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Moore, John Monroe, 1867-

1948. Making the world Christian

THE FONDREN LECTURES FOR 1921

Delivered Before the SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY of SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY

MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN:

THE ESSENTIAL OBJECTIVES IN MISSIONARY ENDEAVOR

BY

JOHN MONROE MOORE,

D.D., Ph.D. (Yale)

The Fondren Lectures

Mr. and Mrs, W, W, Fondren, members of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Churchy South, Hous- ton, Texas, gave to Southern Methodist University on May 10, 1919, the sum of $10,000, the proceeds from which were to he used in the establishment of the Fondren Lectures on Christian Missions. The following paragraphs from the conditions of the original gift will set forth the spirit and purpose of the Foundation.

^'The interest on the investment shall be used annually in procuring some competent person to de- liver lectures on Christian Missions under the aus- pices of Southern Methodist University, some phase of this great cause being always the central theme of such lectures. . . . This fund is dedicated to the foundation of a lectureship on Christian Missions in consideration of other donations made for the up- building of Southern Methodist University, and especially the School of Theology thereof and in the hope that something of good may come directly therefrom and that others more able to give largely may be inspired to devote some portion of the means which they hold in trust as stewards of the Lord to the increase of said fund or to some other laud- able enterprise of our church,"

MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN:

THE ESSENTIAL OBJECTIVES IN MISSIONARY ENDEAVOR

BY vf^l"

JOHN MONROE MOORE,

D.D., Ph.D., (Yale) '^^ 1

NEW xlMy YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1922, By George II. Doran Company

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

A tour of the world in 1908 as an Editor, to study and report through the columns of the paper what he saw of missions, eight years' experience as a secretary of home missions, and four years' service as the gen- eral superintendent of the missionary opera- tions in Brazil of one of the leading denomi- nations, may be said to have furnished the background of the lectures herein presented to the public. At this time when the mission- ary activities of the evangelical churches of the United States and Great Britain are so aggressive and so comprehensive it seems well that the essential objectives in missionary endeavor be clearly defined and duly empha- sized to the end that the strategy of missions be most intelligently formulated and effectu- ally applied. Missionaries on the field and administrators at and from the home base con- tinually need and require fresh interpretations of the missionary task that they may the more adequately set into action the forces and in-

vi PREFACE

fluences that will eventuate in making the world Christian. The purpose of these lec- tures is to draw attention anew to this need and outline some outstanding elements of this pre- eminent task of the Christian Church.

The lectures were prepared in the midst of the most exacting episcopal duties, with time severely limited. Lecture V was not dehvered as the time was not sufficient to allow its preparation before the date set for the dehvery of the series. The other five were delivered in April, 1921, before Dean Paul B. Kern and the Faculty and students of the School of Theology of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, Rev. H. A. Boaz, D.D., the president of the University, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Fondren, the founders of the Lectureship, and Rev. and Mrs. J. Walter Mills, the friends of the founders who had much to do in inspiring the foundation gift. They go forth to the public with the hope and prayer that they will make some contribution, however small, to making the world Christian.

John M. Moore. Nashville, Tennessee,

CONTENTS

LECTURE I:

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

LECTURE II:

RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING

LECTURE III:

CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS .

LECTURE IV:

ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES . .

LECTURE V:

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS . .

LECTURE VI:

CONSTRUCTING AN ADEQUATE FAITH

PAQB 11

. 62

. 122

. 174

224

265

MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

LECTURE I: INTERPRETING RE- LIGIOUS BELIEFS

Religion is the fundamental thing in hu- man life. It is distinctive of man. The great French philosopher and theologian Auguste Sabatier writes: "Why am I religious? Be- cause I cannot help it. It is a moral necessity of my being." He regards humanity as in- curably religious. However low in mental de- velopment, however crude in manner of life, man worships. He recognizes a being upon whom he is dependent and to whom he is in some measure accountable, if not responsible. Pascal once exclaimed: "The eternal silence of the infinite spaces terrifies me." The primi- tive peoples no less have felt the burden of this mysterious silence, and have sought pro- tection in the objects of their worship.

Men have at times arisen and endeavored to throw off this conscious necessity of religion, this summons by the voices of life to worship, but they have ultimately arrived at the place where they must begin a new search for an

11

12 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

adequate religious faith. Comte, the great French positivist, predicted the extinction in the human soul of all disposition to religion, but before he had concluded his work he had attempted to found a new religion, clumsily copied from what he had hitherto known. He came to realize the force of the devotional in- stincts and religious feelings in the life of peo- ples, and to believe that only by religion could the edifice of future society be cemented. Herbert Spencer began with an "Unknow- able" as an undetermined and unconscious force, but eventually he, too, came to pro- nounce religion eternal.

By religion humanity takes its rise, and by religion it is established and completed. People are just what their religions have in- spired and led them to be. In the Orient the civilization is exactly what might be expected from the religious beliefs that have been domi- nant. Religion has not grown so much out of the life of the people as the life of the people has been fashioned and accommodated to their rehgious conceptions. Mohammedanism has made its own world and holds it fast by the most irrevocable decrees. India can never rise to a new estate until it is awakened from the sleep of death and extinction which Hinduism

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 13

induces. China will be chained to a dead past so long as the ancestral tablets are the prime objects or means of worship. Japan grows great as it outgrows its primitive faiths. A people's advancement cannot outrun its religi- ous enlightenment. The old stock cannot be grafted upon with any hope of a new and vig- orous growth. The change needed must be at the roots. All human development springs from religion and ends in it. Humanity can come to thorough establishment and comple- tion only through a religion which breathes re- demption and inspires to fullness of life and destiny.

**Religious beliefs do not die; they are sim- ply transformed," says Sabatier. There is comfort in the view that religion is immortal, but there is the other fact that outward ex- pressions of religious behefs are subject to change through the forces that may be brought to bear upon them, and that religion may be made richer, more abundant, and more satis- fying with reflection and the experiences of life. This lays an inevitable obligation upon those who are responsible for the establishment of the highest form of religious thought, life and service. The ancient thinkers, whether priests or philosophers, maintained an attitude

U MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

of pure indifference toward religions other than the one of their environment. Professor Morris Jastrow in his "Study of Rehgion" says: "If the question were put to a Greek, or an Egyptian, or a Babylonian, as to the reason for the existence of various religions in the world, he would have failed to under- stand what the question meant. It was per- fectly natural to a Greek that the religion in Egypt should be different from the one pre- vailing in Hellas. How could it be otherwise? The countries were different and therefore the gods were different. A difference in religion was accordingly accepted with the same com- placency as was a difference in dress or in language." Hebrew prophets brushed aside the gods of other nations and exalted their own Jehovah with little sense of responsibility for the religious life of their neighbors. Whether Greek philosopher or Hebrew prophet, the in- difference to the manifold manifestations of religion was the same. To this day indiffer- ence to other faiths characterizes practically all rehgious teachers except those of Mohammed- anism and Christianity. Both these are dili- gent and vigorous in their endeavors to win the world to their beliefs.

Christianity in the beginning assumed very

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 15

much the same attitude as that of its great progenitor, Judaism. It looked with more or less contempt on all other faiths. Since God had revealed Himself to only one people, there could be only one form of religious truth — all others were due either to ignorance or dom- inant evil forces. By the preaching of the true religion the others were to be overcome. Such was its early reasoning. Later more severe means were employed to induce the "heathen" to take a more sympathetic and safe relation to this one true faith. Christianity suffered greatly while the old Roman imperialism was in strength, but with its wane there came a new assertion of this all-conquering faith, and the attempts to stamp out heathenism and to crush Judaism make dark pages in the history of the Christian Church. The Jews for cen- turies were treated as a hardened people to whom there seemed to be no approach for the Christ gospel. The conflict with Moham- medanism was void of human feelings. All ideals of peace and good will were laid aside in the bitter warfare with the "infidel" foes. Mohammedanism was looked upon as the in- carnation of the Devil. Christianity and the Church had taken its attitude and its course of action from Rome and maintained a spirit

16 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

of pride and intolerance which continued through fifteen centuries and which was changed only by degrees through the next three centuries. The change came into full effect only with the vigor of the modern mis- sionary movement of evangelical Christianity in its program of enlightenment and regenera- tion.

The conquests of Christianity were the pride and boast of the Church during the first dozen centuries. The sword and crucifix were com- panion instruments in establishing its domains. The Christians acquired a military vocabulary in these ages of conflict, and unfortunately, military terms still remain in the speech of the Church for the characterization of its move- ments. Triumph, victory, advance, cam- paigns, conquest, are words used to express the manner of its enlargement. Christianity should now assume such an attitude toward the world and its own task as to render this very terminology^ obsolete. The vocabulary to-day should be marked by the words: seeds, cultivation, growth, increase, harvest, life. Religion cannot be properly interpreted to the non-Christian world through the terminology of the battlefield. The most severe criticism which the Orient has passed upon Christianity

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 17

is that it represents itself as a religion of force, authority and domination, creating nations of like attitudes. While it is possessed of these qualities, its means of expansion rest not with the weapons of war, but with the utensils of husbandry and the agencies common to life processes. Christianity goes to the non-Chris- tian world upon no campaign of conquest, but upon a mission of love, light and life. Its atti- tude will in no small way be determinative in its success. Its teachers and promulgators must be able to declare in the most convincing terms what Christianity has to contribute to the illumination and interpretation of the most fundamental, essential and precious of all hu- man beliefs.

The Christian Church has come to reahze that the power of Christianity is due to its transforming influence through its creative en- ergy. It supplies a new wine, sparkling and strong, and it rends the wineskins of old con- ceptions into which it may be poured. It scat- ters marvelous seeds of wondrous possibilities in the soils of all civilizations. It transmits a light with the softness of the morning and the strength of the noonday. It kindles fires as genial as springtime for the souls of men but as a burning furnace for the wickedness of the

18 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

world. Its supreme strength is not in its abil- ity to destroy but in its capacity to fill out and complete the measure of human possibilities. It carries the creative energy that brought the universe into existence and that has maintained the onward course of God's government in His world. It produces and reproduces the ele- ments of redemption and regeneration by which man comes into a new estate, views life with a new vision, and is quickened to heroic endeavor for a great destiny. It makes lumi- nous the past and lights up the way of the future. It is a generator of light for the mind and spirit of man. It is life, the life of God in man. Creation is the life of God in action. Christianity can never be less than productive of all that God would express in the human being and the human race.

Christianity interprets religion as creative energy acting in and upon the human life to the accomplishment of the eternal unchanging purpose of God. The religion of Christ gets not only to the God of resources, but also to the God of sources. Man aspires to reach the sources. When he finds himself he rebels at being a pensioner, a dependent. He wants to get at the stored energies for use in the dis-

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 19

covered processes of development and achieve- ment. The religion that reveals the eternal purpose of God develops this same purpose in the lives and institutions of men and opens the way for sublime effort and gives assurance of a blessed destiny. If that which exists in God can be and will be transmitted to man a new creation is assured. Paul says, "There is a new creation whenever a man comes to be in Christ, what is old is gone, the new has come." Man is made master of the major forces op- erating in the real world through his relation to the divine source of all power. He springs to the life processes that bear on to the ful- fillment of personality. He is a new creation and is impelled to the production of a new world life. Religion as interpreted by Chris- tianity is a matter of life, force, progress, achievement. It makes real and vivid the pur- poses of God and commits men to them. It builds up a Kingdom of God. It overturns and assimilates the kingdom of evil. It gives man dominion over the works of the great Creator, and drives him to realize that God has crowned him with glory and honor. What other religion than Christianity gives such worth to man and such character to God?

20 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

n

Christianity has come to its time of supreme testing as it has reached its day of largest op- portunity. Its intelligence, its will, its power, are being tried by the most multifarious and exacting demands. These very demands are indisputable evidence of the world's belief in the immeasurable possibilities of the Christian religion and the limitless capabilities of the Christian Church. No such demands are be- ing made upon any other religious faith or organism. Of Buddhism, Confucianism, Mo- hammedanism, or even Judaism, nothing is ex- pected comparable to what is asked of Chris- tianity. It is universally recognized that the forces that give validity, scope and course to modern civilization have had their origin in Christian sources and have come to their pres- ent effectiveness in the atmosphere of Christian teachings. Not half the world's population know anything of the teaching of Christianity, nor of the Christ from which they sprang. The non-Christian peoples have had the ad- vantage of priority of civilization and they can boast of a nobility of ancestry and a superiority of achievement in the centuries when the pro- genitors of the present mighty nations were

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 21

but rude tribes dressed in skins and dwelling in tents. Yet force has been lodged with these peoples who took over and took in the beliefs which Christianity has delivered.

The question to-day is not whether the world will have Christianity or Buddhism, or Mo- hammedanism, or Judaism. The question is, will the world have Christianity? If Chris- tianity cannot meet the demands which the world now makes upon it there is no thought that one or the other of the existing religions will be tried. In recent years very much sym- pathetic study has been given to a comparison of religions. The Philosophy of Religion has occupied the best philosophical thinkers. The holdings of all faiths have been laid upon the table and their most faithful and capable de- fenders have been called upon to interpret them. In the light of full knowledge and by the aid of the best intelligence the religions of the earth have been estimated. These studies have broadened the conceptions of the real contents of all religions, but they have not lessened the sense of the extraordinary value, superiority and inclusiveness of Christianity. There is not much expectation that some new religion will appear. The testing now for a religion for the human race is upon

22 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

Christianity. Beyond that there is only darkness.

Christianity has come to this place of testing, to the place of unparalleled responsibility, largely because of the claims of its adherents. They have never proclaimed it except as the universal religion, the only hope of the salva- tion of the human race. They have confidently and rigorously maintained that all genuine re- ligion, truth and power are embraced in Chris- tianity and that whatever else may be found in any other religion is spurious or superfluous. These claims have been made in the light of the highest revelation and of the best developed intelligence. Neither the ancient nor modern world has held a religion which has not been thoroughly scrutinized and estimated by the adherents of Christianity. They have found no cause for lowering their claims of the super- lative value of Christianity, the inclusiveness of its truth, and the transcendency of its power for the redemption and edification of the world. This Christian consciousness of the ab- solute superiority of Christianity has been rig- idly maintained since the apostolic era.

The fact cannot be controverted that Chris- tianity has set going great currents of multi- plied energy in the human will. It has turned

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 23

the dream of the half-awake into the visions of vast possibihties which have issued in sub- lime effort and masterly movement. Man, under the creative power of this marvelous faith, has passed from the state of merely a consumer of the Creator's beneficence to a pro- ducer of merit in his own name and by his own wisdom and capabilities. The very atmos- phere of human life becomes charged with a creative energy where Christianity is in force and control. Man not only has lifted before him great prizes but raised up in him great resources. Under the inspiration and force of this Christ-energy the possibilities of humanity are put beyond conceivable limits.

That there is a dynamic in the Christian re- ligion that makes for human assertion, social enlargement and racial development, can scarcely be gainsaid. Wherever it has been introduced humanity has come to a higher level, and whenever it has been refused, neg- lected or withdrawn, decline and deterioration have followed. It energizes capabilities, focal- izes activities, and spiritualizes motives and ob- jectives. The human race has wrought well under its tutelage. It has put no blight upon any land where its essential principles and fun- damental teachings have been emphasized.

24* MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

Rude tribes have grown into great forces for civilization, righteousness and justice under the spirit of this rehgious faith. Men rise up and move forward under the influence of Christi- anity irrespective of their race, their history, or previous or existing conditions of hfe and thought. It is not boasting but only stating a well-recognized fact to say that the nations of first importance, the institutions of largest human influence, the wealth of greatest pro- portions, the governments of widest sweep, are to a prevailing degree under Christian aus- pices. Are these accidents in human move- ments or the normal products of the matchless force which Christianity claims has issued from the Person and teachings of Jesus, the Nazarene ?

No one would claim that these great nations with their superior institutions, massive wealth, and mighty governments are genuinely Chris- tian. They are not. The Great War brought no keener shock to Christian men and women than the fearful realization that humanity may enjoy the fruits of a Christian civilization and claim a personal assurance for another world and yet be wanting in the Christian attitudes, tempers and purposes for this world. The marvel of it all is that nations and peoples so

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 25

meagerly Christian have risen to such pre- eminence in power, possessions and influence. The question arises instinctively, What might they not do were they completely directed by the genius of Jesus Christ and impelled to fashion their forces to the accomplishment of that to which His sublime principles would lead? The entire effort of the Christian Church is, and should be, to get Christianity fully tried out in the earth.

Christianity is now facing a more intelligent non-Christian world than since the first two centuries. A new sense of power has been awakened and a new sense of racial impor- tance has been developed among the peoples that have been the objects of Christian propa- ganda. The adherents and exponents of other faiths have risen to the defensive and are he- roically endeavoring to meet Christianity upon the thresholds of their supposed dominions. They have gone so far as to employ the imple- ments and agencies common to the Christian Church, just as their countries have imported the implements of Christian civilization to take the place of what their own manner of life, thought and worship have produced. The question must be answered anew, What is there in Christianity, and what has it done, to merit

26 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

primacy among the world's faiths ? The evan- gelical Christian propaganda has beisn in course more than a century among non-Chris- tian peoples. What has been wrought in this time in their civilizations and in their processes of life, thought and action? Some new power has stirred the world prodigiously in the last ten decades. Has Christianity released ener- gies that might be expected to bring forth some such results? Has Christianity been creative of new forces and vaster areas of human en- deavor?

Christianity's appeal to the world to-day must be made upon its record and the ration- ality and compass of its projected plans. It must be able to show clearly in what respect Christianity has contributed to the religious endowments and acquirements of mankind; reconstructed thought-life in keeping with its enlarged view of the world, God and human- ity; elevated moral values; and given to the peoples it has touched a religious faith equal to the demands of maturity of the individual and the race. Productive beliefs vitalize the processes of human development. By that standard Christianity and all other religions must be measured. Man's development finds

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 27

legitimate measurement in the sublimity of his religious conceptions and worship, the com- prehensiveness and force of his system of thought, his efficiency in handling the resources of nature, his estimate of moral values and in the adequacy of his beliefs to cover and con- trol the highest life interests. Christianity's aspiration, if not obligation, is to make the world Christian, and the Christianization of the world is the end and purpose of the well- awakened, modern Church. What has been done in consummation of this end? What re- mains to be done with the existing religious conceptions of the vast majority of mankind, with the mental life of the people, and with their sense of relation to God, the world in which they live and the group life of the race before they can think and live Christ, and thereby establish forever in the earth the Kingdom of God? What is it that must be done in the entire body of humanity and in the entirety of humanity in order to complete Christianization? These questions are not only legitimate, but the answers to them are neces- sary to any intelligent, comprehensive system of missionary propaganda of the modern evangelical Church.

28 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

III

Christianity must outline anew its task. The modern missionary movement has put it face to face with the faiths of mankind and the conditions of humanity which attend those faiths. There are backward races that present a pitiable lack of any genuine comprehension of religion and possess little other than bar- baric cults of animism. Practically half the people of the world are in India, China and Japan, where ethnic faiths are dominant in the life, thought and purpose of the people. The Moslem world and the Jewish race re- main stolid in their adherence to the faiths of their fathers notwithstanding their oppor- tunities for correctly knowing the gospel of Christ. More than half of mankind have prac- tically no knowledge of Christianity, and even a larger percentage have no concern for other than a racial religion. Of the so-called Chris- tian world, Romanism with its political ec- clesiasticism and its glaringly erroneous inter- pretations bearing the marks of the old im- perial Roman life and power, holds a large portion in its iron grip, while the darkened forms of Coptic, Armenian and Greek faiths hold little less. That is the world that evangel-

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 29

ical Christianity faces to-day. One is forced to say with Lessing: ''The Christian rehgion has been tried for eighteen centuries; but the rehgion of Christ remains to be tried." Will it be tried? What is it that Christianity must do to make the world Christian? Can it be done? There are those who consider themselves Chris- tians, and in personal character and hope they are such, who do not expect the world to be- come Christian. They consider this world a place to get Christians out of and not into. But the spirit, purpose and plan of modern missions are to make the world Christian and all that is therein or pertains thereto. Is the plan impracticable and the task impossible? Faith makes but one answer.

"Rehgious beliefs do not die," says Sabatier; "they are simply transformed." If his posi- tion is correct the strategy of missions will be the employment of the means and agencies that will set going new currents of religious thought, new batteries of religious power, new generators of religious light in order to effect that transformation. That which the mission- ary finds of real religious value in the religion of any people is to be treasured. It forms the "known" in his effort to lead to that which is the "unknown" to the people. The first

30 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

question will be, How can it be determined that any religious element has real religious value? Has the missionary standards for making this determination? The great ethnic faiths of the Orient have become the foundations of vast civilizations of extended history and immense influence. Out of these civilizations have arisen great minds and great souls who have been sustained from mighty mystic sources. China was a great nation when Abraham started on his quest for a new habitation. India was the source of the rich Sanscrit literature before Europe knew the meaning of culture. These peoples are not novices in the world of action, thought or conduct. They are not without pride in their past, or contentment in their present, or confidence in their future. Their religious faiths are the heritage of the cen- turies. What is there of real religious value in them? This question would seem to be primary and its answer would determine the course of any process that may be entered upon to transform and reconstruct them so as to make them adequate to the religious needs of the people.

There are those who flout the idea of trans- forming a rehgious faith. They hold to the

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 31

old view that there is only one religion and the only thing to do is to destroy the other, root and branch. That smacks of bold fanaticism and is a hazardous process, for as Professor Jastrow says: "Skepticism is the corollary of fanaticism" and has always ensued. The death of a religious belief means usually the funeral of religion. No man has the right to destroy another's faith. He has only the right to supplant it with a better. To-day in all the world where the old faiths have been ruth- lessly exposed and destroyed and the recon- struction process has not kept pace, agnos- ticism is rampant. When man finds his own faith unfounded, he leaps, almost inevitably, to the conclusion that no man's faith is better founded. The missionary to-day faces in China and Japan greater obstacles in the new agnosticism of the educated and the forceful than in the old inadequate and often spurious faiths of the common people. Europe in its revolt against the ecclesiasticism of Rome and of Greek patriarchs has all but become sub- merged in the dark waters of agnosticism and atheism. Latin America has an intellectual and political leadership that no longer retains faith in the Church as a medium of religion. Faith in the old things has been broken down

32 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

and faith in the better has not been created. That is the peril of the world to-day. Chris- tianity can make little or no appeal to a people wanting in any religion.

That all religions have value must be recog- nized, and also that religious values cannot be graded according to the localities and people that hold them any more than can the dia- mond's brilliancy, weight and worth. The standards of truth are not geographical, nor even ethnical. They are psychical and prag- matic. Even the origin of truth does not im- pair its validity. The standards of value for all truth may be determined by the purposes to be met. Barnard's discovery of the fifth satellite of Jupiter was of no value to chemis- try. The Crookes tubes added nothing to the art of healing, but they made possible the X-ray, whose remedial properties can scarcely be overestimated. The discovery of America by Columbus added not only to man's knowl- edge of the earth, but it opened a new world, cleared the way for a new civilization, and made possible the production of a greater political power than had ever been known. The discovery of ether was the beginning of modern surgery, the marvel of the age. The vaccine virus has become the forerunner of

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 33

the vast company of serums that now reduce the mahgnancy of ravaging diseases. The purposes to which any truth may be put may become cumulative as this truth leads to other truth. Chemistry has attained a new and greatly enlarged and enlarging sphere as it has become creative. Creative knowledge is a knowledge with power and multiplies ener- gies as it expands its realm. But such values are neither increased nor diminished by the nationalities of discoverers or producers. They are measured by the high standards of worth to the race and their possibilities for the pur- poses for which they are required.

In like manner the purposes of religion, the ends to be met, the aim to be achieved, must determine the values of any religious concep- tion, belief, or act. These purposes, ends and aims are not local, national nor ethnic, but uni- versal. The standards of value which they erect and require cannot be set aside, ignored, or even disregarded. It is sometimes said "that peoples' religion is good enough for them. Do not disturb them with another." Religion that is not adequate to mankind uni- versal is not competent for any particular part of the race. It is the element in man that is common to the human race that calls for re-

34. MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

ligion. Ethnic faiths came to their form and force in the ages when the commonality of man was not recognized, and they decline as rapidly as this commonality is realized. The Jew has maintained his ethnic faith amid the untoward influences of the world by his untiring em- phasis on racial solidarity. It is that which has kept him from accepting Christianity, which he well knows and for the most part highly appreciates. So long as racial demar- cations can be rigidly maintained and the ele- ment common to man be held in subordina- tion, so long can the ethnic faiths be kept dominant. This is true with the Japanese, the Chinese, the East Indian. The Japanese race instinct will demand and exalt a Japanese re- ligion. But Japanese who are open to the world tides and aspire to participate in world currents and world movements with the con- sciousness of world citizenship and the sense of world responsibility will soon discover and ad- mit the inadequacy of a Japanese religion. The same is true of China and India. The values of a religion must be estimated in terms of man the universal as well as man the par- ticular or man the racial.

Acquaintance with the religions of the peoples to whom they are sent is a primary

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 35

requisite of the Christian propagandists. Paul the apostle, the great defender, interpreter and promulgator of Christianity, knew Judaism in its last detail and was as able in exposition of it as its strongest ecclesiastical teachers. He could not only point out the real principles and practices of Judaism, but he possessed a power of interpretation which made him un- answerable. He knew thoroughly the religion of the Greeks and was familiar with their philosophy. There was a mighty reach to his words because of his mastery of current thought. The Christian teacher must be an interpreter of religion and entirely capable of analyzing and estimating every expression and form of religious belief and determining what element can be made basic in the construction of an adequate faith.

There is now religion enough in the world, if by religion is meant devotion, worship, prayers to gods, efforts at finding the Supreme Being, and the outbreathings toward holy things. What country could be more religious than India from that point of view, but from the viewpoint of Christianity, what land could be more in soul-darkness? What is it that the entire Orient must have in order to receive light and a new life? Evidently there

36 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

must be a change at the very center. Before Copernicus there was just as much sunhght, just as kindly a moon, just as superb firma- ment of stars as after his marvelous labors. Eut the movements of these upper worlds were confusing to the astronomers, who re- quired system and reliable laws by which to set courses and determine age-long activities. Hitherto in their calculations the earth had been recognized as the center of the heavenly system. Copernicus, without depreciating the importance of the earth, declared that system would be possible only if the sun were made the center. That was the beginning of the new astronomy, the new navigation, and the open- ing of the modern world. The religions of the Orient, whatever their light and beauty, can never explain the world, its forces, its movements, and its destinies till they change their centers. They can never come right un- til they recognize the Sun of righteousness as the center of our human system and the con- troller of our earthly world. They must be brought to see that He is not only the source of light and warmth, but that He creates the forces of life, holds by His own mighty centri- petal power the bodies in their orbits and the worlds in their courses, and enables them to

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 37

fulfill their destinies in accord with the pur- pose of the Creator. The supreme question before the Christian is, How can this new heavenly system be brought to the understand- ing and acceptance of the Orientals?

In the analysis of the civilization of the Orient nothing is more outstanding, more im- pressive and more oppressive than the fearful intellectual and spiritual haze that envelops the fundamentals of life. There is a mystical groping after the meaning of things with a pall of uncertainty resting on the most pre- cious of religious beliefs. Life lacks direct- ness. Circumlocution marks all business, diplomacy, engagements and the common re- lations of the people. Religion is wanting in clear-cut aims and definite vitalizing purpose. The devotion is beautiful, the sacrifices are ex- tensive, and the worship is profoundly sincere, but the end of it all is not clear, and its value not exalting. All kinds of religious degrada- tions are current and the superstitions are all but revolting. Even the religious practices of the highest are pitiably below what their in- telligence would seemingly warrant. The

38 IMAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

aristocratic, large-minded Chinese will wor- ship before the ancestral tablets and make offerings to the spirits of their progenitors. The rich, superior Hindus will ceremoniously bathe in the muddy waters of the Ganges with all the manifestations of true worship. The temples exhibit scenes of distressing intellec- tual and spiritual darkness. Japan, China, Burmah and India present different aspects of life and thought, but the same haze is over all. It is this which makes the Orient a thing apart. It is the home of occultism. Kipling was so impressed and oppressed by the ob- scurantism as to write:

*'Oh, East is East, and West is West,

And never the twain shall meet Till earth and sky stand presently At God's great judgment seat."

It may be profitable to review briefly the salient features of the non-Christian faiths. By doing so it will be clearly seen that the Orient has never had an adequate comprehen- sion and valuation of personality. Right here is its supreme defect. The appalling haze that holds the people in their indecision and indirec- tion is largely, if not altogether, due to this fact. The ethnic faiths discount personality

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 39

and lay bases for its extinction. Taoism is perhaps the oldest cult in China. Tao means "The Way," or "The Way of the World" or "Nature." It is a power immaterial, invisible, inaudible, intangible, ubiquitous, indefinable, eternal, which finds expression in various forms. Pope has all but represented the same thought.

**A11 are but parts of one stupendous whole. Whose body nature is, nature the soul. That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame, Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze. Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees. Lives through all life, extends through all extent. Spreads undivided, operates unspent. Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part As full, as perfect, in heir as heart. To It no high, no low, 'no great, no small. It fills. It bounds, connects and equals all."

Laotze, the founder of Taoism, took his con- trolling idea from the orderly operations of nature, which seemed to be accomplished without effort or purpose. He consequently made inaction the cornerstone of his doctrine and cultivated it as the chief virtue. He re- nounced learning and wisdom, developed in- decision and irresoluteness, and made much of the vacant and stupid look. While the meta-

40 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

physical teachings of Laotze were beyond the common people, the practical corollaries found ready response in their natural aptitudes. Irresponsible nature became the teacher of lethargy and ambiguity to capable, respon- sible man.

Confucius was a political thinker and was chiefly concerned with government, order, rules and regulations of life and conduct. He was a great teacher of high ethics, and really founded the moral code that has been domi- nant in China for twenty-four centuries. Con- fucianism has elevated moral values for indi- viduals and the state, but has failed to direct religious instinct to worthy ends and the for- mulation of adequate religious conceptions. Confucius was in reality an agnostic, sought no god and made no claims to the establish- ment of a religion. It is the entire absence of all genuine religious truth in his system of philosophy that allowed, if not encouraged, the direful idolatry which has afflicted China. The forests are filled with temples and shrines, and sportive spirits are in command of all na- ture. The spirits of the soil come all but first in the worship of the people. Multitudes of gods are acknowledged, of which nature is the mother. The secret of this religious chaos is,

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 41

Confucius, like Laotze, had no vital philosophy of man. Personality received little or no em- phasis by them. Nature, dull and speechless, drove their thoughts to the possibilities of the impending silence. They heard not the voice of man calling to the clearer heights and the nobler views of life and the world. They left the people at the mercy of their own imagina- tions, in the midst of an awe-inspiring and ter- ror-awakening world.

The worship of ancestors has great impor- tance in the modern religion of the Chinese people. It is their belief that the spirits of the dead linger about their old habitations to watch over, protect and prosper the living. The dead have much the same needs, motives and labors as the living. It is incumbent upon the living to cherish and honor them and pro- vide habitations and furnish them with articles of use and desire appropriate to their calling and rank on earth. Such a belief cements the family bond, creates the consciousness of its unity and perpetuity through the generations and cultivates parental love and filial devotion. But it also puts the leaden hand of the past upon the aspirations and movements of the present. It provides such a system of disem- bodied spirits as to make the world a grewsome

42 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

dwelling place, and life one long effort at the evasion of any offense to those who populate the spirit world. Demons, ghosts and vam- pires create a population for China fully as dense as that which tabernacles in the body. As a consequence demonology is the dominat- ing force in the life of the people. Spirits! Spirits! Spirits! These monopolize the in- terests and the better powers of the Chinese. There can be no remedy for this fearful in- tellectual and spiritual state save a proper philosophy or personality.

Whatever may be said of the ethnic religious faiths. Buddhism and Hinduism control the beliefs of the Orient. An exception must be made of about one-fifth of the people in India and thirty million Chinese, who are Moham- medans. Buddhism has been practically driven out of India by Hinduism, but it dom- inates Burmah, Siam and Tibet, and is the controlling faith in China and Japan. In China it is mixed with Taoism and Con- fucianism, and in Japan with Shintoism, but these nature faiths and ethical codes do not materially interfere with Buddhistic concep- tions and ways of worship. Buddhism does not attempt to solve the problem of the origin of the universe. It has to do with the material

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 43

world and existences as they are. It holds the utter vanity of all earthly good. Life is an evil. With decay and death there is the in- evitable law of rebirth. Buddhism does not aspire to immortality of the soul, or even to the rebirth of the individual. The seed of ex- istence, called "Karma," must be destroyed if another life is to be stopped. "Karma" can be destroyed only by eight things, "Right views, right thoughts, right speech, right ac- tions, right living, right exertion, right recol- lection and right meditation." There is noth- ing eternal but the law of change, cause and effect. Everj^thing is passing; nothing is; everything becomes. This organized life con- tains in itself no eternal germ; it passes away like everything else, and there remains only the accumulated results of itself and its ac- tions. Each individual in the chain inherits all of good or evil that all its predecessors have done, or been, and takes up the struggle toward enlightenment w^here they left it. The Buddhist lives and works, not for himself, but, by his virtue, to decrease the sum of misery of sentient beings.

The Nirvana sought is simply extinction, yet it is described as the happy seat, the excellent eternal place of bliss where there is no more

44j making the WORLD CHRISTIAN

death nor decay, the home of peace, the other side of the ocean of existence, the harbor of refuge. Life must be got rid of, because that which causes Hf e caused also decay and death ; and these counteract what good hfe may give. Salvation consists, therefore, in getting rid of all, but it can be had only through a radical change in man's nature brought about by his own self-denial and self-control. Mental cul- ture and not mental death becomes a neces- sity. Men differ from each other, not by the chances of birth, but by their own attainments and character. Very naturally, rapid prog- ress in spiritual life was considered possible only with the ascetic life. With asceticism came a mass of legends about the founder's life. Fearful superstitions, devil-worship, witchcraft, astrology and what-not have grown up with Buddhism, and by Buddhism they will be continued and supported. Since life was to be escaped and immortality was not pos- sible, self-destruction has had no terror, ex- cept that it lay the burden of such misdoing upon those that came after. The Japanese general who committed suicide as a testimony of love and loyalty to his dying emperor es- caped a worthless thing, life, and contributed great virtue in such a deed to the accumulated

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 45

merit of the people. The soldiers who fell in battle lost nothing personally, but by their service they built merit for their race. Such is the Buddhist mind of the Orient. Pessimism could scarcely be more pronounced or more thoroughly wrought into the life of the people. Hinduism preceded Buddhism and was the basis of Gautama's thinking. Brahmanism is a religion of abstraction. It holds to the con- ception of an absolute, all embracing spirit, unconditioned. It is the original cause and is the ultimate goal of all individual souls. Brah- manism assumed the ceaseless working of the absolute spirit as a creative, conservative and destructive principle under three divine per- sonalities. This assumption gave rise to poly- theism of the most pronounced kind. No peo- ple ever had so many gods of such varying kinds and powers. The third doctrine was that of the transmigration of soul, the reincar- nations of human spirits. The possibilities in rebirth, reincarnation, range from the meanest beast to the highest spiritual being. With such possibilities it became very necessary that the purity of descent and the purity of re- ligious belief and ceremonial usage be care- fully preserved. This gave rise to the caste system. Indo- Aryans not only kept the native

46 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

races apart from social intercourse with them- selves, but shut them out from participation in their own high aims, religious convictions and ceremonial practices. Instead of attempting to raise the standards of spiritual life, or even allowing gradual intercourse to bring about a community of intellectual culture and re- ligious sentiment, they set up artificial bar- riers in order to prevent their own traditional forms of devotion from being contaminated by the obnoxious practices of the servile race. The serf was not allowed to worship the gods of the Aryan freeman. To-day India is a seething mass of pantheism, polytheism, oc- cultism, demonism, animalism and horrible superstition. Nirvana is the highest goal in the conceptions of the best and the greatest, and it is hid in haze. Darkness rests heavily upon the millions in this country of impersonal re- ligion. Without the clarifying consciousness of transcendent personality India will never see the sun in her religious heavens.

