Theology and the social consciousness; a study of the relations of the social consciousness to theology

BR 115 .S6 K57 1902

King, Henry Churchill, 1858-

1934.
Theology and the social

consciousness

N©,.

THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL
CONSCIOUSNESS

*&»&-

THEOLOGY AND THE
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

A STUDY OF THE RELATIONS OF THE
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS TO THEOLOGY

BY

HENRY CHURCHILL KING

PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY
IN OBERLIN COLLEGE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
I902

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1902
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped September, igoz

luutit $11 r a 8 a n t $ r r 0 0

J. Horace McFarland Company
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Co tfje Sternberg of t&e
^arbaro Summer §>cljool of ^fjeologp

OF THE YEAR 19OI

IN RECOGNITION OF THEIR INTEREST IN THE LECTURES

THAT FORMED THE BASIS OF THIS BOOK

PREFACE

THERE is no attempt in this book to pre-
sent a complete system of theology, though
much of such a system is passed in review,
but only to study a special phase of theo-
logical thinking. The precise theme of
the book is the relations of the social con-
sciousness to theology. This is the subject
upon which the writer was asked to lecture
at the Harvard Summer School of Theology
of 1901 ; and the book has grown out of
the lectures there given. In preparing the
book for the press, however, the lecture
form has been entirely abandoned, and con-
siderable material added.

The importance of the theme seems to
justify a somewhat thorough -going treat-
ment. If one believes at all in the presence
of God in history — and the Christian can
have no doubt here — he must be profoundly

(vii)

PREFACE

interested in such a phenomenon as the
steady growth of the social consciousness.
Hardly any inner characteristic of our time
has a stronger historical justification than
that consciousness ; and it has carried the
reason and conscience of the men of this
generation in rare degree. Having its own
comparatively independent development, and
yet making an ethical demand that is thor-
oughly Christian, it furnishes an almost
ideal standpoint from which to review our
theological statements, and, at the same time,
a valuable test of their really Christian
quality.

In attempting, then, a careful study of
the relations of the social consciousness to
theology, this book aims, first, definitely to
get at the real meaning of the social con-
sciousness as the theologian must view it,
and so to bring clearly into mind the un-
conscious assumptions of the social con-
sciousness itself; and then to trace out the
influence of the social consciousness upon
the conception of religion, and upon theo-

PREFACE

logical doctrine. The larger portion of
the book is naturally given to the influence
upon theological doctrine ; and to make the
discussion here as pointed as possible, the
different elements of the social conscious-
ness are considered separately.

It should be noted, however, that the ques-
tion raised is not the historical one, How, as
a matter of fact, has the social consciousness
modified the conception of religion or the
statement of theological doctrine ? but the
theoretical one, How should the social con-
sciousness naturally affect religion and doc-
trine? In this sense, the result might be
called, in President Hyde's phrase, a "social
theology"; but, as I believe that the social
consciousness is at bottom only a true sense
of the fully personal, I prefer myself to think
of the present book as only carrying out in
more detail the contention of my Recotistruc-
tion in Theology — that theology should aim at
a restatement of doctrine in strictly personal
terms. So conceived, in spite of its casual
origin, this book follows very naturally upon

PREFACE

the previous book. Some of the same topics
necessarily recur here ; and references to
the Reconstruction have been freely made, in
order to avoid all unnecessary repetition.

That this social sense of the fully personal
has finally a real and definite contribution
to make to theology, I cannot doubt. I
can only hope that the present discussion
may be found at least suggestive, particularly
in the analysis of the social consciousness,
and in the treatment of mysticism and of
the ethical in religion, as well as in the con-
sideration of the special influence of the
elements of the social consciousness upon
the restatement of doctrine. Of the doc-
trinal applications, the application to the
problem of redemption may be considered,
perhaps, of most significance.

HENRY CHURCHILL KING.

Oberlin College, June, 1902.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PAGE

The Theme '

THE REAL MEANING OF THE SOCIAL CON-
SCIOUSNESS FOR THEOLOGY

INTRODUCTION
The Point of View of the Theologian 5

CHAPTER I

The Definition of the Social Consciousness 9

I. The Sense of the Like-Mindedness of Men 9

II. The Sense of the Mutual Influence of Men 11

1. Contributing Lines of Thought n

2. The Threefold Form of the Conviction 13

III. The Sense of the Value and Sacredness of the Person . 16

IV. The Sense of Obligation 18

V. The Sense of Love 20

CHAPTER II

The Inadequacy of the Analogy of the Organism as an

Expression of the Social Consciousness 23

I. The Value of the Analogy 23

(xi)

xii CONTENTS

PAGE

II. The Inevitable Inadequacy of the Analogy- 24

1. It Comes from the Sub-personal World 24

2. Access to Reality, Only Through Ourselves .... 24

3. Mistaken Passion for Construing Everything ... 25
III. The Analogy Tested by the Definition of the Social

Consciousness 27

CHAPTER III

The Necessity of the Facts of which the Social Conscious-
ness is the Reflection, if Ideal Interests are to

be Supreme 29

I. The Question 29

II. Otherwise, No Moral World at all 30

1. The Prerequisites of a Moral World 30

(1) A Sphere of Law 3°

(2) Ethical Freedom 30

(3) Some Power of Accomplishment 31

(4) Members One of Another 32

2. The Ideal World Requires, thus, the Facts of the

Social Consciousness 32

CHAPTER IV

The Ultimate Explanation and Ground of the Social

Consciousness 35

I. How can it be, Metaphysically, that we do Influence

One Another? 35

1. Not Due to the Physical Fact of Race-Connection . 36

2. We are not to Over - Emphasize the Principle of

Heredity 37

3. Not Due to a Mystical Solidarity 39

4. Grounded in the Immanence of God 40

CONTENTS xiii

PAGE

II. What is Required for the Final Positive Justification of

the Social Consciousness, as Ethical ? . . . . 44

1. Must be Grounded in the Supporting Will of God . 44

2. God's Sharing in our Life 48

3. The Consequent Transfiguration of the Social Con-

sciousness 49

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
UPON THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION

Introduction ci

CHAPTER V

The Opposition of the Social Consciousness to the Falsely

Mystical 55

I. What is the Falsely Mystical? 55

1. Nash's Definition 55

2. Herrmann's Definition 56

II. The Objections of the Social Consciousness to the Falsely

Mystical 57

1. Unethical 58

2. Does not Give a Really Personal God 58

3. Belittles the Personal in Man 59

4. Leaves the Historically, Concretely Christian .... 62

CHAPTER VI

The Emphasis of the Social Consciousness Upon the Per-
sonal Relation in Religion, and so Upon the

Truly Mystical 66

I. The Social Consciousness Tends Positively to Emphasize

the Personal Relation in Religion 66

1. Emphasizes Everywhere the Personal 66

XIV CONTENTS

PAGE

2. Requires the Laws of a Deepening Friendship in

Religion 67

3. Requires the Ideal Conditions of the Richest Life

in Religion 68

II. The Social Consciousness thus Keeps the Truly Mystical. 70

1. The Justifiable and Unjustifiable Elements in Mysti-

cism 71

(1) Emotion, the Test 71

(2) Subjective Tendency 72

(3) Underestimating the Historical 72

(4) Tendency toward Vagueness 73

(5) Tendency toward Pantheism 73

(6) Tendency to Extravagant Symbolism .... 76

2. The Protest in Favor of the Whole Man 78

3. The Self-Controlled Recognition of Emotion ... 82

CHAPTER VII

The Thorough Ethicizing of Religion 86

I. The Pressure of the Problem 86

II. The Statement of the Problem 87

III. The Answer 89

1. Involved in Relation to Christ 89

2. The Divine Will Felt in the Ethical Command . . 90

3. Involved in the Nature of God's Gifts 91

4. Communion with God, Through Harmony with His

Ethical Will 92

5. The Vision of God for the Pure in Heart .... 92

6. Sharing the Life of God 93

7. Christ, as Satisfying Our Highest Claims on Life . . 94

8. The Vision of the Riches of the Life of Christ,

Ethically Conditioned 96

9. The Moral Law, as a Revelation of the Love of God 98

CONTENTS XV

CHAPTER VIII

The Emphasis of the Social Consciousness Upon the His-
torically Christian I02

I. The Social Consciousness Needs Historical Justification . 102

II. Christianity's Response to this Need 103

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
UPON THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINE

CHAPTER IX

General Results IOc

I. The Conception of Theology in Personal Terms ... 106
II. The Fatherhood of God, as the Determining Principle

in Theology Xo9

III. Christ's Own Social Emphases .. m

IV. The Reflection in Theology of the Changes in the Con-

ception of Religion XI,

CHAPTER X

The Influence of the Deepening Sense of the Like-Mind

edness of Men Upon Theology IIS

I. No Prime Favorites with God n6

II. The Great Universal Qualities and Interests, the Most

Valuable II7

III. Essential Likeness Under very Diverse Forms 121

IV. As Applied to the Question of Immortality 124

V. Consequent Larger Sympathy with Men, Faith in Men,

and Hope for Men 127

VI. Judgment According to Light, and the Moral Reality of

the Future Life 152

xvi CONTENTS

CHAPTER XI

PAGE

The Influence of the Deepening Sense of the Mutual In-
fluence of Men Upon Theology , 136

I. The Real Unity of the Race 136

II. Deepening the Sense of Sin 139

III. Mutual Influence for Good in the Attainment of Char-
acter 145

1. Application to the Problem of Redemption .... 147

2. The Consequent Ethical and Spiritual Meaning of

Substitution and Propitiation 150

IV. Mutual Influence for Good in our Personal Relation to

God 160

1. In Coming into the Kingdom 160

2. In Fellowship within the Kingdom 162

3. In Intercessory Prayer 164

V. Mutual Influence for Good in Confessions of Faith 167

1. Complete Uniformity of Belief and Statement Im-

possible 169

2. Complete Uniformity of Belief and Statement Un-

desirable 171

VI. The Consequent Importance of the Doctrine of the

Church 177

CHAPTER XII

The Influence of the Deepening Sense of the Value and

Sacredness of the Person Upon Theology 179

I. The Recognition of the Personal in Man 180

1. Man's Personal Separateness from God . . 180

2. Emphasis upon Man's Moral Initiative • 181

3. Man, a Child of God ... 183

CONTENTS XV11

PAGE

II. The Recognition of the Personal in Christ 184

1. Christ, a Personal Revelation of God ...... 184

2. Emphasizing the Moral and Spiritual in Asserting

the Supremacy of Christ 185

3. The Moral and Spiritual Grounds of the Supremacy

of Christ 188

(1) The Greatest in the Greatest Sphere . . . 188

(2) The Sinless and Impenitent One 192

(3) Consciously Rises to the Highest Ideal . . . 194

(4) Realizes the Character of God 195

(5) Consciously Able to Redeem All Men . . . 196

(6) Complete Normality under this Transcen-

dent God - Consciousness and Sense of

Mission 197

(7) The Only Person Who can call out Absolute

Trust 198

(8) The One, in Whom God Certainly Finds Us . 199

(9) The Ideal Realized 200

4. Christ's Double Uniqueness 201

5. The Increasing Sense of Our Kinship with Christ,

and of His Reality 205

III. The Recognition of the Personal in God . ..... 207

1. The Steady Carrying Through of the Completely

Personal in the Conception of God. Guarding

the Conception 208

2. God is Always the Completely Personal God . 212

(1) Consequent Relation of God to "Eternal

Truths" 212

(2) Eternal Creation 214

(3) The Unity and Unchangeableness of God . . 216

(4) The Limitations of the Conception of Im-

manence 217

CONTENTS

PAGE

3. Deepening the Thought of the Fatherhood of God . 218

(1) History, no Mere Natural Process 218

(2) God, the Great Servant 219

(3) No Divine Arbitrariness 220

(4) The Passibility of God 221

4. As to the Doctrine of a Social Trinity 222

5. Preeminent Reverence for Personality, Characterizing

all God's Relations with Men 226

(1) Reflected in Christ 226

(2) In Creation 230

(3) In Providence 232

(4) In Our Personal Religious Life 233

(5) In the Judgment 237

(6) In the Future Life 240

THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL
CONSCIOUSNESS

INTRODUCTION

THE THEME

No theologian can be excused to-day from
a careful study of the relations of theology
and the social consciousness. Whether this
study becomes a formal investigation or not,
the social consciousness is so deep and signifi-
cant a phenomenon in the ethical life of our
time, that it cannot be ignored by the theo-
logian who means to bring his message to
men really home. This book is written in
the conviction that, while men are thus
moved as never before by a deep sense of
mutual influence and obligation, they have
also as deep and genuine an interest as ever
in the really greatest questions of religion
and theology. Interests so significant and so
akin cannot long remain isolated in the mind.
They are certain soon profoundly to influence

A (0

2 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

each other. And this mutual influence of
theology and the social consciousness form
the theme of this book.

Two questions are naturally involved in
this theme. First: Has theology given
any help, or has it any help to give, to the
social consciousness? — the question of the
first division of the book. Second : Has the
social consciousness made any contribution,
or has it any contribution to make, to theol-
ogy?— the question of the second and third
divisions. That is to say: On the one hand,
Have the great facts which theology studies
any help to give to the man who faces the
problem of social progress — of the steady
elevation of the race? On the other hand,
Has the great fact of the immensely quick-
ened social consciousness of our time, with
all that it means, any help to give to the
theologian in his attempt to bring the great
Christian truths really home to men, to make
them more real, more rational, more vital?

Or again : On the one hand, do theological
doctrines — the most adequate statements we
can make of the great Christian truths — best
explain and best ground the social conscious-
ness, so as best to bring our entire thought
in this sphere of the social into unity? Is

THE THEME

the Christian truth so great that it not only
includes all that is true in this new social
consciousness — is fully able to take it up into
itself and to make it feel at home there — but
also, so great that it alone can give the social
consciousness its fullest meaning, alone enable
it to understand itself, and alone furnish it
adequate motive and power? Is the social
consciousness, in truth, only a disguised state-
ment of Christian convictions, and does it
really require the Christian religion and its
thoughtful expression to complete itself?
Must the social consciousness say, when it
comes to full self-knowledge, — I am myself
an unmeaning and unjustified by-product, if
there is not a God in the full Christian sense?
and, so saying, confirm again the great Chris-
tian truths? This is the question of the first
division.

On the other hand, since the task of any
given theologian is necessarily temporary, and
since any marked modification of the con-
sciousness of men will inevitably demand
some restatement of theological doctrine, the
question here becomes — To what changed
points of view in religion and theology, to
what restatements of doctrine, and so to what
truer appreciation of Christian truth, does

\ THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

the new social consciousness naturally lead ?
How do the affirmations of the social con-
sciousness, as the outcome of a careful, in-
ductive study of the social evolution of the
race, affect our theological statements? This
is the question of the second and third divi-
sions of the book.

Our discussion must of course assume and
build on the conclusions of sociology, and
of New Testament theology, especially the
conclusions concerning the social teaching
of Jesus.

THE REAL MEANING OF THE SOCIAL
CONSCIOUSNESS FOR THEOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE THEOLOGIAN

First, then, what is the real meaning of
the social consciousness, as the theologian
must view it? The answer to this question
involves a preliminary one: What is the
point of view of the theologian in any in-
vestigation? One can only give his own
answer.

First of all, the theologian, as such, is an
interpreter, not a tracer of causal connections.
He builds everywhere upon the scientific in-
vestigator, and takes from him the statement
of facts and processes. With these he has
primarily nothing to do. With reference to
the social consciousness, therefore, he does
not attempt to do over again the work of
the sociologist; he asks only, What does the
social consciousness, in the light of the whole

(5)

6 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

of life and thought, mean; not, How did it
come about?

The theologian, too, is a believer in the
supremacy of spiritual interests; this is his cen-
tral contention. He affirms strenuously, with
the scientific worker, the place and value of
the mechanical ; but he is certain that the
mechanical can understand itself even, only
as it is seen to be simple means, and thus
clearly subordinate in significance. His prob-
lem is, therefore, everywhere, that of ideal
interpretation, not of mechanical explanation.
But, while he has nothing to do with the
scientific tracing of immediate causal con-
nections, he recognizes causality itself as re-
quiring an ultimate explanation, that cannot
be mechanically given. The theologian must
be in this, then, an ideal interpreter, and an
inquirer after the ultimate cause.

The theologian assumes, moreover, the
legitimacy and value of the fact of religion;
for theology is simply the thoughtful, com-
prehensive, and unified expression of what
religion means to us. The meaning of the
social consciousness to the theologian in-
volves, therefore, at once the question of 'its
relation to religious conviction.

The point of view of the Christian theo-

THE VIEW OF THE THEOLOGIAN 7

logian involves, besides, the reality of the
personal God in personal relation to persons.
Theology is in earnest in its thought of God,
and knows that God is everywhere to be
taken into account; that, if there is a God
at all, he is not to be exiled into some cor-
ner of his universe, but is intimately con-
cerned in all, is at the very heart of all ; and
that, therefore, it is not a matter of merely
curious interest or of subsidiary inquiry,
whether we are to look at our questions
with God in mind.

Finally, the Christian theologian tries every-
where to make his point of view the point
of view of Christ. The theology, upon which
he ultimately stakes his all, is Christ's theol-
ogy. He knows that there is much con-
cerning which he cannot refuse to think,
but upon which Christ has not expressed
himself either explicitly or by clear infer-
ence ; but in all this unavoidable supple-
mentary thinking he aims to be absolutely
loyal to the spirit of Christ.

From this point of view of the Christian
theologian, now, what does the social con-
sciousness mean? The answer may be given
under four heads: (i) the definition of the
social consciousness; (2) the inadequacy of

8 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

the analogy of the organism, as an expression
of the social consciousness ; (3) the necessity
of the facts, of which the social conscious-
ness is the reflection, if ideal interests are
to be supreme ; (4) the ultimate explanation
and ground of the social consciousness.

These four topics form the subjects of
the four chapters of the first division of our
inquiry.

CHAPTER I

THE DEFINITION OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The simplest and probably the most accu-
rate single expression we can give to the
social consciousness, is to say that it is a
growing sense of the real brotherhood of
men. But five elements seem plainly in-
volved in this, and may be profitably sepa-
rated in our thought, if that is to be clear
and definite: — a deepening sense (i) of the
likeness or like-mindedness of men, (2) of
their mutual influence, (3) of the value and
sacredness of the person, (4) of mutual obli-
gation, and (5) of love.

I. THE SENSE OF THE LIKE-MINDEDNESS OF MEN1

If a society is "a group of like-minded
individuals," if the "all -essential" requisites
for cooperation are "like-mindedness and
consciousness of kind," as Giddings tells us,
then certainly a prime element in the social
consciousness is likeness and the sense of

1 Cf . Giddings, Elements of Sociology, pp. 6, 10, 65, 66, 77.
(9)

IO THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

it — a growing sense of the mental and moral
resemblance and "potential resemblance"
of all men, and of all classes of men, though
not equality of powers.

"Equality of need" among men, too,1 to
which sociology comes as one of its surest
conclusions, implies a common capacity, even
if in varying degrees, to enter into the most
fundamental interests of life, and so points
unmistakably to the essential likeness of men
in the most important things.

So, too, sociology's unquestioning asser-
tion that both smaller and larger groups of
men constantly tend toward unity, assumes
potential resemblance.

And the uniform experience and prescrip-
tion of social workers, that really knowing
"how the other half lives" brings increasing
sympathy, also affirm the fundamental like-
ness of men. Every painstaking investigation
of a social question comes out at some point
or other with a fresh discovery of a pre-
viously hidden, underlying resemblance be-
tween classes of men.

From the careful, inductive study of social
evolution, too, the men of our day see, as no
other generation has seen, that the great force

1 Cf. Giddings, Op. cit., p. 324.

DEFINITION OF SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS II

always and everywhere at work in that evo-
lution has been likeness and the conscious-
ness of it.

For all these reasons, this generation be-
lieves, as men never believed before, in the
essential like-mindedness of men; and this
deepening sense of the like-mindedness of
men is certainly one element in the modern
social consciousness.

II. THE SENSE OF THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN

A second element in the social conscious-
ness, and, perhaps, that which has most of
all characterized it through the larger period
of its growth, is the strong sense of the
mutual influence of men — that we are all
"members one of another."

i. Contributing Lines of Thought. — It is
worth seeing how firmly planted the idea
is. Several lines of thought have united to
induce men to emphasize — perhaps even to
over -emphasize — this way of thinking of
society. The influence of natural science,
in the first place, has been inevitably in this
direction. Its root idea of the universality
of law forces upon one the thought of a
world which is a coherent whole, a unity with

12 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

universal forces in it, in which every part is
inextricably connected with every other. So,
too, the acceptance of the theory of evo-
lution has led science to regard the whole
history of the physical universe as an organic
growth.

Psychology, also, with its present-day em-
phasis, in Baldwin and Royce, upon the con-
stant presence and fundamental character of
imitation, and its insistence upon the still
more fundamental impulsiveness of conscious-
ness which Dewey believes underlies imi-
tation,1 is really proclaiming exactly this ele-
ment of the social consciousness. And the
whole assertion by the later psychology of
the unity of man -mind and body, and of
the complex intertwining of all the functions
of the mind, is in closest harmony with a
similar view of society.

Philosophy, too, is exerting all along a
half-unconscious pressure toward the thought
of the organic unity of society. That phil-
osophy may exist at all, it must start from
the assumption of a universe, a real unity of
truth, and its problem is to find a discerned
unity. It knows no unrelated being, and,
consequently, whether it theoretically accepts

'See The New World, Sept., 1898, p. 516.

DEFINITION OF SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 13

the formulation or not, it must admit that,
as a matter of fact, to be is to be in relations.
It asserts as a universal fact, what natural
science and psychology both affirm in their
own respective spheres, the concrete related-
ness of all. It cannot well deny the same
thought when applied to society. Its repeated
attempts, moreover, to conceive all as a devel-
oping unity, and the profound influence of
the analogy of the organism upon its history,
both further sustain the organic view of
society.

Christianity, as well, has been a powerful
factor in this direction from the beginning,
for it really first gave the Idea of Humanity.1

2. The Threefold Form of the Conviction. —
Sustained, now, by all these movements in
natural science, psychology, philosophy, and
Christianity, this thought of the mutual influ-
ence of men has taken three forms : that
mutual influence is inevitable, isolation im-
possible; that mutual influence is desirable,
isolation to be shunned ; that mutual influence
is indispensable, isolation blighting.

(1) This second element in the social
consciousness has meant, then, in the first
place, a growing sense of the inevitableness

1 Cf. Lotae, The Microcosmus, Vol. II, p. 211.

14 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

of the mutual influence of all men, and of
all classes of men ; that we are all parts of
one whole, each part unavoidably affected
by every other; that we are bound up in one
bundle of life with all men, and cannot live
an isolated life if we would ; that we do
influence one another whether we will or
not, and tend unconsciously to draw others
to our lever and are ourselves drawn toward
theirs; that we joy and suffer together
whether we will or not, and grow or deteri-
orate together.

(2) But the mutual influence of men
means more than this: not only that we do
inevitably affect one another in living out
our own life, but a growing sense of the
fact that we are obviously not intended to
come to our best in independence of one
another; that we are made on so large a
plan that we cannot come to our best alone ;
that we are evidently made for personal rela-
tions, and that, therefore, largeness of life for
ourselves depends on our entering into the
life of others.

(3) But even more than this is true. It
is not only that entering into the life of others
is a help in my life, it is the great help, the
one great means, the indispensable, the essen-

DEFINITION OF SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 1 5

tial condition of all largeness of life ; it is
the very meaning of life, — life itself. We
are to find our life only in losing our life.
Life is the fulfilment of relations. When
we try to run away from the variety and
complexity of these relations, we are running
away from life itself. The indispensableness
of these relations to others is assumed, also,
in the assertion by the sociologist of an
evolution toward a society, at once more
and more complex, and more and more
perfect.

But if I grow in the growth of another,
the other grows in my growth. If the only
thing of value that I can finally give is my-
self, the value of that gift depends upon
the largeness and richness of the self given.
For love's own sake, therefore, I must grow,
must strive to bring to its highest perfection
that work which is given me to do. A
person is a social being called to contribute
to the whole, in the line of his own best
possibilities. One's largest ministry to others
is to be rendered, then, through sacred regard
for one's own calling, considered as exactly
his place of largest service. Or, to put it
the other way : I can come to my best only
in work so great and in associations so large

l6 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

that I may lose myself in them in perfect
objectivity.

The mutual influence of men, therefore, is
unavoidable, is desirable, is indispensable; iso-
lation impossible, hindering, blighting. This
is the true solidarity of the race, in which
there is no fiction, no hiding in the incon-
ceivable, and no pretense.

III. THE SENSE OF THE VALUE AND SACREDNESS
OF THE PERSON

The third element in the social conscious-
ness, the sense of the value and sacredness
of the person, follows naturally from the
sense of like-mindedness and of mutual in-
fluence, but needs distinct and emphatic
statement.

It is less easily separable than the other
elements named, and, indeed, may be made
to include all the others, and does, in a way,
carry all with it. Thus broadly conceived,
it has seemed to the writer that — with the
return to the historical Christ — it might well
be called the most notable moral character-
istic of our time.1 But, though less easily
and definitely discriminated, one who knows

'See King, Reconstruction in Theology, Chap. IX, pp, 169 ff.

DEFINITION OF SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 1 7

deeply the modern social consciousness would
surely feel that the very heart of it had been
omitted, if this growing sense of the value
and sacredness of the person did not come
to strong expression. Reverence for person-
ality— the steadily deepening sense that every
person has a value not to be measured in
anything else, and is in himself sacred to
God and man — this it is which marks un-
mistakably every step in the progress of the
individual and of the race. Without it, what-
ever the other marks of civilization, you have
only tyranny and slavery ; with it, though
every trace of luxury and scientific invention
be lacking, you have the perfection of human
relations.

This sense of the value and sacredness of
the person not only characterizes increasingly
the whole social and moral evolution of the
race, but it is to be seen in the clearly con-
scious demand for equality of rights, and,
especially — to take a single example — in the
growing recognition that the child is an
individual with his own rights; that he has
a personality of his own of a sanctity in-
violable by the parent; that there are clear
bounds beyond which no one may go with-
out personal outrage. The recognition by

B

15 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

psychology of respect for personality as one
of the three or four most fundamental con-
ditions— if not the most essential of all — of
happiness, of character, and of influence, is
explicit confirmation of the truth of this
element of the social consciousness.

IV. THE SENSE OF OBLIGATION

But the elements of the social conscious-
ness already named lead directly to a grow-
ing sense of obligation. Every man carries
in himself his only possible standard of
measurement of all else. A growing sense
of the likeness of other men to himself
quickens at once, therefore, the sense of
obligation, and leads naturally to the Golden
Rule. Recognition of mutual influence, too,
inevitably carries with it a deeper sense of
obligation; for, if we do affect others con-
stantly, then we are manifestly under obliga-
tion not only to do direct service to others,
but so to order our own lives as to help,
not to hinder, others. The sense of the
value and sacredness of the person plainly
looks to the same deepening of obligation.

As an element of the social consciousness,
the sense of obligation means for a given

DEFINITION OF SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS ig

individual, a growing sense of responsibility
for all ; and for society at large an increase
in the number of those who feel the obli-
gation to serve.

The growth in each of these directions
cannot be questioned. There is no privi-
leged class, in whose own consciences there
is not being recognized more and more the
right of the claim that they must justify them-
selves by service which shall be as unique
as their privilege. In consequence, the con-
ception of the governing classes is steadily
changing, for both the governed and the
governing, to some recognition of Christ's
principle, that he who would be first must
be servant of all. The sharp insistence of
the sociologist that "organization must be for
the organized" expresses the same thought.
One must add sociology's double asser-
tion, that society is really advancing toward
its goal, and yet that a chief condition of
the progress of society is unselfish leader-
ship.1 This can only mean that there is,
increasingly, unselfish leadership, more and
more of conscious, willing cooperation on
the part of men in forwarding the social
evolution.

1 See Giddings, Op. cit., pp. 302, 320-322,

20 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

None of us can return to the older atti-
tude of comparative indifference, nor can we
honestly defend it. We do have obligations
and we own them ; we are judging ourselves
increasingly by Christ's test of ministering
love.

V. THE SENSE OF LOVE

And the social consciousness ends neces-
sarily in love, in the broader, ethical meaning
of that word. We shall never feel that the
social consciousness is complete, short of real
love. All the other elements of the social con-
sciousness lead to love and are included in it.
Even the sociologist must bring in as neces-
sary results of the consciousness of kind — sym-
pathy, affection, and desire for the recognition
of others;1 and he finds these always more
or less distinctly at work among men.

These further considerations from the study
of evolution confirm this result: that man is
preeminently the social animal;2 that with
man we have clearly reached the stage of
persons and of personal relations ;3 that the
very existence and development of man re-

'Cf. Giddings, Op. cit., pp. 65, 66.

2Cf. Giddings, Op. cit., p. 241.

3 See King, Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 92-96.

DEFINITION OF SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 21

quired love at every step ;l and that the chief
moral significance of man's prolonged infancy
is probably to be found in the necessary call-
ing out of love.2

So, too, it has become constantly more and
more clear that our obligation, what we owe
to others, is ourselves ; and the giving of the
self is love. It seems to be thrust home
upon social workers everywhere that there is
no solution of any social problem without a
personal self-giving in some way on the part
of some ; that there is no cheaper way than
this very costly one of love, of the giving of
ourselves — whether in the family, or in char-
ity, or in criminology.

The point, already noted, that the progress
of society depends on leaders who will serve
with unselfish devotion, is only another em-
phasis upon love as an indispensable element
of the social consciousness.

And the social goal — equality, brotherhood,
liberty, when these terms are given any ade-
quate ethical content — is absolutely unthink-
able in any really vital sense without love.

Any attempted definition of love, more-

1 Cf . Drummond, The Ascent of Man, pp. 272 ff.
sCf. John Fiske, The Destiny of Man, p. 74; Drummond, Op.
cit., p. 279 ff.

22 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

over, resolves at once into what we mean by
the social consciousness. If we define love
as the giving of self, this is exactly what,
with growing clearness and insistence, the
social consciousness demands. If with Herr-
mann we call love, "joy in personal life" —
joy, that is, in the revelation of personal life,
this can only come in that trustful, reverent,
self -surrendering association to which the
social consciousness exhorts. If with Ed-
wards we call love, willing the highest and
completest good of all, we reach the same
result. Or if with Christ in the Beatitudes,
or with Paul in the thirteenth of I Cor-
inthians, we study the characteristics of love,
we phall hardly doubt that a complete social
consciousness must have these marks of love.

These elements, then, make up the social
consciousness : the sense of like-mindedness,
of mutual influence, of the value and sacred-
ne-ss of the person, of obligation, and of love;
and all these, with their implied demands,
only point to what a person must be if he is
to be fully personal.

With this definition in mind, we may
now ask, whether the analogy of the or-
ganism can adequately express the social
consciousness.

CHAPTER II

THE INADEQUACY OF THE ANALOGY OF THE ORGANISM
AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS1

I. THE VALUE OF THE ANALOGY

The analogy of the organism has played
so large a part in the history of thought,
especially in the consideration of ethical and
social questions, that it is well worth while
to ask exactly how far this analogy is ade-
quate, although the danger of the abuse of
the analogy is probably somewhat less than
formerly.

It may be said at once that it is, undoubt-
edly, the very best illustration of these social
relations that we can draw from nature, and it
is of real value. It has had, moreover, as
already indicated, a most influential and
largely honorable history in the development
of the thought of men. Its classical expres-
sion is in the epoch-making twelfth chapter
of I Corinthians, which makes so plain the
ethical applications of the analogy.

1 Cf. King, Op. cit., pp. 92 ff., 179.
(23)

24 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

II. THE INEVITABLE INADEQUACY OF THE
ANALOGY

1. Comes from the Sub-personal World. — But
it ought clearly to be seen, on the other
hand, that, considered as a complete expres-
sion of the social consciousness, it is neces-
sarily inadequate ; and it is of moment that
we should not be dominated by it. Too
often it has been made to cover the entire
ground, as though in itself it were a com-
plete expression and final explanation of the
social consciousness, instead of a quite in-
complete illustration. For, in the first place,
the very fact that the analogy comes from
the physical world, from the sub-personal
realm, makes it certain that it must fail at
vital points in the expression of what is pecu-
liarly a personal and ethical fact. We can-
not safely argue directly from the physical
illustration to ethical propositions.

