The NEW 
 ORTHODOXY 
 
 EDWARD SCRIHM-k AMKS
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 MRS. VIRGINIA B. SPORER
 
 THE NEW ORTHODOXY
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
 THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 
 
 HIW TURK 
 
 THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH 
 
 THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 
 THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY
 
 THE 
 NEW ORTHODOXY 
 
 B, 
 
 EDWARD SCRIBNER AMES 
 
 Author of " The Psychology of Religious Experience ," " The Higher 
 Individualism^* and "TAc Divinity of Christ" 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
 
 COPYRIGHT 1918 BY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY or CHICAGO 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Published October 1918 
 
 Composed and Printed By 
 
 The University of Chicago Press 
 
 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 At the present time many circumstances 
 contribute to the demand for brief, con- 
 structive statements of religion. Technical 
 scholarship in numerous fields has furnished 
 rich and abundant materials, but they are 
 not easy of access to the general reader. 
 In the future these will be more adequately 
 organized and vitalized in comprehensive 
 interpretations. At the moment men's 
 minds are impatient of elaboration and 
 speculation. The war has developed in- 
 quiry concerning these questions with 
 characteristic directness and poignancy. 
 Already it has elicited remarkable activity 
 in the restatement of traditional faiths. 
 But no earnestness in the reaffirmation of 
 the conventional views can satisfy those 
 who are really awake to the problems and 
 outlook of these days. 
 
 A new world of thought and ideals has 
 arisen. Religion has its place in this new 
 
 2042108
 
 vi Preface 
 
 order, not as something aloof, but as some- 
 thing organic and integral with all other 
 vital interests. All who truly dwell in this 
 new world of the natural and the social sci- 
 ences have certain attitudes and habits of 
 thought in common. These constitute the 
 new orthodoxy of method and spirit. It 
 differs from the old orthodoxy as chemis- 
 try differs from alchemy and as empirical, 
 reasonable beliefs differ from the dogmas 
 of tradition imposed by external authority. 
 This book seeks to present in simple 
 terms a view of religion consistent with the 
 mental habits of those trained in the sci- 
 ences, in the professions, and in the expert 
 direction of practical affairs. It suggests a 
 dynamic, dramatic conception designed to 
 offer a means of getting behind specific 
 forms and doctrines. It aims to afford a 
 standpoint from which one may realize the 
 process in which ceremonials and beliefs 
 arise and through which they are modified. 
 When thus seen religion discloses a deeper, 
 more intimate, and more appealing char- 
 acter. As here conceived it is essentially
 
 Preface vii 
 
 the dramatic movement of the idealizing, 
 outreachmg life of man in the midst of his 
 practical, social tasks. The problems of 
 the religious sentiments, of personality, of 
 sacred literature, of religious ideals, and 
 of the ceremonials of worship are other 
 terms which rnigfrt have been employed 
 as the titles of the successive chapters. 
 
 E. S. A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS ATTITUDES i 
 
 II. THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS DRAMATIS 
 
 PERSONAE 29 
 
 III. THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS GROWING 
 
 BIBLE 54 
 
 IV. THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS CHANGING 
 
 GOAL 83 
 
 V. THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS NEW DRAMA 107
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
 ATTITUDES 
 
 Thoughtful people are aware that the 
 opening years of this twentieth century 
 have already denned one of the most im- 
 portant epochs in history. The century 
 was ushered in with a consciousness of 
 progress and of new developments such as 
 no other century has known. Everywhere 
 were recounted the inventions, the discov- 
 eries, the revolutionary achievements in 
 democracy, in education, in the arts, in in- 
 dustry, and in religion. What was then 
 clear to a few is now becoming familiar to 
 the vast multitudes of laborers and peas- 
 ants in every land. The great war has al- 
 ready written in blood and tears the end of 
 the old and the beginning of the new. The 
 spectacular transformation of war itself by 
 its own instruments of death is a tragic 
 symbol of the vast change which has come
 
 2 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 over human affairs. Trenches and gas, sub- 
 marines and airplanes, are no more won- 
 derful or significant than democracy in 
 China and the dethronement of the Czar 
 in Russia and the rising tide of power 
 among the hitherto subject masses of all 
 civilized countries. The war has become 
 an abyss of fire and death between the past 
 and the future. It has widened into four 
 horrible years. Many think it will con- 
 tinue from three to six years more. To 
 those who look back from the year 1920 or 
 1925 across all this wreckage and waste, 
 how remote and diminished the old order 
 will seem ! The glory of its empires and the 
 spectacle of its royal courts will blend into 
 the same unreturning past which has en- 
 tombed giants and fairies and armored 
 knights. Its authority will disappear. 
 Nothing of that world will command the 
 allegiance of men simply because it was 
 a part of that age. Only those things 
 will be perpetuated which are renewed 
 in the living experience of these coming 
 days.
 
 Its Attitudes 3 
 
 For this new time, already begun for 
 those who are truly at home in the twen- 
 tieth century of the spiritual calendar of 
 mankind, how shall the picture of man's 
 life and destiny be drawn? They have 
 thrown off the rule of superstition and the 
 authority of kings and priests. They do 
 not believe in miracles. Their world is not 
 divided by the clouds into human and 
 divine, nor by forms of dress or types of 
 architecture into sacred and secular. Nor 
 are they content with mere denial. Icono- 
 clasm is not the mark of really modern 
 men. They seek to build, to construct, to 
 create. In place of dungeons of fear, irra- 
 tional creeds, and magical rituals they are 
 not content to leave only barrenness and 
 doubt. New hopes, better doctrines, and 
 more satisfying symbols are springing up 
 out of the idealism and faith of the emanci- 
 pated mind and heart. As in the sixteenth 
 century the small earth-centered universe 
 gave way to a cosmos of stellar spaces of 
 incalculable magnitude, and as the little 
 six thousand years of mundane existence
 
 4 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 expanded into the hundreds of thousands 
 of years for the setting of the human 
 drama, so the simple picture of Bunyan's 
 Pilgrim's Progress has dissolved into the 
 gigantic struggle of hundreds of millions 
 of men over the whole earth to realize an 
 actual and visible society of righteousness, 
 justice, and love. The cravings of the 
 souls of men are no longer to be satisfied 
 with the dream of individual salvation after 
 this life in a walled town with jeweled gates 
 and flashing pavements, outside of which 
 in unending night and pain the infinitely 
 greater number of their fellow-men forever 
 wander, tortured and damned. 
 
 What religious conceptions are adequate 
 to the dawning day of our larger mental 
 and moral life ? Dare we hope that these 
 shall be found in the revival of some mys- 
 terious cult of the prescientific childhood of 
 the race in theosophy or some oriental 
 mystery-religion? Is it imaginable that 
 we are to be content with some pretentious 
 propaganda of healing which begins by 
 renouncing the very foundations of science
 
 7/5 Attitudes 5 
 
 and the common-sense reality of practical 
 experience ? The refusal of minds of first 
 rank to accept these religions cannot be 
 offset by any number of devotees gathered 
 from those who are not aware of the prog- 
 ress which has been made in the physical 
 and social sciences. These movements do 
 undoubtedly answer certain real needs of 
 human nature and are obviously conducted 
 by shrewd administrators and propagan- 
 dists, but to suppose that they represent 
 an adequate provision for the many-sided 
 and profound claims of the human spirit is 
 an illusion which time will expose. 
 
 There is more reasonable hope that the 
 great historic development of religion rep- 
 resented by Christianity is destined to 
 come to a new birth of power. This can- 
 not be expected to occur, however, through 
 a mere emotional revival of its traditional 
 forms and doctrines. These have outlived 
 the order of society in which they ap- 
 peared and are already transcended by 
 the leaders of religious thought still working 
 within their domains. Such mighty social
 
 6 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 structures do not pass away at a stroke. It 
 required centuries to build them, and they 
 linger on in the world just as monarchies 
 persist long after democracy has become 
 the accepted political ideal of the world. 
 Christianity has lived through three marked 
 stages and, it is believed by many, is now 
 entering upon a fourth. The first was its 
 earliest form, in which it was a tremen- 
 dously vital impulse to a higher, freer 
 moral life among informal intimate groups, 
 having their common bond in allegiance to 
 the personality and inspiring message of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. That period is directly 
 reflected in our New Testament. Upon its 
 pages are the fresh imprints of the vibrant, 
 pulsing spirit of the Master. But there is 
 little organization. It has been impossible 
 for the most searching scholarship to find 
 there a model for the conduct of the mod- 
 ern church. No fixed ritual is established. 
 No clear and uniform body of doctrine is 
 presented. No provision can be traced 
 there for economic justice and social 
 righteousness as needed by the twentieth
 
 Its Attitudes 7 
 
 century. But the moral aspiration and 
 insight are there. The clear, commanding 
 spiritual vision of Jesus shines through it as 
 the rays of the rising sun illumine and 
 warm the world. That record will there- 
 fore remain a source of inspiration to the 
 end of time. 
 
 The second stage of Christianity was 
 that known as Catholicism. It developed 
 by the gradual extension of the faith to 
 great numbers of communities throughout 
 the Roman Empire and among barbarian 
 tribes. Contact with Greek philosophy 
 was also a great factor in formulating the 
 conceptions of the early church. When 
 Christianity permeated the empire it was 
 inevitable that it should be affected by 
 the Latin genius for organization and by 
 the Greek power of reflective thought. The 
 ecclesiastical institution known to us as the 
 Roman Catholic church may truly be re- 
 garded as deriving its impetus from the gos- 
 pels, its form from the Roman Empire, and 
 its formulations of doctrine from Greek 
 philosophy. The official authority which
 
 8 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 characterizes it is inevitably of the quality 
 of the system on which it was patterned. 
 This type of Christianity was arrested in 
 its progress by the Protestant Reformation 
 of the sixteenth century. Its fate is sealed 
 with the death knell of monarchy and 
 bureaucracy in all social relations in the 
 family, in education, and in industry. It 
 has produced many beautiful souls. It has 
 adorned our human world with marvelous 
 cathedrals and pageants. It has lifted the 
 imagination of millions from sordid and 
 transient things to pure and lofty visions 
 of faith. But it is not the form of religion 
 for the modern man. 
 
 What then of Protestantism? It has 
 now had four centuries of history. The 
 celebration of the four hundredth anniver- 
 sary of Luther's break with the Catholic 
 church is being widely observed. He in- 
 troduced great reforms which continue to 
 exert a powerful influence. He gave the 
 Bible to the people and made Christianity 
 the religion of a book as it had never been 
 before. He struck at the sharp separation
 
 Its Attitudes g 
 
 of the sacred and the secular by opposing 
 the celibacy of the clergy, by recognizing 
 the state as an agency of God, and by dig- 
 nifying common labor as having religious 
 value. But the movement which he in- 
 augurated became dogmatic and fixed and 
 has not fulfilled his hopes. In Calvinism 
 the doctrinal interest predominated and 
 gave rise to creeds and confessions of faith 
 which stand in the background of most of 
 the evangelical churches today. Puritan- 
 ism became austere and antagonistic to 
 many natural and vital interests. It de- 
 veloped strength of conscience and deter- 
 mination of will, but lost breadth and the 
 social graces and appreciation of the fine 
 arts. Under all its differences Protestant- 
 ism retained certain elements of Catholi- 
 cism. It distrusted human nature; it 
 emphasized the sacraments as essential 
 means of grace; it clung to external author- 
 ity, to the doctrines of the supernatural, 
 and to a miraculous conversion of the 
 natural human being in order to make 
 him truly religious.
 
 io The New Orthodoxy 
 
 It is not impossible that future historians 
 will regard Protestantism as coming to its 
 close with the end of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury as a vital, ascending type of religion. 
 In that century several of the most charac- 
 teristic principles of Protestantism were 
 undermined by a larger knowledge of his- 
 tory and science. Protestantism was in- 
 dividualistic; the new order is social. It 
 assumed the infallibility of the Bible, and 
 that is no longer tenable. It exalted au- 
 thority, and now there is on legitimate 
 authority except that of experience. It 
 denied that man is naturally religious, 
 while it is commonly accepted today that 
 man is incurably religious. We may well 
 believe therefore that Christianity is enter- 
 ing upon a fourth great epoch, which has 
 already been called by various names. It 
 is referred to as the religion of the spirit, as 
 social Christianity, and as the religion of 
 democracy. 
 
 There is real need at the present time for 
 statements of this latest form of Christian- 
 ity created by the profound influences
 
 Its Attitudes ii 
 
 working through many agencies toward a 
 richer life for all classes of men. What is 
 this religion of the twentieth century? 
 How shall we set forth the religious life as 
 it appears in the light of the discoveries of 
 the historians of religion, biblical students, 
 natural scientists, and social psychologists ? 
 Let us think of ourselves as perfectly free 
 souls, unawed by any authority over us or 
 by any superstition within us, yet reverent 
 toward the things which experience has 
 taught us and eagerly in quest of clearer 
 perceptions of the ideal possibilities of life. 
 How does the religious life appear ? How 
 shall we understand its attitudes, its dra- 
 matis personae, its growing Bible, its 
 changing goal, and its new drama of the 
 spiritual life? Some persons have diffi- 
 culty in thinking of the Christian life in 
 this way, but no apologies are necessary for 
 identifying it with the religious life at its 
 best. Indeed, the Christian life may be 
 regarded as just life itself at its best. It is 
 not in exclusive opposition to plain good- 
 ness or to life as symbolized by Plato, or
 
 12 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 Buddha, or Confucius. In our culture the 
 highest religion is Christianity. It stands 
 for the best in our civilization. Nothing 
 is too good to be called Christian, and it is 
 difficult to conceive of any good thing 
 appearing in our experience which is fun- 
 damentally alien to the Christian way of 
 life. 
 
 The attitudes treated here are those 
 toward life as it unfolds naturally in simple 
 human relations, those involved in our 
 social complexes, and those which relate 
 to our efforts to contribute to the fulness 
 and beauty of the life of the world. These 
 may be called the attitudes of reverence, of 
 love, and of faith. These seem to be de- 
 manded by life as we experience it in the 
 light of science and of the most ideal attain- 
 ments. And these qualities are illustrated 
 in the life of Jesus. The Christianity of 
 our time begins with its own direct sense 
 of values, finds them in life as it is, and 
 estimates them on their own merit. When , 
 it discovers that Jesus viewed the world in 
 the same way, it sees in him a companion-
 
 7/5 Attitudes 13 
 
 able spirit and a helper in the task of noble 
 living. 
 
