamic or vital until it has taken on a re- ligious form, or has been incorporated with some religious theory, or has, at least, been touched with religious fervor. Christ's thought of the brotherhood of man is joined to his thought of the Fatherhood of God. God is the Head of the family. The service of our brothers is at the same time a service of the Father. Most social theories, however, which speak of masses and humanity have as their religious presupposition a sort of pantheistic notion of Humanity as itself God. Many ad- herents of such pantheism wax very eloquent in their advocacy of Humanity as the sole and sufficient object of religious effort. But such social enthusiasm can be kept up only as it is heated so high that any coolness of reflection is out of the question, for such reflection shows that Humanity, after all, is but a class term. The concrete facts are men, women, and chil- dren in various relationships to one another. In the Christian view we find an adequate mo- tive for devotion to the help of men in the fact of what they are. They are children of the Father in heaven. We show our worshipful spirit toward God by devotion to men, but we
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do not find in the men themselves a full object of worship. What is Humanity? Humanity is human beings — present, past, and to come. But human beings of to-day do not give us a God that we can worship, no matter how pan- theistic our theory may be. Human beings of the past were probably not much better, and posterity has not yet arrived. There is not sufficient force in the duty of working for pos- terity to make the duty altogether self-impel- ling. We ourselves are the posterity of those who have gone before, and our posterity may not be very greatly different from ourselves. We can, however, be very patient with the frailties of actual people if we can think of them as objects of the Divine Love. Enthu- siasm for brotherhood which does not in some way connect itself with the idea of the divine Fatherhood is apt to lack staying qualities. The social workers who cut themselves away from Christian teaching as to the divine Fatherhood find sooner or later that they have cut themselves away from a center of power. Social movements which aim at bringing in the universal brotherhood are apt in the end to create, or at least to reenforce, the idea of God as Father.
The Christian doctrine of men as members
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of a vast family gives too a correction of some doctrines of human equality which are sadly needed. The mere theorist is apt to come for- ward with some statement of the doctrine of equality which makes all men alike equal in all things ; and such statements, wide of reality in themselves, lead to a practical result which is wide of reality. In the Christian thought all men are equal in the sense that all are born into the divine family. All are equal in the sense that all are alike the objects of the Divine Love. But all are not equal in the sense that all have equal ability. Anyone who sees what Christianity aims at will do all he can to re- lieve men of the artificial inequalities in which the present order abounds ; but some inequali- ties are deep-seated. Much of the talk about equality rests on the fancy that human char- acteristics are commensurable, as if there were any way of showing that the ability of the butcher is equal to that of the baker, or that of the general equal to that of the inventor, or that of the painter equal to that of the novelist. Moreover, though all are children of the divine Father, all are not equally responsive to the Father's love. All of which would seem to be self-evident, but much of which lacks recogni- tion by social theorists. On the whole, how-
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ever, there is increasing demand for the Chris- tian conception as best fitted to the facts of society.
There is growing demand also for the Chris- tian method in social reform. That method is one of radicalism, but not the radicalism of the ax. In one of his parables Jesus tells of the tree cumbering the ground. A radical with an ax proposed to cut the tree down, but another radical with a spade proposed to dig about the roots and give them a chance. Radicalism deals with roots. The man who waters roots may be as truly a radical as the man who grubs up roots. Some social institutions have not yet had a chance. They are good enough in them- selves, but their roots lack water. Much bitter attack on industrial, political, ecclesiastical, educational, and other institutions is the radi- calism of the ax, while what is needed is the radicalism of the spade. And this in the end comes down to the improvement of the persons who make up the social body. As an extreme illustration take the furious attacks on mar- riage and the family to which extreme radicals continually give utterance. Improvements in marriage are improvements in the relations of married persons, and this in turn means im- provements in the persons themselves. Per-
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sons marry from wrong motive, or in ignorance of the character of the future partner, or with no adequate sense of the responsibilities in- volved in the marriage relation. Much in- justice results and many innocent suffer. Marriage laws no doubt need improvement, but the fundamental need is an improvement of persons. So with many other institutions. As the readers of an earlier chapter will recall, we hold no brief for industrial institutions, but even in our campaigns against institutions most open to question we must remember that we must in the end reach persons. We must so deal with institutions as to reduce tempta- tion to evil-doing to the minimum. Some in- stitutions to-day put before men temptations which only the strongest wills can withstand. The institutions must, therefore, be modified or abolished. But the final welfare of society cannot depend on abolishing institutions. Men must be brought to the place where they are above using a social institution for mere personal profit, and other men must develop the power to withstand the temptations inevi- table in any system. For illustration, think of the precaution taken to-day to guard the ballot. Not so very long ago election frauds by wholesale were possible. It was easy to put
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a ballot in a man's hand and see that he put the vote in the box. It was easy to vote a man more than once. The Australian system did away with the first possibility, and thus re- duced the chances of election bribery. Regis- tration systems have practically done away with the second possibility. But do the Aus- tralian ballot and registration make democ- racy safe? The only safety is in the character of the man inside the voting booth. Democ- racy depends for its virtue on the goodness of good men. If the example of Christ means anything, it means that the radical method of social reform is the deep spiritual appeal which touches men in the depths. Christ re- fused to appeal to men by turning stones into bread. That was not radical enough. He re- fused to astonish them into submission by marvels. That was not radical enough. He refused to make political alliances. They were not radical enough. He chose, rather, to strike to the invisible center with an appeal for love of God and man which sweeps all the life into its current.
