THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
KEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE LOWELL
INSTITUTE IN BOSTON, AND AT MAN
CHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD
BY
JOSIAH ROYCE
D.Sc. (University of Oxford)
PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
VOLUME I
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
gorfc
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1913
All rights reserved
IZ-l
v/. /
COPYRIGHT, 1913,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1913,
J. 8. CusMng Co. Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
I GRATEFULLY DEDICATE
THIS BOOK
PREFACE
THE present book is the result of studies
whose first outcome appeared, in 1908,
in my "Philosophy of Loyalty." Since then,
two volumes of my collected philosophical
essays have dealt, in part, with the same
problems as those which "The Philosophy of
Loyalty" discussed. Of these two latter
volumes, one is entitled "William James and
other Essays on the Philosophy of Life" ;
and contains, amongst other theses, the
assertion that the "spirit of loyalty" is able
to supply us not only with a " philosophy of
life," but with a religion which is "free from
superstition" and which is in harmony with
a genuinely rational view of the world. In
1912 were published, by the Scribners in New
York, the "Bross Lectures," which I had
delivered, in the autumn of 1911, at Lake
Forest University, Illinois, on "The Sources
of Religious Insight." One of these "Bross
Lectures" was entitled "The Religion of
Vll
PREFACE
Loyalty"; and the volume in question con
tained the promise that, in a future discus
sion, I would, if possible, attempt to "apply
the principles" there laid down to the special
case of Christianity. The present work re
deems that promise according to the best of
my ability.
I
The task of these two volumes is defined
in the opening lecture of the first volume.
The main results are carefully summed up in
Lectures XV and XVI, at the close of the
second volume. This book can be under
stood without any previous reading of my
"Philosophy of Loyalty," and without any
acquaintance with my "Bross Lectures."
Yet in case my reader finds himself totally
at variance with the interpretation of Chris
tianity here expounded, he should not finally
condemn my book without taking the trouble
to compare its principal theses with those
which my various preliminary studies of
"loyalty," and of the religion of loyalty,
contain.
In brief, since 1908, my "philosophy of
viii
PREFACE
loyalty" has been growing. Its successive
expressions, as I believe, form a consistent
body of ethical as well as of religious opinion
and teaching, verifiable, in its main outr
lines, in terms of human experience, and
capable of furnishing a foundation for a de
fensible form of metaphysical idealism. But
the depth and vitality of the ideal of loyalty
have become better known to me as I have
gone on with my work. Each of my efforts
to express what I have found in the course
of my study of what loyalty means has con
tained, as I believe, some new results. My
efforts to grasp and to expound the "religion
of loyalty" have at length led me, in this
book, to views concerning the essence of
Christianity such that, if they have any
truth, they need to be carefully considered.
For they are, in certain essential respects,
novel views ; and they concern the central
life-problems of all of us.
II
What these relatively novel opinions are,
the reader may, if he chooses, discover for
ix
PREFACE
himself. If he is minded to undertake the
task, he will be aided by beginning with the
"Introduction," which immediately follows
the "Table of Contents" in the first volume
of this book. This introduction contains
an outline of the lectures, an outline which
was used, by my audience, when the text of
this discussion was read at Manchester Col-
1 lege, Oxford, between January 13 and March
6, 1913.
But a further brief and preliminary indica
tion is here in order to prepare the reader a
little better for what is to follow.
This book is not the work of an historian,
nor yet of a technical theologian. It is the
outcome of my own philosophical study of
certain problems belonging to ethics, to re
ligious experience, and to general philosophy.
In spirit I believe my present book to be
in essential harmony with the bases of the
philosophical idealism set forth in various
earlier volumes of my own, and especially in
the work entitled "The World and the In
dividual" (published in 1899-1901). On the
other hand, the present work contains no
PREFACE
mere repetition of my former expressions of
opinion. There is much in it which I did
not expect to say w.hen I began the task
here accomplished. As to certain metaphys
ical opinions which are stated, in outline, in
the second volume of this book, I now owe
much more to our great and unduly neg
lected American logician, Mr. Charles Peirce,
than I do to the common tradition of recent
idealism, and certainly very much more than
I ever have owed, at any point of my own
philosophical development, to the doctrines
which, with technical accuracy, can be justly
attributed to Hegel. [It is time, I think,
that the long customary, but unjust and
loose usage of the adjective "Hegelian"
should be dropped. The genuinely Hegelian
views were the ones stated by Hegel himself,
and by his early followers. My own inter
pretation of Christianity, in these volumes,
despite certain agreements with the classical
Hegelian theses, differs from that of Hegel,
and of the classical Hegelian school, in im
portant ways which I can, with a clear con
science, all the more vigorously emphasize,
xi
PREFACE
just because I have, all my life, endeavored
to treat Hegel both with careful historical
justice and with genuine appreciation. In
fact the present is a distinctly new interpreta
tion of the "Problem of Christianity."
One of the most thoughtful and one of the
fairest of the reviewers of my "Spirit of
Modern Philosophy" said of my former
position, as stated, in 1892, in the book thus
named, that I then came nearer to being a
follower of Schopenhauer than a disciple of
Hegel. As far as it went this statement
gave a just impression of how I then stood.
I have never, since then, been more of an
Hegelian than at that time I was. I am
now less so than ever before.
Ill
One favorite and facile way of disposing
of a student of idealistic philosophy who
writes about religion is to say that he has
first formed a system of "abstract concep
tions," whose interest, if they have any in
terest, is purely technical, and whose relation
to the concrete religious concerns of man-
xii
PREFACE
kind is wholly external and formal ; and that
he has then tried to steal popular favor by mis
using traditional religious phraseology, and
by identifying his "sterile intellectualism,"
and these his barren technicalities, with the
religious beliefs and experiences of mankind,
(through taking a vicious advantage of am
biguous words.
I can only ask any one who approaches
this book to read Volume I before he under
takes to judge the metaphysical discussions
which form the bulk of Volume II ; and also
to weigh the relations between my meta
physical and my religious phraseology in
the light of the summary contained in Lec
tures XV and XVI of the second volume.
If after such a reading of my actual opin
ions, as set down in this book, he still in
sists that I have endeavored artificially to
force a set of foreign and preconceived meta
physical "abstractions" upon the genuine
religious life of my brethren, I cannot sup
ply him with fairness of estimate, but ought
to remain indifferent to his manner of
speech.
xiii
PREFACE
As a fact, this book is the outcome of expe
rience, and, in its somewhat extended practi
cal sections, it is written (if I may borrow a
phrase from the Polish master of romance,
Sienkiewicz) , " for the strengthening of hearts."
That some portions of the discussion are
technically metaphysical is a result of the
deliberate plan of the whole work ; and tech
nical assertions demand, as a matter of course,
technical criticisms. The novelty of some of
my metaphysical theses in my second volume,
and the lack of space for their adequate
statement in this book, have made their
exposition, as I here have time to give it,
both incomplete, and justly subject to many
objections, some of which I have anticipated
in my text. But, in any case, I have not
been merely telling anybody s old story over
again.
Since I have been writing from the life, I
of course owe a great deal to the inspiration
that I long ago obtained from William James s
"Varieties of Religious Experience." I even
venture to hope that (while I have of course
laid stress upon no interests which I could
XIV
PREFACE
recognize as due to merely private con
cerns of my own) I might still be address
ing at least some few readers who are able
to understand, and perhaps sometimes to
echo, a cry of genuine feeling when they hear
it. For, after all, it is more important that
we should together recognize in religion our
; own common personal needs and life-interests
than that we should agree about our formulas.
So I have indeed tried, in this book, to
speak as one wanderer speaks to another who
is his friend, when the way is long and ob
scure.
Yet in one very important respect the
religious experience upon which, in this book,
I most depend, differs very profoundly from
that whose "varieties" James described. He
deliberately confined himself to the religious
, experience of individuals. My main topic is
a form of social religious experience, namely,
that form which, in ideal, the Apostle Paul
viewed as the experience of the Church.
This social form of experience is that upon
which loyalty depends. James supposed that
the religious experience of a church must
XV
PREFACE
needs be "conventional," and consequently
must be lacking in depth and in sincerity.
This, to my mind, was a profound and a mo
mentous error in the whole religious philos
ophy of our greatest American master in the
study of the psychology of religious experience.
All experience must be at least individual
experience; but unless it is also social ex
perience, and unless the whole religious com
munity which is in question unites to share
it, this experience is but as sounding brass,
and as a tinkling cymbal. This truth is
what Paul saw. This is the rock upon which
the true and ideal church is built. This is
the essence of Christianity.
If indeed I myself must cry "out of the
depths" before the light can come to me, it
must be my Community that, in the end,
saves me. To assert this and to live this
doctrine constitute the very core of Chris
tian experience, and of the "Religion of
Loyalty." In discussing "the varieties of
religious experience," which here concern
us, I have everywhere kept this thesis in
mind.
xvi
PREFACE
IV
The assertion just made summarizes the
single thought to whose discussion, illustra
tion, defence, and philosophy this book is
devoted. This assertion is the one which,
in my "Philosophy of Loyalty," I was trying,
so far as I then could, to expound and to
apply. We are saved, if at all, by devotion
to the Community, in the sense of that term
which these two volumes attempt to explain
and to defend. This is what I mean by
loyalty. Because the word "loyalty" ends in
ty, and because what a "Community" is, is
at present so ill understood by most philos
ophers, my former discussions of this topic
have been accused of basing all the duties of
life upon an artificial abstraction. When I
now say that by loyalty I mean the practi
cally devoted love of an individual for a com
munity, I shall still leave unenlightened those
who stop short at the purely verbal fact that
the word "community" also ends in ty.
But let such readers wait until they have
at least read Lectures I, III, and VII of
xvii
PREFACE
my first volume. Then they may know what
is at issue.
This book, if it is nothing else, is at least
one more effort to tell what loyalty is. I also
want to put loyalty - - this love of the indi
vidual for the community where it actually
belongs, not only at the heart of the virtues,
not only at the summit of the mountains
which the human spirit must climb if man is
really to be saved, but also (where it equally
belongs) at the turning-point of human his
tory, at the point when the Christian ideal
was first defined, and when the Church
Universal, that still invisible Community of
all the faithful, that homeland of the human
spirit, "which eager hearts expect," was first
introduced as a vision, as a hope, as a con
scious longing to mankind. I want to show
what loyalty is, and that all this is true of the
loyal spirit.
Some of my main theses, in this book, are
the following: First, Christianity is, in its
essence, the most typical, and, so far in human
history, the most highly developed religion of
loyalty. Secondly, loyalty itself is a perfectly
xviii
PREFACE
concrete form and interest of the spiritual life
of mankind. Thirdly, this very fact about
the meaning and the value of universal loy
alty is one which the Apostle Paul learned in
and from the social and religious life of the
early Christian communities, and then en
riched and transformed through his own work
as missionary and teacher. Still another of
my theses is this : Whatever may hereafter
be the fortunes of Christian institutions, or of
Christian traditions, the religion of loyalty,
the doctrine of the salvation of the otherwise
hopelessly lost individual through devotion
to the life of the genuinely real and Universal
Community, must survive, and must direct
the future both of religion and of mankind,
if man is to be saved at all. As to what the
word "salvation" means, and as to why I
use it, the reader can discover, if he chooses,
from the text of these lectures.
The doctrines of the Community, of Loy
alty, of the "lost state of the natural individ
ual," and of Atonement as the function in
XIX
PREFACE
which the life of the community culminates,
appear, in the volumes of this book, in two
forms, whose clear distinction and close con
nection ought next to be emphasized in this
preface. First, these doctrines, and the ideas
in terms of which they are expressed, are
verifiable results of the higher social religious
experience of mankind. Were there no Chris
tianity, were there no Christians in the
world, all these ideas would be needed to ex
press the meaning of true loyalty, the saving
value of the right relation of any human in
dividual to the community of which he is a
member, and the true sense of life. These
doctrines, then, need no dogmas of any
historical church to define them, and no
theology, and no technical metaphysical
theory, to furnish a foundation for them.
In the second place, however, these Chris
tian ideas are based upon deep metaphysical
truths whose significance is more than
human.
Historically speaking, the Christian church
first discovered the Christian ideas. The
founder of Christianity, so far as we know
XX
PREFACE
what his teachings were, seems not to have
defined them adequately. They first came
to a relatively full statement through the
religious life of the Pauline Churches ; and the
Pauline epistles contain their first, although
still not quite complete, formulation. Paul
himself was certainly not the founder of Chris
tianity. But the Pauline communities first
were conscious of the essence of Christianity.
Consequently those are right who have
held, what the "modernists" of the Roman
Church were for a time asserting, before
officialism turned its back, in characteristic
fashion, upon the really new and deeply
valuable light which these modernists were,
for the time, bringing to their own commun
ion. Those, I say, are right who have held
that the Church, rather than the person of
the founder, ought to be viewed as the cen
tral idea of Christianity.
On the other hand, neither the "modern
ists" of recent controversy, nor any other of
the apologists for the traditions of the his
torical Christian church, have yet seen the
meaning of the "religion of loyalty" as the
XXI
PREFACE
Apostle Paul, in certain of his greatest mo
ments and words, saw and expressed that
meaning. The apostle s language, regarding
this matter, is as imperishable as it is well
warranted by human experience, and as it is
also separable from the accidents of later
dogmatic formulation, and inexhaustible in
the metaphysical problems which it brings to
our attention.
Hence the most significant task for a modern
revision of our estimate of what is vital in
Christianity depends upon the recognition of
certain aspects of Christian social experi
ence and of human destiny, aspects to whose
exposition and defence, first in empirical
terms, and then in the light of a reexamina-
tion of certain fundamental metaphysical
ideas, these two volumes are devoted.
The "Christian ideas" of the Church,- of
the lost state of man, of grace, and of atone
ment, are here discussed, first separately,
and then in their natural union. In this
examination, Pauline Christianity receives a
prominence which I believe to be justified
by the considerations which are emphasized
xxii
PREFACE
in my text. After an extended discussion,
in the second volume, of the "metaphysics
of the Christian ideas," I return, at the con
clusion of the whole research, to the relation
! of Christianity to our modern social ex
perience, and to the problems of to-day.
The outcome of this method of dealing
with "The Problem of Christianity" involves,
I believe, not indeed a "solution," but a
great simplification of the problems of Chris-
tology, of dogma in general, and of the rela
tions between the true interests of philosophy
upon the one side, and religion upon the
other. The reader will somewhat dimly see
the nature of the simplification in question
when he reads Lecture I. In Lecture III,
on the "Realm of Grace," he will begin to
anticipate with greater clearness the char
acteristic outlines of my version of the "re
ligion of loyalty." But not until Lectures
XV and XVI will the outcome of the closely
connected story to which, despite many
episodes, the whole book is devoted, be ready
for the reader s final judgment.
XXlll
PREFACE
VI
It is necessary still to forestall one fairly
obvious criticism. Both "orthodox" and
"liberal" Christianity, as they usually state
their otherwise conflicting opinions, very
commonly agree in making their different
attempted solutions of the "Problem of
Christianity" depend upon the views which
they respectively defend regarding the per
son of the founder of the faith. In Lecture
VIII of the first volume, and in Lecture
XVI of the second volume, I have summa
rized the little that I have to say about the
person of the founder.
I cannot find in the ordinary "liberal"
solution of the problem of the personality
of Jesus, as Harnack, as Weinel, and as most
"advanced liberal" discussions of our topic
state that solution, anything satisfactory.
My principal reason for this dissatisfac
tion, w^hen urged against the usual "liberal"
view of the significance of the person of
Jesus, is a novel, but, if I am right, a momen
tous reason. If Christianity is, in its inmost
xxiv
PREFACE
essence, the "religion of loyalty," the reli
gion of that which in this book I have called
:< The Beloved Community," and if Pauline
Christianity contained the essence of the only
doctrine by which mankind, through devo
tion to the community, through loyalty, are
to be saved, --then Buddhism is right in
holding that the very form of the individual
self is a necessary source of woe and of wrong.
In that case, no individual human self can be
saved except through ceasing to be a mere
individual.
But if this be so, Harnack s view and the
usual "liberal" view, to the effect that there
was an ideally perfect human individual,
whose example, or whose personal influence,
involves a solution of the problem of human
life, and is saving, - - this whole view is an
opinion essentially opposed to the deepest
facts of human nature, and to the very es
sence of the "religion of loyalty." Not
through imitating nor yet through loving any
mere individual human being can we be
saved, but only through loyalty to the
"Beloved Community."
XXV
PREFACE
Equally, however, must I decline to follow
any of the various forms of traditionally
orthodox dogma or theory regarding the
person of Christ. Legends, doubtful his
torical hypotheses, and dogmas leave us, in
this field, in well-known, and, to my mind,
simply hopeless perplexities.
Hence this book has no positive thesis to
maintain regarding the person of the founder
of Christianity. I am not competent to settle
any of the numerous historical doubts as
to the founder s person, and as to the details
of his life. The thesis of this book is that
the essence of Christianity, as the Apostle
Paul stated that essence, depends upon re
garding the being which the early Christian
Church believed itself to represent, and the
being which I call, in this book, the "Beloved
Community," as the true source, through
loyalty, of the salvation of man. This doc
trine I hold to be both empirically verifiable
within the limits of our experience, and meta
physically defensible as an expression of
the life and the spiritual significance of the
whole universe.
xxvi
PREFACE
A distinguished authority upon Christology,
who has kindly listened to some of my lec
tures, and who has kindly honored me with
his criticism, points out to me, however, the
final objection which I can here mention.
You imagine," he says, "that early Chris
tianity depended, for the significance of its
faith, upon the fact that a certain body of
men, constituting the Pauline churches, were
loyal to the spiritual unity, to the ideal charity,
which, as they believed, the saving work of
Christ had freely given to them, and to their
community. But you speak of this early
Christian community as if it were its own
creator, as if it grew up spontaneously,
as if its farm of saving and universal loyalty
arose without any cause. Can you make
religious history intelligible in this way ?
Who created the church ? Who inspired
the new loyalty ? Was not the founder the
cause of his church ? How could the church
have existed without its founder? Must
not the founder have possessed, as an in
dividual, a spiritual power equivalent to
that which he exerted ? Must it not then
XXVll
PREFACE
have been Jesus himself, and not the Com
munity, not the church, -- which is the
central source of Christianity ? Otherwise
does not your theory hang in the air ? But
if the founder really created this community
and its loyalty, does not the whole meaning
of the Christian religion once more centre in
the founder, in his life, and in his person ? "
I can here only reply to my kindly critic
that this book (as Lecture III carefully points
out) has no hypothesis whatever to offer as
to how the Christian community originated.
Personally I shall never hope, in my present
existence, to know anything whatever about
that origin, beyond the barest commonplaces.
The historical evidence at hand is insufficient
to tell us how the church originated. The
legends do not solve the problem. I have a
right to decline, and I actually decline to ex
press an opinion as to any details about
the person and life of the founder. For
such an opinion the historical evidences are
lacking, although it seems to me natural to
suppose that the sayings and the parables
which tradition attributed to the founder
XXVlll
PREFACE
were the work of some single author, con
cerning whose life we probably possess some
actually correct reports.
On the other hand, regarding the essence of
the Christianity of the Pauline churches and con
cerning the actual life of those churches, we pos
sess, in the Pauline epistles, information which
is priceless, which reveals to us the religion
of loyalty in its classic and universal form, and
which involves the Christian ideas expounded,
in my own poor way, in what here follows.
The transformation, not of historical, but
of Christological, of ethical, and of religious
ideas which would follow upon an adequate
recognition of these simple considerations
amply justifies the effort of one who under
takes, as I do, not to add to or to take away
from early Christian history, and not to solve
the problems of that history, but simply to
expound the essence of the Christian doctrine
of life, and the relation of the Christian ideas
to the real world.
VII
This preface must close with a few words
of acknowledgment and of explanation.
xxix
PREFACE
In 1911 the "President and Fellows of
Harvard University" a body which is also
known as "The Corporation" appointed me,
for three years, holder of the endowment
known as "The Cabot Fellowship," with
the understanding that I should devote some
of my time to study and research. In the
beginning of 1912, when my work was, for a
brief period, interrupted, the Harvard Cor
poration put me under an additional obliga
tion, by granting me an extraordinary leave
of absence. Since then, I have been allowed
the opportunity not only to write these
lectures, but to accept an offer made in the
summer of 1912 by the Trustees of the
"Hibbert Foundation" to deliver this entire
course on "The Problem of Christianity"
at Manchester College, Oxford ; while the
added generosity of President Lowell, who
also acted, in this matter, as Trustee of the
Lowell Institute in Boston, has enabled me
to deliver the first part of the course (the
discussions contained in Volume I of this
book) as public lectures before the Lowell
Institute in November and December of 1912.
PREFACE
At Manchester College, on the "Hibbert
Foundation," the lectures have been read
between January 13 and March, 1913, and
have thus continued throughout the whole
of one Oxford term.
Seldom, then, has a student of philosophy
been so much indebted to official and to per
sonal kindliness for the chance to perform
such a task. I have heartily to thank the
persons and authorities just mentioned, and
to insist that, under such conditions, the
faults of my book must be regarded as
wholly my own, and judged sternly.
Prominent among the authors who have
influenced my discussion of the idea of Atone
ment is the late Dr. R. C. Moberly, whose
book on "Atonement and Personality" also
had a deep effect upon my treatment of the
idea of the Church. To Professor Sanday s
" Christologies, Ancient and Modern " I owe
a great debt. Dinsmore s "Atonement in
Literature and Art" came into my hands
only after my own discussion of Atone
ment had assumed definitive shape.
Among the friendly critics who have aided
XXXI
PREFACE
me in preparing my text, I ought to mention
Professor E. C. Moore, Professor James
Jackson Putnam, and Professor George H.
Palmer of Harvard University . Professor Law
rence P. Jacks of Manchester College, Ox
ford, has helped me, from the beginning of
my task, in ways which I cannot here ac
knowledge in any adequate fashion. I have
also to acknowledge the assistance of Principal
J. Estlin Carpenter, of Professor Charles M.
Bakewell of Yale University, and of Dr. and
Mrs. R. C. Cabot of Boston. Dr. J. Loewen-
berg has helped me not only with stimu
lating and sometimes decisively effective
criticism of my lectures as they grew, but
with other much-needed aid in preparing
this book. Time would quite fail me to
tell of the numerous other friends, both at
home and in Oxford, who have accompanied,
encouraged, and assisted my efforts.
JOSIAH ROYCE.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,
April 13, 1913.
XXXll
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME I
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
LECTURE I
PAGE
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD .... 1
LECTURE II
THE IDEA OF THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY . . 47
LECTURE III
THE MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL . .107
LECTURE IV
THE REALM OF GRACE 161
LECTURE V
TIME AND GUILT 215
LECTURE VI
ATONEMENT 269
xxxiii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LECTURE VII
PAGE
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE .... 325
LECTURE VIII
THE MODERN MIND AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEAS . 381
XXXIV
INTRODUCTION
WHEN these lectures were delivered at
Manchester College, Oxford, the hear
ers were supplied with the following outline
under the general title: "Plan of Lectures
on the Problem of Christianity." This plan
is here repeated with its headings as they
appeared on this printed programme.
PRELIMINARY NOTE
THESE lectures are divided into two parts :
Part I (Lectures I- VIII), on "THE CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE OF LIFE"; Part II (Lectures IX-
XVI), on "THE REAL WORLD AND THE CHRIS
TIAN IDEAS."
Part I is a study of the human and empirical
aspect of some of the leading and essential
ideas of Christianity. Part II deals with the
technically metaphysical problems to which
these ideas give rise. Parts I and II are
contrasted in their methods, the first part
discussing religious experience, the second
part dealing with its metaphysical foundations.
XXXV
INTRODUCTION
The two parts, however, are closely connected
in their purpose ; and at the close, in Lectures
XV and XVI, the relations* between the meta
physical and the empirical aspects of the whole
undertaking are reviewed.
The "Christian Ideas" which the lecturer
proposes to treat as "leading and essential"
are: (1) The Idea of the "Community"
(historically represented by the Church) ;
(2) The Idea of the "Lost State of the Nat
ural Man"; (3) The Idea of "Atonement,"
together with the somewhat more general
Idea of "Saving Grace."
Each of these ideas is, for the purposes of
these lectures, to be generalized as well as
interpreted. The "Community" exists, in
human history, in countless different forms
and grades, of which the visible and historical
Christian Church is one instance. The ideal
community in which, according to Christian
doctrine, the Divine Spirit finds its expression,
presents a problem which cannot be ade
quately treated without considering whether
the whole universe is or is not, in some sense,
both a community, and a divine being. The
"lost state of the natural man" is a doctrine
dependent upon the views about the nature
xxxvi
INTRODUCTION
of human individuality which are most char
acteristic of the Christian spirit.
Christianity has always been a religion,
not only of Love, but of Loyalty. By loyalty
is meant the thoroughgoing and loving devo
tion of an individual to a community. The
"morally detached" individual, who has not
found the community to which to be loyal, or
who, having first found that community, has
lost his relation to it through an act of deliber
ate disloyalty, is (according to such a religion)
wholly unable, through any further individ
ual deed of his own, to win or to regain the
true goal of life. The ideas of "grace" and
of "atonement" have to do with the question
regarding the way in which the individual,
whom no deed of his own (according to this
religious view) can save or restore, can, never
theless, be saved through a deed "not his
own" -a deed which the community or
which a servant of the community in whom
its Spirit "fully dwells," may accomplish on
behalf of the lost individual. In this fashion
it is possible to indicate how our three Chris
tian ideas may be and should be generalized
for the purpose of the present lectures.
These three Christian ideas that of the
XXXVll
INTRODUCTION
Community, of the Lost Individual, and of
Atonement have a close relation to a doc
trine of life, which, when duly generalized, can
be at least in part studied as a purely human
"Philosophy of Loyalty," and can be esti
mated in empirical terms, apart from any use
of technical dogmas, and apart from any meta
physical opinion. The "Community" is the
object to which loyalty is due. The "Lost
State" is the state of those who have never
found, or who, once finding, have then lost
their loyalty. "Atonement" and "Divine
Grace" may be considered as if they were
expressions of the purely human process
whereby the community seeks and saves,
through its suffering servants and its Spirit,
that which is lost.
Nevertheless, no purely empirical study of
the Christian doctrine of life can, by itself,
suffice to answer our main questions. It is
indeed necessary to consider the basis in
human nature which the religion of loyalty
possesses, and to portray the relation of this
religion to the social experience of mankind ;
and to this task the first part of these lectures
is confined. But such a preliminary study
sends us beyond itself.
XXXVlll
INTRODUCTION
For each of the Christian ideas demands a
further interpretation in terms of a theory of
the real world. Religion can be experienced
and lived apart from metaphysics ; but (if
we adapt Anselm s well-known use of a Scrip
tural word) we may say that whoever has
learned what it is to "do the will" of the loyal
spirit has a right to endeavor to "know the
doctrine" which shall teach whether, and in
what sense, the Spirit, the Community, and
the process of salvation are genuine realities,
transcending any of their human embodiments.
The task of the second part of these lectures
is therefore to consider the neglected philo
sophical problem of the sense in which the
community and its Spirit are realities. For
this purpose a somewhat new form of Ideal
ism, and, in particular, a new chapter in the
theory of knowledge must be studied.
TOPICS OF THE INDIVIDUAL LECTURES
PART I. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF
LIFE
LECTURE I. THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
The "Problem of Christianity" stated. The
creed of the "modern man." The modern man
xxxix
INTRODUCTION
and the "education of the human race." The
methods to be employed in this study. Question :
"In what sense, if in any, does the Divine Spirit
dwell in the Church?" First glimpses of the
course of the inquiry.
LECTURE II. THE IDEA OF THE UNIVERSAL
COMMUNITY
Tragic fortunes of great ideals especially exem
plified by the history of the ideal of the Church.
The conflict of spirit and letter. The basis of
loyalty in human nature. The ideal of loyalty
in its non-Christian forms. The Pauline develop
ment and transformation of the original doctrine
of Christian love through the doctrine of charity
in its relation to the Christian community.
LECTURE III. THE MORAL BURDEN OF THE
INDIVIDUAL
Social aspects of the doctrine which is stated in
the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.
"The Law" as a factor in the development of
Self-consciousness. The natural and social culti
vation of the conscience as a training in self-will.
Modern illustrations of the process which was
first observed by the Apostle. Individualism and
collectivism. The community of hate and the
community of love. The burden of the individual
xl
INTRODUCTION
and the escape through the spirit of loyalty. The
"new creature."
LECTURE IV. THE REALM OF GRACE
A further view of Christianity, as a Religion of
Loyalty. Loyalty in its natural origin and in its
genuinely spiritual forms. The doctrine of the
"two levels" of human nature. The problem of
the origin of the "beloved community" and of the
beginnings of a "life in the spirit." Relations of
Christian loyalty to the origins of Christian dogma.
The Spirit in the Community, and the personal
Spirit of the Community. The Founder and the
problem of the "two natures." The "two na
tures" and the "two levels." Illustration from the
Fourth Gospel.
LECTURE V. TIME AND GUILT
Matthew Arnold on Puritanism and on "getting
rid of sin." Conflicts between the modern spirit
and the doctrine of the "endless penalty" of sin.
Reconsideration of these conflicts. The rational
theory of the nature of " mortal sin." The relation
of our acts to the whole time-process. Every
deed is irrevocable. Consequence in case of the
deliberately disloyal deed. Repentance no ade
quate remedy for guilt. Inability of the traitor
to atone for his own treason. The rational doc
trine of "endless penalty" not a morbid, or a
xli
INTRODUCTION
cheerless, or an arbitrary doctrine. Decisiveness
of character and rigidity of self -judgment. "I
was my own destroyer and will be my own here
after," is not an expression of weak brooding, but
of rational self -estimate.
LECTURE VI. ATONEMENT
The idea of Atonement reviewed with reference
to the "problem of the traitor." Typical and
symbolic value of this problem. Conscience and
personal freedom. The traitor s own self -estimate
is decisive as to what can atone for his guilt, pro
vided only that he is completely awakened to an
insight into the irrevocable facts. Inadequacy
both of the "penal-satisfaction" theories and of
the so-called "moral" theories of Atonement.
Need of an objective Atonement. Neither by
arousing repentance nor by awakening thankful
ness can Atonement be accomplished. State
ment of an objective theory of Atonement through
the deed of a suffering servant of the community.
Human instances. Universality and verifiability
of atoning deeds. In them the life of the com
munity culminates.
LECTURE VII. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF
LIFE
Contrast between Buddhism and Christianity.
Synthesis of the Christian ideas. Resulting esti-
xlii
INTRODUCTION
mate of human life and rule for the service and
conduct of the Community. The Christian Will.
LECTURE VIII. --THE MODERN MIND AND THE
CHRISTIAN IDEAS
Human conditions of the survival of Christianity
as a faith "upon earth." The social prospects of
the near and remote future. The power of the
Christian Ideas. Relations of the foregoing study
to traditional Christianity.
PART II. THE REAL WORLD AND THE
CHRISTIAN IDEAS
LECTURE IX. --THE COMMUNITY AND THE TIME-
PROCESS
The neglected article in Christian theology, and
the problem of the metaphysics of the community.
Social "pluralism," and "the compounding of con
sciousness." The doctrine of the community not
mystical. The time-process as essential to the
existence of the community. Communities of
"hope" and of "memory."
LECTURE X. --THE BODY AND THE MEMBERS
The Pauline use of the resurrection as a means
of clarifying the consciousness of the community.
Modern analogies; communities of cooperation;
xliii
INTRODUCTION
conditions upon which loyalty depends. The
community as an interpretation.
LECTURE XI. PERCEPTION, CONCEPTION, AND
INTERPRETATION
The theory of knowledge has been dominated
in the past by the contrast between Perception
and Conception. Need of the recognition of a
third cognitive process. Charles Peirce s doc
trine of Interpretation as a third and a triadic
cognitive process, essentially social in its type.
Criticism of Bergson s view of the ideal of knowl
edge. Interpretation, and the Metaphysics of
the time-process.
LECTURE XII. THE WILL TO INTERPRET
Interpretation in its relation to Charles Peirce s
triadic type of "Comparison." Comparison and
interpretation under individual and social condi
tions. Definition of a "Community of Interpreta
tion." Ideal value of such a community. Its
form as the principal form which the "life of the
spirit" assumes. Examples, and generalization
of the ideals involved.
LECTURE XIII. THE WORLD OF INTERPRETA
TION
g
Outline of a form of idealism determined by the
use of Peirce s definition of the cognitive process
xliv
INTRODUCTION
of interpretation. Relation to Bergson and to
Plato. The world as a " Community of Interpre
tation." The One and the Many in such a world.
The relation of interpretation to Time. Thesis :
"The universe contains its own interpreter." The
world of interpretation as not " static." Resulting
general doctrine as to the nature and the unity
of the "Spirit of the Community."
LECTURE XIV. - - THE DOCTRINE OF SIGNS
Definition of Peirce s term "Sign." The Signs
as a third and triadic category, corresponding to
the cognitive process of interpretation. The
Doctrine of Signs in its relation to "Radical
Empiricism," and to Pragmatism. The primacy
of the social consciousness. Loyalty as the loving
aspect of the "will to interpret." The meta
physics of the saving process. The irrevocable
and the temporal.
LECTURE XV. - - THE HISTORICAL AND THE
ESSENTIAL
The relation of this form of idealism to tradi
tional Christianity. Pauline Christianity and
our doctrine of interpretation. Final statement
of our "Problem of Christianity."
xlv
INTRODUCTION
LECTURE XVI. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Teleology and Induction. The larger teleolog-
ical aspects of the natural world. The Church
and the sects; the Church and the world; the
future possibilities for religious development.
Practical results of the inquiry.
xlvi
I
THE PEOBLEM AND THE METHOD
LECTURE I
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
I PROPOSE, in the course of these lec
tures, to expound and to defend certain
theses regarding the vital and essential char
acteristics of the Christian religion. In the
present lecture, which must be wholly con
fined to the work of preparing the way for
the later discussion, I shall first briefly ex
plain my title, and shall state what I mean
by "The Problem of Christianity." Then
I shall name certain aspects of this problem
which will determine the whole course of our
inquiry ; and I shall indicate the nature of
the method which I intend to follow. Since
our topic is so wealthy and so complex, I
must begin by means of very general and
summary statements, and must leave to
later lectures any effort to deal with the de
tails of the matters that I shall try to treat.
Before all else, let me say one word as to
the general spirit in which I venture into
3
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
this so familiar, yet so mysterious and mo
mentous, department of the philosophy of
religion.
I
The present day is one marked by a new
awakening of interest in religious experience,
and in its bearing upon life. This interest
finds expression both in general literature
and in philosophical discussion. I myself
have to approach all such topics with the
interests and the habits, not only of a student
of philosophy, but of one already committed
to a certain type of philosophical opinions.
This fact sets inevitable limits to the sort
of contribution that I can make to the in
quiry which my title names. Yet the nov
elty of the present situation of human
thought, and the dramatic interest of certain
crises through which opinion has recently
been passing, give to even the least construc
tive of philosophical students numerous op
portunities to experience, in the world of
religious inquiry, what men were never per
mitted to experience before. The philosoph-
4
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
ical thought of our day is affected by new mo
tives ; and the religious life of the world is
deepened by the presence of efforts which
are due to the novel and far-reaching social
and moral problems of our time. All these
varied influences react upon one another.
The student of philosophy may well feel
himself moved, by recent discussions, to
formulate opinions which the novelty of the
life of other men may haply color, even when
the one who formulates them has no power,
derived from his own inner resources, to
invent.
At all events, any sincere seeker for truth
may hope that, however remote from his
own powers it may be either to speak with
tongues or to prophesy, he may gain new
edification from his brethren, and may, in
his turn, help others to share in the gifts of
the spirit, and to be renewed and informed by
some power which is not ourselves, and which
seems, in this happy moment, to be coming
into a close touch with the deeper thought
and the better aspiration of our time.
5
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
With such a "trembling hope," -with
such a hope to gain some advantage from the
philosophical as well as from the religious
movement of our times, - - 1 myself have
for a good while endeavored to reconsider
some of the ancient and modern problems of
the philosophy of religion. These lectures
will embody the results of a few of these efforts
towards reconsideration. Since I know that
so many other inquirers are engaged in analo
gous tasks, and since I feel sure that unity of
opinion regarding the office and the mean
ing of religion can only be approached through
a variety of efforts, I am sure that my own
venture is no mere outcome of lonely pre
sumption.
II
The man who considers the interests of
religion may choose any one of three atti
tudes toward Christianity. The first is the
familiar attitude of the expounder and de
fender of some form of the Christian faith,
- the position of the apologist and of the
Christian teacher. Even this one mode of
6
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
dealing with the tradition of Christianity is
capable of an almost endless wealth of varia
tions. The defender of the faith may adhere to
this or to that branch of the Christian church.
Or perhaps he may regard tradition from the
point of view which is often called that of
modern Liberal Christianity. Or what
ever his own creed may be --he may lay
the principal stress upon some practical task,
such as that of a pastor or of a missionary.
In yet another spirit, he may emphasize
technical theological questions. Finally, he
may make the history of the church or of the
religion his main interest. Through all such
variations, as they appear in the words and
the hearing of religious inquirers and teachers,
there may run a tendency that unifies, and
so characterizes them all, --the positive ten
dency, namely, to defend, to propagate, and,
in one way or another, to render efficacious
the Christian view of God, of the world, and
of human destiny.
Secondly, however, the inquirer who deals
with religious problems may take the position
7
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
of the opponent or of the critic of Christianity,
or may simply regard Christianity with a
relative, although deliberately thoughtful, in
difference. Such an opponent, or such an
external critical observer of the Christian
world, may be a representative of some other
faith, as certain of the recent Oriental critics
of Christian doctrine have been ; or, in other
cases, he may emphasize some aspect of the
supposed conflict between the spirit and
the results of modern science, on the one
hand, and the tradition or the faith of Chris
tendom on the other. At a very recent time
in the history of European discussion, such
attitudes of critical hostility or of thoughtful
indifference towards Christianity were promi
nent factors in discussion, and occupied a
favored place in the public mind. Such was
the case, for instance, in the last century,
during the early phases of the controversies
regarding evolution, especially in the years
between 1860 and 1880. As a philosophical
student I myself was trained under the
influence of such a general trend of public
8
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
opinion. These attitudes of critical indiffer
ence or of philosophical hostility towards tradi
tional faith, are still prominent in our world
of religious discussion ; but side by side with
them there have recently become prominent
tendencies belonging to a third group, -
tendencies which seem to me to be, in their
treatment of Christianity, neither predomi
nantly apologetic nor predominantly hostile,
nor yet at all indifferent. This third group
of tendencies has suggested to me the title
of these lectures. I wish briefly to charac
terize this group of ways of dealing with
Christianity, and to indicate its contrast
with the other groups.
Ill
The modern student of the problems of
religion in general, or of Christianity in par
ticular, may see good reason for agreeing with
the apologists, -- with the defenders of the
faith, in attributing to Christianity, viewed
simply as a product of human evolution, a
central importance in history, in the religious
9
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
experience of our race, and in the endlessly
renewed, yet very ancient, endeavor of man
kind to bring to pass, or to move towards,
the salvation of man. To such a student it
may have become clear : first, that what
ever the truth of religion may be, the office,
the task, the need of religion are the most
important of the needs, the tasks, the offices
of humanity; and, secondly, that both by
reason of its past history and by reason of its
present and persistent relation to the religious
experience and to the needs of men, Chris
tianity stands before us as the most effective
expression of religious longing which the
human race, travailing in pain until now, has,
in its corporate capacity, as yet, been able
to bring before its imagination as a vision,
or has endeavored to translate, by the labor
of love, into the terms of its own real life.
In view of these opinions, such a student
of religion may tend to disagree with that
spirit of critical indifference or of hostility
towards Christianity which has characterized,
and still characterizes, one of the two groups
10
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
of religious inquirers whom I have just
mentioned. With the apologists, then, and
against the hostile or the thoughtfully indif
ferent critics of Christianity, such a student
may stand, as one to whom the philosophy of
religion, if there is to be a philosophy of reli
gion at all, must include in its task the office
of a positive and of a deeply sympathetic
interpretation of the spirit of Christianity,
and must be just to the fact that the Chris
tian religion is, thus far at least, man s most
impressive vision of salvation, and his prin
cipal glimpse of the home- land of the spirit.
Yet such a student may still see, for rea
sons which I need not at the outset of our
quest fully state, how numerous are the
questions yet to be answered, the reasonable
doubts yet to be removed, the philosophical
issues yet to be met, the historical problems
yet to be solved, the tragedies of practical
and of religious life yet to be overcome, the
divisions of human faith yet to be reunited,
before it can become quite clear to us, if it
ever is to become clear, just what ones amongst
11
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
the apologists are indeed defending the true
Christian faith, and wherein the truth of
that faith, if it be true, consists, and what the
essence of Christianity is, and in what form,
if in any form, Christianity is destined to
win over to itself, if it is ever to win, that
troubled human world which it has illumined,
but whereto it has thus far brought, not peace,
but a sword.
For such a student, who is neither predomi
nantly an apologist, nor, in the main, any
hostile or indifferent critic, the topic to be
chiefly considered in his own reflections con
cerning the Christian religion would be ex
plicitly "The Problem of Christianity."
That is, such a student would approach
this religion regarding it, at least provision
ally, not as the one true faith to be taught,
and not as an outworn tradition to be treated
with an enlightened indifference, but as a
central, as an intensely interesting, life-prob
lem of humanity, to be appreciated, to be
interpreted, to be thoughtfully reviewed, with
the seriousness and with the striving for rea-
12
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
sonableness and for thoroughness which we
owe to every life-problem wherewith human
destiny is inseparably interwoven.
Such is the mode of approach to the study
of Christianity which these lectures will
adopt. This mode of approach is in no wise
new, but it is the one which, at the present
moment, in my opinion, the thoughtful public
of our day both most desires and most deeply
needs. And despite all that has been already
done, and well done, in the direction of the
sympathetic philosophical interpretation of
Christianity, there is still ample work yet to
do to make this third mode of approach to
our topic more effective for the -clarifying
of men s insight and for the strengthening
of the great common religious interests.
IV
If you ask in what way our problem of
Christianity can be, at this stage, provision
ally formulated, I may give you, in reply, a
first glimpse both of the topics that we are
to discuss, and of the general method to be
13
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
used in their discussion, by employing for the
moment a deliberately inadequate expression.
What I am minded to consider in these
lectures includes some part of an answer to
the question: "In what sense, if in any,
can the modern man consistently be, in creed,
a Christian?" This form of statement indi
cates what is at issue, but calls in a most
obvious way for a more exact definition of
our plan. Yet the very vagueness of the
outlook which these words suggest will help
us to advance almost at once to a more definite
view of our task.
"In what sense can the modern man con
sistently be, in creed, a Christian?" You
see, in any case, that we are to speak of some
sort of creed, and of the consistency with
which somebody may or may not hold that
creed. In other words, our own "problem
of Christianity," in these lectures, is to be
one that, at least in part, has to do with the
reasonable consistency of certain possible reli
gious opinions. That is, we are to study our
topic as students of philosophy view their
14
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
issues. Our problem is, in itself considered,
and apart from the limitations of our own
mode of inquiry, a life-problem, an intensely
practical, a passionately interesting, issue, the
problem and the issue of a religion. But we
are to approach this problem reflectively, and
are to take account of interests that are
not only those of religion, but also those of
thought.
Herein lies one chosen limitation of our
enterprise, in that we are not undertaking to
contribute directly to religion itself, but only
to an understanding of some of the problems
which religious creeds suggest. In so far,
then, vague as this first statement of our
problem is, the word " creed," and the
reference to the creed of the "modern
man," serve to specify in some measure
the range of our investigation. As a fact,
I shall summarily study in these lectures cer
tain aspects of the traditional creed of the
Christian Church.
On the other hand, the term "modern
man," as just used in my provisional state-
15
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
ment of our problem, has a meaning whose
deeper relation to our task we shall hardly
be able to appreciate justly until the very
close of this series of studies. "Can the
modern man consistently hold a Christian
creed?" But who, you will ask, is this
modern man ?
Superficially regarded, the conception of
the "modern man" is one of the most arbi
trary of the convenient fictions of current
discussion. What views or types of views
are, or ought to be, characteristic of the
"modern man" hardly any of us will wholly
agree in defining. And if there is any typical
"modern man," he would seem, at first sight,
to be a creature of a day. To-morrow some
other sort of modern man must take his
place. And of the modern man of a future
century we now cannot even know the race,
much less, it would seem, the religious creed.
What creed about religion, Christian or non-
Christian, now befits the creature of a day
whom our own young century calls the modern
man, why need we inquire ? So you might
16
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
comment upon the statement of our problem
which I have just put into words.
Yet even at this stage of the discussion, if
you consider for a moment the meaning that
underlies the so frequent use of the phrase
"modern man" in current discussion, and
that inspires our familiar interest in the sup
posed views of the fictitious being called the
" modern man," you will see that even this
provisional mode of formulating the problem
of Christianity may, after all, guide us to a
study of matters which are not fictitious and
which have a bearing on permanent religious
concerns.
