The increase of faith : some present-day aids to belief

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FRANCIS J.McCONNELL

BR 121 .M24 1912
McConnell, Francis John,

1871-1953.

The increase of faith

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The Increase of Faith

Some Present-Day Aids to Belief

BY/
FRANCIS JOHN McCONNELL

Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church and Ex-President
of DePauw University

NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM

Copyright, 1912, by
FRANCIS J. McCONNELL

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Merrick Lectures 5

Introduction 7

I. The Scientific Spirit 9

II. The Philosophic Outlook 48

III. Soctal Movements 89

IV. The Ethical Advance 128

V. The Adornment of Doctrine 169

VI. The Demand for Christ 204

THE MERRICK LECTURES

By the gift of the late Frederick Merrick,
M.D., D.D., LL.D., for fifty-one years a mem-
ber of the Faculty, and for thirteen of those
years President of Ohio Wesleyan University,
a fund was established providing an annual
income for the purpose of securing lectures
within the general field of Experimental and
Practical Religion. The following courses
have previously been given on this foundation :

Daniel Curry, D.D. — Christian Education.

President James McCosh, D.D., LL.D. —
Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth.

Bishop Randolph S. Foster, D.D., LL.D.—
The Philosophy of Christian Experience.

Professor James Stalker, D.D. — The
Preacher and His Models.

John W. Butler, D.D. — Mission Work in
Mexico.

Professor George Adam Smith, D.D., LL.D.
— Christ in the Old Testament.

Bishop James W. Bashford, Ph.D., D.D.,

LL.D. — The Science of Religion.

5

THE MEERICK LECTURES

James M. Buckley, D.D., LL.D.— The Natu-
ral and Spiritual Orders and Their Relations.

John R. Mott, M.A., F.R.G.S., LL.D.— The
Pastor and Modern Missions.

Bishop Elijah E. Hoss, D.D., LL.D.; Pro-
fessor Doremus A. Hayes, Ph.D., S.T.D.,
LL.D.; Charles E. Jefferson, D.D., LL.D.;
Bishop William F. McDowell, D.D., LL.D.;
Bishop Edwin H. Hughes, D.D. — The New
Age and Its Creed.

Robert E. Speer, M.A. — The Marks of a
Man; or, The Essentials of Christian Charac-
ter.

The Rev. Charles Stelzle, Miss Jane Ad-
dams, Commissioner of Labor Charles P.
Neill, Ph.D., Professor Graham Taylor, and
the Rev. George P. Eckman, D.D. — The So-
cial Application of Religion.

The Rev. George Jackson, M.A. — Some Old
Testament Problems.

Professor Walter Rauschenbusch, D.D. —
Christianizing the Social Order.

INTRODUCTION

The lectures which make up this volume
constitute a distinct addition to the litera-
ture of the Merrick Lecture Course. They
embody a conception of religion and of life
which is greatly worth while.

The thesis which Bishop McConnell has
set forth in his earlier works on "The Diviner
Immanence/' and "Religious Certainty" re-
appears here in new and charming form.
With his penetrative mind he has bored into
a great central and ruling principle, which
dictates his message to our day. While his
thought is so comprehensive that it cannot be
caught in a phrase, this governing principle
may roughly be described as this — religion
the full and glad response of a complete hu-
manity to a Christian Deity. In its applica-
tion this principle, of course, touches the
whole manhood in all its potentialities, intel-
lectual and moral, aesthetic and social. It
deals with all phases of life and thought and
presents a vision of good times, great men,

7

INTRODUCTION

and a conquering God. It affords a sure basis
for faith, and sets aspiration free.

The thought is vitalizing, and should bring
to other religious teachers and learners (as it
has already brought to many) something of
the calm power which marks the author him-
self. Herbert Welch.

Delaware, Ohio.

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

Before we begin a discussion of the various
factors in present-day life which make for the
increase of faith it may be well for us to ask
the question, What is faith?

Many answers are at hand. The upholder
of creed declares that faith is assent to the
articles of belief. Yet assent must be more
than intellectual. Sometimes the fundamen-
tal propositions of Christianity are stated as
if they were mathematical axioms. Assent to
mathematical axioms does not require any
moral virtue. The devils might well assent
to intellectual propositions. Another defini-
tion would turn around the thought that faith
is the enjoyment of an inner experience. This
definition is good except for the danger of
suggesting that the experience is so wholly a
matter of feeling that it has no room what-
soever for faith in the sense of trust. Still
another would have us believe that faith is a
keeping of Commandments, which also is good

9

THE INCREASE OP FAITH

if Commandments are not conceived of in a
mechanical or artificial fashion.

All that is true in these definitions can be
preserved, and all that is harmful avoided, if
we say that Christian faith is Christian life.
Every activity of the Christian bases itself
upon trust — trust in the Christian idea of
God, trust in the Christian idea of man, trust
in the possibility of interaction between God
and man. Out of such trust the life unfolds
in certain practical activities, which lead to
certain insights, which culminate in a general
feeling of spiritual satisfaction. At the cen-
ter of all is the will to do the will of God,
and out of this comes knowledge which is
more than merely intellectual, and experience
which is more than the flow of superficially
emotional states. It is the purpose of these
lectures to show that various great factors in
modern times are working to aid, at least in
a general way, the progress of Christian faith.

The first factor we are to discuss is the
scientific spirit of our day. It is part of
present-day good fortune that we have passed
beyond the era of so-called conflicts between
science and religion. We can easily see how
these conflicts arose. The latter part of the
nineteenth century was a period of unpar al-
io

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

leled scientific advance. The advance was so
real and so unlike anything that the world
had ever before known that science came
quickly to an immense prestige. The glory of
the actual discoveries, the charm of the evolu-
tionary hypothesis, the practical benefits to
be realized at once from scientific conquest,
drew more minds to the consideration of
scientific problems than had ever been drawn
before in a similar period of time. Just think
for a moment of the increase of the number of
students of the sciences since the date of the
announcement of the theory of natural selec-
tion, of the increase too of the means of scien-
tific advance. With science practically tri-
umphant in sphere after sphere, and with
students turning toward science by hundreds,
it is not to be wondered at that the first inter-
pretations of the new heavens and the new
earth were in the direction of atheism. With
matter apparently doing so much on its own
account, it was put in the chief place with
confident expectation on the part of the new
science that matter would soon explain every-
thing. One who was a student in a biological
laboratory in those days has told us that he
had in his laboratory what might be called a
veritable experience of materialism. He

11

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

watched through the microscope certain bac-
teriological developments. Suddenly the im-
pression seized him that this was all — that
the philosophers and poets and prophets were
wrong, and that spirit was nothing. The ex-
perience was as definite as a religious con-
version. To instance such an experience is to
suggest how far we have gone from the credu-
lous, uncritical scientific procedure of those
early days.

Some of the conflicts of those days came
out of the overpowering of the imagination
by the long flights of time which the scientists,
and especially the evolutionists, felt to be
necessary for their theories. True, the length
of eternity used to be a favorite theme with
old-time preachers, whether to frighten sin-
ners or to comfort saints. But the moment
the geologist and the biologist began to speak
of processes running through millions of years
the effect seemed appalling to religious
thought. The reason now seems to have been
not so much the conflict with the biblical reve-
lation as the crude question as to where God
was during the periods. The thought that
God was in the periods did not find ready ac-
ceptance. After a while, though, thoughtful
men began to see that the crisis brought on

12

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

by the evolutionary hypothesis was by no
means the most serious through which Chris-
tian belief had passed. Far more serious had
been the announcement and the acceptance of
the Copernican system. The acceptance of
the idea that the world is round was at one
time a deadly heresy. That diagram on the
first page of the school geographies to illus-
trate the sphericity of the earth, the ship ap-
pearing on the horizon with her masts first
visible to the observer on shore — this is the
costliest diagram in existence, judging by the
suffering required to make men accept the
truth it conveyed. But men not only ac-
cepted the idea of the earth as a globe, but they
accepted also the vast distances which the Co-
pernican system called for and found these
not incompatible with Christian faith. The
late Goldwin Smith used to urge somewhat
peevishly that dogmatic theology should have
died with the announcement of the Coper-
nican theories, that it would die sooner or
later because its head had been crushed by
that announcement. Still theologies of one
sort or another live on. If they are to die, it
will take something more than Copernicanism
or Darwinism to kill them, for Christianity
can adjust itself easily both to practically in-

13

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

finite stretches of space and practically infi-
nite stretches of time. Thinkers of all schools
have virtually agreed upon this.

Moreover, conflicts between science and re-
ligion have in our day been seen not to be
conflicts between science and religion so much
as between scientists and scientists and be-
tween different schools of religion. It would
be very easy to make quite a showing of con-
flict between science and religion by picking
out all the progressive utterances of scien-
tists and by putting them over against a mass
of utterances of belated theologians. But if
we were to take the utterances of scientists as
a whole and the utterances of theologians as a
whole, we should quite likely find that there
have been progressive scientists and progres-
sive theologians, conservative scientists and
conservative theologians. Quite as bitter in-
vective has been heaped upon progressive
scientists by reactionary scientists as upon
progressive scientists by conservative theo-
logians. The battle is really between the
spirit of progress and the spirit of conser-
vatism. When a doctrine, whether scientific
or theological, has organized itself into a
system, it partakes of the over-conservatism
which is a part of the original sin of institu-

14

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

tions. The Church is not the only institu-
tion which suffers from conservatism. It is
not fair, taking the whole Church into the
account, to say that the Church suffers more
from conservatism than do the political or in-
dustrial or educational or social institutions.
Our modern knowledge of institutions will
hardly permit us to speak very seriously of
conflicts between science and religion. The
conflict is really the age-old, world-wide con-
test between the spirit of progress and the
spirit of conservatism.

And, again, certain victories by scientific
thinkers over some arguments for Christianity
have not been victories over Christianity, but
over these particular arguments. For ex-
ample, much has been made of the practical
surrender by theists to-day of the old-fashioned
design argument which had been thought po-
tent since the days of Paley. The more de-
termined of the earlier apologists would pick
out some fact, preferably from the organic
realm, and would show that the evidence of
design in the fact pointed to the existence of
a Creator working with a plan in mind. We
cannot help feeling that these old-fashioned
arguments still have a value that modern
thinkers seem unwilling to concede to them,

15

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

but there is a sort of offensive cocksureness
about them, and they often start more ques-
tions than they answer. When an ambitious
reasoner of this type declares that he can
prove the existence of God from the design
shown in a mosquito's wing, the question in-
evitably arises as to why the mosquito should
exist, at all — which suggests the difficulty
which arises through picking out some one
fact and looking at it alone. In our day we
feel that design must apply to the system as
a whole. We seek for signs of plan not so
much in details as in the entire sweep and
outcome of the vast cosmic process. This
type of thinking has its pitfalls as truly as the
other, but it is in the fashion just at present.
In any case, we can see how little the mere
change of emphasis in our argument can
really affect the foundations of faith.

To come closer to the heart of our ques-
tion, however, we must ask not only whether
this or that body of organized scientific re-
sults makes against faith, but whether the
scientific temper or scientific spirit makes
against faith. Through the positive scientific
advances of the past fifty years, through the
discussion of these even in the newspapers,
through the familiarization of the public with

16

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

scientific processes, there has come and does
come increasingly into our own life a scien-
tific spirit which we can recognize even though
we may not be able to define it. For the pur-
poses of this discussion a formal definition is
not necessary.

Our first main proposition is that there is
nothing in the scientific spirit prohibitive of
theistic or Christian belief. We shall have
something to say later of the decline of the
dogmatic spirit in theology. We must say
here that, remarkable as has been the decline
of the dogmatic spirit in theology, the de-
cline of the dogmatic spirit among those who
are looked upon as the real leaders of science
is more remarkable still. In the later seven-
ties and early eighties it was not so. Scien-
tists then had a great deal to say about what
could not be. Grant that the scientist to-day
may so often say, "I do not know," that he
may get himself into a chronic state of agnos-
ticism, still this scientific agnosticism is better
than the scientific dogmatism which denies
outright the value of religious belief.

Among the real achievements of science in
recent decades none is of more real value
than the recognition of the limitations of
science by every man of real scientific spirit.

17

THE INCREASE OP FAITH

In fact, there is question as to whether a
student can lay claim to the scientific spirit if
he is not willing to recognize the limitations
of scientific procedure. There is nothing more
unscientific than to strive to build up a scien-
tific orthodoxy which arrogates to itself the
right to pass judgment in all fields. In a
general way even popular thinking to-day
recognizes the truth that it is the function of
science to describe processes and the function
of philosophy and religion to give them their
final interpretation. What we call ultimate
problems lie out beyond the reach of technical
scientific processes. Suppose the discoveries
of science to do away with matter as we think
of it. Suppose we accept the modern scien-
tific view that matter is, after all, but a mani-
festation of Force or forces. What this Force
or these forces are, whether personal or im-
personal, and what the fundamental purpose
of the Force is if it is personal, is not a prob-
lem on which the scientist is finally the au-
thority.

But science not only has certain limitations
in the nature of the case. It also has limita-
tions growing out of its own imperfections.
Its instruments are not yet fine enough to
make it the real authority in some realms.

18

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

Take the problem of human immortality.
Many scientists have dogmatically affirmed
that the life of a soul after death is impos-
sible. But how can a scientist of real scien-
tific spirit pronounce thus dogmatically? The
scientist would probably answer that con-
scious life is the accompaniment of certain
forms of nerve structure, that the material
conditions on this earth are the only condi-
tions which make such delicate structures
possible, that with the destruction of the tissue
there is no reason to think that the life makes
any other material adjustment. All of this,
however, is assumption. No necessary con-
nection has ever been shown between nerve
structure as we know it and conscious activity.
On the one side is nerve and on the other is
consciousness, but there is just as much of a
chasm between consciousness and nerve as
there is between consciousness and stone, ex-
cept that, as a matter of fact, certain forms of
consciousness and nerve structure are found
together. For the dogmatic scientist this fact
of being found together will be enough, but
the more reflective scientist will not be so
sure. This latter observer has learned to dis-
trust the mere fact of mutual accompaniment
as of final significance. We cannot always

19

THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

judge consciousness by the company it keeps.
If we lived in a world of just one language,
the dogmatist might readily conclude that
there is a necessary and inevitable connection
between the characters l-o-v-e and the senti-
ment which we know that these characters put
together as a word express. We are held back
from this dogmatic absurdity, however, by the
fact that there are many languages, and that
while a sentiment may be the same it may be
expressed in writing by any one of many dif-
ferent arbitrary symbols. The connection be-
tween consciousness and matter, as we know
it, may likewise be just one of many possible
adjustments, or it is conceivable that con-
sciousness may get along without any material
accompaniment whatever. Our universe may
be penetrated and interpenetrated by other
universes which the instruments of our uni-
verse may not be able to detect. In other
words, a scientific spirit that understands it-
self can say nothing prohibitive of a belief in
immortality.

Nor can science say anything prohibitive of
a belief in freedom. The scientist may object
that the reign of law prohibits the belief in
freedom. Every deed that occurs must be
caught up into the web of law, to be sure, but

20

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

there are laws and laws, and there is nothing
which a truly scientific spirit can find irra-
tional in the thought of a choice between dif-
ferent laws. If virtue is chosen, the path will
be upward toward heroism or saintliness. If
vice is chosen, the path will be downward
toward sluggishness and degradation. But
the struggle uphill and the rush down are both
in accordance with laws. There is no way of
escape from law, but we can escape some laws.
Of course a man may break out that it is im-
possible to show scientifically that we are not
puppets jerked by unseen wires. But it is
equally impossible to prove that we are. Sci-
ence leaves the door open to belief in freedom.
We have already said that proof of the non-
existence of God is scientifically out of the
question. The scientist comes down at last to
forces as they manifest themselves in the
world of space and time. He is not, indeed,
able to say from a study of the forces them-
selves that there is a God back of them, but
he is even less able to say that there is not.
Indeed, it is really easier to say that there is
than that there is not — easier to declare for a
God whose presence would account for the
play and interplay of the forces than to stop
with the forces themselves.

21

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

From the proposition that the scientific
spirit is not prohibitive of belief we advance
to the proposition that the scientific spirit is
largely friendly to belief. We admit at the
outset that we do not hope to establish this
proposition by any supposed revelations from
any particular facts. The aid is largely in-
direct, but really all the more potent on that
account.

We call attention to the fact that scientific
inquiry is more and more human in its pur-
pose and outcome. That is to say, the aim is
to fit the facts of the universe more and more
to the needs of the bodies and minds of men.
In a later paragraph we shall give emphasis
to the need of knowledge for the sake of knowl-
edge itself, which is much the same as saying
knowledge for the sake of the minds of men.
Here we say that a large part of scientific ad-
vance has come from a desire to relieve the
pressing physical needs of men. No matter
how much we admire the pursuit of knowl-
edge for its own sake, we make mental reser-
vations after all. We grow impatient with
the search for facts which clearly have no
human reference. We may sneer at the prac-
tical aim in the pursuit of knowledge, but we
qualify our scorn by reference to the lower

22

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

order of practical. We do not wish a scien-
tist to work with so practical an aim as money-
making, but if his work is bacteriological in-
vestigation, for example, we do not object to
his being practical enough to search for and
trace out the life history of a deadly disease
germ whose annihilation means the deliver-
ance of the race from a plague rather than to
track down a harmless germ whose life and
death are devoid of significance to human be-
ings. If we are to commend scientists for
their devotion to science, we are a little more
likely to choose as hero the man who died ex-
perimenting with means of fighting yellow
fever than the man who wore himself out de-
ciphering prehistoric inscriptions.

Apart altogether from our scientific ideals
on this point, great advances to-day are being
made by those who bring the human purpose
into their researches. And in the past the
aid of science toward the growth of faith has
been along the line of making conditions of
human life really human. Full and rich hu-
man insight is bound to result as science
makes the burdens of life less heavy. Science,
of course, makes possible a materialistic view
of the universe. But there is another mate-
rialism— that of sluggish and inert half-alive-

23

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

ness, where the body is forced into chief con-
sideration by the burdens placed upon it.
With the removal of these burdens some men
begin to think in wrong channels indeed, but
better have them do this than not think at all.
The flourishing of materialism in times of
scientific advance is a flourishing of thought
that in times before science came to the aid of
man was not thought at all, but a dull heavy
sense of pain.

A recent traveler in China has told of the
life of the chair-bearer, even when the bearer
has employment which pays him as much as
he asks — the heavy load, the dull monotony of
the journey, the thin garments which afford
no protection against the rain, the utter weari-
ness when the day closes, the wretched relief
of the opium pipe. Here is a picture of a
comparatively fortunate laborer in a land
where science has not yet been permitted to
lend its aid for the relief of human misery.
In such lands the higher faculties have practi-
cally no chance. Beliefs do indeed grow in
such lands, but they but accentuate the misery
of the people. They are but reflections of the
low vitality of the nation. Now, when it
comes to estimate the value of science for be-
lief we must not forget this indirect service of

24

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

aid to the conditions out of which belief
comes. The shortening of the hours and the
lightening of the burden of labor, the relief of
communities from dread of widespread hor-
rors like conflagrations and plagues, the pro-
vision for leisure on the part of larger masses
of men — all this is a help to belief.

In all of this we do not forget the danger
of the control over material things which
comes with the advance of science. Prosperity
is often harder to endure than adversity. The
psalmist said of old that the people who had
no changes forgot God. We know the power
of adversity to lead men to prayer, and we
know how widespread distresses will lead to
revivals of religion. We know too that when
men lose hope in earth they turn toward
heaven; but our contention holds good that
unless we have the material conditions for a
human life we cannot have a really human
life, and that unless we have really human life
belief which, on the whole, comes out of life
at its brightest and best, is not apt greatly to
flourish. We can readily see that a scientific
control of the earth might be too lavishly com-
plete for men at their present state of moral
development, but there must be some control.
A man can hardly think rightly about God if

25

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

he has no leisure to think at all. No religious
advance worth mentioning came, outside the
pastoral and desert peoples who had long op-
portunities for brooding, until society got
enough goods ahead to secure to religious
leaders at least a measure of freedom from
manual burdens. When science makes it pos-
sible for the masses to have large leisure, multi-
tudes may, indeed, waste their leisure in idle-
ness or worse, but multitudes of others will
lay hold on higher beliefs than they have ever
known. Many of our beliefs to-day still carry
with them much of the hardness of a bitter
time. The idea of God as a taskmaster, the
emphasis on the virtue of chastening, the sense
of tragedy in much religion — all this is a repe-
tition of days that were poor and bitter. The
highest type of saintliness is not that which
can get along without material things, but
that which can control and rightly use ma-
terial things. Sweet indeed are the uses of
adversity, but the uses of prosperity are
sweeter still. The meek are to inherit the
earth and the saints are to judge the world.
Modern science is to help the meek to their
throne and the saints to their judgment seat.
If the meek can remain meek when they come
to their inheritance, and the saints can re-

26

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

main saintly while seated on a throne of judg-
ment, the triumph of grace will be complete,
and out of the triumph of grace will come a
vision of the truth which will be complete.
In a large sense science prepares the way for
faith.

We return now for a moment to the con-
ception of science as a system of knowledge
on its own account. Not only has science
made a way for faith in its utilization and
control of material forces, but the habits of
mind, the intellectual temper and outlook,
which are part of the scientific spirit, have
been an aid to faith. The scientists have
moved through the fields of belief with keen
blades cutting down the weeds. In any realm
which has to do with religious belief it is very
easy for the mind to run off into superstition ;
and while superstition comes often out of the
religious side of our nature, superstition is the
foe of religion. William James used to say
that the best way to deal with superstitions
is to ventilate them, to break them open
and let the northwest wind of science roar
through them. So the northwest wind of
science has actually blown away ghosts and
goblins and witches and demons which used
to infest the realm of religious thinking.

27

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

Understand now, this has not been achieved
by the discovery of this or that scientific fact.
Quite an argument might be made out for all
these ghost folk, but the scientific temper
brushes the argument aside. Let us not for-
get this when we are tempted to cry out
against the scientific spirit as a despoiler in
the realm of religious feeling. Undoubtedly
that spirit may be a despoiler. We have only
to notice some of the wild things done in edu-
cational realms to see what can happen if an
overzealous scientific spirit gets out of its own
realm — the dissection of a great literary
classic, for example, from the standpoint of
minute philological technicalities which miss
the spirit of the author. But while the atmos-
phere of the laboratory may sometimes prove
poisonous in the library or the studio or the
cloister, still that atmosphere is more deadly
to hobgoblins than it is to angels. Unless we
have large familiarity with the thought of
earlier ages we cannot imagine how fortunate
we are in being free from blighting supersti-
tion in religion.

Moreover, there are other types of supersti-
tion which the scientific spirit does much to
banish. Men accept inaccurate and inade-
quate generalizations which get themselves ex-

28

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

pressed in wise saws and which are then al-
most worshiped as a part of a sort of ortho-
doxy. To take one or two simple illustrations
of no particular moral application, think of
the old-fashioned fear of night air, especially
in sick-rooms. Or, in another realm, that
old saw, "Slow but sure." When it occurs to
some statistical investigator to examine thou-
sands of cases of "slow" people he finds that
they are not at all likely to be sure, nor does
he find that the "sure" persons are likely to
be slow. In religious thinking we have ac-
cepted misunderstandings of the laws of he-
redity, mighty as those laws are, until they
have become veritable superstitions. Simi-
larly with notions about depravity, or about
the possibility of saying that men and things
are either in one religious class or another.
This "either-or" superstition is very preva-
lent. When men set themselves to look at the
actual facts of this world in a scientific spirit
they find both men and things to be pretty
much "both-and" — pretty well mixed and
tangled and complicated; so that hasty gen-
eralizations, even if they have the dignity of
long tradition behind them and enjoy the
attractiveness of epigrammatic form, may be
nothing but superstitions after all. The

29

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

matter-of-factness of the scientific spirit is
sometimes too matter-of-fact, but, after all,
we live in a world of matters-of-fact. So long
as we live in this sort of world it is well to
approach matters-of-fact in a matter-of-fact
spirit. A large part of the religious life is of
this matter-of-fact nature. Science aids us
here in a right approach.

Of still further value for the increase of
faith has been the scientific emphasis upon
system and law. The late Francis A. Walker
used to speak of certain psychological by-
products of modern commercial institutions
as of nearly equal value with the direct out-
put of the institutions. He used to speak of
a bank as a manufactory of punctuality, of
great importance to multitudes of men in
holding before them unescapable obligations
which must be met at particular times. The
bank does away with the old loose verbal
agreement to be fulfilled any time more or
less near another time, and also makes even
the written instrument more binding. This
educational effect is of immense value to the
community. Now, it would simply be impos-
sible to estimate the influence for good of the
ideas of system and law as these are enforced
by modern science. We all know the damag-

30

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

ing effect which is wrought by the conception
of law when that binds down the mind by iron
regulations. We know how easily the system
may become hostile to religion, but it is of
vast value to have the ideas of law and system
held before the minds of men. Modern science
is not the only force which has worked in this
direction, and the later scientific emphasis is
not more marked than the emphasis of the
early scientists; but in our time the sheer
abundance of the emphasis has become a com-
pelling factor. Law has been familiar to men
from the dawn of civilization, and there were
worthy scientists in the earliest days, but the
stress on law and system has never before
been made so much a part of the common con-
sciousness as now. On the whole, this is for
good. It introduces system and regularity
into belief. If belief is to be worth while, it
must be sane, and the emphasis on the great
regularities makes for sanity. In these ad-
dresses it must be remembered that by the in-
crease of faith we mean the increase of faith
which is really worth while, not the rank
abundance of all sorts and conditions of be-
liefs.

All this, however, is somewhat indirect.
Science has been of direct aid to faith in plac-

31

THE INCREASE OP FAITH

ing in the hands of faith the scientific method
which can be used mightily in religious effort.
Just as religion uses the material instruments
of modern civilization as an aid in building
her church edifices, just as she uses the instru-
ments of medicine and surgery to carry on her
works of relief, just as she uses printing
presses and express trains to send the gospel
over the world, just so she uses the instru-
ments of the scientific method to approach
anew the facts which are the center of the
Christian system. Truly scientific method,
as illustrated in the hands of the great mas-
ters, is a wonderful tool, even more wonderful
than any material tool which has come of
scientific study. The patience which can ex-
amine huge heaps of details and sort them
into order, the self-control which can suspend
judgment until an adequate conclusion ap-
pears, the discernment which can sift out es-
sentials from nonessentials, the intuition
which can finally seize and state a law — this,
which in part describes the scientific method
of our day, is a valuable instrument in the aid
of faith. To refer again to a fact mentioned a
moment ago, the Church appropriates more
and more the appliances of modern physical
and industrial and social relief for the bring-

32

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

ing in of the kingdom of God. She shows an
increasing willingness to listen to scientific
scrutiny of her own claims and her own faults.
She is willing more and more, if we are to
judge by the utterances of many of her leaders,
to surrender claims of artificial authority of
one sort or another if she can have the power
that comes from righteous influence.

Again, the Church shows more and more
willingness to allow the Scriptures to be sub-
jected to the test of the scrutiny of the scien-
tific method, or, rather, she seems more and
more willing to accept the results of such
study. We trust that we do not err from the
way of strict truth when we voice our opinion
that whatever harm has come through the
scientific handling of the Scriptures has come,
not from those who have been too scientific,
but, rather, from those who have not been
enough scientific. Dogmatism is not scien-
tific. Too often the approach of the theologian
toward the Bible has been with the announced
predetermination that certain teachings must
be found there. Too often the approach of the
scientific critic has been with the predetermi-
nation that these teachings must not be found
there. Of course all thinking must have its
assumptions and presuppositions, but it is not

33

THE INCREASE OF F4JTH

the part of the scientific spirit to blind the
eyes to facts for the sake of the presupposi-
tions.

