Personal Religion and 
 the Social Awakening 
 
 »S L. FINNEY 
 
BR lib .Sb Fb 1913 
 Finney, Ross Lee, 1875-1934 
 Personal religion and the 
 social awakening 
 
L 
 
 NOV fi 
 
 Personal Religion and 
 the Social Awakening 
 
 By 
 
 ROSS L. FINNEY, Ph. D 
 
 Professor of Philosophy and Economics in 
 Illinois Wesleyan University 
 
 Cmcmttati : 
 JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
 
 EATON AND MAINS 
 
Copyright, 1913, by 
 Jennings and Graham 
 
Contents 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. The Social Ideals of the Christian 
 
 Faith, 9 
 
 II. The Social Effects of Individual 
 
 Morals, - 33 
 
 III. Social Christianity Begins at Home, - 49 
 
 IV. The Social Harvest of Materialism, 65 
 
 V. The Social Fruits of the Spiritual 
 
 Life, 81 
 
 VI. The Social Benefits of Self- Denial, 97 
 
 VII. The Social Function of the Church, 111 
 
 VIII. The Social Need of a Religious 
 
 Awakening, 133 
 
Preface 
 
 THE object of this little book is to harmonize the 
 divergent tendencies of personal religion and 
 social religion, to show that they are not at all an- 
 tagonistic, but mutually supplementary; to make it 
 clear that we need the ideals and ends emphasized 
 by the social awakening to motivate our personal 
 religion, and that the social awakening needs the 
 emotions and enthusiasms of personal religion to 
 vitalize it. 
 
 We need the insight to discern that personal sal- 
 vation is a vital requisite to social salvation; and 
 that, if the social hopes of the present age are to be 
 realized, a revival of personal religion must sweep 
 
 through our civilization. 
 
 Ross L. Finney. 
 
 Bloomington, Illinois, 
 August, 1913. 
 
I 
 
 The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 THE Hebrews were, in many respects, a unique 
 people; and just because they were unique they 
 made an invaluable contribution to civilization. 
 The respect in which they were unique was religion, 
 and it was their religion that furnished the basis of 
 their contribution to the future. And one of the 
 characteristics of their peculiar religion was that 
 they looked for a golden age in the future. The 
 Greeks, on the other hand, and indeed all other an- 
 cient peoples, thought of the golden age as in the 
 past. But this Hebrew idea, that the golden age, 
 the ideal age, is in the future, runs like a golden 
 thread through all their religious literature, is a de- 
 termining fact in their history, and is one of the 
 most important elements of their contribution to the 
 future. 
 
 That golden age which they dreamed of in the 
 future they called the Kingdom of God. Into that 
 ideal of the Kingdom which was to come they gath- 
 ered together all the good things they could conceive 
 of. Devoutly, reverently, almost passionately they 
 
 9 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 expected them all to be realized when the Kingdom 
 of God should be established upon earth. It was 
 to be set up with its capital at Jerusalem. Its King 
 was to be a scion of the house of David. All their 
 enemies were to be expelled, all their social ills eradi- 
 cated. It was to be indeed an ideal kingdom upon 
 earth, a veritable religious Utopia. 
 
 This message is sounded forth by all their 
 prophets. Not one of them but makes the Messianic 
 Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, a vital note in his 
 message and uses it as a motive in all his preaching. 
 It was the goal of their history, the inspiration of 
 their faith, the very center of their theocratic na- 
 tional religion. 
 
 And this phrase, u the Kingdom of God," Jesus 
 seized upon to use as a vehicle for His message. 
 
 Every one who lived in Jesus' time was familiar 
 with the term and knew full well all the hope that 
 was expressed in it. At this time, perhaps more than 
 at any other period of Hebrew history, there was a 
 passionate longing in the hearts of all the people 
 for the realization of the Kingdom. With them it 
 merged the enthusiasm and earnestness that we feel 
 in both patriotism and religion, for religion was 
 always patriotic with the Jew, and patriotism was 
 always religious. And so the Kingdom-hope was 
 
 10 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 the passion of the age in which Jesus pronounced 
 His message. It was for this reason that He seized 
 upon the term to use it as a vehicle for the expression 
 of what He had to teach. 
 
 But He differed from the Hebrews as to how 
 the Kingdom was to be realized. He meant to in- 
 dorse their belief that when the Kingdom should 
 come, all conceivable good things should be realized 
 in the world, all social and political ills should be 
 at an end, and the world should be, indeed, an ideal 
 place to live in. All that He intended to indorse. 
 But He took issue with them as to how the Kingdom 
 of God was to come. The Pharisees believed that 
 men could do nothing to hasten its coming, but that 
 it would come in God's good time, and come be- 
 cause He should perform some wonderful miracle 
 and set it up upon earth. The Zealots, on the other 
 hand, believed, to use Ben Franklin's phrase, that 
 "God helps them that help themselves." They were 
 for demonstrating their fitness for the Kingdom by 
 driving out the Romans ; and then they believed the 
 Kingdom of God would be sent. But Jesus indorsed 
 neither of these methods of bringing in the Kingdom 
 of God. He definitely repudiated the methods ad- 
 vocated by the Zealots, and gave little encourage- 
 ment to the ideas that the Pharisees held as to how 
 
 n 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 the Kingdom of God should come. He said, to 
 paraphrase His words, "Change your lives, be good 
 and just, love God and man; behold, the Kingdom is 
 already among you; believe this good news, and it 
 will be here." 
 
 When we come to understand the message of 
 Jesus, therefore, we discern clearly that it was not 
 only a message of personal salvation, but a message 
 of social salvation as well. He looked forward to 
 and taught His disciples to pray for the time when 
 the Kingdom of God should come, the will of God 
 be done upon earth as it is done in heaven, and the 
 whole world should become a veritable heaven upon 
 earth. He taught His disciples that this Kingdom 
 of Heaven was to grow like the seed of a plant, 
 till it should shelter the whole earth. He taught 
 His disciples that the Kingdom of God was like 
 yeast put into the world, that ultimately it may 
 leaven the whole lump. This was the sublimest 
 Utopian dream of all the ages; and in His devotion 
 to this dream, this social ideal, He was willing to die 
 rather than retract one word of His program, one 
 iota of the means for realizing it. Thus He voiced 
 more clearly than any other of the Hebrews this 
 hope that the world is gradually to grow better and 
 better until it approximates the ideal condition. 
 
 12 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 His disciples adopted His view as a matter of 
 course, but it may well be doubted whether they ap- 
 preciated its full significance. There seems to be 
 some indication in the New Testament that, owing 
 to some extent to the influence of the Pharisees, they 
 expected it to come in some sort of marvelous mani- 
 festation. And Paul, it is certain, looked for an 
 apocalyptic Kingdom when, at the recoming of Je- 
 sus, amidst a miraculous display in the heavens 
 above and the earth beneath, the world should come 
 to an end and a new age should dawn. The early 
 Christians, moreover, were actuated in a great de- 
 gree by this expectation of the world's betterment 
 or the world's end; and the early literature is full 
 of it. But little by little it faded away as a social 
 ideal, becoming only a millennial dream. Pagan 
 practices were decaying and decomposing the insti- 
 tutions of the time. Civilization was hopelessly de- 
 cadent, and after a century or two Christians came 
 to despair of transforming and transfiguring the 
 world that now is. And then, too, the philosophy 
 of Plato, which little by little had been woven into 
 theology, withdrew Christian life and hope from 
 the world, instead of trying to save it. And so it 
 came about that Christians set up their monasteries, 
 lived their Christian lives apart from the world, re- 
 
 13 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 signed themselves to the decay and decadence of the 
 age, and comforted themselves with the hope only 
 of their own personal salvation in the spiritual world 
 beyond the grave, and with the dream of a distant 
 millennium. Thus social Christianity was forgotten, 
 and only the immortal hope and the millennial 
 dream remained. The Kingdom-hope lay crushed 
 under the debris of Roman civilization, smothered 
 in the abstractions of a Platonized theology. True, 
 there were those in all ages in whose hearts burned 
 the desire to make the world better, and instinctively 
 individuals and the Church felt its irrepressible mo- 
 tivation at times ; but so far as its explicit expression 
 in the creeds or its overt avowal as a Christian 
 motive are concerned, it lay buried for centuries. 
 
 It is only recently, in the closing years of the 
 nineteenth century and in the beginning years of the 
 twentieth century, that the full gospel, in both its 
 aspects, the individual and the social, is being set 
 forth again, to the inspiration of men's souls. The 
 slogan "Back to Jesus" is restoring it to us, or rather 
 is an expression of its restoration to us. The King- 
 dom-hope is here among us again in all its early 
 Christian grandeur, inspiring the souls of our youth 
 as they could be inspired in this age by no other 
 motive whatsoever. 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 There are various reasons why it is revived in 
 this twentieth century. In the first place it is due 
 to the rise of democracy. Aristotle taught that the 
 lower classes are as much below the higher classes 
 of men as the brutes are below human beings. But 
 Jesus taught the brotherhood of man. Nevertheless 
 the world believed Aristotle rather than Jesus for 
 many sad and dreary centuries, until Rousseau pro- 
 claimed the principle that "all men are created free 
 and equal, and endowed by their Creator with cer- 
 tain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness." The insight of this 
 great idea threw all Europe into political ferment, 
 set in motion movements of modern democracy in 
 Europe and America, and got itself cast in the form 
 just quoted in our great National document. And 
 so democracy has emphasized the fact, as it was not 
 emphasized for centuries, that the brotherhood of 
 man is true and that Christian principles ought to 
 reign in the realm of government, and therefore 
 must reign and shall reign. Democracy has taught 
 us that u a man's a man for a' that;" that the 
 brotherhood of man, as taught by Jesus, is to fill 
 the earth, and that the kingdoms of this earth are 
 to become the Kingdom of our Lord and His Christ. 
 
 Within the last few years the Christian Church 
 
 15 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 itself has caught the inspiration from rising democ- 
 racy and is voicing forth the message of humanity. 
 The change has come about in this way. In the 
 eighties Tolstoi startled Western civilization with 
 the assertion that our institutions are based upon 
 force and retaliation rather than upon love and for- 
 giveness. He challenged us, therefore, to Christian- 
 ize our institutions. That set the world to inquir- 
 ing, as it had never inquired before, what the appli- 
 cation of Christianity to our institutions — political, 
 social, and industrial — might mean. Then Ruskin 
 voiced a similar message, and the world listened to 
 both of these great literary prophets of social re- 
 ligion. 
 
 About twenty years ago, perhaps a little more, 
 there began to appear in America a series of books 
 of great religious significance. The first of these 
 was "Applied Christianity," by Washington Glad- 
 den. He called for the application of the golden 
 rule to the labor problem. In the nineties other 
 books appeared. The first of these was a book by 
 Professor Ely, of the University of Wisconsin, on 
 the "Social Aspects of Christianity." In this book, 
 which, by the way, was prescribed for the required 
 reading of young ministers of a great denomination, 
 Professor Ely applied the principles of Christianity 
 
 16 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 not only to the labor problem, but to various other 
 problems of our economic life. How that book set 
 the young ministers of America to thinking as to 
 what Christianity means to the world as well as to 
 the individual ! Next came Peabody's "Jesus Christ 
 and the Social Question" and Shailer Mathews' 
 "The Social Teachings of Jesus." There is hardly 
 a clergyman in America who has not read some one 
 of these books. But the book of all books that 
 startled the clergy is the one by Rauschenbusch, pub- 
 lished in 1907, entitled, "Christianity and the Social 
 Crisis." Young ministers of America read the book 
 with pulsing hearts, so intense was the excitement 
 of their inspiration as they saw what Christianity 
 might do for this old world if it were but freed from 
 the handicaps of dogmatism and ecclesiasticism, and 
 set free to exert its influence upon the institutions of 
 life and society. 
 
 Thus the clergy have been awakened, and they 
 in turn have awakened the laity. As a result the 
 thought of Christians is aflame with these prophetic 
 messages, and the social application of Christianity 
 has become almost a passion. 
 
 But this passion is to be found not only in the 
 hearts and souls of the clergy and those who listen 
 to the clergy, but it appears also in many contempo- 
 2 ij 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 raneous phases of our National life. There never 
 was a time in all the history of the world when there 
 were being so many enterprises and institutions in- 
 augurated for the benefit of humanity, for the amel- 
 ioration of the conditions of human life, as to-day. 
 Any man or woman who remembers back as far as 
 the Civil War could make a list of not less than one 
 hundred institutions, organizations, and enterprises 
 that have been started since then for the sole pur- 
 pose of bettering the world and benefiting humanity, 
 increasing justice, and ameliorating the conditions of 
 mankind. 
 
 The development of the sciences of Economics 
 and Sociology, moreover, and the activities of phi- 
 lanthropy at the dictate of these sciences, is a mani- 
 festation of the passion engendered in the minds of 
 all the people by the Kingdom-hope. There are 
 thousands of young men who have gone into these 
 lines of study, research, and work, instead of into 
 the ministry, but have gone into them with precisely 
 the same spirit as their fathers went into the min- 
 istry. And there are thousands of men who have 
 never thought of the ministry as a profession who 
 with a noble enthusiasm are devoting their lives to 
 these different forms of activity for the betterment 
 of humanity and the uplift of mankind. The pas- 
 
 18 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 sion even threatens to sweep over into the field of 
 politics, and we have the spectacle of u Social Jus- 
 tice," a new term coined to express this humanita- 
 rian spirit of the age, becoming the campaign slogan 
 of a great political party. 
 
 The spirit of the age, then, is Christian, in this 
 sense, at least. Men's religious fervor is moved 
 by this great desire, this exalted purpose of making 
 the world better. All men are praying, "Thy King- 
 dom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
 heaven." Some of them, perhaps, may not realize 
 that their work for human betterment is Christian, 
 that their aspirations and their ambitions are Chris- 
 tian, however Christian they may be. Would it not 
 be well to let them understand that their work is a 
 contribution to the Kingdom of God upon earth, 
 and that their lives are really Christian in their ac- 
 tivities and motives? Why should not a class of 
 students, studying the great problems of modern 
 life — problems the solution of which will bring to 
 the world a larger measure of justice, enlarge the 
 opportunities of childhood, widen the outlook of 
 womanhood, and bless the world — why should they 
 not come to such a classroom with as religious an 
 enthusiasm as they come to the prayer-meeting? 
 And is it unfitting that after a course devoted to 
 
 19 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 the study of such subjects as Poverty, its causes and 
 cure; Crime, the forces that generate it; the Labor 
 Movement, and the justice and injustice involved in 
 it; the Trust Problem, and the burden that is un- 
 justly laid upon the shoulders of so large a propor- 
 tion of our population, they should reverently thank 
 God that they have learned how the keenest minds 
 of the age propose to realize in larger measure the 
 Kingdom of God in the earth? 
 
 The Church, reformers, students, philanthro- 
 pists, men of the world, statesmen, are all working 
 together in this wonderful age of ours to transform 
 and transfigure the world. We all come to feel that 
 it is not enough to save our individual selves from 
 some hell that threatens us hereafter; we also want 
 to save this old world itself from the hell that has 
 blighted it for centuries, and bring to actuality a 
 heaven upon earth. The forces that are operating 
 in this world of ours, religious and otherwise, mak- 
 ing for this consummation, are powerful forces in- 
 deed; and those who understand the signs of the 
 times are confident that we are just upon the dawn 
 of a new and larger era, when the institutions of 
 this world — political, social, and economic — shall 
 be transformed so that we shall in larger measure 
 at least actualize and exemplify the Golden Rule. 
 
 20 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 For there are two kinds of justice, two kinds of 
 righteousness. There are hand-made justice and 
 righteousness, and there are machine-made justice 
 and righteousness. In an age like ours, when so 
 many things are made by machinery, it ought to be 
 easy for us to discern that justice or injustice, right- 
 eousness or unrighteousness, may be machine-made. 
 Business corporations, municipal governments, penal 
 institutions, educational systems, public-service fran- 
 chises, legal precedents, tariff schedules, fiscal con- 
 stitutions, city slums, competitive industry, and other 
 social, political, and economic organizations are all 
 great machines, producing justice or injustice. 
 
 It is not enough, therefore, that individuals 
 should do right; it is also necessary that our ma- 
 chinery of society should be converted, and that all 
 our institutions should either practice righteousness 
 or else cease to exist as institutions. We have al- 
 ready destroyed the institution of slavery, because it 
 was an institution that could not possibly practice 
 the Golden Rule. There may be other institutions 
 whose resignations we shall have to insist upon ac- 
 cepting, because they, too, are incapable of prac- 
 ticing the Golden Rule. And there are many of our 
 institutions that we should readjust and modify so 
 that they, as institutions, may practice, like good 
 
 21 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 men, the Golden Rule. This will never be a Chris- 
 tian world till the institutions as well as individuals 
 practice justice and Christianity. To convert our 
 institutions may be said, therefore, to be the unique 
 Christian task of the age. 
 
 The task, moreover, appeals to the imagination 
 of our generation. Thousands of young Christians, 
 though unmotivated by fear or hope of a hereafter, 
 are profoundly, even passionately, desirous of in- 
 vesting their lives in behalf of the coming Kingdom 
 which their faith beholds afar. 
 
 But right here their difficulty begins; for they 
 do not know what to do in behalf of that Kingdom. 
 They would gladly be missionaries, or slum workers, 
 or start a social settlement. They eagerly sing, 
 
 "I '11 go where You want me to go, dear Lord, 
 Over mountain, or plain, or sea;" 
 
 but, unfortunately, the way is closed, and they de- 
 spair of ever being able to serve the Kingdom. 
 
