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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16076-8.txt b/16076-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..403384e --- /dev/null +++ b/16076-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6687 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Preaching and Paganism, by Albert Parker Fitch + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Preaching and Paganism + +Author: Albert Parker Fitch + +Release Date: June 16, 2005 [EBook #16076] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREACHING AND PAGANISM *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, William Flis, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +PREACHING AND PAGANISM + + +BY + +ALBERT PARKER FITCH + +PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN AMHERST COLLEGE + + +WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR + + +THE COLLEGE COURSE AND THE PREPARATION FOR LIFE + +CAN THE CHURCH SURVIVE IN THE CHANGING ORDER? + + +PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF JAMES WESLEY +COOPER OF THE CLASS OF 1865, YALE COLLEGE + +THE FORTY-SIXTH SERIES OF THE LYMAN BEECHER LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING +IN YALE UNIVERSITY + + +NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXX + +COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS + +FIRST PUBLISHED, 1920 + + + + +THE JAMES WESLEY COOPER MEMORIAL PUBLICATION FUND + + +The present volume is the fourth work published by the Yale University +Press on the James Wesley Cooper Memorial Publication Fund. This +Foundation was established March 30, 1918, by a gift to Yale +University from Mrs. Ellen H. Cooper in memory of her husband, Rev. +James Wesley Cooper, D.D., who died in New York City, March 16, 1916. +Dr. Cooper was a member of the Class of 1865, Yale College, and for +twenty-five years pastor of the South Congregational Church of New +Britain, Connecticut. For thirty years he was a corporate member of +the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and from 1885 +until the time of his death was a Fellow of Yale University, serving +on the Corporation as one of the Successors of the Original Trustees. + + + + +TO MY WIFE + + + + +PREFACE + + +The chief, perhaps the only, commendation of these chapters is that +they pretend to no final solution of the problem which they discuss. +How to assert the eternal and objective reality of that Presence, the +consciousness of Whom is alike the beginning and the end, the motive +and the reward, of the religious experience, is not altogether clear +in an age that, for over two centuries, has more and more rejected the +transcendental ideas of the human understanding. Yet the consequences +of that rejection, in the increasing individualism of conduct which +has kept pace with the growing subjectivism of thought, are now +sufficiently apparent and the present plight of our civilization +is already leading its more characteristic members, the political +scientists and the economists, to reëxamine and reappraise the +concepts upon which it is founded. It is a similar attempt to +scrutinize and evaluate the significant aspects of the interdependent +thought and conduct of our day from the standpoint of religion which +is here attempted. Its sole and modest purpose is to endeavor to +restore some neglected emphases, to recall to spiritually minded men +and women certain half-forgotten values in the religious experience +and to add such observations regarding them as may, by good fortune, +contribute something to that future reconciling of the thought +currents and value judgments of our day to these central and precious +facts of the religious life. + +Many men and minds have contributed to these pages. Such sources of +suggestion and insight have been indicated wherever they could be +identified. In especial I must record my grateful sense of obligation +to Professor Irving Babbitt's _Rousseau and Romanticism_. The chapter +on Naturalism owes much to its brilliant and provocative discussions. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + + Preface 11 + + I. The Learner, the Doer and the Seer 15 + + II. The Children of Zion and the Sons of Greece 40 + + III. Eating, Drinking and Being Merry 72 + + IV. The Unmeasured Gulf 102 + + V. Grace, Knowledge, Virtue 131 + + VI. The Almighty and Everlasting God 157 + + VII. Worship as the Chief Approach to Transcendence 184 + + VIII. Worship and the Discipline of Doctrine 209 + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + +THE LEARNER, THE DOER AND THE SEER + + +The first difficulty which confronts the incumbent of the Lyman +Beecher Foundation, after he has accepted the appalling fact that he +must hitch his modest wagon, not merely to a star, but rather to an +entire constellation, is the delimitation of his subject. There are +many inquiries, none of them without significance, with which he might +appropriately concern himself. For not only is the profession of the +Christian ministry a many-sided one, but scales of value change +and emphases shift, within the calling itself, with our changing +civilization. The mediaeval world brought forth, out of its need, the +robed and mitered ecclesiastic; a more recent world, pursuant to its +genius, demanded the ethical idealist. Drink-sodden Georgian England +responded to the open-air evangelism of Whitefield and Wesley; the +next century found the Established Church divided against itself +by the learning and culture of the Oxford Movement. Sometimes +a philosopher and theologian, like Edwards, initiates the Great +Awakening; sometimes an emotional mystic like Bernard can arouse +all Europe and carry men, tens of thousands strong, over the Danube +and over the Hellespont to die for the Cross upon the burning sands +of Syria; sometimes it is the George Herberts, in a hundred rural +parishes, who make grace to abound through the intimate and precious +ministrations of the country parson. Let us, therefore, devote this +chapter to a review of the several aspects of the Christian ministry, +in order to set in its just perspective the one which we have chosen +for these discussions and to see why it seems to stand, for the +moment, in the forefront of importance. Our immediate question is, +Who, on the whole, is the most needed figure in the ministry today? +Is it the professional ecclesiastic, backed with the authority and +prestige of a venerable organization? Is it the curate of souls, +patient shepherd of the silly sheep? Is it the theologian, the +administrator, the prophet--who? + +One might think profitably on that first question in these very +informal days. We are witnessing a breakdown of all external forms of +authority which, while salutary and necessary, is also perilous. Not +many of us err, just now, by overmagnifying our official status. +Many of us instead are terribly at ease in Zion and might become less +assured and more significant by undertaking the subjective task of +a study in ministerial personality. "What we are," to paraphrase +Emerson, "speaks so loud that men cannot hear what we say." Every +great calling has its characteristic mental attitude, the unwritten +code of honor of the group, without a knowledge of which one could +scarcely be an efficient or honorable practitioner within it. One of +the perplexing and irritating problems of the personal life of the +preacher today has to do with the collision between the secular +standards of his time, this traditional code of his class, and +the requirements of his faith. Shall he acquiesce in the smug +conformities, the externalized procedures of average society, somewhat +pietized, and join that large company of good and ordinary people, +of whom Samuel Butler remarks, in _The Way of All Flesh_, that they +would be "equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, +or at seeing it practised?" There are ministers who do thus content +themselves with being merely superrespectable. Shall he exalt the +standards of his calling, accentuate the speech and dress, the code +and manners of his group, the historic statements of his faith, at the +risk of becoming an official, a "professional"? Or does he possess the +insight, and can he acquire the courage, to follow men like Francis +of Assisi or Father Damien and adopt the Christian ethic and thus join +that company of the apostles and martyrs whose blood is the seed of +the church? A good deal might be said today on the need of this sort +of personal culture in the ministerial candidate. But, provocative and +significant though the question is, it is too limited in scope, too +purely subjective in nature, to suit the character and the urgency of +the needs of this moment. + +Again, every profession has the prized inheritance of its own +particular and gradually perfected human skill. An interesting study, +then, would be the analysis of that rich content of human insights, +the result of generations of pastoral experience, which form the +background of all great preaching. No man, whether learned or pious, +or both, is equipped for the pulpit without the addition of that +intuitive discernment, that quick and varied appreciation, that sane +and tolerant knowledge of life and the world, which is the reward +given to the friends and lovers of mankind. For the preacher deals not +with the shallows but the depths of life. Like his Master he must be a +great humanist. To make real sermons he has to look, without dismay or +evasion, far into the heart's impenetrable recesses. He must have had +some experience with the absolutism of both good and evil. I think +preachers who regard sermons on salvation as superfluous have not had +much experience with either. They belong to that large world of the +intermediates, neither positively good nor bad, who compose the mass +of the prosperous and respectable in our genteel civilization. Since +they belong to it they cannot lead it. And certainly they who do +not know the absolutism of evil cannot very well understand sinners. +Genuine satans, as Milton knew, are not weaklings and traitors who +have declined from the standards of a respectable civilization. They +are positive and impressive figures pursuing and acting up to their +own ideal of conduct, not fleeing from self-accepted retribution or +falling away from a confessed morality of ours. Evil is a force even +more than a folly; it is a positive agent busily building away at the +City of Dreadful Night, constructing its insolent and scoffing society +within the very precincts of the City of God. + +He must know, then, that evil and suffering are not temporary elements +of man's evolution, just about to be eliminated by the new reform, +the last formula, the fresh panacea. To those who have tasted grief +and smelt the fire such easy preaching and such confident solutions +are a grave offense. They know that evil is an integral part of our +universe; suffering an enduring element of the whole. So he must +preach upon the chances and changes of this mortal world, or go to +the house of shame or the place of mourning, knowing that there is +something past finding out in evil, something incommunicable about +true sorrow. They are not external things, alien to our natures, that +happen one day from without, and may perhaps be avoided, and by and +by are gone. No; that which makes sorrow, sorrow, and evil, evil, is +their naturalness; they well up from within, part of the very texture +of our consciousness. He knows you can never express them, for truly +to do that you would have to express and explain the entire world. +It is not easy then to interpret the evil and suffering which are not +external and temporary, but enduring and a part of the whole. + +So the preacher is never dealing with plain or uncomplicated matters. +It is his business to perceive the mystery of iniquity in the saint +and to recognize the mystery of godliness in the sinner. It is his +business to revere the child and yet watch him that he may make a +man of him. He must say, so as to be understood, to those who balk at +discipline, and rail at self-repression, and resent pain: you have +not yet begun to live nor made the first step toward understanding the +universe and yourselves. To avoid discipline and to blench at pain is +to evade life. There are limitations, occasioned by the evil and the +suffering of the world, in whose repressions men find fulfillment. +When you are honest with yourself you will know what Dante meant when +he said: + + "And thou shalt see those who + Contented are within the fire; + Because they hope to come, + When e'er it may be, to the blessed people."[1] + +It is his business, also, to be the comrade of his peers, and yet +speak to them the truth in love; his task to understand the bitterness +and assuage the sorrows of old age. I suppose the greatest influence +a preacher ever exercises, and a chief source of the material and +insight of his preaching, is found in this intimate contact with +living and suffering, divided and distracted men and women. When +strong men blench with pain and exquisite grief stirs within us at +the sight and we can endure naught else but to suffer with them, when +youth is blurred with sin, and gray heads are sick with shame and we, +then, want to die and cry, O God! forgive and save them or else blot +me out of Thy book of life--for who could bear to live in a world +where such things are the end!--then, through the society of sorrow, +and the holy comradeship in shame, we begin to find the Lord and to +understand both the kindness and the justice of His world. In the +moment when sympathy takes the bitterness out of another's sorrow and +my suffering breaks the captivity of my neighbor's sin--then, when +because "together," with sinner and sufferer, we come out into the +quiet land of freedom and of peace, we perceive how the very heart of +God, upon which there we know we rest, may be found in the vicarious +suffering and sacrifice called forth by the sorrow and the evil +of mankind. Then we can preach the Gospel. Because then we dimly +understand why men have hung their God upon the Cross of Christ! + +[Footnote 1: _The Divine Comedy: Hell_; canto I.] + +Is it not ludicrous, then, to suppose that a man merely equipped with +professional scholarship, or contented with moral conformities, can +minister to the sorrow and the mystery, the mingled shame and glory of +a human being? This is why the average theologue, in his first parish, +is like the well-meaning but meddling engineer endeavoring with clumsy +tools and insensitive fingers to adjust the delicate and complicated +mechanism of a Genevan watch. And here is one of the real reasons why +we deprecate men entering our calling, without both the culture of +a liberal education and the learning of a graduate school. Clearly, +therefore, one real task of such schools and their lectureships is to +offer men wide and gracious training in the art of human contacts, +so that their lives may be lifted above Pharisaism and moral +self-consciousness, made acquainted with the higher and comprehensive +interpretations of the heart and mind of our race. For only thus can +they approach life reverently and humbly. Only thus will they revere +the integrity of the human spirit; only thus can they regard it with +a magnanimous and catholic understanding and measure it not by the +standards of temperamental or sectarian convictions, but by what +is best and highest, deepest and holiest in the race. No one needs +more than the young preacher to be drawn out of the range of narrow +judgments, of exclusive standards and ecclesiastical traditions and to +be flung out among free and sensitive spirits, that he may watch their +workings, master their perceptions, catch their scale of values. + +A discussion, then, dealing with this aspect of our problem, would +raise many and genuine questions for us. There is the more room for it +in this time of increasing emphasis upon machinery when even ministers +are being measured in the terms of power, speed and utility. These are +not real ends of life; real ends are unity, repose, the imaginative +and spiritual values which make for the release of self, with its +by-product of happiness. In such days, then, when the old-time +pastor-preacher is becoming as rare as the former general +practitioner; when the lines of division between speaker, educator, +expert in social hygiene, are being sharply drawn--as though new +methods insured of themselves fresh inspiration, and technical +knowledge was identical with spiritual understanding--it would be +worth while to dwell upon the culture of the pastoral office and to +show that ingenuity is not yet synonymous with insight, and that, in +our profession at least, card-catalogues cannot take the place of +the personal study of the human heart. But many discussions on this +Foundation, and recently those of Dr. Jowett, have already dealt with +this sort of analysis. Besides, today, when not merely the preacher, +but the very view of the world that produced him, is being threatened +with temporary extinction, such a theme, poetic and rewarding though +it is, becomes irrelevant and parochial. + +Or we might turn to the problem of technique, that professional +equipment for his task as a sermonizer and public speaker which is +partly a native endowment and partly a laborious acquisition on the +preacher's part. Such was President Tucker's course on _The Making +and Unmaking of the Preacher_. Certainly observations on professional +technique, especially if they should include, like his, acute +discussion of the speaker's obligation to honesty of thinking, no less +than integrity of conduct; of the immorality of the pragmatic standard +of mere effectiveness or immediate efficiency in the selection of +material; of the aesthetic folly and ethical dubiety of simulated +extempore speaking and genuinely impromptu prayers, would not be +superfluous. But, on the other hand, we may hope to accomplish +much of this indirectly today. Because there is no way of handling +specifically either the content of the Christian message or the +problem of the immediate needs and temper of those to whom it is to +be addressed, without reference to the kind of personality, and the +nature of the tools at his disposal, which is best suited to commend +the one and to interpret the other. + +Hence such a discussion as this ought, by its very scale of values--by +the motives that inform it and the ends that determine it--to condemn +thereby the insincere and artificial speaker, or that pseudo-sermon +which is neither as exposition, an argument nor a meditation but a +mosaic, a compilation of other men's thoughts, eked out by impossibly +impressive or piously sentimental anecdotes, the whole glued together +by platitudes of the Martin Tupper or Samuel Smiles variety. It is +certainly an obvious but greatly neglected truth that simplicity +and candor in public speaking, largeness of mental movement, what +Phillips Brooks called direct utterance of comprehensive truths, are +indispensable prerequisites for any significant ethical or spiritual +leadership. But, taken as a main theme, this third topic, like the +others, seems to me insufficiently inclusive to meet our present +exigencies. It deals more with the externals than with the heart of +our subject. + +Again we might address ourselves to the ethical and practical +aspects of preaching and the ministry. Taking largely for granted +our understanding of the Gospel, we might concern ourselves with its +relations to society, the detailed implications for the moral and +economic problems of our social and industrial order. Dean Brown, in +_The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit_, and Dr. Coffin in _In a +Day of Social Rebuilding_, have so enriched this Foundation. Moreover, +this is, at the moment, an almost universally popular treatment of +the preacher's opportunity and obligation. One reason, therefore, +for not choosing this approach to our task is that the preacher's +attention, partly because of the excellence of these and other +books and lectures, and partly because of the acuteness of the +political-industrial crisis which is now upon us, is already focused +upon it. + +Besides, our present moment is changing with an ominous rapidity. And +one is not sure whether the immediate situation, as distinguished from +that of even a few years ago, calls us to be concerned chiefly with +the practical and ethical aspects of our mission, urgent though the +need and critical the pass, to which the abuses of the capitalistic +system have brought both European and American society. In this day of +those shifting standards which mark the gradual transference of power +from one group to another in the community, and the merging of a +spent epoch in a new order, neither the chief opportunity nor the most +serious peril of religious leadership is met by fresh and energetic +programs of religion in action. In such days, our chief gift to the +world cannot be the support of any particular reforms or the alliance +with any immediate ethical or economic movement. For these things at +best would be merely the effects of religion. And it is not religion +in its relations, nor even in its expression in character--it is the +thing in itself that this age most needs. What men are chiefly asking +of life at this moment is not, What ought we to do? but the deeper +question, What is there we can believe? For they know that the answer +to this question would show us what we ought to do. + +Nor do our reform alliances and successive programs and crusades +always seem to me to proceed from any careful estimate of the +situation as a whole or to be conceived in the light of comprehensive +Christian principle. Instead, they sometimes seem to draw their +inspiration more from the sense of the urgent need of presenting to an +indifferent or disillusioned world some quick and tangible evidence +of a continuing moral vigor and spiritual passion to which the deeper +and more potent witnesses are absent. It is as though we thought the +machinery of the church would revolve with more energy if geared into +the wheels of the working world. But that world and we do not draw +our power from the same dynamo. And surely in a day of profound +and widespread mental ferment and moral restlessness, some more +fundamental gift than this is asked of us. + +If, therefore, these chapters pay only an incidental attention +to the church's social and ethical message, it is partly because +our attention is, at this very moment, largely centered upon this +important, yet secondary matter, and more because there lies beneath +it a yet more urgent and inclusive task which confronts the spokesman +of organized religion. + +You will expect me then to say that we are to turn to some speculative +and philosophic study, such as the analysis of the Christian idea in +its world relationships, some fresh statement of the Gospel, either by +way of apologia for inherited concepts, or as attempting to make a new +receptacle for the living wine, which has indeed burst the most of +its ancient bottles. Such was Principal Fairbairn's monumental task in +_The Place of Christ in Modern Theology_ and also Dr. Gordon's in his +distinguished discussions in _The Ultimate Conceptions of Faith_. + +Here, certainly, is an endeavor which is always of primary importance. +There is an abiding peril, forever crouching at the door of ancient +organizations, that they shall seek refuge from the difficulties of +thought in the opportunities of action. They need to be continually +reminded that reforms begin in the same place where abuses do, +namely, in the notion of things; that only just ideas can, in the +long run, purify conduct; that clear thinking is the source of +all high and sustained feeling. I wish that we might essay the +philosopher-theologian's task. This generation is hungry for +understanding; it perishes for lack of knowledge. One reason for +the indubitable decline of the preacher's power is that we have been +culpably indifferent in maintaining close and friendly alliances +between the science and the art, the teachers and the practitioners of +religion. Few things would be more ominous than to permit any further +widening of the gulf which already exists between these two. Never +more than now does the preacher need to be reminded of what Marcus +Aurelius said: "Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also shall be +thyself; for the soul is dyed by its thoughts." + +But such an undertaking, calling for wide and exact scholarship, large +reserves of extra-professional learning, does not primarily belong +to a discussion within the department of practical theology. Besides +which there is a task, closely allied to it, but creative rather than +critical, prophetic rather than philosophic, which does fall within +the precise area of this field. I mean the endeavor to describe +the mind and heart of our generation, appraise the significant +thought-currents of our time. This would be an attempt to give some +description of the chief impulses fermenting in contemporary society, +to ask what relation they hold to the Christian principle, and to +inquire what attitude toward them our preaching should adopt. If it be +true that what is most revealing in any age is its regulative ideas, +then what is more valuable for the preacher than to attempt the +understanding of his generation through the defining of its ruling +concepts? And it is this audacious task which, for two reasons, we +shall presume to undertake. + +The first reason is that it is appropriate both to the temperament +and the training of the preacher. There are three grand divisions, +or rather determining emphases, by which men may be separated into +vocational groups. To begin with, there is the man of the scientific +or intellectual type. He has a passion for facts and a strong sense of +their reality. He moves with natural ease among abstract propositions, +is both critical of, and fertile in, theories; indicates his essential +distinction in his love of the truth for the truth's sake. He looks +first to the intrinsic reasonableness of any proposition; tends to +judge both men and movements not by traditional or personal values, +but by a detached and disinterested appraisal of their inherent worth. +He is often a dogmatist, but this fault is not peculiar to him, he +shares it with the rest of mankind. He is sometimes a literalist and +sometimes a slave to logic, more concerned with combating the crude +or untenable form of a proposition than inquiring with sympathetic +insight into the worth of its substance. But these things are +perversions of his excellencies, defects of his virtues. His +characteristic qualities are mental integrity, accuracy of statement, +sanity of judgment, capacity for sustained intellectual toil. Such +men are investigators, scholars; when properly blended with the +imaginative type they become inventors and teachers. They make good +theologians and bad preachers. + +Then there are the practical men, beloved of our American life. Both +their feet are firmly fixed upon the solid ground. They generally +know just where they are, which is not surprising, for they do not, +for the most part, either in the world of mind or spirit, frequent +unusual places. The finespun speculations of the philosophers and the +impractical dreams of the artist make small appeal to them; the world +they live in is a sharply defined and clearly lighted and rather +limited place. They like to say to this man come and he cometh, and to +that man go and he goeth. They are enamored of offices, typewriters, +telegrams, long-distance messages, secretaries, programs, conferences +and drives. Getting results is their goal; everything is judged by the +criterion of effective action; they are instinctive and unconscious +pragmatists. They make good cheer leaders at football games in their +youth and impressive captains of industry in their old age. Their +virtues are wholesome, if obvious; they are good mixers, have shrewd +judgment, immense physical and volitional energy. They understand that +two and two make four. They are rarely saints but, unlike many of +us who once had the capacity for sainthood, they are not dreadful +sinners. They are the tribe of which politicians are born but, when +they are blended with imaginative and spiritual gifts, they become +philanthropists and statesmen, practical servants of mankind. They +make good, if conservative, citizens; kind, if uninspiring, husbands +and deplorable preachers. + +Then there are those fascinating men of feeling and imagination, those +who look into their own hearts and write, those to whom the inner +dominions which the spirit conquers for itself become a thousand-fold +more real than the earth whereon they stamp their feet. These are the +literary or the creative folk. Their passion is not so much to know +life as to enjoy it; not to direct it, but to experience it; not even +to make understanding of it an end, but only a means to interpreting +it. They do not, as a rule, thirst for erudition, and they are +indifferent to those manipulations of the externals of life which +are dear to the lovers of executive power. They know less but they +understand more than their scholastic brethren. As a class they are +sometimes disreputable but nearly always unworldly; more distinguished +by an intuitive and childlike than by an ingenious or sophisticated +quality of mind. Ideas and facts are perceived by them not abstractly +nor practically, but in their typical or symbolic, hence their +pictorial and transmissible, aspects. They read dogma, whether +theological or other, in the terms of a living process, unconsciously +translating it, as they go along, out of its cold propositions into +its appropriate forms of feeling and needs and satisfactions. + +The scientist, then, is a critic, a learner who wants to analyze and +dissect; the man of affairs is a director and builder and wants to +command and construct; the man of this group is a seer. He is a lover +and a dreamer; he watches and broods over life, profoundly feeling it, +enamored both of its shame and of its glory. The intolerable poignancy +of existence is bittersweet to his mouth; he craves to incarnate, +to interpret its entire human process, always striving to pierce to +its center, to capture and express its inexpressible ultimate. He +is an egotist but a valuable one, acutely aware of the depths and +immensities of his own spirit and of its significant relations to +this seething world without. Thus it is both himself and a new vision +of life, in terms of himself, that he desires to project for his +community. + +The form of that vision will vary according to the nature of the +tools, the selection of material, the particular sort of native +endowment which are given to him. Some such men reveal their +understanding of the soul and the world in the detached serenity, +the too well-defined harmonies of a Parthenon; others in the dim +and intricate richness, the confused and tortured aspiration of the +long-limbed saints and grotesque devils of a Gothic cathedral. Others +incarnate it in gleaming bronze; or spread it in subtle play of light +and shade and tones of color on a canvas; or write it in great plays +which open the dark chambers of the soul and make the heart stand +still; or sing it in sweet and terrible verse, full-throated utterance +of man's pride and hope and passion. Some act it before the altar or +beneath the proscenium arch; some speak it, now in Cassandra-tones, +now comfortably like shepherds of frail sheep. These folk are the +brothers-in-blood, the fellow craftsmen of the preacher. By a silly +convention, he is almost forbidden to consult with them, and to betake +himself to the learned, the respectable and the dull. But it is with +these that naturally he sees eye to eye. + +In short, in calling the preacher a prophet we mean that preaching +is an art and the preacher is an artist; for all great art has the +prophetic quality. Many men object to this definition of the preacher +as being profane. It appears to make secular or mechanicalize their +profession, to rob preaching of its sacrosanctity, leave it less +authority by making it more intelligible, remove it from the realm +of the mystical and unique. This objection seems to me sometimes +an expression of spiritual arrogance and sometimes a subtle form of +skepticism. It assumes a special privilege for our profession or a +not-get-at-able defense and sanction by insisting that it differs in +origin and hence in kind from similar expressions of the human spirit. +It hesitates to rely on the normal and the intelligible sources of +ministerial power, to confess the relatively definable origin and +understandable methods of our work. It fears to trust to these alone. + +But all these must be trusted. We may safely assert that the preacher +deals with absolute values, for all art does that. But we may not +assert that he is the only person that does so or that his is the only +or the unapproachable way. No; he, too, is an artist. Hence, a sermon +is not a contribution to, but an interpretation of, knowledge, made +in terms of the religious experience. It is taking truth out of its +compressed and abstract form, its impersonal and scientific language, +and returning it to life in the terms of the ethical and spiritual +experience of mankind, thus giving it such concrete and pictorial +expression that it stimulates the imagination and moves the will. + +It will be clear then why I have said that the task of appraising the +heart and mind of our generation, to which we address ourselves, is +appropriate to the preaching genius. For only they could attempt +such a task who possess an informed and disciplined yet essentially +intuitive spirit with its scale of values; who by instinct can see +their age as a whole and indicate its chief emphases, its controlling +tendencies, its significant expressions. It is not the scientist but +the seer who thus attempts the precious but perilous task of making +the great generalizations. This is what Aristotle means when he says, +"The poet ranks higher than the historian because he achieves a more +general truth." This is, I suppose, what Houston Stewart Chamberlain +means when he says, in the introduction to the _Foundations of the +Nineteenth Century_: "our modern world represents an immeasurable +array of facts. The mastery of such a task as recording and +interpreting them scientifically is impossible. It is only the genius +of the artist, which feels the secret parallels that exist between +the world of vision and of thought, that can, if fortune be favorable, +reveal the unity beneath the immeasurable complexities and diversities +of the present order." Or as Professor Hocking says: "The prophet must +find in the current of history a unity corresponding to the unity of +the physical universe, or else he must create it. It is this conscious +unification of history that the religious will spontaneously tends to +bring about."[2] + +[Footnote 2: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 518.] + +It is then precisely the preacher's task, his peculiar office, to +attempt these vast and perilous summations. What he is set here for +is to bring the immeasurable within the scope of vision. He deals with +the far-flung outposts, no man knows how distant, and the boundless +interspaces of human consciousness; he deals with the beginning, the +middle, the end--the origin, the meaning and the destiny--of human +life. How can anyone give unity to such a prospect? Like any other +artist he gives it the only unity possible, the unity revealed in +his own personality. The theologian should not attempt to evaluate +his age; the preacher may. Because the theologian, like any other +scientist, analyzes and dissects; he breaks up the world. The preacher +in his disciplined imagination, his spiritual intuitiveness,--what we +call the "religious temperament,"--unites it again and makes men see +it whole. This quality of purified and enlightened imagination is of +the very essence of the preacher's power and art. Hence he may attempt +to set forth a just understanding of his generation. + +This brings us to the second reason for our topic namely, its +timeliness. All religious values are not at all times equal in +importance. As generations come and go, first one, then another looms +in the foreground. But I sincerely believe that the most fateful +undertaking for the preacher at this moment is that of analyzing his +own generation. Because he has been flung into one of the world's +transition epochs, he speaks in an hour which is radical in changes, +perplexing in its multifarious cross-currents, prolific of new +forms and expressions. What the world most needs at such a moment of +expansion and rebellion, is a redefining of its ideals. It needs to +have some eternal scale of values set before it once more. It needs +to stop long enough to find out just what and where it is, and toward +what it is going. It needs another Sheridan to write a new _School for +Scandal_, another Swift, with his _Gulliver's Travels_, a continuing +Shaw with his satiric comedies, a Mrs. Wharton with her _House of +Mirth_, a Thorstein Veblen with his _Higher Learning in America_, a +Savonarola with his call to repentance and indictment of worldly and +unfaithful living. It is a difficult and dangerous office, this of +the prophet; it calls for a considerate and honest mind as well as a +flashing insight and an eager heart. The false prophet exposes that he +may exploit his age; the true prophet portrays that he may purge it. +Like Jeremiah we may well dread to undertake the task, yet its day and +hour are upon us! + +I have already spoken to this point at length, in a little book +recently published. I merely add here that in a day of obvious +political disillusionment and industrial revolt, of intellectual +rebellion against an outworn order of ideas and of moral restlessness +and doubt, an indispensable duty for the preacher is this +comprehensive study and understanding of his own epoch. Else, without +realizing it,--and how true this often is,--he proclaims a universal +truth in the unintelligible language of a forgotten order, and applies +a timeless experience to the faded conditions of yesterday. + +Indeed, I am convinced that a chief reason why preaching is +temporarily obscured in power, is because most of our expertness in it +is in terms of local problems, of partial significances, rather +than in the wider tendencies that produce and carry them, or in the +ultimate laws of conduct which should govern them. We ought to be +troubled, I think, in our present ecclesiastical situation, with its +taint of an almost frantic immediacy. Not only are we not sufficiently +dealing with the Gospel as a universal code, but, as both cause and +effect of this, we are not applying it to the inclusive life of our +generation. We are tinkering here and patching there, but attempting +no grand evaluation. We have already granted that sweeping +generalizations, inclusive estimates, are as difficult as they are +audacious. Yet we have also seen that these grand evaluations are +of the very essence of religion and hence are characteristic of the +preacher's task. And, finally, it appears that ours is an age which +calls for such redefining of its values, some fresh and inclusive +moral and religious estimates. Hence we undertake the task. + +There remains but one thing more to be accomplished in this chapter. +The problem of the selection and arrangement of the material for such +a summary is not an easy one. Out of several possible devices I +have taken as the framework on which to hang these discussions three +familiar divisions of thought and feeling, with their accompanying +laws of conduct, and value judgments. They are the humanistic +or classic; the naturalistic or primitive; and the religious or +transcendent interpretation of the world and life. One sets up a +social, one an individual, and one a universal standard. Under the +movements which these headings represent we can most easily and +clearly order and appraise the chief influences of the Protestant +centuries. The first two are largely preëmpting between them, at this +moment, the field of human thought and conduct and a brief analysis +of them, contrasting their general attitudes, may serve as a fit +introduction to the ensuing chapter. + +We begin, then, with the humanist. He is the man who ignores, as +unnecessary, any direct reference to, or connection with, ultimate or +supernatural values. He lives in a high but self-contained world. His +is man's universe. His law is the law of reasonable self-discipline, +founded on observation of nature and a respect for social values, +and buttressed by high human pride. He accepts the authority of the +collective experience of his generation or his race. He believes, +centrally, in the trustworthiness of human nature, in its group +capacity. Men, as a race, have intelligently observed and experimented +with both themselves and the world about them. Out of centuries of +critical reflection and sad and wise endeavor, they have evolved +certain criteria of experience. These summations could hardly be +called eternal laws but they are standards; they are the permits and +prohibitions for human life. Some of them affect personal conduct +and are moral standards; some of them affect civil government and are +political axioms; some of them affect production and distribution and +are economic laws; some of them affect social relationships. But in +every case the humanist has what is, in a sense, an objective because +a formal standard; he looks without himself as an individual, yet to +himself as a part of the composite experience and wisdom of his race, +for understanding and for guides. Thus the individual conforms to the +needs and wisdom of the group. Humanism, at its best, has something +heroic, unselfish, noble about it. Its votaries do not eat to their +liking nor drink to their thirst. They learn deep lessons almost +unconsciously; to conquer their desires, to make light of toil and +pain and discomfort; the true humanist is well aware that Spartan +discipline is incomparably superior to Greek accidence. This is what +one of the greatest of them, Goethe, meant when he said: "Anything +which emancipates the spirit without a corresponding growth in +self-mastery is pernicious." + +All humanists then have two characteristics in common: first, +they assume that man is his own arbiter, has both the requisite +intelligence and the moral ability to control his own destiny; +secondly, they place the source and criterion of this power in +collective wisdom, not in individual vagary and not in divine +revelation. They assert, therefore, that the law of the group, the +perfected and wrought out code of human experience, is all that is +binding and all that is essential. To be sure, and most significantly, +this authority is not rigid, complete, fixed. There is nothing +complete in the humanist's world. Experience accumulates and man's +knowledge grows; the expectation and joy in progress is a part of it; +man's code changes, emends, expands with his onward marching. But the +humanistic point of view assumes something relatively stable in life. +Hence our phrase that humanism gives us a classic, that is to say, a +simple and established standard. + +It is to be observed that there is nothing in humanism thus defined +which need be incompatible with religion. It is not with its content +but its incompleteness that we quarrel. Indeed, in its assertion of +the trustworthiness of human experience, its faith in the dignity and +significance of man, its respect for the interests of the group, and +its conviction that man finds his true self only outside his immediate +physical person, beyond his material wants and desires, it is quite +genuinely a part of the religious understanding. But we shall have +occasion to observe that while much of this may be religious this is +not the whole of religion. For the note of universality is absent. +Humanism is essentially aristocratic. It is for a selected group that +it is practicable and it is a selected experience upon which it rests. +Its standards are esoteric rather than democratic. Yet it is hardly +necessary to point out the immense part which humanism, as thus +defined, is playing in present life. + +But there is another law which, from remotest times, man has +followed whenever he dared. It is not the law of the group but of +the individual, not the law of civilization but of the jungle. "Most +men," says Aristotle, "would rather live in a disorderly than a sober +manner." He means that most men would rather consult and gratify their +immediate will, their nearest choices, their instantaneous desires, +than conform the moment to some regulated and considerate, some +comprehensive scheme of life and action. The life of unreason is their +desire; the experience whose bent is determined by every whim, the +expression which has no rational connection with the past and no +serious consideration for the future. This is of the very essence of +lawlessness because it is revolt against the normal sequence of law +and effect, in mind and conduct, in favor of untrammeled adventure. + +Now this is naturalism or paganism as we often call it. Naturalism +is a perversion of that high instinct in mankind which issues in the +old concept of supernaturalism. The supernaturalist, of a former and +discredited type, believed that God violates the order of nature +for sublime ends; that He "breaks into" His own world, so to speak, +"revealing" Himself in prodigious, inexplicable, arbitrary ways. By a +sort of degradation of this notion, a perversion of this instinct, the +naturalist assumes that he can violate both the human and the divine +law for personal ends, and express himself in fantastic or indecent +or impious ways. The older supernaturalism exalts the individualism +of the Creator; naturalism the egotism of the creature. I make the +contrast not merely to excoriate naturalism, but to point out the +interdependence between man's apparently far-separated expressions +of his spirit, and how subtly misleading are our highly prized +distinctions, how dangerous sometimes that secondary mental power +which multiplies them. It sobers and clarifies human thinking a +little, perhaps, to reflect on how thin a line separates the sublime +and the ridiculous, the saint and the sensualist, the martyr and the +fool, the genius and the freak. + +Now, with this selfish individualism which we call naturalism we shall +have much to do, for it plays an increasing rôle in the modern +world; it is the neo-paganism which we may see spreading about us. +Sophistries of all kinds become the powerful allies of this sort of +moral and aesthetic anarchy. Its votaries are those sorts of +rebels who invariably make their minds not their friends but their +accomplices. They are ingenious in the art of letting themselves go +and at the same time thinking themselves controlled and praiseworthy. +The naturalist, then, ignores the group; he flaunts impartially +both the classic and the religious law. He is equally unwilling to +submit to a power imposed from above and without, or to accept those +restrictions of society, self-imposed by man's own codified and +corrected observations of the natural world and his own impulses. He +jeers at the one as hypocrisy and superstition and at the other as +mere "middle-class respectability." He himself is the perpetual Ajax +standing defiant upon the headland of his own inflamed desires, +and scoffing at the lightnings either of heaven or society. Neither +devoutness nor progress but mere personal expansion is his goal. The +humanist curbs both the flesh and the imagination by a high doctrine +of expediency. Natural values are always critically appraised in the +light of humane values, which is nearly, if not quite, the same as +saying that the individual desires and delights must be conformed +to the standards of the group. There can be no anarchy of the +imagination, no license of the mind, no unbridled will. Humanism, +no less than religion, is nobly, though not so deeply, traditional. +But there is no tradition to the naturalist; not the normal and +representative, but the unique and spectacular is his goal. Novelty +and expansion, not form and proportion, are his goddesses. Not truth +and duty, but instinct and appetite, are in the saddle. He will try +any horrid experiment from which he may derive a new sensation. + +Over against them both stands the man of religion with his vision of +the whole and his consequent law of proud humility. The next three +chapters will try to discuss in detail these several attitudes toward +life and their respective manifestations in contemporary society. + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + +THE CHILDREN OF ZION AND THE SONS OF GREECE + + +We are not using the term "humanism" in this chapter in its strictly +technical sense. Because we are not concerned with the history of +thought merely, but also with its practical embodiments in various +social organizations as well. So we mean by "humanism" not only those +modes and systems of thought in which human interests predominate but +also the present economic, political and ecclesiastical institutions +which more or less consistently express them. Hence, the term as +used will include concepts not always agreeing with each other, and +sometimes only semi-related to the main stream of the movement. This +need not trouble us. Strict intellectual consistency is a fascinating +and impossible goal of probably dubious value. Moreover, it is +this whole expression of the time spirit which bathes the sensitive +personality of the preacher, persuading and moulding him quite as much +by its derived and concrete manifestations in contemporary society as +by its essential and abstract principles. + +There are then two sets of media through which humanism has affected +preaching. The first are philosophical and find their expression in a +large body of literature which has been moulding thought and feeling +for nearly four centuries. Humanism begins with the general abstract +assumption that all which men can know, or need to know, are "natural" +and human values; that they have no means of getting outside the +inexorable circle of their own experience. + +Much, of course, depends here upon the sense in which the word +"experience" is used. The assumption need not necessarily be +challenged except where, as is very often the case, an arbitrarily +limited definition of experience is intended. From this general +assumption flows the subjective theory of morals; from it is derived +the conviction that the rationalistic values in religion are the only +real, or at least demonstrable, ones; and hence from this comes the +shifting of the seat of religious authority from "revelation" to +experience. In so far as this is a correction of emphasis only, or the +abandonment of a misleading term rather than the denial of one of the +areas and modes of understanding, again we have no quarrel with it. +But if it means an exclusion of the supersensuous sources of knowledge +or the denial of the existence of absolute values as the source of our +relative and subjective understanding, then it strikes at the heart +of religion. Because the religious life is built on those factors of +experience that lie above the strictly rational realm of consciousness +just as the pagan view rests on primitive instincts that lie beneath +it. Of course, in asserting the importance of these "supersensuous" +values the religionist does not mean that they are beyond the reach +of human appraisal or unrelated by their nature to the rest of our +understanding. By the intuitive he does not mean the uncritical nor by +the supersensuous the supernatural in the old and discredited sense of +an arbitrary and miraculous revelation. Mysticism is not superstition, +nor are the insights of the poet the whimsies of the mere +impressionist. But he insists that the humanist, in his ordinary +definition of experience, ignores or denies these superrational +values. In opposition to him he rests his faith on that definition of +experience which underlies Aristotle's statement that "the intellect +is dependent upon intuition for knowledge both of what is below and +what is above itself." + +Now it is this first set of factors which are the more important. +For the cause, as distinguished from the occasions, of our present +religious scale of values is, like all major causes, not practical but +ideal, and its roots are found far beneath the soil of the present +in the beginnings of the modern age in the fourteenth century. It was +then that our world was born; it is of the essence of that world that +it arose out of indifference toward speculative thinking and unfaith +in those concepts regarding the origin and destiny of mankind which +speculative philosophy tried to express and prove. + +From the first, then, humanistic leaders have not only frankly +rejected the scholastic theologies, which had been the traditional +expression of those absolute values with which the religious +experience is chiefly concerned, but also ignored or rejected the +existence of those values themselves. Thus Petrarch is generally +considered the first of modern humanists. He not only speaks of +Rome--meaning the whole semi-political, semi-ecclesiastical structure +of dogmatic supernaturalism--as that "profane Babylon" but also +reveals his rejection of the distinctively religious experience itself +by characterizing as "an impudent wench" the Christian church. The +attack is partly therefore on the faith in transcendent values which +fixes man's relative position by projecting him upon the screen of an +infinite existence and which asserts that he has an absolute, that is, +an other-than-human guide. Again Erasmus, in his _Praise of Folly_, +denounces indiscriminately churches, priesthoods, dogmas, ethical +values, the whole structure of organized religion, calling it those +"foul smelling weeds of theology." It was inevitable that such men as +Erasmus and Thomas More should hold aloof from the Reformation, not, +as has been sometimes asserted, from any lack of moral courage but +because of intellectual conviction. They saw little to choose between +Lutheran, Calvinistic and Romish dogmatism. They had rejected not only +mediaeval ecclesiasticism but also that view of the world founded on +supersensuous values, whose persistent intimations had produced the +speculative and scholastic theologies. To them, in a quite literal +sense, the proper study of mankind was man. + +It is hardly necessary to speak here of the attitude towards the old +"supernatural" religion taken by the English Deists of the last half +of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century. Here +was the first definite struggle of the English church with a group +of thinkers who, under the leadership of Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke +and others, attempted to adapt humanistic philosophy to theological +speculation, to establish the sufficiency of natural religion as +opposed to revelation, and to deny the unique significance of the +Old and New Testament Scriptures. The English Deists were not deep +or comprehensive thinkers, but they were typically humanistic in that +their interests were not mainly theological or religious but rather +those of a general culture. They were inconsistent with their humanism +in their doctrine of a personal God who was not only remote but +separated from his universe, a _deus ex machina_ who excluded the idea +of immanence. While less influential in England, they had a powerful +effect upon French and German thinking. Both Voltaire and Rousseau +were rationalists and Deists to the end of their days and both were +unwearied foes of any other-than-natural sources for our spiritual +knowledge and religious values. + +In Germany the humanistic movement continued under Herder and his +younger contemporaries, Schiller and Goethe. Its historical horizon, +racial and literary sympathies, broadened under their direction, +moving farther and farther beyond the sources and areas of accepted +religious ideas and practices. They led the revival of study of the +Aryan languages and cultures; especially those of the Hellenes and the +inhabitants of the Indian peninsula. They originated that critical +and rather hostile scrutiny of Semitic ideas and values in present +civilization, which plays no small part in the dilettante naturalism +of the moment. Thus the nature and place of _man_, under the influence +of these "uninspired" literatures and cultures, became more and more +important as both his person and his position in the cosmos ceased +to be interpreted either in those terms of the moral transcendence +of deity, or of the helplessness and insignificance of his creatures, +which inform both the Jewish-Christian Scriptures and the philosophic +absolutism of the Catholic theologies. + +But the humanism of the eighteenth century comes most closely to grips +with the classic statements and concepts of religion in the critical +philosophy of Kant. It is the intellectual current which rises in +him which is finding its last multifarious and minute rivulets in the +various doctrines of relativity, in pragmatism, the subjectivism of +the neo-realists, and in the superior place generally ascribed by +present thinking to value judgments as against existential ones. His +central insistence is upon the impossibility of any knowledge of God +as an objective reality. Speculative reason does indeed give us the +idea of God but he denies that we have in the idea itself any ground +for thinking that there is an objective reality corresponding to it. +The idea he admits as necessitated by "the very nature of reason" but +it serves a purely harmonizing office. It is here to give coherence +and unity to the objects of the understanding, "to finish and crown +the whole of human knowledge."[3] Experience of transcendence thus +becomes impossible. As Professor McGiffert in _The Modern Ideas of +God_ says: "Subjectively considered, religion is the recognition of +our duties as commands of God. When we do our duty we are virtuous; +when we recognize it as commanded by God we are religious. The notion +that there is anything we can do to please God except to live rightly +is superstition. Moreover, to think that we can distinguish works +of grace from works of nature, which is the essence of historic +Christianity, or that we can detect the activity of heavenly +influences is also superstition. All such supernaturalism lies beyond +our ken. There are three common forms of superstition, all promoted +by positive religion: the belief in miracles, the belief in mysteries, +and the belief in the means of grace."[4] So prayer is a confession of +weakness, not a source of strength. + +[Footnote 3: See _The Critique of Pure Reason_ (Müller, tr.), pp. 575 +ff.] + +[Footnote 4: _Harvard Theo. Rev._, vol. I, no. 1, p. 16.] + +Kant is more than once profoundly inconsistent with the extreme +subjectivism of his theory of ideas as when he says in the _Practical +Reason_: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing +admiration and awe the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on +them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within."[5] Again he +remarks, "The belief in a great and wise Author of the world has been +supported entirely by the wonderful beauty, order and providence, +everywhere displayed in nature."[6] Here the objective reality both of +what is presented to our senses and what is conceived of in the mind, +is, as though unconsciously, taken for granted. Thus while he contends +for a practical theism, the very basis of his interest still rests in +the conviction of a Being external to us and existing independent of +our thought. + +[Footnote 5: _The Critique of Practical Reason_ (tr. T.K. Abbott), p. +260.] + +[Footnote 6: _The Critique of Pure Reason_, p. 702.] + +But his intention of making right conduct the essence of religion +is typical of the limits of humanistic interests and perceptions. In +making his division of reason into the theoretical and the practical, +it is to the latter realm that he assigns morality and religion. +Clearly this is genuine rationalism. I am not forgetting Kant's great +religious contribution. He was the son of devout German pietists and +saturated in the literature of the Old Testament. It is to Amos, who +may justly be called his spiritual father, that he owes the moral +absoluteness of his categorical imperative, the reading of history +as a moral order. He was following Amos when he took God out of the +physical and put Him into the moral sphere and interpreted Him in +the terms of purpose. But the doctrine of _The Critique of Practical +Reason_ is intended to negate those transcendent elements generally +believed to be the distinctive portions of religion. God is not known +to us as an objective being, an entity without ourselves. He is an +idea, a belief, which gives meaning to our ethical life, a subjective +necessity. He is a postulate of the moral will. To quote Professor +McGiffert again: "We do not get God from the universe, we give Him +to the universe. We read significance and moral purpose into it. We +assume God, not to account for the world, but for the subjective +need of realizing our highest good.... Religion becomes a creative +act of the moral will just as knowledge is a creative act of the +understanding."[7] Thus there are no ultimate values; at least we can +know nothing of them; we have nothing to look to which is objective +and changeless. The absolutism of the Categorical Imperative is +a subjective one, bounded by ourselves, formed of our substance. +Religion is not discovered, but self-created, a sort of sublime +expediency. It can carry, then, no confident assertion as to the +meaning and destiny of the universe as a whole. + +[Footnote 7: _H.T.R._, vol. I, no. 1, p. 18.] + +Here, then, the nature of morality, the inspiration for character, +the solution of human destiny, are not sought outside in some sort +of cosmic relationship, but within, either in the experience of the +superman, the genius or the hero, or, as later, in the collective +experience and consciousness of the group. Thus this, too, throws man +back upon himself, makes a new exaltation of personality in sharpest +contrast to the scholastic doctrine of the futility and depravity of +human nature. It produces the assertion of the sacred character of the +individual human being. The conviction of the immeasurable worth of +man is, of course, a characteristic teaching of Jesus; what it is +important for the preacher to remember in humanism is the source, not +the fact, of its estimate. With Jesus man's is a derived greatness +found in him as the child of the Eternal; in humanism, it is, so to +speak, self-originated, born of present worth, not of sublime origin +or shining destiny. + +So man in the humanistic movement moves into the center of his own +world, becomes himself the measuring rod about whom all other values +are grouped. In the place of inspiration, or prophetic understanding, +which carries the implications of a transcendent source of truth and +goodness, we have a sharply limited, subjective wisdom and insight. +The "thus saith the Lord" of the Hebrew prophet means nothing here. +The humanist is, of course, confronted with the eternal question of +origins, of the thing-in-itself, the question whose insistence makes +the continuing worth of the absolutist speculations. He begs the +question by answering it with an assertion, not an explanation. He +meets it by an exaltation of human genius. Genius explains all sublime +achievements and genius is, so to speak, its own _fons et origo_. Thus +Diderot says: "Genius is the higher activity of the soul." "Genius," +remarks Rousseau in a letter, "makes knowledge unnecessary." And +Kant defines genius as "the talent to discover that which cannot be +taught or learned."[8] This appears to be more of an evasion than +a definition! But the intent here is to refer all that seems to +transcend mundane categories, man's highest, his widest, his sublimest +intuitions and achievements, back to himself; he is his own source of +light and power. + +[Footnote 8: _Anthropologie_, para. 87 c.] + +Such an anthropocentric view of life and destiny in exalting man, +of course, thereby liberated him, not merely from ecclesiastical +domination, but also from those illusive fears and questionings, those +remote and imaginative estimates of his own intended worth and those +consequent exacting demands upon himself which are a part of the +religious interpretation of life. Humanistic writing is full of the +exulting sense of this emancipation. These superconsiderations do not +belong in the world of experience as the humanist ordinarily conceives +of it. Hence, man lives in an immensely contracted, but a very real +and tangible world and within the small experimental circumference of +it, he holds a far larger place (from one viewpoint, a far smaller one +from another) than that of a finite creature caught in the snare of +this world and yet a child of the Eternal, having infinite destinies. +The humanist sees man as freed from the tyranny of this supernatural +revelation and laws. He rejoices over man because now he stands, + + "self-poised on manhood's solid earth + Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, + Fed from within with all the strength he needs." + +It is this sense of independence which arouses in Goethe a perennial +enthusiasm. It is the greatest bliss, he says, that the humanist won +back for us. Henceforth, we must strive with all our power to keep it. + +We have attempted this brief sketch of one of the chief sources of the +contemporary thought movement, that we may realize the pit whence we +were digged, the quarry from which many corner stones in the present +edifice of civilization were dug. The preacher tends to underestimate +the comprehensive character of the pervasive ideas, worked into many +institutions and practices, which are continually impinging upon him +and his message. They form a perpetual attrition, working silently and +ceaselessly day and night, wearing away the distinctively religious +conceptions of the community. Much of the vagueness and sentimentalism +of present preaching, its uncritical impressionism, is due to the +influence of the non-religious or, at least, the insufficiently +religious character of the ruling ideas and motives outside the church +which are impinging upon it, and upon the rest of the thinking of the +moment. + +Now, this _abstract_ humanism of the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries had a considerable influence upon early American preaching. +The latter part of the eighteenth century marked a breaking away from +the Protestant scholasticism of the Reformation theology. The French +Revolution accented and made operative, even across the Atlantic, the +typical humanistic concepts of the rights of man and the sovereignty +of the individual person. Skepticism and even atheism became a fashion +in our infant republic. It was a mark of sophistication with +many educated men to regard Christianity as not worthy of serious +consideration. College students modestly admitted that they were +infidels and with a delicious naïveté assumed the names of Voltaire, +Thomas Paine and even of that notorious and notable egotist +Rousseau. It is said that in 1795, on the first Sunday of President +administration in Yale College, only three undergraduates remained +after service to take the sacrament. The reasons were partly +political, probably, but these themselves were grounded in the new +philosophical, anti-religious attitude. + +Of course, this affected the churches. There was a reaction from +Protestant scholasticism within them which, later on, culminated in +Unitarianism, Universalism and Arminianism. The most significant thing +in the Unitarian movement was not its rejection of the Trinitarian +speculation, but its positive contribution to the reassertion of +Jesus' doctrine of the worth and dignity of human nature. But it +recovered that doctrine much more by the way of humanistic philosophy +than by way of the teaching of the New Testament. I suppose the +thing which has made the weakness of the Unitarian movement, its +acknowledged lack of religious warmth and feeling, is due not to the +place where it stands, but to the road by which it got there. + +Yet, take it for all in all, the effect upon the preaching of the +supernatural and speculative doctrines and insights of Christianity, +was not in America as great as might be expected. Kant died in 1804, +and Goethe in 1832, but only in the last sixty years has the preaching +of the "evangelical" churches been fundamentally affected by the +prevailing intellectual currents of the day. This is due, I think, +to two causes. One was the nature of the German Reformation. It +found preaching at a low ebb. Every great force, scholastic, popular, +mystical, which had contributed to the splendor of the mediaeval +pulpit had fallen into decay, and the widespread moral laxity of the +clergy precluded spiritual insight. The Reformation, with its ethical +and political interests, revived preaching and by the nature of these +same interests fixed the limits and determined the direction within +which it should develop. It is important to remember that Luther did +not break with the old theological system. He continued his belief +in an authority and revelation anterior, exterior and superior to +man, merely shifting the locus of that authority from the Church +to the Book. Thus he paved the way for Zwingli and the Protestant +scholasticism which became more rigid and sterile than the Catholic +which it succeeded. We usually regard the Reformation as a part of the +Renaissance and hence included in the humanistic movement. Politically +and religiously, it undoubtedly should be so regarded, for it was +a chief factor in the renewal of German nationalism and its central +doctrines of justification by faith, and the right of each separate +believer to an unmediated access to the Highest, exalted the integrity +and dignity of the individual. Inconsistently, however, it continued +the old theological tradition. In the Lutheran system, says Paul de +Lagarde, we see the Catholic scholastic structure standing +untouched with the exception of a few loci. And Harnack, in the +_Dogmengeschichte_ calls it "a miserable duplication of the Catholic +Church." + +Now, New England preaching, it is true, found its chief roots in +Calvinism; Calvin, rather than Luther, was the religious leader of +the Reformation outside Germany. But his system, also, is only +the continuation of the ancient philosophy of the Christian faith +originating with Augustine. He reduced it to order, expounded it with +energy and consistency, but one has only to recall its major doctrines +of the depravity of man, the atonement for sin, the irresistible grace +of the Holy Spirit, to see how untouched it was by the characteristic +postulates of the new humanism. And it was on his theology that New +England preaching was founded. It was Calvin who, through Jonathan +Edwards, the elder and the younger, Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, +Nathaniel Emmons, Nathaniel N. Taylor, determined the course of the +New England pulpit. + +The other reason for our relative immunity from humanistic influence +is accidental and complementary merely. It is the mere fact of our +physical isolation, which, until the last seventy-five years, quite +largely shut off thinkers here from continental and English currents +of thought and contributed to the brilliant, if sterile, provincialism +of the New England theology. + +It is, therefore, to the second set of media, which may be generally +characterized as scientific and practical, that we now turn. These are +the forces which apparently are most affecting Christian preaching +at this moment. But it is important to remember that a large part +of their influence is to be traced to the philosophic and ethical +tendencies of the earlier humanistic movement which had set the scene +for them, to which they are so sympathetic that we may assert that +it is in them that their practical interests are grounded and by them +that their scientific methods are reinforced. I divide this second +group of media, for clearness, under three heads. + +First comes the rise of the natural sciences. In 1859, Darwin +published the _Origin of Species_ and gave to the world the +evolutionary hypothesis, foreshadowed by Goethe and other +eighteenth-century thinkers, simultaneously formulated by Wallace +and himself. Here is a theory, open to objections certainly, not yet +conclusively demonstrated, but the most probable one which we yet +possess, as to the method of the appearance and the continuance of +life upon the planet. It conceives of creation as an unimaginably +long and intricate development from the inorganic to the organic, from +simple to complex forms of life. Like Kantianism and the humanistic +movement generally, the evolutionary hypothesis springs from reasoned +observation of man and nature, not from any _a priori_ or speculative +process. With this theory, long a regulative idea of our world, +preaching was forced to come to some sort of an understanding. It +strikes a powerful blow at the scholastic notion of a dichotomized +universe divided between nature and supernature, divine and human. +It reinforced humanism by minimizing, if not making unnecessary, +the objective and external source and external interpretations of +religions. It pushes back the initial creative _act_ until it is lost +in the mists and chaos of an unimaginably remote past. Meanwhile, +creative _energy_, the very essence of transcendent life, is, as we +know it, not transcendent at all, but working outward from within, +a part of the process, not above and beyond it. The inevitable +implication here is that God is sufficiently, if not exclusively, +known through natural and human media. Science recognizes Him in the +terms of its own categories as in and of His world, a part of all its +ongoings and developments. But His creative life is indistinguishable +from, if not identical with, its expressions. Here, then, is a +practical obliteration of the line once so sharply drawn between the +natural and the supernatural. Hence the demarcation between the divine +and human into mutually exclusive states has disappeared. + +This would seem, then, to wipe out also any knowledge of absolute +values. Christian theism has interpreted God largely in static, final +terms. The craving for the absolute in the human mind, as witnessed by +the long course of the history of thought, as pathetically witnessed +to in the mixture of chicanery, fanaticism and insight of the modern +mystical and occult healing sects, is central and immeasurable. But +God, found, if at all, in the terms of a present process, is not +static and absolute, but dynamic and relative; indefinite, incomplete, +not final. And man's immense difference from Him, that sense of +the immeasurable space between creator and created, is strangely +contracted. The gulf between holiness and guiltiness tends also to +disappear. For our life would appear to be plastic and indefinite, +a process rather than a state, not open then to conclusive moral +estimates; incomplete, not fallen; life an orderly process, hence not +perverse but defensible; without known breaks or infringements, hence +relatively normal and sufficiently intelligible. + +A second factor was the rise of the humane sciences. In the seventh +and eighth decades of the last century men were absorbed in the +discovery of the nature and extent of the material universe. But +beginning about 1890, interest swerved again toward man as its +most revealing study and most significant inhabitant. Anthropology, +ethnology, sociology, physical and functional psychology, came to +the front. Especially the humane studies of political science and +industrial economics were magnified because of the new and urgent +problems born of an industrial civilization and a capitalistic state. +The invention and perfection of the industrial machine had by now +thoroughly dislocated former social groupings, made its own ethical +standards and human problems. In the early days of the labor movement +William Morris wrote, "we have become slaves of the monster to which +invention has given birth." In 1853, shortly after the introduction of +the cotton gin into India, the Viceroy wrote: "The misery is scarcely +paralleled in the history of trade." (A large statement that!) "The +bones of the cotton workers whiten the plains of India." + +But the temporary suffering caused by the immediate crowding out +of cottage industry and the abrupt increase in production was +insignificant beside the deeper influence, physical, moral, mental, +of the machine in changing the permanent habitat and the entire mode +of living for millions of human beings. It removed them from those +healthy rural surroundings which preserve the half-primitive, +half-poetic insight into the nature of things which comes from +relative isolation and close contact with the soil, to the nervous +tension, the amoral conditions, the airless, lightless ugliness of +the early factory settlements. Here living conditions were not merely +beastly; they were often bestial. The economic helplessness of the +factory hands reduced them to essential slavery. They must live where +the factory was, and could work only in one factory, for they could +not afford to move. Hence they must obey their industrial master in +every particular, since the raw material, the plant, the tools, the +very roof that covered them, were all his! In this new human condition +was a powerful reinforcement, from another angle of approach, of +the humanistic impulse. Man's interest in himself, which had been +sometimes that of the dilettante, largely imaginative and even +sentimental, was reinforced by man's new distress and became concrete +and scientific. + +Thus man regarded himself and his own world with a new and urgent +attention. The methods and secondary causes of his intellectual, +emotional and volitional life began to be laid bare. The new situation +revealed the immense part played in shaping the personality and +the fate of the individual by inheritance and environment. The +Freudian doctrine, which traces conduct and habit back to early +or prenatal repressions, strengthens the interest in the physical +and materialistic sources of character and conduct in human life. +Behavioristic psychology, interpreting human nature in terms of +observation and action, rather than analysis and value judgments, +does the same. It tends to put the same emphasis upon the external and +sensationalistic aspects of human experience. + +That, then, which is a central force in religion, the sense of the +inscrutability of human nature, the feeling of awe before the natural +processes, what Paul called the mystery of iniquity and the mystery of +godliness, tends to disappear. Wonder and confident curiosity succeed +humility and awe. That which is of the essence of religion, the sense +of helplessness coupled with the sense of responsibility, is stifled. +Whatever else the humane sciences have done, they have deepened man's +fascinated and narrowing absorption in himself and given him apparent +reason to believe that by analyzing the iron chain of cause and effect +which binds the process and admitting that it permits no deflection +or variation, he is making the further questions as to the origin, +meaning and destiny of that process either futile or superfluous. So +that, in brief, the check to speculative thinking and the repudiation +of central metaphysical concepts, which the earlier movement brought +about, has been accentuated and sealed by the humane sciences and the +new and living problems offered them for practical solution. Thus the +generation now ending has been carried beyond the point of combating +ancient doctrines of God and man, to the place where it has become +comparatively indifferent, rather than hostile, to any doctrine of +God, so absorbed is it in the physical functions, the temporal needs +and the material manifestations of human personality. + +Finally, as the natural and humane sciences mark new steps in the +expanding humanistic movement, so in these last days, critical +scholarship, itself largely a product of the humanistic viewpoint, has +added another factor to the group. The new methods of historical and +literary criticism, of comparative investigation in religion and the +other arts, have exerted a vast influence upon contemporary religious +thought. They have not merely completed the breakdown of an arbitrary +and fixed external authority and rendered finally invalid the notion +of equal or verbal inspiration in sacred writings, but the present +tendency, especially in comparative religion, is to seek the source +of all so-called religious experience within the human consciousness; +particularly to derive it all from group experience. Here, then, is +a theory of religious origins which once more turns the spirit of man +back upon itself. Robertson Smith, Jane Harrison, Durkheim, rejecting +an earlier animistic theory, find the origin of religion not in +contemplation of the natural world and in the intuitive perception +of something more-than-world which lies behind it, but in the group +experience whose heightened emotional intensity and nervous energy +imparts to the one the exaltation of the many. Smith, in the _Religion +of the Semites_,[9] emphasizes, as the fundamental conception of +ancient religion, "the solidarity of the gods and their worshipers as +part of an organic society." Durkheim goes beyond this. There are +not at the beginning men and gods, but only the social group and the +collective emotions and representations which are generated through +membership in the group. + +[Footnote 9: P. 32.] + +Here, then, is humanism again carried to the very heart of the +citadel. Religion at its source contains no real perceptions of any +extra-human force or person. What seemed to be such perceptions +were only the felt participation of the individual in a collective +consciousness which is superindividual, but not superhuman and always +continuous with the individual consciousness. So that, whatever may or +may not be true later, the beginning of man's metaphysical interests, +his cosmic consciousness, his more-than-human contacts, is simply his +social experience, his collective emotions and representations. Thus +Durkheim: "We are able to say, in sum, that the religious individual +does not deceive himself when he believes in the existence of a moral +power upon which he depends and from which he holds the larger portion +of himself. That power exists; it is society. When the Australian +feels within himself the surging of a life whose intensity surprises +him, he is the dupe of no illusion; that exaltation is real, and it +is really the product of forces that are external and superior to the +individual."[10] Yes, but identical in kind and genesis with himself +and his own race. To Leuba, in his _Psychological Study of Religion_, +this has already become the accepted viewpoint. Whatever is enduring +and significant in religion is merely an expression of man's social +consciousness and experience, his sense of participation in a common +life. "Humanity, idealized and conceived as a manifestation of +creative energy, possesses surprising qualifications for a source +of religious inspiration." Professor Overstreet, in "The Democratic +Conception of God," _Hibbert Journal_, volume XI, page 409, says: "It +is this large figure, not simply of human but of cosmic society which +is to yield our God of the future. There is no place in the future for +an eternally perfect being and no need--society, democratic from end +to end, can brook no such radical class distinction as that between a +supreme being, favored with eternal and absolute perfection, and the +mass of beings doomed to the lower ways of imperfect struggle." + +[Footnote 10: _Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse_, p. 322.] + +There is certainly a striking immediacy in such language. We leave for +later treatment the question as to the historical validity of such +an attitude. It certainly ignores some of the most distinguished and +fruitful concepts of trained minds; it rules out of court what are +to the majority of men real and precious factors in the religious +experience. It would appear to be another instance, among the many, of +the fallacy of identifying the part with the whole. But the effect +of such pervasive thought currents, the more subtle and unfightable +because indirect and disguised in popular appearance and influence, +upon the ethical and spiritual temper of religious leaders, the +very audacity of whose tasks puts them on the defensive, is vast +and incalculable. At the worst, it drives man into a mechanicalized +universe, with a resulting materialism of thought and life; at the +best, it makes him a pragmatist with amiable but immediate objectives, +just practical "results" as his guide and goal. Morality as, in +Antigone's noble phrase, "the unwritten law of heaven" sinks down and +disappears. There is no room here for the Job who abhors himself and +repents in dust and ashes nor for Plato's _One behind the Many_; no +perceptible room, in such a world, for any of the absolute values, the +transcendent interests, the ethics of idealism, any eschatology, or +for Christian theodicy. That which has been the typical contribution +of the religious perceptions in the past, namely, the comprehensive +vision of life and the world and time _sub specie aeternitatis_ is +here abandoned. Eternity is unreal or empty; we never heard the music +of the spheres. We are facing at this moment a disintegrating age. +Here is a prime reason for it. The spiritual solidarity of mankind +under the humanistic interpretation of life and destiny is dissolving +and breaking down. Humanism is ingenious and reasonable and clever but +it is too limited; it doesn't answer enough questions. + +Before going on, in a future chapter, to discuss the question as to +what kind of preaching such a world-view, seen from the Christian +standpoint, needs, we are now to inquire what the effect of this +humanistic movement upon Christian preaching has already been. +That our preaching should have been profoundly influenced by it is +inevitable. Religion is not apart from the rest of life. The very +temperament of the speaker makes him peculiarly susceptible to the +intellectual and spiritual movements about him. What, then, has +humanism done to preaching? Has it worked to clarify and solidify +the essence of the religious position? Or has preaching declined and +become neutralized in religious quality under it? + +First: it has profoundly affected Christian preaching about God. +The contemporary sermon on Deity minimizes or leaves out divine +transcendence; thus it starves one fundamental impulse in man--the +need and desire to look up. Instead of this transcendence modern +preaching emphasizes immanence, often to a naïve and ludicrous degree. +God is the being who is like us. Under the influence of that monistic +idealism, which is a derived philosophy of the humanistic impulse, +preaching lays all the emphasis upon divine immanence in sharpest +contrast either to the deistic transcendence of the eighteenth century +or the separateness and aloofness of the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, +or of the classic Greek theologies of Christianity. God is, of course; +that is, He is the informing principle in the natural and human +universe and essentially one with it. Present preaching does not +confess this identification but it evades rather than meets the +logical pantheistic conclusion. So our preaching has to do with God +in the common round of daily tasks; with sweeping a room to His glory; +with adoration of His presence in a sunset and worship of Him in a +star. Every bush's aflame with Him; there are sermons in stones and +poems in running brooks. Before us, even as behind, God is and all is +well. We are filled with a sort of intoxication with this intimate and +protective company of the Infinite; we are magnificently unabashed as +we familiarly approach Him. "Closer is He than breathing; nearer than +hands or feet." Not then by denying or condemning or distrusting the +world in which we live, not by asserting the differences between God +and humanity do we understand Him. But by closest touch with nature +do we find Him. By a superb paradox, not without value, yet equally +ineffable in sentimentality and sublime in its impiety we say, +beholding man, "that which is most human is most divine!" + +That there is truth in such comfortable and affable preaching is +obvious; that there is not much truth in it is obvious, too. To +what extent, and in what ways, nature, red with tooth and claw, +indifferent, ruthless, whimsical, can be called the expression of the +Christian God, is not usually specifically stated. In what way man, +just emerging from the horror, the shame, the futility of his last and +greatest debauch of bloody self-destruction, can be called the chief +medium of truth, holiness and beauty, the matrix of divinity, is not +entirely manifest. But the fatal defect of such preaching is not that +there is not, of course, a real identity between the world and its +Maker, the soul and its Creator, but that the aspect of reality which +this truth expresses is the one which has least religious value, is +least distinctive in the spiritual experience. The religious nature is +satisfied, and the springs of moral action are refreshed by dwelling +on the "specialness" of God; men are brought back to themselves, not +among their fellows and by identifying them with their fellows, but +by lifting them to the secret place of the Most High. They need +religiously not thousand-tongued nature, but to be kept secretly in +His pavilion from the strife of tongues. It is the difference between +God and men which makes men who know themselves trust Him. It is the +"otherness," not the sameness, which makes Him desirable and potent in +the daily round of life. A purely ethical interest in God ceases to be +ethical and becomes complacent; when we rule out the supraphenomenal +we have shut the door on the chief strength of the higher life. + +Second: modern preaching, under this same influence and to a yet +greater degree, emphasizes the principle of identity, where we need +that of difference, in its preaching about Jesus. He is still the most +moving theme for the popular presentation of religion. But that +is because He offers the most intelligible approach to that very +"otherness" in the person of the godhead. His healing and reconciling +influence over the heart of man--the way the human spirit expands and +blossoms in His presence--is moving beyond expression to any observer, +religious or irreligious. Each new crusade in the long strife for +human betterment looks in sublime confidence to Him as its forerunner +and defense. To what planes of common service, faith, magnanimous +solicitude could He not lift the embittered, worldlyized men and women +of this torn and distracted age, which is so desperately seeking its +own life and thereby so inexorably losing it! But why is the heart +subdued, the mind elevated, the will made tractable by Him? Why, +because He is enough like us so that we know that He understands, has +utter comprehension; and He is enough different from us so that we are +willing to trust Him. In what lies the essence of the leadership of +Jesus? He is not like us: therefore, we are willing to relinquish +ourselves into His hands. + +Now, that is only half the truth. But if I may use a paradox, it is +the important half, the primary half. And it is just that essential +element in the Christian experience of Jesus that modern preaching, +under the humanistic impulse, is neglecting. Indeed, liberal preachers +have largely ceased to sermonize about Him, just because it has become +so easy! Humanism has made Jesus obvious, hence, relatively impotent. +With its unified cosmos, its immanent God, its exalted humanity, the +whole Christological problem has become trivial. It drops the cosmic +approach to the person of Jesus in favor of the ethical. It does not +approach Him from the side of God; we approach nothing from that +side now; but from the side of man. Thus He is not so much a divine +revelation as He is a human achievement. Humanity and divinity are +one in essence. The Creator is distinguished from His creatures in +multifarious differences of degree but not in kind. We do not see, +then, in Christ, a perfect isolated God, joined to a perfect isolated +man, in what were indeed the incredible terms of the older and +superseded Christologies. But rather, He is the perfect revelation of +the moral being, the character of God, in all those ways capable of +expression or comprehension in human life, just because he is the +highest manifestation of a humanity through which God has been forever +expressing Himself in the world. For man is, so to speak, his own +cosmic center; the greatest divine manifestation which we know. +Granted, then, an ideal man, a complete moral being, and _ipso facto_ +we have our supreme revelation of God. + +So runs the thrice familiar argument. Of course, we have gained +something by it. We may drop gladly the old dualistic philosophy, and +we must drop it, though I doubt if it is so easy to drop the dualistic +experience which created it. But I beg to point out that, on the +whole, we have lost more religiously than we have gained. For we have +made Jesus easy to understand, not as He brings us up to His level, +but as we have reduced Him to ours. Can we afford to do that? +Bernard's mystical line, "The love of Jesus, what it is, none but His +loved ones know," has small meaning here. The argument is very good +humanism but it drops the word "Saviour" out of the vocabulary +of faith. Oh, how many sermons since, let us say, 1890, have been +preached on the text, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." +And how uniformly the sermons have explained that the text means +not that Jesus is like God, but that God is like Jesus--and we have +already seen that Jesus is like us! One only has to state it all to +see beneath its superficial reasonableness its appalling profanity! + +Third: we may see the influence of humanism upon our preaching in the +relinquishment of the goal of conversion. We are preaching to educate, +not to save; to instruct, not to transform. Conversion may be gradual +and half-unconscious, a long and normal process under favorable +inheritance and with the culture of a Christian environment. Or it +may be sudden and catastrophic, a violent change of emotional and +volitional activity. When a man whose feeling has been repressed by +sin and crusted over by deception, whose inner restlessness has been +accumulating under the misery and impotence of a divided life, is +brought into contact with Christian truth, he can only accept it +through a volitional crisis, with its cleansing flood of penitence and +confession and its blessed reward of the sense of pardon and peace and +the relinquishment of the self into the divine hands. But one thing is +true of either process in the Christian doctrine of conversion. It is +not merely an achievement, although it is that; it is also a rescue. +It cannot come about without faith, the "will to believe"; neither can +it come about by that alone. Conversion is something we do; it is also +something else, working within us, if we will let it, helping us to +do; hence it is something done for us. + +Now, this experience of conversion is passing out of Christian +life and preaching under humanistic influence. We are accepting +the Socratic dictum that knowledge is virtue. Hence we blur the +distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian. Education +supplants salvation. We bring the boys and girls into the church +because they are safer there than outside it; and on the whole it is +a good thing to do and really they belong there anyway. The church +member is a man of the world, softened by Christian feeling. He is +a kindly and amiable citizen and an honorable man; he has not been +saved. But he knows the unwisdom of evil; if you know what is right +you will do it. Intelligence needs no support from grace. It is +strange that the church does not see that with this relinquishment +of her insistence upon something that religion can do for a man that +nothing else can attempt, she has thereby given up her real excuse for +being, and that her peculiar and distinctive mission has gone. It is +strange that she does not see that the humanism which, since it is +at home in the world, can sometimes make there a classic hero, +degenerates dreadfully and becomes unreal in a church where unskilled +hands use it to make it a substitute for a Christian saint! But +for how many efficient parish administrators, Y.M.C.A. secretaries, +up-to-date preachers, character is conceived of as coming not by +discipline but by expansion, not by salvation, but by activity. Social +service solves everything without any reference to the troublesome +fact that the value of the service will depend upon the quality of the +servant. Salvation is a combination of intelligence and machinery. Sin +is pure ignorance or just maladjustment to environment. All we need is +to know what is right and wrong; the humane sciences will take care of +that; and, then, have an advertising agent, a gymnasium, a committee +on spiritual resources, a program, a conference, a drive for money, +and behold, the Kingdom of God is among us! + +Fourth, and most significant: it is to the humanistic impulse and +its derived philosophies that we owe the individualistic ethics, the +relative absence of the sense of moral responsibility for the social +order which has, from the beginning, maimed and distorted Protestant +Christianity. It was, perhaps, a consequence of the speculative +and absolute philosophies of the mediaeval church that, since they +endeavored to relate religion to the whole of the cosmos, its +remotest and ultimate issues, so they conceived of its absoluteness as +concerned with the whole of human experience, with every relation of +organized society. Under their regulative ideas all human beings, not +a selected number, had, not in themselves but because of the Divine +Sacrifice, divine significance; reverence was had, not for supermen or +captains of industry, but for every one of those for whom Christ died. +There were no human institutions which were ends in themselves or +more important than the men which created and served them. The Holy +Catholic Church was the only institution which was so conceived; all +others, social, political, economic, were means toward the end of the +preservation and expression of human personality. Hence, the interest +of the mediaeval church in social ethics and corporate values; hence, +the axiom of the church's control of, the believers' responsibility +for, the economic relations of society. An unjust distribution of +goods, the withholding from the producer of his fair share of the +wealth which he creates, profiteering, predatory riches--these were +ranked under one term as avarice, and they were counted not among +the venial offenses, like aberrations of the flesh, but avarice was +considered one of the seven deadly sins of the spirit. The application +of the ethics of Jesus to social control began to die out as +humanism individualized Christian morals and as, under its influence, +nationalism tended to supplant the international ecclesiastical order. +The cynical and sordid maxim that business is business; that, in the +economic sphere, the standards of the church are not operative and the +responsibility of the church is not recognized--notions which are +a chief heresy and an outstanding disgrace of nineteenth-century +religion, from which we are only now painfully and slowly +reacting--these may be traced back to the influence of humanism upon +Christian thought and conduct. + +In general, then, it seems to me abundantly clear that the humanistic +movement has both limited and secularized Christian preaching. It +dogmatically ignores supersensuous values; hence it has rationalized +preaching hence it has made provincial its intellectual approach and +treatment, narrowed and made mechanical its content. It has turned +preaching away from speculative to practical themes. It was, +perhaps, this mental and spiritual decline of the ministry to which a +distinguished educator referred when he told a body of Congregational +preachers that their sermons were marked by "intellectual frugality." +It is this which a great New England theologian-preacher, Dr. Gordon, +means when he says "an indescribable pettiness, a mean kind of retail +trade has taken possession of the preachers; they have substituted the +mill-round for the sun-path." + +The whole world today tends toward a monstrous egotism. Man's +attention is centered on himself, his temporal salvation, his external +prosperity. Preaching, yielding partly to the intellectual and partly +to the practical environment, has tended to adopt the same secular +scale of values, somewhat pietized and intensified, and to move within +the same area of operation. That is why most preaching today deals +with relations of men with men, not of men with God. Yet human +relationships can only be determined in the light of ultimate ones. +Most preaching instinctively avoids the definitely religious themes; +deals with the ethical aspects of devotion; with conduct rather than +with worship; with the effects, not the causes, the expression, not +the essence of the religious life. Most college preaching chiefly +amounts to informal talks on conduct; somewhat idealized discussions +of public questions; exhortations to social service. When sermons do +deal with ultimate sanctions they can hardly be called Christian. They +are often stoical; self-control is exalted as an heroic achievement, +as being self-authenticating, carrying its own reward. Or they are +utilitarian, giving a sentimentalized or frankly shrewd doctrine of +expediencies, the appeal to an exaggerated self-respect, enlightened +self-interest, social responsibility. These are typical humanistic +values; they are real and potent and legitimate. But they are not +religious and they do not touch religious motives. The very difference +between the humanist and the Christian lies here. To obey a principle +is moral and admirable; to do good and be good because it pays is +sensible; but to act from love of a person is a joyous ecstasy, a +liberation of power; it alone transforms life with an ultimate and +enduring goodness. Genuine Christian preaching makes its final appeal, +not to fear, not to hope, not to future rewards and punishments, not +to reason or prudence or benevolence. It makes its appeal to love, +and that means that it calls men to devotion to a living Being, a +Transcendence beyond and without us. For you cannot love a principle, +or relinquish yourself to an idea. You must love another living +Being. Which amounts to saying that humanism just because it is +self-contained is self-condemned. It minimizes or ignores the living +God, in His world, but not to be identified with it; beyond it and +above it; loving it because it needs to be loved; blessing it because +saving it. In so doing, it lays the axe at the very root of the tree +of religion. Francis Xavier, in his greatest of all hymns, has stated +once for all the essence of the Christian motive and the religious +attitude: + + "O Deus, ego amo te + Nec amo te ut salves me + Aut quia non amantes te + Aeternis punis igne. + + "Nee praemii illius spe + Sed sicut tu amasti me + Sic amo et amabo te + Solem, quia Rex meus est." + +What, then, has been the final effect of humanism upon preaching? It +has tempted the preacher to depersonalize religion. And since love is +the essence of personality, it has thereby stripped preaching of the +emotional energy, of the universal human interests and the +prophetic insight which only love can bestow. Over against this +depersonalization, we must find some way to return to expressing the +religious view and utilizing the religious power of the human spirit. + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + +EATING, DRINKING AND BEING MERRY + + +We ventured to say in the preceding chapter that, under the influences +of more than three centuries of humanism, the spiritual solidarity of +mankind is breaking down. For humanism makes an inhuman demand upon +the will; it minimizes the force of the subrational and it largely +ignores the superrational elements in human experience; it does not +answer enough questions. Indeed, it is frankly confessed, particularly +by students of the political and economic forces now working in +society, that the new freedom born in the Renaissance is, in some +grave sense, a failure. It destroyed what had been the common moral +authority of European civilization in its denial of the rule of the +church. But for nearly four centuries it has become increasingly clear +that it offered no adequate substitute for the supernatural moral and +religious order which it supplanted. John Morley was certainly one of +the most enlightened and humane positivists of the last generation. +In his _Recollections_, published three years ago, there is a final +paragraph which runs as follows: "A painful interrogatory, I must +confess, emerges. Has not your school held the civilized world, +both old and new alike, in the hollow of their hand for two long +generations past? Is it quite clear that their influence has been +so much more potent than the gospel of the various churches? +_Circumspice_. Is not diplomacy, unkindly called by Voltaire the field +of lies, as able as ever it was to dupe governments and governed by +grand abstract catchwords veiling obscure and inexplicable purposes, +and turning the whole world over with blood and tears, to a strange +Witch's Sabbath?"[11] This is his conclusion of the whole matter. + +[Footnote 11: _Recollections_: II, p. 366 ff.] + +But while the reasons for the failure are not far to seek, it is worth +while for the preacher to dwell on them for a moment. In strongly +centered souls like a Morley or an Erasmus, humanism produces a +stoical endurance and a sublime self-confidence. But it tends, in +lesser spirits, to a restless arrogance. Hence, both those lower +elements in human nature, the nature and extent of whose force it +either cloaks or minimizes, and those imponderable and supersensuous +values which it tends to ignore and which are not ordinarily included +in its definition of experience, return to vex and plague it. Indeed +the worst foe of humanism has never been the religious view of the +world upon whose stored-up moral reserves of uncompromising doctrine +it has often half-consciously subsisted. Humanism has long profited +from the admitted truth that the moral restraints of an age that +possesses an authoritative and absolute belief survive for some time +after the doctrine itself has been rejected. What has revealed the +incompleteness of the humanistic position has been its constant +tendency to decline into naturalism; a tendency markedly accelerated +today. Hence, we find ourselves in a disintegrating and distracted +epoch. In 1912 Rudolph Eucken wrote: "The moral solidarity of mankind +is dissolved. Sects and parties are increasing; common estimates and +ideals keep slipping away from us; we understand one another less +and less. Even voluntary associations, that form of unity peculiar to +modern times, unite more in achievement than in disposition, bring men +together outwardly rather than inwardly. The danger is imminent that +the end may be _bellum omnium contra omnes_, a war of all against +all."[12] + +[Footnote 12: _Harvard Theo. Rev._, vol. V, no. 3, p. 277.] + +That disintegration is sufficiently advanced so that we can see the +direction it is taking and the principle that inspires it. Humanism +has at least the value of an objective standard in the sense that it +sets up criteria which are without the individual; it substitutes a +collective subjectivism, if we may use the term, for personal whim +and impulse. Thus it proclaims a classic standard of moderation in all +things, the golden mean of the Greeks, Confucius' and Gautama's law +of measure. It proposes to bring the primitive and sensual element in +man under critical control; to accomplish this it relies chiefly upon +its amiable exaggeration of the reasonableness of human nature. But +the Socratic dictum that knowledge is virtue was the product of a +personality distinguished, if we accept the dialogues of Plato, by +a perfect harmony of thought and feeling. Probably it is not wise to +build so important a rule upon so distinguished an exception! + +But the positive defect of humanism is more serious. It likewise +proposes to rationalize those supersensuous needs and convictions +which lie in the imaginative, the intuitive ranges of experience. +The very proposal carries a denial of their value-in-themselves. +Its inevitable result in the humanist is their virtual ignoring. The +greatest of all the humanists of the Orient was Confucius. "I venture +to ask about death," said a disciple to the sage. "While you do not +know life," replied he, "how can you know about death?"[13] Even more +typical of the humanistic attitude towards the distinctively religious +elements of experience are other sayings of Confucius, such as: "To +give oneself earnestly to the duties due to men, and while respecting +spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them may be called wisdom."[13] +The precise area of humanistic interests is indicated in another +observation. "The subjects on which the Master did not talk were +... disorder and spiritual beings."[13] For the very elements of +experience which humanism belittles or avoids are found in the world +where pagans like Rabelais robustly jest or the high spaces where +souls like Newman meditate and pray. The humanist appears to be +frightened by the one and repelled by the other; will not or cannot +see life steadily and whole. That a powerful primitivistic faith, +like Taoism, a sort of religious bohemianism, should flourish beside +such pragmatic and passionless moderation as classic Confucianism is +inevitable; that the worship of Amida Buddha, the Buddha of redemption +and a future heaven, of a positive and eternal bliss, should be the +Chinese form of the Indian faith is equally intelligible. After a like +manner it is the humanism of our Protestant preaching today from which +men are defecting into utter worldliness and indifference on the one +hand and returning to mediaeval and Catholic forms of supernaturalism +on the other. + +[Footnote 13: _Analects_, XI, CXI; VI, CXX.] + +For the primitive in man is a beast whom it is hard to chain nor does +humanism with its semi-scientific, semi-sentimental laudation of all +natural values produce that exacting mood of inward scrutiny in which +self-control has most chance of succeeding. Hence here, as elsewhere +on the continent, and formerly in China, in Greece and in Rome, a sort +of neo-paganism has been steadily supplanting it. + +To the study of this neo-paganism we now address ourselves. It is +the third and lowest of those levels of human experience to which we +referred in the first lecture. The naturalist, you may remember, +is that incorrigible individual who imagines that he is a law unto +himself, that he may erect his person into a sovereign over the whole +universe. He perversely identifies discipline with repression and +makes the unlimited the goal both of imagination and conduct. Oscar +Wilde's epigrams, and more particularly his fables, are examples of +a thoroughgoing naturalist's insolent indifference to any form of +restraint. All things, whether holy or bestial, were material for his +topsy-turvy wit, his literally unbridled imagination. No humanistic +law of decency, that is to say, a proper respect for the opinions of +mankind, and no divine law of reverence and humility, acted for him +as a restraining force or a selective principle. An immediate and +significant example of this naturalistic riot of feeling, with its +consequent false and anarchic scale of values, is found in the +film dramas of the moving picture houses. Unreal extravagance of +imagination, accompanied by the debauch of the aesthetic and moral +judgment, frequently distinguishes them. In screenland, it is the +vampire, the villain, the superman, the saccharine angel child, +who reign almost undisputed. Noble convicts, virtuous courtesans, +attractive murderers, good bad men, and ridiculous good men, flit +across the canvas haloed with cheap sentimentality. Opposed to them, +in an ever losing struggle, are those conventional figures who stand +for the sober realities of an orderly and disciplined world; the +judge, the policeman, the mere husband. These pitiable and laughable +figures are always outwitted; they receive the fate which indeed, in +any primitive society, they so richly deserve! + +How deeply sunk in the modern world are the roots of this naturalism +is shown by its long course in history, paralleling humanism. It has +seeped down through the Protestant centuries in two streams. One is +a sort of scientific naturalism. It exalts material phenomena and the +external order, issues in a glorification of elemental impulses, an +attempted return to childlike spontaneous living, the identifying of +man's values with those of primitive nature. The other is an emotional +naturalism, of which Maeterlinck is at the moment a brilliant and +lamentable example. This exchanges the world of sober conduct, +intelligible and straightforward thinking for an unfettered dreamland, +compounded of fairy beauty, flashes of mystical and intuitive +understanding intermixed with claptrap magic, a high-flown +commercialism and an etherealized sensuality. + +Rousseau represents both these streams in his own person. His +sentimentalized egotism and bland sensuality pass belief. His +sensitive spirit dissolves in tears over the death of his dog but he +bravely consigns his illegitimate children to the foundling asylum +without one tremor. In his justly famous and justly infamous +_Confessions_, he presents himself Satan-wise before the Almighty at +the last Judgment, these _Confessions_ in his hand, a challenge to the +remainder of the human race upon his lips. "Let a single one assert +to Thee, if he dare: I am better than that man." But his preachment +of natural and spontaneous values, return to primitive conditions, +was equally aggressive. If anyone wants to inspect the pit whence the +Montessori system of education was digged, let him read Rousseau, who +declared that the only habit a child should have is the habit of not +having a habit, or his contemporary disciple, George Moore, who says +that one should be ashamed of nothing except of being ashamed. +There are admirable features in the schooling-made-easy system. It +recognizes the fitness of different minds for different work; that +the process of education need not and should not be forbidding; that +natural science has been subordinated overmuch to the humanities; that +the imagination and the hand should be trained with the intellect. +But the method which proposes to give children an education along +the lines of least resistance is, like all other naturalism, a +contradiction in terms, sometimes a _reductio ad absurdum_, sometimes +_ad nauseam_. As long ago as 1893, when Huxley wrote his Romanes +lecture on _Evolution and Ethics_, this identity of natural and human +values was explicitly denied. Teachers do not exist for the amusement +of children, nor for the repression of children; they exist for +the discipline of children. The new education is consistently +primitivistic in the latitude which it allows to whim and in its +indulgence of indolence. There is only one way to make a man out of +a child; to teach him that happiness is a by-product of achievement; +that pleasure is an accompaniment of labor; that the foundation of +self-respect is drudgery well done; that there is no power in any +system of philosophy, any view of the world, no view of the world, +which can release him from the unchanging necessity of personal +struggle, personal consecration, personal holiness in human life. +"That wherein a man cannot be equaled," says Confucius, "is his work +which other men cannot see."[14] The humanist, at least, does not +blink the fact that we are caught in a serious and difficult world. To +rail at it, to deny it, to run hither and thither like scurrying rats +to evade it, will not alter one jot or one tittle of its inexorable +facts. + +[Footnote 14: _Doctrine of the Mean_, ch. xxxiii, v. 2.] + +Following Rousseau and Chateaubriand come a striking group of +Frenchmen who passed on this torch of ethical and aesthetic rebellion. +Some of them are wildly romantic like Dumas and Hugo; some of them +perversely realistic like Balzac, Flaubert, Gautier, Zola. Paul +Verlaine, a near contemporary of ours, is of this first number; writer +of some of the most exquisite lyrics in the French language, yet a man +who floated all his life in typical romantic fashion from passion +to repentance, "passing from lust of the flesh to sorrow for sin in +perpetual alternation." Guy de Maupassant again is a naturalist of +the second sort, a brutal realist; de Maupassant, who died a suicide, +crying out to his valet from his hacked throat "_Encore l'homme au +rancart_!"--another carcass to the dustheap! + +In English letters Wordsworth in his earlier verse illustrated the +same sentimental primitivism. It would be unfair to quote _Peter +Bell_, for that is Wordsworth at his dreadful worst, but even in +_Tinlern Abbey_, which has passages of incomparable majesty and +beauty, there are lines in which he declares himself: + + "... well pleased to recognize + In nature, and the language of the sense + The anchor of my purest thought, the nurse, + The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul + Of all my moral being." + +Byron's innate sophistication saves him from the ludicrous depths to +which Wordsworth sometimes fell, but he, too, is Rousseau's disciple, +a moral rebel, a highly personal and subjective poet of whom Goethe +said that he respected no law, human or divine, except that of the +three unities. Byron's verse is fascinating; it overflows with a sort +of desperate and fiery sincerity; but, as he himself says, his life +was one long strife of "passion with eternal law." He combines both +the romantic and the realistic elements of naturalism, both flames +with elemental passion and parades his cynicism, is forever snapping +his mood in _Don Juan_, alternating extravagant and romantic feeling +with lines of sardonic and purposely prosaic realism. Shelley is a +naturalist, too, not in the realm of sordid values but of Arcadian +fancy. The pre-Raphaelites belong here, together with a group of young +Englishmen who flourished between 1890 and 1914, of whom John Davidson +and Richard Middleton, both suicides, are striking examples. Poor +Middleton turned from naturalism to religion at the last. When he had +resolved on death, he wrote a message telling what he was about to do, +parting from his friend with brave assumption of serenity. But he did +not send the postcard, and in the last hour of that hired bedroom in +Brussels, with the bottle of chloroform before him, he traced across +the card's surface "a broken and a contrite spirit thou wilt not +despise." So there was humility at the last. One remembers rather +grimly what the clown says in _Twelfth Night_, + + "Pleasure will be paid some time or other." + +This same revolt against the decencies and conventions of our humanist +civilization occupies a great part of present literature. How far +removed from the clean and virile stoicism of George Meredith or the +honest pessimism of Thomas Hardy is Arnold Bennett's _The Pretty Lady_ +or Galsworthy's _The Dark Flower_. Finally, in this country we need +only mention, if we may descend so far, such naturalists in literature +as Jack London, Robert Chambers and Gouverneur Morris. One's only +excuse for referring to them is that they are vastly popular with the +people whom you and I try to interest in sermons, to whom we talk on +religion! + +Of course, this naturalism in letters has its accompanying and +interdependent philosophic theory, its intellectual interpretation +and defense. As Kant is the noblest of the moralists, so I suppose +William James and, still later, Henri Bergson and Croce are the chief +protagonists of unrestrained feeling and naturalistic values in the +world of thought. To the neo-realists "the thing given" is alone +reality. James' pragmatism frankly relinquishes any absolute standard +in favor of relativity. In _the Varieties of Religious Experience_, +which Professor Babbitt tells us someone in Cambridge suggested should +have had for a subtitle "Wild Religions I Have Known," he is plainly +more interested in the intensity than in the normality, in the +excesses than in the essence of the religious life. Indeed, Professor +Babbitt quotes him as saying in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton, +"mere sanity is the most Philistine and at the bottom most unessential +of a man's attributes."[15] In the same way Bergson, consistently +anti-Socratic and discrediting analytical intellect, insists that +whatever unity may be had must come through instinct, not analysis. +He refuses to recognize Plato's _One in the Many_, sees the whole +universe as "a perpetual gushing forth of novelties," a universal and +meaningless flux. Surrender to this eternal flux, he appears to say, +and then we shall gain reality. So he relies on impulse, instinct, his +_elan vital_, which means, I take it, on man's subrational emotions. +We call it Intuitionism, but such philosophy in plain and bitter +English is the intellectual defense and solemn glorification of +impulse. "Time," says Bergson, "is a continuous stream, a present that +endures."[16] Time apparently is all. "Life can have no purpose in the +human sense of the word."[17] Essentially, then, James, Bergson and +Croce appeal from intellect to feeling. They return to primitivism. + +[Footnote 15: Letter to C.E. Norton, June 30, 1904.] + +[Footnote 16: _Le Perception de Changement_, 30.] + +[Footnote 17: _L'evolution creatrice_, 55.] + +Here is a philosophy which obviously may be both as antihumanistic and +as irreligious as any which could well be conceived. Here is license +in conduct and romanticism in expression going hand in hand with +this all but exclusive emphasis upon relativity in thought. Here is +disorder, erected as a universal concept; the world conceived of as +a vast and impenetrable veil which is hiding nothing; an intricacy +without pattern. Obviously so ungoverned and fluid a universe +justifies uncritical and irresponsible thinking and living. + +We have tried thus to sketch that declension into paganism on the +part of much of the present world, of which we spoke earlier in the +chapter. It denies or ignores the humanistic law with its exacting +moral and aesthetic standards; it openly flouts the attitude of +obedience and humility before religious mandates, and, so far as +opportunity offers or prudence permits, goes its own insolently wanton +way. Our world is full of dilettanti in the colleges, anarchists in +the state, atheists in the church, bohemians in art, sybarites in +conduct and ineffably silly women in society, who have felt, and +occasionally studied the scientific and naturalistic movement just far +enough and superficially enough to grasp the idea of relativity and +to exalt it as sufficient and complete in itself. Many of them are +incapable of realizing the implications for conduct and belief which +it entails. Others of them, who are of the lesser sort, pulled by +the imperious hungers of the flesh, the untutored instincts of a +restless spirit, hating Hellenic discipline no less than Christian +renunciation, having no stomach either for self-control or +self-surrender, look out on the mass of endlessly opposing +complexities of the modern world and gladly use that vision as an +excuse for abandoning what is indeed the ever failing but also the +ever necessary struggle to achieve order, unity, yes, even perfection. + +To them, therefore, the only way to conquer a temptation is to yield +to it. They rail nonsensically at all repression, forgetting that man +cannot express the full circle of his mutually exclusive instincts, +and that when he gives rein to one he thereby negates another; +that choice, therefore, is inevitable and that the more exacting +and critical the choice, the more valuable and comprehensive the +expression. So they frankly assert their choices along the lines of +least resistance and abandon themselves, at least in principle, to +emotional chaos and moral sentimentalism. Very often they are of all +men the most meticulously mannered. But their manners are not the +decorum of the humanist, they are the etiquette of the worldling. +Chesterfield had these folk in mind when he spoke with an intolerable, +if incisive, cynicism of those who know the art of combining the +useful appearances of virtue with the solid satisfactions of vice. + +Such naturalism is sometimes tolerated by those who aspire to urbane +and liberal judgments because they think it can be defended on +humanistic grounds. But, as a matter of fact, it is as offensive to +the thoroughgoing humanist as it is to the sincere religionist. +They have a common quarrel with it. Take, for example, the notorious +naturalistic doctrine of art for art's sake, the defiant divorcing of +ethical and aesthetic values. Civilization no less than religion +must fight this. For it is as false in experience and as unclear in +thinking as could well be imagined. Its defense, so far as it has +any, is based upon the confusion in the pagan mind of morality with +moralizing, a confusion that no good humanist would ever permit +himself. Of course, the end of art is neither preaching nor teaching +but delighting. For that very reason, however, art, too, must +conform--hateful word!--conform to fixed standards. For the sense of +proportion, the instinct for elimination, is integral to art and this, +as Professor Babbitt points out, is attained only with the aid of +the ethical imagination.[18] Because without the ethical restraint, +the creative spirit roams among unbridled emotions; art becomes +impressionism. What it then produces may indeed be picturesque, +melodramatic, sensual, but it will not be beautiful because there +will be no imaginative wholeness in it. In other words, the artist +who divorces aesthetics from ethics does gain creative license, but +he gains it at the expense of a balanced and harmonious expression. +If you do not believe it, compare the Venus de Milo with the Venus de +Medici or a Rubens fleshy, spilling-out-of-her-clothes Magdalen with +a Donatello Madonna. When ethical restraint disappears, art tends to +caricature, it becomes depersonalized. The Venus de Milo is a living +being, a great personage; indeed, a genuine and gracious goddess. The +Venus de Medici has scarcely any personality at all; she is chiefly +objectified desire! The essence of art is not spontaneous expression +nor naked passion; the essence of art is critical expression, +restrained passion. + +[Footnote 18: _Rousseau and Romanticism_, p. 206.] + +Now, such extreme naturalism has been the continuing peril and the +arch foe of every successive civilization. It is the "reversion to +type" of the scientist, the "natural depravity" of the older theology, +the scoffing devil, with his eternal no! in Goethe's _Faust_. It tends +to accept all powerful impulses as thereby justified, all vital and +novel interests as _ipso facto_ beautiful and good. Nothing desirable +is ugly or evil. It pays no attention, except to ridicule them, to +the problems that vex high and serious souls: What is right and wrong? +What is ugly and beautiful? What is holy and what is profane? It +either refuses to admit the existence of these questions or else +asserts that, as insoluble, they are also negligible problems. To all +such stupid moralizing it prefers the click of the castanets! The +law, then, of this naturalism always and everywhere is the law of +rebellion, of ruthless self-assertion, of whim and impulse, of cunning +and of might. + +You may wonder why we, being preachers, have spent so much time +talking about it. Folk of this sort do not ordinarily flock to the +stenciled walls and carpeted floors of our comfortable, middle-class +Protestant meeting-houses. They are not attracted by Tiffany glass +windows, nor the vanilla-flavored music of a mixed quartet, nor the +oddly assorted "enrichments" we have dovetailed into a once puritan +order of worship. That is true, but it is also true that these are +they who need the Gospel; also that these folk do influence the +time-current that enfolds us and pervades the very air we breathe and +that they and their standards are profoundly influencing the youth of +this generation. You need only attend a few college dances to be sure +of that! One of the sad things about the Protestant preacher is his +usual willingness to move in a strictly professional society and +activity, his lack of extra-ecclesiastical interests, hence his narrow +and unskillful observations and perceptions outside his own parish and +his own field. + +Moreover, there are other forms in which naturalism is dominating +modern society. It began, like all movements, in literature and +philosophy and individual bohemianism; but it soon worked its way +into social and political and economic organizations. Now, when we are +dealing with them we are dealing with the world of the middle class; +this is our world. And here we find naturalism today in its most +brutal and entrenched expressions. Here it confronts every preacher +on the middle aisle of his Sunday morning congregation. We are +continually forgetting this because it is a common fallacy of our +hard-headed and prosperous parishioners to suppose that the vagaries +of philosophers and the maunderings of poets have only the slightest +practical significance. But few things could be further from the +truth. It is abstract thought and pure feeling which are perpetually +moulding the life of office and market and street. It has sometimes +been the dire mistake of preaching that it took only an indifferent +and contemptuous interest in such contemporary movements in literature +and art. Its attitude toward them has been determined by temperamental +indifference to their appeal. It forgets the significance of their +intellectual and emotional sources. This is, then, provincialism and +obtuseness and nowhere are they by their very nature more indefensible +or more disastrous than in the preacher of religion. + +Let us turn, then, to those organized expressions of society where +our own civilization is strained the most, where it is nearest to the +breaking point, namely, to our industrial and political order. Let us +ask ourselves if we do not find this naturalistic philosophy regnant +there. That we are surrounded by widespread industrial revolt, that we +see obvious political decadence on the one hand, and a determination +to experiment with fresh governmental processes on the other, few +would deny. It would appear to me that in both cases the revolt and +the decadence are due to that fierce, short creed of rebellion against +humane no less than religious standards, which has more and more +governed our national economic systems and our international political +intercourse. Let me begin with business and industry as they existed +before the war. I paint a general picture; there are many and notable +exceptions to it, human idealism there is in plenty, but it and they +only prove the rule. And as I paint the picture, ask yourselves the +two questions which should interest us as preachers regarding it. +First, by which of these three laws of human development, religious, +humanistic, naturalistic, has it been largely governed? Secondly, by +what law are men now attempting to solve its present difficulties? + +The present industrial situation is the product of two causes. One +of them was the invention of machinery and the discovery of steam +transit. These multiplied production. They made accessible unexploited +sources of raw material and new markets for finished goods. The +opportunities for lucrative trading and the profitableness of +overproduction which they made possible became almost immeasurable. +Before these discoveries western society was generally agricultural, +accompanied by cottage industries and guild trades. It was largely +made up of direct contacts and controlled by local interests. After +them it became a huge industrial empire of ramified international +relationships. + +The second factor in the situation was the intellectual and spiritual +nature of the society which these inventions entered. It was, as we +have seen, essentially humanistic. It believed much in the natural +rights of man. The individual was justified, by the natural order, in +seeking his separate good. If he only sought it hard enough and well +enough the result would be for the general welfare of society. Thus at +the moment when mechanical invention offered unheard-of opportunities +for material expansion and lucrative business, the thought and feeling +of the community pretty generally sanctioned an individualistic +philosophy of life. The result was tragic if inevitable. The new +industrial order offered both the practical incentive and the +theoretical justification for institutional declension from humane +to primitive standards. It is not to be supposed that men slipped +deliberately into paganism; the human mind is not so sinister as it +is stupid nor so cruel as it is unimaginative nor so brutal as it +is complacent. For the most part we do not really understand, in +our daily lives, what we are about. Hence society degenerated, as +it always does, in the confident and stubborn belief that it was +improving the time and doing God's service. But He that sitteth in the +heavens must have laughed, He must have had us in derision! + +For upon what law, natural, human, divine, has this new empire been +founded? That it has produced great humanists is gratefully +conceded; that real spiritual progress has issued from its incidental +cosmopolitanism is manifest; but which way has it fronted, what have +been its characteristic emphases and its controlling tendencies? +Let its own works testify. It has created a world of new and extreme +inequality, both in the distribution of material, of intellectual +and of spiritual goods. Here is a small group who own the land, the +houses, the factories, machinery and the tools. Here is a very large +group, without houses, without tools, without land or goods. At this +moment only 7 per cent of our 110,000,000 of American people have an +income of $3,000 or more; only 1¼ per cent have an income of $5,000 +or more! What law produced and justifies such a society? The unwritten +law of heaven? No. The law of humanism, of Confucius and Buddha and +Epictetus and Aurelius? No. The law of naked individualism; of might; +force; cunning? Yes. + +Here in our American cities are the overwealthy and the insolently +worldly people. They have their palatial town house, their broad +inland acres; some of them have their seaside homes, their fish and +game preserves as well. Here in our American cities are the alien, the +ignorant, the helpless, crowded into unclean and indecent tenements, +sometimes 1,000 human beings to the acre. What justifies a +pseudo-civilization which permits such tragic inequality of fortune? +Inequality of endowment? No. First, because there is no natural +inequality so extreme as that; secondly, because no one would dare +assert that these cleavages in the industrial state even remotely +parallel the corresponding cleavages in the distribution of ability +among mankind. What justifies it, then? The unwritten law of heaven? +No. The law of humanism? No. The law of the jungle? Yes. + +Now for our second question. By what law, admitting many exceptions, +are men on the whole trying to change this situation at once indecent +and impious? This is a yet more important query. Our world has +obviously awakened to the rottenness in Denmark. But where are we +turning for our remedy? Is it to the penitence and confession, the +public-mindedness, the identification of the fate of the individual +with the fate of the whole group which is the religious impulse? Is it +to a disinterested and even-handed justice, the high legalism of the +Golden Rule, which would be the humanist's way? Or is it to the old +law of aggression and might transferring the gain thereof from the +present exploiters to the recently exploited? + +It would appear to be generally true that society at this moment is +not chiefly concerned with either love or justice, renunciation +or discipline, not with the supplanting of the old order, but +with perpetuating the naturalistic principle by means of a partial +redivision of the spoils, a series of compromises, designed to make it +more tolerable for one class of its former victims. Thus in capital we +have the autocratic corporation, atoning for past outrages on humanity +by a well-advertised benevolent paternalism, calculated to make men +comfortable so that they may not struggle to be free, or by huge gifts +to education, to philanthropy, to religion. In labor we see men rising +in brute fury against both employer and society. They deny the basic +necessities of life to their fellow citizens; they bring the bludgeon +of the picket down upon the head of the scab; by means of the closed +shop they refuse the right to work to their brother craftsmen; they +level the incapable men up and the capable men down by insisting upon +uniformity of production and wage. Thus they replace the artificial +inequality of the aristocrat with the artificial equality of the +proletariat, striving to organize a new tyranny for the old. It is +significant that our society believes that this is the only way by +which it can gain its rights. That betrays our real infidelity. For +between the two, associated capital and associated labor, what is +there to choose today? By what law, depending upon what sort of power, +is each seeking its respective ends? By the unwritten law of heaven? +No. By the humane law, some objective standard of common rights and +inclusive justice? No! By the ancient law that the only effectual +appeal is to might and that opportunity therefore justifies the deed? +On the whole it is to this question that we must answer, yes! + +Turn away now from national economics and industry to international +politics. Does not its _real politik_ make the philosophical +naturalism of Spencer and Haeckel seem like child's play? For long +there has been one code of ethics for the peaceful penetration of +commercially desirable lands, for punitive expeditions against peoples +possessed of raw materials, for international banking and finance +and diplomatic intercourse, and another code for private honor and +personal morality. There has been one moral scale of values for the +father of his family and another for the same man as ward or state or +federal politician; one code to govern internal disputes within the +nation; another code to govern external disputes between nations. +And what is this code that produced the Prussian autocracy, that long +insisted on the opium trade between India and China, that permitted +the atrocities in the Belgian Congo, that sent first Russia and then +Japan into Port Arthur and first Germany and then Japan into Shantung, +that insists upon retaining the Turk in Constantinople, that produced +the already discredited treaty of Versailles? What is the code that +made the deadly rivalry of mounting armaments between army and army, +navy and navy, of the Europe before 1914? The code, to be sure, of +cunning, of greed, of might; the materialism of the philosopher and +the naturalism of the sensualist, clothed in grandiose forms and +covered with the insufferable hypocrisy of solemn phrases. There are +no conceivable ethical or religious interests and no humane goals +or values that justify these things. International diplomacy and +politics, economic imperialism, using political machinery and power to +half-cloak, half-champion its ends, has no law of Christian sacrifice +and no law of Greek moderation behind it. On the contrary, what +should interest the Christian preacher, as he regards it, is its sheer +anarchy, its unashamed and naked paganism. Its law is that of the +unscrupulous and the daring, not that of the compassionate or the +just. In what does scientific and emotional naturalism issue, then? In +this; a man, if he be a man, will stand above divine or human law and +make it operative only for the weaklings beneath. Wherever opportunity +offers he will consult his own will and gratify it to the full. To +have, to get, to buy, to sell, to exploit the world for power, to +exploit one's self for pleasure, this is to live. The only law is +the old primitive snarl; each man for himself, let the devil take the +hindmost. + +There is only one end to such naturalism and that is increasing +anarchy. It means my will against your will; my appetite for gold, for +land, for women, for luxury and beauty against your appetite; until +at length it culminates in the open madness of physical violence, +physical destruction, physical death and despair. There can be no +other end to it. If men dare not risk being the lovers of their kind, +then they must choose between being the slaves of duty or the slaves +of force. What are we reading in the public prints and hearing from +platform and stage? The unending wail for "rights"; the assertion of +the individual. Ceased is the chant of duty, forgotten the sacrifice +of love! + +The events which have transformed the world since 1914 are an awful +commentary upon such naturalism and a dreadful confirmation of our +indictment. Before the spectacle that many of us saw on those sodden +fields of Flanders, both humanist and religionist should be alike +aghast. How childish not to perceive that its causes, as distinguished +from its occasions, were common to our whole civilization. How +perverse not to confess that beneath all our modern life, as its +dominating motive, has lain that ruthless and pagan philosophy, which +creates alike the sybarite, the tyrant and the anarch; the philosophy +in which lust goes hand in hand with cruelty and unrestrained will to +power is accompanied by unmeasured and unscrupulous force. + +It is incredible to me how men can take this delirium of +self-destruction, this plunging of the sword into our own heart in +a final frenzy of competing anarchy and deck it out with heroic and +poetic values, fling over it the seamless robe of Christ, unfurl above +it the banner of the Cross! The only contribution the World War +has made to religion has been to throw into intolerable relief the +essentially irreligious and inhumane character of our civilization. + +Of course, the men and the ideals who actually fought the contest +as distinguished from the men and ideals which precipitated it and +determined its movements, fill gallant pages with their heroism and +holy sacrifice. For wars are fought by the young at the dictation of +the old, and youth is everywhere humane and poetic. Thus, if I may be +permitted to quote from a book of mine recently published: + +"Our sons were bade to enter it as a 'war to end war,' a final +struggle which should abolish the intolerable burdens of armaments and +conscription. They were taught to exalt it as a strife for oppressed +and helpless peoples; the prelude to a new brotherhood and cooperation +among the nations, and to that reign of justice which is the +antecedent condition of peace. + +"They did their part. With adventurous faith they glorified their +cause and offered their fresh lives to make it good. Their sacrifice, +the idealism which lay behind it in their respective communities--the +unofficial perceptions that they, the fathers and mothers and the +boys, were fighting to vindicate the supremacy of the moral over the +material factors of life--this has made an imperishable gift to the +new world and our children's lives. When an entire commuity rises to +something of magnanimity, and a nation identifies its fate with +the lot of weaker states, then even mutilation and death may be +gift-bringers to mankind. + +"But it is more significant to our purpose to note that the blood of +youth had hardly ceased to run before the officials began to dicker +for the material fruits of conquest. Not how to obtain peace but how +to exploit victory--to wrest each for himself the larger tribute from +the fallen foe--became their primary concern. So the youth appear to +have died for a tariff, perished for trade routes and harbors, for +the furthering of the commercial advantages of this nation as against +that, for the seizing of the markets of the world. They supposed they +fought 'to end business of that sort' but they returned to find their +accredited representatives contemplating universal military service +in frank expectation of 'the next war.' They strove for the +'self-determination of peoples' but find that it was for some people, +but not all. And as for the cooperation among nations, Judge Gary has +recently told us that, as a result of the war, we should prepare for +'the fiercest commercial struggle in the history of mankind!'"