For by the "modern man" most of us mean
a being whose views are supposed to be in
some sense not only the historical result, but
a significant summary, of what the ages have
taught mankind. The term "modern man"
condenses into a word the hypothesis, the
postulate, that the human race has been sub
ject to some more or less coherent process of
education. The modern man is supposed to
teach what this "education of the human
c 17
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
race" has taught to him. The ages have
their lesson. The modern man knows some
thing of this lesson.
Such, I say, is the hypothesis, or postulate,
which makes the phrase "modern man" so
attractive. This hypothesis, this postulate,
may be true or false. But at all events its
meaning is deep and is connected with a cer
tain more or less definite view of human
nature and of the course of time, a view
which has played its own part in the history
of religion, and which, in particular, has well-
known relations to Christian belief.
We all remember that the apostle Paul
conceived human history as including a pro
cess of education. As "modern man" of
his own time, the apostle conceived himself
to have become able to read the lesson of
this process. But such a postulate, whether
true or false, whether asserted in Paul s time
or in our own, whether Christian in its for
mulation or not, includes a doctrine that will
later occupy a large place in our inquiry, -
the doctrine that the human race, taken as a
18
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
whole, has some genuine and significant spirit
ual unity, so that its life is no mere flow and
strife of opinions, but includes a growth in
genuine insight.
Our customary speech about the modern
man implies that, in the light of this common
insight gradually attained by the whole race,
our creeds should be tested and, if need be,
revised. The "modern man," defined in terms
of such an hypothesis, is conceived as the
present minister of this treasury of wisdom
which the ages have stored and which our
progress is still increasing. But, from such
a point of view, to ask whether the modern
man can consistently be in creed a Christian,
is the same as to ask how Christianity, con
sidered as a body of religious beliefs, is related
to the whole lesson of religious history, and
how far this supposed education of the human
race has been, and remains, in spirit, in mean
ing, in its true interpretation, a Christian
education.
Only at the close of our entire discussion
shall we be able to see the real scope of this
19
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
last question, and its deeper relations to the
problem of Christianity. It is not at all
my intent to assume at this stage that the
postulate just stated is true, namely, the
postulate that the human race has been sub
ject to some genuine process of education,
that the ages have taught man some more or
less connected lesson, and that the modern
man can read this lesson. This first provi
sional formulation of our problem of Chris
tianity in terms of the relation of Christianity
to the creed of the modern man, is intended
to direct attention at once to two aspects of
our undertaking.
First, Christianity, as I have already
pointed out, is, historically speaking, one
great result of the effort of mankind to find
the way of salvation, and is apparently thus
far the most impressive and, in this sense, the
greatest result of this very effort. Our prob
lem of Christianity involves some attempt to
find out what this great religion most essen
tially is and means, what its most permanent
and indispensable features are. Secondly,
20
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
our problem of Christianity is the problem
of estimating these most permanent and indis
pensable features of Christianity in the light
of what we can learn of the lesson that the
religious history of the race, viewed, if pos
sible, as a connected whole, has taught men.
So then, to state our problem of Christianity
as a problem about whether the modern man
can consistently be, in creed, a Christian,
is to use language that seems to refer to the
issues of the passing moment, but that at
once leads back from the problem of the
moment to the problem of the ages, from the
modern man to humanity viewed as a whole.
More carefully restated, then, our problem
of Christianity is this : When we consider
what are the most essential features of Chris
tianity, is the acceptance of a creed that
embodies these features consistent with the
lessons that, so far as we can yet learn, the
growth of human wisdom and the course of
the ages have taught man regarding religious
truth ?
Our problem of Christianity is intended to
21
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
be, as now appears, a synthesis of certain
philosophical and of certain historical prob
lems. The Christian religion furnishes the
topic. This religion is an outcome of a long
history and it includes a doctrine about life
and about the world. We are to estimate this
doctrine, partly in the light of its history,
partly in the light of a philosophical study of
the meaning and lesson of this history.
This first statement of our problem brings
next to our minds what is, I suppose, the most
familiar issue which any one has to meet who
undertakes to define the word " Christianity "
in a manner suited to the spirit of recent
discussion. This issue requires here a brief
preliminary statement.
Christianity has two principal and contrast
ing characteristics. It is, in the first place,
according to its own most ancient and familiar
tradition, the religion which was taught and
was first lived out, by an individual person,
by a man who dwelt among men, who
22
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
counselled a mode of living, who aroused and
expressed a certain spirit, and who taught
that in this spirit, and in this life, the way of
salvation is to be found for all men. This
first characteristic of Christianity suggests to
all of us a view regarding our problem which
has been very greatly emphasized in recent
discussions of religion, and which consists in
asserting that, however deep the problem of
Christianity may be, it is, in its essence, an
impressively simple problem.
Let us consider for a moment the grounds of
this assertion. They are well known. As a
religion of a person, appealing to persons
regarding the goal and the path of their own
lives, Christianity in so far appears as an art
of living, as a counsel for the attainment of
the ends of human existence. Whatever
may be your opinions or your doubts about
God and the world and the mysteries of our
nature and our destiny, it would in so far
seem plausible that, as a modern man, you
could reasonably estimate both the Master
and his reported solution of the practical
23
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
problem of human living, and that you could
thus decide whether or no you can be in creed
a Christian, without considering any very
recondite matter. Your decision, "I am
in creed a Christian," if, as a modern man,
you made such a decision, might mean, from
this point of view, simply this: "I find that
the example and the personal inspiration of
Jesus are for me of supreme value ; and my
experience shows me that the Christian plan
of life promises to me, and to those of like
mind with me, the highest spiritual success."
When thus defined, Christianity would
mean the teaching, the personal example, and
the spirit of the Master. If one s personal
experience taught one that this teaching, this
example, and this spirit are, from one s own
point of view, the solution for the problem of
human life, one both could be, and would be,
in this sense of the word, in creed a Chris
tian. So at least the assertion just repeated
teaches. And if this assertion is true, our
problem is essentially a simple problem.
So far I have merely stated a well-known
24
f
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
opinion. But whoever thus attempts to sim
plify the problem of Christianity, can do so
only by either ignoring or else minimizing the
significance of the second of the two char
acteristics of the Christian religion, whose
existence I have just mentioned. Histori
cally speaking, Christianity has never ap
peared simply as the religion taught by the
Master. It has always been an interpretation
of the Master and of his religion in the light
of some doctrine concerning his mission, and
also concerning God, man, and man s salva
tion, a doctrine which, even in its simplest
expressions, has always gone beyond what the
Master himself is traditionally reported to
have taught while he lived.
Whatever the reason why the Master and the
interpretation of his person and of his teach
ing have come to be thus contrasted, it is
necessary at once to call attention to the
historical fact that such an interpretation of
the Master, of his person, and of his mission,
always has existed ever since there was any
Christian religion at all.
25
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
The question is here not one dependent
upon our decision as to the trustworthiness
or the authenticity of any one tradition.
For Christian tradition, in all its forms, has
always more or less clearly and extensively
distinguished between its own account of the
Master, of his sayings, of his deeds, of his
personal character, and its own interpretation
of his mission, of his dignity, and of the divine
purpose that his life accomplished. The
Master himself and the interpretation of his
mission have thus been from the first con
trasted. And they have been contrasted by
the very tradition to which we owe the report
of both of them. This fact stands in the way
of all such attempts to simplify our problem
as is the attempt which I have just outlined.
To mention one of the very earliest forms of
this contrast between religion as taught by
the Master and its later expression. Tradi
tion tells us about sayings in which the
Master set forth his teaching. It also tells
us of his fortunes, of his suffering and
death. Now, however it was that his teach -
26
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
ings were related to the causes that brought
about his sufferings and death, any account
of these his fortunes inevitably contains some
indication of the reasons why, according to
tradition, "it was needful that Christ should
suffer." But these reasons, as tradition states
them, have always included some account of
the Master s office and of his mission, an
account which has gone beyond what, during
his life, tradition views as having become
explicit and manifest to his disciples. While
the Master lived, these and these (so the
reports run) were his teachings. In these
and these deeds he manifested his person and
spirit. But only after he had suffered and
died, and as was early reported had risen
again, did there become manifest, according
to tradition, what, during his earthly life,
could not become plain even to those who were
nearest to him.
Thus, I repeat, tradition reports the matter,
and thus it contrasts, from the very begin
nings of Christian history, the Master to
whom this teaching is attributed and the inter-
27
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
pretation of his nature and mission, which,
according to the same tradition, only his
sufferings, his death, his reported resurrec
tion, and the coming of his spirit into a new
unity with his disciples, could begin to make
manifest. Thus the Master and the inter
pretation early began to be distinguished.
Thus they remain distinguished throughout
Christian history.
And thus, for the fictitious being whom I
called the "modern man" -for him also,
in case he chooses to consider the problem
of Christianity at all, it must sooner or later
become manifest, I think, that he cannot
decide whether or no he is in creed a Chris
tian, without reflecting upon his attitude,
both towards the Master and towards the
interpretations which history has given to the
mission of the Master. To ignore, or even
to minimize, the importance of these inter
pretations, to suppose that Christianity can
be viewed simply, or even mainly, as the
religion taught during the founder s life by
the Master himself, is, I think, to miss the
28
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
meaning of history to a degree unworthy of
the highly developed historical sense which
should characterize the "modern man."
The "modern man" may have to decide,
in the end, that he is, in creed, no Christian
at all, simply because he may have to reject
some or all of the interpretations which tra
dition has asserted to be true of the mission
and of the divine relations of the Master.
But the modern man will be unable, in my
opinion, to be just to his own historical sense
and to the genuine history of Christianity,
unless he sees that the Christian religion
always has been and, historically speaking,
must be, not simply a religion taught by any
man to any company of disciples, but always
also a religion whose sense has consisted, at
least in part, in the interpretation which later
generations gave to the mission and the
nature of the founder. The interpretation
may involve a false doctrine of life. If so,
and if the modern man thinks so, the
modern man cannot consistently be and
remain a Christian. But I do not believe
29
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
that the modern man, when he considers the
lesson of the history of Christianity, can long
remain content with the view that Chris
tianity is, in its principally effective features,
historically reducible to the simple statement
of what, according to tradition, the Master
taught to those who, while he was alive,
heard his words.
VI
Historically speaking, Christianity has,
then, these two sharply contrasted aspects.
I have said that the issue presented by this
contrast is the most familiar one which, at
the moment, any one who approaches the
problem of Christianity has to meet. You
may still ask: But what is this issue? I
answer : It is the issue presented by the
question: Of these two contrasting aspects
of Christianity, which is, not only histori
cally inevitable, but also the deeper, the more
essential, the more permanently important
aspect ?
Now to such a question the history of
30
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
Christianity, necessary as it is in preparing
the way for a decision, cannot alone furnish
the final answer. And at this point we are
already able to give a reason for asserting
that not only history, but the intrinsic nature
of the interests which are involved, will
require us, in our later lectures, to lay our
main stress upon that aspect of Christianity
which, in the order of time, came into exist
ence later than the Master s own reported
teaching. Let me state this reason at once,
dogmatically and quite inadequately, but
enough to indicate the course that we are
to pursue.
The religion of the Master, as he is said
to have taught it, involves many counsels,
addressed to the individual man, regarding
the art of life and regarding the way of
entering what the Master called the Kingdom
of Heaven. But these counsels, this preach
ing of the Kingdom of Heaven, -- they ap
peared, in tradition, as stated in brief outlines
and often as expressed in parables. It appears
that, at least for the multitudes who listened,
31
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
often for the disciples themselves, the parables
needed interpretation, and that the sayings
must be understood in the light of an insight
which, at the time when these words were
first uttered, was seldom or never in the
possession even of those who were nearest
to the Master.
This further insight, according to the same
tradition, was something that, as was held,
would come whenever the Master s spirit
was still more fully revealed to his disciples.
Often when they heard their Teacher speaking
most plainly, the disciples, as we are told,
did not yet quite understand what he meant.
And now, as a fact, the reported sayings and
parables of the founder possess, side by side
with their so well-known directness and
simplicity, certain equally well known but
highly problematic traits which, in all the
ages that have since elapsed, have led to
repeated questions as to what the Master
meant by some of the most central doctrines
that he taught. For instance, precisely what
he taught about the office and work of love,
32
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
and about self-sacrifice, and about casting
off all care for the morrow such things have
often seemed mysterious.
And precisely these more problematic fea
tures of the original teachings of the Master
are the ones to which the later Christian
community gave interpretations that it be
lieved to be due to the guidance of the Master s
spirit, and that it therefore inevitably con
nected with its doctrine regarding his own
person and his mission. Since these later
interpretations have to do with matters that
the original sayings and parables, so far as
reported, leave more or less problematic, so
as to challenge further inquiry ; and since all
these more problematic matters are indeed
of central importance for the whole estimate
of the Christian doctrine of life, we may indeed
have to recognize that the primitive Chris
tianity of the sayings of the Master was both
enriched and deepened by the interpretation
which the Christian community gave to his
person, to his work, and to his whole religion.
I believe this to be the case.
D 33
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Our later discussion will set forth some of
the further reasons for this opinion. These
lectures will not be concerned with the his
tory of dogma; and all our discussions con
cerning the truth of Christianity will be
guided by an interest rather in the essentials
of religion than in any of the refinements
of theology. But it will be one of my theses
that the essential ideas of Christianity include
doctrines which indeed supplement, but which
at the same time in spirit fulfil, the view of
life and of salvation which the original teach
ing of the Master regarding the Kingdom of
Heaven, as that teaching is reported by tradi
tion, made known to those who heard him.
It will help our enterprise if, at this point,
I simply state what, in my opinion, are the
Christian ideas which both the history of
Christianity, and the intrinsic importance of
the religious concerns involved, will make it
most needful for us to consider, for the sake
of a fair comprehension of the problem of
Christianity. These central Christian ideas,
as I shall here name them and shall later
34
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
discuss them, are three. They are all of
them ideas that came to the mind of the
Christian world in the course of later efforts
to explain the true meaning of the original
teaching regarding the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Christian community regarded them as
due to the guidance of the founder s spirit;
but was also aware that, when they first came
to light, they involved new features, which
the reported sayings and parables of the
Master had not yet made so explicit as they
afterwards became. The Spirit which, as the
early church came to believe, was in due time
to guide the faithful to all truth, was held to be
the interpreter who revealed these new things.
Our own main interest is here not in the theo
logical aspect of the development which led
to these ideas. What concerns us is that
these ideas actually appeared in the Chris
tian community as an interpretation of what
the founder had meant, while, as we shall later
more clearly see, they came to constitute
vital and essential portions of the religious
message which Christianity had for mankind.
35
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
VII
We may be aided in our selection of these
three central ideas by mentioning the fact
that certain features of the founder s reported
teaching of the Kingdom of Heaven have
generally seemed, to later ages, to stand in
need of an interpretation which the founder s
recorded words did not wholly furnish. The
three ideas here in question were first devel
oped in the mind of the Christian community
in the midst of the early efforts to reach this
further interpretation of what the founder
had meant by the words that were attributed
to him by tradition.
The Master s teachings are, for the most
part, directed, in his reported sayings, to
individual men, either to some one indi
vidual viewed as a typical man ("Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself"), or to com
panies of individuals viewed as of such nature
that the same counsel applies equally to any
or to all of these individuals alike ("Blessed
36
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
are the meek ; " "Be ye perfect as your Father
in heaven is perfect"). Meanwhile, the Mas
ter freely speaks of what he calls the Kingdom
of Heaven. And the Kingdom of Heaven
appears, on its very face, to be some sort of
social order, some sort of collective life, some
kind of community. Yet the reported sayings
do not, when taken by themselves, make
perfectly explicit what that social order, what
that community, is to which the name King
dom of Heaven is intended to apply. Tradi
tion represents the earliest interpretation of
the term by the Disciples of Christ themselves,
while he was yet speaking to them, as, in
their own minds, more or less doubtful. Was
the Master s kingdom to be of this world, or
of some other Was it to be a more or less
visible political social order ? Was it to be
wholly a matter of the inner spiritual lives of
many outwardly separate individuals ("The
Kingdom of Heaven is within you").
Plainly, whatever the doctrine of the King
dom really meant, its first expression was such
as to call for a further development, and for a
37
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
richer interpretation than any one of the par
ables of the Kingdom, as originally reported,
gave to it. The doctrine of the Kingdom was
at once simple, direct, personal, and deep,
mysterious, prophetic of something yet to be
disclosed. And herewith we at once remind
ourselves how the Christian community,
living, as it believed, in and through the spirit
of the Master, was early led to develop the
doctrine of the Kingdom into the doctrine of
the Christian Church.
When, however, we consider, not the his
torical accidents and not the external show,
but rather the deeper spirit of this doctrine
about the Christian Church, we are led to look
beyond, or beneath, all the special dogmas and
forms in which the opinion aftd the practice
of the historical Christian Church has found
in various ages a manifold and often a very
imperfect expression. And we are also led
to state, as the inner and deeper sense of the
whole process of the history of the Church,
the first of the three ideas of Christianity,
which will hereafter guide our study.
38
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
And we may here state this first Christian
idea in our own words thus, namely, as the
doctrine that "The salvation of the individual
man is determined by some sort of membership
in a certain spiritual community, a religious
community and, in its inmost nature, a divine
community, in whose life the Christian vir
tues are to reach their highest expression and
the spirit of the Master is to obtain its earthly
fulfilment." In other words : There is a
certain universal and divine spiritual com- ^VU/ * V^iui
munity. Membership in that community is
necessary to the salvation of man.
I propose, in our later lectures, to consider,
not the history and not, in any detail, the
dogmas of the Christian Church, but the mean
ing, the foundation, the truth of this first of
our three Christian ideas, --the idea of the
divinely significant spiritual community of the
faithful, -- the idea that such a community
exists, and is needed, and is an indispensable
means of salvation for the individual man, and
is the fitting realm wherein alone the Kingdom
of Heaven which the Master preached can
39
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
find its expression, and wherein alone the
Christian virtues can be effectively practised.
We are to ask, What is the foundation of
this idea ? What does it mean ? In essence,
is it a true idea ? In what sense does it
retain its meaning and its value to-day, and
for the modern man, and (in so far as we can
foresee) in what way is it destined to guide
the future? This inquiry will constitute an
essential part of our study of the Problem of
Christianity.
The mention of this first of the three Chris
tian ideas leads me at once to the mention of
two other ideas. These two stand in the
closest correlation with this first idea and
with each other, and share with the first a
character to which, as we shall later see, the
mystery, the elementally human significance,
and the beauty of the problem of Christianity
are all of them due. Both of these ideas grew
up because, in the preaching of the Kingdom
of Heaven, the Master appealed to the individ
ual man, but left certain aspects of this ap
peal mysterious, so that the question, What
40
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
is the nature and the worth of the individual
man ? was left a matter of serious heart
searching.
The second of our three ideas seems at
first sharply contrasted with the gentle and
hopeful spirit of some of the Master s best-
known and most-loved statements. We shall
later see, however, the deeper connection of
this second idea with what the Master taught
about the individual man. It is the grave,
yes, the tragic idea that can be stated, in the
form of a doctrine, thus: The individual
human being is by nature subject to some
overwhelming moral burden from which, if
unaided, he cannot escape." This burden is
at once a natural inheritance and a burden
of personal guilt. Both because of what has
technically been called original sin, and be
cause of the sins that he himself has com
mitted, the individual is doomed to a spiritual
ruin from which only a divine intervention
can save him. The individual, as Paul first
stated the case, is, apart from divine grace,
" dead in trespasses and sins." His salvation,
41
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
if it occurs at all, must involve a quickening,
a raising of the dead.
Thus tragic, thus strangely opposed in seem
ing to the more comforting and hopeful of
the parables of the founder, thus also very
sharply contrasted with some of our now most
favorite modern doctrines concerning the moral
dignity of human nature, and concerning the
course of the natural evolution of man from
lower to higher spiritual stages, -- thus para
doxical is the second of the three Christian
ideas that, in our latter discussion, we shall
emphasize. The first of the three central
ideas involves, as we just saw, the assertion
that the way of salvation lies in the union of
the individual with a certain universal spiritual
community. The second of these ideas, the
idea of the moral burden of the individual, in
cludes the doctrine that of himself, and apart
from the spiritual community which the divine
plan provides for his relief, the individual is
powerless to escape from his innate and ac
quired character, the character of a lost soul, or,
in Paul s phrase, of a dead man, who is by in-
42
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
heritance tainted, and is also by his own deeds
involved in hopeless guilt. You may well
ask : Can the modern man make anything
of such an idea ? This question, as we shall
see, is a very significant part of our problem
of Christianity.
The third leading idea of Christianity which
we shall have to consider is the one that many
modern minds regard as the strangest, as the
most hopelessly problematic, of the three. It
is also the one whose relation to the original
teachings of the Master seems most problem
atic. It is the idea expressed by the asser
tion : The only escape for the individual,
the only union with the divine spiritual com
munity which he can obtain, is provided by
the divine plan for the redemption of man
kind. And this plan is one which includes
an Atonement for the sins and for the guilt
of mankind. This atonement, and this alone,
makes possible the entrance of the individual
into a saving union with the divine spiritual
community, and reveals the full meaning of
what the Master meant by the Kingdom of
43
tA/VYV ^
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Heaven. Without atonement, no salvation.
And the divine plan has in fact provided and
accomplished the atoning work.
VIII
The idea of the spiritual community in
union with which man is to win salvation, the
idea of the hopeless and guilty burden of
the individual when unaided by divine grace,
the idea of the atonement, these are, for
our purposes, the three central ideas of Chris
tianity. Of these ideas the second, and still
more the third, seems, at first sight, especially
foreign to the modern mind, as most of us
conceive that mind; and all three appear to
be due to interpretations of the mind of the
Master which came into existence only after
his earthly period of teaching had ceased.
The discussion of the meaning and the truth
of each of these three ideas is to constitute
our proposed contribution to the Problem of
Christianity. The justification of our enter
prise lies in the fact that, familiar as these
three ideas are, they are still almost wholly
44
THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD
misunderstood, both by the apologists who
view them in the light of traditional dogmas,
and by the critics who assail the letter of
dogmas, but who fail to grasp the spirit.
We have in outline stated how we define
this Problem of Christianity. We have enu
merated three ideas which we are to regard as
the essential ideas of Christianity. We have
indicated the method that we are to follow
in discussing these ideas and in grasping and
in attempting to clarify our problem. Our
method is to consist in an union of an effort
to read the lesson of history with an effort to
estimate, upon a reasonable basis, the phi
losophy of the Christian religion. Already,
even in our opening statement, we have en
deavored to illustrate this union of historical
summary with philosophical reflection.
45
II
THE IDEA OF THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
LECTURE II
THE IDEA OF THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
IN accordance with the plan set forth at
the close of our first lecture, we begin our
study of the Problem of Christianity by a
discussion of the Christian idea of the Church,
and of its universal mission.
I
The Kingdom of Heaven, as characterized
in the Sermon on the Mount and in the para
bles, is something that promises to the indi
vidual man salvation, and that also possesses,
in some sense which the Master left for the
future to make clearer, a social meaning. To
the individual the doctrine says, "The King
dom of Heaven is within you." But when in
the end the Kingdom shall come, the will of
God, as we learn, is to be done on earth as it
is in heaven. And therewith the kingdoms
of this world - - the social order as it now is
and as it naturally is will pass away. Then
E 49
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
there will come to pass the union of the
blessed with their Father, and also, as appears,
with one another, in the heavenly realm which
the Father has prepared for them.
This final union of all who love is not de
scribed at length in tlie recorded words of the
Master. A religious imagery familiar to those
who heard the parables that deal with the
end of the world was freely used ; and this
imagery gives us to understand that the con
summation of all things will unite in a heav
enly community those who are saved. But
the organization, the administration, the ranks
and dignities, of the Kingdom of Heaven the
Master does not describe.
When the Christian Church began, in the
Apostolic Age, to take visible form, the idea
of the mission of the Church expressed the
meaning which the Christian community came
to attach to the social implications of the
founder s doctrine. What was merely hinted
in the parables now became explicit. The
Kingdom of Heaven was to be realized in
and through and for the Church, in the
50
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
fellowship of the faithful who constituted
the Church as it was on earth ; through the
divine Spirit that was believed to guide the
life of the Church ; and for the future ex
perience of the Church, whenever the end
should come, and whenever the purpose of
God should finally be manifested and accom
plished.
Such, in brief, was the teaching of the early
Christian community. Unquestionably this
teaching added something new to the original
doctrine of the Kingdom. But this addition,
as we shall later see, was more characteristic
of the new religion than was any portion of
the sayings that tradition attributed to the
Master, and was as inseparable from the es
sence of primitive Christianity as the belief
of the disciples themselves was inseparable
from their very earliest interpretations of the
person and the mission of their leader.
It is useless, I think, for the most eager
defender and expounder of primitive Chris
tianity in its purity to ignore the fact that,
whatever else the Christian religion involves,
51
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
some sort of faith or doctrine regarding the
office and the meaning of the Church was an
essential part of the earliest Christianity that
existed after the founder had passed from
earth.
Since our problem of Christianity involves
the study of the most vital Christian ideas,
how can we better begin our task than by
asking what this idea of the Church really
means, and what value and truth it possesses ?
Not only is such a beginning indeed advisable,
but, at first sight, it seems especially adapted
to enable us to use the manifold and abun
dant aids which, as we might suppose, the
aspirations of all Christian ages would fur
nish for our guidance.
For, as you may naturally ask, is not the
history of Christianity, viewed in at least
one very significant way, simply the history
of the Christian Church ? Is not the idea of
the Church, then, not only essential and potent,
but one of the most familiar of the religious
ideas of Christendom? Must not the con
sciousness of all really awakened Christian
52
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
communities whose creeds are recorded stand
ready to help the inquirer who wants to in
terpret this idea ? May we not then begin
this part of our enterprise with high hope,
sure that, as we attempt to grasp and to esti
mate this first of our three essential Christian
ideas, we shall have the ages of Christian
development as our helpers ? So, I repeat,
you may very naturally ask. But the answer
to this question is not such as quite fulfils
the hope just suggested.
II
As a fact, the idea and the doctrine of the
Christian Church constitute indeed a vital and
permanent part of Christianity ; and a study
of this idea is a necessary, and may properly
be the first, part of our inquiry into the Prob
lem of Christianity.
But we must not begin this inquiry without
a due sense of its difficulty. We must remem
ber at the very outset the fact that all the
Christian ages, up to the present one, unite,
not to present to us any finished interpreta-
53
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
tion of the idea of the Church, but rather to
prove that this idea is as fluent in its expres
sion as it is universal in its aim; and is as
baffling, by reason of the conflicts of its inter
preters, as it is precious in the longings that
constitute its very heart.
If this idea comforts the faithful, it is also
a stern idea; for it demands of those who
accept it the resolute will to face and to con
tend against the greatest of spiritual obstacles,
namely, the combined waywardness of the
religious caprices of all Christian mankind.
For the true Church, as we shall see, is still
a sort of ideal challenge to the faithful, rather
than an already finished institution, a call
upon men for a heavenly quest, rather than
a present possession of humanity. "Create
me," this is the word that the Church,
viewed as an idea, addresses to mankind.
Meanwhile the contrast between the letter
and the spirit of a fundamental doctrine is
nowhere more momentous and more tragic
than in case of the doctrine of the nature
and the office of the Christian Church. The
54
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
spirit of this doctrine consists, as we have
already seen, in the assertion that there is a
certain divinely ordained and divinely signifi
cant spiritual community, to which all must
belong who are to attain the true goal of life ;
that is, all who, to use the distinctly religious
phraseology, are to be saved.
How profoundly reasonable are the con
siderations upon which this doctrine is based
we have yet to see, and can only estimate in
the light of a due study of all the essential
Christian ideas. To my own mind these con
siderations are such as can be interpreted
and defended without our needing, for the
purposes of such interpretation and defence,
any acceptance of traditional dogmas. For
these considerations are based upon human
nature. They have to do with interests
which all reasonable men, whether Christian
or non-Christian, more or less clearly recog
nize, in proportion as men advance to the
higher stages of the art of life.
The spirit, then, of the doctrine of the
Church is as reasonable as it is universal. It
55
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
is Christian by virtue of features which, when
once understood, also render it simply and
impressively human. This, I say, is what
our entire study of the three Christian ideas
will, in the end, if I am right, bring to our
attention.
Ill
But the letter of the doctrine of the Church
has been subject to fortunes such as, in various
ways and degrees, attend the visible embodi
ment of all the great ideals of humanity ; only
that, as I have just said, the resulting tragedy
is, in no other case in which spirit and letter
are in conflict, greater than in this case.
In general the risks of temporary disaster
which great ideals run appear to be directly
proportioned to the value of the ideals. The
disasters may be destined to give place to
victory; but great truths bear long sorrows.
What humanity most needs, it most persist
ently misunderstands. The spirit of a great
ideal may be immortal ; its ultimate victory,
as we may venture to maintain, may be pre-
56
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
determined by the very nature of things ;
but that fact does not save such an ideal from
the fires of the purgatory of time. Its very
preciousness often seems to insure its repeated,
its long-enduring, effacement. The comfort
that it would bring if it were fully understood
and accepted may make all the greater the
sorrow of a world that still waits for the
light.
In case of the history of the essential idea
of the Church, the complications of dogma, the
strifes of the sects, the horrors of the religious
wars in former centuries, the confusions of
controversy in our own day, must not make
us despair. Such is the warfare of ideals.
Such is this present world.
Least of all may we attempt, as many do,
to accuse this or that special tendency or
power in the actual Church, past or present,
of being mainly responsible for this failure
to appreciate the ideal Church. The defect
lies deeper than students of such problems
usually suppose. Human nature, --not any
one party, yes, the very nature of the pro-
57
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
cesses of growth themselves, and not any
particular form of religious or of moral error,
must be viewed as the source of the principal
tragedies of the history of all the Christian
ideals.
In fact, the true idea of the Church has not
been forsaken ; it is, in a very real sense, still
to be found, or rather, to be created. We
have to do, in this case, not so much with
apostasy as with evolution. To be sure, at
the very outset, the ideal of the Church was
seen afar off through a glass, darkly. The
well-known apocalyptic vision revealed the
true Church as the New Jerusalem that
was yet to come down from heaven. The
expression of the idea was left, by the early
Church, as a task for the ages. The spirit
of that idea was felt rather than ever ade
quately formulated, and the vision still re
mains one of the principal grounds and sources
of the hope of humanity.
58
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
IV
Such doctrines, and such conflicts of spirit
and letter, cannot be understood unless our
historical sense is well awakened. On the
other hand, they cannot be understood merely
through a study of history. The values of
ideals must be ideally discerned. If viewed
without a careful and critical reflection, the
history of such processes as the development
of the idea of the Church presents a chaos of
contending motives and factions. Apart from
some understanding of history, all critical
reflection upon this idea remains an unfruitful
exercise in dialectics. We must therefore
first divide our task, and then reunite the
results, hoping thereby to win a connected
view of the ideal that constitutes our present
problem.
Let us, then, first point out certain motives
which, when considered quite apart from any
specifically Christian ideas or doctrines, may
serve to make intelligible the ideal which is
here in question. Then let us sketch the way
59
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
in which the idea of the Christian Church
first received expression.
This first expression of the idea of the
Church, as we shall find, transformed the
very teaching which it most eloquently reen-
forced and explained, namely, the teaching
which the parables of the founder had left
for the faith of the Christian community to
interpret. This was the teaching about the
office and the saving power of Christian love.
For such, as we shall see, was the first result
of the appearance of the idea of the Church
in Christian history.
By sketching, then, some non-Christian
developments and then a stage of early
Christian life, we shall get two aspects of the
ideal of the universal community before us.
Hereby we shall not have reached any solu
tion of our problem of Christianity ; but we
shall have brought together in our minds cer
tain Christian and certain non-Christian ideas
whose interrelations will hereafter prove to
be of the utmost importance for our whole
enterprise.
60
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
Next in order, then, comes a brief review
of some of those motives which, apart from
Christian history and Christian doctrine,
make the ideal x>f the universal community
a rationally significant ideal. These motives,
in their turn, are of two kinds. Some of them
are motives derived from the natural history
of mankind. Some of them are distinctively
ethical motives. We must become acquainted,
through a very general summary, with both
of these sorts of motives. Both sorts have
interacted. The nature of man as a social
being suggests certain ethical ideals. These
ideals, in their turn, have modified the natural
history of society.
As an essentially social being, man lives in
communities, and depends upon his com
munities for all that makes his civilization
articulate. His communities, as both Plato
and Aristotle already observed, have a sort
of organic life of their own, so that we can
compare a highly developed community, such
61
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
as a state, either to the soul of a man or to a
living animal. A community is not a mere
collection of individuals. It is a sort of live
unit, that has organs-, as the "body of an indi
vidual has organs. A community grows or
decays, is healthy or diseased, is young or
aged, much as any individual member of the
community possesses such characters. Each
of the two, the community or the individual
member, is as much a live creature as is the
other. Not only does the community live,
it has a mind of its own, a mind whose
psychology is not the same as the psychology
of an individual human being. The social
mind displays its psychological traits in its
characteristic products, in languages, in
customs, in religions, products which an
individual human mind, or even a collection
of such minds, when they are not somehow
organized into a genuine community, cannot
produce. Yet language, custom, religion are
all of them genuinely mental products.
Communities, in their turn, tend, under
certain conditions, to be organized into com-
62
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
posite communities of still higher and higher
grades. States are united in empires ; languages
cooperate in the production of universal litera
ture ; the corporate entities of many commu
nities tend to organize that still very incom
plete community which, if ever it comes into
existence, will be the world-state, the commu
nity possessing the whole world s civilization.
So far, I have spoken only of the natural
history of the social organization, and not of
its value. But the history of thought shows
how manifold are the ways in which, if once
you grant that a community is or can be a
living organic being, with a mind of its own,
this doctrine about the natural facts can be
used for ideal, for ethical, purposes. Few
ideas have been, in fact, more fruitful than
this one in their indirect consequences for
ethical doctrines as well as for religion.
It is no wonder, then, that many object
to every such interpretation of the nature of
a community by declaring that, whatever our
ethical ideals may demand, a community
really has no mind of its own at all, and is no
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
living organism. All the foregoing statements
about the mind of a community (as such
objectors insist) are metaphorical. A com
munity is a collection of individuals. And
the comparison of a community to an animal,
or to a soul, is at best a convenient fiction.
Other critics, not so much simply rejecting
the foregoing doctrine as hesitating, remark
that to call a community an organism, and to
speak of its possession of a mind, is to use
some form of philosophical mysticism. And
such mysticism, they say, stands, in any case,
in need of further interpretation.
To such objectors I shall here only reply
that one can maintain all the foregoing views
regarding the real organic life and regarding
the genuine mind of a community, without
committing one s self to any form of philo
sophical mysticism, and without depending
upon mere metaphors. For instance, Wundt,
in his great book entitled " Volkerpsychologie,"
treats organized communities as psychical en
tities. He does so deliberately, and states
his reasons. But he does all this purely as
64
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
a psychologist. Communities, as he insists^
behave as if they were wholes, and exhibit
psychological laws of their own. Following
Wundt, I have already said that it is the com
munity which produces languages, customs,
religions. These are, all of them, intelligent
mental products, which can be psychologically
analyzed, which follow psychological laws,
and which exhibit characteristic processes of
mental evolution, processes that belong
solely to organized groups of men. So Wundt
speaks unhesitatingly of the Gesammtbewusst-
sein, or Gesammtwille, of a community ;
and he finds this mental life of the community
to be as much an object for the student of
the natural history of mind, as is the conscious
ness of any being whose life a psychologist
can examine. His grounds are not mystical,
but empirical, if you will, pragmatic. A
community behaves like an entity with a mind
of its own. Therefore it is a fair "working
hypothesis" for the psychologist to declare
that it is such an entity, and that a community
has, or is, a mind.
F 65
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
VI
So far, then, I have merely sketched what,
in another context, will hereafter concern us
much more at length. For in later lectures
we shall have to study the metaphysical prob
lems which we here first touch. A community
can be viewed as a real unit. So we have
seen, and so far only we have yet gone.
But we have now to indicate why this
conception, whether metaphysically sound or
not, is a conception that can be ethical in its
purposes. And here again only the most
elementary and fundamental aspects of our
topic can be, in this wholly preparatory state
ment, mentioned. To all these problems we
shall have later to return.
We have said that a community can behave
like an unit; we have now to point out that
an individual member of a community can
find numerous very human motives for be
having towards his community as if it not
only were an unit, but a very precious and
worthy being. In particular he the indi-
66
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
vidual member may love his community as
if it were a person, may be devoted to it as if
it were his friend or father, may serve it, may
live and die for it, and may do all this, not
because the philosophers tell him to do so, but
because it is his own heart s desire to act thus.
Of such active attitudes of love and devo
tion towards a community, on the part of an
individual member of that community, his
tory and daily life present countless instances.
One s family, one s circle of personal friends,
one s home, one s village community, one s
clan, or one s country may be the object of
such an active disposition to love and to serve
the community as an unit, to treat the com
munity as if it were a sort of super-personal
being, and as if it could, in its turn, possess
the value of a person on some higher level.
One who thus loves a community, regards its
type of life, its form of being, as essentially
more worthy than his own. He becomes
devoted to its interests as to something that
by its very nature is nobler than himself.
In such a case he may find, in his devotion to
67
- *
****A*oJt trj fox4 V*^ $4*
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
his community, his fulfilment and his moral
destiny. In order to view a community in this
way it is, I again insist, not necessary to be a
mystic. It is only necessary to be a hearty
friend, or a good citizen, or a home-loving
being.
Countless faithful and dutifully disposed
souls, belonging to most various civilizations,
-people active rather than fanciful, and ear
nest rather than speculative, have in fact
viewed their various communities in this way.
I know of no better name for such a spirit
of active devotion to the community to which
the devoted individual belongs, than the ex
cellent old word " Loyalty," a word to
whose deeper meaning some Japanese thinkers
have of late years recalled our attention.
Loyalty, as I have elsewhere defined it, is
the willing and thoroughgoing devotion of a
self to a cause, when the cause is something
which unites many selves in one, and which
is therefore the interest of a community. For
a loyal human being the interest of the com
munity to which he belongs is superior to
68
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
every merely individual interest of his own.
He actively devotes himself to this cause. 1
Loyalty exists in very manifold shapes,
and belongs to no one time, or country, or
people. Warlike tribes and nations, during
the stages of their life which are intermediate
between savagery and civilization, have often
developed a high type of the loyal conscious
ness, and hence have defined their virtues in
terms of loyalty. Such loyalty may last over
into peaceful stages of social life ; and the
warlike life is not the exclusive originator of
the loyal spirit. Loyalty often enters into a
close alliance with religion, and from its very
nature is disposed to religious interpretations.
To the individual the loyal spirit appeals by
fixing his attention upon a life incomparably
vaster than his own individual life, a life
which, when his love for his community is
once aroused, dominates and fascinates him
by the relative steadiness, the strength and
fixity and stately dignity, of its motives and
demands.
1 See Lecture I of the "Philosophy of Loyalty" (New York, 1908).
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
The individual is naturally wayward and
capricious. This waywardness is a constant
source of entanglement and failure. But the
community which he loves is rendered rela
tively constant in its will by its customs ;
yet these customs no longer seem, to the loyal
individual, mere conventions or commands.
For his social enthusiasm is awakened by the
love of his kind ; and he glories in his service,
as the player in his team, or the soldier in his
flag, or the martyr in his church. If his reli
gion comes into touch with his loyalty, then
his gods are the leaders of his community,
and both the majesty and the harmony of
the loyal life are thus increased. The loyal
motives are thus not only moral, but also
aesthetic. The community may be to the
individual both beautiful and sublime.
Deep-seated, then, in human nature are the
reasons that make loyalty appear to the in
dividual as a solution for the problem of his
personal life. Yet these motives tend to still
higher and vaster conquests than we have here
yet mentioned. Warlike tribes and nations
70
^THE .UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
fight together ; and in so far loyalty contends
with loyalty. But on a more highly self-
conscious level the loyal spirit tends to assume
the form of chivalry. The really devoted
and considerate warrior learns to admire the
loyalty of his foe ; yes, even to depend upon it
for some of his own best inspiration. Knight
hood prizes the knightly spirit. The loyalty
of the clansmen breeds by contagion a more
intense loyalty in other clans ; but at the same
time it breeds a love for just such loyalty.
Kindred clans learn to respect and, ere long,
to share one another s loyalty. The result is
an ethical motive that renders the alliance
and, on occasion, the union of various clans
and nationalities not only a possibility, but
a conscious ideal.
The loyal are, in ideal, essentially kin. If
they grow really wise, they observe this fact.
The spirit that loves the community learns to
prize itself as a spirit that, in all who are
dominated by it, is essentially one, despite
the variety of special causes, of nationalities,
or of customs. The logical development of the
71
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
loyal spirit is therefore the rise of a conscious
ness of the ideal of an universal community
of the loyal, a community which, despite
all warfare and jealousy, and despite all
varieties of gods and of laws, is supreme in its
value, however remote from the present life of
civilization.
The tendency towards the formation of
such an ideal of an universal community can
he traced both in the purely secular forms of
loyalty, and in the history of the relations
between loyalty and religion in the most
varied civilizations. In brief, loyalty is, from
the first, a practical faith that communities,
viewed as units, have a value which is superior
to all the values and interests of detached
individuals. And the sort of loyalty which
reaches the level of true chivalry and which
loves the honor and the loyalty of the stranger
or even of the foe, tends, either in company
with or apart from any further religious mo
tive, to lead men towards a conception of the
brotherhood of all the loyal, and towards an
estimation of all the values of life in terms of
72
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
their relation to the service of one ideally
universal community. To this community
in ideal all men belong ; and to act as if one
were a member of such a community is to win
in the highest measure the goal of individual
life. It is to win what religion calls salva
tion.
When thus abstractly stated, the ideal of an
universal community may appear far away
from the ordinary practical interests of the
plain man. But the history of the spirit of
loyalty shows that there is a strong tendency
of loyalty towards such universal ideals.
Some such conception of the ideal community
of all mankind, actually resulting from re
flection upon the spirit of loyalty, received an
occasional and imperfect formulation in Ro
man Stoicism. In this more speculative shape
the Stoic conception of the universal com
munity was indeed not fitted to win over the
Roman world as a whole to an active loyalty
to the cause of mankind.
Yet the conception of universal loyalty, as
devotion to the unity of an ideal community,
73
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
a community whereof all loyal men should be
members, has not been left merely to the
Stoics, nor yet to any other philosophers to
formulate. The conception of loyalty both
springs from practical interests and tends of
itself, apart from speculation, towards the
enlargement of the ideal community of the
loyal in the direction of identifying that
^
community with all mankind. The history
of the ideals and of the religion of Israel, from
the Song of Deborah to the prophets, is a
classic instance of the process here in ques-
tion.
VII
We have thus indicated some of the funda
mentally human motives which the ideal of
the universal community expresses. We have
next to turn in a wholly different direction and
to remind ourselves of the way in which this
ideal found its place in the early history of
the Christian Church.
I cannot better introduce this part of my dis
cussion than by calling attention to a certain
74
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
contrast between the reported teaching of the
Master regarding the Kingdom of Heaven,
and some of the best-known doctrines of the
Apostle Paul. This contrast is as obvious and
as familiar as it has been neglected by students
of the philosophy of Christianity. Every
word that I can say about it is old. Yet a
survey of the whole matter is not common,
and I believe that this contrast has never more
demanded a clear restatement than it does
to-day.
The particular contrast which I here have
in mind is not the one which both the apolo
gists and the critics of Pauline Christianity
usually emphasize. It is a contrast which
does not directly relate to Paul s doctrine of
the person and mission of Christ ; and never
theless it is a contrast that bears upon the very
core of the Gospel. For it is a contrast that
has to do with the doctrine about the nature,
the office, the saving power of Christian love
itself. I say that just this contrast between
Paul s doctrine and the teachings of Jesus,
although perfectly familiar, has been neg-
75
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
lected by students of our problem. Let me
briefly show what I have in mind.
The best-known and, for multitudes, the
most directly moving of the words which tradi
tion attributes to Jesus, describe the duty of
man, the essence of religion, and the Kingdom
of Heaven itself, in terms of the conception of
Christian love. I have not here either the
time or the power adequately to expound this
the chief amongst the doctrines which tradi
tion ascribes directly to Jesus. I must pass
over what countless loving and fit teachers
have made so familiar. Yet I must remind
you of two features of Christ s doctrine of
love which at this point especially concern
our own enterprise.
First, it is needful for me to point out that,
despite certain stubborn and widespread mis
understandings, the Christian doctrine of
love, as that doctrine appears in the parables
and in the Sermon on the Mount, involves
and emphasizes a very positive and active
and heroic attitude towards life, and is not,
as some have supposed, a negative doctrine of
76
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
passive self-surrender. And secondly, I must
also bring to your attention the fact that the
Master s teaching about love leaves unsolved
certain practical problems, problems which
this very heroism and this positive tendency
of the doctrine make by contrast all the more
striking.