 So we must confess the Kingdom-hope is at a 
 disadvantage in being rather remote and abstract 
 for the practical religious purposes of all the people. 
 We may dream and exult ever so much over a world 
 growing better, but unless we can somehow bring 
 social service down into close contact with the de- 
 
 22 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 tails of our lives and actually live by it as a motive, 
 one of two things will happen : we shall either grow 
 discouraged at the futility of our lives, or else we 
 shall abstract our religion from our lives, praying 
 and singing and exulting over a Kingdom-dream 
 that we can only dream about, while meantime our 
 daily lives are prayerless, visionless, and godless. 
 
 And this danger seriously menaces the social-sal- 
 vation propaganda of the present day. We are all 
 in danger of being like the child who, when asked 
 by his father at family worship, "Where is our part 
 of the Kingdom of God?" glibly replied, "Up in the 
 moon." Child-labor legislation, industrial accident 
 insurance, social settlements, and amelioration of the 
 rigors of competition are, to most of us, most of 
 the time, to all intents and purposes, up in the moon. 
 Unless we see some closer-at-home opportunity to 
 serve the Kingdom than is offered by most programs 
 of social reform, the Kingdom-motive will be to us 
 little more than an abstraction. And with many, 
 devotion to that abstraction is about all the religious 
 experience they have. 
 
 The father just referred to, a few mornings later, 
 tried again. He had intended to teach his six-year- 
 old son that the Kingdom is among the good folks 
 that we know. But this time the child answered 
 
 23 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 as promptly as before, with sweet accents of childish 
 sureness, "Down in our hearts." 
 
 Sure enough ! Down in our hearts ! The father 
 was nonplused for a moment; but he presently dis- 
 cerned that the child's innocence was wiser than his 
 wisdom, and he let the answer stand. Down in our 
 hearts! 
 
 The most important religious insight, the in- 
 sight requisite to the vitality of social religion and 
 the success of our civilization, is the insight to dis- 
 cern that if the Kingdom of God is to come in the 
 earth, it must first come in our hearts. Social sal- 
 vation can only be realized through individual sal- 
 vation. The social awakening must be realized by 
 a revival of personal religion. 
 
 The truth still remains that our institutions need 
 to be readjusted and reorganized, but it will do little 
 good for our institutions to be converted unless the 
 persons who compose them are converted too. We 
 can not make good institutions out of bad folks, 
 however perfectly the institutions are organized; 
 and if we are to have good folks to build into in- 
 stitutions worthy of the Kingdom of God, they must, 
 above all, have the Kingdom of God down in their 
 hearts. The brotherhood of man is impossible with- 
 out brotherly men. A good family is impossible 
 
 24 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 without good folks. The principality of the king- 
 dom in which each of us lives is his own home, and 
 there is no service to the kingdom that begins to 
 compare in importance with making that home an 
 ideal principality of the Kingdom. Local units are 
 as vital to the Kingdom as to democracy. 
 
 Moreover, just as we can not have a good 
 family-life without the Kingdom of God in our 
 hearts, so we can not have a stable National life 
 without the Kingdom of God in the hearts of the 
 people. Have not we in America had enough of 
 stealing and vulgar, wanton selfishness in politics? 
 Is it not high time that our bland, blind optimism 
 be at an end with respect to this democracy of ours? 
 It has not passed its experimental age. It is not 
 a foregone conclusion that democracy is a success in 
 America ; and American democracy certainly will not 
 succeed unless we can get honest men to run it. 
 
 No doubt the logic of Jesus' teachings calls for 
 the Christianization of our social institutions. No 
 doubt we must reduce the Master's message to 
 fundamental principles, such as human brotherhood, 
 and then apply those principles not only to persons 
 and intimate personal relations, but to institutions 
 as well. Thus slavery as a system was incom- 
 patible with Jesus' principles. So was the divine 
 
 25 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 right of kings. So are, no doubt, many of the insti- 
 tutions of to-day. Let each institution be subjected 
 to the test — that is the use to which Christianity must 
 be put — and the world will never be Christian other- 
 wise. 
 
 Nevertheless it is an interesting and, in the light 
 of the present social movement, a curious fact that 
 the great Teacher Himself never carried His own 
 message that far. He devoted His attention not 
 to institutions, but to individuals. His immediate 
 interest was in personal salvation; the social salva- 
 tion He foresaw as an ultimate result. For example, 
 an industrial system closely akin to slavery existed 
 in Palestine in Jesus' day, and the Roman Empire 
 was full of it; but there is not one word against the 
 system in the Gospels. A tyrannous foreign power 
 unjustly taxed and oppressed the people — but not 
 one word do we read of political revolution. An 
 almost hopelessly effete ecclesiastical system pre- 
 vailed; but it was the Pharisees He condemned, not 
 their institution. The nearest He came to prescrib- 
 ing for any social organ was when He declared so 
 unequivocally for the inviolability of marriage. He 
 did not so much as make the slightest provision for 
 institutionalizing the movement to which His very 
 life was given. 
 
 26 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 Instead, He loved men and women, served the 
 people, and called individuals to repentance, declar- 
 ing that the leaven would ultimately leaven the whole 
 lump. Love one another, return good for evil, visit 
 the sick, feed the hungry, forgive your enemies, trust 
 in God, turn from sin ; thus the Kingdom is to come. 
 
 Let us not, therefore, forget the Master. In 
 our entirely commendable enthusiasm to reform, as 
 the logic of His teaching demands, the un-Christian 
 institutions of society, let us not neglect that which 
 He so explicitly directed, to seek the salvation of our 
 own souls and the souls of our contemporaries, the 
 regeneration of our lives and theirs. For nothing 
 is more certain than that "social organization can 
 never be of a higher type than the individual char- 
 acter and intelligence of the members of the group 
 warrant; and only by raising the intelligence and 
 character of the individual members of society can 
 a higher type of social life permanently result."* 
 
 Moreover, let us remind ourselves that our 
 Lord's appeal was essentially and superlatively a 
 religious appeal. His means of regenerating char- 
 acter was through personal religion. And the re- 
 ligion of Jesus Christ that came streaming into the 
 effete civilization of the first century, a civilization 
 
 *EUwood's "Sociology and Modern Social Problems," page 3"- 
 
 27 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 sick to nausea with philosophical speculation, and 
 world-weary with the burden of vice and pessimism, 
 was a personal religion, with a personal God, a per- 
 sonal Savior, personal repentance, love, faith, and 
 salvation. And just because it was a personal re- 
 ligion it created a new force in society, and generated 
 a new tendency in civilization. 
 
 So must it ever be. The most effective means 
 of bringing the Kingdom of God into men's hearts, 
 and so bringing the world to the Kingdom of God, 
 is personal religion. 
 
 Personal religion, because we are individual per- 
 sons, and after all love does not thrive on abstrac- 
 tions. It must tie us to our housemates and our near 
 neighbors as well as to society. Religion, because 
 we are religious persons, and faith, too, is not satis- 
 fied with abstractions; it must show us the way to 
 God and save our souls as well as the social order. 
 Religious faith and love are the sources from which 
 that goodness springs which alone can save the 
 world. Psychology recognizes that fact. Both edu- 
 cational and social theory build upon the principle 
 that religion motivates morality as nothing else can. 
 And we all do know that those praying fathers and 
 mothers of ours, whose faith was vital, had a sta- 
 bility of moral character that we shall fail to develop 
 
 28 
 
The Social Ideals of the Christian Faith 
 
 in our children unless we transmit alive to them our 
 fathers' faith. And upon the character of individu- 
 als depends not only the coming of the Kingdom 
 for which we dream, but the very security of the 
 social capital we now possess. 
 
 The enthusiasms of the social awakening are 
 spreading rapidly and widely in America to-day. 
 And it is well. Young men and women are conse- 
 crating themselves to the service of the Kingdom. 
 Men are selecting their life-work or devoting their 
 means and leisure to these great ideals. But if they 
 are to serve effectively the Kingdom of the Christ, 
 that Christ Himself must abide in their hearts. His 
 forgiveness, His peace, His love must fill them, 
 bless them, inspire them, and send them forth to 
 do His will. For by an irreverent, sordid, or im- 
 moral life they can tear down more, much more, 
 than their work or their philanthropy can possibly 
 build up. And withal they will fail to really find 
 themselves. But with Christ the Savior in the house 
 of their souls they may become indeed servants in 
 the house of the world. 
 
 29 
 
II 
 
 The Social Effects of Individual Morals 
 
The Social Effects of Individual Morals 
 
 THE western religious world has during the last 
 few years been roused to a pitch of exultant 
 enthusiasm over the Christian ideal of the coming 
 Kingdom of God upon the earth. This social ver- 
 sion of the Christian faith dreams of an ideal world 
 that is to be gradually realized. Justice is to grow; 
 the social evils that discount the value of life are to 
 be gradually eliminated; peace, prosperity, happi- 
 ness, and good will are ultimately to dominate 
 human life. The social order, gradually Christian- 
 ized, is, little by little, to approximate perfection. 
 
 This dream has aptly been called the Kingdom- 
 hope. The means by which it is to be realized are 
 changes in laws and institutions whereby such con- 
 crete evils as child-labor, the toil of women in fac- 
 tories, the social evil, industrial accidents, and other 
 like monstrosities are to be done away. In short, 
 social reorganization. The Christian who enter- 
 tains this hope and aspires to help in its realization 
 thinks of some form of social service, such as slum- 
 work, prison-reform, or philanthropy, as the imme- 
 3 33 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 diate program in which he himself, if he could but 
 participate, might help in the realization of the com- 
 ing Kingdom. The Church, under the inspiration of 
 this ideal, is itself agitating and undertaking various 
 forms of social service. All sorts of social reforms 
 are being suggested, and agitators abound. At the 
 heart of the modern social aspiration is the demand 
 for a more equitable distribution of wealth. It is 
 everywhere felt and frankly avowed that this is pre- 
 requisite to all of the other parts of the social pro- 
 gram, and many believe that all the other ideal con- 
 ditions will follow as an inevitable consequence if 
 only an equitable distribution of wealth can be se- 
 cured. 
 
 But it may be well to raise the question whether 
 a materialistic and external program of this char- 
 acter can reach the heart of the matter. For man 
 is not merely external; there is also the internal 
 aspect of his nature. His environment is not merely 
 a material world, it is also a social world and a 
 world of ideals. It has been aptly said: "Our ma- 
 terial progress can never add anything to the real 
 happiness and social betterment of the race. On the 
 contrary, it is possible to conceive of a society in 
 which every one has an economic surplus — a society 
 rolling in wealth, approximately equally divided, and 
 
 34 
 
The Social Effects of Individual Morals 
 
 yet one in which human misery in its worst forms 
 of vice, crime, self-destruction, and pessimism pre- 
 vail." Something else is necessary besides social 
 reorganization, however important this may be in 
 itself. 
 
 To imagine that these external changes alone 
 can give us a perfect world constitutes us dreamers 
 like those of the Renaissance period, who vainly 
 imagined that familiarity with the ancient classics 
 and insight into ultimate metaphysical mysteries 
 could actualize a Utopian world. But the dreams 
 of the Renaissance failed tragically of realization, 
 and from these dreamers of an earlier day we may 
 well learn a lesson. An ideal world can only be 
 realized in proportion to the morality and intelli- 
 gence of the masses of the common people. What 
 we need to-day is not only to reorganize our insti- 
 tutions on more moral lines, but also a deepening 
 of the moral life of individuals. The greatest need 
 of the age, and the most important requisite to the 
 realization of the Kingdom of God upon earth, is 
 the moral insight to discern the social consequence 
 of individual morals and a corresponding revival of 
 personal moral earnestness. He who aspires to 
 devote his life to the service of the Kingdom should, 
 above all things, perceive clearly that nothing he 
 
 35 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 can say or do can possibly contribute more than the 
 integrity and uprightness of his own life. 
 
 In order to a clearer insight into the social con- 
 sequences of personal morality, consider the three 
 vices : licentiousness, gambling, and drunkenness. 
 The immediate effects of the first are diseased 
 bodies, broken homes, disgraced parents, outraged 
 offspring, ruined lives, and the mental anguish of 
 shame and despair. As for the second, think of the 
 worthless, wasted lives of young men, and of the 
 fathers whose gray hairs have been brought down 
 in sorrow to the grave. Intemperance has made us 
 so familiar with its harvest of horrors that we are 
 calloused to them and contemplate them with an 
 almost fatalistic hopelessness and indifference. The 
 trail of poverty, suffering, heartbreak, and death 
 which this vice has left in its train is almost equiva- 
 lent to perpetual war. 
 
 But these vices have not only their direct and 
 immediate social consequences, they have their in- 
 direct effects as well. For in a complex society like 
 ours they have assumed commercialized forms. 
 Everywhere they have organized to corrupt the offi- 
 cers of the law in order to secure their own protec- 
 tion. One of the most shameful chapters in the 
 story of our cities' shame is the complicity of law 
 
 36 
 
The Social Effects of Individual Morals 
 
 officers with the organized interests of vice. Offi- 
 cers whose sworn duty it is to protect the people 
 from the underworld have often protected the un- 
 derworld from the people. Not only so, but by an 
 alliance with public-service corporations they and 
 the vice interests together have been able abso- 
 lutely to control the governments of many of our 
 American cities. Thus vice has often rendered mu- 
 nicipal democracy a failure, temporarily, at least, 
 has prostituted popular government to its own uses, 
 and raised the question whether or not democracy 
 can succeed in America. Delos F. Wilcox asserts 
 that vice is the chief enemy of democracy. 
 
 Imagine, now, a society in which these vices and 
 their consequences have been pushed to their logical 
 conclusion; a society, in other words, in which they 
 are universal. A more veritable hell upon earth can 
 not be imagined. On the other hand, conceive a 
 society from which these vices have been entirely 
 eliminated (and this, by the way, is as conceivable 
 as a society in which an equitable distribution of 
 wealth has been attained), and you have conceived 
 a society that has made tremendous strides toward 
 the realization of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 How evident it is, therefore, that the individual 
 who contributes to the prevalence of these vices in 
 
 37 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 society is a tearer-down, a destroyer, a veritable 
 traitor to the common good! How evident, too, 
 that he whose life is immune from these moral dis- 
 eases is making a large contribution to the welfare 
 of society! How much social service, how much 
 of the work of the reformer or philanthropist would 
 it require, forsooth, to cancel the damage that nat- 
 urally and inevitably accrues from a vicious life? 
 
 Again, in order that the social consequence of 
 personal morality may be more clearly discerned, 
 let us consider what morality is in itself. 
 
 It is fundamentally a social device. It is the 
 indispensable basis of the social order. It is by 
 society that moral standards have been set up as 
 the result of the race's experience. The things that 
 we call right are the things that the race has demon- 
 strated to be conservative of the general welfare. 
 The essential reason for the moral life of the indi- 
 vidual is not primarily to secure his own happiness, 
 but to make possible successful social relations. 
 Courage, for instance, the virtue of war, has as its 
 function the security of the group and the triumph 
 of the national cause. The object of business in- 
 tegrity is to make business organization and activity 
 possible. In countries where business integrity is 
 
 38 
 
The Social Effects of Individual Morals 
 
 at a low ebb, credit and the complexer forms of 
 commercial organization are an impossibility. 
 Truthfulness, likewise, is a device by means of which 
 we are able to live together. So are all the virtues. 
 It is true that society usually rewards the virtuous 
 man. But, moreover, because of the social law of 
 survival and the spiritual nature of man, the vir- 
 tuous man is, in the long run, the happiest man. 
 Nevertheless, if the welfare of society requires it, 
 the ultimate sacrifice may be required from the in- 
 dividual. 
 
 Only a socio-central ethical theory, therefore, 
 can stand the test of logic and human history. 
 
 The same truth may be stated conversely and 
 concretely by pointing out the fact that one immoral 
 person can ruin a family, one rascal can bankrupt 
 a firm, a single traitor can lose a battle, a few rogues 
 can spoil a community. Likewise a sufficient pro- 
 portion of immoral people can debauch a nation and 
 undermine a civilization. 
 
 In society the paths of individual interests cross 
 and recross, but the individuals must not clash. 
 Friction and collisions must be prevented, and slight 
 irritations must be soothed. Ambitious, grasping, 
 passionate, conniving human nature, bent on getting 
 
 39 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 what it wants without regard to the rights of others, 
 must be directed, restrained, or suppressed in the 
 interests of the greater number. Those animal in- 
 stincts which the struggle for existence among the 
 lower orders necessarily augmented are, many of 
 them, still necessary to the survival of the human 
 species. However, they must be guided, curbed, re- 
 strained, controlled. Otherwise human life could 
 never rise above brute level. To this end the thou- 
 shalts and the thou-shalt-nots of the moral law are 
 absolutely requisite. And this is almost their total 
 function. 
 
 Individual morality is, therefore, the most fun- 
 damental thing in society. It is the mechanical de- 
 sign by means of which part fits part and wheel 
 mashes into wheel in this great social machine. It 
 is the plan that transforms the mob into the Mace- 
 donian phalanx, and brings social order out of in- 
 dividual chaos. The ancient virtues are, therefore, 
 more valuable to us than modern inventions. We 
 might better fail to secure our share of the world's 
 trade than fail in the application of the moral law. 
 It were better to let our children grow up in igno- 
 rance than to bring them up in schools where their 
 moral fiber is disintegrated. We might better dis- 
 pense with the telephone and the telegraph, be de- 
 
 40 
 
The Social Effects of Individual Morals 
 
 prived of our modern transportation systems, and 
 go back to the wheelbarrow and the ox-cart than 
 to be deprived of the moral law which has stood 
 the test of centuries, for without it society could 
 not exist at all. 
 