[19] + +[Footnote 19: _Can the Church Survive_? pp. 14 ff.] + +Is it not clear, then, today that behind the determining as +distinguished from the fighting forces of the war there lay a +commercial and financial imperialism, directed by small and powerful +minorities, largely supported by a sympathetic press which used the +machinery of representative democracy to overthrow a more naked and +brutal imperialism whose machinery was that of a military autocracy? +Motives, scales of value, methods and desired ends, were much the same +for all these small governing groups as they operated from behind the +various shibboleths whose magic they used to nerve the arms of the +contending forces. The conclusion of the war has revealed the common +springs of action of the professional soldier, statesman, banker, +ecclesiastic, in our present civilization. On the whole they accept +the rule of physical might as the ultimate justification of conduct. +They are the leaders and spokesmen in an economic, social and +political establishment which, pretending to civilization, always +turns when strained or imperiled by foreign or domestic dangers to +physical force as the final arbiter. + +It is truly ominous to see the gradual extension of this naturalistic +principle still going on in the state. The coal strike was settled, +not by arbitration, but by conference, and "conferences" appear to +be replacing disinterested arbitration. This means that decisions are +being made on the principle of compromise, dictated by the expediency +of the moment, not by reference to any third party, or to some fixed +and mutually recognized standards. This is as old as Pythagoras and +as new as Bergson and Croce; it assumes that the concept of justice +is man-made, produced and to be altered by expediences and +practicalities, always in flux. But the essence of a civilization is +the humanistic conviction that there is something fixed and abiding +around which life may order and maintain itself. + +Progress rests on the Platonic theory that laws are not made by man +but discovered by him; that they exist as eternal distinctions +beyond the reach of his alteration. Again, an unashamed and rampant +naturalism has just been sweeping this country in the wave of mean +and cruel intolerance which insists upon the continued imprisonment +of political heretics, which would prohibit freedom of speech by +governmental decree and oppose new or distasteful ideas by the +physical suppression of the thinker. The several and notorious +attempts beginning with deportations and ending with the unseating of +the New York assemblymen, to combat radical thinking by physical +or political persecution--attempts uniformly mean and universally +impotent in history--are as sinister as they are stupid. The only +law which justifies the persecution and imprisonment of religious and +political heretics is neither the law of reason nor the law of +love, but the law of fear, hence of tyranny and force. When a +twentieth-century nation begins to raise the ancient cry, "Come now +and let us kill this dreamer and we shall see what will become of his +dreams," that nation is declining to the naturalistic level. For +this clearly indicates that the humane and religious resources of +civilization, of which the church is among the chief confessed and +appointed guardians, are utterly inadequate to the strain imposed +upon them. Hence force, not justice, though they may sometimes have +happened to coincide, and power, not reason or faith, are becoming the +embodiment of the state today. + +We come now to the final question of our chapter. How has this renewal +of naturalism affected the church and Christian preaching? On the +whole today, the Protestant church is accepting this naturalistic +attitude. In a signed editorial in the _New Republic_ for the last +week of December, 1919, Herbert Croly said, under the significant +title of "Disordered Christianity": "Both politicians and property +owners consider themselves entitled to ignore Christian guidance in +exercising political and economic power, to expect or to compel the +clergy to agree with them and if necessary to treat disagreement as +negligible. The Christian church, as a whole, or in part, does not +protest against the practically complete secularization of political, +economic and social life." + +You may say such extra-ecclesiastical strictures are unsympathetic and +ill informed. But here is what Washington Gladden wrote in January, +1918: "If after the war the church keeps on with the same old +religion, there will be the same old hell on earth that religious +leaders have been preparing for centuries, the full fruit of which we +are gathering now. The church must cease to sanction those principles +of militaristic and atheistic nationalism by which the rulers of the +earth have so long kept the earth at war."[20] Thus from within the +sanctuary is the same indictment of our naturalism. + +[Footnote 20: The _Pacific_, January 17, 1918.] + +But you may say Dr. Gladden was an old man and a little extreme in +some of his positions and he belonged to a past generation. But there +are many signs at the present moment of the increasing secularizing +of our churches. The individualism of our services, their casual +character, their romantic and sentimental music, their minimizing of +the offices of prayer and devotion, their increasing turning of the +pulpit into a forum for political discussion and a place of common +entertainment all indicate it. There is an accepted secularity today +about the organization. Church and preacher have, to a large degree, +relinquished their essential message, dropped their religious values. +We are pretty largely today playing our game the world's way. We are +adopting the methods and accepting the standards of the market. In +an issue last month of the _Inter-Church Bulletin_ was the following +headline: "Christianity Hand in Hand with Business," and underneath +the following: + +"George W. Wickersham, formerly United States attorney-general, +says in an interview that there is nothing incompatible between +Christianity and modern business methods. A leading lay official of +the Episcopal Church declares that what the churches need more than +anything else is a strong injection of business method into their +management. 'Some latter-day Henry Drummond,' he said, 'should write a +book on Business Law in the Spiritual World.'" + +In this same paper, in the issue of March 27, 1920, there was +an article commending Christian missions. The first caption ran: +"Commercial Progress Follows Work of Protestant Missions," and its +subtitle was "How Missionaries Aid Commerce." Here is Business Law in +the Spiritual World! Here is the church commended to the heathen and +the sinner as an advertising agent, an advance guard of commercial +prosperity, a hawker of wares! If the _Bulletin_ ever penetrates to +those benighted lands of the Orient upon which we are thus anxious +to bestow the so apparent benefits of our present civilization it is +conceivable that even the untutored savage, to say nothing of Chinamen +and Japanese, might read it with his tongue in his cheek. + +Such naïve opportunism and frantic immediacy would seem to me +conclusive proof of the disintegration and anarchy of the spirit +within the sanctuary. It is a part of it all that everyone has today +what he is pleased to call "his own religion." And nearly everyone +made it himself, or thinks he did. Conscience has ceased to be a check +upon personal impulse, the "thou shalt not" of the soul addressed to +untutored desires, and become an amiable instinct for doing good to +others. The Christian is an effusive creature, loving everything and +everybody; exalting others in terms of himself. We abhor religious +conventions; in particular we hasten to proclaim that we are free from +the stigma of orthodoxy. We do not go to church to learn, to meditate, +to repent and to pray; we go to be happy, to learn how to keep young +and prosperous; it is good business; it pays. We have a new and most +detestable cant; someone has justly said that the natural man in us +has been masquerading as the spiritual man by endlessly prating +of "courage," "patriotism"--what crimes have been committed in +its name!--"development of backward people," "brotherhood of man," +"service of those less fortunate than ourselves," "natural ethical +idealism," "the common destinies of nations"--and now he rises up and +glares at us with stained fingers and bloodshot eyes![21] In so far +as we have succumbed to naturalism, we have become cold and shrewd and +flexible; shallow and noisy and effusive; have been rather proud to +believe anything in general and almost nothing in particular; become +a sort of religious jelly fish, bumping blindly about in seas of +sentiment and labeling that peace and brotherhood and religion! + +[Footnote 21: _Rousseau and Romanticism_, p. 376.] + +Here, then, is the state of organized religion today in our churches. +They are voluntary groups of men and women, long since emancipated +from the control of the church as such, or of the minister as an +official, set free also from allegiance to historic statements, +traditional, intellectual sanctions of our faith; moulded by the +time spirit which enfolds them to a half-unconscious ignoring or +depreciation of what must always be the fundamental problem of +religion--the relationship of the soul, not to its neighbor, but to +God. Hence the almost total absence of doctrinal preaching--indeed, +how dare we preach Christian doctrine to the industry and politics and +conduct of this age? Hence the humiliating striving to keep up +with popular movements, to conform to the moment. Hence the placid +acceptance of military propaganda and even of vindictive exhortation. + +Is it any wonder then that we cannot compete with the state or the +world for the loyalty of men and women? We have no substitute to +offer. Who need be surprised at the restlessness, the fluidity, the +elusiveness of the Protestant laity? And who need wonder that at this +moment we are depending upon the externals of machinery, publicity and +money to reinstate ourselves as a spiritual society in the community? +A well-known official of our communion, speaking before a meeting of +ministers in New York City on Tuesday, March 23, was quoted in the +_Springfield Republican_ of the next day as saying: "The church holds +the only cure for the possible anarchy of the future and offers the +only preventative for the hell which we have had for the last five +years. But to meet this challenge the church can only go as far--as +the money permits." + +Has not the time arrived when, if we are to find ourselves again in +the world, we should ask, What is this religion in which we believe? +What is the real nature of its resources? What the real nature of its +remedies? Do we dare define it? And, if we do, would we dare to assert +it, come out from the world and live for it, in the midst of the +paganism of this moment? Is it true that without the loaves and the +fishes we can do nothing? If so, then we, too, have succumbed to +naturalism indeed! + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + +THE UNMEASURED GULF + + +You may remember that when Daniel Webster made his reply to Hayne +in the Senate he began the argument by a return to first principles. +"When the mariner," said he, "has been tossed for many days in thick +weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the +first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his +latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his +true course. Let us imitate this prudence and before we float +further on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we +departed." He then asked for the reading of the resolution. + +It is to some such rehearsing of our original message, a restatement +of the thesis which we, as preachers, are set to commend, that we turn +ourselves in these pages. The brutal dislocations of the war, and the +long and confused course of disintegrating life that lay behind it, +have driven civilization from its true course and deflected the church +from her normal path, her natural undertakings. Let us try, then, to +get back to our charter; define once more what we really stand for; +view our human life, not as captain of industry, or international +politician, or pagan worldling, or even classic hero, would regard +it, but see it through the eyes of a Paul, an Augustine, a Bernard, +a Luther, the Lord Jesus. We have already remarked how timely and +necessary is this redefining of our religious values. If, as Lessing +said, it is the end of education to make men to see things that are +large as large and things that are small as small, it is even more +truly the end of Christian preaching. What we are most in need of +today is a corrected perspective of our faith; without it we darken +counsel as we talk in confusion. So, while we may not attempt here a +detailed and reasoned statement of religious belief, we may try to say +what is the fundamental attitude, both toward nature and toward man, +that lies underneath the religious experience. We have seen that we +are not stating that attitude very clearly nowadays in our pulpits; +hence we are often dealing there with sentimental or stereotyped or +humane or even pagan interpretations. Yet nothing is more fatal for +us; if we peddle other men's wares they will be very sure that we +despise our own. + +We approach, then, the third and final level of experience to which we +referred in the first lecture. We have seen that the humanist accepts +the law of measure; he rests back upon the selected and certified +experience of his race; from within himself, as the noblest inhabitant +of the planet, and by the further critical observation of nature he +proposes to interpret and guide his life. He is convinced that this +combined authority of reason and observation will lead to the _summum +bonum_ of the golden mean in which unbridled self-expression will be +seen as equally unwise and indecent and ascetic repression as both +unworthy and unnecessary. It is important to again remind ourselves +that confidence in the human spirit as the master of its own fate, +and in reason and natural observation as offering it the means of this +self-control and understanding, are essential humanistic principles. +The humanist world is rational, social, ethical. + +Over against this reasonable and disciplined view of man and of +his world stands naturalism. It exploits the defects of the classic +"virtue"; it is, so to speak, humanism run to seed. Just as religion +so often sinks into bigotry, cruelty and superstitition, so humanism, +in lesser souls, declines to egotism, license and sentimentality. +Naturalism, either by a shallow and insincere use of the materialistic +view of the universe, or by the exalting of wanton feeling and +whimsical fancy as ends in themselves, attempts the identification of +man with the natural order, permits him to conceive of each desire, +instinct, impulse, as, being natural, thereby defensible and +valuable. Hence it permits him to disregard the imposed laws of +civilization--those fixed points of a humane order--and to return +in principle, and so far as he dares in action, to the unlimited and +irresponsible individualism of the horde. Inevitably the law of the +jungle is deliberately exalted, or unconsciously adopted, over against +the humanist law of moderation and discipline. + +The humanist, then, critically studies nature and mankind, finding in +her matrix and in his own spirit data for the guidance of the race, +improving upon it by a cultivated and collective experience. The +naturalist uncritically exalts nature, seeks identification with it so +that he may freely exploit both himself and it. The faith of the one +is in the self-sufficiency of the disciplined spirit of mankind; the +unfaith of the other is in its glorification of the natural world and +in its allegiance to the momentary devices and desires of the separate +heart. It will be borne in mind that these definitions are too +clear-cut; that these divisions appear in the complexities of human +experience, blurred and modified by the welter of cross currents, +subsidiary conflicting movements, which obscure all human problems. +They represent genuine and significant divisions of thought and +conduct. But they appear in actual experience as controlling emphases +rather than mutually exclusive territories. + +Now, the clearest way to get before us the religious view of the world +and the law which issues from it is to contrast it with the other two. +In the first place, the religious temperament takes a very different +view of nature than either romantic, or to a less degree +scientific, naturalism. Naturalism is subrational on the one hand or +non-imaginative on the other, in that it emphasizes the _continuity_ +between man and the physical universe. The religious man is +superrational and nobly imaginative as he emphasizes the _difference_ +between man and nature. He does not forget man's biological kinship to +the brute, his intimate structural and even psychological relation to +the primates, but he is aware that it is not in dwelling upon these +facts that his spirit discovers what is distinctive to man as man. +That he believes will be found by accenting the _chasm_ between man +and nature. He does not know how to conceive of a personal being +except by thinking of him as proceeding by other, though not +conflicting, laws and by moving toward different secondary ends from +those laws and ends which govern the impersonal external world. This +sense of the difference between man and nature he shares with the +humanist, only the humanist does not carry it as far as he does and +hence may not draw from it his ultimate conclusions. + +The religious view, then, begins with the perception of man's +isolation in the natural order; his difference from his surroundings. +That sense of separateness is fundamental to the religious nature. The +false sentiment and partial science of the pagan which stresses the +identification of man and beast is the first quarrel that religionist +and humanist alike have with him. Neither of them sanctions +this perversion of thought and feeling which either projects the +impressionistic self so absurdly and perilously into the natural +order, or else minimizes man's imaginative and intellectual power, +leveling him down to the amoral instinct of the brute. "How much +more," said Jesus, "is a man better than a sheep!" One of the greatest +of English humanists was Matthew Arnold. You remember his sonnet, +entitled, alas! "To a Preacher," which runs as follows: + + "In harmony with Nature? Restless fool, + Who with such heat doth preach what were to thee, + When true, the last impossibility-- + To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool! + Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, + And in that more lie all his hopes of good, + Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood; + Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore; + Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest; + Nature forgives no debt and fears no grave; + Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest. + Man must begin; know this, where Nature ends; + Nature and man can never be fast friends. + Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!" + +Religionist and humanist alike share this clear sense of separateness. +Literature is full of the expression of it. Religion, in especial, +has little to do with the natural world as such. It is that other and +inner one, which can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell, with +which it is chiefly concerned. Who can forget Othello's soliloquy as +he prepares to darken his marriage chamber before the murder of his +wife? + + "Put out the light, and then put out the light. + If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, + I can again thy former light restore, + Should I repent me; but once put out thy light, + Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, + I know not where is that Promethean heat, + That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd the rose + I cannot give it vital growth again, + It needs must wither." + +Indeed, how vivid to us all is this difference between man and nature. +"I would to heaven," Byron traced on the back of the manuscript of +_Don Juan_, + + "I would to heaven that I were so much clay, + As I am bone, blood, marrow, passion, feeling." + +Ah me! So at many times would most of us. And in that sense that we +are not is where the religious consciousness takes its beginning. + +Here is the sense of the gap between man and the natural world felt +because man has no power over it. He cannot swerve nor modify its +laws, nor do his laws acknowledge its ascendency over them. But +what makes the gulf deeper is the sense of the immeasurable moral +difference between a thinking, feeling, self-estimating being and all +this unheeding world about him. Whatever it is that looks out from the +windows of our eyes something not merely of wonder and desire but also +of fear and repulsion must be there as it gazes into so cruel as well +as so alien an environment. For a moral being to glorify nature as +such is pure folly or sheer sentimentality. For he knows that her +apparent repose and beauty is built up on the ruthless and unending +warfare of matched forces, it represents a dreadful equilibrium of +pain. He knows, too, that that in him which allies him with +this natural world is his baser, not his better part. This nobly +pessimistic attitude toward the natural universe and toward man so far +as he shares in its characteristics, is found in all classic systems +of theology and has dominated the greater part of Christian +thinking. If it is ignored today by the pseudo-religionists and +the sentimentalists; it is clearly enough perceived by contemporary +science and contemporary art. The biologist understands it. "I know of +no study," wrote Thomas Huxley, "which is so unutterably saddening +as that of the evolution of humanity as set forth in the annals of +history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the +marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more +intelligent than the other brutes; a blind prey to impulses which as +often as not lead him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions +which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his +physical life with barren toil and battle. He attains a certain degree +of comfort, and develops a more or less workable theory of life in +such favorable situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or of Egypt, +and then, for thousands and thousands of years struggles with various +fortunes, attended by infinite wickedness, bloodshed and misery, to +maintain himself at this point against the greed and ambition of his +fellow men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting all +those who first try to get him to move on; and when he has moved +a step farther he foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his +victims. He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move a +step yet farther."[22] + +[Footnote 22: "Agnosticism," the _Nineteenth Century_, February, +1889.] + +And no less does the artist, the man of high and correct feeling, +perceive the immeasurable distance between uncaring nature and +suffering men and women. There is, for instance, the passage in _The +Education of Henry Adams_, in which Adams speaks of the death of +his sister at Bagni di Lucca. "In the singular color of the Tuscan +atmosphere, the hills and vineyards of the Apennines seemed bursting +with midsummer blood. The sick room itself glowed with the Italian joy +of life; friends filled it; no harsh northern lights pierced the soft +shadows; even the dying woman shared the sense of the Italian summer, +the soft velvet air, the humor, the courage, the sensual fullness of +Nature and man. She faced death, as women mostly do, bravely and even +gayly, racked slowly to unconsciousness but yielding only to violence, +as a soldier sabred in battle. For many thousands of years, on these +hills and plains, Nature had gone on sabring men and women with the +same air of sensual pleasure. + +"Impressions like these are not reasoned or catalogued in the mind; +they are felt as a part of violent emotion; and the mind that feels +them is a different one from that which reasons; it is thought +of a different power and a different person. The first serious +consciousness of Nature's gesture--her attitude toward life--took form +then as a phantasm, a nightmare, an insanity of force. For the first +time the stage scenery of the senses collapsed; the human mind felt +itself stripped naked, vibrating in a void of shapeless energies, +with resistless mass, colliding, crushing, wasting and destroying what +these same energies had created and labored from eternity to perfect." + +Here is a vivid interpretation of a universal human experience. +Might not any one of us who had endured it turn upon the pagan and +sentimentalist, crying in the mood of a Swift or a Voltaire, "_Ca vous +amuse, la vie_"? The abstract natural rights of the eighteenth century +smack of academic complacency before this. The indignation we feel +against the insolent individualism of a Louis XIV who cried "_L'état +c'est moi_!" or against the industrial overlord who spills the tears +of women for his ambition, the sweat of the children for his greed, +is as nothing beside the indignation with the natural order which any +biological study would arouse except as the scientist perceives that +indignation is, for him, beside the point and the religionist believes +that it proceeds from not seeing far enough into the process. This +is why there is an essential absurdity in any naturalistic system of +ethics. Even the clown can say, + + "Here's a night that pities + Neither wise men nor fools." + +This common attitude of the religionist toward nature as a remote +and cruel world, alien to our spirits, is abundantly reflected in +literature. It finds a sort of final consummation in the intuitive +insight, the bright understanding of the creative spirits of our race. +What Aristotle defines as the tragic emotions, the sense of the terror +and the pity of human life, arise partly from this perception of the +isolation always and keenly felt by dramatist and prophet and poet. +They know well that Nature does not exist by our law; that we neither +control nor understand it; is it not our friend? + +There is, then, the law of identity between man and nature, found in +their common physical origin; there is also the law of difference. It +is on that aspect of reality that religion places its emphasis. It +is with this approach to understanding ourselves that preachers, as +distinguished from scientists, deal. Our present society is traveling +farther and farther away from reality in so far as it turns either to +the outside world of fact, or to the domain of natural law, expecting +to find in these the elements of insight for the fresh guidance of +the human spirit. Not there resides the secret of the beings of whom +Shelley said, + + "We look before and after + And pine for what is not, + Our sincerest laughter + With some pain is fraught." + +Instinct is a base, a prime factor, part of the matrix of personality. +But personality is not instinct; it is instinct plus a different +force; instinct transformed by spiritual insight and controlled by +moral discipline. The man of religion, therefore, finds himself not +in one but two worlds, not indeed mutually exclusive, having a common +origin, but nevertheless significantly distinct. Each is incomplete +without the other, each in a true sense non-existent without the +other. But that which is most vital to man's world is unknown in the +domain of nature. Already the perception of a dualism is here. + +But now a third element comes into it. There is something spiritually +common to nature and man behind the one, within the other. This +Something is the origin, the responsible agent for man's and nature's +physical identity. This Something binds the separates into a sort of +whole. This, I suppose, is what Professor Hocking refers to when he +says, "the original source of the knowledge of God is an experience +which might be described as of _not being alone in knowing the world_, +and especially the world of nature."[23] Thus the religious man +recognizes beyond the gulf, behind the chasm, something more like +himself than it. When he contemplates nature, he sees something other +than nature; not a world which is what it seems to be, but a world +whose chief significance is that it is more than it seems to be. It is +a world where appearance and reality are inextricably mingled and yet +sublimely and significantly separate. In short, the naturalist, the +pagan, takes the world as it stands; it is just what it appears; the +essence of his irreligion is that he perceives nothing in it that +needs to be explained. But the religionist knows that the world +which lies before our mortal vision so splendid and so ruthless, so +beautiful and so dreadful, does really gain both its substance and +significance from immaterial and unseen powers. It is significant +not in itself but because it hides the truth. It points forever to a +beyond. It is the vague and insubstantial pageant of a dream. Behind +it, within the impenetrable shadows, stands the Infinite Watcher of +the sons of men. + +[Footnote 23: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 236.] + +In every age religious souls have voiced this unearthliness of +reality, the noble other-worldliness of the goals of the natural +order. "Heard melodies are sweet, but unheard melodies are sweeter." +Poet, philosopher and mystic have sung their song or proclaimed their +message knowing that they were moving about in worlds not realized, +clearly perceiving the incompleteness of the phenomenal world and the +delusive nature of sense perceptions. They have known a Reality which +they could not comprehend; felt a Presence which they could not grasp. +They have found strength for the battle and peace for the pain by +regarding nature as a dim projection, a tantalizing intimation of that +other, conscious and creative life, that originating and directive +force, which is not nature any more than the copper wire is the +electric fluid which it carries--a force which was before it, which +moves within it, which shall be after it. + +So poet and believer and mystic find the key to nature, the +interpretation of that alien and cruel world, not by sinking to its +indifferent level, not by sentimental exaltation of its specious +peace, its amoral cruelty and beauty, but by regarding it as the +expression, the intimation rather, of a purposive Intelligence, a +silent and infinite Force, beyond it all. So the pagan effuses over +nature, gilding with his sentimentality the puddles that the beasts +would cough at. And the scientist is interested in efficient causes, +seeing nature as an unbroken sequence, an endless uniformity of cause +and effect, against whose iron chain the spirit of mankind wages a +foredoomed but never ending revolt. But the religionist, confessing +the ruthless indifference, the amorality which he distrusts and +fears, and not denying the majestic uniformity of order, nevertheless +declares that these are not self-made, that the amorality is but +one half and that the confusing half of the tale. The whole creation +indeed groaneth and travaileth in pain, but for a final cause, which +alone interprets or justifies it, and which eventually shall set it +free. As a matter of fact, nearly all poets and artists thus view +nature in the light of final causes, though often instinctively and +unconsciously so. For what they sing or paint or mould is not the +landscape that we see, the flesh we touch, but the life behind it, +the light that never was on land or sea. What they give us is not +a photograph or an inventory--it is worlds away from such naïve and +lying realism. But they hint at the inexpressible behind expression; +paint the beauty which is indistinguishable from nature but not +identical with Nature. They make us see that not she, red in tooth and +claw, but that intangible and supernal something-more, is what gives +her the cleansing bath of loveliness. No reflective or imaginative +person needs to be greatly troubled, therefore, by any purely +mechanical or materialistic conception of the universe. They who +would commend that view of the cosmos have not only to reckon with +philosophical and religious idealism, but also with all the bright +band of poets and artists and seers. Such an issue once resolutely +forced would therewith collapse, for it would pit the qualitative +standards against the quantitative, the imagination against +literalism, the creative spirit in man against the machine in him. + +Here, then, is the difference between the naturalist's and the +religionist's attitude toward Nature. The believer judges Nature, well +aware of the gulf between himself and her, hating with inexpressible +depth of indignation and repudiating with profound contempt the +sybarite's identification of human and natural law. But also he comes +back to her, not to accept in wonder her variable outward form, but to +worship in awe before her invariable inner meaning. Sometimes, like +so many of the humanists, he rises only to a vague sense of the mystic +unity that fills up the interspaces of the world, and cries with +Wordsworth: + + "... And I have felt + A presence that disturbs me with the joy + Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime + Of something far more deeply interfused, + Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, + And the round ocean and the living air, + And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; + A motion and a spirit, that impels + All thinking things, all objects of all thought, + And rolls through all things."[24] + +Sometimes he dares to personalize this ultimate and then ascends to +the supreme poetry of the religious experience and feels the cosmic +consciousness, the eternal "I" of this strange world, which fills it +with observant majesty. And then he chants, + + "The heavens declare the glory of God, + The firmament showeth his handiwork." + +Or he whispers, + + "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit, + Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? + If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there, + If I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there, + If I take the wings of the morning + And dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth, + Even there shall Thy hand lead me + And Thy right hand shall hold me."[25] + +Indeed, the devout religionist almost never thinks of nature as such. +She is always the bush which flames and is not consumed. Therefore he +walks softly all his days, conscious that God is near. + + "Of old," he says, "Thou hast laid the foundations of the earth; + And the heavens are the work of Thy hands. + They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; + Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; + As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed; + But Thou art the same, + And Thy years shall have no end."[26] + +To him nature is the glass through which he sees darkly and often with +a darkling mind, the all-pervasive Presence; it is the veil--the veil +that covers the face of God. + +[Footnote 24: _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_, stanza +3, ll. 36-45.] + +[Footnote 25: Psalm cxxxix. 7-9.] + +[Footnote 26: Psalm cii. 25-27.] + +Here, then, we have the contrasting attitude of worldling and believer +toward nature, the outward universe. Now we come to the contrasting +attitude of humanist and believer toward man, the world within. For +why are we so sure, first, of the chasm between ourselves and +Nature and, second, that we can bridge that chasm by reaching out to +something behind and beyond her which is more like us than her? +What gives us the key to her dualism? Why do we think that there is +Something which perpetually beckons to us through her, makes awful +signs of an intimate and significant relationship? Because we feel +a similar chasm, an equal cleft in our own hearts, a division in the +moral nature of mankind. We know that gulf between us and the outward +world because we know the greater gulf between flesh and spirit, +between the natural man and the real man, between the "I" and the +"other I." + +Here is where the humanist bids us good-by and we must go forward on +our road alone. For he will not acknowledge that there is anything +essential or permanent in that divided inner world; he would minimize +it or explain it away. But we know it is there and the reason we know +there is Something without which can bridge the outer chasm is because +we also know there is Something-Else within which might bridge this +one. For we who are religious know that within the depths and the +immensities of this inner world, where there is no space but where +there is infinite largeness, where there is no time but where there is +perpetual strife, there is Something-Else as well as the "I" and the +"other I," and it is that He who is the Something-Else who alone can +close the gap in that divided kingdom and make us one with ourselves, +hence with Himself and hence with His world. + +You ask how we can say, "He's there; He knows." We answer that this +"other," this "He" is a constant figure in the experience; always +in the vision; an integral part of the perception. What is He like? +"He" is purity and compassion and inexorableness. Something +fixed, immutable, not to be tricked, not to be evaded and oh! +all-comprehending. He sees, his eyes run to and fro in all the dark +and wide, the light and high dominions of the soul. If we will not +come to terms with "Him," that eternal and changeless life will be the +cliff against which the tumultuous waves of the divided spirit shall +shatter and dissipate into soundless foam; if we will come to terms, +relinquish, accept, surrender, then that purity and that compassion +will be the cleansing tide, the healing and restoring flood in which +we sink in the ecstasy of self-loss to arise refreshed, radiant, and +made whole. + +So we reckon from within out. The religious view of the world is based +upon the religious experience of the soul. We have no other means of +getting at reality. I know that there is Something-more than me and +Something-more than the nature outside of me, because we know that +there is Something which is not me and is not nature, inside of me. So +the man of religion, like any other poet, artist, seer, looks in his +own heart and writes. What he finds there is real, or else, as far +as he is concerned, there is no reality. He does not assert that +this reality is the final and utter truth. But he knows it is his +trustworthy mediator of that truth. + +Here, then, is an immense separation between religionist and both +humanist and naturalist; a separation so complete as to come full +circle. We are convinced of the secondary value, both of natural +appearances and of the mortal, temporal consciousness. So we +substitute for impertinent familiarity with Nature, a reverent regard +for what she half reveals, half hides. We interpret her by ourselves. +We are the same compound of identity and difference. We acknowledge +our continuity with the natural world, our intimate and tragic +alliance with the dust, but we also know that we, within ourselves, +are Something-Else as well. And it is that Something-Else in us which +makes the significant part of us, which sets our value and place in +the scale of being. + +In short, the dualism of nature is revealed in the dualism of the +soul. There is a gulf within, and if only man can span the inner +chasm, he will know how to bridge the outer. He must begin by finding +God within himself, or he will never find Him anywhere. Now, it is out +of this sense of a separation within himself, from himself and +from the Author of himself, that there arises that awful sense of +helplessness, of dependence, of bewilderment, which is the second +great element in the religious life. Man is alone in the world; man +is helpless in the world; man ought not to be alone in the world; +man is therefore under scrutiny and condemnation; he must find +reconciliation, harmony, companionship, somehow, somewhere. Hence +the religious man is not arrogant like the pagan, nor proud like the +humanist; he is humble. It is Burke, I think, who says that the whole +ethical life of man has its roots in this humility.[27] The religious +man cannot help but be humble. He has an awful pride in his kinship +with heaven, but, standing before the Lord of heaven, he feels human +nature's proper place, its confusion and division and helplessness; +its dependence upon the higher Power. + +[Footnote 27: _Correspondence_, III, p. 213.] + +It is at this point that humanism and religion definitely part +company. The former does not feel this absolute and judging Presence, +hence cannot understand the spiritual solicitude of the latter. St. +Paul was not quite at home on Mars Hill; it was hard to make those who +were always hearing and seeing some new thing understand; the shame +and humility of the cross were an unnecessary foolishness to them. So +they have always been. The humanist cannot take seriously this sense +of a transcendent reality. When Cicero, to escape the vengeance of +Clodius, withdrew from Rome, he passed over into Greece and dwelt for +a while in Thessalonica. One day he saw Mount Olympus, the lofty and +eternal home of the deities of ancient Greece. "But I," said the bland +eclectic philosopher, "saw nothing but snow and ice." + +How inadequate, then, as a substitute for religion, is even the +noblest humanism. True and fine as far as it goes, it does not go far +enough for us. It takes too little account of the divided life. It +appears not to understand it. On the whole it refuses to acknowledge +that it really exists, or, if it does, it is convinced of man's +unaided ability to efface it. It isn't something inevitable. Hence the +pride which is an essential quality of the humanistic attitude. + +But the religious man knows that it does exist and that while he is +not wholly responsible for it, yet he is essentially so and that, +alas, in spite of that fact, he alone cannot bridge it. So he cries, +"Wretched man that I am, what shall I do to be saved?" Here is the +feeling of uneasiness, the sense of something being wrong about us +as we naturally stand, of which James speaks. In that sense of +responsibility is the confession of sin and in the confession of sin +is the acknowledgment of the impotence of the sinner. + + "The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on + Nor all your wit nor all your tears, can wash a line of it." + +Man cannot, unaided, make his connection with this higher power. The +world is at fault, yes, but we are at fault, something both within and +without dreadfully needs explaining. So man is subdued and troubled by +the infinite mystery; and he cannot accept the place in which he finds +himself in that mystery; he is ashamed of it. + +Vivid, then, is his sense of helplessness! It makes him resent the +humanist, who bids him, unaided, solve his fate and be a man. That is +giving him stones when he asks for bread. He knows that advice makes +an inhuman demand upon the will; it assumes a reasonableness, an +insight and a moral power, which for him do not exist; it ignores +or it denies the reality and the meaning of this inner gulf. It is +important to note that even as philosophy and art and literature soon +parted company with the naturalist, so, to a large degree, they part +company with the humanist, too. They do not know very much of an +harmonious and triumphant universe. Few of the world's creative +spirits have ever denied that inner chasm or minimized its tragic +consequences to mankind. Isaiah and Paul and John and Augustine and +Luther are wrung with the consciousness of it. Indeed, the antithesis +between flesh and spirit is too familiar in religious literature to +need any recounting. It is more vividly brought home to us from +the nonprofessional, the disinterested and involuntary testimony of +secular writing. Was there ever such a cry of revolt on the part of +the trapped spirit against the net and slough of natural values and +natural desires as runs through the sonnets of William Shakespeare? We +remember the 104th: + + "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, + Foiled by these rebel powers that thee array, + Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, + Painting thine outward walls so costly gay? + Why so large cost, having so short a lease, + Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? + Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, + Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? + Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss + And let that pine to aggravate thy store, + Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross + Within be fed, without be rich no more--" + +Or turn to our contemporary poet, James Stephens: + + "Good and bad are in my heart + But I cannot tell to you + For they never are apart + Which is the better of the two. + + I am this: I am the other + And the devil is my brother + And my father he is God + And my mother is the sod, + Therefore I am safe, you see + Owing to my pedigree. + + So I cherish love and hate + Like twin brothers in a nest + Lest I find when it's too late + That the other was the best."[28] + +Here, then, we find the next thing which grows out of man's sense +of separation both from nature and from his own best self. It is his +moral judgment on himself as well as on the world outside, and that +power to judge shows that he is greater than either. As Dr. Gordon +says, "Every honest man lives under the shadow of his own rebuke." We +can go far with the humanist in acknowledging the failures that are +due to environment, to incompleteness, to ignorance; we do not forget +the helpless multitude who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death; +and we agree with the scientist that their helplessness foredooms +them and that their fate cannot be laid to their charge. But we go far +beyond where scientist and humanist stop. For we know that the deepest +cause of human misery is not inheritance, is not environment, is not +ignorance, is not incompleteness; it is the informed but the perverse +human will. Just as unhappiness is the consciousness of the divided +mind, so guilt is this sense of the deliberately divided will. +Jonathan Swift knew that; on every yearly recurrence of the hour in +which he came into the world, he cried lamentably, "Let the day perish +wherein I was born." + +[Footnote 28: _Songs from the Clay_, p. 40.] + +The Lord Jesus knew it, too. His teaching, unlike that of Paul, does +not throw into the foreground the divided will and its accompanying +sense of sin and guilt. But he does not ignore it. He brought it out +with infinite tenderness but inexorable clearness in the parables of +the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost boy. The sheep were but +young and silly, they did not wish to be lost on the mountain-side; +they knew no better; inexperience, ignorance were theirs, and +for their sad estate they were not held responsible. For them the +compassionate shepherd sought until he found them in the wilds, took +them, involuntary burdens, on his heart, brought them back to safety +and the fold. The coin had no native affinity with the dirt and grime +of the careless woman's house. It was only a coin, attached to anklet +or bracelet, having no power, no independence of its own; where it +fell, there must it lie. So with the lives set by fate in the refuse +and grime of our industrial civilization, the pure minted gold +effectually concealed by the obscurity and filth around. For such +lives, victims of environment, the Father will search, too, until they +are found, taken up, and somewhere, in this world or another, restored +to their native worth. But the chief of the parables, and the one that +has captured the imagination and subdued the heart of mankind, because +it so true to the greater part of life, is the story of the lost boy. +For he was the real sinner and he was such because, knowing what +he was about and able to choose, he desired to do wrong. It was not +ignorance, nor environment, nor inheritance, that led him into the far +country. It was its alien delights and their alien nature, for which +as such he craved. How subtle and certain is the word of Jesus here. +No shepherd seeks this wandering sheep; no householder searches for +this lost coin. The boy who willed to do wrong must stay with the +swine among the husks until he wills to do right. Then, when +he desires to return, return is made possible and easy, but the +responsibility is forever his. The source of his misery is his own +will. + +So the disposition of mankind is at the bottom of the suffering and +the division. There is rebellion and perverseness mingled with the +helplessness and ignorance and sorrow. No man ever understands or can +speak to the religious life unless he has the consciousness of this +inner moral cleft. No man will ever be able to preach with power about +God unless he does it chiefly in terms of God's difference from man +and man's perilous estate and desperate need of Him. Indeed, God is +not like us, not like this inner life of ours; this is what we want +to hear. God is different; that is why we want to be able to love Him. +And being thus different, we are separated from Him, both by the inner +chasm of the divided soul and the outer chasm of remote and hostile +nature. Then comes the final question: How are we, being helpless, to +reach Him? How are we, being guilty, to find Him? + +When men deal with these queries, with this range of experience, this +set of inward perceptions, then they are preaching religiously. And +then, I venture to say, they do not fail either of hearers or of +followers. Then there is what Catherine Booth used to call "liberty +of speech"; then there is power because then we talk of realities. +For what is it that looks out from the eyes of religious humanity? +Rebellion, pride? no! Humility, loneliness, something of a just and +deserved fear; but most of all, desire, insatiable, unwavering, an +intense desire. This passion of the race, its never satisfied hunger, +its incredible intensity and persistency of striving and longing, +is at once the tragedy and glory, the witness to the helplessness, +the revelation of the capacity of the race. The mainspring of human +activity, the creative impulse from which in devious ways all the +thousand-hued motives of our lives arise, is revealed in the ancient +cry, "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God!" That unquenched +thirst for Him underlies all human life, as the solemn stillness of +the ocean underlies the restless upper waves. The dynamic of the world +is the sense of the divine reality. The woe of the world is man's +inability to discover and appropriate that reality. Who that has +entered truly into life does not perceive beneath all the glitter of +its brilliance, the roar of its energy and achievement, the note of +melancholy? The great undertone of life is solemn in its pathetic +uniformity. The poets and prophets of the world have seized unerringly +upon that melancholy undertone. Who ever better understood the +futility and helplessness of unaided man, the certain doom that tracks +down his pride of insolence, or his sin, than the Greek tragedians? +Sophocles, divided spirit that he was, heard that note of melancholy +long ago by the Ægean, wrote it into his somber dramas, with their +turbid ebb and flow of human misery. Sometimes the voices of our +humanity as they rise blend and compose into one great cry that is +lifted, shivering and tingling, to the stars, "Oh, that I knew where I +might find Him!" Sometimes and more often they sink into a subdued and +minor plaint, infinitely touching in its human solicitude, perplexity +and pain. Again, James Stephens has phrased it for us in his verse +_The Nodding Stars_.[29] + +[Footnote 29: _Songs from the Clay_, p. 68.] + + "Brothers, what is it ye mean, + What is it ye try to say + That so earnestly ye lean + From the spirit to the clay. + + "There are weary gulfs between + Here and sunny Paradise, + Brothers! What is it ye mean + That ye search with burning eyes, + + "Down for me whose fire is clogged, + Clamped in sullen, earthy mould, + Battened down and fogged and bogged, + Where the clay is seven-fold." + +Now we understand the tragic aspect of nature and of the human soul +caught in this cosmic dualism without which corresponds to the ethical +dualism within. This perception of the One behind the many in nature, +of the thing-in-itself, as distinguished from the many expressions of +that thing, is the chief theme for preaching. This is what brings men +to themselves. Herein, as Dr. Newman Smyth has pointed out, appears +the unique marvel of personality. "It becomes conscious of itself as +individual and it individualizes the world; it is the one discovering +itself among the many. In the midst of uniformities of nature, moving +at will on the plane of natural necessities, weaving the pattern of +its ideas through the warp of natural laws, runs the personal life. +On the same plane and amid these uniformities, yet itself a sphere of +being of another order; in it, yet disentangled from it, and having +its center in itself, it lives and moves and has its being, breaking +no thread of nature's weaving, subject to its own law, and manifesting +a dynamic of its own."[30] + +[Footnote 30: _The Meaning of the Personal Life_, p. 173.] + +The source, then, as we see it, of all human hopes and human dignity, +the urge that lies behind all metaphysics and much of literature and +art, the thing that makes men eager to live, yet nobly curious to die, +is this conviction that One like unto ourselves but from whom we have +made ourselves unlike, akin to our real, if buried, person, walketh +with us in the fiery furnace of our life. There is a Spirit in man +and the breath of the Almighty giveth him understanding. Starting from +this interpretation, we can begin to order the baffling and teasing +aspects, the illusive nature of the world. Why this ever failing, but +never ending struggle against unseen odds to grasp and understand +and live with the Divine? Why, between the two, the absolute and the +changeless spirit, unseen but felt, and the hesitant and timid spirit +of a man, would there seem to be a great gulf fixed? Because we are +wrong. Because man finds the gulf within himself. He chafes at the +limitations of time and space? Yes; but he chafes more at the mystery +and weakness, the mingled deceitfulness and cunning and splendor of +the human heart. Because there is no one of us who can say, I have +made my life pure, I am free from my sin. He knows that the gulf is +there between the fallible and human, and the more than human; he does +not know how to cross it; he says, + + "I would think until I found + Something I can never find + Something lying on the ground + In the bottom of my mind." + +Here, then, can we not understand that mingling of mystic dignity +and profound humility, of awe-struck pride and utter self-abnegation, +wherewith the man of religion regards his race and himself? He is the +child of the Eternal; he, being man, alone knows that God is. "When I +consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars +which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, +or the son of man that Thou visitest him?" Here is the humility: "Why +so hot, little man!" Then comes the awe-struck pride: "Yet Thou hast +made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and +honor." "Alone with the gods, alone!" God is the high and lofty one +which inhabiteth eternity, but He is also nigh unto them who are of a +broken and a contrite heart. + +Here we are come to the very heart of religion. Man's proud +separateness in the universe; yet man's moral defection and his +responsibility for it which makes him know that separateness; man's +shame and helplessness under it. Over against the denial or evasion +of moral values by the naturalist and the dullness to the sense +of moral helplessness by the humanist, there stands the sense of +moral difference, the sense of sin, of penitence and confession. No +preaching not founded on these things can ever be called religious or +can ever stir those ranges of the human life for which alone preaching +is supposed to exist. + +What is the religious law, then? It is the law of humility. And what +is the religious consciousness? The sense of man's difference from +nature and from God. The sense of his difference from himself within +himself and the longing for an inner harmony which shall unite him +with himself and with the beauty and the spirit without. So what +is the religious passion? Is it to exalt human nature? It would +be more true to say it is to lose it. What is the end for us? Not +identification with nature and the natural self, but pursuit of the +other than nature, the more than natural self. Our humility is not +like that of Uriah Heep, a mean opinion of ourselves in comparison +with other men. It is the profound consciousness of the weakness and +the nothingness of our kind, and of the poor ends human nature sets +its heart upon, in comparison with that Other One above and beyond and +without us, to whom we are kin, from whom we are different, to whom we +aspire, to reach whom we know not how. + +This, then, is what we mean when we turn back from the language of +experience to the vocabulary of philosophy and theology and talk about +the absolute values of religion. We mean by "absolute values" that +behind the multifarious and ever changing nature, is a single and a +steadfast cause--a great rock in a weary land. We have lost the old +absolute philosophies and dogmatic theologies and that is good and +right, for they were outworn. But we are never going to lose the +central experience that produced them, and our task is to find a +new philosophy to express these inner things for which the words +"supernatural," "absolute," are no longer intelligible. For we still +know that behind man's partial and relative knowledge, feeling, +willing, is an utter knowledge, a perfect feeling, a serene and +unswerving will; that beneath man's moral anarchy there is moral +sovereignty; that behind his helplessness there is abundant power +to save. Perhaps this Other is always changing, but, if so, it is a +Oneness which is changing. In short, the thing that is characteristic +of religion is that it dwells, not on man's likenesses, but on his +awful differences from nature and from God; sees him not as little +counterparts of deity, but as broken fragments only to be made whole +within the perfect life. It sees relativity as the law of our being, +yes, but relativity, not of the sort that excludes, but is included +in, a higher absolute, even as the planet swings in infinite space. + +The trouble with much preaching is that it lacks the essentially +religious insight; in dwelling on man's identities it confuses or +drugs, not clarifies and purges, the spirit. Thus, it obscures the +gulf. Sometimes it evades it, or bridges it by minimizing it, and +genuinely religious people, and those who want to be religious, and +those who might be, know that such preaching is not real and that it +does not move them and, worst of all, the hungry sheep look up and +are not fed. For in such preaching there is no call to humility, no +plea for grace, no sense that the achievement of self-unity is as +much a rescue as it is a reformation. But this sense of the need of +salvation is integral to religion; this is where it has parted company +with humanism. Humanism makes no organic relations between man and +the Eternal. It is as though it thought these would take care of +themselves! In the place of grace it puts pride; pride of caste, of +family, of character, of intellect. But high self-discipline and +pride in the human spirit are not the deepest or the highest notes man +strikes. The cry, not of pride in self, but for fellowship with the +Infinite, is the superlative expression of man. Augustine sounded the +highest note of feeling when he wrote, "O God, Thou hast made us for +Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." The +words of the Lord Jesus gave the clearest insight of the human mind +when He said, "And when he came to himself, he said, I will arise and +go to my Father." + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + +GRACE, KNOWLEDGE, VIRTUE + + +I hope the concluding paragraphs of the last chapter brought us back +into the atmosphere of religion, into that sort of mood in which the +reality of the struggle for character, the craving of the human spirit +to give and to receive compassion, the cry of the lonely soul for the +love of God, were made manifest. These are the real goods of life to +religious natures; they need this meat which the world knoweth not of; +there is a continuing resolve in them to say, "Good-by, proud world, +I'm going home!" The genuinely religious man must, and should indeed, +live in this world, but he cannot live of it. + +Merely to create such an atmosphere then, to induce this sort of mood, +to shift for men their perspectives, until these needs and values rise +once more compelling before their eyes, is a chief end of preaching. +Its object is not so much moralizing or instructing as it is +interpreting and revealing; not the plotting out of the landscape +at our feet, but the lifting of our eyes to the hills, to the fixed +stars. Then we really do see things that are large as large and things +that are small as small. We need that vision today from religious +leaders more than we need any other one thing. + +For humanism and naturalism between them have brought us to an almost +complete secularization of preaching, in which its characteristic +elements, its distinctive contribution, have largely faded from +liberal speaking and from the consciousness of its hearers. We have +emphasized man's kinship with nature until now we can see him again +declining to the brute; we have proclaimed the divine Immanence +until we think to compass the Eternal within a facile and finite +comprehension. By thus dwelling on the physical and rational elements +of human experience, religion has come to concern itself to an +extraordinary degree with the local and temporal reaches of faith. +We have lost the sense of communion with Absolute Being and of the +obligation to standards higher than those of the world, which that +communion brings. Out of this identification of man with nature has +come the preaching which ignores the fact of sin; which reduces free +will and the moral responsibility of the individual to the vanishing +point; which stresses the control of the forces of inheritance and +environment to the edge of fatalistic determinism; which leads man +to regard himself as unfortunate rather than reprehensible when moral +disaster overtakes him; which induces that condoning of the moral +rebel which is born not of love for the sinner but of indifference to +his sin; which issues in that last degeneration of self-pity in +which individuals and societies alike indulge; and in that repellent +sentimentality over vice and crime which beflowers the murderer while +it forgets its victim, which turns to ouija boards and levitated +tables to obscure the solemn finality of death and to gloze over the +guilty secrets of the battlefield. + +Thus it has come about that we preach of God in terms of the +drawing-room, as though he were some vast St. Nicholas, sitting up +there in the sky or amiably informing our present world, regarding +with easy benevolence His minute and multifarious creations, winking +at our pride, our cruelty, our self-love, our lust, not greatly +caring if we break His laws, tossing out His indiscriminate gifts, +and vaguely trusting in our automatic arrival at virtue. Even as in +philosophy, it is psychologists, experts in empirical science and +methods, and sociologists, experts in practical ethics, who may be +found, while the historian and the metaphysician are increasingly +rare, so in preaching we are amiable and pious and ethical and +practical and informative, but the vision and the absolutism of +religion are a departing glory. + +What complicates the danger and difficulty of such a position, with +its confusion of natural and human values, and its rationalizing +and secularizing of theistic thinking, is that it has its measure of +reality. All these observations of naturalist and humanist are half +truths, and for that very reason more perilous than utter falsehoods. +For the mind tends to rest contented within their areas, and so the +partial becomes the worst enemy of the whole. What we have been doing +is stressing the indubitable identity between man and nature and +between the Creator and His creatures to the point of unreality, +forgetting the equally important fact of the difference, the +distinction between the two. But sound knowledge and normal feeling +rest upon observing and reckoning with both aspects of this law of +kinship and contrast. All human experience becomes known to us through +the interplay of what appear to be contradictory needs and opposing +truths within our being. Thus, man is a social animal and can only +find himself in a series of relationships as producer, lover, husband, +father and friend. He is a part of and like unto his kind, his spirit +immanent in his race. But man is also a solitary creature, and in that +very solitariness, which he knows as he contrasts it with his social +interests, he finds identity of self, the something which makes us +"us," which separates us from all others in the world. A Crusoe, +marooned on a South Sea island, without even a black man Friday for +companionship, would soon cease to be a man; personality would forsake +him. But the same Crusoe is equally in need of solitude. The hell of +the barracks, no matter how well conducted, is their hideous lack of +privacy; men condemned by shipwreck or imprisonment to an unbroken and +intimate companionship kill their comrade or themselves. We are all +alike and hence gregarious; we are all different and hence flee as a +bird to the mountain. The reality of human personality lies in neither +one aspect of the truth nor the other, but in both. The truth is found +as we hold the balance between identity and difference. Hence we are +not able to think of personality in the Godhead unless we conceive of +God as being, within Himself, a social no less than a solitary Being. + +Again, this law that the truth is found in the balance of the +antinomies appears in man's equal passion for continuity and +permanency and for variety and change. The book of Revelation tells +us that the redeemed, before the great white throne, standing upon the +sea of glass, sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. What has the one +to do with the other? Here is the savage, triumphant chant of the far +dawn of Israel's history, joined with the furthest and latest possible +events and words. Well, it at least suggests the continuity of the +ageless struggle of mankind, showing that the past has its place +in the present, relieving man's horror of the impermanence, the +disjointed character of existence. He wants something orderly and +static. But, like the jet of water in the fountain, his life is +forever collapsing and collapsing, falling in upon itself, its +apparent permanence nothing but a rapid and glittering succession of +impermanences. The dread of growing old is chiefly that, as years +come on, life changes more and faster, becomes a continual process of +readjustment. Therefore we want something fixed; like the sailor with +his compass, we must have some needle, even if a tremulous one, always +pointing toward a changeless star. Yet this is but one half of the +picture. Does man desire continuity?--quite as much does he wish for +variety, cessation of old ways, change and fresh beginnings. The +most terrible figure which the subtle imagination of the Middle Ages +conjured up was that of the Wandering Jew, the man who could not die! +Here, then, we arrive at knowledge, the genuine values of experience, +by this same balancing of opposites. Continuity alone kills; perpetual +change strips life of significance; man must have both. + +Now, it is in the religious field that this interests us most. We have +seen that what we have been doing there of late has been to ignore the +fact that reality is found only through this balancing of the law of +difference and identity, contrast and likeness. We have been absorbed +in one half of reality, identifying man with nature, prating of his +self-sufficiency, seeing divinity almost exclusively as immanent in +the phenomenal world. Thus we have not merely been dealing with only +one half of the truth, but that, to use a solecism, the lesser half. + +For doubtless men do desire in religion a recognition of the real +values of their physical nature. And they want rules of conduct, a +guide for practical affairs, a scale of values for this world. This +satisfies the craving for temporal adjustment, the sense of the +goodness and worth of what our instinct transmits to us. But it does +nothing to meet that profound dissatisfaction with this world and that +sense of the encumbrances of the flesh which is also a part of reality +and, to the religious man, perhaps the greater part. He wants to turn +away from all these present things and be kept secretly in a pavilion +from the strife of tongues. Here he has no continuing city. Always +while we dwell here we have a dim and restless sense that we are in an +unreal country and we know, in our still moments, that we shall only +come to ourselves when we return to the house of our Father. Hence +men have never been satisfied with religious leaders who chiefly +interpreted this world to them. + +And indeed, since July, 1914, and down to and including this very +hour, this idealizing of time, which we had almost accepted as our +office, has had a ghastly exposure. Because there has come upon us all +one of these irrevocable and irremediable disasters, for which time +has no word of hope, to which Nature is totally indifferent, for which +the God of the outgoings and incomings of the morning is too small. +For millions of living and suffering men and women all temporal +and mortal values have been wiped out. They have been caught in a +catastrophe so ruthless and dreadful that it has strewed their bodies +in heaps over the fields and valleys of many nations. Today central +and south and northeastern Europe and western Asia are filled with +idle and hungry and desperate men and women. They have been deprived +of peace, of security, of bread, of enlightenment alike. Something +more than temporal salvation and human words of hope are needed +here. Something more than ethical reform and social readjustment and +economic alleviation, admirable though these are! Something there must +be in human nature that eclipses human nature, if it is to endure so +much! What has the God of this world to give for youth, deprived of +their physical immortality and all their sweet and inalienable human +rights, who are lying now beneath the acre upon acre of tottering +wooden crosses in their soldier's graves? Is there anything in this +world sufficient now for the widow, the orphan, the cripple, the +starving, the disillusioned and the desperate? What Europe wants to +know is why and for what purpose this holocaust--is there anything +beyond, was there anything before it? A civilization dedicated to +speed and power and utility and mere intelligence cannot answer these +questions. Neither can a religion resolved into naught but the ethics +of Jesus answer them. "If in this world only," cries today the voice +of our humanity, "we have hope, then we are of all men the most +miserable!" When one sees our American society of this moment +returning so easily to the physical and the obvious and the practical +things of life; when one sees the church immersed in programs, and +moralizing, and hospitals, and campaigns, and membership drives, and +statistics, and money getting, one is constrained to ask, "What shall +be said of the human spirit that it can forget so soon?" + +Is it not obvious, then, that our task for a pagan society and a +self-contained humanity is to restore the balance of the religious +consciousness and to dwell, not on man's identity with Nature, but +on his far-flung difference; not on his self-sufficiency, but on his +tragic helplessness; not on the God of the market place, the office +and the street, an immanent and relative deity, but on the Absolute, +that high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity? Indeed, we are being +solemnly reminded today that the other-worldliness of religion, its +concern with future, supertemporal things, is its characteristic and +most precious contribution to the world. We are seeing how every human +problem when pressed to its ultimate issue becomes theological. Here +is where the fertile field for contemporary preaching lies. It +is found, not in remaining with those elements in the religious +consciousness which it shares in common with naturalism and humanism, +but in passing over to those which are distinctive to itself alone. It +has always been true, but it is especially true at this moment, that +effective preaching has to do chiefly with transcendent values. + +Our task is to assert, first, then, the "otherness" of man, his +difference from Nature, to point out the illusoriness of her phenomena +for him, the derived reality and secondary value of her facts. +These are things that need religious elucidation. The phrase +"other-worldliness" has come, not without reason, to have an evil +connotation among us, but there is nevertheless a genuine disdain +of this world, a sense of high superiority to it and profound +indifference toward it, which is of the essence of the religious +attitude. He who knows that here he is a stranger, sojourning in +tabernacles; that he belongs by his nature, not to this world, but +that he seeks a better, that is to say, a heavenly country, will for +the joy that is set before him, endure a cross and will despise +the shame. He will have a conscious superiority to hostile facts of +whatever sort or magnitude, for he knows that they deceive in so +far as they pretend to finality. When religion has thus acquired a +clear-sighted and thoroughgoing indifference to the natural order, +then, and then only, it begins to be potent within that order. Then, +as Professor Hocking says, it rises superior to the world of facts and +becomes irresistible.[31] + +[Footnote 31: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 518.] + +The time is ripe, then, first, for the preacher to emphasize the +inward and essential difference between man and nature which exists +under the outward likeness, to remind him of this more-than-nature, +this "otherness" of man, without which he would lose his most precious +possession, the sense of personality. Faith begins by recognizing this +transcendent element in man and the acceptance of it is the foundation +of religious preaching. What was the worst thing about the war? Not +its destruction nor its horrors nor its futilities, but its shames; +the dreadful indignities which it inflicted upon man; it treated men +as though they were not souls! No such moral catastrophe could have +overwhelmed us if we had not for long let the brute lie too near the +values and practices of our lives, depersonalizing thus, in politics +and industry and morals and religion, our civilization. It all +proceeded from the irreligious interpretation of human existence, and +the fruits of that interpretation are before us. + +The first task of the preacher, then, is to combat the naturalistic +interpretation of humanity with every insight and every conviction +that is within his power. If we are to restore religious values, +rebuild a world of transcendent ends and more-than-natural beauty, we +must begin here with man. In the popular understanding of the phrase +all life is not essentially one in kind; physical self-preservation +and reproduction are not the be-all and the end-all of existence. +There is something more to be expressed in man without which these are +but dust and ashes in the mouth. There is another kind of life mixed +in with this, the obvious. If we cannot express the other world, we +shall not long tolerate this one. To think that this world is all, +leans toward madness; such a picture of man is a travesty, not a +portrait of his nature. Only on some such basic truths as these can +we build character in our young people. Paganism tells them that it +is neither natural nor possible to keep themselves unspotted from the +world. Over against it we must reiterate, You can and you must! for +the man that sinneth wrongeth his own soul. You are something more +than physical hunger and reproductive instinct; you are of spirit no +less than dust. How, then, can you do this great sin against God! + +How abundant here are the data with which religious preaching may +deal. Indeed, as Huxley and scores of others have pointed out, it is +only the religious view of man that builds up civilization. A great +community is the record of man's supernaturalism, his uniqueness. It +is built on the "higher-than-self" principle which is involved in the +moral sense itself. And this higher-than-self is not just a collective +naturalism, a social consciousness, as Durkheim and Overstreet and +Miss Harrison would say. The simplest introspective act will prove +that. For a man cannot ignore self-condemnation as if it were only a +natural difficulty, nor disparage it as though it were merely humanly +imposed. We think it comes from that which is above and without, +because it speaks to the solitary and the unique, not the social +and the common part of us. Hence conscience is not chiefly a tribal +product, for it is what separates us from the group and in our +isolation unites us with something other than the group. "Against +Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight." So +religious preaching perpetually holds us up above our natural selves +and the natural order. + +Thus man must live by an other-than-natural law if he is to preserve +the family, which is the social unit of civilization. Its very +existence depends upon modifying and transforming natural hunger by a +diviner instinct, by making voluntary repressions, willing sacrifices +of the lower to the higher, the subordinating of the law of self and +might to the law of sacrifice and love--this is what preserves family +life. Animals indeed rear and cherish their young and for the mating +season remain true to one another, but no animality _per se_ ever yet +built a home. There must be a more-than-natural law in the state. Our +national life and honor rest upon the stability of the democracy and +we can only maintain that by walking a very straight and narrow path. +For the peace of freedom as distinguished from precarious license is +a more-than-natural attainment, born of self-repression and social +discipline, the voluntary relinquishment of lesser rights for higher +rights, of personal privileges for the sake of the common good. +Government by the broad and easy path, following the lines of least +resistance, like the natural order, saying might is right, means +either tyranny or anarchy. _Circumspice_! One of the glories of +western civilization is its hospitals. They stand for the supernatural +doctrine of the survival of the unfit, the conviction of the community +that, to take the easy path of casting out the aged and infirm, +the sick and the suffering, would mean incalculable degeneration +of national character, and that the difficult and costly path of +protection and ministering service is both necessary and right. And +why is the reformatory replacing the prison? Because we have learned +that the obvious, natural way of dealing with the criminal certainly +destroys him and threatens to destroy us; and that the hard, difficult +path of reeducating and reforming a vicious life is the one which the +state for her own safety must follow. + +Genuine preaching, then, first of all, calls men to repentance, bids +them turn away from their natural selves, and, to find that other and +realer self, enter the straight and narrow gate. The call is not an +arbitrary command, born of a negative and repressive spirit. It is a +profound exhortation based upon a fundamental law of human progress, +having behind it the inviolable sanction of the truth. Such preaching +would have the authentic note. It is self-verifying. It stirs to +answer that quality--both moral and imaginative--in the spirit of man +which craves the pain and difficulty and satisfaction of separation +from the natural order. It appeals to a timeless worth in man which +transcends any values of mere intelligence which vary with the ages, +or any material prosperity which perishes with the using, or any +volitional activity that dies in its own expenditure. Much of the +philosophy of Socrates was long ago outmoded, but Socrates himself, as +depicted in the Phaedo, confronting death with the cup of hemlock in +his hand, saying with a smile, "There is no evil which can happen to +a good man living or dead," has a more-than-natural, an enduring and +transcendent quality. Whenever we preach to the element in mankind +which produces such attitudes toward life and bid it assert itself, +then we are doing religious preaching, and then we speak with power. +Jesus lived within the inexorable circle of the ideas of His time; +He staked much on the coming of the new kingdom which did not appear +either when or as He had first expected it. He had to adjust, as do we +all, His life to His experience, His destiny to His fate. But when He +was hanging on His cross, forgotten of men and apparently deserted by +His God, something in Him that had nothing to do with nature or the +brute rose to a final expression and by its more-than-natural reality, +sealed and authenticated His life. Looking down upon His torturers, +understanding them far better than they understood themselves, He +cried, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That +cry has no place in nature; it has no application and no meaning +outside the human heart and that which is above, not beneath, the +human heart, from which it is derived. There, then, again was the +supernatural law; there was the more-than-nature in man which makes +nature into human nature; and there is the thing to whose discovery, +cultivation, expression, real preaching is addressed. Every time a man +truly preaches he so portrays what men ought to be, must be, and can +be if they will, that they know there is something here + + "that leaps life's narrow bars + To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven! + A seed of sunshine that doth leaven + Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars, + And glorify our clay + With light from fountains elder than the Day."[32] + +[Footnote 32: J.R. Lowell, _Commemoration Ode_, stanza IV, ll. 30-35.] + +Such preaching is a perpetual refutation of and rebuke to the +naturalism and imperialism of our present society. It is the call +to the absolute in man, to a clear issue with evil. It would not cry +peace, peace, when there is no peace. It would be living and active, +and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of +both joints and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of +the heart. + +Following this insistence upon the difference from nature, the +more-than-natural in man, the second thing in religious preaching +will have to be, obviously, the message of salvation. That is to say, +reducing the statement to its lowest terms, if man is to live by such +a law, the law of more-than-nature, then he must have something also +more-than-human to help him in his task. He will need strength from +outside. Indeed, because religion declares that there is such divine +assistance, and that faith can command it, is the chief cause and +reason for our existence. When we cease to preach salvation in some +form or other, we deny our own selves; we efface our own existence. +For no one can preach the more-than-human in mankind without +emphasizing those elements of free will, moral responsibility, the +need and capacity for struggle and holiness in human life which it +indicates, and which in every age have been a part of the message of +Him who said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is +in heaven, is perfect." + +Therefore, as we have previously corrected the half truth of the +naturalist who makes a caricature, not a portrait of man, we must now +in the same way turn to the correcting of the humanist's emphasis upon +man's native capacity and insist upon the complementary truth which +fulfills this moral heroism of mankind, namely, the divine rescue +which answers to its inadequacy. Man must struggle for his victory; he +can win; he cannot win alone. We must then insist upon the doctrine +of salvation, turning ourselves to the other side of the humanist's +picture. Man cannot live by this more-than-natural law unaided. For +not only has he the power to rise above Nature; the same thing gives +him equal capacity to sink beneath her, and, when left to himself, he +generally does so. The preacher does not dare deny the sovereignty +of sin. Humanism hates the very name of sin; it has never made +any serious attempt to explain the consciousness of guilt. Neither +naturalist nor humanist can afford to admit sin, for sin takes man, as +holiness does, outside the iron chain of cause and effect; it breaks +the law; it is not strictly natural. It makes clear enough that man +is outside the natural order in two ways. He is both inferior and +superior to it. He falls beneath, he rises above it. When he acts like +a beast, he is not clean and beastly, but unclean and bestial. When he +lifts his head in moral anguish, bathes all his spirit in the flood +of awe and repentance, is transfigured with the glorious madness of +self-sacrifice, he is so many worlds higher than the beast that their +relationship becomes irrelevant. So we must deal more completely +than humanists do with the central mystery of our experience; man's +impotent idealism, his insight not matched with consummation; the fact +that what he dares to dream of he is not able alone to do. + +For the humanist exalts man, which is good; but then he makes him +self-sufficient for the struggle which such exaltation demands, which +is bad. In that partial understanding he departs from truth. And what +is it that makes the futility of so much present preaching? It is the +acceptance of this doctrine of man's moral adequacy and consequently +the almost total lack either of the assurance of grace or of the +appeal to the will. No wonder such exhortations cannot stem the tide +of an ever increasing worldliness. Such preaching stimulates the mind; +in both the better and the worse preachers, it moves the emotions but +it gives men little power to act on what they hear and feel to the +transformation of their daily existence. Thus the humanistic sense of +man's sufficiency, coupled with the inherent distrust of any notion of +help from beyond and above, any belief in a reinforcing power which a +critical rationalism cannot dissect and explain, has gradually ruled +out of court the doctrine of salvation until the preacher's power, +both to experience and to transmit it, has atrophied through disuse. + +Who can doubt that one large reason why crude and indefensible +concepts of the Christian faith have such a disconcerting vitality +today is because they carry, in their outmoded, unethical, discredited +forms, the truth of man's insufficiency in himself and the confident +assurance of that something coming from without which will abundantly +complete the struggling life within? They offer the assurance of that +peace and moral victory which man so ardently desires, because they +declare that it is both a discovery and a revelation, an achievement +and a rescue. There are vigorous and rapidly growing popular movements +of the day which rest their summation of faith on the quadrilateral of +an inerrant and verbally inspired Scripture, the full deity of Jesus +Christ, the efficacy of His substitutionary atonement, the speedy +second coming of the Lord. No sane person can suppose that these cults +succeed because of the ethical insight, the spiritual sensitiveness, +the intellectual integrity of such a message. It does not possess +these things. They succeed, in spite of their obscurantism, because +they do confess and meet man's central need, his need to be saved. +The power of that fact is what is able to carry so narrow and so +indefensible a doctrine. + +So the second problem of the preacher is clear. Man asserts his +potential independence of the natural law. But to realize that, he +must bridge the gulf between himself and the supernatural lawgiver +to whose dictates he confesses he is subject. He is not free from the +bondage of the lower, except through the bondage to the higher. Nor +can he live by that higher law unaided and alone. Here we strike at +the root of humanism. Its kindly tolerance of the church is built +up on the proud conviction that we, with our distinctive doctrine of +salvation, are superfluous, hence sometimes disingenuous and always +negligible. The humanist believes that understanding takes the place +of faith. What men need is not to be redeemed from their sins, but to +be educated out of their follies. + +But does right knowing in itself suffice to insure right doing? +Socrates and Plato, with their indentification of knowledge and +virtue, would appear to think so; the church has gone a long way, +under humanistic pressure, in tacit acquiescence with their doctrine. +Yet most of us, judging alike from internal and personal evidence +and from external and social observation, would say that there was no +sadder or more universal experience than that of the failure of right +knowledge to secure right performance. Right knowledge is not in +itself right living. We have striking testimony on that point from one +of the greatest of all humanists, no less a person than Confucius. +"At seventy," he says, "I could follow what my heart desired without +transgressing the law of measure."[33] The implication of such +testimony makes no very good humanistic apologetic! Most of us, when +desire has failed, can manage to attain, unaided, the identification +of understanding and conduct, can climb to the poor heights of a +worn-out and withered continence. But one wonders a little whether, +then, the climbing seems to be worth while. + +[Footnote 33: _Analects_, II, civ.] + +But the doctrine usually begins by minimizing the free agency of +the individual, playing up the factors of compulsion, either of +circumstance or inheritance or of ignorance, as being in themselves +chiefly responsible for blameful acts. These are therefore considered +involuntary and certain to be reformed when man knows better and has +the corresponding strength of his knowledge. But Aristotle, who deals +with this Socratic doctrine in the third book of the _Ethics_, very +sensibly remarks, "It is ridiculous to lay the blame of our wrong +actions upon external causes rather than upon the facility with which +we ourselves are caught by such causes, and, while we take credit for +our noble actions to ourselves, lay the blame of our shameful actions +upon pleasure."[34] "The facility with which we are caught"--there +is the religious understanding there is that perversion of will which +conspires with the perils and chances of the world so that together +they may undo the soul. + +[Footnote 34: _Ethics_, Book III, ch. ii, p. 61.] + +Of course, as Aristotle admits, there is this half truth lying at the +root of the Socratic identification of virtue and knowledge that every +vicious person is ignorant of what he ought to do and what he ought to +abstain from doing in the sense that what he is about to do could +not be defended upon any ground of enlightened self-interest. And +so, while he finds sin sweet and evil pleasant, these are delusive +experiences, which, if he saw life steadily and whole, he would know +as such. But one reason for this ignorance is unwillingness to know. +Good men do evil, and understanding men sin, partly because they are +misled by false ideas, partly, also, because, knowing them false, +they cannot or will not give them up. This is what Goethe very well +understood when he said, "Most men prefer error to truth, because +truth imposes limitations and error does not." + +And another reason is that when men do know, they find a deadly and +mysterious, a sort of perverted joy--a sweet and terrible and secret +delight,--in denying their own understanding. Thus right living calls +for a repeated and difficult exercise of the will, what Professor +Babbitt calls "a pulling back of the impulse to the track that +knowledge indicates." Such moral mastery is not identical with moral +perception and most frequently is not its accompaniment, unless +observation and experience are alike fallacious. Thus the whole +argument falls to the ground when we confess that possession of +knowledge does not guarantee the application of it. Therefore the two +things, knowledge and virtue, according to universal experience, are +not identical. Humanists indeed use the word "knowledge" for the most +part in an esoteric sense. Knowledge is virtue in the sense that it +enables us to see virtue as excellent and desirable; it is not virtue +in the sense that it alone enables us to acquire it. + +Who, indeed, that has ever lived in the far country does not know +that one factor in its fascination was a bittersweet awareness of the +folly, the inevitable disaster, of such alien surroundings. Who +also does not know that often when the whole will is set to identify +conduct with conviction, it may be, for all its passionate and bitter +sincerity, set in vain. In every hour of every day there are hundreds +of lives that battle honestly, but with decreasing spiritual forces, +with passion and temptation. Sometimes a life is driven by the fierce +gales of enticement, the swift currents of desire, right upon the +jagged rock of some great sin. Lives that have seemed strong and fair +go down every day, do they not, and shock us for a moment with their +irremediable catastrophe? And we must not forget that before they went +down, for many a month or even year they have been hard beset lives. +Before that final and complete ruin, they have been drifting and +struggling, driven and fighting, sin drawing nearer and nearer, their +fated lives urged on, the mind growing darker, the stars in their +souls going out, the steering of their own lives taken from their +hands. Then there has been the sense of the coming danger, the dark +presentiment of how it all must end when the "powers that tend the +soul to help it from the death that cannot die, and save it even in +extremes, begin to vex and plague it." There has been the dreadful +sense of life drifting toward a great crash, nearer and nearer to what +must be the wreck of all things. What does the humanist have to offer +to these men and women who know perfectly well where they are, and +what they are about, and where they would like to be, but who can't +get there and who are, today and every day, putting forth their last +and somber efforts, trying in vain to just keep clear of ruin until +the darkness and the helplessness shall lift and something or someone +shall give them peace! + +Now, it is this defect in the will which automatically limits the +power of the intellect. It is this which the Socratic identification +ignores. So while we might readily grant that it is in the essential +nature of things that virtue and truth, wisdom and character, +understanding and goodness, are but two aspects of one thing, is it +not trifling with one of the most serious facts of human destiny +to interpret the truism to mean that, when a man knows that a +contemplated act is wrong or foolish or ugly, he is thereby restrained +from accomplishing it? Knowledge is not virtue in the sense that +mere reason or mere perception can control the will. And this is the +conclusion that Aristotle also comes to when he says: "Some people +say that incontinence is impossible, if one has knowledge. It seems +to them strange, as it did to Socrates, that where knowledge exists in +man, something else should master it and drag it about like a slave. +Socrates was wholly opposed to this idea; he denied the existence of +incontinence, arguing that nobody with a conception of what was best +could act against it, and therefore, if he did so act, his action +must be due to ignorance." And then Aristotle adds, "The theory is +evidently at variance with the facts of experience."[35] Plato himself +exposes the theoretical nature of the assertion, its inhuman demand +upon the will, the superreasonableness which it expects but offers no +way of obtaining, when he says, "Every one will admit that a nature +having in perfection all the qualities which are required in a +philosopher is a rare plant seldom seen among men."[36] + +[Footnote 35: _Ethics_, Book VII, ch. iii, pp. 206-207.] + +[Footnote 36: _Republic_, VI, 491.] + +It would be well if those people who are going about the world today +teaching social hygiene to adolescents (on the whole an admirable +thing to do) but proceeding on the assumption that when youth knows +what is right and what is wrong, and why it is right and why it is +wrong, and what are the consequences of right and wrong, that then, +_ipso facto_, youth will become chaste,--well if they would acquaint +themselves either with the ethics of Aristotle or with the Christian +doctrine of salvation. For if men think that knowledge by itself ever +yet produced virtue in eager and unsated lives, they are either knaves +or fools. They will find that knowledge uncontrolled by a purified +spirit and a reinforced will is already teaching men not how to +be good, but how to sin the more boldly with the better chance of +physical impunity. "Philosophy," says Black, "is a feeble antagonist +before passion, because it does not supply an adequate motive for the +conflict."[37] There were few men in the nineteenth century in whom +knowledge and virtue were more profoundly and completely joined than +in John Henry Newman. But did that subtle intellect suffice? could it +make the scholar into the saint? Hear his own words: + + "O Holy Lord, who with the children three + Didst walk the piercing flame; + Help, in those trial hours which, save to Thee, + I dare not name; + Nor let these quivering eyes and sickening heart + Crumble to dust beneath the tempter's dart. + + "Thou who didst once Thy life from Mary's breast + Renew from day to day; + O might her smile, severely sweet, but rest + On this frail clay! + Till I am Thine with my whole soul, and fear + Not feel, a secret joy, that Hell is near." + +So, only when we include in the term "knowledge" understanding plus +good will, is the humanist position true, and this, I suppose, is +what Aristotle meant when he finally says, "Vice is consistent with +knowledge of some kind, but it excludes knowledge in the full and +proper sense of the word."[38] + +[Footnote 37: _Culture and Restraint_, p. 104.] + +[Footnote 38: _Ethics_, Book VII, ch. v, p. 215.] + +Now, so finespun a discussion of intricate and psychological +subtleties is mildly interesting presumably to middle-aged scholars, +but I submit that a half truth that needs so much explanation and +so many admissions before it can be made safe or actual, is a rather +dangerous thing to offer to adolescence or to a congregation of +average men and women. It cannot sound to them very much like the good +news of Jesus. Culture is a precious thing, but no culture, without +the help of divine grace and the responsive affection on our part +which that grace induces, will ever knit men together in a kingdom +of God, a spiritual society. As long ago as the second century Celsus +understood that. He says in his polemic against Christianity, as +quoted by Origen, "If any one suppose that it is possible that the +people of Asia and Europe and Africa, Greeks and barbarians, should +agree to follow one law, he is hopelessly ignorant."[39] Now, Celsus +was proceeding on the assumption that Christianity was only another +philosophy, a new intellectual system, and he was merely exposing the +futility of all such unaided intellectualism. + +[Footnote 39: _Origen, contra Celsum_, VIII, p. 72.] + +It is, therefore, of prime importance for the preacher to remember +that humanism, or any other doctrine which approaches the problem of +life and conduct other than by moral and spiritual means, can never +take the place of the religious appeal, because it does not touch the +springs of action where motives are born and from which convictions +arise. You do not make a man moral by enlightening him; it is nearer +the truth to say that you enlighten him when you make him moral. +"Blessed are the pure in heart," said Jesus, "for they shall see +God. If any man wills to do the will, he shall know the doctrine." +Education does not wipe out crime nor an understanding mind make a +holy will. The last half of the nineteenth century made it terribly +clear that the learning and science of mankind, where they are +divorced from piety, unconsecrated by a spiritual passion, and largely +directed by selfish motives, can neither benefit nor redeem the race. +Consider for a moment the enormous expansion of knowledge which the +world has witnessed since the year 1859. What prodigious accessions +to the sum of our common understanding have we seen in the natural and +the humane sciences; and what marvelous uses of scientific knowledge +for practical purposes have we discovered! We have mastered in these +latter days a thousand secrets of nature. We have freed the mind from +old ignorance and ancient superstition. We have penetrated the secrets +of the body, and can almost conquer death and indefinitely prolong +the span of human days. We face the facts and know the world as our +fathers could never do. We understand the past and foresee the future. +But the most significant thing about our present situation is this: +how little has this wisdom, in and of itself, done for us! It has made +men more cunning rather than more noble. Still the body is ravaged and +consumed by passion. Still men toil for others against their will, +and the strong spill the blood of the weak for their ambition and the +sweat of the children for their greed. Never was learning so diffused +nor the content of scholarship so large as now. Yet the great cities +are as Babylon and Rome of old, where human wreckage multiplies, and +hideous vices flourish, and men toil without expectancy, and live +without hope, and millions exist--not live at all--from hand to mouth. +As we survey the universal unrest of the world today and see the +horrors of war between nation and nation, and between class and class, +it would not be difficult to make out a case for the thesis that the +scientific and intellectual advances of the nineteenth century +have largely worked to make men keener and more capacious in their +suffering. And at least this is true; just so far as the achievement +of the mind has been divorced from the consecration of the spirit, +in just so far knowledge has had no beneficent potency for the human +race. + +Is it not clear, then, that preaching must deal again, never more +indeed than now, with the religion which offers a redemption from sin? +This is still foolishness to the Greeks, but to those who believe it +is still the power of God unto salvation. Culture is not religion. +When the preacher substitutes the one for the other, he gives stones +for bread, and the hungry sheep go elsewhere or are not fed. It is +this emasculated preaching, mulcted of its spiritual forces, which +awakes the bitterest distrust and deepest indignation that human +beings know. They are fighting the foes of the flesh and the enemies +of the spirit, enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, +standing by the open graves of their friends and kindred, saying +there, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." And then, +with all this mystery and oppression of life upon them they enter the +doors of the house of God and listen to a polite essay, are told of +the consolations of art, reminded of the stupidity of evil, assured of +the unreality of sin, offered the subtle satisfactions of a cultivated +intelligence. In just so far as they are genuine men and women, they +resent such preaching as an insult, a mockery and an offense. No, no; +something more is needed than the humanist can offer for those who are +hard-pressed participants in the stricken fields of life. + +Religious preaching, then, begins with these two things: man's +solitary place in nature, man's inability to hold that place alone. +Hence two more things are necessary as essentials of great preaching +in a pagan day. The clear proclamation of the superhuman God, the +transcendent spirit who is able to control and reinforce the spirit of +man, and the setting forth of some way or some mediator, through whom +man may meet and touch that Spirit so far removed yet so infinitely +near and dear to him. It is with these matters that we shall be +occupied in the next chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + +THE ALMIGHTY AND EVERLASTING GOD + + +If the transcendent element in man which endows him with the proud if +tragic sense of personality is the first message of the preacher to +a chattering and volatile world, and the second is the setting forth +of what this endowment demands and how pitiably man fails to meet it, +then the third message is of the Rock that is higher than he, even +inclusive of his all, in whose composed and comprehensive Being his +baffled and divided person may be gathered up, brought to its own +consummation of self. The rivers that pour tumultuously to their ocean +bed, the ascending fire ever falling backward but leaping upward to +the sun, are poor figures to express the depth and irresistible urge +of the passion in man for completeness, for repose, for power, for +self-perception in self-expression, for victory and the attainment +of the end. Conscious and divided spirit that he is, man turns away, +sooner or later, with utter weariness and self-disgust from the nature +which pleases him by betraying him, which maims his person that he +may enjoy his senses, and reaches out after the other-worldly, the +supernatural, the invisible and eternal Hope and Home of the Soul. + +Humanism which bids men sufficiently find God within themselves, if +they think they need to find Him at all, seems not to comprehend this +passion of pride and humility, this inner perception of the futility +and the blunder of the self-contained life. Life is so obviously +not worth its brevity, its suffering, its withheld conclusions, its +relative insignificance, if it must thus stand alone. All that can +save it, preserve to it worth and dignity, maintain its self-respect +and mastery, is to find that abundant power without which confesses, +certifies and seals the divinity within. + +How foredoomed to failure, then, especially in an age when men are +surmounting life by placating it, enjoying it by being easy with +themselves--how foredoomed to failure is the preaching which continues +in the world of religion this exaltation of human sufficiency and +natural values, domesticating them within the church. It is to laugh +to see them there! It means so transparent a surrender, so pitiable a +confession of defeat. If anything can bring the natural man into the +sanctuary it is that there he has to bring his naturalness to the bar +of a more-than-natural standard. If he comes at all, it will not +be for entertainment and expansion but because there we insist on +reverence and restraint. If church and preacher offer only a pietized +and decorous naturalism, when he can get the real thing in naked and +unashamed brutality without; if they offer him only another form of +humanistic living, he will stay away. Such preaching is as boresome +as it is unnecessary. Such exercise of devotion is essentially +superfluous and a rather humorous imposition upon the world. The only +thing that will ever bring the natural man to listen to preaching is +when it insists upon something more-than-the-natural and calls him to +account regarding it; when it speaks of something different and better +for him than this world and what it can offer. "Take my _yoke_ upon +you" is the attractive invitation, "make inner obeisance and outward +obedience to something higher than thy poor self." + +It is clear, then, that these observations have a bearing upon our +preaching of the doctrine of God. There is a certain illogicality, +something humorous, in going into a church, of all places in the +world, to be told how like we are to Him. The dull and average +personality, the ordinary and not very valuable man, can probably +listen indifferently and with a slow-growing hardness and dim +resentment to that sort of preaching for a number of years. But the +valuable, the highly personalized people, the saints and the sinners, +the great rebels and the great disciples, who are the very folk for +whom the church exists, would hate it, and they would know the final +bitterness of despair if they thought that this was so. Either saint +or sinner would consider it the supreme insult, the last pitch of +insolence, for the church to be telling them that it is true. + +For they know within themselves that it is a lie. Their one hope hangs +on God because His thoughts are not their thoughts, nor His ways their +ways; because He seeth the end from the beginning; because in Him +there is no variableness, neither shadow that is caused by turning; +because no man shall see His face and live. They, the sinners and the +saints, do not want to be told that they, within themselves, can heal +themselves and that sin has no real sinfulness. That is tempting them +to the final denial, the last depth of betrayal, the blurring of moral +values, the calling of evil good and the saying that good is evil. +They know that this is the unpardonable madness. In the hours when +they, the saints and sinners, wipe their mouths and say, "We have done +no harm"; in the days when what they love is ugliness because it is +ugly and shameless, and reckless expression because it is so terrible, +so secretly appalling, so bittersweet with the sweetness of death, +they know that it is the last affront to have the church--the one +place where men expect they will be made to face the facts--bow these +facts out of doors. + +No, we readily grant that the religious approach to the whole truth +and to final reality is like any other one, either scientific, +economic, political, a partial approach. It sets forth for the most +part only a group of facts. When it does not emphasize other facts, +it does not thereby deny them. But it insists that the truth of man's +differences, man's helplessness which the differences reveal, and +man's fate hanging therefore upon a transcendent God, are the key +truths for the religious life. It is with that aspect of life the +preacher deals, and if he fails to grapple with these problems and +considerations, ignores these facts, his candlestick has been removed. + +The argument for a God, then, within His world, but also distinct +from it, above its evil custom and in some sense untouched by +its all-leveling life, is essential to the preservation of human +personality, and personality is essential to dignity, to decency, to +hope. The clearest and simplest thing to be said about the Hebrew God, +lofty and inaccessible Being, with whom nevertheless His purified and +obedient children might have relationships, or about the "living +God" of Greek theology, far removed from us but with whose deathless +goodness, beauty and truth our mortality by some mediator may be +endowed, is that the argument that supports such transcendence is +the argument from necessity. It is the facts of experience, the very +stuff of human life, coming down alike from Hebraic and Hellenic +civilization, which demand Him. Immanence and transcendence are merely +theistic terms for identity and difference. Through them is revealed +and discovered personality, the "I" which is the ultimate fact of +my consciousness. I can but reckon from the known to the unknown. +The world which produced me is also, then, a cosmic identity and +difference. In that double fact is found divine personality. But +that aspect of His Person, that portion of the fact which feeds +the imaginative and volitional life, is the glorious and saving +unlikeness of God--His unthinkable and inexpressible glory; His utter +comprehension and unbelievable compassion; His justice which knows no +flaw and brooks no evasion and cannot be swerved; His power which +may not be withstood and hence is a sure and certain tenderness; His +hatred of sin, terrible and flaming, a hatred which will send sinful +men through a thousand hells, if they will have them, and can only be +saved thereby; His love for men, which is what makes Him hate their +sin and leads Him by His very nature as God to walk into hell with the +sinner, suffering with him a thousand times more than the sinner is +able to understand or know,--like the Paul who could not wish himself, +for himself, in hell, but who did wish himself accursed of God for +his brethren's sake; like Jesus, who, in Gethsemane, would for Himself +avoid His cross, but who accepted it and was willing to hang, forsaken +of God, upon it, for the lives of men, identifying Himself to the +uttermost with their fate. Yes; it is such a supernal God--that God +who is apart, incredible, awful--that the soul of humanity craves and +needs. + +Of course, here again, as throughout these discussions, we are +returning to a form of the old dualism. We cannot seem to help it. We +may construct philosophies like Hegel's in which thesis and antithesis +merge in a higher synthesis; we may use the dual view of the world as +representing only a stage, a present achievement in cosmic progress or +human understanding. But that does not alter the incontestable witness +of present experience that the religious consciousness is based upon, +interwoven with, the sense of the cosmic division without, and the +unresolved moral dualism within the individual life. It is important +enough to remember, however, that we have rejected, at least for this +generation, the old scholastic theologies founded on this general +experience. Fashions of thought change with significant facility; +there is not much of the Absolute about them! Nevertheless we cannot +think with forgotten terms. Therefore ours is no mechanically divided +world where man and God, nature and supernature, soul and body, belong +to mutually exclusive territories. We do not deny the principle of +identity. Hence we have discarded that old view of the world and all +the elder doctrines of an absentee creator, a worthless and totally +depraved humanity, a legalistic or substitutionary atonement, a +magical and non-understandable Incarnation which flowed from it. But +we are not discarding with them that other aspect of the truth, the +principle of separateness, nor those value judgments, that perpetual +vision of another nature, behind and beneath phenomena, from which +the old dualism took its rise. It is the form which it assumed, the +interpretation of experience which it gave, not the facts themselves, +obscure but stubborn as they are, which it confessed, that we have +dropped. Identity and difference are still here; man is a part of his +world, but he is also apart from it. God is in nature and in us; God +is without and other than nature and most awfully something other than +us. + +Indeed, the precise problem of the preacher today is to keep the old +supernatural values and drop the old vocabulary with the philosophy +which induced it. We must acknowledge the universe as one, and yet be +able to show that the He or the It, beyond and without the world, is +its only conceivable beginning, its only conceivable end, the chief +hope of its brevity, the only stay of its idealism. It was the +arbitrary and mechanical completeness of the old division, not the +reality that underlay the distinction itself, which parted company +with truth and hence lost the allegiance of the mind. It was that the +old dualism tried to lock up this, the most baffling of all realities, +in a formula,--that was what undid it. But we shall be equally foolish +if now, in the interests of a new artificial clearness, we deny +another portion of experience just as our fathers ignored certain +other facts in the interests of their too well-defined systems. We +cannot hold to the old world view which would bend the modern mind to +the support of an inherited interpretation of experience and therefore +would not any longer really explain or confirm it. Neither can we hold +new views which mutilate the experience and leave out some of the most +precious elements in it, even if in so doing we should simplify the +problem for the mind. It would be an unreal simplification; it would +darken, not illumine, the understanding; we should never rest in it. +Nor do we need to be concerned if the intellect cannot perfectly +order or easily demonstrate the whole of the religious life, fit each +element with a self-verifying defense and explanation. No man of the +world, to say nothing of a man of faith or imagination, has ever yet +trusted to a purely intellectual judgment. + +So we reject the old dualism, its dichotomized universe, its two sorts +of authority, its prodigious and arbitrary supernaturalism. But we do +not reject what lay behind it. Still we wrestle with the angel, lamed +though we are by the contest, and we cannot let him go until the day +breaks and the shadows flee away. It would be easier perhaps to give +up the religious point of view, but for that ease we should pay with +our life. For that swift answer, achieved by leaving out prime factors +in the problem, we should be betraying the self for whose sake alone +any answer is valuable. It does not pay to cut such Gordian knots! Our +task, then, is to preach transcendence again, not in terms of the old +absolutist philosophy, but in terms of the perceptions, the needs, the +experience of the human heart and mind and will which produced that +philosophy. + +Nor is this so hard to do. Now, as always for the genuinely religious +temperament, there are abundant riches of material lying ready to its +hand. It is not difficult to make transcendence real and to reveal to +men their consummate need of it when we speak of it in the language +of experience and perception. What preaching should avoid is +the abstractions of an archaic system of thought with all their +provocative and contentious elements, the mingled dogmatism and +incompleteness which any worked-out system contains. It is so foolish +in the preacher to turn himself into a lay philosopher. Let him keep +his insight clear, through moral discipline keep his intuitions high, +his spirit pure, and then he can furnish the materials for philosophy. + +Thus an almost universal trait of the religious temperament is in +its delight in beauty. Sometimes it is repressed by an irreligious +asceticism or narrowed and stunted by a literal and external faith. +But when the religious man is left free, it is appropriate to his +genius that he finds the world full of a high pleasure crowded with +sound, color, fragrance, form, in which he takes exquisite delight. +There is, in short, a serene and poetic naturalism, loosely called +"nature-worship," which is keenly felt by both saints and sinners. +All it needs for its consecration and perfection is to help men to +see that this naturalism is vital and precious because, as a matter +of fact, it is something more than naturalism, and more than pleasure +objectified. + +Recall, for instance, the splendors of the external world and that +best season of our climate, the long, slow-breathing autumn. What +high pleasure we take in those hushed days of mid-November in the +soft brown turf of the uplands, the fragrant smell of mellow earth and +burning leaves, the purple haze that dims and magnifies the quiescent +hills. Who is not strangely moved by that profound and brooding peace +into which Nature then gathers up the multitudinous strivings, the +myriad activities of her life? Who does not love to lie, in those +slow-waning days upon the sands which hold within their golden cup the +murmuring and dreaming sea? The very amplitude of the natural world, +its far-flung grace and loveliness, spread out in rolling moor and +winding stream and stately forest marching up the mountain-side, +subdues and elevates the spirit of a man. + +Now, so it has always been and so men have always longed to be the +worshipers of beauty. Therefore they have believed in a conscious and +eternal Spirit behind it. Because again we know that personality is +the only thing we have of absolute worth. A man cannot, therefore, +worship beauty, wholly relinquish himself to its high delights, if he +conceives of this majestic grace as impersonal and inanimate. For that +which we worship must be greater than we. Behind it, therefore, just +because it seems to us so beautiful, must be something that calls to +the hidden deeps of the soul, something intimately akin to our own +spirits. So man worships not nature, but the God of nature; senses an +Eternal Presence behind all gracious form. For that interprets beauty +and consecrates the spell of beauty over us. This gives a final +meaning to what the soul perceives is an utter loveliness. This gives +to beauty an eternal and cosmic significance commensurate to its charm +and power. As long as men's hearts surge, too, when the tide yearns +up the beach; as long as their souls become articulate when the birds +sing in the dawn, and the flowers lift themselves to the sun; so long +will men believe that only from a supreme and conscious Loveliness, +a joyous and a gracious Spirit could have come the beauty which is so +intimately related to the spirit of a man. + +But not all saints and sinners are endowed with this joy and insight, +this quick sensitiveness to beauty. Some of them cannot find the +eternal and transcendent God in a loveliness which, by temperament, +they either underrate or do not really see. There are a great many +good people who cannot take beauty seriously. They become wooden and +suspicious and uncomfortable whenever they are asked to perceive or +enjoy a lovely object. Incredible though it seems, it appears to them +to be unworthy of any final allegiance, any complete surrender, any +unquestioning joy. But there are other ways in which they, too, may +come to this sense of transcendence, other aspects of experience which +also demand it. Most often it is just such folk who cannot perceive +beauty, because they are practical or scientific or condemned to mean +surroundings, who do feel to the full the grim force and terror of +the external world. Prudence, caution, hard sense are to the fore with +them! Very well; there, too, in these perceptions is an open door for +the human spirit to transcend its environment, get out of its physical +shell. The postulate of the absolute worth of beauty may be an +argument for God drawn from subjective necessity. But the postulate of +sovereign moral Being behind the tyranny and brutality of nature is +an argument of objective necessity as well; here we all need God to +explain the world. + +For we deal with what certainly appear to be objective aspects of the +truth, when we regard ourselves in our relation to the might of the +physical universe. For even as men feed upon its beauty, so they have +found it necessary to discover something which should enable them to +live above and unafraid of its material and gigantic power. We have +already seen how there appears to be a cosmic hostility to human life +which sobers indeed those who are intelligent enough to perceive +it. It is only the fool or the brute or the sentimentalist who is +unterrified by nature. The man of reflection and imagination sees his +race crawling ant-like over its tiny speck of slowly cooling earth and +surrounded by titanic and ruthless forces which threaten at any moment +to engulf it. The religious man knows that he is infinitely greater +than the beasts of the field or the clods of the highway. Yet Vesuvius +belches forth its liquid fire and in one day of stark terror the great +city which was full of men is become mute and desolate. The proud +liner scrapes along the surface of the frozen berg and crumples like +a ship of cards. There is a splash, a cry, a white face, a lifted +arm, and then all the pride and splendor, all the hopes and fears, the +gorgeous dreams, the daring thoughts are gone. But the ice floats on +unscarred and undeterred and the ocean tosses and heaves just as it +did before. + +Now, if this is all, if there is for us only the physical might of +nature and the world is only what it seems to be; if there is no other +God except such as can be found within this sort of cosmic process, +then human life is a sardonic mockery, and self-respect a silly +farce, and all the heroism of the heart and the valor of the mind the +unmeaning activities of an insignificant atom. The very men who will +naturally enter your churches are the ones who have always found that +theory of life intolerable. It doesn't take in all the facts. They +could not live by it and the soul of the race, looking out upon this +universe of immeasurable material bulk, has challenged it and dared to +assert its own superiority. + +So by this road these men come back to the transcendent God without +whom they cannot guard that integrity of personality which we are all +set to keep. For here there is no way of believing in oneself, no +way of enduring this world or our place in it and no tolerable way of +understanding it except we look beneath this cosmic hostility and +find our self-respect and a satisfying cosmic meaning in perceiving +spiritual force, a conscious ethical purpose, which interpenetrates +the thunder and the lightning, which lies behind the stars as they +move in their perpetual courses. "Through it the most ancient heavens +are fresh and strong." Integrity of personality in such a world as +this, belief in self, without which life is dust and ashes in the +mouth, rest on the sublime assumption that suffusing material force +is ethical spirit, more like unto us than it, controlling force in the +interest of moral and eternal purposes. In these purposes living, not +mechanical, forces play a major part. + +Of course, to all such reasoning the Kantians and humanists reply that +these notions of an objective and eternal beauty, of a transcendent +and actual Cosmic Being exist within the mind. They are purely +subjective ideas, they are bounded by the inexorable circle of our +experience, hence they offer no proof of any objective reality which +may in greater or less degree correspond to them. + +However, there must be a "source" of these ideas. To which the +philosophers reply, Yes, they are "primitive and necessary," produced +by reason only, without borrowing anything from the senses or the +understanding. Yet there is no sufficient evidence that the idea of +God is thus produced by any faculty of mind acting in entire freedom +from external influence. On the contrary, the idea appears to owe much +to the operation of external things upon the mind; it is not then the +wholly unaffected product of reason. It is a response no less than +an intuition. Like all knowledge a discovery, but the discovery of +something there which could be discovered, hence, in that sense, a +revelation. + +It is not necessary, then, for men to meet their situation in the +cosmos by saying with Kant: We will act as though there were a God, +although we are always conscious that we have no real knowledge of +Him as an external being. In the light of the tragic circumstances of +humanity, this is demanding the impossible. No sane body of men will +ever get sufficient inspiration for life or find an adequate solution +for the problem of life by resting upon mere value judgments which +they propose, by an effort of will, to put in the place of genuine +reality judgments. Indeed, there is a truly scholastic naïveté, a +sort of solemn and unconscious humor, in seriously proposing that +men should vitalize and consecrate their deepest purposes and most +difficult experiences by hypothesizing mere appearances and illusions. + +Nor are we willing either to say with Santayana that all our sense of +the beauty of the world is merely pleasure objectified and that we can +infer no eternal Beauty from it. We are aware that there cannot be an +immediate knowledge of a reality distinct from ourselves, that all +our knowledge must be, in the nature of the case, an idea, a mental +representation, that we can never know the Thing Itself. But if we +believe, as we logically and reasonably may, that our subjective ideas +are formed under the influence of objects unknown but without us, +produced by stimuli, real, if not perceived apart from our own +consciousness, then we may say that what we have is a mediate or +representative knowledge not only of an Eternal Being but formed under +the influence of that Being. Nor does the believer ask for more. He +does not expect to see the King in His beauty; he only needs to know +that He is, that He is there. + +How self-verifying and moving, then, are the appeals ready to our +hands. As long as man with the power to question, to strive, to +aspire, to endure, to suffer, lives in a universe of ruthless and +overwhelming might, so long, if he is to understand it or maintain +his reason and his dignity, he will believe it to be controlled by a +Spirit beyond no less than within, from whom his spirit is derived. It +is out of the struggle to revere and conserve human personality, out +of the belief in the indefectible worth and honor of selfhood that +our race has fronted a universe in arms, and pitting its soul against +nature has cried, "God is my refuge: underneath me, at the very moment +when I am engulfed in earthquake shock or shattered in the battle's +roar, there are everlasting arms!" There is something which is too +deep for tears in the unconquerable idealism, the utter magnanimity +of the faith of the human spirit in that which will answer to itself, +as evidenced in this forlorn and glorious adventure of the soul. +Sometimes we are constrained to ask ourselves, How can the heart of +man go so undismayed through the waste places of the world? + +But, of course, the preacher's main task is to interpret man's moral +experience, which drives him out to search for the eternal in +the terms of the "other" and redeeming God. We have spoken of the +depersonalizing of religion which paganism and humanism alike have +brought upon the world. One evidence of that has been the way in +which we have confounded the social expressions of religion with its +individual source. We are so concerned with the effect of our religion +upon the community that we have forgotten that the heart of religion +is found in the solitary soul. All of which means that we have here +again yielded to the time spirit that enfolds us and have come to +think of man as religious if he be humane. But that is not true. No +man is ever religious until he becomes devout. And indeed no man of +our sort--the saint and sinner sort--is ever long and truly humane +unless the springs of his tenderness for men are found in his ever +widening and deepening gratitude to God! Hence no man was ever yet +able to preach the living God until he understood that the central +need in human life is to reconcile the individual conscience to +itself, compose the anarchy of the spiritual life. Men want to be +happy and be fed; but men must have inward peace. + +We swing back, therefore, to the native ground of preaching, approach +the religious problem, now, not from the aesthetic or the scientific, +but from the moral angle. Here we are dealing with the most poignant +of all human experiences. For it is in this intensely personal world +of moral failure and divided will that men are most acutely aware of +themselves and hence of their need of that other-than-self beyond. +The sentimental idealizing of contemporary life, the declension of the +humanist's optimism into that superficial complacency which will not +see what it does not like or what it is not expedient to see, makes +one's mind to chuckle while one's heart doth ache. There is a brief +heyday, its continuance dependent upon the uncontrollable factors +of outward prosperity, physical and nervous vigor, capacity for +preoccupation with the successive novelties of a diversified and +complicated civilization, in which even men of religious temperament +can minimize or ignore, perhaps sincerely disbelieve in, their divided +life. Sometimes we think we may sin and be done with it. But always in +the end man must come back to this moral tragedy of the soul. Because +sin will not be done with us when we are done with it. Every evil +is evil to him that does it and sooner or later we are compelled +to understand that to be a sinner is the sorest and most certain +punishment for sinning. + +Then the awakening begins. Then can preaching stir the heart until +deep answereth unto deep. It can talk of the struggle with moral +temptation and weakness; of the unstable temperament which oscillates +between the gutter and the stars; of the perversion or abuse of +impulses good in themselves; of the dreadful dualism of the soul. For +these are inheritances which have made life tragic in every generation +for innumerable human beings. Whoever needed to explain to a company +of grown men and women what the cry of the soul for its release from +passion is? Every generation has its secret pessimists, brooding over +the anarchy of the spirit, the issues of a distracted life. We need +not ask with Faust, "Where is that place which men call 'Hell'?" nor +wait for Mephistopheles to answer, + + "Hell is in no set place, nor is it circumscribed, + For where we are--is Hell!" + +Now, it is from such central and poignant experiences as these that +men have been constrained to look outward for a God. For these mark +the very disintegration of personality, the utter dissipation of +selfhood. That is the inescapable horror of sin. That is what we mean +when we say sinners are lost; so they are, they are lost to their own +selves. With what discriminating truth the father in the parable of +the lost boy speaks. "This, my son," he says, "was dead though he is +alive again." So it is with us; being is the price we pay for sinning. +The more we do wrong the less we are. How then shall we become alive +again? + +It is out of the shame and passion, the utter need of the human heart, +which such considerations show to be real that men have built up their +redemptive faiths. For all moral victory is conditioned upon help from +without. To be sure each will and soul must strive desperately, even +unto death, yet all that strife shall be in vain unless One stoops +down from above and wrestles with us in the conflict. For the sinner +must have two things, both of them beyond his unaided getting, or he +will die. He must be released from his captivity. Who does not know +the terrible restlessness, that grows and feeds upon itself and then +does grow some more, of the man bound by evil and wanting to get out? +The torture of sin is that it deprives us of the power to express +ourselves. The cry of moral misery, therefore, is always the groaning +of the prisoner. Oh, for help to break the bars of my intolerable +and delicious sin that I may be myself once more! Oh, for some power +greater than I which, being greater, can set me free! + +But more than the sinner wants to be free does he want to be kept. +Along with the passion for liberty is the desire for surrender. Again, +then, he wants something outside himself, some Being so far above the +world he lives in that it can take him, the whole of him, break his +life, shake it to its foundations, then pacify, compose it, make it +anew. He is so tired of his sin; he is so weary with striving; he +wants to relinquish it all; get far away from what he is; flee like +a bird to the mountain; lay down his life before the One like whom he +would be. So he wants power, he wants peace. He would be himself, he +would lose himself. He prays for freedom, he longs for captivity. + +Now, out of these depths of human life, these vast antinomies of the +spirit, has arisen man's belief in a Saviour-God. Sublime and awful +are the sanctions upon which it rests. Out of the extremity and +definiteness of our need we know that He must be and we know what He +must be like. He is the One to whom all hearts are open, all desires +known, from whom no secrets are hid. Who could state the mingling of +desire and dread with which men strive after, and hide from, such +a God? We want Him, yet until we have Him how we fear Him. For that +inclusive knowledge of us which is God, if only we can bear to come to +it, endows us with freedom. For then all the barriers are down, there +is nothing to conceal, nothing to explain, nothing to hold back. Then +reality and appearance coincide, character and condition correspond. +I am what I am before Him. Supreme reality from without answers and +completes my own, and makes me real, and my reality makes me free. + +But if He thus knows me, and through that knowledge every inner +inhibition melts in His presence and every damning secret's out, and +all my life is spread like an open palm before His gaze, and I am come +at last, through many weary roads, unto my very self, why then I can +let go, I can relinquish myself. The dreadful tension's gone and in +utter surrender the soul is poured out, until, spent and expressed, +rest and peace flood back into the satisfied life. So the life is +free; so the life is bound. So a man stands upon his feet; so he +clings to the Rock that is higher than he. So the life is cleansed in +burning light; so the soul is hid in the secret of God's presence. So +men come to themselves; so men lose themselves in the Eternal. There +is perfect freedom at last because we have attained to complete +captivity. There is power accompanied by peace. That is the gift which +the vision of a God, morally separate from, morally other than we, +brings to the inward strife, the spiritual agony of the world. This +is the need which that faith satisfies. It is, I suppose, in this +exulting experience of moral freedom and spiritual peace which comes +to those men who make the experiment of faith that they, for the most +part, find their sufficient proof of the divine reality. Who ever +doubted His existence who could cry with all that innumerable company +of many kindreds and peoples and tongues: + + "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay; + And he set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. + And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God." + +Here, then, is the preaching which is religious. How foolish are we +not to preach it more! How trivial and impertinent it is to question +the permanence of the religious interpretation of the world! What +a revelation of personal insignificance it is to fail to revere the +majesty of the devout and aspiring life! That which a starved and +restless and giddy world has lost is this pool of quietness, this +tower of strength, this cleansing grace of salvation, this haven of +the Spirit. Belief in a transcendent deity is as natural as hunger +and thirst, as necessary as sleep and breathing. It was the inner and +essential needs of our fathers' lives which drove them out to search +for Him. It will be the inner and essential needs of the lives of our +children that shall bring them to the altar where their fathers and +their fathers' fathers bowed down before them. Are we going to be +afraid to keep its fires burning? + +And so we come to our final and most difficult aspect of this +transcendent problem. We have talked of the man who is separate from +nature, and who knows himself as man because behind nature he sees +the God from whom he is separate, too. We have seen how he needs +that "otherness" in God to maintain his personality and how the gulf +between him and that God induces that sense of helplessness which +makes the humility and penitence of the religious life. We must come +now to our final question. How is he to bridge the gulf? By what power +can he go through with this experience we have just been relating and +find his whole self in a whole world? How can he dare to try it? How +can he gain power to achieve it? + +Perhaps this is the central difficulty of all religion. It is +certainly the one which the old Greeks felt. Plato, the father of +Christian theology, and all neo-platonists, knew that the gulf is +here between man and God and they knew that something or someone must +bridge it for us. They perceived that man, unaided, cannot leap it at +a stride. We proceed, driven by the facts of life, to the point where +the soul looks up to the Eternal and confesses the kinship, and knows +that only in His light shall it see light, and that it only shall be +satisfied when it awakes in His likeness. But how shall the connection +be made? What shall enable us to do that mystic thing, come back +to God? We have frightful handicaps in the attempt. How shall the +distrust that sin creates, the hardness that sin forms, the despair +and helplessness that sin induces, the dreadful indifference which +is its expression,--how shall they be removed? How shall the unfaith +which the mystery, the suffering, the evil of the world induce be +overcome? Being a sinner I do not dare, and being ignorant I do not +believe, to come. God is there and God wants us; like as a father +pitieth his children so He pitieth us. He knoweth our frame, He +remembereth that we are dust. We know that is true; again we do not +know it is true. All the sin that is in us and all which that sin +has done to us insists and insists that it is not true. And the mind +wonders--and wonders. What shall break that distrust; and melt away +the hardness so that we have an open mind; and send hope into despair, +hope with its accompanying confidence to act; change unfaith to +belief, until, in having faith, we thereby have that which faith +believes in? How amazing is life! We look out into the heavenly +country, we long to walk therein, we have so little power to stir hand +or foot to gain our entrance. We know it is there but all the facts of +our rebellious or self-centered life, individual and associated alike, +are against it and therefore we do not know that it is there. + +Philosophy and reason and proofs of logic cannot greatly help us here. +No man was ever yet argued into the kingdom of God. We cannot convince +ourselves of our souls. For we are creatures, not minds; lives, not +ideas. Only life can convince life; only a Person but, of course, +a transcendent person that is more like Him than like us, can make +that Other-who-lives certain and sure for us. This necessity for some +intermediary who shall be a human yet more-than-human proof that +God is and that man may be one with Him; this reinforcing of the old +argument from subjective necessity by its verification in the actual +stuff of objective life, has been everywhere sought by men. + +Saviours, redeemers, mediators, then, are not theological manikins. +They are not superfluous figures born of a mistaken notion of +the universe. They are not secondary gods, concessions to our +childishness. They, too, are called for in the nature of things. But +to really mediate they must have the qualities of both that which they +transmit and of those who receive the transmission. Most of all they +must have that "other" quality, so triumphant and self-verifying that +seeing it constrains belief. A mediator wholly unlike ourselves would +be a meaningless and mocking figure. But a mediator who was chiefly +like ourselves would be a contradiction in terms! + +So we come back again to the old problem. Man needs some proof that he +who knows that he is more than dust can meet with that other life from +whose star his speck has been derived. Something has got to give him +powerful reinforcement for this supreme effort of will, of faith. If +only he could know that he and it ever have met in the fields of time +and space, then he would be saved. For that would give him the will to +believe; that would prove the ultimate; give him the blessed assurance +which heals the wounds of the heart. Then he would have power to +surrender. Then he would no longer fear the gulf, he would walk out +onto it and know that as he walked he was with God. + +Some such reasoning as this ought to make clear the place that Jesus +holds in Christian preaching and why we call Him Saviour and why +salvation comes for us who are of His spiritual lineage, through Him. +Of course it is true that Jesus shows to all discerning eyes what man +may be. But that is not the chief secret of His power; that is not +why churches are built to Him and His cross still fronts, defeated +but unconquerable, our pagan world. Jesus was more-than-nature and +more-than-human. It is this "other" quality, operative and objectified +in His experience within our world, which gives Him the absoluteness +which makes Him indispensable and precious. The mystery is deepest +here. For here we transfer the antinomy from thought to conduct; from +inner perception to one Being's actual experience. Here, in Him, we +say we see it resolved into its higher synthesis in actual operation. + +Here, then, we can almost look into it. Yet when we do gaze, our eyes +dazzle, our minds swerve, it is too much. It is not easy, indeed, at +the present time it seems to be impossible to reconcile the Christ +of history with the Christ of experience. Yet there would be neither +right nor reason in saying that the former was more of a reality +than the latter. And all the time the heart from which great thoughts +arise, "the heart which has its reasons of which the mind knows +nothing," says, Here in Him is the consummate quality, the absolute +note of life. Here the impossible has been accomplished. Here the +opposites meet and the contradictions blend. Here is something so +incredible that it is true. + +Of course, Jesus is of us and He is ours. That is true and it is +inexpressibly sweet to remember it. Again, to use our old solecism, +that is the lesser part of the truth; the greater part, for men of +religion, is that Jesus is of God, that He belongs to Him. His chief +office for our world has not been to show us what men can be like; it +has been to give us the vision of the Eternal in a human face. For if +He does reveal God to man then He must hold, as President Tucker says, +the quality and substance of the life which He reveals. + +Here is where He differs immeasurably from even a Socrates. What men +want most to believe about Jesus is this, that when we commune with +Him, we are with the infinite; that man's just perception of the +Eternal Spirit, his desire to escape from time into reality, may be +fulfilled in Jesus. That is the Gospel: Come unto Him, all ye that +labor and are heavy laden, for He will give you rest. Whosoever +drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of +the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that +I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into +everlasting life. If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall +be free indeed. + +Now, if all this is true, what is the religious preaching of Jesus, +what aspect of His person meets the spiritual need? Clearly, it is His +transcendence. It is not worthy of us to evade it because we cannot +explain it. Surely what has hastened our present paganism has been the +removal from the forefront of our consciousness of Jesus the Saviour, +the divine Redeemer, the absolute Meeter of an absolute need. Of such +preaching of Jesus we have today very little. The pendulum has swung +far to the left, to the other exclusive emphasis, too obviously +influenced by the currents of the day. It was perhaps inevitable +that He should for a time drop out of His former place in Christian +preaching under this combined humanistic and naturalistic movement. +But it means that again we have relinquished those values which have +made Jesus the heart of humanity. + +Of course, He was a perfected human character inspired above all +men by the spirit of God, showing the capacity of humanity to hold +Divinity. This is what Mary celebrates in her paean, "He that is +mighty has magnified me and holy is his name." But is this what men +have passionately adored in Jesus? Has love of Him been self-love? Is +this why He has become the sanctuary of humanity? I think not. We have +for the moment no good language for the other conception of Him. He +is indeed the pledge of what we may be, but how many of us would ever +believe that pledge unless there was something else in Him, more than +we, that guaranteed it? What, as President Tucker asks, is this power +which shall make "maybe" into "is" for us? "Without doubt the trend of +modern thought and faith is toward the more perfect identification +of Christ with humanity. We cannot overestimate the advantage to +Christianity of this tendency. The world must know and feel the +humanity of Jesus. But it makes the greatest difference in result +whether the ground of the common humanity is in Him or in us. To +borrow the expressive language of Paul, was He 'created' in us? Or are +we 'created' in Him? Grant the right of the affirmation that 'there +is no difference in kind between the divine and the human'; allow the +interchange of terms so that one may speak of the humanity of God +and the divinity of man; appropriate the motive which lies in these +attempts to bring God and man together and thus to explain the +personality of Jesus Christ, it is still a matter of infinite concern +whether His home is in the higher or the lower regions of divinity. +After all, very little is gained by the transfer of terms. Humanity +is in no way satisfied with its degree of divinity. We are still as +anxious as ever to rise above ourselves and in this anxiety we want to +know concerning our great helper, whether He has in Himself anything +more than the possible increase of a common humanity. What is His +power to lift and how long may it last? Shall we ever reach His level, +become as divine as He, or does He have part in the absolute and +infinite? This question may seem remote in result but it is everything +in principle. The immanence of Christ has its present meaning and +value because of His transcendence."