These unsolved problems of the reported
teaching of Jesus about love seem to have
been deliberately brought before us by the
Master, and as deliberately left unsolved.
The way was thus opened for a further de
velopment of what the Master chose to teach.
And such further development was presum
ably a part of what the founder more or less
consciously foresaw and intended.
The grain of mustard seed so his faith
assured him must grow. To that end it was
planted. Now a part of the new growth, a
contribution to the treatment of the problems
which the original teaching about love left
unsolved, was, in the sequel, due to Paul.
This sequel, whether the Master foresaw it or
not, is as important for the further office of
77
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Christianity as the original teaching was an
indispensable beginning of the process. Jesus
awaited in trust a further revelation of the
Father s mind. Such a new light came in due
season.
Two features, then, of the doctrine of love
as taught by Jesus, its impressively positive
and active character, and the mystery of its
unsolved problems, -- these two we must
next emphasize. Then we shall be ready to
take note of a further matter which also con
cerns us, namely, Paul s new contribution
to the solution of the very problems concern
ing love which the parables and the sayings of
Jesus had left unsolved. This new contribu
tion, - - Paul himself conceived not as his
own personal invention. For he held that the
new teaching w r as due to the spirit of his risen
and ascended Lord. What concerns us is that
Paul s additional thought was a critical in
fluence in determining both the evolution and
the permanent meaning of Christianity.
78
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
VIII
The love which Jesus preached has often
been misunderstood. Critics, as well as mis
taken friends of the Master s teachings, have
supposed Christian love to be more or less
completely identical with self-abnegation, -
with the amiably negative virtue of one who,
as the misleading modern phrase expresses the
matter, "has no thought of self." Another
modern expression, also misleading, is used by
some who identify Christian love with so-
called "pure altruism." The ideal Christian,
as such people interpret his virtue, "lives
wholly for others." That is what is meant by
the spirit which resists not evil, which turns
the other cheek to the smiter, which forgives,
and pities, and which abandons all worldly
goods.
Now, against such misunderstandings,
many of the wiser expounders of Christian
doctrine, both in former times and in our
own, have taken pains to show that love, as
the Jesus of the sayings and of the parables
79
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
conceived it, does not consist in mere self-
abnegation, and is not identical with pure
altruism, and is both heroic and positive.
The feature of the Master s doctrine of love
which renders this more positive and heroic
interpretation of the sayings inevitable, is
the familiar reason which is laid at the basis
of his whole teaching. One is to love one s
neighbor because God himself, as Father,
divinely loves and prizes each individual man.
Hence the individual man has an essentially
infinite value, although he has this value only
in and through his relation to God, and be
cause of God s love for him. Therefore mere
self-abnegation cannot be the central virtue.
For the Jesus of the sayings not only rejoices
in the divine love whereof every man is the
object, but also invites every man to rejoice
in the consciousness of this very love, and to
delight also in all men, since they are God s
beloved. The man whom this love of God
is to transform into a perfect lover cannot
henceforth merely forget or abandon the self.
The parable of the servant who, although him-
80
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
self forgiven by his Lord, will not forgive his
fellow-servant, shows indeed how worthless
self-assertion is when separated from a sense
that all are equally dependent upon God s
love. But the parable of the talents shows
with equal clearness how stern the demands of
the divine love are in requiring the individual
to find a perfectly positive expression of the
unique value which it is his office, and his
alone, to return to his Lord with usury.
Every man, this self included, has just such
an unique value, and must be so viewed.
Hence the sayings are full of calls to self-ex
pression, and so to heroism. Love is divine ;
and therefore it includes an assertion of its
own divinity ; and therefore it can never
be mere self-abnegation. Christian altruism
never takes the form of saying, "I myself
ought to be or become nothing; while only
the others are to be served and saved." For
the God who loves me demands not that I
should be nothing, but that I should be his
own. Love is never merely an amiable toler
ance of whatever form human frailty and folly
G 81
1
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
may take. To be sure, the lover, as Jesus
depicts him, resists not evil, and turns his
cheek to the smiter. Yes, but he does this
with full confidence that God sees all and will
vindicate his servant. The lover vividly an
ticipates the positive triumph of all the right
eous ; and so his love for even the least of the
little ones is, in anticipation, an active and
strenuous sharing in the final victory of God s
will. His very non-resistance is therefore
inspired by a divine contempt for the powers
of evil. Why should one resist who always
has on his side and in his favor the power that
is irresistible, that loves him, and that will
triumph even through his weakness ?
Such a spirit renders pity much more than
a mere absorption in attempting to relieve
the misery of others. Sympathy for the
sufferer, as the sayings of Jesus depict it, is
but an especially pathetic illustration of one s
serene confidence that the Father who cares
for all triumphs over all evil, so that when we
feel pity and act pitifully, we take part in this
divine triumph. Hence pity is no mere ten-
82
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
derness. It is a sharing in the victory that
overcomes the world.
Such, then, in brief, is the doctrine of Chris
tian love as the sayings and the parables con
tain it, a doctrine as positive and strenuous
as it is humane, and as it is sure of the Father s
good will and overruling power. So far I
indeed merely remind you of what all the
wiser expounders of Christian doctrine, what
ever their theology or their disagreements,
have, on the whole, and despite popular mis
understandings, agreed in recognizing. And
hereupon you might well be disposed to ask :
Is not this, in spirit and in essence, the deepest
meaning, yes, is it not really the whole of
Christianity ? What did Paul do, what could
he do, when he spoke of love, but repeat this,
the Master s doctrine ?
IX
In answer to this question, we must next
note that, over against this clear and posi
tive definition of the spiritual attitude that
Jesus attributes to the Christian lover, there
83
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
stand certain problems which come to mind
when we ask for more precise directions re
garding what the lover is to do for the object
of his love. Love is concerned not only with
the lover s inner inspiration, but with the
services that he is to perform for the beloved.
Now, in the world in which the teaching of
Jesus places the Christian lover, love has
two objects, God and one s neighbor.
What is one to do in order to express one s
love for each of these objects ?
So far as concerns the lover s relation to
God, the answer is clear, and is stated wholly
in religious terms. Purity of heart in loving,
perfect sincerity and complete devotion, the
heroism of spirit just described, -- these,
with complete trust in God, with utter sub
mission to the Father s will, --these are the
services that the lover can render to God.
In these there is no merit ; for they are as
nothing in comparison with one s debt to the
Father. But they are required. And in so
far the doctrine of love is made explicit and
the rule of righteousness is definite.
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THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
But now let us return to the relation of love
to the services that one is to offer to one s
neighbor. What can the lover, in so far as
Jesus describes his task, -- what can he do for
his fellow-man ?
To this question it is, indeed, possible to give
one answer which clearly defines a duty to
the neighbor; and this duty is emphasized
throughout the teaching of Jesus. This duty
is the requirement to use all fitting means, -
example, precept, kindliness, non-resistance,
heroism, patience, courage, strenuousness, -
all means that tend to make the neighbor
himself one of the lovers. The first duty of
love is to produce love, to nourish it, to extend
the Kingdom of Heaven by teaching love to
all men. And this service to one s neighbor
is a clearly definable service. And so far the
love of the neighbor involves no unsolved
problems.
But in sharp contrast with this aspect of
the doctrine of love stands another aspect,
which is indeed problematic. In addition to
the extension of the loving spirit through
.85
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
example and precept, the lover of his neighbor
has on his hands the whole problem of humane
and benevolent practical activity, the prob
lem of the positively philanthropic life.
The doctrine of love, so positive, so
active, so resolute in its inmost spirit, might
naturally be expected to give in detail coun
sel regarding what to do for the personal needs
of the lover s fellow-man. But, at this point,
we indeed meet the more baffling side of the
doctrine of love. Jesus has no system of
rules to expound for guiding the single acts
of the philanthropic life. Apart from insisting
upon the loving spirit, apart from the one
rule to extend the Kingdom of Heaven and
to propagate this spirit of love among men,
the Master leaves the practical decisions of
the lover to be guided by loving instinct
rather than by a conscious doctrine regarding
what sort of special good one can do to one s
neighbor.
Thus the original doctrine of love, as taught
in the parables, involves no definite pro
gramme for social reform, and leaves us in the
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
presence of countless unsolved practical issues.
This is plainly a deliberate limitation to which
the Master chose to subject his explanations
about love.
Jesus tells us of many conditions that ap
pear necessary to the practical living of the
life of love for one s neighbor. But when we
ask : Are these conditions not only necessary
but sufficient ? we are often left in doubt.
Love relieves manifest suffering, when it can ;
love feeds the hungry, clothes the naked ; -
in brief, love seems, at first sight, simply to
offer to the beloved neighbor whatever that
neighbor himself most desires. It is easy to
interpret the golden rule in this simple way.
Yet we know, and the author of the parables
well knows and often tells us, that the natural
man desires many things that he ought not to
desire and that love ought not to give him.
Since the life is more than meat, it also follows
that feeding the hungry and clothing the naked
are not acts which really supply what man
most needs. The natural man does not know
his own true needs. Hence the golden rule
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
does not tell us in detail what to do for him,
but simply expresses the spirit of love. What
is sure about love is that it indeed unites the
lover, in spirit, to God s will. What consti
tutes, in this present world, the pathos, the
tragedy of love, is that, because our neighbor
is so mysterious a being to our imperfect
vision, we do not now know how to make him
happy, to relieve his deepest distresses, to do
him the highest good ; so that most loving acts,
such as giving the cup of cold water, and
helping the sufferer who has fallen by the way
side, seem, to our more thoughtful moods, to
be mere symbols of what love would do if it
could, mere hints of the active life that love
would lead if it were directly and fully guided
by the Father s wisdom.
Modern philanthropy has learned to de
velop a technically clearer consciousness about
this problem of effective benevolence, and has
made familiar the distinction between loving
one s neighbor, and finding out how to be
practically useful in meeting the neighbor s
needs. Hence, sometimes, the modern mind
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
wonders how to apply the spirit of the parables
to our special problems of benevolence, and
questions whether, and in what sense, the
original Gospel furnishes guidance for our
own modern social consciousness.
The problems thus barely suggested are in
deed in a sense answered, so far as the origi
nally reported teaching of Jesus is concerned,
but are answered by a consideration which
awakens a new call for further interpretation.
The parables and the Sermon on the Mount
emphasize, in the present connection, two
things : First, that it is indeed the business
of everj- lover of his neighbor to help other
men by rendering them also lovers ; and sec
ondly that, as to other matters, one who tries
to help his neighbor must leave to God, to
the all-loving Father, the care for the true
and final good of the neighbor whom one
loves. Since the judgment day is near, in
the belief of Jesus and of his hearers, since
the final victory of the Kingdom will erelong
be miraculously manifested, the lover, so
Jesus seems to hold, can wait. It is his task
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
to use his talent as he can, to be ready for his
Lord s appearance, and to be strenuous in
the spirit of love. But the God who cares for
the sparrows will care for the success of love.
It is simply not the lover s task to set this
present world right ; it is his only to act in the
spirit that is the Father s spirit, and that,
when revealed and triumphant, at the judg
ment day, will set all things right. In this
way the heroism of the ideal of the Kingdom
is perfectly compatible, in the parables, with
an attitude of resignation with regard to the
means whereby the ideal is to be accomplished.
Serene faith as to the result, strenuousness as
to the act, whatever it is, which the loving
spirit just now prompts : this is the teaching
of the parables.
I have said that the world of the parables
contains two beings to whom Christian love
is owed: God and the neighbor. Both, as
you now see, are mysterious. The serene
faith of the Master sets one mystery side by
side with the other, bids the disciple lay aside
all curious peering into what is not yet re-
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THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
vealed to the loving soul, and leaves to the
near future, to the coming end of the world,
- the lifting of all veils and the reconciliation
of all conflicts.
Such, then, are the problems of the doctrine
of love which the Master brings [to light, but
does not answer. Our next question is : What
does Paul contribute to this doctrine of love ?
Paul indeed repeated many of his Master s
words concerning love ; and he everywhere is
in full agreement with their spirit. And yet
this agreement is accompanied by a perfectly
inevitable further development of the doctrine
of Christian love, a development which is
due to the fact that into the world of Paul s
religious life and teaching there has entered,
not only a new experience, but a new sort of
being, a real object whereof the Master
had not made explicit mention.
God and the neighbor are beings whose
general type religion and common sense had
made familiar long before Jesus taught,
91
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
mysterious though God and one s neighbor
were to the founder s hearers, and still re
main to ourselves. Both of them are con
ceived by the religious consciousness of the
parables as personal beings, and as individuals.
God is the supreme ruler who, as Christ
conceives him, is also an individual person,
and who loves and wills. The neighbor is the
concrete human being of daily life.
But the new, the third being, in Paul s
religious world, seems to the Apostle himself
novel in its type, and seems to him to possess
a nature involving what he more than once
calls a "mystery." To express, so far as he
may, this "mystery," he uses characteristic
metaphors, which have become classic.
This new being is a corporate entity,
the body of Christ, or the body of which the
now divinely exalted Christ is the head. Of
this body the exalted Christ is also, for Paul,
the spirit and also, in some new sense, the
lover. This corporate entity is the Christian
community itself.
Perfectly familiar is the fact that the exist-
92
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
ence and the idea of this community constitute
a new beginning in the evolution of Christian
ity. But neglected, as I think and as I have
just asserted, is the subtle and momentous
transformation, the great development which
this new motive brings to pass in the Pauline
form of the doctrine of Christian love.
What most interests us here, and what is
least generally understand, I think, by stu
dents of the problem of Christianity, is the fact
that this new entity, this corporate sort of
reality which Paul so emphasizes, this being
which is not an individual man but a com
munity, does not, as one might suppose,
render the Apostle s doctrine of love more
abstract, more remote from human life,
less direct and less moving, than was the orig
inal doctrine of love in the parables. On the
contrary, the new element makes the doctrine
of love more concrete, and, as I must insist,
really less mysterious. In speaking of this
corporate entity, the Apostle uses metaphors,
and knows that they are metaphors; but,
despite what the Apostle calls the new
93
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
"mystery," these metaphors explain much
that the parables left doubtful. These meta
phors do not hide, as the Master, in using the
form of the parable, occasionally intended
for the time to hide from those who were not
yet ready for the full revelation, truths which
the future was to make clearer to the disciples.
No, Paul s metaphors regarding the com
munity of the faithful in the Church bring the
first readers of Paul s epistles into direct
contact with the problems of their own daily
religious life.
The corporate entity the Christian com
munity -- proves to be, for Paul s religious
consciousness, something more concrete than
is the individual fellow-man. The question :
Who is my neighbor ? had been answered by
the Master by means of the parable of the
Good Samaritan. But that question itself
had not been due merely to the hardness of
heart of the lawyer who asked it. The prob
lem of the neighbor actually involves mys
teries which, as we have already seen and
hereafter shall still further see, the parables
94
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
deliberately leave, along with the conception
of the Kingdom of Heaven itself, to be made
clearer only when the new revelation, for which
the parables are preparing the way, shall have
been granted. Now Paul feels himself to be
in possession of a very precious part of this
further revelation. He has discovered, in his
own experience as Apostle, a truth that he
feels to be new. He believes this truth to be
a revelation due to the spirit of his Lord.
In fact, the Apostle has discovered a special
instance of one of the most significant of all
moral and religious truths, the truth that a
community, when unified by an active in
dwelling purpose, is an entity more concrete
and, in fact, less mysterious than is any
individual man, and that such a community
can love and be loved as a husband and wife
love ; or as father or mother love.
Because the particular corporate entity
whose cause Paul represents, namely, the
Christian community, is in his own experience
something new, whose origin he views as
wholly miraculous, whose beginnings and
95
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
whose daily life are bound up with the influ
ence which he believes to be due to the spirit
of his risen and ascended Lord, Paul indeed re
gards the Church as a "mystery." But, as a
fact, his whole doctrine regarding the com
munity has a practical concreteness, a clear
common sense about it, such that he is able
to restate the doctrine of Christian love so as
to be fully just to all its active heroism, while
interpreting much which the parables left
problematic.
XI
What can I do for my neighbor s good ?
The parables had answered: "Love him,
help him in his obvious and bitter needs,
teach him the spirit of love, and leave the
rest to God." Does Paul make light of this
teaching ? On the contrary, his hymn in
honor of love, in the first epistle to the Corin
thians, is one of Christianity s principal treas
ures. Nowhere is the real consequence of
the teaching of Jesus regarding love more
completely stated. But notice this differ-
96
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
ence : For Paul the neighbor has now be
come a being who is primarily the fellow-mem
ber of the Christian community.
The Christian community is itself something
visible; miraculously guided by the Master s
spirit. It is at once for the Apostle a fact of
present experience and a divine creation.
And therefore every word about love for the
neighbor is in the Apostle s teaching at once
perfectly direct and human in its effectiveness
and is nevertheless dominated by the spirit
of a new and, as Paul believes, a divinely
inspired love for the community.
Both the neighbor and the lover of the
neighbor to whom the Apostle appeals are,
to his mind, members of the body of Christ ;
and all the value of each man as an individual
is bound up with his membership in this body,
and with his love for the community.
Jesus had taught that God loves the neigh
bor, yes, even the least of these little ones.
Paul says to the Ephesians : "Christ loved
the church, and gave himself up for it, that he
might sanctify it ; ... that he might present
H 97
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
*
the church to himself a glorious church, not
having spot : . . . but that it should be
holy and without blemish." One sees : The
object of the divine love, as Paul conceives it,
has been at once transformed and fulfilled.
In God s love for the neighbor, the par
ables find the proof of the infinite worth of
the individual. In Christ s love for the
Church Paul finds the proof that both the
community, and the individual member, are
the objects of an infinite concern, which
glorifies them both, and thereby unites them.
The member finds his salvation only in union
with the Church. He, the member, would
be dead without the divine spirit and without
the community. But the Christ whose com
munity this is, has given life to the members,
- the life of the Church, and of Christ him
self. ;< You hath he quickened, which were
dead in trespasses and sins."
In sum : Christian love, as Paul conceives it,
takes on the form of Loyalty. This is Paul s
simple but vast transformation of Christian
love.
98
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
Loyalty itself was, in the history of human
ity, already, at that time, ancient. It had ex
isted in all tribes and peoples that knew what
it was for the individual so to love his com
munity as to glory in living and dying for
that community. To conceive virtue as faith
fulness to one s community, was, in so far,
no new thing. Loyalty, moreover, had long
tended towards a disposition to enlarge both
itself and its community. As the world had
come together, it had gradually become pos
sible for philosophers, such as the later Stoics,
to conceive of all humanity as in ideal one
community.
Although this was so far a too abstract con
ception to conquer the world of contending
powers, the spirit of loyalty was also not
without its religious relationships, and tended,
as religion tended, to make the moral realm
appear, not only a world of human communi
ties, but a world of divinely ordained unity.
Meanwhile, upon every stage, long before the
Christian virtues were conceived, loyalty had
inspired nations of warriors with the sternest
99
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
of their ideals of heroism, and with their
noblest visions of the destiny of the individual.
And the prophets of Israel had indeed con
ceived the Israel of God s ultimate triumph
as a community in and through which all
men should know God and be blessed.
But in Paul s teaching, loyalty, quickened
to new life, not merely by hope, but by the
presence of a community in whose meetings
the divine spirit seemed to be daily working
fresh wonders, keeps indeed its natural rela
tion to the militant virtues, is heroic and stren
uous, and delights to use metaphors derived
from the soldier s life. It appears also as the
virtue of those who love order, and who pre
fer law to anarchy, and who respect worldly
authority. And it derives its religious ideas
from the prophets.
But it also becomes the fulfilment of what
Jesus had taught in the parables concerning
love. For the Apostle, this loyalty unites to
all these stern and orderly and militant traits,
and to all that the prophets had dreamed
about Israel s triumph, the tenderness of a
100
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
brother s love for the individual brother.
Consequently, in Paul s mind, love for the
individual human being, and loyalty to the
divine community of all the faithful ; gra-
ciousness of sentiment, and orderliness of dis
cipline; are so directly interwoven that each
interprets and glorifies the other.
If the Corinthians unlovingly contend,
brother with brother, concerning their gifts,
Paul tells them about the body of Christ,
and about the divine unity of its spirit in all
the diversity of its members and of their
powers. On the other hand, if it is loyalty to
the Church which is to be interpreted and
revivified, Paul pictures the dignity of the
spiritual community in terms of the direct
beauty and sweetness and tenderness of the
love of brother for brother, - - that love which
seeketh not her own.
The perfect union of this inspired passion
for the community, with this tender fond
ness for individuals, is at once the secret of
the Apostle s power as a missionary and the
heart of his new doctrine. Of loyalty to the
101
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
spirit and to the body of Christ, he discourses
in his most abstruse as well as in his most
eloquent passages. But his letters close with
the well-known winning and tender messages
to and about individual members and about
their intimate personal concerns.
As to the question: "What shall I do for
my brother?" Paul has no occasion to
answer that question except in terms of the
brother s relations to the community. But
just for that reason his counsels can be as
concrete and definite as each individual case
requires them to be. Because the community,
as Paul conceives it, the small community
of a Pauline church, -- keeps all its members
in touch with one another ; because its
harmony is preserved through definite plans
for setting aside the differences that arise
amongst individuals ; because, by reason of
the social life of the whole, the physical
needs, the perils, the work, the prosperity of
the individual are all made obvious facts of
the common experience of the church, and
are all just as obviously and definitely related
102
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
to the health of the whole body, Paul s gospel
of love has constant and concrete practical
applications to the life of those whom he ad
dresses. The ideal of the parables has be
come a visible life on earth. So live together
that the Church may be worthy of Christ
who loves it, so help the individual brother
that he may be a fitting member of the Church.
Such are now the counsels of love.
All this teaching of Paul was accompanied,
of course, in the Apostle s own mind, by the
unquestioning assurance that this community
of the Christian faith, as he knew it and in
his letters addressed its various representa
tives, was indeed a genuinely universal com
munity. It was already, to his mind, what
the prophets had predicted when they spoke
of the redeemed Israel. By the grace of God,
all men belonged to this community, or would
soon belong to it, whom God was pleased to
save at all.
For the end of the world was very soon to
come, and would manifest its membership,
its divine head, and its completed mission.
103
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
According to Paul s expectation, there was to
be no long striving towards an ideal that in
time was remote. He dealt with the interests
of all mankind. But his faith brought him
into direct contact with the institution that
represented this world-wide interest. What
loyalty on its highest levels has repeatedly
been privileged to imagine as the ideal brother
hood of all who are loyal, Paul found directly
presented, in his religious experience, as his
own knowledge of his Master s purpose, and
of its imminent fulfilment.
This vision began to come to Paul when he
was called to be an apostle ; and later, when
he was sent to the Gentiles, the ideal grew
constantly nearer and clearer. The Church
1 was, for Paul, the very presence of his Lord.
Such, then, was the first highly developed
Christian conception of the universal com
munity. That which the deepest and highest
rational interests of humanity make most
desirable for all men, and that which the
prophets of Israel had predicted afar off, the
religious experience of Paul brought before his
104
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
eyes as the daily work of the spirit in the
Church. Was not Christ present whenever
the faithful were assembled ? Was not the
spirit living in their midst ? Was not the day
of the Lord at hand ? Would not they all
soon be changed, when the last trumpet
should sound ?
Our sketch, thus far, of the spirit of the
ideal of the universal community, solves none
of our problems. But it helps to define
them. This, the first of our three essential
ideas of Christianity, is the idea of a spiritual
life in which universal love for all individuals
shall be completely blended, practically har
monized, with an absolute loyalty for a real
and universal community. God, the neighbor,
and the one church : These three are for
Paul the objects of Christian love and the
inspiration of the life of love.
Paul s expectations of the coming judgment
were not realized. Those little apostolic
churches, where the spirit daily manifested
itself, gave place to the historical church of
the later centuries, whose possession of the
105
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
spirit has often been a matter of dogma rather
than of life, and whose unity has been so often
lost to human view. The letter has hidden
the spirit. The Lord has delayed his coming.
The New Jerusalem, adorned as a bride for
her husband, remains hidden behind the
heavens. The vision has become the Problem
of Christianity.
Our sketch has been meant merely to help
us towards a further definition of this prob
lem. To such a definition our later lectures
must attempt still further to contribute.
We have a hint of the sources of the first of
our three essential ideas of Christianity. We
have still to consider what is the truth of
this idea. And in order to move towards an
answer to this question, we shall be obliged,
in our immediately subsequent lectures, to
attempt a formulation of the two other
essential ideas of Christianity named in our
introductory statement.
106
Ill
THE MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
LECTURE III
THE MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
A LL things excellent," says Spinoza, "are
-^- as difficult as they are rare;" and
Spinoza s word here repeats a lesson that
nearly all of the world s religious and moral
teachers agree in emphasizing. Whether such
a guide speaks simply of "excellence," or
uses the distinctively religious phraseology
and tells us about the way to "salvation,"* he
is sure, if he is wise, to recognize, and on
occasion to say, that whoever is to win the
highest goal must first learn to bear a heavy
burden. It also belongs to the common lore
of the sages to teach that this burden is much
; more due to the defects of our human nature
than to the hostility of fortune. "We our
selves make our time short for our task":
such comments are as trite as they are well
founded in the facts of life.
109
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
But among the essential ideas of Chris
tianity, there is one which goes beyond this
common doctrine of the serious-minded guides
of humanity. For this idea defines the moral
burden, to which the individual who seeks
salvation is subject, in so grave a fashion that
many lovers of mankind, and, in particular,
many modern minds, have been led to declare
that so much of Christian doctrine, at least
in the forms in which it is usually stated, is
an unreasonable and untrue feature of the
faith. This idea I stated at the close of our
first lecture, side by side with the two other
ideas of Christianity which I propose, in these
lectures, to discuss. The idea of the Church,
of the universal community, -- which was
our topic in the second lecture, is expressed
by the assertion that there is a real and di
vinely significant spiritual community to which
all must belong who are to win the true
goal of life. The idea of the moral burden
no
MORAL BURDENOFTHE INDIVIDUAL
of the individual is expressed by maintaining
that (as I ventured to state this idea in my
own words) : :< The individual human being
is by nature subject to some overwhelming
moral burden from which, if unaided, he
cannot escape. Both because of what has
technically been called original sin, and be
cause of the sins that he himself has com
mitted, the individual is doomed to a spiritual
ruin from which only a divine intervention
can save him."
This doctrine constitutes the second of the
three Christian ideas that I propose to dis
cuss. I must take it up in the present
lecture.
II
To this mode of continuing our discussion
you may object that our second lecture
left the idea of the Church very incompletely
stated, and, in many most important respects,
also left that idea uninterpreted, uncriticised,
and not yet brought into any clear relation
with the creed of the modern man. Is it
ill
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
well, you may ask, to discuss a second one of
the Christian ideas, when the first has not
yet been sufficiently defined ?
I answer that the three Christian ideas
which we have chosen for our inquiry are so
closely related that each throws light upon
the others, and in turn receives light from
them. Each of these ideas needs, in some
convenient order, to be so stated and so
illustrated, and then so made the topic of a
thoughtful reflection, that we shall hereby
learn : First, about the basis of this idea in
human nature; secondly, about its value,
its ethical significance as an interpretation
of life; and thirdly, about its truth, and
about its relation to the real world. At the
close of our survey of the three ideas, we shall
bring them together, and thus form some
general notion of what is essential to the
Christian doctrine of life viewed as a whole.
We shall at the same time be able to define
the way in which this Christian doctrine of
life expresses certain actual needs of men,
and undertakes to meet these needs. We
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MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL
shall then have grounds for estimating the
ethical and religious value of the connected
whole of the doctrines in question.
There will then remain the hardest part of
our task: the study of the relation of these
Christian ideas to the real world. So far as
we are concerned, this last part of our inves
tigation will involve, in the main, meta
physical problems ; and the closing lectures of
our course will therefore contain an outline
of the metaphysics of Christianity, culminat
ing in a return to the problems of the modern
man.
Such is our task. On the way toward our
goal we must be content, for a time, with
fragmentary views. They will, ere long, come
into a certain unity with one another; but
for that unity we must wait, until each idea
has had its own partial and preliminary
presentation.
Of the idea of the universal community
we have learned, thus far, two things, and
no more. First, we have seen that this
idea has a broad psychological basis in the
i 113
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
social nature of mankind, while it gets its
ethical value from its relations to the interests
and needs of all those of any time or nation
who have learned what is the deeper meaning
of loyalty. By loyalty, as you remember, I
mean the thoroughgoing, practical, and loving
devotion of a self to an united community.
Secondly, we have seen that, in addition
to its general basis in human nature, this
idea has its specifically Christian form. The
significance of this form we have illustrated
by the way in which the original doctrine of
Christian love, as Jesus taught it in his sayings
and parables, received not only an applica
tion, but also a new development in the
consciousness of the apostolic churches, when
the Apostle Paul experienced and moulded
their life.
The synthesis of the Master s doctrine of
love with the type of loyalty which the life
of the spirit in the Church taught Paul to
express, makes concrete and practical certain
more mysterious aspects of the doctrine of
love which the Master had taught in parables,
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MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL
but had left for a further revelation to define.
And herewith the spirit of the Christian idea
of the universal community entered, as a
permanent possession, into the history of
Christianity.
This preliminary study of the idea of the
universal community leaves us with countless
unsolved problems. But it at least shows us
where some portion of our main problem lies.
The dogmas of the historical Church concern
ing its own authority we have so far left, in
our discussion, almost untouched. That the
spirit and the letter of this first of our Chris
tian ideas are still very far apart, all who love
mankind, and who regard Christianity wisely,
well know. We have not yet tried to show
how spirit and letter are to be brought nearer
together. It has not been my privilege to
tell you where the true Church is to-day to be
found. As a fact, I believe it still to be an
invisible Church. And I readily admit that
a disembodied idea does not meet all the
interests of Christianity, and does not answer
all the questions of the modern man.
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
But we have yet, in due time, to consider
whether, and to what extent, the universal
community is a reality. That is a problem,
partly of dogma, partly of metaphysics. It
is not my office to supply the modern man,
or any one else, with a satisfactory system of
dogmas. But I believe that philosophy has
still something to say which is worth saying
regarding the sense in which there really is
an universal community such as expresses
what the Christian idea means. I shall
hereafter offer my little contribution to this
problem.
Ill
Let us turn, then, to our new topic. The
moralists, as we have already pointed out,
are generally agreed that whoever is to win
the highest things must indeed learn to bear
a heavy moral burden. But the Christian
idea now in question adds to the common
lore of the moralists the sad word : " The
individual cannot bear this burden. His tainted
nature forbids ; his guilt weighs him down.
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MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
If by salvation one means a winning of the
true goal of life, the individual, unaided, can
not be saved. And the help that he needs for
bearing his burden must come from some
source entirely above his own level, from
a source which is, in some genuine sense,
divine."
The most familiar brief statement of the
present idea is that of Paul in the passage in
the seventh chapter of the epistle to the
Romans, which culminates in this cry :
"O wretched man that I am!" What the
Apostle, in the context of this passage, ex
pounds as his interpretation both of his own
religious experience and of human nature
in general, has been much more fully stated
in the form of well-known doctrines, and has
formed the subject-matter for ages of Chris
tian controversy.
In working out his own theory of the facts
which he reports, Paul was led to certain often
cited statements about the significance and
the effect of Adam s legendary transgression.
And, as a consequence of these words and of
117
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
a few other Pauline passages, technical prob
lems regarding original sin, predestination,
and related topics have come to occupy so
large a place in the history of theology, that,
to many minds, Paul s own report of personal
experience, and his statements about plain
facts of human nature, have been lost to
sight (so .far as concerns the idea of the
moral burden of the individual) in a maze of
controversial complications. To numerous
modern minds the whole idea of the moral
burden of the individual seems, therefore,
to be an invention of theologians, and to
possess little or no religious importance.
Yet I believe that such a view is profoundly
mistaken. The idea of the moral burden of
the individual is, as we shall see, not without
its inherent complications, and not without
its relation to very difficult problems, both
ethical and metaphysical. Yet, of the three
essential ideas of Christianity which consti
tute our list, it is, relatively speaking, the
simplest, and the one which can be most
easily interpreted to the enlightened common
118
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
sense of the modern man. Its most familiar
difficulties are due rather to the accidents of
controversy than to the nature of the subject.
The fate which has beset those who have
dealt with the technical efforts to express
this idea is partly explicable by the general
history of religion ; but is also partly due to
varying personal factors, such as those which
determined Paul s own training. This fate
may be summed up by saying that, regarding
just this matter of the moral burden of the
individual, those who, by virtue of their gen
ius or of their experience, have most known
what they meant, have least succeeded in
making clear to others what they know.
Paul, for instance, grasped the essential
meaning of the moral burden of the individual
with a perfectly straightforward veracity of
understanding. What he saw, as to this
matter, he saw with tragic clearness, and
upon the basis of a type of experience that, in
our own day, we can verify, as we shall soon
see, much more widely than was possible for
him. But when he put his doctrine into
119
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
words, both his Rabbinical lore, and his
habits of interpreting tradition, troubled his
speech ; and the passages which embody his
theory of the sinfulness of man remain as
difficult and as remote from his facts, as his
report of these facts of life themselves is elo
quent and true.
Similar has been the fortune of nearly all
subsequent theology regarding the technical
treatment of this topic. Yet growing human
experience, through all the Christian ages,
has kept the topic near to life ; and to-day it
is in closer touch with life than ever. The
idea of the moral burden of the individual
seems, to many cheerful minds, austere;
but, if it is grave and stern, it is grave with
the gravity of life, and stern only as the call
of life, to any awakened mind, ought to be
stern. If the traditional technicalities have
obscured it, they have not been able to
affect its deeper meaning or its practical sig
nificance. Rightly interpreted, it forms, I
think, not only an essential feature of Chris
tianity, but an indispensable part of every
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MORAL BURDEN OF THE IN DIVIDUAL
religious and moral view of life which con
siders man s business justly, and does so with
a reasonable regard for the larger connections
of our obligations and of our powers.
IV
If we ourselves are to see these larger con
nections, we must, for the time, disregard the
theological complications of the history of
doctrine concerning original sin, and must also
disregard the metaphysical problems that
lie behind these complications. We must do
this ; but not as if these theological theories
were wholly arbitrary, or wholly insignificant.
We must simply begin with those facts of hu
man nature which here most deeply concern
us.
These facts have a metaphysical basis.
In the end, we ourselves shall seek to come
into touch with so much of theology as most
has to do with our problem of Christianity.
We cannot tell, until our preliminary survey
is completed, and our metaphyscial treatment
of our problem is reached, what form our
121
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
sketch of a theology will assume. We must
be patient with our fragmentary views until
we see how to bring them together.
But, for the time being, our question re
lates not to the legend of Adam s fall, nor to
something technically called original sin, but
to man as we empirically know him. We
ask : How far is the typical individual man
weighed down, in his efforts to win the goal
of life, by a burden such as Paul describes in
his epistle to the Romans ? And what is
the significance of this burden ?
Here, at once, we meet with the obvious
fact, often mentioned, not only in ancient,
but also in many modern, discussions of our
topic, --with the fact that there are, deep-
seated in human nature, many tendencies
that our mature moral consciousness views
as evil. These tendencies have a basis in
qualities that are transmitted by heredity.
Viewed as an observant naturalist, as
a disinterested student of the life-process
views them, all our inherited instincts are,
in one sense, upon a level. For no instincts
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MORALBURDENOFTHE IN DIVIDUAL
are, at the outset of life, determined by any
purpose, either good or evil, of which
we are then conscious. But, when trained,
through experience and action, our instincts
become interwoven into complex habits, and
thus are transformed into our voluntary
activities. What at the beginning is an
elemental predisposition to respond to a
specific sensory stimulus in a more or less
vigorous but incoherent and generalized way,
becomes, in the context of the countless
other predispositions upon which is based our
later training, the source of a mode of conduct,
of conduct that, as we grow, tends to be
come more and more definite, and that may
be valuable for good or for ill. And, as a
fact, many of our instinctive predispositions
actually appear, in the sequel, to be like
noxious plants or animals. That is, to use
a familiar phrase, they "turn out ill." They
are expressed in our maturer life in malad
justments, in vices, or perhaps in crimes.
Now Paul, like a good many other moralists,
was impressed by the number and by the vigor
123
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
of those amongst our instinctive predisposi
tions which, under the actual conditions of
human training, "turn out ill," and are inter
woven into habits that often lead the natural
man into baseness and into a maze of evil
deeds. Paul summarizes this aspect of the
facts, as he saw them, in his familiar picture,
first, of the Gentile world, and then of the
moral state of the unregenerate who were
Jews. This picture we find in the opening
chapters of his epistle to the Romans.
The majority of readers appear to suppose
that the essential basis of Paul s theory about
the moral burden of the individual is to be
found in these opening chapters, and in the
assertion that the worst vices and crimes of
mankind are the most accurate indications of
how bad human nature is. For such readers,
whether they agree with Paul or not, the
whole problem reduces to the question: "Are
men, and are human traits and tendencies,
naturally as mischievous ; are we all as much
predisposed to vices and to crimes as Paul s
dark picture of the world in which he lived bids
124
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
us believe that all human characters are ? Is
man, - - viewed as a fair observer from another
planet might view him, is man by nature,
or by heredity, predominantly like a noxious
plant or animal ? Unless some external
power, such as the power that Paul conceives
to be Divine Grace, miraculously saves him,
is he bound to turn out ill, to be the beast
of prey, the victim of lust, the venomous
creature, whom Paul portrays in these earlier
chapters of his letters to the Romans ? "
You well know that, as to the questions
thus raised, there is much to be said, both for
and against the predominantly mischievous
character of the natural and instinctive pre
dispositions of men ; and both for and against
the usual results of training, in case of the
people who make up our social world. Paul s
account of this aspect of the life of the
natural man has both its apologists and its
critics.
I must simply decline, however, to follow
the usual controversies as to the natural pre
dispositions of the human animal any further
125
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
in this place. I have mentioned the familiar
topic in order to say at once that none of the
considerations which the opening chapters
of the epistle to the Romans suggest to a
modern reader regarding the noxious or the
useful instinctive predispositions of ordinary
men, or even of extraordinarily defective or
of exceptionally gifted human beings, seem
to be of any great importance for the under
standing of the genuine Pauline doctrine of
the moral burden of the individual.
Paul opened the epistle to the Romans by
considerations which merely prepared the
way for his main thesis. His argument in
the earlier chapters is also chiefly preparatory.
But his main doctrine concerning our moral
burden depends upon other considerations
than a mere enumeration of the vices and
crimes of a corrupt society. It depends,
in fact, upon considerations which, as I
believe, are almost wholly overlooked in
most of the technical controversies concerning
original sin, and concerning the evil case of
the unregenerate man.
126
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
I shall venture to translate these more sig
nificant considerations which Paul empha
sizes into a relatively modern phraseology.
I believe that I shall do so in a way that is
just to Paul s spirit, and that will enable us
soon to return to the text of the seventh chap
ter of his epistle with a clearer understanding
of the main issue.
Whoever sets out to study, as psychologist,
the moral side of human nature, with the
intention of founding upon that study an
estimate of the part which good and evil play
in our life, must make clear to his mind a
familiar, but important, and sometimes neg
lected distinction. This is the distinction
between the conduct of men, upon the one
hand, and the grade or sort of consciousness
with which, upon the other hand, their con
duct, whatever it is, is accompanied.
Conduct, as we have already mentioned,
results from the training which our heredi
tary predispositions, our instinctive tenden-
127
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
cies, get, when the environment has played
upon them in a suitable way, and for a suffi
cient time. The environment which trains
us to our conduct may be animate or inani
mate ; although in our case it is very largely
a human environment. It is not necessary
that we should be clearly aware of what our
conduct in a given instance is or means,
just as it is not necessary that one who speaks
a language fluently should be consciously
acquainted with the grammar of that language,
or that one who can actually find the way
over a path in the mountains should be able
to give directions to a stranger such as would
enable the latter to find the same way.
In general, it requires one sort of training to
establish in us a given form of conduct, and
a decidedly different sort of training to make
us aware of what that form of conduct is,
and of what, for us ourselves, it means.
The training of all the countless higher
and more complex grades and types of knowl
edge about our own conduct which we can
find present in the world of our self-knowledge,
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MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL
is subject to a general principle which I may
as well state at once. Conduct, as I have
just said, can be trained through the action
of any sort of tolerable environment, animate
or inanimate. But the higher and more com
plex types of our consciousness about our
conduct, our knowledge about what we do,
and about why we do it, all this more
complex sort of practical knowledge of our
selves, is trained by a specific sort of environ
ment, namely, by a social environment.
And the social environment that most
awakens our self-consciousness about our
conduct does so by opposing us, by criticising
us, or by otherwise standing in contrast with
us. Our knowledge of our conduct, in all
its higher grades, and our knowledge of our
selves as the authors or as the guides of our
own conduct, our knowledge of how and why
we do what we do, all such more elaborate
self-knowledge is, directly or indirectly, a
social product, and a product of social con
trasts and oppositions of one sort or another.
Our fellows train us to all our higher grades
K 129
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
of practical self-knowledge, and they do so by
giving us certain sorts of social trouble.
If we were capable of training our conduct
in solitude, we should not be nearly as con
scious as we now are of the plans, of the
ideals, of the meaning, of this conduct. A
solitary animal, if well endowed with suitable
instincts, and if trained through the sort of
experimenting that any intelligent animal
carries out as he tries to satisfy his wants,
would gradually form some sort of conduct.
This conduct might be highly skilful. But
if this animal lived in a totally unsocial, in a
wholly inanimate, environment, he would
meet with no facts that could teach him to be
aware of what his conduct was, in the sense
and degree in which we are aware of our own
conduct. For he, as a solitary creature, would
find no other instance of conduct with which to
compare his own. And all knowledge rests
upon comparison. It is my knowledge of
my fellows doings, and of their "behavior
toward me, it is this which gives me the
basis for the sort of comparison that I use
130
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
whenever I succeed in more thoughtfully
observing myself or estimating myself.
If you want to grasp this principle, consider
any instance that you please wherein you are
actually and clearly aware of how you behave
and of why you behave thus. Consider,
namely, any instance of a higher sort of skill
in an art, in a game, in business, an in
stance, namely, wherein you not only are
skilful, but are fully observant of what your
skill is, and of why you consciously prefer
this way of playing or of working. You
will find that always your knowledge and your
estimate of your skill and of your own way
of doing, turn upon comparing your own con
duct with that of some real or ideal comrade,
or fellow, or rival, or opponent, or critic;
or upon knowing how your social order in
general carries on or estimates this sort of
conduct; or, finally, upon remembering or
using the results of former social comparisons
of the types mentioned.
I walk as I happen to walk, and in general,
if let alone, I have no consciousness as to
131
THE, PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
what my manner of walking is; but let my
fellow s gait or pace attract my attention,
or let my fellow laugh at my gait, or let him
otherwise show that he observes my gait ;
and forthwith, if my interest is stirred, I
may have the ground for beginning to observe
what my own gait is, and how it is to be esti
mated.
In brief, it is our fellows who first startle
us out of our natural unconsciousness about
our own conduct; and who then, by an end
less series of processes of setting us attractive
but difficult models, and of socially interfer
ing with our own doings, train us to higher
and higher grades and to more and more
complex types of self -consciousness regarding
what we do and why we do it. Play and
conflict, rivalry and emulation, conscious
imitation and conscious social contrasts be
tween man and man, - - these are the source
of each man s consciousness about his own
conduct.
Whatever occurs in our literal social life,
and in company with our real fellows, can be,
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MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
and often is, repeated with endless variations
in our memory and imagination, and in a
companionship with ideal fellow-beings of
all grades of significance. And thus our
thoughts and memories of all human beings
who have aroused our interest, as well as our
thoughts about God, enrich our social environ
ment by means of a wealth of real and ideal
fellow-beings, with whom we can and do
compare and contrast ourselves and our own
conduct.
And since all this is true, this whole process
of our knowledge about our own doings, and
about our plans, and about our estimates of
ourselves, is a process capable of simply
endless variation, growth, and idealization.
Hence the variations of our moral self-con
sciousness have all the wealth of the entire
spiritual world. Comparing our doings with
the standards that the social will furnishes to
us, in the form of customs and of rules, we
become aware both of what Paul calls, in a
special instance, "the law," and of ourselves
either as in harmony with or opposed to this
133
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
law. The comparison and the contrast make
us view ourselves on the one side, and the
social will, --that is, "the law," -on the
other side, as so related that, the more we
know of the social will, the more highly con
scious of ourselves we become; while the
better we know ourselves, the more clearly we
estimate the dignity and the authority of the
social will.
So much, then, for a mere hint of the general
ways in which our moral self-consciousness
is a product of our social life. This self is
known to each "one of us through its social
contrasts with other selves, and with the will
of the community. If these contrasts dis
please us, we try to relieve the tension. If
they fascinate, we form our ideals accord
ingly. But in either case we become conscious
of some plan or ideal of our own. Our devel
oped conscience, psychologically speaking, is
the product of endless efforts to clear up, to
simplify, to reduce to some sort of unity and
harmony, the equally endless contrasts be
tween the self, the fellow-man, and the social
134
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
will in general, contrasts which our social
experience constantly reveals and renders
fascinating or agonizing, according to the
state of our sensitiveness or of our fortunes.
