L PERSONAL RELIGION CHARLES HERBERT RUST LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT BR 124 .R87 1915 Rust, Charles Herbert, 1869- Personal religion PERSONAL RELIGION BY y CHARLES HERBERT RUST MINISTER AT THE SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK Author of "Practical Ideals in Evangelism" and "The Church a Field of Service" c> r- .•".•. nOL-^.u;nr"' BOSTON: THE GORHAM PRESS TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED Copyright, 1915, by Charles H. Rust All Rights Reserved The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. FOREWORD THAT we are passing through a transition period in Christian thinking is well known to every thoughtful person. Broader ideas of religion are general, spiritual authority in religion is being rec- ognized, new conceptions of the Bible are in vogue, the immanence of God is emphasized, the ethical side of religion is made prominent, religious experience from the standpoint of psychology, is being studied, and the social or Kingdom aspects of Jesus' message and ideal are constantly before us. The presence of such books as Clark's '"Theology" and ''The Ideal of Jesus" and "Sixty years with the Bible" ; Matthew's "The Church and the Changing Order" ; Stevens' "The Psychology of the Christian Soul" ; Anderson's "The Man of Nazareth" ; and numerous other books of similar view point, makes real the situation. Our Colleges and Seminaries are sending out men well versed in philosophy, psychology, science and the re- sults of historical investigation. They are expected to adjust their Gospel Message to the modern view point. Many of them wonder where they are and what they have lost or gained in the transition. The place of "Personal Religion" in this universal so- cial propaganda is not clear to some of them. Their teachers have not failed. It simply takes time to get adjusted. Then there are many of our pastors who feel they cannot have the same idea of the Bible or of Jesus' religion that they once did who have 3 4 FOREWORD not found a positive Gospel message from the mod- ern standpoint, and there are numbers of our loyal laymen and Sunday School workers who are not clear in their vision of the truth as Jesus taught it. In addition to these, there is a company of Evangelists who do not accept any of these modern conceptions but antagonize them believing them to be of the very devil. They hold tenaciously to the old because they must be conservative, not realizing that the progres- sive scholar is the true conservative for he separates the external from the internal, the material from the spiritual, and the superficial from the vital. They do not know that modern man is honestly seeking to be true to Jesus and to save that which is religiously and ethically essential. It is to help these perplexed ones and to call the church to the truth of Jesus' fundamental message to the world, that this book is written. The author believes most sincerely that there is a very vital Gospel message in the modern conception. The pro- gressive man simply must be intensely evangelistic. He must get men individually into vital touch with the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ, he must se- cure in man a definite life ideal, a positive alinement to Jesus' principles and purposes and a real experi- ence of the spiritual power of Jesus, or man cannot be saved and the Kingdom cannot come. He must emphasize personal religion. Therefore we are to believe that there is a virile evangelism for the church today, and the acceptation of true progressive thought, with its new understanding of the human personality, its scientific investigation, and its social emphasis, not only does not abrogate this evangel- ism, but when deeply considered, demands it. FOREWORD 5 This work has been done in the rush of a busy pastorate and the demands of the larger Kingdom service which have been pressing upon him, but it has been a labor of love for The Father, for Jesus, for Humanity and for the Kingdom. Gladly do I acknowledge my special indebtedness to Drs, Orchard, Phillips, Cliiford, Williams, Wilberforce, Tennant, Stevens, Campbell, Clow, Harnack, Eucken and oth- ers across the sea, and to Drs. Rauschenbusch, Mat- thews, Clark, Anderson, Buckham, Gladden, Patten, Bowne, Hyde, and others in America. The last word on the subject has not been spoken but perhaps some little contribution to truth and Kingdom advance- ment has been made in this humble volume. C. H. R. Rochester, N. Y. June 1, 1915 CONTENTS HAFTEB PAGE I. Personal Religion 11 A Life Experience 18 The Relation to God 20 Relation to One^s Self 25 Relation to Others 28 II. Salvation. What is It ? 31 It is Spiritual and Moral Soundness or Wholeness . 35 It is the Establishment of the Supremacy of the Spirit- ual in Ldfe 37 It is Harmony with God in the Experience of a New Creation 39 It is Development in Christlikeness or Attainment of Character 42 III. Self and Salvation 49 The Crux of the Problem 52 The Rationale of the Beneficiary and Self Interest . . 57 The Saving of the True Self is not to be Considered Apart from All Selves 62 The Salvation of Self is Realized through the Appli- cation of the Law of Sacrifice 65 IV. The Prepositions of Salvation 72 V. The Essential Atonement 94 The Essential Atonement Defined 101 At-one-^ment tuith God through Reconciliation with Man 104 Righteousness is Reconciliation 112 Repentance is Reconciliation 114 VI. The Gospel Message 118 The Gospel of the Kingdom 127 The Gospel of the Grace of God 129 The Gospel of the Saviour 134 7 8 CONTENTS CHAPTEB PAOB VII. The Religion op the Child 143 The Child Human Material The Genius of Child Humanity The Child Not Conceived in Sin, etc. VIII. The Christian Motives 168 Motive the Test of Character Lesser Motives for Beginning Christian Life The Higher Christian Motive Should Be Present at the Outset The Christian Motive for Forsaking Sin The Christian Motive for Giving the Life to Jesus The Christian Motive for Church Membership Humanity's Response to These Motives Evident IX. The Lakger Repentance 194 Sin Not Minimized in Preaching of To-day A Larger Repentance Demanded Repentance in View of Extreme Individualism Repentance in View of Secondary Emphasis Repentance in View of Diversion from Great Tasks Repentance in View of Sinful Practices Repentance in View of War Programmes X. Soul Winning and Life Winning 221 Soul Winning 227 Life Winning 229 To Jesus' Life Conception and World View Point .. 231 To Receive the Spirit of Jesus into the Heart 235 To Adopt the Ethical Principles of Jesus in the Life 237 To Devotion to Jesus' Ideal 239 XL Making Disciples 244 The Disciple and Jesus' Plan 245 The Disciple Defined 248 XII. The Contagion of Personality 259 The Genius of this Contagion 270 PERSONAL RELIGION PERSONAL RELIGION CHAPTER ONE PERSONAL EELIGIO^ IT is well known today that religion began in the social consciousness of man. It was primitively the concern of the whole community rather than sim- ply the individual. It was not only included in the community consciousness but was the controlling ele- ment in that consciousness. It was so thoroughly social that the individual had a right to religion only as he was a member of the community. From this we perceive that the present day social emphasis upon religious life is taking us back to the primitive con- ception of religion. In studying the history of Jew- ish religion as found in the Old Testament, the scholarship of today agrees that it was the commu- nity, or the people as a whole, and not the individual, which had a relation to the deity, worshipped him, was acceptable to him and came under his favor, or sinned against him and called forth his wrath. Prof. Walter R. Betteridge of the Rochester Theological Seminary has recently given to us a very able and valuable treatise on the emergence of the individual in Jewish religion. He states that we are able to fix with mathematical exactness the date when the centre of emphasis was shifted from the nation to the in- dividual. He declares that the prophets Jeremiah 11 12 PERSONAL RELIGION and Ezekiel were the first teachers of the new doc- trine. Jer. 31 : 30 and Ezek. 18 : 1-4. Judaism did not easily part with the community conception of re- ligion however. It still insisted that only as one obeyed the community and submitted to its ordinances ^nd requirements could he have access to God and be accepted by him. We are glad that it did not sep- arate entirely from social religion, for there is a gTeat truth in the idea that the individual is saved as he is a part of his community. The fact is that both are true. It is only the overemphasis of the social or the individual that is erroneous. It is the happy balancing of man's individual responsibility and opportunity before God and man, of his right to respond to the call of the divine and human, unhin- dered by others and of his place in the community of his fellows that represents the truth of the matter. There is no clash between the individual and social conceptions of religion. They are interdependent ideals. Humanity is made up of individuals. We may conceive of religious life just as broadly as pos- sible and yet never for a moment be able to declare that its experience is not fundamentally one of the individual. The generalizing of a religious experi- ence does not make the religion of a single person unimportant, for it is only as the individual person comes to know the reality of religion, that humanity can be conscious of it. Personal religion is essential to all spiritual, moral and social progress of mankind. However we may reason en masse regarding human- ity, we should not overlook this fact. As religion is developed in man's personality, God's will is done and human life progress is secured. Some one has said that the state is simply the 'individual writ large." PERSONAL RELIGION 13 This statement makes real to us the importance of the religious life of that individual. Religion to be uni- versalized must be personalized. Jesus spent time with single persons. He never belittled the power and range of a human life. To have religion truly experienced in individual human lives was his pas- sion. There is a question as to how clearly he per- ceived and endeavored to impress upon the people around him any comprehensive social program. What he did surely try to do was to secure in humanity the spiritualizing of all himian life experiences and relationships. He saw no way for that to be done except by securing this ideal and purpose in the in- dividual as a centre. He knew his Kingdom de- pended upon that. To have people vitally and genu- inely religious persons, satisfied him. Programs would largely take care of themselves. He was not obliged to think them out in detail. There are many varying views of personal religion in the minds of good people. Perhaps no two agree perfectly as to what the qualities, experience and expression of it are. And this notwithstanding the fact that most of us have been trained in the school of religion since babyhood. We find that definitions differ radically. Much that is fundamental to one is entirely secondary to another. One person is confi- dent that he is experiencing personal religion because of certain beliefs which he has subscribed to, ordi- nances which he has submitted to, and activities he has become engaged in, while to another all of these appear to be anything but evidences that he knows what religion is. So much that is not religion, has been considered religion, that some people have about concluded that there is not any religion. It is also 14 PERSON"AL RELIGION quite true that many good people are sorely perplexed regarding it. While some are confident, they are greatly troubled and in serious doubt. When they judge by some standards they think they are religious but according to others they know they are not. They really desire to be sure about the matter. They have great concern about it, therefore they institute thoughtful inquiry concern- ing it. While many fail to understand the great es- sentials of personal religion, some actually turn away from it because of the evidence of sham connected with it and others are perplexed even to doubt while they honestly search for it. It behooves all to make a careful study of it. Deception here is disastrous. Each person should have clear ideas of its fundamen- tal characteristics, and this not primarily to satisfy his own mind and heart regarding his own religious condition so that he may feel perfectly safe, but that he may be able to assist others who are struggling through a religious maze and may be able intelligently to deal with inquiring and even irreligious humanity everywhere. We are sure that God does not want us to be in the dark regarding this most important mat- ter. There is light somewhere. Patient research, thoughtful consideration, discrimination in elements, and following the leadings of the spirit of God, will reward every honest inquirer. We naturally turn to Jesus for a definition of per- sonal religion. For while we recognize the univer- sality of the religious impulse and that all men are more or less religious and that religious experience is based upon the fact that the religious sense is fun- damental to all human life and seeks for an expres- sion according to the direction given to it by enlight- PERSONAL RELIGION 15 enment, environment and edncation, yet we approach the subject from the standpoint of Christian believers. We ask not for a Pagan interpretation of personal religion, even if Plato did experience it, or for a Heathen conception of it, even if some devout Bud- dhists did know^ a little of it, or for a Mohammedan idea of it, even if some sincere believer in Allah the one God, does know the true God, or even for Juda- istic thoughts of it, even if Jeremiah and Isaiah were truly religious and did worship the same God we do. We come to Christ for a definition because he is the author of Christianity which to us is the very high- est type of religion that the world knows. We shall find that Jesus' definition of it, is not so profound as some have thought. The world has made religion far more difficult to perceive and experience than Jesus ever did. Some have made it quite unnatural to man, far beyond his normal experience, intricate and complex. Others have defined it in terms of metaphysics, have wrapped it in ecclesiastical cover- ings and bound it with creedal red tape, so that a common humanity never surely knows when it pos- sesses it. It is not to be confused with elaborate theo- logical statements. One may be genuinely and sanely religious and have a very simple theology. In per- sonal religion one may leave entirely outside of his concern, great masses of theological speculation. He need not bother about perfectly defining Deity, he may even recognize that he cannot state satisfactorily just the nature of Jesus Christ and yet he may be sure of the experience of personal religion. Happy is that person who is able to disentangle religion from speculative theology, and thrice happy is he who finds his way to the experience of this religion without 16 PERSONAL RELIGION trying to settle all the problematical questions of the moral and religious world. We shall find that Jesus' teachings are not theological discussions. He steers clear of speculation, even while living in the midst of it. After he died, the philosophically inclined buried his beautiful, simple religious ideas in specula- tion. We are not bound to them. It is our privi- lege to go direct to the synoptics to ascertain what Jesus' idea of personal religion was. The story of his life will reveal to us his ideas. The Gospel record, while not complete, is sufficient to make the import of that life plain. He gave to the world a double defi- nition of religion. One in his utterances regarding it and the other in the life he lived. His experience of this religion was expressed in his life and that life was lived naturally and in sight of all men so that they could see what it was. Jesus staged re- ligion in actual life, not as a drama but as a vital experience. He lived it out in the open. The curtain was up every day, everywhere. There was nothing behind the scenes. He never closeted his religion. He lived out his own life where he was as naturally as he breathed. The Father's purpose was to per- sonify religion in him, his purpose was to be his own religious self as he must to be genuine. The utter- ances of his lips were those which came logically from his own experience and life. There was no sham in his soul or cant in his words, and no insin- cerity or inconsistency in his life. Soul, lips and life were beautifully blended in portraying his experience. They spoke one language, manifested one life and breathed forth one spirit. And his experience of re- ligion was the deepest, broadest and highest that any man ever has had. He understood the genius PERSONAL RELIGIOJ^ 17 of personal religion as no one ever has and lived it more truly than any one ever did. Jesus stands out alone in the world as the one who has given to man the truest, clearest, most discriminating and most nat- ural embodiment of vital religion that has ever come to the knowledge of the human race. This remarkable fact gives to us the permanent sig- nificance of Jesus to the religious world. No where does the leading personality mean more than in the sphere of religion and this is in perfect accord with the chief aim of religion as Eucken so forcibly points out in his philosophy of human life. He states that, "The aim of religion, and to many an apparently hopeless aim, is to lift man in the midst of human existence to divin- ity; to give to him notwithstanding his dependence upon the course of the world, a self dependent soul; to reveal to him in the very midst of temporal limitations an eternity. This is a most difficult task to accomplish. It seems impossible unless miracles occur. But it is first accomplished in the life and being of creative personalities. Then it can be com- mimicated to others from them and finally become a fact for all mankind. Hence the spiritual depths of religions is meas- ured and their character determined chiefly by the personal traits of their founders; it is they who infuse into the frame- work of outward ordinances and doctrinal casings the inner life they need, and who continually bring religion back from stereotyped formulas to the fresh vigour of their source," With this positively true, with so much depending upon the personality of the founder of a religion, we appreciate the incalculable advantage that Christian- ity has over every other religion of the world in pos- sessing, in Jesus Christ, one who so perfectly em- bodied religion in experience and life. He lived his religion so humanly, humbly and naturally and yet so divinely, exaltedly and incomparably, that when the world desires to know what the noblest type of 18 PERSONAL RELIGION personal religion is, it turns to him with absolute confidence, satisfied that in him we shall see lived out among men in simplicity and grandeur the eternal religion of the one true God. Therefore a study of his life and teachings will give to us correct ideas of it, and a reception of his spirit will lead U5 into the experience of that which is true religion. Surely there is no better way of ascertaining what we desire to know than by analyzing the religion he lived and there is no surer way of having this religion as our own than by seeking earnestly the experience which he had, in so far as we are capacitated to receive it. Personal religion is the religion of Jesus. A study of his life and a response to his spirit lead us to con- clude that it is fundamentally as follows : — A LIFE EXPERIENCE It is not accepting a doctrine or subscribing to an ecclesiastical formula or submitting to a rite. It is fundamentally a life. The life of living human be- ings, whose minds are alert and whose souls are ani- mated. Jesus' religion was life. It was life in him. It was nothing external to him. He could not have lived it or charged others with it if it had not been a vital part of his own essential self. So personal re- ligion today is life in man. No life, then no religion. As we have the true life we shall have religion. It will have its doctrines and principles but they are simply and only the exposition of a life and what that life implies. It will surely have, as it has had, some institutions and organizations connected with it by which it expresses itself, but they are simply and only the servants of the life. Harnack writes : — PERSONAL RELIGION 19 "Religion is just one simple and sublime thing. It is eter- nal life in the midst of time." We can do no better than to reiterate this great truth. Personal religion is eternal life in time, the life of the Eternal One in man, in time, in his own soul, and in all his activities. It is human life lived as an eternal fact. Life lived as if it were eternal. Lived humanly and lived in eternal relationships, lived as if it were to live on forever. Lived as human life but lived divinely in view of all human relationships as if the human were all and to live that eternal life in the human to its full was the greatest experience of life. Thus to live, divinely and humanly, is all of life and all of religion. The fact that Jesus' religion was an experience in actual life, amid human surroundings, must not be forgotten, for this is the field of all personal religion which humanity is to know. It is not something which is to come hereafter only but rather is to be known now. It is an experience of human life right here on this earth. Whatever religion one pos- sesses will be at least begun here. It is not something to hope for but to have ; not something outside of the world arena but right in the centre of it ; not some- thing apart from human environment, off in some ascetic corner but something which has to do with every relation of the individual human being in his earthly career. It is not trying to be somewhere else in mind and heart. It is not trying to get away from your sphere to another. It is having a religious experience of reality here in all the common every- day walks of daily life. It is not an experience which comes to us only as we get away from the actual world about us or assume an abnonnal attitude toward this 20 PERSON'AL RELIGION world in whicli we have been placed. It is an experi- ence of adjustment to the world centre and world order which makes a religious life a normal and nat- ural one to live and which dignifies every activity as sacred. It recognizes that in the purpose of God, religion is the science of human life as its best. It is for this sphere. It is for this human life. There is nothing the matter with the world or human life when both are conceived of religiously, which is simply be- ing thought of normally. Human relationships are the relationships which God has ordained and per- sonal religion is the ideal experience of a human be- ing in these relationships. Human relationships are in reality personal relationships and it is obvious that all the activities of man are included in at least two of these personal relationships, those of man with God and man with man, and a third has been sug- gested, namely man with himself. In these three circles of human relationships, his experience of per- sonal religion will be realized. He will be religious as he approximates in these relationships the religious experience of Jesus Christ, who is our recognized ideal. THE RELATION TO GOD Jesus made it very plain that the relation to God was fundamental in personal religion. He experi- enced a close relationship to his Heavenly Father and every man who accepts Christ must have more or less of the same experience. The man who is not religious refuses to recognize his relationship to God and lives as if he had none. The man who is religious enters into a proper relationship to his Heavenly Father. This is a distinctive characteristic. Without it we PERSONAL RELIGION 21 can hardly consider any man, regardless of how excel- lent he may be, religious. To be religious without a sense of God relationship is to have a father and not know him or care anything about him. A filial con- sciousness is quite indispensable in religion. It will be manifested in at least five ways. Probably the very first expression of filial consciousness will be that of reverence for the father. The moment man is really conscious that he has a Heavenly Father, he will realize something of the majesty of his person- ality. He will be impressed as he considers the in- finiteness of the Eternal Spirit, the powers of the Creator as he beholds the wonders of creation will overawe him and a sense of his own littleness in comparison to the Father's greatness, will lead him to revere him. Then a further consideration of his character, his divine goodness and his love for his children will lead to a reverence which will crystallize into genuine worship. This worship will not be su- perstitious or based upon fear, it will be the logical response of the child who recognizes and wonders at the power, nature and disposition of his Heavenly Father. It will be the result of a conclusion that the infinite is worthy of the worship and homage of the finite. Reverence and worship will appear to him the reasonable attitude of the creature to the Creator, the child to the Father. This is the beginning of religion. Following this will be the attitude of confidence in the Father. Implicit trust is the legitimate out- come of true reverence. Faith in God becomes a ra- tional attitude for the child to assume. He believes that God is good, that his spirit is love, that his na- ture is righteous, that his will is wisest and best and that he has every reason to impose absolute confidence 22 PEESONAL RELIGION in him. There will be a happy sense of security and a quiet repose in his providences. There will be a conscious dependence upon him and genuine faith in him. The child will take his word as final, will not ask for explanations of everything and will place the life in his keeping with just as much assurance as the child of an earthly parent trusts his fond father. He will see in Jesus Christ the revelation of the Father whom he is to trust and faith in Christ will actually be faith in the God of goodness and love — such a faith as abandons the soul and life to his direction and development. Another manifestation of this filial consciousness will be that of harmony with the Father. Whatever moral and spiritual chasm there has been between the father and the child, will be bridged. There will be an experience of oneness. That oneness will be one of disposition and purpose. The child will enter into communion with the father, they will live together in the world. They will feel at home. Prayer will be a natural spiritual intercourse. The child will, as the result of this union, take on the nature of the father, possess his spirit and become absorbed in his plans. There will be a sense of the correlation of the life of the individual to the life of God. In many a life this experience will be revolutionary. It will be a cataclysmic event. It will be a mighty transforma- tion into the spirit and will of God. To others it will be the same result but will come to be without any conscious revolution. In these it will be the log- ical and normal transition into a better understanding of the Father and a more intelligent harmonizing of the soul and life with his. There will be no strain about it. Simply the child's answer to the Father to PERSONAL RELIGION 23 come closer to him and to know him in a larger way and to enter into his spirit and will more fully as he pardons and promises to help and develop. How dif- ferent was Jesus' conception of union with the Father from that of Confucius who said, "Respect the Gods, but have as little to do with them as possible." Furthermore this filial consciousness will reveal an actual love for God. Reverence for, trust in, and union with him will inevitably develop this love. It will not be forced for it cannot be. Love will come as it comes with us today. We do not love those whom we do not know exist. We love people as we come to meet them, understand them, deal with them and trust them. It is the same with our relation to God. But one asks how can we come to know and under- stand God so as to love him. As we study Jesus Christ we see in him the Father. He came to un- bosom or declare the Father. Jesus did not come primarily to secure man's belief in himself, he came to get men to believe in God. Jesus did not live that the world might forever talk of how good and true and noble he was, he lived among men as the sent one from God, that everyone might see in him a picture of the Father and might forever talk of how good and noble and true the Father was. Remember it was the God consciousness of Jesus that made him what he was. Therefore he portrayed the truth about God. He who reads and studies and then understands Jesus, understands God. He who reveres and trusts Jesus reveres and trusts God, and he who loves Jesus, loves God. How can we love Jesus when he is not here ? One may love his ideals, his spirit, and his character. He who does, loves the Father. More than this, he who loves the good in the world, is pas- 24 PERSONAL RELIGION sionately fond of righteousness, finds his heart going out to humanity as Jesus did, may know that he loves what Jesus loves and thus what the Father loved and has in him the love of God, and that this is the very essence of religion. Still another and very important characteristic of filial consciousness will be that of loyalty. The issue of unity and love will be fidelity. To do this Father's will in real life will be the supreme desire of the one who truly experiences this filial consciousness. Jesus' life was singularly objective. He was in clos- est harmony with his Father and knew the subjective experience of spiritual union with him, but it was not a moody mysticism or an impractical emotional- ism. His fellowship with God issued naturally and logically in objective loyalty to his will. He said, you remember, "My food is to do the will of my sender and to accomplish his work." John 4 : 34. His ober dience to God was the proof of his oneness with the Father. His religion would have been valueless with- out this. Union with God implies this. And we may consider ours the same today. Only those who do the will of God are truly in harmony with him. Matt. 7 : 21. The test of religion is not revealed in the con- fessions of St. Augustine or necessarily in the rhap- sodies of Thomas a Kempis, but rather in the honest loyalty to what one conceives to be the will of God for us in this world. And just as truly does love express itself in loyalty. Those who love will be on the alert to please, to work for and to seek first the accomplishment of the Father's purposes. Therefore we may know in very truth that personal religion is an experience in which a filial consciousness of God is realized in reverence of him, confidence in PERSONAL RELIGION 25 him, harmony with him, love for him, and loyalty to him. This is the very foundation of the religion which we are inquiring about. As one experiences this he knows something of personal religion. RELATION TO ONe's SELF Personal religion demands something of one's self. It leads the individual to expect something in himself which is vitally a part of himself. His religious ex- perience will move within the arena of his own per- sonality. There will be something going on there which is a reality even if it is something which one is not able perfectly to describe. Personal religion with- out an experience of some kind within one's self is not the religion that Jesus knew or advocated for others. Some may name it "the new birth," others conver- sion, and still others "getting religion," it really mat- ters not what the name is, it is something. It is an experience of self and effective within one's self. It is not necessarily some great rush of feeling or some peculiar ecstasy of soul. Such experiences are de- termined by the peculiar make up and capacity of the personality. The same experience of religion will be manifested differently in several persons. There will be some effect upon self necessary in each case but there will be superfluous accompaniments which re- sult entirely from the mental and emotional natures of the persons in whom the experience is being real- ized. The case of Hannah Whithall Smith is in point. She writes, — "Suddenly something happened to me. What it was or how it came, I had no idea, but somehow an inner eye seemed to be opened in my soul, and I seemed to see that after all God 26 PERSONAL RELIGION was fact — the bottom of all facts — and that the only thing to do was to find out all about him. It was not a pious feel- ing such as I was looking for, but it was a conviction — just such a conviction as comes to one when a mathematical prob- lem is suddenly solved. One does not feel that it is solved, but one knows it and there can be no further question." This woman of God was brought up in a Quaker atmosphere. From sixteen to twenty-six years of age, her religion was nothing, as she says, "but a religion of trying to feel." Then came this sudden conversion and wonderful illumination which she has described. Continued study of the Bible brought further flashes of light and she became happy in what was to her personal religion. But there are many who never have had even these experiences which she has out- lined. Their struggle for years has been to know God in their own consciousness as others have de- clared they have known him and yet they live on with- out realizing the deepest desires of their hearts. They have at times been led to doubt the possibility of ever experiencing personal religion just because they can- not secure in their own natures the feelings, the joys, the ecstasies of soul and life which others refer to with so much assurance. This fact of troubled souls who possess religious aspirations leads us to state that thoughtful consideration of just what is essential in this self religious experience will help us greatly. First of all, we should recognize the mystic side of self and know that to some people the mystical experi- ence is very real. We need not deny their confes- sions and descriptions of soul delight. We are led however to ask, What is it in the personality that needs most to be seriously affected to have one experi- ence personal religion? Surely the fundamental thing is not physical, for many a cripple can be a PERSOI^AL RELIGION 2Y saint; it is not mystical for some of God's greatest men and women have been conscious of a lack of this element in their constitutions ; and it is not emo- tional for hosts of Jesus' noblest followers have la- bored sincerely and devotedly for him without any great feeling. Then what is it ? The answer is, the mind, the will, the spiritual nature and the conscience. Jesus' appeal was constantly to these. He ever sought to turn men's mind to truth and righteousness, to se- cure in their spiritual nature a response to them, to arouse the ethical consciousness and to call the will into action toward holy ends. Conversion really means a change of mind. It is expressed in ethical realms. It is the result of spiritual evolutions and transformations to be sure, but these are not to con- cern us. I do not know as Jesus understood all the processes by which his ideal was to be secured in man. The essential result which we must have in ourselves, if we are to know the experience of per- sonal religion, is the ethical and spiritual direction of life. We must see within ourselves, desires for goodness, a hatred of sham, a purpose to be pure, righteous and noble as men and women, to live for that which is best and highest. This is an evidence of personal religion upon which we may rely. Mys- ticism and emotional delights of soul are not sure tests. They may or may not accompany a true re- ligious experience. One may have them and yet not be personally religious. But no man or woman who has a sensitive conscience, who loves goodness, who seeks to live for that which is Christlike and humane, who loves not war, and envy and selfishness, but rather peace, love and unselfishness, is without per- sonal religion. I refer not to the person who lives 28 PERSONAL RELIGION fairly decently because of home environment or sim- ply to maintain an outward reputation, but the one whose life reveals a passion for righteousness and a devotion to Godliness. Not a spasmodic disposition of kindness and purity of life, but a temper, a trend, a characteristic movement of the soul and life toward the higher values and nobler objectives. To secure this there will be a surrender to Christ in penitence and a definite reception of his spirit into the life. This will be a spiritual experience but not necessarily mystical. It must be ethical. RELATION TO OTHEES Dr. Soares of Chicago University once stated that religious activity takes three forms according to the conception of religion that one has, namely the ritual- istic, the pietistic and the socialistic. When religion is conceived of primarily as a relationship between God and man, which is conditioned upon the per- formance of proper acts of worship, its prevailing activity is of course the due observance of carefully regulated ritualistic requirements. Observance of days, set forms of prayer and sacramental acts, etc. This is ritualistic. When religion is thought of as an immediate relationship of God and man, father and child, Redeemer and redeemed, its activity is likely to be that of emotional expression. Ex- tempore prayer, outbursts of song, and testimonies of emo- tional experience. This is pietistic. When religion is considered to be a social matter, an atti- tude of man towards his fellows, a realization of duty in human relationships, the activities will be those of philan- thropy, goodwill toward others expressed in kind acts and efforts for social justice and human betterment. This is so- cialistic. Personal religion may be a sensible harmonizing of all three. The last one is very important. No one PEKSONAL RELIGION 29 knows what religion is unless his life is rightly re- lated to his fellowmen. Ethics signifies duty to oth- ers. The ethical objective of Jesus is not secured in you and me unless our duty toward others is dis- charged. It is only as we manifest good will toward men, seek their welfare and blessing, that we are re- ligious. Religion is not something which a man re- ceives, tucks away in his soul as a preservative against moral and spiritual decay. It is something which springs out of his soul and rushes forth to others. There is no antagonism between personal and social religion. The one is simply impossible without the other. In fact the second is the proof of the first. Personal communion with God and personal kindness to men are complementary. Religion is not some iso- lated thing. It cannot be put into separate human cases, sealed up and shipped to Heaven. It must be expressed socially. Its movement is toward and through humanity, not away from it. The very pur- pose of it is to bring humanity into right relations. This cannot be done unless it is manifested in the eth- ical realms of life as men touch men daily. The religion that does not make men loving to their fel- lowmen, that does not save them from crookedness in business dealings with other men, that does not make them sympathetic with other men, that does not lead them to work for the interests of their fellowmen and that does not make them think of and serve their fel- lowmen, is no religion at all, — but superstition based on selfishness. It is not the religion of Jesus. AVe may truly state therefore that an individual experiences personal religion when he establishes his life on the solid basis of faith in and communion with God his Heavenly Father; when he purposes to live that 30 PEKSONAL RELIGION life in obedience to the will of God as revealed through Jesus Christ ; when he accepts into that life the spiritual forces of God necessary to conform that life in its inner character to the ideal or likeness of Jesus Christ and when he makes good will and broth- erly kindness toward all men and sei*vice in the in- terest of all men, the distinctive temper and trend of that life course. Where you find such people, you may conclude that they are personally religious. They are true Christians. They are becoming what Jesus would have them. They are approximating the life he lived and they are experiencing something of the religion that he did, they are becoming like Christ. This is the definition of personal religion which every preacher should make plain to his congregation and every evangelist to his crowds of people. This is the ideal of religion which every church worker should seek to secure in Sunday School scholar and this is the conception of religion which our Missionary work- ers should seek to universalize throughout the world. People who have this idea and this experience of re- ligion are the ones we wish to receive into our churches. They are the ones to teach the scholars in Sunday Schools, to fill places on our official boards, to represent the church in the world at large, and to devote their energies to making Christ's truth real everywhere. Well may we examine our own religion to ascertain if it is the right kind, well may we pray for a revival of such religion throughout the world and well may we give our time and energies to bring- ing humanity to such a conception and experience of religion. CHAPTER TWO SALVATION. WHAT IS IT? ONE of the common words in the vernacular of religion and particularly of Christianity, is the word ''salvation." We are accustomed often to hear such expressions as these, "I was saved," "I am saved," "I hope to be saved," "I have found salva- tion." Whatever ideas of it may be held by individu- als or churches, it is true that the word expresses the great central objective of Christianity. Therefore it is important that each person understands what it im- plies. We shall not discuss the faith in Jesus and the spiritual processes which are necessary to secure salvation for we are now simply seeking a definition of it. It will be wise however to state that the process must not be confused with the objective. Salvation is the goal to which Jesus is leading mankind. Faith in Jesus is indispensable to the securing of that ob- jective, but it is not salvation itself. It is the in- troduction to the process which shall, under the influ- ence and in the power of the Holy Spirit of God, pro- duce in man that which Jesus came to make real within him. Faith in Jesus puts man in touch with the One whom he must have to actualize the goal or the salvation which the Father has for him. Faith in Jesus should therefore be considered vital to man's salvation. We desire to know what condition the in- dividual and humanity in general, must be in to ex- perience the salvation that Jesus came to lead man- 31 32 PEKSONAL KELIGION kind into. When can we say humanity is saved? A century ago preachers and workers knew what they were trying to do and the people who heard them un- derstood what they implied by salvation. Today con- ceptions may have changed, but we are still seeking to save and there is no reason why either preacher or individual hearer should be mistaken about the significance of this well known term. We are led to state first of all that in the Semitic religions and in the Old Testament before the dawning of the hope of immortality, salvation referred chiefly to this life. It implied the removal of the effects of sin so that man could live under the favor of the gods. To escape the judgments of capricious Gods during life was its sig- nificance to the people of that time. In the Mystery Religions which surrounded Christianity at its incep- tion, this word had its place. Their chief aim was to offer salvation to those who became duly initiated and it implied to them primarily deliverance from the tyranny of an omnipotent Fate, which might crush a human life at any moment. Death, with its unknown terrors, would be Fate's terrible visitation. Hence to have assurance of life after death, or a victorious im- mortality would mean salvation. As they might die any moment in the grip of relentless fate, salvation was deliverance from that fate. We find considerable in the Christian conception of salvation which reveals more or less of a similarity to that of the Mystery Religions. It is not hard to produce passage after passage from the New Testa- ment which implies that in the thought of the writer it was synonymous to the expression "escape from the wrath of God." There was one who could and would crush. To escape his wrath was salvation. Since that SALVATION". WHAT^ IS IT? 33 day exhorters and revivalists have cried out loudly "flee from the wrath to come" and thousands have been brought to their knees in tears and fear under their powerful appeals, until the idea that salvation implied primarily deliverance from some impending doom to be meted out by a God of vengeance, was the commonly accepted definition of it. To escape pun- ishment and that punishment something which was to be inflicted in some future state, has been the mean- ing of salvation to millions of good Christian people. A study of Calvin and his followers makes it clear that in his conception of salvation, the primary thought was the escape from future punishment and the joy of eternal bliss. We are not to ridicule the facts of the awfulness of sin and its consequences or belittle the truth concern- ing God's wrath (the reaction of the Divine nature against sin) or to declare that there is no solemn truth in the idea that salvation has to do with immortality and deliverance from sin's eternal effects. Far be it from us to suggest such thoughts. The errors in this conception are largely in the view of our Heavenly Father that it portrays, the emphasis it places upon future punishment rather than present, and the lim- ited idea of salvation which it fosters. The relation of a holy, loving Heavenly Father to his child, be that child what he may be, must form the basis of our con- ception of salvation, and his divine will for us both in the present and the future of salvation, and must define the nature and scope of it. Spinoza was correct when he said "The love of God ought to occupy the soul more than anything else." "Our salvation, our happiness, our liberty consist in a constant and eternal love of God, or if you will, in God's love for us." 34 PERSOIsrAL RELIGION This is the beginning and the end of salvation. In commencing our discussion of the definition of salva- tion, as we progi'ess and as we close it, we are to think in terms of the love of God and we shall ever have in mind the ideal that love has conceived and re- vealed. Salvation is the holy objective which a true Heavenly Father who has our interests at heart, plans for us, not something for us to secure apart from him or despite him, not so much something we are endeavoring to obtain from him but that which he is seeking to accomplish in us. And we should remem- ber that in Jesus' ideas we have the will of God mani- fested to us. In Jesus himself we have his salvation goal outlined and personified. We also quickly recognize that any idea of salvation which confines itself to the present merely, and for- gets the long future, is at once inadequate and far from being satisfactory but we would impress upon all the fact that some previous conceptions have been altogether too limited and the demand is for a more rational and more Christian conception of it. We need Jesus' view of it. Any other will not be ade- quate. To some it may seem easy to furnish Jesus' idea of it, to others it may be very difiicult because in the entire Gospel record, Jesus uses the word just once, Luke 19 : 1, in that memorable utterance to Zac- cheus, "Today is salvation come to this house." In this statement from the lips of Jesus, we note that emphasis is placed upon the present. However, Jesus, while not using the word often, did give to his disciples and others his thoughts regarding his objec- tive in coming to earth. He referred many times to the "saved" and a thoughtful study of his words leaves us in no doubt about his idea of salvation. He SALVATION. WHAT IS IT? 35 was singularly free from involved sentences and inex- plicable terms and the trend of his teaching is very evident. From that trend we learn that Salvation is as follows : — • IT IS SPIRITUAL AND MORAL SOUNDNESS OR WHOLENESS ^ To be "saved" signifies just this. It is more than safety. It is a condition which implies moral and spiritual safety. It implies to be made morally sound, to be brought to a state of spiritual health. The man who is safe from sickness is the physically healthy man. One is saved as he is made sound and kept sound. The Greek word "sozo" used to describe sal- vation, translated "saved," is found some seventy-five times in the JSTew Testament and the etymology of the word implies this wholeness of spiritual and moral life. It makes plain that salvation is some condition of the person himself which makes him safe. As fire cannot burn asbestos because it is made of materials which will not respond to it, so nothing can harm the individual who is morally sound because there is nothing in him to respond to the immoral. Thus men are made safe by being made sound. Jesus was all the time talking to people of heart and soul soundness. He came on purpose to make known to them the fact that the Father's will for them was to be made true and pure at heart, for no moral safety could come to them unless this were true, therefore salvation was fundamentally a condition of the inmost life of the in- dividual. Jesus did not know of any salvation which was not an actual experience of their own lives. ISTo person could be saved unless he was in a condition 36 PEESONAL RELIGIOI^ which was itself salvation. Not a safety imposed from without but one insured from within, a condi- tion which implies present safety. Salvation is not insurance against some outward power that is bent on bringing calamity to man, it is that robust health of the heart which resists and triumphs over every- thing within that could mar the soul. It is not a cov- ering but a life flow in the man himself, a ruddy ro- bustness of moral health. It implies the elimination of evil from the heart and life. Jesus came to save people from their sins. That is from the actual disposition to sin and the presence of sin. As this was done they were saved. As sin is from the heart, so salvation in respect to sin implies a soundness of heart, a purity of soul which eliminates it. As there can be no condition of health in the physical body, while poisons are in the blood, which is the life of the body, so there can be no con- ditions of salvation in a human soul while moral poisons flow through the system. Eliminating is necessary in both cases. Salvation signifies this elimi- nation. Man is saved or not saved as sin is the con- trolled or controlling factor in his inmost life, the diminishing or increasing power in his heart. With elimination a fact, salvation has begun. It also implies the prevention of waste. Every in- dividual possesses potential and actual spiritual and moral powers as well as physical and social vitalities. Sin wastes all of these. It reduces moral vitality, it renders ineffectual soul gifts, it destroys heart ener- gies and it brings to naught that which God had be- stowed for blessing and usefulness. Salvation signi- fies the protection, conservation, development and ef- fectiveness of the powers of personality. It must SALVATIOK WHAT IS IT? 37 first prevent the destruction or waste of those powers. Those are normally saved whose God given vitalities are held sacredly in potentiality and preserved con- scientiously without waste. IT IS THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STJPEEMACY OF THE SPIRITUAL IN LIFE We live in a world of matter and spirit. This declaration does not necessarily imply that matter is an eternal reality, but as far as our lives are con- cerned, it is real to us. We have to deal with it. There are human bodies of real flesh and blood on earth, there are material needs such as bread and but- ter, houses to live in, coal to keep us warm, gold which comes in very handy at times, and exhilarating pleas- ures which appeal to physical sense, give us joy and immense satisfaction and send the blood tingling through our veins. We are not ethereal spirits with- out sense or form. We are very closely allied to the material, regardless of how some may seek to philoso- phize or idealize it into nonexistence. We are souls of spirit in environments of the material, dealing with material and depending upon material for our very existence here. It is true that the real self is spirit but without a body that spirit is not very well known to those of us who stay on earth and struggle to live. There is no fundamental clash between spirit and matter when the place of each is understood in the divine plan. God, who is a spirit, is the creator of both. There is nothing sinful in matter itself and it is not essentially antagonistic to the spirit. Spirit is manifested in matter not reluctantly or incongTU- ously but because matter is according to divine plan, 38 PEESOISTAL RELIGIOI^ excellent material to be revealed in. The body is a temple of the spirit. The functions of the body are divine. All material things may be made expressions of the spirit. The human spirit in a hnman material body, is a divinely correlated personality. What would spirit do without eyes? Many have realized the souls that are in them and that are expressed by them. Think of the soul of a voice ! A material throat is a divine adjunct to help perfect a divine function of the spirit, namely that voice, through which a human personality expresses itself. Madame l^ordica's soul voice has gone from earth with her body, so closely were they related. The one was necessary to the other. Matter is no enemy of spirit, but rather its temporary form. Spirit shines through matter when properly adjusted. Sin is the misdirecting of the material by the spir- itual, the abnormal relation of the spiritual to the ma- terial, the subjugation of spirit to matter, the limit- ing of spirit to matter and the willingness and deter- mination to make matter the objective of the spirit. To live for the body, devote self to gold, to pander exclusively to pleasures of material sense, to conse- crate one's talents to the external, and to confine one's spirit to materialistic visions and goals, this is sin. How clearly the teachings of Jesus reveal this to be true. Think of the long list of the sins of the body, the many sins of unholy materialistic aims, and the sins of devotion to superficial externals which Jesus would class under one head of the sin of material dominance over the spiritual. Therefore salvation is the establishment of the su- premacy of the spiritual in life. It is the proper correlation of matter and spirit. It is the mastery of SALVATION. WHAT IS IT? 39 all external things from within. It is spirit con- trolling and directing matter. It is spirit making use of matter, holding matter in strict obedience, and con- serving its form and force for divine objectives. When the functions of the body are held to the divine purpose regarding them, the powers of the mind are used to direct material things toward holy ends, the relationships of human life in family and neighbor- hood are considered sacred and not opportunities for exploitation and material gain, and the soul arises to the top inspiring, and managing the life in the inter- est of true values, then the establishment of spiritual supremacy is real and salvation is a fact. This is what it implies to be saved. It is impossible to con- ceive of it as real if these conditions are not actual. IT IS HAEMONY WITH GOD IN THE EXPERIENCE OF A NEW CREATION Any true philosophy of life makes God the centre of his universe and also of humanity which has that in it which has come from and is dependent upon him. Humanity may be truly considered to be the self realization of God. The spiritual and moral basis of humanity is therefore God himself. The ideal of humanity is union with the Father. The members of the human family are to be one with their divine Par- ent. As this is realized, man experiences salvation. 