 Such considerations as these should make it clear 
 how much damage can be done by a single cog-wheel 
 in the social machine which does not fit its place, by 
 a single individual whose life is immoral. He is a 
 destroyer and an iconoclast. He disintegrates and 
 tears to pieces the social fabric. He is an undesir- 
 able citizen. If there were none but such as he, 
 civilization would be impossible, and the Kingdom- 
 hope could never even have been conceived. But 
 the person whose life is straight, whose deeds are 
 good, whose morality conserves the social fabric 
 and contributes to the moral progress of the world, 
 should understand that his service to the coming 
 Kingdom, for which he prays, is no mean service. 
 Let him in this find inspiration. 
 
 But there is a higher level than the mere absti- 
 nence from positive vice. There are higher virtues. 
 From the consideration of the infringement of posi- 
 tive laws let us proceed, therefore, to those senti- 
 ments and feelings upon which the gospel places its 
 emphasis as the great moral desiderata of life — 
 
 4i 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 sentiments of sympathy, love, and good will. By 
 so doing we shall be able to see that the person 
 who lives on this high Christian plane makes a posi- 
 tive contribution as great as is the negative damage 
 wrought by the vicious individual. 
 
 For these sentiments are not merely sentiments, 
 they are instincts. They are instincts, morever, 
 which lie at the very basis of society. Professor 
 Ross points out that the contribution of human na- 
 ture itself to the social order consists principally in 
 the instincts of sympathy and the sense of justice. 
 Without these constituent elements of the psychic 
 endowment of man, society could never have begun 
 at all; and the moral progress of society is to be 
 precisely in proportion as these instincts triumph 
 over the anti-social instincts of human nature. The 
 more there are of these sentiments the nearer will 
 the Kingdom of God be at hand. And precisely this 
 is the core of Jesus' social message. He seized upon 
 the socializing instincts of man and sought to aug- 
 ment them. The real Christian is the person whose 
 habituated interests cluster around these instincts. 
 He gets his joy of life from them rather than from 
 the anti-social and animal interests of life. In a 
 world full of real Christians who have developed 
 
 42 
 
The Social Effects of Individual Morals 
 
 these higher and more social interests, justice will 
 thrive, mutual help and kindness will abound, and 
 loyalty to the causes of humanity and the cry of 
 human need will never go unheard. 
 
 Imagine a world in which there are no hearts 
 imbued with the Christian — or shall we say natural? 
 — sentiments of sympathy, good will, and love. 
 How dark and cold and unlivable, indeed, such a 
 world would be ! Byron's picture of darkness might 
 well be applicable to such a world. And he who 
 permits those sentiments to die out of his soul is 
 helping to make the world such a world as that. In 
 such a world social justice would never be dreamed 
 of, and the reorganization and Christianization of 
 the social order would be an unheard-of formula, 
 and there could be no Kingdom-hope. 
 
 Fancy, on the other hand, a world in which every 
 individual soul is filled with love of man, sympathy, 
 kindness, and good will abounding in every heart. 
 That would be a world in which the Kingdom of 
 God had been attained. The brotherhood of man 
 would no longer be a hope, but an actualized re- 
 ality, for it would be a world full of brotherly men. 
 In a world like that social institutions could not long 
 remain unjust. 
 
 43 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 It is not intended by these remarks to cast one 
 iota of disparagement upon the social application 
 of Christianity. The social temper is a grand new 
 passion. It is only intended to domesticate it and 
 utilize it. For most of us must live at home; our 
 world is a little world; our contacts, for the most 
 part, are with individuals and are personal contacts. 
 We have no opportunity, most of us, to make ap- 
 preciable contributions to public reforms. Never- 
 theless we all ought to realize that we can help. 
 And the help that we can render is a most valuable 
 kind, for the moral fiber of the mass of common 
 people is absolutely prerequisite to the realization 
 of the reforms that are on the contemporaneous 
 docket. The sculptor can not mold or polish slacked 
 lime. It is only the hardest marble that will take 
 and hold the forms of beauty that his artist soul 
 conceives, and receive the polish that will reflect the 
 glorious light of the sun. 
 
 Let us, therefore, reconsecrate our lives to God 
 and the service of the Kingdom. Let us begin every 
 new day with the devout prayer that that day may 
 be a day of upright devotion to the duties and re- 
 sponsibilities of our task and station. And let us 
 pray, moreover, that the God who was the God of 
 
 44 
 
The Social Effects of Individual Morals 
 
 social evolution through the centuries of the past, 
 and who from time to time has sent an Amos or 
 an Isaiah, a Savonarola or an Erasmus, a Wesley 
 or a Booth, may send to America, during this gen- 
 eration, a prophet whose message shall reach the 
 ears of all our people and inspire them to lives of 
 firm and stable morality. 
 
 45 
 
Ill 
 
 Social Christianity Begins at Home 
 
Social Christianity Begins at Home 
 
 THE Kingdom of God begins at home. The 
 most important service that any Christian can 
 render to the Kingdom of God upon earth is to 
 make his own home an ideal principality of that 
 Kingdom. For here is a social institution, the 
 family, which needs no reconstruction. Its organi- 
 zation is already on perfect lines. The monoga- 
 mous family is the perfect family type. What it 
 needs to make it a social success is the right kind 
 of folks to constitute it. So far as the family is 
 concerned, therefore, the social application of the 
 gospel depends upon the moral regeneration of in- 
 dividuals; and there is no social aspect of Chris- 
 tianity that begins to compare in importance with 
 this. Moreover, here is an immediate, right-at-hand 
 opportunity for each of us to make a social contri- 
 bution. 
 
 In order to make clear the Christian's social duty 
 with respect to this institution, it may be well to 
 consider how basic a social institution it is. 
 
 The Bible records in its earliest chapters the 
 4 49 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 Hebrew conception of the origin of the family, and 
 St. Paul emphasizes the fundamental character of 
 the institution. As for Jesus, there is no specific sub- 
 ject on which he speaks more explicitly than on the 
 inviolability of the monogamous family relation. 
 Professor Peatfody has pointed out that his in- 
 sistence was even more stringent than we are wont 
 to interpret it. His presence at the wedding in 
 Cana of Galilee is an incidental testimony as to his 
 conception of marriage which we all refer to with 
 pleasure, even though its significance may not be 
 great. As has been pointed out in another place, 
 this institution is the only one for whose plan of 
 organization the Great Teacher took pains to pre- 
 scribe. 
 
 History also gives abundant testimony to the sa- 
 credness of this institution, for it shows us that, 
 although other forms of the family have existed at 
 various times and places, no other form has been 
 able tp conserve as high a type of civilization as the 
 monogamous form, and in fact the struggle for ex- 
 istence has all but eliminated these other forms. 
 Moreover, history has furnished repeated instances 
 of the fact that when the pure family-life has been 
 seriously broken down, civilization has broken down 
 with it. The case of Rome is a no less serious warn- 
 
 50 
 
Social Christianity Begins at Home 
 
 ing in this respect because reference to it has be- 
 come so trite. 
 
 Turning from history, we find science furnished 
 with abundant evidence that promiscuity causes ste- 
 rility, not only by reason of the diseases that it gives 
 rise to, but for other reasons perhaps not fully un- 
 derstood. This fact makes it evident to those who 
 have looked closely into the matter that promiscuity 
 must lead ultimately to the elimination of the race 
 that practices it. As to the diseases just referred 
 to, it is doubtful whether there is any force at work 
 among the American people that menaces more 
 seriously their perpetuity. The very antiquity of 
 the monogamous family, moreover, is one of the 
 strongest evidences of its validity. Westermarck 
 and others, who have made extensive investigations 
 among primitive peoples, assert that the permanent 
 union of one man with one woman is an almost uni- 
 versal rule except where the morals of the native 
 peoples have been corrupted by foreigners. Some 
 have even gone so far as to assert with consider- 
 able show of data that a stable monogamous family 
 very frequently obtains among anthropoid apes. If 
 this be true it would go to show that this type of 
 union is older than the human race itself, bred in 
 our very bone, as it were, so that nature may not 
 
 51 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 tolerate its violation without serious biological re- 
 taliation. 
 
 These facts give us a point of view for a clear 
 appreciation of the far-reaching social destructive- 
 ness of sexual vices and divorce. Together they 
 mean the perpetuation of the diseases they engender, 
 with their consequent poverty and crime. Their 
 prevalence among us would be an incontrovertible 
 sign of decay if permitted to continue and thrive. 
 They would mean the inevitable collapse of our 
 civilization and the extinction of our race. The se- 
 riousness of this menace as it exists in America to- 
 day has frequently been pointed out, and it can not 
 be overestimated. 
 
 The causes are doubtless many and varied. No 
 doubt it is true that economic pressure, and the so- 
 cial maladjustments resulting, often do give rise 
 both to vice and to divorce. But the frequent pro- 
 test that we have recently heard from the pens of 
 young women of the class from which the victims 
 of commercialized vice are said to be most fre- 
 quently recruited indicate very clearly that these 
 causes do not undermine the virtue of those who 
 are possessed of a staunch philosophy of life. Pro- 
 fessor Peabody remarks very succinctly that not a 
 hard life but a soft creed is the cause of divorce, 
 
 52 
 
Social Christianity Begins at Home 
 
 and no doubt there is a large measure of truth in 
 his remark. Human nature being as it is, we may 
 never, of course, ignore the economic and social 
 forces as causes of vice and divorce. Still it may 
 always be validly contended that low ideals and 
 flabby moral fiber must always be reckoned with. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the dry rot that is eating 
 at the very vitals of our family-life in America is 
 exaggerated individualism. This is a philosophy 
 of life consciously or subconsciously held which be- 
 lieves that the vital end and highest good of life is 
 pleasure. All laws are appraised with respect to 
 their capacity of contributing thereto. The respon- 
 sibilities which the individual owes to society and its 
 members are largely ignored, and duty is a small 
 word in the vocabulary of such persons. This phi- 
 losophy inevitably undermines all social institutions 
 which depend upon the sense of duty and responsi- 
 bility. This spirit seems to have been growing, 
 especially among our middle and wealthier classes, 
 since the days of our grandfathers. And the ma- 
 terialism of the ages has by no means diminished it. 
 And it is this spirit which, more than any other 
 assignable cause, has made such inroads upon the 
 stability of the American family. 
 
 No further comment is necessary, therefore, to 
 
 S3 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 make clear the destructive social effects of the lives 
 of these men and women whose conduct tends to 
 the spread of vice and the increase of divorce. 
 Whoever entertains toward his own housemate and 
 family responsibilities those hedonistic thoughts and 
 feelings which, if carried to their logical outcome, 
 would lead him to repudiate the most intimate social 
 obligations any human being can possibly assume, 
 may well tremble, for he is on the verge of a preci- 
 pice. Let him beware lest he be numbered among 
 the destroyers of the social fabric. Such as he post- 
 pone indefinitely the coming of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Not only these considerations, however, but the 
 positive contributions that can be made to the social 
 welfare by the maintenance of ideal family relations 
 may well be considered. For they also make it clear 
 that the Kingdom of God begins at home. 
 
 The best things in life have arisen out of family 
 ties, and can only be conserved by perpetuation of 
 those ties. All are now familiar with what John 
 Fiske discovered in the lengthened period of human 
 infancy. It was he who made clear to us for the 
 first time how all the higher values of life have 
 arisen out of the relations made necessary by the 
 helplessness of infants and children. Love, altru- 
 ism, self-sacrifice, and perhaps even religious faith, 
 
 54 
 
Social Christianity Begins at Home 
 
 could never have arisen except out of the relations 
 of parent to child and of brother to brother. The 
 dearest words in all languages are the words of the 
 hearthstone. Consider the incomparable values and 
 joys of life connoted by such words as mother, 
 father, sweetheart, babe, sister, brother, son, and 
 daughter. We may legitimately state as one of the 
 normal ends of a family, its function as a producer 
 of the highest good of human life. 
 
 Another and, for our present purpose, a more 
 important social function of the family is its function 
 as a training school of the social virtues. It was 
 the original social unit where such training was first 
 given, and no other institution can entirely super- 
 sede it. Here children are habituated in obedience 
 and respect for authority, habits absolutely essential 
 to the success of government and the stability of so- 
 ciety. Here brothers and sisters learn self-restraint, 
 sympathy, mutual help, and the respect for the rights 
 of others, traits of character absolutely fundamental 
 to society. Here adults learn the full meaning of 
 love and the self-abnegation it motivates. Here 
 they realize, too, the joys and satisfactions of the 
 most exacting responsibilities. The terms brother- 
 hood and fatherhood have been seized upon to sym- 
 bolize the highest religious ideals that the world has 
 
 55 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 ever conceived, and these symbols would be utterly 
 empty of meaning were it not for the meaning con- 
 tributed by the family relation. Thus the individual 
 is socialized in the home as he can be socialized no- 
 where else, and that socialization is drilled so early 
 and so deeply into the habits of the individual and 
 woven so intricately into the highest ideals of his life 
 that he can never escape them. Thus the family 
 transmits from age to age the moral heritage, and 
 moral progress is possible only as the family fur- 
 nishes us with the higher types of altruism and 
 nobler specimens of social devotion. 
 
 It is only as society is liberally furnished with 
 individuals who have acquired these higher virtues 
 that the better phases of our civilization are made 
 possible. Moreover, as has been said, the stability 
 of democratic government is absolutely dependent 
 upon the habit of obedience and respect for author- 
 ity. It is clear, therefore, that to spare the rod is 
 not only to spoil the child, but also to spoil the re- 
 public, for it furnishes us with a generation of men 
 and women who have never learned respect and obe- 
 dience for law. It might not be amiss to apply Pro- 
 fessor Hall's term "degenerate pedagogy" to the 
 modern home as well as to the modern school. For 
 we seem to be obsessed with the idea in these days 
 
 56 
 
Social Christianity Begins at Home 
 
 that the individuality and freedom of young America 
 must above all things be conserved. As a matter of 
 fact, rigorous drill in habits of obedience, which is 
 necessary to the proper moral regimen of childhood, 
 can seldom be enforced without sterner persuasives 
 than are sanctioned by the domestic pedagogy now 
 in vogue. The national custom of indulging the 
 willfulness of children and cultivating in them an 
 exaggerated notion of personal liberty has far-reach- 
 ing social and political consequences of which the 
 average parent is by no means aware. 
 
 Similar remarks might cogently be made about 
 the habits of mutual help. We are suffering in 
 America from a lack of public spirit. Democracy 
 is like life-insurance : no more can be gotten out of 
 it in the long run than is put into it. And if we are 
 to have public-spirited citizens, the basis of that trait 
 of character must be developed by the relations 
 children are taught to maintain toward one another 
 and toward their neighbors and local institutions. 
 
 Since these things are so, consider the social in- 
 fluence of an ideal home. In such a home are in 
 vogue the Pauline ideal relations of husband to wife 
 and wife to husband, of parents to children and chil- 
 dren to parents, of masters to servants and servants 
 to masters. Love reigns in such a home, and it is 
 
 57 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 a veritable heaven upon earth. In a home presided 
 over by the right kind of a husband and father, kind- 
 ness banishes most of the causes of friction that fur- 
 nish the grist for the divorce-mill. We are told that 
 the increase of divorce is partly due to the com- 
 mendable demand on the part of womankind for 
 the enjoyment of her just rights. She is rightly pro- 
 testing against oppression that so often prevailed 
 under the old regime, where the lord and master 
 of the house was tyrant as well. This, no doubt, 
 is in large measure true, and perhaps there is a sense 
 in which the increased divorce is a necessary evil 
 attendant upon the social advance of abolishing this 
 ancient tyranny; but kindness on the part of the 
 husband and father vacates this entire contention. 
 Kindness, therefore, is a most efficient antiseptic of 
 social disease. 
 
 Again, how far-reaching and beneficent is the 
 social influence of the good housewife and mother. 
 Many a saintly matron is prone to lament that she 
 has never had the opportunity to do much good in 
 the world. She should be led to understand the 
 social significance of her life-work. She has con- 
 tributed more than a host of social workers. And, 
 moreover, the foolish, undomestic woman who sees 
 only the limitations, handicaps, and restraints of her 
 
 58 
 
Social Christianity Begins at Home 
 
 home, should also be led to see the opportunity for 
 social service that she is missing. How empty is 
 the shallow round of social functions, how fruitless 
 the energy devoted to the current fashions, how 
 transient the joys of freedom from responsibility, 
 as compared with the usefulness, the benefit, and 
 the satisfaction of training boys and girls into phys- 
 ical, moral, and spiritual fitness for their places in 
 the social order. Occasionally some woman who is 
 endowed with unusual genius may make a larger 
 contribution to the world's welfare as a reformer 
 and philanthropist than she could do in any other 
 way; but to the normal woman no other task offers 
 a sphere of activity or opportunity which begins 
 to compare in social usefulness with the domestic 
 sphere. If God has in store a brighter crown 
 for one than for another of His children, it cer- 
 tainly is reserved for her who has performed effi- 
 ciently and well the duties of that sphere. And cer- 
 tainly, if love returning in old age to the giver of 
 love is the best of earth's rewards, she will find her- 
 self rich in reward for the service she has rendered 
 to humanity. 
 
 The social application of Christianity indeed be- 
 gins at home. For the high purpose in hand it is 
 far more requisite that America should be full of 
 
 59 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 ideal homes than that we should secure an equitable 
 distribution of wealth. To be sure, many families 
 are depressed by poverty and hard life below the 
 economic level where an ideal home is possible, and 
 the necessity of securing for such families a sufficient 
 economic basis can by no means be gainsaid or dis- 
 counted. Nevertheless there are all too many homes 
 where the economic causes are by no means the real 
 causes that interfere with their fulfillment of proper 
 moral and spiritual functions. Let us, therefore, 
 place alongside of our desire for larger social justice 
 an equal desire for a higher domestic life; for upon 
 this, as perhaps upon no other one thing, depends 
 our future as a nation. And imagine, moreover, 
 what kind of a world this would be if all the homes 
 that might be ideal were really so. 
 