2. Access to Reality, Only Through Our-
selves.— Moreover, in this day of extraordinary
attention to the physical world, it is particu-
larly important that we should keep constantly
in mind that we have direct access to reality
only in ourselves; that man is himself neces-
sarily the only key which we can use for any

THE ANALOGY OF THE ORGANISM 25

ultimate understanding of anything; or, as
Paulsen puts it, "I know reality as it is in
itself, in so far as I am real myself, or in so
far as it is, or is like, that which I am,
namely, spirit."1 We are not to forget that,
in very truth, we know better what we mean
by persons and personal relations, than we do
what we mean by members of a body and
by organic relations; and, further, that in
point of fact, all those metaphysical notions
by which we strive to think things are ulti-
mately derived from ourselves ; and that then
we illogically turn back upon our own minds,
from which all these notions came, to explain
the mind in the same secondary way in which
we explain other things.

3. Mistaken Passion for Construing Every-
thing.— Natural science, with its sole problem
of the tracing of immediate causal connec-
tions, naturally provokes a persistent, but
nevertheless thoroughly mistaken, " passion,"
as Lotze calls it,2 "for construing everything,"
— even the most real and final reality, spirit;
which wishes to see even this real and final
reality explained as the mechanical result of
the combination of simpler elements, them-

1 Introduction to Philosophy, p. 373.

2 The Microcosmus, Vol. I, p. 262.

26 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

selves, it is to be noted, finally absolutely
inexplicable. Such perverse attempts will be
widely hailed, by many who do not understand
themselves, as highly scientific. And one who
refuses to enter upon such investigations
will be criticized by such minds as "hardly
getting into grips with his subject."

But it is a false application of the scientific
instinct that leads one to seek mechanical
explanation for the final reality, or that urges
to precision of formulation beyond that war-
ranted by the data. It is from exactly this
falsely scientific bias that theology needs
deliverance. "For," as Aristotle reminds us,
"it is the mark of a man of culture to try to
attain exactness in each kind of knowledge
just so far as the nature of the subject
allows." There is a wise agnosticism that
is violated alike by negative and by positive
dogmatism. It is often overlooked that there
is an over -wise radicalism that assumes a
knowledge of the depth of the finite and
infinite, quite as insistent and dogmatic as
the view it supposes itself to be opposing.
"I know it is not so," it ought not to need
to be said, is not agnosticism.

The guiding principle in a truly scientific
theology is this, as Lotze suggests: Just

THE ANALOGY OF THE ORGANISM 27

so far as changing action depends upon alter-
ing conditions, we have explanatory and con-
structive problems to solve, and no farther.
No philosophical view can do without a
simply given reality. And we shall never
succeed in understanding by what machinery
reality is manufactured — in "deducing the
whole positive content of reality from mere
modifications of formal conditions."1

We shall not allow ourselves to be misled,
therefore, by the scientific sound of the
detailed application of the analogy of the
organism to the facts of the social conscious-
ness. And it is a satisfaction to see that the
clearest sociological writers are coming to
agree that there is strictly no "social mind"
that can be affirmed to exist as a separate
reality, supposed to answer to society con-
ceived in its totality as an organism.

III. THE ANALOGY TESTED BY THE DEFINITION
OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

When, now, we test the analogy of the
organism by its competency to express the
full meaning of the social consciousness, as
it has been defined, we must say that the

^otze, The Microcosmus, Vol. II, pp. 649 ff.

28 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

analogy but feebly expresses the likeness of
men ; it best expresses the inevitableness of
mutual influence, though even here there is
no understandable ultimate explanation; it
fairly expresses the desirableness and indis-
pensableness of mutual influence, but, of
course, with entire lack of ethical meaning;
and it quite fails to express the sense of the
value and the sacredness of the person, the
sense of obligation, and the sense of love.
We need to see and feel exactly these short-
comings, if we are not to abuse the analogy.
There is no social consciousness that will
hold water that does not rest on what Phillips
Brooks called "a healthy and ineradicable
individualism," in the sense of the recogni-
tion of the fully personal. We are spirits,
not organisms, and society is a society of
persons, not an organism, in a strict sense.
Why should we wish to make society less
significant than it is?

CHAPTER III

THE NECESSITY OF THE FACTS, OF WHICH THE SOCIAL
CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE REFLECTION, IF IDEAL
INTERESTS ARE TO BE SUPREME

I. THE QUESTION

WITH this positive and negative definition
of the social consciousness in our minds, a
third question immediately suggests itself to
one who wishes to go to the bottom of our
theme. Why must the facts, of which the
social consciousness is the reflection, be as
they are if ideal interests are to be supreme?
What has a theodicy to say as to these facts ?
Why, that is, from the point of view of the
ideal — of religion and theology— why are we
constituted so alike? so that we must influ-
ence one another? so that the results of our
actions necessarily go over into the lives of
others? so that the innocent suffer withnhe
guilty and the guilty, profit with" the righteous?
so that we must recognize everywhere the
claim of others? so that we must respect their
personality? and so that we must love them?

(29)

30 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

II. OTHERWISE NO MORAL WORLD AT ALL

The answer to all these world-old questions
may perhaps be contained in the single state-
ment, that otherwise we should have no moral
world at all. There would be no thinkable
moral universe, but rather as many worlds as
there are individuals, having no more to do
with one another than the chemical reactions
going on in a set of test-tubes.

I. The Prerequisites of a Moral World. For
our human thinking, assuredly, there are cer-
tain prerequisites, that the world may be at
all a sphere for moral training and action.
What are these prerequisites for a moral
world? There must be, in the first place, a
sphere of universal law, to count on, within
which all actions take place. In a lawless
world, action could hardly take on any signifi-
cance— least of all ethical significance. That
freedom itself should mean anything in out-
ward expression, there must be the possibility
of intelligent use of means toward the ends
chosen.

There must be, in the second place, some
real ethical freedom, some power of moral ini-
tiative. We need not quarrel about the terms
used; but, as Paulsen intimates, no serious

THE NECESSITY OF THE FACTS 31

ethical writer ever doubted that men have at
least some power to shape their own charac-
ters.1 Without that assumption, we have a
whole world of ideas and ideals — many of
them the realest facts in the world to us — that
have no legitimate excuse for being, that are
simple insanities of the most inexplicable sort.
The very meaning of the personality, indeed,
which the social consciousness must demand
for men, is some real existence for self, that
is, some real self-consciousness and moral
initiative.

And freedom is not enough; there must
be also some power of accomplishment. To
ascribe mere volition to man seems, it has
been justly said, sophistical. Results are
needed to reveal the character of our acts,
even to ourselves — to make that character
real. Lotze's charge that the world is imper-
fect because it might have been so made that
only good designs could be carried out, or so
that the results of evil volitions would be at
once corrected,2 is itself similarly sophistical.
Such a world, in which the outward results of
action never appear, would be but a play-
world after all — only a nursery of babes not

1 System of Ethics pp. 467 ff.

2 Philosophy of Religion, p. 125.

32 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

yet capable of character. It could be no fit
world for moral training.

And still more, not less, must this law of
the necessary results of actions hold in our
relations to other persons. There can be,
least of all, a moral universe where we are not
members one of another. Character, in any form
we can conceive it, could not then exist.
Our best, as well as our worst, possibilities are
involved in these necessary mutual relations.
Moral character has meaning only in personal
relations. The results, therefore, which follow
upon action, if the character of our deed is to
have reality for us, must be chiefly personal.
The realm of character has fearful possibili-
ties. This is no play-world. We can cause
and be caused suffering, and our sin neces-
sarily carries the suffering, if not the sin, of
others with it.

2. The Ideal World Requires, thus, the Facts
of the Social Consciousness.— All this could be
changed in any vital way only by shutting up
every soul absolutely to itself, and with that
result life has simply ceased.

For we cannot really conceive a person
as having any reason for being without such
relations. He would be constantly baffled at
every point, for he is made for persons and

THE NECESSITY OF THE FACTS 33

personal relations. Love, too, the highest
source of both character and happiness, re-
quires everywhere personal relations. Reli-
gion itself, as a sharing of the life of God,
would be impossible without some relation
to others; for God, at least, could not be
separated from the life of all. That is, per-
sons, love, religion, in such a world, have ,
gone.

This, then, simply means that the ideal
world ceases to be, with the denial of the
facts that the social consciousness reflects.
We must be full persons, social beings in
the entire meaning demanded by the social
consciousness — hard as the consequences in-
volved often are — if ideal interests are to be
supreme. Indeed, the very moral judgment,
that incessantly prompts the problem of evil
for every one of us, is required, for its own
existence, to assume the validity of the rela-
tions about which it questions. For it com-
plains, for the most part, of those facts that
follow inevitably from the necessary mutual
influence of men; but the chief sources of
the joy it requires, that it may justify the
world, lie in these same mutual relations. It
assumes, thus, in its claims on the world, the
validity and worth of the very relations of

34 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

which it complains in its criticism of the
world. Or, slightly to vary the statement,
the major premise, even of pessimism, is that
a really justifiable world must have worth in
the joy it yields in personal life, impossible
out of the personal relations of a real moral
universe. And there can be no moral uni-
verse without the facts reflected in the social
consciousness. The ideal world requires,
then, the facts of the social consciousness.

CHAPTER IV

THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION AND GROUND OF THE
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The most important and fundamental in-
quiry as to the possible help of theology to
the social consciousness still remains : What
is the ultimate explanation and ground of the
social consciousness? This question includes
two: (i) How can it be metaphysically that
we do influence one another? (2) What is
required for the final positive justification of
the social consciousness as ethical? Theol-
ogy's answer to both questions is found in
the being and character of God, the creative
and moral source of all.

I. HOW CAN IT BE, METAPHYSICALLY, THAT WE
DO INFLUENCE ONE ANOTHER?

First, then, how can it be that we do in-
fluence one another? What is the final
explanation of the constant fact of our recip-
rocal action? For in our final thinking we
may not ignore this question.

(35)

36 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

I. Not Due to the Physical Fact of Race-Con-
nection.— It may be worth while saying, first,
that the physical fact of race-connection, if
that could be proved, would be no sufficient
explanation. The race may, or may not, be
dependent upon a single pair, but in any
case this is not the essential connection.
The race is one by virtue of its essential
likeness, however that comes about. Men
might have sprung out of the ground in
absolute individual independence of one an-
other, and yet if there were such actual like-
mindedness as now exists, the race would be
as truly one as it now is, and as capable of
reciprocal action, and its members under the
same obligation to one another. No ideal
interest is at stake, then, in the question of the
actual physical unity of the race as descended
from one pair.

One may say, of course, that the physical
unity of the race would naturally result, ac-
cording to the laws apparently prevailing in
the animal world, in likeness. And this may,
therefore, seem to him the most natural
proximate explanation. But, even so, it is
well to know that our entire moral interest
is in the essential likeness and mutual influ-
ence of men, however brought about, and

THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION 37

not in the physical unity of men. Theology
has no occasion to continue its earlier exces-
sive and quite fundamental emphasis upon
this physical unity. Moreover, such an ex-
planation is necessarily but proximate. Back
of it lies the deeper question, Why just these
laws, and modes of procedure?

2. We are not to Over-Emphasize the Prin-
ciple of Heredity. — Nor can theology, from
any point of view, afford to over-emphasize
the principle of heredity if it wishes to keep
human initiative at all. It is a dangerous
alliance which the old-school theology with
its racial sin in Adam has been so ready to
make with the principle of heredity. That
principle, as they wish to use it, proves quite
too much; and careful thinkers, really awake
to ideal interests, may well rejoice in the com-
parative relief which science itself, through
the probably somewhat exaggerated protest
of the Weismann or Neo-Darwinian school,
seems likely to afford from the incubus of a
grossly exaggerated heredity. The main in-
terest for the ideal view lies right here. We
can see why this law of the "inheritance of
acquired characteristics," in Professor James'
language, "should not be verified in the human
race, and why, therefore, in looking for evi-

38 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

dence on the subject, we should confine our-
selves exclusively to lower animals. In them
fixed habit is the essential and characteristic
law of nervous action. The brain grows to
the exact modes in which it has been exer-
cised, and the inheritance of these modes —
then called instincts — would have in it noth-
ing surprising. But in man the negation of
all fixed modes is the essential characteristic.
He owes his whole preeminence as a rea-
soner, his whole human quality of intellect,
we may say, to the facility with which a given
mode of thought in him may suddenly be
broken up into elements, which re-combine
anew. Only at the price of inheriting no
settled instinctive tendencies is he able to
settle every novel case by the fresh discovery
by his reason of novel principles. He is, par
excellence, the educable animal."1

To over-emphasize the principle of he-
redity, then, is to strike at one of the most
fundamental distinctive human qualities, and
so to endanger every ideal interest. The
growing like -mindedness of men and their
mutual influence are not forthwith to be
ascribed to an omnipotent principle of
heredity.

'James, Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 367, 368.

THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION 39

3. Not Due to a Mystical Solidarity. — Nor
is the mutual influence of men to be ex-
plained by any mystical solidarity of the race
considered as a finite whole. It is a simple
and reasonable scientific demand, that we
should not assume a mysterious, indefinable
and incalculable cause, where known and
intelligible causes suffice to explain the phe-
nomena in question. Do we need, or can we
intelligently use, a mystical solidarity? The
only solidarity of the race which we seem
really to need, or with which we seem able
intelligently to deal, is the actual like-minded-
ness and the actual personal relations them-
selves— the reciprocal action of spirits — the
only kind of reciprocal action which we can
finally fully conceive. Any other finite sol-
idarity than this, though it has often figured
in theology, seems to me only a name with-
out significance. In any case, we need to
insist in theology, much more than we have,
upon that unity of the race which is due to
the actual likeness of men and their actual
mutual personal influence. Such a unity we
know and can understand, and it is of the
highest ethical and spiritual importance. But
to make much of the physical unity is to
ground the spiritual in the physical; and, on

40 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

the other hand, to take refuge in a mystical
solidarity — and this is often felt to be a rather
deep procedure — for whatever theological
purpose, is to hide in the fog of the obscure
and unintelligible.

4. Grounded in the Immanence of God. —
But back of all finite phenomena, we may
still ask for an ultimate explanation of the
possibility of any reciprocal action even be-
tween spirits. And it is, perhaps, this ulti-
mate explanation after which the idea of a
mystical solidarity of the race is blindly grop-
ing. Unless one chooses to accept reciprocal
action as a necessarily given fact in any uni-
verse (and thk position, I think with F. C. S.
Schiller, may be reasonably defended),1 he
must somewhere in his thinking ask for its
final explanation. And most of those, who
try to think things through, feel this pressure.
And metaphysics, we do well to remember
with Professor James, "means only an unusu-
ally obstinate attempt to think clearly and
consistently."2 As Lotze puts it: "How a
cause begins to produce its immediate effect,
how a condition is the foundation of its direct
result, it will never be possible to say; yet

lThe Philosophical Review, May, 1896, p. 228.
-Psychology, Briefer Course, p. 461.

THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION 4-1

that cause and effect do thus act must be
reckoned among those simple facts that com-
pose the reality which is the object of all our
investigation. But there is an intolerable
contradiction in the assumption that, though
two beings may be wholly independent the
one of the other, yet that which takes place
in one can be a cause of change in the other;
things that do not affect each other at all,
cannot at the same time affect each other in
such a manner that the one is guided by the
other."1

This question is fairly thrust upon us by
the facts of the social consciousness. How
can it be that we do so influence one
another? how is our reciprocal action meta-
physically possible? The answer of theistic
philosophy to this question is found in the
being of God.

Upon the metaphysical side, theistic phil-
osophy affirms that we can ascribe indepen-
dent existence in the highest sense only to
God. All else is absolutely dependent for
its existence and maintenance upon him.
The kind of reality that we demand for man
is not that he be outside of God, independent
of him; this would not make man more,

1 Microcosmus, Vol. II, p. 599.

42 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

but less. Every thorough-going theistic view
must have this at least in common with
pantheism, that it recognizes everywhere a
real immanence of God. We are, because
God wills in us. This metaphysical relation
of the finite to the infinite, to be sure, is not
to be conceived spatially or materially; nor,
least of all, is it be so conceived as to deny
a real self -consciousness and a real moral
initiative to the finite spirit; but it does in-
volve the absolute dependence of all the
finite upon the will of God. As to our
being, we root solely in God. And the unity
and consistency of the being of God are the
actual ground of our possible reciprocal
action. Only so is that contradiction of
which Lotze spoke avoided. We are not
independent of one another, because we are
all alike dependent for our very being upon
God. And we are thus members one of
another, ultimately, only through him.

The further fact, that we are never fully
able to trace causal connections anywhere;
that even in the clearest case no possible
analysis of one stage in the process enables
us to prophesy, independently of experience,
the next stage, also compels us to admit that
the full cause is not really present in any of

THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION 43

the finite manifestations we can follow; that
we have always to take account of the "hid-
den efficacy of the Infinite everywhere at
work," and so must recognize once again
the indubitable immanence of God, the ab-
solute dependence of the finite upon his
will, and our reciprocal action as possible
only through him.1

Or, to put the same thing a little differ-
ently, any adequate theory of causality seems
to lead us up inevitably to purpose in God.
As Professor Bowne states it:2 "The funda-
mental antithesis of purpose and causation
is incorrect. The true antithesis is that of
mechanical and volitional causality." And
he intimates the probability that all causality,
even in the physical world, is ultimately
volitional. "It becomes a question," he says,
"whether true causality can be found in the
phenomenal at all, and not rather in a power
beyond the phenomenal which incessantly
posits and continues that order according to
rule." The unity and consistency of the
immanent will of God, then, are the ulti-
mate metaphysical ground of all reciprocal
action. The mutual influence, that is, even

1 See King, Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 54, 84, 102.
2 Theory of Thought and Knowledge, pp. 91, n 1.

44 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

of spirits, finds its final full explanation only
in God.

The social consciousness, therefore, so far
as it is an expression of the possibility and
inevitableness of our mutual influence, is a
reflection of the immanence of the one God
in the unity and consistency of his life.

But this, after all, is not the most important
element of the social consciousness. So far
as it is ethical at all, it can have no final ex-
planation in the metaphysical, considered as
mere matter of fact. We are driven, there-
fore, to ask the second question involved in
the subject of the chapter.

II. WHAT IS REQUIRED FOR THE FINAL POSITIVE
JUSTIFICATION OF THE SOCIAL CON-
SCIOUSNESS AS ETHICAL?

I . Must be Grounded in the Supporting Will
of God. — It is not enough that we should be
able to think of the unity of One Life per-
vading all, or even of One Will upholding
all. If the social consciousness, as distinctly
ethical, is to have any final justification, it
must be able to believe that it is in league
with the eternal and universal forces ; that
the fundamental trend of the universe is its

THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION 45

own trend; in other words, that the deepest
thing in the universe is an ethical purpose
conceivable only in a Person ; that the ideals
and purposes of finite beings expressed in the
social consciousness are in line with God's
own ; that the loving holy purpose of the
Infinite Will quickens and sustains and sur-
rounds our purposes.

Let us distinctly face the fact that, unless
the social consciousness can be so grounded
in the very foundation of the universe, it must
remain an illogical and unjustifiable fragment
in the world, without real excuse for being.
That is, if the social consciousness is not to
be an illusion, it must be, as Professor Nash
contends, cosmical, and not merely individ-
ual, and ethics must root in religion. This
is the very heart of his stimulating book,
Ethics and Revelation, expressed, for example,
in such sentences as these: "Nothing save
a sense of deep and intimate connection with
the solid core of things, nothing save a set-
tled and fervid conviction that the universe
is on the side of the will in its struggle for
that whole-hearted devotion for the welfare
of the race, without which morality is an affair
of shreds and patches, can give to the will
the force and edge suitable to the difficult

46 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

work it has to do. But this sense of kinship
with what is deepest and most abiding in the
universe — what else is meant by pure relig-
ion." And again : "We, as founders and
builders of the true society, find ourselves
shut up to an impassioned faith in the sin-
cerity of the universe and the integrity of
the fundamental being. Our religion is a
deep and wide synthesis of feeling, whereby
that personal will in us, which grounds soci-
ety, comes into solemn league and covenant
with the fundamental being. Here is the
focus-point of the prophetic revelation. At
this point, the deep in God answers to the
deep in Man. . . . All that He is He puts
in pledge for the perfecting of the society
He has founded."1

Paulsen expresses only the same funda-
mental conviction, from the point of view of
the philosopher, and, at the same time, the
heart of his own solution of the relation be-
tween knowledge and faith, when he says:
"There is one item, at least, in which every
man goes beyond mere knowledge, beyond
the registration of facts. That is his own
life and his future. His life has a meaning
for him, and he directs it toward something

1 Ethics and Revelation, pp. 50, 243, 244.

THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION 47

which does not yet exist, but which will exist
by virtue of his will. Thus a faith springs
up by the side of his knowledge. He be-
lieves in the realization of this, his life's aim,
if he is at all in earnest about it. Since,
however, his aim is not an isolated one, but
is included in the historical life of a people,
and finally in that of humanity, he believes
also in the future of his people, in the vic-
torious future of truth and righteousness and
goodness in humanity. Whoever devotes his
life to a cause believes in that cause, and this
belief, be his creed what it may, has always
something of the form of a religion. Hence
faith infers that an inner connection exists
between the real and the valuable within the
domain of history, and believes that in his-
tory something like an immanent principle
of reason or justice favors the right and the
good, and leads it to victory over all resisting
forces." And Paulsen holds that this implicit
faith characterizes necessarily every philo-
sophical theory. "What the philosopher
himself accepts as the highest good and final
goal he projects into the world as its good
and goal, and then believes that subsequent
reflections also reveal it to him in the world."1

1 Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 8, 9, 313.

48 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

We must be able, then, to believe that
the best we know — our highest ideals — are
at home in the world, or give up all faith in
the honesty of the world, and all hope of
philosophy, to say nothing of religion. Ulti-
mately, now, this means that nothing short of
full Christian conviction is needed to support
the social consciousness. We need to be
able to believe that the spirit of the life and
death of Christ is at the very heart of the
world. Nothing less will suffice. And this
is exactly the support which the Christian
revelation offers to the social consciousness.

2. God's Sharing in Our Life. — But if the
social consciousness is only a true reflection
of God's own desire and purpose, then in a
sense far deeper than the merely metaphys-
ical, our life is the very life of God. He
shares in it. And no man can really see
what that means, and not find a new light
falling on all the world, and himself carried
on to take up a new confession of faith in
the solemn words of another: "For the agony
of the world's struggle is the very life of God.
Were he mere spectator, perhaps, he too
would call life cruel. But in the unity of
our lives with his, our joy is his joy, our
pain is his." And from the vision of this

THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION 49

self-giving life of God we turn back to our
own place of service, saying with Matheson :
"If Thou art love then Thy best gift must
be sacrifice ; in that light let me search Thy
world."1

We probably cannot better express this
unity of our highest ethical life with the life
of God than by renewing our old faith that
we are children of a common Father, who
have come, under God's own leading — so
far as a social consciousness is ours — volun-
tarily to share in God's loving purpose in
the creation and redemption of men. We do
not work alone ; nay, we are co-workers with
God.

3. The Consequent Transfiguration of the So-
cial Consciousness. — And as soon as we have
thus really and deeply come into the meaning
of Christ's thought of God as Father, and into
his revelation in his life and death as to what
the spirit of that Fatherhood is, we turn back
to the elements of our social consciousness
to find them all transfigured.

Our likeness is the likeness of common chil-
ren of God reflecting the image of the one
Father, capable of character and of indefinite
progress into the highest.

1Searc/iings in the Silence, p. 46.

50 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Our mutual influence roots in a real Father-
hood, both in source of being and in the one
purpose of love, alike creating and redemp-
tively working for all.

Our sense of the value and sacredness of the
person now for the first time gets its full justifi-
cation. Men are not only creatures capable
of joying and suffering, but children of God
with a preciousness to be interpreted only in
the light of Christ, and with the "power of
the endless life" upon them. Concerning
the value of the person, it is worth stopping
just here, to notice that it is peculiarly true
of the social consciousness, that it is not free
to ignore such considerations upon immor-
tality as those which weighed most with
John Stuart Mill and Sully. Of the hope of
immortality, Mill says: "The beneficial in-
fluence of such a hope is far from trifling.
It makes life and human nature a far
greater thing to the feelings, and gives
greater strength as well as greater solemnity
to all the sentiments which are awakened in
us by our fellow-creatures, and by mankind
at large." And Sully adds: "I would only
say that if men are to abandon all hope of a
future life, the loss, in point of cheering and
sustaining influence, will be a vast one, and

THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION 51

one not to be made good, so far as I can
see, by any new idea of services to collective
humanity."1

Our sense of obligation deepens with all this
deepening of the value of men, and our con-
science becomes only a true response to God's
own life and character — in no mere figurative
sense the voice of God in us.

And our love becomes simply entering a
little way into God's own love, a sharing more
and more in his life.

And when one has once seen the social
consciousness so transfigured in the light of
Christ's revelation, he must believe that then,
for the first time, he has seen the social con-
sciousness at its highest, and that it is impos-
sible for him to go back to the lower ideal.
If the social consciousness is not an illusion,
Christ's thought of God and of the life with
God ought to be true ; and if the world is an
honest world, it is true. It is not only true
that Christ has a social teaching, but that
the social consciousness absolutely requires
Christ's teaching for its own final justification.
The Christian truth is so great that it alone
can give the social consciousness its fullest

Quoted by Orr, The Christian View of God and the World, pp.
j6o, 72.

52 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

meaning, alone can enable it to understand
itself, and alone can give it adequate motive
and power; for, in Keim's words, "to-day,
to-morrow, and forever we can know nothing
better than that God is our Father, and that
the Father is the rest of our souls."1

1 Quoted by Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 157.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL
CONSCIOUSNESS UPON THE CON-
CEPTION OF RELIGION

INTRODUCTION

FROM the question of the support which
Christian faith and doctrine give to the social
consciousness, we turn now to the second
part of our inquiry: How does this grow-
ing social consciousness, not by any means
always consciously religious, naturally react
upon and affect our conceptions of religion
and of theological doctrines?

In this inquiry, we cannot always be sure
historically of the exact connection, and, for
our present purpose, this is not of prime
importance. But we can see, for example,
in this second division of our theme, the
relations of religion and the social conscious-
ness, and how religion must be conceived if
the social consciousness is fully warranted ;
and this is the main question.

If the definition of theology which has
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54 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

been suggested be adopted — the thoughtful
and unified expression of what religion means
to us — then it is obvious that any change
in conception or emphasis in religion will
necessarily affect theological statement. Our
inquiry as to the influence of the social con-
sciousness, therefore, naturally begins with
religion.

The discussions of this division, moreover,
will really include all that part of theological
doctrine which has to do with the growth
into the life with God.

The natural influence of the social con-
sciousness upon the conception of religion
may be, perhaps, summed up in four points,
which form the subjects of the four succeed-
ing chapters: (i) The social consciousness
tends to draw religion away from the falsely
mystical ; (2) it tends to emphasize the per-
sonal relation in religion, and so keeps the
truly mystical; (3) it tends to emphasize the
ethical in religion; (4) it tends to empha-
size the concretely historically Christian in
religion.

CHAPTER V

THE OPPOSITION OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS TO
THE FALSELY MYSTICAL

I. WHAT IS THE FALSELY MYSTICAL?

Two very clear answers made from diff-
erent points of view deserve attention.

i. Nash's Definition. — In trying to set
forth the "main mood and motives of reli-
gious speculation" in the early Christian
centuries, Professor Nash takes, as perhaps
the two strongest influences in determining
the type of man to whom Christian apolo-
getics had then to appeal, Philo and Plotinus,
and says: "By what road shall the mind
enter into a deep and intimate knowledge
of God? That is the decisive question.
Plotinus the Gentile and Philo the Jew are
at one in their answer. The reason must
rise above reasoning. It must pass into a
state that is half a swoon and half an ecstasy
before it can truly know God. Philo gave
up for the sake of his theory, the position of
the prophets. Plotinus, for the same theory,

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56 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

forsook the position of Plato and Aristotle.
The prophets conceived the inmost essence
of things, the being and will of God, as a
creative and redemptive force that guided
and revealed itself through the career of a
great national community. Plato and Aris-
totle conceived the essence of life as a labor
of reason ; and, for them, the labors of reason
found their sufficient refreshment and inspi-
ration in those moments of clear synthesis
which are the reward of patient analysis.
Revelation came to the prophet through his
experience of history. To the philosopher
it came through hard and steady thinking.
But Philo and Plotinus together declared
these roads to be no thoroughfares. The
Greek and the Jew met on the common
ground of a mysticism that sacrificed the
needs of sober reason and the needs of the
nation to the necessities of the monk."1
Mysticism is here conceived as unethical,
unhistorical, and unrational.

2. Herrmann' s Definition. — Herrmann's defi-
nition of mysticism is the second one to which
attention is directed. He says: "When the
influence of God upon the soul is sought and
found solely in an inward experience of the

1 Nash, Ethics and Revelation, p. 33.

THE OPPOSITION TO THE MYSTICAL 57

individual; when certain excitements of the
emotions are taken, with no further question,
as evidence that the soul is possessed by God ;
when, at the same time, nothing external to
the soul is consciously and clearly perceived
and firmly grasped; when no thoughts that
elevate the spiritual life are aroused by the
positive contents of an idea that rules the
soul — then that is the piety of mysticism. He
who seeks in this wise that for the sake of
which he is ready to abandon all beside, has
stepped beyond the pale of Christian piety.
He leaves Christ and Christ's Kingdom alto-
gether behind him when he enters that sphere
of experience which seems to him to be the
highest."1 The marks of mysticism for Herr-
mann, then, are: that it is purely subjective ;
that it is merely emotional and unethical;
and hence that it has no clear object, and
is abstract, unrational, unhistorical, and so
unchristian.

II. THE OBJECTIONS OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
TO THE FALSELY MYSTICAL

Against this neo-platonic, falsely mystical
conception of religion, the social conscious-

'Herrmann, The Communion of the Christian ivith God, pp. 19, 20.

58 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

ness seems to be clearly arrayed, and, so far
as the social consciousness influences religion,
it will certainly tend to draw it away from
this falsely mystical idea.

1. Unethical. — For, in the first place, this
neo-platonic conception of religion has nothing
distinctly ethical in it. The ethical is mani-
festly not made the test of true religious ex-
perience, as it is in the New Testament. The
social consciousness, on the other hand, is
predominantly and emphatically ethical, and
can have nothing to do with a religion in
which ethics is either omitted or is wholly
subordinate. At this point, therefore, the
pressure of the social consciousness is strongly
against a neo-platonic mysticism.

2. Does not Give a Real Personal God. — In
the second place, the social consciousness
cannot get along with the falsely mystical,
because it does not give a real personal God.
Let us be clear upon this point. Is not Herr-
mann right when he says that all that can be
said of the God of this mysticism is "that he
is not the world ? Now that is precisely all
that mysticism has ever been able to say of
God as it conceives him. Plainly, the world
and the conception of it are all that moves
the soul while it thinks thus of God. Only

THE OPPOSITION TO THE MYSTICAL 59

disappointment can ensue to the soul whose
yearning for God in such case keeps on in-
sisting that God must be something utterly
different from the world. If such a soul will
reflect awhile on the nature of the God thus
reached, the fact must inevitably come to the
surface that its whole consciousness is occu-
pied with the world now as it was before, for
evidently it has grasped no positive ideas —
nothing but negative ideas — about anything
else. Mysticism frequently passes into pan-
theism for this very reason, even in men of
the highest religious energy; they refuse to
be satisfied with the mere longing after God,
or to remain on the way to him, but deter-
mine to reach the goal itself, and rest with
God himself."1

Now we have already seen that the social
consciousness can find adequate support and
power and motive only in faith that its pur-
pose is God's purpose, that the deepest thing
in the universe is an ethical purpose, con-
ceivable only in a personal God; and, there-
fore, neither an empty negation nor pantheism
can ever satisfy it.

3. Belittles the Personal in Man. — The false
mysticism, moreover, belittles the personal in

1 Herrmann, Op. cit., p. 27.

6o THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

man as well as in God; for it does not treat
with real reverence either the personality, the
ethical freedom, the sense of obligation, or
the reason of man. This whole thought of
"a state that is half a swoon and half an ec-
stasy" is a sort of swamping of clear self-con-
sciousness and definite moral initiative, in
which the very reality of man's personality
consists. It is a heathen, not a Christian, idea
of inspiration which demands the suppression
of the human, whether in consciousness, in
will, in reason, or by belittling the sense of
obligation to others. But mysticism has at
least tended toward failure in all these
respects.

