. 
 
 Barrett Biblical Institute 
 
 ivansttn, Illisois 

 
 ante* 
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS EXPE- 
 RIENCE. 
 
 HOUGHTON MFFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM
 
 THEJBEIGHER 
 INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD SCRIBNER AMES 
 
 // 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CHICAGO, AND PASTOR OF HYDE PARK CHURCH 
 
 OF DISCIPLES OF CHRIST, CHICAGO 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 (Cbe Afcertftie press CambriD0e 
 
 1915
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY EDWARD SCRIBNER AMES 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published February iqiy 
 
 Garrett Biblical Institute 
 
 Evansien, Illinois
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER 
 REV. LUCIUS AMES
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THESE sermons .were delivered in Appleton 
 Chapel of Harvard University, during 1912-13 
 and 1913-14, in the periods of the author's service 
 as a member of the Board of Preachers to the 
 University. 
 
 Though not conceived with reference to a gen- 
 eral plan, the sermons express certain fundamen- 
 tal ideas characteristic of the constructive tend- 
 ency in current religious thinking. Among these 
 ideas are the social nature of the individual and 
 the value of social service; the charm of the nearer 
 view of Jesus; the naturalness and accessibility of 
 the central religious experiences, such as regen- 
 eration, inspiration, and the mystical moods; and 
 the world-old quest for a more abundant and a 
 more ideal life.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 1 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 21 
 
 THE JOY OP JESUS 43 
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 65 
 
 REGENERATION 89 
 
 RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 109 
 
 WHAT is THE WORD OF GOD? 125 
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY m RELIGION 145
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. 1 Cor. 
 xn,27. 
 
 IN the depths of every normal, vigorous human 
 being is a powerful impulse to possess and to pre- 
 serve his own personality, to maintain his iden- 
 tity, to be himself, to be some one in particular. 
 It is the expression of the will to live, manifested 
 in acts of self-defense in the presence of danger, 
 and in the self-assertion of appetite, acquisitive- 
 ness, curiosity, and growth. This will to live 
 gives rise to various kinds of individualism. 
 
 In its most elemental form it is an individualism 
 self-centered, grasping, and tyrannical. It grows 
 by conquest and assimilation. It is seen in the 
 animal world among those species which live so 
 much in isolation and prey upon others, as do the 
 lion and tiger. It is also the law of the jungle that 
 the herd and the pack shall be ruled and led by 
 the fleetest runner and the fiercest fighter. He 
 reigns supreme so long as he can make his kill and 
 subdue all rivals. Much of human society has 
 been of that pattern, enabling one or a few power- 
 
 3
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 ful men to dominate the mass. The names of 
 Nero and Napoleon have become symbols of this 
 pride and lust of power. The motto of such in- 
 dividualism is that might makes right, and its 
 philosophy is a crude doctrine of the superman, 
 and of the survival of the fittest. But it is an in- 
 dividualism which everywhere tends to defeat 
 itself, for any conspicuous examples of it create 
 envy and conflict. The same craving for self- 
 assertion and power stirs in all classes of men and 
 asserts itself after every tyranny by revolution 
 and reprisal, or by some wiser and more compre- 
 hensive individualism. This is true not only in 
 the state, but also in industry and in all forms of 
 social organization. Children who are made too 
 subservient to a repressive authority at home are 
 likely to become bullies and dictators in their play 
 and work. 
 
 Corresponding to this individualism of might, 
 whether based upon physical force, or caste, or 
 wealth, there has been throughout the history of 
 civilization an individualism of renunciation, of 
 self-abnegation. Asceticism has this motive. Re- 
 garding the world as evil and human contact as 
 contaminating, it takes its precious self out of so- 
 ciety and away from its contagion. But this kind 
 
 4
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 of asceticism is not now so much in vogue. We are 
 beset by a more self-indulgent and luxurious re- 
 tirement from the world which exercises extreme 
 care and cleverness in carrying away most of the 
 comforts and few of the disturbances of organized 
 society. The news service and rapid transit make 
 it possible to satisfy one's human curiosity and 
 one's creature cravings without bearing the respon- 
 sibility of voting in the city elections or doing 
 jury service or sharing at close range the actual 
 life of more than a few persons. There is constant 
 protest against the increasing regulation of busi- 
 ness and industry and personal conduct. Our per- 
 sonal liberty, it is claimed, is curtailed and en- 
 dangered. A noted educator recently called upon 
 university men, especially, to exert their influence 
 against such over-regulation. But the average 
 man easily escapes that inconvenience. In the 
 midst of cities, with multitudes of human beings 
 in adjacent spaces, he may yet experience the 
 deepest solitude, a solitude which may be more 
 complete than that of state prisons or of ancient 
 monasteries. For in the monasteries, at least, 
 there were some communal tasks and some com- 
 mon assemblies. In the modern city people tend 
 to become, in large measure, mere physical ob- 
 
 5
 
 THE HIGHEK INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 jects to one another. In the street cars they glance 
 up indifferently from behind their newspapers. 
 There is little joy of comradeship or of mutual 
 acquaintance. In and out of the throng a man 
 may go and come, abstracting from it, for a price, 
 whatever he craves, without binding himself to 
 any serious relationships or permanent associa- 
 tions. It is the boarding-house attitude toward 
 life so well illustrated in the first act of the play, 
 "The Passing of the Third Floor Back." 
 
 One often hears the theory of individualism cal- 
 culated to fit this manner of life. It is said that 
 one should develop his own personality and 
 should cultivate originality and novelty more 
 than is possible if one identifies himself closely 
 with social organizations and institutions. 
 
 Modern civilization is represented as vulgar- 
 ized by uniformity and monotony. They say it is 
 dominated by the machine, the symbol of repe- 
 tition and duplication. A huge printing-press or 
 steel die produces innumerable copies of the same 
 design with the utmost precision and speed. 
 Everything is standardized and labeled. Clothing 
 and furniture are ready-made, and our very bread 
 and butter bear the shape and form of the moulds. 
 And human life is not exempt. Even the public 
 
 6
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 schools boast in some States, as if it were an end 
 in itself, that at any moment of the day the super- 
 intendent knows that all the thousands of pupils 
 in a given grade are engaged upon exactly the 
 same task. The Church, too, it is alleged, offers 
 a prescribed set of doctrines and a preconceived 
 type of "experience" to which all individuals are 
 required to conform. 
 
 In protest against all this the individualist 
 clings to separateness and isolation, in order that 
 institutions may not close in upon him and dwarf 
 his powers. He feels that participation in organi- 
 zations means suppression, conformity to type, the 
 duplication of a set pattern. Nothing seems so 
 deadening as imitation, as the control of custom 
 and convention. I recently heard a man inveigh 
 against all uniforms for street-car men, messenger 
 boys, and nurses, on the ground that they obscure 
 the individual, lessen his self-respect and swallow 
 him up in a vast impersonal system. His assump- 
 tion was that an institutional system is always 
 hard and exacting, demanding everything and 
 affording nothing human and ennobling in re- 
 turn. In so far as institutions are of that nature, 
 they do obscure and deaden individual talent and 
 initiative, and men will continue to loathe and to 
 
 7
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 exploit them. But individualism which consists 
 in this conscious opposition and negation of 
 social relations always tends to be shallow and 
 fantastic and unhappy. It mistakes eccentricity 
 for genius, and mere divergence for advance- 
 ment. 
 
 The individualism suggested by the apostle 
 Paul in his letter to the Corinthians is of another 
 kind. It does not consist in dominating others, or 
 in having as little as possible in common with 
 them, but it is marked by the fullest and most in- 
 timate association. It is the Pauline conception 
 of being members of the body of Christ. This 
 is often interpreted to mean that the individual 
 members are subordinate to the body as a whole, 
 as if the emphasis fell upon magnifying the 
 Church. But it is also possible to discover here 
 a new evaluation of the individual through his 
 function as an organ of the body. "Now ye are 
 members of the body of Christ, and members in 
 particular." "Members in particular" describes 
 a higher individualism, achieved through inter- 
 dependence and mutual support. It is not the 
 surrender of one to another, or the monotonous 
 repetition of the same function, but it is the ad- 
 justment and development of each part through 
 
 8
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 its own peculiar relation to every other part. This 
 enrichment of the individual by social interaction 
 has sometimes been overlooked through the direc- 
 tion of attention to the social whole. But it is of 
 the highest significance, while realizing the impor- 
 tance of the larger social organism, to keep in mind 
 also the individual development which each mem- 
 ber attains in and through it. 
 
 The simplest social transactions show that all 
 parties involved are required, by the nature of the 
 service they render one another, to maintain their 
 individual character and function. When a cus- 
 tomer enters a store to make a purchase, the clerk 
 does not become an automaton or an imitator. 
 It is his business, hi answer to inquiries, to display 
 the goods, to make explanations in answer to 
 questions, to interrogate the customer in turn for 
 further information, and to play his own special 
 part with judgment and initiative. His responses 
 are scarcely the same with any two customers 
 throughout the day, for he is cooperating succes- 
 sively with different persons to supply their vary- 
 ing wants. And the clerk is not the only one who 
 responds to the customer's need. Beyond him, 
 in turn, are the cashier and the wrapping clerk 
 and the delivery boy, and more remotely the floor 
 
 9
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 walker, the manager, the buyer, the proprietor, 
 and the rest. All cooperate to serve the customer, 
 yet no two of them perform the same act. The 
 deed of each is a signal for a different deed by the 
 next in line through the entire system. 
 
 The contribution of team play to the individu- 
 alism of all members of the team illustrates the 
 same principle. We have magnified team work as 
 if any particular player were quite lost in the 
 larger unit. But in fact no member surrenders 
 his individuality. The very ground of his success 
 is to do with all his might his particular duty, and 
 that duty is different from the duty of any other. 
 Every man must keep his eye on the ball, but with 
 a view to a possible course of action determined 
 by his own unique position and function. So indi- 
 vidualistic do the members of the most efficient 
 teams become that expertness in one place is 
 scarcely any guaranty of success in another. In- 
 deed, and this proves the utter refinement of 
 individualism within a developed social group, 
 the very power and technique which a man at- 
 tains in a given position often literally unfits him 
 for like success in any other position in his group. 
 The tendency is for the members of the team to 
 become more and more differentiated from one 
 
 10
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 another and at the same time mutually more in- 
 terdependent. 
 
 The same condition obtains in modern society, 
 whose great men are the specialists, the experts. 
 They are representatives of the highest individu- 
 alism. They develop only in a highly organized 
 social order and they cannot function apart from 
 it. They are members of the corporate organism, 
 and they are members in particular. When a man 
 hi an undeveloped society dies, it is not difficult to 
 find another man to take his place; but when a 
 man of the higher civilization dies, his personality 
 cannot be replaced. Other men may bear the 
 same official title and the same insignia of honor, 
 but they cannot be what the first man was. Not 
 only our poets and artists and inventors, but our 
 statesmen and our merchants and our soldiers, 
 have been unique and original. This is not be- 
 cause they stood aloof from their time and from 
 their fellows, but precisely because they entered 
 so deeply into the common life and fulfilled their 
 manifold relations so completely. No men have 
 been at once such typical and such exceptional 
 Americans as Ben Franklin and Abraham Lin- 
 coln. They cannot be thought of as trying to 
 make themselves different. On the contrary they 
 
 11
 
 were always losing themselves in the common 
 cause. They were literally the servants of all, and 
 just by virtue of serving all their countrymen they 
 developed many-sided, profoundly distinguished 
 characters. 
 