At the hands of men of true scientific spirit
the Scriptures have been made new in our day
with effects like that which must have at-
tended their translation out of dead language
into living language. The fact that the Scrip-
tures were written in a prescientific age does
not prevent our getting great good from look-
ing at them through the scientific atmosphere.
Thus viewed they have become new. Parts of
Scripture once enigmatic have become clear;
parts misplaced have found their true setting,
and the foundations have been laid on a firmer
basis. Even very radical New Testament
study has found a basis for claim that some
portions of New Testament writing go back
much further toward the times of Christ than
we had previously supposed, and radical study
in its attempt to separate the Jesus of history
from the Christ of faith has failed to come
upon a time when the Christian writers did
not view Christ essentially as we view him to-
day. Looking at the facts of religious history
as facts their significance becomes more and
more important. The fact of the Scriptures
and their influence, the fact of Christ and his

34

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

power, the fact of prayer and its effects for
good, whether we call these effects reflex or
not — all these come to new thrones when we
approach them in the scientific spirit.

We have said that in the scientific spirit of
our time there is nothing hostile to a proper
religious spirit and that in many ways there
is aid to religion in the scientific spirit. It
remains for us to say that even where the facts
of the world seem darkest for the spirit of
faith the scientific spirit furnishes a challenge
and an incentive to the religious spirit. For the
scientific spirit is also a spirit of faith. Science
proceeds upon the most daring assumptions.
We may not call the faiths of science faiths :
we call them hypotheses; but hypothesis is a
form of faith. If we were to write an eleventh
chapter of Hebrews for men of science, it
would have to be a chronicle of the mighty
deeds made possible through the spirit of faith.
The scientist does not win his victories by
going into a laboratory and by staring. He
is animated by a mighty belief, and in that
belief seeks for light. Columbus sailed west in
obedience to a theory, and his quest was one of
faith. There is a splendid daring about such
faith to-day. Whether it be in the assumption
that by invention we can navigate the air, or

35

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

in the assumption that we can drive tubercu-
losis out of the world, or in the assumption
that we can find out whether there are Mar-
tians or not, the daring is the daring of faith.
There is a faith of science, even more truly
than there is a science of faith.

It will be observed that we have nowhere
picked out any facts which specifically make
for belief. We have been speaking of the scien-
tific spirit and the scientific temper. We now
admit the existence of many facts which at
first seem irreconcilable with belief. We in-
sist, however, that the approach of religion to
these facts should be with the same daring as
that with which the scientific spirit approaches
them. For example, it is said that the very
size of the universe is against the spirit of
faith, that it may have been well enough to
believe in the fundamentals of Christianity
back in the days when this earth was con-
ceived of as the center of the physical system.
To-day science has shown that the earth is so
small as to be of little account in a solar
system in which it is a mere fragment. It
was all well enough to believe in Christianity
at a time when men did not think that man
had been on the earth more than a few thou-
sand years. But since Copernicanism and

36

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

Darwinism how changed from all this! How
can Christianity survive the changes?

One reassuring feature about scientific dis-
covery is that, no matter how big the universe
is, and no matter how long it has been run-
ning, it seems to be composed throughout of
the same elements that we find in our world.
If a chemist could be transported from the
earth to the sun, and could live there, he would
not have to unlearn much of the earthly chem-
istry. The same elements that we know here
are in existence there. If the geologist could
go back to the ages before man, he would find
the same forces at work which we find at work
to-day. Air and water and heat working
through long periods have wrought the great
changes. If he could go back and live in the
carboniferous era, he would probably find the
situation there just what he might have ex-
pected before starting. Now, these common
everyday forces take on a new dignity when
they are given field and time in which to act.
Running water is not great taken on a few
feet of river bed and for a few seconds of time,
but give room enough and time enough, and a
Grand Canyon is the result. It really re-
quired some effort for science to see the im-
portance of these everyday forces, and belief

37

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

in their power was at first an act of faith. En-
larging conceptions of religious life act simi-
larly for Christian belief. They give the com-
mon forces space and time through which to
act. Of course the larger world presents a
larger challenge to Christian faith than does
a smaller ; but is faith to be outdone by science
in the boldness of its conceptions? If science
can believe that comparatively insignificant
forces around us can be the shaping tools of
the planets, why cannot faith believe that the
hopes and prayers of men are of vast spiritual
significance? The very fact that man's abode
is not the center of the universe makes, of
course, a larger challenge to faith. Dare we
believe that spiritual forces manifested in an
out-of-the-way planet are the key to the under-
lying forces of the universe? Dare we believe
that righteousness and love wherever found
are above all things else? Shall we be im-
posed upon by the mere bigness and age of
things? The larger universe which science
reveals thus challenges us. The spirit of
really scientific inquiry challenges us not to
be lacking in a spirit of faith. Both science
and religion must rely upon faith.

A still more perplexed doubter points out
our helplessness in the presence of the great

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

fixities of nature. After all, how can we be
sure that anything was made for our benefit?
Some things in the world are usable by us, but
what is there to assure us that these things
were made for us? The stones were made by
the slow geologic processes. We pave our
streets or build our homes with them. It
seems a little absurd to say that these stones
were designed for us. We found the stones
here and we used them. Similarly with the
control of the forces of nature. We can direct
the current a little, but we cannot radically
change its course. We can control others and
ourselves only by studying the streams of our
lives, by immersing ourselves in them, and by
slightly deflecting the flow here and there
while swimming with the stream. Or, to
change the figure, we are like children in
whose hands the reins which guide the steed
have fallen for a few blissful seconds, and
even in our bliss we suspect that this privilege
is allowed us because the horse can be trusted
to go aright for at least a few rods.

We are perfectly willing to admit all this,
perfectly willing to allow the argument to be
stated even more strongly. It does look
absurd to say that the physical universe was
made just for us. It may have other uses than

39

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

just those which suit us. As a matter of fact,
however, we can use the universe, and use it
to good advantage. As a matter of fact, we
shall use it to the full for our purposes, no
matter what the absurdities in our assump-
tion of our own importance. If there is any
fact of the universe worth knowing, the scien-
tist assumes the right to know that fact. If
the universe can be put to any sort of use for
human beings, we assume that it is the human
beings, and not the material universe, which
have the right of way. The great fixities of
nature remain fixed, to be sure, but that not
because we recognize in them especial sacred-
ness. Just so far as we can we will change
them, if we can do so to better human inter-
ests. The old type of piety which detected an
irreverent spirit in changing the course of
streams, or in controlling electricity as in-
terfering with the works of God, is dead and
gone. We admit that we are powerless in the
presence of some facts, but we are not power-
less to protest against the facts. That old
scoffer who said that if he had been present
when the human eye was created he might
have made some valuable suggestions may
have been blasphemous in spirit ; but men who
are .not: blasphemous actually do make im-

40

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

provements in eyes. What we are insisting
upon, however, is not our success in dealing
with nature, for that is little enough. We do
insist upon the significance of the daring as-
sumption that underlies our battle with na-
ture. Let the world be thought of as ever so
big. The magnificent distances may seem to
correct and chasten the spirit of faith both in
science and religion, but the discovery of any
new world is a mighty "dare" both to science
and religion. Science responds with the as-
sumption that the new facts can be fitted into
our system of knowledge, and religion re-
sponds with the assumption that the new
facts can be made serviceable to belief.
The spirit of faith both in its scientific and its
religious aspect survives and increases as new
problems are set by the unfolding of the uni-
verse.

But think of the limitations of our knowl-
edge! Think of the insoluble problems!
Well, suppose we do think of them. We find
them hard enough. Every increase of knowl-
edge is, as of old, an increase of sorrow, but,
after all, the sorrow is not the sorrow of those
who have no hope. We repeat that bad as are
the facts of the physical universe, they are
not prohibitive of faith; rather are they a

41

THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

challenge and an appeal to faith. Insoluble
though they may be to us, they are not neces-
sarily insoluble to a higher intelligence, or to
our own intelligence under more enlightened
circumstances. That is to say, there is noth-
ing inherently self-contradictory or self-evi-
dently absurd in these facts, hard as they are.
Are we distressed by the vast immensities of
the universe and by their apparent meaning-
lessness? On earth the wastes of desert and
water and ice ! Throughout space the blazing
suns and dead moons ! We admit that we do
not understand, but is that a sign that these
facts are beyond the reach of all intelligence?
Are they such contradictions as the prop-
osition that things which are equal to the
same thing are not equal to each other?
Admittedly we do not understand, but con-
ceivably we may understand. The problem
is not clearly beyond the reach of all intelli-
gence.

Or are we distressed by the fact of physical
pain in the world? Even before we come to
man there is pain enough. How can we recon-
cile the presence of animal suffering with the
assumption that God is good? If there were
to be some moral outcome of animal suffer-
ing, the situation might be different ; but, tak-

42

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

ing animal life just as we see it, the problem is
rather dark.

The problem is rather dark; but let us not
make it darker than it is. Above all let us
strive to avoid the error of thinking that the
animals suffer as we would suffer if we were
in the place of the animals. The tender
mercies of nature are no doubt cruel enough,
but animals are not men, after all. If we
could abstract from our* pain all that the
power of looking before and after puts into
it, and could divest pain of all the terrors that
many times come with our understanding of
its deadly significance, the pain itself might
be notably diminished, though a toothache,
for example, would still be its own wretched
self. Still, let us make the fact of animal
suffering as dreadful as we can. Let nature,
red in tooth and claw with ravin, shriek ever
so loudly against our creed. If the creed is at
all vital, it can hope on in spite of the shrieks.

The problem of human suffering — apart
from the problem of moral evil, which does
not fall within the scope of this lecture1 — is
likewise not an insuperable barrier to faith.
Here, again, we must be careful not to make
the problem worse than it is. A favorite de-
vice of pessimists is to imagine a sort of lump

43

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

sum of human woe constantly added to by the
sufferings of man until it reaches one awful
total. The total of human sufferings from the
beginning is, indeed, awful enough, but this
lump sum is a fiction of the imagination.
There has been much sickness from the begin-
ning, but, on the whole, as a shrewd observer
has said, "the race has been in tolerable
health." In spite of inequalities of social
order pain gets pretty well distributed. Then
there might be an increase of pain which
would be a sign and result of material prog-
ress. It is a well-known fact that the great
losses in the human race are due to deaths in
infancy. Suppose now, that science finds
methods of increasing the chances of a child's
living, so that for two who now die in infancy
one would under the new order survive to ma-
turity. Evidently, the survivor must die at
maturity or beyond. This means, statistically,
an increase in deaths from disorders of adult
life, and might be made to seem very terrify-
ing on paper. Again, in such case the death
in maturity, because of the full development
of consciousness and the possibility of looking
ahead, and because too of the more numerous
lines of connection with other human beings,
would probably cause more conscious suffer-

44

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

ing to the person himself and to others than
would have been possible if the person had
died in infancy. Yet we are not willing to
have the work of the diminution of infant
mortality stop on this account.

We have no desire to make the problem of
human suffering less than it really is. The
fact that most of the people that have lived
up to the present time have had no properly
human existence, the probable fact that most
of the persons on the face of the earth now
have gone to sleep in the last twenty-four
hours hungry, the fact of unspeakable hard-
ship in the lot of individuals everywhere — all
these are indeed facts. They are facts which
throw many good people out of sympathy with
the universe. Many look upon the universe as
one long tragedy. They cannot find any clue
to the meanings of nature or any insight into
her moods.

Nevertheless, in spite of all this faith lives
on. Belief undertakes one explanation after
another and all alike fall short. In spite of
the shortcomings of the explanations belief
survives. Looking at the fact of faith in a
scientific spirit, we must ask for some reason
for the persistence of the faith. Of course
the Christian will answer that it is God him-

45

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

self who is prompting men to believe in him in
spite of all temptations to the contrary. Our
problem just now, however, is not as to the
doctrine that God works, but as to how he
works through the modern scientific spirit.
Our answer is that the modern scientific spirit
furnishes neither the glare of the noonday or
the deep darkness of the midnight. It is,
rather, a twilight atmosphere and, no matter
how far it goes, it must always be twilight.
Where everything is sun-clear and admitted
fact there is not faith, as we understand faith.
Where there is dense darkness there cannot be
faith. For a race whose beliefs are to come
out of a moral venture we must not know too
much and we must not know too little. So
we say that the modern scientific atmosphere
does not prohibit belief. It in a measure
aids belief, but it does not compel belief. It
puts the facts of the universe before us in
such a way that they make appeal to faith as
to an heroic quality in men. Some day, it
may be, we shall have the full light ; but who-
ever or whatever has that full light, science
has it not. Science moves in twilight. But
in a measure she furnishes men with tools and
a spirit to move on in the twilight. And the
twilight gives us light enough to take the next

46

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

step. As moral beings under human condi-
tions that is all we need. What the moral re-
sponsibilities of angels or other celestial in-
telligences may be in the blaze of the full light
there is no call for us to consider. Our busi-
ness is not with angels, but with men striving
by moral endeavor to find God. For men we
may express a confidence that this world of
twilight furnishes the challenge and the test
by which faith shows its heroic quality and
by which it grows from more to more. For
some purposes twilight is better than noon-
day.

47

II

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

A familiar characterization of the progress
of human history would have us believe that
progress is never forward along a plane or
straight up an incline, but that it is, rather,
through the upward windings of a spiral with
the gaze downward upon old and familiar
facts seen ever from newer and higher alti-
tudes. This characterization has especial
force as applied to the history of philosophy.
The charge is often made that philosophy is
but a threshing of the same old straw, or a
manipulation of the same old puzzles. The
figure of the spiral is much truer. The prob-
lems are, indeed, the same old problems, be-
cause the problems are the great fundamentals
of human experience. These problems are
forever being seen, however, from a loftier
height and in a wider circle.

Within the memory of persons not yet past
middle life the study of philosophy has made
practically a complete turn in its spiral as-

48

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

cent. The problems of matter, of mind, of
personality, of truth are to-day viewed from
a standpoint more favorable to faith than
they were twenty-five years ago.

It is commonly said to-day that materialism
is no longer a living force in philosophy. This
would seem to be an overstatement. Material-
ism of the old fashion, with matter, force, and
motion as they were conceived of in the early
seventies, is not in vogue, but materialism
which, wThile recognizing mind, nevertheless
puts material processes so completely in the
first place as to make mind dependent on
matter, is still a factor to be reckoned with.
There is reason to believe that the sympathies
of agnosticism to-day are very close to. essen-
tial materialism. To be sure, the agnostic re-
sents the title "materialist," but too often
agnosticism, apparently well meant and sin-
cere, is a cover from which materialism
emerges for a sort of guerrilla warfare and to
which it retreats when at all seriously pur-
sued. At least we may say that the camp of
the agnostic does not hold many believers in
the primacy of the mind. A mind which be-
lieves in its own primacy will not long profess
agnosticism.

In discussing the passage away from the

49

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

emphasis on the older, more outspoken mate-
rialism we must not forget the great lasting
benefit which came from that discussion. In
that discussion the theory of evolution as an
ascent by natural processes took more and
more hold of the thinking of the time, all types
of mind and all realms of study feeling its
power. The theory was more than scientific
in the strict sense of the term. It became a
full philosophy with application to all phases
of thinking. Now, any theory of ascent
through struggle fits in so naturally with the
spirit of aggressive Christianity, and this
theory was so attractive, that, in spite of the
avowed materialism of many of its first ad-
herents, evolution was seized upon as express-
ing an essentially Christian theory of the uni-
verse. Considered simply as historic fact, the
theory of evolution, at least in those stages in
which Christian thinking had become at all
adjusted to it, must be looked upon as one of
the real forces making for an increase of faith.
Even when we come to look at the theory of
ascent through natural processes from the
more critical standpoint of the present day we
find much in it that lends comfort to belief.
In the previous lecture we tried to show how
chary we must be in professing to find direct

50

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

revelations from any realm of nature, but,
nevertheless, the thought of natural processes
as moving in accordance with a law which
sweeps them upward is in accordance with a
theistic and Christian view of the world. Ad-
mitting that there is to-day no substantial
agreement in the schools of the evolutionists
upon a satisfactory definition of evolution, ad-
mitting that there is some disagreement as to
the relative importance of the various factors
at work, admitting also that there is am-
biguity in the use of the terminology of the
evolutionists, as, for example, the oscillation
back and forth between the survival of the fit
as the survival of the merely fit to survive and
the survival of the ethically fit, admitting that
many facts which make against the theory are
ignored or slurred over, still the truth remains
that the present-day emphasis on upward
movement described in evolutionary terms is
a help to the view of the universe which faith
holds.

On the whole, too, the advance which has
come out of the discussion of the evolutionary
philosophy has been on the side of faith. The
old-fashioned materialism which saw in the
evolutionary processes merely the play and
interplay of material factors with mental proc-

51

THE INCREASE OP" FAITH

esses as the shadowy and powerless accom-
paniment of the material processes had, some-
how, to meet the objection that, after all,
the evolutionary theory itself is, on such a
hypothesis, a shadowy attendant of no vital
significance. It had to meet the objection that
it is mind which has discovered and read off
the process. If the most significant philo-
sophical theory culminates in the contention
as to the powerlessness of mind, the fact must
remain that mind has been powerful enough
to discover its own powerlessness.

This, however, the thoroughgoing material-
ist would reject as a quibble, though on his
theory even quibbles must point to some fact
in the physical system. An objection that the
materialistic evolutionist could not wave aside
was the objection out of which came the dis-
tinction generally recognized to-day between
evolution as a description of processes and
evolution as a theory of causes. In the former
evolution may be just the method by which
Creative Intelligence proceeds. In the latter
we have Evolution capitalized and going of
itself, the real factors, of course, being ma-
terialistic. Then we have the puzzle as to how
that which is only matter can ever evolve into
anything else than matter. If we start with

52

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

matter, we must end with matter unless some-
thing is introduced along the line. Of course
the impotence of the theory of materialistic
evolution in this respect was clear to discern-
ing students from the outset, but to-day there
is pretty widespread recognition of the weak-
ness. The distance between such a work as
Bergson's Creative Evolution and the early
statements of evolutionary theory is clear at
a glance; but, apart from the utterances of
philosophers like Bergson, evolutionary the-
ory which denies power to mind is offensive
in a day which lays great stress on intellectual
force, especially on that high form of intellec-
tual force which we call administrative ability.
In the practical life of to-day administrative
skill is so rare as to win the highest prizes.
The power to make things come together so as
to reach any sort of right outcome is just the
power which the man on the street feels must
be put into an evolutionary process to get
from it anything worth while. The ordinary
man feels that if things are left to themselves,
they fall to pieces or run downhill. Now,
this language is fairly insolent to the philo-
sophical materialist, but it does express an
objection which comes naturally to the sur-
face when we see the infinitely complex

53

THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

threads of the universe so managed as to come
to a measurably intelligible result.

How serious a problem this is for the
philosophical materialist appears also from
the fact of his insistence upon certain simplici-
ties like cells and molecules and atoms and
ions as the fundamental facts of the universe.
If these are the fundamentals, all that we see
is arrangement. Now, even though we abjure
altogether the old-and-fast design arguments,
we cannot get away from the suggestions of
mental activity in the presence of arrange-
ment. If it is urged that the arrangement is,
after all, only in the mind, and is really illu-
sion, we have to ask if the physical universe is
such that its processes bring forth illusions.
If the reply is that the illusion is born of
mind, the reflection arises that mind must be
rather powerful to beget such an illusion as
that cells are arranged into plants and ani-
mals.

It is really on this question of mind that
all theories of materialism go to pieces. The
recognition of the activity of mind is another
of those great recognitions which make for
faith. Materialists of all sorts have aban-
doned the crude notion that the brain secretes
thought. In their emphasis upon mental proc-

54

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

esses as the accompaniment of physical proc-
esses the materialists are unable to make the
connection more than coincidence. Their
statement cannot provide a theory of knowl-
edge. We cannot have a real theory of knowl-
edge until we reach some provision for
activity of consciousness. We have no desire
to quarrel about terms. Whether we call the
activity that of a soul, or a self, or a conscious-
ness, or a stream of consciousness, we can
have knowledge only as an agent of some sort
reads off a meaning or builds up a picture.
Suppose we were to hold that the outside
world is reported to the mind by being photo-
graphed there. A photograph is in itself a
creation in space with every point lying out-
side of every other point. It becomes a
photograph only as a mind sees it, and the
mind sees by building up the picture through
a mental process of incredible activity and
subtlety.

And this begins to lead us off toward a dis-
cussion of idealism as one of the contributing
factors making for faith. Before we enter
upon this phase of the discussion, however,
we call attention to the truth that the empha-
sis upon evolution and naturalistic processes
makes an atmosphere in which the old sub-

55

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

jective idealism does not thrive. Whether the
universe lies outside of all thought or not,
we are certainly most in harmony with the in-
tellectual temper of to-day in insisting that
the universe has its reality outside of our
thought in the sense that we did not create it.
The student of the evolutionary process is not
likely to allow himself to be persuaded that
the process is a process simply in his own
mind. To say that the universe is grounded
in thought is one thing. To say that it is
grounded in our thought is quite another. It
is this latter conception that is hardly likely
to thrive in the mind of one who knows geol-
ogy and biology and bacteriology. In ad-
dition to the favorable atmosphere which the
discussion of evolution has begotten for faith,
we must see in the stubborn facts of material-
ism a correction for faith. No one can tell
what absurdity the spirit of faith might foster
to-day if the barrier of a great objective order
were not in the way.

As we have indicated, we need not pay
much attention to subjective idealism. Still,
there is a current form of idealism which is
of mighty meaning. It starts from the fact
which we have mentioned above — the consti-
tutive activity of the mind in knowing. When

56

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

one has really seen this another truth dawns
upon one, namely, that nothing which mind
cannot seize can ever be known. To be seized
by mind the object must be penetrated by re-
lationships which reach the inmost essence;
that is to say, the object must be constituted
throughout by thought. Here is the great con-
tribution of idealism to the spirit of faith.
Nothing knoivable can exist save as the ex-
pression of intelligence. Here is the very
heart of the modern argument for theism.
Things must either come within thought or go
out of existence. Any sort of hard-and-fast
stuff apart from thought is out of the ques-
tion. To affirm that any such sort of stuff
exists is to bring it within thought relation-
ships. So far as our minds are concerned, it
would be too great a strain on a theory to
make us, finite intelligences, responsible for
the creation of the thought system in the midst
of which we live. But we cannot understand
the world until we affirm that whoever laid its
foundations laid them in thought. A knowa-
ble universe is one of the great supports of
theism.

No sooner, however, had philosophy fixed
on the constitutive processes of the mind as
essential than it forgot the individual minds

57

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

whose activities had furnished a clue to the
problem and began to speak of thought itself
as the controlling force. The philosophers
did not say "Thinkers" or "Thinker"; they
said "Thought," Thought, at least by impli-
cation impersonal, was the great source and
center of all things. The study of the move-
ment away from this position, like the study
of the movement away from the early state-
ments of naturalism, is full of instruction.
The contribution of this idealism to theistic
thinking is, in all likelihood, an immortal one,
but the clarifications which have come with
the effective criticism of the system as a
system are hardly less important. The ideal-
ist of the type we are now considering thought
of the universe as the unfolding of a system of
logical implications. In the Hegelian lan-
guage the movement was thesis, as when an
affirmation is made, antithesis, as when the
contradictory is developed, synthesis, as when
a ground of reconciliation is reached between
a proposition and its contradictory. The uni-
verse is here conceived of as an evolution in
logic. The evolution as set forth by the Hege-
lian school was profoundly impressive, as im-
pressive in its way as the materialistic evolu-
tion of the early Darwinians. At one point

58

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

the same criticism is to be passed upon the
Hegelian evolution as was passed upon ma-
terialistic evolution. In both systems it was
impossible on the basis of the system itself to
get more out of the system than the adherents,
started with. If matter is all, there is no use
searching for anything but matter in the out-
come. If impersonal thought is all, imper-
sonal thought is the outcome. In any strict
logical procedure we cannot get more into the
conclusion than there is in the premises. If
the universe is the expression of the thought
of a Living Mind, we can see how the evolu-
tionary process moves from lower to higher —
it moves as new factors are continuously in-
troduced. If the universe is the expression of
a Living Mind moving according to logic, that
Mind must move as ours do to get anything
like progress — it must introduce factors which
are really outside of and above the strict logi-
cal chain. Acute thinkers have maintained
that even in the strictest mathematical reason-
ing there is this introduction of factors from
without the strict line of reasoning. But ideal-
ism which turns around impersonalism is not
entitled to put anything but strict logic in,
and therefore can get nothing out but the
premises with which the reasoning began. For

59

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

religious purposes there is not much choice be-
tween impersonal matter and impersonal
reason.

A further difficulty with the idealistic
systems of the impersonal type is that there
is really no way of getting any movement into
them. We speak, indeed, of logical move-
ments, but the movement is not in the logic.
Logic does not move. Something else moves
according to logic. Logic is simply the
statement of the rule of procedure. We can
see how this illusion arises. In the world
around us events do seem to progress accord-
ing to an inner logic. We speak of the logic
of a movement or of a situation. We say that
the logic of the case forbids a man or a cause
to stop at a particular place. There is a logi-
cal necessity for going on. Or the expression
of a proposition by one party does make neces-
sary the expression of the contrary by the
opposition, and the conflict between the two
must finally be reconciled. But in all of this
the movement is not in any system of imper-
sonal logic. The movement is in men and in
events. Sooner or later this is apt to dawn on
the believer in impersonal idealism, and then
he feels prone to dismiss the world of move-
ment as appearance, perhaps as illusion. The

60

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

final reality becomes the universe of fixed
logical relationships. This universe, on the
impersonalist theory, is not the vision before
the eyes of a living God whose mental life is
forever at the full. It is not a beatific vision
which might be worth while for religious re-
flection. It is impersonal — a framework from
which everything of living significance has
been left out. We do not even have a "ballet
of bloodless categories." The categories are
indeed bloodless enough, but there is no pro-
vision for the movement of a ballet. In spite
of what we have said about the logic by which
men and events often seem to move, we must
now say that this movement is not possible to
pure logic after all. Life comes first and logic
afterward, with the driving power in life.
Now, however it may be with the highly de-
veloped logical tastes of the strict intellec-
tualist, the practical exclusion of the world
of movement from life as appearance or illu-
sion is not a result especially satisfactory
from the religious point of view.

A further objection to impersonal idealism
is its inability to furnish any sort of ground
for moral distinctions. The idealist would in-
sist most strenuously that logical necessity is
stronger even than the physical necessity of

61

THE INCREASE OP FAITH

materialism. But while there might con-
ceivably be inequalities of pressure in a sys-
tem of mechanical stresses and strains there
can hardly be such inequalities in logical ne-
cessity. There the necessity is distributed over
all parts alike. In a necessity of this sort
there is no justification for words like "free-
dom" and "good" and "bad" in the moral
sense. All things that are, are : that is the be-
ginning and the end. Good, bad, and indif-
ferent are morally all alike. All we can say
is that the feeling for the good in us is part of
the logical system, that the feeling toward the
bad is produced by the same system, that the
conflict between the two is produced by the
underlying logic, that the "give-and-take" of
all conflicts is the expression of logical neces-
sity. The emphasis on the reconciliation in
the final synthesis does not help much. The
question is as to how the differences ever
started. Moreover, reconciliation morally
takes place as each side is willing to give up
something in concession. Whither in such
case do the dropped-out elements of the con-
troversy go? If they are aliens, how did they
ever get in? The way to get around all such
questions is, of course, to ignore them. Under-
stand, now, we are not discussing these ques-

62

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

tions primarily with a philosophic motive.
We are interested chiefly in religious values,
and we have to record our feeling that there
is not much aid and comfort for religion in a
theory which by logical necessity puts all
moral conceptions on the same plane.

