{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_21992/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_21992","id":"gutenberg_21992","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21992","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity","Progress"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  The Cole Lectures for 1922\n  delivered before Vanderbilt University\n\n\n\n\nChristianity and Progress\n\n\nBy\n\nHARRY EMERSON FOSDICK\n\n\n  _Professor of Practical Theology in the\n  Union Theological Seminary;\n  Preacher at the First Presbyterian Church,\n  New York_\n\n\n\nNEW YORK ------ CHICAGO\n\nFleming H. Revell Company\n\nLONDON AND EDINBURGH\n\n\n\n\nCopyright, 1922, by\n\nFLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY\n\n\n\n\n  New York: 158 Fifth Avenue\n  Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.\n  London: 21 Paternoster Square\n  Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street\n\n\n\n\nTHE COLE LECTURES\n\nThe late Colonel E. W. Cole of Nashville, Tennessee, donated to\nVanderbilt University the sum of five thousand dollars, afterwards\nincreased by Mrs. E. W. Cole to ten thousand, the design and conditions\nof which gift are stated as follows:\n\n\"The Object of this fund is to establish a foundation for a perpetual\nLectureship in connection with the School of Religion of the\nUniversity, to be restricted in its scope to a defense and advocacy of\nthe Christian religion.  The lectures shall be delivered at such\nintervals, from time to time, as shall be deemed best by the Board of\nTrust; and the particular theme and lecturer will be determined by the\nTheological Faculty.  Said lecture shall always be reduced to writing\nin full, and the manuscript of the same shall be the property of the\nUniversity, to be published or disposed of by the Board of Trust at its\ndiscretion, the net proceeds arising therefrom to be added to the\nfoundation fund, or otherwise used for the benefit of the School of\nReligion.\"\n\n\n\n\nPreface\n\nNo one who ever has delivered the Cole Lectures will fail to associate\nthem, in his grateful memory, with the hospitable fellowship of the\nelect at Vanderbilt University.  My first expression of thanks is due\nto the many professors and students there, lately strangers and now\nfriends, who, after the burdensome preparation of these lectures, made\ntheir delivery a happy and rewarding experience for the lecturer.  I am\nhoping now that even though prepared for spoken address the lectures\nmay be serviceable to others who will read instead of hear them.  At\nany rate, it seemed best to publish them without change in\nform--addresses intended for public delivery and bearing, I doubt not,\nmany marks of the spoken style.\n\nI have tried to make a sally into a field of inquiry where, within the\nnext few years, an increasing company of investigators is sure to go.\nThe idea of progress was abroad in the world long before men became\nconscious of it; and men became conscious of it in its practical\neffects long before they stopped to study its transforming consequences\nin their philosophy and their religion.  No longer, however, can we\navoid the intellectual issue which is involved in our new outlook upon\na dynamic, mobile, progressive world.  Hardly a better description\ncould be given of the intellectual advance which has marked the last\ncentury than that which Renan wrote years ago: \"the substitution of the\ncategory of _becoming_ for _being_, of the conception of relativity for\nthat of the absolute, of movement for immobility.\" [1]  Underneath all\nother problems which the Christian Gospel faces is the task of choosing\nwhat her attitude shall be toward this new and powerful force, the idea\nof progress, which in every realm is remaking man's thinking.\n\nI have endeavoured in detail to indicate my indebtedness to the many\nbooks by whose light I have been helped to see my way.  In addition I\nwish to express especial thanks to my friend and colleague, Professor\nEugene W. Lyman, who read the entire manuscript to my great profit;\nand, as well, to my secretary, Miss Margaret Renton, whose efficient\nservice has been an invaluable help.\n\nH. E. F.\n\nNew York\n\n\n\n[1] Renan: Averroes et L'Averroisme, p. vii.\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\nLECTURE I\n  THE IDEA OF PROGRESS\n\n\nLECTURE II\n  THE NEED FOR RELIGION\n\n\nLECTURE III\n  THE GOSPEL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS\n\nLECTURE IV\n  PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY\n\nLECTURE V\n  THE PERILS of PROGRESS\n\nLECTURE VI\n  PROGRESS AND GOD\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE I\n\nTHE IDEA OF PROGRESS\n\nI\n\nThe supposition that fish do not recognize the existence of water nor\nbirds the existence of air often has been used to illustrate the\ninsensitive unawareness of which we all are capable in the presence of\nsome encompassing medium of our lives.  The illustration aptly fits the\nminds of multitudes in this generation, who live, as we all do, in the\natmosphere of progressive hopes and yet are not intelligently aware of it\nnor conscious of its newness, its strangeness and its penetrating\ninfluence.  We read as a matter of course such characteristic lines as\nthese from Tennyson:\n\n  \"Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,\n  And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.\"\n\nSuch lines, however, are not to be taken as a matter of course; until\ncomparatively recent generations such an idea as that never had dawned on\nanybody's mind, and the story of the achievement of that progressive\ninterpretation of history is one of the most fascinating narratives in\nthe long record of man's mental Odyssey.  In particular, the Christian\nwho desires to understand the influences, both intellectual and\npractical, which are playing with transforming power upon Christianity\ntoday, upon its doctrines, its purposes, its institutions, and its social\napplications, must first of all understand the idea of progress.  For\nlike a changed climate, which in time alters the fauna and flora of a\ncontinent beyond the power of human conservatism to resist, this\nprogressive conception of life is affecting every thought and purpose of\nman, and no attempted segregation of religion from its influence is\nlikely to succeed.\n\nThe significance of this judgment becomes the more clear when we note the\nfact that the idea of progress in our modern sense is not to be found\nbefore the sixteenth century.  Men before that time had lived without\nprogressive hopes just as before Copernicus they had lived upon a\nstationary earth.  Man's life was not thought of as a growth; gradual\nchange for the better was not supposed to be God's method with mankind;\nthe future was not conceived in terms of possible progress; and man's\nestate on earth was not looked upon as capable of indefinite\nperfectibility.  All these ideas, so familiar to us, were undreamed of in\nthe ancient and medieval world.  The new astronomy is not a more complete\nbreak from the old geocentric system with its stationary earth than is\nour modern progressive way of thinking from our fathers' static\nconception of human life and history.\n\n\nII\n\nIt will be worth our while at the beginning of our study to review in\noutline this development of the idea of progress, that we may better\nunderstand the reasons for its emergence and may more truly estimate its\nrevolutionary effects.  In the ancient world the Greeks, with all their\nfar-flung speculations, never hit upon the idea of progress.  To be sure,\nclear intimations, scattered here and there in Greek literature, indicate\nfaith that man in the past had improved his lot.  Aeschylus saw men\nlifted from their hazardous lives in sunless caves by the intervention of\nPrometheus and his sacrificial teaching of the arts of peace; Euripides\ncontrasted the primitive barbarism in which man began with the civilized\nestate which in Greece he had achieved--but this perceived advance never\nwas erected into a progressive idea of human life as a whole.  Rather,\nthe original barbarism, from which the arts of civilization had for a\nlittle lifted men, was itself a degeneration from a previous ideal\nestate, and human history as a whole was a cyclic and repetitious story\nof never-ending rise and fall.  Plato's philosophy of history was\ntypical: the course of cosmic life is divided into cycles, each\nseventy-two thousand solar years in length; during the first half of each\ncycle, when creation newly comes from the hands of Deity, mankind's\nestate is happily ideal, but then decay begins and each cycle's latter\nhalf sinks from bad to worse until Deity once more must take a hand and\nmake all things new again.  Indeed, so far from reaching the idea of\nprogress, the ancient Greeks at the very center of their thinking were\nincapacitated for such an achievement by their suspiciousness of change.\nThey were artists and to them the perfect was finished, like the\nParthenon, and therefore was incapable of being improved by change.\nChange, so far from meaning, as it does with us, the possibility of\nbetterment, meant with them the certainty of decay; no changes upon earth\nin the long run were good; all change was the sure sign that the period\nof degeneration had set in from which only divine intervention could\nredeem mankind.  Paul on Mars Hill quoted the Greek poet Aratus\nconcerning the sonship of all mankind to God, but Aratus's philosophy of\nhistory is not so pleasantly quotable:\n\n  \"How base a progeny sprang from golden sires!\n  And viler shall they be whom ye beget.\" [1]\n\nSuch, in general, was the non-progressive outlook of the ancient Greeks.\n\nNor did the Romans hit upon the idea of progress in any form remotely\napproaching our modern meaning.  The casual reader, to be sure, will find\noccasional flares of expectancy about the future or of pride in the\nadvance of the past which at first suggest progressive interpretations of\nhistory.  So Seneca, rejoicing because he thought he knew the explanation\nof the moon's eclipses, wrote: \"The days will come when those things\nwhich now lie hidden time and human diligence will bring to light. . . .\nThe days will come when our posterity will marvel that we were ignorant\nof truths so obvious.\" [2]  So, too, the Epicureans, like the Greek\ntragedians before them, believed that human knowledge and effort had\nlifted mankind out of primitive barbarism and Lucretius described how man\nby the development of agriculture and navigation, the building of cities\nand the establishment of laws, the manufacture of physical conveniences\nand the creation of artistic beauty, had risen, \"gradually progressing,\"\nto his present height.[3] Such hopeful changes in the past, however, were\nnot the prophecies of continuous advance; they were but incidental\nfluctuations in a historic process which knew no progress as a whole.\nEven the Stoics saw in history only a recurrent rise and fall in endless\nrepetition so that all apparent change for good or evil was but the\ninflux or the ebbing of the tide in an essentially unchanging sea.  The\nwords of Marcus Aurelius are typical: \"The periodic movements of the\nuniverse are the same, up and down from age to age\"; \"He who has seen\npresent things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from\nall eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all\nare of one kin and of one form\"; \"He who is forty years old, if he has\nany understanding at all, has, by virtue of the uniformity that prevails,\nseen all things which have been and all that will be.\" [4]\n\nWhen with these Greek and Roman ideas the Hebrew-Christian influences\nblended, no conception of progress in the modern sense was added by the\nChurch's contribution.  To be sure, the Christians' uncompromising faith\nin personality as the object of divine redemption and their vigorous hope\nabout the future of God's people in the next world, if not in this,\ncalcined some elements in the classical tradition.  Belief in cycles,\nendlessly repeating themselves through cosmic ages, went by the board.\nThis earth became the theatre of a unique experiment made once for all;\nin place of the ebb and flow of tides in a changeless sea, mankind's\nstory became a drama moving toward a climactic denouement that would\nshake heaven and earth together in a divine cataclysm.  But this\nconsummation of all history was not a goal progressively to be achieved;\nit was a divine invasion of the world expectantly to be awaited, when the\nvictorious Christ would return and the Day of Judgment dawn.\n\nThe development of this apocalyptic phrasing of hope has been traced too\noften to require long rehearsal here.  If the Greeks were essentially\nphilosophers and welcomed congenially ideas like endless cosmic cycles,\nthe Hebrews were essentially practical and dramatic in their thinking and\nthey welcomed a picture of God's victory capable of being visualized by\nthe imagination.  At first their national hopes had been set on the\nrestoration of the Davidic kingdom; then the Davidic king himself had\ngrown in their imagination until, as Messiah in a proper sense, he\ngathered to himself supernal attributes; then, as a child of their\ndesperate national circumstances, the hope was born of their Messiah's\nsudden coming on the clouds of heaven for their help.  Between the\nTestaments this expectation expanded and robed itself with pomp and\nglory, so that when the Christians came they found awaiting them a\nphrasing of hope which they accepted to body forth their certainty of\nGod's coming sovereignty over all the earth.  This expectation of coming\ntriumph was not progressive; it was cataclysmic.  It did not offer the\nprospect of great gains to be worked for over long periods of time; it\noffered a divine invasion of history immediately at hand.  It was\npictured, not in terms of human betterment to be achieved, but of divine\naction to be awaited.  The victory would suddenly come like the flood in\nNoah's day, like the lightning flashing from one end of the heaven to the\nother, like a thief in the night.\n\nTo be sure, this eager expectation of a heavenly kingdom immediately to\narrive on earth soon grew dim among the Christians, and the reasons are\nobvious.  For one thing, the Church herself, moving out from days of\nhardship to days of preferment and prosperity, began to allure with her\ninviting prospects of growing power the enthusiasms and hopes of the\npeople, until not the suddenly appearing kingdom from the heavens, but\nthe expanding Church on earth became the center of Christian interest.\nFor another thing, Christ meant more to Christians than the inaugurator\nof a postponed kingdom which, long awaited with ardent expectation, still\ndid not arrive; Christ was the giver of eternal life now.  More and more\nthe emphasis shifted from what Christ would do for his people when he\ncame upon the clouds of heaven to what he was doing for them through his\nspiritual presence with them.  Even in the Fourth Gospel one finds this\ngood news that Christ had already come again in the hearts of his people\ninsisted on in evident contrast with the apocalyptic hope literally\nconceived.  For another thing, dramatic hopes of a sudden invasion of the\nworld are always the offspring of desperate conditions.  Only when people\nare hard put to it do they want history catastrophically stopped in the\nmidst of its course.  The Book of Daniel must be explained by the\ntyrannies of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Book of Revelation by the\npersecutions of Domitian, the present recrudescence of pre-millennialism\nby the tragedy of the Great War.  But when the persecution of the Church\nby the State gave way to the running of the State by the Church; when to\nbe a Christian was no longer a road to the lions but the sine qua non of\npreferment and power; when the souls under the altar ceased crying, \"How\nlong, O Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our\nblood on them that dwell on the earth?\" then the apocalyptic hopes grew\ndim and the old desire for a kingdom immediately to come was subdued to\nan expectation, no longer imperative and urgent, that sometime the course\nof history would stop on Judgment Day.\n\nIn all these Greek and Roman, Hebrew and Christian contributions, which\nflowed together and then flowed out into the medieval age, there was no\nsuggestion of a modern idea of progress, and in the medieval age itself\nthere was nothing to create a fresh phrasing of expectancy.  Men were\naware of the darkness of the days that had fallen on the earth; even when\nthey began to rouse themselves from their lethargy, their thoughts of\ngreatness did not reach forward toward a golden age ahead but harked back\n\n  \"To the glory that was Greece\n  And the grandeur that was Rome,\"\n\nand their intellectual life, instead of being an adventurous search for\nnew truth, was a laborious endeavour to stabilize the truth already\nformulated in the great days of the early Church.  Indeed, the Church's\nspecific contribution of a vividly imagined faith in a future world, as\nthe goal of the most absorbing hopes and fears of men, tended rather to\nconfirm than to dissipate the static conception of earthly life and\nhistory.  With an urgency that the ancient world had never known the\nChristian world believed in immortality and visualized the circumstances\nof the life to come so concretely that in a medieval catechism the lurid\ncolour of the setting sun was ascribed to the supposition that \"he\nlooketh down upon hell.\" [5]  Nothing in this life had any importance\nsave as it prepared the souls of men for life to come.  Even Roger Bacon,\nhis mind flashing like a beacon from below the sky-line of the modern\nworld, was sure that all man's knowledge of nature was useful only in\npreparing his soul to await the coming of Antichrist and the Day of\nJudgment.  There was no idea of progress, then, in the medieval age.\nHuman life and history were static and the only change to be anticipated\nwas the climactic event\n\n  \"When earth breaks up and heaven expands.\"\n\n\nIII\n\nThe emergence of modern progressive hopes out of this static medievalism\nis one of the epic occurrences of history.  The causes which furthered\nthe movement seem now in retrospect to be woven into a fabric so tightly\nmeshed as to resist unraveling.  Nevertheless, it is not difficult to see\nat least some of the major factors which furthered this revolutionary\nchange from a static to a progressive world.\n\nAmong the first, scientific invention is surely to be noted.  Even Roger\nBacon, prophecying with clairvoyant insight far in advance of the event,\nforesaw one of the determining factors of the modern age: \"Machines for\nnavigating can be made so that without rowers great ships can be guided\nby one pilot on river or sea more swiftly than if they were full of\noarsmen.  Likewise vehicles are possible which without draught-animals\ncan be propelled with incredible speed, like the scythed chariots, as we\npicture them, in which antiquity fought.  Likewise a flying machine is\npossible in the middle of which a man may sit, using some ingenious\ndevice by which artificial wings will beat the air like those of a flying\nbird.  Also machines, small in size, can be constructed to lift and move\nunlimited weights, than which in an emergency nothing is more useful.\"\n[6]  So dreamed the great friar in the thirteenth century.  When, then,\nwe find the minds of men first throwing off their intellectual vassalage\nto antiquity and beginning to believe in themselves, their present powers\nand their future prospects, it is this new-found mastery over nature's\nlatent resources which is the spring and fountain of their confidence.\nCardan, in the sixteenth century, marveling at the then modern inventions\nof the compass, the printing press, and gunpowder, cried, \"All antiquity\nhas nothing comparable to these three things.\" [7]  Every year from that\nday to this has deepened the impression made upon the minds of men by the\nmarvelous prospect of harnessing the resources of the universe.  The last\none hundred and twenty-five years have seen the invention of the\nlocomotive, the steamship, the telegraph, the sewing machine, the camera,\nthe telephone, the gasoline engine, wireless telegraphy and telephony,\nand the many other applications of electricity.  As one by one new areas\nof power have thus come under the control of man, with every conquest\nsuggesting many more not yet achieved but brought within range of\npossibility, old theories of cosmic degeneration and circular futility\nhave gone to pieces, the glamour of antiquity has lost its allurement,\nthe great days of humanity upon the earth have been projected into the\nfuture, and the gradual achievement of human progress has become the hope\nof man.\n\nAnother element in the emergence of the modern progressive outlook upon\nlife is immediately consequent upon the first: world-wide discovery,\nexploration and intercommunication.  Great as the practical results have\nbeen which trace their source to the adventurers who, from Columbus down,\npioneered unknown seas to unknown lands, the psychological effects have\nbeen greater still.  Who could longer live cooped up in a static world,\nwhen the old barriers were so being overpassed and new continents were\ninviting adventure, settlement, and social experiment hitherto untried?\nThe theological progressiveness of the Pilgrim Fathers, starting out from\nLeyden for a new world, was not primarily a matter of speculation; it was\neven more a matter of an adventurous spirit, which, once admitted into\nlife, could not be kept out of religious thought as well.  In Edward\nWinslow's account of Pastor Robinson's last sermon before the little\ncompany of pioneers left Leyden, we read that Robinson \"took occasion\nalso miserably to bewaile the state and condition of the Reformed\nChurches, who were come to a period in Religion, and would goe no further\nthan the instruments of their Reformation: As for example, the\n_Lutherans_ they could not be drawne to goe beyond what _Luther_ saw, for\nwhatever part of God's will he had further imparted and revealed to\n_Calvin_, they will die rather than embrace it.  And so also, saith he,\nyou see the _Calvinists_, they stick where he left them: a misery much to\nbee lamented; For though they were precious shining lights in their\ntimes, yet God hath not revealed his whole will to them: And were they\nnow living, saith hee, they would bee as ready and willing to embrace\nfurther light, as that they had received.\" [8]  Static methods of\nthinking are here evidently going to pieces before the impact of a\ndistinctly unstatic world.  They were looking for \"more truth and light\nyet to breake forth out of his holy Word\" [9] because they lived in a\ntime when new things had been happening at an exhilarating rate and when\npioneering adventure and general travel in a world of open avenues were\nalready beginning to have that liberating effect which has increased with\nevery passing century.\n\nClosely allied with the two elements already noted is a third: the\nincrease of knowledge, which, as in the case of astronomy, threw\ndiscredit upon the superior claims of antiquity and made modern men seem\nwiser than their sires.  For ages the conviction had held the ground that\nthe ancients were the wisest men who ever lived and that we, their\nchildren, were but infants in comparison.  When, therefore, the\nCopernican astronomy proved true, when the first terrific shock of it had\npassed through resultant anger into wonder and from wonder into stupefied\nacceptance, and from that at last into amazed exultation at the vast, new\nuniverse unveiled, the credit of antiquity received a stunning blow.  So\nfar was Aristotle from being \"the master of those who know\" whom the\nmedievalists had revered, that he had not even known the shape and motion\nof the earth or its relation with the sun.  For the first time in history\nthe idea emerged that humanity accumulates knowledge, that the ancients\nwere the infants, that the moderns represent the age and wisdom of the\nrace.  Consider the significance of those words of Pascal in the\nseventeenth century: \"Those whom we call ancient were really new in all\nthings, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind; and as we have\njoined to their knowledge the experience of the centuries which have\nfollowed them, it is in ourselves that we should find this antiquity that\nwe revere in others.\" [10]  For the first time in history men turned\ntheir faces, in their search for knowledge, not backward but forward, and\nbegan to experience that attitude which with us is habitual--standing on\ntip-toe in eager expectancy, sure that tomorrow some new and unheard of\ntruth will be revealed.\n\nNew inventions, new discoveries, new knowledge--even before the\neighteenth century all these factors were under way.  Then a new factor\nentered which has played a powerful part in substituting a progressive\nfor a static world: new social hopes.  The medieval age had no\nexpectation of a better social life on earth.  Charity was common but it\nwas purely individual and remedial; it did not seek to understand or to\ncure the causes of social maladjustment; it was sustained by no\nexpectation of better conditions among men; it was valued because of the\ngiver's unselfishness rather than because of the recipient's gain, and in\nconsequence it was for the most part unregulated alms-giving, piously\nmotived but inefficiently managed.  In the eighteenth century a new\noutlook and hope emerged.  If man could pioneer new lands, learn new\ntruth and make new inventions, why could he not devise new social systems\nwhere human life would be freed from the miseries of misgovernment and\noppression?  With that question at last definitely rising, the long line\nof social reformers began which stretched from Abbe de Saint-Pierre to\nthe latest believer in the possibility of a more decent and salutary\nsocial life for human-kind.  The coming of democracy in government\nincalculably stimulated the influence of this social hope, for with the\nold static forms of absolute autocracy now broken up, with power in the\nhands of the people to seek as they would \"life, liberty and the pursuit\nof happiness,\" who could put limits to the possibilities?  The medieval\nage was gone; the modern age had come, and its distinctive note was\nprogress, with new inventions, new discoveries, new knowledge and new\nsocial hope.\n\nIt would be a fascinating task to watch these interweaving factors at\ntheir work and to trace their commingled influence as slowly their\ninvolved significance became clear, now to this man and now to that.  The\nbest narrative that has been written yet of this epochal movement is\ncontained in Professor Bury's volume on \"The Idea of Progress.\" There one\nsees the stream of this progressive conception of life pushing its way\nout as through a delta by way of many minds, often far separated yet\nflowing with the same water.  Some men attacked the ancients and by\ncomparison praised the modern time as Perrault did with \"The Age of Louis\nthe Great\"; some men foresaw so clearly the possibility of man's control\nover nature that they dreamed of terrestrial Utopias as Francis Bacon did\nin \"New Atlantis\"; some men, like Descartes, sought to grasp the\nintellectual conditions of human improvement; and others, like Condorcet,\nbecame the fervid prophets of human perfectibility; some, like Turgot,\nre-examined history in terms of the new ideas; and some, like Saint Simon\nand Comte, sought to discover the law by which all progress moves.  This\nnew idea of life and history came \"by divers portions and in divers\nmanners,\" but no one can doubt its arrival.  The life of man upon this\nearth was no longer conceived as static; it was progressive and the\npossibilities that lay ahead made all the achievements of the past seem\nlike the play of childhood.\n\nAt last, in the nineteenth century, the climactic factor was added which\ngathered up all the rest and embraced them in a comprehensive philosophy\nof life.  Evolution became a credible truth.  No longer a dim conjecture,\nit was established in biology, and then it spread its influence out into\nevery area of human thought until all history was conceived in genetic\nterms and all the sciences were founded upon the evolutionary idea.\nGrowth became recognized as the fundamental law of life.  Nothing in the\nuniverse without, or in man's life within, could longer be conceived as\nhaving sprung full-statured, like Minerva from the head of Jove.  All\nthings achieved maturity by gradual processes.  The world itself had thus\ncome into being, not artificially nailed together like a box, but growing\nlike a tree, putting forth ever new branches and new leaves.  When this\nidea had firmly grasped the human mind, the modern age had come indeed,\nand progress was its distinctive category of understanding and its\nexhilarating phrasing of human hope.  Then came the days of mid-Victorian\noptimism with songs like this upon men's lips:\n\n  \"Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion kill'd,\n  Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd,\n\n  \"Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,\n  Universal ocean softly washing all her warless isles.\" [11]\n\n\nIV\n\nAny one, however, who has lived with discerning thought through the\nopening years of the twentieth century, must be aware that something has\nhappened to chasten and subdue these wildly enthusiastic hopes of the\nmid-Victorian age.  Others beside the \"gloomy dean\" of St. Paul's,\nwhether through well-considered thought or through the psychological\nshock of the Great War, have come to look upon this rash, unmitigated\nenthusiasm about the earth's future as a fool's paradise.  At any rate,\nno treatment of the idea of progress would be complete which did not\ndwell upon the limitations to that idea, now definitely obvious to\nthoughtful men.\n\nAs early as 1879, in Saporta's \"Le Monde des Plantes,\" we run upon one\nserious setback to unqualified expectations of progress.  Men began to\ntake into account the fact that this earth is not a permanent affair.\n\"We recognize from this point of view as from others,\" wrote Saporta,\n\"that the world was once young; then adolescent; that it has even passed\nthe age of maturity; man has come late, when a beginning of physical\ndecadence had struck the globe, his domain.\" [12]  Here is a fact to give\nenthusiasm over earthly progress serious pause.  This earth, once\nuninhabitable, will be uninhabitable again.  If not by wholesale\ncatastrophe, then by the slow wearing down of the sun's heat, already\npassed its climacteric, this planet, the transient theatre of the human\ndrama, will be no longer the scene of man's activity, but as cold as the\nmoon, or as hot as colliding stars in heaven, will be able to sustain\nhuman life no more.  \"The grandest material works of the human race,\"\nwrote Faye in 1884, \"will have to be effaced by degrees under the action\nof a few physical forces which will survive man for a time.  Nothing will\nremain, not even the ruins.\" [13]\n\nEvery suggested clew to a possible escape from the grimness of the\nplanet's dissolution has been followed up with careful search.  The\ndiscovery of radioactivity seemed to promise endlessly extended life to\nour sun, but Sir E. Rutherford, before the Royal Astronomical Society,\nhas roundly denied that the discovery materially lengthens our estimate\nof the sun's tenure of life and has said that if the sun were made of\nuranium it would not because of that last five years the longer as a\ngiver of heat.[14]  Whether we will or not, we have no choice except to\nface the tremendous fact, calmly set down by von Hartmann in 1904: \"The\nonly question is whether . . . the world-process will work itself out\nslowly in prodigious lapse of time, according to purely physical laws; or\nwhether it will find its end by means of some metaphysical resource when\nit has reached its culminating point.  Only in the last case would its\nend coincide with the fulfilment of a purpose or object; in the first\ncase, a long period of purposeless existence would follow after the\nculmination of life.\" [15]\n\nIn a word, men delighted at the prospect of human progress on this planet\nhave made an idol of it, only to discover that on a transient earth it\nleads nowhere without God and immortality.  One disciple of naturalism\nrecently denied his desire to believe in God because he wanted a risky\nuniverse.  But the universe without God is not risky; it is a foregone\nconclusion; the dice are all loaded.  After the lapse of millions of\nyears which, however long they be stretched out, will ultimately end, our\nsolar system will be gone, without even a memory left of anything that\never was dreamed or done within it.  That is the inevitable issue of such\na \"risky\" universe.  When scientifically-minded men, therefore, now take\na long look ahead, the Utopian visions of the mid-Victorian age are not\nforemost in their thought.  Rather, as one of them recently wrote:\n\n\n\"One is tempted to imagine this race of supermen, of some millions of\nyears hence, grimly confronting the issue of extinction.  Probably long\nbefore that time science will have perfectly mastered the problem of the\nsun's heat, and will be able to state precisely at what period the\nradiation will sink to a level which would normally be fatal to the\nliving inhabitants of the planets.  Then will begin the greatest of\ncosmic events: a drama that has doubtless been played numbers of times\nalready on the stage of the universe: the last stand of the wonderful\nmicrocosm against the brute force of the macrocosm. . . . .\n\n\"One conceives that our supermen will face the end philosophically.\nDeath is losing its terrors.  The race will genially say, as we\nindividuals do to-day, that it has had a long run.  But it will\nnone-the-less make a grim fight.  Life will be worth living, for\neverybody, long before that consummation is in sight.  The hovering demon\nof cold and darkness will be combatted by scientific means of which we\nhave not the germ of a conception.\" [16]\n\n\nIf ever a river ran out into a desert, the river of progressive hopes,\nfed only from springs of materialistic philosophy, has done so here.  At\nleast the Greeks had their immortality and the Hebrews their coming\nKingdom of God, but a modern materialist, with all his talk of progress,\nhas neither the one nor the other, nor anything to take their place as an\nultimate for hope.  Whatever else may be true, progress on a transient\nplanet has not done away with the need of God and life eternal.\n\nMoreover, not only have our twentieth century thought and experience\nseriously qualified the meaning of progress on this earth by the limiting\nof the earth's duration; men have come also to distrust, as a quite\nunjustified flourish of sentimentality, the mid-Victorian confidence in\nan automatic evolution which willy-nilly lifts humanity to higher levels.\nSaid Herbert Spencer, \"Progress is not an accident, not a thing within\nhuman control, but a beneficent necessity.\"  \"This advancement is due to\nthe working of a universal law; . . . in virtue of that law it must\ncontinue until the state we call perfection is reached. . . .  Thus the\nultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain--as certain as\nany conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; . . . so surely\nmust the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man\nbecome perfect.