The World S Debt To Protestantism

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iAb CM Y MO PUBLIC LIBPAR V

ODD1

THE

WORLD'S T)EBT TO
T ROTES T4N T1SM

BY
BURRIS JENKINS

Boston, Mass.

fttratforb Cumpanp

Publishers

KWYRTOHT 1930 BY

THE STRATFORD COMPANY

Publisktrs

I'KINTKtt IN THK UNITK1> STATK8 OF AM'KEICA

To
ALEXANDER PROCTER

FOR FORTY YEARS MINISTER OF A CHURCH AT THE
HEAD OF THE SANTA FE TRAIL IN OLD INDE-
PENDENCE, MISSOURI, A PIONEER LIBERAL
OF THE MIDDLE WEST, AND GUIDE, PHI-
LOSOPHER AND FRIEND TO THE
AUTHOR, THIS BOOK IS DED-
ICATED IN GRATEFUL
MEMORY

Contents

I. American Treatment of Minorities . . . 1

II. The Age of Reason 15

III. Unearthing the Bible ....... 27

IV. Religion Without Authority ..... 41
V. Protestantism and Business ..... 56

VI. Denominationalism ....... 75

VII. Protestantism and Woman ..... 90

VIII. Protestantism and the Family . . . .107

IX. A Telling Century 126

X. Scientific Benevolence . . . . . . .146

XI. Reason and Education . . . . . .163

XIL Religion and Recreation . . . . * * 181

XIII. Mysticism . . . .199

XIV. The Growth of Nationalism 215

XV, Re-discovery of Jesus and the Kingdom of

God 232

XVI. The Outlook for Protestantism . * . .248

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO
PROTESTANTISM

CHAPTER I

American Treatment of Minorities

THIS book is written not in praise of Protestant-
ism, but in appraisal. It is intended in no sense as
a polemic, but as a fair and jtist treatment of his-
tory in the scientific spirit for which, it is to be believed,

Protestantism stands. The writer hopes that he is not
an advocate of a cause, but the observer, impartial so far
as human beings can be impartial, of the currents of
thought for the last four or five centuries. Whenever we
begin to attack, in heated blood # those who differ from
us in opinion, then are we untrue not only to the reign
of reason but also to the very spirit of the republic which
we claim as ours and of all democracy in thinking and
in government*

"God hath made of one all nations:" these words
were spoken by a wide traveler, a cosmopolitan, a man
of the world, St. Paul The fact that he was a wide
traveler and knew men of all nations closely and appre-
ciatively enabled him to speak in this strain. An un-
traveled, narrow-minded provincial could never have
spoken thus, except he be a man of universal genius and

1

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

with an innate sense for humanity, like Socrates or
Jesus. Most people who show a prejudice against those
of other races, other nations, or other religions, simply
hang out a signal that they have never traveled, do not
know their fellow-men, are ignorant and provincial. In
several ancient languages the word "enemy'* is the same
as the word ''foreigner." Those who made these two
ideas interchangeable were infantile people, primitive,
untraveled and unschooled. And those who still cherish
the same conceptions in this modern time are belated
remnants of bygone dark ages.

Do not believe for a moment that there is not a great
deal of such heathenism still present in the world, par-
ticularly present, it may" be, in America because we arc
an untraveled, and for the most part, provincial people.
I have seen Englishmen in Italy or Greece contemptuous
of the people who were their involuntary hosts; some-
times, though not so often, I have seen Germans adopt
the same attitude of ignorant superiority; but I have seen
any number of Americans, traveling perhaps for the first
time, who elevated their noses and sniffed in disdain at
the ways and the manners and even the language of the
people among whom they were traveling and by whom,
for a consideration to be sure, they were being enter-
tained, I ha^e even heard them blurt out, ''Why can't
they talk English! What a damn-fool language this is."
Just because it was not their language! Perfectly childish
and petty* Our Yankee boys in the army had no more
than come into contact with British Tommies whom
they called "Lixnies," ignorantly, of course, becaua* the
word applies to British sailors and not soldiers until

AMERICAN TREATMENT OF MINORITIES

they began to have fist fights. Their complaint was,
among other things, that they could not understand the
English that these Englishmen spoke, and the English
could not understand the American language. So they
fought. Puerile, boyish, childish; but what can you ex-
pect when the intelligence quotient of the American
army was about thirteen years of age. They had never
traveled, had never met anybody outside their own coun-
try, and other ways and customs and other languages
gave them a personal affront.

Now, what is true of the American army is equally
true of the rank and file of the American people a few
years older. The masses of the nation have no higher
intelligence quotient than did the army, have not trav-
eled any more, do not know any more. The vast ma-
jority of our countrymen have never been outside their
own country; and a still smaller number speak any other
language than their own, which, by the way, is bor-
rowed from a foreign land* It is no wonder, then, that
the mass of our citizenry hold narrow viev/s of their
relations with other races, other nations, other political
views, and other religions. No wonder they err on the
side of childishness and provincialism. The unusual and
the strange is likely to excite, even in educated and
traveled people, something of prejudice and hostility.
What is to be expected of still smaller folk? They shout
for a one hundred per cent Americanism, as if there were
any such thing. A one hundred per cent American, truly
representative of this polyglot nation, would have to
have some English blood, some German, some French,
some Italian, some Hungarian, some Hottentot, the

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Lord knows what besides* More than that, he would
have to embody in himself some of the spirit and even
some of the ways of all these various folk. Nordic?
That word has been run into the ground, and there is
no such thing on American soil. Even Anglo-Saxon is
fading out rapidly, lost, swamped, overwhelmed in the
rush of all other tributary streams of blood from va-
rious parts of the world that have been poured into the
mighty river of our republic.

Besides, suppose we still were Anglo-Saxon. What
has the Anglo-Saxon done beyond all others to plume
himself upon? He did not invent his own alphabet, his
poetry, his music, his sculpture, or painting, or architec-
ture, or drama. Mathematics and astronomy were born
under Arabian skies; philosophy and logic under the
shadow of the pyramids and the Acropolis; also such
sciences as chemistry, mechanics, the use of metals all
these were invented and carried forward by dark-skinned
races, mostly orientals. The Anglo-Saxon, to be sure,
has taken up these arts and sciences, applied them, made
practical use of them, adapted them to all kinds of ma-
chines and inventions; but he did not originate them. In
the more spiritual of the arts it is doubtful if he has
progressed beyond Arabs, Egyptians, Greeks, Hindus,
and Chinese. Materially we are rich, powerful, inven-
tive; but it is worthwhile to ask ourselves whether spir*
itually and artistically we may not be poor and childish
and provincial. I am merely suggesting a little bit of
modesty and humility of mind and heart, before grap-
pling with the real question before us.

AMERICAN TREATMENT OF MINORITIES
I. RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE, JEWS

Is there by chance anybody reading this book who
hates a Jew, or even does not like the Jew, who looks
down upon or condescends to the Hebrew people? If so,
do not hold up your hand, I would be ashamed to own
it. I know some do, because I have heard them say it,
and advertise to the world in so doing their utter igno-
rance* Don't we know that the Jews are the most
persistent race in the world, and the most distinguished?
Don't we know that they have given more to humanity
to help it on the upward road than any other people in
all human history? Don't we know that those little
nomad tribes, settling finally in a tiny strip of narrow
land along the east side of the Mediterranean, have
given to the world two of the great religions which
have spread from them to hundreds of millions of all
races and today all but sway the world? If we don't
know these things, our education has been neglected, we
are twelve years old, or thirteen, in intellectual de-
velopment.

"Oh, I am aware of all that, but what I don't like is
the loudness and the assertiveness of the Jews, the way
they push themselves." That is our fault, for treating
them as we have for two thousand years. Discrimina-
tion, ostracism, persecution, repression, and suppression
create an inferiority complex which causes a few people
so suppressed to be over-ambitious and over-assertive.
Some Jews have these faults, and are perfectly well
aware of them, and deplore them; but they know, too,
that these are directly the result of the discrimination

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

against them by the very people who object to these
manifestations. It is our fault, we Americans, if the
Jews among us are at times objectionable in behavior.
It is because we dislike them, ostracize them, or at best
condescend to them and tolerate them, that they rebound
in self-assertion. We would do the same thing ourselves;
we could not help it; the laws of psychology are in-
variable in their working. The Jews are well aware, too,
of the hatred which so many people feel for them, I
was riding in Central Park, New York, some years ago
with one of the most distinguished Jews in America,
Six feet and two inches tall perfectly proportioned,
slim as an Indian, features distinctly American. We
were discussing some phases of national affairs when he
suddenly broke out, "Oh, they all hate us Jews!" in a
tone of unutterable bitterness, I protested that I thought
he was mistaken, that I was sure that most of the Ameri-
can people cherished no such feeling; but he only shook
his head and reiterated his assertion. I hope it is not
true, I wish it were not true, but I am afraid that with
the rank and file there is much truth in what he said.

II. RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE, CATHOLICS

Then what about Catholics? Most Protestant Ameri-
cans regard Catholics as they would pagans. The word
causes more hostility in their minds than Pathan, Parsee,
Buddhist, Mohammedan. And all the time, Catholics
are Christians. They worship the same God, the Father,
that we do; the same Jesus, the Son, that we do. They
beat us hands down when it comes to charity and good
works, and the tender guidance of little children. The

6

AMERICAN TREATMENT OF MINORITIES

Protestant clergy might well learn something about
education from the polished priesthood, with its knowl-
edge of languages, with its wide travel, with its broad
human sympathy and cosmopolitanism, Protestant
women church workers, welfare workers and nurses,
might well learn something from the sweetness and
gentleness of the sisters and their knowledge of human
nature. Perhaps they would be a bit less acrid themselves
on occasion and in emergencies. Perhaps they would
learn how to treat everybody alike and never to snub and
to cut as they are so often given to doing,

"No, I hate the Catholics for their political activi-
ties!'* Better hate the Methodists, then, for they are just
as active politically, and if they had more numbers,
would be just as powerful. Better hate the Campbellites,
then, for in some states you cannot elect a governor
without them. Better not hate anybody, then we shall
be on the safe side. Just try to think what you would
do, if you had the votes, and the influence; and better
try to think concerning your own religious prejudices
and how you would like to saddle other people with
them if you could* It is really the strangeness of the
usages of the Catholic church that offends us Protestants ;
in other words, it is our own ignorance. We don't like
the celibacy of the clergy and of the sisterhoods. We
don't like the confessional, with the power it gives the
priesthood over the people. After all, what business are
these things of ours? They don't affect us; they affect
the Catholics. They don't affect society in any way that
society has any right to take notice of* In fact, these
usages, in many ways, have a wholesome effect upon the

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

social structure. Catholic people are tied to their churches,
attend their churches, are held level by their churches in
a way that Protestant people, we must confess, are not.
And it is open to question whether some of our hostility
is not after all envy and jealousy of the influence and
the power the Roman church exercises over its own
people and not over us. As for the anonymous attacks
on priesthood and sisterhood that too often come
through the United States mail to our desks and homes,
they are beneath all contempt, having nothing American
about them. Anonymity is the last refuge of the pale
and pusillanimous and anaemic coward.

The world's debt to the Roman Catholic church
cannot be gainsaid. It has served humanity in a thou-
sand ways, in all parts of the world, and for many
centuries. It kept Christianity alive all through the dark
ages and the middle centuries; it preserved the scrip-
tures in its libraries and monasteries in the oldest manu-
scripts we have. It kept alive the Holy Communion in
unbroken succession from the earliest times in Christian
history to the present hour so that it is safe to say not
a single first day of the week has passed by from the
night when Jesus first broke the bread and poured the
cup with his disciples down to the present hour but that
somewhere and by somebody this feast has been kept,
Moreover it preserved through all these two millenniums
the spirit of Christian charity, mercy for the poor and
the suffering, even at times in an environment of the
utmost indifference and cruelty. The well-worn words
of Lord Macaulay are well-worn because they are so
true, to the effect that the Roman Catholic church is

8

AMERICAN TREATMENT OF MINORITIES

the greatest organization in the history of time and
that it will endure when some traveler from New
Zealand shall, amid a vast wilderness, stand upon a
broken arch of London bridge to sketch the ruins of
St. Paul's.

III. RACE INTOLERANCE

Of course, the most real race problem that we have in
America is the Negro problem. Eleven millions of blacks
let down among a hundred and eleven millions of whites
to live side by side, to serve the same nation, keep intact
the same government, construct and hold together the
same society. It is a problem. No use not recognizing the
fact. Do you hate Negroes? Do you dislike Negroes? Do
you even condescend to Negroes? Just in proportion to
your hatred, dislike, condescension, are you a bad citi-
zen of America. A free and stable government cannot
be built upon hatred, dislike, condescension toward any-
body, no matter what his race or his religion. A republic
cannot endure upon such foundations ; and just in so far
as we cherish such feelings are we treasonable to the re-
public. What we really dread, perhaps, is the inter-
mingling of blood between the white and the black.
This was more to be dreaded in slavery days, and shortly
thereafter, than it is today. The danger is no longer so
great, and the tendency seems to be in the other direc-
tion. This is the reason for the rigid social lines that are
drawn, the segregation, and the fear of all social inter-
mingling. This fear, however, need not drive us to the
extreme of treating fellow human beings as if they were
not human, as if they were not children of the common

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Father. "God hath made of one*' not one blood, but
closer than that; one organism, a single entity, one be-
ing, one family, one body all men. That is what Paul
said. The same hopes and fears, loves and longings,
struggle in all human breasts regardless of the pigmenta-
tion of the skin or the origin of the race. To treat all
men alike, as human beings, children of a common
Father, to do as we would be done by, this is the Chris-
tian gospel and this is American citizenship. It may or
may not mean social intermingling that is beside the
point* What it certainly does mean is that we are all
children of the common Father and must bear ourselves
as such.

There are those who believe that the future of this
nation depends upon its treatment of its minorities. The
majority rules, yes; but without consideration and re-
spect for the minorities, no body of people, no govern-
ment can long stand. A church whose official board
decides matters by a bare majority vote will split. 44 Be
sure of practical unanimity before you allow anything
to come to a vote in your board/' is the wise advice
given me years ago by Dr. Thomas P. Haley, my prede-
cessor in the pastorate of the Linwood Boulevard Chris-
tian church in Kansas City, Missouri. What applies to
a church may well apply to any parliamentary body and
to any nation. Persuasion, fellow-feeling, consideration,
respect for the other man's opinion, even though he be in
a minority, these things mark the good Christian and
the good citizen alike.

My friend Ed V. Williams, of Springfield, Missouri,
told me one time the following incident;

10

AMERICAN TREATMENT OF MINORITIES

Two men came into his office in his department store,
several years ago, one a banker friend, the other the
organizer for the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Williams said:

"Sit down, gentlemen, across that table, I know what
you have come for. I want to tell you a story, and then
you can decide whether you want me in your organiza-
tion. My only son died of tuberculosis years ago in
Colorado. I was a poor young business man and unable
to be with him much in his last days. His closest friend
was a young Catholic priest in the next cot, also dying
of consumption. As the end drew near for my boy, he
asked the Father to give him the last communion. The
priest said, *I can't do that, Mr. Williams, unless you
become a Catholic, and all your people are Presby-
terians; so, of course, you can't do that; but I'll tell
you what I'll do, I'll go out and find a Presbyterian
minister for you/ And he did, though in dying condi-
tion himself, find the minister; and together they gave
the communion to my son.

"Once more, I was born and brought up in Georgia.
My first playmates were little colored children* My first
recollections of going to sleep were upon the comforting
breast of my Negro mammy. I love the Negroes. I would
not do anything to hurt them.

"Then, again, back in the 90's I was about on the
ragged edge in business when my neighbor and competi-
tor, Nathan So-and-So, came in and sat where you are
sitting, saying to me, *Ed, you're having a hard time;
we all are; but I'm getting through, and I want to help
you with a little money. You can pay me when you
please/ And he handed across that table a check for what

11

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

was then a very substantial sum. I took it and slowly
tore it up but thanked him and told him I would never
forget it. We have been bosom friends ever since, though
he now lives in Cincinnati. Not long ago I went to Bat-
tle Creek where they told me I'd have to have an opera-
tion. I wrote to Nathan, told him I was going under
the knife Monday, not much of an operation, but still
an operation. On Sunday morning I heard a tap at my
door, said, 'Come in/ and there stood Nathan, that
little Jew from Cincinnati. He said his doctor had told
him he needed a two weeks' rest and he just thought he'd
come up here and be with me,

"No, gentlemen, I wouldn't make a good member of
your order /'

44 'No/ said the organizer, as he slammed his fist
down on the table. 'We don't want you in our
order/ "

A little later the banker came back, thanked Mr.
Williams for his story and said, "Ed, I came pretty
nearly going into that order* Your story saved me from
making a mistake/'

IV* FAITH AND CONFIDENCE BRING TOLERANCE

Dr. S. Parkes Cadman in his volume on Christianity
and the State, says, l Men who own allegiance to one
Lord must cease to speak and write as though they had
nothing but animosities to gratify, or selfish interests to
advance. The healing of the church and the settling of
the world depend upon a more irenic disposition in the
two great branches of western Christianity. The com-
mendable aspirations of nationalism, the moral ideals

12

AMERICAN TREATMENT OF MINORITIES

that should be supported, the dreams of betterment by
bur finer spirits, and the practical needs which political
leaders almost despair of meeting, cannot be materially
helped by a contentious Christianity/'

Timorous humanity is always afraid of the mysterious
and the unknown. To most Protestants, Roman Catho-
lic worship, beliefs, and social practices are shrouded in
an impenetrable cloud of mystery. The Latin services,
the black robes of nuns, the secluded celibate homes of
the priesthood, the secrets of the confessional all these
seem to most Protestants dangerous just because they
are strange. In the same manner, perhaps, to the Catho-
lic mind the secrets and mysteries of the Masonic order,
which many of us Protestants know to be harmless,
ethical, and uplifting, may seem portentous and threat-
hiing.

The institutions of America are Protestant in origin
*nd genius. If this counsel or this work be of men, it
will be overthrown; but if it is of God, ye will not
be able to overthrow them. It does not seem to me, for
one, at all likely that the spirit and genius of our institu-
tions will be shaken or encroached upon, let alone de-
stroyed, by any minority whatsoever. It is lack of faith
that breeds fear. Lack of faith in God breeds fear of
atheism, although we know that atheism never can
ptand against increasing light and thought. It was lack
of faith in the durability of our Christian church and
body of teaching which made us afraid of scientific
criticism of the scriptures, some forty or fifty years ago.
It is lack of faith in the foundations of the truth which

13

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

always terrorizes us when anything we believe to be
error raises its head. A firmer faith in the ground on
which we stand, in the truth, in the right, always
enables us to look calmly and confidently upon all

horizons, no matter what clouds hang there. Whatever
it is, and wherever and whenever, if it be of men, it will
be overthrown; if it be of God, you cannot over-
throw it.

14

CHAPTER II

The Age of Reason

age in which we live may, in a measure at least,
I be termed the age of reason, although reason is
rarely unalloyed; so mixed is thought with emo-
tion in all of us that it is hard for us to say when we are
thinking and when we are feeling. A man sat in his club
window in an easy chair, deep in a brown study; when a
friend came by and asked him what he was doing, he
replied, "Oh, just thinking/* Then his friend said to
him, "You think you're thinking, but you're not;
you're just rearranging your prejudices/' Our opinions
are so inbred in us, or rather so breathed in from the
atmosphere by which we are surrounded in childhood
and early youth, that it is impossible for us to separate
what we have voluntarily concluded from what we have
unconsciously absorbed. Nevertheless, perhaps it is safe
to say that, to a greater degree and over more wide-
spread territory, this age is marked by rationalization
more than any other in history.

Even popular writers, like Sir Phillip Gibbs, name
books The Age of Reason. James Lane Allen, of Ken-
tucky, in the closing years of the nineteenth century
wrote a best seller called The Reign of Law. And Dr.
Henry Van Dyke, at about the same time, labeled our
day "An Age of Doubt." He affirmed that the coat of
arms of this period is a question mark rampant over

15

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

three bishops dormant and its motto is "Query/' That
is to say that this age is an age of interrogation, which
means an age of thoughtfulness, a time in which, like
children, of whom one said that of such is the kingdom
of heaven, we are bristling with questions, asking the
earth and the sea and the sky what they are made ^ of
and why they arc made, asking ourselves about our in-
nermost and unconscious processes, asking the Creator
who he is, what he is doing, what he intends, not stop-
ping short at any bounds with our constant and persis-
tent inquiries*

Perhaps we are not altogether aware how compara-
tively modern is this state of mind. There were long cen-
turies, the dark ages and the middle ages, during which
men's minds rested quietly and in silence. They were
content with opinions inherited and handed down^ to
them. Now and then, to be sure, a luminous mind
burned like a lighthouse even in the darkness and the
silence; but for the most part humanity cradled its head
upon the breast of authority and slept the sleep of men-
tal comfort and ease. It was not until about the sixteenth
century that reason began to move and stir and visibly
and audibly to breathe again. What we call the Renais-
sance came slowly creeping up beyond the eastern hori-
zon like the sun. First a grey light, like that of early
dawn, then long rosy rays, golden and crimson, spread
over the sky from the Achaian peninsula, and then the
full flood of daylight burst over darkened Europe. The
Renaissance, literally the rebirth, the rebirth of ancient
classic art and literature and philosophy with the sud-
denness of a new-born day, swept with light the western

16

THE AGE OF REASON

world* So long men had forgotten the glory that was
Greece and had buried it under the material grandeur
that was Rome, that they were unaware of the great
names, the great art, and the great thought that was
their rightful heritage from the intellectual center of the
ancient world. To be sure, the great artists and thinkers
of the Renaissance still worked and thought under their
old authority, Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and
an army of followers; but the logic of their activity
brought inevitably a still larger birth, the birth of the
age of reason. The Renaissance rendered the Reforma-
tion irrepressible. Michael Angelo was the first father of
Martin Luther. To change the figure, the ground swell
set in motion in Italian churches, on the ceiling of the
Sistine, on the walls of the refectory at Florence, in
Giotto's duomo, this tidal wave of fresh, new, world-
stirring art and literature and philosophy, so shook the
earth that old structures even in the north of Europe
and in Britain came tottering and crashing to the
ground. Old authorities gave way to new freedoms.

L IRRECONCILABLE HUMAN DESIRES

The human mind is a strange mixture of opposites,
and among these not the least strange is its yearning for
rest and at the same time for liberty. It loves repose, and
it also loves freedom. Between these opposites it swings
back and forth like a pendulum in its arc. At one time it
demands rest, peace, the folding of the hands in sleep,
repose upon the assured and substantial bosom of au-
thority; and another time it insists upon standing alone,
running about, pioneering in strange places and blazing

17

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

trails for itself. It may even mingle the two moods, and
does mingle them, at one and the same time. No matter
how independent the mind, nevertheless in some things,
upon some subjects, it holds on with a death grip to old
and cherished conservatism; in other words, it runs in its
favorite ruts. A man may be never so large a philosopher
in dealing with the Einstein theory or international fra-
ternity, but question him about his diet, or his hour of
calisthenics, and he is as fixed by some outside authority
as Polaris is fixed in the sky. He may be as big and as
liberal as John Stuart Mill or Huxley upon all scientific
and philosophical affairs, but question him about the
tariff or states' rights and he blindly follows his party
to the bitter end. He may be as broad as Bertrand Russell
on psychology and pedagogy and as narrow as H. L.
Mencken on Methodists and prohibition. A strange ad-
mixture is little man! Authoritarian on one day of the
week or in one realm of thought, and an explorer of far
places in another*

Inertia, no doubt, belongs to all of us, the desire to
come to rest, to remain in one place, to find peace. Mod-
ern students of the mind tell us that all life is one long
seeking for rest and peace until at last we find it in the
grave* On the other hand, effort, action seem just as
needful to the fully rounded man; and these two tend-
encies make war the one upon the other. Much of the
time and in many ways we like to have our conclusions
given to us, cut and dried, fixed and finished, once and
for all, with no room for doubt. The more untutored
the mind, and the less it has been trained in mental gym-
nastics, the more it desires all questions settled for it

18

THE AGE OF REASON

without travail and without effort; but once turned
loose on the paths of exploration or in the wilderness of
inquiry, the less it is content with opinions handed
down; it must test and try for itself and reach its own
conclusions. Perhaps it is best for humanity, on the
whole, that these two tendencies should so strongly gov-
ern the human mind. They serve as centrifugal and cen-
tripetal forces, both necessary to equilibrium; they serve
as the weighted ends of a balance pole by which the
tightrope walker is enabled to hold himself in poise.
Conservative and radical, while pulling against each
other, both help to stabilize the thought and the insti-
tutions of their day. Without the conservatives, human
beings might run away with themselves and with soci-
ety; without the radicals, humanity, rooted deep in its
prejudices, might rot and spiritually die.

IL THE REFORMATION BROUGHT UNREST

The swing of the pendulum which began with the
Renaissance culminated in the Reformation* Martin
Luther gave it a mighty shove and shook off authority
in all its forms. Monasticism, celibacy of the clergy,
indulgences, all the technical abuses and extremes in the
authoritarianism of his time moved him and his follow-
ers to revolt. The mind of Germany made a declaration
of independence, and neighboring countries were soon
infected with the revolution. Switzerland, Holland,
England soon joined the procession and unfurled ban-
ners of freedom. A giant stride nearer to the age of rea-
son moved the western world. Clear across the Atlantic
swept the revolt and a new country, conceived in free-

19

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

dom and dedicated to independence, came out of the
womb of time, America undoubtedly was founded by
Protestants, Puritan and Cavalier; the revolution of the
colonies against England was fought largely by Prot-
estants, although Washington thought the services of
the Irish Catholics sufficiently important to the time to
make to them a special address at the close of the war,
thanking them for their loyalty and their devotion to
the cause of freedom. Thus on the northern lines of lati-
tude from the Danube on the east to the Mississippi on
the west, the world of the seventeenth century found
itself bathed in a new, strange, golden light, the morn-
ing light of the age of reason. Many and profound
changes began their incubation under that morning sun
which, when fully hatched and grown, made a new
world, whether better or worse perhaps remains to be
seen, but none the less a totally new and different world
from any that had ever gone before. We are living in it
now*

The inevitable antinomy of the human mind kd al-
most immediately to a back swing of the pendulum*
Too much freedom it could not endure. Some form of
authority it demanded and it found* In place of the
papal authority and that of the church, the minds of
men demanded some other infallible source from which
to derive their doctrines and opinions. Soon after
Luther, then, his followers and imitators, feeling the
need of such an infallible rock on which to set their feet,
erected the Bible as a source of authority, incontestable,
unchanging and final They did not see the logic of their
position, the necessity for interpreters of the Bible, and

20

THE AGE OF REASON

the wide divergences of view that must follow upon the
personal equation; but they were content that at last
their minds, so long footloose and wandering, should
find solid ground on which to build. This infallible
source of authority has lasted in many minds clear down
to the present day. We find, for example, a premier of
England, William Ewart Gladstone, writing a book on
The Impregnable Rock of Sacred Scripture. We find
Protestant ministers and laymen still proving their con-
tentions by the texts of sacred scripture. What the Bible
says is in their judgment the end of all controversy. Here
is the restless human mind, for all its restlessness and its
storm-tossed voyages, seeking a haven and an anchorage,
and laying to its soul the flattering unction that it has
found one, in the infallibility of the Bible.

III. REFORMATION ENDED IN SECTISM

The inevitable result of this cutting loose from old
authority and the attempt to replace it by a shifting and
changeable one was division, sectism, separation into
hundreds of denominational bodies which emphasized
various phases of faith and philosophy. No more was
the Reformation fairly launched until the picture of
such a controversial division arises before our minds.
There sat Luther, leonine of face and lion hearted, on
one side of a pine-top table, and Zwingli, the gentle and
mild and sweet spirited, on the other side, disputing
about the Eucharist. Luther insisted upon a literal
transubstantiation, that the word of scripture meant lit-
erally and legally what it said, that the bread was the
actual body of Christ, and the wine the actual blood of

21

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Christ Zwingli maintained that the bread was only the
representation, the figure, the concrete picture of the
broken body of Jesus, that the language, "This is my
body/' was intended to be figurative and symbolic.
Luther would not budge, his bull-neck swelled with the
intensity of his emotion and his stubbornness, as he took
a piece of chalk and wrote on the top of the table, "Hoc
est meam corpus' "This is my body/' Here he took
his stand even as he did at the Diet of Worms, and if
every tile on the roof of the buildings had been a devil he
could not be driven from his position. It was another
case of "Here I stand. I can do nought else, God help
me, amen/' Here was the appearance of sectism, the first-
born child of the new freedom; but it was only the first;
it was followed by a progeny which has kept up to the
present time, birth after birth, and the end is not yet.

Next that great Frenchman, John Calvin, with head-
quarters at Geneva, disdaining all earthly luxury and
emolument, or even prestige and power, with a keen,
sharp, legalistic mind and a will of steel, holding on to
his convictions with a death grip, does not hesitate to do
to death those who cherish convictions of their own,
The historic case of Servetus who paid with his life for
differing from John Calvin, you may be very sure is
only one of those in which the unbending determination
of this great thinker would have sent opponents to the
block or the fagot if he could. The world owes much to
John Calvin, of independence of thought, of daring of
spirit; but it owes much, too, of unyielding lcgalism r a
proud Pharisaism, and a bigotry that would not stop
at persecution to attain its end. Much of the theology of

22

THE AGE OF REASON

modern fundamentalism in the Protestant church has
been handed down to it from St. Paul by way of St*
Augustine, melted and transmuted in the crucible of the
Genevan doctor, John Calvin. Nobody can say how
much of the unlovely spirit of the most intolerant of
the denominations is a direct heritage from the steel and
sinew soul of this relentless Frenchman.

The other great dividers come trooping down the
pages of history from that day to this. A great leader
arose, gave new emphasis to some phase of the many-
sided message of Christianity until finally he erected it
as a test of loyalty and orthodoxy. The Wesleys came
and upon simplicity and asceticism of life laid their
stress until they built up a huge following of their own
way of thinking; and although those who came after
them have long since lost all trace of their original ideal-
ism and are living just as luxuriously and materially as
anybody else, nevertheless tradition, use and wont, the
rut into which it is so easy for the wheels of humanity
to sink, still holds in line many millions of Wesleyans.
From Switzerland, too, came the sect of the Anabap-
tists, who rejected the baptism of infants and stressed
adult baptism by immersion only, spreading westward
through Germany and into England, thence to the
United States; so that another great denomination was
built up around a single form and ceremonial in the
administration of the Christian ritual. Interesting to re-
late, two powerful men, Thomas Campbell and Alexan-
der Campbell, father and son, originated a denomination
on American soil with the delusive hope of drawing to-

23

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

gether Into one all the multitudinous sects which, up to
the beginning of the nineteenth century, had multiplied
among the Protestants. So far from succeeding in uniting
the divided and dissevered members of Christ's body, the
church, they only succeeded in adding one, and maybe
two or three, additional bodies to about one hundred
and fifty already existent in this free republic.

IV. ATTEMPTS AT UNITY

It is easy to see how, under a regime of absolute free-
dom of thought, any powerful personality, stressing his
own favorite aspect of religious teaching, can and will
inevitably draw after him large numbers of followers
who will soon call themselves after his name or after
his doctrines. Even attempts at unity are mistakenly
made over and over again by trying to put down on
paper propositions, agreements, definitions, creeds. These
attempts are fated never to succeed; for every additional
attempt at a treaty of union, a confession of faith, a
creed, an additional denomination is always formed.
World assemblies have been called time and again in the
last four centuries seeking to draw together these war-
ring sects either into an organic union or into at least
an armed truce of apparent unity; and every one of these
great conferences has ended with the denominations no
closer together than they were when it began. History
repeats itself. The same thing began to take place when
Christianity had but just begun, and we find St Paul,
with a sort of helplessness, exhorting the people at
Corinth to hang together. According to the Moffatt

24

THE AGE OF REASON

translation, his words ran like this: "Brothers, for the
sake of our Lord Jesus Christ I beg of you all to drop
these party-cries. There must be no cliques among you ;
you must regain your common temper and attitude. For
Chloe's people inform me that you are quarreling. By
'quarreling' I mean that each of you has his party-cry,
1 belong to Paul/ 'And I belong to Apollos/ 'And I
to Cephas/ 'And I to Christ/ Has Christ been parceled
out? Was it Paul who was crucified for you? Was it in
Paul's name that you were baptized?* . . For with
jealousy and quarrels in your midst, are you not
worldly, are you not behaving like ordinary men?
When one cries, 'I belong to Paul/ and another, 'I be-
long to Apollos/ what are you but men of the world?
Who is Apollos? Who is Paul? They are simply used
by God to give you faith, each as the Lord assigns the
task/'

Yet when all is said and done, this inextricable confu-
sion, this often strident and clamorous and futile empha-
sis upon non-essentials, this sectism, is not exclusively
Christian. It characterizes other virile and vital religions
as well, and may after all be regarded as a mark of
growth and expanding power. It may certainly, with all
legitimacy, be regarded as a mark of freedom. When
men's minds have liberty to range and roam, they go
far apart. Only when they are bound down by outside
restrictions and authority can they be forced into moulds
and made identical. These wide divergences of the He-
nominations, and the bickering and strife and jealousy
which follow upon them, may often make the heart

25

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

sick to contemplate; they fritter away forces which, if
united and pulling together, might move the world;
they are extravagant beyond all comprehension, both of
money and man-power and also of spiritual penetration ;
nevertheless, they are the price it seems we have to pay
for freedom of thought, for independence of judgment,
for the age of reason.

26

CHAPTER III

Unearthing the Bible

THE story of the way in which the Protestant mind
dug up the Bible, after some fifteen centuries dur-
ing which it had lain practically in the tomb, reads
like a romance. For four centuries that have just passed
this process has gone forward, all unconsciously, to be
sure, to the rank and file, but with a deadly determina-
tion on the part of certain leading minds; and as we scan
the activities of these four centuries concerning the Bible,
with all the light we can now throw upon them and in
their full perspective, the obstacles men overcame, the
opposition and hardship they endured, the ostracism and
even martyrdom they met, the spectacle profoundly
thrills us.

During the dark and middle ages the Bible, in the
form of the Latin Vulgate and the Greek Septuagint,
was in the hands of just a few scholars among the eccle-
siastics. The Vulgate, the authorized translation of the
church of Rome, made by St. Jerome, was open to such
of the clergy as were prepared or sufficiently interested
to read it; but these were very few. The Septuagint so
named from the seventy scholars who, according to tra-
dition, had each separately in his own cell made a trans-
lation of the Old Testament and upon comparing their
versions had found them all identical appealed to still

27

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

fewer of the clergy, those who were acquainted with the
Greek tongue. The masses of the people knew nothing
about the Bible, as they were unacquainted with the an-
cient languages; and no translations into their own
tongues existed. Furthermore, the church frowned upon
popular acquaintance with the sacred writings, the feel-
ing being that the less the people knew about the techni-
calities of their faith and its origin the better it would be
for them and the more docile and tractable they would
remain.

Luther read the Bible with great avidity; and this
reading went far in making him a rebel against tradition
and a campaigner against the existing order. He felt the
need of a translation of the Scriptures in the popular
tongue and so made one, which is still the Bible of the
German people. Luther himself did not consider the
Scriptures infallible; he considered some parts much
more valuable than others and did not quote indiscrim-
inately from any and every part of them. For example,
he called the Epistle of James an "epistle of straw" on
account of the undue emphasis he felt that it laid upon
works instead of faith. On the other hand, he spoke in
his rough way of the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians as
his wife, his Katherine von Bora, because he took it to
bed with him every night; it has in it the elements of
battle and rebellion against traditional authority which
appealed strongly to Luther as a parallel to his own
situation. It was only gradually, as Luther's followers
felt the need of some infallible authority, that the doc-
trine of the infallible Bible grew up.

28

UNEARTHING THE BIBLE

L TRANSLATIONS OF BIBLE APPEAR
In English there had been since 1384 a translation
from the Latin by Wyclif, but it had never gone far,
was antiquated in style at the time of the Reformation,
and filled nobody's needs, Wyclif had paid for his ver-
sion with his life. Erasmus, the Oxford scholar, who
was the first to publish the Greek text of the New Tes-
tament in 1516, wrote in the introduction: "I totally
disagree with those who are unwilling that the sacred
scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, should be
read by private individuals, as if Christ had taught such
subtle doctrines that they can with difficulty be under-
stood by a very few theologians, or as if the strength
of the Christian religion lay in men's ignorance of it.
. . , I would wish all women, even, to read the gospel
and the Epistle of Paul I wish they were translated into
all languages of all peoples, that they might be read and
known not merely by the Scotch and Irish, but even by
the Turks and Saracens. ... I wish that the plough-
man might sing parts of them at his plough, and the
weaver at his shuttle, and that the traveller might be-
guile with their narration the weariness of his way/'

It was only six years later that Luther's German
translation appeared, and three years later than that
Tyndale's English version. A certain learned ecclesiastic
had opposed putting the Bible into popular form, in
William Tyndale's presence, and the latter, with a side-
glance at the language of Erasmus, had hotly replied,
"If God spare my lyfe, ere many yeares I wyl cause the
boye that dryveth the plough shall know more of the

29

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

scripture than thou doest!" Tyndale made good Ms
words and, like Wyclif, paid for his translation with
his life. Discouraged and even prevented from doing his
work in England, he became an exile on the continent,
hunted and hounded from pillar to post, surreptitiously
printing his Bibles with the new-found art of printing
and smuggling them into England even in bales of mer-
chandise. The bishops bought up his editions as fast as
they were printed, to burn them, but this only poured
money into Tyndale's possession for the printing of
more Bibles, The people seized upon them eagerly, and
when no single individual in a community was finan-
cially able to own one, they frequently bought one as a
congregation and chained it to the pulpit so that any one
might go there and read it; and before Tyndale's mar-
tyrdom for his enemies finally got him, his dying
words being, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!"
he had fulfilled his prediction and the plough boys
of England were familiar with the gospel stories. After
a long imprisonment, they strangled him and burned his
body.

Translation after translation followed Tyndak's
production and, indeed, utilized his very language, until
finally under King James I, in 1611, the so-called
authorized translation was made by a company of schol-
ars and is handed down to this day as the favorite Bibk
of the English-speaking peoples. A great deal of Tyn-
dale's phraseology survives in this King James transla-
tion; as a matter of fact, most of it, with its archaic
quaintness and its idiomatic turns of phrase, is in the
language originally given to it by the devoted Tyndale.

30

UNEARTHING THE BIBLE

Such a hold has this authorized version upon the Eng-
lish mind that it is constantly quoted, more or less un-
consciously, all over the western world; and so has it
become embedded in Protestant affection that the revised
version of 1881 and subsequent translations made by a
number of individuals have not yet succeeded in uproot-
ing it. Ministers still think it wise in sick-rooms and at
funerals to use the King James version rather than more
accurate later translations, because of the long familiarity
of the people with the phrasing and because of the rever-
ence in which they hold it. As a matter of fact, the man-
aging editor of a great municipal daily in this country
wrote to me one time protesting against the use which
I had made of a freer translation, saying, "The St. James
translation is the purest and best English in our language
and liberties ought not to be taken with it." He loved
the book although he did not even know the proper
name for it*

II. GROWTH OF THE THEORY OF INFALLIBILITY

In spite of the changing forms of scripture transla-
tion, the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible grew
apace. In their controversies with the mother church and
among themselves in the rapidly growing number of
denominations, the Protestants began appealing to the
scriptures as a source of authority. They failed to allow
for individuality in interpretation, and they failed to
discriminate among the different books from which they
quoted. They rapidly came to think of the entire Bible
as one book instead of a whole library of documents of
varying value bound together between the lids of a single

31

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

volume. They quoted without choice or reason from the
Old Testament or the New; indeed, the habit has not
yet been broken; and people still quote from Deuteron-
omy or the Psalms or Proverbs giving equal weight to
the quotations as if they were drawn from Jesus or John
or St. Paul. "The Bible says so and so/' and that is the
end of all controversy. The popular attitude of nearly
four centuries is not easy to eradicate.

One of the strengthening causes of the doctrine of
infallibility of the Bible is the division into chapters and
verses. Of course, there was originally no such division
in the ancient manuscripts ; but the narratives ran stead-
ily and solidly forward without divisions of any kind.
The divisions into chapters and verses were made purely
for convenience of reference. A French printer, Robert
Estienne, who was making a concordance of the New
Testament, desired a smaller unit of reference than chap-
ters and so he arbitrarily divided each chapter up into
verses, and did most of the work on horseback during
a journey from Paris to Lyons, making a total of
seventy-nine hundred and fifty nine verses. It is easy to
see how this versification tended to impress certain iso-
lated and disconnected sayings upon the minds of read-
ers, and how easy it became to regard these sayings as
oracles. The very word "oracles* ' later became the name
of certain translations made by individual scholars'
"The Oracles of God" and the like.

John Locke anticipated the probable effect of these
arbitrary divisions and deplored "the dividing of them
into Chapters and Verses, as we have done, whereby
they are so chop'd and minc'd, and as they are now

32

UNEARTHING THE BIBLE

Printed, stand so broken and divided, that not only the
Common People take the Verses usually for distinct
Aphorisms, but even Men of more advanced Knowledge,
in reading them, lose very much of the strength and force
of the Coherence, and the Light that depends on it. ...
These Divisions also have given occasion to the reading
these Epistles by parcels and in scraps, which has farther
confirmed the Evil arising from such partitions. And I
doubt not but every one will confess it to be a very
unlikely way to come to the Understanding of any other
Letters to read them Piecemeal, a bit today and another
Scrap tomorrow, and so on by broken Intervals. . . .
How plain soever this Abuse is, and what Prejudice so-
ever it does to the Understanding of the Sacred Scrip-
ture, yet if a Bible was printed as it should be, and as
the several parts of it were writ, in continued Discourses
where the Argument is continued, I doubt not but the
several Parties would complain of it, as an Innovation,
and a dangerous Change in the publishing these Holy
Books. . . . They would most of them be immediately
disarmed of their great Magazine of Artillery wherewith
they defend themselves, and fall upon others, if the Holy
Scripture were but laid before the Eyes of Christians in
its due Connection and Consistency/* No better descrip-
tion could have been written of exactly what has hap-
pened* The verses have been used as magic talismans, and
almost anything has been proved to the satisfaction of
those who quoted them.

IIL TEXTUAL CRITICISM SHAKES INFALLIBILITY
In the nineteenth century, however, began two move-

33

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

ments in scholarship which surely and relentlessly dug
the foundations from under Protestant bibliolatry and
brought the whole structure of scriptural infallibility
crashing to a fall. First was the search for a pure text of
the New Testament, The originals from which the
earlier translations were made consisted partly of the
Latin Vulgate, itself a translation from the Greek, and
partly of manuscripts dating from the middle ages and
more or less corrupt. The first of the great uncials, or
manuscripts in capital letters, made only four or five
centuries after Christ, was the so-called Codex Alexan-
drinus, sent in 1628 as a present to the king of England
by the patriarch of Constantinople. The name codex
means a book with leaves not a roll printed by hand
on vellum or sheepskin, often beautifully illuminated.
The Alexandrian manuscript dates from the fifth cen-
tury, and did not arrive in England until after the King
James version had been made. During succeeding genera-
tions, copy after copy of the manuscripts of the New
Testament began to appear through the tireless search of
scholars east and west. Sometimes this search took on a
romantic, arduous, and even hazardous complexion.