 Such a hope as this is, however, somewhat in- 
 consistent on the part of a man or a woman who 
 has not made his own home, so far as in him lies, 
 ideal. The political unit, so to speak, of the King- 
 dom of God in which each of us registers his vote 
 is his own home. The most consistent and the most 
 effective social service, therefore, that any of us can 
 perform is to render his own home a little model 
 of heaven upon earth. 
 
 But this can not be done unless the Kingdom is, 
 60 
 
Social Christianity Begins at Home 
 
 in the words of the child referred to elsewhere, 
 down in our own hearts. This is the essential prin- 
 ciple. Ideal institutions, ideal society, depend upon 
 the ideal family, and the ideal family depends upon 
 ideal persons. If we feel, therefore, as doubtless 
 most of us do, that we can not remake ourselves, 
 we shall do well to pray that some transfiguring 
 power higher than ourselves shall give us a new 
 heart. Such personal salvation will prove to be 
 social salvation as well. 
 
 Let us here register two pleas in behalf of the 
 home as a social institution. The first of these pleas 
 is for the restoration to the American home of the 
 old-fashioned family altar of our fathers and grand- 
 fathers. What an influence it exerted upon the lives 
 of those of us who can remember it as a part of our 
 childhood ! Its value is greater than either our own 
 generation or our fathers' was aware. Read again 
 the "Cotter's Saturday Night." Listen reverently 
 while Robert Burns portrays the scenes of worship 
 in the humble Scottish home, and ponder well what 
 he says: 
 
 "From scenes like these old Scotia's glories rise." 
 
 The second plea is for homeless children, espe- 
 cially those of our great cities. From them, if they 
 
 61 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 are neglected, must inevitably be recruited our worst 
 class of criminals. Nor will institutional life ade- 
 quately solve the problem in their behalf. Nature 
 has decreed that they shall be reared in homes. 
 Science declares that even red-headed, unprepossess- 
 ing boys, and homely, unkempt little girls, granted 
 they are not positively neurotic with respect to birth, 
 will turn out as well on the average as the offspring 
 of our own homes, if only they are given the advan- 
 tage of a favorable environment. There are hun- 
 dreds of childless wives who might rear one or more 
 such children. To be sure, it would cost them the 
 disturbance of an occasional night's rest, the occa- 
 sional forfeiture of the annual trip to the seaside 
 or the mountains, and the cancellation of some at- 
 tractive social engagements; but it would also have 
 its rewards. It would mean the encircling arms 
 and clinging fingers of a little child uttering precious 
 words those wives otherwise may never hear. It 
 would mean a purpose in life that would lift the life 
 to a level of incomparably greater worth. It would 
 mean the solace and comfort in later years of manly 
 sons and affectionate daughters. It would mean, 
 moreover, a service to the Kingdom of God with 
 which scarcely anything else which they will have 
 the opportunity to do can compare. 
 
 62 
 
IV 
 
 The Social Harvest of Materialism 
 
The Social Harvest of Materialism 
 
 IT is proverbially remarked that philosophy bakes 
 no bread. But Professor James, in the first chap- 
 ters of his "Pragmatism," insists that it is the most 
 important characteristic of an individual or a nation. 
 This is because philosophy is something more than 
 mere intellectual speculation. It is, as Rudolph 
 Eucken urges, a serious and often passionate attempt 
 to solve the problem of human life. A man's phi- 
 losophy is his answer to the question of what con- 
 stitutes for him the ideal meaning of life. What 
 are the ends really worth pursuing, the interests that 
 constitute his life really worth the living. 
 
 Because philosophy in this sense is so serious a 
 concern, some of the great historic systems of philo- 
 sophical thought have exerted incalculable influence 
 upon the course of human events. Plato's system 
 is an illustration, especially in its bearing upon the 
 monastic conception of life prevalent during the 
 Middle Ages. As a matter of fact the distinction 
 with which we are all familiar between the sacred 
 and secular is a far-off echo of this ancient philo- 
 5 65 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 sophical system. In the sense in which the term is 
 here used, the teaching of Jesus may be considered 
 a philosophy, for they prescribe a way of life, and 
 it is superfluous to comment here upon their in- 
 fluence. 
 
 Each individual human being has his philosophy 
 of life. Perhaps he holds it consciously, perhaps 
 only subconsciously. But in either case it determines 
 the ends for which he strives, and motivates in the 
 last analysis his entire activity. 
 
 Modern nations all differ from one another with 
 respect to the philosophy of life that prevails among 
 them, and each age in the world's history is charac- 
 terized by a dominating philosophy peculiar to it- 
 self. This fact we often overlook in our study of 
 history, and by interpreting some epoch of the past 
 in terms of the philosophy of human life that now 
 prevails among us we utterly misconstrue the his- 
 toric epoch to which our attention is directed. It 
 is only by putting ourselves into sympathetic appre- 
 ciation of the prevailing philosophy of any age that 
 we can adequately understand it. Thus the ancient 
 Assyrian Empire and civilization must be inter- 
 preted in terms of the militarism that seems to have 
 dominated its activities. The Greek peoples during 
 the centuries immediately following the Periclean 
 
 66 
 
The Social Harvest of Materialism 
 
 age were actuated by an excessively individualistic 
 conception of life, and this dominated the very 
 course of their history. Monastic asceticism and 
 chivalric militarism contended for supremacy during 
 the mediaeval epoch. The spirit of the Enlighten- 
 ment and of the century that saw the rise of de- 
 mocracy was again individualistic. Thus the pendu- 
 lum swings from one extreme to another. 
 
 The philosophy of human life that dominates 
 our own age, permeates its atmosphere, and ob- 
 sesses the thought of nearly all of our people, is 
 materialistic. We are convinced that a man's life 
 consists in the abundance of the things which he 
 possesseth. We worship success, and spell the name 
 of our god with dollar signs instead of s's. In 
 terms of success we realize that we ourselves are 
 appraised by our boyhood friends and the members 
 of our own family, and in the same terms we are 
 preparing ourselves to appraise our own children. 
 Hence the evidences of material success and power 
 are sought after with an energy sometimes almost 
 terrific. We desire these possessions not merely as 
 means of personal gratification, but because they are 
 the current standards by which the worth and 
 achievement of personalities are measured and com- 
 pared. 
 
 67 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 By this standard do we not only estimate our- 
 selves and one another, but also the achievements 
 of the age itself. It is to our material progress 
 and development that we point with pride — our 
 transportation system, our splendid commercial and 
 industrial cities, our multiplied agencies of produc- 
 tion, our new and incomparably efficient forms of 
 business organization. These are characteristic of 
 the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution, 
 we believe, divides the world's history into two great 
 epochs, and we are quite confident that more has 
 been achieved since than before. Thus do we ap- 
 praise the age in terms of mammon. The mani- 
 festations of this philosophy are everywhere in evi- 
 dence. The excessive business activity of the age 
 and the luxuries that are displayed everywhere are 
 perhaps its most concrete examples. But deeper 
 than this are certain habits of thought and action 
 common among us. Thus, not generals and poets 
 and statesmen and philosophers and prophets catch 
 most effectively the imagination of the American 
 people and become the heroes of youthful ambition, 
 but captains of industry. Our rivalries and emula- 
 tion further betray our materialistic view of life. 
 A large proportion of our people are living habitu- 
 ally beyond their means in the frantic endeavor to 
 
 68 
 
The Social Harvest of Materialism 
 
 keep up appearances so as to maintain a social stand- 
 ing equivalent to that of their associates, or so as to 
 secure admittance to the social circle of their su- 
 periors. Our very reforms are materialistic at the 
 basis. Perhaps this is rightly so, for an epoch of 
 industrial democracy must not too tardily follow 
 upon the heels of political democracy. Nevertheless 
 the labor problem, socialism, and other kindred 
 movements clearly reveal the fact that even our 
 reforms are materialistic. Sometimes this material- 
 ism is definitely and explicitly set forth, as in the 
 Marxian theory of history. More often it is im- 
 plicitly held, as by the millions of our common 
 people, who entertain an almost childlike faith that 
 a more equitable distribution of wealth will prove 
 a panacea for all the ills of life. 
 
 Nor is this conception of life confined to the rich. 
 It is even more influential among our middle classes, 
 for there the struggle to secure the material goods 
 of life is more strenuous and the tragedies of failure 
 more numerous and distressing. Not he alone who 
 has, and whose only joy of life consists in enjoying 
 what he has, is a materialist; but equally he who 
 has not, but struggles to have, and who believes that 
 he has missed the joy of life because he does not 
 secure. This spirit permeates also the laboring 
 
 6 9 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 classes, for they also estimate their lives bitterly in 
 terms merely of the things which they do not possess. 
 Since epochs differ with respect to their domi- 
 nating philosophy, we must conclude that in each 
 case peculiar causes must have been at work. The 
 reasons for the current vogue of the materialistic 
 philosophy of life are not difficult to discover. They 
 are to be sought in the industrial history of the cen- 
 tury and a half just past. The accumulation of 
 capital in England during the eighteenth century, 
 and the excessive demand for the products of Eng- 
 lish industries over the supply, gave rise to a deeply- 
 felt want for more rapid means of production. The 
 inventions which followed as a result of this ne- 
 cessity are too well known to need enumerating here. 
 Chief among them was the steam engine. These 
 inventions revolutionized industry, and by the middle 
 of the nineteenth century the factory system had dis- 
 placed former methods of production almost every- 
 where in western Europe and America. Steam 
 transportation and electric communication followed 
 almost immediately. These industrial changes cre- 
 ated the necessity for larger aggregations of capital, 
 and the corporate organization of industry was the 
 inevitable result. At the same time these changes 
 were occurring the vast resources of North America, 
 
 70 
 
The Social Harvest of Materialism 
 
 not to mention those of other continents, invited ex- 
 ploitation. These modern industrial changes and 
 these vast new resources opened up unprecedented 
 opportunities for wealth-getting. This being the 
 case, men naturally devoted their attention to build- 
 ing factories and railroads, promoting corporations, 
 opening up new areas, and exploiting new resources. 
 Occupied thus with these activities, it could hardly 
 be otherwise than that man should become preoccu- 
 pied with them, and the inevitable commercial esti- 
 mate of life took possession of a commercial age. 
 
 The consequences, particularly the social con- 
 sequences — for these are our special concern here — 
 have been far-reaching, and often far, indeed, from 
 beneficial. This spirit of the age has made inroads 
 upon our family-life. Fathers have become too 
 busy to properly companion and train their boys. 
 Mothers have been drawn into the social whirl with 
 moral consequences to their children too prevalent 
 and plainly seen to need mention. The strain to 
 maintain the standard of living demanded by ma- 
 terialistic ideals has not infrequently been too great 
 for the family ties to endure. Many a divorce has 
 resulted. 
 
 The Church, also, has everywhere felt the in- 
 fluence of this tendency. Men have grown too busy 
 
 7i 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 to attend its services. More than that, they have 
 grown so practical (the word has come to connote 
 the spirit of the age) that they have no use for the 
 spiritual good of the religious life, and therefore 
 nothing to go to church for. Classes of our popu- 
 lation have been alienated from the Church because 
 the Church has refused or neglected (perhaps un- 
 justifiably) to espouse their cause of industrial re- 
 form. Consequently the problem of the alienation 
 of the masses of the Church has become more or 
 less acute. But perhaps the most ominous influence 
 of materialism upon the religious life of our people 
 is in its influence upon the clergy. Even they have 
 come to estimate themselves and one another in 
 terms of the salaries they receive. As a result their 
 struggle for place and preferment is worldly enough, 
 and often unscrupulous. How can the world be 
 expected to hear and heed the gospel message from 
 the lips of priests who are themselves offering sacri- 
 fice upon the altars of Mammon? 
 
 Our political life has also felt the pressure of 
 materialistic ideals. If life's highest values are esti- 
 mated in terms of salaries and other emoluments 
 only, how can we expect that the emoluments will 
 always be questioned rigorously as to their sources? 
 If men enter public life for the money there is in it, 
 
 72 
 
The Social Harvest of Materialism 
 
 and scarcely ever for other reasons, naturally they 
 will seek to get all the money out of it they can. 
 And the temptation to accept dishonest money will 
 not be so vigorously scorned as in an age and among 
 a people where honor and fidelity to public trust are 
 placed among the highest values of life. Further, 
 as long as business offers so many opportunities to 
 secure what is considered the highest good, men who 
 are successful in business will be loath to turn to 
 the field of politics. Not only that, but they will be 
 able to spare but little time from their pursuit of 
 private wealth to devote to the interests of the gen- 
 eral welfare. Inattention to public interests will 
 naturally become quite general. From among a 
 people who are almost universally too busy making 
 money to give attention to political interests, and 
 who, moreover, conceive a government's chief func- 
 tion to be the maintenance of business prosperity, 
 how is it to be expected that there will arise in suffi- 
 cient numbers high-minded, public-spirited men as 
 candidates for political service? Moreover, since 
 business conceives it to be the function of government 
 to conserve the interests of business, how is it to be 
 expected that money motives will not be brought to 
 bear upon the public servants who are in the public 
 service for money ends ? A materialistic nation must 
 
 73 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 inevitably expect its government to be honeycombed 
 with graft. And if that government is a young de- 
 mocracy, its success and ultimate survival will inevi- 
 tably be jeopardized. Truly has it been said by one 
 of the closest students of popular government in 
 America, that we are sick unto death with the money- 
 mania. 
 
 Perhaps it may be proper to hint at still other 
 consequences of the materialistic spirit of our age, 
 which, though less evident and immediate, may pos- 
 sibly be of even greater significance. It is a question 
 how long a people can endure the stress of such a 
 strenuous life as our American life has been for the 
 past generation or two, especially when that strain 
 is not merely physical, but nervous. Nor is the nerv- 
 ous strain the strain of mental work alone, but the 
 strain and worry of the rivalries, ambitions, and emu- 
 lations previously referred to. The fret, anxiety, 
 and disappointment draw heavily on our vitality. 
 The wear and tear, moreover, is not any the less 
 when the struggle is, as many of us have realized, 
 for ends that are not worth the struggle. Who can 
 be sure that this is not among the causes of the rest- 
 less nervousness which foreigners observe among 
 our people, and which we ourselves may discern evi- 
 dences of in the immense demand for popular amuse- 
 
 74 
 
The Social Harvest of Materialism 
 
 ments? Who can be certain that there is no causal 
 connection between these things and the alarming 
 prevalence of crime, insanity, and neurosis? Is it 
 not conceivable that the race which has brought 
 about the marvelous industrial development of mod- 
 ern times shall fail to survive to enjoy its benefits 
 simply because the strain has incapacitated it for 
 reproducing its native population with sufficient ra- 
 pidity to hold its own against the superior fecundity 
 of alien peoples who have been attracted to our 
 shores by that very industrial progress which we 
 have produced? And it is impossible but that our 
 protracted service of a god who can not satisfy the 
 depths of the human soul shall leave us in the end 
 oppressed by the devitalizing world-weariness and 
 pessimism always characteristic of a decadent 
 epoch. 
 
 To the Christian inspired with the Kingdom- 
 hope all this is discouraging indeed, for he knows 
 that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of 
 the things that he possesseth. He knows, moreover, 
 that an age can not serve both God and Mammon, 
 and that the Kingdom of Heaven can never come in 
 an age devoted to the service of pelf. The social 
 consequences of materialism are to him distressing 
 indeed, and he prays daily that this philosophy of 
 
 75 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 life may rapidly give place to conceptions more 
 Christian. He realizes, moreover, that whatever 
 means contribute to the displacement of this phi- 
 losophy of life will hasten the coming of the King- 
 dom. And he feels that if he can contribute any- 
 thing toward this result, he will be performing a val- 
 uable social service. 
 
 The social service that can be rendered by a 
 single individual who, without conscious effort, is 
 blissfully indifferent to the material estimate of life 
 may perhaps effectively be illustrated by an incident. 
 There was once a man of this stamp who taught 
 biology in the high school of a small city in the 
 Middle West. He lived a simple life, was main- 
 taining a happy home, and rearing well a family of 
 considerable size on a small income. He was ab- 
 solutely without restless effort to be contented with 
 small means. Instead he thoroughly enjoyed his 
 life, his home, his profession, and his religion. 
 Years afterwards — a long period of Protestant mis- 
 sionary service in the Orient having intervened — 
 this man met a young Jewish rabbi who had been 
 one of his pupils at the time he was a high-school 
 teacher. He was quite surprised to discover that 
 the young man had become a rabbi, for he had in 
 the former days looked upon him as the heir and 
 
 7 6 
 
The Social Harvest of Materialism 
 
 promising successor of a leading local merchant. 
 When asked by his former teacher as to his reasons 
 for the choice of a life-work, the teacher was com- 
 pletely dumbfounded when the young Jew replied 
 that it was the teacher himself whose influence had, 
 more than anything else, determined his choice. 
 Pressed for an explanation, the young rabbi replied 
 that the teacher's manner of life had set him to 
 thinking that there was something higher and better 
 than merely to make money. 
 
 Ideals are contagious. They are not transmitted 
 from soul to soul by argument on the part of those 
 who only half believe them. They are transmitted 
 by suggestion from the example of those who believe 
 them so completely, so habitually, and so subcon- 
 sciously that they put forth no effort to resist com- 
 peting ideals held by those about them. All that is 
 necessary to liquidate the excessive materialism of 
 our age is simply for enough of us to believe thus 
 really and genuinely the Christian ideals instead of 
 the materialistic. Whoever serves God instead of 
 Mammon in the depths of his heart contributes his 
 service to that end as surely as did the teacher re- 
 ferred to above; and just as this man's influence 
 must have radiated about him in an ever-widening 
 circle, so must the influence of every other such per- 
 
 77 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 son. This ideal once started in vogue, its vogue in- 
 creases by geometric ratio. 
 