And yet, from the time that Paul argued
with the Corinthians against their immense
overestimation of the gift of speaking with
tongues, this fascination of the merely mysti-
cal has been felt in Christianity, (i) The
very mystery and unintelligibility of the expe-
rience, (2) its ecstatic emotion, (3) its sense
of being controlled by a power beyond one's
self, and (4) its contrast with ordinary life — all
these elements make the mystical experience
seem to most all the more divine, although in
so judging they are applying a pagan, not a
Christian, standard. So far as these experi-

THE OPPOSITION TO THE MYSTICAL 6 1

ences have value, it is probably due to the
strong and realistic sense which they give of
being in the presence of an overpowering
being. If thoroughly permeated and domi-
nated with other elements, this sense is not
without its value.

But it is interesting to notice that, although
Paul does not deny the legitimacy of the gift
of speaking with tongues, he nevertheless
absolutely subordinates it, and insists that the
most ecstatic religious emotions are com-
pletely worthless without love. Evidently the
considerations which weighed most with the
Corinthians in valuing the gift of unintelli-
gible ecstatic utterance weighed little with
Paul ; and one can see how Paul implicitly
argues against each of those considerations :
(i) God is not an unknown, mystic force, but
the definite, concrete God of character, shown
in Christ. (2) He speaks to reason and will
as well as to feeling, and he best speaks to
feeling when he speaks to the whole man.
True religious emotion must have a rational
basis and must move to duty. (3) Religion, he
would urge, is a self-controlled and voluntary
surrender to a personal God of character, not
a passive being swept away by an unknown
emotion. (4) God has most to give, be as-

62 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

sured, he would have added, in the common
ways of life.

Now, in every one of these protests, the
social consciousness instinctively joins. It
cannot rest in a conception of religion that
belittles the personal in God or man ; for it is
itself an emphatic insistence upon the fully
personal. And it can, least of all, get on with
the mystical ignoring of the rational and the
ethical, for it holds that the social evolution
moves steadily on to a rational like-mind-
edness, and to a definitely ethical civilization.
Giddings puts the sociological conclusion in a
sentence: "It is the rational, ethical con-
sciousness that maintains social cohesion in a
progressive democracy." l Now that which is
clearly recognized as the goal in the relations
of man to man will not be set aside as unwar-
ranted or subordinate in the relations of man
to God. And we may depend upon it.

4. Leaves the Historically, Concretely Chris-
tian.— Once more, the social consciousness
cannot approve of the mystical conception of
religion in its ignoring, in its highest state,
the historically and concretely Christian.
With mysticism's subjective, emotional, and

1 Giddings, Elements of Sociology, p. 321; cf. also pp. 155 ff,
302, 320, 327.

THE OPPOSITION TO THE MYSTICAL 63

abstract conception of the highest communion
with God, and of the way thereto, the histori-
cal and concrete at best can be to it only sub-
ordinate means, more or less mysteriously
connected with the attainment of the goal,
and left behind when once the goal is
reached.

The social consciousness, on the other
hand, requires historical justification, and
definitely builds on the facts of the historical
social evolution.

In the case of the prophets and psalmists,
for example, who alone in the ancient world
most fully anticipated the modern social feel-
ing, the social consciousness plainly arose in the
face of the concrete historical life of a people.
No result of modern Old Testament criticism
is more certain. So that, speaking of "the
religious aspects of the social struggle in
Israel," McCurdy can use this strong lan-
guage: "It is not too much to say that this
conflict, intense, uninterrupted, and pro-
longed, is the very heart of the religion of
the Old Testament, its most regenerative and
propulsive movement. To the personal life
of the soul, the only basis of a potential,
world-moving religion, it gave energy and
depth, assurance and hopefulness, repose and

64 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

self-control, with an outlook clear and eter-
nal."1 But it was this standpoint of the
prophets that the falsely mystical conception
of religion abandoned. We may well take to
heart, in our estimate of mysticism, the grad-
ual but steady elimination of ecstasy in the
development of Israel, and its practically total
absence in those we count in the highest sense
prophets.2

The social consciousness, moreover, has
almost entirely to do with men, and hence
naturally must lay stress on human history,
rather than on nature, as a source of religious
ideas. Indeed, it will have no doubt that what
nature is made to mean religiously will be
chiefly determined by the prevalent social
ideals. It can, therefore, least of all ignore
the historical in Christianity.

The social consciousness recognizes in-
creasingly, too, with the clearing of its own
ideals and with the deepening study of the
teaching of Jesus, that it really is only de-
manding, in the concrete, and in detailed ap-
plication to particular problems, and to all of

1 McCurdy, History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, Vol. II, p.
223 ; cf. pp. 214, ff.

2 G. A. Smith, The Book of the Twelve Prophets, Vol. I, pp.
30, 84, 89; Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, pp. 41, 46; The Exposi-
tory Times, Jan., Feb., 1902, article, Prophetic Ecstasy.

THE OPPOSITION TO THE MYSTICAL 65

them, the spirit shown in its fullness only in
Christ, as Professor Peabody's eminently sane
treatment of the social teaching of Jesus
seems to me fairly to have proven. The so-
cial consciousness, therefore, cannot help
becoming more and more consciously and
emphatically Christian.

In a single sentence, because of the steps
of its own long evolution, the social con-
sciousness instinctively distrusts the highly
emotional, unless it is manifestly under
equally strong rational control, and unless
it has equal ethical insight and power, and is
historically justified. It tends, therefore, nec-
essarily to draw away from the falsely mysti-
cal in religion, which is lacking in all these
respects.

And the same reasons, which array the so-
cial consciousness against the falsely mystical
in religion, lead it into natural sympathy with
a positive emphasis upon the personal, the
ethical, and the historically concretely Chris-
tian in religion.

CHAPTER VI

THE EMPHASIS OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS UPON

THE PERSONAL RELATION IN RELIGION, AND

SO UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL

I. THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS TENDS POSITIVELY
TO EMPHASIZE THE PERSONAL RELA-
TION IN RELIGION

I . Emphasizes Everywhere the Personal. — The
social consciousness sees man as preeminently
the social animal, made for personal relations,
irrevocably and essentially knit up with other
persons. It deepens everywhere our sense of
persons and of personal relations. It may be
itself almost denned as the sense of the fully
personal.

Religion, then, if it is to be most real to
men of the social consciousness, must be per-
sonally conceived, that is, must be distinctly
seen to be a personal relation of man to God.
And this conception, as the highest we can
reach, is to be followed fearlessly to the end;
only guarding it against wrong inferences
from the simple transference to God of finite
conditions, and recognizing exactly in what

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THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 6^

respects the personal relation to God is
unique.1

The social consciousness, moreover, as we
have seen, must have a conception of religion
that can really justify the social consciousness,
and, therefore, must do justice to the fully
personal in God and man; and this need
also leads the social consciousness naturally
to the conception of religion as a personal
relation.

2. Requires the Laws of a Deepening Friend-
ship in Religion. — When this conception is
carried out, it is found that growth in the
religious life, in communion with God, fol-
lows the laws of a deepening friendship.2
These laws can, therefore, be known and
studied and formulated; and religion, at the
same time, ceases to be unintelligible and
ceases to be isolated — cut off from the rest
of life, and becomes rather that one great
fundamental relation which gives being and
meaning and value to all the rest. In abso-
lute harmony, then, with the genesis of the
social consciousness, religion, in this concep-
tion, is bound up with the whole of life; and
we catch a glimpse of the real and final unity

1 Cf. King, Reconstruction in Theology, p. 201 ff.

2 Op. cit., pp. 210 ff.

68 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

of life in true love, the relation to God and
the relation to man each helping everywhere
the other. If religion is truly a personal rela-
tion, and its laws are those of a deepening
friendship, then every human relation, heart-
ily and truly fulfilled, becomes a new outlook
on God, a revelation of new possibilities in
the religious life. And, on the other hand,
in that mutual self-revelation and answering
trust upon which every growing personal re-
lation is built, every fresh revelation of God
is an enlarging of our ideal for our relations
to others. Even biblical literature, perhaps,
furnishes no more perfect example of the
interplay of the human and divine relations
than Hosea's account of his own providential
leading through the human relation into the
divine, and back again from the divine to a
still better human.

3. Requires the Ideal Conditions of the Rich-
est Life in Religion. — And if religion is to be
justified in its supreme claims by the social
consciousness, it must be felt to offer, besides,
the ideal conditions of the richest life. As
a personal relation to God, religion need not
shrink from this test. Our great needs are
character and happiness. Psychology seems
to me to point to two great means and to

THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 69

two accompanying conditions of both char-
acter and happiness. The means are associa-
tion and work; the corresponding conditions
are reverence for personality, and objectivity
— the mood of both love and work. The
great essentials, therefore, to the richest life
are (i) association in which personality is re-
spected, and (2) work in which one can lose
himself. Now, when would these conditions
become ideal? On the one hand, as to asso-
ciation, when the association is with him
who is of the highest character and of the
infinitely richest life, and relation to whom is
fundamental to every other personal relation;
when, secondly, God is made concrete and
real to us in an adequate personal revelation
of his character, and of his love toward us;
and when, third, the association is individual-
ized for each one, who throws himself open
to God, in God's spiritual presence in us,
constantly and intimately, and yet unobtrusively,
cooperating with us. And, on the other hand,
as to work, when the work is God-given work,
to which one is set apart, and in which he
may lose himself with joy. These are the
ideal conditions of the richest life. Just these
ideal conditions Jesus declared actualities.
For the fulfilment of just these, in the case

70 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

of his disciples, he prayed in his double peti-
tion,—" Keep them," " Sanctify them." " Keep
them in thy name," that is, through the di-
vine association. "Sanctify them" — set them
apart unto their God-given work. "As thou
hast sent me into the world, even so have I
also sent them into the world." Such a con-
ception of religion can fairly claim to meet,
broadly and deeply, the most exacting de-
mands of the social consciousness for emphasis
upon the personal relation in religion.

II. THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS THUS KEEPS THE
TRULY MYSTICAL

I have no predilection for the term mysti-
cal, and would gladly confine it to what I
have termed the neo-platonic or falsely mys-
tical, were it not that, in spite of the diction-
aries and the histories of philosophy and the
histories of doctrine, the term is used in two
quite different senses. Many, it seems to
me, are defending what they call the mystical
in religion, who have no idea of defending
what Herrmann and Nash call mystical. And
many, on the other hand, are defending and
teaching the falsely mystical through an un-
defined fear that else they will lose the truly

THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 71

mystical. Theology and religion both greatly
need a clear discrimination of terms here.
Many are involved, in both living and think-
ing, in a self-contradiction, which they feel
but cannot state; and are urging with them-
selves and with others a means of religious
life and a corresponding method of concep-
tion, which really contradict their highest
convictions in other lines of life and thought.
Can we find our way out of this confusion?

If one studies carefully the historical rep-
resentatives of mysticism, and especially such
a strong type as Jacob Bohme, whom Erd-
mann calls the "culmination of mysticism,"
and still keeps his head, certain dangers in
mysticism, it would seem, must become appa-
rent. And it may be worth while to attempt
a brief, but definite, analysis of the justifiable
and unjustifiable elements in these mystical
movements.

1 . The Justifiable and Unjustifiable Elements
in Mysticism. — (i) The first danger in mysti-
cism seems to me to be the tendency to
make simple emotion the supreme test of
the religious state. Whether this emotion
is thought of as ecstatic — such as some of
the old mystics called " being drunk with
God," or, as quietistic — in which imperturba-

72 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

bflity, passionlessness, become the highest
good — is comparatively indifferent. The jus-
tifiable element here is the insistence that
religion is real and is life ; for feeling is per-
haps the most powerful element in the sense
of reality. So James says: "Speaking gen-
erally, the more a conceived object excites
us, the more reality it has."1 The unjusti-
fiable element is the perilous subjection of
the rational and ethical. Such a view must
always lack any positive and adequate con-
ception of our active life and vocation in
the world.

(2) A second closely connected danger
in mysticism is the tendency toward mere
subjectivism. There is here a justifiable ele-
ment in the emphasis on one's own personal
conviction and faith ; an unjustifiable element
in the tendency to underrate anything but
the purely subjective, to ignore all correct-
ing influences from others, from the church,
and from the Scriptures.

(3) A third danger follows from this: the
marked tendency to underestimate the his-
torical. The justifiable element here is,
again, the emphasis on personal conviction
and faith; the unjustifiable element is the

1 James, Psychology, Vol. II, p. 307.

THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 73

tendency toward the greatest one-sidedness,
and toward emptiness, especially of ethical
content. Advising our young people simply
to "listen to God," without the strongest in-
sistence upon the historical revelation of God
at the same time, is exposing them to the
great danger of mistaking for an indubitable,
divine revelation the veriest vagary that may
chance in their empty- mindedness next to
come into their thought. With the reason in
supposed abeyance, the door is thus thrown
open to the grossest superstitions. Honest
attempts to deepen the religious life may
thus become dangerous assaults upon true
religion.

(4) A fourth danger in mysticism is so
strong a tendency toward vagueness, that the
common mind is not without warrant in
identifying mysticism and mistiness. The
justifiable element here is in the real diffi-
culty of expressing the full content of the
entire religious experience ; the unjustifiable
element is, once more, the slighting of the
historical, the ethical, and the rational, espe-
cially in talking much of the contradictions
of reason, and of what is above reason.
Mysticism naturally lacks positive content.

(5) Another danger — the tendency toward

74 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

pantheism — comes in partly, as Herrmann
has suggested, as a meeting of this lack of
content, and partly as the logical outcome of
such an insistence upon losing oneself in
God as amounts to a being swept out of
one's self — a loss of clear and rational self-
consciousness, which is next interpreted spec-
ulatively as a real absorption in God, and is
then made the goal. This is the familiar
road of Indian and neo-platonic mysticism,
and its phenomena are real enough, but
probably of only the slightest religious sig-
nificance. Tennyson tells somewhere of the
immense sense of illumination that came to
him once from simply repeating monoto-
nously his own name — "Alfred Tennyson,
Alfred Tennyson." This may be as effec-
tive as looking at the end of one's nose and
ceaselessly reiterating "Om," as does the Hindu
ascetic. A still shorter and more certain
method is through nitrous-oxide-gas intoxica-
tion, of which Professor James says: "With
me, as with every other person of whom I
have heard, the key-note of the experience is
the tremendously exciting sense of an intense
metaphysical illumination. Truth lies open
to the view in depth beneath depth of almost
blinding evidence. The mind sees all the

THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 75

logical relations of being with an apparent
subtlety and instantaneity, to which its nor-
mal consciousness offers no parallel ; only as
sobriety returns, the feeling of insight fades,
and one is left staring vacantly at a few dis-
jointed words and phrases as one stares at a
cadaverous -looking snow -peak from which
the sunset glow has just fled, or at the black
cinder left by an extinguished brand." "The
immense emotional sense of reconciliation,"
he felt to be the characteristic mood. "It
is impossible to convey," he says, "an idea
of the torrential character of the identifica-
tion of opposites as it streams through the
mind in this experience."1

Now it is not safe to ignore such facts,
when we are seriously trying to estimate the
religious significance of intense emotional
experiences, the reality of which we need
not at all question. The vital question is,
not that of the reality of the experiences,
but that of the real cause of the experiences;
and the only possible test of this is rational
and ethical. But from this test, mysticism
tends from the start to shut itself off, and
so, assuming the experience to be truly
religious, ends often in virtual pantheism

1 James, The If ill to Believe, pp. 294, 295.

76 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The justifiable element in this insistence
upon absorption in God is the necessary
moral relation of complete surrender to God.
The unjustifiable element is in belittling the
personal in both God and man, and in mak-
ing essentially religious an experience that
has almost nothing of the rational and ethi-
cal in it, and that, on that very account, fos-
ters the irreverent familiarity with Christ so
deplored by more than one careful student
of mysticism. A natural and common and
most dangerous accompaniment of such an
intense emotional experience is the tendency
afterward, to excuse sin in oneself. In the
case of the most conscientious, it is worth
noting, such an emphasis upon intense ex-
periences tends to lead them to distrust the
reality of the normal Christian experience if
they have not had these intense emotions, or
if they have had them, tends to bring them
into despair when they find these marked
experiences actually proving less powerful in
effects upon life than they had expected.

(6) The last danger in mysticism, to which
reference will be made, is the tendency to
extravagant symbolism. This is closely con-
nected with "the immense emotional sense
of reconciliation," and is much stronger by

THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 77

nature in some than in others. The born
mystic finds his own subjective views symbo-
lized everywhere, and is in grave danger of
being led into an ingenious, practically un-
conscious intellectual dishonesty. The justi-
fiable element here is that sense of the unity
and worth of things which is the most
fundamental conviction of our minds. The
unjustifiable element has been sufficiently
indicated.

The justifiable elements in mysticism, then,
may be said to include : the insistence on the
legitimate place of feeling in religion as a
real and vital experience; the emphasis on
one's own conviction and faith ; the real diffi-
culty of expressing the full meaning of the
religious experience; the demand for a com-
plete ethical surrender to God ; and the faith
in the real unity and worth of the world in
God. Now if one tries to bring together
these justifiable elements in mysticism, the
truly mystical may all be summed up as
simply a protest in favor of the whole man —
the entire personality. It says that men can
experience and live and feel and do much
more than they can logically formulate, de-
fine, explain, or even fully express. Living
is more than thinking.

78 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

2. The Protest in Favor of the Whole Man. —
The element to which mysticism has tried
most to do justice is feeling, and so it has
been liable to a new and dangerous one-sid-
edness. But the truly mystical must be a
protest alike against a narrow juiceless intel-
lectualism, against a narrow moralistic rigor-
ism, and against a blind and spineless senti-
mentalism. It is a protest particularly against
making the mathematico-mechanical view of
the world the only view; against making
logical consistency the sole test of truth or
reality; against ignoring all data, except those
which come through the intellect alone ; that
is, against trying to make a part, not the
whole, of man the standard; in other words,
against ignoring the data which come through
feeling and will — emotional, aesthetic, ethical,
and religious data, as well as those judgments
of worth which underlie reason's theoretical
determinations.

Man stands, in fact, everywhere face to
face with an actual world of great complex-
ity, that seems to him at first what James says
the baby's world is, "one big blooming buz-
zing confusion;" "and the universe of all of
us is still to a great extent such a confusion,
potentially resolvable, and demanding to be

THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 79

resolved, but not yet actually resolved, into
parts."1 In one sense, man's whole task is
to think unity and order into this confusion.
The problem really becomes that of think-
ing the universe through in several kinds of
terms, and then finally bringing all together
into one comprehensive view. All these are
alike ideals which the mind sets before itself.
The easiest of these problems is the attempt
to think the world through, in mathematico-
mechanical terms. But the attempt to think
the world through in aesthetic or ethical or
religious terms is equally legitimate, though
it is more difficult. Not only, then, is the
mathematico-mechanical view not the sole
justifiable view, but it really has its justifica-
tion in an ideal, and success in this attempt
affords just encouragement for the hope of
success in the other more difficult problems.2
The truly mystical holds, then, that the
narrow intellectualism is unwarranted, be-
cause natural science, the mechanical view
of the world, is itself an ideal — the "child
of duties," as Miinsterberg calls it — and so
cannot legitimately rule out other ideals;

1 Psychology, Briefer Course, p. 16.

2Cf. James, Psychology, Vol. II, 633-677; especially 633, 634,
667, 671, 677; Miinsterberg, Psychology and Life, pp. 23-28.

80 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

because we have just as immediate a convic-
tion concerning the worth, as concerning the
logical consistency of the world ; because a
narrow intellectualism would make conscious
life but a "barren rehearsal" of the outer
world, without significance; because if we
can trust the indications of our intellect, we
ought to be able to trust the indications of
the rest of our nature ; and because, thus, the
only possible key and standard of truth and
reality are in ourselves — the whole self, and
"necessities of thought" become necessities
of a reason which means loyally to take ac-
count of all the data of the entire man.

And the same point may be thus stated.
We use the word rational in two quite distinct
senses: in the narrow sense, as meaning simply
the intellectual; in the broad sense, as indicat-
ing the demands of the entire man. The true
mysticism stands for the broadly rational.

So, too, we speak of the necessary funda-
mental assumption of the honesty or sincerity
of the world ; but this includes two quite
distinct propositions: one, that the world
must be thinkable, conceivable, construable,
a logically consistent whole, a sphere for ra-
tional thinking, — where the test is consistency;
the other, that the world must be worth while,

THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 8 1

must not mock our highest ideals and aspira-
tions, must in some true and genuine sense
satisfy the whole man, be a sphere for rational
living, — where the test is worth. All our
arguments go forward upon these two as-
sumptions. Now, a true mysticism contends
that the second principle is as rational as the
first, though it must be freely granted that it
is not as easy to employ it for detailed con-
clusions, and it is consequently much more
liable to abuse. The true mysticism wishes
to be not less, but more, rational. It knows
no shorthand substitute for the hard and
steady thinking of the philosopher, or for
the historical experience of the prophet; it
needs and uses both.

In all this, it is plain that the truly mystical
is a legitimate outgrowth of the emphasis
of the social consciousness upon recognition
of the entire personality. Phillips Brooks
finds just this in the intellectual life of Jesus.
"The great fact concerning it is this," he says,
"that in him the intellect never works alone.
You never can separate its workings from the
complete operation of the entire nature. He
never simply knows, but always loves and
resolves at the same time."1

1 Brooks, The Influence of Jesus, p. 219.

82 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

3. The Self -Controlled Recognition of Emo-
tion.— Moreover, it probably may be fairly
claimed that all of the mystical recognition
of the emotional which is valuable or even
legitimate, is preserved, and far more safely
and sanely conceived, in a strictly personal
conception of religion. It may well be
doubted, if it is possible in any other way,
both to do justice to feeling in religion, and
at the same time to keep feeling in its proper
place. Is it possible briefly to indicate both
the recognition of emotion and the control
of emotion in religion?

The true mysticism recognizes that the
supreme joy is "joy in personal life" — joy in
entering into the revelation of a person ; and
it believes with reason that a growing ac-
quaintance with God must have such heights
and depths of meaning as no other personal
relation can have. It is not, therefore, afraid
or distrustful of true emotion — of joy or
peace, of intense longing or of keen satisfac-
tion— in the religious life.

But the true mysticism knows at the same
time that deep revelation of a person is made
only to the reverent, that the conditions are
in the highest degree ethical, and above all
must be recognized to be so in religion. It

THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 83

does view, then, with deep distrust an emo-
tional emphasis in religion that ignores the
ethical. It cannot forget that Christ thought
that everything must be tested by its fruits in
life. Paul, too, insisted on applying the test
of an active ministering love to the highly
valued emotional experiences of the Cor-
inthians; and writes to the Galatians that
there is but one infallible proof of the
working of the Spirit in them — a right-
eous life: "love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, tem-
perance."

And a true mysticism knows that the spirit,
reverent of personality, leads to a self-restraint
that does not seek the emotional experience
simply as such on any conditions ; but, know-
ing the supreme psychological conditions of
happiness and character and influence, it loses
itself in an unselfish love and in absorbing
work, and understands that it must simply let
the experiences come. It will have nothing,
therefore, to do with strained emotion, or
with the working up of feeling for its own
sake. It seeks health, not merely the signs
of health. It prizes, therefore, the joy that
simply proclaims itself as the sign of the nor-
mal life and so positively strengthens and

84 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

cheers, but it will have nothing of the strain
of emotion which is drain.

It is interesting to notice that it is exactly
this true psychological attitude concerning
the emotional life that Phillips Brooks be-
lieved that he found perfectly reflected in
Jesus. "The sensitiveness of Jesus to pain
and joy," he says, "never leads him for a
moment to try to be sad or happy with direct
endeavor; nor, is there any sign that he ever
judges the real character of himself or any
other man by the sadness or the happiness
that for the moment covers his life. He
simply lives, and joy and sorrow issue from
his living, and cast their brightness and their
gloominess back upon his life ; but there is
no sorrow and no joy that he ever sought for
itself, and he always kept a self-knowledge
underneath the joy or sorrow, undisturbed
by the moment's happiness or unhappiness."1

How far from this objectivity and this
healthful emotional life is the atmosphere of
most of our devotional books, and, one might
say, of all the manuals of ordinary mysticism!
That this difficulty should confront us in
devotional literature is very natural ; for such
writing commonly aims to give the emotional

1 The Influence of Jesus, p. 156.

THE EMPHASIS UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL 85

sense of reality in religion ; and is, therefore,
particularly under the temptation to show
and to produce a straining after the emotion,
as for its own sake. Moreover, the very intro-
spection, almost inevitably involved in the
reading and writing of devotional books,
tends to bring about an artificial change in
the religious experience, and so to introduce
into it the abnormal.

But the social consciousness, so far as it
affects religion, not only tends to draw away
from the falsely mystical, and to emphasize
the personal, and so to keep the truly mysti-
cal, but it is even more plain that it must
tend to insist upon the ethical in religion.

CHAPTER VII

THE THOROUGH ETHICIZING OF RELIGION
I. THE PRESSURE OF THE PROBLEM

The social consciousness looks to the thor-
ough ethicizing of religion. If the social
consciousness is to be regarded as historically
justified, it must believe that this growing
sense of brotherhood and consequent obliga-
tion is simply our response to the on-working
of God's own plan, God's own will express-
ing itself in us. The purpose to recognize
the will of God, thus necessarily involves the
recognition of human relations, since, as soon
as conscience is strongly stirred in any direc-
tion, religion can but feel, in this demand of
conscience, the demand of God, and, there-
fore, must bring the convictions of the social
consciousness into religion. Indeed, it may
be well believed that Kaftan is right in his
insistence that it is exactly through the prac-
tical, that is, in the realm of the ethical, that
knowledge arises from faith.1

1 Cf. American Journal of Theology, Oct., 1898, p. 824.
(86)

THE THOROUGH ETHICIZING OF RELIGION 87

In any case, it is evident that the old prob-
lem of faith and works, of religion and ethics,
of the first and second commandments, meets
us here in a way not to be put aside. With
an ethical demand so insistent as that of the
social consciousness no religion can be at
peace that is not with equal insistence ethical.
We are bound, then, to show how communion
with God, the supreme desire to find God,
necessarily carries with it active love for men.
We must show how we truly commune with
God in such active service. The social con-
sciousness, thus, positively thrusts upon every
religious man, who believes in it, the prob-
lem of the thorough ethicizing of religion.
Or, to put the matter in a slightly different
way, if the sense of the value and the sacred-
ness of the person is one of the two greatest
moral convictions of our time, then religion
must be clearly seen to hold this conviction,
or lose its connection with what is most real
and vital to us. This is the problem.

II. THE STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

All will probably agree that religion is
communion with God. We have seen why
the social consciousness cannot accept a falsely

88 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

mystical view of that communion. For simi-
lar reasons, it must make absolutely subordi-
nate all non-ethical and simply mysterious
means which make no appeal to the con-
science and to the reason — the falsely sacra-
mental. Only the person is truly sacramental.
Much else may be of value, but the touch of
personal life is the only absolute essential in
religion. We have seen, also, why the social
consciousness tends to regard religion as a
strictly personal relation.

Our problem thus becomes : How does
the desire for personal relation with God, the
desire for God himself, lead directly into the
ethical life — into the full and practical recog-
nition of the ethical demands of the social
consciousness?

To guard against any possible misconcep-
tion, it is, perhaps, well to say at the start that
the desire for a personal relation with God
has no purpose of returning by another route
to the false position of mysticism, in the claim
of special private revelations that are exclu-
sively for it. It expects, rather, personal con-
viction of that great revelation that is common
to all, and, moreover, it knows well that no
personal relation is essentially sensuous, and it
certainly looks for no sensuous relation to God.

THE THOROUGH ETHICIZING OF RELIGION 89

It may be worth while, too, to reverse our
question for a moment, and ask how morality
necessarily involves religion. The true moral
life is the fulfilment of all personal relations,
and as such can least of all omit the greatest
and most fundamental relation which gives
being and meaning and value to all the rest —
the relation to God. The fully moral life,
therefore, must include religion. The unity
of the two may be thus seen.

But the present inquiry looks at the matter
from the other side, and seeks a careful and
thoroughgoing answer to the question: Why
is the Christian religion, as a personal relation
to God, necessarily ethical?

III. THE ANSWER

I. Involved in Relation to Christ. — In the
first place, then, it probably may be safely
claimed that there is no test of the moral
life of a man so certain as his attitude toward
Christ. Setting aside, now, any special re-
ligious claims of Christ altogether, and recog-
nizing him only as earth's highest character,
the supreme artist in living, who knows the
secret of the moral life more surely and
more perfectly than any other, he becomes

90 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

even so the surest touch-stone of character ;
and the iron filings will not be more cer-
tainly attracted to the magnet than will the
men of highest character be attracted to
Christ when he is really seen as he is. There
is no test of character so certain as the test
of one's personal relation to the best persons.
The personal attitude toward Christ is the su-
preme test. In receiving him, in becoming
his disciples in a completer sense than we own
ourselves the disciples of any other, we make
the supreme moral choice of our lives; and,
if no more is true than has been already said,
we so accept as a matter of fact the fullest
historical revelation of God at the same
time. The ethical and religious here fall
absolutely together. And all the subsequent
choices of our Christian life, if true to Christ,
are necessarily moral.

2. The Divine Will Felt in the Ethical
Command. — In the second place, the sense
of the presence of God, of the divine will
laid upon us, if we have the religious feel-
ing at all, comes to us nowhere in our com-
mon life so certainly and so persistently as
in a sense of obligation which we cannot
shake off, a sense of facing a clear duty.
To run away from this, we are made to feel,

THE THOROUGH ETHICIZING OF RELIGION 91

is plainly to run away from God. Is this
not a simply true interpretation of the com-
mon consciousness? Here, then, the relig-
ious experience is in the very sphere of
the ethical, and identical with it.

3. Involved in the Nature of God'' s Gifts. —
Again, God's gifts in religion are of such a
kind that they simply cannot be given to the
unwilling soul; just to receive them, there-
fore, implies willingness to use them ; and
faith becomes inevitably both "a gift and an
activity." However one names God's gifts
in religion, so long as the relation is kept a
spiritual one at all, receiving the gift requires
a real ethical attitude in the recipient. A
real forgiveness, for example, involves per-
sonal reconciliation, restored personal rela-
tions ; and reconciliation is mutual. One
cannot, then, be said in any true sense to
accept forgiveness from God who is not
himself in an attitude of reconciliation with
God, of harmony of will with him. In the
same way, peace with God, the gift of the
Spirit, life, God's own life, cannot be really
given to any man without an ethical response
on his part in a definite attitude of will.
Anything arbitrary here is, therefore, neces-
sarily shut out. God's gifts in religion are

92 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

of such a kind that they simply cannot be
given to the unwilling soul. They are not
things to be mechanically poured out on
men. We have no need, consequently, to
guard our religious statements in this respect.
We cannot even receive from God the spir-
itual gifts of the religious relation without the
active will. Here, too, religion is certainly
ethical.

4. Communion with God, through Harmony
with His Ethical Will. — Or, one may say,
desire for real communion with God seeks
God himself, not things, or some experience
merely. But the very center of personality
is the will; any genuine seeking of God
himself, therefore, to commune with him,
requires unity with his ethical will. The
deepest religious motive is at the same time,
thus, an impulse to character.

5. The Vision of God for the Pure in Heart.
— Christ's own statement — "Blessed are the
pure in heart; for they shall see God" — sug-
gests another aspect of this essential unity of
the religious and the ethical. The connec-
tion in the beatitude is no chance one.
The highest and cdmpletest revelation of
personality, human or divine, can be made
only to the reverent. God reveals himself

THE THOROUGH ETHICIZING OF RELIGION 93

to the reverent soul, and most of all to the
pure — to those souls that are reverent of
personality throughout and under the sever-
est pressure. Therefore, the pure in heart
shall see God. "The secret of the Lord is
with them that fear him."1 The vision of
God requires the spirit that is reverent of
personality, and this spirit is the abiding
source of the finest ethical living.

6. Sharing the Life of God. — But perhaps
the clearest and most satisfactory putting of
the relation is this. The very meaning of
religion is sharing the life of God. As soon,
now, as God is conceived as essentially holy
and loving, a God of character, a living will
and not a substance — and Christianity to be
true to itself, must always so conceive him —
so soon religion and morality are indissolubly
united. God's life, according to Christ's
teaching, is the life of constant and perfect
self-giving. To share the life of God, there-
fore, to share his single purpose, is to come
into the life of loving service. The two fall
together from the point of view of the social
consciousness. And we are "saved," we come
into the real religious life, only in the pro-
portion in which we have really learned to

1 Psalm 25 114.

94 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

love. "Everyone that loveth is begotten of
God, and knoweth God." 1 The old separation
of religion and character is impossible from
this point of view.