 The same great law was fulfilled in the life of 
 Jesus, and is the source of his inexhaustible at- 
 tractiveness and charm. There is always some- 
 thing wonderfully appealing yet elusive about the 
 personality of Jesus. He was not like any one 
 else, and yet he was like everybody. His words 
 were so true to human experience that they might 
 have been said by any one. Yet their very 
 obviousness and convincing quality made them 
 different, added something indescribable and 
 immeasurable, which distinguished him from his 
 predecessors, from his disciples, and from all the 
 rest of the world before and since his time. The 
 people who heard him were astonished at his doc- 
 trine, and the people of our own time still marvel 
 at his simple yet fathomless words. There he 
 stands a plain peasant of Galilee, a carpenter's son, 
 a friend of publicans and sinners, speaking from 
 the clear pictures of life mirrored in his pure, deep 
 soul. No one can misunderstand them and no one 
 can exhaust their meaning. He is the embodiment 
 
 12
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 of the genius of his people, the focus of a world of 
 spiritual forces and the radiating center of crea- 
 tive moral energy and truth. 
 
 Some one has suggested that the personality of 
 different men might be represented by a great 
 system of electric lamps. When the current is 
 turned on to represent a given man, it not only 
 illuminates the bulb which bears his name, but a 
 glow lightens all the lamps which designate the 
 lives interwoven with his own. Thus each per- 
 son's character traces its own figure, no one being 
 entirely limited to a single point, while the greatest 
 individuals extend circles upon circles, and lines 
 upon lines of light. 
 
 An external account of a man's lineage and 
 training may give only slight clues to the fullness 
 and complexity of his nature. The living world of 
 his imagination, his interior responsiveness to life, 
 may enfold less intimately the companion at his 
 side than it does some sage of the distant past or 
 the dream face of some poet's song. The whole 
 environment is therefore different for various per- 
 sons. No two strike life at the same angle and no 
 two get the same response. The more complex 
 society becomes, the greater are the variations 
 within this ulterior, spiritual experience. Any 
 
 13
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 outward uniformities which convenience and com- 
 fort may impose for the general good do not lessen 
 this larger freedom. Often they enhance it, as 
 when the Government fixes a uniform postal rate 
 for great and small citizens alike, and thereby 
 opens thoroughfares for new movements of spirit- 
 ual energy. In these higher ranges of association 
 no individual is a mere copy of any other. Imita- 
 tion is impossible not only because of difference 
 in inherited capacity, but because a living organ- 
 ism differentiates all its members by the functions 
 they perform. The two hands cannot wear the 
 same glove. The two ears experience varying in- 
 tensity of sound. The two eyes receive different 
 rays of light. 
 
 There are sayings of Jesus which indicate 
 something more than imitation as the principle 
 of his fellowship. He said, "I call you no longer 
 servants but friends," and the very essence of 
 friendship is the interplay of minds not entirely 
 alike, a real give-and-take of experience. That 
 friendship grew with the tasks the disciples per- 
 formed and with the dangers and perplexities 
 they confronted, yet each bore his own cross and 
 was responsible for the investment of his peculiar 
 talents. 
 
 14
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 But it is especially in the letters of the apostle 
 Paul that this higher individualism receives its 
 fullest religious exemplification and interpreta- 
 tion. To him the followers of Christ are fused into 
 a living body, a spiritual society, an ideal king- 
 dom. Such a society became actual and visible in 
 every city of the Roman world where he gathered 
 converts and organized a church. Each group was 
 in miniature and ideally what all of them together 
 were conceived to be in their united, corporate 
 character. Each was the symbol of the body of 
 Christ within which every member had his place 
 and function. These functions were the natural 
 divisions of labor, such as administration, teach- 
 ing, preaching, and healing. And the apostle vir- 
 tually took up all natural, social relations into 
 this religious life, for he exhorts husbands and 
 wives, children and servants and masters and busi- 
 ness men, to fulfill their duties as religious obli- 
 gations, "as unto the Lord." Nothing could be 
 clearer than his insistence upon the community 
 of interest which all share and the distinctness 
 and identity of each member. The body is one 
 organism, animated by one spirit. The individ- 
 ualism which the members attain is not that of 
 independence of each other, "for the eye cannot 
 
 15
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 say unto the hand, I have no need of thee." Nor 
 is it an individualism in which one member ignores 
 or disdains the others, "for the body is not one 
 member, but many." 
 
 The Church thus conceived is a great dynamic 
 society organized to overcome the evil forces of 
 the world, to battle against spiritual wickedness 
 and the powers of darkness. In its warfare each 
 member has his duty to perform. To be efficient 
 he must learn to work with others, to develop 
 the special function for which he is fitted, and 
 to bear whatever part the struggle may thrust 
 upon him. It is only by this sense of organic 
 relation to the whole reality of life that a man 
 feels his essential worth and dignity. In some 
 sense every moral person does feel his conduct 
 to have absolute and final value. The teacher, 
 at his best, has a sense that his work is of 
 crucial significance. To impart an untruth or a 
 flippant word when an earnest, serious message is 
 demanded, is to break faith with the universe. 
 Whereas to utter a tested and illuminating truth 
 is to become a co-worker with the soul of things 
 and to feel the pull of the anchor on the solid rock. 
 
 When the captain of a great ship stands on the 
 bridge in the hour of danger, he is conscious that 
 
 16
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 destiny hangs upon his quick perception and de- 
 cision. Human beings are aboard who have 
 entrusted themselves to his care. No one else can 
 take his place or answer for his deed. He stands 
 there with the weight of the world upon him. It 
 is the moment which has haunted his imagination 
 ever since he went to sea. In the crisis of events 
 everything is in his hand. His life is magnified, 
 not because he is alone, but because he is the focus 
 of a vast system of human values and forces of 
 nature. To succeed at his task in such an hour is 
 to be the bearer of life to the world; but to fail is 
 to be overwhelmed in the storm and darkness. 
 
 In similar manner ordinary persons engaged 
 in the real work of life have the thrill and the 
 stress of great responsibility by virtue of their 
 participation in a complex system of industry or 
 administration. It is appalling to realize what 
 trusts are committed to the obscure railway 
 switchman, the turn of whose hand, or whose mis- 
 judgment of a signal, may wreck a train. Or think 
 what decrees of fate lie in a mother's care or 
 neglect of her child. 
 
 Yet in their deepest natures men crave this 
 tang and terror of real life. They cannot be satis- 
 fied apart from the great social organism. Nothing 
 
 17
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 is so gruesome as an eye or a hand separated from 
 the body, and every sane man shudders to think 
 of himself in lonely and useless isolation. That is 
 the pang of the lost. Hell is the place of outer 
 darkness where everything is swallowed up in 
 chaos and night, and the souls of the damned 
 wander in perpetual solitude. 
 
 Only a little less severe punishment is it to have 
 instruments and tools and never be allowed to 
 lay one's hand to their real use in the world. To 
 work at a telegraph key which is never connected 
 with the actual wires, or to speak into a discon- 
 nected telephone, or, like a child, to hold the 
 ends of the reins where one cannot really guide 
 the horses, is to suffer utter emptiness and de- 
 tachment. 
 
 It is on this account that men really love their 
 uniforms. The braid and buttons are signs of 
 membership in an order. They mean that one 
 has a place on life's team. He counts in the cal- 
 culations of other men, and in the scrimmage 
 which is sure to come he will feel the strain and 
 have the glorious sense of helping in the struggle. 
 
 The apostle Paul summons men into the great 
 spiritual brotherhood of Christian love and ser- 
 vice. He invites them into a bondage which is the 
 
 18
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 highest freedom. He knew that just laws are the 
 means of power to' every one who obeys them. 
 Their yoke is easy and their burden is light. It is 
 in the fellowship of mutual service that men are 
 losing their narrow and lesser selves and finding 
 their larger and diviner selves. He that findeth 
 his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life in 
 the service of Christ and his fellow man, shall 
 surely find it.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we 
 thee an hungred, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee drink ? 
 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? or naked, and 
 clothed thee ? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came 
 unto thee ? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I 
 say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
 these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Mail, xxv, 87-40. 
 
 SUCCESSIVE periods in the history of the Church 
 have emphasized different ideals of Christianity. 
 The first century was peculiarly the age of the 
 martyrs. Paganism regarded the humble disciples 
 of Jesus as traitors to the emperor, and hunted 
 them to the death as criminals. The Church, 
 in turn, non-militant and meek, welcomed every 
 opportunity to witness her faith by patient 
 suffering, through every persecution. By the 
 exigencies of her conflict, the apostles became 
 martyrs like their master. The lowliest followers 
 coveted the same fate. The fury of the old order 
 was met by the eager surrender of the new reli- 
 gion. The greater the Roman thirst for their 
 blood, the readier were the Christians to die, 
 until the martyrs became the despair of the 
 Caesars and the ideal of the Church. 
 
 23
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 In the fourth century asceticism prevailed. 
 Estrangement from the natural life of society 
 and contemplation of heavenly existence with- 
 drew men from the world. Solitude was sought 
 as escape from temptation and as opportunity 
 for meditation and self-denial. Her first contact 
 with government, learning, and wealth made the 
 Church fearful and distrustful. Consequently she 
 exalted the life of renunciation and of prepara- 
 tion for the future. 
 
 In the twelfth century, the Christian warrior, 
 the valiant knight of the crusades, came forward 
 in the consciousness of the Church. Romantic 
 and visionary as they were, the crusaders roused 
 the latent energy of Christendom and furnished 
 opportunity for action and for the exercise of the 
 imagination. The knight was a strange blending 
 of warlike savagery and Christian gentleness, but 
 he became just on that account, the type and 
 symbol of religion in his time. 
 
 In similar sharp definition stands out the mys- 
 tic of the fourteenth century. He is projected on 
 the rigid background of ecclesiasticism and insti- 
 tutionalised. He insists upon direct and immedi- 
 ate access to God without priest or pope. His 
 character is fashioned in reaction against tradi- 
 
 24
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
 tion and in the quest for freedom and direct con- 
 tact with the divine. Likewise the theologian is 
 the conspicuous Christian of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. He is the exponent of a book religion over 
 against what he regards as the human authority 
 of the Church and the vagaries of the inner light. 
 To him the great saints are the intellectual in- 
 terpreters of the faith, the expounders of the 
 Scriptures and the creed. Correct belief becomes 
 the standard of orthodoxy, and every candidate 
 for membership in the Church, from the least to 
 the greatest, is examined with reference to his rea- 
 sons for the faith that is in him. 
 