[40] + +[Footnote 40: "The Satisfaction of Humanity in Jesus Christ," _Andover +Review_, January, 1893.] + +Preaching today is not moving on the level of this discussion, is +neither asking nor attempting to answer its questions. Great preaching +in some way makes men see the end of the road, not merely the +direction in which it travels. The power to do that we have lost if we +have lost the more-than-us in Jesus. Humanity, unaided, cannot look +to that end which shall explain the beginning. And does Jesus mean +very much to us if He is only "Jesus"? Why do we answer the great +invitation, "Come unto me"? Because He is something other than us? +Because He calls us away from ourselves? back to home? Most of us +no longer know how to preach on that plane of experience or from the +point of view where such questions are serious and real. Our fathers +had a world view and a philosophy which made such preaching easy. But +their power did not lie in that world view; it lay in this vision of +Jesus which produced the view. Is not this the vision which we need? + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + +WORSHIP AS THE CHIEF APPROACH TO TRANSCENDENCE + + +Whatever becomes the inward and the invisible grace of the Christian +community such will be its outward and visible form. Those regulative +ideas and characteristic emotions which determine in any age the +quality of its religious experience will be certain to shape the +nature and conduct of its ecclesiastical assemblies. Their influence +will show, both in the liturgical and homiletical portions of public +worship. If anything further were needed, therefore, to indicate +the secularity of this age, its substitutes for worship and its +characteristic type of preaching would, in themselves, reveal the +situation. So we venture to devote these closing discussions to some +observations on the present state of Protestant public worship and the +prevailing type of Protestant preaching. For we may thus ascertain +how far those ideas and perceptions which an age like ours needs +are beginning to find an expression and what means may be taken to +increase their influence through church services in the community. + +We begin, then, in this chapter, not with preaching, but with worship. +It seems to me clear that the chief office of the church is liturgical +rather than homiletical. Or, if that is too technical a statement, +it may be said that the church exists to set forth and foster the +religious life and that, because of the nature of that life, it finds +its chief opportunity for so doing in the imaginative rather than the +rationalizing or practical areas of human expression. Even as Michael +Angelo, at the risk of his life, purloined dead bodies that he +might dissect them and learn anatomy, so all disciples of the art of +religion need the discipline of intellectual analysis and of knowledge +of the facts of the religious experience if they are to be leaders in +faith. There is a toughness of fiber needed in religious people that +can only come through such mental discipline. But anatomists are not +sculptors. Michael Angelo was the genius, the creative artist, not +because he understood anatomy, but chiefly because of those as yet +indefinable and secret processes of feeling and intuition in man, +which made him feel rather than understand the pity and the terror, +the majesty and the pathos of the human spirit and reveal them in +significant and expressive line. Knowledge supported rather than +rivaled insight. In the same way, both saint and sinner need religious +instruction. Nevertheless they are what they are because they are +first perceptive rather than reasoning beings. They both owe, the one +his salvation, the other his despair, to the fact that they have seen +the vision of the holy universe. Both are seers; the saint has given +his allegiance to the heavenly vision. The sinner has resolved to be +disobedient unto it. Both find their first and more natural approach +to religious truth, therefore, through the creative rather than the +critical processes, the emotional rather than the informative powers. + +There are, of course, many in our churches who would dissent from +this opinion. It is characteristic of Protestantism, as of humanism in +general, that it lays its chief emphasis upon the intelligence. If we +go to church to practice the presence of God, must we not first know +who and what this God is whose presence with us we are there asked +to realize? So most Protestant services are more informative than +inspirational. Their attendants are assembled to hear about God rather +to taste and see that the Lord is good. They analyze the religious +experience rather than enjoy it; insensibly they come to regard +the spiritual life as a proposition to be proved, not a power to +be appropriated. Hence our services generally consist of some +"preliminary exercises," as we ourselves call them, leading up to the +climax--when it is a climax--of the sermon. + +Here is a major cause for the declension of the influence of +Protestant church services. They go too much on the assumption that +men already possess religion and that they come to church to discuss +it rather than to have it provided. They call men to be listeners +rather than participants in their temples. Of course, one may find +God through the mind. The great scholar, the mathematician or the +astronomer may cry with Kepler, "Behold, I think the thoughts of God +after him!" Yet a service which places its chief emphasis upon the +appeal to the will through instruction has declined from that realm +of the absolutes where religion in its purest form belongs. For since +preaching makes its appeal chiefly through reason, it thereby attempts +to produce only a partial and relative experience in the life of the +listener. It impinges upon the will by a slow process. Sometimes one +gets so deadly weary of preaching because, in a world like ours, the +reasonable process is so unreasonable. That's a half truth, of course, +but one that the modern world needs to learn. + +Others would dissent from our position by saying that service, the +life of good will, is a sufficient worship. The highest adoration is +to visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction. _Laborare +est orare_. What we do speaks so loud God does not care for what +we say. True: but the value of what we do for God depends upon the +godliness of the doer and where shall he find that godliness save in +the secret place of the Most High? And the greatest gift we can give +our fellows is to bring them into the divine presence. "There is," +says Dr. William Adams Brown, "a service that is directed to the +satisfaction of needs already in existence, and there is a service +that is itself the creator of new needs which enlarge the capacity of +the man to whom it would minister. To this larger service religion +is committed, and the measure of a man's fitness to render it is his +capacity for worship." But no one can give more than he has. If we are +to offer such gifts we must ourselves go before and lead. To create +the atmosphere in which the things of righteousness and holiness +seem to be naturally exalted above the physical, the commercial, the +domestic affairs of men; to lift the level of thought and feeling +to that high place where the spiritual consciousness contributes its +insights and finds a magnanimous utterance--is there anything that our +world needs more? There are noble and necessary ministries to the body +and the mind, but most needed, and least often offered, there is a +ministry to the human spirit. This is the gift which the worshiper can +bring. Knowledge of God may not be merely or even chiefly comprehended +in a concept of the intelligence; knowledge of Him is that vitalizing +consciousness of the Presence felt in the heart, which opens our eyes +that we may see that the mountain is full of horses and chariots of +fire round about us and that they who fight with us are more than +they who fight with them. This is the true and central knowledge that +private devotion and public worship alone can give; preaching can +but conserve and transmit this religious experience through the mind, +worship creates it in the heart. Edwards understood that neither +thought nor conduct can take its place. "The sober performance of +moral duty," said he, "is no substitute for passionate devotion to a +Being with its occasional moments of joy and exaltation." + +We should then begin with worship. A church which does not emphasize +it before everything else is trying to build the structure of a +spiritual society with the corner stone left out. Let us try, +first of all, to define it. An old and popular definition of the +descriptive sort says that "worship is the response of the soul to +the consciousness of being in the presence of God." A more modern +definition, analyzing the psychology of worship, defines it as "the +unification of consciousness around the central controlling idea of +God, the prevailing emotional tone being that of adoration." Evidently +we mean, then, by worship the appeal to the religious will through +feeling and the imagination. Worship is therefore essentially +creative. Every act of worship seeks to bring forth then and there +a direct experience of God through high and concentrated emotion. +It fixes the attention upon Him as an object in Himself supremely +desirable. The result of this unified consciousness is peace and the +result of this peace and harmony is a new sense of power. Worship, +then, is the attainment of that inward wholeness for which in one form +or another all religion strives by means of contemplation. So by its +very nature it belongs to the class of the absolutes. + +Many psychologies of religion define this contemplation as aesthetic, +and make worship a higher form of delight. This appears to me a quite +typical non-religious interpretation of a religious experience. There +are four words which need explaining when we talk of worship. They +are: wonder, admiration, awe, reverence. Wonder springs from the +recognition of the limitations of our knowledge; it is an experience +of the mind. Admiration is the response of a growing intelligence to +beauty, partly an aesthetic, partly an intellectual experience. These +distinctions Coleridge had in mind in his well-known sentence "In +wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it ends; and admiration fills +up the interspace. But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance; +the last is the parent of adoration." Awe is the sense-perception +of the stupendous power and magnitude of the universe; it is, quite +literally, a godly fear. But it is not ignoble nor cringing, it +is just and reasonable, the attitude, toward the Whole, of a +comprehensive sanity. + +Thus "I would love Thee, O God, if there were no heaven, _and if there +were no hell, I would fear Thee no less_." Reverence is devotion to +goodness, sense of awe-struck loyalty to a Being manifestly under the +influence of principles higher than our own.[41] Now it is with these +last two, awe and reverence, rather than wonder and admiration, that +worship has to do. + +[Footnote 41: For a discussion of these four words see Allen, +_Reverence as the Heart of Christianity_, pp. 253 ff.] + +Hence the essence of worship is not aesthetic contemplation. Without +doubt worship does gratify the aesthetic instinct and most properly +so. There is no normal expression of man's nature which has not its +accompanying delight. The higher and more inclusive the expression +the more exquisite, of course, the delight. But that pleasure is the +by-product, not the object, of worship. It itself springs partly from +the awe of the infinite and eternal majesty which induces the desire +to prostrate oneself before the Lord our Maker. "I have heard of Thee +by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I +abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." It also springs partly +from passionate devotion of a loyal will to a holy Being. "Behold, as +the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters and as the +eyes of a maid unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon +the Lord." Thus reverence is the high and awe-struck hunger for +spiritual communion. "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. +When shall I come and appear before God?" + +There is a noble illustration of the nature and the uses of worship +in the Journals of Jonathan Edwards, distinguished alumnus of Yale +College, and the greatest mind this hemisphere has produced. You +remember what he wrote in them, as a youth, about the young woman who +later became his wife: "They say there is a young lady in New Haven +who is beloved of that great Being who made and rules the world, and +that there are certain seasons in which this great Being in some way +or other invisible comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding +sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to +meditate on Him. Therefore if you present all the world before her, +with the richest of its treasures, she disregards and cares not for +it and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange +sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections, is most +just and conscientious in all her conduct, and you could not persuade +her to do anything wrong or sinful if you would give her all the +world, lest she should offend this great Being. She is of wonderful +calmness and universal benevolence of mind, especially after this +great God has manifested Himself to her mind. She will sometimes go +about from place to place singing sweetly and seems to be always full +of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, +walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible +always conversing with her." + +Almost every element of worship is contained in this description. +First, we have a young human being emotionally conscious of the +presence of God, who in some way or other directly but invisibly comes +to her. Secondly, we have her attention so fixed on the adoration of +God that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate upon Him. +Thirdly, as the result of this worshipful approach to religious +reality, we have the profound peace and harmony, the _summum bonum_ +of existence, coupled with strong moral purpose which characterize +her life. Here, then, is evidently the unification of consciousness in +happy awe and the control of destiny through meditation upon infinite +matters, that is, through reverent contemplation of God. Is it not +one of those ironies of history wherewith fate is forever mocking +and teasing the human spirit, that the grandson of this lady and of +Jonathan Edwards should have been Aaron Burr? + +Clearly, then, the end of worship is to present to the mind, through +the imagination, one idea, majestic and inclusive. So it presents it +chiefly through high and sustained feeling. Worship proceeds on the +understanding that one idea, remaining almost unchanged and holding +the attention for a considerable length of time, so directs the +emotional processes that thought and action are harmonized with it. +If one reads the great prayers of the centuries they indicate, for the +most part, an unconscious understanding of this psychology of worship. +Take, for instance, this noble prayer of Pusey's. + +"Let me not seek out of Thee what I can find only in Thee, O Lord, +peace and rest and joy and bliss, which abide only in thine abiding +joy. Lift up my soul above the weary round of harassing thoughts, to +Thy eternal presence. Lift up my soul to the pure, bright, serene, +radiant atmosphere of Thy presence, that there I may breathe freely, +there repose in Thy love, there be at rest from myself and from all +things that weary me, and thence return arrayed with Thy peace, to do +and bear what shall please Thee." + +This prayer expresses the essence of worship which is the seeking, +through the fixation of attention, not the delight but rather the +peace and purity which can only be found in the consciousness of God. +This peace is the necessary outcome of the indwelling presence. It +ensues when man experiences the radiant atmosphere of the divine +communion. + +The same clear expression of worship is found in another familiar and +noble prayer, that of Johann Arndt. Here, too, are phrases descriptive +of a unified consciousness induced by reverent loyalty. + +"Ah, Lord, to whom all hearts are open, Thou canst govern the vessel +of my soul far better than can I. Arise, O Lord, and command the +stormy wind and the troubled sea of my heart to be still, and at peace +in Thee, that I may look up to Thee undisturbed and abide in union +with Thee, my Lord. Let me not be carried hither and thither by +wandering thoughts, but forgetting all else let me see and hear Thee. +Renew my spirit, kindle in me Thy light that it may shine within me, +and my heart burn in love and adoration for Thee. Let Thy Holy Spirit +dwell in me continually, and make me Thy temple and sanctuary, and +fill me with divine love and life and light, with devout and heavenly +thoughts, with comfort and strength, with joy and peace." + +Thus here one sees in the high contemplation of a transcendent God +the subduing and elevating of the human will, the restoration and +composure of the moral life. Finally, in a prayer of St. Anselm's +there is a sort of analysis of the process of worship. + +"O God, Thou _art_ life, wisdom, truth, bounty and blessedness, the +eternal, the only true Good. My God and my Lord, Thou art my hope and +my heart's joy. I confess with thanksgiving that Thou hast made me in +Thine image, that I may direct all my thoughts to Thee and love Thee. +Lord, make me to know Thee aright that I may more and more love and +enjoy and possess Thee." + +One cannot conclude these examples of worshipful expression without +quoting a prayer of Augustine, which is, I suppose, the most perfect +brief petition in all the Christian literature of devotion and which +gives the great psychologist's perception of the various steps in +the unification of the soul with the eternal Spirit through sublime +emotion. + +"Grant, O God, that we may desire Thee, and desiring Thee, seek Thee, +and seeking Thee, find Thee, and finding Thee, be satisfied with Thee +forever." + +I think one may see, then, why worship as distinct from preaching, +or the hearing of preaching, is the first necessity of the religious +life. It unites us as nothing else can do with God the whole and God +the transcendent. The conception of God is the sum total of human +needs and desires harmonized, unified, concretely expressed. It is the +faith of the worshiper that this concept is derived from a real and +objective Being in some way corresponding to it. No one can measure +the influence of such an idea when it dominates the consciousness of +any given period. It can create and set going new desires and habits, +it can minish and repress old ones, because this idea carries, with +its transcendent conception, the dynamic quality which belongs to +the idea of perfect power. But this transcendent conception, being +essentially of something beyond, without and above ourselves can only +be "realized" through the feeling and the imagination, whose province +it is to deal with the supersensuous values, with the fringes of +understanding, with the farthest bounds of knowledge. These make the +springboard, so to speak, from which man dares to launch himself into +that sea of the infinite, which we can neither understand nor measure, +but which nevertheless we may perceive and feel, which in some sense +we know to be there. + +So, if we deal first with worship, we are merely beginning at the +beginning and starting at the bottom. And, in the light of this +observation, it is appalling to survey the non-liturgical churches +today and see the place that public devotion holds in them. It is not +too much, I think, to speak of the collapse of worship in Protestant +communities. No better evidence of this need be sought than in the +nature of the present attempts to reinstate it. They have a naïveté, +an incongruity, that can only be explained on the assumption of their +impoverished background. + +This situation shows first in the heterogeneous character of our +experiments. We are continually printing on our churches' calendars +what we usually call "programs," but which are meant to be orders +of worship. We are also forever changing them. There is nothing +inevitable about their order; they have no intelligible, +self-verifying procedure. Anthems are inserted here and there without +any sense of the progression or of the psychology of worship. Glorias +are sung sometimes with the congregation standing up and sometimes +while they are sitting down. There is no lectionary to determine a +comprehensive and orderly reading of Scripture, not much sequence of +thought or progress of devotion either in the read or the extempore +prayers. There is no uniformity of posture. There are two historic +attitudes of reverence when men are addressing the Almighty. They are +the standing upon one's feet or the falling upon one's knees. For +the most part we neither stand nor kneel; we usually loll. Some of us +compromise by bending forward to the limiting of our breath and the +discomfort of our digestion. It is too little inducive to physical +ease or perhaps too derogatory to our dignity to kneel before the Lord +our Maker. All this seems too much like the efforts of those who have +forgotten what worship really is and are trying to find for it some +comfortable or attractive substitute. + +Second: we show our inexperience by betraying the confusion +of aesthetic and ethical values as we strive for variety and +entertainment in church services; we build them around wonder and +admiration, not around reverence and awe. But we are mistaken if +we suppose that men chiefly desire to be pleasantly entertained or +extraordinarily delighted when they go into a church. They go there +because they desire to enter a Holy Presence; they want to approach +One before whom they can be still and know that He is God. All +"enrichments" of a service injected into it here and there, designed +to make it more attractive, to add color and variety, to arrest +the attention of the senses are, as ends, beside the point, and our +dependence upon them indicates the unhappy state of worship in our +day. That we do thus make our professional music an end in itself is +evident from our blatant way of advertising it. In the same way we +advertise sermon themes, usually intended to startle the pious and +provoke the ungodly. We want to arouse curiosity, social or political +interest, to achieve some secular reaction. We don't advertise that +tomorrow in our church there is to be a public worship of God, and +that everything that we are going to do will be in the awe-struck +sense that He is there. We are afraid that nobody would come if we +merely did that! + +What infidels we are! Why are we surprised that the world is passing +us by? We say and we sing a great many things which it is incredible +to suppose we would address to God if we really thought He were +present. Yet anthems and congregational singing are either a sacrifice +solemnly and joyously offered to God or else all the singing is less, +and worse, than nothing in a church service. But how often sentimental +and restless music, making not for restraint and reverence, not +for the subduing of mind and heart but for the expression of those +expansive and egotistical moods which are of the essence of romantic +singing, is what we employ. There is a great deal of truly religious +music, austere in tone, breathing restraint and reverence, quietly +written. The anthems of Palestrina, Anerio, Viadana, Vittoria among +the Italians; of Bach, Haydn, Handel, Mozart among the Germans; and +of Tallis, Gibbons and Purcell among the English, are all of the truly +devout order. Yet how seldom are the works of such men heard in our +churches, even where they employ professional singers at substantial +salaries. We are everywhere now trying to give our churches splendid +and impressive physical accessories, making the architecture more and +more stately and the pews more and more comfortable! Thus we attempt +an amalgam of a mediaeval house of worship with an American domestic +interior, adoring God at our ease, worshiping Him in armchairs, +offering prostration of the spirit, so far as it can be achieved along +with indolence of the body. + +So we advertise and concertize and have silver vases and costly +flowers and conventional ecclesiastical furniture. But we still hold a +"small-and-early" in the vestibule before service and a "five o'clock" +in the chapel afterward. Sunday morning church is a this-world +function with a pietized gossip and a decorous sort of sociable with +an intellectual fillip thrown in. Thus we try to make our services +attractive to the secular instincts, the non-religious things, in +man's nature. We try to get him into the church by saying, "You will +find here what you find elsewhere." It's rather illogical. The church +stands for something different. We say, "You will like to come and be +one of us because we are not different." The answer is, "I can get the +things of this world better in the world, where they belong, than with +you." Thus we have naturalized our very offices of devotion! Hence +the attempts to revive worship are incongruous and inconsistent. Hence +they have that sentimental and accidental character which is the +sign of the amateur. They do not bring us very near to the heavenly +country. It might be well to remember that the servant of Jahweh doth +not cry nor lift up his voice nor cause it to be heard in the streets. + +Now, there are many reasons for this anomalous situation. One of them +is our inheritance of a deep-rooted Puritan distrust of a liturgical +service. That distrust is today a fetish and therefore much more +potent that it was when it was a reason. Puritanism was born in the +Reformation; it came out from the Roman church, where worship was +regarded as an end in itself. To Catholic believers worship is a +contribution to God, pleasing to Him apart from any effect it may have +on the worshiper. Such a theory of it is, of course, open to grave +abuse. Sometimes it led to indifference as to the effect of the +worship upon the moral character of the communicant, so that worship +could be used, not to conquer evil, but to make up for it, and thus +sin became as safe as it was easy. Inevitably also such a theory +of worship often degenerated into an utter formalism which made +hyprocrisy and unreality patent, until the _hoc est corpus_ of the +mass became the hocus-pocus of the scoffer. + +Here is a reason, once valid because moral, for our present situation. +Yet it must be confessed that again, as so often, we are doing what +the Germans call "throwing out the baby with the bath," namely, +repudiating a defect or the perversion of an excellence and, in so +doing, throwing away that excellence itself. It is clear that no +Protestant is ever tempted today to consider worship as its own reason +and its own end. We are, in a sense, utilitarian ritualists. Worship +to us is as valuable as it is valid because it is the chief avenue +of spiritual insight, a chief means of awakening penitence, obtaining +forgiveness, growing in grace and love. These are the ultimates; these +are pleasing to God. + +A second reason, however, for our situation is not ethical and +essential, but economic and accidental. Our fathers' communities were +a slender chain of frontier settlements, separated from an ancient +civilization by an unknown and dangerous sea on the one hand, menaced +by all the perils of a virgin wilderness upon the other. All their +life was simple to the point of bareness; austere, reduced to the +most elemental necessities. Inevitably the order of their worship +corresponded to the order of their society. It is certain, I think, +that the white meeting-house with its naked dignity, the old service +with its heroic simplicity, conveyed to the primitive society which +produced them elements both of high formality and conscious reverence +which they could not possibly offer to our luxurious, sophisticated +and wealthy age. + +Is it not a dangerous thing to have brought an ever increasing +formality and recognition of a developed and sophisticated community +into our social and intellectual life but to have allowed our +religious expression to remain so anachronistic? Largely for social +and economic reasons we send most of our young men and young women +to college. There we deliberately cultivate in them the perception +of beauty, the sense of form, various expressions of the imaginative +life. But how much has our average non-liturgical service to offer +to their critically trained perceptions? Our church habits are pretty +largely the transfer into the sanctuary of the hearty conventions of +middle-class family life. The relations in life which are precious +to such youth, the intimate, the mystical and subtle ones, get small +recognition or expression. A hundred agencies outside the church are +stimulating in the best boys and girls of the present generation fine +sensibilities, critical standards, the higher hungers. Our services, +chiefly instructive and didactic, informal and easy in character, +irritate them and make them feel like truculent or uncomfortable +misfits. + +A third reason for the lack of corporate or public offices of devotion +in our services lies in the intellectual character of the Protestant +centuries. We have seen how they have been centuries of individualism. +Character has been conceived of as largely a personal affair expressed +in personal relationships. The believer was like Christian in Bunyan's +_Pilgrim's Progress_. He started for the Heavenly Country because +he was determined to save his own soul. When he realized that he was +living in the City of Destruction it did not occur to him that, as +a good man, he must identify his fate with it. On the contrary, he +deserted wife and children with all possible expedition and got him +out and went along through the Slough of Despond, up to the narrow +gate, to start on the way of life. It was a chief glory of mediaeval +society that it was based upon corporate relationships. Its cathedrals +were possible because they were the common house of God for every +element of the community. Family and class and state were dominant +factors then. But we have seen how, in the Renaissance and the +Romantic Movement, individualism supplanted these values. Now, +Protestantism was contemporary with that new movement, indeed, a part +of it. Its growing egotism and the colossal egotism of the modern +world form a prime cause for the impoverishment of worship in +Protestant churches. + +And so this brings us, then, to the real reason for our devotional +impotence, the one to which we referred in the opening sentences of +the chapter. It is essentially due to the character of the regulative +ideas of our age. It lies in that world view whose expressions in +literature, philosophy and social organizations we have been +reviewing in these pages. The partial notion of God which our age has +unconsciously made the substitute for a comprehensive understanding of +Him is essentially to blame. For since the contemporary doctrine is +of His immanence, it therefore follows that it is chiefly through +observation of the natural world and by interpretation of contemporary +events that men will approach Him if they come to Him at all. +Moreover, our humanism, in emphasizing the individual and exalting his +self-sufficiency, has so far made the mood of worship alien and the +need of it superfluous. The overemphasis upon preaching, the general +passion of this generation for talk and then more talk, and then +endless talk, is perfectly intelligible in view of the regulative +ideas of this generation. It seeks its understanding of the world +chiefly in terms of natural and tangible phenomena and chiefly by +means either of critical observation or of analytic reasoning. Hence +preaching, especially that sort which looks for the divine principle +in contemporary events, has been to the fore. But worship, which finds +the divine principle in something more and other than contemporary +events--which indeed does not look outward to "events" at all--has +been thrown into the background. + +It seems to me clear, then, that if we are to emphasize the +transcendent elements in religion; if they represent, as we have been +contending, the central elements of the religious experience, its +creative factors, then the revival of worship will be a prime step +in creating a more truly spiritual society. I am convinced that a +homilizing church belongs to a secularizing age. One cannot forget +that the ultimate, I do not say the only, reason for the founding +of the non-liturgical churches was the rise of humanism. One +cannot fail to see the connection between humanistic doctrine and +moralistic preaching, or between the naturalism of the moment and +the mechanicalizing of the church. "The Christian congregation," +said Luther, child of the humanistic movement, "should never assemble +except the word of God be preached." "In other countries," says old +Isaac Taylor, "the bell calls people to worship; in Scotland it +calls them to a preachment." And one remembers the justice of Charles +Kingsley's fling at the Dissenters that they were "creatures who +went to church to hear sermons!" It would seem evident, then, that a +renewal of worship would be the logical accompaniment of a return to +distinctly religious values in society and church. + +What can we do, then, better for an age of paganism than to cultivate +this transcendent consciousness? Direct men away from God the +universal and impersonal to God the particular and intimate. Nothing +is more needed for our age than to insist upon the truth that there +are both common and uncommon, both secular and sacred worlds; that +these are not contradictory; that they are complementary; that they +are not identical. It is the church's business to insist that men +must live in the world of the sacred, the uncommon, the particular, +in order to be able to surmount and endure the secular, the common and +the universal. It is her business to insist that through worship +all this can be accomplished. But can worship be taught? Is not the +devotee, like the poet or the lover or any other genius, born and +not made? Well, whether it can be taught or not, it at least can be +cultivated and developed, and there are three very practical ways in +which this cultivation can be brought about. + +One of them is by paying intelligent attention to the physical +surroundings of the worshiper. The assembly room for worship obviously +should not be used for other purposes; all its suggestions and +associations should be of one sort and that sort the highest. Quite +aside from the question of taste, it is psychologically indefensible +to use the same building, and especially the same room in the +building, for concerts, for picture shows, for worship. Here we at +once create a distracted consciousness; we dissipate attention; we +deliberately make it harder for men and women to focus upon one, and +that the most difficult, if the most precious, mood. + +For the same reason, the physical form of the room should be one +that does not suggest either the concert hall or the playhouse, but +suggests rather a long and unbroken ecclesiastical tradition. Until +the cinema was introduced into worship, we were vastly improving in +these respects, but now we are turning the morning temple into an +evening showhouse. I think we evince a most impertinent familiarity +with the house of God! And too often the church is planned so that +it has no privacies or recesses, but a hideous publicity pervades its +every part. We adorn it with stenciled frescoes of the same patterns +which we see in hotel lobbies and clubs; we hang up maps behind the +reading desk; we clutter up its platform with grand pianos. + +It is a mere matter of good taste and good psychology to begin our +preparation for a ministry of worship by changing all this. There +should be nothing in color or ornament which arouses the restless mood +or distracts the eye. Severe and simple walls, restrained and devout +figures in glass windows, are only to be tolerated. Descriptive +windows, attempting in a most untractable medium a sort of naïve +realism, are equally an aesthetic and an ecclesiastical offense. +Figures of saints or great religious personages should be typical, +impersonal, symbolic, not too much like this world and the things of +it. There is a whole school of modern window glass distinguished by +its opulence and its realism. It ought to be banished from houses of +worship. Since it is the object of worship to fix the attention upon +one thing and that thing the highest, the room where worship is held +should have its own central object. It may be the Bible, idealized as +the word of God; it may be the altar on which stands the Cross of the +eternal sacrifice. But no church ought to be without one fixed point +to which the eye of the body is insensibly drawn, thereby making it +easier to follow it with the attention of the mind and the wishes of +the heart. At the best, our Protestant ecclesiastical buildings are +all empty! There are meeting-houses, not temples assembly rooms, +not shrines. There is apparently no sense in which we are willing +to acknowledge that the Presence is on their altar. But at least the +attention of the worshiper within them may focus around some symbol of +that Presence, may be fixed on some outward sign which will help the +inward grace. + +But second: our chief concern naturally must be with the content of +the service of worship itself, not with its physical surroundings. And +here then are two things which may be said. First, any formal order of +worship should be historic; it should have its roots deep in the past; +whatever else is true of a service of worship it ought not to suggest +that it has been uncoupled from the rest of time and allowed to run +wild. Now, this means that an order of worship, basing itself on the +devotion of the ages, will use to some extent their forms. I do not +see how anyone would wish to undertake to lead the same company of +people week by week in divine worship without availing himself of the +help of written prayers, great litanies, to strengthen and complement +the spontaneous offices of devotion. There is something almost +incredible to me in the assumption that one man can, supposedly +unaided, lead a congregation in the emotional expression of its +deepest life and desires without any assistance from the great +sacramentaries and liturgies of the past. Christian literature is rich +with a great body of collects, thanksgivings, confessions, various +special petitions, which gather up the love and tears, the vision +and the anguish of many generations. These, with their phrases made +unspeakably precious with immemorial association, with their subtle +fitting of phrase to insight, of expression to need, born of long +centuries of experiment and aspiration, can do for a congregation what +no man alone can ever hope to accomplish. The well of human needs and +desires is so deep that, without these aids, we have not much to draw +with, no plummet wherewith to sound its dark and hidden depths. + +I doubt if we can overestimate the importance of giving this sense of +continuity in petitions, of linking up the prayer of the moment and +the worship of the day with the whole ageless process so that it seems +a part of that volume of human life forever ascending unto the eternal +spirit, just as the gray plume of smoke from the sacrifice ever curled +upward morning by morning and night by night from the altar of the +temple under the blue Syrian sky. We cannot easily give this sense of +continuity, this prestige of antiquity, this resting back on a great +body of experience, unless we know and use the language and the +phrases of our fathers. It is to the God who hath been our dwelling +place in all generations, that we pray; to Him who in days of old +was a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night to His faithful +children; to the One who is the Ancient of Days, Infinite Watcher of +the sons of men. Only by acquaintance with the phrases, the petitions +of the past, and only by a liberal use of them can we give background +and dignity, or anything approaching variety and completeness, to our +own public expression and interpretation of the devotional life. If +anyone objects to this use of formal prayers on the ground of their +formality, let him remember that we, too, are formal, only we, alas, +have made a cult of formlessness. It would surprise the average +minister to know the well-worn road which his supposedly spontaneous +and extempore devotions follow. Phrase after phrase following in the +same order of ideas, and with the same pitiably limited vocabulary, +appear week by week in them. How much better to enrich this painfully +individualistic formalism with something of the corporate glories of +the whole body of Christian believers. + +But, second: there should be also the principle of immediacy in the +service, room for the expression of individual needs and desires +and for reference to the immediate and local circumstances of the +believer. A church in which there is no spontaneous and extempore +prayer, which only harked backward to the past, might build the tombs +of the prophets but it might also stifle new voices for a new age. +But extempore prayer should not be impromptu prayer. It should have +coherence, dignity, progression. The spirit should have been humbly +and painstakingly prepared for it so that sincere and ardent feeling +may wing and vitalize its words. The great prayers of the ages, known +of all the worshipers, perhaps repeated by them all together, tie in +the individual soul to the great mass of humanity and it moves on, +with its fellows, toward salvation as majestically and steadily as +great rivers flow. The extempore and silent prayer, not unpremeditated +but still the unformed outpouring of the individual heart, gives each +man the consciousness of standing naked and alone before his God. Both +these, the corporate and the separate elements of worships are vital; +there should be a place for each in every true order of worship. + +But, of course, the final thing to say is the first thing. Whatever +may be the means that worship employs, its purpose must be to make and +keep the church a place of repose, to induce constantly the life of +relinquishment to God, of reverence and meditation. And this it will +do as it seeks to draw men up to the "otherness," the majesty, the +aloofness, the transcendence of the Almighty. To this end I would use +whatever outward aids time and experience have shown will strengthen +and deepen the spiritual understanding. I should not fear to use +the cross, the sacraments, the kneeling posture, the great picture, +the carving, the recitation of prayers and hymns, not alone to +intensify this sense in the believer but equally to create it in the +non-believer. The external world moulds the internal, even as the +internal makes the external. If these things mean little in the +beginning, there is still truth in the assertion of the devotee that +if you practice them they will begin to mean something to you. This is +not merely that a meaning will be self-induced. It is more than that. +They will put us in the volitional attitude, the emotional mood, where +the meaning is able to penetrate. Just as all the world acknowledges +that there is an essential connection between good manners and good +morals, between military discipline and physical courage, so there +is a connection between a devotional service and the gifts of the +spiritual life. Such a service not merely strengthens belief in +the High and Holy One, it has a real office in creating, in making +possible, that belief itself. + +We shall sum it all up if we say in one word that the offices of +devotion emphasize the cosmic character of religion. They take us out +of the world of moral theism into the world of a universal theism. +They draw us away from religion in action to religion in itself; +they give us, not the God of this world, but the God who is from +everlasting to everlasting, to whom a thousand years are but as +yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night. Thus they help +us to make for ourselves an interior refuge into whose precincts +no eye may look, into whose life no other soul may venture. In that +refuge we can be still and know that He is God. There we can eat the +meat which the world knoweth not of, there have peace with Him. It +is in these central solitudes, induced by worship, that the vision +is clarified, the perspective corrected, the vital forces recharged. +Those who possess them are transmitters of such heavenly messages; +they issue from them as rivers pour from undiminished mountain +streams. Does the world's sin and pain and weakness come and empty +itself into the broad current of these devout lives? Then their +fearless onsweeping forces gather it all up, carry it on, cleanse and +purify it in the process. Over such lives the things of this world +have no power. They are kept secretly from them all in His pavilion +where there is no strife of tongues. + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + +WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF DOCTRINE + + +If one were to ask any sermon-taster of our generation what is the +prevailing type of discourse among the better-known preachers of the +day, he would probably answer, "The expository." Expository preaching +has had a notable revival in the last three decades, especially +among liberal preachers; that is, among those who like ourselves have +discarded scholastic theologies, turned to the ethical aspects of +religion for our chief interests and accepted the modern view of the +Bible. To be sure, it is not the same sort of expository preaching +which made the Scottish pulpit of the nineteenth century famous. It +is not the detailed exposition of each word and clause, almost of each +comma, which marks the mingled insight and literalism of a Chalmers, +an Alexander Maclaren, a Taylor of the Broadway Tabernacle. For that +assumed a verbally inspired and hence an inerrant Scripture; it dealt +with the literature of the Old and New Testaments as being divine +revelations. The new expository preaching proceeds from almost an +opposite point of view. It deals with this literature as being a +transcript of human experience. Its method is direct and simple and, +within sharp limits, very effective. The introduction to one of these +modern expository sermons would run about as follows: + +"I suppose that what has given to the Old and New Testament Scriptures +their enduring hold over the minds and consciences of men has been +their extraordinary humanity. They contain so many vivid and accurate +recitals of typical human experience, portrayed with self-verifying +insight and interpreted with consummate understanding of the issues of +the heart. And since it is true, as Goethe said, 'That while mankind +is always progressing man himself remains ever the same,' and we +are not essentially different from the folk who lived a hundred +generations ago under the sunny Palestinian sky, we read these ancient +tales and find in them a mirror which reflects the lineaments of our +own time. For instance,..." + +Then the sermonizer proceeds to relate some famous Bible story, +resolving its naïve Semitic theophanies, its pictorial narration, +its primitive morality, into the terms of contemporary ethical or +political or economic principles. Take, for instance, the account of +the miracle of Moses and the Burning Bush. The preacher will point +out that Moses saw a bush that burned and burned and that, unlike most +furze bushes of those upland pastures which were ignited by the hot +Syrian sun, was not consumed. It was this enduring quality of the bush +that interested him. Thus Moses showed the first characteristic of +genius, namely, capacity for accurate and discriminating observation. +And he coupled this with the scientific habit of mind. For he said, +"I will now turn aside and see why!" Thus did he propose to pierce +behind the event to the cause of the event, behind the movement to the +principle of the movement. What a modern man this Moses was! It seems +almost too good to be true! + +But as yet we have merely scratched the surface of the story. For +he took his shoes from off his feet when he inspected this new +phenomenon, feeling instinctively that he was on holy ground. Thus +there mingled with his scientific curiosity the second great quality +of genius, which is reverence. There was no complacency here but an +approach to life at once eager and humble; keen yet teachable and +mild. And now behold what happens! As a result of this combination of +qualities there came to Moses the vision of what he might do to lead +his oppressed countrymen out of their industrial bondage. Whereupon +he displayed the typical human reaction and cried, "Who am I, that I +should go unto Pharoah or that I should lead the children of Israel +out of Egypt!" My brother Aaron, who is an eloquent person--and as it +turned out later also a specious one--is far better suited for this +undertaking. Thus he endeavored to evade the task and cried, "Let +someone else do it!" Having thus expounded the word of God (!) the +sermon proceeds to its final division in the application of this +shrewd and practical wisdom to some current event or parochial +situation. + +Now, such preaching is indubitably effective and not wholly +illegitimate. Its technique is easily acquired. It makes us realize +that the early Church Fathers, who displayed a truly appalling +ingenuity in allegorizing the Old Testament and who found "types" of +Christ and His Church in frankly sensual Oriental wedding songs, have +many sturdy descendants among us to this very hour! Such preaching +gives picturesqueness and color, it provides the necessary sugar +coating to the large pill of practical and ethical exhortation. To +be sure, it does not sound like the preaching of our fathers. The old +sermon titles--"Suffering with Christ that we may be also glorified +with Him," for instance--seem very far away from it. Nor is it to be +supposed that this is what its author intended the story we have been +using to convey nor that these were the reactions that it aroused +in the breasts of its original hearers. But as the sermonizer would +doubtless go on to remark, there is a certain universal quality in all +great literature, and genius builds better than it knows, and so each +man can draw his own water of refreshment from these great wells of +the past. And indeed nothing is more amazing or disconcerting than the +mutually exclusive notions, the apparently opposing truths, which can +be educed by this method, from one and the same passage of Scripture! +There is scarcely a chapter in all the Old Testament, and to a +less degree in the New Testament, which may not be thus ingeniously +transmogrified to meet almost any homiletical emergency. + +Now, I may as well confess that I have preached this kind of sermon +lo! these many years _ad infinitum_ and I doubt not _ad nauseam_. We +have all used in this way the flaming rhetoric of the Hebrew prophets +until we think of them chiefly as indicters of a social order. They +were not chiefly this but something quite different and more valuable, +namely, religious geniuses. First-rate preaching would deal with Amos +as the pioneer in ethical monotheism, with Hosea as the first poet of +the divine grace, with Jeremiah as the herald of the possibility of +each man's separate and personal communion with the living God. But, +of course, such religious preaching, dealing with great doctrines of +faith, would have a kind of large remoteness about it; it would pay +very little attention to the incidents of the story, and indeed, +would tend to be hardly expository at all, but rather speculative and +doctrinal. + +And that brings us to the theme of this final discussion. For I am one +of those who believe that great preaching is doctrinal preaching and +that it is particularly needed at this hour. The comparative neglect +of the New Testament in favor of the Old in contemporary preaching; +the use and nature of the expository method--no less than the +unworshipful character of our services--appear to me to offer a final +and conclusive proof of the unreligious overhumanistic emphases of our +interpretation of religion. And if we are to have a religious revival, +then it seems to me worshipful services must be accompanied by +speculative preaching and I doubt if the one can be nobly maintained +without the other. For we saw that worship is the direct experience +of the Absolute through high and concentrated feeling. Even so +speculative and, in general, doctrinal preaching is the same return +to first principles and to ultimate values in the realm of ideas. +It turns away from the immediate, the practical, the relative to the +final and absolute in the domain of thought. + +Now, obviously, then, devout services and doctrinal preaching should +go together. No high and persistent emotions can be maintained without +clear thinking to nourish and steady them. There is in doctrinal +preaching a certain indifference to immediate issues; to detailed +applications. It deals, by its nature, with comprehensive and abstract +rather than local and concrete thinking; with inclusive feeling, +transcendent aspiration. It does not try to pietize the ordinary, +commercial and domestic affairs of men. Instead it deals with the +highest questions and perceptions of human life; argues from those +sublime hypotheses which are the very subsoil of the religious +temperament and understanding. It deals with those aspects of human +life which indeed include, but include because they transcend, the +commercial and domestic, the professional and political affairs of +daily living. We have been insisting in these chapters that it is that +portion of human need and experience which lies between the knowable +and the unknowable with which it is the preacher's chief province to +deal. Doctrinal preaching endeavors to give form and relations to its +intuitions and high desires, its unattainable longings and insights. +There is a native alliance between the doctrine of Immanence and +expository preaching. For the office of both is to give us the God of +this world in the affairs of the moment. There is a native alliance +between expository preaching and humanism which very largely accounts +for the latter's popularity. For expository preaching, as at present +practiced, deals mostly with ethical and practical issues, with the +setting of the house of this world in order. There is also a native +and majestic alliance between the idea of transcendence and doctrinal +preaching and between the facts of the religious experience and the +content of speculative philosophy. Not pragmatism but pure metaphysics +is the native language of the mind when it moves in the spiritual +world. + +But I am aware that already I have lost my reader's sympathy. You do +not desire to preach doctrinal sermons and while you may read with +amiable patience and faintly smiling complacency this discussion, +you have no intention of following its advice. We tend to think that +doctrinal sermons are outmoded--old-fashioned and unpopular--and we +dread as we dread few other things, not being up to date. Besides, +doctrinal preaching offers little of that opportunity which is found +in expository and yet more in topical preaching for exploiting our +own personalities. Some of us are young. It is merely a polite way of +saying that we are egotistical. We know in our secret heart of hearts +that the main thing that we have to give the world is our own new, +fresh selves with their corrected and arresting understanding of the +world. We are modestly yet eagerly ready to bestow that gift of ours +upon the waiting congregation. One of the few compensations of growing +old is that, as the hot inner fires burn lower, this self-absorption +lessens and we become disinterested and judicial observers of life and +find so much pleasure in other people's successes and so much wisdom +in other folk's ideas. But not so for youth; it isn't what the past or +the collective mind and heart have formulated: it's what you've got +to say that interests you. Hence it is probably true that doctrinal +preaching, in the very nature of things, makes no strong appeal to men +who are beginning the ministry. + +But there are other objections which are more serious, because +inherent in the very genius of doctrinal preaching itself. First: +such preaching is more or less remote from contemporary and practical +issues. It deals with thought, not actions; understanding rather than +efficiency; principles rather than applications. It moves among the +basic concepts of the religious life; deals with matters beyond and +above and without the tumultuous issues of the moment. So it follows +that doctrinal preaching has an air of detachment, almost of seclusion +from the world; the preacher brings his message from some pale world +of ideas to this quick world of action. And we are afraid of this +detachment, the abstract and theoretical nature of the thinker's +sermon. + +I think the fear is not well grounded. What is the use of preaching +social service to the almost total neglect of setting forth the +intellectual and emotional concept of the servant? It is the quality +of the doer which determines the value of the deed. Why keep on +insisting upon being good if our hearers have never been carefully +instructed in the nature and the sanctions of goodness? Has not the +trouble with most of our political and moral reform been that we have +had a passion for it but very little science of it? How can we know +the ways of godliness if we take God Himself for granted? No: our +chief business, as preachers, is to preach the content rather than the +application of the truth. Not many people are interested in trying +to find the substance of the truth. It is hated as impractical by +the multitude of the impatient, and despised as old-fashioned by +the get-saved-quick reformers. Nevertheless we must find out the +distinctions between divine and human, right and wrong, and why they +are what they are, and what is the good of it all. There is no more +valuable service which the preacher can render his community than to +deliberately seclude himself from continual contact with immediate +issues and dwell on the eternal verities. When Darwin published _The +Descent of Man_ at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, the _London +Times_ took him severely to task for his absorption in purely +scientific interests and hypothetical issues. "When the foundations +of property and the established order were threatened with the fires +of the Paris Commune; when the Tuileries were burning--how could a +British subject be occupying himself with speculations in natural +science in no wise calculated to bring aid or comfort to those who +had a stake in the country!" Well, few of us imagine today that +Darwin would have been wise to have exchanged the seclusion and the +impractical hours of the study for the office or the camp, the market +or the street. + +Yet the same fear of occupying ourselves with central and abstract +matters still obsesses us. At the Quadrennial Conference of the +Methodist Episcopal Church held recently at Des Moines, thirty-four +bishops submitted an address in which they said among other things: +"Of course, the church must stand in unflinching, uncompromising +denunciation of all violations of laws, against all murderous child +labor, all foul sweat shops, all unsafe mines, all deadly tenements, +all excessive hours for those who toil, all profligate luxuries, all +standards of wage and life below the living standard, all unfairness +and harshness of conditions, all brutal exactions, whether of the +employer or union, all overlordships, whether of capital or labor, +all godless profiteering, whether in food, clothing, profits or wages, +against all inhumanity, injustice and blighting inequality, against +all class-minded men who demand special privileges or exceptions on +behalf of their class." + +These are all vital matters, yet I cannot believe that it is the +church's chief business thus to turn her energies to the problems +of the material world. This would be a stupendous program, even +if complete in itself; as an item in a program it becomes almost a +_reductio ad absurdum_. The _Springfield Republican_ in an editorial +comment upon it said: "It fairly invites the question whether the +church is not in some danger of trying to do too much. The fund of +energy available for any human undertaking is not unlimited; energy +turned in one direction must of necessity be withdrawn from another +and energy diffused in many directions cannot be concentrated. Count +the adjectives--'murderous,' 'foul,' 'unsafe,' 'deadly,' 'excessive,' +'profligate,' 'brutal,' 'godless,' 'blighting'--does not each involve +research, investigation, comparison, analysis, deliberation, a heavy +tax upon the intellectual resources of the church if any result worth +having is to be obtained? Can this energy be found without subtracting +energy from some other sphere?" + +The gravest problems of the world are not found here. They are +found in the decline of spiritual understanding, the decay of moral +standards, the growth of the vindictive and unforgiving spirit, the +lapse from charity, the overweening pride of the human heart. With +these matters the church must chiefly deal; to their spiritual +infidelity she must bring a spiritual message; to their poor thinking +she must bring the wisdom of the eternal. This task, preventive not +remedial, is her characteristic one. Is it not worth while to remember +that the great religious leaders have generally ignored contemporary +social problems? So have the great artists who are closely allied +to them. Neither William Shakespeare nor Leonardo da Vinci were +reformers; neither Gautama nor the Lord Jesus had much to say about +the actual international economic and political readjustments which +were as pressing in their day as ours. They were content to preach the +truth, sure that it, once understood, would set men free. + +But a second reason why we dislike doctrinal preaching is because we +confound it with dogmatic preaching. Doctrinal sermons are those which +deal with the philosophy of religion. They expound or defend or relate +the intellectual statements, the formulae of religion. Such discourses +differ essentially from dogmatic sermonizing. For what is a doctrine? +A doctrine is an intellectual formulation of an experience. Suppose +a man receives a new influx of moral energy and spiritual insight, +through reading the Bible, through trying to pray, through loving and +meditating upon the Lord Jesus. That experience isn't a speculative +proposition, it isn't a faith or an hypothesis; it's a fact. Like the +man in the Johannine record the believer says, "Whether he be a sinner +I know not: but one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I +see." + +Now, let this new experience of moral power and spiritual insight +express itself, as it normally will, in a more holy and more +useful life, in the appropriate terms of action. There you get that +confession of experience which we call character. Or let it express +itself in the appropriate emotions of joy and awe and reverence so +that, like Ray Palmer, the convert writes an immortal hymn, or a body +of converts like the early church produces the _Te Deum_. There is the +confession of experience in worship. Or let a man filled with this new +life desire to understand it; see what its implications are regarding +the nature of God, the nature of man, the place of Christ in the scale +of created or uncreated Being. Let him desire to thus conserve and +interpret that he may transmit this new experience. Then he will begin +to define it and to reduce it, for brevity and clearness, to some +abstract and compact formula. Thus he will make a confession of +experience in doctrine. + +Doctrines, then, are not arbitrary but natural, not accidental but +essential. They are the hypotheses regarding the eternal nature of +things drawn from the data of our moral and spiritual experience. They +are to religion just what the science of electricity is to a trolley +car, or what the formula of evolution is to natural science, or what +the doctrine of the conservation of energy is, or was, to physics. +Doctrines are signposts; they are placards, index fingers, notices +summing up and commending the proved essences of religious experience. +Two things are always true of sound doctrine. First: it is not +considered to have primary value; its worth is in the experience +to which it witnesses. Second: it is not fixed but flexible and +progressive. Someone has railed at theology, defining it as the +history of discarded errors. That is a truth and a great compliment +and the definition holds good of the record of any other science. + +Now, if doctrines are signposts, dogmas are old and now misleading +milestones. For what is a dogma? It may be one of two things. Usually +it is a doctrine that has forgotten that it ever had a history; +a formula which once had authority because it was a genuine +interpretation of experience but which now is so outmoded in fashion +of thought, or so maladjusted to our present scale of values, as to +be no longer clearly related to experience and is therefore accepted +merely on command, or on the prestige of its antiquity. Or it may be +a doctrine promulgated _ex cathedra_, not because religious experience +produced it, but because ecclesiastical expediencies demand it. Thus, +to illustrate the first sort of dogma, there was once a doctrine of +the Virgin Birth. Men found, as they still do, both God and man in +Jesus; they discovered when they followed Him their own real humanity +and true divinity. They tried to explain and formalize the experience +and made a doctrine which, for the circle of ideas and the extent +of the factual knowledge of the times, was both reasonable and +valuable. The experience still remains, but the doctrine is no +longer psychologically or biologically credible. It no longer +offers a tenable explanation; it is not a valuable or illuminating +interpretation. Hence if we hold it at all today, it is either for +sentiment or for the sake of mere tradition, namely, for reasons other +than its intellectual usefulness or its inherent intelligibility. So +held it passes over from doctrine into dogma. Or take, as an +example of the second sort, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, +promulgated by Pius IX in the year 1854, and designed to strengthen +the prestige of the Papal See among the Catholic powers of Europe and +to prolong its hold upon its temporal possessions. De Cesare describes +the promulgation of the dogma as follows: + +"The festival on that day, December 8, 1854, sacred to the Virgin, was +magnificent. After chanting the Gospel, first in Latin, then in Greek, +Cardinal Macchi, deacon of the Sacred College, together with the +senior archbishops and bishops present, all approached the Papal +throne, pronouncing these words in Latin, 'Deign, most Holy Father, +to lift your Apostolic voice and pronounce the dogmatic Decree of the +Immaculate Conception, on account of which there will be praise in +heaven and rejoicings on earth.' The Pope replying, stated that he +welcomed the wish of the Sacred College, the episcopate, the clergy, +and declared it was essential first of all to invoke the help of the +Holy Spirit. So saying he intoned _in Veni Creator_, chanted in chorus +by all present. The chant concluded, amid a solemn silence Pius IX's +finely modulated voice read the following Decree: + +"'It shall be Dogma, that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first +instant of the Conception, by singular privilege and grace of God, +in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was +preserved from all stain of original sin.' The senior cardinal then +prayed the Pope to make this Decree public, and, amid the roar of +cannon from Fort St. Angelo and the festive ringing of church bells, +the solemn act was accomplished.'"[42] Here is an assertion regarding +Mary's Conception which has only the most tenuous connection with +religious experience and which was pronounced for ecclesiastical and +political reasons. Here we have dogma at its worst. Here, indeed, it +is so bad as to resemble many of the current political and economic +pronunciamentos! + +[Footnote 42: _The Last Days of Papal Rome_, pp. 127 ff.] + +Now, nobody wants dogmatic preaching, but there is nothing that we +need more than we do doctrinal preaching and nothing which is more +interesting. The specialization of knowledge has assigned to the +preacher of religion a definite sphere. No amount of secondary +expertness in politics or economics or social reform or even morals +can atone for the abandonment of our own province. We are set to think +about and expound religion and if we give that up we give up our place +in a learned profession. Moreover, the new conditions of the modern +world make doctrine imperative. That world is distinguished by +its free inquiry, its cultivation of the scientific method, its +abandonment of obscuranticisms and ambiguities. It demands, then, +devout and holy thinking from us. Who would deny that the revival +of intellectual authority and leadership in matters of religion +is terribly needed in our day? Sabatier is right in saying that a +religion without doctrine is a self-contradictory idea. Harnack is not +wrong in saying that a Christianity without it is inconceivable. + +And now I know you are thinking in your hearts, Well, what +inconsistency this man shows! For a whole book he has been insisting +on the prime values of imagination and feeling in religion and now he +concludes with a plea for the thinker. But it is not so inconsistent +as it appears. It is just because we do believe that the discovery, +the expression and the rewards of religion lie chiefly in the +superrational and poetic realms that therefore we want this +intellectual content to accompany it, not supersede it, as a balancing +influence, a steadying force. There are grave perils in worshipful +services corresponding to their supreme values. Mystical preaching +has the defects of its virtues and too often sinks into that vague +sentimentalism which is the perversion of its excellence. How +insensibly sometimes does high and precious feeling degenerate into +a sort of religious hysteria! It needs then to be always tested and +corrected by clear thinking. + +But we in no way alter our original insistence that in our realm as +preachers, unlike the scientist's realm of the theologians, thought +is the handmaid, not the mistress. Our great plea, then, for doctrinal +preaching is that by intellectual grappling with the final and +speculative problems of religion we do not supersede but feed the +emotional life and do not diminish but focus and steady it. It is +that you and I may have reserves of feeling--indispensable to great +preaching--sincerity and intensity of emotion, that disciplined +imagination which is genius, that restrained passion which is art, +and that our congregations may have the same, that we must strive for +intellectual power, must do the preaching that gives people something +to think about. These are the religious and devout reasons why +we value intellectual honesty, precision of utterance, reserve of +statement, logical and coherent thinking. + +We are come, then, to the conclusion of our discussions. They have +been intended to restore a neglected emphasis upon the imaginative and +transcendent as distinguished from the ethical and humanistic aspects +of the religious life. They have tried to show that the reaching out +by worship to this "otherness" of God and to the ultimate in life is +man's deepest hunger and the one we are chiefly set to feed. I am sure +that the chief ally of the experience of the transcendence of God and +the cultivation of the worshipful faculties in man is to be found in +severe and speculative thinking. I believe our almost unmixed passion +for piety, for action, for practical efficiency, betrays us. It +indicates that we are trying to manufacture effects to conceal the +absence of causes. We may look for a religious revival when men have +so meditated upon and struggled with the fundamental ideas of religion +that they feel profoundly its eternal mysteries. + +And finally, we have the best historical grounds for our position. +Sometimes great religious movements have been begun by unlearned and +uncritical men like Peter the hermit or John Bunyan or Moody. But we +must not infer from this that religious insight is naturally repressed +by clear thinking or fostered by ignorance. Dr. Francis Greenwood +Peabody has pointed out that the great religious epochs in Christian +history are also epochs in the history of theology. The Pauline +epistles, the _Confessions of Augustine_, the _Meditations_ of Anselm, +the _Simple Method of How to Pray_ of Luther, the _Regula_ of Loyola, +the _Monologen_ of Schleiermacher, these are all manuals of the +devout life, they belong in the distinctively religious world of +supersensuous and the transcendent, and one thing which accounts for +them is that the men who produced them were religious geniuses because +they were also theologians.[43] + +[Footnote 43: See the "Call to Theology," _Har. Theo. Rev._, vol. I, +no. 1, pp. 1 ff.] + +It is to be remembered that we are not saying that the theologian +makes the saint. I do not believe that. Devils can believe and +tremble; Abelard was no saint. But we are contending that the +great saint is extremely likely to be a theologian. Protestantism, +Methodism, Tractarianism, were chiefly religious movements, interested +in the kind of questions and moved by the sorts of motives which +we have been talking about. They all began within the precincts +of universities. Moreover, the Lord Jesus, consummate mystic, +incomparable artist, was such partly because He was a great theologian +as well. His dealings with scribe and Pharisee furnish some of +the world's best examples of acute and courageous dialectics. His +theological method differed markedly from the academicians of His +day. Nevertheless it was noted that He spoke with an extraordinary +authority. "He gave," as Dr. Peabody also points out, "new scope +and significance to the thought of God, to the nature of man, to the +destiny of the soul, to the meaning of the world. He would have been +reckoned among the world's great theologians if other endowments had +not given Him a higher title."[44] + +[Footnote 44: "Call to Theology," _Har. Theo. Rev._, vol. I, no. 1, p. +8.] + +It is a higher title to have been the supreme mystic, the perfect +seer. All I have been trying to say is that it is to these sorts +of excellencies that the preacher aspires. But the life of Jesus +supremely sanctions the conviction that preaching upon high and +abstract and even speculative themes and a rigorous intellectual +discipline are chief accompaniments, appropriate and indispensable +aids, to religious insight and to the cultivating of worshipful +feeling. So we close our discussions with the supreme name upon +our lips, leaving the most fragrant memory, the clearest picture, +remembering Him who struck the highest note. It is to His life and +teaching that we humbly turn to find the final sanction for the +distinctively religious values. Who else, indeed, has the words of +Eternal Life? + + * * * * * + + + + + +LYMAN BEECHER LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING + +YALE UNIVERSITY + + 1871-72 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, first series. + New York, 1872. + + 1872-73 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, second series. + New York, 1873. + + 1873-74 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, third series. + New York, 1874. + + 1874-75 Hall, John, God's Word through Preaching. New York, 1875. + + 1875-76 Taylor, William M., The Ministry of the Word. New York, + 1876. + + 1876-77 Brooks, P., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1877. + + 1877-78 Dale, R.W., Nine Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1878. + + 1878-79 Simpson, M., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1879. + + 1879-80 Crosby, H., The Christian Preacher. New York, 1880. + + 1880-81 Duryea, J.T., and others (not published). + + 1881-82 Robinson, E.G., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1883. + + 1882-83 (No lectures.) + + 1883-84 Burton, N.J., Yale Lectures on Preaching, and other + writings. New York, 1888.* + + 1884-85 Storrs, H.M., The American Preacher (not published). + + 1885-86 Taylor, W.M., The Scottish Pulpit. New York, 1887. + + 1886-87 Gladden, W., Tools and the Man. Boston, 1893. + + 1887-88 Trumbull. H.C., The Sunday School. Philadelphia, 1888. + + 1888-89 Broadus, J.A., Preaching and the Ministerial Life (not + published). + + 1889-90 Behrends, A.J.F., The Philosophy of Preaching. New York, + 1890. + + 1890-91 Stalker, J., The Preacher and His Models. New York, 1891. + + 1891-92 Fairbarn, A.M., The Place of Christ in Modern Theology. + New York, 1893. + + 1892-93 Horton, R.F., Verbum Dei. New York, 1893.* + + 1893-94 (No lectures.) + + 1894-95 Greer, D.H., The Preacher and His Place. New York, 1895. + + 1895-96 Van Dyke, H., The Gospel for an Age of Doubt. New York, + 1896* + + 1896-97 Watson, J., The Cure of Souls. New York, 1896. + + 1897-98 Tucker, W.J., The Making and the Unmaking of the Preacher. + Boston, 1898. + + 1898-99 Smith, G.A., Modern Criticism and the Old Testament. New + York, 1901. + + 1899-00 Brown, J., Puritan Preaching in England. New York, 1900. + + 1900-01 (No lectures.) + + 1901-02 Gladden, W., Social Salvation. New York, 1902. + + 1902-03 Gordon, G.A., Ultimate Conceptions of Faith. New York, 1903. + + 1903-04 Abbott, L., The Christian Ministry. Boston, 1905. + + 1904-05 Peabody, F.G., Jesus Christ and the Christian Character. + New York, 1905.* + + 1905-06 Brown, C.R., The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit. New + York, 1906. + + 1906-07 Forsyth, P.T., Positive Preaching and Modern Mind. New + York, 1908.* + + 1907-08 Faunce, W.H.P., The Educational Ideal in the Ministry. New + York, 1908. + + 1908-09 Henson, H.H., The Liberty of Prophesying. New Haven, 1910.* + + 1909-10 Jefferson, C.E., The Building of the Church. New York, 1910. + + 1910-11 Gunsaulus, F.W., The Minister and the Spiritual Life. New + York, Chicago, 1911. + + 1911-12 Jowett, J.H., The Preacher; His Life and Work. New York, + 1912. + + 1912-13 Parkhurst, C.H., The Pulpit and the Pew. New Haven. 1913.* + + 1913-14 Home, C. Silvester, The Romance of Preaching. New York, + Chicago, 1914. + + 1914-15 Pepper, George Wharton, A Voice from the Crowd. New Haven, + 1915.* + + 1915-16 Hyde, William DeWitt, The Gospel of Good Will as Revealed + in Contemporary Scriptures. New York, 1916. + + 1916-17 McDowell, William Fraser, Good Ministers of Jesus Christ. + New York and Cincinnati, 1917. + + 1917-18 Coffin, Henry Sloane, In a Day of Social Rebuilding. New + Haven.* + + 1918-19 Kelman, John, The War and Preaching, New Haven.* + + 1919-20 Fitch, Albert Parker, Preaching and Paganism. New Haven.* + + +*Also published in London. + +PRINTED BY E.L. HILDRETH & COMPANY BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT, U.S.A. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Preaching and Paganism, by Albert Parker Fitch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREACHING AND PAGANISM *** + +***** This file should be named 16076-8.txt or 16076-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/0/7/16076/ + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, William Flis, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Preaching and Paganism + +Author: Albert Parker Fitch + +Release Date: June 16, 2005 [EBook #16076] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREACHING AND PAGANISM *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, William Flis, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>PREACHING AND PAGANISM</h1> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h2>ALBERT PARKER FITCH</h2> + +<h4>PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN AMHERST COLLEGE</h4> + + + + +<h3>WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR</h3> + + +<h4>THE COLLEGE COURSE AND THE PREPARATION FOR LIFE</h4> + +<h4>CAN THE CHURCH SURVIVE IN THE CHANGING ORDER?</h4> + + + + +<h4>PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF JAMES WESLEY COOPER +OF THE CLASS OF 1865, YALE COLLEGE</h4> + + + + +<h4>THE FORTY-SIXTH SERIES OF THE +LYMAN BEECHER LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING IN YALE UNIVERSITY</h4> + + +<h4>NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXX</h4> + +<center>COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY +YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS</center> + +<center>FIRST PUBLISHED, 1920</center> + + + + +<h3>THE JAMES WESLEY COOPER MEMORIAL PUBLICATION FUND</h3> + + +<p>The present volume is the fourth work published by +the Yale University Press on the James Wesley Cooper +Memorial Publication Fund. This Foundation was established +March 30, 1918, by a gift to Yale University +from Mrs. Ellen H. Cooper in memory of her husband, +Rev. James Wesley Cooper, D.D., who died in New +York City, March 16, 1916. Dr. Cooper was a member +of the Class of 1865, Yale College, and for twenty-five +years pastor of the South Congregational Church of +New Britain, Connecticut. For thirty years he was a +corporate member of the American Board of Commissioners +for Foreign Missions and from 1885 until the +time of his death was a Fellow of Yale University, serving +on the Corporation as one of the Successors of the Original Trustees.</p> + + +<hr /> + +<center>TO MY WIFE</center> + +<hr /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page11" id="page11"></a>[pg 11]</span> + + + +<h3>PREFACE</h3> + + +<p>The chief, perhaps the only, commendation of +these chapters is that they pretend to no final +solution of the problem which they discuss. +How to assert the eternal and objective reality of that +Presence, the consciousness of Whom is alike the beginning +and the end, the motive and the reward, of the +religious experience, is not altogether clear in an age that, +for over two centuries, has more and more rejected the +transcendental ideas of the human understanding. Yet +the consequences of that rejection, in the increasing individualism +of conduct which has kept pace with the +growing subjectivism of thought, are now sufficiently +apparent and the present plight of our civilization is already +leading its more characteristic members, the political +scientists and the economists, to reëxamine and reappraise +the concepts upon which it is founded. It is a +similar attempt to scrutinize and evaluate the significant +aspects of the interdependent thought and conduct of our +day from the standpoint of religion which is here attempted. +Its sole and modest purpose is to endeavor to +restore some neglected emphases, to recall to spiritually +minded men and women certain half-forgotten values in +the religious experience and to add such observations regarding +them as may, by good fortune, contribute something +to that future reconciling of the thought currents +and value judgments of our day to these central and +precious facts of the religious life.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page12" id="page12"></a>[pg 12]</span> + +<p>Many men and minds have contributed to these pages. +Such sources of suggestion and insight have been indicated +wherever they could be identified. In especial I +must record my grateful sense of obligation to Professor +Irving Babbitt's <i>Rousseau and Romanticism</i>. The chapter +on Naturalism owes much to its brilliant and provocative discussions.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page13" id="page13"></a>[pg 13]</span> + + + + +<h3>CONTENTS</h3> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10"> PAGE</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Preface <a href="#page11">11</a></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>I. The Learner, the Doer and the Seer <a href="#page15">15</a></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>II. The Children of Zion and the Sons of Greece <a href="#page40">40</a></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>III. Eating, Drinking and Being Merry <a href="#page72">72</a></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>IV. The Unmeasured Gulf <a href="#page102">102</a></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>V. Grace, Knowledge, Virtue <a href="#page131">131</a></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>VI. The Almighty and Everlasting God <a href="#page157">157</a></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>VII. Worship as the Chief Approach to Transcendence <a href="#page184">184</a></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>VIII. Worship and the Discipline of Doctrine <a href="#page209">209</a></p> + </div> </div> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page15" id="page15"></a>[pg 15]</span> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER ONE</h2> + +<h2>The Learner, the Doer and the Seer</h2> + + +<p>The first difficulty which confronts the incumbent +of the Lyman Beecher Foundation, after +he has accepted the appalling fact that he must +hitch his modest wagon, not merely to a star, but rather +to an entire constellation, is the delimitation of his subject. +There are many inquiries, none of them without +significance, with which he might appropriately concern +himself. For not only is the profession of the Christian +ministry a many-sided one, but scales of value change +and emphases shift, within the calling itself, with our +changing civilization. The mediaeval world brought +forth, out of its need, the robed and mitered ecclesiastic; +a more recent world, pursuant to its genius, demanded +the ethical idealist. Drink-sodden Georgian England +responded to the open-air evangelism of Whitefield and +Wesley; the next century found the Established Church +divided against itself by the learning and culture of +the Oxford Movement. Sometimes a philosopher and +theologian, like Edwards, initiates the Great Awakening; +sometimes an emotional mystic like Bernard can arouse +all Europe and carry men, tens of thousands strong, over +the Danube and over the Hellespont to die for the Cross +upon the burning sands of Syria; sometimes it is the +George Herberts, in a hundred rural parishes, who make +grace to abound through the intimate and precious +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page16" id="page16"></a>[pg 16]</span> +ministrations of the country parson. Let us, therefore, devote +this chapter to a review of the several aspects of +the Christian ministry, in order to set in its just perspective +the one which we have chosen for these discussions +and to see why it seems to stand, for the moment, in the +forefront of importance. Our immediate question is, +Who, on the whole, is the most needed figure in the +ministry today? Is it the professional ecclesiastic, backed +with the authority and prestige of a venerable organization? +Is it the curate of souls, patient shepherd of the +silly sheep? Is it the theologian, the administrator, the prophet—who?</p> + +<p>One might think profitably on that first question in +these very informal days. We are witnessing a breakdown +of all external forms of authority which, while +salutary and necessary, is also perilous. Not many of +us err, just now, by overmagnifying our official status. +Many of us instead are terribly at ease in Zion and +might become less assured and more significant by undertaking +the subjective task of a study in ministerial +personality. "What we are," to paraphrase Emerson, +"speaks so loud that men cannot hear what we say." +Every great calling has its characteristic mental attitude, +the unwritten code of honor of the group, without a +knowledge of which one could scarcely be an efficient +or honorable practitioner within it. One of the perplexing +and irritating problems of the personal life of the +preacher today has to do with the collision between the +secular standards of his time, this traditional code of +his class, and the requirements of his faith. Shall he +acquiesce in the smug conformities, the externalized +procedures of average society, somewhat pietized, and +join that large company of good and ordinary people, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page17" id="page17"></a>[pg 17]</span> +of whom Samuel Butler remarks, in <i>The Way of All +Flesh</i>, that they would be "equally horrified at hearing +the Christian religion doubted, or at seeing it practised?" +There are ministers who do thus content themselves with +being merely superrespectable. Shall he exalt the standards +of his calling, accentuate the speech and dress, the +code and manners of his group, the historic statements +of his faith, at the risk of becoming an official, a "professional"? +Or does he possess the insight, and can he +acquire the courage, to follow men like Francis of Assisi +or Father Damien and adopt the Christian ethic +and thus join that company of the apostles and martyrs +whose blood is the seed of the church? A good deal +might be said today on the need of this sort of personal +culture in the ministerial candidate. But, provocative +and significant though the question is, it is too limited +in scope, too purely subjective in nature, to suit the character +and the urgency of the needs of this moment.</p> + +<p>Again, every profession has the prized inheritance of +its own particular and gradually perfected human skill. +An interesting study, then, would be the analysis of that +rich content of human insights, the result of generations +of pastoral experience, which form the background of +all great preaching. No man, whether learned or pious, +or both, is equipped for the pulpit without the addition +of that intuitive discernment, that quick and varied appreciation, +that sane and tolerant knowledge of life and +the world, which is the reward given to the friends and +lovers of mankind. For the preacher deals not with the +shallows but the depths of life. Like his Master he +must be a great humanist. To make real sermons he has +to look, without dismay or evasion, far into the heart's +impenetrable recesses. He must have had some experience +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page18" id="page18"></a>[pg 18]</span> +with the absolutism of both good and evil. I think +preachers who regard sermons on salvation as superfluous +have not had much experience with either. They +belong to that large world of the intermediates, neither +positively good nor bad, who compose the mass of the +prosperous and respectable in our genteel civilization. +Since they belong to it they cannot lead it. And certainly +they who do not know the absolutism of evil cannot very +well understand sinners. Genuine satans, as Milton knew, +are not weaklings and traitors who have declined from +the standards of a respectable civilization. They are positive +and impressive figures pursuing and acting up to their +own ideal of conduct, not fleeing from self-accepted retribution +or falling away from a confessed morality of +ours. Evil is a force even more than a folly; it is a positive +agent busily building away at the City of Dreadful +Night, constructing its insolent and scoffing society +within the very precincts of the City of God.</p> + +<p>He must know, then, that evil and suffering are not +temporary elements of man's evolution, just about to be +eliminated by the new reform, the last formula, the fresh +panacea. To those who have tasted grief and smelt the +fire such easy preaching and such confident solutions are +a grave offense. They know that evil is an integral part +of our universe; suffering an enduring element of the +whole. So he must preach upon the chances and changes +of this mortal world, or go to the house of shame or +the place of mourning, knowing that there is something +past finding out in evil, something incommunicable about +true sorrow. They are not external things, alien to our +natures, that happen one day from without, and may +perhaps be avoided, and by and by are gone. No; that +which makes sorrow, sorrow, and evil, evil, is their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page19" id="page19"></a>[pg 19]</span> +naturalness; they well up from within, part of the very texture +of our consciousness. He knows you can never express +them, for truly to do that you would have to +express and explain the entire world. It is not easy then +to interpret the evil and suffering which are not external +and temporary, but enduring and a part of the whole.</p> + +<p>So the preacher is never dealing with plain or uncomplicated +matters. It is his business to perceive the mystery +of iniquity in the saint and to recognize the mystery +of godliness in the sinner. It is his business to revere +the child and yet watch him that he may make a man of +him. He must say, so as to be understood, to those who +balk at discipline, and rail at self-repression, and resent +pain: you have not yet begun to live nor made the first +step toward understanding the universe and yourselves. +To avoid discipline and to blench at pain is to evade +life. There are limitations, occasioned by the evil and +the suffering of the world, in whose repressions men +find fulfillment. When you are honest with yourself you +will know what Dante meant when he said:</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"And thou shalt see those who</p> +<p>Contented are within the fire;</p> +<p>Because they hope to come,</p> +<p>When e'er it may be, to the blessed people."<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It is his business, also, to be the comrade of his peers, +and yet speak to them the truth in love; his task to understand +the bitterness and assuage the sorrows of old +age. I suppose the greatest influence a preacher ever exercises, +and a chief source of the material and insight of +his preaching, is found in this intimate contact with living +and suffering, divided and distracted men and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page20" id="page20"></a>[pg 20]</span> +women. When strong men blench with pain and exquisite +grief stirs within us at the sight and we can endure +naught else but to suffer with them, when youth +is blurred with sin, and gray heads are sick with shame +and we, then, want to die and cry, O God! forgive and +save them or else blot me out of Thy book of life—for +who could bear to live in a world where such things are +the end!—then, through the society of sorrow, and the +holy comradeship in shame, we begin to find the Lord +and to understand both the kindness and the justice of +His world. In the moment when sympathy takes the +bitterness out of another's sorrow and my suffering +breaks the captivity of my neighbor's sin—then, when +because "together," with sinner and sufferer, we come +out into the quiet land of freedom and of peace, we perceive +how the very heart of God, upon which there we +know we rest, may be found in the vicarious suffering +and sacrifice called forth by the sorrow and the evil of +mankind. Then we can preach the Gospel. Because then +we dimly understand why men have hung their God upon the Cross of Christ!</p> + +<p>Is it not ludicrous, then, to suppose that a man merely +equipped with professional scholarship, or contented +with moral conformities, can minister to the sorrow and +the mystery, the mingled shame and glory of a human +being? This is why the average theologue, in his first +parish, is like the well-meaning but meddling engineer +endeavoring with clumsy tools and insensitive fingers to +adjust the delicate and complicated mechanism of a Genevan +watch. And here is one of the real reasons why we +deprecate men entering our calling, without both the culture +of a liberal education and the learning of a graduate +school. Clearly, therefore, one real task of such schools +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page21" id="page21"></a>[pg 21]</span> +and their lectureships is to offer men wide and gracious +training in the art of human contacts, so that their lives +may be lifted above Pharisaism and moral self-consciousness, +made acquainted with the higher and comprehensive +interpretations of the heart and mind of our +race. For only thus can they approach life reverently +and humbly. Only thus will they revere the integrity of +the human spirit; only thus can they regard it with a +magnanimous and catholic understanding and measure +it not by the standards of temperamental or sectarian +convictions, but by what is best and highest, deepest and +holiest in the race. No one needs more than the young +preacher to be drawn out of the range of narrow judgments, +of exclusive standards and ecclesiastical traditions +and to be flung out among free and sensitive spirits, that +he may watch their workings, master their perceptions, catch their scale of values.</p> + +<p>A discussion, then, dealing with this aspect of our +problem, would raise many and genuine questions for +us. There is the more room for it in this time of increasing +emphasis upon machinery when even ministers are +being measured in the terms of power, speed and utility. +These are not real ends of life; real ends are unity, repose, +the imaginative and spiritual values which make +for the release of self, with its by-product of happiness. +In such days, then, when the old-time pastor-preacher +is becoming as rare as the former general practitioner; +when the lines of division between speaker, educator, +expert in social hygiene, are being sharply drawn—as +though new methods insured of themselves fresh inspiration, +and technical knowledge was identical with spiritual +understanding—it would be worth while to dwell upon +the culture of the pastoral office and to show that ingenuity +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page22" id="page22"></a>[pg 22]</span> +is not yet synonymous with insight, and that, in our +profession at least, card-catalogues cannot take the place +of the personal study of the human heart. But many +discussions on this Foundation, and recently those of +Dr. Jowett, have already dealt with this sort of analysis. +Besides, today, when not merely the preacher, but the +very view of the world that produced him, is being +threatened with temporary extinction, such a theme, +poetic and rewarding though it is, becomes irrelevant and parochial.</p> + +<p>Or we might turn to the problem of technique, that +professional equipment for his task as a sermonizer and +public speaker which is partly a native endowment and +partly a laborious acquisition on the preacher's part. +Such was President Tucker's course on <i>The Making and +Unmaking of the Preacher</i>. Certainly observations on +professional technique, especially if they should include, +like his, acute discussion of the speaker's obligation to +honesty of thinking, no less than integrity of conduct; +of the immorality of the pragmatic standard of mere +effectiveness or immediate efficiency in the selection of +material; of the aesthetic folly and ethical dubiety of +simulated extempore speaking and genuinely impromptu +prayers, would not be superfluous. But, on the other hand, +we may hope to accomplish much of this indirectly today. +Because there is no way of handling specifically either +the content of the Christian message or the problem of +the immediate needs and temper of those to whom it is +to be addressed, without reference to the kind of personality, +and the nature of the tools at his disposal, which +is best suited to commend the one and to interpret the other.</p> + +<p>Hence such a discussion as this ought, by its very scale +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page23" id="page23"></a>[pg 23]</span> +of values—by the motives that inform it and the ends +that determine it—to condemn thereby the insincere and +artificial speaker, or that pseudo-sermon which is neither +as exposition, an argument nor a meditation but a mosaic, +a compilation of other men's thoughts, eked out by impossibly +impressive or piously sentimental anecdotes, the +whole glued together by platitudes of the Martin Tupper +or Samuel Smiles variety. It is certainly an obvious but +greatly neglected truth that simplicity and candor in public +speaking, largeness of mental movement, what Phillips +Brooks called direct utterance of comprehensive +truths, are indispensable prerequisites for any significant +ethical or spiritual leadership. But, taken as a main +theme, this third topic, like the others, seems to me insufficiently +inclusive to meet our present exigencies. It +deals more with the externals than with the heart of our subject.</p> + +<p>Again we might address ourselves to the ethical and +practical aspects of preaching and the ministry. Taking +largely for granted our understanding of the Gospel, we +might concern ourselves with its relations to society, the +detailed implications for the moral and economic problems +of our social and industrial order. Dean Brown, +in <i>The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit</i>, and Dr. +Coffin in <i>In a Day of Social Rebuilding</i>, have so enriched +this Foundation. Moreover, this is, at the moment, an +almost universally popular treatment of the preacher's +opportunity and obligation. One reason, therefore, for +not choosing this approach to our task is that the +preacher's attention, partly because of the excellence of +these and other books and lectures, and partly because +of the acuteness of the political-industrial crisis which is +now upon us, is already focused upon it.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page24" id="page24"></a>[pg 24]</span> + +<p>Besides, our present moment is changing with an ominous +rapidity. And one is not sure whether the immediate +situation, as distinguished from that of even a few years +ago, calls us to be concerned chiefly with the practical and +ethical aspects of our mission, urgent though the need +and critical the pass, to which the abuses of the capitalistic +system have brought both European and American +society. In this day of those shifting standards which +mark the gradual transference of power from one group +to another in the community, and the merging of a spent +epoch in a new order, neither the chief opportunity nor +the most serious peril of religious leadership is met by +fresh and energetic programs of religion in action. In +such days, our chief gift to the world cannot be the support +of any particular reforms or the alliance with any +immediate ethical or economic movement. For these +things at best would be merely the effects of religion. And +it is not religion in its relations, nor even in its expression +in character—it is the thing in itself that this age most +needs. What men are chiefly asking of life at this moment +is not, What ought we to do? but the deeper question, +What is there we can believe? For they know that +the answer to this question would show us what we ought to do.</p> + +<p>Nor do our reform alliances and successive programs +and crusades always seem to me to proceed from any +careful estimate of the situation as a whole or to be conceived +in the light of comprehensive Christian principle. +Instead, they sometimes seem to draw their inspiration +more from the sense of the urgent need of presenting +to an indifferent or disillusioned world some quick and +tangible evidence of a continuing moral vigor and spiritual +passion to which the deeper and more potent witnesses +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page25" id="page25"></a>[pg 25]</span> +are absent. It is as though we thought the machinery +of the church would revolve with more energy +if geared into the wheels of the working world. But that +world and we do not draw our power from the same +dynamo. And surely in a day of profound and widespread +mental ferment and moral restlessness, some more +fundamental gift than this is asked of us.</p> + +<p>If, therefore, these chapters pay only an incidental attention +to the church's social and ethical message, it is +partly because our attention is, at this very moment, +largely centered upon this important, yet secondary matter, +and more because there lies beneath it a yet more +urgent and inclusive task which confronts the spokesman of organized religion.</p> + +<p>You will expect me then to say that we are to turn to +some speculative and philosophic study, such as the +analysis of the Christian idea in its world relationships, +some fresh statement of the Gospel, either by way of apologia +for inherited concepts, or as attempting to make a +new receptacle for the living wine, which has indeed +burst the most of its ancient bottles. Such was Principal +Fairbairn's monumental task in <i>The Place of Christ in +Modern Theology</i> and also Dr. Gordon's in his distinguished +discussions in <i>The Ultimate Conceptions of Faith</i>.</p> + +<p>Here, certainly, is an endeavor which is always of primary +importance. There is an abiding peril, forever +crouching at the door of ancient organizations, that they +shall seek refuge from the difficulties of thought in the +opportunities of action. They need to be continually reminded +that reforms begin in the same place where +abuses do, namely, in the notion of things; that only just +ideas can, in the long run, purify conduct; that clear +thinking is the source of all high and sustained feeling. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page26" id="page26"></a>[pg 26]</span> +I wish that we might essay the philosopher-theologian's +task. This generation is hungry for understanding; it +perishes for lack of knowledge. One reason for the indubitable +decline of the preacher's power is that we have +been culpably indifferent in maintaining close and +friendly alliances between the science and the art, the +teachers and the practitioners of religion. Few things +would be more ominous than to permit any further +widening of the gulf which already exists between these +two. Never more than now does the preacher need to +be reminded of what Marcus Aurelius said: "Such as +are thy habitual thoughts, such also shall be thyself; for +the soul is dyed by its thoughts."</p> + +<p>But such an undertaking, calling for wide and exact +scholarship, large reserves of extra-professional learning, +does not primarily belong to a discussion within the +department of practical theology. Besides which there +is a task, closely allied to it, but creative rather than critical, +prophetic rather than philosophic, which does fall +within the precise area of this field. I mean the endeavor +to describe the mind and heart of our generation, appraise +the significant thought-currents of our time. This +would be an attempt to give some description of the chief +impulses fermenting in contemporary society, to ask +what relation they hold to the Christian principle, and +to inquire what attitude toward them our preaching +should adopt. If it be true that what is most revealing +in any age is its regulative ideas, then what is more valuable +for the preacher than to attempt the understanding +of his generation through the defining of its ruling +concepts? And it is this audacious task which, for two +reasons, we shall presume to undertake.</p> + +<p>The first reason is that it is appropriate both to the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page27" id="page27"></a>[pg 27]</span> +temperament and the training of the preacher. There are +three grand divisions, or rather determining emphases, +by which men may be separated into vocational groups. +To begin with, there is the man of the scientific or intellectual +type. He has a passion for facts and a +strong sense of their reality. He moves with natural ease +among abstract propositions, is both critical of, and fertile +in, theories; indicates his essential distinction in his +love of the truth for the truth's sake. He looks first to +the intrinsic reasonableness of any proposition; tends to +judge both men and movements not by traditional or +personal values, but by a detached and disinterested appraisal +of their inherent worth. He is often a dogmatist, +but this fault is not peculiar to him, he shares it with the +rest of mankind. He is sometimes a literalist and sometimes +a slave to logic, more concerned with combating the +crude or untenable form of a proposition than inquiring +with sympathetic insight into the worth of its substance. +But these things are perversions of his excellencies, defects +of his virtues. His characteristic qualities are mental +integrity, accuracy of statement, sanity of judgment, +capacity for sustained intellectual toil. Such men are investigators, +scholars; when properly blended with the +imaginative type they become inventors and teachers. +They make good theologians and bad preachers.</p> + +<p>Then there are the practical men, beloved of our +American life. Both their feet are firmly fixed upon the +solid ground. They generally know just where they are, +which is not surprising, for they do not, for the most +part, either in the world of mind or spirit, frequent unusual +places. The finespun speculations of the philosophers +and the impractical dreams of the artist make +small appeal to them; the world they live in is a sharply +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page28" id="page28"></a>[pg 28]</span> +defined and clearly lighted and rather limited place. They +like to say to this man come and he cometh, and to that +man go and he goeth. They are enamored of offices, +typewriters, telegrams, long-distance messages, secretaries, +programs, conferences and drives. Getting results +is their goal; everything is judged by the criterion of +effective action; they are instinctive and unconscious +pragmatists. They make good cheer leaders at football +games in their youth and impressive captains of industry +in their old age. Their virtues are wholesome, if obvious; +they are good mixers, have shrewd judgment, immense +physical and volitional energy. They understand that two +and two make four. They are rarely saints but, unlike +many of us who once had the capacity for sainthood, +they are not dreadful sinners. They are the tribe of which +politicians are born but, when they are blended with +imaginative and spiritual gifts, they become philanthropists +and statesmen, practical servants of mankind. +They make good, if conservative, citizens; kind, if uninspiring, +husbands and deplorable preachers.</p> + +<p>Then there are those fascinating men of feeling and +imagination, those who look into their own hearts and +write, those to whom the inner dominions which the +spirit conquers for itself become a thousand-fold more +real than the earth whereon they stamp their feet. These +are the literary or the creative folk. Their passion is not +so much to know life as to enjoy it; not to direct it, but +to experience it; not even to make understanding of it +an end, but only a means to interpreting it. They do not, +as a rule, thirst for erudition, and they are indifferent to +those manipulations of the externals of life which are +dear to the lovers of executive power. They know less +but they understand more than their scholastic brethren. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page29" id="page29"></a>[pg 29]</span> +As a class they are sometimes disreputable but nearly +always unworldly; more distinguished by an intuitive +and childlike than by an ingenious or sophisticated quality +of mind. Ideas and facts are perceived by them not +abstractly nor practically, but in their typical or symbolic, +hence their pictorial and transmissible, aspects. They read +dogma, whether theological or other, in the terms of a +living process, unconsciously translating it, as they go +along, out of its cold propositions into its appropriate +forms of feeling and needs and satisfactions.</p> + +<p>The scientist, then, is a critic, a learner who wants to +analyze and dissect; the man of affairs is a director and +builder and wants to command and construct; the man +of this group is a seer. He is a lover and a dreamer; +he watches and broods over life, profoundly feeling it, +enamored both of its shame and of its glory. The intolerable +poignancy of existence is bittersweet to his +mouth; he craves to incarnate, to interpret its entire human +process, always striving to pierce to its center, to +capture and express its inexpressible ultimate. He is an +egotist but a valuable one, acutely aware of the depths +and immensities of his own spirit and of its significant +relations to this seething world without. Thus it is both +himself and a new vision of life, in terms of himself, +that he desires to project for his community.</p> + +<p>The form of that vision will vary according to the nature +of the tools, the selection of material, the particular +sort of native endowment which are given to him. Some +such men reveal their understanding of the soul and the +world in the detached serenity, the too well-defined harmonies +of a Parthenon; others in the dim and intricate +richness, the confused and tortured aspiration of the long-limbed +saints and grotesque devils of a Gothic cathedral. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page30" id="page30"></a>[pg 30]</span> +Others incarnate it in gleaming bronze; or spread it in +subtle play of light and shade and tones of color on a +canvas; or write it in great plays which open the dark +chambers of the soul and make the heart stand still; or +sing it in sweet and terrible verse, full-throated utterance +of man's pride and hope and passion. Some act it before +the altar or beneath the proscenium arch; some speak it, +now in Cassandra-tones, now comfortably like shepherds +of frail sheep. These folk are the brothers-in-blood, the +fellow craftsmen of the preacher. By a silly convention, +he is almost forbidden to consult with them, and to betake +himself to the learned, the respectable and the dull. +But it is with these that naturally he sees eye to eye.</p> + +<p>In short, in calling the preacher a prophet we mean +that preaching is an art and the preacher is an artist; +for all great art has the prophetic quality. Many men +object to this definition of the preacher as being profane. +It appears to make secular or mechanicalize their profession, +to rob preaching of its sacrosanctity, leave it +less authority by making it more intelligible, remove it +from the realm of the mystical and unique. This objection +seems to me sometimes an expression of spiritual +arrogance and sometimes a subtle form of skepticism. It +assumes a special privilege for our profession or a not-get-at-able +defense and sanction by insisting that it differs +in origin and hence in kind from similar expressions +of the human spirit. It hesitates to rely on the normal +and the intelligible sources of ministerial power, to confess +the relatively definable origin and understandable +methods of our work. It fears to trust to these alone.</p> + +<p>But all these must be trusted. We may safely assert +that the preacher deals with absolute values, for all art +does that. But we may not assert that he is the only person +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page31" id="page31"></a>[pg 31]</span> +that does so or that his is the only or the unapproachable +way. No; he, too, is an artist. Hence, a sermon is +not a contribution to, but an interpretation of, knowledge, +made in terms of the religious experience. It is taking +truth out of its compressed and abstract form, its impersonal +and scientific language, and returning it to life +in the terms of the ethical and spiritual experience of +mankind, thus giving it such concrete and pictorial expression +that it stimulates the imagination and moves the will.</p> + +<p>It will be clear then why I have said that the task of +appraising the heart and mind of our generation, to +which we address ourselves, is appropriate to the preaching +genius. For only they could attempt such a task who +possess an informed and disciplined yet essentially intuitive +spirit with its scale of values; who by instinct can +see their age as a whole and indicate its chief emphases, +its controlling tendencies, its significant expressions. It +is not the scientist but the seer who thus attempts the +precious but perilous task of making the great generalizations. +This is what Aristotle means when he says, +"The poet ranks higher than the historian because he +achieves a more general truth." This is, I suppose, what +Houston Stewart Chamberlain means when he says, in +the introduction to the <i>Foundations of the Nineteenth +Century</i>: "our modern world represents an immeasurable +array of facts. The mastery of such a task as recording +and interpreting them scientifically is impossible. It +is only the genius of the artist, which feels the secret +parallels that exist between the world of vision and of +thought, that can, if fortune be favorable, reveal the +unity beneath the immeasurable complexities and diversities +of the present order." Or as Professor Hocking +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page32" id="page32"></a>[pg 32]</span> +says: "The prophet must find in the current of history +a unity corresponding to the unity of the physical universe, +or else he must create it. It is this conscious unification +of history that the religious will spontaneously tends to bring about."<a id="footnotetag2" name="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a></p> + +<p>It is then precisely the preacher's task, his peculiar +office, to attempt these vast and perilous summations. +What he is set here for is to bring the immeasurable +within the scope of vision. He deals with the far-flung +outposts, no man knows how distant, and the boundless +interspaces of human consciousness; he deals with the +beginning, the middle, the end—the origin, the meaning +and the destiny—of human life. How can anyone give +unity to such a prospect? Like any other artist he gives +it the only unity possible, the unity revealed in his own +personality. The theologian should not attempt to evaluate +his age; the preacher may. Because the theologian, +like any other scientist, analyzes and dissects; he breaks +up the world. The preacher in his disciplined imagination, +his spiritual intuitiveness,—what we call the "religious +temperament,"—unites it again and makes men see +it whole. This quality of purified and enlightened imagination +is of the very essence of the preacher's power +and art. Hence he may attempt to set forth a just understanding of his generation.</p> + +<p>This brings us to the second reason for our topic +namely, its timeliness. All religious values are not at all +times equal in importance. As generations come and go, +first one, then another looms in the foreground. But I +sincerely believe that the most fateful undertaking for +the preacher at this moment is that of analyzing his own +generation. Because he has been flung into one of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page33" id="page33"></a>[pg 33]</span> +world's transition epochs, he speaks in an hour which +is radical in changes, perplexing in its multifarious cross-currents, +prolific of new forms and expressions. What +the world most needs at such a moment of expansion and +rebellion, is a redefining of its ideals. It needs to have +some eternal scale of values set before it once more. It +needs to stop long enough to find out just what and +where it is, and toward what it is going. It needs another +Sheridan to write a new <i>School for Scandal</i>, another +Swift, with his <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>, a continuing Shaw +with his satiric comedies, a Mrs. Wharton with her +<i>House of Mirth</i>, a Thorstein Veblen with his <i>Higher +Learning in America</i>, a Savonarola with his call to repentance +and indictment of worldly and unfaithful living. +It is a difficult and dangerous office, this of the +prophet; it calls for a considerate and honest mind as +well as a flashing insight and an eager heart. The false +prophet exposes that he may exploit his age; the true +prophet portrays that he may purge it. Like Jeremiah +we may well dread to undertake the task, yet its day and hour are upon us!</p> + +<p>I have already spoken to this point at length, in a +little book recently published. I merely add here +that in a day of obvious political disillusionment and industrial +revolt, of intellectual rebellion against an outworn +order of ideas and of moral restlessness and doubt, +an indispensable duty for the preacher is this comprehensive +study and understanding of his own epoch. Else, +without realizing it,—and how true this often is,—he +proclaims a universal truth in the unintelligible language +of a forgotten order, and applies a timeless experience +to the faded conditions of yesterday.</p> + +<p>Indeed, I am convinced that a chief reason why +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page34" id="page34"></a>[pg 34]</span> +preaching is temporarily obscured in power, is because +most of our expertness in it is in terms of local problems, +of partial significances, rather than in the wider +tendencies that produce and carry them, or in the ultimate +laws of conduct which should govern them. We +ought to be troubled, I think, in our present ecclesiastical +situation, with its taint of an almost frantic immediacy. +Not only are we not sufficiently dealing with the +Gospel as a universal code, but, as both cause and effect +of this, we are not applying it to the inclusive life of our +generation. We are tinkering here and patching there, +but attempting no grand evaluation. We have already +granted that sweeping generalizations, inclusive estimates, +are as difficult as they are audacious. Yet we have +also seen that these grand evaluations are of the very +essence of religion and hence are characteristic of the +preacher's task. And, finally, it appears that ours is an +age which calls for such redefining of its values, some +fresh and inclusive moral and religious estimates. Hence we undertake the task.</p> + +<p>There remains but one thing more to be accomplished +in this chapter. The problem of the selection and arrangement +of the material for such a summary is not an +easy one. Out of several possible devices I have taken +as the framework on which to hang these discussions +three familiar divisions of thought and feeling, with +their accompanying laws of conduct, and value judgments. +They are the humanistic or classic; the naturalistic +or primitive; and the religious or transcendent interpretation +of the world and life. One sets up a social, +one an individual, and one a universal standard. Under +the movements which these headings represent we can +most easily and clearly order and appraise the chief +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page35" id="page35"></a>[pg 35]</span> +influences of the Protestant centuries. The first two are +largely preëmpting between them, at this moment, the +field of human thought and conduct and a brief analysis +of them, contrasting their general attitudes, may serve +as a fit introduction to the ensuing chapter.</p> + +<p>We begin, then, with the humanist. He is the man who +ignores, as unnecessary, any direct reference to, or connection +with, ultimate or supernatural values. He lives in +a high but self-contained world. His is man's universe. +His law is the law of reasonable self-discipline, founded +on observation of nature and a respect for social values, +and buttressed by high human pride. He accepts the +authority of the collective experience of his generation or +his race. He believes, centrally, in the trustworthiness of +human nature, in its group capacity. Men, as a race, have +intelligently observed and experimented with both themselves +and the world about them. Out of centuries of +critical reflection and sad and wise endeavor, they have +evolved certain criteria of experience. These summations +could hardly be called eternal laws but they are +standards; they are the permits and prohibitions for human +life. Some of them affect personal conduct and are +moral standards; some of them affect civil government +and are political axioms; some of them affect production +and distribution and are economic laws; some of them +affect social relationships. But in every case the humanist +has what is, in a sense, an objective because a formal +standard; he looks without himself as an individual, yet +to himself as a part of the composite experience and +wisdom of his race, for understanding and for guides. +Thus the individual conforms to the needs and wisdom +of the group. Humanism, at its best, has something +heroic, unselfish, noble about it. Its votaries do not eat +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page36" id="page36"></a>[pg 36]</span> +to their liking nor drink to their thirst. They learn deep +lessons almost unconsciously; to conquer their desires, +to make light of toil and pain and discomfort; the true +humanist is well aware that Spartan discipline is incomparably +superior to Greek accidence. This is what one of +the greatest of them, Goethe, meant when he said: "Anything +which emancipates the spirit without a corresponding +growth in self-mastery is pernicious."</p> + +<p>All humanists then have two characteristics in common: +first, they assume that man is his own arbiter, +has both the requisite intelligence and the moral ability +to control his own destiny; secondly, they place the +source and criterion of this power in collective wisdom, +not in individual vagary and not in divine revelation. +They assert, therefore, that the law of the group, the perfected +and wrought out code of human experience, is all +that is binding and all that is essential. To be sure, and +most significantly, this authority is not rigid, complete, +fixed. There is nothing complete in the humanist's world. +Experience accumulates and man's knowledge grows; +the expectation and joy in progress is a part of it; man's +code changes, emends, expands with his onward marching. +But the humanistic point of view assumes something +relatively stable in life. Hence our phrase that humanism +gives us a classic, that is to say, a simple and established standard.</p> + +<p>It is to be observed that there is nothing in humanism +thus defined which need be incompatible with religion. +It is not with its content but its incompleteness that we +quarrel. Indeed, in its assertion of the trustworthiness +of human experience, its faith in the dignity and significance +of man, its respect for the interests of the group, +and its conviction that man finds his true self only outside +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page37" id="page37"></a>[pg 37]</span> +his immediate physical person, beyond his material +wants and desires, it is quite genuinely a part of the religious +understanding. But we shall have occasion to observe +that while much of this may be religious this is not +the whole of religion. For the note of universality is +absent. Humanism is essentially aristocratic. It is for a +selected group that it is practicable and it is a selected +experience upon which it rests. Its standards are esoteric +rather than democratic. Yet it is hardly necessary +to point out the immense part which humanism, as thus +defined, is playing in present life.</p> + +<p>But there is another law which, from remotest times, +man has followed whenever he dared. It is not the law +of the group but of the individual, not the law of civilization +but of the jungle. "Most men," says Aristotle, +"would rather live in a disorderly than a sober manner." +He means that most men would rather consult and gratify +their immediate will, their nearest choices, their instantaneous +desires, than conform the moment to some +regulated and considerate, some comprehensive scheme +of life and action. The life of unreason is their desire; +the experience whose bent is determined by every whim, +the expression which has no rational connection with +the past and no serious consideration for the future. +This is of the very essence of lawlessness because it is +revolt against the normal sequence of law and effect, in +mind and conduct, in favor of untrammeled adventure.</p> + +<p>Now this is naturalism or paganism as we often call +it. Naturalism is a perversion of that high instinct in +mankind which issues in the old concept of supernaturalism. +The supernaturalist, of a former and discredited +type, believed that God violates the order of nature for +sublime ends; that He "breaks into" His own world, so +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page38" id="page38"></a>[pg 38]</span> +to speak, "revealing" Himself in prodigious, inexplicable, +arbitrary ways. By a sort of degradation of this notion, +a perversion of this instinct, the naturalist assumes that +he can violate both the human and the divine law for +personal ends, and express himself in fantastic or indecent +or impious ways. The older supernaturalism exalts +the individualism of the Creator; naturalism the egotism +of the creature. I make the contrast not merely to excoriate +naturalism, but to point out the interdependence between +man's apparently far-separated expressions of +his spirit, and how subtly misleading are our highly +prized distinctions, how dangerous sometimes that secondary +mental power which multiplies them. It sobers +and clarifies human thinking a little, perhaps, to reflect +on how thin a line separates the sublime and the ridiculous, +the saint and the sensualist, the martyr and the fool, the genius and the freak.</p> + +<p>Now, with this selfish individualism which we call naturalism +we shall have much to do, for it plays an increasing +rôle in the modern world; it is the neo-paganism +which we may see spreading about us. Sophistries of all +kinds become the powerful allies of this sort of moral +and aesthetic anarchy. Its votaries are those sorts of +rebels who invariably make their minds not their friends +but their accomplices. They are ingenious in the art of +letting themselves go and at the same time thinking themselves +controlled and praiseworthy. The naturalist, then, +ignores the group; he flaunts impartially both the classic +and the religious law. He is equally unwilling to submit +to a power imposed from above and without, or to accept +those restrictions of society, self-imposed by man's own +codified and corrected observations of the natural world +and his own impulses. He jeers at the one as hypocrisy +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page39" id="page39"></a>[pg 39]</span> +and superstition and at the other as mere "middle-class +respectability." He himself is the perpetual Ajax standing +defiant upon the headland of his own inflamed desires, +and scoffing at the lightnings either of heaven or +society. Neither devoutness nor progress but mere personal +expansion is his goal. The humanist curbs both the +flesh and the imagination by a high doctrine of expediency. +Natural values are always critically appraised in +the light of humane values, which is nearly, if not quite, +the same as saying that the individual desires and delights +must be conformed to the standards of the group. +There can be no anarchy of the imagination, no license +of the mind, no unbridled will. Humanism, no less than +religion, is nobly, though not so deeply, traditional. But +there is no tradition to the naturalist; not the normal +and representative, but the unique and spectacular is his +goal. Novelty and expansion, not form and proportion, +are his goddesses. Not truth and duty, but instinct and +appetite, are in the saddle. He will try any horrid experiment +from which he may derive a new sensation.</p> + +<p>Over against them both stands the man of religion +with his vision of the whole and his consequent law of +proud humility. The next three chapters will try to discuss +in detail these several attitudes toward life and their +respective manifestations in contemporary society.</p> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a><b>Footnote 1: </b><a href="#footnotetag1">(return) </a><p><i>The Divine Comedy: Hell</i>; canto I.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a><b>Footnote 2: </b><a href="#footnotetag2">(return) </a><p><i>The Meaning of God in Human Experience</i>, p. 518.</p></blockquote> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page40" id="page40"></a>[pg 40]</span> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER TWO</h2> + +<h2>The Children of Zion and the Sons of Greece</h2> + + +<p>We are not using the term "humanism" in this +chapter in its strictly technical sense. Because +we are not concerned with the history +of thought merely, but also with its practical embodiments +in various social organizations as well. So we +mean by "humanism" not only those modes and +systems of thought in which human interests predominate +but also the present economic, political and ecclesiastical +institutions which more or less consistently express +them. Hence, the term as used will include concepts +not always agreeing with each other, and sometimes only +semi-related to the main stream of the movement. This +need not trouble us. Strict intellectual consistency is a +fascinating and impossible goal of probably dubious +value. Moreover, it is this whole expression of the time +spirit which bathes the sensitive personality of the +preacher, persuading and moulding him quite as much +by its derived and concrete manifestations in contemporary +society as by its essential and abstract principles.</p> + +<p>There are then two sets of media through which humanism +has affected preaching. The first are philosophical +and find their expression in a large body of literature +which has been moulding thought and feeling for nearly +four centuries. Humanism begins with the general +abstract assumption that all which men can know, or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page41" id="page41"></a>[pg 41]</span> +need to know, are "natural" and human values; that they +have no means of getting outside the inexorable circle of their own experience.</p> + +<p>Much, of course, depends here upon the sense in +which the word "experience" is used. The assumption +need not necessarily be challenged except where, as is +very often the case, an arbitrarily limited definition of +experience is intended. From this general assumption +flows the subjective theory of morals; from it is derived +the conviction that the rationalistic values in religion are +the only real, or at least demonstrable, ones; and hence +from this comes the shifting of the seat of religious +authority from "revelation" to experience. In so far as +this is a correction of emphasis only, or the abandonment +of a misleading term rather than the denial of one +of the areas and modes of understanding, again we have +no quarrel with it. But if it means an exclusion of the +supersensuous sources of knowledge or the denial of +the existence of absolute values as the source of our +relative and subjective understanding, then it strikes at +the heart of religion. Because the religious life is built +on those factors of experience that lie above the strictly +rational realm of consciousness just as the pagan view +rests on primitive instincts that lie beneath it. Of course, +in asserting the importance of these "supersensuous" +values the religionist does not mean that they are beyond +the reach of human appraisal or unrelated by their +nature to the rest of our understanding. By the intuitive +he does not mean the uncritical nor by the supersensuous +the supernatural in the old and discredited sense of +an arbitrary and miraculous revelation. Mysticism is +not superstition, nor are the insights of the poet the +whimsies of the mere impressionist. But he insists that the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page42" id="page42"></a>[pg 42]</span> +humanist, in his ordinary definition of experience, ignores +or denies these superrational values. In opposition +to him he rests his faith on that definition of experience +which underlies Aristotle's statement that "the intellect +is dependent upon intuition for knowledge both of what +is below and what is above itself."</p> + +<p>Now it is this first set of factors which are the more +important. For the cause, as distinguished from the occasions, +of our present religious scale of values is, like +all major causes, not practical but ideal, and its roots +are found far beneath the soil of the present in the beginnings +of the modern age in the fourteenth century. +It was then that our world was born; it is of the essence +of that world that it arose out of indifference toward +speculative thinking and unfaith in those concepts regarding +the origin and destiny of mankind which speculative +philosophy tried to express and prove.</p> + +<p>From the first, then, humanistic leaders have not only +frankly rejected the scholastic theologies, which had +been the traditional expression of those absolute values +with which the religious experience is chiefly concerned, +but also ignored or rejected the existence of those values +themselves. Thus Petrarch is generally considered the +first of modern humanists. He not only speaks of Rome—meaning +the whole semi-political, semi-ecclesiastical +structure of dogmatic supernaturalism—as that "profane +Babylon" but also reveals his rejection of the distinctively +religious experience itself by characterizing as +"an impudent wench" the Christian church. The attack +is partly therefore on the faith in transcendent values +which fixes man's relative position by projecting him +upon the screen of an infinite existence and which asserts +that he has an absolute, that is, an other-than-human +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page43" id="page43"></a>[pg 43]</span> +guide. Again Erasmus, in his <i>Praise of Folly</i>, denounces +indiscriminately churches, priesthoods, dogmas, ethical +values, the whole structure of organized religion, +calling it those "foul smelling weeds of theology." It +was inevitable that such men as Erasmus and Thomas +More should hold aloof from the Reformation, not, as +has been sometimes asserted, from any lack of moral +courage but because of intellectual conviction. They saw +little to choose between Lutheran, Calvinistic and Romish +dogmatism. They had rejected not only mediaeval ecclesiasticism +but also that view of the world founded on +supersensuous values, whose persistent intimations had +produced the speculative and scholastic theologies. To +them, in a quite literal sense, the proper study of mankind was man.</p> + +<p>It is hardly necessary to speak here of the attitude +towards the old "supernatural" religion taken by the +English Deists of the last half of the seventeenth and +first half of the eighteenth century. Here was the +first definite struggle of the English church with a +group of thinkers who, under the leadership of Shaftesbury, +Bolingbroke and others, attempted to adapt humanistic +philosophy to theological speculation, to establish +the sufficiency of natural religion as opposed to +revelation, and to deny the unique significance of the Old +and New Testament Scriptures. The English Deists were +not deep or comprehensive thinkers, but they were typically +humanistic in that their interests were not mainly +theological or religious but rather those of a general culture. +They were inconsistent with their humanism in +their doctrine of a personal God who was not only remote +but separated from his universe, a <i>deus ex machina</i> +who excluded the idea of immanence. While less influential +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page44" id="page44"></a>[pg 44]</span> +in England, they had a powerful effect upon +French and German thinking. Both Voltaire and Rousseau +were rationalists and Deists to the end of their days +and both were unwearied foes of any other-than-natural +sources for our spiritual knowledge and religious values.</p> + +<p>In Germany the humanistic movement continued under +Herder and his younger contemporaries, Schiller and +Goethe. Its historical horizon, racial and literary sympathies, +broadened under their direction, moving farther +and farther beyond the sources and areas of accepted +religious ideas and practices. They led the revival of +study of the Aryan languages and cultures; especially +those of the Hellenes and the inhabitants of the Indian +peninsula. They originated that critical and rather hostile +scrutiny of Semitic ideas and values in present civilization, +which plays no small part in the dilettante naturalism +of the moment. Thus the nature and place of +<i>man</i>, under the influence of these "uninspired" literatures +and cultures, became more and more important as both +his person and his position in the cosmos ceased to be +interpreted either in those terms of the moral transcendence +of deity, or of the helplessness and insignificance +of his creatures, which inform both the Jewish-Christian +Scriptures and the philosophic absolutism of the Catholic theologies.