 First, then, reverence for life. We have 
 come to have profound respect for the laws 
 of nature, for the way she works, and for 
 the possibility of co-operating with her. 
 It is the scientific habit of mind to sit down 
 quietly and observe the facts, to view 
 patiently the processes in the growth of 
 plants and animals and in the development 
 of society in order to understand them and 
 control them. Nothing is allowed to come 
 between the scientist and the facts. Jesus 
 took the same unprejudiced, impartial atti- 
 tude when he said to his disciples, "Ye shall 
 know the truth and the truth shall make 
 you free." The order and connection of 
 things in the inner life were to him no less 
 real than the relations which exist in the 
 outer world. "Do men gather grapes of 
 thorns or figs of thistles? A good tree 
 cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a 
 .corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. " It 
 was this appeal to lif e itself which enabled 
 the people to understand him so readily
 
 14 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 and to appreciate the moral lessons which 
 he drew from their common occupations 
 and daily experiences. He did not shrink 
 from life. He came eating and drinking 
 and entered into the natural and simple in- 
 terests of his townsmen and friends. His 
 moral precepts were largely direct observa- 
 tions of what he saw going on about him. 
 " Judge not that ye be not judged, for with 
 what judgment ye judge, ye shall be 
 judged, and with what measure ye mete, it 
 shall be measured to you again." In those 
 words he was simply telling what he had 
 observed and what any of us may observe 
 every day. It was the same when he said, 
 "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and 
 ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened 
 unto you." He probably had in mind 
 some undaunted souls who persistently 
 kept after worthy objects and finally ob- 
 tained them against heavy odds. Jesus 
 appears very near to us because he is so 
 real and straightforward in his estimates. 
 He has precisely the attitude of a modern 
 man who looks over the pictures of life in
 
 Its Attitudes 15 
 
 the newspapers or at the movies and rec- 
 ognizes the folly of the fool and the wisdom 
 of the wise. Generosity begets generosity, 
 hardness invites hardness. They that take 
 the sword shall perish by the sword. 
 
 He may be said to have confidence in his 
 teaching just because so little of it is his 
 own in any exclusive sense. The message 
 which he gives is in no sense private. It 
 is the declaration of things which are right 
 at hand but which are overlooked and 
 neglected. In this sense there is a certain 
 identity between the teaching of Jesus and 
 what is called paganism. The authority 
 for what he teaches is found in the nature 
 of the experience itself and may be verified 
 by anyone. Even paganism in the sense 
 of the joy of life, the delight in friendship 
 and in nature and in humor and in the free 
 play of the imagination, is not wanting. 
 The great parables the Prodigal Son, the 
 Good Samaritan, the Wise and Foolish 
 Virgins, the Sower and the Husbandman 
 are straight out of life and have traveled 
 around the world for two thousand years
 
 1 6 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 as true counterparts of actual conditions, 
 in the lives of the people. It did not re- 
 quire a special revelation to make them 
 true. They would have been just as true 
 from any other lips. Because he saw 
 people as they are, with their ideals as well 
 as their sins, and pictured them to them- 
 selves with such fidelity, he has won their 
 hearts and inspired their wills. 
 
 Religion is for him the maintenance of 
 this attitude of respect for life. The divine 
 order is not different in principle from that 
 which we constantly observe. God is like 
 a good shepherd seeking his lost sheep. He 
 is like the father receiving back his prodigal 
 son. The analogies of seedtime and har- 
 vest hold in the moral realm. Whoever, 
 then, in our day has this reverence for life, 
 respects its simple principles of industry, of 
 generosity, of persistence, and of fidelity, 
 possesses in this respect the Christian atti- 
 tude and is to that extent and by that very 
 fact a Christian. The modern man gains 
 a new attachment for Jesus in this dis- 
 covery, for there is here no longer the sense
 
 Its Attitudes 17 
 
 of something artificial and arbitrary, but a 
 common human response to the great spec- 
 tacle of the world. In all that wonderful 
 panorama some things appear better than 
 others. The differences are as clear to the 
 plain man as to the prophet when once they 
 are pointed out. It is the function of the 
 prophet to call attention to them, and it is 
 the measure of his greatness that he is able 
 to do so in such vivid pictures that men 
 remember and have their wills stirred to 
 act accordingly. 
 
 The great moral distinctions between 
 good and bad, right and wrong, have arisen 
 out of the long and tortuous experience of 
 the race. Like language and art they have 
 been fashioned first in the give and take of 
 use and wont. Later they have been for- 
 mulated and codified by prophets and 
 social leaders. The conviction which a 
 moral leader awakens is not due to what 
 he brings with him so much as to the dis- 
 closures he makes concerning the habits 
 which men already employ. He deals in 
 typical cases: "A certain man had two
 
 1 8 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 sons"; or "There was a certain rich man 
 which had a steward"; or "What man of 
 you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one 
 . . . ." In the time and country of Jesus 
 every man worth taking into account had 
 at least two sons, every rich man naturally 
 had a steward, and every farmer of any 
 significance had at least a hundred sheep. 
 The stories therefore had point and could 
 be verified with little difficulty. They de- 
 rived their significance not from the man 
 who told them but from life itself. His 
 glory was in his clear and illuminating in- 
 sight which became so revealing and so 
 convincing the moment men compared 
 what he said with what they saw all about 
 them. He is vital for us now because he 
 lodged the authority of his word in what he 
 saw, in what all experienced, and in the dis- 
 tinctions which had been made before him 
 but which needed reinforcement through 
 such an energizing and convincing soul as 
 his. He accepted the Ten Command- 
 ments, but he knew they were not all of 
 equal importance and he did not hesitate
 
 Its Attitudes ig 
 
 even in the presence of the formal teachers 
 of the Law to assert which was the greatest 
 and to put another beside it as of equal 
 value. The attitude of Christ toward life 
 was then one of reverence for its moral 
 distinctions and its ethical values. We 
 share that attitude with him. We also 
 look to life for its meaning and for direc- 
 tion, and because we agree in this reverence 
 for life we are to this extent Christian. 
 
 The second conspicuous attitude of the 
 Christian life which I mention is love, espe- 
 cially love of our fellow-men. We are hav- 
 ing a great awakening in recent years with 
 reference to social justice. This is the 
 phrase which we have "adopted to express 
 the development in institutions, and par- 
 ticularly in the state, of the attitude of con- 
 sideration for our fellow-men. That is one 
 reason the present war is more tragic to us 
 than war has ever been before. Just in 
 proportion as men had begun to see the 
 possibility of enhancing human nature by 
 culture and training, by favorable environ- 
 ment and nutrition, the whole process
 
 2o The New Orthodoxy 
 
 seems to be arrested by the most appalling 
 waste of men known to history. Perhaps 
 the tragedy will make so profound an im- 
 pression that the memory of it will be 
 sufficient to prevent its recurrence. But 
 there is something hopeful in the very 
 despair we feel. If we gloried in it, or 
 sought it as men used to do for its excite- 
 ment and its plunder, then everything 
 would be in doubt; but so long as men feel 
 that they are fighting for their fellows and 
 for their children, and even for the children 
 of the enemy, there is some hope. Men do 
 not wait to find that this love of their fel- 
 lows is a supreme ideal of Christianity 
 before they follow it. The impressive fact 
 is that they believe themselves to have 
 found a principle which rests directly upon 
 experience, one which carries its own justi- 
 fication in itself. And they are right. But 
 it is identical with the feeling which Jesus 
 had for his fellows just the same. 
 
 The business man adopts better methods 
 for the protection of his employees. He 
 may have mixed motives about it, but one
 
 7/5 Attitudes 21 
 
 very real factor is his sense of friendliness 
 for those who work with him and who are 
 therefore neighbors to him. At least one 
 of the discoveries made by agencies for the 
 promotion of the welfare of employees is 
 the genuine human interest taken by the 
 employers when they understand the facts. 
 Their attention has too often been cen- 
 tered upon other things in the conduct of 
 business, but when they come into closer 
 human relations with the men they are 
 more and more 'ready to improve working 
 conditions. Neighborliness is in reality 
 dependent upon something more than 
 physical proximity, as we who dwell in city 
 apartments well understand. It is more 
 than a formal connection with the machin- 
 ery and the pay-roll of a firm. It is a 
 question of fellow-feeling, of sympathetic 
 imagination. It is a sense of having our 
 interests intimately bound up together. It 
 is a realization of comradeship in a common 
 cause. Neighbors are not really neighbors 
 until their children play and quarrel to- 
 gether, or until they confer about paving
 
 22 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 the alley, or until they are visited by com- 
 mon bereavement, or their sons go to war. 
 When these things happen, then love arises 
 between them; that is, good feeling, kindli- 
 ness, mutual concern, spring up naturally 
 and of course. The great improvements 
 in social adjustments are now being 
 brought about by using this simple fact. 
 In order to preserve our cities from im- 
 pending isolation of individuals in a great 
 maze of inhuman solid pavements and 
 brick walls, we have created parks and 
 playgrounds where the natural impulses to 
 play and to social contact may find satis- 
 faction. 
 
 Nothing has helped more to create the 
 religious virtue of love to our fellow-men 
 in the cities than these places of associa- 
 tion. Formerly we left the development 
 of this Christian quality too much to the 
 saloon and the public dance hall ! It is one 
 of the most significant forward steps in our 
 society that we have begun to find out how 
 to create the normal and natural conditions 
 out of which the highest moral qualities can
 
 7/5 Attitudes 23 
 
 most successfully be produced. We have 
 always believed, theoretically at least, that 
 men should love each other, and we knew 
 that under certain conditions they always 
 did love each other, but we have only re- 
 cently put these two things together and 
 begun to create vast plans for the condi- 
 tions under which a wider and firmer affec- 
 tion may spontaneously develop. Settle- 
 ment workers, friendly visitors for the 
 united charities, comrades in barracks and 
 in the trenches, as well as classmates in col- 
 lege and members of the family, have found 
 that the old injunction to love your neigh- 
 bor means, when translated into experi- 
 ence, to live together, to share hardship 
 and pleasure, storms and sunshine, tears 
 and laughter, poverty and prosperity. It 
 has been said that all face-to-face groups 
 are naturally Christian. This conviction 
 impels us to the conclusion, therefore, that 
 what is needed is to bring the world face 
 to face, and that is being accomplished in 
 our time in unexpected ways. Travel and 
 communication and the movies and other
 
 24 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 devices enable even the plainest citizen to 
 enter into intimate understanding with 
 classes and conditions which have hitherto 
 been inaccessible to him. It is because 
 this attitude of love which is central in the 
 Christian conception is spontaneous and 
 inevitable in life itself that it is not to be 
 regarded as a fantastic dream that the 
 world may continue increasingly to find 
 itself and to call itself Christian. 
 
 The third attitude of the religious life is 
 faith. Faith is that quality by which 
 pioneers like Abraham and the Klondike 
 adventurers go forth into new countries. 
 It was the attitude of Columbus. It is the 
 forward-striving, hopeful, expectant qual- 
 ity. To have faith means to be willing to 
 take some risk for a cause. It is of the 
 essence of business enterprise and of the 
 creative spirit in science and in art. Reli- 
 gious faith means to have that feeling 
 about life as a whole. No one is able to 
 prove conclusively that human progress 
 will continue, but no man can get the most 
 out of life who refuses to believe in progress
 
 Its Attitudes 25 
 
 and in the possibility of improving the 
 world. In spite of all the lions in the way 
 we must go on. In spite of human frailties 
 and weaknesses, in spite of follies and irra- 
 tionalities, in spite of selfishness and greed, 
 in spite of false ideals and paralyzing in- 
 difference, we must go on with our task 
 whether it is our business, our science, our 
 politics, or our religion. They are all of a 
 piece in this respect. Everywhere we work 
 against difficulties and in the face of dis- 
 couragements which would be heartbreak- 
 ing if we thought only of them. But 
 everywhere we keep hoping and fighting 
 and believing that improvement is to be 
 made. When we give up that faith, we are 
 done with life, or at least with that par- 
 ticular part of it concerning which we have 
 lost faith. 
 
 This, too, is a natural attitude which has 
 come to have a new appraisement. The 
 cults of cheerfulness which have sprung up 
 on every hand witness to the response 
 which this quality gains wherever it ap- 
 pears. That is one great factor in the
 
 26 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 irresistible charm of youth. In its normal 
 state it is buoyant, believing, and un- 
 daunted. Here again it has been dis- 
 covered that this spiritual quality of life 
 has relation to practical and to physical 
 conditions. As between a healthy man 
 and an invalid, the healthy man will 
 usually have the most faith and courage 
 for the future. Therefore every means of 
 banishing disease from the world may be 
 regarded as a means of increasing our faith. 
 Poverty and ignorance also depress and 
 tend to break the spirit and contract the 
 soul. Remunerative occupation and bet- 
 ter education of the mind therefore become 
 factors in the spiritual life. 
 
 But it is also true that faith is conta- 
 gious. You must know that from the way 
 in which salesmen and promoters commu- 
 nicate to you their enthusiasm for their 
 goods and stocks. It is true, too, with ref- 
 ference to the ideal things of religion. It 
 is heartening to meet great souls like Jesus 
 and Paul and Luther and Bishop Brooks, 
 who are resilient and full of faith in the
 
 Its Attitudes 27 
 
 progress of the kingdom of love in the 
 world. They look over the long distances 
 which the race has traveled and are able to 
 see savagery pass away and barbarism dis- 
 appear, the old nomadic life of Israel give 
 place to the kingdom, the old superstitions 
 of magic and sorcery vanish before increas- 
 ing intelligence, old cruelty surrender to 
 kindliness, and the littleness of broken and 
 scattered societies grow into the beauty 
 and power of ordered states and empires. 
 The Christian attitude of faith is that the 
 world has immense possibilities and that 
 these may be realized through the industry, 
 intelligence, and good- will of men working 
 in harmony with the highest knowledge 
 and deepest convictions they possess. 
 
 These, then, are the attitudes of the reli- 
 gious life. Reverence for life and for the 
 moral distinctions which commend them- 
 selves to the experience of the race; love 
 for our fellow-men as the natural attitude 
 of good-will and comradeship which arises 
 wherever men really know and understand 
 each other; and the forward-moving action
 
 28 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 of life in the quest for better things than 
 have yet been achieved these are the atti- 
 tudes of the Christian life, and they are 
 the attitudes of life itself at its best. Is it 
 too much to hope that one day this identity 
 will be fully realized and that then it will 
 be seen that wherever reverence and love 
 and faith abound there also the Christian 
 life has come to its own? It is in this 
 spirit that men are gaining a new appre- 
 ciation of religion and a new and truer 
 vision of Jesus Christ. Instead of being 
 dwarfed by the world's realization that his 
 religion is the religion of life at its best, 
 that discovery exalts him into a more 
 intimate and persuasive leadership which 
 invites new enthusiasm and devotion.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
 DRAMATIS PERSONAE 
 
 Religion as we know it in our society is 
 concerned with persons. This is a distin- 
 guishing feature. In the earlier stages of 
 man's groping life he attached more im- 
 portance to what are for us mere animals 
 and material objects than he did to human 
 beings. His ceremonials centered in the 
 things around him. Often it was his food. 
 At times it was a mountain or a stream. 
 His deities were rice or maize, sheep or kan- 
 garoos, or any other objects acutely con- 
 nected with his wants and his satisfactions. 
 For long ages he cherished such things more 
 than he did his own human kind. It is still 
 true in some countries that animals are 
 treated with more consideration than men 
 and especially than women. Sometimes 
 our western civilization is accused of valu- 
 ing its machines higher than the lives of the 
 29
 
 30 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 men who run them. But in spite of all 
 exceptions and of all failures to live up to 
 it, the motto everywhere displayed is 
 "safety first" for human beings. We are 
 rapidly making this devotion to human 
 welfare religious. It is only recently that 
 negro slavery was abolished, and now agi- 
 tation grows against the slavery of women, 
 wage-slavery, and all forms of the subordi- 
 nation of men, women, or children to un- 
 just or merely impersonal interests. Not 
 only must they be freed from various kinds 
 of bondage, but movements are under way 
 to give them the resources of a larger 
 human existence by means of education, 
 better economic conditions, and larger 
 opportunities for recreation, social con- 
 tact, and genuine freedom. 
 