Mohammedanism is the religion of two hun- dred sixty millions of people. Of these more than sixty millions are in India and thirty mil- lions in China. The near East, covering the former Turkish Empire, Persia, Arabia, Egypt and the North African countries, are

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 47

under its domination. This faith was formu- lated in the seventh century of the Christian era. Its founder was an Arab, who was possessed of the old traditional religious conceptions of his people. He was thor- oughly conversant with ancient Judaism, but knew nothing of Jesus Christ, more than the name which his disciples made far inferior to that of Mohammed. Mohammed- anism has always proclaimed an unyielding monotheism. It has fought all forms of idolatry. It has nurtured faith in a sov- ereign God. But it has been the victim of the most inflexible fatalism. Man is a mere puppet in the hands of the Supreme Being of the universe and is not responsible for the movements of the world. When the Sultan of Turkey was dethroned in 1908, he had but one comment to make: "It is the will of God.'* Whatever takes places is at "the will of God." This sturdy faith in an invincible Sovereign puts iron into the nerve and dauntless deter- mination into the spirit, but it fosters uncon- cern for the higher personal qualities and in- difference to the progress of civilization. The exaltation of Deity is noble, but the deprecia- tion of human personality with its obligations is disastrous. There is no demand by Chris-

48 IVIAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

tianity that the Sovereign God be dethroned, but that man must be made to reahze his son- ship to the most High and his responsibihty as a co-laborer with the Almighty in establish- ment of the divine kingdom in the earth.

The oriental world can never be brought into a new and competent religious faith without a new and adequate philosophy of personalism. The religious spirit is there and the mystical interest in and insight into spiritual value are highly developed, but there is wanting an or- ganizing spirit to head up, systematize, ener- gize and direct thought and effort. The re- ligious system is without a center or an end. The conception of a world of persons with a Supreme Person at the head is foreign to the oriental mind. Pantheism has been inevitable in the midst of massive forces of nature almost entirely not understood when there was no conception of a Supreme personality as the controlling power. Xature might be diffused with intelhgence, or some pervading mind might be recognized in the movements and ac- tivities of the material world, or some super- lative power be in command, but that would

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 49

not be enough. The intelhgent worshiper must have personality as the object of adoration. Though he bow before stocks and stones, the object of his worship is not the image but the personahty represented by the image. If he does not find such a person in the Master of Creation, he will attempt to posit personali- ties in nature, of varying value, to whom he will give worship. This is what has happened and is happening in the non-Christian world. Pol>i;heism has followed pantheism. Without a Supreme God-Personality a multiplicity of god-personalities has been inevitable. There is but one cure for pohi:heism and that is the establishment of a Supreme Person in the Uni- verse. Pantheism can exist only with the sub- merging or extinction of personality, and wherever it is dominant personality ceases to be assertive. On the other hand, ^vith the rise of personahty the mists of pantheism are driven away.

Borden P. Bowne in his "Personalism" said: *'The essential meaning of personality is self- hood, self-consciousness, self-control and the power to know." The fact of personality is not that of the finite or infinite, but simply of knowledge, the consciousness of self, the ability to determine self action, and to control

50 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

the self in its choices and operations. Com- plete and perfect selfhood, self-consciousness and self-determination would mean a complete and perfect personality. This could not be expected in the finite, but only in the infinite Being. The Supreme Person is without the limitations and accidents of the human per- sonality, but the Supreme Person and the human differ not in kind but in degree of self- hood. That is the interpretation of the Scrip- tural statement, "So God created man in his own image." The distinctive thing about man is not his form or features, his corporeal sub- stance and physical endowments, but the self- hood with its self-consciousness and self-deter- mination and power to know which distinguish the Supreme Creator himself. God is not an- thropomorphic. Man in his essential personal- ity is no more tangible, picturable, visible than is God, for the elements of personality are without bodily or carnal significance. But the human limitations to personality may be re- duced, and personality may be enlarged, mag- nified and rendered more comprehensive. The self in humanity is amenable to the laws of growth. Self-consciousness and self-determi- nation become more accurate and more power- ful as selfhood becomes more capacious and

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 51

more forcefuL Whatever makes for the de- velopment of selfhood advances personality and renders it confidently assertive in deter- mining the issues of life. Without this asser- tiveness humanity gropes and grovels in dark- ness and degradation; but with it the human rises to the realm of achievement, dominion and supreme worth.

Personality is the dominant principle of humanity. It comes to enlarged strength and effectiveness through the increase of psychical energies. Whatever will quicken the psychical element, broaden its sweep and perfect its vision, will add to the force of this dominant principle. Since the directive control in the world is in the personal will there is necessity that this be impelled by high purpose and righteous motives. Personal dynamics are pushing forward the processes in world devel- opment. Rehgion that fails to capture this citadel of human interests, this source of life currents, this center of world control becomes a thing apart and void. That it has not done so in the vast areas of human thinking the non- Christian world bears to-day unmistakable tes- timony. Monstrous human failure is charge- able to the lack of religion to possess the courts of human consciousness and assume the throne

52 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

of human will. Religion has been too content with the ante-chamber of human life and too unmindful of what awaits within. The door will not be opened until personality comes to the place of first importance. Religion will be weak, beggarly and helpless until it ascends the throne of human power. The history of the centuries will be one monotonous routine until the creative energy of constructive per- sonality is introduced into the movements of the race. The currents must be turned into another and larger channel before the world moves into a nobler and greater sphere. Per- sonality holds the keys that unlock the pent-up resources of God and man and the possibilities of the new creation for the new earth. Re- ligion has as its first responsibility the setting of personality to the sublime task of bringing to hand the Kingdom of God in the earth.

The development of personality has always been the supreme objective of Christianity. Man is the greatest factor in man's world. The defect in his existence is not in the Creator or the supernatural powers that control but in man himself. Sin lies at his door and is not chargeable to any higher power. Life is not bad; it is man, that lives it, who is bad. With man good, life will be good. The cure

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 53

of life's ills is not extinction but exaltation. That exaltation is not only possible but certain with personahty brought to its legitimate and preordained status and given that range of righteous control for which it has been freely endowed. That which persists is not some blind life force but intelligent, purposeful per- sonality. The primary task of religion is so to purify and fortify personality as to pre- pare it for collaboration with the Supreme per- sonality in the consummation of his eternal purpose. Character becomes at once in such a system the chief attainment in human life. Christianity has made personal righteousness indispensable to citizenship and service in and through the kingdom that Jesus declared he came to establish. "Repent" was the opening injunction and condition. Repentance was the initial act and constant attitude in the Chris- tian regime. Kings and princes were no more than fishermen and artisans before the gospel of repentance and personal righteousness. The worth of the individual lay not in the circumstances and conditions of life but in the personality which Christianity undertook to quicken, energize and direct. The entire sys- tem of Christian doctrine, salvation and sendee is built about personality. With this center

54 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

it has endeavored to set the heavens in order and make luminous and intelligent the move- ments of the earth.

Christianity is the religion of a Person. No other religion can or does make any such claim. Taoism was founded by Laotze but not upon him. Brahmanism is a philosophy rather than a religion, and came from a body of great teachers. Confucius made no claim to the es- tablishment of more than a code of morals. Gautama gave the world Buddhism but the very core of it is the extinction of personality. He was no more than its highest exponent. Mohammedanism proclaims its founder as the great prophet, but not as its foundation. Christianity makes Jesus Christ its chief corner stone. It rests its claims upon Christ, the ideal created and set forth by Jesus of Nazareth. He was a great teacher; but he is the great Savior. He delivered marvelous doctrines; but he wrought in and through himself won- drous salvation. Man is taught that salvation is not by faith that believes the things reported of Jesus but by faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Not because of what he said or did but because of what he was and is man has his eternal hope. "Christ in you the hope of glory" was Paul's statement of the issue.

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 55

Christ is the center of the heavenly system and attracts to himself everything that pertains to man's world. Jesus made this claim for him- self as the Christ of God and the Christian believers have wrought out life upon that basis. Those who have attempted to make of Jesus Christ simply a myth have had small hearing, because they assail the very foundation of the Christian stronghold. It is the person of Christ that appeals to men of like passions. Jesus Christ was the incarnation of God that he revealed, and the revelation of man that required salvation. In him man and God found their union and unity.

The fundamental doctrines of Christianity relate to personality. They open with the in- carnation of the Son of God. The very con- tent of the concept of *'Son" is personality. It connotes nothing else. The Son of God became and was the son of man and thus iden- tified himself with humanity. The resurrection was accomplished in demonstration of the power inherent in the divine personality over the forces that prevail in the material world. The atonement was achieved by the Divine person for the human person. The Holy Spirit was sent not as some diffusive influence but as divine personality representative of the

56 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

triune Godhead. There is no teaching about Christ that is not fundamentally personal. Christianity's relation to man is just as per- sonal. His first need is regeneration. There is no trouble about his body. It is equal to what it was planned to carry. Man's cause of distress is in his spirit. Salvation, if wrought at all, must be achieved in this very center of personality. Repentance and faith are personal. The witness of the Spirit is the witness of personalities. The entire plan of salvation is personal in means, methods, agen- cies and ends. The final hope of immortahty is not in carnal things but in the deep, true elements of the spirit life. Heaven is to be home with the blissful relations which re- deemed and glorified personalities will be com- petent and glad to establish. The rewards set before the Christian man as the fruits of spirit life are personal virtues, such as joy, peace and love. Material and carnal things have their significance to the Christian only in the spirit- ual values into which they are being changed, Jesus said: "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his own soul." The seat of man is the soul, the spirit, the personality, and Christianity offers salva- tion for that as the chief end of all religion.

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 57

The creative principle in Christianity finds its true field in human personality. In all creation personality is always recognized as the creative force. Gross materialism may be satisfied with a bold impersonalism in the world of nature, but in the final analysis the posited cause is personal. "God said'* and creation was in process. Such was the conception of the early Scriptural writers. They may have clothed God with a crude anthropomorphism but what they were endeavoring to do was to represent the creative power as personal. It is always so. Wherever there is personality there is and will be creation. Christianity has been unquestionably the greatest creative force in the world in the last nineteen centuries. It is such to-day. The reason is that Christianity has operated in and upon personality which is possessed of creative energy. The non- Christian religions have been dead and dull so far as stimulating social assertiveness is con- cerned, and the reason is not far to seek. They have neglected the seat of the creative energy, and wandered in the haze of mystifying pan- theism. Not until they turn the searchlights upon man and discover him will they be pre- pared to find a worthy God for him. They have religious values in their keeping but they

58 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

lack the organizing force which Christianity so gloriously bestows. By the standard of purified, fortified, purposeful personality as a product all religions must be tested and esti- mated. The non-Christian world awaits to- day the establishment of this goal for its new religious life.

Christianity has a call from the world to- day to be not a conqueror but an interpreter of its faiths. It must have no ruthless hand to lay upon the sacred beliefs of men, however feeble and inadequate they may be. Religion binds man to the most sacred things that he knows, or aspires to possess, and is too pre- cious to be allowed to suffer at the hands of a greater faith. The late Dr. Charles Cuth- bert Hall, in addressing an audience in India on Christianity as the fulfilling religion, said: "The truth that is in your several faiths cannot be shaken by your assimilation of the faith of Christ. Truth never casts out truth; it casts out only error and whatsoever else has served its purpose fully and is ready to depart." Every lesser truth which the gospel touches is not destroyed thereby but transfigured and given new life and power. Christianity's mis- sion is to show the better way, to reveal the greater truth, and to demonstrate the more

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 59

glorious life. It has done the work of an interpreter since the beginning. The records of Judaism are full of ugliness in deceits, cruel- ties, polygamies and else, and yet the Old Tes- tament is a great heritage of Christianity. The sacrifices and ceremonies with their dull- ness and even abhorrence found their first real meaning through the Christian interpretation. Christianity furnished the key to the divine truth and life underneath it all, and man with this key has been able to make sacred these Scriptures. Just so Christianity is to in- terpret to the oriental mind its own religious holdings. Bishop Charles H. Brent, long time resident in the Philippine Islands, once said: "Touched by Christianity the ideals and re- ligions of the Orient are a contribution to the Kingdom of God ; unconverted and unfulfilled they are a menace to the very life of Christian- ity." Christianity has as its duty the inter- pretation of religion that it may become a crea- tive force in human redemption and exaltation. Religion requires not only such an interpre- tation as will make clear and unmistakable its meaning and purpose, but also as will demon- strate its power to achieve for the worshiper the supreme ends of his existence. Auguste Sabatier says: "The question man puts to him-

60 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

self in religion is always a question of salva- tion, and if he sometimes seems to be pursuing in it the enigma of the universe, it is only that he may solve the enigma of life." Wherein lies the power of religion to effect the salva- tion of man ? The non- Christian religions offer to secure the intervention and service of su- perior beings by bringing to bear the influences which man in various ways may discover and utilize. Christianity teaches that salvation ad- equate and complete is not effected so much for man as in him. The bought-up man, the bought-off devil, and the bought-in God are not genuinely Christian conceptions, however much they have figured in theological discus- sions. Religious power is personal power for divine ends, and it is transmitted by divine personality to the human. The community of relations between the divine and human per- sonalities is the medium for conveying currents of power from the eternal sources to the human ends. Salvation is in the completeness of this bond. That this bond between the human and divine personalities can be established and maintained Christianity boldly affirms. For that purpose Christ became in man Life. The supreme ends of man's existence became at- tainable through this divine power which Chris-

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 61

tianity reveals. Herein is the sublime inter- pretation of religion which Christianity offers all humanity. For its propagation the great missionary movement of modern Evangelical Christian Churches has been planned and is now being superbly carried forward.

LECTURE II : RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING

The interpretation of religion by Christian- ity, the great aim in missionary effort, is by no means a simple process. Rehgion not only involves great and multiplied interests of the people, but it is based upon intellectual con- ceptions as well as emotional aspirations. The old psychology that taught its theory of facul- ties, or more or less separate compartments of mental activities, has been discarded, and to- day the intellect, sensibilities and will are re- garded as simply aspects or forms of expres- sion of the entire personal life.

The intellect does not act independently of the sensibilities and will, and neither of these acts independently of the intellect or of the other. The entire personal being is definitely and intimately related to every act and atti- tude. Unless this fact is duly recognized, efforts at religious transformation may be seri- ously misdirected and the results be not only futile but disastrous. It is to-day well es-

62

RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 63

tablished that the moral and religious can have no sphere of real value where the intellect is not the guiding force. Low intellectuality will be almost invariably accompanied by low morals and incompetent religious beliefs and ignoble acts. High intellectuality will cast off all religious conceptions and expressions which do not harmonize with itself. Religion is the expression of the entire being as it is, in its relation to the Supreme Being in the human's universe. Any effort to transform religious beliefs, acts of worship, or activities in re- ligious service cannot be expected to accom- plish the desired end without a radical altera- tion of the mental holdings, processes and atti- tudes of the person or people involved.

Because of this fact, if for no other reason, the mental life of the people is of primary importance and concern to religion. There can be no hope of making truly religious a colony of mental defectives, however beauti- fully emotional they may be. Reason is as essential to religion as to all else that lifts man toward the ideal set forth in the purpose of creation. Not only what a man believes, but what he with his existing mental endow- ments and bias is capable of believing, must be taken into consideration when a transforma-

64 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

tion of his views is under contemplation. Re- ligion is the result of thinking as well as of revelation. In fact, revelation would not be possible without the mind of man capable of "thinking God's thoughts after Him" and transmitting them to the race. Laotze, Con- fucius, Buddha, and the great company of Hindu philosophers who built up Brahmanism, were thinkers, and their matured thoughts have become the foundations of beliefs of far-reach- ing consequence. But thinking in specific lines, or channels, or grooves, not only results in certain attained thoughts but it sets the mold of the mind, if it does not in* great measure give character to the mental fiber. The scien- tist is frequently forced to confess his loss of capacity for metaphysics or classical litera- ture. A mathematician, after reading Milton's "Paradise Lost," is reported to have said that it was a very interesting book but that it did not prove anything. The mathematical mind is the product of mathematical thinking. The same is true of the scientific, philosophical, the- ological and religious mind. The mind of a people must be converted if there is to be any transformation in its beliefs.

The Christian propaganda must necessarily begin with the status of the mind of the peo-

RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 65

pie, its characteristics and its contents. What is its philosophy of life and what have been the processes by which this philosophy has been produced are necessary questions, prior to any intelligent missionary effort. There is a phi- losophy, a system of metaphysics, with its con- cepts of knowledge and being, at the center of every civilization. These conceptions are the real determinative elements in the life of a people, and the hfe cannot be greatly changed except as these determinative ele- ments are affected. There are those who speak slightingly of metaphysics, especially if they are possessed of certain scientific pretensions, but even they have their metaphysics, however poor or however untenable. There must be foundations before any structures can be erected. Human beings are so constituted that they must have a philosophy of the essence of things, the basic energies, the eternal cause, and the forces that play upon the world. That philosophy will develop a great First Cause, the relation of the world to it, and conceptions of how man can be harmonized with it. It is here that religion rises with compulsion. Re- ligious conceptions have a philosophical basis without which they fail, and that utterly, un- less a new one can be supplied. No great abid-

66 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

ing religious faith can be maintained upon an unreasonable, uncertain and unavailing philo- sophical foundation, whether that faith be Christian or non-Christian. On the other hand, so long as the philosophical ground holds secure and unaffected, the religious faith will be kept steady, sufficient and unmovable.

The reconstruction of the human mind is the most difficult labor to which man has ever set himself. The mature mind is exceedingly- tenacious in its holdings. It is well that it is so. By this characteristic comes that stability and reliability which are so essential to prog- ress. So difficult is the work of reconstruction that those who would produce a new mind have sought and chosen the way of construction in- stead, whenever it has opened. With every people there is a large body of individuals of low mental equipment in whom the determina- tive conceptions of their civilization are dim, poorly understood and lightly held. Christian propagandists have generally chosen to take these individuals and build in them a new life and then await the creation by natural proc- esses of new minds that should become capable of thinking the new conceptions. The scien- tific laws of growth have been relied upon to bring about in due course the new creation.

RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 67

The son of the low caste Indian sweeper has in this way come to be the teacher of the high caste, self-righteous Brahman, and the children of the coolie to be the instructors of the aris- tocratic Mandarins. By this construction of the new mind in the neglected man, there has been erected the scaffolding for the reconstruc- tion of the old mind in the dominant elements of the non-Christian peoples. While the proc- ess is slow, if faithfully continued, the outcome will be certain. These neglected elements con- stitute such enormous masses that the oppor- tunity for constructive work in them is all but unlimited, and thereby the way may be fully opened to the reconstruction of the thought of the non- Christian world. Such an oppor- tunity brings with it the imperative responsi- bility for the greater thought-life of man- kind.

But wisdom indicates that before any ade- quate constructive work can be accomplished for the creation of a new mind, there should be first determined the mental holdings, the mental habit and the mental fiber of the people whose mental reconstruction is sought. The task to be done, the objective to be achieved, the end to be attained, should be carefully sur- veyed and fully set forth in bold outline before

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the process for its complete accomplishment is entered upon. The process itself can be little less than haphazard if fuU knowledge is want- ing and the end in view not definitely deter- mined. There has been much vain missionary effort because of the lack of this very knowl- edge. The gospel has often been proclaimed with the expectation that in some way it would do its work irrespective of the condition of the ground upon which it came. The parable of the sower with the same seed on the barren road, the choked thicket and the prepared land has been lost to such spirit agriculturists. The sower must learn that his duty to sow is no greater than to break up the hard-packed earth and clear away the thicket and make ready the receiving soil. Christianity can become domi- nant in the world because it is creative, deals directly with personality, and affords the true revelation of God and his fatherly relations to the race, but it must have an intellect that can and will think its thought, sensibilities that re- spond to its exalting appeals, and a will that executes unhesitatingly and joyfully its en- larging behests. The world to be Christian must have a Christian mind. Christian emo- tions and Christian will.

Religion affects and is affected by all truth

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and it can never come to a stable basis with- out a consistent philosophy of all life. The peoples of the non-Christian world are far from the peoples of the Christian faith in the fundamental conceptions of the primary forces of the universe. God, man and the world are the three great powers about which men differ radically. There can be no unity of the human race until there is more or less harmony in the conceptions of these fundamental forces. Re- ligion is the life-effort of man to come into proper relations with God, the world in which he lives, and his fellow-beings. So long as he lacks an adequate and satisfying compre- hension of any one of these, he is incapacitated for developing trustworthy religious ideas or entering upon a dependable religious experi- ence. While perfect religious conceptions will never be possible to humanity because of the limitations that belong to finite beings, yet the approach to the perfect religion is being made in proportion to the conformity of the views held of God, man and the world to the highest obtained and obtainable facts. Progress to- ward the establishment of the most nearly per- fect religion in man can be secured only as these conceptions are clarified, systematized and lifted to the highest possible level which

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knowledge and revelation can produce. It is here that Christianity has been able to establish its claims of superiority among religions. Its notions of God, its philosophy of the world, and its knowledge of man have erected standards of value and means for their attainment which are satisfactory to the best human intelligence and sufficient for the highest destiny of the race. Christianity has set itself to the recon- struction of human thought and the recon- struction of the human mind in order to the establishment in the earth of its conceptions of God, man and the universe. This is requisite to making the world Christian.

II

The first thing in the process of reconstruct- ing the world's thinking is to determine what the mental life of the world is, the trend of its activities, the manner of its expression, and what has brought the human mind to its pres- ent state, attitude and fiber. Reconstruction is by no means to be classified with abrupt rev- olution. It must be attained through a normal development by rational processes under the pressure of an intelligent, purposeful plan. Such a process must not be hurried, but it

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must be constant. The task seems all but lim- itless, and most difficult of accomplishment. That half the people of tlie world cannot read or write any language is well known ; but that does not mean that their minds are bare or necessarily wanting in strength or capability. It means that their mental furnishings or hold- ings are largely a heritage with which they will part very reluctantly and which they will modify very slowly, unless they come into the modern methods of cultivated peoples for ac- quiring knowledge. Their mental fiber has taken its texture from the thought- stuff with which they have been occupied. The fiber can be changed by changing the mental food. But there must be created the taste, the appetite for the new food before the process for making a new mind can effectively begin. The ques- tion arises. What is the thought domain, and what can be done, what will be done, what is being done to make over the minds of eight hundred million persons in the world who are unlettered and bound, severely bound, to the traditions of their ancestors and the thought- heritage of their tribes? If the world is to be made Christian, this question must have an an- swer before the comprehensive movement can be projected.

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There is another question that should have diligent consideration early in this movement. What are the thoughts or systems and methods of knowledge which are now most pervasive in society and most influential in their effects upon the present and the future of the race? Streams of thought are flowing in newly made channels from one part of the world to the other. There are gulf streams from the South and the far East, and there are great tides from the North and the West. What are these great intellectual currents carrying to newly opened bays and canals and distributing out over the systems for human refreshing? "Oh, the East is East, and the West is West." Not entirely so in this new era and it will be less so in the near to-morrow. Europe and East- ern Asia are neighbors now. More than that, what Europe is thinking Eastern Asia learns with its breakfast. The great universities are not national any more, but world-wide institu- tions. The old missionary was the exponent of an unknown world. Not so the new mis- sionary. Knowledge has its own systems of transportation and communications to make the world wise. What has Christianity to do with these systems in order to secure the con- summation of its divine end? The world's

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mind is being transformed and human thought reconstructed. Is Christianity in charge of the transformation and directing of the work of reconstruction?

To answer these questions will lead to an inquiry, first, into the attitude of the human mind to be changed toward the world in which it has being and relation, and then into the pervasive influence and the prevailing charac- teristics of the intellectual forces that are making for the enlargement of the world's knowledge and the recasting of the world's mind. The field of Christianity is the world, all the world, however old, however new, how- ever cultured, however illiterate, however strong, however weak. Europe and Asia, America and Africa are alike fields in this day for the planting of the real Christianity of the Christ. The Christian mind, with the Christian fiber, the Christian holdings and the Christian heart, is the object in the new project for world-Christianization. There is a univer- sally recognized need of new ideals, new evo- lution of man, new consciousness of God, since the shameful suicidal carnage of the last dec- ade. The heavens are still leaden with the awful clouds which the explosions of old ideas have produced. The hymn of hate has

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wrought human nerves into frenzy, and the thought of man has descended to the level of his carnality. Who will now think for the race, the race that is human, the race of the sons of God? There is no place where the raucous voice of war-thunder was not heard. The world has been aroused. It cannot return to its old couch of slumber. It has made up its mind that it must get up and go forth to the day that is dawning. It is open to a new morning message, fresh as the dew and joyous as the sunlight. It can be brought to think new thoughts and clothe itself in new habili- ments of mental life. Who will be the mes- senger and what will he say ?

It must be kept in mind that the non-reading world of eight hundred millions has little knowledge beyond the provincial and the in- herited beliefs and traditions. To get at their mental state it is important to know how they came to what they now possess, or what now possesses them. That the dull dumb forces of the material world have been their teachers must be recognized, and the influence of that impact can scarcely be overestimated. Many philosophers have declared that religion origi- nated in the ominous silence of the forces of nature and the fear which they have induced.

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An old Latin poet wrote: "It is fear that en- genders the gods." It is easy to believe that a state of misery and distress filled the heart with infinite terror as man looked upon the disordered and destructive forces of primitive nature and witnessed the phenomena of this mysterious incomprehensible world. While fear cannot account for religion, yet religion rises with the mystery of the unknown. From early periods to the latest day the voices of nature have awakened the spirit of worship. David exclaimed: *'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." There is a vast gulf between the spirit of David and that of Herbert Spencer, who found himself face to face with what he termed the unknowable, and vaster still be- tween that of either and the spirit of the rude, untutored man of the heathen world. Nature strikes terror, or awakens adoration, accord- ing to the knowledge which interprets its mes- sage to man. Religion in no small way is af- fected, if not swayed, by the philosophy of the material world.

Tribes in their primitive state, whether of to-day or the historic past, exhibit a religion of varying degrees of animism. Spirits to them give life to nature and are causes to be

76 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

reckoned with in the affairs of men. Their conceptions are exceedingly crude but they are dominant influences in their lives. Gods and demons, spirits of good and of evil, hold sway over them and can be appeased only by some act or offering. This state of mind to an amaz- ing extent exists in the present day. The black peoples of Africa, the Indian tribes of the Americas, and the mountain groups of central Asia are under the depressing thralldom of this animistic faith. China and Japan, with their almost five hundred millions, are enslaved to these destructive conceptions, while the vast majority of the three hundred millions in In- dia stagger under the same burdening views. China's belief in a dragon that inhabited the earth has prevented the construction of a rail- road system, the most imperative economic need of the nation. The ground could not be cut for fear the dragon's back would be struck ; and if so he would bring on an earthquake, a famine or a pestilence to show his anger. The dead could not be put into the ground because of the dragon, and because the mounds made over the coffins, placed wherever the liv- ing desired, were the habitations of the de- parted spirits. Belief in demonology domi- nates China. The pagoda with its l^ve, seven

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or nine stories is a monument to the belief in spirits. The pagoda protects the town, as the spirits on leaving its top, higher than any build- ing, must go in a straight hne, and thereby pass over the city. The house that has a door- way that fronts an open lot has before the door a brick wall ten feet wide and as high as the eaves of the house, in order that the spirits coming from the vacant lot may strike the wall and be turned down the street and thereby be prevented from entering the house. The cure for such superstition is intellectual en- lightenment already too long delayed.

The temples and shrines in all parts of China and Japan bear unmistakable testimony to the false views of nature and its hidden forces. Taoism and Shintoism, the ethnic faiths of China and Japan, are almost entirely nature cults and could not endure the light of present- day science. The Parsees of India, a most interesting and prosperous people, are Zoroas- trians. They expose the bodies of the dead to be eaten by vultures because they consider tlie earth too sacred to permit a burial, and the fire too holy to be used in cremation. This same faith is held as the ancient belief of Persia. The Jains of India number 1,500,000. They believe that even inorganic matter may

78 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

have a soul. They will not kill anything, not even insects. They maintain hospitals for cats, dogs, decrepit horses, diseased cows and other animals, even for such insects as can be pro- vided for. They build in the cities small stone houses, richly carved, for the birds that may seek them. In the eradication of birds or ani- mals that may carry any dangerous disease, such as the bubonic plague, they are great ob- structionists. Yet they are wealthy, intelli- gent, progressive, and lead in industrial and economic development. A false or inadequate view of the material world and the forces of nature has led to these peculiar and unwar- rantable notions. The people are devout. No more impressive sight ever comes to a Chris- tian traveler than that of a vast company of Parsees sitting in reverence and beautiful worship of the golden sun at its setting in Malabar Bay in Bombay. Nikko the Magnifi- cent in Japan is a fit dwelling place for the gods the Japanese reckon to be there, if beauty and grandeur can make it so. The mountains in their mass, the rivers in their mighty flow, the shady nooks and the silent valleys, the majestic sun and the mighty spheres have pressed upon great souls the consciousness of a power not themselves making for the deter-

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mination of the highest destiny of the human race, and they have poured out before them sincere adoration.

The multitudinous peoples and individuals who worship nature, or through nature, do not know nature. They worship not because of what they know but because of what they find mysterious, incomprehensible and awe-produc- ing. It is amazing how large a proportion of the earth's inhabitants, even among the ad- herents of Christianity, base their worship on the mysterious. Occultism has a peculiar charm and makes a marvelous appeal to those who identify the supernatural with the incom- prehensible. Christianity's sublime task is to make the supernatural intelligible and to flood with light the occult things of the human world. Darkness is no proper medium of spiritual virtues. Blindness is not predicable of the forces of nature simply because man does not see the processes by which they op- erate. The unknown is not necessarily the unknowable. The unknowable has been dem- onstrated to the most intellectual of the race to be not the realm of gods but the lamentable state of human incompetents. The task yet remains to illuminate fully this region of the unknown, clear it of the possibilities of bar-

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boring gods, and relate it to the intelligible world. Such an achievement will be fraught with perils, as well as productive of benedic- tions, to that portion of the race which has based religion upon this unknown in nature. Illumination that destroys error must reveal truth of finer force for humanity if it is to be held to an adequate purpose. This respon- sibility rests with those who set themselves to the construction of the new thought-life.

Ill

The human race can never be fully Chris- tian with an unreasonable and unfounded view of the material universe. Religious concep- tions based upon a view of nature and its forces which science will make, and has made, utterly untenable, will fall into confusion and pass into discard as people see the falsity of their foundations. Conceptions based upon ignorance can be supported and maintained only by ignorance. The progress of science has been the undoing of a vast amount of re- ligious thinking among the oriental peoples and has caused the revision of many tenets of Christian groups. Science going alone is a fearful iconoclast of faith and the generator

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of doubt, agnosticism and even atheism. It makes godless the vast groups who found their gods in and through the material world or based their beliefs upon interpretations of life and revelation which the developments of sci- ence have rendered untenable. It is a sad fact but there is nothing more characteristic of this period than the skepticism of the world in regard to religious things, due to the actual achievements of science and the materialistic spirit which it has generated and promoted. Even in the great laboratories of Christian countries, the investigators have become dog- matically skeptical of religious verities, and not infrequently have arrayed themselves against all religion. This attitude of scientists in the occidental lands where Christianity is religiously supreme, has made the establish- ment of an adequate faith along with modern science increasingly difficult in non-Christian countries. This effect of science upon the mind of the race has emphasized the necessity of a new inquiry into the basic principles of scien- tific truth, the demand for a fuller knowledge of nature than science frequently if not gener- ally has been able or willing so far to give. Science that reveals and systematizes the facts of nature and leads to its interpretation should

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be the handmaiden of religion and in no sense its foe.

Christianity can never make the world Chris- tian unless it can make Christian the world's science. In all world-plans the anti- Christian must be as much the subject of Christianiza- tion processes as the non- Christian. Failure to reach the former can eventually end in noth- ing less than failure to reach the latter. It is well recognized that so mighty a force as science has come to be in this day cannot be checked in its influential impact upon human- ity. If it carries a destructive principle the labor of constructing or reconstructing re- ligious conceptions will inevitably be hindered if not stopped. Irrefutable evidence in sup- port of this declaration can be easily and voluminously adduced. The task of Christian- ity is not only to make the non-Christian world scientific in order to produce a proper, reason- able and sufficient explanation of nature and an. effective reconstruction of their falsely founded religious tenets, but in addition, to make the world-of-knowledge Christian in the last analysis of its fundamental principles and in its impact upon religious faith. Science has proceeded upon the basis that it is without re- ligion; that is, negative in its attitude and re-

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lation to religion. In other words, it claims that religion is outside its realm of thought and application, and it purports to be colorless and without obligation with reference to the most vital and essential interests of man. This is the declared attitude of science and in reality this spirit has in no small measure passed from the colorless negative to derisive reproach, critical antagonism and active opposition. Europe and America, the home of Christianity in this age, are producing just such a science and giving it propagation in all the intellectual centers of the world. Such sources will cer- tainly send forth poisoning streams that must be counteracted if the human mind shall be kept free for the thinking of the higher and deeper thoughts with which religion is con- cerned. The world's science is essential to the world's progress, but genuine human progress cannot be measured simply by materialistic achievements. Man is too great in spiritual endowment to be compassed by materialistic science.

Christianity has not only fostered science in the Occident; it has been its pathmaker in the Orient. The two are the most powerful influences at work in the world to-day. Both are steadily making for a new \aew of life and

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its forces, and are leading to the complete over- throw of the conceptions of nature upon which religious belief has been sustained. Any- Christian propaganda which fails to take cog- nizance of the force of science either to de- stroy or to construct and support religious faith is blind and will find the ditch. Chris- tianization of the world can be accomplished only by the Christianization of the forces that make the world and of these none ranks higher than Science. Science is not merely the body of systematized facts concerning nature; it is a philosophy of nature. Facts must be inter- preted in order to eventuate in real knowledge. It is the interpretation with which Christianity is concerned, because in it are the issues of life. The metaphysics behind science furnish the bases of its explanations and interpretations, and make possible the Christian and spiritual, or the agnostic and materialistic views of life, its source and destiny. It has not been the affirmations of science but the metaphysical implications that have been antagonistic to religion. No body of scientific facts can truly be said to be detrimental to religious faith, but scientific theories which frequently have been deduced from those facts, have been made to carry a philosophy that has been adjudged

RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 85

hostile to the teachings, if not the very spirit of Christianity. It is this hostile philosophy which is impeding Christianity in its efforts to build up an adequate religious faith for humanity.

The man of science deals with phenomena but he requires an ultimate reality, a primal cause and a rational system of principles by which to make competent deductions. He may dissolve atoms into electrons but these points of energy require of the thinking mind ade- quate explanations. As the biologist scruti- nizes the movements of life, whether in the lowest, the highest, or the intervening forms, he is face to face with questionings as to the beginnings and endings, as to purpose and des- tiny. The geologist reads marvelous history in the crust of the earth, and he projects him- self back through the centuries and the cycles and asks, "Who or what did this? When? How?" The scientist cannot content himself with answering *'What is?" He must ask "How came it?" and not infrequently "Why came it?" Answers to these questions are not made by nature itself but by the inquiring human mind. Charles Darwin answered with his "Origin of the Species" and the "Descent of Man," and Haeckel with his "Riddle of the

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Universe." In these volumes they showed their power to acquire facts, but their utter inability to interpret them. Louis Agassiz and James D. Dana and Joseph Le Conte an- swered with a God-made world after the man- ner revealed by their geology. The nature of the ultimate reality cannot be determined by science or scientific method because that reality carries in itself attributes which evince personality, a force self-determining and self- conscious, in a realm beyond science. The sci- entist must have a philosophy as well as a sci- ence, and in his philosophy, by which he ex- plains the forces and principles underlying his science, he is on a plane with other thinkers and must take cognizance of all the interests and principles involved in the human effort to know the nature of the One Ultimate Real- ity and to come into proper relations to the final Being. Upon the plane of this philoso- phy men meet to find together their common, fit, and legitimate attitude to the Great Crea- tive Being.