</p> + +<p>But the humanism of the eighteenth century comes +most closely to grips with the classic statements and +concepts of religion in the critical philosophy of Kant. +It is the intellectual current which rises in him which is +finding its last multifarious and minute rivulets in the +various doctrines of relativity, in pragmatism, the subjectivism +of the neo-realists, and in the superior place +generally ascribed by present thinking to value judgments +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page45" id="page45"></a>[pg 45]</span> +as against existential ones. His central insistence +is upon the impossibility of any knowledge of +God as an objective reality. Speculative reason does indeed +give us the idea of God but he denies that we have +in the idea itself any ground for thinking that there is +an objective reality corresponding to it. The idea he admits +as necessitated by "the very nature of reason" but +it serves a purely harmonizing office. It is here to give +coherence and unity to the objects of the understanding, +"to finish and crown the whole of human knowledge."<a id="footnotetag3" name="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> +Experience of transcendence thus becomes impossible. +As Professor McGiffert in <i>The Modern Ideas of God</i> +says: "Subjectively considered, religion is the recognition +of our duties as commands of God. When we do +our duty we are virtuous; when we recognize it as commanded +by God we are religious. The notion that there +is anything we can do to please God except to live +rightly is superstition. Moreover, to think that we can +distinguish works of grace from works of nature, which +is the essence of historic Christianity, or that we can detect +the activity of heavenly influences is also superstition. +All such supernaturalism lies beyond our ken. There +are three common forms of superstition, all promoted +by positive religion: the belief in miracles, the belief in +mysteries, and the belief in the means of grace."<a id="footnotetag4" name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a> So +prayer is a confession of weakness, not a source of strength.</p> + +<p>Kant is more than once profoundly inconsistent with +the extreme subjectivism of his theory of ideas as when +he says in the <i>Practical Reason</i>: "Two things fill the +mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page46" id="page46"></a>[pg 46]</span> +the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: +the starry heavens above and the moral law within."<a id="footnotetag5" name="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> +Again he remarks, "The belief in a great and wise +Author of the world has been supported entirely by the +wonderful beauty, order and providence, everywhere +displayed in nature."<a id="footnotetag6" name="footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a> Here the objective reality both of +what is presented to our senses and what is conceived of +in the mind, is, as though unconsciously, taken for +granted. Thus while he contends for a practical theism, +the very basis of his interest still rests in the conviction +of a Being external to us and existing independent of our thought.</p> + +<p>But his intention of making right conduct the essence +of religion is typical of the limits of humanistic interests +and perceptions. In making his division of reason into +the theoretical and the practical, it is to the latter realm +that he assigns morality and religion. Clearly this is genuine +rationalism. I am not forgetting Kant's great religious +contribution. He was the son of devout German +pietists and saturated in the literature of the Old Testament. +It is to Amos, who may justly be called his spiritual +father, that he owes the moral absoluteness of his +categorical imperative, the reading of history as a moral +order. He was following Amos when he took God out +of the physical and put Him into the moral sphere and +interpreted Him in the terms of purpose. But the doctrine +of <i>The Critique of Practical Reason</i> is intended to +negate those transcendent elements generally believed to +be the distinctive portions of religion. God is not known +to us as an objective being, an entity without ourselves. +He is an idea, a belief, which gives meaning to our ethical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page47" id="page47"></a>[pg 47]</span> +life, a subjective necessity. He is a postulate of the +moral will. To quote Professor McGiffert again: "We +do not get God from the universe, we give Him to the +universe. We read significance and moral purpose into it. +We assume God, not to account for the world, but for +the subjective need of realizing our highest good.... +Religion becomes a creative act of the moral will just +as knowledge is a creative act of the understanding."<a id="footnotetag7" name="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a> +Thus there are no ultimate values; at least we can know +nothing of them; we have nothing to look to which is +objective and changeless. The absolutism of the Categorical +Imperative is a subjective one, bounded by ourselves, +formed of our substance. Religion is not discovered, +but self-created, a sort of sublime expediency. +It can carry, then, no confident assertion as to the meaning +and destiny of the universe as a whole.</p> + +<p>Here, then, the nature of morality, the inspiration +for character, the solution of human destiny, are not +sought outside in some sort of cosmic relationship, but +within, either in the experience of the superman, the +genius or the hero, or, as later, in the collective experience +and consciousness of the group. Thus this, too, +throws man back upon himself, makes a new exaltation +of personality in sharpest contrast to the scholastic doctrine +of the futility and depravity of human nature. It +produces the assertion of the sacred character of the individual +human being. The conviction of the immeasurable +worth of man is, of course, a characteristic teaching +of Jesus; what it is important for the preacher to remember +in humanism is the source, not the fact, of its +estimate. With Jesus man's is a derived greatness found +in him as the child of the Eternal; in humanism, it is, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page48" id="page48"></a>[pg 48]</span> +so to speak, self-originated, born of present worth, not +of sublime origin or shining destiny.</p> + +<p>So man in the humanistic movement moves into the +center of his own world, becomes himself the measuring +rod about whom all other values are grouped. In the +place of inspiration, or prophetic understanding, which +carries the implications of a transcendent source of truth +and goodness, we have a sharply limited, subjective wisdom +and insight. The "thus saith the Lord" of the Hebrew +prophet means nothing here. The humanist is, of +course, confronted with the eternal question of origins, +of the thing-in-itself, the question whose insistence makes +the continuing worth of the absolutist speculations. He +begs the question by answering it with an assertion, not +an explanation. He meets it by an exaltation of human +genius. Genius explains all sublime achievements and +genius is, so to speak, its own <i>fons et origo</i>. Thus Diderot +says: "Genius is the higher activity of the soul." +"Genius," remarks Rousseau in a letter, "makes knowledge +unnecessary." And Kant defines genius as "the talent +to discover that which cannot be taught or learned."<a id="footnotetag8" name="footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a> +This appears to be more of an evasion than a definition! +But the intent here is to refer all that seems to transcend +mundane categories, man's highest, his widest, his +sublimest intuitions and achievements, back to himself; +he is his own source of light and power.</p> + +<p>Such an anthropocentric view of life and destiny in +exalting man, of course, thereby liberated him, not +merely from ecclesiastical domination, but also from +those illusive fears and questionings, those remote and +imaginative estimates of his own intended worth and +those consequent exacting demands upon himself which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page49" id="page49"></a>[pg 49]</span> +are a part of the religious interpretation of life. Humanistic +writing is full of the exulting sense of this emancipation. +These superconsiderations do not belong in the +world of experience as the humanist ordinarily conceives +of it. Hence, man lives in an immensely contracted, +but a very real and tangible world and within +the small experimental circumference of it, he holds a +far larger place (from one viewpoint, a far smaller one +from another) than that of a finite creature caught in +the snare of this world and yet a child of the Eternal, +having infinite destinies. The humanist sees man as freed +from the tyranny of this supernatural revelation and +laws. He rejoices over man because now he stands,</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">"self-poised on manhood's solid earth</p> +<p>Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,</p> +<p>Fed from within with all the strength he needs."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It is this sense of independence which arouses in Goethe +a perennial enthusiasm. It is the greatest bliss, he says, +that the humanist won back for us. Henceforth, we must +strive with all our power to keep it.</p> + +<p>We have attempted this brief sketch of one of the +chief sources of the contemporary thought movement, +that we may realize the pit whence we were digged, the +quarry from which many corner stones in the present +edifice of civilization were dug. The preacher tends to +underestimate the comprehensive character of the pervasive +ideas, worked into many institutions and practices, +which are continually impinging upon him and his message. +They form a perpetual attrition, working silently +and ceaselessly day and night, wearing away the distinctively +religious conceptions of the community. Much of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page50" id="page50"></a>[pg 50]</span> +the vagueness and sentimentalism of present preaching, +its uncritical impressionism, is due to the influence of +the non-religious or, at least, the insufficiently religious +character of the ruling ideas and motives outside the +church which are impinging upon it, and upon the rest of the thinking of the moment.</p> + +<p>Now, this <i>abstract</i> humanism of the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries had a considerable influence upon +early American preaching. The latter part of the eighteenth +century marked a breaking away from the Protestant +scholasticism of the Reformation theology. The +French Revolution accented and made operative, even +across the Atlantic, the typical humanistic concepts of +the rights of man and the sovereignty of the individual +person. Skepticism and even atheism became a fashion +in our infant republic. It was a mark of sophistication +with many educated men to regard Christianity as not +worthy of serious consideration. College students modestly +admitted that they were infidels and with a delicious +naïveté assumed the names of Voltaire, Thomas Paine +and even of that notorious and notable egotist Rousseau. +It is said that in 1795, on the first Sunday of President +administration in Yale College, only three undergraduates +remained after service to take the sacrament. +The reasons were partly political, probably, but +these themselves were grounded in the new philosophical, anti-religious attitude.</p> + +<p>Of course, this affected the churches. There was a reaction +from Protestant scholasticism within them which, +later on, culminated in Unitarianism, Universalism and +Arminianism. The most significant thing in the Unitarian +movement was not its rejection of the Trinitarian speculation, +but its positive contribution to the reassertion of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page51" id="page51"></a>[pg 51]</span> +Jesus' doctrine of the worth and dignity of human nature. +But it recovered that doctrine much more by the way of +humanistic philosophy than by way of the teaching of the +New Testament. I suppose the thing which has made the +weakness of the Unitarian movement, its acknowledged +lack of religious warmth and feeling, is due not to the +place where it stands, but to the road by which it got there.</p> + +<p>Yet, take it for all in all, the effect upon the preaching +of the supernatural and speculative doctrines and insights +of Christianity, was not in America as great as +might be expected. Kant died in 1804, and Goethe in +1832, but only in the last sixty years has the preaching +of the "evangelical" churches been fundamentally affected +by the prevailing intellectual currents of the day. +This is due, I think, to two causes. One was the nature +of the German Reformation. It found preaching at a +low ebb. Every great force, scholastic, popular, mystical, +which had contributed to the splendor of the mediaeval +pulpit had fallen into decay, and the widespread moral +laxity of the clergy precluded spiritual insight. The Reformation, +with its ethical and political interests, revived +preaching and by the nature of these same interests fixed +the limits and determined the direction within which it +should develop. It is important to remember that Luther +did not break with the old theological system. He continued +his belief in an authority and revelation anterior, +exterior and superior to man, merely shifting the locus +of that authority from the Church to the Book. Thus +he paved the way for Zwingli and the Protestant scholasticism +which became more rigid and sterile than the +Catholic which it succeeded. We usually regard the Reformation +as a part of the Renaissance and hence included +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page52" id="page52"></a>[pg 52]</span> +in the humanistic movement. Politically and religiously, +it undoubtedly should be so regarded, for it was +a chief factor in the renewal of German nationalism and +its central doctrines of justification by faith, and the +right of each separate believer to an unmediated access +to the Highest, exalted the integrity and dignity of +the individual. Inconsistently, however, it continued the +old theological tradition. In the Lutheran system, says +Paul de Lagarde, we see the Catholic scholastic structure +standing untouched with the exception of a few +loci. And Harnack, in the <i>Dogmengeschichte</i> calls it "a +miserable duplication of the Catholic Church."</p> + +<p>Now, New England preaching, it is true, found its +chief roots in Calvinism; Calvin, rather than Luther, +was the religious leader of the Reformation outside +Germany. But his system, also, is only the continuation +of the ancient philosophy of the Christian faith originating +with Augustine. He reduced it to order, expounded +it with energy and consistency, but one has only to recall +its major doctrines of the depravity of man, the atonement +for sin, the irresistible grace of the Holy Spirit, to +see how untouched it was by the characteristic postulates +of the new humanism. And it was on his theology that +New England preaching was founded. It was Calvin +who, through Jonathan Edwards, the elder and the +younger, Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, Nathaniel +Emmons, Nathaniel N. Taylor, determined the course of the New England pulpit.</p> + +<p>The other reason for our relative immunity from humanistic +influence is accidental and complementary +merely. It is the mere fact of our physical isolation, +which, until the last seventy-five years, quite largely shut +off thinkers here from continental and English currents +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page53" id="page53"></a>[pg 53]</span> +of thought and contributed to the brilliant, if sterile, +provincialism of the New England theology.</p> + +<p>It is, therefore, to the second set of media, which may +be generally characterized as scientific and practical, that +we now turn. These are the forces which apparently are +most affecting Christian preaching at this moment. But +it is important to remember that a large part of their influence +is to be traced to the philosophic and ethical tendencies +of the earlier humanistic movement which had +set the scene for them, to which they are so sympathetic +that we may assert that it is in them that their practical +interests are grounded and by them that their scientific +methods are reinforced. I divide this second group of +media, for clearness, under three heads.</p> + +<p>First comes the rise of the natural sciences. In 1859, +Darwin published the <i>Origin of Species</i> and gave to the +world the evolutionary hypothesis, foreshadowed by +Goethe and other eighteenth-century thinkers, simultaneously +formulated by Wallace and himself. Here is a +theory, open to objections certainly, not yet conclusively +demonstrated, but the most probable one which we yet +possess, as to the method of the appearance and the continuance +of life upon the planet. It conceives of creation +as an unimaginably long and intricate development from +the inorganic to the organic, from simple to complex +forms of life. Like Kantianism and the humanistic +movement generally, the evolutionary hypothesis springs +from reasoned observation of man and nature, not from +any <i>a priori</i> or speculative process. With this theory, long +a regulative idea of our world, preaching was forced to +come to some sort of an understanding. It strikes a +powerful blow at the scholastic notion of a dichotomized +universe divided between nature and supernature, divine +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page54" id="page54"></a>[pg 54]</span> +and human. It reinforced humanism by minimizing, if +not making unnecessary, the objective and external +source and external interpretations of religions. It pushes +back the initial creative <i>act</i> until it is lost in the mists +and chaos of an unimaginably remote past. Meanwhile, +creative <i>energy</i>, the very essence of transcendent life, is, +as we know it, not transcendent at all, but working outward +from within, a part of the process, not above and +beyond it. The inevitable implication here is that God is +sufficiently, if not exclusively, known through natural +and human media. Science recognizes Him in the terms +of its own categories as in and of His world, a part of +all its ongoings and developments. But His creative life is +indistinguishable from, if not identical with, its expressions. +Here, then, is a practical obliteration of the line +once so sharply drawn between the natural and the supernatural. +Hence the demarcation between the divine and +human into mutually exclusive states has disappeared.</p> + +<p>This would seem, then, to wipe out also any knowledge +of absolute values. Christian theism has interpreted God +largely in static, final terms. The craving for the absolute +in the human mind, as witnessed by the long course of +the history of thought, as pathetically witnessed to in the +mixture of chicanery, fanaticism and insight of the +modern mystical and occult healing sects, is central and +immeasurable. But God, found, if at all, in the terms +of a present process, is not static and absolute, but dynamic +and relative; indefinite, incomplete, not final. And +man's immense difference from Him, that sense of the +immeasurable space between creator and created, is +strangely contracted. The gulf between holiness and +guiltiness tends also to disappear. For our life would appear +to be plastic and indefinite, a process rather than a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page55" id="page55"></a>[pg 55]</span> +state, not open then to conclusive moral estimates; incomplete, +not fallen; life an orderly process, hence not +perverse but defensible; without known breaks or infringements, +hence relatively normal and sufficiently intelligible.</p> + +<p>A second factor was the rise of the humane sciences. +In the seventh and eighth decades of the last century +men were absorbed in the discovery of the nature and +extent of the material universe. But beginning about +1890, interest swerved again toward man as its most revealing +study and most significant inhabitant. Anthropology, +ethnology, sociology, physical and functional psychology, +came to the front. Especially the humane studies +of political science and industrial economics were magnified +because of the new and urgent problems born of an +industrial civilization and a capitalistic state. The invention +and perfection of the industrial machine had by +now thoroughly dislocated former social groupings, +made its own ethical standards and human problems. In +the early days of the labor movement William Morris +wrote, "we have become slaves of the monster to which +invention has given birth." In 1853, shortly after the introduction +of the cotton gin into India, the Viceroy +wrote: "The misery is scarcely paralleled in the history +of trade." (A large statement that!) "The bones of the +cotton workers whiten the plains of India."</p> + +<p>But the temporary suffering caused by the immediate +crowding out of cottage industry and the abrupt increase +in production was insignificant beside the deeper influence, +physical, moral, mental, of the machine in changing +the permanent habitat and the entire mode of living +for millions of human beings. It removed them from +those healthy rural surroundings which preserve the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page56" id="page56"></a>[pg 56]</span> +half-primitive, half-poetic insight into the nature of +things which comes from relative isolation and close contact +with the soil, to the nervous tension, the amoral conditions, +the airless, lightless ugliness of the early factory +settlements. Here living conditions were not merely +beastly; they were often bestial. The economic helplessness +of the factory hands reduced them to essential slavery. +They must live where the factory was, and could +work only in one factory, for they could not afford to +move. Hence they must obey their industrial master in +every particular, since the raw material, the plant, the +tools, the very roof that covered them, were all his! In +this new human condition was a powerful reinforcement, +from another angle of approach, of the humanistic impulse. +Man's interest in himself, which had been sometimes +that of the dilettante, largely imaginative and even +sentimental, was reinforced by man's new distress and became concrete and scientific.</p> + +<p>Thus man regarded himself and his own world with +a new and urgent attention. The methods and secondary +causes of his intellectual, emotional and volitional life +began to be laid bare. The new situation revealed the immense +part played in shaping the personality and the fate +of the individual by inheritance and environment. The +Freudian doctrine, which traces conduct and habit back +to early or prenatal repressions, strengthens the interest +in the physical and materialistic sources of character and +conduct in human life. Behavioristic psychology, interpreting +human nature in terms of observation and action, +rather than analysis and value judgments, does the same. +It tends to put the same emphasis upon the external and +sensationalistic aspects of human experience.</p> + +<p>That, then, which is a central force in religion, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page57" id="page57"></a>[pg 57]</span> +sense of the inscrutability of human nature, the feeling +of awe before the natural processes, what Paul called +the mystery of iniquity and the mystery of godliness, +tends to disappear. Wonder and confident curiosity succeed +humility and awe. That which is of the essence of +religion, the sense of helplessness coupled with the sense +of responsibility, is stifled. Whatever else the humane +sciences have done, they have deepened man's fascinated +and narrowing absorption in himself and given him +apparent reason to believe that by analyzing the iron +chain of cause and effect which binds the process and +admitting that it permits no deflection or variation, he is +making the further questions as to the origin, meaning +and destiny of that process either futile or superfluous. +So that, in brief, the check to speculative thinking and +the repudiation of central metaphysical concepts, which +the earlier movement brought about, has been accentuated +and sealed by the humane sciences and the new +and living problems offered them for practical solution. +Thus the generation now ending has been carried beyond +the point of combating ancient doctrines of God and +man, to the place where it has become comparatively indifferent, +rather than hostile, to any doctrine of God, so +absorbed is it in the physical functions, the temporal +needs and the material manifestations of human personality.</p> + +<p>Finally, as the natural and humane sciences mark new +steps in the expanding humanistic movement, so in these +last days, critical scholarship, itself largely a product of +the humanistic viewpoint, has added another factor to +the group. The new methods of historical and literary +criticism, of comparative investigation in religion and +the other arts, have exerted a vast influence upon +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page58" id="page58"></a>[pg 58]</span> +contemporary religious thought. They have not merely completed +the breakdown of an arbitrary and fixed external +authority and rendered finally invalid the notion of equal +or verbal inspiration in sacred writings, but the present +tendency, especially in comparative religion, is to seek +the source of all so-called religious experience within the +human consciousness; particularly to derive it all from +group experience. Here, then, is a theory of religious +origins which once more turns the spirit of man back +upon itself. Robertson Smith, Jane Harrison, Durkheim, +rejecting an earlier animistic theory, find the origin of +religion not in contemplation of the natural world and +in the intuitive perception of something more-than-world +which lies behind it, but in the group experience whose +heightened emotional intensity and nervous energy imparts +to the one the exaltation of the many. Smith, in the +<i>Religion of the Semites</i>,<a id="footnotetag9" name="footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a> emphasizes, as the fundamental +conception of ancient religion, "the solidarity of the gods +and their worshipers as part of an organic society." +Durkheim goes beyond this. There are not at the beginning +men and gods, but only the social group and the +collective emotions and representations which are generated +through membership in the group.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is humanism again carried to the very +heart of the citadel. Religion at its source contains no +real perceptions of any extra-human force or person. +What seemed to be such perceptions were only the felt +participation of the individual in a collective consciousness +which is superindividual, but not superhuman and +always continuous with the individual consciousness. So +that, whatever may or may not be true later, the beginning +of man's metaphysical interests, his cosmic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page59" id="page59"></a>[pg 59]</span> +consciousness, his more-than-human contacts, is simply his +social experience, his collective emotions and representations. +Thus Durkheim: "We are able to say, in sum, that +the religious individual does not deceive himself when +he believes in the existence of a moral power upon which +he depends and from which he holds the larger portion of +himself. That power exists; it is society. When the Australian +feels within himself the surging of a life whose +intensity surprises him, he is the dupe of no illusion; +that exaltation is real, and it is really the product of +forces that are external and superior to the individual."<a id="footnotetag10" name="footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a> +Yes, but identical in kind and genesis with himself and +his own race. To Leuba, in his <i>Psychological Study of +Religion</i>, this has already become the accepted viewpoint. +Whatever is enduring and significant in religion is +merely an expression of man's social consciousness and +experience, his sense of participation in a common life. +"Humanity, idealized and conceived as a manifestation +of creative energy, possesses surprising qualifications for +a source of religious inspiration." Professor Overstreet, +in "The Democratic Conception of God," <i>Hibbert Journal</i>, +volume XI, page 409, says: "It is this large figure, +not simply of human but of cosmic society which is to +yield our God of the future. There is no place in the +future for an eternally perfect being and no need—society, +democratic from end to end, can brook no such +radical class distinction as that between a supreme being, +favored with eternal and absolute perfection, and +the mass of beings doomed to the lower ways of imperfect struggle."</p> + +<p>There is certainly a striking immediacy in such +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page60" id="page60"></a>[pg 60]</span> +language. We leave for later treatment the question as to +the historical validity of such an attitude. It certainly +ignores some of the most distinguished and fruitful concepts +of trained minds; it rules out of court what are +to the majority of men real and precious factors in the +religious experience. It would appear to be another instance, +among the many, of the fallacy of identifying the +part with the whole. But the effect of such pervasive +thought currents, the more subtle and unfightable because +indirect and disguised in popular appearance and +influence, upon the ethical and spiritual temper of religious +leaders, the very audacity of whose tasks puts them +on the defensive, is vast and incalculable. At the worst, +it drives man into a mechanicalized universe, with a resulting +materialism of thought and life; at the best, it +makes him a pragmatist with amiable but immediate objectives, +just practical "results" as his guide and goal. +Morality as, in Antigone's noble phrase, "the unwritten +law of heaven" sinks down and disappears. There is no +room here for the Job who abhors himself and repents +in dust and ashes nor for Plato's <i>One behind the Many</i>; +no perceptible room, in such a world, for any of the absolute +values, the transcendent interests, the ethics of +idealism, any eschatology, or for Christian theodicy. That +which has been the typical contribution of the religious +perceptions in the past, namely, the comprehensive +vision of life and the world and time <i>sub specie aeternitatis</i> +is here abandoned. Eternity is unreal or empty; we +never heard the music of the spheres. We are facing at +this moment a disintegrating age. Here is a prime reason +for it. The spiritual solidarity of mankind under the humanistic +interpretation of life and destiny is dissolving +and breaking down. Humanism is ingenious and reasonable +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page61" id="page61"></a>[pg 61]</span> +and clever but it is too limited; it doesn't answer enough questions.</p> + +<p>Before going on, in a future chapter, to discuss +the question as to what kind of preaching such a world-view, +seen from the Christian standpoint, needs, we are +now to inquire what the effect of this humanistic movement +upon Christian preaching has already been. That +our preaching should have been profoundly influenced +by it is inevitable. Religion is not apart from the rest of +life. The very temperament of the speaker makes him +peculiarly susceptible to the intellectual and spiritual +movements about him. What, then, has humanism done +to preaching? Has it worked to clarify and solidify the +essence of the religious position? Or has preaching declined +and become neutralized in religious quality under it?</p> + +<p>First: it has profoundly affected Christian preaching +about God. The contemporary sermon on Deity minimizes +or leaves out divine transcendence; thus it starves +one fundamental impulse in man—the need and desire to +look up. Instead of this transcendence modern preaching +emphasizes immanence, often to a naïve and ludicrous +degree. God is the being who is like us. Under the influence +of that monistic idealism, which is a derived philosophy +of the humanistic impulse, preaching lays all the +emphasis upon divine immanence in sharpest contrast +either to the deistic transcendence of the eighteenth century +or the separateness and aloofness of the God of the +Hebrew Scriptures, or of the classic Greek theologies of +Christianity. God is, of course; that is, He is the informing +principle in the natural and human universe and essentially +one with it. Present preaching does not confess +this identification but it evades rather than meets the logical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page62" id="page62"></a>[pg 62]</span> +pantheistic conclusion. So our preaching has to do +with God in the common round of daily tasks; with +sweeping a room to His glory; with adoration of His +presence in a sunset and worship of Him in a star. Every +bush's aflame with Him; there are sermons in stones and +poems in running brooks. Before us, even as behind, God +is and all is well. We are filled with a sort of intoxication +with this intimate and protective company of the Infinite; +we are magnificently unabashed as we familiarly approach +Him. "Closer is He than breathing; nearer than +hands or feet." Not then by denying or condemning or +distrusting the world in which we live, not by asserting +the differences between God and humanity do we understand +Him. But by closest touch with nature do we find +Him. By a superb paradox, not without value, yet equally +ineffable in sentimentality and sublime in its impiety we +say, beholding man, "that which is most human is most divine!"</p> + +<p>That there is truth in such comfortable and affable +preaching is obvious; that there is not much truth in it is +obvious, too. To what extent, and in what ways, nature, +red with tooth and claw, indifferent, ruthless, whimsical, +can be called the expression of the Christian God, is not +usually specifically stated. In what way man, just emerging +from the horror, the shame, the futility of his last +and greatest debauch of bloody self-destruction, can be +called the chief medium of truth, holiness and beauty, +the matrix of divinity, is not entirely manifest. But the +fatal defect of such preaching is not that there is not, of +course, a real identity between the world and its Maker, +the soul and its Creator, but that the aspect of reality +which this truth expresses is the one which has least religious +value, is least distinctive in the spiritual experience. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page63" id="page63"></a>[pg 63]</span> +The religious nature is satisfied, and the springs of +moral action are refreshed by dwelling on the "specialness" +of God; men are brought back to themselves, not +among their fellows and by identifying them with their +fellows, but by lifting them to the secret place of the +Most High. They need religiously not thousand-tongued +nature, but to be kept secretly in His pavilion from the +strife of tongues. It is the difference between God and +men which makes men who know themselves trust Him. +It is the "otherness," not the sameness, which makes Him +desirable and potent in the daily round of life. A purely +ethical interest in God ceases to be ethical and becomes +complacent; when we rule out the supraphenomenal we +have shut the door on the chief strength of the higher life.</p> + +<p>Second: modern preaching, under this same influence +and to a yet greater degree, emphasizes the principle of +identity, where we need that of difference, in its preaching +about Jesus. He is still the most moving theme for +the popular presentation of religion. But that is because +He offers the most intelligible approach to that very +"otherness" in the person of the godhead. His healing +and reconciling influence over the heart of man—the way +the human spirit expands and blossoms in His presence—is +moving beyond expression to any observer, religious +or irreligious. Each new crusade in the long strife for +human betterment looks in sublime confidence to Him as +its forerunner and defense. To what planes of common +service, faith, magnanimous solicitude could He not lift +the embittered, worldlyized men and women of this torn +and distracted age, which is so desperately seeking its own +life and thereby so inexorably losing it! But why is the +heart subdued, the mind elevated, the will made tractable +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page64" id="page64"></a>[pg 64]</span> +by Him? Why, because He is enough like us so that +we know that He understands, has utter comprehension; +and He is enough different from us so that we are willing +to trust Him. In what lies the essence of the leadership +of Jesus? He is not like us: therefore, we are willing +to relinquish ourselves into His hands.</p> + +<p>Now, that is only half the truth. But if I may use a +paradox, it is the important half, the primary half. And +it is just that essential element in the Christian experience +of Jesus that modern preaching, under the humanistic +impulse, is neglecting. Indeed, liberal preachers have +largely ceased to sermonize about Him, just because it +has become so easy! Humanism has made Jesus obvious, +hence, relatively impotent. With its unified cosmos, its +immanent God, its exalted humanity, the whole Christological +problem has become trivial. It drops the cosmic +approach to the person of Jesus in favor of the ethical. +It does not approach Him from the side of God; we approach +nothing from that side now; but from the side of +man. Thus He is not so much a divine revelation as He +is a human achievement. Humanity and divinity are one +in essence. The Creator is distinguished from His creatures +in multifarious differences of degree but not in kind. +We do not see, then, in Christ, a perfect isolated God, +joined to a perfect isolated man, in what were indeed +the incredible terms of the older and superseded Christologies. +But rather, He is the perfect revelation of the moral +being, the character of God, in all those ways capable +of expression or comprehension in human life, just because +he is the highest manifestation of a humanity +through which God has been forever expressing Himself +in the world. For man is, so to speak, his own cosmic +center; the greatest divine manifestation which we know. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page65" id="page65"></a>[pg 65]</span> +Granted, then, an ideal man, a complete moral being, and +<i>ipso facto</i> we have our supreme revelation of God.</p> + +<p>So runs the thrice familiar argument. Of course, we +have gained something by it. We may drop gladly the +old dualistic philosophy, and we must drop it, though I +doubt if it is so easy to drop the dualistic experience +which created it. But I beg to point out that, on the +whole, we have lost more religiously than we have gained. +For we have made Jesus easy to understand, not as He +brings us up to His level, but as we have reduced Him to +ours. Can we afford to do that? Bernard's mystical line, +"The love of Jesus, what it is, none but His loved ones +know," has small meaning here. The argument is very good +humanism but it drops the word "Saviour" out of the vocabulary +of faith. Oh, how many sermons since, let us +say, 1890, have been preached on the text, "He that hath +seen me, hath seen the Father." And how uniformly the +sermons have explained that the text means not that Jesus +is like God, but that God is like Jesus—and we have +already seen that Jesus is like us! One only has to state +it all to see beneath its superficial reasonableness its appalling profanity!</p> + +<p>Third: we may see the influence of humanism upon our +preaching in the relinquishment of the goal of conversion. +We are preaching to educate, not to save; to instruct, +not to transform. Conversion may be gradual and +half-unconscious, a long and normal process under favorable +inheritance and with the culture of a Christian environment. +Or it may be sudden and catastrophic, a violent +change of emotional and volitional activity. When a +man whose feeling has been repressed by sin and crusted +over by deception, whose inner restlessness has been accumulating +under the misery and impotence of a divided +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page66" id="page66"></a>[pg 66]</span> +life, is brought into contact with Christian truth, he can +only accept it through a volitional crisis, with its cleansing +flood of penitence and confession and its blessed reward +of the sense of pardon and peace and the relinquishment +of the self into the divine hands. But one thing is +true of either process in the Christian doctrine of conversion. +It is not merely an achievement, although it is +that; it is also a rescue. It cannot come about without +faith, the "will to believe"; neither can it come about by +that alone. Conversion is something we do; it is also +something else, working within us, if we will let it, helping +us to do; hence it is something done for us.</p> + +<p>Now, this experience of conversion is passing out of +Christian life and preaching under humanistic influence. +We are accepting the Socratic dictum that knowledge is +virtue. Hence we blur the distinction between the Christian +and the non-Christian. Education supplants salvation. +We bring the boys and girls into the church because +they are safer there than outside it; and on the whole it +is a good thing to do and really they belong there anyway. +The church member is a man of the world, softened +by Christian feeling. He is a kindly and amiable citizen +and an honorable man; he has not been saved. But he +knows the unwisdom of evil; if you know what is right +you will do it. Intelligence needs no support from grace. +It is strange that the church does not see that with this +relinquishment of her insistence upon something that religion +can do for a man that nothing else can attempt, +she has thereby given up her real excuse for being, +and that her peculiar and distinctive mission has gone. +It is strange that she does not see that the humanism +which, since it is at home in the world, can sometimes +make there a classic hero, degenerates dreadfully and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page67" id="page67"></a>[pg 67]</span> +becomes unreal in a church where unskilled hands use it to +make it a substitute for a Christian saint! But for how +many efficient parish administrators, Y.M.C.A. secretaries, +up-to-date preachers, character is conceived of as +coming not by discipline but by expansion, not by salvation, +but by activity. Social service solves everything +without any reference to the troublesome fact that the +value of the service will depend upon the quality of the +servant. Salvation is a combination of intelligence and +machinery. Sin is pure ignorance or just maladjustment +to environment. All we need is to know what is right and +wrong; the humane sciences will take care of that; and, +then, have an advertising agent, a gymnasium, a committee +on spiritual resources, a program, a conference, a +drive for money, and behold, the Kingdom of God is among us!</p> + +<p>Fourth, and most significant: it is to the humanistic +impulse and its derived philosophies that we owe the individualistic +ethics, the relative absence of the sense of +moral responsibility for the social order which has, from +the beginning, maimed and distorted Protestant Christianity. +It was, perhaps, a consequence of the speculative +and absolute philosophies of the mediaeval church that, +since they endeavored to relate religion to the whole of +the cosmos, its remotest and ultimate issues, so they conceived +of its absoluteness as concerned with the whole +of human experience, with every relation of organized +society. Under their regulative ideas all human beings, +not a selected number, had, not in themselves but because +of the Divine Sacrifice, divine significance; reverence +was had, not for supermen or captains of industry, +but for every one of those for whom Christ died. There +were no human institutions which were ends in themselves +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page68" id="page68"></a>[pg 68]</span> +or more important than the men which created and +served them. The Holy Catholic Church was the only institution +which was so conceived; all others, social, political, +economic, were means toward the end of the preservation +and expression of human personality. Hence, the +interest of the mediaeval church in social ethics and corporate +values; hence, the axiom of the church's control +of, the believers' responsibility for, the economic relations +of society. An unjust distribution of goods, the withholding +from the producer of his fair share of the wealth +which he creates, profiteering, predatory riches—these +were ranked under one term as avarice, and they were +counted not among the venial offenses, like aberrations +of the flesh, but avarice was considered one of the seven +deadly sins of the spirit. The application of the ethics of +Jesus to social control began to die out as humanism individualized +Christian morals and as, under its influence, +nationalism tended to supplant the international ecclesiastical +order. The cynical and sordid maxim that business +is business; that, in the economic sphere, the standards +of the church are not operative and the responsibility of +the church is not recognized—notions which are a chief +heresy and an outstanding disgrace of nineteenth-century +religion, from which we are only now painfully and +slowly reacting—these may be traced back to the influence +of humanism upon Christian thought and conduct.</p> + +<p>In general, then, it seems to me abundantly clear that +the humanistic movement has both limited and secularized +Christian preaching. It dogmatically ignores +supersensuous values; hence it has rationalized preaching +hence it has made provincial its intellectual approach +and treatment, narrowed and made mechanical its content. +It has turned preaching away from speculative to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page69" id="page69"></a>[pg 69]</span> +practical themes. It was, perhaps, this mental and spiritual +decline of the ministry to which a distinguished educator +referred when he told a body of Congregational +preachers that their sermons were marked by "intellectual +frugality." It is this which a great New England +theologian-preacher, Dr. Gordon, means when he says +"an indescribable pettiness, a mean kind of retail trade +has taken possession of the preachers; they have substituted +the mill-round for the sun-path."</p> + +<p>The whole world today tends toward a monstrous egotism. +Man's attention is centered on himself, his temporal +salvation, his external prosperity. Preaching, yielding +partly to the intellectual and partly to the practical environment, +has tended to adopt the same secular scale +of values, somewhat pietized and intensified, and to move +within the same area of operation. That is why most +preaching today deals with relations of men with +men, not of men with God. Yet human relationships can +only be determined in the light of ultimate ones. Most +preaching instinctively avoids the definitely religious +themes; deals with the ethical aspects of devotion; with +conduct rather than with worship; with the effects, not +the causes, the expression, not the essence of the religious +life. Most college preaching chiefly amounts to informal +talks on conduct; somewhat idealized discussions of public +questions; exhortations to social service. When sermons +do deal with ultimate sanctions they can hardly be +called Christian. They are often stoical; self-control is +exalted as an heroic achievement, as being self-authenticating, +carrying its own reward. Or they are utilitarian, +giving a sentimentalized or frankly shrewd doctrine of +expediencies, the appeal to an exaggerated self-respect, +enlightened self-interest, social responsibility. These are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page70" id="page70"></a>[pg 70]</span> +typical humanistic values; they are real and potent and +legitimate. But they are not religious and they do not +touch religious motives. The very difference between the +humanist and the Christian lies here. To obey a principle +is moral and admirable; to do good and be good because +it pays is sensible; but to act from love of a person is a +joyous ecstasy, a liberation of power; it alone transforms +life with an ultimate and enduring goodness. Genuine +Christian preaching makes its final appeal, not to fear, +not to hope, not to future rewards and punishments, not +to reason or prudence or benevolence. It makes its appeal +to love, and that means that it calls men to devotion to +a living Being, a Transcendence beyond and without +us. For you cannot love a principle, or relinquish yourself +to an idea. You must love another living Being. +Which amounts to saying that humanism just because +it is self-contained is self-condemned. It minimizes or +ignores the living God, in His world, but not to be identified +with it; beyond it and above it; loving it because it +needs to be loved; blessing it because saving it. In so +doing, it lays the axe at the very root of the tree of religion. +Francis Xavier, in his greatest of all hymns, has +stated once for all the essence of the Christian motive and the religious attitude:</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"O Deus, ego amo te</p> +<p>Nec amo te ut salves me</p> +<p>Aut quia non amantes te</p> +<p>Aeternis punis igne.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>"Nee praemii illius spe</p> +<p>Sed sicut tu amasti me</p> +<p>Sic amo et amabo te</p> +<p>Solem, quia Rex meus est."</p> + </div> </div> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page71" id="page71"></a>[pg 71]</span> + +<p>What, then, has been the final effect of humanism +upon preaching? It has tempted the preacher to depersonalize +religion. And since love is the essence of personality, +it has thereby stripped preaching of the emotional +energy, of the universal human interests and the +prophetic insight which only love can bestow. Over +against this depersonalization, we must find some way +to return to expressing the religious view and utilizing +the religious power of the human spirit.</p> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a><b>Footnote 3: </b><a href="#footnotetag3">(return) </a><p>See <i>The Critique of Pure Reason</i> (Müller, tr.), pp. 575 ff.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a><b>Footnote 4: </b><a href="#footnotetag4">(return) </a><p><i>Harvard Theo. Rev.</i>, vol. I, no. 1, p. 16.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a><b>Footnote 5: </b><a href="#footnotetag5">(return) </a><p><i>The Critique of Practical Reason</i> (tr. T.K. Abbott), p. 260.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote6" name="footnote6"></a><b>Footnote 6: </b><a href="#footnotetag6">(return) </a><p><i>The Critique of Pure Reason</i>, p. 702.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote7" name="footnote7"></a><b>Footnote 7: </b><a href="#footnotetag7">(return) </a><p><i>H.T.R.</i>, vol. I, no. 1, p. 18.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote8" name="footnote8"></a><b>Footnote 8: </b><a href="#footnotetag8">(return) </a><p><i>Anthropologie</i>, para. 87 c.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote9" name="footnote9"></a><b>Footnote 9: </b><a href="#footnotetag9">(return) </a><p>P. 32.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote10" name="footnote10"></a><b>Footnote 10: </b><a href="#footnotetag10">(return) </a><p><i>Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse</i>, p. 322.</p></blockquote> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page72" id="page72"></a>[pg 72]</span> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER THREE</h2> + +<h2>Eating, Drinking and Being Merry</h2> + + +<p>We ventured to say in the preceding chapter +that, under the influences of more than three +centuries of humanism, the spiritual solidarity +of mankind is breaking down. For humanism makes +an inhuman demand upon the will; it minimizes the force +of the subrational and it largely ignores the superrational +elements in human experience; it does not +answer enough questions. Indeed, it is frankly confessed, +particularly by students of the political and economic +forces now working in society, that the new freedom +born in the Renaissance is, in some grave sense, a +failure. It destroyed what had been the common moral +authority of European civilization in its denial of the +rule of the church. But for nearly four centuries it has +become increasingly clear that it offered no adequate +substitute for the supernatural moral and religious order +which it supplanted. John Morley was certainly one of +the most enlightened and humane positivists of the last +generation. In his <i>Recollections</i>, published three years +ago, there is a final paragraph which runs as follows: +"A painful interrogatory, I must confess, emerges. Has +not your school held the civilized world, both old and +new alike, in the hollow of their hand for two long generations +past? Is it quite clear that their influence has been +so much more potent than the gospel of the various +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page73" id="page73"></a>[pg 73]</span> +churches? <i>Circumspice</i>. Is not diplomacy, unkindly +called by Voltaire the field of lies, as able as ever it was +to dupe governments and governed by grand abstract +catchwords veiling obscure and inexplicable purposes, +and turning the whole world over with blood and tears, +to a strange Witch's Sabbath?"<a id="footnotetag11" name="footnotetag11"></a><a href="#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a> This is his conclusion of the whole matter.</p> + +<p>But while the reasons for the failure are not far to +seek, it is worth while for the preacher to dwell on them +for a moment. In strongly centered souls like a Morley +or an Erasmus, humanism produces a stoical endurance +and a sublime self-confidence. But it tends, in lesser +spirits, to a restless arrogance. Hence, both those lower +elements in human nature, the nature and extent of +whose force it either cloaks or minimizes, and those imponderable +and supersensuous values which it tends to +ignore and which are not ordinarily included in its definition +of experience, return to vex and plague it. Indeed +the worst foe of humanism has never been the religious +view of the world upon whose stored-up moral reserves +of uncompromising doctrine it has often half-consciously +subsisted. Humanism has long profited from the admitted +truth that the moral restraints of an age that possesses +an authoritative and absolute belief survive for some +time after the doctrine itself has been rejected. What +has revealed the incompleteness of the humanistic position +has been its constant tendency to decline into naturalism; +a tendency markedly accelerated today. Hence, +we find ourselves in a disintegrating and distracted epoch. +In 1912 Rudolph Eucken wrote: "The moral solidarity +of mankind is dissolved. Sects and parties are increasing; +common estimates and ideals keep slipping away +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page74" id="page74"></a>[pg 74]</span> +from us; we understand one another less and less. Even +voluntary associations, that form of unity peculiar to +modern times, unite more in achievement than in disposition, +bring men together outwardly rather than inwardly. +The danger is imminent that the end may be <i>bellum +omnium contra omnes</i>, a war of all against all."<a id="footnotetag12" name="footnotetag12"></a><a href="#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a></p> + +<p>That disintegration is sufficiently advanced so that we +can see the direction it is taking and the principle that +inspires it. Humanism has at least the value of an objective +standard in the sense that it sets up criteria which +are without the individual; it substitutes a collective subjectivism, +if we may use the term, for personal whim +and impulse. Thus it proclaims a classic standard of +moderation in all things, the golden mean of the Greeks, +Confucius' and Gautama's law of measure. It proposes +to bring the primitive and sensual element in man under +critical control; to accomplish this it relies chiefly upon +its amiable exaggeration of the reasonableness of human +nature. But the Socratic dictum that knowledge is virtue +was the product of a personality distinguished, if we accept +the dialogues of Plato, by a perfect harmony of +thought and feeling. Probably it is not wise to build so +important a rule upon so distinguished an exception!</p> + +<p>But the positive defect of humanism is more serious. +It likewise proposes to rationalize those supersensuous +needs and convictions which lie in the imaginative, the +intuitive ranges of experience. The very proposal carries +a denial of their value-in-themselves. Its inevitable result +in the humanist is their virtual ignoring. The greatest of +all the humanists of the Orient was Confucius. "I venture +to ask about death," said a disciple to the sage. +"While you do not know life," replied he, "how can you +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page75" id="page75"></a>[pg 75]</span> +know about death?"<a id="footnotetag13" name="footnotetag13"></a><a href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> Even more typical of the humanistic +attitude towards the distinctively religious elements +of experience are other sayings of Confucius, such as: +"To give oneself earnestly to the duties due to men, and +while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them +may be called wisdom."<a id="footnotetag13a" name="footnotetag13a"></a><a href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> The precise area of humanistic +interests is indicated in another observation. "The subjects +on which the Master did not talk were ... disorder +and spiritual beings."<a id="footnotetag13b" name="footnotetag13b"></a><a href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> For the very elements of experience +which humanism belittles or avoids are found in the +world where pagans like Rabelais robustly jest or the +high spaces where souls like Newman meditate and pray. +The humanist appears to be frightened by the one and repelled +by the other; will not or cannot see life steadily +and whole. That a powerful primitivistic faith, like Taoism, +a sort of religious bohemianism, should flourish beside +such pragmatic and passionless moderation as classic +Confucianism is inevitable; that the worship of Amida +Buddha, the Buddha of redemption and a future heaven, +of a positive and eternal bliss, should be the Chinese +form of the Indian faith is equally intelligible. After a +like manner it is the humanism of our Protestant preaching +today from which men are defecting into utter +worldliness and indifference on the one hand and returning +to mediaeval and Catholic forms of supernaturalism on the other.</p> + +<p>For the primitive in man is a beast whom it is hard +to chain nor does humanism with its semi-scientific, semi-sentimental +laudation of all natural values produce that +exacting mood of inward scrutiny in which self-control +has most chance of succeeding. Hence here, as elsewhere +on the continent, and formerly in China, in Greece and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page76" id="page76"></a>[pg 76]</span> +in Rome, a sort of neo-paganism has been steadily supplanting it.</p> + +<p>To the study of this neo-paganism we now address ourselves. +It is the third and lowest of those levels of human +experience to which we referred in the first lecture. The +naturalist, you may remember, is that incorrigible individual +who imagines that he is a law unto himself, that +he may erect his person into a sovereign over the whole +universe. He perversely identifies discipline with repression +and makes the unlimited the goal both of imagination +and conduct. Oscar Wilde's epigrams, and more particularly +his fables, are examples of a thoroughgoing naturalist's +insolent indifference to any form of restraint. All +things, whether holy or bestial, were material for his +topsy-turvy wit, his literally unbridled imagination. No +humanistic law of decency, that is to say, a proper respect +for the opinions of mankind, and no divine law of +reverence and humility, acted for him as a restraining +force or a selective principle. An immediate and significant +example of this naturalistic riot of feeling, with its +consequent false and anarchic scale of values, is found in +the film dramas of the moving picture houses. Unreal extravagance +of imagination, accompanied by the debauch +of the aesthetic and moral judgment, frequently distinguishes +them. In screenland, it is the vampire, the villain, +the superman, the saccharine angel child, who reign almost +undisputed. Noble convicts, virtuous courtesans, attractive +murderers, good bad men, and ridiculous good +men, flit across the canvas haloed with cheap sentimentality. +Opposed to them, in an ever losing struggle, are those +conventional figures who stand for the sober realities of +an orderly and disciplined world; the judge, the policeman, +the mere husband. These pitiable and laughable figures +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page77" id="page77"></a>[pg 77]</span> +are always outwitted; they receive the fate which indeed, +in any primitive society, they so richly deserve!</p> + +<p>How deeply sunk in the modern world are the roots of +this naturalism is shown by its long course in history, +paralleling humanism. It has seeped down through the +Protestant centuries in two streams. One is a sort of +scientific naturalism. It exalts material phenomena and +the external order, issues in a glorification of elemental +impulses, an attempted return to childlike spontaneous +living, the identifying of man's values with those of primitive +nature. The other is an emotional naturalism, of +which Maeterlinck is at the moment a brilliant and lamentable +example. This exchanges the world of sober +conduct, intelligible and straightforward thinking for an +unfettered dreamland, compounded of fairy beauty, +flashes of mystical and intuitive understanding intermixed +with claptrap magic, a high-flown commercialism and an etherealized sensuality.</p> + +<p>Rousseau represents both these streams in his own person. +His sentimentalized egotism and bland sensuality +pass belief. His sensitive spirit dissolves in tears over the +death of his dog but he bravely consigns his illegitimate +children to the foundling asylum without one tremor. In +his justly famous and justly infamous <i>Confessions</i>, he +presents himself Satan-wise before the Almighty at the +last Judgment, these <i>Confessions</i> in his hand, a challenge +to the remainder of the human race upon his lips. "Let +a single one assert to Thee, if he dare: I am better than +that man." But his preachment of natural and spontaneous +values, return to primitive conditions, was equally +aggressive. If anyone wants to inspect the pit whence the +Montessori system of education was digged, let him read +Rousseau, who declared that the only habit a child +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page78" id="page78"></a>[pg 78]</span> +should have is the habit of not having a habit, or his contemporary +disciple, George Moore, who says that one +should be ashamed of nothing except of being ashamed. +There are admirable features in the schooling-made-easy +system. It recognizes the fitness of different minds for +different work; that the process of education need not +and should not be forbidding; that natural science has +been subordinated overmuch to the humanities; that the +imagination and the hand should be trained with the intellect. +But the method which proposes to give children +an education along the lines of least resistance is, like +all other naturalism, a contradiction in terms, sometimes +a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>, sometimes <i>ad nauseam</i>. As long +ago as 1893, when Huxley wrote his Romanes lecture on +<i>Evolution and Ethics</i>, this identity of natural and human +values was explicitly denied. Teachers do not exist for +the amusement of children, nor for the repression of children; +they exist for the discipline of children. The new +education is consistently primitivistic in the latitude +which it allows to whim and in its indulgence of indolence. +There is only one way to make a man out of a +child; to teach him that happiness is a by-product of +achievement; that pleasure is an accompaniment of labor; +that the foundation of self-respect is drudgery well done; +that there is no power in any system of philosophy, any +view of the world, no view of the world, which can release +him from the unchanging necessity of personal +struggle, personal consecration, personal holiness in human +life. "That wherein a man cannot be equaled," says +Confucius, "is his work which other men cannot see."<a id="footnotetag14" name="footnotetag14"></a><a href="#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a> +The humanist, at least, does not blink the fact that we +are caught in a serious and difficult world. To rail at it, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page79" id="page79"></a>[pg 79]</span> +to deny it, to run hither and thither like scurrying rats to +evade it, will not alter one jot or one tittle of its inexorable facts.</p> + +<p>Following Rousseau and Chateaubriand come a striking +group of Frenchmen who passed on this torch of ethical +and aesthetic rebellion. Some of them are wildly romantic +like Dumas and Hugo; some of them perversely +realistic like Balzac, Flaubert, Gautier, Zola. Paul Verlaine, +a near contemporary of ours, is of this first number; +writer of some of the most exquisite lyrics in the +French language, yet a man who floated all his life in +typical romantic fashion from passion to repentance, +"passing from lust of the flesh to sorrow for sin in perpetual +alternation." Guy de Maupassant again is a naturalist +of the second sort, a brutal realist; de Maupassant, +who died a suicide, crying out to his valet from his +hacked throat "<i>Encore l'homme au rancart</i>!"—another carcass to the dustheap!</p> + +<p>In English letters Wordsworth in his earlier verse illustrated +the same sentimental primitivism. It would be +unfair to quote <i>Peter Bell</i>, for that is Wordsworth at his +dreadful worst, but even in <i>Tinlern Abbey</i>, which has +passages of incomparable majesty and beauty, there are +lines in which he declares himself:</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"... well pleased to recognize</p> +<p>In nature, and the language of the sense</p> +<p>The anchor of my purest thought, the nurse,</p> +<p>The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul</p> +<p>Of all my moral being."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Byron's innate sophistication saves him from the ludicrous +depths to which Wordsworth sometimes fell, but +he, too, is Rousseau's disciple, a moral rebel, a highly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page80" id="page80"></a>[pg 80]</span> +personal and subjective poet of whom Goethe said that +he respected no law, human or divine, except that of the +three unities. Byron's verse is fascinating; it overflows +with a sort of desperate and fiery sincerity; but, as he +himself says, his life was one long strife of "passion with +eternal law." He combines both the romantic and the +realistic elements of naturalism, both flames with elemental +passion and parades his cynicism, is forever +snapping his mood in <i>Don Juan</i>, alternating extravagant +and romantic feeling with lines of sardonic and purposely +prosaic realism. Shelley is a naturalist, too, not in the +realm of sordid values but of Arcadian fancy. The pre-Raphaelites +belong here, together with a group of young +Englishmen who flourished between 1890 and 1914, of +whom John Davidson and Richard Middleton, both suicides, +are striking examples. Poor Middleton turned +from naturalism to religion at the last. When he had resolved +on death, he wrote a message telling what he was +about to do, parting from his friend with brave assumption +of serenity. But he did not send the postcard, and +in the last hour of that hired bedroom in Brussels, +with the bottle of chloroform before him, he traced across +the card's surface "a broken and a contrite spirit thou +wilt not despise." So there was humility at the last. One +remembers rather grimly what the clown says in <i>Twelfth Night</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Pleasure will be paid some time or other."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This same revolt against the decencies and conventions +of our humanist civilization occupies a great part of present +literature. How far removed from the clean and virile +stoicism of George Meredith or the honest pessimism of +Thomas Hardy is Arnold Bennett's <i>The Pretty Lady</i> or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page81" id="page81"></a>[pg 81]</span> +Galsworthy's <i>The Dark Flower</i>. Finally, in this country +we need only mention, if we may descend so far, such +naturalists in literature as Jack London, Robert Chambers +and Gouverneur Morris. One's only excuse for referring +to them is that they are vastly popular with the +people whom you and I try to interest in sermons, to whom we talk on religion!</p> + +<p>Of course, this naturalism in letters has its accompanying +and interdependent philosophic theory, its intellectual +interpretation and defense. As Kant is the noblest +of the moralists, so I suppose William James and, still +later, Henri Bergson and Croce are the chief protagonists +of unrestrained feeling and naturalistic values in the +world of thought. To the neo-realists "the thing given" is +alone reality. James' pragmatism frankly relinquishes any +absolute standard in favor of relativity. In <i>the Varieties of +Religious Experience</i>, which Professor Babbitt tells us +someone in Cambridge suggested should have had for a +subtitle "Wild Religions I Have Known," he is plainly +more interested in the intensity than in the normality, in +the excesses than in the essence of the religious life. Indeed, +Professor Babbitt quotes him as saying in a letter +to Charles Eliot Norton, "mere sanity is the most Philistine +and at the bottom most unessential of a man's attributes."<a id="footnotetag15" name="footnotetag15"></a><a href="#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a> +In the same way Bergson, consistently anti-Socratic +and discrediting analytical intellect, insists that +whatever unity may be had must come through instinct, +not analysis. He refuses to recognize Plato's <i>One in the +Many</i>, sees the whole universe as "a perpetual gushing +forth of novelties," a universal and meaningless flux. +Surrender to this eternal flux, he appears to say, and +then we shall gain reality. So he relies on impulse, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page82" id="page82"></a>[pg 82]</span> +instinct, his <i>elan vital</i>, which means, I take it, on man's +subrational emotions. We call it Intuitionism, but such +philosophy in plain and bitter English is the intellectual +defense and solemn glorification of impulse. "Time," +says Bergson, "is a continuous stream, a present that endures."<a id="footnotetag16" name="footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> +Time apparently is all. "Life can have no purpose +in the human sense of the word."<a id="footnotetag17" name="footnotetag17"></a><a href="#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a> Essentially, then, +James, Bergson and Croce appeal from intellect to feeling. +They return to primitivism.</p> + +<p>Here is a philosophy which obviously may be both as +antihumanistic and as irreligious as any which could well +be conceived. Here is license in conduct and romanticism +in expression going hand in hand with this all but exclusive +emphasis upon relativity in thought. Here is disorder, +erected as a universal concept; the world conceived +of as a vast and impenetrable veil which is hiding nothing; +an intricacy without pattern. Obviously so ungoverned +and fluid a universe justifies uncritical and irresponsible thinking and living.</p> + +<p>We have tried thus to sketch that declension into paganism +on the part of much of the present world, of +which we spoke earlier in the chapter. It denies or ignores +the humanistic law with its exacting moral and aesthetic +standards; it openly flouts the attitude of obedience and +humility before religious mandates, and, so far as opportunity +offers or prudence permits, goes its own insolently +wanton way. Our world is full of dilettanti in the +colleges, anarchists in the state, atheists in the church, +bohemians in art, sybarites in conduct and ineffably silly +women in society, who have felt, and occasionally studied +the scientific and naturalistic movement just far enough +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page83" id="page83"></a>[pg 83]</span> +and superficially enough to grasp the idea of relativity +and to exalt it as sufficient and complete in itself. Many +of them are incapable of realizing the implications for +conduct and belief which it entails. Others of them, who +are of the lesser sort, pulled by the imperious hungers of +the flesh, the untutored instincts of a restless spirit, hating +Hellenic discipline no less than Christian renunciation, +having no stomach either for self-control or self-surrender, +look out on the mass of endlessly opposing complexities +of the modern world and gladly use that vision as +an excuse for abandoning what is indeed the ever failing +but also the ever necessary struggle to achieve order, unity, yes, even perfection.</p> + +<p>To them, therefore, the only way to conquer a temptation +is to yield to it. They rail nonsensically at all repression, +forgetting that man cannot express the full circle +of his mutually exclusive instincts, and that when he +gives rein to one he thereby negates another; that choice, +therefore, is inevitable and that the more exacting and +critical the choice, the more valuable and comprehensive +the expression. So they frankly assert their choices along +the lines of least resistance and abandon themselves, at +least in principle, to emotional chaos and moral sentimentalism. +Very often they are of all men the most meticulously +mannered. But their manners are not the decorum +of the humanist, they are the etiquette of the worldling. +Chesterfield had these folk in mind when he spoke with +an intolerable, if incisive, cynicism of those who know +the art of combining the useful appearances of virtue +with the solid satisfactions of vice.</p> + +<p>Such naturalism is sometimes tolerated by those who +aspire to urbane and liberal judgments because they +think it can be defended on humanistic grounds. But, as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page84" id="page84"></a>[pg 84]</span> +a matter of fact, it is as offensive to the thoroughgoing +humanist as it is to the sincere religionist. They have a +common quarrel with it. Take, for example, the notorious +naturalistic doctrine of art for art's sake, the defiant +divorcing of ethical and aesthetic values. Civilization no +less than religion must fight this. For it is as false in experience +and as unclear in thinking as could well be imagined. +Its defense, so far as it has any, is based upon the +confusion in the pagan mind of morality with moralizing, +a confusion that no good humanist would ever permit +himself. Of course, the end of art is neither preaching +nor teaching but delighting. For that very reason, +however, art, too, must conform—hateful word!—conform +to fixed standards. For the sense of proportion, +the instinct for elimination, is integral to art and this, as +Professor Babbitt points out, is attained only with the +aid of the ethical imagination.<a id="footnotetag18" name="footnotetag18"></a><a href="#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a> Because without the ethical +restraint, the creative spirit roams among unbridled +emotions; art becomes impressionism. What it then produces +may indeed be picturesque, melodramatic, sensual, +but it will not be beautiful because there will be no imaginative +wholeness in it. In other words, the artist who +divorces aesthetics from ethics does gain creative license, +but he gains it at the expense of a balanced and harmonious +expression. If you do not believe it, compare the +Venus de Milo with the Venus de Medici or a Rubens +fleshy, spilling-out-of-her-clothes Magdalen with a Donatello +Madonna. When ethical restraint disappears, art +tends to caricature, it becomes depersonalized. The Venus +de Milo is a living being, a great personage; indeed, +a genuine and gracious goddess. The Venus de Medici +has scarcely any personality at all; she is chiefly objectified +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page85" id="page85"></a>[pg 85]</span> +desire! The essence of art is not spontaneous expression +nor naked passion; the essence of art is critical expression, restrained passion.</p> + +<p>Now, such extreme naturalism has been the continuing +peril and the arch foe of every successive civilization. +It is the "reversion to type" of the scientist, the "natural +depravity" of the older theology, the scoffing devil, with +his eternal no! in Goethe's <i>Faust</i>. It tends to accept +all powerful impulses as thereby justified, all vital +and novel interests as <i>ipso facto</i> beautiful and good. +Nothing desirable is ugly or evil. It pays no attention, except +to ridicule them, to the problems that vex high and +serious souls: What is right and wrong? What is ugly +and beautiful? What is holy and what is profane? It +either refuses to admit the existence of these questions or +else asserts that, as insoluble, they are also negligible +problems. To all such stupid moralizing it prefers the +click of the castanets! The law, then, of this naturalism +always and everywhere is the law of rebellion, of ruthless +self-assertion, of whim and impulse, of cunning and of might.</p> + +<p>You may wonder why we, being preachers, have spent +so much time talking about it. Folk of this sort do not +ordinarily flock to the stenciled walls and carpeted floors +of our comfortable, middle-class Protestant meeting-houses. +They are not attracted by Tiffany glass windows, +nor the vanilla-flavored music of a mixed quartet, nor the +oddly assorted "enrichments" we have dovetailed into a +once puritan order of worship. That is true, but it is also +true that these are they who need the Gospel; also that +these folk do influence the time-current that enfolds us +and pervades the very air we breathe and that they and +their standards are profoundly influencing the youth of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page86" id="page86"></a>[pg 86]</span> +this generation. You need only attend a few college +dances to be sure of that! One of the sad things about the +Protestant preacher is his usual willingness to move in a +strictly professional society and activity, his lack of extra-ecclesiastical +interests, hence his narrow and unskillful +observations and perceptions outside his own parish and his own field.</p> + +<p>Moreover, there are other forms in which naturalism is +dominating modern society. It began, like all movements, +in literature and philosophy and individual bohemianism; +but it soon worked its way into social and political and +economic organizations. Now, when we are dealing with +them we are dealing with the world of the middle class; +this is our world. And here we find naturalism today in +its most brutal and entrenched expressions. Here it confronts +every preacher on the middle aisle of his Sunday +morning congregation. We are continually forgetting this +because it is a common fallacy of our hard-headed and +prosperous parishioners to suppose that the vagaries of +philosophers and the maunderings of poets have only the +slightest practical significance. But few things could be +further from the truth. It is abstract thought and pure +feeling which are perpetually moulding the life of office +and market and street. It has sometimes been the dire +mistake of preaching that it took only an indifferent and +contemptuous interest in such contemporary movements +in literature and art. Its attitude toward them has been +determined by temperamental indifference to their appeal. +It forgets the significance of their intellectual +and emotional sources. This is, then, provincialism +and obtuseness and nowhere are they by their very nature +more indefensible or more disastrous than in the preacher of religion.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page87" id="page87"></a>[pg 87]</span> + +<p>Let us turn, then, to those organized expressions of society +where our own civilization is strained the most, +where it is nearest to the breaking point, namely, to our +industrial and political order. Let us ask ourselves if we +do not find this naturalistic philosophy regnant there. +That we are surrounded by widespread industrial revolt, +that we see obvious political decadence on the one hand, +and a determination to experiment with fresh governmental +processes on the other, few would deny. It would +appear to me that in both cases the revolt and the decadence +are due to that fierce, short creed of rebellion +against humane no less than religious standards, which +has more and more governed our national economic systems +and our international political intercourse. Let me +begin with business and industry as they existed before +the war. I paint a general picture; there are many and +notable exceptions to it, human idealism there is in plenty, +but it and they only prove the rule. And as I paint the picture, +ask yourselves the two questions which should interest +us as preachers regarding it. First, by which of +these three laws of human development, religious, humanistic, +naturalistic, has it been largely governed? Secondly, +by what law are men now attempting to solve its present difficulties?</p> + +<p>The present industrial situation is the product of two +causes. One of them was the invention of machinery and +the discovery of steam transit. These multiplied production. +They made accessible unexploited sources of raw +material and new markets for finished goods. The opportunities +for lucrative trading and the profitableness of +overproduction which they made possible became almost +immeasurable. Before these discoveries western society +was generally agricultural, accompanied by cottage +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page88" id="page88"></a>[pg 88]</span> +industries and guild trades. It was largely made up of direct +contacts and controlled by local interests. After them +it became a huge industrial empire of ramified international relationships.</p> + +<p>The second factor in the situation was the intellectual +and spiritual nature of the society which these inventions +entered. It was, as we have seen, essentially humanistic. +It believed much in the natural rights of man. The individual +was justified, by the natural order, in seeking his +separate good. If he only sought it hard enough and well +enough the result would be for the general welfare of society. +Thus at the moment when mechanical invention +offered unheard-of opportunities for material expansion +and lucrative business, the thought and feeling of the +community pretty generally sanctioned an individualistic +philosophy of life. The result was tragic if inevitable. The +new industrial order offered both the practical incentive +and the theoretical justification for institutional declension +from humane to primitive standards. It is not to be +supposed that men slipped deliberately into paganism; +the human mind is not so sinister as it is stupid nor so +cruel as it is unimaginative nor so brutal as it is complacent. +For the most part we do not really understand, in our +daily lives, what we are about. Hence society degenerated, +as it always does, in the confident and stubborn belief that +it was improving the time and doing God's service. But +He that sitteth in the heavens must have laughed, He must have had us in derision!</p> + +<p>For upon what law, natural, human, divine, has this +new empire been founded? That it has produced great +humanists is gratefully conceded; that real spiritual progress +has issued from its incidental cosmopolitanism is +manifest; but which way has it fronted, what have been +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page89" id="page89"></a>[pg 89]</span> +its characteristic emphases and its controlling tendencies? +Let its own works testify. It has created a world of new +and extreme inequality, both in the distribution of material, +of intellectual and of spiritual goods. Here is a +small group who own the land, the houses, the factories, +machinery and the tools. Here is a very large group, without +houses, without tools, without land or goods. At this +moment only 7 per cent of our 110,000,000 of American +people have an income of $3,000 or more; only +1¼ per cent have an income of $5,000 or more! What +law produced and justifies such a society? The unwritten +law of heaven? No. The law of humanism, of Confucius +and Buddha and Epictetus and Aurelius? No. The law +of naked individualism; of might; force; cunning? Yes.</p> + +<p>Here in our American cities are the overwealthy and +the insolently worldly people. They have their palatial +town house, their broad inland acres; some of them have +their seaside homes, their fish and game preserves as well. +Here in our American cities are the alien, the ignorant, +the helpless, crowded into unclean and indecent tenements, +sometimes 1,000 human beings to the acre. What +justifies a pseudo-civilization which permits such tragic +inequality of fortune? Inequality of endowment? No. +First, because there is no natural inequality so extreme +as that; secondly, because no one would dare assert that +these cleavages in the industrial state even remotely parallel +the corresponding cleavages in the distribution of +ability among mankind. What justifies it, then? The unwritten +law of heaven? No. The law of humanism? No. The law of the jungle? Yes.</p> + +<p>Now for our second question. By what law, admitting +many exceptions, are men on the whole trying to change +this situation at once indecent and impious? This is a yet +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page90" id="page90"></a>[pg 90]</span> +more important query. Our world has obviously awakened +to the rottenness in Denmark. But where are we +turning for our remedy? Is it to the penitence and confession, +the public-mindedness, the identification of the +fate of the individual with the fate of the whole group +which is the religious impulse? Is it to a disinterested and +even-handed justice, the high legalism of the Golden +Rule, which would be the humanist's way? Or is it to the +old law of aggression and might transferring the gain +thereof from the present exploiters to the recently exploited?</p> + +<p>It would appear to be generally true that society at this +moment is not chiefly concerned with either love or justice, +renunciation or discipline, not with the supplanting of +the old order, but with perpetuating the naturalistic principle +by means of a partial redivision of the spoils, a series +of compromises, designed to make it more tolerable for +one class of its former victims. Thus in capital we have +the autocratic corporation, atoning for past outrages on +humanity by a well-advertised benevolent paternalism, +calculated to make men comfortable so that they may not +struggle to be free, or by huge gifts to education, to philanthropy, +to religion. In labor we see men rising in brute +fury against both employer and society. They deny the +basic necessities of life to their fellow citizens; they bring +the bludgeon of the picket down upon the head of the +scab; by means of the closed shop they refuse the right to +work to their brother craftsmen; they level the incapable +men up and the capable men down by insisting upon uniformity +of production and wage. Thus they replace the +artificial inequality of the aristocrat with the artificial +equality of the proletariat, striving to organize a new tyranny +for the old. It is significant that our society believes +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page91" id="page91"></a>[pg 91]</span> +that this is the only way by which it can gain its rights. +That betrays our real infidelity. For between the two, associated +capital and associated labor, what is there to +choose today? By what law, depending upon what sort of +power, is each seeking its respective ends? By the unwritten +law of heaven? No. By the humane law, some objective +standard of common rights and inclusive justice? +No! By the ancient law that the only effectual appeal is to +might and that opportunity therefore justifies the deed? +On the whole it is to this question that we must answer, yes!</p> + +<p>Turn away now from national economics and industry +to international politics. Does not its <i>real politik</i> make the +philosophical naturalism of Spencer and Haeckel seem +like child's play? For long there has been one code of +ethics for the peaceful penetration of commercially desirable +lands, for punitive expeditions against peoples possessed +of raw materials, for international banking and finance +and diplomatic intercourse, and another code for +private honor and personal morality. There has been one +moral scale of values for the father of his family and +another for the same man as ward or state or federal +politician; one code to govern internal disputes within +the nation; another code to govern external disputes between +nations. And what is this code that produced the +Prussian autocracy, that long insisted on the opium trade +between India and China, that permitted the atrocities in +the Belgian Congo, that sent first Russia and then Japan +into Port Arthur and first Germany and then Japan into +Shantung, that insists upon retaining the Turk in Constantinople, +that produced the already discredited treaty +of Versailles? What is the code that made the deadly +rivalry of mounting armaments between army and army, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page92" id="page92"></a>[pg 92]</span> +navy and navy, of the Europe before 1914? The code, to +be sure, of cunning, of greed, of might; the materialism +of the philosopher and the naturalism of the sensualist, +clothed in grandiose forms and covered with the insufferable +hypocrisy of solemn phrases. There are no conceivable +ethical or religious interests and no humane goals or +values that justify these things. International diplomacy +and politics, economic imperialism, using political machinery +and power to half-cloak, half-champion its ends, +has no law of Christian sacrifice and no law of Greek +moderation behind it. On the contrary, what should interest +the Christian preacher, as he regards it, is its sheer +anarchy, its unashamed and naked paganism. Its law is +that of the unscrupulous and the daring, not that of the +compassionate or the just. In what does scientific and +emotional naturalism issue, then? In this; a man, if he be +a man, will stand above divine or human law and make +it operative only for the weaklings beneath. Wherever +opportunity offers he will consult his own will and gratify +it to the full. To have, to get, to buy, to sell, to exploit +the world for power, to exploit one's self for pleasure, +this is to live. The only law is the old primitive +snarl; each man for himself, let the devil take the hindmost.</p> + +<p>There is only one end to such naturalism and that is +increasing anarchy. It means my will against your will; +my appetite for gold, for land, for women, for luxury +and beauty against your appetite; until at length it culminates +in the open madness of physical violence, physical +destruction, physical death and despair. There can be +no other end to it. If men dare not risk being the lovers +of their kind, then they must choose between being the +slaves of duty or the slaves of force. What are we reading +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page93" id="page93"></a>[pg 93]</span> +in the public prints and hearing from platform and +stage? The unending wail for "rights"; the assertion of +the individual. Ceased is the chant of duty, forgotten the sacrifice of love!</p> + +<p>The events which have transformed the world since +1914 are an awful commentary upon such naturalism +and a dreadful confirmation of our indictment. Before +the spectacle that many of us saw on those sodden fields +of Flanders, both humanist and religionist should be alike +aghast. How childish not to perceive that its causes, as +distinguished from its occasions, were common to our +whole civilization. How perverse not to confess that beneath +all our modern life, as its dominating motive, has +lain that ruthless and pagan philosophy, which creates +alike the sybarite, the tyrant and the anarch; the philosophy +in which lust goes hand in hand with cruelty and unrestrained +will to power is accompanied by unmeasured and unscrupulous force.</p> + +<p>It is incredible to me how men can take this delirium +of self-destruction, this plunging of the sword into our +own heart in a final frenzy of competing anarchy and +deck it out with heroic and poetic values, fling over it +the seamless robe of Christ, unfurl above it the banner of +the Cross! The only contribution the World War has +made to religion has been to throw into intolerable relief +the essentially irreligious and inhumane character of our civilization.</p> + +<p>Of course, the men and the ideals who actually fought +the contest as distinguished from the men and ideals +which precipitated it and determined its movements, fill +gallant pages with their heroism and holy sacrifice. For +wars are fought by the young at the dictation of the old, +and youth is everywhere humane and poetic. Thus, if I +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page94" id="page94"></a>[pg 94]</span> +may be permitted to quote from a book of mine recently published:</p> + +<p>"Our sons were bade to enter it as a 'war to +end war,' a final struggle which should abolish the intolerable +burdens of armaments and conscription. They were +taught to exalt it as a strife for oppressed and helpless +peoples; the prelude to a new brotherhood and cooperation +among the nations, and to that reign of justice +which is the antecedent condition of peace.</p> + +<p>"They did their part. With adventurous faith they glorified +their cause and offered their fresh lives to make it +good. Their sacrifice, the idealism which lay behind it in +their respective communities—the unofficial perceptions +that they, the fathers and mothers and the boys, were +fighting to vindicate the supremacy of the moral over the +material factors of life—this has made an imperishable +gift to the new world and our children's lives. When an +entire commuity rises to something of magnanimity, and +a nation identifies its fate with the lot of weaker states, +then even mutilation and death may be gift-bringers to mankind.</p> + +<p>"But it is more significant to our purpose to note that +the blood of youth had hardly ceased to run before the +officials began to dicker for the material fruits of conquest. +Not how to obtain peace but how to exploit victory—to +wrest each for himself the larger tribute from +the fallen foe—became their primary concern. So the +youth appear to have died for a tariff, perished for trade +routes and harbors, for the furthering of the commercial +advantages of this nation as against that, for the seizing +of the markets of the world. They supposed they fought +'to end business of that sort' but they returned to find +their accredited representatives contemplating universal +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page95" id="page95"></a>[pg 95]</span> +military service in frank expectation of 'the next war.' +They strove for the 'self-determination of peoples' but +find that it was for some people, but not all. And as for +the cooperation among nations, Judge Gary has recently +told us that, as a result of the war, we should prepare +for 'the fiercest commercial struggle in the history of mankind!'"<a id="footnotetag19" name="footnotetag19"></a><a href="#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a></p> + +<p>Is it not clear, then, today that behind the determining +as distinguished from the fighting forces of the war +there lay a commercial and financial imperialism, directed +by small and powerful minorities, largely supported by a +sympathetic press which used the machinery of representative +democracy to overthrow a more naked and brutal +imperialism whose machinery was that of a military +autocracy? Motives, scales of value, methods and desired +ends, were much the same for all these small governing +groups as they operated from behind the various shibboleths +whose magic they used to nerve the arms of the contending +forces. The conclusion of the war has revealed +the common springs of action of the professional soldier, +statesman, banker, ecclesiastic, in our present civilization. +On the whole they accept the rule of physical might as +the ultimate justification of conduct. They are the leaders +and spokesmen in an economic, social and political +establishment which, pretending to civilization, always +turns when strained or imperiled by foreign or domestic +dangers to physical force as the final arbiter.</p> + +<p>It is truly ominous to see the gradual extension of this +naturalistic principle still going on in the state. The coal +strike was settled, not by arbitration, but by conference, +and "conferences" appear to be replacing disinterested +arbitration. This means that decisions are being made on +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page96" id="page96"></a>[pg 96]</span> +the principle of compromise, dictated by the expediency +of the moment, not by reference to any third party, or +to some fixed and mutually recognized standards. This is +as old as Pythagoras and as new as Bergson and Croce; +it assumes that the concept of justice is man-made, produced +and to be altered by expediences and practicalities, +always in flux. But the essence of a civilization is the humanistic +conviction that there is something fixed and +abiding around which life may order and maintain itself.</p> + +<p>Progress rests on the Platonic theory that laws are not +made by man but discovered by him; that they exist as +eternal distinctions beyond the reach of his alteration. +Again, an unashamed and rampant naturalism has just +been sweeping this country in the wave of mean and +cruel intolerance which insists upon the continued imprisonment +of political heretics, which would prohibit +freedom of speech by governmental decree and oppose +new or distasteful ideas by the physical suppression of the +thinker. The several and notorious attempts beginning +with deportations and ending with the unseating of the +New York assemblymen, to combat radical thinking by +physical or political persecution—attempts uniformly +mean and universally impotent in history—are as sinister +as they are stupid. The only law which justifies the persecution +and imprisonment of religious and political heretics +is neither the law of reason nor the law of love, but +the law of fear, hence of tyranny and force. When a +twentieth-century nation begins to raise the ancient cry, +"Come now and let us kill this dreamer and we shall see +what will become of his dreams," that nation is declining +to the naturalistic level. For this clearly indicates that the +humane and religious resources of civilization, of which +the church is among the chief confessed and appointed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page97" id="page97"></a>[pg 97]</span> +guardians, are utterly inadequate to the strain imposed +upon them. Hence force, not justice, though they may +sometimes have happened to coincide, and power, not +reason or faith, are becoming the embodiment of the state today.</p> + +<p>We come now to the final question of our chapter. How +has this renewal of naturalism affected the church and +Christian preaching? On the whole today, the Protestant +church is accepting this naturalistic attitude. In a signed +editorial in the <i>New Republic</i> for the last week of December, +1919, Herbert Croly said, under the significant +title of "Disordered Christianity": "Both politicians and +property owners consider themselves entitled to ignore +Christian guidance in exercising political and economic +power, to expect or to compel the clergy to agree with +them and if necessary to treat disagreement as negligible. +The Christian church, as a whole, or in part, does not +protest against the practically complete secularization of +political, economic and social life."</p> + +<p>You may say such extra-ecclesiastical strictures are unsympathetic +and ill informed. But here is what Washington +Gladden wrote in January, 1918: "If after the war +the church keeps on with the same old religion, there will +be the same old hell on earth that religious leaders have +been preparing for centuries, the full fruit of which we +are gathering now. The church must cease to sanction +those principles of militaristic and atheistic nationalism +by which the rulers of the earth have so long kept the +earth at war."<a id="footnotetag20" name="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a> Thus from within the sanctuary is the +same indictment of our naturalism.</p> + +<p>But you may say Dr. Gladden was an old man and a +little extreme in some of his positions and he belonged to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page98" id="page98"></a>[pg 98]</span> +a past generation. But there are many signs at the present +moment of the increasing secularizing of our churches. +The individualism of our services, their casual character, +their romantic and sentimental music, their minimizing +of the offices of prayer and devotion, their increasing +turning of the pulpit into a forum for political discussion +and a place of common entertainment all indicate it. +There is an accepted secularity today about the organization. +Church and preacher have, to a large degree, relinquished +their essential message, dropped their religious +values. We are pretty largely today playing our game +the world's way. We are adopting the methods and accepting +the standards of the market. In an issue last +month of the <i>Inter-Church Bulletin</i> was the following +headline: "Christianity Hand in Hand with Business," and underneath the following:</p> + +<p>"George W. Wickersham, formerly United States +attorney-general, says in an interview that there is nothing +incompatible between Christianity and modern business +methods. A leading lay official of the Episcopal +Church declares that what the churches need more than +anything else is a strong injection of business method into +their management. 'Some latter-day Henry Drummond,' +he said, 'should write a book on Business Law in the Spiritual World.'"</p> + +<p>In this same paper, in the issue of March 27, 1920, +there was an article commending Christian missions. +The first caption ran: "Commercial Progress Follows +Work of Protestant Missions," and its subtitle was +"How Missionaries Aid Commerce." Here is Business +Law in the Spiritual World! Here is the church commended +to the heathen and the sinner as an advertising +agent, an advance guard of commercial prosperity, a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page99" id="page99"></a>[pg 99]</span> +hawker of wares! If the <i>Bulletin</i> ever penetrates to +those benighted lands of the Orient upon which we are +thus anxious to bestow the so apparent benefits of our +present civilization it is conceivable that even the untutored +savage, to say nothing of Chinamen and Japanese, +might read it with his tongue in his cheek.</p> + +<p>Such naïve opportunism and frantic immediacy would +seem to me conclusive proof of the disintegration and +anarchy of the spirit within the sanctuary. It is a part of +it all that everyone has today what he is pleased to call +"his own religion." And nearly everyone made it himself, +or thinks he did. Conscience has ceased to be a check +upon personal impulse, the "thou shalt not" of the soul +addressed to untutored desires, and become an amiable +instinct for doing good to others. The Christian is an effusive +creature, loving everything and everybody; exalting +others in terms of himself. We abhor religious conventions; +in particular we hasten to proclaim that we are +free from the stigma of orthodoxy. We do not go to +church to learn, to meditate, to repent and to pray; we +go to be happy, to learn how to keep young and prosperous; +it is good business; it pays. We have a new and +most detestable cant; someone has justly said that the +natural man in us has been masquerading as the spiritual +man by endlessly prating of "courage," "patriotism"—what +crimes have been committed in its name!—"development +of backward people," "brotherhood of man," +"service of those less fortunate than ourselves," "natural +ethical idealism," "the common destinies of nations"—and +now he rises up and glares at us with stained fingers +and bloodshot eyes!<a id="footnotetag21" name="footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a> In so far as we have succumbed to +naturalism, we have become cold and shrewd and flexible; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page100" id="page100"></a>[pg 100]</span> +shallow and noisy and effusive; have been rather proud +to believe anything in general and almost nothing in particular; +become a sort of religious jelly fish, bumping +blindly about in seas of sentiment and labeling that peace +and brotherhood and religion!</p> + +<p>Here, then, is the state of organized religion today in +our churches. They are voluntary groups of men and +women, long since emancipated from the control of the +church as such, or of the minister as an official, set free +also from allegiance to historic statements, traditional, +intellectual sanctions of our faith; moulded by the time +spirit which enfolds them to a half-unconscious ignoring +or depreciation of what must always be the fundamental +problem of religion—the relationship of the soul, not +to its neighbor, but to God. Hence the almost total +absence of doctrinal preaching—indeed, how dare we +preach Christian doctrine to the industry and politics +and conduct of this age? Hence the humiliating striving +to keep up with popular movements, to conform to the +moment. Hence the placid acceptance of military propaganda +and even of vindictive exhortation.</p> + +<p>Is it any wonder then that we cannot compete with +the state or the world for the loyalty of men and +women? We have no substitute to offer. Who need +be surprised at the restlessness, the fluidity, the elusiveness +of the Protestant laity? And who need wonder that +at this moment we are depending upon the externals of +machinery, publicity and money to reinstate ourselves as +a spiritual society in the community? A well-known official +of our communion, speaking before a meeting of +ministers in New York City on Tuesday, March 23, was +quoted in the <i>Springfield Republican</i> of the next day as +saying: "The church holds the only cure for the possible +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page101" id="page101"></a>[pg 101]</span> +anarchy of the future and offers the only preventative +for the hell which we have had for the last five years. +But to meet this challenge the church can only go as far—as the money permits."</p> + +<p>Has not the time arrived when, if we are to find ourselves +again in the world, we should ask, What is this religion +in which we believe? What is the real nature of its +resources? What the real nature of its remedies? Do +we dare define it? And, if we do, would we dare to assert +it, come out from the world and live for it, in the midst +of the paganism of this moment? Is it true that without +the loaves and the fishes we can do nothing? If so, then +we, too, have succumbed to naturalism indeed!</p> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote11" name="footnote11"></a><b>Footnote 11: </b><a href="#footnotetag11">(return) </a><p><i>Recollections</i>: II, p. 366 ff.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote12" name="footnote12"></a><b>Footnote 12: </b><a href="#footnotetag12">(return) </a><p><i>Harvard Theo. Rev.</i>, vol. V, no. 3, p. 277.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote13" name="footnote13"></a><b>Footnote 13: </b><a href="#footnotetag13">(return) </a><p><i>Analects</i>, XI, CXI; VI, CXX.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote14" name="footnote14"></a><b>Footnote 14: </b><a href="#footnotetag14">(return) </a><p><i>Doctrine of the Mean</i>, ch. xxxiii, v. 2.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote15" name="footnote15"></a><b>Footnote 15: </b><a href="#footnotetag15">(return) </a><p>Letter to C.E. Norton, June 30, 1904.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote16" name="footnote16"></a><b>Footnote 16: </b><a href="#footnotetag16">(return) </a><p><i>Le Perception de Changement</i>, 30.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote17" name="footnote17"></a><b>Footnote 17: </b><a href="#footnotetag17">(return) </a><p><i>L'evolution creatrice</i>, 55.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote18" name="footnote18"></a><b>Footnote 18: </b><a href="#footnotetag18">(return) </a><p><i>Rousseau and Romanticism</i>, p. 206.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote19" name="footnote19"></a><b>Footnote 19: </b><a href="#footnotetag19">(return) </a><p><i>Can the Church Survive</i>? pp. 14 ff.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote20" name="footnote20"></a><b>Footnote 20: </b><a href="#footnotetag20">(return) </a><p>The <i>Pacific</i>, January 17, 1918.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote21" name="footnote21"></a><b>Footnote 21: </b><a href="#footnotetag21">(return) </a><p><i>Rousseau and Romanticism</i>, p. 376.</p></blockquote> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102" id="page102"></a>[pg 102]</span> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER FOUR</h2> + +<h2>The Unmeasured Gulf</h2> + + +<p>You may remember that when Daniel Webster +made his reply to Hayne in the Senate he began +the argument by a return to first principles. +"When the mariner," said he, "has been tossed for many +days in thick weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally +avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the +earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain +how far the elements have driven him from his true +course. Let us imitate this prudence and before we float +further on the waves of this debate, refer to the point +from which we departed." He then asked for the reading of the resolution.</p> + +<p>It is to some such rehearsing of our original message, a +restatement of the thesis which we, as preachers, are set +to commend, that we turn ourselves in these pages. The +brutal dislocations of the war, and the long and confused +course of disintegrating life that lay behind it, have +driven civilization from its true course and deflected the +church from her normal path, her natural undertakings. +Let us try, then, to get back to our charter; define once +more what we really stand for; view our human life, not +as captain of industry, or international politician, or pagan +worldling, or even classic hero, would regard it, but +see it through the eyes of a Paul, an Augustine, a Bernard, +a Luther, the Lord Jesus. We have already remarked +how timely and necessary is this redefining of our +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page103" id="page103"></a>[pg 103]</span> +religious values. If, as Lessing said, it is the end of education +to make men to see things that are large as large +and things that are small as small, it is even more truly +the end of Christian preaching. What we are most in need +of today is a corrected perspective of our faith; without +it we darken counsel as we talk in confusion. So, while we +may not attempt here a detailed and reasoned statement +of religious belief, we may try to say what is the fundamental +attitude, both toward nature and toward man, that +lies underneath the religious experience. We have seen +that we are not stating that attitude very clearly nowadays +in our pulpits; hence we are often dealing there +with sentimental or stereotyped or humane or even pagan +interpretations. Yet nothing is more fatal for us; if we +peddle other men's wares they will be very sure that we despise our own.</p> + +<p>We approach, then, the third and final level of experience +to which we referred in the first lecture. We have +seen that the humanist accepts the law of measure; he +rests back upon the selected and certified experience of +his race; from within himself, as the noblest inhabitant +of the planet, and by the further critical observation of +nature he proposes to interpret and guide his life. He is +convinced that this combined authority of reason and observation +will lead to the <i>summum bonum</i> of the golden +mean in which unbridled self-expression will be seen as +equally unwise and indecent and ascetic repression as both +unworthy and unnecessary. It is important to again remind +ourselves that confidence in the human spirit as the +master of its own fate, and in reason and natural observation +as offering it the means of this self-control and +understanding, are essential humanistic principles. The +humanist world is rational, social, ethical.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104" id="page104"></a>[pg 104]</span> + +<p>Over against this reasonable and disciplined view of +man and of his world stands naturalism. It exploits the +defects of the classic "virtue"; it is, so to speak, humanism +run to seed. Just as religion so often sinks into bigotry, +cruelty and superstitition, so humanism, in lesser +souls, declines to egotism, license and sentimentality. +Naturalism, either by a shallow and insincere use of the +materialistic view of the universe, or by the exalting of +wanton feeling and whimsical fancy as ends in themselves, +attempts the identification of man with the natural +order, permits him to conceive of each desire, instinct, +impulse, as, being natural, thereby defensible and valuable. +Hence it permits him to disregard the imposed laws +of civilization—those fixed points of a humane order—and +to return in principle, and so far as he dares in action, +to the unlimited and irresponsible individualism of the +horde. Inevitably the law of the jungle is deliberately exalted, +or unconsciously adopted, over against the humanist law of moderation and discipline.</p> + +<p>The humanist, then, critically studies nature and mankind, +finding in her matrix and in his own spirit data +for the guidance of the race, improving upon it by a cultivated +and collective experience. The naturalist uncritically +exalts nature, seeks identification with it so that he +may freely exploit both himself and it. The faith of the +one is in the self-sufficiency of the disciplined spirit of +mankind; the unfaith of the other is in its glorification +of the natural world and in its allegiance to the momentary +devices and desires of the separate heart. It will be +borne in mind that these definitions are too clear-cut; that +these divisions appear in the complexities of human experience, +blurred and modified by the welter of cross +currents, subsidiary conflicting movements, which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page105" id="page105"></a>[pg 105]</span> +obscure all human problems. They represent genuine and +significant divisions of thought and conduct. But they +appear in actual experience as controlling emphases +rather than mutually exclusive territories.</p> + +<p>Now, the clearest way to get before us the religious +view of the world and the law which issues from it is to +contrast it with the other two. In the first place, the religious +temperament takes a very different view of nature +than either romantic, or to a less degree scientific, +naturalism. Naturalism is subrational on the one hand or +non-imaginative on the other, in that it emphasizes the +<i>continuity</i> between man and the physical universe. The +religious man is superrational and nobly imaginative as +he emphasizes the <i>difference</i> between man and nature. +He does not forget man's biological kinship to the brute, +his intimate structural and even psychological relation to +the primates, but he is aware that it is not in dwelling +upon these facts that his spirit discovers what is distinctive +to man as man. That he believes will be found +by accenting the <i>chasm</i> between man and nature. He does +not know how to conceive of a personal being except by +thinking of him as proceeding by other, though not conflicting, +laws and by moving toward different secondary +ends from those laws and ends which govern the impersonal +external world. This sense of the difference between +man and nature he shares with the humanist, only +the humanist does not carry it as far as he does and +hence may not draw from it his ultimate conclusions.</p> + +<p>The religious view, then, begins with the perception of +man's isolation in the natural order; his difference from +his surroundings. That sense of separateness is fundamental +to the religious nature. The false sentiment and +partial science of the pagan which stresses the identification +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page106" id="page106"></a>[pg 106]</span> +of man and beast is the first quarrel that religionist +and humanist alike have with him. Neither of them +sanctions this perversion of thought and feeling which +either projects the impressionistic self so absurdly and +perilously into the natural order, or else minimizes man's +imaginative and intellectual power, leveling him down to +the amoral instinct of the brute. "How much more," said +Jesus, "is a man better than a sheep!" One of the greatest +of English humanists was Matthew Arnold. You remember +his sonnet, entitled, alas! "To a Preacher," which runs as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"In harmony with Nature? Restless fool,</p> +<p>Who with such heat doth preach what were to thee,</p> +<p>When true, the last impossibility—</p> +<p>To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool!</p> +<p>Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,</p> +<p>And in that more lie all his hopes of good,</p> +<p>Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;</p> +<p>Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore;</p> +<p>Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest;</p> +<p>Nature forgives no debt and fears no grave;</p> +<p>Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.</p> +<p>Man must begin; know this, where Nature ends;</p> +<p>Nature and man can never be fast friends.</p> +<p>Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!"</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Religionist and humanist alike share this clear sense +of separateness. Literature is full of the expression of +it. Religion, in especial, has little to do with the natural +world as such. It is that other and inner one, which can +make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell, with which it +is chiefly concerned. Who can forget Othello's soliloquy +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107" id="page107"></a>[pg 107]</span> +as he prepares to darken his marriage chamber before the murder of his wife?</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Put out the light, and then put out the light.</p> +<p>If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,</p> +<p>I can again thy former light restore,</p> +<p>Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,</p> +<p>Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,</p> +<p>I know not where is that Promethean heat,</p> +<p>That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd the rose</p> +<p>I cannot give it vital growth again,</p> +<p>It needs must wither."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Indeed, how vivid to us all is this difference between +man and nature. "I would to heaven," Byron traced on +the back of the manuscript of <i>Don Juan</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"I would to heaven that I were so much clay,</p> +<p>As I am bone, blood, marrow, passion, feeling."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Ah me! So at many times would most of us. And in that +sense that we are not is where the religious consciousness takes its beginning.</p> + +<p>Here is the sense of the gap between man and the natural +world felt because man has no power over it. He +cannot swerve nor modify its laws, nor do his laws acknowledge +its ascendency over them. But what makes +the gulf deeper is the sense of the immeasurable moral +difference between a thinking, feeling, self-estimating +being and all this unheeding world about him. Whatever +it is that looks out from the windows of our eyes something +not merely of wonder and desire but also of fear +and repulsion must be there as it gazes into so cruel as +well as so alien an environment. For a moral being to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page108" id="page108"></a>[pg 108]</span> +glorify nature as such is pure folly or sheer sentimentality. +For he knows that her apparent repose and beauty is +built up on the ruthless and unending warfare of matched +forces, it represents a dreadful equilibrium of pain. He +knows, too, that that in him which allies him with this +natural world is his baser, not his better part. This nobly +pessimistic attitude toward the natural universe and +toward man so far as he shares in its characteristics, is +found in all classic systems of theology and has dominated +the greater part of Christian thinking. If it is ignored today +by the pseudo-religionists and the sentimentalists; it +is clearly enough perceived by contemporary science and +contemporary art. The biologist understands it. "I know +of no study," wrote Thomas Huxley, "which is so unutterably +saddening as that of the evolution of humanity +as set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness +of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his +lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more +intelligent than the other brutes; a blind prey to impulses +which as often as not lead him to destruction; a victim +to endless illusions which make his mental existence a +terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren +toil and battle. He attains a certain degree of comfort, +and develops a more or less workable theory of life in +such favorable situations as the plains of Mesopotamia +or of Egypt, and then, for thousands and thousands of +years struggles with various fortunes, attended by infinite +wickedness, bloodshed and misery, to maintain himself +at this point against the greed and ambition of his +fellow men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting +all those who first try to get him to move on; and +when he has moved a step farther he foolishly confers +post-mortem deification on his victims. He exactly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page109" id="page109"></a>[pg 109]</span> +repeats the process with all who want to move a step yet farther."<a id="footnotetag22" name="footnotetag22"></a><a href="#footnote22"><sup>22</sup></a></p> + +<p>And no less does the artist, the man of high and correct +feeling, perceive the immeasurable distance between +uncaring nature and suffering men and women. There is, +for instance, the passage in <i>The Education of Henry +Adams</i>, in which Adams speaks of the death of his sister +at Bagni di Lucca. "In the singular color of the Tuscan +atmosphere, the hills and vineyards of the Apennines +seemed bursting with midsummer blood. The sick room +itself glowed with the Italian joy of life; friends filled +it; no harsh northern lights pierced the soft shadows; +even the dying woman shared the sense of the Italian +summer, the soft velvet air, the humor, the courage, the +sensual fullness of Nature and man. She faced death, as +women mostly do, bravely and even gayly, racked slowly +to unconsciousness but yielding only to violence, as a +soldier sabred in battle. For many thousands of years, +on these hills and plains, Nature had gone on sabring men +and women with the same air of sensual pleasure.</p> + +<p>"Impressions like these are not reasoned or catalogued +in the mind; they are felt as a part of violent emotion; +and the mind that feels them is a different one from that +which reasons; it is thought of a different power and a +different person. The first serious consciousness of Nature's +gesture—her attitude toward life—took form then +as a phantasm, a nightmare, an insanity of force. For the +first time the stage scenery of the senses collapsed; the +human mind felt itself stripped naked, vibrating in a void +of shapeless energies, with resistless mass, colliding, +crushing, wasting and destroying what these same energies +had created and labored from eternity to perfect."</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page110" id="page110"></a>[pg 110]</span> + +<p>Here is a vivid interpretation of a universal human experience. +Might not any one of us who had endured it +turn upon the pagan and sentimentalist, crying in the mood +of a Swift or a Voltaire, "<i>Ca vous amuse, la vie</i>"? The +abstract natural rights of the eighteenth century smack +of academic complacency before this. The indignation we +feel against the insolent individualism of a Louis XIV +who cried "<i>L'état c'est moi</i>!" or against the industrial +overlord who spills the tears of women for his ambition, +the sweat of the children for his greed, is as nothing +beside the indignation with the natural order which +any biological study would arouse except as the +scientist perceives that indignation is, for him, beside the +point and the religionist believes that it proceeds from +not seeing far enough into the process. This is why there +is an essential absurdity in any naturalistic system of +ethics. Even the clown can say,</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Here's a night that pities</p> +<p>Neither wise men nor fools."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This common attitude of the religionist toward nature +as a remote and cruel world, alien to our spirits, is abundantly +reflected in literature. It finds a sort of final consummation +in the intuitive insight, the bright understanding +of the creative spirits of our race. What Aristotle +defines as the tragic emotions, the sense of the terror and +the pity of human life, arise partly from this perception +of the isolation always and keenly felt by dramatist and +prophet and poet. They know well that Nature does not +exist by our law; that we neither control nor understand it; is it not our friend?</p> + +<p>There is, then, the law of identity between man and +nature, found in their common physical origin; there is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page111" id="page111"></a>[pg 111]</span> +also the law of difference. It is on that aspect of reality +that religion places its emphasis. It is with this approach +to understanding ourselves that preachers, as distinguished +from scientists, deal. Our present society is +traveling farther and farther away from reality in so far +as it turns either to the outside world of fact, or to the +domain of natural law, expecting to find in these the elements +of insight for the fresh guidance of the human +spirit. Not there resides the secret of the beings of whom Shelley said,</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"We look before and after</p> +<p>And pine for what is not,</p> +<p>Our sincerest laughter</p> +<p>With some pain is fraught."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Instinct is a base, a prime factor, part of the matrix of +personality. But personality is not instinct; it is instinct +plus a different force; instinct transformed by spiritual +insight and controlled by moral discipline. The man of religion, +therefore, finds himself not in one but two worlds, +not indeed mutually exclusive, having a common origin, +but nevertheless significantly distinct. Each is incomplete +without the other, each in a true sense non-existent without +the other. But that which is most vital to man's world +is unknown in the domain of nature. Already the perception of a dualism is here.</p> + +<p>But now a third element comes into it. There is something +spiritually common to nature and man behind the +one, within the other. This Something is the origin, the +responsible agent for man's and nature's physical identity. +This Something binds the separates into a sort of +whole. This, I suppose, is what Professor Hocking refers +to when he says, "the original source of the knowledge +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page112" id="page112"></a>[pg 112]</span> +of God is an experience which might be described +as of <i>not being alone in knowing the world</i>, and especially +the world of nature."<a id="footnotetag23" name="footnotetag23"></a><a href="#footnote23"><sup>23</sup></a> Thus the religious man recognizes +beyond the gulf, behind the chasm, something more like +himself than it. When he contemplates nature, he sees +something other than nature; not a world which is what +it seems to be, but a world whose chief significance is that +it is more than it seems to be. It is a world where appearance +and reality are inextricably mingled and yet sublimely +and significantly separate. In short, the naturalist, the pagan, +takes the world as it stands; it is just what it appears; +the essence of his irreligion is that he perceives +nothing in it that needs to be explained. But the religionist +knows that the world which lies before our mortal +vision so splendid and so ruthless, so beautiful and so +dreadful, does really gain both its substance and significance +from immaterial and unseen powers. It is significant +not in itself but because it hides the truth. It points +forever to a beyond. It is the vague and insubstantial +pageant of a dream. Behind it, within the impenetrable +shadows, stands the Infinite Watcher of the sons of men.</p> + +<p>In every age religious souls have voiced this unearthliness +of reality, the noble other-worldliness of the goals of +the natural order. "Heard melodies are sweet, but unheard +melodies are sweeter." Poet, philosopher and mystic +have sung their song or proclaimed their message knowing +that they were moving about in worlds not realized, +clearly perceiving the incompleteness of the phenomenal +world and the delusive nature of sense perceptions. They +have known a Reality which they could not comprehend; +felt a Presence which they could not grasp. They have +found strength for the battle and peace for the pain by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page113" id="page113"></a>[pg 113]</span> +regarding nature as a dim projection, a tantalizing intimation +of that other, conscious and creative life, that +originating and directive force, which is not nature any +more than the copper wire is the electric fluid which it +carries—a force which was before it, which moves within it, which shall be after it.</p> + +<p>So poet and believer and mystic find the key to nature, +the interpretation of that alien and cruel world, not by +sinking to its indifferent level, not by sentimental exaltation +of its specious peace, its amoral cruelty and beauty, +but by regarding it as the expression, the intimation +rather, of a purposive Intelligence, a silent and infinite +Force, beyond it all. So the pagan effuses over nature, +gilding with his sentimentality the puddles that the beasts +would cough at. And the scientist is interested in efficient +causes, seeing nature as an unbroken sequence, an endless +uniformity of cause and effect, against whose iron chain +the spirit of mankind wages a foredoomed but never +ending revolt. But the religionist, confessing the ruthless +indifference, the amorality which he distrusts and fears, +and not denying the majestic uniformity of order, nevertheless +declares that these are not self-made, that the +amorality is but one half and that the confusing half of +the tale. The whole creation indeed groaneth and travaileth +in pain, but for a final cause, which alone interprets +or justifies it, and which eventually shall set it free. +As a matter of fact, nearly all poets and artists thus view +nature in the light of final causes, though often instinctively +and unconsciously so. For what they sing or paint +or mould is not the landscape that we see, the flesh we +touch, but the life behind it, the light that never was on +land or sea. What they give us is not a photograph or an +inventory—it is worlds away from such naïve and lying +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page114" id="page114"></a>[pg 114]</span> +realism. But they hint at the inexpressible behind expression; +paint the beauty which is indistinguishable from nature +but not identical with Nature. They make us see that +not she, red in tooth and claw, but that intangible and +supernal something-more, is what gives her the cleansing +bath of loveliness. No reflective or imaginative person +needs to be greatly troubled, therefore, by any purely +mechanical or materialistic conception of the universe. +They who would commend that view of the cosmos have +not only to reckon with philosophical and religious idealism, +but also with all the bright band of poets and artists +and seers. Such an issue once resolutely forced +would therewith collapse, for it would pit the qualitative +standards against the quantitative, the imagination +against literalism, the creative spirit in man against the machine in him.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is the difference between the naturalist's +and the religionist's attitude toward Nature. The believer +judges Nature, well aware of the gulf between himself +and her, hating with inexpressible depth of indignation +and repudiating with profound contempt the sybarite's +identification of human and natural law. But also he +comes back to her, not to accept in wonder her variable +outward form, but to worship in awe before her invariable +inner meaning. Sometimes, like so many of the humanists, +he rises only to a vague sense of the mystic +unity that fills up the interspaces of the world, and cries with Wordsworth:</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"... And I have felt</p> +<p>A presence that disturbs me with the joy</p> +<p>Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime</p> +<p>Of something far more deeply interfused,</p> +<p>Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115" id="page115"></a>[pg 115]</span> +<p>And the round ocean and the living air,</p> +<p>And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;</p> +<p>A motion and a spirit, that impels</p> +<p>All thinking things, all objects of all thought,</p> +<p>And rolls through all things."<a id="footnotetag24" name="footnotetag24"></a><a href="#footnote24"><sup>24</sup></a></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Sometimes he dares to personalize this ultimate and then +ascends to the supreme poetry of the religious experience +and feels the cosmic consciousness, the eternal "I" +of this strange world, which fills it with observant majesty. And then he chants,</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"The heavens declare the glory of God,</p> +<p>The firmament showeth his handiwork."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Or he whispers,</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Whither shall I go from Thy spirit,</p> +<p>Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?</p> +<p>If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there,</p> +<p>If I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there,</p> +<p>If I take the wings of the morning</p> +<p>And dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth,</p> +<p>Even there shall Thy hand lead me</p> +<p>And Thy right hand shall hold me."<a id="footnotetag25" name="footnotetag25"></a><a href="#footnote25"><sup>25</sup></a></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Indeed, the devout religionist almost never thinks of nature +as such. She is always the bush which flames and is +not consumed. Therefore he walks softly all his days, conscious that God is near.</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Of old," he says, "Thou hast laid the foundations of the earth;</p> +<p>And the heavens are the work of Thy hands.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116" id="page116"></a>[pg 116]</span> +<p>They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure;</p> +<p>Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment;</p> +<p>As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed;</p> +<p>But Thou art the same,</p> +<p>And Thy years shall have no end."<a id="footnotetag26" name="footnotetag26"></a><a href="#footnote26"><sup>26</sup></a></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>To him nature is the glass through which he sees +darkly and often with a darkling mind, the all-pervasive +Presence; it is the veil—the veil that covers the face of God.</p> + +<p>Here, then, we have the contrasting attitude of worldling +and believer toward nature, the outward universe. +Now we come to the contrasting attitude of humanist +and believer toward man, the world within. For why +are we so sure, first, of the chasm between ourselves and +Nature and, second, that we can bridge that chasm by +reaching out to something behind and beyond her which +is more like us than her? What gives us the key to her +dualism? Why do we think that there is Something which +perpetually beckons to us through her, makes awful +signs of an intimate and significant relationship? Because +we feel a similar chasm, an equal cleft in our own +hearts, a division in the moral nature of mankind. We +know that gulf between us and the outward world because +we know the greater gulf between flesh and spirit, +between the natural man and the real man, between the "I" and the "other I."</p> + +<p>Here is where the humanist bids us good-by and we +must go forward on our road alone. For he will not acknowledge +that there is anything essential or permanent +in that divided inner world; he would minimize it or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117" id="page117"></a>[pg 117]</span> +explain it away. But we know it is there and the reason we +know there is Something without which can bridge the +outer chasm is because we also know there is Something-Else +within which might bridge this one. For we who are +religious know that within the depths and the immensities +of this inner world, where there is no space but where +there is infinite largeness, where there is no time but +where there is perpetual strife, there is Something-Else +as well as the "I" and the "other I," and it is that +He who is the Something-Else who alone can close the +gap in that divided kingdom and make us one with ourselves, +hence with Himself and hence with His world.</p> + +<p>You ask how we can say, "He's there; He knows." +We answer that this "other," this "He" is a constant figure +in the experience; always in the vision; an integral +part of the perception. What is He like? "He" is purity +and compassion and inexorableness. Something fixed, immutable, +not to be tricked, not to be evaded and oh! all-comprehending. +He sees, his eyes run to and fro in all the +dark and wide, the light and high dominions of the soul. +If we will not come to terms with "Him," that eternal +and changeless life will be the cliff against which the +tumultuous waves of the divided spirit shall shatter and +dissipate into soundless foam; if we will come to terms, +relinquish, accept, surrender, then that purity and that +compassion will be the cleansing tide, the healing and +restoring flood in which we sink in the ecstasy of self-loss +to arise refreshed, radiant, and made whole.</p> + +<p>So we reckon from within out. The religious view of the +world is based upon the religious experience of the soul. +We have no other means of getting at reality. I know that +there is Something-more than me and Something-more +than the nature outside of me, because we know that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page118" id="page118"></a>[pg 118]</span> +there is Something which is not me and is not nature, inside +of me. So the man of religion, like any other poet, +artist, seer, looks in his own heart and writes. What +he finds there is real, or else, as far as he is concerned, +there is no reality. He does not assert that this +reality is the final and utter truth. But he knows it is his +trustworthy mediator of that truth.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is an immense separation between religionist +and both humanist and naturalist; a separation so +complete as to come full circle. We are convinced of the +secondary value, both of natural appearances and of the +mortal, temporal consciousness. So we substitute for impertinent +familiarity with Nature, a reverent regard for +what she half reveals, half hides. We interpret her by +ourselves. We are the same compound of identity and +difference. We acknowledge our continuity with the natural +world, our intimate and tragic alliance with the dust, +but we also know that we, within ourselves, are Something-Else +as well. And it is that Something-Else in us +which makes the significant part of us, which sets our +value and place in the scale of being.</p> + +<p>In short, the dualism of nature is revealed in the dualism +of the soul. There is a gulf within, and if only man +can span the inner chasm, he will know how to bridge the +outer. He must begin by finding God within himself, or +he will never find Him anywhere. Now, it is out of this +sense of a separation within himself, from himself +and from the Author of himself, that there arises that +awful sense of helplessness, of dependence, of bewilderment, +which is the second great element in the religious +life. Man is alone in the world; man is helpless +in the world; man ought not to be alone in the world; +man is therefore under scrutiny and condemnation; he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119" id="page119"></a>[pg 119]</span> +must find reconciliation, harmony, companionship, +somehow, somewhere. Hence the religious man is not +arrogant like the pagan, nor proud like the humanist; he +is humble. It is Burke, I think, who says that the whole +ethical life of man has its roots in this humility.<a id="footnotetag27" name="footnotetag27"></a><a href="#footnote27"><sup>27</sup></a> The +religious man cannot help but be humble. He has an awful +pride in his kinship with heaven, but, standing before +the Lord of heaven, he feels human nature's proper +place, its confusion and division and helplessness; its dependence +upon the higher Power.</p> + +<p>It is at this point that humanism and religion definitely +part company. The former does not feel this absolute and +judging Presence, hence cannot understand the spiritual +solicitude of the latter. St. Paul was not quite at +home on Mars Hill; it was hard to make those who were +always hearing and seeing some new thing understand; +the shame and humility of the cross were an unnecessary +foolishness to them. So they have always been. The humanist +cannot take seriously this sense of a transcendent +reality. When Cicero, to escape the vengeance of Clodius, +withdrew from Rome, he passed over into Greece and +dwelt for a while in Thessalonica. One day he saw +Mount Olympus, the lofty and eternal home of the deities +of ancient Greece. "But I," said the bland eclectic +philosopher, "saw nothing but snow and ice."</p> + +<p>How inadequate, then, as a substitute for religion, is +even the noblest humanism. True and fine as far as it +goes, it does not go far enough for us. It takes too little +account of the divided life. It appears not to understand +it. On the whole it refuses to acknowledge that it really +exists, or, if it does, it is convinced of man's unaided +ability to efface it. It isn't something inevitable. Hence +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120" id="page120"></a>[pg 120]</span> +the pride which is an essential quality of the humanistic attitude.</p> + +<p>But the religious man knows that it does exist and +that while he is not wholly responsible for it, yet he is +essentially so and that, alas, in spite of that fact, he alone +cannot bridge it. So he cries, "Wretched man that I am, +what shall I do to be saved?" Here is the feeling of uneasiness, +the sense of something being wrong about us +as we naturally stand, of which James speaks. In that +sense of responsibility is the confession of sin and in the +confession of sin is the acknowledgment of the impotence of the sinner.</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on</p> +<p>Nor all your wit nor all your tears, can wash a line of it."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Man cannot, unaided, make his connection with this +higher power. The world is at fault, yes, but we are at +fault, something both within and without dreadfully +needs explaining. So man is subdued and troubled by the +infinite mystery; and he cannot accept the place in which +he finds himself in that mystery; he is ashamed of it.