 The conservation of the race has come to 
 be recognized as more important than the 
 conservation of timber and minerals. This 
 is no longer merely a sentiment, but it is 
 embodied in laws and institutions. Not 
 only do men exist for the state, but the state 
 exists for men. At last man's understand-
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 31 
 
 ing of himself has become clear enough for 
 him to see that his highest duty is toward 
 his own kind, and that unless the life of 
 man himself is becoming larger and finer 
 nothing else can yield enduring satisfac- 
 tion. This is the meaning of the wars for 
 freedom and for conscience. The heroes of 
 liberty and democracy have thought of 
 nothing as comparable in importance with 
 the nurture and enrichment of the spirit of 
 man. 
 
 This love of man toward man is cher- 
 ished for no other reason than that it seems 
 the only natural and human attitude. It 
 yields its own rewards. As a father scorns 
 the thought that his love for his son needs 
 any command to stimulate it or any hope 
 of reward to keep it alive, so thousands who 
 have caught the social vision of our time 
 labor for better laws, better schools, better 
 recreations without waiting for a text of 
 Scripture to tell them that this is their duty 
 and without expecting any other compen- 
 sation than just that of seeing these results 
 accomplished. Gradually it is becoming
 
 32 Tlie New Orthodoxy 
 
 apparent that this was precisely the atti- 
 tude which dominated the mind and will of 
 Jesus. Therefore leaders of social, humani- 
 tarian reforms find themselves in full ac- 
 cord with his spirit and ideals. They have 
 come to have the same interest in building 
 a society that shall minister to the deepest 
 human wants. Often they have found this 
 ideal by direct dealings with human needs, 
 much as he himself found it. Therefore 
 a new sense of comradeship is springing up 
 between them and him, for they are fellow- 
 workers in the same great cause. It is not 
 necessary to decide whether Jesus was the 
 first to have this attitude. Nor is it vital 
 to know just how far he is responsible for 
 this feeling wherever it appears at the 
 present time. We have come to know it 
 as the Christian view of life, and we think 
 of it as Christlike no matter in whom it is 
 manifest. The religious life therefore in- 
 volves one's own personality, the person- 
 ality of others, and of God. These are the 
 dramatis personae. In a history of reli- 
 gion it would be necessary to take account
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 33 
 
 of angels and demons, demigods and in- 
 numerable tribal deities. Here it is suffi- 
 cient to interpret the self and other souls, 
 including Jesus Christ, the church, and 
 God. These are as intimately related to 
 one another as the members of a family. 
 Each must be seen in relation to the rest. 
 No one of them liveth unto himself. 
 
 Self is the word now more commonly 
 used than soul or spirit. It is the mind as 
 it knows itself. When one says "I" or 
 "me" or refers to himself by name, he des- 
 ignates the self. The description of one's 
 own personality is peculiarly difficult, but 
 the sense of it is most ultimate and vital. 
 The psychologists have made great efforts 
 to make it clear, but with all their training 
 and practice they have not satisfied them- 
 selves. Professor James made a notable 
 contribution to the description and under- 
 standing of the self, and all writers upon the 
 subject go back to him for help. He cites 
 the case of Peter and Paul, who talk over 
 the events of the day just before they fall 
 asleep. Each understands the other and
 
 34 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 each enters into the other's moods. They 
 keep their own selves distinct, however. 
 No confusion occurs between them when 
 they wake in the morning. Each takes up 
 his own train of ideas and connects with the 
 events of the previous day without uncer- 
 tainty as to whether he is recalling his own 
 or the other's feelings. The basis of this 
 recognition of his own state and of him- 
 self is in each case just the peculiar 
 "warmth and intimacy" which one feels 
 for some ideas or actions and not for 
 others. Out of the stream of the conver- 
 sation of the night before some attitudes 
 and emotions are recalled which are wel- 
 comed at once as belonging to one's own 
 inner world. In contrast to them the atti- 
 tudes and emotions of the other person are 
 more remote, colder, and carry no sense 
 of possession. 
 
 The self is the being any man experiences 
 himself to be. He is known to himself 
 immediately in the sense of being at home 
 with his thoughts and feelings. His own 
 moods and memories are more familiar,
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 35 
 
 more urgent and alive. The self may un- 
 dergo sudden and extreme changes and yet 
 retain the feeling of being the same person. 
 The changes are just as real as the same- 
 ness. We are actually different from mood 
 to mood. It is astonishing how profoundly 
 the sense of ourselves may be affected by a 
 cup of coffee, a breath of fresh air suddenly 
 let into a stuffy room, a refreshing night's 
 sleep, success at a favorite game. 
 
 When I fall in with a stranger in a rail- 
 way coach, it is this actual self which is dis- 
 closed to him. He begins by remarking 
 that the weather is unusual for the time of 
 year. I give him a courteous but general 
 reply. He then refers to the football score 
 of the previous day, and I am all anima- 
 tion, volunteering remarks about a certain 
 team whose players I know and whose 
 records are forthwith reviewed. Later the 
 evening paper is thrust before us by the 
 newsboy, and the headlines are appeals 
 met by varying degrees of zest and atten- 
 tion. If we journey far and become com- 
 municative, we thus become aware of the
 
 36 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 nature of the self possessed by each one. 
 His self is that of a traveling salesman deal- 
 ing in rubber. He is well developed with 
 reference to automobile tires, rubber boots, 
 water hose, their uses, prices, and possible 
 substitutes. Socialism is his political 
 creed. His heart is wrapped up in a ten- 
 year-old daughter whose studies and play 
 and pets have forced him to attend to a 
 new world of things essential to the life of a 
 little girl. The conversation reveals by 
 many allusions and exclamations, stories 
 and passing references, the outline of his 
 inner world. I remark afterward that I 
 became acquainted with Mr. Smith during 
 that journey. It is literally true. His 
 personality stood forth in his very vocabu- 
 lary and gestures. At some questions of 
 mine he would return quick answers with 
 eagerness, while to others he would merely 
 say indifferently that he did not know. 
 Occasionally, as when he mentioned his 
 little girl, one could observe an almost 
 tragic tension, as if his very heart rose and 
 beat in his words with anxiety and tense
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 37 
 
 affection. He followed none of my hints 
 about Schopenhauer or chess or South 
 America, knew nothing of Bret Harte, and 
 cared nothing for Airedale dogs. It was 
 not difficult to see that his self was highly 
 developed on the side of business and dis- 
 closed depths of fatherly pride in his 
 daughter, but was quite lacking in appre- 
 ciation of poetry and conventional religion. 
 It is in some such way that the practical 
 person, whether he be scholar or man of 
 affairs, understands the self. He knows it 
 best of all in his own experience. He un- 
 derstands what it is to be perplexed and 
 depressed over his mistakes and misfor- 
 tunes, and also what it is to be elated over 
 success. If religion could talk to him in 
 terms of those experiences, he could under- 
 stand it. It is this self which has to be 
 reckoned with first of all. Whether reli- 
 gion is vital depends on whether it is a 
 warm and powerful interest to this self 
 which is also concerned with business and 
 home and pleasure. The measure of a 
 man's interest in religion may be truly seen
 
 38 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 in the time and thought he gives to it, in 
 the response he makes to it in conversa- 
 tion, in the courage and patience with 
 which he seeks to understand it in his read- 
 ing and reflection. 
 
 Jesus realized that when men are most 
 serious and honest with themselves they 
 count their ideal moral interests of the 
 greatest importance. When it comes to a 
 test, all realize that "a man's life consisteth 
 not in the abundance of the things which 
 he possesseth." If it is a conflict between 
 one's comfort and one's honor, the average 
 man knows at once how to choose. Few 
 men will betray their country for bribes. 
 Thousands are now freely giving up their 
 business or profession in order to fulfil the 
 larger lif e of patriotism and of devotion to 
 a new world-order. They fear not those 
 who can merely destroy the body, but fear 
 rather those who strike at the soul of lib- 
 erty and justice. There is now more ur- 
 gent meaning in those words of Jesus, 
 "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain 
 the whole world and lose his own soul"
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 39 
 
 his larger and nobler self ? Religion mag- 
 nifies this better self for which men are will- 
 ing to sacrifice everything else. 
 
 One of the characteristics of this self is 
 that it has no independent being but is 
 intimately and organically bound up with 
 others. It is a common observation that 
 a single child in a home is at a very real 
 disadvantage as compared with one who 
 has brothers and sisters. The conditions 
 for growth of personality lie in the give and 
 take of the interaction of many individuals. 
 If a human infant could be kept alive and 
 brought to years of maturity without con- 
 tact with other human beings, it is difficult 
 to imagine how pitiful and inhuman his 
 state would be. He would be without 
 language and would have few, if any, of 
 the abilities which set man apart from the 
 lower animals. A distinctively human self 
 would be lacking in him. By the same 
 principle the more vital relations a person 
 has with the developed human world the 
 larger self or personality he gains. There- 
 fore other friendly persons are indispensable
 
 40 
 
 conditions of the religious life. They con- 
 stitute the family group within which one 
 is nourished, protected, and fashioned. 
 In its early days the church was sometimes 
 identical with a household. It is not an 
 accident that the terms denoting the do- 
 mestic life hold over into the larger body. 
 The members of the church have the same 
 intimate feeling for each other. They call 
 themselves brothers and sisters. They 
 exercise brotherly care and affection and 
 discipline. Misunderstandings of the na- 
 ture and function of the church would often 
 be avoided if it were more commonly 
 thought of in terms of this natural family 
 relation. It would be seen to be less formal 
 and more intimate, nearer and more pliable 
 in its action upon its members. This en- 
 compassing body becomes a kind of corpo- 
 rate personality. One feels loyalty toward 
 it and protects its good name. Through a 
 sense of participation in its larger, more 
 stable life the individual comes to con- 
 sciousness of himself and of it. The church 
 was in early Christian society, and in its
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 41 
 
 less formal types is today, more nearly 
 what the old clan group was to its mem- 
 bers an intimate association, sustaining 
 and controlling them without the narrow- 
 ness and antagonism of the circumscribed 
 clan. Every interest of the local church 
 tends to carry the intimacy and affection of 
 its inner life out to the larger invisible 
 church universal of which it feels itself a 
 part. In the literature of the early Chris- 
 tians that tendency was marked. The ref- 
 erences to the grace of hospitality are fre- 
 quent. When they traveled into distant 
 cities they were often cared for in the 
 homes of their comrades in the faith to 
 whom they were otherwise entire strangers. 
 The church became to the apostle Paul 
 one organic body, mystical and spiritual, 
 yet real, within which the individual felt 
 himself upborne and nurtured. So vivid 
 was this wholeness and spiritual unity for 
 him that he thought of it as one being, a 
 person, the bride of Christ. For her de- 
 vout sons the church is a great life running 
 through the centuries, constituted of all
 
 42 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 those who have participated in her faith 
 and work. In her are included all the 
 noble company of the apostles, heroes, 
 martyrs, and saints who have shared in 
 her labors and hopes. They merge into 
 her growing soul and form that vast com- 
 munion in whose fellowship the Christian 
 renews his sense of the reality of the King- 
 dom of Heaven. 
 
 Often, in the past, the church has seemed 
 to stand in sharp contrast to other institu- 
 tions. For many centuries Christianity 
 awakened the scorn and then the fear and 
 opposition of the older order. To the 
 Christians the governments, the armies, 
 the wealth, and most of the comforts of life 
 appeared to belong, not to them, but to the 
 world. Christianity became a thing apart 
 and remains so in its inner feeling and atti- 
 tude to this day among the vast majority 
 of its followers. They do not yet really 
 believe that it is possible for a man to be 
 both a citizen of this world and a citizen 
 of the heavenly kingdom without incon- 
 sistency and tragic conflict. In spite of
 
 7/5 Dramatis Personae 43 
 
 her victory over the temporal powers, 
 the Catholic church never came to the 
 point where she could trust herself to live 
 in the world. To this day she remains 
 apart, celibate and otherworldly, mystical 
 and ascetic, through the conviction that 
 the life of the spirit is fundamentally in- 
 compatible with the natural order. All 
 other Christian bodies have been deeply 
 infected with that despair of this world. 
 Therefore there yet remains over against 
 the traditional Christian the traditional 
 worldling. This worldling is one of the 
 dramatis personae. He is a less lively 
 figure in the imagination now than in the 
 past, though he still gives color and con- 
 trast to the fading picture. He is gaily 
 dressed. He employs the arts, is convivial 
 and human. He was as repugnant to the 
 puritan as to the old ascetic. In modern 
 religion he isn't so bad. If he is merely 
 a pleasure-seeker, without serious purpose, 
 he falls under the judgment that he is use- 
 ful neither to himself nor to society. His 
 way of living carries its own condemnation,
 
 44 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 for it does not yield the solid satisfactions 
 of larger participation in the affairs of the 
 community. 
 
 We are finding out, however, new uses 
 for leisure, for art, for play, and for wealth. 
 Here we are in deeper accord with Jesus 
 than with his mediaeval or puritanical fol- 
 lowers. He moved in the midst of the 
 stream of human life, amused and stirred 
 as well as angered and amazed that men 
 should be so blind and wasteful of their 
 opportunities. The traditional contrast 
 between the saints and the sinners, be- 
 tween the saved and the lost, does not hold 
 in its familiar form. Those terms belonged 
 to a static and fixed system in which it was 
 thought one must be either all of one or all 
 of the other. As a matter of fact, the 
 Christian life is a growth, and those who 
 participate in it are not altogether perfect, 
 nor are those who do not profess it alto- 
 gether bad. There is much that is bad in 
 the best of us, and there is a great deal of 
 good in the worst of us. Some people in 
 the churches have tendencies which, if un-
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 45 
 
 checked, would take them to the peniten- 
 tiary, while some convicts in prisons would 
 probably make good mayors of cities or 
 good editors of newspapers. The prison 
 walls are not coterminous with the bounds 
 of sin and virtue, nor are the walls of the 
 churches the sharp dividing line. Human 
 life is mixed in all men. That which en- 
 titles one to be called a good man is not 
 perfection but fairly reliable desires and 
 habits for doing the right thing, and that 
 which classifies one as bad is his perverse 
 desires and habits, which tend to get him 
 into trouble and to lead to defeat. In such 
 a state society cannot be perfect either. 
 Like the individuals in it, it is mixed, and 
 may be considered good or bad in terms 
 of its tendencies and its fruits. 
 