The story of Tischendorf, of the University of Leip-
zig, is an especially fascinating one. He worked with
tremendous energy over manuscripts, deciphering writ-
ings that had been almost washed off the sheepskin and
written over again with later and oftentimes worthless
treatises. With chemicals, he could restore the original,
These twice-written manuscripts are called palimpsests,
Not content with the materials at hand, he sought far
and wide for others whenever he could obtain the neces-

34

UNEARTHING THE BIBLE

sary money. He went to Egypt to Mt. Sinai in 1844,
and in the ancient convent of St. Catherine the monks
gave him forty-three leaves of a beautiful old manu-
script of the Septuagint, or Old Testament in Greek,
which they were about to throw away. He cherished the
feeling for many years that the rest of that manuscript,
including the New Testament, was still in existence and
somewhere around that convent He went back in 1853
and again in 1859 in attempts to find it. After enduring
great hardships and after patiently trying to persuade
and cajole the monks, he was about to give up and go
away; he had ordered his camels for the next morning;
when one of the friars, the steward of the monastery,
took him into his cell and unrolled from a red cloth the
manuscript he had so long desired. Fearing they might
take it away from him, he sat up all night copying the
so-called "Epistle of Barnabas" of which he had never
before seen a Greek text. He was finally allowed, how-
ever, to bring away the famous "Codex Sinaiticus,"
which has turned out to be one of the oldest and purest
of the original texts of the New Testament. Upon it he
based what is known as Tischendorf s Greek New Tes-
tament, which for many decades was the leading New
Testament text.

It was not till near the end of the nineteenth century
that Westcott and Hort's Greek Testament supplanted
it, the work of two Englishmen who gave their lives to
the perfecting of the original from some twenty-five
hundred Greek manuscripts of the New Testament or
parts of it, one hundred and fifty of them being uncials,
dating from the third to the ninth centuries. These two

35

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Englishmen worked over their edition for twenty-eight
years before publishing it. Westcott did many things
besides this and became a bishop, but Dr. Hort did noth-
ing else during this whole period.

Imagine the immense amount of work trying to get
down to the bottom of all this mass of material cover-
ing fifteen hundred years* As a result of all these labors,
we know the exact words of St. Paul and of Jesus better
perhaps than any other generation from their time to
this. The result of a whole century of such indefatigable
investigation in what is called textual criticism was inev-
itably to create in the minds of people who know about
it doubts as to the validity of this passage and that text.
There can be no infallibility about a book concerning
whose actual readings there can be such variety of opin-
ion. Njo other mass of literature has ever been subjected
to such intense scrutiny as has this pile of manuscripts
of the New Testament. No such army of scholars of the
very first rank has ever been launched upon any subject
of investigation in the history of the world. Almost
exclusively, these were Protestant scholars steadily un-
dermining the once cherished Protestant dogma of the
infallibility of sacred scripture.

IV. HIGHER CRITICISM AND INFALLIBILITY

The second story is that concerning the so-called
''higher criticism/' At Tubingen in Germany a professor
named Ferdinand Christian Baur sprang upon the aston-
ished world of scholarship the idea that the books of
the New Testament were each of them and all of them
written with a certain polemic purpose or tendency* He

36

UNEARTHING THE BIBLE

found the key to these varying purposes in the contro-
versy recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Acts between
St. Paul on the one side and the rest of the apostles on
the other. The twelve insisted that all new members of
the church must enter it by the gate of Judaism, must
be circumcised. Paul insisted that this was not necessary,
was a Judaic rite and not a Christian one, that the law
had been done away with in Christ. Baur maintained
that this controversy split the apostolic church into two
opposing camps, and that every document put forth,
and now become a part of the New Testament, was
written to bolster up either the cause of Paul or the cause
of James and Peter, the heads of the twelve. Read over
the fifteenth chapter of Acts and you will see as plain as
your hand before your face the ground upon which
Professor Baur could base his theory. Like most schol-
ars, particularly German ones, he mounted his hobby
and rode fast and furiously, until section after section,
document after document, of the New Testament flew
out of his pockets as spurious, unauthentic, or at least
strongly marked with controversy. Succeeding genera-
tions from the time of the Tubingen school down to the
present have weighed Baur's theory, have taken from it
what is valuable, and thrown away what was exagger-
ated and grotesque; but in the process of weighing the
higher criticism as to its validity, the increasing and irre-
sistible drift of scholarship has been toward a critical and
unbiased examination of the New Testament books in
just the same scientific fashion with which men deal
with any literature; and still further, inevitably, the
infallibility of the Bible has waned.

37

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Another fact, established by the higher criticism, has
had great weight in the minds of scholarly men and has
gradually sifted down in increasing fashion to the pub-
lic at large. That is that many of the books of the Bible
are undoubtedly of composite origin, written by more
than one hand, pieced together from two or more docu-
ments. Almost any amateur can detect this fact in read-
ing the book of Genesis, where there are two accounts
of creation, of the Garden of Eden, of the flood, and so
on, running side by side or intertwined. The same thing
appears in a number of the other Old Testament books.
A parallel to this practice is to be found in the columns
of modern newspapers. There occurs, for example, a
great fire or a striking murder, and a number of reporters
are sent out to gather facts about it; they write their
stories or telephone them in to the office where they arc
written; and then the various parts are pieced together
into a connected whole; a skilful reader can determine
oftentimes where the work of one reporter leaves off and
that of another begins.

The same composite character has at times been de-
clared to exist in certain of the New Testament books.
For example, it is believed by careful scholars that the
speeches of Jesus in Matthew were set down some time
before the book itself was written, and possibly even cir-
culated under the name of "The Logia," or "Sayings of
Jesus/' reported by Matthew. It is known that such a
document as "The Logia" was in existence and was at-
tributed to the publican apostle who may have made
copious notes or may even have taken down the words
of Jesus in shorthand, as shorthand is known to have

38

UNEARTHING THE BIBLE

existed at that time* Furthermore, the fact that the first
three gospels are identical in so many passages is good
ground for the belief that they may all have been taken
from some one document older than the three or that
two of them must have been partly copied from the
other one. Indeed, the so-called synoptic problem, the
problem of the first three gospels which are so much
alike, is one of the hardest nuts that New Testament
scholars have had to crack. No satisfactory solution to
it has even yet been found.

This rapid survey of the past century of unparalleled
study of the Bible and its documents, all too brief and
unsatisfactory, nevertheless must convey to our minds
something at least of the devastating effect upon the
Protestant dogma of infallibility. The doctrine simply
cannot stand against the overpowering force of this
scholarly concentration.

How, then, shall the scriptures be treated by reverent
readers and worshipers? The only enlightened attitude
to assume in this age of reason is the same as that we
would assume toward any other body of literature if
only it were concerned with such high themes* These
books must be weighed in the balances of literary appre-
ciation and criticism, must be tested by common sense
and accepted for whatever their truth and beauty and
goodness are worth, no more, no less. There is beauty
enough and truth enough and inspiration to goodness
enough, in all conscience, to be found in these sacred
writings. It is thanks to the Roman church that these
incomparable documents were preserved through all the
wreck of the Roman empire and handed down to sue-

39

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

ceeding generations. It is thanks to Protestant scholar-
ship that patiently and with herculean effort translations
were made first from the Vulgate, then from better and
better collections of original Greek manuscripts, until
today we possess a Bible more accurate than has ever
been possessed in the Christian era. It is thanks to Prot-
estantism that the Bible is the best seller among all
books and that every plough boy, every soldier, every
seaman, and every working girl, may buy one for a few
pennies and obtain the solace and the courage which
these sacred words can impart.

40

CHAPTER IV

Religion Without Authority

THE human mind strains away from authority and
yt clings to it. As St. Paul said of another matter,
we are divided betwixt the two, and what we
would we wot not. We like to be free to range and
reason for ourselves; and yet when we get too far from
shore, panic seizes us and we look about for some safe
and sure place to drop anchor. We are like Bruce* s spider,
swinging in the air at the end of the strand of web which
we spin out of our own souls, and yet we swing back
and forth from side to side trying to get a foothold on
something solid, substantial, and authoritative.

The end result of Protestantism is freedom from au-
thority, each one sailing the seas for himself, reasoning
and thinking for himself; and if ever the human mind
attains to such freedom of thought and experience, it
will owe this freedom to the Protestant spirit; and in so
far as human minds today have reached such liberty, it
is to the Protestant spirit that they owe it. This is not to
say that in all times, and under all churches and reli-
gions, there have not been bold and independent spirits
who have attained and maintained individual liberty;
but it is to say that, comparatively speaking, the last
four hundred years have produced that attitude in masses
of minds east and west to a degree perhaps not equaled
in other periods. The progress toward this freedom, and

41

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

progress it undoubtedly may be called, has been spas-
modic and spotted; it has gone forward and receded by
fits and starts, here a little and there a little; but on the
whole an advancement has surely been made*

I. PROTESTANTISM AFRAID OF ITS OWN LOGIC

Within the last fifty years we have heard many and
resounding debates upon the source of authority in re-
ligion, the assumption being that authority there must
somewhere be, the only question being as to its location.
The mere fact of this division of sentiment clearly indi-
cated that the Protestant churches realized they were cut
adrift from any final and unchangeable base of authori-
tarianism. They had long ago given up papal and eccle-
siastical infallibility; they had swung over to a scrip-
tural source of authority and found it crumbling under
their feet. With a divided mind, they groped and grasped
for an impregnable rock; some still clinging blindly to
scriptural infallibility, some to an indefinite and intan-
gible something that they called the spirit of the church,
or the Christian consciousness, and some to other float-
ing spars and wreckage. They were not yet ready to
accept the logic of their intellectual revolt against author-
ity and declare without equivocation that there is no
source of authority in religion. Even yet, come out
boldly with that declaration there is no source of au-
thority in religion and cold chills go up and down
many devoted spines. The declaration, however, is ines-
capable for any who launch out into the Protestant river
of thought. Either one has got to stay by the old church
that dates almost from the apostolic age, or else he has

42

RELIGION WITHOUT AUTHORITY

got to launch out upon a course of thinking which
brings him to the inevitable conclusion that there is no
source of authority in religion.

Religion has no place for authority. In fact, there is
very little place for authority in human life at all; the
less the better. There is place for authority in an army
and a police force, but the army is a necessary evil in the
present state of society and we are hoping against hope
that armies may ultimately be done away with. An army
cannot be successfully and efficiently conducted except
upon an authoritarian basis. There must be obedience,
absolute and unquestioned. "Theirs not to make reply;
theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do and die*'
that is the very law of being in an army. Without this
authority the terrible machine could not be held to-
gether, its line of supplies kept intact, and its operations
carried on with any degree of safety and coherence. For
such unmitigated authority there is, according to the
Protestant, the scientific, and, we may fairly say, the
modern mind, no place anywhere else besides the army.

IL AUTHORITY DOES NOT BELONG IN THE FAMILY

Our modern psychology is teaching our reluctant
minds that there is no place for such authority, for
example, in the family. We are rapidly learning what
devastation may be wrought by the exercise of the old
paternal and maternal authority. We no longer treat a
child as a subject who must unquestioningly obey a
sovereign will. We treat him, on the contrary, as a per-
sonality, with God-given rights that may not be in-
vaded; we treat him, if we are wise, as a character to

43

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

be dealt with courteously, respectfully, by the use of
reason, and with all the deference and good form with
which we would treat an adult. Difficult I know it is,
with our traditions of authority, to bring ourselves to
this logical attitude, and yet gradually, with growing
light, we are achieving it. Increasingly we are aware of
the warped and twisted lives whose misfortune may be
traced directly to the abuses of the old ideas of authority.
To enforce the will of the adult upon the child just
because it is the will of the physically stronger, to corn-
pel a child to behave like an adult just because it makes
things easier for the adults round him, we now recog-
nize to be unscientific, out of harmony with the freedom
to be and to grow which belongs to the present era, and
to lead often to direful consequences.

Speaking of the chaotic condition of moral standards
and values in the present age, in A Preface to Morals,
Walter Lippman has this illuminating paragraph: "It
is often said that this distrust is merely an aspect of the
normal rebellion of youth. I do not believe it. This dis-
trust is due to a much more fundamental cause. It is due
not to a rebellion against authority but to an unbelief in
it This unbelief is the result of that dissolution of the
ancient order out of which modern civilization is emerg-
ing, and unless we understand the radical character of
this unbelief we shall never understand the moral con-
fusion of this age. We shall fail to see that morals taught
with authority are pervaded with a sense of unreality
because the sense of authority is no longer real Men will
not feel that wisdom is authentic if they are asked to

44

RELIGION WITHOUT AUTHORITY

believe that it derives from something which does not
seem authentic."

No child wants to lean upon infallibility; no human
being does. Just as soon as a child can move for itself, it
prefers to do its own moving rather than to be moved
by some great power outside itself. As soon as it can
crawl, it prefers to crawl rather than to be carried; as
soon as it can walk, it wants to let go of the guiding
finger and, even though it tumbles and hurts itself, it
wants to struggle up again and make another try. If
now and then, in fatigue, it wishes to be carried or to
lean upon a stronger hand, just as soon as it can re-
cuperate it wants to strike out again for itself. So it
vascillates, with the old antinomy of the race, between
independence and anchorage, between freedom and in-
fallibility, between personality and authority; but of
the two extremes, freedom, independence, personality is
far and away the more essential to expanding life.

What is true of the child, who is father to the man,
is just as true of the adult mind and soul. There is for
it no final source of authority. If these statements are
true in the relation of parents and children, how much
more true in the relation of husbands and wives. Here
there is no room for authority. The word "obey" has
no valid place in a marriage ceremony in an age of rea-
son. One personality cannot, in the nature of the case,
invade and dominate another, not even with a loving
dominance. Live and let live, as partners and equals in
the business of life, with courtesy and deference shown
as to equals this is the only livable basis between

45

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

human beings; this is the life of reason, the life of free-
dom, the life of love.

The natural question arises, what about discipline in
the home? The natural answer is, why should there be
discipline? Discipline implies authority, the imposing of
one will upon another, the army spirit. To be sure, if
one sees a child about to rush over a cliff one exerts
physical force to catch him and draw him back, but one
immediately points out the cliff and the danger and
reasons with the child* One restrains a child from walk-
ing in front of a moving motor car, and accompanies
the action with the reason for it which the child can
easily understand when it is pointed out to him. It is
reason, after all, that should prevail, reason and love.
Discipline is the proper word to apply to a regiment
rather than to a home. Neither will this attitude produce
anarchy among children; nor is it the same as saying,
"Do as you please/' It is merely the substitution, for the
old idea of adult authority, of the newer idea of the
reign of reason, of reason and love.

Teachers in our schools talk much about discipline.
But our schools are modeled on the Prussian plan; the
whole idea of their organization is of Prussian origin.
And the trend in education is away from the military
ideal and practice just as rapidly as conditions will
permit. Reason and love are gradually taking the place
of military discipline in the schools; and instead of
sitting "in position/* eyes to the front, hands folded,
feet on the floor if they can reach it, or standing in ranks
and rows at attention, children are increasingly allowed
to sit round tables, talk if they want to, pass notes if

46

RELIGION WITHOUT AUTHORITY

they wish, and otherwise to act not as if they were on
a parade ground, but as if they were in a library or a
home. The development of personality without undue
repressions and suppressions, this is the slogan of the
new mental science, the spirit of the age of reason; and
it is having its effect in the production of finer human
beings, freer and stronger, leaning upon no canes or
crutches of authoritarianism, but standing upright and
walking alone.

III. FREEDOM vs. AUTHORITY IN BUSINESS AND
GOVERNMENT

One day we shall know enough, perhaps, to intro-
duce this principle of reason and love into society at
large. Beyond the circle of the home and the school, we
may grow into such social beings that we shall be able
gradually to apply the law of reason and of love to
commercial and industrial relations. There are some
signs of it already on the horizon. Men in business often
complain that they meet nothing but self-interest and
that the only law that prevails in commercial life is
the law of the jungle, get or be got; but there is an
increasing number of men in business who are trying,
and with a fair degree of success, to put into practice the
higher law, do as you would be done by. Protestantism
may, indeed, be responsible for the system of capitalism
and of competition, as perhaps we shall see later in this
volume; but in the long run it may be that this same
spirit of Protestantism, with its reign of reason and its
repudiation of authority, may lead to a higher consum-
mation in business life. Some big business men, like

47

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Arthur Nash, William Hapgood, Edward A. Filene,
and a great many others whose names are not so well
known, have conducted their business upon the avowed
principle of the Golden Rule, the law of reason and of
love. And many other big business men are talking, in
their better moments, in a wistful sort of way, about
a hoped-for time when the competition, the battles, the
restrictions, the courts, and even the police systems of
the business world may become unnecessary. That time
may be far off, but that is the logic of the philosophy
that authoritarianism has been tried long enough and
found wanting.

Undoubtedly human society, for the most part, up
to the present time presents no beautiful picture of lov-
ing co-operation. On the contrary, the mob spirit runs
riot in it; bitterness, envy, and hate, greed, anger, and
bigotry grow thick all round us. People who know
nothing of what they are talking about, utter opinions
of which they are as certain as if they sat in the seat of
the omniscient. The mob can be kindled into a frenzy
of fanaticism by an appeal to prejudice, as it was kin-
dled over the question of evolution in Tennessee, and
in Texas and Arkansas and Missouri, Uninformed
bigots, shouting loudly, can lead the herd after them
to deeds of persecution, ostracism, and spiritual martyr-
dom, as we have seen them do in this present generation ;
but at least the actual power of physical life and death
has been taken out of the hands of the mob, for the
most part, and some progress at least has been made
toward a reign of reason. The dawn is very faint, but
there is a dawn.

48

RELIGION WITHOUT AUTHORITY

The fathers of the American republic, which is an
outgrowth of the Protestant spirit and the age of reason,
declared and reiterated until it has become a truism with
us, that the best government is the least possible amount
of government* The nearer a people attain to the devel-
opment of full personality, the freer and the more
grown up they are, the less government they need. It
follows that when people have attained to a very high
state of personal growth, government may grow beauti-
fully less, almost to the vanishing point. So far the
theory. Practice, of course, is quite a different matter,
just because no people now on earth are anywhere near
grown up, developed, free. With a nation, as with a
child, just as rapidly as personality is unfolded, so rap-
idly may restraints and guardianship be removed. It is
truth that sets us free, truth within expanding into
personality without. It is always and inevitably true
that as one grows he becomes free, even in a world where
authority must for the masses still remain in force. It
may be that a time will come on earth, possibly a hun-
dred thousand years away, when this ideal of the ab-
sence of authority may be realized. A dream? Yes, the
dream of Tolstoi, the dream of Jesus, the dream of a
kingdom of God. But dreams, dreamed with reason,
have a way of coming true.

IV. SHOULD THERE BE AUTHORITY IN THE
CHURCH?

If the home and the school are no places for authority,
and, ideally, society no place for it, then surely the
church is no place for it. Perhaps Jesus had this in mind

49

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

when he suggested to his followers that they should
call no man master. It seems as if human beings, so much
like sheep scattered abroad, must be organized, institu-
tionalized, headed up by leaders and guides. It seems as
if the formation of religious societies with officials is
necessary in the present state of human development;
but it is something to recognize the existence of a neces-
sary evil, even if one cannot immediately eliminate it.
And evils enough are manifest wherever ecclesiasticisrns
have been strong. Everybody knows instances.

Here is one: The pastor of a large and influential
church, twenty-nine years of age, when the world war
involved this country, told his bishop that he wanted
to volunteer. The bishop told him that he must not
go; he was needed at home; he was too great a preacher.
But after a mental struggle the powerful young man
told his bishop that he was going anyway, and he went,
He served as a chaplain, and when he came home no
bishop in his denomination in the whole country would
give him a pulpit. He was forced into business, a man
of rare power on the platform. After eleven years, he
is at last in a commanding pulpit in another denomina-
tion. The old Roman church would have been much
wiser and gentler than that. Its wisdom of the centuries
knows how to forgive and to find a niche for every
man according to his abilities. Most of us would feel
that in this case there was nothing to forgive but only
to commend. This example only points out, to be sure,
the defective character of human organization; man-
made and man-administered authority; but are not all
the ecclesiastical authorities man-made and man-admin -

50

RELIGION WITHOUT AUTHORITY

istered? And are they not, therefore, according to the
logic of the Protestant mind, to be reduced to the mini-
mum just as rapidly as humanity matures? The less
authority in the church, the more nearly it approaches
identity with the kingdom of God. Cooperation, equal-
ity, the beloved community, reason and love these are
of the essence of the kingdom of God. The only com-
mand that the founder of Christianity ever gave was the
command to love. He said, "A new commandment give
I unto you, that ye love one another/* This is the only
discipline that he recognized.

Even love may sometimes forget itself and put a heavy
pressure where it intends only to put a tender hand. The
soft touch of love may rest upon a child* s eye or cheek
or throat or above his heart and the response may be
nothing but a grateful one; but let that touch be pro-
longed and persistent and the comfort may turn into
pain unspeakable, unendurable. Any pressure upon a
human soul, the tenderest and the gentlest, if prolonged
and insistent, may produce exquisite pain. Human be-
ings, whether in body or in soul, are not meant for con-
stant and unrelenting pressure, even the pressure of love,
of mistaken love, which is not really love at all but
the self-assertion of the one who thinks he loves. True
love never dominates, never enslaves, never holds down
and presses down with a steady and relentless hand.
True love respects individuality and personality, gives
freedom for growth and expression. Love is opposed
to authority; and when Jesus commands love, so far
from exerting authority, he is removing authority and

51

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

saying to the human being, "Be yourself; it is natural to
love/'

Not even God tries to exercise authority over the free
human mind and soul and will. We talk about God's
commands, but in reality God makes no commands and
never has. The ten commandments that we have ascribed
to God are the outgrowth of human experience as to
what is wise and just and right between man and his
fellow-man. So it is with all our laws. God does not
make them; we make them, or f better still, discover
them. Hamlet said that "the Everlasting fixed his canon
'gainst self -slaughter*'; but the Everlasting did nothing
of the kind; the conscience of humanity for about fifteen
centuries made the canon against suicide. Before that
time, in the Roman empire, and even today in certain
quarters of the world, there is nothing blameworthy
about self-slaughter. The difference between the attitude
that such and such things are God's commands, or God f s
will, and the attitude that such and such things are best
for society, have been tried by human experience and
found valuable, is the difference between authoritarian-
ism and the scientific, the Protestant, spirit. Only a
comparative few have as yet reached the latter attitude.
The great masses, even of Protestants, still cling to the
belief in certain fiats of the Almighty, still talk about
the death of a loved one as God's will. It seems difficult
for them to attain the position of the scientific mind
which recognizes all laws as the outgrowth of the nature
of things as they are.

Not only does God not give commands, but also man
does not make laws, Man only discovers the laws that

52

RELIGION WITHOUT AUTHORITY

already exist. When certain causes operate in nature,
certain effects are produced; and this sequence we write
down as a law of nature. In the same way, given certain
conditions, human beings act toward one another in
certain ways; then we write down this sequence and we
call it the law, moral or civil. Man does not make the
law; he only finds it out Time was, for example, when
polygamy was the wisest thing for humanity; it was
necessary rapidly to increase the population or to make
good the ravages of war. In other times, polyandry was
the law; it was necessary to hold down the population
because food was scarce, and therefore most of the girl
babies were put out of the way, just a few being re-
tained for the convenience and perpetuation of the tribe.
As civilization advanced, and conditions changed, mo-
nogamy appeared as the safest and most convenient unit
of society; and then humanity endowed monogamy
with divine authority. But man found out all these
things as most expedient for the conditions in which
he was living at the time. No compulsion was upon him
except the compulsion of circumstance; no outside will
asserted itself to dominate the will of man. His own
emergencies, and his own best wisdom, guided him into
his actions and his institutions. It has ever been so.

V. RELIGION Is SELF-EXPLORED

In religion, we must each of us walk the lonely road
of self-exploration and self-experimentation. What is
good for me, what puts me at my best, what exalts and
uplifts me, what engenders aspiration within me, that
is my religion. Nobody can make it for me; nobody

53

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

can give it to me. Someone may kindle it in me by word
or action or personal contact, may stimulate me until
I react for myself; but the reaction must finally be my
own. No matter how much some outside authority may
tell me that I ought to think this and believe that, ought
to do this or refrain from that, it can do me no good.
Only what I can think and believe and do in the ful-
fillment of my own growth and personality, only that
has any meaning for me at all. Outside authority can
pour water over my head by the barrelful, but only that
water which I drink myself can sustain me, can become
part of me. The same is true in regard to truth, good-
ness, beauty, religion.

As Dean W. R. Inge, of St. Paul's Cathedral London,
so trenchantly observes: "But whereas the Catholic re-
gards the voice of the church as infallible, and not to be
questioned without disloyalty, and while the Protes-
tantism of the Reformation period gives much the same
absoluteness to the revelation of God's will in the in-
spired Word, the spirit of Protestantism, when it
understands itself, holds that there is no infallible
authority anywhere, but that men are educated both by
what Dean Church called the gifts of civilization and
by the Holy Spirit, whose operations are now often
called religious experience. Modern Protestantism gives
decidedly greater authority to the internal witnesses, the
mystical experience and reason, than to either of the two
external guides/'

"What, then, am I to believe?" cries some timorous
mortal who is afraid to stand alone and to walk alone.
The answer of the Protestant mind is clearly: Believe

54

RELIGION WITHOUT AUTHORITY

what you can believe; believe what you can't help but
believe; believe what is natural for you to believe. We
are all pretty much alike; our minds run in pretty much
the same channels. Given equal opportunities, we natu-
rally and easily find our way to the essential truths. It
is important, first of all, to believe in oneself. If this age
of reason succeeds in persuading large numbers of human
beings to believe in themselves, to believe they are of
such great value that there is no authority which ought
to dominate them, it will have achieved a high purpose
for mankind. Then, next, believe in the world, in the
order of things, in the reign of law and regularity, in
the reasonableness of the universe. Margert Fuller Ossoli
cried out, "I accept the universe 1 /* And Thomas Car-
lyle, when he heard of it, replied, "Gad, she'd better."
The rough old philosopher, with his witty reply, did
not give sufficient weight to the utterance of a human
soul that had really found salvation. It is because some
of us do not accept the universe that we make shipwrecks
of our lives; it is because others do accept it that they are
able to grapple with things as they are, to tackle them
as objects in which they not only believe but in which
they believe there is a beneficent order. That is the
high plane of thought and living to which the mod-
ern scientific mind leads us in the end. It is the gift of
Protestanism.

55

CHAPTER V
Protestantism and Business

THERE are those who maintain that Protestantism,
if not directly responsible for modern capitalism, at
least gave birth to the individualism that rendered
our present business system possible. Professor Reinhold
Niebuhr, of Union Theological Seminary, New York,
says, "Many social thinkers have traced the spiritual af-
finity between the economic doctrine of latssez faite f
which the commercial middle classes of the past cen-
turies used as a weapon against the power and privilege
of the old aristocracies, and the insistence on liberty in
the Reformation. But it has remained for a German soci-
ologist, Max Weber, to prove Protestantism and capital-
ism in intimate and organic relationship far beyond the
individualism which was the spiritual fruit of the one
and the moral basis of the other/*

It is not easy to define the term "capitalism" because
perhaps it may be a thing of degrees. In general, it may
be roughly said that capitalism is identified with the idea
in business affairs of competition * of "every fellow for
himself and the devil take the hindmost'*; with the
economic doctrine called latssez faite t which means that
if you let economic forces alone they will take care of
themselves and of the people, that laws of supply and
demand, of increasing and diminishing returns, like the

56

PROTESTANTISM AND BUSINESS

laws of nature, are inexorable and beneficent In their
working.

This attitude has prevailed in European business un-
questioned for the last three or four hundred years. It
prevails practically unquestioned in America now; al-
though Europe has grown disillusioned on the subject
and has begun vigorously to grapple with these hitherto
unassailable ideas* Russia has tumultuously upset the
whole capitalistic machine and if she has not replaced
it with something totally different, she has at least radi-
cally modified it until today she is working under a com-
bination of capitalism, socialism, and communism. The
experiment is as yet too new to pass upon. The Labor
party in England frankly and profoundly questions, as
it has never done before so fully, the whole organization
of industry, commerce, and finance under the so-called
capitalistic system. The Sydney Webbs, the Bertrand
Russells, H* G. Wells, and Bernard Shaw, leading think-
ers in English life, are not only discouraged concerning
the outlook for the British empire but for moneyed em-
pires of every kind throughout the world. They are
groping for something better. In America, however, up
to the present time there is no similar dissatisfaction to
speak of with the existing order and there are no out-
standing leaders carrying banners of revolt.

Whether Protestantism directly gave birth to capital-
ism is a nice question which R. H. Tawney, in Religion
and the Rise of Capitalism, does not definitely answer*
He traces the practically simultaneous rise of the two, but
he does not specifically state, and far less proves, that
they stand in the relation of cause and effect. One who

57

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

follows his historical research, however, may easily draw
conclusions for himself not out of harmony with the
strain of thought uttered by Dr. Niebuhr.

L THE ROMAN CHURCH AND BUSINESS

The Roman church during its long reign of nearly
fifteen centuries in Europe certainly taught with over-
powering authority the doctrine that the pursuit of gain
was to be tolerated, at the best, and never exalted. All
business was, in the view of the church, a concession to
the imperfection of our earthly state. The ideal of con-
duct was the renunciation of the world with its occupa-
tions, its enjoyments, and its possessions. The ascetic
life, if possible the monastic life, withdrawn from the
world and without wants which could be supplied by
material indulgence, this was the high life. Artisans and
traders, farmers, herdsmen, and even artists, were lower
orders of vocation than that of the undivided pursuit of
religion. Trafficking and trading for gain were at least
verbally and overtly discouraged by the church. The
lending of money for interest was expressly forbidden
and, under the authority of the Old Testament, was
labeled with the opprobrious epithet "usury."

To be sure, the church did not herself hesitate to
profit by the riches of her adherents. She got her share of
the wealth accumulated even in spite of her command-
ments, Rome in the middle ages was a center of worldly
splendor, and all over the western world her rich abbeys,
convents, and monasteries flourished on their hilltops
and in their glades, with their wide-spreading farmlands
and their multitudinous flocks and herds. If her people

58

PROTESTANTISM AND BUSINESS

would and did not practice what she preached, she
would at least accommodate herself to the atmosphere
of their lives by taking a share of what they gained by
the practices that she did not preach. The church amassed
great treasuries, erected magnificent cathedrals, and en-
throned her princes in jeweled power by the fruits of
the very traffic upon which she frowned.

II. BUSINESS UNDER THE NEW FREEDOM

Then came the Reformation with its liberation of the
minds and consciences of men and plunged them into the
welter of a chaos of economic thought and behavior.
Luther himself never grappled seriously with the prob-
lems involved. Impatient and tempestuous, and pro-
foundly concerned with the theological controversies
that raged round his heroic head, he seemed unable to
center his thought upon the vocational and business ef-
fects that the new freedom would have upon the mun-
dane life of the people. His mind really followed the
conventional groove of economic theory in which the
Roman church had brought him up. He, too, conceded
the necessity of worldly occupation, but looked upon it
rather as a concession. He, too, denounced the loaning of
money for interest as usury* He never thought his way
through to the logic of the individualism which he had
launched upon the world.

It remained for John Calvin, that intellect of polished
steel, to hew out a new economic theory to fit in with
the new freedom. He found in New Testament and Old
Testament alike and without discrimination, an order
of life made up of thrift and industry, coupled with

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

economy and sobriety, of utter simplicity of living and
lack of ostentation no matter how the Lord might pros-
per the thrifty citizen in his business, that gave the new
Protestantism an eye to the main chance which it has
never lost. Not only in the Calvinistic churches but in all
Protestantism, the philosophy of John Calvin prevails
at the present time. The devoted Calvinist does not fail
to lay by him in store and also to give tithes of all that
he possesses, even while he is avowedly serving a master
who commanded, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures
upon earth" and added, "A man's life consists not in the
abundance of things that he possesses/' Like John Cal-
vin, the Protestant world thinks more in terms of Paul
of Tarsus than of Jesus of Nazareth. The freedom of
the individual from authority, the right to work and to
trade as he pleases, if not imparted by the Reformation,
was at least tremendously increased by it; and the result
is the existing system, the reign of taissez faire or every-
body for himself, the prevailing competition with all its
rewards and failures, which we have come to call capi-
talism.

Whether Protestantism caused the system of business
under which we live or only aided and abetted it in its
growth, nevertheless the prevailing religion of the west-
ern world tolerates capitalism; indeed, stands helpless
and disarmed in the presence of its overmastering power.
Protestantism up to now has thrown up its hands and
not only accepted the situation but made terms with the
gigantic cohorts of business. The captains of industry,
commerce, and finance, many of them, are prominent In
the councils of the church; they are donors of huge sums

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PROTESTANTISM AND BUSINESS

for ecclesiastical and charitable purposes. It has been de-
clared that they salve more or less uneasy consciences by
these donations to the Lord. The religious leaders of
Protestant churches refrain from uttering their convic-
tions on economic questions, or conveniently shape their
convictions to the atmosphere in which they are placed,
rather than run the risk of alienating the barons of busi-
ness. Perhaps here lies the secret of the loss of power of
those churches which are in the majority in the trading
nations. Perhaps here is the secret of " waning Protes-
tantism/' as it is boldly called in certain quarters, the
dwindling attendance upon its services, the increasing
difficulties of its treasuries, and the loosening grip upon
those even nominally its members, particularly the
young. Perhaps if Protestantism should find a new, or
rather an old, courage to declare without controversy
and without shilly-shallying the ethics of Jesus as its
foundation, it might regain its hold upon an economic
world which at present is undoubtedly like a flock of
sheep scattered abroad without a shepherd.

III. PROTESTANTISM AND LAISSEZ FAIRE

Protestant leaders, however, both clerics and profes-
sors, have joined forces with the worn-out doctrines of
the Adam Smith school of competitive business, and
have declared the teachings of Jesus, the Sermon on the
Mount and the Golden Rule, inapplicable and impos-
sible in business as well as in politics. It is safe to say
that most religious teachers in the western world, to say
nothing of laymen officials in Protestant churches,
would assert without hesitation that Jesus was no more

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

a sociologist or economist than he was a historian; that
his utterances upon business relations constituted a
counsel of perfection which perhaps even he did not ex-
pect to see taken literally; that the non-resistance to evil
which he enjoined was an ideal to be held high before
us but very high, even out of sight; that a society with-
out law courts and with a community of goods is all
very well to contemplate as a Utopia like that of Plato
or More but not to be thought of as realizable. This is
a fair interpretation, perhaps, of the attitude of mind of
most ministers and religious teachers in the Protestant
churches* They all speak highly of Jesus, declare their
loyalty to him, and believe in their own loyalty; but
when it comes to putting his ethics into business rela-
tions, they do not even think seriously about the possi-
bility.

Professor Harry F* Ward, however, in all his books,
and particularly in Our Economic Morality, shows most
vividly the flaws and the dangers in our business world
due to the very fact that we neglect to take literally the
ethical and social teachings of Christ. He finds that
the very sources of our economic system, springing from
the so-called enlightened selfishness of Adam Smith and
Ricardo and Malthus, are the three principles which are
accepted as axioms in the business and social life of
America. These three are: Competition in business as the
life of trade; business life and practically all other activ-
ity for profit; and as the end of these two, the possession
of property. Professor Ward has only to point out to us
that these three are entirely out of harmony with the

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PROTESTANTISM AND BUSINESS

ethics of Jesus to convince the open mind of the truth of
his assertions.

Competition has grown so acute in our business life
that even cool, hard-headed business men are reaching
the conclusion that somehow it must be eliminated so
far as possible. We find great leaders talking about sup-
planting it with co-operation. Their method of co-oper-
ation, so far as it appears, seems to be the method of
consolidation, the merger, the putting out of business
completely of the small competitor by means of huge
combinations, chain stores, chain newspapers, chains of
every kind. The perfectly evident result of these measures
is the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and
fewer hands and the increase of unemployment and of
breadlines. Two-thirds of the wealth of America, as is
well known, is in the hands of one-third of the popula-
tion. Ninety-nine per cent of all the people in the coun-
try have incomes under nine thousand dollars, most of
them very much under. There is over-production and
under-consumption, which amply proves two things:
first, that there are not markets enough available to ab-
sorb the products of our massed industry; and, second,
that many of our people, if not most of them, are unable
to obtain and consume their share. This intense and un-
limited competition worked very well so long as we had
a continent of practically unlimited resources not yet
developed; then there was room at the top and all the
way up; any young man could aspire to become Presi-
dent of the United States or president of a railway or a
newspaper owner or a captain of industry; but with a
continent increasingly denuded of forests and mines,

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

with so much of the oil already drained off or in process
of being drained off, with capital more and more concen-
trated and passed on from father to son, there is not near
the chance now to go west and grow up with the coun-
try. Young men cannot so easily escape from the class
into which they were born and mount the ladder to a
higher one,

IV. A NEW ETHICS IN BUSINESS

Some industrial and commercial leaders begin to grasp
these conditions and to offer tentative solutions. Edward
A. Filene, of Boston, owner of a great department store,
and a Jewish citizen of eminence, has written a book
called The Way Oat, by which title he means the way
out of this intense competition. He prescribes four steps
which he thinks industry must voluntarily take: first,
raising wages to the highest possible point; second, de-
creasing the price of the products to the consumer; third,
mass production; and, fourth, democratization of indus-
try. Mr. Ford, the most successful manufacturer, per-
haps, on this continent, has adopted three of these four
principles to a greater or less degree; he has not adopted
the fourth he is still an autocrat in industry but he
is only about sixty-five and maybe there is hope for him
yet. Anyway, dim glimmerings are coming into the
minds of great business men that the competitive system
under which we are living is not all that it ought to be,
is not safe, leads to dangers within the country and
without. The unlimited competition for world markets
which hitherto has prevailed is one sure cause of any fu-
ture wars now looming on the international horizon,

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PROTESTANTISM AND BUSINESS

Statesmen of the western world are convinced that
civilization cannot stand another war; they are making
desperate efforts to avoid it, but they honestly don't
know how. Some have suggested the ethic of Jesus as
the only way out; but few take them seriously, perhaps
least of all Protestant preachers and teachers.

Within our own nation, the vast machine of compe-
tition grinds many to powder right under our eyes. Here
is a man fifty-two, still able-bodied, bright, and intelli-
gent. He has been fifteen years a mechanic in a great fac-
tory, with excellent wages; but the efficiency expert from
a distant city walks through and says to the superin-
tendent, "Too many old faces and gray hairs/* and out
goes the old mechanic. No pension system, no reward
of long and faithful service; just squeezed dry and
thrown away. This is the story of thousands under the
competitive system. Or here is a young man, sensitive,
artistic by nature, who ought never to be a business man
at all, fitted for only one thing, to be an artist or musi-
cian, but in the great machine there is no room and no
reward for artists and musicians; the circumstances of
our social life organized for business only ring him
round like steel and crush him out. Thousands of those
who squeeze themselves into the great machine lead only
half-hearted, unfilled lives, never happy because they can
never do the thing they love to do; they drag along,
dispirited, often hopeless; they eat and breed and die,
and never live. There is too much business, so much
more than any of us need, too much production, and we
cannot limit it under the existing order. Maybe Christ
knew what he was talking about when he propounded

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

his ideas of simple and careless living, doing the things
we love to do, without thought for the morrow and for
moth-eaten and rust-consumed treasures laid up that we
cannot take with us into our untimely graves. If Protes-
tantism would only preach that and, what is more, live
that, it might not wane. Perhaps Russia may yet succeed
in working it out*

Modern governments, as governments, begin to com-
prehend that unchecked competition among them for
commercial advantages, for markets, and for raw mate-
rials like oil, cannot stop short of another world war.
This dawning comprehension is set forth so plainly by
John Bakeless in The Origin of the Next War that the
reader cannot help but see it. Most commercial nations
do not want the next war, for they understand that it
will bring them loss and not gain. Nevertheless a nation
is always ready to fight if it thinks it can make anything
by fighting; and there are one or two governments in
the western world which seem to be getting ready to take
the chance; if they do, of course they will embroil the
rest of the world. It remains true, however, that most
governments are now well convinced that war does not
pay. Within these nations, competition works just the
same havoc as war works among them; and when busi-
ness leaders begin to understand this fact as clearly as
governments are coming to understand it, they may
gradually accomplish a peaceful revolution. Up to the
present time, in America at least, there seems to be so
little comprehension of this simple truth as to amount to
none; and the few who have begun dimly to grasp it

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PROTESTANTISM AND BUSINESS

seem powerless to evade the intensity of the strife, except
through merger and monopoly.

V. MODERN MOTIVES IN BUSINESS

The motive behind our business system is plainly
profit. Men are not in business for their health, they fre-
quently assert, nor for anybody else's benefit. According
to the ethics of Jesus, they ought to be in business for
both. The question today in the minds of most men
who enter a life-work is, "How well will it pay?" The
question is not, "How best can I spend my life? How
can I grow best? How can I benefit the world most?"
The question baldly and frankly is, "How can I make
most?" Even those who enter the occupations which are
evidently for the service and the well-being of their fel-
low-men catch the same infection and are moved by the
same motive* The physician, in spite of himself, for the
most part selects the specialty that will pay best and
carries it on in the fashion that will prove to him most
lucrative. The artist draws in the style which will bring
him the best returns, even sacrificing his ideals to the
common end* The literary man writes what he thinks
will be a best seller, and his eye is constantly on the roy-
alties. Attorneys choose that kind of practice, preferably
with big corporations, which will bring them the fattest
fees. Even ministers will move from one parish to an-
other at a higher bid. One of them refuses to be elected
bishop, naively declaring, "Why should I be bishop? I
can make a thousand a year more where I am."

One constantly hears the statement made, in comment
upon a proposed piece of work for some young man,

67

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

"There's good money in that/' or "There's nothing in
that. You can't make money there/' A young woman
marries well if she marries a man who is making money ;
hers is a bad match if she marries one who is not "doing
well/* which means making money. A young man or
an old one is "successful" according to his profits. That
these observations are so trite is demonstration of the
universal state of mind which they betray; they are so
commonplace as to excite no surprise. The surprising
thing is that such an atmosphere can prevail solidly
throughout America without exciting remonstrance and
protest. The protests are all reserved, both by his wife
and his community, for the man whose life is given not
to profits but to any other aim in the world. The wife
of Andrea del Sarto, who kept him from becoming the
equal of Raphael by her constant insistence that he
should make profits for her, is multiplied thousands of
times in our modern America; and not only that, the
whole of society takes the same point of view as the wife
of that prostituted artist. Many fine souls are ground to
powder between the millstones of the profit motives of
their day and country. No more really was the young
man of Nazareth nailed upon a wooden cross than is
many a young American immolated upon the cross of
steel behind our machine-made civilization. Had they
lived in the Florence or the Rome of the Renaissance,
or in the Athens of Pericles, a niche and room would
have been found for them, in which they could live with
all their sensitiveness, their delicacy, and their courage,
and grow and work for something finer than the uni-
versal demand that they show profits. Not measuring up,

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PROTESTANTISM AND BUSINESS

according to the Iron rule of profit production, they con-
sider themselves failures in life and either sink down in
despair, effortless, or voluntarily take their departure.