The conflict between scientists and religion- ists arose in the unwillingness of each to give proper recognition to the other on the plane of philosophical generalization and determina- tion. Science was long weak and hesitating

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and was held in subjection to religious author- ity. The Christian Church for centuries was highly unfrier:^ly to any claims of science which in any way controverted its interpreta- tions of any parts of the Holy Scriptures or any of its doctrines formulated from these in- terpretations in a different scientific atmos- phere. Copernicus and Galileo were severely dealt with by the Church when they announced their great scientific discoveries, based upon well-determined facts, and now universally ac- cepted. The evolutionists were fiercely at- tacked in the early years and their teachings were grossly ridiculed, stubbornly resisted, and violently fought as monstrous perversions of inspired Scriptures. To be sure, the early evo- lutionary theories were far different from those of to-day, for in the course of fifty years the- ories of evolution have been greatly if not rad- ically modified. A marked change has also taken place in the attitude of religionists and churchmen toward the evolutionary philoso- phy. These modifications have been brought about on the one hand by scientists who were religionists, and on the other by religionists who were scientists. Truth can but harmonize with truth whatever the realms in which it may be found, and truth-seekers and truth-

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finders are well expected to make common cause. Unquestionably what there is of an- tagonism in the attitude of science toward re- ligion in this day is due in no small way to the attitude which a scholastic ecclesiasticism assumed in the days of the infancy of science and maintained through centuries. Science has become strong, virile, and confident, and still holds in vivid memory the onslaughts of the earlier unreasoning, self-sufficient and domi- nating ecclesiasticism, and has no incentive to make common cause with an old foe that has not yet fully demonstrated its change of heart. This accounts in no small way for the con- temptuous attitude of many scientists towards religion and its proponents and the confusion in scientific circles regarding the greater reali- ties lying back of all their marvelous holdings. Just so far as medieval ecclesiasticism survives and is dominant, science is in antagonism with it and must continue to be. Science is the champion of the free human spirit in its search for truth, and is therefore hostile to the tyr- anny of superstition, of obscurantism and des- potic ecclesiasticism.

That there is any necessary conflict between reasonable science and reasonable religion can scarcely be held in this day by fair-minded

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thinkers. Europe and America have produced many men of the highest scientific attainments who were and are devout defenders and faith- ful behevers in the Christ religion.

"And science came with humble feet To seek the God that faith had found."

The trouble has been and is with the offenders against reason on both sides who decline to be reconciled to the opposing party. This can be removed only by an adequate acquaintance with science by the one and a full knowledge of true religion by the other. The hope of harmony, cooperation and allied service to the world must come with that company of intel- ligently Christian men who devote themselves to the advancement of science. The conflict is not so much between science and religion as between a certain class of scientists and a certain school of theologians. A self-centered, self-righteous, imperialistic ecclesiasticism and an agnostic, self-sufficient science cannot be other than bitter foes to each other and at the same time merciless enemies to the highest interests of the race. If the world is to be made Christian in spirit and knowledge, these must be supplanted by exponents of a Chris- tian science and a scientific Christianity. The

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one is just as essential as the other. The pro- mulgators of an agnostic if not an atheistic science and the promoters of an ill-founded interpretation of Christianity, its principles, its purposes and its power, are sowing dragon's teeth in the wide fields of humanity which eventually will spring forth to wound and de- stroy the sons of men. The non-scientific and non-Christian world is being made the victim of this rashness. "The last state of that man is worse than the first." This can be remedied only by a new declaration of the fundamentals of Christianity, a new interpretation of life in keeping with those principles, and a new pronouncement of science recognizing the right and reasonableness of the Christian revelation, of the nature of the Ultimate Reality, the char- acter of the Creative Being, and allowing a place for the activities of a Supreme Person- ality in the world.

Christianity is compelled to recognize that in its efforts at world reconstruction to-day it is confronted with powerful, hostile rivals, superbly equipped and of massive strength, which did not actually exist in the early days of missionary endeavor. These have grown up in its own household and have been nour- ished by its own life. The university with

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its intellectual aristocracy is a new force in world relations and is fast becoming planet- wide in extent as well as in influence. It has built broad and well-supported approaches to the few chosen high and controlling minds among all peoples. For hostility to exist be- tween great centers of learning and the great- est agent for human redemption is to bring eternal disaster upon mankind. The course of action seems fairly clear. The university must be made an outstanding objective in world Christianization and a faithful ally as well. If Christianitj^ is the proper and ade- quate religion for the peoples now denomi- nated non-Christian, it should be made such for the great centers of knowledge in Europe and America from which the highest intellect- ual influences are going forth. It is a false conception that missionary effort is simply to fulfill an imperative obligation to the utterly ignorant, debased and helpless heathen world. It is that to be sure, but vastly more. The purpose of Christian missions is to command the forces that make the world and its con- ditions. It is not to weakness alone that Chris- tianity goes but strength and force and po- tentiality. These Christianity must command, control, guide and direct if the world moves

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to its legitimate goal as set forth in the lofty purpose of creation, interpreted by Jesus Christ. Christian missions is not a mere mat- ter of equatorial Africa, Central and Eastern Asia and all backward lands. The motives in missions originate not in the destitutions of man but in the sublime revelation of the ex- alted opportunity of the human race to attain unto divine conceptions and relations through Jesus Christ. The avenues by which Christ can best be made known to mankind, Chris- tianity must possess and hold.

The great forces of the university should be aligned with the highest agencies of the Christian propaganda. It can scarcely be ex- pected that this will be done upon the initiative of the university. It must come from the Christian Church. To be sure, it is frequently contended that the Church cannot foster and maintain universities, since the universities must be allowed their fundamental rights of freedom in teaching and freedom in investiga- tion and learning, and the Church cannot grant such freedom. Why should the Church be averse to such freedom if the university is made honest in dealing with Christianity? Those who have most boisterously demanded this freedom have been the worst offenders in

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denying to Christianity a fair and adequate presentation from the lecturer's desk. These traducers who have never even matriculated in the school of the Galilean Master always present Christianity in a false light or dis- miss it with a sneer. They confuse Christian- ity with sordid traditionalism, stubborn scho- lasticism, unmitigated medievalism and tyran- nical ecclesiasticism, and shut up their minds against the interpretations of Christianity made by their own contemporaries. Such ar- rogant ignorance has as often marked the col- lege professor in his defamation of religion as it has the churchman in his denunciation of scientific theories. Christianity asks only for fair treatment at the hands of those who claim the scientific spirit and the scholar's view- point. It feels no antagonism towards real knowledge or the quest therefor. It entertains the most profound regard for great learning and its application to the deepest interests of the race. It recognizes the fact that Christian- ity without scholarship is weak and fanatical, and scholarship without Christianity is dead and deadening. The two must be combined. The world can never be saved by scholarship and it can never be made truly Christian with- out it. Christian scholarship is the one thing

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essential to the illumination of the new world mind now in process of construction. The failure of Christianity to produce such scholar- ship, such learning, can result only in disaster to the movement now on to make the world Christian.

The Christian Church cannot escape the re- sponsibility of not only fostering but also of creating great universities as its missionary obligation. It must even go further and set as a missionary goal the thorough Christianiza- tion of the great centers of learning now in existence and sending forth immense currents of thought. This is by no means outside of the range of possibility. This does not mean and can never mean ecclesiastical domination. It means Christ-control, Christ-direction, and Christ-reenforceftient in the spirit, purpose and supreme objectives of the institution. With such institutions of the highest attain- ments in scholarship and broadest sweep in scientific investigation and philosophical gen- eralization, Christianity would be furnished with mighty and adequate agencies for the construction and reconstruction of human thought and its resultant civilization. To be satisfied with anything less is to court ultimate failure in the final consummation of the com-

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plete progress of Christianity. That the task is monstrously difficult and seemingly fraught with the impossible will be readily admitted, but it lies athwart the way of ultimate success and must be undertaken and carried forward with power, wisdom, courage and confidence. From it there is no escape.

Christian missions have come to the day when they must think in the large as regards agencies as well as fields and goals. Some men are fond of quoting Paul: "God has chosen the weak things to confound the things that are mighty." That translation may carry an erro- neous view. The better translation is, "God has chosen the things which the world regards as destitute of influence in order to put its powerful things to shame." It takes force to meet force, and energy in proportion to the lift. God works on that principle and man dares not neglect it. With half the world illiterate and the masses of humanity utterly abashed and confounded before the forces of nature, driven to the creation of gods to satisfy and support their ignorance, something majes- tically great and comprehensive must be enter- prised. With more than half of those who are only semi-literate absolutely without compe- tent conceptions of the real meaning of things,

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man or God, there is no place for a program of weakness and hopeful passiveness. With great centers of learning emitting clouds of doubt and muddy streams of entangled thought, there is a clear challenge to an ex- hibition of power, comprehension and divine energy. Little plans were quite sufficient for the days of talking like a child, thinking like a child, and arguing like a child, but in full manhood's maturity one should be done with childish ways. The statesman in planning, the general in mobilizing forces, the master-builder in laying foundations are now in demand at the front in the new Christian movement for world salvation and direction. Agencies equal to the gigantic task must be discovered, cre- ated or commandeered. The missionary proj- ect grows greater as the scope of its task be- comes more clearly defined. If there were no object beyond the conversion of a few souls to the Christian faith in order to insure their safe delivery to the heavenly world, the bur- den would not be increased by the changing conditions of the human family; it would be simply the matter of reaching those individ- uals. But the Church to-day cannot be con- tent with such a conception of its full duty. The world task is world construction and re-

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construction to meet the requirements of Christ's principles, ideals and passions. The thought, religion, social relations, purposes and aspirations of the entire race are to be brought into Christ's domain and be made to bear his spirit and fit into his plan for mankind. With such a scope the task of missions becomes ap- palling unless influences of like sweep and agencies of like scale can be put into operation. The Church must set itself resolutely to pro- vide these agencies and bind them irrevocably to the work to be done.

Education is unquestionably the most deter- minative process for thought reconstruction as well as construction and is therefore the feature of primary and chief concern in missionary propaganda. There must be great institutions of the highest merit and thoroughly Christian in the strategic centers of the world's peoples. The world needs a school system equal to the demands of the world intelligence, wisely con- structed and rigidly enforced, until intellectual destitution is entirely obliterated. Without adequate educational facilities, there can be no hope of world-wide uplift. That the people would appreciate and embrace the advantages w^hich educational institutions would insure cannot be expected. The demand for educa-

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tion and the thirst for knowledge must be cre- ated. It is this which constitutes the real problem in education. The society in which gross illiteracy exists has no competent answer to the question, "Why should I be educated, why should I know things?" Those who com- mand that society are frequently quite content with the existing state because usually their interests are in some way advanced thereby. They may be politicians, or traders, or em- ployers, or priestly ecclesiastics. Illiteracy be- fits best their selfish purposes, and they are not merely indifferent, but are even antagonis- tic to movements that would lift the people to a new level of thought and living. Common intelligence will equip men for democracy ; and an intelligent democracy will not endure an oligarchy. Common intelligence lifts the pro- ducer and the laborer to a position of com- petent judgment and he will not tolerate the deception of the trader or the oppression of the employer. Common intelhgence gives wis- dom to the worshiper and he will no longer bow to an image, mutter prayer formulas and submit to priestly authority over soul destiny. Wherever there is oligarchy in government, oppression in industry, and priestcraft in re- ligion, gross illiteracy always abounds, whether

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in the Orient, southern Asia, the Mediterra- nean littoral or Latin America. Which is the cause and which is the effect? Whatever the answer the fact remains that an adequate school system for all mankind cannot be constructed and sent in, but it must grow out of the people's consciousness of their own need and be adapted to that need. The question then arises, How can the consciousness of the people be awak- ened and aroused to its need? What will de- termine the character of that need? This pre- education stimulus must find its sources out- side what the people now have or have ever had and be sustained by motives born of ex- alted purpose.

IV

The impact of Christian civilization has awakened educational interests in proportion to its force. Central Asia, Middle Africa, the vast islands of the sea where Christian civiliza- tion has been little felt show small sign of any educational aspirations. The people of the Near East have sat passive under the deaden- ing blight of Mohammedanism. Japan has taken over bodily all that Christian civilization has had to offer. What it could not adopt, it adapted, including not only the habiliments of

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peace, but also the implements of war. The country is small, the population compact, the government highly centralized and any impact could be readily distributed and quickly assim- ilated. Its school system is comprehensive, compulsory educational laws are in force, illit- eracy has been practically wiped out, great uni- versities have been established and are marvel- ously patronized, and splendid institutions of technology have been provided for large bodies of earnest students. This educational devel- opment may be ascribed to the outgrowth of the new national consciousness, but the stim- ulus had an external source. That which makes Japan great to-day is what it received through Christianity and the products of Christianity. Its school system was the crea- tion of a Christian missionary. There is no modern mission that owes more to Christianity than Japan, the little giant nation of the entire East. The pity of it is that the Japanese are not ready and willing to make this acknowl- edgment, to go farther and accept Christianity as their religion, national and personal. The Christian Church should press constantly for this decision. China has not received such an impact nor come to such an awakening. Its territory is immense and its population prodi-

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gious. For centuries it has been sufficient unto itself. The impact of the outside world was vigorously withstood until within the last quar- ter of a century. The Christian nations forced open its ports and compelled the establishment of relations with the country. The Christian missionary has given freely of his sacrificial life and has mediated unto the people some benefits of the Christian civilization. But China has as yet built meagerly a school sys- tem and educational institutions, although it has done so in proportion to the assimilation of the impact of Christianity and Christian civilization. India has never felt any religious impact from the EngHsh government. This is in keeping with the British policy. Because of this, one is inclined to believe, there has never been any real demand in India for universal education. To-day there are on in that land the most remarkable mass movements towards Christianity. In no country has there ever been such a tidal wave of the common people toward Christianity. The movement is creat- ing in the people an almost unreliable demand for education. They want now to read, to read the Bible, and to read of the world from which the Christians have come. Why is it that only now they want to read? In the

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Levant and in all other parts of the world it is just as true that the impact of modern evangelical Christianity produces this educa- tional reaction and in proportion to that im- pact. The quality of the education sought is largely if not entirely determined by the direct- ness and force of the genuinely Christian in- fluence felt.

The world is being awakened to its educa- tional needs not only by the impact of Chris- tian civilization, the product of Christian teach- ing and living, but also as the direct result of the very seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ which has been widely sown in the earth, and which has in many places come to a glorious harvest. Missionaries of Christ are uniformly educators of the people. This may not always be true of simply missionaries of a church. The seed of the gospel is a life germ and quickens the very soil into which it goes. The influence of the gospel in this new formative period has already become stupendous. With twenty-five thousand missionaries on the field and eighty-six institutions of higher learning, five hundred twenty-two normal school and training classes, one thousand seven hundred boarding and high schools, two hundred ninety industrial training schools, thirty thousand ele-

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mentary and village schools in operation the work of education may be said to be going for- ward. It is not so much the actual literary instruction in these institutions which is most significant; it is the power of the great ideals which they generate that is tearing open new channels for the mental life of the world. They release the intellectual energies of young leaders and inspire them to the reconstruction of the thought of their people. They are pro- ducing an intellectual ferment in the staid mentalities of the "cabined and confined" souls, and this will eventuate in the explosion of old conceptions and the clearing away of a mass of dumped debris of the centuries. The achievements in education in one century of evangelical missions have been truly phenom- enal. They are but the index to what can be possible with agencies commensurate with the task.

The Christian missionary keeps before him constantly the great objective in Christian ed- ucation, which is the awakening, energizing, de- velopment and equipment of personality. That is the sphere of Christian creation and salvation. The materialistic educator, whether agnostic, atheist or religiously indifferent, focuses his energies on things to be known;

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the Christian educator upon persons to be evolved and brought to mastery in the world of power. The awakening of personality to the consciousness of its own powers, capabil- ities and purposes is primary with the Christian teacher, and he draws on all resources for the achievement of this end. The quality of the human mind is immeasurably elevated when the purpose of knowledge is shown to be the production of individuality. Pagan teachers are not all confined to non- Christian lands. What else are those who erect the idols of science, philosophy, and classical lore, worship before them, and leave their students to get their uplift by witnessing that worship? The Christian teacher teaches persons as well as Subjects. His religion has put man in the foreground of his thought and his responsibil- ity. The object of all revelation, whether by creation or inspiration, is the edification and salvation of man, the individual, the person- ality, the being capable of power and the exer- cise of dominion over the material world. The Christian missionary has gone forth to exalt personality in the world and he has done it, and because of that fact he has made way and pro- vided means for the largest progress of man- kind. The religion which he promulgates and

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promotes keeps personality at the center, whether in private hfe or public society, in the school room or the sanctuary.

The Christian's philosophy of the world in which he lives is an outgrowth of the emphasis on personality which the Christian religion re- quires. He lives in a personal world. A self- conscious, self -determining, knowing Being was the infinite cause and responsible agent in creation and is the power by which all things move to their appointed ends. The universe is the manifestation of his will, his thought, his purpose and finds explanation in his poten- tialities. The Infinite Cause being intelligent, moral and personal and in complete control, there can be no hazardous chance or imper- sonal concatenation of forces operating loosely in the world to the possible final peril of man and creation. Nature is not some extraneous unrelated force, but the method in which mani- festations of energy are made. The character of the final energy is determined by its source. There is a ''far off divine event to which the whole creation moves," because the force in the movement is the Personal Power that in- augurated the creation. With Supreme Rea- son and Supreme Righteousness, coupled with Supreme Power, in the ongoing of all things,

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the world is in a legitimate way to consummate its original divine goal. God is concerned with the problems of this world because they are His, as well as man's, and he has pledged his powers for their solution. He who believes that God created the world and then went away is the most deceived of men. God rules the world by acting in it and through it and not by imposing His authority upon it. The Divine Personality is immanent in man's world.

An educational system built upon such a philosophy and carried forward with the pur- pose of lifting human personality to the high- est possible power cannot fail to revolutionize the thought of a people given over to animism, pantheism, fatalism and aspirations for Nir- vana. The introduction of a clear-cut con- ception of a personal God, intelligent, ethical, with unity, self-consciousness, self-control and self-direction to the thinking of the Orient would dispel the appalling haze and set the sun in its bewildering sky. The Orient is wanting in the sense of personality, whether in the infinite or finite. The identification of na- ture with spirit forces is due to a lack of com- prehension of what nature is and what spirit is. To explain nature even by the most complete

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science and fail to explain spirit by just as complete and well-founded philosophy will leave confusion worse confounded and turn the mind to inevitable agnosticism. Destroying man's false conceptions of nature or of spirits is not a complete objective, and standing alone, a very doubtful end in itself. What man needs is such a philosophy of the world and the sentient forces that act upon it that nature slips normally into its own place, the creatures of imagination pass with the hfted fog of in- comprehension, and personal powers are en- throned in all dominions. Man in the ill- illumined world needs the light of science, to be sure, but more he needs an interpretation of the material world and a philosophy of human life and destiny in keeping with his demonstrated worth and highest aspira- tions. The Christian education purports to give this interpretation, and in conformity with it to reconstruct the thought of the mind- enthralled peoples. Personality is the key principle by which Christianity hopes to un- lock the minds of the race. Whether in sci- ence, philosophy, government, society or re- ligion, personality is the active principle and determines the state and progress of all. A less objective than the full development of this

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supreme and controlling factor in world life and thought, education can not afford to set and faithfully endeavor to achieve.

The missionary in the new era must be a philosopher; that is, be able to propose, ex- pound and sustain a philosophy of the world in harmony with the spiritual view of things which Jesus revealed and always maintained. He opened new channels of religious thinking because he created new conceptions of God and the world in which man lived. Paul, in the spirit of the teachings of Jesus, dealt with Greek philosophy as a master because his view of the entities which the philosophers treated made their teachings vain. The day came, however, when this same Hellenism was trans- formed under the influence of the gospel and became directive in theological thought. Hu- man philosophy is the natural product of the developed human mind in its reaction to the world in which it exists, and it cannot be sup- pressed. Man will think, and his systematized thought becomes his philosophy. The nature of that philosophy is determined by the mat- ter and manner of his thinking. The logic may be good and the conclusion false, because the premises from which the thinking began are without proper foundations. The particular

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may be taken for the universal and the entire fabric of thought fall as a consequence. This is exactly the case in the non-Christian and semi-Christian world. The conclusions reached and fashioned into principles have a false or inadequate foundation. The material world has been only partially known, and yet a comprehensive philosophy of nature, from which has come the philosophy of life and re- ligion, has been built up. Error has been un- avoidable. Nature has been interpreted on too limited knowledge and the human life has received false direction by this improper in- terpretation. The only hope of changing the basis of life is in the full knowledge of nature and its methods and a reasonable philosophy that will unify and interpret all the facts of nature in harmony with the personal principle which Christianity has made essential to crea- tion and the movement of the universe. The Christian philosophy of the material world is absolutely necessary to the thought of the race becoming Christian. The reconstruction of the human mind can be satisfactorily achieved in no other way.

To meet the philosophy of the people to be Christianized, the missionary must be ac- quainted with the field of philosophical think-

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ing and thoroughly settled in a Christian phi- losophy which he can clearly expound and forcibly maintain. In the city of Montevideo, the capital of the most progressive of the South American republics, the show windows of the book stores are filled with the works of Huxley, Spencer, Haeckel and Comte. In South Brazil the leaders in politics and educa- tion are Positivists in philosophy, religion and the principles of government. In both places the thought leaders are enemies of the dom- inant church and practically agnostic in all thinking. To be sure, they need a new inter- pretation of Christianity far superior to any they have had, but they will not be inclined to accept it until they are converted to a new philosophy built upon modern scientific facts and principles. This condition is rapidly de- veloping in all parts of the world. It can be met only by an interpretation of the world which is convincing. The missionary who will be equal to this condition must be intelligent in science and philosophy. Much pseudo- philosophy in the form of theosophy and oc- cult spirituahsm has arisen in many sections among people who have some intellectual con- ceits but limited intellectual equipment. They can be made free only by teachers who can

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turn light upon their immature thinking. This portion of the people, with all their intellectual foibles and pretensions, can be said to show a certain mental awakening and to be in the process of thought reconstruction. They re- quire new masters for the steps ahead. The missionaries who cannot show thought and comprehension of science and philosophy equal to theirs will necessarily be relegated in their labors to a lower intellectual stratum of so- ciety. If they cannot compete in thought with mature minds they must seek the realm of childhood and delayed intelligence as their field of labor. Unfortunately this field is more largely occupied than the upper, and all because of this lack of equipment in science and philosophy. But the upper must be pos- sessed if civilization is to be transformed. The strongholds of civilization should be captured for Christianity. The forces for this achieve- ment must be found. The new adventures in missions must be into the realm of the masters of society, and plans for placing genuine Chris- tianity with its philosophy and interpretation of the facts of the world strongly before these leaders of the race should be wisely and speed- ily projected.

The world cannot be made Christian with-

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out a proper interpretation of nature, but that interpretation is based almost entirely upon the conception of God. Heathenism and paganism are due to an inadequate conception of God. Pantheism with its resultant poly- theism came out of the haze as to God and his relation to the world. God that explains the universe, with man its greatest fact, makes paganism, pantheism and the entire fabric of demonology utterly baseless. The doctrine of God is the missionary's chief means of thought reconstruction in the peoples of his field. It is there his philosophy of the world begins and there it will end. When science sweeps away all the conceptions of nature which half the people of the earth now hold, a thing it will eventually do, the doctrine of God will be the bridge over which the mind will pass to the newly discovered mainland of abiding truth. Theism gives to science and religion a common source and justification, and offers the basis for the new thought life of mankind. Without such a philosophy as theism presents and main- tains, the missionary is totally at sea in the presence of the animism of the unlettered, the agnosticism of the erudite, the fatalism of the Moslem and the medievalism of the ecclesias- tic. Grounded on theism with its attendant

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philosophy of personalism, the missionary is thoroughly equipped for interpreting to men the world in which they live and the God from whom they came and in whom they live, move and have their being. With such a knowledge men are ready to lay hold on life and lift it to the fulfillment of the divine purpose.

The intellectual atmosphere of the mission- ary is the chief element in his or her recon- structive influence in the community. The missionary is expected to stand for something intellectually and be capable of aiding the peo- ple to think in new channels and arrive at new points of view. The mind that quickens mind and that starts new strains of thought coursing through the system is a battery of great power in society. An exhibition of intellectual strength and honesty enlists sympathy and es- tablishes confidence. The character of mind, the breadth of its knowledge, the integrity of its thinking, the force of its thoughts, mark the possessor and measure his capacity for in- tellectual leadership. The mental life of the missionary must show growth with the years to meet the increased expectations and require- ments. But the intellectual equipment for de- livering a true philosophy of life is of primary importance in the work of reconstructing and

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constructing the thought of the human race. The preparation of missionaries, whatever else it may include, should have as its objective the making of men and women intellectually ca- pable of taking the mental bearings of the people they are to serve, and setting the courses by which they may find themselves in the common life of mankind. They are to lead men to think forcibly, honestly, ethically, the thoughts of God in their application to society and government. They are to quicken into action the productive powers of the human in- tellect which under the lead of the great ideals and principles that Christianity sets forth eventuate in a new human creation. There is no place nor justification for intellectual flabbi- ness in the missionary of the new era. There is a challenge to the highest intellectual endow- ment and equipment in the world's acute need of intellectual reconstruction.

What is it that Christianity must do in the world to make all the people think Christian? That question Christian missionaries cannot retire. It must be faced now and kept ever in

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the foreground of all necessary endeavor. The world will not act Christian until it thinks Christian. First, it must be realized that men- tal inertia exists in a vast proportion of the human family and that it must be overcome before there can be anything worth the name. To remove the inertia and enable and incite the people to think is a gigantic task, but Christianity is under solemn obligation to face it as its task and face it with a force sufficient to its mastery. The forces of Christianity are equal to this task if they could be mobilized and unified for a common deliverance upon the one matter. But it will require the joint ac- tion of government, commerce, learning and religion, set to lift humanity out of the fearful state of intellectual destitution. Such joint action is not only a possibility, but human conditions make it a human and a Christian obligation. The time has come when Chris- tian missionary propaganda must employ all possible influence for the mobilization of all Christian forces for the preparation of the world to think, and to think Christian. The removal of mental inertia and the stimulation of half the world to aspirations for knowledge and the means for obtaining it are of primary

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consideration. This will require not only the establishment of many educational institutions, but the construction and inauguration of com- prehensive school systems. To this labor Christian missionaries may well give sympathy and strong support and that directive influ- ence which will insure open avenues for the production of Christian thinking.

The missionary propaganda, if criticism is permissible, has been wanting in a clear-cut educational policy. It is indeed remarkable how much has been accomplished in the for- eign fields in view of the fearful mental in- ertia, the meager resources placed at the mis- sionary's command, and the limited training of the average missionary in educational mat- ters. But there has been no educational sys- tem and httle effort at coordination in what has been done by the various societies. Even the educational institutions projected and maintained by the same organization usually have little or no relation to each other. The time has come when leaders in the missionary movement must think in terms of an educa- tional system with standardized courses and coordinated institutions. Only in this way can the several countries be best educationally served, the nucleus and example for a national

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system be created, and the products of Chris- tian effort be conserved.

On many fields the educational forces greatly need reenforcement from the Christian educational leaders in the highly developed countries. The counsel of great educational thinkers and administrators in the United States and Great Britain, who know the ob- jective of the missionary movement and are in sympathy with it, is needed in the formula- tion of policies and systems which the mission- aries will carry out. Such Christian educators of comprehensive thought and extended ex- perience should be related and even personally attached to the movements for the common education of the people and that higher in- struction necessary to the production of leaders. This would probably necessitate vis- its to the fields by these educators in order to obtain a very intimate and comprehensive knowledge of conditions. But whatever may be the requirement, the end in view is so far- reaching that the best possible intelligence should be enlisted for its attainment.

The high objective in the missionary propa- ganda of reconstructing the thinking of the world cannot be attained without great centers of learning in the midst of the people to be

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reached which sustain the atmosphere and evince the control of the Christ spirit. Leaders must be produced for all realms and depart- ments of social and national life who can think great thoughts and will think constantly Chris- tian. The ultimate aim should never be lost sight of, the production of the towering Chris- tian leader for government, for business, for scientific and philosophical instruction and for definite Christian service. Governments can never be put on a higher basis if minds are not produced imbued with great ideas and ideals of government. Society can never rise to a new level except by the ability and spirit of native and national leaders intellectually keen and masterful and thoroughly acquainted with the progress of the race. Universities that are simply aggregations of professional and voca- tional schools, whose courses are built upon preliminary work in secondary institutions never reaching beyond two years of collegiate training, and seldom going that far, cannot meet the case. Government schools have usually as their chief purpose the preparation of governmental employees and political lead- ers. Such universities and governmental schools dominate all Latin America. As a consequence there is lacking the high mental

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development of a great citizenship for a genu- ine democracy; and genuine democracy does not exist, but rather an oligarchy. There must be a higher thinking than these institu- tions produce, and freer, for the inauguration of new and larger political and social move- ments. Scholarship that commands science and philosophy as well as the classics and his- tory is indispensable to great thinking and true. The production of such scholarship by fully developed native or national scientists and philosophers can be hoped for only at the end of a long process of constructive instruc- tion in genuine learning and genuine Chris- tianity. The world must be brought to the conception that education is the process of ex- panding horizons. Woodrow Wilson, teacher and statesman, has said: "The object of a lib- eral training is not learning, but discipline and the enlightenment of the mind. The educated man is to be discovered by his point of view, by the temper of his mind, by his attitude toward life and his fair way of thinking." Whatever else Christian missions may do, without great centers for the production of Christian scholarship of the highest possible merit and comprehensive sweep, the superb objective of reconstructing the thought of the

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race cannot be attained, and Christianity will have lost its best, if not its only, chance of making the world think Christian. Through knowledge and knowledge only Christianity gets its voice and delivers its full message of life and destiny. Men will never come to their stature except as they are brought to the eter- nal foundation of truth. Christianity may ex- claim with the words of St. Paul: "A great door and effectual is opened unto me."

If ever educated young men and young women had a challenge to a task worthy of their highest powers, they are having it to-day from the vast illiterate mind-locked and life- darkened mass in the non-Christian and semi- Christian world. They are met on the very threshold of their careers with a Macedonian cry more urgent than fell upon the ears of St. Paul, ''Come over and help us." But only those who can help need go. Masters of sci- ence, interpreters in philosophy, princes in knowledge who can think God's thoughts after Christ, and who are capable of skilled labor in constructing and reconstructing human thought, have an open way in a great world. To this challenge may the answer be in strong and sustained chorus :

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Lead on, O King eternal.

We follow, not with fears; For gladness breaks like morning

Where'er thy face appears; Thy cross is lifted o'er us;

We journey in its light — The crown awaits the conquest.

Lead on, O God of might.

LECTURE III: CREATING HUMAN- MINDEDNESS

The missionary propaganda of evangelical Christianity began with the burning impulses of devout persons who heard the call of the world and felt the thrust of the Christ mission and injunction. They went forth to "save men" through their faith in Jesus Christ as a personal Redeemer. Their own subjective ex- perience was the impelling force and the pri- mary objective for the lost heathen peoples. They went forth to preach "Jesus Christ and him crucified," and that only as the gospel of salvation. Their zeal was holy and intense; their purpose divine and resolute. They were upheld by the faithful prayers of the churches that they left behind, who had no other conceptions of the missionary's labor than that of preaching the simple gospel. The churches, with the missionaries, believed in the efficacy of this gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit to consummate the object of these tremendous sacrifices and consuming labors. While the

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missionaries found the execution of their pro- gram more troublesome than they had ex- pected, and the conditions under which "salva- tion" might be accomplished extremely diffi- cult to produce, the churches at home came very slowly to a realization of the necessity of a larger process for human salvation than they had first conceived.

The missionary movement began as the re- sponse to the call of the individual. Men hear only the calls which they are capable of receiv- ing. The Church of the early centuries of its Roman era heard with the ears of Rome which had been accustomed to world terms. It took people in the mass, as did the empire to whose heritage it succeeded. Its missionary propa- ganda was in the mass movement. Nations were born into this historic church in a day. This has always been true of Romanism. Not so have been the missionary methods and re- sults in Protestantism. The evangelical mis- sionary propaganda has been almost entirely by non-conformists, independent and individ- ualistic religious bodies. Baptists and Pres- byterians, Congregationalists and Methodists, have been the chief agents in missionary activi- ties, while the State Churches have been con- tent w^ith meager endeavors. These great

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bodies of religious individualists have very naturally sent forth the bearers of an individ- ualistic salvation, and have been slow to recog- nize any other reason for the missionary effort than that of simply declaring a gospel of per- sonal salvation in Jesus Christ. So far as pos- sible, these Christian bodies have typed the men and women who have represented them in the non-Christian lands. The world made no call to them; it was the lost souls in heathen darkness.

The individualist conceptions and convic- tions regarding religion found a most favor- able atmosphere during the last three cen- turies. Some of the greatest thinkers of the period looked upon society as simply a com- pact among individuals. Edmund Burke said: "It is a partnership in all science, a part- nership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfections." Hobbs and Locke, great philosophers, held the extremely indi- vidualistic view that society was simply a con- tract among persons who were independent, self-governing, and free from control except by contract, and that contract was formed sim- ply for mutual advantages. There was no sense of responsibility for the community life, nor a sense of the necessity for society. The

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members of the wild tribes without restraint of society or responsibihty for the social body were admirable types of free men, of truly human beings. The natural rights were in- alienable. This philosophy of the individu- alist in government and social relations was dominant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was in this same period that in- dependentism showed itself in church and state. The Puritans and the Covenanters were exponents of this philosophy and were promul- gators and promoters of it in England and America. Individualism in religion and in government, state and ecclesiastical, was char- acteristic not only of that period, but of the outcome of that period. The Declaration of Independence in America bore unmistakable marks of this doctrine, and the long standing doctrine of state rights was not put aside until the Civil War, when it was overcome in the contest to abolish slavery. But the spirit of the people of the United States to this day, as shown in the presidential campaign of 1920, responds quickly to the appeal of individualism in government and world society. The sense of community responsibility, when the com- munity is the world, is but poorly developed in comparison with the sense of individualistic

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importance. The contract theory of society is still in the ascendency. The individual unit, whether personal or national, has no obliga- tion except what it assumes. Salvation of the person or the nation is individualistic and is the supreme end to be sought. Such is the phi- losophy whether in government or religion. Under its powerful influence the evident teach- ings of the gospel and of the prophets were neglected, if not ignored.

The Reformation may be in no limited de- gree responsible for this individualism in re- ligion. Romanism has always abused individu- alism by its imposition of social control. It has always denied the right of individual opin- ion, the power of individual action, and the possibility of salvation by individual means. The Christian community, as epitomized in the church organization, has subsumed the in- dividual and makes bold to assert its sufficiency for consummating the highest interests, hu- man and divine, to which the individual may be entitled. The rebellion against such un- warranted religious tyranny found expression in the most pronounced religious individualism. Not only were the possibilities of individual religious experience stressed and stoutly main- tained, but they were made the chief objectives

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in all religious effort. With the opening of America religious individualism found the at- mosphere and conditions in which it thrived. Worshiping God according to the dictates of conscience and not according to the dictates of ecclesiastics led to the most far-reaching ex- pressions of individualism. That religion be- came exceedingly forceful and effective thereby cannot be questioned. Denomination- alism had free rein and religious views were unrestrained. The distinctively American Churches came to their strength and mass by emphasis on individual religion and the processes by which the individual became per- sonally religious. The churches which are dis- tinctively ritualistic are largely importations, being brought by vast bodies of unassimilated immigrants. But the assertive, aggressive, strongly spiritual churches of the United States have been and are vigorously individu- alistic in their theology and in their methods of propaganda. The personal Christian life, through regeneration by the Holy Spirit, is the essential thing in the thought and life of the American Churches.