VI
These hints of the nature of a process which
you can illustrate by every higher form and
gradation of the moral consciousness of men
have now prepared us for one more obser
vation which, when properly understood,
will bring us directly in contact with Paul s
own comments upon the moral burden of any
human being who reaches a high spiritual level.
Our conduct may be, according to our
instincts and our training, whatever it hap
pens to be. Since man is an animal that is
hard to train, it will often be, from the point
of view of the social will of our community,
more or less defective conduct. But it might
also be fairly good conduct; and, in normal
people of good training, it often is so. In
this respect, then, it seems unpsychological
to assert that the conduct of all natural
135
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
men is universally depraved, --however ill
Paul thought of his Gentiles.
Let us turn, however, from men s conduct
to their consciousness about their conduct;
and then the simple and general principles
just enunciated will give us a much graver
view of our moral situation. Paul s main
thesis about our moral burden .relates not to
our conduct, but to our consciousness about
our conduct.
Our main result, so far, is that, from a
purely psychological point of view, my con
sciousness about my conduct, and conse
quently my power to form ideals, and my
power to develop any sort of conscience, are
a product of my nature as a social being.
And the product arises in this way : Con
trasts, rivalries, difficult efforts to imitate
some fascinating fellow-being, contests with
my foes, emulation, social ambition, the
desire to attract attention, the desire to find
my place in my social order, my interest in
what my fellows say and do, and especially
in what they say and do with reference to
136
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
me, such are the more elemental social
motives and the social situations which at
first make me highly conscious of my own
doings.
Upon the chaos of these social contrasts
my whole later training in the knowledge of
the good and the evil of my own conduct is
founded. My conscience grows out of this
chaos, grows as my reason grows, through
the effort to get harmony into this chaos.
However reasonable I become, however high
the grade of the conscientious ideals to which,
through the struggle to win harmony, I
finally attain, all of my own conscientious life
is psychologically built upon the lowly foun
dations thus furnished by the troubled social
life, that, together with my fellows, I must
lead.
VII
But now it needs no great pessimism to
observe that our ordinary social life is one
in which there is a great deal of inevitable
tension, or natural disharmony. Such ten-
137
THE PROBLEM O_F CHRISTIANITY
sion, and such disharmony, are due not
necessarily to the graver vices of men. The
gravest disharmonies often result merely from
the mutual misunderstandings of men. There
are so many of us. We naturally differ so
much from one another. We comprehend
each other so ill, or, at best, with such diffi
culty. Hence social tension is, so to speak,
the primary state of any new social enter
prise, and can be relieved only through
special and constantly renewed efforts.
But this simple observation leads to an
other. If our social life, owing to the num
ber, the variety, and the ignorance of the
individuals who make up our social world,
is prevailingly or primarily one in which
strained social situations, forms of social
tension, social troubles, are present, and
are constantly renewed, it follows that every
individual who is to reach a high grade of
self -consciousness as to his own doings, will
be awakened to his observation of himself by
one or another form or instance of social
tension. As a fact, it is rivalry, or contest, or
138
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
criticism that first, as we have seen, naturally
brings to my notice what I am doing. And
the obvious rule is that, within reasonable
limits, the greater the social tension of the
situation in which I am placed, the sharper
and clearer does my social contrast with my
fellows become to me. And thus, the greater
the social tension is, the more do I become
aware, through such situations, both about
my own conduct, and about my plans and
ideals, and about my will.
In brief, my moral self-consciousness is
bred in me through social situations that in
volve, not necessarily any physical con
flict with my fellows, -- but, in general, some
form of social conflict, conflict such as
engenders mutual criticism. Man need not
be, when civilized, at war with his fellows in
the sense of using the sword against them.
But he comes to self-consciousness as a moral
being through the spiritual warfare of mutual
observation, of mutual criticism, of rivalry,
- yes, too often through the warfare of envy
and of gossip and of scandal-mongering, and
139
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
of whatever else belongs to the early training
that many people give to their own consciences,
through taking a more or less hostile account
of the consciences of their neighbors. Such
things result from the very conditions of
high grades of self-consciousness about our
conduct and our ideals.
The moral self, then, the natural con
science, is bred through situations that in
volve social tension. What follows ?
VIII
It follows that such tension, in each special
case, indeed seems evil to us, and calls for
relief. And in seeking for such relief, the
social will, in its corporate capacity, the will
of the community, forms its codes, its custom
ary laws ; and attempts to teach each of us
how he ought to deal with his neighbors so
as to promote the general social harmony.
But these codes, --these forms of customary
morality, -- they have to be taught to us as
conscious rules of conduct. They can only
be taught to us by first teaching us to be more
140
MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL
considerate, more self-observant, more for
mally conscientious than we were before.
But to accomplish this aim is to bring us to
some higher level of our general self-conscious
ness concerning our own doings. And this
can be done, as a rule, only by applying to
us some new form of social discipline which,
in general, introduces still new and more
complex kinds of tension, -- new social con
trasts between the general will and our
own will, new conflicts between the self
and its world.
Our social training thus teaches us to know
ourselves through a process which arouses
our self-will ; and this tendency grows with
what it feeds upon. The higher the training
and the more cultivated and elaborate is our
socially trained conscience, -- the more highly
conscious our estimate of our own value
becomes, and so, in general, the stronger
grows our self-will.
This is a commonplace ; but it is precisely
upon this very commonplace that the moral
burden of the typical individual, trained
141
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
under natural social conditions, rests. If the
individual is no defective or degenerate, but
a fairly good member of his stock, his conduct
may be trained by effective social discipline
into a more or less admirable conformity to
the standards of the general will. But his
conduct is not the same as his own conscious
ness about his conduct; or, in other words,
his deeds and his ideals are not necessarily
in mutual agreement. Meanwhile, his con
sciousness about his conduct, his ideals, his
conscience, are all trained, under ordinary
conditions, by a social process that begins in
social troubles, in tensions, in rivalries, in
contests, and that naturally continues, the
farther it goes, to become more and more a
process which introduces new and more com
plex conflicts.
This evil constantly increases. The bur
den grows heavier. Society can, by its ordi
nary skill, train many to be its servants,
- servants who, being under rigid discipline,
submit because they must. But precisely
in proportion as society becomes more skilled
142*
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
in the external forms of culture, it trains its
servants by a process that breeds spiritual
enemies. That is, it breeds men who, even
when they keep the peace, are inwardly
enemies one of another; because every man,
in a highly cultivated social world, is trained
to moral self-consciousness by his social
conflicts. And these same men are inwardly
enemies of the collective social will itself,
because in a highly cultivated social order
the social will is oppressively vast, and the
individual is trained to self-consciousness by
a process which shows him the contrast
between his own will and this, which so far
seems to him a vast impersonal social will.
He may obey. That is conduct. But he
will naturally revolt inwardly ; and that is
his inevitable form of spiritual self-assertion,
so long as he is trained to self-consciousness
in this way, and is still without the spiritual
transformations that sqme higher form of
love for the community, some form of
loyalty, and that alone, can bring.
This revolt will tend to increase as culture
143
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
advances. High social cultivation breeds
spiritual enmities. For it trains what we in
our day call individualism, and, upon pre
cisely its most cultivated levels, glories in
creating highly conscious individuals. But
these individuals are brought to conscious
ness by their social contrasts and conflicts.
Their very consciences are tainted by the
original sin of social contentiousness. The
higher the cultivation, the vaster and deeper
are precisely the more spiritual and the more
significant of these inward and outward con
flicts. Cultivation breeds civilized conduct;
it also breeds conscious independence of
spirit and deep inner opposition to all mere
external authority.
Before this sort of moral evil the moral
individual, thus cultivated, is, if viewed
merely as a creature of cultivation, power
less. His very conscience is the product of
spiritual warfare, an^l its knowledge of good
and evil is tainted by its origin. The burden
grows ; and the moral individual cannot
bear it, unless his whole type of self-conscious-
144
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
ness is transformed by a new spiritual power
which this type of cultivation can never of
itself furnish.
For the moral cultivation just described is
cultivation in "the law" ; that is, in the rules
of the social will. But such cultivation
breeds individualism ; that is, breeds con
sciousness of self-will. And the burden of
this self-will increases with cultivation.
As we all know, individualism, viewed as a
highly potent social tendency, is a product of
high cultivation. It is also a relatively mod
ern product of such cultivation. Savages
appear to know little about individualism.
Where tribal custom is almighty, the indi
vidual is trained to conduct, but not to a
high grade of self-consciousness. Hence the
individual, in a primitive community, sub
mits ; but also he has no very elaborate con
science. Among most ancient peoples, indi
vidualism was still nearly unknown.
Two ancient peoples, living under special
conditions and possessing an extraordinary
genius, developed very high grades of indi-
L 145
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
vidualism. One of these peoples was Israel,
- especially that fragment of later Israel
to which Judaism was due. Paul well knew
what was the nature and the meaning of just
that high development of individuality which
Judaism had in his day made possible.
The other one of these peoples was the
Greek people. Their individualism, their
high type of self-consciousness regarding con
duct, showed what is meant by being, as every
highly individualistic type of civilization
since their day has been, characteristically
merciless to individuals. Greek individual
ism devoured its own children. The con
sciousness of social opposition determined the
high grade of self-consciousness of the Greek
genius. It also determined the course of
Greek history and politics ; and so the
greatest example of national genius which the
world has ever seen promptly destroyed its
own life, just because its self -consciousness
was due to social conflicts and intensified
them. The original sin of its own cultivation
was the doom of that cultivation.
146
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
In the modern world the habit of forming
a high grade of individual consciousness has
now become settled. We have learned the
lesson that Israel and Greece taught. Hence
we speak of personal moral independence as
if it were our characteristic spiritual ideal.
This ideal is now fostered still more highly
than ever before, - - is fostered by the vast-
ness of our modern social forces, and by the
way in which these forces are to-day used to
train the individual consciousness which op
poses itself to them, and which is trained to
this sort of opposition.
The result is that the training of the culti
vated individual, under modern conditions,
uses, on the one hand, all the motives of
what Paul calls "the flesh," all the natural
endowment of man the social being, - - but
develops this fleshly nature so that it is
trained to self-consciousness by emphasizing
every sort and grade of more skilful oppo
sition to the very social will that trains it.
Our modern world is therefore peculiarly
fitted to illustrate the thesis of Paul s seventh
147
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
chapter of the epistle to the Romans. To
that chapter let us now, for a moment,
return.
IX
The difficulty of the argument of Paul s
seventh chapter lies in the fact that in speak
ing of our sinful nature, he emphasizes three
apparently conflicting considerations: First,
he asserts that sinfulness belongs to our ele
mental nature, to our flesh as it is at birth ;
secondly, he insists that sin is not cured but
increased by cultivation, unless the power of
the Divine Spirit intervenes and transforms
fj\ us into new creatures; thirdly, he declares
that our sinfulness belongs not to especially
defective or degenerate sinners, but to the
race in its corporate capacity, so that no one
is privileged to escape by any good deed of
his own, since we are all naturally under
the curse.
To the first consideration many modern
men reply that at birth we have only untrained
instinctive predispositions, which may, under
148
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
training, turn out well or ill, but which, until
training turns them into conduct, are innocent.
This comment is true, but does not touch
Paul s main thesis, which is that, being as to
the flesh what we are, --that isj being essen
tially social animals, all our natural moral
cultivation, if successful, can only make us
aware of our sinfulness. "Howbeit, I had
not known sin but for the law." It is pre
cisely this thesis which the natural history of
the training of our ordinary moral self-con
sciousness illustrates. This training usually
takes place through impressing the social will
upon the individual by means of discipline.
The result must be judged not by the acci
dental fortunes of this or of that formally
virtuous or obviously vicious individual. The
true problem lies deeper than we are accus
tomed to look. It is just that problem which
Paul understands.
Train me to morality by the ordinary modes
of discipline and you do two things : First,
and especially under modern conditions, you
teach me so-called independence, self-reliance.
149
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
You teach me to know and to prize from the
depths of my soul, my own individual will.
The higher the civilization in which this mode
of training is followed, the more I become
an individualist among mutually hostile indi
vidualists, a citizen of a world where all are
consciously free to think ill of one another, and
to say, to every external authority : "My will,
not thine, be done."
But this teaching of independence is also
a teaching of distraction and inner despair.
For, if I indeed am intelligent, I also learn
that, in a highly cultivated civilization, the
social will is mighty, and daily grows mightier,
and must, ordinarily and outwardly, prevail
unless chaos is to come. Hence you indeed
may discipline me into obedience, but it is a
distracted and wilful obedience, which con
stantly wars with the very dignity of spirit
which my training teaches me to revere. On
the one hand, as reasonable being, I say :
"I ought to submit; for law is mighty;
and I would not, if I could, bring anarchy."
So much I say, if I am indeed successfully
150
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
trained. But I will not obey with the inner
man. For I am the being of inalienable
individual rights, of unconquerable indepen
dence. I have my own law in my own mem
bers, which, however I seem to obey, is at
war with the social will. I am the divided
self. The more I struggle to escape through
my moral cultivation, the more I discern my
divided state. Oh, wretched man that I
am !
Now this my divided state, this my dis
traction of will, is no mishap of my private
fortune. It belongs to the human race, as a
race capable of high moral cultivation. It
is the misfortune, the doom of man the social
animal, if you train him through the disci
pline of social tension, through troubles with
his neighbors, through opposition and through
social conflict, through what Whistler called
"the gentle art of making enemies." This,
apart from all legends, is Paul s thesis ; and
it is true to human nature. The more outer
law there is in our cultivation, the more inner
rebellion there is in the very individuals whom
151
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
our cultivation creates. And this moral bur
den of the individual is also the burden of the
race, precisely in so far as it is a race that is
social in a human sense.
Possibly all this may still seem to you the
mere construction of a theorist. And yet an
age that, like our own, faces in new forms
the conflicts between what we often name
individualism and collectivism, a time such
as the present one, when every new enlarge
ment of our vast corporations is followed by
a new development of strikes and of industrial
conflicts, a time, I say, such as ours ought
to know where the original sin of our social
nature lies.
For our time shows us that individualism
and collectivism are tendencies, each of which,
as our social order grows, intensifies the other.
The more the social will expresses itself in
vast organizations of collective power, the
more are individuals trained to be aware of
their own personal wants and choices and
ideals, and of the vast opportunities that would
be theirs if they could but gain control of
152
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
these social forces. The more, in sum, does
their individual self-will become conscious,
deliberate, cultivated, and therefore danger
ously alert and ingenious.
Yet, if the individuals in question are
highly intelligent, and normally orderly in
their social habits, their self-will, thus for
cibly kept awake and watchful through the
very powers which the collective will has
devised, is no longer, in our own times, a
merely stupid attempt to destroy all social
authority. It need not be childishly vicious
or grossly depraved, like Paul s Gentiles in
his earlier chapters of the epistle to the
Romans. It is a sensitive self-will, which
feels the importance of the social forces, and
which wants them to grow more powerful,
so that haply they may be used by the indi
vidual himself.
And so, when opportunity offers, the indi
vidual self-will casts its vote in favor of new
devices to enrich or to intensify the expres
sion of the collective will. For it desires
social powers. It wants them for its own
153
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
use. Hence, in its rebellion against authority,
when such rebellion arises, it is a consciously
divided self-will, which takes in our day no
form more frequently than the general form of
moral unrest, of discontent with its own most
ardent desires. It needs only a little more
emphasis upon moral or religious problems
than, in worldly people, in our day, it displays,
in order to be driven to utter from a full
heart Paul s word: "O wretched man that
I am!"
For the highly trained modern agitator, or
the plastic disciple of agitators, if both intel
ligent and reasonably orderly in habits, is
intensely both an individualist and a man who
needs the collective will, who in countless
ways and cases bows to that will, and votes
for it, and increases its power. The indi
vidualism of such a man wars with his own
collectivism ; while each, as I insist, tends to
inflame the other. As an agitator, the typi
cally restless child of our age often insists
upon heaping up new burdens of social
control, control that he indeed intends to
154
MORAL BURDEN OF THE INDIVIDUAL
have others feel rather than himself. As
individualist, longing to escape, perhaps from
his economic cares, perhaps from the mar
riage bond, such a highly intelligent agitator
may speak rebelliously of all restrictions,
declare Nietzsche to be his prophet, and set
out to be a Superman as if he were no social
animal at all. Wretched man, by reason
of his divided will, he is ; and he needs only
a little reflection to observe the fact.
But note : These are no mere accidents
of our modern world. The division of the
self thus determined, and thus increasing in
our modern cultivation, is not due to the
chance defects of this or of that more or less
degenerate individual. Nor is it due merely
to a man s more noxious instincts. This
division is due to the very conditions to which
the development of self-consciousness is sub
ject, not only in our present social order, but
in every civilization which has reached as
high a grade of self-consciousness as that
which Paul observed in himself and in his
own civilization.
155
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
X
The moral burden of the individual, as
Paul conceives it, and as human nature makes
it necessary, has now been characterized. The
legend of Adam s transgression made the fall
of man due to the sort of self-consciousness,
to the knowledge of good and evil, which the
crafty critical remarks of the wise serpent
first suggested to man, and which the result
ing transgression simply emphasized. What
Paul s psychology, translated into more
modern terms, teaches, is that the moral
self-consciousness of every one of us gets its
cultivation from our social order through a
process which begins by craftily awakening
us, as the serpent did Eve, through critical
observations, and which then fascinates our
divided will by giving us the serpent s coun
sels. "Ye shall be as gods." This is the lore
of all individualism, and the vice of all our
worldly social ambitions. The resulting dis
eases of self-consciousness are due to the in
most nature of our social race.
156
MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL
They belong to its very essence as a social
race. They increase with cultivation. The
individual cannot escape from the results of
them through any deed of his own. For his
will is trained by a process which taints his
conscience with the original sin of self-will,
of clever hostility to the very social order
upon which he constantly grows more and
more consciously dependent.
What is the remedy ? What is the escape ?
Paul s answer is simple. To his mind a new
revelation has been made, from a spiritual
realm wholly above our social order and its
conflicts. Yet this revelation is, in a new
way, social. For it tells us: "There is a
certain divinely instituted community. It
is no mere collection of individuals, with laws
and customs and quarrels. Nor is its unity
merely that of a mighty but, to our own will,
an alien power. Its indwelling spirit is con
crete and living, but is also a loving spirit.
It is the body of Christ. The risen Lord
dwells in it, and is its life. It is as much a
person as he was when he walked the earth.
157
THE PROBLEM OP CHRISTIANITY
And he is as much the spirit of that community
as he is a person. Love that community ;
let its spirit, through this love, become your
own. Let its Lord be your Lord. Be one
in him and with him and with his Church.
And lo ! the natural self is dead. The new
life takes possession of you. You are a new
creature. The law has no dominion over
you. In the universal community you live
in the spirit ; and hence for the only self, the
only self-consciousness, the only knowledge
of your own deeds which you possess or
tolerate : these are one with the spirit of
the Lord and of the community."
Translated into the terms that I ventured
to use in our last lecture, Paul s doctrine is
that salvation comes through loyalty.
Loyalty involves an essentially new type of
self -consciousness, the consciousness of one
who loves a community as a person. Not
social training, but the miracle of this love,
creates the new type of self -consciousness.
Only (as Paul holds) you must find the
universal community to which to be loyal ;
158
MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL
and you must learn to know its Lord, whose
body it is, and whose spirit is its life.
Paul is assured that he knows this universal
community and this Lord. But, apart from
Paul s religious faith, the perfectly human
truth remains that loyalty (which is the love
of a community conceived as a person on a
level superior to that of any human individual)
loyalty, and the devotion of the self to
the cause of the community, loyalty, is the
only cure for the natural warfare of the col
lective and of the individual will, a war
fare which no moral cultivation without
loyalty can ever end, but which all cultiva
tion, apart from such devoted and trans
forming love of the community, only inflames
and increases.
Thus the second of the essential ideas of
Christianity illustrates the first, and is in
turn illumined by the first. This, I believe
is the deeper sense and truth of the doctrine
of the inherent moral taint of the social
individual.
159
IV
THE REALM OF GRACE
LECTURE IV
THE REALM OF GRACE
THE Christian world has been still
more deeply influenced by the apostle
Paul s teaching concerning the divine grace
that saves, than by his account of the moral
burden of the individual. The traditional
lore of salvation is more winning, and, in
many respects, less technical, than is the
Christian teaching regarding our lost state.
The present lecture is to be devoted to a
study of some aspects of the doctrine of grace.
Yet, since our moral burden, and our escape
from that burden, are matters intimately con
nected, we shall find that both topics belong to
the exposition of the same essential Christian
idea, and that, at the same time, they throw new
light upon the first of the three essential Chris
tian ideas, the idea of the universal community.
Our present task will therefore enable us to
reach a new stage in our survey of the larger
connections of the Christian doctrine of life.
163
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Christianity is most familiarly known as a
religion of love, and this view, as far as it
extends, is a true view of Christianity. Our
second lecture has shown us, however, that
this characterization is inadequate, because
it does not render justly clear the nature of
the objects to which, in our human world,
Christian love is most deeply and essentially
devoted. A man is known by the company
that he keeps. In its human relations, and
apart from an explicit account of its faith con
cerning the realm of the gods, or concerning
God, a religion can be justly estimated only
when you understand what kinds and grades
of human beings it bids you recognize, as well
as what it counsels you to do in presence of
the beings of each grade. Now, as our second
lecture endeavored to point out, there are
in the human world two profoundly different
grades, or levels, of mental beings, namely,
the beings that we usually call human individ
uals, and the beings that we call communities.
164
vC*-*vf *3 tf* * > ^t jfc
THE REALM OF GRACE
Of the first of these two grades, or levels,
of human beings, any one man whom you may
choose to mention is an example. His organ
ism is, in the physical world, separate from
the organisms of his fellows. The expressive
movements of this organism, his behavior,
his gestures, his voice, his coherent course of
conduct, the traces that his deeds leave be
hind them, - - these, in your opinion, make
more or less manifest to you the life of his
mind. And, in your usual opinion, his mind
is, on the whole, at least as separate from the
minds of other men, as his organism, and his
expressive bodily movements, are physically
sundered from theirs.
Of the second of these two levels of human
beings, a well-trained chorus, or an orchestra
at a concert ; or an athletic team, or a rowing
crew, during a contest; or a committee, or
a board, sitting in deliberation upon some
matter of business ; or a high court consisting
of several members, who at length reach what
legally constitutes "the decision of the court,"
all these are good examples. Each one of
165
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
these is, in its own way, a community. The
vaster communities, real and ideal, which we
mentioned, by way of illustration, in our
second lecture, also serve as instances of real
beings with minds, whose grade or level is
not that of the ordinary human individuals.
Any highly organized community so in
our second lecture we argued is as truly a
human being as you and I are individually
human. Only a community is not what we
usually call an individual human being; be
cause it has no one separate and internally
well-knit physical organism of its own ; and
because its mind, if you attribute to it any
one mind, is therefore not manifested through
the expressive movements of such a single
separate human organism.
Yet there are reasons for attributing to a
community a mind of its own. Some of these
reasons were briefly indicated in our second
lecture ; and they will call for a further scru
tiny hereafter. Just here it concerns my pur
pose simply to call attention to the former
argument, and to say, that the difference be-
166
THE REALM OF GRACE
tween the individual human beings of our
ordinary social intercourse, and the com
munities, is a difference justly characterized,
in my opinion, by speaking of these two as
grades or levels of human life.
The communities are vastly more complex,
and, in many ways, are also immeasurably
more potent and enduring than are the indi
viduals. Their mental life possesses, as Wundt
has pointed out, a psychology of its own, which
can be systematically studied. Their mental
existence is no mere creation of abstract
thinking or of metaphor; and is no more a
topic for mystical insight, or for fantastic
speculation, than is the mental existence of
an individual man. As empirical facts, com
munities are known to us by their deeds, by
their workings, by their intelligent and co
herent behavior, just as the minds of our
individual neighbors are known to us through
their expressions.
Considered as merely natural existences,
communities, like individuals, may be either
good or evil, beneficent or mischievous. The
167
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
level of mental existence which belongs to
communities insures their complexity ; and
renders them, in general, far more potent
and, for certain purposes and in certain of
their activities, much more intelligent than
are the human individuals whose separate
physical organisms we ordinarily regard as
signs of so many separate minds.
But a community, --in so far like a fallen
angel, may be as base and depraved as
any individual man can become, and may be
far worse than a man.. Communities may
make unjust war, may enslave mankind, may
deceive and betray and torment as basely
as do individuals, only more dangerously.
The question whether communities are or
are not real human beings, with their own level
of mental existence, is therefore quite dis
tinct from the question as to what worth
this or that community possesses in the spir
itual world. And, in our study of the doctrine
of grace, we shall find how intimately the
Christian teaching concerning the salvation
of the individual man is bound up with the
168
THE REALM OF GRACE
Christian definition, both of the saving com
munity and of the power which, according to
the Christian tradition, has redeemed that
community, and has infused divine life into
the level of human existence which this com
munity, and not any merely human individual,
occupies.
II
To the two levels of human mental exist
ence correspond two possible forms of love :
love for human individuals ; love for com
munities. In our second lecture we spoke
of the natural fact that communities can be
the object of love; and that this love may
lead to the complete practical devotion of an
individual to the community which he loves.
Such vital and effective love of an individual
for a community constitutes what we called,
in that lecture, Loyalty. And when, in our
second lecture, the conception of loyalty as
the love of an individual for a being that is
on the level of a community first entered our
argument, we approached this conception by
169
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
using, as illustrations, what might be called
either the more natural or the more primitive
types of loyalty, - - types such as grow out of
family life, and tribal solidarity, and war.
As we pointed out in the second lecture,
Christianity is essentially a religion of loyalty.
We have learned in our third lecture that, for
Christianity, the problem of loyalty is en
riched, and meanwhile made more difficult,
by the nature of that ideal or universal com
munity to which Paul first invited his con
verts to be loyal.
Paul and his apostolic Christians were not
content with family loyalty, or with clan
loyalty, or with a love for any community
that they conceived as merely natural in its
origin. A miracle, as they held, had created
the body of Christ. To this new spiritual
being, whose level was that of a community,
and whose membership was human, but whose
origin was, in their opinion, divine, their love
and their life were due. Christianity was the
religion of loyalty to this new creation. The
idea involved has since remained, with all its
170
THE REALM OF GRACE
problems and tragedies, essential to Chris
tianity.
Our study of the moral burden of the indi
vidual has now prepared us for a new insight
into the special problem which, ever since
Paul s time, Christian loyalty has had to
solve. This is no longer anywhere nearly as
free from complications as are the problems
which family loyalty and clan loyalty present,
manifold as those problems of natural loyalty
actually are. Even the idea of the rational
brotherhood of mankind, of the universal
community as the Stoics conceived it, presents
no problems nearly as complex as is the prob
lem which the Pauline concept of charity,
and of Christian loyalty, has to meet.
For Paul, as you now know, finds that the
individual man has to be won over, not to a
loyalty which at first seems, to the fleshly
mind, natural, but to an essentially new life.
The natural man has to be delivered from a
doom to which "the law" only binds him
.faster, the more he seeks to escape. And this
escape involves finding, for the individual
171
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
man, a community to which, when the new
life comes, he is to be thenceforth loyal as
no natural clan loyalty or family loyalty
could make him.
The power that gives to the Christian con
vert the new loyalty is what Paul calls Grace.
And the community to which, when grace
saves him, the convert is thenceforth to be
loyal, we may here venture to call by a name
which we have not hitherto used. Let this
name be "The Beloved Community." This
is another name for what we before called
the Universal Community. Only now the
universal community will appear to us in a
new light, in view of its relations to the doc
trine of grace. And the realm of this Beloved
Community, whose relations Christianity con
ceives, for the most part, in supernatural
terms, will constitute what, in our discussion,
shall be meant by the term "The Realm of
Grace."
172
THE REALM OF GRACE
III
If we suppose that the two levels of human
mental existence have both of them been
recognized as real, and that hereupon the
problem of finding an ideally lovable com
munity has been, for a given individual, solved,
so that this individual is sure of his love and
loyalty for the community which has won his
service, then, from the point of view of that
individual, the two levels of human life will
indeed be no longer merely distinguished by
their complexity, or by their might, or by their
grade of intelligence. Henceforth, for the
loyal soul, the distinction between the levels,
so far as the object of his loyalty is concerned,
will be a distinction in value, and a vast one.
The beloved community embodies, for its
lover, values which no human individual,
viewed as a detached being, could even re
motely approach. And in a corresponding
way, the love which inspires the loyal soul has
been transformed ; and is not such as could
be given to a detached human individual.
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
The human beings whom we distinguish
in our daily life, and recognize through the
seeming and the doings of their separate or
ganisms, are real indeed, and are genuinely
distinct individuals. But when we love them,
our love, however ideal or devoted, has its
level and its value determined by their own.
And if this love for human individuals is the
only form of human love that we know, both
our morality and our religion are limited
accordingly, and remain on a correspond
ingly lower level.
Such human love knows its objects pre
cisely as Paul declared that, henceforth, he
would no longer know Christ, namely,
"after the flesh." Loyalty knows its object
(if I may again adapt Paul s word) "after
the Spirit." For Paul s expression here refers,
in so far as he speaks of human objects at all,
to the unity of the spirit which he conceived
to be characteristic of the Christian com
munity, whereof Christ was, to the Apostle s
mind, both the head and the divine life.
Hence you see how vastly significant, for our
174
THE REALM OF GRACE
view of Christianity, is a comprehension of
what is meant by religion of loyalty.
With this indication of the connections
which link the thoughts of our lecture on the
universal community with the task which
lies next in our path, let us turn, first to Paul s
own account of the doctrine of grace, and
then to the later development of Paul s teach
ings into those views about the Realm of
Grace which came to be classic for the later
Christian consciousness. Our own interest
in all these matters is here still an interest,
first in the foundation which the Christian
ideas possess in human nature, and secondly
in the ethical and religious values which are
here in question. And we still postpone any
effort to pass judgment upon metaphysical
problems, or to decide the truth as to tradi
tional dogmas.
IV
Let us next summarily review the original
and distinctively Pauline doctrine, both of
our fallen state and of the grace which saves.
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
The last lecture furnished the materials for
such a review. The pith of the matter can be
expressed, in terms of purely human psychol
ogy, thus : Man s fallen state is due to his
nature as a social animal. This nature is
such that you can train his conscience only by
awakening his self-will. By self-will, I here
mean, as Paul meant, man s conscious and
active assertion of his own individual desires,
worth, and undertakings, over against the will
of his fellow, and over against the social will.
Another name for this sort of conscious self-
will is the modern term " individualism," when
it is used to mean the tendency to prefer what
the individual man demands to what the col
lective will requires. In general, and upon high
levels of human intelligence, when you train in
dividualism, you also train collectivism ; that
is, you train in the individual a respect for the
collective will. And it belongs to Paul s very
deep and searching insight to assert that these
two tendencies the tendency towards individ
ualism, and that towards collectivism do not
exclude, but intensify and inflame each other.
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THE REALM OF GRACE
Training, if formally successful in producing
the skilful member of human society, breeds
respect, although not love, for "the law," that
is, for the expression of the collective will.
But training also makes the individual con
scious of the "other law" in "his members,"
which "wars against" the law of the social
will. The result may be, for his outward
conduct, whatever the individual s wits and
powers make it. But so far as this result is
due to cultivation in intelligent conduct, it
inevitably leads to an inner division of the
self, a disease of self-consciousness, which
Paul finds to be the curse of all merely natural
human civilization.
This curse is rooted in the primal consti
tution which makes man social, and which
adapts him to win his intelligence through
social conflicts with his neighbors. Hence
the curse belongs to the whole "flesh" of
man; for by "flesh" Paul means whatever
first expresses itself in our instincts and thus
lies at the basis of our training, and so of our
natural life. The curse afflicts equally the
N 177
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
race and the individual. Man is by inherit
ance adapted for this training to self-will and
to inner division.
The social order, in training individuals,
therefore breeds conscious sinners; and sins
both in them and against them. The natural
community is, in its united collective will, a
community of sin. Its state is made, by its
vast powers, worse than that of the individual.
But it trains the individual to be as great a
sinner as his powers permit.
If you need illustrations, Paul teaches you
to look for them in the whole social order, both
of Jews and of Gentiles. But vices and
crimes, frequent as they are, merely illustrate
the principle. The disease lies much deeper
than outward conduct can show; and re
spectability of behavior brings no relief. All
are under the curse. Cultivation increases
the curse. The individual is helpless to es
cape by any will or deed of his own.
The only escape lies in Loyalty. Loyalty,
in the individual, is his love for an united com
munity, expressed in a life of devotion to
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THE REALM OF GRACE
that community. But such love can be true
love only if the united community both exists
and is lovable. For training makes self-will
fastidious, and abiding love for a community
difficult.
In fact, no social training that a community
can give to its members can train such love
in those who have it not, or who do not win
it through other aid than their training sup
plies. And no social will that men can in
telligently devise, apart from previously active
and effective loyalty, can make a community
lovable. The creation of the truly lovable
community, and the awakening of the highly
trained individual to a true love for that
community, are, to Paul s mind, spiritual
triumphs beyond the wit of man to devise,
and beyond the power of man to accomplish.
That which actually accomplishes these
triumphs is what Paul means by the divine
grace.
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
One further principle as to the human work
ings of this grace must still be mentioned,
in order to complete our sketch of the foun
dations which our actual nature, disordered
though it be, furnishes, not for the compre
hension of this miracle of saving love, but for
an account of the conditions under which
the miracle takes place, so far as these condi
tions can fall under our human observation.
Natural love of individuals for communities,
as we saw in our second lecture, appears in
case of family loyalty, and in case of patriot
ism ; and seems to involve no miracle of grace.
But such love of an individual for a commu
nity, in so far as such love is the product of our
ordinary human nature, tends to be limited
or hindered by the influences of cultivation,
and is blindly strongest in those who have
not yet reached high grades of cultivation.
It arises as mother-love or as tribal solidarity
arises, from the depths of our still unconscious
social nature. The infant or the child loves
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THE REALM OF GRACE
its home ; the mother, her babe ; the primi
tive man, his group.
But loyalty of the type that is in question
when our salvation, in Paul s sense of salva
tion, is to be won, is the loyalty which springs
up after the individual self-will has been trained
through the processes just characterized. It
is the loyalty that conquers us, even when we
have become enemies of the law. It finds us
as such enemies, and transforms us. It is
the love which leads the already alert and re
bellious self-will to devote all that it has won
to the cause which henceforth is to remain,
by its own choice, its beloved.
Such loyalty is not the blind instinctive
affection from which cultivation inevitably
alienates us, by awakening our self-will. It
is the love that overcomes the already fully
awakened individual. We cannot choose to
fall thus in love. Only when once thus in
love, can we choose to remain lovers.
Now such love comes from some previous
love which belongs to the same high and diffi
cult grade. The origin of this higher form of
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
loyalty is hard to trace, unless some leader
is first there, to be the source of loyalty in
other men. If such a leader there is, his own
loyalty may become, through his example,
the origin of a loyalty in which the men of
many generations may find salvation. You
are first made loyal through the power of
some one else who is already loyal.
But the loyal man must also be, as we have
just said, a member of a lovable community.
How can such a community originate ? The
family, as we have also remarked, is lovable
to the dependent child. Yet often the way
ward youth is socially trained to a point
where such dependence, just because he has
come to clear self-consciousness, seems to
him unintelligible ; and herewith his father s
house ceases to be, for him, any longer
lovable.
Great loyalty loyalty such as Paul him
self had in mind when he talked of divine
grace must be awakened by a community
sufficiently lovable to win the enduring devo
tion of one who, like Paul, has first been
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THE REALM OF GRACE
trained to possess and to keep an obstinately
critical and independent attitude of spirit, -
an attitude such as, in fact, Paul kept to the
end of his life, side by side with his own loyalty,
and in a wondrous harmony therewith.
Such a marvellous union of unconquerable
and even wilful self -consciousness, with an
absolute loyalty to the cause of his life,
breathes in every word of Paul s more contro
versial outbursts, as well as in all of his more
fervent exhortations. Such loyalty is no
mere childhood love of home. It comes
only as a rushing, mighty wind.
In order to be thus lovable to the critical
and naturally rebellious soul, the Beloved
Community must be, quite unlike a natural
social group, whose life consists of laws and
quarrels, of a collective will, and of individ
ual rebellion. This community must be an
union of members who first love it. The
unity of love must pervade it, before the indi
vidual member can find it lovable. Yet
unless the individuals first love it, how can the
unity of love come to pervade it ?
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THE PROBLEM OF, CHRISTIANITY
The origin of loyalty, if it is to arise,
not as the childhood love of one s home
arises, unconsciously and instinctively ; but as
Paul s love for the Church arises, consciously
and with a saving power, in the life of one
who is first trained to all the conscious en
mities of the natural social order, the
origin of loyalty seems thus to resemble, in a
measure, the origin of life, as the modern man
views that problem. A living being is the
offspring of a living being. And, in a similar
fashion, highly conscious loyalty presupposes
a previous loyalty, only a loyalty of even
higher level than its own, as its source. Loy
alty needs for its beginnings the inspiring
leader who teaches by the example of his
spirit. But the leader, in order to inspire to
loyalty, must himself be loyal. In order to be
loyal, he must himself have found, or have
founded, his lovable community. And this,
in order to be lovable, and a community,
must already consist of loyal and loving mem
bers. It cannot win the love of the lost soul
who is to be saved, unless it already consists
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THE REALM OF GRACE
of those who have been saved by their love
for it. One moves thus in a circle. Only
some miracle of grace (as it would seem) can
initiate the new life, either in the individuals
who are to love communities, or in the com
munities that are to be worthy of their love.
VI
If the miracle occurs, and then works
according to the rules which, in fact, the con
tagion of love usually seems to follow, the one
who effects the first great transformation and
initiates the high type of loyalty in the dis
tracted social world must, it would seem,
combine in himself, in some way, the nature
which a highly trained social individual de
velops as he becomes self-conscious, with the
nature which a community possesses when
it becomes intimately united in the bonds of
brotherly love, so that it is "one undivided
soul of many a soul."
For the new life of loyalty, if it first appears
at all, will arise as a bond linking many
highly self-conscious and mutually estranged
185
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
social individuals in one; but this bond can
come to mean anything living and real to
these individuals, only in case some potent
and loyal individual, acting as leader, first
declares that for him it is real. In such a
leader, and in his spirit, the community will
begin its own life, if the leader has the power
to create what he loves.
The individual who initiates this process
will then plausibly appear to an onlooker, such
as Paul was when he was converted, to be at
once an individual and the spirit the very
life of a community. But his origin will be
inexplicable in terms of the processes which
he himself originates. His power will come
from another level than our own. And of the
workings of this grace, when it has appeared,
we can chiefly say this : That such love is
propagated by personal example, although
how, we cannot explain.
We know how Paul conceives the beginning
of the new life wherein Christian salvation
is to be found. This beginning he refers to
the work of Christ. The Master was an
186
, ; .
fir >
THE REALM OF GRACE
individual man. To Paul s mind, his mission
was divine. He both knew and loved his
community before it existed on earth ; for
his foreknowledge was one with that of the
God whose will he came to accomplish. On
earth he called into this community its first
members. He suffered and died that it might
have life. Through his death and in his life
the community lives. He is now identical with
the spirit of this community. This, according
to Paul, was the divine grace which began
the process of salvation for man. In the
individual life of each Christian this same pro
cess appears as a new act of grace. Its out
come is the new life of loyalty to which the
convert is henceforth devoted.
VII
With any criticism of the religious beliefs
of Paul, and with their metaphysical bearings,
we are not here concerned. What we have
attempted, in this sketch, is an indication of
the foundation which human nature furnishes
for the Pauline doctrine of divine grace. The
187
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
human problem, as you see, when it is viewed
quite apart from the realm of the gods, is the
problem of the value and the origin of loyalty.
The value of loyalty can readily be de
fined in simply human terms. Man, the
social being, naturally, and in one sense help
lessly, depends on his communities. Sundered
from them, he has neither worth nor wit, but
wanders in waste places, and, when he re
turns, finds the lonely house of his individual
life empty, swept, and garnished.
But, on the other hand, his communities,
to which he thus owes all his natural powers,
train him by teaching him self-will, and so
teach him the arts of spiritual hatred. The
result is distraction, spiritual death. Es
cape through any mere multitude of loves for
other individuals is impossible. For such
loves, unless they are united by some supreme
loyalty, are capricious fondnesses for other
individuals, who, by nature and by social
training, are as lonely and as distracted as their
lover himself. Mere altruism is no cure for
the spiritual disease of cultivation.
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THE REALM OF GRACE
No wonder, then, that early Buddhism,
fully sensible of the disorders of self-will and
of the natural consciousness, sees no escape
but through the renunciation of all that is
individual, and preaches the passionless calm
of knowing only what is no longer a self at all.
If birth and training mean only distraction,
why not look for the cessation of all birth,
and the extinction of desire ?
Loyalty, if it comes at all, has the value of
a love which does not so much renounce the
individual self as devote the self, with all its
consciousness and its powers, to an all-em
bracing unity of individuals in one realm of
spiritual harmony. The object of such devo
tion is, in ideal, the community which is ab
solutely lovable, because absolutely united,
conscious, but above all distractions of the
separate self-will of its members. Loyalty
demands many members, but one body ;
many gifts, but one spirit.
The value of this ideal lies in its vision of
an activity which is endless, but always at
rest in its own harmony. Such a vision, as
189
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Mr. F. C. S. Schiller has well pointed out,
Aristotle possessed when, in dealing with quite
another problem than the one now directly
before us, he defined the life of God, the
Energeia of the unmoved mover. Such a
vision, but interpreted in terms which were
quite as human as they were divine, Paul
possessed when he wrote to the Corinthians
concerning the spiritual gifts. This was Paul s
beatific vision, granted him even while he was
in the life of earthly tribulation, the vision of
the Charity which never faileth, the vision
of Charity as still the greatest of the Chris
tian graces in the world whereto the saved
are to be translated.
The realm of absolute loyalty, of the Paul
ine charity, is what Christianity opposes to
the Buddhistic Nirvana. In Nirvana the
Buddha sees all, but is no longer an individual,
and neither desires nor wills anything what
ever. In Paul s vision of beatitude, when I
shall know even as I am known, an endlessly
restful spiritual activity, the activity of the
glorified and triumphant Church, fills all the
190
THE REALM OF GRACE
scene. It is an activity of individuals who
still will, and perform the deeds of love, and
endlessly aim to renew what they possess, -
the life of the perfected and perfectly lovable
community, where all are one in Christ.
Paul s vision unites, then, Aristotle s ideal
of the divine beatitude, always active yet
always at the goal, with his own perfectly
practical and concrete ideal of what the united
Church, as a community, should be, and in
the perfect state, as he thinks, will be.
Thus the value of the loyal life, and of the
love of the ideal community, is expressible
in perfectly human terms. The problem of
grace is the problem of the origin of loyalty ;
and is again a perfectly human problem.
Paul s solution, in the opening of his letter
to the Ephesians, "By grace are ye saved, and
that not of yourselves ; it is the gift of God,"
is for him the inevitable translation into re
ligious speech of that comment upon the ori
gin of loyalty which we have just, in sum
mary form, stated. The origin of the power
of grace is psychologically inexplicable, as all
191
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
transforming love is. The object to which
grace directs the convert s mind is above the
level of any human individual. ^
.
The realm of grace is the realm of the
powers and the gifts that save, by thus origi
nating and sustaining and informing the loyal
life. This realm contains, at the very least,
three essentially necessary constituent mem
bers: First, the ideally lovable community of
many individuals in one spiritual bond ;
secondly, the spirit of this community, which
is present both as the human individual whose
power originated and whose example, whose
life and death, have led and still guide the
community, and as the united spiritual activ
ity of the whole community ; thirdly, Charity
itself, the love of the community by all its
members, and of the members by the com
munity.
To the religion of Paul, all these things must
be divine. They all have their perfectly
human correlate and foundation wherever
the loyal life exists.
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THE REALM OF GRACE
vin
We now may see how the characterization
of Christianity as not only a religion of love,
but as also, in essence, a religion of loyalty,
tends to throw light upon some of the other
wise most difficult aspects of the problem of
Christianity. We can already predict how
great this light, if it grows, promises to become.