The end kept in view under this competition for
profits is, of course, the accumulation of property. Noth-
ing raises such a storm of loyalty and fanatical defense
in American life as the slightest question concerning the
sacredness of property. To question the sacredness of
human life itself is scarcely so great a heresy. "Who
steals my purse steals trash," makes no hit at all with
the American mind; my purse is very far from trash; my
purse and my property are guaranteed, if you please, by
the constitution and by all the inviolable usages and
habits of mind of my nation; my government will all
but die for my purse and my property. Yet the question,
which has raised its head in liberal England and else-
where in the civilized world, will not down even here in
America, "Just how sacred is property? Just how much
right has anybody to inherit the accumulations of his
father? Just how much has society at large aided in
amassing that property and how much has society at
large the right to share in the enjoyment of it?" Society
makes the center of a city, the people help to build the
property values of the lots; how much has any indi-
vidual the right to profit by the mere accident, even the
actual forethought, of the ownership of those lots? A
department store or a drugstore may pay a heavy divi-
dend, thirty to a hundred per cent; the people make
valuable the location of that shop; how much right have
the owners and the operators, with all their business
acumen and efficiency, to the rolled-up profits of the

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

years? These questions are pressing for serious consid-
eration and for attempts to answer.

Property is power, power over the lives of others.
Property enables the holders to sit back at leisure and
demand the services of others, their toil and sweat, in
the form of rents and interest. In other words, property
makes some men masters of other men; it is a form of
serfdom or slavery. We say that slavery has been abol-
ished in the civilized world; it has not. What shall be
said of the increasing idleness and futility of many in-
heritors of wealth? What shall we do with and for the
great army of toilers who, by their efforts, maintain
these sons of American nobility at Newport and Palm
Beach? Plainly, this condition of affairs is non-Chris-
tian, utterly out of harmony with the sociology of Jesus.

Then, too, there is growing up in America a stratifica-
tion of society, a division into classes approaching the
rigidity of hereditary rank in England and the European
nations. The basis for this division into classes in this
country is property and property alone. The very
wealthy in the east mimic the ways and manners of liv-
ing, and the attitudes toward others, their so-called in-
feriors, their serfs, that obtain in the nations descended
from feudalism. We have our barons, earls, and dukes
on American soil. This spirit and these attempts at a
little aristocracy are evident even in the smaller cities
across our continent. The heirs of wealth will not mingle
with the rest of the people, will not send their children
to the same schools, will not even attend the same
churches* How far have we departed from the democratic

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PROTESTANTISM AND BUSINESS

Ideals and utterances of the founders of the republic?
And how much farther have we gone from the ethics of
Jesus?

VL FAMILY ETHICS IN BUSINESS

The ideal which Jesus taught and lived was the ideal
of a kingdom of God, a beloved community, all men free
and equal, all men children of God; in other words, his
ideal is that the ethics of the family should be broadened
to apply to all human relationships. In the family we
try to let love prevail, courtesy, consideration, unselfish-
ness; and the family is successful according to the preva-
lence of love and kindness; it is unsuccessful according
to their absence* This, Jesus considers to be the touch-
stone in all society, in business, in government, in every
social relation. One needs but to state this fact to appre-
ciate the rarefied atmosphere in which he lived and
breathed and thought. It is too high for us; we cannot
attain it; like Simon Peter, we fall to our knees and say,
''Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man/* One
who attempted to apply the family attitude in a grocery
business, a department store, or the manufacturing of
any article, might just as well throw himself to a hungry
pack of wolves or into a cage of Bengal tigers. Self-
preservation would not permit, in the existing order of
society, any such useless martyrdom. Ask any common-
sensed heir of property, small or great, "Why don't you
sell it and give it to the poor, and go about teaching the
ethics of Jesus?" and he would reply, "It would get no-
where. It would be dashing my brains out against the

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

stone wall of modern social organization, I can do much
more wisely by expending my income or my property in
teaching as widely as possible the ethics of the
Nazarene/*

Here is the solution, as in most other matters: educa-
tion, evolution to prevent revolution, the gradual un-
folding of the kingdom of God, leaven working in the
lump, insistence line by line, precept by precept, here a
little, there a little, the way of the prophets, the way of
the Master himself. Wherever an ocular demonstration is
possible, make it. Teach by example; teach in the con-
crete. Men are doing it, the late Arthur Nash and his
factory, William Hapgood and his, Edward A. Filene
and his department store. They are teaching it, not
simply by welfare enterprises, club rooms, restaurants,
music, gymnasia, and baths tacked on to the industrial
plant; but they are teaching it by the attempt to practice
the Golden Rule with employees, customers, competitors,
and those from whom they buy their raw materials. It
is often a very nice question as to how to employ the
Golden Rule in this or that transaction, this or that rela-
tion in business; but where the will is to practice it, there
the way can always be found. The slow process of edu-
cation, how impatient we get when it is proposed! The
trouble is, God is not in a hurry and we are. We want
instantaneous changes made, upsets of the existing order
suddenly brought about, revolution. We declare that the
holders of property never yet have yielded it except to
force; yes, they have, to the force of education, slow,
creeping, titanic. Public opinion is the most powerful

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PROTESTANTISM AND BUSINESS

force in the world; and only public opinion will hold a
nation in leash, or a nobility, or a propertied class. Edu-
cation is the way out, the continued and increasing
chorus of prophets, drilling into the stone, steadily bor-
ing away until the time comes when the structure of the
social order shall disintegrate and change as rocks under
the operation of ice and snow.

"Saints are still born among us/' writes Will Durant
in Mansions of Philosophy, "kindly men meet us at
every turn, modest girls can be found if we like to find
them, patient mothers hide in a thousand homes, and
heroism rivals crime in the daily press. A flood comes,
and a thousand people go to help, and a million men
contribute financial aid. A nation starves, and her ene-
mies succor her. Explorers are lost, and others give their
lives to rescue them. No one has yet fathomed man's
potentialities for good. Behind our chaos, our riot, and
our crime lies the fundamental kindliness of the human
soul. It waits till the riot is over, and another moral
order emerges by trial and error to lift it to nobility. The
old world is dead; long live the new!*'

The world a big family, supplying its need in the
spirit of self-help and help of others, freed of competi-
tion, working not for profit and profit alone; finding it
unnecessary to pile up mountains of property, moun-
tains of bread, with which to command armies of men ;
radiant good will toward everybody; all humanity a
beloved community; every house a house by the side of
the road where dwells a friend to men; all the nations
living and helping others to live, exchanging works of

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

art and of the creative mind what a picture it is, what
a millennial age, no wonder Jesus called it the kingdom
of God. No less than that is the dream that we may
dream about the future. No less beautiful than that is
the aim that Jesus holds up to us. When we begin to
work toward it, we shall start up a long hill indeed, but
what is time to God?

74

CHAPTER VI
Denominationalism

INEVITABLY freedom of thought, the individual-
ism that sprang from the Reformation, resulted in
the division of the Protestant world into scores and
even hundreds of denominations. Differing types of
mind and differing trains of thought demanded different
styles of worship and organization* One type desired a
rich liturgical service, another a severely plain Puritanical
sort* Every new prophet that arose gave a color to the
thought and life of his followers which separated them
from the rest of the religious world. Each sect, as it
arose, undertook to restore the apostolic type of church
and each claimed that it had been successful; so that
there seem to be just about as many apostolic churches
as there are sects. Some of them even set out to unite all
the denominations into one church, their own church,
with the ensuing futility of adding only one more
denomination.

Denominations are like disease germs, sects are like
streptococci; they must serve some purpose, but the Lord
only knows what it is* So far as our limited vision goes,
they cause only trouble in the world. They are a condi-
tion that confronts us, a defect in the order of things, a
handicap to labor under, and not an end to be promoted.

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

I. SECTS UNIVERSAL AND PERPLEXING

Sects we have always had with us, like the poor, and
shall always have. They take their root from the di-
versity of human nature and they will never disappear
until human nature changes its leopard spots. Human
beings are so constituted that they can never see truth
and right all from the same angle, nor see all of the
truth and the right; but what they do see, they all
think is the whole. One flash of light, on one side of
the mountain, and they insist they have seen the moun-
tain and know it all. One swift view of the sea, from
only one point on cape or shore line, and they feel they
comprehend the ocean. "That settles it. I know all the
truth, for have I not seen it? Wisdom will die with me/'
That is the age-long song of poor, little, purblind man.

The Jews had sects and for the matter of that still
have them just as the Christians had. Before Jesus
came, they had their Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes
and various other "nees." They had their Ebionites and
Nazarites, and various other "ites." The Greeks and
Romans had their Stoics and Epicureans, their Platonists
and Neo-Platonists ; the Brahmans of India, long be-
fore Christianity was born, were split up into scores of
sects now known only to the scholars, and they are
still split up. Ancient Buddhism and ancient Confucian-
ism, far older than the Christian era, likewise knew their
denominations. Even politics knows them. How many
political parties are there in America? And how many in
each of the other nations? And how many people do
not find their views expressed by any political party or

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DENOMINATIONALISM

by any religious denomination? Humanity varies in-
finitely, and doubtless always will.

The Lord might have left disease germs out of the
world; but if he had, perhaps humanity would have
multiplied so fast as to overrun the place, and he would
have had to find some other way to kill them off and
make room for others. He might have made us all alike,
so that we would see the truth and right alike; but if
he had, life would have been much less interesting and
spicy. We can, then, understand why denominations
exist, even while feeling that they are an unmitigated
evil, a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet
us. They are the underbrush that we've got to stumble
through, the thick wilderness that somehow we must
overcome, the handicap and the obstacle that we must
struggle with and overcome. The condition confronts
us; with the theory we are not greatly concerned.

The troubles caused by sects are so apparent that one
needs scarcely to rehearse them. We have divided coun-
cils, pulling and hauling at each other, with little for-
ward motion and the generation of much heat. Like
an army or an expedition or a migration without unified
command, we scatter, criss-cross each other's trail, pass
by the most important places, and wind up far apart,
at fault, lost, futile. We waste force and dissipate funds.
Then we duplicate, several parties grabbing at once for
the same points of settlement. The heart-breaking sight
is so common we have become calloused six denomina-
tional churches in a town of six hundred and a seventh
one moving in because, it says, * 'There is no real Chris-
tian church in the place. We must go and start one that

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

is Simon pure/' Six untrained, bigoted, little preachers,
or only three, or none at all; and any there may chance
to be, miserably supported, without books, without con-
tacts with the world, absorbed in the petty village fights
and jealousies between sect and sect. The denomina-
tional mission boards, meantime, pouring their funds
and sending their absentee-supported emissaries into the
"field'' to hold up their particular colored light, red,
green, yellow, in the darkness as if it were a "heathen"
l an d and heathen it is, to be sure. Then in this heathen
village the church workers, the guilds and ladies' aids,
miserable little handfuls, spend their time backbiting,
envying, hating each other, while the real men of the
place are sick of the whole thing.

In larger places, you may see four churches on four
corners of the courthouse square, where two or one
were amply sufficient. In big cities you may see a dozen
churches in a half-mile square where two or three great
cathedrals, with a plural ministry, might gather in and
care for all the people ten times more efficiently. You
may see each congregation trying to take members away
from the others; you may see ministers jealous of each
other, making unkind remarks about each other, envy-
ing and sometimes even hating each other, when they
should be pulling together to try to bring men and
women under the influence of a common Lord, trying to
alleviate the sorrows and the distresses and solve the
problems of the people who cannot fail to see the divi-
sion and the hostility so easy to behold* There is nothing
Christian about it It is worse than pagan.

Why not do away with it, then? Easy enough to

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DENOMINATIONALISM

say. Why not do away with human nature, with its
one-angled view of truth and right? Anybody who
thinks at all recognizes the evils of sectarianism and its
few or no benefits* We realize, to be sure, that differing
types of mind, because of their heredity or their train-
ing, may desire differing emphasis on truth, differing
form and ceremonial, differing atmospheres of worship;
but at the same time we recognize that all these might be
provided under a unified church as well as a divided one.
Why, then, not get together?

IL OBSTACLES TO UNITY

The obstacles seem insurmountable. In America, the
major denominations have lost all real differences. A
stranger might wander into a Methodist or a Congre-
gationalist or a Presbyterian church and, unless he were
very acute and keen indeed, be unable to tell to what
denomination this particular church belonged* Most of
us, supposed to be expert in church doctrines and affairs,
cannot for the life of us tell the differences between
certain of the denominations; and if we should state
those differences, they would seem to this age altogether
petty, insignificant, and outworn. Surely it would be a
simple matter for such denominations to merge into
one? But not so fast! What about the vested interests?
There are the land titles dating way back; there are the
centralized missionary organizations with their officials,
presidents, secretaries, and treasurers, with their bequests
and their annuities. There is always a way, you say, to
solve the problems of propertied interests where there is
the will; but there remains the inertia of human kind,

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

the desire to continue doing things as they have always
been done, the ruts and the channels. How are you
going to get out of them? Then each denomination has
its ways and its manners, its deep-seated traditions, its
very vocabulary, all meaningless to the others. It has its
pride of opinion, its perfect confidence that "We are
the people. We know the truth and the right. Wisdom
is ours beyond anybody else's, and it will die with us."
We may not put it in such bald terms, but that is the
spirit of each sect. No, there is no hope in your day or
in mine, if ever, of any large measure of actual union
among the one hundred and fifty different denomina-
tions in the United States,

Denominationalism is an expensive luxury and by
no means a necessity. Protestantism could very well get
along without it and be much better off. As a matter of
fact, if Protestantism keeps on indulging it, Protestant-
ism will go bankrupt. The sooner we look the situation
squarely in the face, take account of stock, cut down
overhead, provide necessities and dispense with luxuries,
the better we shall be able to handle the real problems
of our life, such as social adjustments and industrial
difficulties, with which the church has to grapple.

The tendency towards this luxury springs from the
very constitution of human nature. The assertion of
the ego, the desire to exalt the self and to vaunt our-
selves, poor little creatures that we are, and so in need of
bolstering up, lies at the very basis of it. No matter
how conscious we are of our own vanity, we nevertheless
constantly cater to it by forming little cliques and com-
panies, little clubs, even little pairs, and looking with

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DENOMINATIONALISM

condescension, or even cutting criticism, at the rest of
the world, and saying to ourselves, "We are the people.
Wisdom shall die with us/* Too often we indulge the
luxury all alone; and then it is another case of "little
Jack Horner in the corner/' The tendency toward de-
nominationalism, sectism, religious, political, social, is
almost irresistible in us alL We form our clubs and
associations, our lodges and our churches, and delib-
erately foster the feeling of superiority, pronounce the
shibboleths, hold up the standards, or wave the flags, as
the case may be, because it makes us feel big and because
everybody else suffers in comparison with our own little
selves and our own little crowds, our own little sect,
political party, or nation* To become conscious of the
egoism that underlies all this may help us a little bit,
may it not, to shake free from the enervating effects of
this day-dreaming luxury*

Another inherent characteristic of humanity which
leads directly into this slough of luxury is the inertia
of the human mind and wilL We love to find a place,
settle into it, and refuse to leave it. Few of us have the
daring to hunt for "a better *ole/* It is a delightful thing
to lie down and sleep in the same place all the time. Cats
and human beings both love to do it. Few of us have
the exploring instinct of the hound, hound of heaven
or hound of earth; and even if by chance we do, we
want to come back home when the hunt is over and
lie down in the same old kennel. "It always has been
done this way; my father always did it this way; and
what was good enough for the fathers is good enough
for me/' The regular track, the same old rut, the same

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

form and ceremonial, the same organization and usage,
the same, the same, the same this universal desire is
one of the trunk roots of denominational luxury.

Closely allied, a twin root indeed, strikes deep down
into our nature and that is unwillingness to think. "Let
me alone, my mind is made up; too much trouble to
unmake it and make it all over again; what's the use of
changing; costs effort to change and it is so luxurious to
settle back with all questions- solved and finished." Al-
most irresistible is the desire of the mind to come to rest,
peace, sleep, the folding of the hands in sleep ; and we are
so impatient of these pestiferous fellows who will not
leave us alone but are constantly jabbing and stabbing
at us to try to make us wake up and think. What's the
use? When we were thirty or thirty-five, we settled that
question once and for all, now why reopen it? We
crystallize and fossilize in our middle years, at the very
top of our powers, and we don't like to break the crys-
taline shell or the fossiliferous case in which we lie.
"Let us alone; we've got the truth, the final truth,
sealed, signed and delivered/' This is the luxury of
belonging to the denomination that is nonpareil, eight-
een carat, Simon pure, the old Jerusalem gospel, un-
speakable luxury!

No matter how narrow and restricted and barren the
poor little field in which we are penned, it is the whole
luxurious world to us. A goat is satisfied in the back
yard where he is immured, covered with straw, stunted
shrubs, and tin cans. A sow is satisfied in a muddy sty,
belly deep in mud. Beautiful language, this? Well it is
a beautiful thing I am talking about. I have seen many

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DENOMINATIONALISM

a goatish sectarian, chewing upon succulent straws and
twigs and tin cans, his beard wagging and his self-
satisfied eye in a fine frenzy rolling; perfectly assured
that his little pen is the whole universe, contains all the
sustenance as well as the scenic grandeur that any sane
goat ought to desire. "We are the people" bawls the
goat, lost in his luxury. And I have seen many a sec-
tarian sow grunting in self content, and growling at
any intruder, rolling little bead-like eyes in the delusion
that she sees the whole big round world, mud from head
to heals, wallowing in mud, in the luxury of her limi-
tations. If this is rough language, I would call your at-
tention to the fact that St. Paul uses rougher. No, the
luxury of denominationalism is not an admirable thing
calling for dainty and fragrant description; it is a dirty
and vicious thing calling for all the vituperation that
our English will bear.

ILL UNLOVELY FRUITAGE OF THE SECTS

Look what effects it produces, what unlovely shapes
it grows. It is the mother of snobbery, exclusive and not
inclusive. There are several kinds of snobs, financial
snobs who high-hat everybody that does not possess just
so many millions or thousands; social snobs who ostra-
cize everybody who is not in a certain little hereditary
or customary circle ; and religious snobs who look down
upon all people not of their own particular stripe and
color; and of all these snobs, the worst and most childish
is the religious snob, the furthest away, if possible, from
the spirit of the inclusive Christ. He never tried to shut
anybody out; not even the worst denominationalists of

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

his day, the Pharisees. He tried to draw everybody in,
even Samaritans, the heretics of the time, even street-
walkers, the social outcasts of his day and ours, even
the tax-collectors, the one class of men most cordially
hated. If we ever catch the spirit of Christ, we shall find
no exclusiveness, doctrinal, social or other, in our veins
or our mental fibre.

Once more this luxury divides and does not unite,
centripetal, not centrifugal. It drives people apart,
throws them off, when of all things else we need to
draw together. In fact, in the stress of modern life we
are already drawn together, jammed together, in the
concentration of our increasingly complex social struc-
ture. All the less can we afford to try to kick away from
others with whom we are willy-nilly in such close con-
tact We need uniting forces, not dividing ones; we need
altruism and not more assertion of the ego; we have got
to learn to live together, closely and harmoniously, or
else die like flies, morally and spiritually die. Today
above all others in history is the day for union of Chris-
tian people or else a day of doom for them. They can
take their choice of maintaining the old luxury of their
denominationalisrn or of inheriting the doom of what
we call our Christian civilization.

It is easy to see, then, how expensive and not eco-
nomical is this luxury, as all luxuries are. The very
word implies useless expense; to keep up this luxury we
sacrifice necessity. It is foolhardy to do a thing like that,
although people are constantly doing it in their private
lives. The churches are no wiser than the improvident
poor to whom they so often condescend and whom

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DENOMINATIONALISM

they so often chide for buying the things they do not
need instead of saving up for the things they seriously
do need* Take the lesson home, ye churches, to your-
selves. Keep on with the luxury of your eight-cylindered
denominationalism and find yourselves by and by unable
to make repairs and to move at alL

It goes without saying that this luxury spells no
spirituality, but the height of unspirituality. The satis-
fied sectarian whines and harps upon his particular type
of song and form of prayer, with his particular holy
tone, and calls himself spiritual; when all the time he
is giving the finest possible demonstration of what Jesus
denounced as unspiritual, the broadening of phylacteries,
the long-winded praying in public places and the showy
giving of charity where everybody could see. It has been
my experience that the narrower the denominationalist,
the more he profaned that beautiful word, spirituality,
and the less he knows about it* To him all that is true
and beautiful and good, lovely and of good report, are
seen only with half an eye, and that a jaundiced one and
out of focus, because all the intensity of his vision is
centered upon the unimportant and the restrictive fences
of his little pen.

IV* SIGNS OF HOPE

Is there another side to the picture? This much, that
all those large minded enough are trying to fulfill the
prayer of our Lord, "That they all may be one/* by
working together as much as possible and pulling apart
as little as possible ; that the Federal Council of Churches
of Christ in America commands the allegiance of nearly

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

all Protestants nationally, and state and city federations
locally; that as many co-operative movements as possible
are fostered by the denominations, or at least by those
leaders in denominations, gentle and sweet spirited
enough, strong and brave enough, brotherly and Christ-
like enough, to range themselves side by side, instead of
toe to toe. Weekday schools of religion, Christmas and
Easter union services, united efforts of all kinds these
are multiplying in the larger centers and spreading even
to smaller ones.

A further sign of hope is coming up over the horizon.
More and more individual churches, regardless of de-
nomination, are becoming community churches. Their
denominational bonds grow more and more tenuous and
less and less emphasized. These churches reduce the body
of required doctrine to the lowest possible terms, the
belief in Jesus as the Christ, Son of God and Son of
Man, and the will to serve and follow him. If any creed
is recited in these churches, it is only as an ancient sym-
bol, a ceremonial, valued only for its flavor of tradition
and its atmosphere of worship. No actual and formal
assent is required as if it were a scientific formula. In
these community churches the day for such theologizing
has gone by. The recognized essence of the Christian
faith, common to all denominations, alone is demanded
of the membership allegiance to Jesus. The right to
define all terms for himself is left to the individual.

Along with this minimum of belief goes the mini-
mum of required form. The two sacraments of the
church, upon which all are in general agreed, baptism
and the Lord's Supper, are administered by such form

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DENOMINATIONALISM

and at such time as the individual may himself deter-
mine* The forms and ceremonials of public worship,
ritual and liturgy, emerge from the cultural environment
and heritage of the people making up the community
church. Whatever is adapted to their minds and spirits
is adopted into the forms and service of the community
church*

Free trade in members is the order between such
churches. Letters of commendation or statements of
membership pass at their face value* There is no protec-
tive tariff on the interchange of church members; there
are no immigration laws, no educational nor doctrinal
tests for admission* In some quarters this is called open-
membership* It has been practiced a long time by some
churches, but only newly adopted by some others. The
point is* that it is an increasing practice, that the num-
ber of these undenominational* free, or community
churches, is increasing in all quarters of the land* Natu-
rally, these community churches thrill and throb with
alertness to the spirit of the times, to the emergence of
new truth, to the adoption of new measures. They are
fully conscious that the essence of the Christian faith
remains the same from age to age, that Jesus is the same,
yesterday, today and forever; but they also recognize
that new lights are turned upon him and upon his
teaching from generation to generation and century to
century, that knowledge grows from more to more and
with it more of reverence may dwell in us all. So they
are out for everything new and true, everything beauti-
ful and good* These churches do not fight the rising tide
of increasing truth but try to ride higher upon it*

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Why should these free churches not cut loose from
their old denominations entirely and become wholly in-
dependent? Some day perhaps they will and in that line
may lie the path of real Christian unity. It is too soon,
however, for most of such churches to sever entirely their
old denominational ties. The number of avowed com-
munity churches, with no denominational tie at all, and
now bound together in an association, is something over
sixteen hundred; but this movement is not yet powerful
enough to render it safe for certain churches, already
community churches in everything else but name, to
shake themselves free from the denominational entan-
glements in which they were born and in which they
have lived. After all, humanity is gregarious. We cannot
flock alone. No church can develop or grow, scarcely
even survive, that strikes out by itself on an entirely
independent course. The experience of such churches has
been that they have floated along more or less precari-
ously during the life and activity of some more or less
brilliant leader and then have broken up and sunk be-
neath the waves. For efficiency and for permanency there
must exist ties with other churches, solidarity, com-
munity of interest, fellowship in effort and inspiration.
These may all be present, however, with a decreasing
emphasis upon denominational aims and purposes, slo-
gans and doctrines, properties and organizations. An
increasing number of churches in great cities, consciously
or unconsciously, are plunging ahead upon this course.
The outstanding churches in most cities grow less and
less denominational and are more and more to be de-

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DENOMINATIONALISM

fined as community churches* This comes nearest to a
rainbow of anything that hangs in the Protestant sky.
Denominationalism, due to the diversity of human-
ity, inherited and environmental; denominationalism,
as old as humanity and religion, an apparently unmixed
evil and yet apparently unavoidable, may gradually
disappear or at least diminish in importance with the
passage of the centuries. The evils of divided councils,
wasted resources, duplication and overlapping, with the
resultant rivalries and jealousies and hatreds, may at
least be mitigated. The obstacles to unity, such as vested
interests, pride in tradition and opinion, the sluggishness
and inertia of humanity may never be done away with,
but at least they may be diminished by the rise of the
community church. The increasing number of great
churches, great both in numbers and in spirit, which re-
duce doctrine to its lowest terms, with a firm faith in
Jesus as the Christ alone ; which lay upon the shoulders
of their people the smallest possible burden of required
form; which freely interchange their members: and
which keep an open face turned always toward the light
such churches go far toward the fulfillment of the
prayer of Jesus for unity.

89

CHAPTER VII
Protestantism and Woman

female of the species is more deadly than the
male** even so late as Mr. Kipling this idea,
though not always spoken, has more or less un-
consciously swayed the minds of men and therefore in-
fluenced their attitudes toward women. The belief of
primitive peoples in mana, or magic, a belief that mys-
tical causes are more powerful than material; for ex-
ample, that people do not die of a cold wind or of
eating poisonous food but that they die of witchcraft,
the evil eye, some spell or charm has influenced hu-
manity all down through the centuries and influences
us unconsciously to this day*

Under this system of belief woman was regarded by
savage peoples as dangerous, the repository of mana, the
very center of magic spells, and her presence in the com-
munity, indispensable as it was, constituted a continuous
threat of calamity. The origin of this idea is more or less
obscure but can be at least partly understood when we
remember the intense fascination that woman has for
man and has ever had. Whatever is so attractive, what-
ever cannot be resisted, may easily be regarded as dan-
gerous. The basilisk's eye, in our old legendry, is a case
in point; the common idea that a snake can charm a
bird is another. Again, to the primitive mind, blood
always signals danger, for it is life itself. Many ancient

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PROTESTANTISM AND WOMAN

peoples would eat no meat until the blood had been
thoroughly drained away. This was a regulation under
the Hebrew laws and, as the fifteenth chapter of Acts
clearly shows, extended down into Christian times.
Whenever blood appeared, human beings were fright-
ened; so they were afraid of their women in childbirth
and at other periodic seasons.

So dangerous did many savage people consider their
women to be, that they avoided all contacts before hunt-
ing expeditions or before war* The whale could not be
successfully harpooned by a man who had just left his
wife; his hand would tremble; his eye would not be
sure. The antelope, the elephant, the tiger, would surely
fail to fall before the arrows of the hunter who any
time within a certain period had been with his woman
or women. Moreover, unless her conduct at home, in
the hut, the tepee, or the kraal, was above reproach, the
warrior or the hunter might fail, might fall in the battle
or the hunt. She must observe certain definite restric-
tions, avoid certain taboos, carry on a prescribed ritual,
to ward off the dangers of her mana from her absent
man.

That this superstition survived long after tribes had
become pastoral and even agricultural is perfectly clear
from the laws of Israel as set down in the Old Testa-
ment. Women who bore a child had to go through days
and even weeks of so-called "purification" with accom-
panying sacrifices and ceremonials, after the birth of the
child, a longer period for a girl child than for a boy
child. Similar observances had to be followed after her
monthly experience of the "way of women/' The origin

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

of these observances is rooted in the barbaric idea of
mana, of the danger of womankind.

The weird rites of marriage among primitive tribes
are traceable to this fear of woman". All kinds of spells
and charms were woven to protect the bridegroom
against the dangers of his newly wedded wife. Loud
noises were made to scare away the evil spirits ; the bride
might be beaten by the other women, bruised and lac-
erated, to chastise away the evil magic that inhered in
her. Sometimes the bridegroom would not be allowed to
stay in the same room or hut with his bride the first
night, or for many nights, but a younger brother or
little lad took his place until the danger might be over-
passed. Some of these ancient forms survive at the pres-
ent day in the marriage ceremonials of highly ritualistic
churches even in the Christian religion.

In view of the danger which for so many millenniums
men have been inclined to ascribe to their women, it is
not surprising that medicine men, witch doctors, and
priests led the way in prescribing charms and taboos to
be raised against this magic. The same attitude of open
or unconscious hostility to the normalcy and the free-
dom of women has been assumed by modern religious
leaders charged with the preservation of social and reli-
gious institutions. The church, in a great deal of its
history, has fought the liberties of women, and down
to the present time keeps up the fight in one form or
another. It may not be always conscious that the thing
it is fighting is the barbarian mana, but that is what
it is. We have inherited it for thousands of years; it is

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PROTESTANTISM AND WOMAN

in the blood, in the very texture of our being, none the
less there because we are not aware of it*

L SURVIVALS OF THIS ANCIENT FEAR

In this essential fact lies the root, it would seem, of
the age-long misunderstanding and antagonism of the
sexes about which we hear so much. Civilization has
always been a man's civilization. Man has been the ruler,
not merely on account of his superior physical strength
and his supposed mental strength, but also because of
the intense fear with which he has regarded woman and
his desperate determination to guard against her dangers.
Woman frequently, for purposes of her own, has been
willing to fall in with the legends of her danger and
even to foster them. There is no intelligent and scientific
reason for this age-long antagonism between the two
sexes. Biology is proving to us beyond all peradventure
the essential partnership of the sexes, recognizing the
essential differences, to be sure, which nature herself has
decreed, but no rational ground for hostility, fear, and
opposition. The biological difference between sperm
cells and the ovum lies at the base of the difference
between the sexes and runs all the way down through
the history of the two and all the way out to the re-
motest nerve and muscle and channel of the blood
stream. Every gland, whether endocrine or not, adds
to this essential and constitutional difference between
the two, which are not hostile but complemental in
the biological structure and in the life; the one only
supplements and completes the other. One is not superior
and the other inferior, either in body or in mind; they

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

are just totally different This modern scientific conclu-
sion has been reached by the few, surprisingly few; but
we have been a long time reaching it; and the dregs of
the old fears and taboos, the old spells and charms with
their implications, are with us and in us still

A curious survival, that has come down to us, of the
rites and ceremonials springing from the fear of women
is found in the eating of fish on Friday as a sacred ob-
servance. Fish do not copulate to produce young. The
mother-fish lays her eggs or spawn and the male swims
over them until they are impregnated. Savages, with
their age-long fear of the sex-relation, before going into
battle or going hunting would live for days upon a fish
diet, to keep themselves free from the mana, the taboo.
Sex-contact was regarded as unclean ceremonially un-
clean impure, taboo. Hence grew up the verbal usage
which persists to this hour: pure and impure, clean and
unclean, being still used of a relation which is essentially
no different as to cleanliness from eating or from a score
of other bodily processes.

The advocates of feminism of recent years have made
the mistake of insisting that the only difference between
men and women are due to differences in environment,
education, and opportunity, covering thousands of years.
Their case would be strengthened if they both compre-
hended and freely admitted the marked biological dif-
ference between the sexes; and their strategy would be
far wiser and more effective.

Gina Lombroso, a doctor of laws and doctor of medi-
cine, in The Soul of Woman, drawing a sharp distinc-
tion between the traits of women and those of men,

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PROTESTANTISM AND WOMAN

guards carefully the truth that this distinction is not
hard and fast, that the dividing line between the two is
a wavering line, that to all rules there are many excep-
tions, and that many women possess certain masculine
traits to greater or less degree and many men possess
more or less accentuated feminine traits. She makes a
strong point of her generalization that woman is by
nature alterocentrist while man is egocentrist; that is,
woman's life hinges on persons and things outside her-
self; it is always some one or some group, some thing or
things, upon which her destiny and happiness depend;
while man is self-sufficient, absorbed with what is inside
of him, his desires, aims, thoughts, and achievements*
This distinction maintains not merely in the human
race but throughout all creation as between the mascu-
line and the feminine. It is necessary. If the feminine
creature did not thus center her life upon things out-
side of herself, the species would not be perpetuated. If,
on the contrary, the male were not absorbed with the
field and the chase, his prowess and his ability, the young
of the species would not survive.

IL CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN

Now comes the question : What part has the Christian
religion played in the long drama of adjustment through
the ages? It is an easy thing, as many do, to make the
sweeping generalization that all religions and priest-
hoods, rooted and grounded in superstitions of all kinds,
have enslaved the physically weaker women and abetted
the lordship of men. Like all such generalizations, this
one, at various points and various times, breaks down*

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

It Is undoubtedly true that Paul, the most Influential
of Christian writers in the apostolic age, cherished the
prejudices which grew out of the superstitions that gave
rise to the Mosaic code of social laws. The fear of
woman, and her supposed danger, Is evident In these
statutes* Moreover, the tenth commandment, carried
over with the rest into the unwritten constitution of the
church, classed women along with chattels, cattle, and
other possessions which one should never covet Paul,
therefore, a lawyer by inheritance and training, enjoined
upon women, even in the Gentile church, many of the
restrictions observed under the Jewish law. She was
not to appear uncovered as to head and face in public
places; she was not to speak in the congregation; she
was to live her life withdrawn, secluded, and in every
way according to that baneful adjective "modest/' Be-
lieving as Paul did, especially in his earlier career, in
the second coming of Christ and the end of the world
In the very near future, he advised against marriage.
He did, however, conceive that in some instances of
intense passion it was ''better to marry than to burn";
and he did advise that husbands and wives already
married should render to each other "due benevolence";
but at the same time he reminded wives that they should
obey their husbands.

In the apostolic age, therefore, the lot of woman ap-
pears to have been none too enviable. The attitude of
Jesus, the founder of the religion, was undoubtedly ob-
scured by the utterances of the apostle to the Gentiles
which were earlier accessible to the newly founded
churches. The Christian consciousness had not yet

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PROTESTANTISM AND WOMAN

grasped, perhaps has not even yet grasped, the liberality,
the kindliness, the respect, and the penetration with
which the man of Nazareth treated all women with
whom he came into contact. Too much emphasis,
perhaps, has been laid upon the one single ' utterance
of Jesus about divorce for one cause only per-
haps a quick, offhand utterance at that and not
enough emphasis upon his actions which speak louder
than his words. His treatment of his mother, of the
woman at the well of Samaria, of Mary and Martha,
the sisters of Lazarus, of the weeping Mary with the
long hair, of Mary Magdalene, of the woman in the
temple, in fact all the women who circled round him,
is the kind of treatment that, when it becomes universal,
will mark the highest reach of the social solution of this
eternal question.

The attitude of the Roman church, coveting so many
centuries, and expressed by so many church fathers,
needs little elucidation. Founded partly upon the Jewish
tradition of subordination, partly upon that of Greece
and then of Rome, and influenced to a profound degree
by the utterances of Paul, it looked upon woman as a
source of danger to man and placed her in as much
seclusion and subordination as it possibly could. Under
the Jewish law, woman had always been a commodity
to be bought and sold, to be owned like a piece of
property, to be put away at the will of the husband,
unable to inherit, unable to testify in a court of law
except by consent of her male relatives. At the height
of Greek supremacy, woman was regarded only as a
producer of children ; she lived in the back of the house

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

and the men in the front; she never ate with men or
associated with them in conversation, in business, or
in politics. Men spent their lives, the greatest of them,
like Socrates and Plato, like the artists, poets, and
dramatists, in men's associations. No wonder Xantippe,
the wife of Socrates, scolded vehemently. The only
women with whom Greek men ever conversed on any-
thing like equal intellectual terms were the famous
courtesans, like Aspasia, Roman women, subject to the
same legal disabilities as the Jewish, had occasional
periods of freedom and influence under the empire; they
sometimes amounted to something in political life and
councils; but on the whole they occupied the subordi-
nate position common to all the ancient civilizations.

The Roman church inherited much of this classic
attitude and carried the tradition of subjection for
women down into the middle ages. The women were
immured in the castles while the men went away to
fight The peasant class, happier by far than the chate-
laines, could toil in the fields and carry on the farms in
the absence of the fighting men. The supposed romance
of the age of chivalry did not greatly illumine the lives
of women, for they did not interest their knights as
much as horses and dogs and deer did. The women of
the castles and even of the fields, like the women of
Athens, served as mothers of future soldiers and that
was about all. The highest life for a soldier of the mid-
dle ages was an ascetic life, perhaps a monastic life, a
templar's career, never for a moment forgetful of the
danger of womankind, and tolerating women at the
best as a necessary evil in an imperfect world,

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PROTESTANTISM AND WOMAN

III. THE REFORMATION AFFECTS WOMAN

The Rennaissance and the Reformation, bursting
upon the world almost simultaneously, possibly one
the cause of the other to greater or less degree, inevitably
shook old customs and old relations to the very founda-
tion, among these, the relations of the sexes* Under
Protestantism the clergy took wives and established
homes, led by Luther and imitated by all his followers*
The same individualism which let loose the forces of
trade and commerce and launched modern capitalism
among men in this new age of revolt set free from much
of their bondage the soul of women. During the Eliza-
bethan era in England, women became as learned as men.
Many in the Virgin Queen's court could speak five or
six modern languages, to say nothing of the possession
of some knowledge of Latin and of Greek. Elizabeth
herself led them in the new fashion. Under the Stuarts
there came a marked retrogression, culminating in the
debauchery of women under the restoration of Charles
II, in which backswing of the pendulum we see the
often marked fact that human progress comes in waves
and recessions, forward strongly and then back part of
the way. The impetus that woman's freedom and equal-
ity of mind received under Elizabeth has never quite
been lost. The effect of it, although counteracted by
certain hostile forces, can undoubtedly be felt in the
feminist movement of our own time.

Not only was woman dragged backward and down-
ward by the dissolute court life of the restoration of
Prince Charlie, but also by the powerful Puritan move-

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

ment, colored by Old Testament legalism and literalism.
Puritan women, counseled and compelled to the utmost
sobriety of dress and conduct, repressed, suppressed, all
but effaced as to personality and charm, fared little
better than their sisters of the tents of Israel or the
harems of the Moslem world. If a woman walked abroad
at all in Puritanism, she must walk with her eyes upon
the ground, her hands folded piously before her; if she
spoke, it must be ever in low and hushed tones, without
free expression of mind or spirit; if she laughed, it must
be a soundless and a mirthless smile, without exuber-
ance, without abandon. In such a school of repression
were reared the women who came to America and be-
came the mothers of at least the New England half of
the colonial people. Here is a swing back of the pendu-
lum as extreme as that of the gay and dissolute era of
the reign of the Stuarts.

Another epoch of enslavement of women, perhaps the
direct outgrowth of the Puritan movement, Queen Vic-
toria's long reign brought about in the lives not merely
of English women but also of American and other
women as well. During the Victorian era women worked
either too little or too much, according to where they
stood in the social scale. At the top, the women of
quality did nothing but sit in drawing rooms and turn
loose their tongues; hands must be folded and soft,
never soiled with work; constitutions must be delicate,
never robust; if a woman had good health, she was
to conceal it carefully for fear the men, who liked them
pale and interesting, might be alienated. The ladies de-
picted by Jane Austen must be proper, repressed, modest

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PROTESTANTISM AND WOMAN

beyond endurance, with sense and sensibility, with pride
and prejudice, clothed most modestly; for, as a wise
physician of the times counseled his daughters, charms
concealed and skilfully suggested were far more alluring
than charms revealed. Much of the Victorian influence
still shows itself clearly in the twentieth century and in
the democratic atmosphere of old England and new
America. Simultaneously, among the lower classes in
English life women were burdened, and overburdened
with work, in mines, factories, and fields. At the same
time that they were attempting to rear families of chil-
dren, they pushed coal carts, like asses, along the gal-
leries under ground; they were under-fed, improperly
housed, and lived short and miserable lives, the serfs and
slaves of Miss Austen's dainty daughters of the draw-
ing room. Thus at neither end of the social scale did
the Victorian woman enjoy any measure of equality
of opportunity with men.

IV. THE MODERN WOMAN

The feminist movement preceding and accompanying
the world war struck many shackles from the hands and
feet of women. The individualism launched upon the
world at the Renaissance and the Reformation could
not long be thrust into the background so far as one
whole half of the human race is concerned. Political
freedom came like an avalanche into democratic nations
at the conclusion of the world conflict. A measure of
economic freedom came too, but only a measure; com-
plete independence for woman in industrial and com-
mercial life has not yet been won* Social freedom is

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

following hard, but that too trails behind the political
advance. The battle is going on; the chaos is extreme;
the ultimate result no man can foresee* The principal
battle grounds, as at present the war for feminine free-
dom appears, are Russia and America: one socialistic,
even communistic; the other, capitalistic* In both,
women are winning the strife, and liberty is as sure to
be theirs as the sun to rise tomorrow morning*

Even the measure of economic freedom accorded to
women, the opportunity to work in factories, stores, and
offices, and therefore to support themselves in whole or
in part, has produced startling changes in social life and
structure. Increased divorce, fewer children, added inde-
pendence, pleasure-seeking, insistence upon a single
standard of morals and customs all these and many
other symptoms of profound unrest have followed upon
the heels of the economic liberation of women, limited
though it be, from home industry and farm industry,
and their entrance into wider fields* Shallow thinkers
may reiterate that dancing, cigarettes, automobiles, short
dresses, bobbed hair, cosmetics, the aftermath of the
war, cabarets, gin, and what not, are the causes of our
social upheaval and who has not heard the cocksure
utterance of such conclusions from pulpit, press, plat-
form, and Pullman smoking room, in wearisome plati-
tude? But however easy and comfortable these supposed
explanations to the shallow-pated, they are wide of the
mark, far wide; the real cause of the unrest, the change,
the chaos, is economic emancipation, even incomplete
economic freedom, the industrial revolution still going
forward in the machine age*

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PROTESTANTISM AND WOMAN

This one thing seems certain, that when the period of
complete emancipation comes women will have neither
too much work nor too little; they will be neither too
burdened for complete development of personality nor
too idle for happiness* For it is true beyond peradventure
that woman shall earn her happiness in the sweat of her
face. She can never be free, and she can never be happy,
unless she is active, useful, serviceable to the society of
which she is a part. To keep women in idleness is but
the policy of the harem, the diplomacy of men who wish
to hold women in subjection. This policy seems doomed
to fail, so great a force has been let loose in the new indi-
vidualism of woman. Now that she is free to range,
she will find work for her hands to do, mother's work,
wife's work, teacher's work, employee's work, manager's
work, welfare work, politician's work all kinds of
work she is determined to undertake, and what force is
there powerful enough to stop her ?