 Three of the most important of the 
 dramatis personae. remain for considera- 
 tion. Usually they are referred to as the 
 three persons of the Trinity, the meaning 
 of which word has never been made clear. 
 The doctrines of the Trinity have little 
 significance in our time. They are not
 
 46 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 demanded by our moral life and they are not 
 taught by the Scriptures. Therefore they 
 may be allowed to pass with the intellec- 
 tual world to which they belonged. If it 
 were necessary to treat of Jesus in relation 
 to the Trinity the modern theologian 
 would have little to say except what con- 
 cerns the history of that conception. For 
 himself it has little meaning. But of Jesus 
 there is much to say. The impression of 
 his life is so natural and convincing in the 
 New Testament that there is little force in 
 the contention that he never lived. Even 
 the stories relating to his birth and his 
 death are such as might easily have grown 
 up among his followers in that age without 
 any intention to deceive or misread the 
 facts. Those stories are the expression of 
 the boundless love and admiration of men 
 who believed him utterly divine. They are 
 the record of the wonder-love of the human 
 heart, which continues to make legend- 
 ary narratives about very human men. 
 It has happened to Abraham Lincoln, 
 who lived in the full light of a scien-
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 47 
 
 tific era and died little more than a half- 
 century ago. The figure of Jesus as a 
 moral teacher and as a courageous freeman 
 against the background of hard conven- 
 tion and narrow prejudice is becoming 
 more distinct and more moving. There is 
 no doubt that fine souls have been turned 
 from him by the artificial and preposterous 
 claims of many of his followers. But now 
 that it is possible to understand him more 
 directly and to assess his mind and mes- 
 sage more adequately, he is gaining a new 
 hold upon the will and the affection of all 
 classes. If it were only the educated 
 classes who were discovering the power of 
 his personality, it would not be so signifi- 
 cant, but there are signs that the masses of 
 men are coming to realize better how near 
 he is to them and how sincerely he speaks 
 to the heart of the common people. His 
 words remain unique and vital in religion 
 as those of Shakespeare do in literature 
 or of Plato in philosophy. He moves to 
 the heart of moral issues with the sure, 
 swift insight of clear thought and of pure
 
 48 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 impulse. He speaks out of life and by 
 constant reference to it almost like an 
 empirical scientist of today. This funda- 
 mental note is so clear that it becomes a 
 touchstone in connection with scholarly 
 studies for deciding the genuineness of 
 doubtful passages. Nor is it difficult to be- 
 lieve that this urgent religious enthusiasm 
 for moral ideals will keep him supreme 
 among the religious leaders through the 
 ages. He will continue to be the living 
 companion of those who come to know 
 him, and the charm of his personality will 
 continue to radiate itself through the 
 world. 
 
 The Holy Spirit in the history of the 
 church came into prominence after the 
 death of Jesus. He was the Comforter who 
 arose in the thought of the early disciples 
 when they were bereft. He was an unseen 
 presence felt whenever they came together 
 and opened their hearts to one another. 
 To him they attributed the words which 
 they spoke in moments of peril before 
 judges and accusers or at times of elation
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 49 
 
 in the assembly of the church. It is not 
 impossible to identify the experience out of 
 which this personality arose. It is recog- 
 nized in the sense of companionship we 
 have felt in the uplifting moments of great 
 gatherings or when moved by an over- 
 mastering impulse to utter the truth as we 
 see it. Colonel Francis Younghusband, of 
 the English expeditionary forces to Thibet, 
 tells of his experience when wounded and 
 ill in the hospital in Llhassa. He felt 
 borne up by the physicians and the nurses 
 and by the atmosphere of sympathy and 
 comfort which they created around him. 
 The spirit of this group of friends and 
 helpers became to him the Holy Spirit. 
 He said to a friend, "In those days the 
 God who was most real to me was not God 
 the Father; nor God the Son; but God the 
 Holy Spirit." 
 
 This experience expresses the tendency 
 of many discerning souls in their thought 
 of God. He is no longer sought outside 
 the world in unattainable distances of 
 the unknown and unknowable. Nor is he
 
 So 
 
 approached primarily through physical na- 
 ture. He is found in the associated life of 
 men, especially when that association is 
 aspiring and productive. Men are at their 
 best when striving for fuller life, for more 
 adequate knowledge, and a larger measure 
 of justice. God is love; the serving, suffer- 
 ing, healing love which binds men together 
 in nations and kindreds and leagues of 
 peace for the common good. Every con- 
 structive, fruitful organization of people is 
 a means of understanding the divine. It 
 is not an accident that we think of great 
 social entities as great personalities. Our 
 college is our Virgin Mother, to whom we 
 address songs and sentiments of genuine 
 affection. Our city has a personality, 
 photographed and visualized, whenever 
 her honor or her ambition is challenged. 
 Each state has an individuality and every 
 nation is personified through a definite face 
 and figure. Is it not just as natural to 
 sum up the meaning of the whole of life in 
 the person and image of God ? Seemingly 
 it is equally inevitable. It appears to be
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 51 
 
 the most natural and the simplest way to 
 represent to our minds and wills the moral 
 values and the spiritual realities of life. 
 Our own selves have grown up through 
 interaction with other selves both sensible 
 and ideal. In our private reflections we 
 carry on conversations with people present 
 to our imaginations who are none the less 
 important and influential with us because 
 they are not physically tangible and visible. 
 God is the great Ideal Companion. To 
 commune with him is to gain new apprecia- 
 tions of all that he signifies to us. He is 
 then identified with Strength and Wisdom 
 and Nobility. To be loyal to him is to 
 strive to adhere to all that he means to us. 
 To develop the familiar image of a par- 
 ent or friend or historical character to the 
 point where it serves as the most vivid 
 symbol of the divine is doubtless a com- 
 mon experience. "The light of the knowl- 
 edge of the glory of God in the fact of Jesus 
 Christ" is the great reality to Christians. 
 The warmth and comfort and contentment 
 which Christianity affords may be found
 
 52 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 largely in that fact. In him God comes 
 near and takes the form we can grasp and 
 utilize. In practical religious life men 
 easily feel themselves in the presence of 
 God when they recall his face. This is not 
 due so much to any theological conviction 
 about the doctrine of his divinity as it is 
 to long training and practice in associating 
 Christ with all that they feel and respect 
 as divine. 
 
 All these persons of the religious drama 
 cannot be separated from each other. 
 They are bound up together in an intimacy 
 as vital as that which unites the members 
 of an organism. No one of them can 
 live without the others nor without the 
 whole. The self grows through interplay 
 with the selves around it. It could not 
 exist without them. Over and above the 
 particular persons constituting one's class 
 or country or world is the feeling of the 
 entity of the class or country or world 
 itself. Each class in a school possesses an 
 individuality to which the members mani- 
 fest loyalty and reverence. That indi-
 
 Its Dramatis Personae 53 
 
 viduality has a certain objectivity and per- 
 manence above and beyond any particular 
 persons within it. In a sense it transcends 
 them. Yet that individuality obviously is 
 in and through them. If this be the nature 
 of God as the Ideal Socius, then he too has 
 at least such reality and objectivity. He 
 is the Soul of the world in which all other 
 selves live and move and have their being.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
 GROWING BIBLE 
 
 One of the striking facts in the religious 
 experience of the modern man is that while 
 he seems to hold sacred things more lightly 
 than did the passing generation, yet in 
 reality he cherishes those to which he does 
 cling with a more vital faith. He is dis- 
 covering that religion does not need to be 
 defended and protected in order to preserve 
 it in the world. It has a surprising depth 
 and persistence. The rationalistic mind of 
 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 
 which still survives here and there in so- 
 cieties and individuals designating them- 
 selves as rationalists, assumed that religion 
 could not survive criticism. They sup- 
 posed that religion was so inextricably 
 bound up with superstition and super- 
 naturalism that when these were exposed 
 and cast aside religion itself would perish. 
 
 54
 
 7/5 Growing Bible 55 
 
 This too has been the conviction of the 
 extreme conservatives. They must believe 
 the Bible "from cover to cover" or reject 
 it all. If they should relax their adherence 
 to miracle or prophecy they could not be- 
 lieve in the veracity of the teaching. 
 There is thus a significant likeness between 
 the extremes. They agree that one must 
 accept all or nothing. No discrimination 
 or qualification is approved. The Bible 
 and the Christian religion are to be de- 
 fended or rejected in toto. 
 
 The man of the modern mind, trained in 
 history and in the social sciences, takes a 
 different view. He does not indorse all 
 that has been claimed for the Bible nor 
 does he take it to be of equal worth in all 
 its parts. Yet he finds in it messages of 
 greatest value. Even contradictions, dis- 
 crepancies, superstitions, and myths may 
 be discovered without weakening the force 
 of the moral ideals and precepts. Those 
 things which are self-evidencing and veri- 
 fiable in experience cannot be deprived of 
 their validity because of accompanying
 
 56 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 errors or misconceptions. Religion is at 
 last seen to be greater than the traditions 
 which have grown up with it. It has 
 deeper springs in human nature than have 
 been suspected. Instead of being a deli- 
 cate and tender growth it proves to be 
 hardy and vigorous. Therefore it does not 
 have to be sheltered and hidden against 
 investigation and criticism. It cannot 
 thrive at its best under patronizing influ- 
 ences nor at the hands of those who are 
 unwilling to trust it to the free play of 
 social forces. Certainly many men in our 
 time have been surprised to realize how 
 much more vital and satisfying their reli- 
 gious faith became the moment they began 
 to view it with the same freedom and in- 
 telligence with which they regard art and 
 politics. As with all other big human con- 
 cerns, religion is at its best where it is close 
 to lif e, unhindered by authority and open to 
 reasonable, sympathetic criticism. Again 
 and again in the history of Christianity its 
 vital force has broken through old forms 
 and doctrines and created new symbols and
 
 Its Growing Bible 57 
 
 types of service. The dogma of biblical 
 infallibility is one of the artificialities re- 
 cently discarded, and the result has been 
 the strengthening of religion. 
 
 One of the best correctives for mistaken 
 and exaggerated views of any phase of re- 
 ligion is the study of its history. When the 
 Bible is viewed from the beginning of the 
 church through the changing centuries, 
 many things concerning it are made plain. 
 The word " Bible " gets a new meaning. It 
 is no more a single book but a collection of 
 books. The proper translation of the 
 Greek from which the word "Bible" comes 
 is "the books." That fact alone lessens 
 the impression of singleness and unity 
 which has prevailed. The Bible means a 
 collection of writings, a little library of 
 sixty-six books. These are all printed 
 separately by the American Bible Society 
 at one penny each, and it might be an aid 
 to the right use of them if they were always 
 sold separately rather than being bound 
 together in flexible bindings so different 
 from other books. It is even an occasion
 
 58 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 of comment to be seen carrying a copy of 
 the Bible on the street, especially on any 
 other day than Sunday, because it is still 
 felt to be different from other books, and 
 those who carry it are looked upon as not 
 quite natural and human. 
 
 The fact that the Bible is not one but 
 many books is clear from the history of the 
 selection of the writings contained in it. 
 It is difficult for us to realize that the Bible 
 has not always meant just the words 
 brought together in our Oxford editions. 
 Few people stop to think that the early 
 church did not have any of the writings of 
 the New Testament until the latter part 
 of the first century, and then only in the 
 informal and uncompilated form of letters 
 and sayings circulated from hand to hand 
 and by word of mouth. Yet it is of pro- 
 found importance to realize that the church 
 is older than its written documents and was 
 the cause of them. Naturally today the 
 book is regarded as the seed from which 
 churches spring, and the common impres- 
 sion easily arises that it was always so, but
 
 Its Growing Bible 5$ 
 
 originally the opposite was the case. The 
 first disciples had, of course, only the 
 Scriptures of the Old Testament, and these 
 were in different versions, lacking uni- 
 formity as to the number and character of 
 the constituent books. It was late in the 
 fourth century before a list of the New Tes- 
 tament books appeared which is identical 
 with our own. Before that time there was 
 a very notable variation. The oldest parts 
 of our New Testament are the letters of 
 Paul. These began to be written about 
 twenty years after the death of Jesus. 
 They were not prepared for publication, 
 much less as permanent documents. They 
 were concerned with problems in local 
 churches and with the conduct and spirit- 
 ual needs of individuals, and were passed 
 around among interested friends in much 
 the same way as letters today from one on 
 a journey or at war. 
 
 Our New Testament contains twenty- 
 seven books, but Justin Martyr in the 
 middle of the second century mentions only 
 thirteen or fourteen. Irenaeus, about
 
 60 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 185 A.D., speaks of twenty-one. A list 
 from about 200 A.D., known as the Mura- 
 torian Canon, contains twenty-four, among 
 which are the Revelation of Peter and the 
 Wisdom of Solomon. The author of this 
 list frankly says that some would also in- 
 clude other books, and names the Shepherd 
 of Hermas, but he would not include them. 
 He accepts the Apocalypse of Peter as well 
 as the Revelation of John which we have. 
 But he does not have the Epistles of Peter, 
 nor the third letter of John, nor the Epistle 
 of James. Throughout this period and 
 until the time of the Reformation there was 
 never so much importance attached to the 
 inspiration and authority of these writings 
 as we are accustomed to ascribe to them. 
 When individual Christians sought counsel 
 and instruction they went to the church 
 itself, to the congregation of believers or 
 to the leaders, such as the presbyters or 
 bishops. Until the age of Luther the 
 church was the recognized source and 
 medium of authority. The group itself 
 settled its problems and furnished guid-
 
 Its Growing Bible 61 
 
 ance for its members. The congregations 
 clearly held the writings of Scripture in 
 high esteem, but they did not regard them 
 as the sole nor the supreme means of ascer- 
 taining the truth. The spirit of the church 
 itself was the real court of appeal. This 
 conviction continued into Reformation 
 times, and was only obscured by the reac- 
 tion against abuses by the hierarchy of the 
 Roman church. Martin Luther himself, 
 with all his devotion to the Bible, did not 
 receive all of the books as of equal value, 
 but went so far as to reject the letter of 
 James as "an epistle of straw" and the 
 Revelation of John as of doubtful right to 
 a place in the canon. He did not include 
 the Revelation in his version of the Scrip- 
 tures but printed it in an appendix with 
 Hebrews, James, and Jude. 
 
 Apparently the event which fixed the 
 Bible in the form in which we know it was 
 the official publication of the King James 
 translation, commonly known as the 
 Authorized Version. It was the first 
 authoritative translation of the whole
 
 62 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 Bible into any modern vernacular lan- 
 guage. It was made by the King's com- 
 mand. He was the head of the church in 
 England, and it was appointed by him to 
 be read in the churches. The reverence 
 felt for the Bible was greatly augmented by 
 this translation. It gained prestige and 
 became of increasing interest to the people. 
 It was, however, too expensive to be pur- 
 chased generally, and the majority were too 
 illiterate to read it. It remained, there- 
 fore, in the hands of the clergy to a large 
 extent and was known chiefly to the public 
 through being read in the services of the 
 churches. By the natural tendency al- 
 ready fostered through the authority of the 
 state and the church and by the importance 
 attached to it by the preachers among the 
 common people, the book came to be re- 
 garded with a feeling of awe and supersti- 
 tious devotion. Perhaps it was the work 
 of the British and other Bible societies 
 which did most to make it accessible and 
 at the same time to transform it into a kind 
 of popular fetish. Before the organization
 
 7/5 Growing Bible 63 
 
 of these societies the Bible was a luxury 
 which few could afford. In the sixteenth 
 century, the time of Shakespeare, the Bible 
 was so rare as to be possessed only by the 
 few, while for the use of those who could 
 not buy it a copy was chained to a reading 
 desk in the cathedrals where the people 
 could have access to it and at the same 
 time not be able to steal it. 
 