7. Christ, as Satisfying Our Highest Claims
on Life. — But we may still profitably press the
question : Is the Christian religion — the spe-
cial faith in the revelation of God in Christ,
the best way to righteousness? does it neces-
sarily, most naturally, most spontaneously, and
most joyfully carry righteousness of life with
it? If this is to be true, Christian faith, in
Herrmann's language, "must give men the
power to submit with joy to the claims of
duty."2 It may be doubted whether any one
has dealt with this question as satisfactorily as
Herrmann himself, and a few sentences may
well be quoted from his discussion. "We
know that the ordinary instinctive way in
which men seek the satisfaction of all the
needs of life makes it impossible to submit
honestly to the demands of duty, and we see,
also, the falsity of the childish idea of the
mystics that this instinct should be extirpated ;
it follows, then, that we can only seek moral
deliverance in a true and perfect satisfaction

1 I John 4:7.

2 The Communion of the Christian with God, p. 230.

THE THOROUGH ETHICIZING OF RELIGION 95

of our craving for life. . . Now just such
a feeling of perfect inner contentment is pos-
sible to the Christian, and he has it just in
proportion as he understands that God turns
to him in Christ. . . This is redemption,
that Christ creates within us a living joy,
whose brightness beams even from the eye of
sorrow, and tells the world of a power it can-
not comprehend. And the power that works
redemption is the fact that in our world
there is a Man whose appearance can at any
moment be to us the mighty Word of God,
snatching us out of our troubles and making
us to feel that he desires to have us for his
own, and so setting us free from the world
and from our own instinctive nature."1

Christ, that is, has no desire to withdraw
himself from the test of the largest life. He
is able to satisfy the highest demands for life.
He courts the trial. He claims to offer life,
the largest life. "I came," he says, "that
they may have life, and may have it abun-
dantly."2 His way of deliverance is not neg-
ative but positive, not limiting but fulfilling.
He is able to give such largeness of life in
himself, such inner satisfaction of the craving

1 Op. cit., pp. 232-234.

2 John 10:10.

96 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

for life, as makes a lower life lose its power
over us, the larger and higher life driving out
the meaner and lower. This is positive vic-
tory, supplanting the lower with the higher;
just as in literature, in music, in friendship,
and in love, we expect the best to break down
the taste for the lower.

8. The Vision of the Riches of the Life of
Christ, Ethically Conditioned. — But the thought
of Christ's satisfying our highest claim on
life deserves to be carried further, if it is to
be saved from vagueness and to have its full
power with us. The highest value in the
world is a personal life. So Christ has made
us feel. It is finally the only value, for all
other so-called values borrow their value from
persons. The highest joy conceivable is en-
tering into the riches of another's personal
life through his willing self-revelation. Now
it is no fine fancy that the supremely rich life
of the world's history is Christ's. God can
only be known, if we are not to fall back
into the vagaries of mysticism, in his concrete
manifestation; and God opens out in Christ,
the New Testament believes, the inexhaus-
tible wealth of his own personal life. It is
God's highest gift, the gift of himself. "No
one knoweth the Son save the Father; neither

THE THOROUGH ETHICIZING OF RELIGION 97

doth any know the Father, save the Son, and
he to whom the Son willeth to reveal him."1
"This is life eternal, that they should know
thee, the only true God, and him whom thou
didst send."2 So it seemed to Paul: "Unto
me, who am less than the least of all saints,
was this grace given, to preach unto the Gen-
tiles the unsearchable riches of Christ."3 Do
we not here catch a glimpse of what the
depth of that satisfaction with the inner life
of God in Christ may be?

" For He who hath the heart of God sufficed,
Can satisfy all hearts, — yea, thine and mine."

Only the riches of a personal life can satisfy
our claim on life, our desire for life; and,
ultimately, we can be fully satisfied only with
God's own life in the fullest revelation he can
make of it to us men. Only this can be "the
unspeakable gift." The thirst for God, for
the living God, is a simply true expression of
the human heart when it comes to real self-
knowledge.

But the riches of the personal life of Christ
are necessarily hidden to one who does not
come into the sharing of Christ's purpose.
The condition of the vision is ethical. The

1 Matt. 11:27. 2John 17:3. 3 Eph. 3:8.

G

98 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

very satisfaction, therefore, of our craving for
life constantly impels to a more perfect union
with the will of Christ; for such complete
entering into the life of another with joy
implies profound agreement. The desire
for life, therefore, for God's own life, for
communion with God, itself impels to char-
acter. Faith does here give "the power to
submit with joy to the claims of duty," and
religion is ethical in the very heart of it.

9. The Moral Law, as a Revelation of the
Love of God. — The same unity of the religious
and ethical life is helpfully seen, if we put
the matter in one further and slightly differ-
ent way. Only the Christian religion, faith
in God as Father revealed in Christ, enables
us to welcome the stern demands of duty
and so gives us inner deliverance, joy, and
liberty in the moral life; for now the moral
demand is seen, not as task only, but as op-
portunity. For Christ, the law of God is a
revelation of the love of God; it is a gracious
indication — a secret whispered to us — of the
lines along which we are to find our largest
and richest life; it is not a limitation of life,
but a way to larger life. Not, then, the avoid-
ance, as far as possible, of the law of God,
but the completest fulfilment of it is the road

THE THOROUGH ETHICIZING OF RELIGION 99

to life — following the hint of the law into the
remotest ramifications, and into the inmost
spirit, of the life.

The other attitude which assumes that the
law is a hindrance to life is a distinct denial
of the love of God. It implies that God
lays upon us demands which are not for our
good. It refuses to accept as reality Christ's
manifestation of God as Father. Real belief
in the love of God, on the other hand, must
take the fearful out of his commands. To
be "freed from the law," now, has quite a
different meaning: not the taking off from
us of the moral demand, but the inner deliv-
erance, that would not have the command
removed, but finds life in it, and obeys it
freely and joyfully. Only a thoroughgoing
and fundamental faith in the Fatherhood of
God can bring such inner deliverance, even
as we have seen that only such a faith can
really ground the social consciousness. And
such a faith only Christ has proved adequate
to bring.

With this light, now, we feel, in every de-
mand of duty, the presence of God, and in
this presence of God the pledge of life, not
a limitation of life. The religious life desires
God, and it finds God never so certainly

IOO THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

as in the purpose fully to face duty. Every
one of the relations of life is, thus, turned to
with joy by the religious man, as sure to be
a further channel of the revelation of God.
The thirst for God drives to the faithful ful-
filment of the human relation. Religion
becomes joyfully ethical.

Nor is there any possibility of abandon-
ment to the will of God in general, as the
mystic seems often to feel. God's will means
particulars all along the way of our life; and
there is no communion with God except in
this ethical will in particulars. At no point,
therefore, can the religious life withdraw it-
self from the daily duty and maintain its own
existence. The constant inevitable condition
of the religious communion is the ethical
will. Our providential place is God's place
to find us. Where God has put us, just
there he will best find us. This is further
seen in the fact that the true Christian experi-
ence is a constant paradox : God ever satisfy-
ing, and yet ever impelling — never allowing
us to remain where we are, but holding up
to us the always higher ideal beyond ; the
law is ever, "Of his fulness we all received,
and grace in place of grace."1 The deepen-

!John i: 16. Cf. Herrmann, Op. cit., pp. 92, 93.

THE THOROUGH ETHICIZING OF RELIGION IOI

ing communion with God is only through a
constantly deepening moral life.

Such a thoroughgoing ethicizing of reli-
gion as the social consciousness demands, we
need not hesitate, therefore, to believe is
possible. The truer religion is to its own
great aspiration after God, the more certainly
is it ethical.

But the social consciousness, so far as it
influences religion, not only tends to draw
away from the falsely mystical, and to empha-
size the personal and the ethical, it also tends
to emphasize in religion the concretely, his-
torically Christian.

CHAPTER VIII

THE EMPHASIS OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS UPON
THE HISTORICALLY CHRISTIAN IN RELIGION

The fact that the social consciousness
tends to emphasize in religion the concretely
historically Christian, has been so inevitably,
involved in the preceding discussions, that it
can be treated very briefly.

I. THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS NEEDS HISTORICAL
JUSTIFICATION

The justification of the social conscious-
ness, we have seen,1 must be preeminently
from history. Neither nature nor speculation
can satisfy it. It needs to be able to believe
in a living God who is in living relation to
living men. It needs just such a justification
as historical Christianity, and only historical
Christianity, can give ; it needs the assurance
of an objective divine will in the world,
definitely working in the line of its own
ideals. It needs also to be able to give such

1 Cf above, pp. 59 ff.
(102)

THE HISTORICALLY CHRISTIAN 103

definite content to the thought of God as shall
be able to satisfy its own strong insistence
upon the rational and the ethical as historical.

II. CHRISTIANITY'S RESPONSE TO THIS NEED

If religion is to be a reality to the social
consciousness, then, there must be a real
revelation of a real God in the real world,
in actual human history, not an imaginary
God, nor a dream God, nor a God of mystic
contemplation. This discernment of God in
the real world, in actual history, is the glory
even of the Old Testament; and it came, as
we have seen, along the line of the social
consciousness. And it is such a real reve-
lation of the real God that Christianity finds
preeminently in Christ. It can say to the
social consciousness : Make no effort to be-
lieve, but simply put yourself in the presence
of a concrete, definite, actual, historical fact,
with its perennial ethical appeal; put yourself
in the presence of Christ — the greatest and
realest of the facts of history, — and let that
fact make its own legitimate impression,
work its own natural work; that fact alone,
of all the facts of history, gives you full and
ample warrant for your own being.

104 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

If this be true, it can hardly be doubted
that, so far as the social consciousness under-
stands itself and influences religion at all, it
will tend to emphasize, not to underestimate,
the concretely, historically Christian.

The natural influence of the social con-
sciousness upon religion, then, may be said
to be fourfold : it tends to draw away from
the falsely mystical; it tends to emphasize
the personal in religion, and so to keep the
truly mystical; it tends to emphasize the
ethical in religion ; and it needs the con-
cretely, historically Christian.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL
CONSCIOUSNESS UPON THEO-
LOGICAL DOCTRINE

CHAPTER IX

GENERAL RESULTS

The question of this third division of our
inquiry is this : To what changed points of
view, and to what restatements of doctrine,
and so to what better appreciation of Chris-
tian truth, does the social consciousness of
our time lead ? The question is raised here,
as in the case of the conception of religion,
not as one of exact historical connection,
but rather as a question of sympathetic points
of contact. It means simply: With what
changes in theological statements would the
social consciousness naturally find itself most
sympathetic ?

Certain general results are clear from the
start, and might be anticipated from any one
of several points of view.

(105)

106 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

I. THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY IN PERSONAL

TERMS

In the first place, the social consciousness
means, we have found, emphasis on the fully
personal — a fresh awakening to the signifi-
cance of the person and of personal relations.
Its whole activity is in the sphere of personal
relations. Hence, as in the conception of
religion, so here, so far as the social con-
sciousness affects theology at all, it will tend
everywhere to bring the personal into promi-
nence, and it certainly will be found in har-
mony ultimately with the attempt to conceive
theology in terms of personal relations.
These are for the social consciousness the
realest of realities ; and if theology is to be
real to the social consciousness, then it must
make much of the personal. Theology, thus,
it is worth while seeing, is not to be personal
and social, but it will be social — it will do jus-
tice to the social consciousness — if it does
justice to the fully personal; for, in the lan-
guage of another, "man is social, just in so far
as he is personal."1

The foreign and unreal seeming of many
of the old forms of statement, it may well be

1 Nash, Ethics and Revelation, p. 259.

GENERAL RESULTS IO7

noted in passing, has its probable cause just
here. They were not shaped in the atmos-
phere of the social consciousness. They got
at things in a way we should not now think of
using. The method of approach was too
merely metaphysical and individualistic and
mystical, and the result seems to us to have
but slight ethical or religious significance.
The arguments that now move us most, in
this entire realm of spiritual inquiry, are
moral and social rather than metaphysical
and mystical. It is interesting to see, for ex-
ample, how such arguments for immortality
as that of the simplicity of the soul's being —
and most of those used by Plato — and how
such arguments even for the existence of
God as those of Samuel Clarke from time
and space, have become for us merely matters
of curious inquiry. We can hardly imagine
men having given them real weight. A simi-
lar change seems to be creeping over the
laborious attempts metaphysically to conceive
the divinity of Christ. The question is shift-
ing its position for both radical and conserva-
tive to a new ground — from the metaphysical
and mystical to the moral and social ; though
some radicals who regard themselves as in the
van of progress have not yet found it out, and

108 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

so find fault with one for not continually de-
fining himself in terms of the older meta-
physical formulas and shibboleths. The con-
siderations, in all these questions and in many
others, which really weigh most with us now,
are considerations which belong to the sphere
of the personal spiritual life. Ultimately,
no doubt, a metaphysics is involved here too;
but it is a metaphysics whose final reality is
spirit, not an unknown substance — Locke's
"something, I know not what."

The unsatisfactoriness of even so honored
a symbol as the Apostles' Creed, as a perma-
nently adequate statement of Christian faith,
must for similar reasons become increasingly
clear in the atmosphere of the social con-
sciousness. One wonders, as he goes care-
fully over it, that so many concrete statements
could be made concerning the Christian reli-
gion, which yet are so little ethical. The
creed seems almost to exclude the ethical.
It has nothing to say, except by rather distant
implication, of the character of God, of the
character of Christ, or of the character of
men. The life of Christ between his birth
and his death are untouched. The consider-
ations that really weigh most with us — as they
did with the apostles — in making us Christians,

GENERAL RESULTS 109

certainly do not come here to prominent ex-
pression. This whole difference of atmos-
phere is the striking fact; and were it not
that we instinctively interpret its phrases in
accordance with our modern consciousness,
we should feel the difference much more than
we do.

What the previous discussion has called the
truly mystical — the recognition of the whole
man, of the entire personality — is coming in
increasingly to correct both the falsely mysti-
cal and the falsely metaphysical. We are
arguing now, in harmony with the social
consciousness, from the standpoint of the
broadly rational, not from that of the narrowly
intellectual.

II. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD, AS THE DETER-
MINING PRINCIPLE IN THEOLOGY

One might reach essentially the same gen-
eral results from the influence of the social
consciousness, by seeing that, so far as it deep-
ens for us the meaning of the personal, it will
deepen immediately our conception of the
Fatherhood of God — the central and domi-
nating doctrine in all theology — and so affect
all theology. For, with a change in the con-

IIO THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

ception of God, no doctrine can go wholly
untouched. Every step into a deeper feeling
for the personal — and the growth of the
modern social, consciousness is undoubtedly
a long step in that direction — deepens neces-
sarily religion and theology. Perhaps the
possible results here can be illustrated in no
way better than by recalling Patterson DuBois'
putting of the needed change in the concep-
tion of the proper attitude of a father toward
his child. We are not to say, he writes: "I
will conquer that child, no matter what it
may cost him," but we are to say, "I will
help that child to conquer himself, no matter
what it may cost me." Now that change in
point of view is a well-nigh perfect illustra-
tion of the social consciousness in a given
relation, and it cannot be doubted that it is
a true expression of Christ's thought of the
Fatherhood of God ; but has it really domi-
nated through and through our theological
statements? Manifestly, what it means to us
that God is Father depends on what we have
come to see in fatherhood. And Principal
Fairbairn, in the second part of his The Place
of Christ in Modern Theology, has given us a
good illustration of how much it means for
theology to be in earnest in making the

GENERAL RESULTS III

Fatherhood of God the determining doctrine
in theology.

III. CHRIST'S OWN SOCIAL EMPHASES

Again, if the general influence of the so-
cial consciousness upon theological doctrine
is to be recognized at all, it is evident that
a Christian theology must take full account
of Christ's own social emphases. By loyalty
to these, it will expect best to meet the need
of an enlightened social consciousness. It
will strive thus — to use Professor Peabody's
instructive summary of "the social principles
of the teaching of Jesus" — to be true to "the
view from above, the approach from within,
and the movement toward a spiritual end ;
wisdom, personality, idealism ; a social hori-
zon, a social power, a social aim. The su-
preme truth that this is God's world gave to
Jesus his spirit of social optimism; the assu-
rance that man is God's instrument gave to
him his method of social opportunism ; the
faith that in God's world God's people are
to establish God's kingdom gave him his
social idealism. He looks upon the strug-
gling, chaotic, sinning world with the eye of
an unclouded religious faith, and discerns in

112 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

it the principle of personality fulfilling the
will of God in social service."1

And every one of these three great social
principles of Jesus has obvious theological
applications, not yet fully made.

The social consciousness, indeed, well illus-
trates Fairbairn's admirable statement of how
progress is to be expected in theology. "The
longer the history [of Christ]," he says, "lives
in the [Christian] consciousness and pene-
trates it, the more does the consciousness be-
come able to interpret the history in its own
terms and according to its own contents. The
old pagan mind into which Christianity first
came could not possibly be the best inter-
preter of Christianity, and the more the mind
is cleansed of the pagan the more qualified
it becomes to interpret the religion. It is,
therefore, reasonable to expect that the later
forms of faith should be the truer and purer."2

Now the social consciousness itself is a
genuine manifestation of the spirit of Christ
at work in the world, and the mind perme-
ated with this social consciousness is conse-
quently better able to turn back to the teach-
ing of Jesus and give it proper interpretation.

1 Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Social Question, p. 104.
2Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 186.

GENERAL RESULTS 113

IV. THE REFLECTION IN THEOLOGY OF THE
CHANGES IN THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION

Once more, theology, as an expression of
religion, will at once reflect any change in
the conception of religion. The influence
of the social consciousness upon religion,
already traced, will, therefore, inevitably pass
over into theology. This means nothing less
than a changed point of view, in the consid-
eration of each doctrine. For theology must
then recognize clearly that it can build on
no falsely mystical conception of communion
with God; but, while keeping the elements
in mysticism which are justified by the social
consciousness, it will require of itself through-
out a formulation of doctrine in terms that
shall be thoroughly personal, thoroughly
ethical, and indubitably loyal to the con-
cretely historically Christian. Many tradi-
tional statements quite fail to meet so search-
ing a test; but no lower standard can give
a theology that should fully meet the demands
of the social consciousness.

The general results of the influence of the
social consciousness upon theological doc-
trine, then, may be said to include: The
emphasis upon the fully personal, and so

h

114 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

conceiving theology in terms of personal
relation; the deepening of the conception
of the Fatherhood of God, and making this
the determining principle in theology; the
application of the social principles of the
teaching of Jesus to theology; the reflection
in theology of the natural changes in the
conception of religion wrought by the social
consciousness. Now any one of these gen-
eral results indicates the certain influence of
the social consciousness upon theology, and
any one might be followed out into helpful
suggestions for the restatement of theological
doctrines.

But we shall probably most clearly and
definitely answer the question of our theme,
if we ask specifically concerning the several
elements of the social consciousness: How
does a deepening sense of the like-minded-
ness of men, of the mutual influence of men,
of the value and sacredness of the person,
of personal obligation, and of love, tend to
affect our theological point of view and mode
of statement? And our inquiry will follow
these separate questions in separate chapters,
except that for the purposes of theological
inference, the last three may be appropriately
grouped together.

CHAPTER X

THE INFLUENCE OF THE DEEPENING SENSE OF THE
LIKE-MINDEDNESS OF MEN UPON THEOLOGY

In definitely considering the influence of
the social consciousness upon theological
doctrines, our first question becomes: How
does the deepening sense of the like-mind-
edness of men affect theology?

Obviously, here, the change will be largely
one of mood. We shall look at our themes
with a different feeling, and so speak differ-
ently, modifying our methods of putting
things in those slight ways that do not seem
specially significant to one who judges in
the mass, but mean very much to one who
feels the finer implications of personal life.
These finer changes no one can hope to
follow out in detail. Certain of these finer
changes will naturally find incidental ex-
pression in the course of the more formal
treatment.

But our attention must be mainly given to
the statement of some of the most important of
the plainer results of the principle in theology.

("5)

Il6 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
I. NO PRIME FAVORITES WITH GOD

In the first place, this conviction of the
like-mindedness of men means that there can
be no prime favorites with God.

It can hardly help affecting the thought
of election. Election will, indeed, be thought
of as qualified by the character of the chosen;
for even Paul's argument in Romans clearly
recognizes this, and is, in fact, itself a distinct
argument against a narrow doctrine of elec-
tion, as others have recognized.1 But, beyond
this, the conviction of the like-mindedness of
men will especially view election as a choice
for service. The divine method of election
must be in harmony with Christ's fundamen-
tal principle of his kingdom, and with the
developing social consciousness: "Whosoever
shall be first among you, shall be servant
of all."2 It is no accident that this thought
of election as choice for preeminent service,
which is indeed soundly biblical, has come
into special prominence in these days of the
social consciousness. The same change is
passing over our view of the "elect," as of the
"privileged" and "governing" classes. We

1 Cf. e. g., Clarke, Outline of Christian Theology, p. 145.
* Mark 10:44.

INFLUENCE OF LIKE -MINDEDNESS OF MEN 117

shall not return to the older feeling of prime
favorites of God, and the problem of evil
will find herein a certain alleviation. We
shall feel increasingly that each race and each
individual have their calling and have their
compensating advantages ; and that, when it
comes down to the final test of opportunity,
the differences in opportunity between in-
dividuals are far less than they seem ; for to
each one is given the possibility of the larg-
est service any man can render — the possi-
bility of touching closely with the very spirit
of his life a few other lives. " There are
compensations," as James says, "and no out-
ward changes of condition in life can keep
the nightingale of its eternal meaning from
singing in all sorts of different men's hearts."1

II. THE GREAT UNIVERSAL QUALITIES AND INTER-
ESTS, THE MOST VALUABLE

Moreover, since equality of need among
men,2 implies, as we have seen, a common
capacity — even if in varying degrees — of
entering into the most fundamental interests
of life, this belief in the essential likeness of

1 James, Talis on Psychology and Life's Ideals, p. 301.
,j!Cf. Giddings, Elements of Sociology, p. 324.

Il8 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

men is likely to carry with it that most
wholesome conviction for theology, that the
great universal qualities and interests are the
most valuable. Not that which distinguishes
us from one another, but that which we have
in common is most valuable. As Howells
tells the boys in his A Boy'1 s Town, "the
first thing you have to learn here below, is
that in essentials you are just like every one
else, and that you are different from others
only in what is not so much worth while."1
This consideration is no small help in fac-
ing that most difficult problem for any ideal
view of the world — the problem of evil.

In God's world, we feel that the most
common things ought to be the best. And
this growing conviction of the social con-
sciousness- comes in to confirm our faith.
The constant and simple insistence of Christ
on receptivity as a fundamental quality in
his kingdom is built, in fact, on an opti-
mistic faith in the value of the common
things.

It is interesting to notice the varied con-
firmations of the value of the common.
How often we have to feel that the deepest
discussions come out with only deeper in-

1 Howells, A Boy's Town, p. 205.

INFLUENCE OF LIKE -MINDEDNESS OF MEN Iig

sight into the great common truths; and,
on the other hand, that in stilted philoso-
phizing, what seems at first sight a great dis-
covery, proves only a perversely obscure way
of putting a common truth.

It is the very mission of genius — of the
poet in the larger sense, we are coming
to feel, to bring out the value of the com-
mon. His distinctive mark is that he has
kept a fresh sense for the great common
experiences of life. So Kipling prays:

"It is enough that through Thy grace
I saw naught common on Thy earth.
Take not that vision from my ken."

So, the greatest in art, Hegel contends, has
a universal appeal.

It is a wholesome and heartening convic-
tion, I say, to bring into theology, that the
really best things are common, accessible to
all, actually shared in, to an extent beyond
that which our superficial vision seems to
show. For, after all, this conviction of the
social consciousness is only bringing home
to us, in a new and appreciable way, Christ's
own optimism and his own faith in the love
of the Father. It is only another illustration
of Fairbairn's principle of the Christian con-
sciousness becoming more Christian, and

120 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

so better able to understand and interpret
Christ.

And it leads us back by this route of the
social consciousness, to emphasize in life,
and in our theological thinking upon the
conditions of entering the kingdom of God,
Christ's own insistence upon the two univer-
sally human characteristics found in every
child — susceptibility and trust, which, volun-
tarily cherished, become teachableness and
belief in love. If God is Father indeed, and
we are intended to come to our best in
association with him, these qualities must be
the most fundamental ones. And they imply
no lack of virility, either, for the highest
self-assertion, as Professor Everett pointed
out in his criticism of Nietzsche, is in com-
plete self-surrender to such a will as God's.
"When Jesus said, 'He that loseth his life
shall save it,' he said in effect — The self-sur-
render to which I call you is the truest self-
assertion. We find thus in the teachings of
Christianity a summons to strength far greater
than that implied by the self-assertion which
is most characteristic of the teachings of
Nietzsche, because it is the assertion of a
larger self."1

1 The Neiv World, Dec, 1898, pp. 702, 703.

INFLUENCE OF LIKE -MINDEDNESS OF MEN 121

Our outlook becomes well-nigh hopeless,
when we make our tests of admission to the
kingdom so much more exclusive than Christ
himself made them.

III. ESSENTIAL LIKENESS UNDER VERY DIVERSE
FORMS

It is particularly important for theology
that this conviction of the like-mindedness
of men has come from a growing power to
discern essential likeness under very diverse
forms; for this consideration bears not only
on the problem of natural evil, but also on
the problem of sin and of the progress of
Christianity.

We have taken some curiously diverse
paths to this understanding of diverse lives.
Travels, history, biography, autobiographical
fragments, anthropology, sociology, psychol-
ogy, and — to no small degree — fiction, with its
stories of out-of-the-way places and out-of-the-
way peoples and of unfamiliar classes, — all
have been thoroughfares for the social con-
sciousness here.

We are slowly learning to see the likeness
under the differences, and so to transcend
the differences even between occidental and

122 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

oriental. All this means much, not only for
our practical missionary putting of the truth,
but also for our final theological statements.
They will inevitably grow simpler, larger,
more universally human, and at the same
time more deep and solid.

We are slowly learning, too, to discern a
deep inner content of life under conditions
that have no appeal for us, and to see like
ideals and aspirations under very diverse
forms of expression. Take, for example,
these three or four sentences — a small part
of that quoted by Professor James in his essay,
On a Certain blindness in Human Beings, — from
Stevenson's Lantern-Bearers : "It is said that
a poet has died young in the breast of the
most stolid. It may be contended rather
that a (somewhat minor) bard in almost every
case survives, and is the spice of life to his
possessor. Justice is not done to the versa-
tility and the unplumbed childishness of
man's imagination. His life from without
may seem but a rude mound of mud ; there
will be some golden chamber at the heart of
it in which he dwells delighted."1 And,
later, on the side of ideals, Stevenson is
quoted once again: "If I could show you

'James, Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals, p. 237.

INFLUENCE OF LIKE-MINDEDNESS OF MEN 123

these men and women all the world over, in
every stage of history, under every abuse of
error, under every circumstance of failure,
without hope, without help, without thanks,
still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue,
still clinging to some rag of honor, the poor
jewel of their souls!"1 And now, having
quoted Howells and Stevenson as theological
authorities, I shall be pardoned if, for a mo-
ment, I erect Kenneth Grahame's Golden Age
into a "theological institute": "See," said my
friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder,
"how this strange thing, this love of ours,
lives and shines out in the unlikeliest of
places ! You have been in the fields in early
morning? Barren acres, all ! But only stoop —
catch the light thwartwise — and all is a silver
network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments
of this strange thing underrun and link to-
gether the whole world. Yet it is not the
old imperious god of the fatal bow — ipm dvi/care
ixdxav — not that — nor even the placid respect-
able aropyrj — but something still unnamed, per-
haps more mysterious, more divine ! Only
one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one
must stoop !"2

lOp. cit., p. 282.

2p. 112.

124 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

It means very much for the sanity of our
outlook on life, and for any possible theodicy,
that we can believe the heart of such a view
as this for which Stevenson and Grahame
are here contending. And what is all this
attempt to get away from this "certain blind-
ness in human beings," of which Professor
James speaks, but a growing into one of the
fixed habits of Jesus, what Phillips Brooks
calls " his discovery of interest in people
whom the world generally would have found
most uninteresting?" "And this same habit,"
he adds, "passing over into his disciples, made
the wide and democratic character of the
new faith."1

IV. AS APPLIED TO THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY

It may probably be safely said that this
steadily growing conviction of the social
consciousness, of the essential likeness of all
men, which is daily confirmed afresh, and
the more confirmed the more careful the
study, is not likely to take kindly to the idea —
which comes into a part of Dr. McConnell's
argument concerning immortality, in his in-
teresting book, The Evolution of I?nmortality —

1 Brooks, The Influence of Jesus, p. 253.

INFLUENCE OF LIKE-MINDEDNESS OF MEN 125

that living creatures classed as men on
physical grounds are not, therefore, to be so
classed on psychical grounds.1 The consid-
erations and illustrations brought forward by
Dr. McConnell, in connection with this
proposition, I cannot think would seem at
all conclusive to either the trained psychol-
ogist or sociologist. It is exactly the like-
mindedness of men which the social con-
sciousness affirms, and it has not come
hastily to its conclusion. It will not quickly
surrender that conclusion. There is an "evo-
lution of immortality," and it has been age-
long, but it is pre-human. The belief in
immortality so far as it does not rest purely
on the question of the moral quality of a
given human life (where the hypothesis of
"immortability" may properly enough come
in) is grounded upon characteristics — like that
of the possibility of absolutely indefinite pro-
gress2— which in sober scientific inquiry can-
not safely be denied to any man, and must
be denied to all creatures below man. In
any case, the new theory of "immortability,"
so far as it is based upon the proposition

1 McConnell, The Evolution of Immortality, pp. 75 ff.

2 Cf . James, Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 348 ff., p. 367; Lotze, The
Microcosmus, Book V, especially Vol. I, pp. 713, 714.

126 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

here considered, has its battle to fight out
with this established conviction of the social
consciousness of the essential like-mindedness
of all men.

There are various considerations, not all
of them wholly creditable, which will lead
many to turn a willing ear to this new
prophesying; but, though it makes much of
evolution, it seems to me to have the whole
trend of the social evolution against it, and
to give the lie to that patient sympathetic
insight into the lives of other classes and
peoples, which is one of the finest products
of the ethical evolution of the race. If one
is tempted to believe that a good large share
of the human race are really brutes in human
semblance, — and our selfishness and pride
and impatience and unloving lack of insight
and desire to dominate may naturally tempt
in this direction,— let him read that chapter
of Professor James to which reference has
already been made, On a Certain Blindness in
Human Beings, and its pendant, What Makes
a Life Significant. It may help his theology.
Let him recall the words of Phillips Brooks
concerning this "strange hopelessness about
the world, joined to a strong hope for them-
selves, which we see in many good religious

INFLUENCE OF LIKE-MINDEDNESS OF MEN 127

people." "In their hearts they recognize
indubitably that God is saving them, while
the aspect of the world around them seems
to show them that the world is going to
perdition. This is a common enough con-
dition of mind ; but I think it may be surely
said that it is not a good, nor can it be a
permanent, condition. God has mercifully
made us so that no man can constantly and
purely believe in any great privilege for
himself unless he believes in at least the
possibility of the same privilege for other

V. CONSEQUENT LARGER SYMPATHY WITH MEN,
FAITH IN MEN, AND HOPE FOR MEN

This whole conviction of the social con-
sciousness, of the like-mindedness of men,
leads naturally to increased sympathy with men,
and this in turn to still better discernment of
moral and spiritual realities. And this is of
prime importance for the theologian ; for sym-
pathetic insight, it must never be forgotten,
is the true route to spiritual verities. So far
as our insight into actual human life becomes
truer, so far our theology becomes clearer and
more reasonable.

1 The Candle of the Lord, and Other Sermons, p. 154.

128 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

This conviction leads also to increased be-
lief in men, and consequently to increased
belief in the effectiveness of the higher
appeals. The temptation to disbelief in man
was one of the underlying temptations of
Christ as he looked forward to his work; but
he turned resolutely from it, and refused to
build his kingdom on any lower appeal that
implied a lack of faith in men. Nothing
seems to me more wonderful in Christ than
his marvelous faith in man ; for, though he has
the deepest sense of the sin of men, there is
not the slightest trace of cynicism in his
thought or life.

This recognition of likeness under diver-
sity, too, leads to increased hope for men, here
and hereafter. In James' words: "It abso-
lutely forbids us to be forward in pronoun-
cing on the meaninglessness of forms of ex-
istence other than our own. . . . Neither
the whole of truth nor the whole of good is
revealed to any single observer. . . . No
one has insight into all the ideals. No one
should presume to judge them off-hand."1

This thought helps us to greater hope for
men, because, indeed, it helps us to the dis-
cernment of genuine ideals under very differ-

1 Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals, pp. 263, 265.