 Those Christians, then, who are ambitious to 
 render social service in the interests of the coming 
 Kingdom of God in the world may well look to 
 their own hearts to discover there whether the in- 
 fluence of their ideals is making for or against the 
 materialistic spirit of the age. And if they discover 
 there a restlessness, an effort of resistance to that 
 spirit, they may well seek a change of heart in the 
 ways it has so often been sought. For here again 
 it is true that by grace we are saved through faith, 
 and that not of ourselves : it is the gift of God. And 
 he whose personal salvation makes him a servant 
 from the heart of God instead of Mammon may be 
 sure that he will make his proportionate contribu- 
 tion to the overthrow of the kingdom of Mammon 
 and the establishment of his own Father's Kingdom 
 in the earth. 
 
 78 
 
V 
 
 The Social Fruits of the Spiritual Life 
 
The Social Fruits of the Spiritual Life 
 
 THE message of Rauschenbusch and the other 
 prophets of social Christianity have already 
 been referred to. That message has indeed moved 
 profoundly the religious world. But just now we are 
 turning to another religious message that bids fair 
 to move us at least as profoundly. That is the mes- 
 sage of Rudolph Eucken, of Jena. 
 
 His plea is for the spiritual life. He contends 
 that its demands are irrepressible and perennial. 
 The whole history of philosophy he interprets as the 
 expression of the spiritual nature of man seeking to 
 solve the problem of human life. He insists, more- 
 over, that any age which repudiates the needs of the 
 soul must inevitably be followed by an age which 
 swings back through spiritual unrest to the spiritual 
 life. On the first page of his little booklet entitled 
 "Back to Religion" he declares that it is a super- 
 ficial observer of the signs of our times who believes 
 that this age is characterized only by blatant denial, 
 for, he continues, however much the denial of re- 
 ligion may yet obtain among the masses, there is 
 6 81 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 evident a demand arising out of the intellect and out 
 of the depths of men's souls for a return to the 
 spiritual life, an undeniable yearning for more depth 
 of life. 
 
 What, now, does Eucken mean by this charac- 
 teristic phrase of his, "The depths of men's souls?" 
 
 He means, I think, those parts of our natures 
 which activity, pleasure, power, and learning fail 
 to satisfy; those instinctive needs and desires which 
 have led men in all ages to construct philosophies 
 and theologies, liturgies and creeds, hymns and 
 prayers, and live by them. Those capacities of our 
 minds which are exercised and satisfied by the con- 
 sciousness of duty well done, sorrows submissively 
 and sweetly borne, the misery of existence reverently 
 contemplated: this is the depths of our souls. In 
 the depths of our souls we feel remorse for sin, the 
 joy of forgiveness, and the enthusiasm of consecra- 
 tion. In the depths of our souls are emotions of 
 repentance, mystical joys of faith, and immortal 
 hopes. In the depths of our souls do we contem- 
 plate nature's vastness and power, her beauty and 
 order, and her fierce relentlessness. The depths of 
 our souls respond to the facts of suffering, sorrow, 
 and death. It is in the depths of our souls that we 
 experience that war in our members of which the 
 
 82 
 
The Social Fruits of the Spiritual Life 
 
 apostle writes, the depressing sense of guilt, and the 
 exultation of moral victory. Our imaginations, re- 
 acting against the imperfections and incompleteness 
 of our own life and surroundings construct, in the 
 depths of our souls, ideals of a perfect life and a 
 perfect world. 
 
 In the depths of our souls, says Professor 
 Eucken, there is unmistakable demand for more 
 depth of life. What does he mean again, by this 
 phrase, "More depth of life?" Not more business 
 activity; not more of the excitements of pleasure, 
 touring, and travel; not more power of material 
 success, nor conquests of the scientific intellect: but 
 something deeper than these. He means more 
 peace of mind and repose of soul; more singleness 
 of worthy purpose, less clash and conflict of inner 
 desires; more mastery of self and loyalty to others; 
 more comfort of faith; more joy of prayer; more 
 delight of loving and being loved; more strength of 
 soul to resist temptations and bear unbearable 
 griefs; more insight into the secrets of union with 
 God; more noble enthusiasm for holy ideals. He 
 means more satisfaction of these passionate longings 
 we so often feel for a holier life; the sparks of that 
 triumphant inner fire that from time to time is kin- 
 dled in men's souls by renunciation of love, or even 
 
 83 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 life, in behalf of holy causes; more of that insight 
 of soul which gives us visions of the invisible world 
 where broken arcs are completed in the perfect 
 round. This is more depth of life. 
 
 It is with such phrases as these that Eucken re- 
 fers to the spiritual life. And to this he says we must 
 inevitably return if we are to save our lives from 
 emptiness and our age from barrenness. To this, 
 moreover, he sees signs that we are already return- 
 ing; for the souls of men are never satisfied for long 
 with the mere husks of life. 
 
 It must be conceded that the epoch through 
 which we have just passed has been skeptical indeed 
 of the joys and powers of the spiritual life. It has 
 been a commercial age, valuing life in terms of 
 abundant possessions. Men were not bankrupted 
 by the loss of their souls. It has been an individu- 
 alistic, selfish period. Freedom, power, happiness, 
 self-assertion, were the great desiderata. Men felt 
 little need for prayer and the forgiveness of sins. 
 It has been a rationalistic age. The Zeitgeist had 
 little faith that piety could lay hold on invisible 
 sources of personal power. It was classed with the 
 vagaries of the shallow-brained. The soul fared ill 
 in such a "practical" age. Psychology tended to ex- 
 plain prayer as a psychic phenomenon, the activity 
 
 8 4 
 
The Social Fruits of the Spiritual Life 
 
 of the self within the self, a pure subjectivity, a mere 
 tugging at one's boot-straps. Physical science regis- 
 tered the existence of no invisible world; no chem- 
 istry tabulated its elements, no astronomy charted 
 its location. Naturalistic philosophy was willing, to 
 be sure, to effect a division of labor with poetry, 
 but insisted that its ideals, though pretty, could not 
 be proven. And all the time business, without se- 
 rious interruptions or interferences, went on supply- 
 ing the market with everything the heart could de- 
 sire to eat and to drink and to be merry with. Never 
 did man seem so prosperous and so well satisfied 
 with himself! 
 
 But of all the wonders of creation the most awe- 
 inspiring is the soul of man; and most marvelous 
 of all the soul's wonders is the range and scope of 
 its activities and needs. The vast designs of busi- 
 ness and war, the astonishing creations of philosophy 
 and art, the delicacy and the power of poetry and 
 music, the heights and depths of love, the whole 
 cycle of the passions, the sublime capacity for self- 
 abnegation, the curiosity to know and the will to 
 live and do — no Goethe or Shakespeare can compass 
 all that is in the soul of man. 
 
 Our inventories of life's values are apt, there- 
 fore, to fall short of completeness, and our reasons 
 
 85 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 for valuing life are prone to a lack of finality. For 
 the whole contents of man defies enumeration by 
 a single part of man, and life is ever bigger than 
 logic. For instance, our catalogue of the reasons for 
 duty is often strikingly deficient. A hopeful doctor 
 of philosophy scarcely out of adolescence once as- 
 serted sapiently that the only reason for conjugal 
 constancy was that one might know his own off- 
 spring. As a matter of fact, virtue has, as Wester- 
 marck has shown, biological roots older and deeper 
 than human existence; and Fiske has shown us that 
 the family relation bears as its fruitage the holiest 
 and best things of human life. In the light of these 
 facts the flippant young professor's philosophy seems 
 partial indeed. 
 
 Such mistakes, however, we are very prone to 
 make. Thus ideals that can never be verified are 
 often valid symbols of unseen realities. The ideal 
 of a rescued sepulcher or of a westward route to 
 the East Indies could not, indeed, have borne in- 
 spection, but they validly symbolized all that after- 
 ward grew out of activity in their behalf, namely, 
 the revival of learning in one case, and the whole 
 civilization of the western hemisphere in the other. 
 The Christian ideals of heaven, of the Kingdom of 
 God, of sanctification, have never been surveyed and 
 
 86 
 
The Social Fruits of the Spiritual Life 
 
 charted; but they do stand, nevertheless, as valid 
 symbols of we know not what. Let them continue 
 to motivate endeavor and bring forth their benefi- 
 cent consequences, as they have done in ages past; 
 for there is more reality in visions and ideals than 
 is dreamed of in the skeptical philosophy of the day, 
 and the epoch that omits religion from its inventory 
 of values is presently avenged in the shallowness or 
 even decadence of its own life. 
 
 Yes, Horatio, there are more things in heaven 
 and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy. 
 
 There are more invisible powers available for 
 our inner life than are reckoned by the rash skepti- 
 cism of the age. For are we not segments of a 
 greater circle? "Me poinitet," the Latin had it. 
 Other verbs also called for a like unpersonal idiom, 
 as if the soul, swept by certain emotions and pas- 
 sions, recognized itself passive rather than active; 
 handled, as it were, a mere individual atom, by 
 forces cosmic and universal. There are indeed 
 forces at work within us that are not of us. What 
 shall we say, for instance, of our instincts? Are they 
 not manifestations of laws and powers that do not 
 depend for their existence upon our having been born 
 to manifest them? How, further, can the percep- 
 tion of outer things occur within us, to interpret to 
 
 87 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 us the things that are without, unless there be some 
 connection which we ourselves did not create be- 
 tween the inner and the outer? What, again, are 
 those Kantian categories of the mental life a priori 
 to our thinking? Without them we could not think 
 at all, and yet before we are they were, from ever- 
 lasting to everlasting, even as the Creator Himself, 
 who is their source. What, once more, are those 
 principles of logic according to which we think? 
 They too are in us, but not of us ; yet without them 
 we could not think at all. They too are, in a large 
 sense, not of us, but of the over-world of which 
 we partake, and which is a part of each of us. 
 
 So likewise in the spiritual world the soul com- 
 pletes itself because it partakes of powers not of it- 
 self, powers that ever were and shall be for ever- 
 more, and of which all finite souls partake. Faith 
 and prayer, assurance of forgiveness, mystical in- 
 sight, and prophetic vision may, indeed, puzzle the 
 metaphysicians; but by them the powers of the in- 
 visible world are made available, and the greatest 
 moral triumphs do occur, both in individual lives 
 and the social order. 
 
 And if one rests intellectually ill content until 
 these powers of the invisible world be named, let 
 him venture to name them just as his mother taught 
 
The Social Fruits of the Spiritual Life 
 
 him at her knee to name them: God! Metaphysics 
 can not consistently offer any serious demur to that 
 name, for it has no better nomenclature to suggest. 
 Indeed, the history of philosophy for the last three 
 thousand years consists mostly in following first this 
 great thinker, and then that one into various specu- 
 lative leads, only to demonstrate each in turn a blind 
 pocket. What little gold they have found they have, 
 one by one, poured molten into the form of that 
 great name. The last century has conceded the in- 
 soluble contradictions of materialistic atheism, while 
 the drift of idealism has been steadily in the direc- 
 tion of personalism. Meantime the ancient ineffable 
 Name, ever on the reverent lips of faith, has led the 
 van of social progress from Galilee to the Golden 
 Gate, and now returns to light the awakening Orient. 
 
 And among ourselves men in search of more 
 depth of life and spiritual power are turning to God 
 in ever-increasing numbers and passionate eagerness. 
 For the spiritual life does lay hold on power. It 
 does bear fruit, and its fruits are not only individual, 
 they are social as well. And if we fail to explain 
 how it can bear fruit, it is only necessary to point 
 out the fruits that it has borne. If its proofs are 
 not speculative they are pragmatic. 
 
 But after all we shall not have to look far to dis- 
 89 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 cover in part why this is so. For the spiritual life, 
 like the intellectual life and the cultural life, diverts 
 attention and activity from primitive, anti-social in- 
 terests to acquired interests that are socializing. 
 Our primitive, animal, untaught interests are inter- 
 ests of hunger and passion and of savage strife; 
 and if we devote our attentions and activities to 
 these, and these alone, we inevitably clash with one 
 another, and social chaos must result. But as Pro- 
 fessor Ross wittily, though almost irreverently, says, 
 the exerciser of dogs in training would be wise not 
 to throw them a bone, but rather to set them baying 
 the moon. For there might not be bone enough to 
 go around, whereas there would be plenty of moon 
 for all. So with the higher intellectual culture and 
 spiritual interests of man. Attention and activity 
 devoted to them seldom breed disagreements or gen- 
 erate friction. Just to the degree that we occupy 
 ourselves with these higher interests, to that degree 
 does social order develop. And of all these acquired 
 socializing interests to which men may devote their 
 attention, and from which they may secure happiness, 
 the religious interests are most cheaply produced and 
 distributed among the common people. It requires 
 tremendous effort and capital to distribute widely 
 all the products of science, philosophy, literature, 
 
 90 
 
The Social Fruits of the Spiritual Life 
 
 and art; but men pray instinctively, the religious life 
 is spontaneous, and a revival can sweep through a 
 whole population redirecting the energies of the 
 masses as nothing else can do. 
 
 But the religious life is far more than a mere 
 harmless diversion, a mere plaything with which chil- 
 dren can be amused, so as to keep them out of mis- 
 chief. It is positively socializing in a score of dif- 
 ferent ways. This may be especially and emphat- 
 ically said of the Christian religion. For its unique- 
 ness and grandeur consists precisely in this, that it 
 harnesses the religious activities and emotions to 
 social sentiments, ideals, and enterprises. It stimu- 
 lates instincts of sympathy and love, not only by its 
 standards, but by the emotions that it generates. 
 Thus men are motivated to lives of spontaneous and 
 positive goodness, they are bound together by mutual 
 spiritual interests of the most intimate and tender 
 sort. Thus the world's capital of love is immeas- 
 urably augmented, and its liability to hatred immeas- 
 urably decreased. 
 
 Again, the religious life, especially the Christian 
 life, renders the heart right as nothing else can pos- 
 sibly do. It places its emphasis upon sincerity and 
 good intentions as the prime requisites. And here, 
 again, it stimulates these virtues with emotions that 
 
 9i 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 can not be tabulated. It strengthens, moreover, the 
 will by its very access to those higher and invisible 
 powers which no man can explain. Thus it makes 
 men over, and from what has already been said of 
 the social value of individual morality, its social 
 value must appear. 
 
 Not only so, but — and this is most important of 
 all — religion always and everywhere has been char- 
 acterized by its power to seize upon ideals, enter- 
 prises, and causes, and marshal thereto fervor and 
 enthusiasm that are incalculable. History is full 
 of instances: the pilgrimages of the Buddhists, the 
 conquests of the Mohammedans, the fanatical cru- 
 sades of the Albigenses, and so on without limit. 
 This fervor and activity, often tremendous, though 
 sometimes fanatical, may be tamed and harnessed 
 to the cause of social welfare. It may be made to 
 motivate the individual moral regeneration of whole 
 populations in behalf of social ideals, and it may 
 be utilized in behalf of social justice. 
 
 But why should it be attempted here to complete 
 the list of reasons why the spiritual life regenerates 
 men and thus regenerates society? This is not an 
 argument, and even if it were it could gain nothing 
 by exhaustiveness, if that were possible. Suffice it, 
 therefore, to assert again what in our heart of hearts 
 
 92 
 
The Social Fruits of the Spiritual Life 
 
 we all believe, that the spiritual life does get hold 
 on invisible power. And having asserted, let us 
 turn to history, for history bears eloquent testimony 
 to the social fruitage of the spiritual life. The great 
 revivals of personal religion have always been fruit- 
 ful of social consequences. One illustration may 
 suffice. Green in his "Short History of the English 
 People" devotes several pages to the Wesleyan re- 
 vival of the eighteenth century. He says : "Religion 
 carried to the hearts of the people a fresh spirit of 
 moral zeal, while it purified our literature and our 
 manners. A new philanthropy reformed our pris- 
 ons, infused clemency and wisdom into our penal 
 laws, abolished the slave-trade, and gave impulse 
 to popular education. ... In the nation at large 
 appeared a new moral enthusiasm which, rigid and 
 pedantic as it often seemed, was still healthy in its 
 social tone, and its power was seen in the disap- 
 pearance of the profligacy which had disgraced the 
 upper class and the foulness which had infested the 
 literature ever since the restoration. . . . A yet 
 nobler result of the religious revival was the steady 
 attempt, which has never ceased from that day to 
 this, to remedy the guilt, ignorance, physical suffer- 
 ing, social degradation of the profligate and the 
 poor." 
 
 93 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 Such instances might be multiplied without num- 
 ber, but it is unnecessary. Our social ills are some- 
 what different from those of England in the eight- 
 eenth century, but they are no less serious, and prob- 
 ably no less amenable to such ameliorating influ- 
 ences. Who can estimate the work of such a re- 
 vival of personal religion sweeping over America 
 during this generation? 
 
 But let us return to the two religious messages 
 with reference to which we began: the one a plea 
 for the social application of Christianity, typified in 
 its chief present representative, Rauschenbusch, the 
 other a plea for the spiritual life, its representative, 
 Professor Eucken. One message is almost exclu- 
 sively social, the other almost exclusively individual. 
 But let us discern clearly that they do not contra- 
 dict nor discount one another. Instead they are 
 mutually supplementary. Each needs the other, and 
 the people need them both. We need more social 
 ends to actuate our personal religion; we need more 
 personal spirituality to vitalize our social religion. 
 If these two messages, blended together in causal 
 connection, as they must be if either is to be vital, 
 are taken seriously to heart by clergy and people, 
 they will together under God redeem the times. 
 