 The Bible Society changed all this by 
 printing the book in vast editions. Gifts 
 of charity were secured for its wider circu- 
 lation. The response to the appeal of the 
 society on behalf of the poor to whom it 
 sought to distribute Bibles was greater 
 than any appeals for those suffering from 
 famine and pestilence. In the middle of 
 the nineteenth century the society dis- 
 tributed half a million a year and increased 
 its output until its presence in the house- 
 holds of the common people in civilized 
 lands and in countries reached by mis- 
 sionaries has become one of the amazing 
 phenomena of the age. The faith thus dis- 
 played in the power of the Bible without
 
 64 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 note or comment to transform the world is 
 a striking illustration of the miraculous in- 
 fluence attributed to it. Along with the 
 book went the belief in its complete inspira- 
 tion and in its efficacy to convert the souls 
 of its humblest readers. We should not 
 marvel that it was regarded as a sacred ob- 
 ject, whose presence brought safety to the 
 home and the daily reading of which 
 accumulated merit for the soul. It is 
 hardly a mere coincidence that the period 
 of its greatest circulation has been the time 
 of the deepest and most widespread belief 
 in its infallibility and uniqueness. Many 
 people still believe that they can at any 
 moment receive from it a divine message 
 for any perplexity on the first page opened 
 at random. 
 
 The fact that this extreme view of the 
 supernatural and infallible character of the 
 Bible is so recent and so much the belief of 
 the less educated classes should prepare 
 us to understand the modern view without 
 confusion or distrust. The first step in the 
 appreciation of what is meant by the grow-
 
 Its Growing Bible 65 
 
 ing Bible is to realize that the conception 
 of it as a complete and final revelation is 
 exceptional in the history of the church and 
 is characteristic of a short period of time 
 which is now passing away. The older and 
 profounder belief that God has not left 
 himself without witness among any people 
 and that he has his living prophets in every 
 age has found new expression through the 
 most authentic spirits of our time. There 
 is no need to deny to the first Christian 
 century and the writings of the early dis- 
 ciples a certain uniqueness and compelling 
 directness. They have the quality of the 
 first fresh impulse and urgent moral appeal 
 of the personal impress of Jesus and Paul 
 and their immediate companions. What 
 they said and wrote stands apart as the 
 record of an epoch distinct from any before 
 or after it. Nowhere is it duplicated, nor 
 is it likely to be. On this account its canon 
 of documents naturally becomes fairly well 
 defined. 'They were the expression of a 
 definite personal history and its influence 
 upon certain characters and institutions of
 
 66 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 the time. As that age passed into history 
 its outline took shape and remains clear 
 among all the epochs of man's spiritual 
 struggle. So well marked are its spirit and 
 its word that it is possible to determine 
 whether newly discovered writings really 
 belong to it, and indeed whether specific 
 lines and words traditionally embodied in 
 the oldest extant manuscripts are genuine 
 portions of the Christian message. There 
 is some possibility that discoveries are yet 
 to be made of letters or gospels purport- 
 ing to belong to that message. If such 
 should appear, their indicated date and 
 authorship would not be so decisive in 
 determining their genuineness as would 
 their contents and their correspondence 
 with that which is already known as 
 authentic. 
 
 The problem of establishing the body of 
 writings which belong to the church of the 
 first century is not radically different from 
 that of selecting the great literary products 
 of any other well-defined period, such as 
 the golden age of Greece or the Elizabethan
 
 Its Growing Bible 67 
 
 era of English history. The scholars in 
 these fields are conscious of a collection of 
 writings just as characteristic, just as or- 
 ganic, as the collection which we know as 
 the Bible. The latter is the product of the 
 religious life of the Hebrew people and its 
 full bloom in Christianity. Those records 
 and messages which constitute the Scrip- 
 tures or writings of that stream of human 
 experience are said to be inspired, inspira- 
 tion here being equivalent to distinctness 
 or separateness. But the fact is usually 
 overlooked that the selection of writ- 
 ings which are "inspired" was determined 
 finally long after the time of their appear- 
 ance. This has certainly been true of the 
 canon of Scripture. By the same principle 
 it might be appropriate to say that certain 
 books belong to the canon of Greek litera- 
 ture, namely, those which bear the impress 
 of the Greek genius as shown by their par- 
 ticipation in a certain body of characteris- 
 tic ideas and attitudes. These are the only 
 works which are truly inspired by that 
 genius. They are unique and inimitable.
 
 68 
 
 That canon also is closed. It has been 
 finished and sealed. 
 
 In similar manner one may regard the 
 written records of any age. The Eliza- 
 bethan era of English letters embraces a 
 definite list of authors, the great names 
 of which are Spenser, Shakespeare, and 
 Bacon. The lesser lights are Ben Jonson, 
 Marlowe, Beaumont, and Fletcher, with 
 others like Lodge and Sidney and numer- 
 ous anonymous authors making up the 
 chorus and background. These all have a 
 certain kinship in their problems and out- 
 look and general philosophy of life. The 
 same is true of the Victorian writers, Ten- 
 nyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and 
 their lesser kin. Each distinctive time and 
 movement has its representative spokes- 
 men and prophets. Collections of their 
 books are made and preserved and cher- 
 ished by their devotees. From the stand- 
 point and date of a given epoch its 
 literature becomes a closed book. Seldom 
 are new authors of importance discovered 
 whose works have to be added to the col-
 
 Its Growing Bible 69 
 
 lections already extant. But in a larger 
 sense and in the longer perspective the 
 records accumulate throughout the entire 
 unfolding life of the race. The Scriptures 
 in this larger sense include the finest prod- 
 ucts of the spiritual history of mankind in 
 all ages. They are the records of the moral 
 and religious aspirations and ideals of all 
 humanity. The later stages of this devel- 
 opment are not without their influence 
 upon the Scriptures of past ages. Those 
 Scriptures of the past are, in a very true 
 sense, being constantly reinterpreted and 
 refashioned, while the new material vastly 
 extends and enlarges the entire body of 
 literature. Having seen something of the 
 gradual formation of the canon of our 
 accepted biblical writings and of the pro- 
 cess by which it became set off and apothe- 
 osized, we may also note the way in which 
 it is reinterpreted and made continuous 
 with the ampler Scriptures of the whole 
 spiritual development of mankind. 
 
 The Bible, like other vital books, grows 
 by constant reinterpretation. This may
 
 yo The New Orthodoxy 
 
 be realized through the experience of any- 
 one to whom it is a book of real religious 
 value. As one makes the Bible his own by 
 finding in it the passages which appeal to 
 him and suit his need, he tends to magnify 
 those selections and ignore the rest. Many 
 pious souls have for their actual working 
 Bible scarcely more than the Twenty-third 
 Psalm, the Sermon on the Mount, the four- 
 teenth chapter of John, the thirteenth 
 chapter of First Corinthians, and the last 
 chapters of Revelation. If you judge by 
 the interest he displayed in the various 
 books, the real Bible of Martin Luther con- 
 sisted of the Epistles of Paul, especially 
 Galatians and Romans, with the Psalms 
 and Genesis. He called the Psalms a 
 "short Bible" and Genesis almost the 
 noblest book of the Old Testament. 
 Luther illustrates, too, the fact that the 
 Bible not only is different for different 
 people but is different for the same person 
 at various times in life. At first he re- 
 jected the Revelation of John entirely, but 
 later in life it appealed to him more, though
 
 Its Growing Bible 71 
 
 never as a book of the first importance. 
 Luther made the Old Testament an alle- 
 gorical elaboration of the gospel of Christ, 
 especially as he found that gospel in the 
 letters of Paul. He saw the mysteries of 
 the Trinity in the first verses of the first 
 chapter of Genesis. Zwingli, another of 
 the reformers, unlike Luther, preached the 
 New Testament rather than the Old, and 
 did not regard Paul's letters as the purest 
 gospel. John Calvin, in his turn, made the 
 Bible a new book to his generation by a 
 radically different type of interpretation. 
 It is said that "for the first time in a thou- 
 sand years he gave a conspicuous example 
 of non-allegorical exposition." He even 
 read the poetry as if it were prose. That 
 may have been because he Wad been trained 
 as a lawyer or because he lacked the poetic 
 temper. He held the stories of Genesis to 
 be literal history. The serpent spoke like 
 a human being when Eve was tempted, 
 lions lay down with lambs in the ark of 
 Noah. His view of Christianity was essen- 
 tially imbued with the Old Testament
 
 72 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 standards. To him the Psalms afforded 
 adequate knowledge of salvation and the 
 Ten Commandments constituted a suffi- 
 cient rule of life. In the sixteenth century 
 he adopted the theological doctrines of the 
 fourth century and manipulated the texts 
 of Scripture to support them. 
 
 We have thus three Bibles, as one might 
 say. First that of scholasticism, which 
 obscured the original Scriptures by the 
 dogmatic theology of the times. Its un- 
 derstanding of the Christian religion rested 
 upon the teaching of the church fathers, 
 with no attempt to get back to the original 
 text. A second Bible was that of many of 
 the reformers, of whom Luther is typical. 
 He went back to the words of the text but 
 he employed a highly allegorical interpre- 
 tation. Calvin also took the Bible itself 
 as the basis of his commentaries and used 
 a thoroughly literal method, but still with 
 the point of view and the doctrines of the 
 fourth century. A third Bible is that of 
 those modern scholars since the seven- 
 teenth century who employed an unham-
 
 Its Growing Bible 73 
 
 pered exegesis in which the Bible for the 
 first time was studied in the light of its 
 own history and by means of free, unbiased 
 investigation. 
 
 Another means of realizing how different 
 the Scriptures become under the influence 
 of varying presuppositions may be seen in 
 the comparison of the impressions which 
 different Protestant sects cherish. To one, 
 passages concerning foreordination and 
 election become the standards and con- 
 trolling determinants; to another, the texts 
 which emphasize the freedom of the gospel; 
 to another, the pivotal texts are those deal- 
 ing with the second coming of Christ; to 
 another, the miracles of healing are in the 
 foreground. Some magnify withdrawal 
 from the world, renouncing all relations 
 with it so far as possible. A few exalt the 
 evangelization of the world, while some 
 center everything upon a form or a type 
 of organization. From the use made of it 
 the Bible appears in one group to be su- 
 premely a volume concerned with future 
 reward and punishment, while to others
 
 74 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 it is made to be primarily a treasury of 
 mystical visions and forecasts of history. 
 Thus, in a sense, each sect has its own 
 Bible, made by unconscious emphasis upon 
 its favorite interests. 
 
 An explanation is suggested by this fact 
 for the growth of the Bible in keeping with 
 the spirit of the age. Gradually the sacred 
 writings have been felt to support causes 
 of reform and progress, abolition of slavery, 
 woman's freedom, economic justice, and 
 prohibition, though in the course of attain- 
 ing such reforms the Bible has also been 
 appealed to for the sanction of the direct 
 opposites. The realization of this possi- 
 bility of taking the Bible for the support of 
 widely different points of view has in recent 
 years led to questioning whether there is 
 not some standard afforded by the Bible 
 itself and by the course of history which 
 might furnish a more stable and convincing 
 interpretation. Partly through the inter- 
 est of our time in social problems and 
 partly through a reading of the whole of 
 Scripture in the light of its greatest mes-
 
 Its Growing Bible 75 
 
 sages a better point of view and method 
 have been discovered. The biblical stu- 
 dent today seeks to free himself from the 
 presuppositions of the traditional creeds 
 and from the bias of any particular sects. 
 He is better able to do this because the 
 creeds and doctrines have been so thor- 
 oughly criticized and appraised in the light 
 of the historical and social conditions out 
 of which they arose. The method of mod- 
 ern scientific analysis and comparison has 
 done its work in this field as elsewhere, and 
 the result is the understanding of the Bible 
 in the light of its own unfolding moral and 
 spiritual conceptions. 
 
 The Bible thus attained makes a new 
 and profound appeal to our time, for it is 
 now a collection of writings reflecting the 
 history of a religiously gifted people in their 
 growth and aspirations. Within that his- 
 tory the prophetic utterances of the Old 
 Testament and the words of Jesus mark 
 the high peaks from which all the rest is 
 surveyed and estimated. So aptly and 
 searchingly do the social judgments of the
 
 76 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 prophets appeal to the social conscience of 
 the present that in certain respects they 
 seem like reformers of the twentieth cen- 
 tury. At the same time the more adequate 
 knowledge of Jesus has put him above all 
 the prophets and given him a new hold 
 upon the spiritual imagination and ideal- 
 ism of the best minds of the new social 
 order. In this reconstruction of the bib- 
 lical material and perspective the book has 
 become a source of increasing inspiration 
 and moral incentive. Some attempts have 
 been made to reprint the text in a way to 
 bring out this organization of it around the 
 character and work of Jesus. His sayings 
 have been underlined in some editions. 
 Some have advocated the re-editing of the 
 Bible in still more radical ways to make 
 clear the central, controlling position of 
 Christ. It is widely felt that the elimina- 
 tion of much comparatively irrelevant and 
 incongruous material would greatly clarify 
 and magnify the real message of the book 
 and the cause of true religion. Out of its 
 living Word, as from a fountain of cleansed
 
 7/5 Growing Bible 77 
 
 and purified water, would flow more re- 
 freshing streams. This Word, like all 
 great utterances, is a constant source of 
 new inspiration and wisdom. It is a grow- 
 ing and inexhaustible treasury of riches and 
 power for the noblest enterprises of man. 
 There is a third sense in which the Bible 
 is a growing collection of sacredly impor- 
 tant writings. Not only has it gradually 
 grown through a long past into the form 
 in which it was fixed by the Authorized 
 Version of King James, and not only does 
 it grow in its use by being interpreted by its 
 own highest ideals, but it grows in a third 
 manner. It expands by the assimilation 
 to itself of the great religious literature 
 of other peoples and by the contribu*- 
 tions of new prophets and teachers in the 
 expanding life of the church. The days of 
 the old exclusiveness in religion as in all 
 other forms of life are happily passing. 
 Within a century the sacred books of many 
 races have become available through the 
 prodigious labors of armies of scholars. 
 What Max Mueller did by the translation
 
 78 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 of the sacred books of the East is typical 
 and expressive of the new and larger spirit- 
 ual inheritance we are receiving. Just as 
 a touchstone for understanding Hebrew 
 and Christian documents has been pro- 
 vided in the enlightened social and moral 
 judgment of modern Christendom, so also 
 a standard has been therein secured for 
 appreciation of the best in the great litera- 
 tures of the world. God has not left him- 
 self without a witness among any people. 
 It has come to be regarded as an immoral 
 conception of the divine nature to attribute 
 to him the kind of favoritism which has 
 dominated the church in the past. Every- 
 where in the prayers and songs and 
 symbolism of the Hindu, Persian, and 
 Confucianist writings are sentiments akin 
 to those of our Old Testament Psalms and 
 Prophets. When the magnet of Christian 
 idealism is brought into contact with them, 
 many great words rise out of these deposits 
 and cling to it with the force of an elemental 
 kinship. Deep calleth unto deep in all the 
 vast waters of man's inner life. Nothing
 
 7*s Growing Bible 79 
 
 but an arbitrary limitation of the canons 
 of the various faiths prevents the recogni- 
 tion of this fact. As those limitations are 
 swept away in the fires of criticism and of 
 kindling human brotherhood, the common 
 elements are seen and fused together. As 
 internationalism grows and better ac- 
 quaintance is established, this common 
 possession will become clearer and the 
 mutual understandings come into focus. 
 Thus the Bible grows by the inclusion of 
 kindred works. The principle of inclusive- 
 ness is extending also to contemporary 
 authors. This is strikingly illustrated in 
 the development of the hymnology of the 
 church. It was at first limited to the 
 Psalms. Gradually there grew up beside 
 them the lyrics of the living faith. Some- 
 times these were the cries of priest or monk 
 or lonely pilgrim. Sometimes they were 
 the music of unordained hearts flowing 
 forth spontaneously. From all such sources 
 the church has appropriated its hymns and 
 carols, its anthems and oratorios. Modern 
 hymnbooks are the blending in Christian
 
 8o The New Orthodoxy 
 
 worship of harmonious notes from very 
 diverse minds and lives. Yet they are not 
 thereby weakened, but made ampler and 
 more vital. The songs of David are bound 
 up with those of the Crusaders and Puri- 
 tans and modern liberals. Isaac Watts 
 and Charles Wesley keep company in the 
 great choir with Bernard of Clairvaux, 
 Cardinal Newman, and Bishop Brooks. 
 And what shall be said of the presence 
 here in an evangelical hymnal of Gilbert 
 K. Chesterton, Algernon C. Swinburne, 
 Goethe, Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 Felix Adler, Tennyson, and Whittier ? 
 