 And now in this twentieth century the Chris- 
 tian ideal is undergoing another transformation. 
 The theological saint is losing prestige. His 
 creeds are discredited by greater knowledge and 
 by broader vision. As the image of the theologian 
 dissolves and fades from view, there is emerging 
 the ideal of the social worker. He is becoming 
 typical of the Christianity of^our day. This is 
 apparent in the official, representative acts of 
 the Church. All of the important denominations 
 have appointed commissions on social service, and 
 have received their recommendations with enthu- 
 siasm. The schools for ministerial education have 
 
 25
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 introduced courses in sociology. The Church has 
 adopted a social service programme in foreign 
 missions, in city parishes, and, more recently, in 
 rural communities. This means turning attention 
 to the great central problem of human welfare 
 with unprecedented energy and intelligence. Re- 
 ligion has a new concern for health. It is enlisted 
 to prevent disease as well as to cure and nurse the 
 sick. The Church is awakening to its duty in 
 the campaigns against child labor, white slavery, 
 alcoholism, prison abuses, corruption in politics 
 and every form of social injustice. Ministers are 
 becoming the advocates of educational reforms, 
 the extension of playgrounds, better housing, the 
 advancement of woman, international peace, and 
 the science of eugenics. 
 
 But in all the struggle for social welfare there 
 remains a lingering, deep-seated doubt whether 
 this is genuinely religious work. Shall we, by this 
 programme continue to have a truly spiritual 
 religion? Will it generate vital, personal reli- 
 gion? Or has the Church been led to take up 
 functions which may be exercised in an external, 
 mechanical way? Some fear that it is another 
 form of mere "works" which may be carried on 
 without faith. The social settlement, they say, 
 
 26
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
 has sometimes been remote from the Church. It 
 has seldom conducted religious services, or re- 
 quired of its workers any profession of faith. 
 Others believe that religion has found a new 
 dynamic in social service, and that a new faith 
 and a new fervor are springing from it. It is my 
 conviction that the latter are right. I wish to 
 emphasize some of the religious elements in these 
 new activities of the churches. 
 
 First, this practical, social Christianity is the 
 most Biblical of all the historical forms. Other 
 / ideals, those of the martyr, the monk, the knight, 
 the mystic, the theologian, have been able to cite 
 certain texts of Scripture in their own behalf. It 
 is true that blessings are pronounced upon the 
 persecuted and upon those who love not the world. 
 There are also texts in which we are exhorted to 
 have a reason for the faith that is in us. But the 
 central doctrine of Scripture is that Christians are 
 finally known and tested by their fruits. We enter 
 the kingdom, not by saying, Lord, Lord, but by 
 doing his will; not by repeating prayers in his 
 name so much as by feeding the hungry, clothing 
 the naked, visiting the sick and the imprisoned. 
 "What does the Lord require of thee, but to do 
 justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 
 27
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 thy God?'* "Pure religion and undefiled is to 
 visit the fatherless and the widows in their afflic- 
 tion." The Good Samaritan was a more typical 
 New Testament Christian than the priest or the 
 Levite, and he is more typical now than the mystic 
 or the theologian. 
 
 The Christian of this twentieth century is a 
 more normal and natural Christian than the mar- 
 tyr or monk, the crusader or the expounder of 
 creeds. Each of them was the result of some pecul- 
 iar strain or wrench which Christianity suffered 
 in its contact with the world. To-day for the first 
 time in two thousand years Christianity stands 
 free from such cramping and deforming influences. 
 The persecutions have ceased. The Church is no 
 longer fleeing from the world. Christianity is at 
 home on the earth and in the flesh and is on terms 
 of the finest cooperation with the great forces of 
 society. "The world," in the sense of the base 
 and vicious things of life, has lost too much of its 
 illusion and is too well understood to frighten any 
 intelligent Christian into solitude. The martyr 
 and the monk did not have the resources and the 
 mastery of life which Christian people now pos- 
 sess. The crusader and the mystic were the prod- 
 ucts of a certain vague and restless dreaming 
 
 28
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
 which science and experience have in large part 
 dispelled. 
 
 Even the theologian of the old school was the 
 result of an imperfect and partial view of life. 
 The age in which he lived regarded the Bible as 
 the direct and perfect revelation of the divine will. 
 There was no sufficient understanding of the 
 historic process by which the Scriptures had been 
 produced. There was no adequate appreciation 
 of that most important fact, that every system of 
 theology is an interpretation, and that all inter- 
 pretation involves a point of view. It has re- 
 mained for recent thought to realize with any full- 
 ness that the Biblical literature has a point of 
 view within itself and that this point of view is 
 man's struggle for a larger life. It is the will to 
 live, to have life, and to have it more abundantly, 
 which constitutes the organizing, dynamic im- 
 pulse of the experiences which the Scriptures re- 
 cord. In all other periods religion has been forced 
 to content itself with a partial and one-sided de- 
 velopment of human nature, often fanatical and 
 doctrinaire. For the first time the Church is con- 
 sistently and conscientiously devoting itself to 
 a virile, practical, reasonable, and yet spiritual 
 ideal of what a Christian life should be. Chris- 
 
 29
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 tianity has just begun to be herself without con- 
 straint or artifice, and in this happy emancipa- 
 tion she sees more clearly than ever before that a 
 spiritualized social order is the vision and goal of 
 New Testament Christianity. 
 
 Jesus was constantly insisting that human life 
 in its highest form is the true end of his religion. 
 The Sabbath the symbol and embodiment of 
 all ceremonial the Sabbath was made for man, 
 and man should not be subordinated to it nor bur- 
 dened by it. The lowest and most sinful person is 
 of measureless value, and woe to any one who dis- 
 regards or injures him. The whole world's wealth 
 and power are worthless compared with one hu- 
 man soul. The truth itself is for man. It is to 
 make him free. In every way the religion of Jesus 
 magnifies as its fundamental purpose the rescue 
 and the culture of men. It seeks and saves the 
 lost and it enriches those "who are neither poor, 
 ignorant, nor depraved." At its heart it is a re- 
 ligion for making and remaking men, for cultivat- 
 ing in them sympathy, forbearance, and mutual 
 helpfulness in the process of building the ideal 
 society which is the kingdom of God. 
 
 Now it is precisely this ideal which is fascinating 
 the modern mind. It has been the objective of 
 
 30
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
 our political revolutions, struggling for democ- 
 racy; and of our industrial revolutions, throwing 
 off the burdens of toil; and it is the goal of our 
 manifold uplift movements at the present time. 
 We are getting the idea of using wealth to make 
 better men. Government is beginning to be re- 
 garded not as an agency for the glorification of 
 officials or for the maintenance of laws, but as an 
 instrument for ameliorating and improving the 
 conditions of human life. Our dramatists are pre- 
 senting the claims of democracy and brother- 
 hood. Our great cities have long been accustomed 
 to various expositions, horse shows, dog shows, 
 flower shows, automobile shows, but at last we 
 have human welfare exhibits. The ancient stream 
 of learning, gathered into the reservoirs of the in- 
 stitutions of culture, and flowing into the wonder- 
 ful achievements of modern science, is finally dis- 
 covering that along with many other subjects 
 "the proper study of mankind is man." We begin 
 to realize the reproach implied in the statement of 
 a recent writer on ethics that "the things of great- 
 est importance to human life have scarcely been 
 touched as yet by science." He points out that 
 "we know more about astrophysics than about 
 health and disease; more about waste in steam 
 
 31
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 power than about waste in foods, or in education; 
 more about classical archaeology than about the 
 actual causes of poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, 
 and childlessness." 
 
 We are cultivating new extensions of sympa- 
 thetic imagination. Any of us feels a deep shud- 
 der when we read the account of a child being 
 hurt to death under a carelessly driven car, and 
 we are beginning to feel revulsion that hundreds 
 of little children should be stunted and maimed 
 under existing conditions of child labor. We have 
 always been horrified by the press reports of in- 
 dividual train wrecks, but we are learning to in- 
 terpret the annual statistics of railroad and indus- 
 trial accidents with something of the same horror 
 and indignation. In the Iroquois Theater fire in 
 Chicago, six hundred lost their lives. The news- 
 papers flamed with the report. In that same 
 month and in each month since, more than a 
 thousand people died from preventable diseases 
 in that city. Formerly these statistics were 
 quietly tabulated by the officials and filed away 
 in obscure records. But now these shocking facts 
 are bulletined throughout the city and the news- 
 papers print conspicuously every morning warn- 
 ings and instructions concerning health. These 
 
 32
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
 humane interests of our time are identical with the 
 central purpose of Christianity. Little is gained 
 by attempting to determine whether the religion 
 of Jesus is altogether responsible for this new 
 spirit. It is far more important to appreciate the 
 fact that these movements are the fulfillment of 
 the best hope and endeavor of the Church from its 
 beginning. They are religious in the deepest 
 sense. They are Christian in the most vital man- 
 ner. When the Church turns its energies into such 
 channels, it gains the consciousness of laboring 
 at its natural, vital task. It becomes a world- 
 transforming power not from without but from 
 within; not by alien but by resident forces; not by 
 magic or superstition but by law and light. 
 
 The second thing I wish to emphasize is the 
 fact that social service generates religious feel- 
 ing and conviction. Not only do these modern 
 welfare movements constitute the fruits, the 
 good works which Christianity requires as the 
 test of genuine religion, but they also beget that 
 inner disposition of the heart which has been 
 magnified by evangelical Christianity. 
 
 It is a fundamental discovery of modern psy- 
 chology that emotion accompanies voluntary 
 activity. Feeling is generated by conduct. It 
 
 33
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 springs also from the anticipatory rehearsal of 
 experiences. When we run over in imagination 
 the dangers of an approaching journey or the 
 pleasures of a promised vacation, we are in fact 
 living through the events themselves. We think 
 of ourselves in the midst of various situations and 
 we act out incipiently, in truncated gestures and 
 expressions, the parts we shall actually play. 
 Accompanying this preliminary activity there is 
 generated the emotional state appropriate to it. 
 The intensity of the emotion is in direct relation 
 to the vividness and tension of the imagined ex- 
 perience. 
 
 By this principle we may understand more 
 fully the conditions and the processes by which 
 religious awakenings occur. All spiritual awaken- 
 ing, every sound conversion, as it is called, has a 
 history. Often it is only the climax that is noted, 
 but the backlying conditions are equally impor- 
 tant. In the days of the great revivals and acute 
 conversions, an individual was prepared for the 
 emotional crisis by a series of vivid, imaginative 
 experiences. He was made to realize his evil con- 
 duct. He was drawn along the path of his wick- 
 edness until he felt the shame and disgrace of it. 
 Then he was taken in reflection through the way 
 
 34
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
 of the righteous and led to taste its peace and 
 blessedness. Thus by an intense, often prolonged, 
 conflict of contrasted activities and emotions, 
 sinners were launched with mighty impetus, into 
 the religious life. That became an unforgettable 
 event. It loomed like a towering mountain-top 
 above all ordinary moments. 
 