 94 
 
VI 
 
 The Social Benefits of Self-Denial 
 
The Social Benefits of Self -Denial 
 
 A SELF-CALCULATING ethic falls very far 
 short of giving a full account of human na- 
 ture. Self-renunciation is a phenomenon connected 
 with the most deep-seated instincts of man, and is 
 therefore older, much older, than the race. Biology 
 furnishes abundant testimony to this significant fact. 
 The utterly rash defense of their young by animal 
 mothers, and the battles of the ants in which indi- 
 viduals seem to count for nothing, are cases in which 
 the first law of nature seems to be set aside. But 
 without this instinct the species would perish. 
 
 The human race inherits it. However universal 
 selfishness may be, this other instinct of self- 
 abnegation ever remains, asserting itself at unex- 
 pected times and places, often most sublimely. How 
 else can we account for the heroisms of war, and 
 the weary, unending toil of parents for their chil- 
 dren? And whoever has observed the face of a 
 youth in whose soul there was transpiring the agony 
 of consecration to some great ideal may well con- 
 sider what this passion is worth to the world. For 
 7 97 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 without vicarious sacrifice social salvation is impos- 
 sible. History is full of it. 
 
 The opinion is advanced by some that it is wrong 
 for society to accept gratis the self-sacrificing de- 
 votion of Catholic nurses. Perhaps this opinion is 
 valid; still there is something in the priest's reply 
 •who said, "But the spirit of self-sacrifice must be 
 kept alive in the world !" Indeed, how bereft of its 
 best things the world would at last become if this 
 noble passion should cease to master and mold 
 many of the choicest souls of every generation! 
 An interesting catalogue might be made of the pre- 
 cious possessions which this passion has contributed 
 to the world. It vitalized ancient Hebrew prophet- 
 ism. It motivated that missionary zeal which evan- 
 gelized all Europe by the end of the tenth century, 
 and promises to evangelize all the world by the end 
 of the twentieth. Had no one been willing to die 
 for Liberty, democracy could never have grown to 
 such proportions. Stories came to us from the East 
 of how young Japanese soldiers had confided fer- 
 vently to their English-speaking friends that they 
 hoped to die in Manchuria. Then we understood 
 why Japanese losses in a charge could be one hun- 
 dred per cent, but a column could not be repulsed. 
 
 For the leadership of great reforms this spirit 
 
 9 8 
 
The Social Benefits of Self-Denial 
 
 is absoltuely necessary. "How, then, mark the true 
 prophet from the false? How tell the disinterested 
 sage from the ambitious impostor? The masses 
 have met this difficulty by applying the rude but 
 effective test of renunciation. They will not receive 
 a sterner ideal unless the author renounces all that 
 common men strive for. The false prophet makes 
 his success the stepping-stone to power and ease, 
 while the true prophet puts the world beneath his 
 feet. Hence, the locust and the wild honey, the 
 staff and the sheep-skin, have always been the sure 
 credentials of the moral reformer."* On the other 
 hand, an evangelist who knows how to develop a 
 mob-craze and then capitalize it at tens of thou- 
 sands of dollars, can hardly expect the benediction 
 of posterity. 
 
 It may be that the real contribution of the clergy 
 of our day to social welfare and progress is in direct 
 proportion to the degree of this spirit which actu- 
 ates it. The temptations were never greater than 
 in an epoch like ours for clergymen to become sor- 
 didly professionalized; and many, no doubt, have 
 gradually succumbed to the subtle temptation. 
 
 The various new forms of philanthropy and 
 social engineering now developing have given rise 
 
 *Ross, " Social Control," p. 359. 
 
 99 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 to a new profession, which might be termed the 
 profession of social service. Schools have already 
 been established to train young men and women for 
 this profession. The demand for such young per- 
 sons exceeds the supply, and is increasing; but the 
 pay is usually small. The passion of altruistic de- 
 votion must be relied upon to furnish recruits. Con- 
 secration is the door to this service. Upon the re- 
 sponse depends in considerable measure the Chris- 
 tianization of the social order. 
 
 But if in our modern society we need the spirit 
 of self-denial as a qualification for reform leaders, 
 we need it much more in the very texture of our 
 whole life. The atmosphere is charged with selfish 
 individualism, which, as has been pointed out, is eat- 
 ing at the vitals of our institutions. We shall never 
 recover until we reinstate in some measure at least 
 the austere, rigorous virtue of a stricter generation. 
 The prevailing tendency nowadays seems to be to 
 satisfy the cravings of human nature for happiness, 
 pleasure or self-gratification, without any very deep 
 or far-sighted regard to consequences. Naturally, 
 therefore, the world is full of the forms of moral 
 laxness repeatedly referred to, and which constitute 
 the disintegrating agencies of our times. Blue laws 
 
 XOO 
 
The Social Benefits of Self-Denial 
 
 no doubt are extreme ; and the puritanical rigor that 
 voluntarily accepts the standards which blue laws 
 are designed to impose upon the unwilling is a harsh 
 one, to be sure; but that rigor makes an adaman- 
 tine virtue fit for the foundations of a great civili- 
 zation. Too little such lime in the superstructure 
 may imperil the walls. Such austerity is the prime 
 moral need of our age. It alone can furnish us in- 
 corruptible judges, honest legislators, and faithful 
 executives. Nothing less can eliminate infidelity 
 from our public life, and put our business life on 
 the moral level demanded by the deepest needs and 
 best insight of the age. And only this can restore 
 the creed upon which the family is built. For it is 
 always the seductive lure of illicit self-gratification 
 that draws us from the straight course ; and unless 
 one's philosophy of life is beaten firmly into the 
 warp of self-restraint, he will hardly be able to stifle 
 the passion of temptation. 
 
 We are accustomed to cast slanting remarks at 
 the austerities of our fathers, and caricature the pe- 
 culiarities of dress, speech, and manner that were 
 associated with their austerities. The final footing 
 of the columns may, however, show a balance to 
 their accounts; and the time may come when we 
 
 IOI 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 shall be characterized non-conductors of civilization. 
 Doubtless the purple-clad Romans of the later am- 
 phitheater poked fun at Cincinnatus. 
 
 The decadence of this spirit of self-denial we 
 find referred to in most unexpected places. For in- 
 stance, in a recently-issued treatise on educational 
 theory may be found the following sentences: 
 
 "To see to it that the ideals which accumulated 
 human experience has shown to be worthy and to 
 make for social welfare, are safely and effectively 
 transmitted from generation to generation is ob- 
 viously a prime task of education. The decline of 
 the ancient civilizations is generally recognized as 
 having been due to the fact that the races which 
 had so laboriously built up these civilizations failed 
 to transmit from generation to generation the ideals 
 that were essential to their perpetuation. Chief 
 among these are the ideals of self-denial and self- 
 sacrifice — those essential standards of human con- 
 duct that have made all advancement possible. It 
 is because material prosperity eliminates the con- 
 ditions which give vitality and emotive force to 
 these ideals, — it is for this reason that material 
 prosperity, unless checked and controlled by edu- 
 cative forces, tends to national and ethnic decay. 
 Both Greece and Rome lacked an organized educa- 
 
 102 
 
The Social Benefits of Self-Denial 
 
 tional institution that would automatically instill 
 these ideals into each generation. It remains to 
 be seen whether modern education will be adequate 
 to the task. Certain it is that the present tenden- 
 cies in our schools toward ease and comfort and 
 the lines of least resistance confirm rather than 
 counteract the operation of the Zeitgeist which re- 
 flects so perfectly the moral decadence that comes 
 with prosperity — the letting loose the grip that our 
 forefathers, who lived under sterner and harsher 
 conditions, had upon the ideals of self-denial and 
 self-sacrifice."* 
 
 Moreover, the lack of these ideals shows its 
 consequences in the most remote and unexpected 
 ways. Take, for instance, the tendency of our so- 
 ciety to stratify into classes. Scarcely anything 
 could be more undesirable in a democracy, for his- 
 tory warns us ominously of the volcanic upheavals 
 that ultimately break up these crusts. However 
 validly we may charge such formations to economic 
 forces, it still remains true that the psychology o£ 
 the thing is the love of display, the pride of emu- 
 lation, and the lust of personal power. However 
 prime a requisite to the prevention of this caste- 
 formation a proper distribution of economic reward 
 
 * Bagley, " Educational Values," p. 60. 
 IO3 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 and opportunity may be, it must be seen also that 
 renunciation and humility are factors worth con- 
 sidering on their own account. Advice about the 
 appropriate treatment of poor men in vile raiment 
 as compared with men in gold rings and goodly ap- 
 parel is, indeed, quite counter to human nature ; but 
 after all it actuates brotherhoods in the obscure cor- 
 ners of Ephesus and Corinth, which later become 
 the leaven of the world. 
 
 Cause-loyalty and rigid renunciation of personal 
 interests and inclinations are the key also to the 
 labor problem. 
 
 The growth of population always tends to over- 
 supply the labor market. The purchasers of labor 
 take advantage of the resulting competition among 
 laborers to beat the price of labor down to bare 
 means of subsistence. Consequently the sellers of 
 labor have always been exploited by the buyers of 
 labor. Slavery and serfdom are historic forms of 
 that exploitation; wage-oppression is the contempo- 
 raneous form. The great trusts may easily become 
 the greatest oppressors, because they have the great- 
 est advantage over individual laborers. 
 
 To stand together and sell their labor collec- 
 tively are the laborers' only escape from this op- 
 pression. The tremendous power that in this way 
 
 104 
 
The Social Benefits of Self-Denial 
 
 labor could exert in its own behalf is really quite 
 startling. There need be no limit to labor's share 
 in production except the productivity of labor, if 
 only all laborers would submerge their personal in- 
 terests to the interests of their class. 
 
 Laborers are disqualified for such co-operation 
 by natural human selfishness, and by the brutalizing 
 vices to which they are so apt to be addicted. Our 
 liquor system not only loads the laboring man's beer 
 bucket with the federal taxes the trusts should bear, 
 but also debauches him beyond the capacity for effi- 
 cient organization against those that hire him. 
 
 If the leaders and the rank and file of labor 
 could become imbued with a pious passion for their 
 cause like that which characterized Cromwell's bri- 
 gade, their contribution to the cause of industrial 
 democracy might be more commensurate with the 
 contribution of Cromwell -and his men to the cause 
 of political democracy. 
 
 And, I dare say, the secret of individual happi- 
 ness is also to be found here. Perhaps a unique 
 and effective illustration of this fact may be found 
 in the vogue and acceptability of Spinoza's phi- 
 losophy. For, when some great thinker's guess at 
 the ultimate mystery of life and things enjoys wide 
 currency over a long period of time, it may be pretty 
 
 105 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 certainly assumed that there is a core of truth in 
 it which satisfies the needs of human nature. Spi- 
 noza's system is fatalistic and pantheistic in its meta- 
 physical aspects; but its ethical outcome is in what 
 he calls the love of God. By this he really means 
 -a willing, submissive absorption in and obedience 
 to Nature. "Our life is a battle between surrender 
 to the phenomenal world and ascent to the world of 
 reality, obstinate clinging to petty individualism and 
 willing absorption in Infinite Being. . . . Spinoza 
 feels the traditional ideals of conduct to be unbear- 
 ably small and petty, since, whatever the breadth 
 they may seem to have, they do not take man out 
 of himself and the sphere of his own ideas, interests, 
 and emotions."* 
 
 For purposes of our adjustment to society and 
 the social awakening, as well as to our own inner 
 selves, we might paraphrase Spinoza's thought by 
 asserting that the secret of life is to be found in 
 closer intimacy with the social cosmos and absorp- 
 tion in its evolution. 
 
 Self-denial seldom manifests itself except in con- 
 nection with some strong instinct. It can not, there- 
 fore, be made to order, but results as a by-product 
 from the stimulation of the instinct. The three in- 
 
 *Eucken, "The Problem of Human Life," pp. 373, 378. 
 
 106 
 
The Social Benefits of Self-Denial 
 
 stincts with which it most commonly displays itself 
 are fighting, the parental instincts, and religion. 
 
 It is the last of these with which we are now 
 concerned. Any student of the ethnic religions is 
 familiar with the phenomena of self-inflicted tor- 
 tures and fanatical devotion to superstitious enter- 
 prises that take heavy toll of life. As for our own 
 religion, who can forget what it has cost its devo- 
 tees! 
 
 It is characteristic of the Christian religion that 
 it seized upon this, as upon other socializing in- 
 stincts, magnified and idealized it, and so gave it 
 tremendous force in the world. This feature of 
 Christianity, however, is hardly recognized in these 
 days, because the spirit of the times is so contrary 
 to it. Nor do we fully appreciate the emphasis that 
 early Christianity placed upon self-denial. So ex- 
 treme is the emphasis to-day upon social religion 
 and programs for the betterment of this world that 
 the other-worldly character of apostolic and patris- 
 tic Christianity is largely forgotten. We also inter- 
 pret this element out of the teachings of Jesus Him- 
 self, thereby doing violence to His thought. 
 
 But as a matter of fact, the early Christians were 
 dwellers in tents. They were but pilgrims here, 
 journeying home to an abiding country. It was not 
 
 107 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 the visible, but the invisible world which was real 
 to them. So temporary, indeed, was the world, so 
 transient their lives in it, that nothing of weal or 
 woe was counted of much consequence. It was only 
 under the inspiration of this faith that they were 
 able to bear what they had to bear. If the blood 
 of the martyrs was the seed of the Church, it fol- 
 lows that without this spirit of self-denial Chris- 
 tianity could never have taken root in the world. 
 
 What was true of the early Church has been 
 more or less true at every epoch in her history. And 
 if by lightening the emphasis upon other-worldliness 
 we should lose the motive for self-denial, it would 
 be a sorry shift indeed for the world that now is. 
 There ought to be no danger, however; for the in- 
 creasing social interest, not to say passion, of the 
 present time, together with the more enlightened 
 insight into the social consequences of self-indul- 
 gence, ought to more than make up for the lack of 
 that early, semi-fanatical other-worldliness. And 
 it is devoutly to be hoped that religion may assume 
 a form in America and take on a fervor that shall 
 revive its early spirit of self-denial. Consecration 
 is a good word yet! 
 
 108 
 
VII 
 
 The Social Function of the Church 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 EDUCATORS are guided in their professional 
 work by a philosophy of education in which 
 there is formulated a systematic theory of the ends 
 of education, the means and methods adapted to 
 each of the various ends, and the relative value of 
 the respective means and ends. This body of stand- 
 ardized theory is of great value, for it rescues our 
 educational system from the blunders and waste of 
 empiricism. 
 
 The clergy also seriously needs such a philoso- 
 phy, some authorized and well-grounded and thor- 
 oughly-worked-out concensus of opinion as to what 
 the Church is for, how the ends for which it exists 
 are to be realized, and the relative value and impor- 
 tance of the various kinds of Church activity. Un- 
 fortunately, however, they do not possess such a 
 philosophy of the ecclesiastical function. The result 
 is great confusion. Various conceptions of the ends 
 and aims of ecclesiastical activity are more or less 
 explicitly held by this one or that one. A great 
 variety of new theories abound which lead to experi- 
 
 iii 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 mentation; or the older and traditional perpetuates 
 itself through sheer inertia. But nowhere is there 
 any balance, adjustment, or authority. 
 
 To illustrate the condition referred to and at the 
 same time introduce the problem of the Church's 
 social function, there might be enumerated two dif- 
 ferent and apparently contradictory theories as to 
 the Church's function which are commonly in vogue. 
 First, that the Church exists in order to save indi- 
 viduals from hell ; second, that its business is to re- 
 construct and save the social order. 
 
 The first of these dominated the Middle Ages 
 and is still extant among us. It explains the vast 
 majority of Church activities of the past, and per- 
 haps also of the present as well. As held in its ex- 
 treme form, it utterly ignores and sometimes ex- 
 plicitly denies the second end mentioned. 
 
 The second, on the other hand, has enjoyed an 
 immense vogue of late, though it may have had 
 some incidental recognition always. As now ad- 
 vocated in some quarters, however, there is some 
 tendency manifested to make it imply complete re- 
 pudiation of the latter. 
 
 It will be seen that on the basis of either of 
 these two theories alone there inevitably arises un- 
 certainty and confusion, and that uncertainty often 
 
 112 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 avenges itself in practice by the inadequacy and in- 
 completeness of the work resulting. 
 
 An attempt to compromise these two theories 
 might be stated somewhat as follows : that the busi- 
 ness of the Church is to make men fit either for so- 
 ciety or for heaven. But here again the necessity 
 for a thoroughly worked out philosophy of the 
 Church's function is evident. For this proposition 
 assumes that fitness for society is fitness for heaven. 
 But, abandoning this assumption and the puzzles 
 that it might lead to, another puzzle may be noted 
 which is involved in the proposition; viz., whether 
 the Church should approach the individual directly 
 or through his environment. And if directly, should 
 it be by inspiration chiefly, or by instruction, regi- 
 men, habituation, etc. And if indirectly through 
 society, the question arises whether society or the 
 individual is, in the last analysis, the end of its 
 activity. 
 
 But it is only the intent here to suggest the de- 
 sirability of such a system of thought as has been 
 referred to, and to hint at some of the problems in- 
 volved in it. Manifestly, if these puzzles could be 
 reduced, and a systematic philosophy of the Church's 
 function provided, we should be able to reduce the 
 various activities of the Church to a much more just 
 8 113 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 proportion, and so accomplish incomparably more 
 with a given amount of energy expended. 
 
 Without attempting, however, to answer the the- 
 oretical questions raised, let us proceed to some dis- 
 cussion of the social function of the Church. We 
 may, perhaps, safely begin by laying down the prop- 
 osition that there are two ways at least in which the 
 Church may proceed in the performance of its social 
 function. The first is the endeavor to better society 
 directly by changing for the better social conditions 
 and social organs. The second is to better society 
 indirectly by improving the individuals that compose 
 society. 
 