</p> + +<p>Vivid, then, is his sense of helplessness! It makes him +resent the humanist, who bids him, unaided, solve his +fate and be a man. That is giving him stones when he +asks for bread. He knows that advice makes an inhuman +demand upon the will; it assumes a reasonableness, an insight +and a moral power, which for him do not exist; +it ignores or it denies the reality and the meaning of this +inner gulf. It is important to note that even as philosophy +and art and literature soon parted company with the naturalist, +so, to a large degree, they part company with the +humanist, too. They do not know very much of an harmonious +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page121" id="page121"></a>[pg 121]</span> +and triumphant universe. Few of the world's +creative spirits have ever denied that inner chasm or +minimized its tragic consequences to mankind. Isaiah +and Paul and John and Augustine and Luther are wrung +with the consciousness of it. Indeed, the antithesis between +flesh and spirit is too familiar in religious literature +to need any recounting. It is more vividly +brought home to us from the nonprofessional, the disinterested +and involuntary testimony of secular writing. +Was there ever such a cry of revolt on the part of the +trapped spirit against the net and slough of natural values +and natural desires as runs through the sonnets of +William Shakespeare? We remember the 104th:</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,</p> +<p>Foiled by these rebel powers that thee array,</p> +<p>Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,</p> +<p>Painting thine outward walls so costly gay?</p> +<p>Why so large cost, having so short a lease,</p> +<p>Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?</p> +<p>Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,</p> +<p>Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?</p> +<p>Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss</p> +<p>And let that pine to aggravate thy store,</p> +<p>Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross</p> +<p>Within be fed, without be rich no more—"</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Or turn to our contemporary poet, James Stephens:</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Good and bad are in my heart</p> +<p>But I cannot tell to you</p> +<p>For they never are apart</p> +<p>Which is the better of the two.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page122" id="page122"></a>[pg 122]</span> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>I am this: I am the other</p> +<p>And the devil is my brother</p> +<p>And my father he is God</p> +<p>And my mother is the sod,</p> +<p>Therefore I am safe, you see</p> +<p>Owing to my pedigree.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>So I cherish love and hate</p> +<p>Like twin brothers in a nest</p> +<p>Lest I find when it's too late</p> +<p>That the other was the best."<a id="footnotetag28" name="footnotetag28"></a><a href="#footnote28"><sup>28</sup></a></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Here, then, we find the next thing which grows out of +man's sense of separation both from nature and from +his own best self. It is his moral judgment on himself as +well as on the world outside, and that power to judge +shows that he is greater than either. As Dr. Gordon says, +"Every honest man lives under the shadow of his own +rebuke." We can go far with the humanist in acknowledging +the failures that are due to environment, to incompleteness, +to ignorance; we do not forget the helpless +multitude who sit in darkness and in the shadow of +death; and we agree with the scientist that their helplessness +foredooms them and that their fate cannot be +laid to their charge. But we go far beyond where scientist +and humanist stop. For we know that the deepest +cause of human misery is not inheritance, is not environment, +is not ignorance, is not incompleteness; it is the informed +but the perverse human will. Just as unhappiness +is the consciousness of the divided mind, so guilt is this +sense of the deliberately divided will. Jonathan Swift +knew that; on every yearly recurrence of the hour in +which he came into the world, he cried lamentably, "Let +the day perish wherein I was born."</p> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page123" id="page123"></a>[pg 123]</span> + +<p>The Lord Jesus knew it, too. His teaching, unlike that +of Paul, does not throw into the foreground the divided +will and its accompanying sense of sin and guilt. But he +does not ignore it. He brought it out with infinite tenderness +but inexorable clearness in the parables of the lost +sheep, the lost coin and the lost boy. The sheep were but +young and silly, they did not wish to be lost on the +mountain-side; they knew no better; inexperience, ignorance +were theirs, and for their sad estate they were +not held responsible. For them the compassionate shepherd +sought until he found them in the wilds, took them, +involuntary burdens, on his heart, brought them back to +safety and the fold. The coin had no native affinity with +the dirt and grime of the careless woman's house. It was +only a coin, attached to anklet or bracelet, having no +power, no independence of its own; where it fell, there +must it lie. So with the lives set by fate in the refuse +and grime of our industrial civilization, the pure minted +gold effectually concealed by the obscurity and filth +around. For such lives, victims of environment, the Father +will search, too, until they are found, taken up, and +somewhere, in this world or another, restored to their +native worth. But the chief of the parables, and the one +that has captured the imagination and subdued the heart +of mankind, because it so true to the greater part of life, +is the story of the lost boy. For he was the real sinner and +he was such because, knowing what he was about and able +to choose, he desired to do wrong. It was not ignorance, +nor environment, nor inheritance, that led him into the +far country. It was its alien delights and their alien nature, +for which as such he craved. How subtle and certain +is the word of Jesus here. No shepherd seeks this wandering +sheep; no householder searches for this lost coin. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page124" id="page124"></a>[pg 124]</span> +The boy who willed to do wrong must stay with the swine +among the husks until he wills to do right. Then, when +he desires to return, return is made possible and easy, but +the responsibility is forever his. The source of his misery is his own will.</p> + +<p>So the disposition of mankind is at the bottom of the +suffering and the division. There is rebellion and perverseness +mingled with the helplessness and ignorance +and sorrow. No man ever understands or can speak to +the religious life unless he has the consciousness of this +inner moral cleft. No man will ever be able to preach with +power about God unless he does it chiefly in terms of +God's difference from man and man's perilous estate and +desperate need of Him. Indeed, God is not like us, not +like this inner life of ours; this is what we want to hear. +God is different; that is why we want to be able to love +Him. And being thus different, we are separated from +Him, both by the inner chasm of the divided soul and +the outer chasm of remote and hostile nature. Then +comes the final question: How are we, being helpless, to +reach Him? How are we, being guilty, to find Him?</p> + +<p>When men deal with these queries, with this range of +experience, this set of inward perceptions, then they are +preaching religiously. And then, I venture to say, they +do not fail either of hearers or of followers. Then there +is what Catherine Booth used to call "liberty of speech"; +then there is power because then we talk of realities. +For what is it that looks out from the eyes of religious +humanity? Rebellion, pride? no! Humility, loneliness, +something of a just and deserved fear; but most +of all, desire, insatiable, unwavering, an intense desire. +This passion of the race, its never satisfied hunger, its +incredible intensity and persistency of striving and longing, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page125" id="page125"></a>[pg 125]</span> +is at once the tragedy and glory, the witness to the +helplessness, the revelation of the capacity of the race. +The mainspring of human activity, the creative impulse +from which in devious ways all the thousand-hued motives +of our lives arise, is revealed in the ancient cry, +"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God!" That +unquenched thirst for Him underlies all human life, as +the solemn stillness of the ocean underlies the restless +upper waves. The dynamic of the world is the sense of +the divine reality. The woe of the world is man's inability +to discover and appropriate that reality. Who that +has entered truly into life does not perceive beneath all +the glitter of its brilliance, the roar of its energy and +achievement, the note of melancholy? The great undertone +of life is solemn in its pathetic uniformity. The +poets and prophets of the world have seized unerringly +upon that melancholy undertone. Who ever better understood +the futility and helplessness of unaided man, the +certain doom that tracks down his pride of insolence, or +his sin, than the Greek tragedians? Sophocles, divided +spirit that he was, heard that note of melancholy long +ago by the Ægean, wrote it into his somber dramas, +with their turbid ebb and flow of human misery. Sometimes +the voices of our humanity as they rise blend and +compose into one great cry that is lifted, shivering and +tingling, to the stars, "Oh, that I knew where I might +find Him!" Sometimes and more often they sink into +a subdued and minor plaint, infinitely touching in its human +solicitude, perplexity and pain. Again, James Stephens +has phrased it for us in his verse <i>The Nodding Stars</i>.<a id="footnotetag29" name="footnotetag29"></a><a href="#footnote29"><sup>29</sup></a></p> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page126" id="page126"></a>[pg 126]</span> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Brothers, what is it ye mean,</p> +<p>What is it ye try to say</p> +<p>That so earnestly ye lean</p> +<p>From the spirit to the clay.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>"There are weary gulfs between</p> +<p>Here and sunny Paradise,</p> +<p>Brothers! What is it ye mean</p> +<p>That ye search with burning eyes,</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>"Down for me whose fire is clogged,</p> +<p>Clamped in sullen, earthy mould,</p> +<p>Battened down and fogged and bogged,</p> +<p>Where the clay is seven-fold."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Now we understand the tragic aspect of nature and +of the human soul caught in this cosmic dualism without +which corresponds to the ethical dualism within. +This perception of the One behind the many in nature, +of the thing-in-itself, as distinguished from the many expressions +of that thing, is the chief theme for preaching. +This is what brings men to themselves. Herein, as Dr. +Newman Smyth has pointed out, appears the unique +marvel of personality. "It becomes conscious of itself as +individual and it individualizes the world; it is the one +discovering itself among the many. In the midst of uniformities +of nature, moving at will on the plane of natural +necessities, weaving the pattern of its ideas through +the warp of natural laws, runs the personal life. On the +same plane and amid these uniformities, yet itself a +sphere of being of another order; in it, yet disentangled +from it, and having its center in itself, it lives and moves +and has its being, breaking no thread of nature's weaving, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page127" id="page127"></a>[pg 127]</span> +subject to its own law, and manifesting a dynamic of its own."<a id="footnotetag30" name="footnotetag30"></a><a href="#footnote30"><sup>30</sup></a></p> + +<p>The source, then, as we see it, of all human hopes and +human dignity, the urge that lies behind all metaphysics +and much of literature and art, the thing that makes men +eager to live, yet nobly curious to die, is this conviction +that One like unto ourselves but from whom we have +made ourselves unlike, akin to our real, if buried, person, +walketh with us in the fiery furnace of our life. There +is a Spirit in man and the breath of the Almighty giveth +him understanding. Starting from this interpretation, we +can begin to order the baffling and teasing aspects, the +illusive nature of the world. Why this ever failing, but +never ending struggle against unseen odds to grasp and +understand and live with the Divine? Why, between the +two, the absolute and the changeless spirit, unseen but +felt, and the hesitant and timid spirit of a man, would +there seem to be a great gulf fixed? Because we are +wrong. Because man finds the gulf within himself. He +chafes at the limitations of time and space? Yes; but he +chafes more at the mystery and weakness, the mingled +deceitfulness and cunning and splendor of the human +heart. Because there is no one of us who can say, I have +made my life pure, I am free from my sin. He knows +that the gulf is there between the fallible and human, +and the more than human; he does not know how to cross it; he says,</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"I would think until I found</p> +<p>Something I can never find</p> +<p>Something lying on the ground</p> +<p>In the bottom of my mind."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Here, then, can we not understand that mingling of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page128" id="page128"></a>[pg 128]</span> +mystic dignity and profound humility, of awe-struck +pride and utter self-abnegation, wherewith the man of religion +regards his race and himself? He is the child of the +Eternal; he, being man, alone knows that God is. "When +I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the +moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is +man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man +that Thou visitest him?" Here is the humility: "Why +so hot, little man!" Then comes the awe-struck +pride: "Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than the +angels and crowned him with glory and honor." "Alone +with the gods, alone!" God is the high and lofty one +which inhabiteth eternity, but He is also nigh unto them +who are of a broken and a contrite heart.</p> + +<p>Here we are come to the very heart of religion. Man's +proud separateness in the universe; yet man's moral defection +and his responsibility for it which makes him +know that separateness; man's shame and helplessness under +it. Over against the denial or evasion of moral values +by the naturalist and the dullness to the sense of moral +helplessness by the humanist, there stands the sense of +moral difference, the sense of sin, of penitence and confession. +No preaching not founded on these things can +ever be called religious or can ever stir those ranges of +the human life for which alone preaching is supposed to exist.</p> + +<p>What is the religious law, then? It is the law of humility. +And what is the religious consciousness? The +sense of man's difference from nature and from God. +The sense of his difference from himself within himself +and the longing for an inner harmony which shall unite +him with himself and with the beauty and the spirit without. +So what is the religious passion? Is it to exalt human +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129" id="page129"></a>[pg 129]</span> +nature? It would be more true to say it is to lose it. What +is the end for us? Not identification with nature and the +natural self, but pursuit of the other than nature, the +more than natural self. Our humility is not like that of +Uriah Heep, a mean opinion of ourselves in comparison +with other men. It is the profound consciousness of the +weakness and the nothingness of our kind, and of the +poor ends human nature sets its heart upon, in comparison +with that Other One above and beyond and without +us, to whom we are kin, from whom we are different, to +whom we aspire, to reach whom we know not how.</p> + +<p>This, then, is what we mean when we turn back from +the language of experience to the vocabulary of philosophy +and theology and talk about the absolute values of +religion. We mean by "absolute values" that behind the +multifarious and ever changing nature, is a single and a +steadfast cause—a great rock in a weary land. We have +lost the old absolute philosophies and dogmatic theologies +and that is good and right, for they were outworn. +But we are never going to lose the central experience +that produced them, and our task is to find a new philosophy +to express these inner things for which the +words "supernatural," "absolute," are no longer intelligible. +For we still know that behind man's partial and +relative knowledge, feeling, willing, is an utter knowledge, +a perfect feeling, a serene and unswerving will; that beneath +man's moral anarchy there is moral sovereignty; +that behind his helplessness there is abundant power to +save. Perhaps this Other is always changing, but, if so, +it is a Oneness which is changing. In short, the thing that +is characteristic of religion is that it dwells, not on man's +likenesses, but on his awful differences from nature +and from God; sees him not as little counterparts of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page130" id="page130"></a>[pg 130]</span> +deity, but as broken fragments only to be made whole +within the perfect life. It sees relativity as the law of our +being, yes, but relativity, not of the sort that excludes, +but is included in, a higher absolute, even as the planet swings in infinite space.</p> + +<p>The trouble with much preaching is that it lacks the +essentially religious insight; in dwelling on man's identities +it confuses or drugs, not clarifies and purges, the +spirit. Thus, it obscures the gulf. Sometimes it evades it, +or bridges it by minimizing it, and genuinely religious +people, and those who want to be religious, and those +who might be, know that such preaching is not real and +that it does not move them and, worst of all, the hungry +sheep look up and are not fed. For in such preaching +there is no call to humility, no plea for grace, no sense +that the achievement of self-unity is as much a rescue as +it is a reformation. But this sense of the need of salvation +is integral to religion; this is where it has parted company +with humanism. Humanism makes no organic relations +between man and the Eternal. It is as though it +thought these would take care of themselves! In the +place of grace it puts pride; pride of caste, of family, of +character, of intellect. But high self-discipline and pride +in the human spirit are not the deepest or the highest +notes man strikes. The cry, not of pride in self, +but for fellowship with the Infinite, is the superlative expression +of man. Augustine sounded the highest note of +feeling when he wrote, "O God, Thou hast made us for +Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in +Thee." The words of the Lord Jesus gave the clearest +insight of the human mind when He said, "And when he +came to himself, he said, I will arise and go to my Father."</p> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote22" name="footnote22"></a><b>Footnote 22: </b><a href="#footnotetag22">(return) </a><p>"Agnosticism," the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, February, 1889.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote23" name="footnote23"></a><b>Footnote 23: </b><a href="#footnotetag23">(return) </a><p><i>The Meaning of God in Human Experience</i>, p. 236.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote24" name="footnote24"></a><b>Footnote 24: </b><a href="#footnotetag24">(return) </a><p><i>Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey</i>, stanza 3, ll. 36-45.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote25" name="footnote25"></a><b>Footnote 25: </b><a href="#footnotetag25">(return) </a><p>Psalm cxxxix. 7-9.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote26" name="footnote26"></a><b>Footnote 26: </b><a href="#footnotetag26">(return) </a><p>Psalm cii. 25-27.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote27" name="footnote27"></a><b>Footnote 27: </b><a href="#footnotetag27">(return) </a><p><i>Correspondence</i>, III, p. 213.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote28" name="footnote28"></a><b>Footnote 28: </b><a href="#footnotetag28">(return) </a><p><i>Songs from the Clay</i>, p. 40.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote29" name="footnote29"></a><b>Footnote 29: </b><a href="#footnotetag29">(return) </a><p><i>Songs from the Clay</i>, p. 68.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote30" name="footnote30"></a><b>Footnote 30: </b><a href="#footnotetag30">(return) </a><p><i>The Meaning of the Personal Life</i>, p. 173.</p></blockquote> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131" id="page131"></a>[pg 131]</span> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER FIVE</h2> + +<h2>Grace, Knowledge, Virtue</h2> + + +<p>I hope the concluding paragraphs of the last chapter +brought us back into the atmosphere of religion, +into that sort of mood in which the reality +of the struggle for character, the craving of the human +spirit to give and to receive compassion, the cry of the +lonely soul for the love of God, were made manifest. +These are the real goods of life to religious natures; they +need this meat which the world knoweth not of; there +is a continuing resolve in them to say, "Good-by, proud +world, I'm going home!" The genuinely religious man +must, and should indeed, live in this world, but he cannot live of it.</p> + +<p>Merely to create such an atmosphere then, to induce +this sort of mood, to shift for men their perspectives, +until these needs and values rise once more compelling +before their eyes, is a chief end of preaching. Its object +is not so much moralizing or instructing as it is interpreting +and revealing; not the plotting out of the landscape +at our feet, but the lifting of our eyes to the hills, +to the fixed stars. Then we really do see things that are +large as large and things that are small as small. We need +that vision today from religious leaders more than we need any other one thing.</p> + +<p>For humanism and naturalism between them have +brought us to an almost complete secularization of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132" id="page132"></a>[pg 132]</span> +preaching, in which its characteristic elements, its distinctive +contribution, have largely faded from liberal +speaking and from the consciousness of its hearers. We +have emphasized man's kinship with nature until now we +can see him again declining to the brute; we have proclaimed +the divine Immanence until we think to compass +the Eternal within a facile and finite comprehension. By +thus dwelling on the physical and rational elements of +human experience, religion has come to concern itself to +an extraordinary degree with the local and temporal +reaches of faith. We have lost the sense of communion +with Absolute Being and of the obligation to standards +higher than those of the world, which that communion +brings. Out of this identification of man with nature has +come the preaching which ignores the fact of sin; which +reduces free will and the moral responsibility of the individual +to the vanishing point; which stresses the control +of the forces of inheritance and environment to the +edge of fatalistic determinism; which leads man to regard +himself as unfortunate rather than reprehensible +when moral disaster overtakes him; which induces that +condoning of the moral rebel which is born not of love +for the sinner but of indifference to his sin; which issues +in that last degeneration of self-pity in which individuals +and societies alike indulge; and in that repellent sentimentality +over vice and crime which beflowers the murderer +while it forgets its victim, which turns to ouija +boards and levitated tables to obscure the solemn finality +of death and to gloze over the guilty secrets of the battlefield.</p> + +<p>Thus it has come about that we preach of God in terms +of the drawing-room, as though he were some vast St. +Nicholas, sitting up there in the sky or amiably informing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page133" id="page133"></a>[pg 133]</span> +our present world, regarding with easy benevolence +His minute and multifarious creations, winking at our +pride, our cruelty, our self-love, our lust, not greatly caring +if we break His laws, tossing out His indiscriminate +gifts, and vaguely trusting in our automatic arrival at +virtue. Even as in philosophy, it is psychologists, experts +in empirical science and methods, and sociologists, experts +in practical ethics, who may be found, while the +historian and the metaphysician are increasingly rare, so +in preaching we are amiable and pious and ethical and +practical and informative, but the vision and the absolutism +of religion are a departing glory.</p> + +<p>What complicates the danger and difficulty of such a +position, with its confusion of natural and human values, +and its rationalizing and secularizing of theistic thinking, +is that it has its measure of reality. All these +observations of naturalist and humanist are half +truths, and for that very reason more perilous than utter +falsehoods. For the mind tends to rest contented +within their areas, and so the partial becomes the worst +enemy of the whole. What we have been doing is stressing +the indubitable identity between man and nature and +between the Creator and His creatures to the point of +unreality, forgetting the equally important fact of +the difference, the distinction between the two. But sound +knowledge and normal feeling rest upon observing and +reckoning with both aspects of this law of kinship and +contrast. All human experience becomes known to +us through the interplay of what appear to be contradictory +needs and opposing truths within our being. Thus, +man is a social animal and can only find himself in a series +of relationships as producer, lover, husband, father and +friend. He is a part of and like unto his kind, his spirit +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page134" id="page134"></a>[pg 134]</span> +immanent in his race. But man is also a solitary creature, +and in that very solitariness, which he knows as he contrasts +it with his social interests, he finds identity of self, +the something which makes us "us," which separates us +from all others in the world. A Crusoe, marooned on a +South Sea island, without even a black man Friday for +companionship, would soon cease to be a man; personality +would forsake him. But the same Crusoe is equally +in need of solitude. The hell of the barracks, no matter +how well conducted, is their hideous lack of privacy; +men condemned by shipwreck or imprisonment to an unbroken +and intimate companionship kill their comrade or +themselves. We are all alike and hence gregarious; we +are all different and hence flee as a bird to the mountain. +The reality of human personality lies in neither one aspect +of the truth nor the other, but in both. The truth is +found as we hold the balance between identity and difference. +Hence we are not able to think of personality in +the Godhead unless we conceive of God as being, within +Himself, a social no less than a solitary Being.</p> + +<p>Again, this law that the truth is found in the balance +of the antinomies appears in man's equal passion for continuity +and permanency and for variety and change. The +book of Revelation tells us that the redeemed, before the +great white throne, standing upon the sea of glass, sing +the song of Moses and the Lamb. What has the one to +do with the other? Here is the savage, triumphant chant +of the far dawn of Israel's history, joined with the furthest +and latest possible events and words. Well, it +at least suggests the continuity of the ageless struggle of +mankind, showing that the past has its place in the present, +relieving man's horror of the impermanence, the disjointed +character of existence. He wants something orderly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page135" id="page135"></a>[pg 135]</span> +and static. But, like the jet of water in the fountain, +his life is forever collapsing and collapsing, falling in +upon itself, its apparent permanence nothing but a rapid +and glittering succession of impermanences. The dread +of growing old is chiefly that, as years come on, life +changes more and faster, becomes a continual process of +readjustment. Therefore we want something fixed; like +the sailor with his compass, we must have some needle, +even if a tremulous one, always pointing toward a +changeless star. Yet this is but one half of the picture. +Does man desire continuity?—quite as much does he wish +for variety, cessation of old ways, change and fresh beginnings. +The most terrible figure which the subtle imagination +of the Middle Ages conjured up was that of the +Wandering Jew, the man who could not die! Here, then, +we arrive at knowledge, the genuine values of experience, +by this same balancing of opposites. Continuity +alone kills; perpetual change strips life of significance; man must have both.</p> + +<p>Now, it is in the religious field that this interests us +most. We have seen that what we have been doing there +of late has been to ignore the fact that reality is +found only through this balancing of the law of difference +and identity, contrast and likeness. We have been +absorbed in one half of reality, identifying man with nature, +prating of his self-sufficiency, seeing divinity almost +exclusively as immanent in the phenomenal world. Thus +we have not merely been dealing with only one half of the +truth, but that, to use a solecism, the lesser half.</p> + +<p>For doubtless men do desire in religion a recognition +of the real values of their physical nature. And they want +rules of conduct, a guide for practical affairs, a scale of +values for this world. This satisfies the craving for temporal +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page136" id="page136"></a>[pg 136]</span> +adjustment, the sense of the goodness and worth of +what our instinct transmits to us. But it does nothing to +meet that profound dissatisfaction with this world and +that sense of the encumbrances of the flesh which is also +a part of reality and, to the religious man, perhaps the +greater part. He wants to turn away from all these present +things and be kept secretly in a pavilion from the +strife of tongues. Here he has no continuing city. Always +while we dwell here we have a dim and restless +sense that we are in an unreal country and we know, in +our still moments, that we shall only come to ourselves +when we return to the house of our Father. Hence men +have never been satisfied with religious leaders who +chiefly interpreted this world to them.</p> + +<p>And indeed, since July, 1914, and down to and including +this very hour, this idealizing of time, which we had +almost accepted as our office, has had a ghastly exposure. +Because there has come upon us all one of these irrevocable +and irremediable disasters, for which time has no +word of hope, to which Nature is totally indifferent, for +which the God of the outgoings and incomings of the +morning is too small. For millions of living and suffering +men and women all temporal and mortal values have +been wiped out. They have been caught in a catastrophe +so ruthless and dreadful that it has strewed their +bodies in heaps over the fields and valleys of many nations. +Today central and south and northeastern Europe +and western Asia are filled with idle and hungry and +desperate men and women. They have been deprived of +peace, of security, of bread, of enlightenment alike. Something +more than temporal salvation and human words of +hope are needed here. Something more than ethical reform +and social readjustment and economic alleviation, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page137" id="page137"></a>[pg 137]</span> +admirable though these are! Something there must be in +human nature that eclipses human nature, if it is to endure +so much! What has the God of this world to give +for youth, deprived of their physical immortality and all +their sweet and inalienable human rights, who are lying +now beneath the acre upon acre of tottering wooden +crosses in their soldier's graves? Is there anything in this +world sufficient now for the widow, the orphan, the cripple, +the starving, the disillusioned and the desperate? +What Europe wants to know is why and for what purpose +this holocaust—is there anything beyond, was there +anything before it? A civilization dedicated to speed and +power and utility and mere intelligence cannot answer +these questions. Neither can a religion resolved into +naught but the ethics of Jesus answer them. "If in this +world only," cries today the voice of our humanity, "we +have hope, then we are of all men the most miserable!" +When one sees our American society of this moment returning +so easily to the physical and the obvious and the +practical things of life; when one sees the church immersed +in programs, and moralizing, and hospitals, and +campaigns, and membership drives, and statistics, and +money getting, one is constrained to ask, "What shall be +said of the human spirit that it can forget so soon?"</p> + +<p>Is it not obvious, then, that our task for a pagan society +and a self-contained humanity is to restore the balance +of the religious consciousness and to dwell, not on +man's identity with Nature, but on his far-flung difference; +not on his self-sufficiency, but on his tragic helplessness; +not on the God of the market place, the office +and the street, an immanent and relative deity, but on the +Absolute, that high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity? +Indeed, we are being solemnly reminded today that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138" id="page138"></a>[pg 138]</span> +the other-worldliness of religion, its concern with future, +supertemporal things, is its characteristic and most precious +contribution to the world. We are seeing how every +human problem when pressed to its ultimate issue becomes +theological. Here is where the fertile field for contemporary +preaching lies. It is found, not in remaining +with those elements in the religious consciousness which +it shares in common with naturalism and humanism, but +in passing over to those which are distinctive to itself +alone. It has always been true, but it is especially true at +this moment, that effective preaching has to do chiefly with transcendent values.</p> + +<p>Our task is to assert, first, then, the "otherness" of +man, his difference from Nature, to point out the illusoriness +of her phenomena for him, the derived reality and +secondary value of her facts. These are things that need +religious elucidation. The phrase "other-worldliness" has +come, not without reason, to have an evil connotation +among us, but there is nevertheless a genuine disdain of +this world, a sense of high superiority to it and profound +indifference toward it, which is of the essence of the +religious attitude. He who knows that here he is a +stranger, sojourning in tabernacles; that he belongs by +his nature, not to this world, but that he seeks a better, +that is to say, a heavenly country, will for the joy that is +set before him, endure a cross and will despise the shame. +He will have a conscious superiority to hostile facts of +whatever sort or magnitude, for he knows that they deceive +in so far as they pretend to finality. When religion +has thus acquired a clear-sighted and thoroughgoing indifference +to the natural order, then, and then only, it begins +to be potent within that order. Then, as Professor +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page139" id="page139"></a>[pg 139]</span> +Hocking says, it rises superior to the world of facts and becomes irresistible.<a id="footnotetag31" name="footnotetag31"></a><a href="#footnote31"><sup>31</sup></a></p> + +<p>The time is ripe, then, first, for the preacher to emphasize +the inward and essential difference between man and +nature which exists under the outward likeness, to remind +him of this more-than-nature, this "otherness" of +man, without which he would lose his most precious possession, +the sense of personality. Faith begins by recognizing +this transcendent element in man and the acceptance +of it is the foundation of religious preaching. What +was the worst thing about the war? Not its destruction +nor its horrors nor its futilities, but its shames; the +dreadful indignities which it inflicted upon man; it +treated men as though they were not souls! No such +moral catastrophe could have overwhelmed us if we had +not for long let the brute lie too near the values and +practices of our lives, depersonalizing thus, in politics +and industry and morals and religion, our civilization. It +all proceeded from the irreligious interpretation of human +existence, and the fruits of that interpretation are before us.</p> + +<p>The first task of the preacher, then, is to combat the +naturalistic interpretation of humanity with every insight +and every conviction that is within his power. If we are +to restore religious values, rebuild a world of transcendent +ends and more-than-natural beauty, we must begin +here with man. In the popular understanding of the +phrase all life is not essentially one in kind; physical +self-preservation and reproduction are not the be-all +and the end-all of existence. There is something more to +be expressed in man without which these are but dust and +ashes in the mouth. There is another kind of life mixed in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page140" id="page140"></a>[pg 140]</span> +with this, the obvious. If we cannot express the other +world, we shall not long tolerate this one. To think that +this world is all, leans toward madness; such a picture of +man is a travesty, not a portrait of his nature. Only on +some such basic truths as these can we build character +in our young people. Paganism tells them that it is +neither natural nor possible to keep themselves unspotted +from the world. Over against it we must reiterate, You +can and you must! for the man that sinneth wrongeth his +own soul. You are something more than physical hunger +and reproductive instinct; you are of spirit no less than +dust. How, then, can you do this great sin against God!</p> + +<p>How abundant here are the data with which religious +preaching may deal. Indeed, as Huxley and scores of +others have pointed out, it is only the religious view of +man that builds up civilization. A great community is the +record of man's supernaturalism, his uniqueness. It is +built on the "higher-than-self" principle which is involved +in the moral sense itself. And this higher-than-self +is not just a collective naturalism, a social consciousness, +as Durkheim and Overstreet and Miss Harrison +would say. The simplest introspective act will prove that. +For a man cannot ignore self-condemnation as if it were +only a natural difficulty, nor disparage it as though it were +merely humanly imposed. We think it comes from that +which is above and without, because it speaks to the solitary +and the unique, not the social and the common part +of us. Hence conscience is not chiefly a tribal product, +for it is what separates us from the group and in our +isolation unites us with something other than the group. +"Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this +evil in Thy sight." So religious preaching perpetually +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page141" id="page141"></a>[pg 141]</span> +holds us up above our natural selves and the natural order.</p> + +<p>Thus man must live by an other-than-natural law if +he is to preserve the family, which is the social unit of +civilization. Its very existence depends upon modifying +and transforming natural hunger by a diviner instinct, by +making voluntary repressions, willing sacrifices of the +lower to the higher, the subordinating of the law of self +and might to the law of sacrifice and love—this is what +preserves family life. Animals indeed rear and cherish +their young and for the mating season remain true to one +another, but no animality <i>per se</i> ever yet built a home. +There must be a more-than-natural law in the state. Our +national life and honor rest upon the stability of the +democracy and we can only maintain that by walking a +very straight and narrow path. For the peace of freedom +as distinguished from precarious license is a more-than-natural +attainment, born of self-repression and social discipline, +the voluntary relinquishment of lesser rights for +higher rights, of personal privileges for the sake of the +common good. Government by the broad and easy path, +following the lines of least resistance, like the natural order, +saying might is right, means either tyranny or anarchy. +<i>Circumspice</i>! One of the glories of western civilization +is its hospitals. They stand for the supernatural +doctrine of the survival of the unfit, the conviction of the +community that, to take the easy path of casting out the +aged and infirm, the sick and the suffering, would mean +incalculable degeneration of national character, and that +the difficult and costly path of protection and ministering +service is both necessary and right. And why is the +reformatory replacing the prison? Because we have +learned that the obvious, natural way of dealing with the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page142" id="page142"></a>[pg 142]</span> +criminal certainly destroys him and threatens to destroy +us; and that the hard, difficult path of reeducating and +reforming a vicious life is the one which the state for her own safety must follow.</p> + +<p>Genuine preaching, then, first of all, calls men to repentance, +bids them turn away from their natural selves, +and, to find that other and realer self, enter the straight +and narrow gate. The call is not an arbitrary command, +born of a negative and repressive spirit. It is a profound +exhortation based upon a fundamental law of human +progress, having behind it the inviolable sanction of the +truth. Such preaching would have the authentic note. It +is self-verifying. It stirs to answer that quality—both +moral and imaginative—in the spirit of man which +craves the pain and difficulty and satisfaction of separation +from the natural order. It appeals to a timeless +worth in man which transcends any values of mere intelligence +which vary with the ages, or any material prosperity +which perishes with the using, or any volitional activity +that dies in its own expenditure. Much of the philosophy +of Socrates was long ago outmoded, but Socrates +himself, as depicted in the Phaedo, confronting death +with the cup of hemlock in his hand, saying with a smile, +"There is no evil which can happen to a good man living +or dead," has a more-than-natural, an enduring and +transcendent quality. Whenever we preach to the element +in mankind which produces such attitudes toward +life and bid it assert itself, then we are doing religious +preaching, and then we speak with power. Jesus lived +within the inexorable circle of the ideas of His time; He +staked much on the coming of the new kingdom which +did not appear either when or as He had first expected +it. He had to adjust, as do we all, His life to His experience, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143" id="page143"></a>[pg 143]</span> +His destiny to His fate. But when He was hanging +on His cross, forgotten of men and apparently deserted +by His God, something in Him that had nothing to do +with nature or the brute rose to a final expression and +by its more-than-natural reality, sealed and authenticated +His life. Looking down upon His torturers, understanding +them far better than they understood themselves, He cried, +"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." +That cry has no place in nature; it has no application and +no meaning outside the human heart and that which is +above, not beneath, the human heart, from which it is derived. +There, then, again was the supernatural law; there +was the more-than-nature in man which makes nature +into human nature; and there is the thing to whose +discovery, cultivation, expression, real preaching is +addressed. Every time a man truly preaches he so portrays +what men ought to be, must be, and can be if they +will, that they know there is something here</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8">"that leaps life's narrow bars</p> +<p>To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven!</p> +<p class="i2">A seed of sunshine that doth leaven</p> +<p>Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars,</p> +<p class="i2">And glorify our clay</p> +<p>With light from fountains elder than the Day."<a id="footnotetag32" name="footnotetag32"></a><a href="#footnote32"><sup>32</sup></a></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Such preaching is a perpetual refutation of and rebuke +to the naturalism and imperialism of our present society. +It is the call to the absolute in man, to a clear issue +with evil. It would not cry peace, peace, when there is no +peace. It would be living and active, and sharper than any +two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of both +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144" id="page144"></a>[pg 144]</span> +joints and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.</p> + +<p>Following this insistence upon the difference from nature, +the more-than-natural in man, the second thing in +religious preaching will have to be, obviously, the message +of salvation. That is to say, reducing the statement +to its lowest terms, if man is to live by such a law, the +law of more-than-nature, then he must have something +also more-than-human to help him in his task. He will +need strength from outside. Indeed, because religion declares +that there is such divine assistance, and that faith +can command it, is the chief cause and reason for our +existence. When we cease to preach salvation in some +form or other, we deny our own selves; we efface our +own existence. For no one can preach the more-than-human +in mankind without emphasizing those elements of +free will, moral responsibility, the need and capacity for +struggle and holiness in human life which it indicates, +and which in every age have been a part of the message +of Him who said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your +Father, which is in heaven, is perfect."</p> + +<p>Therefore, as we have previously corrected the half +truth of the naturalist who makes a caricature, not a +portrait of man, we must now in the same way turn to +the correcting of the humanist's emphasis upon man's +native capacity and insist upon the complementary truth +which fulfills this moral heroism of mankind, namely, the +divine rescue which answers to its inadequacy. Man must +struggle for his victory; he can win; he cannot win alone. +We must then insist upon the doctrine of salvation, turning +ourselves to the other side of the humanist's picture. +Man cannot live by this more-than-natural law unaided. +For not only has he the power to rise above Nature; the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page145" id="page145"></a>[pg 145]</span> +same thing gives him equal capacity to sink beneath her, +and, when left to himself, he generally does so. The +preacher does not dare deny the sovereignty of sin. Humanism +hates the very name of sin; it has never made any +serious attempt to explain the consciousness of guilt. +Neither naturalist nor humanist can afford to admit sin, +for sin takes man, as holiness does, outside the iron chain +of cause and effect; it breaks the law; it is not strictly natural. +It makes clear enough that man is outside the natural +order in two ways. He is both inferior and superior +to it. He falls beneath, he rises above it. When he acts +like a beast, he is not clean and beastly, but unclean and +bestial. When he lifts his head in moral anguish, bathes +all his spirit in the flood of awe and repentance, is transfigured +with the glorious madness of self-sacrifice, he is +so many worlds higher than the beast that their relationship +becomes irrelevant. So we must deal more completely +than humanists do with the central mystery of +our experience; man's impotent idealism, his insight not +matched with consummation; the fact that what he dares +to dream of he is not able alone to do.</p> + +<p>For the humanist exalts man, which is good; but then +he makes him self-sufficient for the struggle which such +exaltation demands, which is bad. In that partial understanding +he departs from truth. And what is it that makes +the futility of so much present preaching? It is the acceptance +of this doctrine of man's moral adequacy and +consequently the almost total lack either of the assurance +of grace or of the appeal to the will. No wonder such +exhortations cannot stem the tide of an ever increasing +worldliness. Such preaching stimulates the mind; in both +the better and the worse preachers, it moves the emotions +but it gives men little power to act on what they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146" id="page146"></a>[pg 146]</span> +hear and feel to the transformation of their daily existence. +Thus the humanistic sense of man's sufficiency, +coupled with the inherent distrust of any notion of help +from beyond and above, any belief in a reinforcing power +which a critical rationalism cannot dissect and explain, +has gradually ruled out of court the doctrine of salvation +until the preacher's power, both to experience and to +transmit it, has atrophied through disuse.</p> + +<p>Who can doubt that one large reason why crude and +indefensible concepts of the Christian faith have such a +disconcerting vitality today is because they carry, in their +outmoded, unethical, discredited forms, the truth of +man's insufficiency in himself and the confident assurance +of that something coming from without which will +abundantly complete the struggling life within? They +offer the assurance of that peace and moral victory which +man so ardently desires, because they declare that it is both +a discovery and a revelation, an achievement and a rescue. +There are vigorous and rapidly growing popular movements +of the day which rest their summation of faith on +the quadrilateral of an inerrant and verbally inspired +Scripture, the full deity of Jesus Christ, the efficacy of +His substitutionary atonement, the speedy second coming +of the Lord. No sane person can suppose that these cults +succeed because of the ethical insight, the spiritual sensitiveness, +the intellectual integrity of such a message. It +does not possess these things. They succeed, in spite of +their obscurantism, because they do confess and meet +man's central need, his need to be saved. The power of +that fact is what is able to carry so narrow and so indefensible a doctrine.</p> + +<p>So the second problem of the preacher is clear. Man +asserts his potential independence of the natural law. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147" id="page147"></a>[pg 147]</span> +But to realize that, he must bridge the gulf between himself +and the supernatural lawgiver to whose dictates he +confesses he is subject. He is not free from the bondage +of the lower, except through the bondage to the higher. +Nor can he live by that higher law unaided and alone. +Here we strike at the root of humanism. Its kindly tolerance +of the church is built up on the proud conviction +that we, with our distinctive doctrine of salvation, are +superfluous, hence sometimes disingenuous and always +negligible. The humanist believes that understanding +takes the place of faith. What men need is not to be redeemed +from their sins, but to be educated out of their follies.</p> + +<p>But does right knowing in itself suffice to insure right +doing? Socrates and Plato, with their indentification +of knowledge and virtue, would appear to think so; +the church has gone a long way, under humanistic pressure, +in tacit acquiescence with their doctrine. Yet most +of us, judging alike from internal and personal evidence +and from external and social observation, would say that +there was no sadder or more universal experience than +that of the failure of right knowledge to secure right performance. +Right knowledge is not in itself right living. +We have striking testimony on that point from one of +the greatest of all humanists, no less a person than Confucius. +"At seventy," he says, "I could follow what my +heart desired without transgressing the law of measure."<a id="footnotetag33" name="footnotetag33"></a><a href="#footnote33"><sup>33</sup></a> +The implication of such testimony makes no very +good humanistic apologetic! Most of us, when desire has +failed, can manage to attain, unaided, the identification +of understanding and conduct, can climb to the poor +heights of a worn-out and withered continence. But one +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148" id="page148"></a>[pg 148]</span> +wonders a little whether, then, the climbing seems to be worth while.</p> + +<p>But the doctrine usually begins by minimizing the free +agency of the individual, playing up the factors of compulsion, +either of circumstance or inheritance or of ignorance, +as being in themselves chiefly responsible for +blameful acts. These are therefore considered involuntary +and certain to be reformed when man knows better +and has the corresponding strength of his knowledge. +But Aristotle, who deals with this Socratic doctrine in the +third book of the <i>Ethics</i>, very sensibly remarks, "It is +ridiculous to lay the blame of our wrong actions upon external +causes rather than upon the facility with which we +ourselves are caught by such causes, and, while we take +credit for our noble actions to ourselves, lay the blame +of our shameful actions upon pleasure."<a id="footnotetag34" name="footnotetag34"></a><a href="#footnote34"><sup>34</sup></a> "The facility +with which we are caught"—there is the religious understanding +there is that perversion of will which conspires +with the perils and chances of the world so that together they may undo the soul.</p> + +<p>Of course, as Aristotle admits, there is this half truth +lying at the root of the Socratic identification of virtue +and knowledge that every vicious person is ignorant of +what he ought to do and what he ought to abstain from +doing in the sense that what he is about to do could not +be defended upon any ground of enlightened self-interest. +And so, while he finds sin sweet and evil pleasant, +these are delusive experiences, which, if he saw life +steadily and whole, he would know as such. But one +reason for this ignorance is unwillingness to know. Good +men do evil, and understanding men sin, partly because +they are misled by false ideas, partly, also, because, knowing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page149" id="page149"></a>[pg 149]</span> +them false, they cannot or will not give them up. This +is what Goethe very well understood when he said, "Most +men prefer error to truth, because truth imposes limitations and error does not."</p> + +<p>And another reason is that when men do know, they +find a deadly and mysterious, a sort of perverted joy—a +sweet and terrible and secret delight,—in denying their +own understanding. Thus right living calls for a repeated +and difficult exercise of the will, what Professor Babbitt +calls "a pulling back of the impulse to the track that +knowledge indicates." Such moral mastery is not identical +with moral perception and most frequently is not its +accompaniment, unless observation and experience are +alike fallacious. Thus the whole argument falls to the +ground when we confess that possession of knowledge +does not guarantee the application of it. Therefore the +two things, knowledge and virtue, according to universal +experience, are not identical. Humanists indeed use the +word "knowledge" for the most part in an esoteric sense. +Knowledge is virtue in the sense that it enables us to see +virtue as excellent and desirable; it is not virtue in the +sense that it alone enables us to acquire it.</p> + +<p>Who, indeed, that has ever lived in the far country +does not know that one factor in its fascination was a +bittersweet awareness of the folly, the inevitable disaster, +of such alien surroundings. Who also does not know that +often when the whole will is set to identify conduct with +conviction, it may be, for all its passionate and bitter sincerity, +set in vain. In every hour of every day there are +hundreds of lives that battle honestly, but with decreasing +spiritual forces, with passion and temptation. Sometimes +a life is driven by the fierce gales of enticement, +the swift currents of desire, right upon the jagged rock +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page150" id="page150"></a>[pg 150]</span> +of some great sin. Lives that have seemed strong and +fair go down every day, do they not, and shock us for a +moment with their irremediable catastrophe? And we +must not forget that before they went down, for many a +month or even year they have been hard beset lives. Before +that final and complete ruin, they have been drifting +and struggling, driven and fighting, sin drawing +nearer and nearer, their fated lives urged on, the mind +growing darker, the stars in their souls going out, the +steering of their own lives taken from their hands. Then +there has been the sense of the coming danger, the dark +presentiment of how it all must end when the "powers +that tend the soul to help it from the death that cannot die, +and save it even in extremes, begin to vex and plague it." +There has been the dreadful sense of life drifting toward +a great crash, nearer and nearer to what must be the +wreck of all things. What does the humanist have to offer +to these men and women who know perfectly well where +they are, and what they are about, and where they would +like to be, but who can't get there and who are, today and +every day, putting forth their last and somber efforts, +trying in vain to just keep clear of ruin until the darkness +and the helplessness shall lift and something or someone shall give them peace!</p> + +<p>Now, it is this defect in the will which automatically +limits the power of the intellect. It is this which the Socratic +identification ignores. So while we might readily +grant that it is in the essential nature of things that virtue +and truth, wisdom and character, understanding and +goodness, are but two aspects of one thing, is it not trifling +with one of the most serious facts of human destiny +to interpret the truism to mean that, when a man +knows that a contemplated act is wrong or foolish or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page151" id="page151"></a>[pg 151]</span> +ugly, he is thereby restrained from accomplishing it? +Knowledge is not virtue in the sense that mere reason +or mere perception can control the will. And this is the +conclusion that Aristotle also comes to when he says: +"Some people say that incontinence is impossible, if one +has knowledge. It seems to them strange, as it did to +Socrates, that where knowledge exists in man, something +else should master it and drag it about like a slave. Socrates +was wholly opposed to this idea; he denied the existence +of incontinence, arguing that nobody with a conception +of what was best could act against it, and +therefore, if he did so act, his action must be due to ignorance." +And then Aristotle adds, "The theory is evidently +at variance with the facts of experience."<a id="footnotetag35" name="footnotetag35"></a><a href="#footnote35"><sup>35</sup></a> Plato +himself exposes the theoretical nature of the assertion, +its inhuman demand upon the will, the superreasonableness +which it expects but offers no way of obtaining, +when he says, "Every one will admit that a nature having +in perfection all the qualities which are required in +a philosopher is a rare plant seldom seen among men."<a id="footnotetag36" name="footnotetag36"></a><a href="#footnote36"><sup>36</sup></a></p> + +<p>It would be well if those people who are going about +the world today teaching social hygiene to adolescents +(on the whole an admirable thing to do) but proceeding +on the assumption that when youth knows what is right +and what is wrong, and why it is right and why it is +wrong, and what are the consequences of right and +wrong, that then, <i>ipso facto</i>, youth will become chaste,—well +if they would acquaint themselves either with the +ethics of Aristotle or with the Christian doctrine of salvation. +For if men think that knowledge by itself ever +yet produced virtue in eager and unsated lives, they are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page152" id="page152"></a>[pg 152]</span> +either knaves or fools. They will find that knowledge uncontrolled +by a purified spirit and a reinforced will is +already teaching men not how to be good, but how to sin +the more boldly with the better chance of physical impunity. +"Philosophy," says Black, "is a feeble antagonist +before passion, because it does not supply an adequate +motive for the conflict."<a id="footnotetag37" name="footnotetag37"></a><a href="#footnote37"><sup>37</sup></a> There were few men in the +nineteenth century in whom knowledge and virtue were +more profoundly and completely joined than in John +Henry Newman. But did that subtle intellect suffice? +could it make the scholar into the saint? Hear his own words:</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"O Holy Lord, who with the children three</p> +<p class="i2">Didst walk the piercing flame;</p> +<p>Help, in those trial hours which, save to Thee,</p> +<p class="i2">I dare not name;</p> +<p>Nor let these quivering eyes and sickening heart</p> +<p class="i2">Crumble to dust beneath the tempter's dart.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>"Thou who didst once Thy life from Mary's breast</p> +<p class="i2">Renew from day to day;</p> +<p>O might her smile, severely sweet, but rest</p> +<p class="i2">On this frail clay!</p> +<p>Till I am Thine with my whole soul, and fear</p> +<p class="i2">Not feel, a secret joy, that Hell is near."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>So, only when we include in the term "knowledge" understanding +plus good will, is the humanist position true, and +this, I suppose, is what Aristotle meant when he finally +says, "Vice is consistent with knowledge of some kind, +but it excludes knowledge in the full and proper sense of the word."<a id="footnotetag38" name="footnotetag38"></a><a href="#footnote38"><sup>38</sup></a></p> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153" id="page153"></a>[pg 153]</span> + +<p>Now, so finespun a discussion of intricate and psychological +subtleties is mildly interesting presumably to +middle-aged scholars, but I submit that a half truth that +needs so much explanation and so many admissions before +it can be made safe or actual, is a rather dangerous +thing to offer to adolescence or to a congregation of average +men and women. It cannot sound to them very +much like the good news of Jesus. Culture is a precious +thing, but no culture, without the help of divine grace +and the responsive affection on our part which that grace +induces, will ever knit men together in a kingdom of +God, a spiritual society. As long ago as the second century +Celsus understood that. He says in his polemic +against Christianity, as quoted by Origen, "If any one +suppose that it is possible that the people of Asia and +Europe and Africa, Greeks and barbarians, should agree +to follow one law, he is hopelessly ignorant."<a id="footnotetag39" name="footnotetag39"></a><a href="#footnote39"><sup>39</sup></a> Now, Celsus +was proceeding on the assumption that Christianity +was only another philosophy, a new intellectual system, +and he was merely exposing the futility of all such unaided intellectualism.</p> + +<p>It is, therefore, of prime importance for the preacher +to remember that humanism, or any other doctrine which +approaches the problem of life and conduct other than by +moral and spiritual means, can never take the place of +the religious appeal, because it does not touch the springs +of action where motives are born and from which convictions +arise. You do not make a man moral by enlightening +him; it is nearer the truth to say that you enlighten +him when you make him moral. "Blessed are the pure +in heart," said Jesus, "for they shall see God. If any man +wills to do the will, he shall know the doctrine." Education +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154" id="page154"></a>[pg 154]</span> +does not wipe out crime nor an understanding mind +make a holy will. The last half of the nineteenth century +made it terribly clear that the learning and science of mankind, +where they are divorced from piety, unconsecrated +by a spiritual passion, and largely directed by selfish motives, +can neither benefit nor redeem the race. Consider +for a moment the enormous expansion of knowledge +which the world has witnessed since the year 1859. What +prodigious accessions to the sum of our common understanding +have we seen in the natural and the humane +sciences; and what marvelous uses of scientific knowledge +for practical purposes have we discovered! We +have mastered in these latter days a thousand secrets of +nature. We have freed the mind from old ignorance and +ancient superstition. We have penetrated the secrets of +the body, and can almost conquer death and indefinitely +prolong the span of human days. We face the facts and +know the world as our fathers could never do. We understand +the past and foresee the future. But the most +significant thing about our present situation is this: how +little has this wisdom, in and of itself, done for us! It +has made men more cunning rather than more noble. Still +the body is ravaged and consumed by passion. Still men +toil for others against their will, and the strong spill the +blood of the weak for their ambition and the sweat of the +children for their greed. Never was learning so diffused +nor the content of scholarship so large as now. Yet the +great cities are as Babylon and Rome of old, where human +wreckage multiplies, and hideous vices flourish, and +men toil without expectancy, and live without hope, and +millions exist—not live at all—from hand to mouth. As +we survey the universal unrest of the world today and +see the horrors of war between nation and nation, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page155" id="page155"></a>[pg 155]</span> +between class and class, it would not be difficult to make +out a case for the thesis that the scientific and intellectual +advances of the nineteenth century have largely worked +to make men keener and more capacious in their suffering. +And at least this is true; just so far as the achievement +of the mind has been divorced from the consecration +of the spirit, in just so far knowledge has had no +beneficent potency for the human race.</p> + +<p>Is it not clear, then, that preaching must deal again, +never more indeed than now, with the religion which +offers a redemption from sin? This is still foolishness to +the Greeks, but to those who believe it is still the power +of God unto salvation. Culture is not religion. When the +preacher substitutes the one for the other, he gives stones +for bread, and the hungry sheep go elsewhere or are not +fed. It is this emasculated preaching, mulcted of its spiritual +forces, which awakes the bitterest distrust and deepest +indignation that human beings know. They are fighting +the foes of the flesh and the enemies of the spirit, +enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, +standing by the open graves of their friends and kindred, +saying there, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to +me." And then, with all this mystery and oppression of +life upon them they enter the doors of the house of God +and listen to a polite essay, are told of the consolations of +art, reminded of the stupidity of evil, assured of the unreality +of sin, offered the subtle satisfactions of a cultivated +intelligence. In just so far as they are genuine men +and women, they resent such preaching as an insult, a +mockery and an offense. No, no; something more is +needed than the humanist can offer for those who are +hard-pressed participants in the stricken fields of life.</p> + +<p>Religious preaching, then, begins with these two +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page156" id="page156"></a>[pg 156]</span> +things: man's solitary place in nature, man's inability to +hold that place alone. Hence two more things are necessary +as essentials of great preaching in a pagan day. The +clear proclamation of the superhuman God, the transcendent +spirit who is able to control and reinforce the +spirit of man, and the setting forth of some way or some +mediator, through whom man may meet and touch that +Spirit so far removed yet so infinitely near and dear to +him. It is with these matters that we shall be occupied in the next chapter.</p> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote31" name="footnote31"></a><b>Footnote 31: </b><a href="#footnotetag31">(return) </a><p><i>The Meaning of God in Human Experience</i>, p. 518.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote32" name="footnote32"></a><b>Footnote 32: </b><a href="#footnotetag32">(return) </a><p>J.R. Lowell, <i>Commemoration Ode</i>, stanza IV, ll. 30-35.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote33" name="footnote33"></a><b>Footnote 33: </b><a href="#footnotetag33">(return) </a><p><i>Analects</i>, II, civ.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote34" name="footnote34"></a><b>Footnote 34: </b><a href="#footnotetag34">(return) </a><p><i>Ethics</i>, Book III, ch. ii, p. 61.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote35" name="footnote35"></a><b>Footnote 35: </b><a href="#footnotetag35">(return) </a><p><i>Ethics</i>, Book VII, ch. iii, pp. 206-207.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote36" name="footnote36"></a><b>Footnote 36: </b><a href="#footnotetag36">(return) </a><p><i>Republic</i>, VI, 491.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote37" name="footnote37"></a><b>Footnote 37: </b><a href="#footnotetag37">(return) </a><p><i>Culture and Restraint</i>, p. 104.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote38" name="footnote38"></a><b>Footnote 38: </b><a href="#footnotetag38">(return) </a><p><i>Ethics</i>, Book VII, ch. v, p. 215.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote39" name="footnote39"></a><b>Footnote 39: </b><a href="#footnotetag39">(return) </a><p><i>Origen, contra Celsum</i>, VIII, p. 72.</p></blockquote> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157" id="page157"></a>[pg 157]</span> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER SIX</h2> + +<h2>The Almighty and Everlasting God</h2> + + +<p>If the transcendent element in man which endows +him with the proud if tragic sense of personality +is the first message of the preacher to a chattering +and volatile world, and the second is the setting forth of +what this endowment demands and how pitiably man +fails to meet it, then the third message is of the Rock +that is higher than he, even inclusive of his all, in whose +composed and comprehensive Being his baffled and divided +person may be gathered up, brought to its own consummation +of self. The rivers that pour tumultuously to +their ocean bed, the ascending fire ever falling backward +but leaping upward to the sun, are poor figures to express +the depth and irresistible urge of the passion in +man for completeness, for repose, for power, for self-perception +in self-expression, for victory and the attainment +of the end. Conscious and divided spirit that he is, +man turns away, sooner or later, with utter weariness +and self-disgust from the nature which pleases him by +betraying him, which maims his person that he may enjoy +his senses, and reaches out after the other-worldly, +the supernatural, the invisible and eternal Hope and Home of the Soul.</p> + +<p>Humanism which bids men sufficiently find God within +themselves, if they think they need to find Him at all, +seems not to comprehend this passion of pride and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158" id="page158"></a>[pg 158]</span> +humility, this inner perception of the futility and the blunder +of the self-contained life. Life is so obviously not +worth its brevity, its suffering, its withheld conclusions, +its relative insignificance, if it must thus stand alone. All +that can save it, preserve to it worth and dignity, maintain +its self-respect and mastery, is to find that abundant +power without which confesses, certifies and seals the divinity within.</p> + +<p>How foredoomed to failure, then, especially in an age +when men are surmounting life by placating it, enjoying +it by being easy with themselves—how foredoomed to +failure is the preaching which continues in the world of +religion this exaltation of human sufficiency and natural +values, domesticating them within the church. It is to +laugh to see them there! It means so transparent a surrender, +so pitiable a confession of defeat. If anything +can bring the natural man into the sanctuary it is that +there he has to bring his naturalness to the bar of a more-than-natural +standard. If he comes at all, it will not be +for entertainment and expansion but because there we insist +on reverence and restraint. If church and preacher +offer only a pietized and decorous naturalism, when he +can get the real thing in naked and unashamed brutality +without; if they offer him only another form of humanistic +living, he will stay away. Such preaching is as boresome +as it is unnecessary. Such exercise of devotion is +essentially superfluous and a rather humorous imposition +upon the world. The only thing that will ever bring the +natural man to listen to preaching is when it insists upon +something more-than-the-natural and calls him to account +regarding it; when it speaks of something different +and better for him than this world and what it can offer. +"Take my <i>yoke</i> upon you" is the attractive invitation, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159" id="page159"></a>[pg 159]</span> +"make inner obeisance and outward obedience to something higher than thy poor self."</p> + +<p>It is clear, then, that these observations have a bearing +upon our preaching of the doctrine of God. There is a +certain illogicality, something humorous, in going into a +church, of all places in the world, to be told how like we +are to Him. The dull and average personality, the ordinary +and not very valuable man, can probably listen indifferently +and with a slow-growing hardness and dim resentment +to that sort of preaching for a number of years. +But the valuable, the highly personalized people, the +saints and the sinners, the great rebels and the great disciples, +who are the very folk for whom the church exists, +would hate it, and they would know the final bitterness +of despair if they thought that this was so. Either saint +or sinner would consider it the supreme insult, the last +pitch of insolence, for the church to be telling them that it is true.</p> + +<p>For they know within themselves that it is a lie. Their +one hope hangs on God because His thoughts are not +their thoughts, nor His ways their ways; because He +seeth the end from the beginning; because in Him there +is no variableness, neither shadow that is caused by turning; +because no man shall see His face and live. They, +the sinners and the saints, do not want to be told that +they, within themselves, can heal themselves and that sin +has no real sinfulness. That is tempting them to the final +denial, the last depth of betrayal, the blurring of moral +values, the calling of evil good and the saying that good +is evil. They know that this is the unpardonable madness. +In the hours when they, the saints and sinners, wipe their +mouths and say, "We have done no harm"; in the days +when what they love is ugliness because it is ugly and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160" id="page160"></a>[pg 160]</span> +shameless, and reckless expression because it is so terrible, +so secretly appalling, so bittersweet with the sweetness +of death, they know that it is the last affront to have +the church—the one place where men expect they will be +made to face the facts—bow these facts out of doors.</p> + +<p>No, we readily grant that the religious approach to the +whole truth and to final reality is like any other one, +either scientific, economic, political, a partial approach. +It sets forth for the most part only a group of facts. +When it does not emphasize other facts, it does not +thereby deny them. But it insists that the truth of man's +differences, man's helplessness which the differences reveal, +and man's fate hanging therefore upon a transcendent +God, are the key truths for the religious life. It is +with that aspect of life the preacher deals, and if he fails +to grapple with these problems and considerations, ignores +these facts, his candlestick has been removed.</p> + +<p>The argument for a God, then, within His world, but +also distinct from it, above its evil custom and in some +sense untouched by its all-leveling life, is essential to the +preservation of human personality, and personality is +essential to dignity, to decency, to hope. The clearest and +simplest thing to be said about the Hebrew God, lofty +and inaccessible Being, with whom nevertheless His purified +and obedient children might have relationships, or +about the "living God" of Greek theology, far removed +from us but with whose deathless goodness, beauty and +truth our mortality by some mediator may be endowed, is +that the argument that supports such transcendence is the +argument from necessity. It is the facts of experience, the +very stuff of human life, coming down alike from Hebraic +and Hellenic civilization, which demand Him. Immanence +and transcendence are merely theistic terms for +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page161" id="page161"></a>[pg 161]</span> +identity and difference. Through them is revealed and +discovered personality, the "I" which is the ultimate fact +of my consciousness. I can but reckon from the known +to the unknown. The world which produced me is also, +then, a cosmic identity and difference. In that double fact +is found divine personality. But that aspect of His Person, +that portion of the fact which feeds the imaginative +and volitional life, is the glorious and saving unlikeness of +God—His unthinkable and inexpressible glory; His utter +comprehension and unbelievable compassion; His justice +which knows no flaw and brooks no evasion and cannot +be swerved; His power which may not be withstood and +hence is a sure and certain tenderness; His hatred of sin, +terrible and flaming, a hatred which will send sinful men +through a thousand hells, if they will have them, and can +only be saved thereby; His love for men, which is what +makes Him hate their sin and leads Him by His very nature +as God to walk into hell with the sinner, suffering +with him a thousand times more than the sinner is able +to understand or know,—like the Paul who could not wish +himself, for himself, in hell, but who did wish himself +accursed of God for his brethren's sake; like Jesus, who, +in Gethsemane, would for Himself avoid His cross, but +who accepted it and was willing to hang, forsaken of +God, upon it, for the lives of men, identifying Himself +to the uttermost with their fate. Yes; it is such a supernal +God—that God who is apart, incredible, awful—that +the soul of humanity craves and needs.</p> + +<p>Of course, here again, as throughout these discussions, +we are returning to a form of the old dualism. We cannot +seem to help it. We may construct philosophies like +Hegel's in which thesis and antithesis merge in a higher +synthesis; we may use the dual view of the world as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162" id="page162"></a>[pg 162]</span> +representing only a stage, a present achievement in cosmic +progress or human understanding. But that does not +alter the incontestable witness of present experience that +the religious consciousness is based upon, interwoven +with, the sense of the cosmic division without, and the +unresolved moral dualism within the individual life. It is +important enough to remember, however, that we have +rejected, at least for this generation, the old scholastic +theologies founded on this general experience. Fashions +of thought change with significant facility; there is not +much of the Absolute about them! Nevertheless we cannot +think with forgotten terms. Therefore ours is no +mechanically divided world where man and God, nature +and supernature, soul and body, belong to mutually exclusive +territories. We do not deny the principle of identity. +Hence we have discarded that old view of the world +and all the elder doctrines of an absentee creator, a +worthless and totally depraved humanity, a legalistic or +substitutionary atonement, a magical and non-understandable +Incarnation which flowed from it. But we are not +discarding with them that other aspect of the truth, the +principle of separateness, nor those value judgments, that +perpetual vision of another nature, behind and beneath +phenomena, from which the old dualism took its rise. It +is the form which it assumed, the interpretation of experience +which it gave, not the facts themselves, obscure +but stubborn as they are, which it confessed, that we have +dropped. Identity and difference are still here; man is a +part of his world, but he is also apart from it. God is in +nature and in us; God is without and other than nature +and most awfully something other than us.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the precise problem of the preacher today is to +keep the old supernatural values and drop the old vocabulary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page163" id="page163"></a>[pg 163]</span> +with the philosophy which induced it. We must +acknowledge the universe as one, and yet be able to show +that the He or the It, beyond and without the world, is +its only conceivable beginning, its only conceivable end, +the chief hope of its brevity, the only stay of its idealism. +It was the arbitrary and mechanical completeness of +the old division, not the reality that underlay the distinction +itself, which parted company with truth and hence +lost the allegiance of the mind. It was that the old dualism +tried to lock up this, the most baffling of all realities, +in a formula,—that was what undid it. But we shall be +equally foolish if now, in the interests of a new artificial +clearness, we deny another portion of experience just as +our fathers ignored certain other facts in the interests of +their too well-defined systems. We cannot hold to the old +world view which would bend the modern mind to the +support of an inherited interpretation of experience and +therefore would not any longer really explain or confirm +it. Neither can we hold new views which mutilate the +experience and leave out some of the most precious elements +in it, even if in so doing we should simplify the +problem for the mind. It would be an unreal simplification; +it would darken, not illumine, the understanding; we +should never rest in it. Nor do we need to be concerned +if the intellect cannot perfectly order or easily demonstrate +the whole of the religious life, fit each element +with a self-verifying defense and explanation. No man +of the world, to say nothing of a man of faith or imagination, +has ever yet trusted to a purely intellectual judgment.</p> + +<p>So we reject the old dualism, its dichotomized universe, +its two sorts of authority, its prodigious and arbitrary +supernaturalism. But we do not reject what lay +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page164" id="page164"></a>[pg 164]</span> +behind it. Still we wrestle with the angel, lamed though +we are by the contest, and we cannot let him go until the +day breaks and the shadows flee away. It would be easier +perhaps to give up the religious point of view, but for +that ease we should pay with our life. For that swift +answer, achieved by leaving out prime factors in the +problem, we should be betraying the self for whose sake +alone any answer is valuable. It does not pay to cut such +Gordian knots! Our task, then, is to preach transcendence +again, not in terms of the old absolutist philosophy, +but in terms of the perceptions, the needs, the experience +of the human heart and mind and will which produced that philosophy.</p> + +<p>Nor is this so hard to do. Now, as always for the +genuinely religious temperament, there are abundant +riches of material lying ready to its hand. It is not difficult +to make transcendence real and to reveal to men +their consummate need of it when we speak of it in the +language of experience and perception. What preaching +should avoid is the abstractions of an archaic system of +thought with all their provocative and contentious elements, +the mingled dogmatism and incompleteness which +any worked-out system contains. It is so foolish in the +preacher to turn himself into a lay philosopher. Let him +keep his insight clear, through moral discipline keep his +intuitions high, his spirit pure, and then he can furnish +the materials for philosophy.</p> + +<p>Thus an almost universal trait of the religious temperament +is in its delight in beauty. Sometimes it is repressed +by an irreligious asceticism or narrowed and +stunted by a literal and external faith. But when the religious +man is left free, it is appropriate to his genius +that he finds the world full of a high pleasure +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165" id="page165"></a>[pg 165]</span> +crowded with sound, color, fragrance, form, in which he +takes exquisite delight. There is, in short, a serene and +poetic naturalism, loosely called "nature-worship," which +is keenly felt by both saints and sinners. All it needs for +its consecration and perfection is to help men to see that +this naturalism is vital and precious because, as a matter +of fact, it is something more than naturalism, and more than pleasure objectified.</p> + +<p>Recall, for instance, the splendors of the external +world and that best season of our climate, the +long, slow-breathing autumn. What high pleasure we +take in those hushed days of mid-November in the soft +brown turf of the uplands, the fragrant smell of mellow +earth and burning leaves, the purple haze that dims and +magnifies the quiescent hills. Who is not strangely moved +by that profound and brooding peace into which Nature +then gathers up the multitudinous strivings, the myriad +activities of her life? Who does not love to lie, in those +slow-waning days upon the sands which hold within +their golden cup the murmuring and dreaming sea? The +very amplitude of the natural world, its far-flung grace +and loveliness, spread out in rolling moor and winding +stream and stately forest marching up the mountain-side, +subdues and elevates the spirit of a man.</p> + +<p>Now, so it has always been and so men have always +longed to be the worshipers of beauty. Therefore they +have believed in a conscious and eternal Spirit behind it. +Because again we know that personality is the only thing +we have of absolute worth. A man cannot, therefore, +worship beauty, wholly relinquish himself to its high delights, +if he conceives of this majestic grace as impersonal +and inanimate. For that which we worship must +be greater than we. Behind it, therefore, just because it +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166" id="page166"></a>[pg 166]</span> +seems to us so beautiful, must be something that calls to +the hidden deeps of the soul, something intimately akin to +our own spirits. So man worships not nature, but the God +of nature; senses an Eternal Presence behind all gracious +form. For that interprets beauty and consecrates the +spell of beauty over us. This gives a final meaning to +what the soul perceives is an utter loveliness. This gives +to beauty an eternal and cosmic significance commensurate +to its charm and power. As long as men's hearts +surge, too, when the tide yearns up the beach; as long as +their souls become articulate when the birds sing in the +dawn, and the flowers lift themselves to the sun; so +long will men believe that only from a supreme and +conscious Loveliness, a joyous and a gracious Spirit could +have come the beauty which is so intimately related to the spirit of a man.</p> + +<p>But not all saints and sinners are endowed with this +joy and insight, this quick sensitiveness to beauty. +Some of them cannot find the eternal and transcendent +God in a loveliness which, by temperament, they either +underrate or do not really see. There are a great many +good people who cannot take beauty seriously. They become +wooden and suspicious and uncomfortable whenever +they are asked to perceive or enjoy a lovely object. +Incredible though it seems, it appears to them to be unworthy +of any final allegiance, any complete surrender, +any unquestioning joy. But there are other ways in which +they, too, may come to this sense of transcendence, other +aspects of experience which also demand it. Most often +it is just such folk who cannot perceive beauty, because +they are practical or scientific or condemned to mean +surroundings, who do feel to the full the grim force and +terror of the external world. Prudence, caution, hard +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page167" id="page167"></a>[pg 167]</span> +sense are to the fore with them! Very well; there, too, +in these perceptions is an open door for the human spirit +to transcend its environment, get out of its physical shell. +The postulate of the absolute worth of beauty may be an +argument for God drawn from subjective necessity. But +the postulate of sovereign moral Being behind the tyranny +and brutality of nature is an argument of objective +necessity as well; here we all need God to explain the world.</p> + +<p>For we deal with what certainly appear to be objective +aspects of the truth, when we regard ourselves in our +relation to the might of the physical universe. For even +as men feed upon its beauty, so they have found it necessary +to discover something which should enable them to +live above and unafraid of its material and gigantic +power. We have already seen how there appears to be a +cosmic hostility to human life which sobers indeed those +who are intelligent enough to perceive it. It is only the +fool or the brute or the sentimentalist who is unterrified +by nature. The man of reflection and imagination sees +his race crawling ant-like over its tiny speck of slowly +cooling earth and surrounded by titanic and ruthless +forces which threaten at any moment to engulf it. The +religious man knows that he is infinitely greater than the +beasts of the field or the clods of the highway. Yet Vesuvius +belches forth its liquid fire and in one day of stark +terror the great city which was full of men is become +mute and desolate. The proud liner scrapes along the +surface of the frozen berg and crumples like a ship of +cards. There is a splash, a cry, a white face, a lifted +arm, and then all the pride and splendor, all the hopes +and fears, the gorgeous dreams, the daring thoughts are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page168" id="page168"></a>[pg 168]</span> +gone. But the ice floats on unscarred and undeterred and +the ocean tosses and heaves just as it did before.</p> + +<p>Now, if this is all, if there is for us only the physical +might of nature and the world is only what it seems to +be; if there is no other God except such as can be found +within this sort of cosmic process, then human life is a +sardonic mockery, and self-respect a silly farce, and all +the heroism of the heart and the valor of the mind the +unmeaning activities of an insignificant atom. The very +men who will naturally enter your churches are the ones +who have always found that theory of life intolerable. It +doesn't take in all the facts. They could not live by it +and the soul of the race, looking out upon this universe +of immeasurable material bulk, has challenged it and +dared to assert its own superiority.</p> + +<p>So by this road these men come back to the transcendent +God without whom they cannot guard that integrity +of personality which we are all set to keep. For +here there is no way of believing in oneself, no way of +enduring this world or our place in it and no tolerable way +of understanding it except we look beneath this cosmic +hostility and find our self-respect and a satisfying cosmic +meaning in perceiving spiritual force, a conscious ethical +purpose, which interpenetrates the thunder and the lightning, +which lies behind the stars as they move in their +perpetual courses. "Through it the most ancient heavens +are fresh and strong." Integrity of personality in such a +world as this, belief in self, without which life is dust +and ashes in the mouth, rest on the sublime assumption +that suffusing material force is ethical spirit, more like +unto us than it, controlling force in the interest of moral +and eternal purposes. In these purposes living, not mechanical, +forces play a major part.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169" id="page169"></a>[pg 169]</span> + +<p>Of course, to all such reasoning the Kantians and humanists +reply that these notions of an objective and eternal +beauty, of a transcendent and actual Cosmic Being +exist within the mind. They are purely subjective ideas, +they are bounded by the inexorable circle of our experience, +hence they offer no proof of any objective reality +which may in greater or less degree correspond to them.</p> + +<p>However, there must be a "source" of these ideas. To +which the philosophers reply, Yes, they are "primitive and +necessary," produced by reason only, without borrowing +anything from the senses or the understanding. Yet there +is no sufficient evidence that the idea of God is thus produced +by any faculty of mind acting in entire freedom +from external influence. On the contrary, the idea appears +to owe much to the operation of external things +upon the mind; it is not then the wholly unaffected product +of reason. It is a response no less than an intuition. +Like all knowledge a discovery, but the discovery of +something there which could be discovered, hence, in that sense, a revelation.</p> + +<p>It is not necessary, then, for men to meet their situation +in the cosmos by saying with Kant: We will act as +though there were a God, although we are always conscious +that we have no real knowledge of Him as an external +being. In the light of the tragic circumstances of +humanity, this is demanding the impossible. No sane body +of men will ever get sufficient inspiration for life or find +an adequate solution for the problem of life by resting +upon mere value judgments which they propose, by an effort +of will, to put in the place of genuine reality judgments. +Indeed, there is a truly scholastic naïveté, a sort +of solemn and unconscious humor, in seriously proposing +that men should vitalize and consecrate their deepest +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page170" id="page170"></a>[pg 170]</span> +purposes and most difficult experiences by hypothesizing +mere appearances and illusions.</p> + +<p>Nor are we willing either to say with Santayana that +all our sense of the beauty of the world is merely pleasure +objectified and that we can infer no eternal Beauty +from it. We are aware that there cannot be an immediate +knowledge of a reality distinct from ourselves, that all +our knowledge must be, in the nature of the case, an +idea, a mental representation, that we can never know +the Thing Itself. But if we believe, as we logically and +reasonably may, that our subjective ideas are formed +under the influence of objects unknown but without us, +produced by stimuli, real, if not perceived apart from +our own consciousness, then we may say that what we +have is a mediate or representative knowledge not only +of an Eternal Being but formed under the influence of +that Being. Nor does the believer ask for more. He does +not expect to see the King in His beauty; he only needs +to know that He is, that He is there.</p> + +<p>How self-verifying and moving, then, are the appeals +ready to our hands. As long as man with the power to +question, to strive, to aspire, to endure, to suffer, lives in +a universe of ruthless and overwhelming might, so long, +if he is to understand it or maintain his reason and his +dignity, he will believe it to be controlled by a Spirit beyond +no less than within, from whom his spirit is derived. +It is out of the struggle to revere and conserve human +personality, out of the belief in the indefectible worth +and honor of selfhood that our race has fronted a universe +in arms, and pitting its soul against nature has +cried, "God is my refuge: underneath me, at the very +moment when I am engulfed in earthquake shock or shattered +in the battle's roar, there are everlasting arms!" +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page171" id="page171"></a>[pg 171]</span> +There is something which is too deep for tears in the unconquerable +idealism, the utter magnanimity of the faith +of the human spirit in that which will answer to itself, +as evidenced in this forlorn and glorious adventure of +the soul. Sometimes we are constrained to ask ourselves, +How can the heart of man go so undismayed through the waste places of the world?</p> + +<p>But, of course, the preacher's main task is to interpret +man's moral experience, which drives him out to search +for the eternal in the terms of the "other" and redeeming +God. We have spoken of the depersonalizing of religion +which paganism and humanism alike have brought +upon the world. One evidence of that has been the way +in which we have confounded the social expressions of +religion with its individual source. We are so concerned +with the effect of our religion upon the community that +we have forgotten that the heart of religion is found in +the solitary soul. All of which means that we have here +again yielded to the time spirit that enfolds us and have +come to think of man as religious if he be humane. But +that is not true. No man is ever religious until he becomes +devout. And indeed no man of our sort—the saint and +sinner sort—is ever long and truly humane unless the +springs of his tenderness for men are found in his ever +widening and deepening gratitude to God! Hence no man +was ever yet able to preach the living God until he understood +that the central need in human life is to reconcile +the individual conscience to itself, compose the anarchy +of the spiritual life. Men want to be happy and be fed; +but men must have inward peace.</p> + +<p>We swing back, therefore, to the native ground of +preaching, approach the religious problem, now, not from +the aesthetic or the scientific, but from the moral angle. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page172" id="page172"></a>[pg 172]</span> +Here we are dealing with the most poignant of all human +experiences. For it is in this intensely personal world of +moral failure and divided will that men are most acutely +aware of themselves and hence of their need of that +other-than-self beyond. The sentimental idealizing of +contemporary life, the declension of the humanist's optimism +into that superficial complacency which will not see +what it does not like or what it is not expedient to see, +makes one's mind to chuckle while one's heart doth ache. +There is a brief heyday, its continuance dependent upon +the uncontrollable factors of outward prosperity, physical +and nervous vigor, capacity for preoccupation with the +successive novelties of a diversified and complicated +civilization, in which even men of religious temperament +can minimize or ignore, perhaps sincerely disbelieve in, +their divided life. Sometimes we think we may sin and +be done with it. But always in the end man must come +back to this moral tragedy of the soul. Because sin will +not be done with us when we are done with it. Every +evil is evil to him that does it and sooner or later we are +compelled to understand that to be a sinner is the sorest +and most certain punishment for sinning.</p> + +<p>Then the awakening begins. Then can preaching stir +the heart until deep answereth unto deep. It can talk of +the struggle with moral temptation and weakness; of the +unstable temperament which oscillates between the gutter +and the stars; of the perversion or abuse of impulses +good in themselves; of the dreadful dualism of the soul. +For these are inheritances which have made life tragic +in every generation for innumerable human beings. Whoever +needed to explain to a company of grown men and +women what the cry of the soul for its release from passion +is? Every generation has its secret pessimists, brooding +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page173" id="page173"></a>[pg 173]</span> +over the anarchy of the spirit, the issues of a distracted +life. We need not ask with Faust, "Where is that +place which men call 'Hell'?" nor wait for Mephistopheles to answer,</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Hell is in no set place, nor is it circumscribed,</p> +<p>For where we are—is Hell!"</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Now, it is from such central and poignant experiences +as these that men have been constrained to look outward +for a God. For these mark the very disintegration of personality, +the utter dissipation of selfhood. That is the +inescapable horror of sin. That is what we mean when we +say sinners are lost; so they are, they are lost to their +own selves. With what discriminating truth the father +in the parable of the lost boy speaks. "This, my son," he +says, "was dead though he is alive again." So it is with +us; being is the price we pay for sinning. The more we do +wrong the less we are. How then shall we become alive again?</p> + +<p>It is out of the shame and passion, the utter need +of the human heart, which such considerations show to be +real that men have built up their redemptive faiths. For +all moral victory is conditioned upon help from without. +To be sure each will and soul must strive desperately, +even unto death, yet all that strife shall be in vain unless +One stoops down from above and wrestles with us in +the conflict. For the sinner must have two things, both +of them beyond his unaided getting, or he will die. He +must be released from his captivity. Who does not know +the terrible restlessness, that grows and feeds upon itself +and then does grow some more, of the man bound by +evil and wanting to get out? The torture of sin is that it +deprives us of the power to express ourselves. The cry +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page174" id="page174"></a>[pg 174]</span> +of moral misery, therefore, is always the groaning of the +prisoner. Oh, for help to break the bars of my intolerable +and delicious sin that I may be myself once more! Oh, +for some power greater than I which, being greater, can set me free!</p> + +<p>But more than the sinner wants to be free does he +want to be kept. Along with the passion for liberty is +the desire for surrender. Again, then, he wants something +outside himself, some Being so far above the world +he lives in that it can take him, the whole of him, break +his life, shake it to its foundations, then pacify, compose +it, make it anew. He is so tired of his sin; he is so weary +with striving; he wants to relinquish it all; get far away +from what he is; flee like a bird to the mountain; lay +down his life before the One like whom he would be. So +he wants power, he wants peace. He would be himself, he +would lose himself. He prays for freedom, he longs for captivity.</p> + +<p>Now, out of these depths of human life, these vast +antinomies of the spirit, has arisen man's belief in a Saviour-God. +Sublime and awful are the sanctions upon +which it rests. Out of the extremity and definiteness of +our need we know that He must be and we know what +He must be like. He is the One to whom all hearts are +open, all desires known, from whom no secrets are hid. +Who could state the mingling of desire and dread with +which men strive after, and hide from, such a God? We +want Him, yet until we have Him how we fear +Him. For that inclusive knowledge of us which is God, +if only we can bear to come to it, endows us with freedom. +For then all the barriers are down, there is nothing +to conceal, nothing to explain, nothing to hold back. +Then reality and appearance coincide, character and condition +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page175" id="page175"></a>[pg 175]</span> +correspond. I am what I am before Him. Supreme +reality from without answers and completes my own, and +makes me real, and my reality makes me free.</p> + +<p>But if He thus knows me, and through that knowledge +every inner inhibition melts in His presence and every +damning secret's out, and all my life is spread like an +open palm before His gaze, and I am come at last, +through many weary roads, unto my very self, why then +I can let go, I can relinquish myself. The dreadful tension's +gone and in utter surrender the soul is poured out, +until, spent and expressed, rest and peace flood back into +the satisfied life. So the life is free; so the life is bound. +So a man stands upon his feet; so he clings to the Rock +that is higher than he. So the life is cleansed in burning +light; so the soul is hid in the secret of God's presence. +So men come to themselves; so men lose themselves in +the Eternal. There is perfect freedom at last because we +have attained to complete captivity. There is power accompanied +by peace. That is the gift which the vision of +a God, morally separate from, morally other than we, +brings to the inward strife, the spiritual agony of the +world. This is the need which that faith satisfies. It is, I +suppose, in this exulting experience of moral freedom +and spiritual peace which comes to those men who make +the experiment of faith that they, for the most part, find +their sufficient proof of the divine reality. Who ever +doubted His existence who could cry with all that innumerable +company of many kindreds and peoples and tongues:</p> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay;</p> +<p>And he set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page176" id="page176"></a>[pg 176]</span> +<p>And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Here, then, is the preaching which is religious. How +foolish are we not to preach it more! How trivial and impertinent +it is to question the permanence of the religious +interpretation of the world! What a revelation of personal +insignificance it is to fail to revere the majesty of +the devout and aspiring life! That which a starved and +restless and giddy world has lost is this pool of quietness, +this tower of strength, this cleansing grace of salvation, +this haven of the Spirit. Belief in a transcendent deity is +as natural as hunger and thirst, as necessary as sleep and +breathing. It was the inner and essential needs of our fathers' +lives which drove them out to search for Him. It +will be the inner and essential needs of the lives of our +children that shall bring them to the altar where their +fathers and their fathers' fathers bowed down before +them. Are we going to be afraid to keep its fires burning?</p> + +<p>And so we come to our final and most difficult aspect +of this transcendent problem. We have talked of the man +who is separate from nature, and who knows himself as +man because behind nature he sees the God from whom +he is separate, too. We have seen how he needs that +"otherness" in God to maintain his personality and how +the gulf between him and that God induces that sense of +helplessness which makes the humility and penitence of +the religious life. We must come now to our final question. +How is he to bridge the gulf? By what power can he +go through with this experience we have just been relating +and find his whole self in a whole world? How can he +dare to try it? How can he gain power to achieve it?</p> + +<p>Perhaps this is the central difficulty of all religion. It +is certainly the one which the old Greeks felt. Plato, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page177" id="page177"></a>[pg 177]</span> +father of Christian theology, and all neo-platonists, knew +that the gulf is here between man and God and they knew +that something or someone must bridge it for us. They +perceived that man, unaided, cannot leap it at a stride. +We proceed, driven by the facts of life, to the point +where the soul looks up to the Eternal and confesses the +kinship, and knows that only in His light shall it see +light, and that it only shall be satisfied when it awakes in +His likeness. But how shall the connection be made? +What shall enable us to do that mystic thing, come back +to God? We have frightful handicaps in the attempt. +How shall the distrust that sin creates, the hardness that +sin forms, the despair and helplessness that sin induces, +the dreadful indifference which is its expression,—how +shall they be removed? How shall the unfaith which the +mystery, the suffering, the evil of the world induce be +overcome? Being a sinner I do not dare, and being ignorant +I do not believe, to come. God is there and God +wants us; like as a father pitieth his children so He pitieth +us. He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that +we are dust. We know that is true; again we do not know +it is true. All the sin that is in us and all which that sin +has done to us insists and insists that it is not true. And +the mind wonders—and wonders. What shall break that +distrust; and melt away the hardness so that we have an +open mind; and send hope into despair, hope with its +accompanying confidence to act; change unfaith to belief, +until, in having faith, we thereby have that which faith +believes in? How amazing is life! We look out into the +heavenly country, we long to walk therein, we have so +little power to stir hand or foot to gain our entrance. We +know it is there but all the facts of our rebellious or self-centered +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178" id="page178"></a>[pg 178]</span> +life, individual and associated alike, are against +it and therefore we do not know that it is there.</p> + +<p>Philosophy and reason and proofs of logic cannot +greatly help us here. No man was ever yet argued into +the kingdom of God. We cannot convince ourselves of +our souls. For we are creatures, not minds; lives, not +ideas. Only life can convince life; only a Person but, of +course, a transcendent person that is more like Him than +like us, can make that Other-who-lives certain and sure +for us. This necessity for some intermediary who shall +be a human yet more-than-human proof that God is and +that man may be one with Him; this reinforcing of the +old argument from subjective necessity by its verification +in the actual stuff of objective life, has been everywhere sought by men.</p> + +<p>Saviours, redeemers, mediators, then, are not theological +manikins. They are not superfluous figures born of +a mistaken notion of the universe. They are not secondary +gods, concessions to our childishness. They, too, are +called for in the nature of things. But to really mediate +they must have the qualities of both that which they +transmit and of those who receive the transmission. +Most of all they must have that "other" quality, so triumphant +and self-verifying that seeing it constrains belief. +A mediator wholly unlike ourselves would be a +meaningless and mocking figure. But a mediator who +was chiefly like ourselves would be a contradiction in terms!</p> + +<p>So we come back again to the old problem. Man needs +some proof that he who knows that he is more than +dust can meet with that other life from whose star his +speck has been derived. Something has got to give him +powerful reinforcement for this supreme effort of will, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179" id="page179"></a>[pg 179]</span> +of faith. If only he could know that he and it ever have +met in the fields of time and space, then he would be +saved. For that would give him the will to believe; that +would prove the ultimate; give him the blessed assurance +which heals the wounds of the heart. Then he would have +power to surrender. Then he would no longer fear the +gulf, he would walk out onto it and know that as he walked he was with God.</p> + +<p>Some such reasoning as this ought to make clear the +place that Jesus holds in Christian preaching and why +we call Him Saviour and why salvation comes for us +who are of His spiritual lineage, through Him. Of +course it is true that Jesus shows to all discerning eyes +what man may be. But that is not the chief secret of +His power; that is not why churches are built to Him +and His cross still fronts, defeated but unconquerable, +our pagan world. Jesus was more-than-nature and more-than-human. +It is this "other" quality, operative and objectified +in His experience within our world, which gives +Him the absoluteness which makes Him indispensable +and precious. The mystery is deepest here. For here we +transfer the antinomy from thought to conduct; from inner +perception to one Being's actual experience. Here, in +Him, we say we see it resolved into its higher synthesis in actual operation.</p> + +<p>Here, then, we can almost look into it. Yet when we +do gaze, our eyes dazzle, our minds swerve, it is too +much. It is not easy, indeed, at the present time it seems +to be impossible to reconcile the Christ of history with +the Christ of experience. Yet there would be neither right +nor reason in saying that the former was more of a reality +than the latter. And all the time the heart from which +great thoughts arise, "the heart which has its reasons of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page180" id="page180"></a>[pg 180]</span> +which the mind knows nothing," says, Here in Him is the +consummate quality, the absolute note of life. Here the +impossible has been accomplished. Here the opposites +meet and the contradictions blend. Here is something so incredible that it is true.</p> + +<p>Of course, Jesus is of us and He is ours. That is true +and it is inexpressibly sweet to remember it. Again, to +use our old solecism, that is the lesser part of the truth; +the greater part, for men of religion, is that Jesus is of +God, that He belongs to Him. His chief office for our +world has not been to show us what men can be like; it +has been to give us the vision of the Eternal in a human +face. For if He does reveal God to man then He must +hold, as President Tucker says, the quality and substance +of the life which He reveals.</p> + +<p>Here is where He differs immeasurably from even a +Socrates. What men want most to believe about Jesus +is this, that when we commune with Him, we are with +the infinite; that man's just perception of the Eternal +Spirit, his desire to escape from time into reality, may +be fulfilled in Jesus. That is the Gospel: Come unto Him, +all ye that labor and are heavy laden, for He will give +you rest. Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst +again. But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall +give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall +give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into +everlasting life. If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.</p> + +<p>Now, if all this is true, what is the religious preaching +of Jesus, what aspect of His person meets the spiritual +need? Clearly, it is His transcendence. It is not worthy +of us to evade it because we cannot explain it. Surely +what has hastened our present paganism has been the removal +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page181" id="page181"></a>[pg 181]</span> +from the forefront of our consciousness of Jesus +the Saviour, the divine Redeemer, the absolute Meeter +of an absolute need. Of such preaching of Jesus we have +today very little. The pendulum has swung far to the +left, to the other exclusive emphasis, too obviously influenced +by the currents of the day. It was perhaps inevitable +that He should for a time drop out of His former +place in Christian preaching under this combined humanistic +and naturalistic movement. But it means that again +we have relinquished those values which have made Jesus the heart of humanity.</p> + +<p>Of course, He was a perfected human character inspired +above all men by the spirit of God, showing the capacity +of humanity to hold Divinity. This is what Mary celebrates +in her paean, "He that is mighty has magnified me +and holy is his name." But is this what men have passionately +adored in Jesus? Has love of Him been self-love? +Is this why He has become the sanctuary of humanity? +I think not. We have for the moment no good language +for the other conception of Him. He is indeed the pledge +of what we may be, but how many of us would ever believe +that pledge unless there was something else in Him, +more than we, that guaranteed it? What, as President +Tucker asks, is this power which shall make "maybe" +into "is" for us? "Without doubt the trend of modern +thought and faith is toward the more perfect identification +of Christ with humanity. We cannot overestimate +the advantage to Christianity of this tendency. The world +must know and feel the humanity of Jesus. But it makes +the greatest difference in result whether the ground of +the common humanity is in Him or in us. To borrow the +expressive language of Paul, was He 'created' in us? Or +are we 'created' in Him? Grant the right of the affirmation +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page182" id="page182"></a>[pg 182]</span> +that 'there is no difference in kind between the divine +and the human'; allow the interchange of terms so +that one may speak of the humanity of God and the divinity +of man; appropriate the motive which lies in these +attempts to bring God and man together and thus to explain +the personality of Jesus Christ, it is still a matter +of infinite concern whether His home is in the higher or +the lower regions of divinity. After all, very little is +gained by the transfer of terms. Humanity is in no way +satisfied with its degree of divinity. We are still as anxious +as ever to rise above ourselves and in this anxiety +we want to know concerning our great helper, whether +He has in Himself anything more than the possible increase +of a common humanity. What is His power to +lift and how long may it last? Shall we ever reach His +level, become as divine as He, or does He have part in +the absolute and infinite? This question may seem remote +in result but it is everything in principle. The immanence +of Christ has its present meaning and value because of His transcendence."<a id="footnotetag40" name="footnotetag40"></a><a href="#footnote40"><sup>40</sup></a></p> + +<p>Preaching today is not moving on the level of this discussion, +is neither asking nor attempting to answer its +questions. Great preaching in some way makes men see +the end of the road, not merely the direction in which it +travels. The power to do that we have lost if we have lost +the more-than-us in Jesus. Humanity, unaided, cannot +look to that end which shall explain the beginning. And +does Jesus mean very much to us if He is only "Jesus"? +Why do we answer the great invitation, "Come unto +me"? Because He is something other than us? Because +He calls us away from ourselves? back to home? Most +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page183" id="page183"></a>[pg 183]</span> +of us no longer know how to preach on that plane of experience +or from the point of view where such questions +are serious and real. Our fathers had a world view and +a philosophy which made such preaching easy. But their +power did not lie in that world view; it lay in this vision +of Jesus which produced the view. Is not this the vision which we need?</p> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote40" name="footnote40"></a><b>Footnote 40: </b><a href="#footnotetag40">(return) </a><p>"The Satisfaction of Humanity in Jesus Christ," <i>Andover Review</i>, January, 1893.</p></blockquote> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page184" id="page184"></a>[pg 184]</span> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER SEVEN</h2> + +<h2>Worship as the Chief Approach to Transcendence</h2> + + +<p>Whatever becomes the inward and the invisible +grace of the Christian community such +will be its outward and visible form. +Those regulative ideas and characteristic emotions which +determine in any age the quality of its religious experience +will be certain to shape the nature and conduct of its +ecclesiastical assemblies. Their influence will show, both +in the liturgical and homiletical portions of public worship. +If anything further were needed, therefore, to indicate +the secularity of this age, its substitutes for worship +and its characteristic type of preaching would, in +themselves, reveal the situation. So we venture to devote +these closing discussions to some observations on the +present state of Protestant public worship and the prevailing +type of Protestant preaching. For we may thus +ascertain how far those ideas and perceptions which an +age like ours needs are beginning to find an expression +and what means may be taken to increase their influence +through church services in the community.</p> + +<p>We begin, then, in this chapter, not with preaching, +but with worship. It seems to me clear that the chief office +of the church is liturgical rather than homiletical. +Or, if that is too technical a statement, it may be said +that the church exists to set forth and foster the religious +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page185" id="page185"></a>[pg 185]</span> +life and that, because of the nature of that life, it finds +its chief opportunity for so doing in the imaginative +rather than the rationalizing or practical areas of human +expression. Even as Michael Angelo, at the risk of his +life, purloined dead bodies that he might dissect them +and learn anatomy, so all disciples of the art of religion +need the discipline of intellectual analysis and of knowledge +of the facts of the religious experience if they are +to be leaders in faith. There is a toughness of fiber needed +in religious people that can only come through such mental +discipline. But anatomists are not sculptors. Michael +Angelo was the genius, the creative artist, not because +he understood anatomy, but chiefly because of those as +yet indefinable and secret processes of feeling and intuition +in man, which made him feel rather than understand +the pity and the terror, the majesty and the pathos +of the human spirit and reveal them in significant and +expressive line. Knowledge supported rather than rivaled +insight. In the same way, both saint and sinner need religious +instruction. Nevertheless they are what they are +because they are first perceptive rather than reasoning +beings. They both owe, the one his salvation, the other +his despair, to the fact that they have seen the vision of +the holy universe. Both are seers; the saint has given his +allegiance to the heavenly vision. The sinner has resolved +to be disobedient unto it. Both find their first and more +natural approach to religious truth, therefore, through the +creative rather than the critical processes, the emotional +rather than the informative powers.</p> + +<p>There are, of course, many in our churches who would +dissent from this opinion. It is characteristic of Protestantism, +as of humanism in general, that it lays its chief +emphasis upon the intelligence. If we go to church to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page186" id="page186"></a>[pg 186]</span> +practice the presence of God, must we not first know who +and what this God is whose presence with us we are there +asked to realize? So most Protestant services are more +informative than inspirational. Their attendants are assembled +to hear about God rather to taste and see that +the Lord is good. They analyze the religious experience +rather than enjoy it; insensibly they come to regard the +spiritual life as a proposition to be proved, not a power +to be appropriated. Hence our services generally consist +of some "preliminary exercises," as we ourselves call +them, leading up to the climax—when it is a climax—of the sermon.</p> + +<p>Here is a major cause for the declension of the influence +of Protestant church services. They go too much on +the assumption that men already possess religion and that +they come to church to discuss it rather than to have it +provided. They call men to be listeners rather than participants +in their temples. Of course, one may find God +through the mind. The great scholar, the mathematician +or the astronomer may cry with Kepler, "Behold, I think +the thoughts of God after him!" Yet a service which +places its chief emphasis upon the appeal to the will +through instruction has declined from that realm of the +absolutes where religion in its purest form belongs. For +since preaching makes its appeal chiefly through reason, +it thereby attempts to produce only a partial and relative +experience in the life of the listener. It impinges upon the +will by a slow process. Sometimes one gets so deadly +weary of preaching because, in a world like ours, the +reasonable process is so unreasonable. That's a half truth, +of course, but one that the modern world needs to learn.</p> + +<p>Others would dissent from our position by saying that +service, the life of good will, is a sufficient worship. The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page187" id="page187"></a>[pg 187]</span> +highest adoration is to visit the widows and the fatherless +in their affliction. <i>Laborare est orare</i>. What we do +speaks so loud God does not care for what we say. True: +but the value of what we do for God depends upon the +godliness of the doer and where shall he find that godliness +save in the secret place of the Most High? And the +greatest gift we can give our fellows is to bring them +into the divine presence. "There is," says Dr. William +Adams Brown, "a service that is directed to the satisfaction +of needs already in existence, and there is a service +that is itself the creator of new needs which enlarge the +capacity of the man to whom it would minister. To this +larger service religion is committed, and the measure of +a man's fitness to render it is his capacity for worship." +But no one can give more than he has. If we are to offer +such gifts we must ourselves go before and lead. To create +the atmosphere in which the things of righteousness +and holiness seem to be naturally exalted above the physical, +the commercial, the domestic affairs of men; to lift +the level of thought and feeling to that high place where +the spiritual consciousness contributes its insights and +finds a magnanimous utterance—is there anything that +our world needs more? There are noble and necessary +ministries to the body and the mind, but most needed, and +least often offered, there is a ministry to the human spirit. +This is the gift which the worshiper can bring. Knowledge +of God may not be merely or even chiefly comprehended +in a concept of the intelligence; knowledge of +Him is that vitalizing consciousness of the Presence felt +in the heart, which opens our eyes that we may see that +the mountain is full of horses and chariots of fire round +about us and that they who fight with us are more than +they who fight with them. This is the true and central +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page188" id="page188"></a>[pg 188]</span> +knowledge that private devotion and public worship alone +can give; preaching can but conserve and transmit this religious +experience through the mind, worship creates it +in the heart. Edwards understood that neither thought +nor conduct can take its place. "The sober performance +of moral duty," said he, "is no substitute for passionate +devotion to a Being with its occasional moments of joy and exaltation."</p> + +<p>We should then begin with worship. A church which +does not emphasize it before everything else is trying to +build the structure of a spiritual society with the corner +stone left out. Let us try, first of all, to define it. An old +and popular definition of the descriptive sort says that +"worship is the response of the soul to the consciousness +of being in the presence of God." A more modern definition, +analyzing the psychology of worship, defines it as +"the unification of consciousness around the central controlling +idea of God, the prevailing emotional tone being +that of adoration." Evidently we mean, then, by worship +the appeal to the religious will through feeling and the +imagination. Worship is therefore essentially creative. +Every act of worship seeks to bring forth then and +there a direct experience of God through high and concentrated +emotion. It fixes the attention upon Him as an +object in Himself supremely desirable. The result of this +unified consciousness is peace and the result of this peace +and harmony is a new sense of power. Worship, then, is +the attainment of that inward wholeness for which in one +form or another all religion strives by means of contemplation. +So by its very nature it belongs to the class of the absolutes.</p> + +<p>Many psychologies of religion define this contemplation +as aesthetic, and make worship a higher form of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189" id="page189"></a>[pg 189]</span> +delight. This appears to me a quite typical non-religious interpretation +of a religious experience. There are four +words which need explaining when we talk of worship. +They are: wonder, admiration, awe, reverence. Wonder +springs from the recognition of the limitations of our +knowledge; it is an experience of the mind. Admiration +is the response of a growing intelligence to beauty, partly +an aesthetic, partly an intellectual experience. These distinctions +Coleridge had in mind in his well-known sentence +"In wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it +ends; and admiration fills up the interspace. But the first +wonder is the offspring of ignorance; the last is the parent +of adoration." Awe is the sense-perception of the stupendous +power and magnitude of the universe; it is, quite +literally, a godly fear. But it is not ignoble nor cringing, +it is just and reasonable, the attitude, toward the Whole, of a comprehensive sanity.</p> + +<p>Thus "I would love Thee, O God, if there were no +heaven, <i>and if there were no hell, I would fear Thee no +less</i>." Reverence is devotion to goodness, sense of awe-struck +loyalty to a Being manifestly under the influence +of principles higher than our own.<a id="footnotetag41" name="footnotetag41"></a><a href="#footnote41"><sup>41</sup></a> Now it is with these +last two, awe and reverence, rather than wonder and admiration, +that worship has to do.</p> + +<p>Hence the essence of worship is not aesthetic contemplation. +Without doubt worship does gratify the aesthetic +instinct and most properly so. There is no normal expression +of man's nature which has not its accompanying delight. +The higher and more inclusive the expression the +more exquisite, of course, the delight. But that pleasure is +the by-product, not the object, of worship. It itself springs +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page190" id="page190"></a>[pg 190]</span> +partly from the awe of the infinite and eternal majesty +which induces the desire to prostrate oneself before the +Lord our Maker. "I have heard of Thee by the hearing +of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I +abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." It also +springs partly from passionate devotion of a loyal will to +a holy Being. "Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto +the hand of their masters and as the eyes of a maid unto +the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the +Lord." Thus reverence is the high and awe-struck hunger +for spiritual communion. "My soul thirsteth for God, for +the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?"</p> + +<p>There is a noble illustration of the nature and the uses +of worship in the Journals of Jonathan Edwards, distinguished +alumnus of Yale College, and the greatest +mind this hemisphere has produced. You remember what +he wrote in them, as a youth, about the young woman +who later became his wife: "They say there is a young +lady in New Haven who is beloved of that great Being +who made and rules the world, and that there are certain +seasons in which this great Being in some way or other +invisible comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding +sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except +to meditate on Him. Therefore if you present all +the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, +she disregards and cares not for it and is unmindful of +any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her +mind, and singular purity in her affections, is most just +and conscientious in all her conduct, and you could not +persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful if you would +give her all the world, lest she should offend this great +Being. She is of wonderful calmness and universal benevolence +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page191" id="page191"></a>[pg 191]</span> +of mind, especially after this great God has manifested +Himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about +from place to place singing sweetly and seems to be always +full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for +what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and +groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her."</p> + +<p>Almost every element of worship is contained in this +description. First, we have a young human being emotionally +conscious of the presence of God, who in some +way or other directly but invisibly comes to her. Secondly, +we have her attention so fixed on the adoration of God +that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate +upon Him. Thirdly, as the result of this worshipful approach +to religious reality, we have the profound peace +and harmony, the <i>summum bonum</i> of existence, coupled +with strong moral purpose which characterize her life. +Here, then, is evidently the unification of consciousness in +happy awe and the control of destiny through meditation +upon infinite matters, that is, through reverent contemplation +of God. Is it not one of those ironies of history +wherewith fate is forever mocking and teasing the human +spirit, that the grandson of this lady and of Jonathan +Edwards should have been Aaron Burr?</p> + +<p>Clearly, then, the end of worship is to present to the +mind, through the imagination, one idea, majestic and +inclusive. So it presents it chiefly through high and sustained +feeling. Worship proceeds on the understanding +that one idea, remaining almost unchanged and holding +the attention for a considerable length of time, so directs +the emotional processes that thought and action are harmonized +with it. If one reads the great prayers of the centuries +they indicate, for the most part, an unconscious +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192" id="page192"></a>[pg 192]</span> +understanding of this psychology of worship. Take, for +instance, this noble prayer of Pusey's.</p> + +<p>"Let me not seek out of Thee what I can find only in +Thee, O Lord, peace and rest and joy and bliss, which +abide only in thine abiding joy. Lift up my soul above +the weary round of harassing thoughts, to Thy eternal +presence. Lift up my soul to the pure, bright, serene, radiant +atmosphere of Thy presence, that there I may breathe +freely, there repose in Thy love, there be at rest from +myself and from all things that weary me, and thence +return arrayed with Thy peace, to do and bear what shall please Thee."</p> + +<p>This prayer expresses the essence of worship which is +the seeking, through the fixation of attention, not the +delight but rather the peace and purity which can +only be found in the consciousness of God. This peace is +the necessary outcome of the indwelling presence. It ensues +when man experiences the radiant atmosphere of the divine communion.</p> + +<p>The same clear expression of worship is found in +another familiar and noble prayer, that of Johann Arndt. +Here, too, are phrases descriptive of a unified consciousness +induced by reverent loyalty.</p> + +<p>"Ah, Lord, to whom all hearts are open, Thou canst +govern the vessel of my soul far better than can I. Arise, +O Lord, and command the stormy wind and the troubled +sea of my heart to be still, and at peace in Thee, that I +may look up to Thee undisturbed and abide in union with +Thee, my Lord. Let me not be carried hither and thither +by wandering thoughts, but forgetting all else let me see +and hear Thee. Renew my spirit, kindle in me Thy light +that it may shine within me, and my heart burn in love +and adoration for Thee. Let Thy Holy Spirit dwell in me +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page193" id="page193"></a>[pg 193]</span> +continually, and make me Thy temple and sanctuary, and +fill me with divine love and life and light, with devout +and heavenly thoughts, with comfort and strength, with joy and peace."</p> + +<p>Thus here one sees in the high contemplation of a +transcendent God the subduing and elevating of the human +will, the restoration and composure of the moral +life. Finally, in a prayer of St. Anselm's there is a sort +of analysis of the process of worship.</p> + +<p>"O God, Thou <i>art</i> life, wisdom, truth, bounty and +blessedness, the eternal, the only true Good. My God and +my Lord, Thou art my hope and my heart's joy. I confess +with thanksgiving that Thou hast made me in Thine +image, that I may direct all my thoughts to Thee and +love Thee. Lord, make me to know Thee aright that I +may more and more love and enjoy and possess Thee."</p> + +<p>One cannot conclude these examples of worshipful expression +without quoting a prayer of Augustine, which +is, I suppose, the most perfect brief petition in all the +Christian literature of devotion and which gives the great +psychologist's perception of the various steps in the unification +of the soul with the eternal Spirit through sublime emotion.</p> + +<p>"Grant, O God, that we may desire Thee, and desiring +Thee, seek Thee, and seeking Thee, find Thee, and finding +Thee, be satisfied with Thee forever."</p> + +<p>I think one may see, then, why worship as distinct +from preaching, or the hearing of preaching, is the first +necessity of the religious life. It unites us as nothing else +can do with God the whole and God the transcendent. +The conception of God is the sum total of human needs +and desires harmonized, unified, concretely expressed. It +is the faith of the worshiper that this concept is derived +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page194" id="page194"></a>[pg 194]</span> +from a real and objective Being in some way corresponding +to it. No one can measure the influence of such an +idea when it dominates the consciousness of any given +period. It can create and set going new desires and habits, +it can minish and repress old ones, because this idea +carries, with its transcendent conception, the dynamic +quality which belongs to the idea of perfect power. But +this transcendent conception, being essentially of something +beyond, without and above ourselves can only be +"realized" through the feeling and the imagination, +whose province it is to deal with the supersensuous values, +with the fringes of understanding, with the farthest +bounds of knowledge. These make the springboard, so to +speak, from which man dares to launch himself into that +sea of the infinite, which we can neither understand nor +measure, but which nevertheless we may perceive and +feel, which in some sense we know to be there.</p> + +<p>So, if we deal first with worship, we are merely beginning +at the beginning and starting at the bottom. And, +in the light of this observation, it is appalling to survey +the non-liturgical churches today and see the place that +public devotion holds in them. It is not too much, I think, +to speak of the collapse of worship in Protestant communities. +No better evidence of this need be sought than +in the nature of the present attempts to reinstate it. They +have a naïveté, an incongruity, that can only be explained +on the assumption of their impoverished background.</p> + +<p>This situation shows first in the heterogeneous character +of our experiments. We are continually printing on +our churches' calendars what we usually call "programs," +but which are meant to be orders of worship. We are +also forever changing them. There is nothing inevitable +about their order; they have no intelligible, self-verifying +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page195" id="page195"></a>[pg 195]</span> +procedure. Anthems are inserted here and there without +any sense of the progression or of the psychology of +worship. Glorias are sung sometimes with the congregation +standing up and sometimes while they are sitting +down. There is no lectionary to determine a comprehensive +and orderly reading of Scripture, not much sequence +of thought or progress of devotion either in the read or +the extempore prayers. There is no uniformity of posture. +There are two historic attitudes of reverence when +men are addressing the Almighty. They are the standing +upon one's feet or the falling upon one's knees. For the +most part we neither stand nor kneel; we usually loll. +Some of us compromise by bending forward to the limiting +of our breath and the discomfort of our digestion. It +is too little inducive to physical ease or perhaps too derogatory +to our dignity to kneel before the Lord our Maker. +All this seems too much like the efforts of those who +have forgotten what worship really is and are trying to +find for it some comfortable or attractive substitute.</p> + +<p>Second: we show our inexperience by betraying the +confusion of aesthetic and ethical values as we strive for +variety and entertainment in church services; we build +them around wonder and admiration, not around reverence +and awe. But we are mistaken if we suppose that +men chiefly desire to be pleasantly entertained or extraordinarily +delighted when they go into a church. They +go there because they desire to enter a Holy Presence; +they want to approach One before whom they can be still +and know that He is God. All "enrichments" of a service +injected into it here and there, designed to make it more +attractive, to add color and variety, to arrest the attention +of the senses are, as ends, beside the point, and our dependence +upon them indicates the unhappy state of worship +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page196" id="page196"></a>[pg 196]</span> +in our day. That we do thus make our professional +music an end in itself is evident from our blatant way of +advertising it. In the same way we advertise sermon +themes, usually intended to startle the pious and provoke +the ungodly. We want to arouse curiosity, social or political +interest, to achieve some secular reaction. We don't +advertise that tomorrow in our church there is to be a +public worship of God, and that everything that we are +going to do will be in the awe-struck sense that He is +there. We are afraid that nobody would come if we merely did that!</p> + +<p>What infidels we are! Why are we surprised that the +world is passing us by? We say and we sing a great many +things which it is incredible to suppose we would address +to God if we really thought He were present. Yet anthems +and congregational singing are either a sacrifice +solemnly and joyously offered to God or else all the singing +is less, and worse, than nothing in a church service. +But how often sentimental and restless music, making +not for restraint and reverence, not for the subduing of +mind and heart but for the expression of those expansive +and egotistical moods which are of the essence of romantic +singing, is what we employ. There is a great deal of +truly religious music, austere in tone, breathing restraint +and reverence, quietly written. The anthems of Palestrina, +Anerio, Viadana, Vittoria among the Italians; of +Bach, Haydn, Handel, Mozart among the Germans; and +of Tallis, Gibbons and Purcell among the English, are all +of the truly devout order. Yet how seldom are the works +of such men heard in our churches, even where they employ +professional singers at substantial salaries. We are +everywhere now trying to give our churches splendid and +impressive physical accessories, making the architecture +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197" id="page197"></a>[pg 197]</span> +more and more stately and the pews more and more comfortable! +Thus we attempt an amalgam of a mediaeval +house of worship with an American domestic interior, +adoring God at our ease, worshiping Him in armchairs, +offering prostration of the spirit, so far as it can be +achieved along with indolence of the body.