 But our matter-of-fact age has grown some- 
 what doubtful of that process. It seems artifi- 
 cial. Many persons sought it and never attained 
 it. We now know that different types of persons 
 "get religion" in different ways. It is more emo- 
 tional for some than for others. The differences 
 are quite comparable to those among people en- 
 tering upon their profession or making changes in 
 business. Out of a group of artists one finds some 
 were started in their career by an emotional crisis, 
 others by the influence of companionship, others 
 by a gradual training and growth. But in the end 
 they are all artists, masters of their technique, 
 loyal to their tasks and warmed by the joy and 
 satisfaction of achievement. The same is true of 
 religious people. Just as persons become artistic 
 by the direction of native talent into artistic ac- 
 tivities, so persons become religious by participa- 
 tion in religious enterprises. 
 
 35
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 To share in the great characteristic human ac- 
 tivities is to experience the fundamental human 
 emotions. When a bachelor friend of mine mar- 
 ried, he had no appreciation of children. He sim- 
 ply did not see them. But when his own child was 
 born his eyes were opened to the charms of child- 
 hood. He entered into a new world and was as 
 completely transformed in his sympathies and 
 views of life as if he had been given a new nervous 
 system. 
 
 A Japanese gentleman, not a Christian, was 
 visiting Hull House one day. He saw the resi- 
 dents from the neighborhood passing in and out 
 foreigners of different nationalities, ragged 
 little children, worn and troubled women, and 
 humble laborers. All came with confidence, 
 found a moment of companionship, secured a 
 book, received a bit of neighborly advice, or some 
 other help, and went their way again. Return- 
 ing to the busy streets, in the midst of the noise 
 and throngs, the Japanese suddenly plucked the 
 sleeve of his American companion and in a tone 
 of discovery, referring to the scene he had wit- 
 nessed, said: "Ah, that is what you mean by the 
 Christian spirit!" 
 
 In principle the spirit of religion is generated 
 36
 
 precisely as the spirit of a game. If one does not 
 play golf, the game lies quite outside one's feeling. 
 The actions of the players are uninteresting and, 
 maybe, entirely absurd. The golf literature and 
 the golf symbols are unattractive and meaning- 
 less. But if one mingles with enthusiasts for the 
 game, hears it praised by intelligent men, and al- 
 lows himself to be drawn into a few games under 
 favorable circumstances, then his interest kindles, 
 his emotions stir, and he becomes a convert to 
 golf. He may be surprised at himself, at his seem- 
 ing passivity in the experience. He scarcely 
 knows how the change took place, but his eager 
 devotion and his increasing interest in all that 
 belongs to his new sport are sufficient evidence of 
 the genuineness of the change wrought in him. 
 
 Is not the same principle operative in religion? 
 When one engages in its social enterprises, its 
 benevolences, its missions, its humanitarian en- 
 deavors, under favorable circumstances, does not 
 one feel the kindling idealism and enthusiasm of 
 the true religious spirit? Perhaps if the Church 
 were as determined and resourceful in cultivating 
 the active habits of social service, as she has 
 been in conducting "revivals," the flame of the 
 religious life would leap higher than ever before 
 
 37
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 and be far more illuminating. Jesus summoned 
 men to follow Him in his life of service. Their 
 willingness to join Him in the good deeds He 
 wrought was enough to admit them to his com- 
 pany. He trusted this practical test to the ut- 
 most. He formulated the principle of a sane and 
 objective challenge when He said, "He that wills 
 to do God's will, shall know of the doctrine." 
 
 The third fact I briefly mention is that by its 
 devotion to social service Christianity is gain- 
 ing a new apologetic an apologetic which the 
 man in the street may quickly comprehend. The 
 practical programme of religion combines with 
 other influences to supplant the older theoreti- 
 cal and dogmatic vindications of Christianity. 
 We are no longer acutely convinced and persua- 
 ded by arguments concerning the fundamentals 
 of the older theology miracles, inspiration, 
 future punishment, and the rest; but we are sen- 
 sitive and responsive to a religion which opens 
 schools in India, hospitals in China, and neighbor- 
 hood centers along the coast of Labrador which 
 creates institutions of learning, of health, of com- 
 radeship and hope in all the dark places of the 
 earth. 
 
 Besides, the layman is able to appreciate the
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
 service which he can render in religion so applied. 
 Heretofore the layman has often hesitated to 
 pass judgment or to engage in activities in the 
 sphere of religion because it seemed to belong to 
 the clergy. But the new direction of effort has 
 made secular talents sacred by devoting them to 
 noble ends. All labor which improves society, 
 lessens its injustice, increases its happiness and 
 refinement is thereby sanctified. In this larger 
 service of man, the lawyer, the teacher, the me- 
 chanic finds his task idealized and spiritualized. 
 Even the minister discovers that he can no longer 
 adequately fulfill his office by the disciplines 
 which have conventionally equipped the clergy- 
 man. He is therefore seeking efficiency and au- 
 thority for his calling through what have long 
 been regarded as the secular sciences of medicine, 
 pedagogy, civics, and business administration. 
 Surely, in a time when churchmen are striving 
 for the skill of lay experts, those experts should 
 be better able to realize how well equipped they 
 are by means of their own specialities, to work the 
 works of God. 
 
 It is these works of humanitarian Christianity 
 which are teaching the masses of the people the 
 true understanding of Jesus Christ, and drawing 
 
 39
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 them together in a great spiritual comradeship. 
 No doctrinal interpretation or defense is so con- 
 vincing as actual works of love and sympathy. 
 Everywhere in distant lands the missionaries are 
 met by the astonishment of non-Christians that 
 the white man should leave his home and go so far 
 to heal the sick and tell good news of peace and 
 goodwill. The marvel of that unselfish service is 
 the strongest appeal of Christianity abroad and 
 at home. It is unanswerable and irresistible. 
 Those who engage in it are conscious of common 
 ties binding them in a mystic communion far 
 above all sects and parties. They experience in 
 simple and tangible ways the great realities of 
 the religion of Christ. They best know the divine 
 nature, for God is love. They enter deepest into 
 the fellowship of the apostles, a fellowship of suf- 
 fering for the redemption of the race. They at- 
 tain the most substantial satisfactions of life, for 
 Jesus proclaimed not merely a rule of his own 
 faith, but a law of life itself when He said, "He 
 that would be the greatest among you, let him be 
 the servant of all." 
 
 This ideal of social service is filling the Church 
 with new hope. It is attracting stronger men into 
 her ministry. It is producing new hymns and a 
 
 40
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
 new spirit of worship. It is affording a new con- 
 ception of church membership as an active parti- 
 cipation in the growing kingdom of God on earth. 
 It is an ideal full of practical deeds and of sweet 
 reasonableness, but full also of the romance and 
 mystery of the infinite life manifesting itself in 
 the will and purposes of men.
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain 
 in you, and that your joy might be full. John xv, 11. 
 
 A NOTABLE characteristic of the religious thought 
 of our time is the more intimate and sympathetic 
 understanding of the personality of Jesus. We 
 have long been familiar with his official titles of 
 prophet, priest, and king; and with his theological 
 designations as the Son of God, the Logos, and the 
 Saviour of the world. We have dwelt upon cer- 
 tain features of his earthly life, his temptation, his 
 hunger and thirst, his suffering and sorrow and 
 sacrificial death. Men have made bold to empha- 
 size various traits of his character which bring 
 Him into still closer and more vital relation with 
 our common humanity. Not only have they 
 dwelt upon his patience, self-restraint, capacity 
 for friendship and heroism, but we read of his love 
 of nature, his use of exaggeration, his anger, his 
 ignorance on certain subjects, and there is more 
 than one book devoted exclusively to the humor 
 of Jesus. These studies are not irreverent or ca- 
 pricious, but are genuine, sympathetic attempts 
 
 45
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 to plumb the depths and ranges of the ever-fas- 
 cinating, many-sided character of Christ. 
 
 Much has been written, too, about the joy of 
 Jesus, but usually it has been conceived as an 
 unnatural joy the joy of self-renunciation, of 
 silent but highly self-conscious suffering. It has 
 seldom been set forth as the joy of a robust, eager 
 soul, rejoicing in the energy of youth, in the vol- 
 untary choice of a great task and in the intellec- 
 tual discovery of spiritual realities. But the more 
 searching inquiries of recent scholarship encour- 
 age such an interpretation of the joy of Jesus. 
 Certain it is they do not represent Him as prima- 
 rily a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 
 That particular designation was derived from the 
 Old Testament prophet, and does not express 
 Jesus' own thought of Himself. The early dis- 
 ciples and the Church in subsequent ages very 
 naturally magnified the passion and death of 
 Jesus, but it is not in keeping with all we know of 
 Him to think that through life he held before 
 Himself the consciousness of death upon the 
 cross. It is, indeed, quite possible that his buoy- 
 ant optimism obscured for a considerable time 
 his realization of the deadly opposition forming 
 against Him, and that only gradually did He per- 
 
 46
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 ceive the full purpose of his enemies. The very 
 depth and vividness of his enthusiasm for the 
 Kingdom of God might well have made difficult 
 any anticipation of the culminating tragedy of 
 his ministry. 
 
 It is important to remember that words can- 
 not mean one thing in daily experience and an- 
 other in religion, if we are ever to come to an 
 understanding with reference to our most ideal 
 interests. The joy of Jesus must be comparable 
 to our own. It must mean the gratification of 
 wants, the satisfaction of desires, the fulfillment 
 of hopes, where there was uncertainty and real 
 chance of failure. The particular things which 
 yield pleasure to different men may be as various 
 as collecting stamps and commanding armies, but 
 they all have this in common: they supply some 
 felt need. A man's joy reveals the kind of man 
 he is. It shows his deepest craving. It uncovers 
 the hot spot of his mind. Jesus was no exception. 
 His character may be seen in his satisfactions. 
 We have his own deliberate and conscious empha- 
 sis upon the joy He felt and which He desired to 
 share with his disciples. He was approaching the 
 great crisis. His mind was filled by thoughts of 
 his mission. It was important that his disciples 
 
 47
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 make no mistake concerning the spirit and tem- 
 per of his teaching. At that moment He surveyed 
 his instruction, and exclaimed: "These things 
 have I spoken unto you that my joy might re- 
 main in you and that your joy might be full." 
 
 I wish to consider this happiness of Jesus as it is 
 manifested in his natural impulses, in his devo- 
 tion to a great task, and in the play of his imagin- 
 ation as he interpreted and projected the mean- 
 ing of his gospel. We have come to have greater 
 respect for our natural appetites and impulses. 
 The instincts have attained new dignity in the 
 eyes of science and philosophy. They are re- 
 garded as the raw materials, the vital stuff, out 
 of which our lives develop. The energy and sen- 
 sitivity of these elemental impulses make life 
 urgent and warm. They contribute a vibrant, 
 tender beauty to all young life. They furnish the 
 dynamics of the organized habits of manhood. 
 The presence of this original quality and flavor of 
 youth is unmistakable. It cannot be simulated 
 and it cannot be disguised. This quality shines 
 through all the words and gestures of Jesus. He 
 thereby stands in striking contrast with the hard- 
 ened old age of his nation. He moves with the 
 strong, sinewy step of a vigorous man. There is a 
 
 48
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 fresh, persuasive note in his speech which the 
 people at once detect. "They were astonished at 
 his teaching," the record runs, "for He taught 
 them as one having authority, and not as the 
 scribes." This authority was doubtless the ex- 
 pression, in part at least, of the unworn energy of 
 his youth. 
 