'No definition of salvation is at all complete without this in it. With this true, an examination of the facts of mankind will be in order. There is most con- clusive evidence that man is largely out of spiritual and moral harmony with God. To many there is no consciousness of unity with his nature, his spirit, or 40 PERSONAL RELIGION his ideals and purposes and no sense of his presence. There are three classes of people who are not in union with God. There are those who have grown up with a vivid realization of their own individual- ity, the striking powers of their own personality, they have been totally ignorant apparently of the central self of the universe and of their birth from him and have persisted in their own way through life increas- ing the consciousness of individuality and having no consciousness of being a part of a divine unity. They have lived as separate selves having no relationship to any greater or more perfect Self who is the centre of all spirit selves. And their great lack has been that in their rather commendable struggle for self development, a struggle ordained of God, they have never realized the basic unity of their spiritual na- ture with the God who is over all and expressed in all. They have lived singularly pure and true lives, but they have lacked that consciousness of unity with God which would make real within them a spiritual transformation that would signify nothing less than their salvation. This experience is verily a new cre- ation, a new life consciousness, a new center. One is in harmony with the central Being of the universe, is actually identified with him. Old things have be- come new. This, when truly experienced and lived, is salvation. This oneness with the Father was the secret of Jesus' life. He personified the salvation of harmony with God. It will give new center to the best life on earth. It changes individualism into consciousness of the whole, God and humanity. It is basic in God's plan. Then there are others who have ignorantly strug- gled through life, not understanding their own na- SALVATION. WHAT IS IT? 41 tures, appetites or desires, failing to interpret life correctly, and have yielded to inclinations and temp- tations which have brought them to sad loss, failure and even wreck. They have been unconscious of any Heavenly Father who loved them and have lived apart from him when he was willing and glad to identify himseK with them. To these, as the others, salvation is a conscious unity with the Father, through Jesus Christ. Spiritual and moral harmony with him sig- nifies salvation begim. But there is in the lives of many people a devotion to sin in open rebellion against God's truth and righteousness, in declared de- fiance to the idealism of Jesus as an expression of God's will for man, that signifies a separateness which is more than simply the unconsciousness of union with the Father. We fear there are some people who are intelligently out of harmony with God's spirit and purposes because they desire to be, at least until they can secure what they are after. They seem to have no reverence for him, no respect for his wishes and no desire to do his will. Their lives are lived pur- posely apart from him. They deliberately and per- sistently pursue a course of life which is utterly op- posed to the Father's thought for them. Salvation to them implies a conscious surrender to the Father in contrition and sorrow because of their sinful sep- arateness, and a relation of union with him which will be so vital that the spirit of the individual becomes one with his, his scheme of life will be harmonious with the Father's plan for him and his very soul, his real inner self will become consciously united to the soul of the universe, his God. This will be salva- tion. Anything less is not. Salvation without union with God is impossible in a world of God, in a family 42 PERSONAL RELIGION of God, and in a spiritual universe where spirits are the offspring of the Eternal Spirit. IT IS DEVELOPMENT IN CIIRISTLIKENESS OR ATTAIN- MENT OF CHARACTER The church, in endeavoring to correct one error has fallen into another, concerning the relation of character to salvation. Paul and the early church were disgusted with the assumption of the Phari- sees that bloodless maxims, mechanical ethics and rules of conduct were the content of religious life. Thej knew that Jesus opposed any such idea and ex- pounded an ethical experience which was much more than a mere legal negative morality. They knew that by the external works of the law no one could be saved and declared so, often. The church of later cen- turies misinterpreting Jesus' ideal, and, with the ex- ample of the Pharisees in mind, went to the other extreme and denied that character had anything to do with salvation. It was trusting the church as the Roman priests taught, or believing in Jesus and a creed as the Protestant church taught or one single miraculous transformation as Wesley and others taught. The church so emphasized these ideas that character came to be discounted. It was dangerous to have a good character for then one would trust in it for salvation. The Roman church went so far as to state that the personal character of a priest had nothing to do with his religious effectiveness and this is true today in South American Catholicism and might be true in the American type if it was not for the fact that it continually faces the insistent mod- ern type of ethical Protestantism. But it is not long SALVATION. WHAT IS IT? 43 since Protestant preachers denounced morality from the pulpit. Perhaps there are preachers even today who would send a man straight to perdition and give him no hope of salvation whatever no matter how good he was, if he had not professed a belief in a certain creed or announced some miraculous instan- taneous experience. But there is a more sensible idea of the relation of character to salvation coming to view. We are recog- nizing that Jesus gave no hope of salvation to any who did not seek to do the Father's will, and who did not manifest genuine ethical fruits in every day life. He never once countenanced the idea that the gospel provided for sending bad men to heaven because they subscribed to a creed or good men to hell because they did not have one. He expected men to believe something but salvation did not depend upon perfec- tion of belief. Salvation to Jesus was development into character with all that this implied. We would define character as Christlikeness. Jesus never did. His modesty forbade it. But we know that it is the Christian ideal of character. The goal of God, through Jesus Christ, for all men, is a positive good- ness, a goodness which is an essential part of the per- son himself, a character which does not consist in some forced obedience to ethical rules and moral regu- lations but is the expression of the real life of the individual. As a person becomes really good, he be- comes Christlike and as he becomes Christlike, he possesses character and as he possesses character, he experiences salvation. That is, salvation is character, not by character but character itself. Salvation is that moral and spiritual condition which Jesus came to bring men to. There is no better name for it than 44 PEESONAL RELIGION character. Man is saved as he possesses it. The only salvation that is real and adequate is that which operates in a strata of our life which is far deeper than mere surface goodness. A restraining moral idealism is not enough. The giving up of a few bad habits is not an adequate salvation. It must imply a character which is the positive expression of a real deliverance from the basic motives and spirit of sin, a character which is laid in a goodness that God knows is good; a spirit and a purpose which issues in un- selfish service for mankind. To have this kind of a character begun in us, is to have salvation begTin. To reach the ideal of character which Jesus has for us is to be saved. And the fact that this character is a development, needs to be emphasized. Salvation which is such a character as we have delineated, does not spring up in a night and is not consummated in a week. There are very radical and wonderful crises in its realiza- tion, great crucial events and experiences, which stand out clearly, making that which was before seem as nothing or worse, but careful analysis reveals that these experiences were after all expressions of a move- ment toward a goal and at no one was the goal reached. There are many conversions and each one is a long step in advance toward the ideal which Jesus has for us, but in no one is salvation completed. "Justifi- cation," "sanctificatiou," "baptism of the Holy Spirit," are old terms to express the fact of these steps toward the character ideal which has been set up for us. The term "full salvation" is a misnomer. JSTo person has yet experienced full salvation. Some experience may have been stamped that when it was made known to him, but fifty years of walk with God SALVATION. WHAT IS IT? 45 in love for humanity, will make it plain that it was only a very partial salvation. Millions confess that the elimination of sinful tendencies is far from com- plete, that much of the animal and crude remains, and no single virtue is perfect, while some characteristics of goodness are lacking entirely, therefore it is true that salvation is a matter of a long period of develop- ment. The processes of God in bringing man to salvation are no different than many others which he has or- dained. Thoughtful consideration here will save us from many a pitiful aberration. Consultation of the records which stand out before us in all nature about us, and in our own physical, mental and moral de- velopment will manifest to us the fact that there are no gaps in nature and no leaps from nothing to ideal attainments. We reach ideals by the slow proc- ess of becoming. Completeness of anything takes time. There is nothing static. The whole universe is a constant movement of life, changes are constantly occurring. The soul itself is becoming. All these changes and all this becoming signify the slow, la- borious process of accretion. Character cannot be manufactured in a moment. Even God could not make it except by the processes he has ordained. You cannot make a fifty year old Christian in an hour. Great salvation processes may be begun in a second of time, but no one of them gives to any indi- vidual a perfected salvation at that time. That must come gradually. Thus from this, it is evident that all Christian peo- ple are partially saved. That they have within them the sure spirit of God, the true nature of Christ and of their ultimate perfection, no one may doubt, but 46 PEKSONAL KELIGION the character which Jesus would have real within them is only partially wrought out. The salvation which is God's ideal for them is far from complete. Christian people represent various stages of salvation. Some have just begun, some have developed to a much higher stage, and some have progressed remarkably and reveal a proximity to Christ's expectation of them in this world. All are being saved to that salvation, that character which Jesus came to make known. In no one is the task completed. We may be confident that God will perfect that which he has begun in us, as we conscientiously surrender ourselves to him, (Paul was sure that he would do it for the Philippi- ans. See Chap. 1:6) but as yet, the best know it is very imperfect. N^or have we any reason to conclude that this char- acter salvation will be perfected on earth or instan- taneously after death. Jesus said, ''He who endures to the end shall be saved." The immediate applica- tion of these words was to persons who would be in the midst of the troublous tirnes which were coming upon Jerusalem and had reference to their need amidst persecution and suffering to remain firm and endure. But the trend of his teaching would lead us to state that endurance to the end was the sign of a character and spirit which, while not perfect, would persist unto perfection. There is no suggestion in Jesus' utter- ances that when one died it was accomplished or enough was done at death to make its completeness a fact immediately afterwards. The process must continue, in the soul, (the personality) after the earthly house has fallen. It was the soul which was being developed and this lives. The man himself was the field of salvation and the man goes on. Im- SALVATIOK WHAT IS IT? 47 mortality is the persistence of him. Salvation is his perfection. Salvation is his evolution toward the di- vine ideal. And this is not because of some arbitrary decree from God. It is simply because in the nature of God's moral universe it must be so. It is a biolog- ical necessity. It could not be otherwise. There is no possible trick or magic that can accomplish it any other way. In the Fathers' plan of salvation there is no way known to the divine mind whereby at the moment of death, any person with a poorly or par- tially developed character, can abruptly, in an instant be reconstructed or perfected morally and spiritually so that the processes of becoming would be abrogated and salvation become a fact without the human soul having truly experienced it. It must be a part of his experience and wrought out within him, regardless of the time it takes to accomplish it, if it is to be his sal- vation. We see the wisdom of God's plan in view of the majesty and worth of an individual life. It is be- cause the soul is a growing entity. It has within itself great possibilities and before it a divine, won- derful destiny. It may spread out so widely and de- velop so deeply and climb so loftily, that time must be given for its completion. God is so mindful of the intrinsic value of a human soul that he would not save it too quickly. To save it now and preserve it as it is would be a very poor achievement. An in- stantaneous salvation signifies a very limited one. God could save all there was to save but that would be very little indeed in some cases. Salvation, if it were to imply nothing but the preservation in exact entity of that which is in existence at death even, would be too small an accomplishment for the divine 48 PEESONAL RELIGION mind to conceive of or the divine power to be de- voted to. Few people would like to think that the best that salvation could imply would be the conservation and preservation of what they are at death, with noth- ing more to be added throughout the long ages of eternity. No larger ideas, no clearer visions, no purer motives, no nobler aspirations, and no truer righteousness of character. It would be almost hell. Hell is hell if it means the arrest of personality in remorse for the past and the consciousness of no progress in the future. Some one asks when will sal- vation be consummated. I answer I do not know. Just to go on, to progress, to be larger, grander, no- bler, freer, more like Jesus every day; this is salva- tion for the individual and humanity as a whole. This is what Jesus would have us understand salvation to be. Some day we shall know much more about it. Well may we lift our hearts in thanksgiving to God for his grace in bringing to us through Jesus the reve- lation of the nature and scope of his salvation for man, the disposition and power to accomplish it, the patience and long suffering with his children in achieving it and the constant joy and inspiration of his presence within us as he leads us onward, out- ward, and upward to the moral and spiritual heights, pictured to us in the person and the teachings of Jesus our Saviour and Lord. CHAPTER THREE SELF AND SALVATION^ THE individual has very largely been the centre of the Christian objective. To secure the sal- vation of self has been the aim of Gospel preaching. Evangelists, pastors, personal workers, Sunday School teachers and the rank and file of church mem- bers have agreed that the work of Christians is to secure the salvation of individuals throughout the world. Jesus came to seek and save the lost and he has commissioned us to do the same. In order to do this we have arrested the attention of individuals by public mass meetings and by private conversations. The message of these public aud private approaches has been in the nature of an appeal to be saved. Christians of one century have perpetuated the appeal of those of the preceding century and Christians of one locality have approached the individual in and about the same way that Christians of another locality have. Up to the present time there has been a re- markable similarity in the nature of this appeal among Christian people the world over. There have been many differences in method but the nature of the appeal has been about the same. It has been an appeal to come and get saved, to be made safe, to become the recipient of that which would be an eternal insurance against any moral or spiritual calamity. Therefore the appeal has been and is, in many quarters, a selfish one. It is a warn- 49 50 PEESONAL EELIGI0:N" ing cry to get in out of the storm and protect your- self. It is the call to come and get; something and to come for what you can get. It is to look out for number one and do it now. It is impossible thought- fully to consider the popular evangelistic appeal to be saved without concluding that it is essentially a selfish one. People are urged to listen to the Gospel message and receive Christ in order that they may escape the eternal penalty of their sins and the failure in this life which inevitably follows sinful indulgence. They are deliberately moved to be Christians by revelations of personal loss in the present life, by picturing the torments of the damned hereafter, by making known to them what they would gain now if they accepted Christ and by promises of reward in the life to come. The appeal of profit and loss has been and is in- tensified in our effort to save the individual. It pays and pays well to be a Christian is the genius of this message. The motive may have been an ex- cellent one but the appeal has been manifestly selfish. All one needed to do to be a Christian was to think more deeply and let the motive of selfishness control him more rationally and he would, for what he could get out of Christ during time and eternity, become one of his followers. For himself, for his own in- terests, for what life could signify to him, the indi- vidual would logically accept the proffers of God's grace through Jesus Christ. We would not insinuate that there has been noth- ing more to the presentation of Christianity than this, but the appeal to be saved has been more or less limited as we have outlined. We know that millions have been drawn into our churches under this appeal. SELF AKD SALVATION 51 The sad fact is that the Christian life has been quite universally started under it. In fear and trembling they have responded to it and have testified that they have received what they desired to get. But the ques- tion is did they really secure the salvation which they thought they did ? Is it not simply a birth to a new consciousness of what they had received or could se- cure regardless of any one else ? Regeneration may have begun, but it was an abnormal new birth, under the pressure of a selfish motive. They would be lost unless they were in the Kingdom, they could not get into the Kingdom unless they were born again, there- fore they submitted to this new birth that they might surely get in. But the serious question is : "Does such a birth initiate one in the life of the Kingdom" ? Then in after years we have brought these people face to face with the essentials of Jesus' religion, with his principles of ethics, namely, love for others, whole hearted and generous giving, sacrifice and suffering, devotion of talents to the good of humanity, and un- selfish service everywhere and always, and they have been told that this is what it signifies to be a Chris- tian. But a large percentage have not responded to it. Preachers and workers have sighed and sorrowed because only a small number in our churches give anything to missions, only a few manifest any interest in the work of the church and large numbers think they have done wonderfully well and show an excel- lent Christian spirit, by attending church once on Sunday to receive something more in inspiration and instruction. Many still come to get, many still stay away be- cause they cannot get all they want, many still refuse to have much of anything to do with Christianity, 5^ PERSONAL RELIGION unless there is something in it for them. We have chided and prodded them, and wondered why they have not more quickly responded to the heroic ap- peals of Christ. But why should we wonder if they thus do ? Have we not as Christian leaders and teach- ers really deceived them regarding the very essence of religious faith and life ? The trouble lies in the fact that they were not told, when approached, what it ac- tually did imply to be a Christian. The conception given them was wrong. We have known that the genius of Christian ethics is unselfish love and ser- vice, yet we have very largely limited our appeal to the unchurched, to that conception of Christianity which makes it synonymous with selfishness. This being true, how could results be different ? There has been a great fundamental mistake in this. We should have told them at the outset what it cost. Jesus did. (See Luke 14:25-33.) In coming to Christ their selfish natures were awakened. It was the response of these that led them into the church. They were not converted to the genius of Jesus' religion. They were simply perpetuated in their ovsm. If they ever do respond to the appeals of a true Christianity, it will be because they have been brought into alinement with Christ by a new conversion. THE CRUX OF THE PROBLEM But the real problem is a far deeper one than ap- pears on the surface. These previous considerations have led us to ask what place self has in salvation, and what really constitutes the salvation of self? These fundamental questions present to us the greater problem. In Matthew's Gospel record (16:24-27) SELF AKD SALVATION 58 we read the familiar words of Jesus on the subject of self in salvation. The entire passage might be paraphrased as "Renouncement of self." In this statement he commends self humiliation, self depreci- ation, and self annihilation. There seems to be no place for self. It is something to be abrogated en- tirely. One must keep it out of the way if he is to be saved. But instantly the question arises, How can self be repudiated if it is self that is to be saved ? Surely something in self must persist. How can the salvation and the annihilation of self be secured at the same time? Then the teachings of Jesus and the apostles seem replete with inference that the Christian should always depreciate self righteousness, self ambition, self glory, self confidence and self sat- isfaction. Again the inquiring one is muddled. What does this imply ? Is it wrong to have a right- eous self? Should no one have any confidence in self ? Is it a sin to have any real satisfaction in life ? Does God frown upon us if we have ambitions to make the most of ourselves ? ISTo thinking person can honestly answer these inquiries in the affirmative. Because of this the religion which Jesus outlined seems irrational and impractical. We ask for some solution of the problem. A definition of self will help us perhaps. The per- sonal pronoun "I" stands for individuality. The "I" is the ego or self. That self has come from God. There is something of God in every man. This some- thing is his real self. This is the true or the eternal self. It has been known as Moral Reason, Conscience, Rationality, Spirit, the Spiritual Man. This true self, in all great philosophies Heathen, Pagan, and Christian, has been recognized to be the supreme fact 54 PERSONAL RELIGION of human existence and as such, akin to the divine. This self is destined to become a human personality in human environment and to come in contact with things material, yet it is possessed of divine potentiali- ties, which must be saved and developed if salvation is to be real. The saving of this self to its birthright of experience and destiny is the salvation man needs and may expect. This self starts on its career to become a person- ality, and in its struggle upward becomes overde- veloped. Its self direction becomes accentuated. It, in its realization of self, draws everything it can to itself. This becomes a passion, a spirit. This spirit may be named selfishness. The self must be saved. The spirit must be subdued. It is this spirit of sel- fishness, or overdevelopment of self, that we recog- nize to be opposite to Christian virtue. If self is saved this cannot be present, therefore the great and difficult task of Christianity is to secure the salva- tion of the essential self, without the spirit of sel- fishness. To save self and not perpetuate the appar- ently distinctive characteristic of self, is the problem which Jesus confronted and which he recognized to be the divine task of religion. Thus Jesus com- mended the spirit of self depreciation in seeking to save man. He sought not for the annihilation of the essential self, it was the spirit of an overdeveloped self that must be repressed. The true self is also very closely related to another self within us or a part of us. It has been named the empirical self, it is really not another self but a phase of the true self, or the outer visible self within which the true self resides as a potential personality. It is not the eternal self but rather the cosmic. It SELF AND SALVATION 55 is the self which has come from the primeval along the pathway of the animal and racial, until it makes itself known in the individual man. It is the sum total of the material environments, the physical ten- dencies, the effects of deep rooted habits and in- stincts, and the inheritance and experiences of the past. It is the self that has come to be, because the true self was destined, in the providence of God, to make its journey to selfhood through things material and earthly. It is therefore the self of moods, cir- cumstances and environments. Sometimes it seems as if this self was the only self, there is no other deeper reality to our selfliood. As Professor Taggart writes : "There are leaden days, when even the most convinced idealist seems to feel that his body and his furniture are as real as himself and members of a far more powerful reality." The accretions which have gathered around the true self have become so visible and real that they seem to smother any self deeper and more vital. But these make up the empirical self and do not form the fun- damental genius of the human personality. This em- pirical self is the one that Paul had so much trouble with as recorded in the seventh of Komans, and the one others are well acquainted with. And this self is the one that is to be repressed, and denied, and con- trolled. The true self is to be brought forth, made uppermost and developed. To make the essential self real and triumphant is what Jesus came to lead man to. As this became true man was saved. Jesus himself, the central figure of the Christ reve- lation, is the expressed thought of God carried to the utmost extreme of divine realization and specializa- tion that we have any cognizance of. That is he is 56 PERSONAL RELIGION the highest ideal of true selfhood that the world has ever known. This being true, we would naturally expect to find the problem of self solved in him. Being truly divine and truly human, coming so surely from God and being so closely akin to God and at the same time a veritable man, we would look for a perfect adjustment of the true self and the empirical self in him. And this is just what a critical study of his personality reveals to us. And in him we wit- ness the miracle of a saved self without the perpetua- tion of the selfish spirit. He therefore is the ideal for all humanity. As the self of each of us becomes like the self of Jesus, we shall be saved. As we gi'ow into the stature of the man Christ Jesus, we shall experi- ence salvation. It is certainly significant that the two ordinances of the church, the symbols, which Jesus gave his follow- ers to remind them of the experiences and the prin- ciples which were vital to his religion, (Baptism and The Supper) , should emphasize so strongly the truth that Christianity is real in man as the empirical self is kept subordinate (see Romans 6 : 4) and as the principles of unselfish sacrifice and suffering in the interests of humanity become dominant in the life. (See Luke 22 : 19, 20) (The Broken Body, The Shed Blood.) They are not sacraments to save self without vi- tally affecting the actual self, but symbols or pictures of what must occur in the individual if self is to be saved. Only as the empirical self is put down and the spirit and principles which were evident in Jesus' death, become a vital part of the life of the individual person, is the true self to experience its salvation. SELF AND SALVATION^ 5Y THE RATIONALE OF THE BENEFICIARY AND SELF INTEREST With the conception of self which has been out- lined, in mind, it behooves us to inquire if there is no rational place in salvation for the religious bene- ficiary and the person who has a passion for self interest? Are we to condemn every person who de- sires to be saved as one possessed of a spirit of sel- fishness ? Are we to declare that no person has any Christian right to come to God to receive anything? Are we to state that it is sinful to think at all of self preservation ? Is there no salvation for the one who desires it ? These questions naturally arise after stat- ing that the appeal to be saved has fostered selfish- ness and also in view of Jesus' words, "He who saves his life shall lose it," "I came not to be ministered unto but to minister." There are some who would lead us to infer by their statements that any thought of personal benefit or self development in coming to Christ and becoming a Christian, is a sin, that the Christ spirit never inspires one to think of himself at any time, and therefore the thought of securing something from God or any one in the interest of self is utterly foreign to the genius of religion and ethics as Jesus taught them. While we appreciate this view point and recognize what truth there is in it, it does not present Jesus' idea of the matter fairly. If we will keep in mind the definition of the true self and its distinction from the empirical self and the selfish overdevelopment of self, we shall be able to judge more satisfactorily concerning this question of self interest. The true self is the expression of God in the world and each human being is his child. It is 58 PEKSONAL KELIGIOK certain that God would be interested in his own self realization, and as a father would be devoted to his child. That interest and devotion, springing nat- urally from love, would lead to an effort to bestow upon that child the blessings which his divine mind would devise and his divine nature be disposed to con- fer. In the religious development of the human race, man has gi-adually come to realize that such concep- tions of God as father and benefactor are true. In Jesus Christ we have the revelation of the eternal attitude of God toward his children. For God so loved that he gave, is a true and beautiful picture of the Father. Jesus came to make real to man the Father's desire to give comfort, strength, freedom, joy and moral and spiritual power, to him. He stated this clearly in Luke 4: 18, and he illustrated it every day of his life by actual ministry to humanity. He called the weary to rest, the weak to strength, the forlorn to cheer, the sick to health, the restless to peace and the discouraged to hope. He freely gave his life power to succor a diseased, broken hearted, starved, needy and sinful humanity. Jesus actually came to bestow upon mankind the priceless gifts of a loving God. He inspired men to ask that they might receive and he never turned away one who really desired his great gifts. Jesus also knew that the salvation of man depended upon his becoming a beneficiary of God's grace and love. The religious development of the individual child of God and the entire family of God is contingent upon becoming recipients of the spiritual riches of the Father. All we are we have received from him, all we expect to be is to come from him. With this true, could it be entirely wrong to desire SELF AND SALVATION" 59 what the Father has for us ? To want cheer when the heart is lonely, light when the soul is in the dark, strength when power is waning, calmness when the heart flutters, faith when confidence seems shaken, and forgiveness when conscious of sin, cannot be dis- pleasing to God. It is the normal expression of the child who is cognizant of his great need in a world where his Father has placed him. It reveals the true instinct of a true child. It is just as normal as the turning of the babe to the mother's breast for food, or the cry of the child in danger for protection, or the appeal to the parents for help in solving problems and achieving success. This call of the child for Him and his gifts is just what the Father delights to hear. How we parents love to feel that the child is conscious of us, realizes his relation to us, knows something of our resources and craves our help daily. Such desires spring logically from a normal relation- ship between parent and child and there are desires to receive, to become beneficiaries of the Heavenly Father's love and grace which are just as logical and right as these. We are not to think that every call to God to help us is necessarily selfish nor are we to believe that the receiving of his benefactions is in- congruous with the essence of religion. These are instinctive in an ideal spiritual relationship to God. It is the proper adjustment of the true self to the great Self of the universe. It reveals our kinship with him and our dependence upon him. The out- flow of God to his children is divine and the intake by humanity is a part of his plan. It is as necessary to the Father as it is to the children. It is essential in a family experience. An intelligent self interest is also to be commended. 60 PERSONAL RELIGION It is not selfish to desire passionately the preserva- tion or the salvation of the true self. The desire to cater to the empirical Self, is another matter. If we have a passion to perpetuate and develop the ac- cumulative self which has come from the racial and animal and is cosmic in its scope, then self interest is to be condemned. But the desire to have the true self saved, that is, protected from moral and spir- itual ruin, kept from danger if you please, and made all that can be under a Heavenly Father's blessing, is a commendable self interest. It is not necessarily sel- fish to desire power over moral waste in life and to overcome evil within, that the soul self may become all that the Father has planned. Emphasis upon the true self here is the important thought. We are certainly not asked to be indifferent to our essential well being in God's plan. Jesus sought continually to awaken men to a passion for the true values of life in view of genuine self preser- vation. He wanted every one to think seriously of the effect of sin and devotion to the external upon the real self. The passages in Luke 9 : 25 make this very plain. These words are eschatological in their original use. The picture is one of the final judg- ment of a man, who, by disregarding his real interests and by unfaithfulness to his true self, has become wealthy, powerful in worldly influence and appar- ently possessed of all that self needed. But in reality he has perpetuated the empirical or sensual self and has neglected his true self. There he stands in the judgment in a sorry plight. He has all the accumu- lations of the empirical self and yet he cannot enjoy them. These shall not last. It is only the true self that persists. He has no soul self. He did not SELF AND SALVATION 61 awaken to true values and now he is stripped of everything. If he had possessed intelligent self in- terest, said JesiTS, if he had been really wise, he would have sought earnestly to develop his true soul self. The Master here was teaching the lesson that true self interest is not to be neglected but rather stimulated. While not inspiring mankind to think of life simply in terms of '^'profit and loss" to them- selves, and never idealizing a strictly commercial con- ception of religion and ethics, yet he did make the desire and purpose to have one's true self saved as the Father revealed it should be, a legitimate passion to possess. The conscious relation to the Father and his purpose, in this passion to have himself pro- tected and developed, saves self interest from the very element which Jesus could not sanction, namely, sel- fishness. We should remember that selfishness is the passion for overdevelopment of self, and that nor- mal self interest is necessary to individual growth. Self interest is the evidence of the soul's struggle upward. A normal self interest consciously absorbed in the Father's purpose, is what the Master came to secure. The Prodigal son, aroused to self interest which issued in a return to his Father's love and will for him, presents the legitimate interest which everyone should have in himself, an interest never separated from the Father, but a self interest nev- ertheless. Without defending Nietzsche's philosophy of altruism and selfishness in entirety, we yet believe he had much truth on his side, and there is danger of producing deficiency of personality by an empha- sis of altruism which leads one to think that all self development is sin. Surely we do not desire to ad- vocate an unselfishness which produces selflessness. 62 PERSONAL RELIGION THE SAVING OF THE TKUE SELF IS NOT TO BE CON- SIDERED APART FROM ALL SELVES No self is saved alone. The desire to be saved regardless of others, is a proof that the true salva- tion of self has not been appreciated. The assump- tion of salvation in private with no sense of others is a Christian absurdity. Matthew Arnold nobly testified of his father as follows : — But thou wouldst not alone Be saved, my father, alone Conquer and come to thy goal. Leaving the rest in the wild. We are happy that he did not think of being saved alone for we know he could not be. He had no privilege to be saved without interest in others. And this is not because of some arbitrary decree that God will not save any except as they endeavor to secure the salvation of others. It is simply an impossibility in view of the nature of salvation itself, the one- ness of God with all humanity and the solidarity of the human race. Realizing that our Heavenly Father is the supreme self conscious, self determining per- sonality, having his life in and through a world order and a kingdom of selves, who are his own self reali- zation, a social unity, he being the father of all human spirits, how could it be possible for one to be in harmony with God and have within him the saving essence of the Father's nature, if he had no love for these other selves, and was not consciously one with them 'I His salvation is more than inti- mately connected with theirs, it is an actual part of theirs and is consummated in theirs. No self is an end in itself. The moment one tries to make himself SELF AND SALVATION 63 the whole, or to claim himself for himself, that is to make his true self his and his only, then that self is not himself. The true self is universal. It is only itself when it is tinily related to God and all other selves. So that no person can have that self saved without others being included in its perspec- tive and passion. In this utterance of Jesus, namely that "he who saves his life shall lose it and he who loses his life for my sake shall find it," he states the well known truth that self realization or self salvation must be found in the establishment of the Kingdom of God among men. That is, it is a social experience. He was talking to his disciples about his Kingdom, a Kingdom made up of persons. He had no thought of seeking to save any one apart from that Kingdom. He had no idea that any one could be fully saved apart from it. He told all his disciples to seek first that Kingdom and that righteousness which was fun- damental to it. They were to have as large an ob- jective as — Kingdom righteousness, that is the right- eousness of the whole. And in presenting this ideal of the Kingdom, he emphasized the fact that true self salvation could not be an isolated, unsocial self realization. It is only in the society of the kingdom that one can find himself. As he lost himself in the realization of that social ideal for which Jesus came, he would come to the experience of his true self. Thus man comes to his own higher good as he seeks the good of others. This does not imply that he has no interest in himself. He is one of the others who make up the kingdom and he has his own value. He may have respect for his life as one of many but only one. There is a self interest which places a man 64 PEESONAL EELIGION before all others. He makes himself primary. This cannot be if he is to be saved. He is but one of many and he is to love others as himself. As he loves others and works for others, he comes to his true self. The true self, if left to follow its inclina- tions, will move toward others, for it belongs to the larger himianity and as it moves out toward others it comes to its own self realization. Free the true self of the empirical or sense self, said Jesus, and it will find its own salvation among the many whom it needs to complete itself. What is the picture of a saved man ? Is it one who is riding in an ark while the world of mankind is being drowned ? Is it Lot fleeing from Sodom ? We have about concluded that such as these are lost men. The man who is thinking only of him- self and seeking to escape the woes of the world is far from salvation. The saved man is the one who moves out into society and seeks with others to realize the salvation of all. This is the true self coming to its own, in touch with all and one for all. It is by identification with human beings as mem- bers of the great family of God that the self comes to its realization. The method of the monk, the re- cluse and the ascetic is just the reverse of what it should be. The idea that one can secure even his own salvation by staying away from others, by having no part in the experience of a common humanity, is utterly untrue to the fundamental principles of soul progress and in opposition to the plain teachings of Jesus. There will be something lacking in the self- realization of the Christian individual whose heart does not throb for the humanity of the world. The man who does not love all classes, including the hea- SELF AND SALVATIOT^ 65 then, and labor for them, will find himself far from complete, some day. He ought to know his salvation is partial today. He has sought to save himself not- withstanding others, and in that has lost the salva- tion of himself. He is not progressing toward salva- tion but rather toward subtraction and division of humanity which is the loss of self. THE SALVATION OF SELF IS REALIZED THKOUGH THE APPLICATION OF THE LAW OF SACRIFICE It is true that Jesus called men to take up the cross and follow him because there was no way for his kingdom to come without doing that. The life he outlined for his disciples was one of hardship and would necessarily involve sacrifice. They must give up their lives for the world in order that the Father's eternal purposes might be fulfilled. The truth of sacrifice being necessary in the interest of life de- velopment is everywhere evident. The student of botany finds that one portion of a flower is sacrificed for the welfare of the whole flower and that certain leaves perish in order that the plant may put on the full glory of the summer. The devotee of entomology ascertains that the same principle is operative in in- sect life. The activity of the bee is seldom for its own pleasure; almost all of its gifts, habits and in- dustry are designed for the benefit of the species. The knowledge of natural history reveals that there is a law governing the development of animals and plants so that whenever large numbers of them are congregated together, some are modified for the bene- fit of the others. Thus science makes plain to us the fact that the law of sacrifice is operating through- 66 PERSON^AL RELIGION out the entire structure and development of the earth and its life. We recognize that Jesus was calling his disciples to obey the law that is universal in the world development. Today we appreciate its sig- nificance more than ever. Sir Fitzjames Stephen once wrote, "The Christian admiration for self sac- rifice will disappear and it will turn out that the respectable man of the world was after all in the right." But where in the civilized world today is the man, who lives for self, admired ? Does any one hold him up as an ideal ? Do his portraits fill our galleries and is his name revered by the people ? Hu- manity's love and admiration for the unselfish man reveals the universality of this law of sacrifice in human life and also the response of human nature to its divinity and nobility. But the corollary of this truth is equally evident. It is just as true that self comes to its own salvation by sacrifice as that self must be sacrificed for the sal- vation of others. As the disciples of Jesus gave them- selves to the furthering of the Father's eternal pur- poses regarding his Kingdom, they furthered the process of self realization in themselves. The motive of sacrifice was the welfare of others. No thought was there to be of their own benefit. Jesus was thinking of his great kingdom plan when he called them to the life of hardship and sacrifice. But he took care to tell them that the result would be the finding of their own selves. They were asked to give up all thought of satisfying the empirical self, to lose their very lives, to go even to death if need be, but in doing this they would experience the salva- tion of their true selves. The case of the rich young ruler would be to the point here. He was anxious SELF AND SALVATION 67 to know what he must do to be saved or as he phrased it "to have eternal life." Jesus told him plainly to sell all his possessions and give to the poor. Here was an exaction which was not arbitrarily imposed. The giving of his goods to the poor would not have saved him, if there had not been some fundamental law of soul life in operation which demanded that to be done in order to accomplish what he requested. It was only because it was impossible for the life de- voted to self to be saved while it was conformed to that principle of living. It must subordinate the em- pirical self with its grasp of material things to the true soul self and yield to the law of sacrifice before the true self could ever come to itself. In the science of soul culture, or the true self culture, it is a fact that every act of the true self in subordinating the empirical self to itself reacts to the development of itself for the good of others. Instead of decreasing it or dividing it only increases and unifies it. There are mysteries regarding it, we cannot understand the spiritual alchemy of it, but as we know that it is impossible to find the "Blue Bird" by seeking it, and that happiness comes to us as we forget our own desire for it and make others happy, so it is im- possible to secure our own salvation by seeking for it, and salvation comes as we give ourselves to save others. We may be very sure that God has so or- dered the moral world that the development of hu- man personality into the likeness of Christ, or the salvation of the true self, and the coming of the Kingdom of God among men depend upon conform- ity to love, righteousness and sacrifice. And he who seeks righteousness everywhere and daily sacrifices in the interest of humanity, will find, as time con- 68 PEESONAL RELIGION tinues and eternity begins, that devotion to the good of all and the purposes of God in Christ, will work out within him that salvation which Jesus came to secure in man, and the less he thinks about himself the better. It is true that salvation eludes one just in proportion as he passionately seeks it for himself. It is undeniably true that the nature of the true self is such that the appeal to save self and that pri- marily, only stupefies it. It cannot be true to itself and respond to it. The empirical self leaps to such an appeal. Its nature is alive to everything which can bring more to itself. All its faculties and pow- ers are alert to grasp something more. It is ever- lastingly out to get. But the only appeal which really awakens the true self, is the appeal of God- likeness or the appeal of the Christ to forget self and serve, to be up and doing for others, to go to the limits of self sacrifice in the interests of Christ's kingdom among men. The appeal that the empirical self is dead to, the true self is all alive to. Its nature makes this difference. It is the difference between the spiritual nature of the universe, God, and the material, animal and racial powers which have be- come so potent a part of the human personality. The true self responds to the unselfish appeal because it is its nature thus to do. The universal response to sacrificing, to the heroic and the common good by individuals in all classes, proves that there is a true self in humanity and God is not dead. Without this awakening of the true self it could never experience salvation. Without this disposition to respond to the unselfish there would be no hope for humanity. The moral order of true selfhood is basicly inclined to- ward its own salvation by its native response to the SELF AND SALVATION 69 unselfish. Therefore there is salvation in being true to one's true self. Some fifteen years ago it was my privilege to hear Dr. John Watson, ^'lan MacLaren," read from his own book ''The Bonnie Brier Bush." He told of a criticism of one of the characters of that book by some good people. He had made real the sacrifice and love of one who leaped into a river to save a young man and has left the inference that there was something in that act which led on to salvation. When asked if he thought one would be saved be- cause of that act, he answered that he was sure that he would far quicker than he would if he had not leaped into the river to save. The fact was that the person who did this act of kindness had responded to the spirit and principles which are essential in a saved life. This was but one expression of that re- sponse. As this response became what Christ would have it, that person was coming to his salvation. The true self was becoming dominant and thus the true self was being saved. Jesus knew what he was doing when he appealed to men from the standpoint of unselfishness to follow him. He was perfectly sure that only as humanity responded to that appeal could it be saved. That there was no real culture of the personality in thoughts and acts which had self salvation exclu- sively in mind. With clear statement, apt illustra- tion, and personal example he emphasized this fun- damental truth in soul science. In the interest of all humanity and each individual, he asked men to for- sake all, to give to feed the poor, to take up the cross, to deny self, and to lose the life. He knew that the culture, or salvation of self, could only be realized 70 PEKSON^AL KELIGION by adopting those principles which save. A saved self is a true self, denying the dominance of the em- pirical self and yielding to the principles of unsel- fishness by which its life is made spiritually strong and perpetuated. One of the most powerful illustrations of the con- flict between the true self of a man, the self that feels its divinity and aspires to the Christlike, and the empirical self, the self that passionately strives to gain the whole world for itself, has been given to us recently by Mr. Basil King in his most remark- able story of American life entitled "The Way Home." It is worth studying from this view point. Half the battle is fought if one understands the na- ture of his true self and his self of accretion, and also the principles which should govern the relation of the two. Recognizing his real self, and standing with his Heavenly Father in the strength and dignity of that selfhood, he, from within and above, watches that empirical self and forestalls its avaricious prog- ress, by becoming one with Christ and humanity and devoting himself to the good of all. We perceive from this view point, the rationality of Jesus' state- ments about self interest and self denial, realizing what self the interest is to be centred in and what self is to be denied. And we should be conscious of this today. The Christian preacher and worker will work with Christ and for the salvation of man as he makes it the basis of his appeal and service. Jesus never deceived humanity. We must not. The entire Kingdom work of the Master depends upon intelligent instruction and example in the constructive principles of Chris- tian salvation. Every religious leader who speaks in SELF AND SALVATION Yl the name of the Master, every worker everywhere, is in duty bound to deal with mankind so that men will be truly saved, so that society will experience salvation, so that Christ's ideal will be reached. Never was the world in need of this unselfish ideal- ism and spirit more than at the present. A cynic once gave the following definition of a Christian : "A Christian man is a man whose great aim in life is a selfish desire to save his own soul, who in order to do that goes regularly to church, and whose supreme hope is to go to heaven when he dies." We fear that this definition has been too often true. It is our business to forestall the possibility of its repetition. The coming generation should have bet- ter ideals and illustrations of the saved self. If a so called Christian civilization had not been so per- meated with the spirit of national selfishness, the European horror would not have been a fact. God forbid that we should train people to think that Christianity is synonymous with the development of a national as well as an individual empirical self- hood. God hasten the day when the true selfhood of nations shall be secured and maintained, for how can the kingdom come unless this be a fact ? CHAPTER FOUR THE PEEPOSITIONS OF SALVATION TRUTH is conceived and developed in the mind. It sometimes comes like a flash to the soul. We know it before we can tell it. It is also empirical and the experience of it struggles for expression. Our Heavenly Father has made it possible for man to make known his thoughts and experiences. Lan- guage is the vehicle of the mind and heart. Vocabu- laries are demanded to carry thought and feeling out into the world and picture the sights of the soul. Languages did not drop from Heaven ready made, they came into being because man had something to tell. Words are but windows through which the light of the inner being shines that others may see. What would we do without the ability to state and describe what we think and experience? How could we see anything together if language was not possible ? How could thought make any contribution to humanity's progress if man had not been able to write nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs ? Word painting is as much an art as coloring in oil. He who knows how to use a language to express the great thoughts of his mind and to portray the divine experiences of his soul, is as traly a master as a Raphael or Rubens. Religious history has come down to us in written lan- gTiages. There have been many. The record of the religious development of the Jewish nation is before us in the most precious Book in the world. Two 72 THE PREPOSITIONS OF SALVATION 73 great languages were used to make it known to us, the Hebrew and the Greek. In fact it has come to us in one language, namely the Greek. Students well know the value of this to early Christianity in view of the fact that the lang-uage of the Roman empire at that time was almost entirely Greek. Scholars testify that of all earth languages there is no one so rich, so beautiful and so capable of expressing the shades and varieties of thought, as the Greek. That the Bible should be preserved, that the great truths therein contained should be expressed and that all thie treasures of its spiritual wealth should be handed on to humanity, in this remarkable language, is more to us than a coincidence. It is worthy of recogTiition as a distinct and wonderful providence of the true God. We should be everlastingly grateful to him be- cause of it. It is also a fact that the greatness of profound truths is oftentimes made real in the little words of a language. A long word will have attached to it a short one and this tiny attachment is what makes the larger word stand out before us in all the majesty of its worth and meaning. In fact we would have difficulty at times to ascertain the significance of the great word were it not for the small one. It is the preposition, or that particle of speech which comes just before or just after the noun or the verb that gives to us the value of the thing expressed. So im- portant are these prepositions that laws of nations are interpreted in the light of them, courts proceed to judge in view of them, and systems of theology are made out of them. It is particularly true that they are illuminating interpreters of religious truth. Of- tentimes not only side lights are thrown upon great T4 PERSONAL RELIGION fundamental essentials in religion but the whole light of what God has taught humanity through experience shines out in them and is actually focused upon the human mind and heart through them. And in no language does the power of a preposition to manifest truth reveal itself more, if as much, as in the Greek. Recently I took occasion to examine in my own inade- quate way, the significance of some of these prepo- sitions contained in one single passage of Paul's writ- ings and I was perfectly amazed to note what it was my privilege to discover. I found that the genius and range of salvation were wonderfully laid open to all who would take time to study them. The passage to which I refer is found in the letter to the Colos- sians the first chapter and the thirteenth verse. "Who has delivered us out of the power of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of His beloved son — in whom we have the redemption — the release from sins" (Translation by Ferrar Fenton.) In these masterful lines from Paul's pen we have a conception of salvation, intensified by prepositions, which will live as long as the world stands. These little words do not represent some passing idea of Christian sal- vation which only has to do with temporary condi- tions and forms. Perusal of them impresses one with their permanent significance. They stand for the great essentials which the modern religious world recognizes to be so important. If this were not true, we would not be emphasizing them today. Paul, to be sure, was writing them to the small band of dis- ciples at Colossae, (a church which he did not estab- lish. Epaphras having that privilege while the apostle was busy at Ephesus,) and they were written primarily with the Pagan world in which this church THE PEEPOSITIONS OF SALVATIOK 75 was situated, in mind, although they implied much to Paul himself as he thought of his experience as a zealous devotee of Judaism, yet both of these con- siderations do not make the application of the truth expressed at all irrelevant to us today. While our civilization is far in advance of the Pagan and our Christianity an improvement upon the Judaism of Paul's day, and therefore we live in a very different world from that of the first century of the Christian era, yet salvation is essentially the same today and implies an experience which is identical in its fun- damental phases with that which was outlined by Paul in these words. In fact it should imply much more today than it did then. Its negative and posi- tive characteristics should be even more sharply out- lined at this stage of the world's religious and moral development than then. The Christianity of Christ demands more of us today than when these words were written. Paul was constantly recognizing Pa- gan training and environment together with the in- fluence of Judaistic externalism, and the members of that first council at Jerusalem in considering how much they ought to expect from the Gentile Chris- tians, were singularly sympathetic, fair and lenient with them, imposing only that which was reasonable in view of all conditions and opportunities. Today the councils of the church have reason to make the standards of salvation far higher to humanity than they did then. All progress in Christianity suggests deeper meaning to salvation, imposes greater moral and religious obligations and calls humanity to no- bler ideals than that which has preceded. Every mountain top shows another higher and grander, just in advance. This is what it signifies to experience 76 PEESO^AL RELIGION 8alvation. And strange as it may seem, all of this progress and possibility is included in the con- ception which is outlined in these tiny and appar- ently insignificant prepositions. The first word, Ek or Apo that we find here, is one that is used many times in the ]^ew Testament. It signifies ''out of" or "from" and when applied to salvation gives to us a very vivid description of one phase of that momentous experience. Paul used it advisedly of himself as well as all those who had come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ. The experi- ence of salvation to him and to them implied a com- ing out from something. Something was left behind. Abraham went out from his own country. Israel went out from Egypt. The Christian goes out from a condition which is real when salvation is his ex- perience. Salvation is not real unless one is saved from that which he should be. Jesus came to save people from just this. There was something the trou- ble with man. No person could look out upon the Pagan or Jewish world at the time of Christ and honestly characterize it without recognizing its relig- ious and moral obliquity. It was in a condition from which man must escape or he could not be saved. Paul knew the life of the Pagan world thoroughly, having been in the very midst of it during his travels and he sought to make plain to the disciples at Colos- sae, that the salvation which Jesus came to make known to them, was something totally different from the Pagan life about them and implied an experience of transformation which was far from imaginary. And today while progress in religion and ethics is so evident, salvation means being saved from some- thing which is real. The difference between the THE PKEPOSITIONS OF SALVATION 77 Pagan and Christian world was a fact then. There is still a difference in the world today. We may con- ceive of religion in far broader terais than the early Christians did, look at the world very differently from what they did, and rejoice in the fact that the church does not contain all the goodness in the world, yet there is much within and around us for each of us to be saved from, if we are to be the Christians that Christ would have us be. Paul describes this condition out of which Christ saves men with the single word "darkness." This was particularly applicable to those for whom it was first intended. There seems to be no word better suited to picture their condition in Paganism than this. It is a most inclusive word. It could properly be used to describe the whole comprehensive signifi- cance of the superstitions and immoral environment of these early Christians. He might have used other words but not one would have been as pertinent and powerful. The more one thinks it over, the more conclusive is the evidence that the word "darkness" is the one word to convey to the mind the whole ter- rible, awful state which they, in Christ, were to be saved from. Think first of all of the polytheism which surrounded them. Hundreds of gods and yet no God. Gods of wood and stone by the ton, but no living God, to trust and know, to tie to, and fellow- ship with. Superstition everywhere but no vital re- ligious faith. Men and women desiring to know God but no sure way to find him. No clear light from Heaven. Darkness almost everywhere. Then their perplexity in the midst of false philosophies. Paul's letter was written especially to help them re- garding a particular philosophy which later devel- 18 PERSONAL RELIGIOl!