It IS well recognized that the redemption of a lost w^orld must begin with the redemption of the lost man. But in order to complete re-

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demption he must be reconstructed in every- thing that distinguishes him as a man. He not only thinks poorly, but he thinks error and evil and is not ashamed. His will is not only in- adequate to his earthly task, but it is perverse. The very spirit of him is distorted. He is out of relations with the world in which he lives. He is at war with the nature of which he is a part. He grovels without vision and resents the fate that binds him. Man is lost, and be- fore he can get back home he must establish intelligent relations with his surroundings and get his direction for the new course. What must take place in him before he finds him- self, relates himself properly and adequately to his world, and gets his bearings for a destiny that covers more than one sphere? Vision de- pends upon the organs of sight, but also upon the atmosphere through which the eyes are to see. It was an apostolic discovery that the gos- pel of Christianity had in it the power to pro- duce the experience of personal salvation. Has it also the power of such thorough recon- struction of man as will eventuate in the re- construction of this world? This power hu- manity must realize before the world becomes Christian.

While redemption is of man, it is not of man

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in his solitariness. Man is not a detached be- ing, but, as Homer made Ulysses to say, a part of all he had met. He is also a part of much he has not met. It was the compre- hensiveness of the humanity of Jesus that en- abled him to exhibit the perfect life. The complete salvation of the individual must in- volve the sources from which the individu- ality is made up. The Christian ascetics of the middle centuries realized this and sought de- tachment in monasteries and convents in order to attain holiness. But they found themselves incapable of detachment. Bernard of Clair- vaux was one of the most saintly of these, and yet his busy hands made kings to tremble and popes to rise and fall. "No man liveth unto himself." The inheritance from Adam was the commonality of humanity, and only through that commonality will humanity ever be able to regain the first estate. Selfishness is a poor mark of holiness, and yet sainthood has usually been sought in abnegation of hu- man claims. Bondage to Christ can never mean less than obligation to man. There is personal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, but in its very nature it carries the sense of responsibility for what Christ came to accomplish. To be a Christian is to have

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the sense of human kinship accentuated and the demands of human welfare and human re- demption made imperative.

The objectives in missionary endeavor should be first clearly defined, as they regulate the agencies and processes that may be em- ployed in the consummation of the supreme end. Is the objective to save men out of the world and to build up for that purpose a church in the world destined to hold aloof from the world? Is '^saving souls" the primary, the inclusive, the only genuine objective in mis- sionary endeavor? Is Christ preached when this gospel of selection and election is pro- claimed? Did Christ have as his mission the populating of heaven, or the regeneration and final redemption of the human race, whether that race occupied this world or some other? The latter is a much greater task and the processes involved are enormous, and the prob- able time required indefinitely vast. Is this latter possible to Christ, and would it be worthy of his divine labors? The idea of the salvation of the human race as a race, with all that it involves and that this program involves, has usually been ignored. Men have spoken of the by-products of Christian activities, meaning those results which could not be tabu-

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lated under conversions and church member- ship. This is a mistake. There are no by- products of Christianity or of the Christian propaganda, but products all, direct and de- signed. The obligation and function of Chris- tianity is to change this world into a kingdom of God. It is its province to stimulate and guide the progress of humanity, to command, control, direct and sustain the energies of mankind, to imbue all human relations with the spirit of Christ, and to create the confi- dent consciousness in human lives of divine re- lationship and divine kinship.

II

There have always been two views of the es- sential and primary work of missions. The exclusivists hold that the Scriptural mode of evangelization had to do only with the pro- claiming of the gospel, and that this is the only proper work of a missionary. They do not recognize the fact that the apostles preached to a people prepared for centuries and by their entire history for the reception of the gospel. They had the prophets as a background of all that the apostolic evangelists proclaimed. The Messiah had long been expected. The entire

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world with which they dealt was permeated with the atmosphere of the basal religion upon which Christianity built. There was no need of a transformation of thought and reconstruc- tion of society in order to create an intelligent apprehension of the new doctrine. The history of the Christian movement from the apostolic days until now shows decidedly that Chris- tianity moves upon a prepared way and with- out this preparation has never taken immedi- ate hold upon the human heart. Before the Christ fact has become real and vital to the conscious soul there has always been the con- version of the mind and the preparation of the very conditions of human conceptions. The view that the preaching of the gospel is the only true work of missions has not been held long by those who became great missionaries and who have been the mighty forces in bring- ing in the new era of world life, thought and religious inquiry. These missionaries found that they must prepare the soil before a har- vest could be produced.

Robert Morrison labored in China eighteen years without a conversion and could count only six after a quarter of a century of faith- ful, heroic, God-directed apostolic work. Why was that? Why was it that William Carey,

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the consecrated cobbler, the great path-breaker of modern missions, found it exceedingly de- sirable, if not absolutely necessary, to provide a school, a printing press, a physician and sur- geon as indispensable to the successful preach- ing of the gospel in India? Why was it that Alexander Duff, that great Scotchman, after a decade of untiring effort, set himself to de- stroy the ancient system of life by the intro- duction of western science and literature, and justified himself by declaring, "We directed our view not merely to the present, but to future generations"? He held from the be- ginning that the receptive, plastic minds must be molded to the Christian system of thought and life in order to the proper conception of the Christian faith. Robert Morrison failed to make converts because there was no founda- tion in the Chinese mind and life upon which he could build a faith in Jesus Christ. There was no atmosphere to sustain such a faith. The zeal that sent forth the flaming evangelists could be applied only according to the knowl- edge which experience readily and forcibly im- parted.

The inclusive view of missions set the pro- grams of the masters in missionary enterprise. William Carey, Alexander Duff, and Adoni-

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ram Judson in India and Burmah; David Liv- ingstone, James Stewart, and Robert Moffatt in Africa; Robert Morrison, Hudson Taylor, W. A. P. Martin, Young J. Allen and Timo- thy Richards in China, G. F. Verbeck, C. M. Williams and the Lambuths in Japan, Cyrus Hamlin and the Blisses in the Levant, John G. Paton in the Fijis, Hiram Bingham in Hawaii, William Butler in Mexico, and Wil- liam Taylor in South America and Africa were reconstructionists of life and thought in those lands, and they left the nations with a bent toward Christian civilization and the Christian religion. The biographies of these modern apostles reveal such effectiveness of that mode of evangelization as to warrant its continuance. They went forth to preach Christ as a personal Savior to those who would accept him, and they lingered to proclaim the Kingdom of God as the medium through which Christ is to become the Savior of all men. The latter is not in contradiction to the former, but is inclusive of it and the conditions in which this primary truth may be realized. They left a world in awe before the possibilities of such a kingdom of God and in anticipation of a Messiah that shall bring salvation to all people. In the opinion of many superior Christian

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men of thought, insight and outlook, vision and comprehension, there is no greater barrier to- day to the world's becoming Christian than the distressing lack of human-mindedness in the Christian Church. Until this day a great body of very sincere and devout Christians have no thought or desire of making the world Christian. They are strongly antagonistic to the idea and actively opposed to any mission- ary program that has such as its objective. They are concerned only in the conversion of individuals in such quantities as to compel Jesus Christ to return to the earth and set up his authority, and by his might restore right. They boldly assert that the world is getting worse and worse and will continue until it be- comes utterly unbearable, when Jesus will come and usher in the millennium. Instead of endeavoring to make the world human, they rejoice as it is made inhuman. Instead of wanting peace they are hilarious over wars and rumors of war. They never were so con- fident and so assertive of their doctrines and so prophetic in their interpretations of the Scriptures and the times as when in the last decade Europe was drenched in blood and darkness lay upon the heart of the world. To them any effort to make the world human is

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folly and can end only in futility. They are certain that the world is not to be made Chris- tian and cannot be made Christian. They are literalists in interpretation and individualists in gospel thinking. They are extremists in individuahsm. Such persons, however sincere and devout, are unquestionably fearful bar- riers to the Christianization of the world and to any comprehensive program for lifting the level of human civilization. Whatever may be their interest in and fitness for the other world, they are wanting in the chief qualities of world citizenship in the Kingdom of God on earth.

The beliefs and teachings of these extremists are based upon the theory that this world is in- herently bad and irredeemable, and that the only thing possible is the salvation out of its wreckage of as many souls as possible. The devil is now in charge and until he is chained for at least a thousand years by the imposition of an external divine authority and power, there can be no hope of this becoming a fit dwelhng place for the sons of God. The sal- vation of the world, humanity, the entire race, by the spiritual processes which Jesus Christ introduced and now supports is hopeless and doomed to failure. Unless the first coming is

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succeeded by a second coming, in which the full power of God is demonstrably asserted for the control of the world, the human race can never be redeemed. Christianity is not con- ceived as a divine provision for making men human as well as making them divine. The aspiration to make the world Christian has be- hind it this double conception of the purpose and work of Christianity. But in order to make the world human or Christian, this phi- losophy of the world's inherent evil and this be- lief in the final failure of Christianity unless it is reenforced by a second physical appear- ance of the Son of God must be utterly re- pudiated. That Christianity can finally suc- ceed upon the strictly individualistic basis, with a complete unconcern in, if not bold an- tagonism to, the human program is indeed questionable, but Christianity on the basis laid in the Sermon on the Mount, in the paraboHc and other teachings, the Samaritan incident and all that took place in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has every prospect of final triumph in the earth. To this end the missionary propaganda is now be- ing vigorously conducted in the world.

Those who lay emphasis on the ultimate tri- umph of the religion of Christ have come to

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the view that the construction and stability of human society constitute the high and holy purpose at the very heart of Christianity. Christianity was never intended to produce angels, but men. Wherein men and angels agree or differ cannot be said, as there is no basis upon which to build an opinion. Revela- tion as received is concerned entirely with men and his salvation. Man has always insisted that the salvation brought by Jesus Christ was for his world and that alone. The revelation of the other life has been meager, but all the intimations in the Holy Scriptures lead to the view that it will be a human life. Unfortu- nately man has been so individualistic in his thinking and in his interests that he has gener- ally believed that salvation was meant only for himself in his particular personality. He has come slowly to human conceptions; that is, conceptions of humanity as a social body, as an entity, having value, force, movement, and destiny as has the individual. He has not always recognized that the salvation of hu- manity is the salvation of the human as well as the divine in man. Making the world human is not entirely a human process. It is, however, more and more being recognized as antecedent to and a constituent part of mak-

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ing the world Christian. The humanness in the life, thought, service and ideals of Chris- tianity's adherents and promoters is an enor- mous, if not a determinative, factor in bring- ing the peoples of the world to the acceptance of the religion of the Nazarene.

There is a great company of noble, broad- minded people who believe that what the world needs is to think in terms of human- ity. They hold that if there were no Chris- tianity, no other world destiny for the race, human-mindedness would be a distinct and most meritorious achievement of mankind. Human-mindedness in the race, the established consciousness of the unity of humanity, the vivid sense of the kinship of all people, the realized obligation of every man to every man in the fellowship of the world, would be a magnificent accomplishment for mankind. The Christian Church has not in fact made this achievement a real dominant ideal and ob- jective in its labors. It has asserted its ex- ternal authority to accomplish a unity, but it has not promoted unity on the human basis. Protestantism has had much to say of the "elect" and the "predestined" and "decrees of damnation." These have not helped human- mindedness and thev have had doubtful values

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for God-mindedness. The Church has stood for the common origin of the human family, but it has wavered in its support of the ideas of common life, common purpose, common in- terests and common destiny of humanity. Saving man for the kingdom of man as well as the Kingdom of God has not seemed quite as high an aim as saving man out of man's world to an angel world. Salvation has too often been regarded as a transportation rather than a transformation. Religion has not com- prehended within its domain the entire man and all his relations.

Ill

There are few things more distressing to the thoughtful men and women who are con- cerned for the development of human civiliza- tion than the tribal-mindedness of mankind. Tribalism has afflicted the world since the days of the patriarchs. As shown in the Bible his- tory and in all the records of the race it has developed and perpetuated a spirit of antag- onism and strife. It still exists and manifests itself in selfishness, dissension and deadly com- bat. The Great War was brought on by the tribal spirit and it has left in its trail a mon-

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strous amount of tribal hatred, which may, at some future critical time, wreak ruin upon the nations. Tribalism is the world's greatest enemy, and until it is conquered by a new world one-ness there will hang a pall over mankind. The clan spirit wills to rule and goes to any conceivable length to accomplish its purpose. It thinks only in terms of the clan, whatever its size or its habitation. It never fails to lift its emblazoned banner, *'My clan first." Its interests are clan interests; its purposes are clan purposes; its sense of justice and right never fail to accord with its weal and aspirations. The clan spirit has prevailed in the world for forty centuries and to-day it interferes with the great movements for hu- manity. To be sure, the clans in many sec- tions have grown larger, and in some have come to be nations, but the temper of diplo- macy, of commerce, of social relations, carries an air of forcible domination too nearly similar to the clan spirit of the days of Julius Csesar, or even of the Judges. That there has been advancement is to be joyfully acknowledged, but the end to be desired is the disposition of good will, cooperation, and mutual considera- tion in all that pertains to human life and its relations, and this is not yet in view.

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The only complete corrective of the clan spirit, or tribalism, is human-mindedness. Its development has been a slow process notwith- standing the all but universally accepted be- lief in the common origin of all branches of the human family. The developments of recent decades have contributed extraordinarily to its production, whether these developments have been in the sphere of scientific discovery and invention, of philosophical theory and suggestions, commercial enlargement, diplo- matic treaties, philanthropic activities, or re- ligious instruction and service. There is to- day a certain world consciousness, world thought, world mind which has emerged in very recent years. That it will be submerged by other incoming tides is not probable, al- though its recently developed force may at times be held in abeyance. Its rise is not an ebullition, but rather the result of long years of Christian teaching and the impact of Chris- tian thought and spirit. Human-mindedness is an ideal toward which Christianity has ever impelled the world by the very nature of its controlling principles, and it is a goal worthy of the highest Christian effort. Humanity re- quires unity in order to its peace, happiness, and the enlarging pursuits of life. The spirit-

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ual bond is at this very moment the greatest need of this planet. Only by it can come hu- man salvation and the permanence of any worthy civilization. World consciousness is the first step in world redemption, and its de- velopment marks the progress of the Chris- tian religion in the consummation of its divine purpose.

Christianity began with a sense of world re- sponsibility. Jesus of Nazareth was the first world citizen. There was not one before Him. His interests were world interests and His concern was for all humanity. He was not the nationalist or tribalist expected, with the pur- pose to make dominant one people in the midst of the nations. The Jehovah of the Hebrews had always been regarded as partial to them because he was their particular God. They delighted to call themselves the chosen people. The Messiah they sought was a Jewish mon- arch with powers unlimited for their own ag- grandizement. Jesus failed and disappointed them because of his broad horizons, his world sympathies, and his human comprehensiveness. They would not tolerate such conceptions. The Jews, even to this day, are tribalists, in- tensely racial, though residing in every nation. They did away with Jesus, but not before He

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had released the forces for a world redemp- tion. He made new orbits for the movements of creation. He opened new channels for the currents of history. He lifted humanity out of its tribal confines and set it in the open ways of universalism. He spent His days pro- claiming a Kingdom of God for the earth. He gave His life as the Savior of the world. He laid upon His friends and followers the man- date to ''Go and make disciples of the na- tions.'' This was the beginning of the move- ment for world consciousness.

World consciousness was never an attain- ment of the non- Christian peoples. When China was first visited by Robert Morrison, that pioneer of modern missionaries, a little more than a century ago, it was a sealed em- pire. The Chinese claimed an ancestry of divine origin. They knew no other shores than their own. Those who by chance found their way in from other lands could be, in their estimation, none other than foreign dev- ils. When Commodore Perry first entered Japan so late as 1853, he found a people of the same darkened seclusion. India was in no sense different. Its horrible caste system is the product of tribalism, self-sufficiency, and a religion of the most severely clannish type.

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Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Hindu- ism never developed any sense of world re- sponsibility. The non-Christian faiths have been narrow and selfish, producing peoples of like characteristics. No great explorers, no world conquerors, no constructors of racial destinies ever haled from lands of such re- ligious and intellectual conceptions. What- ever of world consciousness may be found among these people to-day has been brought in and developed with Christianity and the civilization which Christianity has fostered and energized.

Christianity began under the inspiration of the world gospel, but in an atmosphere quite unfavorable to the consummation of its pro- gram. For centuries pagan ideals were dom- inant. Roman imperialism, Greek philosophy and Teutonic barbarity were in control of the early centuries of the Christian era, and these were supported and guided by pagan prin- ciples of hfe, thought, religion and morals. Christianity was restrained from giving ex- pression to its conceptions of world responsi- bility. It was forced in fear into narrow in- dividualistic molds and was held to the dis- cussion of the important but limited meta- physical dogmas of religious belief. Church

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councils were called and creeds were passed upon, but they were confined to the preexist- ence and the double nature of Jesus and the speculations as to the other world. The heresies that harassed the Church in that period and later involved largely the meta- physics of Christian theology, or the mechanics of the Christian organization. Hellenism was in no small way responsible for the one and Romanism for the other. Christ's world con- sciousness in such an era lost its significance and force. Europe and not Palestine gained the ascendency and has retained it through the centuries.

With the decline of these world forces by which it had been bound, the Church ventured forth to assume the role which pagan imperial- ism in its ascendency had been playing. It not only constituted itself the mouthpiece of God on earth, but it arrogated to itself all the as- sumptions and claims of the emperor in his autocratic control of the world. It identified itself with the Kingdom of God. In it all the ecclesiastical hierarchy represented itself to be the Church. From that day, a millennium and more ago, world empire has been the ambition of the Roman Church. But imperialism is pagan in thought, purpose and action, and is

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no less so because it is ecclesiastical. The dream of world empire has been entertained by great conquerors, great statesmen and great nations, and especially by the Holy Roman Empire, but the dream has not been inspired by the sense of the brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God. Its source is always in the thirst for power, authority, domination and exploitation. Wherever ecclesiastical im- perialism has held sway, or to-day holds sway, there can be found the characteristic products of paganism, such as illiteracy, superstition, image worship, moral obliquity and oligarchi- cal government. The bane of the historic Christian Church has been its pagan aspiration for world empire. Human-mindedness, the true characteristic of apostolic Christianity, has been dissipated by the introduction of Ro- man paganism into the mind of the Church. World domination is the very opposite of all that world consciousness would develop and support.

World control by the imposition of external authority is not a Christian conception, even though that control were exercised by heavenly ambassadors or the Lord Jesus Himself. A temporal kingdom on earth, set up and ruled by Jesus from a throne on the Mount of

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Olives, would not meet the purposes of God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. True Chris- tian humanity is a democracy. Monarchies and oligarchies are but stepping stones to that higher human social control which is at yet but an ideal. True democracy has not yet been attained. Democracy is dependent upon in- telligence and righteousness or wisdom and the controlling sense of right. Attempts at de- mocracy succeed or fail just in proportion as these two qualities prevail in the people. So long as the people have not the wisdom, the ability and the righteous motive and control for self-government, so long must they be gov- erned by others, for their good and the good of society. Imperialism has no penchant for the spread of intelligence and the production of the sense of righteousness, as these will inevi- tably mean its overthrow, whether it is the state or the Church. Education and the true Chris- tian religion blaze the way to democracy and make certain the undermining of autocracy. Democracy and human-mindedness are cor- relative terms. They lead to each other. They center the focus upon man, his worth, individ- ual and collective, irrespective of locality or conditions of life. He is not planned of the Almighty to be a slave, a subject, but a free-

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man, a citizen with all the sovereign right of any Son of God.

The Christianity of Christ is an enemy of tribalism and imperialism, clannishness and provincialism. It expands horizons, lengthens visions, deepens soul yearnings and sets new stars in the heavens. It projects man upon outstretching lines of thought. This was co- gently illustrated in the recent World War. Whence the guns that could deliver their pro- jectiles with much accuracy from a distance of twenty miles, and others that could shell a city with much damage seventy-five miles away? Whence those flocks of airplanes, those net- works of battlefield telephones, those deadly demons of the deep, those wireless devices for limitless communication? Whence this amaz- ing exhibition of force and efficiency in the modern war? No less wonderful are the imple- ments of peace and the vast structural work of civilization. The modern man has come to be little less than a creator. But the non- Christian nations furnished nothing of their own dis- covery, invention and creation. The masterful man in it all came to his exalted supremacy in the atmosphere of Christianity. Some one will rise to say: ''This is not due to the at- mosphere of Christianity, but to racial endow-

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merit." He who champions such a thesis of the superiority of the Occidental brain over the Oriental undertakes a very large task. When lives from the beginning have been subject to the same stimuli, the incidents of birth have shown meager significance. It is well recog- nized that minds take character and strength from what passes through them. The non- Christian peoples have not had the world's truth to pass through their minds to equip them for that greater service to the world. Likewise from the peoples long dominated by an exacting ecclesiasticism, little of invention and production has come. Christianity is a re- ligion of freedom ; without freedom its pinions are clipped; but with an open sky and a free spirit it bears man toward the goals of divine destiny. Not the Anglo-Saxon, not the Teu- ton, not the Celt, not the Latin,' not the Slav makes the world sway under his power, but man brought to his full stature for service, whatever his race or region.

IV

Christianity has gone forth into the entire world in the missionary propaganda teaching the worth of man and instituting the agencies

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and activities that lift him to a new level and set before him new hopes of coming to full stature in the human family. Man has been taught that he can achieve mastery over the world in which he lives, and come to a destiny in the after life in keeping with his powers as a son of God. Emphasis everywhere has been put upon man's worth, his capabilities and his possibilities in a righteous environment and un- der a sympathetic divine power. Man's esti- mation of himself has been lifted and even ex- alted by a gospel that taught that God consid- ered him worthy of redemption and of co-part- nership with Himself in the construction and reconstruction of the world. He has been taught that Jesus came to save men, as Borden P. Bowne once said: "Not because they are so many, but because they are so dear." Re- ligion has been so presented as to awaken in man a sense of human importance in the esti- mation of God the Father. This emphasis has made all the more glaring the awfulness of man's sinning and sinfulness. In the response of the moral qualities in man to the moral qualities in God, the realization of man's soul unfitness has been made vivid and, as in the apostolic times, men have cried, "^VTiat must I do to be saved?" That conversion which is an

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organic reconstructing of the human spirit, a regeneration, has resulted from this new con- sciousness of man's worth and his responsibiHty to God and his fellow man because of his en- dowments, capabilities and powers.

Only as a man sees his own worth does he begin to realize the worth of every other man. It is then that he finds all the world akin. Man is not ready for any very great service until he discovers that he is human and a member of the human family. Without this consciousness of human family relationship he is scarcely ca- pable of entertaining the high purpose for which human beings actually exist. Those who have no just conception of the race receive no call to recognize the kinship of the race. The reconciliation of man to man in the world currents comes only in recognition of man's permanent values and the essential unity of mankind. The humanizing of mankind is achieved by the double process of awakening man to his own worth and of setting up in the earth the unity of humanity. Getting man to himself and above the animal of him is a pri- mary achievement. Fangs and claws make great the tiger, but disgrace the man. The man of prey is a slur upon the species and a re- proach to his Maker. But man can never be

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lifted from the jungle until the jungle habit has been made despicable by an awakened con- sciousness of his own higher worth and nobler design. Animal instincts serve the animal in ascendency, but when man comes to self-ap- preciation and self-assertion the animal is cowed to subjection. No objective in Chris- tianity should stand out more boldly than this of humanizing mankind. To this labor the evangelical propagandists, through missionary operations, have been assiduously and intelli- gently devoted. The gratifying results of these difficult but Christ-like labors are to be found in all the world.

The awakened consciousness of the back- ward races is a sublime testimony to this high altruism of vigorous Christianity. Civiliza- tion was thrust upon them and they are awak- ening to its value and desirability. To-day the wild men are scarce, whether in the United States, Mexico, South America or Central Africa. The mountain fastnesses of the Bal- kans and the Himalayas and the slopes and plains of Thibet and Central Asia have felt the pressure of the Christian missionary and yielded to his kindly hand. The gold hunter in the Americas and the slave trader in Africa made the white man a foreign devil; the mis-

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sionary in all the world has made him a mes- senger of light and hope. The horrors pre- scribed by the Belgian monarch for the Congo blacks cannot be repeated to-day. The servant of the Brother of man has been the friend to the backward races, and he has lifted the veil and pushed back the horizons for those who knew not the way of God and his sons in the earth. Non-Christian peoples have never made substantial contributions to the awaken- ing and uplifting of backward races, even when they dwelt at their door. But Brainerd and Robinson in America, Livingstone and Moffatt in Africa, Paton in the Fiji Islands and Bingham in the Hawaiian Islands have set beacons upon the hill tops of human well-be- ing, and backward tribes have fixed new courses for their movements and new goals for their existence. Such service comes from men who feel the urge of the Christian gospel. V Currents have been set in the tides of men that make for human welfare. The effort is on to lift the level of human living and heighten the quality of human life. This can- not be done so long as disease stalks the earth, ignorance beclouds half of humanity, and pov- erty hangs a pall over unnumbered multitudes. These shall be stricken away by the processes

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already inaugurated and being carried for- ward. Herculean efforts are being put forth to destroy malaria, draw the fangs of typhoid fever, wipe out tuberculosis, and hold in check the ravaging diseases of all mankind. The an- nual reports of the Rockefeller Foundation will give a most illuminating account of the in- estimable service which is being rendered in the interest of world health. Yellow fever has now been confined to a very few seed-beds and the onslaught upon these is constant and ef- fective. The time is near when the very seed- germ of yellow fever will be destroyed and the race will be rid of that disease forever. Hook- worm disease prevails extensively in all warm climates. This great Foundation has its corps of hard working specialists in all countries la- boriously endeavoring to bring this disease un- der complete control through adequate treat- ment and sanitary precautions. Never have there been such campaigns against preventable and curable diseases. Public health in all countries and in all international associations is fast assuming primary importance. Medi- cal Colleges of the highest merit have been es- tablished in countries where the people have been unmindful of their value. Medical mis- sions that once were operated simply as means

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to evangelistic propaganda have now become great ends in themselves. The propagation of the gospel of health, physical strength and ca- pable bodily organisms has become a part of the program to make the world soundly hu- man and potentially Christian. Hospitals, nurses, dispensaries, orphanages and asylums are appearing in all the world.

Whence all this? Who built or inspired these measures and means of world health and human welfare? The non-Christian peoples can but admit that they came from Christian sources. What the non-Christian world has to-day of medicine, the medical school, the hospital, its appliances and its agencies, is the product or result of the missionary's labor and influence. Christianity creates a philanthropy that not only gives relief to the occasional dis- tresses, but that also sets itself resolutely to reduce the conditions by which all distresses come. It inspires to remedial, yea, redemp- tive processes for the deliverance of humanity. Did not the Great Physician lead in this di- vinely human service? Whether it be Ar- menia's oppressions, China's famines, or Eu- rope's awful war curses, the Christian peoples of America readily and nobly respond. Whether it be the destruction of the foes of

CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 157

civilization or the construction of betterment agencies for the uplift of mankind, Christian forces are ever at hand. Human welfare is first in human considerations. The representa- tives of the Christian community stand at the crossroads of the world to make glad the hearts of men. The instinct of brotherhood has found expression through the human-mindedness which Christianity has widely promoted.

The same attitude which has been assumed toward the disease that destroys the body has been assumed to the diseases of societies. Poverty is now looked upon as a social disease and as having no place in a well-ordered world. It is not a necessity laid by nature upon man, but a condition of his own production. The world's poverty is largely of the world's mind and not of any lack in creation. It may be the outcome of a pernicious social and indus- trial adjustment. Whichever the cause, it and superstition can never be removed so long as ignorance reigns. Remove ignorance and both will go as the dews. China will have no more famines after it has learned to distribute prop- erly its own products. India's sixty millions who daily lay down hungry were fed as an in- telligent and adequate system of irrigation, constructed by a Christian power, brought its

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abundant waters to its expansive and fertile fields. Bombay's scourge of Bubonic plague will pass when the people cease to harbor rats and protect fleas. Ignorance is the world's greatest foe. Human welfare demands that ignorance and poverty, whether due to mental incompetency or industrial injustice, shall be brought to an end. Shall Christianity reserve all its forces and teachings, principles and ideals simply for the salvation of "lost souls," or shall it apply its full powers to the full task of saving humanity for this world and the next through the Spirit of Jesus Christ, Physician, Teacher and Redeemer? Is there any doubt as to which program will make the greater ap- peal to the race and so lift up Christ before the world that He* may draw all men unto Him?

Whatever else Christianity may have done, it has created the sense of human interest and has impelled its adherents to undertake the work of broadening the horizon of men and calling into the action the forces that dispel darkness of mind and gloom of spirit and that put the feeling of triumph into the life of the individual and the race.

By nothing has the missionary propaganda contributed more largely to the solidarity of humanity than by its promotion of the fellow-

CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 159

ship of learning. It would be difficult to estimate the value and influence of such in- stitutions as Robert College on the Bosphorus, the American College at Beirut, the Ameri- can College at Cairo, the Christian universi- ties at Canton, Shanghai, Soochow, Nanking and Peking, the Doshisha University at Kyoto, and the Christian schools at Tokyo, Kobe and Hiroshima, the Christian colleges at Singapore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Bombay and Madras, and the Universities at Calcutta, Allahabad and other points under the direc- tion of the English Government in establish- ing human relations between peoples and building proper estimates of human values. Great radiating centers in these Christian in- stitutions are flashing rays of light into the darkened corners of the earth. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light ; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death upon them hath the light shined." The modern world with its upheavals and en- tanglements, its conflicts and confusion, is an awakened world, though but rousing from its long deep sleep. It cannot return to its slum- ber with light streaming full into its face. The great intellectual awakening now manifest in the Far and Near East, resulting from the

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bold efforts of far-seeing Christian mis- sionaries has changed the old order. New leaders have arisen for the great political and economic, as well as educational movements of the Orient and the Levant, and they have their visions of the larger life through the tutorage of Christ-illumined men and women. The achievements in education in the non- Christian lands in a half centurj'', in the estab- lishment of schools and school systems and the training of leaders, have been honorable to the human race and have shed unfading luster upon the Christian missionary. Only the sense of human worth, directed and enforced by human-mindedness in the ambassador of Christ, would have contributed this matchless service to the world.

"The measure of a man is the diameter of his horizon," is the statement of a sage. Ex- tend the horizon is the new order to Chris- tianity. Closed-in peoples, by whatever the conditions, physical, political, social or re- hgious, are marked by narrowness of mental perspective. Their convictions may be intense but their ideals are pinched. Their aspirations and purposes may be spiritualized by religion, but their tribal-mindedness becomes then only group-mindedness in religious relations. The

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Christian Church suffers as much to-day from group-mindedness as society does from tribal- mindedness. Selfishness characterizes this group-mindedness in its tenets of faith, its ben- efits of grace, its blessings of church organiza- tion and its rewards for the faithful unto death. Group success has been identified with Chris- tianity's success. The mission field has been victimized by all the group-mindedness which denominationalism could establish. Heresy charges and proselytism are common with the narrow representatives of narrow faiths, and group-mindedness has laid and is laying the foundations for future denominational clashes. The only cure for all this is a human-minded- ness with a horizon as wide as the race and a conception of life and salvation as compre- hensive as Christ's. It may be here gratefully acknowledged that the human-mindedness of the missionaries has had a most beneficent effect upon the group-mindedness of the de- nominations at home. The great missionaries are first to advocate cooperation by the churches and proclaim the gospel of human service. They have been fully convinced that group-mindedness is an impediment to Chris- tianity as much as tribal-mindedness is a check to the true development of humanity. Human

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welfare, human unity, human redemption, are great goals for the Christian Church in this new opening era of world reconstruction and Christianization and should be vigorously striven for by every devout servant of God who goes to the non-Christian and semi- Chris- tian peoples to be ambassadors of the true Christ. The sense of the human is to-day the greatest need of the world. The Chris- tian Church can never minister to the need until it becomes thoroughly possessed of this sense. It was this that lay at the heart of Jesus and made him the messenger of God to all the sons of men.

"Thou shalt love thy fellow man as much as thyself." Jesus put large store by that. He put it second only to one other commandment : "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, thy whole soul, thy whole mind." There is no use to talk of neighbors to men who have no God. They have none. It is because man has God whom he loves with all the powers of his being that he concerns him- self about the welfare of his neighbors. The first commandment epitomized personal re-

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ligion and the second the social gospel. The whole of religion is summed up in these two commandments, but by no means in either alone. Not even the half is in either, any- more than half of life is to be found in half a man. The Church has always made much of the first, and rightfully, but its neglect of the second has wrought havoc for humanity and delayed the coming of the Kingdom of God. There has been the rebound, the recoil to personal religion in these latter days, largely because it had not the support of the social religiousness which Jesus stressed. Commu- nity respect and friendship are the only com- petent medium and reliable support for the community life; and community life is not merely of the earth but of all worlds, where man with his instincts and endowments could find what he would call home.

Nations are as much subject to the laws of society as individuals. The injunction to "love thy neighbor as thyself" was no mere personal regulation. It contains a great fundamental principle for mankind. Social regard, respect, cooperation and friendship are br.sic to social advancement and permanence. Nations are called by the highest exponent of the essential truth of human life to love one another. It

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is a pity to-day that France and Germany will have no regard for such a voice. It is a blot upon Europe that the Balkans have never been taught such a truth. What would this prin- ciple, strictly enforced, bring about in the Orient? The United States and Canada have more nearly lived up to this principle than any other two countries. There is a party in the United States that would apply this prin- ciple with Mexico, but there is another party that is too selfishly interested in Mexico's nat- ural deposits to be controlled by such an in- junction. The Monroe Doctrine has been for a century a declaration for self -protection ; now it has an open way to become a pronounce- ment for human brotherhood and a principle of international good will. The nations that do not regard each other should be made to do so with Christ's commandment to love their neighbors as themselves beating heavily upon their national consciousness and consciences. The fellow man has come above the horizon in these recent years. Nothing so stirred the world in all President Wilson's matchless ad- dresses, delivered with such inspired wisdom and vision, as his emphasis on human service, human liberty and human happiness. What a wealth of meaning was put into the word

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human, used collectively for mankind! There is to-day turmoil, strife, and bitter hatred in the world, such as seems could scarcely have been before. The weighty woes of war still curse the world, and the end is not yet. But in it all — yea, above it all — there is a plaintive murmur, a sad pleading of the human heart. Alfred IS^oyes in his poem, "The Dawn of Peace" gives voice to this stirring emotion:

"The spirit that moved upon the deep Is moving on the minds of men; The nations feel it in their sleep, A Change has touched their dreams again.

Voices confused and faint arise Troubling their hearts from East to West. A doubtful gleam is in their eyes, A gleam that will not let them rest."

The great souls of whatever nation or people rebel at the forces that harass their brother man. There is a growing consciousness that this should not be but that in its stead should be a new brotherhood of the races. There is a heart hunger for a family life. Forces are multiplying and being mobilized to bring the members of the human family to a common hearthstone, to plight anew the troths of good will and mutual helpfulness. A family of na- tions, a community of nations, a fraternity

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of nations — that is the Christian conception and the ideal toward which mankind must move. Science and philosophy, with their ap- pliances and applications, have reduced the world to a bedlam and a continuous battlefield if that for which Christianity stands does not produce a brotherhood. The world neighbor- hood now in existence must be a scene of love- making and holy friendships or of feuds and deadly hate. Men can no longer dwell apart; can they be taught to live together? Shall they live as revengeful desperados, or as friendly neighbors, mutually respectful and helpful?