Political freedom she has won, and a measure of
economic freedom. Spiritual freedom she is determined
to win; she will first define it and then go about to get
it. In spiritual freedom she will include not only all the
literary and artistic pursuits upon which she is already
entering, but also social and moral initiative, liberty, and
equality. Already, indeed, she is grasping at this higher
independence, in the rarefied atmosphere which is above
and beyond the more material relationships.

What the end is to be, what man has the temerity to
forecast? There are those who believe that the end is to
be a woman's world, that the tables of ten thousand
years' standing are to be overturned, that man who has

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

been so long in the ascendant Is destined to find him-
self soon subordinate. This is the prophecy of John
Langdon-Davies in A Short History of Women, the
concluding paragraph of which reads: "Seeing that, as
Chaucer said, women seem to desire domination, and
seeing that few men are happy until they get some one
else to take over from them their will and their liberty
of action, perhaps the world will be happier in the new
regime. But all this is of only partial value as speculation
on the future; for men and women are purely relative
terms, and long before the tendencies of our time work
to their logical conclusions, men and women, as we
know them, will have ceased to exist; and human nature
will have forgotten the 'he and she/ According to our
own personal feelings we may regret that we shall not
live to see that time, or congratulate ourselves on living
at a time which antedates it/' The assertion of Tolstoi
was that already the period of women's dominance has
arrived. He said: "Where is her power! Everywhere and
in everything! Go past the shops in any large town.
The amount of labor there stored is beyond compute
uncounted millions; but see whether in nine-tenths of
those shops there is anything for men's use? All the
luxury of life is wanted and kept up by women. Count
up all the factories. An immense part of them produce
useless ornaments, vehicles, furniture, and trifles, for
women. Millions of people, generations of toilers, per-
ish, working like galley-slaves in the factories, only to
satisfy her caprice. Women, like queens, hold nine-
tenths of the human race in slavery and hard-labor. And
all because women have been degraded and deprived of

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PROTESTANTISM AND WOMAN

their equal right! So they revenge themselves by acting
on our sensuality, and snaring us in their net* Yes, it
all comes to that/' Professor Ramsey Traquair, of Mc-
Gill University, Toronto, writes an article called "The
Regiment of Women," in the Atlantic Monthly of
March, 1929, to which he gives the subtitle "a plea for
equal rights for men in America/* He says such daring
things as this: * 'Today woman never hesitates to break
a convention and never permits man to do so, for the
unconventional woman is a brave creature, defying the
lightning, whereas the unconventional man is an out-
cast/* He holds that in America men are all dominated
and bossed by women, have their noses to the grind-
stone to support women in their social, intellectual, and
recreational life, with the greatest ease to women* The
result is that men do not know half so much as the
women and do not have half so good a time. He is for
putting on a revolution to give men a fair chance in the
world*

The whole matter of the status of woman, when the
logic of the Reformation shall have worked itself out,
resolves itself into the ethics of the beloved community,
of the kingdom of God, of the family spirit in all rela-
tionships of society* That one single utterance of Jesus
regarding divorce possibly merely a quick adaptation
to the prevailing prejudice of this time which he did not
dare seriously to combat will be overshadowed by the
whole spirit of his teaching and his action, which is
the spirit of courtesy, of respect for personalities, of the
Golden Rule, and the beatitudes. To him there was no
discrimination among genders, classes, ages, distinctions

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

of any kind. To him all human beings were personalities
of highest value* To him nobody was rich or poor,
young or old, male or female* Every individual was a
sacred person. The Reformation, when complete, will
share his valuation of a human being and erect his stand-
ards of social conduct. The society or the individual that
puts into practice the ethics of Jesus in all personal rela-
tions will certainly give to women, as to all others,
equal rights and opportunities* We may well anticipate
a time, then, when neither the men nor the women shall
be in the ascendant, but when they shall live and work
side by side, aiding each other, supplementing each other,
fulfilling each other*

106

CHAPTER VIII
Protestantism and the Family

THERE can be no doubt, even to the most casual
observer, that the family has greatly changed in re-
cent centuries and is rapidly changing at the present
time. This appears even more markedly in America than
in Europe, except in Russia. America is young, new, ex-
perimental, and, in more ways than one, Protestant.
Furthermore, the United States has changed almost over-
night from a rural to an urban people, from agricultural
to industrial and commercial life. The results to the basic
social unit, the family, cannot but be revolutionary.

The individualism let loose upon the world by the
Reformation, while shaping and reshaping all other
forms of authority, likewise has shaken the patriarchal
authority which formerly resided in the home. The
Pope, or "papa," is not the only father who has felt the
earthquake. This same individualism which inaugurated
what is called the industrial revolution, the introduction
of the factory and the machine-age, has changed com-
pletely the modes of living in the majority of households
all over the western world. Time was when the home
was the industrial unit, when food was grown and pre-
pared by the family alone, when cloth was woven,
clothes made, hides tanned, and shoes manufactured, all
within the family circle. The home was a little factory,
making and doing everything essential to its independent

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

existence. It could live isolated from all the rest of the
world well nigh from year's end to year's end. To such
an institution every child was an asset and never a lia-
bility, if only it was healthy. Whether boy or girl, every
child added one more pair of hands for the production
of the necessaries of life. Children were so much added
wealth. This type of family life prevailed in America al-
most within the memory of some of us now living and
certainly within the memories of our fathers and
mothers. Where is it now ?

They say that this family factory still exists in certain
sections of old Spain, but it is scarcely found elsewhere
even among the peasantry of other European peoples un-
less it be the Russians. It is the old patriarchal family
handed down from the beginnings of history, even from
the times when, as some wag has observed, "Adam and
Eve raised Cain/' Such a family was, and perhaps had to
be a despotism. The father was the head. In rare in-
stances, among aboriginal peoples, the family circled
round the mother or matriarch; but for the most part the
patriarchal family prevailed among the progenitors of
our race. When population was sparse and the multipli-
cation of children was greatly to be desired, polygamy
in one form or another obtained. The tendency, how-
ever, throughout all human history has been toward
the monogamous family. This same tendency, biologists
tell us, prevails among the higher species of animals. The
natural desire of the higher creatures is toward the single
mate for life. Departures from this instinctive tendency
may therefore be attributed to unusual emergencies, like
those of pioneer or pastoral life, sparsely settled coun-

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PROTESTANTISM AND THE FAMILY

tries, and the need for more fighting men. The knowl-
edge of this innate desire of the human species for the
monogamous union brings comfort to the hearts of any
who may be distressed about present abberations in our
relationships, due perhaps to the over-emphasis of the
new individualism.

I. THE CHANGING FAMILY

In what condition now does the family, particularly
the American family, find itself? Some say it is disap-
pearing and already has all but disappeared. One ob-
serves that we have to have annually a "Mother's Day"
to remind us that we have mothers at all. Families have
removed from the farm house to the industrial centers
for work, for bread and circuses* Nearly everybody in
the family now works, in factories, stores, and offices;
and if nearly every family owns an automobile, it is
often used to take the wife to one factory and the hus-
band to another. Housekeeping and child-rearing, re-
duced to the lowest possible terms, is accomplished, after
a fashion, before and after the hours of work. Father
and mother may see the children a few minutes in the
early morning or in the evening, and again they may
not; hired substitutes often take the place of parental
influences. Every child has now become a liability in-
stead of an asset, and the number of them is therefore
reduced to the lowest limit. Housekeeping is now done
by electricity, by pressing a button here and another one
there. Ready-cooked foods come in from the delicatessen
and the family table, if any, has become a miniature
cafeteria. As children grow up, they scatter to school or

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

factories, to evening dates or duties, and the family
meets more rarely stilL

Space is at a premium in proportion to the congestion
of population; so the family, like the ancient cliff
dwellers, lives prevailingly in flats, crypts, holes in the
wall, with attendant dangers, difficulties, and handicaps
to health, to morals, and to normal living easy to
imagine and not necessary to describe. That this picture
is not overdrawn may seem unbelievable to the more
well-to-do and privileged classes, but it will be quickly
recognized as an understatement rather than an over-
statement by any whose work has led them into the
thickly populated sections of great cities. Even those
families with somewhat better environment and oppor-
tunities lead lives conforming somewhat to the pattern
set by the fashion of the day. The apartments may be a
bit bigger, the delicatessen supplies a bit more liberal, the
electrical housekeeping machines a bit more numerous
and efficient; there may be two automobiles instead of
one; but the general picture remains the same, only
brighter. Manufacture of the necessities of life has been
taken out of the home; woman's work has been taken
away from the home to the factory, to the office, to the
shop. "A woman's sphere is the home/' has become a
laughing absurdity. Unless she is a writer, an artist, a
musician, or a piece worker of some kind, which of
course is exceptional, she cannot for the life of her find
more than an hour's work in the average little apartment
in the day.

Under the present regime of highly developed indi-
vidualism, Protestantism against all kinds of authority,

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PROTESTANTISM AND THE FAMILY

patriarchal and otherwise, the present-day woman, if
she does not have to work to balance the family budget,
finds little to occupy idle hands. She goes to a round of
bridge parties and teas until she gets sick of it. Perhaps
she makes a try at golf or tennis. If she has some intel-
lectual ability and educational background, she may find
diversion and profit in the more serious work of
women's clubs; she may even find the equivalent of a
career in their studies and their attempts to reform and
remake the world. For the most part, however, the
leisured class of women in the present era are hard put to
it to find congenial and saving activities. The idle brain
is still the workshop of that ancient and estimable gen-
tleman who is traditionally responsible for so much of
the sixes and sevens of this world.

II. EXPERIMENTS To MEET THE CHANGE

It is easy to see, from this rapid resume of the chang-
ing family, into what a tangle of questions and diffi-
culties, into what a chaos social, economic, moral and
religious, present-day society is projected. It is little
wonder that our time has been characterized by the
phrase "individualism running amuck"; that it is
marked by numerous and increasing divorces; that chil-
dren get extravagant ideas of what they ought to have
and be, and resort frequently to highwaymen's methods
of attaining their ends; that families are growing
smaller; that many, in the great apartment houses of the
great industrial centers, are living without benefit of
clergy. The time is frankly revolutionary, experimental,
changing and Protestant. It is useless to sigh for the

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

good old days, and the old family fireside. Those days
are gone, and the hearthstone has been turned into a
steam radiator.

Nevertheless, so intelligent a student as Professor W.
F. Ogburn, of the University of Chicago, sums up the
situation in these words: "I believe that it is quite pos-
sible, even probable, that the family will emerge a more
harmonious institution, though such an end is hardly
conceivable to those whose eyes are turned backward/'
He sees in the future a family founded not upon eco-
nomic production, and the necessities of home manufac-
ture, but founded upon affection and affection alone. He
believes, and with justification it would appear, that
family affection is ineradicable in the human heart; it is
instinctive with us to love our own, husbands and wives,
parents and children. Driven by the centrifugal forces of
an industrial and individualistic period, we may fly
apart for a time in an avowedly experimental era; but
the innate desires of human beings are for rest and peace
in the affections of the family group. It is not con-
venience only upon which the unit of social life is built,
but it is founded upon the deepest and profoundest in-
stincts and longings of the human soul. That the most
free-minded scientists should reach such conclusions
ought to give heart of hope to those of us who may be
apprehensive that our most cherished institutions and
traditions are crumbling away. There need be no real
fear for monogamy and the monogamous family; it is
here to stay; it will never be outgrown nor replaced.
However it may be threatened and temporarily even
shattered by the titanic social forces which have followed

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PROTESTANTISM AND THE FAMILY

the industrial revolution, it is too deeply rooted in the
essential soil of the human spirit ever to be torn loose
and destroyed.

Rooted is the right word. Dean W. R. Inge, in his
little volume Protestantism, has made an investigation
of the various elements of liberty, spiritual awareness,
individualism, faith, humanitarianism, and clear reason-
ing, which have contributed to the "tree-like" structure
of Protestantism. The simile is sound, for as in forest
growth the lower branches die off, so with Protestant-
ism; many of its earlier expressions have lived out their
day and become but dead wood or branch scars, on the
stalwart main trunk of the still growing tree. Professor
George Santayana, of Harvard, is quoted as saying that
Protestantism has not yet fully found itself, but is still
in the making. And Santayana can never be thought of
as a propagandist, an advocate, or anything but a calm
and detached philosopher.

IIL INCREASING DIVORCE

The heavy increase in divorce follows inevitably from
these changed conditions in the industrial order and in
the scientific, Protestant age of reason. In America par-
ticularly divorces have so multiplied that something like
one marriage out of seven ends in this way; while in
many cities half the marriages eventuate in divorce. Ac-
cording to the Roman Catholic conception, this state of
affairs is altogether anarchic; and one or two of the
Protestant sects still hold to the same view. Divorce for
them is either never justifiable or permissible only for the
so-called scriptural reason contained in the famous utter-

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

ance of Jesus upon the subject. Most religious leaders,
even in other Protestant bodies, still influenced by these
traditional attitudes toward divorce, inveigh against the
existing situation in the frequently used phrases, "the di-
vorce evil/' "the orgy of divorce/' "the divorce menace/'
and similar utterances. The students of the social sci-
ences, however, untinctured by these prejudices, and ap-
proaching the subject with open minds, seem to hold
that divorce is rather a symptom than a disease, that it
is the inevitable result of the industrial and economic
conditions of the present age, that it is an index to the
increased freedom and independence of women, and that
on the whole it is probably a passing phase of a painful
readjustment.

The utter change from the old-fashioned home, with
its internal industries, with its hearthstones and its fam-
ily table, its hymns and its prayers, to the modern insti-
tution which sometimes is like a dormitory combined
with a short-order lunch room, has created such a pres-
sure of congested living conditions upon husbands and
wives as to render their living together in harmony,
peace, and ease a great deal more delicate and difficult.
Add to this the ability of women to make their own
way in the world, their dread of additional children lest
they should make industrial life difficult or impossible,
all the additional frictions which this dread implies, and
the unwillingness of women to endure what they used
to take as a matter of course or of necessity, cruelty,
abuse, domination, drunkenness, gambling, and a thou-
sand and one other incompatibilities in their mates, and
you have a situation that all the preaching and denunci-

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PROTESTANTISM AND THE FAMILY

ation of religious leaders cannot affect. The increase in
divorces, so far from being mere lawlessness on the part
of the American people, springs directly from the
changed economic order under which we are living* Far
the majority of divorces are secured by women; and that
in itself is enough to tell the tale.

We are rapidly learning from the relentless investiga-
tions of scientific men that the causes of divorce are
rooted more deeply than we used to think* In the opinion
of the most expert sexologists, physical maladjustments
of husbands and wives, due largely to inadequate and
abnormal education when they were quite small, produce
more divorces than economic or any other kind of causes.
This condition can only be remedied by beginning with
the children of the present day and giving them the freest
and most scientific training, answering all their questions
honestly as soon as they are ready to ask them, and ban-
ishing all of the old sense of shame and guilt which has
so long hung like a pall over matters that should be
treated just as sanely and scientifically as proper food,
proper baths, and proper hours of sleep.

Increasingly do students of child training believe that,
in extreme instances, divorce is better for children than
a condition of strained relations, quarrels, and recrimina-
tions, or even repressed anger and restrained hatred be-
tween parents. A child is so sensitive that you do not
need to quarrel in its presence for it to be aware of such
strained relations, and so sensitive that its life may be
bent and twisted irreparably by subjection to the strain.
Unfortunate as it may be for any child to be deprived
of either parent, still it is better oftentimes to be under

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

the harmonious control of just one than the inharmoni-
ous control of two.

IV. "CURES" FOR DIVORCE

The various cures for the so-called "divorce evil/' if
one must cling to the old theological terminology, such
as more difficult divorce or easier divorce, more difficult
entrance into matrimony or easier entrance, uniform di-
vorce laws among the states or federal legislation upon
the subject, all these can never go to the root of the mat-
ter. You cannot treat a symptom with any success with-
out eradicating the disease. The disease in this instance
lies deep in the economic structure, the organized forms
of industrial and commercial life. Legislation about mar-
riage and divorce will not cut to the root of the true
causes. Declaiming against "the disgrace of divorce" and
preaching to people that they must bear and forbear,
kiss each other good morning and good-bye, and estab-
lish family prayer, can never alter the living conditions
in modern apartment life. The question is bigger and
deeper than any one of these poultices or counter-irri-
tants which are so easy to prescribe for the body politic
and which can do so little good. The masses of the
people, experimenting with new ways of living, must
gradually work out their own solutions, aided and
abetted by the best guidance that men of science can give
and that education in human living can slowly provide.
Time is of the essence of the solution, time and experi-
ence and education in the very fundamentals of human
relationships.

One of the fields of education rendered inevitable by

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PROTESTANTISM AND THE FAMILY

changed living conditions in the scientific era and made
possible by the Protestant spirit is the field of family
limitation. The masses of the people have taken this
matter into their own hands in spite of ecclesiastical op-
position and hostility. The Malthusian theory, that the
world can easily become too thickly populated for the
food supply which the earth can produce, has never been
successfully combated nor conclusively contradicted, al-
though it is now over a century old. Whether the masses
have got hold of this truth or not, they are never-
theless blindly and gropingly working at the problem
for themselves. Whether they are aware that the pop-
ulation of the earth may become too big or not they
realize that it is very easy for a single family to grow
too big for the food supply, or at least the luxury sup-
ply, that it can provide; so they are setting to work in
their own bungling fashion to prevent the over-popula-
tion of their own little world. In spite of them, we are
told, the total number of inhabitants of the world has
doubled in the last century; and, as Francis Bacon said,
"It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be/'
Most western nations have set to work deliberately to
avert the danger to their own food supplies. Only a few
whose policy is plainly imperialistic are now fostering
an unlimited birth rate. Italy is the outstanding instance
in the west, and Japan in the east. These nations at the
present time evidently intend to fight if necessary for
outlets for increasing population; and since they want
to be prepared with an indefinite amount of cannon fod-
der, they legislate strictly against any limitation of the
birth rate.

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Most other nations, apparently undesirous of war,
seek to keep their populations more nearly at a level.
France has done this for centuries and other European
nations are now following her guidance* Holland is the
shining example of a nation whose government gives in-
struction in family limitation and eugenics, with the re-
sult that in a generation her population has rather
increased than decreased, to a healthy degree, since the
death rate has been lowered with the birth rate; and
some authorities say that the actual stature of the Dutch
people is two or three inches taller than it was before.
Wherever the birth rate is controlled the death rate auto-
matically lowers, and wherever the birth rate is unre-
stricted the death rate rises with equal steps* In previous
centuries, when the saturation point of population was
approximated, immediately famine, pestilence, or war
took care of the situation by sweeping out of existence
multitudes of people; but medical and surgical science,
together with agricultural skill and better transportation,
has done away with two of these means of decreasing the
population* War still remains as a last resort, and will
undoubtedly be the result if nations do not voluntarily
limit their birth rate.

V. AMERICA AND BIRTH CONTROL

Is America, then, one of the imperialistic nations, like
Italy and Japan, which are looking forward to wars and
conquests and which, therefore, desire an unrestricted
birth rate to provide cannon fodder? So far as our legis-
lation is concerned, it would appear that we belong in
this category. The Anthony Comstock law, a federal

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PROTESTANTISM AND THE FAMILY

statute, passed in 1873, remains unrepeated It renders
unlawful any instruction designed to limit population.
Many of the states have similar laws. In practice, the
people, regardless of their religious affiliations and train-
ing, ignore these laws. The better educated and more
well-to-do classes in particular are able to avail them-
selves of the knowledge which filters out, in sub-rosa
fashion, from the offices of scientific men. The less edu-
cated and the less well off must perforce do without such
information; and therefore these so-called lower orders
multiply more rapidly than the higher ones. The sur-
reptitious, hit-and-miss manner in which the American
people as a whole are handling this problem, nullifying
their own laws, cannot but be degrading morally and
unskilful scientifically. A vast amount of the unrest in
domestic relations is due to this intolerable condition*
It is a realm in which the Protestant spirit has not yet
won a victory, but is still under the domination of unen-
lightened and outworn theological legalism.

Why are these old statutes not repealed? Perhaps the
innate inertia of the human mind bears part of the guilt;
perhaps the age-old determination of the male to keep
the female in subjection is partly responsible; but per-
haps plain ignorance of scientific laws and of economic
and social needs is the chief cause of all. Education does
not always make an individual better or happier; but
certainly the lack of education in the delicate and artistic
relations of domestic life does make people a vast deal
worse and very much unhappier. It is information, edu-
cation, guidance in the most elementary principles of

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

building and preserving a family which the American
people needs more than any other one thing to contrib-
ute to its happiness. The dissipation of ancient preju-
dice, the abolition of old taboos, the letting in of light
into dark and forbidden corners in which there is no real
reason for darkness and for forbidden ground, this the
Protestant spirit yet must undertake to accomplish*

Concerning the rights of mothers to decide when they
will have children and when they will not, Professor
Edward M. East, of Harvard University, in his book
Mankind at the Crossroads has this to say: "If there is
not full freedom, it seems as if both mother and child
are being defrauded of a reasonable chance for life and
health, hindered in their liberty of action, and restrained
from the pursuit of happiness. I now realize what an
unsophisticated person a biologist can be who puts his
trust in rational formulas and natural laws instead of
the dogmas of old folkways. One sees communications
from doctors, lawyers, and captains of industry who
most assuredly do not accept such a statement as axio-
matic* In fact the idea strikes them as carrying within it
a terrible menace to society in some mysterious way.
They fear for the consequences if women are permitted
to depart from the ways of their jungle ancestors, and
to bring forth children by choice as thinking beings. To
him who carries this feeling as a relic of the timidity
which led men to fear to allow women to read, to hold
property, to vote, or otherwise to assume a full partner-
ship in life, one may say with Solomon: 'The foolish-
ness of fools is folly/ If it be a case of anxiety about the

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PROTESTANTISM AND THE FAMILY

disappearance of the human race, one must exercise in-
dulgence, and recommend a course in elementary biol-

ogy."

That the American people may be unconsciously im-
perialistic in aim and may be preparing to conquer or
defend markets in quarters of the earth beyond its boun-
daries is not at all unthinkable; on the contrary, it is a
suggestion which the nation may do well to ponder. It is
difficult to answer the question whether America cher-
ishes such purposes or not. Nations are not always nor
often conscious of where they are going even while they
are on the way. Someone has said wittily and a bit cyni-
cally that America is the least military and the most
warlike nation in the world. Is it true? We have cer-
tainly grown and spread, by one means and another,
until without doubt we are today a great empire, the
most powerful in the world. We began with a little strip
of territory on the Atlantic coast and we pushed our way
by conquest, peaceful penetration, and purchase clear
to the Pacific coast, down to the borders of Mexico, into
the Caribbean, to the Isthmus of Panama, northwest-
ward to Alaska, out to Hawaii and the Philippines; and
where are we going to stop? Possibly the trend of our
history and our far-flung trade lines at this hour, feeling
out for markets in which to sell our surplus goods and
sources from which to draw our raw materials, oil, rub-
ber, metals, and chemicals, may have some influence,
none the less real for being unconscious, upon our desire
for unlimited man power. Who is wise enough to solve
this question?

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM
VI. GOOD RESULTS FROM CHANGED FAMILY

One desirable result comes from the diminished power
of the patriarchal family ideal in the Protestant world,
and that is the lessened domination over the individual
of the old-time family. The patriarchal discipline, main-
tained for so many centuries in family life, undoubtedly
led to many untoward results. The father complexes
and mother fixations, beginning to be so well known
since the popularization of the new psychology, are by
no means idle dreams* The loss of individuality, the dis-
couragements, the twisted and aborted lives, the actual
neuroses frequently traceable to this inexorable pressure
of the family are plainly to be seen by the trained eye
in our vicinity at the present time. Many an employee is
hesitant and afraid in the presence of his superior and
does not know that the origin of his timidity lies far
back in his early years when an iron-handed father or
mother bent and broke his wilL Many a confirmed bach-
elor or bachelor maid, if only they were aware of the
facts, could trace their condition to mistaken love and
oversight resulting in tremendous pressure upon their
young and tender lives. Older people, almost in spite of
themselves and all unconsciously, are inclined to impose
their personalities and their wills upon younger ones;
it seems next to impossible to go back in imagination,
renew one's youth, and put oneself in the child's place*
The adult is so sure that he knows better than the child,
that he insists upon all behavior being adult behavior
like his own* Even the tenderest love and solicitude may
and does often err upon the side of undue influence

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PROTESTANTISM AND THE FAMILY

exerted upon the growing life, and although the hand
that exerts pressure is a gentle hand, none the less the
tender sprout may be easily bent aside. It is extremely
difficult, even for those trained to scientific pursuits, to
measure the tremendous influence of family pressure, an
influence that is felt and manifested through the whole
span of human life. We never recover from our families.
It may be, then, that those centrifugal forces which are
lessening the immediate central pressure upon individuals
in our changed industrial age may not be unmixed evils;
they may indeed be blessings in disguise, throwing the
young outward from the nest, to light on their own feet,
to shift more for themselves, to build independent lives
and strong individual personalities,

On the whole, the picture of family life drawn by the
most careful investigators in this industrial period shows
many high lights far from discouraging. These scientists
seem to believe that the family is a long way from dying
out, that no set of conditions can ever stamp it out, that
society has made no mistake in its search thousands of
years long for a unit, in lighting upon the family, the
monogamous family at that, as the final even though the
imperfect integer round which human organization
builds itself and will continue so to do. So does the
human heart, in its inevitable loneliness, yearn for in-
timate contacts, affections, blood ties, that it will forever
cleave by irresistible attraction to those nearest at hand.
The long helpless infancy of the human young makes
imperative the unremitting care of those responsible for
its coming into the world. No institution, however
good, can take the place of the family, one would almost

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

say, however bad. Social workers prefer as a rearing
place for the child a very imperfect home to any perfect
institution. After all, it is love that makes the world go
round; affection is bread and water to the hungry and
thirsty soul of man* Mother love and father love,
brother love and sister love, though sometimes grown
dim under adverse conditions, and sometimes apparently
disappearing entirely from the life, nevertheless, with the
majority of people, exercises a life-long sway over the
heart. The family will never die.

We cannot appreciably affect the economic forces
which are slowly but surely changing the complexion of
family life in the western world; but at least there are
some things which intelligent training can do for our-
selves and our children and therefore for our homes. We
come round to the same declaration in dealing with all
our problems, and that is that education, the freest and
the best that our scientific knowledge up to the present
time can maintain, leads us out of many a wilderness.
Husbands and wives need knowledge, need training in
the finest of the fine arts, the art of love. Parents need to
learn the delicate and difficult art of being parents; it
does not just "come natural/' All members of families
need to be taught that the art of living together whole-
somely and well does not come spontaneously; and they
need to be trained from the ground up in the rudiments
of this beautiful art.

Without religion in the family not necessarily the
old-time family prayers now become almost obsolete and
impossible, but, what is more important, a real religion,
liberal, individual, and free, permeating every act and

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PROTESTANTISM AND THE FAMILY

attitude and irradiating every face the future of the
family under the individualism of the day will look dark
enough; but with religion, modest and tongue-tied
though it be, that affects the voice and touch of every
father and mother and then logically and inevitably
every child, the home, no matter how complicated by
our industrial atmosphere, may still be a sanctuary, a
refuge, a place of joy and peace.

125

CHAPTER IX

A Telling Century

PERHAPS no one thing has more clearly revealed the
vitality of Protestantism than that one century, the
nineteenth, in which Christianity made its most
powerful impact upon the world. Of course the first and
second centuries, the apostolic age and a few generations
following, made a similar impact, but upon a more re-
stricted area. The spread of Christianity in the early
centuries, due to the fall of Rome and the influx of the
northern tribes, made such an impression upon Europe
as to turn it into a Christian continent; but Asia,
Africa, and other continents then undiscovered remained
practically untouched by the message of Jesus until that
great century during which was written the romantic
and dramatic story of the world- wide diffusion of the
Christian message*

This is not to say that the Greek and Roman churches
sent out no messengers to various quarters of the earth,
for they did ; but it is to say that these efforts of the old
ecclesiasticisms were more or less tentative, more or less
sporadic, and only more or less successful. There is no
discount, for example, on some of the missionary work
done by the eastern or Greek Catholic church, far back
in the fifteenth century. Two brothers, Cyril and Meth-
odius, members of the church in Thessalonica founded
by Paul, volunteered to go and help a Crimean king

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A TELLING CENTURY

decide whether to adopt Judaism, Mohammedanism,
or Christianity as his state religion. Succeeding well,
they set off to convert the savage Bulgarians* There
again they succeeded, and passed on into wild regions
today known as Hungary and converted the Moravians
living there. Here was a triumph indeed; for these Mo-
ravians, sometimes known as United Brethren, have
proved through the centuries to be the most tireless of all
Christian bodies in pioneering with the gospel message.
At one time, one out of twelve of their numbers served
as missionaries while the other eleven supported him.
They prepared the way for such a man as Dr. Wilfred
Grenfell in Labrador and when their work was done,
turned their missions over to others who continued so
systematically that Labrador is Christian throughout
at the present time. The Moravians, expelled from
Austria in 1722, migrated to Herrn Hut, near Dresden,
and were cordially welcomed by Count Von Zinzendorf
who later became a bishop of their church and a pro-
moter of their mission. Some three thousand mission-
aries have been sent out first and last by these tireless
people. Beginning as Greek Catholics, they merged into
the Protestant movement.

Great Roman Catholic missionaries have gone out
devotedly into distant places. Ignatius Loyola, founder
of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, was at first a young
Spanish cavalier, who, wounded in battle with the
French and knowing he could never fight again, decided
to become a knight of the Virgin. At the University of
Paris he found a group of congenial spirits who deter-
mined to do nothing in this world except to spread the

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

knowledge of "the true faith/* Linked with the name
of Loyola is the immortal one of Francis Xavier, the
greatest of all Catholic missionaries* These men invaded
the Orient, and Xavier spent many years in India. He
never chose to learn the native language but depended
always upon interpreters and felt at the end of his life
profound dissatisfaction with the results of his labors.
He wrote to Loyola, "The natives (of India) are so
terribly wicked that they can never be expected to em-
brace Christianity/' To secure the baptism of infants,
with or without the knowledge and consent of parents,
seems to have been, and still to be, the policy of the
Roman church in foreign lands, just to get them into the
fold. This policy cannot but be superficial in its results,
It remained for Protestantism, with all the drive and
force imparted to it by the age of industry and com-
merce, of reason and individualism, to go at the business
of propagation with system, organization, and such a
penetration as to produce permanency in results*

L PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN INDIA
The closing years of the eighteenth century and the
dawn of the nineteenth marked the beginning of a tidal
wave, slow and gradual at first, increasing in force and
power with the advancing decades, that has shaken to
the very foundation old sleeping civilizations and social
structures. First, eighteen chaplains attached to the
British East India Company, began doing a little work
among the people of India. They were followed by
Christian Friedrich Schwartz who went out in 1750 and
gave his life to South India until his death at seventy-

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A TELLING CENTURY

two at the close of the century. Six years before the death
of Schwartz, In 1792 there landed in Bengal, William
Carey, who has been termed the father and founder of
modern missions* He was a cobbler by trade, working in
his youth with a book beside him on his bench and
growing into a Baptist preacher of local reputation and
power. In an assembly of ministers he one time asked the
question whether the command of Jesus to go out and
preach the gospel were not obligatory upon the men of
his day. An aged divine interrupted him, saying, "Sit
down, young man. When God is ready to convert the
heathen, he will do it without your help or mine/* The
young man, however, was not to be so easily squelched.
He sat down then, but he kept bobbing up until, with
the help of some of his friends at home who undertook
to hold the ropes for him to go down into the mine, and
with his great motto which has become classic, "Attempt
great things for God and expect great things from God/'
he finally landed in India.

There he spent a long and honored and useful life,
translating the Scriptures into the native tongue, estab-
lishing a college at Calcutta and presiding over it, until
at his death, after thirty years of service, he left behind
him a strong Christian community. Slowly and surely
he had added converts, carefully trained and deeply
grounded. Carey adopted a policy, not of gathering large
numbers of communicants or scattering the message
widely and thinly over the country, but of training
native Christians to be their own preachers and evan-
gelists, a method which is followed to this day by the
wisest leaders of missionary effort. He assailed social

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THE WORLDS DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

abuses, like the burning of widows upon the funeral
pyres of their husbands, until he persuaded the British
government to abolish them.

Other great men, like Alexander Duff, representing
the established church of Scotland, came out to take up
the torch when the hands of Carey failed* Duff contin-
ued his work in Calcutta until 1863; and while his
converts were not numbered by thousands or even
hundreds, they included many high caste Hindus of
brilliant mental gifts and strength of character sufficient
to influence their fellow countrymen all over India. Duff
was a man of very great scholarly attainment, fine judg-
ment, and strength of personality.

Early in the nineteenth century, America, that new
Christian country, took a hand in this world- wide
movement. Adoniram Judson left American shores for
India, a Congregationalist commissioned by the newly
formed missions board of his church, but on the way
across he decided, after careful study of his Bible, that he
must be immersed, and so he cut himself off from his
supporters at home ; but his action resulted in the forma-
tion of a Baptist missionary society which adopted him
as its representative* Turned aside from the inhospitable
shores of India, not permitted to land by the officials of
the British East India Company one of whom had
said he would rather see a band of devils in India than
a band of missionaries Judson went on to Burma
where he entered upon a life-long work. He endured
untold hardships and persecutions, was imprisoned at
one time for two years, wearing chains. His devoted
wife brought provisions to the jail for him and some of

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A TELLING CENTURY

his fellow prisoners. For months he daily anticipated
martyrdom, heard the axes ground in the morning and
saw fellow prisoners led out to their death. At last, how-
ever, by the intervention of the English themselves he
gained freedom and journeyed down the river Irawaddy
to his home. He remarked later that unless you have
floated down the river on a raft in the moonlight, after
two years in prison, with your wife by your side and
your children round you, you have never known the
height of happiness in this world. By the time Judson
died, he had round him a Christian community, well
trained in the Christian faith, of some thirty-five hun-
dred people.

During that world-changing century, thousands of
missionaries have entered India, and with them have
gone the arts and the sciences of the west, medical, sani-
tary, and agricultural, to increase the prosperity of the
people, to save life and to prolong it, to feed and to
clothe* Along with these products of the scientific era
and the machine age have gone the literature and art of
Christian Europe, until subtly and all but invisibly
Christian ideals have permeated the life and thought of
the people. The attempt of Mahatma Gandhi to turn
back the tide of the machine age and to re-establish the
old-fashioned hand industries of the past, many of his
own best friends consider to be just as futile as the
attempt of King Canute to turn back by his unaided
word the advancing tide. However, Gandhi's interest in
and his admiration for the teaching and the character of
Jesus, shared by his friend Rabindranath Tagore, is
influencing all India* These intelligentsia of the Orient,

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

while little attracted by the organizations and the ma-
chinery of the Christian church, are none the less in-
tensely attracted by the personality of its founder* They
are reading, studying, and lecturing about the New Tes-
tament all over India and putting their own interpreta-
tion upon it; and who knows but that these oriental
minds, with their genius for religion, may in the long
run give us a truer knowledge and a more successful
embodiment of our Master than we westerners have
ever attained? Thus the east may turn round and teach
the west.

IL CHINA AND JAPAN

It was at the dawn of the nineteenth century, in
1807, that the first Protestant missionary landed in
Canton, China Robert Morrison, sent out by the Lon-
don Missionary Society. Because of English hostility, he
made his journey in an American ship; and because of
Chinese hostility, he had to keep secret his purpose in
entering the country. He hired out to a mercantile com-
pany, and at night in a deep cellar, by the light of an
earthen lamp, he toiled away at his translation of the
scriptures into Chinese. It took him seven years to put
out his first translation and to win his first convert; and
when he died in 1834, there were just ten Chinese
Christians in the whole country. Today, less than a
century from Morrison's death, there are schools, col-
leges, hospitals, and orphanages all over China, with
thousands of Christians. The leading men of the new
China are nearly all of them graduates of Christian
schools and colleges, or European or American ones* The

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A TELLING CENTURY

new republic, when it becomes firmly welded and grows
into a united nation, bids fair to be Christian in its
outlook* The science and the industry of western civi-
lization, China will increasingly adopt like India
she cannot help it; and open to criticism as so much
of this western machine-made civilization may be, it
nevertheless carries with it the spirit of the age of reason
which rapidly is laying hold upon the world* China, like
the rest, must ultimately be Christian; and perhaps
China, too, may give us lessons in the genuine article.

The story of Japan, much more startling and dra-
matic, lies open for the least expert observer to compre-
hend. Japan, even more than the Thibet of today, lay
withdrawn from the world, a hermit nation, during the
first half of the nineteenth century. The Mikado by
royal decree had forbidden any of his people to leave
their shores and had declared that if any Christian, or
even the Christians' God himself, should set foot in the
island, he should pay for it with his head. It was not
until 1853 that an American squadron, under the com-
mand of Commodore Perry, sailed into Yeddo Bay,
the harbor of Tokyo, and dropped anchor. Perry, so the
story goes, spread the American flag over the capstan of
his vessel, laid on it the open Bible, read the hundredth
Psalm, and opened the ports of Japan without the firing
of a gun to the entrance of Christianity, diplomacy, and
commerce*

In a half century, Japan underwent a revolution, a
bloodless revolution, in ways, manners, and customs.
She has proved another wonder of the world. She has
adopted European thought and culture, European man-

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

ufacture and arts, European military and naval policies;
she has become the England of the east. Japan set out
to secure a place in the sun. Today she occupies a fore-
most position among the great powers at all interna-
tional gatherings. There followed the inevitable reaction,
and the Japanese wondered if they had not gone too far
in adopting the western ways of life. They became more
nationally self-conscious. They demanded the leader-
ship of their own religious life and got it* Missionaries
today in Japan have retired to the advisory position
which ultimately they must hold in all foreign coun-
tries, and gave way to a local mastery in the local church.
At this moment, one Japanese out of every two hundred
and fifty owes allegiance to some form of Christianity ;
and many of the leaders in the life of Japan are avowed
Christians.

The factory employees in this island kingdom in-
creased in a single year in 1914 from three hundred
thousand to nearly a million; and today there are two
millions of them, with atrocious conditions of factory
life. Along with the benefits that have come from west-
ern thought, the inevitable evils of the machine age have
descended heavily upon the culture of Japan. From this
on, we may be sure, Japan will take up and handle her
own problems; and with such devoted spirits as Kagawa
and a host of others, we may be sure that in the end she
will reach Christian solutions. The story of Kagawa, as
narrated in semi-autobiographical fashion in his great
novel, Before the Dawn, and in the reports of those who
have seen his settlement work in Osaka, stirs the dramatic
sense of any who hear it. A student of Tokyo Univer-

134

A TELLING CENTURY

sity, an artistic and sensitive spirit, he plunges into the
depths of poverty in the slums of his native city, and
amid disease and filth gives himself to the service of
unfortunate fellow-men and women* This man's life
alone shines like a Christian lighthouse in his native
land*

III* THE DARK CONTINENT AFRICA

The continent of Africa appeals to the interest and
imagination of the world at the present time more per-
haps than any other quarter of the globe* Cecil Rhodes*
dream of the Cape to Cairo railroad, while not yet
realized, will doubtless materialize in a very few years.
Already automobile lines make the journey from one
end of the continent to the other* Only with difficulty
can we recall that within the lives of some of us, not yet
old, that great continent for the most part was marked
on our school maps "unexplored." Today there is
scarcely a mile of it, even including the trackless Sahara,
which has not been traversed* plotted, and explored.

Three great names stand out above all others in the
romance of African exploration; and of the three, two
were Christian missionaries. Robert Moffat, an English
gardener born in Scotland, for more than half a century
lived and worked in the heart of the dark continent,
meeting dangers and enduring disease with such courage
that the savages declared concerning him and his helpers,
* 'These men must have ten lives, since they are so fear-
less of death*" At eighty-three, Moffat spoke in London
in 1878 and one who heard him described him as "a son
of Anak in stature* erect, his features strongly marked,

135

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

his venerable locks and long white beard adding majesty
to his appearance * . .his voice strong and musical/*
The story is well known of his arrival among the Boers
in the early part of that wonderful nineteenth century,
of how he expressed his determination to find Afrikaner,
that ruthless, bloodthirsty king of so many united
tribes, and try to make a Christian of him. Said one
Boer farmer, "He will set you up for a mark for his
boys to shoot at" Said another, "He will strip off your
skin and make a drumhead of it/* And another, "He
will make a drinking cup of your skull/* He found
Afrikaner and made a friend and Christian out of him.
Mojffat married an English girl and together they went
farther into the heart of the country and built that
beautiful home at Kuruman which became a center of
hospitality for all passing adventurers and remained so
for forty years* Here David Livingstone, later found his
wife in the Moffats* daughter, Mary.

Of course when one thinks of Africa one thinks of
Dr. Livingstone. Some of us remember when he was
lost for seven years in the blackness of that unexplored
land and when Henry M. Stanley, a New Orleans news-
paper man, set out to hunt for him and found him
"about his Master's business** in the thick of African
swamps and jungles. He found him where he was not
lost. We can easily forget, however, that the great ex-
plorer and physician was first and foremost a missioner.
This Scotch lad toiled through his early years with one
hand upon the loom and the other holding a Latin
grammar or a Latin classic. He took his medical degree
intending to go to China, but while waiting for the

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A TELLING CENTURY

opium war to stop he heard that there was need of men
to join Moffat in Africa. He promptly set out. While he
was journeying to the Moffat home at Kuruman, a lion
met him, attacked him, and shattered his left arm, so
that after he had pieced it together the best he could
himself, it hung limp and practically useless throughout
all the rest of his life. For a time Livingstone practiced
his profession among the natives; then, seeing that what
was needed most of all in Africa was exploration, he
refused thereafter all but cases of great seriousness or of
emergency, and devoted his life to the long journeys
back and forth, in and out, up and down, in opening
up the so-called dark continent to the light of commerce,
religion, and civilization. He thought nothing of seven
years away from the base, or a seven-thousand-mile trip
from Zanzibar to Banana. He discovered the Zambezi
River; his were the first eyes in a white face to behold the
wonderful Victoria Falls; backed by the Royal Geo-
graphical Society and in their employ, he struck out
alone, with his native carriers, and threaded the heart of
Africa with lines of light.