Christianity is not the only religion in
whose conceptions and experiences a com
munity has been central. Loyalty has not
left itself without a witness in many ages of
human life, and in many peoples. And all
the higher forms of loyalty are, in their spirit,
religious ; for they rest upon the discovery,
or upon the faith, that, in all the darkness of
our earthly existence, we individual human
beings, separate as our organisms seem in
their physical weakness, and sundered as our
souls appear by their narrowness, and by their
diverse loves and fortunes, are not as much
alone, and not as helpless, in our chaos of di
vided will, as we seem.
o 193
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
For we are members one of another, and
members, too, of a real life that, although
human, is nevertheless, when it is lovable,
also above the level upon which we, the sepa
rate individuals, live our existence. By our
organisms and by our individual divisions of
knowledge and of purpose, we are chained to
an order of nature. By our loyalty, and by
the real communities to which we are worthily
loyal, we are linked with a level of mental
existence such that, when compared with our
individual existence, this higher level lies in
the direction of the divine. Whatever the
origin of men s ideals of their gods, there
should be no doubt that these gods have often
been conceived, by their worshippers, as the
representatives of some human community,
and as in some sense identical with that
community.
But loyalty exists in countless forms and
gradations. Christianity is characterized not
only by the universality of the ideal com
munity to which, in its greatest deeds and
ages, it has, according to its intent, been loyal ;
194
THE REALM OF GRACE
but also by the depth and by the practical
intensity and the efficacy of the love towards
this community which has inspired its most
representative leaders and reformers; and,
finally, by the profoundly significant doc
trines and customs to which it has been led
in the course of its efforts to identify the
being of its ideal community with the being of
God.
Other religions have been inspired by loyalty.
Other religions have identified a community
with a divine being. And, occasionally,
yes, as the world has grown wiser and more
united, increasingly, non-Christian thinking
and non-Christian religion have conceived an
ideal community as inclusive as mankind,
or as inclusive as the whole realm of beings
with minds, however vast that realm may be.
But, historically speaking, Christianity has
been distinguished by the concreteness and
intensity with which, in the early stages of
its growth, it grasped, loved, and served its
own ideal of the visible community, supposed
to be universal, which it called its Church.
195
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
It has further been contrasted with other
religions by the skill with which it gradually
revised its views of the divine nature, in order
to be able to identify the spirit that, as it
believed, guided, inspired, and ruled this
Church, with the spirit of the one whom it had
come to worship as its risen Lord.
IX
If we bear these facts in mind, there is
much in the otherwise so difficult history of
Christian dogma which we can easily see in a
new light. I myself am far from being a
technical theologian, and, in coming to the
few fragments of an understanding of the
meaning of the history of dogma which I
possess, I owe much to views such as, in
England, Professor Percy Gardner has set
forth, both in his earlier discussions, and
notably in his recent book on "The Religious
Experience of the Apostle Paul." I also owe
new light to the remarkable conclusions which
Professor Troeltsch of Heidelberg states, at
the close of his recently published volume on
196
THE REALM OF GRACE
"The Social Doctrines of the Christian
Churches." 1 I shall make no endeavor in
this place to deal with those technical aspects
of the history of dogma which lie beyond my
province as a philosophical student of the
Christian doctrine of life. But if I attempt
to restate a very few of the results of others
in terms of that view of the essence of Chris
tian loyalty which does concern me, my word,
at this stage of our discussion, must be as
follows :
Jesus unquestionably taught, in the best-
attested, and in the best-known, of his say
ings, love for all individual human beings.
But he taught this as an organic part of his
doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven. The
individual whom you are bidden to love as
your brother and your neighbor is, even while
Jesus depicts him, transformed before your
eyes. For, first, he is no longer the separate
organism with a separate mind and a de
tached being and destiny, whom you ordi-
1 " Die sozialen Lehren der Christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen."
Tubingen, 1912.
197
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
narily loathe if he is your enemy, and resist if
he endangers or oppresses you. No, -- when
he asks your aid, though he be "the
least of these my brethren" he speaks
with the voice of the judge of all men,
with the voice that you hope to hear saying :
"Come ye blessed of my Father, for I was
hungered and ye gave me meat." In other
words, the real man, whom your eyes only
seem to see, but whom on the level of ordinary
human intercourse you simply ignore, ac
tually belongs to another level of spiritual
existence, above the level of our present life
of divisions. The mystery of the real being
of this man is open only to the divine Love.
If you view your neighbor as your Father
would have you view him, you view him not
only as God s image, but also as God s will
and God s love. If one asks for further light
as to how the divine love views this man,
the answer of Jesus, in the parables is, in
substance, that this man is a member of the
Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven is obviously a
198
THE REALM OF GRACE
community. But this community is itself a
mystery, soon to be revealed, -- but so far
in the visible world, of which Jesus speaks,
not yet to be discovered. This Kingdom is a
treasure hid in a field. Its Master has gone
into a far country. Watch and be ready.
The Lord will soon return. The doctrine of
Christian love, as thus taught by Jesus, so far as
the records guide us, implies loyalty to the
Kingdom ; but expresses itself in forms which
demand further interpretation, and which the
Master intended to have further interpreted.
Now the apostolic churches held that those
visions of the risen Lord, upon the memory
and report of which their life as communities
was so largely based, had begun for them
this further interpretation. For them Chris
tian loyalty soon became explicit ; because
their community became visible. And they
believed their community to be the realization
of the Kingdom ; because they were sure that
their risen Lord, whom the reported and re
corded visions had shown, was henceforth in
their midst as the spirit of this community.
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
The realm of grace, thus present to the
Christian consciousness, needed to be further
explored. The explorers were those who
helped to define dogmas. The later develop
ment of the principal dogmas of the post-
apostolic Church was due to a process in which,
as Professor Troeltsch persuasively insists, 1
speculation and the use of the results of an
cient philosophy (however skilful and learned
such processes might be), were in all the great
crises of the history of doctrine wholly sub
ordinate to practical religious motives. 1
1 In the summary of his "Ergebnisse," on p. 967, op. cit., Troeltsch
says :
"Es erhellt die Abhangigkeit der ganzeu christlichen Vorstel-
lungswelt und des Dogmas von den soziologischen Grundbedingungen,
von der jeweiligen Gemeinschaftsidee. Das einzige besondere
christliche Ur-Dogma, das Dogma von der Gb ttlichkeit des Christus,
entsprang erst aus dem Christuskult und dieser wiederum aus der
Notwendigkeit der Zusammenscharung der Gemeinde des neuen
Geistes. Der Christuskult ist der Organisationspunkt einer christ
lichen Gemeinschaft und der Schopfer des christlichen Dogmas. Da
der Kultgott der Christen, nicht wie ein anderer Mysteriengott
polytheistisch zu verstehen ist, sondern die erlosende Off enbarung des
monotheistischen Gottes der Propheten darstellt, so wird aus dem
Christusdogma das Trinitatsdogma. Alle philosophischen und
mythologischen Entlehnungen sind nur Mittel fur diesen aus der
inneren Notwendigkeit der christlichen Kultgemeinschaft sich
bildenden Gedanken." My own text, at this point, interprets the
200
THE REALM OF GRACE
To use the phraseology that I myself am
obliged to prefer : The common sense of the
Christian Church had three problems to solve.
First : It was loyal to the universal spiritual
community ; and upon this loyalty, according
to its view, salvation depended. L But this uni
versal community must be something concrete
and practically efficacious. Hence the visible
Church had to be organized as the appearance
on earth of God s Kingdom. For what the
parables had left mysterious about the object
and the life of love, an authoritative interpreta
tion, valid for the believers of those times, must
be found, and was found in the visible Church.
Secondly, The life, the unity, the spirit
of the Church had meanwhile to be identified
with the person and with the spirit of the risen
and ascended Lord, whom the visions of the
first disciples had made henceforth a central
fact in the belief of the Church.
results which Troeltsch has reached, but also translates them into the
terms of my own philosophy of loyalty. Lectures VII, VIII, and XV
will show, in much greater fulness than is here possible, how far-
reaching are the consequences which follow from accepting the inter
pretation of Christianity here merely sketched.
201
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
The supernatural being whose body was
now the Church, whose spirit was thus identi
fied with the will and with the mind of a com
munity, had once, as man, walked the earth,
had really suffered and died. But since he
had risen and ascended, henceforth pre
cisely because he was as the spirit whose body
was this community, the Church he was
divine. Such was the essential article of the
new faith.
Paul had already taught this. This very
doctrine, in its further development, must be
kept by the Church as concrete as the recorded
life of the Master had been, as close to real
life as the work of the visible Church was, and
as true to the faith in the divine unity and
destiny of the universal community, as Chris
tian loyalty in all those formative centuries
remained.
And yet all this must also be held in touch
with that doctrine of the unity, the personality,
and the ineffable transcendence of God,
that doctrine which was the heritage of the
Church, both from the religion of Israel and
202
THE REALM OF GRACE
from the wisdom of Greece. Speaking in a
purely historical and human sense, the dogma
of the Trinity was the psychologically in
evitable effort at a solution of this complex
but intensely practical problem.
Loyalty to the community inspired this
Solution. The problem of the two natures of
Christ, divine and human, was also psycho
logically forced upon Christianity by the very
problem of the two levels of our human exist
ence which I have just sketched. 1
I speak still, not of the truth, but of the
psychological motives of the dogma. The
problem of the two levels of human exist
ence is concrete, is practical, and exists for
all of us. Every man who learns what the
true goal of life is must live this twofold
existence, as separate individual, limited
by the flesh of this maladjusted and dying
organism, yet also as member of a spiritual
community which, if loyal, he loves, and in
1 The relation of the traditional doctrine of the "two natures" to
my present thesis regarding the "two levels" is something which I
am solely responsible for asserting.
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
which, in so far as he is loyal, he knows that
his only true life is hidden, and is lived.
But for Christianity this problem of the
two levels was vital, not only for the individ
ual Christian, but also for the interpretation
of the person of Christ, and for the life of the
Church. Since, for historical and psycho
logical reasons, the solution of this problem
could not be, for Christianity, either poly
theistic or disloyal in its spirit, the only
humanly natural course was, first, to dis
tinguish the transcendent divine being from
the concretely active spirit whose daily work
was that of the Church, and then also to dis
tinguish both of these from the human in
dividuality of the Master who had taught
the mystery of the Kingdom, and who had
then suffered and died, and, as was believed,
had risen to create his Church. One had, I
say, clearly to distinguish all these; to de
clare them all to be perfectly real facts. And
then one had to unite and, in form, to identify
them all, by means of dogmas which were
much less merely ingenious speculations than
204
THE REALM OF GRACE
earnest resolutions to act and to believe what-
ever the loyal Christian life and the work of
the Church demanded for the unity of human
ity and for the salvation of the world.
The result may be estimated philosophically,
as one may judge to be reasonable. I have
said nothing about the metaphysical truth
of these dogmas. But the result should not
be judged as due to merely speculative sub
tleties, or as a practical degeneration of the
spirit of the early Church.
The common sense of the Church was simply
doing its best to express the meaning of its
loyalty. This loyalty had its spiritual com
munity and its human master. And its prob
lems were the problems of all loyalty. And
it was as a religion of loyalty, with a com
munity, a Lord, and a Spirit to interpret, that
Christianity was led to the doctrine of the
two natures of Christ, and to the dogma of the
Trinity.
205
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
X
The psychological motives and the histori
cal background of the capital dogmas of the
Church are therefore best to be understood
in the light of the conception of the universal
community, if only one recognizes the his
torical fact that the Christian consciousness
was by purely human motives obliged to de
fine its community as due to the work of the
Master who once walked the earth.
It is not surprising, then, that the Fourth
Gospel, wherein the Pauline conception of the
Church as the body of Christ, and of Christ
as the spirit of the Church, is perfectly united
with the idea of the divine Word made flesh,
is, of all the Gospels, the one which, although
much the farthest from the literal history of
the human Master s earthly words and deeds,
has been, in its wholeness, the nearest to the
heart of the Christian world during many
centuries.
The Synoptic Gospels stir the spirits of
men by the single word or saying of Jesus, by
208
THE REALM OF GRACE
the recorded parable, or by the impressive
incident, be this incident a legend, or a frag
ment of literally true portrayal (we often
know not which).
But the Fourth Gospel impresses us most in
its wholeness. This Gospel faces the central
practical problem of Christianity, the prob
lem of grace, the transformation of the very
essence of the individual man. This trans
formation is to save him by making him a
dweller in the realm which is at once inacces
sibly above his merely natural level as an
individual, and yet daily near to whatever
gives to his otherwise ruined natural exist
ence its entire value. This realm is the
realm of the level of the united and lovable
community.
From this realm comes all saving grace.
*4 /
Wherever two or three are gathered together
in a genuine unity of spirit, - - this realm
does indeed begin to display itself. Other
religions besides Christianity have illustrated
that fact. And whatever, apart from legend
on the one hand, and speculative interpreta-
207
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
tion on the other, we human beings can ap
preciate, in a vital sense, concerning the
meaning of what we call divine, we learn
through such love for communities as arises
from the companionships of those who are
thus joined.
This truth humanity at large has long since
possessed in countless expressions and dis
guises. But the fortune of Christianity led
the Church to owe its foundation to teachings,
to events, to visions, and, above all, to a
practical devotion, which, from the first,
required the faithful to identify a human in
dividual with the saving spirit of a community,
and with the spirit of a community which was
also conceived as wholly divine.
The union of the concrete and the ineffable
which hereupon resulted, - - the union of what
touches the human heart and stirs the soul as
only the voice of a living individual leader
can touch it, the complete union of this
with the greatest and most inspiring of human
mysteries, the mystery of loving member
ship in a community whose meaning seems
208
THE REALM OF GRACE
divine, --this union became the central in
terest of Christianity.
Apart from what is specifically Christian in
belief, such union of the two levels has its
place in our daily lives wherever the loyalty of
an individual leader shows to other men the
way that leads them to the realm of the
spirit. And whenever* that union takes place,
the divine and the human seem to come into
touch with each other as elsewhere they never
do.
The mystery of loyalty, as Paul well knew,
is the typical mystery of grace. It is, in
another guise, the mystery of the incarnation.
According to the mind of the early Christian
.
Church, one individual had solved that mys
tery for all men.
He had risen from the shameful death that,
for Christianity, as for its greatest rival Bud
dhism, is not only the inevitable but the just
doom of whoever is born on the natural level
of the human individual; he had ascended
to the level of the Spirit, and had become, in
the belief of the faithful, the spirit of a com-
p 209
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
munity whose boundaries were coextensive
with the world, and of whose dominion there
was to be no end.
The Fourth Gospel conceives this union
of the two levels of spiritual existence with a
perfect mastery at once of the exalted poetry
and of the definitely practical concreteness of
the idea, and of the experiences which make
it known to us. That the conception of the
Logos a philosophical conception of Greek
origin is used as the vehicle of the portrayal
is, for our present purpose, a fact of subor
dinate importance.
What is most significant is the direct and
vital grasp of the new problem, as it appears
in the Fourth Gospel. The spirit of the infant
Church is here expressed with such unity and
such pathos that all the complications of the
new ideas vanish ; and one sees only the sym
bol of the perfectly literal and perfectly
human triumph of the Spirit, a triumph
which can appear only in this form of the
uniting of the level of individuality with the
level of perfect loyalty.
210
THE REALM OF GRACE
In the tale here presented, the dust of our
natural divisions is stirred into new life.
From the tomb of individual banishment into
which the divine has freely descended, from
the wreck to which every human individual is
justly doomed, the Word made flesh arises.
But "Who is this King of Glory ?" He is,
in this portrayal, the one who says: "I
am the vine. Ye are the branches." The
Spirit of the community speaks. The Pauline
metaphor appears in a new expression. But
it is uttered not by the believer, but by the
being who has solved the mystery of the
union of the self and the community. He
speaks to individuals who have not yet reached
that union. He comforts them : -
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give
unto you; not as the world giveth give I
unto you." This is the voice of the saving
community to the troubled soul of the lonely
individual.
"Let not your heart be troubled, neither
let it be fearful. Ye have heard how I said
to you, I go away, and I come to you."
211
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
" Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch
cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the
vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in
me."
:< These things have I spoken unto you in
proverbs : The hour cometh, when I shall
no more speak unto you in proverbs, but shall
tell you plainly of the Father." "In the world
ye shall have tribulation ; but be of good cheer;
I have overcome the world."
The loyal alone know whose world this is,
and for whom. In the prayer with which this
farewell closes, the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel
prays : "Holy Father, keep them in thy name
which thou hast given me, that they may be
one, even as we are one."
These are explicitly the words of the spirit
of the universal community, whom mortal
eyes no longer see, and whom, in a lonely
world of tribulation, men who are doomed to
die now miss with grief and expect with long
ing. But: "Hast thou been so long with
me, and hast not known me ?"
In such words the Fourth Gospel embodies
212
THE REALM OF GRACE
the living spirit of the lovable community.
This is what the loyal soul knows.
That is why I venture to say in my own
words (though I am neither apologist, nor
Christian preacher, nor theologian), that
Christianity is a religion not only of love, but
also of loyalty. And that is why the Fourth
Gospel tells us the essential ideas both of
Christianity, and of the Christian Realm of
Grace, more fully than do the parables, unless
you choose to read the parables as the voice
of the Spirit of the Church.
In all this I have meant to say, and have
said, nothing whatever about the truth, or
about the metaphysical bases of Christian
dogma.
I have been characterizing the human
motives that lie at the basis of the doctrine of
the realm of grace, and have been pointing
out the ethical and religious value of these
motives.
** JL
213
l r Yr W?? V
i*vT ***
V
TIME AND GUILT
LECTURE V
TIME AND GUILT
TN Matthew Arnold s essay on "St. Paul
-*- and Protestantism," there is a well-known
passage from which I may quote a few words
to serve as a text for the present lecture.
These words express what many would call a
typical modern view of an ancient problem.
I
In this essay, just before the words which I
shall quote, Matthew Arnold has been speak
ing of the relation between Paul s moral ex
periences and their religious interpretation,
as the Apostle formulates it in the epistle to
the Romans. Referring to a somewhat earlier
stage of his own argument, Arnold here says :
"We left Paul in collision with a fact of
human nature, but in itself a sterile fact, a
fact upon which it is possible to dwell too
long, although Puritanism, thinking this im
possible, has remained intensely absorbed
217
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
in the contemplation of it, and indeed has
never properly got beyond it, the sense of
sin." "Sin," continues Matthew Arnold, "is
not a monster to be mused on, but an impo
tence to be got rid of. All thinking about it,
beyond what is indispensable for the firm
effort to get rid of it, is waste of energy and
waste of time. We then enter that element of
morbid and subjective brooding, in which so
many have perished. This sense of sin, how
ever, it is also possible to have not strongly
enough to beget the firm effort to get rid of it ;
and the Greeks, with all their great gifts,
had this sense not strongly enough; its
strength in the Hebrew people is one of this
people s mainsprings. And no Hebrew
prophet or psalmist felt what sin was more
powerfully than Paul." In the sequel, Arnold
shows how Paul s experience of the spiritual
influence of Jesus enabled the Apostle to solve
his own problem of sin without falling into
that dangerous brooding which Arnold at
tributes to the typical Puritan spirit. As a
result, Arnold identifies his own view of sin
218
TIME AND GUILT
with that of Paul and counsels us to judge the
whole matter in the same way.
We have here nothing to do with the cor
rectness of Matthew Arnold s criticism of
Protestantism ; and also nothing to say, at
the present moment, about the adequacy
of Arnold s interpretation, either of Paul or of
Jesus. But we are concerned with that
characteristically modern view of the prob
lem of sin which Arnold so clearly states in
the words just quoted.
What constitutes the moral burden of the
individual man, -- what holds him back from
salvation, may be described in terms of his
natural heritage, his inborn defect of charac
ter, or in terms of his training, or, finally,
in terms of whatever he has voluntarily done
which has been knowingly unrighteous. In
the present lecture I am not intending to
deal with man s original defects of moral
nature, nor yet with the faults which his
training, through its social vicissitudes, may
have bred in him. I am to consider that
which we call, in the stricter sense, sin.
219
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Whether correctly or incorrectly, a man
often views certain of his deeds as in some
specially intimate sense his own, and may
also believe that, amongst these his own
deeds, some have been wilfully counter to
what he believes to be right. Such wrongful
deeds a man may regard as his own sins.
He may decline to plead ignorance, or bad
training, or uncontrollable defect of temper,
or overwhelming temptation, as the ground
and excuse for just these deeds. Before the
forum of his own conscience he may say :
"That deed was the result of my own moral
choice, and was my sin." For the time being
I shall not presuppose, for the purposes of
this argument, any philosophical theory about
free will. I shall not, in this lecture, assert
that, as a fact, there is any genuinely free will
whatever. At the moment, I shall provision
ally accept only so much of the verdict of com
mon sense as any man accepts when he says :
"That was my own voluntary deed, and was
knowingly and wilfully sinful." Hereupon I
shall ask: Is Matthew Arnold s opinion
220
TIME AND GUILT
correct with regard to the way in which the
fact and the sense of sin ought to be viewed by
a man who believes that he has, by what he
calls his own "free act and deed," sinned ? Is
Arnold s opinion sound and adequate when
he says : "Sin is not a monster to be mused
on, but an impotence to be got rid of."
Arnold praises Paul for having taken sin seri
ously enough to get rid of it, but also praises
him for not having brooded over sin except
to the degree that was "indispensable to the
effort to get rid of it." Excessive brooding
over sin is, in Arnold s opinion, an evil charac
teristic of Puritanism. Is Arnold right ?
II
Most of us will readily agree that Arnold s
words have a ring of sound modern sense
when we first hear them spoken. Brooding
over one s sins certainly appears to be not
always, yes, not frequently, and surely
not for most modern men, a convenient
spiritual exercise. It tends not to the edifica
tion, either of the one who broods, or of his
221
THE PROBLEM OP CHRISTIANITY
brethren. Brooding sinners are neither agree
able companions nor inspiring guides. Arnold
is quite right in pointing out that Paul s
greatest and most eloquent passages those
amongst his words which we best remember and
love are full of the sense of having some
how "got rid" of the very sin to which Paul
most freely confesses when he speaks of his
own past as a persecutor of the Church and as
an unconverted Pharisee. It is, then, the
i escape from sin, and not the bondage to sin,
which helps a man to help his fellows. Ought
not, therefore, the thought of sin to be used
only under the strict and, so to speak, artistic
restraints to which Matthew Arnold advises
us to keep it subject ? You have fallen into
a fault ; you have given over your will to the
enemy; you have wronged your fellow; or,
as you believe, you have offended God in word
and deed. What are you now to do about
this fact? "Get rid of your sin," says
Matthew Arnold. Paul did so. He did so
through what he called a loving union with
the spirit of Christ. As he expressed the mat-
222
TIME AND GUILT
ter, he "died" to sin. He "lived" henceforth
to the righteousness of his Master and of the
Christian community. And that was, for
him, the end of brooding, unless you call it
brooding when his task as missionary re
quired him to repeat the simple confession of
his earlier life, - - the life that he had lived
before the vision of the risen Christ trans
formed him. Matthew Arnold counsels a
repetition of Paul s experience in modern
fashion, and with the use of modern ideas
rather than of whatever was narrow, and of
whatever is now superseded, in Paul s reli
gious opinions and imagery.
The modern version of Paulinism, as set
forth by Arnold, would involve, first, a return
to the primitive Christianity of the sayings of
Jesus; next, a "falling in love" with the
person and character of Jesus; and, finally,
a "getting rid of sin" through a new life of
love, lived in the spirit of Jesus. Matthew
Arnold s version of the Gospel is, at the pres
ent moment, more familiar to general readers
of the literature of the problem of Christianity
223
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
than it was when he wrote his essays on reli
gion. So far as sin is concerned, is not this
version heartily acceptable to the modern
mind ? Is it not sensible, simple, and in
spirit strictly normal, as well as moral and
religious ? Does it not dispose, once for all,
both of the religious and of the practical
aspect of the problem of sin ?
I cannot better state the task of this lecture
than by taking the opportunity which Arnold s
clearness of speech gives me to begin the
study of our question in the light of so favorite
a modern opinion.
Ill
t
It would not be useful for us to consider any
further, in this place, Paul s own actual
doctrine about such sin as an individual thinks
to have been due to his own voluntary and
personal deed. Paul s view regarding the na
ture of original sin involves other questions
than the one which is at present before us.
We speak here not of original sin, but of know
ing and voluntary evil doing. Paul s idea of
224
TIME AND GUILT
salvation from original sin through grace,
and through loving union with the spirit of
the Master, is inseparable from his special
opinions regarding the Church as the body of
Christ, and regarding the supernatural exist
ence of the risen Christ as the Spirit of the
Church. These matters also are not now
before us. The same may be said of Paul s
views concerning the forgiveness of our volun
tary sins. For, in Paul s mind, the whole
doctrine of the sins which the individual has
knowingly and wilfully committed, is further
complicated by the Apostle s teachings about
predestination. And for an inquiry into those
teachings there is, in this lecture, neither
space nor motive. Manifold and impressive
though Paul s dealings with the problem of sin
are, we shall therefore do well, upon this oc
casion, to approach the doctrine of the volun
tary sins of the individual from another side
than the one which Paul most emphasizes.
Let us turn to aspects of the Christian tradi
tion about wilful sin for which Paul is not
mainly responsible.
Q 225
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
We all know, in any case, that Arnold s
own views about the sense and the thought of
sin are not the views which have been preva
lent in the past history of Christianity. And
Arnold s hostility to the Puritan spirit carries
him too far when he seems to attribute to
Puritanism the principal responsibility for
having made the fact and the sense of sin so
prominent as it has been in Christian thought.
Long before Puritanism, mediaeval Christian
ity had its own meditations concerning sin.
Others than Puritans have brooded too much
over their sins. And not all Puritans have
cultivated the thought of sin with a morbid
intensity.
I have no space for a history of the Christian
doctrine of wilful sin. But, by way of prepara
tion for my principal argument, I shall next
call to mind a few of the more familiar Chris
tian beliefs concerning the perils and the results
of voluntary sin, without caring, at the mo
ment, whether these beliefs are mediaeval, or
Puritan, or not. Thereafter, I shall try to
translate the sense of these traditional beliefs
226
TIME AND GUILT
into terms which seem to me to be worthy
of the serious consideration of the modern
man. After this restatement and interpreta
tion of the Christian doctrine, not of orig
inal sin, but of the voluntary sin of the in
dividual, - we shall have new means of seeing
whether Arnold is justified in declaring that
no thought about sin is wise except such
thought as is indispensable for arousing the
effort " to get rid of sin."
IV
The teaching of Jesus concerning wilful
sin, as it is recorded in some of the best known
of his sayings, is simple and searching, august
in the severity of the tests which it uses for
distinguishing sinful deeds from righteous
deeds, and yet radiant with its familiar
message of hope for the sincerely repentant
sinner. *I have no right to judge as to the
authenticity of the individual sayings of Jesus
which our Gospels record. But the body of
the teachings of the Master concerning sin is
not only one of the most frequently quoted
227
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
portions of the Gospel tradition, but is also
an essential part of that doctrine of Christian
love which great numbers of Christian souls,
both learned and unlearned, find to be the
most obviously characteristic expression of
what the founder had at heart when he came
to seek and to save that which was lost.
Searching is this teaching about sin, because of
what Matthew Arnold called the inwardness
of the spirit which Jesus everywhere empha
sized in telling us what is the essence of right
eousness. August is this teaching in the
severity of the tests which it applies ; because
all seeming, all worldly repute, all outward
conformity to rules, avail nothing in the eyes
of the Master, unless the interior life of the
doer of good works is such as fully meets the
requirements of love, both towards God and
towards man.
Countless efforts have been made* to sum
up in a few words the spirit of the ethical
teaching of Jesus. I make no new effort, I
contribute no novel word or insight, when I
now venture to say, simply in passing, that
228
TIME AND GUILT
the religion of the founder, as preserved
in the sayings, is a religion of Whole-Hearted-
ness. The voluntary good deed is one which,
whatever its outward expression may be,
carries with it the whole heart of love, both to
God and to the neighbor. The special act -
whether it be giving the cup of cold water, or
whether it be the martyr s heroism in confes
sing the name of Jesus in presence of the
persecutor matters less than the inward
spirit. The Master gives no elaborate code
to be applied to each new situation. The
whole heart devoted to the caftse of the King
dom of Heaven, - - this is what is needed.
On the other hand, whatever wilful deed
does not spring from love of God and man,
and especially whatever deed breaks with the
instinctive dictates of whole-hearted love, is
sin. And sin means alienation from the King
dom and from the Father; and hence, in the
end, means destruction. Here again the au
gust severity of the teaching is fully mani
fested. But from this destruction there is
indeed an escape. It is the escape by the
229
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
road of repentance. That is the only road
which is emphatically and repeatedly insisted
upon in the sayings of Jesus, as we have them.
But this repentance must include a whole
hearted willingness to forgive those who tres
pass against us. Thus repentance means a
return both to the Father and to the whole
hearted life of love. Another name for this
whole-heartedness, in action as well as in
repentance, is faith. For the true lover of
God instinctively believes the word of the Son
of Man who teaches these things, and is sure
that the Kingdom of God will come.
But like the rest of the reported sayings of
Jesus, this simple and august doctrine of the
peril of sin, and of the way of escape through
repentance, comes to us with many indications
that some further and fuller revelation of its
meaning is yet to follow. Jesus appears in
the Gospel reports as himself formally an
nouncing to individuals that their sins are
forgiven. The escape from sin is therefore
not always wholly due to the repentant sinner s
own initiative. Assistance is needed. And
230
TIME AND GUILT
, Jesus appears in the records, as assisting.
He assists, not only as the teacher who an
nounces the Kingdom, but as the one who has
"power to forgive sins." Here again I simply
follow the well-known records. I am no
judge as to what sayings are authentic. i
I am sure, however, that it was but an in
evitable development of the original teaching
of the founder and of these early reports about
his authority to forgive, when the Christian
community later conceived that salvation
from personal and voluntary sin had become
possible through the work which the departed
Lord had done while on earth. How Christ
saved from sin became hereupon a problem.
But that he saved from sin, and that he some
how did so through what he won for men by
his death, became a central constituent of the
later Christian tradition.
A corollary of this central teaching was a
further opinion which tradition also empha
sized, and, for centuries, emphasized the more,
the further the apostolic age receded into the
past. This further opinion was : That the
231
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
wilful sinner is powerless to return to a whole
hearted union with God through any deed of
his own. He could not "get rid of sin,"
either by means of repentance or otherwise,
unless the work of Christ had prepared the
way. This, in sum, was long the common
tradition of the Christian world. How the
saving work of Christ became or could be
made efficacious for obtaining the forgiveness
of the wilful sin of an individual, this
question, as we well know, received momen
tous and conflicting answers as the Christian
church grew,, differentiated, and went through
its various experiences of heresy, of schism,
and of the learned interpretation of its faith.
Here, again, the details of the history of dog
ma, and the practice of the Church and of its
sects in dealing with the forgiveness of sins,
concern us not at all.
We need, however, to remind ourselves,
at this point, of one further aspect of the
tradition about wilful sin. That sin, if
unforgiven, leads to "death," was a thought
which Judaism had inherited from the reli-
232
TIME AND GUILT
gion of the prophets of Israel. It was a grave
thought, essential to the ethical development
of the faith of Israel, and capable of vast
development in the light both of experience
and of imagination.
Because of the later growth of the doctrine
of the future life, the word "death" came to
mean, for the Christian mind, what it could not
yet have meant for the early prophets of Israel.
And, in consequence, Christian tradition
gradually developed a teaching that the di
vinely ordained penalty of unforgiven sin the
doom of the wilful sinner is a " second death,"
an essentially endless penalty. The Apoca
lypse imaginatively pictures this doom.
When the Church came to define its faith as
to the future life, it developed a well-known
group of opinions concerning this endless
penalty of sin. In its outlines this group of
opinions is familiar even to all children who
have learned anything of the faith of the
fathers.
An essentially analogous group of opinions
is found in various religions that are not
233
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Christian. In its origin this group of opin
ions goes back to the very beginnings of
those forms of ethical religion whose history
is at all closely parallel to the history of
Judaism or of Christianity. The motives
which are here in question lie deeply rooted in
human nature; but I have no right and no
time to attempt to analyze them now. It is
enough for my purpose to remind you that
the idea of the endless penalty of unforgiven
sin is by no means peculiar to Puritanism ;
and that it is certainly an idea which, for those
who accept it with any hearty faith, very
easily leads to many thoughts about sin
which tend to exceed the strictly artistic
measure which Matthew Arnold assigns as
the only fitting one for all such thoughts.
To think of a supposed "endless penalty"
as a certain doom for all unforgiven sin, may
not lead to morbid brooding. For the man
who begins such thoughts may be sedately
sure that he is no sinner. Or again, although
he confesses himself a sinner, he may be pleas
antly convinced that forgiveness is readily
234
TIME AND GUILT
and surely attainable, at least for himself.
And, as we shall soon see, there are still other
reasons why no morbid thought need be con
nected with the idea of endless penalty. But
no doubt such a doctrine of endless penalty
tends to awaken thoughts which have a less
modern seeming, and which involve a less
sure confidence in one s personal power to
"get rid of sin" than Matthew Arnold s words,
as we have cited them, convey. If, without
any attempt to dwell further, either upon the
history or the complications of the traditional
Christian doctrine of the wilful sin of the
individual, we reduce that doctrine to its
simplest terms, it consists of two theses, both
of which have had a vast and tragic influence
upon the fortunes of Christian civilization.
The theses are these: First: "By no deed
of his own, unaided by the supernatural
consequences of the work of Christ, can
the wilful sinner win forgiveness. " Second :
"The penalty of unforgiven sin is the endless
second death."
235
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
The contrast between these two traditional
theses and the modern spirit seems manifest
enough, even if we do not make use of
Matthew Arnold s definition of the reasonable
attitude towards sin. This contrast of the old
faith and the modern view is one of the most
frequently emphasized means of challenging
the ethical significance of the Christian tradi
tion.
It is indeed difficult to define just who the
"modern man" is, and what views he has to
hold in order to be modern. But very many
people, I suppose, would be disposed to accept
as a partial definition of the modern man,
this formulation: "The modern man is one
who does not believe in hell, and who is too
busy to think about his own sins." If this
definition is indeed too trivial to be just, it
would still seem to many serious people that,
at this point, if at no other, the modern
man has parted company with Christian
tradition.
236
TIME AND GUILT
And the parting would appear to be not
accidental, nor yet due to superficial motives.
The deepest ethical interests would be at
stake, if the appearances here represent the
facts as they are. For the old faith held that
the very essence of its revelation concerning
righteousness was bound up with its concep
tion of the consequences of unforgiven sin.
On the other hand, if the education of the hu
man race has taught us any coherent lesson,
it has taught us to respect the right of a ra
tional being to be judged by moral standards
that he himself can see to be reasonable.
Hence the moral dignity of the modern idea
of man seems to depend upon declining to
regard as just and righteous any penalty which
is supposed to be inflicted by the merely arbi
trary will of any supernatural power. The just
penalty of sin, to the modern mind, must
therefore be the penalty, whatever it is,
which the enlightened sinner, if fully awake
to the nature of his deed, and rational in his
estimate of his deed, would voluntarily inflict
upon himself. And how can one better ex-
237
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
press that penalty than by following the spirit
of Matthew Arnold s advice: "Get rid of
your sin"? This advice, to be sure, has its
own deliberate sternness. For "the firm ef
fort to get rid of sin" may involve long labor
and deep grief. But "endless penalty," a
"second death," -what ethically tolerable
meaning can a modern mind attach to these
words ?
Is not, then, the chasm between the modern
ethical view and the ancient faith at this
point simply impassable ? Have the two not
parted company altogether, both in letter and,
still more, in their inmost spirit ?
To this question some representatives of
modern liberal Christianity would at once
reply that, as I have already pointed out, the
early Gospel tradition does not attribute to
Jesus himself the more hopeless aspects of the
doctrine of sin, as the later tradition was led
to define them. Jesus, according to the re
ports of his teaching in the Gospels, does in
deed more than once use a doctrine of the
endless penalty of unforgiven sin, a doc-
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TIME AND GUILT
trine with which a portion of the Judaism of
his day was more or less familiar. In well-
known parables he speaks of the torments of
another world. And in general he deals with
wilful sin unsparingly. But, so far as the
present life is concerned, he seems to leave
the door of repentance always open. The
Father waits for the Prodigal Son s return.
And the Prodigal Son returns of his own will.
We hear nothing in the parables about his
being unable effectively to repent unless
some supernatural plan of salvation has first
been worked out for him. Is it not possible,
then, to reconcile the Christian spirit and the
modern man by simply returning to the
Christianity of the parables ? So, in our
day, many assert.
I do not believe that the parables, in the
form in which we possess them, present to us
any complete view of the essence of the Chris
tian doctrine of sin, or of the sinner s way of
escape. I do not believe that they were in
tended by the Master to do so. I have al
ready pointed out how our reports of the
239
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
founder s teachings about sin indicate that
these teachings were intended to receive a
further interpretation and supplement. Our
real problem is whether the interpretation
and supplement which later Christian tradi
tion gave, through its doctrine of sin, and of
the endless penalty of sin, was, despite its
tragedy, its mythical setting, and its arbitra
riness, a teaching whose ethical spirit we can
still accept or, at least, understand. Is the
later teaching, in any sense, a just develop
ment of the underlying meaning of the par
ables ? Does any deeper idea inform the
traditional doctrine that the wilful sinner is
powerless to save himself from a just and
endless penalty through any repentance, or
through any new deed of his own ?
As I undertake to answer these questions,
let me ask you to bear in mind one general
historical consideration. Christianity, even
in its most imaginative and in its most tragic
teachings, has always been under the influ
ence of very profound ethical motives, - - the
motives which already inspired the prophets
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TIME AND GUILT
of Israel. The founder s doctrine of the
Kingdom, as we now possess that doctrine,
was an outline of an ethical religion. It was
also a prologue to a religion that was yet to
be more fully revealed, or at least explained.
This, as I suppose, was the founder s personal
intention. When the early Church sought to
express its own spirit, it was never knowingly
false; it was often most fluently, yet faithfully,
true to the deeper meaning of the founder.
Its expressions were borrowed from many
sources. Its imagination was constructive of
many novelties. Only its deeper spirit was
marvellously steadfast. Even when, in its
darker moods, its imagination dwelt upon
the problem of sin, it saw far more than it
was able to express in acceptable formulas.
Its imagery was often of local, or of heathen,
or even of primitive origin. But the truth
which the imagery rendered edifying and
teachable, -- this often bears and invites an
interpretation whose message is neither local
nor primitive. Such an interpretation I
believe to be possible in case of the doc-
R 241
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
trine of sin and of its penalty ; and to
my own interpretation I must now ask your
attention.
VI
There is one not infrequent thought about
sin upon which Matthew Arnold s rule would
surely permit us to dwell ; for it is a thought
which helps us, if not wholly "to get rid of
sin," still, in advance of decisive action, to
forestall some temptations to sin which we
might otherwise find too insistent for our
safety. It is the thought which many a man
expresses when he says, of some imagined act :
"If I were to do that, I should be false to all
that I hold most dear ; I should throw away
my honor ; I should violate the fidelity that is
to me the very essence of my moral interest in
my existence." The thought thus expressed
may be sometimes merely conventional ; but
it may also be very earnest and heartfelt.
Every man who has a moral code which he
accepts, not merely as the customary and,
to him, opaque or senseless verdict of his
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TIME AND GUILT
tribe or of his caste, but as his own chosen
personal ideal of life, has his power to formu
late what for him would seem (to borrow the
religious phraseology) his "sin against the
Holy Ghost," -his own morally "impos
sible" choice, so far as he can now predeter
mine what he really means to do.
Different men, no doubt, have different ex
emplary sins in mind when they use such words.
Their various codes may be expressions of quite
different and largely accidental social tradi
tions ; their diverse examples of what, for
each of them, would be his own instance of
the unpardonable sin, may be the outcome
of the tabus of whatever social order you
please. I care for the moment not at all for
the objective ethical correctness of any one
man s definition of his own moral code. And
I am certainly here formulating no ethical
code of my own. I am simply pointing out
that, when a man becomes conscious of his
own rule of life, of his own ideal of what
makes his voluntary life worth while, he tends
to arrange his ideas of right and wrong acts
243
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
so that, for him at least, some acts, when he
contemplates the bare possibility of doing
them himself, appear to him to be acts such
that they would involve for him a kind
of moral suicide, a deliberate wrecking of
what makes life, for himself, morally ,worth
while.
One common-sense way of expressing such
an individual judgment upon these extreme
acts of wrong-doing, is to say : "If I were to
do that of my own free will, I could thereafter
never forgive myself."
Since I am here not undertaking any
critical discussion of the idea of the "Ought,"
I do not now venture the thesis that every
man who is a reasonable being at all, or who,
as they say, "has a conscience," must needs
be able to name instances of acts which, if
he knowingly chose to do them, would make
his life, in his own eyes, a moral chaos, a
failure, so that he would "never forgive"
himself for those acts. If a student of ethics
asks me to prove that a man ought to view his
own life and his own will in this way, I am
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TIME AND GUILT
not here concerned to offer such a proof in
philosophical terms.
But this I can point out : In case a man
thinks of his own possible actions in this way,
he need not be morbidly brooding over sins
of which it is well not to think too much.
He may be simply surveying his plan of life
in a resolute way, and deciding, as well as he
can, where he stands ; what his leading ideas
are, and what makes his voluntary life, from
his own point of view, worth living. To be
resolute, is at all events no weakness ; and no
body "perishes" merely because he has his
mind clearly made up regarding what, for
him, would be his own unpardonable sin.
There is no loss for one s manhood in know
ing how one s "sin against the Holy Ghost,"
one s possible act for which one is resolved
never to ask one s own forgiveness, is defined.
Such thoughts tend to clear our moral air, if
only we think them in terms of our own per
sonal ideals, and do not, as is too often the
case, apply them solely to render more dra
matic our judgments about our neighbors.
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
VII
In order to be able to formulate such
thoughts, one must have an "ideal," even if
one cannot state it in an abstract form.
One must think of one s voluntary life in terms
of fidelity to some such "ideal," or set of
ideals. One must regard one s self as a crea
ture with a purpose in living. One must
have what they call a "mission" in one s
own world. And so, whether one uses philo
sophical theories or religious beliefs, or does
not use them, one must, when one speaks
thus, actually have some sort of spiritual
realm in which, as one believes, one s moral
life is lived, a realm to whose total order, as
one supposes, one could be false if one chose.
One s mission, one s business, must ideally
extend, in some fashion, to the very boun
daries of this spiritual realm, so that, if one
actually chose to commit one s supposed un
pardonable sin, one could exist in this entire
realm only as, in some sense and degree, an
outcast, estranged, so far as that one un-
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TIME AND GUILT
pardonable fault estranged one, from one s
own chosen moral hearth and fireside. At
least this is how one resolves, in advance of
decisive action, to view the matter, in case
one has the precious privilege of being able
to make such resolves. And I say that so to
find one s self resolving, is to find not weakness
and brooding, but resoluteness and clearness.
Life seems simply blurred and dim if one
can nowhere find in it such sharp moral out
lines. And if one becomes conscious of such
sharp outlines, one is not saying: "Behold
me, the infallible judge of moral values for
all mankind. Behold me with the absolute
moral code precisely worked out." For one
is so far making no laws for one s neighbors.
One is accepting no merely traditional tabus.
One is simply making up one s mind so as to
give a more coherent sense to one s choices.
The penalty of not being able to make such
resolves regarding what would be one s own
unpardonable sin, is simply the penalty of
flabbiness and irresoluteness. To remain un
aware of what we propose to do, never helps
247
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
us to live. To be aware of our coherent plan,
to have a moral world and a business that, in
ideal, extends to the very boundaries of this
world, and to view one s life, or any part of it,
as an expression of one s own personal will,
is to assert one s genuine freedom, and is not
to accept any external bondage. But it is
also to bind one s self, in all the clearness of
a calm resolve. It is to view certain at least
abstractly possible deeds as moral catas
trophes, as creators of chaos, as deeds whereby
the self, if it chose them, would, at least in
so far, banish itself from its own country.
To be able to view life in this way, to resolve
thus deliberately what genuine and thorough
going sin would mean for one s own vision,
requires a certain maturity. Not all ordinary
misdeeds are in question when one thinks of
the unpardonable sin. Blunders of all sorts
fill one s childhood and youth. What Paul
conceived as our original sin may have
expressed itself for years in deeds that our
social order condemns, and that our later
life deeply deplores. And yet, in all this
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TIME AND GUILT
maze of past evil-doing and of folly, we may
have been, so far, either helpless victims of
our nature and of our training, or blind fol
lowers of false gods. What Paul calls sin
may have "abounded." And yet, as we
look back, we may now judge that all this
was merely a means whereby, henceforth,
"grace may more abound." We may have
learned to say, it may be wise, and even
our actual duty to say: "I will not brood
over these which were either my ignorant or
my helpless sins. I will henceforth firmly
and simply resolve to get rid of them.
That is for me the best. Bygones are by
gones. Remorse is a waste of time. These
confusions of a wasted youth must be
henceforth simply ignored. That is the way
of cheer. It is also the way of true right
eousness. I can live wisely only in case
I forget my former follies, except in so far as
a memory of these follies helps me not to
repeat them."