^ oped into Gnosticism. It was so serious that it was undermining their faith in God and was reducing their Christianity to impractical musings and ob- servances. The genius of this error was that God was inaccessible, onlj to be approached through a long line of celestial intermediaries, (of whom Jesus was but one), emanations from His Essence and all combining to compose his divine plenitude. These must be adored and as matter was polluting and the body a degradation, self abasement and rigid asceti- cism must be practiced as a necessary preliminary in their struggle to reach God. This developed a sys- tem of outward observances and the whole philosophy thrust life's duties into the background. In the acceptance of such philosophies they were in the dark. Then there was the darkness because of sin. Paganism was morally corrupt. People were living in unnamable iniquities. Evil was a power control- ling man in general. The pure and noble were ex- ceptions. Many a soul was in immoral dungeon darkness. Sin had shut off the light. With the light gone out, the soul was in bondage to its baser desires and appetites and the inky blackness of the pit was all too real. Associations were evil. Fellowships of character were not numerous. Iniquity moved in crowds. The atmosphere was thick. Moral reckless- ness was popular. Conscience seemed to be dead. The soul was in prison, with few if any windows open to God and light. And with it all there was a hope- lessness regarding life that made suicide far from uncommon. Therefore Paul appealed to them to be saved from something. Salvation implied getting away from polytheism, false philosophies and most of all from sin, and its abject despair. They must THE PREPOSITIONS OF SALVATION 79 no longer associate with evil, they must come out from the sinful world and thej must be separate from wicked companions (2 Cor. 6:17.) Salvation was first of all a movement away from everything and everyone sinful. It is a long time since Paul wrote these words with their direct application to conditions of those days in Colossae, but we are impressed with the fact that salvation today includes all that this preposition '*Ek" implied then. Men today may not have the same form of polytheism to be saved from but there is a devotion to gods of wood and stone which is far worse and more serious in its results than was their superstitious belief in many gods then. They knew no better, man today does. Present day en- lightenment forbids any conscientious devotion to materialistic ideals and to gods of gold and earthly success. The reason of man in the light of Christian revelation, makes such devotion a practical atheism. To have no consciousness of a Heavenly Father is darkness indeed. Salvation today implies being de- livered from the gloom which is the result of having no positive and clear religious faith. And erroneous philosophies persist today and even increase in num- bers. Not all that defines religion differently from the past is bad philosophy but some of these ap- parently new ideas are dangerous to untutored minds and all of them more or less perplex the sincere soul. There are many good people today who are in the dark because of the divergent views of Christian doc- trine, who are lost in the maze of literalism, who are uneasy by reason of the conflict of religious opinions and practices and who are distressed not a little in the presence of current philosophies of religion and 80 PERSO^-AL RELIGION ethics. To these salvation should mean being saved from the false alternatives of statements of truth, from the many disastrous philosophies which demand acceptance and from the beliefs which tend to mys- tify and make life impractical. There is a salvation in Jesus Christ which makes clear some fundamental conceptions of life, which takes a man out from the distressing condition of uncertainty in religious mat- ters and gives him a simple and beautiful thought of life and its opportunities and responsibilities, which makes living a real delight. I firmly believe that there are some philosophers today who are revealing ideas which will prove to be the salvation of many minds from intellectual perplexities which were des- tined to ruin peace and prospects. Eucken is one. But after all the great fact that salvation stands for today as revealed in this tiny preposition "Ek" is being saved from sin. It is in the moral realm that we today must experience something if we are to be saved. Sins change, sin remains the same. Paul could come here today and point out just about as much for us to be saved from as he did those Colos- sians in the first century, but of course the sins would not be exactly the same in form. And if Jesus were to return to earth he would make plain to all that the essential element which man needed to be saved out of was iniquity. Jesus came to save man from impurity, injustice, unbrotherliness and every form of evil in mind, heart and life. And these per- sist today. No one can study the conditions of hu- man life at this moment and fairly conclude about the facts evident there, without recognizing that there is sin of all kinds in the world to be saved from. All Europe seems to have succumbed to sin ai this THE PREPOSITIONS OF SALVATION 81 writing. America is growing better, millions are fighting iniquity in public places but no one dares to think that there is no badness abounding anywhere. The need of both individual and social humanity is still at this hour to be saved from evil. If Jesus were here he would not minimize it. He would not act as if it were imaginary and nothing to bother about escaping from. He would show it up anew. He would make men understand again its real nature and he would declare that salvation signifies without ques- tion getting out of sin. Man must get away from it. He would state that the one necessary prerequisite of salvation is to get sin out of man. Man is saved from it only as it is taken out of him. It is not so much the thing that is external to him which is pressing upon him from without, that he must get away from, but rather something within, his thoughts, his mo- tives, his ideals and his spirit, which must be gotten out of him. He is to recognize what it is, to be able to discern its presence and know the experience of being freed from it. He is not to bother so much about some definitions of it, or some minor mani- festations of it. He is to understand its real na- ture and spirit and get rid of the thing itself. This is salvation. Man is also to be saved from a world of evil asso- ciations. This does not imply that the world is neces- sarily evil. Our world view is not that of the New Testament writers who conceived of the world be- ing owned and controlled by the devil and all its life and associations wicked. We do not so read Jesus' ideas We do however recognize that there is much evil in the world. To be saved from the world and worldliness is not to become ascetic and 82 PERSO:^AL EELIGION leare human associations of evil in the world. We are not to turn away from it as if the world were essentially sinful and to be abandoned to iniquity, but rather to be separated from that part of it which is evil. This recognizes associations of evil and sal- vation implies coming out from them. There are some people whom the Christian cannot properly be with. Those who are bent on evil, those who associ- ate us with their sin, those who would take us into their iniquitous plans and ask us for our sanction, those who together work destruction to humanity, who exploit their own brothers and sisters, those who effect us immorally, and those who have no respect for Jesus and his religion, are not the ones for us to associate with. Man's salvation includes a parting company with them as associates. This does not im- ply that we do not desire to help them and would not do our utmost to turn them away from their sin, but with such ideals and spirit as personified in them, we must have nothing to do. A man is saved as he leaves the political "bosses" alone, as he turns emphatically away from the saloon and brewery in- terests, as he refuses to connive with state wide cor- ruptionists, as he gives the cold shoulder to industrial exploitation of humanity, as he stands high and dry from those who are guilty of iniquitous methods in business, and as he stays aloof from every individual or company of individuals, that lives avowedly by sinful practices. There is a second preposition here which in- terprets another side of salvation. It is the word "Eis." It means "into." Paul writes that they were to consider that they had been translated "out of," or "from" the powers of darkness "into" the Kingdom THE PKEPOSITIONS OF SALVATION 83 of the Son of his love. Here we have the conception that salvation is something more than getting hu- manity out of the pit of sin and the prison house of darkness. It is more than escaping something. It is even more than excluding sin from the life. It is much greater than getting away from evil compan- ions and having nothing to do with workers of in- iquity. To have been saved from these is a miracu- lous accomplishment and no one has yet been able to state that all which he should be saved from has been achieved. It is more than a negative deliver- ance. It reaches out toward something. It has a positive ideal to secure and maintain. There is a definite result to obtain. One is to be changed from a condition which is irreligious, or nonreligious and unethical to a condition which is religious and actu- ally ethical. That is, there is a real experience which has many positive characteristics, which one is to be initiated into and to be developed in. We are not taken from something to nothing. We are not to es- cape the dungeon to find ourselves on a barren plain of religious experience with nothing but the con- sciousness of having gotten out of its blackness and sin, to revel in. That consciousness is worth some- thing we are sure, but there is a rich and wonderful experience awaiting us. Jesus introduces man into that which is at once exhilarating, satisfying, and beautiful. There will be something to learn, and feel, and enjoy and do every moment. He will show what the Father desires to give to and make of his child. There will really be no limit to the positive side of this salvation. No one has ever experienced all that the Father had for him yet. The world has recorded the lives of God's saints but no life has 84 PEKSONAL HELIGIOIT called on him for all he could do or has been able to know all he could make known. The great wide stretches of soul and life experience which God is ca- pable of leading a human being into, are opened up before man in the salvation that Jesus came to make known to the world. Too many stop short in sal- vation. They are satisfied with too little. The Father waits to make real all he can but the child is too busy with the lesser to receive the greater. The Father plans much for his child, he would take him into experiences which would enlarge his soul, widen his vision, deepen his consciousness of the eter- nal and open up to him the wonders of his Kingdom plans, but the child has been satisfied to have been kept from heinous sin, moral ruin and soul destruc- tion. To have God save him from these sins and keep him in a fairly straight pathway for life, is enough. All the time the Father was pressing him- self by his spirit upon him, asking him to leave some trivial things that he might go with him to some spiritual mountain heights, view with him his pur- poses, see with him what he saw in humanity about him, understand with him that which is worth while in view of eternal values in life and move with him across the broad stretches of his Kingdom enterprise, but the child kept singing, "Oh, Happy Day when Jesus washed my sins away." The past was gone and that was enough. The present would be glori- ous in the light of what he had escaped from. He would be satisfied to think what had been done and would not ask for or think of anything more to know in his life just now. Conversion was an end instead of a beginning. There was nothing beyond. Salva- tion is simply getting out of sin and being kept out THE PREPOSITIONS OF SALVATION 85 of hell. This is one of the saddest limitations that man puts upon himself. The limitations of good enough. It reveals smallness of capacity and little- ness of soul. ISTe-plus-ultra- is not Christianity. There is always something more to know, be and do. Salvation is exploration with glorious surprises and fresh experiences every day. To be saved into the Kingdom of the Son of his love implies experiencing a fellowship with Christ which becomes at once a new life. Separation from sin means together with Christ. This introduces man to the knowledge of the power and spiritual life of a living God. "Into" means actually getting into the life of God. The experience of the life of God within us is secured by moving into the largeness of God's life about us. The whole meaning of Jesus' career on earth was that God was capable of taking up his abode in men. That man could realize the presence of the eternal God in his heart and life. To be saved into the life of God, into its spirit, its great- ness, its power, this is salvation. Humanity lives without God consciousness even after it is saved from some forms of sin. Man exists on the edges of di- vinity. He seldom gets into the heart of God's life. He who is translated into the Kingdom of the Son of his love knows something of the central life of the universe which was so powerfully manifested in Jesus. He moves within its wide circle and delves into its depths. To experience salvation then im- plies fundamentally to know the incoming power of Christ's spirit. That is to feel a new divine energy in one's being. To be conscious of a new spiritual force. To find one's self strong where once one was weak, to possess a buoyancy of spirit, an invigorating 86 PERSONAL RELIGION of the soul, to feel the divine pulse beat of Jesus in the heart. To iind new aspirations and new purposes and new feelings after the high and the noble and true. To experience the vitality of the spiritual uni- verse where God is. Not a walk across a barren waste, not a salvation from some dark room where the air was bad to a room where the air was too rare for the soul. But the rather being saved into a life fed on pure oxygen, and thrilled with the presence of the divine spirit. Living in God every day. This is salvation. Call it mysticism if you choose, but it is true. And more than this, it implies being saved into that life which fits into the spirit and ideals of the Son of his love. It is a salvation into a holiness of life and purpose which is compatible with the spir- itual experience of having the divine life of God within. This life always expresses itself ethically. To Paul salvation implied this as he wrote to the Corinthian Christians contrasting their present living with that of former days. "Such were some of you, but ye were washed, ye were made holy by the power of the Spirit of God." To know that sort of a moral and ethical life which is compatible with the King- dom ideals of Jesus, is the salvation which he came to save us to. He who is translated into the King- dom, has an experience in relation to that King- dom. He cannot be in it unless he is fitted to be. Salvation makes him a part of it by developing within him the spirit and life which are essential to it. That Kingdom is fundamentally a spiritual King- dom. Not that it is separated from human life and earthly existence, but that its basis is the spiritual nature of man. Its determining principles are spir- THE PEEPOSITIONS OF SALVATION" 87 itiial and pertain to this nature. They are ethical of course, but the vitalizing forces which maintain Christian ethics are spiritual. Jesus came to estab- lish the Kingdom of God. This means he came to bring man into a condition of righteousness, peace, and holiness, i. e. into right relations with man and into harmony with God. His divine purpose can only be accomplished as man is made righteous and holy. So Jesus came to save people from their sins. Matt. 1 :21. All straying and lost ones must be brought into the Father's fold, so Jesus came to seek and save the lost ; Luke 19 : 10. But his Kingdom would be temporary if it did not possess life, so Jesus came to put man in touch with abundant life which would prove to be eternal life ; John 10:10 and 5 : 24. Kingdom life and eternal life are the same. Jesus came to save men from sin and to build them up into holiness of character, for only such could make up his kingdom. He, by his spirit, would plant the seeds of righteousness in man, for by this only could man be saved. These are the seeds of the spiritual, ethical Kingdom into which humanity is ushered. Only as man grows them in his heart and life is he in the Kingdom. Translation into, there- fore implies spiritual, ethical transfonnation and takes time. This salvation "out of" and '^into" is not a process in which all of one phase is accomplished before the other is begun. 'No life has been saved entirely from sin and no life has entered fully into the rich- ness of its spiritual inheritance in Christ. The proc- esses parallel each other. While one is being saved out of a life which was not harmonious to Christ, he is being saved into a life which is in tune with him. 88 PEESONAL RELIGION While sin, on the one hand, is being taken out of the life, holiness, on the other hand, is being built in. While evil is diminishing in power in the life, goodness is increasing in potency. While one is over- coming bad habits, noble practices are becoming the settled characteristics of the individual. God does not wait for his child to be saved negatively before he begins the positive development of his spiritual na- ture. In fact taking humanity as a whole and think- ing of the salvation process in the entire length and range of its activities, one concludes that man is de- veloped into that which the Father purposes for him continuously and it is the reception into his nature of those positive elements of reconstruction which after all eifect his salvation from the evil and un- ideal. The filling of the life with goodness — is what displaces the sinful. One need not worry about the "out of" if he knows the experience of the "into." The anxiety of the human heart should be to realize the positive side of this salvation. Lady Henry Som- erset once said, "I never had to leave sinful and empty society. It left me." When her life became filled with the spirit and power of God and she was developed in greatness of soul and character, the things which once she revelled in dropped away. The expulsive power of a new divine life drives evil out and the empty world hides from a luminous soul. It does not bother that soul as it once did. There is still another implication concerning sal- vation in the significance of the preposition. This Greek word "Eis" is often used to express the thought of "unto" or "for" as well as "into" and in the pas- sage which we have been considering, it has that meaning. An able Greek scholar has given to us THE PREPOSITIONS OF SALVATION 89 this rendering of the verse. "He has delivered us from the authority of darkness and caused a change of sides for the Kingdom of the Son of his Love." How illuminating this translation is. It makes that word "eis" stand out for something so definite. In the conception of Paul, each one who has been saved "out of" something and "into" something has also been saved "unto" something, or "for" something, as this makes clear. There is an actual change of sides in order that the Kingdom of Jesus Christ might come. The spirit of God had a purpose in moving man into the experience of salvation. It was to accomplish the salvation of society, that is to bring others into the Kingdom and so extend its range throughout humanity. Jesus had this King- dom always in mind and he called men to himself with a view to establishing it. He was delighted to reveal to those about him the way to secure deliver- ance from sin and all its destruction and to introduce them into the exalted and wonderful experience of spiritual life with God, but he never imagined that the goal had been reached, or that the individual had come to know the length, breadth, depth and height of salvation, until he had been made a factor in sav- ing others or securing the establishment of the King- dom among all men. Thus the salvation which Jesus came to save the individual to, was not fully experi- enced until that person was actively engaged in doing something definite for others, and the salvation which Jesus came to secure to humanity could not be ex- perienced until each person who had been saved out of and into, was also giving himself in service for 90 PERSON^AL RELIGIOl^ those in need about him. The interrelation of the two is sublime. Jesus was not a cold blooded utili- tarian who was going around hunting for human souls and lives that he might manipulate and use them to secure the ideal of his ambition, much as a contractor would look for pieces of material with which to put up a building he was erecting, or a mas- ter mechanic would assemble machinery, in the inter- ests of a gTcat project, having no interest in the ma- terial itself except as it could be made to further the scheme of his mind. Jesus loved each human being, his passion was to help each person into that which would make life true, happy, successful and useful, his heart went out with compassion to all and he sought to save men individually to something in order that they might have the comfort, strength and experience they needed. He never thought of them simply as pieces of material to use. He came to give his life for them because of his interest in them. Yet this purpose for the individual overflowed to all. He could not think of less than collective hu- manity. And his Kingdom was to be composed of individuals who were saved. And was to be secured as they in turn became factors in building it. And there was no way that either the individual or hu- manity as a whole, could be brought to his ideal un- less the individual who had come to experience some- thing of his love and power, actually moved unto oth- ers who had not thus learned the true meanine; of re- ligion and life. This is the meaning in Jesus' mind of being translated "out of" and "into" and "for" something. It is not heartless utility. It is soul interest in one and all in the great human family. The change of sides was for both the individual and THE PREPOSITIONS OF SALVATION 91 society. The salvation of each was conditioned upon it. As his objective for all was reached, the hum- blest individual would be able to realize his true sal- vation. The elimination of cold blooded utility however, does not lessen the significance of the preposition "unto." It really intensifies it. It shows how neces- sary it is to salvation. Neither the individual nor humanity as a whole can be saved luiless each one who has been brought out of that which is exceedingly sinful and into that which is noble and good, actually enters the service for the good of all. Jesus had a task in relation to and for others. Each one of his followers must have the same. Salvation is not being delivered out of a problematical hell into an impos- sible heaven. It is occuping the position Christ has for us in this world. It is doing the work that must be done to save mankind. It means positive, active service for all peoples of all races every day. Surely the need for this in view of the emancipation of the human race is evident. How can Jesus see of the tra- vail of his soul and realize a world redemption, un- less his followers give themselves to the blessed min- istry for others ? The significance of the word "unto" in considering the salvation of the world of mankind is perfectly plain, but its meaning in the salvation of the individual ought to be just as pro- nounced and clear. We may state in truth that the surest evidence that the salvation of Christ has come to us personally is that witnessed in the activity of our lives for the good of all. If we know that our lives are given unselfishly unto those in need any- where and everywhere every day, if we are really seeking to help people and do them good, and we 92 PEESONAL RELIGION are doing it because we love Christ and humanity, then we may be very sure that we are being truly saved "out of," "into" and "unto" something. And there is little cause to worry about either the "out of" or the "into" if we have the "unto." Too many people are always inquiring and struggling to know if they have really gotten all there is in religion. They desire to be sure that they haVe come "into" all the riches of the inheritance which they feel is theirs in Christ. They want to have all there is in salvation which is coming to them. The real anxiety should be the "unto." It is well largely to forget the "into." Give the soul and life to work for the bet- terment of those about us and humanity all over the world and the "into" will take care of itself. The people who are being saved "into" something are those who are giving of themselves in love for hu- manity all the time. It is impossible for one thus to labor for others without experiencing the move- ment into the richness of fellowship with Christ and the joys of his salvation. Those who do this are already in Christ and he is in them. He who is on the constant watch for something which he could be ushered "into" and is totally blind to the opportuni- ties "for" service which are all around him, is losing the very salvation he so much desires. Who are the ones who have the first, second and all the other bless- ings of soul and life that God has for them? Are they those who spend their time almost entirely in attending meetings as seekers for these blessings, who rush from one place to another where some chance may be given them to get in on some rich haul of spiritual experience, or are they those who go as set- tlement workers to help the poor, as humble indi- THE PREPOSITIONS OF SALVATION 93 viduals to lend a hand to the needy, who carry the cup of cold water to the thirsty and who cross the seas to carry some knowledge and cheer to darkened sinful heathen ? Who has the experience of salva- tion, the parasite or the propagandist, the beneficiary or the benefactor, the seeker or the saviour ? Is there one who could imagine that Jane Addams, or Jacob Eiis, Robert Moffatt or William Carey, Lady Henry Somerset, or Mrs. Ballington Booth have not found their salvation "into" as they have given their souls and lives "unto" others ? Last winter Dr. Charles MacKensie, a medical Missionary in China, a friend of my boyhood and a brother beloved in the ministry, came to Rochester and told us of the labor of love that he was engaged in the land of the East. His life from morn till night every day is one for others. Hard, sacrificing service it is that he gives. Nights of vigil by the sick, days of ministry to the needy make up his regime. He however found his own salvation in it. His soul was aglow with the light of Christ. He had no time to think much about what he was being developed "into." But his service for others was moving him rapidly to the full rich ex- perience of the Master's presence every day. The "unto" had become his salvation. He was being made like Christ. The graces that are indispensable to such a character were being developed so wonder- fully. This explains why some declare that after all "service is salvation." Taken together, these prepo- sitions certainly emphasize a most complete Chris- tian experience. CHAPTER FIVE THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT AS we enter the arena of religion the subjects of God, sin, retribution and reconciliation or atonement, stand out clearly as being very important. Innate in man is the sense of something wrong between him and his God therefore the need for reconcilia- tion. Sin, retribution and reconciliation are the foun- dation stones upon which the creed and worship of just about every religious faith have been developed. The Bible makes atonement in view of man's sin one of its great revelations. A study of the poets reveals that this same theme is the constantly recurring one of their voluminous writings. In the plot of human drama as it has been unfolded by Homer, ^schylus, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, and a host of others, the effect of sin upon a just and holy God and the reconciliation of the offender have been the chief themes. Theologians of every age have recognized that it is one of the primary Christian truths and they have given years to the study of its significance. Assured of its integral place in re- ligious history, these noble men have labored long and hard to understand it. They have examined the New Testament record of the place which Christ's death occupies in the subject believing that it was closely associated to man's sin and salvation and have sought earnestly to perceive exactly what that was. The result of this conscientious research has 94 THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 95 given to the world at least five great theories of the atonement, which are as follows: — The So- cinian or Example theory, which advocates the idea that Christ effects humanity to its salvation by his noble example of faithfulness even unto death. The Bushnellian or Moral Influence theory which advo- cates the idea that Jesus' death is a manifestation of the Love of God for man and effects humanity to its salvation by softening man's heart and leading him out of sin. The Grotian or Governmental the- ory which declares that because of the necessities en- tailed in the moral government of the world, Jesus died to satisfy the demand of the divine law that sin for all bo satisfactorily dealt with so that God could save a transgressor without detriment to the inter- ests of his government. The Irvington or the the- ory of gradually extirpated depravity, which advo- cates the idea that Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit extirpated all the original depravity of his human nature and reunited it to God. And also that men are saved by becoming partakers of his new humanity by faith. The Anselmic or Commercial theory which advocates the idea that Christ bore the infinite punishment for sin which God in justice inflicted and therefore satisfied his divine claims per- fectly and Christ saves the sinner from punishment as that sinner accepts him. These theories have been held by the church at different periods of her history, yet no single theory has been accepted by all theologians at any one time. The subject has been a controversial one ever since men began to formu- late theories about Jesus' relation to the problem of sin and man's reconciliation to God. The significant thing about it all is that these controversies reveal 96 PERSONAL RELIGION how important man has considered the subject to be and the fact that we are still studying it, are inher- ently inclined to accept it as basic in life and are constantly endeavoring to interpret it, leads us to conclude that there must be something profoundly true about it. Dr. James Martineau once wrote: — "Show me a tenet which mankind have in every age been laboring to demonstrate, in behalf of which genius has piled up structure after structure of massy argument; in reference to which each period has been conscious of the failure of the preceding, and yet set itself to try another turn of skill; and after exploring in vain every road of thought, is fresh and unexhausted still; and I at once recognize in that doc- trine the very happiest order of truth, and precisely because, all men trying, no man can prove it. No amount, no dura- tion of failure sufficing to throw it off, what shall I infer but that it is one of those things, not which the mind must be- lieve because it has proved it, but which it must prove be- cause it has believed it." We are ever coming to more rational ideas of this fundamental truth in religion and life. We are sim- mering the theories down as historical evolution would naturally lead us to do and the atmosphere is being clarified. These theories reveal two opposite ways of looking at the relation of Christ's death to God in his effort to secure man's reconciliation. One is that it may be looked upon as the cause of God's willingness to forgive the guilty because satisfaction was made to divine justice, or may be considered the result of Jesus' obedience to the divine law of Love which was eternal with God and which was manifested in Jesus' life and death, this love spring- ing from the Father's heart as he devised plans for the salvation of mankind. This makes Jesus one who came to express God's love and willingness and plan to save man rather than the one who did something THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 97 to move God to love for man. All the theories of the atonement which Christ came to accomplish may be classed in these two great conflicting conceptions. The thinking religious world is devoted to one or the other. The evidence is that the latter conception is coming more and more into prominence, is being quite generally accepted and will eventually, no doubt, be universally adopted. It is worthy of note, as Dr. Washington Gladden has recently pointed out after careful investigation, that none of the Presbyterian Seminaries of the north is committed to the penal substitutionary theory of Christ's work among men, and we venture to state that not a northern Baptist, Methodist, or Congregational Seminary is, therefore we are reasonably concluding that the movement of thought, in view of God's character and in the light of reason and conscience, is strongly toward the idea that Christ in both life and death beautifully mani- fests the eternal love and purpose of God, in the interests of his human children, and that he did not live or die to secure a movement in God's heart to- ward man. This is leading us to be conscious of the fact that there need be no effort to explore the mys- teries of the atonement from the Father's side. It is not imperative that we give hours to anxious inquiry as to whether God is ready to be reconciled to man or not: we are not to worry ourselves about hair splitting problems of divine justice and love in the great redemptive scheme of the Almighty One and we are not to spend any more long years trying to sound out in surety the precise depths of the nature and counsels of God, regarding man's sin and his salvation. We are to be happy in the consciousness that God is holy love, that his relation to us is one 98 PERSOlSrAL EELIGION of a father, that the heart of this Heavenly Father is close to the hearts of his children, that he knows all about the nature and consequences of sin, that his desire is to have every child in harmonious relation with himself and that whatever has been needed to be done on his part to bring about man's reconcili- ation or salvation, has been done and whatever is called for at the present time, is being done, and whatever may be demanded in the future will be done; that is absolutely everything, as far as he is concerned, is provided for, and the Gospel of Jesus is the revelation of his eternal disposition of love and helpfulness toward sinful mankind. We need not concern ourselves any more about the Father's side of this reconciliation. Let that be set- tled at once and for all time. We understand atonement to imply the reconcilia- tion of, or the making atone-ment between, two estranged parties. In the religious significance of the word the meaning is the bringing together of God and man. We are convinced that God had made his overtures toward man, that he has come into hu- manity, that Jesus is a particular revelation of his oneness with his children, that he has taken the initia- tive and has moved more than half way toward all who are morally and spiritually estranged from him. In fact he has never left them but is always with them, whether they are conscious of it or not. He has done more than this, he has actually planned and taken up the task of bringing man into union with himself. His objective is the harmonizing of hu- manity with his mind and will, that is to secure in man a reconciliation to him which is vital and real. Therefore the essential atonement is that of man. THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 99 There is no question about the Father, the problem is with the child. The anxiety should not be as to how God could be reconciled to a sinner but that the sinner should actually be reconciled to his God. Re- gardless of how God may do it, the great result to achieve is in man. The burden of the Gospel is for men to be right with God. The cry of Paul was ''be ye reconciled to God." He was constantly mov- ing upon men to secure this result. He had a posi- tive conviction regarding God's plan to reconcile. He was not wasting time and energy discussing that. He was not vacillating between a dozen opinions. His soul was settled. He had concluded something. We are not discussing as to how perfectly Paul appre- hended the genius of the atonement scheme. He was sure of God in the matter. There were no misgivings there. This surety left him free to see what was needed in man. His only anxiety now was for man. He saw his condition of moral estrangement clearly. He grasped the meaning of his message to the Gen- tiles with a vise like grip. His confidence in God's disposition and plan became his missionary dynamic. To reconcile the whole known world to God was his work. He threw himself into the task of making men see their need, of bringing them to a conscious- ness of their privilege in Christ, of securing their reconciliation to God, with abandon and zeal. This was the essential achievement, this was the at-one- ment to secure. This was the one thing to do. For- getting those things which are behind or not worrying about anything about the Godward side of it, he be- came absorbed in the primary objective before him. He went everywhere calling man to at-one-ment. And this is the primary affair of the church today. 100 PEESONAL EELIGION We are to cease all controversies about the attitude of our Heavenly Father in this matter of securing man's redemption. In the light of modern knowl- edge of God's methods with man, is the growing con- sciousness of his essential goodness, and in the prog- ress toward larger and better conceptions of his plans for the human race, we are to be confident of his dis- position to men and know that the great task to which Christ has set us is not that of unravelling all the intricacies of his counsels, not that of following all the long labyrinths of divine processes, but rather the task of actually saving mankind or bringing man into reconciliation with God. We are to refuse to waste our time in endless discussions about the moral problems of the atonement on God's side of the great fact, and to do this not because we dare not inquire or cannot come to any satisfactory conclu- sions, but just because our souls are settled with Paul's regarding it. ISTot because we are uncertain but because we are sure of God, do we cease quib- bling about it. We vacillate no longer between opin- ions which only touch the externalities of it, we have arrived at conclusions regarding the basic principles of and elements in it and we go forth sure of God and the message of the Gospel and give ourselves with frank abandon to the work of helping men to the reconciliation which is necessary, to the at-one-ment which is essential. It is a sin to use time in fruitless discussion about God's side of the matter. The time should be given to considerations of how best to se- cure man's response to God. Our task is to become evangels of the Gospel of God's love as revealed in Jesus, to make others as sure of the Father's dispo- sition toward man as we are, to become in this world THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 101 ministers of actual reconciliation, to give ourselves to the service of humanity in love and sacrifice, and to lead mankind to receive that spirit and adopt those principles by which alone man can be reconciled to God. This means evangelism, missions, social service and efforts for vt^orld wide human betterment. If this had been done in the past, we would have been a thousand years in advance of our present Christian achievement. The world would have been so much nearer Jesus' ideal that in all probability the Euro- pean war of 1914 would have been an impossibility. THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT DEFINED If this actual condition in man of something which may be described as reconciliation, is the objective of Jesus' entire life work, then it is imperative that we ascertain what it is. The ideal of Jesus defines it. We may know by study- ing his words and understanding his life purpose. He made it very clear that he came to bring man into harmony with God an,d this harmony was his reconciliation. He found man more or less out of touch with God, some rebellious against him, some quite entirely estranged from him and all men failing in their privilege of union with him. His great life work was to have them brought into right relations with God his Heavenly Father. This he considered fundamental in salvation. This was the real genius of the atonement which he came to accom- plish. There could be no atonement without it. When considered fully, it is the "summum bonum" of the reconciliation Jesus came to secure in man- kind. He never used the word atonement or recon- 102 PERSONAL RELIGION ciliation, but the idea it represented was clearly con- ceived and stated. By parable and precept, he sought to impress this idea upon those about him. He con- stantly referred to God as a father and continually declared that man should trust and love him and be conformed to the Father's ideal for him. The parable of the Prodigal Son emphasizes this strongly. The very essence of religion, to Jesus, was faith in God and harmony with his divine laws. As man pos- sessed his spirit, conformed to his will, partook of his character and adopted his purposes, he experienced the atonement. He must become closely identified with the Heavenly Father in all these ways if he was to be reconciled to him. 'No atonement is real un- less the child loves what the father loves, seeks to be what he would have him be, endeavors to do what he would have him do and makes the effort to have the life in its entirety, conform to his holy will. It is coming into conscious union with him. No cross purposes or passions, but rather happy acqui- escence to his desires. Not simply seeking to obey his commands. Not struggling to keep his rules, but becoming one with his very self. Feeling a de- lightful nearness to him, being at home with him, conscious of his presence through the whole live long- day, entering with joy into his plans, thrilled with the experience of knowing him and understanding something of his counsels and fellowshiping with him in all his majestic purposes and holy hopes for the world of mankind he loves. That is, experiencing a God consciousness which is vital, real, natural and continual. This is reconciliation. This is the at- one-ment which Jesus came to secure. And it in- cludes adjustment to the moral order of God, accept- THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 103 ance of His basic principles of the universe, recog- nition of and harmony with the eternal laws of a wise and loving Heavenly Father, an attitude toward the facts of life which is radically different from the Stoic, and a compliance with the divine movements of humanity which make for the Kingdom of God among men. Reconciliation is the greatest experi- ence that can come to man, a feeling that one is in tune with the infinite; in harmony with the great truths of God and life. And where there has been deliberate rebellion against God and persistent transgression of his loving will, there must be a condition of heart which reveals that one is sorrowful in view of his sins of estrange- ment, that he is ashamed of his willful waywardness, that he now wants to be in his Father's life and plans once more, that he has no disposition to turn away from him, that his will is one with the Father's, and he is ready to respond to his calls whatever they may be. That is, the prodigal comes to the consciousness of Father, sorrows for what he has done because it is so opposed to his father's love and desire for him, turns to father, begins the journey to the father, finds a place on his neck, pours out his soul in ang-uish of spirit, feels the father's embrace, sees his smile of pardon, takes his place in the home, becomes one with the father's hopes for him and lives in delightful union with him. This is the experience of reconcilia- tion. Anything less is not. The crying need of the world is for this filial piety, or the response of the soul to the Heavenly Father. Sabatier defines piety as the sensitiveness of the heart for God. It is this sort of religious experience that is the essence of reconciliation. It is something vastly 104 PERSOl^AL EELIGION more than accepting dogmas and submitting to rites, attending church, and adopting external forms of religious exercises. These may or may not express man's development toward oneness with God. They are not the essential experience that the Father wants his children to have. They are not the heart of re- ligion at all. There is no surety of reconciliation in them. One may go through all these religious forms and not be reconciled to God. The very soul of at- one-ment is in a deep, actual, conscious experience of union with God. It cannot be anything less. There may be external helps but unless the person, in his own deepest self, possesses something of this piety, then the essential reconciliation has not been begun. How Jesus exposed the superficiality of the religious forms of his day! He cut through them right and left and showed up their hollowness. Ev- erywhere he went, he called them to heart piety, to true and real relations with God his father and made plain to them that any other idea of reconciliation would be inadequate. AT-ONE-MENT WITH GOD THEOUGH EECONCILIATION WITH MAN Some one may ask, where is God that I may be- come reconciled to him ? One might answer. He sur- rounds us and we may reach him through those mys- tic avenues of approach which he has appointed as the way to him. But these avenues are very hard for most people to find. They seem to have no well de- fined limitations or points of direction. One gets lost very easily in wide hazy stretches of psychic and mental areas where there are no boundaries and THE ESSENTIAL ATON"EMENT 105 apparently no guide posts, and which, after explor- ing for long periods, reveal no God to deal with. There seems to be little that is tangible to touch and there is no one to see and know; how can one estab- lish right relations with him? This is not foolish babble. It is all too real to millions. Perhaps St. Francis, or St. Bernard, or Evelyn Underbill may establish a conscious union with God in the cloister with ease, but the rank and file of humanity do not. And it is true that the scientific mystic cannot reach him in that way alone. But why not think of him dwelling in humanity, and why not say to the one who asked the question "where is he that I may be reconciled to him," you will find him in human be- ings about you, and in your dealings with people of flesh and blood you may establish right relations with him. There is a soul to humanity and that soul is God. This is why religion, the religion that Jesus taught, is so closely allied to and so truly tested by man's dealing with his fellowmen. This is why Jesus made the law of love to our neighbor the second great law of God. As men loved each other, they loved God because God was in humanity. It is the law of God that at-one-ment with him shall come through reconciliation with mankind. Therefore Jesus constantly appealed to men to treat others with consideration in love. He came purposely to secure this at-one-ment of man with man. He knew of no way that man could be reconciled to God without it. To be reconciled to God simply implied to be con- formed to his ideal of human relationship. God is not one sitting on a throne demanding that his chil- dren pay some special attention to him for his own sake and glory. He is one in humanity, one in the 106 PERSONAL RELIGIOIT life of his divine family and at-one-ment with him, is of necessity, establishing a harmonious relation- ship to the members of the entire family of humanity. This is the fundamental requirement of reconcili- ation. There is nothing arbitrary about God's atone- ment plan and laws. They are a vital part of his entire cosmic human scheme. They are necessary in view of his relationship to humanity. His plan for the human race is to develop that race according to his highest ideals for it, and in doing this, he iden- tifies himself with humanity as a whole, as well as every human being individually who will have him. His ideal for humanity cannot be secured except as each one seeks in his relationship to his fellows to do as God would have him or in other words treat his fellowmen ideally. So that the reconciliation which God must have in order to accomplish his divine purposes is that which is represented by right relations between man and man. Sin is the wrong relation of one man to another, it is against man him- self, it is injury to him, it is unkindness to him, but it is also against God himself because God is so iden- tified with humanity and for the reason that his plans are frustrated because of it. Therefore the essential reconciliation is that of man with man. This is the only atonement that fits into the Father's plan. Anything else would be outside of himself and out- side of his moral world order. Only as man quits his sinful selfish practices with other men, only as he comes to deal with them justly, lovingly, brotherly and unselfishly, only as he gives his life talents of body, mind and heart to their welfare is he experienc- ing the reconciliation which his Heavenly Father desires to secure in him. Only as the spirit of love THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 107 dominates him in his life with a single human indi- vidual, in his home, in his neighborhood, in his com- munity, city, state, nation and world, is he reconciled to God. As sin is primarily the treason of one hu- man being in his relation to the many about him, reconciliation or forgiveness can only be secured as man becomes to each and all what love and justice demand he should, and only as he proves it by loyalty to the interests of all human beings. In March, 1914, it was my privilege to read a message from the pen of Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis which will never be effaced from my memory. He drew the picture of Benedict Arnold and his grievous sin against his country in his own inimitable way and stated that the genius of his sin was treason against the community of humanity. He further stated that just about every human being had more or less of the Benedict Arnold principle in him and before life was over was sure to give evidence of it. He then declared that there could be no atonement unless all of us who had been thus guilty of treason to the community of humanity, were brought into right relations with the Master of the Community. He also said that man must be reconciled to the mem- bers of the community whom he had sinned against. A sin against the community signifies an injury to each member. All have suffered and all must be dealt with. Each one must in some way effect an atonement with those people whom he has morally injured. They might promise to forget and forgive if he manifested penitence, but that was not enough. Benedict Arnold was not brought into a state of rec- onciliation with his country after his act of treason by simply coming back and saying he was sorry or 108 PERSONAL RELIGION even reenlisting. What about his black heart, his evil scheme and the acts of taking money and incen- diarism ? There was a time when he loved gold more than his country. Some moral transformation must take place within his soul which will make this sol- dier love loyalty to his country and hate treason. ISTot