\" [17]  There is no scientific basis whatever for such a\njudgment.  Evolution is not an escalator which, whether or not man run in\naddition to its lift, will inevitably raise humanity to a heaven on\nearth.  Potatoes in the cellar shooting out long white eyes in search of\nlight are evolving, but they are evolving worse.  Upon the basis of a\nscientific doctrine of evolution, no idolatrous superstition could be\nmuch more lacking in intellectual support than Spencer's confidence in a\nuniversal, mechanical, irresistible movement toward perfection.  The\nplain fact is that human history is a strange blend of progress and\nregress; it is the story of the rhythmic rise and fall of civilizations\nand empires, of gains made only to be lost and lost only to be fought for\nonce again.  Even when advance has come, it has come by mingled progress\nand cataclysm as water passes, through gradual increase of warmth, from\nice suddenly to liquid and from liquid suddenly to vapour.  Our\nnineteenth century ideas of evolution tended to create in us the\nimpression that humanity had made a smooth and even ascent.  We\nartificially graded the ascending track of human history, leveled and\nmacadamized it, and talked of inevitable progress.  Such sentimental\noptimism has ceased even to be comforting, so utterly untenable has it\nbecome to every well-instructed mind.\n\nTo such unfounded faith in automatic progress a valuable counterweight is\nacquaintance with the life of a man like St. Augustine.  As one reads\nAugustine's sermons one can hear in the background the collapse of a\ngreat civilization.  One can tell from his discourses when the barbarians\nbegan to move on Rome.  One can hear the crash when Alaric and his hordes\nsacked the Eternal City.  One can catch the accent of horror at the tidal\nwaves of anarchy that everywhere swept in to engulf the falling empire.\n\"Horrible things,\" said Augustine, \"have been told us.  There have been\nruins, and fires, and rapine, and murder, and torture.  That is true; we\nhave heard it many times; we have shuddered at all this disaster; we have\noften wept, and we have hardly been able to console ourselves.\" [18]  At\nlast, the empire in ruins, the old civilization tottering to its\ncollapse, Augustine died in his episcopal city of Hippo, while the\nbarbarians were hammering at the city gates.  Through such scenes this\ngeneration too has lived and has had to learn again, what we never should\nhave forgotten, that human history is not a smooth and well-rolled lawn\nof soft ascents; that it is mountainous, precipitous, terrific--a country\nwhere all progress must be won by dint of intelligence and toil, and\nwhere it is as easy to lose the gains of civilization as it is to fall\nover a cliff or to surrender a wheat field to the weeds.  An archeologist\nin Mesopotamia talked with an Arab lad who neither read, himself, nor\nknew any one who did; yet the lad, when he acknowledged this, stood\nwithin a stone's throw of the site where milleniums ago was one of the\ngreatest universities of the ancient world and where still, amid the\ndesolation, one could dig and find the old clay tablets on which the\nchildren of that ancient time had learned to write.  Progress?  Regress!\nWhile history as a whole, from the Cro-Magnon man to the twentieth\ncentury, does certainly suggest a great ascent, it has not been an\nautomatic levitation.  It has been a fight, tragic and ceaseless, against\ndestructive forces.  This world needs something more than a soft gospel\nof inevitable progress.  It needs salvation from its ignorance, its sin,\nits inefficiency, its apathy, its silly optimisms and its appalling\ncarelessness.\n\n\nV\n\nNevertheless, though it is true that our modern ideas of progress on this\nearth never in themselves can supply an adequate philosophy of life, and\nthough it is true that they do not dispense with, but rather emphasize,\nour need of God and immortality and the saving powers which Christians\nfind in Christ, yet those ideas have in them a permanent contribution to\nthe life of man from whose influence the race cannot escape.  When we\nhave granted the limitations which disillusioned thoughtfulness suggests\nconcerning progress upon this earth, it still remains true that, in our\nnew scientific control over the latent resources of the earth without and\nover our own mental and moral processes within, we have a machinery for\nproducing change that opens up exciting prospects before humanity.  Never\nin our outlook upon man's earthly future can we go back to the endless\ncosmic cycles of the Greeks or the apocalyptic expectations of the\nHebrews.  We are committed to the hope of making progress, and the\ncentral problem which Christianity faces in adjusting her thought and\npractice to the modern age is the problem of coming to intelligent terms\nwith this dominant idea.\n\nThese lectures are an excursion to spy out this land and to see, if we\nmay, what the idea of progress through the scientific control of life is\nlikely to mean and ought to mean to Christianity.  If this modern idea is\nnot intelligently guided in its effect upon our faith and practice, it\nwill none the less have its effect in haphazard, accidental, unguided,\nand probably ruinous ways.  If one listens, for example, to the preaching\nof liberal ministers, one sees that every accent of their teaching has\nbeen affected by this prevalent and permeating thought.  The God they\npreach no longer sits afar like Dante's deity in the stationary empyrean\nbeyond all reach of change; their God is here in the midst of the human\nstruggle, \"their Captain in the well-fought fight.\"  H. G. Wells may be a\npoor theologian but he is one of our best interpreters of popular thought\nand his idea of God, marching through the world \"like fifes and drums,\"\ncalling the people to a progressive crusade for righteousness, is one\nwhich modern folk find it most easy to accept.  He is a God of progress\nwho undergirds our endeavours for justice in the earth with his power;\nwho fights in and for and with us against the hosts of evil; whose\npresence is a guarantee of ultimate victory; and whose effect upon us is\nto send us out to war against ancient human curses, assured that what\nought to be done can be done.\n\nAs men's thought of God has thus been molded by the idea of progress on\nthe earth, so, too, the Christ they preach is not primarily, as of old,\nthe victim by whose substitutionary sacrifice the race of men has found\nan open door from the bottomless pit of endless woe to a blessed\nimmortality in Paradise.  The modern emphasis is all another way.  Christ\nis the divine revealer whose spirit alone can transform individuals and\nsave society.  The sort of character he was, the life he lived, the ideas\nhe promulgated, are the salt that can preserve human life, the light that\ncan illumine the way to a kingdom of righteousness on earth.  He himself\nis the leader in the fight for that kingdom, his sacrifice part of the\nprice it costs, his spirit the quality of life that is indispensable to\nits coming, and when we think of him we sing,\n\n  \"The Son of God goes forth to war. . . .\n  Who follows in his train?\"\n\n\nSo, too, the Church, as presented by typical modern preachers, is no\nlonger an ark to which, from the flood of wrath divine, the few may flee\nfor safety.  If men tried to preach in that way, the message would stick\nin their throats.  The Church is primarily an instrument in God's hands\nto bring personal and social righteousness upon the earth.  When her\nmassed influence overcomes a public evil or establishes a public good,\nmen find the justification of her existence and a first-rate weapon of\napologetic argument in her behalf.  When wars come, the Church is blamed\nbecause she did not prevent them; when wars are over, she takes counsel\nhow she may prove the validity of her message by making their recurrence\nimpossible; and the pitiful dismemberment of the Church by sects and\nschisms is hated and deplored, not so much because of economic waste or\ntheological folly, as because these insane divisions prevent social\neffectiveness in bringing the message of Christ to bear influentially on\nmodern life.\n\nLikewise, hope, deeply affected by modern ideas of earthly progress, is\nnot primarily post-mortem, as it used to be.  Men believe in immortality,\nbut it seems so naturally the continuance of this present life that their\nresponsible concern is chiefly centered here.  The hopes which waken\nimmediate enthusiasm and stir spontaneous response are hopes of\nrighteousness victorious upon the earth.  Because men believe in God,\nthey believe that he has great purposes for humankind.  The course of\nhuman history is like a river: sometimes it flows so slowly that one\nwould hardly know it moved at all; sometimes bends come in its channel so\nthat one can hardly see in what direction it intends to go; sometimes\nthere are back-eddies so that it seems to be retreating on itself.  If a\nman has no spiritual interpretation of life, if he does not believe in\nGod, he may well give up hope and conclude that the human river is\nflowing all awry or has altogether ceased to move.  A Christian, however,\nhas a spiritual interpretation of life.  He knows that human history is a\nriver--not a whirlpool, nor a pond, but a river flowing to its end.  Just\nas, far inland, we can tell that the Hudson is flowing to the sea,\nbecause the waters, when the tide comes in, are tinctured with the\nocean's quality, so now, we believe that we can tell that the river of\nhuman history is flowing out toward the kingdom of our God.  Already the\nsetback of the divine ocean is felt among us in ideals of better life,\npersonal, social, economic, national.  That it is Christianity's function\nto believe in these ideals, to have faith in the possibility of their\nrealization, to supply motives for their achievement, and to work for\nthem with courage and sacrifice, is the familiar note of modern Christian\nhope.\n\nThe modern apologetic also is tinctured with this same quality.  Not as\nof old is it a laboured working out of metaphysical propositions.\nRather, a modern Christian preacher's defense of the Gospel may be\nparaphrased in some such strain as this: You never can achieve a decent\nhuman life upon this planet apart from the Christian Gospel.  Neither\noutward economic comfort nor international treaties of peace can save the\nday for humanity.  Not even when our present situation is described as \"a\nrace between education and catastrophe\" has the case been adequately\nstated.  What kind of education is meant?  If every man and woman on\nearth were a Ph. D., would that solve the human problem?  Aaron Burr had\na far keener intellect than George Washington.  So far as swiftness and\nagility of intelligence were concerned, Burr far out-distanced the\nslow-pacing mind of Washington.  But, for all that, as you watch Burr's\nlife, and many another's like him, you understand what Macaulay meant\nwhen he exclaimed: \"as if history were not made up of the bad actions of\nextraordinary men, as if all the most noted destroyers and deceivers of\nour species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false\nreligions, had not been extraordinary men, as if nine tenths of the\ncalamities which have befallen the human race had any other origin than\nthe union of high intelligence with low desires.\" Was Nebuchadnezzar of\nBabylon unintelligent?  Caesar and Napoleon--were they unintelligent?\nHas the most monumental and destructive selfishness in human history been\nassociated with poor minds?  No, with great minds, which, if the world\nwas to be saved their devastation, needed to be reborn into a new spirit.\nThe transforming gospel which religion brings is indispensable to a\nbuilding of the kingdom of righteousness upon the earth.\n\nWherever one listens, then, to the typical teaching of modern Christians,\nhe finds himself in the atmosphere of the idea of progress.  Men's\nthoughts of God, of Christ, of the Church, of hope, their methods of\napologetic, are shaped to that mold--are often thinned out and flattened\ndown and made cheap and unconvincing by being shaped to that mold--so\nthat an endeavour to achieve an intelligent understanding of\nChristianity's relationship with the idea of progress is in part a\ndefensive measure to save the Gospel from being unintelligently mauled\nand mishandled by it.  Marcus Dods, when he was an old man, said: \"I do\nnot envy those who have to fight the battle of Christianity in the\ntwentieth century.\"  Then, after a moment, he added, \"Yes, perhaps I do,\nbut it will be a stiff fight.\"  It is a stiff fight, and for this reason\nif for no other, that before we can get on much further in a progressive\nworld we must achieve with wisdom and courage some fundamental\nreconstructions in our Christian thinking.\n\n\n\n[1] Aratus of Soli: Phaenomena, lines 122-3.\n\n[2] Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Naturalium Quaestionum, Liber VII, 25.\n\n[3] T. Lucretius Carus: De Rerum Natura, Lib. V, 1455--\"Paullatim docuit\npedetentim progredienteis.\"\n\n[4] Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: Meditations, IX, 28; VI, 37; XI, 1.\n\n[5] Andrew D. White: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in\nChristendom, Vol. I, p. 97.\n\n[6] Roger Bacon: Epistola de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae, et de\nNullitate Magiae, Caput IV, in Opera Quaedam Hactenus Inedita, edited by\nJ. S. Brewer, p. 533.\n\n[7] Jerome Cardan: De Subtilitate, Liber Decimusseptimus: De artibus,\nartificiosisque rebus.\n\n[8] Edward Winslow: Hypocrisie Unmasked, p. 97.\n\n[9] Ibid.\n\n[10] Blaise Pascal: Opuscules, Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum, in The\nThoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal, Translated by O.  W.\nWight, p. 550.\n\n[11] Alfred Tennyson: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.\n\n[12] Comte de Saporta: Le Monde des Plantes avant L'Apparition de\nL'Homme, p. 109.\n\n[13] H. Faye: Sur L'Origine du Monde, Chapitre XI, p. 256-7.\n\n[14] Joseph McCabe: The End of the World, p. 112.\n\n[15] Eduard von Hartmann: Ausgewaehlte Werke, viii, pp. 572-3 (Leipzig,\n1904).\n\n[16] Joseph McCabe: The End of the World, pp. 116-117.\n\n[17] Herbert Spencer: Illustrations of Universal Progress, Chapter I,\nProgress: Its Law and Cause, p. 58; Social Statics, Part I, Chapter II,\nThe Evanescence of Evil, Sec. 4, p. 78 ff.\n\n[18] Louis Bertrand: Saint Augustin, p. 342.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE II\n\nTHE NEED FOR RELIGION\n\nI\n\nOne of the first effects of the idea of progress, whose development our\nlast lecture traced, has been to increase immeasurably man's self\nreliance and to make him confident of humanity's power to take care of\nitself.  At the heart of the idea of progress is man's new scientific\ncontrol over life, and this new mastery, whereby the world seems ready\nto serve the purposes of those who will learn the laws, is the dominant\ninfluence in both the intellectual and practical activities of our age.\nThat religion, in consequence, should seem to many of minor import, if\nnot quite negligible, and that men, trusting themselves, their\nknowledge of law, their use of law-abiding forces, their power to\nproduce change and to improve conditions, should find less need of\ntrusting any one except themselves, was inevitable, but for all that it\nis fallacious.  Already we have seen that a stumbling and uneven\nprogress, precarious and easily frustrated, taking place upon a\ntransient planet, goes but a little way to meet those elemental human\nneeds with which religious faith has dealt.  In our present lecture we\npropose a more specific consideration of this abiding necessity of\nreligion in a progressive world.\n\nHow difficult it is to go back in imagination to the days before men\ngrasped the meaning of natural law!  We take gravitation for granted\nbut, when Newton first proclaimed its law, the artillery of orthodox\npulpits was leveled against him in angry consternation.  Said one\npreacher, Newton \"took from God that direct action on his works so\nconstantly ascribed to him in Scripture and transferred it to material\nmechanism\" and he \"substituted gravitation for Providence.\" [1]  That\npreacher saw truly that the discovery of natural law was going to make\na profound difference to religion.  For ages men had been accustomed to\nlook for the revelation of supernatural power in realms where they did\nnot know the laws.  And as men were tempted to look for the presence of\nGod in realms where they did not know the laws, so in those realms they\ntrusted God to do for them what they did not know how to do for\nthemselves.\n\nThen men began discovering natural laws, and every time they laid their\nhands on a new natural law they laid their hands on a new law-abiding\nforce and began doing for themselves things of which their fathers had\nnever dreamed.  Stories of old-time miracles are overpassed in our\nmodern days.  Did Aladdin once rub a magic lamp and build a palace?\nTo-day, knowledge of engineering laws enables us to achieve results\nthat would put Aladdin quite to shame.  He never dreamed a Woolworth\nTower.  Did the Israelites once cross the Red Sea dry-shod?  One thing,\nhowever, they never would have hoped to do: to cross under and over the\nHudson River day after day in multitudes, dry-shod.  Did an axe-head\nfloat once when Elisha threw a stick into the water?  But something no\nElisha ever dreamed of seeing we see continually: iron ships navigating\nthe ocean as though it were their natural element.  Did Joshua once\nprolong the day for battle by the staying of the sun?  Yet Joshua could\nnever have conceived an habitual lighting of the city's homes and\nstreets until by night they are more brilliant than by day.  Did\nJericho's walls once fall at the united shout of a besieging people?\nThose childlike besiegers, however, never dreamed of guns that could\nblast Jerichos to pieces from seventy miles away.  Huxley was right\nwhen he said that our highly developed sciences have given us a command\nover the course of non-human nature greater than that once attributed\nto the magicians.\n\nThe consequence has been revolutionary.  Old cries of dependence upon\nGod grow unreal upon the lips of multitudes.  Sometimes without knowing\nit, often without wanting it, men are drawn by the drift of modern\nthought away from all confidence in God and all consciousness of\nreligious need.  Consider two pictures.  The first is an epidemic in\nNew England in the seventeenth century.  Everybody is thinking about\nGod; the churches are full and days are passed in fasting and agonizing\nprayer.  Only one way of getting rid of such an epidemic is known: men\nmust gain new favour in the sight of God.  The second picture is an\nepidemic in New England in the twentieth century.  The churches are not\nfull--they are closed by official order and popular consent to prevent\nthe spread of germs.  Comparatively few people are appealing to God;\nalmost everybody is appealing to the health commissioner.  Not many\npeople are relying upon religion; everybody is relying upon science.\nAs one faces the pregnant significance of that contrast, one sees that\nin important sections of our modern life science has come to occupy the\nplace that God used to have in the reliance of our forefathers.  For\nthe dominant fact of our generation is power over the world which has\nbeen put into our hands through the knowledge of laws, and the\nconsequence is that the scientific mastery of life seems man's\nindispensable and sufficient resource.\n\nThe issue is not far to seek.  Such has been public confidence in the\nefficacy and adequacy of this scientific control of life to meet all\nhuman needs, that in multitudes of minds religion has been crowded to\nthe wall.  Why should we trust God or concern ourselves with the deep\nsecrets of religious faith, if all our need is met by learning laws,\nblowing upon our hands, and going to work?  So even Christians come\nsecretly to look upon their Christianity as a frill, something gracious\nbut not indispensable, pleasant to live with but not impossible to live\nwithout.  Christian preachers lose their ability, looking first upon\ntheir spiritual message and then upon their fellow men, to feel how\ndesperately the two need each other.  Religion has become an \"elective\nin the university of life.\"  But religion cannot persist as a frill; it\neither is central in its importance or else it is not true at all.  Its\ngreat days come only when it is seen to be indispensable.  We may use\nwhat artificial respiration we will upon the Church, the days of the\nChurch's full power will not come until the conviction lays hold upon\nher that the endeavour to found civilization upon a materialistic\nscience is leading us to perdition; that man needs desperately the\nministry of religion, its insight into life's meanings, its control\nover life's use, its inward power for life's moral purposes; that man\nnever needed this more than now, when the scientific control of life is\narming him with so great ability to achieve his aims.\n\n\nII\n\nAs we try to discern wherein man's need of religion lies with reference\nto the scientific control of life, let us start with the proposition\nthat, when we have all the facts which science can discover, we still\nneed a spiritual interpretation of the facts.  All our experiences are\nmade up of two elements: first, the outward circumstance, and second,\nthe inward interpretation.  On the one side is our environment, the\nworld we live in, the things that befall us, the kaleidoscopic changes\nof fortune in the scenery of which our lives are set.  On the other\nside are the inward interpretations that we give to this outward\ncircumstance.  Experience is compounded of these two elements.\n\nThis clearly is true in ordinary living.  Two men, let us say, go to\ntheir physicians and are told that they have only a few months to live.\nThis is the fact which faces both of them.  As we watch them, however,\nwe are at once aware that this fact is not the whole of their\nexperience.  One of the men crumples up; he \"collapses into a yielding\nmass of plaintiveness and fear.\"  Thinking of the event which he is\nfacing, he sees nothing there but horror.  That is his interpretation\nof it.  The other man so looks upon the event which is coming that his\nfamily, far from having to support his spirit, are supported by him.\nHe buoys them up; he carries them along; his faith and courage are\ncontagious; and when he thinks of his death it appears in his eyes a\ngreat adventure concerning which the old hymn told the truth:\n\n  \"It were a well-spent journey\n  Though seven deaths lay between.\"\n\nThat is his interpretation.  As we regard the finished experiences of\nthese two men, we see clearly that, while the same fact lay at the\nbasis of both, it was the inward interpretation that determined the\nquality of the experience.\n\nThis power to transform facts so that they will be no longer merely\nfacts, but facts plus an interpretation, is one of the most distinctive\nand significant elements in human life.  The animals do not possess it.\nAn event befalls a dog and, when the dog is through with it, the event\nis what it was before.  The dog has done nothing to it.  But the same\nevent befalls a man and at once something begins to happen to it.  It\nis clothed in the man's thought about it; it is dressed in his\nappreciation and understanding; it is transformed by his\ninterpretations.  The event comes out of that man's life something\naltogether different from what it was when it went in.  The man can do\nalmost anything with that event.  For our experiences do not fall into\nour lives in single lumps, like meteors from a distant sky of fate; our\nexperiences always are made up of the fortunes that befall us and the\ninterpretations that we give to them.\n\nSo far as the relative importance of these two factors is concerned, we\nmay see the truth in the application of our thought to happiness.  If\nthere is any area in human experience where the outward circumstance\nmight be supposed to control the results, it is the realm of happiness;\nyet probably nine-tenths of the problem of happiness lies, not in the\noutward event, but in the inward interpretation.  If we could describe\nthose conditions in which the happiest people whom we have known have\nlived, can any one imagine the diversity of environment that would be\nrepresented in our accounts?  Let them move in procession before the\neyes of our imagination, those happy folk whose friendship has been the\nbenediction of our lives!  What a motley company they are!  For some\nare blind, and some are crippled, and some are invalid; not many are\nrich and fortunate; many are poor--a company of handicapped but radiant\nspirits whose victorious lives, like the burning bush which Moses saw,\nhave made in a desert a spot of holy ground.  If, now, we ask why it is\nthat happiness can be so amazingly independent of outward circumstance,\nthis is the answer: every experience has two factors, the fortune that\nbefalls and the inward interpretation of it; and, while we often cannot\ncontrol the fortune, we always can help with the interpretation.  That\nis in our power.  That is the throne of our sovereignty over our lives.\n\n\nIII\n\nThe deep need of a worthy interpretation of life is just as urgent in a\nworld where the idea of progress reigns as in any other, and to supply\nthat need is one of the major functions of religion.  For religion is\nsomething more than all the creeds that have endeavoured to express its\nthought.  Religion is something more than all the organizations that\nhave tried to incarnate its purposes.  Religion is the human spirit, by\nthe grace of God, seeking and finding an interpretation of experience\nthat puts sense and worth, dignity, elevation, joy, and hope into life.\n\nA body of students recently requested an address upon the subject:\n\"What is the use of religion anyway?\"  The group of ideas behind the\nquestion is not hard to guess: that science gives us all the facts,\nthat facts and their laws are all we need, that the scientific control\nof life guarantees progress, and that religion therefore is\nsuperfluous.  But in such a statement one towering interrogation has\nbeen neglected: what about the interpretation of the very facts which\nscience does present?  Could not one address himself to the question of\nthose students in some such way as this?  You say that science has\ndisclosed to us the leisureliness of the evolving universe.  Come back,\nthen, on the long road to the rear on which Bishop Usher's old date of\ncreation is a way station an infinitesimal distance behind us; come\nback until together we stand at the universe's postern gate and look\nout into the mystery whence all things came, where no scientific\ninvestigation can ever go, where no one knows the facts.  What do you\nmake of it?  Two voices rise in answer.  One calls the world \"a\nmechanical process, in which we may discover no aim or purpose\nwhatever.\" [2]  And another voice says:\n\n  \"The heavens declare the glory of God;\n  And the firmament showeth his handiwork.\" [3]\n\nThat is not a difference in facts, upon which we can get our hands.\nThat is a difference in the interpretation of the facts.\n\nOr come forward together to look into that mystery ahead, toward which\nthis universe and we within it are so prodigiously plunging on.  Do we\nnot often feel, upon this earth whirling through space, like men and\nwomen who by some weird chance have found themselves upon a ship,\nignorant of their point of departure and of their destination?  For all\nthe busyness with which we engage in many tasks, we cannot keep\nourselves from slipping back at times to the ship's stern to look out\nalong its wake and wonder whence we came, or from going at times also\nto its prow to wonder whither we are headed.  What do you make of it?\nToward what sort of haven is this good ship earth sailing--a port\nfortunate or ill?  Or may it be there is no haven, only endless sailing\non an endless sea by a ship that never will arrive?  So questioning, we\nlisten to conflicting voices.  One says there is no future except\nultimate annihilation, and another voice sings:\n\n  \"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed\n    of good, shall exist.\"\n\nThat is not a difference in the facts, that eyes can see and hands\nhandle; that is a difference in the interpretation of the facts.\n\nOr from such large considerations come down into some familiar\nexperience of daily life.  Here is a man having a hard battle between\nright and wrong.  There is no more impressive sight on earth to one who\nlooks at it with understanding eyes.  What do you make of this\nmysterious sense of duty which lays its magisterial hand upon us and\nwill not be denied?  At once various voices rise.  Haeckel says the\nsense of duty is a \"long series of phyletic modifications of the\nphronema of the cortex.\" [4]  That is his interpretation.  And\nWordsworth:\n\n  \"Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!\n  O Duty!\"\n\nThis sharp contrast is not a difference between facts, which can be\npinned down as the Lilliputians pinned down Gulliver; it is a\ndifference in the interpretation of the facts.\n\nOr let us go together up some high hill from which we can look out upon\nthe strange history of humankind.  We see its agonies and wars, its\nrising empires followed by their ruinous collapse, and yet a mysterious\nadvance, too, as though mankind, swinging up a spiral, met old\nquestions upon a higher level, so that looking back to the Stone Age,\nfor all the misery of this present time, we would be rather here than\nthere.  What can we make of it?  Hauptmann's Michael Kramer says \"All\nthis life is the shuddering of a fever.\"  And Paul says, \"the eternal\npurpose which he purposed in Christ.\"  That is not a difference in the\nfacts.  It is a difference in the interpretation of the facts.\n\nYet once more, come into the presence of death.  The facts that human\neyes can see are plain enough, but what can we make of it--this\nstanding on the shore, waving farewell to a friendly ship that loses\nitself over the rim of the world?  Says Thomson of the world's\ntreatment of man,\n\n  \"It grinds him some slow years of bitter breath,\n  Then grinds him back into eternal death.\"\n\nAnd Paul says: \"This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this\nmortal must put on immortality.  But when this corruptible shall have\nput on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality,\nthen shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed\nup in victory.\"  That is not a contrast between facts; that is a\ncontrast between interpretations of facts.\n\nIs it not plain why religion has such an unbreakable hold upon the\nhuman mind?  The funeral of Christianity has been predicted many times\nbut each time the deceased has proved too lively for the obsequies.  In\nthe middle of the eighteenth century they said that Christianity had\none foot in the grave, but then came the amazing revival of religious\nlife under the Wesleys.  In the middle of the last century one wiseacre\nsaid, \"In fifty years your Christianity will have died out\"; yet, for\nall our failures, probably Christianity in all its history has never\nmade more progress than in the last half century.  If you ask why, one\nreason is clear: man cannot live in a universe of uninterpreted facts.\nThe scientific approach to life is not enough.  It does not cover all\nthe ground.  Men want to know what life spiritually means and they want\nto know that it \"means intensely, and means good.\"  Facts alone are\nlike pieces of irritating grit that get into the oyster shell; the\npearl of life is created by the interpretations which the facts educe.\n\nIn this difference between the facts of experience and their\ninterpretations lies the secret of the contrast between our two words\n_existence_ and _life_.  Even before we define the difference, we feel\nit.  To exist is one thing; to live is another.  Existence is comprised\nof the bare facts of life alone--the universe in which we live, our\nheritage and birth, our desires and their satisfactions, growth, age\nand death.  All the facts that science can display before us comprise\nexistence.  But life is something more.  Life is existence clothed in\nspiritual meanings; existence seen with a worthy purpose at the heart\nof it and hope ahead, existence informed by the spirit's insights and\nunderstandings, transfigured and glorified by the spirit's faiths and\nhopes.  It follows, therefore, that while existence is given us to\nstart with, life is a spiritual achievement.  A man must take the facts\nof his existence whether he wants to or not, but he makes his life by\nthe activity of his soul.  The facts of existence are like so much\nloose type, which can be set up to many meanings.  One man leaves those\nfacts in chaotic disarrangement or sets them up into cynical\naffirmations, and he exists.  But another man takes the same facts and\nby spiritual insight makes them mean gloriously, and he lives indeed.\nTo suppose that mankind ever can be satisfied with existence only and\ncan be called off from the endeavour to achieve this more abundant\nlife, is utterly to misconceive the basic facts of human nature.  And\nthis profound need for a spiritual interpretation of life is not\nsatisfied by an idea of temporal progress, stimulated by a few\ncircumstances which predispose our minds to immediate expectancy.\n\n\nIV\n\nWhen, therefore, any one asserts the adequacy of the scientific\napproach to life, one answer stands ready to our hand: science deals\nprimarily with facts and their laws, not with their spiritual\ninterpretations.  To put the same truth in another way, science deals\nwith one specially abstracted aspect of the facts; it drains them of\ntheir qualitative elements and, reducing them to their quantitative\nelements, it proceeds to weigh and measure them and state their laws.\nIt moves in the realm of actualities and not in the realm of values.\nOne science, for example, takes a gorgeous sunset and reduces it to the\nconstituent ether waves that cause the colour.  What it says about the\nsunset is true, but it is not the whole truth.  Ask anybody who has\never seen the sun riding like a golden galleon down the western sea!\nAnother science takes a boy and reduces him to his Bertillon\nmeasurements and at the top of the statistics writes his name, \"John\nSmith.\"  That is the truth about John Smith, but it is not the whole\ntruth.  Ask his mother and see!  Another science takes our varied and\nvibrant mental life and reduces it to its physical basis and states its\nlaws.  That is the truth about our mental life, but it is not the whole\ntruth.  What is more, it is not that part of the truth by which men\nreally live.  For men live by love and joy and hope and faith and\nspiritual insight.  When these things vanish life is\n\n        \"a tale\n  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,\n  Signifying nothing.\"\n\n\nWhen a man takes that quantitative aspect of reality, which is the\nspecial province of natural science, as though it were the whole of\nreality, he finds himself in a world where the physical forces are in\ncontrol.  We, ourselves, according to this aspect of life, are the\nproduct of physical forces--marionettes, dancing awhile because\nphysical forces are pulling on the strings.  In a word, when a man\ntakes that quantitative aspect of reality, which natural science\npresents, as though it were the whole of reality, he becomes a\nmaterialistic fatalist, and on that basis we cannot permanently build\neither personal character or a stable civilization.  