The kingdom of God, which Jesus put first in all his speech, prayer and life, is not to be an aftermath of this world. It is the one end for which this earth exists, and will continue to exist. The Christian prophecy, written by the beloved disciple and apostle, is that the kingdoms of this world shall be under the sov- ereignty of God and that Christ shall reign in them forever. To that divine end all crea- tion moves. Nations that cannot be taught this supreme lesson of social life can come only to dispersion. The nations that can live together will, in the providence of God, supplant those that cannot. This is the logical teaching of

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Christianity and the well-founded expectation of its adherents. What effect will such con- victions, expressed in the heart councils of hu- manity, have upon the trend of world events? The league of nations is a Christian concep- tion. The master minds who first proposed it, those who have wrought upon it for decades, and those who finally produced a tangible form for its operation, were Christian. The high idealism, which is as essential to its ongoing as to its formulation, is possible only from a Christian source. This missionary propa- ganda can have no more far-reaching objective than just this of establishing a real league of humanity through which the nations may set up a brotherhood of the race and forge that spiritual bond that is so requisite to the perma- nence of world peace.

Any covenant of peoples must carry force in order to its fulfillment. But military alli- ance is not the first thing in such a league. It is good w^ll that the world needs. "Peace on earth for men of good will." Good will can eventuate only in good service. What an association of nations can do for the peo- ples, and not what it protects them from, will in the end determine the value of such a bond. Altruism is the antidote of national as well

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as personal selfishness, and the cure of malig- nant vindictiveness. The force that completely disarms a vicious foe is friendship, respect, love. Such a disarmament the nations will eventually come to make. A military alliance of forty or fifty nations to delay war between two ugly-tempered peoples may have value, but it is the least value of a genuine league of nations. The war on war should be, and can be, successfully carried on, but the weapons in the conflict must be other than enginery of the battlefield. The force that will put an end to war is moral and spiritual, not physical and carnal. Militarism must go with war. Human power is called upon to assume better forms and devote itself to higher ends than any that militarism may devise.

The worldly-wise man is saying: *'That is all very well, but it takes more than that to tame this wild world." Better say, '*It will take as much as that." Disarmament, international police, an international court and an interna- tional parliament are essentials, but they can- not give strength and perpetuity to a league of nations. There must be international labor, international currency which cannot be set aside by the fickleness of exchange, interna- tional fixing of prices for the commodities of

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human living, international principles of com- merce and transportation, international stand- ards of education and means for its acquisi- tion, international helpfulness in providing for the home, the happiness and development of mankind. The league of nations must be a covenant of man to love, honor and serve his fellow man. The irreligious man says to all this, "Impossible"; the non-Christian man says, "Undesirable." The Christian man of America cherishes such an ideal and says: "Why should we be afraid of responsibilities which we are qualified to sustain, and which the whole of our history has constituted a promise to the world we would sustain?" The brotherhood of man is not only a Christian doctrine, but also a Christian ideal. It is fast being burned into the consciousness of man- kind as the sublime hope of human redemption and human perpetuity. In this far-reaching work the missionary is a pioneer and leader. Human-mindedness culminates in bonds of fel- lowship, kinship and permanent peace.

VI

The Christian missionary of the evangelical faiths has been the path breaker in the Orient

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for the common miderstanding of man. He has been the interpreter of one race to another, and has removed in literally thousands of cases the menacing misunderstandings, and has ce- mented bonds of good will between the nations. The Japan Mail once said: "No single per- son has done as much as the missionary to bring foreigners and Japanese into close inter- course." The same might be said of China and Korea. The Near East has felt this same bond between the Americans and its own peo- ple. The twenty-five thousand missionaries scattered throughout the world, giving their lives to some foreign people, are invisible bonds among the nations which become more and more firm with the accumulating years. They are the shock absorbers in the interna- tional collisions and ward off the evil of heated conflict. They proclaim and practice the prin- ciples of human brotherhood as fundamental in Christian doctrine, and they demand human consideration for all people. The golden rule has been written by them and the Christian statesmen into the international law of the world. Their contributions to world peace make all mankind their debtor. They have won the high esteem and complete confidence of the nations to which they have gone and

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liave become the most reliable and capable servants of their own nations in the foreign lands.

The missionary has been a diplomat and the diplomats' aid wherever he has been sent. When Caleb Gushing conducted the first dip- lomatic negotiations with China, two mission- aries were his interpreters. The Hon. John W. Foster, a long-time resident of China, bears testimony, **Up to the middle of the last century Christian missionaries were an abso- lute necessity in diplomatic circles." The mis- sionaries have not only served their own gov- ernments, but the governments under which they labored. Robert Morrison was for twenty-five years the adviser of the British Government at Canton. Verbeck had so much to do with the reconstruction of the system of government in Japan that he is called the Father of the constitution of Japan. Dr. W. A. P. Martin was for almost a quarter of a century a most influential adviser at Peking. In the non-Christian world the evangelical missionary has been a most valuable diplomatic aid and has been in reality an astute diplomat for his own country and the country to which he was unselfishly giving his life. The Roman Catholic priest is always the politician and has

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an eye out for the main chance of temporal power. He became persona non grata to the Japanese and to the Chinese as well. But the evangelical missionary still holds his influence for good will among the nations and renders high service in creating and maintaining a sym- pathetic understanding among the nations.

What is it that the missionaries have not done to promote human-mindedness, human welfare, human intelligence, universal peace, international good will and the brotherhood of the race ? What other group of world workers has done so much? All the armies and all the navies of the world have scarcely reached the half. The greatest force for bringing about a real league of nations, a genuine peace cov- enant of mankind, lies not in the chancellories of Europe, Asia and America, but with that consecrated company of Christian missionaries who labor incessantly and untiringly, with faith in God and man, in the heart centers of the race. Put at the cross roads of Europe such a company as now labor in the rest of the world and they will draw the fires of hate, light the lamps of love, and set the nations to singing the Hallelujah Chorus. The mis- sionary has the palladium for the world's peace as he has the divine provision for the world's

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salvation. As he makes vocal the gospel of redemption, he makes vital the gospel of peace. The sweep of the Christ he proclaims thrills the world with hope, and invites to action the best energies of the race for the achievement of its noblest aspirations. Light, health, peace and good will follow in his train. The world will swing out into day and take the course of heaven as it comes to know the Nazarene and feel the force of His hand of love. To make Him known is God's supreme command to the sons of men.

LECTURE IV: ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES

A VERY ancient writer reports that the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone." That is the statement of an immuta- ble principle, whatever the particular applica- tion intended. This is just as true of groups as of individuals. Men who live apart live poorly and partially. They fail to get their counterparts in other individuals or sections of the race. In this aloneness they develop the sense of self-sufficiency and become blind to their gross deficiencies. This is true even of ascetic monastic saints. The idiosyncrasies of racial groups developed in their physical and mental solitariness are to-day the out- standing barriers to world cooperation and human brotherhood. One cannot read the early historical portions of the Old Testament without being horrified by the ferocious bru- tality of the tribes in their dealings with each other. Notwithstanding their common origin, the separation for generations developed the

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sense of otherness and therefore hostihty. Nothing is more remarkable and really amaz- ing about the history of mankind than the seemingly set purpose to maintain his alone- ness, aloofness, suspicion and enmity. The treaties on record in Europe covering a thou- sand years are glowing testimonials to the un- tiring efforts of nations to keep people in a state of separateness and rancorous animosity. Only once have nations thought in terms of humanity, and then instant fear feU upon them and they rushed back into their barbaric selfishness. They lacked the support of a new human consciousness which is possible only through the Christian conception of man and society. They fell from the high ideal of a covenant of humanity to the old fang and claw alliance of powers. The lion and the tiger may cower in the lair and bring quiet for a time, but trouble will be ever in the brewing. There is no hope of a new state of life until there is a new conception of social values, social possibihties and social responsi- bilities.

Society has been thrust upon mankind and there is no escape. Space is gone and time is vanishing. There can be no hermits of nations or peoples. The daily happenings of the world

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are within the range of common knowledge, and the thoughts of all are a common heritage. Man cannot get away from society. He is compelled to be a social being. His individual- ism served him well in the days of his soli- tariness, but he has lost his solitariness. He may complain about it as the American In- dian who longs for the wilds of his forefathers, but there are no more wilds and there are never to be any more wilds. The world is not going back to the aboriginal state to please the be- lated aborigines. The Indian must become a citizen or a nuisance. The same is true of every other man in the world. Steam and electricity, discovery and invention, science and philosophy have made this planet into a neigh- borhood and there is no escape from society. The barriers between peoples henceforth must be of their own invention and construction. The question very naturally arises, what shall be the character of the new neighborhood life in the world ? Is Christianity interested or in- volved in the production and preservation of the proper social state, conditions and rela- tions? Is there a religious basis for society which Christianity should seek to establish and maintain? Before attempting to answer these

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questions it will be well to examine the state of society of to-day.

All Europe reeks with the rottenness of social conditions. This is true from the Med- iterranean to the North Sea, and from the Bay of Biscay to the Ural Mountains. The political, industrial and social situations are marked by alarming unrest and constantly threatened by increasing revolution. This should occasion no surprise when it is realized that the entire basis of present day society is loathsomely materialistic. This is evidenced by the report of the Peace Conference at Ver- sailles, of the supreme council in its various meetings, and in the social and political move- ment and upheaval in Western Europe. The chancellories of the world were never more overwhelmed by materialism than in this post- war period. Greed, vantage ground, personal and national gain seem ever the ascendant ob- jectives. It might be said of the world as it was said of England in the early part of the eighteenth century, "It is no time to regard men as living souls; they must be thought of rather as tools, as workmen, as producers of wealth, the builders of industry, and the cap- tains of soldiers of fortune. Men must talk

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of fiscal problems, of the law of commerce, of raw materials and the processes of manufac- ture, of the facilitation of exchange. Pohtics center in the budget, and the freedom men think of is rather the freedom of the market than the freedom of the hustings or of the voting booth." Society has lost its sense of spiritual values and has fallen to the low level of physical and temporal expediency. Ma- terialism has usurped the rule over the nations and humanity has become enslaved to the grosser conceptions of life. The heart grows sick as it contemplates the state of the social mind in the very home of modern civilization from which go out the major influences that are determinative if not dominant in all the world.

The plague spot of humanity to-day is in the heart of Europe. Militarism could be stricken from the earth if Europe would con- sent. The defeat of Germany in its mad de- signs of military world domination has in no way reduced the prestige of the military par- ties at the courts of the major powers. The Orient is learning war of Europe. The Amer- icans are kept armed against the possibility of an European imbroglio. The war to end war cannot be successfully conducted by the

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sword; it must be by reason and good will operating in the minds and consciousness of the European peoples. Little less than the calamity of mihtarism is the plague of political vagaries developed in recent decades, that moves like a cloud of poisonous gas upon the entrenched supporters of stalwart civilization. Marxism, Nihilism and Bolshevism in their ex- treme forms have cursed the peoples amidst whom they arose, and they have given off the various phases of socialism and communism which have been the outstanding insinuating foes to industrj% economy and stable social life in England and America. The propagan- dists of industrial unrest and political upheaval have been the migrating sons of these plague- stricken centers of Europe, in which morals have been discounted and from which religion has been excluded. For the last quarter of a century the immigrant tide from Europe to America, north and south, has carried an in- fluence that is preponderantly materialistic, agnostic and even anti-religious. The forces that Europe has given off to the nations in these later years have been wanting in that fine spirit, those splendid purposes and high ideals which characterized the early colonists in the American Republic. Europe has lost

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its power to transfuse health-giving blood to the world's humanity.

Europe will never become better, but only- worse, until its ideals of society and its prin- ciples of social relations shall be radically transformed. The heavy hand of the past stays progress. The heritage of the nursery days of civilization has hindered the produc- tion hy matured society of the larger facilities for the broadened responsibilities. Childhood things have not been put away as man's era has come on. The disgusting if not exasper- ating flummery of pretentious aristocracy is an irritation to broad-minded, purposeful men and women who seek to establish a real broth- erhood of mankind. Much of the untoward in European life to-day is directly traceable to the rebellion of thoughtful persons against the inequalities which so-called aristocracy strives to maintain. These remnants of feudalism and tribal civilization are out of date, and a vig- orous application of modern political and so- cial science would put them out of existence. The real trouble is, the spiritual sources of society have been clogged and the out-going currents have not been sufficiently strong and of adequate volume to flush the broadened channels which the larger life requires. Social

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stagnation has brought on social disease and these will continue until the streams of spirit- ual influence shall fill the ways of society with cleansing virtues and the renovating forces of new conceptions and vitalizing ideals. For half a century religion in continental Euro- peans has been at a low ebb. The desecration of the Christian Sabbath by the masses has been flagrant. The worship of the sanctuary and the devout study of the Word of God have been willfully neglected by the intel- lectual and political leaders of the nations. Almighty God has had no hearing at the courts in the formation of plans and the inaugura- tion of movements that have set destiny to mankind. Christ's Christianity has had little voice and less application. There is little won- der that society grovels and humanity moves in uncertainty and fear. Yet the Christian Church has not ceased its functions as they related to the observance of ordinances and ceremonies and the administration of its in- structions and comforts to the occasional in- dividuals. But in dealing with life and society it has revealed a withered hand from which all power had departed. The sinews of a vig- orous, forceful faith no longer held man to God or man to man. How different from the

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formative days of Israel when the spokesman for the nation and the civihzation from which Christianity came cried aloud and spared not. They had a vivid sense of Israel as a living being that was responsible to Almighty God, its chief ruler, and to the people whom God had chosen. Whatever might be the destiny of the individual, the nation was to endure for- ever. Continental Europe has had no proph- ets; only priests. "Like people, like priests," was Hosea's characterization of his times. Like people, like church, has been true of Eu- rope for a century. Romanism has been marked by political machination, feudalistic ecclesiastical conceptions, tyranny of authority and neglect of the minds and living conditions of the people. It has produced no social re- formers. Protestantism has been consumed with its metaphysical dogmatizing over doc- trines, theological hair-splitting and the spec- ulations in textual and historical criticism, and has had no time or thought for the Christiani- zation of the minds, souls and social relations of the people. Genuine, practical, apostolic Christianity has not had a real chance at con- tinental Europe in fifty years. Its neglect has brought havoc to mankind, unleashed the ravishers of civilization, and left the world

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at the peril of forces of materialism, agnosti- cism and blind self-interest. Europe is awak- ening to the necessity of the revival of re- ligion.

What shall be the character of the religion which Europe and the world are to receive? The conviction has gained currency that God's purpose in Jesus Christ was fundamentally social while elementally individual. Through the salvation of individuals, social beings and citizens were to be created and developed. The unredeemed man is not qualified for the citizenship which is required for God's king- dom. Man, of himself, is worthy of redemp- tion, but the broader purposes of the redemp- tion are social. In this way only God's eternal purposes can be consummated and His crea- tive energies have full play. The Church has always held the conception of a purified and glorified Society, but for another world. It has not reaUy made the creation and establish- ment of such a society on earth its chief and comprehensive objective. It has really never taken seriously the obligation or the possibility of such a consummation. Its entire system of thought, activity, and inducements has had to do with the after-life and the after-place. There has come a rude awakening, by a shock.

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to the awful fact that social values of this earth must have a new appraisement, that so- cial life must be quickened from above, and that social ideals must hereafter be set blaz- ing in the sanctuary of God. The withered hand is to-day the church's shame and humil- iation. The Lord in this hour commands, "Stretch forth thy hand." Healing will come as that hand is placed under the burdens of the weary world. Christianity will become commanding as it becomes redemptive of the entire domain of human life. This truth the living Church must make vital in its service to the world.

II

The Christian Church has become vividly conscious of being face to face with a status of social conditions vastly different from any that it has ever hitherto confronted. That a social revolution is on cannot be gainsaid. Whether the Great War was the occasion of its being projected upon the world, or whether the War was itself a feature of the revolution, history must yet determine. Students of so- ciety judge revolutions by movements and not by cataclysms, and their verdicts may be with- held until more of the evidence is in. The

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late Benjamin Kidd in his "Science of Power," says that if the age preceding the War could be seen as the historian could see it we "should see this war of the nations to be no more than an incident in a universal movement, involving every form of thought and activity in the West, gradually rising to a climax throughout the world." It was his view that we are in the opening stages of a "revolution the like of which has never been experienced in history." To be sure, his chief reference is to the industrial or material value feature of the revolution, but the fabric of society is such that if the industrial feature is radically af- fected, all society will inevitably be trans- formed. The forces that operate in the world are really general, and the philosophy of soci- ety is a unit. There are few disturbances that are now truly local. World mobilization has been practically achieved and currents that af- fect the parts will eventually move the whole. The Church itself is not secure from change w^hen all the rest of the world is being trans- formed. Revolution, such as here indicated, w^ill stir all social conditions and affect all so- cial values.

The recent war began with great display of military forces but ended with a remarka-

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ble demonstration of socialistic organization and propagation. For a period of several months the masters of the armies were in deadly fear of the socialistic spirit. The uni- versal conscription that made the armies has become the method of labor organization. The power to command no longer rests with the State or Government. In every country the recruiting of the social industrial army has gone on, making ready for the day when its demands upon the world shall be irresistible. The state of war in the economic realm is not so spectacular as in the military struggle, but that it exists and is determined and deadly is common knowledge. The entire system of modern capitalism is arraigned by labor be- fore public opinion as vicious, anti-social and fundamentally unjust. On the other hand, the entire program of labor is arraigned by capital as malicious, dictatorial and despotic. Each party is strengthening itself daily for the ti- tanic struggle. Wealth has never been sO thoroughly mobilized and labor never so strongly organized. Each is depending upon its force to win in the end whatever may be the cost to its opponent and the public. This is not a local community contest, nor of one nation. It is a world contest so far as wealth

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and labor have been able to organize the world ; and the day is rapidly approaching when it will indeed be a world contest. It is yet to be determined whether or not militarism will pale into insignificance as a foe to humanity in comparison with industrialism or capitalism or economic tyranny.

Has Christianity anything to do with this contest ? Has it no concern in this the greatest struggle into which humanity has been and is being constantly thrust? Christianity has never proclaimed nor sustained a doctrine of force. Christ never said by the fruits of wealth, armies and power shall he "be known and his kingdom prevail. The fighting man never received any endorsement from the Naz- arene in the display of his ability to de^roy his opponent. Nietzsche in his "Will to Power" declared that society would eventually in its demand for the rule of might, throw over utterly all that Jesus taught. Nietzsche and Treitschke were accredited during the war with being the instructors of Germany in the philosophy of force and domination. Has their philosophy gone down with the German eagle or has it hec6me dominant in larger realms? The very principles at the basis of Christianity are at stake in the industrial or economic strug-

188 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

gle that is now on. It is not a partisan of either side in this conflict, but an antagonist to the philosophy and methods of procedure of both parties. Christianity is, however, no mere spectator. It is a greatly involved party. It does not win if either loses. It loses if the final battle is fought. Humanity is Chris- tianity's ward and its protection and exaltation are its real concern. The question that is up- permost in the mind of humanity is, has Chris- tianity the spiritual power, the commanding intelligence and the convincing processes of reasoning to reconcile these great social forces and coordinate them for the uplift of the world and the sanctification of mankind ? This ques- tion answered in the affirmative will put Chris- tianity in power as the peacemaker of the world.

There is a zone between these two great massive forces over which Christianity should be able to sit supreme. It is the realm of justice, moral purpose, and good will. In the matter of justice three parties are involved: capital, labor, the public. Neglect either and justice fails. The way of justice may be a bit difficult to find because of the intricacies of the issues and the limitations of the finding intelligence, but the spirit of justice need never

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be absent. This Christianity will always sup- ply. In the matter of moral purpose, all ways are parallel, and reconciliation will be found only a station ahead if Christianity could put capital and labor on these tracks. What is the moral purpose of capital and labor to-day? Are they marked by moral integrity and char- acterized by moral earnestness? Broken agreements, ''scraps of paper," and economic intrigues are never charged against men whose moral integrity is unquestioned and whose moral earnestness is written large in human endeavor. In the matter of good will the three parties can always find a common plane of explanation, discussion and adjustment if the Golden Rule shall be the guiding principle in all deliberations and final conclusions. Christianity asserts that social values must not be imperiled by unmoral procedure and im- moral contentions. The basis of settlement in every human contest is in the human values which Jesus Christ exalted as being of more worth than the gain of "the whole world." The voice of the Galilean who stilled the tur- bulent sea should be sounded over the surging billows of industrial and economic life. Jesus, the Carpenter, is now needed at the arbitra- tion conferences of the world.

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Heathenism is the provocation that sends Christianity to foreign lands. But heathendom is not a place but a state of mind and life. Define heathenism as one may and the pres- ent industrial state in the supposedly civilized world cannot escape being classed as little short of heathenish, and the full development is yet ahead. The only way of deliverance from the fearful disaster that the conflict is bringing upon the world is the elevation of social values to their true position by the vigorous and burning proclamation of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Industrial justice there must be. Respect for economic worth must never be lost. Capital and labor are mighty forces but they are not ends in themselves. Society is the supreme end of all operating powers. The two great forces are suffering to-day from the lack of a true perspective, a worthy goal, a supreme objective in the use of their powers. These only a virile, thorough-going, masterful gospel will set in bold relief. This is no time for shrinking timidity, cringing fear, and apologetic speech. The gospel that is the power of God unto the salvation of society in the present state is what is needed in every public place and hidden nook on this earth.

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It is absurd to speak of making the world Christian with the state of the industrial mind as it is. It is playing with destiny to shout curses upon the childish aberrations of the thoughtless and keep silent in the presence of the prodigious willful sinners against the high- est interests of society. The Kingdom of God can come only as society shall own the sov- ereignty of the Almighty.

The gospel that lifts capital and labor to a new moral level is the gospel that will recon- cile their differences and direct their powers to the consummation of the purposeful ends of society. The piratical acquisition of wealth, whether on some Treasure Island, or wrecked shipping, or from some land of the Incas, or from foreign gold mines or oil fields, or from some bold exploitation of common society, will leave about that wealth something of the pirate's spirit. The pirate should now be re- placed by the producer. Men must be taught the fine distinction between the production of wealth and its acquisition. They need to learn the difference between the exhaustion of nat- ural resources and their development. There must be found and recognized the divide be- tween an accumulation which enriches and that which exhausts man's abode. The world is

192 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

not the possession of this generation and no man has the moral right to impoverish pos- terity to satiate his whims for an hour. The individual must learn just how far his owner- ship extends and recognize the limits to his rights in what he seems to possess. There is a wealth which civilization may acquire through the possessions of men, and this be- comes the heritage of the race. Christianity has no more important responsibility than this of making the proper appraisement of ma- terial wealth, putting in bold outline the mean- ing and purpose of earthly possessions, and clearly indicating the manner in which such wealth is to be used in the establishment and furtherance of the Kingdom of God. The gospel of wealth is a gospel of power, as it puts the sinews of effectiveness into the pur- poses of righteousness and brings the world of resources under the sovereignty of the Lord of heaven.

The power and prestige of wealth have awakened the ancient realms to a new thirst for its possession. The magic word in all languages is "business." Commercial prowess has assumed first place in the ambition of the nations. The wealth of the world, at the open- ing of the Great War, was increasing at a

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prodigious rate, and since the war every plan has been constructed for amassing anew great national fortunes. The gospel for an age of prosperity has again become more needful than the gospel for a period of adversity and sor- rows. Already the loss of life in the war, reaching into great millions, has become sec- ond in thought to the loss of wealth. In fact, the loss of life has itself come to be estimated in the loss of wealth which it entails. Money madness is the malignant malady of this gen- eration irrespective of locality or nationality. **Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physi- cian there?" The love of money has indeed become the root of all the world's evil. Has Christianity the power to make the use of money the source and agent of the world's highest good? Only the Christian principles of stewardship will save humanity with its ac- cumulated wealth and stored-up energy from final destruction. Christianity only can put social value upon human wealth. Selfish ac- cumulators and even selfish producers will never find the social purpose of all possessions. Social purpose is moral at its basis and has the social good as its end. Wealth in its finality is a social value and not individual. It will be elevated to its true sphere only as

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it takes on moral significance and is supported by moral motives. This will come only as religion controls the centers of human power and directs the endeavors of human spirits.

Ill

Trade is primarily a social act, as through it is accomplished that exchange of commodi- ties which is indispensable to the sustenance of the life of humanity in all parts of the world. It is socially based upon the funda- mental virtues of honesty, faith in the fellow man, and conscientious regard for the needs of the race. Local barter of man with man may be a matter of wits and keenness in driv- ing a bargain, but the great trade of the world must be pitched upon the plane of confidence, straightforward dealing, and unquestionable reliability. Traders in a Syrian bazaar in the city of Damascus enjoy the mental gymnas- tics involved in their scales of askings and tak- ings. The sellers and the buyers in Benares on the Ganges, in Cairo on the Nile, or in modern Jerusalem, seem to the Christian trader utterly void of conscience in the matter of trade. The Japanese, in the opening days of his international commercial career, non-

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plused the commercial world by his utter un- reliability in abiding by a trade when the tide went against him. He soon found, however, that there were substantial principles which must be observed if he were to continue in the markets. Nothing was more interesting to me than to find in Kobe, thirteen years ago, a Christian American lecturing in English to a class of three hundred students in a school of commerce on the moral principles of busi- ness. The unreliability of the Japanese in abiding by a commercial contract gave rise to an unfounded and false statement that has had great currency, that even in their own banks the Japanese were so unreliable that foreigners had to be employed to handle the money. The Japanese has learned this lesson of the nations as he has learned many others, and is to-day a splendid business man.

The Chinese have been a trading people through the centuries. They were the world's first bankers. Their commercial organizations are the most complete of any on earth. They compelled honesty by the penalty of commer- cial ostracism which would mean economic ruin. Integrity was not a moral virtue but a business necessity. The Jew for many cen-

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turies has been a trader, but in the recent eras he has not commanded the big markets. His principles of dealing are known to be largely of the oriental type, although relations to world trade have stabilized in large measure his methods. The characteristics of trade vary with the character of the business that is be- ing done.

American trade has the reputation of being honest, reliable and serviceable. The Ameri- can article is usually taken anywhere in the world at what is claimed for it by the seller. The American business man has been looked upon as straightforward, conscientious and trustworthy. He is direct in his methods and outspoken in his dealings. However, this must be said; during the war and the immediate post-war period this good reputation has suf- fered at the hands of American business men who were lamentably lacking in the American character and principles. Many of these were not of Christian birth or training, and many spoke the English language with a strong for- eign accent. Substitutions were common and cancellations were frequent. Perhaps never in the last fifty years of American business, even in the United States, has there been such an exhibition of moral obliquity in trade as

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in the last two years. South America, though outrageously guilty in its own name, has been amazed by this deterioration of the American moral character in business. To be sure this is a fleeting irregularity, but its moral effect is most injurious and cannot be immediately eradicated. But it has thoroughly demon- strated the utter necessity of moral integrity in business if commerce is to be carried on in world proportions and by world facilities. The truth, and nothing but the truth, without ex- aggerations or embellishments, must charac- terize all representations of goods. The falsi- fier in advertising or representing his wares is a thief in ambush and should be subject to prosecution for attempted felony. The trader who in foreign commerce maliciously substi- tutes one article for another to the hurt of his customer is an offender against two na- tions and should be subject to prosecution under international law through proper diplo- matic procedure. In no other way can the good name of a trading nationality be kept unsullied before the world. Trade is not an individual but a social value and its safeguard- ing should be a social responsibility. The pro- visions for its protection should cover local, provincial, national and international condi-

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tions and be entirely adequate to insure virtue in every branch of business.

Commerce has not always had high moral ideals in what it takes to a foreign people or in the representatives who introduce the com- modities. What a country's trade does and the agents by which it is done are looked upon as representative of that country. The Amer- ican brand on intoxicants, narcotics, firearms, cinematic materials ally Christian America with all that that commerce does. The drunken sailors from an American warship in a foreign port, the scurrilous dealings of an American trader, the reckless conduct of an American representative are chargeable to Christian America. The Christian missionary is not infrequently almost alone in his repre- sentation of the fine idealism, splendid Chris- tian character, and noble aspirations of the American people before a non-Christian or semi-Christian public. Christianity in recent years has found one of its greatest obstacles in the un- Christian conduct and attitude of commercial representatives of American and European countries.

Commerce frequently loses a great oppor- tunity to serve itself, its country, and its high- est purposes by failing to make its labors in

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foreign lands Christian as well as financial. Central Africa and many of the Asiatic Islands have become Mohammedan under the missionary labors of Mohammedan business men. They go on long itineraries of trade but they never lose the higher objective of bring- ing the people to the worship of their God through their own prophet. AVhy should men of business support missionaries, and business itself not be missionary? Commerce also finds in its own country the representatives of great foreign firms whose knowledge of Christianity is nigh unto naught. Christianity has at its doors the very men that should eventually be its chief exponents in foreign regions and will be recreant to a sacred trust if it does not earnestly seek them. Commerce owes the Christian missionary a great debt as its path- maker. It should be indeed to-day the joy- ous and efficient handmaiden of religion in its efforts to Christianize the world. Chris- tianity has no greater open channel to man- kind than this which commerce offers, and it should not be slow to possess it every whit. The fundamental principles of genuine busi- ness are moral, and root themselves in re- ligious conceptions. With commerce Chris- tianized, fleet messengers of Christian civihza-

.^00 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

tion, thought and life would be shuttling the world. In the major points of missionary strategy commerce is prominent. It is a great main artery of social relations which Christ should control. Commerce, thinking Chris- tian, would lift trade to the first rank as a major missionary agency.

IV

Wealth and commerce are the two well- recognized arms of social power in the world to-day, but they owe their existence and sup- port to the third and greater, which is labor. Labor is the primary productive force with- out which society would fail, and in proportion to which all social values are developed and exalted. By labor is generally meant physical toil, or muscular effort directed to some use- ful end, but in reality it should include all intellectual exertion as well. Through the newly developed industrial mind it has come to be looked upon as a commodity to be bought and sold, and that irrespective of its human basis. In the opening of the Christian era physical labor was held in disrepute and only befitting slaves. This conception has lingered, in some measure, with the inheritors of that old

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Mediterranean civilization, and to-day is an obstacle in the industrial development of the countries which they dominate. The same view prevails in almost the entire non-Chris- tian world. Christianity has strenuously en- deavored to lift labor to the dignity of life expression and remove from it all stigma of life repression and the sense of social bond- age. The entire theory or conception of labor as a commodity should be utterly annihilated along with every other slavery-produced idea. Labor is and should be the free expression of one's obligation to society and the accepted mode of one's service to the commjanity of man. Society is a fellowship of values, and every man is social just to the extent of his contribution to the common fund through which the exchange of values is made. Service to humanity should be the high controlling in- centive in human labor.

Where society has not come to a moral basis nor acquired a moral perspective, labor has not assumed the dignity of life expression. In fact, where life itself has not been lifted to that high moral plane which a genuine religion of personality would establish, labor is re- garded as the necessity of the incompetent, the curse of the lowly born. This accounts in

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no small degree for the economic inefficiency of non-Christian peoples. In others the lack of the spur of necessity and uncertainty has allowed wantonness and indifference to labor. In the great oriental countries the laborers are noted for their patience, persistence and endurance, but the output of their toil is piti- fully small. They have very little command over natural forces ; their tools are crude ; their methods are primitive and their products are meager. Fifteen years ago Tokio had forty thousand jinrikisha men; practically all the transportation and transfer work of the city was done by human labor without horses or drays of any kind. Man for centuries has been the draft horse of Japan. In Nikko I saw forty men drawing on a two-wheeled cart up a steep hill a seven thousand pound dy- namo to be installed in a hotel. In India a family may have a half-dozen servants but they will not do more than a single good servant of the old type in an American home. A brick- layer in the United States will lay two or three times as many bricks in a day as will the aver- age bricklayer in Brazil. In all these non- Christian and semi-Christian countries indo- lence, or crudeness of implements, or primi- tiveness of methods produce an incompetency,

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an economic inefficiency, which retards prog- ress and commits the people to a low standard of living and social relations.

The work of Christianity is to help ease the pressure that bears men down and increase the forces that bear men up. Lord Bacon once spoke of the end of knowledge as *'the glory of God and the relief of man's estate." Surely Christianity could have nothing less. The relief of man's estate has directed the mis- sionary in his and her labors. They have em- phasized the dignity of labor and taught the most approved methods in agriculture, carpen- try, masonry and bricklaying, and the gentler arts of drawing, sewing, cooking and other domestic labors. The Methodist Episcopal Church has recently invested about $300,000 in a great farm in the valley of Chili to dem- onstrate to that people, and other South Americans, what may be accomplished by mod- ern scientific farming. Industrial classes have been inaugurated and technical schools to the number of three hundred have been established in all parts of the world by Chris- tian missionaries to give to the people new conceptions of industry and new leaders for their material development. Large areas of the earth are lost to swamps that could be

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drained, and even larger domains are now desolate because of lack of rainfall that could be made wonderfully productive by possible irrigation. Christianity is vitally concerned for the productivity of the earth because the populations are becoming crowded in some countries where the present capacity of pro- duction is limited; and human competency de- pends upon adequate nourishment. Men must also be raised to a new level of wants in order to new assertiveness. It is not so much what the human body consumes but what the human life in its best expression calls for that de- termines the worth of society. Only the capa- bilities for self-sustenance linked with the as- pirations of self-development give hope for so- cial efficiency. Christianity, by its creative power, will set in action the forces that re- deem waste places, that produce adequate capabilities, and that will inspire to that intel- ligent and constructive effort that is necessary to elevate the very quality of human living.

Christianity to-day is vividly mindful that the challenge of the world is to such a recon- struction of society and its institutions as

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will harmonize them with the high ideals which it has always acclaimed. Religion does take hold on the imagination by its mystic hopes, and that strongly, but it makes its greatest appeal to reason through its expressions of substantial social values. The Christian prop- agandist who seeks to lay an enduring founda- tion for the Christian structure must endeavor to possess those social institutions through which human life comes to its most evident, complete, and continued expression. Among these may be reckoned the school, the family and the government.

Education is a process of the intelligent transformation of society. The spirit of real learning is the spirit of freedom. The restless- ness in India to-day is due to the large num- ber of highly educated men that the English schools of the country have produced. Their intelligence demands a progress which they be- lieve their country is not having under the existing conditions and they seek the employ- ment of those methods and agencies which have proven productive of vast development in other countries. The place of the school in the ut- ter transformation of Germany in a quarter of a century has been powerfully demon- strated. The Japanese in two generations have

206 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

passed from the most thoroughgoing feudal- ism to modern conditions of civilization. A people formerly negligible and considered un- fit for association with Western nations has leaped at a bound to a place of equality as a great world power among the leading nations of the earth. The process of this achievement has unquestionably been that of education. What has been in this way accomplished is possible to all peoples. The school is an out- standing social factor which Christianity must look to as its agent for elevating all social values. But a system of inferior Christian schools will unavoidably mean that Christianity itself would be brought by them under re- proach. But when it is remembered that the graduates of Robert College wrote the consti- tution of Bulgaria, that the graduates of Beirut College are in responsible positions, political, educational, professional and com- mercial, throughout the Levant, that the makers of the new China were graduates of Christian schools, that the literature of Japan has become Christian in ideals and atmosphere, it is clear what may be accomplished in trans- forming and exalting social values in accord- ance with the principles of Christianity in a short period by great educational institutions

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that are thoroughly Christian. The Christian Church has no greater responsibility than this of Christianizing the entire educational system of the whole world. The school should be lifted to the plane of the Christian ideal.