until that is done can there be real reconcilia- tion. And just so, not until the Benedict Arnold im- pulse within each man is changed to love and devo- tion to the good of humanity is humanity reconciled to man or God. This is the essential reconciliation for the very reason that in no other is there any power to move the world to the ideal condition of moral goodness which Jesus came to secure. The reconciliation which Jesus desires to achieve in man is far more than that which is expressed in the experience of simply coming to him and having him say, "Son, your sins are forgiven, go in peace." This sinning against our fellows demands something more than that. The moral order of the world would be thrown into chaos if it did not. Think of the effect upon others which our sins have had. Think of the fact that when one comes to God and seeks for- giveness he has the memory of all his wrong before him. Every sin against another looms up before him as a double affront. It is a wrong against God and man. Is it possible for any individual to imagine that reconciliation consists in some presto change manipu- lation, some shuffle of theological phrases, some repe- tition of certain beliefs, or some announcement from Heaven that all is well, the past is forgotten. How about the young man who ruins the life of a girl, the business man who by underhand methods destroys the chance of another, the husband who lives a double THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 109 life and almost mortally injures his own wife's soul while he leads another woman to hell, the man who not only sins against his own manhood but also in- clines another man down the slimy course of sin with him and both are besmeared from head to foot in its smut ? Is the essential reconciliation secured by their statement of sorrow and their promises of better things ? It was because the moral instinct of Dr. Samuel Johnson as told in Boswell's life of Johnson, revolted against any such supposition, that he was obliged to do something to express his own remorse and shame because of the way he had treated his father. One day he left the city of London and re- turned to Lichfield, the town of his youth. The people in the house where he was staying ventured not to ask him where he had been through the day. He, however, told them of his own accord in the fol- lowing langTiage. "Madame, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my de- parture in the morning. But I was compelled to it by con- science. Fifteen years ago, Madame, on this day, I com- mitted a breach of filial piety. My father had been in the habit of attending Uttexeter Market, and opening a stall there for the sale of books. Confined by indisposition, he desired me that day to go and attend the stall in his place. My pride prevented me; I gave my father a refusal. And now today, I have been at Uttexeter. I went into the market at the time of business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare for an hour on the spot where my father's stall used to stand. In contrition, I stood, and I hojie the penance was expiatory." He was right. Just what that act of Dr. Johnson's accomplished in the adjustment of the moral order of Heaven and earth, we do not know, but of one thing we are quite certain namely — there was no true at-one-ment between Dr. Johnson and his old father's 110 PERSONAL RELIGION spirit wherever he was, without some such expres- sion of shame in view of the sin which he had com- mitted against him. It manifested his desire to rec- tify the wrong in the only way he could. It revealed his willingness to do anything to show his sorrow. It proved that he had come to at-one-ment with the spirit gone. It was, we hope, the sign of a life now given in love to others. There are many who sit with memory in the dark at times and see pic- tured before them the sinful deeds which they have committed to the injury of others, who have passed on. God may not demand that they do the spectacu- lar and humiliating thing that Dr. Johnson did, but he certainly knows that there is no real reconciliation in their hearts if they can be satisfied simply to kneel and quietly ask God to forgive, with little thought of those whom they have wronged. The evidence of at-one-ment is not there, if there is no ang-uish in soul and no disposition to humiliate one's self before the memory of it all. Further than this, we should not wait until those whom we have wronged in life have passed be- yond before we feel this sorrow and seek to make amends. A sin against the community should be atoned for in sorrow and righted at once. It cannot be righted in Heaven unless it is on earth. No one can injure another member of the human family and secure the essential reconciliation while he for- gets those whom he has sinned against. Some one has suggested that the story of the prodigal son is far from complete. Is it possible to imagine that that boy was experiencing the true reconciliation to the father if he sat there at the feast making merry, re- joicing in the fact that his father had taken him back THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 111 and at the same time caring not for the way he treated the elder brother who was one of the family, and more than this forgetting the lads and the girls he enticed into sin by his unholy influence while he was a prodigal ? Is there nothing which a man must do in relation to those whom he has sinned against before he can be reconciled to God ? We answer that he must do everything in his power to rectify the wrongs of his life with those whom he has affected so disastrously. Jesus offers no parlor car seat to him on the road to Heaven, while those whom he led into sin ride in the cattle cars to hell. There is no recon- ciliation for him unless he gets into close touch with them wherever they are, if it is possible, and pleads with them to forgive him and more than this works hard to have them leave the life they are living and be noble, true and Christlike. The only at-one-ment which is real is the one that leads a person to go with them along the route to hell, suffers in agony for them and makes the honest attempt to lead them out of sin to righteousness. Jesus never came to offer any reconciliatio.i to man that did not include this. He did not come ihat the sinful man who has led others into sin might ^ce'^ape this, he camd to point out that there is no reconclUation for any man unless he does do this. And many a man will need to spend his very life in seeking ihe salvation of others whom he has wronged, he will be obliged to give up every day in every year to this.iask, to sv ^rk with might and soul, to agonize eveu to sweating blood and perhaps to die by the side of .ome one who is still going on to ruin because of hiii sinful influ- ence before he can be sure he is reconciled to God. The record of Sir Walter Scott and Mirk Twain, 112 PERSOISTAL RELIGIOIT when loaded with debts, giving their last years in weariness and persistent toil to pay every creditor who had suffered in their financial collapses, is a record of reconciliation, the kind that is divine and the sort that is essential. This is what Jesus came to secure. There is no other kind that is real. By do- ing this one works out his own reconciliation. He who claims in riotous joy in some religious gathering that he has been reconciled to God and yet makes no serious effort to right the wrongs of his life is de- ceiving himself. RIGHTEOUSNESS IS RECONCILIATION Who can doubt that the prophets were led by God's spirit in their insistence upon righteousness of life as the test of religion ? The demand of Jesus for right- eousness was in line with the ideal which a holy God would have for his children. The reconciliation which he came to secure was that which would fit into that ideal of righteousness The just demand of God for this righteousness defined the nature of the reconciliation which 'was necessary to secure it. Ttere is a truth m'hae satisfaction theory of the , atoixement. It is' correct that God must be satisfied in tli^s matter. It is his moral order which must be sustaiit^d and his will which must be done. That moral orrirr is built on righteousness and that will is to have Hghteousness done in the world. His very nature whi»h is holy demands this. If God is to forgive ms^n'he must make him righteous. This is imperative in his moral order. It would be immoral to reconcile man while he remains wicked. Our Heavenly Father is satisfied with nothing less than THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 113 man's development in righteousness of life. There can be no pleasure for him, no joy in his human family unless the movement of mankind is tov^ard this ideal of character. As long as sin abounds, as ruin of man's moral nature is evident, as wrecks of human life line the beach of earth experience, as men deal with each other selfishly and the unity of the family life of humanity is broken by moral es- trangements, there can be no satisfaction to God. Therefore the only atonement which is adequate is that which is righteousness. That is, reconciliation is development in righteousness. A reconciliation declared while evil holds high carnival, and blackens the beauty of God's creation, is mockery. There is no such thing. Reconciliation means the alinement of man to the righteous ideals of Jesus, the experi- ence of a goodness which expresses itself in truth, honesty, justice and every noble trait of character as men deal with other men in the human relationships of life. A declaration of reconciliation without man being righteous would be hypocrisy. To say a man is righteous does not make him. God can only de- clare him so as he is so. Therefore, as man is morally transformed into righteousness of heart and life he is reconciled. This is the essential reconciliation, or the one that man must experience if God is to be sat- isfied and his will accomplished in man. And our Heavenly Father cannot be satisfied with a right- eousness which is superficial or unreal. The right- eousness which is the ideal of the reconciliation which he, because of his own nature and his own love for and interest in his children must have, is nothing less than the purest, truest and largest possible. A right- eousness certainly equal to Plato's conception namely 114 PEKSONAL EELIGION that which was stripped of all rewards, honors and emoluments, a righteousness which is righteous even when vice is accompanied bj ease, riches, fame, pleas- ure and world success and virtue is accompanied by poverty, disdain, persecution, suffering and condem- nation. A righteousness which expresses itself in a life of unselfish devotion to others, which spends the powers of personality in the service of the com- mon good and which finds its supreme delight in realizing the Kingdom ideals of Jesus. REPENTANCE IS EECONCILIATION The repeated calls of John and Jesus to repent- ance must have had some tremendous significance in man's religious experience, or they would not have made them so repeatedly insistent. They were issued in view of the demand for righteousness. If men have been living in sin, and righteousness is the essence, the fundamental genius of reconciliation, then only as man actually turns from sin to holi- ness is he reconciled to God. Repentance is the sign of atonement begun. This verifies the sanity of Jesus' initial appeal to men. He began right. Knowing that there could be no real reconciliation to God outside of righteous principles in life he called men everj^where to repent or turn away from sin. We should remember that repentance is a genu- ine movement of the heart and life from sin motives and purposes to righteous motives and purposes. It is more than sorrow for the past, it is a whole hearted right about face from one thing to another. To se- cure this in humanity is to accomplish the movement toward atonement. Therefore Jesus and his fol- THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 115 lowers have emphasized it. The preacher and Chris- tian worker of today are to make repentance the great fundamental plea of their Gospel ministry. We should put it first as Jesus did. We are to make it plain that there is absolutely no salvation or recon- ciliation apart from it. The church needs a bap- tism of conviction regarding the essential atonement. That is a conviction which arises out of a conclusion regarding God and man. The attitude of the one and the need of the other. The church should know the meaning of the essential atonement so well that she will be able to discriminate between definitions and spirit, between the accomplished and that which is not, and between the essential and the nonessential. Often we hear some one state that a certain preacher has either publicly or privately denied the atonement. He is denounced or discounted as a heretic or un- safe leader in religious life. Upon examination of this statement we find that it often signifies simply that the person has questioned another's theory of the atonement. And oftentimes the man who is accused of denying it is the one who is most firmly settled in his conclusions regarding the fundamental truth and spirit of it. He has simply set aside one the- ory after another, and has come to a basic idea which is essential in all. He is far from denying it. He actually afiirms it. He joyously perceives its deeper meaning and enthusiastically announces it. And in- variably, the man who is considered guilty of denying the atonement, is the one who understands the essen- tial atonement which God in Christ came to secure, namely the actual, moral and spiritual reconciliation of man, and instead of forgetting it, emphasizes it and gives his very life to make it real. He is alert 116 PERSONAL RELIGION to its significance every moment, he is alive to its principle, he is in prayer daily that his life may be used to bring man to it and he conceives that his life task is none other than to lead humanity to its consciousness. Who denies the atonement but the man who bickers and fights about definitions of God's side of it and fails to give his time, talents and his very soul to develop in humanity about him the ac- tual process which in the providence of the Father will surely bring it about ? The real denier of the atonement is the one who neglects to give his life for others to secure the essential harmonizing of man with God and right. The real heretic, we fear, is the man who so limits the holy love of the Father, that another is obliged to interpose between his chil- dren and him to secure his interest in them, and at- tempts to force a theory of the atonement upon man which implies a doubt of the Father's eternal dispo- sition of solicitude for his child notwithstanding that child's sin and weakness and a further doubt of his ability to overcome the moral catastrophe which sin has brought about in the world, within his own heart and nature. Surely that man cannot truthfully be styled a heretic who thinks of God as the one who is able and willing to move toward man in love not- withstanding all that sin is and does, who divinely expresses that native movement of his soul in Jesus Christ's life and death and who passionately assumes the gi'eat task of bringing sinful man to that actual state of righteousness, love and brotherhood which is the ideal of his mind, the desire of his heart and the cry of his own nature for his children. We believe there is a Heavenly sanction of that faith which con- ceives of God thus, which recognizes the reconcilia- THE ESSENTIAL ATONEMENT 117 tion which he must have for his children and which expresses itself in untiring devotion to those min- istries which are calculated definitely and actually to secure in men the moral and spiritual at-one-ment which is so evidently essential in the Kingdom plan of Jesus our Lord. CHAPTER SIX THE GOSPEL MESSAGE IN" Mr. Chesterton's delightful play "Magic," the young girl who wanders about the garden dream- ing of fairies is warned by the stern old agnostic doc- tor not to" forget the difference between the things that are beautiful and the things that are there ; "my red lamp is not beautiful but it is there." The girl looks through the French windows and sees the red glow of the doctor's light shining steadily in the dark — a reminder that pain, disease and death are there as well as dreams and fairies of the mind and heart. It is of the utmost importance that we view the world of humanity as it actually is. There is much in it that is beautiful and we love to think of it and gaze upon it, but there is also much that is ugly and bad and we do not like to think of it, in fact we shudder in horror when we are, at times, forced to look upon it. But whether we enjoy it or not, the fact is that this dark side of human life is there. It is useless to deny it. The fairminded one who looks at life squarely and with clear vision, knows it is there. It is only the blind optimist, or one sided philosopher, who refuses to see what really exists, and who is able to make himself think that it is not actual. There has been in vogue among some a belief of absolute idealism which does not rec- ognize that there is anything offensive in life. This 118 THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 119 view is, that within the absolute, there is no room for real differences and if things can only be viewed from the eternal standpoint, disagreement vanishes. That is, that there is nothing particularly wrong with the world, everything is in beautiful harmony because everything has its place in the All. But there is an awakening resentment to this sort of sophistry and this resentment is because the facts do not substan- tiate the idealism which it champions. The belief in the unity of the universe and the eternity of the good, does not necessitate the view of life which recognizes no evil present today. Some people who feel there must be a oneness to life are so obsessed with an ultimate ideal that they refuse to see the actual condition of human life which, though mov- ing toward the ideal, is far from it. Faith in God and the supremacy of truth and righteousness, does not demand that we shut our eyes to the facts of life, heart rending and shameful as they may be. All about us, right before us in individual life and active collective humanity, there are clear and un- mistakable evidences of the presence of the unideal. Take the European Crisis which is on just now. We may believe that God is somehow connected with it, that it was inevitable, that all nations are more or less involved in its ethics, that there are times when war is justifiable, and that it must be fought to the bitter end until righteousness triumphs. Yet is there any one in this country who truly believes that it is compatible with a true Christianity, that it really exhibits the spirit and ideals of the ISTazarene, that it reveals humanity at its best, that it was be- g-un in justice and brotherhood and that it is the re- sult of love to God and love to man ? We know that 120 PERSONAL EELIGION it is evil, that it is the fruit of treachery, fear, race hatred and human greed, backed by a false idealism of life and that it would never have occurred, had Christian nations taken Jesus' ideal of life seriously and received his spirit actually. It means progress because man will no doubt have sense enough to learn something as a result of it, but no deep reason- ing is able to gloss over the fact that it is discord and distrust among the nations of the world. This accentuates the truth that right by the side of the lovely and good in this world, are unrighteousness and unloveliness. The story that the daily news- papers tell is not one of moral grandeur. Think of the record of anger, divorce, murder, cruelty, im- purity, avarice, and a hundred other forms of the unideal which is being served us hourly. When can we enjoy a happy meal together without being con- scious of the poverty, sorrow, drunkenness, de- bauchery, wretchedness and misery about us ? Think of the persistent strife among the classes which rep- resent labor and capital, the stampede of human greed for gold that crushes out human lives in its mad rush, and the craze for the superficial and temporary which engulfs millions like a flood. Before such facts, is it imreasonable to declare that the world is out of order and that there is much that is far from the ideal ? And when this is traced to its source it comes back to the individual. There is that in his life which is fitly described only by that homely word "sin." The unideal is a soft word for the same fact. But speaking it softly as we may, does not lessen the awfulness of the truth that it is sin in man that causes it all. We do not need to discuss original sin ; THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 121 the actual is significant enough for us. Its presence furnishes us with a problem sufficient to tax the feel- ings and ability of the greatest hearts and minds of earth. It is not a question as to how it came. The facts are that man reveals motives and dispositions and also actually does that to his fellowmen which cannot escape the judgment of the moral world and which justly must be named evil. Sin against God and sin against man, it is sin that man is guilty of; that he is morally responsible for; that ruins and wrecks and dams, and that makes this world a hell. Sin that comes from the wicked mind of man. We should not fail to recognize that there are sins ration- ally chargeable to ignorance and immaturity, but there are also other sins which cannot be excused in any way whatsoever and which only merit disgTist and condemnation. 'No philosophy of the unity of life can possibly be true to facts and lightly pass over them, either as existing or as being justly to be ac- counted for by human beings of moral capacity in a moral world order. There is something wrong with the world because there is something wrong with in- dividual man. Let us be honest before that which is so evidently true. Let us place the blame where it belongs. Then another phase of this dark picture confronts us, namely that millions of individuals are struggling to win in life and yet are harassed con- tinuously by the sense of moral weakness. Some seem always to have been deficient, a handicap handed over by the previous generation ; others have brought weakness on to themselves by indulgence, while still others struggle on never reaching that place of moral triumph which they long for. There is much that goes by the name of sin which after 122 PERSOITAL RELIGIOitT all is only a collapse of an aspiring soul amid cir- cumstances which seem fated to keep it down. But the fact is there just the same that moral victory and life success are not attained and the world is obliged to witness a continual panorama of character tragedy. Then as one carefully examines the human family in its life activity today, he finds that the higher val- ues of life are not appreciated and are not sought after; that religious ideals are tabooed by hosts of people; and that boys and girls even do not give evidence as they emerge into manhood and woman- hood that they naturally choose the nobler qualities of soul life. They seem so often like little animals which have interest only in that which will secure food, wearing apparel, leisure, fun, and which will satisfy appetite and passion. It seems to take a long time to awaken the majority of them to the noblest and best while some of them (and recent statements from those who are closely associated with young people seem to corroborate it) are controlled by the baser motives and passions of human animal- ism. For them not to feel guilty of the sins of sel- fishness and indulgence and uselessness is something to deplore. For any of them to live on and on with no high ambitions, with no sense of God, is to be sorrowed over, even if Walt Whitman did write the following lines: — "I think I could go and live with the animals; I stand and look at them long and long, They do not fret and whine about their condition; They do not lie awake at night and weep for their sins; They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God; Not one of them is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth." THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 123 We are more than mere animals and these lines are not worthy of such a man as he. The man who lives like an animal and cares not about moral failure hav- ing no desire for things noble and great, is worse than an animal, because he is so much more than an animal. And the fact that so many human be- ings, made in the image of God, having a distinc- tive moral quality and capacity in their natures, do grovel in the animal excesses of life, is something that we more than deplore, it is something that we are ashamed of. Man certainly shows up a dark side and reveals a condition away below the ideal. He needs much if he is ever to be brought to God's ideal for him. With the evidence of need before us, what can be done for humanity is the question. Intelligence is a factor in bringing man to his salvation, we are sure, therefore we advocate education as being vital to civilization. Knowledge was salvation to the ancients. But we are convinced that the acquiring of knowledge is not enough. The able editor of one of our strongest weeklies wrote recently as follows : — In the Autobiography of Dr. Shaler, a college ad- ministrator of great ability who had a rare power of winning the love of his students, these significant words are found: "I have known many an ignorant sailor or backwoodsman who, because he had been brought into sympathetic contact with the primitive qualities of his kind, was humanely a better educated man than those who pride themselves on their cul- ture. The gravest problem of civilization is, in my opinion, how to teach human quality in a system which tends ever more and more to hide it." These words are immensely reinforced by the con- ditions of the hour; and they also strikingly inter- 124 PEESONAL EELIGION pret those conditions. Many people are asking in despair : If men of the highest training yield to the same passions and antagonisms to which ignorant men yield, how is society ever to become safe and sane? Man needs something more than cultnre. Educa- tion and intelligence, good as they are, are not enough to save humanity. Conscious of this, the challenge comes to the Christian church and pulpit today. Have we a message which is vital to humanity's emancipation ? Have we any truth which will ac- tually give to man what he needs ? If we have not, then of what use is Christianity and the church in the world ? The great question is regarding the ef- fectiveness of the message which we have to offer mankind. We need not concern ourselves primarily about methods, much as we believe in them. There are many good Christian people today who are busy with methods who perhaps have forgotten the demand for a message. The pulpit today stands in need of ascertaining if it has a message able to cope with the religious and moral situation in the world and then it needs to be sure that it knows what that message is. Every man who goes out from a seminary should not only be sure of his method but should be abso- lutely certain that he has a message which is fitted to do the work which he expects to methodize. Some we fear are great on method and little on message. Each should be sure of the second, first. The method is important but the message is more so. Therefore the question as to whether we have one or not is a very vital inquiry. Let every one stop and answer it. One is in a sorry plight fussing about methods with no message to give to man. The person who THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 125 meddles with methods while muddled regarding his message is very unwise. We should have the mes- sage clear in the mind, then study methods. It will save much extra work. There is a message which we believe is suited to every need of mankind and that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It has come from the God of all hu- man beings and is a revelation of what his mind has planned and his heart has prompted in view of the condition of the human race. It has within it the perfect answer to man's needs, having been framed with all those needs in mind and on purpose to meet them. It is the message of a Father to his children. It does not so much concern what he demands as what man must have for his own good. It is a mes- sage of great depth and breadth. It reaches the ex- tremity of the soul, and it falls short of nothing of which a human life is capable. Its elements are in- serted to satisfy the entire range and possibilities of growing humanity. It is a message that reveals no weak points and no foolish demands. It is really the message of Jesus himself. It is his religious and ethical announcement to the world. It is something about him, but it is primarily something in him and of him. It is his message for others, having been given to them because of what they are, and may be. It is emphatically for humanity because of the very condition humanity is in. And the happy truth is that this message is within the grasp of every preacher and Christian worker in the world today. With it truly perceived and spiritually experienced, he has the truth which may be delivered to himianity with no misgivings whatsoever. He may be abso- lutely certain that he has that which man must have 126 PERSONAL EELIGION today as well as any other day. It needs no cor- rections. A man may stand with its contents burst- ing from his soul and feel all through his most sen- sitive consciousness, that the truth of the Eternal God is his. He may look into the dark conditions of humanity about him and declare in joy as one after another comes before him, I have the message this one and that one and every other one must have to bo saved. I have the Gospel that the world is in perplexing need of. It is good news, glad tidings. A message of optimism and hope. A message fit for angels and men to deliver. God pity the preacher who has once had it and lost it or never had it. It is just as vital to life today as ever. The genius of it does not change. We talk about modernist and conservatist, but there should be no alternative here. The true mod- ernist is the one who gets into the heart of this won- derful truth of the "Gospel," this "goodnews" of God, and knows its essential meaning and power. He is the one who strips it of all needless externali- ties and realizes its heart. He is the one who con- serves its vitalities. He discriminates between defi- nitions of it and the thing itself. He is passion- ately devoted to its inner meaning, to its essential sig- nificance. He will give his very life to make it real. l^ot because he wishes to differ with any of his breth- ren, but because he feels in his imnost being that the tinith which humanity most needs, is the vital message of the Gospel and not its form. He must conserve its life. That life to him is the Gospel. Unless humanity has that it is doomed. He feels that both wings of theological faith must find the spiritual heart of the Gospel or else have no message THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 127 for the age. The only conservatist is the one who conserves the divine content of the message of Jesus, not the man who grasps with tenacity its outer forms and fights with passionate enthusiasm to hold on to its definitions. The one who thus loyally and sin- cerely battles, may find in his hands only the ex- ternal wrappings of it, while the inner essence, that every human being must secure, if he is to be spirit- ually and morally saved, is not perceived or realized at all. This being so, he has no vital Gospel mes- sage to give to those about him. They come in need and hunger, watch him as he deftly handles the Gos- pel truth in dogmatic definitions, and struggles to make it clear, but they go away feeling that somehow they did not find what they needed and truly desired. It is he who knows the heart of the Gospel who can move among the hungry crowds and feed them with the bread of life. With this so true, we are led to examine the Gospel of Jesus Christ to ascertain just what its essential content is. THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM In Matthew 4:23, we read that Jesus went through all the towns of Galilee proclaiming the "Good news" of the Kingdom, or the reign of God. We have here the Gospel in ideal. It is the ideal of the reign of God in the individual human heart. This implies a religious and ethical standard of life for each one. Each life is to be lived purely and nobly. Others who had gone before had given excellent ideals to man, but Jesus' ideal was the highest. It was the "good news" that man as an individual was worthy of this ideal, and that God himself had proclaimed 128 PERSoisrAL religio:n" righteous and moral greatness as the only suitable goal of his individual career. This is a Gospel in itself. It was also the ideal of the reign of God in righteousness, love and peace in collective human- ity on the earth. Jesus considered this an impor- tant part of his message. He constantly referred to it, assured the people there was a condition of life among men to look forward to, and sought to inspire everyone with the desire to labor toward it. Dark as conditions were, unideal as human life was, he had come to announce the "glad tidings" of a divine ideal among men and to bring humanity to its reali- zation. They were not to give up hope entirely. Israel could yet be emancipated. Humanity could yet come to its own. The world could yet be made true and noble and righteous. That certainly was a message of joy to politically disrupted and broken hearted Israel, to the few aspiring souls in Paganism and to the superstitiously religious hordes of bar- barism. And while 1900 years have gone by since then, and religious and ethical advance can be truth- fully chronicled, yet it comes as "glad tidings" today for we have not yet realized its happy and wonderful fulfilment. It is a gospel ideal we should ever keep in mind and ever conscientiously labor toward. The good news of a social state of brotherhood and love must never be lost sight of. It is an integral part of our Gospel message. It should be constantly pro- claimed as an ideal. We should be ardent and de- voted preachers of this Gospel. The Christianizing of the social order is no idle dream. It is the actual ideal of Jesus. Our message should include it. THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 129 THE GOSPEL OF THE GEACE OF GOD The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Gospel of God. — Mark 1 : 15. It was born in him. The Gospel of God is the Gospel of his grace. It sprang forth from that quality of his character which we name grace. This word grace occurs in the ISTew Testament some 150 times and reveals to us the very soul of the Gospel. Paul rightly conceived of the grace of God as giving birth to the message of Jesus Christ. "By grace are ye saved." "The grace of God which bringcth salvation hath appeared unto men." "That in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riclies of his grace in his kindness toward us through Jesus Christ." This is the Gospel as a divine philosophy. It re- veals to us the spirit in which it was bom, the moral and spiritual principles which it operates in con- formity to and the gracious nature which mothers and sustains its perpetuity. It makes plain to us the fact that it is nothing external to God himself. It announces the good news that there has always been in the father nature, the character and spirit which would naturally produce the message which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was not wrung out of God reluctantly but rather was produced spon- taneously within his great heart. It was the flower of his own grace. It was not made effective in him nor secured from him by another. All the prob- lems of bringing it to being and action, if there were any, were solved within the mind, and soul and by the will of the Father himself. The Gospel is not a message that some one was able to turn God's atten- 130 PERSONAL RELIGIOIT tion to sinful needy man, but the "good news" that his own heart moved toward every one of his way- ward, stumbling, frightened, sinsick and even rebel- lious children. And more than this, all that the "good news" of the Gospel implies may be done for man religiously and in every other way was made possible and arranged for in the nature and disposi- tion of the Eternal Father of all men. The philoso- phy of the Gospel message is his. ISTo one thought it out for him, no one was inclined to it more than he. It is all his. And this disposition expressed in the Gospel was not a spasmodic attitude or spirit, but an eternal fact, as eternal as God himself. There never was a time when God was not gracious toward his children. This timeless disposition of God toward man which the Gospel so beautifully portrays, is made intelli- gent to us in the word "grace." It is the Gospel of God's grace and should always be thought of as such. Grace is a common word in Christian circles but it is often only superficially considered. There are at least two basic thoughts concerning God's nature and his attitude toward men because of it. One is that he is holiness and everything he does must be in per- fect adjustment to that holiness. Whole theologies have been written from this standpoint. Another is that he is love and all that he plans and does for his children, is because of and in harmony with this love. Whole theologies are now being written from this view point. Which is correct ? We have reason to believe that both are or neither wholly is. It is the correlation of the two which expresses the truth. That happy adjustment is manifested in the term "grace." Grace is the perfect blending of the two. THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 131 Holiness becomes love and love insists upon holiness. This forbids love ever acting sentimentally and saves holiness from austerity. Love in its pity, benevo- lence and passion to help, is never allowed to excuse sin of any sort. It is constantly brought up before the demand for righteousness in God's nature. A holiness which could never allow love to imagine that it could champion anything less than holiness, and could never allow its object, the Child of God, to think that he was in the love of God if his heart was not yearning for and his life tending toward that character which is the very nature of the Father. And holiness, in its insistence upon a high moral idealism, and recognizing the weaknesses and guilt of God's children, is constantly being tempered by "that spirit which refuses to let the holiness of the one, and the moral obliquity of the other, keep the two apart. It saves holiness in God from that au- gustness and loftiness of character which gives no place to an erring child and saves the child from fear to approach his Father whom he recognizes as love as well as holiness. Grace is therefore the Father's bed rock nature sublimely adjusted and in action for man's salvation. It is not a weak and indulgent aspect of God, but an attitude toward hu- manity which, while expressing genuine love, mani- fests a stainless character which must act holily. It is a holy love for all mankind. In that holy love it plans to forgive and save man. It is really about the grandest and noblest conception of God and his attitude toward his children that can be thought of and championed. Once conceived as it should be, it inspires hope and life in mankind. It is possible so to think of the holiness of God that when one con- 132 PERSONAL RELIGION trasts his own life of moral failure to it, the divine stainlessness of it produces nothing but despair. We fear there has been a presentation of the perfection of God and his unrelenting attitude toward man be- cause of it, which has caused the children of his own family to flee from him, even when they were sorry for their sins, when they should have been inclined toward him because of his love. To hold God up as an alien and Holy power, an exacting Taskmaster, who writes his laws across the sky and shouts them forth in the thunders of Sinai and threatens in light- ning flashes the sure retribution of his justice, only paralyzes mankind as it falls below the divine ideal and acknowledges the truth of its own shortcomings and wickedness. There is nothing inviting in this. It never draws any one to the Father. It leaves men to fall back hopeless into the oblivion of dark- ness caused by the consciousness of their moral col- lapses and evident weaknesses. But how different is the effect of the conception of the truth revealed in Grace. The truth that the Father himself, notwith- standing his holiness, loves us, loves every one of us, and possesses a nature which not only permits him to but makes it natural for him to think of us, move out toward us, move within us, seek to help us and graciously forgive and care for us. We should remember that it did not originate in the historical Jesus but in the Father. The time- less nature and attitude of the Father is revealed in Jesus Christ. The law came by Moses and grace and truth by Jesus Christ. Not that there was no grace and truth in the world previous to the Jesus of Nazareth, but that the eternal grace of God was made real to man at a given point in time, in him, THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 133 in a divine and most unique manner. "The Grace of God appeared unto men." Jesus was the objectify- ing or visualizing of the Gospel of the grace of God. His spirit was the Father's spirit. His life and min- istry were the expression of the Father's activity for man. The Son did nothing of himself apart from the Father. His life and death revealed the Father. ISTothing that he did in life or death procured God's grace. Everything that he did manifested that grace. He was first, last and always the embodiment on; earth of the gracious plans and hopes of God him- self. The ''Glad Tidings," in the announcement of Jesus' birth, was the song of the angels who came to let man know that the Gospel of the grace of God was to be lived out in human life for all human- kind, that the Father's willingness to forgive and to save man from his sin was a fact and that everything was and always had been ready for every needy child of his to be helped and directed in his long life jour- ney upward. We are never to think of Jesus other than one who uniquely made known in his life career the spirit and life of the Father. In him we see how God was inclined toward man and sought to do for him what he most needed. What more could man ask of his Heavenly Father ? This is the message con- cerning the philosophy of the Gospel of God's grace which we may be sure of and preach with power. How it thrills the soul when it once gets hold of a man ! How it sings itself into the consciousness of a messenger of God sent forth to save the world ! How it satisfies the reason and the conscience ! With what enthusiasm one can take it into every condi- tion of human life! The scholar and the ignorant welcome it. The religions of the world have nothing 134 PEESOKAL RELIGION so good. Pagan philosophy goes blind before its daz- zling light. It makes the pulpit at once rational, con- scientious, and effective. Men feel that the God whom it portrays is worth considering. Their souls refuse to have any other. Such a God is worthy of man's faith, love and life. THE GOSPEL OF THE SAVIOUR In that familiar statement of Paul written to the Roman church as found in Romans 1 : 16 he declares that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes. This word "power" comes from the Greek word "dunamis" from which we get our English word "dynamite." We have here then a reference to the Gospel as a dynamic. This con- ception of the Gospel has a very vital place in the message of the Christian church today as in every age. After all of what use is a Gospel message, if it has no power to affect human life in such a way that man will actually be moved toward God ? Some force must be operative in human life to save men or they cannot be saved. Sin is a disease and must be cured. The power to cure it is what man needs. The Gospel as an ideal does affect man more or less. The portrayal of the high moral and re- ligious idealism which Jesus gave the world in his words and life was important in view of man's salva- tion. How could men be expected to leave a low idealism if they were not conscious of a higher ? How could men ever aspire to be what they ought to be if they were not taught what God wanted them to be? The painting of a picture of true hu- THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 135 manity in actual human life by a divine artist cer- tainly was imperative. The good news that such a painting may be seen, is a genuine Gospel. Jesus' life picture of an individual religious life, in the foregi'ound of a majestic Kingdom-coloring, with all its delicate ethical shades of life relationships, was indispensable to man's salvation. One must be made to think in the terms of idealism before he can be brought to aspire. The awakening of the moral con- sciousness of man is divinely correlated to this ideal- ism. Jesus started right. His Gospel was first of all one of ideal. On the mind he paints it. The soul receives its impression and man not only sees but feels what he ought to be and what the world of mankind may be. The Gospel ideal convicts man of his need because it pictures what his Heavenly Father reveals he may be. At first thought it may seem to be true that a philosophy of the Gospel cannot effect any man toward his salvation, but deeper thought may see in it a power to this end. We are sure that an abstract philosophy does not, yet the very thought that God is disposed toward sinful man as he, in the Gospel of his grace, reveals himself to be, does have a trans- forming influence upon him. The philosophy of the Gospel is not given to us only in the abstract. It is singularly concrete in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. With the heart of God opened up to humanity in Jesus and his graciousness made real to all who contemplate him, with the Father's holy character and spirit of love divinely embodied in the Son and all of this over against the low moral idealism and indifference and waywardness of his children, the effect upon man, as he studies Jesus, realizes his 136 PERSONAL RELIGION ministry and sacrifice even to death for others, is to see his sin as he never saw it before, and to awaken him to hate it, forsake it and turn to God for pardon and help. Therefore the objectifying of the Gospel of God's grace in Jesus Christ does move man toward his salvation and the Father's ideal for him. The realization of the Gospel as a philosophy is often- times potent to stop man in his sin and to start him in the right direction. When Jesus has been held up to men as the manifestation of God's love, aa his noble life has been made real to humanity and as his suffering and death have been dwelt upon to show the extremity to which he was willing to go to help save others, and all of this has portrayed the Father's disposition and desire to make known to man his graciousness, men have been deeply moved as by no other appeal. From all over this world the testimony comes that mankind has responded to the idealism of the Father, that men have been brought to penitence on account of their sins and have actually been turned away from them to live true lives. Thus we can state in very truth that the knowledge of the philosophy of the Gospel is effec- tive to move man toward his salvation. The objecti- fying of the Gospel of God in Jesus Christ was needed. This is why he came. But the picturing of an ideal or the objectifying of a philosophy is no guarantee of man's salvation. His great need is for some spiritual and moral power to help him in the struggle of life. It is just this that God provides in the Gospel in view of his ideal for man and in harmony with his philosophy of grace. Realizing that his salvation ideal for his children is a character of holiness and a spirit of THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 137 love in life, and that humanity is saved only as it comes as a whole to this ideal, he provides for and makes real in the Gospel of Jesus the power which will enable man to overcome sin and progress toward the Father's ideal for him. The ideal necessitates this. Man's need demands this. A Gospel message without this, would not be "glad tidings" at all. It would be but to taunt man, to place before him an ideal and objectify simply a disposition in the life of Jesus for him. God could not and would not do it. If the Gospel stopped there, there would be no adequate message for man today. Calling to man to see an ideal and to behold God's grace in the life of Jesus, with no power to enable man to respond successfully, would be but mockery. We would shut up our churches and quit preaching and laboring. The task would be hopeless.. But the Gospel is not thus limited. Every possible exigency has been met. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes. That is to all who vitally connect themselves to it by faith. Jesus objectified not only the ideal and the philosophy but also this very force. He lived out the ideal in the actual, human arena that we are living in. He had the same human nature and met the same temptations and lived in the same environment. There was nothing uncanny or unreal about his life on earth. If it had been staged totally different from our life there would have been no vital connection between it and ours and what he did would have given us no hope. This is the foundation fact of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus lived as he did because he had the same moral and spiritual power we may have. This is the truth which gives man hope today. 138 PEESOIsTAL EELIGIO¥ This force which operates unto the salvation of humanity is the power of the living God. The Gos- pel is not simply an announcement that we have the ideal and philosophy and power pictured in Jesus. It is the fact that in Jesus, it was in humanity, and that furnishes us with a message to men today. If he possessed it only because he was so unique, or if it was characteristic of his age only, then we would be hopeless. It is because the power of the eternal, living, immanent God was in Jesus as a human being that we have the surety today of such a force in our lives. The Gospel is the good news that this same living God is near us, is verily in us, as we by faith and will become conscious of him. He is able to gTant us daily the power we need to be saved out of fear and worry, hatred and malice, and sin of all description into that life of love and moral nobility which is Jesus' ideal for us. Salvation is secured by the reception into our lives of the spiritual forces of God himself. This is not difficult for con- servatist or modernist to appreciate. Mr. McDowell, in his "Evolution and the Atonement" finds what seems to him to be a serious problem concerning man's hope of salvation from sin. He writes that the only hope lies either in the upspringing of a new vital impulse or else a freeing of man from the con- sequences of his own wrong acts. He dismisses the first as an interruption of the whole evolutionary process. His trouble being that man's rescue comes from without. But why is this necessarily true? Why not conceive of God's power enveloping man, in him to a certain extent but larger and more powerful than he. And available for him as he con- sciously appropriates it to himself and gives it free THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 139 course within his own personality to work out his salvation ? This does not abrogate the evident truth of spiritual evolution in the world. The life of God, great as it is, moves in and through humanity to man's salvation. This is the force that saves men. The fact that all men may have it is the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are to be assured that the Gospel of Jesus Christ makes known to us the spiritual and moral power of the universe for our lives. It is this force that operates in our deepest nature to counteract evil, to issue in the experience of victory over all sinful tendencies and to develop us in the graces of Christ- likeness which are indispensable to salvation. It is powerful enough to help every member of the human family. In a poor district in Aberdeen where open-air preaching is common, a minister who had only a human Saviour to preach started to give this Gospel to the people. "After a time or two," as Dr. Tlorton tells us in "My Belief," "they told him that if that was all he had to tell them, it was no use of his com- ing. 'Your rope,' said one 'fallen woman' standing by, 'is nae lang eneuch for me.' " It is our privilege to believe and know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is long enough to reach every human need. And more than this it is able to put every living human being in touch with the spiritual forces of the universe or God himself, which will give man the necessary power to grow in the spirit and into the character which have been made the goal of his moral and spiritual life. The Gospel is thus sufficient to repress and eliriiinate evil, to stimulate every latent talent into activity, to develop 140 PERSOI^AL EELIGION every hidden potentiality and to add to his character those positive qualities which are so essential to Christlikeness. And still more, this Gospel message is the announcement that there is a force at hand which can bring society into an experience of right- eousness, love and brotherhood. The power of God is equal to the apparently Utopian ideal of Jesus for humanity. The first does not outreach the sec- ond. Following right behind the ideal of the Gospel is the message that what ought to be, may be, that what God desires done, can be done. There is no suggestion of perfection of ideal and imperfection, of power or length of vision and shortage of force. God the idealist for his human family is with each and all to reach that ideal in human life. His laws are framed for this and his forces are in operation to secure this. Every command of the living God to be and do is a request to call upon him for power with which to be and do. Think what this means in society. We are to believe that man can see the right, that society can respond, that evil can be put down, that righteousness and love can occupy the throne, that God is sufficient to help his children onward and upward. This is the Gospel that Jesus brought. With such a message as this the preacher and worker may stand before the whole world unashamed as was Paul of his Gospel. We have the same eternal truth today. We may stand in slumdum, in the market place, in the legislative chambers, the college halls, anywhere and everywhere and declare this glorious message with absolutely no question of its rationality or ability. It is the truth of God's eternal holy love and power. It is the only message that will save man from individual sin and nations from barbaric THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 141 conflict. There are no substitutes for it. Shall we not preach it in its essence, in its widest interpre- tation and in its fullest hope? To the world shall we go with such a Gospel. Shall we call every one to have faith in the Jesus of this Gospel, to receive his spirit and give the life to his service ? A further truth should be added which is that the message of Jesus covers the needs of the physical body to a degree not realized by many. His mes- sage was preeminently spiritual and the realm of the physical was only secondary, yet while he was on earth he exercised his divine power in cooperation with the eternal laws of God to effect the himian body for health. While there is great danger in advocating anything along this line as possible today, for it opens the door to all sorts of vagary and fanati- cism, yet we believe that Jesus would have us not only recogTiize the fact that there are mental and spiritual laws which cooperate with the physical in securing to man physical strength and health, but that he would call all mankind to know these laws, and to couple up with the psychic forces of the uni- verse in order that he may be benefited in body and mind. Level-headedness is greatly needed here, but we should realize that there is something basic in all the successful mental and spiritual systems of heal- ing which may be traced to fundamental laws of God's universe. These laws and forces were made and set in operation for man and are for us today. Sound physical constitutions are valuable potencies in moral and spiritual kingdom progress. It is "Good News" of a divine sort to be able to tell nervous, worn-out, worried, fearful, despondent and sick peo- ple, that they may expect all the laws and powers 142 PEESONAL EELIGION of God, physical, mental and spiritual, to operate when the scientific physician is called, and that the prayer of faith or personal cooperation with and realization of those laws and forces, is not only pos- sible but effective to the securing of health. And fur- ther, when one realizes that 85 percent of the diseases of mankind are either functional or imaginary, it may be safely assumed that mental and spiritual attitudes do determine something, that there is a wide field for their operation, and there are times when the physician can truthfully state, "I was not needed except to help them mentally and spiritually." Without stimulating undue credulity and without advocating any systems of oriental philosophy in con- nection with bodily healing, we may reasonably as- sert that Jesus' Gospel message does include much for human kind in the realm of the physical. An excellent reading course on this phase of our sub- ject would be as follows: "The Law of Mental Medicine," by Hudson. "The Physiology of Faith and Fear," by Sadler. "The Life Power and How to Use It," by Elizabeth Townc. "Mind, Religion and Health," by MacDonald. "Mind Power," by Atkinson. "Christology," by O. C. Sabin. CHAPTER SEVEN THE KELIGIO:?