By this time the purely verbal character of
impersonal idealism ought to be clear to us.
The reconciliations of contradictions are
largely verbal. Everything is pasted together
under one term like the "Absolute" or "All."
Of course nothing is done to things themselves
in thus giving them a name. By the way, it
is worth while remembering that much of the
skepticism of religious fundamentals which has
come out of the Hegelian camp is really verbal.
How can the absolute ever take up relations
to the purely relative? How can the infinite
come into contact with the finite without ceas-
ing to be infinite? All this is empty. Re-
ligion is not concerned to maintain an Abso-
lute of this purely verbal nature. The passion
for unity is entirely intelligible in its aim and
purpose, but it is hard to see how so imperious
a passion can be satisfied with so meager an
outcome as throwing all things together and
calling them "All." And while the way to-
ward this abstraction is easy enough, the way

63

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

back is sorely beset. We can get an "All" by
calling all things all, but even with the most
potent logic it is not possible to deduce the
world of concrete things as we see them by
looking upon the All. Admitting that every-
thing in the conclusion must be in the prem-
ises, and stocking these premises with all
the possibilities of the concrete world, we find
ourselves unable to deduce a single concrete
item from our philosophy. We are told that
logic reigns in all things, but we cannot de-
duce a single thing. And taking the world of
things inductively, we cannot tell why any-
thing is after we find it. We cannot tell why
any particular thing should be as it is and not
otherwise. All this would not distress us so
much if we were admittedly living in a world
where logic played but little part; but in a
world where logic is professedly everything it
is embarrassing not to be able to make more
use of logic.

Among the most concrete facts in our con-
crete world is the individual person. Just
how to get this world of persons out of a
system of impersonal thought is a hopeless
puzzle. By what processes of thesis, antith-
esis, and synthesis can we make the in-
dividuals whom we know fit into a system?

64

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

The last thing we can do with the men
and women and children whom we know
is to deduce them. If logic is lame in
trying to deduce a material universe, what
can we say of it in connection with a universe
of persons? The fact is that in all utterances
about persons as deductions or specifications
or generalizations of impersonal thought the
thinker has his reasonings curiously reversed.
Thinkers are really first and thoughts are
second. But some thought was in the uni-
verse before we in particular arrived, and
hence it is easy for the mind to hide behind its
own product, spelling Thought with a capital
and making the thinker the product of
Thought. Of course no thinker would be
guilty of saying that he himself is the product
of his own thinking, but it is easy for anyone
to think of himself as the product of Thought
which antedated himself — thence the conclu-
sion becomes possible that Thought antedates
all thinkers.

Some suspicion of the difficulty at this
point seems to haunt the theories of all abso-
lute idealists. The only meeting of the diffi-
culty, however, is no meeting at all, but,
rather, an avoidance of it. An ambiguous
term like "Keason" is used. At one moment

65

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

Reason is impersonal thought. At another
moment Reason is a Reasoner. At one mo-
ment Intelligence is impersonal thought. At
another it is an active mind. Some idealists
come out openly with the avowal that they do
not believe in absolute idealism as an imper-
sonal system of thought. They believe in
Eternal Consciousness which wells up in in-
dividuals. All men are parts of the Eternal
Consciousness. Persons melt and fuse into
one another or, rather, into an all-embracing
Consciousness. This view has two considera-
tions in its favor. First is the historic fact
of the persistence of the view itself. It has
probably been held over wider reaches of space
and time than any other serious philosophical
construction of the universe, not in the Hege-
lian form indeed, but in various forms which
show Oriental or semi-Oriental influences.
Second, there is something in some phases of
conscious experience which seems to support
the conception. In moments of surpassing
friendship it is possible for ono heart to enter
into such sympathy with another that two
personalities seem at least for the instant to
be fused. Or in transports of feeling which
sweep over men in groups the individual seems
lost in the mob, or crowd, or group, or national

66

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

consciousness. This suggests the possibility
of like emotional approach to an Eternal Con-
sciousness above and including what we look
upon as finite consciousness.

But the philosophical objections come back
with even greater vigor, especially the problem
of evil. It is bad enough if all the evils in the
world are deductions or specifications of our
impersonal system of thought. It is worse,
for religious values at least, if individual sin-
ners are parts of an Eternal Consciousness.
The desire of the sinner for his sin and his
joy in his sin are not merely reflections of a
desire and joy on the part of the Eternal Con-
sciousness : they are directly and immediately
the desire and joy of the Eternal Conscious-
ness. The Eternal Consciousness is Eternal
Saint and Eternal Sinner in one. Then there
is the difficulty of getting the individual con-
sciousness as we know it into any sort of re-
lation to the Eternal Consciousness. The mis-
leading expression "Stream of Consciousness"
has played a harmful influence here. Streams
can be diverted from the main channel and
can be run through sluiceways even down to
capillary proportions. But consciousness is
not a stream, except by figure of speech. It is
an active and indivisible unity. Suppose we

67

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

drop the word "consciousness" and ask as to
the possibility of so dealing with a man as to
run him off into sluiceways which become
other men! If we think of the Eternal Con-
sciousness as a Creative Will we can say that
the finite men are creations of that will, but
one will cannot be part of another will.

And so we are back again to the finite wills
which make up the world of persons. The
mind refuses to yield to materialism on the
one hand or to absolute idealism on the other.
The way out is through personalism, the recog-
nition of the living individualities around us
as the points from which our thinking must
start. We find ourselves in communication
with other minds, and as we reflect upon the
possibility of such communication we see
clearly that the communication must have
come about through the possibility of using
the world as an instrument and medium for
the communication of thought. But the
world clearly is independent of our thinking.
Back of it there must be a Thinker greater
than ourselves. In attributing personality to
the Cause of the universe we do not mean per-
sonality with the limitations of human con-
ditions. We seize upon personality as the
very highest power we know, and think of

68

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

the Cause of all things in terms of personal
life.

The objection to the personality of God
once took the form of emphasis upon the limi-
tations of personality, whereas Cod must be
thought of as the absolute and unlimited.
Much of the discussion on the point was pure-
ly verbal, but the point itself seemed to be
valid. To-day there is a rather strongly
marked protest against such absolutism in the
thought of God. A God who is infinite in the
sense that he is above all relations to the
finite, absolute in the sense that he cannot
touch the relative, eternal in the sense that
all that happens in time is illusion for him,
is not a God of the highest value religiously.

Two attempts to deliver the Power back of
all things from the emptiness of absolutism
are worthy of note. Professor William James
gave the last years of his life to the doctrine
of a finite God. It is fairly difficult to make
much of a system out of anything that James
did. James's whole soul seemed to be in a
state of chronic revolt against any suggestion
of system. At one time he seemed to be sym-
pathetic with the philosophy of Mill and Bain
and Spencer. At another he lent direct aid
and encouragement to the most orthodox Chris-

69

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

tianity. In a private letter to a friend he de-
clared that in his belief of the reality of the
play of spiritual forces upon the individual
life he could out-Methodist the Methodists.
It is clear that while James would have scru-
ples over such a term as "theist" he was,
nevertheless, a believer in God. But for him
God is a limited person among other persons.
James carried belief in pluralism to great
lengths. He saw no objection to believing
that the individual finite soul will exist for-
ever, and quite likely would have been willing
to hold a belief that the individual souls have
existed forever. Among these lives, or streams
of consciousness, God is the greatest. Just
how to provide for unity in such a scheme
James would not have cared. Quite likely he
would have been willing to hold that time and
space are a vast theater on which God and
angels and men play their several parts. In
all this James would have said that he was
serving religious interests — that he was con-
tending not for a barren abstraction but for
the living God, the God of Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob. The philosophical objections to
the theory are apparent at a glance. But the
religious value is by no means slight. James
would bring God within reach, even though

70

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

he had to resort to dubious theological expe-
dients to accomplish the result.

The other attempt is by Bergson. Berg-
son's interest does not seem to be especially
religious. For God in the ordinary sense of
the word he would have no place at all. But
he does speak of God as Life, Freedom, Move-
ment unfolding in new and altogether unpre-
dictable manifestations. Life is spelled with
a capital and is responsible for the forward
push which means progress. There is all the
difference in the world between evolution as
conceived of by Bergson and evolution as con-
ceived of by the Spencerians. Spencerianism,
and even Darwinism, for that matter, is no-
where subjected to more searching criticism
than in Bergson's Creative Evolution. Life
is conceived of after the analogy of conscious-
ness to such an extent that matter itself seems
at times to be a product of consciousness. Yet
consciousness is not the formal intellectual
life as we know it. We can hardly tell just
what Bergson conceives consciousness to be,
but his suggestions point to intuition and feel-
ing as nearer the heart of reality than is the
speculative intellect. Bergson overlooks the
truth that the concrete facts with which we
have to do are just the individual lives. He

71

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

throws a blanket-term, "Life," over all these.
There is no way of getting from "Life" to
lives. There is no attempt at answering the
score of questions that crowd upon us when
we try to come to close quarters with the sys-
tem. But Bergson's view does have this great
virtue — it is alive and it does provide for a
real struggle with a growing reality. What-
ever God Bergson would admit at all is him-
self in the movement. God is himself move-
ment and struggle and development. Just
where Bergson would find anything to stand
across the flow of life and measure the flow, or
even discern the flow, is nowhere told us, but
the impression Bergson produces is whole-
some. We are in the presence of real forces
engaged in real movement. Whatever God
there is, is not afar off in the heavens, but is
here now. God is not satisfactory from the
standpoint of speculative intellect, but the
speculative intellect is not itself satisfac-
tory. The deep life-needs must be satisfied.
If we are willing to put the critical under-
standing to one side and resolve not to ask
questions, there is much in Bergson's book
that is stimulating and even bracing. His God
too, if he has one, is a God of the living.
But works like those of James and Bergson

72

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

have their chief value as protests, and as pro-
tests their value is great. It is the conviction
of the present writer that religious thinking
has suffered harm from the systematic theo-
logians who have laid such stress on the meta-
physical perfections of God that his value as
an object to be sought for worship and com-
panionship has been seriously impaired. To
take a single illustration, the establishment
of the doctrine of the ideality of time is a great
philosophical achievement. It is to be doubted
whether in the history of philosophy there has
been more profound reasoning than that which
has gone to show that time is essentially a
mental form under which the mind works,
that a man's present is in a sense equivalent
to the range of his mental activity, that with
the Supreme Intelligence there may be a grasp
which makes all things present. Now, while
this doctrine is clear enough to the metaphy-
sician, it may be so stated as to harm religious
life. It may be so interpreted as to mean that
with God everything of life and movement is
of slight consequence. Or it may be taken to
mean that with God everything is jumbled
into a confused happening together. The
most serious result, however, is that which
would make change mean nothing for God.

73

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

God is changeless in what sense? In the sense
that his own development is forever at the full,
but not in the sense that the changes on earth
and in men mean nothing to him. A satisfac-
tory construction of the reality of change for
God may be beyond us, but in that case we
would better leave the question of construc-
tion open rather than close it with a philos-
ophy that does harm to the religious needs of
the human heart. While we must not give
ourselves up to contradictions of logic, we
must follow James and Bergson in putting
the claims of life above those of the strictly
speculative intellect.

So then we accept the challenge of the
modern protests against the absolute and the
infinite and declare for certain limitations in
a God who is to be a living force with men.
It may appear later that these limitations are
in part self-assumed and in part the expres-
sions of moral fullness of life, but in any case
we must get God near to men. It is worth
while to make the Almighty mighty.

In the first place, a Creator of the universe
is bound by the creations which he makes. We
have spoken of the universe as founded in
thought. If there is nothing in existence
apart from thought, and the universe is a vast

74

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

set of activities expressing thought, the
thought must move according to a divine
grammar and syntax and rhetoric if it is to
be of service for men. Men must not be dis-
mayed if they cannot understand all of the
language, but they may expect to understand
some of it. The universe may not be intelli-
gible, but it must be more than a set of inco-
herent ejaculations. This requirement would
rule out arbitrary whim and caprice. Now,
thus far there would seem to be no limitation
upon the divine beyond the requirement that
every utterance be rational, which is, of
course, not to be thought of as a limitation.
But when we think of the universe as a system
we must think of the Creator as tied up to the
demands of that system. That is to say, if
there is to be system, the Creator cannot
thereafter treat a particular part as if it stood
by itself alone. He might treat it otherwise
than he does if it stood alone, or if it were part
of a smaller system, or if it were in a different
system. Some thinkers have gone so far as
to seek for an explanation of the problem of
evil in the conflicts which may arise between
the good of the parts of the system and the
good of the whole of the system. Without
subscribing to such extreme doctrine we may

75

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

all admit that the carrying on of a finite
system puts limitations on the Cause back of
it. These limitations come to even clearer
light when we think of the relations between
the Cause and Ground of all things and the
individual souls as we know them. Espe-
cially is this true if we are to think of the in-
dividuals as free. How to establish freedom
speculatively we do not pretend to say, but
the objections to freedom have usually been in
the name of an Absolute or Infinite for whom
or for which freedom of men would be a dis-
turbing factor. If the world is Absolute Mat-
ter or Absolute Idea, freedom for the individ-
ual seems out of the question. If the World-
Cause is a Person whose sovereignty must not
be divided with any other will whatsoever, the
freedom of the individual must be given up.
But, on the other hand, freedom at least seems
to be here as a throbbing fact in the life of the
individual. We are all forced to admit the
real limitations upon this freedom. It may
be that many of our choices even when we
seem to ourselves most free are the play and
interplay of underlying necessities, but after
every such admission we have to come back
to the conviction of the fact of freedom in the
individual. Over against this is the neces-

76

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

sity of some limitation for the Back-Lying
Power. Why not accept the limitation? If
an individual is free, the Cause and Ground
of things must accept limitations upon him-
self as a consequence of that freedom. The
old picture of the master leading a servant is
in place here. The chain binds the servant,
but it also limits the master. How much more
real is the limitation if the servant is rebel-
lious or sulky? This is only a poor illustra-
tion, to be sure, but it has at least a sugges-
tive value. If there are free individuals in the
world, their wills must be taken into account
in physical and mental and moral spheres.
There is the possibility of conflict between the
souls of men and the soul of God, or there is
the possibility of cooperation. Even in the
latter case, however, there is limitation for
God. The best human will may be so slow as
to impose delay upon a divine will. All this
is at times obscured by the fact that after a
clearly evil course has been chosen by human
wills good seems to result in the end — which,
of course, can mean only that a Higher Intelli-
gence has made the best possible of a bad
situation.

Furthermore, we can see that there must be
limitation for God in any special work of

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

revelation which he wills to undertake. If the
movement is to show itself through a national
development, the laws wThich govern national
life must be observed. Now, it has long been
the special claim of Christianity that God has
for his glory that he is willing to take upon
himself limitations for the sake of reaching
men. One of the great attractions of the doc-
trine of incarnation for men has been the
thought that in the incarnation the gift of God
has really meant cost to God. The Christian
thinker has always maintained that the will-
ingness of God to assume limitations has come
out of the moral fullness of the divine life.
One of the encouraging signs of present-day
religious thinking is the movement away from
the God of the abstract to the God of the con-
crete, in spite of the fact that connection with
the concrete means limitation.

But what becomes of the modern doctrine
of the divine immanence if such considera-
tions as those just adduced are allowed to
have sway? Has not the doctrine of imma-
nence as held to-day been a help to faith in
bringing God near? Undoubtedly it has, but
undoubtedly also it has wrought some confu-
sion to faith. God is in all things in one sense,
but not in all senses. There are degrees of

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THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

nearness. God is in the world in the sense
that the world is the expression of his thought
and activity. But all thoughts are not the
same thoughts. We have to keep away from
that old fallacy of "Thought" spelled with a
capital. The world is not so much Thought as
thoughts. The value of the doctrine of imma-
nence is that it does away with the idea of any
sort of mechanical existence with laws of its
own which God must break in order to reach
men. This, however, merely furnishes a start-
ing point. The thought of God in a particular
situation can be determined only from a study
of that situation. God is in the lives of men,
but not in the lives of all men alike. He is in
the lives of bad men. In him even the worst
of men live and move and have their being.
But in what sense is God in the life of a bad
man? In the sense that he is giving the gift
of life even to a bad man, and seeking to work
through the life of the man to lift him out of
evil. But God is not in the bad man in the
same sense that he is in the good man. In one
sense God is near all men alike. In another
sense everything depends upon the man.
There really have to be about as many phras-
ings of the doctrine of divine nearness as
there are different men.

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

But all this seems to leave us at amazingly
loose ends. We have not a system of the kind
to which we have been used. No, we have not,
but we have an open world before us. We
have finite lives which can come progressively
nearer to God.

And here we reach at last a final question.
We have seen the movement away from the
old materialism, through absolute idealism to
personalism. It is in the lives of persons that
we are to seek for fuller revelations of divine
life. But what, after all, in the lives of these
persons is to give us the clue to the truth for
which we seek?

There is an answer ready at hand in a popu-
lar movement which is called pragmatism. It
may be well to approach this final question
through some suggestions thrown out by this
present-day system of philosophical thinking.
Pragmatism is the affirmation that beliefs are
to be tested by their consequences in the life of
the believers. There is really nothing new in
the system except the brilliancy of the treat-
ment of men like James and the extraordinary
vogue which the system, if it can be called
a system, has reached through falling in with
the urgent demands of the time for emphasis
upon practical results and actual contacts

80

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

with the life which we are now living. All
that is important in the system reaches back
to Kant. It will be remembered that Kant
showed that formal proof of the existence of
God and of the facts of freedom and immortal
life is impossible. He did, however, insist that
these ideas are the postulates of the practical
reason. While we cannot formally prove them
to be true, we, nevertheless, hold fast to them
for their practical value. While they are not
constitutive principles of the reason, they are
in a profound sense regulative principles not
only for reason but for life. The line of phil-
osophical development, however, did not fol-
low from Kant's emphasis on the practical
reason. It went through Fichte to Hegel and
the absolute idealist. Then came Ritschl in
protest against the absolute idealists with his
denial of any considerable place in theology
for speculative methods of the metaphysical
sort. For him religious ideas were "value-
judgments" showing their worth by their value
in life.

There is not much sign that the pragmatists
of to-day know the Ritschlian system. There
is nothing German about present-day prag-
matism. It is impatient of that systemization
which we think of as characteristically Ger-

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THE INCEEASE OF FAITH

man. And pragmatism is not in the slightest
degree theological in its origin. James him-
self began his work with studies in physiology.
It was only in quite late years that his reli-
gious interest became outspoken. Moreover,
pragmatism is quite ambitious. It would ask
us to accept a criterion for truth in all realms.
Like the believers in all new systems, the be-
lievers in the all-sufficiency of pragmatism
carry their claims to great extremes. And all
sorts and conditions of men claim to be prag-
matists. In some puttings of the belief it
would seem that pragmatism would allow a
man to believe all that works well with him,
or that agrees with him, or that he fancies. A
man might preach the doctrine of the brother-
hood of man, or he might be a follower of
Nietzsche, and still be a pragmatist. He might
be an individualist or a socialist, a theist or
a pantheist, or a polytheist or a pluralist or an
absolutist. As a matter of historic truth the
pressure of real or fancied life-needs has been
back of all these beliefs. When we hear that
a man is a pragmatist the next question may
well be as to what else he is. Accepting prag-
matism may mean that the door is open to ac-
cepting anything or everything else.

The man who first hears of pragmatism

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THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

may feel that at last the way is open for him
to believe anything or everything or nothing,
just as he pleases. A teacher in ethics has
pointed out that one hearing the principles of
Epicurus for the first time might imagine
that at last the doors are open to all manner
of pleasure-seeking with the sanction of
ethical precept, but that such a one will find
as soon as he comes close to his problem that,
after all, many doors are closed. So with
pragmatism, for pragmatism with its doctrine
of consequences as the test of truth must
recognize :

1. The existence of an objective order. The
consequences must be the consequences of the
long run. A man might declare that the con-
sequences are best for him in denying the
existence of a material world, and he might
get on comfortably with the belief for a while,
but not for long.

2. The pragmatist must make some conces-
sion to logic, else there would be no sense in
reasoning. It would seem rather absurd to
try to find a system with no reliance upon
logic. Of course some pragmatists go so far
as to make even mathematical axioms prac-
tical postulates, virtually denying the mind
any power of insight on its own account.

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

3. The pragmatist must concede the exis-
tence of others besides himself, but with this
concession there must be a social as well as an
individual set of consequences for beliefs, and
the two sets will often come into conflict.
There is no relief here on the pragmatist basis.

4. The pragmatist must yield to the au-
thority of consequences as these have revealed
themselves in great individuals.

5. The pragmatist must take into account
inner as well as outer consequences, else the
system will sink into a low order of utilita-
rianism. The most practical consequences are
not necessarily outer.

Thus we might go on. Still, after we have
said all this we must say further that the
preaching of the pragmatic philosophy does
pave the way for the preaching of an essen-
tially Christian doctrine. The Founder of
Christianity taught that discipleship means
the doing of the deeds of the kingdom, that he
that heareth the words and doeth them is the
one who gets the rock foundation, that he
that doeth the will of God shall know the doc-
trine of God. Christ came that men might
have life, but life has deeper roots than specu-
lation. Life flowers out into Christian con-
sciousness and Christian consciousness in

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THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

turn sends new powers back into the root and
tree and branch.

Our long discussion comes to this — that the
movements of modern philosophy are not
away from faith, but, rather, in the direction
of faith. Nothing in philosophy itself can
establish the Christian standpoint; but noth-
ing in philosophy can block the way of Chris-
tian revelation, and much can aid that revela-
tion. There are no mechanical or idealistic
systems which, standing in their own light,
are a barrier to the demands of Christian life.

The demands of Christian life ! Life shows
itself in its power to make demands and to
seize what it requires to satisfy those demands.
The Christian conception needs the idea of a
material universe in which God shows at least
a measure of this thought. While we might
never suspect the presence of God in the world
from an inductive scrutiny alone, we do find
signs of his presence when we search for the
plan which we feel must be there. We need
the idea of a vast spiritual organism, a body
of God, which is to set forth the immensity of
the divine Life, and as we work with this de-
mand in mind we find a satisfaction which
we believe is an indication that we are on the
path to the truth. We feel the need of the

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

presence of God in the life of the individual,
and we hold fast to the idea of prayer, not for
extraordinary answers here and there, but for
the increasing life in him who prays.

It may seem to some that we have made out
a rather fragmentary and broken plight for
current philosophic thinking. This is just
the advantage which confronts the student to-
day. The tight systems are broken up. The
windows and the doors are open. It is per-
missible for us to believe that the divine Spirit
is near enough to us to find us and to help us
on and up. Whatever seems to be on and up
we shall reach after. And if we find ourselves
moving on and up, we shall feel that we are
on the right path.

Of course truth is truth and finally stands
in its own right. But the final truth which
thus stands in its own right is not the truth
of speculative statement, but the truth of life.
A life, a moral person — this is the good on its
own account. If this is the good-in-itself, we
have to consider speculative statements in
somewhat of an instrumental capacity. They
are the tools by which the mind takes its direc-
tion and surveys its path. A belief may be
useful for one time and not for another. Or,
to make the matter more vital still, the belief

86

THE PHILOSOPHIC OUTLOOK

is the food — or part of the food — on which the
life feeds. The final test is the test of life.
And thus the life moves on toward God. The
world is open; the sky is free. Whatever the
life finds necessary for its growth it will take.
It cannot make itself at home in the world by
denying the facts of science, or the truths of
logic, or the foundations of social order. It
will search for the truth in any system which
has presented itself or which will present it-
self. It will live upon the truth of the system
so far as it can and will throw away the error.
If some object that this is unsystematic
eclecticism, the only reply is that life is al-
ways eclectic. The living organism lays hold
on air and sunshine and water and food in
large variety for the sake of preserving and
propagating itself. The great revelation is
through the organism which we may call the
body of the Spirit of God — the family of be-
lievers in God. Formal statements are the
outputs of the vitality of this organism. The
statements must not be so held as to smother
or crush the life of the organism itself. For
that life itself is the center around which all
else should turn. A revealing God must limit
himself to the persons through whom he
works, but through the lives obedient to him

87

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

he makes an increasingly large and significant
revelation of himself. The life of a good man
stands in its own right because — paradoxical
as the words seem — it points beyond itself to
the life of God.

88

Ill

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

It is the aim of this lecture to show that the
widening of the social horizon works in aid
of faith by bringing into prominence the great
human ideals. Anything which lays stress on
what we may call essential humanity works
for faith. It may be that the upholders of
ideals of human rights in political and indus-
trial and social realms are not themselves
adherents of religious beliefs. Agitators and
propagandists of doctrines which work for
lofty human ideals may themselves be agnos-
tics or skeptics so far as religious beliefs are
concerned, and yet, all unconsciously to them-
selves, may be working for the increase of re-
ligious faith. Anything which exalts our con-
ception of what human life ought to be is a
veritable revealer of God. We cannot enrich
a human ideal without at the same time en-
riching our idea of God.

At the very outset of such a discussion we
are met by the urgent insistence of those who

89

THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

hold to the doctrine of the economic interpre-
tation of history, that the effective force in

%j 7

setting hnman ideals high in the thinking of
men has not been the perception of those
ideals themselves. Physical necessities have
been the great driving powers, we are told.
Hunger, the demand for better houses and
costlier raiment — these are the compelling
forces. We do not feel any need to discuss
this claim at length. We may, however, ven-
ture one or two remarks.

First, if the theory is true it is rather an
odd fact that these physical forces reach their
highest effectiveness when baptized with a
moral and ideal name. No one denies that
hunger is a driving force in the life of society.
Men who are working for human rights may
frankly say that they are trying to get more
bread for hungry mouths. But before the
agitation is complete the movement takes on
the form of a moral appeal. The cynic may
say that all this is hypocrisy, but, neverthe-
less, lifting the appeal to the moral realm
gives it added power. But even this is some-
what aside from the present purpose ; we shall
return to it later.

We pass now to a second remark, namely,
that we are not especially concerned with the

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

order in which ideals emerge in the conscious-
ness of men. It may be that the economic im-
pulse comes first and the moral impulse arises
as an afterthought. We are not thinking
especially of before and after. It may be that
men do not see the full significance of moral
ideals until economic issues have been settled.
To use the common expression, as long as
there is money in a particular course the
moral aspect may not have a chance to reveal
itself. This economic view, with all its truth,
is in these days much overemphasized, but, we
repeat, we are not especially concerned with
the sequence in which ideals emerge. The fact
is that the ideals do emerge, and that they
seem to us to make for faith. There is con-
stant need of care against that old fallacy that
we can judge the worth of an idea wholly by
noticing the circumstances of its origin.
Holders of evolutionary theory often fancy
that they can get at the worth of an idea by
determining its place in the evolutionary pro-
cession. The main feature of a human ideal
is not so much the path by which it has come
as the direction in which it points. The ideal
may arise from the earth, but if it arises to-
ward God it is worth our study.

Perhaps the best start for our general pur-

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

pose can be found in some illustrations from
American history. It will be understood that
there is no attempt here to trace a movement
through history as a technically trained his-
torical student would trace such a movement.
We are, of course, dependent upon others for
the facts here presented. All that we claim is
that the facts point in the direction of an en-
larging human ideal, and that they tend to in-
crease our respect for men and humanity.

As a first illustration of a movement which
would tend to increase our respect for hu-
manity, and especially for democracy, we take
the period of the American Civil War and the
years which immediately followed the con-
flict. We can imagine the gasp of astonish-
ment with which some will greet the proposal
to show from democracy's conduct in war a
reason for faith in humanity and for respect
for humanity. We trust that we shall not be
supposed to suggest that there is anything
ennobling or refining in war. It is just be-
cause war in itself is hideous that we use the
illustration. It may increase our trust in de-
mocracy to see how it carries itself in seasons
of grievous trial. We submit democracy to
the test of severest conditions. It had long
been said before the Civil War that the test

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

of democracy would come in time of war. The
fact that democracy stood the test well is an
item to be set down to humanity's credit. Of
course it will not be understood that we are
committing so palpable an error as to identify
humanity and democracy, but, surely, no
greater promise for humanity could be found
than to find a democracy of some twenty mil-
lions of people acquitting itself with surpass-
ing credit in time of strain.