 In all essential respects the hymnbook is 
 the expanded edition of the Book of Psalms, 
 developed and adapted to the enlarging 
 vision and spiritual aspiration of the 
 church. Fortunately no censorship nor 
 creedal test has been able to deprive us of 
 this rich commingling of the praises and 
 prayers of men of widely varying outlook. 
 They have found their place in the sanc- 
 tuary because of their faith in brotherhood 
 and unselfish service. Their words have
 
 Its Growing Bible 81 
 
 already become integral parts of our work- 
 ing Bible. They are admitted to the canon 
 of our lyrical Scriptures and they bear ap- 
 pealing witness to the genuine catholicity 
 of our moods of devotion. 
 
 It is a simple question which this fact 
 occasions. If the poems of these writers 
 are thus freely incorporated in our Bible, 
 why may we not also add their other 
 equally great and spiritual writings ? Have 
 not Tennyson and Whittier and Bryant 
 and Lowell and Phillips Brooks given us 
 other divine gifts of wisdom and beauty ? 
 Having opened the way to this great com- 
 pany of prophets and teachers, how shall 
 we again close the doors upon them and 
 exclude them from the sacred canon? 
 And when they have entered not only sing- 
 ing their songs but bringing also their prose 
 and proverbs, how is it possible to separate 
 from them playwrights like Shakespeare 
 and Maeterlinck, or scientists like Kepler 
 and Darwin, or philosophers like John 
 Locke and William James? We cannot 
 believe that God has withdrawn from his
 
 82 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 world or is less present than of old. His 
 living Word finds voice now as in every age. 
 The divine volume enlarges with the com- 
 ing of each new prophet. Inspired writers 
 gather in growing companies to lift the 
 light of wisdom and beauty upon the as- 
 cending path of man's purer and more 
 abundant life.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
 CHANGING GOAL 
 
 Christianity began, if we may trust the 
 impressions gained from a fair reading of 
 the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 
 with a challenge to turn from the hope of 
 an immediate establishment of a visible 
 Kingdom of God on earth to the founding 
 of it as an inner kingdom of life and right- 
 eousness. In the teaching of Jesus one feels 
 an urgent appeal on behalf of friendliness 
 and generous kindliness between man and 
 man and between man and God. The 
 pure, intimate affection of lovers is exalted 
 into the model for all men and God. Such 
 a love impels to the forgiveness of repeated 
 offenses and to reconciliation with enemies. 
 It leads a man to lay down his very life for 
 his friend. Full of compassion for others, 
 it begets nobility and restraint for one's 
 self. Nor does Christianity leave one with 
 
 83
 
 84 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 a mere rule and injunction. It furnishes 
 vital human relations in which these quali- 
 ties are already dominant. Naturally 
 family affection springs into beauty in all 
 human societies. Jesus made that his 
 starting-point. Father and son, neighbor 
 and friend, husband and wife, brother and 
 brother these are all bound together by an 
 elemental affection which is also capable 
 of extension to strangers and to the in- 
 visible God himself. The early disciples 
 confirmed that faith by clinging to each 
 other and to their Master with a loyalty 
 which was spontaneous and measureless. 
 By the charm of his spirit and the appeal 
 of his hopes they were made as one family, 
 as one company of comrades. As they 
 gathered about him on the shore of the 
 lake or sat with him in an upper room at 
 the close of a meal and talked of their 
 dreams, they felt the bonds of their fellow- 
 ship powerful enough to encompass the 
 world. It was the fact that Christianity 
 became a living communion as well as a 
 doctrine which enabled it to strike root and
 
 Its Changing Goal 85 
 
 to resist all opposition. So vivid and 
 imaginative was that fellowship that it 
 could not be broken by time or death. 
 When Jesus was no longer with them in 
 physical presence, they still clung to him as 
 alive in their hearts. After the generation 
 had passed which knew him face to face, 
 another generation, to which Paul be- 
 longed, formed a yet more intimate and 
 persuasive comradeship with him. Paul 
 became the apostle of that religion of love 
 and swept through the cities of the gentile 
 world proclaiming it. Everywhere indi- 
 viduals responded and formed societies or 
 churches in which the dominant personal- 
 ity _was Jesus, who had died but who 
 lived in the affection of his followers and 
 in the alluring faith in his kingdom of 
 love. 
 
 In the feeling of those churches, as with 
 Jesus himself, this world is in close relation 
 to the abode of God in heaven. To Jesus 
 in his reverence and sense of immediate 
 providence the heavenly Father was very 
 near. In his vivid imagination the future
 
 86 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 life and Judgment Day were close at hand. 
 Such matters were not estimated in terms 
 of space and time, but in their power over 
 the heart and will. His followers caught 
 the same urgency and lived in a universe 
 whose physical structure was not known 
 and which had little meaning for them ex- 
 cept in moral and religious terms. The 
 heavenly realms were just beyond the 
 clouds, through which in exalted moments 
 they seemed to penetrate. There Christ 
 dwelt at the right hand of God, keeping 
 watch above his faithful followers, acces- 
 sible to them in prayer, and preparing to 
 come again in dazzling glory. 
 
 As persecutions arose and the Second 
 Coming was delayed, attention centered 
 more on the future heavenly world. As 
 the struggles and sufferings increased for 
 the church on earth, its saints took com- 
 fort in the thought of the other world. 
 In the course of centuries that simple, 
 natural feeling became organized into a 
 theology which magnified that other world 
 still more and became pessimistic about the
 
 Its Changing Goal 87 
 
 present. The great creations of the Greek 
 mind, especially of Plato and Aristotle, 
 were employed to build out that concep- 
 tion to vast proportions. The impressive 
 scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages 
 marked its climax. Then the discoveries 
 of modern science as to the dimensions of 
 the earth and the heavens added the im- 
 measurable distances of astronomy and the 
 geological periods of time to the picture of 
 the universe. It was in the last century 
 that the difficulties involved in this view 
 became too acute to be borne. Men could 
 not have the same intimate and vivid feel- 
 ing for a literal heaven so far away in the 
 future and so entirely incongruous with all 
 the discoveries of science. If Laplace, a 
 scientist of rank, could say, "I have swept 
 the heavens with my telescope and find no 
 God there," it is not surprising that many 
 common people have quickly concluded 
 that science has made short work of the 
 whole fabric of religion merely by showing 
 that it employs inadequate conceptions of 
 nature.
 
 88 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 So much of the imagery of Christianity 
 was bound up with that little world of vis- 
 ible spaces and appreciable time that the 
 definition of its goal was naturally set in 
 the same framework. The hope of the 
 early Christians was to be worthy to enter 
 heaven and to live there forever. Their 
 faith scarcely sought to redeem the whole 
 world. Roman civilization and degener- 
 ate Greece and barbaric tribes offered too 
 great opposition to the early Christians, 
 lowly and impotent in the things of this 
 world. It is not strange that they con- 
 cluded that their task was to persuade as 
 many as possible to flee this world and only 
 to exist here as though already citizens of 
 heaven. They could learn to be patient 
 with much injustice. Even slaves could 
 bear their servitude in such a way as to 
 convince their masters of the great superi- 
 ority of the Christian faith. Some day all 
 their burdens would be lifted and they 
 would find themselves transformed into 
 kings and rulers in a happier sphere. They 
 hardly had the opportunity to know that
 
 Its Changing Goal 89 
 
 under fair conditions their religion would 
 furnish them the most satisfying life for 
 this present world as well as for the here- 
 after. As it was, their faith was often the 
 occasion of their suffering and outward 
 misery. Many influences thus conspired 
 to keep their eyes fixed on the other world 
 as their destination and hope. That ex- 
 pectation for the future continued to domi- 
 nate the church down to very recent times, 
 and is even now being renewed in the ter- 
 rible strain and confusion of the present 
 war. But another and more attractive 
 goal has arisen before the modern Chris- 
 tian. It is that of the enrichment and en- 
 largement of human life here and now in 
 the conviction that this is also the best 
 possible preparation for any future there 
 may be. 
 
 This goal is in spirit much like that 
 which constituted the earliest ideal of 
 Jesus, that is, the social message of his 
 teaching. His kingdom of love and service 
 already had its foundation in the natural 
 affection of friends and neighbors. If the
 
 90 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 leaven of that gracious faith could have 
 spread throughout the world without the 
 persecutions and obstructions which have 
 been raised against it, perhaps the other- 
 world goal of the historic church would not 
 have developed. But few will doubt that 
 it was better to have the dream of a king- 
 dom of love preserved to us in the setting 
 of a distant future life than to lose faith 
 in it entirely. Today, however, conditions 
 have radically changed. Christianity is no 
 longer the religion of slaves and underlings. 
 It is the religion of the mightiest nations on 
 earth. Its representatives possess wealth 
 and power and preferment. It is no longer 
 in the attitude of a suppliant, nor in that of 
 an outsider and antagonist, but it sits in 
 the councils of state and of industry and 
 of science. Men who at least call them- 
 selves Christians are among the leaders in 
 all these things. 
 
 For this reason and for many others the 
 conception of Christianity as centering 
 chiefly in another life is rapidly losing its 
 hold. That which is coming into favor is
 
 Its Changing Goal gi 
 
 the hope of Christianizing the social order 
 itself, as Professor Rauschenbusch has 
 phrased it. Here is taken into account 
 the natural goodness and forward-moving 
 tendency of human nature, its capacity for 
 improvement, for measureless unselfish- 
 ness, and for nobility and ideality of char- 
 acter beyond all calculation or present 
 imagination. Many comparisons and con- 
 trasts between the old and the new are 
 already familiar to popular thought. To 
 state them in balanced sentences has the 
 value of emphasis, though it is not without 
 the dangers of brevity and exaggeration. 
 
 The old was static; the new is dynamic. 
 The one sought perfection; the other seeks 
 improvement. One was given; the other 
 is to be gradually achieved. The first was 
 prescribed; the second is to be progres- 
 sively discovered. That goal depended on 
 providence miraculously transforming the 
 soul; this modern goal depends upon 
 learning by experience as revealed in the 
 lives of great men in the past and in scien- 
 tific observation and experiment in the
 
 92 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 present. Religion then was apart from 
 life, from the state, and from practical 
 affairs; religion now is integral with life in 
 all its forms. In the old days it lacked 
 variety and the richness of individuality; 
 in these days it is specialized and made 
 concrete by the peculiar duties and rela- 
 tions given to each person by virtue of his 
 place in society. The old had a separate 
 unique literature; the new regards all 
 noble literature as its medium. The tradi- 
 tional system had a special priesthood; the 
 present order magnifies the priesthood of 
 all true believers. The old attitude de- 
 spised and feared the natural order which 
 it called the world; the new loves the 
 natural, especially in its service of social 
 ideals. In the past there has been diffi- 
 culty in using the fine arts in religion; at 
 present they are means of the most impres- 
 sive symbolization of the new spiritual 
 values. For a long time Christ has been 
 unreal and remote ; at last he is becoming 
 human and natural. God was the infinite 
 veiled Being; he is now drawing near even
 
 7/5 Changing Goal 93 
 
 at the risk of seeming finite. Transcen- 
 dental mysticism was not difficult for the 
 faith of yesterday; a natural, winsome 
 mysticism throbs hi the soul of today. 
 The former ideal of the good man was 
 the saintly soul, serene and at peace, 
 withdrawn from the common struggle; 
 the present ideal is of a man sinewy 
 and full of courage, working in the 
 midst of the human tasks, clear-headed 
 and good-natured, conscious of far hori- 
 zons, to which also his deeds have 
 reference. 
 
 At last, then, religion has come to reckon 
 with the fact that its highest quest is not 
 for a supernatural order but just for natural 
 goodness in largest and fullest measure. 
 Through long centuries it has nourished 
 a deep antagonism to mere morality. 
 Natural goodness, it was felt, needed also 
 a churchly consecration. Religion claimed 
 to possess a peculiar sanctity accessible 
 only through its ministrations. It is yet 
 widely viewed hi that light. Professor 
 Coe, who has a right to speak on this
 
 94 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 subject both as a psychologist and as a 
 Christian, says: 
 
 Some among us are confused, timid, and non- 
 committal because they do not clearly see how 
 being religious is different from simply living a 
 good life. Others are waiting for some special, 
 phenomenal revelation which shall convey a mes- 
 sage not otherwise obtainable. All such persons 
 are like the bird and the fish in the poem 
 
 "Oh, where is the sea?" cried the fish; and 
 "Oh, where is the air?" cried the bird. 
 
 Let such men know that the religious experience 
 is not something different from living a good life, 
 but just living it more abundantly. 
 
 The task of religion, then, is not that of cul- 
 tivating a life apart from natural interests 
 and practical concerns, but is rather the 
 pursuit of such normal ideals with religious 
 faith and enthusiasm. When a person de- 
 votes himself to any cause with zeal and 
 fidelity, it is said of him that he makes that 
 cause his religion or he works at it reli- 
 giously. This is one of the simplest ways 
 of understanding religion. It is an ex- 
 traordinary enthusiasm for a cause. As a
 
 Its Changing Goal 95 
 
 recent writer puts it, "Mere morality is 
 prosaic, cool, exact; religion is imaginative, 
 emotional, exaggerated." He adds, "Any 
 man deserves to be called religious by 
 whom an ideal of life has been so heartily 
 and loyally espoused that it lifts him, in 
 some measure, above the power of temp- 
 tation to seduce or of ill fortune to de- 
 press." Accordingly the highest type of 
 religion today is that which has the finest 
 devotion to the most adequate ideal of life. 
 Many sects display the most intense emo- 
 tional interest in small or partial programs 
 of living. They are devoted to health, or 
 to socialism, or to rescue work hi the slums, 
 or to the millennial dawn, or to individual 
 salvation. It is difficult to secure allegi- 
 ance to a comprehensive program, which 
 is the very thing needed. This is one rea- 
 son for a religious organization such as the 
 church. It enables each member to have 
 the sense of participating in a many-sided 
 agency the details of which he may not be 
 able to know individually but which are 
 known and cared for by persons in whose
 
 g6 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 judgment and fidelity he is able to confide. 
 In the support of the institution he is aid- 
 ing many causes and participating in a 
 fuller life than is possible without such an 
 organization. He is also in turn subject- 
 ing himself to the larger relations which a 
 social group makes possible. By means of 
 these he is carried along through the inter- 
 action of many social currents into larger 
 problems and stimulated to find their solu- 
 tion. The religious society is like the 
 larger community of which it is a part. It 
 makes it possible for an individual to 
 specialize in his own work and yet share in 
 the common, comprehensive enterprise. 
 Just as plasterers and painters can exist 
 only in a society where there are carpen- 
 ters, brickmasons, truck-drivers, and ac- 
 countants, so a man who is occupied with 
 the study of the Greek language needs a 
 society where others specialize in cooking, 
 tailoring, engineering, and other things. 
 If he recognizes this fact and realizes that 
 the other activities are as important as his 
 own, and if he maintains respect and neigh-
 
 Its Changing Goal 97 
 
 borliness toward the persons in those other 
 pursuits, then he is so far religious. If he 
 views his own labor as the only kind worth 
 while, or as of supreme importance, then he 
 is selfish. If he thinks of himself as help- 
 ing in his sphere to the best of his ability to 
 add to the intelligence and beauty and 
 efficiency of the life of a great social order, 
 he is religious. 
 