^ OF THE CHILD OJSTE day not long ago upon returning to my house in the late afternoon, I noticed a small child of some two years of age, toddling toward me on the sidewalk. The woman attendant was safely guarding the little one from any danger while he rambled onward. As I came to him, he stopped and looked up into my face. I stopped also and gazed into his. The symmetry and beauty of his features caused me to say, as admiration and love burst forth from my soul, ''Oh you little sweetheart." I passed on with the vision of that face before me. It seemed to me that I had never seen anything more wonder- ful or beautiful in all my life. Such a perfect little form, such great eyes, such cheeks pinked by the bracing air, such curls of silken hair, and such an expression of mingled joy, inquiry and confidence on his upturned face. As I journeyed on, it seemed that I was a visitor to earth and did not know the genius of life on this planet but was inquiring about it. I looked toward Heaven and asked, "What was that beautiful creature ?" God answered, "That was a child." "Just a human child. Made of the same material that all children are made of." I walked on lost in revery. The world seems new to me and in the very centre of it was the child. I was back in the first century and was standing with Jesus as 143 144 PEKSONAL EELIGION he placed the child in the midst. In my mind, I traveled all over this earth and visited the great art galleries and wonders of nature but there was noth- ing so exquisitely beautiful and divinely wonderful as this child. It seemed as if some artist were out- lining, in the colors that never wear out, the pic- ture of the human babe. There was nothing that could take his place. Everything receded before him. But this was not all. The Master was talking to me. He who knew human life as no one else did, was telling me the secrets of the soul, heart, mind and being of that child. How he did open up to me the genius of his nature, his powers, his possibilities and the life environment on earth into which he had been placed by a loving Heavenly Father. It was a revelation to me. The vision has never left me. To- day the church is recognizing the child's right to the central place in her Christian thought and labors. Never was the world so thoroughly aroused to his importance. The church believes that she should make provision for his protection and full rounded development. She is interested in every phase of his life problem and promise. His religious develop- ment is so thoroughly appreciated, that her entire ecclesiastical machinery is being reconstructed to take care of it. Books by the scores concerning child culture, have been and are being written. This is all because the church believes that one of the great tasks which confronts us is that of religiously devel- oping this same child who is in our midst. Pastors, evangelists. Christian workers of all sorts, are thus impressed, knowing that the future of Christianity in this world depends upon its power with the young. Time and time again, I hear such expressions as THE RELIGION OF THE CHILD 145 these, "the best evangelism and the best Christian work are with the children." "The church must focus her attention more upon them." "Rescue work is not the normal service for Christ. He intended that we should win the child and hold him, making rescue work largely superfluous." With such senti- ments we are in happiest accord. This being true, namely, that our work should be done largely with the children, developing them upward to Christian manhood and womanhood without any break, it ap- pears necessary to have a right view of the religion of the child. Christian workers should understand him as Jesus did, should know what it is for him to be religious and should realize just what we are expected as Christian workers to do to develop him in this realm. It is for this reason that I write out what the Master seemed truly to tell me on that walk with him after seeing that beautiful child. There is no question about the surpassing beauty of some children and the wonder of all, but what is the child ? How shall we think of him ? In a moment of rapture, one declares that he is an "angel" and shortly some one in a passion states that he is a little "devil." The mother fondly caresses her baby and coos to him and presses the cheek to hers while she says, "Sweetest thing in all the world," but it may not be very many months before she turns that baby on her knee and spanks him good and hard while she cries out, "You naughty, awful child." The beautiful baby now seems to be the incorrigible youngster. The angel has gone and the little devil has come in his place. Perhaps most parents would state that the child is a mixture of both angel and devil. Sometimes one is uppermost and sometimes 146 PERSONAL RELIGION the other comes to the front. The fact is however that the child is neither devil nor angel. Parents are not giving birth to either of the two. The child is simply and only a human being. And he is a human being because God planned his life thus. He came into being because the Eternal Spirit willed that human life should take that form. His excel- lencies or weaknesses are not to be attributed to anything outside of humanity. That which pleases us or does not, is not because it is either angelic or devilish. These are simply terms which we have be- come accustomed to use to describe certain charac- teristics of humanity. That which we see in the humanity of the child is that which belongs to hu- manity because of what it has been, what it is, and what it is subjected to. Our study then is the study of a human being himself. The Master set the child in the midst and pro- ceeded to analyze him for me. He told me that the world should think of him as a child of God (poten- tially at least), that he has something of the Eternal Father in him, that he was given human form be- cause that was the Father's wish in wisdom and love for him, that he had instincts and tendencies charac- teristic of his human life, that he had a spiritual and moral nature, and that he had a religious impulse with capacity for a real religious experience. "All of this," said he, "is in the child in germ." He wanted me to be sure and understand him for "of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." "Make no mis- takes," he continued, "the study of the child is the examination of the genius of human life, my King- dom is to be made up out of human life and the child has within him all the possibilities of it." No THE KELIGION OF THE CHILD 147 Kingdom idealist or Kingdom worker can leave the child out of his thought and heart, for he is that Kingdom potentially. This does not imply that the Master looked upon the child as spiritually and mor- ally perfect as some noble men have implied. Kous- seau regarded children as coming perfect from the Creator's hand. There is a great difference between the perfection of ignorance and innocence and that of moral and spiritual development. Jesus saw in the child perfection in germ but not in actuality. He could have stated with Wordsworth, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And Cometh from. afar. Nor in entire forgetfulness And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come, From God who is our liome; Heaven lies about us in our infancy." But this does not lead us to imagine that there would be no signs of imperfection as the child moved toward his divine goal. He told me that we should make an honest study of the child, and should be freed from all preconceived notions and ideas. He commended to me the work of scientific observation, experiment and induction, that was going on among able religion- ists and psychologists. As we examine the child's human nature, and that is the sum of the endowments with which the child is born, what do we find ? The ablest students of the child state that we do not find in the infant's mental birth inheritance, any innate ideas. There is no complex furniture like this in his mind at that time. The infant's experience begins in raw sensa- 148 PERSONAL RELIGION tions, feelings of pleasure and pain and the motor adaptations to which these lead. Then we find the congenital instincts and appetites. Instincts being automatic, it is obvious that no moral attribute, such as "good" or "bad" can at least be applied to the child for possessing them. And as they are necessary to life they are not alien to human nature as the Father planned it. And an examination of the appetites which the human child is heir to, does not reveal any particular taint. Their presence or their intensity cannot necessarily be regarded as a derangement of hmnan nature. They are simply organic needs calling for satisfaction. Hunger and thirst are essential to life. Something for the hands to grasp and some path for the feet to find, is natural and right. Even the sexual appetite which causes so much sin in later life, has been placed by the Creator in the child as a germ, that his plan of pro- creation may be carried out. There is nothing wrong with the appetites. There are other tendencies in human nature which have become the child's inherit- ance through its link with the animal, but we cannot refer to these as qualities which are in themselves inherently evil. If God willed that life should be developed through the animal, with its instincts and appetites, who is there to say that they are neces- sarily bad ? -Some one has said that it is only the non- moralizing of them that makes badness a fact. Even the stubbornness and selfishness of a child when hin- dered in its outreach to satisfy its elemental appe- tites, may be recognized as tendencies unmoralized. To look upon the rush of the child toward that which its nature propels it naturally, as a sign of inherent corruption, is a mistake. We are to recognize simply THE EELIGION OF THE CHILD 149 instincts and appetites uncontrolled by intelligence and the spiritual and moral nature. There seems to be much in the child which substantiates the claim of some that he is a little devil and is the inheritor of a depraved and corrupt nature. He is very impa- tient of reasonable restraint, he fights bitterly against discipline, he exhibits bursts of passion, cruelty, wil- fulness and a craze for self pleasing which causes mothers and fathers occasionally and neighbors quite often, to conclude that the devil or at least old Adam, is incarnated in him. From a certain view point of the child one can prove the old doctrine of original sin. And it is very true that taking children as they are reveals much that is far from ideal, and seems to give credence to the theory of total deprav- ity. There is a something in the natures of some of them which does not admit of any sentimental and idealistic conclusions. However looking at the facts about our own children and those of others, is it not true that the badness of the child wherever it is evi- dent can be satisfactorily explained by the nonmor- alizing of the instincts and appetites of his nature ? If those elemental appetites and instincts had been understood, reckoned with intelligently, held in check and controlled and directed morally, would not the results have been satisfactory? Would he not have seemed to be angelic ? Phcebe Gray in her touching story of ''Little Sir Galahad" writes : "You cannot account for the impulses of boys on any ground of malice and depravity. A boy is the most experi- mentmg of animals, yearning always to see what will happen under any set of untested circumstances. Desiring to scrutin- ize the activities of a wingless fly, he takes the most direct route. Curiosity, not cruelty, should l)e charged with the onus of the deed. To say that a boy is bad because he produces bad results would be much too sweeping." 150 PEKSONAL KELIGION Understanding the child we shall be able to judge more truly of his badness or goodness. We need not be staggered by David's confession in the fifty-first psalm when such words as "in sin did my mother conceive me" are credited to him. It is worse than absurd to build up a doctrine of total depravity from this confession which shall apply to every child coming into the world. These words of the Psalmist give to us an orientalism, express- ing shame and disgust of himself, wherein he con- fesses his sense of moral weakness, a weakness which has been with him all his life and was with him even in his birth. One greatly errs who imagines that sin is an essential part of the nature of the child. Sin is an abnormal twist or misdirection of that which was meant to be good and noble. We fail to find any saying of Jesus which intimates that sin is integral to the child. It is not in his true self as it came into being or his human body in which that self was destined to live. Believing that the child was actually conceived in sin, the fond parents have taken their little one in the arms and have been obliged to accept the decisions of the theologian re- garding him. They have faced two alternatives. They were to think that the human spirit, or the real self of the child, came into the world pure but was obliged to accept a human flesh environment which was tainted by sin, and would surely force him to sin, or the spirit of the child came into being with its essential nature corrupted by sin but was to live in a human tabernacle which was pure and would be forced into sin by the corrupted spirit. The truth is that the mother and father may believe that neither the human spirit nor the flesh environment THE EELIGION" OF THE CHILD 151 of the babe they love, is necessarily contaminated. The spirit is the self realization of the Eternal Spirit, the Heavenly Father, and the hnman body is that house in which he would have the spirit exercise its divine functions. God did' not handicap a pure soul in a sin-tainted body of flesh, or oblige a noble body to house a sin-laden soul all through its earthly career. They fit each other according to the divine plan and may be happily correlated. The parents are not to mourn over the supposed fact that they have given birth to such a monstrosity as either of the alterna- tives would suggest. They are to look upon the babe as a pure spirit cradled in a human environment which was conceived by the Father himself to be fitting and beautiful. The little human animal does not come into the world contaminated by sin. The presence of the animal tendencies for which the child is not responsible, cannot therefore be sin. The very outreach of them which issues in more or less selfishness and greed as the child seeks to satisfy its nature, cannot reasonably be considered sin until that child comes to an age of intelligence and moral consciousness and the will is revealed as a power to express moral responsibility. Goodness and badness are in the child only as that child acts with the will and intelligently for the right or in the interests of the wrong. Some refer to sinful passions and appe- tites, but such terms are not correct when referring to passions and appetites which are common to a human- ity which the Father wisely planned that the child should possess in its development to the Father's ideal. These become sinful only as the will intelligently and deliberately abuses and misdirects them. The scholar declares that they are the raw material out of which 152 PEESONAL KELIGION good, just as well as evil, may come. They are really indifferent stuff awaiting moralization. Even fear is the basis of cowardice and courage alike. The emotion of anger is the source of righteous indigna- tion against wrong as well as of vindictive passion. The child's virtues and vices have the same roots. The will determines what those roots shall develop into. There is no sin in the root. The evil arises when the will refuses to moralize the root develop- ment. So the Master impressed upon me the truth, as we together examined the nature of the child, that he was innocent of any inborn sinfulness. He said, ''His appetites are blind ; action is not purposive, but simply as the psychologist maintains, the automatic response to stimulus and therefore nonmoral." The child in following his impulses is expressing the law of his being. What is needed is the intelligence, and will to control all human appetites and tendencies so that they will fulfil their divine function and co- operate in making the child what the Heavenly Father desires him to be. "But there is another fact about the nature of this child which we must not forget," said the Master, "and that is his moral nature." With everything depending upon the power to moralize his inherent tendencies, this part of his being is very important. It is the development of this moral nature within the child that brings the act of volition which is wrong, under the category of sin. We do not blame the child for his cruelty to a kitten, or its insatiable greediness in grasping everything he can lay his hands on. We are confident that he knows no better and we reason that he knows no better because he has not acquired even a rudimentary conception of THE KELIGIO:^ OF THE CHILD 153 the moral law. He has so little moral sense that he cannot even condemn his own actions. In this con- dition he could not sin because he has no moral per- sonality. The ablest psychologists inform us that the awakening of the moral faculty occurs somewhere about the age of three years. This does not imply however that from the age of three years we are to consider the child so accountable for his life that we may apply the epithet of sinner to him rationally, whenever there seems to be evidence of nonmoral or immoral actions. His moral nature is just beginning to realize itself. He blunders continually in his own endeavors to understand himself and what life means. He gradually learns the moral law by contact with humanity socially, through the influences of correc- tion, instruction, imitation and reflection. At first, good is simply that which he is permitted him to do and be, and evil is that which he is forbidden to do and be. Slowly does he emerge as a moral being into that moral personality which is essential to his knowledge of right and wrong and to the moralizing of all his tendencies and powers. The age of ac- countability is when this moral nature has been suffi- ciently developed to have him know that which ap- pears to him right and wrong, but it is never the same. It is always going on to perfection and there- fore he is to be judged by the degree of moral devel- opment to which he has attained. The guilt of the child will be in proportion to his rational capacity, degree of moral development, and opportunity for moral advancement. Fundamental to his moral development is his re- ligious impulse. Every child possesses it. It is that which explains the religious history of the world. It 154 PEKSONAL EELIGIOIT is that in man which reveals the universal capacity for religion. The inherent impulse in man toward religion is a faculty of his powers as a human being. It is no abnormal insertion into his selfhood. It is basic within him. It is the outcome of the natural and normal activities of his human nature. The Master dwelt at length upon this as we talked to- gether. He seemed to probe to the deepest depths of the child's nature as we analyzed his being. He said this religious impulse is what must be recognized, found and trained, if the moralizing of his human appetites and powers is to be achieved. Every one should think of the child as possessing this impulse with all that it implied regarding his inclination toward and capacity for religion. It is the centre to which all who have the child's welfare at heart must go. It is the basis of all hope for his life. The religion of the child is possible because of it and will be experienced as his human life career is correlated to it. This does not signify that the child possesses a certain peculiar impulse or charac- teristic of his nature which stands out separately from all else of his personality, and which can be caught by psychological tweezers, much as a dentist grasps the nerve of a tooth. It is really the sum total of his capacities for thinking, feeling and willing as a human being. It cannot be identified solely with his moral, social, intellectual or spiritual nature. It cannot be limited to the subconscious or any single impulse of instinct. It is complex. It has many roots. It is capable of many diverse expressions. Yet there is a unity about these expressions in the human race and there is that in the child which may be reached, trained and perfected. THE KELIGION OF THE CHILD 155 The religion of the child is to be experienced in the proper education or his personality amid its life surroundings. It is to be the normal expression of his human being. It is to be the growing of germs which his Heavenly Father has placed within him. There is that within every child which if wisely and thoroughly developed will issue in a sensible religious faith, a pious religious life, a righteous religious character and an aggressive religious activity. The most prominent religious educators of the centuries past and the present have approached and are ap- proaching the child with these suppositions in mind and their experiences warrant these conclusions. Sir Francis Bacon believed that the rational powers of the soul were divine and that man comes to his re- ligious consciousness through natural means. Come- nius identified religion with the natural qualities of the child's life. He believed that the seeds of learn- ing, virtue and piety were naturally implanted in the human soul by the God of all mankind. And said he, refen*ing to the fact that man came from God, "There is no direction in which he can be more easily carried by his desires than toward the fountain whence he took his origin." Pestalozzi the great Swiss educator wrote as follows: "The child loves and believes before he thinks and acts. These forces of the heart, faith and love — are in the formation of immortal man, what the root is for the tree." Froebel strongly emphasized the belief that the child's nature is essentially religious and did all of his work from this basic thought. His philosophy in brief was as follows : The whole universe is divinely constituted. It is the external expression of a spiritual energy. This energy is really God. Man is a part of the 156 PEKSONAL EELIGIOI^ self expression of God and the universal process of the Father's self realization. He declared : "It is the special destiny and life work of man, as an intel- ligent and rational being, to become fully, vividly and clearly conscious of his essence, of the divine effluence in him and therefore of God; to become conscious of his destiny and life work ; and to accomplish this, to render it ( his essence ) active, to reveal it in his own life with self determination and free- dom." He goes on further to state that by education (which means to lead out) the divine essence in man shall be unfolded, lifted into consciousness, man himself made free, obedient to the divine principle within him and able to moralize all his tendencies by the pres- ence of the living God, within his soul, of whom he is a part. The training of the religious nature as the essen- tial essence of the child, in its full rounded entity and activity implies much if that child is to have the religious experience that the Heavenly Father would give it. The mind is first of all to be de- veloped religiously, that is, is to think correctly and enlargingly of the gTeat fundamental truths concern- ing the world we live in. The child is to be taught the fact of God, his character, spirit and purpose. He is to have his mind turned, in the earliest days of intelligence, to the truth that God is to be thought of as his Heavenly Father, who loves him, and has a holy purpose for him. There is no truth more important to impress upon the young child than this. Then he is to understand the world about him, as his intellectual capacity makes it possible. Its phenom- ena are to be correlated to the fact of the Heavenly Father. It is under that Father's laws that the THE EELIGIO^ OF THE CHILD 157 world is developed. Humanity is to be considered at its highest value in the plan of that same Father. The laws governing it are to be thought of as his. The child is to think of himself with all others and the world itself as a part of this gigantic scheme of God, and in himself and the world about him he is to recognize the constant presence of the Father. He should come into this consciousness slowly but surely yet naturally. His first thought of himself in relation to God should be that of a child to a father, and the world the place where the Father wants him to be for the present, and his human surroundings and relationships all planned by that Father, and the Father always with his own ready to be approached by them, wisely planning for them and anxious to help them. The religious life is to start out then with no horrible conceptions of God to overcome. The mind is to be free from fear, ready for faith and open to enlargement of the crude but true ideas of the eternal causes, of the eternal presence in the world, what humanity is, what life signifies in the wonderful plan of God. Dr. George E. Dawson, in his admirable little book, ''The Child and His Eeligion," writes of a small four year old boy being awakened one night by a violent thunderstorm. He was frightened and called to his mother, ''Mamma, God won't let the thunder hurt us, will he ?" When assured that the lightning was gov- erned by God's laws, and that there was little or no danger, he quieted down and slept soundly all night. So far as known, this child had never been told that God protected him under such circumstances. It was evidently an inference drawn from his own thoughts about the personal influence he felt to pervade the 158 PEESO^AL EELIGIOiN" world. He also gave evidence that he naturally be- lieved that God cared for him in other ways and also for people in general and also animals. From time to time he asked a number of questions as to whether God liked him, took care of his sister before she was born, how he fed the squirrels in the winter and how he makes children good. In all his questions there was implied a real faith that God is in the world, keeping it in order, and caring for his crea- tures in a most benevolently and tender way. Chil- dren in normal circumstances come to this faith so naturally and may be developed in it so easily. The reliffious life of the child is thus established and progress toward more intelligence and a larger expe- rience assured. We need not worry how to give our children an idea of God. Some declare that it is not necessary to give the child the idea of God, at all, for as Dr. Montessori says "every child has it." We are not obliged to take the child through even an abbreviated theological course. Perhaps we need to do less teaching and more watching, less trying to get something into the child and more watering and nourishing that which is there potentially. After pointing out good and evil and expecting them to choose the good, and observing tendencies which need to be directed we shall have the privilege of witness- ing a miracle. God consciousness in mind and soul may blossom at once. Dr. Montessori asks the par- ents to prepare for this miracle in the home. She suggests to mothers and fathers a new beatitude. "Blessed are those who feel," and another adds, "for they shall know God." He is not far away from the child's heart and life. It ought not to be very dif- ficult to lead the child out to be conscious of him. THE EELIGION OF THE CHILD 159 It also includes the development of that part of the child's nature which we name his conscience. This is the essential organ of his moral personality. He is born with something which may grow into a conscience. It is his germinal moral capacity. It is to be brought into conscious contact with the moral law of God. This law will be made known to the child through his social consciousness, for right and wrong will have to do with other human beings. The enforced obedience which he is subjected to by his parents will cause the child to be conscious of a life above the life of the mere impulse of his nature. He will realize that there is a right way and a wrong way to use the impulses of his nature. He will find that he has a relationship to others and in that rela- tionship he will discover the law of his Heavenly Father for him. As this conscience is developed, his moral responsibility will be established and he will be capable of becoming ethically religious. He will be truly religious as he acts toward his playmates and friends in accordance to that enlightened con- science. A study of the Montessori methods in con- science training will be very advantageous. She tells us that if we but watch a little child's free spon- taneous use of his soul fingers, his daily loves, faith, and hopes, these will shine for us as a Bethlehem Star path, leading us to the manger throne of the King in the making. As we turn a child's tendency to handle, into mind training, we will turn his mani- festations of inner sensibility into morality. It also includes the conscious surrender of the will to this Heavenly Father. This surrender will be in the realm of daily life duties. It will not be some imag- inary surrender to a mythical being who has written 160 PERSOl^AL RELIGION his demands in spiritual hieroglyphics on some mys- tical blackboard. It will be a conscious yielding to his will as that will is understood to have to do with the child's relationship to his parents, playmates, and the world in which he lives. Conceiving of what the Father's ideal for his life is as he grows up, sur- render of the will to that later will be simply willing to do unto others as he would have him. It will be the simplest and most natural thing to do. It will be obedience to mother, care for sister, love for father, respect for right, and devotion to the good. It will be simply fitting into the Father's ideal of life by a definite and continuous act of the will. The child also has a heart, a seat of affection where love is born and developed, and the religion of the child in- cludes the training of this heart to love the Father and to set its affection in love upon that which the Father loves. That is the child grows to like that which the Father, in his little mind, stands for. When a child likes something it is equivalent to lov- ing it. When a child likes that which it conceives the Father would have him be or do, it is the same as that child loving the one whom he associates with that which he likes. The child is therefore religious, he loves God and he likes that which he thinlcs his Heavenly Father desires him to be and do. Therefore when the mind, conscience, will and heart of the child are being brought into conformity to the spirit, purpose and ideal of the Father that child is becoming religious. Its spiritual nature is being- developed. It is moving on to the goal which was marked out by the divine mind for it. The human spirit is really a part of God taber- nacled in flesh and living on the earth. The fond THE EELIGIOIT OF THE CHILD 161 parents have a perfect right to think this when they take baby to their hearts. This is the highest con- ception we can have of humanity and we believe it to be a true one. There is no conscious individuality in baby, but it soon develops. Self consciousness, a sense of difference between others and itself arises and in a few years it announces its selfhood in the personal pronovm ''!." Unless very different from most human beings, there comes with this sense of individuality a sense of separateness from God. Or at least no sense of union with him. God is not a reality. That the individual life came from him is not appreciated or even realized at all. The conse- quence is, that the life, in perpetuating its individu- ality, moves along without conscious union with God, its author, and this movement, without God con- sciousness, leads to sin. There is no thought of do- ing his will, of living in harmony with his laws, or of becoming one with him in his purpose. The Father and the child are morally separated. Then even when his will is presented it may not be considered or it may even be repudiated. This constitutes the es- sence of sin. The child of God has become actually rebellious against the desires, plans, and hopes of the Heavenly Father for him. To lead the child, who naturally responds *to the fact of God which he finds within him, to a conscious spiritual union with him by an act of faith and will, which issues in loving obedience to his will in the round of his little life, and which deepens and widens as life grows, is to lead him into that experience which is fundamentally religious. The child becomes a Christian as he comes to the religious experience which Jesus revealed was the 162 PERSONAL RELIGION true one for humanity. We have said that he was to think of himself as a human being, a child of God, who is love, in the Father's world, and with other children and with older people who are mem- bers of the same human family because God has planned it ; he is to come to moral consciousness, realizing right and wrong, moralizing his appetites and powers, he is to love what the Father loves and will do what the Father would have him in all human relationships, in order to be religious and live a re- ligious life. Now for him to be a Christian means that he interprets all of this, in the light of Jesus' teachings, and comes to that experience which Jesus as his teacher, leader and Saviour would introduce him to. He studies the Bible, as the best religious book on earth, and recognizes it to be a record of the religious development of a particular nation, cul- minating in the story of the life and influence of Jesus Christ. He places his mind and heart, con- science and will imder the tutelage of the Master and seeks to know what he would have him learn re- garding the life which is to be religious. His idea of God, his nature, disposition and will, his conscious- ness of right and wrong, and his ideal for humanity will be what Jesus makes plain to him. His soul will be awakened to what Jesus would have him be, he will be led to faith in the Heavenly Father whom Jesus reveals, will desire to be good as he understands goodness from Jesus' definition of it, will be sorry for and turn away from wrong as he conceives of it in view of what Jesus teaches him, will trust his Heav- enly Father to forgive him as Jesus has made plain to him, will trust his soul and life to the Father because of faith in Jesus who came to manifest him. THE EELIGION OF THE CHILD 163 It will be a simple, beautiful heart, soul and life conformity to the ideals, spirit and purpose of the Father as revealed in Jesus, which will issue in love and kindness to one and all whom he associates with. As this is accomplished in the child he will become a Christian. He experiences the religion which Jesus came to give to the world. We should introduce the child to Jesus who will surely lead him into what he should know and experience. Jesus becomes his Saviour and Lord. But it does not seem easy, so say some people, to lead every child into this religious experience which we have outlined ; at times all methods fail and all expectations fall short. We might just as well ac- knowledge it one time as another, they declare, chil- dren do exhibit that spirit and that life which is contrary to Christ and which bears the mark of wil- ful wickedness. Some come into the world with all the animal tendencies and features which have been piling up in an unmoralized and even immoral and irreligious ancestry for centuries. And others of the best of training and influence apparently give the lie to the statement that they came from God. They rebel against their Heavenly Father and persist in their determination to be disobedient and wilful. They spend their time on the frivolous and have no desire to be unselfish and noble. They are evidently going away from God. They are moving in a direc- tion which will lead to disaster just as sure as God exists. Two questions come to us at once. W^hat do they need and how shall we secure their willing- ness to be what Jesus would have them be? The answer to the first is that they need a redirection of their real selfhood which has become so engrossed in 164 PERSONAL RELIGION" the animal and time instincts of humanity that it has lost its way in its journey to its divine destiny. They need a change, a real conversion, a right about face, in spirit, disposition, purpose and activity. They need to realize the sin of thus rebelling against their Heavenly Father and refusing his proffers of love and help in Jesus if they have really done this. They need a spiritual and moral invigoration which shall enable them to moralize the inherited tendencies of their natures, which shall give them power to overcome the twist that sin has given them as they have yielded to it and to redirect the normal powers of their souls and lives toward that which is right, noble and useful. They need all of this to be Christians. The answer to the second question seems to be far more problematical than the first. It is easy enough to tell what a wa^'ward child needs, how to correct that child is another proposition. In the first place each one should be dealt with indi- vidually and wise discriminations should be made in each case. We shall probably find that more than one came into the world with his little soul more or less smothered, and that few ever were really under- stood by their loved ones and friends and not many of them were accorded the intelligent and thorough religious training which was their birthright. In the second place we should approach them with the faith that within them were capabilities of response to the good and true and that no one is hopeless, and also a faith in the message of Jesus to the child. In the third place we should deal with them in love and a love that establishes confidence, inspires hope and patiently nurtures the least that is commendable. Given these, there are few boys and girls who can- THE EELIGIO:^^ OF THE CHILD 1G5 not be won to goodness and all that Jesus would have them be. The record of Judge Lindsay's work with apparently bad boys and the results of the efforts of the Dayton Cash Kegister Company to redeem the boys of "slumville," afford us with a vivid illustra- tion of the fact that no child is all bad and there is a way to reach even the most incorrigible. The church is recognizing and accepting the grave responsibility regarding the child and his religious development as never in her history. There is a general confidence that we have ascertained the Mas- ter's estimate and analysis of the child and have found his way of leading this child out to the re- ligious and moral experiences which have always been his birthright. More than this the church gives evidence of a wise leadership in this realm, a leader- ship which is bringing the church to consecrate its best genius and power to a more scientific and thor- ough husbandry of our boys and girls by the process of spiritual and moral education than has ever been known. The church as a whole is rapidly coming to believe that there are few children who cannot be led to experience religion genuinely by spiritual proc- esses of evolution which include every crisis of hu- man life and that they can come to these normally, pass through them intelligently and progress natu- rally into the soul and life achievements which are indispensable to a Christian experience. We are be- lieving that it is presumption to ask God to produce miracles in maturity if we fail as educators to work the field of youth sensibly and faithfully. We are sure that the failure of the past has not been due primarily to the defects in the religious nature or the moral capabilities of the child, but to our failure 166 PERSONAL RELIGION to understand him and our blundering with him. But there is no excuse for mistakes now. We know that with proper training the boj should approach the religious crises of his soul and life as a part of the Father's plan for him and should understand just what he is and what his father's attitude toward him is and what he expects him to be and what he desires to do for him as he realizes his own helplessness. The loud cry ''What shall I do to be saved ?" from a boy of twelve years of age expressing agony and ignor- ance, is not something to rejoice in but to deplore, for it reveals that we have largely failed to make plain to that boy what his condition implied and what he should do because of it. He may come to his moral and religious crises with a consciousness of moral defects and sorrow for sin but he ought to know that Jesus has revealed the Father who is ready to forgive and help the moment he turns away from wrong and to him. The consciousness of the Father should be so strong that the boy would in- stinctively find his heart. Woe be to the evangelist or pastor or Christian worker with the young, who gives these children erroneous conceptions of the Father, who fails rightly to interpret their tendencies and problems to them, who misjudges and falsely condemns them, who doubts their inherent capacity for God and good, who fails to make clear to them the genius of Jesus' simple and beautiful religion, who places before them unreasonable alternatives, who fogs their soul vision with definitions and (Jog- mas, and who does anything with them but to lead them onward and upward to the Christian manhood and womanhood which the Master came to give them. All honor to the increasing; number of noble and THE KELIGION OF THE CHILD 16Y intelligent men and women leaders in religious edu- cation who are understanding the child and are mak- ing religion seem normal to the rollicking boy and girl and leading them through the crises of their lives with divine foresight and tact. CHAPTER EIGHT THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVES WE have long been accustomed to appreciate the vahie of motive in estimating religious charac- ter. St. Thomas a Kempis once said, "God weighs the motive of one's action rather than the amount of performance." There is truth in the statement that a man is very largely what he tries to be. The Christian career is one which is tested by its mo- tives. A Christian is not a Christian unless his motives are what they should be. The life of re- spectability must be punctured by the query con- cerning the motive, to ascertain its real value. The life also of devotion to an apparently high idealism and even that of Christian activity must be judged the same way. This is because motives are from the heart and the heart tests the real man. The questions as to why we do what we do and why we are what we are, call up the purposes of the inmost nature and reveal what we are. We have become so accustomed to this reasoning that it is almost trite. Yet perhaps its full implication needs emphasis. If the test of religion is after all in the motives of the heart as manifested in the life, if our entire life careers are to be judged at the last day by the single word "why," if our purposes are our real charac- ters, then it behooves each person to be sure that his purposes are true to the spirit of Christ. But 168 THE CHEISTIAN MOTIVES 169 more than this, this same test should be applied to each person in the initial step of becoming a Christian. There are un-Christian motives for ac- cepting the faith, idealism and activities of a Chris- tian life. At the very beginning, one should respond to the higher purposes and nobler reasoning and move toward Christ and his expectations of him, with pure motives in his soul. If he does not, how can he even begin the Christian life aright ? Without such motives, how can he grow into that Christlikeness of character which is indispensable to a Christian life. The genius of the start largely determines the nature of one's Christian character and the direc- tion and power of his life. The originating impulse should be essentially Christlike to be Christian. It should be of the same sort as the after life must be, to be truly Christlike. The early Christians gave no evidence of being entirely free from the lesser motives in their religious lives. The truth is that the Church Fathers did not possess that purity of moral motive that the Greek philosophers manifested. The scholars make it very plain to us that there is a great contrast between the motives of the Christian thinkers of the early centuries and the ancients of Greece. The one thought which controlled the minds of the Christians, was the blessedness of happiness hereafter which they might secure and therefore their motive in fore- going pleasure or indulgence in any sensuous or tem- porary gratification on earth, was to gain this eternal joy in the future life. The Greek thinkers with one accord attributed an intrinsic beauty to good- ness and elevated the joy of participation in this beauty into the highest impulse for conduct, but the iro PERSON'AL KELIGION great majority of the churcli Fathers, particularly the Latin Fathers, insisted strenuously upon an ample reward for virtue. The evidence is that these Fa- thers regarded virtue simply as a means to blessed- ness, a highly wrought out and fanciful happiness which they were to experience in the life beyond the grave. And their contemplation of this led them to become rather indifferent to the value of a moral life here and surely gave them no joy in. it. Some scholars declare that the early Christians did not hesitate to consider it actual folly to suffer the pains which the life of virtue might involve if there was no sure promise of reward for that virtue in the future life. Lactantius wrote, "If there were no immortality, it would be wise to do evil and foolish to do good." There are few Christian leaders today who would countenance such a statement as at all compatible with true Christian ideals or motives. We are leagues in advance of such conceptions of Christian character. Yet we fear that there are traces of such ideas to be found today and they are logically accompanied by false motives. It will be interesting for us to consider the gen- erally accepted motives for becoming Christians which are in vogue quite universally. We may find that while we profess to be so advanced in our char- acter, we still fall below what Jesus would have us realize. An examination of the reasons which led us to accept Christ and follow him, or those which we know moved others to do the same, or the appeals we and others known to us have made to secure confessions of faith in Christ and from those not professedly Christian, will reveal no doubt some mo- tives altogether unchristian in spirit and others, while THE CHEISTIAN MOTIVES 171 not being the baser, are at best the lesser ones of those we recognize to be like Christ. There are some motives which are quite commendable and yet not the higher ones to contemplate. Take for instance the motive to become a follower of Christ that one may have his sin forgiven and become a partaker of the love of God in that forgiveness ; the motive to secure freedom from sin's demoralizing effects in the life; the desire to escape the personal degradation and ruin which sin inevitably brings; that which moves one to Christ in order that his life may be made strong and capable of insuring success rather than defeat ; that which springs from the reasoning which makes plain the misery of a course against truth and goodness and the happiness and satisfaction in living for righteousness; that which arouses one to trust in and live for Jesus because he considers this his only surety of eternal life and joy here- after. Yet an analysis of these reveals that they are all permeated more or less with the thought of what one may get out of life for himself. They do not differ very much from those of the early Fathers who did not possess as noble motives as the Greeks. One wonders just how many have accepted Christ and become his followers with the single thought in mind, "it is the only way to escape punishment and be saved." One questions as to how many have come to Jesus because they truly loved goodness itself and loved God for what he asked them to be? We are confident that many have, and we are also very certain that the motive to be a Christian that one may overcome his own sin and be pure and true, is a noble one as far as it goes. It is not to be placed among those which are simply the desire to escape the pen- 172 PEESONAL KELIGIOJST alty of sin in some future existence. In vain do we study the teachings of Jesus to find his sanction by direct utterance or parable inference of the motives which are so manifestly selfish and secondary. Jesus did give to man hope of eternal life, he also revealed eternal values by discoursing on the advisability of laying up treasures in Heaven, but he never intimated that the motive for being noble in character, pure at heart, was only to secure that life eternal or to have a full spiritual bank account in the Celestial City. And we are positive that his compassion for suffering and needy human- ity never led him to inspire men to come to him only that they might be helped. He continually held up to them higher motives than those which were associated with personal interests. He knew that the true motive for beginning a life of goodness, un- selfish sacrifice and service, could not be personal gain. Selfishness is not an introduction into the Christ life. The motive of seeking Jesus only that one may be saved does not move one in the right direction. It is not a response to the essential spirit of Christianity. Therefore while one may come to Christ to receive from him the forgiveness and spir- itual power needed, his motive should be that his life may be saved to become what Christ would have it become in the highest thought of the Master who came to give his life a ransom for the world. There is a decided incongruity therefore in coming to Christ solely with the motive to secure something for one's self. The idea has been that one should do this at first and then think of something higher after- wards, but we are led to emphasize the falsity of this contention. Some will no doubt say a person THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVES 173 must have Christ before he can take him to others, bnt can a person truly have Christ who tries to get him only for himself ? The truth is that the motive in coming to Christ to be his true follower must contain the desire for something larger and grander than mere personal profit. That is, the initial step toward Jesus should be taken in that spirit. He who has that motive finds Christ, knows true religion and becomes a true Christian. He who has the lesser motive must have the higher one developed within his heart if he is to be a follower of Jesus. When he truly comes to Christ he will find himself pos- sessed with it. Possessed with it, he now has a true Christianity to invite others to. How can a false or entirely selfish motive introduce one to a true Christian life ? There is an insistent moral demand upon every one who desires to be respectable to taboo all forms of heinous sin. This demand is recognized to be far more comprehensive in its range and also much deeper in its significance in those who desire to be truly religious and followers of Jesus Christ. It is plainly understood that no one can be a sincere Christian unless he does conscientiously turn from every form of sin and also has a heart which genu- inely wishes to have nothing to do with any phase of it. This would, at first thought, seem to be the acme of a human soul's attitude toward that which we know as sin, but we find upon sober thought that there is a still higher view to take, of forsaking sin. One is not the Christian he should be simply be- cause he sincerely seeks to have sin taken out of him and honestly tries to turn away from every form of it. It is one thing to forsake sin and another to for- 174 PEESONAL KELIGION sake it with the highest motives. One may turn from the path of wrong simply because he sees that his doom awaits him at the end; he may turn from evil because he knows he will lose his job if he holds to it; he may give up sin because he wishes to gain a certain advantage politically; he may refuse to connive with evil only because he knows which side his bread is buttered on. Surely these motives are not high ones and not one commends itself to the Christian conscience as being adequate. Then one may forsake sin because of the ruin it makes of a man and he does not like to ruin that which is so precious. He may forsake sin because he sincerely desires to be good. There is an attractiveness to char- acter. His own sense of self respect, his conscious- ness of manly dignity furnishes him with the motive for it. These are certainly nobler motives for turning from evil. But are they necessarily Christian ? They approximate it. They are included in the Christian motive. There is however another motive which is most seldom considered perhaps by some but is after all the very highest and therefore thoroughly Chris- tian. It is that of forsaking sin because of its rela- tion to others. We may be glad to have men forsake sin for any reason, but Jesus would have them turn from it for the highest reasons. Even personal good- ness itself is not a sufficient motive. The first person to consider is the Heavenly Father himself. Sin is a transgression of the moral law of the world. It is God's law. He made it for the good of mankind and to sustain his moral order. Sin is therefore a disregarding, and sometimes a deliberate overriding or a wilful disobedience of that law of God which was framed in love for the protection and THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVES 175 development of the human family. It is needless to state that sin does affect the Father. We may believe that he not only feels deeply the moral estrangement of a wayward child, but that he actually suffers be- cause of it. Either God is only an inanimate force with no feeling whatsoever or he, as a Father, has a soul and a heart and is wrenched within because of the sin of mankind. This latter idea of him, we believe to be true. This being so, man should for- sake sin because it thus affects the Father. If there is any filial relationship of man to God which is vital and real, then this should be one of the very highest motives for turning from evil. Believing that there is, we emphasize this as the ''why" which should move men to forsake their wicked ways. The prophet Isaiah (55:8) considered sin to be closely related to God and Jesus certainly did. We would do well always to remember it and all that it signifies. But the effect upon God is what it is, because of sin's effect upon man. God does not suffer so much be- cause it is his law that is disregarded as he does be- cause it is the human family which is injured and disrupted. The fact that sin is never limited in its effect to the one who commits it, but seriously in- fluences others in the human brotherhood, is the cause of God's suffering. Sin is seldom if ever committed alone. Wrong done, while it may disastrously affect the one who does it, touches another life and that life touches another, until one is staggered as he contemplates the extent of a single act of sin. Whole generations are involved in it. The taint of one man's wicked life reaches down through centuries of time. There are people living today who are strug- gling hard to overcome the handicap which was im- 176 peeso:j^al religion posed upon them by the generations of the eighteenth century. God does not visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children by some arbitrary rule of ''tit for tat." It is simply that sin works disaster from one generation to another. By the same law that good works for the good of others, evil brings disaster upon the unborn millions of posterity. The law is good. Man is evil. Humanity suffers. God is pained. Therefore because of the effect of sin upon others we should forsake it. This is a religious motive. God may be rather imreal to some. Perhaps it is quite impossible for them to think out at all satisfac- torily, the theological significance of God's relation to sin. But there is no question whatever about what sin does to human life. The direful results are clearly before them. All about us in the open are the ruined bodies, the wrecked homes, the sad, hollow eyed faces, the dwarfed minds and the blighted lives. The path of sin is like that of a tornado. It tears its way through human life and leaves physical, moral and spiritual destitution in its wake. One who has seen the results of a wind storm readily makes it a simile of sin's power. The world presents its pic- ture of twisted consciences, mutilated souls, stumps of personalities, barren lives and aching hearts, all because of sin. No human temple is too beautiful for it to demolish^no noble mind too great for it to derange and no soul too high for it to pull down and bury under its debris. This devastation is far more terrible than that of the wind storm. Moral collapses and spiritual deaths are worse than the physical. A mother may have her boy brought home dead, having been killed in some accident while at work, but