To begin at a plane which is decidedly
lower than the moral aspects we hope later to
discuss, discerning critics have said that even
in its military aspects the conduct of the war
was a great item to be set down to democracy's
credit. Spenser Wilkinson, a foremost Eng-
lish military authority, has used the American
Civil War as an illustrative commentary on
the remark of the great Prussian whose work
on war did so much to make modern Germany
possible, the remark of Clausewitz that when a
whole people go to war, animated to the last
man with a common purpose, the war, while it
may be hesitating in its first policy, will
finally take on as distinct and definite and
true a form as if it were being conducted by a
dictator — by a vast military genius with pro-
fessional soldiers obedient to his will. The

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

only difference will be that it may conceiva-
bly require a longer time for a nation in arms
to get itself into effective action than for
the dictator. Spenser Wilkinson applies this
remark, as we have said, to the Civil War.
Taking the whole four years together, the war
may be looked upon as one battle on a large
scale. The history of the war thus becomes
quite simple. It will not suffice to say that
the North won by sheer weight of numbers.
The weight of numbers had to be skillfully ap-
plied. The North won by turning the left
flank of the Confederacy as a whole. One
blow struck the Confederacy in twain along
the line of the Mississippi. Another broke it
from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Then while
the head and front of the Confederate resist-
ance was held fast in the East, the Northern
armies moved east to the sea from Atlanta
and thence north, piercing the vitals of the
Confederacy in all directions. The contention
of Wilkinson is that this plan is as simple and
direct and as effective as if conceived by the
mind of a Napoleon. It will not avail against
this contention to say that, after all, the work
was done by professional generals. In the
beginning it was true that the soldiers of the
democracy thought that one man was as likely

94

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

to be a good captain as another man,
and sought to fill official positions by ballot.
As the war progressed, however, all this
changed and the conduct of the war passed
into hands trained to war. But the people
themselves were responsible for this change,
and the generals, after all, acted only in re-
sponse to a popular demand. Grant, the gen-
eral who cared least for the pressure of public
opinion, on more than one occasion refused to
turn back because the people were looking for
advance in a particular direction and would
interpret any sort of a backward step as a
defeat. The plan, as a whole, reflected the
will of the people. If it be objected that in a
war between contestants who were practi-
cally two peoples the Prussian theory would
call for like unity and simplicity of plan on
the other side, the answer must be that the
other side was essentially on the defensive
and had to adapt its plans to the plans of the
offensive.

Now, all this may seem rather far-fetched,
but Wilkinson has this much on his side —
that, on the whole, the progress of the North
was a miracle of victory, and would seem to
indicate that even in the intellectual insights
required in a highly technical field a whole

95

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

people, under the stress of a great crisis, can
come to an understanding which in a single
individual would be superlative genius and to
a force of will which in an individual would
be entirely titanic. The significance of figures
like Lincoln and Grant is partly in this, that
Lincoln on the political side and Grant on the
military side were incarnations of the good
sense of the people. In the words of Lincoln
the people heard their own thought and in the
blows of Grant saw their own deeds. Neither
was a man standing apart from his time.
Each had his meaning in the democracy of
which he was an expression and an agent.

But great as is the credit to be given de-
mocracy on the more intellectual side at the
time of crisis, the credit to be given on the
moral side is greater still. Bad as is war in
any case, this war was undertaken on both
sides in the name of an ideal. We may say
all we please about the pressure of economic
forces and about the irreconcilable conflict be-
tween two hostile industrial systems. We are
willing to grant that the conflict was one be-
tween corn and cotton as to which should be
king, but that was not all of the meaning. On
the one side was the broad appeal to human
rights, and on the other the rights of certain

96

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

States to rule themselves. Each side claimed
to be fighting for an ideal of human liberty.
One side may have been wholly right and the
other wholly wrong, or both sides may have
been partly right and partly wrong, with one
side more predominantly right than the other.
The essential fact is that the underlying, over-
powering motives did not come to full force
until they had been given a moral statement.
Now, it is simply out of the question to say
that the masses on one side or the other were
playing the part of hypocrites. Human ideals
seemed to be at stake, and this gave the con-
test its desperate fury. No matter what we
may say about the conspiracies and insinceri-
ties of leaders, it is impossible to maintain
that the people on either side thought they
were fighting for other than a moral ideal.
The progress of time has shown that the ideals
of humanity for which the North stood meant
more for the race, that the right of the people
to rule was more closely bound up with the
cause of the Union, that the final platform of
the Union was for the broader charter of hu-
man rights. It may seem strange to us that
any man could invoke the aid of God in try-
ing to secure bread earned by the sweat of
another man's brow, but we would do well to

97

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

heed the statesman's word that in this we
judge not that we be not judged.

The war too was carried through in as hu-
mane a fashion as possible. Atrocities com-
mitted in prisons here and there, for which
the scarcity of provisions and the desperate
nature of the conflict itself furnished some ex-
cuse, ought not to obscure our eyes to the truth
that in spite of bloodshed beyond all parallel
the warfare did not brutalize or vulgarize the
mass of the soldiers. Outrages and rapacity
there were in plenty, but when we reflect that
with the war at its height a million of men
were engaged on one side, the wonder is that
barbarities were so few. When the conflict
had ceased there was, indeed, some clamor for
revenge, but the victor's hands were not
stained with the blood of political prisoners.
And when the armies were disbanded — wonder
of wonders! — they went back quietly to the
pursuits of peace. Now, we protest that we
would not say one word in glorification of
war, but the manner in which democracy went
through this period of strain with so little of
moral damage tends to increase our confi-
dence in the loyalty of masses of men to high
ideals. The period of reconstruction, horrible
as it was, was amazingly brief for a period in

98

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

the life of a nation, and was partly the out-
come of a real, though partly doctrinaire, de-
votion to a human ideal. The conceptions
which philanthropists held of the freedman in
those days seem very humorous to us as we
look back, but the conceptions were a credit to
the men who held them. Longfellow repre-
sented the Negro's dream as carrying him back
to Africa, where "once more a king he strode."
The poet evidently knew very little about the
dreams of the actual slave, but the misconcep-
tion was really a tribute to Longfellow. The
Negro problem is hard enough for us after
nearly fifty years of experiment. There is
little excuse for harshness in criticism of the
failures of the first experiments. The idealists
of the day lacked knowledge in a realm where
there were no precedents. And they had to
cope with outrageous adventurers and with the
national reaction after four years of tremen-
dous emotional upheaval, a reaction showing
itself in indifference on the part of many as to
how the nation should discharge its responsi-
bilities. But, on the whole, considering the
lack of detailed and accurate data on the
working of social institutions in untried
hands, the wonder is that so little damage was
done. The working of popular thought,

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

through the whole period, tends to deepen our
respect for the people's respect for humanity.
Passing from a period which is to all prac-
tical intents and purposes closed, to one in the
midst of which we are now moving, we call
attention to the significance for American so-
ciety of the passing away of the American
frontier. Professor Frederic J. Turner has
written with profound instructiveness on this
theme. He even sets a date to mark the time
when the nation passed out of one stage and
into another. This he finds to have been the
year 1890, when, according to the census, it
had become no longer possible, at least in any
considerable part of the country, to secure
land free from all cost except just the cost of
appropriating it. To be sure, there are still
many parts of the country where essentially
frontier conditions prevail, but these are be-
coming fewer and smaller. The situation is
somewhat as if a continent-wide stream which
was moving easily toward the West had at
last reached a check and had come to a stand-
still or to eddying currents. So far as the
exceedingly difficult problems are concerned,
the real frontiers of to-day are the cities. The
movement to-day is toward the cities, and the
new problems are city problems.

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Professor Turner thinks that the passing
away of the frontier will bring in — indeed, has
already brought in — a new type of democracy,
a type in which social elements are bound to
predominate more largely than in the individu-
alistic type of the frontier. In the old days
of the frontier a settler was not likely to live
near enough to his neighbor to be disturbed
by him; there was room enough to allow the
most quarrelsome neighbors to get along with-
out too frequent clash. If the neighbor be-
came intolerable, it was possible for the ag-
grieved or disturbed man to move on to other
lands to be had for the taking. That day has
long since gone. It is now nearer the fact to
say that our problem is to get along with the
neighbor whether we like him or not. At
most, all we can hope for by change is a change
of neighbors. The neighbor is bound to us
henceforth.

There is no denying that with the passing of
the individualistic type of democrat we have
lost much. There was a romance in the
independence of the pioneer which is very de-
lightful to read about. There was a resource-
fulness, too, that never ceases to amaze us.
There was an inner moral strength altogether
surprising. But there was another side. The

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

life was barren. In spite of the fact that some
men can rejoice in solitude and can even be-
come philosophers and poets in the solitude,
life in the solitude is for most men barren.
Pioneer conditions were frequently too hard
to allow any real rest, and what spare time
there was went to loafing and dozing. The
pleasures of the frontier were often coarse and
gross. There grew up a false sense of honor at
times — a quickness for resenting insult that
often left no chance for an explanation that
might save a friendship and perhaps a life.
Along with this went a development of a demo-
cratic doctrine from which we have not yet re-
covered— that every man is as good as every
other man in every particular. The Civil War
did much to show the fallacy of this idea
through the mistakes which came with the
notion that one man is as good as another in
the leading of troops, but the idea still per-
sists. The fallacy was partly responsible for
the "spoils system" which appropriately
enough was made potent by that king of
frontiersmen, Andrew Jackson. While we of
to-day have seen little of the pioneer, many of
the pioneer's ideas descend to us as a heritage
not altogether blessed. The worst legacy is
just the idea that democracy is not an organi-

102

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

zation but an assembly of units, each of which
is what it is on its own account, and each of
which maintains that it can do as it pleases.
The fact that at one time such a conception
was useful, and even indispensable, should not
prevent our seeing the limitations of the con-
ception for a later time.

The conception which we are fast approach-
ing is the conception of democracy as an or-
ganism. Of course this doctrine is as old as
political theorizing itself, but it is to-day re-
ceiving a setting forth on a scale the like of
which the world has not before known. We
have to adjust our life to that of our neigh-
bors. Now, the latter type of democracy
makes possible evils which cannot be found
with the individualistic type, but the likelier
possibility is that the ideal of human life will
be enriched with the realization of democracy
as an organism. In the next lecture we shall
attempt some analysis of the content of the
ethical ideal to which men are advancing in
the present-day emphasis on social values.
Here it will suffice to say that the ideal is, or
at least can be, richer and fuller under the
new conditions. Two persons living and
working together can think of more things
than either can alone, and the things are more

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

apt to be good things than evil things. When
numbers of persons move on into evil together
the outcome is indeed apt to be more tragic
than when they move as individuals. Groups
of evildoers may occasionally debase the hu-
man ideal worse than individuals following
out their desires as individuals, but the groups
are apt to be held back by some considerations
of morality and sanity which may not weigh
with an individual. In a healthy community
the streams of life which reach down even to
the least part of the organism are apt to be
healthier than the private circulatory system
of an individual. If we must believe that the
normal life is the social life, it must follow
that the ideals which come out of the social
life are healthier than those which come out
of the individualistic order. There is some-
times safety in numbers for human ideals.

It may be objected that the great moral and
religious insights have always started with
some individual who has withdrawn from the
life of the community and has brooded in
solitude and silence until a revelation has
burst upon him. Abraham leaves the city for
the desert and John the Baptist grows up in
the wilderness. But Abraham, according to
the story, was seeking a city, and John finally

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

drew to himself all Jerusalem and Judaea.
Before a prophet becomes a positive force he
must voice an insight or a need which the
people have at least half felt or half seen.
From what has been said in a previous ad-
dress it will be remembered that we do not
minimize the individual. The moral person
is an end in himself, the only end we recog-
nize. When we speak of the social organism
we do not delude ourselves with the fancy that
our language is scientifically exact, any more
than the language is scientific in exactness
when we speak of the individualistic theory as
atomistic. Both terms are descriptive only in
a figurative sense. The figure of society as
an organism is true enough for our present
purpose. The expression "social conscious-
ness" does not mean that there is a conscious-
ness apart from the consciousness of indivi-
duals. We are uttering only commonplace in
saying that society is nothing apart from the
individuals that compose it, and we are will-
ing to declare that the great result of the
social activities is in the benefit of the in-
dividual, but we insist that the individual
comes to the largest life when he is so
closely connected with others that he may
be spoken of as a part of a social organ-

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

ism. The fact, however, must not be lost sight
of that while in a biological organism the
parts exist predominantly for the good of the
whole, in a social organism the worthy func-
tion of the whole is the good of the parts. It
is with this understanding that we speak of
the social organism.

The transition from the individualistic to
the more social form of democracy is deter-
minative of our social problems and of the
restless agitation that so generally prevails.
If it be maintained that present-day agita-
tion is world-wide, and that the difficulties
come through the introduction into America
of social ideals from Europe, the ready answer
is that American conditions have begun to
approach European conditions closely enough
to make plausible the suggestion that Euro-
pean ideas should be adopted here. Nobody
can foresee the outcome of the present-day
movements toward emphasis on social values
and social control, but some general forces
make for the atmosphere in which faith
flourishes.

First among these forces which aid faith
we mention the demand for Publicity. Under-
neath this demand is the assumption, none the
less real because half -conscious or uncon-

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

scious, that the people can understand and
that they have a right to know. In the light
of publicity faith is apt to flourish. We real-
ize that the modern democratic movement
drags out into the light many things that
would better be kept hidden, things trivial or
harmful, but every year shows improvement.
In the main, the modern democratic tendency
is increasing the importance of that principle
of discussion which Walter Bagehot found so
significant for the advance of civilization.
Though there are aspects of faith which are
not best dealt with in public debate — and of
these we shall speak in a later lecture — the
broad foundations of the faith are served by
the freest discussion. In the realm of faith
much may happen in the secret depths of the
soul, but faith does not thrive best when con-
fined in a corner. The worst impression to
give people concerning faith is that faith is a
sort of secret for the initiated few. Let there
be the fullest discussion. Let any man who
has any theory about the Church or the Bible
or religious experience feel free to publish.
Nothing so quickly kills error as free discus-
sion, and nothing so firmly establishes truth.
The quickest way to deal with some forms of
skepticism is to bring them to utterance.

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

Some doctrines are so fragile that they break
with the very attempt to give them articulate
statement. Some are seen through as soon as
they are expressed.

If we may indulge in what seems like a
digression, we may call attention to the faith
in the people manifested in the publication
of the Bible in English three hundred years
ago. It would be hard to find a parallel for
this event as a revelation of sheer confidence
in and reliance upon the mind of the masses
as well as upon the content of the Book itself.
When we consider the illiteracy of the people
of the time, their natural proneness to mistake
the letter of a revelation for its spirit, the pos-
sibility of misunderstanding through the na-
ture of the Book, we can only wonder at the
boldness which could scatter the precious seed
of the gospel on such a field. The result was
not due merely to the particular type of people
for whom the translation was made. The re-
sult has been similar with all sorts and con-
ditions of men and communities and races
whenever a like venture has been made.
It is worth while to trust religious reve-
lations to the people. There may for a season
be misunderstanding and turmoil and ship-
wreck, but in the end the result is favor-

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

able to faith. One test of the worth of
a new religious doctrine, or method of
study, or form of organization is to get it
before the people for discussion. Light de-
stroys some growths and quickens others.
Modern discussion is light for faith — not the
blaze of noonday, indeed, but light enough to
reveal what is adapted to minister to the deep
human needs and to set on high the great hu-
man ideals. The moral factor is by no means
slight in the modern popular demand for
publicity.

A second great demand coming out of the
democratic impulse is the demand for Sim-
plicity— simplicity in action and expression.
The people are much too busy to give them-
selves over to elaborate intricacies. The de-
mand on institutions of all sorts is that the
truth for which the institution stands be
brought at last to such simplicity that it can
be grasped for popular use. Of course this
demand may run into absurdity. Justice
Charles E. Hughes has called attention to the
danger for democracy in democratic impa-
tience with expert opinion. But the impa-
tience becomes less year by year, partly be-
cause the experts themselves show more skill
in reducing their revelations, at least in the

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TIIE INCREASE OF FAITH

practical phases, to simplicity. For example,
the fight of the modern scientist against the
world-old plague of cholera is based upon the
knowledge obtained from minutely technical
processes. Cultures and staining agents and
microscopes and the whole modern bacte-
riological theory and technique are necessary
for the immense victory of our day. But the
final message to the people in danger of the
plague is quite simple. It is, for the most
part, just an exhortation that they keep clean,
eat only cooked food, and boil the drinking
water. It would be interesting to reflect upon
the good wrought for the formulation and
perhaps even for the advance of scientific doc-
trines by the need of meeting the popular de-
mand that the practical statement of the truth
be simple.

There is a manifestation of this same desire
too in the current call for more direct methods
of government or for a more direct instrument
for the governmental expression of the popular
will. How far some of these demands can
safely be heeded is a problem for the expert
in political institutions. Representative gov-
ernment would seem to have behind it a long
historic development suggesting its estab-
lished usefulness as an instrument of de-

110

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

mocracy. How far this system can be modified
in favor of more direct government by the peo-
ple is, indeed, a serious question. It is not
difficult, however, to discern the moral spring
back of the demand for direct government.
There is always a possibility of evils creeping
in when the path is too tortuous. When we
must be too long in learning how legislation is
achieved we are apt to become suspicious, just
as we feel a tendency to suspicion when it
takes a money-maker too long to tell us how
he makes his money. A like demand for sim-
plicity is seen in the popular protest against
legal and judicial procedure. We all know
the value of some set of checks in public move-
ment. Public sentiment sometimes runs into
a fever, and the courts serve the people by
acting as a cooling and steadying factor. But
the protest against courts is not so much
against a system of brakes in a democracy as
against the intricacy and lack of simplicity in
procedures. When mere processes and de-
cisions become overtechnical there is fear on
the part of the people that mischief lieth at
the door.

Now, all of this movement toward sim-
plicity is both an indirect and a direct aid to
faith. Just as faith thrives on the demand for

in

THE INCREASE OP FAITH

publicity, so it thrives also on a demand for
simplicity. The demand for simplicity enables
the believer to put the nonessentials to one
side and to fasten his thoughts upon the fac-
tors supremely worth while. The people
quickly weary of the too elaborate in religious
doctrine and ritual and organization. It is
well for faith that this is so. Faith thrives on
the demand for the simple. The higher and
more important the truth, the easier to state
that truth simply.

The third demand is that which we have
already mentioned so often, the increased note
of emphasis on Humanity in modern demo-
cratic movements. No doubt this emphasis
has its economic side. The movement away
from the individualism of the frontier has its
economic phase. The drawing force in the life
of the pioneer was free land. The exhaustion
of the free lands would inevitably call for
profound economic readjustment. But what-
ever the cause which has worked for the bring-
ing of people into closer relationship, the very
fact that they are thrown thus together makes
for a larger mutual understanding. While the
economic movement is exceedingly important
in itself, it often best shows its importance by
accentuating the emphasis on humanity as a

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

standard and test of institutions. Increasing
stress is put on the question as to what kind
of men are produced by the institutions of to-
day. No institution escapes the searching in-
quiry. Even the Church must not be looked
upon as an end in itself. No claims for divine
authority will long support the Church if it
does not generate right influences for the up-
building of men. What kind of man is pro-
duced by the Church, or the ideal, or the social
institution? This is the critical inquiry.

The transition from individualistic to social
democracy is marked by the changing man-
ners of democracy in the bearing of men to-
ward one another. Elijah Pogram, of Dick-
ens's Martin Chuzzlewit, may have been and
perhaps was a caricature, but the sting
of the caricature was in its truth. Part
of the swagger had passed out of American
manners fifty years ago, but somewhat of an
overbearing spirit lingered on till later. The
very fact that men have to be in closer mutual
contact than formerly makes for larger mu-
tual consideration. And in the deeper sense
the accent on the most truly human ideals
marks the spirit of to-day. Men seem quite
willing to endure inequality of distribution of
wealth. That inequality always has been, and

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

quite likely always will be, though contrasts
may become less glaring. But resentment
against any show of arrogance on the part of
the owner of wealth is abundant. Even vul-
garity of display is keenly resented.

When we reach the more directly indus-
trial problem of our day we find the same
emphasis on the demands of humanity. The
growth of huge business combinations is an
illustration of the form in which the mon-
archical principle persists in democratic sur-
roundings. No kingly leadership has ever
been more striking than the leadership of
some who have made themselves the heads of
vast industrial concerns. Democracy has
much to gain from conserving the monarchical
principle, at least in the sense of furnishing
scope for kingly abilities, but must stand
against any tendencies of the monarchical
principle in modern industrialism to inter-
fere with popular welfare. A great deal of
useful discussion has gone on in recent years
showing the violations of law by which some
industrial kings came to their power. Evil
doings there have no doubt been, but it will
tend to a more complete understanding to say
that when these great movements of concen-
tration and consolidation began the social con-

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

sequences had not been thought out or worked
out. Now that the social consequences have
become apparent, the worthy aim is that the
consequences be such as to be in the full sense
harmonious with the demands of humanity re-
gardless of the effect on the industrial institu-
tions as institutions.

In all the more radical movements of social
reform the same stress on human rights gives
the movements their power. If we regard
these movements as dangerous in their ten-
dency, it will not suffice for us to point out
the inadequacies of their logic. The inade-
quacy of the logic may make the doctrines
dangerous, but what gives the power is the
emphasis upon certain human needs. Revolu-
tionary and extreme socialism, for example,
may be very dangerous to the community, but
the wise man will not think he has done his
whole duty in pointing out the danger. This
is as if a man should call out that a car dash-
ing along a particular road will plunge over a
precipice. What we need is not merely to
know whither the logic leads but to under-
stand how to control the power which drives
the theory. We may, if we so choose, call all
these theories philosophies of failure, but fail-
ure itself is so much a tragedy for human life

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

that there is a protest against failure. We
call for the most searching inquiry into the
cause of failure, to determine whether such
a large percentage of disaster is necessary.
One significant feature of modern social pro-
test is that it has arisen, in this country at
least, in a period of comparative prosperity.
Outside of the mere cost of living, which
though serious is not necessarily calamitous,
the times during which the current protest has
come to power have not been crises of indus-
trial depression. The facts which have called
forth the protests have been just the facts
which could be found at times which are called
prosperous. And the protests have come not
wholly from the men who have been them-
selves under the burden of oppression. The
recruits for revolution have come from all
classes and especially from those who have had
ample opportunity to study the structure of
society. The spectacle of the mass of human
failure has got not only on the nerves but on
the consciences of many who are not them-
selves failures. And the revolutionary the-
ories, dangerous as we may think them, are
red lights showing the disasters into which we
may come if the underlying humanities are not
heeded. The humanities have the right of way.

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

It requires hardly more than a glance to
detect the presence of the human ideal as the
criterion of social institutions. Of course the
evil-hearted are with us always, as are also
those who delight to tinker with social machin-
ery, and as are also those who have the itch for
the new. But after we have made allowance
for all these, the criticism which gets a hearing
with the people is that which has behind it a
genuinely human motive. To take a single
instance, note the growing impatience with
that protest against the education of women
and the opening of the doors of economic op-
portunity to women which gravely informs
us that the true sphere of women is the home
and that women were intended to be wives
and mothers! As if educated women could
not be as good wives and mothers as the un-
educated. The more the doors are opened to
women in the field of economic opportunity,
the fewer the marriages likely to come from
motives predominantly economic. If a woman
is not to marry, we ought to rejoice in the con-
ditions which to-day fill the single life with
increasing opportunity for culture and service.
If a woman is to marry, the increased oppor-
tunities outside of married life make it pos-
sible for marriage to be more and more a free

117

THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

choice. The ideal human elements come more
largely into play and the compulsory elements
drop into the secondary place.

It remains to speak briefly of the extent to
which the strictly human ideals are playing
their part in international relationship. Here,
again, we would not at all minimize the sig-
nificance of the economic forces. Interna-
tional commercial considerations were never
more effective than to-day in bringing the ends
of the earth together, but when once the ends
have been brought together considerations
other than the economic begin to rise into first
place. We may be permitted to mention three
phases of international activity as showing
the increasing emphasis by the people on hu-
man considerations : the immigration question
in our own country, the problem of the Chris-
tianization of non-Christian nations, the in-
ternational movement against war.

In immigration the effective force against
legislative restriction has always been the
thought of America as the refuge of the op-
pressed. America has been thought to spell
opportunity, and the effective obstacle against
restriction has been a lofty ideal. But of late
years we have come to see that the motive of
desire for relief from civil or religious oppres-

118

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

sion is not so effective in bringing the aliens
to us as we had once imagined. The fact that
there are worthy political or religious refu-
gees does not blind our eyes to the fact that
the motive with the masses of immigrants to-
day is economic. Of course an economic op-
portunity is a moral boon to men, and even
when men sought America for political and re-
ligious freedom they were not unmindful of
the material chances here. But the class of
men now responding to the lure of America is
not the same as in other days. A great mass
come to us who tend to lower the standard of
living for American workmen. The "stand-
ard of living" means much to us. It means
more than difference between the grade of fish
and meat and vegetables consumed by native
Americans and that consumed by laborers
from abroad. It is said that carp from the
Illinois Kiver are shipped in immense num-
bers to the immigrants in New York, but that
the American laborer will not touch such
coarse food. The difference in standard, how-
ever, is not to be measured by a difference of
attitude toward carp. The standard of living
means almost anything and everything for the
outlook on life. It means that there shall or
shall not be books and pictures and schooling

119

THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

and recreation and the opportunities for the
fullness of life.

We insist that it is its essentially human
aspect which gives the immigration question
seriousness in the minds of all thinking Ameri-
cans. The spectacle of thousands of men
brought from abroad to work in the mills is
in itself bad enough, but the spectacle becomes
worse when we stop to think that these force
others who desire higher standards of living
to accept a paltry wage. In the face of this
outcome there are investigators who would
restrict immigration very rigidly. If the
argument is put to such students that they
would force human beings, who now look to
our country as the land of hope, back upon
hopeless conditions in their own land, the re-
ply is forthcoming that the very best way for
America to serve the world is to maintain her
ideals at every cost. If some immigrants who
would with worthy motives come to us are
kept out by any exclusion laws, this is, in-
deed, a misfortune to those thus excluded and
to us also, but this is an item of the cost which
must be paid for the maintenance of human
ideals. America cannot afford to cease to be
an object lesson to the world as to what can
be done when the right sort of civic and social

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

ideals get a chance. It might well be that
forcing immigrants back into their own lands
and thus closing the vent from those lands
outward toward our land would through the
congestion and pressure in those lands work
for reforms there. If there is oppressive hard-
ship back of immigration, it might be that the
restriction and confinement of the peoples to
their home lands would blow the tops off some
ancient evils. There are more students, of
course, who think that the public schools and
the standard of American life so promptly in-
fluence, if not the newcomers themselves, at
least the second generation of immigrants,
that American ideals can be looked upon as
safe. The point, however, upon which we in-
sist is that there is growing impatience with
any discussion of immigration which talks
almost in impersonal terms of labor supply
and ignores the effect on human ideals from
the forced adoption of low standards of living.
In the view of the world which comes with
the modern outlook upon man a new respon-
sibility falls on the Christian nations for hold-
ing before the whole world the human ideals
which make up the Christian thought of man.
The existence of millions of human beings in
so-called heathen lands under conditions which

121

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

hardly permit human life from one point of
view makes for pessimism. To frame a the-
ory which will account for the hard plight of
millions of men is beyond us. Truly the non-
Christian nations sit in darkness, being bound
in affliction and iron. But without attempt-
ing to fathom the purposes of Providence in
the history of nations, the truth seems to be
increasingly manifest that the only power
which will lift the heathen nations out of
their plight is Christianity with that ideal of
human life which is so essential to the Chris-
tian system.

Suppose we glance at a land like China. It
is customary for a certain type of traveler to
tell us that the fundamental trouble with
China is economic, that the pressure of the
large masses of population on the land is in-
tense beyond calculation, that it is the pres-
sure which has stripped the hillsides of trees,
and that has exhausted the vitality of the peo-
ple till, as Bagehot says, the nation has been
caked over with a hard crust of custom which
is imperviously obstinate. Now, we avow
again that we do not underestimate the power
of the economic forces, but we insist that
economic and psychological factors act re-
ciprocally upon one another and together upon

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

the total situation. What is back of the fact
of overpopulation in China? The demand for
sons. What is back of the demand for men?
The demand for earthly service to be rendered
by sons to fathers after the fathers shall have
passed on to the company of the ancestors.
In other words, China thinks more of a dead
man than of a live man. In any civilization
at all Christian this earth belongs by right of
eminent domain to the people now living. But
in China a false religious view gives rise to a
false relation between the land and the people.
Polygamy, concubinage, and promiscuity in
sexual relations are encouraged, with the re-
sult that perhaps -five generations are pro-
duced in a length of time through which only
four should be born. The strain on the soil
becomes terrific. Nature falls back on those
rough and merciless instruments which
Malthus so effectively describes — famine,
flood, and pestilence. The people hang on to
existence by so flimsy a fringe that a crop
failure means death to thousands. They
crowd down into the river valleys so close to
the embankments that a breach brings wide-
spread disaster. They live so close together
that the plague mows down its victims by en-
tire communities. Nor must we allow our-

123

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

selves to be misled by the fact that people
living in such conditions develop a marvelous
power of endurance. We must not accept it
as a tribute to the people that they can live on
next to nothing. Professor Ross has shown
that a peculiarity of the Chinese is that they
have demonstrated what a large part of the
race can do under unfavorable conditions.
This, however, is just a reason why the whole
system should be changed. The race is not
on the planet for the purpose of showing what
can be done under unfavorable conditions.
The conditions must be made favorable for
the sake of the large human result which is
to come.