One may only the more insist upon this
cheering doctrine of Lethe and forgiveness
249
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
for the past, and of "grace abounding" for
the future, when there come into one s life
those happenings which Paul viewed as a
new birth, and as a "dying to sin." These
workings of "grace," if they occur to us, may
transform our "old man" of inherited defect,
of social waywardness, of contentiousness,
and of narrow hatred for our neighbors and
for "the law" into the "new life." It is a
new life to us because we now seem to have
found our own cause, and have learned to love
our sense of intimate companionship with the
universe. Now, for the first time, we have
found a life that seems to us to have trans
parent sense, unity of aim , and an abiding and
sustaining inspiration about it.
If this result has taken place, then, whatever
our cause, or our moral opinions, or our reli
gion may be, we shall tend to rejoice with
Paul that we have now "died" to the old life
of ignorance and of evil-working distractions.
Hereupon we may be ready to say, with him,
and joyously: There is no condemnation"
for us who are ready to walk after what we
250
TIME AND GUILT
now take to be "the spirit." The past is
dead. Grace has saved us. Forgiveness
covers the evil deeds that were done. For
those deeds, as we now see, were not done by
our awakened selves. They were not our
own "free acts" at all. They were the work
ings of what Paul called "the flesh."
"Grace" has blotted them out.
I am still speaking not of any one faith
about the grace that saves, or about the ideal
of life. Let a man find his salvation as it
may happen to him to find it. But the main
point that I have further to insist upon is
this : Whenever and however we have become
morally mature enough to get life all colored
through and through by what seems to us a
genuinely illuminating moral faith, so that
it seems to us as if, in every deed, we could
serve, despite our weakness, our one highest
cause, and be faithful to all our moral world
at every moment, - - then this inspiration
has to be paid for. The abundance of
grace means, henceforth, a new gravity of
life.
251
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
For we now have to face the further fact that,
if we have thus won vast ideals, and a will
that is now inspired to serve them, we can
imagine ourselves becoming false to this our
own will, to this which gives our life its gen
uine value. We can imagine ourselves break
ing faith with our own world-wide cause and
inspiration. One who has found his cause,
if he has a will of his own, can become a
conscious and deliberate traitor. One who
has found his loyalty is indeed, at first, under
the obsession of the new spirit of grace. But
if, henceforth, he lives with a will of his own,
he can, by a wilful closing of his eyes to the
light, become disloyal.
Our actual voluntary life does not bear out
any theory as to the fatally predestined per
severance of the saints. For our voluntary
life seems to us as if it was free either to per
severe or not to persevere. The more precious
the light that has seemed to come to me, the
deeper is the disgrace to which, in my own
eyes, I can condemn myself, if I voluntarily
become false to this light.
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TIME AND GUILT
Now it is indeed not well to brood over
such chances of falsity. But it is manly
to face the fact that they are present.
I repeat that, in all this statement, I have
presupposed no philosophical theory of free
will, and have not assumed the truth of any
one ethical code or doctrine. I have been
speaking simply in terms of moral experience,
and have been pointing out how the world
seems to a man who reaches sufficient moral
maturity to possess, even if but for a season,
a pervasive and practically coherent ideal of
life, and to value himself as a possible servant
of his cause, but a servant whose freedom to
choose is still his own.
What I point out is that, if a man has won
practically a free and conscious view of what
his honor requires of him, the reverse side of
this view is also present. This reverse side
takes the form of knowing what, for this man
himself, it would mean to be wilfully false to
his honor. One who knows that he freely
serves his cause knows that he could, if he
chose, become a traitor. And if indeed he
253
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
freely serves his cause, he knows whether or
no he could forgive himself if he wilfully be
came a traitor. Whoever, through grace, has
found the beloved of his life, and now freely
lives the life of love, knows that he could, if
he chose, betray his beloved. And he knows
what estimate his own free choice now re
quires him to put upon such betrayal.
Choose your cause, your beloved, and your
moral ideal as you please. What I now point
out is that so to choose is to imply your
power to define what, for you, would be the
unpardonable sin if you committed it. This
unpardonable sin would be betrayal.
VIII
So far I have spoken of the moral possi
bility of treason. We seem to be free. There
fore it seems to us as if treason were possible.
But now, do any of us ever actually thus
betray our own chosen cause ? Do we ever
actually turn traitor to our own flag, to the
flag that we have sworn to serve, after
taking our oath, not as unto men, but as unto
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TIME AND GUILT
ourselves and our cause ? Do any of us ever
really commit that which, in our own eyes, is
the unpardonable sin ?
Here, again, let every one of us judge for
himself. And let him also judge rather him
self than his neighbor. For we are here
speaking, not of customary codes, nor of out
ward seeming, but of how a man who knows
his ideal and knows his own will finds that
his inward deed appears to himself.
Still, apart from all evil speaking, the com
mon experience of mankind seems to show that
such actual and deliberate sin against the
light, such conscious and wilful treason,
occasionally takes place.
So far as we know of such treason at all,
or reasonably believe in its existence, it
appears to us to be, on the whole, the worst
evil with which man afHicts his fellows and
his social order in this distracted world of
human doings. The blindness and the nai ve
cruelty of crude passion, the strife and hatred
with which the natural social order is filled,
often seem to us mild when we compare
255
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
them with the spiritual harm that follows
the intentional betrayal of great causes once
fully accepted, but then wilfully forsaken, by
those to whom they have been intrusted.
"If the light that is in thee be darkness,
how great is that darkness." This is the word
which seems especially fitted for the traitor s
own case. For he has seen the great light. The
realm of the spirit has been graciously opened
to him. He has willingly entered. He has
chosen to serve. And then he has closed his
eyes ; and, by his own free choice, a darkness
far worse than that of man s primal savagery
has come upon him. And the social world,
the unity of brotherhood, the beloved life
which he has betrayed, -- how desolate he
has left what was fairest in it. He has re
duced to its primal chaos the fair order of
those who trusted and who lived and loved
together in one spirit !
But we are here little concerned with what
others think of the traitor, if such traitor there
be. We are interested in what (if the light
against which he has sinned returns to him),
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TIME AND GUILT
the traitor henceforth is to think of himself.
Matthew Arnold would say, "Let him think
of his sin," - that is, in this case, of his trea
son, only in so far as is indispensable to
the "firm resolve to get rid of it." We ask
whether, now that the traitor has first won
his own light, and has defined by his own will
his own unpardonable sin, and has then
betrayed his cause, has sinned against his light
and has done his little best to make chaos of
his own chosen ideal and of his moral order,
- we ask, I say, whether Arnold s rule seems
any longer quite adequate to meet the situa
tion.
Of course I am not venturing to assign
to the supposed traitor any penalties except
those which his own will really intends to
assign to him. I am not acting in the least
as his Providence. I am leaving him quite
free to decide his own fate. I am certainly
not counselling him to feel any particular
kind or degree of the mere emotion called
remorse. For all that I now shall say, he
is quite free, if that is his desire, to forget his.
s 257
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
treason once for all, and to begin his business
afresh with a new moral ideal, or with no
ideal at all, as he may choose.
What I ask, however, is simply this : //
he resumes his former position of knowing and
choosing an ideal, if he also remembers what
ideal he formerly chose, and what and how
and how deliberately he betrayed, and knows
himself for what he is, what does he judge
regarding the now inevitable and endless con-
seqiiences of his deed ? And what answer
will he now make to Matthew Arnold s kind
advice: "Get rid of your sin." He need
not answer in a brooding way. He need be
no Puritan. He may remain as cheerful in
his passing feelings as you please. He may
quite calmly rehearse the facts. He may
decline to shed any tear, either of repentance
or of terror. My only hypothesis is that he
sees the facts as they are, and confesses, how
ever coolly and dispassionately, the moral
value which, as a matter of simple coherence
of view and opinion, he now assigns to himself.
258
TIME AND GUILT
IX
He will answer Matthew Arnold s advice,
as I think, thus: " Get rid of my sin?
How can I get rid of it ? It is done. It is
past. It is as irrevocable as the Archaean
geological period, or as the collision of stellar
masses, the light of whose result we saw
here on earth a few years ago, when a new
star flamed forth in the Constellation Per
seus. I am the one who, at such a time, with
such a light of the spirit shining before
me, with my eyes thus and thus open to my
business and to my moral universe, first, so
far as I could freely act at all, freely closed
my eyes, and then committed what my own
will had already defined to be my unpardon
able sin. So far as in me lay, in all my
weakness, but yet with all the wit and the
strength that just then were mine, I was a
traitor.
That fact, that event, that deed, is irrevo
cable. The fact that I am the one who then
did thus and so, not ignorantly, but know-
259
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
ingly, that fact will outlast the ages. That
fact is as endless as time.
And, in so far as I continue to value myself
as a being whose life is coherent in its mean
ing, this fact that then and there I was a
traitor will always constitute a genuine pen
alty, my own penalty, a penalty that no
god assigns to me, but that I, simply because
I am myself, and take an interest in knowing
myself, assign to myself, precisely in so far as
and whenever I am awake to the meaning of
my own life. I can never undo that deed. If
I ever say, I have undone that deed, I shall be
both a fool and a liar. Counsel me, if you will,
to forget that deed. Counsel me to do good
deeds without number to set over against
that treason. Counsel me to be cheerful,
and to despise Puritanism. Counsel me to
plunge into Lethe. All such counsel may be,
in its way and time, good. Only do not
counsel me to get rid of just that sin.
That, so far as the real facts are concerned,
cannot be done. For I am, and to the end
of endless time shall remain, the doer of that
260
TIME AND GUILT
wilfully traitorous deed. Whatever other
value I may get, that value I retain forever.
My guilt is as enduring as time."
But hereupon a bystander will naturally
invite our supposed traitor to repent, and to
repent thoroughly of his treason. The trai
tor, now cool and reasonable once more, can
only apply to his own case Fitzgerald s word
in the Omar Khayyam stanzas :
The moving finger writes, and having writ,
Moves on : nor all your piety nor wit
Can lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
These very familiar lines were sometime
viewed as Oriental fatalism. But they are,
in fact, fully applicable to the freest of deeds
when once that deed is done.
We need not further pursue any supposed
colloquy between the traitor and those who
comment upon the situation. The simple
fact is that each deed is ipso facto irrevocable ;
that our hypothetical traitor, in his own
deed, has been false to whatever light he then
and there had and to whatever ideal he then
261
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
viewed as his highest good. Hereupon no
new deed, however good or however faithful,
and however much of worthy consequences
it introduces into the future life of the traitor
or of his world, can annul the fact that the
one traitorous deed was actually done. No
question as to whether the traitor, when he
first chose the cause which he later betrayed,
was then ethically correct in his choice, aids
us. to estimate just the one matter which is
here in question, namely, the value of the
traitor as the doer of that one traitorous
deed. For his treason consists not in his
blunders in the choice of his cause, but in his
sinning against such light as he then and
there had. The question is, furthermore,
not one as to his general moral character,
apart from this one act of treason. To
condemn at one stroke the whole man for the
one deed is, of course, absurd. But it is the
one deed which is now in question. This
man may also be the doer of countless good
deeds. But our present question is solely
as to his value as the doer of that one trai-
262
TIME AND GUILT
torous deed. This value he has through his
own irrevocable choice. Whatever other
values his other deeds may give him, this one
value remains, never to be removed. By no
deed of his own can he ever escape from that
penalty which consists in his having intro
duced into the moral world the one evil which
was, at the time, as great an evil as he could
then, of his own will, introduce.
In brief, by his own deed of treason, the
traitor has consigned himself, not indeed
his whole self, but his self as the doer of this
deed, - - to what one may call the hell of the
irrevocable. All deeds are indeed irrevocable.
But only the traitorous sin against the light
is such that, in advance, the traitor s own free
acceptance of a cause has stamped it with the
character of being what his own will had
defined as his own unpardonable sin. What
ever else the traitor may hereafter do, -
and even if he becomes and remains, through
all his future life, in this or any other world,
a saint, the fact will remain: There was a
moment when he freely did whatever he could
263
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
to wreck the cause that he had sworn to serve.
The traitor can henceforth do nothing that
will give to*himself , precisely in so far as he
was the doer of that one deed, any character
which is essentially different from the one
determined by his treason.
The hell of the irrevocable: all of us know
what it is to come to the border of it when
we contemplate our own past mistakes or
mischances. But we can enter it and dwell
in it only when the fact "This deed is irrev
ocable," is combined with the further fact
"This deed is one that, unless I call treason
my good, and moral suicide my life, I cannot
forgive myself for having done."
Now to use these expressions is not to con
demn the traitor, or any one else, to endless
emotional horrors of remorse, or to any sen
suous pangs of penalty or grief, or to any one
set of emotions whatever. It is simply to
say : If I morally value myself at all, it
remains for me a genuine and irrevocable evil
in my world, that ever I was, even if for that
one moment only and in that one deed, with
264
TIME AND GUILT
all my mind and my soul and my heart
and my strength, a traitor. And if I ever
had any cause, and then betray e<* it, such
an evil not only was my deed, but such an
evil forever remains, so far as that one deed
was done, the only value that I can attribute
to myself precisely as the doer of that deed
at that time.
What the pungency of the odors, what the
remorseful griefs, of the hell of the irrevocable
may be, for a given individual, we need not
attempt to determine, and I have not the
least right or desire to imagine. Certainly
remorse is a poor companion for an active
life ; and I do not counsel any one, traitor or
not traitor, to cultivate remorse. Our ques
tion is not one about one s feelings, but about
one s genuine value as a moral agent. Cer
tainly forgetfulness is often useful when one
looks forward to new deeds. I do not counsel
any one uselessly to dwell upon the past.
Still the fact remains, that the more I come
to take large and coherent views of my life
and of its meaning, the more will the fact
265
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
that, by my own traitorous deed, I have baji-
ished myself to the hell of the irrevocable,
appear to me both a vast and a grave fact
in my world. I shall learn, if I wisely grow
into new life, neither to be crushed by any
sort of facing of that fact, nor to brood unduly
over its everlasting presence as a fact in my
life. But so long as I remain awake to the
real values of my life, and to the coherence of
my meaning, I shall know that while no god
shuts me, or could possibly shut me, if he
would, into this hell, it is my own will to say
that, for this treason, just in so far as I wil
fully and knowingly committed this treason,
I shall permit none of the gods to forgive me.
For it is my precious privilege to assert my
own reasonable will, by freely accepting my
place in the hell of the irrevocable, and by
never forgiving myself for this sin against the
light. If any new deed can assign to just
that one traitorous deed of mine any essen
tially novel and reconciling meaning, - - that
new deed will in any case certainly not be mine.
I can do good deeds in future ; but I cannot
266
TIME AND GUILT
revoke my individual past deed. If it ever
comes to appear as anything but what I
myself then and there made it, that change will
be due to no deed of mine. Nothing that I
myself can do will ever really reconcile me to
my own deed, so far as it was that treason.
This, then, as I suppose, is the essential
meaning which underlies the traditional
doctrine of the endless penalty of wilful sin.
This deeper meaning is that, quite apart from
the judgment of any of the gods, and wholly
in accordance with the true rational will of
the one who has done the deed of betrayal,
the guilt of a free act of betrayal is as endur
ing as time. This doctrine so interpreted is,
I insist, not cheerless. It is simply resolute.
It is the word of one who is ready to say to
himself, "Such was^my deed, and I did it."
No repentance, no pardoning power can de
prive us of the duty and, as I repeat, -
the precious privilege of saying that of our
own deed.
267
VI
ATONEMENT
LECTURE VI
ATONEMENT
THE human aspect of the Christian idea
of atonement is based upon such motives
that, if there were no Christianity and no
Christians in the world, the idea of atonement
would have to be invented, before the higher
levels of our moral existence could be fairly
understood. To the illustration of this thesis
the present lecture is to be largely devoted.
The thesis is not new ; yet it seems to me to
have been insufficiently emphasized even in
recent literature ; although, as is well known,
modern expositors of the meaning of the Chris
tian doctrine of atonement have laid a con
stantly increasing stress upon the illustra
tions and analogies of that doctrine which
they have found present in the common experi
ence of mankind, in non-theological litera
ture, and in the history of ethics.
271
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
The treatment of the idea of atonement in
the present lecture, if it in any respect aids
towards an understanding of our problem,
will depend for whatever it accomplishes upon
two deliberate limitations.
The first limitation is the one that I have
just indicated. I shall emphasize, more than
is customary, aspects of the idea of atonement
which one could expound just as readily in a
world where the higher levels of moral experi
ence had somehow been reached by the
leaders of mankind, but where Christians
and Christianity were as yet wholly unknown.
My second limitation will be this : I shall
consider the idea of atonement in the light
of the special problems which the close
of the lecture on "Time and Guilt" left upon
our hands. The result will be a view of the
idea of atonement which will be intentionally
fragmentary, and which will need to be later
reviewed in its connection with the other
great Christian ideas.
272
ATONEMENT
It is true that the history of the Christian
doctrine of the atonement has inseparably
linked, with the topics that I shall here most
emphasize, various religious beliefs, and theo
logical interpretations, with which, under
my chosen limitations and despite these limi
tations, I shall endeavor to keep in touch.
But, in a great part of what I shall have to
say, I shall confine myself to what I may call
"the problem of the traitor," -an ethical
problem which, on the basis laid in the fore
going lecture, I now choose arbitrarily as
my typical instance of the human need for
atonement, and of a sense in which, in purely
human terms, we are able to define what an
atoning act would be, if it took place, and
what it could accomplish, as well as what it
could not accomplish.
Our last lecture familiarized us with the
conception of the being whom I shall now
call, throughout this discussion, "the traitor."
We shall soon learn new reasons why our
present study will gain, in definiteness of issue
and in simplicity, by using the exemplary
T 273
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
moral situation in which our so-called "trai
tor" has placed himself, as our means for
bringing to light what relief, what possible,
although always imperfect, reconciliation of
the traitor with his own moral world, and with
himself, this situation permits.
Perhaps I can help you to anticipate my
further statement of my reasons for dwelling
upon the unlovely situation of the hypothet
ical traitor, if I tell you what association of
ideas first conducted me to the choice of the
exemplary type of moral tragedy which I shall
use as the vehicle whereby we are here to be
carried nearer to our proposed view of the
idea of atonement.
In Bach s Matthew Passion Music, whose
libretto was prepared under the master s
own guidance, there is a great passage wherein,
at the last supper, Christ has just said :
"One of you shall betray me." "And they all
begin to say," so the recitative first tells us,
although at once passing the words over into
the mouths of the chorus, "Is it I ? Is it I ?
Is it I ? " And then there begins (with the use
274
ATONEMENT
of the recurrent chorale), the chorus of "the
Believers" : " Tis I, My sins betray thee, who
died to make me whole." The effect of this, as
well as of other great scenes in the Passion
Music, the dramatic and musical workings
in their unity, as Bach devised them, transport
the listener to a realm where he no longer hears
an old story of the past retold, but, looking
down, as it were, upon the whole stream of
time, sees the betrayal, the divine tragedy,
and the triumph, in one, not indeed time
less, but time-embracing vision. In this vision
all flows and changes and passes from the
sorrows of a whole world to the hope of recon
ciliation. Yet all this fluent and passionate
life is one divine life, and is also the listener s,
or, as we can also say, the spectator s own
life. Judas, the spectator knows as himself,
as his own ruined personality; the sorrow of
Gethsemane, the elemental and perfectly
human passion of the chorus : "Destroy them,
destroy them, the murderous brood," -the
waiting and weeping at the tomb, --these
things belong to the present life of the be-
275
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
liever who witnesses the passion. They are
all the experiences of us men, just as we are.
They are also divine revelations, coming as if
from a world that is somehow inclusive of our
despair, and that yet knows a joy which, as
Bach depicts it in his music drama, is not so
much mystical, as simply classic in the per
fection of its serene self-control.
What the art of Bach suggests, I have
neither the right nor the power to translate
into "matter-moulded forms of speech." I
have here to tell you only a little about the
being whom Mephistopheles calls "der kleine
Gott der Welt," about the one who, as the
demon says :
Bleibt stets von gleichem Schlag,
Und 1st so wunderlich, als wie am ersten Tag.
And I am forced to limit myself in this dis
course to choosing, as my exemplary being
who feels the need of some form of atonement,
- man in his most unlovely and drearily
discouraging aspect, man in his appearance
as a betrayer. The justification of this
repellent choice can appear, if at all, then only
276
ATONEMENT
in the outcome of our argument, and in its
later relation to the whole Christian doctrine
of life. But you may now see what first
suggested my using this choice in this lecture.
So much, however, it is fair to add as I
introduce my case. The "traitor" of my
discourse shall here be the creature of an
ideal definition based upon facts set forth in
the last lecture. I shall soon have to speak
again of the sense in which all observers of
human affairs have a right to say that there
are traitors, and that we well know some of
their works. But we have in general no right
to say with assurance, when we speak of our
individual neighbors, that we know who the
traitors are. For we are no searchers of
hearts. And treason, as I here define it, is
an affair of the heart, that is, of the inner
voluntary deed and decision.
While my ideal definition of the traitor of
whom we are now to speak thus depends, as
you see, upon facts already discussed in our
discourse on Time and Guilt," our new
relation to the being defined as a traitor con-
277
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
sists in the fact that, at the last time, we
considered the nature of his guilt, while now
we mean to approach an understanding of his
relation to the idea of atonement.
II
Two conditions, as you will remember from
our last lecture, determine what constitutes,
for the purposes of my definition, a traitor.
The first condition is that a traitor is a man
who has had an ideal, and who has loved it
with all his heart and his soul and his mind and
his strength. His ideal must have seemed
to him to furnish the cause of his life. It
must have meant to him what Paul meant
by the grace that saves. He must have
embraced it, for the time, with full loyalty.
It must have been his religion, his way of
salvation. It must have been the cause of a
Beloved Community.
The second condition that my ideal traitor
must satisfy is this. Having thus found his
cause, he must, as he now knows, in at least
some one voluntary act of his life, have been
278
ATONEMENT
deliberately false to his cause. So far as in
him lay, he must, at least in that one act,
have betrayed his cause.
Such is our ideal traitor. At the close of the
last lecture we left him condemned, in his
own sight, to what we called the "hell of the
irrevocable."
We now, for the moment, still confine our
selves to his case, and ask : Can the idea
of atonement mean anything that permits its
application, in any sense, however limited,
to the situation of this traitor ? Can there
be any reconciliation, however imperfect,
between this traitor and his own moral world,
- any reconciliation which, from his own
point of view, and for his own consciousness,
can make his situation in his moral world
essentially different from the situation in
which his own deed has so far left him ?
In the hell of the irrevocable there may be,
as at the last time we pointed out, no sensuous
penalties to fear. And there may be, for
all that we know, countless future opportu
nities for the traitor to do good and loyal
279
THE PROBLEM OF ^CHRISTIANITY
deeds. Our problem lies in the fact that
none of these deeds will ever undo the sup
posed deed of treason. In that sense, then,
no good deeds of the traitor s future will
ever so atone for his one act of treason, that
he will become clear of just that treason, and
of what he finds to be its guilt. He had his
moral universe ; and his one act of treason
did the most that he then and there could do
to destroy that world and to wreck his own
relation to its meaning. His irrevocable deed
is, for his moral consciousness, its own end
less penalty. For that deed he can never
forgive himself, so long as he knows himself.
And nothing that we can now say will change
just these aspects of the matter. So much in
the traitor s situation is irrevocably fixed.
But it is still open to us to ask whether
anything could occur in the traitor s moral
world which, without undoing his deed, could
still add some new aspect to this deed, an
aspect such that, when the traitor came to
view his own deed in this light, he could say :
" Something in the nature of a genuinely recon-
280
ATONEMENT
ciling element has been added, not only to
my world and to my own life, but also to the
inmost meaning even of my deed of treason
itself. My moral situation has hereby been
rendered genuinely better than my deed
left it. And this bettering does not consist
merely in the fact that some new deed of my
own, or of some one else, has been simply a
good deed, instead of a bad one, and has thus
put a good thing into my world to be hence
forth considered side by side with the irrev
ocable evil deed. No, this bettering consists
in something more than this, in something
which gives to my very treason itself a new
value ; so that I can say, not : It is undone ;
but I am henceforth in some measure, in
some genuine fashion, morally reconciled to
the fact that I did this evil. "
Plainly, if any such reconciliation is pos
sible, it will be at best but an imperfect and
tragic reconciliation. It cannot be simply
and perfectly destructive of guilt. But the
great tragic poets have long since taught us
that there are indeed tragic reconciliations
281
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
even when there are great woes. These
tragic reconciliations may be infinitely
pathetic; but they may be also infinitely
elevating, and even, in some unearthly and
wondrous way, triumphant.
Our question is : Can such a tragic recon
ciliation occur in the case of the traitor ?
If it can occur, the result would furnish to us
an instance of an atonement. This atone
ment would not mean, and could not mean,
a clearing away of the traitor s guilt as if it
never had been guilt. It would still remain
true that the traitor could never rationally
forgive himself for his deed. But he might in
some measure, and in some genuine sense,
become, not simply, but tragically, sternly,
- yet really, reconciled, not only to himself,
but to his deed of treason, and to its meaning
in his moral world.
Let us consider, then, in what way, and to
what degree, the traitor might find such an
atonement.
282
ATONEMENT
III
The Christian idea of atonement has al
ways involved an affirmative answer to the
question : Is an atonement for even a wilful
deed of betrayal possible ? Is a reconcilia
tion of even the traitor to himself and to his
world a possibility ? The help that our
argument gets from employing the supposed
traitor s view of his own case as the guide of
our search for whatever reconciliation is
still possible for him, shows itself, at the
present point of our inquiry, by simplifying
the issue, and by thus enabling us at once to
dispose, very briefly - - not indeed of the
Christian idea of atonement (for that, as we
shall see, will later reveal itself in a new and
compelling form), but of a great number of
well-known theological theories of the nature
of atonement, so far as they are to help our
traitor to get a view of his own case.
These theological theories stand at a pecul
iar disadvantage when they speak to the now
fully awakened traitor, when he asks what
283
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
measure of reconciliation is still for him
possible. .Our traitor has his own narrow, but
for that very reason, clearly outlined problem
of atonement to consider. We here confine
ourselves to his view.
Calmly reasonable in his hell of the irrevo
cable, he is dealing, not with the "angry
God" of a well-known theological tradition,
but with himself. He asks, not indeed for
escape from the irrevocable, but for what
relative and imperfect tragic reconciliation
with his world and with his past, his moral
order can still furnish to him, by any new
event or deed or report. Shall we offer
him one of the traditional theological com
forts and say: "Some one, namely, a
divine being, Christ himself, has accom
plished a full penal satisfaction for your
deed of treason. Accept that satisfying sac
rifice of Christ, and you shall be reconciled."
The traitor need not pause to repeat any of
the now so well-known theological and ethical
objections to the "penal satisfaction" theories
of atonement. He needs no long dispute to
284
ATONEMENT
clear his head. The cold wintry light of his
own insight into what was formerly his moral
home and into what he has by his own deed
lost, is enough to show him the mercilessly
unchangeable outlines of his moral landscape.
He sees them ; and that is so far enough.
"Penal satisfaction?" " That," he will say,
"may somehow interest the angry God of
one or another theologian. If so, let this
angry God be content, if he chooses. That
does not reconcile me. So far as penalty is
concerned :
*I was my own destroyer and will be my own hereafter.
I asked for reconciliation with my own moral
universe, not for the accidental pacification
of some angry God. The penal satisfac
tion offered by another is simply foreign to
all the interests in the name of which I
inquire."
But hereupon let a grander, -- let a far
more genuinely religious and indeed truly
Christian chord be sounded for the traitor s
consolation. Let the words of Paul be heard:
"There is now no condemnation for them that
285
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the spirit." The simply
human meaning of those immortal words, if
understood quite apart from Paul s own
religious beliefs, is far deeper than is any
merely technical theological theory of atone
ment. And our traitor will well know what
those words of Paul mean. Their deepest
human meaning has long since entered into
his life. Had it not so entered, hp would
be no traitor ; for he would never have known
that there is what, for his own estimate, has
been a Holy Spirit, a cause to which to
devote one s life, a love that is indeed
redeeming, and, when it first comes to us,
compelling, -- the love that raises, as if
from the dead, the man who becomes the
lover, the love that also forces the lover,
with its mysterious power, to die to his old
natural life of barren contentions, and of
distractions, and to live in the spirit. That
love, so the traitor well knows, redeems
the lover from all the helpless natural wretch
edness of the, as yet, unawakened life. It
286
ATONEMENT
frees from "condemnation" all who remain
true to this love.
The traitor knows all this by experience.
And he knows it not in terms of mere theo
logical formulas. He knows it as a genuinely
human experience. He knows it as what
every man knows to whom a transforming
love has revealed the sense of a new life.
All this is familiar to the traitor. In his
own way, he has heard the voice of the Spirit.
He has been converted to newness of life.
And therefore he has known what his own sin
against the Holy Ghost meant. And, there
after, he has deliberately committed that
very sin. Therefore Paul s words are at
once, to his mind, true in their most human as
well as in their most spiritual sense. And
just for that very reason they are to him
now, in his guilt, as comfortless and as
unreconciling as a death knell. For they
tell him of precisely that life which once was
his, and which, so far as his jpne traitorous
deed could lead to such a result; he himself
has deliberately slain.
287
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
If there is to be any, even the most tragic,
reconciliation for the traitor, there must be
other words to be heard besides just these
words of Paul.
IV
Yet there are expositors of the Christian
idea of the atonement who have developed
the various so-called "moral theories" of
the atoning work of Christ. And these men
indeed have still many things to tell our
traitor. One of the most clearly written and,
from a purely literary point of view, one of
the most charming of recent books on the
moral theory of the idea of atonement,
namely, the little book with which Sabatier
ended his life work, very effectively contrasts
with all the "penal satisfaction" theories of
atonement, the doctrine that the work of
Christ consisted in such a loving sacrifice for
human sin and for human sinners that the
contemplation of this work arouses in the
sinful mind a^ depth of saving repentance, as
well as of love, a depth of glowing fervor,
such as simply purifies the sinner s soul.
288
ATONEMENT
For love and repentance and new life, these
constitute reconciliation. These, for Saba-
tier, and for many other representatives of
the "moral theories" of atonement, -- these
are in themselves salvation.
I need not dwell upon such opinions in this
connection. They are nowadays well known
to all who have read any notable portion of
the recent literature of the atonement. They
are present in this recent literature in almost
endless variations. In general these views
are deep, and Christian, and cheering, and
unquestionably moral. And their authors
can and do freely use Paul s words ; and on
occasion supplement Paul s words by a cita
tion of the parables. In the parables there
is no definite doctrine of atonement enun
ciated. But there is a doctrine of salvation
through loving repentance. Cannot our
traitor, in view of the loving sacrifice that
constitutes, according to tradition, Christ s
atoning work, repent and love ? Does that
not reconcile him ? May not the love of
Christ both constrain and console him ?
u 289
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Once more, speaking still from his own
purely human point of view, our traitor
sadly simplifies the labor of considering in
detail these various moral theories of atone
ment. The traitor seeks the possible, the
relative, the inevitably imperfect reconcilia
tion which, for one in his case, is still rationally
definable. He discounts all that you can say
as to the transforming pathos and the com
pelling power of love, and of the sacrifices.
All this he long since knows. And, as I must
repeat, all this constitutes the very essence of
his own tragedy. He knew love before he
became a traitor. He knew the love that has
inspired heroes, martyrs, prophets, and saviours
of mankind. All this he knew. And in his
one traitorous deed he thrust it forth. That
is the very heart of his problem. Repent
ance ? Yes, so far as he now has insight,
he has repentance for his traitorous deed.
He has this repentance, if not as in the form
of passionate remorse, still in the form of an
290
ATONEMENT
irrevocable condemnation of his own deed.
He has this repentance as the very breath of
what is now his moral existence in the hell of
the irrevocable.
As for amendment of life, and good deeds
yet to come, he well knows the meaning
of all these things. He is ready to do what
ever he can. But none of all this doing
of good works, none of this repentance, no
love, and no tears will "lure back" the
"moving finger" to "cancel half a line," or
wash out a word of what is written. Once,
when the great light first came, and the one
who is now the traitor saw what life meant,
his repentance as he then indeed repented
- reconciled him with his own life, and did
so for precisely the reasons which Paul has
explained. But that was his repentance for
the former deeds of his folly, for the misad
ventures and the passions of his helpless natu
ral sinfulness. He then repented, namely, of
what he had done before the light came.
But now his state is quite other. We know
why it is other. And we know, too, why the
291
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
parables no longer can comfort the traitor.
Their words can at most only remind him
of what he himself best knows.
"Thou knewest," says the returning Lord
to the traitor-servant in the parable of the
talents; "thou knewest that I was a hard
master." And as for our traitor, so far
as his one deed of treason could express his
will, it was the deed of one who not merely
hid his talent in a napkin, but betrayed his
Lord as Judas betrayed. Therefore if atone
ment is to mean for the traitor anything that
shall be in any sense reconciling, he must hear
of it in some new form. He is no mere
prodigal son. His problem is that of the sin
against the Holy Ghost.
Let us leave, then; both the "penal satis
faction" theories and the "moral theories"
to address themselves to other men. Our
traitor knows too well the sad lesson of his
own deed to be aided either by the vain tech
nicalities of the more antiquated of these theo
logical types of theories, or by the true, but
to him no longer applicable, comforts which
292
ATONEMENT
the theories of the other the moral type
- open to his view.
Plainly, then, the traitor himself can sug
gest nothing further as to his own reconcilia
tion with the world where, by his deed of
betrayal, he once chose to permit the light
that was in him to become darkness. We
must turn in another direction.
VI
We have so far considered the traitor s
case as if his treason had been merely an
affair of his own inner life, a sort of secret
impious wish. But of course, while we are
indeed supposing the traitor, now enlight
ened by the view of his own deed, - - to be
the judge of what he himself has meant and
done, - - we well know that his false deed was,
in his own opinion, no mere thought of un-
holiness. He had a cause. That is, he
lived in a real world. And he was false to
his cause. He betrayed. Now betrayal is
something objective. It breaks ties. It rends
asunder what love has joined in dear unity.
293
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
What human ties the traitor broke, we leave
to him to discover for himself. Why they
were to his mind holy, we also need not now
inquire. Enough, since he was indeed
loyal, he had found his ties; they were
precious and human and real ; and he believed
them holy ; and he broke them. That is,
so far as in him lay, he destroyed by his
deed the community in whose brotherhood,
in whose life, in whose spirit, he had found
his guide and his ideal. His deed, then, con
cerns not himself only, but that community
whereof he was a voluntary member. The
community knows, or in the long run must
learn, that the deed of treason has been done,
even if, being itself no searcher of hearts, it
cannot identify the individual traitor. We
often know not who the traitors are. But if
ours is the community that is wrecked, we
may well know by experience that there has
been treason.
The problem of reconciliation, then, -
if reconciliation there is to be, concerns
not only the traitor, but the wounded or
294
ATONEMENT
shattered community. Endlessly varied are
the problems the tragedies, the lost causes,
the heartbreaks, the chaos, which the deeds
of traitors produce. All this we merely hint
in passing. But all this constitutes the heart
of the sorrow of the higher regions of our
human world. And we here refer such count
less, commonplace, but crushing tragedies to
these ruins which are the daily harvest-home
of treason, merely in order to ask the ques
tion : Can a genuinely spiritual community,
whose ideals are such as Paul loved to portray
when he wrote to his churches, can such
a loving and beloved community in any degree
reconcile itself to the existence of traitors
in its world, and to the deeds of individual
traitors ? Can it in any wise find in its world
something else, over and above the treason,
- something which atones for the spiritual
disasters that the very being of treason both
constitutes and entails ? Must not the exist
ence of traitors remain, for the offended
community, an evil that is as intolerable and
irrevocable and as much beyond its powers of
295
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
reconciliation as is, for the traitor himself,
his own past deed, seen in all the light of its
treachery ? Can any soul of good arise or
be created out of this evil thing, or as an atone
ment therefor ?
You see, I hope, that I am in no wise asking
whether the community which the traitor has
assailed, desires, or does well either to inflict
or to remit any penalties said to be due to
the traitor for his deed. I am here speaking
wholly of the possibility of inner and human
reconciliations. The only penalty which, in
the hell of the irrevocable, the traitor himself
inevitably finds, is the fact: "I did it."
The one irrevocable fact with which the com
munity can henceforth seek to be reconciled,
if reconciliation is possible, is the fact : "This
evil was done." That is, "These invaluable
ties were broken." This unity of brotherhood
was shattered. The life of the community, -
as it was before the blow of treason fell, -
can never be restored to its former purity of
unscarred love. This is the fact. For this
let the community now seek, not oblivion,
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ATONEMENT
for that is a mere losing of the truth ; not
annulment, for that is impossible; but some
measure of reconciliation.
For the community, as I am now viewing
its ideal but still distinctly human life, the
question is not one of what we usually call
"forgiveness." If "forgiveness " means simply
an affectionate remission of penalty, that is
something which, for a given community,
may be not only humanly possible, but ob
viously both wise and desirable. Penalty is
no remedy for the irrevocable. Forgiveness
is often both reasonable and convenient. Nor
need the question be raised as to whether
the community could ever trust the traitor
with the old hearty human, although always
fallible, confidence. What the community
can know is not the traitor s heart, but
the fact manifest through the shattered
ties and the broken spiritual life, - - the fact
that a deed of treason has been done. That
the deed was the voluntary work of just
this traitor, the community can learn only as
a matter of probable opinion, or perhaps
297
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
through the traitor s confession. But, just
as the community cannot now search the
traitor s heart, or know whether he will
hereafter repeat his treason in some new form,
-T- just so, too, it never has been able, before
the deed of treason was committed, to search
the hearts of any of its free and loyal members,
and to know whether, in fact, its trust was
wholly well founded when it believed, or
hoped, that just this treason would never be
committed by any one of the members whom
it fondly trusted.
All the highest forms of the unity of the
spirit, in our human world, constantly depend,
for their very existence, upon the renewed
free choices, the sustained loyalty, of the
members of communities. Hence the very
best that we know, namely, the loyal brother
hood of the faithful who choose to keep their
faith, this best of all human goods, I say,
- is simply inseparable from countless possi
bilities of the worst of human tragedies, -- the
tragedy of broken faith. At such cost must
the loftiest of our human possessions in the
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ATONEMENT
realm of the spirit be purchased, at the
cost, namely, of knowing that some deed of
wilful treason on the part of some one whom
we trusted as brother or as beloved may rob
us of this possession. And the fact that we
are thus helplessly dependent on human
fidelity for some of our highest goods, and
so may be betrayed, this fact is due not to
the natural perversity of men, nor to the mere
weakness of those who love and trust. This
fact is due to something which, without any
metaphysical theory, we ordinarily call man s
freedom of choice. We do not want our
beloved community to consist of puppets, or
of merely fascinated victims of a mechanically
insistent love. We want the free loyalty of
those who, whatever fascination first won them
to their cause, remain faithful because they
choose to remain faithful. Of such is the king
dom of good faith. The beloved community
demands for itself such freely and deliberately
steadfast members. And for that very reason,
in a world where there is such free and good
faith, there can be treason. Hence the
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
realm where the spirit reaches the highest
human levels is the region where the worst
calamities can, and in the long run do, assail
many who depend upon the good faith of
their brethren.
The community, therefore, never had any
grounds, before the treason, for an absolute
assurance about the future traitor s perse
verance in the faith. After his treason, if
indeed he repents and now begins once more
to act loyally, it may acquire a relative
assurance that he will henceforth abide faith
ful. The worst evil is not, then, that a trust
in the traitor, which once was rightly serene
and perfectly confident, is now irrevocably
lost. It is not this which constitutes the
irreconcilable aspect of the traitor s deed.
All men are frail. And especially must those
who are freely loyal possess a certain freedom
to become faithless if they choose. This
evil is a condition of the highest good that
the human world contains. And so much the
community, in presence of the traitor, ought
to recognize as something that was always
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ATONEMENT
possible. It also ought to know that a cer
tain always fallible trust in the traitor can
indeed be restored by his future good deeds,
if such are done by him with every sign that
he intends henceforth to be faithful.
But what is indeed irrevocably lost to the
community through the traitor s deed is
precisely what I just called "unscarred love."
The traitor remains for the community as
well as for himself - - the traitor, just so
far as his deed is confessed, and just so far
as his once unsullied fidelity has been stained.
This indeed is irrevocable. It is perfectly
human. But it is unutterably comfortless to
the shattered community.
It is useless, then, to say that the problem
of reconciliation, so far as the community is
concerned, is the problem of "forgiveness,"
not now as remission of penalty, but of for
giveness, in so far as forgiveness means a
restoring of the love of the community, or
of its members, towards the one who has
now sinned, but repented. Love may be
restored. If the traitor s future attitude
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
makes that possible, human love ought to
be restored to the now both repentant and
well-serving doer of the past evil deed. But
alas ! this restored love will be the love for
the member who has been a traitor ; and the
tragedy of the treason will permanently form
part in and of this love. Thus, then, up to
this point, there appears for the community
as well as for the traitor, no ground for
even the imperfect reconciliation of which
we have been in search. Is there, then, any
other way, still untried, in which the com
munity may hope, if not to find, then to
create something which, in its own strictly
limited fashion, will reconcile the community
to the traitor and to the irrevocable, and
irrevocably evil, deed.
VII
Such a way exists. The community can
not undo the traitor s deed, and cannot simply
annul the now irrevocable fact of the evil
which has been accomplished. Penalty, even
if called for, annuls nothing of all that has
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ATONEMENT
been done. Repentance does not turn back
wards the flow of time. Restored and always
fallible human confidence in the traitor s
good intentions regarding his future deeds,
is not true reconciliation. Forgiveness does
not wash out a word of the record that the
moving finger of treason has written. The
love of the forgiving community, or of its
members, for the repentant and now well
doing traitor, is indeed a great good ; but it is
a love that has forever lost one of its most
cherished possessions, the possession of a
loyal member who, in the old times before
the treason, not only loved, but, so far, had
steadfastly kept his faith. By all these means,
then, no atonement is rendered to the com
munity. Neither hatred nor penalty need
be, from the side of the community, in any
wise in question. But the fact remains :
The community has lost its treasure ; its
once faithful member who, until his deed of
treason came, had been wholly its own
member. And it has lost the ties and the
union which he destroyed by his deed. And,
303
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
for all this loss, it lovingly mourns with a
sorrow for which, thus far, we see no recon
ciliation. Who shall give to it its own again ?
The community, then, can indeed find
no reconciliation. But can it create one ?
At the worst, it is the traitor, and it is not
the community, that has done this deed.
New deeds remain to be done. The com
munity is free to do them, or to be incarnate
in some faithful servant who will do them.
Could any possible new deed, done by, or on
behalf of, the community, and done by some
one who is not stained by the traitor s deed,
introduce into this human world an element
which, as far as it went, would be, in whatever
measure, genuinely reconciling ?
VIII
We stand at the very heart and centre of
the human problem of atonement. We have
just now nothing to do with theological opin
ion on this topic. I insist that our problem
is as familiar and empirical as is death or
grief. That problem of atonement daily arises
304
ATONEMENT
not as between God and man (for we here are
simply ignoring, for the time being, the meta
physical issues that lie behind our problem).
That problem is daily faced by all those faith
ful lovers of wounded and shattered com
munities who, going down into the depths of
human sorrow, either as sufferers or as friends
who would fain console, or who, standing
by hearths whose fires burn no more, or
loving their country through all the sorrows
which traitors have inflicted upon her, or
who, not weakly, but bravely grieving over the
woe of the whole human world, are still
steadily determined that no principality and
no power, that no height and no depth,
shall be able to separate man from his true
love, which is the triumph of the spirit.
That human problem of atonement is, I say
daily faced, and faced by the noblest of
mankind. And for these our noblest, despite
all our human weakness, that problem is,
in principle and in ideal, daily solved. Let us
turn to such leaders of the human search
after greatness, as our spiritual guides.
x 305
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Great calamities are, for all but the traitor
himself, so far as we have yet considered
his case, great opportunities. Lost causes
have furnished, times without number, the
foundations and the motives of humanity s
most triumphant loyalty.
When treason has done its last and most
cruel work, and lies with what it has de
stroyed, dead in the tomb of the irrevocable
past, - - there is now the opportunity for a
triumph of which I can only speak weakly
and in imperfectly abstract formulas. But,
as I can at once say, this of which I now speak
is a human triumph. It forms part of the
history of man s earthly warfare with his
worst foes. Moreover, whenever it occurs
at all, this is a triumph, not merely of stoical
endurance, nor yet of kindly forgiveness, nor
of the mystical mood which, seeing all things
in God, feels them all to be good. It is a
triumph of the creative will. And what
form does it take amongst the best of men,
who are here to be our guides ?
I answer, this triumph over treason can
306
ATONEMENT
only be accomplished by the community, or
on behalf of the community, through some
steadfastly loyal servant who acts, so to speak,
as the incarnation of the very spirit of the
community itself. This faithful and suffering
servant of the community may answer and
confound treason by a work whose type I
shall next venture to describe, in my own
way, thus : First, this creative work shall
include a deed, or various deeds, for which
only just this treason furnishes the oppor
tunity. Not treason in general, but just this
individual treason shall give the occasion,
and supply the condition of the creative deed
which I am in ideal describing. Without
just that treason, this new deed (so I am
supposing) could not have been done at all.