 Jesus was perfectly conscious that He was no 
 ascetic and that his frank acceptance of the natu- 
 ral appetites and affections constantly brought 
 Him under criticism. The difference between 
 Him and John the Baptist, in this respect, was 
 readily observed. Jesus declared, "John came 
 neither eating nor drinking and they say, He hath 
 a devil. The Son of Man came eating and drink- 
 ing, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and 
 a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." 
 Jesus mingled freely in the social life about Him. 
 One commentator remarks that "there is no rec- 
 ord in the New Testament of his ever having de- 
 clined an invitation," and adds, "His habit in this 
 respect is illustrated by his presence at the mar- 
 riage at Cana of Galilee, the feast at Matthew's 
 house, the house of Simon, the dinner given Him 
 by the Pharisees, and the supper given by Mary 
 and Martha." 
 
 49
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 There are other evidences of his instinctive 
 delight in natural things. He had a fresh, sensu- 
 ous joy in the open fields and in the solitudes of 
 the mountains. The flowers held his eye, and 
 their transient beauty impressed Him with the 
 marvelously intimate care of God. He had a peas- 
 ant's love of nature and it was his habit to escape 
 into her silences for poise and vision. He felt the 
 blue waters of the Lake of Galilee carry Him ca- 
 ressingly into peace and rest. 
 
 This deep mystical passion for the free life of 
 the hills was only equaled by his love of the pro- 
 phetic innocence of childhood. One led Him into 
 a consciousness of divine providence, and the 
 other to the spirit of his coming kingdom a 
 kingdom constituted by pure and teachable souls. 
 Thus the powerful impulses of his nature deter- 
 mined his outlook upon the world. There was 
 about Him, even in his subdued moments, the un- 
 spent nervous force of a strong man, interpreting 
 life through his own creative personality. His 
 gesture frightened the money-changers from the 
 temple. He felt able to exert the power of legions 
 of angels. One grain of his faith would remove 
 mountains. The very words He uttered seemed 
 eternal. He feared neither violence nor death. 
 
 50
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 Even if He were crucified He would have strength 
 to rise again, and the company of his disciples 
 his Church He would build upon the rock of his 
 mighty spirit so securely that the very gates of 
 hell could not prevail against it. 
 
 May we not thus think, with reverence, of the 
 consciousness of power born of the natural in- 
 stincts within him? Does not some measure of 
 that power sweep through the soul of any one of 
 us, hi some moments of our lives? Are not these 
 the hours of our visions, our awakenings, our il- 
 luminations? Are not these the precious moments 
 of the mystic when he seems to transcend the lim- 
 its of ordinary knowledge and catch glimpses of 
 God's very essence? 
 
 In such passionate moments, the bounds of 
 logical thought seem passed, and routine habits 
 cast off. These may be the channels of what we 
 call inspiration, through which, if we are scientists 
 we make discoveries; if we are artists, we arrive at 
 new beauty; if we are prophets, we gain new reve- 
 lations the channels through which, no matter 
 what we may be, we feel the passionate and ele- 
 mental joy of life. 
 
 The joy of Jesus may further be viewed in re- 
 spect to his task. When the seventy returned tri- 
 
 51
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 umphantly f rom the first mission upon which He 
 sent them, his exultation was intense. "In that 
 hour," the narrative tells us, "Jesus rejoiced in 
 spirit and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of 
 heaven and earth." "And he turned to his dis- 
 ciples and said, Blessed are the eyes which see the 
 things that ye see; for I tell you, that many 
 prophets and kings have desired to see these 
 things that ye see, and have not seen them; and 
 to hear those things which ye hear, and have not 
 heard them." 
 
 We can scarcely exaggerate the emotion of 
 Jesus at that moment. For generations his na- 
 tion had cherished the hope of an awakening and 
 a deliverance. Some still looked for it in outward 
 power and pomp, in the coming of a grand king 
 like David. But Jesus cherished a wiser hope, 
 caught, perhaps, from the prophet Isaiah, nour- 
 ished by gentle spirits like the aged Simeon, and 
 Mary, the mother of Jesus. This hope was for 
 one to preach good tidings unto the meek, to bind 
 up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the 
 captives, and the opening of the prison to them 
 that are bound; to give them that mourn beauty 
 for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the gar- 
 ment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. 
 * 52
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 These were the very words Jesus took for a 
 text in the first discourse of his public ministry. 
 This was the message He enjoined the seventy to 
 preach, for in every city they were to heal the sick 
 and say, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto 
 you. It was the first great venture upon the long- 
 cherished hope of the more spiritual patriots of 
 his people. How would the message be received? 
 What response would the people make? No won- 
 der Jesus felt a thrill of ecstasy when the seventy 
 returned with joy and said, " Lord, even the devils 
 are subject unto us." 
 
 There was something ancestral, something 
 massive and corporate uttering itself in this re- 
 sponse of the people. It was the ancient national 
 spirit rising to prophetic speech once more. But 
 the keen satisfaction of that moment was yet to 
 be deepened and mellowed by relentless opposi- 
 tion and persecution. The officials of the existing 
 order blocked the progress of Jesus. Their anger 
 and hatred grew as they saw the crowds increas- 
 ing round Him. And here is just the point at 
 which we have been most mistaken about the 
 emotional experience of Jesus. 
 
 We have witnessed the contest between Jesus 
 and the Pharisees too much hi the attitude of 
 
 53
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 casual observers. We have been like timid, un- 
 seeing persons witnessing an athletic contest. 
 The players rush into the scrimmages, tense and 
 determined. They collide, and fall, and struggle. 
 They rise, bruised and bloody. Some are carried 
 off the field. We say, Poor fellows, how they suf- 
 fer! What pitiful lives they live! How depressed 
 and melancholy they must be, having always to 
 be in training, to struggle, and endure, that others 
 may enjoy the fruits of their vicarious sacrifice. 
 How false is such an impression. How it misses 
 the whole experience of the players. They are 
 really at the height of keenest pleasure. They are 
 the bearers of the college colors and the college 
 spirit. They are unconscious of the blood and 
 dirt. The blows and cuts are mere stings and 
 scratches, and they rush back into line full of the 
 glory of their cause and the hope of victory. 
 
 Or we may think of the patriot marching to 
 battle. It is terrible, but it is grand. To the ob- 
 server, he fronts hardships and danger and death. 
 For himself, he has a cause at heart. Into the 
 thick of the fight he goes with the challenge of 
 the moral universe upon him. He is beyond all 
 thought of any other joy in the undivided energy 
 he gives to this. 
 
 54
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 I think it was so with Jesus. The scattered, 
 shepherdless souls of his countrymen stirred his 
 compassion. He espoused their cause against the 
 injustices, hypocrisies, and vices by which they 
 were burdened. Every opposition He encountered 
 awakened new resources within Him and height- 
 ened the importance of his task. To the observer 
 He was abused, belied, mocked, scourged, and 
 crucified. To Himself he was the ardent, faithful, 
 deathless champion of a glorious kingdom. We 
 enter most intimately into his emotions when we 
 think of Him as committed to a great moral ad- 
 venture in which the spiritual destiny of the race 
 hung in the balance. No one knew in advance, 
 not even Jesus Himself, what the outcome would 
 be. No one knew the day nor the hour, nor the 
 manner of the end. That is the only kind of a sit- 
 uation which elicits genuine feeling. No contest 
 awakens interest where the strife is unreal, where 
 the forces are known to be unevenly matched, or 
 where one side has some unnatural advantage. 
 If Jesus had been as spectral and magical a person 
 as some have thought, He could not have been 
 even a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; 
 but with a nature truly like our own, only might- 
 ier and holier and sincerely devoted to the vast 
 
 55
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 enterprise of human redemption, He could only 
 be what He Himself said He was, a man of joy. 
 For the building of a race of righteous men is the 
 noblest possible adventure, and he who gives him- 
 self to it is sure of greater satisfactions than gladi- 
 ators or warriors achieve. 
 
 It was the hope of Jesus that this joy might be 
 shared by his disciples and that their joy might be 
 full. They could experience it by the same fear- 
 less and unmeasured devotion to the betterment 
 of humanity. Every man who has in any way 
 joined in this moral adventure of Christianity 
 knows what the Master meant. The astonishing 
 thing is that so many people have never made 
 this discovery of the satisfactions of strenuous 
 moral endeavor. We are eager enough for pleas- 
 ure, but we seem blind to the means of its attain- 
 ment. We are evermore seeking it for itself, while 
 all of the psychologists and philosophers insist 
 that we should heed the paradox that it is only 
 found where it is not sought. It is the elusive 
 blue bird which we seek far and wide, only to find 
 it in kindly deeds at our own lowly fireside. And 
 it escapes us even there the moment we become 
 too conscious of it. When we try to hold it in 
 our hands and stroke it, it flies out of the window. 
 
 56
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 There must be some hardihood about our moral 
 adventures; some distant objective, some forget- 
 fulness of self. The chances for a thrilling good 
 time are overwhelmingly on the side of the Lady 
 of the Decoration, as against my lady of comforts, 
 dwelling securely at home in the lap of luxury. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton declares that "the thing called 
 high spirits is possible only to the spiritual." 
 "Ultimately," he says, "a man can enjoy nothing 
 but religion." You remember the contrast he 
 draws between Jesus Christ and Omar Khayyam 
 in the use of wine. "Jesus Christ made wine not 
 a medicine, but a sacrament. But Omar makes 
 it not a sacrament, but a medicine. He feasts be- 
 cause life is not joyful; he revels because he is not 
 glad. * Drink,' he says, 'for you know not whence 
 you come nor why. Drink, for you know not 
 when you go nor where. Drink, because the stars 
 are cruel and the world as idle as a humming top. 
 Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base 
 equality and an evil peace.' So he stands, offering 
 us the cup in his hand. And at the high altar of 
 Christianity stands another figure, in whose hand 
 also is the cup of the vine. * Drink,' He says, 'for 
 the whole world is as red as this wine, with the 
 crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for 
 
 57
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is 
 the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this is my blood of the 
 New Testament that is shed for you. Drink, for 
 I know of whence you come and why. Drink, 
 for I know of when you go and where." 
 
 But the joy of Jesus was not merely instinctive 
 exuberance, nor was it only self-forgetfulness in 
 a huge task. His impulsive energy and powerful 
 will expressed themselves also in the luminous 
 play of a clear, discerning intellect. He has some- 
 times been classed as a successor of the wise men 
 or sages of his race, rather than as a priest or 
 prophet. But He never gives the impression of a 
 love for purely speculative wisdom. His reflec- 
 tion issues from the deep moral need He sees 
 about Him. His ideas are warm and urgent with 
 human interest. They are concrete and visualized, 
 yet definite and organic. His thought moves with 
 the quick, free action of a mind ready and at ease. 
 