</p> + +<p>So we advertise and concertize and have silver vases +and costly flowers and conventional ecclesiastical furniture. +But we still hold a "small-and-early" in the vestibule +before service and a "five o'clock" in the chapel afterward. +Sunday morning church is a this-world function +with a pietized gossip and a decorous sort of sociable +with an intellectual fillip thrown in. Thus we try to make +our services attractive to the secular instincts, the non-religious +things, in man's nature. We try to get him into the +church by saying, "You will find here what you find elsewhere." +It's rather illogical. The church stands for something +different. We say, "You will like to come and be +one of us because we are not different." The answer is, +"I can get the things of this world better in the world, +where they belong, than with you." Thus we have naturalized +our very offices of devotion! Hence the attempts +to revive worship are incongruous and inconsistent. +Hence they have that sentimental and accidental character +which is the sign of the amateur. They do not bring +us very near to the heavenly country. It might be well to +remember that the servant of Jahweh doth not cry nor +lift up his voice nor cause it to be heard in the streets.</p> + +<p>Now, there are many reasons for this anomalous situation. +One of them is our inheritance of a deep-rooted +Puritan distrust of a liturgical service. That distrust is +today a fetish and therefore much more potent that it was +when it was a reason. Puritanism was born in the Reformation; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page198" id="page198"></a>[pg 198]</span> +it came out from the Roman church, where +worship was regarded as an end in itself. To Catholic +believers worship is a contribution to God, pleasing to +Him apart from any effect it may have on the worshiper. +Such a theory of it is, of course, open to grave abuse. +Sometimes it led to indifference as to the effect of the +worship upon the moral character of the communicant, +so that worship could be used, not to conquer evil, but to +make up for it, and thus sin became as safe as it was easy. +Inevitably also such a theory of worship often degenerated +into an utter formalism which made hyprocrisy +and unreality patent, until the <i>hoc est corpus</i> of the mass +became the hocus-pocus of the scoffer.</p> + +<p>Here is a reason, once valid because moral, for our +present situation. Yet it must be confessed that again, as +so often, we are doing what the Germans call "throwing +out the baby with the bath," namely, repudiating a defect +or the perversion of an excellence and, in so doing, throwing +away that excellence itself. It is clear that no Protestant +is ever tempted today to consider worship as its own +reason and its own end. We are, in a sense, utilitarian +ritualists. Worship to us is as valuable as it is valid because +it is the chief avenue of spiritual insight, a chief +means of awakening penitence, obtaining forgiveness, +growing in grace and love. These are the ultimates; these are pleasing to God.</p> + +<p>A second reason, however, for our situation is not ethical +and essential, but economic and accidental. Our fathers' +communities were a slender chain of frontier +settlements, separated from an ancient civilization by an +unknown and dangerous sea on the one hand, menaced by +all the perils of a virgin wilderness upon the other. All +their life was simple to the point of bareness; austere, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page199" id="page199"></a>[pg 199]</span> +reduced to the most elemental necessities. Inevitably the +order of their worship corresponded to the order of their +society. It is certain, I think, that the white meeting-house +with its naked dignity, the old service with its heroic +simplicity, conveyed to the primitive society which produced +them elements both of high formality and conscious +reverence which they could not possibly offer to +our luxurious, sophisticated and wealthy age.</p> + +<p>Is it not a dangerous thing to have brought an ever increasing +formality and recognition of a developed and +sophisticated community into our social and intellectual +life but to have allowed our religious expression to remain +so anachronistic? Largely for social and economic +reasons we send most of our young men and young women +to college. There we deliberately cultivate in them the perception +of beauty, the sense of form, various expressions +of the imaginative life. But how much has our average +non-liturgical service to offer to their critically trained +perceptions? Our church habits are pretty largely the +transfer into the sanctuary of the hearty conventions of +middle-class family life. The relations in life which are +precious to such youth, the intimate, the mystical and +subtle ones, get small recognition or expression. A hundred +agencies outside the church are stimulating in the +best boys and girls of the present generation fine sensibilities, +critical standards, the higher hungers. Our services, +chiefly instructive and didactic, informal and easy +in character, irritate them and make them feel like truculent +or uncomfortable misfits.</p> + +<p>A third reason for the lack of corporate or public offices +of devotion in our services lies in the intellectual +character of the Protestant centuries. We have seen how +they have been centuries of individualism. Character has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page200" id="page200"></a>[pg 200]</span> +been conceived of as largely a personal affair expressed +in personal relationships. The believer was like Christian +in Bunyan's <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>. He started for the +Heavenly Country because he was determined to save +his own soul. When he realized that he was living in the +City of Destruction it did not occur to him that, as a +good man, he must identify his fate with it. On the contrary, +he deserted wife and children with all possible expedition +and got him out and went along through the +Slough of Despond, up to the narrow gate, to start on +the way of life. It was a chief glory of mediaeval society +that it was based upon corporate relationships. Its cathedrals +were possible because they were the common house +of God for every element of the community. Family and +class and state were dominant factors then. But we have +seen how, in the Renaissance and the Romantic Movement, +individualism supplanted these values. Now, Protestantism +was contemporary with that new movement, +indeed, a part of it. Its growing egotism and the colossal +egotism of the modern world form a prime cause for the +impoverishment of worship in Protestant churches.</p> + +<p>And so this brings us, then, to the real reason for our +devotional impotence, the one to which we referred in +the opening sentences of the chapter. It is essentially due +to the character of the regulative ideas of our age. It lies +in that world view whose expressions in literature, philosophy +and social organizations we have been reviewing +in these pages. The partial notion of God which our +age has unconsciously made the substitute for a comprehensive +understanding of Him is essentially to blame. +For since the contemporary doctrine is of His immanence, +it therefore follows that it is chiefly through observation +of the natural world and by interpretation of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page201" id="page201"></a>[pg 201]</span> +contemporary events that men will approach Him if they +come to Him at all. Moreover, our humanism, in emphasizing +the individual and exalting his self-sufficiency, has +so far made the mood of worship alien and the need of it +superfluous. The overemphasis upon preaching, the general +passion of this generation for talk and then more +talk, and then endless talk, is perfectly intelligible in view +of the regulative ideas of this generation. It seeks its understanding +of the world chiefly in terms of natural and +tangible phenomena and chiefly by means either of critical +observation or of analytic reasoning. Hence preaching, +especially that sort which looks for the divine principle +in contemporary events, has been to the fore. But +worship, which finds the divine principle in something +more and other than contemporary events—which indeed +does not look outward to "events" at all—has been thrown into the background.</p> + +<p>It seems to me clear, then, that if we are to emphasize +the transcendent elements in religion; if they represent, +as we have been contending, the central elements of the +religious experience, its creative factors, then the revival +of worship will be a prime step in creating a more +truly spiritual society. I am convinced that a homilizing +church belongs to a secularizing age. One cannot forget +that the ultimate, I do not say the only, reason for the +founding of the non-liturgical churches was the rise of +humanism. One cannot fail to see the connection between +humanistic doctrine and moralistic preaching, or between +the naturalism of the moment and the mechanicalizing of +the church. "The Christian congregation," said Luther, +child of the humanistic movement, "should never assemble +except the word of God be preached." "In other countries," +says old Isaac Taylor, "the bell calls people to worship; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page202" id="page202"></a>[pg 202]</span> +in Scotland it calls them to a preachment." And one +remembers the justice of Charles Kingsley's fling at the +Dissenters that they were "creatures who went to church +to hear sermons!" It would seem evident, then, that a renewal +of worship would be the logical accompaniment of +a return to distinctly religious values in society and church.</p> + +<p>What can we do, then, better for an age of paganism +than to cultivate this transcendent consciousness? Direct +men away from God the universal and impersonal to God +the particular and intimate. Nothing is more needed for +our age than to insist upon the truth that there are both +common and uncommon, both secular and sacred worlds; +that these are not contradictory; that they are complementary; +that they are not identical. It is the +church's business to insist that men must live in the +world of the sacred, the uncommon, the particular, in order +to be able to surmount and endure the secular, the +common and the universal. It is her business to insist that +through worship all this can be accomplished. But can +worship be taught? Is not the devotee, like the poet or the +lover or any other genius, born and not made? Well, +whether it can be taught or not, it at least can be cultivated +and developed, and there are three very practical +ways in which this cultivation can be brought about.</p> + +<p>One of them is by paying intelligent attention to the +physical surroundings of the worshiper. The assembly +room for worship obviously should not be used for other +purposes; all its suggestions and associations should be +of one sort and that sort the highest. Quite aside from +the question of taste, it is psychologically indefensible to +use the same building, and especially the same room in the +building, for concerts, for picture shows, for worship. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page203" id="page203"></a>[pg 203]</span> +Here we at once create a distracted consciousness; we +dissipate attention; we deliberately make it harder for +men and women to focus upon one, and that the most +difficult, if the most precious, mood.</p> + +<p>For the same reason, the physical form of the room +should be one that does not suggest either the concert +hall or the playhouse, but suggests rather a long and unbroken +ecclesiastical tradition. Until the cinema was introduced +into worship, we were vastly improving in these +respects, but now we are turning the morning temple into +an evening showhouse. I think we evince a most impertinent +familiarity with the house of God! And too often +the church is planned so that it has no privacies or recesses, +but a hideous publicity pervades its every part. +We adorn it with stenciled frescoes of the same patterns +which we see in hotel lobbies and clubs; we hang up maps +behind the reading desk; we clutter up its platform with grand pianos.</p> + +<p>It is a mere matter of good taste and good psychology +to begin our preparation for a ministry of worship by +changing all this. There should be nothing in color or +ornament which arouses the restless mood or distracts +the eye. Severe and simple walls, restrained and devout +figures in glass windows, are only to be tolerated. Descriptive +windows, attempting in a most untractable medium +a sort of naïve realism, are equally an aesthetic and +an ecclesiastical offense. Figures of saints or great religious +personages should be typical, impersonal, symbolic, +not too much like this world and the things of it. +There is a whole school of modern window glass distinguished +by its opulence and its realism. It ought to be +banished from houses of worship. Since it is the object +of worship to fix the attention upon one thing and that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page204" id="page204"></a>[pg 204]</span> +thing the highest, the room where worship is held should +have its own central object. It may be the Bible, idealized +as the word of God; it may be the altar on which stands +the Cross of the eternal sacrifice. But no church ought +to be without one fixed point to which the eye of the +body is insensibly drawn, thereby making it easier to follow +it with the attention of the mind and the wishes of +the heart. At the best, our Protestant ecclesiastical buildings +are all empty! There are meeting-houses, not temples +assembly rooms, not shrines. There is apparently no +sense in which we are willing to acknowledge that the +Presence is on their altar. But at least the attention of the +worshiper within them may focus around some symbol +of that Presence, may be fixed on some outward sign which will help the inward grace.</p> + +<p>But second: our chief concern naturally must be with +the content of the service of worship itself, not with its +physical surroundings. And here then are two things +which may be said. First, any formal order of worship +should be historic; it should have its roots deep in the +past; whatever else is true of a service of worship it +ought not to suggest that it has been uncoupled from the +rest of time and allowed to run wild. Now, this means +that an order of worship, basing itself on the devotion of +the ages, will use to some extent their forms. I do not see +how anyone would wish to undertake to lead the same +company of people week by week in divine worship without +availing himself of the help of written prayers, great +litanies, to strengthen and complement the spontaneous +offices of devotion. There is something almost incredible +to me in the assumption that one man can, supposedly unaided, +lead a congregation in the emotional expression of +its deepest life and desires without any assistance from +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page205" id="page205"></a>[pg 205]</span> +the great sacramentaries and liturgies of the past. Christian +literature is rich with a great body of collects, +thanksgivings, confessions, various special petitions, +which gather up the love and tears, the vision and the +anguish of many generations. These, with their phrases +made unspeakably precious with immemorial association, +with their subtle fitting of phrase to insight, of expression +to need, born of long centuries of experiment and aspiration, +can do for a congregation what no man alone can +ever hope to accomplish. The well of human needs and +desires is so deep that, without these aids, we have not +much to draw with, no plummet wherewith to sound its dark and hidden depths.</p> + +<p>I doubt if we can overestimate the importance of giving +this sense of continuity in petitions, of linking up the +prayer of the moment and the worship of the day with +the whole ageless process so that it seems a part of that +volume of human life forever ascending unto the eternal +spirit, just as the gray plume of smoke from the sacrifice +ever curled upward morning by morning and night by +night from the altar of the temple under the blue Syrian +sky. We cannot easily give this sense of continuity, this +prestige of antiquity, this resting back on a great body +of experience, unless we know and use the language and +the phrases of our fathers. It is to the God who hath +been our dwelling place in all generations, that we pray; +to Him who in days of old was a pillar of cloud by day +and of fire by night to His faithful children; to the One +who is the Ancient of Days, Infinite Watcher of the sons +of men. Only by acquaintance with the phrases, the petitions +of the past, and only by a liberal use of them can +we give background and dignity, or anything approaching +variety and completeness, to our own public expression +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page206" id="page206"></a>[pg 206]</span> +and interpretation of the devotional life. If anyone +objects to this use of formal prayers on the ground of +their formality, let him remember that we, too, are formal, +only we, alas, have made a cult of formlessness. It +would surprise the average minister to know the well-worn +road which his supposedly spontaneous and extempore +devotions follow. Phrase after phrase following in +the same order of ideas, and with the same pitiably limited +vocabulary, appear week by week in them. How much +better to enrich this painfully individualistic formalism +with something of the corporate glories of the whole body of Christian believers.</p> + +<p>But, second: there should be also the principle of immediacy +in the service, room for the expression of individual +needs and desires and for reference to the immediate +and local circumstances of the believer. A church +in which there is no spontaneous and extempore prayer, +which only harked backward to the past, might build the +tombs of the prophets but it might also stifle new voices +for a new age. But extempore prayer should not be +impromptu prayer. It should have coherence, dignity, progression. +The spirit should have been humbly and painstakingly +prepared for it so that sincere and ardent feeling +may wing and vitalize its words. The great prayers +of the ages, known of all the worshipers, perhaps repeated +by them all together, tie in the individual soul to +the great mass of humanity and it moves on, with its +fellows, toward salvation as majestically and steadily +as great rivers flow. The extempore and silent prayer, +not unpremeditated but still the unformed outpouring of +the individual heart, gives each man the consciousness of +standing naked and alone before his God. Both these, the +corporate and the separate elements of worships are vital; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page207" id="page207"></a>[pg 207]</span> +there should be a place for each in every true order of worship.</p> + +<p>But, of course, the final thing to say is the first thing. +Whatever may be the means that worship employs, its +purpose must be to make and keep the church a place of +repose, to induce constantly the life of relinquishment to +God, of reverence and meditation. And this it will do as +it seeks to draw men up to the "otherness," the majesty, +the aloofness, the transcendence of the Almighty. To this +end I would use whatever outward aids time and experience +have shown will strengthen and deepen the spiritual +understanding. I should not fear to use the cross, the +sacraments, the kneeling posture, the great picture, the +carving, the recitation of prayers and hymns, not alone to +intensify this sense in the believer but equally to create +it in the non-believer. The external world moulds the internal, +even as the internal makes the external. If these +things mean little in the beginning, there is still truth in +the assertion of the devotee that if you practice them +they will begin to mean something to you. This is not +merely that a meaning will be self-induced. It is more +than that. They will put us in the volitional attitude, the +emotional mood, where the meaning is able to penetrate. +Just as all the world acknowledges that there is an essential +connection between good manners and good morals, +between military discipline and physical courage, so there +is a connection between a devotional service and the gifts +of the spiritual life. Such a service not merely strengthens +belief in the High and Holy One, it has a real office +in creating, in making possible, that belief itself.</p> + +<p>We shall sum it all up if we say in one word that the +offices of devotion emphasize the cosmic character of religion. +They take us out of the world of moral theism +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page208" id="page208"></a>[pg 208]</span> +into the world of a universal theism. They draw us away +from religion in action to religion in itself; they give us, +not the God of this world, but the God who is from everlasting +to everlasting, to whom a thousand years are but +as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the +night. Thus they help us to make for ourselves an interior +refuge into whose precincts no eye may look, into whose +life no other soul may venture. In that refuge we can be +still and know that He is God. There we can eat the +meat which the world knoweth not of, there have peace +with Him. It is in these central solitudes, induced by worship, +that the vision is clarified, the perspective corrected, +the vital forces recharged. Those who possess them are +transmitters of such heavenly messages; they issue from +them as rivers pour from undiminished mountain +streams. Does the world's sin and pain and weakness +come and empty itself into the broad current of these devout +lives? Then their fearless onsweeping forces gather +it all up, carry it on, cleanse and purify it in the process. +Over such lives the things of this world have no power. +They are kept secretly from them all in His pavilion +where there is no strife of tongues.</p> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote41" name="footnote41"></a><b>Footnote 41: </b><a href="#footnotetag41">(return) </a><p>For a discussion of these four words see Allen, <i>Reverence as the Heart of Christianity</i>, pp. 253 ff.</p></blockquote> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page209" id="page209"></a>[pg 209]</span> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER EIGHT</h2> + +<h2>Worship and the Discipline of Doctrine</h2> + + +<p>If one were to ask any sermon-taster of our generation +what is the prevailing type of discourse among +the better-known preachers of the day, he would +probably answer, "The expository." Expository preaching +has had a notable revival in the last three decades, especially +among liberal preachers; that is, among those +who like ourselves have discarded scholastic theologies, +turned to the ethical aspects of religion for our chief interests +and accepted the modern view of the Bible. To +be sure, it is not the same sort of expository preaching +which made the Scottish pulpit of the nineteenth century +famous. It is not the detailed exposition of each word +and clause, almost of each comma, which marks the +mingled insight and literalism of a Chalmers, an Alexander +Maclaren, a Taylor of the Broadway Tabernacle. +For that assumed a verbally inspired and hence an inerrant +Scripture; it dealt with the literature of the Old +and New Testaments as being divine revelations. The +new expository preaching proceeds from almost an opposite +point of view. It deals with this literature as being +a transcript of human experience. Its method is direct +and simple and, within sharp limits, very effective. +The introduction to one of these modern expository sermons +would run about as follows:</p> + +<p>"I suppose that what has given to the Old and New +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page210" id="page210"></a>[pg 210]</span> +Testament Scriptures their enduring hold over the minds +and consciences of men has been their extraordinary humanity. +They contain so many vivid and accurate recitals +of typical human experience, portrayed with self-verifying +insight and interpreted with consummate +understanding of the issues of the heart. And since it is +true, as Goethe said, 'That while mankind is always progressing +man himself remains ever the same,' and +we are not essentially different from the folk who lived +a hundred generations ago under the sunny Palestinian +sky, we read these ancient tales and find in them a mirror +which reflects the lineaments of our own time. For instance,..."</p> + +<p>Then the sermonizer proceeds to relate some famous +Bible story, resolving its naïve Semitic theophanies, its +pictorial narration, its primitive morality, into the terms +of contemporary ethical or political or economic principles. +Take, for instance, the account of the miracle of +Moses and the Burning Bush. The preacher will point out +that Moses saw a bush that burned and burned and that, +unlike most furze bushes of those upland pastures which +were ignited by the hot Syrian sun, was not consumed. +It was this enduring quality of the bush that interested +him. Thus Moses showed the first characteristic of +genius, namely, capacity for accurate and discriminating +observation. And he coupled this with the scientific habit +of mind. For he said, "I will now turn aside and see +why!" Thus did he propose to pierce behind the event to +the cause of the event, behind the movement to the principle +of the movement. What a modern man this Moses +was! It seems almost too good to be true!</p> + +<p>But as yet we have merely scratched the surface of the +story. For he took his shoes from off his feet when he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page211" id="page211"></a>[pg 211]</span> +inspected this new phenomenon, feeling instinctively that +he was on holy ground. Thus there mingled with his +scientific curiosity the second great quality of genius, +which is reverence. There was no complacency here but +an approach to life at once eager and humble; keen yet +teachable and mild. And now behold what happens! As +a result of this combination of qualities there came to +Moses the vision of what he might do to lead his oppressed +countrymen out of their industrial bondage. +Whereupon he displayed the typical human reaction and +cried, "Who am I, that I should go unto Pharoah or that +I should lead the children of Israel out of Egypt!" My +brother Aaron, who is an eloquent person—and as it +turned out later also a specious one—is far better suited +for this undertaking. Thus he endeavored to evade the +task and cried, "Let someone else do it!" Having thus +expounded the word of God (!) the sermon proceeds to +its final division in the application of this shrewd and +practical wisdom to some current event or parochial situation.</p> + +<p>Now, such preaching is indubitably effective and not +wholly illegitimate. Its technique is easily acquired. It +makes us realize that the early Church Fathers, who displayed +a truly appalling ingenuity in allegorizing the Old +Testament and who found "types" of Christ and His +Church in frankly sensual Oriental wedding songs, +have many sturdy descendants among us to this very +hour! Such preaching gives picturesqueness and color, it +provides the necessary sugar coating to the large pill of +practical and ethical exhortation. To be sure, it does not +sound like the preaching of our fathers. The old sermon +titles—"Suffering with Christ that we may be also glorified +with Him," for instance—seem very far away from +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page212" id="page212"></a>[pg 212]</span> +it. Nor is it to be supposed that this is what its author +intended the story we have been using to convey nor that +these were the reactions that it aroused in the breasts of +its original hearers. But as the sermonizer would doubtless +go on to remark, there is a certain universal quality +in all great literature, and genius builds better than it +knows, and so each man can draw his own water of refreshment +from these great wells of the past. And indeed +nothing is more amazing or disconcerting than the +mutually exclusive notions, the apparently opposing +truths, which can be educed by this method, from one and +the same passage of Scripture! There is scarcely a chapter +in all the Old Testament, and to a less degree in the +New Testament, which may not be thus ingeniously +transmogrified to meet almost any homiletical emergency.</p> + +<p>Now, I may as well confess that I have preached this +kind of sermon lo! these many years <i>ad infinitum</i> and I +doubt not <i>ad nauseam</i>. We have all used in this way the +flaming rhetoric of the Hebrew prophets until we think +of them chiefly as indicters of a social order. They were +not chiefly this but something quite different and more +valuable, namely, religious geniuses. First-rate preaching +would deal with Amos as the pioneer in ethical monotheism, +with Hosea as the first poet of the divine grace, with +Jeremiah as the herald of the possibility of each man's +separate and personal communion with the living God. +But, of course, such religious preaching, dealing with +great doctrines of faith, would have a kind of large remoteness +about it; it would pay very little attention to the +incidents of the story, and indeed, would tend to be +hardly expository at all, but rather speculative and doctrinal.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page213" id="page213"></a>[pg 213]</span> + +<p>And that brings us to the theme of this final discussion. +For I am one of those who believe that great +preaching is doctrinal preaching and that it is particularly +needed at this hour. The comparative neglect of the +New Testament in favor of the Old in contemporary +preaching; the use and nature of the expository method—no +less than the unworshipful character of our services—appear +to me to offer a final and conclusive proof of +the unreligious overhumanistic emphases of our interpretation +of religion. And if we are to have a religious +revival, then it seems to me worshipful services must be +accompanied by speculative preaching and I doubt if the +one can be nobly maintained without the other. For we +saw that worship is the direct experience of the Absolute +through high and concentrated feeling. Even so speculative +and, in general, doctrinal preaching is the same return +to first principles and to ultimate values in the realm of +ideas. It turns away from the immediate, the practical, +the relative to the final and absolute in the domain of thought.</p> + +<p>Now, obviously, then, devout services and doctrinal +preaching should go together. No high and persistent +emotions can be maintained without clear thinking to +nourish and steady them. There is in doctrinal preaching +a certain indifference to immediate issues; to detailed applications. +It deals, by its nature, with comprehensive and +abstract rather than local and concrete thinking; with inclusive +feeling, transcendent aspiration. It does not try +to pietize the ordinary, commercial and domestic affairs +of men. Instead it deals with the highest questions and +perceptions of human life; argues from those sublime +hypotheses which are the very subsoil of the religious +temperament and understanding. It deals with those aspects +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page214" id="page214"></a>[pg 214]</span> +of human life which indeed include, but include because +they transcend, the commercial and domestic, the +professional and political affairs of daily living. We have +been insisting in these chapters that it is that portion of +human need and experience which lies between the knowable +and the unknowable with which it is the preacher's +chief province to deal. Doctrinal preaching endeavors to +give form and relations to its intuitions and high desires, +its unattainable longings and insights. There is a native +alliance between the doctrine of Immanence and expository +preaching. For the office of both is to give us the +God of this world in the affairs of the moment. There is +a native alliance between expository preaching and humanism +which very largely accounts for the latter's popularity. +For expository preaching, as at present practiced, +deals mostly with ethical and practical issues, with the +setting of the house of this world in order. There is also +a native and majestic alliance between the idea of transcendence +and doctrinal preaching and between the facts +of the religious experience and the content of speculative +philosophy. Not pragmatism but pure metaphysics is the +native language of the mind when it moves in the spiritual world.</p> + +<p>But I am aware that already I have lost my reader's +sympathy. You do not desire to preach doctrinal sermons +and while you may read with amiable patience and faintly +smiling complacency this discussion, you have no intention +of following its advice. We tend to think that doctrinal +sermons are outmoded—old-fashioned and unpopular—and +we dread as we dread few other things, not being +up to date. Besides, doctrinal preaching offers little of +that opportunity which is found in expository and yet +more in topical preaching for exploiting our own +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page215" id="page215"></a>[pg 215]</span> +personalities. Some of us are young. It is merely a polite way +of saying that we are egotistical. We know in our secret +heart of hearts that the main thing that we have to give +the world is our own new, fresh selves with their corrected +and arresting understanding of the world. We are +modestly yet eagerly ready to bestow that gift of ours +upon the waiting congregation. One of the few compensations +of growing old is that, as the hot inner fires burn +lower, this self-absorption lessens and we become disinterested +and judicial observers of life and find so much +pleasure in other people's successes and so much wisdom +in other folk's ideas. But not so for youth; it isn't what +the past or the collective mind and heart have formulated: +it's what you've got to say that interests you. +Hence it is probably true that doctrinal preaching, in the +very nature of things, makes no strong appeal to men who are beginning the ministry.</p> + +<p>But there are other objections which are more serious, +because inherent in the very genius of doctrinal preaching +itself. First: such preaching is more or less remote +from contemporary and practical issues. It deals with +thought, not actions; understanding rather than efficiency; +principles rather than applications. It moves among +the basic concepts of the religious life; deals with matters +beyond and above and without the tumultuous issues of +the moment. So it follows that doctrinal preaching has an +air of detachment, almost of seclusion from the world; +the preacher brings his message from some pale world of +ideas to this quick world of action. And we are afraid +of this detachment, the abstract and theoretical nature of the thinker's sermon.</p> + +<p>I think the fear is not well grounded. What is the use +of preaching social service to the almost total neglect of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page216" id="page216"></a>[pg 216]</span> +setting forth the intellectual and emotional concept of the +servant? It is the quality of the doer which determines +the value of the deed. Why keep on insisting upon being +good if our hearers have never been carefully instructed +in the nature and the sanctions of goodness? Has not the +trouble with most of our political and moral reform been +that we have had a passion for it but very little science +of it? How can we know the ways of godliness if we +take God Himself for granted? No: our chief business, as +preachers, is to preach the content rather than the application +of the truth. Not many people are interested in +trying to find the substance of the truth. It is hated as impractical +by the multitude of the impatient, and despised as +old-fashioned by the get-saved-quick reformers. Nevertheless +we must find out the distinctions between divine +and human, right and wrong, and why they are what they +are, and what is the good of it all. There is no more valuable +service which the preacher can render his community +than to deliberately seclude himself from continual contact +with immediate issues and dwell on the eternal verities. +When Darwin published <i>The Descent of Man</i> at the +end of the Franco-Prussian War, the <i>London Times</i> took +him severely to task for his absorption in purely scientific +interests and hypothetical issues. "When the foundations +of property and the established order were threatened +with the fires of the Paris Commune; when the Tuileries +were burning—how could a British subject be occupying +himself with speculations in natural science in no wise +calculated to bring aid or comfort to those who had a +stake in the country!" Well, few of us imagine today that +Darwin would have been wise to have exchanged the seclusion +and the impractical hours of the study for the +office or the camp, the market or the street.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page217" id="page217"></a>[pg 217]</span> + +<p>Yet the same fear of occupying ourselves with central +and abstract matters still obsesses us. At the Quadrennial +Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held recently +at Des Moines, thirty-four bishops submitted an +address in which they said among other things: "Of +course, the church must stand in unflinching, uncompromising +denunciation of all violations of laws, against all +murderous child labor, all foul sweat shops, all unsafe +mines, all deadly tenements, all excessive hours for those +who toil, all profligate luxuries, all standards of wage and +life below the living standard, all unfairness and harshness +of conditions, all brutal exactions, whether of the +employer or union, all overlordships, whether of capital +or labor, all godless profiteering, whether in food, clothing, +profits or wages, against all inhumanity, injustice and +blighting inequality, against all class-minded men who +demand special privileges or exceptions on behalf of their class."</p> + +<p>These are all vital matters, yet I cannot believe that it +is the church's chief business thus to turn her energies +to the problems of the material world. This would be a +stupendous program, even if complete in itself; as an +item in a program it becomes almost a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. +The <i>Springfield Republican</i> in an editorial comment +upon it said: "It fairly invites the question whether +the church is not in some danger of trying to do too +much. The fund of energy available for any human undertaking +is not unlimited; energy turned in one direction +must of necessity be withdrawn from another and energy +diffused in many directions cannot be concentrated. +Count the adjectives—'murderous,' 'foul,' 'unsafe,' +'deadly,' 'excessive,' 'profligate,' 'brutal,' 'godless,' +'blighting'—does not each involve research, investigation, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page218" id="page218"></a>[pg 218]</span> +comparison, analysis, deliberation, a heavy tax upon +the intellectual resources of the church if any result +worth having is to be obtained? Can this energy be found +without subtracting energy from some other sphere?"</p> + +<p>The gravest problems of the world are not found here. +They are found in the decline of spiritual understanding, +the decay of moral standards, the growth of the vindictive +and unforgiving spirit, the lapse from charity, the +overweening pride of the human heart. With these matters +the church must chiefly deal; to their spiritual infidelity +she must bring a spiritual message; to their poor +thinking she must bring the wisdom of the eternal. This +task, preventive not remedial, is her characteristic one. Is +it not worth while to remember that the great religious +leaders have generally ignored contemporary social problems? +So have the great artists who are closely allied to +them. Neither William Shakespeare nor Leonardo da +Vinci were reformers; neither Gautama nor the Lord Jesus +had much to say about the actual international economic +and political readjustments which were as pressing +in their day as ours. They were content to preach the +truth, sure that it, once understood, would set men free.</p> + +<p>But a second reason why we dislike doctrinal preaching +is because we confound it with dogmatic preaching. +Doctrinal sermons are those which deal with the philosophy +of religion. They expound or defend or relate the +intellectual statements, the formulae of religion. Such +discourses differ essentially from dogmatic sermonizing. +For what is a doctrine? A doctrine is an intellectual formulation +of an experience. Suppose a man receives a new +influx of moral energy and spiritual insight, through +reading the Bible, through trying to pray, through loving +and meditating upon the Lord Jesus. That experience +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page219" id="page219"></a>[pg 219]</span> +isn't a speculative proposition, it isn't a faith or an hypothesis; +it's a fact. Like the man in the Johannine record +the believer says, "Whether he be a sinner I know not: +but one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see."</p> + +<p>Now, let this new experience of moral power and +spiritual insight express itself, as it normally will, in a +more holy and more useful life, in the appropriate terms +of action. There you get that confession of experience +which we call character. Or let it express itself in the appropriate +emotions of joy and awe and reverence so that, +like Ray Palmer, the convert writes an immortal hymn, +or a body of converts like the early church produces the +<i>Te Deum</i>. There is the confession of experience in worship. +Or let a man filled with this new life desire to understand +it; see what its implications are regarding the +nature of God, the nature of man, the place of Christ in +the scale of created or uncreated Being. Let him desire +to thus conserve and interpret that he may transmit this +new experience. Then he will begin to define it and to +reduce it, for brevity and clearness, to some abstract and +compact formula. Thus he will make a confession of experience in doctrine.</p> + +<p>Doctrines, then, are not arbitrary but natural, not accidental +but essential. They are the hypotheses regarding +the eternal nature of things drawn from the data of our +moral and spiritual experience. They are to religion just +what the science of electricity is to a trolley car, or what +the formula of evolution is to natural science, or what +the doctrine of the conservation of energy is, or was, to +physics. Doctrines are signposts; they are placards, index +fingers, notices summing up and commending the +proved essences of religious experience. Two things are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page220" id="page220"></a>[pg 220]</span> +always true of sound doctrine. First: it is not considered +to have primary value; its worth is in the experience to +which it witnesses. Second: it is not fixed but flexible and +progressive. Someone has railed at theology, defining it +as the history of discarded errors. That is a truth and a +great compliment and the definition holds good of the record of any other science.</p> + +<p>Now, if doctrines are signposts, dogmas are old and +now misleading milestones. For what is a dogma? It may +be one of two things. Usually it is a doctrine that has +forgotten that it ever had a history; a formula which +once had authority because it was a genuine interpretation +of experience but which now is so outmoded in fashion +of thought, or so maladjusted to our present scale of +values, as to be no longer clearly related to experience and +is therefore accepted merely on command, or on the prestige +of its antiquity. Or it may be a doctrine promulgated +<i>ex cathedra</i>, not because religious experience produced it, +but because ecclesiastical expediencies demand it. Thus, +to illustrate the first sort of dogma, there was once a doctrine +of the Virgin Birth. Men found, as they still do, +both God and man in Jesus; they discovered when they +followed Him their own real humanity and true divinity. +They tried to explain and formalize the experience and +made a doctrine which, for the circle of ideas and the +extent of the factual knowledge of the times, was both +reasonable and valuable. The experience still remains, +but the doctrine is no longer psychologically or biologically +credible. It no longer offers a tenable explanation; +it is not a valuable or illuminating interpretation. Hence +if we hold it at all today, it is either for sentiment or for +the sake of mere tradition, namely, for reasons other than +its intellectual usefulness or its inherent intelligibility. So +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page221" id="page221"></a>[pg 221]</span> +held it passes over from doctrine into dogma. Or take, as +an example of the second sort, the dogma of the Immaculate +Conception, promulgated by Pius IX in the year +1854, and designed to strengthen the prestige of the Papal +See among the Catholic powers of Europe and to prolong +its hold upon its temporal possessions. De Cesare describes +the promulgation of the dogma as follows:</p> + +<p>"The festival on that day, December 8, 1854, sacred to +the Virgin, was magnificent. After chanting the Gospel, +first in Latin, then in Greek, Cardinal Macchi, deacon of +the Sacred College, together with the senior archbishops +and bishops present, all approached the Papal throne, +pronouncing these words in Latin, 'Deign, most Holy Father, +to lift your Apostolic voice and pronounce the dogmatic +Decree of the Immaculate Conception, on account +of which there will be praise in heaven and rejoicings +on earth.' The Pope replying, stated that he welcomed the +wish of the Sacred College, the episcopate, the clergy, and +declared it was essential first of all to invoke the help of +the Holy Spirit. So saying he intoned <i>in Veni Creator</i>, +chanted in chorus by all present. The chant concluded, +amid a solemn silence Pius IX's finely modulated voice read the following Decree:</p> + +<p>"'It shall be Dogma, that the most Blessed Virgin +Mary, in the first instant of the Conception, by singular +privilege and grace of God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus +Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved from +all stain of original sin.' The senior cardinal then prayed +the Pope to make this Decree public, and, amid the roar +of cannon from Fort St. Angelo and the festive ringing +of church bells, the solemn act was accomplished.'"<a id="footnotetag42" name="footnotetag42"></a><a href="#footnote42"><sup>42</sup></a> Here +is an assertion regarding Mary's Conception which has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page222" id="page222"></a>[pg 222]</span> +only the most tenuous connection with religious experience +and which was pronounced for ecclesiastical and +political reasons. Here we have dogma at its worst. Here, +indeed, it is so bad as to resemble many of the current +political and economic pronunciamentos!</p> + +<p>Now, nobody wants dogmatic preaching, but there is +nothing that we need more than we do doctrinal preaching +and nothing which is more interesting. The specialization +of knowledge has assigned to the preacher of +religion a definite sphere. No amount of secondary expertness +in politics or economics or social reform or even +morals can atone for the abandonment of our own province. +We are set to think about and expound religion and +if we give that up we give up our place in a learned profession. +Moreover, the new conditions of the modern +world make doctrine imperative. That world is distinguished +by its free inquiry, its cultivation of the +scientific method, its abandonment of obscuranticisms +and ambiguities. It demands, then, devout and holy thinking +from us. Who would deny that the revival of intellectual +authority and leadership in matters of religion is +terribly needed in our day? Sabatier is right in saying that +a religion without doctrine is a self-contradictory idea. +Harnack is not wrong in saying that a Christianity without it is inconceivable.</p> + +<p>And now I know you are thinking in your hearts, +Well, what inconsistency this man shows! For a whole +book he has been insisting on the prime values of imagination +and feeling in religion and now he concludes with +a plea for the thinker. But it is not so inconsistent as it +appears. It is just because we do believe that the discovery, +the expression and the rewards of religion lie chiefly +in the superrational and poetic realms that therefore we +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page223" id="page223"></a>[pg 223]</span> +want this intellectual content to accompany it, not supersede +it, as a balancing influence, a steadying force. There +are grave perils in worshipful services corresponding to +their supreme values. Mystical preaching has the defects +of its virtues and too often sinks into that vague sentimentalism +which is the perversion of its excellence. How +insensibly sometimes does high and precious feeling degenerate +into a sort of religious hysteria! It needs then +to be always tested and corrected by clear thinking.</p> + +<p>But we in no way alter our original insistence that in +our realm as preachers, unlike the scientist's realm of the +theologians, thought is the handmaid, not the mistress. +Our great plea, then, for doctrinal preaching is that by +intellectual grappling with the final and speculative problems +of religion we do not supersede but feed the emotional +life and do not diminish but focus and steady it. It +is that you and I may have reserves of feeling—indispensable +to great preaching—sincerity and intensity of +emotion, that disciplined imagination which is genius, +that restrained passion which is art, and that our congregations +may have the same, that we must strive for +intellectual power, must do the preaching that gives +people something to think about. These are the religious +and devout reasons why we value intellectual honesty, +precision of utterance, reserve of statement, logical and coherent thinking.</p> + +<p>We are come, then, to the conclusion of our discussions. +They have been intended to restore a neglected emphasis +upon the imaginative and transcendent as distinguished +from the ethical and humanistic aspects of the religious +life. They have tried to show that the reaching out by +worship to this "otherness" of God and to the ultimate +in life is man's deepest hunger and the one we are chiefly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page224" id="page224"></a>[pg 224]</span> +set to feed. I am sure that the chief ally of the experience +of the transcendence of God and the cultivation of the +worshipful faculties in man is to be found in severe and +speculative thinking. I believe our almost unmixed passion +for piety, for action, for practical efficiency, betrays +us. It indicates that we are trying to manufacture effects +to conceal the absence of causes. We may look for a religious +revival when men have so meditated upon and +struggled with the fundamental ideas of religion that they +feel profoundly its eternal mysteries.</p> + +<p>And finally, we have the best historical grounds for our +position. Sometimes great religious movements have been +begun by unlearned and uncritical men like Peter the +hermit or John Bunyan or Moody. But we must not infer +from this that religious insight is naturally repressed +by clear thinking or fostered by ignorance. Dr. Francis +Greenwood Peabody has pointed out that the great religious +epochs in Christian history are also epochs in the +history of theology. The Pauline epistles, the <i>Confessions +of Augustine</i>, the <i>Meditations</i> of Anselm, the <i>Simple +Method of How to Pray</i> of Luther, the <i>Regula</i> of Loyola, +the <i>Monologen</i> of Schleiermacher, these are all manuals +of the devout life, they belong in the distinctively religious +world of supersensuous and the transcendent, and +one thing which accounts for them is that the men who +produced them were religious geniuses because they were also theologians.<a id="footnotetag43" name="footnotetag43"></a><a href="#footnote43"><sup>43</sup></a></p> + +<p>It is to be remembered that we are not saying that the +theologian makes the saint. I do not believe that. Devils +can believe and tremble; Abelard was no saint. But we +are contending that the great saint is extremely likely to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225" id="page225"></a>[pg 225]</span> +be a theologian. Protestantism, Methodism, Tractarianism, +were chiefly religious movements, interested in the +kind of questions and moved by the sorts of motives +which we have been talking about. They all began within +the precincts of universities. Moreover, the Lord Jesus, +consummate mystic, incomparable artist, was such partly +because He was a great theologian as well. His dealings +with scribe and Pharisee furnish some of the world's best +examples of acute and courageous dialectics. His theological +method differed markedly from the academicians +of His day. Nevertheless it was noted that He spoke +with an extraordinary authority. "He gave," as Dr. Peabody +also points out, "new scope and significance to the +thought of God, to the nature of man, to the destiny of +the soul, to the meaning of the world. He would have +been reckoned among the world's great theologians if +other endowments had not given Him a higher title."<a id="footnotetag44" name="footnotetag44"></a><a href="#footnote44"><sup>44</sup></a></p> + +<p>It is a higher title to have been the supreme mystic, the +perfect seer. All I have been trying to say is that it is to +these sorts of excellencies that the preacher aspires. But +the life of Jesus supremely sanctions the conviction that +preaching upon high and abstract and even speculative +themes and a rigorous intellectual discipline are chief accompaniments, +appropriate and indispensable aids, to religious +insight and to the cultivating of worshipful feeling. +So we close our discussions with the supreme name +upon our lips, leaving the most fragrant memory, the +clearest picture, remembering Him who struck the highest +note. It is to His life and teaching that we humbly +turn to find the final sanction for the distinctively religious +values. Who else, indeed, has the words of Eternal Life?</p> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote42" name="footnote42"></a><b>Footnote 42: </b><a href="#footnotetag42">(return) </a><p><i>The Last Days of Papal Rome</i>, pp. 127 ff.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote43" name="footnote43"></a><b>Footnote 43: </b><a href="#footnotetag43">(return) </a><p>See the "Call to Theology," <i>Har. Theo. Rev.</i>, vol. I, no. 1, pp. 1 ff.</p></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote44" name="footnote44"></a><b>Footnote 44: </b><a href="#footnotetag44">(return) </a><p>"Call to Theology," <i>Har. Theo. Rev.</i>, vol. I, no. 1, p. 8.</p></blockquote> + +<hr /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227" id="page227"></a>[pg 227]</span> + +<h3>LYMAN BEECHER LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING</h3> + +<h4>YALE UNIVERSITY</h4> + +<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>1871-72 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, first series. New York, 1872.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1872-73 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, second series. New York, 1873.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1873-74 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, third series. New York, 1874.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1874-75 Hall, John, God's Word through Preaching. New York, 1875.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1875-76 Taylor, William M., The Ministry of the Word. New York, 1876.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1876-77 Brooks, P., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1877.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1877-78 Dale, R.W., Nine Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1878.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1878-79 Simpson, M., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1879.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1879-80 Crosby, H., The Christian Preacher. New York, 1880.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1880-81 Duryea, J.T., and others (not published).</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1881-82 Robinson, E.G., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1883.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1882-83 (No lectures.)</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1883-84 Burton, N.J., Yale Lectures on Preaching, and other writings. New York, 1888.*</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1884-85 Storrs, H.M., The American Preacher (not published).</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1885-86 Taylor, W.M., The Scottish Pulpit. New York, 1887.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1886-87 Gladden, W., Tools and the Man. Boston, 1893.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1887-88 Trumbull. H.C., The Sunday School. Philadelphia, 1888.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1888-89 Broadus, J.A., Preaching and the Ministerial Life (not published).</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1889-90 Behrends, A.J.F., The Philosophy of Preaching. New York, 1890.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page228" id="page228"></a>[pg 228]</span> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1890-91 Stalker, J., The Preacher and His Models. New York, 1891.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1891-92 Fairbarn, A.M., The Place of Christ in Modern Theology. New York, 1893.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1892-93 Horton, R.F., Verbum Dei. New York, 1893.*</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1893-94 (No lectures.)</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1894-95 Greer, D.H., The Preacher and His Place. New York, 1895.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1895-96 Van Dyke, H., The Gospel for an Age of Doubt. New York, 1896*</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1896-97 Watson, J., The Cure of Souls. New York, 1896.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1897-98 Tucker, W.J., The Making and the Unmaking of the Preacher. Boston, 1898.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1898-99 Smith, G.A., Modern Criticism and the Old Testament. New York, 1901.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1899-00 Brown, J., Puritan Preaching in England. New York, 1900.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1900-01 (No lectures.)</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1901-02 Gladden, W., Social Salvation. New York, 1902.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1902-03 Gordon, G.A., Ultimate Conceptions of Faith. New York, 1903.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1903-04 Abbott, L., The Christian Ministry. Boston, 1905.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1904-05 Peabody, F.G., Jesus Christ and the Christian Character. New York, 1905.*</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1905-06 Brown, C.R., The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit. New York, 1906.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1906-07 Forsyth, P.T., Positive Preaching and Modern Mind. New York, 1908.*</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1907-08 Faunce, W.H.P., The Educational Ideal in the Ministry. New York, 1908.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1908-09 Henson, H.H., The Liberty of Prophesying. New Haven, 1910.*</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1909-10 Jefferson, C.E., The Building of the Church. New York, 1910.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1910-11 Gunsaulus, F.W., The Minister and the Spiritual Life. New York, Chicago, 1911.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1911-12 Jowett, J.H., The Preacher; His Life and Work. New York, 1912.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1912-13 Parkhurst, C.H., The Pulpit and the Pew. New Haven. 1913.*</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page229" id="page229"></a>[pg 229]</span> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1913-14 Home, C. Silvester, The Romance of Preaching. New York, Chicago, 1914.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1914-15 Pepper, George Wharton, A Voice from the Crowd. New Haven, 1915.*</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1915-16 Hyde, William DeWitt, The Gospel of Good Will as Revealed in Contemporary Scriptures. New York, 1916.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1916-17 McDowell, William Fraser, Good Ministers of Jesus Christ. New York and Cincinnati, 1917.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1917-18 Coffin, Henry Sloane, In a Day of Social Rebuilding. New Haven.*</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1918-19 Kelman, John, The War and Preaching, New Haven.*</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>1919-20 Fitch, Albert Parker, Preaching and Paganism. New Haven.*</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>*Also published in London.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page230" id="page230"></a>[pg 230]</span> + +<center>PRINTED BY E.L. HILDRETH & COMPANY<br /> +BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT, U.S.A.</center> + +<hr class="full" /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Preaching and Paganism, by Albert Parker Fitch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREACHING AND PAGANISM *** + +***** This file should be named 16076-h.htm or 16076-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/0/7/16076/ + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, William Flis, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Preaching and Paganism + +Author: Albert Parker Fitch + +Release Date: June 16, 2005 [EBook #16076] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREACHING AND PAGANISM *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, William Flis, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +PREACHING AND PAGANISM + + +BY + +ALBERT PARKER FITCH + +PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN AMHERST COLLEGE + + +WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR + + +THE COLLEGE COURSE AND THE PREPARATION FOR LIFE + +CAN THE CHURCH SURVIVE IN THE CHANGING ORDER? + + +PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF JAMES WESLEY +COOPER OF THE CLASS OF 1865, YALE COLLEGE + +THE FORTY-SIXTH SERIES OF THE LYMAN BEECHER LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING +IN YALE UNIVERSITY + + +NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXX + +COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS + +FIRST PUBLISHED, 1920 + + + + +THE JAMES WESLEY COOPER MEMORIAL PUBLICATION FUND + + +The present volume is the fourth work published by the Yale University +Press on the James Wesley Cooper Memorial Publication Fund. This +Foundation was established March 30, 1918, by a gift to Yale +University from Mrs. Ellen H. Cooper in memory of her husband, Rev. +James Wesley Cooper, D.D., who died in New York City, March 16, 1916. +Dr. Cooper was a member of the Class of 1865, Yale College, and for +twenty-five years pastor of the South Congregational Church of New +Britain, Connecticut. For thirty years he was a corporate member of +the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and from 1885 +until the time of his death was a Fellow of Yale University, serving +on the Corporation as one of the Successors of the Original Trustees. + + + + +TO MY WIFE + + + + +PREFACE + + +The chief, perhaps the only, commendation of these chapters is that +they pretend to no final solution of the problem which they discuss. +How to assert the eternal and objective reality of that Presence, the +consciousness of Whom is alike the beginning and the end, the motive +and the reward, of the religious experience, is not altogether clear +in an age that, for over two centuries, has more and more rejected the +transcendental ideas of the human understanding. Yet the consequences +of that rejection, in the increasing individualism of conduct which +has kept pace with the growing subjectivism of thought, are now +sufficiently apparent and the present plight of our civilization +is already leading its more characteristic members, the political +scientists and the economists, to reexamine and reappraise the +concepts upon which it is founded. It is a similar attempt to +scrutinize and evaluate the significant aspects of the interdependent +thought and conduct of our day from the standpoint of religion which +is here attempted. Its sole and modest purpose is to endeavor to +restore some neglected emphases, to recall to spiritually minded men +and women certain half-forgotten values in the religious experience +and to add such observations regarding them as may, by good fortune, +contribute something to that future reconciling of the thought +currents and value judgments of our day to these central and precious +facts of the religious life. + +Many men and minds have contributed to these pages. Such sources of +suggestion and insight have been indicated wherever they could be +identified. In especial I must record my grateful sense of obligation +to Professor Irving Babbitt's _Rousseau and Romanticism_. The chapter +on Naturalism owes much to its brilliant and provocative discussions. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + + Preface 11 + + I. The Learner, the Doer and the Seer 15 + + II. The Children of Zion and the Sons of Greece 40 + + III. Eating, Drinking and Being Merry 72 + + IV. The Unmeasured Gulf 102 + + V. Grace, Knowledge, Virtue 131 + + VI. The Almighty and Everlasting God 157 + + VII. Worship as the Chief Approach to Transcendence 184 + + VIII. Worship and the Discipline of Doctrine 209 + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + +THE LEARNER, THE DOER AND THE SEER + + +The first difficulty which confronts the incumbent of the Lyman +Beecher Foundation, after he has accepted the appalling fact that he +must hitch his modest wagon, not merely to a star, but rather to an +entire constellation, is the delimitation of his subject. There are +many inquiries, none of them without significance, with which he might +appropriately concern himself. For not only is the profession of the +Christian ministry a many-sided one, but scales of value change +and emphases shift, within the calling itself, with our changing +civilization. The mediaeval world brought forth, out of its need, the +robed and mitered ecclesiastic; a more recent world, pursuant to its +genius, demanded the ethical idealist. Drink-sodden Georgian England +responded to the open-air evangelism of Whitefield and Wesley; the +next century found the Established Church divided against itself +by the learning and culture of the Oxford Movement. Sometimes +a philosopher and theologian, like Edwards, initiates the Great +Awakening; sometimes an emotional mystic like Bernard can arouse +all Europe and carry men, tens of thousands strong, over the Danube +and over the Hellespont to die for the Cross upon the burning sands +of Syria; sometimes it is the George Herberts, in a hundred rural +parishes, who make grace to abound through the intimate and precious +ministrations of the country parson. Let us, therefore, devote this +chapter to a review of the several aspects of the Christian ministry, +in order to set in its just perspective the one which we have chosen +for these discussions and to see why it seems to stand, for the +moment, in the forefront of importance. Our immediate question is, +Who, on the whole, is the most needed figure in the ministry today? +Is it the professional ecclesiastic, backed with the authority and +prestige of a venerable organization? Is it the curate of souls, +patient shepherd of the silly sheep? Is it the theologian, the +administrator, the prophet--who? + +One might think profitably on that first question in these very +informal days. We are witnessing a breakdown of all external forms of +authority which, while salutary and necessary, is also perilous. Not +many of us err, just now, by overmagnifying our official status. +Many of us instead are terribly at ease in Zion and might become less +assured and more significant by undertaking the subjective task of +a study in ministerial personality. "What we are," to paraphrase +Emerson, "speaks so loud that men cannot hear what we say." Every +great calling has its characteristic mental attitude, the unwritten +code of honor of the group, without a knowledge of which one could +scarcely be an efficient or honorable practitioner within it. One of +the perplexing and irritating problems of the personal life of the +preacher today has to do with the collision between the secular +standards of his time, this traditional code of his class, and +the requirements of his faith. Shall he acquiesce in the smug +conformities, the externalized procedures of average society, somewhat +pietized, and join that large company of good and ordinary people, +of whom Samuel Butler remarks, in _The Way of All Flesh_, that they +would be "equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, +or at seeing it practised?" There are ministers who do thus content +themselves with being merely superrespectable. Shall he exalt the +standards of his calling, accentuate the speech and dress, the code +and manners of his group, the historic statements of his faith, at the +risk of becoming an official, a "professional"? Or does he possess the +insight, and can he acquire the courage, to follow men like Francis +of Assisi or Father Damien and adopt the Christian ethic and thus join +that company of the apostles and martyrs whose blood is the seed of +the church? A good deal might be said today on the need of this sort +of personal culture in the ministerial candidate. But, provocative and +significant though the question is, it is too limited in scope, too +purely subjective in nature, to suit the character and the urgency of +the needs of this moment. + +Again, every profession has the prized inheritance of its own +particular and gradually perfected human skill. An interesting study, +then, would be the analysis of that rich content of human insights, +the result of generations of pastoral experience, which form the +background of all great preaching. No man, whether learned or pious, +or both, is equipped for the pulpit without the addition of that +intuitive discernment, that quick and varied appreciation, that sane +and tolerant knowledge of life and the world, which is the reward +given to the friends and lovers of mankind. For the preacher deals not +with the shallows but the depths of life. Like his Master he must be a +great humanist. To make real sermons he has to look, without dismay or +evasion, far into the heart's impenetrable recesses. He must have had +some experience with the absolutism of both good and evil. I think +preachers who regard sermons on salvation as superfluous have not had +much experience with either. They belong to that large world of the +intermediates, neither positively good nor bad, who compose the mass +of the prosperous and respectable in our genteel civilization. Since +they belong to it they cannot lead it. And certainly they who do +not know the absolutism of evil cannot very well understand sinners. +Genuine satans, as Milton knew, are not weaklings and traitors who +have declined from the standards of a respectable civilization. They +are positive and impressive figures pursuing and acting up to their +own ideal of conduct, not fleeing from self-accepted retribution or +falling away from a confessed morality of ours. Evil is a force even +more than a folly; it is a positive agent busily building away at the +City of Dreadful Night, constructing its insolent and scoffing society +within the very precincts of the City of God. + +He must know, then, that evil and suffering are not temporary elements +of man's evolution, just about to be eliminated by the new reform, +the last formula, the fresh panacea. To those who have tasted grief +and smelt the fire such easy preaching and such confident solutions +are a grave offense. They know that evil is an integral part of our +universe; suffering an enduring element of the whole. So he must +preach upon the chances and changes of this mortal world, or go to +the house of shame or the place of mourning, knowing that there is +something past finding out in evil, something incommunicable about +true sorrow. They are not external things, alien to our natures, that +happen one day from without, and may perhaps be avoided, and by and +by are gone. No; that which makes sorrow, sorrow, and evil, evil, is +their naturalness; they well up from within, part of the very texture +of our consciousness. He knows you can never express them, for truly +to do that you would have to express and explain the entire world. +It is not easy then to interpret the evil and suffering which are not +external and temporary, but enduring and a part of the whole. + +So the preacher is never dealing with plain or uncomplicated matters. +It is his business to perceive the mystery of iniquity in the saint +and to recognize the mystery of godliness in the sinner. It is his +business to revere the child and yet watch him that he may make a +man of him. He must say, so as to be understood, to those who balk at +discipline, and rail at self-repression, and resent pain: you have +not yet begun to live nor made the first step toward understanding the +universe and yourselves. To avoid discipline and to blench at pain is +to evade life. There are limitations, occasioned by the evil and the +suffering of the world, in whose repressions men find fulfillment. +When you are honest with yourself you will know what Dante meant when +he said: + + "And thou shalt see those who + Contented are within the fire; + Because they hope to come, + When e'er it may be, to the blessed people."[1] + +It is his business, also, to be the comrade of his peers, and yet +speak to them the truth in love; his task to understand the bitterness +and assuage the sorrows of old age. I suppose the greatest influence +a preacher ever exercises, and a chief source of the material and +insight of his preaching, is found in this intimate contact with +living and suffering, divided and distracted men and women. When +strong men blench with pain and exquisite grief stirs within us at +the sight and we can endure naught else but to suffer with them, when +youth is blurred with sin, and gray heads are sick with shame and we, +then, want to die and cry, O God! forgive and save them or else blot +me out of Thy book of life--for who could bear to live in a world +where such things are the end!--then, through the society of sorrow, +and the holy comradeship in shame, we begin to find the Lord and to +understand both the kindness and the justice of His world. In the +moment when sympathy takes the bitterness out of another's sorrow and +my suffering breaks the captivity of my neighbor's sin--then, when +because "together," with sinner and sufferer, we come out into the +quiet land of freedom and of peace, we perceive how the very heart of +God, upon which there we know we rest, may be found in the vicarious +suffering and sacrifice called forth by the sorrow and the evil +of mankind. Then we can preach the Gospel. Because then we dimly +understand why men have hung their God upon the Cross of Christ! + +[Footnote 1: _The Divine Comedy: Hell_; canto I.] + +Is it not ludicrous, then, to suppose that a man merely equipped with +professional scholarship, or contented with moral conformities, can +minister to the sorrow and the mystery, the mingled shame and glory of +a human being? This is why the average theologue, in his first parish, +is like the well-meaning but meddling engineer endeavoring with clumsy +tools and insensitive fingers to adjust the delicate and complicated +mechanism of a Genevan watch. And here is one of the real reasons why +we deprecate men entering our calling, without both the culture of +a liberal education and the learning of a graduate school. Clearly, +therefore, one real task of such schools and their lectureships is to +offer men wide and gracious training in the art of human contacts, +so that their lives may be lifted above Pharisaism and moral +self-consciousness, made acquainted with the higher and comprehensive +interpretations of the heart and mind of our race. For only thus can +they approach life reverently and humbly. Only thus will they revere +the integrity of the human spirit; only thus can they regard it with +a magnanimous and catholic understanding and measure it not by the +standards of temperamental or sectarian convictions, but by what +is best and highest, deepest and holiest in the race. No one needs +more than the young preacher to be drawn out of the range of narrow +judgments, of exclusive standards and ecclesiastical traditions and to +be flung out among free and sensitive spirits, that he may watch their +workings, master their perceptions, catch their scale of values. + +A discussion, then, dealing with this aspect of our problem, would +raise many and genuine questions for us. There is the more room for it +in this time of increasing emphasis upon machinery when even ministers +are being measured in the terms of power, speed and utility. These are +not real ends of life; real ends are unity, repose, the imaginative +and spiritual values which make for the release of self, with its +by-product of happiness. In such days, then, when the old-time +pastor-preacher is becoming as rare as the former general +practitioner; when the lines of division between speaker, educator, +expert in social hygiene, are being sharply drawn--as though new +methods insured of themselves fresh inspiration, and technical +knowledge was identical with spiritual understanding--it would be +worth while to dwell upon the culture of the pastoral office and to +show that ingenuity is not yet synonymous with insight, and that, in +our profession at least, card-catalogues cannot take the place of +the personal study of the human heart. But many discussions on this +Foundation, and recently those of Dr. Jowett, have already dealt with +this sort of analysis. Besides, today, when not merely the preacher, +but the very view of the world that produced him, is being threatened +with temporary extinction, such a theme, poetic and rewarding though +it is, becomes irrelevant and parochial. + +Or we might turn to the problem of technique, that professional +equipment for his task as a sermonizer and public speaker which is +partly a native endowment and partly a laborious acquisition on the +preacher's part. Such was President Tucker's course on _The Making +and Unmaking of the Preacher_. Certainly observations on professional +technique, especially if they should include, like his, acute +discussion of the speaker's obligation to honesty of thinking, no less +than integrity of conduct; of the immorality of the pragmatic standard +of mere effectiveness or immediate efficiency in the selection of +material; of the aesthetic folly and ethical dubiety of simulated +extempore speaking and genuinely impromptu prayers, would not be +superfluous. But, on the other hand, we may hope to accomplish +much of this indirectly today. Because there is no way of handling +specifically either the content of the Christian message or the +problem of the immediate needs and temper of those to whom it is to +be addressed, without reference to the kind of personality, and the +nature of the tools at his disposal, which is best suited to commend +the one and to interpret the other. + +Hence such a discussion as this ought, by its very scale of values--by +the motives that inform it and the ends that determine it--to condemn +thereby the insincere and artificial speaker, or that pseudo-sermon +which is neither as exposition, an argument nor a meditation but a +mosaic, a compilation of other men's thoughts, eked out by impossibly +impressive or piously sentimental anecdotes, the whole glued together +by platitudes of the Martin Tupper or Samuel Smiles variety. It is +certainly an obvious but greatly neglected truth that simplicity +and candor in public speaking, largeness of mental movement, what +Phillips Brooks called direct utterance of comprehensive truths, are +indispensable prerequisites for any significant ethical or spiritual +leadership. But, taken as a main theme, this third topic, like the +others, seems to me insufficiently inclusive to meet our present +exigencies. It deals more with the externals than with the heart of +our subject. + +Again we might address ourselves to the ethical and practical +aspects of preaching and the ministry. Taking largely for granted +our understanding of the Gospel, we might concern ourselves with its +relations to society, the detailed implications for the moral and +economic problems of our social and industrial order. Dean Brown, in +_The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit_, and Dr. Coffin in _In a +Day of Social Rebuilding_, have so enriched this Foundation. Moreover, +this is, at the moment, an almost universally popular treatment of +the preacher's opportunity and obligation. One reason, therefore, +for not choosing this approach to our task is that the preacher's +attention, partly because of the excellence of these and other +books and lectures, and partly because of the acuteness of the +political-industrial crisis which is now upon us, is already focused +upon it. + +Besides, our present moment is changing with an ominous rapidity. And +one is not sure whether the immediate situation, as distinguished from +that of even a few years ago, calls us to be concerned chiefly with +the practical and ethical aspects of our mission, urgent though the +need and critical the pass, to which the abuses of the capitalistic +system have brought both European and American society. In this day of +those shifting standards which mark the gradual transference of power +from one group to another in the community, and the merging of a +spent epoch in a new order, neither the chief opportunity nor the most +serious peril of religious leadership is met by fresh and energetic +programs of religion in action. In such days, our chief gift to the +world cannot be the support of any particular reforms or the alliance +with any immediate ethical or economic movement. For these things at +best would be merely the effects of religion. And it is not religion +in its relations, nor even in its expression in character--it is the +thing in itself that this age most needs. What men are chiefly asking +of life at this moment is not, What ought we to do? but the deeper +question, What is there we can believe? For they know that the answer +to this question would show us what we ought to do. + +Nor do our reform alliances and successive programs and crusades +always seem to me to proceed from any careful estimate of the +situation as a whole or to be conceived in the light of comprehensive +Christian principle. Instead, they sometimes seem to draw their +inspiration more from the sense of the urgent need of presenting to an +indifferent or disillusioned world some quick and tangible evidence +of a continuing moral vigor and spiritual passion to which the deeper +and more potent witnesses are absent. It is as though we thought the +machinery of the church would revolve with more energy if geared into +the wheels of the working world. But that world and we do not draw +our power from the same dynamo. And surely in a day of profound +and widespread mental ferment and moral restlessness, some more +fundamental gift than this is asked of us. + +If, therefore, these chapters pay only an incidental attention +to the church's social and ethical message, it is partly because +our attention is, at this very moment, largely centered upon this +important, yet secondary matter, and more because there lies beneath +it a yet more urgent and inclusive task which confronts the spokesman +of organized religion. + +You will expect me then to say that we are to turn to some speculative +and philosophic study, such as the analysis of the Christian idea in +its world relationships, some fresh statement of the Gospel, either by +way of apologia for inherited concepts, or as attempting to make a new +receptacle for the living wine, which has indeed burst the most of +its ancient bottles. Such was Principal Fairbairn's monumental task in +_The Place of Christ in Modern Theology_ and also Dr. Gordon's in his +distinguished discussions in _The Ultimate Conceptions of Faith_. + +Here, certainly, is an endeavor which is always of primary importance. +There is an abiding peril, forever crouching at the door of ancient +organizations, that they shall seek refuge from the difficulties of +thought in the opportunities of action. They need to be continually +reminded that reforms begin in the same place where abuses do, +namely, in the notion of things; that only just ideas can, in the +long run, purify conduct; that clear thinking is the source of +all high and sustained feeling. I wish that we might essay the +philosopher-theologian's task. This generation is hungry for +understanding; it perishes for lack of knowledge. One reason for +the indubitable decline of the preacher's power is that we have been +culpably indifferent in maintaining close and friendly alliances +between the science and the art, the teachers and the practitioners of +religion. Few things would be more ominous than to permit any further +widening of the gulf which already exists between these two. Never +more than now does the preacher need to be reminded of what Marcus +Aurelius said: "Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also shall be +thyself; for the soul is dyed by its thoughts." + +But such an undertaking, calling for wide and exact scholarship, large +reserves of extra-professional learning, does not primarily belong +to a discussion within the department of practical theology. Besides +which there is a task, closely allied to it, but creative rather than +critical, prophetic rather than philosophic, which does fall within +the precise area of this field. I mean the endeavor to describe +the mind and heart of our generation, appraise the significant +thought-currents of our time. This would be an attempt to give some +description of the chief impulses fermenting in contemporary society, +to ask what relation they hold to the Christian principle, and to +inquire what attitude toward them our preaching should adopt. If it be +true that what is most revealing in any age is its regulative ideas, +then what is more valuable for the preacher than to attempt the +understanding of his generation through the defining of its ruling +concepts? And it is this audacious task which, for two reasons, we +shall presume to undertake. + +The first reason is that it is appropriate both to the temperament +and the training of the preacher. There are three grand divisions, +or rather determining emphases, by which men may be separated into +vocational groups. To begin with, there is the man of the scientific +or intellectual type. He has a passion for facts and a strong sense of +their reality. He moves with natural ease among abstract propositions, +is both critical of, and fertile in, theories; indicates his essential +distinction in his love of the truth for the truth's sake. He looks +first to the intrinsic reasonableness of any proposition; tends to +judge both men and movements not by traditional or personal values, +but by a detached and disinterested appraisal of their inherent worth. +He is often a dogmatist, but this fault is not peculiar to him, he +shares it with the rest of mankind. He is sometimes a literalist and +sometimes a slave to logic, more concerned with combating the crude +or untenable form of a proposition than inquiring with sympathetic +insight into the worth of its substance. But these things are +perversions of his excellencies, defects of his virtues. His +characteristic qualities are mental integrity, accuracy of statement, +sanity of judgment, capacity for sustained intellectual toil. Such +men are investigators, scholars; when properly blended with the +imaginative type they become inventors and teachers. They make good +theologians and bad preachers. + +Then there are the practical men, beloved of our American life. Both +their feet are firmly fixed upon the solid ground. They generally +know just where they are, which is not surprising, for they do not, +for the most part, either in the world of mind or spirit, frequent +unusual places. The finespun speculations of the philosophers and the +impractical dreams of the artist make small appeal to them; the world +they live in is a sharply defined and clearly lighted and rather +limited place. They like to say to this man come and he cometh, and to +that man go and he goeth. They are enamored of offices, typewriters, +telegrams, long-distance messages, secretaries, programs, conferences +and drives. Getting results is their goal; everything is judged by the +criterion of effective action; they are instinctive and unconscious +pragmatists. They make good cheer leaders at football games in their +youth and impressive captains of industry in their old age. Their +virtues are wholesome, if obvious; they are good mixers, have shrewd +judgment, immense physical and volitional energy. They understand that +two and two make four. They are rarely saints but, unlike many of +us who once had the capacity for sainthood, they are not dreadful +sinners. They are the tribe of which politicians are born but, when +they are blended with imaginative and spiritual gifts, they become +philanthropists and statesmen, practical servants of mankind. They +make good, if conservative, citizens; kind, if uninspiring, husbands +and deplorable preachers. + +Then there are those fascinating men of feeling and imagination, those +who look into their own hearts and write, those to whom the inner +dominions which the spirit conquers for itself become a thousand-fold +more real than the earth whereon they stamp their feet. These are the +literary or the creative folk. Their passion is not so much to know +life as to enjoy it; not to direct it, but to experience it; not even +to make understanding of it an end, but only a means to interpreting +it. They do not, as a rule, thirst for erudition, and they are +indifferent to those manipulations of the externals of life which +are dear to the lovers of executive power. They know less but they +understand more than their scholastic brethren. As a class they are +sometimes disreputable but nearly always unworldly; more distinguished +by an intuitive and childlike than by an ingenious or sophisticated +quality of mind. Ideas and facts are perceived by them not abstractly +nor practically, but in their typical or symbolic, hence their +pictorial and transmissible, aspects. They read dogma, whether +theological or other, in the terms of a living process, unconsciously +translating it, as they go along, out of its cold propositions into +its appropriate forms of feeling and needs and satisfactions. + +The scientist, then, is a critic, a learner who wants to analyze and +dissect; the man of affairs is a director and builder and wants to +command and construct; the man of this group is a seer. He is a lover +and a dreamer; he watches and broods over life, profoundly feeling it, +enamored both of its shame and of its glory. The intolerable poignancy +of existence is bittersweet to his mouth; he craves to incarnate, +to interpret its entire human process, always striving to pierce to +its center, to capture and express its inexpressible ultimate. He +is an egotist but a valuable one, acutely aware of the depths and +immensities of his own spirit and of its significant relations to +this seething world without. Thus it is both himself and a new vision +of life, in terms of himself, that he desires to project for his +community. + +The form of that vision will vary according to the nature of the +tools, the selection of material, the particular sort of native +endowment which are given to him. Some such men reveal their +understanding of the soul and the world in the detached serenity, +the too well-defined harmonies of a Parthenon; others in the dim +and intricate richness, the confused and tortured aspiration of the +long-limbed saints and grotesque devils of a Gothic cathedral. Others +incarnate it in gleaming bronze; or spread it in subtle play of light +and shade and tones of color on a canvas; or write it in great plays +which open the dark chambers of the soul and make the heart stand +still; or sing it in sweet and terrible verse, full-throated utterance +of man's pride and hope and passion. Some act it before the altar or +beneath the proscenium arch; some speak it, now in Cassandra-tones, +now comfortably like shepherds of frail sheep. These folk are the +brothers-in-blood, the fellow craftsmen of the preacher. By a silly +convention, he is almost forbidden to consult with them, and to betake +himself to the learned, the respectable and the dull. But it is with +these that naturally he sees eye to eye. + +In short, in calling the preacher a prophet we mean that preaching +is an art and the preacher is an artist; for all great art has the +prophetic quality. Many men object to this definition of the preacher +as being profane. It appears to make secular or mechanicalize their +profession, to rob preaching of its sacrosanctity, leave it less +authority by making it more intelligible, remove it from the realm +of the mystical and unique. This objection seems to me sometimes +an expression of spiritual arrogance and sometimes a subtle form of +skepticism. It assumes a special privilege for our profession or a +not-get-at-able defense and sanction by insisting that it differs in +origin and hence in kind from similar expressions of the human spirit. +It hesitates to rely on the normal and the intelligible sources of +ministerial power, to confess the relatively definable origin and +understandable methods of our work. It fears to trust to these alone. + +But all these must be trusted. We may safely assert that the preacher +deals with absolute values, for all art does that. But we may not +assert that he is the only person that does so or that his is the only +or the unapproachable way. No; he, too, is an artist. Hence, a sermon +is not a contribution to, but an interpretation of, knowledge, made +in terms of the religious experience. It is taking truth out of its +compressed and abstract form, its impersonal and scientific language, +and returning it to life in the terms of the ethical and spiritual +experience of mankind, thus giving it such concrete and pictorial +expression that it stimulates the imagination and moves the will. + +It will be clear then why I have said that the task of appraising the +heart and mind of our generation, to which we address ourselves, is +appropriate to the preaching genius. For only they could attempt +such a task who possess an informed and disciplined yet essentially +intuitive spirit with its scale of values; who by instinct can see +their age as a whole and indicate its chief emphases, its controlling +tendencies, its significant expressions. It is not the scientist but +the seer who thus attempts the precious but perilous task of making +the great generalizations. This is what Aristotle means when he says, +"The poet ranks higher than the historian because he achieves a more +general truth." This is, I suppose, what Houston Stewart Chamberlain +means when he says, in the introduction to the _Foundations of the +Nineteenth Century_: "our modern world represents an immeasurable +array of facts. The mastery of such a task as recording and +interpreting them scientifically is impossible. It is only the genius +of the artist, which feels the secret parallels that exist between +the world of vision and of thought, that can, if fortune be favorable, +reveal the unity beneath the immeasurable complexities and diversities +of the present order." Or as Professor Hocking says: "The prophet must +find in the current of history a unity corresponding to the unity of +the physical universe, or else he must create it. It is this conscious +unification of history that the religious will spontaneously tends to +bring about."[2] + +[Footnote 2: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 518.] + +It is then precisely the preacher's task, his peculiar office, to +attempt these vast and perilous summations. What he is set here for +is to bring the immeasurable within the scope of vision. He deals with +the far-flung outposts, no man knows how distant, and the boundless +interspaces of human consciousness; he deals with the beginning, the +middle, the end--the origin, the meaning and the destiny--of human +life. How can anyone give unity to such a prospect? Like any other +artist he gives it the only unity possible, the unity revealed in +his own personality. The theologian should not attempt to evaluate +his age; the preacher may. Because the theologian, like any other +scientist, analyzes and dissects; he breaks up the world. The preacher +in his disciplined imagination, his spiritual intuitiveness,--what we +call the "religious temperament,"--unites it again and makes men see +it whole. This quality of purified and enlightened imagination is of +the very essence of the preacher's power and art. Hence he may attempt +to set forth a just understanding of his generation. + +This brings us to the second reason for our topic namely, its +timeliness. All religious values are not at all times equal in +importance. As generations come and go, first one, then another looms +in the foreground. But I sincerely believe that the most fateful +undertaking for the preacher at this moment is that of analyzing his +own generation. Because he has been flung into one of the world's +transition epochs, he speaks in an hour which is radical in changes, +perplexing in its multifarious cross-currents, prolific of new +forms and expressions. What the world most needs at such a moment of +expansion and rebellion, is a redefining of its ideals. It needs to +have some eternal scale of values set before it once more. It needs +to stop long enough to find out just what and where it is, and toward +what it is going. It needs another Sheridan to write a new _School for +Scandal_, another Swift, with his _Gulliver's Travels_, a continuing +Shaw with his satiric comedies, a Mrs. Wharton with her _House of +Mirth_, a Thorstein Veblen with his _Higher Learning in America_, a +Savonarola with his call to repentance and indictment of worldly and +unfaithful living. It is a difficult and dangerous office, this of +the prophet; it calls for a considerate and honest mind as well as a +flashing insight and an eager heart. The false prophet exposes that he +may exploit his age; the true prophet portrays that he may purge it. +Like Jeremiah we may well dread to undertake the task, yet its day and +hour are upon us! + +I have already spoken to this point at length, in a little book +recently published. I merely add here that in a day of obvious +political disillusionment and industrial revolt, of intellectual +rebellion against an outworn order of ideas and of moral restlessness +and doubt, an indispensable duty for the preacher is this +comprehensive study and understanding of his own epoch. Else, without +realizing it,--and how true this often is,--he proclaims a universal +truth in the unintelligible language of a forgotten order, and applies +a timeless experience to the faded conditions of yesterday. + +Indeed, I am convinced that a chief reason why preaching is +temporarily obscured in power, is because most of our expertness in it +is in terms of local problems, of partial significances, rather +than in the wider tendencies that produce and carry them, or in the +ultimate laws of conduct which should govern them. We ought to be +troubled, I think, in our present ecclesiastical situation, with its +taint of an almost frantic immediacy. Not only are we not sufficiently +dealing with the Gospel as a universal code, but, as both cause and +effect of this, we are not applying it to the inclusive life of our +generation. We are tinkering here and patching there, but attempting +no grand evaluation. We have already granted that sweeping +generalizations, inclusive estimates, are as difficult as they are +audacious. Yet we have also seen that these grand evaluations are +of the very essence of religion and hence are characteristic of the +preacher's task. And, finally, it appears that ours is an age which +calls for such redefining of its values, some fresh and inclusive +moral and religious estimates. Hence we undertake the task. + +There remains but one thing more to be accomplished in this chapter. +The problem of the selection and arrangement of the material for such +a summary is not an easy one. Out of several possible devices I +have taken as the framework on which to hang these discussions three +familiar divisions of thought and feeling, with their accompanying +laws of conduct, and value judgments. They are the humanistic +or classic; the naturalistic or primitive; and the religious or +transcendent interpretation of the world and life. One sets up a +social, one an individual, and one a universal standard. Under the +movements which these headings represent we can most easily and +clearly order and appraise the chief influences of the Protestant +centuries. The first two are largely preempting between them, at this +moment, the field of human thought and conduct and a brief analysis +of them, contrasting their general attitudes, may serve as a fit +introduction to the ensuing chapter. + +We begin, then, with the humanist. He is the man who ignores, as +unnecessary, any direct reference to, or connection with, ultimate or +supernatural values. He lives in a high but self-contained world. His +is man's universe. His law is the law of reasonable self-discipline, +founded on observation of nature and a respect for social values, +and buttressed by high human pride. He accepts the authority of the +collective experience of his generation or his race. He believes, +centrally, in the trustworthiness of human nature, in its group +capacity. Men, as a race, have intelligently observed and experimented +with both themselves and the world about them. Out of centuries of +critical reflection and sad and wise endeavor, they have evolved +certain criteria of experience. These summations could hardly be +called eternal laws but they are standards; they are the permits and +prohibitions for human life. Some of them affect personal conduct +and are moral standards; some of them affect civil government and are +political axioms; some of them affect production and distribution and +are economic laws; some of them affect social relationships. But in +every case the humanist has what is, in a sense, an objective because +a formal standard; he looks without himself as an individual, yet to +himself as a part of the composite experience and wisdom of his race, +for understanding and for guides. Thus the individual conforms to the +needs and wisdom of the group. Humanism, at its best, has something +heroic, unselfish, noble about it. Its votaries do not eat to their +liking nor drink to their thirst. They learn deep lessons almost +unconsciously; to conquer their desires, to make light of toil and +pain and discomfort; the true humanist is well aware that Spartan +discipline is incomparably superior to Greek accidence. This is what +one of the greatest of them, Goethe, meant when he said: "Anything +which emancipates the spirit without a corresponding growth in +self-mastery is pernicious." + +All humanists then have two characteristics in common: first, +they assume that man is his own arbiter, has both the requisite +intelligence and the moral ability to control his own destiny; +secondly, they place the source and criterion of this power in +collective wisdom, not in individual vagary and not in divine +revelation. They assert, therefore, that the law of the group, the +perfected and wrought out code of human experience, is all that is +binding and all that is essential. To be sure, and most significantly, +this authority is not rigid, complete, fixed. There is nothing +complete in the humanist's world. Experience accumulates and man's +knowledge grows; the expectation and joy in progress is a part of it; +man's code changes, emends, expands with his onward marching. But the +humanistic point of view assumes something relatively stable in life. +Hence our phrase that humanism gives us a classic, that is to say, a +simple and established standard. + +It is to be observed that there is nothing in humanism thus defined +which need be incompatible with religion. It is not with its content +but its incompleteness that we quarrel. Indeed, in its assertion of +the trustworthiness of human experience, its faith in the dignity and +significance of man, its respect for the interests of the group, and +its conviction that man finds his true self only outside his immediate +physical person, beyond his material wants and desires, it is quite +genuinely a part of the religious understanding. But we shall have +occasion to observe that while much of this may be religious this is +not the whole of religion. For the note of universality is absent. +Humanism is essentially aristocratic. It is for a selected group that +it is practicable and it is a selected experience upon which it rests. +Its standards are esoteric rather than democratic. Yet it is hardly +necessary to point out the immense part which humanism, as thus +defined, is playing in present life. + +But there is another law which, from remotest times, man has +followed whenever he dared. It is not the law of the group but of +the individual, not the law of civilization but of the jungle. "Most +men," says Aristotle, "would rather live in a disorderly than a sober +manner." He means that most men would rather consult and gratify their +immediate will, their nearest choices, their instantaneous desires, +than conform the moment to some regulated and considerate, some +comprehensive scheme of life and action. The life of unreason is their +desire; the experience whose bent is determined by every whim, the +expression which has no rational connection with the past and no +serious consideration for the future. This is of the very essence of +lawlessness because it is revolt against the normal sequence of law +and effect, in mind and conduct, in favor of untrammeled adventure. + +Now this is naturalism or paganism as we often call it. Naturalism +is a perversion of that high instinct in mankind which issues in the +old concept of supernaturalism. The supernaturalist, of a former and +discredited type, believed that God violates the order of nature +for sublime ends; that He "breaks into" His own world, so to speak, +"revealing" Himself in prodigious, inexplicable, arbitrary ways. By a +sort of degradation of this notion, a perversion of this instinct, the +naturalist assumes that he can violate both the human and the divine +law for personal ends, and express himself in fantastic or indecent +or impious ways. The older supernaturalism exalts the individualism +of the Creator; naturalism the egotism of the creature. I make the +contrast not merely to excoriate naturalism, but to point out the +interdependence between man's apparently far-separated expressions +of his spirit, and how subtly misleading are our highly prized +distinctions, how dangerous sometimes that secondary mental power +which multiplies them. It sobers and clarifies human thinking a +little, perhaps, to reflect on how thin a line separates the sublime +and the ridiculous, the saint and the sensualist, the martyr and the +fool, the genius and the freak. + +Now, with this selfish individualism which we call naturalism we shall +have much to do, for it plays an increasing role in the modern +world; it is the neo-paganism which we may see spreading about us. +Sophistries of all kinds become the powerful allies of this sort of +moral and aesthetic anarchy. Its votaries are those sorts of +rebels who invariably make their minds not their friends but their +accomplices. They are ingenious in the art of letting themselves go +and at the same time thinking themselves controlled and praiseworthy. +The naturalist, then, ignores the group; he flaunts impartially +both the classic and the religious law. He is equally unwilling to +submit to a power imposed from above and without, or to accept those +restrictions of society, self-imposed by man's own codified and +corrected observations of the natural world and his own impulses. He +jeers at the one as hypocrisy and superstition and at the other as +mere "middle-class respectability." He himself is the perpetual Ajax +standing defiant upon the headland of his own inflamed desires, +and scoffing at the lightnings either of heaven or society. Neither +devoutness nor progress but mere personal expansion is his goal. The +humanist curbs both the flesh and the imagination by a high doctrine +of expediency. Natural values are always critically appraised in the +light of humane values, which is nearly, if not quite, the same as +saying that the individual desires and delights must be conformed +to the standards of the group. There can be no anarchy of the +imagination, no license of the mind, no unbridled will. Humanism, +no less than religion, is nobly, though not so deeply, traditional. +But there is no tradition to the naturalist; not the normal and +representative, but the unique and spectacular is his goal. Novelty +and expansion, not form and proportion, are his goddesses. Not truth +and duty, but instinct and appetite, are in the saddle. He will try +any horrid experiment from which he may derive a new sensation. + +Over against them both stands the man of religion with his vision of +the whole and his consequent law of proud humility. The next three +chapters will try to discuss in detail these several attitudes toward +life and their respective manifestations in contemporary society. + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + +THE CHILDREN OF ZION AND THE SONS OF GREECE + + +We are not using the term "humanism" in this chapter in its strictly +technical sense. Because we are not concerned with the history of +thought merely, but also with its practical embodiments in various +social organizations as well. So we mean by "humanism" not only those +modes and systems of thought in which human interests predominate but +also the present economic, political and ecclesiastical institutions +which more or less consistently express them. Hence, the term as +used will include concepts not always agreeing with each other, and +sometimes only semi-related to the main stream of the movement. This +need not trouble us. Strict intellectual consistency is a fascinating +and impossible goal of probably dubious value. Moreover, it is +this whole expression of the time spirit which bathes the sensitive +personality of the preacher, persuading and moulding him quite as much +by its derived and concrete manifestations in contemporary society as +by its essential and abstract principles. + +There are then two sets of media through which humanism has affected +preaching. The first are philosophical and find their expression in a +large body of literature which has been moulding thought and feeling +for nearly four centuries. Humanism begins with the general abstract +assumption that all which men can know, or need to know, are "natural" +and human values; that they have no means of getting outside the +inexorable circle of their own experience. + +Much, of course, depends here upon the sense in which the word +"experience" is used. The assumption need not necessarily be +challenged except where, as is very often the case, an arbitrarily +limited definition of experience is intended. From this general +assumption flows the subjective theory of morals; from it is derived +the conviction that the rationalistic values in religion are the only +real, or at least demonstrable, ones; and hence from this comes the +shifting of the seat of religious authority from "revelation" to +experience. In so far as this is a correction of emphasis only, or the +abandonment of a misleading term rather than the denial of one of the +areas and modes of understanding, again we have no quarrel with it. +But if it means an exclusion of the supersensuous sources of knowledge +or the denial of the existence of absolute values as the source of our +relative and subjective understanding, then it strikes at the heart +of religion. Because the religious life is built on those factors of +experience that lie above the strictly rational realm of consciousness +just as the pagan view rests on primitive instincts that lie beneath +it. Of course, in asserting the importance of these "supersensuous" +values the religionist does not mean that they are beyond the reach +of human appraisal or unrelated by their nature to the rest of our +understanding. By the intuitive he does not mean the uncritical nor by +the supersensuous the supernatural in the old and discredited sense of +an arbitrary and miraculous revelation. Mysticism is not superstition, +nor are the insights of the poet the whimsies of the mere +impressionist. But he insists that the humanist, in his ordinary +definition of experience, ignores or denies these superrational +values. In opposition to him he rests his faith on that definition of +experience which underlies Aristotle's statement that "the intellect +is dependent upon intuition for knowledge both of what is below and +what is above itself." + +Now it is this first set of factors which are the more important. +For the cause, as distinguished from the occasions, of our present +religious scale of values is, like all major causes, not practical but +ideal, and its roots are found far beneath the soil of the present +in the beginnings of the modern age in the fourteenth century. It was +then that our world was born; it is of the essence of that world that +it arose out of indifference toward speculative thinking and unfaith +in those concepts regarding the origin and destiny of mankind which +speculative philosophy tried to express and prove. + +From the first, then, humanistic leaders have not only frankly +rejected the scholastic theologies, which had been the traditional +expression of those absolute values with which the religious +experience is chiefly concerned, but also ignored or rejected the +existence of those values themselves. Thus Petrarch is generally +considered the first of modern humanists. He not only speaks of +Rome--meaning the whole semi-political, semi-ecclesiastical structure +of dogmatic supernaturalism--as that "profane Babylon" but also +reveals his rejection of the distinctively religious experience itself +by characterizing as "an impudent wench" the Christian church. The +attack is partly therefore on the faith in transcendent values which +fixes man's relative position by projecting him upon the screen of an +infinite existence and which asserts that he has an absolute, that is, +an other-than-human guide. Again Erasmus, in his _Praise of Folly_, +denounces indiscriminately churches, priesthoods, dogmas, ethical +values, the whole structure of organized religion, calling it those +"foul smelling weeds of theology." It was inevitable that such men as +Erasmus and Thomas More should hold aloof from the Reformation, not, +as has been sometimes asserted, from any lack of moral courage but +because of intellectual conviction. They saw little to choose between +Lutheran, Calvinistic and Romish dogmatism. They had rejected not only +mediaeval ecclesiasticism but also that view of the world founded on +supersensuous values, whose persistent intimations had produced the +speculative and scholastic theologies. To them, in a quite literal +sense, the proper study of mankind was man. + +It is hardly necessary to speak here of the attitude towards the old +"supernatural" religion taken by the English Deists of the last half +of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century. Here +was the first definite struggle of the English church with a group +of thinkers who, under the leadership of Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke +and others, attempted to adapt humanistic philosophy to theological +speculation, to establish the sufficiency of natural religion as +opposed to revelation, and to deny the unique significance of the +Old and New Testament Scriptures. The English Deists were not deep +or comprehensive thinkers, but they were typically humanistic in that +their interests were not mainly theological or religious but rather +those of a general culture. They were inconsistent with their humanism +in their doctrine of a personal God who was not only remote but +separated from his universe, a _deus ex machina_ who excluded the idea +of immanence. While less influential in England, they had a powerful +effect upon French and German thinking. Both Voltaire and Rousseau +were rationalists and Deists to the end of their days and both were +unwearied foes of any other-than-natural sources for our spiritual +knowledge and religious values. + +In Germany the humanistic movement continued under Herder and his +younger contemporaries, Schiller and Goethe. Its historical horizon, +racial and literary sympathies, broadened under their direction, +moving farther and farther beyond the sources and areas of accepted +religious ideas and practices. They led the revival of study of the +Aryan languages and cultures; especially those of the Hellenes and the +inhabitants of the Indian peninsula. They originated that critical +and rather hostile scrutiny of Semitic ideas and values in present +civilization, which plays no small part in the dilettante naturalism +of the moment. Thus the nature and place of _man_, under the influence +of these "uninspired" literatures and cultures, became more and more +important as both his person and his position in the cosmos ceased +to be interpreted either in those terms of the moral transcendence +of deity, or of the helplessness and insignificance of his creatures, +which inform both the Jewish-Christian Scriptures and the philosophic +absolutism of the Catholic theologies. + +But the humanism of the eighteenth century comes most closely to grips +with the classic statements and concepts of religion in the critical +philosophy of Kant. It is the intellectual current which rises in +him which is finding its last multifarious and minute rivulets in the +various doctrines of relativity, in pragmatism, the subjectivism of +the neo-realists, and in the superior place generally ascribed by +present thinking to value judgments as against existential ones. His +central insistence is upon the impossibility of any knowledge of God +as an objective reality. Speculative reason does indeed give us the +idea of God but he denies that we have in the idea itself any ground +for thinking that there is an objective reality corresponding to it. +The idea he admits as necessitated by "the very nature of reason" but +it serves a purely harmonizing office. It is here to give coherence +and unity to the objects of the understanding, "to finish and crown +the whole of human knowledge."[3] Experience of transcendence thus +becomes impossible. As Professor McGiffert in _The Modern Ideas of +God_ says: "Subjectively considered, religion is the recognition of +our duties as commands of God. When we do our duty we are virtuous; +when we recognize it as commanded by God we are religious. The notion +that there is anything we can do to please God except to live rightly +is superstition. Moreover, to think that we can distinguish works +of grace from works of nature, which is the essence of historic +Christianity, or that we can detect the activity of heavenly +influences is also superstition. All such supernaturalism lies beyond +our ken. There are three common forms of superstition, all promoted +by positive religion: the belief in miracles, the belief in mysteries, +and the belief in the means of grace."[4] So prayer is a confession of +weakness, not a source of strength. + +[Footnote 3: See _The Critique of Pure Reason_ (Mueller, tr.), pp. 575 +ff.] + +[Footnote 4: _Harvard Theo. Rev._, vol. I, no. 1, p. 16.] + +Kant is more than once profoundly inconsistent with the extreme +subjectivism of his theory of ideas as when he says in the _Practical +Reason_: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing +admiration and awe the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on +them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within."[5] Again he +remarks, "The belief in a great and wise Author of the world has been +supported entirely by the wonderful beauty, order and providence, +everywhere displayed in nature."[6] Here the objective reality both of +what is presented to our senses and what is conceived of in the mind, +is, as though unconsciously, taken for granted. Thus while he contends +for a practical theism, the very basis of his interest still rests in +the conviction of a Being external to us and existing independent of +our thought. + +[Footnote 5: _The Critique of Practical Reason_ (tr. T.K. Abbott), p. +260.] + +[Footnote 6: _The Critique of Pure Reason_, p. 702.] + +But his intention of making right conduct the essence of religion +is typical of the limits of humanistic interests and perceptions. In +making his division of reason into the theoretical and the practical, +it is to the latter realm that he assigns morality and religion. +Clearly this is genuine rationalism. I am not forgetting Kant's great +religious contribution. He was the son of devout German pietists and +saturated in the literature of the Old Testament. It is to Amos, who +may justly be called his spiritual father, that he owes the moral +absoluteness of his categorical imperative, the reading of history +as a moral order. He was following Amos when he took God out of the +physical and put Him into the moral sphere and interpreted Him in +the terms of purpose. But the doctrine of _The Critique of Practical +Reason_ is intended to negate those transcendent elements generally +believed to be the distinctive portions of religion. God is not known +to us as an objective being, an entity without ourselves. He is an +idea, a belief, which gives meaning to our ethical life, a subjective +necessity. He is a postulate of the moral will. To quote Professor +McGiffert again: "We do not get God from the universe, we give Him +to the universe. We read significance and moral purpose into it. We +assume God, not to account for the world, but for the subjective +need of realizing our highest good.... Religion becomes a creative +act of the moral will just as knowledge is a creative act of the +understanding."[7] Thus there are no ultimate values; at least we can +know nothing of them; we have nothing to look to which is objective +and changeless. The absolutism of the Categorical Imperative is +a subjective one, bounded by ourselves, formed of our substance. +Religion is not discovered, but self-created, a sort of sublime +expediency. It can carry, then, no confident assertion as to the +meaning and destiny of the universe as a whole. + +[Footnote 7: _H.T.R._, vol. I, no. 1, p. 18.] + +Here, then, the nature of morality, the inspiration for character, +the solution of human destiny, are not sought outside in some sort +of cosmic relationship, but within, either in the experience of the +superman, the genius or the hero, or, as later, in the collective +experience and consciousness of the group. Thus this, too, throws man +back upon himself, makes a new exaltation of personality in sharpest +contrast to the scholastic doctrine of the futility and depravity of +human nature. It produces the assertion of the sacred character of the +individual human being. The conviction of the immeasurable worth of +man is, of course, a characteristic teaching of Jesus; what it is +important for the preacher to remember in humanism is the source, not +the fact, of its estimate. With Jesus man's is a derived greatness +found in him as the child of the Eternal; in humanism, it is, so to +speak, self-originated, born of present worth, not of sublime origin +or shining destiny. + +So man in the humanistic movement moves into the center of his own +world, becomes himself the measuring rod about whom all other values +are grouped. In the place of inspiration, or prophetic understanding, +which carries the implications of a transcendent source of truth and +goodness, we have a sharply limited, subjective wisdom and insight. +The "thus saith the Lord" of the Hebrew prophet means nothing here. +The humanist is, of course, confronted with the eternal question of +origins, of the thing-in-itself, the question whose insistence makes +the continuing worth of the absolutist speculations. He begs the +question by answering it with an assertion, not an explanation. He +meets it by an exaltation of human genius. Genius explains all sublime +achievements and genius is, so to speak, its own _fons et origo_. Thus +Diderot says: "Genius is the higher activity of the soul." "Genius," +remarks Rousseau in a letter, "makes knowledge unnecessary." And +Kant defines genius as "the talent to discover that which cannot be +taught or learned."[8] This appears to be more of an evasion than +a definition! But the intent here is to refer all that seems to +transcend mundane categories, man's highest, his widest, his sublimest +intuitions and achievements, back to himself; he is his own source of +light and power. + +[Footnote 8: _Anthropologie_, para. 87 c.] + +Such an anthropocentric view of life and destiny in exalting man, +of course, thereby liberated him, not merely from ecclesiastical +domination, but also from those illusive fears and questionings, those +remote and imaginative estimates of his own intended worth and those +consequent exacting demands upon himself which are a part of the +religious interpretation of life. Humanistic writing is full of the +exulting sense of this emancipation. These superconsiderations do not +belong in the world of experience as the humanist ordinarily conceives +of it. Hence, man lives in an immensely contracted, but a very real +and tangible world and within the small experimental circumference of +it, he holds a far larger place (from one viewpoint, a far smaller one +from another) than that of a finite creature caught in the snare of +this world and yet a child of the Eternal, having infinite destinies. +The humanist sees man as freed from the tyranny of this supernatural +revelation and laws. He rejoices over man because now he stands, + + "self-poised on manhood's solid earth + Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, + Fed from within with all the strength he needs." + +It is this sense of independence which arouses in Goethe a perennial +enthusiasm. It is the greatest bliss, he says, that the humanist won +back for us. Henceforth, we must strive with all our power to keep it. + +We have attempted this brief sketch of one of the chief sources of the +contemporary thought movement, that we may realize the pit whence we +were digged, the quarry from which many corner stones in the present +edifice of civilization were dug. The preacher tends to underestimate +the comprehensive character of the pervasive ideas, worked into many +institutions and practices, which are continually impinging upon him +and his message. They form a perpetual attrition, working silently and +ceaselessly day and night, wearing away the distinctively religious +conceptions of the community. Much of the vagueness and sentimentalism +of present preaching, its uncritical impressionism, is due to the +influence of the non-religious or, at least, the insufficiently +religious character of the ruling ideas and motives outside the church +which are impinging upon it, and upon the rest of the thinking of the +moment. + +Now, this _abstract_ humanism of the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries had a considerable influence upon early American preaching. +The latter part of the eighteenth century marked a breaking away from +the Protestant scholasticism of the Reformation theology. The French +Revolution accented and made operative, even across the Atlantic, the +typical humanistic concepts of the rights of man and the sovereignty +of the individual person. Skepticism and even atheism became a fashion +in our infant republic. It was a mark of sophistication with +many educated men to regard Christianity as not worthy of serious +consideration. College students modestly admitted that they were +infidels and with a delicious naivete assumed the names of Voltaire, +Thomas Paine and even of that notorious and notable egotist +Rousseau. It is said that in 1795, on the first Sunday of President +administration in Yale College, only three undergraduates remained +after service to take the sacrament. The reasons were partly +political, probably, but these themselves were grounded in the new +philosophical, anti-religious attitude. + +Of course, this affected the churches. There was a reaction from +Protestant scholasticism within them which, later on, culminated in +Unitarianism, Universalism and Arminianism. The most significant thing +in the Unitarian movement was not its rejection of the Trinitarian +speculation, but its positive contribution to the reassertion of +Jesus' doctrine of the worth and dignity of human nature. But it +recovered that doctrine much more by the way of humanistic philosophy +than by way of the teaching of the New Testament. I suppose the +thing which has made the weakness of the Unitarian movement, its +acknowledged lack of religious warmth and feeling, is due not to the +place where it stands, but to the road by which it got there. + +Yet, take it for all in all, the effect upon the preaching of the +supernatural and speculative doctrines and insights of Christianity, +was not in America as great as might be expected. Kant died in 1804, +and Goethe in 1832, but only in the last sixty years has the preaching +of the "evangelical" churches been fundamentally affected by the +prevailing intellectual currents of the day. This is due, I think, +to two causes. One was the nature of the German Reformation. It +found preaching at a low ebb. Every great force, scholastic, popular, +mystical, which had contributed to the splendor of the mediaeval +pulpit had fallen into decay, and the widespread moral laxity of the +clergy precluded spiritual insight. The Reformation, with its ethical +and political interests, revived preaching and by the nature of these +same interests fixed the limits and determined the direction within +which it should develop. It is important to remember that Luther did +not break with the old theological system. He continued his belief +in an authority and revelation anterior, exterior and superior to +man, merely shifting the locus of that authority from the Church +to the Book. Thus he paved the way for Zwingli and the Protestant +scholasticism which became more rigid and sterile than the Catholic +which it succeeded. We usually regard the Reformation as a part of the +Renaissance and hence included in the humanistic movement. Politically +and religiously, it undoubtedly should be so regarded, for it was +a chief factor in the renewal of German nationalism and its central +doctrines of justification by faith, and the right of each separate +believer to an unmediated access to the Highest, exalted the integrity +and dignity of the individual. Inconsistently, however, it continued +the old theological tradition. In the Lutheran system, says Paul de +Lagarde, we see the Catholic scholastic structure standing +untouched with the exception of a few loci. And Harnack, in the +_Dogmengeschichte_ calls it "a miserable duplication of the Catholic +Church." + +Now, New England preaching, it is true, found its chief roots in +Calvinism; Calvin, rather than Luther, was the religious leader of +the Reformation outside Germany. But his system, also, is only +the continuation of the ancient philosophy of the Christian faith +originating with Augustine. He reduced it to order, expounded it with +energy and consistency, but one has only to recall its major doctrines +of the depravity of man, the atonement for sin, the irresistible grace +of the Holy Spirit, to see how untouched it was by the characteristic +postulates of the new humanism. And it was on his theology that New +England preaching was founded. It was Calvin who, through Jonathan +Edwards, the elder and the younger, Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, +Nathaniel Emmons, Nathaniel N. Taylor, determined the course of the +New England pulpit. + +The other reason for our relative immunity from humanistic influence +is accidental and complementary merely. It is the mere fact of our +physical isolation, which, until the last seventy-five years, quite +largely shut off thinkers here from continental and English currents +of thought and contributed to the brilliant, if sterile, provincialism +of the New England theology. + +It is, therefore, to the second set of media, which may be generally +characterized as scientific and practical, that we now turn. These are +the forces which apparently are most affecting Christian preaching +at this moment. But it is important to remember that a large part +of their influence is to be traced to the philosophic and ethical +tendencies of the earlier humanistic movement which had set the scene +for them, to which they are so sympathetic that we may assert that +it is in them that their practical interests are grounded and by them +that their scientific methods are reinforced. I divide this second +group of media, for clearness, under three heads. + +First comes the rise of the natural sciences. In 1859, Darwin +published the _Origin of Species_ and gave to the world the +evolutionary hypothesis, foreshadowed by Goethe and other +eighteenth-century thinkers, simultaneously formulated by Wallace +and himself. Here is a theory, open to objections certainly, not yet +conclusively demonstrated, but the most probable one which we yet +possess, as to the method of the appearance and the continuance of +life upon the planet. It conceives of creation as an unimaginably +long and intricate development from the inorganic to the organic, from +simple to complex forms of life. Like Kantianism and the humanistic +movement generally, the evolutionary hypothesis springs from reasoned +observation of man and nature, not from any _a priori_ or speculative +process. With this theory, long a regulative idea of our world, +preaching was forced to come to some sort of an understanding. It +strikes a powerful blow at the scholastic notion of a dichotomized +universe divided between nature and supernature, divine and human. +It reinforced humanism by minimizing, if not making unnecessary, +the objective and external source and external interpretations of +religions. It pushes back the initial creative _act_ until it is lost +in the mists and chaos of an unimaginably remote past. Meanwhile, +creative _energy_, the very essence of transcendent life, is, as we +know it, not transcendent at all, but working outward from within, +a part of the process, not above and beyond it. The inevitable +implication here is that God is sufficiently, if not exclusively, +known through natural and human media. Science recognizes Him in the +terms of its own categories as in and of His world, a part of all its +ongoings and developments. But His creative life is indistinguishable +from, if not identical with, its expressions. Here, then, is a +practical obliteration of the line once so sharply drawn between the +natural and the supernatural. Hence the demarcation between the divine +and human into mutually exclusive states has disappeared. + +This would seem, then, to wipe out also any knowledge of absolute +values. Christian theism has interpreted God largely in static, final +terms. The craving for the absolute in the human mind, as witnessed by +the long course of the history of thought, as pathetically witnessed +to in the mixture of chicanery, fanaticism and insight of the modern +mystical and occult healing sects, is central and immeasurable. But +God, found, if at all, in the terms of a present process, is not +static and absolute, but dynamic and relative; indefinite, incomplete, +not final. And man's immense difference from Him, that sense of +the immeasurable space between creator and created, is strangely +contracted. The gulf between holiness and guiltiness tends also to +disappear. For our life would appear to be plastic and indefinite, +a process rather than a state, not open then to conclusive moral +estimates; incomplete, not fallen; life an orderly process, hence not +perverse but defensible; without known breaks or infringements, hence +relatively normal and sufficiently intelligible. + +A second factor was the rise of the humane sciences. In the seventh +and eighth decades of the last century men were absorbed in the +discovery of the nature and extent of the material universe. But +beginning about 1890, interest swerved again toward man as its +most revealing study and most significant inhabitant. Anthropology, +ethnology, sociology, physical and functional psychology, came to +the front. Especially the humane studies of political science and +industrial economics were magnified because of the new and urgent +problems born of an industrial civilization and a capitalistic state. +The invention and perfection of the industrial machine had by now +thoroughly dislocated former social groupings, made its own ethical +standards and human problems. In the early days of the labor movement +William Morris wrote, "we have become slaves of the monster to which +invention has given birth." In 1853, shortly after the introduction of +the cotton gin into India, the Viceroy wrote: "The misery is scarcely +paralleled in the history of trade." (A large statement that!) "The +bones of the cotton workers whiten the plains of India." + +But the temporary suffering caused by the immediate crowding out +of cottage industry and the abrupt increase in production was +insignificant beside the deeper influence, physical, moral, mental, +of the machine in changing the permanent habitat and the entire mode +of living for millions of human beings. It removed them from those +healthy rural surroundings which preserve the half-primitive, +half-poetic insight into the nature of things which comes from +relative isolation and close contact with the soil, to the nervous +tension, the amoral conditions, the airless, lightless ugliness of +the early factory settlements. Here living conditions were not merely +beastly; they were often bestial. The economic helplessness of the +factory hands reduced them to essential slavery. They must live where +the factory was, and could work only in one factory, for they could +not afford to move. Hence they must obey their industrial master in +every particular, since the raw material, the plant, the tools, the +very roof that covered them, were all his! In this new human condition +was a powerful reinforcement, from another angle of approach, of +the humanistic impulse. Man's interest in himself, which had been +sometimes that of the dilettante, largely imaginative and even +sentimental, was reinforced by man's new distress and became concrete +and scientific. + +Thus man regarded himself and his own world with a new and urgent +attention. The methods and secondary causes of his intellectual, +emotional and volitional life began to be laid bare. The new situation +revealed the immense part played in shaping the personality and +the fate of the individual by inheritance and environment. The +Freudian doctrine, which traces conduct and habit back to early +or prenatal repressions, strengthens the interest in the physical +and materialistic sources of character and conduct in human life. +Behavioristic psychology, interpreting human nature in terms of +observation and action, rather than analysis and value judgments, +does the same. It tends to put the same emphasis upon the external and +sensationalistic aspects of human experience. + +That, then, which is a central force in religion, the sense of the +inscrutability of human nature, the feeling of awe before the natural +processes, what Paul called the mystery of iniquity and the mystery of +godliness, tends to disappear. Wonder and confident curiosity succeed +humility and awe. That which is of the essence of religion, the sense +of helplessness coupled with the sense of responsibility, is stifled. +Whatever else the humane sciences have done, they have deepened man's +fascinated and narrowing absorption in himself and given him apparent +reason to believe that by analyzing the iron chain of cause and effect +which binds the process and admitting that it permits no deflection +or variation, he is making the further questions as to the origin, +meaning and destiny of that process either futile or superfluous. So +that, in brief, the check to speculative thinking and the repudiation +of central metaphysical concepts, which the earlier movement brought +about, has been accentuated and sealed by the humane sciences and the +new and living problems offered them for practical solution. Thus the +generation now ending has been carried beyond the point of combating +ancient doctrines of God and man, to the place where it has become +comparatively indifferent, rather than hostile, to any doctrine of +God, so absorbed is it in the physical functions, the temporal needs +and the material manifestations of human personality. + +Finally, as the natural and humane sciences mark new steps in the +expanding humanistic movement, so in these last days, critical +scholarship, itself largely a product of the humanistic viewpoint, has +added another factor to the group. The new methods of historical and +literary criticism, of comparative investigation in religion and the +other arts, have exerted a vast influence upon contemporary religious +thought. They have not merely completed the breakdown of an arbitrary +and fixed external authority and rendered finally invalid the notion +of equal or verbal inspiration in sacred writings, but the present +tendency, especially in comparative religion, is to seek the source +of all so-called religious experience within the human consciousness; +particularly to derive it all from group experience. Here, then, is +a theory of religious origins which once more turns the spirit of man +back upon itself. Robertson Smith, Jane Harrison, Durkheim, rejecting +an earlier animistic theory, find the origin of religion not in +contemplation of the natural world and in the intuitive perception +of something more-than-world which lies behind it, but in the group +experience whose heightened emotional intensity and nervous energy +imparts to the one the exaltation of the many. Smith, in the _Religion +of the Semites_,[9] emphasizes, as the fundamental conception of +ancient religion, "the solidarity of the gods and their worshipers as +part of an organic society." Durkheim goes beyond this. There are +not at the beginning men and gods, but only the social group and the +collective emotions and representations which are generated through +membership in the group. + +[Footnote 9: P. 32.] + +Here, then, is humanism again carried to the very heart of the +citadel. Religion at its source contains no real perceptions of any +extra-human force or person. What seemed to be such perceptions +were only the felt participation of the individual in a collective +consciousness which is superindividual, but not superhuman and always +continuous with the individual consciousness. So that, whatever may or +may not be true later, the beginning of man's metaphysical interests, +his cosmic consciousness, his more-than-human contacts, is simply his +social experience, his collective emotions and representations. Thus +Durkheim: "We are able to say, in sum, that the religious individual +does not deceive himself when he believes in the existence of a moral +power upon which he depends and from which he holds the larger portion +of himself. That power exists; it is society. When the Australian +feels within himself the surging of a life whose intensity surprises +him, he is the dupe of no illusion; that exaltation is real, and it +is really the product of forces that are external and superior to the +individual."