But of all social institutions none perhaps is so distinctively Christian as the home. It does not exist among non-Christian peoples and no word connoting the conception is to be found in their languages. In India, with all its ancient culture, the wife is in the zenana, liv- ing in her domicile away from her master. In the near East the mother and daughters do not live in the house with the father and sons. The social meal, with all members of the family at the board, as is the rule in all distinctly Christian countries, is not known in the non-Christian lands. The home circle is a Christian creation and home itself is a Chris- tian conception. Christianity elevates the marital relation to a new level and thereby puts the family upon a new basis. At least one third of all the people in the world live in a polygamous society. Polygamy and con- cubinage characterized all wild tribes, whether in Africa or America, as they do the historic civilizations of China and India, the Moham-

208 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

medan world and non-Christian peoples gener- ally. Christianity can countenance none of it, and wherever its light is shed the sense of the unrighteousness of this custom is created and soon leads to abandonment. The ques- tion arises, can a people be made truly Chris- tian and retain a polygamous society? Does not the gospel of Christ demand the eradica- tion of polygamy and concubinage? Can the gospel be truly preached with the home, the faithful marital life, and the virtues of the home relations ignored ? The answers to these questions cannot be in doubt. Personal re- ligion, if genuine, will manifest itself quickly in the family life. By it man's attitude to- ward his wife and children, his parents and his brothers and sisters, to all members of his family, will be lifted to a splendid height of consideration and affection. The home in the Christian system is the one institution that administers to the nurture of the highest vir- tues of the individual and the race. The world cannot be made Christian without the estab- lishment of the Christian home, nor can it be kept Christian if the home is allowed to de- teriorate in conceptions, in virtue, and its min- istrations to the family.

The center of the home is woman, the wife.

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the mother, the sister, the friend. She has in her keeping the timeless interests of the race. The welfare of mankind is largely in her hands because of her influence upon the mind of the young. There is a deep mystery over the law of heredity, but woman is the medium through which social inheritance is transmitted to the new generation. The power of the future is locked up in the influences which woman, by the endowments of mother- hood, shall exert.^ Christianity has recognized this mysterious fact of human life and has placed a valuation on woman which no non- Christian religion even allowed. Woman has worth, to be sure, in her individuality equal to that of man's, but her worth as the medium for transmitting a social inheritance, a social ideal, is even greater. Woman has a capacity for emotion which gives her unmeasured power in effecting the majesty of the race. Her per- sonality is peculiarly endowed for social vision through long stretches of time which make for the preservation of the future of civilization. Christianity has made always for the establish- ment of woman in her true place. In all non- Christian lands and in all ages the status of woman has been and is low. Not infrequently she is treated as a chattel and almost always

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is made the victim of cruelty and lust. In the more primitive and barbaric tribes she is the heavy burden bearer and the slave of drudgery. It is only in highly Christianized countries that society protects her from galling labor and the conditions of toil that may be disastrous to the high social interests of which she is the heaven-endowed custodian. Recent years have witnessed a marvelous recognition of the rights and powers of the race in woman, and the immense reconstruction of the proc- esses of society in order to call into action those qualities of mankind which woman represents. It is not a matter simply of giving women certain prerogatives and responsibilities which will put her on a par with man. It is a matter of relating woman, the molder of social des- tiny, adequately to social values, that some- how in that mysterious impressionist manner she may become the better transmitter of the full social inheritance which the future genera- tions require for the larger development. Woman is the supreme social organism. Neg- lect of woman can result only in the retarda- tion of human development. Man has always received the best equipment available to fight the battle of life. It has not always been realized that woman needs equally as great

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equipment to fight the battle of social heredity. Elevating woman is not merely elevating an individual; it is elevating a primary social value.

Woman's estate in any country is a fair in- dex to the character of the religious life in that country. Only religion deals with ultimate realities and keeps open the door to the fu- ture. Where religion is low that door stands but slightly ajar, and there woman sits in the shadows. Christianity only has grasped the meaning of woman to the race and the King- dom of God, and opened the ways for her ele- vation and sanctification. To-day in the most advanced Christian lands woman is having her opportunity with man, and more, for that higher development which her social responsi- bility to humanity requires. This opportunity Christianity would put at the command of every woman in the world.

The Christian home established by the mis- sionary with the Christian wife and mother at its heart is the center of the remarkable revo- lutions which are being started in the thoughts and habits of mankind. This fact gives force to the statement of Rauschenbusch that "A celibate minister is more efficient for the church; a married minister of more service to

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the Kingdom of God." The Christian family- is the revolutionizing Christian force. After seeing the Christian woman, refined and capa- ble, the Chinese woman no longer considers it good form to hobble on crippled feet to satisfy the whims of long centuries in the bindings that supposedly contributed to gentility. Wife-bargaining is passing as Christians have impressed people with the reasonableness and right of personal choice in life-mating. The wail of illiteracy becomes bitter as womanly intelligence in the missionary adorns society and elevates home companionship. Woman has already demonstrated in non-Christian lands her capacity to appreciate Christian ideals, to comprehend Christian conceptions, and to enter fully into Christian experience. She is fast becoming the hope of transmitting to the oncoming generations the Christian mind and the aptitudes for Christianization processes. When the world becomes Christian it w^iil be found that woman has been the medium of revelation and of its redemption. Her social relation to the race in the capacity of motherhood, of custodian and trainer of childhood, and of conveyor of the emotional power of mankind must be regarded always as a supreme objective in the program of

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world Christianization. The home is the pre- eminent sphere of woman's best expression of herself and highest influence on the race, and as such must be looked upon as having pri- mary value for the Kingdom of God. The family is the unit in the development of man- kind, and its redemption, preservation and sanctification are essential to the consumma- tion of the ulterior purpose of Christianity. The elevation of these values throughout the world to the Christian standards is absolutely essential to making this world Christian.

yi

Along with the family and the school as social institutions of vast possibilities for the Kingdom of God must be placed the govern- ment, the voice of authority in society. By nothing are the spirit, force, intelligence, pur- pose and progress of a people more effectively displayed than by the character of govern- ment which it supports or tolerates. The de- velopments in government during the last half- century have been truly marvelous, and espe- cially so in those countries where Christian missions have been most active. The first mis- sionaries in the non-Christian countries found

214 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

usually the government of an autocratic per- sonal ruler, whose decisions accorded more often with his own whims, or caprice, or the size of a bribe, than with the demands of jus- tice. From the magistrate to the viceroy this was the rule. In some instances in these coun- tries, and even in semi-Christian countries, the bureaucratic oligarchy was in power and the theory of government was that of exploitation in the interests of the ruling class. The well- being of the people was a matter of minor importance. Corruption and inefficiency char- acterized such government, and do so to-day. This is the trouble with China, the old Turkish empire, Persia, and Central Asia. Korea went down under the weight of a most corrupt gov- ernment, while the downfall of the Manchu Dynasty is largely attributable to its corrup- tion. The oligarchies in the South American republics exploit their countries and are open to the charges of corruption in politics and inefficiency in public service. The history of the other Latin American nations, large and small, is a story of shameful exploitation. Po- litical revolutions are as often traceable to the ambitions of loot gatherers in public office as to real sentiments of genuine patriotism. How far below real Christian ideals of government

ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 215

these nations fall may be seen in the statement by that great Christian statesman, Thomas R. Marshall, made upon his retirement from the vice presidency of the United States : " A gov- ernment dedicated to the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- ness, can find its perfect accomplishment only in republics brave and strong enough to rise above the ambitions, passions, and prejudices of individuals and groups. Representative government was intended to guarantee these inalienable rights of man through the enact- ment and enforcement of laws calculated to preserve and promote equal and exact justice to all men." What non-Christian peoples ever had a government dedicated "to the inaliena- ble rights of man"? What people will ever become Christian that fail to dedicate them- selves, their lives and their sacred honors to the establishment and maintenance of such a government? Despotic autocracies and tyran- nical oligarchies and exploiting officialdom can never harmonize with genuine Christianity, or even show sympathy for its principles and movements. They prefer depraved paganism, illiterate superstition, or blatant agnosticism to a religion that lifts the ideals of "inalienable rights of man," and that demands honesty, in-

216 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

tegrity, and efficiency in public affairs. They choose "darkness rather than hght because their deeds are evil," and they will not choose otherwise until the impact of Christian civili- zation shall drive them from power and en- throne other forces that will have diligent re- spect to the "inalienable rights of man" and the means and processes of their complete de- velopment. There can be no such thing as a virile Christianity under a corrupt govern- ment, such as existed in Korea and China. The two are exclusive ideas. Christianity makes for virtue, integrity and moral purpose, and government without these recognizes in Christianity a dangerous foe.

The world has witnessed in the last two decades a marvelous awakening of natural con- sciousness among all nations of Asia. How far Japan has been the leader and teacher could scarcely be said, but it is true the peo- ples are arousing from the long slumber and asking for a new evaluation. The Great War developed a tremendous expectancy on the part of small national groups. President Wil- son's famous Fourteen Points seemed a new gospel to them, although it contained no prin- ciples for which his own nation had not long stood. The Fourteen Points were not made

ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 217

effective because of the inability of the world to take them and incarnate them. But they are on tables of stone and will not wear away. The day of their acceptance and embodiment into the framework of world government will inevitably come. The interesting thing at this time is the marvelously sensitive consciousness which the nations possess. They are tired of oligarchies, big nation-ism, world power domi- nance, and the diplomacy of spoils-takers. They watch, as for the morning, for the gleam of a new internationalism under the protec- tion and direction of a real Christianity. World-intermingling through students, tour- ists, commercialists and diplomatists is having a miraculous effect on the consciousness of all peoples in regard to their own governments. They are getting strong side-lights on their institutions, their liberties and their political deficiencies. The emigration of their people has established points of contact with the vari- ous nations of the earth, and especially of the countries that have made most of their liberty- giving and liberty-assuring governments. As a result, governmental principles and practice are in a state of flux in almost all nations, whether in Asia, Africa, South America, or the settled countries of Europe. The period of

218 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

reconstruction and reconstitution must inevi- tably ensue.

That Christianity through its missionary propaganda, and through the multiplied con- tacts which it has effected, has had tremendous influence in bringing about the present state of affairs can scarcely be controverted. The overwhelming evidence which can be adduced cannot fail to be convincing of the fact. The question is, what contribution has Christianity now to make to the necessary governmental reconstruction of mankind, and what end has Christianity to promote by this reconstruction ? The question must be answered and answered unmistakably if the supreme objective of mak- ing the world Christian is achieved. In the first place, Christianity must interpret to all peoples the meaning, purpose and end of gov- ernment. It must be understood that missions have no call or purpose to dictate the forms and instruments of government, nor to sit in judgment upon those that exist. Christian- ity looks upon government as society's mode of self-expression in its endeavors to attain the great progressive objectives in human de- velopment. The redemption, elevation, and perfecting of humanity is the objective in all social institutions, and government must al-

ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 219

ways be directed to the consummation of that end. The progress of the race in the consum- mation of these supreme objectives is tied up with this highest form of social expression. Government, as the social institution that makes for the group destiny and largely for the individual development of a people can at- tain its supreme ends only as it makes the advancement of personality the determinative factor in all efforts and movements. Not property but personality is the power of the state. The Christian interpretation of the meaning, purpose and end of government has brought the demand for liberty, stabilization and sense of security against despoiling tyrants. Revolutions have resulted from the germination of the Christian ideals of gov- ernment. Christianity requires by its very nature political honesty. President Cleveland expressed it, "Public office is a public trust." Corruption and inefficiency in government are intolerable in the Christian regime, while auto- cratic despotism and oligarchical tyranny and exploitation are made indefensible. Christian- ity makes the service of humanity the control- ling national purpose and the perfecting of cit- izenship the primary patriotic endeavor.

The creative energy of Christianity is never

220 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

more manifest than in the remarkable trans- formations which it brings about in all social values. Government, the family, the home, the state of woman, the evaluation of child- hood, the function of the school, all bear un- equivocal evidence to the ennobling and up- lifting power which Christianity introduces. The world can be made to think and act Chris- tion only as these social values shall express the Christian purpose and convey the Chris- tian power. The mission of Christianity is to create those conditions of the social mind that shall make normal in the world the Christ thought of humanity, its relations and its ac- tivities. The social ideal, as revealed in Christ's Kingdom of God, no man has a right to regard as unattainable in earthly conditions. The late Benjamin Kidd in his "The Science of Power" said, "There is not an existing in- stitution in the world of civilized humanity which cannot be profoundly modified or al- tered, or abolished in a generation. There is no form or order of government or of the do- minion of force which cannot be removed out of the world within a generation. There is no ideal in conformitjT- with the principles of civilization dreamed of by any dreamer or idealist which cannot be realized within the life-

ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 221

time of those around him." In speaking of civiHzation he says: "Within the Hfetime of a single generation it can be made to undergo changes so profound, so revolutionary, so per- manent, that it would almost appear as if hu- man nature had been completely altered in the interval."

Christian propagandists need to be brought definitelj^ and forcibly to the conviction that the social ideals of Christianity are possible of real- ization. They need not be discouraged because genuine civilization has not yet arrived. Civ- ilization awaits the very power which Chris- tianity with its personalism is capable of pro- ducing. The glorified savagery and individ- ualistic supremacy which have characterized the highest that has existed hitherto can be re- tired only by the force of commanding social ideals which Christianity inspires and supports. There is limitless power in the social relation, and the question arises, shall Christianity allow this to lie dormant, or be misdirected, while the world wallows in wanton willfulness and woeful waste? The emergence of the efficient individ- ual is always acclaimed with proper laudation, and Christianity is constituted to bring about that emergence, but shall not the world be made expectant of the rise of an efficient so-

222 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

ciety, in which the efficient individual shall find full appointments for complete expression? Society is as much, if not more, under the law of heredity as the individual. Social ideals are operative far beyond the reach of a generation. They gather momentum not only by the reason that they convince, but by the emotions which they arouse. It has never yet been decided that the emotions were any the less powerful than reason in determining the course of so- ciety. Christianity is sovereign in that realm, always making contribution of inspiration, re- finement and direction. By this fact its access to the institutions of society is direct and com- plete. Christianity's power of achievement in the world can never be applied more effectively for the consummation of its eternal and divine purpose than through the institutions of society and the ideals which they embody.

The challenge of the world is to the forces of Christianity. Mr. Kidd has declared that "the science of power in civilization is the sci- ence of the passion for the ideal." Christianity creates social ideals that are regenerative of all social values and sustains the passion for their consummation. Its capabilities become its con- demnation if social inefficiency and social de- pravity be allowed to continue and social ruin

ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 223

be permitted to ensue. Christianity is forced to accept the obligation to lift society to its own ideal or assume the responsibihty for the failure and prostitution of civilization. Well may the Church of God take its stand this day with the Seer of Patmos and resolutely declare: *'The kingdoms of this world shall become the king- doms of Our Lord and His Christ and He shall reign forever and ever."

LECTURE V: VITALIZING ETHL CAL IDEALS

Whatever may be true of other religions, Christianity cannot disengage itself from hu- man civilization. In fact, civilization must ever be the direct aim and end of all intelligent Christian effort. Christianity sets a standard for civilization as well as for the individual life ; wherever that standard is even approached it gets its strongest apologetic; wherever in so- called Christian countries that standard is neg- lected it has been made to suffer blame. When men said in the last decade, "Civiliza- tion has failed," they said also, "Christianity has failed." Christianity's failure had been in its lack of ability or effort to command civiliza- tion, and civilization's failure had been in its ignoring of the principles which Christianity had offered. The fact should now be clearly and forcibly recognized that the Christian re- ligion can never be dominant except as it com- mands the highways of human movement and development. Christianity must seek to con-

224

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 225

trol with its principles the environment in which people live, for human destiny here and hereafter is vitally affected by the forces that play upon human life. The main arteries of social relations must be accepted as great ob- jectives in any far-reaching strategy of Chris- tian propaganda. The kingdoms of this world, such as power, wealth, industry, trade, human life, the family, national consciousness and government, should be made the kingdoms of Our Lord and His Christ. The very elements of civilization are to be vitalized by Christian thought and purpose if humanity is to be caught up into the intent of redemption. The world has that conception to-day and it will not soon lay it off.

Christianity has been necessarily revolution- ary in society, and in the future it must be even more so. It has not taken over and absorbed the forms, conditions and expressions of civili- zation that have developed under the influence and inspiration of other religious beliefs, ex- cept to its own hurt. Wherever the Church in its worldly thirst for dominion has adopted, or adapted, entirely or in part, institutions from paganism or semi-paganism, deterioration of the Christian faith and experience has resulted. This has been true by its inclusions from Juda-

226 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

ism, Hellenism, ancient Romanism and North European paganism, and it has been true in the modern era when ecclesiastical dominion has outrun spiritual evangelization. Chris- tianity must grow the institutions and the forms of society through which it is to have its fullest expression. It is no product of eclecti- cism, no composition of contributing faiths, no mechanism of harmonizing religionists. Christianity is an organizing principle, life- giving and life-asserting. It is a growth, a life development, of an organism as the oak is the life expression of the acorn. As the oak necessarily reveals the potentialities of the acorn, so the Christian civilization discloses the potentialities of the Christian life. Christian- ity cannot now be presented independently of the Christian civilization, or rather the civiliza- tion which has been evolved in the atmosphere and by the forces of the Christian faith. Social values take on new phases and new relations with the movements which it inspires. Christi- anity could never make itself known and ap- preciated except through what its spirit and purpose inevitably produces.

The Christian missionary is more, therefore, than the exponent of a new rehgious belief. He is the representative, the incarnation, the

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 227

epitome, and therefore the interpreter of a new civilization and of the sources from which that civilization came. To be sure, he goes out to teach Christianity and to make Chris- tians of the people, but his largest instructions are in his life. He interprets Christianity more by his personality than by his words. In his personality he carries the impact of his country, his college, his church, his nation, his family, the society that has produced him, and for a lifetime he endeavors to put into form and actualities what he carries in conceptions and impulses. Personal religion cannot be anything less than the religion of a person in human relations. Angels are not qualified to be missionaries. If religion were only a mat- ter of the personal spirit and the heavenly world it would seem that no other beings would be so well qualified, as they know what is required and desired. But they lack the hu- man relations and the elements of life which this world has produced. Jesus lived thirty years in human relations before entering upon his mission of redemption. Had He need to do so ? He was in a family ; a youth in a neigh- borhood ; a carpenter among laborers ; a physi- cian among the sick; a citizen of a govern- ment ; a member of a race ; a man among men.

228 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

He gave evidence that to Him all these rela- tions were not only important, but vital in the Kingdom of God upon which He laid His chief emphasis. Angels could not do this. They could talk only of heaven and the virtues of the redeemed soul. The message of the angel is important; yea, essential, but the gospel of human life is the need of the human world, and by the angels' message will come to full fruition.

The gospel of the human life is the Chris- tian missionary's offering to the peoples of the earth. He goes as the exponent of life in relations just as Christ revealed it. The lis- tening hearts of the race have been awaiting anxiously just such gospel from the teachers and promulgators of religion. Sad it is, but true, that through the weary years for the most part they have listened in vain. Religion and human life were not separate in the think- ing and teaching of Jesus. He went so far as to call the ecclesiastical leaders of his day and his people hypocrites and a generation of vipers because in their religious zeal and bigotry they exhibited no concern for human life, nor even for the virtues which should characterize a true human life. By His condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees for their narrow re-

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 229

ligious conceptions and unsympathetic attitude toward human hfe He hastened, if not brought on, His own crucifixion. It was Jesus w^ho really discovered humanity and gave it intelligent and adequate relation to divinity. The follower of Jesus, and espe- cially one sent out to make Him known to the world, is under solemn obligation to present and expound the meaning and value of human life and its relations as well as to interpret the doctrinal elements of the Christian creed. Failure in the former is a formidable barrier to the acceptance of the latter. Christianity admits of no separation between creed and conduct, between faith and life, between re- ligion and morals. It is this union, organic and inseparable, which gives Christianity its unanswerable appeal to the entire human race.

n

Christianity is based upon the indissoluble unity of morals and religion. Religion deals primarily with the relation of man to God; morals with the relation of man to man. Jesus never separated the ethical problem from the religious. His religious teaching involved plain ethical principles and could scarcely be

230 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

stated except in that relation. Without His fundamental, ethical assumptions much of His expressly religious teaching would have no force. A very large proportion of His teach- ing was simply and distinctly ethical. He laid down and made plain by numerous statements and illustrations many fundamental laws of human life. His ethics formed a large and vital part of His marvelous doctrines. He made duty the will of God and found the will of God expressed in some duty. His life was the realization and illustration of His ethical principles and in His person can be found the best expression of His ethics. He embodied the ideal that He set forth. His matchless personality created a moral standard which cannot be avoided or ignored if His religious doctrines and revelations are to be accepted for effective application. He offers no re- ligious light nor confident hope independently of ethical requirements and moral achieve- ments. With His ethical and religious teach- ings intricately interwoven it becomes evident that the religion of Jesus Christ cannot be pre- sented, promulgated and promoted without full and continued emphasis upon His ethical conceptions, ideals and demands. The Chris- tian religion carries with it the Christian ethics

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 231

and neither will have power without the other.

The ethical conception of religion is point- edly and forcefully presented in the Sermon on the Mount. Here is to be found the state- ment and elucidation of the basic principles of human life. Here are set forth the qualities essential to true character, full happiness and worthy influence. Here are made plain the sublime motives to living. To many very sin- cere and even devout persons these ethical ideals are important, but not essential and fundamental to salvation. They have become persuaded that the essence of Christianity is in its mystical doctrines, its metaphysical ex- pressions of Christ's relation to God, to man, and to human sin and salvation, and so they are compelled to give this marvelous enuncia- tion of basic principles of human life a sec- ondary place in the Christian system of re- ligion. They do not find in this matchless statement what they call the "blood" — that is, the atonement as they interpret that great es- sential doctrine. The gospel with them is identified with the sacrificial act of Jesus Christ comprised in His death and passion and consummated by the crucifixion. Redemption finds its efficacy in this atonement, and what-

232 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

ever else may be added cannot be accepted as essential to salvation. Preaching this gospel as thus understood has by this group of be- lievers been considered comprehensive of all that Christianity requires. But there is an- other and larger group that holds just as tenaciously to the great central doctrines of the atonement and the incarnation, and at the same time believes that the ethical conceptions and ideals set forth by Jesus in His supreme statement of principles are also essential to human salvation. They hold, and rightly, that the teachings of Jesus must not be di- vorced from the life of Jesus. He was not dealing in nonessentials when He spoke. His ethics were as much the expression of His life as was His religion or His sacrificial acts, and these cannot be omitted when He is presented to men or nations, nor ignored or minimized when He is accepted as a Divine Savior.

Jesus began with His demand for a new mind, a new attitude, a new character — "Re- pent!" That is a challenge to a new expres- sion of personality. The false standards of life must be abandoned. The life that is really worth while must become the absorbing aim. Things basic to high living must come to pri- mary consideration and adoption. He began

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 233

in His exposition of fundamental principles with contrasting the humble, the teachable, the open-minded, with the proud, the con- ceited, the self-satisfied and self-willed. He finds here the door into the Kingdom of heaven, and it might be said into the kingdom of knowledge. Doctor Henry Churchill King, in his *'Ethics of Jesus," has pointed out that against the man of brazen assurance, of jeal- ousy for his own rights, and of ambition for his own glory, Jesus puts the man of meekness, self-control, tranquil courage and conscious strength. Over against the tyrannical, the hard, the intolerant, He sets the compassion- ate, the sympathetic and the forbearing. Over against those who stir up strife, create conten- tions, encourage war. He puts those who rec- oncile differences, harmonize elements and promote peace. Over against the meddler, the busybody, the tattler, the mischief-maker. He puts those who bring in the state of friend- liness, neighborliness and social good will. Over against the self-indulgent, the luxury- loving, soft sentimentalist, He puts the heroic, the self-sacrificing, the persecuted for right- eousness. These qualities of character Jesus marks out as the supreme conditions of happi- ness and the primary factors in a powerful in-

234 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

fluence for the kingdom which He was con- cerned in establishing.

Doctor King has given the following as the code of the world, the beatitudes of the world- lings— "Happy are the proud, for theirs is the world. Happy are the unscrupulous, for they shall need no comfort. Happy are those who claim everything, for they shall possess the earth. Happy are they who hold back from no sin, for they shall drain pleasure's cup. Happy are the tyrants, for they need no mercy. Happy are the impure, to whose lust no bound can be put, for they shall see many harlots. Happy are they who can stir anger unhindered, whose ambition is un- checked, for they shall be as gods. Happy are they who have never sacrificed, for theirs is aU the world." Jesus has set as the task of His followers the entire reversal of the world's code and the substitution with all mankind of that law of life which conserves, magnifies and sanctifies the noble elements of our humanity. Self-mastery, the pursuit of rightness, intelli- gent and sympathetic respect for personality are qualities of character which inevitably make for the upbuilding of true society. The great coming civilization guided by Jesus' code and not the world's is the aim of Christian ef-

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 235

fort. In such a civilization a brotherhood of men is a possibihty and in no other. With such an ethical ideal humanity will have a chance to come to its maturity and display forces worthy of the Creative Intelligence and Love. With such possibilities human effort is inspired to sublime tasks. On the other hand, what is there in the code of the world to lift man and civilization to heights in keeping with man's consciousness of his own powers? JNIen find life dreary without competent mo- tives. It was Emerson who said, "A good intention clothes itself with sudden power." Jesus set the dynamic of living in the motives with which he charged the human soul. First, He placed the demand for thoroughgoing con- sistency of life. This is no fragmentary mat- ter. A judgment is inevitable and only a life substantial in every part can endure the test- ing. It is better to lose one of the members of the body than to have the entire body thrown into the dumping pit. Duplicity in making answer to life's demands brings only condemnation. "You must be perfect," con- sistent in your life, as your Heavenly Father is consistent in His, if you hope to reach this standard. Second, He placed a loving Father- hood at the heart of the world and at the cen-

236 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

ter of its life. There is no partiality there. There is no forgetfulness of any. There is deep concern for all. Third, He made every man a brother of every other man. He urged that man be reconciled to every brother before any effort is made to win the favor of the Father. The brother may at some time be minded to strike you, or take your possessions, or do you injury, but treat him like a brother nevertheless. Whatever you would like men to do to you, do just the same to them. The life of every man is knit up with one's** own. Every man has a priceless personality in the estimation of Jesus. In all essentials men are alike. The brotherhood of the race is based upon its essential unity and the com- mon Fatherhood in the Creator. These clear- cut, unequivocal, emphatic teachings of Jesus not only set forth commanding social ideals and objectives, but they place dynamic mo- tives at the heart of humanity.

The supreme purpose of the Christian prop- aganda is the delivery of the full gospel of Jesus Christ in power to all peoples, that His Kingdom, with all that He meant it should embrace, may become the established will and habit of mankind. The peril always to par- tial beings such as men are is that they may

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 237

limit their emphasis to that only which ap- peals strongly to them as essential. They are not always able to see that all that Jesus em- phasized, and even suggested, is essential. The full gospel comprises the solution of the ethi- cal and religious problems of humanity and there is no solution of the one without the so- lution of the other. Religious dogmas are no more indispensable to the adequate presenta- tion of Christianity than the ethical ideals and demands which Jesus outlined and empha- sized. The moral standard in Christianity is just as necessary to the plan of salvation as the doctrines based upon the mystical and metaphysical elements of Christ's sacrifices. Sacerdotalism with its pretentious claims of exclusive authority and power in administer- ing the benefits of the latter has always made light of the former. Wherever the moral re- quirements of Christianity are duly met and emphasized Sacerdotalism becomes more and more glaringly empty and vain. There can be no substitute for the moral character which genuine Christian faith develops, and any priestly efforts at such substitution can have merit only with those who refuse to learn from the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth the full gos- pel of life and salvation.

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III

All non-Christian and semi-Christian peo- ples suffer to-day by reason of the evident di- vorce of religion and morals which has been encouraged, or at least wittingly tolerated by their priestly leaders. The priestly leaders are first accused of bringing about or allowing this separation because the priestly act by its very nature leads to such a condition. It is the act of ransom, of buying off, of appeasing, of making satisfaction for past transgression by the bestowal of a gift, of substituting through some supposed innate or imputed power and authority some accumulated virtue for the requirement which wrongdoing had called forth. In India one may witness to- day the sacrificial slaughter of the kid or the lamb before the altar of bloody Kali. In Japan and China one may see altars filled with offerings to spirits who would be dis- turbers of peace without such consideration. In some belated lands even human sacrifices are still occasionally made to meet the ven- geance of some outraged deity. Priestcraft thrives upon the faith of the people in its abil- ity to save them from the dire consequences of their own misdoings. Priests not only encourv

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 239

age, but they nourish such monstrous credulity up to the point of implicit reliance upon them for extrication from the just punishment for unrepented misdoings. What must be the effect upon moral character of the priest- hood emphasizing from week to week, and even from day to day, by the spoken word and the posted placard, the possibility of ob- taining for current coin or so many repeti- tions of designated prayers indulgences for wrong doings? Indulgences! What a trav- esty on religion ! Yet, by these granted indul- gences, by the pretentious promises to shorten the period of expiation after death, by the boast of holding the keys to the chambers of life and light, the priesthood in all lands and in all faiths maintains its place and power.

The basis of authority in the priesthood is never claimed to be in the inner purity of the priest. Its power is imputed and external. The religious body is the real representative of the Divine Being and when it acts through the priesthood the divine benefit is bestowed. Thus the priests acting officially carry a bene- fit altogether independent of their personal character. They can give to each other the cleansing from wrong-doing which they be- lieve they acting officially can bestow. They

240 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

become a great cleansing fountain for the vile pollutions of wretched lives. Is it any wonder that in all lands which they control religiously priests suffer unspeakable accusations against their moral character? Would it be any sur- prise that men in their positions, where black streams of corrupt living flow unceasingly, should be tempted beyond endurance? The priesthood is a victim as much as a victimizer in such an unnatural, unreasonable, unethical and unreligious system of belief and practice. The censure for a low state of morals in any country must necessarily rest upon the re- ligious leaders and teachers. The priestly system supposedly makes possible the escape from the ultimate consequences of bad morals, and therefore it is wanting in the force and sense of necessity to develop an energized moral leadership. Priests seldom in any lands become moral reformers and leaders against vice. They are so completely occupied with the other-world consequences of immorality and their own capabilities for destroying those consequences that they give little heed to the dire results that threaten earthly society. Their every effort is to keep God off men in- stead of getting God to men. They foster the belief that in the very last moment of a very

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 241

notoriously evil life they can give an absolu- tion that insures safety. Such a philosophy of rehgion, such a practice of supposed au- thority, such a concern continually for the after-life cannot do otherwise than unfit men for great, vital, moral leadership. It is not easy to get free of such a stupefying system. Priests grow from boys and are not chosen from men. Almost from infancy they have breathed the atmosphere of the priesthood. They never chose the priesthood; they were given to it and reared in it. This is true of all priestly and sacerdotal faiths. Their sphere has been exceedingly cramped; their horizon distressingly limited. Their travel has been only from convent to convent, monastery to monastery, temple to temple. They know not the world of men as it should be known by those who are under such tremendous moral responsibility. They lack equipment for moral leadership in a throbbing world of human re- lations.

The non-Christian world and the semi- Christian world is a priestly dominated world, and in a priestly dominated world morals re- ceive meager emphasis from the religious leaders. The nature and purpose of priest- craft makes it so. There is no hope of raising

242 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

the moral standard by means of that priestly- leadership. That must be done independently of that leadership or more often in spite of it. Evangelical Christianity lays down its first challenge to the non-Christian and semi-Chris- tian peoples in its moral ideals and require- ments. It has at the very beginning the unde- sirable task of discounting the existing priest- hood because of its moral delinquencies, either personal or social. The stress that is put upon the ethical ideals and demands of Jesus is in marked contrast to anything ever previously required by the priesthood. The emphasis is at once shifted from ceremonies and ordi- nances to life and character. The principles of human relations enunciated by Jesus be- come necessarily an arraignment of all re- ligious leaders who have ignored them, or transgressed them, and been ignorant of them. At first the proponents of the new faith and new ethics are treated as fanatics or deluded extremists. But the humanity which Jesus presents in His person and in His teachings finds a response in the common humanity of the race. His fundamental laws of human life are so reasonable, so desirable to thought- ful builders of society that His ethics become irresistible and lead at once to inquiry into His

VITALIZING ETHICAI IDEALS 243

religion. The more the priesthood combats the ethics as well as the religion of Jesus the more it opens to view its own character and brings upon itself accusations of moral short- comings. The moral emphasis is subversive of priestly claims and is revolutionary of the philosophy of the priestly system and it can- not be made without throwing the flashlight on the priesthood itself. This in no small way is responsible for much of the conflict between teachers of genuine Christianity and the non- Christian and semi-Christian leaders. Chris- tianity's first word to the non-Christian and un-Christian man is "Repent." The first word of the semi-Christian and the non-Christian leader is "Do penance." Christianity demands in unmistakable terms "Change your life"; the others, "Produce the ransom price." The one gives as a reason of its demands a door to be entered ; the others a possible way of escape. These two conceptions of how man is to deal with the Supreme Being and the human life account in no small degree for the state of ethical ideals and conduct to be found among the various peoples of the earth. So long as the priestly system can maintain itself in au- thority and power in any country, whatever its religion, morals will not receive from the

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religious leaders any adequate consideration and emphasis. It is just as true that should morals be given proper emphasis by any people the priestly system will wane and the prophet of righteousness and truth will assume re- ligious leadership and come into supreme spir- itual power.

IV

In nothing is genuine Christianity more dis- tinctive and more alone than in its emphasis upon the worth of the individual. Wherever heathenism reigns or wherever Christianity is wrapped in mists man's life is cheap. Mo- hammed built his great system upon the utter disregard of human life, and his followers in their blood-thirstiness have left a trail of hor- ror and desolation wherever they have been impelled by their selfish interests. Their bru- talities toward the Armenians illustrate what they are minded to do in order to the estab- lishment of their own will and power. Life has no sacredness to the fatalistic Moham- medan. Wherever Confucius and Buddha have been dominant the killing of hundreds of thousands in war or a scourge, or by some catastrophe, is not an event of startling impor- tance, except where the impact of Christianity

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 245

has been felt. Human suffering from famines, floods, plagues and pestilence seems not to arouse any great sympathy. In China the barbaric habit of tossing into a public vat the undesirable babies to die has only recently been discontinued. In India, the home of the Hindu cults, the age-long custom of burning widows with their deceased husbands on the funeral pyre was not discontinued until pro- hibited by a Christian government. Canni- balism in the Fiji Islands and among the African tribes did not cease until after the proclamation of Christianity. Cruelty of the most revolting kind is common in all non- Christian countries. Ordeals of the most un- speakable torture are resorted to in courts and in the punishment of crime. Suicide is almost too prevalent to receive notice. It is more common in China than in any other country perhaps because of the frivolous estimate there put upon numan life. In Japan suicide has been all but canonized and admired as an act of heroism and a sign of distinction. In India it is common, and usually is the result of un- happy marriage or domestic cruelty. But in all cases and in all lands suicide is due to a low estimate of the value of human life. In non- Christian countries the individual is counted

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for nothing. He is brought up with his sense of responsibility confined to his membership in a family, a tribe, a clan, or a guild. He is a part of a social machine. He is to be con- tent to be what his fathers were, and satisfied if his descendants rise only to the position which he has been compelled to hold. Such a man can never fulfill any just and adequate conception of humanity. He is the victim of a direful philosophy and a bondslave to a so- cial system that crushes human hope. Human existence to him is a mad struggle in which fate is the determinative force. Life has no goal in this earthly sphere and better is the end than burdensome distress and perplexing uncertainty. Pessimism reigns supreme where human life in any form is held in contempt. This is everywhere true to-day in the non- Christian and semi-Christian world. Only the lifting of human life to its proper valuation will restore to the world a just and adequate philosophy of human existence.