And hereupon the new deed, as I suppose, is
so ingeniously devised, so concretely practical
in the good which it accomplishes, that, when
you look down upon the human world after
the new creative deed has been done in it,
you say, first, "This deed was made possible
by that treason; and, secondly, The world,
307
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
as transformed by this creative deed, is better
than it would have been had all else remained
the same, but had that deed of treason not been
done at all." That is, the new creative deed
has made the new world better than it was
before the blow of treason fell.
Now such a deed of the creative love and
of the devoted ingenuity of the suffering
servant, on behalf of his community, breaks
open, as it were, the tomb of the dead and
treacherous past, and comes forth as the life
and the expression of the creative and recon
ciling will. It is this creative will whose
ingenuity and whose skill have executed the
deed that makes the human world better
than it was before the treason.
To devise and to carry out some new deed
which makes the human world better than it
would have been had just that treasonable
deed not been done; --is that not, in its
own limited way and sense, a reconciling form,
both of invention and of conduct ? Let us
forget, for the moment, the traitor. Let us
now think only of the community. We know
308
ATONEMENT
why and in what sense it cannot be recon
ciled to the traitor or to his deed. But have
we not found, without any inconsistency, a
new fact which furnishes a genuinely recon
ciling element ? It indeed furnishes no per
fect reconciliation with the irrevocable ; but
it transforms the meaning of that very past
which it cannot undo. It cannot restore the
unscarred love. It does supply a new triumph
of the spirit, a triumph which is not so
much a mere compensation for what has been
lost, as a transfiguration of the very loss into
a gain that, without this very loss, could
never have been won. The traitor cannot
thus transform the meaning of his own past.
But the suffering servant can thus transfigure
this meaning; can bring out of the realm of
death a new life that only this very death
rendered possible.
The triumph of the spirit of the community
over the treason which was its enemy, the
rewinning of the value of the traitor s own
life, when the new deed is done, involves the
old tragedy, but takes up that tragedy into
309
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
a life that is now more a life of triumph than
it would have been if the deed of treason had
never been done.
Therefore, if indeed you suppose or observe
that, in our human world, such creative deeds
occur, you see that they indeed do not remove,
they do not annul, either treason or its
tragedy. But they do show us a genuinely
reconciling, a genuinely atoning, fact in the
world and in the community of the traitor.
Those who do such deeds solve, I have just
said, not the impossible problem of undoing
the past, but the genuine problem of finding,
even in the worst of tragedies, the means of
an otherwise impossible triumph. They meet
the deepest and bitterest of estrangements
by showing a way of reconciliation, and a
way that only this very estrangement has
made possible. 1
view with regard to Atonement stated in the text was
reached by me quite independently of any knowledge on my part
of the remarkable book of Mr. Charles Allen Dinsmore : " Atonement
in Literature and Life" (Boston, 1906). I am glad to find myself in
close agreement with some of the essential features of Mr. Dinsmore s
position. He has especially called my attention to Milton s illustra
tion of this view of Adam s case.
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ATONEMENT
IX
This is the human aspect of the idea of
atonement. Do we need to solve our theo
logical problems before we decide whether
such an idea has meaning, and is ethically
defensible ? I must insist that this idea
comes to us, not from the scholastic quiet of
theological speculation, but stained with the
blood of the battle-fields of real life. For
myself, I can say that no theological theory
suggested to me this interpretation of the
essential nature of an atoning deed. I can
not call the interpretation new, simply because
I myself have learned it from observing the
meaning of the lives of some suffering ser
vants, -- plain human beings, who never
cared for theology, but who incarnated in
their own fashion enough of the spirit of their
community to conceive and to accomplish
such new and creative deeds as I have just
attempted to characterize. To try to de
scribe to you, at all adequately, the life or
311
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
the work of any such persons, I have neither
the right nor the power. Here is no place
for such a collection and analysis of the human
form of the atoning life as only a William
James could have justly accomplished. And
upon personal histories I could dwell, in this
place, only at the risk of intruding upon lives
which I have been privileged sometimes to
see afar off, and briefly, but which I have no
right to report as mere illustrations of a
philosophical argument. It is enough, I think,
for me barely to indicate what I have in mind
when I say that such things are done amongst
men.
All of us well know of great public bene
factors whose lives and good works have been
rendered possible through the fact that some
great personal sorrow, some crushing blow of
private grief first descended, and seemed to
wreck their lives. Such heroic souls have
then been able, in. these well-known types of
cases, not only to bear their own grief, and
to rise from the depths of it (as we all in our
time have to attempt to do). They have been
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ATONEMENT
able also to use their grief as the very source
of the new arts and inventions and labors
whereby they have become such valuable
servants of their communities. Such people
indeed often remind us of the suffering servant
in Isaiah ; for their life work shows that they
are willing to be wounded for the sake of
their community. Indirectly, too, they often
seem to be suffering because of the faults as
well as because of the griefs of their neighbors,
or of mankind. And it indeed often occurs
to us to speak of these public or private
benefactors as living some sort of atoning
life, as bearing, in a sense, not only the sor
rows, but the sins of other men.
Yet it is not of such lives, noble as they
are, that I am now thinking nor of such
vicarious suffering, of such sympathizing
helpfulness in human woe, of such rising
from private grief to public service, -- that
I am now speaking, when I say that atoning
deeds, in the more precise sense just described,
are indeed done in our human world. Sharply
contrasted with these beneficent lives and
313
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
deeds, which I have just mentioned, are the
other lives of which I am thinking, and to
which, in speaking of atonement, I have been
referring. These are the lives of which I
have so little right to give more than a bare
hint in this place.
One s private grief may be the result of the
deed of a traitor. That again is something,
which often seems to happen in our human
world. One may rally from the despair due
to even such a blow, and may later become a
public benefactor. We all know, I suppose,
people who have done that, and whose lives
are the nobler and more serviceable because
they have conquered such a grief, and have
learned great lessons through such a conquest.
Yet even such lives do not show exactly the
reconciling and atoning power that I now most
have in mind. Let me next state a mere
supposition.
Suppose a community, a modern com
munity, to be engaged with the ideals
and methods of modern reform, in its contests
with some of those ills which the natural
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ATONEMENT
viciousness, the evil training, and the treason
able choices of very many people combine to
make peculiarly atrocious in the eyes of all
who love mankind. Such evils need to be met,
in the good warfare, not only by indignant
reformers, not only by ardent enthusiasts,
but also by calmly considerate and enlightened
people, who distinguish clearly between fervor
and wisdom, who know what depths of woe
and of wrong are to be sounded, but who also
know that only self-controlled thoughtful-
ness and well-disciplined self-restraint can
devise the best means of help. As we also
well know, we look, in our day, to highly
trained professional skill for aid in such work.
We do not hope that those who are merely
well-meaning and loving can do what most
needs to be done. We desire those who know.
Let us suppose, then, such a modern com
munity as especially needing, for a very
special purpose, one who does know.
Hereupon let us suppose that one individual
exists whose life has been wounded to the
core by some of treason s worst blows. Let
315
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
us suppose one who, always manifesting true
loyalty and steadfastly keeping strict integ
rity, has known, not merely what the ordinary
professional experts learn, but also what it is
to be despised and rejected of men, and to
be brought to the very depths of lonely deso
lation, and to have suffered thus through a
treason which also deeply affected, not one
individual only, but a whole community.
Let such a soul, humiliated, offended, broken,
so to speak, through the very effort to serve a
community, forsaken, long daily fed only by
grief, yet still armed with the grace of loyalty
and of honor, and with the heroism of dumb
suffering, - - let such a soul not only arise,
as so many great sufferers have done, from the
depths of woe, - - let such a soul not only
triumph, as so many have done, over the
grief that treason caused ; but let such
a soul also use the very lore which just this
treason had taught, in order to begin a new
life work. Let this life work be full of a
shrewd, practical, serviceable, ingenious wis
dom which only that one individual experi-
316
ATONEMENT
ence of a great treason could have taught.
Let this new life work be made possible only
because of that treason. Let it bring to the
community, in the contest with great public
evils, methods and skill and judgment and
forethought which only that so dear-bought
wisdom could have invented. Let these
methods have, in fact, a skill that the traitor s
own wit has taught, and that is now used for
the good work. Let that life show, not only
what treason can do to wreck, but what the
free spirit can learn from and through the
very might of treason s worst skill.
If you will conceive of such a life merely as
a possibility, you may know why I assert that
genuinely atoning deeds occur, and what I
believe such deeds to be. For myself, any
one who should supply the facts to bear out
my supposition ( and such people, as I assert,
there are in our human world) would appear
henceforth to me to be a sort of symbolic
personality, one who had descended into
hell to set free the spirits who are in prison.
When I hear those words, "descended into
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
hell," repeated in the creed, I think of such
human beings, and feel that I know at least
some in our human world to whom the creed
in these words refers.
X
Hereupon, you may very justly say that
the mere effects of the atoning deeds of a
human individual are in this world appar
ently petty and transient; and that even
the most atoning of sacrificial human lives
can devise nothing which, within the range
of our vision, does make the world of the
community better, in any of its most tragic
aspects, than it would be if no treason had
been committed.
If you say this, you merely give me the
opportunity to express the human aspect of
the idea of the atonement in a form very near
to the form which, as I believe, the Christian
idea of atonement has always possessed when
the interests of the religious consciousness
(or, if I may use the now favorite word, the
subconsciousness) of the Church, rather than
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ATONEMENT
the theological formulations of the theory of
atonement, have been in question. Christian
feeling, Christian art, Christian worship, have
been full of the sense that somehow (and how
has remained indeed a mystery) there was
something so precious about the work of
Christ, something so divinely wise (so skil
ful and divinely beautiful ?) about the plan
of salvation, -- that, as a result of all this,
after Christ s work was done, the world as
a whole was a nobler and richer and worthier
creation than it would have been if Adam had
not sinned.
This, I insist, has always been felt to be
the sense of the atoning work which the faith
has attributed to Christ. A glance at a
great Madonna, a chord of truly Christian
music, ancient or modern, tells you that this
is so. And this sense of the atoning work
cannot be reduced to what the modern
"moral" theories of the Christian atonement
most emphasize.
For what the Christian regards as the aton
ing work of Christ is, from this point of view,
319
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
not something about Christ s work which
merely arouses in sinful man love and repent
ance.
No, the theory of atonement which I
now suggest, and which, as I insist, is sub
consciously present in the religious senti
ment, ritual, and worship of all Christendom,
is a perfectly "objective" theory, quite
as "objective" as any "penal satisfaction"
theory could be. Christian religious feeling
has always expressed itself in the idea that
what atones is something perfectly "objec
tive," namely, Christ s work. And this aton
ing work of Christ was for Christian feeling
a deed that was made possible only through
man s sin, but that somehow was so wise and
so rich and so beautiful and divinely fair that,
after this work was done, the world was a
better world than it would have been had
man never sinned.
So the Christian consciousness, I insist,
has always felt. So its poets have often,
in one way or another, expressed the matter.
The theologians have disguised this simple
320
ATONEMENT
idea under countless forms. But every
characteristically Christian act of worship
expresses it afresh. Treason did its work (so
the legend runs) when man fell. But Christ s
work was so perfect that, in a perfectly ob
jective way, it took the opportunity which
man s fall furnished to make the world better
than it could have been had man not fallen.
But this is indeed, as an idea concerning
God and the universe and the work of Christ,
an idea which is as human in its spirit, and
as deep in its relation to truth, as it is, in
view of the complexity of the values which
are in question, hard either to articulate or to
defend. How should we know, unless some
revelation helped us to know, whether and
in what way Christ s supposed work made
the world better than it would have been had
man not sinned ?
But in this discussion I am speaking of the
purely human aspect of the idea of atone
ment. That aspect is now capable of a state
ment which does not pretend to deal with
any but our human world, and which fully
Y 321
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
admits the pettiness of every human individual
effort to produce such a really atoning deed
as we have described.
The human community, depending, as it
does, upon its loyal human lovers, and wounded
to the heart by its traitors, and finding, the
farther it advances in moral worth, the
greater need of the loyal, and the greater
depth of the tragedy of treason, utters its
own doctrine of atonement as this postulate,
the central postulate of its highest spirit
uality. This postulate I word thus : No
baseness or cruelty of treason so deep or so
tragic shall enter our human world, but that
loyal love shall be able in due time to oppose
to just that deed of treason its fitting deed
of atonement. The deed of atonement shall
be so wise and so rich in its efficacy, that the
spiritual world, after the atoning deed, shall
be better, richer, more triumphant amidst
all its irrevocable tragedies, than it was
before that traitor s deed was done.
This is the postulate of the highest form of
human spirituality. It cannot be proved by
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ATONEMENT
the study of mankind as they are. It can be
asserted by the creative will of the loyal.
Christianity expressed this postulate in the
symbolic form of a report concerning the
supernatural work of Christ. Humanity must
express it through the devotion, the genius,
the skill, the labor of the individual loyal
servants in whom its spirit becomes incarnate.
As a Christian idea, the atonement is
expressed in a symbol, whose divine inter
pretation is merely felt, and is viewed as a
mystery. As a human idea, atonement is
expressed (so far as it can at any one time
be expressed) by a peculiarly noble and
practically efficacious type of human deeds.
This human idea of atonement is also expressed
in a postulate which lies at the basis of all
the best and most practical spirituality.
The Christian symbol and the practical
postulate are two sides of the same life,
at once human and divine.
323
VII
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
LECTURE VII
I
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
THROUGHOUT these lectures, both the
contrast and the close connection be
tween ethical and religious ideas have been
illustrated. Ethical ideas define the nature
of righteous conduct. Religious ideas have
to do with bringing us into union with some
supremely valuable form or level of life.
Morality gives us counsel as to our duty.
Religion, pointing out to us the natural
poverty and failure which beset our ordinary
existence, undertakes to show us some way
of salvation. Ethical teachings direct us to
a better mode of living. Religion undertakes
to lead us to a home-land where we may wit
ness, and, if we are successful, may share some
supreme fulfilment of the purpose for which
we live. In the Sermon on the Mount, the
counsel, " Judge not that ye be not judged,"
is ethical ; the beatitudes are religious.
When Paul rebukes the Corinthians for their
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
disputes, his teaching is, in so far, ethical.
When he writes the great chapter on Charity,
his doctrine is religious.
Now what I here mean by a "doctrine of
life" comprises both ethical and religious
elements. It brings these elements into unity,
and, if it is a sound doctrine, it gives us both
a connected survey of some notable portion
of our duty, and an insight into the nature
and source of the supreme values of our
existence.
A religious doctrine very generally includes
some assertions about the real world such
that they can be elaborately tested only in
case one is willing to undertake a metaphysical
inquiry. But, as we have repeatedly seen
in these lectures, both ethical and religious
doctrines also deal with many matters which
we can test, sufficiently for some of our most
serious purposes, without raising issues which
are technically and formally metaphysical.
And that is why we have so far postponed any
metaphysical study of the foundations which
the various essential ideas of Christianity
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
possess in the nature of the real universe.
Both the ethical significance and the religious
spirit which these ideas assure, we could in
large measure estimate merely by taking ac
count of the acknowledged facts of human
nature.
A doctrine of life that is, a coherent
and comprehensive teaching concerning both
the moral conduct of life, and the realm where
in the highest good is to be hoped for, sought,
and, haply, won - - will therefore, like the
various ethical and religious ideas which in
form such a general survey and estimate of
human life, arousb many metaphysical ques
tions. But, in large part, it can be both
stated and estimated without answering these
metaphysical questions in a technical way.
The present lecture is to be devoted to
bringing together the essential Christian ideas
which we have considered in the foregoing
discussions, and to stating, as the result of
a synthesis of these ideas, some aspects of
the Christian doctrine of life.
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
This lecture will presuppose, and will not
attempt to repeat, many of the most familiar
of the moral precepts which characterize the
Christian view of conduct. What I have time
to dwell upon ought so to be selected that
essential and weighty matters come to our
notice. But if any one finds that my sketch
omits much that is also of importance for
the Christian definition of our duty, let him
know from the start that I aim at certain
larger connections, and endeavor to set down
here genuinely Christian teachings about
duty, but that I do not hope to be exhaustive
in any part of my report.
Such moral teachings of Christianity as I
can restate will be intimately connected with
Christian views about life which are also re
ligiously important. I shall make no effort
to keep asunder, in my sketch, the ethical
teachings and the religious interests of Chris
tianity. In our study of the ethical value
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
of the separate ideas, I have unhesitatingly
passed from the strictly ethical to the ob
viously religious aspect of these ideas, when
ever it was convenient to do so, always post
poning, for reasons which I have repeatedly
explained, the technically metaphysical prob
lems which both the ethical and the religious
sides of the questions at issue have involved.
You can, for convenience, sunder your
treatment, both of ethical and of religious
problems, from your technical metaphysics.
But ethics and religion, in a case such as that
of Christianity, can indeed be contrasted ;
but cannot profitably be kept apart in your
exposition. This, I suppose, has been mani
fest at each stage of our foregoing discussion
of the different Christian ideas. It will be
more than ever manifest in the present por
trayal of the connected whole to which they
belong.
II
What is essential to the Christian doctrine
of life can be brought to mind, at this point,
more readily than in any other way known to
331
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
me, by a very brief contrast between some
features of the Christian religion, and the
corresponding features of the greatest his
torical rival of Christianity, namely, Buddh
ism. Of the latter religion I know, like
most philosophical students of my type of
training, only very superficially, and mainly
at second hand. What I mention regarding
that matter has therefore merely the value of
emphasizing the contrast to which I am to
direct attention, and of thus illustrating the
position of Christianity.
Let me begin my sketch by pointing out
some features wherein these two great reli
gions agree.
Both Christianity and Buddhism are prod
ucts of long and vast processes of religious
evolution. Both of them originally appealed
to mature and complex civilizations. Yet
both of them intended that their appeal
should, in the end, be made to all mankind.
Both of them deliberately transcended the
limits of caste, of rank, of nation, and of race,
and undertook to carry their message to all
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
sorts and conditions of men. Both showed,
as missionary religions, an immense power of
assimilation. Both freely used, so far as they
could do so without sacrificing essentials, the
religious ideas which they found present in
the various lands that their missionaries
reached ; and, like Paul, both of them became
all things to all men, if haply they might
thereby win any man to the faith that they
thought to be saving.
Both were redemptive religions, which con
demned both the mind and the sins of the
natural man ; and taught salvation through
a transformation of the innermost being of this
natural man. Each developed a great variety
of sects and of forms of social life. Each
made use of religious orders as a means of
separating those who, while desirous of salva
tion, were able, in their present existence, to
live only in a close contact with the world,
from those who could aim directly at the high
est grades of perfection.
Each of these two religions attempts, by a
frank exposure of the centrally important
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
facts of our life, to banish the illusions which
bind us fast to earth, and, as they both main
tain, to destruction. Each is therefore, in its
own way, austere and unsparing in the speech
which it addresses to the natural man. Each
shuns mere popularity, and is transparently
honest in its estimate of the vanities of the
world. Each aims at the heart of our defects.
Each says : " What makes your life a wreck
and a failure, is that your very essence as a
human self is, in advance of the saving process,
a necessary source of woe and wrong. Each
of the two religions insists upon the inmost
life of the heart as the source whence proceeds
all that is evil, and whence may proceed all
that can become good about man. Each
rejects the merely outward show of our deeds
as a means for determining whether we are
righteous or not. Each demands absolute
personal sincerity from its followers. Each
blesses the pure in heart, requires strict self-
control, and makes an inner concentration of
mind upon the good end an essential feature
of piety. Each preaches kindliness toward
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
all mankind, including our enemies. Each
condemns cruelty and malice. Each, in fact,
permits no human enmities. Each is a re
ligion that exalts those who, in the world s
eyes, are weak.
And not only in these more distinctly ethi
cal ideas do the two religions agree. Each of
them has its own world of spiritual exalta
tion ; its realm that is not only moral, but
deeply religious ; its home-land of deliverance,
where the soul that is saved finds rest in
communion with a peace that the world can
neither give nor take away.
In these very important respects, therefore,
the distinctly religious features of the two
faiths are intimately related. In case of each
of the two religions, but in the case of Buddh
ism rather more than in the case of Christi
anity, it is possible, and in fact just and requi
site, to distinguish its ideas of the nature and
the means and the realm of salvation from
the metaphysical opinions which a more or
less learned exposition of the doctrines of the
faith almost inevitably uses.
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Buddhism has its ideas of the moral
order of the universe, of Nirvana, and of the
Buddhas, - - the beings who attain supreme
enlightenment, and who thereby save the
world. These ideas invite metaphysical spec
ulation, and furnish motives that tended
towards the building up of a theology, and
that, in the end, produced a theology. But
each of these religious ideas, in the case of
Buddhism, can be denned without defining
either a metaphysical or a theological system.
The original teaching of Gotama Buddha re
jected all metaphysical speculation, and in
sisted solely upon the ethical foundations of
the doctrine, and upon those distinctly reli
gious, but non-metaphysical, views of salva
tion, and of the higher spiritual life, which
Buddha preferred to depict in parables,
rather than to render needlessly abstruse
through discussions such as, in his opinion,
did not tend to edification.
The common ethical and religious features
of Christianity and Buddhism are thus both
many and impressive. Some of the greatest
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
life questions are faced by both religions, and,
in the respects which I have now pointed out,
are answered in substantially the same way.
Moreover, in several of the ethical and reli
gious ideas in which these two religions agree
with each other, they do not closely agree with
any other religion. So far as I can venture
to judge, no other religions that have at
tempted to appeal to the deepest and most uni
versal interests of mankind have been so free
as both Buddhism and Christianity are from
bondage to national, to racial, and to worldly
antagonisms and prejudices. No others have
made so central, as they both have done, the
conception of a personal saviour of mankind,
whose dignity depends both upon the moral
merits of his teaching and of his life, and
upon the religious significance of the spiritual
level to which he led the way, thus moulding
both the thoughts and the lives of his fol
lowers.
When we add to all these parallels the fact
that each of these religions had an historical
founder, whose life later came to be the object
z 337
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
of many legendary reports ; and that the
legends, in each case, were so framed by the
religious imagination of the early followers of
the faith in question that they include a
symbolism, whereby a portion of the true
meaning of each faith is expressed in the
stories about the founder, - - when, I say, we
add this fact to all the others, we get some hint
of the very genuine community of spirit which
belongs to these two great world religions.
That the imaginative Buddha-legends show
an unrestrained and often helpless disposition
to adorn the religion with an edifying body
of miraculous tales, while the relative self-
restraint of the early Christian Church in
holding in check, as much as it did, its vig
orous myth-making tendencies, remains, in
many respects, a permanent marvel, all
this constitutes a very notable contrast
between the two faiths. But this is, in part,
a contrast between the two civilizations (so
remote, in many ways, from each other)
whose development lay at the basis of the
two religions. Buddhism was more sur-
338
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
rounded by an atmosphere of magic than the
Christian Church ever was. Yet in those
essentials which I have just reported, the
agreements and analogies between the two
faiths are both close and momentous. So far
the two seem to be genuine co-workers in the
same vast task of the ages, -- the salvation of
man, through the transformation of a natural
life into a life whose dwelling-place lies be
yond human woe and sin.
Ill
Wherein, then, lies the most essential con
trast between the Christian and the Buddh
istic doctrines of life ? This contrast, when
it once comes to light, is, to my mind, far
more impressive than are the agreements.
It has often been discussed. What I say
about it is the word of one who cannot decide
problems of the comparative history of reli
gion. But I must venture my own statement
at this point, despite my comparative igno
rance of Buddhism ; because the contrast in
question seems to me so illuminating for one
339
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
who wishes clearly to grasp the essence of
Christianity.
The most familiar way of stating this con
trast is to say that Buddhism is pessimistic,
while Christianity is a religion of hope. This
is, in part, true ; but it is not very enlighten
ing, unless the spirit of Christian hopefulness
is more fully explained, and unless the Buddh
istic pessimism is quite justly appreciated.
Both religions hope for salvation ; and, for
each of them, salvation means an overcoming
of the world. Each deplores humanity as it is,
and means to transform us. The contrast is,
therefore, hardly to be defined as a contrast
of hope with despair. For each undertakes
to overcome the world, and assures us that we
can be transformed. And each regards our
natural state as one worthy of despair, were
not the way of salvation opened.
Nearer to the whole truth seems to be that
frequently repeated statement of the matter
which insists upon the creative attitude which
Christianity requires the will to take, as against
the quietism of Buddha. Buddhism, as we
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
mentioned in a former lecture, has as its goal
a certain passionless contemplation, in which
the distinction of one individual from another
is of no import, so that the self, as this self,
vanishes. Christianity conceives love as posi
tively active, and dwells upon a hope of im
mortality.
Nevertheless, the concept of beatitude, as
the Christian thought of the Middle Ages
formulated that concept, sets the contem
plative life nearer the goal than the active
life, even when the active life is one of charity.
Hence, in their more mystical moods and
expressions, the two religions are, once more,
much more largely in agreement than our own
very natural partisanship, determined by our
Christian traditions, tends to make us admit.
It is also true that Buddhism aims at the
extinction of the individual self ; while Chris
tianity assigns to the human individual an
infinite worth. And this is indeed a vastly
important difference. Yet this very impor
tance remains unexplained, and a mere for
mula, until you see what it is about the human
341
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
individual which constitutes, for the Christian
view, his importance. One may answer, in sim
ple terms, that, according to the teachings of
Jesus, the individual is infinitely important, be
cause the Father loves him ; while Buddhism,
in its original Southern form, has nothing to
offer that is equivalent to this love of God for
the individual man. Yet the further question
has to be faced : Why and for what end does
the God of Christianity love the individual ?
And it is here, at last, that you come face to
face with the deepest contrast.
For God s love towards the individual is,
from the Christian point of view, a love for one
whose destiny it is to be a member of the King
dom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is
essentially a community. And the idea of
this community, as the founder in parables
prophetically taught that idea, developed into
the conception which the Christian Church
formed of its own mission ; and through all
changes, and despite all human failures, this
conception remains a sovereign treasure of
the Christian world.
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
IV
The Individual and the Community : this,
if I may so express a perfectly human
antithesis in religious and deliberately sym
bolic speech, this pair of terms and of
ideas is, so to speak, the sacred pair, to whose
exposition and to whose practical application
the whole Christian doctrine of life is due.
This pair it is which, in the first place, enables
Christianity to tell the individual why, in
his natural isolation and narrowness, he is
essentially defective, - - is inevitably a failure,
is doomed, and must be transformed. This,
if you choose, is the root and core of man s
original sin, namely, the very form of his
being as a morally detached individual. This
is the bondage of his flesh ; this is the soul
of his corruption ; this is his alienation from
true life; this fact, namely, that by nature,
as a social animal, he is an individual who,
though fast bound by ties which no man
can rend, to the community wherein he
chances to be born or trained, nevertheless,
343
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
until the true love of a community, and until
the beloved community itself appear in his
life, is a stranger in his father s house,
a hater of his only chance of salvation, a
worldling, and a worker of evil deeds, a
miserable source of misery. This is why, for
Christianity, the salvation of man means the
destruction of his natural self, - - the sacrifice
of what his flesh holds dearest, .the utter
transformation of the primal core of the social
self. I say : it is the merely natural relation
of the individual to the community which, for
Christianity, explains all this. Here are the
two levels of human existence. The individ
ual, born on his own level, is naturally doomed
to hatred for what belongs to the other level.
Yet there, on that higher level, his only
salvation awaits him.
Buddhism fully knows, and truly teaches,
where the root of bitterness is to be found,
not in the outward deed, but in the inmost
heart of the individual self. But what, so
far as I know, the original Southern Buddhism
never clearly made a positive part of its own
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
plan of the salvation of mankind, is a trans
formation of the self, not through the mere
destruction of the narrow and corrupt flesh
which alienates it from the true life, but by
the simple and yet intensely positive DEVOTION
of the self to a new task, to its creative office
as a loyal member of a beloved community.
Early Buddhism never, so far as I know,
clearly defined its ideal of the beloved com
munity in terms which make that community,
viewed simply as an ideal, one conscious unity
of the business, of the eager hopes, and of the
patiently ingenious and endlessly constructive
love, of all mankind.
The ideal Christian community is one in
which compassion is a mere incident in the
realization of the new life, not only of
brotherly concord, but also of an intermi
nably positive creation of new social values,
all of which exist for many souls in one spirit.
The ideal Christian community of all man
kind is to be as intimate in its enthusiasm
of service as the daily life of a Pauline
church was intended by the apostle to be, -
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
and as novel in its inventions of new arts of
common living as the gifts of the spirit in the
early Christian Church were believed to be
novel. The ideal Christian community is to
be the community of all mankind, as com
pletely united in its inner life as one con
scious self could conceivably become, and as
destructive of the natural hostilities and of the
narrow passions which estrange individual
men, as it is skilful in winning from the in
finite realm of bare possibilities concrete arts
of control over nature and of joy in its own
riches of grace. This free and faithful com
munity of all mankind, wherein the individuals
should indeed die to their own natural life,
but should also enjoy a newness of positive
life, - - this community never became, so far
as I can learn, a conscious ideal for early
Buddhism.
How far the Japanese religion of loyalty,
in its later forms of modified Buddhism, or
in its other phases, has approached, or will
hereafter approach, to an independent and
original definition of the positive and con-
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
structive ideal of a conscious and universal
human community which is here in question,
I am quite unable to judge. The Japanese
Buddhist sects well know what salvation by
grace is. They well conceive and accept the
doctrine of the incarnation of the divine being
in a supernatural individual man ; and are
certainly universal in their general concep
tions of some sort of human brotherhood.
And they have reached these religious ideas
quite apart from any dependence upon Chris
tianity.
But what I miss in their religious concep
tions, so far as I have read reports of these
conceptions, is such a solution of the prob
lem of human life in terms of loyalty, as
at once demands the raising of the human self
from the level of its natural narrowness, to
the level of a complete and conscious personal
membership in a beloved community, and
at the same time defines the ideal community
to whose level and in whose spirit we are TO
live, as the community of all mankind, and
as one endlessly creative and conscious human
347
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
spirit, whose life is to be lived upon its own
level, and of whose dominion there is to be,
in ideal and in meaning, no end.
The familiar article in the Christian creed
which expresses this perfectly concrete and
practical and also religious ideal, and ex
presses it in terms whose ethical and whose
religious value you can test by personal
and social experience, whatever may be your
own definition of the dogmas of the Church,
and whatever your metaphysical opinions
may be, and whatever form of the visible or
invisible Church chances best to seem to meet
this your interpretation, - - the familiar arti
cle of the Christian creed which expresses, I
say, this ideal, just as an ideal, uses the words :
"I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catho
lic Church, the communion of saints." My
earlier exposition of this idea sadly failed if
I did not show you how one can understand
and accept the spirit of this article of the
creed, without accepting the dogmas or the
obedience or the practice of any one form of
the visible Christian Church. But it was this
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
which I had in mind when I said, in our
opening lecture, that Christianity has fur
nished mankind with its most impressive and
inspiring vision of the home-land of the
spirit.
Ethically speaking, the counsels which this
Christian idea of the community implies, in
clude all the familiar maxims of the Sermon
on the Mount and all the lessons of the par
ables, but tend to give to them such sorts of
development as the ideals of the early Church,
in Pauline and post-Pauline times, gradually
gave to them. Always what I have called the
difference between the two levels of our hu
man existence must be borne in mind, if the
interpretation of Christian love is to become as
concrete as Paul made it in his epistles, and
as concrete as later ages have attempted to
keep it, even while developing its meaning.
You love your neighbor, first, because God
loves him. Yes, but how and why does God
love him ? Because God loves the Kingdom
349
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
of Heaven ; and the Kingdom of Heaven is a
perfectly live unity of individual men joined
in one divine chorus an unity of men who,
except through their attachment to this life
which exists on the level of the beloved com
munity of the Kingdom of Heaven, would be
miserable breeders of woe, and would be lost
souls. Let your love for them be a love for
your fellow-members in this Kingdom of
Heaven.
Yes ; but this neighbor is your enemy ;
or he belongs to the wrong tribe or caste or
sect. Do not consider these unhappy facts
as having any bearing on your love for him.
For the ethical side of the doctrine of life
concerns not what you find, but what you are
to create. Now God means this man to be
come a member of the community which
constitutes the Kingdom of Heaven ; and
God loves this man accordingly. View him,
then, as the soldier views the comrade who
serves the same flag with himself, and who
dies for the same cause. In the Kingdom you,
and your enemy, and yonder stranger, are one.
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
For the Kingdom is the community of God s
beloved.
As for the way in which you are to love,
make that way of loving, to your own mind,
more alive, by recalling the meaning of your
own dearest friendships. Think of the closest
unity of human souls that you know. Then
conceive of the Kingdom in terms of such love.
When friends really join hands and hearts
and lives, it is not the mere collection of sun
dered organisms and of divided feelings and
will that these friends view as their life. Their
life, as friends, is the unity which, while above
their own level, wins them to itself and gives
them meaning. This unity is the vine. They
are the branches.
Now of such unity is the Kingdom of
Heaven. See, then, in every man the branch
of such a vine, - - the outflowing of such a
purpose, -- the beloved of such a spirit, the
incarnation of such a divine concern for many
in one. And then your Christian love will
be much more than mere pity, - - will be
greater than any amiable sympathy with the
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
longings of those poor creatures of flesh could,
of itself, become. Your love will then become
the Charity that never faileth. For its object
is the Beloved Community, and the individual
as, ideally, a member of that community.
Is such a regard for individuals too imper
sonal to meet the spirit of the parables ? No,
it does not destroy, it fulfils, as the early
Christian Church, in ideal, fulfilled the spirit
of the parables. Paul spoke thus, and thereby
made Christian love more rather than less
personal.
If by person you merely mean the morally
detached individual man, then the commu
nity, - - the Kingdom of Heaven, is indeed
superpersonal. If, by person, you mean a
live unity of knowledge and of will, of love and
of deed, -- then the community of the King
dom of Heaven is a person on a higher level
than is the level of any human individual ;
and the Kingdom of Heaven is at once within
you, and above you, a human life, and yet
a life whose tabernacles are built upon a
Mount of Transfiguration.
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
Reconsider familiar parables in the light
of such an interpretation, an interpreta
tion as old and familiar as it is persistently
ignored or misunderstood. That, I insist,
is a useful way of restating the Christian
moral doctrine of life.
Over what does the Father in the parable
of the Prodigal Son rejoice ? Over the mere
delight that his son s presence now gives him,
and over the feasting and the merriment that
his own forgiving power supplies to the re
pentant outcast ? No, the Father has won
again, not merely his son as a hungry creature
who can repent and be fed. The Father has
won again the unbroken community of his
family. It is the Father s house that rejoices.
It is this community which makes merry ;
and the father is, for the moment, simply the
incarnation of the spirit of this community.
Why is there more joy in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine
just persons ? Why is the lost sheep sought
in the wilderness ? Because the individual
soul has its infinite meaning in and through
2 A 353
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
the unity of the Kingdom. The one lost
sheep, found again, or the one repentant
sinner, symbolizes the restoration of the
unity of this community, as the keystone
stands for the sense of the whole arch, as
the flag symbolizes the country.
And why, in the parable of the judgment,
does the judge of all the earth identify him
self with "the least of these my brethren,"
with the stranger, with the sick, with the
captive ? Because the judge of all the earth
is explicitly the spirit of the universal com
munity, who speaks in the name of all who are
one in the light and in the life of the Kingdom
of Heaven.
VI
These things remind us how ill those inter
pret the teachings of the Master who see in
them a merely amiable fondness for what
any morally detached individual happens to
love or to suffer or seem. It is the ideal one
ness of the life of the Kingdom of Heaven
which glorifies and renders significant every
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
human individual who loves the Kingdom, or
whom God views as such a lover. And be
cause Paul had before him the life of the
churches, while the Master left the Kingdom
of Heaven for the future to reveal, Paul s
account of Christian morals is an enrichment,
and a further fulfilment of what the parables
began to tell, and left to the coming of the
Kingdom to make manifest.
In such wise, then, are the familiar precepts
to be interpreted, if the Christian doctrine of
the moral life is to be what it was intended
to be, --not a body of maxims and of illus
trations, but a living and growing expression
of the life-spirit of Christianity.
For the doctrine, if thus interpreted, points
you not only backwards to the reported words
of the Master, but endlessly forwards into
the region where humanity, as it continues
through the coming ages, must, with an un
wearied patience, labor and experiment, and
invent and create. The true moral code of
Christianity has always been and will remain
fluent as well as decisive. Only so could it
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
express the Master s true spirit. It therefore
must not view either the parables or the
sayings as a storehouse of maxims, or even
as a treasury of individual examples and of
personal expressions of the Master s mind,
expressions such that these maxims, these
examples, and these personal sayings of the
Master can never be surpassed in their ethical
teachings. The doctrine of the sayings and of
the parables actually cries out for reinterpre-
tation, for the creation of a novel life. That
seems to me precisely what the founder him
self intended. The early apostolic Churches
fulfilled the Master s teaching by surpassing
it, and were filled with the spirit of their
Master just because they did so. This, to
my mind, is a central lesson of the early devel
opment of Christianity.
All morality, namely, is, from this point
of view, to be judged by the standards of the
Beloved Community, of the ideal Kingdom of
Heaven. Concretely stated, this means that
you are to test every course of action not by
the question : What can we find in the par-
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
ables or in the Sermon on the Mount which
seems to us more or less directly to bear upon
this special matter ? The central doctrine
of the Master was : "So act that the Kingdom
of Heaven may come." This means : So
act as to help, however you can, and when
ever you can, towards making mankind one
loving brotherhood, whose love is not a mere
affection for morally detached individuals,
but a love of the unity of its own life upon its
own divine level, and a love of individuals
in so far as they can be raised to communion
with this spiritual community itself.
VII
Now if we speak in purely human, and still
postpone any speaking in metaphysical, terms,
the community of all mankind is an ideal.
Just now, just in this year or on this day, there
exists no human community that is adequately
conscious of its own unity, adequately crea
tive of what it ought to create, adequately
representative, on its own level, of the real
and human communion of the spirit. Our
357
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
best communities of to-day either take ac
count of caste or of nation or of race, as all
the political communities do, or else, when
deliberately aiming at universality and at
religious unity, they exclude one another;
and are therefore not, in an ideal sense and
degree, beloved communities. Two things, if
no other, stand between even the best of the
churches as they are, -- between them, I say,
and the attainment of the goal of the truly
beloved and the universal human community.
The one thing is their sectarian character,
- excluding, as they do, the one the other.
The other thing is their official organization,
which cultivates, in each of the more highly
developed communities of this type, a respect
for the law at precisely the expense of that
which Paul experienced in case of the legal
aspect of the Judaism in which he was
trained.
No, the universal and beloved commu
nity is still hidden from our imperfect hu
man view, and will remain so, how long we
know not.
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
Nevertheless, the principle of principles in
all Christian morals remains this :--" Since
you cannot find the universal and beloved
community, create it." And this again, ap
plied to the concrete art of living, means :
Do whatever you can to take a step towards
it, or to assist anybody, your brother, your
friend, your neighbor, your country, -- man
kind, - - to take steps towards the organiza
tion of that coming community.
That, I say, is the principle of principles
for Christian morals. But, for that very
reason, there can be no code of Christian
morals, nor any one set of personal examples,
or of sayings, or of parables, or of other nar
ratives, which will do more than to arouse us
to create something new on our way towards
the goal. Christian morality will not, either
suddenly or gradually, conquer the world.
But, if Christianity, conceived in its true
spirit, retains its hold upon mankind, human
ity will go on creating new forms of Christian
morality ; whose only persistent feature will
be that they intend to aid men to make their
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
personal, their friendly, their social, their
political, their religious orders and organiza
tions such that mankind comes more and more
to resemble the ideal, the beloved, the univer
sal community. And the ethical aspect of
the creed of the Christian world always will
include this article : "I believe in the beloved
community and in the spirit which makes it
beloved, and in the communion of all who are,
in will and in deed, its members. I see no
such community as yet ; but none the less
my rule of life is : Act so as to hasten its
coming."
Now such an ethical creed is not a vague
humanitarian enthusiasm. For it simply re
quires that we work with whatever concrete
human materials we have for creating both the
organization of communities and the love for
them. The work is without any human con
clusion that we can foresee. But it can be
made always definite, simply by resoluteness,
in union with devotion. That is the type of
work which always has been characteristically
Christian, and which promises to remain so.
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
VIII
The Christian idea of the community and of
its relation to the way of salvation requires for
its complete appreciation a comparison and
synthesis which shall also include the idea of
Atonement. ,
In the foregoing lecture we endeavored to
set the religious value of the idea of atone
ment in a light which must be, for many
minds, somewhat novel ; for otherwise the idea
of atonement would not have been so long and
so variously rendered more mysterious by the
technically theological treatment which has
been freely devoted to it. Nevertheless, in
its deepest spirit, this very idea of atonement
has been so dear to the religious mind of
Christendom, and so familiar in art, in worship,
and in contemplation, that it simply ought
not to appear so mysterious. The fate of the
Christian idea of atonement has been, that
what Christian piety felt to be the head of
the corner, the Christian intellect has either
rejected, or else, even in trying to defend the
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
atonement, has made a stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offence.
Between the idea of the saving community
and the idea of atonement, lie the gravest of
Christian ideas, -- those which many op
timists find too discouraging to face, or too
austere to be wholesome. These are: the
idea of sin, the idea of our original bondage to
sin, and the idea of the consequences involved
in defining sin as an inner voluntary inclina
tion of the mind, rather than as an outwardly
manifest evil deed. These ideas about sin
are in part common, as we have said, to Chris
tianity and to Buddhism.
But, as a fact, Christianity has so developed
these very ideas, has so united them with the
conception of the grace and of the loyalty which
save* men from their natural sinfulness, that
just these conceptions regarding sin, despite
the fact that Matthew Arnold thought them
too likely to lead to a brooding wherein " many
have perished," are ideas such that their right
ful definition renders Christianity what, for
Paul, it became, a religion of spiritual freedom.
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
In our studies of the moral burden of the
individual, and of the realm of grace, we have
seen how Christianity is a religion dependent,
for its conception of original sin, upon the
most characteristic features of that social
cultivation whereby we are brought to a high
level of self -consciousness. Early Buddh
ism had, so far as I am aware, no views about
the nature of the social self as clear as those
which Paul attained and, in his own way,
expressed. But this very doctrine about
"the law," -that is, about the social origin
of the individual self, and about that which
"causes sin to abound," is a theory which lies
at the root of the power and the right of Chris
tianity to say, to the self which has first at
tained sinful cultivation in self-will, and which
has then been transformed by "grace" into a
loyal self, precisely what Paul said to his
converts: "All things are yours." For the
doctrine of Paul is, that the escape from orig
inal sin comes through the acceptance of a
service which is perfect freedom. Out of the
Christian doctrine of sin grows the Christian
363
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
teaching about the freedom of the faithful,
a teaching which, in its turn, lies at the basis
of some of the most important developments
of the modern mind. The doctrine of sin
need not lead, then, to brooding. It may
lead to spiritual self-possession.
The doctrine of atonement enables us to
extend the Pauline theory of salvation by
grace, so that not merely our originally help
less bondage to the results of our social culti
vation is removed by the grace of loyalty, but
the saddest of all the forms and consequences
of wilful sin, namely, the deed and the
result of conscious disloyalty, can be brought
within the range which the grace of the will
of the community can reach. The result of
our discussion in the last lecture has been
that, if we are right, the idea of atonement
has a perfectly indispensable office, both in
the ethical and in the religious task which the
Christian doctrine of life has to accomplish.
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
IX
Let me try to make a little more obvious
the interpretation of the idea of atonement
which, in the last lecture, I stated in outline.
Let me use for this purpose another illustra
tion.
If my view about the essence of the idea of
atonement is correct, the first instance of an
extended account of an atoning process which
the Biblical narratives include, would be the
story of Joseph and his brethren. Let us
treat this story, of course, as obviously a little
romance. We study merely its value as an
illustration. The brethren sin against Joseph,
and against their father. Their deed has
some of the characteristics, not of mere youth
ful folly, but of maturely wilful treason.
They assail not merely their brother, but their
father s love for the lost son. Their crime is
carefully considered, and is deeply treacherous.
But it goes still farther. The treason is di
rected against their whole family community.
Now, in the long run, according to the beauti-
365
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
ful tale, Joseph not only comforts his father,
and is able to be a forgiving benefactor to his
brethren, but in such wise atones for the sin
of his brethren that the family unity is re
stored. Here, then, is felt to be a genuine
atonement. Wherein does it consist ?
Does it consist in this, that the brethren
have earned a just penalty which, as a fact,
they never adequately suffer; while Joseph,
guiltless of their wilful sin, vicariously suffers
a penalty which he has not deserved ? Does
the atonement further consist in the fact that
Joseph is able and willing freely to offer, for
the good of the family, both the merits and
the providential good fortune which this
vicarious endurance of his has won ?