So that the justification, from the social
standpoint, of the attempt to Christianize the
non-Christian nations is in the large ideal of
humanity which is at the heart of Christianity.
The aims of evangelism must be more than
remedial. Suppose the resources of Western
civilization are used to better the merely ma-
terial situation in lands like China. It seems
cold-blooded to say so, but these resources
would only make the result worse, apart from
the introduction of the Christian ideal which
sets a higher value on human life. Polygamy,
concubinage, and promiscuity must be done

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

away. Life must be made more sacred. The
birth rate must be lowered from animal to
human proportions. This does not mean the
Westernization of the Orient. It means the
humanization and Christianization of the
Orient. To say that such a chasm must al-
ways yawn between the East and the West
that an essential Christianity can never be
introduced which will give the millions of peo-
ple a chance at life on human terms is really
to despair of the race.

We mention briefly the crusade against in-
ternational war as a closing illustration of
emphasis on the claims of humanity. A great
change has come over the thinking of the
world in respect to wars in the last half-cen-
tury. A war which should be frankly and
openly commercial and materialistic would
hardly be tolerated to-day. The economic ele-
ment is, of course, a force in every war, but to
put the appeal squarely down upon a business
basis would condemn the war hopelessly. To-
day the cost in human terms is being urged
more and more. Important as might be the
world-wide disturbance of capital through a
war or number of wars, the disturbance to the
happiness of the plain people who have to do
the fighting and the suffering is more im-

125

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

portant still. In this connection let us be
thankful for those international labor move-
ments which stand against war. It has always
been necessary to consult the men who were
to furnish the financial sinews before going to
war. Let us rejoice that the human sinews
more and more insist on being consulted. If
there is to be war, let the men who are to do
the dying be consulted before the war breaks
out.

But the telling factor against war is just
its inhumanities. Of course there are inhu-
manities of peace, and sometimes in a choice
between inhumanities war must be chosen as
less inhuman. But such crises are becoming
less and less likely. The essential inhumanity
of men's killing one another by wholesale is
becoming more and more apparent. Note the
impatience with which men meet the old plea
that war must be relied on as a sort of moral
tonic for the nations. The argument would
have us believe that we must resort to inhu-
man means to make men human.

We come to the end of this long and per-
haps tedious discussion. The connection be-
tween the working of the various forces at
which we have looked and the increase of faith
may_ not have been immediately clear. We

126

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

must remember, however, that we are think-
ing of life at its fullest and best, and that
whatever makes for full and good life makes
for faith. It does not require the detailed in-
formation or the technical skill of the expert
to detect the growing emphasis on human con-
siderations in modern social movement, and
this emphasis counts for faith. If it seems
that all our stress has been on the thought of
human values and none on divine values, we
have to reply that the clearest insight we can
get into divine life is through high human
development. Believing in a system which
teaches that man is made in the image of God,
a system which places the incarnation at its
center as its most essential article of faith,
which depends upon a Bible which teaches
social duty throughout, which builds a Church
which aims at a redeemed humanity, we need
not apologize for seeing in real humanness the
sign of the coming of the kingdom of God.
We are not now concerned with the progress of
formal creeds. God is a Spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit. If
there is anything in modern life which re-
veals a larger spirit toward men it is not too
much to claim that that larger spirit has a
divine source.

127

IV

THE ETHICAL ADVANCE

There is a widespread feeling to-day that
the past twenty-five years have seen a marked
advance in the moral spirit of Christian lands.
In our own country especially it has been said
that ethical change has been very pronounced,
at some periods making strides ahead with
a force which might almost be called the force
of an ethical revivalism. We- would do well
to be on our guard against any such sweeping
claims. Man for man and group for group,
we may well ask ourselves if we are really any
better than were our fathers. To use the old
expression, if we are to be as good as our
fathers, we must be better. We are under the
obligation to increase with every possible de-
velopment. Considering the forces that make
for material and intellectual betterment, we
have to ask ourselves if the moral forces which
work in us and through us are keeping pace
with these material anl intellectual forces.
Are we making the advance in moral life in
our time that our fathers made in theirs?

128

THE ETHICAL ADVANCE

This essay does not pretend to be a discus-
sion in moral philosophy. It aims simply at
showing the stress in general thought to-day
upon some phases of ethical spirit which in-
dicate progress. Especially does it aim at
calling up the elements in our ethical thinking
which seem to make for faith in religious be-
liefs.

It is cause for congratulation that there is
at present both in philosophical and popular
ethical thinking such substantial agreement
on what constitutes the chief good. The chief
good has been discussed ever since men began
to discuss ethics, and the results have been
confused and confusing. One school has
found the chief good in pleasure, another in
the pursuit of duty for its own sake, another
in self-realization, another in self-renuncia-
tion. The definitions of terms like "pleasure,"
"duty," "realization," "renunciation" have
themselves been numerous and various. To-
day, however, there is rather remarkable agree-
ment that a vast deal of such discussion is
barren and unfruitful. The term we hear
most often in ethical discussion is "life." Our
preceding essays have insisted that in modern
philosophical and social theories the accent
is put upon life as having an inherent right of

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

way. But life is a broad and general term,
and we must come down to "lives." The indi-
vidual lives of men and women and children
are the goods which stand in their own right
and the chief good is these lives living out
their highest and best possibilities. Of course
when we use the term "highest and best" the
debate begins to rage again, but it is some-
thing to have discerned that the good in this
world is that which is good for human lives,
and not something which exists in and for
itself in abstraction from the concrete lives
around us. The good is a good life — not
virtue for its own sake or happiness or any-
thing abstract. A good man is an end in
himself.

Further, there is a fairly universal agree-
ment to-day that the good man does not be-
come a good man by just trying to be good.
He does not become good by making goodness
an object in itself or by pursuing an abstract
righteousness. He does not reach the highest
and best by thinking about himself. He,
rather, finds life himself by trying to find
life for others. The thought and purpose must
be outward. A man's own righteousness is a
sort of reflex or by-product which comes out
of his attempt to help others. The social or-

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ganisra is not a thing in itself, but it is a
mighty instrument in helping the individuals
who compose it to be good in themselves. The
growth of what we call the social conscious-
ness has helped us to this insight into the
method by which life comes to us.

Still further, we can be thankful for the
fact that we hear such emphasis upon con-
science as the very heart of moral life. Much
popular teaching upon fundamental moral
issues is off the track and some even seems
perverted ; but all, or almost all, teaching is in
the name of conscience. Conscience is claimed
for some queer, aberrant conduct, but it is at
least significant that the word "conscience" is
in all quarters claimed as the vital and signifi-
cant word. He would be a hardy ethical
teacher who would arise and declare that men
ought to disregard and flout behests of con-
science. A teacher might well say that the
uninstructed conscience, or the morbid con-
science, or the popular conscience, or the con-
ventional conscience ought to be disregarded,
but he would hardly dare teach that a man
ought to turn deliberately against his own
mature thought of what is right. Conscience
is, indeed, used in most unconscientious ways,
but we can hardly think that a moral school

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teaching the open disregard of conscience
would win many converts.

As we look at some present-day demands
upon that inner spirit which is the heart of
the moral life we repeat that we are not espe-
cially concerned as to how these demands
have come about. We certainly do not think
that in all cases the new sense of obligation
springs up within the heart of the obligated
man of its own movement. In one man the
assumption of obligation may thus mark the
spontaneous development of the moral life.
In another man the obligation may be more
like a demand from without or a law imposed
by an external authority. But the new sense
of obligation is in somebody's mind, and the
somebodies are numerous, numerous enough
to give the public moral spirit of our day a
well-defined stamp. Whether individuals ac-
cept these obligations willingly or unwillingly,
the obligations are here. They are here as the
expression of real conscience and they voice
real moral insight.

We begin by calling attention to the vigor-
ous sense of the obligations of poiver to-day.
A doctrine more and more generally accepted
is that the possession of power imposes obli-
gations on the possessor. We might in a sense

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call the struggle to get this doctrine into the
popular consciousness a sort of continuation
of the struggle against the divine right of
kings. The slightest acquaintance with his-
tory helps us to realize that the fight against
the divine right came because of the unwill-
ingness of rulers to admit that their power
carried with it any real responsibility. The
king felt at liberty to follow out any whim
that might come into his mind. The succes-
sive movements toward popular government
have not come just because the people have
been enamored of the dream of democracy.
The movements have come because the people
have felt that the kings have not ruled with
a sense of responsibility. If the kings had
ruled well, it is not likely that there would
have been movements toward democracy so
early in the course of history. There does not
seem to be anything inherently repellent to
the human mind in the thought of monarchy.
Let the king take his work with a sense of re-
sponsibility, and in some quarters even to-day
the kingdom seems to stand fast. But the
real question is as to whether any man can
have a sense of obligation to his people strong
enough to entitle him to a kingship. If a man
is to be a king, his sense of obligation must

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be unspeakably strong. The very fact that
the powers are in his hand puts obligation
upon him beyond all possibility of estimate.
Even in these days of limited monarchy the
question, we repeat, is as to whether any man
can adequately feel these obligations or dis-
charge them if he does feel them. The objec-
tion to kings in our day might be put into the
form of a statement that the obligations are
so heavy that we cannot think of asking any
single human being to assume them.

We get further illustration of the force of
this same emphasis on the sense of obligation
when we think of the responsibilities that a
military leader would have to assume even in
a democracy going to war. In a previous
essay we spoke of the triumphs of our democ-
racy in the strain of a terrible war, but such
triumph means that sooner or later vast re-
sponsibilities must be placed in the hands of
individual generals. Of course when a pop-
ular government votes for a war the underly-
ing responsibility is with the voters, but the
responsibilities on the generals are stupen-
dous. Possibly the darkest single charge ever
made against Napoleon was that which de-
clared that he once ordered a perfectly useless
assault just to satisfy the desire of a party of

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friends to see a little of actual war. Whether
Napoleon was guilty or not we do not pretend
to say. We can, however, understand the re-
morselessness of the criticism of those who
believe the charge to be true. Anything more
cynically base than such an order would be
hard to conceive. We can understand also
the criticism passed on that other leader who
was reported to have said that he was going
forth to war with a light heart. Think of the
obligations that the leader of hundreds of
thousands of soldiers must assume! His
slightest moves mean death to scores and per-
haps to hundreds. One objection raised
against kingship can likewise be raised
against war. If a great war is to be success-
ful, it must come into the hands of a single
man. Unity of command is essential to suc-
cess. But how rare must be the man who can
feel the obligations of such leadership ! Here,
again, the question is as to whether any such
man could be found. In any case, modern
thought has taken all the lightheartedness out
of our attitude toward war. The great hero
of war has to be the general and his heroism
has to be the devotion to obligations so heavy
that we may well ask if any man should be
allowed to assume them.

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

But the political power to-day has passed
away from the kings to the' citizens. We hear
as never before the responsibility of the ordi-
nary voter, for the vote means power and power
carries with it obligation. Accordingly, we
hear that more than a merely property or edu-
cational test is necessary if a man is to be a
good citizen. Of course the man who has
property is apt to have achieved some
moral strength in the gaining of the property,
and the man who knows enough to read is
likely to know more about moral distinctions
than the illiterate man, but, after all, the
urgent stress to-day is upon the need of the
sense of obligation. We hear much about the
man who will sell his vote, but such men are,
when the large number of voters are taken
into account, very rare. Such men can be
dealt with by the police and by the courts.
The man whom we need to keep constantly be-
fore us is the man who takes into his hand so
mighty an instrument as the ballot and uses it
without proper sense of obligation. We have
had many good things to say of democracy,
and our faith in the people is not small, but
the danger in democracy is that power will be
used without proper sense of obligation. We
do not have to believe that there is any neces-

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sary and inherent right of the people to rule
before we can regard ourselves as good demo-
crats. We have only to believe that the people
can rule better than can individuals to be
democrats. We believe that the people can
thus rule, but we may well be glad that we
hear so often that rule by the people is only
an experiment, after all. The people must
rule with a sense of responsibility if they are
to rule successfully. They must be willing to
assume the obligations of power as well as
the power itself. Among these obligations
must always be included the duty of looking
facts squarely in the face, of distrusting great
outbursts of emotionalism, of standing for the
doctrine that a thing is not settled until it is
settled aright. In the midst of all present-day
signs of restlessness which now and again seem
to point toward revolution it is well for us to
remember that, on the whole, the people seem
to have a wholesome regard for the checks
upon popular excitement. Very few popular
assemblies will ignore the simpler and clearer
rules of parliamentary procedure; very few
will violate the requirements of fair play ; very
few will trample upon the rights of a minority.
By the way, one of the clearest indications of
a healthy moral spirit in society is this re-

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

spect for the rights of the minority. A mi-
nority is even being looked upon as essential
to the proper movement of a democracy. The
old doctrine that government exists for the
sake of whatever majority happens to win is
about gone. There is even less emphasis than
there once was on the doctrine of the greatest
good to the greatest number. More and more
we hear that the proper aim of government is
the best, under the circumstances, for all. And
this means an increasing sense of obligation
on the part of the people. When the "ins"
have their way they have only the advantage
of certain strategic positions. The "outs" are
not out in the sense that they are out of the
game. Even when they are out they are an
essential element. There is to-day a growing
popular recognition of the truth that victory
for a majority does not dispose of the minority
which loses. The minority is not a foe which
is to be annihilated or taken prisoner. The mi-
nority is for the moment just the weaker of two
forces which, working upon each other, bring
about a certain resultant. Advances of popu-
lar thought are seldom straight forward in a
direct path. The advance of a majority can-
not be stopped or turned back upon itself by
the action of a minority, but it can be de-

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fleeted far to one side of the course which it
might otherwise have taken. It is the recogni-
tion of mutual duties by "ins" and "outs"
which is one of the encouraging signs as we
think of the immense power which the ballot
puts in the hands of the voters.

But, after all, the monarchical principle
comes back upon us, even after we have given
the vote to the individual citizen. The citizen
to-day is, indeed, a ruler of mighty force, but
the monarchical principle is illustrated on a
vast scale in the industrial realm. We have
to deal with real kings in the realm of industry
— railroad kings, corn kings, corporation
kings. It was once said of a railroad magnate
that he had conquered more territory with a
coupling pin than Julius Caesar had won with
the sword. The days when these kings could
act according to their own sweet will — a will
which often proved bitter enough to those who
stood in their way — are fast disappearing. So
much power must necessarily be lodged in the
hands of such leaders that the doctrine of the
obligations of power are preached to them
with urgent insistence. In the old days — days
not so very far in the past — a railroad king
could set up or pull down a community or a
city with a stroke of his pen through a schedule

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

of freight rates. He could divert the currents
of trade from their accustomed channels. He
could stop the mill wheels and literally make
the grass grow in the streets of the cities.
Without military resources he could really
levy tribute from millions of people as truly
as if he had started armies to marching to-
ward them. He could rebate a city into deso-
lation almost as effectively as a general could
starve it by siege. Now, all this power is just
as truly in the hands of the railroads to-day,
but it will never be exercised as in the past.
Laws will do their part, commissions will do
their part, public opinion will do its part. We
may be permitted to believe, however, that by
no means the least effective force in bringing
about the result has been and will be the grow-
ing adoption of the doctrine that power means
obligation, and that the power belongs only
to those whose development in conscience has
kept pace with their development in skill over
materials and men.

Even the possession of money — since money
is power — brings with it responsibilities em-
phasized to-day with new force. Money is a
tool and must be used as a tool. Professor
Carver has suggested that the meaning of the
parable of Jesus about the talents is to be

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understood from the viewpoint of wealth as an
instrument. If the talents were mere good
things to be enjoyed, we can understand the
protest when the talent was taken from the
man who had only one talent and given to the
man who had ten. If, however, the talents
were to be regarded as instruments, there was
only justice in taking the instrument from the
hands of him who could not use it and giving
it to him who could. Of course wealth is an
end to a certain extent, but only to a certain
extent. For the most part, it is an instru-
ment to be used with a sense of obligation for
the best things; and the best things, as we
have tried to show, are human lives. There is
a growing protest against a rich man's leaving
money at his death to those who are apt to use
it as an end in itself. Assuming that the prin-
cipal of a great estate is to be kept intact, there
is a growing objection to its being so disposed
of by the legacy of its owner that the interest
is to go to those who will enjoy money as an
end in itself. Back of the objection is this
realization of wealth as an instrument. The
wealth is more likely to be used as an instru-
ment in the hands of the trustees of a school
or a hospital or an orphange than in the hands
of those who are thinking of enjoyment. By a

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right as of eminent domain wealth belongs
properly in the hands of those who can devote
it to the most productive use. All this has
been known from the beginning, but we are
insisting to-day upon such definition of the ex-
pression "productive use" as shall include the
highest and best welfare of the lives that the
money touches either in the making or the
spending. The tools of modern industrial life
are so powerful for good or for evil that we
must allow them to get only into the hands of
men who will use them with a sense of obliga-
tion. Industrial forces are set to work by the
slightest pulls on triggers or levers. Con-
scienceless fingers must not touch the triggers.
This sense of obligation is going still further.
There are some qualifications of men in the
way of inborn talents which are really mo-
nopoly powers. No one else has such talents —
it may be — and the talents are not to be al-
lowed to go to waste. Possibilities of influenc-
ing one's fellow men, capabilities for unusual
work, even artistic skill — all these are gifts
which partake of the nature of monopolies.
A monopoly even of this kind carries its obli-
gations. There must be serious consideration
of how the talent can be best developed and
best used after it is developed. This too has

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been known from the beginning, but the obliga-
tion is receiving new emphasis. The placing
of the life is as important as the development.
If we may use an expression from political
economy, a man is under obligation not to
work too much against the law of diminishing
returns. "The law of diminishing returns"
means that after a certain point the returns
from effort are not commensurate with the
effort put forth to obtain them. Then, if there
are other fields where the same amount of
effort will bring a larger return, the obliga-
tion is to cultivate those fields. We are not
at present directly concerned with missionary
enterprises, but, for the sake of illustration,
we may ask as to the wisdom of sending one
hundred teachers into America when the one
hundred can do but little more than ninety
could ; the extra ten could accomplish as much
in China just now as the ninety can here. We
do not pretend to pick our figures with mathe-
matical care, but the question is suggestive.
Jesus once raised the issue as to the morality
of refusing to place a candle where its light
would do the most good. In our day we see
the obligation of paying our way and of so
placing our lives that they will pay the largest
return.

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

This modern spirit does away at once with
the old heresy that a man's life is his own
affair, and that he can make his choices as he
pleases. More and more we see that the obli-
gation to society reaches into the inner depths.
If a man will not be conscientious even in
those things which do not at first seem to
affect the welfare of society, we speedily find
ways of trying to establish a connection be-
tween his conduct and the welfare of society.
If a man could withdraw to some Robinson
Crusoe island, making no drafts on society
and living out of all communication with men,
we might find something to say in justification
of letting him go to the devil in his own style.
But the ethical spirit of to-day will not hear
of a man's going to the devil through indul-
gence in vice with the plea that vice is a pri-
vate affair. Opium-smoking is a distinctly
private vice, but we have seen it nearly ruin a
nation. The simple obligation to pay one's
way means more with the increase of moral
understanding. Every man whose working
efficiency is impaired below a certain point is
a charge on other men. Such a man must be
shouldered and carried, or some one else must
pull his weight or pay his fare. In a world
where struggle for life is hard enough at the

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easiest, moral sense rebels at the injustice
wrought through the failure of individuals to
play their part as men. Being a man means
keeping off the shoulders of other men. And
as to going to the devil in one's own way, even
if all the expenses are paid by the one who
thus goes, even if there is no loss to anyone but
the man himself, and the man's going is a
good riddance, still the spectacle of man's go-
ing to the devil is not helpful, for long before
he has gone from this world the devil is in
such complete possession as to affect the on-
lookers. The presence of evil in a human life
is not socially profitable. Even when evil men
can be pointed to as examples of the outwork-
ing of moral law the exhibition costs more
than it is worth. Social obligation reaches to
the innermost realms of individual life.

We have spoken of to-day's attitude toward
the obligations of power. We may find further
illustration of the same spirit in the emphasis
on the obligations of knowledge. Knowledge
itself is a power.

We all know the obligation on the man who
can see farther than his fellows or can grasp
an ideal with firmer certainty than can his
fellows. The emphasis upon the obligation of
such a man to live up to the highest light is

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

not new, but it is well for us to remember that
the opportunities for heroism of this sort are
as actual to-day as ever, though possibly less
spectacular. The opportunities come in the
minor social groups — industrial, political,
ecclesiastical. The reason why the heroism
does not attract great attention is to be found
in the thought that if a man cannot get along
comfortably in one of these groups, he can go
out. There is plenty of room outside. But
this is very easy to say. Here is a man who
has trained himself to a particular task. He
is known to hold and to advocate views which
are not agreeable to the company for which
he works. He is an official of a transportation
company, it may be, and a campaign is on
against the saloon forces in a city through
which this transportation company runs. The
official receives a hint from headquarters that
while he is free to vote as he pleases the com-
pany does not expect its officials to take active
part against the saloon. If the official speaks
out after such a hint, he does so at more of a
risk than that run by all the agitators in the
town. The official is qualified to do a particu-
lar kind of work. He may not be able to find
work of just that kind anywhere else than in
the employ of that particular company. Too

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much honor cannot be given under such cir-
cumstances to the man of superior insight into
the worth of an ideal who realizes and acts
upon the obligations which the insight puts
upon him. Or, to take a further illustration :
here is a minister or a teacher enlisted in the
ranks of one of the great ecclesiastical de-
nominations. He feels that he must advocate
improvements in doctrinal statement or church
polity. Some leader advises him that his place
is outside. If the change which he advocates
is subversive of the aims for which the de-
nomination stands, or if it is hostile to the
essential spirit of that body, the man's place is
outside. But if the change is one called for by
the development of the body itself, the obliga-
tion is upon the servant of the Church to stay
in and speak his mind. If he does stay he
runs a risk. He may incur the disfavor of
church leaders, either ecclesiastical or lay, and
his own advancement may suffer. The most
carefully guarded and moderate statement
from such a man may mean more than the
most radical utterances of the man outside or
of the member of the professedly radical com-
munions. We need liberal bodies of believers,
but there is no reason for calling the liberal
utterances of bands of liberals especially

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THE INCREASE OP FAITH

heroic. If a man cares to be heroic with radi-
cals, let him preach conservatism to them. We
mention these illustrations simply to bring
out the truth that there is abundant oppor-
tunity to assume to-day the obligations which
go with the knowledge of high ideals. And
we speak with knowledge of fact and not out
of merely enthusiastic optimism when we say
that in the industrial and ecclesiastical and
political groups there appears to be increas-
ing willingness to assume the obligations
which go with knowledge of commanding
ideals.

But there is increasingly general recogni-
tion also of the obligations imposed by the
possession of more matter-of-fact and prosaic
knowledge than the knowledge of high ideals.
We have spoken elsewhere of the demands
upon the possessor of scientific knowledge.
Of course some treatment of the owner of
great ideas to-day is little short of outrageous.
Property in almost everything else is recog-
nized and protected better than property in
ideas. But even though this is lamentably
true the scientific ideal is that beneficial facts
become at discovery the property of humanity.
If a scientist could discover some inevitably
certain method of dealing directly with the

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germs of typhoid or tuberculosis, all right-
thinking men would agree that such a dis-
coverer should be suitably rewarded, but all
scientists would recognize the duty of making
the facts public property as soon as possible.
There can be no question as to the obligation
here.

Moreover, society in general is taking upon
itself more and more cheerfully the responsi-
bility for the discharge of obligations which
come with increasing knowledge. The use of
the scientific method has revealed to us the
laws by which even moral evils get their foot-
hold in the world. We have come to a new
conviction as to the remediableness of moral
situations, but the remedies lie more and more
in the field of prevention. The urgency with
which preventive measures are pushed upon
the public to-day and the increasing readiness
with which the new view is accepted are mar-
velous. There is nothing spectacular about a
work of prevention. Here is a village in
danger through the use of wells placed too
near the dwelling houses. It may be that
there never has been an epidemic of typhoid in
that village. On the chance that there may be
an epidemic the wells are abandoned and an
expensive water system is installed. It is

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

always possible for the reactionary to say that
nothing would have happened if the old wells
had been kept open. Now, in less material
manifestations this new spirit is abroad in the
land. There is more and more general re-
sponse to the obligations which come with the
very knowledge of the ways in which moral
disorders may be prevented. The protests
against the overcrowding of houses and the
overstrain of weak wills and against all ma-
terial and spiritual conditions which practi-
cally rob the human will of its freedom are
instances in point. Now that public opinion
is aware of the causes of some evils, there is
increasing restlessness in the continued ex-
istence of the evils. The knowledge increases
that sorrow which cannot be abated till the
obligation which comes with the knowledge is
satisfied.

Under all this is the sense of obligation
which arises from the knowledge that what
might be called constitutional morality is
woven into the very texture of the universe.
That is to say, the laws which pick up the evil
deed and carry it out to endless consequences
are seen to be remorseless in their ongoings.
There are laws which work for the relief of
the evildoer who sets himself to work with

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them, but these laws never completely undo
an evil deed. Bodies are scarred and souls are
marked with the evil. Great achievements no
doubt are possible to the life which has for-
saken sin, but present-day moral insight will
not tolerate the doctrine that the soul which
has sinned can be as good as if it had never
sinned. Modern morality is increasingly im-
patient with any doctrine which obscures the
deadliness of sin. The growing realization of
this means increasing civilization. The po-
litical economist tells us that civilization ad-
vances as men "learn to discount the future
at a low rate of interest" — as they learn to
put some far-off morrow on about the same
plane as to-day. We are learning anew that
though God may not always pay on Saturday,
he nevertheless pays. There is no healthier
moral realization than just this, especially
when the obligation which comes with the
realization is assumed. The laws do not slip
and they do not forget.

Lest, however, we may seem to have painted
a system of unrelenting sternness, we call at-
tention to the fact that the increasing knowl-
edge of actual situations is bringing a chari-
tableness into moral judgments which is of
significance. In a sense, our knowledge of

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

men has increased. We see more clearly the
springs of moral action. Irrevocable as are the
laws of the universe, they are not to be con-
ceived of as working in the same fashion upon
the unintentional evildoer as upon the delib-
erate transgressor. If the effects of evildoing
were chiefly and primarily upon the body it
would be true that an evil done in ignorance
would receive the same penalty as wrong com-
mitted intentionally. The laws of the body
carry on the results of sincere mistakes and
deliberate sins alike. We are not thinking
especially, however, of the physical evils.
These are the most easily remedied. We are
thinking of sins of the spirit — rejections of
the truth and choices of the evil. It is here
that sin is most deadly. The mind which turns
against the light loses its power to know the
light. In this inner realm, however, we feel
more and more the need of charity. We are
learning that the moral task for the human
life is to make the passage over from the
merely natural to the spiritual, or, rather, to
lift the natural up to the plane of the spiritual
by informing it with a right purpose. And so
we find many lives in many stages of transi-
tion— some having attained quite nearly to
sainthood and others making the first attempts

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to rationalize and spiritualize their impulses.
That deliberate choice of evil and cynical joy
in evil are too common we all know, but the
more closely we study human life the more
clearly we see that much which seems like evil
is not purposely and intentionally such. Per-
fect intentions may mark even imperfect lives.
And so the increasing contact with men to-
day and the increasing knowledge of them
puts on us the obligation to profound charity.
Hence it comes about that the attitude toward
the moral problem to-day has this double as-
pect: insistence upon the inevitableness of
penalty under the law and charitableness to-
ward the vast mass of men who are striving to
bring the moral spirit into their lives. The
knowledge of the actual condition of men puts
on us the obligation to charitableness.