 He had no fear of knowledge, but welcomed it 
 as an essential of his religion. "Wisdom is jus- 
 tified of her children," He declared. Again He 
 said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth 
 shall make you free." So thoroughly did He trust 
 man's natural reason, that He asked the common 
 people why they could not discern the moral 
 
 58
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 signs of the time with some such certainty as they 
 detected signs of rain or fair weather. "Yea, and 
 why even of yourselves judge ye not what is 
 right?" 
 
 His own mind held clearly the great moral dis- 
 tinctions and values of life. He never confused 
 anise, mint, and cummin with the weightier mat- 
 ters of the law judgment, mercy, and faith. 
 He saw that some of the Ten Commandments are 
 more important than others, and without hesita- 
 tion asserted that love to God and love to man are 
 the two commandments upon which hang all the 
 law and the prophets. With the same deep pene- 
 tration He gave morality a new dimension when 
 He arraigned the traditional standards, saying, 
 "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old 
 time, Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill 
 shall be in danger of the judgment; but I say unto 
 you, that whosoever is angry with his brother 
 without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. 
 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I 
 say unto you Love your enemies." 
 
 Jesus also saw clearly the action and reaction 
 of psychical attitudes and moral dispositions 
 among people. He warned his disciples that they 
 
 59
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 would be judged by their own manner of judging 
 and that according to their own measure would 
 others measure back to them. "They that take 
 the sword shall perish by the sword." "Whatso- 
 ever ye would that men should do unto you, do 
 ye even so unto them." 
 
 At times the illustration of this principle rose 
 to a touch of humor, as when He asked, "And 
 why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy 
 brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that 
 is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out 
 the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt 
 thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy 
 brother's eye." 
 
 We sometimes encounter minds which seem 
 endowed with a special gift for mathematical 
 forms and formulas. They move to the heart of 
 a problem with facile and sure intuition, while 
 other men are confused and heavy in their num- 
 ber processes. In some such contrast Jesus stood 
 to many with whom his conversations are pre- 
 served to us. His interpretation of a moral situa- 
 tion separates the gold from the dross so that all 
 right-minded men perceive the distinction. It 
 was often so when they tried to trap Jesus into 
 some embarrassing admission; for example, when 
 
 60
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 they inquired about taxes, and He answered by 
 the image and superscription of the tribute 
 money, "Render unto Caesar the things that are 
 Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." 
 And again when they questioned whether He 
 should heal a man on the Sabbath, He pointed to 
 their own willingness to rescue a sheep from a pit- 
 fall on the Sabbath, and remarked, "How much, 
 then, is a man better than a sheep?" 
 
 With the same precision He disclosed the hy- 
 pocrisy of the Pharisees, who strained at gnats 
 of legalism and swallowed camels of actual sin. 
 They made clean the outside, but within were full 
 of extortion and excess. 
 
 But it was, perhaps, in the contemplation of 
 the growth of his kingdom that He experienced 
 the keenest satisfactions. He saw through the 
 seeming paradox of its inner law. And when his 
 disciples came to Him still confused by the illu- 
 sions of worldly power and rank, and by the con- 
 ception of advancement through influence and 
 favoritism, He answered that in the kingdom of 
 true morality and righteousness it was not so, 
 but that He that would be the greatest must 
 be the servant of all. This kingdom, therefore, 
 enlarges itself from within and by processes which 
 
 61
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 are beyond the comprehension of selfish men. 
 It communicates itself like the leaven hidden in 
 the meal; it grows like the tiny mustard seed from 
 small beginnings to great proportions; it is like 
 secret treasure for which, when they discover it, 
 men sell all the outward goods they possess. 
 
 Those who seek first this kingdom find all the 
 qualities which are effective in this present world, 
 for they must be faithful and honest and indus- 
 trious and pure. Such men are not harassed by 
 anxious thought for the outward goods. They are 
 of untroubled hearts in the midst of the strife and 
 clamor of the world, and they enjoy a peace which 
 passeth all understanding of the selfish mind. 
 
 It was with this farseeing insight that Jesus 
 faced the cross. "Whosoever exalteth himself 
 shall be abased, and he that shall humble himself 
 shall be exalted." That intellectual conviction 
 transformed the cross and the glory of that 
 transformation has been made brighter as men 
 have grown to understand it more adequately. 
 
 It was such joy as this which Jesus craved 
 for his disciples, a joy so natural and spontane- 
 ous that it already throbs in the unspoiled im- 
 pulses of children and of virtuous men; a joy so 
 virile and cumulative that it rises with the great- 
 
 62
 
 THE JOY OF JESUS 
 
 ness of the moral task undertaken; a joy so sane 
 and intelligible that it unfolds its logic to every 
 pure and teachable mind. 
 
 Unfortunately, the disciples of Jesus have not 
 always entered fully into this joy. They have 
 often caught the serious summons of the Master 
 with Puritan rigor, but without his full confidence 
 in life. They have put on sackcloth and ashes 
 when they might well have worn the wedding 
 garment. They have sometimes made the high 
 day of religion gloomy and stern and forbidding, 
 when in its proper spirit it is a day of noble fellow- 
 ship and song. 
 
 We are this week entering upon the season of 
 Lent. Let us not deceive ourselves by thinking 
 we are religious because we are sad of counte- 
 nance and quiet in manner. We should be sad 
 when we reflect upon our lives, if we find that they 
 are not religious. Our grief is necessary, not be- 
 cause we are keeping company with Christ, but 
 because through misapprehension, or carelessness, 
 or perversion of spirit, we have wandered away 
 from Him. If we truly enter into his life, we shall 
 find Him buoyant where outward circumstances 
 made us think Him broken in spirit; we shall find 
 Him silent in the presence of threatening death, 
 
 63
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 not because He is afraid or confounded, but be- 
 cause already He sees the future with a vision 
 that none of his disciples much less Pilate or 
 the priests can share. 
 
 Easter is the true objective of Lent, for at 
 Easter religion comes forth again with festival 
 and song, with drama and pageant. Then the 
 true disciples of Christ raise aloft the cross, not 
 as the emblem of pain and defeat, but as the sign 
 of victory and immortal life. Then they experi- 
 ence what Jesus meant when He said, "These 
 things have I spoken unto you that my joy might 
 remain in you and that your joy might be full."
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 " Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a 
 cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which 
 doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is 
 set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith." 
 Heb. xn. 1, 2. 
 
 THERE is something deeply human in this refer- 
 ence to the presence of other people as a reason 
 for strenuous moral endeavor. It is almost dis- 
 concerting to be so frankly urged to be good 
 because one is being observed. Yet there is no 
 denying the fact that OUT neighbors' opinions 
 are mighty goads to good actions and powerful 
 deterrents from evil. We do not always admit it. 
 We are, indeed, seldom conscious of the extent 
 to which it is true. There is often an avowal of 
 disinterested, independent devotion to truth and 
 honor, while all the time one is really controlled 
 and guided by the attitudes and expressions of the 
 persons standing by. Every normal human being 
 lives in this medium of social stimulation and con- 
 trol, as a fish lives in water or a bird in air. 
 
 It has always been so. The helplessness of 
 human infancy determines every individual to an 
 
 67
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 intimate dependence upon others for several of 
 the most impressionable years. There can be no 
 infant Robinson Crusoe all alone on a desert 
 island. And by the time a Robinson Crusoe is 
 able to maintain himself in solitude, he is already 
 formed and fashioned under the eyes of many 
 witnesses. The approval and censure of the fam- 
 ily circle, of playfellows and of various kith and 
 kin, establish the core of his code of conduct. As 
 a child, seeing a shining vase upon the table, im- 
 pulsively puts out a hand to touch it, and then, 
 with the hand poised in air, turns to search the 
 mother's face for permission to proceed, so hu- 
 man beings are always casting side glances to 
 ascertain the opinions of the spectators. It is 
 noticeable that people are frequently more care- 
 ful about their front yards, which the public may 
 see, than they are with the back yards. We quite 
 naturally agree that it is more important to have 
 the street side of the house of better material 
 or to keep it especially well painted and repaired. 
 We thus pay tribute to the sentiments of others. 
 Without this environing human presence, we are 
 like sailors who have no compass and cannot see 
 the stars. The most ordinary moral judgments 
 lose their meaning when the individual is cut off 
 
 68
 
 from his fellows. Every one knows, for example, 
 that in dealing with others it is wrong to cheat, 
 but a student recently asked in all seriousness 
 whether it is immoral to cheat in solitaire. 
 
 The moralists identify the growth of ethical 
 sentiment in an individual with the growth of 
 his knowledge of the judgment of his associates. 
 As one writer says: "There is often a lack of 
 sharp condemnation of ourselves as long as our 
 sins remain private; we are aware of the sinful- 
 ness in a general way; conscience gets in a timid 
 voice, especially just at the time of commission 
 of the deed, and more timidly each time that it is 
 committed; but there may be no lively emotional 
 reaction, no great agitation of remorse, no desper- 
 ate attempts to justify one's self by argument, no 
 call to repentance. But let it once come out; then 
 his nature asserts itself. The sense of publicity 
 immediately reacts upon his own private stand- 
 ards of judgment." He then sees himself as others 
 see him and the profound emotions of self-con- 
 demnation sweep over him. Similarly, a man's 
 sense of the value of virtue, of strict honor and 
 integrity, is heightened and strengthened by the 
 recognition and approval of others. 
 
 It is this great universal fact of our moral 
 69
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 experience which the text employs. It implies 
 also that one may select and enlarge the cloud 
 of witnesses in imagination and keep them be- 
 fore the mind when they are no longer accessible 
 in physical presence. These witnesses which the 
 inner eye beholds serve as supports and guides 
 when a man's actual companions are inadequate, 
 or when they might tyrannize over his will and 
 hinder his most ideal achievements. 
 
 The possession of such a company of ideal 
 companions is a distinctly human characteristic. 
 Out of sight, out of mind, is the fate of the lower 
 orders of life, and it was only gradually that the 
 memory of man lengthened to include the names 
 and deeds of any individuals beyond a generation 
 or two. It was the development of language and 
 the accumulation of traditions and records which 
 enabled man to draw away from the narrow world 
 of other animals, and guide himself by the achieve- 
 ments of many individuals remote in time and 
 place. The recital of the deeds of the great names 
 of Israel's past, as given in the eleventh chapter 
 of Hebrews, is a typical expression of the way in 
 which the race brought its lengthening memory 
 to bear upon the conduct of the individual. Here 
 are arrayed with dramatic vividness and individ- 
 
 70
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 uality the ancestral heroes of the faith. Some of 
 them, like Abel, Enoch and Noah, Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob move upon the shadowy borders 
 of mythology and folklore. Others stand in the 
 light of history David, Samuel, the prophets, 
 and the great company of the nameless cham- 
 pions of faith. All of them exemplify the power 
 of faith "through faith they subdued king- 
 doms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, 
 stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the vio- 
 lence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of 
 weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in 
 fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens." 
 