 The first of these is of great importance. It is 
 the aim of the modern social awakening. It is the 
 gist of social religion in the present stage of its de- 
 velopment. It characterizes the spirit of the age. 
 This social aim is motivating as never before all our 
 intellectual activities: science, politics, literature, 
 philanthropy, as well as religion. There are various 
 ways in which the Church may seek to assist in this 
 contemporaneous movement for the betterment of 
 society. She may preach the social ideal and point 
 out its place in the thought of the Founder, thus 
 inspiring with this socio-religious motive millions of 
 people who can be reached in no other way. This 
 
 114 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 the Church is doing as a matter of fact. Countless 
 sermons have been preached during the past decade 
 on the social application of Christianity. Millions 
 of Christian people have been interested in the so- 
 cial teachings of Jesus and have read books on social 
 religion. 
 
 Another thing that the Church can do is to co- 
 operate with philanthropic enterprise and reform 
 movement. This also she is doing to a degree that 
 perhaps is not adequately appreciated. Through 
 the Federal Council of Churches she has taken a 
 stand for the minimum wage; through the Na- 
 tional Child-labor Committee, for the betterment of 
 working conditions; the churches also have co- 
 operated largely in the anti-vice campaign, and are 
 taking an important part in the agitation for acci- 
 dent-indemnity laws. Many further activities of this 
 kind might be enumerated. 
 
 Such co-operation as this with philanthropy and 
 reforms, it may be noted, are not usually local en- 
 terprises for the local Church, but instead are causes 
 which, like the missionary cause, must be furthered 
 through the central agencies of a whole denomina- 
 tion, or even by several denominations in co-opera- 
 tion with one another. Denominational alignment 
 for a great enterprise has been successfully accom- 
 
 ii5 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 plished by modern Christendom in the interests of 
 foreign missions, and to some extent in the interests 
 of temperance. These lessons as to what may be 
 accomplished in behalf of a great cause by inter- 
 denominational alignment and mutual co-operation 
 .should be pondered well. For they suggest to all 
 thoughtful advocates of social reform what may be 
 accomplished by the Churches for such causes as 
 child-labor, industrial accidents, eugenics, and a 
 score of other social interests, if the whole body of 
 Christians could unite effectively in their behalf, as 
 they have been able to unite and co-operate in behalf 
 of foreign missions. We already have the begin- 
 nings of organizations to that end, notably the Fed- 
 eral Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 
 There is no more inspiring subject for meditation 
 than to consider what can be accomplished in behalf 
 of the practical interests of the Kingdom when this 
 alignment shall have been perfected. 
 
 Another thing that must come and will naturally 
 come as a by-product of the movements we have 
 just been speaking of, will be the elimination of de- 
 nominational competition and the waste accompany- 
 ing it. We seriously need a redistribution of eccle- 
 siastical energy and activity from over-churched 
 rural districts, where the competitive struggle is 
 
 116 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 wasting men, money, and devotion, to the un- 
 churched and neglected slums of our great cities. 
 Thousands of young ministers are laboring in coun- 
 try places oppressed beyond expression by the reali- 
 zation that the little community in which they live 
 would be as well or better off if their own Churches 
 were removed entirely and the field left to those that 
 remain. These same young men, many of them, have 
 seen the social vision and are praying daily with 
 almost passionate entreaties that opportunity may 
 be given them to devote their services to the social 
 regeneration and salvation of our great neglected 
 centers. Here is perhaps the most pressing problem 
 in religious strategy that now presents itself to our 
 captains of ecclesiasticism. 
 
 Perhaps the form in which the problem of the 
 Church's social function presents itself most fre- 
 quently, especially to that class of young clergymen 
 to whom reference has just been made, is the ques- 
 tion of what the local Church can do in matters of 
 local social service and activity. Feeling the call of 
 the social ideal, but failing to realize either that the 
 chief social work of the Church must be done either 
 through denominational co-operation with the re- 
 forms just mentioned, or through the regeneration 
 of individuals, to which we shall proceed in a mo- 
 
 117 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 ment, these young men have otten sought to trans- 
 form their local Churches into philanthropic and 
 charitable institutions or into social centers. This 
 tendency has given rise to the institutional Church 
 in the city and to the community-life Church in the 
 tountry. 
 
 While the social aspiration that has given rise 
 to these experiments is no doubt laudable in the 
 highest degree, still it must be conceded that this 
 zeal has often developed in a one-sided, fanatical 
 way. Perhaps more of these enterprises have failed 
 than have succeeded, so that the whole question of 
 the adequacy and permanence of this kind of Church 
 work is still in question. 
 
 The Church, however, is not the only institution 
 thus embarrassed by the rise of this new social zeal. 
 A few years ago in one of the Central States of the 
 Middle West there gathered at a well-known center 
 of pedagogical learning a large group of persons, 
 mostly young women, under the auspices of a new 
 and enthusiastic organization known as the Country 
 Teachers' Association. The inspiring genius of this 
 meeting was a person of charming grace and mag- 
 netic personality, who was full of enthusiasm for the 
 country-life movement. This leader was able to see 
 visions and dream dreams as to the possibilities of 
 
 118 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 country-life improvement and the function and op- 
 portunity of the country school teacher in connection 
 therewith. The whole program was inspirational in 
 the extreme, and the ideal carried the delegates to 
 the highest pitch of enthusiasm. At the critical mo- 
 ment in the program, just as the young teachers were 
 pledging themselves to exert their influence in the 
 districts to which they were about to go, in behalf 
 of the movement under consideration, there pre- 
 sented himself before the audience a middle-aged 
 man of striking appearance. His face was cadaver- 
 ous and somewhat cynical in its expression, but his 
 eye was keen and twinkled with humor and common 
 sense. He proved to be a prominent educational of- 
 ficial of the State, and with a speech markedly sug- 
 gestive of the Fatherland he spoke as follows: 
 
 u Ve are here to-day on the Moundain of Drans- 
 figuration. Led us build three dabernagles, etc." 
 Thus he proceeded, gradually and humorously feel- 
 ing his way to a mastery of the situation, which by 
 tact and skill he at length secured. The general 
 drift of his remarks may be surmised from the con- 
 cluding paragraph of his extemporaneous address, 
 which was as follows: 
 
 "The pusiness of the coundry school deacher is 
 to deach school. If she makes good at that she 
 
 119 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 might perhaps interest the farmers a little in better 
 roads and better social life. But if she begins by 
 making a hobby of rural community building, like 
 as not she '11 forget to deach the children to read. 
 Then de directors vill say, 'Another fool from the 
 normal school.' " 
 
 The present situation in the Church relative to 
 social activities is not altogether different from that 
 suggested by this incident. The present writer must 
 confess that he went away from that convention of 
 teachers with a paraphrased version of the German 
 pedagogue's philosophy ringing in his ears. "The 
 pusiness of the breacher is to breach the gospel." 
 And this philosophy may well impress itself deeply 
 upon the minds of the contemporaneous clergy. 
 They may well repeat again and again in thoughtful 
 soliloquy, "The business of the preacher is to preach 
 the gospel." 
 
 And this leads us to the second way in which the 
 Church may improve society, namely, by improving 
 the character of the individuals who compose society. 
 It is in this way that the preaching of the gospel 
 has far more significant social consequences than 
 many of us are apt to realize. The social value of 
 the ordinary work of the ordinary Church is not 
 to be judged by its conscious social aims alone, for 
 
 1 20 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 it may well be that it is not consciously social in its 
 aims. Its social significance is rather to be judged 
 from the standpoint of its social effects. And it is 
 to these that consideration here is to be directed. 
 For a vast amount of social betterment may be ac- 
 complished simply by improving the character of the 
 individuals who compose society. And this ordinary 
 work the Church actually accomplishes with remark- 
 able efficiency. 
 
 The Church sets up and maintains from genera- 
 tion to generation the moral standards so necessary 
 to the maintenance of social order. It approves or 
 disapproves the members of the community with re- 
 spect to their conformity to these standards^ and 
 succeeds in a remarkable degree in pressing its ap- 
 praisals upon the whole community. It teaches not 
 only adults, but the children of each rising genera- 
 tion the thou-shalts and the thou-shalt-nots of the 
 moral law perhaps more universally and effectively 
 than any other social organ could possibly do. 
 
 Moreover, the Church inculcates beliefs and 
 faiths which motivate human behavior to an incom- 
 parable degree. These beliefs and faiths permeate 
 the whole community and constitute an important 
 element of the social atmosphere. Nobody has to 
 explain these beliefs in the course of conversation 
 
 121 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 with his neighbor; he assumes that his neighbor un- 
 derstands them and perhaps accepts them, and that 
 assumption is valid because of the work of the 
 Church. These beliefs and faiths are with men in 
 solitude as well as in society, and patrol their be- 
 havior while the policeman is asleep. 
 
 But perhaps the most significant of all is the 
 body of spiritual ideals and feelings which the 
 Church in all the centuries has fostered. Emotions 
 and ideals — and an ideal is but a great proposition 
 emotionally conceived — are the mainspring of 
 human activity. When these enthusiasms dwindle, 
 life is dwarfed and its value sinks to a low ebb. 
 Then the appetites and passions of the baser nature 
 break from their restraints, and chaos and pande- 
 monium are the program of the day? 
 
 Thus the Church stands like a sentinel from age 
 to age guarding the citadel of social order. 
 
 Not only may it be said that this is the function 
 of the Church, but it may also be added that only 
 as the agency of this function is institutionalized can 
 it perform the function. The tasks of social control 
 do not, many of them, perform themselves. On the 
 other hand, they are performed by institutions, and 
 these institutions must be built upon solid, substantial 
 foundations of organization and support. Other- 
 
 122 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 wise the old adage that what is everybody's business 
 is nobody's business is illustrated again, and pres- 
 ently the function ceases to be performed. However 
 imperfect the Church may be as to its organization 
 and personnel (and what else could be expected 
 among faulty human beings?), it is not imperfect 
 with respect to its ideals. But these ideals would 
 gradually fade away were they not conserved and 
 promulgated by a stable institution organized and 
 maintained for that very purpose. 
 
 And the efficiency with which the Church has per- 
 formed this function is the very reason why we fail 
 to perceive the function itself. Our whole social 
 atmosphere is so permeated with what the Church 
 has contributed to it that we are as unconscious of 
 it as we are unconscious of the air and the sunshine, 
 and for precisely the same reasons. This moral at- 
 mosphere which the Church has generated is the 
 very medium in which we live and, unconscious of 
 it, devote our attention to our every-day affairs. But 
 notice how these moral standards do permeate the 
 community. In the dooryard of the humble or in 
 the nurseries of the rich accost any child of a dozen 
 years of age and ask him what is right or wrong, 
 and why, and you will presently learn that immedi- 
 ately or by proxy he has been sitting at the feet of 
 
 123 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 the Church. The readiness with which hypocrites 
 in the Church are condemned by those outside the 
 Church is convincing evidence of the success with 
 which the Church has performed her task of teach- 
 ing all the world what the Christian virtues are. 
 Nor are we to estimate the Church's influence in 
 the community solely by the numbers who frequent 
 the church-building itself. For we are well aware 
 that the large percentage of the people, even those 
 who have not darkened the door of the church for 
 many years, are yet fairly well informed as to what 
 ideals and hopes, beliefs and faiths, and moral stand- 
 ards the Church stands for. Moreover, they are 
 far from being unmoved by the public opinion which 
 the Church has generated. No better illustration of 
 this fact can be cited than the all but universal de- 
 mand in time of death for a religious funeral. 
 
 Again, imagine the Church eliminated from the 
 community. How, then, would these motives 
 and standards of behavior, these foundations of so- 
 cial order, be maintained? The public school by 
 common consent is deplorably inadequate to the task, 
 not only in America, where religious instruction is 
 debarred, but also in Europe, where it is explicitly 
 fostered. Literature and the theater could not be 
 relied upon to supply the deficency, for they both 
 
 124 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 cater notoriously to the commercial demand, vend- 
 ing that which sells the best. And it is a historic 
 fact, instanced, for example, by the English litera- 
 ture of the eighteenth century, that a corrupt age 
 demands corrupt literature. Law and the police 
 could not meet the need, for they can only repress 
 the occasional offender, and their success depends 
 upon the spontaneous good behavior of the vast ma- 
 jority. Tradition might be relied upon for a time, 
 but only for a time. Religion and morals could not 
 die out, to be sure, for the first is an instinct of 
 human nature, and the second is a social necessity 
 without which civilization can not continue. Nature 
 would in time reassert herself, therefore, and the in- 
 stitutions which we have imagined eliminated, or 
 something designed with an identical end in view, 
 would spring spontaneously into existence again. 
 
 The most significant testimonial to the social 
 effects of the Church's ordinary ministration to the 
 moral and spiritual needs of individuals may be 
 gathered from the history of the Dark Ages. Dur- 
 ing this period the work of the Church was devoted 
 almost exclusively to individuals. The social func- 
 tions of the Church and of religion were almost 
 totally undreamed of, so much so that for centuries 
 the ideal held up was that the best possible life and 
 
 125 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 the most proper means of salvation was the most 
 complete withdrawal from society. Nevertheless it 
 was during these centuries that the Church accom- 
 plished the most important social function that she 
 has ever accomplished, and perhaps the most impor- 
 tant function that has ever been accomplished by 
 any institution. For notice, at the date of the down- 
 fall of Rome the world was populated with the de- 
 moralized and decadent Roman peoples and the bar- 
 barous invaders from the north. These two races 
 were in violent conflict, and all the safeguards of 
 life, property, and happiness were destroyed to- 
 gether in the general catastrophe. Almost nothing 
 remained intact but the Christian Church, to which 
 the Romans gave spiritual allegiance, and to which 
 the Germans either had been converted or were to 
 be converted in a few centuries. The task that con- 
 fronted the Church, the task that characterized the 
 Middle Ages was to tame, civilize, and socialize the 
 violent elements of this turbulent society, training 
 them to social order and laying the foundations for 
 modern civilization. 
 
 Of this outlook the Church of the sixth century 
 was almost totally ignorant. She was also totally 
 unaware of the fact that this task confronted her. 
 She was, instead, imbued with the purpose of pro- 
 
 126 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 tecting her property and her devotees, and saving 
 the souls of the people, both Roman and barbarian, 
 from hell. These tasks she sought to accomplish 
 by bringing the minds of the barbarians into the 
 most abject submission to her creeds and ritual. 
 This she succeeded in doing, and there followed a 
 thousand years of ecclesiastical authority and sub- 
 ordination of the individual will to that authority 
 in all matters of intellectual and spiritual interest. 
 And the result every student of history well knows. 
 Little by little she developed the intellectual and 
 moral life of the European peoples. Gradually they 
 became civilized, until the social task of the medi- 
 aeval Church bore full fruitage in the Renaissance, 
 the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the rise 
 of modern democracy. 
 
 And all this may well be taken as a type of the 
 social service that is always being accomplished by 
 the Church that performs its usual tasks from age 
 to age, and which is, of course, augmented with in- 
 creased activity and influence on the part of the 
 Church. 
 
 There are hundreds of ministers who are op- 
 pressed with the burden and futility of their work. 
 They are discouraged because they see neither souls 
 being saved in large numbers nor social work being 
 
 127 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 accomplished. The chief necessity of such men is 
 an enlargement of their conception of the Church's 
 function, and a deeper insight into the social conse- 
 quences of the moral and spiritual life to the fos- 
 tering of which the Church devotes herself from 
 year to year. Let such ministers live the spiritual 
 life themselves, and minister to the spiritual needs 
 of the people. Let them keep their churches painted 
 and the church-bells ringing, thus presenting, as it 
 were, pleasing sensory symbols of the spiritual life 
 to the ears and eyes of the populace. Let them 
 preach the gospel faithfully every Sunday to such as 
 willingly come to the church, gathering in as many 
 as they can. Let them see that as large a fraction 
 as possible of the children are taught from week to 
 week the fundamentals of Christian faith, morals, 
 and ideals. Let them visit the homes of the people 
 and befriend such people as will welcome their 
 friendship. Let them marry happy lovers and bap- 
 tize innocent children. Let them bury the dead and 
 invoke the divine blessing upon all social functions 
 where they are invited to do so. Let them surround 
 themselves with as large a constituency as possible 
 of faithful Christian Church members. And let 
 them remember that the same thing is being done in 
 every village and in every ward of every city in the 
 
 128 
 
The Social Function of the Church 
 
 whole broad land. Let them thus feel themselves 
 companioned by an innumerable host of those who 
 are doing the same work as they, a work more vital 
 to the stability of society and the moral and social 
 progress of mankind than any other work whatso- 
 ever. 
 
 And let the conscientious layman who helps to 
 pay the bills and do the work of the Church and 
 exemplify the Christian life take heart. For it is 
 through such as he that the social application of 
 Christianity is most effectively being accomplished. 
 
 Let this part of the discussion be concluded, 
 therefore, with two special pleas. The first is for 
 the evangelization of the un-churched centers of 
 our population, those congested sections of our great 
 cities which have been so aptly characterized as 
 "folk swamps." If the circuit-rider evangelizing 
 the rural slums of our frontier three-quarters of a 
 century ago exerted as great an influence upon the 
 morals and intelligence of the settlers as he is cred- 
 ited by some of our historians with doing, why is 
 not the urban slum amenable to similar influences? 
 As a matter of fact, what Peter Cartwright did 
 among the swamps of Central Illinois, Booth has 
 done among the folk-swamps of London. Our 
 cities need social settlements, but some of those who 
 
 9 129 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 have conducted the most successful social settlements 
 are reputed to have confessed that the people need 
 even more the preaching of the gospel. 
 