It is not\ndifficult, then, to see one vital significance of Jesus Christ: he has\ngiven us the most glorious interpretation of life's meaning that the\nsons of men have ever had.  The fatherhood of God, the friendship of\nthe Spirit, the sovereignty of righteousness, the law of love, the\nglory of service, the coming of the Kingdom, the eternal hope--there\nnever was an interpretation of life to compare with that.  If life\noften looks as though his interpretation were too good to be true, we\nneed not be surprised.  Few things in the universe _are_ as\nsuperficially they _look_.  The earth looks flat and, as long as we\ngaze on it, it never will look any other way, but it is spherical for\nall that.  The earth looks stationary and if we live to be as old as\nMethuselah we never will see it move, but it is moving--seventy-five\ntimes faster than a cannon ball!  The sun looks as though it rose in\nthe east and set in the west, and we never can make it look any other\nway, but it does not rise nor set at all.  So far as this earth is\nconcerned, the sun is standing still enough.  We look as though we\nwalked with our heads up and our feet down, and we never can make\nourselves look otherwise, but someone finding a safe stance outside\nthis whirling sphere would see us half the time walking with our heads\ndown and our feet up.  Few things are ever the way they look, and the\nend of all scientific research, as of all spiritual insight, is to get\nbehind the way things look to the way things are.  Walter Pater has a\nrememberable phrase, \"the hiddenness of perfect things.\"  One meaning,\ntherefore, which Christ has for Christians lies in the realm of\nspiritual interpretation.  He has done for us there what Copernicus and\nGalileo did in astronomy: he has moved us out from our flat earth into\nhis meaningful universe, full of moral worth and hope.  He has become\nto us in this, our inner need, what the luminous phrase of the Book of\nJob describes, \"An interpreter, one among a thousand.\"  And in spite of\nall our immediate expectancy, born out of our scientific control of\nlife, mankind never needed that service more than now.\n\n\nV\n\nThere is a second proposition to which we should attend as we endeavour\nto define the need for religion with reference to the scientific\nmastery of life.  Consider why so often men are tempted to suppose that\nscience is adequate for human purposes.  Is it not because science\nsupplies men with power?  Steam, electricity, petroleum, radium--with\nwhat progressive mastery over the latent resources of the universe does\nscience move from one area of energy to another, until in the\nimagination of recent generations she has seemed to stand saying: all\npower is given unto me in heaven and in earth.  With such power to\nbestow, is she not our rightful mistress?  But who that has walked with\ndiscerning eyes through these last few years can any longer be beguiled\nby that fallacious vision?  Look at what we are doing with this new\npower that science has given us!  The business to which steel and steam\nand electricity, explosives and poisons have recently been put does not\nindicate that humanity's problem is solved when new power is put into\nour hands.  Even the power of wide-spread communication can so be used\nthat a war which began in Serajevo will end with lads from Kamchatka\nand Bombay blasted to pieces by the same shell on a French battlefield.\nEven the power of modern finance can be so used that nations will\nexhaust the credit of generations yet unborn in waging war.  How some\nfolk keep their cheap and easy optimism about humanity's use of its new\nenergies is a mystery.  We have come pretty near to ruining ourselves\nwith them already.  If we do not achieve more spiritual control over\nthem than we have yet exhibited we will ruin ourselves with them\naltogether.  Once more in history a whole civilization will commit\nsuicide like Saul falling on his own sword.\n\nThe scientific control of life, by itself, creates more problems than\nit solves.  The problem of international disarmament, for example, has\nbeen forced on us by the fear of that perdition to the suburbs of which\nour race has manifestly come through the misuse of scientific\nknowledge.  Humanity is disturbed about itself because it has\ndiscovered that it is in possession of power enough to wreck the world.\nNever before did mankind have so much energy to handle.  Multitudes of\npeople, dubious as to whether disarmament is practical, are driven like\nshuttles back and forth between that doubt, upon the one side, and the\ncertainty, upon the other, that armament is even less practical.  The\nstatisticians have been at work upon this last war and their figures,\nlike the measurements of the astronomers, grow to a size so colossal\nthat the tentacles of our imaginations slip off them when we try to\ngrasp their size.  The direct costs of this last war, which left us\nwith more and harder difficulties than we had at the beginning, were\nabout $186,000,000,000.  Is that practical?  At the beginning of 1922\nalmost all the nations in Europe, although by taxation they were\nbreaking their people's financial backs, were spending far more than\ntheir income, and in the United States, far and away the richest nation\non the planet, we faced an enormous deficit.  Is that practical?  In\nthis situation, with millions of people unemployed, with starvation\nrampant, with social revolution stirring in every country--not because\npeople are bad, not because they impatiently love violence, but because\nthey cannot stand forever the social strain and economic consequence of\nwar--what were we doing?  We were launching battleships which cost\n$42,000,000 to build, which cost $2,000,000 a year to maintain and\nwhich, in a few years, would be towed out to sea to be used as an\nexperimental target to try out some new armour-piercing shell.  I\nwonder if our children's children will look back on that spectacle and\ncall it practical.  In 1912 the naval expenses of this country were\nabout $136,000,000.  In 1921 our naval expenses were about\n$641,000,000--approximately five times greater in nine years.  So over\nall the earth war preparations were pyramiding with an ever\naccelerating momentum.  And because any man can see that we must stop\nsometime, we have been trying desperately to stop now; to turn our\nbacks upon this mad endeavour to build civilization upon a\nmaterialistic basis, bulwarked by physical force; to turn our faces\ntoward spiritual forces, fair play, reasonable conference, good-will,\nservice and co-operation.\n\nYet how hard it is to make the change effective!  Long ages ago in the\nprimeval jungle, the dogs' ancestors used to turn around three times in\nthe thicket before they lay down, that they might make a comfortable\nspot to nestle in, and now your highbred Pekingese will turn around\nthree times upon his silken cushion although there is no earthly reason\nwhy he should.  So difficult is it to breed beasts and men out of their\ninveterate habits.  So hard is it going to be to make men give up the\nidea that force is a secure foundation for international relationships.\nYet somehow that change must be made.  They are having trouble with the\nhousing problem in Tokyo and the reason is simple.  Tokyo is built on\nearthquake ground and it is insecure.  You cannot put great houses on\nunstable foundations.  One story, two stories, three stories--that is\nabout as high as they dare go.  But in New York City one sees the\nskyscrapers reaching up their sixty stories into the air.  The\nexplanation is not difficult: Manhattan Island is solid rock.  If you\nare going to build great structures you must have great foundations.\nAnd civilization is a vast and complicated structure.  We cannot build\nit on physical force.  That is too shaky.  We must build it upon\nspiritual foundations.\n\nThere are those who suppose that this can be done by progress through\nthe scientific control of life, and who treat religion as a negligible\nelement.  Such folk forget that while a cat will lap her milk\ncontentedly from a saucer made of Wedgwood or china, porcelain or\nearthenware, and will feel no curiosity about the nature of the\nreceptacle from which she drinks, human beings are not animals who thus\ncan take their food and ask no questions about the universe in which it\nis served to them.  We want to know about life's origin and meaning and\ndestiny.  We cannot keep our questions at home.  We cannot stop\nthinking.  If this universe is fundamentally physical, if the only\nspark of spiritual life which it ever knew is the fitful flame of our\nown unsteady souls, if it came from dust and to dust will return,\nleaving behind no recollection of the human labour, sacrifice and\naspiration which for a little time it unconsciously enshrined, that\noutlook makes an incalculable difference to our present lives.  For\nthen our very minds themselves, which have developed here by accident\nupon this wandering island in the skies, represent the only kind of\nmind there is, and what we do not know never was thought about or cared\nfor or purposed by anyone, and we, alone in knowing, are ourselves\nunknown.\n\nThe consequence of this sort of thinking, which is the essence of\nirreligion, is to be seen on every side of us in folk who, having thus\nlost all confidence in God and the reality of the spiritual world,\nstill try to labour for the good of men.  They have kept one part of\nChristianity, its ideals of character and service; they have lost the\nother part, which assures them about God.  In a word, they are trying\nto build an idealistic and serviceable life upon a godless basis.  Now,\nthe difficulty with this attitude toward life lies here: it demands a\nquality of spirit for which it cannot supply the motive.  It demands\nsocial hope, confidence, enthusiasm and sacrifice, and all the while it\ncuts their nerves.  It tells men that the universe is fundamentally a\nmoral desert, that it never was intended even to have an oasis of\ncivilization in it, that if we make one grow it will be by dint of our\nown effort against the deadset of the universe's apathy, that if, by\nour toil, an oasis is achieved, it will have precarious tenure in such\nalien and inhospitable soil, and that in the end it will disappear\nbefore the onslaught of the cosmic forces; yet in the same breath it\ntells men to work for that oasis with hope, confidence, joy and\nenthusiastic sacrifice.  This is a world view which asks of men a\nvalorous and expensive service for which it cannot supply the driving\npower.  Yet many of our universities are presenting just that outlook\nupon life to our young men and women.  The youth are being urged to\nfight courageously and sacrificially for righteousness upon the earth,\nand at the same time they are presented with a view of the background\nand destiny of human life similar to that which Schopenhauer expressed:\n\"Truly optimism cuts so sorry a figure in this theatre of sin,\nsuffering, and death that we should have to regard it as a piece of\nsarcasm, if Hume had not explained its origin--insincere flattery of\nGod in the arrogant expectation of gain.\" [5]\n\nWhat this generation, which so disparages religion and like the ancient\nSadducee calls its good right arm its god, will ultimately discover is\nthat the fight for righteousness in character and in society is a long\nand arduous campaign.  The Bible says that a thousand years in God's\nsight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the\nnight.  It certainly seems that way.  It is a long and roundabout\njourney to the Promised Land.  Generations die and fall by the way.\nThe road is white with the bones of pilgrims who attained not the\npromises but saw them and greeted them from afar.  Some Giordano Bruno,\nwho gives himself to the achievement of mankind's high aims, is burned\nat the stake; centuries pass and on the very spot where he was martyred\na monument is built with this inscription on it: \"Raised to Giordano\nBruno by the generation which he foresaw.\"  This is exhilarating when\nthe story is finished, but in the meantime it is hard work being\nGiordano Bruno and sacrificially labouring for a cause which you care\nenough for and believe enough in and are sure enough about so that you\nwill die for it.  When such faith and hope and sacrifice are demanded\none cannot get them by exhortation, by waving a wand of words to\nconjure his enthusiasm up.  Nothing will do but a world-view adequate\nto supply motives for the service it demands.  Nothing will do but\nreligion.\n\nOne wonders why the preachers do not feel this more and so recover\ntheir consciousness of an indispensable mission.  One wonders that the\nchurches can be so timid and dull and negative, that our sermons can be\nso pallid and inconsequential.  One wonders why in the pulpit we have\nso many flutes and so few trumpets.  For here is a world with the\naccumulating energies of the new science in its hands, living in the\npurlieus of hell because it cannot gain spiritual mastery over the very\npower in which it glories.  Here is a world which must build its\ncivilization on spiritual bases or else collapse into abysmal ruin and\nwhich cannot achieve the task though all the motives of\nself-preservation cry out to have it done, because men lack the very\nelements of faith and character which it is the business of religion to\nsupply.\n\n\nVI\n\nWe have said that when science has given us all its facts we still need\na spiritual interpretation of the facts; that when science has put all\nits energies into our hands we still need spiritual mastery over their\nuse.  Let us say in conclusion that, when science has given us all its\npower, we still need another kind of power which it is not the business\nof science to supply.  Long ago somebody who knew the inner meaning of\nreligion wrote:\n\n  \"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.\n  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;\n  He leadeth me beside still waters.\n  He restoreth my soul.\"\n\nThat last phrase sums up one of the deepest needs of human life.  We\nare in constant want of spiritual repair; we are lost without a fresh\ninflux of inward power; we desperately need to have our souls restored.\nA young British soldier once came in from the trenches where his\naggressive powers had been in full employ and, having heard one of the\nfinest concert companies that London could send out, he wrote in a\nletter to his family: \"I have just come down from the trenches, and\nhave been listening to one of the best concerts I ever attended.  It\nmakes one feel that perhaps there is a good God after all.\"  The two\naspects of life which that soldier discovered in himself all men\npossess.  One takes us to life's trenches; the other throws us back on\nsome revelation of grace and beauty that we may be sure of God.  With\none we seek aggressively to master life; with the other we seek\nreceptively to be inspired.  Every normal man needs these two kinds of\ninfluence: one to send him informed and alert to his tasks, the other\nto float his soul off its sandbars on the rising tide of spiritual\nreassurance and power.  Every normal man needs two attitudes: one when\nhe goes into action determined to do his work and to do it well, and\nthe other when he subdues his spirit to receptivity and with the\nPsalmist cries,\n\n  \"My soul, wait thou in silence for God only;\n  For my expectation is from him.\"\n\nWhen science has given us all the power it can, we still need another\nkind of power which science cannot give.\n\nWhatever else the scientific control of life may have accomplished, it\nhas not saved mankind from the old and devastating problems of trouble\nand sin.  So far as individual experience of these is concerned, there\nis little discernable difference between two thousand years before\nChrist and two thousand years afterward.  Still disasters fall upon our\nlives, sometimes as swift in their assault as wild beasts leaping from\nan unsuspected ambush.  Still troubles come, long drawn out and\nwearying, like the monotonous dripping of water with which old\ntorturers used to drive their victims mad.  Still sins bring shame to\nthe conscience and tragic consequence to the life, and tiresome work,\nlosing the buoyancy of its first inspiration, drags itself out into\npurposeless effort and bores us with its futility.  Folk now, as much\nas ever in all history, need to have their souls restored.  The\nscientific control of life, however, is not adequate for that.\nElectricity and subways and motor cars do not restore the soul; and to\nknow that there are millions upon millions of solar systems, like our\nown, scattered through space does not restore the soul; and to delve in\nthe sea or to fly in the air or to fling our words through the ether\ndoes not restore the soul.  The need of religion is perennial and would\nbe though our scientific control over life were extended infinitely\nbeyond our present hope, for the innermost ministry of religion to\nhuman life is the restoration of the soul.\n\nIn this fact lies the failure of that type of naturalism which\nendeavours to keep religion as a subjective experience and denies the\nreality of an objective God.  If we are not already familiar with this\nattempted substitution we soon shall be, for our young people are being\ntaught it in many a classroom now.  One of the basic principles of this\nnew teaching is belief in the spiritual life but, when one inquires\nwhere the spiritual life is, he discovers that it is altogether within\nourselves--there is no original, creative and abiding Spiritual Life\nfrom whom we come, by whom we are sustained, in whom we live.  Rather,\nas flowers reveal in their fragrance a beauty which is not in the earth\nwhere they grow nor in the roots on which they depend, so our spiritual\nlife is the mysterious refinement of the material out of which we are\nconstructed, and it has nothing to correspond with it in the source\nfrom which we sprang.  Nevertheless, the new naturalism exalts this\nspiritual life within us, calls it our crown and glory, bids us\ncultivate and diffuse it, says about it nearly everything a Christian\nsays except that it is a revelation of eternal reality.  Moreover, it\nis difficult to differentiate from this outspoken group of professed\nnaturalists another group of humanists who do retain the idea of God,\nbut merely as the sum total of man's idealistic life.  \"God,\" says one\nexponent, \"is the farthest outreach of our human ideals.\"  That is to\nsay, our spiritual lives created God, not God our spiritual lives.\nGod, as one enthusiastic devotee of this new cult has put it, is a sort\nof Uncle Sam, the pooling of the idealistic imaginations of multitudes.\nOf course he does not exist, yet in a sense he is real; he is the\nprojection of our loyalties, affections, hopes.\n\nIt should go without saying that this idea of God has about as much\nintellectual validity as belief in Santa Claus and is even more\nsentimental, in that it is a deliberate attempt to disguise in pleasant\nand familiar terms a fundamentally materialistic interpretation of\nreality.  The vital failure of this spiritualized naturalism, however,\nlies in the inability of its Uncle Sam to meet the deepest needs on\naccount of which men at their best have been religious.  This deified\nprojection of our ideals we made up ourselves and so we cannot really\npray to him; he does not objectively exist and so has no unifying\nmeaning which puts purposefulness into creation and hope ahead of it;\nhe does not care for any one or anything and so we may not trust him;\nand neither in sin can he forgive, cleanse, restore, empower, nor in\nsorrow comfort and sustain.  A god who functions so poorly is not much\nof a god.  Once more, therefore, one wonders why in a generation when,\nnot less, but more, because of all our scientific mastery the souls of\nmen are starved and tired, the Church is not captured by a new sense of\nmission.  It is precisely in a day when the active and pugnacious\nenergies of men are most involved in the conquest of the world that the\nspirit becomes most worn for lack of sustenance.  To be assured of the\nnearness and reality and availability of the spiritual world is a\nmatter of life and death to multitudes of folk to-day.  There could\nhardly be a more alluring time in which to make the Holy Spirit real to\nthe world.  For the supreme moral asset in any man's life is not his\naggressiveness nor his pugnacity, but his capacity to be inspired--to\nbe inspired by great books, great music, by love and friendship; to be\ninspired by great faiths, great hopes, great ideals; to be inspired\nsupremely by the Spirit of God.  For so we are lifted until the things\nwe tried to see and could not we now can see because of the altitude at\nwhich we stand, and the things we tried to do and could not we now can\ndo because of the fellowship in which we live.  To one asserting the\nadequacy of the scientific control of life, therefore, the Christian's\nthird answer is clear: man's deepest need is spiritual power, and\nspiritual power comes out of the soul's deep fellowships with the\nliving God.\n\nSuch, then, is the abiding need of religion in a scientific age.  To be\nscientifically minded is one of the supreme achievements of mankind.\nTo love truth, as science loves it, to seek truth tirelessly, as\nscience seeks it, to reveal the latent resources of the universe in\nhope that men will use them for good and not for evil, as science does,\nis one of the chief glories of our race.  When, however, we have taken\neverything that science gives, it is not enough for life.  When we have\nfacts, we still need a spiritual interpretation of facts; when we have\nall the scientific forces that we can get our hands upon, we still need\nspiritual mastery over their use; and, beyond all the power that\nscience gives, we need that inward power which comes from spiritual\nfellowships alone.  Religion is indispensable.  To build human life\nupon another basis is to erect civilization upon sand, where the rain\ndescends and the floods come and the winds blow and beat upon the house\nand it falls and great is the fall thereof.\n\n\n\n[1] Andrew D. White: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology\nin Christendom, Vol. II, p. 16.\n\n[2] Quoted in the Hibbert Journal, Vol. III, January 1905, p. 296.\n\n[3] Psalm 19:1.\n\n[4] Ernst Haeckel: The Wonders of Life, p. 413.\n\n[5] Arthur Schopenhauer: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Zweiter\nBand, Kapital 46, Von der Nichtigkeit und dem Leiden des Lebens, p. 669.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE III\n\nTHE GOSPEL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS\n\nI\n\nOur last lecture started with the proposition that the dominant\ninfluence in the intellectual and practical activity of the modern age\nis man's scientific mastery over life.  This present lecture considers\none of the consequences of this primary fact: namely, the humanitarian\ndesire to take advantage of this scientific control of life so to\nchange social conditions that mankind may be relieved from crushing\nhandicaps which now oppress it.  For the growth of scientific knowledge\nand control has been coincident with a growth of humanitarian\nsentiment.  This movement for human relief and social reform, in the\nmidst of which we live, is one of the chief influences of our time.  It\nhas claimed the allegiance of many of the noblest folk among us.  Its\nidealism, its call to sacrifice, the concreteness of the tasks which it\nundertakes and of the gains which it achieves, have attracted alike the\nfine spirits and the practical abilities of our generation.  What\nattitude shall the Christian Church take toward this challenging\nendeavour to save society?  How shall she regard this passionate belief\nin the possibility of social betterment and this enthusiastic\ndetermination to achieve it?  The question is one of crucial importance\nand the Church is far from united on its answer.  Some Christians claim\nthe whole movement as the child of the Church, born of her spirit and\nexpressing her central purpose; others disclaim the whole movement as\nevil and teach that the world must grow increasingly worse until some\ndivine cataclysm shall bring its hopeless corruption to an end; others\ntreat the movement as useful but of minor import, while they try to\nsave men by belief in dogmatic creeds or by carefully engineered\nemotional experiences.  Meanwhile, no words can exaggerate the\nfidelity, the vigour, the hopefulness, and the elevated spirit with\nwhich many of our best young men and women throw themselves into this\ncampaign for better conditions of living.  Surely, the intelligent\nportion of the Church would better think as clearly as possible about a\nmatter of such crucial import.\n\nAt first sight, the devotee of social Christianity is inclined\nimpatiently to brush aside as mere ignorant bigotry on the Church's\npart all cautious suspicion of the social movement.  But there is one\nreal difficulty which the thoughtful Christian must perceive when he\ncompares the characteristic approach to the human problem made by the\nsocial campaign, on the one side, and by religion, on the other.  Much\nof the modern social movement seems to proceed upon the supposition\nthat we can save mankind by the manipulation of outward circumstance.\nThere are societies to change everything that can be changed and,\nbecause the most obvious and easy subjects of transformation are the\nexternal arrangements of human life, men set themselves first and\nchiefly to change those.  We are always trying to improve the play by\nshifting the scenery.  But no person of insight ever believed that the\nmanipulation of circumstance alone can solve man's problems.  Said\nEmerson, \"No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.\"\nSaid Herbert Spencer, \"No philosopher's stone of a constitution can\nproduce golden conduct from leaden instincts.\"  Said James Anthony\nFroude, \"Human improvement is from within outwards.\"  Said Carlyle,\n\"Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy\nCondition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of.\"\nSaid Mrs. Browning:\n\n           \"It takes a soul,\n  To move a body: it takes a high-souled man\n  To move the masses even to a cleaner stye:\n  .....    Ah, your Fouriers failed,\n  Because not poets enough to understand\n  That life develops from within.\"\n\n\nNow, religion's characteristic approach to the human problem is\nrepresented by this conviction that \"life develops from within.\"  So\nfar from expecting to save mankind by the manipulation of outward\ncircumstance, it habitually has treated outward circumstance as of\ninferior moment in comparison with the inner attitudes and resources of\nthe spirit.  Economic affluence, for example, has not seemed to\nChristianity in any of its historic forms indispensable to man's\nwell-being; rather, economic affluence has been regarded as a danger to\nbe escaped or else to be resolutely handled as one would handle\nfire--useful if well managed but desperately perilous if uncontrolled.\nNor can it be said that Christianity has consistently maintained this\nattitude without having in actual experience much ground for holding\nit.  The possession of economic comfort has never yet guaranteed a\ndecent life, much less a spiritually satisfactory one.  The morals of\nFifth Avenue are not such that it can look down on Third Avenue, nor is\nit possible anywhere to discern gradation of character on the basis of\nrelative economic standing.  It is undoubtedly true that folks and\nfamilies often have their moral stamina weakened and their\npersonalities debauched by sinking into discouraging poverty, but it is\nan open question whether more folks and families have not lost their\nsouls by rising into wealth.  Still, after all these centuries, the\n\"rich fool,\" with his overflowing barns and his soul that sought to\nfeed itself on corn, is a familiar figure; still it is as easy for a\ncamel to go through a needle's eye as for a rich man to enter the\nKingdom of Heaven.  When, therefore, the Christian, approaching the\nhuman problem, not from without in, but from within out, runs upon this\nmodern social movement endeavouring to save mankind by the manipulation\nof outward circumstance, his cautious and qualified consent may be\nneither so ignorant nor so unreasonable as it at first appears.\n\nAs an example of manipulated circumstance in which we are asked to\ntrust, consider the new international arrangements upon which the world\nleans so heavily for its hopes of peace.  Surely, he would be a poor\nChristian who did not rejoice in every reasonable expectation which new\nforms of co-operative organization can fulfil.  But he would be a\nthoughtless Christian, too, if he did not see that all good forms of\ninternational organization are trellises to give the vines of human\nrelationship a fairer chance to grow; but if the vines themselves\nmaintain their old acid quality, bringing out of their own inward\nnature from roots of bitterness grapes that set the people's teeth on\nedge, then no external trellises will solve the problem.  It is this\nChristian approach to life, from within out, which causes the common\nmisunderstanding between the social movement and the Church.  The first\nthinks mainly of the importance of the trellis; the second thinks\nchiefly about the quality of the vine.\n\nThe more deep and transforming a man's own religious experience has\nbeen, the more he will insist upon the importance of this inward\napproach.  Here is a man who has had a profound evangelical experience.\nHe has gone down into the valley of the shadow with a deep sense of\nspiritual need; he has found in Christ a Saviour who has lifted him up\ninto spiritual freedom and victory; he has gone out to live with a\nsense of unpayable indebtedness to him.  He has had, in a word, a\ntypical religious experience at its best with three elements at the\nheart of it: a great need, a great salvation, a great gratitude.  When\nsuch a man considers the modern social movement, however beautiful its\nspirit or admirable its concrete gains, it seems to him superficial if\nit presents itself as a panacea.  It does not go deep enough to reach\nthe soul's real problems.  The continual misunderstanding between the\nChurch and the social movement has, then, this explanation: the\ncharacteristic approach of the Christian Gospel to the human problem is\nfrom within out; the characteristic approach of much of the modern\nsocial movement is from without in.\n\n\nII\n\nIf, therefore, the Christian Gospel is going to be true to itself, it\nmust carefully preserve amid the pressure of our modern social\nenthusiasms certain fundamental emphases which are characteristic of\nits genius.  It must stress the possibility and the necessity of the\ninward transformation of the lives of men.  We know now that a thorny\ncactus does not have to stay a thorny cactus; Burbank can change it.\nWe know that a crab-apple tree does not have to stay a crab-apple tree;\nit can be grafted and become an astrakhan.  We know that a malarial\nswamp does not have to stay a malarial swamp; it can be drained and\nbecome a health resort.  We know that a desert does not have to stay a\ndesert; it can be irrigated and become a garden.  But while all these\npossibilities of transformation are opening up in the world outside of\nus, the most important in the series concerns the world within us.  The\nprimary question is whether human nature is thus transformable, so that\nmen can be turned about, hating what formerly they loved and loving\nwhat once they hated.  Said Tolstoy, whose early life had been\nconfessedly vile: \"Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the\ndoctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation.\nWhat I had once wished for I wished for no longer, and I began to\ndesire what I had never desired before.  What had once appeared to me\nright now became wrong, and the wrong of the past I beheld as right.\"\n[1]\n\nSo indispensable to the welfare of the world is this experience, that\nwe Christians need to break loose from our too narrow conceptions of it\nand to set it in a large horizon.  We have been too often tempted to\nmake of conversion a routine emotional experience.  Even Jonathan\nEdwards was worried about himself in this regard.  He wrote once in his\ndiary: \"The chief thing that now makes me in any measure question my\ngood estate is my not having experienced conversion in those particular\nsteps wherein the people of New England, and anciently the dissenters\nof old England, used to experience it.\"  Poor Jonathan!  How many have\nbeen so distraught!  But the supreme folly of any man's spiritual life\nis to try thus to run himself into the mold of any other man's\nexperience.  There is no regular routine in spiritual transformation.\nSome men come in on a high tide of feeling, like Billy Bray, the\ndrunken miner, who, released from his debasing slavery and reborn into\na vigorous life, cried, \"If they were to put me into a barrel I would\nshout glory out through the bunghole!  Praise the Lord!\"  Some men come\nin like Bushnell, the New England scholar and preacher, who, when he\nwas an unbelieving tutor at Yale, fell on his knees in the quiet of his\nstudy and said, \"O God, I believe there is an eternal difference\nbetween right and wrong and I hereby give myself up to do the right and\nto refrain from the wrong.\"  Some men break up into the new life\nsuddenly like the Oxford graduate who, having lived a dissolute life\nuntil six years after his graduation from the university in 1880,\npicked up in his room one day Drummond's \"Natural Law in the Spiritual\nWorld,\" and, lo! the light broke suddenly--\"I rejoiced there and then\nin a conversion so astounding that the whole village heard of it in\nless than twenty-four hours.\"  Some come slowly, like old John\nLivingstone, who said, \"I do not remember any particular time of\nconversion, or that I was much cast down or lift up.\"  Spiritual\ntransformation is infinitely various because it is so infinitely vital;\nbut behind all the special forms of experience stands the colossal fact\nthat men can be transformed by the Spirit of God.\n\nThat this experience of inward enlightenment and transformation should\never be neglected or minimized or forgotten or crowded out is the more\nstrange because one keeps running on it outside religion as well as\nwithin.  John Keats, when eighteen years old, was handed one day a copy\nof Spenser's poems.  He never had known before what his life was meant\nto be.  He found out that day.  Like a voice from heaven his call came\nin the stately measures of Spenser's glorious verse.  He knew that he\nwas meant to be a poet.  Upon this master fact that men can be inwardly\ntransformed Christ laid his hand and put it at the very center of his\ngospel.  All through the New Testament there is a throb of joy which,\ntraced back, brings one to the assurance that no man need stay the way\nhe is.  Among the gladdest, solemnest words in the records of our race\nare such passages in the New Testament as this: Fornicators,\nadulterers, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revelers, extortioners, such\nwere some of you; but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye\nwere justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit\nof our God.  One cannot find in the New Testament anything stiff and\nstilted about this experience.  Paul's change came suddenly; Peter's\ncame slowly.  