INFLUENCE OF LIKE -MINDEDNESS OF MEN 129

ent forms of life, of the universal sense of
duty and some loyalty to it, though there is
great diversity of judgment as to what is duty.1
But, it is here to be noted, also, that the
thought of the like-mindedness of men brings
greater hope, because it helps to the dis-
cernment of likeness, even under difference
in important terms used. We are coming to
see that there is sometimes, at least, a
really strong religious faith where men do
not acknowledge the term. Thus, Bradley
says: "All of us, I presume, more or less,
are led beyond the region of ordinary facts.
Some in one way, and some in others, we
seem to touch and have communion with
what is beyond the visible world. In vari-
ous manners we find something higher,
which supports and humbles, both chastens
and transports us. And," as a philosopher
he adds, "with certain persons, the intel-
lectual effort to understand the universe is
a principal way of thus experiencing the
Deity."2

Even where the term Deity would be en-
tirely abjured, we have seen with Paulsen,3

1 Cf. above, p. 121 ff.

2 Bradley, Appearance and Reality, pp. 5, 6.

3 Cf. above, pp. 46, 47.

I30 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

that a real faith essentially religious in char-
acter may be clearly manifest. We are even
coming to see that men may seem to them-
selves to be contending upon opposite sides
of so fundamental a question as that of the
personality of God, and yet be near together
as to their own ultimate faith and attitude, and
possibly even as to their real philosophical
views of God ; but the same term has come
to have such different connotations for the
men, from their different education and ex-
perience, that they simply cannot use it with
the same meaning.

I have not the slightest desire to reduce the
concrete, ethical, definitely personal religion
of Jesus to the ambiguities of philosophical
dreamers ; the world is going to become
more and more consciously and avowedly
Christian. But I do not, on the other hand,
as a Christian theologian, wish to shut my eyes
to great essential likenesses in fundamental
faiths and ideals and aspirations, because they
are clothed in different garb. The life and
teaching of Jesus have worked and are work-
ing in the consciousness of men far beyond
the limits our feeble faith is inclined to
prescribe. There is doubtless much "un-
conscious Christianity," much "unconscious

INFLUENCE OF LIKE -MINDEDNESS OF MEN 131

following of Christ."1 And we are only
following Christ's own counsel, when we re-
fuse to forbid the man who is working a
good work in his name, though he follows
not with us.2 Certainly, if we accept the
witness of a man's life against the witness
of his lips when the witness of his lips is
right, we ought to accept the witness of his
life against the witness of his lips when the
witness of his lips is wrong.

With reference to all the preceding in-
ferences from the deepening sense of the
like-mindedness of men, it is particularly
worthy of note, that this conviction of the
essential likeness of men has come into ex-
istence side by side with the growing con-
viction of the moral unripeness of many men,
and in spite of that conviction. The careful
study of different social classes is forcing
upon both the scientific sociologist and the
practical social worker, the sense of the
ethical immaturity of men. But deeper than
this recognition of moral unripeness, deeper
than the vision of the sad defectiveness of
moral and spiritual ideals and standards,

1 Cf. Fremantle, The World as the Subject of Redemption, pp.
250 ff, 320 ff; Lyman Abbott, The Outlook, Dec. 24, 1898.

2 Mark 9:38, 39; Cf. Matt. 10:40-42.

132 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

deeper than the clear sense of the immense
differences among men as to what is duty,
deeper than the differences in even the most
important terms used, lies this great convic-
tion of likeness — that all men are moral and
spiritual beings, made for relation to one
another and to God; that they have ideals
that have a wide outlook implicit in them,
and have some loyalty to these ideals ; that
they do have a sense of obligation; that the
moral and spiritual life is a reality, a great
universal human fact.

VI. JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO LIGHT, AND THE
MORAL REALITY OF THE FUTURE LIFE

It is no accident, now, that accompanying
this double social conviction, there has come
into theology a new insistence upon the
principle of judgment of a man according
to his light, and consequently also, what Pro-
fessor Clarke calls "a tendency toward the
recognition of greater reality and freedom
in the other life, and thus toward the possi-
bility of moral change."1 Our conception
of the future life was certain to be modified
by the social consciousness; and it may be

1 An Outline of Christian Theology, p. 475.

INFLUENCE OF LIKE-MINDEDNESS OF MEN 133

doubted if any influence of the social con-
sciousness upon theology can be more clearly
traced historically than this. The motives
that have been working in our minds here
include, on the one hand, a wholesome sense
of the imperfection of even the best human
lives; a glad discernment, on the other hand,
of the presence of genuine ideals in lives
where we had thought there were none; the
certainty that, as Dr. Clarke says, "for at least
one-third of mankind the entire life of con-
scious and developed personality is lived in
the other world ;'n an experienced unwilling-
ness to say, where we cannot see, the precise
point at which the very diverse lives of men
under very diverse conditions come to full
moral maturity ; and the conviction that a
life that is to be moral at all must be moral
everywhere and through all time, and that
where even we can see a little, God can see
much more. All these motives, now, make
us refuse, with Christ, to answer the question,
"Are there few that be saved?" And both
with increasing hope, and with that increasing
sense of the seriousness and significance of
life which so characterizes the social con-
sciousness, to urge: "Strive to enter in."

1 Op. cit., p. 469.

134 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The growing sense of the likeness of men
does affect our thought of the future life.
The best men, under the clearest light, have
only begun; for the best, there is still much
need of growth. Who has not begun at all?
For whom is there no growth?

Let us make no mistake here. It is no
light - hearted indifference to character, to
which the genuine social consciousness leads.
No age, indeed, ever saw so clearly as ours
that the most essential conditions of happi-
ness are in character, or was more certain
that sin carries with it its own inevitable
consequences. It is not a less, but a more,
profound sense of the seriousness of the
problem of moral character, that makes us
hesitate to dogmatize concerning the future
life.

To bring together, now, the conclusions of
the chapter : The first element in the social
consciousness — the deepening sense of the like-
ness of men — seems likely to affect theology,
especially by modifying the thought of election
through emphasis upon choice for service,
and through the clear recognition that there
are no prime favorites with God; by strength-
ening the conviction that the great common
qualities and interests are the most valuable,

INFLUENCE OF LIKE -MINDEDNESS OF MEN 135

and that genuine and largely common ideals
may be found under very diverse forms and
conditions; and thus, on the one hand, by
opposing the denial of the psychical likeness
of men, as applied to the problem of immor-
tality, and, on the other hand, by bringing
us to larger sympathy with men, to larger
faith in men, and to larger hope for men;
and, finally, by laying new emphasis upon
judgment according to light, and upon the
moral reality and freedom of the future life.

CHAPTER XI

THE INFLUENCE OF THE DEEPENING SENSE OF THE
MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN UPON THEOLOGY

FROM this first element of the social con-
sciousness, we turn now to the second, and
ask, How does the deepening sense of the
mutual influence of men affect theology?

I. THE REAL UNITY OF THE RACE

i. First, then, taken with the sense of the
likeness of men, it can hardly be doubted
that sociology's strong feeling of the mutual
influence of men deepens for theology the
thought of the real, not the mechanical, unity
of the race. The theologian believes, more
than he did, in a race whose unity is preemi-
nently moral, rather than physical or mystical.
The truly scientific position for the theologian
seems to be, to make no mysterious assump-
tions, where well-known causes are sufficient
to account for the facts ; and those causes
which the social consciousness clearly sees to

(136)

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN I37

be at work seem, in all probability, adequate
to account for the facts in discussion so far
as those facts are finite at all.1 The theo-
logian knows, then, a true moral universe,
with a unity which is that of the close per-
sonal, mutual relations of like-minded spiritual
beings.

The natural goal of such a race, the only
one in which they can truly find themselves,
is the kingdom of God. This conception of
Christ is first thoroughly at home with us,
when we see that the true unity of the race
is that of personal moral relation. So far as
men turn from that goal, this same racial
unity of the inevitable and most intimate
personal relations converts them into some-
thing approaching Ritschl's conception of an
opposing "kingdom of sin."

Are we prepared to be thoroughly loyal
to just this conception of the unity of the
race throughout our theological thinking;
and so to give up cherished ideas of "com-
mon," "transmitted," "inherited," or "racial"
sin or righteousness, of "mystical solidarity,"
and racial ideal representation, etc.? It
probably may be said with truth that few,
if any, theological systems have been thus

1 Cf. above, pp. 35 ff.

138 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

loyal. Indeed, under what seems a mistaken
application of the social consciousness, and
particularly under the misleading influence
of the analogy of the organism, men have
believed themselves attaining a deeper theo-
logical view, when they have, in fact, turned
away from the sober teaching of the social
consciousness.

It may not be in vain for our theology to
hear and receive with patience a sociologist's
definition of the "social mind." Upon this
point Professor Giddings says explicitly:
"There is no reason to suppose that society
is a great being which is conscious of itself
through some mysterious process of think-
ing, separate and distinct from the thinking
that goes on in the brains of individual men.
At any rate, there is no possible way yet
known to man of proving that there is any
such supreme social consciousness." Never-
theless, he adds: "To the group of facts that
may be described as the simultaneous like-
mental-activity of two or more individuals in
communication with one another, or as a
concert of the emotions, thought, and will
of two or more communicating individuals,
we give the name, the social mind. This
name, accordingly, should be regarded as

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 139

meaning just this group of facts and noth-
ing more. It does not mean that there is
any other consciousness than that of indi-
vidual minds. It does mean that individual
minds act simultaneously in like ways and
continually influence one another; and that
certain mental products result from such
combined mental action which could not
result from the thinking of an individual
who had no communication with fellow-
beings."1

Just so far, it may well be supposed, and
no farther may we go, in theology, in moral
and spiritual inferences from the unity of the
race. We are members one of another for
good and for ill, one in the unity of the
inevitable, mutual influence of like-minded
persons.

II. DEEPENING THE SENSE OF SIN

And this conviction, in the second place,
not only deepens our sense of the real unity
of the race, it deepens also the sense of sin.
And we can hardly separate here the in-
fluence of the third element of the social
consciousness — the sense of the value and

1 The Elements of Saciology, pp. 119, 120, 121.

140 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

sacredness of the person. As against a rather
wide-spread and often expressed contrary feel-
ing, this deepening sense of sin may yet, it
is believed, be truthfully maintained, so far
as the social consciousness is really making itself
felt. There are some disintegrating ten-
dencies here, no doubt, like the tendency
under some applications of evolution and
evolutionary philosophy to turn all sin into
a necessary stage in the evolution. But had
not Drummond reason to say: "There is one
theological word which has found its way
lately into nearly all the newer and finer
literature of our country. It is not only one
of the words of the literary world at present,
it is perhaps the word. Its reality, its certain
influence, its universality, have at last been
recognized, and in spite of its theological
name have forced it into a place which
nothing but its felt relation to the wider
theology of human life could ever have
earned for a religious word. That word, it
need scarcely be said, is sin."1

Contrast this modern sense of sin with the
almost total lack of it among even so gifted a
people of the ancient world as the Greeks,
and feel the significance of the phenomenon.

1 The Ideal Life, p. 149.

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 141

But it is particularly to be noted that this
sense of sin in literature is largely due to a
keener social conscience. In fact, if the social
consciousness is not a thoroughly fraudulent
phenomenon, it could hardly be otherwise;
for the social consciousness, in its very essence,
is a sense of what is due a person; and sin is
always ultimately against a person, failure to
be what one ought to be in some personal
relation, including finally all the relations of
the kingdom of God. We simply cannot
deepen the sense of the meaning and value
of personal relations, and not deepen, at the
same time, the sense of sin. The meaning
of the Golden Rule, and so the sense of sin
under it, deepens inevitably with every step
into the meaning of the person. If the one
great commandment is love, then the sin of
which men need most of all to be convicted
is lack of love.

The self-tormenting and fanciful sins of
some of our devotional books very likely are
less felt. But the very existence of the social
consciousness seems to be proof that there
never was so much good, honest, whole-
some sense of real sin as to-day — such sin as
Christ himself recognizes in his own judg-
ment test.

142 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

It may be that, in temporary absorption in
the human relations, the relation of all this
to the All-Father may seem forgotten ; even
so, we may well remember Christ's "Ye did
it unto me." But, in fact, we must go much
farther and say, The social consciousness can
only be true to itself finally, as it goes on to
see its acts in the light, most of all, of that
single, personal relation which underlies all
others. We have already seen that the social
consciousness requires for its own justification
its grounding in the manifest trend of the
living will of God. With this felt identifi-
cation of the will of God with love for men,
men can still less shake off easily the con-
viction of sin.

Probably, most religious men. argue a
diminishing sense of sin, because they feel
that less is made of those consequences of
sin which have been usually connected with
the future life. There may be real danger
here from shallow thinking; but here, too,
the social consciousness has only to be true
to itself to be saved from any shallow esti-
mate of the consequences of sin here or
hereafter. As the sin itself is always, finally,
in personal relations, so the most terrible
results of sin, in this life and in all lives, are

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN I43

in personal relations. What it costs the man
himself in cutting him off from the relations
in which all largeness of life consists, what
it costs those who love him, what it costs
God, — this alone is the true measure of sin.
So judged, sin itself is feared as never before.
Surely, Principal Fairbairn is right in saying:
"And so even within Christendom, sin is
never so little feared as when hell most dom-
inates the imagination ; it needs to be looked
at as it affects God, to be understood and
feared."1 But it is the inevitable result of the
social consciousness to bring us to the deepest
conviction of all these personal relations, and
so to the deepest conviction of sin.

Another consideration deserves attention.
We have a growing conviction that our social
ideal is personally realized only in Christ, and
we have given unequaled attention to that
life and have such knowledge of it, in its
detailed applications, as no preceding genera-
tion has ever had. This simply means that
we have both such a sense of our moral call-
ing, and are face to face with such a living
standard, as must steadily deepen in us a gen-
uine sense of real sin, in our falling so far
short of the spirit of Christ.

1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 455,

144 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Theology needs, further, to make unmis-
takably clear, and to use the fact, that this
mutual influence of men holds for good as well
as for evil ; that few greater lies have ever
been told, than the insinuation that only evil
is contagious, the good not. And this con-
viction of the contagion of the good, of
mutual influence for good, concerns theology
particularly in three ways, all of which may
be regarded simply as illustrations or aspects
of the one kingdom of God. We are mem-
bers one of another (i) in attainment of
character, (2) in personal relation to God,
and (3) in confession of faith. And each of
these forms of mutual influence will need
careful attention.

In considering separately here attainment
of character and relation to God, it is not
meant for a moment to admit that separation
of ethics and religion which has been already
denied, but only to single out for distinct
treatment the one most important and funda-
mental relation of life — relation to God. We
are certainly never to forget that the indis-
pensable condition of right relations to God,
is that a man should have been won into wil-
lingness to share God's own righteous purpose
concerning men.

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 145

III. MUTUAL INFLUENCE FOR GOOD IN THE
ATTAINMENT OF CHARACTER

We know no deeper law in the building of
character, than that righteous character comes
through that association with the best in
which there is mutual self-giving. The prob-
lem of character implies not only a bare rec-
ognition of a man's moral freedom, but a
sacred respect at every point for his person-
ality. If a man is ever to have character at
all, it must be absolutely his own; he must
be won freely into it. In this free winning
to character, no association counts for its most
that is not mutual. I become in character
most certainly and rapidly like that man with
whom I constantly am, to whose influence I
most fully surrender, and who gives himself
most completely to me.

We may analyze the phenomenon psycho-
logically, as, indeed, we have already done in
showing that a true personal relation to Christ
necessarily carries with it a true ethical life.
And that which held true for religion cannot
be false for theology, we may be sure. But,
in any case, we always come back finally to
the fact, that character is truly and inevitably
contagious in an association in which there is

I46 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

mutual surrender. Character is caught, not
taught. The inner strength of another life
to which we surrender is, as Phillips Brooks
somewhere says, "directly transmissible." I
suspect that the ultimate psychological prin-
ciple at work here is that of the impulsiveness
of consciousness. But, whether that be true
or not, the witness to this contagion is wide-
spread among students of men. "The greatest
gift the hero leaves his race," one of our great
novelists says, "is to have been a hero." In
almost identical language, a great ethical and
philosophical writer adds: "The noblest
workers of our world bequeath us nothing so
great as the image of themselves. Their task,
be it ever so glorious, is historical and tran-
sient, the majesty of their spirit is essential
and eternal."

But one might still think, here, only of an
example. The other life, however, must be
more to me than mere example. For the
highest attainment in character I need the
association of some highest one, who will give
himself to me unreservedly. Redemption to
real righteousness of life cannot be without
cost to the redeemer. And it is a psychologist,
facing the ultimate problem of will-strength-
ening, who urges in words that might seem

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN I47

almost to look to Christ: "The prophet has
drunk more deeply than any one of the cup of
bitterness; but his countenance is so un-
shaken, and he speaks such mighty words of
cheer, that his will becomes our will, and our
life is kindled at his own."1 It is the one
great certain road to character — as it is to
appreciation of every value — to stay in the
presence of the best, in self-surrender to it.
No wonder Christ said, "I am the Way."

1 . The Application to the Problem of Redemp-
tion.— It is hardly possible to ignore this one
great known law of character-making, which
the social consciousness so presses upon us,
in any thinking that is for a moment worth
while concerning our redemption by Christ.
And whatever our point of view, this consid-
eration ought to have weight with us. Nay,
must we not make it necessarily the very cen-
ter of all our thought here? For all the
realities in this problem of redeeming a man
from sin to righteousness are intensely per-
sonal, ethical, spiritual. Now, are we to
reach a deeper view of redemption, by turn-
ing away from the deepest ethical fact to the
unethical? Do we so ground our view the
more securely? Is there something holier

'James, Psychology, Vol. II, p. 579.

148 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

than the holy ethical will seen realized in
Christ's life and death? For, if it is the will
in his death by which we are sanctified,1 there
can be no sharp separation of the life and
death. Must we not rather expect that the
clearest light, on the holiest in God and our
personal relation to him, will be thrown by
the holiest we know in life, in our human
personal relations?

Is not the precise method of redemption,
then, to no small degree, cleared for us right
here, in this conviction of the social con-
sciousness of the contagion of the good in a
self -surrendering association — the only soli-
darity of which we can be certain? Christ
saves us, in the only certain way we know
that any man is ever saved to better liv-
ing, through direct contagion of character,
through his immediate influence upon us.
The power of the influence of a redeeming
person must depend upon two facts : the rich-
ness of the self that is given, and the depth
of the giving. The supremely redeeming
power must be the giving of the richest self,
unto the uttermost. God has not yet done
his best for men, until he gives himself in
the fullest manifestation which can be made

1 Cf. Hebrews, 10:10.

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN I49

through man to men, and gives to the utter-
most, with no drawing back from any cost.
Is it not because, after all, back of all theories
and even in spite of theories, men have seen
in the life and death of Christ just this eternal
giving of God himself, that they have been
caught up into some sharing of the same
spirit, and so felt working directly and im-
mediately upon them the supremest redeem-
ing power the world knows? The cross of
Christ has been God's not only saying, "I
will help that child to conquer himself, what-
ever it costs me," but God doing it, and per-
petually doing it. Not less than that must
be the cost of a man's redemption.

Character is directly transmissible in an
association in which there is mutual self-giv-
ing. It is most easily so transmissible, only
at its highest, in its most perfect manifesta-
tion, in its completest self-giving at any cost.

The self-giving on the part of one trying
to win another into character must precede
the self-giving of the sinner; for the sinner's
own willingness to yield himself to the in-
fluence of the character of the other must
first of all be won. This initial winning of
the cooperative will of the other is the heart
of the whole battle. And here the power

150 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

relied on is not only the unconscious conta-
gion and imitation of character that enlists a
man's interest almost by surprise, but also
the mightiest influence men know in break-
ing down the resisting will and winning
men consciously and with final abandon —
the influence of a patient, long-suffering,
persistent, self-sacrificing love that cannot
give the sinning one up.

Most certainly, then, redemption cannot
be without cost to the redeemer of men —
not only that cost to the hero of the superior
showing of superior character in a superior
task, but that other cost, indissolubly linked
indeed with this, of reverently, patiently, to
the bitter end, helping another to conquer
himself — the inevitable suffering of all redemp-
tive endeavor for those whom one loves. This
involves (i) suffering in contact with sin,
(2) suffering in the rejection by those sin-
ning, and most of all, (3) suffering in the
sin itself of those one loves because one
loves them — suffering which is the more
intense, the more one loves.

2. The Consequent Ethical and Spiritual
Meaning of Substitution and Propitiation. — Can
we go yet a step farther here? It may be
fairly taken for granted that where the

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 151

church has strongly and persistently stood
for certain modes of putting a doctrine —
though the precise putting may be unfortu-
nate— that in all probability there is there
some real and important truth after which
the consciousness of the church is dimly
feeling. Starting, now, from this same great
law of the contagion of character and the
inevitable influence of an association in which
there is mutual self-giving, is it not possible
to show that there is a strict ethical and
spiritual sense that we can understand, in
which Christ's suffering may be truly called
vicarious, and himself a substitute for us, and
a propitiation?

It is, of course, not for a moment forgotten
that, in Dr. Clarke's language, "a God who
will himself provide a propitiation has no
need of one in the sense which the word has
ordinarily borne. Some richer and nobler
meaning must be present if the word is ap-
propriate to the case."1 But it is not likely
that a purely ethical and spiritual view of the
atonement, which sees the problem as a
strictly personal one — and this seems to the
writer the only true position — can ever suc-
ceed in the hearts of the great body of the

lAn Outline of Christian Theology, p. 335.

152 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

membership of the churches, if it cannot
show, at the same time, that it is able in some
real way to take up into itself these thoughts
of substitution and propitiation. The writer
finds much of the old language about the
atonement as offensive to his moral sense as
any man well can. But that there is an abso-
lutely universal human need for something
like that to which the old language of substi-
tution and propitiation looked, he cannot
doubt. It seems to show itself in this, that
no man with real moral sense, probably, cares
to put himself at the end of his life, say, in
the attitude of the Pharisee rather than in that
of the Publican. If one sets aside all spec-
tacular elements in the judgment, and even
denies altogether any great single final assize
for all men, still he cannot avoid the thought
of some judgment upon his life. As Dr.
Clarke says again: "We are not our own
masters in going out of this world; we go we
know not whither. Yet our going is not with-
out its just and holy method. Our place and
lot in the life that is beyond must be deter-
mined righteously, in accordance with the life
that we have lived thus far, that the next stage
in our existence may be what it ought to be."1

lOp. tit., p. 459.

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 1 53

However, now, that judgment of God may
be expressed, no man can hope to face the
test proposed by Christ in the twenty-fifth
of Matthew, still less the test implied in
Christ's own life, and feel that he has already
attained. He knows himself to be at best
only a faulty growing child, with some real
spirit of obedience in his heart. And it is
particularly to be noted, that exactly that man
must stand most definitely for the reality of
some genuinely ethical judgment, who has
most insisted upon the necessarily ethical
character of the religious life. Moreover, the
normal experience of the deepening Chris-
tian life is an increasing sense of sin. Upon
this point, too, the social consciousness is
witness.

What, now, makes it possible for a man
to expect, in any sense, a favorable judgment
of God upon his life ? If God makes any
separation of men in the world to come, he
certainly cannot divide them into perfect and
imperfect men. Judged by any complete
standard, all are imperfect. Or if, without
separation, God in any sense, in the most
inner way, passes judgment, how does ap-
proval fall upon any? And upon whom does
it fall? Must not every man who wishes to

154 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

be clear and honest with himself fairly face
these questions?

And Christ's own thought of God as
Father must be our key here. And the
matter may well be counted worth a more
careful analysis than it often gets. How
does a father distinguish between what he
calls an obedient and a disobedient child?
Both are faulty. How in any fair sense may
one be called obedient? To the earthly
father, that child is called an obedient child,
not who is deliberately setting his will against
his father's with no intention to cooperate
with the father's purpose for him, but whose
loyal intention is to do the father's will, really
to cooperate with the father in the father's
own purpose for the child's life. When,
now, this child is carried away by some gust
of temptation and disobeys, and then returns
in penitence to the father, evidently viewing
the sin, so far as his experience allows, as
the father views it, and heartily putting it
away, the father, either with or without penalty,
restores the child to full personal relation to
himself; and that is the vital point. And,
though he neither judges the past life as
without failure, nor expects the future to be
without failure, he approves the child, as in

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 155

a true sense obedient. He is an approved
child.

What is it that satisfies the father in
such a case? Upon what does he rely in his
hope for matured character in the child?
What, in biblical language, "covers" for the
father the actual disobediences of the past
and the certain disobediences of the future,
and enables him in a sense to ignore both
in his approval of the child? Certainly, the
present purpose of the child, the child's
honest intention to cooperate with the father
in the father's purpose for him. Yes; but
as certainly, it seems to the writer, not that
alone. The father's hope for his child's
steady growth in righteousness depends not
only on the child's present intention, but
much more upon the father's own intention
never to give up in his attempt at any cost
to help that child to conquer himself.1 The
father may be said here in a true sense to
propitiate himself; and his own fixed pur-
pose has become a partial substitute for the
wavering purpose of the child.

And the child's full righteousness is seen,
not merely in an attitude of immediate pres-
ent obedience, but especially in his loyal

1 Cf. Romans 8:26-39.

156 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

acceptance of his filial relation — in his honest
surrender to his father's influence. And the
father can now say, Because my child accepts
heartily his relation to me, and honestly throws
himself open to it to let it be to him all it
can and work its own work in him, I may
approve him; for this relation to me which
he so takes has only to go on, to work out
its complete results in a matured character.
In the hearty acceptance of this filial relation
to me, there is contained the promise of
the end.

Just this attitude exactly, and no other, it
seems to the writer, God takes toward men
in his revelation in Christ. Christ is God's
own showing forth of himself. "God was in
Christ reconciling the world unto himself."1
"Propitiation," Beysclag truly says, "is blot-
ting out, making amends for sin in God's
eyes. Now what can cover the sin of the
world in God's eyes? Only a personality and
a deed which contain the power of actually
delivering the world from its sin."2

We have seen, it may be hoped, just how
God's self-revealing in Christ does have this
actual power, and becomes, thus, a true pro-

1 II Corinthians, 5:19.

2 The Theology of the Ne<w Testament, Vol. II, p. 448.

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 157

pitiation in the highest moral sense, in the
only sense in which God can wish a propiti-
ation, and in the only sense in which we can
ever need a propitiation. Our final hope
for that true salvation, which is the sharing
of the life of God and the involved like-
ness of character with God, is in God's own
long-suffering, redeeming activity. Only as
that may be remembered, in connection
with our surrender to it, may we hope
to stand approved before the judgment of
God. We are not judged alone before the
judgment of God. In a very real sense the
judge himself stands with us. Not what God
is able to believe about this man thought of
as standing alone, but what he may believe
about this man standing in a living, surren-
dering association with himself, is the ground
of judgment. We may not separate here the
work of God and the work of Christ, as the
New Testament does not separate them. In
constant reliance upon the constant redeem-
ing activity of the Father here and here-
after, we children go hopefully on our way.
Put into the language of the blood cove-
nant, where the blood has all its significance
as life — the giving of life, the sharing of life,
the closest and most indissoluble union of

158 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

lives — this is to say, there is no atonement, no
reconciliation, no remission of sins, no for-
giveness— and these are all essentially identi-
cal terms — without shedding of blood, that
is, without complete giving of life on both
sides, Christ giving himself not only for us in
seeking us out, but to us in complete recon-
ciliation and renewal of life. It means that
only God, the very life of God, sharing God's
life, can really save one from his sins. God
must pour his life into one, and he does, in
Christ.

This seems to be the heart of the whole
matter; but certain considerations may be
still added, as indicating how far a purely
ethical and spiritual view of the atonement
may go, in meeting the human need ex-
pressed in these older terms of substitution
and propitiation.

There must be a wrath of God against
wilful sin, a complete disapproval of it, and
all the more because God loves the sinner.
God is a consuming fire for sin in us, because
he loves us. That wrath cannot be propiti-
ated, that disapproval cannot be satisfied, in
any effective way, so long as the sin con-
tinues. The punishment of the sin in its
inevitable consequences, will go on in the

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 159

very fidelity of God. But for any real satis-
faction of God, the sin itself must cease, and
there must be assurance of righteousness to
come. The sinner must come to share God's
hatred of the sin and God's positive purpose
of love. Hence the expiation of the sin,
the propitiation of the wrath of God, the
satisfaction of God — so far as these terms
still have meaning, and so far as they express
Christ's work— consist (i) in winning men
to repentance, to sharing God's hatred of
their sin, (2) in helping men to a real power
against sin, and (3) in the assurance of per-
fecting righteousness which is contained in
the relation to God honestly accepted by men.
When, now, the unfilial spirit is thus changed
into a completely filial spirit — through the
fullest acceptance by the child of the father's
purpose for him, and through the child's
throwing himself completely open to the in-
fluence of the father — the personal relation
is thereby inevitably changed, personal recon-
ciliation is achieved. It is impossible to think
it otherwise. And so the chief pain in the
previous relation is done away both for God
and man ; though the punishment, in the
consequences of sin in other respects, is not
thereby set aside.

l6o THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

But, further, so far now as the power of
this new personal relation to God in Christ
begins actively to counteract the conse-
quences of sin in us, as it will assuredly do,
God's work in Christ becomes a direct sub-
stitute for that punishment of us that would
else inevitably follow. And yet the process
is wholly ethical ; for the results of righteous-
ness can actually occur in us, only in so
far as we come into harmony with Christ's
purpose for us.

Even so far, we may believe, does the
social consciousness, in its emphasis upon
the mutual influence of persons go, in lead-
ing us into the secret of the attainment of
character — into the heart of God's redemption
of men.

IV. MUTUAL INFLUENCE FOR GOOD IN OUR
PERSONAL RELATION TO GOD

What, now, in the second place, does the
mutual influence of men for good mean for
theology in the individual relation to God?
Here it may be said at once, that faith is as
directly contagious as character.

i. In Coming into the Kingdom. — We are
introduced through others into all spheres of

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN l6l

value, including friendship even with God.
In the atmosphere of those who already feel
the value, our interest is aroused; we find it
possible at least to take those initial steps of
a dawning attention, which give the value
opportunity to make its own impression upon
us, and bring us to an appreciation, to a faith
of our own. Only so is that most difficult
of all tasks in the redemption of a man —
that first stirring of a new appetite, a new
desire, a new aspiration, a new ideal —
accomplished.

We are members one of another here to
an extent that deserves ever fresh emphasis.
We cannot too often say to ourselves, Had it
not been that there were those who actually
entered into the meaning of the revelation
of God in Christ — who, in John's language,
"beheld his glory" — the record of that revela-
tion never could have come down to us.
Christianity must have perished at its birth.
"Hence," in the vital language of Herrmann,
"the picture of his inner life could be pre-
served in his church or * fellowship ' alone.
But, further, this picture so preserved can be
understood only when we meet with men on
whom it has wrought its effect. We need
communion with Christians in order that,

K

l62 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

from the picture of Jesus which his Brother-
hood has preserved, there may shine forth
that inner life which is the real heart of it.
It is only when we see its effects, that our
eyes are opened to its reality so that we may
thereby experience the same effect. Thus
we never apprehend the most important ele-
ment in the historical appearance of Jesus
until his people make us feel it. The testi-
mony of the New Testament concerning
Jesus is the work of his church, and its ex-
position is the work of the church, through
the life which that church develops and
gains for itself out of this treasure which it
possesses."1

The Christian is no Melchizedek, then,
without father or mother; he comes into life
in a community of life, and usually, more-
over, through the personal touch of some
other individual life. It is the one primal
law, of life through life.

2. In Fellowship within the Kingdom. — And
not only in coming into the kingdom, but
also within the religious fellowship of the
kingdom, we are emphatically members one
of another. In bringing us into that love
which is God's own life, God evidently has

: The Communion of the Christian ivith God, p. 61 ; cf. p. 87.

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 163

no intention of allowing us to cut ourselves
off from our brethren, to climb up to heaven
by some little individual ladder of our own.
That humility or open-mindedness, which con-
stitutes the first beatitude and the initial step
into the kingdom, and that self-sacrificing
love, which constitutes the last beatitude and
the crown of the Christian life, are both pos-
sible and cultivable only in personal relations
to others. No man ever got them alone.
And, for this very reason, in the discussion of
the religious life, we found the New Testa-
ment guarding most carefully against all over-
estimation of marvelous experiences as such.
For these tended to make a man feel that
he had such an individual ladder of his own
to heaven, and had no need, consequently,
of his brethren ; and so led him into the very
reverse of the fundamental Christian quali-
ties— into unteachableness instead of humility
and open-mindedness, and into censorious-
ness instead of love. That objective attitude
which is essential in all character and work
and happiness, cannot be unimportant in our
specifically religious life.