We have seen that the great word in current ethical life is obligation. The teaching of Christ aids the ethical life not so much by giving a new set of duties as by giving new
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force to the ideas which condition ethical de- velopment. Christianity does not advance new ethical notions. It is possible to find the ethical precepts of Christ in the Old Testa- ment, or even in non-Christian svstems. The difference is in the religious ideas which place a sky over the earth which the ethical teachers give us. We have seen that the ethical em- phasis to-day has a mighty influence on the shaping of religious ideas. The religious ideas in turn repay the debt by giving new force to the moral ideas. There are some persons who declare that they can do the right for the right's own sake without any thought of re- ligious presuppositions, and these persons are at times inclined to sneer at those who demand religious presuppositions. Kant's thought of God, freedom, and immortality as implications of the moral nature does not seem to some who profess to worship right for right's own sake to be especially worthy. But those who feel the need of the implications feel that need not because of any less loyalty to right for right's sake. They think so much of the right that they are not willing that the universe should be such a universe as to make morality only the affair of fleeting mortals. Man must be free so as to be capable of real morality. Im-
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mortality must give scope for morality. At the center must be a God who is himself bound by the demands of the moral law. Right for right's own sake may become rather empty unless we are in a universe where we can say at least something of man for man's own sake and worship God for God's own sake. Upon our doctrine of man and God our ethics will in the end depend for its force.
The ethical demand for Christ, therefore, is the demand for a moral dynamic. That dynamic is found in the doctrine of man and the doctrine of God. On Christ's teaching that the deep human claims have the right of way we need not dwell. It is sufficient to say that in his view the deep and base sins are sins against the ideal of humanity. Even an insti- tution which his contemporaries regarded as transcendently sacred had to meet his declara- tion that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Even more force- ful, however, has been the demand for Christ because of the Christian doctrine of God. The struggle for moral life in this world is so in- tense, the inducements to quit the struggle are so many, the sense of failure is at times so overwhelming that the soul cries out asking whether there is a moral God or not, and if
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there is, can we think of him as interested in our battle? The moral battlefield is a grim place. Where is God and what is he doing? Is he contemplating the scene from afar or is he at hand? Is he the God of the scientist merely, most interested in the law of gravita- tion, or is he interested in moral law? The answer of Jesus is clear. God is at hand. He is more truly in the moral struggle than we can be ourselves. Our success or failure means more to him than to us. Obligations are more truly binding upon him than on us. When we enter the really moral life we come close to him, and the more moral we become the more we become like him. The pure in heart see God. The seeker after morality seeks the real kingdom. He lives among the real persons. He attains to the real life. No matter what the appearance may be, the real universe is moral. Moral law is constitutional. When a man sets his will to do right, the stars and the God who made the stars are fighting for him.