They did not even have, as we have come to have, a\nsettled word to describe the experience.  Ask James what it is and,\npractical-minded man that he is, he calls it _conversion_--being turned\naround.  Ask Peter what it is and, as he looks back upon his old\nbenighted condition, he cries that it is like _coming out of the\ndarkness into a marvelous light_.  Ask Paul what it is and, with his\nlove of superlative figures, he cries that it is like _being dead and\nbeing raised again with a great resurrection_.  Ask John what it is\nand, with his mystical spirit, he says that it is _being born again_.\nSee the variety that comes from vitality--no stiff methods, no stiff\nroutine of experience, but throbbing through the whole book the good\nnews of an illuminating, liberating, transforming experience that can\nmake men new!\n\nIt is the more strange that this central element in the Christian\nGospel should be neglected in the interests of social reformation\nbecause it is so indispensable to social reformation.  Wherever a new\nsocial hope allures the efforts of forward-looking men, there is one\nargument against the hope which always rises.  You cannot do that--men\nsay--human nature is against it; human nature has always acted another\nway; you cannot change human nature; your hope is folly.  As one\nlistens to such skepticism he sees that men mean by human nature a\nstatic, unalterable thing, huge, inert, changeless, a dull mass that\nresists all transformation.  The very man who says that may be an\nengineer.  He may be speaking in the next breath with high enthusiasm\nabout a desert in Arizona where they are bringing down the water from\nthe hills and where in a few years there will be no desert, but orange\ngroves stretching as far as the eye can reach, and eucalyptus trees\nmaking long avenues of shade, and roses running wild, as plenteous as\ngoldenrod in a New England field.  But while about physical nature he\nis as hopeful of possible change as a prophet, for human nature he\nthinks nothing can be done.\n\nFrom the Christian point of view this idea of human nature is utterly\nfalse.  So far from being stiff and set, human nature is the most\nplastic, the most changeable thing with which we deal.  It can be\nbrutalized beneath the brutes; it can rise into companionship with\nangels.  Our primitive forefathers, as our fairy tales still reveal,\nbelieved that men and women could be changed into anything--into trees,\nrocks, wolves, bears, kings and fairy sprites.  One of the most\nprominent professors of sociology in America recently said that these\nstories are a poetic portraiture of something which eternally is true.\nMen can be transformed.  That is a basic fact, and it is one of the\ncentral emphases of the Christian Gospel.  Of all days in which that\nemphasis should be remembered, the chiefest is the day when men are\nthinking about social reformation.\n\n\nIII\n\nIt is only a clear recognition of the crucial importance of man's\ninward transformation which can prepare us for a proper appreciation of\nthe social movement's meaning.  For one point of contact between\nreligion's approach to the human problem from within out and\nreformation's approach from without in lies here: to change social\nenvironments which oppress and dwarf and defile the lives of men is one\nway of giving the transforming Spirit a fair chance to reach and redeem\nthem.  All too slowly does the truth lay hold upon the Church that our\nvery personalities themselves are social products, that we are born out\nof society and live in it and are molded by it, that without society we\nshould not be human at all, and that the influences which play upon our\nlives, whether redeeming or degrading, are socially mediated.  A man\nwho says that he believes in the ineffable value of human personalities\nand who professes to desire their transformation and yet who has no\ndesire to give them better homes, better cities, better family\nrelationships, better health, better economic resources, better\nrecreations, better books and better schools, is either an ignoramus\nwho does not see what these things mean in the growth of souls, or else\nan unconscious hypocrite who does not really care so much about the\nsouls of men as he says he does.\n\nAn illuminating illustration of this fact is to be seen in the\nexpanding ideals of missionary work.  When the missionaries first went\nto the ends of the earth they went to save souls one by one.  They went\nout generally with a distinctly, often narrowly, individualistic\nmotive.  They were trying to gather into the ark a few redeemed spirits\nout of the wreck of a perishing world; they were not thinking primarily\nof building a kingdom of social righteousness in the earth.  Consider,\nthen, the fascinating story of the way the missionaries, whatever may\nhave been the motives with which they started, have become social\nreformers.  If the missionaries were to take the Gospel to the people,\nthey had to get to the people.  So they became the explorers of the\nworld.  It was the missionaries who opened up Asia and Africa.  Was\nthere ever a more stirring story of adventure than is given us in the\nlife of David Livingstone?  Then when the missionaries had reached the\npeople to give them the Gospel, they had to give them the Bible.  So\nthey became the philologists and translators of the world.  They built\nthe lexicons and grammars.  They translated the Bible into more than a\nhundred languages on the continent of Africa alone.  Carey and his\nfollowers did the same for over a score of languages in India.  The\nBible to-day is available in over six hundred living languages.\nEverywhere this prodigious literary labour has been breaking down the\nbarriers of speech and thought between the peoples.  If ever we do get\na decent internationalism, how much of it will rest back upon this\npioneer spade work of the missionaries, digging through the barricades\nof language that separate the minds of men!  When, then, the\nmissionaries had books to give the people, the people had to learn to\nread.  So the missionaries became educators, and wherever you find the\nchurch you find the school.  But what is the use of educating people\nwho do not understand how to be sanitary, who live in filth and disease\nand die needlessly, and how can you take away old superstitions and not\nput new science in their places, or deprive the people of witch doctors\nwithout offering them substitutes?  So the missionaries became\nphysicians, and one of the most beneficent enterprises that history\nrecords is medical missions.  What is the use, however, of helping\npeople to get well when their economic condition is such, their\nstandards of life so low, that they continue to fall sick again in\nspite of you?  So the missionaries are becoming industrial reformers,\nagriculturalists, chemists, physicists, engineers, rebuilding wherever\nthey can the economic life and comfort of their people.  The missionary\ncause itself has been compelled, whether it would or not, to grow\nsocially-minded.  As Dan Crawford says about the work in Africa: \"Here,\nthen, is Africa's challenge to its Missionaries.  Will they allow a\nwhole continent to live like beasts in such hovels, millions of negroes\ncribbed, cabined, and confined in dens of disease?  No doubt it is our\ndiurnal duty to preach that the soul of all improvement is the\nimprovement of the soul.  But God's equilateral triangle of body, soul,\nand spirit must never be ignored.  Is not the body wholly _ensouled_,\nand is not the soul wholly _embodied_? . . .  In other words, in Africa\nthe only true fulfilling of your heavenly calling is the doing of\nearthly things in a heavenly manner.\" [2]\n\nIndeed, if any one is tempted to espouse a narrowly individualistic\ngospel of regeneration, let him go to the Far East and take note of\nBuddhism.  Buddhism in wide areas of its life is doing precisely what\nthe individualists recommend.  It is a religion of personal comfort and\nredemption.  It is not mastered by a vigorous hope of social\nreformation.  In many ways it is extraordinarily like medieval\nChristianity.  Consider this definition of his religion that was given\nby one Buddhist teacher: \"Religion,\" he said, \"is a device to bring\npeace of mind in the midst of conditions as they are.\"  Conditions as\nthey are--settle down in them; be comfortable about them; do not try to\nchange them; let no prayer for the Kingdom of God on earth disturb\nthem; and there seek for yourselves \"peace of mind in the midst of\nconditions as they are.\"  And the Buddhist teacher added, \"My religion\nis pure religion.\"  But is there any such thing as really caring about\nthe souls of men and not caring about social habits, moral conditions,\npopular recreations, economic handicaps that in every way affect them?\nOf all deplorable and degenerate conceptions of religion can anything\nbe worse than to think of it as a \"device to bring peace of mind in the\nmidst of conditions as they are?\"  Yet one finds plenty of Church\nmembers in America whose idea of the \"simple Gospel\" comes perilously\nnear that Buddhist's idea of \"pure religion.\"\n\nThe utter futility of endeavouring to care about the inward\ntransformation of men's lives while not caring about their social\nenvironment is evident when one thinks of our international\nrelationships and their recurrent issue in war.  War surely cannot be\nthought of any longer as a school for virtue.  We used to think it was.\nWe half believed the German war party when they told us about the\ndisciplinary value of their gigantic establishment, and when Lord\nRoberts assured us that war was tonic for the souls of peoples we were\ninclined to think that he was right.  When, in answer to our nation's\ncall, our men went out to fight and all our people were bound up in a\nfellowship of devotion to a common cause, so stimulated were we that we\nalmost were convinced that out of such an experience there might come a\nrenaissance of spiritual quality and life.  Is there anybody who can\nblind his eyes to the facts now?  Every competent witness in Europe and\nAmerica has had to say that we are on a far lower moral level than we\nwere before the war.  Crimes of sex, crimes of violence, have been\nunprecedented.  Large areas of Europe are to-day in a chaos so complete\nthat not one man in a thousand in America even dimly imagines it, with\na break-down of all the normal, sustaining relationships and privileges\nof civilized life, and with an accompanying collapse of character\nunprecedented in Christendom since the days of the Black Plague.  If we\nare wise we will never again go down into hell expecting to come up\nwith spirits redeemed.\n\nTo be sure, there are many individuals of such moral stamina that they\nhave come out of this experience personally the better, not the worse.\nThere are people who would build into the fiber of their character any\nexperience that earth could offer them.  But if we are thinking of the\nmoral stability and progress of mankind, surely there is nothing in the\nprocesses of war, as we have seen them, or the results of war, as they\nnow lie about us, that would lead us to trust to them for help.  War\ntakes a splendid youth willing to serve the will of God in his\ngeneration before he falls on sleep and teaches him the skilful trick\nof twisting a bayonet into the abdomen of an enemy.  War takes a\nloyal-spirited man who is not afraid of anything under heaven and\nteaches him to drop bombs on undefended towns, to kill perchance the\nbaby suckled at her mother's breast.  The father of one of our young\nmen, back from France, finding that his son, like many others, would\nnot talk, rebuked him for his silence.  \"Just one thing I will tell\nyou,\" the son answered.  \"One night I was on patrol in No Man's Land,\nand suddenly I came face to face with a German about my own age.  It\nwas a question of his life or mine.  We fought like wild beasts.  When\nI came back that night I was covered from head to foot with the blood\nand brains of that German.  We had nothing personally against each\nother.  He did not want to kill me any more than I wanted to kill him.\nThat is war.  I did my duty in it, but for God's sake do not ask me to\ntalk about it!  I want to forget it.\"  That _is_ war, and no more\ndamning influence can be thrown around the characters of people in\ngeneral or around the victims of military discipline and experience in\nparticular than that supplied by war.  How then could inconsistency be\nmade more extreme than by saying that Christianity is concerned about\nthe souls of men but is not concerned about international good-will and\nco-operation?  After all, the approaches to the human problem from\nwithout in and from within out are not antithetical, but supplementary.\nThis tunnel must be dug from both ends and until the Church thoroughly\ngrasps that fact she will lead an incomplete and ineffectual life.\n\n\nIV\n\nThe purposes of Christianity involve social reform, not only, as we\nhave said, because we must accomplish environmental change if we are to\nachieve widespread individual transformation, but also because we must\nreorganize social life and the ideas that underlie it if we are to\nmaintain and get adequately expressed the individual's Christian spirit\nwhen once he has been transformed.  Granted a man with an inwardly\nremotived life, sincerely desirous of living Christianly, see what a\nsituation faces him in the present organization of our economic world!\nSelfishness consists in facing any human relationship with the main\nintent of getting from it for oneself all the pleasure and profit that\none can.  There are folk who use their families so.  They live like\nparasites on the beautiful institution of family life, getting as much\nas possible for as little as possible.  There are folk who use the\nnation so.  To them their country is a gigantic grab-bag from which\ntheir greedy hands may snatch civic security and commercial gain.  For\nsuch we have hard and bitter names.  There is, however, one\nrelationship--business--where we take for granted this very attitude\nwhich everywhere else we heartily condemn.  Multitudes of folk go up to\nthat central human relationship with the frank and unabashed confession\nthat their primary motive is to make out of it all that they can for\nthemselves.  They never have organized their motives around the idea\nthat the major meaning of business is public service.\n\nThe fact is, however, that all around us forms of business already have\ndeveloped where we count it shame for a man to be chiefly motived by a\ndesire for private gain.  If you thought that the preacher were in love\nwith his purse more than with his Gospel, you would not come again to\nhear him, and you would be right; if you thought that the teacher of\nyour children cared for payday first and for teaching second, you would\nfind another teacher for them tomorrow, and you ought to; if you\nthought that your physician cared more for his fees than he did for his\npatients, you would discharge him to-night and seek for a man more\nworthy of his high profession; if you had reason to suppose that the\njudges of the Supreme Court in Washington cared more for their salary\nthan they did for justice, you could not easily measure your\nindignation and your shame.  In the development of human life few\nthings are nobler than the growth of the professional spirit, where in\nwide areas of enterprise, not private gain, but fine workmanship and\npublic service have become the major motives.  If one says that a sharp\nline of distinction is to be drawn between what we call professions and\nwhat we call business, he does not know history.  Nursing, as a gainful\ncalling, a hundred years ago was a mercenary affair into which\nundesirable people went for what they could get out of it.  If nursing\nto-day is a great profession, where pride of workmanship and love of\nservice increasingly are in control, it is because Florence\nNightingale, and a noble company after her, have insisted that nursing\nessentially is service and that all nurses ought to organize their\nmotives around that idea.\n\nWhat is the essential difference between professions and business?  Why\nshould the building of a schoolhouse be a carnival of private profit\nfor labourers and contractors alike, when the teaching in it is\nexpected to be full of the love of fine workmanship and the joy of\nusefulness?  Why, when a war is on, must the making of munitions here\nbe a wild debauch of private profits, but the firing of them \"over\nthere\" be a matter of self-forgetful sacrifice?  Why, in selling a food\nwhich is essential to health, should the head of a sugar corporation\nsay with impunity, \"I think it is fair to get out of the consumers all\nyou can, consistent with the business proposition,\" when the physician\nis expected to care for the undernourished with a devoted professional\nspirit utterly different from the sugar magnate's words?  There is no\nreal answer to that \"why.\"  The fact is that for multitudes of people\nbusiness is still in the unredeemed state in which nursing and teaching\nand doctoring were at the beginning, and nothing can save us from the\npersonal and social consequence of this unhappy situation except the\nclear vision of the basic meaning of business in terms of service, and\nthe courageous reorganization of personal motive and economic\ninstitutions around that idea.\n\nIf, then, Christianity is sincerely interested in the quality of human\nspirits, in the motives and ideals which dominate personality, she must\nbe interested in the economic and industrial problems of our day.  To\nbe sure, many ministers make fools of themselves when they pass\njudgment on questions which they do not understand.  It is true that a\nchurch is much more peaceable and undisturbing when it tries\nexperiments upon religious emotions with colored lights than when it\nmakes reports upon the steel trust.  Many are tempted, therefore, to\ngive in to irritation over misdirected ministerial energy or to a\ndesire for emotional comfort rather than an aroused conscience.  One\nhas only to listen where respectable folk most congregate to hear the\ncry: let the Church keep her hands off!\n\nLet me talk for a moment directly to that group.  If you mean, by your\ndistaste for the Church's interest in a fairer economic life, that most\nministers are unfitted by temperament and training to talk wisely on\neconomic policies and programs, you are right.  Do you suppose that we\nministers do not know how we must appear to you when we try to discuss\nthe details of business?  While, however, you are free to say anything\nyou wish about the ineptitude of ministers in economic affairs (and we,\nfrom our inside information, will probably agree with you), yet as we\nthus put ourselves in your places and try to see the situation through\nyour eyes, do you also put yourselves in our places and try to see it\nthrough our eyes!\n\nI speak, I am sure, in the name of thousands of Christian ministers in\nthis country endeavouring to do their duty in this trying time.  We did\nnot go into the ministry of Jesus Christ either for money or for fun.\nIf we had wanted either one primarily, we would have done something\nelse than preach.  We went in because we believed in Jesus Christ and\nwere assured that only he and his truth could medicine the sorry ills\nof this sick world.  And now, ministers of Christ, with such a motive,\nwe see continually some of the dearest things we work for, some of the\nfairest results that we achieve, going to pieces on the rocks of the\nbusiness world.\n\nYou wish us to preach against sin, but you forget that, as one of our\nleading sociologists has said, the master iniquities of our time are\nconnected with money-making.  You wish us to imbue your boys and girls\nwith ideal standards of life, but all too often we see them, having\nleft our schools and colleges, full of the knightly chivalry of youth,\ntorn in the world of business between the ideal of Christlikeness and\nthe selfish rivalry of commercial conflict.  We watch them growing\nsordid, disillusioned, mercenary, spoiled at last and bereft of their\nyouth's fine promise.  You wish us to preach human brotherhood in\nChrist, and then we see that the one chief enemy of brotherhood between\nmen and nations is economic strife, the root of class consciousness and\nwar.  You send some of us as your representatives to the ends of the\nearth to proclaim the Saviour, and then these missionaries send back\nword that the non-Christian world knows all too well how far from\ndominant in our business life our Christian ideals are and that the\nnon-Christian world delays accepting our Christ until we have better\nproved that his principles will work.  Everywhere that the Christian\nminister turns, he finds his dearest ideals and hopes entangled in the\neconomic life.  Do you ask us then under these conditions to keep our\nhands off?  In God's name, you ask too much!\n\nIn the sixteenth century the great conflict in the world's life\ncentered in the Church.  The Reformation was on.  All the vital\nquestions of the day had there their spring.  In the eighteenth century\nthe great conflict of the world's life lay in politics.  The American\nand French revolutions were afoot.  Democracy had struck its tents and\nwas on the march.  All the vital questions of that day had their origin\nthere.  In the twentieth century the great conflict in the world's life\nis centered in economics.  The most vital questions with which we deal\nare entangled with economic motives and institutions.  As in the\nsixteenth and eighteenth centuries great changes were inevitable, so\nnow the economic world cannot possibly remain static.  The question is\nnot whether changes will occur, but how they will occur, under whose\naegis and superintendence, by whose guidance and direction, and how\nmuch better the world will be when they are here.  Among all the\ninterests that are vitally concerned with the nature of these changes\nnone has more at stake than the Christian Church with her\nresponsibility for the cure of souls.\n\n\nV\n\nStill another point of contact exists between the Christian purpose and\nsocial reform: the inevitable demand of religious ideals for social\napplication.  The ideal of human equality, for example, came into our\ncivilization from two main sources--the Stoic philosophy and the\nChristian religion--and in both cases it was first of all a spiritual\ninsight, not a social program.  The Stoics and the early Christians\nboth believed it as a sentiment, but they had no idea of changing the\nworld to conform with it.  Paul repeatedly insisted upon the equality\nof all men before God.  In his early ministry he wrote it to the\nGalatians: \"There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither\nbond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one man\nin Christ Jesus.\"  Later he wrote it to the Corinthians: \"For in one\nSpirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks,\nwhether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit.\"  In\nhis last imprisonment he wrote it to the Colossians: \"There cannot be\nGreek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian,\nbondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all.\"  Yet it never would\nhave occurred to Paul to disturb the social custom of slavery or to\nquestion the divine institution of imperial government.\n\nNevertheless, while this idea of human equality did not at first\ninvolve a social program, it meant something real.  If we are to\nunderstand what the New Testament means by the equality of men before\nGod, we must look at men from the New Testament point of view.  Those\nof us who have been up in an aeroplane know that the higher we fly the\nless difference we see in the elevation of things upon the earth.  This\nman's house is plainly higher than that man's when we are on the ground\nbut, two thousand feet up, small difference can we observe.  Now, the\nNew Testament flies high.  It frankly looks from a great altitude at\nthe distinctions that seem so important on the earth.  We say that\nracial differences are very important--a great gulf between Jew and\nGentile.  We insist that cultural traditions make an immense\ndistinction--that to be a Scythian or to be barbarian is widely\nseparated from being Greek.  We are sure that the economic distinction\nbetween bondman and freeman is enormous.  But all the while these\nsuperiorities and inferiorities, which we magnify, seem from Paul's\nvantage point not nearly so important or so real as we think they are.\nHe is sure about this central truth, that God asks no questions about\ncaste or colour or race or wealth or social station.  All men stand\nalike in his presence and in the Christian fellowship must be regarded\nfrom his point of view.\n\nIt was utterly impossible, however, to keep this spiritual insight from\ngetting ultimately into a social program.  It appealed to motives too\ndeep and powerful to make possible its segregation as a religious\nsentiment.  For however impractical an ideal this thought of human\nequality may seem in general, and however hard it may be to grant to\nothers in particular, it is never hard for us to claim for ourselves.\nIf ever we are condescended to, does any assertion rise more quickly in\nour thought than the old cry of our boyhood, \"I am as good as you are\"?\nThe lad in school in ragged clothes, who sees himself outclassed by\nricher boys, feels it hotly rising in his boyish heart: \"I am as good\nas you are.\"  The poor man who, with an anxiety he cannot subdue and\nyet dares not disclose, is desperately trying to make both ends meet,\nfeels it as he sees more fortunate men in luxury: \"I am as good as you\nare.\"  The negro who has tried himself out with his white brethren, who\nwears, it may be, an honour key from a great university, who is a\nscholar and a gentleman, and yet who is continually denied the most\ncommon courtesies of human intercourse--he says in his heart, although\nthe words may not pass his lips, \"I am as good as you are.\"  Now, the\nNew Testament took that old cry of the human heart for equality and\nturned it upside down.  It became no longer for the Christian a bitter\ndemand for one's rights, but a glad acknowledgment of one's duty.  It\ndid not clamour, \"I am as good as you are\"; it said, \"You are as good\nas I am.\"  The early Christians at their best went out into the world\nwith that cry upon their lips.  The Jewish Christians said it to the\nGentiles and the Gentiles to the Jews; the Scythians and barbarians\nsaid it to the Greeks and the Greeks said it in return; the bond said\nit to the free and the free said it to the bond.  The New Testament\nChurch in this regard was one of the most extraordinary upheavals in\nhistory, and to-day the best hopes of the world depend upon that spirit\nwhich still says to all men over all the differences of race and colour\nand station, \"You are as good as I am.\"\n\nTo be sure, before this equalitarian ideal could be embodied in a\nsocial program it had to await the coming of the modern age with its\nopen doors, its freer movements of thought and life, its belief in\nprogress, its machinery of change.  But even in the stagnation of the\nintervening centuries the old Stoic-Christian ideal never was utterly\nforgotten.  Lactantius, a Christian writer of the fourth century, said\nthat God, who creates and inspires men, \"willed that all should be\nequal.\" [3]  Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, said\nthat \"By nature we are all equal.\" [4]  For ages this spiritual insight\nremained dissociated from any social program, but now the inevitable\nconnection has been made.  Old caste systems and chattel slavery have\ngone down before this ideal.  Aristotle argued that slavery ethically\nwas right because men were essentially and unchangeably masters or\nslaves by nature.  Somehow that would not sound plausible to us, even\nthough the greatest mind of all antiquity did say it.  Whatever may be\nthe differences between men and races, they are not sufficient to\njustify the ownership of one man by another.  The ideal of equality has\nwrecked old aristocracies that seemed to have firm hold on permanence.\nIf one would feel again the thrill which men felt when first the old\ndistinctions lost their power, one should read once more the songs of\nRobert Burns.  They often seem commonplaces to us now, but they were\nnot commonplaces then:\n\n  \"For a' that and a' that,\n  Their dignities, and a' that;\n  The pith o' sense and pride o' worth\n  Are higher rank than a' that!\"\n\nThis ideal has made equality before the law one of the maxims of our\ncivilized governments, failure in which wakens our apprehension and our\nfear; it has made equal suffrage a fact, although practical people only\nyesterday laughed at it as a dream; it has made equality in opportunity\nfor an education the underlying postulate of our public school systems,\nalthough in New York State seventy-five years ago the debate was still\nacute as to whether such a dream ever could come true; it is to-day\nlifting races, long accounted inferior, to an eminence where\nincreasingly their equality is acknowledged.  One with difficulty\nrestrains his scorn for the intellectual impotence of so-called wise\nmen who think all idealists mere dreamers.  Who is the dreamer--the\ndespiser or the upholder of an ideal whose upheavals already have burst\nthrough old caste systems, upset old slave systems, wrecked old\naristocracies, pushed obscure and forgotten masses of mankind up to\nrough equality in court and election booth and school, and now are\nrocking the foundations of old racial and international and economic\nideas?  The practical applications of this ideal, as, for example, to\nthe coloured problem in America, are so full of difficulty that no one\nneed be ashamed to confess that he does not see in detail how the\nprinciple can be made to work.  Nevertheless, so deep in the essential\nnature of things is the fact of mankind's fundamental unity, that only\nGod can foresee to what end the application of it yet may come.  At any\nrate, it is clear that the Christian ideal of human equality before God\ncan no longer be kept out of a social program.\n\n\nVI\n\nThere is, then, no standing-ground left for a narrowly individualistic\nChristianity.  To talk of redeeming personality while one is careless\nof the social environments which ruin personality; to talk of building\nChristlike character while one is complacent about an economic system\nthat is definitely organized about the idea of selfish profit; to\npraise Christian ideals while one is blind to the inevitable urgency\nwith which they insist on getting themselves expressed in social\nprograms--all this is vanity.  It is deplorable, therefore, that the\nChristian forces are tempted to draw apart, some running up the banner\nof personal regeneration and some rallying around the flag of social\nreformation.  The division is utterly needless.  Doubtless our own\nindividual ways of coming into the Christian life influence us deeply\nhere.  Some of us came into the Christian experience from a sense of\nindividual need alone.  We needed for ourselves sins forgiven, peace\nrestored, hope bestowed.  God meant to us first of all satisfaction for\nour deepest personal wants.\n\n  \"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,\n  Let me hide myself in Thee\"--\n\nsuch was our cry and such was our salvation.  If now we are socially\nminded, if we are concerned for economic and international\nrighteousness, that is an enlargement of our Christian outlook which\nhas grown out of and still is rooted back in our individual need and\nexperience of God.\n\nSome of us, however, did not come into fellowship with God by that\nroute at all.  We came in from the opposite direction.  The character\nin the Old Testament who seems to me the worthiest exhibition of\npersonal religion before Jesus is the prophet Jeremiah, but Jeremiah\nstarted his religious experience, not with a sense of individual need,\nbut with a burning, patriotic, social passion.  He was concerned for\nJudah.  Her iniquities, long accumulating, were bringing upon her an\nirretrievable disaster.  He laid his soul upon her soul and sought to\nbreathe into her the breath of life.  Then, when he saw the country he\nadored, the civilization he cherished, crashing into ruin, he was\nthrown back personally on God.  He started with social passion; he\nended with social passion plus personal religion.  Some of God's\ngreatest servants have come to know him so.\n\nHenry Ward Beecher once said that a text is a small gate into a large\nfield where one can wander about as he pleases, and that the trouble\nwith most ministers is that they spend all their time swinging on the\ngate.  That same figure applies to the entrance which many of us made\ninto the Christian experience.  Some of us came in by the gate of\npersonal religion, and we have been swinging on it ever since; and some\nof us came in by the gate of social passion for the regeneration of the\nworld, and we have been swinging on that gate ever since.  We both are\nwrong.  These are two gates into the same city, and it is the city of\nour God.  It would be one of the greatest blessings to the Christian\nchurch both at home and on the foreign field if we could come together\non this question where separation is so needless and so foolish.  If\nsome of us started with emphasis upon personal religion, we have no\nbusiness to stop until we understand the meaning of social\nChristianity.  If some of us started with emphasis upon the social\ncampaign, we have no business to rest until we learn the deep secrets\nof personal religion.  The redemption of personality is the great aim\nof the Christian Gospel, and, therefore, to inspire the inner lives of\nmen and to lift outward burdens which impede their spiritual growth are\nboth alike Christian service to bring in the Kingdom.\n\n\n\n[1] Leo M. Tolstoi: My Religion, Introduction, p. ix.\n\n[2] D. Crawford: Thinking Black, pp. 444-445.\n\n[3] L. C. F. Lactantius: The Divine Institutes, Book V, Chap. xv, xvi.\n\n[4] Gregory the Great: Moralium Libri, Pars quarta, Lib. XXI, Caput\nXV--\"Omnes namque homines natura aequales sumus.\"\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE IV\n\nPROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY\n\nI\n\nHitherto in the development of our thought, we have been considering the\nChristian Gospel as an entity set in the midst of a progressive world,\nand we have been studying the new Christian attitudes which this\ninfluential environment has been eliciting.  The Gospel has been in our\nthought like an individual who, finding himself in novel circumstances,\nreacts toward them in ways appropriate alike to them and to his own\ncharacter.  The influence of the idea of progress upon Christianity,\nhowever, is more penetrating than such a figure can adequately portray.\nFor no one can long ponder the significance of our generation's\nprogressive ways of thinking without running straight upon this question:\nis not Christianity itself progressive?  In the midst of a changing world\ndoes not it also change, so that, reacting upon the new ideas of\nprogress, it not only assimilates and uses them, but is itself an\nillustration of them?  Where everything else in man's life in its origin\nand growth is conceived, not in terms of static and final creation or\nrevelation, but in terms of development, can religion be left out?\nInstead of being a pond around which once for all a man can walk and take\nits measure, a final and completed whole, is not Christianity a river\nwhich, maintaining still reliance upon the historic springs from which it\nflows, gathers in new tributaries on its course and is itself a changing,\ngrowing and progressive movement?  