Christianity comes with its doctrines of per- sonality and high individual worth and de- mands that life be made worth while and that the dignity of the human is respected. This is why slavery has been wiped out. This is why human barbarity and ferocity die out with the

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 247

demonstration of the Christian virtues, and in their stead spring up those qualities of charac- ter and strength which enrich and ennoble civ- ilization. The human body takes on new value as the organism of the spirit. The peo- ple are not only taught not to abuse it, but how to refine and strengthen it and its higher sensibilities for its part in life's processes. Sanitation and housing are all but invariably bad wherever Christianity has not been; and they come to the fore for adequate attention wherever Christianity gets a competent voice. Christianity seeks to command with its princi- ples the environment in which people live. The missionary who does not produce a stir of interest in better living in the zone of his operations may question the effectiveness of his services, whatever may be the appearances of success. Christianity aims directly at the redemption of life, whether for this world or the next. Whatever may be said in behalf of other religions the facts of their civilizations show that humanitarianism never w\is truly manifested until Christianity pressed upon the consciences of all people its exalted estimate of the individual worth of human life.

Christianity presents a moral code that is directly antagonistic to many characteristic

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practices of various peoples. For instance, the gambling habit is widespread in the world. China seems to lead in this fearful vice. The indulgence of the Chinese is immemorial and inveterate. In Korea the passion is appar- ently unrestrained. In Japan it is less than in China, but it is exceedingly common. In Siam it is a national evil, while in Burma it is called the ''bane of the country." The Brit- ish Government has checked it in India, but it is still a social curse. The South American Government lotteries, one of the most harm- ful ways of gambling because it affects so large a number of people, are sources of vast revenues, portions of which are applied to the support of philanthropic institutions, includ- ing schools and hospitals, and the remainder is appropriated by the State. It is readily ad- mitted that gambling in the United States and Great Britain is not uncommon, but it is un- der the ban of public society. There can be no lotteries anywhere in this nation. Race track gambling is prohibited by most of the States and practically all other forms have been outlawed. Gambling is recognized by the public as a social evil. This is not so in the non-Christian countries nor in semi-Christian countries.

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 249

The low estimate on human life is shown not only in its destruction, but also in the evils which society nourishes or tolerates. Social vice is the open shame of Japan. India's prominence as a land of immoral tendencies is most unenviable. In China it may be said that womanhood is carefully guarded, and yet the infamous traffic shows many shameful as- pects. In Thibet and Siam the moral status is low. The harem of the Moslem is notorious. Concubinage and polygamy with the arbitrary power of divorce, the conceded right of every husband in all heathen and Moslem countries, add their horror to flaunting immorality. In South America, Central America and the West Indies the tone of society is dissolute, and the people are distressingly profligate. The physical condition of vast numbers bears fiery testimony to this wanton fact. The sta- tistics of illegitimacy in these Latin countries are startling. In the Roman Catholic con- vents, hospitals and foundling homes there is a niche in the wall in which is a box placed in a cylinder which turns. Undesirable infants are placed in this box, the bell is rung, the cylinder is turned, the infant is taken from the inside of the building by the attendants and its name and parentage thereafter are

250 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

never known. Evangelical Christianity finds itself in these countries face to face with wide- spread social vice. Because of the existing prohibition of all divorce the masses have be- come sadly indifferent to legal restraints and formalities. This adds an additional problem for all who strive to establish Christian civili- zation.

The evils of government in non-Christian countries are little less distressing than those of society. The rulers in heathen history of all ranks and grades looked almost altogether upon government as simply a process of self- aggrandizement and exaltation at the expense of their subjects. Their conception of rule was despotism. Savage life everywhere has been characterized by tyranny on the part of rulers. The principle of despotism was not limited to the kings and superior officials, but it was em- ployed by underlings and petty officers. Op- pression was characteristic of all. Every one in power sought his victim and the higher the official the larger were his demands. It was customary not only to arraign the party ac- cused of wrong doing, but to make his rela- tives, his neighbors, and even his village, re- sponsible for his misdoings. This insured tribute. The old Korean Government liter-

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 251

ally fell to pieces under the weight of its own rottenness. China's rebellion was against the Manchu tyrannical extortioners. Japan caught early the gleam of civilization and saved the government by gradual reforms. Oriental governmentalism has been for cen- turies marked by extortion, bribery, graft and every form of public dishonesty. This is just as true of Moslem rule. Has there come in the Oriental countries a complete revolution in govermiiental honesty? This will not be until new moral ideals have been set up. The reputation of Latin America is by no means enviable. A distinguished South American, at the opening of this decade, declared that the greatest need of his country was "honesty and efficiency in government." Some of the South American governments are little above bank- ruptcy notwithstanding their great natural wealth. The octopus upon the countries is overgrown, extravagant and dishonest govern- mentalism. The revolutions that have afflicted Latin America in the last quarter of a century have been in reality raids upon the treasurj^ rather than struggles for liberty an3 justice. As a rule they have proven lucrative to the revolutionary leaders. No one can deal with the custom houses, post-offices and other public

252 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

concerns of these countries without being nauseated by the graft, bribery and out- rageous dishonesty that are tolerated. Presi- dent Cleveland spoke of "Public office as a public trust." Not so in the southern re- publics ; public office is too often simply a pri- vate opportunity. This is no wholesale indict- ment of all officials in all or any of these coun- tries, but rather the designation of evils which do exist, and which there seems to be no serious effort to correct.

Deceit and dishonesty are twin sins of heathenism, irrespective of the countries in which they are found. Lying, make-believe, insincerity are characteristics of the common people of the Orient. "Nation of Uars" with "ways that are dark and tricks that are vain" make a terrible and yet pitiable indictment against the non- Christian world. Where so- ciety is permeated with the spirit of deceit sta- bility does not exist and moral health is un- known. Honesty is fundamental to all social confidence. With the foundations of social in- tegrity and prosperity wanting there can be no hope of development and human advance. Commercial distrust is inevitable where artful and unscrupulous dealings are common. Dr. Arthur H. Smith, in his "Chinese Characteris-

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tics," says: "Neither buyer nor seller trusts the other, and each for that reason thinks his interests are subserved by putting his affairs for the time being out of his own hands into those of a third person who is strictly neutral. The high rate of Chinese interest, ranging from twenty-four to thirty-six or more per- cent, is a proof of the lack of mutual confi- dence. The large part of this extortionate ex- action does not represent payment for the use of money, but insurance on risk, which is very great." Another writer says: "Low commer- cial standard is a feeble phrase to express the dishonesty and general unreliability prevalent in the commercial life of China." The reputa- tion of the Japanese business morals three decades ago was notoriously bad, while in In- dia, Turkey and Persia the lack of business confidence was a national characteristic. Throughout the South American continent the higher standards of business are grievously wanting, while in Central America commer- cial standards are low in every conceivable re- spect. Smuggling is looked upon as cunning. Fraudulent reproduction and use of foreign trade symbols and patent reservations are car- ried on without shame. Imitations of Eu- ropean or American articles are palmed off as

254 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

genuine. Where the commercial status is thus weighted with low moral standards, fraudulent methods and paralyzing defects, financial con- fidence is not possible and all enterprise is crip- pled. Moral hindrances which affect the com- mercial prosperity of a people may be prop- erly considered as social evils which will not be eliminated except by a new social morality.

The world to-day is far from a true ethical basis. With great peoples characterized by a low estimate of the value of human life, by gross social immoralities, by corruption and inefficiency in government, by prevalent un- scrupulousness in business and by untruthful- ness and duplicity in common human relations, there is glaring need of a new ethical code and the vitalizing power of a new moral and re- ligious ideal. To be sure, there are good peo- ple and true, perfectly correct and honorable men and women, honest government officials and upright and trustworthy business men in all these lands, but the facts in large volume strongly support the position that the status of society is far, far below what genuine con- scientious Christianity could at all tolerate.

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No just person would want to claim that the moral delinquencies and obliquities herein set forth grew out of the religious beliefs of the people. The moral corollaries of all religious beliefs would be strongly opposed to what really exists, but these corollaries have not been diligently deduced and vigorously ap- plied. Right here is the deficiency. A wide gulf has been allowed between the religious tenets and ethical conduct, and the blame rests heavily upon those religious leaders who have been selfishly indifferent to that gulf. There can be no denial of the existence of these moral shortcomings and transgressions, and there can be no denial of the fact that even now the religious leaders of the non-Christian and nom- inally Christian peoples are utterly indifferent to the low moral status of society. Their in- terest, like that of the Scribes and Pharisees, is in priestly functions with their pretensions to divine powers, and not the elevation of the quality of human living.

As he has said, the Latin- American coun- tries are all permeated by the beguiling lot- teries. Lottery tickets are thrust at travelers at every railroad station and cried by venders in all the streets of the cities. The iniquities of this institution are well known. \Vhat Ro-

256 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

man Catholic priest in any of these countries ever raised his voice against the lottery? Yet it was the evangelical ministry in the United States that made the lottery, or even the ad- vertisement of one, utterly impossible in this country. The liquor traffic is nefariously car- ried on in all these lands, but no Roman Cath- olic priest, bishop or archbishop ever took his stand against it. Very few did it in the United States. The prohibition sentiment in many South American countries is growing at a mar- velous rate, but the priest is silent. Who does not know that the evangelical ministry of the United States really mobilized the forces that made prohibition a constitutional amendment, and that with very little aid from the Roman clergy? Social vice is notorious in Roman Catholic countries, but Roman Catholic ec- clesiastics have initiated no movement against it nor done anything whatsoever to abolish or lessen its evil? If this is true of priests who are called Christian, what could be expected of priests who are called non-Christian? It is true the opium curse was wiped out from China, but largely under evangelical Christian leadership. Widow-burning was stopped in India, but only by the prohibition of Christian authorities. Destruction of infants in China

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 257

was stopped not by the activity of the native priests, but by the impact of Christian civiliza- tion. The priest of whatever faith up to this time has been a nonentity so far as giving leadership to moral reform is concerned, and his opportunities have been multitudinous throughout many centuries.

It would be lamentably unfair to suppose that non-Christian peoples are wanting in ethi- cal ideals. One has only to examine the teach- ing of Confucius to find a marvelous system of ethics. These have been the basis of Chinese education for centuries and have been for many years in the curricula of the school sys- tem of Korea and even Japan. Many of his statements rival those of the Jewish prophets and psalmists, and even some of those of the Master Teacher of Galilee. Taoism in China and Shintoism in Japan with all their nature worship and hero worship are not without strong ethical implications and injunctions. Buddhism with its deadening pessimism is one long exhortation to right living and right thinking, although the ultimate purpose was happy extinction. Hinduism with its tre- mendous body of Vedic abstruse philosophy and bewildering mysticism is rich in its moral instruction and high idealism. No Christian

258 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

would grant that the ethics of Confucius, of Laotze, of Buddha, and of the Hindu teachers are comparable to those of Jesus, but the con- tention here is that no people has been left without a high moral standard, even sufficient to high ethical conduct. The low status of morals is due to the disruption between morals and religion, to the indifference to morals on the part of religious leaders, and to the lack of real vitalization of morals by a virulent re- ligious faith.

Religion was always to the ancients, as it is to-day to many moderns, synonymous with su- perstitious practices and usages. A system of worship apart from life inevitably brings re- ligion into decline and often into contempt. Faults in the presentation of Christianity by its recognized exponents have been the chief sources of skepticism and even antagonism to Christianity. A Minister of Education in France a number of years ago said, "The fur- ther men are from religion the nearer they are to morality and good sense." Fremantle, in his "The World as the Subject of Redemp- tion," commenting on this statement, said, "But the cause of this was patent, namely this, that the Church had narrowed itself to a cleri- cal sect, and that the clergy, having separated

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religion from the common life of men, had taught superstition and folly under its name." He says further, '*When the Church is seen to be the constant inspirer of human progress there will be no skeptics but those to whom human progress is indifferent." The best thing that Christians can do for the faith of mankind is to exhibit the real power of Christ and the Holy Spirit as a redeeming influence in the whole wide field of human life.

While evangelical propagandists are sur- veying and tabulating the moral delinquencies of non-Christian and Roman countries, they should not lay too much virtue to their own land. Here will be found much of the same disregard of high ethical ideals, which the founders of the nation have deemed essential to the stability and onward movement of civ- ihzation. One can scarcely think of our mu- nicipal governments without being reminded of graft. One cannot think of the war with- out thinking of the shameless profiteers and that unscrupulous company of men who by their government contracts made enormous fortunes out of the disasters of humanity. Business in this country is capable of being a very great sinner and is very weak before large temptations. Our divorce courts scandahze

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us and the divorcees feel no string. Social vice has become infamous. Law is trampled upon by bootleggers and their willful patrons, by lynching mobs and masked parties, and by the increased number of safe-blowers, train-rob- bers and murderers. This people is not with- out sin, but it is also not without a militant moral force. The dominant Christianity of the country is awake to its moral obligation. Public opinion exists, is fearless, powerful and ethical. The things that are bad in Society are not allowed to rest and be at ease. The searchlight is ever flashing and radium rays cease not their burning. ^ The social conscience is set for the eradication of social disease and the establishment of social health. This state of mind and attitude of leadership makes the incalculable difference between Christian and non- Christian countries.

VI

The Christian propaganda in every land is confronted by the immense task of creating or vitalizing ethical conceptions and moral stand- ards. If the foregoing survey has revealed the facts correctly, then moral progress in the world must necessarily wait upon Christian

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progress. That the progress of evangelical Christianity has stimulated moral activity by its very impact is well authenticated. Moral progress has everywhere awaited the coming of true ethical Christianity and always begins with the preaching and even the impact of ethical Christian doctrines. Ethical Chris- tianity vigorously proclaimed and strenuously applied in individual and social life creates a stir of conscience in any people and calls forth an assertion of the best elements of the human character. It is its own apologetic to the open consciences of the race. Its faithful exposi- tion will always be its own defense. This ac- counts for the friendly attitude toward Chris- tianity in the world to-day. The organized Church is criticized, and in many places all but rejected, and Christianity which is identified with ecclesiasticism is almost repudiated, but a friendly voice is always raised in behalf of the true religion of Jesus Christ. Men who have declared their contempt for the Church still express their admiration for Jesus, if not their attachment to Him. The reason is not far to seek. A metaphysical faith, a sacra- mentarian worship, and a priestly domination of life here and hereafter have become to them the meaning of the Church. Against this they

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rebel. They seek Jesus who has the words of life; yea, eternal life.

The world to-day stands in dire need of moral integrity, moral purpose and moral earnestness. These cannot come simply by moral reform. Many peoples may need new and adequate moral conceptions, but the su- preme need of all is new moral power. "When I would do good, evil is present with me." That is man's universal testimony. The pos- sibilities of the overthrow of evil have never been made clear to the great body of humanity. Moral resistance is looked upon as vain be- cause moral incompetence has been accepted as fatally imposed. It is evident that there can be no hope of moral reform and moral as- sertiveness until this demonic spell is broken and men have been awakened to the possibility of a full moral life. This cannot be accom- plished by any mere moralist. There must be a dynamic charged from invisible batteries and connected with unfailing sources of power. Moral power can have no less origin than re- ligious power. Moral integrity must find its support in religious reliability. Moral pur- pose must be actuated by religious motive. Moral earnestness must be fired by religious zeal and stayed by religious determination.

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Moral triumph can find no sufficient basis out- side genuine religion. This lays upon religion the unescapable responsibility for the moral status of the race. Religion has not always recognized — yea, seldom has it recognized this responsibility — and bent its efforts to the dis- charge of this crowning duty to mankind. But in the future in these balances shall religion be weighed, and woe be unto it if it is found wanting.

Christianity must now recognize its double responsibility, of lifting up before the world vital ethical ideals and of supplying a religion of commensurate spiritual power. The ethics of Christianity holds the same relation to the ethics of other religions that the religion of Jesus does to the religion of Buddha, Con- fucius, Mohammed and the rest. Jesus was distinctly a teacher of superior ethics and His moral ideals alone form an enormous contribu- tion to the race. The ethics of Jesus forms a body of instruction of which the world to-day stands in great need, and without which no new moral standard will ever be established. But the ethics of Jesus finds its dynamic in the religion of the Christ. The Christian ethics is not something apart from Christian religion. The power that vitalizes one vitahzes

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the other and any neglect of the one can only prove disastrous to the other. In seeking after eternal life there can be no trifling with the ideals of human conduct and the principles of human life. Playing fast and loose in the moral realm blurs the vision and renders im- possible any just estimate of values in the spiritual sphere. Religion and morals are but aspects of the one reality.

Christianity carries not merely a new faith, but a new life. It is a religion of character. The redemption it assures is fundamentally moral. Its essential doctrines have to do with life. By its superiority in moral conceptions and achievements it makes its easiest approach to the non-Christian man; but it is in this realm that the greatest battle for vital Chris- tianity must be fought. The missionary prop- aganda in its supreme objective of making the world Christian is unalterably bound to that of making the world moral.

LECTURE VI: CONSTRUCTING AN ADEQUATE FAITH

The real goal of the missionary movement, however diverse its activities and comprehen- sive its labors, is the construction of an ade- quate religious faith for every member of the human family. It is this which gives signifi- cance and direction to the entire movement. Christianity is primarily, essentially and ulti- mately a religion, and what it accomplishes in the individual and society is the outcome of its religious power. Religion recognizes super- sensible realities and recognizes them as su- perior and worshipful. Christianity defines those invisible, intangible, superior and wor- shipful realities in terms of personality and thereby brings them into the realm of human relations. Religion has to do with man's atti- tude to the world as a whole. Christianity in- terprets the world as the manifestation of supreme intelligence, moral purpose and righteous will. Not only back of it all but in it all man finds a force like unto his own and

265

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with which he can establish coveted relations. He finds himself continually in touch with the Infinite to whom he is akin. Christianity puts a new appraisal on religious values and reveals man's possibilities through religious power. The secret and center of that power is the creative Personality from which it sprang and by which it is maintained. The Christ is the supreme contribution which Christianity has to make to the world. To make Him known, understood, comprehended, believed in, and accepted by the entire race is to lift humanity into the upper spheres of divine reality and attain the supreme end of all missionary en- deavor. The religion of the Christ is man's best gift to man, as it is God's. To deliver it the Christian is irretrievably bound and is now resolutely bent.

Religion to-day in all the earth is more or less in a state of chaos. The reasons for this are not far to seek. The cataclysm of the last decade shook all society to its foundation, broke up the old channels of thought and jarred, if not shattered, the faith of men in the moral order of the world. The bitter wail arose from believer and skeptic alike, the one in lament, the other in scorn, "Christianity has failed." Europe was a spectacle which no re-

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 267

ligious faith could look upon without the deepest questionings of mind and heart. Many a soul was lost to religious reason in the days of that awful conflict, while many another came to foundations that are sure. Through- out the world men who thought, and never did so many think as then, thought seriously, so- berly, profoundly, about the purpose of the life, the meaning and value of man, the end of all civilization and the final destiny of crea- tion. To be sure, the great body of the race did not rise to any great height in their thought, but they felt the tremor of the cos- mic movement and have not been quite the same as before. Thinker and non-thinker alike, whether in the Occident or the Orient, have been left with deep questionings which still await new revelations of truth and new demonstrations of values. Some old beliefs have been tested and found untenable. They gave way in the time of crisis when most needed. Their foundations had been decep- tively laid. They can never be reinstated. The overthrow of cherished beliefs opens the way for the suspicion of all behefs and makes difficult the implanting of that which is true and reliable. This is the state of much of the world's people to-day. They have cast off

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their beliefs and shut the door of their minds to all things religious. They can be brought back to faith, any faith, only by the most sym- pathetic and human interpretations of re- ligious values.

That the religious faith of the vast propor- tion of mankind has been severely strained in these recent years cannot be gainsaid. For a half century Christian missionaries have been undermining the religious beliefs of the Ori- ent. Every effort has been made to show the inadequacy, if not the falsity, of their faiths. The full force of western civilization has been employed to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity and the weakness of the Oriental beliefs. Nothing, or scarcely anything, has gone from the West to the East that did not make for the overthrow of the established re- ligious faiths. Unfortunately not everything has made for the acceptance and practice of Christianity. The East has been made to realize that the western world, the world of progress, power and prospect, discounted the religions of Confucius, Laotze, Buddha, Mo- hammed and the rest and exalted only Chris- tianity. This fearful impact has had tremen- dous effect upon the confidence of the leaders of the East in the faith of their fathers. The

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positive result for Christianity has not been so great. The European conflict of so-called Christian nations raised unanswerable ques- tions in their minds as to the claims of the pro- ponents of Christianity. After all, is Chris- tianity the real religion for the race? China has always been a peace-loving land and a be- liever in the irrationality of war. Is Chris- tianity the religion of war? With the Oriental religions demonstrated to be erroneous and false and Christianity exhibited as incompe- tent in a crisis, what shall man believe? This is largely the state of mind toward religion in the Orient and the inevitable result is coarse materialism and defiant agnosticism.

The Levant has been dominated by Moham- medanism for many centuries and that blight has rested heavily upon many lands. The blood-thirsty Turk ruled by the sword of Allah, while his Sultan reigned as Caliph over the entire Mohammedan world. The thirty million Mohammedans in China, the sixty- two millions in India, the practically full pop- ulation of Egypt and Arabia and vast masses in North and Central Africa, and much of Western Asia, have been taught to believe in the invincibility of Mohammed and the final supremacy of his faith. The World War was

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a tremendous revelation of the force and su- periority of Christian civilization and the weakness before it of all that JNIohammedanism had built up. This rude shock has severely strained the confidence of Mohammedans in their religion and the Sovereign God behind it, of whom Mohammed is the prophet. Be- fore the war no Moslem was allowed to pro- fess Christ and live in a Moslem community. The well-known representative of the Young Men's Christian Association, Mr. Sherwood Eddy, reports a marvelous change in the atti- tude of the Moslems. He finds that great numbers of them are anxious to hear the Chris- tian gospel and some are accepting Christ. When there is such a break in a religious faith as the war made in the Moslem world, skepti- cism is inevitable. But the war has not done it all. The Levant has been looking upon great beacons in the Christian schools and the groups of devout, intelligent Christian adher- ents which have been gathered under mission- ary tutelage. The clefts in rock-ribbed Mo- hammedanism made by Christian forces have become new doors in the Near East for the in- troduction of the gospel of Jesus Christ. With a break in Mohammedanism Christianity may propose an adequate religious faith.

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Eastern Europe, from the Hellespont to the Baltic Sea, is in ignominious confusion. Rumania and Poland are under the dominion of the Roman pope. A more fanatically Ro- man Catholic people than the Poles cannot be found. The Jews of Russia and Poland, numbering about seven out of the eleven mil- lions in the world, still cling to the old tradi- tionalism of their race and religion, but they are greatly involved in the political maelstrom of Russia. Their religious faith is far from having genuine soul value. Those w^ho get away and come to America exhibit a fearful break-down in all that made Judaism a vessel of truth to humanity. The Orthodox Greek Church before the war was dominant in Greece, Servia, Bulgaria and Russia. The Czar was the head of the Russian Church and its ecclesiastics were politically appointed and devoted to political ends. The revolution that played havoc with everything political, social and industrial in Russia spared not the estab- lished Church. The chaos that reigns in all other matters is just as pronounced in religion. However, even before the fall of the Roman- offs seventy percent of the people had little relation to the church. With the ecclesiasti- cism that directed what did exist gone and the

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leaders of the ruling parties arrayed against religion in every form, the condition of re- ligious faith can be readily imagined. Greece has not suffered so much, but political revolu- tions have had disastrous effect upon religion. Servia and Bulgaria and Czecho- Slovakia — the latter largely Roman Catholic and the others Greek Orthodox — have only the empty shells of religious formalism without the life and vigor of a genuine faith. In no part of the world has religious faith been brought to a lower ebb than in Eastern Europe.

Western and Central Europe have not shown any marked changes. Great Britain did not lose religiously by the war. Ag- nosticism is no more pronounced, the indiffer- ent no more numerous ; but on the other hand, the churches are more hopeful and the spirit of unity among them has made progress. Germany has passed before the judgment of the world and her religious teachers have been severely censured. What the effect will be upon her new scholarship in Biblical interpre- tation and theological doctrines cannot yet be known. There is every reason to believe that German religious thought will profit by the fiery testing, while the faith of the plain peo- ple by reason of the great sorrow and pro-

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longed suffering will be held firm. France has long been the hotbed of atheism, agnosti- cism and religious destitution. The war has been of meager profit. The French Govern- ment has recently established diplomatic re- lations with the Vatican, but this is for politi- cal purposes only and signifies nothing re- ligiously. France feels the need just now of all the aid she can command for her national safety. This action may draw Rome from Germany, for whom there were many indica- tions of the Pope's sympathy before imperial- ism fell. Rome is always ready for a good political bargain and this has been made in es- tablishing governmental relations with France. The estrangement which has existed for fifty years between the Vatican and the Italian Government has been somewhat assuaged and during the Fiume episode, when the govern- ment needed assistance, a large number of high church ofiicials were raised to places in the nobility. Rome has made much of the ex- tremities of nations to recoup her old places of influence and power. That religious faith has been strengthened in any of this no one would dare to claim. Not faith but fear has forged the new bonds.

Dr. Robert F. Horton, the distinguished

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English Congregationalist, a few years ago, wrote "The CathoHc Church is discredited in Cathohc countries and flourishes only in Prot- estant countries by virtue of the very liberty which she herself has consistently denied. There is hardly a country in Europe in which the strength and the manhood are not arrayed against Catholicism." Again he says, "Prot- estantism has made the return to Catholicism impossible for progressive nations and for fearless lovers of the truth. If it has not suc- cessfully presented the truth of Christianity, it has at any rate demonstrated that the truth of Christianity is very different from Catholic truth, and it has made an impression on the thinking part of Europe, which can never be removed, that Christianity means the identifi- cation of religion and moralit}^." Komanism for a time may be able to play a strengthened political role, but it can never reinstate itself as a religion. The choice in Europe in the future will be between Protestantism and ag- nosticism.

Romanism still holds its heavy hand upon South America, but not with the same arro- gance as in earlier days. Its ecclesiastics have come to realize that only by heroic endeavors, if at all, can it stay the rising tide of religious

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liberty and eventual Protestantism. It is prominent in all political campaigns in all the republics, but it suffers defeats increasingly. In October, 1920, its own chosen candidate for president of Chile was defeated by a pro- nounced liberal whose sympathies with Prot- estantism were well known. Some of the state governors in Brazil are out and out evangeli- cal Christians, while several others are anti- Romanist or decidedly hberal. The Roman Catholic Church is regarded in South America much more as a political party than as a re- ligious organization. Ecuador has never been entered by a great missionary Board, and it has less than one hundred Evangelical Church members, yet its constitution is surprisingly advanced and liberal. The turbulence of its history has been due to the struggle between the Liberal and Romanist parties. The Lib- eral party is now in power, but the Clerical party is strong and loses no opportunity to re- gain its domination. Society holds to the church as the best means of maintaining and exhibiting its aristocracy, and by this Roman- ism feels secure. In Brazil a great era of Church building is on. In some places great cathedrals are being erected. But these are not increasing the regard for the Church, or

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even staying the tide of Protestant sympathy. The ahgnments which the South American re- pubhcs are making with Protestant countries are loosening the grip of Romanism. But an age of doubt is more apt to follow than a new era of genuine saving faith. In fact, South America is beginning to show strongly the tendency to skepticism in rebellion to the dominance of ecclesiastical hierarchy. Re- ligious faith, genuine, true, redemptive, must be yet constructed in South America before those countries of unlimited possibilities can be called truly Christian. What has been said of these can be just as correctly said of all Latin American countries. Not only so, but great bodies of immigrants from Latin Amer- ica, and Latin Europe, from Slavic lands and Oriental regions now in the United States are without an adequate religious faith, as understood by Evangelical Chris- tians. Not only has religious faith been severely strained by the war, but it has suf- fered by the infusions due to immigrant tides. Christianity faces to-day the most exacting conditions of any era in its history. Whether or not it prevails will depend upon its ability to define and defend before mankind a re- ligious faith that is adequate to the demands

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of the mind, heart and will of man in the world of to-day.

II

Religion suffers in many lands and among many individuals in all lands because of a lack of proper basis, a sufficient ground work, an adequate foundation. There are often wanting well-founded principles, sane and comprehensive, to direct the worshiper and re- late him to the life and experience to be at- tained through that worship. With more than half the world's population religion is based upon incomprehension, mystery and manifes- tations that lie without the range of under- standing. All nature worship is of that kind. Idolatry is worship based upon incomprehen- sion. The sense of the supernatural is pres- ent but it is clothed with the mysterious. The ghost dance of a Kiowa Indian puts the leader in a hypnotic frenzy, aided by the narcotic effect of some herb, and this man in his wild dreams sees visions and becomes the oracle to the community. The people accept his impo- sitions because neither they nor he understands the forces that are acting upon him. The whirling Dervishes in Egypt come into the same sort of hypnotic state, and the mystery

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of it is overwhelming, and spirits are given the credence which intelhgence would have de- nied. All superstition is the direct outcome of pure ignorance whether found among can- nibal tribes or civilized people. The supersti- tion about Friday, the number thirteen, the haunted house, has come down from ignorant people and is perpetuated by those who refuse to use their intelligence. Religion in the non- Christian and semi-Christian world is built upon incomprehension and as a result it sup- ports and is supported by all sorts of super- stition and symbolism. In a city of thirty thousand people in Brazil during the malig- nant epidemic of influenza in 1918 the city authorities had ordered that no public assem- blies be had for a month. In the midst of it all on Sunday afternoon the Roman Cath- olic priests in their official robes led a great concourse of people through the streets chant- ing prayers and making demonstrations about four images borne in different sections of the throng. The multitude returned to the cathe- dral for prayer. The object of it was to ban- ish the influenza from the city. "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." These were supposedly Christian people led by the priests of the pretentious Roman Catholic

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Church. When war was on between Russia and Japan the Czar had "icons," the church images, in the lead of his armies in their strug- gle with the ^'heathen." Hosea's other words seem applicable. "Because thou hast rejected knowledge I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me."

Romanism has built its system of worship very largely upon mystery. Why all the gen- uflection, making the sign of the cross, ringing a bell at the prayer of consecration in the mass, except to clothe it all with mystery! Why is the ritual in a dead language, incomprehensible to the vast majority of the worshipers? They claim it is to make it universal, but in reality it is for the purpose of mystery. Why has Mexico its lady of Guadalupe and South America its lady of Penha? Mystery! Half of the effectiveness of the Roman Catholic worship is due to mystery, the sense of the supernatural coming from incomprehension. The firm grip of the priesthood is due in no small way to the doctrine of the mysterious, incomprehensible purgatory. The perfidy of the entire system of bought indulgences is sup- ported by incomprehension. Why this con- tinual "Ave Maria" or "Hail Mary" as it means in English? There is magic in it that

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makes efficacy for the indulgences. The Ro- sary is a string of beads divided into ten sets of ten beads and separated by each eleventh. Each set counts a "Hail Mary." The recital of the Lord's Prayer at these beads and the repetition of the "Hail Mary" or "Ave Maria" are reckoned to have great virtue. By these repetitions indulgences come. The editor of a Roman Catholic paper recently stated that by saying a single pair of the beads, requiring ten to fifteen minutes, the devout Romanist may receive 409 years and 310 days of indulgence. Surely only the lack of comprehension of the meaning of Christianity and an understanding of the Bible record of Jesus Christ would tol- erate such ridiculous pretension. But the mys- tery of the unseen world, the priestly presenta- tion of purgatory, and the incomprehensive ele- ments in the worship have bound the Roman- ists in chains and they cannot free their en- slaved minds and hearts. No Protestant can ever hear sung the "Ave Maria" and "My Rosary" without being conscious of the intol- erable superstitions which lie behind them.

In Tokyo I went once into a Buddhist tem- ple. There was much that was strange. The entire worship of the people seemed pitiable because of evident incomprehension. In the

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temple there stood a wooden human statue to which the people went. Those who had rheu- matism in the arm or shoulder or knee rubbed that part of the statue, expecting to get relief thereby from the god in the statue. "Pagan- ism!'' one says. Ten years after I was in Para on the Amazon and visited the Nazareth Church. One room in this great sanctuary was filled with wooden arms, legs, heads and ships, street cars and other means of conveyance. They were brought by devout worshipers who had been saved from disaster on water or land or healed of diseases in various parts of the body. Was the latter any less heathen than the former? All over the non-Christian and semi-Christian countries in Asia, Africa, Eu- rope and Latin America these instances can be endlessly multiplied. Where illiteracy abounds as it does in practically all Roman Catholic, Mohammedan and non-Christian countries, religion is based largely upon in- comprehension, mystery, weakness and fear.

It is often held that Romanism and Greek Orthodoxy are best for the people of certain countries because they are not mentally capa- ble of spiritual conceptions, intellectually formed and supported. Symbolism is the crutch of incomprehension and has always at-

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tended worship that is based upon the mys- terious. Image worship is not always worship of the image, but rather worship through the image. Roman altars are always filled with pictures of the Virgin or statues of Jesus in infancy, in his acts of mercy, or in the scenes of his passion. Unfortunately these symbols for the intellectually semi-dependent become objects of worship to the vast throngs of men- tally destitute. In Latin countries images on cards or flags are placed in the homes, or on poles in the yards, to ward off evil spirits and to bring good fortune. This is a common sight. Demonology almost always accompanies sym- bolism and employs the images in the work of necromancy. What were once intended by the Christian Church to be aids to worship have become stumbling blocks in the way of spiritual discernment and religious comprehen- sion. The religion of humanity is cluttered up with the toys of faith made sacred by long usage and holy association. Before worship rises to the spiritual the temple must be cleansed. Only so will men come to "Worship in spirit and in truth."

The symbolism of Romanism is its inherit- ance from paganism and is utterly without basis in anything that Jesus did or said. Juda-

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ism with its Mosaic ceremonies and laws of sacrifice were forever transformed by the spirit, teachings and personality of Jesus Christ. The same power will cleanse Roman- ism and all forms of semi-Christian and non- Christian thought if access to the minds, hearts and lives of the people can be obtained. Re- ligion suffers also from the dominance of hu- man authority so widely exercised by the priesthood. The day is on when the priest in non-Christian lands and Rome controlled coun- tries is not highly regarded for his personal piety or powers but he is obeyed because of the authority which is supposed to rest in him. The old Roman institution has always inter- preted and represented Christianity as the authority of a sacerdotal hierarchy to disci- pline, dominate and destine human souls. It admits no right of liberty in thought or action. In keeping with its historic spirit Romanism is concerned all but entirely with the observ- ance of traditional rites, the maintenance of superstitions as well as supernatural beliefs, the performance of its divine sacraments which the priesthood controls, and the promotion of political ends and purposes. That kind of an institution not only can have no part in a modern intellectual movement for the world

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but it even creates revulsion and provokes to revolution in the patrons and promoters of learning. The major portion of the agnos- ticism and atheism to be found in Europe and Latin America to-day, and there is very much indeed, can be traced to a contempt for Ro- manism with its tyrannical ecclesiasticism, its sordid traditionalism, its stubborn scholasti- cism and its unmitigated medievalism. The arrogant pretender to final wisdom and author- ity has no password to the precincts of modern knowledge, nor to the halls of liberty in thought, action and religion.