 They endured as seeing the invisible. It was 
 the cultivation of this ability to transcend the 
 present moment and live in intimate companion- 
 ship with the past which contributed to the in- 
 tensity of religious life among the Jews. They 
 thus created and transmitted a rich heritage of 
 national idealism which has marvelously resisted 
 changes of environment and all manner of out- 
 ward misfortunes. By impressing the stories of 
 their early heroes upon the minds of the children, 
 they fortified one generation after another against 
 alien standards and kept them loyal to the race 
 ideals. 
 
 71
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Besides, it was possible in this way to cherish 
 only those traits of the former generations which 
 contributed to the ideal ends desired. There were 
 many characters whom it was advantageous to 
 forget. Thus the process of selection was con- 
 stantly at work, not so much by deliberate or 
 conscious determination as by the attraction of a 
 common purpose. The dauntless spirit of the 
 race, especially in time of disaster, attracted to 
 itself the like-minded characters of the past and 
 thereby confirmed its hope and fixed more securely 
 that type of mind for the future. 
 
 It was lack of continuity in their outward his- 
 tory which forced the Hebrews to maintain with 
 rigor and devotion, the inner spirit and mental 
 pictures of their past. This tendency preserved 
 the soul of the nation after its institutions were 
 broken and humbled. It has enabled the faithful 
 Jews for thousands of years to preserve their 
 racial identity and to endure contempt and dis- 
 aster as no other people has done. No other has 
 shown so much tenacity of ancient ideals through 
 such calamities and opposition. And this has 
 been due to the fact that with deep moral earnest- 
 ness and unflagging zeal, the imagination of every 
 child has been infused with the idealized characters 
 
 72
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 of the long line of national heroes. These char- 
 acters have had the quality of life and the inti- 
 macy of deepest sentiment. They have been better 
 known and more devotedly obeyed than the visible 
 companions of the hour. They have been the in- 
 visible keepers of the conscience and the honor of 
 the generations which have cherished them. 
 
 It was this habit of mind which became one 
 of the greatest contributions of Judaism to Chris- 
 tianity. So long as the Christians were scorned 
 and persecuted by their contemporaries, they 
 were forced to secure approval and spiritual com- 
 panionship in imagination with the Old Testa- 
 ment heroes or with the celestial company of the 
 apostles and martyrs. The doctrine of the heav- 
 enly existence which Christianity emphasized, 
 gave a new field for the imagination and incalcu- 
 lably strengthened the hearts and wills of the 
 faithful. Why should they be disheartened by the 
 disdain of Roman governors and the ridicule of 
 common soldiers when they were conscious of the 
 sympathetic presence and encouragement of their 
 exalted King and his mighty cohorts? It was 
 thus a simple matter for the early Christians to 
 employ the long accustomed usage of the Hebrew 
 mind and to enlarge and idealize the grand com- 
 
 73
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 pany of its heroes by adding the living, though 
 invisible, spirits of their dead. Here was secured 
 a more powerful and vivid aid to the imagination, 
 inasmuch as the great souls whose approval one 
 craves are not merely in the past but are living 
 witnesses, just barely removed from sight, quick 
 and sensitive to our mortal strife. 
 
 Christianity has here availed itself of a very 
 natural and universal tendency of the mind, to 
 feel toward the absent ones something of the 
 same respect and affection which they elicited 
 when actually present. Among primitive people 
 the dead are felt to be active and influential and 
 hover about their homes and associates with awe- 
 inspiring presence. Christianity has enhanced 
 that view and qualified it with a moral principle, 
 for it is now the righteous dead whose presence 
 the Christian contemplates and whose approval 
 he regards. 
 
 The Church has magnified this mystic host of 
 the heavenly world and has encouraged the most 
 vivid imagery with reference to the saints ranged 
 above us intent hi contemplation of our moral 
 conflict. Their sympathy and inspiration are 
 often felt to be the most powerful incentives to 
 our noblest endeavors. 
 
 74
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 "How should we bear our life 
 Without the friendship of the happy dead?" 
 
 runs the sentiment of a recent mystical poem by 
 Miss Evelyn Underbill. 
 
 "They see 
 
 The steadfast purpose of eternity. 
 Their care is all for us: they whisper low 
 Of the great heritage 
 To which we go. 
 
 As one may tell a child of tender age 
 Of manhood and its joys, 
 They from our toys 
 Call us to contemplation of the light. 
 We, all unknowing, wage 
 Our endless fight 
 By ghostly banners led, 
 By arms invisible helped in the strife. 
 Without the friendship of the happy dead 
 How should we bear our life?" 
 
 This is the theme of many of the noblest 
 hymns of the Church, reminding us of those 
 
 "Who, from the battlements above, 
 Follow our course with eager love, 
 And cheer our contest on." 
 
 The first great step in the idealization and spir- 
 itualization of human life, then, we may say, is 
 this release of man from his immediate environ- 
 ment and the reference of his conduct to the great 
 lives of the past and to the heavenly company of 
 
 75
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 those who have died in the faith. But all this may 
 occur within the unmodified tradition of the past. 
 The individual who accepts this heritage and lives 
 in obedience to it possesses indeed a larger and 
 richer inner life than one whose conscience had 
 no such historical and celestial perspective. But 
 for all that, it may be a life which is bound to 
 precedent, subject to the authority of tradition 
 and quite wholly given to imitation and acquies- 
 cence. If we lived in a changeless, intellectual 
 world, that type of religion might be sufficient, 
 but in a growing social order where different his- 
 torical traditions are often in conflict, something 
 more is needed. To many minds of our modern 
 world the original Hebrew tradition and its modi- 
 fied form in historic Christianity scarcely supply 
 the full satisfaction demanded. That tradition 
 is at least called upon to meet other traditions in 
 a new way. The assertion of its truth, its an- 
 tiquity, the number of its adherents cannot 
 answer the deeper questions which many sin- 
 cere minds are asking. Where and how, then, 
 may a sincere soul of this day determine what 
 cloud of witnesses to invoke? Here is a modern 
 man who makes his appeal to the Greek worthies. 
 Auguste Rodin, in his brochure "To the Venus 
 
 76
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 of Melos," says of his experience with Greek art: 
 "In the Louvre, of old, like saints to a monk in 
 his cloister, the Olympian gods said to me all that 
 a young man might usefully hear; later they 
 protected and inspired me; after an absence of 
 twenty years, I found them again with an in- 
 describable joy, and I understood them. These 
 divine fragments, these marbles, older than two 
 thousand years, speak to me louder, move me 
 more than human beings.'* 
 
 Another man of Western culture makes his 
 home in Japan and comes to believe profoundly 
 in the moral and artistic ideals of that land and 
 makes himself a kind of missionary of Japanese 
 art and culture. A third man of our Anglo-Saxon 
 world is fascinated with life hi India and becomes 
 a devotee of theosophy, which he commends to 
 us with zeal and earnestness. It is also possible 
 to meet men among us who have come to know 
 intimately the social control, the proverbial wis- 
 dom, and the ceremonial customs of the tribes 
 of Central Africa, or of Australia, and who are 
 dubious about the claims of our culture and our 
 religion, hi comparison. Not only are we experi- 
 encing this contact of various cultures with their 
 differing standards and ideals, but within our 
 
 77
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 own society there are numerous claimants for al- 
 legiance. There is a certain type of scientist 
 who like Darwin, may have given himself to his 
 observations of facts and the formulations of 
 hypotheses and generalizations, until he has no 
 interest in poetry and the symbolic idealizations 
 of life which characterize art and religion. 
 
 With all these there is also present the prac- 
 tical man of affairs who may or may not elaborate 
 the theory which his conduct suggests. He works 
 as if life had its charm and justification in utili- 
 tarian efficiency and skill. He sees the power of 
 wealth and a certain respect which it elicits even 
 from those devoted to other ideals, and he con- 
 cludes that at least all men in middle life see the 
 wisdom of his course and tacitly admit that 
 worldly success and material goods are among the 
 most important possessions possible to men. 
 
 This is not the first age of the world in which 
 such a conflict of traditions has occurred, and in 
 which a civilization has had its traditions deeply 
 challenged. It happened so among the Greeks at 
 the time of the Sophists; and among the Romans 
 in the age of the decline of the empire when a great 
 number of Oriental cults struggled with Judaism 
 and Christianity for supremacy. But there is this 
 
 78
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 difference in our time. The wide diffusion of 
 knowledge makes the problem vital to more peo- 
 ple. It is as though for the masses of men there 
 appeared within the field of mental vision not 
 only the cloud of witnesses which their own tra- 
 ditional culture affords, but also those vast com- 
 panies of the saints of other faiths, vigorous hi 
 devotion to their beliefs and equally ready to 
 encourage and crown any who will fight under 
 their banners. 
 
 It is analogous to the perplexity of a person 
 who removes from a relatively simple commu- 
 nity into the maelstrom of a great city. In the 
 smaller town he has acquaintances on every side, 
 whom he meets freely. His labors and his recre- 
 ations are part of their own life. He feels quickly 
 their praise or blame. He is held to the moral 
 standards of his class and group by the simple and 
 direct operation of public opinion. But in the 
 city there is a great multiplicity of social sets 
 clubs, lodges, associations, and guilds. The street 
 on which he lives is no longer a neighborhood, the 
 business associates he encounters have little com- 
 mon life outside of business. A great wealth of 
 organizations offer their ideals and companion- 
 ships, but the old habits and traditions of the 
 
 79
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 smaller community afford little rational guidance 
 in the new, bewildering life. He has lost the in- 
 timate connection with the old cloud of witnesses 
 before whom he felt the values of life decisively 
 and urgently, while among the confused and dis- 
 cordant multitudes of the metropolis no one at 
 first seems to care whither he goes. No one as- 
 sumes responsibility for his direction. 
 
 In some similar way the modern mind has 
 found itself in spiritual bewilderment in the pres- 
 ence of many voices. It is unavailing merely to 
 reassert the old authority with greater vehemence 
 and insistence. So far as the text offers a solution 
 for this emergency, it is found in the exhortation 
 to run the race with the eyes fixed, not upon the 
 past, but upon the future; not upon the ancient 
 heroes so much as upon the ideal man beyond. It 
 is as though the course upon which the runner ran 
 stretched away into a distance where the specta- 
 tors could only follow by their eager vision and 
 where they themselves had never actually run. 
 One figure only had passed along that course, and 
 that was the figure of Jesus Christ, who ventured 
 beyond the ancient goals and opened a new and 
 living way toward God. 
 
 In the New Testament Jesus appeared as one 
 80
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 who directed men beyond the old tradition. He 
 was often in conflict with the ancient order. It 
 was not sufficient for Him to know what was said 
 by them of old time. He was free to say things 
 radically different. And He did not offer Himself 
 as another lawgiver or dictator. He proclaimed 
 Himself rather as a friend and teacher, whose 
 words rested not so much upon his own authority 
 as upon experience. The truth itself would make 
 men free. Others, coming after Him, would do 
 greater things than Himself. 
 