deep THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVES 1Y7 as her sorrow must be, it is almost heaven compared to the anguish which would fill her soul if her boy were brought home dead drunk. A father would a thousand times rather see the fair form of his daugh- ter laid out in the casket in his best room than to have that form alive and the victim of vice. Yet man knows that his sin is doing this. He may not see God but he sees his own human kin thus affected and he realizes the disaster of it all when he stops to think. Sin's tragedy is written upon the leaves of human life everywhere. There are few white pages. Where is there a family that has not been blackened somewhere down the line by its soot ? The effect of sin is thus vividly before him and he cannot be blind to it. Ignorance of its due results cannot be ex- cused. Consciousness of these results should give him a powerful motive for turning away from it. This should be the primary reason for ceasing to do it. It is incomparably higher than the motive to quit sin because of its effect upon one's self. Con- sider this in the realm of purity. Here is a man who leads a girl into vice. He may be guilty, as many men are, of robbing a dozen girls of their virtue. He may continue his course until he is diseased, and, in shame and remorse because of what he has brought on himself, cease his beastly habits. Others are happy to think of the change for the better in the man and we are glad that the sinful career has been stopped. But what about the girls whom he has ruined ? Think of what he has brought on them. And think of the future. On they go. Each one a factor in human degradation. What shall the har- vest of his sin be ? Only God knows and only eter- nity can reveal it. Conscious of this, what should 178 PERSONAL RELIGION his motive for forsaking his sin be ? The only one that would please God, or satisfy his own sense of right is to stop the dreadful influence of his life upon any more girls. And this same motive should keep men from ever wronging any young women. A young man should look upon a maiden as he would upon his own sister, should protect her with the same love and heroism and should say to himself, my principal reason for not thinking of making improper advances to her, is because I know what damning results to her soul and life would follow. This is a Christian motive. He might refrain from it for fear that God would send him to Hell, or because of the results that would come to him in many ways in this life, but the great divine motive would be because it would morally injure one of the Father's human family. Man should see that there is little glory in ceasing sin only because he is diseased, broken down, incapable of holding his position and on the road to ruin. Any man, even a fool, would have brains enough to think that wise. The motive which Christ would sanction would be that others may be kept from moral injury and helped toward robust development. To leave evil only because one is "down and out" with a reck- less disregard for those involved in his sin, is really damnable. This has force also in the mercantile realm. We know that unrighteous dealing with one's fellowmen, that trickery in business, that unfairness with em- ployees, that unfaithfulness concerning contracts, that nonpayments of debts and all such things revert in their influence upon the life and soul and charac- ter of the one who commits them. They make it practically impossible for him to feel that forgive- THE CHEISTIA:N' motives 179 ness of sin is his, or that he has any surety of life with God hereafter. This being true, his conscience bothers him and he feels cut to the quick of his soul, and he is convinced that he should forsake these wrong dealings with business associates and neigh- bors, and so for fear of the consequences to himself and the loss of his own future salvation, he decides to be a follower of Christ and forsake the sins which he has committed. No one would want to stop him in this course and all would commend. Jesus would no doubt. But Jesus would commend him more and the man would reveal a truer character and more worthiness of salvation in its widest meaning, if he were to decide to forsake his sins primarily because of the effect upon those with whom he dealt. If he should say to himself, I am treating them unfairly, I am actually stealing something from them. It is within the law perhaps but it is wrong, I am making their lives unhappy, I am scrimping their livelihood and taking it to myself. For their sakes I will for- sake this sin. I do it because I have them in mind more than myself. I do it because it hinders their way to goodness and peace and joy. For the sake of human life about me I will cease my evil and sel- fish ways. It is also true that the employees in busi- ness should have the same motive in forsaking that which is evil ; they should not think primarily of what they would gain if they refrained from doing wrong in their relations to their employers, but should think of the effect which their wrong would have on the employers and their business. These are motives worthy of those who would be followers of Jesus. They need these motives to begin the Chris- tian life. 180 PERSONAL EELIGIOIT Another one of the higher motives for being a Christian is that one may spend his strength for the good of hnmanity. As we study the Kew Testa- ment, we wonder jnst how much the motive of unseliish service in the interest of humanity and the Kingdom entered into the desire and willingness of the early disciples to follow Jesus. We know that Jesus constantly reminded them of the fact that such a motive was needed if they were to be his true fol- lowers, yet he was continually obliged to teach them lessons of service for others for they were always on the lookout to see who was to be the first in his King- dom and who was to have the highest place. They were largely in it for what it implied for them, we fear. Today there is a humanity which seems to be cut off the same piece. It is so self centred that it rejects the call of Christ because he asks something of them. It refuses to consider him until sickness or disaster comes. It is apparently perfectly satisfied to get along without him. In fact too many have thought of Christ as the innovator, who was going to rob them of much they wanted and was going to ask something of them which he had no right to re- quire. They would yield to it some day, perhaps, if by thus doing they could secure their own salvation, but only for that reason. The truth is that Jesus does ask something of humanity. He calls men not only to forsake their sins that they may be kept from injuring human beings, but actually to keep their lives strong and develop their powers to their best in order that they may use what they have for the good of humanity. He would have all understand that the great reason for following him is that they may wisely and effectively make their lives the surest con- THE CHKISTIAN MOTIVES 181 tribution to hiimanity. That is, when one thinks of being a follower of Jesus, he should be so far above all thought of what he is to get out of it that the one absorbing passion of his nature will be, I want to live for others, I want to make my life a power to do others good and make the world better and therefore I enter the Christian life. It is a real question whether a person can truly take his place as a follower of Jesus, without thinking of this truth and possessing the spirit and purpose which is har- monious to it at the outset. That he could have this motive a week after he starts, for he must to be a Christian then, and not have it when he starts, is quite inconceivable. The Christ idealist will insist that he must have this motive in after years. It is evi- dent that he ought to have it when he begins. This motive must be one of the controlling motives of his Christian life, by which that life is to be tested every day, throughout the years, therefore how is it possi- ble for him to begin the life which is to be distinctively Christian or Christlike unless he possesses it ? To enter this life with no thought of doing others good, no conception of making one's life a gift to the de- velopment of human life about him, would make an- other conversion imperative at once before a person could be a true Christian. It is very true that there will be conversions to new ideas and larger thoughts and experiences of the meaning of following Christ as the years come and go, it can't be learned and adopted all at once, but this conception and experi- ence is so fundamental to the Christian career that some idea of it must enter the mind and some passion for it must become a motive, as one ac- tually becomes a Christian. This is a part of 182 PERSONAL RELIGION the initial conversion because it is so essential. There will be continual enlargements of it as Christian experience broadens, but the germ of the conception and the first pulsings of the passion to give one's life for the good of humanity should be an integral part of the first experience of becom- ing a follower of Jesus. In examining the cases of the early disciples who responded to Jesus' call, we find that they were asked to follow Christ with the thought of ministry to others in mind and Jesus continually explained how vital this motive was to his task. He came to save others, to give his very life to redeem humanity from sin and to lead the world of mankind to truth, good- ness and eternal life and no person could become a real part of his Kingdom scheme and propaganda unless he had something of this motive at the time of beginning the Christian life. Out from the mul- titude who came simply to secure the loaves and fishes, there were those who became his actual follow- ers and these always had something of his passion. Paul seemed to be struck vnth the idea that Jesus wanted him to go out at once and use his energies for truth and his Kingdom rather than against them. He who had been hindering the progress of Chris- tianity by binding Christians and taking them to Je- rusalem, now saw that he must become an actual apostle of this Jesus and give his life to the Gentiles. This motive was very evidently his at conversion. It was what moved him to become a follower of Christ. It is impossible to imagine Paul looking upon Jesus only as one who was to give to him salvation. I ques- tion whether he thought of it at all. The record leads us to believe that he saw himself opposing one THE CHEISTIAK MOTIVES 183 who was the true Messiah and deliverer of Israel, the one who had come to do his nation good even to se- cure its salvation. His Kingdom included the Gen- tiles which was a larger idea than Paul had conceived of before and his soul was fired to give his life to Jesus that he might have a part, as a chosen one, in carrying the Gospel news to those in great need. Who is there who can think of Paul approaching Jesus as a grasping religionist whose single passion was to make his own life safe? It is utterly incon- ceivable. He was the man of giant intellect, strong personality, greatness of soul, breadth of vision, who, having a passion for the religion of his fathers, under- stood the genius of Christ's world mission and swung his whole being and life into that plan for humanity, intelligently moved by the master motive of Chris- tian service. The task of Christ through his followers is to make this world righteous. This implies making humanity righteous. This signifies great movements of reform, the putting out of every form of evil, the sweetening and beautifying of all human relationships, and the development of humanity socially and politically in ethics. This implies the setting in motion of mighty constructive forces which shall operate to this end. "Where shall these constructive forces be generated ? Somewhere in the air or on some other planet and then wired to us by spiritual cables ? We answer, "No." The forces are here. They are those of the immanent God. They are to be generated and de- veloped in human personalities. Jesus came to do this very work in view of his Kingdom plan and hope. Motives are power. As human personalities become possessed with the motives which move them 184 PERSOI^AL RELIGION to make the world righteous, they become what Jesus would have them be. Therefore one must have the motive to make the world righteous in order to be a true follower of Jesus. How can a human person- ality become a power in the ethical world if he has no motive which moves him that way. And if Jesus came purposely to do this how can one be a Chris- tian, if he does not possess the motive to reconstruct the human family according to Jesus' ideal. Then again knowing that moral forces dwell in human be- ings, and that the world can only be made righteous as men are made Christlike, our motive in following Jesus is to become "fishers of men." But not to fish men out of the evil world of mankind to keep them out, but to draw them to Christ that he may give them the same motive and send them back into the ocean of human life to save others. Our motive is not to take men out of their environment and leave it to degenerate still more, but to fill them with a passion to change that evil environment to one of goodness. To make town, city, state, country, nation and the world what Jesus would have them be. This being true the person who thinks of being a follower of Christ should have this motive of laboring to make this world righteous when he begins his Christian life. He should not come to Christ simply to get out of a wicked world but to go into it with zeal and confi- dence, knowing that to follow Christ implies to go with him to every needy spot where human life ex- ists. And to go there purposely to save humanity ac- tually and comprehensively. One of the crimes of a professed Christianity has been the absorption of the powers of the personality in the sole aim of securing salvation to the individual to be experienced in some THE CHRISTIAN" MOTIVES 185 future blessedness. It was difficult for the early church to escape this. The world was not something to save, but to disapprove. They were led to think of it as abandoned to the evil one and the Christian was the one who could get out and stay out of it. He who had much of anything to do with it was mor- ally tainted. Thinlcing only of escaping it killed the possibility of a passion to save it. Becoming ab- sorbed in securing a future salvation left no oppor- tunity to take part in the task of Christian civiliza- tion. Thus early Christianity manifested little or no impulse to improve general conditions in the moral world. The rapid decline of the ancient world in the second century discouraged any who might have thought they ought to hope and strive for such an ideal. We can sympathize with those early Chris- tians. They were surrounded with a luxurious civi- lization ; all sorts of dazzling enticements were be- fore them and the laxity of morals made lapses of character easily excusable. They were forced to sep- arate themselves from such a world and we have rea- son to commend them for it. It is easy to see how they were led to go too far in this idea of separate- ness. Their new world was one to be inaugurated by cataclysm and had nothing whatever to do with the present order. That they were to be the means of gradually changing it to one of righteousness, did not dawn upon them. But it does present itself as rea- sonable today. The evolutionary laws of life seem to determine it for us and we recognize our task in the light of them. We so understand Jesus' hope also. Therefore our motive in becoming followers of Christ must be to have a part in redeeming this very world order and bringing in a reign of peace 186 PEKSOI^AL RELIGION and righteousness on earth. We are to take our places in the Christian church, as people who have organized not only to perpetuate the public worship of God, and to keep the ideal of Jesus ever before the world, but that we may ac- tually in an intelligent manner, serve Christ and humanity in the interests of human betterment and the Kingdom of God on earth. This is why we exist as churches. This is the motive which should ani- mate us as we unite with the church. And this is so because it is the motive which moved us to be Chris- tians. Being Christians and active church members are the same. We are not to begin the Christian life as selfish individualists who are bent on oiTr own salvation entirely and then unite with the church to save others. The second is the logical issue and de- velopment or expression of the first. Therefore the idea of uniting with the church simply to secure sal- vation is at once excluded and the idea that church membership for service is different from discipleship for service is also ruled out. Church membership for organized work in the world in the interests of right- eousness is simply focusing the individual Christian motive in a collective way on humanity for Christ and his cause. This is the motive we should expect every one to possess as he unites with the church. It is not a new motive. It is the fundamental Christian one. The church does not create it. It furnishes it a proper medium of expression. Recently a pastor was called to visit a young married man of some twenty-five years of age whom he found ill in bed. His illness was the result of sinful indulgences. He found him in a subdued mood, sorry for his sin, ready for advice, and anxious for help. He has a THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVES 187 Christian father and mother and excellent brothers and sisters who are more than humiliated by his weakness. They suffer keenly because of his period- ical yielding to the power of drink. During the conversation the pastor appealed to him to think of his sin in the light of its sorrowful effect upon his wife, parents, brothers and sisters and all his friends and therefore upon God. He told him this was the primary reason why he should be sorry for it and why he should ask God for power to quit. The young man turned to him and said: "I had not thought of that before. I was only thinking of my own sal- vation." But it impressed him deeply. He said it made him feel that he must never do it again. They prayed together and the room was filled with God. Tears were in his eyes as he grasped the pastor's hand and he realized his soul had responded to the noblest and best. He wanted to be a Christian and to for- sake all his sins that he might be kept from injuring others. Time went on and the question of church membership came up. He and his wife also revealed a desire to unite with the church. It was the pas- tor's privilege to tell them that the highest motive that one could have in confessing Christ in baptism and church membership was to identify themselves with the organized forces of Christianity that they might now labor together to help save others and make the world better. He baptized both and re- ceived them into active church membership. Their Christian lives have started with these high motives in mind. They have begun in the right spirit. They have forsaken evil for more than their own salvation, they have become true and good for something nobler than their own personal joy and gain, they have done 188 PERSONAL RELIGION it all and have united with the church that they may give what they have to making others righteous and happy. They are beginning as Jesus would have them, we are sure. One very striking fact is the evidence which con- tinually comes to us that there is something down deep in humanity which responds to this appeal. Re- cently one of our greatest religious educators told me that in his purity talks with men when he referred to the vileness of some indulgences and the effect it had upon men physically, they all acted as if they knew that before and their faces gave no proof that they were deeply affected by the argiiment, or that they were mentally resolving to quit such sins, but the moment he emphasized the effect of these sins upon the young women and their own loved ones who knew what they were doing, and what it would mean to un- born babes, when they married, he always caught their attention and they seemed quickly to respond to the appeal to live pure lives for the good of others. Not long ago I heard Mr. Thomas M. Osborne, the newly appointed prison warden at Sing Sing, tell of the new regime at Auburn where he has been labor- ing for some time. It is well known that his prison policy is to make the institution a place for correc- tion and reform in love rather than one of punish- ment in revenge. The entire plan is worked out from this view point. Lie also trusts the men, dismisses the inside guards and puts the men upon honor. He establishes self government and makes the criminals responsible for themselves. He considers the com- pany to be a commonwealth. Each is a part of the whole. The misdemeanor of one seriously hinders the progress of the entire company. Therefore each THE CHRISTIAN" MOTIVES 189 one is to work for the good of all. The motive for good behaviour is to secure the welfare and blessing of all. He told a remarkable and touching incident that occurred at Auburn. It seems that the 1,400 men were placed upon honor in marching to chapel without a guard near them. Each one was asked to treat every other man as a brother. He who did not, would jeopardize the whole line of men. Men could get near each other at this time of marching as at no other time. One day an Italian came to him and broke down in tears. He said in the prison at that moment was a man who had cut him from ear to ear in a quarrel and he had been looking for him for five years to "get even" with him. He saw him in line. At first thought he said, "Now is my time for revenge," but when he realized that he would not only be injuring him but the entire 1,400 men, he said, "I must not do it," and his anger cooled and his heart softened and he said, "I will not do it." He said more than this. "I will forgive him, and never try to get my revenge upon him." It was the motive for the good of others that he responded to. It is certainly significant that a criminal should give such a motive place in his heart. Another instance of the response of the hu- man heart to the call to service in the interests of humanity is worthy of being chronicled. I have just received a letter from Auburn prison from a man who is there because he committed a crime in a drunken spree. He writes enthusiastically of Mr. Osborne and tells of the inspiration of the "Mutual Welfare League." He is helping every other man and is as hopeful and happy as can be. His desire to assist all there is really leading him to his own 190 PERSOI^AL RELIGIOIT salvation. The following is also worthy of serious consideration : — "The committee to examine candidates for membership was in session. The first to come before them was a very promi- nent lawyer and his wife. The latter had for years been the member of a Methodist churcli but had not transferred her letter in the hopes that some day her husband would join with her. During all these thirty years there has been only a nominal interest in the church. The statement of Christian experience made to the committee was full of interest. "Years ago, the lawyer said, he had gone forward in the Methodist church in Washington to partake of the com- munion with his wife. From time to time he had done this, thus, in a way, declaring his faith in Christ. But he had never united with the church because it did not seem that there was anything in it for him. "When the team of specialists of the Men and Religion Movement came to his city he followed the meetings with interest, going on Sunday to the church where Raymond Robins was to speak. Instead of giving an address on Social Service that morning, as was expected, Mr. Robins was pow- erfully moved by the fact that he was in the pulpit of a man who had written a book years ago that had stirred him tremendously and that morning he told how God had spoken to him in the wilds of Alaska. The lawyer listened to that story as he had never listened to any presentation of the gospel. That day God touched his heart and when he went from the church he had found not that the church had something for him so much as tliat he had something which he should give to the church, his life. "Several months have passed since that Sunday. The im- pulse of the day was not temporary. It has increased in power gradually. A new minister is now in the pulpit where Raymond Robins spoke. At the close of the last communion service in the church, this lawyer of whom the pastor had only heard the name and of whose experience he knew noth- ing, introdviced himself to the pastor. At once he made known his decision publicly to confess Christ and to unite with the church. At the next meeting of the Brotherhood, when the plans for the year were determined along the lines of the Men and Religion Campaign, he was present and asked for an assignment on the Social Service Committee. On the next communion Sunday he united with the church. "In the conversation that followed the statement of his Christian experience, the question was asked, 'What draws THE CHRISTIAI^ MOTIVES 191 you more to the church, the thought of your personal salva- tion or the opportunity to render a large service to others in the name of Christ?' There was no hesitation in the answer: 'It was the call to service. I am sure there are many men in our town who will become interested in the church when they are put to work as I was put to work by Mr. B. and as I am now put to work.' " It is the call to do good that awakens men. It has occurred to me that one of the surest signs of a highly intelligent and ethical humanity is manifested in its reluctance to respond to the selfish and fearful appeals of eternal punishment and the bold profit and loss arguments of some evangelists and preachers. When these are the sole basis of the message of truth to mankind and men sit before them irresponsive and dumb, does it not reveal a condition which is essen- tially noble? And if while man repudiates these, he at the same time responds to appeals to give the life in love and service to others, does it not show marks of the true Christian motive ? There is a cer- tain majesty about the character of a humanity that sits unmoved before the hell fire and personal gain appeal to be a follower of Jesus. It shows its purity and greatness in its silence. On the other hand what a stigma rests upon hiunanity, how painful are its relations of innate meanness and self interest in life only, when the higher appeal to follow Christ is made, when it is asked to forsake evil and take up goodness and enter into service for others, it still pursues its profligate, pleasure loving, careless and indifferent way, apparently totally dead to any of the Master's motives. While on the one hand, some manifest their nobility of character by refusing to answer the call to come and follow Jesus for what they ^fl,n secure, on the other, others reveal their ex- 192 PEESONAL RELIGION ceeding sinfulness as they, in their cold respectabil- ity, live their lives of ease and care not for Christ and needy humanity. We are led to conclude that our evangelistic appeal should seek to arouse higher motives for becoming Christians. There is a seri- ous question as to whether any man truly preaches the Gospel or approaches humanity at all as Jesus would have him, if he makes the sum mum bonum of salvation to imply the experience of individual escape from sin and its penalty, or if he appeals to men in such a way that to enter the Christian life with the motive of gain to themselves is the primary one. Sermons which continually depict the danger of hell to the individual appealed to and which con- stantly seek to arouse him to the consciousness of personal loss which sin will cause him to experience both temporarily and eternally, do not stimulate these motives which are necessary to have, if one is to be a true follower of the Master. It is the preacher's duty so to appeal to humanity that the higher mo- tives will be understood, possessed and acted from. Conscious that the genius of the Christian spirit and life is bound up in these motives, and that the success of the Kingdom advancement depends upon them, and that humanity under the influence of the spirit of God gives abundant evidence of capability and inclination to respond to them, every Christian worker in pulpit and pew should give time to the study of their significance, and should daily appeal to mankind so that humanity shall be taught to re- spond to them. There is no question but what the responsibility is ours. The Master is to hold us accountable in this matter. We should recognize that dealing with motives is our most important task. THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVES 193 It makes all the difference in the world what we ask men to respond to when we call upon them to follow Christ. First results are not the greatest. Better have fewer answer the call of our ministry than to have large numbers respond from wrong or totally inadequate motives. Remember motives prove the man and make the world. CHAPTER NINE THE LAEGER REPENTANCE WE read in the Gospel record (Matt. 3:1) that John the Baptizer began to declare in the desert of Judea, "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Reign of Heaven is at hand." During one of his preaching tours, Jesus, to whom John was calling the attention of the crowd as the One who was to come after him, hearing his message of repentance in view of that righteousness which was needed to establish the Reign of God on earth, came to him and requested baptism at his hands, thereby confess- ing his faith in the idealism of John and his willing- ness publicly to identify himself with the message and hope of his forerunner. In the very next chap- ter of Matthew's record, we read that Jesus, after his temptation to relinquish his ideal and purpose of the Kingdom, began to proclaim, "Repent for the Reign of Heaven is near." It is evident that repent- ance (a change of mind and a moral right about face) was an integral part of the message of John and Jesus. That it was so vital to Jesus' ideal, is what concerns us principally. Through the centuries, the Christian church has considered the message of re- pentance an important one and exceedingly funda- mental in personal religion. It has always had to do primarily with that which the church has conceived to be sin. Repentance is an attitude toward, and 194 THE LARGER REPENTANCE 195 an action regarding that which has been understood to be evil. It is not a mystical experience so much as a practical moral one. It is something that can be seen for it has to do with our ethical obligations and duties. This calls to the front the whole question of sin. On the one hand we hear some saying that the great trouble with the world today is that people are losing their sense of and are therefore careless about sin, while on the other hand there are those who would philosophize it out of the world order entirely de- claring with emphasis that the only salvation of hu- manity is in the hope that the world shall consider that it does not exist and shall become senseless to it. Ultra conservatives in theology are deeply con- cerned about the evident growing tendency among liberals to minimize the genius and awfulness of sin. They state that preachers as a whole today do not preach about it as others once did. They do not boldly tell people that they are sinners as did Charles Finney and Jonathan Edwards and there is a ten- dency to gloss over sins, excusing man in unwar- ranted pity rather than condemning him outspokenly. But this contention can hardly be substantiated. It is true that most preachers today of both the con- servative and liberal schools may define sin somewhat differently from what men of one himdred years ago did, but the intimation that the Christian pulpit of this hour is careless about the significance of evil and man's responsibility for it, is wide from the mark of truth. There is no tendency today any more than ever among the preachers of Christ to make evil good, but on the contrary never was the pulpit so true to Jesus' message regarding it and never so 196 PEKSONAL RELIGION strong in denouncing it. Sins that were passed by without a single word of condemnation, a century ago, are now being scored by just about every pulpit in the land. Never has the genius of evil been so truly apprehended, man's responsibility for it been so strongly affirmed, and repentance regarding it been so emphatically insisted upon in the past, as it is today. The ethical interpretation of the religion of Jesus which is so universally recognized by thought- ful men in both wings of the theological world, is demanding this. In fact the whole Christian church is being aroused to the subject of evil anew. He who charges the leaders of the church of this day with carelessness regarding it, is not awake to the meaning of the movements of the times and is not conscious of the significance of the utterances of the twentieth century pulpit. It may be true that humanity itself has, in its own religious and ethical consciousness, outside of ecclesiastical circles largely, sensed the meaning of sin in its relation to mankind even more than many of the clergy and the rank and file of the churches and has been able to see clearly what was not Christian and what was, quicker than many within the bounds of the church. It has therefore called both the church and the world to repentance. But the chiu'ch is holding up to humanity in a very striking manner, and with more intelligence than ever before, the ideals of Jesus, and calling one and all, rich and poor, high and low, to repent in view of those ideals. It is true that sin is more sinful, evil more despicable, and unrighteousness more hideous than it ever has been. Christian repentance signi- fies more at this hour than it has in any year since the days of Jesus. The church, through its able rep- THE LARGER REPENTANCE 197 resentatives, is calling not only individuals but muni- cipalities, states, and nations to repent. ISTot only certain individuals to quit certain v^ell recognized vices and inconsistencies, but all men everywhere regardless of position or station, to turn from every form of sin which the righteousness of Jesus demands or cease calling themselves Christians. Talk about the pulpit or church laughing at sin or white wash- ing it over. When in the history of the church was there an age when she was so outspoken against evil, and determined to call men to see their sins as today ? The spirit of God is moving humanity everywhere regardless of ecclesiastical distinctions, to consider wrong in the light of Jesus' ethical idealism, and to turn from it. There is no happier sign of a growing religious conscience regarding sin than the evidence which the church furnishes that she herself needs a new and larger repentance. The church is composed of people who have confessed faith in Jesus, have accepted the life standards of Jesus as theirs and have banded together for worship and Christian work in the world. These people have entered the church while holding different definitions of sin and therefore of repent- ance. Probably few have considered either as funda- mentally as Jesus did. History reveals that the church has been guilty of sins of grievous nature and even today there are evidences that she needs a genu- ine repentance. The popular evangelist begins his special meetings in any city with two or three weeks' effort to expose the sins of the church and bring her to her knees. This does not imply that every one in the church is in such a condition but he is sure that enough are to make his meetings a failure unless he 198 PERSONAL RELIGION can bring them to change their way of living. And he generally preaches against the kinds of sins which every one recognizes to be sin. He begins with the lowest ideals of ethics and reveals the hypocrisies, duplicities, and indulgences of so-called Christian people. He begins at the a, b, c of religion and Christian life standards and calls church members of years' standing to repentance. We are sorry to say that there is evidence of the need of such preach- ing. Think of it, so thoughtless, so deliberately apos- tate, are some in our churches that there is a call for such messages. Consider being obliged to begin all over again regarding gross pagan sins with a com- pany of people whose profession implies that they have confessed to a sense of sin and have repented of it and have been schooled in the knowledge of good- ness for years. Many a pastor acknowledges that even today there are some in the church whom the business world can't trust to be commonly honest, who have no scruples about drinking to excess at times, who are known to be guilty of profanity, and who have apparently no vital interest in those mat- ters which are distinctively Christian. While it is true that the church is the best moral institution on the face of the earth, yet one is pained to think that the crudest ideas of repentance are still granted a place by many and even these are forgotten by oth- ers. The church of Jesus Christ should have such a clear view of Jesus' ethical idealism that repentance would imply turning away not only from those sins which all decent people today recognize to be evil but also from all that are less than the righteousness of Christ. One of the surest signs of the spiritual life and purity of character of the church is the in- THE LAEGER REPENTANCE 199 creasing demand for a higher Christian ideal and a repentance in view of that ideal. There are preach- ers today who are constantly pressing their churches up to this idealism and calling them to genuine re- pentance in the presence of it. The great writers of fiction have given to us recently in books like "The Inside of the Cup" and "V. V.'s Eyes," this same message. This is the reason why one can truthfully state that repentance signifies more today than ever. We are going on to a larger repentance every week we live. People talk about Christianity being obsolete or dead. ISTever was it more alive and never were its principles and ideals more insisted upon than today. We are constantly discovering new meaning in the messages of Jesus. The content of his truth is being opened up daily. The old Gospel is becoming a new and larger one. And it is perfectly right and proper for the church, that company of people on earth which stands for the truth of Jesus as no other, to be the first to consider the deeper and greater meaning of Jesus' message to the world and to submit her life and ideals to cross examination in the light of them. This exposes shortcomings, grievous wrongs and grave mistakes in her practices, and demands of her a new and larger repentance, but it is what she must not only endure but actually arise to and profit by. The church is to lead the world ethically as well as religiously if she is to be true to her trust and she must first of all see her own sins and repent of them before she can call the outside world to the repent- ance which Jesus called it to in view of his Kingdom. The best fact about this is that the church is actually seeing her sins and repenting of them. Her leaders are calling the rank and file of her membership to 200 PERSONAL RELIGION this experience. There are several sins which the church is recog- nizing today that she once did not and the first one is that of being individually minded. She has em- phasized the value of the individual so long and has given her efforts for him so continually that she has developed a case of sinful concentration. She has not thought enough of humanity as a v^^hole. She has fo- cused her vision on one instead of many. Her min- istry was not calculated to help people together; she was not thoughtful of the common good; she was seeking only to help the single person here and there and get him or her safe within the fold. She has been like a father looking for his lost boy and only his, being unmindful of the fact that all boys are the Heavenly Father's. Individualism, true and great as it is, has become an obsession which makes it a sin. When one thinks only in its terms and sees only with its limited vision, he commits a sin and he should recognize the need of repentance. The Kingdom was not solely individual and Jesus' re- pentance was in view of that Kingdom. For the church to move out into the world with her micro- scope focused only on single persons, seeing nothing but the possible help for each and no wonderful plan for all, is to commit a grievous sin which should be repented of. She should keep her microscope but add to it a telescope. Her sin has been to imagine that her task was limited to getting individuals out of a sinful world. To think socially is a change of mind which Jesus would have in every church member. It is a new conversion. There are revivals going on all over this world especially in England and America where such repentance is being preached and where THE LARGER REPEI^TANCE 201 multitudes of such conversions are taking place. This first sin leads to another, namely, indifference to the condition of humanity as a whole. Seeing only in- dividuals to be saved out of the masses makes one sinfully careless of the many in the masses. The physical, moral and religious condition of all, is the concern of the followers of Christ. To attend church, sit in fine upholstered pews and praise God for his goodness while the world lies in filth, suffers in pov- erty, stumbles in ignorance and dies in disease, is not Christianity. It is sin. To move within the circle of the elite and refined, holding the skirts from the crowds and deliberately passing by on the other side from those who are less fortunate, is evil indeed. And more than this, to think of and labor for a few whom we know, and to answer occasional appeals for help, while we give our time to the enjoyment of life, is a crime before God, The Christian is the one who thinks and feels toward the world as Jesus did. The Christ heart for the sinful and needy is his. His very soul goes out in compassion for the multitude. He cannot be indifferent to them, blameworthy as they may be. He, to be like Jesus, is to be deeply concerned about the world. The spirit of taking it as easy as you can while others struggle and die, is opposite to him. 'No person can be a Christian un- less he takes time to inquire how the other members of the world family are getting along. His inquiry must lead to study, then to serious effort to help. Knowing conditions he cannot be indifferent to them. He may not be able to know about all thoroughly but he takes up one subject at least, for instance the hous- ing conditions in his own city, or the problems of the foreigner in our midst, and devotes himself to a study 202 PERSONAL RELIGION of such conditions and a practical solution of them. This is Christian. Not to have this concern and in- terest is to sin and it is sin that every church mem- ber should repent of, manifesting that repentance in an actual change of life as well as mind toward the masses of humanity. To feel socially is to have a change of heart which merits the name of Christian repentance. This being true, one rejoices to be able to chronicle the evidence of a change of heart regard- ing the masses of humanity which is becoming quite universal. The church is taking the needs, problems and sufferings of humanity to heart, repenting of her indifference. There is however room for more such repentance, but the revival of social feeling for needy humanity is on and conversions are being recorded by the Son of man. They are Christian conversions too. To be individually minded and devoid of social feeling leads humanity to social injustice which is a term to describe much of the real evil in this world. One of our weeklies of recent date, in an allusion to a certain socialistic preacher of the extreme type, printed this sentence : "One could not help feeling sorry that a man of such splen- did ability should so lose sight of the greater good that he might do by a less radical and more rational manner of preaching the Gospel of Jesus, who lived to save men from sin as well as from social injustice." The statement that Jesus came to save men from sin as well as social injustice is what arrested my atten- tion. The implication that sin was something to- tally different from social injustice or that social in- justice could not be included in the catalogue of sin, is what startled me. I read and reread it in perfect THE LARGEE REPENTANCE 203 amazement. I wonder how many people as preach- ers or laymen are accustomed, in their thinking, to make this discriminating distinction ? From the re- ports which come to me of the attitude of many re- vivalists toward social service, I am led to think that there are quite a number of people who do thus make it. This being so, the evidence is conclusive that a new conception of sin is necessary and a larger re- pentance is imperative. Social injustice simply means that form of unrighteousness which is the op- posite of the righteousness on which the Kingdom of God is to be built. It includes every sin which is not compatible with the high ideal of the Reign of Heaven which Jesus came to inaugurate. The rec- ognition of the evil of certain gross acts with a fail- ure to perceive the awfulness of the sins of industrial exploitation of competitive commercialism, of mak- ing money unfairly, of demanding exorbitant profit, and of living in forgetfulness of others in the hiunan family, reveals an incomplete vision of the demands of righteousness which is so essential to Christ's king- dom and therefore a restricted idea of the significance of true repentance. We are glad to state that the church is coming to realize that these things are evil and that even the competitive system is not Christ- like. There are men in hundreds of cities in the church who have repented of these sins and the move- ment within the church is toward the large repent- ance which includes them. Another sin which the church is coming to repent- ance regarding is that of diverting the attention of mankind to the lesser things. Intuition and con- science, enlightened by Christian training, lead us all to recog-nize that the great things in life are right- 204 PEESOITAL RELIGION eousness, love, brotherhood, faith, service and spir- itual progress of all kinds. Jesus emphasized these as the essential truths of his Kingdom. He did not make doctrines and dogmas, ceremonies and outward observances, the primary facts of religious life. He was constantly cutting in between these and showing up the great difference. Now the early church com- mitted the sin of keeping the minds of those within its own circle largely concentrated on the lesser of the two. And the centuries since reveal that the church has done more or less of the same. She has pressed men within her own ranks to think of the importance of church rites and ceremonies to the exclusion oftentimes of other and more important matters. She had led her own constituency to believe that the round of religious life and duty has been cir- cled when it has traversed the circumference of eccle- siastical privileges and obligations. And the Protest- ant church cannot escape some of this indictment. But worse than this, the church has called the atten- tion of the sinful and struggling world to her creedal statements over which she has spent so much time in militant argument, has aroused the world to consider her ritual and her form of religious service and has gone out among mankind compelling attention to this or that peculiar hair splitting difference in doctrine, this essential dogma, necessary form of baptism, sac- erdotal function, invaluable sacrament and many other forms and observances which she has conscien- tiously believed herself to be the custodian of. She has kept the mind of man alive to these things. She has crowded her edifices as she has contended for the faith and form she believed was delivered to the saints and concerning which she must give an account THE LAKGER REPENTANCE 205 some day. Who will deny that while some of this may have been necessary and has been in the inter- ests of religious advance, it has diverted the attention of humanity from the greater and more important truths and things in Christ's kingdom to those which are, when thoughtfully considered, very secondary. We may believe that such diversion is a sin. We Baptists have been guilty of it and repentance is reasonably demanded of us. This does not imply that we should discard the emphasis upon democratic church order, or forget the beauty of baptism as a symbol, but that we should recognize that these are secondary to righteousness and a spiritual religious life, and the keeping of them in the foreground to the exclusion of the latter is a sin. The churches that will in any given community keep the minds of the people in a hubbub as they bicker between each other over differences in creedal statement, forms of church polity and sacramental observances, setting factions against each other in real animosity so that some hardly speak, and thus di- verting the people from thinking of the essentials of religion and Christian character, are under a severe indictment by Christ. They merit his words as found in Matt. 23 :23, "Woe unto you, ye canting pro- fessors and Pharisees, ye pay tithes on mint, dill and cummin and omit the weightier matters of the law, humanity, sympathy and faith," they are sinners and sinners indeed. They were put there in the com- munity to bring to the people the essential messages and the true ideals of Jesus' Kingdom, and they have sidetracked them in favor of discussions of ecclesi- astical differences. They have been remiss in their duty. They have failed to discharge their obligations 206 PERSONAL RELIGION to that community. They have not been loyal to the spirit and truth of Jesus. They have acted as if it were more important to have the people committed in mind to certain beliefs and forms of religion than to have them thinking of faith in God, how best to express love and how to live the truest and noblest life together. In the light of the spiritual authority in religion we recog-nize such emphasis to be a sin and the church is called to repentance because of it. Every church must throw its doctrines and forms into the crucible today, and let them boil in the hot fire of human needs. Only that will remain which is vital to the religious and ethical life of the community. The church that continues to keep the external, creed- al and nonessential on the top and refuses to get at the life of true religion that all may partake and live, is to be condemned without pity. We have no excuse for such a sin. We should turn our faces to the wall and cry aloud for mercy and repent in the dust. That so many are doing this is proof of the presence of Jesus in our midst and of the church's consciousness of his message. Go through the West today, visit some small towns in ISTew York state even and see four or five little meeting houses poorly equipped, the same number of Godly pastors barely existing on starvation salaries, the same number of small companies of Christian believers (principally women) working with might and main to keep up the salaries, to pay for the expenses and possibly to send a pittance to the Heathen, the same number of Home Mission Boards paying amounts quarterly to the churches to help pay expenses, the same number of churches appealing to the community for support, and what for ? simply to defend some peculiar and THE LAEGER REPENTANCE 207 special tenet of faith, or ecclesiastical form or order. And all this time the thought of the people in the community turned away from the great facts of hu- man life, and the needs of the community neglected. The lesser has absorbed the attention of the people at the suggestion and even the demand of the church. No community consciousness and no sense of the vitali- ties of religion among the people. Every one dis- cussing church differences and made tired of religion by the incessant and diversified appeals which had to be made to keep up the various church organizations. Two good churches, possibly one, would be enough in many of these towns. Is there any question about the sinfulness of such policies? Surely not and the time has come for us to repent in genuine sorrow and that repentance is superficial unless it leads to larger thought of what the function and spirit of a church is where preachers are taught, unless it brings Home Mission Boards really together and unless it leads all the denominations to see what is vital in re- ligion and to act out their conceptions in practical ways for Kingdom advancement in these communi- ties. In many states this repentance is a fact and the church is increasingly responding to its call. Another sin which the church is acknowledging and, in some quarters, is repenting of in sackcloth and ashes, is that of spending her precious time and strength on unimportant activities. The church has done an immense amount of great good in this world in ways which are only to be commended. And when one considers the fact that the work she has accom- plished has been done probably by about one tenth of her membership, it would seem that her fair- minded critic ought to spend his time primarily in 208 PERSONAL RELIGION cannonading the nine-tenths of lazy church members. But these have been shot to pieces over and over again. At least the pulpit has fired at them continu- ally over the heads of the good and faithful people who were present at the church services, with a steadiness and rapidity which is quite marvelous. We know that the shots have gone into the air largely but it was about the best range the pulpit gun could secure. While recognizing the work done by the few, it seems a little ungrateful to point out any failures in it, yet all service today turns toward high objec- tives and great efficiency, and a kindly criticism is not to be considered unchristian. With all the so- cial, philanthropic, and mission service rendered by the workers of the church which is unquestionably of value yet there are some activities in which she spends her time and strength which are only second- ary. Afternoon socials and pink teas may be pleas- ant and profitable in a way, for social fellowship is productive of excellent results in keeping people in- terested. It tickles sensitive and thin skinned delin- quents especially, arousing them to temporary prom- ises of faithfulness in church attendance and the like, and it provides a happy diversion for some really good workers, but is it the dignified, big task to which God has set capable strong women at in calling them to give their life talents to the saving of humanity ? What if the women of the church should conceive that it was their privilege to study the conditions of the children and mothers in some of the foreign tenement districts of the city, and should outline a constructive program of redemption for the whole neighborhood, establishing model homes, teaching domestic science, forming literary clubs and Bible classes and actually THE LAKGEK REPENTANCE 209 taking to those ignorant and needy ones the light of the Gospel of love, cleanliness and righteousness, would not this be service worth while ? Surely the church has some feminine talent going to waste en- tirely and other such gifts being expended on trifles. We have highest regard and heartiest commendation for those women who are really sensing the gi'eat re- ligious and humanitarian task of the church and are putting their very souls into it, but we call the oth- ers to realize that it is a sin for them not only to do nothing but to do the needless and secondary things all the time instead of devoting their energies to the meaningful service of human salvation. The men, we fear, come under this indictment also. The time was when Christian manhood was measured by at- tending church services on Sunday, supporting the pastor and keeping one's life unspotted by the world. There was little thought that the men of the church were called to a mighty task worthy of their best manhood and that they were to be up and at it if they were doing what Christ would have them do. Today, the Christian man, who thinks, knows that the ideal of the past will not do. The measure of Christian service is something more than attending church, lis- tening to sermons, meeting good people socially, at- tending some happy function to drink coffee or eat ice cream. Just to keep men religiously and socially revolving around the meeting house is not a sufficient goal for the expenditure of the energies of the Chris- tian manhood of this age. The church has no doubt sinned in placing such an ideal before the man of today. Surely no Christian believes that this is a large enough task to command his strength. Church work for men today implies at least the following: 210 PERSOI^AL RELIGION I. The development of a centre of religious life which shall vitally affect the life of the people in the community. II. The religious and moral education of the youth of the community in Sunday Schools and other organizations. ///. The study of the conditions and needs of the community in view of adopting the wisest and most effective methods to secure this objective. IV. The application of the principles of Jesus Christ to all phases of human life, mercantile, do- mestic, municipal, etc., with a view to establishing a Christian community. V. The maintenance of a well equipped and effi- cient church organization and building capable of do- ing the task assigned the members in any given com- munity. VI. The launching and furthering of the needed reform measures