The Vatican Council in 1870 declared "The Roman Pontiff, when speaking ex cathedra — that is, when performing the office of Pas- tor and Doctor of all Christians — he defines, in virtue of his superior authority, a point of doctrine touching faith and morals, obligatory for the entire Church — the Roman Pontiff, thanks to the divine assistance which was prom- ised to him in the person of the most blessed Peter enjoys that infallible authority, with which the divine Redeemer endowed his church, when the question arises of defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are then unchangeable

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in themselves and are not rendered such by the consent of the Church." Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII, great masters in Romanism, decreed to the subjects, "In the matter of thinking, it is necessary for them (Christian behevers) to embrace and firmly hold all that the Roman Pontiffs have transmitted to them, or shall yet transmit, and to make public pro- fession of them as often as circumstances make necessary. Especially and particularly in what is called modern liberties, they must abide by the judgment of the Apostolic See, and each believer is bound to believe thereupon what the Holy See itself thinks." Think of there being sixteen million persons in the United States of America, the land of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, of Abra- ham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Wood- row Wilson, in such galling bonds of intellec- tual slavery! Think of an Irish Republic dreaming of independence with such a creed dominating its Constitution! Is it any won- der that in enlightened countries to-day it is well believed that such ecclesiasticism is nec- essarily antagonistic to religion? The world to-day might be far on toward being Christian had it been served these last sixteen centuries

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by the Holy Christ Church instead of intrigued and dominated by the Holy Roman Church. The fallacy in the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope is to be found in the expression *'that infallible authority with which the Divine Redeemer endowed his church." Evangelical Christianity flatly denies that any infallible authority was ever bestowed upon the church. If the Church has such authority, and the priesthood is the Church, then poor man is a victim indeed of the deficient intelhgence of Jesus Christ who established this human slav- ery forever on earth, eternal in the heavens. Belief in the infallible authority of the Church is the foundation of the credulity that supports the unreasonable pretensions of Romanism. The confessional is the seat of the church, and whatever may be the character of the occu- pant, upright or vicious, all that issues there- from is divinely authoritative and must be complied with to escape wrath or to gain vir- tue. The Church by its infallible authority, dispenses merit in baptism, administers the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ in the mass, makes the only possible bond between husband and wife, cleanses away all sin in extreme unction and makes clear the way to glory, and after death extricates the soul from

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purgatory. The Church can do all this; and the priesthood with its infallible head is the Church! That is what millions and millions of people, mostly illiterate, believe! The authority of the priesthood in the Orthodox Greek Church is little less autocratic! Is it any wonder that seventy percent of all the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Greek popula- tion of the earth cannot read or write? It is superfluous to think. Ask the priest! It is needless to read the Bible. Ask the priest! The Bible is what he says it is, and no private opinion is allowed. When will such a people ever be capable of rising to an adequate per- sonal religious faith in Almighty God and His only begotten Son, the complete Savior of all men? Yes, to make the world Christian is the ultimate objective from which the Chris- tianity of Christ must never recede. These gross perversions of Christian doctrine must be met and corrected. Similar assertions of re- ligious authority are found in the Mohamme- dan world with its quarter of a billion people. Religious liberty is really the possession of a very small portion of the earth's inhabitants. The authority of the priesthood with the vast majority is the foimdation of faith and the re warder of the faithful. This will continue

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so long as humanity remains three quarters ilHterate, the slaves of incomprehension, mys- tery, and superstition. The despot rules from a throne of darkness and maintains his su- premacy by the weakness of his subjects. When Romanism becomes seventy-five per- cent literate instead of illiterate, and Moham- medanism changes its ninety percent from il- literacy to literacy, when priest controlled be- lievers come to a state of moderate enlighten- ment, and become capable of knowledge, rea- son, and thinking for self, then "infallibilities" will meet the shrug of the shoulder and the wink of the eye and authority will pass from decrees of masters to the testimony of reason and revelation. But the conditions of this transformation herein implied necessitate such a production of intelligence as only the most gigantic effort can bring about. The world must be enabled to see that religion has a nobler basis than the authority of man, how- ever that authority may seem to have been obtained. Incomprehension, mystery, and authority have their place in religion as in everything else in a finite world, but they should in no sense be determinate of the controlling conceptions of human life and destiny.

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III

Religious conceptions among all people are undergoing more or less transformation. So great is the transformation with some groups and many individuals that it amounts to a rev- olution. While the upheaval produced by the Great War is responsible for much of the dis- turbance in religious beliefs, yet antedating the war forces were at work which are in no small way responsible for this transformation. Science, the scientific spirit, and the evolution- ary philosophy which science developed and largely supported have subjected all concep- tions and the methods of getting at the truth to a very vigorous examination and testing. Historical criticism in the last four decades has had an amazing influence upon the inter- pretation of the Holy Scriptures and the prin- cipal doctrines of Christianity. There has been much misunderstanding of what was being at- tempted and of what was really done. Vast numbers thought the "ark" was in grave dan- ger and rushed frantically and fiercely to the defense and maintenance of the grandfather views, while others leaped defiantly to the "new theology" of the grandson possibilities as the last word in Biblical interpretations and theo-

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logical knowledge. Grandfathers and grand- sons have their days but the living present is the responsibility of the living generation. Theology is not a stable thing. It changes with every variation in one's general view of the world. The theology of yesterday, true then with its light, may not be true to-day with its added light, but the theology of to- day, if true, has grown out of the theology of yesterday. A new theology which breaks with the past never succeeds in establishing itself. However, unless theology is new, fresh, living, it is not true. Because of the fact that these principles have not been kept in mind the religious conceptions of many people have suffered in the recent era of reconstruc- tion. Not every one has believed as Dr. R. F. Horton, "The scientific spirit has been the breath of life to Biblical study, to dogmatic theology, to the claims of the Church. It is intrinsically more reverent than the credulity which gulps down the superstition and the un- proved dogmas and the unsupported claims of traditions.'^ But whether believed or not, it can scarcely be denied that this scientific spirit and its attendant influences have wrought remarkable transformations in the re- ligious conceptions of many people and among

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them the most cultured and the most virile intellectually. While there has been great gain in many quarters, on the other hand, there has been disastrous loss in many groups.

In view of the state of the oriental mind and its religious beliefs, of the Mohammedan world and its new sense of Christian superi- ority, of the East European masses and their terrible confusion, and of the Roman Catholic populations and their growing rebellion against ecclesiastical hierarchy, what should be the form and spirit in which Christianity shall be presented for the construction of an adequate religious faith? There is general agreement that apostolic Christianity should be given to the world. But who shall decide what apos- tolic Christianity is? The Romanist and the Anglican, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Independent and the Connectional, all have their own interpretation of this same apostolic Christianity, supported by ample evidence and strong reason. Ministerial orders and church sacraments, the forms of worship and modes of administration have been so emphasized as to become fundamental to faith with many re- ligious bodies. Inquisitions and ex-communi- eations, sectarian exclusiveness and opinion-

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atedness have resulted from the inordinate if not unwarranted stress on the forms, rights and powers of ecclesiasticism. The rite of bap- tism in mode, meaning and subjects, has been made of determinative importance with large groups, while the sacrament of the Lord's Supper has become a fetish with sacerdotalists and an imperative passport to vast multitudes. The church with the Romanist has all power over the lives and souls of men, and the min- istry by the high churchman has been given a vicegerency of heaven, full or limited, to de- termine the religious and eternal status of hu- manity. There are also the prophetically pre- tentious who make bold to set times and sea- sons for God's activities and mark the mil- lennium and scenes of the Lord's physical oc- cupancy of the earth. Those who claim the effulgence of the Inner Light, or the exclu- sive baptism of the Holy Spirit, or the extraor- dinary supernatural gifts indicated in the New Testament believe themselves alone to have found the apostolic way. The higher critic, the lower critic, and the anti-critic critic have all set up themselves as the true interpreters of apostolic Christianity. What shall the world hear and believe when strident voices cry "Lo here," "Lo there" and multiply con-

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fusion for tliose already confounded ? Is there no voice to be lifted above all the rest that can direct to "the way, the truth, the life?" Has not Christianity some strong cen- tral stream where the great body of its cur- rent makes for the ocean of Eternal truth? Christendom presents to the world the aspect of chaos by reason of its fierce contentions over shades of doctrines, the significance of the forms, modes and rites, and the powers of its instruments and agents. To transfer all this to the non-Christian peoples is scarcely fair to them nor is it in harmony with the spirit of the Master who said, "Go teach all nations." Yet, just this is being done.

The contention for the faith once delivered to the saints, so ardently enjoined upon the early disciples, has frequently been interpreted to mean contention for beliefs or formulas of beliefs as stated in some early period or by some patristic ecclesiastical council. Ortho- doxy is often made to mean conformity to formulas of doctrines set forth by eminent men in some early or middle century of the Chris- tian Era. But orthodoxy is not conformity to a static mass of religious conceptions meta- physically expressed, but to a stream of theo- logical thought channeled by the great religious

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thinkers of its age. What reason is there to believe that the fourth century or the fifth, or the sixth, with its Mediterranean center of religious life and thought was more capable of formulating a correct orthodox theology than the twentieth with its world comprehen- sion, scientific information and philosophical generalization and the rich accumulation of fifteen centuries of illuminating experience and majestic thought? Dogmas out of which for- mal theology is produced are always metaphys- ically conceived and expressed, and the meta- physics of the age of creed making have al- ways been determinative of the formulas of Christian doctrines. The impatience of this era with the historic dogmas and creeds is not due to any loss of interest in and concern for their real Christian doctrinal content but to a lack of sympathy with the metaphysics of the periods in which these historic statements came into form. The interpretation of the contents of these statements do not always, by any means, coincide with those of the formula- tors of the statements, and they show variety according to the interpreters. Where is the orthodoxy? In the agreement with the early creed formulators or with the main body of the late Christian interpreters? In other

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words is living Christianity in its theological conceptions a voice or an echo?

The Christian propaganda has reached the point where these questions are thrusting themselves into the foreground. Evangelical Christianity has fought the battle for religious liberty and is still in the fray. What is re- ligious liberty? Liberty for what, from what, and to do what ? Ruskin once heard a sermon in Turin which he said made him turn away from religious faith. He said, "A little squeaking idiot was preaching away to an audience of seventeen old women and three louts that they were the only children of God in Turin and that all the people outside the chapel, and all the people in the world out of sight of Mount Viso would be damned." Narrowness that breeds contempt and latitudi- narianism that practically annuls conviction are enemies to Christianity and deaden its appeals. Intolerance in the Protestant of the twentieth century is just as censurable as the intolerance of the Romanist of any century. An inquisi- tion is odious in any period in any form, or by any people. On the other hand the toler- ance that is so broad and liberal as to make friends of anything and stand for nothing cre- ates no convictions, produces no faith, sup-

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ports no movements, achieves no ends, and is almost as detestable as intolerant narrowness. Religious liberty is fundamental in Christian- ity but religious conviction founded upon rev- elation and experience and supported by rea- son is the essential dynamic in all religious propaganda. But the Biblical revelation, the theological interpretation, and the Christian experience are not possessed entirely by any one man or one school of thinkers. No greater mistake is ever made by a Christian than when he supposes that he has the complete vision of religious things. Finite beings are made so as to be the complements of each other at getting at the whole truth and they get the truth only as they recognize this relation and the necessity of man to man. In order to ar- rive at reliable religious convictions recogni- tion must be had of the possible correctness and value of the views of other persons who have been equally diligent and honest in the search for the divine truth and equally de- voted to the divine Teacher and Lord.

The peril to missionaries is the side track in theology, the switch in Biblical interpreta- tion, the narrow gauge in Christian experience. One is an advocate of the advanced theology of the new school, one a defender of the old hard

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dead creed, one is a second blessing sanctifica- tionist, one an oil and prayer healer, one a premillennialist of the pessimistic ready-at- hand-coming type, one a Sabbatarian or other literalist who interprets by the letter as he likes and by the spirit when he must. Each is vociferously doing his utmost to make a main line out of a side track and to use a Mogul engine on a narrow gauge road. Collisions and wrecks have been unavoidable and the re- sulting loss of life has been incalculable. To- day the track of the missionary in every land is strewn with the debris of this short-sighted strife for the propagation of bits of beliefs, largely speculative in character, narrowly ac- cepted in Christendom and of limited impor- tance in the Christianization of the world. Christianity is worthy of a higher presentation of its majestic values than such limited though devout representatives have given. Trunk line Christianity only with its broad gauge, its powerful locomotives, its solidly constructed cars filled with imperishable, well-ripened, life- giving truth in charge of a strong, capable, efficient force can carry salvation to this world. Humanity crowds the stations when it arrives and acknowledges the impact of a mighty dynamic when it passes. It awakens

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the world by its movements and feeds man- kind with its cargo. It has speed, drive and capacity for continental service. Sects and denominations may label the cars, but the con- tents should be only what the spiritually fam- ished world requires to live. When trunk line Christianity has right of way, switches will be closed and side tracks shut off, and without this Christianity must come to a standstill and await the clearing of the way.

Missionaries have a very great responsibility as representatives of those who send them out, but vastly more as the factor in presenting Christ and the teachings of which He is the center. The Gospel is their comprehensive message, but preaching the Gospel is more than reciting some formulas of a bygone age, or proclaiming the speculations as to some future possibility. The Gospel is God's age- less message to the age. Men are not preach- ing to-day to the people of the fifth century, or the tenth, or the fifteenth, or even to the nineteenth. The people of the twentieth cen- tury await God's message to them in terms of their life and thought. The people of the fifth century would have been bewildered by the speech of this day filled as it is with concep- tions of which they had no dream. The con-

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ceptions of the fifth century are too limited to bear to this century the full gospel for pres- ent day humanity. What is true of the cen- turies is equally true of the countries in the different degrees of development. The faith of every age must find expression in the life and thought of that age and not independent of them. Teachings that ignore the scientific and the philosophical thinking of their era may ap- peal to the ignorant, the credulous, the imagi- native, but they discount Christianity to the thoughtful, the forceful and those capable of fashioning the world to the high standards of an adequate religious faith. The doctrines of Christianity are not embalmed beliefs handed down from apostolic days or patristic periods but the living, throbbing, thrilling energies of essential religious thought and experience that link man and God to-day in the issues of this present life. A religious faith to be adequate to the age must harmonize with its life, throb with its energy and issue in purposeful, puri- fied personality. The Gospel that men are called to preach is the power of God in this day in and through Jesus Christ to redeem the entire world and everything in it, and to establish His reign in the earth.

The outstanding question which every pro-

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mulgator of Christianity is compelled to an- swer is what are the bases, the elements, and the enduring support of a religious faith that is adequate to the time, the place and the conditions in which humanity lived? The propaganda that carries Christianity to the non-Christian and semi-Christian peoples car- ries also intellectual enlargement with its varied science and extensive philosophy. Shall the pathmaker for knowledge be turned upon because of its own offense to religious reason? This will happen if the Christianity preached is not true to the essentials in religious belief and faithful to the vital religious conceptions. The world is not being converted to creeds but to Christ. Salvation is not in shades of doc- trines but in flames of truth. Men do not need to be led into the by-ways of religious speculation but out, and to the hilltops of world vision where transfigurations transpire and divine fellowship is realized and heavenly aspirations are awakened. History is the best prophecy. In God's footprints men will find the direction of his present and future move- ments. He has not changed his course. He has published his destination and the way of his journey, and signs of His progress mark the wayside. It is all this the world wants

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 301

to know, and needs to know, and is lost be- cause it does not know. Christianity must be true to history, obedient to reason, replete with knowledge that God be revealed and that man gets related to the eternal things. An adequate faith must find God, get His course, see his footprints, comprehend his purpose and lay hold on His realities. There are many other things that are valuable, some impor- tant, but these are essential, if this world sets Christ at the center of its life system. Make the Kingdom of God the chief aim and all these other things will come to their rightful place.

IV

The basis for an adequate religious faith is a body of irrefutable facts assembled from revelation, study of nature, and the experi- ence of the race. The human reason must be conceded the right to a determining voice in the validity of the facts. Faith cannot admit what reason absolutely rejects. Faith is called upon to go beyond knowledge, but it must go from knowledge and not independent of it. While rationalism is too short-armed for faith, yet faith is too fundamental in human life to be irrational. Hope that is reason

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grounded and girded is confident and issues in conscious power, but the hope of hazy un- certainty and doubtful authority leaves life wavering. The best destroyer of such dark- ness and the fear that is consequent thereof is light — light emanating from constant truth and stable realities. Religious conceptions that carry unquestionable assurance, unswerving stability and irresistible force are based upon undeniable facts. By the facts of revelation, the facts of knowledge, the facts of religious experience Christianity will win its case in the world, and in no other way. The Christian faith can be produced only by the Christian facts. No amount of esthetic beauty, or phi- losophical analysis, nor any kind of authority can take the place of facts for faith. The re- ligious debility so common even among sin- cere people is due largely to an absence of a factual basis in their religion. Religion that is a sort of esthetic hobby, a kind of insurance, or a program of irksome duty is wanting in perspective and lacking in basic principles. Christianity is not only a body of principles but a record of historic facts, concrete and outstanding, visible and intelligible to men, and its coming to neglected peoples must bring daybreak to humanity and sunrise to a sleep-

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 303

ing or groping world. The facts of Chris- tianity constitute its supreme apologetics to the intellectual elements of the race.

The supreme authority in religion is truth, and because Christianity claims to have the truth that sanctifies and redeems it is its prov- ince to make known the facts of life, human and divine. The Holy Scriptures form the faithful record of man in his progress of re- lationship to Almighty God from creation to his exaltation in the incarnation. The early man in all his crudity, animalism, dullness of comprehension and childish conceptions of God is portrayed with as great faithfulness as the Master from Tarsus with his prodigious sweep of intellectuality, his vast depth of religious comprehension, and his sublime interpretation of the Son of God. Everywhere and at all times God is diligently and earnestly seeking to establish connection with his human chil- dren to whom he would reveal, as they are able to receive, the secrets of his eternal pur- pose. It is not authority over them but fel- lowship with them that He would establish. When humanity was in its childhood His directions were conceived as statutes and form- ulated as laws, but in its maturity they are reckoned eternal principles and made basic in

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noble free living. God's laws are the expres- sion of His nature and not the corrective measures for a rebellious race, except as they lift humanity to the loftier conceptions. The Holy Scriptures when interpreted as the pro- gressive revelation of God and development of man is a record of facts upon which has been based the highest religious faith of the race. The perversion of this sublime and holy record to be an infallible dictum, in every word, of an Almighty sovereign, set upon despotic rule, is to take from man the beauty, the glory and the virtue of this Holy Book. It is this that has been done for the Koran of the Mo- hammedans. The Koran is the sword of a despotic earthly sovereign; the Holy Scrip- tures is the sword of the Holy Spirit whose province it is to teach all things and bring to remembrance and effectiveness Christ's teaching and deeds. The word of God in the life of man is the preeminent pivotal aim about which the entire Holy Scriptures revolve.

The Roman Catholic Church has denied to its adherents access to the Holy Scriptures, ascribing as sufficient reason the incapability of the people to understand the Book and the consequent danger of error. The further rea- son might have been added, the denial of the

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 305

right of private opinion in religious matters. Romanism has always bitterly fought, and still fiercely contests, the circulation of the Scrip- tures in the countries where it is predominant. However, it is a fact that the Holy Scriptures have often been grossly misunderstood and even among devout Christians it has been variously construed and been made to support many doubtful theories of life, doctrine, and interpretations of divine realities. There are many splendid incidents of individuals com- ing into sublime conceptions of religion and exalted experiences of Christian faith through the simple reading of the Scriptures, but the great body of humanity requires instruction, leading, guidance, in the Holy Book in order to get a proper appreciation of its truth and an adequate understanding of its revelation. The most important work of a missionary, whatever else he may be trying to do, is the honest, faithful, intelligent, illuminating teach- ing of the meaning, contents and respective values of the Scriptures. The missionary who cannot teach the Bible, plainly, freely, hon- estly, is lacking in the most essential qualifica- tion for service in the foreign field. Unfortu- nately not all who consider themselves qualified for this service have the accurate knowledge,

306 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

the proper perspective, and competent compre- hension of its purpose to make the Bible the real Book of revelation to the unevangelized world. Many Bible instructors are so obsessed with theories which they feel compelled to pro- mote that they make the Bible run altogether to the establishment of these theories. The pre- firiillennialist, for instance, is usually very in- dustrious in Bible teaching, but always with the objective of showing that the second com- ing is imminent, as the evil times and the prophecies from Genesis to Revelation clearly prove. The Second-blessingist is always em- phasizing the double spiritual experience of iiiGB. from the patriarchs to the latest apostles. The Sabbatarians print and distribute millions of pages of literature with the avowed purpose, above everything else, to break down the ob- servance of the Lord's Day and to stress the literal Sabbath of the Jews. The Divine Heal- ingist is attracted by all the cases of illness and the pre-medicine method of healing them. The Epistle of James, the last chapter espe- cially, with its reference to the anointing of the sick with oil and the prayer of the elders, is the chief book in the Bible, even if Martin Liuther did speak of it rather contemptuously as a book of straw. The Bible, God's Holy

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 307

Book, will never get to the people through teachers who use it simply to support a theory or establish some peculiar doctrine. The Bible must be taught by those who seek its truth and can find in it what God and men are, and the divine purpose and plan for establishing the eternal unity between them, and who can make the Book the living voice of the ever- speaking God in his fatherly appeal to man, His Son. These matchless Scriptures have been discounted by the petty ends to which they have been subjected. They can come to their greatness and dignity only as they re- veal the stately steppings of Almighty God and the redemptive processes of high heaven for the elevation of the race to the plane of transcendent righteousness and power. The missionary is enjoined to be a "faithful dis- penser of the Word of God" and to this end the Bible should be a well-known book, in con- tents, meaning and purpose.

In order to the construction of an adequate religious faith in the people of the earth upon a stable basis, the missionary must not only know and teach the Bible in its entirety and in the light of modern devout scholarship but he or she must know thoroughly the elemental and fundamental elements of Christian doc-

308 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

trine. The missionary, whatever the pecuhar field of service, must never overlook the prime motive in his or her going or being sent. The world needs science and its myriad appli- cations. A new and better philosophy is in- dispensable to the reconstruction of thought. Vocational and avocational training is a neces- sity for the new industrial era which should be ushered in. The new trade relations and the present diplomatic alliance may call for service in their advancement. All this the missionary may do, but it must never be for- gotten that religion is the motive, and religion is the end in all missionary endeavor. These other objects may be attained without the mis- sionary leadership, even though the greater part up to date has been done by his leader- ship, but the adequate faith will come only through the missionary. So what is the re- ligion that the missionary, every missionary, has gone forth to teach? What interpretation of religious values will he or she make that is vital, necessary, compelling in their appeal? What is the Christian view of nature, of so- ciety, of government, of the mind, of the soul, of life, of death, of destiny? In what respects is Christianity the complete religion and in every way adequate to the needs of the human

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 309

spirit and the wants of the human heart? These questions the missionary is sent to an- swer.

The fundamental element in the Christian system is its doctrine of God. Christianity assumes at the foundation the existence of an Infinite Personal God, a Heavenly Father of absolute Power. The conception of God, how- ever, does not take on vividness and acquire force until it attains the sense of essentiality. The doctrines of the Gospel do not become vital until God becomes the ultimate reality in personal and cosmic life. The conviction of the reality of God as revealed by and in Jesus Christ is the creative force in developing the Christian system of thought and experi- ence. Man interprets his religious experience in terms of his theology and he interprets his experience with Almighty God in terms of his doctrine of God. Take, for instance, prayer. For what may a person pray? The Roman- ist prays to or through saints and the Virgin Mary. Why? Because of his conception of God. To him God is too terrible to meet face to face. To those to whom God is a father, direct communion in prayer with this father

310 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

is the most precious privilege. What is it that God and man must do together, and that God cannot enter upon until man announces in prayer that he is ready for cooperation in this united task? The entire philosophy of prayer is based upon one's doctrine of God. It is most important to hold in mind what Professor Samuel Harris once said, "If God is going to do anything He will do it like God and not like man." The doctrine of the atonement has taken form according as man has considered God as an imperialistic King, an oriental judge, or a sympathetic father. The doctrine of the incarnation becomes a stumbling block to one who fails to find be- tween God and man an eternal kinship. The doctrine of the Trinity is confusing in the extreme unless the doctrine of God shall allow the expressions of deity found in the Son and the Holy Spirit. No adequate religious faith is possible, until there is a clear, comprehensive, exhaustive doctrine of God as the central tenet of all religious beliefs.

Along with the doctrine of God must be put the doctrine of man. Any religion that leaves man and God at a distance from each other is wanting in an essential element. "What is man, that God is mindful of him ; and the son

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 311

of man, that God visits him?" This question of the ancient psalmist, raised in wonderment, the missionary is sent to the rehgiously illiter- ate people of the earth to answer. This can be done only if he or she know the meaning of man, the significance of Sin, the purpose of a Saviour and the plan of redemption as set forth in the Holy Scriptures.

Teachers of Christianity to the religiously untutored or wrongly taught throngs must deal directly with the fundamental elements of man's personality which include self-con- sciousness, self-determination and self-knowl- edge. A large proportion of the prejudicial if not disastrous theological blundering of sin- cere religious thinkers is due to an extraordi- nary degree to their utter lack of a competent psycholog}^. The mind of man is the instru- ment of his faith as it is the agent in his knowl- edge. Too many teachers of religion seem to take no cognizance of the fact that as man's mind is, so his faith will be. An exhaustive knowledge of man such as genuine psychology gives will put to rest, or vanish to indifference, many speculative theological theories so long divisive of Christians, and reduce to a paltry state many of the differences now existing be- tween the creeds and forms of the various de-

312 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

nominations. Many of the strifes over predes- tination, possibility of apostacy, second bless- ing sanctification, and Holy Ghost baptisms, and posture in prayer, the meaning and man- ner of the Lord's Supper, the common and individual communion cup, the use of the or- gan and other musical instruments in the church, the mode of baptism, the right and power of only certain ministers to baptize or administer the Communion, are due almost entirely to the psychology in the case. Spirit- ualism, theosophy, the most of Christian Sci- ence, fanatical faith healings, whether by Saints' bones, or Saints' manipulations, hang on the clouds in the psychological sky.

The teacher of Christianity should be ac- quainted with man. The religion of person- ahtjT- must find personality for its realm and the approaches thereto as the chief channels of its operations. But psychology alone will fit no man to teach the Christian religion. Man is not only a thinker ; he is a sinner. Why is he a sinner? What is the consequence of his sin? What is the provision that has been made for his transformation? The doctrines of sin and salvation are vital in any mission- ary's equipment for giving the world an ade- quate religious faith. Back of these and in-

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 313

terwoven with them is the doctrine of the per- son of Jesus Christ and the philosophy of the redemption which has been accomphshed in him for man. The missionary is required to be in possession of the great trunk lines of Christian doctrine when he or she goes forth to construct an adequate religious faith for three-fourths of the world's humanity. Many young men and young women are offering themselves as teachers of religious education. Education in religion is the primary need, but before there can be the teaching of religion, there must be the knowledge of religion. Com- prehensive knowledge of the Christian religion, of the great source book in revelation and of man, and an experience of personal salvation in Jesus Christ are essential to any proper equipment for that missionary service which mankind now needs. Such equipment is no less essential to any just presentation and com- petent promulgation and promotion of Chris- tianity in the home lands. In this day there is an urgent call for persons to teach Chris- tianity who really know what Christianity is. The hope of the world ultimately rests upon a real religion. What is real religion? That is the ever recurring question. Many factors are involved, the chief being man himself.

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Man is not a constant quantity, but variable with the infinite variety of the species. The Oriental and the Occidental are types of mind as well as classes of peoples. What is real religion to the one may not be real religion to the other. Until there is standardization of intellects in the earth, there cannot be uniform- ity in religious conceptions. Different view- points give different views of the object. Man is not constituted for viewing things in this world in completeness. He gets but broken views and consequently forms opinions which deepen into convictions that are limited, par- tial and defective. This is the penalty of be- ing finite. It is a heavy strain on many people to be finite. Such a limitation lays the obliga- tion of recognizing the possibility of the one- sidedness of one's own view and the further possibility of a different and even correct view from another side. It is here that man clas- sified himself as tolerant or intolerant. Re- ligion is the one subject that allows many view- points and opens the possibilities of varying conceptions. Charges of heresy may be, and frequently are, more the evidences of inability to comprehend the other's point of view than indications of error in the other's conceptions. Some one has said, "There are times when the

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 315

heresy which seeks and prays and suffers is much nearer the source of life than an intel- lectual orthodoxy incapable of comprehending the dogmas that it keeps embalmed." It takes all points of view to get any just and satisfac- tory opinion of the world, and the same may be said of religion and especially Christianity. The crime of Christendom has been its bitter divisions due to divergence of views necessi- tated by the multiplied points of vision. What is real true Christianity cannot be answered by one man or group of men. The answer in completeness must synthetize the views of Christ-filled humanity.

Since the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem two very distinct types of mind have been exhibited in their consideration of the facts and doctrines of Christianity. The Shepherds saw and heard the marvelous chorus; the Wise Men of the East followed the conjunction of the planets; and all found the Lord. Each group was peculiarly qualified for what it saw and heard. The Judaistic type has always been impressed by signs and wonders and bound by forms, ceremonies and formulas of faith. The Hel- lenistic type is inclined to seek truth by logic, reason and a distinctly intellectual method. Miracles with the first group are always pri-

316 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

mary evidences; with the latter, they are sec- ondary and are urged not so much as won- | ders as works of love and mercy that reveal the divine goodness of the miracle worker. The first group is always engrossed in the tem- poralities of faith and the physical hopes of prophecies, and is usually the slave of literal- ism and the victim of funcf ions of the priestly kind. The extremists of this class are Zion- ists, Dowieites, Russellites, Mormons, Holy Rollers, and Come-outers of all degrees; but many devout souls are bound by some strands of this same literalism and physicalism. This group usually designates itself as conservative, although it is usually very radical in its con- ceptions, its operations, and in its demands that all men think its thoughts as it thinks them. This group in the foreign field is very prone to be exceedingly insistent that those of the other type are heretics, have denied the funda- mentals of the faith, and are bringing ruin upon the Christian propaganda. Not infre- quently the leaders in this radical conservatism have had little training in theolog>% none in psychology and philosophy, and have had lim- ited opportunities in the school for developing the mind or the thought processes which the great issues of theology require.

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 317

The other group has led in the modernism of all the periods. In the recent decades it has promoted the textual and historical criti- cisms, the discoveries in archaeology, the con- struction of the recent theologies, the inaugu- ration of the sociological studies and move- ments, and has emphasized the salvation of the entire world through the establishment on earth of the Kingdom of God. It has had in much, if not most of all this, the opposition and the criticism of the first group. It has led in many- instances to just as objectionable and danger- ous extremes as the first. The Hellenism of the early centuries wsls the parent of Gnos- ticism and all the rationalistic teachings of that time against which the Apostles and the early fathers had to contend vigorously. From this attitude of mind have come the natural- ism and agnosticism of these later centuries that have been so dissipating to spiritual life. The rationalist is so irrational as to claim that his comprehension of all truth is the only com- prehension there is. He denies not only the intimation of superhuman intelligence but also the validity and possibility of collected com- prehension. He denies the existence of any thought outside his thought. He is of the earth earthy, and carnal withal. The first

318 IMAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

group is fond of calling the second group ra- tionalistic and thereby damning it eternally in devout minds. But in truth the rationalists no more represent the great group of the reason- ing, intellectual and scholarship type than the Mormon and the Dowieite represent the fac- tual, traditional and literalistic type. Call- ing each other names and aligning each other with heresy of an outgrown past or heresy of a too pretentious present and a far-off possible future cannot make for the establishment of an adequate Christian religious belief in the non-Christian and semi-Christian world. The genuine Christianity that is to meet the chal- lenge of the world must have a clear-cut reve- lation of the meaning and purpose of God, man, and the world, and of the divine energy by which all things live, move and have being. There has been too much materialism in re- ligious thinking. Too much emphasis has been put upon the edibles, the mansions, and the ecstatic experiences of the other world, and too little on character, divine relationships and high objectives in life. Personalities, and not carnal bodies with the appetites and aspirations originating therefrom, are the true concern of genuine Christianity. Christ arose from the dead not to demonstrate the worth of the body

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 319

but the power of personality to re-clothe itself for the world in which it is to live and operate. He boldly asserted, "I am the resurrection and the life." Through the personality of the Divine the personality of the human is en- dowed for eternal life. It is personality in which God, Christ, and man have their com- mon claim. Religion, to be adequate, must lift man's personality to the level of divine relationships. The constructors of genuine re- ligious faith must promote a Christianity that meets the requirements of the intellect, sensi- bilities, and will of developed humanity. Only a religion that meets the demands of developed humanity will be the requisite force for devel- oping humanity.

Teachers of religion must recognize the two types of mind in the world and set themselves intelligently to fit Christianity in its forms of statement and application to the minds of men, and at the same time to fit the minds of men to receive and assimilate the comprehensive truth of Christianity. Rehgious faith cannot be established by the cravings of animalism, the claims of literalism, or the demands of intel- lectualism, and the doctrinal deductions which they incite, but only by the synthetic revela- tion of that personality, creative and command-

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ing, which exists and binds together God, Christ and man. The mission work of evan- gehcal Christianity would be greatly hindered if not severely endangered by the overpower- ing predominance of one type of mind in its instruction and ministry, just as historic Chris- tianity has suffered by the predominance of the Roman mind. Both types are necessary to a proper and adequate revelation of the truth. Paul and James supplement each other, Jesus used Thomas as well as Nathaniel. The Bible contains the hortatory and argumentative books of Isaiah and Romans as well as the apocalyptic writings of Daniel and Revelation. The Christian church of this day may learn wisdom of its masters and the way of truth from its Lord.

VI

The world was never more in need of a com- petent Christianity. Unprecedented dangers are imminent. The backwash of the Great War has produced a tide of reaction in gov- ernment, in economics, in thought and in reli- gion. A backward movement in almost every phase of life, threatening time-tried ideals, seems to have set in. One of the leading American editors writes, ''Some are daring to

CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 321

exhort us, in the days of the backward tide, to seek out the *okl time rehgion.' We need su^ premely, however, a fresh, new-time religion, ahve, vibrant, aggressive and conquering. The future of the world in these days of awful crises depends almost solely upon the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, for this is the only institution left with great resources of saving idealism." This editor, however, is optimistic, as he says, "We are on the verge of a new and glorious age, with a new vision of God, a new epoch for faith, a new conception of hu- man freedom. The coming Kingdom is about to become a more tangible and visible thing than ever before, as the living Christ more and more finds his place in human hearts and lives." In the midst of a world situation more terrible than was ever known before, when the wisest men seem baffled and the strongest appear de- feated, faith in God is the sure and abiding hope, the foundation for a new world order, and the supreme factor in the construction of a competent civilization.

Europe needs to-day new religious ideals, new conceptions of man and the world, and a new consciousness of God. It is to-day the world's greatest mission field, because by its life, thought, and power, it is determinative of

322 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN

the conceptions, ideals, and even convictions of four-fifths of the world's population. Europe has lost its hold on eternal values. Reparation commissions may assess indemnities, but Heaven alone can repair the losses. The re- covery of a Holy Faith following the reclama- tion of the Holy City and the Holy Land would be the consummate victory of all the centuries. Were Europe and America Chris- tian there would be no more heathen in two generations. Alexander Hamilton once said of this country, *'It is ours to be either the grave in which the hopes of the world shall be entombed or the pillar which shall pilot the world forward." This may be truly said to- day of the evangelical Christian Church and especially in America. The world is weary of pretense and exhausted by ecclesiasticism. It wants a new expression of character, a new exhibition of love, a new demonstration of the Christ spirit, a new projection of the Christ program, a new display of spiritual power in the human life, and a new sense of a living and present Christ. This is the time for every Christian to face forward, and fight valiantly, to drive back the deadening forces of ex- hausted beliefs and support the new majestic movement for the world's Christianization.

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Making the world Christian! The idea is thrilling! The very conception is dynamic. It gives sweep to the imagination, depth to thought, and consuming purpose to consecra- tion and service. But this is not possihle hy any instantaneous process, any one generation program. There must be the time exposure and the processes of life and construction. But the ages belong to God. He has under- taken the salvation of the world and there is no place for discouragement. The enormous task is within His powers. Equipped with the Christ plan of human redemption, reinforced by genuine Christian character, inspired by unfeigned Christ love and energized by re- demptive spiritual power, man valiantly goes forth to deliver to the world a competent Christianity and to construct for all humanity an adequate religious faith. With Robert Morrison we may boldly declare this day, "The outlook is as bright as the promises of God."

THE END

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