 The second plea is in behalf of the children and 
 their devotion to the Church. It is of the greatest 
 importance that they be taught by precept and by 
 example to frequent the services of the Church and 
 revere its teachings and influence. It will be a great 
 day for America and for American life and civiliza- 
 tion when a preponderating majority of her children 
 have learned to sing in sweet childish simplicity: 
 
 "I love Thy church, O God! 
 Her walls before Thee stand, 
 Dear as the apple of Thine eye 
 And graven on Thy hand." 
 
 130 
 
VIII 
 
 The Social Need of a Religious 
 Awakening 
 
The Social Need of a Religious 
 Awakening 
 
 THE pessimist and the calamity howler are the 
 most unwelcome members of American society. 
 The prediction that the country is going to the dogs 
 furnishes perennial grist for the funny-paper mill. 
 Our conceit prefers the superlatives of the typical 
 old-time orator with his "grandest civilization upon 
 which the sun ever shone," and his "sublimest hero- 
 ism that was ever displayed upon the bloody field 
 of battle." We are confident that our resources are 
 limitless and our future immeasurably glorious. Are 
 not we of Anglo-Saxon blood in this the United 
 States of America? 
 
 It irritates us a little to be told that our public 
 out-door charities fail because we are gifted with 
 the most administrative awkwardness of any civil- 
 ized people in the world. It really angers us to be 
 laughed at by the Germans because of our back- 
 wardness in the practical application of science. We 
 are a trifle chagrined to compare our military sani- 
 tation and our death rates in Cuba with the Japanese 
 
 133 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 record in Manchuria. It is a rather rude awaken- 
 ing to be urged in the midst of a political campaign 
 to favor progressive legislation that Europe has had 
 in successful operation for more than a generation. 
 Our inability to see the hole in the doughnut is droll 
 jndeed. But since blind optimism is one of the symp- 
 toms of tuberculosis, the friend who warns against 
 dampness, darkness, and dirt should hardly be stig- 
 matized for the unpardonable sin of blind pessimism. 
 There probably never has been an age of greater 
 promise than the present. That promise of the fu- 
 ture is based upon an unparalleled material develop- 
 ment, upon rising democracy, upon increasing intelli- 
 gence and the development of science, and upon an 
 expanding sympathy and humanitarianism. Con- 
 sidering what we have succeeded in accomplishing 
 in the last two centuries, and the capital that we have 
 acquired for further progress, it does seem gratui- 
 tous indeed to suggest the possibility of ultimate 
 failure and collapse on the part of our splendid 
 civilization. But there have been other periods of 
 achievement and progress. The most notable 
 among these perhaps are the period of the Greek 
 enlightenment and the period of the Renaissance. 
 Nevertheless the promise of both of these epochs 
 was disappointed. The historic tragedy occurred, 
 
 134 
 
The Social Need of a Religious Awakening 
 
 in the first instance, of a civilization gradually crum- 
 bling into decay, and in the second instance the bright 
 promises of progress were postponed for half a 
 thousand years. For alongside of the constructive 
 forces that gave rise to the hopes of these epochs 
 there were also destructive forces at work, and these 
 destructive forces, though unnoticed at the time, 
 proved more potent in the end than the constructive. 
 
 It may be so with us to-day. Some of our most 
 constructive writers admit this possibility.* 
 
 The study of these former epochs is instructive 
 indeed. The Greek or Roman civilization culmi- 
 nated in some of its phases at the period of the 
 Greek enlightenment and in other phases during the 
 Augustinian age. That civilization was character- 
 ized, through the earlier part of these centuries 
 especially, with intellectual achievement of the first 
 magnitude, with democratic political institutions not 
 wholly different from some of ours and in commer- 
 cial activities of great volume and extent. Upon the 
 basis of these, and these alone, boundless hopes 
 might legitimately have been founded; but there 
 were also other forces at work. Among these was a 
 bad distribution of wealth through the Greco-Roman 
 
 *See Ross' "Social Control," p. 436; Rauschenbusch's "Christianizing the 
 Social Order," p. 29; Eucken's "The Problem of Human Life," p. 300; Bagley's 
 " Educational Values," p. 61. 
 
 135 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 world and the breakdown of the family, especially 
 among the Romans. But the most destructive social 
 force of the period was positive individualism. This 
 expressed itself explicitly and with open avowal in 
 Greek philosophy. Epicurianism and Stoicism were 
 both hedonistic at heart, and the Sophists asserted as 
 their central maxim that the individual is the stand- 
 ard and criterion in everything. It manifested itself 
 in the rebellion against convention in Greek morals 
 and the almost universal skepticism as to the author- 
 ity of duty. All this took a practical form in the 
 excessive personal ambitions and the unrestrained 
 individual competition that prevailed in Greek so- 
 ciety, and, what was perhaps worse, between Greek 
 states. As for the Greek religion, it was utterly 
 devoid of any such co-operative ideals as we now 
 possess in Christianity. All this gave rise to centrif- 
 ugal movements, resulting in the moral and social 
 decadence of the first century, which Rogers, in his 
 history of philosophy, characterizes in the following 
 words : 
 
 "The rapidly increasing corruption of the ruling 
 class, the glaring contrasts of luxury and misery, the 
 insecurity of life and property, the sense of world- 
 weariness which marked the passing away of moral 
 enthusiasms, all brought home to man the feeling 
 
 136 
 
The Social Need of a Religious Awakening 
 
 that the world was growing old and that some moral 
 catastrophe was impending." 
 
 But imagine Aristides or Alexander approached 
 with the suggestion that the ancient world was mov- 
 ing toward a dark age. Imagine Pericles or Aris- 
 totle, or even Cicero or Caesar, foreseeing the col- 
 lapse of ancient civilization. Nevertheless, blind as 
 they were to the facts, these destructive forces were 
 at work, and ultimately brought forth their fruits. 
 
 The Renaissance epoch, with the period imme- 
 diately following, is equally interesting. Dante and 
 half a score of lesser literary geniuses were adding 
 their names to the list of the immortals. The hori- 
 zon of the earth was being widened by the discovery 
 of the great navigators, and the boundary of the 
 universe was being extended by the great astrono- 
 mers. Commercial and industrial developments 
 were greater than Europe had ever seen before. 
 And several important inventions had stimulated the 
 imagination of men with the possibilities of applied 
 science. No wonder Moore was inspired by these 
 events to Utopian dreams, and Erasmus hoped for 
 the time when the Golden Rule should dominate di- 
 plomacy and government exist for the benefit of the 
 governed. 
 
 Nevertheless these bright dreams and alluring 
 
 137 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 promises were doomed to disappointment, and the 
 centuries following were drenched in the blood of 
 peasants' rebellions and religious wars. Religious 
 liberty miscarried, the Reformation degenerated 
 into a brood of warring sects, and rising democracy 
 was crushed under the tyrannous heels of Henry 
 VIII and Charles V. 
 
 In casting about for the causes of this disap- 
 pointment they may be discovered principally in a 
 single fact; viz., the superstitious ignorance of the 
 masses of the common people. This ignorance was 
 the destructive force which successfully held in check 
 for nearly five centuries all the constructive forces 
 upon which the hopes of the age were based. There 
 is always a certain aggregate of forces at work in 
 society, whether in our age or any other. And it 
 stands to reason that while some of these forces are 
 constructive, some also are destructive ; and the ques- 
 tion may always be legitimately and wisely raised 
 whether the destructive or constructive forces pre- 
 dominate in the balance of power. It is always well 
 to make sane, thoughtful, optimistic investigation 
 of the enemy's position and forces, so as to make 
 sure of victory in the inevitable engagement. It 
 must be admitted, and all wise friends of progress 
 will be willing to admit it, that some of the disinte- 
 
 138 
 
The Social Need of a Religious Awakening 
 
 grating forces that were operative in these previous 
 epochs are also operative among us to-day. 
 
 First may be mentioned the tendency to appraise 
 wealth above life. Numerous manifestations of this 
 phenomenon might be remarked. There is the will- 
 ingness to fatten the federal fisc at the crib of the 
 liquor interests and pay the bills of the National Gov- 
 ernment with the miserable forfeitures of drunken- 
 ness. There is the glaring inequitableness of our 
 distribution of wealth, which Professor Patton char- 
 acterizes by asserting that only twenty-five per cent 
 of our population have shared in the benefits of our 
 material progress. There is the terrible toll of 
 industrial accident and disease, and the exploitation 
 of childhood in the interests of gain. All of these 
 manifestations of the accumulation of wealth at the 
 expense of man are brought into even clearer light 
 by the very protest which is being so effectively raised 
 against them of late. 
 
 Another evidence of the destructive forces at 
 work in our society is the prevalence of vice and the 
 diseases and death that follow in its wake. Again, 
 there are the disappointments of democratic govern- 
 ment displayed in the corrupt dominance of the great 
 financial interest and in the shameful political de- 
 bauchery of so many of our cities. 
 
 139 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 Again, there is the decreasing fecundity of our 
 native white race, indicated by population statistics. 
 This even raises the question whether our native 
 population may not ultimately be supplanted by de- 
 scendants of immigrants, and whether the civiliza- 
 tion our forefathers have produced can be appreci- 
 ated and transmitted to the future by alien races 
 such as are now flocking to our shores. 
 
 It will be seen that under all these moral phe- 
 nomena there lies a common cause; viz., the exag- 
 gerated individualism of the present age. Individu- 
 alism as an ethical philosophy is hedonistic. It be- 
 lieves that the purpose of life is pleasure, and that 
 the value of life is to be measured in the amount 
 of pleasure which the individual secures. It can 
 not bear restraints. It suffocates with disappoint- 
 ment. It is egotistical and selfish. It repudiates 
 duties, ignores responsibilities, and seeks to attain 
 its ends without regard to the like ends of others. 
 It interprets personal liberty into license, and refuses 
 to limit freedom by voluntary responsibility. 
 
 The individualist has habituated this philosophy 
 of life into his mode of action so thoroughly that 
 the philosophy is not held explicitly but implicitly 
 and subconsciously. The individualist can not 
 brook failure of his plans or miscarriage of his am- 
 
 140 
 
The Social Need of a Religious Awakening 
 
 bitions. He passes his way but once, and therefore 
 he insists passionately upon plucking the flowers that 
 grow along the way. For he is impressed with the 
 fact that he can never return to gather what he has 
 missed. The individualist is a willful child and a 
 selfish brother, a domineering husband and a tyran- 
 nous father, grasping in business, unsympathetic and 
 disobliging as a neighbor, self-centered as a citizen, 
 and self-seeking as a public servant. 
 
 It must be conceded that individualism as a sub- 
 conscious habituated philosophy of life is extremely 
 prevalent among us. And the causes are not far to 
 seek. It is a by-product of the rise of democracy 
 and comes from that one-sided interpretation of dem- 
 ocratic principles which emphasizes its benefits, but 
 fails to recognize its responsibilities. It arises also 
 out of the intellectual freedom of the age, the fact 
 that men are no longer under the bonds of dogma- 
 tism, but instead, freedom of thought is the motto 
 of the times. By this freedom selfish men are un- 
 leashed from the restraints of controlling beliefs and 
 ideals. But principally it is the result of the com- 
 mercialism of the age and the emphasis that it has 
 laid. Wealth is a means primarily to self-gratifica- 
 tion; and in an age especially devoted to wealth- 
 getting, self-gratification is the inevitable conse- 
 
 141 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 quence. Moreover, the sense of power that results 
 from the possession of wealth can not but augment 
 this sentiment. The effects are evident everywhere 
 in the starting up of the screws of duty that hold 
 society together. Individualism is the disease that 
 is giving rise to nearly all of the symptoms of moral 
 decay just enumerated. In addition to these it has 
 generated the current obtuseness of mind relative 
 to the higher spiritual values. 
 
 These constitute a sufficiently complete list of the 
 disintegrating forces that are at work in modern 
 society. The similiarity to the forces that have 
 blighted former ages is strikingly evident, and they 
 may well receive the thoughtful consideration of 
 serious men and women. 
 
 The great medicine needed is a more adequate 
 supply of moral earnestness on the part of all our 
 people. Just as the general ignorance of the masses 
 brought to naught the bright promises of the Re- 
 naissance, so the loose moral adjustments of our 
 modern life, as indicated in the preceding para- 
 graphs, are our serious danger. Exaggerated indi- 
 vidualism, precisely the same cause that undermined, 
 more than any other, the Greco-Roman civilization, 
 is at work among the foundations of our own civili- 
 zation. We need a firm socio-personal morality; 
 
 142 
 
The Social Need of a Religious Awakening 
 
 that is, a personal morality that sees its ends in the 
 general welfare. We need to develop as a motive 
 for this morality a greater volume and intensity of 
 socio-personal religion; that is, a religion that finds 
 its ideals, its enthusiasms, and its motives in the so- 
 cial welfare. 
 
 The possibilities along this line have scarcely 
 been realized. It seems entirely practicable to hope 
 that limitless moral resources may be developed here, 
 for without doubt humanity is as religious at heart 
 to-day as in any preceding age. To be sure, reli- 
 gious energy may be latent rather than active, but 
 its occasional almost volcanic local eruptions under 
 the leadership of professional revivalists seems to 
 indicate that it is available. The capacity for faith, 
 spiritual longing, and devotion to religious enter- 
 prises is surely as great as ever. If only the souls 
 of our contemporaries could be led to see the divine 
 plan in social relations, and God's law in the moral 
 law, and salvation in the social life, there is no telling 
 what might result in behalf of social betterment. 
 
 There is probably more sympathy and altruism 
 in the world per capita than ever before. It could 
 hardly be otherwise, considering the growth of de- 
 mocracy and enlightenment during the past century 
 and a half, and it is evident in the humanitarian 
 
 143 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 movements of the last generation. If only this sym- 
 pathy and altruism could be utilized as a motive for 
 moral life, if only men could be led to see the dire 
 consequences to their loved ones and to society of 
 vicious lives, this growing sympathy might be utilized 
 for the realization of the Kingdom of God among us. 
 
 But above all there is a tremendous amount of 
 social interest and idealism. How else can we ac- 
 count for the almost fanatical display of feeling that 
 seems capable of developing during political cam- 
 paigns? How else can we account for the growth 
 of socialism and of the labor movement? How 
 else can we explain the tremendously increased inter- 
 est in the social sciences, the development of philan- 
 thropy, and the spread of social religion? If only 
 this social interest and altruism could be attached 
 to the cause of individual moral regeneration, it 
 might lift our nation and our people to a safe moral 
 level, as a raft may be made to lift a sunken dere- 
 lict out of the sand and mud of a river bottom when 
 the tide comes in. 
 
 Such a moral regeneration as this, flowering 
 forth out of the latent religious capacity of the 
 people, out of the growing sympathy of the modern 
 man and the budding social interests, is a regener- 
 ation worthy of our day-dreams and our prayers; 
 
 144 
 
The Social Need of a Religious Awakening 
 
 for day-dreams and prayers may vitally contribute 
 to its actual realization. 
 
 Stranger things have happened. We have all 
 read of that great movement of the Middle Ages 
 which marshaled all Western Europe to the enter- 
 prise of recapturing the Holy Sepulcher from the 
 infidels. What a display of religious devotion, en- 
 ergy, and sacrifice to a great though mistaken ideal, 
 to a cause supposed to be in the interests of the gen- 
 eral welfare ! What might it not have accomplished 
 had it been more wisely directed. But does the in- 
 telligence, social enthusiasm, and the religious fervor 
 of the modern world aggregate any less than the 
 religious fanaticism of that day? Does the social 
 ideal appeal any less powerfully to the imagination 
 of our day than the Holy Sepulcher appealed to the 
 imagination of that day? 
 
 God grant that a crusade commensurate in devo- 
 tion and enthusiasm to the crusade which sought to 
 rescue the Holy Sepulcher from the Saracens may en- 
 list the devotion and enthusiasm of our modern age, 
 to the end that the infidelity of selfishness and vice 
 may be driven out and the Kingdom of God set up 
 in the midst of our society. May the spirit of Peter 
 the Hermit come again to some humble and fervent 
 prophet from among the common people, a man 
 
 10 145 
 
Personal Religion and the Social Awakening 
 
 who knows the miseries and temptations, the pas- 
 sions and the suffering of the masses as well as that 
 earlier prophet knew the insults and indignities suf- 
 fered by pilgrims to the Holy Land 1 May he arouse 
 the common people! May he be able to fire the 
 hearts of the men in Halsted Street and the East 
 Side to enlist in the crusade — a crusade against the 
 vices of their own lives, in behalf of their children, 
 their homes, and the republic ! And as the fire he 
 kindles spreads, may some Urban appear among the 
 ecclesiastical leaders, who shall discern the full sig- 
 nificance of such a moral and spiritual crusade! 
 May he, before the representatives of the Church 
 assembled at some modern Clermont, take up the 
 message and preach it with an eloquence and per- 
 suasiveness that shall move the souls of all who 
 hear him till they shall cry in response : "Deus vult! 
 Deus vult!" And may this cry echo from council 
 to council, from city to city, from village to village, 
 until it shall reverberate throughout the length and 
 breadth of the land! May the crusade become as 
 universal as was that other crusade of a thousand 
 years ago ! For certain it is that God does will it. 
 He wills that the millions of our people whose lives 
 are under the blight of selfishness, sin, vice, and 
 
 146 
 
The Social Need of a Religious Awakening 
 
 despair may be regenerated and redeemed. He 
 wills that thereby our civilization shall also be re- 
 deemed from the destructive forces that menace it, 
 so that the social dreams and hopes of the twentieth 
 century may be realized and the Kingdom of God 
 may come upon the earth. 
 
 147 
 
Date Due 
 
 :■ 
 
 
 
 ( 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 -■* ^ 
 
 
 
 ,1* sn w 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 >• Q 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 JE^ * 55 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f)