Not only are there obligations of power and
of knowledge, but there are obligations of sym-
pathy emphasized in the moral messages of to-
day. Any man who can sympathize at all
must feel himself in these days under the obli-
gation to come into some sort of personal touch
with persons who are in distress. Of course
any man's range of personal contacts is lim-
ited, but there is good cheer in any movement
away from impersonalism. One of the almost

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

inevitable vices of our time has been a sort of
wholesaleism in the treatment of men. The
wholesaleism perhaps took its start in indus-
trial developments. The modern stress on
large-scale production has tended to obscure
the worth and meaning of the individual man.
The tendency has been to get away from the
thought of the individual laborer to the consid-
eration of labor in the mass. In such a system
a laborer is fortunate if he is known even by
number. Out of the success of modern indus-
trialism has come a copying of some of the
features of industrialism in realms where they
have no right. The demand has been that edu-
cational and charitable and industrial institu-
tions be handled with business methods.
While any sensible person can see the advan-
tages of business methods in any of these ac-
tivities, there comes a point where business
methods break down in dealing with the great
human relationships. A philanthropic institu-
tion may get on well enough in dealing by
wholesale with the bodies of men, though there
is some question even about this. The physi-
cian at work upon an unconscious patient
does not think of the individuality of the pa-
tient, but as soon as consciousness returns,
and the task of nursing begins, the limitations

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of wholesale and card-case methods become
apparent. So likewise with educational and
ecclesiastical wholesaleism. Business methods
in these fields have revealed their weakness.
And so in these later days there is a swing
back in the other direction. The personal
touch is emphasized. In the schools the
classes are broken into small groups that the
individual student may be reached. Personal
contact is more and more preached in the
work of the Church. It is high time for this
change, for impersonalism tends to a sort of
dehumanization. With the swing of the pen-
dulum in the other direction the old virtues
which come out of warm human sympathy
come to the old-time regard. This makes for
faith. The gospel deals in large terms, but
not in wholesale terms. It lays stress upon
sympathy. We are under obligations to help
men with material things and with whatever
knowledge may be at our disposal, but we are
under obligations also to give of ourselves.
While a moral command to 'Sympathize with
men, given in a mechanical fashion, would
miss the mark, the obligation is to take such
attitude toward men that we shall sympathize
with them. Hence the condemnation on the
man who in giving to a cause simply flings his

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

money into the box. More is called for —
knowledge of the situation which demands re-
lief, imagination, which can make another's
suffering real to oneself. Much of the appeal
to imagination to-day is forced and crude, but
the appeal is made and with great effect. Life
as we know it is inevitably an affair of the
sensibility. There may be beings in some
other sphere whose life moves on without rela-
tion to sensibility. Life for them may be effec-
tive will-exercise with no accompaniment of
feeling whatever. Or it may be a colorless
knowing without any sort of thrill in its ex-
pectancy or discovery. Such is not life as we
know it. For us a great word is happiness;
and happiness has no meaning apart from sen-
sibility. Now the higher the meaning put
into happiness the more closely we come to the
realm of personal communion. The greatest
gift a man can give is real sympathy. Like-
wise, the greatest gift a man can receive is a
sympathy which shows that others are doing
and thinking and feeling with him. The moral
consciousness to-day recognizes and enforces
this truth.

We must say a word about another obliga-
tion which is more and more forcing itself
upon the moral consciousness. We refer to

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the extent to which the obligations of belief
are coming into ethical consideration. There
is in modern thinking a very decided trend
away from the idea that religious belief is not
a matter of grave moral consequence. We
once heard much of the doctrine that it makes
little difference to anyone else what any par-
ticular man believes. Belief has so much to
do with other-world destiny that if a man is
willing to take the risks of the hereafter in
any belief, the risk is entirely of the man's
own concern. After that we heard of the
doctrine that anyone should be allowed the
liberty to believe whatever might agree with
him. But this easy-going liberalism has not
to-day the hold it once had. The emphasis on
the social consequences of belief has made a
difference. In some spheres society assumes
a great deal of authority, not, indeed, as to
what a man believes, but as to what he pub-
lishes and puts into action. There are to-day
various beliefs as to government, for example.
Public opinion will not sit quietly by and
allow beliefs subversive of all government to
be proclaimed without protest. And when
anarchy proceeds to act itself out into prac-
tical expression the police take a hand in the
argument. The plea of personal sincerity will

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THE INCREASE OP FAITH

not avail to establish a right to proclaim
anarchy. While no one could ever justify him-
self in an argument for a return to censorship
of religious beliefs by authority, public opin-
ion is recognizing that it makes a vast differ-
ence to society as to what sort of religious be-
liefs are proclaimed. It is being discovered
that belief itself is apt to make for fuller life
than skepticism, and that the larger beliefs
make for the larger life. The better the belief
the better the believer is apt to be. Moreover,
there are distinct social consequences of par-
ticular beliefs. Take the great catholic ut-
terances of the creeds as to the nature of God
and the dignity of human life. There may
legitimately be all variety of interpretation of
these utterances. The objectors may urge that
the Church which has held to these doctrines
many times has stood in the way of human
progress, and may urge also that it has been
hard to separate the truths from doubtful ac-
companiments. But the large good sense of
constantly increasing numbers is seeing that
in the main and on the whole these fundamen-
tal beliefs are mighty bulwarks of human
order and progress. Hence it comes about
that a skeptic or an atheist will support a
church because it is good for the community,

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and that an agnostic like the late Goldwin
Smith will, while avowing that it is disloyalty
to the truth for a man like Cardinal Newman
to declare assent to propositions because of
the consequences of believing them, deplore
the dawning of the day when disbelief in im-
mortality will make the members of society
struggle all the more bitterly for the things
of the present. Now, it is hard to see how any
man of intellectual integrity would not sooner
know the truth no matter how unpleasant it
might prove than to hold to a false belief just
because of consequences pleasant for a time;
but the confidence of the normal man in reason
is such that he feels that in a realm where we
cannot have positive demonstration one way
or the other the fact that the social conse-
quences of a belief are beneficial must be an
indication that the belief lays hold of the
springs of reality. And when once these so-
cial consequences are seen streaming from be-
lief as effects from a cause the social con-
science of our time inclines charitably toward
the belief. It is hard to see how a man who
professes great sympathy for his fellow men,
and who knows that those fellow men do not
and cannot live by bread alone, can overlook
the social importance of the catholic beliefs.

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

It is hard to see how such a man, having once
seen these consequences, can avoid the moral
responsibility of at least examining the be-
liefs, and examining them with charitable pre-
suppositions.

We may properly close this lecture with a
brief suggestion as to the more direct bearing
of the obligation to belief on the form which
some Christian beliefs should take. First, we
urge the duty of laying hold on the best be-
liefs. We can have any beliefs we choose. We
are not in the realm of strict demonstration.
The question is not as to whether A or B can
be proved by demonstration to be an objective
fact, or whether the formal processes of rea-
soning will yield a result thus or so. If there
is in fact or reason nothing against belief, and
the great needs of life call for belief, then be-
lief becomes not only a demand of reason but
a behest of duty. And with the field of belief
open the obligation is to seek the best beliefs.
One belief is not by any means necessarily as
good as another. One belief is larger than
another, or finer than another, or in closer
touch with the facts of history or experience
than another, or more in harmony with the
total spiritual nature than another. If be-
liefs are instruments for the upbuilding of the

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life, the wise man searches for the best instru-
ment. The truth of belief is like the truth of
an instrument; an instrument is true when it
is made of the finest obtainable material, when
the workmanship on it is honest and sincere,
when it comes nearest perfection in accom-
plishing its proper work. Or, more clearly
still, the truth of a belief is like what we might
call the truth of a food. A food could be
called true if it is really a product containing
the great elements on which the body depends,
and when it is so prepared as to nourish life.
The body is a part of the physical universe. It
thrives on the foods which most deeply con-
nect it with the universe. The soul is a part
of the spiritual universe. If it thrives on be-
liefs, it must do so because these beliefs con-
tain the elements out of which the spiritual
universe is constituted. But there are foods
and foods and beliefs and beliefs. Some foods
and some beliefs are clearly more truly of the
basic materials of the universe than are others
and some are more wisely prepared than
others. A moral imperative lies back of the
search for the best beliefs.

Furthermore, in the search for the best be-
liefs the demands of the moral life are to be
used as the guiding light. If we are to have

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THE INCREASE OP FAITH

beliefs, we must have the best beliefs, and by
best beliefs we mean the morally best. It is in
obedience to a sure moral insight that the his-
tory of theology is a story of the progressive
nioralization of theology. As soon as men
have attained to a fresh moral insight they
have dared to attribute this to the Divine
Being as a part of his character. They have
believed that these insights are in a profound
sense a part of the self-revelation of God to
men. The story of the progress of moral think-
ing is in any case interesting, but, as we have
so often said, we are not especially concerned
with the precise steps by which the insights
come. If they come because growing material
needs or advancing material prosperity make
demand for a fuller thought of God, well and
good, if only the insight stands in its own
right after it does come. The guiding rule of
religious thinking might well be phrased as an
assumption that nothing is too good to believe
about God.

We must be careful as we follow out this
leading of increasing moral insight lest we be-
come uncharitable toward beliefs of an earlier
day. It is easy for us to speak of ourselves
as the people and to fancy that moral under-
standing will die with us. We must remem-

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ber that a good man is a good man in whatever
age he lives, that the central element in a
moral character is a good will, and that the
larger knowledge of ethical values comes out
of following the dictates of good will toward
the larger interpretations of increasing knowl-
edge. There should never be any reflection on
the ancient saints in our speech about growing
moral insight. The problem is similar to that
of our relation to the wise men of other times.
We know more than Plato, but it would
hardly be a mark of superior wisdom to say
that we are wiser than Plato. We may know
more truth than he knew, but we are not apt
to be greater lovers of the truth than he.
WTith this caution before us we pass to some
consideration of the progressive moralization
of the idea of God.

Take, now, the thought of the increasing
sense of obligation which obtains in our day
and see how this is being applied to our con-
ception of God. We have spoken of the obliga-
tions of power. We are coming to emphasize
the obligations which must be upon one who
holds in his hands the forces of the universe.
We preach the obligations of possession. The
man who has control of the industrial forces
of a time has vast obligations, but what are

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

these obligations as compared to the obliga-
tions of control of a world? We insist upon
the obligations of leadership of armies or of
States, but what are these responsibilities com-
pared to the responsibilities of creatorship?
Human beings are not in this world by their
own choice. None of us had a vote on the ques-
tion as to whether he would come or not. And
when we awake to consciousness here we find
ourselves in rather a difficult plight. We are
not creatures endowed with merely passive
sensibilities, nor are we able outright to shape
our destinies. We have, however, enough
freedom to make shipwreck possible. We are
confronted by the most grievous inequalities
of fortune between persons and between dif-
ferent periods of our own careers. And just
about the moment we feel ourselves in position
to accomplish something worth while we are
called from earth. Say all we please about
human responsibility, the divine responsibility
is greater still. God must be looked upon, in
the light of our increasing understanding of
obligation, as the most obligated Being in the
universe. If he has not the power to control
for moral purposes the forces of the universe,
he must stand condemned by moral reason for
ever having undertaken such an enterprise as

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the universe. If he has the power, he must use
it. The history of religious thinking shows
that the moral insight of the race has always
recognized this obligation, each age express-
ing it in the language of its own time. Accord-
ingly, the Almighty has been conceived of as
discharging faithfully the obligations which
are upon him through the possession of power.
If men ever thought of the devil as robbed of
his due by what God had done for men, they
thought of God himself as discharging what-
ever obligation was due the devil. If God was
thought of as a feudal Lord whose dignity had
been affronted beyond the power of mankind
to make reparation, God himself must make
reparation. If any sort of a substitute must
pay a penalty for sin because of the inade-
quacy of any offering which man might make,
God must provide the substitute. If a tribute
must be paid to the dignity of the government
of the universe by some one worthier than
man, the problem must be solved by God him-
self. If moral influences are to be set at work
for men by some force higher than the human,
God must set the forces to work. It all comes
down to this, in a word, that God is under
obligation to exert every means in his power
to help men use aright the boon of freedom

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which has been coinpulsorily bestowed upon
them.

Then there are the obligations of knowledge
which we look upon as binding upon God.
While we insist strenuously that there must
be no abatement of the moral law, the increase
of our moral insight leads us to larger charity
in our attitude toward men. We do not min-
imize the ill desert of the evil will, but the more
we know of men the more we are inclined to
charity. The dependence of choices upon en-
vironmental conditions and upon hereditary
tendencies and upon the physical condition,
the limitations which come with inadequate
knowledge or deficient imagination — all these
deter us from hasty judgment, especially as
to the motives of men. Likewise we insist
that the judgment of God must rest down
upon full knowledge, that his attitude can
never be determined by anything other than
the full light. Hence we hold ourselves in
readiness to see many earthly judgments re-
vised and many verdicts set aside. The doc-
trine that has in any other than a merely prac-
tical sense put judgment in the hands of men
is looked upon as little short of blasphemy.
The final destiny of men is in the hands of
the God who knows, and he must act out

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the responsibilities which come with knowl-
edge.

Finally, there must be upon God the obliga-
tion to sympathy. If we are to cast ourselves
with self-abandonment into the work of up-
lifting men, much more must he. There
is no room in the moral universe for a
merely philanthropic God. God cannot be
looked upon merely as a Benefactor. He
must come to men himself. If he gives
gifts, he must be in the gifts. If we are not to
fall into the evil of impersonalism, he must
not fall into that evil. He must not look at
men as "masses," or "humanity," or "man-
kind." He must stand toward men in the re-
lation of "Father" and "Friend." He must
be interested in men, not for what he is to get
out of them, but for what they are in them-
selves. If an obligation of this sort is upon
us, it is much more upon God. He must fill
human life to the full with his sympathy.

It is from the standpoint of this manifold
obligation that we must approach the moral
basis of the incarnation. The glory of the doc-
trine of the incarnation is that God has freely
taken the burden of human life upon his own
heart. But it does not detract from this glory
to teach that this free gift of love bases down

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

upon moral obligations. God has with love
and with passionate enthusiasm come as
deeply into men's lives as it is possible for him
to come. He has discharged and does dis-
charge with solemn joy the moral obligations
of creatorship and fatherhood. He is the
leader of all in self-sacrifice; this is the glory
of the cross. We can easily lose ourselves in
theological intricacies when we attempt the-
ories of Christology and atonement, but we
must not lose sight of the clear moral aim
which the framers of the theories — in so far
as they have met any widespread demand at
all — have had at heart. They have been anx-
ious to show that God is moral above all
others, that, having placed heavy responsibili-
ties upon men, he takes the heaviest responsi-
bilities upon himself, that in Christ and the
cross he has laid bare his inner thought to
show men that in the realest and profoundest
sense he is with men.

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THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

In the old days a wise Christian leader
counseled his followers to adorn the doctrine
of the Lord Jesus. Throughout the centuries
there has been a real, though for the most part
half-conscious, tendency to act out the impulse
back of the apostle's advice. The aesthetic or
artistic impulse has led to most notable crea-
tions in the manifestation of religious spirit.
We have only to instance the subjects of many
of the world's greatest paintings and orations
to prove this statement, and both church
architecture and church ritual bear witness
to the force of the same impulse.

We are liable to grave misunderstanding
when we speak of the significance of an in-
crease of a discernment of right form or of a
sense of beauty for religious insights. Still,
the growth and improvement of what might be
called the artistic impulse really make for
the betterment of theological statement. To
begin with a consideration which is not

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

directly artistic, the progress of mechanical
invention helps us to see the need of right
form, not, indeed, for purposes of aesthetic
gratification merely, but for the sake of in-
creasing effectiveness. Quite often the curve
of greatest beauty proves to be the curve of
greatest strength. But even from the stand-
point of effectiveness alone it is essential that
an inventor work toward an effective form.
The inventor may have before him two pieces
of glass of precisely the same quality. One is
plain glass and the other is the lens of a tele-
scope. The lens is a lens simply because it has
been given a certain form. Its curve has been
fashioned with mathematical exactness. Prop-
erly mounted and turned toward the sky, it
will reveal to the observer something worth
seeing. A recent book of three hundred pages
describing inventors at work gives over half
its space simply to this consideration — that
the process of invention has to do not so much
with an attempt at creating new materials, or
even new combinations of materials, as with
the change in the form of old and familiar ma-
terials.

As it is in the realm of material invention
so is it also in the realm of literary invention.
In fact, a production can hardly be called

170

THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

literary until the material has been thrown
into the right form. A scientist may make a
great and far-reaching discovery, but his dis-
covery does not become effective in shaping
the thinking of the people until, as in the case
of Darwin's Origin of Species, for example, it
is stated with some degree of literary skill. In
the realm of social investigation we have at
our hand to-day masses of facts terrifically
dynamic in their possible power to arouse
public attention, or even to start revolution.
But these facts lie in unshaped masses in gov-
ernment reports, in papers read before learned
societies, in articles published in technical
journals. What is needed is the appearance of
some artist who can shape the material into
effective form. Now, the progress of theolog-
ical thinking in our time is somewhat a
progress in the shaping of material. We have
not discovered much that is altogether new.
We have, however, learned how to change em-
phasis and how to omit altogether, and how to
cast aside the nonessentials, and how to fash-
ion the essentials toward a statement with a
cutting edge. The call of the preacher espe-
cially is not so much to be an original au-
thority in scientific, or philosophic, or social,
or even theological investigation. The au-

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

thorities in these various spheres are more apt
to be the men of the schools; but the men of
the schools are not apt to be conspicuously suc-
cessful as masters of effective popular state-
ment. It remains for the preacher to take the
masses of fresh material which are delivered
to him almost daily and to shape these into
effectiveness. To do this work as it ought to
be done will quite likely be enough of a task
for any man called to the pulpit. Intellectual
ability shows itself not more in the discovery
of truth than in the cogent and well-balanced
statement of the truth.

Lest we appear to lay too much stress on a
phase of religious effort which may seem to
have to do merely with the technic of the
preacher's work, we hasten to call attention to
the fact that the obligation here is not merely
professional and artistic but moral as well.
We hear a vast deal to-day about the honesty
of religious teachers. We are told of the obli-
gation upon the religious teacher to be honest
with himself. We urge again what we have
said in a previous lecture about the need of the
leader's being honest to his followers. To be
honest to the follower implies a willingness to
fashion and refashion a statement of truth till
it cannot fail of a true effect. The material in

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THE ADORNMENT OP DOCTRINE

the statement may be true: the form of the
statement may be such as to produce only
falsity in the impression. From this point of
view it might fairly be said that some men
whose utterances are always true in their
matter are always untrue in their form. The
insignificant truth is made untrue when it is
treated with as much emphasis as the im-
portant truth. Putting truths all on the same
plane comes in the end to positive distortion.
Yet the distortion may come not from pur-
posive desire but from indifference to perspec-
tive and proportion. Among the religious
thinkers of an earlier generation there used
to be considerable debate as to the conditions
of salvation. There was much support of the
doctrine that no man could be summarily cast
out of the kingdom who had never heard Christ
preached. This was obviously a provision in
behalf of the heathen. As soon, however, as
an expedient of this sort was resorted to in
behalf of the heathen the question arose as to
what others had not heard Christ preached.
Some took the ground that even faithful at-
tendants at churches had not heard Christ
preached. We need not revive this ancient
debate to see the force of such a contention.
A religious teacher might draw a portrait of

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

Christ in lines every one of which might be
true. Yet the lines might be so put together
— or so not put together — as to result in
caricature rather than in portraiture.

All this, however, may make theological
statement seem more of an artificial creation
than true statements are. Real revelations
grow after the manner of organisms. The
supreme beauty in this world is the beauty of
a growing life. If the life within be full and
free, the outward expression is apt to take on
beauty of form to correspond. If the inner
life is cramped or scantily nourished, the out-
ward expression is distorted or deformed.
The organs of a growing life make a twofold
appeal to us — an appeal because of their effec-
tiveness and an appeal because of their own
inherent beauty. The erect body, for example,
is stronger than the bent body. There is more
chance to breathe, better distribution of the
weight to be carried, an opportunity for the
sight to range ahead and on both sides. The
impoverished organism, on the other hand,
has not strength enough to hold itself erect,
and through this lack of strength it loses the
chance to gain more strength. In a sense
beauty may be said to belong to the very life
of a growing religious organism. Beauty of

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THE ADORNMENT OP DOCTRINE

form is the natural expression of a living re-
ligious insight.

In the second place, the beauty of a state-
ment— its correctness of form and its exact-
ness of symmetry — makes an effective appeal
on its own account. Quite apart from the fact
that statements of truth can be put in effective
form simply for the sake of effectiveness as
statements, they should be given correct form
for the sake of the appeal which the beauty
itself makes. The masters of theological state-
ment have always known how to put this
impress of beauty upon their work. We some-
times wonder how it has come about that sys-
tems of philosophy have lasted beyond their
day into times in which they are not altogether
useful. We sometimes speak of succeeding
generations as under the spell of systems of an
earlier day. We speak more wisely than we
realize. The spell is the spell cast by a genius
for construction. The thinker has thrown his
thought into form that makes it unescapably
imposing. There is a unity about the system
and a symmetry in its development which
make men turn back to gaze. We can no more
escape the charm of some of these systems
than we can escape the charm of the Pyramids
or the Parthenon.

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

The recognition of this truth is ever before
the higher order of religious prophet. He
strives to adorn his doctrine. He knows, of
course, that adornment is not something put
on from without; it is the movement from
within of a living principle. The prophet
knows that when the principle comes to high-
est expression it will minister to the highest
in men. We have said that present-day philos-
ophy seems to be moving on the sound prin-
ciple that in our quest for truth we are to
follow the lead of the highest and best in our-
selves. We may justly feel that the craving
for the highest and best will not be satisfied
until the truth which in itself seems highest
and best has been joined to highest and best
statement.

Prominent among the factors which to-day
are making for the adornment of doctrine is
the growth of a sense of restraint. We share
with others the alarm at the falling off in re-
ligious activities. We do not feel alarm, how-
ever, at the falling off of some forms of re-
ligious expression. It is sometimes claimed
that the religious spirit shows itself in an
utter abandonment of the life of the believer
to complete expression. This is true if by ex-
pression we are thinking of deeds of self-

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THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

sacrifice. Yet even here there are limitations
imposed by the sense of the fitness of things.
When we are thinking of religious expression
as taking the form of literary statement we
must give large part to the limitations im-
posed by the fitness of things.

There is to-day a growing sense of restraint
which tends to magnify the importance of the
normal and healthy in religious expression and
to prevent overemphasis on the morbid and
unhealthy. While there is truth in the claim
that art should be followed for art's own sake,
there is even deeper truth in the further claim
that nothing can be truly artistic which does
not have back of it a normal and healthy pur-
pose. It would be very hard for even a gifted
artist to make much of a subject which all the
world knew to be sickly or diseased. Certain
processes in nature are called morbid when
considered in relation to their bearing on hu-
man welfare. Certain dangerous growths, for
example, take place in the human organism
and in the end bring the organism to death.
The actual processes of these growths, when
viewed by the scientist, may move according
to the same bacteriological or physiological
laws as do the healthy processes. The micro-
scopic forms produced may be just as beau-

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

tiful in their tiny lines and as symmetrical
in their proportions as the forms which make
for health. If, however, an artist should try
to give expression to what he might call the
inherent beauty of a morbid growth, he would
find himself in difficulty the moment he tried
to secure an audience. Of course it may seem
that judging the sesthetic quality of a fact in
nature by its relation to human needs is arrant
egotism, but the world thus judges, neverthe-
less. If our contention be just in this illus-
tration, much more must it be just in the realm
of religious expression. The world will not
finally tolerate emphasis upon the unnatural
or the unhealthy in religious utterance.

Discerning critics have more than once
called attention to the element of restraint in
the gospel narratives. Think for a moment of
the story of the crucifixion as told by the evan-
gelists. Here was every opportunity for mor-
bid and harrowing treatment of ghastly de-
tails, an opportunity which later ages did not
fail to improve. In the gospel narratives the
dreadful event is passed over as quickly as
possible. Moreover, the few touches, swift as
they are, set before us not the horrible aspects
of the story but the spiritual significance.
This part of the gospels, by the way, is but

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little short of a literary miracle. The writers
very likely knew nothing about Greek re-
straint, but they had the spirit of restraint,
nevertheless. The glory about the cross of
Christ is a normal and healthy glory, the reve-
lation of that spirit of love which is forever at
the heart of things. The writers so brush
away the dreadful as to leave the love of Christ
streaming forth unmistakably.

The movement away from the unhealthy
must bring about better spiritual conditions
both for society and for the individual. It is
to these back-lying conditions that we must
look as we think of the religious expression of
a particular time. We can best see this im-
provement by contrasting our own century
with some earlier centuries. How much
chance would monasticism, for example, have
of taking root in our time? We would not
disparage the good of monasticism. Many
benefits came forth from the system which
have been of lasting good to humanity. Quite
likely we could date many productive prin-
ciples of modern agriculturalism back to the
gardens of the monks. It was — though of
course in much later times — to Mendel the
monk that the world owed the long series of
experiments which resulted in the scientific

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formulation of the biological law of heredity.
But advantages like this are largely incidental.
We may at least say that in our day monasti-
cism on a large scale would be looked upon as
aberrant and unnatural. Here and there an
individual who has taken the vows of celibacy,
or who has even consecrated himself to the
life of a hermit, may give utterance to loftiest
religious expression; but, on the whole, cir-
cumstances which lie apart from the main
current of normal human life cannot be pro-
ductive of best religious statement.

As it is in the lives of communities so also is
it in the life of the individual. It may cause
almost a smile to say that our age has turned
away from habits of spiritual introspection.
This would seem to put the present-day con-
dition very mildly. It may cause astonish-
ment when a professedly religious teacher
declares that there is danger in religious intro-
spection. The danger does not seem to be
especially imminent in our time. But while
the movement away from introspection to-day
may be just an expression of indifference,
such a movement may rise from true religious
instinct. The needs of the individual soul
must certainly not be neglected. It is very
easy, however, for the devout believer to carry

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introspection to an unhealthy excess. The
more devout the believer the greater the
danger. Suppose a man should ask himself
at the close of each day's religious effort
whether during that day he had done all he
could for the advance of the kingdom. Ordi-
narily, this question is wholesome. It is very
easy to see, however, that the question might
be too frequently repeated. And too fre-
quently repeated, the question might easily
lead to morbidness. This danger is especially
imminent when the mind is given to self-
scrutiny as to its own sincerity, or as to the
signs of the presence of the divine within it-
self. Utterances born out of an unhealthy
mental state violate that sense of fitness which
should mark religious utterance. If we do
not directly discourage the habit of overmuch
religious introspection to-day, we at least favor
reticence in speech about such introspection.

The adornment of doctrine implies likewise
a restraint from any degree of exaggeration.
In a previous lecture we spoke of the increas-
ing emphasis upon simplicity of statement.
There we were emphasizing the need of sim-
plicity in statements addressed to the under-
standing of the vast masses of the people. It
is in order in the present connection to insist

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that simplicity of statement must characterize
religious utterance if that utterance is to min-
ister to the finest feelings of men. In the su-
preme crises of experience the great minds
seem by a certain innate perception to move
toward simplicity of expression. There is no
room in such minds at such times for anything
exaggerated or gaudy or spectacular. Mr.
Charles Francis Adams has a fine passage
concerning the bearing of Grant and Lee at
Appomattox. Mr. Adams points out that not
a single word was spoken by either actor in
the scene to detract from a quiet simplicity
which marked all the details of the momentous
transaction. When we think of the vast mean-
ing of the event we might at first glance feel
something of a craving for at least a touch of
the dramatic in the final scene. An immense
war had been fought through to an immense
victory on the one side and an immense defeat
on the other. The people of the North had
fought with the conviction that the destinies
of democracy were involved in the right issues
of the campaign. The people of the South had
sustained themselves through unparalleled
privations with the belief that they were fight-
ing for the sacred cause of liberty. The meet-
ing between the chief actors might well have

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been regarded as one upon which the after ages
would delight to look. Considerations like
these might have prompted the ordinary leader
to a little self-conscious posing. But there was
no posing. The reason was that the actual
leaders were far from ordinary. Without
purposely doing so they instinctively did what
the real fitness of things called for.