to rid the world of the saloon, vice districts, disease, child exploitation and kindred evils. VII. The Christianizing of national life at home and all nations abroad. That is, the actual endeavor religiously and humanitarianly to educate the peoples of the globe in the truths and ideals and spirit of Jesus Christ. With such a task given the church, think of the in- efficiency of strong men giving their time and limit- ing their endeavors to attending church once a Sun- day, occasionally pleasing the pastor by returning to the evening meeting, once in a while meeting with the other men for a social hour and good time, or even giving a little occasionally to current expenses and missions. It is verily a sin for masculine energy to be expended thus as well as for its power not to be THE LARGER REPENTANCE 211 expended at all. Therefore men should be in it heart and soul, intelligently cognizant of what is to be done, full of ideas and plans as to how to do it, and ani- mated with enthusiasm to accomplish what the Mas- ter has assigned in the most efficient manner possi- ble. The church's task is the biggest project ever given to man to have a part in. It is no less than that of constructing a Christian Kingdom Empire which shall have all humanity for its field. It is building human life according to the ideals of Jesus. The President and his cabinet and the members of Congress at Washington have no larger one, in fact theirs is simply a part of the Christian work of the church. The Generals and their men in the armies of Europe today are seriously alive to their gigantic task. Each is bent on saving an Empire. Many have righteousness and peace for a goal. All believe that the work set out before them is worthy of the best brain, greatest soul and noble manhood of the world. But theirs is not to be compared to the service which has been assigned to the church. Imagine if you can the leaders of these national armies giving their time to a continual round of cushion concerts, feasts and pastimes, wherein they may lie at ease, or to desul- tory advances on the tag ends of the enemies' lines and the weakest of her defences while the main col- umns of their armies were moving steadily on to vic- tory. The church has done too much of this. Our leaders should tackle the main business at hand. The meetings of the official boards of the churches ought to be occasions when the best men and women of the membership gather together in force, where a con- sciousness of the great Christian task is sensed by one and all and where consecration, enthusiasm and 212 PERSONAL RELIGION efficiency are focused on the world field, the problems to be solved and the best methods to iDe adopted in view of the results to be achieved. Disinterestedness and nonattendance, with time spent on life's follies, signify sin of a serious sort. The movements among men and women in the last few years are positive proof of the presence of this kind of repentance. But there is a demand for more. Another sin that some in the church need to re- pent of is that of accepting the gifts of Ood's grace without maJcing restitution. Repentance is more than simply turning away from the wickedness of the past, it is turning in to rectify as far as possible the wrong that has been done. Sin puts upon every one who commits it a serious and exacting obligation and repentance is only real as it conscientiously dis- charges it. Take for instance the man who has been influencing others in an evil way possibly to that of leading others into impurities or other forms of wickedness. What does repentance signify to him ? Is it enough that he go forward in some mission hall service or church meeting and confess his sins in tears, arise and declare that he will do so no more and then unite with the church ? Surely God expects more of him than this. His sinful influence upon others demands of him a life given to make restitu- tion. He must give back to them now an influence which if possible shall save after all the very ones whom he dragged down with him. His going up the hill is not enough. He must restore them also. At least he must work with might and main to restore them. He has not repented unless he does. Then suppose another man, who has been guilty of under- handed methods in his business, has foreclosed mort- THE LARGER REPENTANCE 213 gages on poor widows, has shown no mercy to strug- gling tenants and has wronged scores of competitors and has actually robbed more than one customer, should be convicted of the wrong of this, come to Christ for forgiveness, promise to turn away from it and unite with the church, has he truly repented ? We answer — he has negatively done so but not posi- tively. He has but partly turned. He should wheel clear around, not only against the evil he has been doing but to the ones he has wronged. He must make restitution as far as possible of all his evil. He must go to the widow whose mortgage he foreclosed need- lessly, reestablish her and help her, he must go to those tenants to whom he has shown no mercy and make them happy, he must meet those competitors and beg their pardon and to those customers whom he has robbed, he must take back his ill gotten gain. If he cannot find the ones whom he had wronged, then, recognizing that it was out of the community that he secured his unrighteous profits and gains, that it was a common humanity that he injured, he must restore to the community what he took, must give back to the humanity that is around him today, the kindness and love and service which he refused to give to oth- ers. This is his conscience money which he must take back. Remorse and regrets over the past are not repentance unless they move us to restore to oth- ers that which our sin took from them. For one sim- ply to be sorry that he once treated others wrongly and not actually to restore that which was theirs, is in reality to remain a thief forever. We may truly state that the salvation which Jesus came to give men is not effected unless this is done. And when this is done it is the one primary thing to be accomplished 214 PERSONAL RELIGION in conversion. The case of Zaccheus is in point. The thing which he did was that which was neces- sary to repentance and therefore to salvation. There is no record that he intelligently subscribed to ortho- dox theological opinions. He went at the matter in a very businesslike way. He, the tax collector who had become rich by robbing men and women right and left in his business, who recognized that he was a sin- ner indeed, was confronted by Jesus who told him that he was to abide at his house. We haven't the details of the entire process by which this man came to his repentance, but the genius of it is evident in the words, "Sir, I give half of my goods to feed the poor and if I have wrongly exacted ought from any I will restore fourfold." That is he makes full resti- tution. He promises to pay principal and 300 per cent interest for years. And in addition to that he parts with one half of his riches to be used for the poor. Jesus then states to him in the presence of the others, 'Today Salvation is come to this house." To restore his sinfully procured wealth and to give one half of all he possessed to the poor, this is what elesus names Salvation. This is what the Master would say today was repentance. It is more than beginning anew. It is doing our utmost to make amends for the past and using what we have to contribute to the wel- fare of the community in which we have done our wrong. One wonders if the church is making resti- tution at all commensurate to the demand of such repentance. We hope she is becomingly sensitive at this point. The church is also repenting of her war spirit and program. We are realizing that these are not compatible with Christianity. The present Euro- pean conflict is troubling the church as she never was THE LAEGER REPE:t^TAI^CE 215 troubled. She is passing througli a time of serious examination of her ideals and principles in the light of Jesus' teaching and the result is that she finds her- self gnilty of gross misrepresentation of the truth of Christ. She has been taking over the idealism of the Old Testament with its racial and national prejudices and its war spirit to perpetuate those prejudices, and has laid claim to a tribal God as did those of old, forgetting Jesus' ideal of internationalism, the love and good will toward all which are to secure it and the basis of true religion, namely, that God is the Father of all peoples and we are brethren. Today she is aroused anew to see the sin of racial antagon- ism and also that of war as a method of settling na- tional differences. This is bringing her under con- demnation. She is truly convicted of sin and a very large part of her constituency is repenting. She has already begun a crusade among her own and is calling her membership to recognize the sin of the whole scheme of militarism. A peace revival is this mo- ment on although war is terribly real across the sea. The mourner's bench is filling up with war penitents. She is crying to God to forgive her for departing so far from the spirit of Jesus, for making the soldier the ideal man, and the evidence is that her repentance is real. This is giving to her a new evangelism. She is preaching the vital love message of Jesus. She is, with courage, showing up the sins of the war pro- moter, and the annament manufacturer. She is con- demning the philosophy of might that makes militar- ism necessary. She is proclaiming the Gospel of peace. Her evangelists are calling for converts from militarism. They are insisting upon a repentance in view of a devotion to the war propaganda. No con- 216 PERSOI^AL EELIGIOE" versions and no repentance are more radical and real than these. There is need for the spread of this re- vival of peace. The question is, can an individual or a nation be Christian if this repentance is not forth- coming ? There is also a demand for a larger view of repent- ance in the evangelistic circles of our land. While it is very true that the evangelists of today include cer- tain forms of evil in their category of sin which those of years ago did not, yet there is little evidence that many of these present day revivalists have anything like the comprehensiveness which the message of Jesus implied. His call to the people to change their minds and turn from evil in view of the Kingdom of righteousness which he had come to establish was far more inclusive than the ordinary evangelist re- veals by his messages and objectives that he under- stands the call to repentance signifies today. There is a danger of failing to perceive the very ethical principles which Jesus declared were basic in his Kingdom ideal. That is a miscalculation or a total disregard of the fact that sins of the spirit and dis- position were the really gross and terrible sins of life and that the evil of false purposes and unright- eous ideals was the great sin of one's being. Then is it not true that many a great revivalist denounces continually the sins of licentiousness, drunkenness and criminal corruption in high places and fails to see other great sins which human kind is guilty of? We are grateful to these strong Gospel preachers who do call wicked, low lived, drunken and criminal men and women to repentance, but their range of ethical vision should be widened to that of Jesus and their call to repentance should be coterminous with that THE LARGER REPENTANCE 21Y vision. Sin covers a far wider field than many an evangelistic preacher has discovered. It is only a low ideal of the Kingdom that permits the limitation of the message of repentance to be staked at licentious- ness and debauch. To declare that he who quits such sins is in the Kingdom before he repents of other sins which are diametrically opposite to the principles of that Kingdom is to be false to Jesus and to him. The Gospel preacher who preaches boldly against certain well known gross sins, and significantly refrains from mentioning those of social injustice, does not deserve the right to be called a preacher of righteousness or an announcer of the message of Jesus. He may be ever so orthodox in his theology but that does not make him true to Jesus. The world needs to have its attention called to the sin of negativeness. Many men and women may be above the grosser forms of evil and may even be free from the intolerable sins of injustice which have been mentioned, for which we are truly grateful. We would commend them highly for the high standard of life which they have come to. But their lives should be rightly interpreted in the light of the full expectations of Jesus Christ. They are good but far from what they ought to be. Until something more is added to them, they are sadly negative. These people are what they are be- cause of what they are not. They have a compla- cency and an undisturbed satisfaction that they have come to about the highest ideal of manhood and wom- anhood known to man simply because they do not commit the sins of the vile sort and do not plan and execute acts of gross injustice. But when confronted with demands of Jesus for a life of aggressive good- ness, for actual devotion to the great tasks of his 218 PEESOiN-AL EELIGIOlsr Kingdom enterprise, for continual sacrifice and ser- vice in the interests of human development, they re- veal a lack which is strikingly great and which consti- tutes a sin to be repented of. Glad as the Master is that they have refrained from sin in its lowest forms and that they have not wickedly planned evil against their brethren, he asks them in all seriousness, what positive contributions are you making to the better- ment of the world, what real interest are you mani- festing in humanity about you, and what actual tasks relative to world righteousness are you seriously grasping and moving on to completion ? With such questions to answer, they should quickly recognize the sin of negativeness and the demand for a re- pentance in view of it. With so much needed to be done, this sin looms up large. The only repentance regarding it which will do, implies a right about face from apathy, a will to do what Christ wants done, a definite alinement with the forces that make for righteousness in the world, membership in the church, and activity in the interests of humanity as strength and time permit. This is a sin and a re- pentance which twentieth century evangelism will of necessity recognize and deliver its message concern- ing. It is something to preach about with a view to conversions. The change from the negative to the positive is just the conversion that a certain class of people must have to be Christians. Their attention should be held to it. This makes plain the fact that it is only as one in- telligently perceives the Kingdom objective of Jesus and understands the social righteousness which that objective implies, that he comes to realize the mean- ing of sin and the repentance which Jesus called all THE LARGER REPENTANCE 219 men to. The spirit does not automatically give to the mind and conscience of the preacher or layman the full thought and sense of what this sin and re- pentance imply. There must be thoughtful and prayerful study of the teachings of Jesus in the light of his ideal. No man can preach about sin or repentance unless this is done. He must have a true view of the great religious and ethical work Jesus came to do. He must understand just what the principles and spirit of the Kingdom are. He must school himself in the heart life of the Master as he looked out upon humanity and saw it tossed to and fro. He must grasp the essential thing he was after. He must see with him on the mount of vision what would fit into that Kingdom and what would not. In the light of this vision he will know what is sin and what man must repent or turn away from, if he is to be a true follower of Jesus and have an actual place in that Kingdom. The call to the preacher today, be he pastor or evangelist, is to recognize this larger repentance which Jesus demands of church members and people outside of the church also, and to call men everywhere to it. No man is a true prophet of God, no man really preaches the message of Jesus and no man deals honestly with humanity who does not frankly, yet kindly, declare the genius and make plain the scope of this larger repentance. It will take consid- erable courage to do it, it will demand moral hero- ism of the highest type, it may cause some suffering at heart and send more than one to a martyr's death, but it must be done if we are to be loyal to Jesus, if man is truly to be saved and if the actual Kingdom of righteousness and justice is to be established among 220 PEKSOIsrAL RELIGION men. Let every evangelist know that his "sawdust trail" is mockery, if those who walk its way toward the repentance he asks them to, do not understand the expectation of the Master of one who turns away from evil and to him. We commend his expose of the grosser forms of evil, his call to purity and temper- ance, and every insistence upon genuineness of living which he makes but we still declare that no repent- ance is deep enough and wide enough that does not call one and all, church members and everyone, to the highest thought of Christ for men. This business that we are in of working with Christ to establish his Kingdom among men cannot admit of any superficial message. We must preach something larger than a juvenile repentance. We are dealing with men deeply and permanently — not simply to arouse them to tears or to build up an ecclesiastical superstructure in hu- manity. We know that men are not the Christians that Jesus would have them be and his Kingdom is not being established unless men repent thus genu- inely and largely. Therefore, away with efforts to- ward hasty and superficial results, away with playing to galleries or appealing to the Vox populi, or any- thing else less than clear, intelligent. Christlike deal- ing with humanity in the interests of its thorough repentance and salvation and the building solidly of that Kingdom of righteousness which Jesus came to make real among men. CHAPTER TEN SOUL WINNIInTG and LIFE WINNING AN examination of the life of the church today reveals a wide range of activities. As the church advances, she broadens the field extending her ministry along many avenues of human activity and into every place where there is human need. There was a time when she limited her service almost en- tirely to what was styled "soul saving work." She placed all the emphasis on individual salvation, con- sidering her one task to be that of saving sinners from future penalty of sin. She measured her preachers by their ability to preach so that conversions would occur at every public meeting, and prayed and labored only for special outpourings of the Holy Spirit and revival seasons when scores and hundreds would be swept into the church. The deliberate limitation of her ministry largely to this revival work was because of an erroneous conception of her task and a failure to appreciate the breadth of her message. Today she uses her energies in all forms of humanitarian endeavor; emphasizes education, engages in reform, and in righteous legislation; and gives her time and talents to anything and everything which will benefit humanity, while she fights strenuously all enemies of human life. This leads us to consider what place there is in her ministry for that definite work of "soul winning" or evangelism. In some quarters 221 222 PERSONAL RELIGION there does not seem to be much room for it. There are types of evangelism which should be forgotten ; messages which ought never to be preached and meth- ods which should never be used; but this does not warrant our tabooing all efforts toward winning indi- viduals to Christ. With a better understanding of the essential characteristics of evangelism, it may as- sume its proper place in the ministry of every church of Christ, and easily be correlated to all other ac- tivities. Recognizing this, the question before us just now is, what does it really signify to win another to Christ ? When is an individual truly won to Christ ? We use the expression as if the meaning was per- fectly clear to those who are seeking to win and to those who may be won. But it is not. There are many versions of this objective. We naturally turn to the pages of the New Testament to find what it im- plied in the days of Jesus and his immediate fol- lowers. The Jewish background of this record reveals a national faith and hope. The people believed in God more or less and were looking for a deliverer sent from him who would save the nation out of the hands of its enemies and give them political independence and freedom. Jesus was to come to save Israel even if their ideas of deliverance were totally different from his. John came on to the scene announcing his coming. Jesus was born and the religiously inclined people from what they heard of him, wondered if he was the real deliverer of their nation. Later he went out from his home and began his public ministry, de- claring his moral and religious message to one and all. He commanded attention, aroused interest, stim- ulated inquiry. Their one question was. Is he the SOUL WINNING AND LIFE WINNING 223 Messiah, namely, the deliverer of Israel? The re- ligious leaders of the day scouted the idea, multi- tudes who saw his marvelous works thought that he must be, for who could do what he did unless he was ? Some became convinced that he surely was the one for whom they were looking, declaring that his words and acts gave proof that Simeon's prophecy concern- ing him was quite correct, and a few accepted him as such and became his avowed followers. These were the first ones of whom it might be said, ''they were won to Christ." To them it therefore implied a con- viction that he was the promised Messiah sent to de- liver their nation. The record does not reveal that at first it signified any larger conception. The distinction between those who were won to him and those who were not was that the former be- lieved he was the Messiah of Israel and the others did not. It was this faith that became the incentive for them to go out and win the people about them to Jesus and others were won to Christ as they came to the same belief of his Messiahship which they held. Take the familiar story of Philip and Nathaniel as found in John 1:43-51. Philip who had come to believe in Jesus' Messiahship went to seek out his friend Nathaniel and to ask him to come and con- sider Jesus' right to that claim himself. At first, Nathaniel who heard that Jesus came from Nazareth refused to credit his Messiahship, but upon meeting Jesus and talking with him, he was led to declare his faith in him as the deliverer, yea verily, the King of Israel. It is very difiicult for us to tell all that this signified to him, but the evidence plainly is, that for Nathaniel to be won to Jesus implied only that he was won to the truth that Jesus was the coming de- 224 PERSO^-AL RELIGION liverer of Israel. This is but a sample case of many in the New Testament and practically every one of them implies that those who, from Judaism, were won to Jesus, were led simply to believe more or less in his Messiahship. And those who won them were satisfied that this was the significance of being won to Christ. There was much added as the centuries went by, but the first test of being won, was faith in Jesus' Messiahship. Connected with this faith were apoca- lyptic hopes which Jesus seemed to encourage (at least the record states that he did), and the genius of being won to him in those days of his early followers was faith in his Messiahship or the acceptance of him as the great God-sent deliverer of the Jewish nation. This also includes some religious and ethical prepa- ration on the part of those who believed in him. John and Jesus both emphasized it. When the followers of Jesus heeded his command to go into all the world, that is, throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Empire, to preach his mes- sage and to seek to win others to him, they found that a different conception of their task was forced upon them. What did the Roman and Greek world care for the distinctive beliefs and hopes of a peculiar sect of the Semitic people, who had arisen from nomadic and tribal life away in the east and were now occupy- ing only a small province of the Empire in Palestine ? These ambassadors of Christ would find no such se- cret hopes of a national deliverer as their own people possessed, which would form a solid basis for re- sponse to their appeal. Instead they would find people devoted to their own gods, accepting the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others and would no doubt resent any intrusion into their SOUL WIlSTISriNG AND LIFE WINNING 225 religious thoughts and life. But to the whole world thej must go with the deliberate purpose of winning men to Christ. This was also very difficult for them from the standpoint of religious pride. These Jew- ish followers of Christ looked with more or less dis- dain upon those outside of their nation and this con- viction and feeling had to be overcome before they could even think of the work of winning others with any degree of satisfaction and pleasure. The spirit of God prepared Peter by giving him the vision and also the experience with Cornelius, as recorded in the tenth of Acts. Paul was also made ready for the great task of winning the Gentiles by special visions. So that they were prepared to approach the people of the Roman world intelligently with the message of Jesus. Then the spirit of God was preparing the minds and hearts of the people outside of their own land. So that everything was ready to make the ap- peal to one and all everywhere to consider Christ and be won to him. Into the Gentile cities they went, they told their story, they upheld Jesus and the rec- ord shows that many believed. In Ephesus, Corinth, Athens, and even Rome itself, people were actually won to Jesus Christ, so the record reads. But no one imagines that they had exactly the same idea about it that was in the minds of the Jews. And could we have been at Athens with Paul, we would have heard a very different presentation of Christ in the synagogue to the Judeans than the one he gave to the Stoics and philosophers on Mars hill. To the first he traced the religious history of the Jewish people and the evidence of God's special care of them as a nation throughout the centuries, and his great gift of a Messiah in Jesus Christ and their 226 PERSONAL RELIGION privilege to believe him to be such. To the second, he spoke as the broad minded religious philosopher, in a very different terminology, declaring that the God whom they worshipped in ignorance was his God and he had come to proclaim him as the true God to them. That he made the universe, gave to all men life, was the God of all nations, and in him all men lived and moved and had their being and that this God had been divinely revealed to them in the man Jesus. He did not ask them to think of him in the same way that he asked the Jews in the same city to consider him, but he sought nevertheless to win both the Judeans and the Pagan Athenians to the same Christ. The Jews would find in him their promised Messiah and the Gentiles would find in him the truth about the God whom many were so super- stitiously worshipping. In both cases they would be won to Christ. This gives us some idea of the breadth of mind we must have about the subject of winning men to Jesus as we think of the whole world field. Nearly two thousand years have gone since then, there are still followers of Christ in the world and they are continuing the same work of winning others to Christ. We are concerned about the significance of this task today. We know that we are living in an age of remarkable advance over the early Jewish and Pagan. Knowledge has increased in every depart- ment of life. Religious ideas have broadened and have been wonderfully clarified. The idea of a Mes- siah who will give to the Jews a national independ- ence and life is not alive to any great extent, the Pagan world is no more, the Heathen world is aroused to a new religious consciousness and Christianity is SOUL WINNING AND LIFE WINNING 227 nominally the religion of himdreds of millions of the people of the earth. We are at this hour seeking to win Jews, Heathen, and people under direct Chris- tian influence, to Christ and the inquiry concerning the actual meaning of winning another to Christ is exceedingly pertinent. What are we really trying to do? Can we reasonably expect to make Jesus Christ appealing- to all races regardless of religious ideas and prejudices ? Can we approach the Roman- ist and Protestant, the indifferent and anxious, the religious and irreligious, the broad minded and the narrow minded, the literalist and the spiritualist, the philosopher and the practical man of affairs and ex- pect to win each to Jesus ? We answer, ''Yes." There will be many view points to make Christ at- tractive from in this age, even more than in the days of Paul, but no one need think that the task is im- practical or the labor useless. SOUL WINNING The word "soul" in the expression "soul winning" has been ignorantly interpreted. We have reit- erated the sentence of the writer in Proverbs, "He that winneth souls is wise," without much thought as to just what a soul is. To most people it has been that part of a person which is to exist here- after. Therefore soul winning has been largely an activity in the interest of eternity. But regardless of limited ideas of the soul, there is a truth in "soul winning" which needs to be more fully recognized. We may properly apply the term to the essential person himself. It should signify the spiritual centre of the personality. Thus soul winning implies call- 228 PERSONAL RELIGION ing the vital part of the h-uman being out, and win- ning that part to Christ ; it means attaching the real self of the person to Christ. Winning people to him means winning the souls of the people or the essential deepest nature of their personalities. This is the important result to secure. Upon it depends all. Without it, Christian work is a superficial busi- ness. The person himself is to be won to Christ himself. We may use the terms Christ, Lord and Jesus interchangeably when thoughtfully considered. He who is won to Jesus is won to Christ and to God. Paul in 2 Corinthians 5th chapter, uses the words Christ and Lord in this sense. Without doubt he also had some reference to the historical Jesus. The Christ conception of the theologian may be larger than the historical Jesus and greater than any human incarnation, but that does not forbid one associating Jesus with it in its fulness. Let Jesus be to us the one who makes real to us the great spiritual and eternal Presence, God. The very Soul of the uni- verse. Then let each one realize something of the truth that all souls have come from him and live and move in him. Following this logically is the idea that as men are won to Jesus they are brought into conscious fellowship with the great Soul of all life, our God and Father. Probably the Pagans on Mars Hill would have understood this far better than the Jews. And if they did realize the deep spiritual significance of accepting Christ, they knew more of vital religion than did these Jews who simply re- ceived him as their external Messianic deliverer. It was the ditterence between the spiritual and the mate- rial. We today have the privilege of winning the Jews to receive, in the historic Jesus, the one who SOUL WINNING AND LIFE WINNING 229 came to lead them into spiritual and moral deliver- ance both as individuals and as a nation, and the heathen to receive him as the manifestation of the eternal Soul of the universe, and every one, regardless of race or creed, everywhere, to know through him, the soul touch of the infinite Father, who is over all. This is genuine soul winning. This is getting the heart of man into that relationship to the Spiritual Centre of all life which is indispensable to religious and moral world progress. This is winning human- ity to Christ. No person is really won to Christ until the inner "soul" where motives are made, aspi- rations are born, incentives are developed, and pur- poses are framed, is vitally allied to the Soul of all spiritual life and moral dynamics. Time, energy, and talents spent in an honest endeavor to reach the depths of human personality with the message of Jesus Christ, are never wasted. There is no work more essential to humanity than this. Nothing should obscure it. Out of the soul come the issues of life. LIFE WINNING But after all it is the life that proves the winning of the soul. Soul winning without life winning is impossible. Life is the objective of all heart wooing in religion. The life cannot be separated from the soul or the essential self. We are sent to win living humanity. To win others while they live here and now. A famous preacher stirred by the great theme of salvation through Jesus, once asked every one in his great audience to repeat after him the matchless word, "Jesus," and with one mighty shout they 230 PERSONAL EELIGION echoed "Jesus." Then he asked all who could in heart, to repeat' after him the two words, "My Jesus," but on this many of the great multitude could not open their lips. To be won to Jesus so that a person can from the heart, in very truth, state "he is my Jesus" implies not only that one has accepted him with all that he represents of divine grace and love, into the soul, but also signifies that the life has become identified with him and all that he stands for. Everyone who thinks deeply and to whom religious confessions mean what they should, hesitates to make this statement. It leads such to ask many questions. It turns the search light on the life and exposes gi'eat dark discrepancies between what Jesus lived for and what we do. We feel it is hypocritical for us to say, or even to lead any one to infer, that we have been won to Him, unless we can find some evidences in our actual liv- ing, that we are what he would have us be. Being- won to Christ is something far more than sighing over past failure, or shedding tears because of moral collapses, or making good resolutions, or accepting the spiritual ministries of the Lord. It is placing the whole life under his direction, making Christian- ity synonymous with living truly and nobly and lin- ing up one's entire earthly career with his will for us. And no person is won to Jesus unless this is true of him. Some lives are never won. Some only partially won. Some largely won and some almost en- tirely won. But no one is the Christian he should be until all of his life is won. The test of Christian- ity is thus in the life. This makes life winning after all the supreme goal of the messengers of the Master. We as ambassadors of Christ are to think of our- SOUL WINNIITG AND LIFE WUSTNIITG 231 selves as life winners. The fact that the person won to Jesus is to ''leave the low vaulted past" that he is to forsake all forms of heinous sins and live above the animal, criminal and the brute, that he is won only as he does turn definitely away from this, is quickly recognized by all, but perhaps the great primary and positive characteristics of a life won to Jesus have not been so readily perceived and so insistently demanded of those who have taken upon themselves the name of the Son of man. To win a life to Jesus does include this latter phase of the Christian idealism and should never be lost sight of, either by those who are endeavoring to win others or those who are being won. Jesus emphasized the positive side of religion which is manifested in those qualities of character that are far above the shame- fully sinful. He never intimated that his followers were really won to him if they gave evidence of noth- ing more than freedom from the despicable. He was always calling attention to the demand for the noble strong and great qualities of moral and spirit- ual life. His ideal made that of a common Judaism look disgraceful, made the immorality of a Pagan world appear horrible and made the best of the past seem singularly faulty. The world is yet to give us one individual who approximates Jesus' ideal, so strikingly high was its character and pure its spirit. TO JESUs' LIFE CONCEPTION AND WORLD VIEW POINT A life conception and a world view point are at the basis of all life activity. Life cannot be what it ought to be unless one has both. No one is really won to Jesus who does not have His view of both. 232 PEESON'AL RELIGIOI^ One of the greatest tasks of the life winner is to get the one whom he is seeking to win to Jesus to see what Jesus saw as he looked out upon the world. Humanity's world view is very distorted. Men are blind to the significance of facts. Some are short sighted. Some see almost nothing in its cor- rect perspective. The world looks to be chaotic and strange. There seems to be no law governing any- thing. Human beings come on to the earth like little animals and struggle to get enough to eat and drink, fight with their brothers and sisters in the human family, strive to get the best of each other, exist for a few years in luxury or misery and then die. Each one gets all he can out of life and only lets the others take what they can grab. He is shrewd- est who can grasp and hold the most. They do not perceive any foundations on which a human life is being scientifically built, they do not see any divine architect drawing plans or working out moral and religious specifications, they see no stately building of proportion and symmetry being constructed. All is odds and ends, hollows and hills, gasp and bulges. The incoming millions simply fill up the hollows and gaps as others pass on. It is an endless, meaning- less procession to them. There is no solidarity to humanity. 'No moral world order. No purpose in life, no soul to it, no heart beat back of it, no guiding hand controlling it. We were born by chance, met fate on the doorstep, have struggled to keep out of his way ever since and wonder if after all he will not stand at the exit of life and direct our eternal destiny, regardless of how we may protest and strug- gle against his evident power. Jesus viewed human- ity so differently. He thought of human beings in SOUL WIl^ISTING AND LIFE WmKENG 233 a great family, with one Heavenly Father ; each life precious, sacred, and wonderful ; possessing a moral nature and subject to divine laws of a perfected moral order; each dependent upon the other and all dependent upon the Father ; each to be developed ac- cording to a divine pattern and as a whole to come to a state of moral and spiritual perfection in har- mony with the Father's plans and purposes ; each able to respond to and couple up with the forces which that Father has placed in the world for hu- manity's development, until the world shall be a place wherein his will is done. He saw that human life was beautiful when lived normally, and that human- ity had within it the power to respond to the true and divine. It is this view point that must dawn upon the person who is really won to Jesus. Jesus tried to get those early followers to see it. None of them did, but all tried, no doubt. Paul caught a glimpse of it and ere his life was done had a vision of it. Today it ought to be comparatively easy to get all to see it. Given one who truly beholds it and who can, with words in conversation, clearly paint it, and another who desires to perceive it as he ex- presses a sincere purpose to follow Christ, and with this, the illumination of the Spirit of God, which is always ready at hand to impress it, it ought not to be difficult to get the world to perceive it. But simply seeing it, is not winning one to its vision. One may quickly perceive Jesus' world view and then fail to respond to it. It is dissolved into other pic- tures colored by selfish ambitions and materialistic aims. It never impressed itself upon the mind or soul. It was only a flashlight glimpse. To be won to Jesus' view of humanity means to be thrilled by 234 PERSOI^AL RELIGION it, to live in its glory every day, to sit by its color- ings and study them, to receive its outlines to the heart and to walk with it in sight along every ave- nue and alley of human existence. Let the life win- ner know that the other has not been won to Jesus' life conception unless this is accomplished. The life winner must work in the role of an artist and stay with his task until on the retina of the other's soul, this picture is indelibly painted. This is what it implies to win another to Jesus' life conception and world view. How can one's life be won to Jesus, if he does not see what human life really is, what the world scope and significance of it is and how his life is to be related to the entire human scheme ? '^o life can be truly lived without this view point to live from, therefore no life is actually won to Jesus until this vision captivates and controls the individ- ual. Because a person states that he believes in Jesus does not imply that the life has been caught by such a vision. He may go out into the world and stagger through as imintelligently as a drunken man does along the paths of a flower garden. He, even with good intentions in his heart, may actually mutilate the human flowers by his own stupidity, may spoil many a beautiful bed and work disaster to the garden as a whole. But seeing the whole human garden before him as Jesus would have him view it and imderstanding what humanity really is, he ap- proaches each flower wisely, he fits his own life into the general color scheme and makes himself a posi- tive contribution to the development of the human race. Therefore no human life can be made useful in Christ's idea of usefulness unless it first of all be won to behold what the Master sees in the world SOUL WINNING AND LIFE WINNING 235 about it. God does not want us to stumble ignorantly through the garden of humanity. He sent Jesus to us to make clear what it means to live in this garden. To be won to him we must stand with him in the very center of all human life and perceive its genius, weaknesses, potentialities, possibilities, laws of growth and divine destiny. TO RECEIVE THE SPIRIT OF JESUS INTO THE HEART THAT THE DISPOSITION OF THE LIFE MAY BE GENUINELY CHRISTIAN It is one thing to see, it is more to love what you see. Jesus saw hmnanity with clear soul perception and he also had a disposition to love it, to move toward it, to be kind to it, and to seek and to save it. To be won to Jesus implies that we have become recipients of his spirit and are disposed toward hu- manity as he was. Our life, if lived, must be lived in connection with human beings who are around us and of whom we are a part. That life cannot be lived properly, that is Christianly, unless it has the fundamental disposition toward those human be- ings which Jesus had. The disposition is basic to everything. There is little use of considering being a Christian unless this is first secured. All life depends upon it. Our attitude toward anything de- cides our relation to it and our activities in connec- tion with it. We fear there are many good people seeking to secure human betterment in the wrong way. They have the cart before the horse. Men will not be induced to act rightly toward each other until they feel rightly toward each other. They will still be selfish, grasping, unreasonably assertive of 236 PERSONAL RELIGION rights, and even combative and wicked, until they have a different disposition toward their fellows. The great primary need of humanity today is to be won to that attitude toward others which comes only from receiving the spirit of God into their lives. Jesus' life was what it was because of its spirit and hu- manity today must have the same spirit to make its life right. This disposition of love, goodwill, kind- ness, patience and longsuffering is what humanity needs. There is no hope of solving human world problems unless this is secured. This is what our social life must have above ever}i;hing else. ISTo one is really won to Jesus unless he has been brought by divine processes to experience this spirit. Pro- fessing Christians who have said they have accepted Jesus as Saviour and have united with the church with no thought that they must have this spirit to be Christian, have not been actually won to Jesus. The test question when people unite with the church is not, do you accept Jesus as the one to save you from the penalty of your sins hereafter ? but do you re- ceive the spirit of Jesus into your heart and life now ? Do you want to love others ? Do you desire to forgive others? Do you wish above everything else to live in kindness toward everybody and do them good ? Is this the attitude you want to have toward humanity? Do you feel that this is being brought about in your heart just now? These are queries which the persons who wish to unite with our churches should have asked them simply because it is the primary test of being won to Jesus. Hear Paul say, "If anyone has not the Christlike spirit he is not his." Rom. 8 : 9. He knew that only those who were won to his disposition were really won to SOUL WINNING AND LIFE WINNING 23Y him. And this is what we should realize today. We are not to discount convictions regarding; truth and the place that loyalty to truth has in the Christian life. But no amount of loyalty to truth in an abstract sense can take the place of loyalty to truth in the concrete sense or loyalty to Christ's spirit. Is there any loyalty to the truth of love or its expression of kindness, if there is no love in the heart or kindness in the life? Therefore our task as life winners is again specifically outlined for us. We are to win others to receive his spirit. It will probably be done not so much by preaching to humanity about the spirit of Jesus, as by living with humanity in the spirit of Jesus. You cannot talk a person into this spirit as easily as you can love him into it. The best winner is therefore the best lover. But conver- sational love is fruitful. Many a person is won by it. Couple the actual helping of another by kindness and love with the oral appeal, and great souls are moved toward Christ and his claims. TO ADOPT THE ETHICAL PKINCIPLES OF JESUS IN THE LIFE To be won to Jesus signifies the ethical response of the life to him. Jesus came to establish in man an ethical consciousness and no one could be won to him unless there was some response to his claims. Matthew Arnold said life was three-fourths conduct. Jesus certainly made it much of life. His kingdom could not be established in human life unless men adopted the principles of right living which were essential to that kingdom, therefore no person could be truly won to him if he did not recognize the 238 PERSONAL RELIGIOIT principles which Jesus championed and if he failed to incorporate them into his life. When Jesus asked men to "follow him" he wanted them to know what he expected of them. It was something more than to be with him while he preached and worked mir- acles. There was a distinctive moral note in it all. 'No man was won to him who simply stepped over on his side of the company, believed he was a wonderful man or God's Son and said so publicly. It was the one who thoughtfully considered the principles of righteousness and justice he stood for and was deter- mined that these principles should be his very own. There were some who followed him for personal gain, and because he was popular with the common people, and because they were swept in with his believers during the excitement of the hour, but their super- ficiality was soon tested. When he made plain to them that his was a spiritual kingdom, that it implied loyalty to principles of character, even at personal cost, then one by one they went to their own com- pany. They were not willing to make his princi- ples actually theirs, therefore they left him. The person who is won to Jesus is the one who responds morally to the code of life conduct which he asked men to accept. It implies a recognition, grasp and assent to this ideal of living which is nothing more nor less than identification of the conscience and will to that which Jesus considered right. So that the person won studies Jesus and his teachings seri- ously, considers Jesus and his teachings favorably, accepts Jesus and his teachings authoritatively, ap- plies those teachings to his own life practically, and incorporates the principles of those teachings into his own life conscientiously. How clear it is that the SOUL WINNING AND LIFE WINNING 239 only life which is truly won to Jesus is that one which is being lived out according to the ethical principles which he so forcefully and repeatedly declared were the true principles on which the whole moral order of the world was based. A profession of faith in him without the life thus morally governed would be not only hypocritical but disastrous to the life itself and also to the Kingdom he came to establish. Noth- ing can endure except that which is molded accord- ing to the eternal laws of right which govern the moral world order. One is won to Christ as he thinks this honestly and feels it in his deepest soul. It is not the person who decides to do what Jesus would have him do simply because he desires respectabil- ity or temporary moral success or personal achieve- ment, but the one who responds so truly to Christ's moral maxims in his heart and mind that he really lives for goodness, practices justice, and would rather be right than own a million, if the alternative were forced upon him. No one may reasonably think he is a Christian until such ethical fruits are realized in his life. And no one has a right to think he has won another to Christ until he sees in his life plain honesty, square dealing, business integrity, simple kindness, true consideration of others and those acts in daily life relations which manifest the essence of the ethical teachings of Jesus. TO DEVOTION TO JESUS' IDEAL Jesus' ideal was love, righteousness, and brother- hood among men, or in other words the Kingdom on earth. That kingdom could only be established as the religious and ethical principles which he cham- 240 PERSONAL RELIGION" pioned became operative in the lives of all men. Jesus depended upon those who were his followers to help realize this ideal in humanity. This de- manded of each early disciple a devotion to his ideal. The basis of this devotion was a passion to do his will. The souls of those first followers were aflame with enthusiasm. They became living dynamos with one objective in mind and heart. Everything else was secondary. What Jesus wanted to be done was the thing to be done. They were absorbed in heart and mind with the Master's plan. This enthusiasm was not expressed in sentimental gushings but in actual activity in the cause of the Kingdom. There was a glad cooperation with Jesus in his Kingdom task. They associated themselves with Jesus to help do his work. Their ideal of life was to be "well pleasing unto the Lord" a personal devotion to him, but it was to be manifested in hearty cooperation with him in the actual tests of his Kingdom. He depended upon their cooperation to have it done. He left it with them when he went away and their devotion to him was measured by their willingness to have a part in what he came to accomplish. The early disciples were workers to- gether with God to secure the Kingdom of God on earth. This cooperation demanded a consecration of themselves including everything they possessed to the interests of that Kingdom ideal. So they laid every- thing they had at the feet of the Master and proved the genuineness of their devotion by their conse- cration. They sold their earthly goods, forsook home and loved ones, left their fishing nets by the sea side and gave every talent of heart, mind and life to secure Jesus' ideal in hmnanity. To be sure some SOUL WINNING AND LIFE WINNING 241 did not continue, the task was harder than they at first thought, the Kingdom did not come as they ex- pected it would, their enthusiasm being born out of an apocalyptic hope and that hope failing of realiza- tion, cooled, and many of the most devoted fell by the way side and gave up the work. But some re- mained faithful to the end of their lives. These were the ones who were fully won to Christ. To be actually won to Christ in those days implied just this passion, cooperation, consecration and faithful- ness in service. We are removed some 1900 years from that day, and the ideal of Jesus is still unreal- ized. Jesus depends upon his followers today as he did then. His spirit is moving upon men to secure their devotion to his purpose in the world. There is no other way that the Kingdom can come. That spirit is working to win men to the task at hand. The call to Christ is a call for this service. As in those days, only those who were willing to take up this task, were actually won to him, so it is today. As no follower of his who went out then to win, could truthfully declare that he had won another unless the person won gave evidence of devotion to humanity in an endeavor to actualize Jesus' ideal, so none of us can state in truth that he has won another to Jesus unless he feels sure that the life of the person won has been placed at the disposal of the Master to secure the Kingdom of righteousness and love in the world. This imperative should be even more clearly recognized today than then. Converts should only be counted as they manifest the same devotion. They should be made to under- stand that they have not yielded to Christ until they possess a passion to bring about in humanity the 242 PERSONAL RELIGION conditions of righteousness and brotherhood. Their life view point is this ideal, their disposition toward others is the love which will secure this ideal, the principles of their own lives are those which operate to realize this ideal, and now the proof of all three of these is the actual life devotion to accomplish this ideal. When the individual has come, in his religious and ethical experience, to this condition, then we may state he has been really won to Christ. And there is no reason why when one first becomes an avowed Christian, even in the tender years of teens, he should not understand that to be won to Jesus signifies just this. Christian lives should be started with correct conceptions of what Jesus ex- pects. Far better have fewer profess to be won, and have them realize more fully what it signifies, than to have multitudes led into superficial Christian careers. No pastor or evangelist can be excused from making the call of Christ so clear that no one who hears shall mistake what it means to be won to Jesus. It will be better for the Kingdom in the future if we of the present deal fairly and frankly with all. There will be more truth also in the reports of our churches if statistics of those won to Jesus chronicle the actual winning of souls and lives to the soul of Jesus and to the life ideal and ministry which he so beautifully personified in his own earthly career and which he so clearly and emphatically stated in his appeals to humanity to follow him. Let us do away entirely with superficial, meaningless records. Shall we not call the membership of our churches to appre- ciate the significance of "life winning" ? Shall we not lead one and all to see that only those who, hav- ing the vision and spirit of the Master, devote their SOUL WINNING AND LIFE WINNING 243 time and talents in loving ministry to humanity in order that the Kingdoms of the world may become the Kingdoms of our Lord and Christ (which means that love and right and brotherhood shall be uni- versal), are actually and fully won to Jesus. No doubt, it is impossible to have the conception and experience thus outlined as clear, real and compre- hensive at first as it will be in later years, for each year in the life of the sincere follower of Jesus is a record of being won to larger, greater and more Christlike privileges and ministries, but all should be won to this conception and experience up to his capacity at first that the life may have the privi- lege of developing correctly into those larger visions and activities which it is divinely destined for. We should be sure that no life under our influence is won to less than the genius of Jesus' ideal, at the start and that education and direction are given to it intelli- gently all the way along. This is evangelism indeed. CHAPTER ELEVEN MAKING DISCIPLES JESUS, just before he left his disciples, took them into his counsel and gave them directions con- cerning the nature of the work which they were to do in the world. As an integral part of a masterful plan, he declared that they were to go forth and make disciples. This was to be considered as a very important and fundamental phase of their service in his name. They were disciples and they were to make disciples. This fact has led the Christian church to maintain that in the broad scheme of the Christian objective, the making of individual dis- ciples has its high place. The Kingdom cannot come without it. No effort to ameliorate human condi- tions, important as this service is, will ever be substi- tuted for making actual personal disciples of Jesus. They are both essential. As the disciples of early Christianity did, so are we to do. That is, the making of disciples is recog- nized by this local body of Christians to be an essen- tial part of our task in the community and the world. With this true, a very pertinent inquiry is concern- ing the nature of the task which is before us. What does it imply to make a disciple of Jesus Christ today? It is exceedingly important for us to have this in our minds before we actually take up the work. If our business is quite largely the bring- 244 MAKING DISCIPLES 245 ing into being of live disciples of Jesus Christ, then we must know what a live disciple is. As the em- ployee in a manufacturing plant, who is making defi- nite articles, must have a clear conception of what he is to make, so we as servants of our Master must have the true idea of what Jesus has asked us to do. We must mentally see a disciple before we try to actualize one. We must know so well what he is that we will recognize him when he is made. We should understand the nature of discipleship and the process of securing it so perfectly that we will be cognizant of the beginning of the process in an indi- vidual and be able to recognize progress toward its consummation if it is there. To ascertain and under- stand the Master's idea of his disciples is our hope in this study, then we can with intelligence obey his command to go forth and make disciples. We are not making mechanics, or financiers, or philosophers, or soldiers, we are told to make disci- ples of Jesus, therefore to Jesus we go that we may know what a disciple is. We shall not discuss the process, or the field, we are seeking a definition, a description, and an ideal, in order to do the work intelligently. THE DISCIPLE AND JESUs' PLAN Jesus came to do a definite work for humanity ac- cording to the will of his Father who had sent him. That work was to establish a Kingdom of righteous- ness on the earth and to make real within man the life which is eternal. At thirty years of age, he started out to accom- plish his holy purpose and of necessity had some well 246 PEESONAL RELIGION defined plan of action. By public discourses in the open, and by private conversations with individuals he disclosed the religious and ethical ideals which he came to make known, the principles which formed the basis of his Kingdom plan and also the spirit and character which were essential to his ideal. As a distinct step in advance toward securing his Kingdom ideal, he chose twelve disciples to assist him. 