Thanks to Livingstone, we can map it all now. He
never carried nor used firearms. He never fought or re-
sisted the natives. He was known and loved by them all
over the continent. They held his life a sacred thing to
be guarded with their own. He it was who fought the
slave trade with a bitter and undying hatred; he it was
who fought the Belgian atrocities in the rubber forests;
he it was who gave his life and his strength, crippled
though he was, for the lives of these savage peoples, and
they recognized him as a heaven-sent friend* When at

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

last he died, on his knees, in the night and alone in his
little tent on the shores of Lake Bangweola, his boys
took out his heart and buried it there, where a monument
stands over it at the present time; and preserving his
body as best they could in wrappings of mud and
grasses, they carried it three thousand miles, swimming
rivers while they held it above their heads, threading
swamps and jungles, to the western coast where it could
be put on shipboard and carried back to sleep in West-
minster Abbey, In that sanctuary of the illustrious dead
he lies; and many a tourist, wandering in the dim re-
ligious light, comes suddenly upon a great dark stone in
the pavement just above the breast of the explorer sleep-
ing there and reads with a quickened heartbeat the words
that he himself wrote, "May God bless the man, be he
Englishman, American, or Turk, who helps to heal this
open sore of the world/'

Livingstone, often homesick to the heart, longed
many a time for his old father, whom he loved better
than any other human being except Mary his wife, and
when asked one time what he would desire above every-
thing else, replied, "To sit by the ingleside in that little
Scotch cottage and talk all evening with my father/* Of
Mary, he said, "She was always the best spoke in the
wheel"; and once, when starting on an important jour-
ney, he remarked, "Glad indeed am I that I am to be
accompanied by my guardian angel/* When she died in
1862, he who had faced so many deaths and dangers
completely broke down and cried like a child. In his
journal he wrote, "Oh, my Mary, my Mary! How often
we have longed for a quiet home since you and I were

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A TELLING CENTURY

cast adrift at Kolobeng/' And again, "My dear, dear
Mary has been this evening a fortnight in heaven. For
the first time in my life I feel willing to die/' Yet, when
some wondering person once said to him, "Dr. Living-
stone, how can you make such sacrifices?*' he replied,
"I never made a sacrifice/'

The third shining name in the constellation of Africa,
Henry M. Stanley, though not the name of an avowed
missionary, nevertheless marks a Christian explorer,
probably made more thoroughly Christian by associa-
tion with the dauntless but gentle Livingstone, who
carried on the work that fell from the doctor's dead
hands. Not by any means all of the work in advancing
the cause of Christianity and of civilization has been
accomplished by avowedly religious workers, but much
of it by secular assistance, by commercial men and diplo-
mats.

IV. CHRISTIANITY SAILS THE SOUTH SEAS

Turn now to the South Seas, the scattered and popu-
lous islands under the Southern Cross, those dreamlands
in the blue waters, those paradises of the Pacific Ha-
waii, Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa, Australia, all of Polynesia. It
is a mistake to suppose that these romantic regions ori-
ginally supported a life and an atmosphere that was like
Eden for innocence, peace, and sweetness. On the con-
trary, they were homes of atrocities, cannibalism, and
infanticide. Sick people and the old were murdered to
get them out of the way. In practically all of these "par-
adises" the food supply, not so satisfying as one would
suppose as it dropped into the laps of the natives, was

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

eked out by the more strengthening and the more palat-
able human flesh, boiled, stewed, or fried. The names of
John Williams, George Gordon, Bishop Patteson, and
many other martyrs still burn in the sky above these
islands of the South Seas; to say nothing of such other
names as John Geddie, whose monument in the New
Hebrides reads, "When he came he found no Christians;
when he left, he left no heathen/' James Chalmers of
New Guinea, the Binghams and the Castles of Hawaii,
Titus Coan of Hilo, and a host of others have written
their names into the annals of transformation of those
islands of the seas*

We have lately seen many false pictures of mission
work and mission effects in Polynesia, in such popular
plays as The Bird of Paradise, Rain and the like. We
are constantly reading in the magazines how the "inno-
cent children of nature" ought to have been left alone
with their simple and beautiful customs no doubt re-
ferring to the annual sacrifice of a young maiden to Pele
by pitching her into the crater of Kilauea, or to the in-
alienable privilege of roasting human tenderloins over
tropical fires. These indignant journalists get up quite a
sweat over the * Vinegar-faced, lugubrious, and woe-be-
gone religious cranks/' who insist upon putting clothes
upon naive natives. Rather more influential than these
popular half-baked utterances ought to be the words of
a scientist, unbiased if anybody is, by the name of
Charles Darwin. This is what he wrote: "They forget,
or will not remember, that human sacrifices and the
power of an idolatrous priesthood, a system of profligacy
unparalleled in any other part of the world, infanticide,

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A TELLING CENTURY

a consequence of that system, bloody wars, where the
conquerors spared neither women nor children that
all these have been abolished, and that dishonesty, in-
temperance, and licentiousness have been greatly reduced
by the introduction of Christianity. In a voyager, to
forget these things would be base ingratitude; for should
he chance to be on the point of shipwreck on some un-
known coast, he will most devoutly pray that the lesson
of the missionary may have extended thus far/*

Captain Cook, the foremost explorer in these waters,
a remarkably accurate observer, ratifies these words of
Darwin. He declared that from one-fourth to two-thirds
of the children of Tahiti, for example, were strangled or
buried alive. Only two children were usually allowed to
any family. Few of the natives died of natural causes, as
the sick and the aged were brutally murdered. Polygamy
was universal and widows were strangled on the death
of any man of prominence. Gods and demons alike were
worshiped, with human sacrifices and wild carrousels
like the orgies of hell. All sorts of taboos held the people
in bondage. Some existing depravities in these islands,
including the abuse of liquors introduced by white men,
the debaucheries of the half- whites, and the devastating
diseases which have come in with civilization, may not
present a pretty picture; but at least it is no worse than
the original photographs of these "paradises of the Pa-
cific" ; and one who has been in Honolulu, who has seen
the schools and colleges and the huge Christian churches
of natives as well as whites, who has listened to the
choirs and to the Royal Hawaiian Band, as so many
trans-Pacific tourists these days have done and can do,

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

can well say with Hamlet, "Look on this picture and on
that!"

V. THE CRITICS OF THE WORLD CRUSADE
So much for a hasty sketch of a marvelous movement
covering a marvelous century. Perhaps we are as yet too
near to it to appraise it at its proper value and signifi-
cance. We are seldom able to estimate the importance of
our own period of time; this was true, no doubt, of the
Elizabethans, of the artists of the Renaissance, of the men
and women in any particularly world-moulding period,
It is certainly true concerning us who are so near to the
nineteenth century which has so reshaped the world,
Some uninformed tourist or business man travels in
China for a longer or shorter period, seeing only super-
ficially, and sneers at missionaries. He does not realize
that these quiet men and women have carried within the
Chinese wall an influence stronger than any poison gas
or high explosive, an influence which is giving to China
a sense of nationality and making it over new. Some
tourist or hunter goes to India, stays six weeks, six
months, six years, and thinks he knows something about
the deep under-currents of silent Indian life. A group of
such Englishmen, returning on a ship from India, were
discussing the futility of missions and missionaries. One
of them, a tiger hunter, loudly declared, *Tve been six
months in India and I haven* t even seen a missionary/'
He did not observe a quiet, unpretentious gentleman
who was listening to the conversation, Bishop Thoburn
on his way home on furlough. The quiet little man
spoke up, saying, "Did you see any tigers?" The hunter

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A TELLING CENTURY

glared at him and replied, "Certainly* I saw many
tigers/' Then remarked Bishop Thoburn quietly, "I am
a missionary, I have been thirty years in India and I
never saw a tiger/' Men easily see what they go hunting
for.

Most of the objections popularly raised against the
work of foreign missions, on inspection, prove just as
superficial as such remarks. "We have plenty of heathen
here at home. Let us take care of them first, before we
begin sending money and men to those far away/' The
trouble is that we never do take care of those at home;
and we are less likely to, the less we refuse to take a part
in the world-wide task* Charity may begin at home,
indeed, but it doesn't stay there. Those who offer this
objection generally prove tight-fisted enough and con-
servative enough when it comes to any progressive reli-
gious enterprise within the home land.

"So much money is wasted in administration!"
Surely, it costs something to administer any such world
enterprise. Think how much more it would cost if any
government or set of governments should send expedi-
tionary forces of the same size to the same distant quar-
ters. In any such peaceful penetration as this, there must
be not only the expeditionary force but the base, and the
line of supplies. Such a huge task calls for organization
and administration, and such things cost money. On the
whole, however, the expense of gathering the necessary
funds and maintaining the necessary line of communi-
cations in this world enterprise has not exceeded nor even
equaled any other expedition or crusade with which it
may be compared, if there is anything with which it

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

may be compared. Perhaps the greatest cause for distaste
in the popular mind for this word "missions" lies in the
type of administration which has been absolutely neces-
sary, the gathering of pennies in boxes, the women's and
the children's efforts which have had such a part in it,
the meetings and the exhortations, the beating of the
thickets and the combings with a fine-tooth comb for
numerous and minute contributions. Objectors fail to
see that the very minuteness of this work and its far-
flung character deepens the education of the home con-
stituency and develops a home army to back up the
advance guard.

Another objection commonly offered is the duplica-
tion of effort due to the numerous denominations. This
condition, of course, follows hard upon the individual-
ism of the Protestant mind during the nineteenth cen-
tury. Individualism running amuck once more. All we
can do is to make the best of human nature as it exists
and of the conditions in which it is placed. This very
division of effort, however, has compensations of its
own; once again, education feeds and grows upon it,
scatters more widely because of it. Furthermore, evi-
dences begin to appear that, having done its work, this
excessive individualism begins to yield before the in-
creasing spirit of co-operation and merger of the present
day. Certain it is that on distant fields there is little over-
lapping; the missionaries themselves care little or noth-
ing for denominational differences; confronting the huge
task on the firing line, they are welded together much
more closely than the forces hack home. The road to
Christian unity, if one ever appears, will be a road built

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A TELLING CENTURY

upon co-operation in practical effort and not upon defini-
tions, propositions, statements of faith* This world task
will unite, is uniting, the individualistic denominations
as nothing else can do. Protestantism has suffered and
must suffer from the defects of its qualities, the disadvan-
tages of its freedom and its individualism*

If one will but shake himself free from narrow and
provincial views, look beyond the little horizon of his
own city, state, and nation, and try to comprehend the
movements in the whole wide world, he can scarcely re-
main oblivious to the Christian influence which may be
likened to a mighty subterranean river or, better yet, a
whole water system flowing under and through all lands.
It pierces India to the very heart of its thought and life;
it has shaken China loose from its old foundation until
the four hundred millions of that once inchoate empire
are rapidly welding into a national whole; it has made
Japan over new; it has turned Africa from a dark conti-
nent into a rapidly lightening land; it has made of
Australia and Polynesia real paradises to take the place
of false ones. And who can measure what its final influ-
ence may become in changing governments from the
hard and selfish policies of imperialism to co-operation
in the form of courts and councils, leagues and associa-
tions, undergirded by a truly Christian spirit. Imperial-
ism giving way to humanism! What a consummation,
and perhaps just over the horizon! If the nineteenth cen-
tury has seen a world rapidly pervaded by this powerful
and transforming spirit, the spirit of the Nazarene, is it
too much to hope that the twentieth century may wit-
ness a peaceful world revolution in the relations of
peoples, castes, classes, and industrial systems?

145

CHAPTER X

Scientific Benevolence

THE changed attitude of the Protestant world to-
wards charity, if not a revolution, marks at least a
definite and progressive reformation as contrasted
with the views and practices of medieval Christianity,
The church had always held that the giving of alms was
one of its primary obligations. The fathers had enjoined
it upon the religious orders line upon line and precept
upon precept. To care for the needy and unfortunate,
evidently without discrimination, the monasteries and
the nunneries had regarded as a supreme duty.

Not so much the laity, but rather the clergy, were
charged with the dispensation of alms and aid. Naturally
the laity side-stepped all responsibility and turned the
matter of relief over to the monks and the nuns where
they had been taught it belonged. They gave their
money freely into the treasuries of the church, thereby
purchasing merit and safety in another world ; then they
washed their hands of the matter, turning it over to the
priesthood. Naturally, in the religious corruption of the
times, trusts were abused, sometimes funds were misap-
propriated, and scandals ensued* The system lent itself
to such possibilities, and it is not surprising that such re-
sults appeared. This is not to say that no charity was
handed out by the feudal lords from their castles and in
their villages. Many a mendicant got his dinner in the

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SCIENTIFIC BENEVOLENCE

great hall and slept in the stables, like Caedmon and even
tvanhoe; but for the most part It was the abbeys which
took in the wanderers and the derelicts*

I* SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF CHARITY

Gradually after the dawn of the Reformation charity
took on new forms proceeding from a new philosophy*
The old mother church herself has changed with the
changing spirit and the changing science* Today her
charities are usually administered with all the enlighten-
ment and skill which prompts most of the so-called
Protestant welfare work* She possesses, too, an advan-
tage in her centralized authority; she can say to this
man go and he goes* and to this one come and he comes*
For the conduct of great institutions, a central ecclesias-
ticism possesses a particularly strong arm* The individu-
alized, and therefore more or less scattered, resources of
independent charities must suif er from much friction and
lost motion* Furthermore, the handing on of skill and
training from one generation of workers to another lends
an inherited strength to the ecclesiasticism over the less
closely knit organizations of independent character. It
must be admitted, however, that the new spirit and sci-
entific skill even of Catholic charities derives directly
from our scientific era which to greater or less degree
derives in turn from the free spirit of the Protestant
reformation*

When this scientific era had got fairly under way in
the nineteenth century* those charged with the relief of
the unfortunate began digging down to find the root
causes of poverty with a view to their eradication* States,

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

cities, authorities upon whom rested responsibility for
the care of the dependent sought for origins and the cure
of them. The poor laws of England, with the genera-
tions of dispute pro and con regarding them, educated
the English public concerning the matter of pauperism
to a considerable degree of enlightenment. Under the
constant hammering of the Earl of Shaftesbury and his
associates the English public was reluctantly convinced
that their relief measures created the very thing which
they sought to alleviate; and ultimately the English na-
tion brought about the repeal of the whole system. Hard
upon this repeal came charity organizations both in that
country and in this, followed by monumental investiga-
tions on both sides of the water concerning the causes
of poverty, as for example the huge scientific investiga-
tion of Charles Booth in east London entitled "The Life
and Labor of the People of London/' The charity or-
ganization society, or the provident association, or the
associated charities of practically all our great American
cities grew up in the nineteenth century and became the
instrumentality for the relief of distress, occupying the
place once held by the monasteries and the nunneries.
The public delegated its work to organized charity with
a personnel supposed, at least, to be scientific and expert.
These organizations, not content with the traditional
view that "the poor ye have always with you/' under-
took to canvass the causes of poverty and even dreamed
of its abolition.

At first, charity organization contented itself mostly
with immediate relief. But it soon realized that to poul-
tice the sore spot was not enough; the root cause must be

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SCIENTIFIC BENEVOLENCE

found and, if possible, cured. Dr. Richard C Cabot, of
Harvard University, defines the goal of modern Chris-
tian charity as follows: "Suffering, misery-that-enslaves,
is the first, though not the only, enemy against whom
we campaign; not all suffering, but only that which
enslaves. The mile-runner at the three-quarter point is
suffering acutely in body and often in mind also. But he
wants no aid and would never think of himself
as entangled. . . . Freedom, therefore, and the free
chance to live his life with whatever suffering that life
necessarily entails, but no more, is what we want to at-
tain through social work. . . . But because it is his
freedom that we want and because relief of suffering may
enslave him afresh by sapping his energies in dependence,
it is always in our minds that relief by money like relief
by morphine may give ease, but not freedom, and so may
increase the trouble that we wish to cure.**

We are all familiar with the painstaking tabulations
of cases made by charity organization investigators as
to the causes of poverty. We have seen percentages as to
how much was due to sickness and death, to accident, to
drunkenness, to thriftlessness and laziness, to licentious-
ness and the abuse of the sex life, to inheritance from
diseased or defective ancestry, and to the imprisonment
of the breadwinner. We have realized how difficult it
was to draw the line between one and another of these
causes, that heredity might be the occasion of sickness
and death, that drunkenness might either be the cause or
the result of sickness or of thriftlessness or of licentious-
ness. It has gradually dawned upon our comprehension
that all these causes, twisted and intertwined, like the

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

roots of alfalfa teaching down into the dark obscurity
of the muck and the soil underneath, matted and dense,
could not be traced with mathematical accuracy. These
so-called causes became in our comprehension symptoms
rather than the diseases. One of the surprising things that
came to notice out of the period we are now scanning is
the fact that only about a third of the applicants to
charity organizations for aid were found worthy to re-
ceive it: that is, what most of these unfortunates needed
was friendship, advice, wise guidance, and self help. Out
of this fact grew a still stronger conviction on the part
of welfare workers that the causes of poverty did not lie
so clearly on the surface as had at first appeared.

II. CAUSES OF POVERTY

Then came a great new step forward, investigation as
to conditions producing poverty rather than so-called
causes, conditions inherent in our social structure, condi-
tions for which the individuals themselves were not
responsible and which they were helpless to change, con-
ditions for which no one individual could be blamed but
for which the whole social order is open to criticism.
One of these conditions that smote the social worker in
the face appeared in the damage done to the human being
by the new-made machine which dominated our indus-
trial era* Accidents to workmen, putting them out of
business, taking the bread out of the mouths of their
children, appeared to be a condition back of the so-called
cause of poverty, sickness. Many workers, disabled for
long periods by the inexorable machine, could not pro-
vide for their own; some, crippled and maimed, became

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SCIENTIFIC BENEVOLENCE

public charges, took to drink, possibly to crime. The
railways, most prolific of the sources of injury done to
men, the steel mills, glass factories, the mines, all the vast
machinery of production, came under the intense scru-
tiny of the scientific welfare worker, and the noise made
by these investigations caused the "safety first" move-
ment in answer to public demand. Railways improved
the conditions of working for their men, introduced
safety appliances, and greatly reduced the amount of
damage done by the machine to man. Manufacturing
took a leaf out of the book of transportation and like-
wise rendered conditions of working and handling ma-
chines safer for the men who had to operate them. Much
ground has been conquered, though much remains yet
to be desired, in this realm of safety while at work.

Certain industries by their very nature expose the
workmen in them to grave danger. Painters who have
to work indoors with white lead generally break down
in early middle life and often die. Sanding, scraping,
painting hour after hour in confined spaces, inhaling the
white lead, leads almost inevitably to serious poisoning;
and the effects of it, when they fall, fall instantaneously,
and fall hard. Flouring mills and bakeries, all occupa-
tions carried on in dust-laden atmospheres are likely to
produce pulmonary and bronchial diseases which cut
short the lives of the workers. Then the cause of poverty
becomes not sickness and death but the condition under
which the machine age places the workman. The auto-
mobile industry takes its toll of crippled and disabled
men, as do all these other great factories. The reform
of working conditions becomes then a dominating mo-

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

tive with the scientifically minded who take interest in
social welfare. The reduction of risk to its lowest terms
in the processes of manufacture becomes the responsibil-
ity of the whole of society*

Fatigue appears as one of the most fruitful conditions
of the so-called causes of poverty. When a workman
continues at a more or less monotonous task for many
hours at a stretch, the hands lose their dexterity, the
brain its clearness, and a slip in handling the machinery
may at any moment come with disastrous and even fatal
results. This, to say nothing of the temptation to stimu-
lants and narcotics which comes with over-fatigue.
Whereas we formerly listed drunkenness as the produc-
tive cause of poverty in such a case, we now see clearly
enough to assign the deeper cause or condition as fatigue.
The campaign for the shortening of hours made by
organized labor as well as by the Federal Council of
Churches, which is organized Protestantism, has had a
marked effect already in reducing the condition of over-
fatigue. Here again, much ground yet remains to be
conquered by those actuated by real charity for their
fellow-men.

Owen B. Young, of the General Electric Company, is
quoted as saying in a recent speech: "Slowly we are
learning that low wages for labor do not necessarily
mean high profits for capital. We are learning that an
increasing wage level is wholly consistent with a dimin-
ishing price level. We are learning that productivity of
labor is not measured alone by the hours of work, nor
even by the test of physical fatigue in a particular job.

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SCIENTIFIC BENEVOLENCE

When zest departs, labor becomes drudgery* When ex-
haustion enters, labor becomes slavery/*

The scientific welfare workers early discovered how
disastrous to the well-being of large masses of people
was child labor, and early set to work in England and
in America to reduce the amount of it. Child labor legis-
lation, passed by the federal government, after strenuous
effort on the part of sociologists, reduced by thousands
the numbers of children employed in such factories as
designed their products for interstate commerce. The
federal statute could not reach factories whose products
were consumed within the borders of the states. Many
children under sixteen are still employed, particularly in
certain southern industries in the United States, and
upon farms. It is all well enough for a farmer to utilize
the services of his child under sixteen, even to the extent
of keeping him out of school at times for the purpose;
but where a child is put to work in the tobacco fields, or
the cotton fields, or the sugar-beet fields, or in carrying
on a large industry, and is kept out of school for the
purpose, the effect upon both the child and his family is
almost always decidedly unwholesome. The tendency of
true charity, scientific in character, is to broaden child
labor legislation and to make more drastic compulsory
education; for the child which possesses a fair public
school training does not often grow up into a nitwit
who makes all kinds of foolish economic blunders until
he and his family become a charge upon the public
charity.

Unsanitary and unhygienic housing and homes stand
out like a carbuncle upon the body of the social organ-

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

ism. Such crowding as makes it necessary for more than
two to sleep in a room, the density of many tenement
rookeries in all our great cities, the makeshift of tents or
houseboats along water courses and wharves, with their
malaria-breeding mosquitoes, the collections of garbage
and offal, and old fashioned outhouses in backyards be-
hind crowded tenements these pictures are not over-
drawn, but exist at the moment of writing in the very
city where this is written, to say nothing of the bigger
cities all over the country and even the world. The
words of Lord Tennyson are almost as true now as they
were half a century ago when they were written :

"There the smouldering fire of fever creeps along the

rotted floor,

And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of the
poor/'

In such conditions you cannot say that the cause of
poverty is sickness and death, nor yet drunkenness nor
licentiousness. Any of these things may happen, are
bound to happen, in such conditions. It is the condition,
then, that is the deeper underlying cause. All the causes
which we listed thirty or forty years ago for poverty,
dependence, pauperism, are now pushed further back to
the conditions of existing society. Amos G. Warner's
classic work on American charities sums up the story of
the advancing ideas of the Protestant, scientific era in an
illuminating resume:

"In tracing the endless circle of poverty, degeneration
and dependency, the characteristic isolated conditions
sickness, unemployment, defects of character, and ab-
sence of wage-earner have disappeared as separate

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SCIENTIFIC BENEVOLENCE

causes and in their place the social structure itself ap-
pears, conditioning every life and determining the suc-
cess or failure of the weaker groups. The charity worker,
sorting cases in the endeavor to account for pauperism,
was too much concerned with individuals and percen-
tages to see the whole structure; the social missionary
focused attention on habits and defects of character and
settled the matter with the comprehensive and pessimis-
tic proverb : 'Poor folks have poor ways* ; while the sci-
entist, disclaiming all responsibility for unsuccessful
human nature, laid it on heredity. The social reformer
in his turn seized upon some conspicuous social or indus-
trial evil and threw the onus upon society as the ex-
ploiter of the poor, making the wage earner himself the
victim of the situation. Each of these observers saw a
portion of the whole social edifice in which pauperism
and poverty, character and endowment, industry and
environment, are co-ordinated sections. Seeing society as
a whole, at last we arrive at the ancient truth, known
but never yet fully visualized, that civilization is judged
by what it does with and for the weakest members. . . .
With the rise of the Protestant faiths and the develop-
ment of humanitarian feeling, the poor became the con-
cern of a larger group of persons until in our day it is
the province of trained laymen in societies whose mem-
bership is not distinctively religious/'

III. ABOLITION OF POVERTY Is THE MODERN AIM

The attack upon poverty and disability, then, be-
comes quite a different thing in the light of this increased
penetration from what it was under the old assumption

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

that pauperism was inevitable and that the poor ye have
always with you. Two attitudes are possible and have
been assumed. One is the policy of hands off, let natural
forces have play, let the weak and the unworthy go
down, and let the fit survive. The other is the attitude
of saving and preserving human life at all costs in the
belief that while there is life there is hope of growth and
development and possible usefulness. Under the former
policy, charity becomes impossible; it is another case of
laissez faire; the shiftless, the sick, the defective, the un-
fortunate are left to their fate for the good of the social
whole. Crippled and deformed children are allowed to
die; for example, a child born with hydro-cephalis or
with syphilis is put out of the way mercifully. Under
this philosophy, there would be no hospitals for crippled
children, but those able to survive would be allowed to
survive and the others to perish. If one urges that it is
not nature by which we are surrounded but a social
structure for which we are ourselves responsible, the
answer comes from this school of social thinkers, "Then
let the abuses of the structure we have built become ap-
parent; do not palliate its abuses with a false philan-
thropy. The sooner society rises and rebels against
untoward conditions, the better; and it will rebel all
the quicker and reform itself all the more thoroughly
because many who are not strong enough to battle its
waves sink and drown. Charity is only an opiate to lull
human discontent against human injustices/'

The other position holds that human life is forever
precious and promising. Nobody knows when a crippled
or deformed child may turn out to be a Steinmetz or

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SCIENTIFIC BENEVOLENCE

some other kind of genius. Sometimes intellectual abil-
ity is in inverse ratio to physical ability* Allow all crip-
ples or diseased among children to die without help and
you may be shutting out a large amount of intellectual
and spiritual light and leadership from the world. Fur-
thermore, the very attitude of coldness and indifference
is out of keeping with the best instincts of humanity.
Even where it seems necessary to take human life, we
have passed from the torture chamber and the stake to
the scaffold and then the electric chair. We have sought
to make the process as painless and humane as possible.
The natural tendency of human nature at its best is to
exercise mercy, to prolong life; and the mere neglect to
exert every effort blunts the sensibilities of those respon-
sible for the care of the suffering. A sharp division exists
among physicians as to whether it is ever justifiable to
let Nature take her course and to permit a human life to
sink beneath her waves; and when it comes to the actual
pinch, it is the rarest thing in the world to find a physi-
cian willing to take a chance against the preservation of
a human life. They may theorize as they will, but faced
with an actual situation they rarely fail to exercise the
fullest charity.

Concerning such matters as eugenics, however, there
is little room for difference of opinion. The manifest ob-
ligation of the state would dictate the utmost care to
prevent the propagation of unwholesome children. The
segregation of those afflicted with heritable diseases, with
feeble-mindedness, with incorrigible criminal instincts,
and possibly the sterilization of those so afflicted, has al-
ready to a degree been adopted by governments and will

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

undoubtedly increase. Many people should never be al-
lowed to marry or to mate; and nobody but the state
can deal with such classes.

The attack upon the conditions which produce pov-
erty has increasingly become organized, systematized,
scientific* If a certain standard of living has been ascer-
tained to be essential for health and wholesomeness
and it has then organized efforts must be put forth to
promote and preserve such a standard* About twenty-
one hundred dollars a year is essential for the support of
a family of five, the federal bureau of labor has esti-
mated. To secure this standard for all the people in all
America will require an attack all along the line. Labor
has found it necessary to organize for collective bargain-
ing. A type of socialism harmonious with the teachings
of Jesus, which calls itself Christian socialism, has been
adopted by many social and religious leaders. Social
settlements, whose primary object is not relief but rather
first-hand study of social conditions and the exercise of
friendliness between students and workers, have multi-
plied in congested centers of population. All this mani-
fests the scientific and Protestant spirit at work in an
attempt to remedy the defects of a scientific machine-
made age. It is science correcting itself.

Within the last generation in America the right of
labor to organize has won recognition. That labor is not
a commodity to be bought and sold in the cheapest mar-
ket, has at last become a truism. Labor is flesh and blood,
home and children, spiritual welfare. No man has the
absolute right to hire and fire at will. The bigger his
factory and the larger the body of his employees, the

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SCIENTIFIC BENEVOLENCE

less absolute right has he to conduct his business as he
pleases. His business affects too many lives, both of
workers and consumers. Society makes his business; he
is responsible to society. These statements, which seem
to us axiomatic today, would have startled and shocked
most business people thirty years ago; which only goes
to show how far we have come under the guidance of
the scientific spirit in the attack upon social injustice, so
productive of poverty and pauperism.

Social settlements, in which students of society and
economics voluntarily take up their homes in massed
districts of workers, like Toynbee Hall in London and
Hull House in Chicago, have multiplied and have served
as invaluable scouts out beyond the firing line of social
reform. Graham Taylor, in Chicago, giving up a home
of comfort and even of luxury, to go and live among the
submerged ; Miss Jane Addams, leading a long and hon-
orable life devoted entirely to this pioneer work; and
scores of others in America carrying forward the tradi-
tion and spirit of Arnold Toynbee in England who
can say how much these trail blazers in the wilderness
of social service have done in elevating the standards of
living among hand- workers?

Some governments in the western world have taken
tentative steps toward the provision of old-age pensions
for those who need them and some leaders in industry
have followed. Widows' pensions have in like fashion
received some attention. Minimum wage scales for
women workers have passed some state legislatures, as
have also workmen's compensation acts. Such measures,
destined to increase with our increasing enlightenment,

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

some would not call charity at all but merely justice.
Very well, let them be called what you will, they are
friendliness merged with science, humanitarianism allied
with economics; and that is the spirit of free inquiry and
the scientific handling of social conditions in the Protes-
tant age.

Meantime, for the immediate need hospitals and insti-
tutions for the care of the defective and the unfit increase
in numbers. The old-time prejudice against the hospital
and even the fear of it is rapidly fading away. Even the
rank and file of the people have come to know that
the hospital is the best place for sick people, and that the
hospital is the best place in which to die. Women seek
hospitals increasingly in childbirth, realizing that the
chances of fatality are far less than in the private home.
While fees are paid for service in hospitals by those able
to pay them, many patients receive the benefits free of
charge. The hospital, then, is part charity and part eco-
nomics, partly a poultice upon the sore of humanity and
partly the scientific surgery which goes to the root of the
ulcer. Who could draw the line in the great and growing
system of hospitals between the element of charity and
the element of social science? The two go hand in hand
as they should and do in the constantly extending attack
upon the roots of misfortune in human life.

The attempt of social science is to give to every indi-
vidual certain opportunities, variously listed by various
students. Dr. Richard C. Cabot gives two or three of
these lists, as for example: "Self support (with one's
family), self expression, self respect, respect of others,
justice/' Another list reads: "Adventure, security, recog-

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SCIENTIFIC BENEVOLENCE

nition, response. Of course Dr. Cabot recognizes the lim-
itations of these expressions. "Self support" who is
really self supporting? We all depend on our fellows, on
society, on Nature, on the round of the seasons, on the
very insects, germs, and bacteria* "Self respect" how
many of us can honestly respect ourselves, with all our
faults and failings, our limitations and egregious blun-
ders? How much room is there for real self -respect? If,
however, we accept the very fine definition of morality
which Dr. Cabot puts forward, as the organization of all
a person's desires around his master desire, we escape, as
he assures us, the reproach of censoriousness and the
deadness of conventions. "A person does wrong when he
violates, not my standards or the world's customs, but
his own ideals. He is fooling himself." Then Dr. Cabot
adds in italics, "The social worker's goal, therefore, is
the relief of misery and unhappiness so that people's en-
franchised and organized desires can find their expression
in the social relationships which are part of their natural
outlet." Walter Lippman's figure of speech in A Preface
to Morals is illuminating: "Morality thus becomes a
traffic code designed to keep as many desires as possible
moving together without too many violent collisions."
As another expert has summed up the work of social
science, it is neighborliness, nothing but neighborliness.
In rural or primitive sections, people have neighbors;
but in congested districts society has to provide them,
pay them, maintain them. We cannot live without
neighbors, and the great cities destroy neighbors. Good
Samaritans are hard to find in massed population; and,
first or last, every one of us needs a good Samaritan.

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Here, then, is the mission of Christian charity in human
life. The word "charity" has been taken out of the thir-
teenth chapter of First Corinthians and "love" substi-
tuted; and one wonders if there is not loss here* There is
no greater word than love, to be sure; but charity is love
with a certain connotation. It is too good a word to lose.
Neighborliness, fellowship, the family spirit, the beloved
community, the kingdom of God this is the central
thought of Jesus regarding human relationships; and
this is the far-off divine event to which the social crea-
tion moves. Once again, this consummation involves the
process of education, beginning with the youngest and
the remotest and not neglecting those of advancing ex-
perience and those in the very thickest of the social whirl,
long-drawn-out education, widespread education, the
education of mind and also of heart. One is not a neigh-
bor by instinct; one is not a devoted member of a family
by intuition. It takes long training to live in a house by
the side of a road and be a neighbor to man.

162

CHAPTER XI

Reason and Education

Afar back as our information extends in antiquity,
both in classic lands and in some others, we hear
of attempts, more or less systematic and organ-
ized, to teach and train the youth* Most often, of course,
religion occupied the chief place in such instruction. Is-
rael had its schools of the prophets, and its synagogue
schools in every village for children who did not expect
to become professional religionists* The chief rabbis at
Jerusalem, members of the Sanhedrin, like Hillel and
Gamaliel, gathered their disciples about them to train
their successors for rulership in the theocratic state.

Greece had her schools of rhetoric and even her pre-
tentious universities, aside from the informal groups
who met about the persons of her great philosophers,
Athens, Tarsus in Asia Minor, and Alexandria in
Egypt, call up to our minds pictures of noble institutions
of learning that flourished in many other cities as well.
The idea of a university dates well back into ancient
times. No doubt such institutions varied greatly in plan
and in efficiency. No doubt some of them, like the schools
of the mandarins in the Chinese empire, spent their time
in the mere drudgery of memorizing the classics of their
civilization and of their religion. If one would gain an
idea of the methods and the atmosphere of such a uni-
versity, he needs only to go to Cairo and stroll through

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

the courtyards and the colonnades where Mohammedan
students from all over the world assemble in Al-Hazar,
perhaps the largest university in numbers in the world.
Here Arab and Indian, sitting upon the pavement or
lying prone, con over the Koran, chanting it over and
over in sing-song voices, with here and there a teacher
the center of a little group, as far as possible from the
ideas of a university that prevail in our western and
Protestant world*

The church through many centuries paid little heed
to learning among the people and even frowned upon it.
All through the early and middle .ages, roughly speak-
ing, there were colleges only for the clerics. The rank and
file could neither read nor write. The monasteries held
the only libraries and the only instruction in a darkened
world. Joan of Arc and all her generals could not sign
their names. St. Patrick, a Scotch lad, captured in Ire-
land, broke loose, found refuge in monasteries and con-
vents as far away as the south of France and Italy,
where he picked up learning and made his way back to
Ireland to teach. Books were for the clergy; knowledge
was for the priests; the people were supposed to be better
off without it. The subtle policy of the church in those
distant centuries seemed to be to keep the people in ig-
norance in order that they might be so much more easily
handled, managed, dominated.

I. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

Then came the Renaissance, the revival of learning,
accompanied by the Reformation. Greek literature, art,
and philosophy came surging into the west like streams

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REASON AND EDUCATION

of gold from the Orient* Men went into the east to
bring it back with the eagerness with which they would
have gone after gold* Doubtless the crusades, to a degree
at least, prepared the way for this resurgence of curiosity
and the desire to learn and know. Be that as it may, the
masses of the people began to demand that plough boys
and housemaids be able to read the scriptures; and rap-
idly the old monkish fastnesses of learning opened their
doors to the invading hordes of the curious populace*
Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, Louvain, and scores
of others, threw off monasticism and took on a secular
air. In the last four centuries under Protestantism
changes have come, in rapid and revolutionary fashion,
to transform the ideals and the practice of the educa-
tional process.

The separation of church and state, which became
inevitable wherever the Protestant spirit carried through
to its logical conclusion, resulted in the secularization of
the whole educational purpose and machinery. Where
church and state are kept apart, education naturally be-
longs to the state, not to the church; for the logic of
such situation is inescapable, that not religion alone is
the field for human culture and training, but all depart-
ments or all phases of human thought and learning. Of
course, the church, in all lands and of all denominations,
has sought to hold fast the prerogative of training youth
under its own auspices and grounding them deeply in
its own dogmas. Parochial schools and denominational
colleges still exist, and no doubt will continue to exist,
so long as religion is sectarian; but the tendency even of
such institutions in a democratic environment is to

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

merge into a freer and larger atmosphere* The separation
between church and state in any democracy may be de-
layed, but only delayed; sooner or later all institutions
under state supervision must, in the nature of the case,
become secularized. This process is going forward, even
in countries of the Protestant world which still maintain
a state church* The public schools of England, so-called
because they are not public, do not represent the mass
education of the English people. Even at the two great
English universities, secularization goes forward slowly
for nearly everything moves slowly in conservative
England but surely. The German system of education
has long been popular and secular. The United States,
with its rigid separation of church and state from the
very beginning, sends all its children, with almost neg-
ligible exception* to public schools that are really public*

IL MORE SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION

Many of the older colleges in America, dating back
to Colonial times, though founded by denominations
and fostered under denominational care, have outgrown
sectarian bounds and today are just as secular and free
as the avowedly state institutions* Who can think of
Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Williams, or even Princeton,
as denominational institutions? Indeed, in the last gen-
eration, we have seen such universities as Vanderbilt,
Northwestern, and Chicago, founded by denominational
money and begun more or less under denominational
supervision, expand almost overnight into thoroughly
non-sectarian organizations* Such destiny aWaits any
college or university which is to keep pace with the

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REASON AND EDUCATION

times* Many denominational colleges, some struggling
for a meager existence and some fairly flourishing, still
dot the country; but these tend either to burn out like
candles or to transcend their denominational beginnings
and control. The future and the spirit of the times
promise very little for purely denominational attempts at
education. Denominations themselves seem to be looking
about beneath the huge legs of progress to find them-
selves dishonorable graves; amalgamation and co-opera-
tion seem to be the order of the day, not only in
commerce and industry, but also in religion; it may well
be that many of these struggling denominational insti-
tutions will find their future solved for them through
the merger of their respective governing bodies, which
will, of course, mean increasing freedom and increasing
secularization. Education that is real education can never
be labeled with sectarian names nor limited with sec-
tarian bias.

III. MORE FREEDOM IN SCHOOLS

The educational world owes a heavy debt to the spirit
of freedom which came in with the revival of learning
and the Protestant Reformation; but what it owes al-
ready is not to be compared with what it will owe pro-
vided the spirit already manifested, more or less timidly
and more or less in spots, shall go to its full and logical
conclusion. The ground conquered is as nothing com-
pared with the ground that yet remains to be conquered.
The old traditionalism hangs on and refuses to die; the
ancient ideals of the synagogue school, of the Moham-
medan university-by-rote, of the cloistered monastery,

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

still too often overhangs school rooms and college halls.
The attempt to pour knowledge into a student's head
through a funnel, as you pour gasoline into a tank or
water into a barrel how hard it is to get away from
that conception of education! The attempt to load up a
student for life as we used to charge the old-fashioned
muzzle-loading shotgun we still keep at it in a breech-
loading age.

Discipline in a schoolroom, why should we have dis-
cipline? The tortures to a child of sitting "in position/'
hands folded upon the desk and feet not touching the
floor! Or standing lined up in a row along the wall "at
attention/' These barbarities still endure; and teachers
still spend a great deal of their time in their institutes
and conferences talking about "discipline/* The most
enlightened of elementary schools today are ridding
themselves of the whole militaristic idea and introducing
freedom, the normal behavior of human beings in a
social environment. The table is taking the place of the
desk; and an informal gathering round a table to under-
take some project is taking the place of the old class.
Children are allowed to whisper. Think of that, actually
to whisper! What a revolution that signifies to some of
us who in childhood were taught that whispering was
just about in the same class with murdering. That an-
cient day is rapidly fading. The best schools operate with
the utmost freedom, with the least possible amount of
supervision and restriction upon the children. Order
there must be, of course, as in all society, but a truly so-
cial order. What is called the project method, the turning

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REASON AND EDUCATION

of the children loose to accomplish certain ends in their
own individual ways, grows in favor and in use.

IV. MORE FREEDOM IN COLLEGES

The same spirit is increasingly applied to institutions
of higher learning. The college and the university are
shaking off the old-time methods of the funnel and the
muzzle-loader. Gradually the principle which has long
been put into words and seldom into practice, that edu-
cation is a drawing out instead of a pouring in, an
unfoldment or development instead of a stocking up,
displaces ancient practice. Higher education, like every-
thing else in our experimental age and country, is feel-
ing its way toward new developments and is discontent
with old cut and dried methods and atmosphere. James
A. Garfield's aphorism that a log with Mark Hopkins at
one end and a student at the other constitutes a college
is at last beginning to sink into the comprehension of
up-to-date educators. With all the piling up of magnifi-
cent buildings and endowments, with the addition of
libraries, laboratories, art galleries, and observatories, we
nevertheless comprehend increasingly that Mark Hop-
kins, the great teacher, cuts a larger figure in true educa-
tion than all the material equipment. If one had to
choose between a great institution without a teacher of
genius, and a teacher of genius without a great institu-
tion, one would far better take the latter.

One college executive in this country at least has de-
clared that he never intends to build handsome struc-
tures or to solicit funds for great equipment. He intends
to look carefully all over the nation for magnetic teach-

169

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

ers not necessarily famous men who have written
books or made contributions to science or who have dis-
tinguished themselves as research hounds, but teachers,
alluring, inspiring, charming; and then he intends to
pay them handsomely according to their worth. Fur-
thermore, he limits the size of his college to seven hun-
dred, does not intend that it shall ever grow beyond that
number, a certain percentage of them boys and a smaller
percentage girls. Besides all this, he told me that he
wished to abolish as rapidly as possible the old-time
lecture method and the old-time text-book-and-quiz
method in the college class room. He defined the lecture
method as the transference of words from one set of notes
to another by means of a fountain pen with as little in-
tellectual effort as possible, and the quiz method as a
sort of Sherlock Holmes procedure by which a professor
sought to ascertain how little knowledge a student pos-
sessed. Instead of these antiquated methods, the classes
at Rollins College in Florida, under the regime of Dr.
Hamilton Holt, meet for two-hour periods, and sit
down at tables with their professors, with books or
apparatus scattered about over the table. There the class
confers with the professor, with one another, with the
books, or with their fountain pens, as impulse and in-
terest may direct; they even get up and go without say-
ing "by your leave/' to the library after a reference, to
the laboratory after some object of inquiry, to their
room after memoranda, or wherever they please. There
is no restraint or constraint. The atmosphere is purely
one of informal interest and inquiry. In place of exami-
nations, students prepare papers, wherever they please

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REASON AND EDUCATION

to prepare them, with all the tools they care to use in the
preparation; their attitude toward the subject, their in-
terest in it and enthusiasm about it, is gauged rather
than their knowledge of it* None of us knows very much
about anything; and it is rather our interest and curi-
osity that count. Given these, we shall educate ourselves
in the long run.