A passage in the Old Testament instructs
us that on the day of atonement the priests
laid aside their lavishly embroidered robes
and clad themselves in simple white. Some-
thing of the same restraint is becoming in ex-
pression which aims to deal with the highest
religious ideas. There are, indeed, splendid
flights of oratory and magnificent poems in
the Scriptures. But even in these the quality
of restraint is marked. If we were searching
for indications of inspiration in the Scrip-
tures, we might find that inspiration revealing
itself in a contrast between our Scriptures and
other scriptures written at substantially the
same times. Not only are the Hebrew Scrip-
tures healthier in moral tone than the others,
but there is a dignified restraint about the
former in contrast with the abandonment of
at least parts of the other. Abandonment has
its place in a Christian system, but the aban-

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

donment is never that of wantonness or reck-
lessness.

Insight into the true demands of the re-
ligious spirit also has a tendency to keep us
from the curious and artificial. Keligion is
in a sense profoundly natural. It is the out-
come of really primal feelings. Like every-
thing else, it has its merely curious phases,
and, like everything else also, it lends itself
to artificiality. But religion in its highest
reaches has very little place either for the
curious or the artificial. It may be that
a half-conscious perception of this truth
underlies present-day impatience with fine-
spun theological theories. In looking back
to the period of scholasticism, for example,
we are sorely tried at the over-systematiza-
tion of doctrinal statements. The teachers of
that day dwelt much on essences and sub-
stances and processions in dealing with the
divine nature. Each of these terms has very
likely something of vital meaning even for
present-day theology. But in medieval days
the terms were handled with an overelab-
oration which practically put them out of
touch with anything real in heaven or on earth,
though perhaps we would better say that such
expressions would suggest nothing real to us

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THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

to-day. Scholasticism did great work in show-
ing the futility of overcarefulness and punctil-
iousness in doctrinal exposition. The student
of philosophy will give all credit to the scho-
lastics for working out a terminology some of
which is lasting in value, and for fashioning
some philosophic tools whose usefulness we
have not yet outgrown ; but the curse of scho-
lasticism was and is its artificiality.

Many theological dogmas fall into disfavor
through being too complete. The very fact of
their completeness suggests the artificial. We
have no doubt that the so-called evangelical
churches would insist quite as strongly in
1912 as ever upon the religious truth which
must lie at the heart of the doctrine of the
Trinity. There is in this doctrine a suggestion
of fullness of moral life in the Divine which
the churches would not give up without a
struggle, or even after a struggle. But in
every church there is increasing unwillingness
to hear doctrines of the Trinity which are
overelaborate. We will not listen as com-
placently as did our fathers to discussions as
to just what the word "Person" means when
applied to the Persons of the Holy Trinity.
We would protest, on the one hand, against
any interpretation of the doctrine which would

185

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

empty it of vital significance; on the other
hand, we would turn away from a too com-
plete discussion, for example, of what the
different functions of the Persons of the
Trinity may be. No doubt very many logical
arguments may be adduced in discussions of
this kind. But the more logical the arguments
the more restless the listeners. To be over-
complete in such a field of theological discus-
sion jars upon our sense of what is really be-
coming and fitting. The celebrated divine
who fifteen or twenty years ago in discussing
the divinity of Christ established three main
propositions, namely, pleromatic divinity,
pleromatic humanity, and hypostatic union,
might be just as cogent in his logic now as
then, but he would hardly get much of a hear-
ing to-day. Thinkers of his kind might pro-
claim that this is because of the increasing in-
difference of our day to theological discussion.
But the objection to this sort of discussion
does not come from the indifferent. The in-
different are too indifferent even to object.
The protest comes from those who are really
interested in the statement of the religious
truth, but who instinctively shrink from a too
clearly artificial exposition of what at least
ought to be profoundly natural.

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The sense of restraint also is keeping us
back from some of the rougher and cruder ut-
terances of early days. We do not speak thus
with any desire to belittle the religious phrase-
ology of our fathers. We would give much if
we could put into some of our more refined ex-
pressions the mighty energy that rushed forth
from the speech of our fathers. So far as our
Methodist branch of the Church is concerned,
the fathers had little time for the refinements.
Methodism was born at a time when only the
most vigorous shaking could arouse the Eng-
lish nation from its lethargy. The sins of the
nation were drunkenness and licentiousness
and theft and murder; these were the evils
against which Methodism launched itself. In
assault on such sins there was scant room for
the niceties of religious speech. When Meth-
odism was transported to our country it made
its chief conquest in pioneer conditions. The
pioneer life is not a parlor life. Out of the
roughness of pioneer conditions came a rough-
ness of speech that was exactly fitted to the
time and place it was intended to serve. The
pioneer sins were apt to be rough sins, like
brawling and fist-fighting. The success of
men like Peter Cartwright lay in the fact that
they could attack pioneer conditions with in-

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

st rumen ts which reached and transformed the
pioneer. In the journal of Francis Asbury
are repeated references to his conviction that
he must be "dreadfully loud and alarming."
Quite likely he succeeded in being both. And
very surely the preaching that lacked the loud
and alarming quality would have been futile.
We must not forget that preaching is, after all,
an instrumental statement of the truth. In
estimating its success we must judge it by the
effect it produces. The glory of Methodism
has been the energy with which it pushed its
conquests on the frontiers. The leader in
these conquests was the pioneer preacher.
For him plainness of speech amounting to
roughness was an absolute necessity. The
roughness was not assumed. It was sincere,
coming out of a toughness of fiber begotten in
him by the conditions of which he was a part.

In what we say about this rough vigor we
do not mean to imply that there is not room
in modern preaching for such plainness of
speech. Thousands upon thousands of men
cannot understand anything else. Thousands
of men to-day are in sins as gross as any which
John Wesley saw. We are not to be classed
among those sensitive souls who shrink back
in horror when a preacher uses language which

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THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

may seem to the conventional to be very sensa-
tional. The success of some sensational
preachers arises out of the fact that what to
some persons seems sensationalism may meet
a real need. There are men in all ranks of
society whose real thinking is in essentially
coarse terms. The question which the evan-
gelistic preacher has to consider in presenting
the gospel to such minds is how to speak a
language which such men will understand.
The alternative is to throw out this rough
hempen rope or to let the men go down. In
the presence of such an alternative we can
even bring ourselves to endure a crudeness and
slanginess of speech, if this is the only speech
that the men to whom it is addressed can
understand. But there are limits here which
regard for the fitness of things and some meas-
ure of good sense ought to impose.

In Zion's Songster, a Collection of Hymns
and Spiritual Songs Usually Sung at Camp
Meetings and Also in Revivals of Religion,
published by J. and J. Harper in New York
in 1831, is the following hymn :

When the fierce north wind, with his airy forces,
Rears up the Baltic to a roaring fury,
And the red lightning with a storm of hail comes
Rushing amain down;

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

Now the poor sailors stand amazed and tremble,
While the hoarse thunder like a bloody trumpet,
Roars a loud onset to the gaping waters,
Quick to devour them.

Such shall the noise be, and the wild disorder,
If things eternal may be like these earthly;
Such the dire terror when the great archangel
Shakes the creation;

Tears the strong pillars of the vault of heaven,
Breaks up old marble, the repose of princes:
See the graves open and the bones arising!
Flames all around them!

Hark! the shrill outcries of the guilty wretches;
Lively bright horror and amazing anguish
Stare through their eyeballs, while the living worm lies
Gnawing within them.

Thoughts like old vultures prey upon their heartstrings,
And the smart twinges, when the eye beholds the
Lofty Judge frowning, and a flood of vengeance
Rolling before him.

Hopeless immortals, how they scream and shiver!
While devils push them to the pit wide-yawning,
Hideous and gloomy, to receive them headlong
Down to the center.

Stop here, my fancy (all away, ye horrid,
Doleful ideas!), come, arise to Jesus:
How he sits Godlike, and the saints around him
Throned, yet adoring!

Oh, may I sit there, when he comes triumphant,
Dooming the nations! then ascend to glory,
While our hosannas all along the passage
Shout the Redeemer.

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We do not know how large use was made
of this particular hymn; and it is fair to say
that this is not a sample of the phraseology or
imagery of the entire collection. Many of the
hymns in the book are the great hymns, which
will probably be used through the centuries.
Moreover, we recognize a rugged force in this
hymn, and we can feel something of the power
that it must have had with a congregation
eighty years ago. We recognize also the eter-
nal truth which is embodied in the hymn.
Apart, however, from the presence or absence
of poetic quality we could hardly think of this
hymn as likely to endure through any but a
special period of the Church's life. No matter
what the effectiveness of the stanzas may have
been in other days, we should hardly expect
much effectiveness from such style of compo-
sition to-day. In spite of all the extravagance
and exaggeration and crudeness of utterance
in the time in which we live, the most effec-
tive statement is apt to be restrained. Merely
for rhetorical purposes understatement is apt
to be quite as powerful as overstatement. The
passage which suggests by a touch here and
there is quite as productive of the right im-
pression as the passage which comes forth in
attempt at complete expression. When such

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

completeness is aimed at the impression finally
left is one of crudeness.

And all this leads up to the unwillingness
of some very worthy religious thinkers to at-
tempt to put some insights into speech at all.
Some truths are better suggested than defi-
nitely declared. We ask indulgence for re-
peated harking back to the principle of effec-
tiveness in a discussion which professedly aims
at emphasis on the fitness of things in itself,
but the fit expression is, after all, the effective
expression. Some truths or facts are too great
to be described. We lack as yet the speech
instruments for their description. The best
we can do is to point a learner toward the
mood in which the significance of the truth can
be sensed rather than declared. One of the
sublimest passages in Victor Hugo is his de-
scription of the battle of Waterloo in Les
Miserables. The description is an attempt at
definite and measurably complete setting
forth of the battle. Upon one type of reader
the effect is no doubt overwhelming. But an-
other reader feels, after all, the incompleteness
of the labored attempt at completeness. A
student of Thackeray has somewhere remarked
that perhaps quite as effective an impression
of the greatness of Napoleon is to be obtained

192

THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

from the few references to Napoleon on the
pages of Vanity Fair as from any direct de-
scription by other writers of the battles of Na-
poleon. The significance of Waterloo is al-
most as clearly seen by Thackeray's story of
what was passing in Brussels on the day of the
battle as by the direct statement of the prog-
ress of the battle itself. Yet Thackeray's
chapter has its force merely in suggestion.
From some incidents of confusion on the
streets of Brussels — incidents that could be
fully described — we can imagine that tumult
and shouting of the captains at the front which
could never be described.

Likewise in the realm of religious life there
are some experiences which are beyond de-
scription. There are some truths which can-
not be compassed in theoretical statement.
Take, for example, that final setting forth of
the love of God which we have in the cross of
Christ. Why is it that we feel so uncertain
about theories of atonement? Is it because we
are indifferent to the love of God obviously
set on high in the cross of Christ? Very likely
the cross means more to-day to devout believ-
ers than it has ever meant. Just because it
means more there is distrust of theory. No
one theory is adequate, and after all the the-

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

ories have been added together and the good
of each accepted at its highest value we still
feel that the formulations are inadequate. We
look upon each theory as the attempt of a par-
ticular age to phrase that age's best thought
of God in the highest and best utterance. But
the voice of no one age is complete, and the
voices of all the Christian centuries are not
complete. And beyond all this anything which
is a theory of the cross cannot in the nature
of things be complete, for the cross is more
than theory. Anything which has to do with
divine moral passion is more than theory. So
while we frame for ourselves attempts at scien-
tific formulation of the doctrine of the cross,
we do so with the inner reservation that these
formulations must be taken as mere sugges-
tions or adumbrations of a truth which we
cannot express. The greater part is the unex-
pressed part. The sense of fitness prevents us
from trying to express the truth too com-
pletely. There is a vast realm here which is
to be explored by reverent and reticent senti-
ment rather than by scientific and logical ex-
pertness. In this realm there is something
almost irreverent, something almost imperti-
nent about too definite a statement. Henri
Bergson in his Creative Evolution makes the

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THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

point that as soon as we harden a living ex-
perience down into articulate logical state-
ment we have moved away from the peculiarly
living quality of the experience itself. Berg-
son finds fullness of life only in the actual
moment of living. As soon as we get far
enough away from the experience to talk about
it we have taken a step away from life, and by
the time we have reached logical articulation
the living quality is almost gone. However
this may be as concerns life in general, Berg-
son is on the path toward a truth as concerns
religious life. The language cannot keep
pace with the life.

This truth becomes all the more apparent
when we think of the relation of the indi-
vidual soul to God. There is always need
of testimony to the presence of God from
lips touched by the power of God. There is
need of fuller public confession of sin on the
part of many who profess to be disciples. It
would do the world good to have fuller glimp-
ses into the inner life of the saints. The or-
dinary man would be helped if he could open
the closet door of the saint and see the saint
upon his knees. Vast benefit would accrue to
believers everywhere if they could know how
widespread is the fact of communion between

195

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

the greatest lives and the Divine Life. But
there is in these experiences themselves an ele-
ment that transcends speech, though we are
not now referring to experiences that are
transcendently mystical. There are some ex-
periences which are common to all; any intel-
ligent Christian can understand them; but
there are other experiences which are peculiar
to the individual. These experiences partake
of the nature of confidences between the finite
soul and the Infinite Soul. They have a sacred-
ness like the sacredness of the intercourse be-
tween two friends of high and refined feeling
who respect each the confidences of the other.
We may well be thankful for the emphasis
upon the need of friendship with God. We
hear much about the love of God, but love in
the sense of mutual affection is possible be-
tween two persons who may not be able to
commune together in the full sense possible to
friends. We hear much about men as children
of God in the sense that men are the little chil-
dren of God. We should be grateful for the
growing emphasis on that conception of men as
the sons of God which implies the possibility
of that maturer companionship which we think
of as holding between friends. Now, friend-
ship does not show itself altogether in out-

196

THE ADOKNxMENT OF DOCTKINE

right utterance. Understanding between two
friends may be so complete that frequent
speech is not necessary. Two friends may be
separated by the width of the globe, with no
communication passing between them, and yet
each may feel at every instant that he thor-
oughly understands and sympathizes with the
other. While we believe that God is always
near us, there are times when in a sense he
seems to be at a distance. He may for the
moment seem to hide himself, or his ways may
be past finding out; still, there is possible for
the saint even at such moments an unshaken
trust which is like the trust which holds be-
tween friends. These experiences cannot well
be talked about, but the very fact that there
are such experiences, and, we believe, such ex-
periences in increasing number, makes an
atmosphere in which restrained and dignified
religious expression seems more and more
satisfyingly beautiful.

We have made much use of the term "re-
straint." We would rather, after all, insist
that as we stand in the presence of what is fine
in itself the very fineness may make us realize
the impotence and futility of our expression.
Suppose we stand before a great picture. Any
attempt to describe the picture will fall short

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

of the picture itself. We have all noticed the
silence that prevails in art galleries. The
silence is fitting. Loudness and volubility are
out of place in the presence of a surpassing
work of art. So with any manifestation of
transcendent genius. A celebrated American
man of letters has told of the evening when
with a companion he went over from Cam-
bridge to Boston to hear Edgar Allan Poe read
a new poem. Poe appeared before the au-
dience and announced that he would not read
a new poem, but one with which his hearers
were already familiar. There was at first a
rustle of disappointment in the audience, but
all became quiet as Poe started to read. For
the auditors perceived at once that Poe was
in the creative mood out of which the poem
had come. As Poe read on through the stanzas
his hearers realized that they were hearing a
genius at the very top of his power. When
the reading finished, the audience dispersed
with hardly any man speaking to his neighbor.
The two friends who had come over from Cam-
bridge walked back across the Charles without
the utterance of a word until they had reached
their home. The reason was not that any
mystic spell had been cast over the audience,
but, rather, that each appreciated so fully the

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THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

surpassing manifestation of genius that he
felt that any word would be out of place.

What, now, is a manifestation of literary
genius compared with a manifestation of a
spirit of nobility or of self-sacrifice in its
power to chain the attention of the world by
the very fineness of the deed itself? If we were
to drop out of literature and song the inspira-
tion which has come from the contemplation
of deeds fine in themselves, we would have
very little left. The traditions of armies and
navies which nations most fondly cherish are
not altogether those of splendid equipment or
of excellence in drill or of effectiveness of
onslaught on the field of battle. The mind of
the nation singles out some scene of outstand-
ing valor, some moment when a leader has
forgotten his own peril in the glory of aban-
donment to his cause, some instant when a
hero leaps to inevitable death for the sake of
his flag. These are the eternal moments and
the eternal scenes in the sense that they have
about them the quality of eternity. Or some
man gives his life for his fellows in time of
plague or surrenders his place to another in
the lifeboat of a sinking ship. These are the
fine things, but they are fine beyond all de-
scription or expression.

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The world is coming more and more to see
the fineness of the kingdom of God as a thing
in itself. Even on the theoretical and specu-
lative side there is an element of protest
against atheism, for example, which is deeper
than logic. Our sense of balance presses for
a fuller universe than the atheist would give
us. We feel that the material must be bal-
anced by the spiritual. We feel that things
must not be left at loose ends, that there must
be Some One for whom and by whom the loose
ends are gathered up into some significant
meaning. We crave a universe with a fineness
of symmetry on its own account. We wish
for individual lives an opportunity to come to
fullness of proportion. We feel that the
quality of the universe must be protected by a
force that will give it an inherent nobility.
Especially do we crave some power in human
lives to make them really worthy ends in them-
selves.

As we read through the Gospels we find
abundant indications that Christ was think-
ing of his kingdom as a kingdom of ends in
themselves. He valued men not as invest-
ments, not as instruments altogether, but as
ends in themselves. He would have men serv-
ants of God, but after the men have done all

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THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

they can do as mere servants they are un-
profitable servants. Men come to themselves
when they come to be sons of God. Men have
value in the sight of God not because of what
they can do for God so much as because of the
fact that they can enter into appreciative com-
panionship with God. When we think of the
kingdom of heaven as an existence hereafter
we dream of a realm where things stand in
their own right and on their own account. In
our earthly sphere the instrumental phases of
existence necessarily engross our attention.
We are putting this and that together so as to
get something else. This, however, cannot be
the final phase. We long for a realm where
the fine things are valued simply for their own
fineness.

The words of Jesus are fine on their own
account. His life was a life fine on its own
account. Both his teaching and his life come
to their climax in the cross, and the spirit of
the cross is fine on its own account. A dis-
tinguished philosopher once said that Chris-
tianity may be only a beautiful dream, but
that if so, it is the most beautiful dream that
has ever come to the minds of men. We be-
lieve that Christianity is more than a dream.
The insistent pressure that would make Chris-

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

tianity more truly actual is a craving for the
fitness of things. We cannot be permanently
satisfied with times that are out of joint.
Somewhere we must reach unity and consist-
ency and symmetry and fineness. The idea of
God as set before us in Christianity is a beau-
tiful idea and reaches the height of its beauty
in the revelation of Christ.

Jesus once spoke of the kingdom of heaven
as like unto a merchantman seeking goodly
pearls. We are glad that Jesus spoke of his
kingdom as pearl. He used other figures of
speech to set forth the predominantly useful
aspects of the kingdom. He is the Physician
who will heal sick souls. He is the Bread of
Life upon whom all may feed. The kingdom
of the Cross is medicine for disease and bread
for the hungry. But it is pearl also. When
we think of pearl we lose sight of the more
practical orders of usefulness. The pearl min-
isters not to disease and not to hunger, except
to that nobler hunger for what is fine in itself.
The teaching of Jesus, the cross of Christ, the
revelation of God — all this is pearl. We shall
always need the presentation of the cross as
redemption from sin and as sustenance for
laboring, struggling souls. Out of the doctrine
of the cross as redemption and nourishment

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THE ADORNMENT OF DOCTRINE

there will come increasingly forceful puttings
of the doctrine of the kingdom. All these put-
tings, however, will be inadequate if there is
not also some realization of the pearl-like
beauty of the gospel. The man who sees this
beauty may not be as outspoken as the prophet
who would bring the gospel to sick souls, or as
the leader who would minister to the massive
material needs of men. But he will be no less
effective than they. He will bring to men an
atmosphere of appreciation of the beauty of
the gospel, an atmosphere which will inevi-
tably mellow and chasten the hardness and
barrenness of much doctrinal statement.

To conclude: anything which begets a real
sense for and appreciation of the beautiful
will make for the increase of faith. The crav-
ing for beauty is so much a part of us that it
must come from the divine source of beauty.
Men will not long allow the good and the true
and the beautiful to stand in separate spheres.
The beautiful is so closely linked to the good
and true that if the beautiful is given a chance
to reveal itself, it will reveal also something of
the true and good.

203

VI
THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

One of the striking features of theological
discussion during the past fifty years has been
the renewed prominence given to Christ. The
biblical studies have as their net result the
teaching that all parts of the Scriptures are
to be judged by the spirit of Christ as the test
and standard of their final worth. The Church
in present-day theory has its value as an in-
strument for getting the Christ spirit and the
Christ thought and the Christ life into effective
working relationship with the forces of the
world. Any theory or system which aims at
the uplift of the world takes on new power
when it can claim for itself the sanction of
the Christian spirit or can baptize itself with
the name of Christ.

This prominence of Christ must be due to
the satisfaction of demands arising out of hu-
man needs. We cannot feel that Christ has
in any artificial fashion been pushed to the
front. His doctrine and deed and spirit must

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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

minister to the needs of to-day and must
satisfy some imperious demands. What are
some of these demands, and how do preaching
and teaching Christ satisfy them?

In the first place, Christ satisfies the de-
mand for some final fixity, at least of mean-
ing, in the unceasing flow and transformation
of the universe. An impression which we
bring back from scientific study is that in the
natural world all is movement and change.
In our own bodies we live through an inces-
sant storm of change. Organs which seem
part of our very selves are renewed day by day.
All organic nature sweeps along from change
to change with incredible swiftness. Even
classifications of forms which we yesterday
looked upon as hard-and-fast are now seen to
be merely provisional and temporary. If we
think we can find fixity even in the inorganic
realm, we find that we must correct our expec-
tations. The physicist tells us that the most
inert masses beneath our feet are throbbing
with energies which constantly change their
direction, and the chemist smiles when we ex-
press our naive belief that the elements are
necessarily final and must remain as they now
are forever.

We are aware that this is no new problem.

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

The Greeks wrestled with the puzzle of change
and fixity. But the problem is really vaster
for us to-day than for the Greeks. The ma-
terial universe is much more overwhelming.
The distances are longer and the stretches of
time are measured in terms which would have
staggered the Greeks. We must give up the
attempt to find any really fixed point in the
physical system itself. What seems to us to
be permanent is only activity repeated accord-
ing to a law which calls for repetition. The
permanence of any phase of the physical sys-
tem is like the permanence of a flame which
may stand for a time at a given height and
burn with a given intensity, but which, never-
theless, is in constant movement. The slight-
est change in any one of a dozen forces work-
ing through the flame will modify its intensity
or its color, or extinguish it altogether. The
apparent solidity even of a mountain is, when
viewed across the stretch of a geological
period, largely illusive, depending upon the
steadiness of forces which race along with
vast speed. Somewhere, we know, there must
be a relatively permanent factor standing
across this flow of things. Else we never
could become aware that there is a flow.
Existence would be sliced into inconceiv-

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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

ably thin sections, each of which would
perish as soon as it was born. Familiarity
with the problem of knowledge shows us
that the permanent factor must be in the
realm of spirit. Without entering into the
metaphysics of psychological existence, we
know that there must be within ourselves some
power to abide from moment to moment, some
power to weave complexity into unity, some
memory to gather up the past and make it
live in consciousness. We do find in the very
act of knowing some ability in ourselves to
stand across the stream of change and to know
the stream as a stream.

But this does not help us much. To begin
with, change enters into the very heart of our
inmost life. We are the same that we were
when we were children, and yet we are not the
same. Our spiritual powers rise to strength
and sink to decay. More significant still, our
ideals know both increase and loss. The social
institutions of mankind, the ideas which fash-
ion man's companionships with his fellows,
his conceptions of religion — all these are sub-
ject to influences which lift them up and cast
them down. Both the realm of nature and
the inner life of individuals and communities
offer little in the way of a permanent resist-

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

ance to the stream of changes in the midst of
which we live.

It is in Christianity that we find any meas-
ure of relief from the dizziness of contemplat-
ing the world of change. The relief is spir-
itual. We come at last upon an idea of God
and an idea of man which brings at least a
measure of meaning into the vast procession
upon which we gaze. The theistic metaphy-
sician arrives at the end of his reasonings at
the idea of a God who founds change without
himself being involved in change. The theist
holds that God is above change, not in the
sense that change means nothing to him, but
in the sense that change brings nothing to
him of either increase or loss of power. Men
are above change in the sense that they are
able to hold in consciousness the varying in-
stants of the stream long enough to under-
stand the meaning of the movement, but men
are in change in the sense that they are under
the law of development and are dependent
upon the changes of the universe for the at-
tainment of their own fullest life. While
carrying forward the changes of the uni-
verse, God is above change in the sense
of possessing power to keep the entire stream
before his mind and to withstand any suction

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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

of the stream which would draw him into its
current. We are not, however, so much con-
cerned at this juncture with the God of the
mere theist as with the God of the Christian.
Christ set before men an ideal of an unvary-
ing love at the heart of the universe. He did
not pretend to construe this love in terms of
theoretical statement. He simply told of the
love of the Father in heaven, whose love fail-
eth not, and he set this love on high in his own
life and death. There is a sense in which even
this ideal of Christ changes, but it changes in
a fixed direction. It changes in the sense
that men understand it better as the years
go by. The love of God knows no change,
but the heart of man reaches after and
attains unto that love by rhythmic pulsings.
God is Love. God is the Father of men.
Christ's ideal is that men should come to such
purity of heart that they can enter into com-
panionship with God forever. Our thought of
God and of Christ and of man is under the law
of change, but the change is in a fixed direc-
tion from glory to glory.

Again, there is a real though perhaps uncon
scious demand for Christ to-day — that is to
say, for the thought and deed and spirit of
Christ set before us in the New Testament —

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

as a supplement and corrective for the results
of the scientific method in the study of the
Scriptures. We are not likely to overempha-
size the importance of modern biblical study
for the better understanding of the Bible.
These studies have given the Book new vital-
ity. They have helped us to discern a new
permanence in both the Old and New Testa-
ments and to cast out the incidental and non-
essential. We see as never before the trend of
the old national life of the Jews toward Christ,
the satisfaction of their hopes and of the hopes
of the world in Christ, and the mighty mo-
mentum of the early apostolic enthusiasm.
One of the greatest achievements of modern
science is the success which has followed the
application of the scientific method to scrip-
tural study. Even where the students of the
Scriptures have been somewhat hostile to the
claims of orthodox Christianity the final re-
sults have been good. The most hostile critic
has often brought forth a theory worthy of
consideration, and the discussion of the theory
has put the Church on the path of a truth
whose existence the hostile critic may not of
himself have suspected.