 The religious goal may thus be seen in 
 the way a man takes himself and his work. 
 It may be said that there is but one sub- 
 stance or material or function in what we 
 call life and that everything depends on the 
 way we use it. Each normal person labors, 
 eats, loves, plays, wonders, suffers, and 
 hopes. Whether he is a villain or a saint 
 is determined by the attitude in which he 
 does these things. To be a Christian is to 
 do them generously, with sympathy and 
 intelligence for the ideal human value in- 
 volved. This may be illustrated in con- 
 nection with simple acts, such as building 
 a fire in a grate, running a business, or ex- 
 periencing a friendship. To build a fire for
 
 gS The New Orthodoxy 
 
 warmth on a cold day might be called a 
 practical act. To do so when the house is 
 already warm in order to enjoy the crack- 
 ling flames might illustrate the aesthetic 
 interest. To kindle the fire to test the 
 chimney or to make experiments with fuel 
 is the scientific way of doing things. To 
 make the fire for a sick child and to feel in 
 doing so sympathy and human interest for 
 the child and the home and the outreach- 
 ing significance of its life is to give the act 
 of building the fire a religious quality. A 
 business undertaking, such as conducting 
 a store, may likewise be carried on in a 
 variety of ways. The outward acts may be 
 practically the same. At least to conduct 
 a store it is necessary to purchase goods, 
 to display them, to deal with customers, 
 to employ labor, and to pay taxes. If a 
 man simply says, "Business is business," 
 and works primarily to develop the largest 
 trade possible and to clear the most profits, 
 then we call him practical. Obviously it is 
 not far from that attitude to one of hard- 
 ness and selfishness and immorality. On
 
 Its Changing Goal 99 
 
 the other hand, the merchant may realize 
 that the public is best served by a store 
 which looks out for fair profits, thereby 
 being able to carry a larger stock and to 
 meet the exigencies of trade in the most 
 facile and accommodating manner. In so 
 far as all transactions are open and fair, the 
 community well served, and the labor 
 properly dealt with, the store is a moral in- 
 stitution. But the merchant may take 
 particular pride in his building, in his 
 window displays, in the trimness of his 
 delivery wagons, in the general air of refine- 
 ment and taste throughout his system. In 
 so far he reveals an aesthetic interest. 
 Now it is conceivable that the merchant 
 is also concerned about improving the 
 wages and working conditions of his em- 
 ployees, in co-operating with other mer- 
 chants in limiting hours of business, in 
 associating with other citizens to improve 
 the streets, the schools, the living condi- 
 tions of the community. He is willing to 
 regard his business as a factor in the larger 
 interests of his fellow-men and to use some
 
 ioo The New Orthodoxy 
 
 of his profits to bring lecturers and enter- 
 tainers to the city. He will use some of 
 his earnings to educate a worthy boy he 
 knows and let the boy decide for himself 
 later what he will do in the world. At last, 
 in his moments of deepest reflection, the 
 merchant acknowledges that what he has 
 accomplished has been through combina- 
 tions of events and the wills of other per- 
 sons in a most complex and far-reaching 
 manner. His own part has been real 
 enough and important; but in relation to 
 the whole system in which he acts he is but 
 one factor, dependent and bound up with 
 the whole system of society, its order, com- 
 munication, good-will, and fidelity. The 
 forces of nature also enter into his achieve- 
 ments. Trade is related to crops, and 
 crops to sun and rain and mellow autumn. 
 If he is a man as well as a merchant, a per- 
 son as much as an accountant, will he not 
 here feel some awe and reverence for the 
 life which encompasses him, without whose 
 co-operation he is lost and by whose sup- 
 port he gathers all his gains ? This feeling
 
 Its Changing Goal 101 
 
 is for natural human beings a sense of wider 
 personal relations, of an intimate and vital 
 social fellowship, of devout and reverent 
 consciousness of God. When a man is able 
 now and then to survey his business in that 
 perspective and in that mood, he is reli- 
 gious. 
 
 Friendship, too, may be practical and 
 aesthetic, and moral and religious. It may 
 perhaps be any one of the others and not be 
 religious, though that is doubtful; but it is 
 certain that it cannot be religious in the 
 truest measure without also being useful 
 and beautiful and noble. 
 
 What, then, is the goal of religion ? Not 
 escape from the natural relations, nor the 
 repetition of prayers and creeds, nor the 
 cultivation of communion with ideal beings 
 of the past or of celestial realms. Any of 
 these may be necessary at times, but they 
 are only parts of a larger whole, means to 
 a more inclusive end. The goal of reli- 
 gion is the fulfilment of the normal duties 
 and opportunities of life as we experi- 
 ence it, with sympathy and idealism
 
 io2 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 and passionately unselfish devotion. This 
 means that we live the life of our race, eat- 
 ing and loving, toiling and playing, learning 
 and teaching, watching and praying, ad- 
 venturing and discovering, suffering and 
 repenting, for our children and our neigh- 
 bors, for our country and for humanity, 
 for the whole dear world and God. If we 
 build churches, they are way stations and 
 not terminals. If we picture new Jerusa- 
 lems, it is not to predetermine for all time 
 the city of our hearts' desire but to visu- 
 alize our hopes and to take our bearings 
 while we journey. We are well aware that 
 Jerusalem must be retaken and rebuilt over 
 and over again in the wars of God. The 
 modern spirit glories in the vision of an in- 
 definitely great future in which through the 
 same process of growth and renewal by 
 which we live now we may go on to greater 
 and nobler attainments. 
 
 We are therefore confronted with the 
 spectacle of life whose goal is not once for 
 all set up and fixed, but which is put for- 
 ward and lifted higher as we labor and
 
 Its Changing Goal 103 
 
 aspire. The dream of the present is of 
 a free society whose chief aim shall be 
 to furnish to all its members the greatest 
 possible power of intelligence, and will, 
 and sympathy, and capacity for social 
 co-operation and progress. That requires 
 intelligence and the constant improvement 
 of popular education. It demands a 
 wholesome and stimulating social atmos- 
 phere of freest interaction and emulation 
 for the energizing of the will. It means 
 the closest comradeship and the finest 
 sympathetic imagination, such as is now 
 momentarily realized in times of crises, 
 as in the Halifax disaster and in the reve- 
 lations of unselfish devotion in the trenches 
 of the Great War. 
 
 The function of the church is to make 
 that ideal of a free and growing brother- 
 hood of all mankind real to the experience 
 and to the imagination of men. After all 
 this is not so different from that which it 
 has done for the souls of men in the past. 
 Certainly Jesus summoned his followers 
 into a companionship of adventure and
 
 104 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 faith on behalf of fuller friendship and 
 deeper love. It may be said that the 
 course of thought since the seventeenth 
 century has been the elaboration of the 
 value of a society in which the individual 
 soul could come to its own in a kingdom of 
 good- will. And surely modern social re- 
 formers would be satisfied if they could feel 
 that adequate progress were being made in 
 the permeation of the race with the kind- 
 liness and idealism of Jesus. That would 
 mean the cultivation of science to under- 
 stand what love really requires us to do. 
 It would mean better organization of the 
 state to make the ideals effective. It 
 would mean better care of childhood, in 
 whose plastic soul lie all the possibilities of 
 realizing the most wonderful dreams of the 
 sages and prophets yet to be. We cannot 
 ignore the past nor can we be slaves to it. 
 No more can we merely trust everything 
 to the future; we must anticipate it and 
 live in it as well as in the present. 
 
 We are more convinced than we were 
 before the war began that an international
 
 Its Changing Goal 105 
 
 society and brotherhood is not only pos- 
 sible but necessary to the onward move- 
 ment of the life of every individual of us. 
 Whether we are conscious of it or not, the 
 state of men on the other side of the world 
 affects the welfare of every one of us. It 
 has been religion more than trade or diplo- 
 macy or literature which has realized this 
 fact and has acted accordingly by send- 
 ing heralds of brotherhood literally without 
 purse or scrip into the uttermost parts of 
 the earth. By their labors every recurring 
 Christmas time, in spite of war, witnesses 
 to the widespreading ideal of brotherhood 
 increasing among men. The fact that the 
 war itself is felt to be so tragic, so unspeak- 
 ably terrible, is due in no small degree to 
 the fact that it violates this sacred hope 
 and faith which were already rising to con- 
 sciousness among socialists and laborers as 
 well as among philosophers and mission- 
 aries. 
 
 Man has climbed far from the depth of 
 his savagery and isolation. He will not 
 forfeit the heights he has gained, nor those
 
 io6 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 beyond, upon which his eager vision opens. 
 He has heard the Christmas bells of the 
 spirit, and he wakes to answer them with 
 passionate and boundless good-will. 
 
 Hark! the bells ringing! 
 
 In the deep night, in the depth of the winter of 
 
 Man, 
 Lo! once more the son is born. 
 
 O age-long, not in Nazareth alone, 
 
 Nor now today but through all ages of the 
 
 past, 
 
 The bells of Christmas ringing: 
 The Savior-music like a dream from heaven 
 Touching the slumbering heart. 
 
 Sweet promise which the people with unerring 
 
 instinct cling to! 
 
 O winter sun arising never more to set! 
 O Nature slowly changing, slow transforming 
 
 to the hearts of men, 
 Shrine of the soul, shrine of the new-born god 
 
 of Man himself.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE NEW ORTHODOXY: ITS 
 NEW DRAMA 
 
 If the significance of particular features 
 of the religious life is to be appreciated, they 
 need to be seen and felt in relation to the 
 total living process in which they appear. 
 Any religion remote from one's own is 
 likely to seem to consist of disconnected 
 factors without life or meaning. On this 
 account primitive religions have appeared 
 as the most grotesque and senseless mum- 
 mery. Interpreters generally fail to per- 
 ceive the practical ends and intense hopes 
 which dominate the ceremonials even of 
 the lowest savages and the most alien 
 pagans. They see only the weird cos- 
 tumes, the painted bodies, the blood and 
 ochre markings on the ground, the simple 
 sticks and stones, the smoldering fire; they 
 hear through the darkness the moaning, 
 shrieking, and chanting, the fearful noise 
 107
 
 io8 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 of the bull-roarers, and at intervals the 
 recital of fanciful myths and strange 
 prayers. Readers often turn away from 
 the accounts of the Indian snake dances 
 or of the Australian initiation ceremonies 
 with disgust and pity. They do not realize 
 what these things really mean to the par- 
 ticipants. The snakes are the rain gods, 
 and the gifts of nature depend upon them. 
 The Australians are infusing into the new 
 generation the literal blood and substance 
 of their ancestors. They are reverently 
 endeavoring to guarantee for the future the 
 .maintenance of the best things gained in 
 the past. They feel themselves to be en 
 rapport with the brave, wise men of the 
 elder days and with the gods who rule the 
 world. They are not engaged in make- 
 believe, but are sharing in the life-and- 
 death struggle to insure the welfare and 
 power of the tribe. Every costume and 
 decoration, every stick and weapon em- 
 ployed, every cry and chant, has a vital 
 place and part in the momentous under- 
 taking.
 
 Its New Drama 109 
 
 In principle it is the same with modern 
 religion. Its parts have to be seen fused 
 in the warm, living action of a great enter- 
 prise in order to be understood. The cos- 
 tume of a priest, like the uniform of a 
 soldier, implies many things, and, most of 
 all, a profound and tragic cause in which he 
 is engaged. That cause is reflected also in 
 the attitudes characteristic of all religious 
 persons. Their reverence and love and 
 faith are all bound up with the goal they 
 are striving to attain. The same is true of 
 the Bible. It can be appreciated only in 
 reference to the action and movement of 
 the events out of which its words have 
 come. It gives fragmentary and imper- 
 fect pictures of the hopes and longings of 
 a people in their struggle to realize their 
 national and cultural ideals. Those ideals 
 were symbolized for them in the majestic 
 figure of their God, moving before them as 
 a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire 
 by night. Riding upon the thundercloud, 
 flashing in the lightnings, and sending his 
 voice pealing among the mountain tops, he
 
 no The New Orthodoxy 
 
 was the embodiment of the energy and 
 power with which they felt themselves im- 
 pelled forward in conquest and in moral 
 aspiration. God cannot be understood 
 apart from his people, with whose will and 
 purpose he is one. Neither can a people 
 be understood without reference to their 
 God. The God of any people may be seen 
 in their purpose, direction, and moral 
 idealism. Without a people God becomes 
 vague, weak, easily disbelieved, and 
 doubted. God cannot be known outside 
 of history and living experience. All at- 
 tempts to discover him as a fact among 
 the facts of nature have failed. No ab- 
 stract arguments can demonstrate his 
 being; but wherever you plunge into the 
 red stream of history and enter the pulsing 
 life of actual human beings bound to- 
 gether in great societies, there you find 
 the name and will and power of God. 
 