A man by the name of Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn got
into a mixup at an old conservative New England col-
lege because of his new-fangled ideas and got himself
fired from the presidency. Glenn Frank took him to the
University of Wisconsin, gave him a building all to
himself, a set of a dozen professors or so, and two hun-
dred picked freshmen to experiment upon. Dr. Meikle-
john set out to make his little college inside of the big
university a sort of "beloved community/' to use the
phrase of Josiah Royce. The community chose its own
subject of study, fifth-century Athens, its politics, art,
philosophy, literature, religion, and everything pertain-
ing to this golden period of Greece. They studied noth-
ing else the first year, but that meant that they studied
nearly everything under the sun. The second year, they
chose America. Imagine the parallel between these two
civilizations that those young fellows could not help
drawing! Here, too, the utmost informality of relation-
ships between professors and students prevail, a sort of
adaptation of the Oxford tutorial system, only carried to
greater lengths.

Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio, a little old
institution founded by Horace Mann, fell into the hands
of a hydraulic engineer, Arthur E. Morgan, who had

171

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

solved the flood problem at Dayton, When they asked
him to become president of the college, he agreed on one
condition, and that was that all the trustees and faculty
should resign; then he went to work and built it all
over again. He planned for a six-year course especially
designed for students who desired to earn part or all of
their expenses* Each student spends six weeks at the
college and six at some factory or office or store within
"Ford distance/* in contact with the business world
and earning some money. Students work in teams of
two, one in college while the other holds down the job,
and changing places with each other at week-ends six
weeks apart. Relations exist between certain corporations
and the college by which any student recommended for
a position is accepted by the business house. Thus a
double process of education goes on in the student's life,
partly concerned with theory and partly with practice,
The project method plays a part in much of the instruc-
tion; for example, one party of students in horticulture
gave their attention to the task of developing a blueberry
one inch in diameter* At last accounts, they had come
within a quarter of an inch of the requirement, a pretty
big blueberry at that!

The great teacher and the informal method! When
it is recognized that the magnetic teacher is in demand,
he will be developed. Somebody has declared that among
the thousands of professors in American colleges, there
are not five hundred who are expert teachers. The fault
is in the system which demands research results, the
printing of books and the gaining of fame as writers and
scholars, instead of demanding the cultivation of such

172

REASON AND EDUCATION

personality as will first charm, then stimulate, then in-
spire the youth who come to the teachers' doors. Put a
premium upon such magnetism and the response will
appear. With all his faults as a martinet, there is some-
thing of these qualities, so greatly to be desired, in the
German schoolmaster* He gives his personal attention to
each individual child; he stands eagerly before the pupil
who is struggling with his problem, feeling for his lost
word, trying to see through a confused situation, until
when the situation is solved, the teacher all but dances
up and down in joy, may throw his arms around the
boy and hug him in his delight. No pupil however back-
ward can fail to respond to such sympathy and stimula-
tion.

Something of that sort the colleges begin to seek.
William Rainey Harper did such great teaching feats at
Yale University in the late eighties of the last century;
then he gave up his chair to become an executive and to
build a great university in the west. He did it and died
early; and one sometimes wonders whether all this prac-
tical endeavor was worth while in comparison with the
exercise of his genius as a teacher. He had as dry a subject
as any man ever had to impart to his fellow-men, the
Hebrew language; yet he filled his study so full of in-
spiration and aspiration and enthusiasm on the part of
his students that they worked for him four, five, six
hours out of the twenty-four until all the rest of the
professors in the divinity school were jealous of the
amount of time that Harper took. That is the magnetic
power upon which the colleges at last begin to put a
premium.

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Mass production may do very well in industry, but
it will scarcely do finally and satisfactorily in education*
For the most part, mass production, on account of the
rapid increase of our numbers without a corresponding
increase in our school funds, still holds the center of the
stage. We grind children through the hopper of our pri-
mary and secondary schools, without regard to differ-
ences in temperament, taste, interest, or brain capacity.
We try to turn them out all standardized, all built on
the same model, like a cheap motor car as it slides off
the assembly line. Some few superintendents and prin-
cipals, making bricks without straw, are beginning to
sort out the materials which come to them in the shape
of little human lives and try tentatively to rank them
according to native ability and inclination. Certain col-
leges carry the process further still. Not every freshman
who enters college can attain the degree of B.A., B.S.,
or what not; not every freshman should go clear through
to a degree at all; a college should set itself to answer
the question as to what kind of degree, if any, the stu-
dent should get.

Swarthmore College undertakes this discrimination; it
presents two types of degree, the ordinary A.B. and "the
A.B. with honors." At the end of the sophomore year,
the students decide for themselves at which one they will
aim. For the honors degree, they must set a certain aca-
demic standard in their first two years, and develop as
well certain qualities of character, perseverance, trust-
worthiness, and determination, to show themselves fit
to aspire. Then the honor student is allowed to select
from ten to a dozen fields of study not departments,

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REASON AND EDUCATION

like Greek, mathematics, biology, but a whole wide field
covering many lines of human inquiry and looking
toward a roundness and a breadth of intellectual devel-
opment and character formation. The idea has attained
success enough to be adopted at Princeton, Oregon, and
several other American colleges.

V. STUDENTS TAKE A HAND IN MANAGEMENT

Increasingly educational institutions give students a
chance to say something about the management of their
own education* Self government has become an estab-
lished principle in many of them, primary, secondary,
and collegiate. President Hopkins, of Dartmouth, took
away the breath of the educational world by asking the
student body for criticisms of the curricula, the educa-
tional policies, and the ways and manners generally of
the institution. The students took the matter seriously
and intelligently, and offered suggestions which led to
actual changes and improvements. At Harvard a com-
mission of students which was asked to report concern-
ing certain conditions, did so to such advantage that a
benefactor donated eleven millions of dollars to carry
out their recommendations. This gift, too, is designed
for the building of a small college within the college,
after the Wisconsin plan, and after the much older one
prevailing in English universities. When certain Harvard
alumni criticized the authorities for paying heed to stu-
dents' suggestions, Professor Rollo Walter Brown re-
plied that some of the best suggestions of policy had
come from students themselves concerning the construc-
tion of this new college within the college.

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Glenn Frank, president of the University of Wiscon-
sin, has given carte blanche to students and students'
publications to criticize freely and frankly their profes-
sors. They may list the names of their teachers, with
descriptions of their courses and comments as to whether
they are dry as dust or bright and stimulating and profit-
able. The result is that Glenn Frank may rock and reel
in his position; but it is to be hoped that his trustees
are men enough to see the value of his attitude and to
stand behind him until the last gun is fired. Mediocrity
and incompetence fear the honest voice of plain and
trenchant criticism, but talent and originality are not
afraid, provided only the authorities behind them will
lend them honest and faithful support.

Educators begin to pay heed to the voice of youth.
Supple and elastic minds, not yet set and hardened by
age, may sometimes see with greater clarity than even the
maturity of experts can attain. If William James strikes
anywhere near the truth when he declares that new ideas
cannot penetrate a brain over thirty -five years old, then
certainly young people brought into contact with edu-
cational questions as a daily cause for pondering, may
well reach judgments sounder and stronger than those
which come from older and more cement-like minds.
One who has intimately to do with a large student body
would infinitely prefer to seek a verdict from a student,
on any important moral issue at any rate, if not upon
actually a matter of educational policy, than from any
townsman outside the academic limits. The young
student mind possesses a sensitiveness and a fresh, un-
spoiled outlook that does not characterize the rank and

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REASON AND EDUCATION

file of the business and social world. It was townsmen
who caused all the trouble in Tennessee, not students.
It was townsmen who secured the discharge or suspen-
sion of an eminent psychologist and a sociologist at the
University of Missouri over a questionnaire addressed
to the student body; the sympathy of the students all
held with the discharged professors.

Freedom of teaching, freedom of inquiry, is seldom if
ever threatened by a student body; and since contact
with young minds tends to preserve youth and elasticity
in those most intimately associated with them, it is sel-
dom if ever that academic freedom suffers at the hands
of academic men. It is the townsman, the opinionated
newspaper man, the business man, the alumnus, the
meddlesome and fossilized preacher, that strikes at the
liberties of education and inquiry* Left to students them-
selves, what the Germans call the lehrfreiheit and the
lernfreiheit, the freedom of teaching and the freedom of
learning, will never be in danger. These, any college or
university that is true to its calling must preserve, or
forfeit the proud name of college or university* These,
the Protestant spirit has created; and for these, the Prot-
estant spirit must do and die; for when these fail, then
we revert to the traditionalism and authoritarianism
against which we rebelled, we fall back into the pit from
which we were digged,

VI, WHERE WILL THE PRESENT TREND LEAD Us?
The logic of the Protestant spirit in America calls,
then, not so much for more and bigger colleges and uni-
versities, but for better ones. Many of the leading insti-

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

tutions of learning are becoming too big, maybe even too
rich; and they are not so good as they might be. Their
methods smack too much of the market place and the
industrialism which dominates American life. Surely,
if anywhere, academic shades are the places when ideal-
ism and aspiration should triumph over materialism and
commercialism. Instead of that, some of these huge stu-
dent bodies organize themselves into armies of pep-
boosters for athletics as a means of advertising, for all
the world like the boosting stunts of civic clubs and
chambers of commerce, newspapers and other industrial
combinations. Indeed, some of these commercial organi-
zations may well envy the concentrated advertising abil-
ities of the modern educational institution. Such is the
feeling uttered by such widely diverse critics as William
Allen White, the publicist, and President Lawrence
Lowell, of Harvard University.

Under the influence of the Protestant and scientific
outlook, democracy grows apace in the world, whatever
set-backs it may apparently have received of recent years;
and education forms the backbone of a democracy. Other
forms of government may survive without it; other
forms may even do better without it; but a democracy
cannot survive unless its people are enlightened, unless
they know the truth which makes men free. More than
that, education is intimately allied with religion; indeed,
it is the selfsame thing. Principal Jacks of England is
advocating as strongly as he can this identity and is de-
claring that the future of religion is dependent upon a
profounder education. Religion may be said to be edu-
cation raised to the highest power. Both are designed for

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REASON AND EDUCATION

the enlightenment and the refinement of the mind, the
heart, the soul; both stimulate aspiration and a divine
discontent; both reach out after the unknown, the un-
seen, the spiritual; and both tend to grow impatient and
even oblivious to the purely material*

Education, too, helps us to appreciate humanity and
its real value and never to make false distinctions in clas-
sification* Only the uneducated can think of himself or
his own as more important than other people and their
own. The truly cultivated man or woman places all
human life upon the same level of value. He knows,
what ignorance does not know, that the same kind of
hearts beat under coarse woolens as under fine silk, that
the same emotions and aspirations, hopes, fears, long-
ings, and griefs flourish under the flowing robes of the
orient as under the stiff black coats of the west Only the
really cultivated, ancient or modern, can cry, "I am a
man and nothing that pertains to humanity is foreign to
me/* Only a great and highly polished spirit can exclaim,
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you
free!'* or, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself/*

This is not to imply that education alone can save
anybody's life, make one good, lead to the good life.
The world has seen many highly educated scoundrels.
Sometimes increased culture makes social adjustment
more difficult; increased refinement often adds to the
sensitiveness with which the individual impinges upon
his world and therefore increases the strain of walking
in the narrow path of social conformity and convention-
ality. Nevertheless, all things equal, it is true that unin-
telligent and ignorant conduct may be called immoral

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

conduct; sin is ignorance. As an old theologian, Dr.
Harris of Yale, defined it, "sin is the attempt to realize
the absurd"; or as Bertrand Russell puts it, the highest
morals mean simply intelligent conduct. The enlight-
ened person has a better chance, in proportion to his
enlightenment, to make his conduct conform to the
highest interests of society, because he sees the bearing of
what he does upon the welfare of all others. More than
that, he is liberated from ancient and inhibiting preju-
dices, so that he lives with a certain daring, lives danger-
ously, as Jesus did and all the great spirits of light and
leading. Some there are, like Professor Edward Scribner
Ames, who consider religion the attempt to realize in
life the highest and best for human society; and the edu-
cated man can make wiser efforts in this direction than
the untrained.

180

CHAPTER XII

Religion and Recreation

CHRISTIANITY in the early centuries absorbed
something of the Greek spirit, its lightness, its
love of whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of
good report; then it promptly lost much of this atmos-
phere in the iron legalism that was Rome, and in the
somber streams of thought that bore down upon the
south of Europe from the cypress swamps and forests
of the north. Christianity, at its beginning, took on an
ascetic spirit that derives to a degree, no doubt, from the
caves and camps of the Essenes and the Nazarites of the
Dead Sea region and the mountains of Moab, but that
was deepened by the savage sadness of primitive Euro-
pean tribes.

It is, of course, never an easy thing to analyze an
atmosphere into its constituent elements; perhaps it is
enough, therefore, simply to recognize that asceticism,
self immolation, flagellations, and extreme poverty con-
stituted the highest ideal of holiness for many centuries
in Christian history. Even though the masses might eat,
drink, and be merry, such joyousness was only tolerated
and not encouraged by the church* Somberness was the
synonym for sanctity. The religious life, when the ideal
was halfway lived up to, wore the hair shirt, the rough
robe, and the rope girdle.

With the Renaissance, the sunny atmosphere of

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Greece came sifting back, obscured and over-clouded now
and again, but gradually increasing; with the Reforma-
tion, a new-old joyousness came dancing into the forests
of the north. Luther came eating and drinking; he even
married and gave in marriage; he carried a Christmas tree
sparkling with snow out of the moonlight into the little
cottage of Catherine Von Bora for his children. Calvin
promptly soured much of this milk of human happiness,
and the Puritans soured even more. Progress, as we have
seen, goes in waves and recessions, in pendulum-swings
and pulsations, never steadily toward a fixed end. A
great deal that was Greek invaded Elizabethan England,
receded under James I and the Roundheads, came extrav-
agantly back at the Restoration, and all but disappeared
again under Victoria; but steadily ideals of lightness,
brightness, and well-being grew even in untoward cir-
cumstances. Even the Puritans in their own home life
laughed and sang and ate and drank more than we are
accustomed to think they did* The present age, both in
Europe and America, perhaps especially in America, is
feeling after the beauty of the Greek ideal of life and
seeking to combine it with a Christian ethic into what
Dr. L. P. Jacks calls a restoration of the lost radiance
of Christianity,

If modern Christian prophets, like Reinhold Niebuhr
and Sherwood Eddy, preach a new asceticism, they con-
template nothing like a return to the caves of Engedi or
the monasteries of the middle ages. They think, rather,
of joyous and artistic plain living and high thinking, a
normal and natural society with all the happiness of
social contacts, the relaxation and the exuberance neces-

182

RELIGION AND RECREATION

sary to wholesome living, and the attempt at the fullest
expression in art, poetry, drama, architecture, music,
everything pure, true, beautiful, and of good report It is
not less of living, but more of living, more intense and
happy living, more Greek and Christian living, that they
are thinking of, these new prophets, when they talk
about a new asceticism. They preach and embody the
principle so often spoken and so fully lived by Jesus,
summed up perhaps most succinctly in his statement,
"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sab-
bath/' In other words, all institutions, all observances,
all practices of society must aim not at the subjection of
man but at the development, the growth, the freedom,
the best interests of man. Any institution, however dear,
that by long usage and custom gets in the way of man
and his growth must be shattered, like the Sabbath, and
something better put in its place. Thus a Christian
Lord's Day, conceived in the Greek-Christian spirit, rises
instead of the Sabbath, This is but an illustration of
numerous other steps toward restoring the lost radiance*
Whether due to the Protestant faith and logic, or
whether due to the Renaissance and the far-off influence
of Greece, or whether due simply to the evolution of
human society, there appears in our period an evident
attempt to explore the constitution of man and an evi-
dent desire to round out his being in as symmetrical a
mode of living as can be found* Necessarily, in this at-
tempt, attention has been paid, and must increasingly
be paid, to rest, recreation, amusement. It has long been
known that all work and no play turns Jack out a poor
social product; but only recently have we begun to rec-

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

ognize that play is necessary to the adult, and to create
a philosophy and a psychology of play* If human beings
are to live out the allotted term, they must play as well
as work; if they don't play, then they will take it out
in drinking and in swearing and in warring. Only com-
paratively recently have we set about definitely to find
out why they do such things.

I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY

Within the last fifty years or so, students have worked
out various explanations of the tendency in human be-
ings to play* Herbert Spencer held that play is the using
of those organs and functions of the body that are over-
rested and under- worked in the normal course of life;
that it is the working off of a super- abundance of en-
ergy. This is good as far as it goes, but does not go far
enough. Professor Groos, in two great volumes, sets
forth the theory that play is a preparation for what is to
be practiced later in the serious pursuits of life; thus girls
play with dolls in preparation for motherhood, and
boys play in contentious games in preparation for the
contests of life. But this theory fails to explain the play
of adults. Certain American writers have put forth a
catharsis theory of play, that it is a kind of safety valve
for the letting loose of pent-up emotions, as in the fight-
ing plays of children and young people, where the pent-
up emotion is anger. There is value to this idea also;
undoubtedly play, both in children and adults, uses up
the secretions of certain internal glands which, without
this outlet, would have a poisoning effect upon the blood
and nerves. There is the so-called recapitulation theory

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RELIGION AND RECREATION

of play, according to which the individual passes
through all the stages of the evolution of the race chil-
dren run as their primitive ancestors ran to get away
from danger; they throw sticks and stones for the same
reason; they swing clubs and beat at balls or at one an-
other as their savage fathers did before them. But here,
too, there is lacking an explanation of the play of adults
who, upon occasion, do the same things.

Possibly the best explanation of the play tendency is
that summed up by Professor G. T, W. Patrick in The
Psychology of Relaxation. He holds, with many other
authorities, that civilization increasingly ties us down
with inhibitions, repressions, conventions, which, in the
nature of the case, enchain us and fatigue us. Play is an
attempt to shake off for the time being these restraints;
it is a reversion to previous conditions, more or less
savage, at least unrestrained, which enable us to get rid
of pent-up and repressed emotion, or, if you will, to get
rid of the secretions of those ductless glands which have
loaded us up, on account of our restrained emotion.
Thus, grown men find infinite relief in getting out upon
grassy slopes and swinging clubs fiercely at little white
balls, then following the flight with piercing vision,
then going to peer among long grasses and bushes just as
their savage ancestors used to go and hunt for their ar-
rows and missiles. As speed played an essential part in
safety in war or in hunting with our savage ancestry, so
speedy motion is a great relief and recreation to the
civilized human being* Racing upon horses and rapid
motion with automobiles and airplanes lets go taut
nerves, quickens blood circulation, purifies the whole

185

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

nervous system. For a like reason, men love to fish, to
camp, to splash in mud or water. Literally hundreds of
thousands of people in great cities go out to streams,
lakes, and seashores, spend large sums of money for
equipment, catch fish or not as the case may be and if
they catch them, hand them over with great indifference
to guides or to cooks because the compensation is not
in the fish but in the catching of the fish, the reversion
to the activities of the wilderness and of their savage
ancestry* A group of workmen from a factory swallow
a hasty lunch and then go to a vacant lot, throw a ball
back and forth, swing at it with a club, run from base
to base, shout and make faces, doing the same sort of
things that primitive men used to do with clubs, stones,
and speed. The unthinking might say that these men
were not resting, that they ought to be sitting in the
shade quietly and storing up their energies. Not so. They
are using an unused set of muscles and, what is more im-
portant, letting go pent-up emotions.

Thousands of people go to professional baseball
games and watch eighteen men in two teams in a contest
of strength, speed, and skill. Thoughtless persons often
declare that those thousands of people are wasting
money and time. Not so. They shout, grimace, and bawl
out denunciations and cheer at players and umpires; they
clap each other on the back, throw up their hats, and
lose themselves and all their inhibitions and repressions
in a return to the primitive audiences that surrounded
heroes and warriors of old. Football games even more
nearly approximate the warfare of organized tribes in
ancient time; therefore, they attract all the bigger crowds

186

RELIGION AND RECREATION

and all the more strenuous response. The game may cease
to be a game for the players; it may become extremely
hard work indeed ; but to the spectators it brings unmiti-
gated relaxation, recreation, rest. Wrestling and boxing
bouts have the same value for those who attend them,
and the dangers or cruelties are restricted by the regu-
lations of the authorities. Automobile races, more dan-
gerous than any of these other forms of spectacle, and
airplane stunt flying and exhibitions, give the same sort
of thrill to those who watch them a kind of vicarious
breasting of the danger. To consider that the hundreds
of thousands of people who flock to such forms of en-
tertainment are morons and nitwits is to take a short-
sighted and unscientific view of the necessity for human
relaxation.

The most stupendous form of such amusemental re-
lief known to history appears in the games at the Coli-
seum in Rome and the races in the Circus Maximus.
Humanity early had to fight the beasts for survival; and
with immense joy the Roman populace watched gladi-
ators fighting lions and tigers from Africa and India.
Those emperors were most popular who brought the
most games to the Coliseum. At one time eleven thou-
sand wild beasts were collected and brought there for
combat; and one season of games lasted for over a hun-
dred and twenty days. Such extravagance of play does
not destroy but rather demonstrates the truth of the
principle that civilization brings restrictions from which
now and then there must be some form of escape.

With the growth of civilization comes greater com-
plexity in the tangled pathways through the brain and

187

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

greater increase of monotony and fatigue from the con-
finement to these paths. The more civilized the race, the
more restrained and suppressed its evidences of emotion,
and the more the face and bearing become set and
formal Primitive man, living in the open, spent most of
his time upon his feet, walking, running, hunting, fight-
ing, standing, and stalking enemies or game. Civilized
man, on the contrary, increasingly sits down; muscles
of trunk and legs that formerly were in constant use
now seldom exert themselves. Swimming, walking, ath-
letics, and dancing bring a necessary relief to these un-
used muscles. Folk dancing, such as the old-time square
dance, rather than the more or less objectionable society
dancing of today, is recommended by psychological
scientists. Here lies the value of exaggerated jazz, the
Charleston and other adaptations of the Negro jigs,
breakdowns, and double-shuffles. The imitations of the
Negro dances, flinging the body about with great aban-
don, especially serve a valuable end; for they are types
of the folk dance,- and bring all the dancers' muscles into
play.

For the most sophisticated, and for those advanced
in years, other forms of play may be substituted for
these more vigorous ones. Games of cards, dominoes,
checkers, and chess, bring relief from the mental tension
and fatigue which increase with increasing civilization*
The more informal the game and the less studious, the
greater the value. Novels, poetry, drama, and art in all
its forms brings rest, refreshment, and recreation. They
restore the jaded spirit and are, therefore, spiritual in
character and in value. A story read brings its benefit,

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RELIGION AND RECREATION

but a story told or enacted or sung to a social company
brings multiplied benefit. Hence the value of the old
traveling troubadour, the mission of the player, and the
service of the story-teller. He is bringing release to tied-
up nerves; he comes bringing laughter holding both his
sides; he uses up the poisonous secretions of the endo-
crine glands which have had no outlet for the day or the
week or the month. The theater has played a beneficent
part for three or four centuries in modern civilization.
Beginning at least with the Elizabethan era and the
school of playwrights and players who preceded and
surrounded Shakespeare, the stage play has rested and
recreated many worn and tired minds and lives* Previ-
ously to this time, of course, plays had been produced
in Christian lands, but largely by the church and largely
of religious character. The old miracle plays and pag-
eants occur to our minds; but nothing like the Greek
theater had flourished in Europe at large until the Prot-
estant Reformation came on. All forms of legitimate
drama, from farce and comedy to the most dignified
tragedy, perform not only the function called catharsis,
but even more, lift us out of ourselves, enable us to live
in imagination the events depicted upon the stage and
discharge the pent-up emotions and gland secretions in
a kind of vicarious fashion.

II. LAUGHTER HOLDING BOTH ITS SIDES

The recreation which comes from laughter, all experts
seem to agree, performs a part of the utmost wholesome-
ness in human life. Advancing civilization compels us
among other restraints to repress our laughter, especially

189

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

loud and explosive laughter. The faces of the fully civi-
lized become set in restrained lines, carved like stone; and
to laugh loudly and uproariously in polite society vio-
lates good form. Anything that releases us from this
state of repression and forces us, almost against our
wills, to burst into loud guffaws, relieves momentarily
the restrained and inhibited brains and emotions. The
origin of laughter has occupied students of psychology of
late; and the study has resulted in a theory somewhat
as follows: Primitive man, engaged in war or the chase,
moving stealthily and watchfully, his face frozen into
hard lines, suddenly triumphs over his foe; he stands
gloating above the prostrate form, and emits a sudden
explosive breath of relief with the syllable "Ha!" fol-
lowed by a succession of explosive breaths, a wild, loud
series of ejaculations, as much as to say, "I have tri-
umphed. I am alive. You, my enemy, are dead. I've got
the best of you/' Almost all other moments of quick
relief from anxiety and strain, from repression and in-
hibition, are followed by the same explosive syllable or
series of syllables. Today, though dangers are reduced,
the restraints remain; and anything that releases us, per-
haps suddenly and unexpectedly, from the grooves of
habitual restraint causes the same series of explosive
ejaculations of relief. That is why almost anything a
little out of the ordinary is so funny in a dignified en-
vironment, in a school or a church or at a funeral. A
public speaker is a poor jokester indeed who cannot
suddenly release laughter in a large and dignified audi-
ence. That is why it is the easiest possible way to break
the ice between an audience and a speaker who are

190

RELIGION AND RECREATION

strange to each other. Professor Patrick says, "Laughter
is more than salutary; it is necessary. Wit, humor, and
laughter are shock absorbers. They alone enable us to
stand the pace and save our nerves from disaster/*

III. UNWHOLESOME RECREATION

Profanity, alcohol, drugs, and war have all been
studied as manifestations, in an unwholesome and mis-
directed fashion, of ways by which man has sought to
escape the fatigues of restraint. Profanity relieves the
speaker through the sense of shock that he is trying to
give to his hearers. The more sacred the words employed,
the greater the shock, the greater the sense of uncon-
ventional release. Joan of Arc, in Mark Twain's bio-
graphical novel, gets a great deal of amusement out of
her dealings with the profane General LaHire. She com-
mands him to cut out his swearing and go to mass, and
finally compromises with him by granting permission
that in battle he may swear by his baton, the symbol of
his command. Alcohol, we now know, is not a stimulant
but a narcotic; it puts to sleep the higher brain centers,
gives them a false and temporary release from the
grooves of sophistication. Drugs give the same reaction ;
and the greater the civilization, the stronger the tempta-
tion to the use of them.

War upsets the current of civilized life and behavior;
it lets loose the primitive in man, both in those young
men who go to war and in those old men who stand on
the sidelines and shout and curse their enemies. Many
men welcome war as a release from the restrictions of
civilization. During the World War, a great many

191

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

young men went gladly into camp and into battle to get
rid of the oppressions of conventionalized life, domestic
and otherwise. A letter was sent through the hands of
the censor in France by a young soldier to his wife at
home, who had been upbraiding him about the irregu-
larity of his remittances. He said, "Can't you leave me
alone and quit your nagging, and let me enjoy this war
in peace?" Professor Patrick speaks of war as "a return
to the most brutal and the most elemental kind of be-
havior, which rests the higher brain completely. It is
really a psychological situation that the peace societies
have to contend with. Mankind cannot so easily escape
from its long past." This utterance gives point to the
search of William James for "a moral substitute for
war." Civilized society must devise means of explosion
for mankind, short of the barbarities of war, through
games, through play, through the stage and the motion
pictures, through literature and the arts, through the in-
ventions and anything and everything that will relieve
the tense nerves and the tired brains of sophisticated
peoples without the organized murder of one another.

IV. RELIEF IN BEAUTY AND TRUTH AND GOODNESS

Increasingly it dawns upon the consciousness of re-
ligious thinkers that every form of spiritual cultivation
and relief in the beautiful, the true, and the good that
old-fashioned trinity must be fostered for the salva-
tion of the individual and of society. A new significance
and content come into the word "spiritual" with this
attitude of mind. Too long in Protestantism, in the so-
called evangelical sects, this beautiful word has been

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RELIGION AND RECREATION

abused as applying to certain cant phrases and shibbo-
leths, certain holy tones and whines, certain sect ob-
servances and conventionalized prayings, rather than to
the upper range of aspiring existence, to the delight and
the refreshment that come from every form of artistic
expression. Some Protestants could never think of Aris-
tophanes' comedy The Frogs as spiritual or the Anti-
gone of Sophocles, or the statue of the Apollo Belvidere,
or the Propylaeum, or the Parthenon, Possibly they
might think of these buildings as spiritual they are so
grand, and they cannot be seen without some exaltation ;
yet it is doubtful if the average orthodox Christian who
cants about spirituality usually pronouncing it "spir-
ichality" could ascend to the Acropolis and regard his
stand there as a high religious experience. Yet in all
probability, Paul, who dictated so much of the theology
of conventional Protestants, could perform this incred-
ible feat; possibly he had the Acropolis in mind, and
maybe the red roofs of Tarsus, the Hippodrome at An-
tioch, and the other great works of art in the Graeco-
Roman world, when he advised his followers to think
about "whatsoever things are beautiful, pure, lovely,
and of good report/*

The love of nature is spiritual. There are very few
who do not have it; there are none who cannot cultivate
it; the artistic inspiration and relief that it brings are
nothing less than boundless. Paul possessed little of it;
at least he never illustrates in all his voluminous writ-
ings from the beauty and the sweetness of nature; per-
haps that is why so many Protestants have seemed
oblivious to it. There are, however, some signs of a

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

change, and an increased delight on the part of western
peoples in the loveliness with which the good God ^ has
surrounded them. Civilization shows some indications
of a desire to refine the beauty, and increase it, of the
natural world in which they live. The creation of gar-
dens and forests, the conservation of waterfalls and
rivers, the ornamentation of lakeside drives and moun-
tain parts is there something here which may play a
part in the moral substitute for war? Nature appeals to
memory, brings back the days and nights of romantic
youth, induces a sweet melancholy, and even in some
moments and some phases releases tears; here is direct
relief from repressions, sophistications, conventions.
With Nature one may be himself; and for his variant
moods she speaks a variant language.

What is true of Nature may be true of what we call
art, the product of man's hand and brain as he seeks,
not so much to copy Nature, as to reproduce the same
responses and emotions that Nature can so readily call
up. All that is art which, by one form or another of
expression, stirs the human soul, lets loose the explosions
of the human nerves, consumes the stored-up secretions
due to inhibited reactions. Drawing, painting, building,
writing, singing, acting these and various other forms,
artistic expression takes. Nor need the expression be al-
ways beautiful sometimes it is terrible, just as Nature
in certain of her moods is terrible, awe inspiring, terror
striking. Pictures need not always be beautiful to be art.
Hogarth reproduced the life of the submerged tavern
roysterers and drunkards, the scum of London. Was his
work any the less art? Eugene O'Neil pictures the seamy

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side of American life, strips conventional man to the
bone, shows us what goes on around us whether we like
it or not. Is it any the less art because it is forbidding?
Must the story always be pretty, sweet, filled with the
perfume of honeysuckle and the softness of moonlit
nights? Must the story always end in a way that we call
well, in which everyone lived happily ever afterward?
When we make these demands, as the American public
seems prevailingly to do, we merely reveal our own low
state of artistic culture. The Greeks made no such de-
mands; otherwise we should never have had Homer and
Aeschylus and their descendants, Virgil, Dante, Shake-
speare, Milton* The greatest art is seldom merely pretty.
The most spiritual thing that the most progressive
nations could do, and the best substitutes for drunken-
ness, profanity, and war, were to bend their whole ener-
gies and to spend all their substance in the production of
great works of art. Battleships are not beautiful in any
artistic way, but egregiously ugly and highly inartistic,
except when belching broadsides. Turn those millions
into glorious sky-scraping public structures, cover them
with carvings, fill them with paintings, and what a re-
lease for pent-up emotions they could provide! Instead
of subsidizing armies and navies, subsidize the artists
now starving in garrets or making their music for a bare
subsistence. Give them leisure, time for thought and
culture; take away their anxieties for mere food and
clothing for themselves and their families; honor them
with positions, recognition, opportunities; and how the
face of the western world would change from grimness
into smiles! There is money enough and to spare, now

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

spent on armaments actuated by fear, which, if changed
to the uses of artistic production, which is not unprece-
dented among classic nations, might change Europe and
America into long avenues of beauty, tree-lined high-
ways, a very elysium of spiritual joy. Of course, it will
take a long time to realize such idealistic dreams. It can
never come in answer to the whinings and the cants of
Protestant extremists; they don't know what spiritu-
ality is. It can only come through the long toil of think-
ers and dreamers who will have spent themselves, often
in obscurity and penury, to find out the truth and to tell

it

Protestantism must bear the odium of long ages of
denunciation directed at perfectly harmless types of
diversion, yes, necessary types of relaxations, such as
cards, dancing, theaters, boxing, football, fishing on
Sunday, and golf -playing. These things all minister, in
one way or another, each in its own way, to spirituality.
It is undoubtedly true that "when the human race learns
to do without sleep and rest, when it learns to work
both day and night, only then may we dispense with
laughter, with play, with art, and with religion."

The Protestant world is at last trying, more or less
blindly and painfully, to bring about realization of the
ideals here set forth. In America, in particular, it would
seem that a wistful sort of search is going forward after
an idealism compounded of two elements: first, the
Greek devotion to beauty and well-being, to joy and
radiance; and, second, the ethics of Christianity. The
combination of these two strains, upon careful reflection,
seems not at all unattainable. They are not incompat-

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RELIGION AND RECREATION

ible. Some observers have sensed In America a kind of
sadness and a measure of anxiety for tomorrow, which
has reflected itself in our literature and even in our
laughter; and yet even that anxiety, perhaps, is having
its desire answered in the increased and increasing well-
being and comfort, in the means of expression and recre-
ation, which characterize our national life. Even though
the pains of travail may accompany the birth of this
ancient Greek ideal, the consummation may be worth all
the preliminary agony* Certainly some progress makes
itself manifest* The sadness is not quite so apparent as it
was two or three decades ago. It may be that the wish is
father to the thought, but something of a new calm, a
new carelessness, if you will, seems to be coming up over
the horizon; a new contentment seems to manifest itself
in less of social striving, of economic war and conten-
tion, in more of satisfaction in the beauties of the world
and of art and the essential goodness of life.

Along with this Greek sense of well-being which,
after all, is much the same as the lost radiance of Chris-
tianity, the joy which the Nazarene teacher said he
wished to leave with his people there comes naturally
and inevitably the solution of human relations set forth
in the ethics of the founder of the Christian religion. We
are coming to see that his solution is in harmony with
the best findings of modern science. He seemed to under-
stand the need for release and relief from the conventions
of the law which surrounded him. He loved to get away
in boats and into the loneliness of the mountains and
wild places; he loved social converse, dinners and wed-
dings and house parties. He loved the architecture of

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classic Capernaum and the oriental beauty of the temple
area. There was nothing of somberness and melancholy,
let alone pessimism and fatalism, either in his personal
bearing or in his ethical precepts. Modern psychology
and modern economics are slowly finding out that his
relaxed ease in social contacts and social views are the
best solution for our own complicated age. Indeed,
whether you regard all the elements which go to make
up his figure in the world's thought as historical or only
as ideal, he is none the less the embodiment of the double
ambition, unconscious though it may largely be, of the
American people, to find and to restore the lightness, the
carelessness, the relaxed joy, and the sense of well-being
of golden Greece, and at the same time the simple beauty
of the Christian morality in the Golden Rule and the
Sermon on the Mount.

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CHAPTER XIII

Mysticism

MYSTICISM is difficult enough to understand and
still more difficult to define. It derives from the
Greek word mystedon, which means a secret
religious ceremony. In Greek usage, therefore, a mystery
was something which must not be revealed, must be
kept secret; in modern usage it has come to apply to
something which cannot be revealed because it is not
understood. All that we do not know or cannot explain
belongs, therefore, to the realm of mystery. Life, we
say, is surrounded by mystery, shot through with mys-
tery. "Mystic" and "mystical" apply, then, to those
persons and those attitudes of mind which acknowledge
a borderland between the known and the unknowable,
a misty circumference beyond the region of sense per-
ception or of reasoning. Here intuition reigns, or faith,
or a conviction obtained in some other way than by the
two well-known means of knowledge, sense perception
and intellectual processes. Mysticism has been defined,
as Professor Knight Dunlap of Johns Hopkins points
out, as "the belief in a third kind of knowledge/'

The mystical element has always made itself felt in
religious life. It early appeared in Christianity and
powerfully affected its train of thinking and manner
of living. The Greek world into which Christianity was
early projected vitally influenced the thought and the

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spirit of the new religion, as is clearly seen in the fourth
gospel, perhaps the favorite gospel of the largest number
even of modern Christians, and in other writings of the
New Testament* Recognition of the mystery and the
beauty, perhaps the beauty of the mystery, that like
a rosy cloud constituted the penumbra surrounding
human life, worked its way into the theology of the
unknown author of that fourth gospel, and even to a
degree into the work of PauL Greek thought, in turn,
doubtless felt the effect of Indian strains of influence,
for we know that certain of the great teachers in the
golden age of Greece, like Plato, journeyed eastward to
bring back from the Orient the gold of the philosophy
woven into the Vedic hymns, the Sankhya, and the
Vedanta, of ancient Hindu; thought. These eastern
strains can be discerned even in the neo-Platonic phi-
losophy of Alexandria, in the systems of such men as
Plotinus, perhaps chiefly Plotinus, who is a sort of
god -father to the modern mystic.

Through the long centuries in which Roman Ca-
tholicism represented Christian thought, the mystic
element in religion flourished and was carefully fostered.
The withdrawal of holy men to live hermit lives, or at
least monastic lives, made directly for the development
of the mystic attitude in life and religion* The mortifi-
cation of the flesh, the hair shirt, the bed of spikes, the
fast, the pebbles in the shoes, all this was designed to
promote those states of trance or semi-consciousness in
which visions might appear and the devotee might
behold the invisible. The words of such saints and holy
Deople, both men and women, have come down to us,

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MYSTICISM

conveying, to be sure, no very clear and definite impres-
sion of the things seen and heard. The words and
phrases used by mystics in all religions bear a striking
resemblance, such as ecstasy, the indescribable, the inef-
fable, union with the infinite, unity with the God,
marriage with the Lord* Such attempts to put into
words that which cannot be uttered come down even
from our savage ancestors.

Some of them induced the trance by eating certain
herbs or nuts, like the mescal, or by drinking certain
intoxicating drinks. Nobody can describe the beautiful
dreams, the ineffable happiness, which come to the drug
addict or the drunken man. Something of this ecstatic
state could be produced by brooding in monasteries and
nunneries, no doubt, by starvation and bodily weakness
and abnormal physical conditions of any kind. The fact
that so large a portion of the utterances of mystics may
in all probability be traced to such causes lends color to
the statement of those students of psychology and of
philosophy who would reduce all the mystical in human
thought and emotion to purely sensory conditions.
Professor Edward Scribner Ames, for example, in the
chapter on mysticism in his volume called Religion,
finds no other source for this element in religion except
nerves and glands and other sensuous origins. The
mystics themselves, however, even though they may
repudiate the word "mysticism" and refuse to be classed
with any ism or school, remain unconvinced by the
rationalists and insist that " there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,
Horatio/*

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

L ASCETICISM NOT NECESSARY TO THE MYSTIC

With the coming of Protestantism, the ascetic ideal of
holiness fell to the ground. Luther came with a robust
cheeriness into the religious life of the western world,
contending both by precept and example that life itself,
with all its experiences of joy and pain, of happiness and
sorrow, furnished sufficient discipline for the spiritual
existence. In his belief, the home and family could foster
ecstatic states; social life and relationships could induce
the moods of exaltation; and faith alone produced that
condition which might fitly be termed, in its joy and
peace, salvation. John Wright Buckham says concerning
Luther: "It was his wholesome and manly piety that
enabled him to see that the devout and self-denying
facing of common life with its toil and trial, its search-
ing tests and temptations, is the best and truest possible
purgation. But Luther only half succeeded in inculcating
this truth. The lesson has been slow in learning. It is
strange that with the example and teaching of Jesus,
reproduced in Paul, so sun-clear in this respect, the
ascetic ideal could ever have gained so firm a hold on
Christianity. Even in Protestantism, in a modified form
the ascetic ideal has been incorrigibly persistent/'

It is easy enough for mysticism to run amuck, for
the mystical to run away with the rational. In all times
and in all religions this seems to have happened. It hap-
pens today. In the chaotic condition of a period of
transition, the tortured minds of many who will not
or cannot think, who have not the tools with which
to think, who have not the guidance of trained and
expert minds, too often take refuge in strange cults that

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MYSTICISM

come directly or indirectly from the Far East whence
early mysticism came to Greece, We have our theosophies
and our yogis, our denials of matter and evil, our shut-
ting of the eyes to the most ordinary facts of life,
particularly all its ills, in a sort of dreamland of un-
reality. The newspapers are full of announcements of
esoteric lectures and lecturers. Anybody can get an
audience who proclaims a non-understandable system or
lack of system clothed in incomprehensible language.
The poor deluded public eats it with a spoon* The more
mysterious and mystifying the message, the more the
public goes away with its head in the rosy clouds and
its feet off the earth. But if every error is a truth abused,
and if at the heart of every husk of mistake there is a
sound kernel of honest truth, then we may avoid the
necessity of throwing away all the mystical in religion,
all the realm of faith and wonder, just because some
extremists run amuck. There is no use to empty out
the baby with the bath. Here, if anywhere, is oppor-
tunity for discrimination.

There are mystics and mystics. One may be mystical
in one degree, and another mystical in another degree.
Mystics and the mystical may exist without a mysticism.
The ism is not essential to the situation. Names of the
utmost respectability, of the calmest intellectual poise,
teach us that mystics may keep their feet firmly on the
ground even though their eyes may be turned outward
toward the circumference of mist that surrounds all
human life. Men of the scientific era, not lacking in the
scientific spirit, informed upon all the bearings of the
question, may be numbered among the mystics, from

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

William James to Dean Inge, Joseph Fort Newton, and
Rufus Jones. Indeed, far the majority of men, possibly
without knowing it, belong in the ranks of the mystical
quest, the wistful and yearning quest after the Un-
known God. Some of us call it longing and others call
it God. From the days of Paul, who recognized the
Athenians as searchers after God, on down to the nature
lovers and art lovers and religion lovers of the present
day, men have ever felt after him if haply they might
find him. And how is it unscientific to say that perhaps
emotion plays as much a part as cold reason in reaching
definite and sure conclusions about him? How is one to
draw the line between what is known or at least be-
lieved by intuition, and what is grasped by more purely
intellectual processes? Who can tell except the one who
prays whether his prayers are answered in some satisfy-
ing way or no? How can one deny the varieties of
religious experience? Easy enough to dismiss all the
multiplied testimony concerning direct contacts between
the human heart and the Eternal Being back of the
world, and to trace it all to emotional states due to the
functioning of endocrine glands or the condition of the
nerves; but when you have done this, you have pushed
the inquiry but one step further back. For what is it
that causes nerves and glands to function in a particular
way at a particular time? And why does an emotional
response, given the same conditions, come to one and not
to another, unless it be that the one has fitted himself
by training and by seeking for the very response which
he obtains?