[10] Yes, but identical in kind and genesis with himself +and his own race. To Leuba, in his _Psychological Study of Religion_, +this has already become the accepted viewpoint. Whatever is enduring +and significant in religion is merely an expression of man's social +consciousness and experience, his sense of participation in a common +life. "Humanity, idealized and conceived as a manifestation of +creative energy, possesses surprising qualifications for a source +of religious inspiration." Professor Overstreet, in "The Democratic +Conception of God," _Hibbert Journal_, volume XI, page 409, says: "It +is this large figure, not simply of human but of cosmic society which +is to yield our God of the future. There is no place in the future for +an eternally perfect being and no need--society, democratic from end +to end, can brook no such radical class distinction as that between a +supreme being, favored with eternal and absolute perfection, and the +mass of beings doomed to the lower ways of imperfect struggle." + +[Footnote 10: _Les Formes elementaires de la vie religieuse_, p. 322.] + +There is certainly a striking immediacy in such language. We leave for +later treatment the question as to the historical validity of such +an attitude. It certainly ignores some of the most distinguished and +fruitful concepts of trained minds; it rules out of court what are +to the majority of men real and precious factors in the religious +experience. It would appear to be another instance, among the many, of +the fallacy of identifying the part with the whole. But the effect +of such pervasive thought currents, the more subtle and unfightable +because indirect and disguised in popular appearance and influence, +upon the ethical and spiritual temper of religious leaders, the +very audacity of whose tasks puts them on the defensive, is vast +and incalculable. At the worst, it drives man into a mechanicalized +universe, with a resulting materialism of thought and life; at the +best, it makes him a pragmatist with amiable but immediate objectives, +just practical "results" as his guide and goal. Morality as, in +Antigone's noble phrase, "the unwritten law of heaven" sinks down and +disappears. There is no room here for the Job who abhors himself and +repents in dust and ashes nor for Plato's _One behind the Many_; no +perceptible room, in such a world, for any of the absolute values, the +transcendent interests, the ethics of idealism, any eschatology, or +for Christian theodicy. That which has been the typical contribution +of the religious perceptions in the past, namely, the comprehensive +vision of life and the world and time _sub specie aeternitatis_ is +here abandoned. Eternity is unreal or empty; we never heard the music +of the spheres. We are facing at this moment a disintegrating age. +Here is a prime reason for it. The spiritual solidarity of mankind +under the humanistic interpretation of life and destiny is dissolving +and breaking down. Humanism is ingenious and reasonable and clever but +it is too limited; it doesn't answer enough questions. + +Before going on, in a future chapter, to discuss the question as to +what kind of preaching such a world-view, seen from the Christian +standpoint, needs, we are now to inquire what the effect of this +humanistic movement upon Christian preaching has already been. +That our preaching should have been profoundly influenced by it is +inevitable. Religion is not apart from the rest of life. The very +temperament of the speaker makes him peculiarly susceptible to the +intellectual and spiritual movements about him. What, then, has +humanism done to preaching? Has it worked to clarify and solidify +the essence of the religious position? Or has preaching declined and +become neutralized in religious quality under it? + +First: it has profoundly affected Christian preaching about God. +The contemporary sermon on Deity minimizes or leaves out divine +transcendence; thus it starves one fundamental impulse in man--the +need and desire to look up. Instead of this transcendence modern +preaching emphasizes immanence, often to a naive and ludicrous degree. +God is the being who is like us. Under the influence of that monistic +idealism, which is a derived philosophy of the humanistic impulse, +preaching lays all the emphasis upon divine immanence in sharpest +contrast either to the deistic transcendence of the eighteenth century +or the separateness and aloofness of the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, +or of the classic Greek theologies of Christianity. God is, of course; +that is, He is the informing principle in the natural and human +universe and essentially one with it. Present preaching does not +confess this identification but it evades rather than meets the +logical pantheistic conclusion. So our preaching has to do with God +in the common round of daily tasks; with sweeping a room to His glory; +with adoration of His presence in a sunset and worship of Him in a +star. Every bush's aflame with Him; there are sermons in stones and +poems in running brooks. Before us, even as behind, God is and all is +well. We are filled with a sort of intoxication with this intimate and +protective company of the Infinite; we are magnificently unabashed as +we familiarly approach Him. "Closer is He than breathing; nearer than +hands or feet." Not then by denying or condemning or distrusting the +world in which we live, not by asserting the differences between God +and humanity do we understand Him. But by closest touch with nature +do we find Him. By a superb paradox, not without value, yet equally +ineffable in sentimentality and sublime in its impiety we say, +beholding man, "that which is most human is most divine!" + +That there is truth in such comfortable and affable preaching is +obvious; that there is not much truth in it is obvious, too. To +what extent, and in what ways, nature, red with tooth and claw, +indifferent, ruthless, whimsical, can be called the expression of the +Christian God, is not usually specifically stated. In what way man, +just emerging from the horror, the shame, the futility of his last and +greatest debauch of bloody self-destruction, can be called the chief +medium of truth, holiness and beauty, the matrix of divinity, is not +entirely manifest. But the fatal defect of such preaching is not that +there is not, of course, a real identity between the world and its +Maker, the soul and its Creator, but that the aspect of reality which +this truth expresses is the one which has least religious value, is +least distinctive in the spiritual experience. The religious nature is +satisfied, and the springs of moral action are refreshed by dwelling +on the "specialness" of God; men are brought back to themselves, not +among their fellows and by identifying them with their fellows, but +by lifting them to the secret place of the Most High. They need +religiously not thousand-tongued nature, but to be kept secretly in +His pavilion from the strife of tongues. It is the difference between +God and men which makes men who know themselves trust Him. It is the +"otherness," not the sameness, which makes Him desirable and potent in +the daily round of life. A purely ethical interest in God ceases to be +ethical and becomes complacent; when we rule out the supraphenomenal +we have shut the door on the chief strength of the higher life. + +Second: modern preaching, under this same influence and to a yet +greater degree, emphasizes the principle of identity, where we need +that of difference, in its preaching about Jesus. He is still the most +moving theme for the popular presentation of religion. But that +is because He offers the most intelligible approach to that very +"otherness" in the person of the godhead. His healing and reconciling +influence over the heart of man--the way the human spirit expands and +blossoms in His presence--is moving beyond expression to any observer, +religious or irreligious. Each new crusade in the long strife for +human betterment looks in sublime confidence to Him as its forerunner +and defense. To what planes of common service, faith, magnanimous +solicitude could He not lift the embittered, worldlyized men and women +of this torn and distracted age, which is so desperately seeking its +own life and thereby so inexorably losing it! But why is the heart +subdued, the mind elevated, the will made tractable by Him? Why, +because He is enough like us so that we know that He understands, has +utter comprehension; and He is enough different from us so that we are +willing to trust Him. In what lies the essence of the leadership of +Jesus? He is not like us: therefore, we are willing to relinquish +ourselves into His hands. + +Now, that is only half the truth. But if I may use a paradox, it is +the important half, the primary half. And it is just that essential +element in the Christian experience of Jesus that modern preaching, +under the humanistic impulse, is neglecting. Indeed, liberal preachers +have largely ceased to sermonize about Him, just because it has become +so easy! Humanism has made Jesus obvious, hence, relatively impotent. +With its unified cosmos, its immanent God, its exalted humanity, the +whole Christological problem has become trivial. It drops the cosmic +approach to the person of Jesus in favor of the ethical. It does not +approach Him from the side of God; we approach nothing from that +side now; but from the side of man. Thus He is not so much a divine +revelation as He is a human achievement. Humanity and divinity are +one in essence. The Creator is distinguished from His creatures in +multifarious differences of degree but not in kind. We do not see, +then, in Christ, a perfect isolated God, joined to a perfect isolated +man, in what were indeed the incredible terms of the older and +superseded Christologies. But rather, He is the perfect revelation of +the moral being, the character of God, in all those ways capable of +expression or comprehension in human life, just because he is the +highest manifestation of a humanity through which God has been forever +expressing Himself in the world. For man is, so to speak, his own +cosmic center; the greatest divine manifestation which we know. +Granted, then, an ideal man, a complete moral being, and _ipso facto_ +we have our supreme revelation of God. + +So runs the thrice familiar argument. Of course, we have gained +something by it. We may drop gladly the old dualistic philosophy, and +we must drop it, though I doubt if it is so easy to drop the dualistic +experience which created it. But I beg to point out that, on the +whole, we have lost more religiously than we have gained. For we have +made Jesus easy to understand, not as He brings us up to His level, +but as we have reduced Him to ours. Can we afford to do that? +Bernard's mystical line, "The love of Jesus, what it is, none but His +loved ones know," has small meaning here. The argument is very good +humanism but it drops the word "Saviour" out of the vocabulary +of faith. Oh, how many sermons since, let us say, 1890, have been +preached on the text, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." +And how uniformly the sermons have explained that the text means +not that Jesus is like God, but that God is like Jesus--and we have +already seen that Jesus is like us! One only has to state it all to +see beneath its superficial reasonableness its appalling profanity! + +Third: we may see the influence of humanism upon our preaching in the +relinquishment of the goal of conversion. We are preaching to educate, +not to save; to instruct, not to transform. Conversion may be gradual +and half-unconscious, a long and normal process under favorable +inheritance and with the culture of a Christian environment. Or it +may be sudden and catastrophic, a violent change of emotional and +volitional activity. When a man whose feeling has been repressed by +sin and crusted over by deception, whose inner restlessness has been +accumulating under the misery and impotence of a divided life, is +brought into contact with Christian truth, he can only accept it +through a volitional crisis, with its cleansing flood of penitence and +confession and its blessed reward of the sense of pardon and peace and +the relinquishment of the self into the divine hands. But one thing is +true of either process in the Christian doctrine of conversion. It is +not merely an achievement, although it is that; it is also a rescue. +It cannot come about without faith, the "will to believe"; neither can +it come about by that alone. Conversion is something we do; it is also +something else, working within us, if we will let it, helping us to +do; hence it is something done for us. + +Now, this experience of conversion is passing out of Christian +life and preaching under humanistic influence. We are accepting +the Socratic dictum that knowledge is virtue. Hence we blur the +distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian. Education +supplants salvation. We bring the boys and girls into the church +because they are safer there than outside it; and on the whole it is +a good thing to do and really they belong there anyway. The church +member is a man of the world, softened by Christian feeling. He is +a kindly and amiable citizen and an honorable man; he has not been +saved. But he knows the unwisdom of evil; if you know what is right +you will do it. Intelligence needs no support from grace. It is +strange that the church does not see that with this relinquishment +of her insistence upon something that religion can do for a man that +nothing else can attempt, she has thereby given up her real excuse for +being, and that her peculiar and distinctive mission has gone. It is +strange that she does not see that the humanism which, since it is +at home in the world, can sometimes make there a classic hero, +degenerates dreadfully and becomes unreal in a church where unskilled +hands use it to make it a substitute for a Christian saint! But +for how many efficient parish administrators, Y.M.C.A. secretaries, +up-to-date preachers, character is conceived of as coming not by +discipline but by expansion, not by salvation, but by activity. Social +service solves everything without any reference to the troublesome +fact that the value of the service will depend upon the quality of the +servant. Salvation is a combination of intelligence and machinery. Sin +is pure ignorance or just maladjustment to environment. All we need is +to know what is right and wrong; the humane sciences will take care of +that; and, then, have an advertising agent, a gymnasium, a committee +on spiritual resources, a program, a conference, a drive for money, +and behold, the Kingdom of God is among us! + +Fourth, and most significant: it is to the humanistic impulse and +its derived philosophies that we owe the individualistic ethics, the +relative absence of the sense of moral responsibility for the social +order which has, from the beginning, maimed and distorted Protestant +Christianity. It was, perhaps, a consequence of the speculative +and absolute philosophies of the mediaeval church that, since they +endeavored to relate religion to the whole of the cosmos, its +remotest and ultimate issues, so they conceived of its absoluteness as +concerned with the whole of human experience, with every relation of +organized society. Under their regulative ideas all human beings, not +a selected number, had, not in themselves but because of the Divine +Sacrifice, divine significance; reverence was had, not for supermen or +captains of industry, but for every one of those for whom Christ died. +There were no human institutions which were ends in themselves or +more important than the men which created and served them. The Holy +Catholic Church was the only institution which was so conceived; all +others, social, political, economic, were means toward the end of the +preservation and expression of human personality. Hence, the interest +of the mediaeval church in social ethics and corporate values; hence, +the axiom of the church's control of, the believers' responsibility +for, the economic relations of society. An unjust distribution of +goods, the withholding from the producer of his fair share of the +wealth which he creates, profiteering, predatory riches--these were +ranked under one term as avarice, and they were counted not among +the venial offenses, like aberrations of the flesh, but avarice was +considered one of the seven deadly sins of the spirit. The application +of the ethics of Jesus to social control began to die out as +humanism individualized Christian morals and as, under its influence, +nationalism tended to supplant the international ecclesiastical order. +The cynical and sordid maxim that business is business; that, in the +economic sphere, the standards of the church are not operative and the +responsibility of the church is not recognized--notions which are +a chief heresy and an outstanding disgrace of nineteenth-century +religion, from which we are only now painfully and slowly +reacting--these may be traced back to the influence of humanism upon +Christian thought and conduct. + +In general, then, it seems to me abundantly clear that the humanistic +movement has both limited and secularized Christian preaching. It +dogmatically ignores supersensuous values; hence it has rationalized +preaching hence it has made provincial its intellectual approach and +treatment, narrowed and made mechanical its content. It has turned +preaching away from speculative to practical themes. It was, +perhaps, this mental and spiritual decline of the ministry to which a +distinguished educator referred when he told a body of Congregational +preachers that their sermons were marked by "intellectual frugality." +It is this which a great New England theologian-preacher, Dr. Gordon, +means when he says "an indescribable pettiness, a mean kind of retail +trade has taken possession of the preachers; they have substituted the +mill-round for the sun-path." + +The whole world today tends toward a monstrous egotism. Man's +attention is centered on himself, his temporal salvation, his external +prosperity. Preaching, yielding partly to the intellectual and partly +to the practical environment, has tended to adopt the same secular +scale of values, somewhat pietized and intensified, and to move within +the same area of operation. That is why most preaching today deals +with relations of men with men, not of men with God. Yet human +relationships can only be determined in the light of ultimate ones. +Most preaching instinctively avoids the definitely religious themes; +deals with the ethical aspects of devotion; with conduct rather than +with worship; with the effects, not the causes, the expression, not +the essence of the religious life. Most college preaching chiefly +amounts to informal talks on conduct; somewhat idealized discussions +of public questions; exhortations to social service. When sermons do +deal with ultimate sanctions they can hardly be called Christian. They +are often stoical; self-control is exalted as an heroic achievement, +as being self-authenticating, carrying its own reward. Or they are +utilitarian, giving a sentimentalized or frankly shrewd doctrine of +expediencies, the appeal to an exaggerated self-respect, enlightened +self-interest, social responsibility. These are typical humanistic +values; they are real and potent and legitimate. But they are not +religious and they do not touch religious motives. The very difference +between the humanist and the Christian lies here. To obey a principle +is moral and admirable; to do good and be good because it pays is +sensible; but to act from love of a person is a joyous ecstasy, a +liberation of power; it alone transforms life with an ultimate and +enduring goodness. Genuine Christian preaching makes its final appeal, +not to fear, not to hope, not to future rewards and punishments, not +to reason or prudence or benevolence. It makes its appeal to love, +and that means that it calls men to devotion to a living Being, a +Transcendence beyond and without us. For you cannot love a principle, +or relinquish yourself to an idea. You must love another living +Being. Which amounts to saying that humanism just because it is +self-contained is self-condemned. It minimizes or ignores the living +God, in His world, but not to be identified with it; beyond it and +above it; loving it because it needs to be loved; blessing it because +saving it. In so doing, it lays the axe at the very root of the tree +of religion. Francis Xavier, in his greatest of all hymns, has stated +once for all the essence of the Christian motive and the religious +attitude: + + "O Deus, ego amo te + Nec amo te ut salves me + Aut quia non amantes te + Aeternis punis igne. + + "Nee praemii illius spe + Sed sicut tu amasti me + Sic amo et amabo te + Solem, quia Rex meus est." + +What, then, has been the final effect of humanism upon preaching? It +has tempted the preacher to depersonalize religion. And since love is +the essence of personality, it has thereby stripped preaching of the +emotional energy, of the universal human interests and the +prophetic insight which only love can bestow. Over against this +depersonalization, we must find some way to return to expressing the +religious view and utilizing the religious power of the human spirit. + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + +EATING, DRINKING AND BEING MERRY + + +We ventured to say in the preceding chapter that, under the influences +of more than three centuries of humanism, the spiritual solidarity of +mankind is breaking down. For humanism makes an inhuman demand upon +the will; it minimizes the force of the subrational and it largely +ignores the superrational elements in human experience; it does not +answer enough questions. Indeed, it is frankly confessed, particularly +by students of the political and economic forces now working in +society, that the new freedom born in the Renaissance is, in some +grave sense, a failure. It destroyed what had been the common moral +authority of European civilization in its denial of the rule of the +church. But for nearly four centuries it has become increasingly clear +that it offered no adequate substitute for the supernatural moral and +religious order which it supplanted. John Morley was certainly one of +the most enlightened and humane positivists of the last generation. +In his _Recollections_, published three years ago, there is a final +paragraph which runs as follows: "A painful interrogatory, I must +confess, emerges. Has not your school held the civilized world, +both old and new alike, in the hollow of their hand for two long +generations past? Is it quite clear that their influence has been +so much more potent than the gospel of the various churches? +_Circumspice_. Is not diplomacy, unkindly called by Voltaire the field +of lies, as able as ever it was to dupe governments and governed by +grand abstract catchwords veiling obscure and inexplicable purposes, +and turning the whole world over with blood and tears, to a strange +Witch's Sabbath?"[11] This is his conclusion of the whole matter. + +[Footnote 11: _Recollections_: II, p. 366 ff.] + +But while the reasons for the failure are not far to seek, it is worth +while for the preacher to dwell on them for a moment. In strongly +centered souls like a Morley or an Erasmus, humanism produces a +stoical endurance and a sublime self-confidence. But it tends, in +lesser spirits, to a restless arrogance. Hence, both those lower +elements in human nature, the nature and extent of whose force it +either cloaks or minimizes, and those imponderable and supersensuous +values which it tends to ignore and which are not ordinarily included +in its definition of experience, return to vex and plague it. Indeed +the worst foe of humanism has never been the religious view of the +world upon whose stored-up moral reserves of uncompromising doctrine +it has often half-consciously subsisted. Humanism has long profited +from the admitted truth that the moral restraints of an age that +possesses an authoritative and absolute belief survive for some time +after the doctrine itself has been rejected. What has revealed the +incompleteness of the humanistic position has been its constant +tendency to decline into naturalism; a tendency markedly accelerated +today. Hence, we find ourselves in a disintegrating and distracted +epoch. In 1912 Rudolph Eucken wrote: "The moral solidarity of mankind +is dissolved. Sects and parties are increasing; common estimates and +ideals keep slipping away from us; we understand one another less +and less. Even voluntary associations, that form of unity peculiar to +modern times, unite more in achievement than in disposition, bring men +together outwardly rather than inwardly. The danger is imminent that +the end may be _bellum omnium contra omnes_, a war of all against +all."[12] + +[Footnote 12: _Harvard Theo. Rev._, vol. V, no. 3, p. 277.] + +That disintegration is sufficiently advanced so that we can see the +direction it is taking and the principle that inspires it. Humanism +has at least the value of an objective standard in the sense that it +sets up criteria which are without the individual; it substitutes a +collective subjectivism, if we may use the term, for personal whim +and impulse. Thus it proclaims a classic standard of moderation in all +things, the golden mean of the Greeks, Confucius' and Gautama's law +of measure. It proposes to bring the primitive and sensual element in +man under critical control; to accomplish this it relies chiefly upon +its amiable exaggeration of the reasonableness of human nature. But +the Socratic dictum that knowledge is virtue was the product of a +personality distinguished, if we accept the dialogues of Plato, by +a perfect harmony of thought and feeling. Probably it is not wise to +build so important a rule upon so distinguished an exception! + +But the positive defect of humanism is more serious. It likewise +proposes to rationalize those supersensuous needs and convictions +which lie in the imaginative, the intuitive ranges of experience. +The very proposal carries a denial of their value-in-themselves. +Its inevitable result in the humanist is their virtual ignoring. The +greatest of all the humanists of the Orient was Confucius. "I venture +to ask about death," said a disciple to the sage. "While you do not +know life," replied he, "how can you know about death?"[13] Even more +typical of the humanistic attitude towards the distinctively religious +elements of experience are other sayings of Confucius, such as: "To +give oneself earnestly to the duties due to men, and while respecting +spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them may be called wisdom."[13] +The precise area of humanistic interests is indicated in another +observation. "The subjects on which the Master did not talk were +... disorder and spiritual beings."[13] For the very elements of +experience which humanism belittles or avoids are found in the world +where pagans like Rabelais robustly jest or the high spaces where +souls like Newman meditate and pray. The humanist appears to be +frightened by the one and repelled by the other; will not or cannot +see life steadily and whole. That a powerful primitivistic faith, +like Taoism, a sort of religious bohemianism, should flourish beside +such pragmatic and passionless moderation as classic Confucianism is +inevitable; that the worship of Amida Buddha, the Buddha of redemption +and a future heaven, of a positive and eternal bliss, should be the +Chinese form of the Indian faith is equally intelligible. After a like +manner it is the humanism of our Protestant preaching today from which +men are defecting into utter worldliness and indifference on the one +hand and returning to mediaeval and Catholic forms of supernaturalism +on the other. + +[Footnote 13: _Analects_, XI, CXI; VI, CXX.] + +For the primitive in man is a beast whom it is hard to chain nor does +humanism with its semi-scientific, semi-sentimental laudation of all +natural values produce that exacting mood of inward scrutiny in which +self-control has most chance of succeeding. Hence here, as elsewhere +on the continent, and formerly in China, in Greece and in Rome, a sort +of neo-paganism has been steadily supplanting it. + +To the study of this neo-paganism we now address ourselves. It is +the third and lowest of those levels of human experience to which we +referred in the first lecture. The naturalist, you may remember, +is that incorrigible individual who imagines that he is a law unto +himself, that he may erect his person into a sovereign over the whole +universe. He perversely identifies discipline with repression and +makes the unlimited the goal both of imagination and conduct. Oscar +Wilde's epigrams, and more particularly his fables, are examples of +a thoroughgoing naturalist's insolent indifference to any form of +restraint. All things, whether holy or bestial, were material for his +topsy-turvy wit, his literally unbridled imagination. No humanistic +law of decency, that is to say, a proper respect for the opinions of +mankind, and no divine law of reverence and humility, acted for him +as a restraining force or a selective principle. An immediate and +significant example of this naturalistic riot of feeling, with its +consequent false and anarchic scale of values, is found in the +film dramas of the moving picture houses. Unreal extravagance of +imagination, accompanied by the debauch of the aesthetic and moral +judgment, frequently distinguishes them. In screenland, it is the +vampire, the villain, the superman, the saccharine angel child, +who reign almost undisputed. Noble convicts, virtuous courtesans, +attractive murderers, good bad men, and ridiculous good men, flit +across the canvas haloed with cheap sentimentality. Opposed to them, +in an ever losing struggle, are those conventional figures who stand +for the sober realities of an orderly and disciplined world; the +judge, the policeman, the mere husband. These pitiable and laughable +figures are always outwitted; they receive the fate which indeed, in +any primitive society, they so richly deserve! + +How deeply sunk in the modern world are the roots of this naturalism +is shown by its long course in history, paralleling humanism. It has +seeped down through the Protestant centuries in two streams. One is +a sort of scientific naturalism. It exalts material phenomena and the +external order, issues in a glorification of elemental impulses, an +attempted return to childlike spontaneous living, the identifying of +man's values with those of primitive nature. The other is an emotional +naturalism, of which Maeterlinck is at the moment a brilliant and +lamentable example. This exchanges the world of sober conduct, +intelligible and straightforward thinking for an unfettered dreamland, +compounded of fairy beauty, flashes of mystical and intuitive +understanding intermixed with claptrap magic, a high-flown +commercialism and an etherealized sensuality. + +Rousseau represents both these streams in his own person. His +sentimentalized egotism and bland sensuality pass belief. His +sensitive spirit dissolves in tears over the death of his dog but he +bravely consigns his illegitimate children to the foundling asylum +without one tremor. In his justly famous and justly infamous +_Confessions_, he presents himself Satan-wise before the Almighty at +the last Judgment, these _Confessions_ in his hand, a challenge to the +remainder of the human race upon his lips. "Let a single one assert +to Thee, if he dare: I am better than that man." But his preachment +of natural and spontaneous values, return to primitive conditions, +was equally aggressive. If anyone wants to inspect the pit whence the +Montessori system of education was digged, let him read Rousseau, who +declared that the only habit a child should have is the habit of not +having a habit, or his contemporary disciple, George Moore, who says +that one should be ashamed of nothing except of being ashamed. +There are admirable features in the schooling-made-easy system. It +recognizes the fitness of different minds for different work; that +the process of education need not and should not be forbidding; that +natural science has been subordinated overmuch to the humanities; that +the imagination and the hand should be trained with the intellect. +But the method which proposes to give children an education along +the lines of least resistance is, like all other naturalism, a +contradiction in terms, sometimes a _reductio ad absurdum_, sometimes +_ad nauseam_. As long ago as 1893, when Huxley wrote his Romanes +lecture on _Evolution and Ethics_, this identity of natural and human +values was explicitly denied. Teachers do not exist for the amusement +of children, nor for the repression of children; they exist for +the discipline of children. The new education is consistently +primitivistic in the latitude which it allows to whim and in its +indulgence of indolence. There is only one way to make a man out of +a child; to teach him that happiness is a by-product of achievement; +that pleasure is an accompaniment of labor; that the foundation of +self-respect is drudgery well done; that there is no power in any +system of philosophy, any view of the world, no view of the world, +which can release him from the unchanging necessity of personal +struggle, personal consecration, personal holiness in human life. +"That wherein a man cannot be equaled," says Confucius, "is his work +which other men cannot see."[14] The humanist, at least, does not +blink the fact that we are caught in a serious and difficult world. To +rail at it, to deny it, to run hither and thither like scurrying rats +to evade it, will not alter one jot or one tittle of its inexorable +facts. + +[Footnote 14: _Doctrine of the Mean_, ch. xxxiii, v. 2.] + +Following Rousseau and Chateaubriand come a striking group of +Frenchmen who passed on this torch of ethical and aesthetic rebellion. +Some of them are wildly romantic like Dumas and Hugo; some of them +perversely realistic like Balzac, Flaubert, Gautier, Zola. Paul +Verlaine, a near contemporary of ours, is of this first number; writer +of some of the most exquisite lyrics in the French language, yet a man +who floated all his life in typical romantic fashion from passion +to repentance, "passing from lust of the flesh to sorrow for sin in +perpetual alternation." Guy de Maupassant again is a naturalist of +the second sort, a brutal realist; de Maupassant, who died a suicide, +crying out to his valet from his hacked throat "_Encore l'homme au +rancart_!"--another carcass to the dustheap! + +In English letters Wordsworth in his earlier verse illustrated the +same sentimental primitivism. It would be unfair to quote _Peter +Bell_, for that is Wordsworth at his dreadful worst, but even in +_Tinlern Abbey_, which has passages of incomparable majesty and +beauty, there are lines in which he declares himself: + + "... well pleased to recognize + In nature, and the language of the sense + The anchor of my purest thought, the nurse, + The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul + Of all my moral being." + +Byron's innate sophistication saves him from the ludicrous depths to +which Wordsworth sometimes fell, but he, too, is Rousseau's disciple, +a moral rebel, a highly personal and subjective poet of whom Goethe +said that he respected no law, human or divine, except that of the +three unities. Byron's verse is fascinating; it overflows with a sort +of desperate and fiery sincerity; but, as he himself says, his life +was one long strife of "passion with eternal law." He combines both +the romantic and the realistic elements of naturalism, both flames +with elemental passion and parades his cynicism, is forever snapping +his mood in _Don Juan_, alternating extravagant and romantic feeling +with lines of sardonic and purposely prosaic realism. Shelley is a +naturalist, too, not in the realm of sordid values but of Arcadian +fancy. The pre-Raphaelites belong here, together with a group of young +Englishmen who flourished between 1890 and 1914, of whom John Davidson +and Richard Middleton, both suicides, are striking examples. Poor +Middleton turned from naturalism to religion at the last. When he had +resolved on death, he wrote a message telling what he was about to do, +parting from his friend with brave assumption of serenity. But he did +not send the postcard, and in the last hour of that hired bedroom in +Brussels, with the bottle of chloroform before him, he traced across +the card's surface "a broken and a contrite spirit thou wilt not +despise." So there was humility at the last. One remembers rather +grimly what the clown says in _Twelfth Night_, + + "Pleasure will be paid some time or other." + +This same revolt against the decencies and conventions of our humanist +civilization occupies a great part of present literature. How far +removed from the clean and virile stoicism of George Meredith or the +honest pessimism of Thomas Hardy is Arnold Bennett's _The Pretty Lady_ +or Galsworthy's _The Dark Flower_. Finally, in this country we need +only mention, if we may descend so far, such naturalists in literature +as Jack London, Robert Chambers and Gouverneur Morris. One's only +excuse for referring to them is that they are vastly popular with the +people whom you and I try to interest in sermons, to whom we talk on +religion! + +Of course, this naturalism in letters has its accompanying and +interdependent philosophic theory, its intellectual interpretation +and defense. As Kant is the noblest of the moralists, so I suppose +William James and, still later, Henri Bergson and Croce are the chief +protagonists of unrestrained feeling and naturalistic values in the +world of thought. To the neo-realists "the thing given" is alone +reality. James' pragmatism frankly relinquishes any absolute standard +in favor of relativity. In _the Varieties of Religious Experience_, +which Professor Babbitt tells us someone in Cambridge suggested should +have had for a subtitle "Wild Religions I Have Known," he is plainly +more interested in the intensity than in the normality, in the +excesses than in the essence of the religious life. Indeed, Professor +Babbitt quotes him as saying in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton, +"mere sanity is the most Philistine and at the bottom most unessential +of a man's attributes."[15] In the same way Bergson, consistently +anti-Socratic and discrediting analytical intellect, insists that +whatever unity may be had must come through instinct, not analysis. +He refuses to recognize Plato's _One in the Many_, sees the whole +universe as "a perpetual gushing forth of novelties," a universal and +meaningless flux. Surrender to this eternal flux, he appears to say, +and then we shall gain reality. So he relies on impulse, instinct, his +_elan vital_, which means, I take it, on man's subrational emotions. +We call it Intuitionism, but such philosophy in plain and bitter +English is the intellectual defense and solemn glorification of +impulse. "Time," says Bergson, "is a continuous stream, a present that +endures."[16] Time apparently is all. "Life can have no purpose in the +human sense of the word."[17] Essentially, then, James, Bergson and +Croce appeal from intellect to feeling. They return to primitivism. + +[Footnote 15: Letter to C.E. Norton, June 30, 1904.] + +[Footnote 16: _Le Perception de Changement_, 30.] + +[Footnote 17: _L'evolution creatrice_, 55.] + +Here is a philosophy which obviously may be both as antihumanistic and +as irreligious as any which could well be conceived. Here is license +in conduct and romanticism in expression going hand in hand with +this all but exclusive emphasis upon relativity in thought. Here is +disorder, erected as a universal concept; the world conceived of as +a vast and impenetrable veil which is hiding nothing; an intricacy +without pattern. Obviously so ungoverned and fluid a universe +justifies uncritical and irresponsible thinking and living. + +We have tried thus to sketch that declension into paganism on the +part of much of the present world, of which we spoke earlier in the +chapter. It denies or ignores the humanistic law with its exacting +moral and aesthetic standards; it openly flouts the attitude of +obedience and humility before religious mandates, and, so far as +opportunity offers or prudence permits, goes its own insolently wanton +way. Our world is full of dilettanti in the colleges, anarchists in +the state, atheists in the church, bohemians in art, sybarites in +conduct and ineffably silly women in society, who have felt, and +occasionally studied the scientific and naturalistic movement just far +enough and superficially enough to grasp the idea of relativity and +to exalt it as sufficient and complete in itself. Many of them are +incapable of realizing the implications for conduct and belief which +it entails. Others of them, who are of the lesser sort, pulled by +the imperious hungers of the flesh, the untutored instincts of a +restless spirit, hating Hellenic discipline no less than Christian +renunciation, having no stomach either for self-control or +self-surrender, look out on the mass of endlessly opposing +complexities of the modern world and gladly use that vision as an +excuse for abandoning what is indeed the ever failing but also the +ever necessary struggle to achieve order, unity, yes, even perfection. + +To them, therefore, the only way to conquer a temptation is to yield +to it. They rail nonsensically at all repression, forgetting that man +cannot express the full circle of his mutually exclusive instincts, +and that when he gives rein to one he thereby negates another; +that choice, therefore, is inevitable and that the more exacting +and critical the choice, the more valuable and comprehensive the +expression. So they frankly assert their choices along the lines of +least resistance and abandon themselves, at least in principle, to +emotional chaos and moral sentimentalism. Very often they are of all +men the most meticulously mannered. But their manners are not the +decorum of the humanist, they are the etiquette of the worldling. +Chesterfield had these folk in mind when he spoke with an intolerable, +if incisive, cynicism of those who know the art of combining the +useful appearances of virtue with the solid satisfactions of vice. + +Such naturalism is sometimes tolerated by those who aspire to urbane +and liberal judgments because they think it can be defended on +humanistic grounds. But, as a matter of fact, it is as offensive to +the thoroughgoing humanist as it is to the sincere religionist. +They have a common quarrel with it. Take, for example, the notorious +naturalistic doctrine of art for art's sake, the defiant divorcing of +ethical and aesthetic values. Civilization no less than religion +must fight this. For it is as false in experience and as unclear in +thinking as could well be imagined. Its defense, so far as it has +any, is based upon the confusion in the pagan mind of morality with +moralizing, a confusion that no good humanist would ever permit +himself. Of course, the end of art is neither preaching nor teaching +but delighting. For that very reason, however, art, too, must +conform--hateful word!--conform to fixed standards. For the sense of +proportion, the instinct for elimination, is integral to art and this, +as Professor Babbitt points out, is attained only with the aid of +the ethical imagination.[18] Because without the ethical restraint, +the creative spirit roams among unbridled emotions; art becomes +impressionism. What it then produces may indeed be picturesque, +melodramatic, sensual, but it will not be beautiful because there +will be no imaginative wholeness in it. In other words, the artist +who divorces aesthetics from ethics does gain creative license, but +he gains it at the expense of a balanced and harmonious expression. +If you do not believe it, compare the Venus de Milo with the Venus de +Medici or a Rubens fleshy, spilling-out-of-her-clothes Magdalen with +a Donatello Madonna. When ethical restraint disappears, art tends to +caricature, it becomes depersonalized. The Venus de Milo is a living +being, a great personage; indeed, a genuine and gracious goddess. The +Venus de Medici has scarcely any personality at all; she is chiefly +objectified desire! The essence of art is not spontaneous expression +nor naked passion; the essence of art is critical expression, +restrained passion. + +[Footnote 18: _Rousseau and Romanticism_, p. 206.] + +Now, such extreme naturalism has been the continuing peril and the +arch foe of every successive civilization. It is the "reversion to +type" of the scientist, the "natural depravity" of the older theology, +the scoffing devil, with his eternal no! in Goethe's _Faust_. It tends +to accept all powerful impulses as thereby justified, all vital and +novel interests as _ipso facto_ beautiful and good. Nothing desirable +is ugly or evil. It pays no attention, except to ridicule them, to +the problems that vex high and serious souls: What is right and wrong? +What is ugly and beautiful? What is holy and what is profane? It +either refuses to admit the existence of these questions or else +asserts that, as insoluble, they are also negligible problems. To all +such stupid moralizing it prefers the click of the castanets! The +law, then, of this naturalism always and everywhere is the law of +rebellion, of ruthless self-assertion, of whim and impulse, of cunning +and of might. + +You may wonder why we, being preachers, have spent so much time +talking about it. Folk of this sort do not ordinarily flock to the +stenciled walls and carpeted floors of our comfortable, middle-class +Protestant meeting-houses. They are not attracted by Tiffany glass +windows, nor the vanilla-flavored music of a mixed quartet, nor the +oddly assorted "enrichments" we have dovetailed into a once puritan +order of worship. That is true, but it is also true that these are +they who need the Gospel; also that these folk do influence the +time-current that enfolds us and pervades the very air we breathe and +that they and their standards are profoundly influencing the youth of +this generation. You need only attend a few college dances to be sure +of that! One of the sad things about the Protestant preacher is his +usual willingness to move in a strictly professional society and +activity, his lack of extra-ecclesiastical interests, hence his narrow +and unskillful observations and perceptions outside his own parish and +his own field. + +Moreover, there are other forms in which naturalism is dominating +modern society. It began, like all movements, in literature and +philosophy and individual bohemianism; but it soon worked its way +into social and political and economic organizations. Now, when we are +dealing with them we are dealing with the world of the middle class; +this is our world. And here we find naturalism today in its most +brutal and entrenched expressions. Here it confronts every preacher +on the middle aisle of his Sunday morning congregation. We are +continually forgetting this because it is a common fallacy of our +hard-headed and prosperous parishioners to suppose that the vagaries +of philosophers and the maunderings of poets have only the slightest +practical significance. But few things could be further from the +truth. It is abstract thought and pure feeling which are perpetually +moulding the life of office and market and street. It has sometimes +been the dire mistake of preaching that it took only an indifferent +and contemptuous interest in such contemporary movements in literature +and art. Its attitude toward them has been determined by temperamental +indifference to their appeal. It forgets the significance of their +intellectual and emotional sources. This is, then, provincialism and +obtuseness and nowhere are they by their very nature more indefensible +or more disastrous than in the preacher of religion. + +Let us turn, then, to those organized expressions of society where +our own civilization is strained the most, where it is nearest to the +breaking point, namely, to our industrial and political order. Let us +ask ourselves if we do not find this naturalistic philosophy regnant +there. That we are surrounded by widespread industrial revolt, that we +see obvious political decadence on the one hand, and a determination +to experiment with fresh governmental processes on the other, few +would deny. It would appear to me that in both cases the revolt and +the decadence are due to that fierce, short creed of rebellion against +humane no less than religious standards, which has more and more +governed our national economic systems and our international political +intercourse. Let me begin with business and industry as they existed +before the war. I paint a general picture; there are many and notable +exceptions to it, human idealism there is in plenty, but it and they +only prove the rule. And as I paint the picture, ask yourselves the +two questions which should interest us as preachers regarding it. +First, by which of these three laws of human development, religious, +humanistic, naturalistic, has it been largely governed? Secondly, by +what law are men now attempting to solve its present difficulties? + +The present industrial situation is the product of two causes. One +of them was the invention of machinery and the discovery of steam +transit. These multiplied production. They made accessible unexploited +sources of raw material and new markets for finished goods. The +opportunities for lucrative trading and the profitableness of +overproduction which they made possible became almost immeasurable. +Before these discoveries western society was generally agricultural, +accompanied by cottage industries and guild trades. It was largely +made up of direct contacts and controlled by local interests. After +them it became a huge industrial empire of ramified international +relationships. + +The second factor in the situation was the intellectual and spiritual +nature of the society which these inventions entered. It was, as we +have seen, essentially humanistic. It believed much in the natural +rights of man. The individual was justified, by the natural order, in +seeking his separate good. If he only sought it hard enough and well +enough the result would be for the general welfare of society. Thus at +the moment when mechanical invention offered unheard-of opportunities +for material expansion and lucrative business, the thought and feeling +of the community pretty generally sanctioned an individualistic +philosophy of life. The result was tragic if inevitable. The new +industrial order offered both the practical incentive and the +theoretical justification for institutional declension from humane +to primitive standards. It is not to be supposed that men slipped +deliberately into paganism; the human mind is not so sinister as it +is stupid nor so cruel as it is unimaginative nor so brutal as it +is complacent. For the most part we do not really understand, in +our daily lives, what we are about. Hence society degenerated, as +it always does, in the confident and stubborn belief that it was +improving the time and doing God's service. But He that sitteth in the +heavens must have laughed, He must have had us in derision! + +For upon what law, natural, human, divine, has this new empire been +founded? That it has produced great humanists is gratefully +conceded; that real spiritual progress has issued from its incidental +cosmopolitanism is manifest; but which way has it fronted, what have +been its characteristic emphases and its controlling tendencies? +Let its own works testify. It has created a world of new and extreme +inequality, both in the distribution of material, of intellectual +and of spiritual goods. Here is a small group who own the land, the +houses, the factories, machinery and the tools. Here is a very large +group, without houses, without tools, without land or goods. At this +moment only 7 per cent of our 110,000,000 of American people have an +income of $3,000 or more; only 11/4 per cent have an income of $5,000 +or more! What law produced and justifies such a society? The unwritten +law of heaven? No. The law of humanism, of Confucius and Buddha and +Epictetus and Aurelius? No. The law of naked individualism; of might; +force; cunning? Yes. + +Here in our American cities are the overwealthy and the insolently +worldly people. They have their palatial town house, their broad +inland acres; some of them have their seaside homes, their fish and +game preserves as well. Here in our American cities are the alien, the +ignorant, the helpless, crowded into unclean and indecent tenements, +sometimes 1,000 human beings to the acre. What justifies a +pseudo-civilization which permits such tragic inequality of fortune? +Inequality of endowment? No. First, because there is no natural +inequality so extreme as that; secondly, because no one would dare +assert that these cleavages in the industrial state even remotely +parallel the corresponding cleavages in the distribution of ability +among mankind. What justifies it, then? The unwritten law of heaven? +No. The law of humanism? No. The law of the jungle? Yes. + +Now for our second question. By what law, admitting many exceptions, +are men on the whole trying to change this situation at once indecent +and impious? This is a yet more important query. Our world has +obviously awakened to the rottenness in Denmark. But where are we +turning for our remedy? Is it to the penitence and confession, the +public-mindedness, the identification of the fate of the individual +with the fate of the whole group which is the religious impulse? Is it +to a disinterested and even-handed justice, the high legalism of the +Golden Rule, which would be the humanist's way? Or is it to the old +law of aggression and might transferring the gain thereof from the +present exploiters to the recently exploited? + +It would appear to be generally true that society at this moment is +not chiefly concerned with either love or justice, renunciation +or discipline, not with the supplanting of the old order, but +with perpetuating the naturalistic principle by means of a partial +redivision of the spoils, a series of compromises, designed to make it +more tolerable for one class of its former victims. Thus in capital we +have the autocratic corporation, atoning for past outrages on humanity +by a well-advertised benevolent paternalism, calculated to make men +comfortable so that they may not struggle to be free, or by huge gifts +to education, to philanthropy, to religion. In labor we see men rising +in brute fury against both employer and society. They deny the basic +necessities of life to their fellow citizens; they bring the bludgeon +of the picket down upon the head of the scab; by means of the closed +shop they refuse the right to work to their brother craftsmen; they +level the incapable men up and the capable men down by insisting upon +uniformity of production and wage. Thus they replace the artificial +inequality of the aristocrat with the artificial equality of the +proletariat, striving to organize a new tyranny for the old. It is +significant that our society believes that this is the only way by +which it can gain its rights. That betrays our real infidelity. For +between the two, associated capital and associated labor, what is +there to choose today? By what law, depending upon what sort of power, +is each seeking its respective ends? By the unwritten law of heaven? +No. By the humane law, some objective standard of common rights and +inclusive justice? No! By the ancient law that the only effectual +appeal is to might and that opportunity therefore justifies the deed? +On the whole it is to this question that we must answer, yes! + +Turn away now from national economics and industry to international +politics. Does not its _real politik_ make the philosophical +naturalism of Spencer and Haeckel seem like child's play? For long +there has been one code of ethics for the peaceful penetration of +commercially desirable lands, for punitive expeditions against peoples +possessed of raw materials, for international banking and finance +and diplomatic intercourse, and another code for private honor and +personal morality. There has been one moral scale of values for the +father of his family and another for the same man as ward or state or +federal politician; one code to govern internal disputes within the +nation; another code to govern external disputes between nations. +And what is this code that produced the Prussian autocracy, that long +insisted on the opium trade between India and China, that permitted +the atrocities in the Belgian Congo, that sent first Russia and then +Japan into Port Arthur and first Germany and then Japan into Shantung, +that insists upon retaining the Turk in Constantinople, that produced +the already discredited treaty of Versailles? What is the code that +made the deadly rivalry of mounting armaments between army and army, +navy and navy, of the Europe before 1914? The code, to be sure, of +cunning, of greed, of might; the materialism of the philosopher and +the naturalism of the sensualist, clothed in grandiose forms and +covered with the insufferable hypocrisy of solemn phrases. There are +no conceivable ethical or religious interests and no humane goals +or values that justify these things. International diplomacy and +politics, economic imperialism, using political machinery and power to +half-cloak, half-champion its ends, has no law of Christian sacrifice +and no law of Greek moderation behind it. On the contrary, what +should interest the Christian preacher, as he regards it, is its sheer +anarchy, its unashamed and naked paganism. Its law is that of the +unscrupulous and the daring, not that of the compassionate or the +just. In what does scientific and emotional naturalism issue, then? In +this; a man, if he be a man, will stand above divine or human law and +make it operative only for the weaklings beneath. Wherever opportunity +offers he will consult his own will and gratify it to the full. To +have, to get, to buy, to sell, to exploit the world for power, to +exploit one's self for pleasure, this is to live. The only law is +the old primitive snarl; each man for himself, let the devil take the +hindmost. + +There is only one end to such naturalism and that is increasing +anarchy. It means my will against your will; my appetite for gold, for +land, for women, for luxury and beauty against your appetite; until +at length it culminates in the open madness of physical violence, +physical destruction, physical death and despair. There can be no +other end to it. If men dare not risk being the lovers of their kind, +then they must choose between being the slaves of duty or the slaves +of force. What are we reading in the public prints and hearing from +platform and stage? The unending wail for "rights"; the assertion of +the individual. Ceased is the chant of duty, forgotten the sacrifice +of love! + +The events which have transformed the world since 1914 are an awful +commentary upon such naturalism and a dreadful confirmation of our +indictment. Before the spectacle that many of us saw on those sodden +fields of Flanders, both humanist and religionist should be alike +aghast. How childish not to perceive that its causes, as distinguished +from its occasions, were common to our whole civilization. How +perverse not to confess that beneath all our modern life, as its +dominating motive, has lain that ruthless and pagan philosophy, which +creates alike the sybarite, the tyrant and the anarch; the philosophy +in which lust goes hand in hand with cruelty and unrestrained will to +power is accompanied by unmeasured and unscrupulous force. + +It is incredible to me how men can take this delirium of +self-destruction, this plunging of the sword into our own heart in +a final frenzy of competing anarchy and deck it out with heroic and +poetic values, fling over it the seamless robe of Christ, unfurl above +it the banner of the Cross! The only contribution the World War +has made to religion has been to throw into intolerable relief the +essentially irreligious and inhumane character of our civilization. + +Of course, the men and the ideals who actually fought the contest +as distinguished from the men and ideals which precipitated it and +determined its movements, fill gallant pages with their heroism and +holy sacrifice. For wars are fought by the young at the dictation of +the old, and youth is everywhere humane and poetic. Thus, if I may be +permitted to quote from a book of mine recently published: + +"Our sons were bade to enter it as a 'war to end war,' a final +struggle which should abolish the intolerable burdens of armaments and +conscription. They were taught to exalt it as a strife for oppressed +and helpless peoples; the prelude to a new brotherhood and cooperation +among the nations, and to that reign of justice which is the +antecedent condition of peace. + +"They did their part. With adventurous faith they glorified their +cause and offered their fresh lives to make it good. Their sacrifice, +the idealism which lay behind it in their respective communities--the +unofficial perceptions that they, the fathers and mothers and the +boys, were fighting to vindicate the supremacy of the moral over the +material factors of life--this has made an imperishable gift to the +new world and our children's lives. When an entire commuity rises to +something of magnanimity, and a nation identifies its fate with +the lot of weaker states, then even mutilation and death may be +gift-bringers to mankind. + +"But it is more significant to our purpose to note that the blood of +youth had hardly ceased to run before the officials began to dicker +for the material fruits of conquest. Not how to obtain peace but how +to exploit victory--to wrest each for himself the larger tribute from +the fallen foe--became their primary concern. So the youth appear to +have died for a tariff, perished for trade routes and harbors, for +the furthering of the commercial advantages of this nation as against +that, for the seizing of the markets of the world. They supposed they +fought 'to end business of that sort' but they returned to find their +accredited representatives contemplating universal military service +in frank expectation of 'the next war.' They strove for the +'self-determination of peoples' but find that it was for some people, +but not all. And as for the cooperation among nations, Judge Gary has +recently told us that, as a result of the war, we should prepare for +'the fiercest commercial struggle in the history of mankind!'"[19] + +[Footnote 19: _Can the Church Survive_? pp. 14 ff.] + +Is it not clear, then, today that behind the determining as +distinguished from the fighting forces of the war there lay a +commercial and financial imperialism, directed by small and powerful +minorities, largely supported by a sympathetic press which used the +machinery of representative democracy to overthrow a more naked and +brutal imperialism whose machinery was that of a military autocracy? +Motives, scales of value, methods and desired ends, were much the same +for all these small governing groups as they operated from behind the +various shibboleths whose magic they used to nerve the arms of the +contending forces. The conclusion of the war has revealed the common +springs of action of the professional soldier, statesman, banker, +ecclesiastic, in our present civilization. On the whole they accept +the rule of physical might as the ultimate justification of conduct. +They are the leaders and spokesmen in an economic, social and +political establishment which, pretending to civilization, always +turns when strained or imperiled by foreign or domestic dangers to +physical force as the final arbiter. + +It is truly ominous to see the gradual extension of this naturalistic +principle still going on in the state. The coal strike was settled, +not by arbitration, but by conference, and "conferences" appear to +be replacing disinterested arbitration. This means that decisions are +being made on the principle of compromise, dictated by the expediency +of the moment, not by reference to any third party, or to some fixed +and mutually recognized standards. This is as old as Pythagoras and +as new as Bergson and Croce; it assumes that the concept of justice +is man-made, produced and to be altered by expediences and +practicalities, always in flux. But the essence of a civilization is +the humanistic conviction that there is something fixed and abiding +around which life may order and maintain itself. + +Progress rests on the Platonic theory that laws are not made by man +but discovered by him; that they exist as eternal distinctions +beyond the reach of his alteration. Again, an unashamed and rampant +naturalism has just been sweeping this country in the wave of mean +and cruel intolerance which insists upon the continued imprisonment +of political heretics, which would prohibit freedom of speech by +governmental decree and oppose new or distasteful ideas by the +physical suppression of the thinker. The several and notorious +attempts beginning with deportations and ending with the unseating of +the New York assemblymen, to combat radical thinking by physical +or political persecution--attempts uniformly mean and universally +impotent in history--are as sinister as they are stupid. The only +law which justifies the persecution and imprisonment of religious and +political heretics is neither the law of reason nor the law of +love, but the law of fear, hence of tyranny and force. When a +twentieth-century nation begins to raise the ancient cry, "Come now +and let us kill this dreamer and we shall see what will become of his +dreams," that nation is declining to the naturalistic level. For +this clearly indicates that the humane and religious resources of +civilization, of which the church is among the chief confessed and +appointed guardians, are utterly inadequate to the strain imposed +upon them. Hence force, not justice, though they may sometimes have +happened to coincide, and power, not reason or faith, are becoming the +embodiment of the state today. + +We come now to the final question of our chapter. How has this renewal +of naturalism affected the church and Christian preaching? On the +whole today, the Protestant church is accepting this naturalistic +attitude. In a signed editorial in the _New Republic_ for the last +week of December, 1919, Herbert Croly said, under the significant +title of "Disordered Christianity": "Both politicians and property +owners consider themselves entitled to ignore Christian guidance in +exercising political and economic power, to expect or to compel the +clergy to agree with them and if necessary to treat disagreement as +negligible. The Christian church, as a whole, or in part, does not +protest against the practically complete secularization of political, +economic and social life." + +You may say such extra-ecclesiastical strictures are unsympathetic and +ill informed. But here is what Washington Gladden wrote in January, +1918: "If after the war the church keeps on with the same old +religion, there will be the same old hell on earth that religious +leaders have been preparing for centuries, the full fruit of which we +are gathering now. The church must cease to sanction those principles +of militaristic and atheistic nationalism by which the rulers of the +earth have so long kept the earth at war."[20] Thus from within the +sanctuary is the same indictment of our naturalism. + +[Footnote 20: The _Pacific_, January 17, 1918.] + +But you may say Dr. Gladden was an old man and a little extreme in +some of his positions and he belonged to a past generation. But there +are many signs at the present moment of the increasing secularizing +of our churches. The individualism of our services, their casual +character, their romantic and sentimental music, their minimizing of +the offices of prayer and devotion, their increasing turning of the +pulpit into a forum for political discussion and a place of common +entertainment all indicate it. There is an accepted secularity today +about the organization. Church and preacher have, to a large degree, +relinquished their essential message, dropped their religious values. +We are pretty largely today playing our game the world's way. We are +adopting the methods and accepting the standards of the market. In +an issue last month of the _Inter-Church Bulletin_ was the following +headline: "Christianity Hand in Hand with Business," and underneath +the following: + +"George W. Wickersham, formerly United States attorney-general, +says in an interview that there is nothing incompatible between +Christianity and modern business methods. A leading lay official of +the Episcopal Church declares that what the churches need more than +anything else is a strong injection of business method into their +management. 'Some latter-day Henry Drummond,' he said, 'should write a +book on Business Law in the Spiritual World.'" + +In this same paper, in the issue of March 27, 1920, there was +an article commending Christian missions. The first caption ran: +"Commercial Progress Follows Work of Protestant Missions," and its +subtitle was "How Missionaries Aid Commerce." Here is Business Law in +the Spiritual World! Here is the church commended to the heathen and +the sinner as an advertising agent, an advance guard of commercial +prosperity, a hawker of wares! If the _Bulletin_ ever penetrates to +those benighted lands of the Orient upon which we are thus anxious +to bestow the so apparent benefits of our present civilization it is +conceivable that even the untutored savage, to say nothing of Chinamen +and Japanese, might read it with his tongue in his cheek. + +Such naive opportunism and frantic immediacy would seem to me +conclusive proof of the disintegration and anarchy of the spirit +within the sanctuary. It is a part of it all that everyone has today +what he is pleased to call "his own religion." And nearly everyone +made it himself, or thinks he did. Conscience has ceased to be a check +upon personal impulse, the "thou shalt not" of the soul addressed to +untutored desires, and become an amiable instinct for doing good to +others. The Christian is an effusive creature, loving everything and +everybody; exalting others in terms of himself. We abhor religious +conventions; in particular we hasten to proclaim that we are free from +the stigma of orthodoxy. We do not go to church to learn, to meditate, +to repent and to pray; we go to be happy, to learn how to keep young +and prosperous; it is good business; it pays. We have a new and most +detestable cant; someone has justly said that the natural man in us +has been masquerading as the spiritual man by endlessly prating +of "courage," "patriotism"--what crimes have been committed in +its name!--"development of backward people," "brotherhood of man," +"service of those less fortunate than ourselves," "natural ethical +idealism," "the common destinies of nations"--and now he rises up and +glares at us with stained fingers and bloodshot eyes![21] In so far +as we have succumbed to naturalism, we have become cold and shrewd and +flexible; shallow and noisy and effusive; have been rather proud to +believe anything in general and almost nothing in particular; become +a sort of religious jelly fish, bumping blindly about in seas of +sentiment and labeling that peace and brotherhood and religion! + +[Footnote 21: _Rousseau and Romanticism_, p. 376.] + +Here, then, is the state of organized religion today in our churches. +They are voluntary groups of men and women, long since emancipated +from the control of the church as such, or of the minister as an +official, set free also from allegiance to historic statements, +traditional, intellectual sanctions of our faith; moulded by the +time spirit which enfolds them to a half-unconscious ignoring or +depreciation of what must always be the fundamental problem of +religion--the relationship of the soul, not to its neighbor, but to +God. Hence the almost total absence of doctrinal preaching--indeed, +how dare we preach Christian doctrine to the industry and politics and +conduct of this age? Hence the humiliating striving to keep up +with popular movements, to conform to the moment. Hence the placid +acceptance of military propaganda and even of vindictive exhortation. + +Is it any wonder then that we cannot compete with the state or the +world for the loyalty of men and women? We have no substitute to +offer. Who need be surprised at the restlessness, the fluidity, the +elusiveness of the Protestant laity? And who need wonder that at this +moment we are depending upon the externals of machinery, publicity and +money to reinstate ourselves as a spiritual society in the community? +A well-known official of our communion, speaking before a meeting of +ministers in New York City on Tuesday, March 23, was quoted in the +_Springfield Republican_ of the next day as saying: "The church holds +the only cure for the possible anarchy of the future and offers the +only preventative for the hell which we have had for the last five +years. But to meet this challenge the church can only go as far--as +the money permits." + +Has not the time arrived when, if we are to find ourselves again in +the world, we should ask, What is this religion in which we believe? +What is the real nature of its resources? What the real nature of its +remedies? Do we dare define it? And, if we do, would we dare to assert +it, come out from the world and live for it, in the midst of the +paganism of this moment? Is it true that without the loaves and the +fishes we can do nothing? If so, then we, too, have succumbed to +naturalism indeed! + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + +THE UNMEASURED GULF + + +You may remember that when Daniel Webster made his reply to Hayne +in the Senate he began the argument by a return to first principles. +"When the mariner," said he, "has been tossed for many days in thick +weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the +first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his +latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his +true course. Let us imitate this prudence and before we float +further on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we +departed." He then asked for the reading of the resolution. + +It is to some such rehearsing of our original message, a restatement +of the thesis which we, as preachers, are set to commend, that we turn +ourselves in these pages. The brutal dislocations of the war, and the +long and confused course of disintegrating life that lay behind it, +have driven civilization from its true course and deflected the church +from her normal path, her natural undertakings. Let us try, then, to +get back to our charter; define once more what we really stand for; +view our human life, not as captain of industry, or international +politician, or pagan worldling, or even classic hero, would regard +it, but see it through the eyes of a Paul, an Augustine, a Bernard, +a Luther, the Lord Jesus. We have already remarked how timely and +necessary is this redefining of our religious values. If, as Lessing +said, it is the end of education to make men to see things that are +large as large and things that are small as small, it is even more +truly the end of Christian preaching. What we are most in need of +today is a corrected perspective of our faith; without it we darken +counsel as we talk in confusion. So, while we may not attempt here a +detailed and reasoned statement of religious belief, we may try to say +what is the fundamental attitude, both toward nature and toward man, +that lies underneath the religious experience. We have seen that we +are not stating that attitude very clearly nowadays in our pulpits; +hence we are often dealing there with sentimental or stereotyped or +humane or even pagan interpretations. Yet nothing is more fatal for +us; if we peddle other men's wares they will be very sure that we +despise our own. + +We approach, then, the third and final level of experience to which we +referred in the first lecture. We have seen that the humanist accepts +the law of measure; he rests back upon the selected and certified +experience of his race; from within himself, as the noblest inhabitant +of the planet, and by the further critical observation of nature he +proposes to interpret and guide his life. He is convinced that this +combined authority of reason and observation will lead to the _summum +bonum_ of the golden mean in which unbridled self-expression will be +seen as equally unwise and indecent and ascetic repression as both +unworthy and unnecessary. It is important to again remind ourselves +that confidence in the human spirit as the master of its own fate, +and in reason and natural observation as offering it the means of this +self-control and understanding, are essential humanistic principles. +The humanist world is rational, social, ethical. + +Over against this reasonable and disciplined view of man and of +his world stands naturalism. It exploits the defects of the classic +"virtue"; it is, so to speak, humanism run to seed. Just as religion +so often sinks into bigotry, cruelty and superstitition, so humanism, +in lesser souls, declines to egotism, license and sentimentality. +Naturalism, either by a shallow and insincere use of the materialistic +view of the universe, or by the exalting of wanton feeling and +whimsical fancy as ends in themselves, attempts the identification of +man with the natural order, permits him to conceive of each desire, +instinct, impulse, as, being natural, thereby defensible and +valuable. Hence it permits him to disregard the imposed laws of +civilization--those fixed points of a humane order--and to return +in principle, and so far as he dares in action, to the unlimited and +irresponsible individualism of the horde. Inevitably the law of the +jungle is deliberately exalted, or unconsciously adopted, over against +the humanist law of moderation and discipline. + +The humanist, then, critically studies nature and mankind, finding in +her matrix and in his own spirit data for the guidance of the race, +improving upon it by a cultivated and collective experience. The +naturalist uncritically exalts nature, seeks identification with it so +that he may freely exploit both himself and it. The faith of the one +is in the self-sufficiency of the disciplined spirit of mankind; the +unfaith of the other is in its glorification of the natural world and +in its allegiance to the momentary devices and desires of the separate +heart. It will be borne in mind that these definitions are too +clear-cut; that these divisions appear in the complexities of human +experience, blurred and modified by the welter of cross currents, +subsidiary conflicting movements, which obscure all human problems. +They represent genuine and significant divisions of thought and +conduct. But they appear in actual experience as controlling emphases +rather than mutually exclusive territories. + +Now, the clearest way to get before us the religious view of the world +and the law which issues from it is to contrast it with the other two. +In the first place, the religious temperament takes a very different +view of nature than either romantic, or to a less degree +scientific, naturalism. Naturalism is subrational on the one hand or +non-imaginative on the other, in that it emphasizes the _continuity_ +between man and the physical universe. The religious man is +superrational and nobly imaginative as he emphasizes the _difference_ +between man and nature. He does not forget man's biological kinship to +the brute, his intimate structural and even psychological relation to +the primates, but he is aware that it is not in dwelling upon these +facts that his spirit discovers what is distinctive to man as man. +That he believes will be found by accenting the _chasm_ between man +and nature. He does not know how to conceive of a personal being +except by thinking of him as proceeding by other, though not +conflicting, laws and by moving toward different secondary ends from +those laws and ends which govern the impersonal external world. This +sense of the difference between man and nature he shares with the +humanist, only the humanist does not carry it as far as he does and +hence may not draw from it his ultimate conclusions. + +The religious view, then, begins with the perception of man's +isolation in the natural order; his difference from his surroundings. +That sense of separateness is fundamental to the religious nature. The +false sentiment and partial science of the pagan which stresses the +identification of man and beast is the first quarrel that religionist +and humanist alike have with him. Neither of them sanctions +this perversion of thought and feeling which either projects the +impressionistic self so absurdly and perilously into the natural +order, or else minimizes man's imaginative and intellectual power, +leveling him down to the amoral instinct of the brute. "How much +more," said Jesus, "is a man better than a sheep!" One of the greatest +of English humanists was Matthew Arnold. You remember his sonnet, +entitled, alas! "To a Preacher," which runs as follows: + + "In harmony with Nature? Restless fool, + Who with such heat doth preach what were to thee, + When true, the last impossibility-- + To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool! + Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, + And in that more lie all his hopes of good, + Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood; + Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore; + Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest; + Nature forgives no debt and fears no grave; + Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest. + Man must begin; know this, where Nature ends; + Nature and man can never be fast friends. + Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!" + +Religionist and humanist alike share this clear sense of separateness. +Literature is full of the expression of it. Religion, in especial, +has little to do with the natural world as such. It is that other and +inner one, which can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell, with +which it is chiefly concerned. Who can forget Othello's soliloquy as +he prepares to darken his marriage chamber before the murder of his +wife? + + "Put out the light, and then put out the light. + If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, + I can again thy former light restore, + Should I repent me; but once put out thy light, + Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, + I know not where is that Promethean heat, + That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd the rose + I cannot give it vital growth again, + It needs must wither." + +Indeed, how vivid to us all is this difference between man and nature. +"I would to heaven," Byron traced on the back of the manuscript of +_Don Juan_, + + "I would to heaven that I were so much clay, + As I am bone, blood, marrow, passion, feeling." + +Ah me! So at many times would most of us. And in that sense that we +are not is where the religious consciousness takes its beginning. + +Here is the sense of the gap between man and the natural world felt +because man has no power over it. He cannot swerve nor modify its +laws, nor do his laws acknowledge its ascendency over them. But +what makes the gulf deeper is the sense of the immeasurable moral +difference between a thinking, feeling, self-estimating being and all +this unheeding world about him. Whatever it is that looks out from the +windows of our eyes something not merely of wonder and desire but also +of fear and repulsion must be there as it gazes into so cruel as well +as so alien an environment. For a moral being to glorify nature as +such is pure folly or sheer sentimentality. For he knows that her +apparent repose and beauty is built up on the ruthless and unending +warfare of matched forces, it represents a dreadful equilibrium of +pain. He knows, too, that that in him which allies him with +this natural world is his baser, not his better part. This nobly +pessimistic attitude toward the natural universe and toward man so far +as he shares in its characteristics, is found in all classic systems +of theology and has dominated the greater part of Christian +thinking. If it is ignored today by the pseudo-religionists and +the sentimentalists; it is clearly enough perceived by contemporary +science and contemporary art. The biologist understands it. "I know of +no study," wrote Thomas Huxley, "which is so unutterably saddening +as that of the evolution of humanity as set forth in the annals of +history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the +marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more +intelligent than the other brutes; a blind prey to impulses which as +often as not lead him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions +which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his +physical life with barren toil and battle. He attains a certain degree +of comfort, and develops a more or less workable theory of life in +such favorable situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or of Egypt, +and then, for thousands and thousands of years struggles with various +fortunes, attended by infinite wickedness, bloodshed and misery, to +maintain himself at this point against the greed and ambition of his +fellow men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting all +those who first try to get him to move on; and when he has moved +a step farther he foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his +victims. He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move a +step yet farther."[22] + +[Footnote 22: "Agnosticism," the _Nineteenth Century_, February, +1889.] + +And no less does the artist, the man of high and correct feeling, +perceive the immeasurable distance between uncaring nature and +suffering men and women. There is, for instance, the passage in _The +Education of Henry Adams_, in which Adams speaks of the death of +his sister at Bagni di Lucca. "In the singular color of the Tuscan +atmosphere, the hills and vineyards of the Apennines seemed bursting +with midsummer blood. The sick room itself glowed with the Italian joy +of life; friends filled it; no harsh northern lights pierced the soft +shadows; even the dying woman shared the sense of the Italian summer, +the soft velvet air, the humor, the courage, the sensual fullness of +Nature and man. She faced death, as women mostly do, bravely and even +gayly, racked slowly to unconsciousness but yielding only to violence, +as a soldier sabred in battle. For many thousands of years, on these +hills and plains, Nature had gone on sabring men and women with the +same air of sensual pleasure. + +"Impressions like these are not reasoned or catalogued in the mind; +they are felt as a part of violent emotion; and the mind that feels +them is a different one from that which reasons; it is thought +of a different power and a different person. The first serious +consciousness of Nature's gesture--her attitude toward life--took form +then as a phantasm, a nightmare, an insanity of force. For the first +time the stage scenery of the senses collapsed; the human mind felt +itself stripped naked, vibrating in a void of shapeless energies, +with resistless mass, colliding, crushing, wasting and destroying what +these same energies had created and labored from eternity to perfect." + +Here is a vivid interpretation of a universal human experience. +Might not any one of us who had endured it turn upon the pagan and +sentimentalist, crying in the mood of a Swift or a Voltaire, "_Ca vous +amuse, la vie_"? The abstract natural rights of the eighteenth century +smack of academic complacency before this. The indignation we feel +against the insolent individualism of a Louis XIV who cried "_L'etat +c'est moi_!" or against the industrial overlord who spills the tears +of women for his ambition, the sweat of the children for his greed, +is as nothing beside the indignation with the natural order which any +biological study would arouse except as the scientist perceives that +indignation is, for him, beside the point and the religionist believes +that it proceeds from not seeing far enough into the process. This +is why there is an essential absurdity in any naturalistic system of +ethics. Even the clown can say, + + "Here's a night that pities + Neither wise men nor fools." + +This common attitude of the religionist toward nature as a remote +and cruel world, alien to our spirits, is abundantly reflected in +literature. It finds a sort of final consummation in the intuitive +insight, the bright understanding of the creative spirits of our race. +What Aristotle defines as the tragic emotions, the sense of the terror +and the pity of human life, arise partly from this perception of the +isolation always and keenly felt by dramatist and prophet and poet. +They know well that Nature does not exist by our law; that we neither +control nor understand it; is it not our friend? + +There is, then, the law of identity between man and nature, found in +their common physical origin; there is also the law of difference. It +is on that aspect of reality that religion places its emphasis. It +is with this approach to understanding ourselves that preachers, as +distinguished from scientists, deal. Our present society is traveling +farther and farther away from reality in so far as it turns either to +the outside world of fact, or to the domain of natural law, expecting +to find in these the elements of insight for the fresh guidance of +the human spirit. Not there resides the secret of the beings of whom +Shelley said, + + "We look before and after + And pine for what is not, + Our sincerest laughter + With some pain is fraught." + +Instinct is a base, a prime factor, part of the matrix of personality. +But personality is not instinct; it is instinct plus a different +force; instinct transformed by spiritual insight and controlled by +moral discipline. The man of religion, therefore, finds himself not +in one but two worlds, not indeed mutually exclusive, having a common +origin, but nevertheless significantly distinct. Each is incomplete +without the other, each in a true sense non-existent without the +other. But that which is most vital to man's world is unknown in the +domain of nature. Already the perception of a dualism is here. + +But now a third element comes into it. There is something spiritually +common to nature and man behind the one, within the other. This +Something is the origin, the responsible agent for man's and nature's +physical identity. This Something binds the separates into a sort of +whole. This, I suppose, is what Professor Hocking refers to when he +says, "the original source of the knowledge of God is an experience +which might be described as of _not being alone in knowing the world_, +and especially the world of nature."[23] Thus the religious man +recognizes beyond the gulf, behind the chasm, something more like +himself than it. When he contemplates nature, he sees something other +than nature; not a world which is what it seems to be, but a world +whose chief significance is that it is more than it seems to be. It is +a world where appearance and reality are inextricably mingled and yet +sublimely and significantly separate. In short, the naturalist, the +pagan, takes the world as it stands; it is just what it appears; the +essence of his irreligion is that he perceives nothing in it that +needs to be explained. But the religionist knows that the world +which lies before our mortal vision so splendid and so ruthless, so +beautiful and so dreadful, does really gain both its substance and +significance from immaterial and unseen powers. It is significant +not in itself but because it hides the truth. It points forever to a +beyond. It is the vague and insubstantial pageant of a dream. Behind +it, within the impenetrable shadows, stands the Infinite Watcher of +the sons of men. + +[Footnote 23: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 236.] + +In every age religious souls have voiced this unearthliness of +reality, the noble other-worldliness of the goals of the natural +order. "Heard melodies are sweet, but unheard melodies are sweeter." +Poet, philosopher and mystic have sung their song or proclaimed their +message knowing that they were moving about in worlds not realized, +clearly perceiving the incompleteness of the phenomenal world and the +delusive nature of sense perceptions. They have known a Reality which +they could not comprehend; felt a Presence which they could not grasp. +They have found strength for the battle and peace for the pain by +regarding nature as a dim projection, a tantalizing intimation of that +other, conscious and creative life, that originating and directive +force, which is not nature any more than the copper wire is the +electric fluid which it carries--a force which was before it, which +moves within it, which shall be after it. + +So poet and believer and mystic find the key to nature, the +interpretation of that alien and cruel world, not by sinking to its +indifferent level, not by sentimental exaltation of its specious +peace, its amoral cruelty and beauty, but by regarding it as the +expression, the intimation rather, of a purposive Intelligence, a +silent and infinite Force, beyond it all. So the pagan effuses over +nature, gilding with his sentimentality the puddles that the beasts +would cough at. And the scientist is interested in efficient causes, +seeing nature as an unbroken sequence, an endless uniformity of cause +and effect, against whose iron chain the spirit of mankind wages a +foredoomed but never ending revolt. But the religionist, confessing +the ruthless indifference, the amorality which he distrusts and +fears, and not denying the majestic uniformity of order, nevertheless +declares that these are not self-made, that the amorality is but +one half and that the confusing half of the tale. The whole creation +indeed groaneth and travaileth in pain, but for a final cause, which +alone interprets or justifies it, and which eventually shall set it +free. As a matter of fact, nearly all poets and artists thus view +nature in the light of final causes, though often instinctively and +unconsciously so. For what they sing or paint or mould is not the +landscape that we see, the flesh we touch, but the life behind it, +the light that never was on land or sea. What they give us is not +a photograph or an inventory--it is worlds away from such naive and +lying realism. But they hint at the inexpressible behind expression; +paint the beauty which is indistinguishable from nature but not +identical with Nature. They make us see that not she, red in tooth and +claw, but that intangible and supernal something-more, is what gives +her the cleansing bath of loveliness. No reflective or imaginative +person needs to be greatly troubled, therefore, by any purely +mechanical or materialistic conception of the universe. They who +would commend that view of the cosmos have not only to reckon with +philosophical and religious idealism, but also with all the bright +band of poets and artists and seers. Such an issue once resolutely +forced would therewith collapse, for it would pit the qualitative +standards against the quantitative, the imagination against +literalism, the creative spirit in man against the machine in him. + +Here, then, is the difference between the naturalist's and the +religionist's attitude toward Nature. The believer judges Nature, well +aware of the gulf between himself and her, hating with inexpressible +depth of indignation and repudiating with profound contempt the +sybarite's identification of human and natural law. But also he comes +back to her, not to accept in wonder her variable outward form, but to +worship in awe before her invariable inner meaning. Sometimes, like +so many of the humanists, he rises only to a vague sense of the mystic +unity that fills up the interspaces of the world, and cries with +Wordsworth: + + "... And I have felt + A presence that disturbs me with the joy + Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime + Of something far more deeply interfused, + Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, + And the round ocean and the living air, + And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; + A motion and a spirit, that impels + All thinking things, all objects of all thought, + And rolls through all things."[24] + +Sometimes he dares to personalize this ultimate and then ascends to +the supreme poetry of the religious experience and feels the cosmic +consciousness, the eternal "I" of this strange world, which fills it +with observant majesty. And then he chants, + + "The heavens declare the glory of God, + The firmament showeth his handiwork." + +Or he whispers, + + "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit, + Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? + If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there, + If I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there, + If I take the wings of the morning + And dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth, + Even there shall Thy hand lead me + And Thy right hand shall hold me."[25] + +Indeed, the devout religionist almost never thinks of nature as such. +She is always the bush which flames and is not consumed. Therefore he +walks softly all his days, conscious that God is near. + + "Of old," he says, "Thou hast laid the foundations of the earth; + And the heavens are the work of Thy hands. + They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; + Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; + As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed; + But Thou art the same, + And Thy years shall have no end."[26] + +To him nature is the glass through which he sees darkly and often with +a darkling mind, the all-pervasive Presence; it is the veil--the veil +that covers the face of God. + +[Footnote 24: _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_, stanza +3, ll. 36-45.] + +[Footnote 25: Psalm cxxxix. 7-9.] + +[Footnote 26: Psalm cii. 25-27.] + +Here, then, we have the contrasting attitude of worldling and believer +toward nature, the outward universe. Now we come to the contrasting +attitude of humanist and believer toward man, the world within. For +why are we so sure, first, of the chasm between ourselves and +Nature and, second, that we can bridge that chasm by reaching out to +something behind and beyond her which is more like us than her? +What gives us the key to her dualism? Why do we think that there is +Something which perpetually beckons to us through her, makes awful +signs of an intimate and significant relationship? Because we feel +a similar chasm, an equal cleft in our own hearts, a division in the +moral nature of mankind. We know that gulf between us and the outward +world because we know the greater gulf between flesh and spirit, +between the natural man and the real man, between the "I" and the +"other I." + +Here is where the humanist bids us good-by and we must go forward on +our road alone. For he will not acknowledge that there is anything +essential or permanent in that divided inner world; he would minimize +it or explain it away. But we know it is there and the reason we know +there is Something without which can bridge the outer chasm is because +we also know there is Something-Else within which might bridge this +one. For we who are religious know that within the depths and the +immensities of this inner world, where there is no space but where +there is infinite largeness, where there is no time but where there is +perpetual strife, there is Something-Else as well as the "I" and the +"other I," and it is that He who is the Something-Else who alone can +close the gap in that divided kingdom and make us one with ourselves, +hence with Himself and hence with His world. + +You ask how we can say, "He's there; He knows." We answer that this +"other," this "He" is a constant figure in the experience; always +in the vision; an integral part of the perception. What is He like? +"He" is purity and compassion and inexorableness. Something +fixed, immutable, not to be tricked, not to be evaded and oh! +all-comprehending. He sees, his eyes run to and fro in all the dark +and wide, the light and high dominions of the soul. If we will not +come to terms with "Him," that eternal and changeless life will be the +cliff against which the tumultuous waves of the divided spirit shall +shatter and dissipate into soundless foam; if we will come to terms, +relinquish, accept, surrender, then that purity and that compassion +will be the cleansing tide, the healing and restoring flood in which +we sink in the ecstasy of self-loss to arise refreshed, radiant, and +made whole. + +So we reckon from within out. The religious view of the world is based +upon the religious experience of the soul. We have no other means of +getting at reality. I know that there is Something-more than me and +Something-more than the nature outside of me, because we know that +there is Something which is not me and is not nature, inside of me. So +the man of religion, like any other poet, artist, seer, looks in his +own heart and writes. What he finds there is real, or else, as far +as he is concerned, there is no reality. He does not assert that +this reality is the final and utter truth. But he knows it is his +trustworthy mediator of that truth. + +Here, then, is an immense separation between religionist and both +humanist and naturalist; a separation so complete as to come full +circle. We are convinced of the secondary value, both of natural +appearances and of the mortal, temporal consciousness. So we +substitute for impertinent familiarity with Nature, a reverent regard +for what she half reveals, half hides. We interpret her by ourselves. +We are the same compound of identity and difference. We acknowledge +our continuity with the natural world, our intimate and tragic +alliance with the dust, but we also know that we, within ourselves, +are Something-Else as well. And it is that Something-Else in us which +makes the significant part of us, which sets our value and place in +the scale of being. + +In short, the dualism of nature is revealed in the dualism of the +soul. There is a gulf within, and if only man can span the inner +chasm, he will know how to bridge the outer. He must begin by finding +God within himself, or he will never find Him anywhere. Now, it is out +of this sense of a separation within himself, from himself and +from the Author of himself, that there arises that awful sense of +helplessness, of dependence, of bewilderment, which is the second +great element in the religious life. Man is alone in the world; man +is helpless in the world; man ought not to be alone in the world; +man is therefore under scrutiny and condemnation; he must find +reconciliation, harmony, companionship, somehow, somewhere. Hence +the religious man is not arrogant like the pagan, nor proud like the +humanist; he is humble. It is Burke, I think, who says that the whole +ethical life of man has its roots in this humility.[27] The religious +man cannot help but be humble. He has an awful pride in his kinship +with heaven, but, standing before the Lord of heaven, he feels human +nature's proper place, its confusion and division and helplessness; +its dependence upon the higher Power. + +[Footnote 27: _Correspondence_, III, p. 213.] + +It is at this point that humanism and religion definitely part +company. The former does not feel this absolute and judging Presence, +hence cannot understand the spiritual solicitude of the latter. St. +Paul was not quite at home on Mars Hill; it was hard to make those who +were always hearing and seeing some new thing understand; the shame +and humility of the cross were an unnecessary foolishness to them. So +they have always been. The humanist cannot take seriously this sense +of a transcendent reality. When Cicero, to escape the vengeance of +Clodius, withdrew from Rome, he passed over into Greece and dwelt for +a while in Thessalonica. One day he saw Mount Olympus, the lofty and +eternal home of the deities of ancient Greece. "But I," said the bland +eclectic philosopher, "saw nothing but snow and ice." + +How inadequate, then, as a substitute for religion, is even the +noblest humanism. True and fine as far as it goes, it does not go far +enough for us. It takes too little account of the divided life. It +appears not to understand it. On the whole it refuses to acknowledge +that it really exists, or, if it does, it is convinced of man's +unaided ability to efface it. It isn't something inevitable. Hence the +pride which is an essential quality of the humanistic attitude. + +But the religious man knows that it does exist and that while he is +not wholly responsible for it, yet he is essentially so and that, +alas, in spite of that fact, he alone cannot bridge it. So he cries, +"Wretched man that I am, what shall I do to be saved?" Here is the +feeling of uneasiness, the sense of something being wrong about us +as we naturally stand, of which James speaks. In that sense of +responsibility is the confession of sin and in the confession of sin +is the acknowledgment of the impotence of the sinner. + + "The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on + Nor all your wit nor all your tears, can wash a line of it." + +Man cannot, unaided, make his connection with this higher power. The +world is at fault, yes, but we are at fault, something both within and +without dreadfully needs explaining. So man is subdued and troubled by +the infinite mystery; and he cannot accept the place in which he finds +himself in that mystery; he is ashamed of it. + +Vivid, then, is his sense of helplessness! It makes him resent the +humanist, who bids him, unaided, solve his fate and be a man. That is +giving him stones when he asks for bread. He knows that advice makes +an inhuman demand upon the will; it assumes a reasonableness, an +insight and a moral power, which for him do not exist; it ignores +or it denies the reality and the meaning of this inner gulf. It is +important to note that even as philosophy and art and literature soon +parted company with the naturalist, so, to a large degree, they part +company with the humanist, too. They do not know very much of an +harmonious and triumphant universe. Few of the world's creative +spirits have ever denied that inner chasm or minimized its tragic +consequences to mankind. Isaiah and Paul and John and Augustine and +Luther are wrung with the consciousness of it. Indeed, the antithesis +between flesh and spirit is too familiar in religious literature to +need any recounting. It is more vividly brought home to us from +the nonprofessional, the disinterested and involuntary testimony of +secular writing. Was there ever such a cry of revolt on the part of +the trapped spirit against the net and slough of natural values and +natural desires as runs through the sonnets of William Shakespeare? We +remember the 104th: + + "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, + Foiled by these rebel powers that thee array, + Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, + Painting thine outward walls so costly gay? + Why so large cost, having so short a lease, + Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? + Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, + Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? + Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss + And let that pine to aggravate thy store, + Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross + Within be fed, without be rich no more--" + +Or turn to our contemporary poet, James Stephens: + + "Good and bad are in my heart + But I cannot tell to you + For they never are apart + Which is the better of the two. + + I am this: I am the other + And the devil is my brother + And my father he is God + And my mother is the sod, + Therefore I am safe, you see + Owing to my pedigree. + + So I cherish love and hate + Like twin brothers in a nest + Lest I find when it's too late + That the other was the best."[28] + +Here, then, we find the next thing which grows out of man's sense +of separation both from nature and from his own best self. It is his +moral judgment on himself as well as on the world outside, and that +power to judge shows that he is greater than either. As Dr. Gordon +says, "Every honest man lives under the shadow of his own rebuke." We +can go far with the humanist in acknowledging the failures that are +due to environment, to incompleteness, to ignorance; we do not forget +the helpless multitude who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death; +and we agree with the scientist that their helplessness foredooms +them and that their fate cannot be laid to their charge. But we go far +beyond where scientist and humanist stop. For we know that the deepest +cause of human misery is not inheritance, is not environment, is not +ignorance, is not incompleteness; it is the informed but the perverse +human will. Just as unhappiness is the consciousness of the divided +mind, so guilt is this sense of the deliberately divided will. +Jonathan Swift knew that; on every yearly recurrence of the hour in +which he came into the world, he cried lamentably, "Let the day perish +wherein I was born." + +[Footnote 28: _Songs from the Clay_, p. 40.] + +The Lord Jesus knew it, too. His teaching, unlike that of Paul, does +not throw into the foreground the divided will and its accompanying +sense of sin and guilt. But he does not ignore it. He brought it out +with infinite tenderness but inexorable clearness in the parables of +the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost boy. The sheep were but +young and silly, they did not wish to be lost on the mountain-side; +they knew no better; inexperience, ignorance were theirs, and +for their sad estate they were not held responsible. For them the +compassionate shepherd sought until he found them in the wilds, took +them, involuntary burdens, on his heart, brought them back to safety +and the fold. The coin had no native affinity with the dirt and grime +of the careless woman's house. It was only a coin, attached to anklet +or bracelet, having no power, no independence of its own; where it +fell, there must it lie. So with the lives set by fate in the refuse +and grime of our industrial civilization, the pure minted gold +effectually concealed by the obscurity and filth around. For such +lives, victims of environment, the Father will search, too, until they +are found, taken up, and somewhere, in this world or another, restored +to their native worth. But the chief of the parables, and the one that +has captured the imagination and subdued the heart of mankind, because +it so true to the greater part of life, is the story of the lost boy. +For he was the real sinner and he was such because, knowing what +he was about and able to choose, he desired to do wrong. It was not +ignorance, nor environment, nor inheritance, that led him into the far +country. It was its alien delights and their alien nature, for which +as such he craved. How subtle and certain is the word of Jesus here. +No shepherd seeks this wandering sheep; no householder searches for +this lost coin. The boy who willed to do wrong must stay with the +swine among the husks until he wills to do right. Then, when +he desires to return, return is made possible and easy, but the +responsibility is forever his. The source of his misery is his own +will. + +So the disposition of mankind is at the bottom of the suffering and +the division. There is rebellion and perverseness mingled with the +helplessness and ignorance and sorrow. No man ever understands or can +speak to the religious life unless he has the consciousness of this +inner moral cleft. No man will ever be able to preach with power about +God unless he does it chiefly in terms of God's difference from man +and man's perilous estate and desperate need of Him. Indeed, God is +not like us, not like this inner life of ours; this is what we want +to hear. God is different; that is why we want to be able to love Him. +And being thus different, we are separated from Him, both by the inner +chasm of the divided soul and the outer chasm of remote and hostile +nature. Then comes the final question: How are we, being helpless, to +reach Him? How are we, being guilty, to find Him? + +When men deal with these queries, with this range of experience, this +set of inward perceptions, then they are preaching religiously. And +then, I venture to say, they do not fail either of hearers or of +followers. Then there is what Catherine Booth used to call "liberty +of speech"; then there is power because then we talk of realities. +For what is it that looks out from the eyes of religious humanity? +Rebellion, pride? no! Humility, loneliness, something of a just and +deserved fear; but most of all, desire, insatiable, unwavering, an +intense desire. This passion of the race, its never satisfied hunger, +its incredible intensity and persistency of striving and longing, +is at once the tragedy and glory, the witness to the helplessness, +the revelation of the capacity of the race. The mainspring of human +activity, the creative impulse from which in devious ways all the +thousand-hued motives of our lives arise, is revealed in the ancient +cry, "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God!" That unquenched +thirst for Him underlies all human life, as the solemn stillness of +the ocean underlies the restless upper waves. The dynamic of the world +is the sense of the divine reality. The woe of the world is man's +inability to discover and appropriate that reality. Who that has +entered truly into life does not perceive beneath all the glitter of +its brilliance, the roar of its energy and achievement, the note of +melancholy? The great undertone of life is solemn in its pathetic +uniformity. The poets and prophets of the world have seized unerringly +upon that melancholy undertone. Who ever better understood the +futility and helplessness of unaided man, the certain doom that tracks +down his pride of insolence, or his sin, than the Greek tragedians? +Sophocles, divided spirit that he was, heard that note of melancholy +long ago by the AEgean, wrote it into his somber dramas, with their +turbid ebb and flow of human misery. Sometimes the voices of our +humanity as they rise blend and compose into one great cry that is +lifted, shivering and tingling, to the stars, "Oh, that I knew where I +might find Him!" Sometimes and more often they sink into a subdued and +minor plaint, infinitely touching in its human solicitude, perplexity +and pain. Again, James Stephens has phrased it for us in his verse +_The Nodding Stars_.[29] + +[Footnote 29: _Songs from the Clay_, p. 68.] + + "Brothers, what is it ye mean, + What is it ye try to say + That so earnestly ye lean + From the spirit to the clay. + + "There are weary gulfs between + Here and sunny Paradise, + Brothers! What is it ye mean + That ye search with burning eyes, + + "Down for me whose fire is clogged, + Clamped in sullen, earthy mould, + Battened down and fogged and bogged, + Where the clay is seven-fold." + +Now we understand the tragic aspect of nature and of the human soul +caught in this cosmic dualism without which corresponds to the ethical +dualism within. This perception of the One behind the many in nature, +of the thing-in-itself, as distinguished from the many expressions of +that thing, is the chief theme for preaching. This is what brings men +to themselves. Herein, as Dr. Newman Smyth has pointed out, appears +the unique marvel of personality. "It becomes conscious of itself as +individual and it individualizes the world; it is the one discovering +itself among the many. In the midst of uniformities of nature, moving +at will on the plane of natural necessities, weaving the pattern of +its ideas through the warp of natural laws, runs the personal life. +On the same plane and amid these uniformities, yet itself a sphere of +being of another order; in it, yet disentangled from it, and having +its center in itself, it lives and moves and has its being, breaking +no thread of nature's weaving, subject to its own law, and manifesting +a dynamic of its own."[30] + +[Footnote 30: _The Meaning of the Personal Life_, p. 173.] + +The source, then, as we see it, of all human hopes and human dignity, +the urge that lies behind all metaphysics and much of literature and +art, the thing that makes men eager to live, yet nobly curious to die, +is this conviction that One like unto ourselves but from whom we have +made ourselves unlike, akin to our real, if buried, person, walketh +with us in the fiery furnace of our life. There is a Spirit in man +and the breath of the Almighty giveth him understanding. Starting from +this interpretation, we can begin to order the baffling and teasing +aspects, the illusive nature of the world. Why this ever failing, but +never ending struggle against unseen odds to grasp and understand +and live with the Divine? Why, between the two, the absolute and the +changeless spirit, unseen but felt, and the hesitant and timid spirit +of a man, would there seem to be a great gulf fixed? Because we are +wrong. Because man finds the gulf within himself. He chafes at the +limitations of time and space? Yes; but he chafes more at the mystery +and weakness, the mingled deceitfulness and cunning and splendor of +the human heart. Because there is no one of us who can say, I have +made my life pure, I am free from my sin. He knows that the gulf is +there between the fallible and human, and the more than human; he does +not know how to cross it; he says, + + "I would think until I found + Something I can never find + Something lying on the ground + In the bottom of my mind." + +Here, then, can we not understand that mingling of mystic dignity +and profound humility, of awe-struck pride and utter self-abnegation, +wherewith the man of religion regards his race and himself? He is the +child of the Eternal; he, being man, alone knows that God is. "When I +consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars +which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, +or the son of man that Thou visitest him?" Here is the humility: "Why +so hot, little man!" Then comes the awe-struck pride: "Yet Thou hast +made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and +honor." "Alone with the gods, alone!" God is the high and lofty one +which inhabiteth eternity, but He is also nigh unto them who are of a +broken and a contrite heart. + +Here we are come to the very heart of religion. Man's proud +separateness in the universe; yet man's moral defection and his +responsibility for it which makes him know that separateness; man's +shame and helplessness under it. Over against the denial or evasion +of moral values by the naturalist and the dullness to the sense +of moral helplessness by the humanist, there stands the sense of +moral difference, the sense of sin, of penitence and confession. No +preaching not founded on these things can ever be called religious or +can ever stir those ranges of the human life for which alone preaching +is supposed to exist. + +What is the religious law, then? It is the law of humility. And what +is the religious consciousness? The sense of man's difference from +nature and from God. The sense of his difference from himself within +himself and the longing for an inner harmony which shall unite him +with himself and with the beauty and the spirit without. So what +is the religious passion? Is it to exalt human nature? It would +be more true to say it is to lose it. What is the end for us? Not +identification with nature and the natural self, but pursuit of the +other than nature, the more than natural self. Our humility is not +like that of Uriah Heep, a mean opinion of ourselves in comparison +with other men. It is the profound consciousness of the weakness and +the nothingness of our kind, and of the poor ends human nature sets +its heart upon, in comparison with that Other One above and beyond and +without us, to whom we are kin, from whom we are different, to whom we +aspire, to reach whom we know not how. + +This, then, is what we mean when we turn back from the language of +experience to the vocabulary of philosophy and theology and talk about +the absolute values of religion. We mean by "absolute values" that +behind the multifarious and ever changing nature, is a single and a +steadfast cause--a great rock in a weary land. We have lost the old +absolute philosophies and dogmatic theologies and that is good and +right, for they were outworn. But we are never going to lose the +central experience that produced them, and our task is to find a +new philosophy to express these inner things for which the words +"supernatural," "absolute," are no longer intelligible. For we still +know that behind man's partial and relative knowledge, feeling, +willing, is an utter knowledge, a perfect feeling, a serene and +unswerving will; that beneath man's moral anarchy there is moral +sovereignty; that behind his helplessness there is abundant power +to save. Perhaps this Other is always changing, but, if so, it is a +Oneness which is changing. In short, the thing that is characteristic +of religion is that it dwells, not on man's likenesses, but on his +awful differences from nature and from God; sees him not as little +counterparts of deity, but as broken fragments only to be made whole +within the perfect life. It sees relativity as the law of our being, +yes, but relativity, not of the sort that excludes, but is included +in, a higher absolute, even as the planet swings in infinite space. + +The trouble with much preaching is that it lacks the essentially +religious insight; in dwelling on man's identities it confuses or +drugs, not clarifies and purges, the spirit. Thus, it obscures the +gulf. Sometimes it evades it, or bridges it by minimizing it, and +genuinely religious people, and those who want to be religious, and +those who might be, know that such preaching is not real and that it +does not move them and, worst of all, the hungry sheep look up and +are not fed. For in such preaching there is no call to humility, no +plea for grace, no sense that the achievement of self-unity is as +much a rescue as it is a reformation. But this sense of the need of +salvation is integral to religion; this is where it has parted company +with humanism. Humanism makes no organic relations between man and +the Eternal. It is as though it thought these would take care of +themselves! In the place of grace it puts pride; pride of caste, of +family, of character, of intellect. But high self-discipline and +pride in the human spirit are not the deepest or the highest notes man +strikes. The cry, not of pride in self, but for fellowship with the +Infinite, is the superlative expression of man. Augustine sounded the +highest note of feeling when he wrote, "O God, Thou hast made us for +Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." The +words of the Lord Jesus gave the clearest insight of the human mind +when He said, "And when he came to himself, he said, I will arise and +go to my Father." + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + +GRACE, KNOWLEDGE, VIRTUE + + +I hope the concluding paragraphs of the last chapter brought us back +into the atmosphere of religion, into that sort of mood in which the +reality of the struggle for character, the craving of the human spirit +to give and to receive compassion, the cry of the lonely soul for the +love of God, were made manifest. These are the real goods of life to +religious natures; they need this meat which the world knoweth not of; +there is a continuing resolve in them to say, "Good-by, proud world, +I'm going home!" The genuinely religious man must, and should indeed, +live in this world, but he cannot live of it. + +Merely to create such an atmosphere then, to induce this sort of mood, +to shift for men their perspectives, until these needs and values rise +once more compelling before their eyes, is a chief end of preaching. +Its object is not so much moralizing or instructing as it is +interpreting and revealing; not the plotting out of the landscape +at our feet, but the lifting of our eyes to the hills, to the fixed +stars. Then we really do see things that are large as large and things +that are small as small. We need that vision today from religious +leaders more than we need any other one thing. + +For humanism and naturalism between them have brought us to an almost +complete secularization of preaching, in which its characteristic +elements, its distinctive contribution, have largely faded from +liberal speaking and from the consciousness of its hearers. We have +emphasized man's kinship with nature until now we can see him again +declining to the brute; we have proclaimed the divine Immanence +until we think to compass the Eternal within a facile and finite +comprehension. By thus dwelling on the physical and rational elements +of human experience, religion has come to concern itself to an +extraordinary degree with the local and temporal reaches of faith. +We have lost the sense of communion with Absolute Being and of the +obligation to standards higher than those of the world, which that +communion brings. Out of this identification of man with nature has +come the preaching which ignores the fact of sin; which reduces free +will and the moral responsibility of the individual to the vanishing +point; which stresses the control of the forces of inheritance and +environment to the edge of fatalistic determinism; which leads man +to regard himself as unfortunate rather than reprehensible when moral +disaster overtakes him; which induces that condoning of the moral +rebel which is born not of love for the sinner but of indifference to +his sin; which issues in that last degeneration of self-pity in +which individuals and societies alike indulge; and in that repellent +sentimentality over vice and crime which beflowers the murderer while +it forgets its victim, which turns to ouija boards and levitated +tables to obscure the solemn finality of death and to gloze over the +guilty secrets of the battlefield. + +Thus it has come about that we preach of God in terms of the +drawing-room, as though he were some vast St. Nicholas, sitting up +there in the sky or amiably informing our present world, regarding +with easy benevolence His minute and multifarious creations, winking +at our pride, our cruelty, our self-love, our lust, not greatly +caring if we break His laws, tossing out His indiscriminate gifts, +and vaguely trusting in our automatic arrival at virtue. Even as in +philosophy, it is psychologists, experts in empirical science and +methods, and sociologists, experts in practical ethics, who may be +found, while the historian and the metaphysician are increasingly +rare, so in preaching we are amiable and pious and ethical and +practical and informative, but the vision and the absolutism of +religion are a departing glory. + +What complicates the danger and difficulty of such a position, with +its confusion of natural and human values, and its rationalizing +and secularizing of theistic thinking, is that it has its measure of +reality. All these observations of naturalist and humanist are half +truths, and for that very reason more perilous than utter falsehoods. +For the mind tends to rest contented within their areas, and so the +partial becomes the worst enemy of the whole. What we have been doing +is stressing the indubitable identity between man and nature and +between the Creator and His creatures to the point of unreality, +forgetting the equally important fact of the difference, the +distinction between the two. But sound knowledge and normal feeling +rest upon observing and reckoning with both aspects of this law of +kinship and contrast. All human experience becomes known to us through +the interplay of what appear to be contradictory needs and opposing +truths within our being. Thus, man is a social animal and can only +find himself in a series of relationships as producer, lover, husband, +father and friend. He is a part of and like unto his kind, his spirit +immanent in his race. But man is also a solitary creature, and in that +very solitariness, which he knows as he contrasts it with his social +interests, he finds identity of self, the something which makes us +"us," which separates us from all others in the world. A Crusoe, +marooned on a South Sea island, without even a black man Friday for +companionship, would soon cease to be a man; personality would forsake +him. But the same Crusoe is equally in need of solitude. The hell of +the barracks, no matter how well conducted, is their hideous lack of +privacy; men condemned by shipwreck or imprisonment to an unbroken and +intimate companionship kill their comrade or themselves. We are all +alike and hence gregarious; we are all different and hence flee as a +bird to the mountain. The reality of human personality lies in neither +one aspect of the truth nor the other, but in both. The truth is found +as we hold the balance between identity and difference. Hence we are +not able to think of personality in the Godhead unless we conceive of +God as being, within Himself, a social no less than a solitary Being. + +Again, this law that the truth is found in the balance of the +antinomies appears in man's equal passion for continuity and +permanency and for variety and change. The book of Revelation tells +us that the redeemed, before the great white throne, standing upon the +sea of glass, sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. What has the one +to do with the other? Here is the savage, triumphant chant of the far +dawn of Israel's history, joined with the furthest and latest possible +events and words. Well, it at least suggests the continuity of the +ageless struggle of mankind, showing that the past has its place +in the present, relieving man's horror of the impermanence, the +disjointed character of existence. He wants something orderly and +static. But, like the jet of water in the fountain, his life is +forever collapsing and collapsing, falling in upon itself, its +apparent permanence nothing but a rapid and glittering succession of +impermanences. The dread of growing old is chiefly that, as years +come on, life changes more and faster, becomes a continual process of +readjustment. Therefore we want something fixed; like the sailor with +his compass, we must have some needle, even if a tremulous one, always +pointing toward a changeless star. Yet this is but one half of the +picture. Does man desire continuity?--quite as much does he wish for +variety, cessation of old ways, change and fresh beginnings. The +most terrible figure which the subtle imagination of the Middle Ages +conjured up was that of the Wandering Jew, the man who could not die! +Here, then, we arrive at knowledge, the genuine values of experience, +by this same balancing of opposites. Continuity alone kills; perpetual +change strips life of significance; man must have both. + +Now, it is in the religious field that this interests us most. We have +seen that what we have been doing there of late has been to ignore the +fact that reality is found only through this balancing of the law of +difference and identity, contrast and likeness. We have been absorbed +in one half of reality, identifying man with nature, prating of his +self-sufficiency, seeing divinity almost exclusively as immanent in +the phenomenal world. Thus we have not merely been dealing with only +one half of the truth, but that, to use a solecism, the lesser half. + +For doubtless men do desire in religion a recognition of the real +values of their physical nature. And they want rules of conduct, a +guide for practical affairs, a scale of values for this world. This +satisfies the craving for temporal adjustment, the sense of the +goodness and worth of what our instinct transmits to us. But it does +nothing to meet that profound dissatisfaction with this world and that +sense of the encumbrances of the flesh which is also a part of reality +and, to the religious man, perhaps the greater part. He wants to turn +away from all these present things and be kept secretly in a pavilion +from the strife of tongues. Here he has no continuing city. Always +while we dwell here we have a dim and restless sense that we are in an +unreal country and we know, in our still moments, that we shall only +come to ourselves when we return to the house of our Father. Hence +men have never been satisfied with religious leaders who chiefly +interpreted this world to them. + +And indeed, since July, 1914, and down to and including this very +hour, this idealizing of time, which we had almost accepted as our +office, has had a ghastly exposure. Because there has come upon us all +one of these irrevocable and irremediable disasters, for which time +has no word of hope, to which Nature is totally indifferent, for which +the God of the outgoings and incomings of the morning is too small. +For millions of living and suffering men and women all temporal +and mortal values have been wiped out. They have been caught in a +catastrophe so ruthless and dreadful that it has strewed their bodies +in heaps over the fields and valleys of many nations. Today central +and south and northeastern Europe and western Asia are filled with +idle and hungry and desperate men and women. They have been deprived +of peace, of security, of bread, of enlightenment alike. Something +more than temporal salvation and human words of hope are needed +here. Something more than ethical reform and social readjustment and +economic alleviation, admirable though these are! Something there must +be in human nature that eclipses human nature, if it is to endure so +much! What has the God of this world to give for youth, deprived of +their physical immortality and all their sweet and inalienable human +rights, who are lying now beneath the acre upon acre of tottering +wooden crosses in their soldier's graves? Is there anything in this +world sufficient now for the widow, the orphan, the cripple, the +starving, the disillusioned and the desperate? What Europe wants to +know is why and for what purpose this holocaust--is there anything +beyond, was there anything before it? A civilization dedicated to +speed and power and utility and mere intelligence cannot answer these +questions. Neither can a religion resolved into naught but the ethics +of Jesus answer them. "If in this world only," cries today the voice +of our humanity, "we have hope, then we are of all men the most +miserable!" When one sees our American society of this moment +returning so easily to the physical and the obvious and the practical +things of life; when one sees the church immersed in programs, and +moralizing, and hospitals, and campaigns, and membership drives, and +statistics, and money getting, one is constrained to ask, "What shall +be said of the human spirit that it can forget so soon?" + +Is it not obvious, then, that our task for a pagan society and a +self-contained humanity is to restore the balance of the religious +consciousness and to dwell, not on man's identity with Nature, but +on his far-flung difference; not on his self-sufficiency, but on his +tragic helplessness; not on the God of the market place, the office +and the street, an immanent and relative deity, but on the Absolute, +that high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity? Indeed, we are being +solemnly reminded today that the other-worldliness of religion, its +concern with future, supertemporal things, is its characteristic and +most precious contribution to the world. We are seeing how every human +problem when pressed to its ultimate issue becomes theological. Here +is where the fertile field for contemporary preaching lies. It +is found, not in remaining with those elements in the religious +consciousness which it shares in common with naturalism and humanism, +but in passing over to those which are distinctive to itself alone. It +has always been true, but it is especially true at this moment, that +effective preaching has to do chiefly with transcendent values. + +Our task is to assert, first, then, the "otherness" of man, his +difference from Nature, to point out the illusoriness of her phenomena +for him, the derived reality and secondary value of her facts. +These are things that need religious elucidation. The phrase +"other-worldliness" has come, not without reason, to have an evil +connotation among us, but there is nevertheless a genuine disdain +of this world, a sense of high superiority to it and profound +indifference toward it, which is of the essence of the religious +attitude. He who knows that here he is a stranger, sojourning in +tabernacles; that he belongs by his nature, not to this world, but +that he seeks a better, that is to say, a heavenly country, will for +the joy that is set before him, endure a cross and will despise +the shame. He will have a conscious superiority to hostile facts of +whatever sort or magnitude, for he knows that they deceive in so +far as they pretend to finality. When religion has thus acquired a +clear-sighted and thoroughgoing indifference to the natural order, +then, and then only, it begins to be potent within that order. Then, +as Professor Hocking says, it rises superior to the world of facts and +becomes irresistible.[31] + +[Footnote 31: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 518.] + +The time is ripe, then, first, for the preacher to emphasize the +inward and essential difference between man and nature which exists +under the outward likeness, to remind him of this more-than-nature, +this "otherness" of man, without which he would lose his most precious +possession, the sense of personality. Faith begins by recognizing this +transcendent element in man and the acceptance of it is the foundation +of religious preaching. What was the worst thing about the war? Not +its destruction nor its horrors nor its futilities, but its shames; +the dreadful indignities which it inflicted upon man; it treated men +as though they were not souls! No such moral catastrophe could have +overwhelmed us if we had not for long let the brute lie too near the +values and practices of our lives, depersonalizing thus, in politics +and industry and morals and religion, our civilization. It all +proceeded from the irreligious interpretation of human existence, and +the fruits of that interpretation are before us. + +The first task of the preacher, then, is to combat the naturalistic +interpretation of humanity with every insight and every conviction +that is within his power. If we are to restore religious values, +rebuild a world of transcendent ends and more-than-natural beauty, we +must begin here with man. In the popular understanding of the phrase +all life is not essentially one in kind; physical self-preservation +and reproduction are not the be-all and the end-all of existence. +There is something more to be expressed in man without which these are +but dust and ashes in the mouth. There is another kind of life mixed +in with this, the obvious. If we cannot express the other world, we +shall not long tolerate this one. To think that this world is all, +leans toward madness; such a picture of man is a travesty, not a +portrait of his nature. Only on some such basic truths as these can +we build character in our young people. Paganism tells them that it +is neither natural nor possible to keep themselves unspotted from the +world. Over against it we must reiterate, You can and you must! for +the man that sinneth wrongeth his own soul. You are something more +than physical hunger and reproductive instinct; you are of spirit no +less than dust. How, then, can you do this great sin against God! + +How abundant here are the data with which religious preaching may +deal. Indeed, as Huxley and scores of others have pointed out, it is +only the religious view of man that builds up civilization. A great +community is the record of man's supernaturalism, his uniqueness. It +is built on the "higher-than-self" principle which is involved in the +moral sense itself. And this higher-than-self is not just a collective +naturalism, a social consciousness, as Durkheim and Overstreet and +Miss Harrison would say. The simplest introspective act will prove +that. For a man cannot ignore self-condemnation as if it were only a +natural difficulty, nor disparage it as though it were merely humanly +imposed. We think it comes from that which is above and without, +because it speaks to the solitary and the unique, not the social +and the common part of us. Hence conscience is not chiefly a tribal +product, for it is what separates us from the group and in our +isolation unites us with something other than the group. "Against +Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight." So +religious preaching perpetually holds us up above our natural selves +and the natural order. + +Thus man must live by an other-than-natural law if he is to preserve +the family, which is the social unit of civilization. Its very +existence depends upon modifying and transforming natural hunger by a +diviner instinct, by making voluntary repressions, willing sacrifices +of the lower to the higher, the subordinating of the law of self and +might to the law of sacrifice and love--this is what preserves family +life. Animals indeed rear and cherish their young and for the mating +season remain true to one another, but no animality _per se_ ever yet +built a home. There must be a more-than-natural law in the state. Our +national life and honor rest upon the stability of the democracy and +we can only maintain that by walking a very straight and narrow path. +For the peace of freedom as distinguished from precarious license is +a more-than-natural attainment, born of self-repression and social +discipline, the voluntary relinquishment of lesser rights for higher +rights, of personal privileges for the sake of the common good. +Government by the broad and easy path, following the lines of least +resistance, like the natural order, saying might is right, means +either tyranny or anarchy. _Circumspice_! One of the glories of +western civilization is its hospitals. They stand for the supernatural +doctrine of the survival of the unfit, the conviction of the community +that, to take the easy path of casting out the aged and infirm, +the sick and the suffering, would mean incalculable degeneration +of national character, and that the difficult and costly path of +protection and ministering service is both necessary and right. And +why is the reformatory replacing the prison? Because we have learned +that the obvious, natural way of dealing with the criminal certainly +destroys him and threatens to destroy us; and that the hard, difficult +path of reeducating and reforming a vicious life is the one which the +state for her own safety must follow. + +Genuine preaching, then, first of all, calls men to repentance, bids +them turn away from their natural selves, and, to find that other and +realer self, enter the straight and narrow gate. The call is not an +arbitrary command, born of a negative and repressive spirit. It is a +profound exhortation based upon a fundamental law of human progress, +having behind it the inviolable sanction of the truth. Such preaching +would have the authentic note. It is self-verifying. It stirs to +answer that quality--both moral and imaginative--in the spirit of man +which craves the pain and difficulty and satisfaction of separation +from the natural order. It appeals to a timeless worth in man which +transcends any values of mere intelligence which vary with the ages, +or any material prosperity which perishes with the using, or any +volitional activity that dies in its own expenditure. Much of the +philosophy of Socrates was long ago outmoded, but Socrates himself, as +depicted in the Phaedo, confronting death with the cup of hemlock in +his hand, saying with a smile, "There is no evil which can happen to +a good man living or dead," has a more-than-natural, an enduring and +transcendent quality. Whenever we preach to the element in mankind +which produces such attitudes toward life and bid it assert itself, +then we are doing religious preaching, and then we speak with power. +Jesus lived within the inexorable circle of the ideas of His time; +He staked much on the coming of the new kingdom which did not appear +either when or as He had first expected it. He had to adjust, as do we +all, His life to His experience, His destiny to His fate. But when He +was hanging on His cross, forgotten of men and apparently deserted by +His God, something in Him that had nothing to do with nature or the +brute rose to a final expression and by its more-than-natural reality, +sealed and authenticated His life. Looking down upon His torturers, +understanding them far better than they understood themselves, He +cried, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That +cry has no place in nature; it has no application and no meaning +outside the human heart and that which is above, not beneath, the +human heart, from which it is derived. There, then, again was the +supernatural law; there was the more-than-nature in man which makes +nature into human nature; and there is the thing to whose discovery, +cultivation, expression, real preaching is addressed. Every time a man +truly preaches he so portrays what men ought to be, must be, and can +be if they will, that they know there is something here + + "that leaps life's narrow bars + To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven! + A seed of sunshine that doth leaven + Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars, + And glorify our clay + With light from fountains elder than the Day."