The question is inevitable in any\nstudy of the relationship between the Gospel and progress, and its\nimplications are so far-reaching that it deserves our careful thought.\n\nCertainly it is clear that already modern ideas of progress have had so\npenetrating an influence upon Christianity as to affect, not its external\nreactions and methods only, nor yet its intellectual formulations alone,\nbut deeper still its very mood and inward temper.  Whether or not\nChristianity ought to be a changing movement in a changing world, it\ncertainly has been that and is so still, and the change can be seen going\non now in the very atmosphere in which it lives and moves and has its\nbeing.  For example, consider the attitude of resignation to the will of\nGod, which was characteristic of medieval Christianity.  As we saw in our\nfirst lecture, the medieval age did not think of human life upon this\nearth in terms of progress.  The hopes of men did not revolve about any\nUtopia to be expected here.  History was not even a glacier, moving\nslowly toward the sunny meadows.  It did not move at all; it was not\nintended to move; it was standing still.  To be sure, the thirteenth\ncentury was one of the greatest in the annals of the race.  In it the\nforemost European universities were founded, the sublimest Gothic\ncathedrals were built, some of the world's finest works of handicraft\nwere made; in it Cimabue and Giotto painted, Dante wrote, St. Thomas\nAquinas philosophized, and St. Francis of Assisi lived.  The motives,\nhowever, which originated and sustained this magnificent outburst of\ncreative energy were otherworldly--they were not concerned with\nanticipations of a happier lot for humankind upon this earth.  The\nmedieval age did not believe that man's estate upon the earth ever would\nbe fundamentally improved, and in consequence took the only reasonable\nattitude, resignation.  When famines came, God sent them; they were\npunishment for sin; his will be done!  When wars came, they were the\nflails of God to thresh his people; his will be done!  Men were resigned\nto slavery on the ground that God had made men to be masters and slaves.\nThey were resigned to feudalism and absolute monarchy on the ground that\nGod had made men to be rulers and ruled.  Whatever was had been ordained\nby the Divine or had been allowed by him in punishment for man's\niniquity.  To rebel was sin; to doubt was heresy; to submit was piety.\nThe Hebrew prophets had not been resigned, nor Jesus Christ, nor Paul.\nThe whole New Testament blazes with the hope of the kingdom of\nrighteousness coming upon earth.  But the medieval age was resigned.  Its\nreal expectations were post-mortem hopes.  So far as this earth was\nconcerned, men must submit.\n\nTo be sure, in those inner experiences where we must endure what we\ncannot help, resignation will always characterize a deeply religious\nlife.  All life is not under our control, to be freely mastered by our\nthought and toil.  There are areas where scientific knowledge gives us\npower to do amazing things, but all around them are other areas which our\nhands cannot regulate.  Orion and the Pleiades were not made for our\nfingers to swing, and our engineering does not change sunrise or sunset\nnor make the planets one whit less or more.  So, in the experiences of\nour inward life, around the realm which we can control is that other\nrealm where move the mysterious providences of God, beyond our power to\nunderstand and as uncontrollable by us as the tides are by the fish that\nlive in them.  Captain Scott found the South Pole, only to discover that\nanother man had been there first.  When, on his return from the\ndisappointing quest, the pitiless cold, the endless blizzards, the\nfailing food, had worn down the strength of the little company and in\ntheir tent amid the boundless desolation they waited for the end while\nthe life flames burned low, Captain Scott wrote: \"I do not regret this\njourney. . . .  We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out\nagainst us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the\nwill of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.\" [1]\nThat is resignation at its noblest.\n\nWhen, however, a modern Christian tries to do what the medieval\nChristians did--make this attitude of resignation cover the whole field\nof life, make it the dominant element in their religion, the proof of\ntheir trust and the test of their piety--he finds himself separated from\nthe most characteristic and stirring elements in his generation.  We are\nnot resigned anywhere else.  Everywhere else we count it our pride and\nglory to be unresigned.  We are not resigned even to a thorny cactus,\nwhose spiky exterior seems a convincing argument against its use for\nfood.  When we see a barren plain we do not say as our fathers did: God\nmade plains so in his inscrutable wisdom; his will be done!  We call for\nirrigation and, when the fructifying waters flow, we say, Thy will be\ndone! in the way we think God wishes to have it said.  We do not\npassively submit to God's will; we actively assert it.  The scientific\ncontrol of life at this point has deeply changed our religious mood.  We\nare not resigned to pestilences and already have plans drawn up to make\nthe yellow fever germ \"as extinct as the woolly rhinoceros.\"  We are not\neven resigned to the absence of wireless telephony when once we have\nimagined its presence, or to the inconvenience of slow methods of travel\nwhen once we have invented swift ones.  Not to illiteracy nor to child\nlabour nor to the white plague nor to commercialized vice nor to\nrecurrent unemployment are we, at our best, resigned.\n\nThis change of mood did not come easily.  So strongly did the medieval\nspirit of resignation, submissive in a static world, keep its grip upon\nthe Church that the Church often defiantly withstood the growth of this\nunresigned attitude of which we have been speaking and in which we glory.\nLightning rods were vehemently denounced by many ministers as an\nunwarranted interference with God's use of lightning.  When God hit a\nhouse he meant to hit it; his will be done!  This attitude, thus absurdly\napplied, had in more important realms a lamentable consequence.  The\ncampaign of Christian missions to foreign lands was bitterly fought in\nwide areas of the Christian Church because if God intended to damn the\nheathen he should be allowed to do so without interference from us; his\nwill be done!  As for slavery, the last defense which it had in this\ncountry was on religious grounds: that God had ordained it and that it\nwas blasphemous to oppose his ordination.  In a word, this spirit of\npassive resignation has been so deeply ingrained in religious thinking\nthat it has become oftentimes a serious reproach to Christian people.\n\nNow, however, the mood of modern Christianity is decisively in contrast\nwith that medieval spirit.  Moreover, we think that we are close to the\nMaster in this attitude, for whatever difference in outward form of\nexpectation there may be between his day and ours, when he said: \"Thy\nkingdom come.  Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth,\" that was not\npassive submission to God's will but an aggressive prayer for the victory\nof God and righteousness; it was not lying down under the will of God as\nsomething to be endured, but active loyalty to the will of God as\nsomething to be achieved.  To be resigned to evil conditions on this\nearth is in our eyes close to essential sin.  If any one who calls\nhimself a conservative Christian doubts his share in this anti-medieval\nspirit, let him test himself and see.  In 1836 the Rev. Leonard Wood, D.\nD., wrote down this interesting statement: \"I remember when I could\nreckon up among my acquaintances forty ministers, and none of them at a\ngreat distance, who were either drunkards or far addicted to drinking.  I\ncould mention an ordination which took place about twenty years ago at\nwhich I myself was ashamed and grieved to see two aged ministers\nliterally drunk, and a third indecently excited.\" [2]  Our forefathers\nwere resigned to that, but we are not.  The most conservative of us so\nhates the colossal abomination of the liquor traffic, that we do not\npropose to cease our fight until victory has been won.  We are\nbelligerently unresigned.  Or when militarism proves itself an\nintolerable curse, we do not count it a divine punishment and prepare\nourselves to make the best of its continuance.  We propose to end it.\nMilitarism, which in days of peace cries, Build me vast armaments, spend\nenough upon a single dreadnaught to remake the educational system of a\nwhole state; militarism, which in the days of war cries, Give me your\nbest youth to slay, leave the crippled and defective to propagate the\nrace, give me your best to slay; militarism, which lays its avaricious\nhand on every new invention to make gregarious death more swift and\nterrible, and when war is over makes the starved bodies of innumerable\nchildren walk in its train for pageantry,--we are not resigned to that.\nWe count it our Christian duty to be tirelessly unresigned.\n\nHere is a new mood in Christianity, born out of the scientific control of\nlife and the modern ideas of progress, and, however consonant it may be\nwith the spirit of the New Testament, it exhibits in the nature of its\nregulative conceptions and in its earthly hopes a transformation within\nChristianity which penetrates deep.  Progressive change is not simply an\nenvironment to which Christianity conforms; it is a fact which\nChristianity exhibits.\n\n\nII\n\nThis idea that Christianity is itself a progressive movement instead of a\nstatic finality involves some serious alterations in the historic\nconceptions of the faith, as soon as it is applied to theology.  Very\nearly in Christian history the presence of conflicting heresies led the\nchurch to define its faith in creeds and then to regard these as final\nformulations of Christian doctrine, incapable of amendment or addition.\nTertullian, about 204 A. D., spoke of the creedal standard of his day as\n\"a rule of faith changeless and incapable of reformation.\" [3]  From that\nday until our own, when a Roman Catholic Council has decreed that \"the\ndefinitions of the Roman Pontiff are unchangeable,\" [4] an unalterable\ncharacter has been ascribed to the dogmas of the Church of Rome.  Indeed,\nPius IX, in his Syllabus of Errors, specifically condemned the modern\nidea that \"Divine revelation is imperfect, and, therefore, subject to\ncontinual and indefinite progress, which corresponds with the progress of\nhuman reason.\" [5]  Nor did Protestantism, with all the reformation which\nit wrought, attack this central Catholic conception of a changeless\ncontent and formulation of faith.  Not what the Pope said, but what the\nBible said, was by Protestants unalterably to be received.  Change there\nmight be in the sense that unrealized potentialities involved in the\noriginal deposit might be brought to light--a kind of development which\nnot only Protestants but Catholics like Cardinal Newman have willingly\nallowed--but whatever had once been stated as the content of faith by the\nreceived authorities was by both Catholics and Protestants regarded as\nunalterably so.  In the one case, if the Pope had once defined a dogma,\nit was changeless; in the other, if the Bible had once formulated a\npre-scientific cosmology, or used demoniacal possession as an explanation\nof disease, or personified evil in a devil, all such mental categories\nwere changelessly to be received.  In its popular forms this conception\nof Christianity assumes extreme rigidity--Christianity is a static system\nfinally formulated, a deposit to be accepted in toto if at all, not to be\nadded to, not to be subtracted from, not to be changed, its i's all\ndotted and its t's all crossed.\n\nThe most crucial problem which we face in our religious thinking is\ncreated by the fact that Christianity thus statically conceived now goes\nout into a generation where no other aspect of life is conceived in\nstatic terms at all.  The earth itself on which we live, not by fiat\nsuddenly enacted, but by long and gradual processes, became habitable,\nand man upon it through uncounted ages grew out of an unknown past into\nhis present estate.  Everything within man's life has grown, is growing,\nand apparently will grow.  Music developed from crude forms of rhythmic\nnoise until now, by way of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner, our modern music,\nstill developing, has grown to forms of harmony at first undreamed.\nPainting developed from the rough outlines of the cavemen until now\npossibilities of expression in line and colour have been achieved whose\nfull expansion we cannot guess.  Architecture evolved from the crude huts\nof primitive man until now our cathedrals and our new business buildings\nalike mark an incalculable advance and prophesy an unimaginable future.\nOne may refuse to call all development real progress, may insist upon\ndegeneration as well as betterment through change, but, even so, the\nbasic fact remains that all the elements which go to make man's life come\ninto being, are what they are, and pass out of what they are into\nsomething different, through processes of continual growth.  Our business\nmethods change until the commercial wisdom of a few years ago may be the\nfolly of to-day; our moral ideals change until actions once respectable\nbecome reprobate, and the heroes of one generation would be the convicts\nof another; our science changes until ideas that men once were burned at\nthe stake for entertaining are now the commonplace axioms of every school\nboy's thought; our economics change until schools of thought shaped to\nold industrial conditions are as outmoded as a one-horse shay beside an\nautomobile; our philosophy changes like our science when Kant, for\nexample, starts a revolution in man's thinking, worthy, as he claimed, to\nbe called Copernican; our cultural habits change until marooned\ncommunities in the Kentucky mountains, \"our contemporary ancestors,\"\nhaving let the stream of human life flow around and past them, seem as\nstrange to us as a belated what-not in a modern parlour.  The perception\nof this fact of progressive change is one of the regnant influences in\nour modern life and, strangely enough, so far from disliking it, we glory\nin it; in our expectancy we count on change; with our control of life we\nseek to direct it.\n\nIndeed no more remarkable difference distinguishes the modern world from\nall that went before than its attitude toward change itself.  The\nmedieval world idealized changelessness.  Its very astronomy was the\napotheosis of the unalterable.  The earth, a globe full of mutation and\ndecay; around it eight transparent spheres carrying the heavenly bodies,\neach outer sphere moving more slowly than its inner neighbour, while the\nninth, moving most slowly of all, moved all the rest; last of all, the\nempyrean, blessed with changeless, motionless perfection, the abode of\nGod--such was the Ptolemaic astronomy as Dante knew it.  This\nidealization of changelessness was the common property of all that by\ngone world.  The Holy Roman Empire was the endeavour to perpetuate a\nchangeless idea of political theory and organization; the Holy Catholic\nChurch was the endeavour to perpetuate a changeless formulation of\nreligious dogma and hierarchy; the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas was the\nendeavour to settle forever changeless paths for the human mind to walk\nin.  To that ancient world as a whole the perfect was the finished, and\ntherefore it was immutable.\n\nHow different our modern attitude toward change has come to be!  We\nbelieve in change, rely on it, hope for it, rejoice in it, are determined\nto achieve it and control it.  Nowhere is this more evident than in our\nthought of the meaning of knowledge.  In the medieval age knowledge was\nspun as a spider spins his web.  Thinking simply made evident what\nalready was involved in an accepted proposition.  A premise was drawn out\ninto its filaments and then woven into a fabric of new form but of the\nsame old material.  Knowledge did not start from actual things; it did\nnot intend to change actual things; and the shelves of the libraries\ngroan with the burden of that endless and largely futile cogitation.\nThen the new knowledge began from the observation of things as they\nreally are and from the use of that observation for the purposes of human\nlife.  Once a lad, seventeen years old, went into the cathedral at Pisa\nto worship.  Soon he forgot the service and watched a chandelier,\nswinging from the lofty roof.  He wondered whether, no matter how\nchangeable the length of its arc, its oscillations always consumed the\nsame time and, because he had no other means, he timed its motion by the\nbeating of his pulse.  That was one time when a boy went to church and\ndid well to forget the service.  He soon began to wonder whether he could\nnot make a pendulum which, swinging like the chandeliers, would do useful\nbusiness for men.  He soon began to discover, in what he had seen that\nday, new light on the laws of planetary motion.  That was one of the\nturning points in human history--the boy was Galileo.  The consequences\nof this new method are all around us now.  The test of knowledge in\nmodern life is capacity to cause change.  If a man really knows\nelectricity he can cause change; he can illumine cities and drive cars.\nIf a man really knows engineering, he can cause change; he can tunnel\nrivers and bridge gulfs.  It is for that purpose we wish knowledge.\nInstead of being dreaded, controlled change has become the chief desire\nof modern life.\n\nWhen, therefore, in this generation with its perception of growth as the\nuniversal law and with its dependence upon controlled change as the hope\nof man, Christianity endeavours to glorify changelessness and to maintain\nitself in unalterable formulations, it has outlawed itself from its own\nage.  An Indian punkah-puller, urged by his mistress to better his\ncondition, replied: \"Mem Sahib, my father pulled a punkah, my grandfather\npulled a punkah, all my ancestors for four million ages pulled punkahs,\nand, before that, the god who founded our caste pulled a punkah over\nVishnu.\"  How utterly lost such a man would be in the dynamic movements\nof our modern Western life!--yet not more lost than is a Christianity\nwhich tries to remain static in a progressive world.\n\n\nIII\n\nAmong the influences which have forced well-instructed minds first to\naccept and then to glory in the progressive nature of Christianity, the\nfirst place must be given to the history of religion itself.  The study\nof religion's ancient records in ritual, monument and book, and of\nprimitive faiths still existing among us in all stages of development,\nhas made clear the general course which man's religious life has traveled\nfrom very childish beginnings until now.  From early animism in its\nmanifold expressions, through polytheism, kathenotheism, henotheism, to\nmonotheism, and so out into loftier possibilities of conceiving the\ndivine nature and purpose--the main road which man has traveled in his\nreligious development now is traceable.  Nor is there any place where it\nis more easily traceable than in our own Hebrew-Christian tradition.  One\nof the fine results of the historical study of the Scriptures is the\npossibility which now exists of arranging the manuscripts of the Bible in\napproximately chronological order and then tracing through them the\nunfolding growth of the faiths and hopes which come to their flower in\nthe Gospel of Christ.  Consider, for example, the exhilarating story of\nthe developing conception of Jehovah's character from the time he was\nworshiped as a mountain-god in the desert until he became known as the\n\"God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.\"\n\nWe are explicitly told that the history of Jehovah's relationship with\nIsrael began at Sinai and that before that time the Hebrew fathers had\nnever even heard his name.[6]  There on a mountain-top in the Sinaitic\nwilderness dwelt this new-found god, so anthropomorphically conceived\nthat he could hide Moses in a rock's cleft from which the prophet could\nnot see Jehovah's face but could see his back.[7]  He was a god of battle\nand the name of an old book about him still remains to us, \"The book of\nthe Wars of Jehovah.\" [8]\n\n  \"Jehovah is a man of war:\n  Jehovah is his name\"--[9]\n\nso his people at first rejoiced in him and gloried in his power when he\nthundered and lightened on Sinai.  Few stories in man's spiritual history\nare so interesting as the record of the way in which this mountain-god,\nfor the first time, so far as we know, in Semitic history, left his\nsettled shrine, traveled with his people in the holy Ark, became\nacclimated in Canaan, and, gradually absorbing the functions of the old\nbaals of the land, extended his sovereignty over the whole of Palestine.\n\nTo be sure, even then he still was thought of, as all ancient gods were\nthought of, as geographically limited to the country whose god he was.\nMilcolm and Chemosh were real gods too, ruling in Philistia and Moab as\nJehovah did in Canaan.  This is the meaning of Jephthah's protest to a\nhostile chieftain: \"Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god\ngiveth thee to possess?\" [10]  This is the meaning of David's protest\nwhen he is driven out to the Philistine cities: \"They have driven me out\nthis day that I should not cleave unto the inheritance of Jehovah,\nsaying, Go, serve other gods.\" [11]  This is the meaning of Naaman's\ndesire to have two mules' burden of Jehovah's land on which to worship\nJehovah in Damascus.[12]  Jehovah could be worshiped only on Jehovah's\nland.  But ever as the day of fuller understanding dawned, the\nsovereignty of Jehovah widened and his power usurped the place and\nfunction of all other gods.  Amos saw him using the nations as his pawns;\nIsaiah heard him whistling to the nations as a shepherd to his dogs;\nJeremiah heard him cry, \"Can any hide himself in secret places so that I\nshall not see him? . . .  Do not I fill heaven and earth?\" [13]; until at\nlast we sweep out, through the exile and all the heightening of faith and\nclarifying of thought that came with it, into the Great Isaiah's 40th\nchapter on the universal and absolute sovereignty of God, into the\nPriestly narrative of creation, where God makes all things with a word,\ninto psalms which cry,\n\n  \"For all the gods of the people are idols;\n  But Jehovah made the heavens.\" [14]\n\nMoreover, as Jehovah's sovereignty thus is enlarged until he is the God\nof all creation, his character too is deepened and exalted in the\nunderstanding of his people.  That noblest succession of moral teachers\nin ancient history, the Hebrew prophets, developed a conception of the\nnature of God in terms of righteousness, so broad in its outreach, so\nhigh in its quality, that as one mounts through Amos' fifth chapter and\nIsaiah's first chapter and Jeremiah's seventh chapter, he finds himself,\nlike Moses on Nebo's top, looking over into the Promised Land of the New\nTestament.  There this development flowers out under the influence of\nJesus.  God's righteousness is interpreted, not in terms of justice only,\nbut of compassionate, sacrificial love; his Fatherhood embraces not only\nall mankind but each individual, lifting him out of obscurity in the mass\ninto infinite worthfulness and hope.  And more than this development of\nidea, the New Testament gives us a new picture of God in the personality\nof Jesus, and we see the light of the knowledge of God's glory in his\nface.\n\nMoreover, this development, so plainly recorded in Scripture, was not\nunconsciously achieved by the drift of circumstance; it represents the\nardent desire of forward-looking men, inspired by the Spirit.  The\nMaster, himself, was consciously pleading for a progressive movement in\nthe religious life and thinking of his day.  A static religion was the\nlast thing he ever dreamed of or wanted.  No one was more reverent than\nhe toward his people's past; his thought and his speech were saturated\nwith the beauty of his race's heritage; yet consider his words as again\nand again they fell from his lips: \"It was said to them of old time . . .\nbut I say unto you.\"  His life was rooted in the past but it was not\nimprisoned there; it grew up out of the past, not destroying but\nfulfilling it.  He had in him the spirit of the prophets, who once had\nspoken to his people in words of fire; but old forms that he thought had\nbeen outgrown he brushed aside.  He would not have his Gospel a patch on\nan old garment, he said, nor would he put it like new wine into old\nwineskins.  He appealed from the oral traditions of the elders to the\nwritten law; within the written law he distinguished between ceremonial\nand ethical elements, making the former of small or no account, the\nlatter all-important; and then within the written ethical law he waived\nprovisions that seemed to him outmoded by time.  Even when he bade\nfarewell to his disciples, he did not talk to them as if what he himself\nhad said were a finished system: \"I have yet many things to say unto you,\nbut ye cannot bear them now.  Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is\ncome, he shall guide you into all the truth.\"\n\nIn Paul's hands the work which Jesus began went on.  He dared an\nadventurous move that makes much of our modern progressiveness look like\nchild's play: he lifted the Christian churches out of the narrow,\nreligious exclusiveness of the Hebrew synagogue.  He dared to wage battle\nfor the new idea that Christianity was not a Jewish sect but a universal\nreligion.  He withstood to his face Peter, still trammeled in the\nnarrowness of his Jewish thinking, and he founded churches across the\nRoman Empire where was neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, male\nnor female, bond nor free, but all were one man in Christ Jesus.\n\nEven more thrilling were those later days when in Ephesus the writer of\nthe Fourth Gospel faced a Hellenistic audience, to whom the forms of\nthought in which Jesus hitherto had been interpreted were utterly unreal.\nThe first creed about Jesus proclaimed that he was the Messiah, but\nMessiah was a Jewish term and to the folk of Ephesus it had no vital\nmeaning.  John could not go on calling the Master that and that alone,\nwhen he had hungry souls before him who needed the Master but to whom\nJewish terms had no significance.  One thing those folk of Ephesus did\nunderstand, the idea of the Logos.  They had heard of that from the many\nfaiths whose pure or syncretized forms made the religious background of\ntheir time.  They knew about the Logos from Zoroastrianism, where beside\nAhura Mazdah stood Vohu Manah, the Mind of God; from Stoicism, at the\nbasis of whose philosophy lay the idea of the Logos; from Alexandrian\nHellenism, by means of which a Jew like Philo had endeavoured to marry\nGreek philosophy and Hebrew orthodoxy.  And the writer of the Fourth\nGospel used that new form of thought in which to present to his people\nthe personality of our Lord.  \"In the beginning was the Logos, and the\nLogos was with God, and the Logos was God\"--so begins the Fourth Gospel's\nprologue, in words that every intelligent person in Ephesus could\nunderstand and was familiar with, and that initial sermon in the book,\nfor it is a sermon, not philosophy, moves on in forms of thought which\nthe people knew about and habitually used, until the hidden purpose comes\nto light: \"The Logos became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his\nglory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and\ntruth.\"  John was presenting his Lord to the people of his time in terms\nthat the people could understand.\n\nEven within the New Testament, therefore, there is no static creed.  For,\nlike a flowing river, the Church's thought of her Lord shaped itself to\nthe intellectual banks of the generation through which it moved, even\nwhile, by its construction and erosion, it transfigured them.  Nor did\nthis movement cease with New Testament days.  From the Johannine idea of\nthe Logos to the Nicene Creed, where our Lord is set in the framework of\nGreek metaphysics, the development is just as clear as from the category\nof Jewish Messiah to the categories of the Fourth Gospel.  And if, in our\ngeneration, a conservative scholar like the late Dr. Sanday pleaded for\nthe necessity of a new Christology, it was not because he was primarily\nzealous for a novel philosophy, but because like John of old in Ephesus\nhe was zealous to present Christ to his own generation in terms that his\nown generation could comprehend.[15]\n\n\nIV\n\nUndoubtedly such an outlook upon the fluid nature of the Christian\nmovement will demand readjustment in the religious thinking of many\npeople.  They miss the old ideas about revelation.  This new\nprogressiveness seems to them to be merely the story of man's discovery,\nfinding God, here a little and there a little, as he has found the truths\nof astronomy.  But God's revelation of himself is just as real when it is\nconceived in progressive as when it is conceived in static terms.  Men\nonce thought of God's creation of the world in terms of fiat--it was done\non the instant; and when evolution was propounded men cried that the\nprogressive method shut God out.  We see now how false that fear was.\nThe creative activity of God never was so nobly conceived as it has been\nsince we have known the story of his slow unfolding of the universe.  We\nhave a grander picture in our minds than even the psalmist had, when we\nsay after him, \"The heavens declare the glory of God.\"  So men who have\nbeen accustomed to think of revelation in static terms, now that the long\nleisureliness of man's developing spiritual insight is apparent, fear\nthat this does away with revelation.  But in God's unfolding education of\nhis people recorded in the Scriptures revelation is at its noblest.  No\nman ever found God except when God was seeking to be found.  Discovery is\nthe under side of the process; the upper side is revelation.\n\nIndeed, this conception of progressive revelation does not shut out\nfinality.  In scientific thought, which continually moves and grows,\nexpands and changes, truths are discovered once for all.  The work of\nCopernicus is in a real sense final.  This earth does move; it is not\nstationary; and the universe is not geocentric.  That discovery is final.\nMany developments start from that, but the truth itself is settled once\nfor all.  So, in the spiritual history of man, final revelations come.\nThey will not have to be made over again and they will not have to be\ngiven up.  Progress does not shut out finality; it only makes each new\nfinality a point of departure for a new adventure, not a terminus ad quem\nfor a conclusive stop.  That God was in Christ reconciling the world unto\nhimself is for the Christian a finality, but, from the day the first\ndisciples saw its truth until now, the intellectual formulations in which\nit has been set and the mental categories by which it has been\ninterpreted have changed with the changes of each age's thought.\n\nWhile at first, then, a progressive Christianity may seem to plunge us\ninto unsettlement, the more one studies it the less he would wish it\notherwise.  Who would accept a snapshot taken at any point on the road of\nChristian development as the final and perfect form of Christianity?\nRobert Louis Stevenson has drawn for us a picture of a man trying with\ncords and pegs to stake out the shadow of an oak tree, expecting that\nwhen he had marked its boundaries the shadow would stay within the limits\nof the pegs.  Yet all the while the mighty globe was turning around in\nspace.  He could not keep a tree's shadow static on a moving earth.\nNevertheless, multitudes of people in their endeavour to build up an\ninfallibly settled creed have tried just such a hopeless task.  They\nforget that while a revelation _from_ God might conceivably be final and\ncomplete, religion deals with a revelation _of_ God.  God, the infinite\nand eternal, from everlasting to everlasting, the source and crown and\ndestiny of all the universe--shall a man whose days are as grass rise up\nto say that he has made a statement about him which will not need to be\nrevised?  Rather, our prayer should be that the thought of God, the\nmeaning of God, the glory of God, the plans and purpose of God may expand\nin our comprehension until we, who now see in a mirror, darkly, may see\nface to face.  \"Le Dieu defini est le Dieu fini.\"\n\nThis mistaken endeavour, in the interest of stability, to make a vital\nmovement static is not confined to religion.  Those of us who love Wagner\nremember the lesson of Die Meistersinger.  Down in Nuremberg they had\nstandardized and conventionalized music.  They had set it down in rules\nand men like Beckmesser could not imagine that there was any music\npermissible outside the regulations.  Then came Walter von Stolzing.\nMusic to him was not a conventionality but a passion--not a rule, but a\nlife--and, when he sang, his melodies reached heights of beauty that\nBeckmesser's rules did not provide for.  It was Walter von Stolzing who\nsang the Prize Song, and as the hearts of the people were stirred in\nanswer to its spontaneous melody, until all the population of Nuremberg\nwere singing its accumulating harmonies, poor Beckmesser on his\nblackboard jotted down the rules which were being broken.  Beckmesser\nrepresents a static conception of life which endeavours to freeze\nprogress at a given point and call it infallible.  But Beckmesser is\nwrong.  You cannot take things like music and religion and set them down\nin final rules and regulations.  They are life, and you have to let them\ngrow and flower and expand and reveal evermore the latent splendour at\ntheir heart.\n\n\nV\n\nObviously, the point where this progressive conception of Christianity\ncomes into conflict with many widely accepted ideas is the abandonment\nwhich it involves of an external and inerrant authority in matters of\nreligion.  The marvel is that that idea of authority, which is one of the\nhistoric curses of religion, should be regarded by so many as one of the\nvital necessities of the faith.  The fact is that religion by its very\nnature is one of the realms to which external authority is least\napplicable.  In science people commonly suppose that they do not take\ntruth on any one's authority; they prove it.  In business they do not\naccept methods on authority; they work them out.  In statesmanship they\nno longer believe in the divine right of kings nor do they accept\ninfallible dicta handed down from above.  But they think that religion is\ndelivered to them by authority and that they believe what they do believe\nbecause a divine Church or a divine Book or a divine Man told them.\n\nIn this common mode of thinking, popular ideas have the truth turned\nupside down.  The fact is that science, not religion, is the realm where\nmost of all we use external authority.  They tell us that there are\nmillions of solar systems scattered through the fields of space.  Is that\ntrue?  How do we know?  We never counted them.  We know only what the\nauthorities say.  They tell us that the next great problem in science is\nbreaking up the atom to discover the incalculable resources of power\nthere waiting to be harnessed by our skill.  Is that true?  