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MYSTICISM

II. WHO CAN DEFINE THE LOVE OF BEAUTY?

The love of the beautiful, the artistic, the noble, and
the good, stirs every soul first or last; and it cannot be
rationalized away. Neither can it be explained in any
intellectual terms that we have yet found. We do not
explain it when we say that it is a purely sensuous reac-
tion to stimuli. The question grows only intenser. Why
are we made to respond? Why is beauty and goodness
here in the first place? That power which built the earth
and all the stars about it, little speck of dust that it is,
filled it full of beauty and goodness and nobility; and
the heart of man leaps up in response to it, is moved
and stirred deeply at the sight of it, and answers, with a
longing and an aspiration that nothing can quench, to
the order, the law, the regularity, and the resultant
beauty by which he is surrounded. Sometimes poets and
artists see more clearly and more truly than even phi-
losophers; and they have believed in large numbers that
after all religion may be reducible to terms of beauty.
Even in Christianity we may not have come so far as we
think away from ancient Greek ideals and the Greek
religion of beauty. Before we are through we may even
go back more consciously than we have ever done to the
love and worship of the beautiful along with the true.
It would seem that the intellect alone does not fully
satisfy.

Dean Inge, a Protestant, lists the characteristics of
mystical religion as follows: First, a disinterested quest
of the absolutely real and good and beautiful; a quest of
the Absolute; the goal is God himself the Unchang-
ing, Eternal Fountain of all being. Second, the mystic

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

stakes all to gain all; he gives his whole self, because
if anything is kept back the quest is vain* Huxley once
said, 'It does not take much of a man to be a Christian,
but it takes all there is of him/' Third, strenuous labor,
though the labor is mostly internal. Fourth, although
the journey is through darkness to light, and although
"all truth is shadow except the last/' yet there is imme-
diacy all through, contact with the divine, which even
the sin wherewith the face of man is blackened cannot
quite extinguish. Fifth, the goal is a living object of
love, a God who draws souls like a magnet. Sixth, beati-
tude is a form of enriched and enhanced life, not noth-
ingness, not Nirvana, but peace bathed in love; this is
the aim of the mystic and his path is a dying life, not
a living death. Such is the Protestant, as opposed to the
old monastic, ideal of the mystical in religion.

III. THE RATIONALIST VERSUS THE MYSTIC

If, however, we push the rationalistic campaign
against the mystical element in religion to its utmost
conclusion, as some in the twentieth century seem to do,
God disappears into a personification of the various
social stages in human progress, the summation of each
varying mood or condition of tribe or nation; immor-
tality becomes only living in the memory of those who
are still alive; prayer is reduced to an intellectual calis-
thenics which one feels all the time is not worth while;
and religion, to put it in the language of those who go
this length, must be defined as humanism, or naturalism.
This extreme position of certain intellectuals among the
Protestants of today leads to a coldly scientific pursuit

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MYSTICISM

of the economic and physical welfare of man, with per-
haps some attention to intellectual and aesthetic develop-
ment, and to a frank and definite seeking for happiness
alone as the end and aim of life; it results in barren
futility in many Protestant churches of the present era.
Even Dr. Ames, who takes the rationalistic position
upon this matter of the mystical element in religion,
writes several trenchant paragraphs directed at natural-
ism, or humanism. He holds that the error in this posi-
tion arises from the abolition of one term of a dualistic
conception while retaining the other. The contrast be-
tween the supernatural and the natural cannot logically
be solved by simply dropping the term supernatural.
Neither can the contrast between the human and the
superhuman be so easily disposed off. Speaking of the
advocates of humanism, he says:

"Convinced that the empirical values are the only
values discoverable, they conclude that this justifies their
naturalistic, humanistic interpretation of the world.
They are therefore compelled to devote much of their
strength to denying the existence of God and the super-
natural. But as a result, they are left with a truncated
world, and the lower half of the old dualistic order*
They have unwittingly separated man from nature by
the same stroke, and have left their humanistic realm
suspended between the void of matter on the one side
and the vacancy left on the other by the removal of the
old supernaturalistic deity. . . . Desires for more ade-
quate living arise out of the conflicts occurring in the
partial and imperfect adjustments of the organism; con-
ceptions of means for attaining more satisfying condi-

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

tions appear, and these are embodied in attempts to
reconstruct the ways of life. It is these ideals, springing
from blocked desire, which have been hypostatized into
entities of another order. The misunderstanding of them
gave rise to the contrast between the natural and the
supernatural, and the error cannot be corrected by
assuming a static realm of physical nature on the one
side, and man as a helpless dreamer in an alien world on
the other/'

This matter strikes to the root of the old question of
the existence of a God. The empiricism of today, that is,
the method of examining facts, co-ordinating them, and
drawing necessary conclusions from them, has swept
away the conventional forms of proof for the existence
of a personal God. The old argument from design, for
example, has practically gone by the board. Neither will
the modern scientific mind admit as evidence the indi-
vidual and personal testimonies concerning a mystical
contact with the divine. It is true, as James H. Leuba in
The Psychology of Religious Mysticism points out, that
from end to end of the Protestant world these "inner
experiences 7 * constitute the only argument actually relied
upon for the belief in a God in affective and intellectual
relations with man; and that, if there is no other
ground of belief, then for those who are acquainted
with the modern scientific conceptions, there could be
no belief in God. But as he further points out, philoso-
phy knows another route, a metaphysical route, to the
belief in God; and so long as there is any route at all,
the human mind, however untutored, will find its way
into that path and reach that conclusion* There is some-

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MYSTICISM

thing after all to the mere universality of such belief.
The world has few or no atheists, nor has ever had;
and the mere fact that the chief reliance of the masses for
proofs of the divine are in the emotional and mystical
realm does not entirely exclude from their mental
processes the profounder, even if only half-conscious,
progress by means of a sort of innate philosophy. Mys-
tical or metaphysical though the route be, every man
travels one or the other of the two and reaches much
the same goal, a god and a religion.

This is far from holding that religion has little or
nothing to do with straight, hard thinking; far from
declaring that it doesn't make much diiference what you
think but all the difference in the world how you act.
In the individualism and the freedom of the modern
atmosphere, the temptation is strong for the crowd to
feel and to show its impatience with theology in favor of
some form of practicality ; easy for it to brush aside the
tedious steps leading to knowledge and to turn its face
to the instant need of things. How often do we hear the
expression, "Makes no difference what you think; the
important thing is how you live/' Thus the crowd for-
gets that what you think determines how you live.
Religion, like everything else in the social structure,
cannot dissolve into a nebulous chaos of unthinking or
wrong- thinking individuals and hope to hold society
together, let alone lift it up into more skilful and artistic
living. Not sentimentalism, not a dissolved emotional-
ism, but as straight and as square and as coherent a
system of philosophy as our enlightenment can muster
for us, is what we need. The exaggerations and the

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

dangers of the mystical elements in the human constitu-
tion need constant watchfulness, if we are to keep our
feet on the ground.

Undoubtedly the "will to believe" affects our think-
ing, or, at any rate, the power to believe. We believe
what we want to believe; and we believe what we can-
not help believing. Perhaps the two things come to the
same in the end. One cannot say, "Go to, I will believe
this or that"; on the contrary, one believes what all
his past inheritance and environment compel him to be-
lieve, and he cannot get away from it, rationalize how
he will. No thought or idea or belief exists for us except
as it has entered into us and become a part of us. The
teacher, philosopher, friend, or guide, may insist to us
that such and such is the truth and even demonstrate it,
and still it does not become our truth until we appro-
priate it and it enters into our fiber. Possibly here is
where the nervous system and the endocrine glands enter
in, helping us to believe or to disbelieve, as the case may
be. Are they not, then, as much a part of us as the
convolutions of the brain, or whatever it is with which
we do our thinking and knowing?

Some thorough-going psychologists insist that since
the mystical states, the trances and the ecstasies, may be
produced and are produced by drug, intoxicant, fasting,
or fever, therefore all mystical states are traceable to
purely sensuous and physical conditions. Is it not un-
scientific to declare that just because certain things are
in some instances causes of certain states, that therefore
there can be no such states except for such causes? Em-
piricism itself would teach us otherwise; for we know

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MYSTICISM

that similar states, possibly not so intense but none the
less real, may result from other causes. For example,
one who has been trained to some love and appreciation
of nature stands looking at some wonderful scene, Mont
Blanc, Mt. Rainier, the Grand Canyon, the sunrise or
sunset over any farm, the mistiness of the early dawn,
and the silvery mystery of the moonlight, and feels a
stir within him sometimes as powerful as that from the
use of any drug or intoxicant. One trained even in the
rudiments of art stands before Michelangelo's "Moses"
or ''David/' or the ruins of the Parthenon, or Da Vinci's
"Last Supper/' and a nameless yearning too deep for
words comes welling up within him just as real as the
mystic ecstasies that come to the flagellated monk in his
cell or his cave. Some noble deed the daring of a
Lindbergh plunging out alone, first one of all, betting
his life on a great adventure and coming out to win
stirs the whole world of humanity with cold chills up
and down their backs, tense, taut nerves, and even tears
and sobs, for all the world like the intoxication that
comes from heavy drinking. Science and philosophy
must take account of these human phenomena.

IV. How DIVIDE BETWEEN EMOTION AND REASON?

Who shall say that these aesthetic emotions, these
artistic responses, these yearnings for the heroic and the
noble, may not be part of the equipment with which
we gain a rounded knowledge of life and of the world?
Who shall draw the line in any human being between
cold rationality and warm emotionalism? Who shall
say how much every one of us is rationalist and how

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

much mystic, how much philosopher and how much
poet, how much scientist and how much artist? We are
so compacted of a variety of powers, thoughts, feelings,
yes, intuitions if you will, that there is no scalpel keen
enough to dissect the human constitution. Hence man
as artist, man as poet, man as worshiper, may be just
as truly man at his highest and best as man as thinker.
Dr. William Ernest Hocking, himself a mystic although
a philosopher, in The Meaning of God in Human Ex-
perience, has this to say concerning such worshipers,
"They do not mix well, these mystics: they must live
as objects to the crowd, solitary often, often in exclusive
groups of like-minded spirits. ... It is this difficulty
of communication, this separation from the mass in
thought and habit, this embarrassment of speech, which
has embodied itself in the word mysticism. ... It
matters not to us if some, or even most, prophets have
been vain or false, if there are any true prophets. In
this, as in other great matters, nature makes a thousand
failures to bring forth one consummate product. The
existence of the genuine mystic Bernard, Mohammed,
Lao-tse, Plotinus, Eckhart, John of the Cross how-
ever seldom he is found, is the momentous thing. . . .
For the mysteries and the mystics have in the course of
time distilled into their own tradition the essence of
religious practice. They know, if any know, how it is
that the knowledge of God can be the most universal of
perceptions, and at the same time the most rare and
difficult. They know wherein the act of prayer differs
from an act of reflective thought. A philosophy of
mysticism would be a philosophy of worship/'

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MYSTICISM

The united voice of humanity, then, emotional
though it may be, explainable to a degree even as a
form of sensuous response to stimuli, need not imply
delusion, may even be the voice of authority. At all
events, it is the only authority we have, the only guide
we possess, and it cannot be altogether and forever
wrong. Perhaps we shall find that the ancient Greek,
who knew so much else, may have known what he was
talking about when he summed up religion as the love
of beauty. Maybe that is about the best that any of us
can do, for beauty includes so much. To reduce religion
to mere humanism, to define it as seeking and serving
the best interests of humanity, leads often to the com-
parative barrenness of what is called the "social gospel/'
Too often this practical religion fritters itself away into
certain types of "welfare work*' and the promotion of
mere institutions, mere administration and machinery*
It leaves too many of us cold, and doubtful of its abid-
ing value. There is no reason why a religion of beauty
might not combine with a practical message of human
welfare without becoming exclusively the one thing or
the other. In point of fact, the poet and the humani-
tarian belong together in one. To believe with George
Santayana that religion is rather a form of poetry, a
symbolic interpretation of human experience, a great
imaginative structure reared to extend the narrow hori-
zons of actual living, that it is a high and noble form of
art, a poem of the ages, does not clash with the view of
Ames that "religion is the quest for the largest and the
fullest satisfaction of felt needs. ... It is in religion
more than anywhere else that men realize their common

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

life, their brotherhood, their mutual dependence/' The
poetic spirit of a religion of beauty does not jar with
the prophetic spirit of a practical one. There is room in
such a quest as that of religion for the poet, the artist,
the dreamer, and for the flaming prophet who would
tear down ancient wrong and erect a fairer social struc-
ture.

We come back once more to what the American
people, at least, seems engaged upon, which is the com-
bination of the classic Greek aspiration for a religion
of beauty and well being with the ethic of Jesus. The
two mix well ; they are by no means mutually exclusive.
To live the rich, round, full life, as well adjusted to
environment as may be, the satisfying life, the joyous,
fully expressive life, and at the same time to fulfill the
one and only command that Jesus gave, to love all
things and all men, both great and small, lies altogether
within the scope of any human career. The whole man
may become absorbed in this inspiring pursuit. To
cultivate himself as opportunity may allow in the ap-
preciation of the beautiful in nature, in sculpture, in
painting, in architecture, in poetry and drama, in litera-
ture in all its forms; to train himself in the artistic and
poetic pursuit of prayer, of worship, of aspiration after
all truth, all uplift, all the mysterious response which
may come to him from the voices of the earth and air;
and to keep his feet firmly set in the paths of love and
good will and service to his fellow-man, this is surely the
high and beautiful calling of the leading free, Protestant
spirits in religion in our day.

214

CHAPTER XIV

The Growth of Nationalism

A THOUGH it is a difficult thing to trace and to
prove, nevertheless there is a feeling among his-
torical students that the rise of modern national-
ism is somehow connected with the rise of Protestantism*
The national spirit had, of course, grown and developed
to a degree even in primitive times, and had flourished in
certain instances in classical antiquity; hut the wide-
spread prevalence of national feeling and intense patri-
otism, difficult as it may be for us to realize it, has
grown up over most of the world in recent centuries*
Whether the Reformation gave birth to the nationalistic
spirit or nationalism to the Reformation, one may not
categorically declare; but that the two arose simultane-
ously one cannot gainsay.

Humanity is by nature gregarious; human beings
cling together. If only for safety's sake, they early ascer-
tained that they must hang together or hang separately.
Against the dangers of the wilderness and the dangers of
ferocious neighbors, primitive men had to stand together*
Like flocks of sheep or herds of deer, they congregated
for safety ; and like packs of wolves, they got together to
hunt and to make war. It is difficult for the imagination
to go backward to a time when tribes did not exist. Then
gradually tribes amalgamated into larger and larger
communities, as the nomadic way of life gave place to

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

settled agricultural pursuits. From these aggregations of
tribes, no doubt, sprang the first attempts at national
life. Israel, for example, with her twelve united tribes,
early developed a. strong and persistent sense of national-
ism, which has lasted to the present time.

Egypt, Assyria, Persia, one after another, attained
national consciousness, a patriotism and a coherence,
which must have been considerable in order to result in
the achievements which we know were theirs. Greece
under Alexander gained the same nationhood, and pre-
served it for many centuries during her great golden era,
It was in this time that she built her temples, carved her
statues, made her plays, and wrought out her philoso-
phies. Then, divided by jealousies between Athens and
Sparta, she disintegrated to her decay. The Romans came
next, emerging gradually from the tribal state into a
national consciousness with her increasing victories and
her wide-flung boundaries. Although but a very few of
her population could be called citizens, nevertheless the
way was open for any slave, sufficiently able, to work
his way up to Roman citizenship. Many did, and the
number of those endowed with the franchise increased
with the ripening of her history and civilization. Her
roads were unrolled like wide white ribbons from the
golden mile-stone in the Forum at Rome. They were
patroled by her legionaries and rendered safe for all
travelers by night and day, summer and winter. Her
ships sailed the Mediterranean to what were then the
ends of all the earth. Her invincible armies added terri-
tories farther and farther away from the capital, bring-
ing back spoil and captives, adding to her splendor, her

216

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM

circuses, and her bread. An intense national pride grew
up, even among the serfs and slaves, the heavy fractions
of the population which were submerged beneath the
real Roman citizenry. Roman law, Roman order,
Roman grandeur, these things thrilled the breasts even
of the Roman multitudes.

Then came the f alL More or less hollow the shell may
have been, must have been ; none the less, it took several
centuries to cfush it and destroy it* Upon its ruins there
grew no real nationalism for some fifteen centuries. The
peoples of the north of Europe still lived the tribal life,
banded together, to be sure, in some degree for safety
and for war, and banded together with enough efficiency
to overthrow imperial Rome herself. First, however,
Christianity had undermined Rome's foundations and
honeycombed her walls. The tribesmen of the north
went back Christians ; and the only tie approaching na-
tionalism which may be said to have existed through the
dark ages and the middle ages was that of a theocratic
state, an ecclesiasticism centering at Rome and claiming
all the tribes as its constituents. The Holy Father at
Rome claimed sovereignty over all the world, and to a
degree exercised it; but it was a sovereignty over divided
and widely separated tribes, lacking in the real coherence
of nationality. During the age of chivalry, the barons in
their chateaus, castles, and strongholds, with their vil-
lagers and serfs grouped at the foot of their crags, exer-
cised the sovereignty of little kings, chieftains of stronger
or weaker bands of marauders.

Simultaneously with the Renaissance and the Refor-
mation, came the dawn of nationalism in Europe,

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

whether these events were in relation of cause and effect
or not* The city states had flourished in a measure
Venice, Florence, and the like; they had warred with
each other; they had prospered and grown great by
means of their commerce and naval expeditions; and a
certain degree of domestic coherence had arisen among
them. Perhaps they prepared the way for the Renais-
sance, for their expeditions to the Grecian peninsula had
brought back the seeds which sprouted into the revival
of learning and of the arts* But nothing approaching
real nationalism had developed among them. Says Dr. S*
Parkes Cadman in Christianity and the State: "The Re-
naissance, the Reformation, the various translations of
the Bible, Luther's virile personality, and Calvin's for-
midable intellectualism, were the chief formative factors
of modern nationalism* That of Scotland was derived
from Geneva through John Knox; that of England came
by the circuitous route of a characteristic independence,
intensified by the isolation of the English people, and
the resolution of the Plantagenet and Tudor monarchs
to govern without outside interference***

I* GROWTH OF NATIONALISM IN EUROPE AND
AMERICA

Origins of such ideas as nationalism are difficult to
trace; sometimes they have their roots buried in the soil
centuries ahead of the flower and fruit* Thus John Wy-
clif in England, sometimes called "The Morning Star
of the Reformation/* undoubtedly played the part of
forerunner to the upheaval which took place on the con-
tinent and also to the slowly dawning sense of nation-

218

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM

ality in his own country. An Oxford don, of great
learning and courage, he insisted upon making the Bible
an open book to the ploughboys of England as well as
upon the fearless advocacy of those ideas of freedom and
liberty which later Martin Luther put into such vigor-
ous action* His earliest writings were in the nature of a
defense of the British Parliament in refusing tribute to
the Pope* Here he demonstrated his fellow feeling with
the rise of nationalism and its interference with Roman
authority. He declared independence for the individual
worshiper without the mediation of the priest and an-
ticipated the Protestant doctrine, which grew up two
centuries later, of the infallibility of the Bible, He has
by some been called the father of English prose.

The first nationality to lift its head plainly above the
surrounding chaos was that developed by Swiss moun-
taineers. No doubt the rough and inaccessible character
of their mountain homes begot the spirit of independence
which rapidly cemented into their cantons. Love of
their cliffs and peaks developed patriots in whom they
took a just pride, like William Tell and Arnold Wink-
lereid. The Reformation and John Calvin came along
just at the right time. The keen and unbending steel of
Calvin's character soon conquered the leadership among
the Swiss and rapidly advanced the national conscious-
ness which has continued unbroken through at least four
centuries, Calvin prescribed laws and morals, statescraft
as well as faith; and his influence is still felt in Switzer-
land, as it was long felt elsewhere, including the Ameri-
can colonies and the American republic,

Luther, of course, with his German Bible, did more

219

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

to unite divided German tribes and dukedoms than any
other one individual in her history, not excluding Fred-
erick the Great, Bismarck, and William L Even the
peasant revolt, the direct outgrowth of Luther's declara-
tion of independence from Rome, a revolt which he de-
plored and did all he could to put down, only added in
its ultimate effects to the sense of unity among the
divided German tribes. From Luther forward, the de-
velopment of German life and thought has marched
steadily on to solidified nationality,

In England, Henry VIII, although dubbed "Defender
of the Faith" by the Catholic church, rebelled ultimately
against that church for the highly personal reason that
he desired to marry six different wives, one after the
other, and he couldn't do it without a breach with the
Holy Father, From this time forward, he became a very
different defender of the faith. Indeed, he led a Protes-
tant revolt, followed by the utter independence of his
stalwart and able daughter, Elizabeth, Under her pow-
erful reign, England grew more and more Protestant,
and more and more nationalistic. At the same time,
John Knox, the Calvinistic preacher, was the real ruler
of Scotland, From his pulpit in St, Giles he swayed the
destiny of the kingdom in much the same way as Savon-
arola had done in Florence, and over a much longer
period without a break,

France had her Joan of Arc, her Huguenots, her rev-
olutions, and her Napoleon to weld the Gallic tribes
steadily into a united whole. Although Joan was herself
a devout Catholic, she was even more a devout patriot.
She called herself, and people thought of her as, France

220

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM

personified* She was the dawn, not only of nationhood
in France and of burning patriotism, but also in a sense
the dawn of the Reformation as welL At any rate, from
her time forward, the sense of nationality grew among
the French, and the Reformation followed hard upon
her armies.

Geoffrey Parsons in The Stream of History makes the
assertion that "the rise of nationalism in Europe fur-
nished its extreme example in the division of the
Scandinavian peoples, all closely akin, into the three in-
dependent nations of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden/*
They were separated during the middle ages, but united
in 1397; and Sweden broke loose in 1523 and has con-
tinued separate to the present time. Norway, first under
Danish control, swung later to Sweden in 1814 and re-
gained final independence as late as 1907. Gustavus
Adolphus, brilliant soldier king, raised Sweden to a high
degree of power, which was developed under Charles
XII early in the eighteenth century. Little Denmark at
one time ruled the Baltic Sea, though she has never held
great political or military power.

Across the seas came the Puritans and the Pilgrims, as
well as the Cavaliers. Like the Spanish adventurers who
preceded them, they still held allegiance to the sover-
eignties from which they came ; but distance and malad-
ministration gradually broke the ties; independence grew
apace; and at the end of the Revolutionary War, the
thirteen American colonies may be said to have been less
like each other than they were like their respective
mother countries. Nevertheless necessity drew them to-
gether and the long, slow process of forging out of them

221

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

a united nation began, a process which was not to end
until the civil conflict closed in 1865* Although there
were Roman Catholic settlers on American soil at the
beginning, and although many immigrants of the same
faith have come in during her history, still it is true that
the prevailing faiths and philosophies which accom-
panied the birth of the republic were Protestant. So it
is safe to say that nationalism in America and Protes-
tantism, whether cause and effect or no, go hand in
hand,

IL EXTREME NATIONALISM BREEDS WAR

Whether good for the world or bad for the world,
there was no escape from the ultimate results of this in-
tensified nationalism in a world conflict Germany's con-
sciousness of her nationality cannot be held responsible
alone, in view of the knowledge which has come to us
since the event, for the disastrous cataclysm. All round
her were nationalisms as intensely self-conscious as hers.
France burned like an incandescent light with national
sentiment, with desire for revenge for Alsace-Lorraine,
and with commercial ambition, Russia, writhing under
the oppressions of her czars, was just preparing to burst
into a new and independent nationhood. Belgium was
colonizing; Italy aspired; England was dominating the
waves of all the world, and brooking no rivalry in her
rulership of the seas. Germany felt herself, whether
rightly or wrongly, ringed about with a rim of steel.
She only struck first, she thought, to keep from being
struck. All these intense nationalisms were bound sooner
or later to clash. There was no escape* What is more to

222

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM

the purpose, unless the logic of Protestantism can work
out something bigger and finer than mere nationalism,
other clashes are bound to come. Another world war,
such authorities as Admiral Lord Beatty and ex-Pre-
mier Lloyd George say, will mean the end of existing
western civilization; and according to both authorities,
nothing but the Christian religion at its best can prevent
such a catastrophe.

It may be that this is the ultimate logic of Protestant
nationalism, that it will destroy itself. It may be that
providence, fate, whatever one cares to call it, may be
setting the stage for such a decline and fall of western
civilization. Empires and kingdoms and cultures have a
way of rising, flourishing, and falling. It may be that
another world conflict may arise out of the intense na-
tionalism of today which will so weaken these white
nationalities that the yellow, brown, and black races
may flood in over their ruins to establish a new order,
a new civilization, a totally different culture. Certainly
some such end is likely, in the judgment of many cool
and calm students, unless the rising tide of nationalism
be checked and governed and possibly merged into a
greater and a nobler thing.

III. CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM THE ANTIDOTE

Enter, then, internationalism a word with which
to frighten conservatives in all lands, a bogey for "patri-
ots" and one hundred per cent Englishmen, Americans,
Germans, Italians, or French. The word "international-
ism," however, cannot startle mankind any more than
the word "reformation" startled them in Europe some

223

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

four hundred years ago. It may be called an Impossible
idealism, fraught with danger; it may be denounced by
the press, by diplomats, by politicians, and by kings of
industry, but denouncing will not keep it from being
born. As a matter of fact, it is already born a puny
little infant to be sure, but born just the same, sucking
lustily and gaining strength hour by hour. It is true that
the preachments of Woodrow Wilson during and after
the world conflict, the widest heard words of that epoch
in human history, intensified greatly the self -conscious-
ness and the nationalism of many little peoples. "Self-
determination," his phrase, was on everybody's tongue,
Many isolated groups sprang into nationhood almost
over night; and the peace makers at Versailles put them
on the map and marked out their boundaries plain and
clear. In spite, however, of this occasional intensification
of the nationalistic spirit, a new idea, or idealism, sprang
from those same preachments, viz., internationalism.
One of the sixteen points upon which the world war
armistice was signed and the peace negotiated was the
formation of a League of Nations by which an interna-
tional mind might take the place of the national mind,
From this League of Nations, which in the event has
proved to be a league of other nations than the United
States, has grown a World Court by which it is hoped
to supplant war with law.

It is not surprising that this new internationalism
should be regarded as a foe by the old-fashioned patri-
ots, nor that the old nationalism should be regarded as
dangerous by internationally minded thinkers. So firmly
rooted has this comparatively new-born nationalism

224

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM

grown to be, in something like four centuries of time,
that "patriotism" is now regarded, without definition,
as one of the supreme virtues. The rank and file of most
nations do not stop to distinguish between good and
bad patriotism, wise and unwise patriotism, safe and
dangerous patriotism. The patriotic spirit gone to seed
may become nothing else but provincialism; and run-
ning amuck, nothing less than chauvinism or jingoism,
"Lives there a man with soul so dead . ." Of course,
everybody loves the soil on which he was born, the
scenes of his childhood, the highways and byways of
long association. This fact ought, as the French say, to
go without saying; it should be taken for granted* But
the truest patriot does not wave the flag and shout, does
not carry a chip on his shoulder, takes a just estimate
and not an unfair one of his country's virtues and vices,
and looks the facts squarely in the face. It is never any
good not facing facts. It fools only one's self and one's
countrymen to look at one's native land only through
rose-colored glasses and at all other lands with jaundiced
eyes. Such patriotism, falsely so-called, has been well
named the last refuge of scoundrels. The ruthless politi-
cian and the conscienceless demagogue, as well as the
unscrupulous militarist and profiteer, make their final
appeal to this pseudo-patriotism. In the language of
Edith Cavell, "Patriotism is not enough."

That this language is not overstrong for prevailing
types of nationalism is made more than evident by Jona-
than French Scott in his trenchant and startling little
volume called The Menace of Nationalism in Education.
He has searched the textbooks of France, Germany,

225

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Great Britain, and the United States to show how chil-
dren are misguided toward neighbor nations in their
most impressionable years, and how distorted views of
their own country, its victories and achievements, are
bred into little minds so that they never can be tooted
out. Most of us need only to recall our own school days
to remember how we were drilled in hatred of the red-
coats and the Hessians who took part against us in our
Revolutionary War; how the defeats of 1812 in almost
unbroken succession, including the capture and burning
of Washington city, were turned into victories in our
school text books; and how the battle of New Orleans,
fought by Andy Jackson after that war was over, and
with absolutely no effect upon the result, was exalted for
us into a humiliation of the British empire. Perhaps very
few Americans realize how the textbooks concerning our
own civil conflict were written from so strictly a north-
ern point of view since the presses and publishing
houses were all in the hands of the north and none in
the hands of the impoverished south that they could
not be used in southern schools where the people knew
that the facts had been distorted. Southern sensibilities
were outraged by the use of such words as "rebels,"
when the Confederates did not consider themselves reb-
els, and were not rebels. Southern teachers, in turn,
practically without textbooks, just turned the thing
around and exalted Lee, Jackson, Beauregard, and the
rest, into demigods. This illustration, unimportant
though it may be in influencing international attitudes,
only brings home to American readers the dangerous and
egregious partisanship of writings that might be so much

226

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM

more disastrous, such as German textbooks exalting the
fatherland and denouncing France and England, or
French textbooks kindling the desire for revenge in
French hearts against her nearest neighbor to the north
and east. The whole vicious system of provincial patri-
otism gone to seed, patriotism running amuck in the
schools, in the public press, and on the platform, it is
easy to see, can do irreparable damage and render wars
inevitable*

IV. PATRIOTISM GONE TO SEED

Such false patriotism would teach every nation that
all its acts are rooted and grounded in justice, right, and
unselfishness, all its wars waged in self-defense and never
in aggression, and all its motives beyond all criticism or
suspicion of self-seeking. Who that has listened to polit-
ical speakers in the United States, the Fourth of July
and Thanksgiving Day orators, including ministers of
the gospel, has not heard the repeated assertion that
"America never fought except in self defense**; when
any student who has had access to unbiased works of
history knows perfectly well that we have fought wars
of aggression and have annexed territory at the mouth
of the cannon. Our citizens have promoted revolution,
as for example in Hawaii, preparatory to annexation.
And, as for the Isthmus of Panama, President Theodore
Roosevelt frankly said, "I reached out and took it/'
Furthermore, the world is beginning to learn that there
is a type of peaceful penetration, with Industry, trans-
portation, and finance, that is no less real and no less

227

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

powerful than that with military arms* Neither Amer-
ica, nor any other nation, dare honestly make the claim
that it has never fought except in self defense, and never
been actuated by selfish motives. Such a claim is false-
hood and nothing else* Many unbiased students ^ of
history declare that when any nation sees that something
is to be got by war, that nation will fight. To such a
degree has nationalism developed. Unchecked and un-
leashed, it threatens the world.

Who, then, is to check it? If Protestantism may be
credited or charged with giving birth to nationalism,
and if Protestantism holds the religious leadership of
what we call the civilized world, then it would seem
that Protestantism must do the job, if anybody can.
This huge and menacing child of Protestantism, intense
nationalism, may grow too big, powerful, and ungov-
ernable for its parent to handle. Certainly all the re-
sources of the Protestant spirit must be taxed to the ut-
most in its discipline. To the present moment, that spirit
seems to have sidestepped the responsibility. Protestant-
ism apparently is not thinking in international terms ; it
is thinking in denominational, national, and even paro-
chial terms. For the huge task of internationalism, men
have got to think in world terms. If the religion of Jesus
means anything at all, it means that the Samaritan is
our neighbor and brother; and today the Samaritan
means, to us Americans, the German, the English, the
French, the Japanese. Somehow, in our minds, if we
carry out the logic of Protestantism, we must draw these
distant neighbors up close to us with television photog-

228

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM

raphy and see them face to face and understand them
heart to heart*

V. CO-OPERATION NECESSARY TO SAVE THE WORLD

How can this be accomplished except by participation
in every type of conference and commission, economic or
political, hygienic or industrial? It is the part of Protes-
tant peoples particularly, if charged with the leadership
of the world, to say to one another and to all, "Come let
us reason together/* It is the part of each one to engage
in every world court, every world conference, every
world association, every peace pact, every disarmament
conference, looking towards that far-off ideal of frater-
nal democracies ultimately growing into a united states
of the world, Edmund Burke once said, "You cannot
indict a whole nation/' Perhaps, then, it may be said,
"You cannot indict a whole religion/* If, however,
Protestantism fails of her obligation and her oppor-
tunity to think in world terms and to act with world
measures, the next world war will indict her anyhow.

During the last world conflict we were assured that it
was a war to end wars, that it was to make the world
safe for democracy, that it was to usher in a period of
international thinking and living. We are yet too near
to the event to know whether these high ideals shall
arise out of the smoke and the ruins and the untimely
death of some thirteen millions of young men or not
But this much we do know, that the idealism of those
strenuous years, receding like the swinging of a pendu-
lum as all such moments of high heroism must recede

229

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

i nt o the doldrums of disillusionment and fatigue,

must be renewed again and take the ascendant. Other-
wise, the struggles and the blood of that convulsion
must go for naught Those fifty thousand boys who
wore the American khaki and who lie in Flanders fields,
will have died in vain. We just went over there and got
mixed up in a European commercial and nationalistic
quarrel and won the victory for one side and not for the
other, and didn't do any good on earth, unless out of
that terrible conflict there comes some attempt, at least,
at a moral substitute for the belated barbarism of war.
Unless our Protestantism begins to think internationally
and act internationally, the blood of those boys will cry
out to us from the ground, and we shall hear them say-
ing:

''To you from failing hands we throw the torch,
Be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flan-
ders fields/'

In The History of American Idealism, by Gustavus
Myers, is the following illuminating paragraph: "Has
history any surprises? We all have endlessly heard the
formula that 'history repeats itself/ In one great respect
America may fairly claim to have thrown that ancient
aphorism to the winds. There have been in the annals
of history occasional appearances of great religious,
moral and idealistic leaders. But where in all history is
to be found the precedent of a people idealistic and to
such a preponderant degree that the nominal leaders

230

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM

simply expressed what the people themselves felt and
thought? As an idealistic nation America has proved
that, after all, history is still in an incipient stage* The
American people have provided the surprise of ages in
writing an unprecedented species of history and they
will write more. The most lavish dreamer cannot vision
the future possibilities embedded in this invincible ideal-
ism/'

231

CHAPTER XV

Re-discovery of Jesus and the
Kingdom of God

WHATEVER sins may be laid at the door of
Protestantism, and they are many of omission
and commission this much must be said in its
behalf, that it has rediscovered and re-presented the his-
toric personality of Jesus, the man and teacher, in such
a way as has never been done hitherto in eighteen or
nineteen centuries. The greater the character in history,
the more the tendency for myth and legend to gather
round it until it becomes dim, misty, shadowy in its
very exaltation. A distorted picture grows so easily and
so rapidly in the minds and imaginations of men that
but a short time needs to elapse until such characters be-
come quite different from their realities. If this is true of
King David, heroes of Homer, Charlemagne, Henry of
Navarre, George Washington, Bonaparte, and Lenin,
how much more likely is it that it should be true of
Jesus of Nazareth, concerning whom so little was writ-
ten and since whose day so many centuries have rolled
over the heads of humanity*

During all the long annals of the church, the person
of Jesus was submerged beneath the figure of his mother,
the Virgin Mary. Saints and apostles and prophets
crowded him into a corner of the stage. Doctrines and
creeds and intricate theological systems enshrouded him,

232

RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

until these became more and more, while he grew less
and less* It remained for the scholars of Protestantism
to strip away the mists of antiquity, to push aside the
crowding figures that stood between him and the eyes of
men, to tear down the massive structures of creed and
symbol and system, and to let him loose in all the charm
of his reality for the eyes of men to behold. The story of
this rediscovery of Jesus, told by Albert Schweitzer in
The Quest of the Historical Jesas, reads like a tremen-
dous epic and dramatic Odyssey, thrills and stirs the
reader. No wonder the education of any young theo-
logical student of today is considered incomplete without
a knowledge of this romantic story so vividly told by
that Swiss musician, philosopher, theologian, and good
physician who has buried himself in the heart of Africa
to serve his fellows as Jesus served his.

L JESUS REDISCOVERED AFTER Two THOUSAND
YEARS

This story is laid largely in the nineteenth century.
During that period in which science, principally Protes-
tant-born, was growing up to mature and stalwart stat-
ure, not the least of the objects of research to which the
newly awakened minds of men devoted themselves, but
probably the greatest single topic of investigation, is the
man Jesus. Beginning with Strauss in Germany, whose
Leben Jesu was the pioneer of the lives of Christ and
still a work monumental and beautiful in character; and
continuing with Ernest Renan and his Vie de Jesu in
France, a highly imaginary but none the less artistic and
literary study of this character, the lives of Jesus have

233

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

come pouring from the press in a steady and increasing
stream* At this moment no reader can keep up with the
flood of them that an insatiable public seems to demand.
For a hundred years now the best brains of the western
world have devoted themselves as tirelessly and as avidly
to the pursuit of the truth about Jesus as they have to
the discovery of poison gases or the perfection of aviation
and the radio. Yes, it is safe to say that even more
scholarship, genius, and indefatigable effort have been
directed toward this end than even the natural sciences
have commanded. Men have toiled night and day in the
libraries, deciphering old manuscripts, restoring faded
and double-written ones, have traveled at great pains
and even personal danger to the monasteries of the
Fayouni and Asia Minor, have threaded the footsteps of
Paul in his great journeys, have excavated in the Holy
Land, and have followed the trail of Jesus almost with
foot rule and microscope to find the exact truth about
him.

The result stands out plain and clear for even those
who are not scholars today to inherit. The biggest part
of the New Testament has been set aside as teaching us
little about the real Jesus, and sometimes little about his
thought. The sources of the historical picture of the
Christ have been reduced principally to the first three
gospels; and even these must be dissected carefully and
scientifically to get at the contemporary story. The
fourth gospel, John, so long a favorite with Christian
worshipers, and even today deservedly popular with
them, we now know to be more a Greek gospel, filled
with the philosophy and the atmosphere of the ancient

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Greek world, than a Palestinian document reflecting the
first thirty years of the first century. Jesus had scarcely
been laid in the new-made tomb until the legends began
to grow around him, just as they have grown around
Lenin of Russia, dead only some six years. There were
no written documents for many years after Jesus* death,
and the prolific word of mouth, handed on from one to
another, rolled up like a snowball of accretion and ex-
traneous matter. A well-nigh superhuman task has been
that of the Protestant scholars of the last century, coolly
and ruthlessly to tear away, dig away, hew away all this
accretion, hardened by the ages, and to release from the
marble block of eighteen centuries of tradition the snow-
white Christ embedded there. This they have done until
the work is practically complete and one may venture the
assertion that the real Jesus of the first thirty-three years
of the Christian era is better known today than he was
in the year 5 of the first Christian century.

IL THE TEACHING OF JESUS UNEARTHED

It follows, of course, that what Jesus really taught,
which is the essential thing for us, has likewise by Prot-
estant scholarship been dug up out of the masses of
non-essential matter that have been heaped upon his
message through ignorant and superstitious centuries.
Not creeds and catechisms, not rubrics and litanies, not
the findings of councils and theologians, but the Simon-
pure utterance and emphasis of Jesus have come forth as
from the tomb in a veritable resurrection and in a light
often blinding to the eyes of men. It is easy to forget
that for less than a century, due to the inexorable inves-

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

tigations of Protestant scientific men, we have known
that the sum of the teaching of Jesus is found in the
phrase "the kingdom of God/* That phrase has lived, to
be sure, throughout all the subsequent centuries, even as
it existed many centuries before Jesus was born; but it
was not until the nineteenth that this idea was driven
into the minds of men like a nail and clinched on the
other side, never to be shaken out. The hold upon the
idea had ever been loose and half-hearted; now let us
hope we are gripping it with some degree of relentless-
ness and finality*

To the Jewish mind that phrase meant the triumph
of their people and their tribal or national god. It meant
the undisputed reign of Jahweh over the other nations
of the earth, with the clouds and smoke of a theocratic
empire circling round the temple at Jerusalem. It meant
the destruction of the Roman yoke, the downfall of
Greek influence, the dissipation of Egyptian and As-
syrian power, and the supremacy of Israel, with all the
trees bowing down to the king who should come and set
up this rule and all the roads of the world leading to his
throne and his sanctuary. Men have dreamed of Utopias
in all times, from Plato and his ideal republic, through
Augustine and his city of God, Savonarola and his, Cal-
vin and his, Sir Thomas More and his Utopia, clear
down to H. G. Wells and the Russian communists.
Jesus dreamed, but in a different way from any and all
of these, of his "kingdom of God/' his celestial city, his
rule of God in the hearts and not in the eyes of men. His
dream was a totally different dream, only slowly begin-
ning to penetrate the minds of modern men, sharpened

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in its cutting edge by the scholarship, mostly Protestant,
of the scientific age.