Very little harm has been done by the hos-
tile critic of the Scriptures. Some harm is

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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

continually wrought by the student who is an
exponent of the scientific method and is noth-
ing else. Such a student is apt to look upon
the Scriptures merely as an intellectually con-
trived mechanism. He does not sense the
vividness and warmth of the life which plays
across the pages of the Scriptures; nor does
he often enough reflect that the Scriptures
were written by human beings. Dealing with
the Book thus as a merely intellectual contri-
vance, he may reach all manner of astounding
conclusions. If he finds passages in a scrip-
tural book which seem to him to be contradic-
tory to each other, he will have it that the
passages must have come from different
periods of history or have been written by
different hands. If he discovers analogies be-
tween scriptural accounts and accounts in
other literatures which are evidently solar
myths, he is apt to conclude at once that the
scriptural narratives are largely solar myths.
He forgets that it is perfectly possible to move
even through current history and resolve
many of the men of our own time into solar
myths! Students of the curious in literature
will remember that an acute Frenchman once
wrote a satire to prove that Napoleon Bona-
parte was a sun myth. Napoleon had been

211

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

dead only a few years when the satire was
written, but the author proved conclusively
that the Corsican wTas a myth. Napoleon, for
example, prevailed in the south, as in Egypt,
and lost in the north, as in the Russian cam-
paign. The sun likewise prevails in the south
and loses strength in the north. This argu-
ment is fully as conclusive as the argument
that Jacob must be regarded as a sun myth
because on one occasion the sun rose upon
him ! We would not deny the worth of scien-
tific study which proceeds upon the principle
of analogy, but we would insist that scientific
study must be supplemented and corrected by
an understanding of the motives and proc-
esses of real life. The method of the division
and reassignment of scriptural documents be-
cause of differences discovered in passages
which we have thought of as constituting a
unified whole is fruitful. But the differences
must be really significant. If we find side by
side allusions to customs of a particular time
and allusions to customs of two centuries
later, we know that the document cannot have
been written at the period of the earlier cus-
toms. Or, if the ideas in the different parts
of a single document are widely divergent
from each other, the parts must clearly have

212

THE DEMAND FOE CHRIST

come from differing periods. But so far as
minor differences are concerned, these can
easily be found in the works of a single author.
Men speak now with one set of phrases and
now with another. They become possessed of
certain ideas which hold them for a time, and
then they are captivated by another set. We
would not have to go far into the authenticated
reports of speeches delivered in this year of
nineteen hundred and twelve to discover the
most glaring contradictions in the utterances
of this or that public leader. A merely in-
tellectualistic critic could on the basis of these
utterances split more than one public char-
acter to-day into at least a dozen characters.

All this is true of biblical study in general.
When we come to the study of the Gospels we
must be careful to supplement the scientific
method with genuine appreciation of the spirit
of Christianity. Some students in our own
day have made a good deal of stir by profess-
ing to have proved that Jesus never existed.
The reasoning may seem very conclusive to
readers of a certain type. The best corrective
against such excess is in an attempt to seize
the spirit of the gospel narrative concerning
Jesus — to take the portrait just as it stands
and try to realize the spiritual content, to

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

attempt to understand the implications of
Christ's doctrine of God and of man. When
the Gospels are approached thus we have a
sense as of having come into touch with some-
thing actual and real. If the Scripture is
studied by a man who is trying to order his
life according to the spirit of the New Testa-
ment, such a man has a corrective against the
excesses of the purely scientific method like
the corrective which contact with real life
always affords.

The scientific student becomes very im-
patient with the popular indifference to some
of his theories concerning the beginnings of
Christianity. He wonders that even intelli-
gent Christians do not seem to appreciate the
results of his investigation. The popular im-
patience is not with the scientific method as
such. People in general recognize the virtue
of that method. The indifference arises out
of the fact that there is on the part of the
Church as a whole a general knowledge of
Christ and a general demand for him. In
specific items this knowledge and demand need
correction, but likewise the specific findings
of the scientific student need correction by a
general appreciation of Christ's thought of
God and of man and of his setting on high of

214

THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

that thought in his own life and death. The
real dangers in the scientific study of the
Scriptures are the dangers of scientific study
anywhere, the dangers which beset the special-
ists. If it is true that the specialist in me-
chanics or medicine or law is safe only as he
is familiar with the general and fundamental
truths which lie at the base of his science in
common with other kindred sciences, so it is
also true that the scientific student of the
Scriptures is likely to lose himself and lead
others astray if he has not that power to see
truth steadily and to see it whole which should
mark the thinking of the Christian disciple.

Lest all this may seem critical of biblical
students, we again profess our admiration for
the results of biblical study. We have said
that we do not fear the hostile critic of Chris-
tianity. May we be permitted also to say that
we do not much fear even the too technical,
over-specialized critic? For the general im-
pression which the Christ life as a whole makes
upon modern life as a whole, and the general
satisfaction of modern life with that impres-
sion, is a corrective and safeguard against any
evils likely to come from scientific biblical re-
search. The very extremeness of the utter-
ances of some biblical students has made a

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

fresh demand for the presentation of the
Christ-life and teaching in their large and
fundamental outlines. As a reaction from
overemphasis on microscopic detail there is
renewed demand to-day for emphasis on the
outline ideas of Christian teaching. After
minute study of the trees men are again call-
ing for a survey of the sweep and majesty of
the forest.

In our second lecture we sketched the prog-
ress of modern philosophy from materialism
through idealism to personalism and pragma-
tism. We here note the impulse which pre-
vails in practically all schools of philosophy
to attempt to connect philosophic systems
with the teaching and spirit of Christ. All the
world knows how Christian thinking has of
late been friendly to the evolutionary hy-
pothesis, and how welcome this hospitality on
the part of Christianity has been to the large
body of evolutionists themselves. The reason
is not merely that philosophic critics have
drawn a distinction between evolution as an
order of progress and evolution as a theory of
causation, and have pointed out that there is
nothing hostile to Christianity in evolution as
an order of progress. The scientific thinkers
realize the hold which Christ has on the life of

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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

the world. If such scientists are not them-
selves materialistically inclined they feel that
this grasp of Christ is one of the great cosmic
forces, and they feel also that evolution has
not come to its final statement so long as it
does not take account of this grasp. More-
over, the evolutionary process by itself pre-
sents rather a grim spectacle. We cannot
help being impressed with the enormity of the
cost with which the evolutionary factors do
their work. Many evolutionists, indeed, teach
that there is another aspect beyond mere strug-
gle for survival, namely, the struggle for the
life of others. But the emphasis on the strug-
gle for the life of others can hardly be effective
without reference to the teaching and spirit of
Christ. The evolutionary procession itself
raises many questions. From where to where
is the procession moving? Who is leading the
procession? What is the aim of the proces-
sion? Why should there be a procession?
WTho gives it marching orders and sets its
pace? Has the procession any halting place?
All these problems clamor for an answer.
There is no answer simply from contemplat-
ing the procession itself. Hence there is a
rather general agreement to-day that prin-
ciples at least measurably Christian must be

217

THE INCREASE OP FAITH

called in before we can make much of evo-
lution.

Another student may choose to remain an
idealist in spite of the modern movement away
from idealism of the stricter sort. But any
really serious-minded person soon feels that
idealism is rather barren if there cannot be an
answer to the question as to whose ideas or
what ideas are constitutive of reality. There
are ideas and ideas. All ideas are not on the
same plane. Hence it is not surprising that
the more morally and spiritually minded ideal-
ists find delight in the prologue to the fourth
Gospel. They turn to Christ as the Word that
really utters the universe — as the Reason,
which, immanent in the universe, comes to
personal expression in human terms. The doc-
trine of the Logos is especially attractive to
members of the Hegelian school. The Hege-
lians also seem willing to use such terms as
Incarnation and Atonement. True, they do
not ordinarily use these terms in the orthodox
sense, but the very use of the terms shows the
ready willingness of this school of philosophy
to reach out a hand almost of supplication to-
ward Christianity.

Those who have broken away from idealism
and have become personalists likewise feel the

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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

need of some exemplar or leader who shall
really interpret the meaning of personal ex-
istence. Suppose that we grant for the mo-
ment the extreme claims of some personalists
that all individual souls have existed in their
individuality from eternity. Even with this
admission we must be impressed with the dif-
ference in persons. If there is to be develop-
ment in persons, the most thoroughgoing in-
dividualist would have the worst persons catch
something of the spirit of the better persons.
We cannot find a suitable ideal in ourselves or
in our neighbors or in the mass of mankind.
Almost any fair-minded student will admit
that, without regard to the historical and
critical issues involved in the study of the
Gospels, the acceptance of the portrait of
Jesus substantially as that portrait is put be-
fore us in the New Testament is the most im-
perative duty for any doctrine of personalism.
The doctrine of personalism must stand or
fall with the type of person the theory accepts
as standard. If personalism is to mean the
wild lunging about of selfish individuals, each
acting out the lower impulses of his own life,
we have anarchy ; and any system which leads
to anarchy must be cast out. If the normal in
human life is put above the actual or the aver-

219

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

age state of men, we must find the normal
most adequately set forth in the great individ-
uals of human history. The personal moun-
tain peaks must give direction to the move-
ment of men through their earthly pilgrimage ;
all of which makes a demand for human per-
sonality interpreted in terms of Christ as the
Supreme Norm and Standard.

If personalism must finally turn toward
Christ, so also must pragmatism. We have
already enumerated some conditions which
pragmatism must meet in order to satisfy the
largest human demands. Too many pragma-
tists speak as if their creed means that a man
may believe whatever happens to agree with
him. Before we accept such a statement we
must know what the word "agree" means.
The doctrine that a man may believe whatever
agrees with him is not much more intelligent
than the doctrine that a man may eat whatever
agrees with him. "Agree" ought certainly to
mean more than to taste pleasant. Some
foods taste pleasant, but are poisonous or in-
nutritious or unsubstantial. A man may, in-
deed, eat whatever agrees with him, but if he is
a normal man the food must partake of the
fundamental elements which nourish and build
up the body. Likewise a man may believe

220

THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

whatever agrees with him, but his belief ought
to nourish and build up his entire life. Here,
again, we need a norm and a standard. Chris-
tianity uses the pragmatic method, but finds
the norm and standard in Christ. Without sub-
scribing to the doctrine that pragmatism has
other than merely instrumental value, we may
say that pragmatism does seem wonderfully
fitted to be a useful tool for Christianity.
Every man that willeth to do the will of God
comes into sympathy at least with the spirit
of Christ. But Christianity brings elements
into pragmatism that may not be acceptable to
the philosophical adherents of the system.
Christianity accepts the truth that we learn
by doing and that the final tests are the tests
of life. In real life — by which we mean life
at its highest and best — cross-bearing plays a
part. Not by accident did the Master say that
any man who would be his disciple must take
up a cross daily. Now, the objection to cross-
bearing is that it seems to ask us to believe
and do what does not promise to agree with us.
We come again upon the age-old paradox of
Christianity that a man who would save his
life must lose it. The danger with pragmatism
is that it tends to become too easy. In the
presence of hard philosophic problems it may

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

turn away from a rugged wrestling on the
ground that rugged wrestling is too hard. So
in the presence of the cross. The pragmatist
may, like Peter of old, glimpse a truth which
means the highest and fullest life, and yet in
the next instant deserve a rebuke for an un-
willingness to master the implications of the
truth in cross-bearing. If pragmatism is to
remain respectable as the statement of a philo-
sophic method, it needs something or some one
to keep it in the straight and narrow path.
The temptation of pragmatism is to slip over
to the broad way. There are many pragma-
tists in the broad way. Pragmatism needs to
be kept difficult. Before it can be discipline
even for human minds it must exact some-
thing of the steadiness of mental effort which
the great idealistic systems require. Before
pragmatism can be a discipline for the entire
life it must see and lay stress upon the signi-
ficance of cross-bearing for the attainment of
spiritual insight. Much learning, indeed,
comes out of reflective brooding; much out of
vigorous and persistent doing ; much out of un-
selfish suffering. Bearing the cross does not
imply asceticism; against asceticism or any
other unnatural abnormality we strenuously
protest. Christianity does not enjoin need-

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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

less suffering. It does not even exalt the spirit
which would seek after suffering, but it does
compel men to accept and walk in the straight
and narrow way which leads to life. If prag-
matism ever attains to great power, it will
have to heed the world's demand for considera-
tion of that cross which represents the divine
willingness to bear burdens for the sake of
others. Upon one occasion Jesus told his dis-
ciples to rejoice when men persecuted them
and said all manner of evil against them
falsely for the sake of truth, "for so persecuted
they the prophets which were before you."
The words would seem to give us some hint
as to a method of coming to an understanding
of the prophets. There might conceivably be
many ways of studying the life of a prophet.
One might read, mark, and inwardly digest all
the words of a prophet. Then one might visit
the scenes of the prophet's life and attempt
to reproduce in imagination the great events
which the force of the prophet had brought to
pass. In other words, one might learn some-
thing of a prophet by looking backward at the
prophet himself. But one could learn more
by looking around upon conditions like those
which made the prophet burn with wrath and
then by casting oneself against the evils which

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

call for a prophet's fire. When one had met
something of the resistant force of evil after
attacking that evil, when one had been perse-
cuted for the sake of the truth, then, indeed,
one might begin to understand the prophets of
old. The best way to study Elijah is to rebuke
evils like those which Elijah rebuked. What-
ever the real prophet does he does not follow
the line of least resistance. He cuts new
channels even if he has to receive upon him-
self all the shock which comes to the cutting
edge. Pragmatism as method of learning the
truths supremely worth while must keep off
the line of least resistance. Whatever else
Christ may or may not do as a leader of men,
he will not lead them along the lines of least
resistance.

The modern social movements also make a
demand for a vigorous statement and restate-
ment of the thought and spirit of Christ.
Such a statement is clearly needed to help us
keep our balance between the swing toward
masses which would submerge the individual
and the opposite swing toward individuals
which would ignore the organic dependence of
individuals on each other. We may say, on
the one hand, that Christ discovered the in-
dividual— or, rather, that he discovers individ-

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TriE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

uals — and, on the other hand, that he gave
new force to the social relationships of in-
dividuals. There is little in the words of Jesus
to suggest such terms as "masses," or "hu-
manity," or "mankind." If he wishes to speak
of mankind he says "all men." Yet even the
prayer which the Master holds up as a model
is predominantly social. "Our Father," "our
daily bread," "forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive," "lead us not into temptation" — ex-
pressions like these do not suggest unrelated
individuals. They suggest an organism which,
in the thought of the Founder of Christianity,
is to be coextensive with humanity. Yet Jesus
does not suggest the term "organism" or "hu-
manity." He suggests the idea of men as mem-
bers of a family.

The contribution of Jesus to the social move-
ment is the force which he has put into the
thought of men as members of a family. Bio-
logical terms like "social organism," mechani-
cal and artificial terms which abound in many
theories of the state as a deliberate creation,
legal expressions like "rights" and "implied
contracts" — these do not have the force of the
emphasis of Jesus on men as members of a
family. Social theories depend for much of
their force on the religious ideas back of them

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

or implied in them. It is hardly too much to
claim that no social theory becomes really
dynamic or vital until it has taken on a re-
ligious form, or has been incorporated with
some religious theory, or has, at least, been
touched with religious fervor. Christ's
thought of the brotherhood of man is joined
to his thought of the Fatherhood of God. God
is the Head of the family. The service of our
brothers is at the same time a service of the
Father. Most social theories, however, which
speak of masses and humanity have as their
religious presupposition a sort of pantheistic
notion of Humanity as itself God. Many ad-
herents of such pantheism wax very eloquent
in their advocacy of Humanity as the sole and
sufficient object of religious effort. But such
social enthusiasm can be kept up only as it is
heated so high that any coolness of reflection
is out of the question, for such reflection shows
that Humanity, after all, is but a class term.
The concrete facts are men, women, and chil-
dren in various relationships to one another.
In the Christian view we find an adequate mo-
tive for devotion to the help of men in the fact
of what they are. They are children of the
Father in heaven. We show our worshipful
spirit toward God by devotion to men, but we

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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

do not find in the men themselves a full object
of worship. What is Humanity? Humanity
is human beings — present, past, and to come.
But human beings of to-day do not give us a
God that we can worship, no matter how pan-
theistic our theory may be. Human beings of
the past were probably not much better, and
posterity has not yet arrived. There is not
sufficient force in the duty of working for pos-
terity to make the duty altogether self-impel-
ling. We ourselves are the posterity of those
who have gone before, and our posterity may
not be very greatly different from ourselves.
We can, however, be very patient with the
frailties of actual people if we can think of
them as objects of the Divine Love. Enthu-
siasm for brotherhood which does not in some
way connect itself with the idea of the divine
Fatherhood is apt to lack staying qualities.
The social workers who cut themselves away
from Christian teaching as to the divine
Fatherhood find sooner or later that they have
cut themselves away from a center of power.
Social movements which aim at bringing in
the universal brotherhood are apt in the end
to create, or at least to reenforce, the idea of
God as Father.

The Christian doctrine of men as members

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THE INCREASE OF FAITH

of a vast family gives too a correction of some
doctrines of human equality which are sadly
needed. The mere theorist is apt to come for-
ward with some statement of the doctrine of
equality which makes all men alike equal in
all things ; and such statements, wide of reality
in themselves, lead to a practical result which
is wide of reality. In the Christian thought
all men are equal in the sense that all are born
into the divine family. All are equal in the
sense that all are alike the objects of the Divine
Love. But all are not equal in the sense that
all have equal ability. Anyone who sees what
Christianity aims at will do all he can to re-
lieve men of the artificial inequalities in which
the present order abounds ; but some inequali-
ties are deep-seated. Much of the talk about
equality rests on the fancy that human char-
acteristics are commensurable, as if there were
any way of showing that the ability of the
butcher is equal to that of the baker, or that of
the general equal to that of the inventor, or
that of the painter equal to that of the novelist.
Moreover, though all are children of the divine
Father, all are not equally responsive to the
Father's love. All of which would seem to be
self-evident, but much of which lacks recogni-
tion by social theorists. On the whole, how-

228

THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

ever, there is increasing demand for the Chris-
tian conception as best fitted to the facts of
society.

There is growing demand also for the Chris-
tian method in social reform. That method is
one of radicalism, but not the radicalism of the
ax. In one of his parables Jesus tells of the
tree cumbering the ground. A radical with an
ax proposed to cut the tree down, but another
radical with a spade proposed to dig about the
roots and give them a chance. Radicalism
deals with roots. The man who waters roots
may be as truly a radical as the man who grubs
up roots. Some social institutions have not yet
had a chance. They are good enough in them-
selves, but their roots lack water. Much bitter
attack on industrial, political, ecclesiastical,
educational, and other institutions is the radi-
calism of the ax, while what is needed is the
radicalism of the spade. And this in the end
comes down to the improvement of the persons
who make up the social body. As an extreme
illustration take the furious attacks on mar-
riage and the family to which extreme radicals
continually give utterance. Improvements in
marriage are improvements in the relations of
married persons, and this in turn means im-
provements in the persons themselves. Per-

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THE INCKEASE OF FAITH

sons marry from wrong motive, or in ignorance
of the character of the future partner, or with
no adequate sense of the responsibilities in-
volved in the marriage relation. Much in-
justice results and many innocent suffer.
Marriage laws no doubt need improvement,
but the fundamental need is an improvement
of persons. So with many other institutions.
As the readers of an earlier chapter will recall,
we hold no brief for industrial institutions,
but even in our campaigns against institutions
most open to question we must remember that
we must in the end reach persons. We must
so deal with institutions as to reduce tempta-
tion to evil-doing to the minimum. Some in-
stitutions to-day put before men temptations
which only the strongest wills can withstand.
The institutions must, therefore, be modified
or abolished. But the final welfare of society
cannot depend on abolishing institutions.
Men must be brought to the place where they
are above using a social institution for mere
personal profit, and other men must develop
the power to withstand the temptations inevi-
table in any system. For illustration, think
of the precaution taken to-day to guard the
ballot. Not so very long ago election frauds
by wholesale were possible. It was easy to put

230

THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

a ballot in a man's hand and see that he put
the vote in the box. It was easy to vote a man
more than once. The Australian system did
away with the first possibility, and thus re-
duced the chances of election bribery. Regis-
tration systems have practically done away
with the second possibility. But do the Aus-
tralian ballot and registration make democ-
racy safe? The only safety is in the character
of the man inside the voting booth. Democ-
racy depends for its virtue on the goodness of
good men. If the example of Christ means
anything, it means that the radical method of
social reform is the deep spiritual appeal
which touches men in the depths. Christ re-
fused to appeal to men by turning stones into
bread. That was not radical enough. He re-
fused to astonish them into submission by
marvels. That was not radical enough. He
refused to make political alliances. They were
not radical enough. He chose, rather, to strike
to the invisible center with an appeal for love
of God and man which sweeps all the life into
its current.

We have seen that the great word in current
ethical life is obligation. The teaching of
Christ aids the ethical life not so much by
giving a new set of duties as by giving new

231

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

force to the ideas which condition ethical de-
velopment. Christianity does not advance new
ethical notions. It is possible to find the
ethical precepts of Christ in the Old Testa-
ment, or even in non-Christian svstems. The
difference is in the religious ideas which place
a sky over the earth which the ethical teachers
give us. We have seen that the ethical em-
phasis to-day has a mighty influence on the
shaping of religious ideas. The religious ideas
in turn repay the debt by giving new force to
the moral ideas. There are some persons who
declare that they can do the right for the
right's own sake without any thought of re-
ligious presuppositions, and these persons are
at times inclined to sneer at those who demand
religious presuppositions. Kant's thought of
God, freedom, and immortality as implications
of the moral nature does not seem to some who
profess to worship right for right's own sake
to be especially worthy. But those who feel
the need of the implications feel that need not
because of any less loyalty to right for right's
sake. They think so much of the right that
they are not willing that the universe should
be such a universe as to make morality only
the affair of fleeting mortals. Man must be
free so as to be capable of real morality. Im-

232

THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

mortality must give scope for morality. At the
center must be a God who is himself bound by
the demands of the moral law. Right for
right's own sake may become rather empty
unless we are in a universe where we can say
at least something of man for man's own sake
and worship God for God's own sake. Upon
our doctrine of man and God our ethics will
in the end depend for its force.

The ethical demand for Christ, therefore, is
the demand for a moral dynamic. That
dynamic is found in the doctrine of man and
the doctrine of God. On Christ's teaching that
the deep human claims have the right of way
we need not dwell. It is sufficient to say that
in his view the deep and base sins are sins
against the ideal of humanity. Even an insti-
tution which his contemporaries regarded as
transcendently sacred had to meet his declara-
tion that the Sabbath was made for man and
not man for the Sabbath. Even more force-
ful, however, has been the demand for Christ
because of the Christian doctrine of God. The
struggle for moral life in this world is so in-
tense, the inducements to quit the struggle are
so many, the sense of failure is at times so
overwhelming that the soul cries out asking
whether there is a moral God or not, and if

233

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

there is, can we think of him as interested in
our battle? The moral battlefield is a grim
place. Where is God and what is he doing?
Is he contemplating the scene from afar or is
he at hand? Is he the God of the scientist
merely, most interested in the law of gravita-
tion, or is he interested in moral law? The
answer of Jesus is clear. God is at hand. He
is more truly in the moral struggle than we
can be ourselves. Our success or failure means
more to him than to us. Obligations are more
truly binding upon him than on us. When we
enter the really moral life we come close to
him, and the more moral we become the more
we become like him. The pure in heart see
God. The seeker after morality seeks the real
kingdom. He lives among the real persons.
He attains to the real life. No matter what
the appearance may be, the real universe is
moral. Moral law is constitutional. When a
man sets his will to do right, the stars and the
God who made the stars are fighting for him.

There is another factor in the power which
Christ contributes to men engaged in the
struggle for moral life. We have spoken of
the sense of failure which attends the moral
struggle. We arise in the morning and think
that we shall reach our moral ideal by sunset,

234

THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

but at sunset the ideal mocks us from the dis-
tance. Conscience lays upon us tasks which
we feel we can never discharge. In addition
to this we have lapses which burden us with a
consciousness of personal guilt. We cry out
for forgiveness and for a second chance, and
for a third, and so on indefinitely. Here the
Christian revelation comes in again to help us.
The cross of Christ sets on high a holiness and
love which reestablish and reenforce us. In the
name of a holiness which we can never reach,
but which we would reach if we could, we seek
for forgiveness ; and in the name of a love for
which we can find no adequate expression we
go forth again to the battle. We grieve over
our blunders, but rest in the consolation that
the God of moral love, after all, takes our in-
tention for the deed. So if we fall, we rise
again. We are poor travelers, but we get
ahead. Now, the present writer is not espe-
cially concerned as to the theological terms in
which the Holy love of God as set forth in the
cross of Christ is stated, but we must not lose
sight of the significance of the fact itself as a
center of moral power. Right for right's own
sake, with no thought of aid from religious con-
ceptions, may suffice in ordinary and comfort-
able circumstances, but is apt to lack power

235

THE INCREASE OF FAITH

when deadly temptation appears. And when
we are dealing with the man who is down, the
bare contemplation of moral precepts, no mat-
ter how correct these may be, is hardly enough
to get him again upon his feet.

We have said before that the great word in
all our thought of man's mastery of the forces
of the universe is the word "control." Now
control is not a making over of a force or a
turning it back upon itself. Control recog-
nizes the force and then seeks to utilize
it. Control is the rudder of the ship. The
emphasis upon control would seem to be
an essentially Christian conception. Chris-
tianity looks upon the vast forces as in a sense
sacred — sacred, at least, as presenting a divine
opportunity. Forces in ourselves are sacred
in the sense that they can be given a divine
direction. We are not to try to make our-
selves something other than we are, or to turn
our streaming forces back upon themselves.
We are to accept ourselves as what we are and
then to direct our lives aright. So with the
social and all other forces. Rudders are to be
put into them. They are not to be condemned
and halted. They are not to be allowed to
drift. They are to be steered to a goal.

The truth of the Christian system as aiming

236

THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

at control in this sense is being more and more
recognized, and is creating renewed demand
for Christianity. There have been Christians
who have declared that all the forces in this
world, both inside ourselves and outside, are
to be resisted as of the devil. The aim of these
disciples has usually been good, but their
method has not always been wise. Worldliness
is of the inner spirit. The man who has least of
worldly power may be most worldly in spirit,
and the man who has most of worldly power
may be unworldly in aim. Other Christians
have declared that this world and its forces
are to be allowed to drift whither they will,
that they have little meaning for the kingdom
of God. The true Christian conception would
seem to be that the forces are to be neither
resisted nor allowed to drift, but to be con-
trolled. Hence the feeling both inside the
Church and outside is that we must look to
the teaching of Jesus for an understanding of
the forces and to his spirit for a power which
will control the forces.

We do not mean that there is any demand
to-day for a slavish imitation of Christ. Per-
haps we would do better not to use the word
"imitation" at all. There is demand for ap-
propriation of the teaching and spirit of

237

THE INCREASE OP FAITH

Christ. But appropriation means not me-
chanical imitation, but absorption and assimi-
lation. The way of advance lies not through
attempt to make a detailed code of ethics of
the teaching of Jesus valid for all times, but
through working Christ's thought of God and
of man and of life into the life of to-day. And
the spirit of Christ, while it cannot be de-
scribed, is readily discernible. With that spirit
we can contrive to get along with imperfectly
working institutions or forces; and without
that spirit we are helpless, no matter how
worthy the institution or force in itself. In
our relation to the great natural forces our
question is as to who is running the machines
and with what spirit. The answer of Chris-
tianity is that God is the center and source of
the forces, and that he is using them with the
spirit that is revealed in Christ. In regard
to all forces which can be brought under hu-
man control, the function of Christianity is to
animate these forces with the spirit of Christ.

One of the most remarkable phenomena in
history is the fact of what might be called the
repeated return of Christ. After all attempts
to explain him away, Christ returns to the
thinking of men, and returns more powerful
than before. We say that this is because of

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THE DEMAND FOR CHRIST

his ability to minister to the deeper needs of
men. Those needs become urgent and clam-
orous and make demands upon thought sys-
tems which only the teachings of Christ can
satisfy and demands upon heart and will-
forces which only the spirit of Christ can meet.
It is part of the glory of our time that the
Church of to-day is making everything turn
around the thought and spirit of Christ. In
her thought of the Scriptures, and of religious
experience, and in her thought of herself as an
instrument, the question which the Church
raises is as to how to beget in men the spirit of
Christ. Raising the question does not answer
it, of course, but the future of the Church is
never brighter than in the days when she
clearly discerns the demand of the individual
and of society for the spirit which is in Christ.

239

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