Most of us do\nnot understand what an atom is, and what it means to break one up passes\nthe farthest reach of our imaginations; all we know is what the\nauthorities say.  They tell us that electricity is a mode of motion in\nether.  Is that true?  Most of us have no first hand knowledge about\nelectricity.  The motorman calls it \"juice\" and that means as much to us\nas to call it a mode of motion in ether; we must rely on the authorities.\nThey tell us that sometime we are going to talk through wireless\ntelephones across thousands of miles, so that no man need ever be out of\nvocal communication with his family and friends.  Is that true?  It seems\nto us an incredible miracle, but we suppose that it is so, as the\nauthorities say.  In a word, the idea that we do not use authority in\nscience is absurd.  Science is precisely the place where nine hundred and\nninety-nine men out of a thousand use authority the most.  The chemistry,\nbiology, geology, astronomy which the authorities teach is the only\nscience which most of us possess.\n\nThere is another realm, however, where we never think of taking such an\nattitude.  They tell us that friendship is beautiful.  Is that true?\nWould we ever think of saying that we do not know, ourselves, but that we\nrely on the authorities?  Far better to say that our experience with\nfriendship has been unhappy and that we personally question its utility!\nThat, at least, would have an accent of personal, original experience in\nit.  For here we are facing a realm where we never can enter at all until\nwe enter, each man for himself.\n\nTwo realms exist, therefore, in each of which first-hand experience is\ndesirable, but in only one of which it is absolutely indispensable.  We\ncan live on what the authorities in physics say, but there are no proxies\nfor the soul.  Love, friendship, delight in music and in nature, parental\naffection--these things are like eating and breathing; no one can do them\nfor us; we must enter the experience for ourselves.  Religion, too,\nbelongs in this last realm.  The one vital thing in religion is\nfirst-hand, personal experience.  Religion is the most intimate, inward,\nincommunicable fellowship of the human soul.  In the words of Plotinus,\nreligion is \"the flight of the alone to the Alone.\"  You never know God\nat all until you know him for yourself.  The only God you ever will know\nis the God you do know for yourself.\n\nThis does not mean, of course, that there are no authorities in religion.\nThere are authorities in everything, but the function of an authority in\nreligion, as in every other vital realm, is not to take the place of our\neyes, seeing in our stead and inerrantly declaring to us what it sees;\nthe function of an authority is to bring to us the insight of the world's\naccumulated wisdom and the revelations of God's seers, and so to open our\neyes that we may see, each man for himself.  So an authority in\nliterature does not say to his students: The Merchant of Venice is a\ngreat drama; you may accept my judgment on that--I know.  Upon the\ncontrary, he opens their eyes; he makes them see; he makes their hearts\nsensitive so that the genius which made Shylock and Portia live\ncaptivates and subdues them, until like the Samaritans they say, \"Now we\nbelieve, not because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves,\nand know.\"  That is the only use of authority in a vital, realm.  It can\nlead us up to the threshold of a great experience where we must enter,\neach man for himself, and that service to the spiritual life is the\nBible's inestimable gift.\n\nAt the beginning, Christianity was just such a first-hand experience as\nwe have described.  The Christian fellowship consisted of a group of men\nkeeping company with Jesus and learning how to live.  They had no creeds\nto recite when they met together; what they believed was still an\nunstereotyped passion in their hearts.  They had no sacraments to\ndistinguish their faith--baptism had been a Jewish rite and even the\nLord's Supper was an informal use of bread and wine, the common elements\nof their daily meal.  They had no organizations to join; they never\ndreamed that the Christian Gospel would build a church outside the\nsynagogue.  Christianity in the beginning was an intensely personal\nexperience.\n\nThen the Master went away and the tremendous forces of human life and\nhistory laid hold on the movement which so vitally he had begun.  His\nfollowers began building churches.  Just as the Wesleyans had to leave\nthe Church of England, not because they wanted to, but because the\nAnglicans would not keep them, so the Christians, not because they\nplanned to, but because the synagogue was not large enough to hold them,\nhad to leave the synagogue.  They began building creeds; they had to.\nEvery one of the first Christian creeds was written in sheer\nself-defense.  If we had been Christians in those first centuries, when a\npowerful movement was under way called Gnosticism, which denied that God,\nthe Father Almighty, had made both the heaven and the earth, which said\nthat God had made heaven indeed but that a demigod had made the world,\nand which denied that Jesus had been born in the flesh and in the flesh\nhad died, we would have done what the first Christians did: we would have\ndefined in a creed what it was the Christians did believe as against that\nwild conglomeration of Oriental mythology that Gnosticism was, and we\nwould have shouted the creed as a war cry against the Gnostics.  That is\nwhat the so-called Apostles' Creed was--the first Christian battle chant,\na militant proclamation of the historic faith against the heretics; and\nevery one of its declarations met with a head-on collision some claim of\nGnosticism.  Then, too, the early Christians drew up rituals; they had\nto.  We cannot keep any spiritual thing in human life, even the spirit of\ncourtesy, as a disembodied wraith.  We ritualize it--we bow, we take off\nour hats, we shake hands, we rise when a lady enters.  We have\ninnumerable ways of expressing politeness in a ritual.  Neither could\nthey have kept so deep and beautiful a thing as the Christian life\nwithout such expression.\n\nSo historic Christianity grew, organized, creedalized, ritualized.  And\never as it grew, a peril grew with it, for there were multitudes of\npeople who joined these organizations, recited these creeds, observed\nthese rituals, took all the secondary and derived elements of\nChristianity, but often forgot that vital thing which all this was meant\nin the first place to express: a first-hand, personal experience of God\nin Christ.  That alone is vital in Christianity; all the rest is once or\ntwice or thrice removed from life.  For Christianity is not a creed, nor\nan organization, nor a ritual.  These are important but they are\nsecondary.  They are the leaves, not the roots; they are the wires, not\nthe message.  Christianity itself is a life.\n\nIf, however, Christianity is thus a life, we cannot stereotype its\nexpressions in set and final forms.  If it is a life in fellowship with\nthe living God, it will think new thoughts, build new organizations,\nexpand into new symbolic expressions.  We cannot at any given time write\n\"finis\" after its development.  We can no more \"keep the faith\" by\nstopping its growth than we can keep a son by insisting on his being\nforever a child.  The progressiveness of Christianity is not simply its\nresponse to a progressive age; the progressiveness of Christianity\nsprings from its own inherent vitality.  So far is this from being\nregrettable, that a modern Christian rejoices in it and gladly recognizes\nnot only that he is thinking thoughts and undertaking enterprises which\nhis fathers would not have understood, but also that his children after\nhim will differ quite as much in teaching and practice from the modernity\nof to-day.  It has been the fashion to regard this changeableness with\nwistful regret.  So Wordsworth sings in his sonnet on Mutability:\n\n  \"Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear\n  The longest date do melt like frosty rime,\n  That in the morning whitened hill and plain\n  And is no more; drop like the tower sublime\n  Of yesterday, which royally did wear\n  Its crown of weeds, but could not even sustain\n  Some casual shout that broke the silent air,\n  Or the unimaginable touch of Time.\"\n\nSuch wistfulness, however, while a natural sentiment, is not true to the\nbest Christian thought of our day.  He who believes in the living God,\nwhile he will be far from calling all change progress, and while he will,\naccording to his judgment, withstand perverse changes with all his might,\nwill also regard the cessation of change as the greatest calamity that\ncould befall religion.  Stagnation in thought or enterprise means death\nfor Christianity as certainly as it does for any other vital movement.\nStagnation, not change, is Christianity's most deadly enemy, for this is\na progressive world, and in a progressive world no doom is more certain\nthan that which awaits whatever is belated, obscurantist and reactionary.\n\n\n\n[1] Leonard Huxley: Scott's Last Expedition, Vol. I, The Journals of\nCaptain R. F. Scott, Rn., C. V. O., p. 417.\n\n[2] Kirby Page; The Sword or the Cross, p. 41.\n\n[3] Tertullian: De Virginibus Velandis, Cap. I--\"Regula quidem fidei una\nomnino est, sola immobilis et irreformabilis.\"\n\n[4] Vatican Council, July 18, 1870, First Dogmatic Constitution on the\nChurch of Christ, Chapter IV, Concerning the Infallible Teaching of the\nRoman Pontiff.\n\n[5] The Papal Syllabus of Errors, A. D. 1864, Sec. 1, 5.\n\n[6] Exodus 6:3; Chap. 19.\n\n[7] Exodus 33:22-23.\n\n[8] Numbers 21:14.\n\n[9] Exodus 15:3.\n\n[10] Judges 11:24.\n\n[11] I Samuel 26:19.\n\n[12] II Kings 5:17.\n\n[13] Jeremiah 23:24.\n\n[14] Psalm 96:5.\n\n[15] William Sanday: Christologies Ancient and Modern.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE V\n\nTHE PERILS OF PROGRESS\n\nI\n\nIn the history of human thought and social organization there is an\ninteresting pendular swing between conflicting ideas so that, about the\ntime we wake up to recognize that thought is swinging one way, we may\nbe fairly sure that soon it will be swinging the other.  Man's social\norganization, for example, has moved back and forth between the two\npoles of individual liberty and social solidarity.  To pick up the\nswing of that pendulum only in recent times, we note that out of the\nsocial solidarity of the feudal system man swung over to the individual\nliberty of the free cities; then from the individual liberty of the\nfree cities to the social solidarity of the absolute monarchies; then\nback again into the individual liberty of the democratic states.  We\nsee that now we are clearly swinging over to some new form of social\nsolidarity, of which tendency federalism and socialism are expressions,\nand doubtless from that we shall recoil toward individual liberty once\nmore.  It is a safe generalization that whenever human thought shows\nsome decided trend, a corrective movement is not far away.  However\nenthusiastic we may be, therefore, about the idea of progress and the\npositive contributions which it can make to our understanding and\nmastery of life, we may be certain that there are in it the faults of\nits qualities.  If we take it without salt, our children will rise up,\nnot to applaud our far-seeing wisdom, but to blame our easy-going\ncredulity.  We have already seen that the very idea of progress sprang\nup in recent times in consequence of a few factors which predisposed\nmen's minds to social hopefulness.  Fortunately, some of these factors,\nsuch as the scientific control of life through the knowledge of law,\nseem permanent, and we are confident that the idea of progress will\nhave abiding meaning for human thought and life.  But no study of the\nmatter could be complete without an endeavour to discern the perils in\nthis modern mode of thought and to guard ourselves against accepting as\nan unmixed blessing what is certainly, like all things human, a blend\nof good and evil.\n\nOne peril involved in the popular acceptance of the idea of progress\nhas been the creation of a superficial, ill-considered optimism which\nhas largely lost sight of the terrific obstacles in human nature\nagainst which any real moral advance on earth must win its way.  Too\noften we have taken for granted what a recent book calls \"a goal of\nracial perfection and nobility the splendour of which it is beyond our\npowers to conceive,\" and we have dreamed about this earthly paradise\nlike a saint having visions of heaven and counting it as won already\nbecause he is predestined to obtain it.  Belief in inevitable progress\nhas thus acted as an opiate on many minds, lulling them into an elysium\nwhere all things come by wishing and where human ignorance and folly,\ncruelty and selfishness do not impede the peaceful flowing of their\ndreams.  In a word, the idea of progress has blanketed the sense of\nsin.  Lord Morley spoke once of \"that horrid burden and impediment upon\nthe soul which the Churches call Sin, and which, by whatever name you\ncall it, is a real catastrophe in the moral nature of man.\"  The modern\nage, busy with slick, swift schemes for progress, has too largely lost\nsight of that.\n\nIndeed, at no point do modern Christians differ more sharply from their\npredecessors than in the serious facing of the problem of sin.\nChristians of former times were burdened with a heavy sense of their\ntransgressions, and their primary interest in the Gospel was its\npromised reestablishment of their guilty souls in the fellowship of a\nholy God.  Modern Christianity, however, is distinguished from all that\nby a jaunty sense of moral well-being; when we admit our sins we do it\nwith complacency and cheerfulness; our religion is generally\ncharacterized by an easy-going self-righteousness.  Bunyan's Pilgrim\nwith his lamentable load upon his back, crying, \"What shall I do! . . .\nI am . . . undone by reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me,\" is no\nfit symbol of a typically modern Christian.\n\nDoubtless we have cause to be thankful for this swing away from the\nmorbid extremes to which our fathers often went in their sense of sin.\nIt is hard to forgive Jonathan Edwards when one reads in his famous\nEnfield sermon: \"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as\none holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors\nyou, and is dreadfully provoked; . . . you are ten thousand times so\nabominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in\nours.\"  Any one who understands human nature could have told him that,\nafter such a black exaggeration of human depravity as he and his\ngeneration were guilty of, the Christian movement was foredoomed to\nswing away over to the opposite extreme of complacent\nself-righteousness.  Unquestionably we have made the swing.  In spite\nof the debacle of the Great War, this is one of the most unrepentant\ngenerations that ever walked the earth, dreaming still of automatic\nprogress toward an earthly paradise.\n\nMany factors have gone into the making of this modern mood of\nself-complacency.  _New knowledge_ has helped, by which disasters, such\nas once awakened our fathers' poignant sense of sin, are now attributed\nto scientific causes rather than to human guilt.  When famines or\npestilences came, our fathers thought them God's punishment for sin.\nWhen earthquakes shook the earth or comets hung threateningly in the\nsky, our fathers saw in them a divine demand for human penitence.  Such\nevents, referred now to their scientific causes, do not quicken in us a\nsense of sin.  _New democracy_ also has helped in this development of\nself-complacency.  Under autocratic kings the common people were common\npeople and they knew it well.  Their dependent commonality was enforced\non them by the constant pressure of their social life.  Accustomed to\ncall themselves miserable worms before an earthly king, they had no\nqualms about so estimating themselves before the King of Heaven.\nDemocracy, however, elevates us into self-esteem.  The genius of\ndemocracy is to believe in men, their worth, their possibilities, their\ncapacities for self-direction.  Once the dominant political ideas\ndepressed men into self-contempt; now they lift men into\nself-exaltation.  _New excuses for sin_ have aided in creating our mood\nof self-content.  We know more than our fathers did about the effect of\nheredity and environment on character, and we see more clearly that\nsome souls are not born but damned into the world.  Criminals, in\nconsequence, have come not to be so much condemned as pitied, their\nperversion of character is regarded not so much in terms of iniquity as\nof disease, and as we thus condone transgression in others, so in\nourselves we palliate our wrong.  We regard it as the unfortunate but\nhardly blamable consequence of temperament or training.  Our fathers,\nwho thought that the trouble was the devil in them, used to deal\nsternly with themselves.  Like Chinese Gordon, fighting a besetting sin\nin private prayer, they used to come out from their inward struggles\nsaying, \"I hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord.\"  But we are softer\nwith ourselves; we find in lack of eugenics or in cruel circumstance a\ngood excuse.\n\nUndoubtedly, the _new theology_ has helped to encourage this modern\nmood of self-complacency.  Jonathan Edwards' Enfield sermon pictured\nsinners held over the blazing abyss of hell in the hands of a wrathful\ndeity who at any moment was likely to let go, and so terrific was that\ndiscourse in its delivery that women fainted and strong men clung in\nagony to the pillars of the church.  Obviously, we do not believe in\nthat kind of God any more, and as always in reaction we swing to the\nopposite extreme, so in the theology of these recent years we have\ntaught a very mild, benignant sort of deity.  One of our popular\ndrinking songs sums up this aspect of our new theology:\n\n  \"God is not censorious\n  When His children have their fling.\"\n\nIndeed, the god of the new theology has not seemed to care acutely\nabout sin; certainly he has not been warranted to punish heavily; he\nhas been an indulgent parent and when we have sinned, a polite \"Excuse\nme\" has seemed more than adequate to make amends.  John Muir, the\nnaturalist, was accustomed during earthquake shocks in California to\nassuage the anxieties of perturbed Eastern visitors by saying that it\nwas only Mother Earth trotting her children on her knee.  Such\npoetizing is quite in the style of the new theology.  Nevertheless, the\ndescription, however pretty, is not an adequate account of a real\nearthquake, and in this moral universe there are real earthquakes, as\nthis generation above all others ought to know, when man's sin, his\ngreed, his selfishness, his rapacity roll up across the years an\naccumulating mass of consequence until at last in a mad collapse the\nwhole earth crashes into ruin.  The moral order of the world has not\nbeen trotting us on her knees these recent years; the moral order of\nthe world has been dipping us in hell; and because the new theology had\nnot been taking account of such possibilities, had never learned to\npreach on that text in the New Testament, \"It is a fearful thing to\nfall into the hands of the living God,\" we were ill prepared for the\nexperience.\n\nMany factors like those which we have named have contributed to create\nour modern negligence of the problem of sin, but under all of them and\npermeating them has been the idea that automatic progress is inherent\nin the universe.  This evolving cosmos has been pictured as a\nfool-proof world where men could make and love their lies, with their\nsouls dead and their stomachs well alive, with selfish profit the\nmotive of their economic order and narrow nationalism the slogan of\ntheir patriotism, and where still, escaping the consequences, they\ncould live in a progressive society.  A recent writer considers it\npossible that \"over the crest of the hill the Promised Land stretches\naway to the far horizons smiling in eternal sunshine.\"  The picture is\nnonsense.  All the progress this world ever will know waits upon the\nconquest of sin.  Strange as it may sound to the ears of this modern\nage, long tickled by the amiable idiocies of evolution popularly\nmisinterpreted, this generation's deepest need is not these dithyrambic\nsongs about inevitable progress, but a fresh sense of personal and\nsocial sin.\n\nWhat the scientific doctrine of evolution really implies is something\nmuch more weighty and sinister than frothy optimism.  When a preacher\nnow quotes Paul, \"as in Adam all die,\" not many of the younger\ngeneration understand him, but when we are told that we came out of\nlow, sub-human beginnings, that we carry with us yet the bestial\nleftovers of an animal heritage to be fought against and overcome and\nleft behind, well-instructed members of this generation ought to\ncomprehend.  Yet in saying that, we are dealing with the same\nfundamental fact which Paul was facing when he said, \"as in Adam all\ndie\"; we are handling the same unescapable experience out of which the\nold doctrine of original sin first came; we are facing a truth which it\nwill not pay us to forget: that humanity's sinful nature is not\nsomething which you and I alone make up by individual deeds of wrong,\nbut that it is an inherited mortgage and handicap on the whole human\nfamily.  Why is it that if we let a field run wild it goes to weeds,\nwhile if we wish wheat we must fight for every grain of it?  Why is it\nthat if we let human nature run loose it goes to evil, while he who\nwould be virtuous must struggle to achieve character?  It is because,\nin spite of our optimisms and evasions, that fact still is here, which\nour fathers often appraised more truly than we, that human nature, with\nall its magnificent possibilities, is like the earth's soil filled with\nage-long seeds and roots of evil growth, and that progress in goodness,\nwhether personal or social, must be achieved by grace of some power\nwhich can give us the victory over our evil nature.\n\nIn past generations it was the preachers who talked most about sin and\nthundered against it from their pulpits, but now for years they have\nbeen very reticent about it.  Others, however, have not been still.\nScientists have made us feel the ancient heritage that must be fought\nagainst; novelists have written no great novel that does not swirl\naround some central sin; the work of the dramatists from Shakespeare\nuntil Ibsen is centrally concerned with the problem of human evil; and\nnow the psycho-analysts are digging down into the unremembered thoughts\nof men to bring up into the light of day the origins of our spiritual\nmiseries in frustrated and suppressed desire.  We do not need\nartificially to conjure up a sense of sin.  All we need to do is to\nopen our eyes to facts.  Take one swift glance at the social state of\nthe world to-day.  Consider our desperate endeavours to save this\nrocking civilization from the consequences of the blow just delivered\nit by men's iniquities.  That should be sufficient to indicate that\nthis is no fool-proof universe automatically progressive, but that\nmoral evil is still the central problem of mankind.\n\nOne would almost say that the first rule for all who believe in a\nprogressive world is not to believe in it too much.  Long ago Plato\nsaid that he drove two horses, one white and tractable, the other black\nand fractious; Jesus said that two masters sought man's allegiance, one\nGod, the other mammon; Paul said that his soul was the battle-ground of\ntwo forces, one of which he called spirit and the other flesh; and only\nthe other day one of our own number told of the same struggle between\ntwo men in each of us, one Dr. Jekyll, the other Mr. Hyde.  That\nconflict still is pivotal in human history.  The idea of progress can\ndefeat itself no more surely than by getting itself so believed that\nmen expect automatic social advance apart from the conquest of personal\nand social sin.\n\n\nII\n\nAnother result of our superficial confidence in the idea of progress is\nreliance upon social palliatives instead of radical cures for our\npublic maladies.  We are so predisposed to think that the world\ninherently wants to be better, is inwardly straining to be better, that\nwe are easily fooled into supposing that some slight easement of\nexternal circumstance will at once release the progressive forces of\nmankind and save the race.  When, for example, one compares the immense\namount of optimistic expectancy about a warless world with the small\namount of radical thinking as to what really is the matter with us, he\nmay well be amazed at the unfounded regnancy of the idea of progress.\nWe rejoice over some slight disarmament as though that were the cure of\nour international shame, whereas always one can better trust a real\nQuaker with a gun than a thug without one.  So the needs of our\ninternational situation, involving external disarmament, to be sure,\ninvolve also regenerations of thought and spirit much more radical than\nany rearrangement of outward circumstance.  To forget that is to lose\nthe possibility of real progress; and insight into these deep-seated\nneeds is often dimmed by our too amiable and innocent belief in\nautomatic social advance waiting to take place on the slightest excuse.\n\nTo take but a single illustration of a radical change in men's\nthinking, difficult to achieve and yet indispensable to a decent world,\nconsider the group of prejudices and passions which center about\nnationalism and which impede the real progress of international\nfraternity.  What if all Christians took Jesus in earnest in his\nattitude that only one object on earth is worthy of the absolute\ndevotion of a man--the will of God for all mankind--and that therefore\nno nationality nor patriotism whatsoever should be the highest object\nof man's loyalty?  That ought to be an axiom to us, who stood with the\nAllies against Germany.  Certainly, we condemned Germany roundly enough\nbecause so many of her teachers exalted the state as an object of\nabsolute loyalty.  When in Japan one sees certain classes of people\nregarding the Mikado as divine and rating loyalty to him as their\nhighest duty, it is easy to condemn that.  When, however, a man says in\nplain English: I am an American but I am a Christian first and I am an\nAmerican only in the sense in which I can be an American, being first\nof all a Christian, and my loyalty to America does not begin to compare\nwith my superior loyalty to God's will for all mankind and, if ever\nnational action makes these two things conflict, I must choose God and\nnot America--to the ears of many that plain statement has a tang of\nnewness and danger.  In the background of even Christian minds, Jesus\nto the contrary notwithstanding, one finds the tacit assumption,\ncounted almost too sacred to be examined, that of course a man's first\nloyalty is to his nation.\n\nIndeed, we Protestants ought to feel a special responsibility for this\nnationalism that so takes the place of God.  In medieval and Catholic\nEurope folk did not so think of nationalism.  Folk in medieval Europe\nwere taught that their highest obligation was to God or, as they would\nhave phrased it, to the Church; that the Church could at any time\ndispense them from any obligation to king or nation; that the Church\ncould even make the king, the symbol of the nation, stand three days in\nthe snow outside the Pope's door at Canossa.  Every boy and girl in\nmedieval Europe was taught that his first duty was spiritual and that\nno nationality nor patriotism could compare with that.  Then we\nProtestants began our battle for spiritual liberty against the tyranny\nof Rome, and as one of the most potent agencies in the winning of our\nbattle we helped to develop the spirit of nationality.  In place of the\nHoly Roman Church we put state churches.  In place of devotion to the\nVatican we were tempted to put devotion to the nation.  Luther did more\nthan write spiritual treatises; he sent out ringing, patriotic appeals\nto the German nobility against Rome.  It is not an accident that\nabsolute nationalism came to its climacteric in Germany where\nProtestantism began.  For Protestantism, without ever intending it, as\nan unexpected by-product of its fight for spiritual liberty, helped to\nbreak up western Europe into nations, where nationalism absorbed the\nloyalty of the people.  And now that little tiger cub we helped to rear\nhas become a great beast and its roaring shakes the earth.\n\nA superficial confidence in automatic progress, therefore, which\nneglects an elemental fact like this at the root of our whole\ninternational problem is futile; it leads nowhere; it is rose water\nprescribed for leprosy.  The trouble with nationalism is profound and\nthis is the gist of it: we may be unselfish personally, but we group\nourselves into social units called nations, where we, being\nindividually unselfish with reference to the group, are satisfied with\nourselves, but where all the time the group itself is not unselfish,\nbut, it may be, is aggressively and violently avaricious.  Yet to most\npeople our sacrificial loyalty to the nation would pass for virtue,\neven though the nation as a whole were exploiting its neighbours or\nwaging a useless, unjust war.  The loyalty of Germans to Germany may be\nrated as the loftiest goodness no matter what Germany as a whole is\ndoing, and the loyalty of Americans to America may be praised as the\nvery passport to heaven while America as a whole may be engaged in a\nnationally unworthy enterprise.  The fine spirit of men's devotion\nwithin the limits of the group disguises the ultimate selfishness of\nthe whole procedure and cloaks a huge sin under a comparatively small\nunselfishness.\n\nWe can see that same principle at work in our industrial situation.  We\nbreak up into two groups; we are trades unionists or associated\nemployers.  We are unselfish so far as our group is concerned; we make\nit a point of honour to support our economic class; it is part of our\ncode of duty to be loyal there.  But while we are thus unselfish with\nreference to the group, the group itself is not unselfish; the group\nitself is fighting a bitter and selfish conflict, avaricious and often\ncruel.  There is no ultimate way out of this situation which does not\ninclude the activity of people who have a loyalty that is greater than\ntheir groups.  Henry George was once introduced at Cooper Institute,\nNew York City, by a chairman who, wishing to curry favour with the\ncrowd, called out with a loud voice, \"Henry George, the friend of the\nworkingman.\"  George stood up and sternly began, \"I am not the friend\nof the workingman\"; then after a strained silence, \"and I am not the\nfriend of the capitalist\"; then after another silence, \"I am for men;\nmen simply as men, regardless of any accidental or superficial\ndistinctions of race, creed, colour, class, or yet function or\nemployment.\"  Until we can get that larger loyalty into the hearts of\nmen, all the committees on earth cannot solve our industrial problems.\n\nNor can anything else make it possible to solve our international\nproblem.  The curse of nationalism is that, having pooled the\nunselfishness of persons in one group under one national name and of\npersons in another group under another national name, it uses this\nbeautiful unselfishness of patriotism to carry out national enterprises\nthat are fundamentally selfish.  One element, therefore, is\nindispensable in any solution: enough Christians, whether they call\nthemselves by that name or not, who have caught Jesus' point of view\nthat only one loyalty on earth is absolute--the will of God for all\nmankind.  This last summer I spent one Sunday night in the home of Mr.\nOzaki, perhaps the leading liberal of Japan, a man who stands in danger\nof assassination any day for his international attitude.  Suddenly he\nturned on me and said, \"If the United States should go into a war which\nyou regarded as unjust and wrong, what would you do?\"  I had to answer\nhim swiftly and I had to give him the only answer that a Christian\nminister could give and keep his self-respect.  I said, \"If the United\nStates goes into a war which I think is unjust and wrong, I will go\ninto my pulpit the next Sunday morning and in the name of God denounce\nthat war and take the consequence.\"  Surely, a man does not have to be\na theoretical pacifist, which I am not, to see how indispensable that\nattitude is to a Christian.  There is hardly anything more needed now\nin the international situation than a multitude of people who will sit\nin radical judgment on the actions of their governments, so that when\nthe governments of the world begin to talk war they will know that\nsurely they must face a mass of people rising up to say: War?  Why war?\nWe are no longer dumb beasts to be led to the slaughter; we no longer\nthink that any state on earth is God Almighty.  If, however, we are to\nhave that attitude strong enough so that it will stand the strain of\nmob psychology and the fear of consequences, it must be founded deep,\nas was Jesus' attitude: one absolute loyalty to the will of God for all\nmankind.  So far from hurting true patriotism, this attitude would be\nthe making of patriotism.  It would purge patriotism from all its\nperil, would exalt it, purify it, make of it a blessing, not a curse.\nBut whatever be the effect upon patriotism, the Christian is committed\nby the Master to a prior loyalty; he is a citizen of the Kingdom of God\nin all the earth.\n\nAn easy-going belief in inherent and inevitable progress, therefore, is\npositively perilous in the manifoldly complex social situation, from\nwhich only the most careful thinking and the most courageous living\nwill ever rescue us.  The Christian Church is indeed entrusted, in the\nmessage of Jesus, with the basic principles of life which the world\nneeds, but the clarity of vision which sees their meaning and the\ncourage of heart which will apply them are not easy to achieve.  Some\nof us have felt that acutely these last few years; all of us should\nhave learned that whatever progress is wrought out upon this planet\nwill be sternly fought for and hardly won.  Belief in the idea of\nprogress does not mean that this earth is predestined to drift into\nParadise like thistledown before an inevitable wind.\n\n\nIII\n\nA third peril associated with the idea of progress is quite as\nwidespread as the other two and in some ways more insidious.  The idea\nis prevalent that progress involves the constant supersession of the\nold by the new so that we, who have appeared thus late in human history\nand are therefore the heirs \"of all the ages, in the foremost files of\ntime,\" may at once assume our superiority to the ancients.  The modern\nman, living in a world supposedly progressing from early crude\nconditions toward perfection, has shifted the golden age from the past\nto the future, and in so doing has placed himself in much closer\nproximity to it than his ancestors were.  The world is getting\nbetter--such is the common assumption which is naturally associated\nwith the idea of progress.  As one enthusiastic sponsor of this\nproposition puts it:\n\n\n\"Go back ten years, and there was no airship; fifteen years, and there\nwas no wireless telegraphy; twenty-five years, and there was no\nautomobile; forty years, and there was no telephone, and no electric\nlight; sixty years, and there was no photograph, and no sewing machine;\nseventy-five years, no telegraph; one hundred years, no railway and no\nsteamship; one hundred and twenty-five years, no steam engine; two\nhundred years, no post-office; three hundred years, no newspaper; five\nhundred years, no printing press; one thousand years, no compass, and\nships could not go out of sight of land; two thousand years, no writing\npaper, but parchments of skin and tablets of wax and clay.  