Even in this most individual relation to
God, then, men's outlook is varied and but
partial. We need to share, and can share, one

164 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

another's visions. The meaning of the many-
sidedness of even a great human personality
gets home to us only so — through the various
impressions gained by different men. Much
more can God be revealed to us, even ap-
proximately, only so. The great and surpass-
ing value of the New Testament lies exactly
herein, that it gives the varied impressions
upon the first Christian generation of God's
supreme revelation — the most important indi-
vidual reflections of Christ. The New Tes-
tament comes to stand, thus, in no merely
external and mechanically authoritative rela-
tion to the life and faith of the church, but
in the most interior and vital relation. And
Bible study gets a new significance for us, as
we see it, as at one and the same time our
chief way to our own vision of God's actual,
concrete self-revelation, and our deliverance
from our merely subjective dreaming. We
come to share in some living way the vision
of these others who have seen most directly
and most largely.

3. In Intercessory Prayer. — One particular
application to our religious life, of this con-
viction of the social consciousness of our
mutual influence, seems worthy of mention —
its bearing upon intercessory prayer. Few

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 165

other things in religion, one may suspect,
seem less real to modern men. Can we
ground the matter a little more deeply for
ourselves, and give it reality, by showing its
close connection with this deep-rooted con-
viction of the social consciousness?

We have already seen,1 if character and
love are to be realities to us, if the world is
to be a real training-ground for moral char-
acter, and not a mere play-world — a nursery
continually set to rights from without, that
we must all be most closely knit together;
that our choices must have effects in the
lives of others ; that we must be bound up
in one bundle of life. And we do affect
one another's lives in a thousand ways. In
manifold directions we condition the happi-
ness and temptations of one another. The
unspoken mood of another, an expression of
countenance, a tone, an emphasis, may affect
our whole day.

Now, if the spiritual world is real at all,
it is to be counted upon. Apparently, there
is such a thing, for example, as a spiritual
atmosphere in an audience — not, it may well
be supposed, a magical matter, but really
determined by the tone of the minds com-

1 Cf. above, p. 32.

l66 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

posing the audience. The actual mood of
the hearers and of the speaker makes a
difference. Results, great and important, are
so changed often quite unconsciously. It
may well be that God is the medium in all
this. The attitude of the auditors is like
unconscious, silent praying to God — the
praying of their life, of their spirit.

But, whether one cares to look at this
special case in such a way or not, we are, in
any event, in our spiritual lives in the deepest
way members one of another. Our spiritual
condition inevitably affects others. We can-
not sow to the flesh and reap life anywhere,
in ourselves or in others. This is particularly
true, of course, of those to whom we are
bound in the closest life relations. That
this is absolutely true in normal personal
relations, when we are in the presence of
our friends, all of us fully believe. The
question simply is, May this law of mutual
influence hold of those bound up with our
lives even when they are distant from us or
estranged? In giving the privilege of inter-
cessory prayer, it may well be believed, God
simply allows us to be, even then, what we
are always so fully under other circumstances
— an influence upon them, a condition of

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 167

the good and growth of others. He simply
allows the regular law of the spiritual and moral
world to hold without exception. We are still,
though distant or estranged, members one
of another. It would be a very human, de-
fective, faulty God, who could not put us
thus in touch with our loved ones every-
where. But this is possible through him,
and therefore in prayer, and under strictly
ethical and spiritual conditions, and not as a
matter of mere whimsical and wilful will on
our part, and it opens no door to magical
superstition. Is not the recognition of the
place and value of intercessory prayer, then,
an only just extension of the prime conviction
of the social consciousness?

V. MUTUAL INFLUENCE FOR GOOD IN CONFESSIONS
OF FAITH

Theology has, once more, in the third
place, to recognize the importance of mutual
influence for good in confession of faith, in
creeds. When, to-day, we seek the common
grounds of belief for Christian thinkers, so
far as the social consciousness really moves
us, we approach the problem in a way some-
what different from that of previous genera-

l68 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

tions. We do not now seek to elaborate
a second, modern Westminster confession;
nor do we seek a mere average of Chris-
tian ideas that in reality expresses no one's
whole living thought. Still less is there
sought the barest minimum of Christian
belief. Rather, in harmony with the social
consciousness, we seek a unity that is organic.
Our age, therefore, must recognize that, in
the confession of its faith as in all else, we
are genuinely members one of another. The
unity sought not only tolerates differences,
but welcomes and justifies them, as them-
selves helps to a deeper unity. It believes
in equality, but not in identity.

It is true that Christianity looks every-
where to life ; and we may be sure that any
statement of Christian doctrine that does not
obviously bear on living is still inadequate
and incorrect. It is true that we do well to
emphasize the strictly religious and practical
purpose of the Bible ; that the Bible is inter-
ested in both nature and history so far and
only so far as either reveals God and inspires
to godly living. It is true that in all Christian
thinking Christ is our ultimate appeal.

But, on the other hand, we must not con-
fuse the issue. We cannot expect agreement

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN l6g

in detailed intellectual statements even with
fullest loyalty to Christ, and the most earnest
desire after truth. To each his own message.
Nor can we confine, nor is it desirable to
confine, expressions of Christian faith to the
merely practical side. We need to seek to
understand the meaning of our Christian ex-
perience, not only for the sake of our intel-
lectual peace, but also for the sake of deep-
ening our Christian experience itself. Now,
it is here contended that in our confessions
of Christian faith we need one another, and
that complete uniformity of belief and state-
ment is both impossible and undesirable.

i . Complete Uniformity of Belief and State-
ment Impossible. — It is impossible, for, in the
first place, it is difficult, in any case, to tell
our real inner creed. Some of its most
important articles are quite certain to be
implicit and unconfessed, even to ourselves.
The only important creed, in the case of the
individual, is that which finds its expression in
life. There are assumptions implied in deeds
and spirit; and the spirit of a man throws
more light on his real creed than his formal
statements do. His doctrines may be radical,
his spirit thoroughly constructive, or vice
versa. If all thought tends to pass into act,

170 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

as modern psychology insists, we have a right
to urge that those articles of a man's creed
which find expression in living, are for him
the really important articles. The will has a
creed, as well as the intellect, and the real
creed is the creed of life rather than of lips;
it is wrought out, rather than thought out.
And this real, inner, living creed probably no
man can state with accuracy even in his own
case. And if he is ever able even approxi-
mately to do so, it will be at the end, rather
than at the beginning, of his life's work and
experience.

Moreover, complete uniformity of belief
and statement is impossible, for, even exactly
the same words cannot mean the same to
different individuals, for they are interpreted
out of a different experience; they cannot
mean precisely the same thing, even to the
same individual, at different times, for his
interpreting experience, too, is a changing
thing. We need sometimes to remind our-
selves that there is never any literal transfer
of thought from mind to mind, still less from
statement to mind; all thinking of even the
most passive kind has an element of creation
in it, for terms must be interpreted, and the
interpretation is inevitably limited by previous

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN I 7*

experience. Sabatier1 is quite right, there-
fore, in asserting that credal statements must
change their meaning just as words change.
But it is to be noted that this principle means
not only that unalterable doctrine, in this
sense, is impossible between the generations ;
but also that identical doctrine is impossible
in the same generation.

Out of the different experiences, too, grow
the different points of view and the different
emphases. And these different points of
view, and the different distribution of em-
phasis, give the same creed very different
meanings for different men. It is as impos-
sible to avoid this, as it is to avoid change
and individuality. It is true of a man's creed
as of his environment, that the only effective
portions are those to which he attends — those
which he emphasizes, not those to which he
gives a bare assent ; and this varying attention
and emphasis cannot be the same in different
individuals. The only logical outcome of a
thorough-going attempt to reach an identical
creed is the church of one member.

2. Complete Uniformity of belief and State-
ment Undesirable. — But complete uniformity
of belief and statement is not only impos-

1 The Vitality of Christian Dogmas and their Power of Evolution.

172 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

sible; it is undesirable. For, in the first
place, it is only by these differing but sup-
plementary finite expressions that we can
approximate to the infinite truth. Like Leib-
nitz's mirrors in the market-place, it is only
by combining the points of view of all that
a complete representation is possible. We
need one another here, as elsewhere; we
need the fellowship of the church, and of
the whole church ; the strictly individual view
must be fragmentary. Our message needs
the supplement of the messages of others;
through each member God has something
unique to say. They without us, we without
them, are not to be made perfect. We need
to share, in such measure as is possible, the
experiences of others ; but this is possible
only through vital contact.

Moreover, we are not to forget how truth
comes — not by surrender of convictions, not
by the silence of each, but by each standing
earnestly for the truth which is given to him,
in a union of conviction and charity. For
only he who has convictions can be tolerant,
as only he who has fears can be courageous.

Once more, we cannot and must not simply
repeat each other. Nothing is so fatal to
spiritual life as dishonesty. To attempt an

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 173

identical creed involves something of such
untrue repetition of the experience of others.
For, as Herrmann has said, doctrines are an
expression of life already present, and are of
value only so; they are not themselves a con-
dition of life. If the doctrines we profess
are not the honest expression of a real life in
us, they are a hindrance, not a help. "Con-
scious untruth tends to drive from Christ."

For every one of these reasons, now, it is
positively undesirable to forbid varying theo-
ries or to check the varied expressions of
Christian faith, whether in accordance or not
with certain standard formulas. A growing
life requires a growing expression, which
must be justified by its history, not dogmati-
cally by reference to some supposed fixed
standard of doctrine in the past. The very
meaning and health of Christian fellowship
demand that we should welcome and en-
courage the honest expression of the varied
manifestations of the One Spirit, that we may
be the more certain to get the whole truth,
the whole life which God intends. We are
members one of another, in doctrine as in
life.

It becomes increasingly clear, thus, where
the real Christian unity is, and where the

174 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

common grounds of Christian belief must be
sought. The real unity of Christians is in
their common life, in the common experi-
ence, in the possession of the common per-
sonal self-revelation of God in Christ, in the
inworking of the One Spirit. It is the mean-
ing of this one central Christian experience,
which we strive to express in our doctrinal
statements. Our expressions must vary; the
life, the personal relation to God, is one.
The best analogy we have of the case lies in
what the same great friend means to differ-
ent persons. Our creeds are at best poor
and partial expressions of the meaning for
us of the divine friendship, of God's self-
revelation to us. It is, then, precisely in our
Christian experience and in that personal
relation to God revealed in Christ which
makes a man a Christian at all, that all the
common grounds of Christian belief lie.

The solution of Christian unity here, that
is, is not by increasing abstraction, but by
frank concreteness ; not by false simplicity,
but by living fullness ; not by relation to
propositions, but by relation to facts ; not by
emphasis on natural religion, but by empha-
sis on historical religion; not by bringing
nature into prominence, but human nature;

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN 1 75

not by relation to things, but by relation to
persons, to the one great world fact, the one
person, to Christ. "I am the Way." The
Christian faith is faith in a person ; the Chris-
tian confession of faith is confession of Christ.
And if we are really in earnest with this word
Christian, we already have our basis of unity
in our personal relation to Christ, our com-
mon Lord. But that personal relation to
God in Christ is always more than a credal
statement can express, though we may never
cease to attempt such expression; and for the
sake of the larger realization, by ourselves and
by the church, of the meaning of the per-
sonal relation to Christ, we must welcome
every honest expression of his Christian life
by another. Altogether, we shall at best
but dimly shadow forth its full meaning.

And such a concrete relation to the per-
sonal Christ is a far better test of genuine
Christian faith than any creed, whether more
or less elaborate, since in the personal rela-
tion character inevitably comes out; and any
test that allows even for the moment the
ignoring of the ethical, cannot remain even
intellectually adequate, for Christian doctrine
looks always and certainly to life. Even
if one is thinking only of the correct intel-

176 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

lectual expression of the common Christian
life — the maintenance of orthodoxy, so far
as that is possible to us — it should be
remembered that the most conservative of
all influences is love of a person, and, by no
means, subscription to a set of propositions.
Would Christ so think? Would he so
speak? — these are questions far more cer-
tain to keep Christian thinking true, than any
intellectual test of man's devising.

We do not expect, therefore, we do not
seek, any common grounds of belief for
Christian thinkers, other than are involved
in the simple fact that we are Christians at
all, in the common recognition of the reve-
lation of God in Christ — of the Lordship of
Christ. We confess Christ. For, "no man
can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy
Spirit." And "other foundation can no man
lay, than that which is laid, which is Jesus
Christ."

Now, in this common confession, it is
here especially maintained, we are, as every-
where, "members one of another" and need
one another; and the unity we seek, there-
fore, is not the unity of identical credal
statement — which can only make us isolated
atoms not necessary to one another — but the

THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF MEN I 77

deeper and larger organic unity of the richly
varying manifestations of the common life
in Christ. We may come, through the
witness of another, to an appreciation of
Christ which is really our own, but to which
we should not have come if the other had
not spoken. Men do mutually influence one
another for good, in their confessions of
Christian faith.

VI. THE CONSEQUENT IMPORTANCE OF THE
DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

In this recognition of the vital and essen-
tial importance of mutual influence in the
attainment of character, in the individual
relation to God, and in creed, theology is
brought to a new sense of the significance
of the doctrine of the church. On the one
hand, it cannot derive its importance from
having to do with an unalterably fixed and
infallibly organized external authority; and,
on the other hand, it can be no longer an
unimportant addendum concerned only with
methods of organization and government,
and with ecclesiastical ordinances and pro-
cedure. So far as the social consciousness
has influence upon theology at this point,

L

178 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

theology must see that the doctrine of the
church is the doctrine of that priceless, living,
personal fellowship, in which alone Christian
character, Christian faith, and Christian con-
fession can arise and can continue. The
doctrine of the church becomes thus the
doctrine of the very life and growth of
Christianity in the world. It is the doctrine
of the real kingdom of God, Christ's own
great central theme.

CHAPTER XII

THE INFLUENCE OF THE DEEPENING SENSE OF THE

VALUE AND SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON

UPON THEOLOGY

In the discussion of the influence of the
social consciousness upon theological doc-
trine, we turn now to ask concerning the third
element of the social consciousness, How
does the deepening sense of the value and
sacredness of the person affect theology?

And with this sense of the value and
sacredness of the person, we may well in-
clude, so far as the influence upon theology
is concerned, the remaining elements of the
social consciousness — the deepening sense
of obligation, and of love. For, as we have
already seen, the sense of obligation and of
love follow so inevitably from a deep sense
of the value and sacredness of the person,
that it would be a needless refinement,
probably, to try to analyze out their separate
influence upon theological thinking. We
should find them all leading us to essentially
the same great emphases.

(179)

l8o THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

When, now, through the social conscious-
ness, the personal has become the supreme
value for us, and regard for it our eternal
motive and goal, we cannot fail to demand
that theology give a real personality to God
and man — a consciousness marked, in Pro-
fessor Howison's language, with "that recog-
nition and reverence of the personal initiative
of other minds which is at once the sign
and the test of the true person."1

I. THE RECOGNITION OF THE PERSONAL IN MAN

In the first place, the social sense of the
value and sacredness of the person will
emphasize the full personality of man.

i. Man's Personal Separateness from God. —
The sense of the value of the person cannot
admit for a moment such a one-sided empha-
sis upon a universal cosmic evolution, or upon
the immanence of God, as should make im-
possible a true personality in man. It seeks,
in its view of both God and man, a really
"personal idealism." It does not forget, but
earnestly asserts, the dependence of all other
spirits upon God; and, consequently, looks
for no metaphysical separateness in this sense

i1 The Limits of Evolution, p. x.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 151

from God. But a genuine recognition of the
personality of man does require that man be
conceived as separate from God in just this
sense: (i) that he has a clear self-conscious-
ness of his own, and (2) that he has real
moral initiative, which makes his volition
truly his own. These two factors constitute
all of separateness that need be demanded
for man. Possessing these, he is "outside of
God" in the only sense in which a "personal
idealism" feels concerned to assert separate-
ness. But for these factors it is concerned;
for without them, it believes, no truly ideal
view, no moral world, no religious life, are
possible.

2. Emphasis Upon Man's Moral Initiative.
— In particular, the application of the sense
of the value and sacredness of the person in
theology, means the emphatic recognition of
the moral initiative of man — of the possession
of a real will of his own. The whole social
consciousness, especially in this third element
of it, rests upon the assumption that man has
worth, as a being capable of character as well
as of happiness, and so deserves in some
worthy sense to be called a child of God. If
the social consciousness is, as we have seen,
with any fairness to be called the recognition

l82 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

of the fully personal,1 this reverence for the
personal initiative of men cannot be lacking
in it. Its influence upon theology at this
point, therefore, is hardly to be doubted.

And theology itself is vitally concerned.
For the whole possibility of the conceptions
of government and providence requires this.
These terms are words without meaning,
having absolutely no place in theology or
philosophy, if man has no moral initiative.
Nor should it escape our notice, that we
strike at the very root of all possible rever-
ence for God, if we deny a real initiative to
man. We have no possible philosophic ex-
planation of either sin or error, consistent
with any real reverence for God, if a true
human will is denied.2 In Professor Bowne's
vigorous language: In a system of necessity
"every thought, belief, conviction, whether
truth or superstition, arises with equal neces-
sity with every other. ... On this plane
of necessary effect the actual is all, and the
ideal distinctions of true and false have as
little meaning as they would have on the
plane of mechanical forces. . . . The

*Cf. above, pp. 22, 66, 106.

2See especially Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, pp.
239, 377, 378; James, The Will to Believe, pp. 145 ff.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 183

only escape from the overthrow of reason
involved in the fact of error lies in the
assumption of freedom." Moreover, if real
human initiative is denied to men, we con-
ceive God as having really less respect for
persons in his dealing with them, than the
most elementary ethics requires of men in
their relations to one another. A one-sided
doctrine of immanence, thus, degrades both
man and God. It degrades man, in denying
to him a true personality, and so making him
simply a thing. It degrades God, in making
him the real responsible cause of all sin and
error, and in making him treat possible per-
sons as things. The influence of the social
consciousness, which leads us to measure the
moral growth of a man and of a civilization
by the deepening sense of reverence for the
person, is fairly decisive at this point. It
must see in God the most absolute guarding
of man's personality, and especially of his
moral initiative.

3. Man, a Child of God. — The Christian
faith, that man is a child of God, is a faithful
expression of the insistence of the social con-
sciousness upon the recognition of the full
personality of man. It expresses both man's
entire dependence upon God for his being

184 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

and maintenance, and at the same time his
infinite value and sacredness as a spirit made
in the image of God, capable of indefinite
progress, and capable of personal relation to
God. It voices thus Christianity's character-
istic "humbly-proud" conception of man —
humble in view of the eternal and infinite
plans of God; proud, as "called to an imper-
ishable work in the world." It is, indeed,
but a concrete statement of that faith in love
at the heart of things, and in the all-embrac-
ing plan of a faithful God, which we found
required, if the social consciousness itself was
to have any justification.1

II. THE RECOGNITION OF THE PERSONAL
IN CHRIST

In the second place, under this impulse of
the sense of the value and sacredness of the
person, theology is likely to insist on the rec-
ognition of the personal in the conception
of Christ.

1. Christ a Personal Revelation of God. —
This recognition of the personal in Christ
will mean, first, that we are to conceive Christ
as a personal revelation of God, rather than as

1 Cf. above, p. 44 ff

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 185

containing in himself a divine substance.1 It
cannot forget, that if God is a person, and
men are persons, the adequate self-revelation
of God to men can be made only in a truly
personal life ; and that men need above all, in
their relation to God, some manifestation of
his ethical will, and this can be shown only
in the character of a person. A merely meta-
physical conception of the divinity of Christ
in terms of substance or essence, as these are
commonly thought, must, therefore, wholly
fail to satisfy. We must be able to recognize
and bow before the personal will of the per-
sonal God revealed in Christ, if we are really
to find God through him. A strong sense of
the personal, then, such as the social con-
sciousness evinces, must see in Christ, above
all, a personal revelation of a person.

2. Emphasizing the Moral and Spiritual in
Asserting the Supremacy of Christ. — This im-
plies that the dominant sense of the value and
sacredness of the person will certainly tend
to bring into prominence the moral and
spiritual in asserting the supremacy of Christ,
rather than the metaphysical or the simply
miraculous. So far as these latter come into
its representation at all, they will follow rather

'See King, Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 241 ff.

l86 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

than precede, and be accepted because of
the moral and spiritual, or as simply work-
ing hypotheses enabling us to bring into a
thought-unity what we have to recognize in
the moral and spiritual realm. If one faces
the matter fully and frankly, is it not plain
that Christians of all shades of belief are in-
creasingly finding the real reason for their
faith in Christ in his moral and spiritual
supremacy? Many may choose to express
their faith in him, when once reached, in
terms of the miraculous or metaphysical; but
the miraculous and the metaphysical are not
the primary reasons for their faith. It is the
inner spirit of Christ himself which really
masters us and calls out our confident faith
and our eager submission. And it is only
when we have already gotten this sense of
the stupendousness of his personality, that
the so-called miraculous in his life becomes
to our thought natural and fitting, and we
are driven to think him standing in some
unique relation to God and so requiring to
be conceived in unique metaphysical terms.
It is easy, no doubt, to indulge in a false
polemic against the miraculous and metaphys-
ical. One of the surest bits of autobiogra-
phy we have from Christ, the narrative of

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 1 87

the temptations, implies, as Sanday has
acutely pointed out,1 the clear consciousness
on the part of Christ of the possession of
what we call supernatural powers. It is a
far less simple problem to rid the gospels
of the miraculous element, than our age,
with its greatly exaggerated estimate of
the mathematico- mechanical view of the
world, is likely to think. The so-called
miraculous in connection with Christ is not
to be impatiently and dogmatically set aside.2
So, too, the demand of thought, that we
form finally some metaphysical conception of
the great personality which we meet in Christ
cannot be denied as wholly illegitimate. All
this is to be freely granted and asserted.

But it is of the greatest importance for
Christian thought, that it still keep Christ's
own absolute subordination of both the mi-
raculous and metaphysical to the moral and
the spiritual. The same narrative of the
temptation, that so clearly implies super-
natural powers in Christ, has its whole point
in Christ's answering determination abso-
lutely to subordinate these supernatural
powers to moral and spiritual ends. His

'Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. II, p. 626.

'See King, Reconstruction in Theology, Chaps. VI and VII.

l88 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

whole ministry evinces the greatest pains
upon this point. And he evidently thinks a
theory of his metaphysical relation to God
(as ordinarily conceived) of so little vital
importance that even such slight hints as we
get of it in the New Testament apparently
do not come from him at all. The present
tendency, therefore, naturally demanded by
the social consciousness, to emphasize the
moral and spiritual in Christ in asserting his
supremacy, is quite in harmony with Christ's
own insistence. He will be followed for
what he is in himself.

The real supremacy of Christ, his truest
divinity, we may be sure, comes out for our
time in those statements which we are able
to make concerning his inner spirit. Here,
and here only, the real power of his person-
ality gets hold upon us. What are these
grounds of the supremacy of Christ? How
is it that we come to God through him?

3. The Moral and Spiritual Grounds of the
Supremacy of Christ} — (1) In the first place,
Jesus Christ is the greatest in the greatest sphere,
that of the moral and spiritual; and this, by

1 I aim here to bring out with some fullness the significance of the
propositions briefly summarized in the Reconstruction in Theology,
p. 244; and I venture to repeat, also, two quotations from that book,
because they fit so closely into the argument here.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 189

common consent of all men. Both the depth
and the consensus of conviction concerning
Christ are profoundly significant. If our earth
has ever seen one of whom it could be truly
said, He is a moral and spiritual authority,
preeminently the one great authority in this
greatest sphere, — that person is Jesus Christ.
Seeing the moral problem more broadly than
any other ever saw it, tracing the motives of
life more deeply than any other ever traced
them, applying those principles of the life
which he sees with a tact and delicacy and
skill that no other ever approached, speaking
with an authority in this moral and spiritual
sphere to which no other can for a moment
lay claim, — this man is easily the greatest in
the greatest sphere.

It is, perhaps, to say only the same thing
in a little different way, when one says with
Fairbairn, that Christ is transcendent among
founders of religion, "and to be transcendent
here is to be transcendent everywhere, for
religion is the supreme factor in the organ-
izing and the regulating of our personal and
collective life."1 The present age is, more
than any other, the age of the scientific study
of religion. The last forty years, indeed,

1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 378.

igO THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

have seen such attention to the study of
comparative religion as the world never saw
before. What has been the outcome of that
study? To make the relative position of
Jesus among the founders of religion lower?
I do not so understand it. No, the outcome
is such that it is a manifestly inadequate
statement to say, that he is transcendent
among the founders of religion. The very
most that we may hope to say about the
founder of any other religion is, that in some
single particular at a long distance he can
be brought into comparison with Jesus. But
let one think for a moment what it means
for a man to be a founder of religion. We
talk of leadership. Do we know what a
founder of religion does? He makes the
light, in which millions of men look upon
all the events of their life, in which they
see the past of the world's history, in which
they look forward to the entire future. The
very mood and atmosphere of men's lives
are determined by these founders of religion;
and among these preeminent leaders, Jesus,
beyond all mistake, is transcendent.

Let the nature of his kingdom, too, be
his witness. He calmly aims to found a
kingdom that shall be spiritual, universal,

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON igi

eternal. One must face the fact that this
man of Nazareth in Syrian Galilee, purposes
in coolness of deliberation to found a king-
dom that shall be absolutely spiritual, that
shall make no appeal to any of the lower
elements of man ; one must see that this
man, in those temptations through which he
passed concerning the form of his work,
deliberately set aside the kingdom by bread,
the kingdom by marvel and ecstasy, and the
kingdom by force, and purposed to found a
kingdom solely upon moral and spiritual
forces. And observe that he confidently
expects this kingdom to be universal — ap-
pealing to men of all races and of all times,
and to be eternal — still standing when all
else shall have passed away. And upon his
belief in this character of his kingdom he
stakes his life, and calmly gives to himself
as the goal of his life the establishment of
just such a kingdom; and remains to the
end confident of his success. The mere
vitality of will in such a purpose is hard to
take in, and alone may well give us pause.

And because he is the greatest in the
greatest sphere, transcendent among found-
ers of religion, the founder of a kingdom
spiritual, universal, and eternal, he becomes

192 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

for us a "personalized conscience," a spirit-
ual, moral authority for us even beyond our
own conscience — an authority that grows
upon us with our growth, and submission to
which is earth's highest moral test.

(2) And there must be added to this first
proposition, that Jesus is the greatest in the
greatest sphere, a second : He alone is the
sinless and impenitent one. And it is to be
noticed that it is this man who sees more
clearly than any other the moral and spiritual,
who knows, as no other does, what character
is and what moral life means, — it is he, who
claims to be the sinless one. No other ever
intelligently made this claim; for no other
was it ever intelligently made. The words
of the great historian Ranke seem to us to be
simple truth when he says: "More guiltless
and more powerful, more exalted and more
holy has naught ever been on earth than his
conduct, his life, and his death. The human
race knows nothing that could be brought
even afar off into comparison with it." Only
such an one could intelligently make for him-
self the claim of sinlessness. And for no
other was this claim of sinlessness ever intel-
ligently made. Men know each other too
well to make it for others when moral con-

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 193

sciousness has fully awakened. But he fights
his battle in the wilderness, and there is no
record of failure so far as he himself can see
it, and none that disciple ever ascribed.

And this claim of sinlessness for Christ is
to be urged, not so much because of any
special statements by Christ as because of
that remarkable fact to which Dr. Bushnell
has called attention, — his impenitence. Jesus
alone among all good men is a man of "im-
penitent piety;" and by this he is marked
off absolutely from every other good man.
What happens in the life of any other good
man is this : that, as he goes forward, the sense
of sin grows upon him, the ideal rises before
him and he feels increasingly that his own
life is inferior to it. Of Jesus this is not
true. He shows no sign of consciousness of
failure. There is no evidence that he feels
that he has fallen short in any degree. He
is absolutely without that universal character-
istic of all other good men, absolutely without
penitence. Contrast him for a moment with
the man, who perhaps all would agree was
the greatest of all his disciples, the man to
whose devotion there seems to be no limit —
the Apostle Paul; and notice, that years after
his persecution of the church and of the

M

194 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

cause of Jesus, with growing sense of what
Jesus is, and of his own inexhaustible debt
to him, there comes over him with increas-
ing, not lessening, power the sense of his
sin, and he writes to the Ephesians, "Unto
me, who am less than the least of all saints,
was this grace given me that I might preach
unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
Christ;" and in one of the very last letters
that comes down to us from him, says again,
"Faithful is the saying and worthy of all ac-
ceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners; of whom I am chief."
What evidence have we that Christ ever felt
in the slightest degree such penitence?

(3) But more than this is true. With the
highest ideal, Jesus not only does not consciously
fall short of it, hut consciously rises up to it,
and, as Herrmann says, "compels us to
admit that he does rise to it." It were very
much that a man with any ideal, however
inferior, should be able to say to himself, I
have not fallen short of this ideal; but that
one, who sees more clearly than any other
in the realm of the moral and spiritual, and
who has an ideal of simply absolute love
and of unbounded trust in God, — that he
should show not only no consciousness of

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 195

falling short, but should consciously rise to
his ideal and compel us to admit that he
rises to it: this is a fact unparalleled in the
history of the world. It is far more than
mere sinlessness; there is here a positiveness
of moral achievement so great — a fact so
tremendous — that we seem able but feebly
to take it in.

(4) And even that is not all. Jesus has
such a character that we can transfer it feature
by feature to God, not only with no sense of
blasphemy, not only with no sense of his
coming short, but with complete satisfaction.
I do not now ask at all as to any man's
metaphysical theory about Jesus Christ; I
only ask that it be noticed that those who
question common theories altogether still
get their ideal of God from Jesus Christ;
and that this is the wonderful thing that has
happened on our earth: that there has once
lived a man — daily moving about among
men, a concrete circumstantial account of
whose life in many particulars we have — the
features of whose character one can transfer
absolutely to God and say, That is what I
mean by God. One simply cannot add any-
thing to the character of God himself in the
highest moments of his imagination, that is

196 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

not already revealed in Jesus Christ. I take
it that the words of Fairbairn are literally
true: he was "the first being who had real-
ized for men the idea of the Divine."
When, therefore, Philip said to him, "Lord,
show us the Father and it sufficeth us," he
could only reply as he might any day to us,
"Have I been so long time with you, and
dost thou not know me, Philip? he that
hath seen me hath seen the Father."

(5) And one cannot stop here. Jesus is
consciously able to redeem all men. With such
sense of the meaning of sin and of moral
conduct as no other ever had, understanding,
therefore, the sin and need of men as no
other ever did, and having such a vision of
what it is perfectly to share the life of God
as no other ever had, still, facing the masses
of men, he could say to himself, "I am able
to take these men and lift them into the very
presence of God and present them spotless
before the throne of his glory." Have we
taken in what it means, that, in the conscious-
ness of a man in form like ourselves, there
could be, even for a moment, the actual be-
lief that he was the one that was to take
away the sin of the world, and had power
to redeem men absolutely unto God? In

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 197

another's words : "Jesus knows no more sa-
cred task than to point men to his own per-
son." He is himself God's greatest gift,
himself "the way, the truth, the life," — not
only fighting his own battles, but consciously
able to redeem all men.

(6) This simply implies, as Dr. Denison
has suggested, that Jesus has such God-con-
sciousness and such sense of mission as would
simply topple any other brain that the world has
ever known into insanity, but which simply
keeps him sweet, normal, rational, living the
most wholesome and simple and noble life
the world has ever seen. How are we to
explain that fact? On the one hand, the
sense of being of even a little importance in
the kingdom of God proves singularly intoxi-
cating to men. How often, when one is
strongly possessed by the idea that he is a
special channel of manifestation for God, do
moral sanity, influence, and character all suf-
fer! On the other hand, there is no burden
of suffering that men can bear so great as
suffering in the sin of one loved — thus bearing
the sin of another. But here is one who can
believe that, when men come to him and
simply see him as he is, they catch their best
vision of God; here is one who bears con-

198 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

sciously the sin of all men, and who can
believe that he has absolute power to revo-
lutionize the lives of other men and make
them what they were meant originally to be,
children of God; and yet, believing this,
can, under that consciousness, keep sweet and
normal, wholesome and simple, energetically
ethical and thoroughly rational, — can keep
sane. Indeed, he lives a life so sane, that, to
pass even from some of our best religious
books into the simple atmosphere of the
story of his life often seems like passing from
the super-heated, artificially lighted, heavily
perfumed and exhausted atmosphere of the
crowded drawing-room into the open fresh
air of day under the heaven of God. In the
very act of the most stupendous self-asser-
tion, Jesus can still characterize himself as
"meek and lowly of heart," and we feel no
self-contradiction— so completely has he har-
monized for even our unconscious feeling
his transcendent self-consciousness and his
humble simplicity of life. Has the world
anywhere a phenomenon comparable to this?
(7) In consequence of all this, Jesus is in
fact the only person in the history of the race who
can call out absolute trust. As little children,
we knew something of what it meant to have

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 199

complete trust. There were a few years
when it seemed to us that there was nothing
in either power or character that was not
true of our fathers and mothers. We soon
lost such trust, even as children. Is there
anyway back to the childlike spirit? Let us
ponder these golden words of Herrmann:
"The childlike spirit can only arise within
us when our experience is the same as a
child's; in other words, when we meet with
a personal life which compels us to trust it
without reserve. Only the person of Jesus
can arouse such trust in a man who has
awakened to moral self-consciousness. If
such a man surrenders himself to anything
or any one else, he throws away not only his
trust, but himself." There has been one
life lived on earth, in whose hands one may
put himself with absolute confidence and
have no fear as to the result. Jesus, and
Jesus alone, can call out absolute trust.