'No great cause can be made successful without leaders. After a night of prayer in the mountain and with great care and seriousness, he called twelve men, who came from the ordinary vocations of life, men of humble birth and station and of no culture and particular fitness, to be the leaders of his divine enter- prise. They, with others, had been following him under the charm of his personality and the hope of his message, but now they were selected one by one and called by name and told that they were to be his chosen representatives and his close companions in this plan which the Father had given him. The word disciple occurs in the Gospel records some 230 times. Subsequent to the Gospels, the word is found some thirty times in the New Testament. It signifies "trained one." There is a clear distinction between the word "disciple" and "believer." Every disciple was a believer, but not every believer was a disciple. Belief or faith in Jesus Christ was the open door through which the individual passed on the way to discipleship. But simple belief in Jesus did not make one a disciple. To be a disciple one must be trained. The objective of faith in Jesus was discipleship but faith was not the beginning and end of discipleship. Faith was the introduction to train- ing. MAKING DISCIPLES 247 Training could not be secured without schooling and experience, so Jesus as teacher matriculated these potential disciples in his school of religion and ethics and also in the school of actual life experience. He daily taught them truth about God, his nature, character, disposition towai'd his children and his will; the dignity and value of human life, the rela- tion of men to God, to each other, the meaning of life itself, the ethical standards which should gov- ern mankind and the spirit and principles which are eternal in the moral order of the world and which were quite essential in securing the objective which they together should now work for. These principles are to be found in that remarkable discourse named ^'The Sermon on the Mount." He taught them dur- ing three years of preaching and ministry, sometimes in perfect quiet alone and at other times by illus- tration and uttered precept as he dealt with the peo- ple about him. They were taught by being with him, listening to him, watching him, praying by his side, noting how he dealt with intricate moral problems and witnessing his wonderful works. John 15: 15: "Everything I have learned of my Father, I have made known to you." (See Mark 10 :1 also.) This reveals that he gave them the best of instruc- tion. He also gave them work to do, that by expe- rience they might learn. Many a mistake did they make, but at the end of the three years they had been taught much and had learned something of the real nature of his kingdom, of the ideal he came to make real to humanity and of the divine purpose of their discipleship. Jesus often reproved them for not learning more. They were evidently very lim- ited in ability and insight. He was obliged to leave 248 PERSOI^AL RELIGIOIT them at his death conscious that they were after all poorly trained. Their ideas of religion were far from being mature, as his last conversation with them re- corded in Acts 1 : 6-8 revealed, but he left his king- dom task with them and told them to go forth and make disciples. They were the best leaders he could secure. They were to train others in the truths which he had taught them. This was their business and was imperative in view of the object of his mission to earth, and it was only as they trained individuals in his religious and ethical ideals and principles that they could make disciples. THE DISCIPLE DEFINED We are removed some 1900 years from the school of Jesus, in which those early disciples were trained, and it is possible that some ideas concerning disciple- ship may have received credence which are not in accord with his teaching. But there ought to be no difficulty in ascertaining from that teaching what a Christian disciple is, therefore what the modem church is asked to do in making disciples. As there were then, so there are now, certain steps to be taken by and certain conditions to secure in the individual before he may be properly considered a disciple of the Master. They are as follows: I. One must be a genuine student of Jesus' ideals of religion and life. Humanity must find Jesus the teacher. The individual must first get into contact with him and his teaching. How shall this be done today ? In Jesus' day, prospective disciples could approach him personally and gain from him by personal con- MAKIISTG DISCIPLES 249 versation his ideas of religion, but this is not possible today. Our approach must be through the record which in the Providence and wisdom of God has been given to the world in the synoptic Gospel stories of his life. Today, by means of these records, one may ex- amine the teachings of the Master and ascertain what his conception of a disciple was. This contact with the truths which Jesus uttered is essential as an initial step toward discipleship. First hand reading of the ISTew Testament is therefore important to se- cure personal progress in this matter. Through the divine record we get into contact with the divine teacher. There is a mystical contact also but it needs the direction of the written record. It is there that we secure the story of his life and a statement of his ideas. Our ideas of what Jesus would have us be as his disciples must not be allowed to differ radically from the trend of his teaching in the ISTew Testa- ment. Discipleship without perusal of the message of the Master is liable to be lopsided, or empty. It develops vagaries and delusions. True discipleship cannot be secured apart from contact with the verit- able message of Jesus. The object of this perusal of the written record is to become a student of it. To read is not enough. Disciples can only be made after serious study of Jesus' ideals. Jesus must be thought of as a teacher and the relationship of pupil and teacher established. Discipleship can only be realized through pupil- ship. Men must make a genuine study of Jesus' religion and life. It cannot be appreciated or known without study. 'No person can become a disciple of Jesus by merely expressing some belief in him, or 250 PERSONAL RELIGIO:^^ uniting with some church, or endeavoring to live respectably. There must be hard work as a student. He must take time with text book in hand. One can no more be a disciple of Jesus without study than he can be a scholar in any realm with- out it. Some people refuse to study under Jesus, therefore discipleship is impossible to them. An in- quiring heart or disposition to ?*udy reveals the spirit of a Christian pupil. But the road to discipleship requires something more than a willingness or anxiety to know, it demands patient perusal and serious con- sideration. This study must be made intelligently. The times in which Jesus lived should be understood, the view- points of the writers of the record appreciated, the occasion of the sayings realized, the manner of the preservation of the records known, and some con- ception of the hopes and aspirations of the writers held, in order to interpret properly the truths which Jesus taught. With preconceptions laid aside, the facts before the student, in the light of IsTew Testament scholar- ship, the student should seek honestly to understand the principles and spirit which were central in Jesus' ideal of religion and life. There may be inaccuracy in statement, omissions or interpolations, but the trend of Jesus' teaching will be evident. The stu- dents will ask for show of evidence, will not be ab- sorbed in details but will work hard to secure light regarding the great essentials in Christ's teaching. By thus doing, he will be on the way to disciple- ship. 11. One must learn the inner content of Jesus' religion and life. The object of being a pupil is to MAKING DISCIPLES 251 learn. Learning is the pupil's task under a teacher. One becomes a disciple of Jesus Christ as he learns. The test of discipleship is learning. The true disciple, i. e., the trained Christian, intel- lectually perceives the central truths of Jesus' relig- ious message to the world. He grasps the funda- mentals which Jesus taught. Lie not only reads and studies, but learns. After being in the class room with the Master, through perusal of his life record, he is conscious that he understands him. He has gotten something. He has a vision of the ideal that Jesus was portraying. He says to himself, ''I see it." ^'It is plain to me." ''I have learned the con- tent of the religion he came to reveal." Study has accomplished something. The mind has conceived what the teacher sought to make clear. This is an epoch in the life of any human being. It is the great initial step toward discipleship. No person can be a disciple of Jesus without it. He may be some- thing of a Christian, something of a believer, may have the spirit of Christ within him, but he is not the trained Christian. And what has he learned ? He has learned that the heart of Jesus' religion is love to God and love to man. ^'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself," and that this twofold love must be possessed in the heart. He has learned that the fundamentals of Jesus' religion issue from the heart in a life of rev- erence, righteousness, justice, mercy, soberness, and unselfishness. That as men forsake sin, become Christlike, walk humbly before God in love for him and each other, they are manifesting the religion that Jesus held up as ideal. He learns that Jesus came 252 PEESON'AL RELIGION to bring humanity to this ideal. Learning this, he is on the way toward discipleship. He is ready to be made into one. One does not understand how he could be an intelligent disciple of Jesus if he did not mentally perceive this. He also learns that a disciple is called to a life of patient endurance, self sacrifice, for it was he who said, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." It is very clear to him that there will be more or less hard- ship in the life of a disciple. He is called to a strenuous career. It may imply becoming a martyr to the cause of truth and righteousness. He also learns that it is more than simply endeavoring to live a virtuous life. It signifies service in the inter- ests of himianity, it implies giving of one's material resources to the needy, it means spending a life time in proclaiming divine truths, overcoming evil, cor- recting error, in a real effort to make dominant in human society the principles of Jesus' religion. More than this, he learns that discipleship implies a life of surrender to the spirit of Christ. Whatever that spirit presses one to be, to do, and wherever that spirit calls one to go, it must be done. It signifies the supremacy of the spiritual in the soul and in all activities of life. He learns that to be a disciple of Jesus one must possess within himself the spirit of the Master and give his life to spiritual objec- tives. All of this he mentally apprehends as a stu- dent and learner. III. One must know the experience of Jesus' re- ligion and life. Learning implies more than mere mental percep- tion of the great principles of Jesus' religion and life. MAKING DISCIPLES 253 "Ro person is a real disciple of Jesus' who simply understands what Jesus taught and realizes what his objective was. One may be ever so exact in his analysis of Jesus' ideas and ever so correct in inter- preting them and yet be very far from his disciple- ship. Intellectual conceptions are but the open door- way to the approach to discipleship, not the proof of it. There must be a spiritual response to the teach- ings of Christ. It is not the ability to state the truths of Jesus that makes one a disciple but rather the soul apprehension of them. They must be re- ceived into the inmost being, must become a part of the personal desires, aims, and hopes. They must be experienced in the heart and lived in the life. Not only must the disciple know what Jesus was trying to accomplish in the world morally and spirit- ually, but he must know the spirit of Jesus, he must embody some of this religion in his own personality. The truth of spiritual supremacy must be lived out in him, the principles of righteousness and justice must be dominant in him, the spirit of love and unsel- fishness must be manifest in him, the passion for the good of all regardless of individual right must burn in him. As this is true he is a disciple of the Master. One realizes that this signifies the applications of the principles of love, righteousness and brotherhood to every phase of human life. It applies to the world of business, of politics, of neighborhood life, of every realm the follower of Jesus enters. As he lives these principles out he makes real his discipleship. Scholarship in religion implies the knowledge of the Lord in the heart and life, signifies a Christian 254 PERSOIS'AL RELIGION experience of depth, in which the presence of God is real, the power of God to overcome sin and to arise above material control is a fact and the fruits of the spirit-love, purity, self control, peace, and kind- ness are the natural result of the life of Christ in the soul. Ethical development is what Jesus sought in his disciples, because it was eternally indispensable to the true ideal of the religious life. Scholarship in discipleship could imply nothing less. The knowl- edge of the Lord is not some mystical perception, some uncanny spiritual intuition, which does nothing more than to enable one to understand religious mys- teries and to penetrate the unseen ; it is not some supernatural power which gives one a seventh heaven experience and keeps man far above everything mun- dane and human, but rather that sense of the divine which makes God one with his children and that Christlikeness of character which manifests itself in loving kindness and justice in all human relation- ships. To learn Christ means to be made like him, to have his spirit and ideals, to deal with humanity as he did, to make manhood synonymous with right- eousness and to become absorbed in the fine art of living for others. This is scholarship in Christian discipleship. IV. One must devote himself and his life to the Kingdom objective of Jesus Christ. Jesus called his disciples purposely to extend his Kingdom enterprise and through them to realize his world wide ideal. They were not asked to follow him for what they could secure for themselves, but for what they could accomplish in his Kingdom plan. With this true, and the fact that he taught them MAKING DISCIPLES 255 the extent of his plan and their important place in it, it is obvious that they actually learned of him as they became obedient to his wishes and devoted them- selves to the task he had outlined for them. Learning of Jesus implies activity in his cause. The mind conceives, the soul responds and the life ■poivers become active. The disciple is not a recipient of the grace of God primarily, he is a messenger of his Lord. He is a force to accomplish the purpose of Christ in the world. He is a factor in establish- ing the kingdom. Indifference to the needs of the world, and inactivity in the Master's propaganda sig- nifies poor work in the school of Christ. Lessons have not been learned and discipleship is not real- ized. He who does not love all human beings, who does not labor hard to help all, who does not give freely of time and talents to make Christ real to all, who does not become aggressive in the cause of right- eousness on the earth and who does not take up with zeal the planetary mission of Christ, has not learned his lessons and is not a scholar in the school of Christ. He is really not a disciple. He may be something of a believer but not a trained follower of the Master. We should remember that all dis- ciples are trained men and women. The learning of the principles of discipleship also implied the willingness to go to any extreme of self renunciation or sacrifice in order to fulfil the Lord's will among men. The dedication of one's self to the cause of Christ signified a willingness to snap every tie of earth or home or material success. Jesus said, '^Whosoever doth not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." Devotion to the divine objective of Jesus for humanity accepts 256 PERSONAL RELIGION the most exacting demands. He who has truly learned is willing. This willingness proves disciple- ship. Without it there are no diplomas. Matt. 16:21-28. Thus we perceive that a disciple is a well rounded Christian personality, is an individual excellently trained in the fundamentals of religion, in the ex- perience of a living God within, in the ethical ideals of Jesus, in the principles which are essential to these ideals, in the practice of those principles in daily life, in the science of kingdom advancement and in the faith, courage, stability, and aggressiveness which are indispensable to heroic Christianity. He is one who has learned something and who manifests his religious and ethical scholarship in his ideas, in his spirit and in his service for hiunanity. He is an educated Christian. He has passed through the ele- mentary grades and has proven himself capable of meeting successfully any test his teacher imposes upon him. He is capable of teaching and becoming a powerful propagandist in the interests of Christ's Kingdom. The consideration of the truth regarding this sub- ject may lead many of us to ask, "Who then are dis- ciples ?" "Are there any in the world ?" "Have there ever been any ?" Looking back through Chris- tian history we find many. One of the finest types of discipleship is disclosed in Paul. He was far more intelligent concerning the significance of dis- cipleship than any of the immediate followers of Jesus and yet none as holy, brave, unflinching, sac- rificing and as devoted to the Kingdom ideal of Jesus, as he. (See 2 Cor. 11 : 22-31 ; Phil. 3 : 7-16.) And since that day every generation of Christian MAKING DISCIPLES 257 believers lias had its quota of men and women who have revealed that they had learned the lessons of discipleship and were absorbed in living them out in daily life. In every church in this world today in- cluding many in heathen lands, there are those who beautifully picture the meaning of the word disciple. Men and women of character who, up to their finan- cial strength and mind and soul capabilities, are pas- sionately devoted to Christ and his Kingdom. Hosts of missionaries who have left all and given the life for the people in darkness. There is not a better exposition of the meaning of discipleship than the Student Volunteer movement. Think of it ! 5000 young men and women of culture, the very cleanest and strongest of the land, willing and glad at this moment to devote their lives to the redemption of humanity anywhere and everywhere. Dr. John R. Mott is as great and outstanding a religious person- ality to this age as Paul was to his. Williams, the missionary to Eromanga, said to a chief of one Island, who refused him the privilege of staying, ■■'Very well, we will go to other islands. We may (lie, but others will follow," He was soon killed and there has been an army to take his place. What about the fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, who are living holy lives, above reproach, who are noble and true and who are giving their all to help loved ones in the home, to relieve the poor, to right the wrongs about them and to make this world one of love and peace ? What about the business men who are devoting time and money even to 20 percent of their income to the cause of Christ in the world ? What about many in the laboring masses who are struggling every day for human betterment ? Surely 258 PEESONAL RELIGION these are disciples of Jesus. The definition of a disciple which we have set forth, is true, we believe, to the teachings of Jesus. It implies developing individuals to be like Jesus and to become powerful, aggressive personalities in the great cause of his Kingdom. With this fact be- fore us, we understand what we are to do. The great- ness of the church's task is evident. To accomplish it, we shall need to bring humanity in touch with the truths of Jesus by the study of the ISTew Testa- ment, we shall need to bring them under the influence of his spirit in prayer, to school them by patient work in teaching, to make the church a place where dis- cipleship is intelligently conceived, and where dis- ciples are truly made. Nothing short of fully trained believers is our goal. Any methods which do not aim at and produce these results, we must taboo. Our work as churches in making disciples must be funda- mental, scientific, thorough, and in every way com- mensurate with the greatness and dignity of the task given to us. We are to emphasize intelligent, spirit- ual, and ethical development as necessary to disciple- ship. CHAPTER TWELVE THE CONTAGION OF PERSONALITY WITHOUT question the greatest fact of earth is a human being, and the outstanding truth about a human being is that he is a person, (one who has a mind,) and the fact of greatest significance about this person is that he is a personality. We are coming to realize this more and more each day and the emphasis is upon personality because we are discovering the fundamental truth of the universe. There is a growing conviction among all thinking people that personality is not only the key to the meaning of man, but also of nature and God. Man has been studying himself and the universe ever since his reason asserted itself and the scholars tell us that he has come to the conclusion that the whole affair, these movements of material things, this life develop- ment about us, this struggling, laboring human na- ture, is all a drama of personality. Today he is giv- ing himself to the study of this characteristic of humanity with new zeal, conscious that every branch of science, philosophy, art, industry and theology is vitally effected by it. He has not been able to define it perfectly but he is convinced that he faces a fact and that this fact is the great basic one of all crea- tion. So impressed is he with this that he seldom refers to man as soul today, the terms person and personality having taken that place. The latter terms 259 260 PEKSONAL KELIGION are stronger, more inclusive and more appropriate in view of religious and scientific investigation. This study is concerned with but one phase of the subject of personality, namely, its power in the development of humanity itself. Great personalities have been and are the secret of the progress of the world in all realms of human activity. The history of the human race is after all a story of the lives of its heroes and heroines. All mighty movements have centred in some person. Men have drawn the people of communities, of states and of nations to themselves. Froude represents Julius Ca?sar drawing men unto him as a magnet draws par- ticles of iron and steel. Another has said that the rude Koman soldiers could no more escape his mag- netic presence than they could dodge the gravity of the earth. The historian tells us that the hand grip of ISTapoleon was like a powerful electric shock. Garibaldi had such power with men that thousands of Italy's noblest were willing to follow him even to a martyr's death. The birth of our own nation in independence, after suffering and hardship, was because of the association of loyal men and women around George Washington. The present is also re- plete with illustrations of the same truth. Germany as a nation today is rallying to the personality of the Kaiser, England to Sir Edward Grey and Lloyd George, and United States to President Wilson. In fact where does history or human life anywhere in the past or in the present reveal conspicuous prog- ress, momentous movements, without close association with some outstanding personality. Every nation has its King or Czar or President, every army its gen- eral, every cause its leader, and every home its head. THE CONTAGION OF PERSONALITY 261 Dominant personality has so affected the human race, that one said, ''It was Socrates, not the Athenians, who gave man the ideas handed down to us by his disciples, Xenophoii and Plato ; it was Onosar, not the Roman legions, who conquered Gaul, invaded Briton, vanquished Pompey and unified the Roman World ; it was Frederick the Great, not the Prussian army, who kept at bay the three great European powers for seven years; it was Napoleon, not his marshals, nor even the spirit of the Revolution, who entered nearly every capital as conqueror, created Kings, and was the arbiter of Europe for a dozen years." The world's religious movements have centred in great personalities. In the primitive religions God was more or less unapproachable but as time went on, man, in his devotion to human personality, actually deified himself. He could not get near God, there- fore he made man God. The story of Julius Csesar is familiar. Shakespeare said he was the foremost man in the world, but because of his many triumphs, his own people concluded that no honor was too high for him and made him a god. His statue was erected in the Capitol and another bore the inscription "Caesar the demigod." His image was also carried in the procession of the gods. This reveals the remarkable power of personality in the religious world. In pagan life, previous to this time, the re- ligious leadership of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle was very evident. And almost contemporaneous with them Gautama, surnamed Buddha, was drawing the people of India to himself as a religious leader. And what shall we say of the prophets of Israel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Micah and Malachi, mighty men of religious conviction and zeal who were command- 262 PERSONAL RELIGION ing the attention of the Jewish people? How evi- dent it is that the religions life of this nation was developed around these noble human personalities. Then when we consider Christianity, there is one ma- jestic personality, Jesus of Nazareth, who stands out in bold outline. There he is looming up against the black background of a dissolute, luxurious pagan world, and a fossilized and legalized Judaism. The religious inclinations of the school of Athens had given place to conceited gossiping about everything new, the prophets in Israel were no more, the dev- otee of Judaism was worshipping the letter and feeding on the husk of religion while the masses of the people were wandering in the twilight of a re- ligious consciousness which bordered very closely on the blackness of night. Quietly and unostentatiously, Jesus, the Son of man, arose and took his place in human life. He had no prestige or peculiar preroga- tives which would startle the world. He was the son of Joseph and Mary, a very humble pair, he labored at his carpenter's bench during the day, and developed as a young man of faith, high ideals, and religious zeal. He simply had a life to live and to give to those about him. At thirty years of age, he began his public ministry, by confessing in public baptism loyalty to the righteous idealism of John the Baptist. He became a religious propagandist, be- gan his preaching tours, entered into religious con- versation with all whom he could reach, performed wonderful works of healing and soon commanded the attention of the people of his neighborhood and coun- try. It was not long before crowds of people were drawn to him, listened to him, considered him, and were talking about him. He became the centre of the THE CONTAGION OF PERSONALITY 263 life of the people in Palestine. He was the topic of conversation in town and city. He was the exponent of a religion which has heen named after him. This religion is onrs today, nearly two thousand years after. From him, as a personality, the Christian religion came and today hundreds of millions of peo- ple on the earth recognize him to be the central figure in all religious history. The religious life of the entire globe is more and more attracted to him. To the religion which was personified in his personality, the world owes its high moral idealism, its religious culture, its educational advancement and its humani- tarian development. These considerations lead us to ask what is the significance of human personality ? Why is it that all movements including those of a religious nature start with and depend upon the genius of a person? We would answer first of all because personality is the basis of all human life development, God him- self being personality, and humanity itself being made up of many personalities, forming a circle of personalities in which each individual one moves. The second reason is because of the capacity of per- sonality for fellowship. It is distinctively social in its nature. This is no new truth ; others have stated that Plato recognized it in his Republic, Jesus em- phasized it in his Kingdom ideal and all recall Paul's words, "None liveth unto himself." It is because the true self never comes to its full self apart from other selves, and it is needed in fellowship with all other selves, to complete them, that personality is the secret of all great human movements. It is because the interrelations of personality are integral in the structure of human life that humanity so naturally 264 PERSO^TAL RELIGION clusters about a personality. God made it so. It is not a freak of nature but a part of the divine plan. Then another reason is because of the contagion of personality, or the power inherent in a human being to influence another. Personality is a centre of life power, a charged entity. It can move, attack, stick to, effect and change. No person is walled in, unable to reach out and touch others, and no person is im- potent to affect others. Intercommunication is be- cause of power to move out toward another. This movement produces a result. This result is what we perceive and realize in great human movements. Some personalities are particularly strong, they have within them ability of mind, an intensity of nature, a dynamic of soul and a richness of life which over- flows to others. No one can come in contact with them without being conscious of it. We meet them, are drawn toward them, are impressed by them and are made stronger for having been with them. We go away refreshed, vitalized and encouraged. As we have heard them talk we have been led to think, at times have felt condemned, then aroused, then in- spired to be and do. This is all because of the con- tagion or personality. And this is the reason why one man will affect a whole community, will direct an entire nation, will lead a race of people, will com- mand a religious following and change the history of the world. It was the overflowing of the divine life inherent within the personality of Jesus that gave to Chris- tianity its early remarkable advancement. The re- ligious forces of the universe seemed to have been summed up in him. He arose to manhood surcharged with the dynamic power of God. No ordinary human THE CONTAGION OF PERSONALITY 2C5 personality was he. Were we to combine the orator- ical genius of a Demosthenes, the philosophical abil- ity of a Plato, the statesmanship of a Lincoln, the political force of a Mazzini and the religious fervor of a Paul in one man, we would yet seek for some explanation of the power of Jesus Christ. Amid the fiercest opposition, an opposition which eventually brought on his death, he was able to charm the people by his words, to win those first disciples to his ideals, imbue them with his spirit and secure their promise to follow him anywhere he might go. They did not fully understand him, they failed to perceive the real genius of his Kingdom enterprise, but they caught his spirit and best of all began to live the life he outlined for them. They had gotten something from him which made them new men, and flaming evangels of a new message, which carried them forward with irresistible power, which enabled them to bear priva- tions and suffering most severe and which filled them with an enthusiasm that kept increasing in its in- tensity as the years went by. He certainly affected their personalities. They were sent forth to affect other personalities. As Socrates affected Plato, and Plato moved Aristotle, so Jesus affected Philip and Philip moved Nathaniel. Not that the personality of Socrates was exactly the same in essence or power as that of Jesus but the method was identical, namely the contagion of personality. Thus Peter caught the contagion from Jesus and through him thousands of others at one time and it was not long before the personality of Jesus was affecting humanity in a large area. It arrested Paul and through him was carried to the people of Asia Minor and Greece and Home even as far west as Spain and as far north 266 PERSONAL RELIGION as England. That personality has affected human- ity so powerfully by contagion through other human personalities that today, 1900 years after his death, we are feeling the power of its genius and life. Some one has said — "The divine plan seems to be to furnish a splendid specimen in the realm of personality and then wait for humanity to reproduce the type. One Luther — many Protestants. One Wesley — many Methodists. One Shakespeare — many poets. One Raphael — many painters. One Sankey — many sing- ers. One architect — many builders. One Christ — and millions of Christians." The church itself is the result of the contagion of personality. In those early days just after Jesus died it was composed of companies of human beings who had been brought together by meeting those who were Christians, and adopting Christian faith. Within 100 years after Jesus left the earth, the coun- try around the Mediterranean was dotted with com- munities of Jesus' disciples. They had come into being as the direct result of contact with other dis- ciples of Jesus, therefore it was the contagion of personality which had accomplished it. Christians from one centre went to and affected people of an- other, with the result that other human personali- ties received the Christ spirit through them and new centres of Christian life were started. The develop- ment of Christianity has been the repetition of this process down through the centuries since. Christian- ity in humanity is but a chain of linked personali- ties from Christ to the present. And there have been practically no disciples of Jesus made except through the influence of some person. No churches anywhere during all this time have been founded THE CONTAGION OF PEKSONALITY 267 which cannot be traced to the direct contact of hu- man personality upon others. If an experience meet- ing could be held in any Christian church in this world and each member were asked to tell what led him to decide to be a Christian and unite with the church, the answers would reveal with practically no variation, that some personality, surcharged with the spirit of Christ, had gotten into contact with each life and had influenced the true self Godward. There would be a long list of the names of preachers, par- ents, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, friends, Sun- day School teachers and others who had helped these to joy and service in Jesus' name. And probably the one individual, the single personality, which would stand out as being the most potent to effect this result would be that of mother. Not sermons, addresses, and lessons alone but these plus personality. Not rebukes, hints and invitations but these plus person- ality. Had it not been for the persons themselves who influenced others there would be no church today. It is also true that the maintenance of the church is secured by the contagion of personality. Who can estimate the power that personality has in keeping the church alive, together, active, moving onward, doing, and accomplishing? Churches are companies of living human beings who are what they are largely because they touch each other and contribute to each other's development. Receive into a church a real boy, who desires to be what Jesus would have him be and purposes sincerely to follow him, and all recog- nize that he is crude, with many rough edges, with little idea of what it implies to be a Christian. Place around him, however, mature, strong Christian per- 268 PEESOJSTAL EELIGION sonalities, keep them in close, sympathetic touch with him, and let them restrain, educate, inspire and de- velop him as God wonld have them. This is the contagion of personality. It literally means the sal- vation of the boy. God intended that Christian per- sonality should be used to develop him and thus to save him. There are many people of years in our churches today who owe their religious development to the contact and influence of a few great souls in the Christian fraternity. The church is a school of Christ in which Christianized personality is the head teacher. Paul used a simile which helps us to understand this power of personality mutually to minister to the religious development of humanity in the church. He writes that the church is the body and Jesus is the head. The members of the body are mutually dependent upon each other and organically united. Through this organism flows the divine life from the head, all members being cor- related to that Head Christ. There are difterent capacities and functions for these members, and all are more or less fragmentary as personalities. No one represents the Christ or Head perfectly. Each is to receive from the Head and is to contribute something to the good of every other one. When one personality becomes weak or diseased by sin, the others know it and feel it. They have lost just so much. It is the privilege of each personality in the church body to be fully alive to the head, so that it can contribute all it should toward the development of the other personalities in the body. All the per- sonalities should combine and assist the specially weak personality in the church, that each may grow to its full experience and that the whole may present THE CONTAGION OF PERSONALITY 269 a beautiful symmetry of moral and spiritual life. As these personalities touch and help each other, the body, or the church, is built up. It is moreover true that the advance of humanity outside of the church toward the kingdom idea of Jesus is maintained through the power of and the response to personality. The spirit which moves men forward in the interest of that Kingdom is caught by the contact of personality; the principles which operate to secure that Kingdom are in living human beings and affect hunianitv for its betterment through personality and the objective of the Kingdom is made the world's ideal as personality touches personality in the common walks of life. Today we are wit- nessing great movements for the moral, physical and spiritual uplift of humanity outside of the Christian church, which are unquestionably in the program of Christ, and these have originated through the con- tagion of personality and are perpetuated in the same way. As men and women of ideas and pas- sions meet, they affect each other and their impress upon society is the secret of the development of hu- manity toward the Christ ideal. Today, in indus- try, education, government and church, our states- men and stateswomen are working hard on no less a problem than this, — how best to translate the ideals, spirit and principles of Jesus Christ into the laws and the activities of a world life. It is because personality has vision, passion and hope, that these efforts are being made and glorious results are being- obtained. Surely the Kingdom is to come by the contagion of personality. 270 PERSONAL RELIGION THE GENIUS OF THIS CONTAGION We are sure that men and women move others and influence others into Christian life by the faculties which the totality of their personalities reveal, and all powers of mind and soul and even body are sacred and to be used to this end, but after all, what is the fundamental essence of this contagion ? What in- fluences man most toward the life which Jesus would have him live ? What part of the personality affects him most seriously and lastingly ? It is that in men which in Jesus touched humanity most deeply, namely, his character. It was not definitions of him but the fact of his pure spirit and lofty purpose and high ideals. It was his quality of heart that drew them and held them to him. His miracles startled men for a while but as one studies the effect of Jesus' personality upon humanity through the cen- turies, as well as when he lived, he is led to state that it has been just one wonderful reality about him that has drawn the world to him and that is the reality of his goodness. Goodness was the genius of his power over men and it is goodness today that forms the essential force of the contagion of per- sonality. God has made goodness catching. It pos- sesses an irresistible power. Men may escape the logic of argument, and the brilliancy of intellect and even the deduction of achievement, but they cannot elude the power of character. It forever follows them, daily confronts them, constantly impresses them and mightily moves them. Character pene- trates the soul. It secures a vantage point in the true self of man and pierces his spiritual vitals. It can get in where nothing else enters. There are no THE CONTAGION OF PERSONALITY 271 himian beings who are impervious to the power of goodness in another. Ask any one how he was led to yield his heart to Christ and he will tell you of the goodness which shone forth from the life of some friend or loved one. He may have been moved by a sermon but the sermon was powerful only as it was backed by the presence of character. It was the momentum of goodness that moved him. Ask any one how it came to be that he aspired to goodness and he will answer that it was the response of his soul to the love, truth and righteousness which he recognized in another. Thus we realize that the gen- ius of the contagion of personality is goodness, in possessing the spirit of Jesus, treating our fellow- men as he would have us, and serving humanity in unselfish devotion to its interests. We ask why is this? Simply because the soul of man is tuned to character. The Kingdom of Jesus Christ is built upon it. Were it to be founded on power, then great feats of strength in others would arouse men to be Christians ; and Hercules would be the master personality ; were it founded on perfection of physical form, then the sight of a graceful figure would awaken men to the Christ ideal and Venus de Milo would be the goddess of the Christian faith ; were it founded on artistic beauty of nature, then the paintings of the Masters would insure Christian- ity and Rembrandt and Rosa Bonheur would be the commanding personalities of the world. But because it is based on goodness and nothing less, men respond to character in being led into the Christian life and Jesus is the central personality of the world. This also makes plain to us why character was the goal of Jesus' salvation for men. There is no wav his 272 PERSONAL RELIGION ideal in personal religion and the Kingdom can be reached except as personality responds to character and perpetuates it through contact with other per- sonalities until humanity becomes at heart and in life what he would have it, that is good. The history of Christianity is a history of the perpetuation of goodness. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of love of righteousness, of unselfishness and of service or the spirit of character. As this works in man, the con- tagion of personality is divine. Goodness is the basis of spiritual power. The baptism of the Spirit is a baptism of goodness and unselfishness. No man has the baptism of the Holy Spirit apart from such goodness. Spiritual power may be more or less psychic, and mystical but it cannot work distinct from spiritual character or goodness. The significance of the contagion of personality in the Christian development of humanity is evi- dent in view of these considerations. There are some conclusions which are inevitable. We recognize that the primary business of the disciples is to be good. Conscious of the fact that the greatest potency of a personality is in character, that others are won to Christ and his ideals through the contagion of gen- uine goodness of being, our greatest anxiety should be to be like Jesus Christ in spirit, principle and action. We do not need a morbid introspection which enlarges upon moral and spiritual excrescences, or a religious discontent which discounts every evidence of Christian progress in the soul and life and tends to rob one of all joy in view of the fact that the ideal which Jesus has for us is so far from being realized, but we do need a devotion to Christ, a thought and love for Christlikeness, and a passion THE CONTAGION OF PERSONALITY 273 to be genuinely good clear through and this in view of discharging the obligations of personality, or do- ing personal work in the world among men in the interests of Christ's kingdom. Goodness is active. It reaches out to others. It issues in service. This service to others is potent to lead humanity to Christ. The contagion of personality, through its primary quality, character which issues in service, is the most powerful moral and religious force in the world, therefore in view of Christ and humanity, we must be actively good. Knowing that hypocrisy blocks all religious contagion, the demand to be genuinely good in view of aggressive work for Christ, is evi- dent. One wonders if the real reason why so little personal religious work is done is because of the con- sciousness which many have of a serious deficiency in character. What is nobler than to be good for others ? We also recognize the necessity of making full use of the personality in helping humanity to a true re- ligious experience and in securing the Kingdom ob- jective of Jesus. With the facts plainly before us, namely that an active personality is the secret of the religious advancement of the human race, that hu- manity is Christianized as the powers of personality are in contact with other human personalities, that the salvation of mankind is secured by the flow of the spirit of God through one to another, we clearly perceive the need of using all these powers within us for the good of those about us. This makes the work of individuals for individuals imperative. The touch of the individual person for Christ and his kingdom is not only legitimate but necessary. Jesus touched his first disciples, they made the point of 274 PEKSONAL EELIGIOK contact with others, and so on down through the centuries until today and this is our day for contact. The salvation of those about us, and the progress of Christ's kingdom depend upon us. The evolution of Christianity must go on through us to those about us. The spirit of God is pressing from within ua to move outward toward others that they may have what we have, may know what we know, may learn what we have learned and may do what we are doing. This is the law of the contagion of personality. The divine forces which are operating in the world toward securing the Kingdom of God on earth are working through spiritualized personalities, that is, human be- ings whose moral natures are energized with the spirit of God. True evangelism means the effort to bring men into intelligent and vital touch with the source of all spiritual power, God, and this by Jesus Christ through whom he is made known to men today. Therefore the winning of the individual to Christ signifies that a human personality with all its pos- sibilities is made a channel for the flow of spirit- ual forces of the universe, and personal evangelism is important. This work is essential to the coming of the Kingdom. With the progress of the Kingdom of God dependent upon us we realize the privilege and necessity of thrusting forth personality. We are to make the social nature count, let the hand clasp be contagious with affectionate regard and every faculty potent to impress, lead and win. It also furnishes us with a rational basis for ap- peal to men. Because of it we understand the place of the conversational religious message in the econ- omy of the Kingdom. We know that the personality has a physical voice as well as a moral and spiritual THE CONTAGION OF PERSONALITY 2Y5 one. It emphasizes the divine art of oral preach- ing. It makes personality the vehicle for the glad tidings of God's love and helpfulness. Consciousness of it helps one to appreciate the others' view point and life. It leads one into a religious conversation, not because he assumes an air of superiority, but as the mutual interchange of personality. It makes this conversation normal. It helps one to know that only as personalities have free intercourse are they devel- oped. And experience reveals that people are awak- ened and helped by that personal appeal, when it is the natural outflow of one person to another. It is not always as it was in the early centuries of the Christian era, namely the announcement of a new religion. This may be so today in heathen lands, but in our country it is sounding the religious con- sciousness of others, entering into their problems, lov- ingly assisting them when the opportimity offers, and making real to them the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Religious conversation is simply the overflow of the well filled personality. "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh." This makes religion as rational a subject as health, business or any other matter, and much more than some other matters. It also makes reasonable the use of the psycho- logical powers of man upon others. Without con- tradicting the fact that the primary power of per- sonality to move others Christward is that of charac- ter, yet there are coupled with this certain mental and psychic powers which are ordained of God to assist in moving an irresponsive humanity to decision and action for Christ and goodness. I am sure that a great many good men hesitate about making the 276 PEESONAL RELIGION personal religious appeal to others, and shrink from active efforts to win men to Christ and the church sim- ply because they fear the possibility of undue influ- ence. Conscious of the fact that character can never be forced, and that a man's faith in Christ and his turning to him and his ideals must be of his own accord and as the result of the response of his own soul to Christ's claims and opportunities for Chris- tian life and service, many a thinking man refrains from approaching him and pleading with him in order to secure his alinement with Christ and the Kingdom forces, because he questions the wisdom of pressing his personality upon another. He hates co- ercion, he repudiates intimidation, and he even ques- tions persuasion. He says each man must act for himself. He would, even if he did approach him, do it in a passive manner and leave him alone to decide. Another would not go near him at all. Sim- ply let the spirit of God touch him, and invite him in some peculiar nonpersonal way. But this is not as God would have it. We are to know that the powers of personality are calculated by him to be used to influence others. If this were not true there would be no contagion of personality. And we are not to think that the use of psychic and mental forces within our natures is necessarily evil, but rather good and ordained by God to help the world onward in its religious and moral development. It is not only proper but necessary that there be an outgo of these powers to others in order to secure the advancement of the Kingdom of God on earth. No normal func- tion of the human personality is to be considered even dangerous when used as God would have it and every function is to be utilized to its full in the right THE CONTAGIOlSr OF PERSONALITY 277 manner. This does not sanction the hypnotism of some evangelists or the bulldozing dominance of some powerful personalities in forcing and rushing men into the Kingdom, but it does sanction the surround- ing of another person with all the mental and sug- gestive powers of one's personality. There are in this world many people who need just this touch and influence to move their dormant souls to respond to the calls of Christ. Justin Martyr waited for the touch of John the Aged, Augustine for the influence of his mother Monica, Martin Luther for the call of old David Stanpitz, John B. Gough for the pressure of Joe Stratten, and the history of every soul triumph records the presence of some one who helped mightily by the contact of his personality. There are few of us who cannot discriminate intelligently between the undue pressure of our wills and psychic powers upon another and that legitimate influence of personality which is evidently so indispensable in moving men toward what God would have them be. There is no doubt in my own mind that the movement of men to "go forward" and confess Christ in great revival mass meetings is accomplished largely by the power of mental concentration exerted by thousands of Chris- tians who are thinking of, praying for, and pleading with them, but who shall say that all of this is wrong and no one should mentally impress any one for his good? There is a power of personality revealed here which may legitimately be used. We may ra- tionally conclude that the Holy Spirit works through the normal functions of personality. God is thus touching many by forces which he has created and according to laws of human development which he has made. All laws of human progress are divine. 2Y8 PERSONAL RELIGION It makes real our responsibility in kingdom prog- ress. If the personality is so central in all Christian work, if so much depends upon it because God has ordained its place and its functions, think what re- sponsibility rests upon each one to make the most of himself and to use his powers to advance the cause of Christ on earth. Timidity must be laid aside, prejudice must be overcome and preconceptions must be changed. The individual must move out into all forms of Christian endeavor. His business is to en- list men for Christ, to lead them to unite with the church, to line up their powers in the interest of the Kingdom, to bring about needed reforms, to in- fluence men's judgments in municipal, state and na- tional affairs, to make everything he has in himself crtunt for the good of humanity about him. He has the power to do this. It is in his personality, there- fore, His Lord is to hold him responsible. Not only are individuals needing him, but the world needs him. A passive Christian personality is a misnomer. If one is Christian, actively loves, and makes his personal contact with others, he influences others to make definite decision for Christ and to line up with his organized work, he arouses dormant poten- tialities in humanity and brings about by contagion, great reformations and genuine regenerations in in- dividual life and in society. He who accepts his responsibility as a Christian personality will be doing this. He may be able to do one thing better than another but he will endeavor to do something surely. He will labor to have his personality as large and capable as possible, that it may be a dynamic of con- tagion for the glory of God and the good of human- ity. Think what the world would be if all the fol- THE CONTAGION OF PERSONALITY 279 lowers of Christ in the church and out, were to let God use their personalities to the full in helping individuals to religious experience and in establishing among men the Kingdom of love and righteousness. We have no right to pass people by, to say nothing about their deeper interests. God is depending upon us. It is wrong to ask him to do his work apart from us. He has ordained that our personalities be the channels of his power to accomplish his will. Princeton Theoloqical Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01197 0482 iiiiliillliiiiiiii