Go back far\nenough and there were no plows, no tools, no iron, no cloth; people ate\nacorns and roots and lived in caves and went naked or clothed\nthemselves in the skins of wild beasts.\" [1]\n\n\nSuch is the picture of human history upon this planet which occupies\nthe modern mind, and one implication often drawn is that we have\noutgrown the ancients and that they might well learn from us and not we\nfrom them.\n\nChristians, however, center their allegiance around ideas and\npersonalities which are, from the modern standpoint, very old indeed.\nThe truths that were wrought out in the developing life and faith of\nthe Hebrew-Christian people are still the regulative Christian truths,\nand the personality who crowned the whole development is still the\nChristians' Lord.  They are challenged, however, to maintain this in a\nprogressive world.  Men do not think of harking back to ancient\nPalestine nineteen centuries ago for their business methods, their\neducational systems, their scientific opinions, or anything else in\nordinary life whatever.  Then why go back to ancient Palestine for the\nchief exemplar of the spiritual life?  This is a familiar modern\nquestion which springs directly from popular interpretations of\nprogress.\n\n  \"Dim tracts of time divide\n    Those golden days from me;\n  Thy voice comes strange o'er years of change;\n    How can I follow Thee?\n\n  \"Comes faint and far Thy voice\n    From vales of Galilee;\n  Thy vision fades in ancient shades;\n    How should we follow Thee?\" [2]\n\n\nBehind this familiar mood lies one of the most significant changes that\nhas ever passed over the human mind.  The medieval age was tempted to\nlook backward for its knowledge of everything.  Philosophy was to be\nfound in Aristotle, science in Pliny and his like.  It was the ancients\nwho were wise; it was the ancients who had understood nature and had\nknown God.  The farther back you went the nearer you came to the\nvenerable and the authoritative.  As, therefore, in every other realm\nfolk looked back for knowledge, so it was most natural that they should\nlook back for their religion, too.  To find philosophy in Aristotle and\nto find spiritual life in Christ required not even the turning of the\nhead.  In all realms the age in its search for knowledge was facing\nbackwards.  It was a significant hour in the history of human thought\nwhen that attitude began to give way.  The scandal caused by Alessandro\nTassoni's attacks on Homer and Aristotle in the early seventeenth\ncentury resounded through Europe.  He advanced the new and astonishing\nidea that, so far from having degenerated since ancient times, the race\nhad advanced and that the moderns were better than their sires.  This\nnew idea prevailed as belief in progress grew.  It met, however, with\nviolent opposition, and the remnants of that old controversy are still\nto be found in volumes like George Hakewill's five hundred page folio\npublished in 1627 on \"the common errour touching Nature's perpetuall\nand universall decay.\" [3]  But from the seventeenth century on the\nidea gained swift ascendency that the human race, like an individual,\nis growing up, that humanity is becoming wiser with the years, that we\ncan know more than Aristotle and Pliny, that we should look, not back\nto the ancients, but rather to ourselves and to our offspring, for the\nreal wisdom which maturity achieves.  Once what was old seemed wise and\nestablished; what was new seemed extempore and insecure: now what is\nold seems outgrown; what is new seems probable and convincing.  Such is\nthe natural and prevalent attitude in a world where the idea of\nprogress is in control.  Nor can the applications of this idea to the\nrealm of religion be evaded.  If we would not turn back to Palestine\nnineteen centuries ago for anything else, why should we turn back to\nfind there the Master of our spiritual life?  In a word, our modern\nbelief in progress, popularly interpreted, leads multitudes of people\nto listen with itching ears for every new thing, while they condescend\nto all that is old in religion, and in particular conclude that, while\nJesus lived a wonderful life for his own day, that was a long time ago\nand surely we must be outgrowing him.\n\nThat this attitude is critically perilous to the integrity of the\nChristian movement will at once be obvious to any one whose own\nspiritual experience is centered in Christ.  From the beginning until\nnow the faith of Christian people has been primarily directed, not to a\nset of abstract principles, nor to a set of creedal definitions, but to\na Person.  Christians have been people believing in Jesus Christ.  This\nabiding element has put unity into Christian history.  The stream of\nChristian thought and progress has never been twice the same, yet for\nall that it has been a continuous stream and not an aimless, sprawling\nflood, and this unity and consistency have existed for one reason\nchiefly: the influence of the personality of Jesus.  Folk may have been\nRomanists or Protestants, ritualists or Quakers, reactionaries or\nprogressives, but still they have believed in Jesus.  His personality\nhas been the sun around which even in their differences they have swung\nlike planets in varying orbits.  Take the personality of Jesus out of\nChristian history and what you have left is chaos.\n\nMoreover, it is the personality of Jesus that has been the source of\nChristianity's transforming influence on character.  Ask whence has\ncome that power over the spirits of men which we recognize as\nChristianity at its mightiest and best, and the origin must be sought,\nnot primarily in our theologies or rubrics or churches, but in the\ncharacter and spirit of Jesus.  He himself is the central productive\nsource of power in Christianity.  We have come so to take this for\ngranted that we do not half appreciate the wonder of it.  This\npersonality, who so has mastered men, was born sixty generations ago in\na small village in an outlying Roman province, and until he was thirty\nyears of age he lived and worked as a carpenter among his fellow\ntownsfolk, attracting no wide consideration.  Then for three years or\nless he poured out his life in courageous teaching and sacrificial\nservice, amid the growing hatred and hostility of his countrymen, until\nhe was put to death by crucifixion \"because he stirred up the people.\"\nAnatole France, in one of his stories, represents Pilate in his later\nyears as trying to remember the trial and death of Jesus and being\nbarely able to recall it.  That incident had been so much a part of the\nday's work in governing a province like Judea that it had all but\nescaped his recollection.  Such a representation of the case is not\nimprobable.  It is easy so to tell the story of Jesus' life as to make\nhis continued influence seem incredible.  None would have supposed that\nnineteen centuries after his death, Lecky, the historian of European\nmorals, would say, \"The simple record of three short years of active\nlife has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the\ndisquisitions of philosophers, and all the exhortations of moralists.\"\n[4]  None would have thought that sixty generations after he was gone,\nMontefiori, a Jew, putting his finger on the source of Christianity's\npower, would light upon the phrase \"For the sake of Jesus,\" and would\ncry: \"Of what fine lives and deaths has not this motive been the spring\nand the sustainment!\" [5]  None would have thought that so long after\nCalvary seemed to end forever the power of Jesus, one of the race's\ngreatest men, David Livingstone, engaged in one of the race's most\ncourageous enterprises, breaking his way into the untraveled jungles of\nAfrica, would sing as he went, for so his journal says he did,\n\n  \"Jesus, the very thought of Thee\n  With sweetness fills my breast\"?\n\nTake the personality of the Master out of Christian history and we have\nrobbed it of its central moral power.\n\nMoreover, the personality of Jesus has always been the standard of\nreformation when Christianity has become recreant or laggard or\ncorrupt.  A man named John Wilkes started a political movement in\nEngland in the eighteenth century, and around him sprang up a party who\ncalled themselves Wilkites.  These followers of Wilkes, however, went\nto extremes so wild and perilous that poor John Wilkes himself had to\nexplain to everybody that, as for him, he was not a Wilkite.  This\nlapse of a movement from the original intention of its founder is\nfamiliar in history and nowhere is it more clearly illustrated than in\nChristianity.  The Master, watching Western Christendom today, with all\nour hatred, bitterness, war, would have to say, If this is\nChristianity, then I am not a Christian.  The Master, wandering through\nour cathedrals with their masses, waxen images and votive gifts, or\nthrough our Protestant churches with their fine-spun speculations\ninsisted on as necessary to belief if one is to be a child of grace,\nwould have to say, If this is Christianity, then I am not a Christian.\nIndeed, just this sort of service the Master always has been rendering\nhis movement; he is the perennial rebuke of all that is degenerate and\nfalse in Christianity.  Whenever reform has come, whenever real\nChristianity has sprung up again through the false and superficial, the\nmovement has been associated with somebody's rediscovery of Jesus\nChrist.  Saint Francis of Assisi rediscovered him, and made a spot of\nspiritual beauty at the heart of the medieval age.  John Wesley\nrediscovered him and his compassion for the outcast, and led the Church\ninto a new day of evangelism and philanthropy.  William Carey\nrediscovered him and his unbounded care for men, and blazed the trail\nfor a new era of expansive Christianity.  And if today many of us are\ndeeply in earnest about the application of Christian principles to the\nsocial life of men, it is because we have rediscovered him and the\nspirit of his Good Samaritan.  In an old myth, Antaeus, the child of\nEarth, could be overcome when he was lifted from contact with the\nground but, whenever he touched again the earth from which he sprang,\nhis old power came back once more.  Such is Christianity's relation\nwith Jesus Christ.  If, therefore, the idea of progress involves the\nmodern man's condescension to the Master as the outgrown seer of an\nancient day, the idea of progress has given Christianity an incurable\nwound.\n\nBefore we surrender to such a popular interpretation of the meaning of\nprogress, we may well discriminate between two aspects of human life in\none of which we plainly have progressed, but in the other of which\nprogress is not so evident.  In the Coliseum in ancient Rome centuries\nago, a group of Christians waited in the arena to be devoured by the\nlions, and eighty thousand spectators watched their vigil.  Those\nChristians were plain folk--\"not many mighty, not many noble\"--and\nevery one of them could have escaped that brutal fate if he had been\nwilling to burn a little incense to the Emperor.  Turn now to\nourselves, eighteen hundred years afterwards.  We have had a long time\nto outgrow the character and fidelity of those first Christians; do we\nthink that we have done so?  As we imagine ourselves in their places,\nare we ready with any glibness to talk about progress in character?\nThose first Christians never had ridden in a trolley car; they never\nhad seen a subway; they never had been to a moving picture show; they\nnever had talked over a telephone.  There are innumerable ways in which\nwe have progressed far beyond them.  But character, fidelity, loyalty\nto conscience and to God--are we sure of progress there?\n\nTo hear some people talk, one would suppose that progress is simply a\nmatter of chronology.  That one man or generation comes in time after\nanother is taken as sufficient evidence that the latter has of course\nsuperseded the earlier.  Do we mean that because Tennyson came after\nShelly he is therefore the greater poet?  What has chronology to do\nwith spiritual quality and creativeness, which always must rise from\nwithin, out of the abysmal depths of personality?  Professor Gilbert\nMurray, thinking primarily in a realm outside religion altogether,\nchastises this cheap and superficial claim of advance in spiritual life:\n\n\n\"As to Progress, it is no doubt a real fact.  To many of us it is a\ntruth that lies somewhere near the roots of our religion.  But it is\nnever a straight march forward; it is never a result that happens of\nits own accord.  It is only a name for the mass of accumulated human\neffort, successful here, baffled there, misdirected and driven astray\nin a third region, but on the whole and in the main producing some\ncumulative result.  I believe this difficulty about Progress, this fear\nthat in studying the great teachers of the past we are in some sense\nwantonly sitting at the feet of savages, causes real trouble of mind to\nmany keen students.  The full answer to it would take us beyond the\nlimits of this paper and beyond my own range of knowledge.  But the\nmain lines of the answer seem to me clear.  There are in life two\nelements, one transitory and progressive, the other comparatively if\nnot absolutely non-progressive and eternal, and the soul of man is\nchiefly concerned with the second.  Try to compare our inventions, our\nmaterial civilization, our stores of accumulated knowledge, with those\nof the age of Aeschylus or Aristotle or St. Francis, and the comparison\nis absurd.  Our superiority is beyond question and beyond measure.  But\ncompare any chosen poet of our age with Aeschylus, any philosopher with\nAristotle, any saintly preacher with St. Francis, and the result is\ntotally different.  I do not wish to argue that we have fallen below\nthe standard of those past ages; but it is clear that we are not\ndefinitely above them.  The things of the spirit depend on will, on\neffort, on aspiration, on the quality of the individual soul, and not\non discoveries and material advances which can be accumulated and added\nup.\" [6]\n\n\nLet any Christian preacher test out this matter and discover for\nhimself its truth.  We are preachers of the Gospel in the twentieth\ncentury.  St. Francis of Assisi was a preacher of the Gospel in the\nthirteenth century.  We know many things which St. Francis and his\ngeneration never could have known but, when we step back through that\noutward change into the spirit of St. Francis himself, we must take the\nshoes from off our feet, for the place whereon we stand is holy ground.\nWe may not talk in such an hour about progress in Christian character\nin terms of chronology, for a modern minister might well pray to touch\nthe garment's hem of such a spirit as St. Francis had!  When, then, one\nspeaks of outgrowing Jesus, one would do well to get a better reason\nthan simply the fact that he was born nineteen centuries ago.  The\ntruth is that humanity has been upon this planet hundreds of thousands\nof years, while our known history reaches back, and that very dimly,\nthrough only some four or five thousand.  In that known time there has\ncertainly been no biological development in man that any scientist has\nyet discerned.  Even the brain of man in the ice age was apparently as\nlarge as ours.  Moreover, within that period of history well known to\nus, we can see many ups and downs of spiritual life, mountain peaks of\nachievement in literature and art and religion, with deep valleys\nintervening, but we cannot be sure that the mountain peaks now are\nhigher than they used to be.  The art of the two centuries culminating\nabout 1530 represents a glorious flowering of creative genius, but it\nwas succeeded by over three centuries of descent to the abominations of\nugliness which the late eighteenth century produced.  We have climbed\nup a little since then, but not within distant reach of those lovers\nand makers of beauty from whose hearts and hands the Gothic cathedrals\ncame.  Progress in history has lain in the power of man to remember and\nso to accumulate for general use the discoveries, both material and\nethical, of many individuals; it has lain in man's increasing\ninformation about the universe, in his increasing mastery over external\nnature, and in the growing integration of his social life; it has not\nlain in the production of creative personalities appearing in the\ncourse of history with ever greater sublimity of spirit and grasp of\nintellect.  Where is there a mind on earth today like Plato's?  Where\nis there a spirit today like Paul's?\n\nThe past invites us still to look back for revelations in the realm of\ncreative personality.  Some things have been done in history, like the\nsculptures of Phidias, that never have been done so well since and that\nperhaps never will be done so well again.  As for the Bible, we may\nwell look back to that.  There is no book to compare with it in the\nrealm of religion.  Most of the books we read are like the rainwater\nthat fell last night, a superficial matter, soon running off.  But the\nBible is a whole sea--the accumulated spiritual gains of ages--and to\nknow it and to love it, to go down beside it and dip into it, to feel\nits vast expanse, the currents that run through it, and the tides that\nlift it, is one of the choicest and most rewarding spiritual privileges\nthat we enjoy.  As for Jesus, it is difficult to see what this\ntwentieth century can mean by supposing that it has outgrown him.  It\nhas outgrown countless elements in his generation and many forms of\nthought which he shared with his generation, but it never will outgrow\nhis spirit, his faith in God, his principles of life: \"Our Father who\nart in heaven, Hallowed by thy name;\" \"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God\nwith all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,\nand with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself;\" \"It is not the\nwill of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones\nshould perish;\" \"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples,\nif ye have love one to another;\" \"If any man would be first, he shall\nbe last of all, and servant of all;\" \"All things therefore whatsoever\nye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them;\"\n\"Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you;\" \"Thy will be\ndone, as in heaven, so on earth.\"  Take principles like these, set them\nafire in a flaming life the like of which has never come to earth, and\nwe have in Jesus a revelation of the spiritual world which is not going\nto be outgrown.  Still for the Christian he is Saviour and Lord, and\nacross the centuries in his face shines the light of the knowledge of\nthe glory of God.\n\n\nIV\n\nProgress, therefore, intelligently apprehended, does not involve that\nflippant irreverence for the past that so often is associated with it.\nIt offers no encouragement to the chase after vagaries in which so many\nmoderns indulge, as though all that is old were belated and all that is\nnovel were true.  The idea of progress has led more than one eager mind\nto think that the old religions were outgrown; that they were the\nbelated leftovers of a bygone age and were not for modern minds; that a\nnew religion fitted to our new needs alone would do.  Suppose, however,\nthat one should say: The English language is an archaic affair; it has\ngrown like Topsy, by chance; it has carried along with it the forms of\nthinking of outgrown generations; it is not scientific; what we need is\na new language built to order to meet our wants.  In answer one must\nacknowledge that the English language is open to very serious\ncriticism, that one can never tell from the way a word is spelled how\nit is going to be pronounced, nor from the way it is pronounced how it\nis going to be spelled.  One must agree that the English language makes\none phrase do duty for many different meanings.  When two people\nquarrel, they make up; before the actor goes upon the stage, he makes\nup; the preacher goes into his study to make up his sermon; when we do\nwrong we try to make up for it; and the saucy lad in school behind his\nteacher's back makes up a face.  The English language is fearfully and\nwonderfully made.  But merely because the English language has such\nungainly developments, we are not likely to surrender it and adopt\ninstead a modern language made to order, like Esperanto.  Say what one\nwill about English, it is the speech in which our poets have sung and\nour prophets have prophesied and our seers have dreamed dreams.  If any\ndo not like it they may get a new one, but most of us will stay where\nwe still can catch the accents of the master spirits who have spoken in\nour tongue.  There are words in the English language that no Esperanto\nwords ever can take the place of: home and honour and love and God,\nwords that have been sung about and prayed over and fought for by our\nsires for centuries, and that come to us across the ages with\naccumulated meanings, like caskets full of jewels.  Surely we are not\ngoing to give up the English language.  Progress does not mean\nsurrendering it, but developing it.\n\nWe shall not give up Christianity.  It has had ungainly developments;\nit does need reformation; many elements in it are pitiably belated;\nbut, for all that, the profoundest need of the world is real\nChristianity, the kind of life the Master came to put into the hearts\nof men.  Progress does not mean breaking away from it, but going deeper\ninto it.\n\nHere, then, are the three perils which tempt the believer in progress:\na silly underestimate of the tremendous force of human sin, which\nwithstands all real advance; superficial reliance upon social\npalliatives to speed the convalescence of the world, when only radical\ncures will do; flippant irreverence toward the past, when, as a matter\nof fact, the light we have for the future shines upon us from behind.\nHe who most believes in progress needs most to resist its temptations.\n\n\n\n[1] James H. Snowden: Is the World Growing Better?  pp. 41-42.\n\n[2] Francis Turner Palgrave: Faith and Light in the Latter Days.\n\n[3] George Hakewill: An Apologie of the Power and Providence of God in\nthe Government of the World, or An Examination and Censure of the\nCommon Errour Touching Natures Perpetuall and Universall Decay.\n\n[4] W. E. H. Lecky: History of European Morals from Augustus to\nCharlemagne, Vol. II, p. 9.\n\n[5] C. G. Montefiore: Some Elements of the Religious Teaching of Jesus\nAccording to the Synoptic Gospels, p. 133.\n\n[6] Gilbert Murray: Tradition and Progress, Chapter I, Religio\nGrammatici, IV, pp. 19-20.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE VI\n\nPROGRESS AND GOD\n\nI\n\nWe may well begin our final lecture, on the interplay between the idea\nof progress and the idea of God, by noting that only faith in God can\nsatisfy man's craving for spiritual stability amid change.  The central\nelement in the conception of a progressive world is that men's thoughts\nand lives have changed, are changing and will change, that nothing\ntherefore is settled in the sense of being finally formulated, that\ncreation has never said its last word on any subject or landed its last\nhammer blow on any task.  Such an outlook on life, instead of being\nexhilarating, is to many disquieting in the extreme.  In particular it\nis disquieting in religion, one of whose functions has always been to\nprovide stability, to teach men amid the transient to see the eternal.\nIf in a changing world religious thought changes too, if in that realm\nalso new answers are given to old questions and new questions rise that\nnever have been answered before, if forms of faith in which men once\ntrusted are outgrown, man's unsettlement seems to be complete.  The\nwhole world then is like a huge kaleidoscope turning round and round\nand, as it turns, the manifold elements in human experience, even its\nreligious doctrines and practices, arrange and rearrange themselves in\nendless permutations.  How then in such a world can religion mean to us\nwhat it has meant to the saints who of old, amid a shaken world, have\nsung:\n\n  \"Change and decay in all around I see;\n  O Thou, Who changest not, abide with me!\"\n\n\nThis fear of the unsettling effects of the idea of progress accounts\nfor most of the resentment against it in the realm of theology, and for\nthe desperate endeavours which perennially are made to congeal the\nChristian movement at some one stage and to call that stage final.\nStability, however, can never be achieved by resort to such reactionary\ndogmatism.  What one obtains by that method is not stability but\nstagnation, and the two, though often confused, are utterly different.\nStagnation is like a pool, stationary, finished, and without\nprogressive prospects.  A river, however, has another kind of\nsteadfastness altogether.  It is not stationary; it flows; it is never\ntwice the same and its enlarging prospects as it widens and deepens in\nits course are its glory.  Nevertheless, the Hudson and the Mississippi\nand the Amazon are among the most stable and abiding features which\nnature knows.  They will probably outlast many mountains.  They will\ncertainly outlast any pool.\n\nThe spiritual stability which we may have in a progressive world is of\nthis latter sort, if we believe in the living God.  It is so much more\ninspiring than the stagnation of the dogmatist that one wonders how any\none, seeing both, could choose the inferior article in which to repose\nhis trust.  Consider, for example, the development of the idea of God\nhimself, the course of which through the Bible we briefly traced in a\nprevious lecture.  From Sinai to Calvary--was ever a record of\nprogressive revelation more plain or more convincing?  The development\nbegins with Jehovah disclosed in a thunder-storm on a desert mountain,\nand it ends with Christ saying: \"God is a Spirit: and they that worship\nhim must worship in spirit and truth;\" it begins with a war-god leading\nhis partisans to victory and it ends with men saying, \"God is love; and\nhe that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him;\" it\nbegins with a provincial deity loving his tribe and hating its enemies\nand it ends with the God of the whole earth worshiped by \"a great\nmultitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all\ntribes and peoples and tongues;\" it begins with a God who commands the\nslaying of the Amalekites, \"both man and woman, infant and suckling,\"\nand it ends with a Father whose will it is that not \"one of these\nlittle ones should perish;\" it begins with God's people standing afar\noff from his lightnings and praying that he might not speak to them\nlest they die and it ends with men going into their inner chambers and,\nhaving shut the door, praying to their Father who is in secret.  Here\nis no pool; here is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of\nGod.\n\nConsider as well the course of the idea of God after the close of the\nNew Testament canon.  The Biblical conception of God in terms of\nrighteous and compassionate personal will went out into a world of\nthought where Greek metaphysics was largely in control.  There God was\nconceived in terms of substance, as the ontological basis and ground of\nall existence--immutable, inscrutable, unqualified pure being.  These\ntwo ideas, God as personal will, and God as metaphysical substance,\nnever perfectly coalescing, flowed together.  In minds like St.\nAugustine's one finds them both.  God as pure being and God as gracious\nand righteous personal will--St. Augustine accepted both ideas but\nnever harmonized them.  Down through Christian history one can see\nthese two conceptions complementing each other, each balancing the\nother's eccentricities.  The Greek idea runs out toward pantheism in\nSpinoza and Hegel.  The Biblical idea runs out toward deism in Duns\nScotus and Calvin.  In the eighteenth century an extreme form of deism\nheld the field and God, as personal will, was conceived as the Creator,\nwho in a dim and distant past had made all things.  In the nineteenth\ncentury the thought of God swung back to terms of immanence, and God,\nwho had been crowded out of his world, came flooding in as the abiding\nlife of all of it.\n\nAs one contemplates a line of development like this, he must be aware\nthat, while change is there, it is not aimless, discontinuous, chaotic\nchange.  The riverbed in which this stream of thought flows is stable\nand secure; the whole development is controlled by man's abiding\nspiritual need of God and God's unceasing search for man.  One feels\nabout it as he might about man's varying, developing methods of telling\nthe time of day.  Men began by noting roughly the position of the sun\nor the length of shadows; they went on to make sun-dials, then\nwater-clocks, then sand-glasses; then weight-driven clocks were\nblunderingly tried and, later, watches, used first as toys, so little\nwere they to be relied upon.  The story of man's telling of the time of\nday is a story of progressive change, but it does not lack stability.\nThe sun and stars and the revolution of the earth abide.  The changes\nin man's telling of the time have been simply the unfolding of an\nabiding relationship between man and his world.\n\nSo the development of man's religious ideas from early, crude\nbeginnings until now is not a process which one would wish to stop at\nany point in order to achieve infallible security.  The movement is not\nhaphazard and discontinuous change, like disparate particles in a\nkaleidoscope falling together in new but vitally unrelated ways.  Upon\nthe contrary, its course is a continuous path which can be traced,\nrecovered in thought, conceived as a whole.  We can see where our ideas\ncame from, what now they are, and in what direction they probably will\nmove.  The stability is in the process itself, arising out of the\nabiding relationships of man with the eternal.\n\nIndeed, the endeavour to achieve stability by methods which alone can\nbring stagnation, the endeavor, that is, to hit upon dogmatic finality\nin opinion, is of all things in religion probably the most disastrous\nin its consequence.  Until recent times when reform movements invaded\nMohammedanism and higher criticism tackled the problem of the Koran,\none could see this achievement of stagnation in Islam in all its\ninglorious success.  The Koran was regarded as having been infallibly\nwritten, word for word, in heaven before ever it came to earth.  The\nKoran therefore was a book of inerrant and changeless opinion.  But the\nKoran enshrines the best theological and ethical ideas of Arabia at the\ntime when it was written: God was an oriental monarch, ruling in\nheaven; utter submission to the fate which he decreed was the one law\nof human relationship with him; and on earth slavery and polygamy and\nconversion of unbelievers by force were recognized as right.  The Koran\nwas ahead of its day, but having been by a theory of inspiration\npetrified into artificial finality it became the enemy of all opinions\nwhich would pass beyond its own.\n\nWhen, now, one contrasts Mohammedanism with Christianity, one finds an\nimportant difference.  For all our temptation, succumbed to by\nmultitudes, to make the Bible a Koran, Christianity has had a\nprogressive revelation.  In the Bible one can find all the ideas and\ncustoms which Mohammedanism has approved and for which it now is hated:\nits oriental deity decreeing fates, its use of force to destroy\nunbelievers, its patriarchal polygamy, and its slave systems.  All\nthese things, from which we now send missionaries to convert\nMohammedans, are in our Bible, but in the Bible they are not final.\nThey are ever being superseded.  The revelation is progressive.  The\nidea of God grows from oriental kingship to compassionate fatherhood;\nthe use of force gives way to the appeals of love; polygamy is\ndisplaced by monogamy; slavery never openly condemned, even when the\nNew Testament closes, is being underminded [Transcriber's note:\nundermined?] by ideas which, like dynamite, in the end will blast to\npieces its foundations.  We are continually running upon passages like\nthis: \"It was said to them of old time, . . . but I say unto you;\"\n\"God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by\ndivers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days\nspoken unto us in his Son;\" \"The times of ignorance therefore God\noverlooked; but now he commandeth men that they should all everywhere\nrepent;\" and over the doorway out of the New Testament into the\nChristian centuries that followed is written this inscription: \"The\nspirit of truth . . . shall guide you into all the truth.\"  In a word,\nfinality in the Koran is behind--it lies in the treasured concepts of\n600 A. D.--but finality in the Bible is ahead.  We are moving toward\nit.  It is too great for us yet to apprehend.  Our best thoughts are\nthrown out in its direction but they do not exhaust its meaning.\n\n  \"Our little systems have their day;\n    They have their day and cease to be;\n    They are but broken lights of thee,\n  And thou, O Lord, art more than they.\"\n\n\nSuch is the exultant outlook of a Christian believer on a progressive\nworld.  If, however, one is to have this exultant outlook, he must\ndeeply believe in the living God and in the guidance of his Spirit.\nWhat irreligion means at this point is not fully understood by most\nunbelieving folk because most unbelievers do not think through to a\nconclusion the implications of their own skepticism.  We may well be\nthankful even in the name of religion for a few people like Bertrand\nRussell.  He is not only irreligious but he is intelligently\nirreligious, and, what is more, he possesses the courage to say frankly\nand fully what irreligion really means:\n\n\n\"That Man is the product of causes which have no prevision of the end\nthey were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears,\nhis loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental\ncollocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of\nthought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave;\nthat all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the\ninspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined\nto extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole\ntemple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the\ndebris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond\ndispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects\nthem can hope to stand.  Only within the scaffolding of these truths,\nonly on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's\nhabitation henceforth be safely built.\" [1]  Such is the outlook on\nhuman life of a frank and thoroughgoing irreligion, and there is\nnothing exhilarating about it.  All progress possible in such a setting\nis a good deal like a horse-race staged in a theatre, where the horses\ndo indeed run furiously, but where we all know well that they are not\ngetting anywhere.  There is a moving floor beneath them, and it is only\nthe shifting of the scenery that makes them seem to go.  Is human\nhistory like that?  Is progress an illusion?  Is it all going to end as\nBertrand Russell says?  Those who believe in the living God are certain\nof the contrary, for stability amid change is the gift of a\nprogressive, religious faith.