IIL THE KINGDOM OF GOD NOT VISIBLE

The key to his idea of his Utopia is in the little
clause, "the kingdom of God cometh not with observa-
tion/* a negative utterance that cuts away all the tradi-
tional Jewish materialism that had preceded him and
equally lops oft all the Christian materialism that has
followed him. His idea, perhaps best phrased by Josiah
Royce, is that of a "beloved community," a fraternity
of all mankind, a comradeship, a friendship, a com-
munity of interest and service* Of course, it cannot be
seen, as it resides within the hearts of men, consists of
spiritual qualities and forces gentleness, kindness,
helpfulness, love. The success of this ideal city of God
cannot be measured by the size of buildings or treasuries,
by numbers of converts or communicants. It cannot be
measured at all. It has no boundary line; or, rather, it
has only waving and jagged boundaries which cut out
many that we think are in and cut in many that we
think are out. You cannot say concerning the kingdom
of God, "Lo, here it is," or "Lo, there it goes," for "it
is among you, even within you/' Jesus believes and
teaches that those qualities which characterize family re-
lationships are the qualities of this kingdom of God. In
families, the ideal is to give and take, to live and let live,
to love and serve, you first and me last; in short, un-
selfish love. That, believes Jesus, is the ideal for all
social relationships, world wide, with those who live
close to us and those who live on the other side of the

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

world* This and nothing less is the rarefied atmosphere
of his idealism in that phrase most often heard from his
lips, "the kingdom of God/'

The ideal has a double significance: first, for the inner
life of each one; and, second, for the social relationships
of all This reign of God, or reign of love, must trans-
form the character of every human being who attempts
to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Perhaps this is what
the Quakers mean by "the inner light/ The kingdom of
God within a man shines out in face and action with an
inward incandescence* His bearing is one of sympathy,
understanding, kindness, and service; he is a comrade to
everybody else. He cannot be the self-seeking opponent,
the adversary, let alone the ruthless exploiter of any liv-
ing human being. The attitude of the ideal father and
mother towards children, the ideal brother or sister to-
wards each other or towards parents, marks the indi-
vidual who has entered into the kingdom of God. The
historical Jesus himself best displays the characteristics
which he taught*

Then the social bearing of this idealism comes loom-
ing up plainly in our scientific age. We can no longer
strain at gnats and swallow camels when once we adopt
the kingdom of God as our ideal in human contacts. We
can no longer lay double emphasis upon the peccadillos
of people and blind our eyes to the glaring social sins
which are all round us. Professor Edward A. Ross, of
the University of Wisconsin, in Sin and Society, writ-
ten in the spirit of a scientific era by a scientific man,
seeks to give us this rational view of a new doctrine of
sin. In his preface he says:

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"In its reactions against wrong- doing the public is
childishly naive and sentimental. It is content with the
surface look of things. It lays emphasis where emphasis
was laid centuries ago. . . * It never occurs to the
public that sin evolves along with society, and that the
perspective in which it is necessary to view misconduct
changes from age to age* Hence, in today's warfare on
sin, the reactions of the public are about as serviceable as
gongs and stinkpots in a modern battle. Rationalize
public opinion; modernize it and bring it abreast of
latter-day sin; make the blame of the many into a flam-
ing sword guarding the sacred interests of society/'

Professor Ross then has much to say about sin and
syndicates, about the over-emphasis on the compara-
tively unimportant sins which hurt principally one's self,
and the lack of emphasis upon the wholesale sins that
hurt thousands of others. Here is a paragraph that is like
an earthquake, and that voices the so-called social gos-
pel, a legitimate child of Protestantism in the twentieth
century:

"People are sentimental, and bastinado wrong-doing
not according to its harmfulness, but according to the
infamy that has come to attach to it. Undiscerning, they
chastise with scorpions the old authentic sins, but spare
the new. They do not see that boodling is treason, that
blackmail is piracy, that embezzlement is theft, that
speculation is gambling, that tax-dodging is larceny,
that railroad discrimination is treachery, that the factory
labor of its children is slavery, that deleterious adultera-
tion is murder. It has not come home to them that the
fraudulent promoter 'devours widows* houses/ that the

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

monopolist 'grinds the faces of the poor/ that mercenary
editors and spellbinders 'put bitter for sweet and sweet
for bitter/ The cloven hoof hides in patent leather; and
today, as in Hosea's time, the people 'are destroyed for
lack of knowledge/ The mob lynches the red-handed
slayer, when it ought to keep a gallows Haman-high for
the venal mine inspector, the seller of infected milk, the
maintainer of a fire-trap theater. The child-beater is for-
ever blasted in reputation, but the exploiter of infant
toil or the concocter of a soothing syrup for the drug-
ging of babies stands a pillar of society. The petty shop-
lifter is more abhorred than the stealer of a franchise,
and the wife-whipper is outcast long before the man
who sends his over-insured ship to founder with its
crew/'

IV* THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AN UNREALIZED IDEAL
No one of us but knows men whose business ethics
differ as widely as the poles from their family ethics or
church ethics. We all know men and concerns whose
reputation for shady and ruthless dealings is known all
over their territory and yet who, as individuals, are
honored in their communities and in their churches.
They do not hesitate during the week to over-reach, to
misrepresent, to exploit, and to cheat; while on Sunday
they sit in the sanctuary in front pews, meet with com-
mittees and boards, devise plans for what they call the
"kingdom of God" and give large sums for benevolent
purposes. Strange the intellectual feat they perform of
keeping their religion in one air-tight and water-tight
compartment and their business in another one. This

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RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

fact is well known in American life but none the less
needs ten times the emphasis that has yet been given to
it. Protestant preachers would do well to cease wasting
their time in attacks on bridge-players, dancers, or pet-
ters, and put in their time assailing men who steal and
murder on a tremendous scale* The conscience money
that is poured out in founding universities and building
great institutions, in charities and benevolences, in the
United States, has never been equaled in the worlcTs his-
tory; and too often it is just as truly blood money as
the thirty pieces of silver that Judas took and then in
his disgust and despair threw down at the feet of his
ruthless employers.

Men whose souls are eaten up by the guilt of these
colossal crimes can have no sort of comprehension of the
true kingdom of God within the heart, with its peace
and serenity, with its appreciation of all beauty in Na-
ture and in human life. Of such men, the Protestant
poet, Wordsworth, in the nineteenth century exclaimed:

"Great God! I'd rather be a pagan
Suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn/'

It goes without saying that Protestantism cannot
claim exclusive origination for the social gospel; but it
is not too much to claim that for the most part it has
borne the burden of this emphasis in the last twenty or
thirty years. Walter Rauschenbusch, with his Chris-
tianity and the Social Crisis, now a little over a score

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

of years old, gained the reputation of being the foremost
interpreter in his time of social Christianity, and the
prophet of a new reformation. It is the Protestant
churches which have brought about and are still bring-
ing about the most striking social reforms of the present
day. The leaders of the Labor movement and Labor party
in England belong mostly to non-conformist churches ;
very few of them are in the established church of Eng-
land* The members of the Labor government are mostly
identified with these free Protestant churches. The first
lord of the admiralty is a lay preacher in the Baptist
church, and several others in high positions are lay
preachers* In America, it was the Federal Council of
Churches which brought about the reduction of the
twelve-hour day in the steel industry to the eight-hour
day, an achievement which called for heroism, for sac-
rifice financial and otherwise, on the part of the daring
men who pushed it through. Labor ought never to for-
get that. Perhaps it is safe to say that Protestant churches
proclaiming the social gospel have done more for labor
than labor unions themselves have done. Protestantism
has been unrelenting in its fight against child labor and
its advocacy of maternity legislation and insurance. In
making this assertion, one need not forget the devoted
efforts of Catholic and Jewish welfare associations; but
one must weigh fairly the stress placed upon these mat-
ters from one source or another and the comparative
success attending the efforts.

Whatever may be said about the causes which brought
about the passage of the eighteenth amendment to the
American constitution, however much it may be con-

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RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

ceded that big business, in the interests of mass produc-
tion, finally pushed this amendment through, neverthe-
less it must be agreed that it was the Protestant voice,
pre-eminently in the Methodist, Baptist, and Disciples
churches, which first lifted the insistent cry against
legalized liquor. Whatever may be the varying opinions
concerning the social value of this experiment, it is clear,
none the less, that Protestant churches are responsible
largely for its inception.

V. INTERRACIAL RELATIONS

Under the head of the social reform message derivable
from the idea of the kingdom of God, must be placed
the promotion of better interracial conditions in mod-
ern life* Wherever there are any attempts at better under-
standing on the part of different races, Protestants are
playing the leading role in the promotion of them. The
effort to put into practice the Golden Rule in the dealings
of whites with blacks and blacks with whites in Ameri-
can life seems to be fostered principally by Protestant
leaders in the field of social science and social ethics. The
voices that are raised on the platform and in the public
prints with any degree of insistency upon this topic
seem to be pre-eminently Protestant voices. The churches
that are exchanging preachers between the races, and
those which observe race relations Sundays now and
again, are Protestant churches. The officers and leaders
of race relations commissions are the officers and leaders
in church federations and in the Federal Council of
Churches. Those educational institutions which make a
point of fair play between these two races in America

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

are mostly institutions dominated by the Protestant
spirit. Here, if anywhere, the kingdom of God, the com-
radeship of men, the beloved community, however you
prefer to phrase Jesus' central idea, is the dominating
theme*

Other quarters of the earth besides America struggle
against the difficulties of race relations, such as various
lands in the Far East, India, China, and the interna-
tional territories in the eastern hemisphere. Here race
feeling is just as hot and keen as it has ever been on the
American continent. In Cape Colony, and South Africa
in general, the contact of race with race engenders preju-
dice and heat and passion. Here the voice of the Naz~
arene, as released by Protestant scholarship in the last
century, rings out against the oppression of man by his
fellow-man, against the inhumanity of man to man
bringing mourning to countless thousands, and counsel-
ing kindness and brotherhood, mutual toleration and
service. There is a long, long way to go to the realization
of the ideals of Jesus in race relations; but at least some
few faltering steps have been taken along that road.

VI. WAR AND PEACE

In the direction of world peace perhaps more has been
done in the last eleven years, the period succeeding the
world war, than in any century in human history.
These measures for peace on earth among men of good
will are in directest harmony with the master conception
of the kingdom of God, the reign of heaven in the
hearts of men and in all the earth. Catholic, Protestant,
and even pagan lands have all been caught up into this

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RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

longing for peace* It is hoped and believed by such lead-
ers as Sir Gilbert Murray that even the Moslem countries
will soon be drawn into the League of Nations. That
institution is the rainbow of hope for Europe and most
of the rest of the world, the only hope they see upon
their horizon. The World Court, to which almost all
the nations have now adhered, to the extent even of
signing the optional clause of the protocol, agreeing to
submit all their differences to compulsory arbitration
and adjudication the World Court, the child of the
League, is nothing less than an arch of protection over
the heads of otherwise defenseless nations. The Kellogg
anti-war pact, a good resolution, none the less weighty
for being simply a resolution, has a moral value incal-
culable in banishing the spirit of fear and hostility from
the minds of men. Never perhaps in history has the
world been so passionately desirous of peace as it is just
now. All but universal is this longing and yearning for
the paths of peace* And who can say how much of this
profound desire comes from an increasing comprehension
of this dynamic ideal of Jesus, the kingdom of God, dug
up out of the obscurity of centuries by Protestant schol-
arship and scattered to the ends of the earth so that
such men as Gandhi and Tagore are teaching it in India ;
and generals in China, perhaps as truly Christian as
some captains of industry in America, call it their life
creed. And who is to say how much even Russia in her
communism, her straining after what some consider to
be an impossible ideal of comradeship and community
service, may be beholden to the Nazarene whom avow-
edly they reject? No gas or ether or atmosphere can pene-

245

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

trate more pervasively than a great idea; and this idea
of the kingdom of God has not only begun to penetrate
but has already penetrated remote continents, and is
rapidly forcing its way into the nooks and crannies of
places far from Europe and from the seats of Protestant
scholarship. It comes not with observation ; it cannot be
seen; but its effects are manifest to those who have
scanned the conditions of the world.

This, then, is the thesis of this chapter, that Protes-
tantism through its devoted scholarship, which regard-
less of consequences has bored deeply under the strata of
eighteen centuries of dust for the truth about Jesus, has
rediscovered him, unearthed him, placed him fairly be-
fore the eyes of men, has outlined the indubitable his-
torical facts about his personality, shown his strength
and his loveliness to the astonished eyes of men, so that
the imaginations of people everywhere are quickened
and charmed by him. Then, in searching for the essence
of his teaching, these same scholars have determined that
his supreme idea and utterance is his beautiful dream of
a kingdom of God among men, a beloved community, a
world- wide comradeship in which the ethics that char-
acterize family life at its best shall apply to all human
relationships without limitation or discrimination. As a
corollary to this world-shaking and world-moving
ideal, there comes into human thought and upon human
lips the piercing message of a gospel which has to do
with business, to make it mutually helpful and never
mutually destructive; into industrial concerns, to lay the
emphasis upon humane dealings of managers with men
and men with managers, upon devotion to the interest

246

RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

of stockholder by handworker and of handworker by
stockholder, nothing less. There follows in the logic of
this gospel the inevitable conclusion that a man is a man
for a* that, no matter what the texture or the pigment of
his skin, the contour of his skull, or the character of the
hair which surmounts it. To this ideal of the beloved
community the thought of war and its belated barbar-
ism, abhorrent and irreconcilable, organized murder and
destruction of life and property, becomes impossible of
entertainment even for one single moment of temporary
insanity. All this stream of thought and spur to action,
Protestantism, if it has not originated, has at least
helped forward into the life of this world*

247

CHAPTER XVI
The Outlook for Protestantism

PRESIDENT ELIOT of Harvard used to say that
the greatest satisfaction in this world lay in giving
one's life to the service of an institution which one
knew would endure long after his service is done. Now
some of us have wondered much whether the Protestant
church at large is gaining or waning, is headed for a
splendid future or for a gradual good-night. Some of
the best brains of the world are seriously concerned with
that elemental question. Many able observers in both
hemispheres declare that Protestantism is waning, is
decadent, has entered upon its eclipse, is headed for final
extinction. Difficult as it is to gather evidences for or
against this prediction, much as figures compiled largely
by Protestants may mislead us, we may none the less
find many more or less intangible evidences supporting
this view.

For example, Dean Inge has recently said that the
golden age of preaching is past. He speaks for England,
to be sure; but what happens in England sooner or later
is likely to happen in America. The golden age of
preaching no doubt recedes into the past in this country
as well as in the mother land. The names of command-
ing preachers in America may be counted on the fingers
of one hand. Country people who would listen eagerly
for an hour or two hours to a preacher have given place

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THE OUTLOOK FOR PROTESTANTISM

to city people who will not listen with patience for
twenty to thirty minutes. It is impossible in the cities
to gather evening audiences even for the most powerful
men. The "foolishness of preaching no longer gathers
a gaping crowd on Sunday nights. City ways and city
manners, with all the complexity and diversions and
distractions of city life, demand a different type of
assemblage, if any; so Sunday evening clubs, forums,
and motion pictures have supplanted the old-time eve-
ning service. Where preaching is still continued at the
evening hour, a mere handful, except in very unusual
instances, listen to it. Morning services still attract,
though to a much more limited degree than even a
generation ago; and how many of those who come are
moved simply by the force of habit, remains an open
question. In the average Protestant congregation, where
are the young who have formed no such life-time habit
of church attendance?

It may be argued that the preachers are to blame for
bringing a deadly dull message instead of a thrilling and
throbbing one, and no doubt the accusation is fair and
just. It may be also argued that the laity share the blame
because they do not promote their churches as they pro-
mote so many other phases of their business, intellectual,
and social life. Quite possibly the whole church organ-
ization may be blamed for hanging on to rural and
countrified ways of doing things in a distinctly urban
age. Whatever the specific criticism of the methods
adopted by the church, they all resolve themselves finally
into an indictment of the spirit of Protestantism*

Another evidence pointing to the decline and fall of

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THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Protestantism lies in the division and disharmony so
apparent to the most casual observer. In an age when
the whole tendency is toward amalgamation, the draw-
ing together of units into a central whole, an age of
trusts and chains in all departments of life and in all
nations, the church has flung apart into literally hun-
dreds of divided and dissevered fragments. The man in
the street sees these futile divisions, the unbusiness-like
character of church conduct, and turns silently away
from it, saying to himself, it may be half unconsciously,
"I will have nothing to do with such maladministra-
tion."

One may almost see in England the loosening hold
of the established church upon the masses and the weak-
ening grip even of the non-conformist churches. At the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge almost none of
the graduates are preparing for the ministry. Recently I
counted the names of thirteen men registered as students
at Manchester New College, Oxford, presided over by
that radiant prophet, Principal L. P. Jacks. In Germany
Protestantism fights for its very life. The Dom in Berlin,
the Kaiser's old church, still is crowded to the doors;
but its atmosphere, royalist in character, jangles the
nerves of every citizen devoted to the German republic;
the old church of Luther hangs on to a past and fallen
regime. Throughout Germany Protestant churches draw
but a handful. In France, of course, Protestantism has
never taken hold and presents no more encouraging
features today than it ever did. Even in Calvmist Swit-
zerland, internationalism seems almost to have sup-
planted Protestantism as a religion of the people. In

250

THE OUTLOOK FOR PROTESTANTISM

America a diminishing number of college men are fitting
themselves as clergymen. If you ask an audience of high
school students how many intend to be farmers, they
will laugh; if you ask how many intend to be ministers,
they will guffaw. Whatever the statistics of church addi-
tions may show on paper, the cool observer is bound to
question whether city people in large numbers are
accepting church membership.

Another evidence of the decadence of Protestantism
lies in the fact that it has almost no hold upon hand-
workers. The church as at present administered is
middle-class, bourgeois, and makes little appeal to the
masses of working men and working women. Time was
when the workers on the farms and in the little shops
constituted the backbone of the Protestant church; today
they are seldom to be found within its walls; little if
anything is done to make them feel they belong there;
the atmosphere of the place seems not to be created for
the hand- worker. There are notable exceptions, but these
only prove the rule; taken by and large, Protestantism
no longer reaches out for any but the white-collared
middle-class.

L CAUSES OF A SUNSET FOR PROTESTANTISM?

So much for a rough statement of the evidences for a
waning Protestantism. What are the reasons for this
loosening hold upon the twentieth centuty? Some of
these have already been hinted at in the statement of the
evidence for decline. There is the failure on the part of
the church to adapt itself to an utterly changed civiliza-
tion. While business all about us grasps new situations

251

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

and new customs and makes radical changes to meet
them, the church goes on following the same old
methods of a day that is dead and gone. The passenger
agent of a great railway, reminded that the automobile
had just about destroyed short-haul passenger traffic,
only smiled and said, "Oh, well, let it go; we'll do
something else/* Then a few weeks later came the
announcement that a great transcontinental system had
introduced a bus line to parallel its railway and to take
care of the short-haul traffic. Another line introduces
the airplane for daytime travel and the sleeping car at
night for those desiring to "cross the continent. The
church meanwhile holds on to the spring wagon and a
team of horses, and even the ox-cart, and goes rumbling
along in a rut.

If a minister or a church leader wants to do some-
thing in a different way from the old village method in
which it has always been done, he would better not
take it up with his board, for he will be met with
instantaneous opposition. Conservatism will rear back
in the harness and push on the breech-strap while he
tries vainly to go ahead. After long experience, I have
found out, have been told by older ministers, and have
advised younger men in turn, that if they wish to do
new and up-to-date and citified things, they would
better begin with men outside their churches, or they
would better go ahead and do what they intend to do
and consult their church members afterwards. Most city
churches in America at this good hour consist of un-
reconstructed country-jakes.

One other reason for the slipping hold of Protestant-

252

THE OUTLOOK FOR PROTESTANTISM

ism lies in its dishonesty, its absolute untmthfulness,
its deep-dyed insincerity. It still claims to believe, and
even believes it believes, a whole lot of out-grown doc-
trine which it has long since thrown away. Preachers,
afraid of their own people, overawed by the supposed
conservatism of their influential contributors, do not
hesitate to declare over and over positions which they
know to be false. It seems cruel to blame these preachers,
because they have wives and children dependent upon
them, and the loss of their places may mean loss of
bread and butter for their families; and yet the heroic
spirit, the daring spirit, the spirit of martyrdom, to a
degree at least, seldom fails to win its way to recogni-
tion and support.

Not the least burden of obloquy, however, for this
essential dishonesty of too m,uch of the Protestant
church rests upon the shoulders of laymen* Most of
them do not read, do not think, and yet presume to
assert their intellectual opinions and prejudices blatantly
and to brow-beat their ministers into cowardly subjec-
tion. A great many "men who knew Coolidge" sit in
the pews as in the smoking compartments of Pullman
cars, with their minds made up on all questions sub-
Junary and celestial, set like cement, unchangeable, dog-
matic, domineering. No wonder they frighten the average
minister until he shakes in his shoes. A dishonest church
and a cowardly minister can never lay hold upon a stal-
wart generation of men and women. Unless the church
speaks out with honesty and sincerity repudiating the
out-grown and out-worn and asserting unequivocally

253

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

its honest convictions it cannot hope to hold its own
in a changing time.

Moreover, the ancient ruts of expression and phrase-
ology in which the old ox-cart goes jogging along can-
not but alienate the young people and the man of the
world. The Protestant church persists in employing in
prayer, in public utterance, and in ritualistic observance,
ancient words and phrases which not only mean nothing
but are actually false. Thus the preacher talks about the
"rum-traffic" when there has been very little rum uti-
lized since the days of the Spanish Main. That is bound
to rub a newspaper man or an up-to-date business man
the wrong way. The preacher talks about getting reli-
gion when we no longer consider that religion is a
commodity to be got; about salvation when the world
does not any longer believe that it is condemned; about
the scheme of redemption when the word scheme makes
all of us mad. It is the easiest thing in the world for the
professional religious teacher to hang on to the old
phrases of ancient Christianity long since gone into the
colloquial discard, or even of a Judaism out of date
some three thousand years; and it requires constant
watchfulness on the part of such a teacher or preacher to
fight shy of the old inheritance handed down to him in
these cant words and phrases.

This inherited vocabulary forms part of the deadly
boredom of the average Protestant church service, its
sleepiness and its unreality as well as its insincerity. No
wonder the average high school student or young col-
legian or even thoughtful and reading business man not
only remains uninterested in this unctuous flow of

254

THE OUTLOOK FOR PROTESTANTISM

phrases but finds himself actually offended and left cold.
A living church must use living language, as nearly as
may be the words and phrases, the taste and tang, of
shops and offices, of the street and the home; refined, of
course, with all the culture the church can command, all
the artistry and the literary finish it can obtain, but
none the less close to the realities of life, even down to
the grass roots of human nature and human interest.
The unforgivable crime of Protestant churches is the
dullness which grows out of cant, dishonesty, cowardice.
Here again the ministers err, but the laymen err with
them. The responsibility rests upon both of them for
failure to make their churches live, pulsate with life,
and grow.

Unbusinesslike methods in the administration of
church machinery helps on the downfall of Protestant-
ism. For the most part no layman would conduct his
business in the slipshod fashion in which, at odd mo-
ments, he conducts his church's business. He would not
even allow his favorite club to fall into the extravagances,
the deficits, and the rattling, jarring makeshifts to which
without any compunction of conscience he subjects his
church. The administration of church affairs too often,
indeed almost always, falls upon the shoulders of over-
burdened ministers. People say that preachers have little
business sense ; just the contrary is true, for if they were
not generally able executives, the old one-hoss shay
would utterly collapse and go to pieces. Indeed, the
modern city minister, more's the pity, is more executive
than anything else, more business man than student,
more money-getter than prophet. Here the laity are ex-

255

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

clusively to blame. If they felt their responsibility as
members and leaders in their churches, they would lift
the load of business administration entirely off the
shoulders of their ministers and leave them free to give
themselves exclusively to their priestly and prophetic
calling. Perhaps this state of affairs is just as much
evidence as it is cause of the decline of Protestantism;
perhaps it is both. Many men who from the outside
view this chaotic and inefficient business management
no doubt withhold their countenance and support from
anything so foreign to their own business customs.

II. DISHARMONY AND DISUNION BRING DECAY

The dissension within the Protestant church likewise
makes for its declining hold upon the masses of people,
The very individualism which in this volume has been
pointed out as a virtue of the Protestant movement may
run so far, and does run so far, as to jeopardize the
safety and the future of the movement itself. The fight-
ings within create fears without. The battles over in-
significant matters, tweedledum and tweedledee, so-called
fundamentals that really are non-essentials, and the
attempt on the part of one mind to dominate another
mind, to make it think in a certain set way, so violates
everything that we have learned of recent years about
the very constitution of the human mind, that the
futility of such an attempt grows increasingly evident
to the ordinary man even though he may know nothing
about the science of psychology. Somehow this scientific
knowledge has seeped down into the masses of the people
and they resent the absurdity of an attempt at domina-

256

THE OUTLOOK FOR PROTESTANTISM

tion over their own minds or those of others. When,
therefore, they see Don Quixotes in the pulpit tilting
at impossible windmills, slavishly followed by their
Sancho Panzas, preachers and laymen alike fighting
battles against imaginary foes, the utter ridiculous-
ness of the whole procedure bowls them over and
they refuse to come back and be bowled over again.
They comprehend the nonsense of the procedure, the
waste of valuable time and opportunity. The hearts of
men are sick with longing, with disappointment, with
sorrow and perplexity, with pent up and unexpressed
comradeship and love. They have pulling and hauling
enough all during the week in their factories and offices
and stores; they don't want any more pulling and haul-
ing in their religious services. They want relief and
release from strife, they want peace, they want courage
and some satisfaction for mute and nameless aspirations.
Until the church lays off controversy and lays on with
comradeship, it may expect to continue its slipping hold
upon men of the world.

III. EMPHASIS WHERE EMPHASIS Is DUE

Not only does the church blaze away, in futile and
intolerant fashion, at supposed theological errors, but
often it fails to recognize changing moral attitudes as
well. It hangs on to ten commandments formulated
some three thousand years ago by Jewish thinkers
scarcely out of the nomadic stage and scarcely settled in
the agricultural, as if they were still laws of the Medes
and Persians for an industrial civilization such as ours.
They forget that Jesus upset the whole Jewish regime,

257

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

laws, commandments, scriptures, and all. They forget
furthermore that Jesus upset the whole legalistic attitude
towards ethics for all time. They refuse to believe in
him and to take him at his face value. They continue to
tithe, mint, anise and cummin, to use his own phrase,
and to neglect his spirit* The church today fails to assail
economic crime and sin and continues with sledge-
hammer blows to assault the sins of the flesh, the so-
called more generous sins, toward which Jesus was, to
say the least, extremely lenient. Almost any pulpit in
any Protestant church thunders more today against in-
temperance, against sexual excess or aberration, against
dancing, card -playing, and the theater; while it is utterly
silent against avarice and greed, envy, jealousy, malice,
hatred, the hard, cold bitter sins that destroy human life.
Sensual excess may well be called generous sin, for it
is throwing life away, giving life for social or other
reasons, spending it like a spendthrift; but after all, it
is worth remembering that Jesus prized generosity so
highly that he could say that whoever saves his life
loses it, and whoever loses it saves it. But he did say
with no uncertainty of meaning that the most hateful
thing in human nature is pride, hypocrisy, greed, hatred,
in short, Pharisaism. Today, the church persistently and
consistently denounces lesser evils and harbors, pets, and
pampers the most destructive vices. Protestant churches
are full of successful and proud Pharisees. Protestantism
pays a premium to the materially successful man or
woman, regardless of how cold and hard and cruel his
or her heart may be. No wonder the man of the world,
whose ideas about ethics have changed with changing

258

THE OUTLOOK FOR PROTESTANTISM

centuries, views with suspicion a church which can give
seats of highest honor to those whom he knows to be the
self-same kind of cruel Pharisees that Jesus so bitterly
denounced. The very word "morals" means "mores/'
customs, manners; and the ideal is bound to change with
changing usages. The emphasis will forever alter with
altering periods; but the hostility of the Christian church
should be forever the hostility of its founder and should
burn brightly and destroyingly against all inner sins, all
hardness, all bitterness, all coldness and cruelty, all love-
lessness in whatever form. Here stalks the relentless
enemy of Jesus and his church. Here roams the only
devil there is. Here he reigns in human hearts and human
spirits. And here is the unending mission of the church,
to drive him out like a devil and to destroy him*

IV. PERHAPS IT Is DAWN, NOT SUNSET

Is there hope that after all Protestantism may not
die but may revive, increase, grow, and survive through
the centuries? There are signs of hope. The fact that the
human heart is incurably religious, cannot remain at
peace without religion, is the highest hope of all.
Napoleon Bonaparte, hard-headed, sceptical, believing
little or nothing, when he wlent to set up his empire
and the Code Napoleon, turned to his advisers one day
and said, "Now what religion shall be have? A nation
has to have a religion. It cannot survive, cannot hold
together, without a religion/' It made no difference to
Napoleon whether that religion were Christian or
Moslem, Catholic or Protestant, just so it was a religion*

Russia has practically succeeded in destroying the old

259

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

Orthodox church, but it has not succeeded and It can
scarcely succeed in destroying religion in the hearts of
its people. Protestantism, if given half a chance, would
sweep Russia from end to end. While in Russia I heard
of a village of three thousand which under Communism
had been converted, to a man and woman, from the
old Greek Orthodox church. Then a Baptist revivalist
came along and re-converted the entire village, men,
w(omen and children, from atheism to Protestantism and
baptized them all. Russia is ripe for a free religion. So
perhaps is all the rest of the wt>rld. Given half a chance,
set free from ecclesiasticisms, dominations, intolerances,
allowed to think for itself and to feel for itself, the
whole world, it is not too much to believe, would turn
to a large and living faith. The varieties of religious
experience too, must be as numerous as the different
phases of religious thought and religious observance.
The church that is ultimately to prevail with humanity
must adapt itself to nationality, to climate, to individual
idiosyncrasy, to class, to all the invisible cleavages that
run through the social structure. For such a Protestant-
ism, large and wise and tolerant, there is just as much
ground for hope as there is reality to the ineradicable
religion that lies at the basis of human life.

There is no way to prove by facts and figures the
advent of a new and hopeful time just ahead for Prot-
estantism; and it is very easy, no doubt, for one biased
in its favor to find on the horizon traces of the coming
dawn ; nevertheless, perhaps it is safe to give some weight
to these indications. There is, for example, a manifest
tendency toward amalgamation of denominations, A

260

THE OUTLOOK FOR PROTESTANTISM

spirit of union is in the air in Protestant conventions
and in individual congregations. Like the union of
churches in Canada, there is brewing a union of certain
churches in the United States. The consummation of
actual union among individual congregations in great
cities goes forward. The community church springing
up in villages, towns, and rural districts so rapidly all
over the American continent almost keeps pace with the
growth of community high schools. There is a notice-
able tendency toward improved business methods in
many great churches. There is an increasing adoption
of new and unusual methods in great city churches and
even in smaller ones. Many ministers are revolting
against the chains of untruthfulness and insincerity with
which they have so long been bound down. Many con-
gregations are granting to their ministers greater liberty
to think and freely to speak their thoughts. Theological
controversy grows unfashionable and increasing em-
phasis is placed by thoughtful leaders upon economic
and social reforms. Many men are studying conscien-
ciously how to dissipate the dullness of the seventeenth
century forms of worship and to bring the twentieth
century inside the four church walls.

How Protestantism may be made to grow in power
and influence and in service to mankind has perhaps
already been suggested in this chapter. It remains but to
sum up by enumerating certain characteristics which
must be fostered if such a happy future is to be assured.

First of all, real religion must become the burden of
its song; not denominational religion, not dogmatic
religion, not a religion that may be labeled at all, but

261

THE WORLD'S DEBT TO PROTESTANTISM

religion. Refuse all labels as an essential part of the
Protestant free spirit. To define is to restrict; to label
religion is to destroy it* We all know what religion is,
but none of us can define it* This real religion, with
every man's own idea of God, this is an inalienable
possession of every human being and needs only to be
fostered and allowed to grow*

It goes without saying that such real religion calls
for the utmost tolerance each toward the other. No one
of us can think or believe any differently from what he
does think or believe. No one of us can successfully im-
pose his own manner of thinking and believing and
feeling upon another; therefore, to live and let live,
think and let think, believe and let believe, feel and let
feel, must be the very soul of a progressing Protestant-
ism. Intolerance is futility, leads to defeat and despair,
shuts out instead of takes in, makes for the failure of
whoever tries its impossible and absurd task.

Looked at from the other side, freedom for the indi-
vidual within the Protestant church, freedom consistent
with the welfare of the social whole, is one of the
requisites for a conquering instead of a decadent church.
Freedom in the pulpit to speak without fear and favor,
and freedom in the pew to accept or reject what is
spoken from the platform without this liberty which
Jesus taught and lived, there can be no successful future
for the Protestant church*

Protestantism to win must capture the interest of
twentieth-century people. Good pedagogy calls first of
all for the stimulation of interest. Boredom is the death
of the school room and the church. The church, like the

262

THE OUTLOOK FOR PROTESTANTISM

skilful teacher, must use the process called apperception,
must capture the student or the worshiper where he is
and with his present stock of interests and must lead
him on, step by step, to higher and further interests.
The language that he knows, the concepts that are
familiar, the contacts that are of his day and not of an
age long gone into the past, these the church must seize
upon to catch the attention of the present time. All
means and methods, all arts and crafts, that live in our
day, the church must make her own if her hold is not
to slip.

Whatever, then, is human, whatever makes for the
good of human beings, whatever promotes human wel-
fare, whatever sets humanity free from ignorance, from
fear, from suppression of personality, whatever builds
up the well-being of mankind and contributes to beauty
of character and achievement and expression, that is the
business of the church. After all, it is human beings that
compose the only real world. All the rest is only setting,
framework, for humanity. The real religion concerns
itself with human beings and human well-being. What-
ever is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is lovely,
whatever is comradely, whatever promotes fellowship
and harmony and love, that the church must find and
use to win men, as the charming Master of Nazareth
won them* Doing this, it cannot wane, it cannot fail*

263

Index

Acts, 37

Addams, Jane, 159

Africa, 135

African slave trade, 137

Alcohol 191

Allen, James Lane, 1 5

Alms, 146

America, 20, 49

American colleges non-sectarian,

166

American colonies, 221
American idealism, 230
American imperialism, 118,

121,227

Americanism, 100%, 3
Americans, provincial, 2
Ames, E. S., 180, 201, 207
Anabaptists, 23
Anglo-Saxon, 4
Anonymous letters, 8
Antioch college, 171
Aristophanes, 193
Army discipline, 43
Art, 195
Asceticism, 58, 98, 181, 182,

202

Aspasia, 98

Associated charities, 148
Atheists, 209

Bakeless* John, 66

Baptism, 86

Baur, Ferdinand C., 36

Beauty, 205, 213

Beliefs, 54, 210

"Beloved community/* 237

Bible, infallible, 20, 28, 31, 33,

36

Bible verses, 3 2
Birth control, 117
Booth, Charles, 148
British East India company,

128

Brotherhood, 214
Brown, Rollo Walter, 175
Business ethics, 47
Business methods, 255

Cabot, Richard C, 149, 160
Cadman, S. Parkes, 12,218
Calvin, John, 22, 59, 182, 219
Campbell, Alexander and

Thomas, 23
Capitalism, 56
Carey, William, 129
Carlyle, Thomas, 55
Cavell, Edith, 225
Charity, 8, 146
Charity organizations, 148
Child bearing, 9 1
Child labor, 153
Child psychology, 43, 45
Child welfare, 156
Children, 108, 115
China, 132
Chivalry, 98, 217
Christian civilization, 84
Christian socialism, 158
Christianity, 181, 199, 217
Christianity and woman, 95
Christianity, 19th century, 126
Church, 49, 78, 260

265

INDEX

Church members, 252
Citizenship, 9
Civilization, 155
Civilization complex, 188
Clergy take wives, 9 9
Codex Alexandrinus, 34
Codex Sinaiticus, 35
Community churches, 8 6
Competition, 63
Comstock law, 118
Conscience money, 24 1
Conservatives, 19
Cook, Captain, 141
Criticism, 176
Crusades, 165
Customs, 90
Cyril 126

Dancing, 188
Darwin, Charles, 140
Death rate, 1 1 8
Degrees, college, 1 74
Democracy, 178
Denmark, 221
Denominational colleges, 165,

167

Discipline, 46, 168
Dissension, 256
Divorce, 105, 113
Dom, in Berlin, 250
Drama, 188
Duff, Alexander, 130
Dunlap, Knight, 199
Durant, Will, 73

East, Ed ward M., 120
Ecclesiasticism, 50, 147
Education, 72, 116, 119, 162
Egoism, 81

Eighteenth amendment, 242
Eliot Charles W., 248
Elizabethan era, 99

Emotion, 21 1, 213

England, 220

Epistle of James, 28

Epistles of Paul, 28

Erasmus, 29

Ethics, business, 61, 64, 67

Ethics, family, 71

Ethics of Christianity, 196

Ethics of Jesus, 61, 65, 67, 71,

106, 214, 258
Eucharist, 21
Eugenics, 157

Faith, 12

Family affections, 112, 124

Family relations, 45

Fatigue, 152

Fear, 90

Federal council of churches, 85,

152, 242

Filene, Edward A., 48, 64, 72
Fish on Friday, 94
Ford, Henry, 64
Fourth gospel 200
France, 220

Frank, Glenn, 171, 176
Freedom in education, 167
Freedom of teaching, I 76
Freedom of thought, 41, 26 1

262

Freedom of woman, 101, 114
Fundamentalism, 23

Games, 188
Gandhi, Mahatma, 1 3 1
Geddie, John, 140
Genesis, 38
Gibbs, Sir Philip, 15
Gladstone, W. B., 21
God, 208,212

Golden rule, 48, 61, 72, 198,
243

266

INDEX

Gospels, 234

Government, 49

Greece, 216

Greek architecture, 193

Greek civilization, 197

Greek influence, 182, 199, 214

Groos, Prof, Karl, 184

Haley, T. P., 10
Hapgood, William, 48, 72
Harper, William Rainey, 173
Hermits, 200
Higher criticism, 3 6
Hindu influence, 200
History in schools, 225
Hocking, W. E., 212
Hogarth, William, 194
Holt, Hamilton, 170
Home, 107, 124
Hopkins, Pres. E. M., 1 75
Hort, Dr. F. J. A., 35
Hospitals, 160
Housing, 153
Hull House, 159
Humanity gregarious, 215
Huxley, T. H., 206

Idealism, 229

Imperialism, 145

India, 131

Individualism, 99, 107, 111

Industrial era, 150

Industrial life, 107

Industrialism in Japan, 134

Inertia, 81

Infant baptism, 128

Inge, Dean W, R,, 54, 113,

205, 248

Intelligence quotient, 3
Internationalism, 223, 250
Intolerance, 9

Jacks, L.P, 182, 250

Japan, 133

Jerome, 27

Jesuits, 127

Jesus, 49, 51, 60, 61, 83, 97,

180, 183, 197, 236, 263
Jews, 5, 11

Joan of Arc, 164,191, 220
Judson, Adoniram, 130

Kagawa, Toyohiko, 134
Kellogg peace pact, 245
Kindness, 73

King James translation, 30
Kingdom of God, 49, 51, 72,

74, 105, 162, 232
Knox, John, 220

Labor, 158, 242, 251
Labor party, 5 7
Labrador, 127
Langdon-Davies, John, 1 04
Laughter, 189
Laws, 52

League of nations, 224, 245
Learning, 164
Leuba, J. H., 208
Libraries, 164
"Limies," 2

Lippmann, Walter, 44, 161
Literature, 188
Livingstone, David R., 136
Locke, John, 32
Logia, 38
Logic, 42

Lombroso, Gina, 94
Lord's supper, 8,86
Love, 5 1
Loyola, 127

Luther, Martin, 19, 21, 28, 59,
182, 202, 219

Macaulay, 8
Machine age, 107

267

INDEX

Magic, 90

Malthus, 62,117

Mann, Horace, 171

Manuscripts of Bible, 8

Marriage, 92

Matthew, 38

Meiklejohh, Alexander, 171

Membership, 87

Mergers, 63

Methodists, 23

Methodius, 126

Mind, 17, 20

Minimum wage, 159

Ministry, 250

Minorities, 10

Missions, 126

Moff at, Robert, 135

Monogamy, 53, 108, 112, 123

Morality, definitions of, 161

Morals, 44

Moravians, 127

Morgan, Arthur E., 171

Morrison, Robert, 132

Myers, Gustavus, 230

Mystery, 199

Napoleon I, 259
Narcotics, 191
Nash, Arthur, 48, 72
Nature, 194
Negro problem, 9
Neighborliness, 161
New Testament, 38
Niebuhr, Reinhold, 5 6
Nordic, 4
Norway, 221

Ogburn, W. F., 112
O'Neil, Eugene, 1 94
Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, 5 5

Palimpsests, 34

Parental domination, 122

Parochial schools, 1 65
Parsons, Geoffrey, 221
Patriarchal authority, 107
Patrick, G. T. W., 185, 191,

192

Patriotism, 215,225,227
Paul, 1,24, 193
Peace, 244
Pensions, 159

Perry, Commodore O. H,, 133
Personality, 47, 49, 54
Phraseology, 254
Pilgrims, 221
Play, 183
Polyandry, 53
Polygamy, 53
Polynesia, 139
Poor laws, 148
Poverty, 146
Prayer, 212
Preaching, 248
Prejudice, 2
Priesthood, 7
Profanity, 191
Progress, 41
Property, 69
Prophets, 212
Protestant scholarship, 235
Protestantism dishonest, 253
Protestantism waning? 248
Provident associations, 148
Puritanism, 100
Puritans, 182, 221

Race prejudice, 5
Race relations, 243
Radicals, 19

Rauschenbusch, Walter, 24 1
Reason, 1,206. 211, 213
Reformation, 19, 59, 99, 147,

164, 182, 215, 217
Relaxation, 187

268

INDEX

Religion, 124, 199, 262
Religion and education, 178
Religion necessary, 259
Religious experience, 54
Religious life, 1 8 1
Renaissance, 16, 99, 164, 181,

217

Renan, Ernest, 233
Ricardo, 62
Rollins college, 170
Roman Catholic church, 39, 58,

98, 147

Roman Catholics, 6, 11, 13, 20
Roman games, 187
Rome, 2 1 6
Ross, E. A., 238
Royce, Josiah, 237
Russell, Bertrand, 57, 180
Russia, 57, 102
Russia religious, 260

Sabbath, 183

4 'Safety first/' 151

St, Patrick, 1 64

Santayana, George, 113

Sarto, Andrea del, 68

Schools, 163

Schwartz, Christian Frederick,

128

Schweitzer, Albert, 233
Science and mysticism, 203
Scientific era, 147
Scott, J. F., 225
Sects, 21, 24, 75
Secularization of schools, 165
Segregation, 9
Self- respect t 161
Septuagint, 27

Sermon on the mount, 61, 198
Servetus, 22
Sex education, 115
Sexes, 93, 99

Shaftesbury, Earl of , 148

Shaw, Bernard, 57

Sin, 180, 238, 258

Sisters, 7

Smith, Adam, 62

Snobbery, 83

Social Christianity, 238, 246

Social classes, 70

Social settlements, 159

Social welfare, 146

Social worker's goal, 161

Society, 48

Sophocles, 193

South Seas, 139

Spencer, Herbert, 1 84

Spiritual, 192

Spirituality, 85

Sports, 185

Stanley, Henry M., 139

Strauss, David F., 233

Student government, 175

Subsidize artists, 195

Swarthmore college, 1 74

Sweden, 221

Swiss, 2 1 9

Synoptic gospels, 3 9

Taboos, 90

Tagore Rabindranath, 131

Tawney, R. H., 57

Taylor, Graham, 159

Teachers, 169

Ten commandments, 52, 258

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 154

Testament, Greek, 35

Textual criticism, 33

Thinking, 82

Thoburn, Bishop J. M., 142

Tischendorf , L. F. 1C, 34

Tolerance, 262

Tolstoi, 49, 104

Toynbec, Arnold, 159

269

INDEX

Trance, 201
Traquair, Ramsey, 105
Troubadour, 189
Truth, 76
Tyndale, William, 29

United Brethren, 127
Unity, 24, 79, 144, 261
University of Wisconsin, 171
Urban people, 107
Usury, 58

Van Dyke, Henry, 15
Victorian era, 100
Vulgate, 27, 34

War, 64, 66, 118, 191, 247
Ward, H. R, 62
Warner, Amos G., 154
Washington, George, 20
Wealth, 63

Webb, Sidney, 5 7
Weber, Max, 5 6
Welfare work, 2 1 3
Welfare worker, 151
Wells, H. G., 57
Westcott, Bishop B. F., 35
Williams, E. V., 10
Wilson, Wood row, 224
Women and the home, 111
Wordsworth, William, 241
Working conditions, 150
World court, 224, 245
World war, 222, 229
Wyclif, John, 29, 218

Xavier, Francis, 128
Young, Owen B., 152
Zwingli, Ulrich, 21

270

ri

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