(8) Moreover, Jesus is the only life ever
lived among men in whom God certainly finds «j,
and in whom we certainly find God. And, once
again, I am not now asking whether one is
able to come to any theory of the nature
of Christ. That is a matter of comparative
indifference. The great fact is this: That

200 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

there has been lived among us men such a
life that, if a man will simply put himself
in the presence of it and stay there, he will
have brought home to him with unmistakable
conviction the fact that God is, and is touch-
ing him and that he is touching God; that,
coupled with such a sense as he never had
before of his sin, there will be also the
sense of forgiveness and reconciliation with
God, and so, such evidence of the contact
of God with his life as he can find nowhere
else. So Harnack believes: "When God
and everything that is sacred threaten to
disappear in the darkness, or our doom is
pronounced ; when the mighty forces of
inexorable nature seem to overwhelm us,
and the bounds of good and evil to dissolve;
when, weak and weary, we despair of finding
God at all in this dismal world, — it is then
that the personality of Christ may save us."
(9) And all this means, finally, that Jesus
is for us the ideal realized. Let not the com-
monplaceness of the words rob us of their
meaning. The fact is far enough from the
commonplace. Philosophy must always tell
us that we have no right to expect anywhere
a realized ideal, except in the absolute whole
of things. Certainly, we never find in any

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 201

of the inferior spheres a fully realized ideal.
What does it mean, then, that in this highest
of all spheres, the sphere of the moral and
spiritual life, we have the ideal realized; that
our very highest vision is a fact? What is
there that one would add to, what, that one
would take away from, the life of Christ,
that it might be more completely than it is
the ideal realized?

"But Thee, but Thee, O Sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poet's Poet, wisdom's tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love,
O perfect life in perfect labor writ,
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King or Priest, —
What // or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect,
What rumor, tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's,
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, thou crystal Christ?"

4. Christ's Double Uniqueness. — It seems
hardly possible to do justice to the facts
now passed in review, without recognizing,
at least, that they point to a double unique-
ness on the part of Christ in his relation to
God, reflected in his own language concern-
ing himself and in the spontaneous confes-
sions of his disciples in all times. He alone,

202 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

in the emphatic sense, is the Son. The
contrasts between Christ and other men,
which the simple facts of the life and con-
sciousness of Christ have compelled us to
make, naturally, then, demand recognition
from thought. The recognition of the facts
is the vital matter, but thought can hardly
see them unmoved. How are we to think
of Christ? With clear remembrance, now,
that Christian teaching itself insists upon the
kinship of God and men ; that absolute
barriers, therefore, cannot anywhere be set
up ; that a revelation unrelated to all else
could be no revelation ; and that Christ
himself often pointed out the likeness be-
tween his own life and work and those of
his disciples; — still we may not ignore actual
differences, and must honestly strive to do
justice to them in our own conception of
Christ. One may not forget that there is
much here that we can hardly hope ever to
fathom ; and that into this secret of Christ's
relation to the Father theology has often
tried to press with a precision of statement
that was quite beyond its possible knowledge,
and that damaged rather than helped the
religious consciousness ; but one may try
to think in simple, straightforward fashion

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 203

what the facts mean. Now these actual and
momentous moral and spiritual differences
already pointed out seem, at least, to assert,
I say, a genuine double uniqueness in Christ.
Christ's relation to God is absolutely unique,
that is, in two senses: in the absolutely
unique purpose of God concerning him ; in
the absolutely perfect response of Christ to
that purpose. If one chooses to use the
language, he may say, that the first unique-
ness is metaphysical; the second, ethical.1

First, then, God has a purpose concerning
Christ, that he has concerning no other, for
he purposes to make in him his supreme self-
manifestation. This sets him apart from all
others. His transcendent sense of God and
sense of mission only correspond to the abso-
lute uniqueness of this eternal purpose of
God concerning him. We are utterly unable
to see that they could be borne by any being
that we know as man. He is the manifested
God — "the visible presentation of the invisi-
ble God." This cannot be said, in the same
sense, of any other. Now, our only adequate
statement of the inner reality — the essential
meaning — of any being, can be given only
in terms of the purpose which God calls

1 Cf. King, Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 232, 233, 248, 249.

204 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

that being to fulfil. To see, then, that God's
purpose concerning Christ is absolutely
unique, and that God's purpose is, to make
in Christ the completest possible personal
manifestation of himself, is to see that Christ's
essential relation to the Father is absolutely
his own, unshared by any other. And, it
may be added, there is no reason why this
purpose of God concerning Christ should
not be regarded as an eternal purpose,
eternally realized.

But Christ is as clearly unique in his
simply perfect response to this purpose of
God. Our facts seem to point directly to
the conclusion, that in him there was no
moral hindrance to the fullness of the reve-
lation God would make through him. His
life is perfectly transparent, allowing the full
glory of the character of God to shine
through it. The harmony of his will with
God's will is complete. If it be said that
this last uniqueness is, after all, only differ-
ence in degree from other men, it must be
answered, first, that degree here is so vast as
to be practically kind. This is the perfect
of Christ set over against the varyingly im-
perfect of all other men. Moreover, to ask
here for difference in kind in any other

THE SACREDNESS OP THE PERSON 205

sense, is probably to make an unintelligent
and impossible demand; for, in the nature
of the case, the relations involved are spir-
itual and personal, and there cannot be, in
strictness, in the fulfilment of such relations
any real differences in kind.

5. The Increasing Sense of Our Kinship with
Christ, and of His Reality. — Side by side with
this recognition of the nature of Christ's
uniqueness, there deserves to be set, as an-
other outcome of the emphasis upon con-
ceiving Christ as a personal revelation of
God, the increasing sense of our kinship
with Christ and of his reality. The connec-
tion here is by no means accidental, though
it may seem almost paradoxical. We have
plainly come in our day to our clearest rec-
ognition of the divinity of Christ through
the sense of his transcendent character. But
revelation in character requires the reality of
his human life. The very route, therefore,
by which we have most certainly reached our
sense of Christ's divinity, leads also to an
increasing sense of kinship with Christ, and
so of his reality. So long as we seemed
driven to conceive the divinity of Christ in
terms that had no relation and no meaning
for human life, just so long must he seem

206 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

to us to be really moving in another world
and to take on the unreality of that other
world quite hidden from us. But now
Christ's life has meaning; we can enter into
it and feel that it is real. With all its tran-
scendence, the life does not move now simply
in the sphere of the mysterious. It is no
unreal drama, no play-struggle, — utterly fail-
ing to meet our real moral and spiritual
needs. Least of all, in this supreme work
for man, can the revealing life be only a
show. It feels real. It is real. And, with
clear sense of the inevitable inadequacy of
the analogy, we still rest confidently in the
conviction that God's relation to Christ may
be best conceived after the analogy of the
relation of the Spirit of God to our spirits ;
and that, when we try to press beyond that,
we are attempting to rise into that sphere of a
supposed supra-personal, for which we have no
possible organ of vision, and where, therefore,
we are thinking not more, but less, truly.1

With this sense of the reality of the per-
sonal, spiritual life of Christ, there naturally
comes home to us the appropriateness and
practicability of his ideals. They are seen to
belong to us more surely, and properly to

1 See King, Reconstruction in Theology, p. 209; and below, p. 209.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 207

make demands upon us. It is, probably, not
too much to say that, under the influence of
the social consciousness, there has been a
definite, growing approach to Christ's way
of thinking, and to his ideal of life. This
means a consciousness increasingly Christian
in tone, and, therefore, in turn, increasingly
better able to interpret the teaching and life
of Christ, and so to give promise of a more
Christian theology. None of us, probably,
are fully conscious of the more subtle in-
consistencies of even our best theological
thinking, when measured by a completely
Christian spirit. At least, with the insist-
ence upon Christ as a personal revealer of a
personal God, it must become more true
that the meaning of all terms for the work
of Christ shall be more clearly reasonable,
more consistently ethical, and more com-
pletely spiritual; and then the immediate
rooting of Christian theology in the Christian
religion can be seen and felt.

III. THE RECOGNITION OF THE PERSONAL IN GOD

The sense of the value and sacredness of
the person must lead to the special recogni-
tion of the personal not only in man and in

208 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Christ, but also in God. We have already
seen reasons for believing that the social
consciousness is peculiarly bound strongly
to emphasize the personality of God, as in
the end absolutely essential to its own justi-
fication. The social consciousness represents
an ethical movement that can live only in the
atmosphere of the personal.

I. The Steady Carrying through of the Com-
pletely Personal in the Conception of God.
Guarding the Conception. — This pressure of
the social consciousness toward an impera-
tive faith in the fully personal God is most
valuable, as offsetting the tendency in many
quarters toward a scientific or even idealistic
pantheism or monism that is quite imper-
sonal. "For," in the language of Professor
Howison, "the very quality of personality is,
that a person is a being who recognizes
others as having a reality as unquestionable
as his own, and who thus sees himself as a
member of a moral republic, standing to
other persons in an immutable relationship
of reciprocal duties and rights, himself en-
dowed with dignity, and acknowledging the
dignity of all the rest."1 As this is preemi-
nently the spirit of the social consciousness,

1 The Limits of Evolution, p. 7.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 209

it is plain that we have in the social con-
sciousness an increasingly powerful motive
for guarding the full personality of God.

It needs particularly to be noted, that we
know no definite "supra-personal." Pantheism
or any impersonal monism is forced, there-
fore, when it leaves the personal conception
of God, to take a lower line of develop-
ment, not a higher. The result is, that it is
obliged to deny the highest attributes to
God, and then, as Browning is fond of
arguing, man steps at once into the place
of God. Men cannot permanently remain
satisfied with a philosophical view, of which
that is the logical outcome. Certainly, such
a view can get no support from the social
consciousness, with its deep conviction of
the supreme value and sacredness of the
person.

Moreover, it is not to be forgotten, in esti-
mating the value of a cosmic monism, that
what the cosmological really means, ethi-
cally and religiously, to a people, must always
depend upon their social ideals. The nat-
ural in itself contains no command. For
any effective vital interpretation, therefore,
even of its impersonal Absolute, pantheism
is constantly thrown back upon the personal.

N

2IO THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Only a clear, steady carrying through by
theology of the completely personal in its
conception of God can ultimately satisfy this
sense of the value and sacredness of the per-
son. Professor Nash does not speak too
strongly when he says: "To fulfil her func-
tion the church must develop the doctrine
of a Divine Personality. She has not always
been true to it in the past. Too often, by
her sacraments, by her theology, by her
theory of inspiration, she has glorified the
impersonal."1

Now, such an attempt, it is perhaps worth
saying once more, is not to be thought of
as a running away from a thorough-going
metaphysical investigation. It rather takes
the ground, indicated in the earlier discus-
sion, of what may be called, in Professor
Howison's language, personal idealism; and
holds that spirit, person, is for us the ultimate
metaphysical fact: the one reality to which
we have immediate access; the reality from
which all our metaphysical notions are origi-
nally derived; and, in consequence, the one
reality which we can take as the key to the
understanding of all else. And it believes
that even essence and substance, the great

1 Ethics and Revelation, p. 270.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 211

words of the old metaphysics, can be really
understood only as they are interpreted in
personal terms. Ultimately, theology would
hold, this would mean the interpretation of
the essence of things in terms of the purpose
of God concerning them — what he meant
them to be.

In the attempt, then, clearly and steadily
to carry through the conception of God as
completely personal, theology may well guard
carefully certain points. In the first place,
theology does not mean to transfer to God
human limitations; rather, it conceives him
to be the only complete personality with per-
fect self-consciousness and full freedom, no
part of whose being is in any degree foreign
to himself. Nor, in the second place, does
it mean to forget that the personal relations
in which God stands to other persons are
unique, and that, in three definite respects:
that conviction of the love of God, as of no
other, must underlie, as a great necessary
assumption, all our thinking and all our liv-
ing; that God is himself the source of the
moral constitution of man, which must thus
be regarded as an expression of the personal
will of God, and the personal relation to God
so have universal moral implications such as

212 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

no other personal relation can have; and in
that God is such in his universal love for all,
that it is impossible to come into right per-
sonal relation to God, and not at the same
time come into right relation to all moral
beings.1

2. God is Always the Completely Personal
God. — If, now, theology is to do justice to
the demands of the social consciousness for
a full recognition of the personal in God, it
must see clearly that God is always the com-
pletely personal God. Certain conclusions,
not always admitted, are believed to follow
from this position.

(i) The Consequent Relation of God to " Eter-
nal Truths" — In the first place, there can be
no sphere of eternal truths, thought of as
either created outright by the will of God,
or as existing of themselves independently of
God and only to be recognized by him.

The difficulty is not merely that at least
one of these views would put God in the
same dependent relation to truth as we finite
beings, and thus practically put a God above
God. Nor is the difficulty merely that it
is impossible to think the real existence of
such a sphere of eternal truth, since truths

!Cf. King, Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 205 ff.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 213

or laws can be said to exist only in one of
two ways : either as the actual mode of
action of reality, or as the perception and
formulation in an observing mind of that
mode of action. And these difficulties are
both sufficiently serious.

But, from our present point of view, the
great difficulty is, that trying to conceive
God as either creating or coming to the
recognition of truth, assumes, as Lotze points
out, a fragmentary God, a God for whom
truth is not yet. It assumes an action of the
will of God apart from his reason, that is,
a God not yet completely personal, not yet
the full God of truth and character. A God
for whom truth and duty are not yet, is cer-
tainly no true person. Most, if not all, of
our metaphysical puzzles connected with the
relation of God to what we call eternal
truths, seem to me to grow out of this
thought of an essentially fragmentary God.

We are driven, consequently, to a denial
of both the Scotist and Thomist positions, as
ordinarily conceived. It is true neither that
the truth is true and the good is good be-
cause God wills it, nor yet that God wills
the true because it is true and the good
because it is good. Both views alike assume

214 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

the possibility of a fragmentary God, a God
for whom at some time truth and goodness
were not yet. But God has always been the
completely personal God of truth and love,
never a bare will and never a bare intellect.
Hence, neither as an independent object to
be recognized, nor yet as the external prod-
uct of his will, can we think of the realm
of eternal truth and goodness. We must
rather say, God alone is the eternal being
and absolute source of all, always complete
in the perfection of his personality; and,
therefore, what we call the eternal truths
are only the eternal modes of God^s actual
activity. This alone seems to the writer to
give a thorough-going theistic view, free from
self-contradiction.1

(2) Eternal Creation. — But, further, if God
is to be thought as always the completely
personal God, we are led, also, immediately
to the doctrine of eternal creation.

If God has had always a completely per-
sonal life, his entire being must have been
always in exercise. Can we really think of
such a God as simply quiescent, and not as
always active? Is not his activity involved
in his complete personality? The thought

1 Cf. Lotze, The Microcosmus, Vol. II, pp. 690 ff.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 215

of his possible quiescence arises probably out
of an unconscious, but nevertheless unwar-
ranted, transfer to God of our finite sepa-
ration of will and act. But God is here, too,
no fragmentary God; he has always been the
completely personal God, always acting.

A second consideration carries us to the
same conclusion. Theologians have felt that
they have made a distinct step in advance
in tracing creation to love in God, as, for
example, Principal Fairbairn does. But this
gives no real help as an explanation of
creation as beginning in time ; for one must at
once ask, Was not the love of God eternal,
and if this were the real reason leading to
creation, must not, then, creation be eternal?

So far as I am able to see, there is noth-
ing to lose and much to gain in clearness
and satisfactoriness of thought in a frank
acceptance of the doctrine of eternal crea-
tion. Not, of course, in the sense of an
eternal dualism, in the sense of the thought
of an eternity of matter set over against God,
but in the clear sense of the eternal creative
activity of God. And to such a doctrine of
eternal creation, the social consciousness, in
its emphasis on the completely personal,
seems to me to lead.

2l6 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

(3) The Unity and Unchangeableness of
God. — And, once more, if God is always
the completely personal God, we shall con-
ceive his own unity not as monotonous self-
identity, but only as consistency of meaning.
We shall not, therefore, transfer to God,
pluming ourselves meanwhile upon a highly
philosophical view, the mechanical unchange-
ableness of a rock; but we shall be rather
concerned with the consistency of his char-
acter and the unchangeableness of his loving
will, which would be the very reasons for
his changing, adapting attitude toward his
changing children. From this point of view,
too, the sphere of law and the sphere of the
actual, will seem to us, necessarily, to root
in the sphere of the ideal; the is and the
must, to rest in the ought; though we may
not hope to trace the connections in detail.
In a God, then, who is a completely har-
monious person, never acting in fragmentary
fashion, whose will and whose reason and
whose love are never at cross purposes —
only in such a God can the world find its
adequate and unifying source. The world
itself has real unity only in so far as it is
the expression of the consistency of meaning
of the purpose of God concerning it.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 217

And this same thought of the consistency
of the meaning of the purpose of God, I
have elsewhere argued,1 saves us from the
necessity of a self-contradictory conception of
the miraculous or supernatural, by its recog-
nition of the dominant spiritual order. It
also enables us to see, with Professor Nash, if
the word personal is given sufficient breadth,
that "the true supernatural is the personal,
and wheresoever the personal is discovered,
whether in the life of conscience or the life
of reason, whether in Israel or Greece, there
the supernatural is discovered. Upon this
conception of the supernatural as the per-
sonal, apologetics must found the claims of
Christianity. The divine and the human
personality stand within * Nature,' that is,
within the total of being. But they both,
the human as well as the divine, transcend
the scope and reach of visible Nature."2

(4) The Limitations of the Conception of
Immanence. — Indeed, it ought to be clearly
recognized on all sides by those who believe
in religion at all, that we cannot so exclu-
sively emphasize the immanence of God, as
many are now doing, and have a God at

1 See Reconstruction in Theology, Chapter VI.
2 Ethics and Revelation, p. 270.

2l8 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

all, beyond the finite manifestations. When
the matter is so conceived, there is no real
personal God with whom there can be any
personal communion. Religion, thus, in any
ordinary sense of it, is by this process made
simply impossible; Positivism is the only
logical result, and Frederic Harrison becomes
the one sole, clear-sighted prophet among us,
a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Such
an outcome is possible for any, because, and
in so far as, they are not true to the social
consciousness in its demand for the com-
pletely personal God, who, in Martineau's
language, is a genuinely "free spirit."1

3. Deepening the Thought of the Fatherhood
of God. — But the influence of the social con-
sciousness in its deepening sense of the value
and sacredness of the person, of obligation
and of love, not only tends to insist upon
the completely personal in the conception of
God, but also tends to deepen our thought
of the Fatherhood of God.

(1) History no Mere Natural Process. — No
mere on- going of an unfeeling Absolute,
whatever name be given it, will ever satisfy
the social consciousness. The new sense of
the sorrow and ethical meaning of the his-

1 See the fuller statement in the Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 96-108.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 219

torical process demands, in the first place,
that history shall not be regarded as a mere
necessitated development, but a movement
in which men effectively cooperate, never
more consciously and clearly than to-day;
and secondly, it demands a God who cares,
who loves, who guides. History cannot be
a mere holocaust to God.

(2) God, the Great Servant. — Rather, as
we saw in the fourth chapter, the social con-
sciousness requires a God whose purpose shall
completely support its own purpose, and so
requires us, with Fairbairn, to put Fatherhood
before Sovereignty, not Sovereignty before
Fatherhood, and requires us definitely to
conceive God after Christ, as self-giving
ministering love. It is one of the anomalies
of Christian history, that the church has been
so slow to cast off a pagan conception of
God, and to come to a truly Christian view.
We can hardly take in Christ's own revela-
tion of God without some sharing in his
sympathy for men. Some experience of our
own is needed to unlock the revelation.
And, so, the steady deepening of the social
consciousness, both as to the value of the
person and as to the sense of obligation, has
certainly helped us to see that if God is to

220 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

be highest, he must be love, and thus the
great servant, with transcendent obligations,
entering really and sympathetically into all
our life.

(3) No Divine Arbitrariness. — With such a
conception of God, every trace of arbitrari-
ness disappears. Calvinism, however stren-
uously insisted upon, means a far different
thing for any man who really feels the pres-
sure of the modern social consciousness, who
has come to some real sense of the value
and sacredness of the person, that is, who
really sees God in Christ. The great truth
of Calvinism, that God is the ultimate source
of all, was perhaps never more secure than
to-day; but that God, who is the absolute
and ultimate source of all, is the fully per-
sonal God, whose will is never divorced from
his reason and love, who knows no such
abstraction as a bare and empty omnipotence
without content or direction, but who is him-
self always living love. The bane of much
so-called Calvinism is in this supposition of
a fragmentary God, like a motion without
direction or rate of speed. Arbitrary decrees
are conceivable only from such a fragmentary
God, not yet full and complete in his reality
and personality.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 221

(4) The Passibility of God. — It would seem,
also, that any vital defense of the Fatherhood
of God, required by the social consciousness,
involves further the frank admission of the
passibility of God, whether it has the look of
an ancient heresy or not. We must unhesi-
tatingly admit that, without which God can
be no real God to us. "Theology has no
falser idea than that of the impassibility of
God. If he is capable of sorrow, he is capa-
ble of suffering, and were he without the
capacity for either he would be without any
feeling of the evil of sin or the misery of
man. The very truth that comes by Jesus
Christ may be said to be summed up in the
passibility of God."1 With the growing sen-
sitiveness of the social consciousness, the
problem of suffering and of sin presses in-
creasingly, and itself almost compels the asser-
tion of the passibility of God. Nothing less
can satisfy our hearts, nor indeed allow us to
keep our reverence for God.

Certainly, with the increasingly clear vi-
sion, which the social consciousness is giving
us, of sympathetic, unselfish, definitely self-
sacrificing, loving leadership even among
men, we shall not rest satisfied with less in

1 Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 483.

222 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

God. We must have a suffering, seeking,
loving God; because our Father, suffering
in our sin, bearing as a burden the sin of
each, and not satisfied while one child turns
away; no mere on-looker, but in all our
afflictions, himself afflicted. The cross of
Christ, then, is only an honest showing of
the actual facts of God's seeking, suffering
love.

4. As to the Doctrine of a Social Trinity.
— One inference for theology widely drawn
from the social consciousness, it ought in
fairness, perhaps, to be said, seems to me
unjustified, — the doctrine of a so-called "So-
cial Trinity." One must question the constant
cool assumption made in these discussions of
a social Trinity, that this view is the only
alternative to what is called an "abstract sim-
plicity." In any case, one would suppose,
we must have in God all the richness and
complexity of a complete personal life, freed
from the limitations of finite personality.
Something of the much that that involves
we have been trying to point out. Here
certainly is no "abstract simplicity."

Moreover, the conception of a social
Trinity, so far as the writer can see, carries
us inevitably to a tritheism of the most un-

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON* 223

mistakable kind. "Social" involves full per-
sonality. Nothing requires more complete
personality than love, which the view affirms
to exist between the persons of the immanent
Trinity, between the distinctions in the very
Godhead. The relations of Christ to God
were, of course, distinctly and definitely
personal; but it must not be forgotten that
we are not permitted, on any careful theo-
logical view, to transfer these directly to the
immanent relations of the Godhead.

The distinction drawn by Dr. W. N.
Clarke,1 between the doctrine of the biblical
Trinity and the doctrine of the Triunity, I
count of decided value; but after one has
made the distinction, one may doubt the
value of the contribution made by the doc-
trine of the Triunity. The really immanent
relations of the Godhead are necessarily
hidden from us, and are, also, so far as the
writer can see, without ethical or religious
significance for us, except in the way of
possible injury through substituting some
supposed altogether mysterious and incom-
prehensibly sacred, for the well-known and
truly sacred shown in the ethical relations of
common life.

1 Outline of Christian Theology, pp. 161, ff.

224 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The doctrine of the Triunity seems to
have been originally intended to enable the
church to hold the divinity of Christ. If
we now get at that and hold that from quite
a different point of view, the older way be-
comes less essential. We must, indeed, keep
the ancient treasure, but we need not keep
it' in the same ancient chest. None of us —
not the most orthodox — really find the
reasons for holding the divinity of Christ in
the doctrine of the Triunity. It is interest-
ing to observe how widely separated from
the doctrine of the Triunity are the consid-
erations which really move men to faith in
the divinity of Christ. That doctrine is, at
the very most, only our philosophical supple-
ment intended to bring that, which on other
grounds we have come to believe, into unity
with our thought of God.

But, at least, we must so conceive the
divinity of Christ, as not to get two or
three Gods. And a "Social Trinity" does
not seem to me to avoid that, except in
terms. However, therefore, we are to solve
our problem, we are not to take that way
out.

What Dr. Clarke calls the biblical doc-
trine of the Trinity, on the other hand,

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 225

seems to me to contain the very heart of
Christianity, whatever philosophical theory
we put beneath it; and it became, there-
fore, as expressed in the baptismal and bene-
diction formulas, the great daily confession
of the church, since it strongly expresses
that of which we have been speaking, — the
living love of God, a life of absolutely self-
giving love, of eternal ministry.

The biblical Trinity is, in truth, what it has
sometimes been called, the trinity of redemp-
tion; and, for me, directly emphasizes the
great facts of redemption. Here there are
three great facts: First, the Fatherhood of
God, that God is in his very being Father,
Love, self-manifesting as light, self-giving as
life, self-communicating, pouring himself out
into the life of his children, wishing to share
his highest life with them, every one. Second,
the concrete, unmistakable revelation of the
Father in Christ, revealed in full ethical
perfection, as an actual fact to be known
and experienced ; no longer an unknown,
hidden, or only partially and imperfectly re-
vealed God, but a real, living God of char-
acter, counting as a real, appreciable, but fully
spiritual fact in the real world. And, third,
the Father revealing himself by his Spirit in

226 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

every individual heart that opens itself to
him, in a constant, intimate, divine associa-
tion, which yet is never obtrusive, but rever-
ent of the man's personality, making possible
to every man the ideal conditions of the
richest life.

What metaphysical theory we put under
that confession of our full Christian faith, does
not seem to me to be of prime importance.
Men may count it of great importance; but
it can hardly be of first importance, since, at
the very most, only the beginnings of such
a theory can be found in the great New
Testament confession of Christ.

5. Preeminent Reverence for Personality,
Characterizing all God's Relations with Men. —
But the very heart of the conviction, on the
part of the social consciousness, of the value
and sacredness of the person, is its reverence
for personality; and this thought has much
significance for theology, for, if this judg-
ment of the social consciousness is justified,
it must be regarded as preeminently char-
acterizing God in all his relations with men.

(1) Reflected in Christ.— When, in the first
place, we turn to Christ as the supreme
revelation of God, we cannot fail to see that
this reverence for the personal marks every

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 227

step he takes. It begins, of course, in the
priceless value which Christ gives to each
person, as a child of the living, loving Father.
And it seems to determine his whole method
with his generation and with his disciples.
It is shown in the initial battle in the temp-
tations, as to the form his work was to take,
and as to the means to be employed. There
was here, as we have seen, from the start an
absolute subordination of all unspiritual and
unethical methods in the building of the king-
dom. There is to be no over-riding of the free
personality anywhere. He faced successively
the temptations to place his dependence on
the mere meeting of men's material needs —
the kingdom by bread ; the temptation to
place his dependence on that which appealed
most strongly to the oriental mind — the use
of wonder-working power — the kingdom by
marvel or ecstasy; the .temptation to place
his dependence on force — the kingdom by
force. But Christ sees clearly that God is
no mere supplier of bread; that God is no
mere wonder-worker, no mere giver of won-
derful experiences; and that God is not a
tyrant to conquer by force. Everywhere,
therefore, he sets aside whatever may over-
ride the free personality. He would replace

228 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

all the attractive and seemingly rapid meth-
ods of the kingdom by bread, the kingdom
by marvel, and the kingdom by force, with
the slow and tedious and costly but reverent
method of the spiritual kingdom by spiritual
means, the kingdom of God by God's way
— of a trust freely won, a humility sponta-
neously arising, a love gladly given. He
can take no pleasure in any kingdom but
one of free persons.

In the same way, in his dealings with the
inner circle of his disciples, there seems to
have been the most scrupulous regard for
their own needed initiative. He apparently
makes no clear announcement of himself as
Messiah even to the disciples until late in
his public ministry, and, then, only after they
have been brought, through weeks, if not
months, of unusually close personal contact
and impression of his spirit, into their own
confession of him. He steadily abjures, that
is, all dogmatism about himself, and leads
them along by a purely spiritual method to
a confession of him, that may be truly their
own. There is no piling up of proof-texts
from the Old Testament, to show that he
is the Messiah. He seems never to have
attempted any proof with his disciples. In-

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 229

deed, he seems purposely to have chosen the
rather ambiguous title, "the Son of Man,"
that men might be left free to come by
moral choice to him.

The surpassingly significant fact, that
Christ's chief work in the establishment of
the kingdom of God, as seems to me beyond
doubt, was his personal association with a
few men; that, probably, a full third, perhaps
more, of his very brief so-called public
ministry was taken up with a period of defi-
nitely sought comparative retirement with the
inner circle of the disciples — all this points to
the same recognition of the fundamental im-
portance in Christ's eyes of such a reverence
for the person. The kingdom of God can
be founded only by the full winning of free
persons into his discipleship. The kingdom
is first and last a kingdom of free persons,
in Dr. Mulford's language, always a "Re-
public of God." Professor Peabody's empha-
sis on the essential importance of Christ's
individualism, that "Jesus approaches life
from within, through the inspiration of the
individual,"1 it need not be said, goes upon
the same assumption of Christ's reverence
for the person.

lJesus Christ and the Social Question, p. 101.

230 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

In his really public ministry the same
spirit appears; for Jesus seems to me here
constantly to be standing with a kind of moral
shudder between the spirit of contempt in
the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the out-
raged personality of the common people,
even of the publicans and sinners. He feels
the contempt even for these least, as a blow
in his own face.

That glimpse which the Revelation gives
us of Christ standing and knocking at the
heart's closed door, is a true picture forever-
more not only of the attitude of Christ's
earthly life, but of God's eternal relation to
us. Men may over-ride and outrage us, and
even think that they show the more love
thereby; God, never. This principle, then,
we may take as absolutely crucial, in our
judgment of God's dealings with us.

(2) /// Creation. — It is fundamental even
in creation. The very fact of the creation
of persons implies it. Such a creation can
have no significance, if, in the language
already quoted from Howison, God's "con-
sciousness is void of that recognition and
reverence of the personal initiative of other
minds which is at once the sign and the
test of the true person."

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 23 1

And if love is, for a moment, to be thought
of as the motive of creation, it required for
any satisfaction of it, persons who could
freely respond to that love.

The definite bestowal of the fateful gift of
moral freedom, with the practical certainty
of sin — the creation of beings who could
choose against him — shows how deeply
planted in the very being of God is this
principle of reverence for the person.

Here, too, the impossibility of arbitrary
divine decrees meets us. This would be
treating a person as a thing, and God him-
self may not do that and remain God. If a
man cannot see his way to a faith both in
the divine foreknowledge and in the moral
initiative of men, therefore, he must not
hesitate to choose even the divine nescience
of the free acts of men, rather than think of
God as compelling men. Our whole moral
universe tumbles about our ears, if he who
is the source of all is not in earnest with
persons. And yet there is much theological
thinking, of which the common notions of a
personal reign of Christ on the earth may be
taken as an example, that practically looks
to a kingdom by compulsion. A kingdom
of free spirits cannot be merely decreed.

232 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

(3) In Providence. — And this same prin-
ciple of reverence for personality must be
felt to be the guiding motive and key, as
well, in the providence and government of
God. God keeps his hands off. He must
so act as to call out, not to suppress, indi-
vidual initiative.

This is, perhaps, the deepest reason for a
sphere of law, that there may be a realm in
which a person can have his own free devel-
opment, uninterfered with by any moral
compulsion.