[32] + +[Footnote 32: J.R. Lowell, _Commemoration Ode_, stanza IV, ll. 30-35.] + +Such preaching is a perpetual refutation of and rebuke to the +naturalism and imperialism of our present society. It is the call +to the absolute in man, to a clear issue with evil. It would not cry +peace, peace, when there is no peace. It would be living and active, +and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of +both joints and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of +the heart. + +Following this insistence upon the difference from nature, the +more-than-natural in man, the second thing in religious preaching +will have to be, obviously, the message of salvation. That is to say, +reducing the statement to its lowest terms, if man is to live by such +a law, the law of more-than-nature, then he must have something also +more-than-human to help him in his task. He will need strength from +outside. Indeed, because religion declares that there is such divine +assistance, and that faith can command it, is the chief cause and +reason for our existence. When we cease to preach salvation in some +form or other, we deny our own selves; we efface our own existence. +For no one can preach the more-than-human in mankind without +emphasizing those elements of free will, moral responsibility, the +need and capacity for struggle and holiness in human life which it +indicates, and which in every age have been a part of the message of +Him who said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is +in heaven, is perfect." + +Therefore, as we have previously corrected the half truth of the +naturalist who makes a caricature, not a portrait of man, we must now +in the same way turn to the correcting of the humanist's emphasis upon +man's native capacity and insist upon the complementary truth which +fulfills this moral heroism of mankind, namely, the divine rescue +which answers to its inadequacy. Man must struggle for his victory; he +can win; he cannot win alone. We must then insist upon the doctrine +of salvation, turning ourselves to the other side of the humanist's +picture. Man cannot live by this more-than-natural law unaided. For +not only has he the power to rise above Nature; the same thing gives +him equal capacity to sink beneath her, and, when left to himself, he +generally does so. The preacher does not dare deny the sovereignty +of sin. Humanism hates the very name of sin; it has never made +any serious attempt to explain the consciousness of guilt. Neither +naturalist nor humanist can afford to admit sin, for sin takes man, as +holiness does, outside the iron chain of cause and effect; it breaks +the law; it is not strictly natural. It makes clear enough that man +is outside the natural order in two ways. He is both inferior and +superior to it. He falls beneath, he rises above it. When he acts like +a beast, he is not clean and beastly, but unclean and bestial. When he +lifts his head in moral anguish, bathes all his spirit in the flood +of awe and repentance, is transfigured with the glorious madness of +self-sacrifice, he is so many worlds higher than the beast that their +relationship becomes irrelevant. So we must deal more completely +than humanists do with the central mystery of our experience; man's +impotent idealism, his insight not matched with consummation; the fact +that what he dares to dream of he is not able alone to do. + +For the humanist exalts man, which is good; but then he makes him +self-sufficient for the struggle which such exaltation demands, which +is bad. In that partial understanding he departs from truth. And what +is it that makes the futility of so much present preaching? It is the +acceptance of this doctrine of man's moral adequacy and consequently +the almost total lack either of the assurance of grace or of the +appeal to the will. No wonder such exhortations cannot stem the tide +of an ever increasing worldliness. Such preaching stimulates the mind; +in both the better and the worse preachers, it moves the emotions but +it gives men little power to act on what they hear and feel to the +transformation of their daily existence. Thus the humanistic sense of +man's sufficiency, coupled with the inherent distrust of any notion of +help from beyond and above, any belief in a reinforcing power which a +critical rationalism cannot dissect and explain, has gradually ruled +out of court the doctrine of salvation until the preacher's power, +both to experience and to transmit it, has atrophied through disuse. + +Who can doubt that one large reason why crude and indefensible +concepts of the Christian faith have such a disconcerting vitality +today is because they carry, in their outmoded, unethical, discredited +forms, the truth of man's insufficiency in himself and the confident +assurance of that something coming from without which will abundantly +complete the struggling life within? They offer the assurance of that +peace and moral victory which man so ardently desires, because they +declare that it is both a discovery and a revelation, an achievement +and a rescue. There are vigorous and rapidly growing popular movements +of the day which rest their summation of faith on the quadrilateral of +an inerrant and verbally inspired Scripture, the full deity of Jesus +Christ, the efficacy of His substitutionary atonement, the speedy +second coming of the Lord. No sane person can suppose that these cults +succeed because of the ethical insight, the spiritual sensitiveness, +the intellectual integrity of such a message. It does not possess +these things. They succeed, in spite of their obscurantism, because +they do confess and meet man's central need, his need to be saved. +The power of that fact is what is able to carry so narrow and so +indefensible a doctrine. + +So the second problem of the preacher is clear. Man asserts his +potential independence of the natural law. But to realize that, he +must bridge the gulf between himself and the supernatural lawgiver +to whose dictates he confesses he is subject. He is not free from the +bondage of the lower, except through the bondage to the higher. Nor +can he live by that higher law unaided and alone. Here we strike at +the root of humanism. Its kindly tolerance of the church is built +up on the proud conviction that we, with our distinctive doctrine of +salvation, are superfluous, hence sometimes disingenuous and always +negligible. The humanist believes that understanding takes the place +of faith. What men need is not to be redeemed from their sins, but to +be educated out of their follies. + +But does right knowing in itself suffice to insure right doing? +Socrates and Plato, with their indentification of knowledge and +virtue, would appear to think so; the church has gone a long way, +under humanistic pressure, in tacit acquiescence with their doctrine. +Yet most of us, judging alike from internal and personal evidence +and from external and social observation, would say that there was no +sadder or more universal experience than that of the failure of right +knowledge to secure right performance. Right knowledge is not in +itself right living. We have striking testimony on that point from one +of the greatest of all humanists, no less a person than Confucius. +"At seventy," he says, "I could follow what my heart desired without +transgressing the law of measure."[33] The implication of such +testimony makes no very good humanistic apologetic! Most of us, when +desire has failed, can manage to attain, unaided, the identification +of understanding and conduct, can climb to the poor heights of a +worn-out and withered continence. But one wonders a little whether, +then, the climbing seems to be worth while. + +[Footnote 33: _Analects_, II, civ.] + +But the doctrine usually begins by minimizing the free agency of +the individual, playing up the factors of compulsion, either of +circumstance or inheritance or of ignorance, as being in themselves +chiefly responsible for blameful acts. These are therefore considered +involuntary and certain to be reformed when man knows better and has +the corresponding strength of his knowledge. But Aristotle, who deals +with this Socratic doctrine in the third book of the _Ethics_, very +sensibly remarks, "It is ridiculous to lay the blame of our wrong +actions upon external causes rather than upon the facility with which +we ourselves are caught by such causes, and, while we take credit for +our noble actions to ourselves, lay the blame of our shameful actions +upon pleasure."[34] "The facility with which we are caught"--there +is the religious understanding there is that perversion of will which +conspires with the perils and chances of the world so that together +they may undo the soul. + +[Footnote 34: _Ethics_, Book III, ch. ii, p. 61.] + +Of course, as Aristotle admits, there is this half truth lying at the +root of the Socratic identification of virtue and knowledge that every +vicious person is ignorant of what he ought to do and what he ought to +abstain from doing in the sense that what he is about to do could +not be defended upon any ground of enlightened self-interest. And +so, while he finds sin sweet and evil pleasant, these are delusive +experiences, which, if he saw life steadily and whole, he would know +as such. But one reason for this ignorance is unwillingness to know. +Good men do evil, and understanding men sin, partly because they are +misled by false ideas, partly, also, because, knowing them false, +they cannot or will not give them up. This is what Goethe very well +understood when he said, "Most men prefer error to truth, because +truth imposes limitations and error does not." + +And another reason is that when men do know, they find a deadly and +mysterious, a sort of perverted joy--a sweet and terrible and secret +delight,--in denying their own understanding. Thus right living calls +for a repeated and difficult exercise of the will, what Professor +Babbitt calls "a pulling back of the impulse to the track that +knowledge indicates." Such moral mastery is not identical with moral +perception and most frequently is not its accompaniment, unless +observation and experience are alike fallacious. Thus the whole +argument falls to the ground when we confess that possession of +knowledge does not guarantee the application of it. Therefore the two +things, knowledge and virtue, according to universal experience, are +not identical. Humanists indeed use the word "knowledge" for the most +part in an esoteric sense. Knowledge is virtue in the sense that it +enables us to see virtue as excellent and desirable; it is not virtue +in the sense that it alone enables us to acquire it. + +Who, indeed, that has ever lived in the far country does not know +that one factor in its fascination was a bittersweet awareness of the +folly, the inevitable disaster, of such alien surroundings. Who +also does not know that often when the whole will is set to identify +conduct with conviction, it may be, for all its passionate and bitter +sincerity, set in vain. In every hour of every day there are hundreds +of lives that battle honestly, but with decreasing spiritual forces, +with passion and temptation. Sometimes a life is driven by the fierce +gales of enticement, the swift currents of desire, right upon the +jagged rock of some great sin. Lives that have seemed strong and fair +go down every day, do they not, and shock us for a moment with their +irremediable catastrophe? And we must not forget that before they went +down, for many a month or even year they have been hard beset lives. +Before that final and complete ruin, they have been drifting and +struggling, driven and fighting, sin drawing nearer and nearer, their +fated lives urged on, the mind growing darker, the stars in their +souls going out, the steering of their own lives taken from their +hands. Then there has been the sense of the coming danger, the dark +presentiment of how it all must end when the "powers that tend the +soul to help it from the death that cannot die, and save it even in +extremes, begin to vex and plague it." There has been the dreadful +sense of life drifting toward a great crash, nearer and nearer to what +must be the wreck of all things. What does the humanist have to offer +to these men and women who know perfectly well where they are, and +what they are about, and where they would like to be, but who can't +get there and who are, today and every day, putting forth their last +and somber efforts, trying in vain to just keep clear of ruin until +the darkness and the helplessness shall lift and something or someone +shall give them peace! + +Now, it is this defect in the will which automatically limits the +power of the intellect. It is this which the Socratic identification +ignores. So while we might readily grant that it is in the essential +nature of things that virtue and truth, wisdom and character, +understanding and goodness, are but two aspects of one thing, is it +not trifling with one of the most serious facts of human destiny +to interpret the truism to mean that, when a man knows that a +contemplated act is wrong or foolish or ugly, he is thereby restrained +from accomplishing it? Knowledge is not virtue in the sense that +mere reason or mere perception can control the will. And this is the +conclusion that Aristotle also comes to when he says: "Some people +say that incontinence is impossible, if one has knowledge. It seems +to them strange, as it did to Socrates, that where knowledge exists in +man, something else should master it and drag it about like a slave. +Socrates was wholly opposed to this idea; he denied the existence of +incontinence, arguing that nobody with a conception of what was best +could act against it, and therefore, if he did so act, his action +must be due to ignorance." And then Aristotle adds, "The theory is +evidently at variance with the facts of experience."[35] Plato himself +exposes the theoretical nature of the assertion, its inhuman demand +upon the will, the superreasonableness which it expects but offers no +way of obtaining, when he says, "Every one will admit that a nature +having in perfection all the qualities which are required in a +philosopher is a rare plant seldom seen among men."[36] + +[Footnote 35: _Ethics_, Book VII, ch. iii, pp. 206-207.] + +[Footnote 36: _Republic_, VI, 491.] + +It would be well if those people who are going about the world today +teaching social hygiene to adolescents (on the whole an admirable +thing to do) but proceeding on the assumption that when youth knows +what is right and what is wrong, and why it is right and why it is +wrong, and what are the consequences of right and wrong, that then, +_ipso facto_, youth will become chaste,--well if they would acquaint +themselves either with the ethics of Aristotle or with the Christian +doctrine of salvation. For if men think that knowledge by itself ever +yet produced virtue in eager and unsated lives, they are either knaves +or fools. They will find that knowledge uncontrolled by a purified +spirit and a reinforced will is already teaching men not how to +be good, but how to sin the more boldly with the better chance of +physical impunity. "Philosophy," says Black, "is a feeble antagonist +before passion, because it does not supply an adequate motive for the +conflict."[37] There were few men in the nineteenth century in whom +knowledge and virtue were more profoundly and completely joined than +in John Henry Newman. But did that subtle intellect suffice? could it +make the scholar into the saint? Hear his own words: + + "O Holy Lord, who with the children three + Didst walk the piercing flame; + Help, in those trial hours which, save to Thee, + I dare not name; + Nor let these quivering eyes and sickening heart + Crumble to dust beneath the tempter's dart. + + "Thou who didst once Thy life from Mary's breast + Renew from day to day; + O might her smile, severely sweet, but rest + On this frail clay! + Till I am Thine with my whole soul, and fear + Not feel, a secret joy, that Hell is near." + +So, only when we include in the term "knowledge" understanding plus +good will, is the humanist position true, and this, I suppose, is +what Aristotle meant when he finally says, "Vice is consistent with +knowledge of some kind, but it excludes knowledge in the full and +proper sense of the word."[38] + +[Footnote 37: _Culture and Restraint_, p. 104.] + +[Footnote 38: _Ethics_, Book VII, ch. v, p. 215.] + +Now, so finespun a discussion of intricate and psychological +subtleties is mildly interesting presumably to middle-aged scholars, +but I submit that a half truth that needs so much explanation and +so many admissions before it can be made safe or actual, is a rather +dangerous thing to offer to adolescence or to a congregation of +average men and women. It cannot sound to them very much like the good +news of Jesus. Culture is a precious thing, but no culture, without +the help of divine grace and the responsive affection on our part +which that grace induces, will ever knit men together in a kingdom +of God, a spiritual society. As long ago as the second century Celsus +understood that. He says in his polemic against Christianity, as +quoted by Origen, "If any one suppose that it is possible that the +people of Asia and Europe and Africa, Greeks and barbarians, should +agree to follow one law, he is hopelessly ignorant."[39] Now, Celsus +was proceeding on the assumption that Christianity was only another +philosophy, a new intellectual system, and he was merely exposing the +futility of all such unaided intellectualism. + +[Footnote 39: _Origen, contra Celsum_, VIII, p. 72.] + +It is, therefore, of prime importance for the preacher to remember +that humanism, or any other doctrine which approaches the problem of +life and conduct other than by moral and spiritual means, can never +take the place of the religious appeal, because it does not touch the +springs of action where motives are born and from which convictions +arise. You do not make a man moral by enlightening him; it is nearer +the truth to say that you enlighten him when you make him moral. +"Blessed are the pure in heart," said Jesus, "for they shall see +God. If any man wills to do the will, he shall know the doctrine." +Education does not wipe out crime nor an understanding mind make a +holy will. The last half of the nineteenth century made it terribly +clear that the learning and science of mankind, where they are +divorced from piety, unconsecrated by a spiritual passion, and largely +directed by selfish motives, can neither benefit nor redeem the race. +Consider for a moment the enormous expansion of knowledge which the +world has witnessed since the year 1859. What prodigious accessions +to the sum of our common understanding have we seen in the natural and +the humane sciences; and what marvelous uses of scientific knowledge +for practical purposes have we discovered! We have mastered in these +latter days a thousand secrets of nature. We have freed the mind from +old ignorance and ancient superstition. We have penetrated the secrets +of the body, and can almost conquer death and indefinitely prolong +the span of human days. We face the facts and know the world as our +fathers could never do. We understand the past and foresee the future. +But the most significant thing about our present situation is this: +how little has this wisdom, in and of itself, done for us! It has made +men more cunning rather than more noble. Still the body is ravaged and +consumed by passion. Still men toil for others against their will, +and the strong spill the blood of the weak for their ambition and the +sweat of the children for their greed. Never was learning so diffused +nor the content of scholarship so large as now. Yet the great cities +are as Babylon and Rome of old, where human wreckage multiplies, and +hideous vices flourish, and men toil without expectancy, and live +without hope, and millions exist--not live at all--from hand to mouth. +As we survey the universal unrest of the world today and see the +horrors of war between nation and nation, and between class and class, +it would not be difficult to make out a case for the thesis that the +scientific and intellectual advances of the nineteenth century +have largely worked to make men keener and more capacious in their +suffering. And at least this is true; just so far as the achievement +of the mind has been divorced from the consecration of the spirit, +in just so far knowledge has had no beneficent potency for the human +race. + +Is it not clear, then, that preaching must deal again, never more +indeed than now, with the religion which offers a redemption from sin? +This is still foolishness to the Greeks, but to those who believe it +is still the power of God unto salvation. Culture is not religion. +When the preacher substitutes the one for the other, he gives stones +for bread, and the hungry sheep go elsewhere or are not fed. It is +this emasculated preaching, mulcted of its spiritual forces, which +awakes the bitterest distrust and deepest indignation that human +beings know. They are fighting the foes of the flesh and the enemies +of the spirit, enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, +standing by the open graves of their friends and kindred, saying +there, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." And then, +with all this mystery and oppression of life upon them they enter the +doors of the house of God and listen to a polite essay, are told of +the consolations of art, reminded of the stupidity of evil, assured of +the unreality of sin, offered the subtle satisfactions of a cultivated +intelligence. In just so far as they are genuine men and women, they +resent such preaching as an insult, a mockery and an offense. No, no; +something more is needed than the humanist can offer for those who are +hard-pressed participants in the stricken fields of life. + +Religious preaching, then, begins with these two things: man's +solitary place in nature, man's inability to hold that place alone. +Hence two more things are necessary as essentials of great preaching +in a pagan day. The clear proclamation of the superhuman God, the +transcendent spirit who is able to control and reinforce the spirit of +man, and the setting forth of some way or some mediator, through whom +man may meet and touch that Spirit so far removed yet so infinitely +near and dear to him. It is with these matters that we shall be +occupied in the next chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + +THE ALMIGHTY AND EVERLASTING GOD + + +If the transcendent element in man which endows him with the proud if +tragic sense of personality is the first message of the preacher to +a chattering and volatile world, and the second is the setting forth +of what this endowment demands and how pitiably man fails to meet it, +then the third message is of the Rock that is higher than he, even +inclusive of his all, in whose composed and comprehensive Being his +baffled and divided person may be gathered up, brought to its own +consummation of self. The rivers that pour tumultuously to their ocean +bed, the ascending fire ever falling backward but leaping upward to +the sun, are poor figures to express the depth and irresistible urge +of the passion in man for completeness, for repose, for power, for +self-perception in self-expression, for victory and the attainment +of the end. Conscious and divided spirit that he is, man turns away, +sooner or later, with utter weariness and self-disgust from the nature +which pleases him by betraying him, which maims his person that he +may enjoy his senses, and reaches out after the other-worldly, the +supernatural, the invisible and eternal Hope and Home of the Soul. + +Humanism which bids men sufficiently find God within themselves, if +they think they need to find Him at all, seems not to comprehend this +passion of pride and humility, this inner perception of the futility +and the blunder of the self-contained life. Life is so obviously +not worth its brevity, its suffering, its withheld conclusions, its +relative insignificance, if it must thus stand alone. All that can +save it, preserve to it worth and dignity, maintain its self-respect +and mastery, is to find that abundant power without which confesses, +certifies and seals the divinity within. + +How foredoomed to failure, then, especially in an age when men are +surmounting life by placating it, enjoying it by being easy with +themselves--how foredoomed to failure is the preaching which continues +in the world of religion this exaltation of human sufficiency and +natural values, domesticating them within the church. It is to laugh +to see them there! It means so transparent a surrender, so pitiable a +confession of defeat. If anything can bring the natural man into the +sanctuary it is that there he has to bring his naturalness to the bar +of a more-than-natural standard. If he comes at all, it will not +be for entertainment and expansion but because there we insist on +reverence and restraint. If church and preacher offer only a pietized +and decorous naturalism, when he can get the real thing in naked and +unashamed brutality without; if they offer him only another form of +humanistic living, he will stay away. Such preaching is as boresome +as it is unnecessary. Such exercise of devotion is essentially +superfluous and a rather humorous imposition upon the world. The only +thing that will ever bring the natural man to listen to preaching is +when it insists upon something more-than-the-natural and calls him to +account regarding it; when it speaks of something different and better +for him than this world and what it can offer. "Take my _yoke_ upon +you" is the attractive invitation, "make inner obeisance and outward +obedience to something higher than thy poor self." + +It is clear, then, that these observations have a bearing upon our +preaching of the doctrine of God. There is a certain illogicality, +something humorous, in going into a church, of all places in the +world, to be told how like we are to Him. The dull and average +personality, the ordinary and not very valuable man, can probably +listen indifferently and with a slow-growing hardness and dim +resentment to that sort of preaching for a number of years. But the +valuable, the highly personalized people, the saints and the sinners, +the great rebels and the great disciples, who are the very folk for +whom the church exists, would hate it, and they would know the final +bitterness of despair if they thought that this was so. Either saint +or sinner would consider it the supreme insult, the last pitch of +insolence, for the church to be telling them that it is true. + +For they know within themselves that it is a lie. Their one hope hangs +on God because His thoughts are not their thoughts, nor His ways their +ways; because He seeth the end from the beginning; because in Him +there is no variableness, neither shadow that is caused by turning; +because no man shall see His face and live. They, the sinners and the +saints, do not want to be told that they, within themselves, can heal +themselves and that sin has no real sinfulness. That is tempting them +to the final denial, the last depth of betrayal, the blurring of moral +values, the calling of evil good and the saying that good is evil. +They know that this is the unpardonable madness. In the hours when +they, the saints and sinners, wipe their mouths and say, "We have done +no harm"; in the days when what they love is ugliness because it is +ugly and shameless, and reckless expression because it is so terrible, +so secretly appalling, so bittersweet with the sweetness of death, +they know that it is the last affront to have the church--the one +place where men expect they will be made to face the facts--bow these +facts out of doors. + +No, we readily grant that the religious approach to the whole truth +and to final reality is like any other one, either scientific, +economic, political, a partial approach. It sets forth for the most +part only a group of facts. When it does not emphasize other facts, +it does not thereby deny them. But it insists that the truth of man's +differences, man's helplessness which the differences reveal, and +man's fate hanging therefore upon a transcendent God, are the key +truths for the religious life. It is with that aspect of life the +preacher deals, and if he fails to grapple with these problems and +considerations, ignores these facts, his candlestick has been removed. + +The argument for a God, then, within His world, but also distinct +from it, above its evil custom and in some sense untouched by +its all-leveling life, is essential to the preservation of human +personality, and personality is essential to dignity, to decency, to +hope. The clearest and simplest thing to be said about the Hebrew God, +lofty and inaccessible Being, with whom nevertheless His purified and +obedient children might have relationships, or about the "living +God" of Greek theology, far removed from us but with whose deathless +goodness, beauty and truth our mortality by some mediator may be +endowed, is that the argument that supports such transcendence is +the argument from necessity. It is the facts of experience, the very +stuff of human life, coming down alike from Hebraic and Hellenic +civilization, which demand Him. Immanence and transcendence are merely +theistic terms for identity and difference. Through them is revealed +and discovered personality, the "I" which is the ultimate fact of +my consciousness. I can but reckon from the known to the unknown. +The world which produced me is also, then, a cosmic identity and +difference. In that double fact is found divine personality. But +that aspect of His Person, that portion of the fact which feeds +the imaginative and volitional life, is the glorious and saving +unlikeness of God--His unthinkable and inexpressible glory; His utter +comprehension and unbelievable compassion; His justice which knows no +flaw and brooks no evasion and cannot be swerved; His power which +may not be withstood and hence is a sure and certain tenderness; His +hatred of sin, terrible and flaming, a hatred which will send sinful +men through a thousand hells, if they will have them, and can only be +saved thereby; His love for men, which is what makes Him hate their +sin and leads Him by His very nature as God to walk into hell with the +sinner, suffering with him a thousand times more than the sinner is +able to understand or know,--like the Paul who could not wish himself, +for himself, in hell, but who did wish himself accursed of God for +his brethren's sake; like Jesus, who, in Gethsemane, would for Himself +avoid His cross, but who accepted it and was willing to hang, forsaken +of God, upon it, for the lives of men, identifying Himself to the +uttermost with their fate. Yes; it is such a supernal God--that God +who is apart, incredible, awful--that the soul of humanity craves and +needs. + +Of course, here again, as throughout these discussions, we are +returning to a form of the old dualism. We cannot seem to help it. We +may construct philosophies like Hegel's in which thesis and antithesis +merge in a higher synthesis; we may use the dual view of the world as +representing only a stage, a present achievement in cosmic progress or +human understanding. But that does not alter the incontestable witness +of present experience that the religious consciousness is based upon, +interwoven with, the sense of the cosmic division without, and the +unresolved moral dualism within the individual life. It is important +enough to remember, however, that we have rejected, at least for this +generation, the old scholastic theologies founded on this general +experience. Fashions of thought change with significant facility; +there is not much of the Absolute about them! Nevertheless we cannot +think with forgotten terms. Therefore ours is no mechanically divided +world where man and God, nature and supernature, soul and body, belong +to mutually exclusive territories. We do not deny the principle of +identity. Hence we have discarded that old view of the world and all +the elder doctrines of an absentee creator, a worthless and totally +depraved humanity, a legalistic or substitutionary atonement, a +magical and non-understandable Incarnation which flowed from it. But +we are not discarding with them that other aspect of the truth, the +principle of separateness, nor those value judgments, that perpetual +vision of another nature, behind and beneath phenomena, from which +the old dualism took its rise. It is the form which it assumed, the +interpretation of experience which it gave, not the facts themselves, +obscure but stubborn as they are, which it confessed, that we have +dropped. Identity and difference are still here; man is a part of his +world, but he is also apart from it. God is in nature and in us; God +is without and other than nature and most awfully something other than +us. + +Indeed, the precise problem of the preacher today is to keep the old +supernatural values and drop the old vocabulary with the philosophy +which induced it. We must acknowledge the universe as one, and yet be +able to show that the He or the It, beyond and without the world, is +its only conceivable beginning, its only conceivable end, the chief +hope of its brevity, the only stay of its idealism. It was the +arbitrary and mechanical completeness of the old division, not the +reality that underlay the distinction itself, which parted company +with truth and hence lost the allegiance of the mind. It was that the +old dualism tried to lock up this, the most baffling of all realities, +in a formula,--that was what undid it. But we shall be equally foolish +if now, in the interests of a new artificial clearness, we deny +another portion of experience just as our fathers ignored certain +other facts in the interests of their too well-defined systems. We +cannot hold to the old world view which would bend the modern mind to +the support of an inherited interpretation of experience and therefore +would not any longer really explain or confirm it. Neither can we hold +new views which mutilate the experience and leave out some of the most +precious elements in it, even if in so doing we should simplify the +problem for the mind. It would be an unreal simplification; it would +darken, not illumine, the understanding; we should never rest in it. +Nor do we need to be concerned if the intellect cannot perfectly +order or easily demonstrate the whole of the religious life, fit each +element with a self-verifying defense and explanation. No man of the +world, to say nothing of a man of faith or imagination, has ever yet +trusted to a purely intellectual judgment. + +So we reject the old dualism, its dichotomized universe, its two sorts +of authority, its prodigious and arbitrary supernaturalism. But we do +not reject what lay behind it. Still we wrestle with the angel, lamed +though we are by the contest, and we cannot let him go until the day +breaks and the shadows flee away. It would be easier perhaps to give +up the religious point of view, but for that ease we should pay with +our life. For that swift answer, achieved by leaving out prime factors +in the problem, we should be betraying the self for whose sake alone +any answer is valuable. It does not pay to cut such Gordian knots! Our +task, then, is to preach transcendence again, not in terms of the old +absolutist philosophy, but in terms of the perceptions, the needs, the +experience of the human heart and mind and will which produced that +philosophy. + +Nor is this so hard to do. Now, as always for the genuinely religious +temperament, there are abundant riches of material lying ready to its +hand. It is not difficult to make transcendence real and to reveal to +men their consummate need of it when we speak of it in the language +of experience and perception. What preaching should avoid is +the abstractions of an archaic system of thought with all their +provocative and contentious elements, the mingled dogmatism and +incompleteness which any worked-out system contains. It is so foolish +in the preacher to turn himself into a lay philosopher. Let him keep +his insight clear, through moral discipline keep his intuitions high, +his spirit pure, and then he can furnish the materials for philosophy. + +Thus an almost universal trait of the religious temperament is in +its delight in beauty. Sometimes it is repressed by an irreligious +asceticism or narrowed and stunted by a literal and external faith. +But when the religious man is left free, it is appropriate to his +genius that he finds the world full of a high pleasure crowded with +sound, color, fragrance, form, in which he takes exquisite delight. +There is, in short, a serene and poetic naturalism, loosely called +"nature-worship," which is keenly felt by both saints and sinners. +All it needs for its consecration and perfection is to help men to +see that this naturalism is vital and precious because, as a matter +of fact, it is something more than naturalism, and more than pleasure +objectified. + +Recall, for instance, the splendors of the external world and that +best season of our climate, the long, slow-breathing autumn. What +high pleasure we take in those hushed days of mid-November in the +soft brown turf of the uplands, the fragrant smell of mellow earth and +burning leaves, the purple haze that dims and magnifies the quiescent +hills. Who is not strangely moved by that profound and brooding peace +into which Nature then gathers up the multitudinous strivings, the +myriad activities of her life? Who does not love to lie, in those +slow-waning days upon the sands which hold within their golden cup the +murmuring and dreaming sea? The very amplitude of the natural world, +its far-flung grace and loveliness, spread out in rolling moor and +winding stream and stately forest marching up the mountain-side, +subdues and elevates the spirit of a man. + +Now, so it has always been and so men have always longed to be the +worshipers of beauty. Therefore they have believed in a conscious and +eternal Spirit behind it. Because again we know that personality is +the only thing we have of absolute worth. A man cannot, therefore, +worship beauty, wholly relinquish himself to its high delights, if he +conceives of this majestic grace as impersonal and inanimate. For that +which we worship must be greater than we. Behind it, therefore, just +because it seems to us so beautiful, must be something that calls to +the hidden deeps of the soul, something intimately akin to our own +spirits. So man worships not nature, but the God of nature; senses an +Eternal Presence behind all gracious form. For that interprets beauty +and consecrates the spell of beauty over us. This gives a final +meaning to what the soul perceives is an utter loveliness. This gives +to beauty an eternal and cosmic significance commensurate to its charm +and power. As long as men's hearts surge, too, when the tide yearns +up the beach; as long as their souls become articulate when the birds +sing in the dawn, and the flowers lift themselves to the sun; so long +will men believe that only from a supreme and conscious Loveliness, +a joyous and a gracious Spirit could have come the beauty which is so +intimately related to the spirit of a man. + +But not all saints and sinners are endowed with this joy and insight, +this quick sensitiveness to beauty. Some of them cannot find the +eternal and transcendent God in a loveliness which, by temperament, +they either underrate or do not really see. There are a great many +good people who cannot take beauty seriously. They become wooden and +suspicious and uncomfortable whenever they are asked to perceive or +enjoy a lovely object. Incredible though it seems, it appears to them +to be unworthy of any final allegiance, any complete surrender, any +unquestioning joy. But there are other ways in which they, too, may +come to this sense of transcendence, other aspects of experience which +also demand it. Most often it is just such folk who cannot perceive +beauty, because they are practical or scientific or condemned to mean +surroundings, who do feel to the full the grim force and terror of +the external world. Prudence, caution, hard sense are to the fore with +them! Very well; there, too, in these perceptions is an open door for +the human spirit to transcend its environment, get out of its physical +shell. The postulate of the absolute worth of beauty may be an +argument for God drawn from subjective necessity. But the postulate of +sovereign moral Being behind the tyranny and brutality of nature is +an argument of objective necessity as well; here we all need God to +explain the world. + +For we deal with what certainly appear to be objective aspects of the +truth, when we regard ourselves in our relation to the might of the +physical universe. For even as men feed upon its beauty, so they have +found it necessary to discover something which should enable them to +live above and unafraid of its material and gigantic power. We have +already seen how there appears to be a cosmic hostility to human life +which sobers indeed those who are intelligent enough to perceive +it. It is only the fool or the brute or the sentimentalist who is +unterrified by nature. The man of reflection and imagination sees his +race crawling ant-like over its tiny speck of slowly cooling earth and +surrounded by titanic and ruthless forces which threaten at any moment +to engulf it. The religious man knows that he is infinitely greater +than the beasts of the field or the clods of the highway. Yet Vesuvius +belches forth its liquid fire and in one day of stark terror the great +city which was full of men is become mute and desolate. The proud +liner scrapes along the surface of the frozen berg and crumples like +a ship of cards. There is a splash, a cry, a white face, a lifted +arm, and then all the pride and splendor, all the hopes and fears, the +gorgeous dreams, the daring thoughts are gone. But the ice floats on +unscarred and undeterred and the ocean tosses and heaves just as it +did before. + +Now, if this is all, if there is for us only the physical might of +nature and the world is only what it seems to be; if there is no other +God except such as can be found within this sort of cosmic process, +then human life is a sardonic mockery, and self-respect a silly +farce, and all the heroism of the heart and the valor of the mind the +unmeaning activities of an insignificant atom. The very men who will +naturally enter your churches are the ones who have always found that +theory of life intolerable. It doesn't take in all the facts. They +could not live by it and the soul of the race, looking out upon this +universe of immeasurable material bulk, has challenged it and dared to +assert its own superiority. + +So by this road these men come back to the transcendent God without +whom they cannot guard that integrity of personality which we are all +set to keep. For here there is no way of believing in oneself, no +way of enduring this world or our place in it and no tolerable way of +understanding it except we look beneath this cosmic hostility and +find our self-respect and a satisfying cosmic meaning in perceiving +spiritual force, a conscious ethical purpose, which interpenetrates +the thunder and the lightning, which lies behind the stars as they +move in their perpetual courses. "Through it the most ancient heavens +are fresh and strong." Integrity of personality in such a world as +this, belief in self, without which life is dust and ashes in the +mouth, rest on the sublime assumption that suffusing material force +is ethical spirit, more like unto us than it, controlling force in the +interest of moral and eternal purposes. In these purposes living, not +mechanical, forces play a major part. + +Of course, to all such reasoning the Kantians and humanists reply that +these notions of an objective and eternal beauty, of a transcendent +and actual Cosmic Being exist within the mind. They are purely +subjective ideas, they are bounded by the inexorable circle of our +experience, hence they offer no proof of any objective reality which +may in greater or less degree correspond to them. + +However, there must be a "source" of these ideas. To which the +philosophers reply, Yes, they are "primitive and necessary," produced +by reason only, without borrowing anything from the senses or the +understanding. Yet there is no sufficient evidence that the idea of +God is thus produced by any faculty of mind acting in entire freedom +from external influence. On the contrary, the idea appears to owe much +to the operation of external things upon the mind; it is not then the +wholly unaffected product of reason. It is a response no less than +an intuition. Like all knowledge a discovery, but the discovery of +something there which could be discovered, hence, in that sense, a +revelation. + +It is not necessary, then, for men to meet their situation in the +cosmos by saying with Kant: We will act as though there were a God, +although we are always conscious that we have no real knowledge of +Him as an external being. In the light of the tragic circumstances of +humanity, this is demanding the impossible. No sane body of men will +ever get sufficient inspiration for life or find an adequate solution +for the problem of life by resting upon mere value judgments which +they propose, by an effort of will, to put in the place of genuine +reality judgments. Indeed, there is a truly scholastic naivete, a +sort of solemn and unconscious humor, in seriously proposing that +men should vitalize and consecrate their deepest purposes and most +difficult experiences by hypothesizing mere appearances and illusions. + +Nor are we willing either to say with Santayana that all our sense of +the beauty of the world is merely pleasure objectified and that we can +infer no eternal Beauty from it. We are aware that there cannot be an +immediate knowledge of a reality distinct from ourselves, that all +our knowledge must be, in the nature of the case, an idea, a mental +representation, that we can never know the Thing Itself. But if we +believe, as we logically and reasonably may, that our subjective ideas +are formed under the influence of objects unknown but without us, +produced by stimuli, real, if not perceived apart from our own +consciousness, then we may say that what we have is a mediate or +representative knowledge not only of an Eternal Being but formed under +the influence of that Being. Nor does the believer ask for more. He +does not expect to see the King in His beauty; he only needs to know +that He is, that He is there. + +How self-verifying and moving, then, are the appeals ready to our +hands. As long as man with the power to question, to strive, to +aspire, to endure, to suffer, lives in a universe of ruthless and +overwhelming might, so long, if he is to understand it or maintain +his reason and his dignity, he will believe it to be controlled by a +Spirit beyond no less than within, from whom his spirit is derived. It +is out of the struggle to revere and conserve human personality, out +of the belief in the indefectible worth and honor of selfhood that +our race has fronted a universe in arms, and pitting its soul against +nature has cried, "God is my refuge: underneath me, at the very moment +when I am engulfed in earthquake shock or shattered in the battle's +roar, there are everlasting arms!" There is something which is too +deep for tears in the unconquerable idealism, the utter magnanimity +of the faith of the human spirit in that which will answer to itself, +as evidenced in this forlorn and glorious adventure of the soul. +Sometimes we are constrained to ask ourselves, How can the heart of +man go so undismayed through the waste places of the world? + +But, of course, the preacher's main task is to interpret man's moral +experience, which drives him out to search for the eternal in +the terms of the "other" and redeeming God. We have spoken of the +depersonalizing of religion which paganism and humanism alike have +brought upon the world. One evidence of that has been the way in +which we have confounded the social expressions of religion with its +individual source. We are so concerned with the effect of our religion +upon the community that we have forgotten that the heart of religion +is found in the solitary soul. All of which means that we have here +again yielded to the time spirit that enfolds us and have come to +think of man as religious if he be humane. But that is not true. No +man is ever religious until he becomes devout. And indeed no man of +our sort--the saint and sinner sort--is ever long and truly humane +unless the springs of his tenderness for men are found in his ever +widening and deepening gratitude to God! Hence no man was ever yet +able to preach the living God until he understood that the central +need in human life is to reconcile the individual conscience to +itself, compose the anarchy of the spiritual life. Men want to be +happy and be fed; but men must have inward peace. + +We swing back, therefore, to the native ground of preaching, approach +the religious problem, now, not from the aesthetic or the scientific, +but from the moral angle. Here we are dealing with the most poignant +of all human experiences. For it is in this intensely personal world +of moral failure and divided will that men are most acutely aware of +themselves and hence of their need of that other-than-self beyond. +The sentimental idealizing of contemporary life, the declension of the +humanist's optimism into that superficial complacency which will not +see what it does not like or what it is not expedient to see, makes +one's mind to chuckle while one's heart doth ache. There is a brief +heyday, its continuance dependent upon the uncontrollable factors +of outward prosperity, physical and nervous vigor, capacity for +preoccupation with the successive novelties of a diversified and +complicated civilization, in which even men of religious temperament +can minimize or ignore, perhaps sincerely disbelieve in, their divided +life. Sometimes we think we may sin and be done with it. But always in +the end man must come back to this moral tragedy of the soul. Because +sin will not be done with us when we are done with it. Every evil +is evil to him that does it and sooner or later we are compelled +to understand that to be a sinner is the sorest and most certain +punishment for sinning. + +Then the awakening begins. Then can preaching stir the heart until +deep answereth unto deep. It can talk of the struggle with moral +temptation and weakness; of the unstable temperament which oscillates +between the gutter and the stars; of the perversion or abuse of +impulses good in themselves; of the dreadful dualism of the soul. For +these are inheritances which have made life tragic in every generation +for innumerable human beings. Whoever needed to explain to a company +of grown men and women what the cry of the soul for its release from +passion is? Every generation has its secret pessimists, brooding over +the anarchy of the spirit, the issues of a distracted life. We need +not ask with Faust, "Where is that place which men call 'Hell'?" nor +wait for Mephistopheles to answer, + + "Hell is in no set place, nor is it circumscribed, + For where we are--is Hell!" + +Now, it is from such central and poignant experiences as these that +men have been constrained to look outward for a God. For these mark +the very disintegration of personality, the utter dissipation of +selfhood. That is the inescapable horror of sin. That is what we mean +when we say sinners are lost; so they are, they are lost to their own +selves. With what discriminating truth the father in the parable of +the lost boy speaks. "This, my son," he says, "was dead though he is +alive again." So it is with us; being is the price we pay for sinning. +The more we do wrong the less we are. How then shall we become alive +again? + +It is out of the shame and passion, the utter need of the human heart, +which such considerations show to be real that men have built up their +redemptive faiths. For all moral victory is conditioned upon help from +without. To be sure each will and soul must strive desperately, even +unto death, yet all that strife shall be in vain unless One stoops +down from above and wrestles with us in the conflict. For the sinner +must have two things, both of them beyond his unaided getting, or he +will die. He must be released from his captivity. Who does not know +the terrible restlessness, that grows and feeds upon itself and then +does grow some more, of the man bound by evil and wanting to get out? +The torture of sin is that it deprives us of the power to express +ourselves. The cry of moral misery, therefore, is always the groaning +of the prisoner. Oh, for help to break the bars of my intolerable +and delicious sin that I may be myself once more! Oh, for some power +greater than I which, being greater, can set me free! + +But more than the sinner wants to be free does he want to be kept. +Along with the passion for liberty is the desire for surrender. Again, +then, he wants something outside himself, some Being so far above the +world he lives in that it can take him, the whole of him, break his +life, shake it to its foundations, then pacify, compose it, make it +anew. He is so tired of his sin; he is so weary with striving; he +wants to relinquish it all; get far away from what he is; flee like +a bird to the mountain; lay down his life before the One like whom he +would be. So he wants power, he wants peace. He would be himself, he +would lose himself. He prays for freedom, he longs for captivity. + +Now, out of these depths of human life, these vast antinomies of the +spirit, has arisen man's belief in a Saviour-God. Sublime and awful +are the sanctions upon which it rests. Out of the extremity and +definiteness of our need we know that He must be and we know what He +must be like. He is the One to whom all hearts are open, all desires +known, from whom no secrets are hid. Who could state the mingling of +desire and dread with which men strive after, and hide from, such +a God? We want Him, yet until we have Him how we fear Him. For that +inclusive knowledge of us which is God, if only we can bear to come to +it, endows us with freedom. For then all the barriers are down, there +is nothing to conceal, nothing to explain, nothing to hold back. Then +reality and appearance coincide, character and condition correspond. +I am what I am before Him. Supreme reality from without answers and +completes my own, and makes me real, and my reality makes me free. + +But if He thus knows me, and through that knowledge every inner +inhibition melts in His presence and every damning secret's out, and +all my life is spread like an open palm before His gaze, and I am come +at last, through many weary roads, unto my very self, why then I can +let go, I can relinquish myself. The dreadful tension's gone and in +utter surrender the soul is poured out, until, spent and expressed, +rest and peace flood back into the satisfied life. So the life is +free; so the life is bound. So a man stands upon his feet; so he +clings to the Rock that is higher than he. So the life is cleansed in +burning light; so the soul is hid in the secret of God's presence. So +men come to themselves; so men lose themselves in the Eternal. There +is perfect freedom at last because we have attained to complete +captivity. There is power accompanied by peace. That is the gift which +the vision of a God, morally separate from, morally other than we, +brings to the inward strife, the spiritual agony of the world. This +is the need which that faith satisfies. It is, I suppose, in this +exulting experience of moral freedom and spiritual peace which comes +to those men who make the experiment of faith that they, for the most +part, find their sufficient proof of the divine reality. Who ever +doubted His existence who could cry with all that innumerable company +of many kindreds and peoples and tongues: + + "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay; + And he set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. + And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God." + +Here, then, is the preaching which is religious. How foolish are we +not to preach it more! How trivial and impertinent it is to question +the permanence of the religious interpretation of the world! What +a revelation of personal insignificance it is to fail to revere the +majesty of the devout and aspiring life! That which a starved and +restless and giddy world has lost is this pool of quietness, this +tower of strength, this cleansing grace of salvation, this haven of +the Spirit. Belief in a transcendent deity is as natural as hunger +and thirst, as necessary as sleep and breathing. It was the inner and +essential needs of our fathers' lives which drove them out to search +for Him. It will be the inner and essential needs of the lives of our +children that shall bring them to the altar where their fathers and +their fathers' fathers bowed down before them. Are we going to be +afraid to keep its fires burning? + +And so we come to our final and most difficult aspect of this +transcendent problem. We have talked of the man who is separate from +nature, and who knows himself as man because behind nature he sees +the God from whom he is separate, too. We have seen how he needs +that "otherness" in God to maintain his personality and how the gulf +between him and that God induces that sense of helplessness which +makes the humility and penitence of the religious life. We must come +now to our final question. How is he to bridge the gulf? By what power +can he go through with this experience we have just been relating and +find his whole self in a whole world? How can he dare to try it? How +can he gain power to achieve it? + +Perhaps this is the central difficulty of all religion. It is +certainly the one which the old Greeks felt. Plato, the father of +Christian theology, and all neo-platonists, knew that the gulf is +here between man and God and they knew that something or someone must +bridge it for us. They perceived that man, unaided, cannot leap it at +a stride. We proceed, driven by the facts of life, to the point where +the soul looks up to the Eternal and confesses the kinship, and knows +that only in His light shall it see light, and that it only shall be +satisfied when it awakes in His likeness. But how shall the connection +be made? What shall enable us to do that mystic thing, come back +to God? We have frightful handicaps in the attempt. How shall the +distrust that sin creates, the hardness that sin forms, the despair +and helplessness that sin induces, the dreadful indifference which +is its expression,--how shall they be removed? How shall the unfaith +which the mystery, the suffering, the evil of the world induce be +overcome? Being a sinner I do not dare, and being ignorant I do not +believe, to come. God is there and God wants us; like as a father +pitieth his children so He pitieth us. He knoweth our frame, He +remembereth that we are dust. We know that is true; again we do not +know it is true. All the sin that is in us and all which that sin +has done to us insists and insists that it is not true. And the mind +wonders--and wonders. What shall break that distrust; and melt away +the hardness so that we have an open mind; and send hope into despair, +hope with its accompanying confidence to act; change unfaith to +belief, until, in having faith, we thereby have that which faith +believes in? How amazing is life! We look out into the heavenly +country, we long to walk therein, we have so little power to stir hand +or foot to gain our entrance. We know it is there but all the facts of +our rebellious or self-centered life, individual and associated alike, +are against it and therefore we do not know that it is there. + +Philosophy and reason and proofs of logic cannot greatly help us here. +No man was ever yet argued into the kingdom of God. We cannot convince +ourselves of our souls. For we are creatures, not minds; lives, not +ideas. Only life can convince life; only a Person but, of course, +a transcendent person that is more like Him than like us, can make +that Other-who-lives certain and sure for us. This necessity for some +intermediary who shall be a human yet more-than-human proof that +God is and that man may be one with Him; this reinforcing of the old +argument from subjective necessity by its verification in the actual +stuff of objective life, has been everywhere sought by men. + +Saviours, redeemers, mediators, then, are not theological manikins. +They are not superfluous figures born of a mistaken notion of +the universe. They are not secondary gods, concessions to our +childishness. They, too, are called for in the nature of things. But +to really mediate they must have the qualities of both that which they +transmit and of those who receive the transmission. Most of all they +must have that "other" quality, so triumphant and self-verifying that +seeing it constrains belief. A mediator wholly unlike ourselves would +be a meaningless and mocking figure. But a mediator who was chiefly +like ourselves would be a contradiction in terms! + +So we come back again to the old problem. Man needs some proof that he +who knows that he is more than dust can meet with that other life from +whose star his speck has been derived. Something has got to give him +powerful reinforcement for this supreme effort of will, of faith. If +only he could know that he and it ever have met in the fields of time +and space, then he would be saved. For that would give him the will to +believe; that would prove the ultimate; give him the blessed assurance +which heals the wounds of the heart. Then he would have power to +surrender. Then he would no longer fear the gulf, he would walk out +onto it and know that as he walked he was with God. + +Some such reasoning as this ought to make clear the place that Jesus +holds in Christian preaching and why we call Him Saviour and why +salvation comes for us who are of His spiritual lineage, through Him. +Of course it is true that Jesus shows to all discerning eyes what man +may be. But that is not the chief secret of His power; that is not +why churches are built to Him and His cross still fronts, defeated +but unconquerable, our pagan world. Jesus was more-than-nature and +more-than-human. It is this "other" quality, operative and objectified +in His experience within our world, which gives Him the absoluteness +which makes Him indispensable and precious. The mystery is deepest +here. For here we transfer the antinomy from thought to conduct; from +inner perception to one Being's actual experience. Here, in Him, we +say we see it resolved into its higher synthesis in actual operation. + +Here, then, we can almost look into it. Yet when we do gaze, our eyes +dazzle, our minds swerve, it is too much. It is not easy, indeed, at +the present time it seems to be impossible to reconcile the Christ +of history with the Christ of experience. Yet there would be neither +right nor reason in saying that the former was more of a reality +than the latter. And all the time the heart from which great thoughts +arise, "the heart which has its reasons of which the mind knows +nothing," says, Here in Him is the consummate quality, the absolute +note of life. Here the impossible has been accomplished. Here the +opposites meet and the contradictions blend. Here is something so +incredible that it is true. + +Of course, Jesus is of us and He is ours. That is true and it is +inexpressibly sweet to remember it. Again, to use our old solecism, +that is the lesser part of the truth; the greater part, for men of +religion, is that Jesus is of God, that He belongs to Him. His chief +office for our world has not been to show us what men can be like; it +has been to give us the vision of the Eternal in a human face. For if +He does reveal God to man then He must hold, as President Tucker says, +the quality and substance of the life which He reveals. + +Here is where He differs immeasurably from even a Socrates. What men +want most to believe about Jesus is this, that when we commune with +Him, we are with the infinite; that man's just perception of the +Eternal Spirit, his desire to escape from time into reality, may be +fulfilled in Jesus. That is the Gospel: Come unto Him, all ye that +labor and are heavy laden, for He will give you rest. Whosoever +drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of +the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that +I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into +everlasting life. If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall +be free indeed. + +Now, if all this is true, what is the religious preaching of Jesus, +what aspect of His person meets the spiritual need? Clearly, it is His +transcendence. It is not worthy of us to evade it because we cannot +explain it. Surely what has hastened our present paganism has been the +removal from the forefront of our consciousness of Jesus the Saviour, +the divine Redeemer, the absolute Meeter of an absolute need. Of such +preaching of Jesus we have today very little. The pendulum has swung +far to the left, to the other exclusive emphasis, too obviously +influenced by the currents of the day. It was perhaps inevitable +that He should for a time drop out of His former place in Christian +preaching under this combined humanistic and naturalistic movement. +But it means that again we have relinquished those values which have +made Jesus the heart of humanity. + +Of course, He was a perfected human character inspired above all +men by the spirit of God, showing the capacity of humanity to hold +Divinity. This is what Mary celebrates in her paean, "He that is +mighty has magnified me and holy is his name." But is this what men +have passionately adored in Jesus? Has love of Him been self-love? Is +this why He has become the sanctuary of humanity? I think not. We have +for the moment no good language for the other conception of Him. He +is indeed the pledge of what we may be, but how many of us would ever +believe that pledge unless there was something else in Him, more than +we, that guaranteed it? What, as President Tucker asks, is this power +which shall make "maybe" into "is" for us? "Without doubt the trend of +modern thought and faith is toward the more perfect identification +of Christ with humanity. We cannot overestimate the advantage to +Christianity of this tendency. The world must know and feel the +humanity of Jesus. But it makes the greatest difference in result +whether the ground of the common humanity is in Him or in us. To +borrow the expressive language of Paul, was He 'created' in us? Or are +we 'created' in Him? Grant the right of the affirmation that 'there +is no difference in kind between the divine and the human'; allow the +interchange of terms so that one may speak of the humanity of God +and the divinity of man; appropriate the motive which lies in these +attempts to bring God and man together and thus to explain the +personality of Jesus Christ, it is still a matter of infinite concern +whether His home is in the higher or the lower regions of divinity. +After all, very little is gained by the transfer of terms. Humanity +is in no way satisfied with its degree of divinity. We are still as +anxious as ever to rise above ourselves and in this anxiety we want to +know concerning our great helper, whether He has in Himself anything +more than the possible increase of a common humanity. What is His +power to lift and how long may it last? Shall we ever reach His level, +become as divine as He, or does He have part in the absolute and +infinite? This question may seem remote in result but it is everything +in principle. The immanence of Christ has its present meaning and +value because of His transcendence."[40] + +[Footnote 40: "The Satisfaction of Humanity in Jesus Christ," _Andover +Review_, January, 1893.] + +Preaching today is not moving on the level of this discussion, is +neither asking nor attempting to answer its questions. Great preaching +in some way makes men see the end of the road, not merely the +direction in which it travels. The power to do that we have lost if we +have lost the more-than-us in Jesus. Humanity, unaided, cannot look +to that end which shall explain the beginning. And does Jesus mean +very much to us if He is only "Jesus"? Why do we answer the great +invitation, "Come unto me"? Because He is something other than us? +Because He calls us away from ourselves? back to home? Most of us +no longer know how to preach on that plane of experience or from the +point of view where such questions are serious and real. Our fathers +had a world view and a philosophy which made such preaching easy. But +their power did not lie in that world view; it lay in this vision of +Jesus which produced the view. Is not this the vision which we need? + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + +WORSHIP AS THE CHIEF APPROACH TO TRANSCENDENCE + + +Whatever becomes the inward and the invisible grace of the Christian +community such will be its outward and visible form. Those regulative +ideas and characteristic emotions which determine in any age the +quality of its religious experience will be certain to shape the +nature and conduct of its ecclesiastical assemblies. Their influence +will show, both in the liturgical and homiletical portions of public +worship. If anything further were needed, therefore, to indicate +the secularity of this age, its substitutes for worship and its +characteristic type of preaching would, in themselves, reveal the +situation. So we venture to devote these closing discussions to some +observations on the present state of Protestant public worship and the +prevailing type of Protestant preaching. For we may thus ascertain +how far those ideas and perceptions which an age like ours needs +are beginning to find an expression and what means may be taken to +increase their influence through church services in the community. + +We begin, then, in this chapter, not with preaching, but with worship. +It seems to me clear that the chief office of the church is liturgical +rather than homiletical. Or, if that is too technical a statement, +it may be said that the church exists to set forth and foster the +religious life and that, because of the nature of that life, it finds +its chief opportunity for so doing in the imaginative rather than the +rationalizing or practical areas of human expression. Even as Michael +Angelo, at the risk of his life, purloined dead bodies that he +might dissect them and learn anatomy, so all disciples of the art of +religion need the discipline of intellectual analysis and of knowledge +of the facts of the religious experience if they are to be leaders in +faith. There is a toughness of fiber needed in religious people that +can only come through such mental discipline. But anatomists are not +sculptors. Michael Angelo was the genius, the creative artist, not +because he understood anatomy, but chiefly because of those as yet +indefinable and secret processes of feeling and intuition in man, +which made him feel rather than understand the pity and the terror, +the majesty and the pathos of the human spirit and reveal them in +significant and expressive line. Knowledge supported rather than +rivaled insight. In the same way, both saint and sinner need religious +instruction. Nevertheless they are what they are because they are +first perceptive rather than reasoning beings. They both owe, the one +his salvation, the other his despair, to the fact that they have seen +the vision of the holy universe. Both are seers; the saint has given +his allegiance to the heavenly vision. The sinner has resolved to be +disobedient unto it. Both find their first and more natural approach +to religious truth, therefore, through the creative rather than the +critical processes, the emotional rather than the informative powers. + +There are, of course, many in our churches who would dissent from +this opinion. It is characteristic of Protestantism, as of humanism in +general, that it lays its chief emphasis upon the intelligence. If we +go to church to practice the presence of God, must we not first know +who and what this God is whose presence with us we are there asked +to realize? So most Protestant services are more informative than +inspirational. Their attendants are assembled to hear about God rather +to taste and see that the Lord is good. They analyze the religious +experience rather than enjoy it; insensibly they come to regard +the spiritual life as a proposition to be proved, not a power to +be appropriated. Hence our services generally consist of some +"preliminary exercises," as we ourselves call them, leading up to the +climax--when it is a climax--of the sermon. + +Here is a major cause for the declension of the influence of +Protestant church services. They go too much on the assumption that +men already possess religion and that they come to church to discuss +it rather than to have it provided. They call men to be listeners +rather than participants in their temples. Of course, one may find +God through the mind. The great scholar, the mathematician or the +astronomer may cry with Kepler, "Behold, I think the thoughts of God +after him!" Yet a service which places its chief emphasis upon the +appeal to the will through instruction has declined from that realm +of the absolutes where religion in its purest form belongs. For since +preaching makes its appeal chiefly through reason, it thereby attempts +to produce only a partial and relative experience in the life of the +listener. It impinges upon the will by a slow process. Sometimes one +gets so deadly weary of preaching because, in a world like ours, the +reasonable process is so unreasonable. That's a half truth, of course, +but one that the modern world needs to learn. + +Others would dissent from our position by saying that service, the +life of good will, is a sufficient worship. The highest adoration is +to visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction. _Laborare +est orare_. What we do speaks so loud God does not care for what +we say. True: but the value of what we do for God depends upon the +godliness of the doer and where shall he find that godliness save in +the secret place of the Most High? And the greatest gift we can give +our fellows is to bring them into the divine presence. "There is," +says Dr. William Adams Brown, "a service that is directed to the +satisfaction of needs already in existence, and there is a service +that is itself the creator of new needs which enlarge the capacity of +the man to whom it would minister. To this larger service religion +is committed, and the measure of a man's fitness to render it is his +capacity for worship." But no one can give more than he has. If we are +to offer such gifts we must ourselves go before and lead. To create +the atmosphere in which the things of righteousness and holiness +seem to be naturally exalted above the physical, the commercial, the +domestic affairs of men; to lift the level of thought and feeling +to that high place where the spiritual consciousness contributes its +insights and finds a magnanimous utterance--is there anything that our +world needs more? There are noble and necessary ministries to the body +and the mind, but most needed, and least often offered, there is a +ministry to the human spirit. This is the gift which the worshiper can +bring. Knowledge of God may not be merely or even chiefly comprehended +in a concept of the intelligence; knowledge of Him is that vitalizing +consciousness of the Presence felt in the heart, which opens our eyes +that we may see that the mountain is full of horses and chariots of +fire round about us and that they who fight with us are more than +they who fight with them. This is the true and central knowledge that +private devotion and public worship alone can give; preaching can +but conserve and transmit this religious experience through the mind, +worship creates it in the heart. Edwards understood that neither +thought nor conduct can take its place. "The sober performance of +moral duty," said he, "is no substitute for passionate devotion to a +Being with its occasional moments of joy and exaltation." + +We should then begin with worship. A church which does not emphasize +it before everything else is trying to build the structure of a +spiritual society with the corner stone left out. Let us try, +first of all, to define it. An old and popular definition of the +descriptive sort says that "worship is the response of the soul to +the consciousness of being in the presence of God." A more modern +definition, analyzing the psychology of worship, defines it as "the +unification of consciousness around the central controlling idea of +God, the prevailing emotional tone being that of adoration." Evidently +we mean, then, by worship the appeal to the religious will through +feeling and the imagination. Worship is therefore essentially +creative. Every act of worship seeks to bring forth then and there +a direct experience of God through high and concentrated emotion. +It fixes the attention upon Him as an object in Himself supremely +desirable. The result of this unified consciousness is peace and the +result of this peace and harmony is a new sense of power. Worship, +then, is the attainment of that inward wholeness for which in one form +or another all religion strives by means of contemplation. So by its +very nature it belongs to the class of the absolutes. + +Many psychologies of religion define this contemplation as aesthetic, +and make worship a higher form of delight. This appears to me a quite +typical non-religious interpretation of a religious experience. There +are four words which need explaining when we talk of worship. They +are: wonder, admiration, awe, reverence. Wonder springs from the +recognition of the limitations of our knowledge; it is an experience +of the mind. Admiration is the response of a growing intelligence to +beauty, partly an aesthetic, partly an intellectual experience. These +distinctions Coleridge had in mind in his well-known sentence "In +wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it ends; and admiration fills +up the interspace. But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance; +the last is the parent of adoration." Awe is the sense-perception +of the stupendous power and magnitude of the universe; it is, quite +literally, a godly fear. But it is not ignoble nor cringing, it +is just and reasonable, the attitude, toward the Whole, of a +comprehensive sanity. + +Thus "I would love Thee, O God, if there were no heaven, _and if there +were no hell, I would fear Thee no less_." Reverence is devotion to +goodness, sense of awe-struck loyalty to a Being manifestly under the +influence of principles higher than our own.[41] Now it is with these +last two, awe and reverence, rather than wonder and admiration, that +worship has to do. + +[Footnote 41: For a discussion of these four words see Allen, +_Reverence as the Heart of Christianity_, pp. 253 ff.] + +Hence the essence of worship is not aesthetic contemplation. Without +doubt worship does gratify the aesthetic instinct and most properly +so. There is no normal expression of man's nature which has not its +accompanying delight. The higher and more inclusive the expression +the more exquisite, of course, the delight. But that pleasure is the +by-product, not the object, of worship. It itself springs partly from +the awe of the infinite and eternal majesty which induces the desire +to prostrate oneself before the Lord our Maker. "I have heard of Thee +by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I +abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." It also springs partly +from passionate devotion of a loyal will to a holy Being. "Behold, as +the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters and as the +eyes of a maid unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon +the Lord." Thus reverence is the high and awe-struck hunger for +spiritual communion. "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. +When shall I come and appear before God?" + +There is a noble illustration of the nature and the uses of worship +in the Journals of Jonathan Edwards, distinguished alumnus of Yale +College, and the greatest mind this hemisphere has produced. You +remember what he wrote in them, as a youth, about the young woman who +later became his wife: "They say there is a young lady in New Haven +who is beloved of that great Being who made and rules the world, and +that there are certain seasons in which this great Being in some way +or other invisible comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding +sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to +meditate on Him. Therefore if you present all the world before her, +with the richest of its treasures, she disregards and cares not for +it and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange +sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections, is most +just and conscientious in all her conduct, and you could not persuade +her to do anything wrong or sinful if you would give her all the +world, lest she should offend this great Being. She is of wonderful +calmness and universal benevolence of mind, especially after this +great God has manifested Himself to her mind. She will sometimes go +about from place to place singing sweetly and seems to be always full +of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, +walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible +always conversing with her." + +Almost every element of worship is contained in this description. +First, we have a young human being emotionally conscious of the +presence of God, who in some way or other directly but invisibly comes +to her. Secondly, we have her attention so fixed on the adoration of +God that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate upon Him. +Thirdly, as the result of this worshipful approach to religious +reality, we have the profound peace and harmony, the _summum bonum_ +of existence, coupled with strong moral purpose which characterize +her life. Here, then, is evidently the unification of consciousness in +happy awe and the control of destiny through meditation upon infinite +matters, that is, through reverent contemplation of God. Is it not +one of those ironies of history wherewith fate is forever mocking +and teasing the human spirit, that the grandson of this lady and of +Jonathan Edwards should have been Aaron Burr? + +Clearly, then, the end of worship is to present to the mind, through +the imagination, one idea, majestic and inclusive. So it presents it +chiefly through high and sustained feeling. Worship proceeds on the +understanding that one idea, remaining almost unchanged and holding +the attention for a considerable length of time, so directs the +emotional processes that thought and action are harmonized with it. +If one reads the great prayers of the centuries they indicate, for the +most part, an unconscious understanding of this psychology of worship. +Take, for instance, this noble prayer of Pusey's. + +"Let me not seek out of Thee what I can find only in Thee, O Lord, +peace and rest and joy and bliss, which abide only in thine abiding +joy. Lift up my soul above the weary round of harassing thoughts, to +Thy eternal presence. Lift up my soul to the pure, bright, serene, +radiant atmosphere of Thy presence, that there I may breathe freely, +there repose in Thy love, there be at rest from myself and from all +things that weary me, and thence return arrayed with Thy peace, to do +and bear what shall please Thee." + +This prayer expresses the essence of worship which is the seeking, +through the fixation of attention, not the delight but rather the +peace and purity which can only be found in the consciousness of God. +This peace is the necessary outcome of the indwelling presence. It +ensues when man experiences the radiant atmosphere of the divine +communion. + +The same clear expression of worship is found in another familiar and +noble prayer, that of Johann Arndt. Here, too, are phrases descriptive +of a unified consciousness induced by reverent loyalty. + +"Ah, Lord, to whom all hearts are open, Thou canst govern the vessel +of my soul far better than can I. Arise, O Lord, and command the +stormy wind and the troubled sea of my heart to be still, and at peace +in Thee, that I may look up to Thee undisturbed and abide in union +with Thee, my Lord. Let me not be carried hither and thither by +wandering thoughts, but forgetting all else let me see and hear Thee. +Renew my spirit, kindle in me Thy light that it may shine within me, +and my heart burn in love and adoration for Thee. Let Thy Holy Spirit +dwell in me continually, and make me Thy temple and sanctuary, and +fill me with divine love and life and light, with devout and heavenly +thoughts, with comfort and strength, with joy and peace." + +Thus here one sees in the high contemplation of a transcendent God +the subduing and elevating of the human will, the restoration and +composure of the moral life. Finally, in a prayer of St. Anselm's +there is a sort of analysis of the process of worship. + +"O God, Thou _art_ life, wisdom, truth, bounty and blessedness, the +eternal, the only true Good. My God and my Lord, Thou art my hope and +my heart's joy. I confess with thanksgiving that Thou hast made me in +Thine image, that I may direct all my thoughts to Thee and love Thee. +Lord, make me to know Thee aright that I may more and more love and +enjoy and possess Thee." + +One cannot conclude these examples of worshipful expression without +quoting a prayer of Augustine, which is, I suppose, the most perfect +brief petition in all the Christian literature of devotion and which +gives the great psychologist's perception of the various steps in +the unification of the soul with the eternal Spirit through sublime +emotion. + +"Grant, O God, that we may desire Thee, and desiring Thee, seek Thee, +and seeking Thee, find Thee, and finding Thee, be satisfied with Thee +forever." + +I think one may see, then, why worship as distinct from preaching, +or the hearing of preaching, is the first necessity of the religious +life. It unites us as nothing else can do with God the whole and God +the transcendent. The conception of God is the sum total of human +needs and desires harmonized, unified, concretely expressed. It is the +faith of the worshiper that this concept is derived from a real and +objective Being in some way corresponding to it. No one can measure +the influence of such an idea when it dominates the consciousness of +any given period. It can create and set going new desires and habits, +it can minish and repress old ones, because this idea carries, with +its transcendent conception, the dynamic quality which belongs to +the idea of perfect power. But this transcendent conception, being +essentially of something beyond, without and above ourselves can only +be "realized" through the feeling and the imagination, whose province +it is to deal with the supersensuous values, with the fringes of +understanding, with the farthest bounds of knowledge. These make the +springboard, so to speak, from which man dares to launch himself into +that sea of the infinite, which we can neither understand nor measure, +but which nevertheless we may perceive and feel, which in some sense +we know to be there. + +So, if we deal first with worship, we are merely beginning at the +beginning and starting at the bottom. And, in the light of this +observation, it is appalling to survey the non-liturgical churches +today and see the place that public devotion holds in them. It is not +too much, I think, to speak of the collapse of worship in Protestant +communities. No better evidence of this need be sought than in the +nature of the present attempts to reinstate it. They have a naivete, +an incongruity, that can only be explained on the assumption of their +impoverished background. + +This situation shows first in the heterogeneous character of our +experiments. We are continually printing on our churches' calendars +what we usually call "programs," but which are meant to be orders +of worship. We are also forever changing them. There is nothing +inevitable about their order; they have no intelligible, +self-verifying procedure. Anthems are inserted here and there without +any sense of the progression or of the psychology of worship. Glorias +are sung sometimes with the congregation standing up and sometimes +while they are sitting down. There is no lectionary to determine a +comprehensive and orderly reading of Scripture, not much sequence of +thought or progress of devotion either in the read or the extempore +prayers. There is no uniformity of posture. There are two historic +attitudes of reverence when men are addressing the Almighty. They are +the standing upon one's feet or the falling upon one's knees. For +the most part we neither stand nor kneel; we usually loll. Some of us +compromise by bending forward to the limiting of our breath and the +discomfort of our digestion. It is too little inducive to physical +ease or perhaps too derogatory to our dignity to kneel before the Lord +our Maker. All this seems too much like the efforts of those who have +forgotten what worship really is and are trying to find for it some +comfortable or attractive substitute. + +Second: we show our inexperience by betraying the confusion +of aesthetic and ethical values as we strive for variety and +entertainment in church services; we build them around wonder and +admiration, not around reverence and awe. But we are mistaken if +we suppose that men chiefly desire to be pleasantly entertained or +extraordinarily delighted when they go into a church. They go there +because they desire to enter a Holy Presence; they want to approach +One before whom they can be still and know that He is God. All +"enrichments" of a service injected into it here and there, designed +to make it more attractive, to add color and variety, to arrest +the attention of the senses are, as ends, beside the point, and our +dependence upon them indicates the unhappy state of worship in our +day. That we do thus make our professional music an end in itself is +evident from our blatant way of advertising it. In the same way we +advertise sermon themes, usually intended to startle the pious and +provoke the ungodly. We want to arouse curiosity, social or political +interest, to achieve some secular reaction. We don't advertise that +tomorrow in our church there is to be a public worship of God, and +that everything that we are going to do will be in the awe-struck +sense that He is there. We are afraid that nobody would come if we +merely did that! + +What infidels we are! Why are we surprised that the world is passing +us by? We say and we sing a great many things which it is incredible +to suppose we would address to God if we really thought He were +present. Yet anthems and congregational singing are either a sacrifice +solemnly and joyously offered to God or else all the singing is less, +and worse, than nothing in a church service. But how often sentimental +and restless music, making not for restraint and reverence, not +for the subduing of mind and heart but for the expression of those +expansive and egotistical moods which are of the essence of romantic +singing, is what we employ. There is a great deal of truly religious +music, austere in tone, breathing restraint and reverence, quietly +written. The anthems of Palestrina, Anerio, Viadana, Vittoria among +the Italians; of Bach, Haydn, Handel, Mozart among the Germans; and +of Tallis, Gibbons and Purcell among the English, are all of the truly +devout order. Yet how seldom are the works of such men heard in our +churches, even where they employ professional singers at substantial +salaries. We are everywhere now trying to give our churches splendid +and impressive physical accessories, making the architecture more and +more stately and the pews more and more comfortable! Thus we attempt +an amalgam of a mediaeval house of worship with an American domestic +interior, adoring God at our ease, worshiping Him in armchairs, +offering prostration of the spirit, so far as it can be achieved along +with indolence of the body. + +So we advertise and concertize and have silver vases and costly +flowers and conventional ecclesiastical furniture. But we still hold a +"small-and-early" in the vestibule before service and a "five o'clock" +in the chapel afterward. Sunday morning church is a this-world +function with a pietized gossip and a decorous sort of sociable with +an intellectual fillip thrown in. Thus we try to make our services +attractive to the secular instincts, the non-religious things, in +man's nature. We try to get him into the church by saying, "You will +find here what you find elsewhere." It's rather illogical. The church +stands for something different. We say, "You will like to come and be +one of us because we are not different." The answer is, "I can get the +things of this world better in the world, where they belong, than with +you." Thus we have naturalized our very offices of devotion! Hence +the attempts to revive worship are incongruous and inconsistent. Hence +they have that sentimental and accidental character which is the +sign of the amateur. They do not bring us very near to the heavenly +country. It might be well to remember that the servant of Jahweh doth +not cry nor lift up his voice nor cause it to be heard in the streets. + +Now, there are many reasons for this anomalous situation. One of them +is our inheritance of a deep-rooted Puritan distrust of a liturgical +service. That distrust is today a fetish and therefore much more +potent that it was when it was a reason. Puritanism was born in the +Reformation; it came out from the Roman church, where worship was +regarded as an end in itself. To Catholic believers worship is a +contribution to God, pleasing to Him apart from any effect it may have +on the worshiper. Such a theory of it is, of course, open to grave +abuse. Sometimes it led to indifference as to the effect of the +worship upon the moral character of the communicant, so that worship +could be used, not to conquer evil, but to make up for it, and thus +sin became as safe as it was easy. Inevitably also such a theory +of worship often degenerated into an utter formalism which made +hyprocrisy and unreality patent, until the _hoc est corpus_ of the +mass became the hocus-pocus of the scoffer. + +Here is a reason, once valid because moral, for our present situation. +Yet it must be confessed that again, as so often, we are doing what +the Germans call "throwing out the baby with the bath," namely, +repudiating a defect or the perversion of an excellence and, in so +doing, throwing away that excellence itself. It is clear that no +Protestant is ever tempted today to consider worship as its own reason +and its own end. We are, in a sense, utilitarian ritualists. Worship +to us is as valuable as it is valid because it is the chief avenue +of spiritual insight, a chief means of awakening penitence, obtaining +forgiveness, growing in grace and love. These are the ultimates; these +are pleasing to God. + +A second reason, however, for our situation is not ethical and +essential, but economic and accidental. Our fathers' communities were +a slender chain of frontier settlements, separated from an ancient +civilization by an unknown and dangerous sea on the one hand, menaced +by all the perils of a virgin wilderness upon the other. All their +life was simple to the point of bareness; austere, reduced to the +most elemental necessities. Inevitably the order of their worship +corresponded to the order of their society. It is certain, I think, +that the white meeting-house with its naked dignity, the old service +with its heroic simplicity, conveyed to the primitive society which +produced them elements both of high formality and conscious reverence +which they could not possibly offer to our luxurious, sophisticated +and wealthy age. + +Is it not a dangerous thing to have brought an ever increasing +formality and recognition of a developed and sophisticated community +into our social and intellectual life but to have allowed our +religious expression to remain so anachronistic? Largely for social +and economic reasons we send most of our young men and young women +to college. There we deliberately cultivate in them the perception +of beauty, the sense of form, various expressions of the imaginative +life. But how much has our average non-liturgical service to offer +to their critically trained perceptions? Our church habits are pretty +largely the transfer into the sanctuary of the hearty conventions of +middle-class family life. The relations in life which are precious +to such youth, the intimate, the mystical and subtle ones, get small +recognition or expression. A hundred agencies outside the church are +stimulating in the best boys and girls of the present generation fine +sensibilities, critical standards, the higher hungers. Our services, +chiefly instructive and didactic, informal and easy in character, +irritate them and make them feel like truculent or uncomfortable +misfits. + +A third reason for the lack of corporate or public offices of devotion +in our services lies in the intellectual character of the Protestant +centuries. We have seen how they have been centuries of individualism. +Character has been conceived of as largely a personal affair expressed +in personal relationships. The believer was like Christian in Bunyan's +_Pilgrim's Progress_. He started for the Heavenly Country because +he was determined to save his own soul. When he realized that he was +living in the City of Destruction it did not occur to him that, as +a good man, he must identify his fate with it. On the contrary, he +deserted wife and children with all possible expedition and got him +out and went along through the Slough of Despond, up to the narrow +gate, to start on the way of life. It was a chief glory of mediaeval +society that it was based upon corporate relationships. Its cathedrals +were possible because they were the common house of God for every +element of the community. Family and class and state were dominant +factors then. But we have seen how, in the Renaissance and the +Romantic Movement, individualism supplanted these values. Now, +Protestantism was contemporary with that new movement, indeed, a part +of it. Its growing egotism and the colossal egotism of the modern +world form a prime cause for the impoverishment of worship in +Protestant churches. + +And so this brings us, then, to the real reason for our devotional +impotence, the one to which we referred in the opening sentences of +the chapter. It is essentially due to the character of the regulative +ideas of our age. It lies in that world view whose expressions in +literature, philosophy and social organizations we have been +reviewing in these pages. The partial notion of God which our age has +unconsciously made the substitute for a comprehensive understanding of +Him is essentially to blame. For since the contemporary doctrine is +of His immanence, it therefore follows that it is chiefly through +observation of the natural world and by interpretation of contemporary +events that men will approach Him if they come to Him at all. +Moreover, our humanism, in emphasizing the individual and exalting his +self-sufficiency, has so far made the mood of worship alien and the +need of it superfluous. The overemphasis upon preaching, the general +passion of this generation for talk and then more talk, and then +endless talk, is perfectly intelligible in view of the regulative +ideas of this generation. It seeks its understanding of the world +chiefly in terms of natural and tangible phenomena and chiefly by +means either of critical observation or of analytic reasoning. Hence +preaching, especially that sort which looks for the divine principle +in contemporary events, has been to the fore. But worship, which finds +the divine principle in something more and other than contemporary +events--which indeed does not look outward to "events" at all--has +been thrown into the background. + +It seems to me clear, then, that if we are to emphasize the +transcendent elements in religion; if they represent, as we have been +contending, the central elements of the religious experience, its +creative factors, then the revival of worship will be a prime step +in creating a more truly spiritual society. I am convinced that a +homilizing church belongs to a secularizing age. One cannot forget +that the ultimate, I do not say the only, reason for the founding +of the non-liturgical churches was the rise of humanism. One +cannot fail to see the connection between humanistic doctrine and +moralistic preaching, or between the naturalism of the moment and +the mechanicalizing of the church. "The Christian congregation," +said Luther, child of the humanistic movement, "should never assemble +except the word of God be preached." "In other countries," says old +Isaac Taylor, "the bell calls people to worship; in Scotland it +calls them to a preachment." And one remembers the justice of Charles +Kingsley's fling at the Dissenters that they were "creatures who +went to church to hear sermons!" It would seem evident, then, that a +renewal of worship would be the logical accompaniment of a return to +distinctly religious values in society and church. + +What can we do, then, better for an age of paganism than to cultivate +this transcendent consciousness? Direct men away from God the +universal and impersonal to God the particular and intimate. Nothing +is more needed for our age than to insist upon the truth that there +are both common and uncommon, both secular and sacred worlds; that +these are not contradictory; that they are complementary; that they +are not identical. It is the church's business to insist that men +must live in the world of the sacred, the uncommon, the particular, +in order to be able to surmount and endure the secular, the common and +the universal. It is her business to insist that through worship +all this can be accomplished. But can worship be taught? Is not the +devotee, like the poet or the lover or any other genius, born and +not made? Well, whether it can be taught or not, it at least can be +cultivated and developed, and there are three very practical ways in +which this cultivation can be brought about. + +One of them is by paying intelligent attention to the physical +surroundings of the worshiper. The assembly room for worship obviously +should not be used for other purposes; all its suggestions and +associations should be of one sort and that sort the highest. Quite +aside from the question of taste, it is psychologically indefensible +to use the same building, and especially the same room in the +building, for concerts, for picture shows, for worship. Here we at +once create a distracted consciousness; we dissipate attention; we +deliberately make it harder for men and women to focus upon one, and +that the most difficult, if the most precious, mood. + +For the same reason, the physical form of the room should be one +that does not suggest either the concert hall or the playhouse, but +suggests rather a long and unbroken ecclesiastical tradition. Until +the cinema was introduced into worship, we were vastly improving in +these respects, but now we are turning the morning temple into an +evening showhouse. I think we evince a most impertinent familiarity +with the house of God! And too often the church is planned so that +it has no privacies or recesses, but a hideous publicity pervades its +every part. We adorn it with stenciled frescoes of the same patterns +which we see in hotel lobbies and clubs; we hang up maps behind the +reading desk; we clutter up its platform with grand pianos. + +It is a mere matter of good taste and good psychology to begin our +preparation for a ministry of worship by changing all this. There +should be nothing in color or ornament which arouses the restless mood +or distracts the eye. Severe and simple walls, restrained and devout +figures in glass windows, are only to be tolerated. Descriptive +windows, attempting in a most untractable medium a sort of naive +realism, are equally an aesthetic and an ecclesiastical offense. +Figures of saints or great religious personages should be typical, +impersonal, symbolic, not too much like this world and the things of +it. There is a whole school of modern window glass distinguished by +its opulence and its realism. It ought to be banished from houses of +worship. Since it is the object of worship to fix the attention upon +one thing and that thing the highest, the room where worship is held +should have its own central object. It may be the Bible, idealized as +the word of God; it may be the altar on which stands the Cross of the +eternal sacrifice. But no church ought to be without one fixed point +to which the eye of the body is insensibly drawn, thereby making it +easier to follow it with the attention of the mind and the wishes of +the heart. At the best, our Protestant ecclesiastical buildings are +all empty! There are meeting-houses, not temples assembly rooms, +not shrines. There is apparently no sense in which we are willing +to acknowledge that the Presence is on their altar. But at least the +attention of the worshiper within them may focus around some symbol of +that Presence, may be fixed on some outward sign which will help the +inward grace. + +But second: our chief concern naturally must be with the content of +the service of worship itself, not with its physical surroundings. And +here then are two things which may be said. First, any formal order of +worship should be historic; it should have its roots deep in the past; +whatever else is true of a service of worship it ought not to suggest +that it has been uncoupled from the rest of time and allowed to run +wild. Now, this means that an order of worship, basing itself on the +devotion of the ages, will use to some extent their forms. I do not +see how anyone would wish to undertake to lead the same company of +people week by week in divine worship without availing himself of the +help of written prayers, great litanies, to strengthen and complement +the spontaneous offices of devotion. There is something almost +incredible to me in the assumption that one man can, supposedly +unaided, lead a congregation in the emotional expression of its +deepest life and desires without any assistance from the great +sacramentaries and liturgies of the past. Christian literature is rich +with a great body of collects, thanksgivings, confessions, various +special petitions, which gather up the love and tears, the vision +and the anguish of many generations. These, with their phrases made +unspeakably precious with immemorial association, with their subtle +fitting of phrase to insight, of expression to need, born of long +centuries of experiment and aspiration, can do for a congregation what +no man alone can ever hope to accomplish. The well of human needs and +desires is so deep that, without these aids, we have not much to draw +with, no plummet wherewith to sound its dark and hidden depths. + +I doubt if we can overestimate the importance of giving this sense of +continuity in petitions, of linking up the prayer of the moment and +the worship of the day with the whole ageless process so that it seems +a part of that volume of human life forever ascending unto the eternal +spirit, just as the gray plume of smoke from the sacrifice ever curled +upward morning by morning and night by night from the altar of the +temple under the blue Syrian sky. We cannot easily give this sense of +continuity, this prestige of antiquity, this resting back on a great +body of experience, unless we know and use the language and the +phrases of our fathers. It is to the God who hath been our dwelling +place in all generations, that we pray; to Him who in days of old +was a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night to His faithful +children; to the One who is the Ancient of Days, Infinite Watcher of +the sons of men. Only by acquaintance with the phrases, the petitions +of the past, and only by a liberal use of them can we give background +and dignity, or anything approaching variety and completeness, to our +own public expression and interpretation of the devotional life. If +anyone objects to this use of formal prayers on the ground of their +formality, let him remember that we, too, are formal, only we, alas, +have made a cult of formlessness. It would surprise the average +minister to know the well-worn road which his supposedly spontaneous +and extempore devotions follow. Phrase after phrase following in the +same order of ideas, and with the same pitiably limited vocabulary, +appear week by week in them. How much better to enrich this painfully +individualistic formalism with something of the corporate glories of +the whole body of Christian believers. + +But, second: there should be also the principle of immediacy in the +service, room for the expression of individual needs and desires +and for reference to the immediate and local circumstances of the +believer. A church in which there is no spontaneous and extempore +prayer, which only harked backward to the past, might build the tombs +of the prophets but it might also stifle new voices for a new age. +But extempore prayer should not be impromptu prayer. It should have +coherence, dignity, progression. The spirit should have been humbly +and painstakingly prepared for it so that sincere and ardent feeling +may wing and vitalize its words. The great prayers of the ages, known +of all the worshipers, perhaps repeated by them all together, tie in +the individual soul to the great mass of humanity and it moves on, +with its fellows, toward salvation as majestically and steadily as +great rivers flow. The extempore and silent prayer, not unpremeditated +but still the unformed outpouring of the individual heart, gives each +man the consciousness of standing naked and alone before his God. Both +these, the corporate and the separate elements of worships are vital; +there should be a place for each in every true order of worship. + +But, of course, the final thing to say is the first thing. Whatever +may be the means that worship employs, its purpose must be to make and +keep the church a place of repose, to induce constantly the life of +relinquishment to God, of reverence and meditation. And this it will +do as it seeks to draw men up to the "otherness," the majesty, the +aloofness, the transcendence of the Almighty. To this end I would use +whatever outward aids time and experience have shown will strengthen +and deepen the spiritual understanding. I should not fear to use +the cross, the sacraments, the kneeling posture, the great picture, +the carving, the recitation of prayers and hymns, not alone to +intensify this sense in the believer but equally to create it in the +non-believer. The external world moulds the internal, even as the +internal makes the external. If these things mean little in the +beginning, there is still truth in the assertion of the devotee that +if you practice them they will begin to mean something to you. This is +not merely that a meaning will be self-induced. It is more than that. +They will put us in the volitional attitude, the emotional mood, where +the meaning is able to penetrate. Just as all the world acknowledges +that there is an essential connection between good manners and good +morals, between military discipline and physical courage, so there +is a connection between a devotional service and the gifts of the +spiritual life. Such a service not merely strengthens belief in +the High and Holy One, it has a real office in creating, in making +possible, that belief itself. + +We shall sum it all up if we say in one word that the offices of +devotion emphasize the cosmic character of religion. They take us out +of the world of moral theism into the world of a universal theism. +They draw us away from religion in action to religion in itself; +they give us, not the God of this world, but the God who is from +everlasting to everlasting, to whom a thousand years are but as +yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night. Thus they help +us to make for ourselves an interior refuge into whose precincts +no eye may look, into whose life no other soul may venture. In that +refuge we can be still and know that He is God. There we can eat the +meat which the world knoweth not of, there have peace with Him. It +is in these central solitudes, induced by worship, that the vision +is clarified, the perspective corrected, the vital forces recharged. +Those who possess them are transmitters of such heavenly messages; +they issue from them as rivers pour from undiminished mountain +streams. Does the world's sin and pain and weakness come and empty +itself into the broad current of these devout lives? Then their +fearless onsweeping forces gather it all up, carry it on, cleanse and +purify it in the process. Over such lives the things of this world +have no power. They are kept secretly from them all in His pavilion +where there is no strife of tongues. + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + +WORSHIP AND THE DISCIPLINE OF DOCTRINE + + +If one were to ask any sermon-taster of our generation what is the +prevailing type of discourse among the better-known preachers of the +day, he would probably answer, "The expository." Expository preaching +has had a notable revival in the last three decades, especially +among liberal preachers; that is, among those who like ourselves have +discarded scholastic theologies, turned to the ethical aspects of +religion for our chief interests and accepted the modern view of the +Bible. To be sure, it is not the same sort of expository preaching +which made the Scottish pulpit of the nineteenth century famous. It +is not the detailed exposition of each word and clause, almost of each +comma, which marks the mingled insight and literalism of a Chalmers, +an Alexander Maclaren, a Taylor of the Broadway Tabernacle. For that +assumed a verbally inspired and hence an inerrant Scripture; it dealt +with the literature of the Old and New Testaments as being divine +revelations. The new expository preaching proceeds from almost an +opposite point of view. It deals with this literature as being a +transcript of human experience. Its method is direct and simple and, +within sharp limits, very effective. The introduction to one of these +modern expository sermons would run about as follows: + +"I suppose that what has given to the Old and New Testament Scriptures +their enduring hold over the minds and consciences of men has been +their extraordinary humanity. They contain so many vivid and accurate +recitals of typical human experience, portrayed with self-verifying +insight and interpreted with consummate understanding of the issues of +the heart. And since it is true, as Goethe said, 'That while mankind +is always progressing man himself remains ever the same,' and we +are not essentially different from the folk who lived a hundred +generations ago under the sunny Palestinian sky, we read these ancient +tales and find in them a mirror which reflects the lineaments of our +own time. For instance,..." + +Then the sermonizer proceeds to relate some famous Bible story, +resolving its naive Semitic theophanies, its pictorial narration, +its primitive morality, into the terms of contemporary ethical or +political or economic principles. Take, for instance, the account of +the miracle of Moses and the Burning Bush. The preacher will point +out that Moses saw a bush that burned and burned and that, unlike most +furze bushes of those upland pastures which were ignited by the hot +Syrian sun, was not consumed. It was this enduring quality of the bush +that interested him. Thus Moses showed the first characteristic of +genius, namely, capacity for accurate and discriminating observation. +And he coupled this with the scientific habit of mind. For he said, +"I will now turn aside and see why!" Thus did he propose to pierce +behind the event to the cause of the event, behind the movement to the +principle of the movement. What a modern man this Moses was! It seems +almost too good to be true! + +But as yet we have merely scratched the surface of the story. For +he took his shoes from off his feet when he inspected this new +phenomenon, feeling instinctively that he was on holy ground. Thus +there mingled with his scientific curiosity the second great quality +of genius, which is reverence. There was no complacency here but an +approach to life at once eager and humble; keen yet teachable and +mild. And now behold what happens! As a result of this combination of +qualities there came to Moses the vision of what he might do to lead +his oppressed countrymen out of their industrial bondage. Whereupon +he displayed the typical human reaction and cried, "Who am I, that I +should go unto Pharoah or that I should lead the children of Israel +out of Egypt!" My brother Aaron, who is an eloquent person--and as it +turned out later also a specious one--is far better suited for this +undertaking. Thus he endeavored to evade the task and cried, "Let +someone else do it!" Having thus expounded the word of God (!) the +sermon proceeds to its final division in the application of this +shrewd and practical wisdom to some current event or parochial +situation. + +Now, such preaching is indubitably effective and not wholly +illegitimate. Its technique is easily acquired. It makes us realize +that the early Church Fathers, who displayed a truly appalling +ingenuity in allegorizing the Old Testament and who found "types" of +Christ and His Church in frankly sensual Oriental wedding songs, have +many sturdy descendants among us to this very hour! Such preaching +gives picturesqueness and color, it provides the necessary sugar +coating to the large pill of practical and ethical exhortation. To +be sure, it does not sound like the preaching of our fathers. The old +sermon titles--"Suffering with Christ that we may be also glorified +with Him," for instance--seem very far away from it. Nor is it to be +supposed that this is what its author intended the story we have been +using to convey nor that these were the reactions that it aroused +in the breasts of its original hearers. But as the sermonizer would +doubtless go on to remark, there is a certain universal quality in all +great literature, and genius builds better than it knows, and so each +man can draw his own water of refreshment from these great wells of +the past. And indeed nothing is more amazing or disconcerting than the +mutually exclusive notions, the apparently opposing truths, which can +be educed by this method, from one and the same passage of Scripture! +There is scarcely a chapter in all the Old Testament, and to a +less degree in the New Testament, which may not be thus ingeniously +transmogrified to meet almost any homiletical emergency. + +Now, I may as well confess that I have preached this kind of sermon +lo! these many years _ad infinitum_ and I doubt not _ad nauseam_. We +have all used in this way the flaming rhetoric of the Hebrew prophets +until we think of them chiefly as indicters of a social order. They +were not chiefly this but something quite different and more valuable, +namely, religious geniuses. First-rate preaching would deal with Amos +as the pioneer in ethical monotheism, with Hosea as the first poet of +the divine grace, with Jeremiah as the herald of the possibility of +each man's separate and personal communion with the living God. But, +of course, such religious preaching, dealing with great doctrines of +faith, would have a kind of large remoteness about it; it would pay +very little attention to the incidents of the story, and indeed, +would tend to be hardly expository at all, but rather speculative and +doctrinal. + +And that brings us to the theme of this final discussion. For I am one +of those who believe that great preaching is doctrinal preaching and +that it is particularly needed at this hour. The comparative neglect +of the New Testament in favor of the Old in contemporary preaching; +the use and nature of the expository method--no less than the +unworshipful character of our services--appear to me to offer a final +and conclusive proof of the unreligious overhumanistic emphases of our +interpretation of religion. And if we are to have a religious revival, +then it seems to me worshipful services must be accompanied by +speculative preaching and I doubt if the one can be nobly maintained +without the other. For we saw that worship is the direct experience +of the Absolute through high and concentrated feeling. Even so +speculative and, in general, doctrinal preaching is the same return +to first principles and to ultimate values in the realm of ideas. +It turns away from the immediate, the practical, the relative to the +final and absolute in the domain of thought. + +Now, obviously, then, devout services and doctrinal preaching should +go together. No high and persistent emotions can be maintained without +clear thinking to nourish and steady them. There is in doctrinal +preaching a certain indifference to immediate issues; to detailed +applications. It deals, by its nature, with comprehensive and abstract +rather than local and concrete thinking; with inclusive feeling, +transcendent aspiration. It does not try to pietize the ordinary, +commercial and domestic affairs of men. Instead it deals with the +highest questions and perceptions of human life; argues from those +sublime hypotheses which are the very subsoil of the religious +temperament and understanding. It deals with those aspects of human +life which indeed include, but include because they transcend, the +commercial and domestic, the professional and political affairs of +daily living. We have been insisting in these chapters that it is that +portion of human need and experience which lies between the knowable +and the unknowable with which it is the preacher's chief province to +deal. Doctrinal preaching endeavors to give form and relations to its +intuitions and high desires, its unattainable longings and insights. +There is a native alliance between the doctrine of Immanence and +expository preaching. For the office of both is to give us the God of +this world in the affairs of the moment. There is a native alliance +between expository preaching and humanism which very largely accounts +for the latter's popularity. For expository preaching, as at present +practiced, deals mostly with ethical and practical issues, with the +setting of the house of this world in order. There is also a native +and majestic alliance between the idea of transcendence and doctrinal +preaching and between the facts of the religious experience and the +content of speculative philosophy. Not pragmatism but pure metaphysics +is the native language of the mind when it moves in the spiritual +world. + +But I am aware that already I have lost my reader's sympathy. You do +not desire to preach doctrinal sermons and while you may read with +amiable patience and faintly smiling complacency this discussion, +you have no intention of following its advice. We tend to think that +doctrinal sermons are outmoded--old-fashioned and unpopular--and we +dread as we dread few other things, not being up to date. Besides, +doctrinal preaching offers little of that opportunity which is found +in expository and yet more in topical preaching for exploiting our +own personalities. Some of us are young. It is merely a polite way of +saying that we are egotistical. We know in our secret heart of hearts +that the main thing that we have to give the world is our own new, +fresh selves with their corrected and arresting understanding of the +world. We are modestly yet eagerly ready to bestow that gift of ours +upon the waiting congregation. One of the few compensations of growing +old is that, as the hot inner fires burn lower, this self-absorption +lessens and we become disinterested and judicial observers of life and +find so much pleasure in other people's successes and so much wisdom +in other folk's ideas. But not so for youth; it isn't what the past or +the collective mind and heart have formulated: it's what you've got +to say that interests you. Hence it is probably true that doctrinal +preaching, in the very nature of things, makes no strong appeal to men +who are beginning the ministry. + +But there are other objections which are more serious, because +inherent in the very genius of doctrinal preaching itself. First: +such preaching is more or less remote from contemporary and practical +issues. It deals with thought, not actions; understanding rather than +efficiency; principles rather than applications. It moves among the +basic concepts of the religious life; deals with matters beyond and +above and without the tumultuous issues of the moment. So it follows +that doctrinal preaching has an air of detachment, almost of seclusion +from the world; the preacher brings his message from some pale world +of ideas to this quick world of action. And we are afraid of this +detachment, the abstract and theoretical nature of the thinker's +sermon. + +I think the fear is not well grounded. What is the use of preaching +social service to the almost total neglect of setting forth the +intellectual and emotional concept of the servant? It is the quality +of the doer which determines the value of the deed. Why keep on +insisting upon being good if our hearers have never been carefully +instructed in the nature and the sanctions of goodness? Has not the +trouble with most of our political and moral reform been that we have +had a passion for it but very little science of it? How can we know +the ways of godliness if we take God Himself for granted? No: our +chief business, as preachers, is to preach the content rather than the +application of the truth. Not many people are interested in trying +to find the substance of the truth. It is hated as impractical by +the multitude of the impatient, and despised as old-fashioned by +the get-saved-quick reformers. Nevertheless we must find out the +distinctions between divine and human, right and wrong, and why they +are what they are, and what is the good of it all. There is no more +valuable service which the preacher can render his community than to +deliberately seclude himself from continual contact with immediate +issues and dwell on the eternal verities. When Darwin published _The +Descent of Man_ at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, the _London +Times_ took him severely to task for his absorption in purely +scientific interests and hypothetical issues. "When the foundations +of property and the established order were threatened with the fires +of the Paris Commune; when the Tuileries were burning--how could a +British subject be occupying himself with speculations in natural +science in no wise calculated to bring aid or comfort to those who +had a stake in the country!" Well, few of us imagine today that +Darwin would have been wise to have exchanged the seclusion and the +impractical hours of the study for the office or the camp, the market +or the street. + +Yet the same fear of occupying ourselves with central and abstract +matters still obsesses us. At the Quadrennial Conference of the +Methodist Episcopal Church held recently at Des Moines, thirty-four +bishops submitted an address in which they said among other things: +"Of course, the church must stand in unflinching, uncompromising +denunciation of all violations of laws, against all murderous child +labor, all foul sweat shops, all unsafe mines, all deadly tenements, +all excessive hours for those who toil, all profligate luxuries, all +standards of wage and life below the living standard, all unfairness +and harshness of conditions, all brutal exactions, whether of the +employer or union, all overlordships, whether of capital or labor, +all godless profiteering, whether in food, clothing, profits or wages, +against all inhumanity, injustice and blighting inequality, against +all class-minded men who demand special privileges or exceptions on +behalf of their class." + +These are all vital matters, yet I cannot believe that it is the +church's chief business thus to turn her energies to the problems +of the material world. This would be a stupendous program, even +if complete in itself; as an item in a program it becomes almost a +_reductio ad absurdum_. The _Springfield Republican_ in an editorial +comment upon it said: "It fairly invites the question whether the +church is not in some danger of trying to do too much. The fund of +energy available for any human undertaking is not unlimited; energy +turned in one direction must of necessity be withdrawn from another +and energy diffused in many directions cannot be concentrated. Count +the adjectives--'murderous,' 'foul,' 'unsafe,' 'deadly,' 'excessive,' +'profligate,' 'brutal,' 'godless,' 'blighting'--does not each involve +research, investigation, comparison, analysis, deliberation, a heavy +tax upon the intellectual resources of the church if any result worth +having is to be obtained? Can this energy be found without subtracting +energy from some other sphere?" + +The gravest problems of the world are not found here. They are +found in the decline of spiritual understanding, the decay of moral +standards, the growth of the vindictive and unforgiving spirit, the +lapse from charity, the overweening pride of the human heart. With +these matters the church must chiefly deal; to their spiritual +infidelity she must bring a spiritual message; to their poor thinking +she must bring the wisdom of the eternal. This task, preventive not +remedial, is her characteristic one. Is it not worth while to remember +that the great religious leaders have generally ignored contemporary +social problems? So have the great artists who are closely allied +to them. Neither William Shakespeare nor Leonardo da Vinci were +reformers; neither Gautama nor the Lord Jesus had much to say about +the actual international economic and political readjustments which +were as pressing in their day as ours. They were content to preach the +truth, sure that it, once understood, would set men free. + +But a second reason why we dislike doctrinal preaching is because we +confound it with dogmatic preaching. Doctrinal sermons are those which +deal with the philosophy of religion. They expound or defend or relate +the intellectual statements, the formulae of religion. Such discourses +differ essentially from dogmatic sermonizing. For what is a doctrine? +A doctrine is an intellectual formulation of an experience. Suppose +a man receives a new influx of moral energy and spiritual insight, +through reading the Bible, through trying to pray, through loving and +meditating upon the Lord Jesus. That experience isn't a speculative +proposition, it isn't a faith or an hypothesis; it's a fact. Like the +man in the Johannine record the believer says, "Whether he be a sinner +I know not: but one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I +see." + +Now, let this new experience of moral power and spiritual insight +express itself, as it normally will, in a more holy and more +useful life, in the appropriate terms of action. There you get that +confession of experience which we call character. Or let it express +itself in the appropriate emotions of joy and awe and reverence so +that, like Ray Palmer, the convert writes an immortal hymn, or a body +of converts like the early church produces the _Te Deum_. There is the +confession of experience in worship. Or let a man filled with this new +life desire to understand it; see what its implications are regarding +the nature of God, the nature of man, the place of Christ in the scale +of created or uncreated Being. Let him desire to thus conserve and +interpret that he may transmit this new experience. Then he will begin +to define it and to reduce it, for brevity and clearness, to some +abstract and compact formula. Thus he will make a confession of +experience in doctrine. + +Doctrines, then, are not arbitrary but natural, not accidental but +essential. They are the hypotheses regarding the eternal nature of +things drawn from the data of our moral and spiritual experience. They +are to religion just what the science of electricity is to a trolley +car, or what the formula of evolution is to natural science, or what +the doctrine of the conservation of energy is, or was, to physics. +Doctrines are signposts; they are placards, index fingers, notices +summing up and commending the proved essences of religious experience. +Two things are always true of sound doctrine. First: it is not +considered to have primary value; its worth is in the experience +to which it witnesses. Second: it is not fixed but flexible and +progressive. Someone has railed at theology, defining it as the +history of discarded errors. That is a truth and a great compliment +and the definition holds good of the record of any other science. + +Now, if doctrines are signposts, dogmas are old and now misleading +milestones. For what is a dogma? It may be one of two things. Usually +it is a doctrine that has forgotten that it ever had a history; +a formula which once had authority because it was a genuine +interpretation of experience but which now is so outmoded in fashion +of thought, or so maladjusted to our present scale of values, as to +be no longer clearly related to experience and is therefore accepted +merely on command, or on the prestige of its antiquity. Or it may be +a doctrine promulgated _ex cathedra_, not because religious experience +produced it, but because ecclesiastical expediencies demand it. Thus, +to illustrate the first sort of dogma, there was once a doctrine of +the Virgin Birth. Men found, as they still do, both God and man in +Jesus; they discovered when they followed Him their own real humanity +and true divinity. They tried to explain and formalize the experience +and made a doctrine which, for the circle of ideas and the extent +of the factual knowledge of the times, was both reasonable and +valuable. The experience still remains, but the doctrine is no +longer psychologically or biologically credible. It no longer +offers a tenable explanation; it is not a valuable or illuminating +interpretation. Hence if we hold it at all today, it is either for +sentiment or for the sake of mere tradition, namely, for reasons other +than its intellectual usefulness or its inherent intelligibility. So +held it passes over from doctrine into dogma. Or take, as an +example of the second sort, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, +promulgated by Pius IX in the year 1854, and designed to strengthen +the prestige of the Papal See among the Catholic powers of Europe and +to prolong its hold upon its temporal possessions. De Cesare describes +the promulgation of the dogma as follows: + +"The festival on that day, December 8, 1854, sacred to the Virgin, was +magnificent. After chanting the Gospel, first in Latin, then in Greek, +Cardinal Macchi, deacon of the Sacred College, together with the +senior archbishops and bishops present, all approached the Papal +throne, pronouncing these words in Latin, 'Deign, most Holy Father, +to lift your Apostolic voice and pronounce the dogmatic Decree of the +Immaculate Conception, on account of which there will be praise in +heaven and rejoicings on earth.' The Pope replying, stated that he +welcomed the wish of the Sacred College, the episcopate, the clergy, +and declared it was essential first of all to invoke the help of the +Holy Spirit. So saying he intoned _in Veni Creator_, chanted in chorus +by all present. The chant concluded, amid a solemn silence Pius IX's +finely modulated voice read the following Decree: + +"'It shall be Dogma, that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first +instant of the Conception, by singular privilege and grace of God, +in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was +preserved from all stain of original sin.' The senior cardinal then +prayed the Pope to make this Decree public, and, amid the roar of +cannon from Fort St. Angelo and the festive ringing of church bells, +the solemn act was accomplished.'"[42] Here is an assertion regarding +Mary's Conception which has only the most tenuous connection with +religious experience and which was pronounced for ecclesiastical and +political reasons. Here we have dogma at its worst. Here, indeed, it +is so bad as to resemble many of the current political and economic +pronunciamentos! + +[Footnote 42: _The Last Days of Papal Rome_, pp. 127 ff.] + +Now, nobody wants dogmatic preaching, but there is nothing that we +need more than we do doctrinal preaching and nothing which is more +interesting. The specialization of knowledge has assigned to the +preacher of religion a definite sphere. No amount of secondary +expertness in politics or economics or social reform or even morals +can atone for the abandonment of our own province. We are set to think +about and expound religion and if we give that up we give up our place +in a learned profession. Moreover, the new conditions of the modern +world make doctrine imperative. That world is distinguished by +its free inquiry, its cultivation of the scientific method, its +abandonment of obscuranticisms and ambiguities. It demands, then, +devout and holy thinking from us. Who would deny that the revival +of intellectual authority and leadership in matters of religion +is terribly needed in our day? Sabatier is right in saying that a +religion without doctrine is a self-contradictory idea. Harnack is not +wrong in saying that a Christianity without it is inconceivable. + +And now I know you are thinking in your hearts, Well, what +inconsistency this man shows! For a whole book he has been insisting +on the prime values of imagination and feeling in religion and now he +concludes with a plea for the thinker. But it is not so inconsistent +as it appears. It is just because we do believe that the discovery, +the expression and the rewards of religion lie chiefly in the +superrational and poetic realms that therefore we want this +intellectual content to accompany it, not supersede it, as a balancing +influence, a steadying force. There are grave perils in worshipful +services corresponding to their supreme values. Mystical preaching +has the defects of its virtues and too often sinks into that vague +sentimentalism which is the perversion of its excellence. How +insensibly sometimes does high and precious feeling degenerate into +a sort of religious hysteria! It needs then to be always tested and +corrected by clear thinking. + +But we in no way alter our original insistence that in our realm as +preachers, unlike the scientist's realm of the theologians, thought +is the handmaid, not the mistress. Our great plea, then, for doctrinal +preaching is that by intellectual grappling with the final and +speculative problems of religion we do not supersede but feed the +emotional life and do not diminish but focus and steady it. It is +that you and I may have reserves of feeling--indispensable to great +preaching--sincerity and intensity of emotion, that disciplined +imagination which is genius, that restrained passion which is art, +and that our congregations may have the same, that we must strive for +intellectual power, must do the preaching that gives people something +to think about. These are the religious and devout reasons why +we value intellectual honesty, precision of utterance, reserve of +statement, logical and coherent thinking. + +We are come, then, to the conclusion of our discussions. They have +been intended to restore a neglected emphasis upon the imaginative and +transcendent as distinguished from the ethical and humanistic aspects +of the religious life. They have tried to show that the reaching out +by worship to this "otherness" of God and to the ultimate in life is +man's deepest hunger and the one we are chiefly set to feed. I am sure +that the chief ally of the experience of the transcendence of God and +the cultivation of the worshipful faculties in man is to be found in +severe and speculative thinking. I believe our almost unmixed passion +for piety, for action, for practical efficiency, betrays us. It +indicates that we are trying to manufacture effects to conceal the +absence of causes. We may look for a religious revival when men have +so meditated upon and struggled with the fundamental ideas of religion +that they feel profoundly its eternal mysteries. + +And finally, we have the best historical grounds for our position. +Sometimes great religious movements have been begun by unlearned and +uncritical men like Peter the hermit or John Bunyan or Moody. But we +must not infer from this that religious insight is naturally repressed +by clear thinking or fostered by ignorance. Dr. Francis Greenwood +Peabody has pointed out that the great religious epochs in Christian +history are also epochs in the history of theology. The Pauline +epistles, the _Confessions of Augustine_, the _Meditations_ of Anselm, +the _Simple Method of How to Pray_ of Luther, the _Regula_ of Loyola, +the _Monologen_ of Schleiermacher, these are all manuals of the +devout life, they belong in the distinctively religious world of +supersensuous and the transcendent, and one thing which accounts for +them is that the men who produced them were religious geniuses because +they were also theologians.[43] + +[Footnote 43: See the "Call to Theology," _Har. Theo. Rev._, vol. I, +no. 1, pp. 1 ff.] + +It is to be remembered that we are not saying that the theologian +makes the saint. I do not believe that. Devils can believe and +tremble; Abelard was no saint. But we are contending that the +great saint is extremely likely to be a theologian. Protestantism, +Methodism, Tractarianism, were chiefly religious movements, interested +in the kind of questions and moved by the sorts of motives which +we have been talking about. They all began within the precincts +of universities. Moreover, the Lord Jesus, consummate mystic, +incomparable artist, was such partly because He was a great theologian +as well. His dealings with scribe and Pharisee furnish some of +the world's best examples of acute and courageous dialectics. His +theological method differed markedly from the academicians of His +day. Nevertheless it was noted that He spoke with an extraordinary +authority. "He gave," as Dr. Peabody also points out, "new scope +and significance to the thought of God, to the nature of man, to the +destiny of the soul, to the meaning of the world. He would have been +reckoned among the world's great theologians if other endowments had +not given Him a higher title."[44] + +[Footnote 44: "Call to Theology," _Har. Theo. Rev._, vol. I, no. 1, p. +8.] + +It is a higher title to have been the supreme mystic, the perfect +seer. All I have been trying to say is that it is to these sorts +of excellencies that the preacher aspires. But the life of Jesus +supremely sanctions the conviction that preaching upon high and +abstract and even speculative themes and a rigorous intellectual +discipline are chief accompaniments, appropriate and indispensable +aids, to religious insight and to the cultivating of worshipful +feeling. So we close our discussions with the supreme name upon +our lips, leaving the most fragrant memory, the clearest picture, +remembering Him who struck the highest note. It is to His life and +teaching that we humbly turn to find the final sanction for the +distinctively religious values. Who else, indeed, has the words of +Eternal Life? + + * * * * * + + + + + +LYMAN BEECHER LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING + +YALE UNIVERSITY + + 1871-72 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, first series. + New York, 1872. + + 1872-73 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, second series. + New York, 1873. + + 1873-74 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, third series. + New York, 1874. + + 1874-75 Hall, John, God's Word through Preaching. New York, 1875. + + 1875-76 Taylor, William M., The Ministry of the Word. New York, + 1876. + + 1876-77 Brooks, P., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1877. + + 1877-78 Dale, R.W., Nine Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1878. + + 1878-79 Simpson, M., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1879. + + 1879-80 Crosby, H., The Christian Preacher. New York, 1880. + + 1880-81 Duryea, J.T., and others (not published). + + 1881-82 Robinson, E.G., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1883. + + 1882-83 (No lectures.) + + 1883-84 Burton, N.J., Yale Lectures on Preaching, and other + writings. New York, 1888.* + + 1884-85 Storrs, H.M., The American Preacher (not published). + + 1885-86 Taylor, W.M., The Scottish Pulpit. New York, 1887. + + 1886-87 Gladden, W., Tools and the Man. Boston, 1893. + + 1887-88 Trumbull. H.C., The Sunday School. Philadelphia, 1888. + + 1888-89 Broadus, J.A., Preaching and the Ministerial Life (not + published). + + 1889-90 Behrends, A.J.F., The Philosophy of Preaching. New York, + 1890. + + 1890-91 Stalker, J., The Preacher and His Models. New York, 1891. + + 1891-92 Fairbarn, A.M., The Place of Christ in Modern Theology. + New York, 1893. + + 1892-93 Horton, R.F., Verbum Dei. New York, 1893.* + + 1893-94 (No lectures.) + + 1894-95 Greer, D.H., The Preacher and His Place. New York, 1895. + + 1895-96 Van Dyke, H., The Gospel for an Age of Doubt. New York, + 1896* + + 1896-97 Watson, J., The Cure of Souls. New York, 1896. + + 1897-98 Tucker, W.J., The Making and the Unmaking of the Preacher. + Boston, 1898. + + 1898-99 Smith, G.A., Modern Criticism and the Old Testament. New + York, 1901. + + 1899-00 Brown, J., Puritan Preaching in England. New York, 1900. + + 1900-01 (No lectures.) + + 1901-02 Gladden, W., Social Salvation. New York, 1902. + + 1902-03 Gordon, G.A., Ultimate Conceptions of Faith. New York, 1903. + + 1903-04 Abbott, L., The Christian Ministry. Boston, 1905. + + 1904-05 Peabody, F.G., Jesus Christ and the Christian Character. + New York, 1905.* + + 1905-06 Brown, C.R., The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit. New + York, 1906. + + 1906-07 Forsyth, P.T., Positive Preaching and Modern Mind. New + York, 1908.* + + 1907-08 Faunce, W.H.P., The Educational Ideal in the Ministry. New + York, 1908. + + 1908-09 Henson, H.H., The Liberty of Prophesying. New Haven, 1910.* + + 1909-10 Jefferson, C.E., The Building of the Church. New York, 1910. + + 1910-11 Gunsaulus, F.W., The Minister and the Spiritual Life. New + York, Chicago, 1911. + + 1911-12 Jowett, J.H., The Preacher; His Life and Work. New York, + 1912. + + 1912-13 Parkhurst, C.H., The Pulpit and the Pew. New Haven. 1913.* + + 1913-14 Home, C. Silvester, The Romance of Preaching. New York, + Chicago, 1914. + + 1914-15 Pepper, George Wharton, A Voice from the Crowd. New Haven, + 1915.* + + 1915-16 Hyde, William DeWitt, The Gospel of Good Will as Revealed + in Contemporary Scriptures. New York, 1916. + + 1916-17 McDowell, William Fraser, Good Ministers of Jesus Christ. + New York and Cincinnati, 1917. + + 1917-18 Coffin, Henry Sloane, In a Day of Social Rebuilding. New + Haven.* + + 1918-19 Kelman, John, The War and Preaching, New Haven.* + + 1919-20 Fitch, Albert Parker, Preaching and Paganism. New Haven.* + + +*Also published in London. + +PRINTED BY E.L. HILDRETH & COMPANY BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT, U.S.A. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Preaching and Paganism, by Albert Parker Fitch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREACHING AND PAGANISM *** + +***** This file should be named 16076.txt or 16076.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/0/7/16076/ + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, William Flis, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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