\n\n\nII\n\nIt must be evident, however, to any one acquainted with popular ideas\nof God that if in a progressive world we thus are to maintain a vital\nconfidence in the spiritual nature of creative reality and so rejoice\nin the guidance of the Spirit amid change, we must win through in our\nthinking to a very much greater conception of God than that to which\npopular Christianity has been accustomed.  Few passages in Scripture\nbetter deserve a preacher's attention than God's accusation against his\npeople in the 50th Psalm: \"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a\none as thyself.\"  The universal applicability of this charge is evident\nto any one who knows the history of man's religious thought.  If in the\nbeginning God did make man in his own image, man has been busy ever\nsince making God in his image, and the deplorable consequences are\neverywhere to be seen.  From idolaters, who bow down before wooden\nimages of the divine in human form, to ourselves, praying to a\nmagnified man throned somewhere in the skies, man has persistently run\nGod into his own mold.  To be sure, this tendency of man to think of\nGod as altogether such a one as ourselves is nothing to be surprised\nat.  Even when we deal with our human fellows, we read ourselves into\nour understandings of them.  A contemporary observer tells us that\nwhenever a portrait of Gladstone appeared in French papers he was made\nto look like a Frenchman, and that when he was represented in Japanese\npapers his countenance had an unmistakably Japanese cast.\n\nIf this habitual tendency to read ourselves into other people is\nevident even when we deal with human personalities, whom we can know\nwell, how can it be absent from man's thought of the eternal?  A man\nneeds only to go out on a starry night with the revelations of modern\nastronomy in his mind and to consider the one who made all this and\nwhose power sustains it, to see how utterly beyond our adequate\ncomprehension he must be.  As men in old tales used to take diffused\nsuperhumans, the genii, and by magic word bring them down into a\nstoppered bottle where they could be held in manageable form, so man\nhas taken the vastness of God and run it into a human symbol.\n\nThis persistent anthropomorphism is revealed in our religious\nceremonies.  Within Christianity itself are systems of priestcraft\nwhere the individual believer has no glad, free access to his Father's\npresence, but where his approach must be mediated by a priestly ritual,\nhis forgiveness assured by a priestly declaration, his salvation sealed\nby a priestly sacrament.  This idea that God must be approached by\nstated ceremonies came directly from thinking of God in terms of a\nhuman monarch.  No common man could walk carelessly into the presence\nof an old-time king.  There were proprieties to be observed.  There\nwere courtiers who knew the proper approach to royalty, through whom\nthe common folk would better send petitions up and from whom they would\nbetter look for favour.  So God was pictured as a human monarch with\nhis throne, his scepter, his ministering attendants.  Here on earth the\npriests were those courtiers who knew the effectual way of reaching\nhim, by whom we would best send up our prayers, through whom we would\nbest look for our salvation.  Nordau is not exaggerating when he says:\n\"When we have studied the sacrificial rites, the incantations, prayers,\nhymns, and ceremonies of religion, we have as complete a picture of the\nrelations between our ancestors and their chiefs as if we had seen them\nwith our own eyes.\" [2]\n\nOur anthropomorphism, however, reaches its most dangerous form in our\ninward imaginations of God's character.  How the pot has called the\nkettle black!  Man has read his vanities into God, until he has\nsupposed that singing anthems to God's praise might flatter him as it\nwould flatter us.  Man has read his cruelties into God, and what in\nmoments of vindictiveness and wrath we would like to do our enemies we\nhave supposed Eternal God would do to his.  Man has read his religious\npartisanship into God; he who holds Orion and the Pleiades in his\nleash, the Almighty and Everlasting God, before whom in the beginning\nthe morning stars sang together, has been conceived as though he were a\nBaptist or a Methodist, a Presbyterian or an Anglican.  Man has read\nhis racial pride into God; nations have thought themselves his chosen\npeople above all his other children because they seemed so to\nthemselves.  The centuries are sick with a god made in man's image, and\nall the time the real God has been saying, \"Thou thoughtest that I was\naltogether such a one as thyself.\"\n\nThe unhappy prevalence of this mental idolatry is one of the chief\ncauses for the loss of religious faith among the younger generation.\nThey have grown up in our homes and churches with their imaginations\ndwelling on a God made in man's image, and now through education they\nhave moved out into a universe so much too big for that little god of\ntheirs either to have made in the first place or to handle now that\nthey find it hard to believe in him.  Astronomers tell us that there\nare a hundred million luminous stars in our sky, and dark stars in\nunknown multitudes; that these stars range from a million to ten\nmillion miles in diameter; that some of them are so vast that were they\nbrought as close to us as our sun is they would fill the entire\nhorizon; and that these systems are scattered through the stellar\nspaces at distances so incredible that, were some hardy discoverer to\nseek our planet in the midst of them, it would be like looking for a\nneedle lost somewhere on the western prairies.  The consequence is\ninevitable: a vast progressive universe plus an inadequate God means\nthat in many minds faith in God goes to pieces.\n\n\nIII\n\nOne of the profoundest needs of the Church, therefore, in this new and\ngrowing world, is the achievement of such worthy ways of thinking about\nGod and presenting him as will make the very idea of him a help to\nfaith and not a stumbling-block to the faithful.  In the attainment of\nthat purpose we need for one thing to approach the thought of God from\nan angle which to popular Christianity is largely unfamiliar, although\nit is not unfamiliar in the historic tradition of the Church.  Too\nexclusively have we clung to the mental categories and the resultant\nphraseology which have grown up around the idea of God as an individual\nlike ourselves.  The reasons for the prevalence of this individualized\nconception of deity are obvious.  First, as we have seen, the growth of\nthe idea of God in Hebrew-Christian thought moved out from a very\nclearly visualized figure on a mountain-top to those expanded and\nspiritualized forms which glorified the later stages of the Biblical\ndevelopment; and, second, every one of us in his personal religious\nexperience and thought recapitulates the same process, starting as a\nchild with God conceived in very human terms and moving out to expanded\nand sublimated forms of that childish conception.  Whether, then, we\nconsider the source of our idea of God in the Biblical tradition or in\nour own private experience, we see that it is rooted in and springs up\nout of a very human conception of him, and that our characteristic\nwords about him, attitudes toward him, and imaginations of him, are\nassociated with these childlike origins.  Popular Christianity,\ntherefore, approaches God with the regulative idea of a human\nindividual in its mind, and, while popular Christianity would insist\nthat God is much more than that, it still starts with that, and the\nenterprise of stretching the conception is only relatively successful.\nEven when it is successful the result must be a God who is achieved by\nstretching out a man.\n\nIn this situation the only help for many is, for the time being, to\nleave this endeavour to approach God by way of an expanded and\nsublimated human individual and to approach God, instead, by way of the\nCreative Power from which this amazing universe and all that is within\nit have arisen.  Man's deepest question concerns the nature of the\nCreative Power from which all things and persons have come.  In\ncreation are we dealing with the kind of power which in ordinary life\nwe recognize as physical, or with the kind which we recognize as\nspiritual?  With these two sorts of power we actually deal and, so far\nas we can see, the ultimate reality which has expressed itself in them\nmust be akin to the one or to the other or to both.  _He who is\nconvinced that the Creative Power from which all things have come is\nspiritual believes in God_.  I have seen that simple statement lift the\nburden of doubt from minds utterly perplexed and usher befogged spirits\nout into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.  For they did\nnot believe that the Creative Power was dynamic dirt, going it blind;\nthey did believe that the Creative Power was akin to what we know as\nspirit, but so accustomed were they to the Church's narrower\nanthropomorphism that they did not suppose that this approach was a\nlegitimate avenue for the soul's faith in God.\n\nNevertheless, it is a legitimate avenue and in the history of the\nChurch many are the souls that have traveled it.  The basis for all\nmature conceptions of God lies here: that the Power from whom all life\nproceeds wells up in two forms.  One is physical; we can see it, touch\nit, weigh it, analyze and measure it.  The other is spiritual; it is\ncharacter, conscience, intelligence, purpose, love; we cannot see it,\nnor touch it, nor weigh it, nor analyze it.  We ourselves did not make\neither of these two expressions of life.  They came up together out of\nthe Creative Reality from which we came.  When a man thinks of the\nPower from which all life proceeds, he must say at least this: that\nwhen it wells up in us it wells up in two forms and one of them is\nspirit.  How, then, when we think of that Power, can we leave spirit\nout?  At the heart of the eternal is the fountain of that spiritual\nlife which in myself I know.\n\nThis thought of God does not start, then, with a magnified man in the\nheavens; this thought of God starts with the universe itself vibrant\nwith life, tingling with energy, where, when scientists try to analyze\nmatter, they have to trace it back from molecules to atoms, from atoms\nto electrons, and from electrons to that vague spirituelle thing which\nthey call a \"strain in the ether,\" a universe where there is manifestly\nno such thing as dead matter, but where everything is alive.  When one\nthinks of the Power that made this, that sustains this, that flows like\nblood through the veins of this, one cannot easily think that\nphysicalness is enough to predicate concerning him.  If the physical\nadequately could have revealed that Power, there never would have been\nanything but the physical to reveal him.  The fact that spiritual life\nis here is evidence that it takes spiritual life fully to display the\ntruth about creation's reality.  As an old mystic put it: \"God sleeps\nin the stone, he dreams in the animal, he wakes in man!\"\n\nIt was this approach to God which saved the best spiritual life of the\nnineteenth century.  For in the eighteenth century Christianity came\nnearer to being driven out of business than ever in her history before.\nShe had believed in a carpenter god who had made the world and\noccasionally tinkered with it in events which men called miracles.  But\nnew knowledge made that carpenter god impossible.  Area after area\nwhere he had been supposed to operate was closed to him by the\ndiscovery of natural law until at last even comets were seen to be\nlaw-abiding and he was escorted clean to the edge of the universe and\nbowed out altogether.  Nobody who has not read the contemporary\nliterature of the eighteenth century can know what dryness of soul\nresulted.\n\nMan, however, cannot live without God.  Our fathers had to have God\nback again.  But if God were to come back again he could not return as\nan occasional tinkerer; he had to come as the life in all that lives,\nthe indwelling presence throughout his creation, whose ways of working\nare the laws, so that he penetrates and informs them all.  No absentee\nlandlord could be welcomed back, but if God came as the resident soul\nof all creation, men could comprehend that.  And he did come back that\nway.  His return is the glory of the nineteenth century.  In the best\nvisions of the century's prophets that glory shines.\n\n\nMRS. BROWNING:\n\n  \"Earth's crammed with heaven,\n  And every common bush afire with God:\n  But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.\"\n\n\nTENNYSON:\n\n  \"Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and\n      Spirit with Spirit can meet--\n  Closer is He than breathing, and nearer\n      than hands and feet.\"\n\n\nCOLERIDGE:\n\n  \"Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!\n  All conscious presence of the Universe!\n  Nature's vast ever-acting Energy!\"\n\n\nWORDSWORTH:\n\n          \"a sense sublime\n  Of something far more deeply interfused,\n  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,\n  And the round ocean and the living air\n  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;\n  A motion and a spirit, that impels\n  All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,\n  And rolls through all things.\"\n\n\nCARLYLE:\n\n\"Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest\nprovince thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that\nthrough every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every\nLiving Soul, the glory of a present God still beams.  But Nature, which\nis the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from\nthe foolish.\"\n\n\nMoreover, this idea of God as the Creative Power conceived in spiritual\nterms need not lose any of the intimate meanings which have inhered in\nmore personal thoughts of him and which are expressed in the Bible's\nnames for him: Father, Mother, Bridegroom, Husband, Friend.  There is\nindeed this danger in the approach which we have been describing, that\nwe may conceive God as so dispersed everywhere that we cannot find him\nanywhere and that at last, so diffused, he will lose the practical\nvalue on account of which we want him.  For we do desire a God who is\nlike ourselves--enough like ourselves so that he can understand us and\ncare for us and enter into our human problems.  We do want a human side\nto God.  A man who had seen in Henry Drummond the most beautiful\nexhibition of God's Spirit that he had ever experienced said that after\nHenry Drummond died he always prayed up to God by way of Drummond.  We\nmake our most vital approaches to God in that way and we always have,\nfrom the time we prayed to God through our fathers and mothers until\nnow, when we find God in Christ.  We want in God a personality that can\nanswer ours, and we can have it without belittling in the least his\ngreatness.\n\nI know a man who says that one of the turning points of his spiritual\nexperience came on a day when for the first time it dawned on him that\nhe never had seen his mother.  Now, his mother was the major molding\ninfluence in his life.  He could have said about her what Longfellow\nsaid in a letter to his mother, written when he was twenty-one.  \"For\nme,\" wrote Longfellow, \"a line from my mother is more efficacious than\nall the homilies preached in Lent; and I find more incitement to virtue\nin merely looking at your handwriting than in a whole volume of ethics\nand moral discourses.\"  So this man would have felt about the pervasive\ninfluence of his mother.  Then it dawned on him one day that he never\nhad seen her.  To be sure, he had seen the bodily instrument by which\nshe had been able somehow to express herself through look and word and\ngesture, but his mother herself, her thoughts, her consciousness, her\nlove, her spirit, he never had seen and he never would see.  She was\nthe realest force in his life, but she was invisible.  When they talked\ntogether they signalled to each other out of the unseen where they\ndwelt.  They both were as invisible as God.  Moreover, while his mother\nwas only a human, personal spirit, there was a kind of omnipresence in\nher so far as he was concerned, and he loved her and she loved him\neverywhere, though he never had seen her and never could.  If spiritual\nlife even in its human form can take on such meanings, we need not\nthink of God as an expanded individual in order to love him, be loved\nby him, and company with him as an unseen friend.  Let a man once begin\nwith God as the universal spiritual Presence and then go on to see the\ndivine quality of that Presence revealed in Christ, and there is no\nlimit to the deepening and heightening of his estimation of God's\ncharacter, except the limits of his own moral imagination.\n\n\nIV\n\nWith many minds the difficulty of achieving an idea of God adequate for\nour new universe will not be met by any such intellectual shift of\nemphasis as we have suggested.  Not anthropomorphic theology so much as\necclesiasticism is the major burden on their thinking about deity.  Two\nconceptions of the Church are in conflict to-day in modern\nProtestantism, and one of the most crucial problems of America's\nreligious life in this next generation is the decision as to which of\nthese two ideas of the Church shall triumph.  We may call one the\nexclusive and the other the inclusive conception of the Church.  The\nexclusive conception of the Church lies along lines like these: that we\nare the true Church; that we have the true doctrines and the true\npractices as no other Church possesses them; that we are constituted as\na Church just because we have these uniquely true opinions and\npractices; that all we in the Church agree about these opinions and\nthat when we joined the Church we gave allegiance to them; that nobody\nhas any business to belong to our Church unless he agrees with us; that\nif there are people outside the Church who disagree, they ought to be\nkept outside and if there are people in the Church who come to\ndisagree, they ought to be put outside.  That is the exclusive idea of\nthe Church, and there are many who need no further description of it\nfor they were brought up in it and all their youthful religious life\nwas surrounded by its rigid sectarianism.\n\nOver against this conception is the inclusive idea of the Church, which\nruns along lines like these: that the Christian Church ought to be the\norganizing center for all the Christian life of a community; that a\nChurch is not based upon theological uniformity but upon devotion to\nthe Lord Jesus, to the life with God and man for which he stood, and to\nthe work which he gave us to do; that wherever there are people who\nhave that spiritual devotion, who possess that love, who want more of\nit, who desire to work and worship with those of kindred Christian\naspirations, they belong inside the family of the Christian Church.\nThe inclusive idea of the Church looks out upon our American\ncommunities and sees there, with all their sin, spiritual life\nunexpressed and unorganized, good-will and aspiration and moral power\nunharnessed and going to waste, and it longs to cry so that the whole\ncommunity can hear it.  Come, all men of Christian good-will, let us\nwork together for the Lord of all good life!  That is the inclusive\nidea of the Church.  It desires to be the point of incandescence where,\nregardless of denominationalism or theology, the Christian life of the\ncommunity bursts into flame.\n\nAs between these two conceptions there hardly can be any question that\nthe first idea so far has prevailed.  Our endlessly split and shivered\nProtestantism bears sufficient witness to the influence of the\nexclusive idea of the Church.  The disastrous consequences of this in\nmany realms are evident, and one result lies directly in our argument's\npath.  An exclusive Church narrows the idea of God.  Almost inevitably\nGod comes to be conceived as the head of the exclusive Church, the\norigin of its uniquely true doctrine, the director of its uniquely\ncorrect practices, so that the activities of God outside the Church\ngrow dim, and more and more he is conceived as operating through his\nfavourite organization as nowhere else in all the universe.  In\nparticular the idea grows easily in the soil of an exclusive Church\nthat God is not operative except in people who recognize him and that\nthe world outside such conscious recognition is largely empty of his\nactivity and barren of his grace.  God tends, in such thinking, to\nbecome cooped up in the Church, among the people who consciously have\nacknowledged him.  What wonder that multitudes of our youth, waking up\nto the facts about our vast and growing universe, conclude that it is\ntoo big to be managed by the tribal god of a Protestant sect!\n\nThe achievement of a worthy idea of God involves, therefore, the\nability to discover God in all life, outside the Church as well as\nwithin, and in people who do not believe in him nor recognize him as\nwell as in those who do.  Let us consider for a moment the principle\nwhich is here involved.  Many forces and persons serve us when we do\nnot recognize them and do not know the truth about them.  This\nexperience of being ministered to by persons whom we do not know goes\nback even to the maternal care that nourished us before we were born.\nNo mother waits to be recognized before she serves her child.  We are\ntempted to think of persons as ministering to us only when the service\nis consciously received and acknowledged but, as a matter of fact,\nservice continually comes to us from sources we are unaware of and do\nnot think about.\n\n  \"Unnumbered comforts to my soul\n  Thy tender care bestowed,\n  Before my infant heart conceived\n  From whom those comforts flowed.\"\n\n\nThis principle applies to mankind's relationship with the physical\nuniverse.  Through many generations mankind utterly misconceived it.\nThey thought the earth was flat, the heavens a little way above; yet,\nfor all that, the sun warmed them and the rain refreshed them and the\nstars guided their wandering boats.  The physical universe did not wait\nuntil men knew all the truth about it before being useful to men and at\nlast, when the truth came and the glory of this vast and mobile cosmos\ndawned on mankind, men discovered the facts about forces which, though\nunknown and unacknowledged, long had served them.\n\nThis same principle applies also to man's relationship with social\ninstitutions and social securities that have sustained us from our\ninfancy.  If a boy knows that there is a Constitution of the United\nStates, he does not think about it.  Then maturity comes and he begins\nvividly to understand the sacrifices which our forefathers underwent in\nbuilding up the institutions that have nourished us.  He recognizes\nforces and factors of which he had been unconscious but whose value,\nlong unacknowledged, he now gratefully can estimate.\n\nThis same principle also applies to our unconscious indebtedness to\npeople who have helped us but whom we have not known.  This is a far\nfiner world because of souls who have been here through whom God has\nshined like the sun through eastern windows, but we can go on year\nafter year absorbing unconsciously the influence of these spirits\nwithout ever knowing them.  I lived for twelve years in a community to\nwhich in its early days a young minister had come, and where for forty\nyears he stood as the central influence in the town's life.  He brought\nit up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  As was said of Joseph\nin Potiphar's prison, \"Whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of\nit.\"  The height of his mind, the unselfishness of his spirit, the\nliberality of his thought, made all the people gladly acclaim him as\nthe foremost citizen of the town.  There is a quality in the town's\nlife yet which never would have been there had it not been for him.\nSometimes yet his spirit must brood above that community which for\nforty years he cherished and must say to people whom he never knew, but\nwho are being blessed by the benedictory influence of his life, what\nJehovah said to Cyrus the Persian, \"I girded thee, though thou hast not\nknown me.\"\n\nSo, from multitudinous sources services flow in upon us that we do not\nrecognize.  It should be impossible then to think that God never\ntouches men until men welcome him.  Some people seem to suppose that\nGod ministers to men, saves them, transforms them, raises them up and\nliberates them only when they confessedly receive him.  That cannot be\ntrue of the God of the New Testament.  He is too magnanimous for that.\nJesus says a man is unworthy of his discipleship when he serves only\nthe friends who are responsive, that we must serve the hostile and\nungrateful, too.  Can it be that God is less good than Jesus said we\nought to be?  We in the churches have drawn our little lines too tight.\nWe have been tempted to divide mankind into two classes, the white and\nthe black: in the Church the white, the saved, who recognize God;\noutside, the black, the unsaved, the ungodly who do not recognize him.\nBy that division we sometimes seem to imply that those outside the\nChurch are outside the reach of God's transforming grace and power.  We\nare tempted to look for God's activity chiefly, if not altogether,\ninside the organization that avows him.  But that cannot be true.  He\ncomes in like the sun through every chink and crevice where he can find\na way of entrance.  He does not wait to be welcomed.  He does not\ninsist on being consciously recognized before he enters a man's life.\nRather, through any door or window left unwittingly ajar where he may\nsteal in, even though unobserved, to lift and liberate a life, there\nthe God of the New Testament will come--\"the light which lighteth every\nman coming into the world.\"\n\nConsider, for illustration, the many people in this generation who have\ngiven up active relationship with the Church and assured faith in God.\nThey may even call themselves agnostics.  Would it not be true to speak\nto them like this: You have not succeeded in getting rid of God.  There\nis a flame in your heart that will not go out.  You try to say there is\nno God and then you go out under the stars at night and you begin to\nwonder how such a vast, law-abiding universe could come by accident, as\nif a man were to throw a font of type on the floor and by chance it\nshould arrange itself into a play of Shakespeare.  Strange universe,\nwithout God!  You try to say there is no God and you pick up a book: a\nlife of Phillips Brooks or David Livingstone or Francis Xavier, and you\nbegin to wonder that, amid these whirling stars and solar systems, a\nrace of men should have emerged with spiritual life like that which we\npossess, with ideals that beckon us, conscience that warns us and\nremorse that punishes us!  You cannot easily think that this long\nspiritual struggle and achievement of the race is an accident struck\noff unwittingly like sparks from falling stones in a material world\nwithout abiding meaning.  Or you try to say there is no God, and then\nyou are married and your first baby is born and there wells up in your\nheart that purest love that man can know, the feeling of a parent for a\nlittle child.  And you cannot help wondering how a man can walk about\nthe world with love like that in the center of his life, thinking that\nthere is nothing to correspond with it in the reality from which his\nheart and his baby came.  You try to say there is no God, and then you\nbegin to grow old and the friends you love best on earth pass away, as\nCarlyle said his mother did, like \"the last pale rim or sickle of the\nmoon which had once been full, sinking in the dark seas.\"  You cannot\nhelp wondering whether great souls can be so at the mercy of a few\nparticles of matter that when these are disturbed the spirit is plunged\ninto oblivion!  You never really have gotten rid of God.  There is a\nflame in the center of your heart which you cannot put out.  If there\nwere no God it would be easier to disbelieve in him than it is.  You\ncannot get rid of him because the best in you is God in you.  The flame\nis he and there in the center of your life, recognized or unrecognized,\nhe is burning up as best he can.\n\nThis principle of God's unrecognized presence applies to a special\ngroup of people that has been growing rapidly in the last few years:\nthe men and women who give themselves with high spirit to human service\nin science or philanthropy but who never think of attributing their\nservice or love of truth to religious motives.  To this group belong\nmany of our scientists.  They give themselves no rest, seeking for\ntruth which will help human need.  In obscure and forgotten\nlaboratories to-day they search for remedies for ancient, lamentable\nills.  They make it a point of professional honour not to take profit\nfor themselves when they have succeeded, but to give freely to the\nworld the knowledge they have achieved.  The pulpit has often quarreled\nwith the scientists.  Let the pulpit honour them for their amazing\noutpouring of service to the world.  To this group also belong many of\nour philanthropists, to whom sacrifice for the common weal has become\nthe moral equivalent of war.  Yet often these men and women, useful\npublic servants of the generation as they are, do not know God.  They\nare great spirits.  Let us not pretend that they are not.  They are\nmaking a deep and beneficent impress upon their own times, and our sons\nand our sons' sons will rise up to call them blessed; yet they do not\nknow God.  What are we to say of such men and women?  You know what\nsome people do say about them.  They use them as arguments against\nreligion.  They say, See these fine men living without God.  That is an\nutter fallacy.  They are not living without God.  They only think they\nare.  They are the supreme examples of the work of the unrecognized\nGod.  One wishes that those men and women would recognize God.  God can\ndo much more through responsive than through unresponsive lives.  But\nwe may not say that they are living without God.  There, in the center\nof their life, in the ideals they work for, in the service they render,\nin the love they lavish, in the mission that has mastered them, there\n_is_ God.\n\nSome time ago I wandered down Broadway, in the small hours of the\nmorning, with one of the prominent citizens of the community.  At the\nheart of his life is the passion to be of use.  Because his character\nis stalwart and his ability great, the scope of his service is far\nwider than the capacity of most of us.  Amid the hurrying crowds and\nthe flashing lights of Broadway we talked together hour after hour\nabout God and immortality.  He said that he could not believe in God.\nHe wistfully wished that he could.  He was sure that it must add\nsomething beautiful to human life, but for himself he thought that\nthere was no possibility except to live a high, clean, serviceable life\nuntil he should fall on sleep.  All the way home that night I thought\nof other people whom I know.  Here is a man who believes in God.  He\nalways has believed in God.  He was brought up to believe in God and he\nhas never felt with poignant sympathy enough the abysmal, immedicable\nwoes of human-kind to have his faith disturbed.  He never has had any\ndoubts.  The war passed over him and left him as it found him.  The\nfiercest storm that ever raged over mankind did not touch the surface\nof his pool of sheltered faith.  How could one help comparing him with\nmy friend who could not believe?  For he, in high emotion, had spoken\nof the miseries of men, of multitudes starving, of the horrors of war,\nof the poor whose lives are a long animal struggle to keep the body\nalive, of the woes that fall with such terrific incidence upon the\nvast, obscure, forgotten masses of our human-kind, and out of the very\nardour of his sympathy had cried: \"How can you believe that a good\nFather made a world like this?\"\n\nNow, I believe in God with all my heart.  But the God whom I believe in\nlikes that man.  Jesus, were he here on earth as once he was, would\nlove him.  I think Jesus would love him more than the other man who\nnever had faced human misery with sympathy enough to feel his faith\ndisturbed.  This does not mean that we ought contentedly to see men\nministered to by a God whom they do not recognize.  It is a pity to be\nserved by the Eternal Spirit of all grace and yet not know him.  In\nJean Webster's \"Daddy Long Legs,\" Jerusha Abbott in the orphanage is\nhelped by an unknown friend.  Year after year the favours flow in from\nthis friend whom she does not know.  She blossoms out into girlhood and\nyoung womanhood and still she does not know him.  One day she sees him\nand she does not recognize him.  She has always thought of him as\nlooking other than he does, and so even when she sees him she does not\nknow him.  Suppose that the story stopped there!  It would be\nintolerable to have a story end so.  To be served all one's life by a\nfriend and then not to know him when he seeks recognition is tragedy.\nSo it is tragedy when God is unrecognized, but behind that is a deeper\ntragedy still--people who believe in God but who have thoughts of him\nso narrowly ecclesiastical that they themselves do not perceive his\npresence, acknowledged or unacknowledged, in all the goodness and truth\nand beauty of the universe.\n\nSuch an enlargement of the idea of God to meet the needs of this new\nworld is one of the innermost demands of religion to-day.  When a man\nbelieves in the living God as the Creative Power in this universe,\nwhose character was revealed in Christ and who, recognized or\nunrecognized, reveals himself in every form of goodness, truth and\nbeauty which life anywhere contains, he has achieved a God adequate for\nlife.  To such a man the modern progressive outlook upon the world\nbecomes exhilarating; all real advance is a revelation of the purpose\nof this living God; and, far from being hostile to religion, our modern\ncategories furnish the noblest mental formulae in which the religious\nspirit ever had opportunity to find expression.  We who believe this\nhave no business to be modest and apologetic about it, as though upon\nthe defensive we shyly presented it to the suffrages of men.  It is a\ngospel to proclaim.  It does involve a new theology but, with\nmultitudes of eager minds in our generation, the decision no longer\nlies between an old and a new theology, but between new theology and no\ntheology.  No longer can they phrase the deepest experiences of their\nsouls with God in the outgrown categories of a static world.  In all\ntheir other thinking they live in a world deeply permeated by ideas of\nprogress, and to keep their religion in a separate compartment,\nuninfluenced by the best knowledge and hope of their day, is an\nenterprise which, whether it succeed or fail, means the death of vital\nfaith.  To take this modern, progressive world into one's mind and then\nto achieve an idea of God great enough to encompass it, until with the\nlittle gods gone and the great God come, life is full of the knowledge\nof him, as the waters cover the sea, that is alike the duty and the\nprivilege of Christian leadership to-day.\n\nIn a world which out of lowly beginnings has climbed so far and seems\nintended to go on to heights unimagined, God is our hope and in his\nname we will set up our banners.\n\n\n\n[1] Bertrand Russell: Philosophical Essays, II, The Free Man's Worship,\npp. 60-61.\n\n[2] Max Nordau: The Interpretation of History, p. 217.","title":"Christianity and Progress","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":48772}