There is another factor in the power which Christ contributes to men engaged in the struggle for moral life. We have spoken of the sense of failure which attends the moral struggle. We arise in the morning and think that we shall reach our moral ideal by sunset,
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but at sunset the ideal mocks us from the dis- tance. Conscience lays upon us tasks which we feel we can never discharge. In addition to this we have lapses which burden us with a consciousness of personal guilt. We cry out for forgiveness and for a second chance, and for a third, and so on indefinitely. Here the Christian revelation comes in again to help us. The cross of Christ sets on high a holiness and love which reestablish and reenforce us. In the name of a holiness which we can never reach, but which we would reach if we could, we seek for forgiveness ; and in the name of a love for which we can find no adequate expression we go forth again to the battle. We grieve over our blunders, but rest in the consolation that the God of moral love, after all, takes our in- tention for the deed. So if we fall, we rise again. We are poor travelers, but we get ahead. Now, the present writer is not espe- cially concerned as to the theological terms in which the Holy love of God as set forth in the cross of Christ is stated, but we must not lose sight of the significance of the fact itself as a center of moral power. Right for right's own sake, with no thought of aid from religious con- ceptions, may suffice in ordinary and comfort- able circumstances, but is apt to lack power
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when deadly temptation appears. And when we are dealing with the man who is down, the bare contemplation of moral precepts, no mat- ter how correct these may be, is hardly enough to get him again upon his feet.
We have said before that the great word in all our thought of man's mastery of the forces of the universe is the word "control." Now control is not a making over of a force or a turning it back upon itself. Control recog- nizes the force and then seeks to utilize it. Control is the rudder of the ship. The emphasis upon control would seem to be an essentially Christian conception. Chris- tianity looks upon the vast forces as in a sense sacred — sacred, at least, as presenting a divine opportunity. Forces in ourselves are sacred in the sense that they can be given a divine direction. We are not to try to make our- selves something other than we are, or to turn our streaming forces back upon themselves. We are to accept ourselves as what we are and then to direct our lives aright. So with the social and all other forces. Rudders are to be put into them. They are not to be condemned and halted. They are not to be allowed to drift. They are to be steered to a goal.
The truth of the Christian system as aiming
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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST
at control in this sense is being more and more recognized, and is creating renewed demand for Christianity. There have been Christians who have declared that all the forces in this world, both inside ourselves and outside, are to be resisted as of the devil. The aim of these disciples has usually been good, but their method has not always been wise. Worldliness is of the inner spirit. The man who has least of worldly power may be most worldly in spirit, and the man who has most of worldly power may be unworldly in aim. Other Christians have declared that this world and its forces are to be allowed to drift whither they will, that they have little meaning for the kingdom of God. The true Christian conception would seem to be that the forces are to be neither resisted nor allowed to drift, but to be con- trolled. Hence the feeling both inside the Church and outside is that we must look to the teaching of Jesus for an understanding of the forces and to his spirit for a power which will control the forces.
We do not mean that there is any demand to-day for a slavish imitation of Christ. Per- haps we would do better not to use the word "imitation" at all. There is demand for ap- propriation of the teaching and spirit of
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Christ. But appropriation means not me- chanical imitation, but absorption and assimi- lation. The way of advance lies not through attempt to make a detailed code of ethics of the teaching of Jesus valid for all times, but through working Christ's thought of God and of man and of life into the life of to-day. And the spirit of Christ, while it cannot be de- scribed, is readily discernible. With that spirit we can contrive to get along with imperfectly working institutions or forces; and without that spirit we are helpless, no matter how worthy the institution or force in itself. In our relation to the great natural forces our question is as to who is running the machines and with what spirit. The answer of Chris- tianity is that God is the center and source of the forces, and that he is using them with the spirit that is revealed in Christ. In regard to all forces which can be brought under hu- man control, the function of Christianity is to animate these forces with the spirit of Christ.
One of the most remarkable phenomena in history is the fact of what might be called the repeated return of Christ. After all attempts to explain him away, Christ returns to the thinking of men, and returns more powerful than before. We say that this is because of
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his ability to minister to the deeper needs of men. Those needs become urgent and clam- orous and make demands upon thought sys- tems which only the teachings of Christ can satisfy and demands upon heart and will- forces which only the spirit of Christ can meet. It is part of the glory of our time that the Church of to-day is making everything turn around the thought and spirit of Christ. In her thought of the Scriptures, and of religious experience, and in her thought of herself as an instrument, the question which the Church raises is as to how to beget in men the spirit of Christ. Raising the question does not answer it, of course, but the future of the Church is never brighter than in the days when she clearly discerns the demand of the individual and of society for the spirit which is in Christ.
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