If, now, this sphere of law is to be any
true training ground for character, as we saw
in the third chapter, results must not be
forthwith set aside, the mutual influence of
men must hold all along the line.

Even in the case of great evils, God does
not step in at once to set things right.
Character is an exceedingly costly product.
This is no play-world, either as to mutual
influence or as to freedom. God guards
most jealously the freedom and personality
of men. He never forgets that character
must be from within. He will not accept,
as Christ would not, a faith compelled by
"signs." Hence, too, we are left to ask, and
much is left to depend on our asking. So,

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 233

also, God does not remove all difficulties
and give sight in place of faith. He seems
even careless, often, of how things go; for
he would not only appeal to the heroic in
us, but he wishes to make it impossible for
us to confuse prudence and virtue in our-
selves or others, and so to give us the
opportunity and the joy of a real moral
victory, of knowing that we have made a
genuinely unselfish surrender to the right.

In the light of this deep-lying principle of
God's sacred reverence for the person, one
learns to hush his former complaints, and
with full heart to thank God that he lives
in a world where righteousness and happi-
ness do not always seem to fall together,
and where, therefore, he can "serve God for
naught." Oh, let us know, that it is not
that God does not care, but that he cares
so much — too much to sacrifice to present
comfort the character of the child he loves
— too much to shut him out from his highest
opportunity.

(4) In Our Personal Religious Life. — And
the same principle holds in our personal
religious life. The unobtrusiveness of God's
relation to us, of which we often complain,
is rather to be taken as evidence of his

234 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

sacred respect for our own moral initiative,
and proof of his careful adaptation to our
moral need. Wherever a strong personality
is in relation to a weaker, the stronger must
maintain a conscientious self-restraint, lest he
dominate the personality of the other, to the
other's moral injury and to the hindering of
his individuality. It is possible for a boy to
be injuriously "tied to his mother's apron-
strings." Much more is it necessary that
God's relation to us should not be obtrusive.
God must guard our freedom and our indi-
viduality. He must even take pains to hide
his hand, as a strong, influential, but wise
friend would do. As we go higher, our life
is and must be increasingly one of faith,
the Father's relation less and less obtrusive.1
The times of vision are given to make us
patient in our progress toward the goal.
And after the vision comes often what Ren-
del Harris calls "the dark night of faith,
when every step has to be taken in absolute
dependence upon God and assurance that
the vision was truth and was no lie."2 We
need the invisible God for character.

1 Cf. Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, pp.

434-435-

2 Union with God, p. 109.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 235

It is for this reason, no doubt, that God
makes so rare use of overwhelming experi-
ences in the religious life. He would be
chosen with clear and rational self-conscious-
ness, and so he rarely overpowers. And
even in experiences which seem most over-
powering, if the person is really awake to
their true ethical and spiritual import, they
will probably be found delicately adapted to
call out the individual's own response. But
for most of us such experiences prove a real
temptation, because we allow the passively
emotional to absorb our attention, and so
lose the ethical and spiritual fruit. Where
these marvelous experiences have been most
marked, and have plainly given real help,
they seem still, usually, to have been needed
because of some false conception of God
and the spiritual world that required a pow-
erful corrective. Here they seem really to
have been granted, as probably the trans-
figuration of Christ was to the disciples, as
a concession to men's weakness, God con-
senting reluctantly to use for the time a lower
line of appeal, because men are unable to
rise to the higher appeal.

We have already seen the danger of the
neo-platonic over -estimation of emotional

236 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

experience, and of sudden and magical
crises in religion ; and this danger is espe-
cially seen in much that is said concerning
the work of the Holy Spirit. It seems as if
it were simply true, for many earnest and
sincere Christians, that the superstitions, which
they had conscientiously put aside elsewhere
in religion, all came back in their thought of
the work of the Spirit. Here their relation to
God has ceased to be thought of as a personal
or moral or truly spiritual one; and they are
looking more or less definitely for bodily
thrills, for marked and overwhelming emo-
tional experiences, or for sudden transforma-
tions— hardly to be called transformations of
character — in the passive half-magical removal
of temptations altogether. That is, they are
looking for moral and spiritual results from
unmoral and unspiritual processes. The
exact point is this : Doubtless we are not
narrowly to limit what the personal influence
of the personal Spirit of God may do in
transforming human life — the possibilities
probably far transcend what we think — but
we are clearly to see that the relation is per-
sonal, that the influence is spiritual and under
strictly ethical conditions, if we are .to escape
from simply pagan superstition. Let us see

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 237

that, if God is a Personal Spirit and not an
impersonal substance, then, as Herrmann
says, he "communes with us through mani-
festations of his inner life, and when he con-
sciously and purposely makes us feel what
his mind is, then we feel himself."1

And, then, let us add, as has been already
earlier said, that the deepening life in the
Spirit becomes plainly a deepening personal
friendship and communion with God, with
laws — those of a growing friendship — that
we may study and know and obey; and
among these laws, none is of more central
importance than this of the reverence for
the person.

(5) In the Judgment. — And when we turn
to God's relation to us in the judgment, we
can be sure, I think, of a further application
of this principle, contrary to common teach-
ing and expectation. We have no reason to
look forward to a time when the secrets of
all, or of any, hearts shall be laid bare to all.
In so doing, God would violate, it seems to
me, the principle of his entire dealing with
men, and give the lie to his own revelation
in Christ and in history. For myself, Dr.
Clarke's words carry immediate conviction:

xThe Communion of the Christian with God, p. 143.

238 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

"No man needs to know the secrets of his
neighbor, and be able to trace the justice
of God through his neighbor's life, and no
man who respects the sacredness of indi-
viduality will desire it. Neither revelation
of his own secrets nor knowledge of another's
seems a good thing to a self-respecting soul."1
Even the judgment itself proceeds, no
doubt, in clear recognition of the free per-
sonality. We are "judged by the law of
liberty." And we really choose our own
destiny, as Phillips Brooks suggests in one
of his most striking paragraphs. "By this
law we shall be judged. How simple and
sublime it makes the judgment day! We
stand before the great white throne and
wait our verdict. We watch the closed lips
of the Eternal Judge, and our hearts stand
still until those lips shall open and pronounce
our fate, heaven or hell. The lips do not
open. The Judge just lifts his hand and
raises from each soul before him every law
of constraint whose pressure has been its
education. He lifts the laws of constraint,
and their results are manifest. The real in-
trinsic nature of each soul leaps to the sur-
face. Each soul's law of liberty becomes

lAn Outline of Christian Theology, p. 464.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 239

supreme. And each soul, without one word
of commendation or approval, by its own
inner tendency, seeks its own place. . .
The freeing of souls is the judging of souls.
A liberated nature dictates its own destiny.
Could there be a more solemn judgment
seat? Is it not a fearful thing to be judged
by the law of liberty?"1

And we may be most certain, that, in any
judgment by God, there can be no thought
of "human waste." The man must remain
for God, to the end, a child of God, a person
of sacredness and value, to be dealt with
always as capable of character. And it is
along just this line that, independently of
exegetical grounds, it seems to me, we are
led to a decisive rejection of the doctrine of
annihilation. And I know no more convinc-
ing putting of the matter than this brief but
comprehensive statement of Fairbairn : "If
there is any truth in the Fatherhood, would
not annihilation be even more a punishment
of God than of man? The annihilated crea-
ture would indeed be gone forever — good
and evil, shame and misery, penalty and pain,
would for him all be ended with his being;
but it would not be so with God — out of

1 The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons, p. 197.

240 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

his memory the name of the man could
never perish, and it would be, as it were,
the eternal symbol of a soul he had made
only to find that with it he could do nothing
better than destroy it."1

(6) In the Future Life. — Doubtless our
difficulties are not at an end even so ; but, at
least, our conception of God is saved from
self-contradiction ; and the Father is seen as
suffering in the sin of the son, and perpetu-
ally desiring and seeking his return, never
satisfied so long as any child of his still
refuses his place in the Father's love. This
deep-going principle of reverence for per-
sonality, with which we are dealing, is the
finest flower of human ethical development,
and seems completely to shut out the possi-
bility of compulsion by God at any time in
the future life. A person will never be
treated as a thing. The soul that turns to
God must be won voluntarily.

And if, then, the abstract possibility of end-
less resistance to God by men cannot be de-
nied; so neither can the possibility — perhaps
one might even say, the practical probability —
be denied that God, in his infinite love and
patience and wisdom, may finally win them all

1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 467.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 24.I

out of their resistance. And the eternal hope
is at least open; but it is open, it should be
noted, only upon the fulfilment by men of
precisely those moral conditions which hold
now in the earthly life, and which ought now
to be obeyed. There will never be an easier
way to God. It is shallow thinking that sup-
poses that, if there be any possibility of turn-
ing to God in the future life, it is of small
moment that one should now put himself
where he ought to be. The full results of
all our evil sowing, we must receive. The
utmost that on any rational theory, then,
can be held out to men, is the hope that,
facing a greater heritage of evil than now
they face, they might return to God under
the same condition of absolute moral sur-
render, which now holds, and the fulfilment
of which is now far more easily possible to
them.

And it ought not to be overlooked that,
even if the principle of reverence for person-
ality be much less far-reaching than is here
affirmed, the annihilation of a soul by God
could seem justified only upon the assumption
that God foresaw the entire future, and knew
that the soul would never turn to righteous-
ness and God. But if the doctrine of annihila-

242 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

tion is to be justified on that ground, it is to
be observed, that the same foreknowledge
would have enabled God to know before
creation all the finally incorrigible, if there
were to be any such, and so he need not
have called these into being at all. A goal,
therefore, as great if not far greater, than
that offered by the annihilation theory would
be, thus, attainable simply upon the same
assumption that must rationally be made by
that theory, and, at the same time, the great
objection to that theory— its violation of per-
sonality— would be avoided.

It seems probable that this very principle
of reverence for personality contains the chief
reason why more has not been revealed to
us concerning the future life. Christianity
is very far from satisfying our curiosity here.
It gives little more than the absolutely needed
assurance of the fact and worth of the life
beyond. Details are either quite lacking, or
given only in broadest symbols. This reti-
cent silence of revelation seems needed if
our individual initiative is not to be hin-
dered, either by excess of motive on the one
hand, or by the depression of an unappreci-
ated ideal on the other hand.

On the one hand, that is, so far as we could

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 243

understand a detailed revelation of the future
life, to set it forth with the realism of the pres-
ent life would be to interfere with that unob-
trusive relation of God to us, which we have
seen to be so necessary to our highest moral
training. We need, in this time of our train-
ing, a certain obscurity of spiritual truth ; we
need to walk by faith, not by sight. To be
able so obviously to weigh the eternal realities
against the temporal, would hinder rather
than help our growth in loyal, unselfish
character.

On the other hand, if a complete and in-
dubitable revelation of the future life were
given us, no doubt there would be much
that could make but small appeal to us, and
might even prove positively depressing, be-
cause we have not yet the experience which
would interpret to us its meaning and open
to us its joy. Our earthly life may fur-
nish us an analogy. The joy of a grown
man is often preeminently in his work, but
he would find it difficult to explain to a
child the source of his joy. And if the
child were told that there would come a
time in a few years when his chief joy would
be found in work, the prospect would prob-
ably not seem to him inviting. The wisest

244 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

of us may be as little prepared to enter in
detail into the meaning of the future life.

We may be content to know that the
future life is, and is of value beyond that
which we can now understand ; and we may
be assured that at least what we have already
seen to be the ideal conditions of the richest
life,1 as now we understand life, will be fully
met in the future life. We can hardly doubt,
therefore, that the two great centers of the
life beyond must be association and work ;
though we may not know the precise forms
that these will take, nor how greatly both
may deepen beyond our present conception.
Steadily deepening personal relations, rooted
in the one absolutely satisfying relation to
God in Christ, there must be ; and work, in
which one may lose himself with joy, because
it is God's work. This, at least, the future
life will contain. We can hardly go farther
with assurance.

But perhaps even this may suggest, that
men may vary much in the proportionate
emphasis laid upon these two great sources
of life, and still alike come into a genuine
and rewarding relation to God. That God
has counted individuality among men to be

1 See above, pp. 68 ff.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON 245

of prime significance, the facts of creation
hardly allow us to doubt. Possibly it is only
another application of this same principle of
reverence for the person, in the recognition
of that individuality which has its great joy
in work, which is to be found in what Pro-
fessor George F. Genung suggestively calls
"an apocalypse of Kipling." In Kipling's
poem to Wolcott Balestier, Professor Genung
sees "the discovery of a religion, or assignable
and eternally rewardable relation to God, in
those whose inner life is not introspective or
self-expressive." Their spiritual life "serves
God with the joy which comes of following
and satisfying, in the sphere of his plans, the
eager bent of a conquering will." "It is the
religion of work and of daring." And "it
is only in the open vision of an eternal world
that their secular ardor, which was uncon-
sciously serving God all along, begins to
come to the perception of a transcendent
master and to be transformed into an ado-
ration, an obedience and loyalty, a r will to
serve or to be still as fitteth our Father's
praise.'"

It is quite possible that through our very
failure to enter into God's own deep rever-
ence for the person, in the recognition of

246 THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

man's divinely given individuality, as well as
through failure to recognize the essential
like-mindedness of men, we have been shut-
ting the door of hope, where God has not
shut it, and have limited beyond warrant the
divine mercy. Even in the life of heaven
men cannot be all alike. "Who art thou
that judgest the servant of another? to his
own lord he standeth or falleth. Yea, he
shall be made to stand ; for the Lord hath
power to make him stand."1

1 Romans 14:4.

INDEX

Abbott, Lyman, reference to, 131.

American Journal of Theology, the, refer-
ence to, 86.

Analogy of Organism. See Organism.

Annihilation, doctrine of, why rejected,
239 ff.

Arbitrariness, excluded in God, 220 ff.

Aristotle, quoted, 26; his position aban-
doned by mysticism, 56.

Association, personal, in redemption, 149
ff; in personal relation to God, 159 ff; 'n
confessions of faith, 167 ff.

Assumption of the book, 3.

Atonement, in the light of social conscious-
ness, 147 ff, 150 ff; the cost of, 150; sub-
stitution and propitiation in, 150 ff ;
analogy of father and child in, 154 ff:
blood covenant applied to, 157.

Baldwin, J. M., reference to, 12.

Biblical Trinity, 224, 225.

Blood covenant, as applied to doctrine of
atonement, 1 57-

Bohme, Jacob, referred to, 71.

Bowne, B. P., on causality and purpose,
43; on freedom, 182, 183.

Bradley, F. H., on the religious feeling in
philosophy, 129.

Brooks, Phillips, reference to, 28, 146; on
the intellectual life of Jesus, 81; on the
emotional life of Jesus, 84; on the uni-
versal interest of Jesus, 124; on the like-
ness of men, 126; on judgment according
to the law of liberty, 238.

Bruce's The Kingdom of God, reference to,
52.

Bushnell, H., on impenitence of Jesus,
193.

Calvinism, 220.

Causality and purpose, 42, 4?-

Christ. See Jesus.

Christian, the historically, emphasized by
the social consciousness, 102 ff.

Christianity, as contributing to sense of
mutual influences, 13; sometimes uncon-
scious, 130.

Church, the, importance of the doctrine of,

177 ff-

Clarke, W. N., referred to, 116,224; quoted,
132, 133, 152; on propitiation, 151; on
doctrine of Trinity and Triunity, 223:
on revelation of inner life at judgment,
237.

Common qualities and interests, most valu-
able, 177 ff. ■

Confessions of faith. Christian fellowship in,
167 ff; uniformity in, impossible, 169 ff
and undesirable, 171 ff.

Corinthians, first, twelfth chapter of, as
expression of analogy of organism, 23;
against false mysticism, 60-61, 83.

Cornill, reference to, 64.

Creation, eternal, 214 ff ; reverence for per-
son in, 230 ff.

Creed, Christian fellowship in, 167 (I; uni-
formity in, impossible, 169 ff ; and unde-
sirable, 171 ff.

Denison, J. H., referred to, 197.

Devotional literature, difficulty in, 84 ;
referred to, 141.

Dewey, John, referred to, 12.

Drummond, H., reference to. 21; on sin,
140.

Du Bois, Patterson, on true spirit of father-
hood, no.

C247)

M

INDEX

Edwards, Jonathan, referred to, 22.

Election, in Paul, 116; a choice for ser-
vice, 116.

Emotion, extreme emphasis on, a danger in
mysticism, 71 ; cf. 23s ff.

Eternal creation, 214 ft*.

"Eternal truths," God's relation to, 212 ff.

Ethical, the, in religion, 86 ff; proofs that
religion must be, 89 ff.

Ethicizing of religion, 89 ff; involved in
relation to Christ, 89; the divine will in
ethical command, 90; involved in nature
of God's gifts, 91 ; communion with God
through harmony with his will, 92; the
vision of God for the pure in heart, 92;
sharing the life of God, 9; ; Christ, as
satisfying our claims on life, 94; attrac-
tion to Christ, ethically conditioned, 96;
the moral law, a revelation of the love of
God, 98.

Ethics and religion, 87, 89 ff.

Everett, C. C, criticism of Nietzsche, 120.

Expository Times, The, reference to, 64.

Fairbairn, A.M., his The Place of Christ in
Modern Theology, mentioned, no; on the
Christian consciousness, 112; referred
to, 119, 196, 215, 234; on sense of sin,
14?; on Christ as transcendent, 189; on
passibility of God, 221; on annihilation,
239-

Faith, necessity of, in life, 43, 44.

Faith in men, increased by sense of like-
ness, 128.

Father and child, the analogy of, applied
to redemption, 154 ff.

Favorites, none with God, 116 ff.

Fellowship, Christian, help of, in coming
into kingdom, 159 ff; within the king-
dom, 162 ff; in intercessory prayer, 164
ff; in confessions of faith, 167 ff.

Fiske, John, reference to, 21.

Freedom, in man, 181 ff; Bowne on, 182,
183; references on, 182.

Fremantle, W. H., reference to, 141.

Friendship, laws of, as holding in religion,
67.

Future life, moral reality of, 132 ff ; rever-
ence for person in, 240 ff.

Galatians, Epistle to, referred to, 83.

Genung, G. F., on "an apocalypse of Kip-
ling," 245.

Giddings, F. H., reference to, 9, 10, ig, 20,
62, 117; on the "social mind," 138.

God, immanence of, as related to social con-
sciousness, 40 ff; his will, ethical basis
of social consciousness, 44 ff; sharing in
our life, 48; will of, felt in ethical com-
mand, 90; his gifts require ethical atti-
tude to receive them, 91, 92; our sharing
his life, 93; we cannot do his will in
general, 100; a thoroughly personal con-
ception of, needed, 207 ff; guarding the
conception of, 208 ff, 211; suprapersonal
in, 209; Nash on doctrine of personality
of, 210; always completely personal, 212
ff; relation to eternal truths, 212 ff; as
eternally creating, 214 ff; unity and un-
changeableness of, 216 ff; limiting con-
ception of immanence of, 217 ff ; deepen-
ing thought of Fatherhood of, 218 ff; as
the great servant, 219; no arbitrariness
in, 220; passibility of God, 221; trinity
in, 222 ff.

Grahame, Kenneth, on love, 123; referred
to, 124.

Harnack, A., on Christ, 200.

Harris, J. R., quoted, 234.

Hegel, on greatest in art, 119.

Heredity, not to be over-emphasized, 37;
James, on, 37, 38.

Herrmann, W., referred to, 22, 70, 173 ; his
definition of mysticism, c6, 57; on pan-
theistic tendency in mysticism, 58, 74;
on our satisfaction in Christ, 94; on the
help of the fellowship of the church, 161 ;
on Christ's rising to his ideals, 194; on
Christ's calling out absolute trust, 199;
on personal relation to God, 237.

Historical, the, under-estimated by mysti-
cism, 72.

Historical justification needed by social
consciousness, 59 ff, 102 ff.

Historically, the, Christian, emphasized by
the social consciousness, 102 ff.

History, no mere natural process, 218 ff;
God in, vii, 219.

INDEX

249

Holy Spirit, doctrine of, often made super-
stitious. 236.

Honesty of the world, double meaning of, 80.

Hope for men, increased by sense of like-
ness, 128.

Hosea, as illustration of inter-play of hu-
man and divine relations, 68.

Howells, W. D., his A Boy's Town, quoted,
118; referred to, 125.

Howison, G. H., on the person, 180, 208,
230; referred to, 210.

Humanity, idea of, from Christianity, 13.

Ideal view, requires the facts of the social
consciousness, 29 ft, 32 ff.

Imitation, to be avoided, 172 ff.

Immanence of God, as metaphysical ground
of facts of social consciousness, 40 ff;
Lotze on, 40, 41; limitations in concep-
tion of, 217 ff.

"Immovability," discussed, 124 ff.

Immortality. J. S Mill on, 50; Sully on, 50;
doctrine of, as affected by sense of like-
ness of men, 124 ff ; references on, 125.

Indian mysticism. 74.

Israel, significance of its social struggle,
63; ecstasy among its prophets, 64.

James, William, on heredity, 37 ; on meta-
physics, 40; on sense of reality, 72; on
nitrous-oxide-gas intoxication, 74; on
the world as a confusion. 78; reference
to, 79, 122, 124, 126; on compensations,
117: on varied ideals, 128; on catching
faith and courage, 147.

Jesus, Brooks on his intellectual life, 81;
on his emotional life, 84; relation to,
necessarily ethical, 89, 94, 96; satisfies
our highest claims on life, 94; his social
emphases, in ff; Brooks on his interest
in the uninteresting, 124; the great
Christian confession, 174 ff; loyalty to,
best assurance for doctrine, 175 ; the per-
sonal in, 184 ff; a personal revelation of
God, 184 ff; the moral and spiritual in
his supremacy, 185 ff; grounds of his
supremacy, 188 ff; among founders of re-
ligion, 189 ff; his sinlessness, 192 ff; his
impenitence, 193; rises to highest ideals,

194 ff; shows character of God, 19? ff;
consciously able to redeem all men, 196;
transcendent God-consciousness and
sense of mission, 197 ff; calls out abso-
lute trust, 198 ff; in him God certainly
finds us, 199 ff; the ideal realized. 200 ff;
his double uniqueness, 201 ff; sense of
kinship with, and reality of. 205 ff; di-
vinity of, as related to Trinity, 224;
reverence for person in, 226 ff.
Judgment, according to light, 132 ff; how
God's can be favorable, 153 ff; reverence
for person in, 237 ff; according to law of
liberty, 238 ff.

Kaftan, J., referred to, 86.

Keim, quoted, 52.

King, references to his Reconstruction in

Theology, 16, 20, 23, 43, 67, 185, 187, 188,

203, 205, 212, 217, 218.
Kipling, R., on the value of the common,

119; G. F. Genung on, 245.

Lanier, S., quoted, on Christ, 201.

Leibnitz, referred to, 172.

Life, the richest, ideal conditions of, 68 ff.

Like-mindedness' of men, 9 ff; an element
of social consciousness, 9 ff, 47; influ-
ence on theology, 115 ff; summary on,
134; seen under diverse forms, 121 ff.

Lotze, reference to, 13, 25, 31, 42, 213, 214;
on passion for construing everything,
25, 26; on immanence of God, 40.

Love, sense of, 20; element in social con-
sciousness, 20, 51 ; as motive in creation,
215.

Man, the personal in, 180 ff; separateness
from God, 180 ff; freedom in, 181 ff; a
child of God, 183 ff.

Matheson, George, on sacrifice, 49.

McConnell, S. D., objection to one part in
his argument as to immortality, 124 ff.

McCurdy, on the significance of the social
struggle in Israel, 63.

Metaphysical, not to be emphasized, in
conception of Christ, 185 ff; how to be
thought, as to Christ, 203, 204; in doc-
trine of Trinity, 226.

250

INDEX

Mill, J. S., on immortality, 50.

Moral world, prerequisites of, 30 ff; sphere
of law, 30; ethical freedom, 30; some
power of accomplishment, 31; members
one of another, 32.

Mistiness in mysticism, 73.

Moral initiative in men, 181 ff.

Moral law, a revelation of the love of God,
98.

Mulford, E., referred to, 229.

Miinsterberg, H., referred to, 79; refer-
ence to his Psychology and Life, 79.

Mutual influence of men, 1 1 ff; contribut-
ing lines of thought, n ff; threefold
form of the conviction, 13 ff; as clement
of social consciousness, 11 ff, 50; influ-
ence upon theological doctrine, 136 ff;
for good, 144 ff ; in attainment of charac-
ter, 145 ff; in personal relation to God,
160 ff; in confession of faith, 167 ff.

Mystical, the falsely, opposition of the
social consciousness to, 55 ff, 57 ff;
Nash's definition of, 55, 56; Herrmann's
definition of, 56, 57; unethical, 58; no
real personal God, 58; belittles personal
in man, 59; Paul's rejection of. 60, 61;
leaves historically Christian. 62 ff.

Mystical, the truly, emphasized by the
social consciousness, 66 ff, 70 ff ; requires
laws of a deepening friendship, 67; re-
quires ideal conditions of the richest life,
68; protest in favor of whole man, 78 ff ;
its self-controlled recognition of emotion,
82 ff.

Mysticism, its relation to the social con-
sciousness, 55 ff; false, 55 ff; true, 66 ff,
70 ff; justifiable and unjustifiable ele-
ments in, 71 ff; its dangers:

emotionalism, 71; subjectivism, 72; un-
der-estimating historical, 72; mistiness,
73; pantheism, 73 ff; symbolism. 76.
justifiable elements in, summed up, 77.

Nash, H. S., on ethical basis of social con-
sciousness in will of God, 4; ff ; his defi-
nition of the mystical, 55, 56; referred
to, 70; on doctrine of divine personality,
210; on the supernatural, 217.

Neo-Darwinian school, referred to, 37.

Neo-Platonic mysticism, 55 ff, 74.
New World, The, reference to, 12, 120.
Neitzsche, criticism of, by Everett, 120.

Obligation, sense of, 18 ff; element in so-
cial consciousness, 18, 51.
Organism, analogy of, 23 ff; value of, 23;
classical expression in I Cor. 12; in-
adequacy of, for social consciousness,
24 ff;

comes from the sub-personal world, 24;
access to reality only through our-
selves, 24; mistaken passion for con-
struing everything, 25 ; tested by defi-
nition of social consciousness, 26 ff.
Orr's The Christian View of God and the
World, reference to, 51.

Pantheism, tendency to, in mysticism, 58, 74.

Paul, his rejection of the falsely mystical,
60, 61, 83.

Paulsen, on key to reality, 25; reference
to, 30, 129; on necessity of faith, 46, 47.

Peabody, F. G., referred to, 65; on the so-
cial principles of Jesus, in ; on Christ's
individualism, 229.

Person, value of, 16 ff, 50; influence of
sense of value of, on theology, 179 ff;
reverence for, characterizing all God's
relation to men, 226 ff.

Personal, the, recognition of, 179 ff; rec-
ognition of, in man, 180 ff; recognition
of, in Christ, 184 ff: recognition of, in
God, 207 ff.

" Personal idealism," 180, 181, 210.

Personal relation, in religion, emphasized
by social consciousness, 66 ff ; leads to
the truly mystical, 70 ff.

Philo, as representative of mysticism, 55.

Philosophical Review, The, reference to, 40.

Philosophy, as contributing to sense of mu-
tual influence, 12.

Plato, his position abandoned by mysticism,
56.

Plotinus, as representative of mysticism, 55.

Prophets, the, their standpoint abandoned
by Philo, 55; their sense of the signifi-
cance of the social struggle in Israel, 63 ;
ecstasy in, 64.

INDEX

251

Propitiation, ethical meaning of, 150 ff, 156,

158 ff.
Providence, reverence for person in, 232 ff.
Psychology, as contributing to sense of

mutual influence, 12.
Purpose and causality, 42, 43,

Race-connection, not prime cause of unity
of men, 35 ff.

Race, real unityof, 136 ff; its solidarity,
how conceived, 16, 35, 39, 137.

Ranke, on Christ, 192.

Rational, two senses of, 80.

Reconstruction in Theology, references to,
16, 20, 23,43, 67. 185, 187, 188, 203, 205,
212, 217, 218.

Redemption, as viewed from point of view
of mutual influence for good, 147 ff; the
cost of, 150; substitution and propitia-
tion in, 150 ff.

Religion, and theology, 6, 113; influence
of the social consciousness upon, 53 ff,
70 ff ; the personal relation in, empha-
sized by the social consciousness, 66 ff;
its thorough ethicizing demanded by so-
cial consciousness, 86 ff; and ethics, 87 ;
a supreme factor in life, 189.

Reverence for the person characterizing all
God's relations to men, 226 ff; reflected
in Christ. 226 ff; in creation, 230 ff; in
providence, 232 ff; in the personal re-
ligious life, 233 ff; in the judgment, 237 ff;
in the future life, 240 ff.

Ritschl, A., referred to, 137.

Royce, Josiah, reference to, 12.

Sabatier, A., reference to, 171.

Sanday, W., reference to, 187.

Schiller, F. C. S., reference to, 40.

Science, as contributing to sense of mutual
influence, 11.

Scotist position as to God, 213.

Separateness from God, meaning of, 180 ff.

Sin, sense of, deepened by social con-
sciousness, 139 ff; Drummond on, 140;
lack of sense of, among Greeks, 140 ;
when most feared, 143.

Smith, G. A., reference to, 64.

Social consciousness, definition, 9 ff; ele-

ments in, 9 ff; meaning of, for theology,
5 ff ; analogy of organism, inadequate for,
24 ff; analogy, tested, 26 ff; necessity of
its facts for ideal interests, 29 ff; the
question, 29; else, no moral world, 30 ff,
32 ff; ultimate explanation and ground
of, 3; ff; metaphysical ground, 35 ff:
not due to physical race-connection,
35 ff; nor primarily to heredity, 37 ff;
nor to mystical solidarity, 37 ff; but to
immanence of God, 40 ff ; ethical basis,
44 ff; supporting will of God, 44; Nash
on, 4;; Paulsen on, 46; God's sharing
in our life, 48 ff; consequent trans-
figuration of, 49 ff.
its influenceupon religion, 53 ff; opposed
to the falsely mystical, 57 ff; emphasizes
personal relation in religion, and so the
truly mystical, 66 ff ; demands the ethi-
cizing of religion, 86 ff; needs historical
justification, 102 ff; its influence upon
theological doctrine, 105 ff;

general results, 105 ff ; influence of
like-mindedness of men, 115 ff; of
mutual influence of men, 136 ff; of
sense of value of person, 179 ff.
"Social mind," real meaning of, 138; Gid-

dings on, 138.
"Social Trinity," 222 ff.

Solidarity, a mystical, not to be pressed, 39.
Solidarity of race, often falsely conceived,

16, 35. 39. 137 H.
Stevenson, R. L , on the poetical and ideal

in men, 122; referred to, 123, 124.
Subjectivism, tendency to, in mysticism, 72.
Substitution, ethical meaning of, 150 ff;

158 ff.
Sully, J., on immortality, 50.
Supra-personal, the, in God, 209.
Symbolism, strong tendency to, in mysti-
cism, 76.
Sympathy with men, increased by sense of
likeness, 127.

Tennyson, his self-hypnotism, 74.

Theme of the book, 1 ff.

Theologian, the, an interpreter, 5 ; a believer

in the supremacy of spiritual interests, 6;

assumes the fact of religion, 6; assumes a

252

INDEX

personal God, 7; takes point of view of
Christ, 7.

Theologian's, the, point of view, 5 ff.

Theology, and religion, 6, 11?; in personal
terms, 106 ff; Fatherhood of God, deter-
mining principle in, 109; as influenced
by social consciousness, 105 ff; general
results in, 105 ff; influence of likeness of
men on, 115 ff ; influence of mutual influ-
ence of men on, 156 flf; influence of value
of person on, 179 ff.

Thomist position as to God, 223.

Trinity, doctrine of, 222 ff; biblical, 224,
22;.

"Trinity, Social," 222 ff.

Tritheism, involved in a real social trinity,

222 ff.
Triunity of God, doctrine of, 223 ff.
"Truths, eternal," God's relation to, 212 ff.

Unchangeableness of God, 216 ff.
Unconscious Christianity, 130.
Uniqueness, a double, in Christ, 201 ff;
metaphysical, 203, 204; ethical, 204, 205

Value and sacredness of person, 16 ff ; sense
of, element in social consciousness, 16,

Weismann, referred to, 37.

Reconstruction in Theology

By Henry Churchill King

Professor of Theology, Oberlin Theological College
CLOTH. 12M0. $1.50

FROM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE
A new constructive period in theology, it may well be
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more thorough and sympathetic understanding of the great
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