No, --this "penal satisfaction" theory of
the atoning work of Joseph, if it were proposed
as an example of a doctrine of atonement,
certainly would not meet that sense of justice,
and of the fitness of things, and of the true
value of Joseph s life and deeds, -- that sense,
I say, which every child who first hears the
story readily feels, - - without in the least
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
being able to tell what he feels. If one
magnified the deed of Joseph to the infinite,
and said, as many have said, "Such a work
as Joseph did for his brethren, even such a
work, in his own divinely supreme way and
sense Christ did for sinful man," -would that
theory of the matter make the nature of atone
ment obvious? Would a vicarious "penal
satisfaction" help one to understand either one
or the other of these instances of atonement ?
But let us turn from such now generally
discredited "penal satisfaction" theories to
the various forms of modern moral theories.
Let us say, applying our explanations once
more to the story of Joseph: "God s Prov
idence sent Joseph into captivity, through
the sin of his brethren, but still under a divine
decree. Joseph was obedient and faithful and
pure-minded. God rewarded his patience
and fidelity by giving him power in Egypt.
Then Joseph, having suffered and triumphed,
set before his brethren (not without a due
measure of gently stern rebuke for their past
misdeeds), an example of love and forgiveness
367
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
so moving, that they deeply repented, con
fessed their sins, and loved their brother as
never before. That was Joseph s atonement.
And that, if magnified to the infinite, gives
one a view of the sense in which the work of
Christ atones for man s sin." Would such
an account help us to understand atonement,
either in Joseph s case, or in the other ?
I should reply that such moral theories of
atonement, applied to the story of Joseph,
miss the most obvious point and beauty of
the tale ; and also show us in no wise what
genuine atoning work the Joseph of the story
did. Would the mere repentance, or the re
newed love of the treacherous brethren for
Joseph, or their wish to be forgiven, or their
confession of their sin, constitute a sufficient
ground for the needed reconciliation, in view of
their offence against their brother, their father,
or their family ? If this was all the atonement
which Joseph s labors supplied, he failed in his
supposed office. Something more is needed to
satisfy even the child who enjoys the story.
But now, let us become as little children
363
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
ourselves. Let us take the tale as a sensitive
child takes it, when its power first enters his
soul. Let us simply articulate what the child
feels. Here, according to the tale, is a pa
triarchal family invaded by a wilful treason,
wounded to the core, desolated, broken.
The years go by. The individual who was
most directly assailed by the treason is guilt
less himself of any share in that treason.
He is patient and faithful and obedient.
When power comes to him, he uses that power
(which only just this act of treason could
have put into his hands), first, to accomplish
a great work of good for the community of a
great kingdom. Herewith, according to the
tale, he provides for the future honor and
glory of his own family for all time to come.
And then, being brought once more into touch
with his family, he behaves with such clem
ency, and justice, and family loyalty ; he
shows such transient but amiable brotherly
severity towards the former traitors, he shows
also such tender filial devotion ; his weeping
when the family unity is restored is so rich in
2B 369
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
pathos ; his care in providing for his father
and for the future is so wise ; his creative
skill in making again into one fair whole
what treason had shattered is so wonderful,
that all these things together make the situa
tion one whereof the child says without definite
words, what we now say : Through Joseph s
work all is made, in fact, better than it would
have been had there been no treason at all."
Now I submit that Joseph s atoning work con
sists simply in this triumphantly ingenious
creation of good out of ill. That the breth
ren confess and repent is inevitable, and is a
part of the good result; but by itself that is
only a poor offering on their part. It is
Joseph who atones. His atonement is, of
course, vicarious. But it is perfectly ob
jective. And it is no vicarious " penal satis
faction" whatever. It is simply the triumph
of the spirit of the family through the devoted
loyalty of an individual. This, in fact, is,
in substance, what Joseph himself says in his
closing words to his brethren.
Joseph turns into a good, for the family, for
370
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
the world, for his father, for the whole com
munity involved, what his brothers had made
ill. In his deed, through his skill, as well as
through his suffering, the world is made better
than it would have been had the treason never
been done. This, I insist, constitutes his
atoning work.
As to the brethren, -- their treason is, of
course, irrevocable. Joseph s deed does not
wipe out that guilt of their own. But they
can stand in the presence of their community
and hear the distinctly reconciling word :
"You have been the indirect cause of a good
that, by the grace and the ingenuity of the
community and of its faithful servant, has
now been created, while, but for your treason,
this good could not have been created. Your
sin cannot be cancelled. Nor are you in any
wise the doers of the atoning deed. But the
community welcomes you to its love again,
- not as those whose irrevocable deed has
been cancelled, but as those whom love has so
overruled that you have been made a source
whence a spring of good flows."
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
The repentant and thankful brothers can
now accept this reconciliation, never as a
destruction of their guilt, but as a new and an
objective fact whose significance they are
willing to lay at the basis of a new loyalty.
The community is renewed ; the spirit has
triumphed ; and the traitors are glad that the
irrevocable deed which they condemn has been
made a source of a good which never could
have existed without it. They are in a new
friendship with their community, since the
ends that have triumphed unite the new will
with the old and evil will, through a new con
quest of the evil.
Let my illustration pass for what it is
worth. I still insist that an atonement of this
sort, if it occurs at all, is a perfectly objective
fact, namely, the creation by somebody of a
definite individual good on the basis of a
definite previous evil. That the total result,
in a given case, such as that of Joseph, is
something better than would have existed, or
than would have been possible, had not that
evil deed first been done, to which the atoning
372
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
deed is the response, --all this, I say, is a
perfectly proper matter for a purely objective
study. Such a study has the difficulties
which attend all inquiries into objective values.
But these difficulties do not make the matter
one of arbitrary whim.
Moreover, if the atoning deed has brought,
as a fact, such good out of evil that, despite
the evil deed, the world is better than it could
have been if the evil deed had not been done,
then this very fact has its own reconciling
value, a value limited but precious. The
repentant sinner, seeing what, in Adam s
vision, Milton makes the first human sinner
foresee, will rightly find a genuine consola
tion, and a true reunion with his community,
in thus being aware that his iniquity has been
overruled for good.
A theory of atonement, founded upon this
basis, is capable of as technical treatment as
any other, and deals with facts and values
which human wit can investigate, so far as
the facts in question are accessible to us.
Such a theory of atonement could be applied
373
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
to estimate the atoning work of Christ, by
any one who believed himself to be suffi
ciently in touch with the facts about Christ s
supposed work. It would be capable of as
technical a statement as our knowledge war
ranted.
This then, in brief, is my proposal looking
towards an interpretation of the idea of atone
ment.
X
Turning once more to view, in the light of
this interpretation, the Christian doctrine of
life in its unity, we may see how all the ideas
now unite to give to this doctrine a touch both
with the ethical and with the religious interests
of humanity.
To sum up : As individuals we are lost ;
that is, are incapable of attaining the true goal
of life. This our loss is due to the fact that
we have not love. So the Master taught.
But the problem is also the problem : For
what love shall I seek ? What love will save
me ? Here, if we restrict our answer to
human objects, and deliberately avoid theol-
374
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
ogy, the Christian answer is : Love the Com
munity. That is, be Loyal.
Yet one further asks : What community
shall I love ? The answer to this question has
been lengthily discussed. We need not here,
at any length, repeat it. Speaking still in
human terms, we are to love a community
which, in ideal, is identical with all mankind,
but which can never exist on earth until man
has been transfigured and unified, as Paul
hoped that his churches would soon witness
this transfiguration and this union, at the
end of the world.
So far as this ideal indeed takes possession
of us, we can direct our human life in the
spirit of this love for the community, far
away as the goal may seem and be.
Yet what stands in the way of our being
completely absorbed by this ideal ? The
answer is : Our enemy is what Paul called
the flesh, and found further emphasized by
"the law." This enemy is due to our nature
as social beings, so far as this nature is cul
tivated by social conditions which, while
375
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
training our self-consciousness, even thereby
inflame our self-will. This our social nature,
then, is the basis of our natural enmity both
towards the law, and towards the spirit.
How can this natural enmity be overcome ?
The answer is : By the means of those uni
fying social influences which Paul regarded
as due to grace. Genius, and only genius,
the genius which, in the extreme cases, founds
new religions, and which, in the better known
cases, creates great social movements of a
genuinely saving value, can create the com
munities which arouse love, which join the
faithful into one, and which transform the old
man into the new. When once we have come
under the spell of such creative genius, and
of the communities of which some genius ap
pears to be the spirit, only then can we too
die to the old life, and be renewed in the spirit.
The early Christian community is (still speak
ing in human terms) one great historical in
stance of such a source of salvation. To be
won over to the level of such a community is,
just in so far, to be saved.
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
But the will of the loyal is, in the purely
human and practical sense, a will that we call
free. The higher the spiritual gifts in question
are, the greater is the opportunity for wilful
treason to the community to which we have
once given faith. The consequences of every
deed include the great fact that each deed is
irrevocable. And the penalty of wilful trea
son, therefore, is, for the traitor, precisely
in so far as he knows himself, and values his
life in its larger connections, an essentially
endless penalty, - - the penalty which he as
signs to himself ,-- the fact of his sin.
For such penalty is there any aid that can
come to us through the atoning deed of an
other ? There is such aid possible. In the
human world we can never count upon it.
But it is possible. And sometimes, by the
grace of the community, and by the free will
of a noble soul, such aid comes. As a fact,
the whole life of man gets its highest one is
often disposed to say, its only real and abiding
- goods, from the conquest over ill. Atoning
deeds, deeds that, through sacrifices, win
377
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
again the lost causes of the moral world, not
by undoing the irrevocable, nor by making
the old bitterness of defeat as if it never
had been, but by creating new good out of
ancient ill, and by producing a total realm of
life which is better than it would have been
had the evil not happened, atoning deeds
express the most nearly absolute loyalty
which human beings can show. The atoning
deeds are the most creative of the expressions
which the community gives, through the deed
of an individual, to its will that the unity of
the spirit should triumph, not only despite,
but through, the greatest tragedies, - - the
tragedies of deliberate sin.
Through the community, or on its behalf,
the atoning deeds are done. The individual
who has sinned, but who knows of free atoning
deeds that indeed have been done, deeds
whereby good comes out of his evil, can be
not wholly reconciled to his own past, but
truly restored to the meaning of the loyal
life. Upon the hope that such atoning deeds,
if they have not been done because of our sins,
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE
may yet be done, all of us depend for such re-
winning of our spiritual relations to our com
munity as we have sinned away. And thus
the idea of the community and the idea of
atonement, -- both of them, still interpreted
in purely human fashion, but extended in
ideal through the whole realm that the human
spirit can ever conquer, form in their insep
arable union, and in their relation to the
other Christian ideas, the Christian doctrine
of life. The Christian life is one that first,
as present in the individual, offers to the
community practical devotion and absorb
ing love. This same life, also present in the
individual, looks to the community for the
grace that saves and for the atonement that,
so far as may be, reconciles. As incorporate
in the community, or as incarnate in those who
act as the spirit of the community, and who
create new forms of the community, and
originate atoning deeds, as thus present in
the community and in its creatively loyal in
dividual members, the Christian life expresses
the postulate, the prayer, the world-conquer-
379
THE PROBLEM O.F CHRISTIANITY
ing will, whose word is : Let the spirit triumph.
Let no evil deed be done so deep in its treach
ery but that creative love shall find the way
to make the world better than it would have
been had that evil deed not been done.
The Christian doctrine of life consists in
observing and asserting that these ideas have
their real and distinctly human basis. This
doctrine also consists in the purely voluntary
assertion that, in so far as these ideals are not
yet verifiable in human life as it is, this life is
to be lived as if they were verifiable, or were
sure to become so in the fulness of time.
For that fulness of time, for that coming of
the Kingdom, we both labor and wait.
380
VIII
THE MODERN MIND AND THE CHRISTIAN
IDEAS
LECTURE VIII
THE MODERN MIND AND THE CHRISTIAN
IDEAS
THROUGHOUT our exposition of the
ideas which, in their unity, constitute
the Christian doctrine of life, we have intended
to bring to light the relations of these ideas to
the modern mind. Whenever we have at
tempted to define what we mean by the
modern mind, we have been guided by two
considerations. First, certain opinions and
mental attitudes seem to be characteristic of
leading teachers and of representative ten
dencies in our own day. Secondly, these
prominent ideas of our day express general
lessons which the history of mankind appears
to us to have taught. We have accepted the
postulate that history includes a more or less
coherent education of the human race ; and
then have we viewed the modern mind as the
present heir to this wisdom. And therefore
some at least of the prominent ideas of our
383
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
day have seemed to deserve their prominence
because they express part of the lesson of
history.
How vague the resulting general conception
of the modern mind and of its opinions neces
sarily is, we have acknowledged. But the con
ception is useful, simply because it enables
us to summarize a type of convictions that
possess indeed no supreme authority, but
that are signs which men must interpret, and
leadings which they must attempt to follow,
if they are to take part in that collective
human life which is to record itself in future
history, and if our age is to teach any lesson
to those who shall come after us.
The present lecture will be devoted to a
summary of some of the lessons which the
history of religion seems to have taught
mankind, and to a general study of the bear
ing of these lessons upon our estimate of the
present and the future of the Christian re
ligion.
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MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
There are three lessons of religious history,
and three views prominent in recent discussion,
which may be said to form part of the charac
teristically modern view of the meaning and
destiny of religion.
First, religion is, historically speaking, a
product of certain human needs ; and its en
durance depends upon its power to meet those
needs. A religion which ceases to strengthen
hearts and to fulfil the just demands of the
human spirit for guidance through the wilder
ness of this world, is doomed ; and in due time
passes away ; as the religion of Greco-Roman
antiquity decayed and died ; and as countless
tribal and national religions have died, along
with the social orders and cultures which
they, in their day, sustained and inspired.
To use a metaphor which I believe to be
neither trivial nor unjust : The gods, as man
conceives the gods, live upon spiritual food;
but, viewed in the light of history, they appear
as beings who must earn their bread by supply-
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THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
ing, in their turn, the equally spiritual suste
nance which their worshippers need. And
unless they thus earn their bread, the gods die ;
and the holy places that have known them,
know them no more forever. Let the ruins
of ancient temples suggest the meaning that
lies behind my figure of speech.
To make this assertion concerning the in
evitable fortunes of all religions, is not to re
duce the conception of religious truth to that
which current pragmatism emphasizes. The
relation between the two conceptions of reli
gious truth which are in question will concern
us in our later lectures. Here it is enough to
say that I am not now deciding whether or
no any religious truth is absolute ; but am
expressly limiting myself to the forms under
which religious truth and error enter human
history.
The needs of the worshippers determine, in
the long run, the historical fate of religions.
It is just, however, to add, that worshippers
actually need an everlasting gospel ; and that,
if such a gospel were to be revealed to man, it
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MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
would not only satisfy human needs, but also
contain absolute religious truth.
What I thus point out is simply meant to
emphasize the assertion that the realm of
religion is a realm, not of merely natural facts,
but of will and of need, of desire, of longing,
and of satisfaction. In other words, as it is
now r customary to state the case, religion is
mainly concerned, not with facts that belong
to the material world, but with values. Re
ligion, meanwhile, aims at the absolute, but
has no vehicle to carry its message to our
selves except the vehicle of human experience.
The goal of religion is something beyond all our
transient strivings. But its path lies through
the realm of human needs.
And so, when a religion loses touch with
human needs, it dies.
II
Such is the first of the three modern opinions
about religion to which I wish to call attention.
The second may be stated in well-known terms.
We live in an age when there have already
387
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
occurred great recent changes in the spiritual
needs whereof men are conscious. And in the
near future still greater changes in these needs
are likely to be felt.
Those changes in the needs of mankind
which led to the decay and death of the
religions of antiquity were petty in contrast
to the vast transformations of the human
spirit to which our modern conditions seem
likely to lead within the next few centuries.
Physical science and the industrial arts are
altering the very foundations of our culture,
of our social order, and of our opinions regard
ing nature. This alteration is now taking
place at a rate for which no previous age of
human history furnishes any parallel. Apart
from chance catastrophes, which seem un
likely to happen, these processes of mental
and of social change are likely to continue
at a constantly increasing rate. In conse
quence, man s whole spiritual outlook will
probably soon become different from any
outlook that men have ever before experi
enced. This law of constantly accelerated
388
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
change promises to dominate the most
essential interests of the civilization of the
near future.
Concerning this second thesis which I here
attribute to the modern mind, there is likely
to be little difference of opinion amongst us.
Many of us fear or deplore great spiritual
changes. We all feel sure that such will soon
occur. We know that, regarding all such
matters, we have indeed no right to predict
the future of humanity in any but the most
general terms. Yet the prospect of very
rapid and vast mental and social transfor
mations, in the near future of civilization, is
emphasized in our minds by innumerable
considerations. Few of us are disposed to
believe that, were we permitted to return to
earth a very few centuries from now, we should
find that even the dearest and oldest of the
traditional features of our civilization had
remained exempt from momentous and, to our
minds, bewildering alterations.
The wildest flights of imagination regarding
such possibilities often seem to us instructive,
389
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
just because they help us to read one great
warning which the modern world gives us.
This is the warning that nothing in human
affairs is so sacred as to be sure of escaping
the workings of this law of accelerated change.
Ill
The third of the modern opinions which I
here have in mind is closely associated with
the two foregoing theses.
In ancient civilizations the religious insti
tutions were often supported by the whole
social power of the peoples concerned, so
that the religious life of a nation belonged to
whatever was most characteristic and most
conservative about the civilization in question.
In the Middle Ages, despite the enormous
complexity of the Christian- social order, the
religious institutions still formed a very large
part of what was most essential to European
culture. But in recent times religious insti
tutions institutions of the nature of churches,
of sects, or of religious orders stand in a
much less central position in our organized
390
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
social life than ever before. The tangible
social importance of these institutions grows
constantly less rather than greater. Had all
the temples of a typical ancient city, and had
all its priests and sacred places, been suddenly
destroyed, so that none of the customary
festivals and sacrifices could be carried on,
we know how tragically the whole life of that
city would have been disturbed, if not wholly
paralyzed. But our modern industrial arts,
our world-wide commerce, our daily business,
our international relations, grow constantly
more and more independent of any ecclesi
astical and, in fact, of any public religious
activities or institutions ; so that, if all
churches and priesthoods and congregations
were temporarily to suspend their public
functions and their visible doings, our market
places and factories and merchants and armies
would continue to go on, for the time, much
as usual.
In consequence, in the modern world, reli
gion no longer has the effective institutional
support of the whole collective social will,
391
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
but lives more apart from the other great
social interests, and dwells more in a realm
where internal faith rather than publicly
administered law determines the range of its
control. Hence when the social world is
subject to forces which tend towards change,
religion no longer stands at the point where
the most conservative powers of society are
massed. Religion must depend for its ability
to resist change upon new weapons. Con
servatism will no longer stand as its potent
and natural defender. The human needs
that it is to meet will be in a state of constant
growth. The visible social organizations
which have been its closest allies in the
past can no longer be counted upon to pre
serve its visible forms. Once, when the
temples and the gods were threatened, all
the state rose as one man to defend them.
For they were the centre of the social order.
But henceforth commerce and industry will
tend to take the place in men s minds which
religious institutions once occupied. The
things of the spirit must now be defended
392
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
with the sword of the spirit. Worldly weapons
can no longer be used either to propagate or
to preserve religion. Religion must find its
own way to the hearts of the coming genera
tions. And these hearts will be stirred by
countless new cares and hopes. The human
problem of religion will grow constantly more
complicated.
Our three assertions of the modern mind
regarding religion define for us, then, the
religious problem of the future. No religion
can survive unless it keeps in touch with men s
conscious needs. In the future men s needs
will be subject to vastly complex and rapidly
changing social motives. In the future, reli
gion, as a power aiming to win and to keep a
place in men s hearts, can no longer perma
nently count on the institutional forces which
have in the past been amongst its strongest
supports. Its own institutions will tend, with
the whole course of civilization, to come
increasingly under the sway of the law of
accelerated change. The non-religious insti
tutions of the future, the kingdoms and the
393
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
democracies of this world, the social structures
which will be used for the purposes of pro
duction, of distribution, and of political life,
will certainly exemplify the law of accelerated
change. And these social structures will not
be under the control of religious institutions.
IV
Such are some of the lessons which history
and the present day teach to the modern
mind. Such are the conditions which deter
mine the religious problems of the future.
What shall we say of these problems, in their
bearing upon Christianity ?
In answer we can only take account of
what we have gained for an understanding of
our situation through our study of the Chris
tian ideas. What we need is to look again
at the sword of the spirit which is still in the
hands of religion.
Were the strength of the Christian religion,
in its contest with the coming modern world,
mainly the strength of its already existing
religious institutions, we can see at once
394
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
that all the three considerations which we
have just emphasized would combine to make
the prospects of the contest doubtful. It is
true that no reasonable man ought for a
moment to underestimate the actual vitality
of the religious institutions of the Christian
world, viewed simply as institutions. Asser
tions are indeed sometimes made to the effect
that the Church, in all its various forms and
divisions, or in very many of them, is already
very rapidly losing touch, or has already
hopelessly lost touch, with the modern world;
and that here the process of estrangement
between the Church and modern life is con
stantly accelerated. Some observers even ven
ture to predict a rapid dwindling of all or most
of the ecclesiastical institutions of Christendom
in the near future. I suppose all such extreme
assertions to be hasty and unwarranted.
What we can see is merely this : that if the
future of Christianity depended upon its insti
tutions rather than upon its ideas, the result
of changes that lie before us would be doubtful.
But our study of the Christian ideas has
395
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
shown that the deepest human strength of
this religion lies precisely in these ideas them
selves. By the might of these ideas early
Christianity conquered the Roman world.
In the light of these ideas European civiliza
tion has since been transformed ; and by their
spirit it still guides its life. These Christian
ideas, not their formulations in the creeds,
- not their always inadequate institutional
embodiment, and of course not any ab
stract statement of them such as our philo
sophical sketch has attempted, -- these ideas
constitute the sword of the spirit with which
the Christian religion has to carry on its
warfare. What makes its contest with the
world of the future hopeful is simply the fact
that, whatever creed or institution or practice
may lose its hold on the modern mind, the
Christian doctrine of life is the expression of
universal human needs, and of the very
needs upon whose satisfaction the very life
of every social order depends for its worth
and for its survival. No progress in the
industrial arts, and no massing of population
396
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
or of wealth, and no scheme of political re
form, can remove from the human mind and
the human heart these needs, and the ideas
that alone can satisfy them. As for social
changes, they will inevitably mean vast
social tragedies. But such tragedies can only
emphasize the very longings to which the
Christian doctrine of life appeals. Whatever
happens to any of the visible forms and insti
tutions of Christianity, the soul of this reli
gion can always defiantly say to itself :
Stab at thee then who will;
No stab the soul can kill.
With this interpretation of its mission pres
ent to its mind, it can face all its enemies with
all the might of the spirit upon its side. It
is this view of the relation between the Chris
tian ideas and the modern world which I here
wish to emphasize.
To accomplish this end, we have merely to
sum up what our whole study has already
taught us, and to contrast our views with
those which some other accounts of the prob
lem of Christianity have defended.
397
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
V
Many, in our day, are disposed to think
that the true, or perhaps also the last, refuge
of religion is some form of mystical piety.
Retire from the world ; seek rest in what
Meister Eckhart called the wilderness of the
Godhead ; win an immediate experience of
the presence of the divine ; surrender your
individuality; let God be all in all to you;
and then, so such lovers of religion declare,
-you will indeed win the peace that the
world can neither give nor take away. By
such a flight into Egypt the defenders of
mystical religion hope to save the divine life
from the hands of the Herod of modern world-
liness. If you thus flee, they say, you
may find what the saints of old found in their
deserts and their cloisters. Modern civiliza
tion, with all its restlessness, will then become
to you, so the partisans of mystical religion
insist, a matter of indifference. Time, with
all its mysterious futures and its endless
changes, will for you simply pass away.
398
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
You will behold the end of all things. You
will, so to speak, witness the judgment day.
If Christianity is to triumph at all, such minds
hold that it must triumph in the form of the
mystical and utterly unworldly piety thus
suggested. Such solutions of the problem of
Christianity are at this moment freely offered
for our need. Such solutions in plenty will
be offered in the future.
Now I have, personally, a profound respect
for the mystical element in religion. The
problem of justly estimating that element is
a problem as inexhaustible as it is fascinating.
And I have no doubt that the mystics have
indeed contributed indispensable religious
values to our experience. I am eager to
bring to light, in our future discussion, what
some of those values are. But of this I am
sure : Mystical piety can never either exhaust
or express the whole Christian doctrine of
life. For the Christian doctrine of life, in its
manifoldness, in the intensity and variety
of the human interests to which it appeals,
is an essentially social doctrine. Private
399
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
individual devotion can never justly inter
pret it.
Paul was a mystic; but he was a mystic
with a community to furnish the garden where
the mystical flowers grew; and where the
fruits of the spirit were ripened, and where all
the gifts of the spirit found their only worthy
expression.
Without his community, without his breth
ren to be edified, and without charity to fur
nish the highest of the spiritual gifts, Paul,
as he expressly tells us, would have accounted
all his other gifts as making him but as sound
ing brass and as a tinkling cymbal. In all
this he displayed that sound judgment, that
clear common sense, to which the Christian
doctrine of life has always been true. If
Christianity, in the future, triumphs, that
will be because some active and beloved
community comes gradually more and more
to take control of human affairs, and not
because religion has fled to the recesses of any
wilderness of the Godhead
As a fact, the mystical tendency in religion
400
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
is not the last, the mature, result, nor yet the
last refuge, of piety. Mysticism is the always
young, it is the childlike, it is the essentially
immature aspect of the deeper religious life.
Its ardor, its pathos, its illusions, and its
genuine illuminations have all the characters
of youth about them, characters beautiful
but capricious. Mature religion of the Chris
tian type takes, and must take, the form of
loyalty, --the loyalty which Baul lived out,
and described. Loyalty fulfils the individual,
not by annulling or quenching his individual
self-expression, but by teaching him to assert
himself through an active and creative devo
tion to his community. Hence, while one
may be thoroughly loyal, and therefore thor
oughly religious, without having the gift or
the grace of mystical illumination, no mystic
can become truly religious unless, like all the
really greatest of the mystics, beyond all
his illuminations, and besides all his mere
experiences of fulfilment, or of the immediate
presence of the Divine, --he attains to a
strenuous, active loyalty which can overcome
2D 401
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
the world only by living in the community.
The strength of Christianity, in its conflict
with the future world of our changing social
order, will therefore depend upon the fact
that its doctrine of life permits it, and indeed
requires it, to be as practical and constructive
in its dealing with the problems of social life
as the industrial arts are practical and con
structive in their production of material
goods. It is tke Christian will, and not Chris
tian mysticism, which must overcome the
world.
VI
If many thus suppose that the only solution
of the problem of Christianity is a solution
in terms of inner religious experience, and if
they hold that the modern man should seek
to interpret his religion mainly or wholly in
a mystical sense, and should regard Chris
tianity as a religion of private individual
illumination, --there are many others who
indeed vigorously reject this view. And some
such defenders of the faith declare that, if
Christianity is to survive at all, it can survive
402
MODERN MIND ANDCHRISTIANITY
only in the form of a literal acceptance of the
principal dogmas of the historical Church.
Those Christian apologists who view our
problem in this way declare that the modern
man, and the civilization of the future, must
face an old and well-known choice between
alternatives. "Christianity," so they say,
"declares itself to be a revealed religion.
This declaration forms a part of its very
essence. If one rejects the thesis that Chris
tianity is a revelation of God s will, the only
alternative is to view Christian doctrine as a
mere system of ethical teachings, and thus
to transform the Christian religion into bare
morality. The future of Christianity depends
wholly upon how this choice is made."
Our previous discussion now enables us to
answer this frequent assertion of the apolo
gists of Christian tradition, by insisting that,
whatever the final truth about Christianity
may be, the choice between alternatives which
lies before the modern man is not justly to be
stated in any such way as the one upon which
these apologists so often insist
403
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
In fact, the most significant choice for the
modern man, in dealing with Christianity,
lies between accepting and rejecting the Chris
tian doctrine of life. And the Christian
ideas whereof this doctrine of life consists
can be both estimated and put into practice
without presupposing any one view of God or
of revelation, although such an estimate may
indeed lead, in the end, to a theology. When
stated in human terms, as we have thus far
stated them in these lectures, the Christian
ideas do not constitute merely an ethical
system. Nor is their spirit that of a mere
morality. For they relate to the salvation of
man. That is, they include the assertion that
human life ought to be guided in the light of
a highest good which is not a merely wordly
or natural good, and which cannot be obtained
through mere skill in winning good fortune,
or in successfully living the life of a human
individual. For the Christian doctrine of life
insists that the human individual, as he is
naturally constituted, simply cannot live a
successful life, but must first be transfigured.
404
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
The Christian ideas depend upon acknowl
edging what we have called the distinction
between the two levels of human existence,
and upon defining the highest good of man in
terms of a transformation of our individual
nature. A loving union of the individual
with a level of existence which is essentially
above his own grade of being is what the Chris
tian doctrine of life defines as the way that
leads towards the highest good. The whole
of Christianity, as we have seen, grows out
of this doctrine of the two levels.
But, from the very nature of the case, the
vista which this doctrine of the two levels
opens before us is at once human and
illimitable. Man the individual is essentially
insufficient to win the goal of his own exist
ence. Man the community is the source of
salvation. And by man the community I
mean, not the collective biological entity
called the human race, and not the merely
natural community which gives to us, as social
animals, our ordinary moral training. Nor
by man the community do I mean the se-
405
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
ries of misadventures and tragedies whereof
the merely external history of what is called
humanity consists. By man the community
I mean man in the sense in which Paul con
ceived Christ s beloved and universal Church
to be a community, man viewed as one
conscious spiritual whole of life. And I say
that this conscious spiritual community is the
sole possessor of the means of grace, and is
the essential source of the salvation of the
individual. This, in general, is what the
Christian doctrine of life teaches. The essen
tial problem for the modern man is the ques
tion : Is this doctrine of life true ?
Now the conception of man the spiritual
community comes to our knowledge, not,
in the first place, by means of any revelation
from the world of the gods ; nor yet through
metaphysical reflection ; although, when once
we have this conception, it easily suggests to us
dogmas, and easily seems to us as if it were
a superhuman revelation, and also awakens
an inexhaustible metaphysical interest.
The saving idea of man the community
406
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
comes to us through two kinds of perfectly
human experience. First, it comes to us
through the experience of the failure both of
our natural self-will and of our mere morality
to save us. This failure is due to the essential
defect of the level upon which, by nature,
man the social individual lives. Buddhism
was founded upon this experience of the inevi
table failure of the human individual to win
his own goal. Paul, before his vision of the
risen Lord converted him, learned in another
form, and by perfectly human experience, the
same negative lesson. Individual self-will
is due to our insatiable natural greed, and is
only inflamed by our merely moral cultivation.
Secondly, however, when such experience
of the failure of a merely individual human
existence has done its work, another sort of
experience is needed to reveal to us the mean
ing of the life which belongs to the other
human level, --to the level of the beloved
community. This experience is the experi
ence of the meaning of loyalty. It is this
experience which, while always essentially
407
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
human in the facts that it brings to our no
tice, opens up its endless vistas, suggests to us
countless interpretations in terms of our rela
tions to a supernatural world, and justly seems
to be a revelation of something not ourselves
which is worthy to be our guide and salvation.
This experience of grace and of loyalty it is
which awakens an inexhaustible metaphysical
interest.
Since these ethical and religious and meta
physical vistas and interests are indeed end
less, and since the life work and the insight
to which they call us are constantly growing,
there is no one way of defining in dogmatic
formulas that view of God or of revelation to
which they will always require us to adhere.
Man the community, without ceasing to be
genuinely human, may also prove to be
divine. That is a matter for further inquiry.
Loyalty, without ceasing to be a spirit that
we learn through our human relations, may
also prove to be a revelation from a realm of
life which is infinitely superior to any human
life that we now experience. In other words,
408
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
the higher of the two levels of human exist
ence may prove to be, not only# essentially
above our individual level, but endlessly
and quite divinely above that level. Man
the community may prove to be God, as the
traditional doctrine of Christ, of the Spirit,
and of the Church seems to imply. But all
such possible outcomes and interpretations,
to which the Christian doctrine of life may
lead, must be discovered for themselves. It is
vain to narrow the choice that lies before the
modern man and before the future social order
to a choice between any one set of traditional
dogmas on the one hand, and a mere morality
on the other.
VII
The Christian doctrine of life is therefore
no mere morality, any more than it is a mere
mysticism. And yet it does not depend upon
first accepting any one form of theology or
any one view about revelation. For one who
wishes to judge fairly the Christian doctrine
of life, the choice which is to be faced is there-
409
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
fore this : Either a doctrine that individuals
can work 0ut their own salvation, or else a
recognition that salvation comes through
loyalty to the beloved community and through
the influence of the realm of grace. Loyalty,
- the beloved community, the realm of
grace, - - these are indeed essential features of
ChristiaA doctrine.
The various views about revelation which
have taken part in Christian history can be
understood only in case this contrast between
the two levels, and the practical significance
of grace, of salvation, and of loyalty, have
first been made clear in human terms. But
if these human aspects of the Christian ideas
have been grasped, one may then go on to the
comprehension of what the Christian views
about God have been trying, with varied
symbolism, to present to the minds of men.
One who approaches the problem of Chris
tianity with the lore of the two levels of
human existence well in mind will be ready
for spiritual novelties. He will not limit
himself to any simple pair of alternatives.
410
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
His creed will be neither a narrow moralism
nor an equally narrow traditional dogmatism.
He will perceive that we have endlessly new
things yet to learn about what were, and
still are, the sources of Christian doctrine
and life, - - the sources of the inspirations
which guide humanity into novel undertak
ings, and the sources, also, of those traditions
of the Church which symbolized so much more
then they made explicit. He will also be quite
ready to see that, despite all the changes of
doctrine, the unity of the Christian doctrine
of life has been and can be retained, and
retained just because Christianity is a doc
trine of life, and hence a doctrine of that
which preserves its meaning through change,
and by virtue of change, so that the doctrine
also must change its form as the life changes,
but must nevertheless keep its unity precisely
in so far as the changing life means something
coherent and worthy.
And therefore, when we ask how the
modern man, and how the future social order,
stands related to the Christian ideas, our
411
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
question really concerns the worth and the
coherence which the Christian doctrine of
life still retains, and will retain, in the midst
of our vast and distracted modern world.
Such a question is at best not easy to answer.
But our foregoing studies have furnished a
preparation for an attempt towards such an
answer. I believe that some such preparation
is needed, and will grow more and more nec
essary the jmore complex the situation of
modern civilization becomes.
VIII
Closely related to the effort to reduce our
problem of Christianity to the simple choice
of alternative, "Either Christianity is a
revealed religion, or else it is a mere system
of morality," there stands another interpre
tation of the same problem with which you
are all familiar. This interpretation often
expresses itself thus: "The modern man s
relation to a Christian creed must depend
upon his answer to the question, "Is, or is
not the man Jesus, the founder of Christianity,
412
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
identical with the Christ, the God-Man,
whom Christian tradition has acknowledged
as Lord?" The modern man s choice, when
thus interpreted, lies between the two alter
native theses : "Either Jesus, the founder of
Christianity ? was a man, ^and only a man;
or else Jesus was the Christ, that is, was the
God-Man."
Many apologists insist that this one choice
between alternatives may be said to cover all
that is most important in the problem of
Christianity. For if the modern man, in
presence of this choice, decides that in his
opinion Jesus was the Christ, the decision
brings him into close touch with all the best-
known traditions of historical Christianity.
The Christian religion is then acknowledged
to be a divine process ; and the work of the
divine founder becomes the one source of
human salvation. On the other hand, if
Jesus was a man and only a man, then, how
ever exalted his human life, or his doctrine,
may have been, he stands upon essentially the
same level as Socrates or as Confucius.
413
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
For in that case he taught as an individual
man, addressing his individual fellow-men;
and the worth of his teaching must vary with
the needs of persons and of periods. So the
problem of the modern man is stated by many
Christian apologists.
As a fact, the choice between alternatives
which is thus formulated can be neglected by
no serious student of our problem of Chris
tianity. It is also true, however, that the
choice cannot justly be made unless one takes
account of considerations which tend greatly
to widen our vista, and which define possi
bilities whereof those who believe in Christian
tradition seldom take adequate account.
In answer, then, to the challenge: "Either
you must believe that the founder of Chris
tianity was only a man, or else you must
accept Jesus as the Christ, the divine man,"
we must first reply, I think, by an assertion
which is as capable of a reasonable historical
confirmation as it is often, at the present
moment, neglected. It is indeed no new as
sertion, and many in the past have made it.
414
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
But our foregoing study, I think, helps us to
view this assertion in a new light.
IX
Whatever may be the truth about the
person of Christ, and about the supposed
supernatural origin of Christianity, the human
source of the Christian doctrine of life, and
also the human source of all the later Chris-
tologies, must be found in the early Christian
community itself. The Christian religion, in
its early form, is the work and expression of
the Christian Church.
By the early Christian community I mean,
first of all, the company of disciples who,
after the Master s death, assembled in Galilee,
and who, a little later, returned to Jerusalem.
This community was absorbed, at first, in
what it knew of the earliest visions of the
risen Lord ; and it narrated these visions in
forms which the well-known gospel legends
preserved for later Christian ages. This com
munity also cherished the memory and the
reported sayings of the Master. Erelong
415
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
this same community began to experience
those phenomena of collective religious fervor
which it regarded as the work of the divine
Spirit. It began its own task of propagating
its faith. It made converts. Of these con
verts the greatest was the apostle Paul. Now
this community, not Paul himself as an
individual, not any one man, but this
community, acting under the inspiration of
its leaders, is the source of all later forms
of Christian life and faith. In this sense it is
true that this community is the real human
founder of Christianity.
It is of course also true that Jesus during
his life had, as an individual man, taught a
doctrine, and done a work, which made this
first Christian community possible. In this
sense it is correct to say that the man Jesus,
in so far as he was merely an individual man,
is the founder of Christianity. But when we
say this, we must add that, so far as we know
of the teachings of the man Jesus, they did
not make explicit what proved to be precisely
the most characteristic feature of Christianity,
416
MODERN MI_ND AND CHRISTIANITY
- namely, the mission and the doctrine of
the Christian community itself. The doc
trine of Christian love, as the Master taught
it, is not yet, in explicit form, the whole
Christian doctrine of life. For the Christian
doctrine of life is a doctrine which is unintel
ligible apart from the ideal of the universal
community.
It is of course true, that had it not been for
the life and for the teachings of Jesus, and
had not the visions of the risen Lord been
seen and held in memory, there would have
been no Christian religion, and nothing for
Paul to discover or to teach.
But it is also true that Christianity not only
is a religion founded upon the idea of the
divine community, -- the Church, -- but also
is a religion whose human founder was rather
the community itself, acting as a spiritual
unity, --than it was any individual man
whatever. Our doctrine of the two levels of
human existence has explained what such a
view of the matter means.
We know how the Church interpreted its
2B 417
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
own origin when it held that its actual origi
nator was no mere individual man at all.
In this opinion the Church was, as I hold,
literally right, however you interpret the
human person of Jesus.
The modern man, therefore, need not accept
the early Christology of the Church in order
to recognize that, since the founding of Chris
tianity was due to the united spirit of the early
Christian community, this founding was not
wholly, or mainly, due to any individual man
whatever.
Meanwhile, since the human founder Jesus
gave the stimulus, the signal, or, to use
the now current Bergsonian language, set
in motion the vital impetus, without which
the Christian community, as this potent and
creative human and spiritual union, would
never have come into existence, we can
indeed also say that the man Jesus was, in
this sense, the founder of Christianity. But
we cannot say that, speaking of Jesus as an
individual man, we know that he explicitly
intended to found the Christian Church. For
418
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
he simply did not make explicit what he taught
about the Kingdom of Heaven as a divine
community. And the foundation of the
Church, as a community, depends, humanly
speaking, upon psychological motives - - upon
motives belonging not merely to individual
but also to social psychology - - upon motives
which we cannot fathom by means of any
soundings that our historical materials or our
knowledge of social psychology permit us to
make. We shall presumably never know the
true sources of the Easter visions until we have
learned the whole truth about that second,
that higher, level of human existence upon
whose reality I have insisted. The psychology
of the origins of Christian experience is thus
social, and is not an individual psychology.
These considerations with regard to Christian
origins teach us that, deep as the historical
mystery of the Christian origins remains,
and will presumably for countless ages remain,
neither the modern man of to-day, nor the
men of the future, can be limited to the
simple choice which the apologists emphasize.
419
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
X
But, as you will say, What bearing have
such historical comments upon the future
prospects of the Christian faith ?
I answer: These considerations tend to
show us : first, that the Christian ideas do
not demand for their interpretation and
appreciation any one theory regarding the
natural or supernatural origin of this religion;
and secondly, that, in consequence, these
ideas run no risk of being neglected or forgotten
in consequence of the inevitable modern
transformations of our ideas regarding nature
and the supernatural.
Without sinking to the level of a mere
moralism, Christianity presents to us a view
of life which indeed arouses profound meta
physical inquiries ; but which yet appeals
to the most concrete and vital and present
moral and religious interests. And without
staking its existence upon the truth of any
legends, Christianity, when fairly interpreted,
presents to us, in the symbolism of its Chris-
420
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
tological myths, a doctrine which is capable
of the most manifold religious and metaphys
ical interpretations, but which also expresses
the perfectly human and the verifiable experi
ences that the loyal life everywhere illustrates.
We have seen that the social motives to
which Christianity appeals are rooted in the
very depths of our nature. They are the
motives which make us naturally dependent
upon life in communities, and morally lost
and helpless without loyalty. These motives
will not pass away. Christianity was that
one among the religions which first invented
an effective way of making the ideal of loyalty
to the universal community not only impres
sive, but so transforming that for centuries
the European world was under the sway of the
institutions which gave expression to this ideal.
These institutions are now threatened;
and the historical outcome of the vast con
flicts upon which they are now entering
cannot be foreseen. Moreover, in order to
give to its doctrine of life not only a social
expression, but an internal consistency and
421
THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
intensity of religious meaning, Christianity,
in its early days, recorded its legends and
framed its creeds. Many of the resulting
groups of ideas already seem strangers in our
modern world; and they will probably seem
to future generations, as time goes on, -
less and less literally acceptable. But now
that we have seen something of what momen
tous and literally true, and permanently
needed, spiritual discoveries concerning hu
man life and its salvation the symbolism of
these legends and of these creeds originally
expressed, we are able to judge the Christian
doctrine of life upon its own immortal merits,
and to separate this judgment from any one
theory, either about metaphysical or about
historical truth.
Christianity will always arouse new critical
and philosophical inquiries ; its creeds will
probably change unceasingly ; its present
institutions may in time wholly pass away.
But in the new human life of the future ages,
love and loyalty will not lose, but grow in
human value, so long as man remains alive.
422
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
And the calm stern conscience wherewith
the Christian faith has always condemned
both our natural chaos of passion and our
graver disloyalties, this conscience will be
increasingly needed; needed, not because
men fear, but because men grow more self-
possessed and clear in vision. The more rea
sonable, the more critical, the more far-seeing,
and the more humane men become, the more
will the ideas of the moral burden of the indi
vidual and of the irrevocable guilt of dis
loyalty appeal, not to the morbid moods, but
to the resolute will and the clear self-con
sciousness of the enlightened man of the
future.
Furthermore, as the spirit of science extends
its influence, loyalty to the common insight
and to the growth of knowledge will become
prominent in the consciousness of the civilized
man. For the scientific spirit is indeed one
of the noblest and purest forms of loyalty.
The Christian virtues, then, will flourish
in the civilization of the future, if indeed that
civilization itself flourishes. For the more
423
THE PROBI/EM OF CHRISTIANITY
complex its constitution, and the swifter and
vaster its social changes, the more will that
civilization need love, and loyalty, and the
grace of spiritual unity, and the will and the
conscience which the Christian ideas have
defined, and counselled, and that atoning
conflict with evil wherein the noblest expres
sion of the spirit must always be found.
The Christian virtues will survive if hu
manity triumphs in its contest with its own
deepest needs and in its struggle after its
own highest goods. But if the Christian
virtues survive, they will find their religious
expression. And this expression will be at
tended with the knowledge that, in its his
torical origins, the religion of the future will
be continuous with and dependent upon the
earliest Christianity; so that the whole
growth and vitality of the religion of the future
will depend upon its harmony with the Chris
tian spirit. Whatever becomes of the present
creeds and the present institutions, the man
of the future, looking out over the wide vista
of the ages, will know how near he is, despite
424
MODERN MIND AND CHRISTIANITY
all time and change, to the spirit of Chris
tianity.
So much, and only so much, our survey of
the Christian doctrine of life permits us to
assert concerning the relation of the Christian
spirit to the modern mind, without essay
ing the grave tasks of a philosophical the
ory of the real world. Herewith the first
part of our task is done. The second part
calls for another method.
425
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Royce, Josiah
The problem of Christianity