 It is the drama of the religious life, then, 
 which furnishes the explanation of all the 
 factors which appear in it its attitudes, 
 its dramatis personae, its growing Bible,
 
 Its New Drama in 
 
 and its changing goal. But this drama is 
 not a stage play. It is not an afternoon's 
 entertainment. It is not the second- 
 hand re-enactment of a tragedy which has 
 been once accomplished. It is the living 
 action of real life in the natural setting of 
 land and sea, streets and firesides, shops 
 and battlefields. It is a drama in which 
 there are no professional actors, but where 
 every man takes his role in the action by 
 virtue of his nature and his relation to his 
 fellows. There is no sharp line between 
 the audience and the performers. Rather, 
 in the ceaseless movement of events, indi- 
 viduals arise in their places and perform 
 their tasks. Some eyes are fixed upon 
 them where they stand. At the same time 
 other persons are elsewhere focusing atten- 
 tion. Even the dead do not withdraw 
 from the drama. Sometimes they con- 
 tinue to arrest the hurrying multitudes 
 more than do any living kings or warriors. 
 Their voices seem to grow clearer, their 
 summons more urgent, as the perspective 
 in which they appear lengthens.
 
 ii2 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 Each person is thus both actor and ob- 
 server. The range of his action is far 
 larger than the field of his vision. Many 
 times in his life he is called upon, not to 
 speak lines which he has learned for the 
 occasion, but to improvise actions and 
 words suited to situations which have 
 never existed before in all the world. Upon 
 his decision turns the fate of the whole act 
 and, it may be, of the entire drama. Such 
 momentous events in your personal life 
 were those in which you determined to en- 
 ter your profession, or to move to this city, 
 or to this neighborhood, or to vote the 
 democratic ticket, or to join the church. 
 Of the same kind, but vaster in results, 
 were the signing of the Magna Charta to 
 guarantee the liberties of England, the 
 Declaration of Independence by the Ameri- 
 can colonies, the Emancipation Proclama- 
 tion by Abraham Lincoln, and the declara- 
 tion of war by each of the responsible 
 representatives of their governments in the 
 present world-war. These were crucial 
 points in the life of mankind. They were
 
 Its New Drama 1 13 
 
 of the original, elemental action, which 
 constitutes the fundamental and essential 
 drama of human life. These scenes are 
 enacted over and over again by the play- 
 actors, and something of the original force 
 and meaning is felt each time. Indeed, the 
 make-believe drama has its right to exist 
 and its value for us in the degree to which 
 it is able to reinstate for all who behold it 
 the sense of a mighty crisis to be resolved 
 by the deeds of the individuals present on 
 the stage. For the time being the actors 
 become the historical characters respon- 
 sible for the course of events, and the audi- 
 ence enter into the movement of the play, 
 approving the hero and manifesting indig- 
 nation against his enemies. The drama of 
 the theater has in this way a vital relation 
 to the actual drama of daily life. When 
 the spectators have witnessed a stirring 
 representation of the battles of Washing- 
 ton's army in our war for independ- 
 ence, they form new resolutions to buy 
 liberty bonds or to aid in economizing 
 food.
 
 ii4 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 The drama of the religious life is of the 
 original, elemental kind. Only when it 
 has lost touch with reality does it take on 
 the manner of a spectacle. So long as it 
 is the direct and spontaneous expression of 
 deep needs and true satisfaction its cere- 
 monials are integral parts of life and are 
 just as essential as the most practical ac- 
 tivities. That was true of the elaborate 
 ceremonials of the church in the Middle 
 Ages. They were the very means of life 
 to the souls of men. They were not exter- 
 nal or artificial or in need of defense. By 
 the elaborate celebration of the Mass men 
 literally obliterated their sins and received 
 in the Eucharist the actual body of God. 
 In that miracle of grace was constantly 
 enacted the drama of the divine love. 
 Every feature of the worship was eloquent 
 with that one fact. The cathedral itself 
 was the architectural expression of the 
 surpassing grandeur of the supersensible 
 world. Its vast arches and high-flung 
 spires towered over man's little form with 
 the distances and glory of that other realm
 
 7/5 New Drama 115 
 
 which they symbolized. Whoever has 
 stood in the cathedral at Milan or in 
 St. Peter's at Rome cannot efface the mem- 
 ory of the impression of vastness and mag- 
 nificence, as if all the devices of wonderful 
 art had been employed to teach man his 
 littleness and transiency in comparison 
 with the infinite and eternal things above 
 him. All other features of the ritual were 
 in keeping with this the paintings of 
 clouds and cherubim in the lofty ceilings, 
 the sculptured forms of the transfigured 
 saints, high up on the capitals of the giant 
 pillars, the echoing tones of the organ and 
 the ethereal voices of boy choirs, the slowly 
 intoned prayers in an archaic tongue, and 
 the bent, suppliant posture of the wor- 
 shipers. They were passive and depend- 
 ent recipients of favors from the world 
 above. They were in search of nothing 
 which they could merit, nor of anything 
 they could create for themselves. None 
 but divine power and infinite condescension 
 could reach their need and lift them up. 
 But so long as all believed in that power
 
 u6 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 and that measureless grace of God be- 
 stowed upon man through those channels 
 such rituals and ceremonials were of the 
 very essence of reality. Only with the rise 
 of different conceptions of human nature 
 have these rituals begun to appear as the 
 survivals of a passing world. 
 
 Since man has learned to assert himself 
 he has found himself stronger and stronger. 
 He is no longer a passive suppliant, help- 
 less in a predetermined universe. Instead 
 of accepting pestilence and misfortune as 
 the visitations of an all-wise God who sent 
 them for man's discipline, he has set about 
 the task of making such things impossible. 
 The natural causes of many diseases have 
 been found, and those plagues have been 
 eradicated. Encouraged by past success, 
 new and vaster enterprises are under way 
 to gain control of larger and more impor- 
 tant areas of life through natural science. 
 Therefore the older drama of religion has 
 become a beautiful work of the past. For 
 the modern man, standing erect in his pride 
 of power, the old ceremonial full of pas-
 
 7/5 New Drama 117 
 
 sivity and surrender is the symbol of a 
 dying age. He may contemplate it with 
 a certain admiration and reverence, but he 
 cannot believe in it nor endeavor to revive 
 it. It has become a drama in the sense of 
 being something consciously copied in 
 order that, through the momentary illu- 
 sion of its reality, it may be entered into 
 for appreciation and for the purpose of 
 knowing more adequately what we have 
 left behind. Like all things from which 
 the life has fjed, that older drama is no 
 longer warm and vibrant. Its constituents 
 have fallen apart. One sees fragments of 
 its architecture in secular buildings, its 
 painting and sculpture exhibited in public 
 displays, its doctrines unbelievable, and its 
 authority vanished. 
 
 Nowhere is the change more apparent 
 than in the feeling men have about the very 
 act and attitude of worship. The idea of 
 worship as mere praise and adulation of 
 the Creator has become almost irreverent. 
 God has come to be regarded in so imma- 
 nent and dynamic a way that it seems
 
 u8 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 quite inconsistent to conceive him as 
 honored and gratified by adoration and 
 flattery, such as were formerly given to 
 tyrants and despots. Perhaps here is to 
 be found the source of much indifference 
 to the churches. Men have given up the 
 forms and words of worship in their inter- 
 course with each other and even with their 
 superiors. In our democracies men do not 
 bow themselves to the ground nor pros- 
 trate themselves even before the mightiest 
 individuals. With open eyes and confident 
 minds they contend together, seek to co- 
 operate, and strive to be guided by experi- 
 ence and not by authority. They do not 
 care for a drama on Sunday which is too 
 completely contrasted with the drama in 
 which they live all the week. What they 
 do crave is some powerful means of dis- 
 covering the fuller meaning and larger 
 possibilities of their common life. 
 
 The old drama moved between the crea- 
 tion of the world and the Day of Judgment. 
 Its origin lay in the inscrutable counsels of 
 divine wisdom. All of the figures which
 
 Its New Drama 119 
 
 moved upon its stage were the puppets of 
 the omnipotent Will. Their acts, from the 
 first deed of rebellion, which brought sin 
 and its infinite curse, to their acceptance of 
 the proffered salvation, were foreordained 
 and once for all decreed. Even the Re- 
 deemer, through whom the bondage was 
 broken, did not act in his own right but was 
 sent into the world and given up to bitter 
 pain and death for man's deliverance. To 
 the end of time the efficacy of his atone- 
 ment was to remain a fathomless mystery, 
 for not until the grand assize at the great 
 Day of the Lord could it be known who are 
 worthy of blessing and who deserve the 
 curse. The services of religion, under that 
 conception, have been largely devoted to 
 cultivating a sense of humility and of un- 
 worthiness in the worshiper and an atti- 
 tude of resignation for any fate which may 
 befall! 
 
 The new drama starts with man's life on 
 the earth and with the upward and forward 
 tendency within it. It shows, from the 
 earliest records, efforts toward something
 
 120 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 better and loftier. Everywhere are temples 
 and tombs and the sign of uplifted hands. 
 In and around these have flowed the in- 
 tense desires and aspirations of the unsatis- 
 fied soul of man, restless in his age-long 
 quest. Often mistaken as to the source of 
 his success, always burdened with supersti- 
 tions and misconceptions of himself and 
 his world, nevertheless he has continued to 
 follow the gleam. At last he is finding out 
 the immediate causes of many of his bless- 
 ings and his ills. With a new joy and cour- 
 age in his discovery of scientific knowledge 
 and power he is preparing for still greater 
 mastery and progress. With all of his old 
 reverence for life and with greater zest he 
 is not merely seeking a city which hath 
 foundations. He is building it. He does 
 not just sit silently listening in his worship, 
 but he wrestles with God and, like Jacob of 
 old, exacts his blessing. The drama which 
 he is enacting is one of intense activity and 
 profound thoughtfulness. This has quite 
 changed the meaning of worship. It is 
 now no longer the contemplation of a series
 
 Its New Drama 121 
 
 of celestial events in which man beholds 
 himself the passive recipient of divine favor 
 or wrath. It is rather the survey of the 
 long path of past experience and the mem- 
 ory of the heroic actors who have toiled 
 there and the anticipation of the further 
 extension of that path by labor, intelli- 
 gence, and unselfish devotion. Through it 
 all run the realization of the magnitude of 
 the forces involved, the incalculably great 
 scale of the events transpiring, and the 
 tragic character of the smallest word and 
 deed. It is this richness and inexhaustible 
 nature of experience which constitutes its 
 divine quality. But the divine is no more 
 separate and aloof. It is within and or- 
 ganic with the human. We surrender the 
 old contrast of the human and the divine, 
 not by eliminating either one to retain the 
 other, but by insisting that life as we find 
 it has in it the warmth and intimacy of the 
 human and also the dynamic and the out- 
 reach of the divine. Life is in this respect 
 all of a piece, varied and intricate, but 
 undivided.
 
 122 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 In the drama of the religious life as thus 
 conceived the congregation is the unit of 
 action and expression. Not the public serv- 
 ice, so largely the function of the minister 
 and the choir, but the less formal meetings 
 of the church for counsel and conference 
 illustrate it best. The local church is a 
 kind of epitome of the whole social order. 
 It undertakes to guide itself by the spirit 
 and ideals of a truly religious society. It 
 can succeed only as all of its members con- 
 sciously and enthusiastically enter into 
 that endeavor. Three things are con- 
 tinually dramatized in every church, no 
 matter how imperfectly : the vast implica- 
 tions of our life, the intimate personal feel- 
 ing of being at home, and the alluring hope 
 of a better future. 
 
 The greatness of man's life in the old 
 drama was set forth in the very fact of the 
 condescension of heaven to take note of 
 him. In the new he is accorded a real part. 
 A mother feels herself intrusted with a 
 wonderful share in the life of the world 
 through her child. She is constantly hop-
 
 Its New Drama 123 
 
 ing to nourish and train him so that he may 
 bless mankind. She cannot hide from her- 
 self the question of his future usefulness. 
 If he could measure up to her wishes for 
 him he would bring some good invention, 
 make some discovery, accomplish some dis- 
 tinguished service. In caring for him she 
 thinks of herself as performing a task for 
 thousands who are to be helped by him. 
 As she herself is the inheritor of the affec- 
 tion and yearning watchfulness of count- 
 less ancestors, so in turn she is to transmit 
 the stream of life through him to countless 
 other human beings. Religion calls atten- 
 tion to these great distances and to these 
 wonderful implications in the plot of every 
 human life. Even a sparrow is upheld by 
 the whole power of the universe, and man 
 is of more value than many sparrows. He 
 is therefore called upon to live, not for the 
 passing hour, but for all that relates to it 
 and for all that grows out of it. In this 
 consists man's true nobility: He views 
 himself more truly as the child of the ages 
 than as the grass of the field. We are
 
 124 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 gaining more adequate means of estimat- 
 ing human influence and responsibility. 
 Ibsen's Ghosts is an artistic expression of 
 this fact. The great tables of the statistics 
 of heredity tell the same story. It was 
 recognized by George Eliot as "the sweet 
 presence of a good diffused, and in diffusion 
 ever more intense!" 
 
 The religious representation of life also 
 emphasizes the sense of being at home in 
 the world and of extending a yearning love 
 to all individuals. The good shepherd 
 goes in search of the one lost sheep. The 
 redemptive sympathy of modern society 
 reaches out toward the poor, the lonely, 
 and the separated souls. Religion might 
 well dramatize the work of social settle- 
 ments, of public schools, of boards of 
 health and morals. The necessity of co- 
 operation has never been brought home 
 to men in the history of the world before 
 as at the present time. Society insists 
 upon closer supervision of private affairs, 
 of individual property, and of business. 
 In the emergency which the war has ere-
 
 Its New Drama 125 
 
 ated a degree of consolidation and unifica- 
 tion has been attained which would have 
 required decades or centuries to achieve 
 otherwise. 
 
 No man liveth unto himself now. That 
 has suddenly come to be far more than a 
 statement of pious sentiment. It is felt to 
 be the very condition and necessity of any 
 kind of existence. This dependence of the 
 individual upon his group and his partici- 
 pation in its practical and ideal life is one 
 of the deepest and most vital facts of the 
 religious life. The church has need to ex- 
 tend this principle in more vivid and com- 
 manding ways to individuals not included 
 at present in the immediate circle of the 
 church. It becomes true of the great souls 
 of the past too. They also co-operate with 
 us. By their writings and their deeds they 
 participate in our deliberation and in our 
 estimate of the value and sanctity of our 
 religious ideals. They suffer and toil with 
 us, and their words of courage and com- 
 fort are like counsels of our dearest 
 friends.
 
 126 The New Orthodoxy 
 
 Not only does the church seek to keep 
 alive in its members the sense of the dignity 
 of human life and of personal worth, but it 
 also dramatizes the hopes which are cher- 
 ished and toward whose fulfilment every 
 energy is dedicated. These hopes revive 
 in the company of those who seek them and 
 contemplate them. In the older hymns 
 the sentiment was, "I'm but a stranger 
 here; heaven is my home." In the newer 
 hymns we sing, "We are builders of that 
 city." 
 
 Religious souls have been variously rep- 
 resented in art as in life. They have been 
 shown as solitary pilgrims in their search 
 for God and peace of soul. They have 
 been portrayed as "a noble army, men and 
 boys, the matron and the maid, who 
 climbed the steep ascent of heaven, thro' 
 peril, toil and pain." But there is some- 
 thing still more appealing in the dream of 
 them as builders of a beautiful city. 
 
 The city is becoming more impressive as 
 a symbol of the enlarging spiritual life 
 of man. It affords opportunity for com-
 
 Its New Drama 127 
 
 panionship, for intelligent concerted action, 
 for effective brotherhood, and for means for 
 growth. Man can see in the city the fruits 
 of his labors and the consequences of his 
 mistakes. He is thereby brought to terms 
 with his own conduct and furnished in- 
 centives for indefinite improvement. No 
 longer solitary or ascetic, militant or 
 visionary, the Christian sees rising about 
 him "the glorious golden city." In. the 
 words of Felix Adler's beautiful hymn: 
 
 We are builders of that city; 
 
 All our joys and all our groans 
 Help to rear its shining ramparts; 
 
 All our lives are building-stones: 
 Whether humble or exalted, 
 
 All are called to task divine; 
 All must aid alike to carry 
 
 Forward our sublime design. 
 
 And the work that we have builded 
 
 Oft with bleeding hands and tears, 
 And in error and in anguish, 
 
 Will not perish with our years: 
 It will last and shine transfigured 
 
 In the final reign of Right; 
 It will merge into the splendors 
 
 Of the City of the Light.
 
 I 
 
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