 Jewish descent was not necessary in order to be 
 a true son of Abraham. The God whom Jesus 
 worshiped counted as true sons of Abraham only 
 those who had faith like Abraham's a faith 
 for adventure and endurance, in the interest of a 
 righteous cause. To Jesus any place was just as 
 sacred as Jerusalem, if it were a place where men 
 truly worshiped God. 
 
 St. Paul understood how new and untraditional 
 the religion of Jesus was in this respect. He saw 
 that a Jew is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but 
 he is a Jew who is one inwardly, regardless of 
 blood or any ceremonial. The apostle Paul re- 
 peated no conviction oftener or with greater em- 
 phasis than this, that in Christianity there is no 
 
 81
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor 
 free; that the old order had passed away, and be- 
 hold all things are new! 
 
 It was, then, upon such a leader as this that the 
 Jewish Christians were to fix their eyes as they 
 ran their race, surrounded by the cloud of wit- 
 nesses. When Jesus Christ is thus understood, He 
 becomes an inspiring leader for an age in which 
 the old traditions clash. He becomes the embodi- 
 ment of the best elements of all the streams of 
 culture in the race. The gentle Buddha, the wise 
 Confucius, the earnest Mohammed are not re- 
 pelled by Christ, but, like Moses and the prophets, 
 receive through Him the vindication and fulfill- 
 ment of the true spirit of their teaching. It is the 
 fuller appreciation of this fact which is opening a 
 new chapter in Christian missions. The Christian 
 missionary no longer feels compelled to denounce 
 en bloc all of these ancient revelations of God 
 among the various peoples of the earth. On the 
 contrary, he seeks in their sacred books for every 
 Christ-like word, and is ready to employ at its 
 full value every truly catholic text or parable of 
 the New Testament Scriptures. 
 
 It is also this deep, free spirit of Christ which 
 may guide one in the confusion which many ex- 
 
 82
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 perience in our scientific age. The so-called con- 
 flict between science and religion has its ground 
 in narrow and superficial views of science and of 
 religion. One is almost able to say that such a con- 
 flict no longer exists between minds of the first rank 
 either among scientists or ministers. Christianity, 
 at its best, in our day welcomes in the very name 
 and spirit of Christ all the knowledge, all the 
 investigation, all the genuine experimentation of 
 science. And Christianity does this, not with the 
 feeling that science works in an alien realm, but 
 in the conviction that its problems lie at the very 
 heart of its own task, the task, namely, of so un- 
 derstanding nature and life, God and the world 
 and man, that it may be possible to build more 
 rapidly and more securely a kingdom of righteous- 
 ness and love and peace upon the earth. Religion 
 needs the aid of science to abolish superstition 
 and to refine the tools of progress; and science 
 needs religion to keep alive the ideal meaning 
 of all our tasks, and to make luminous and 
 resplendent, the social, spiritual goal of all our 
 labor. 
 
 When, therefore, the Christian, in the race he 
 runs, looks forward to Jesus Christ, he should see 
 in Him not an arbitrary mind, nor a barrier to 
 
 83
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 progress, but a free spirit, opening the course and 
 himself urging all men ever onward in the way. 
 This represents the ultimate emancipation of 
 mankind. It was of profound importance to free 
 men from the tyranny of the moment and from 
 the bonds of immediate experience by extending 
 the perspective of human life into the past and 
 preserving there the great characters and deeds 
 of history. But that achievement still made pos- 
 sible a fatal bondage the bondage of tradition, 
 of precedent, of a fixed standard. 
 
 The other emancipation, in which the human 
 spirit especially rejoices to-day, is release from 
 this slavery of tradition. Men feel themselves 
 freer than ever before to accept from any culture 
 of the past its rich treasure, without thereby be- 
 coming the devotees of all the elements of that 
 culture, or forfeiting the right to accept the gifts 
 of other peoples. One may now, at last, be both a 
 Greek and a Jew, a scientist and a saint, a scholar 
 and a Christian, in the deepest and best import 
 of these terms. 
 
 And finally, it is some satisfaction to remind 
 ourselves that the writer of the letter to the 
 Hebrews realized that the cloud of witnesses he 
 described were not themselves perfect. Those who 
 
 84
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 came after them were necessary to complete what 
 the ancient heroes attempted "God having 
 provided some better thing for us, that they with- 
 out us should not be made perfect." It is doubtful 
 whether the greatest men of the past ever desired 
 their own words to be praised as the final state- 
 ments of truth, or their deeds as the end of per- 
 fection. It is more frequently the desire of the 
 parent that the child should accomplish finer and 
 greater things. Every right-thinking man who is 
 compelled to give up a task into which he has put 
 his life is happy to see others carry it on, and he 
 is doubly happy if by encouragement and ap- 
 proval he is able to assist them to surpass his 
 own achievements. Nothing gives finer satisfac- 
 tion to a teacher than to be outdone in his own 
 specialty by his pupils. 
 
 It is the saving salt of human nature that this 
 power of appreciation is greater than the power 
 of creation. Men who are themselves weak and 
 imperfect in moral achievement, may yet encour- 
 age others to better deeds. The earnest approval 
 of good men by those less virtuous is a common 
 thing, and such approval helps to make the good 
 man better. As has been said, " If only those were 
 allowed to uphold standards who had demon- 
 
 85
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 strated their ability to live up to them, how our 
 reigning ideals would suffer." "Common enough 
 is that mild predilection for the right which is 
 equal to supporting some one else under tempta- 
 tion." 
 
 The cloud of witnesses is not, then, superfluous 
 or cumbrous. They give zest to the contestants. 
 Their own hopes and broken efforts yet await ful- 
 fillment. They are able to appreciate what they 
 could not accomplish. Instead of restraining, 
 they urge on the battle. Whose heart is not quick- 
 ened in him when he takes up his daily task to 
 think that there are those who care? Who is not 
 strengthened against temptation, even in his soli- 
 tude, when he recalls in memory a pure face look- 
 ing into his? And who does not feel the stirring 
 ardor in a company of human souls assembled in 
 a quiet place of worship, striving together in their 
 wills to find the way of life and to walk in it? 
 Over them brood the spirits of the mighty dead, 
 rank on rank massing themselves upward into the 
 mystic amphitheater of memory and faith. Who 
 does not respond to their presence by some new 
 dedication of his being to the race they ran and 
 to which they urge us on? 
 
 "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about 
 86
 
 THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 
 
 with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside 
 every weight, and the sin which doth so easily 
 beset us, and let us run with patience the race 
 that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author 
 and the finisher of our faith."
 
 REGENERATION
 
 REGENERATION 
 
 "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." 
 John in, 7. 
 
 THE sermon is the repetition of the last word 
 Ye must be born again, and again, and again. 
 Some commentators observe that a stricter trans- 
 lation would be, "Ye must be born anew"; or, 
 "Ye must be born from above"; but neither of 
 these meanings is inconsistent with the idea of 
 continuous regeneration or rebirth, which several 
 understand the text to emphasize. The same 
 thought often recurs, particularly in the letters 
 of St. Paul. He writes to the Roman Christians, 
 "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your 
 mind"; and to the Ephesians, "Be renewed in 
 the spirit of your mind"; and to the Colossians, 
 "Lie not to one another seeing that ye have put 
 off the old man with his doings, and have put on 
 the new man which is being renewed unto knowl- 
 edge after the image of Him that created him." 
 In the history of Christianity this continuous 
 regeneration has sometimes been displaced by the 
 idea of a unique, cataclysmic spiritual experience, 
 
 91
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 known as conversion. As one is born into the 
 natural world, so, it is contended, one must expe- 
 rience a second birth into the spiritual world. 
 Whoever knows himself to have experienced this 
 regeneration is a Christian and worthy to be a 
 member of the visible church, while any one who 
 has not felt this inner event remains outside the 
 company of the saved. Great agitation arose in 
 the early days of this country over the nature and 
 necessity of the second birth. The Puritan fathers 
 held strongly to the doctrine that the visible 
 church should consist of none but evident Chris- 
 tians, and none were admitted to the adult mem- 
 bership of the churches who could not relate some 
 instance of the transforming operation of God in 
 their own lives. But their children, educated and 
 trained in the Christian faith, moral and earnest 
 in their lives, yet frequently could lay claim to no 
 such experience as that which their parents had 
 called a change of heart, and were not conscious 
 of anything they could designate as the work of 
 God in then* souls. Consequently their right to 
 membership in the church was called in question. 
 The halfway covenant, as it was called, came into 
 use during the seventeenth century. This cove- 
 nant permitted such unregenerate members to 
 
 92
 
 REGENERATION 
 
 remain in the church, and entitled them to trans- 
 mit church membership to their children, but it did 
 not entitle them to partake of the communion. 
 The ambiguities and perplexities of that practice, 
 however, were not long endured. Its critics 
 charged that the halfway covenant devitalized 
 religion and scandalized the church. Jonathan 
 Edwards denounced it and the course of strict 
 orthodoxy clung to the doctrine of a regenerate 
 church membership. 
 
 Essentially the same view of conversion and 
 of the necessity of such a regenerate membership 
 is still maintained in many churches, and for not 
 a few whose theory of the world no longer includes 
 original sin and miracles of grace, there yet sur- 
 vives the vague feeling that religion is only for 
 those who are peculiarly gifted for it or have had 
 it thrust upon them by some unusual experience.^ 
 The consequence is that conscientious persons 
 sometimes make pathetic efforts to find evidence 
 in their lives of a divine visitation, and not in- 
 frequently attach undue importance to merely 
 incidental and even grotesque phenomena. Thus 
 in the great Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky at 
 the beginning of the last century, men and women 
 thought themselves spiritually transformed be- 
 
 93
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 cause, during the preaching and exhortations, 
 they fell down in trances, or jumped about in 
 muscular paroxysms, or became subject to what 
 was called the "barking exercise." Others re- 
 ceived their assurance in the form of visions and 
 voices; flashes of light and dreams. 
 
 Equally pathetic have been the negative cases 
 of those who sincerely sought some token but 
 found none. They were not encouraged to at- 
 tach religious importance to those natural im- 
 pulses and awakenings which are the normal 
 expressions of the spiritual tendencies of human 
 nature, and were therefore forced, in spite of their 
 moral earnestness and sincere sympathy with 
 Christian ideals, to regard themselves as unre- 
 generate and unfit for membership in the church. 
 One still meets people who explain their aloofness 
 from the Church by saying they never experi- 
 enced the feeling which they consider as the pri- 
 mary requisite. They seem not to imagine that this 
 "feeling" may be in any way within their control, 
 subject to their own volition and dependent upon 
 objective activities and natural relationships. 
 Unfortunately in our common English version of 
 the New Testament the appeal to become Chris- 
 tians is uniformly mistranslated, so that men 
 
 94
 
 REGENERATION . 
 
 read that they are to "be converted"; whereas * 
 the verb so rendered is active and carries a sum- 
 mons to turn, or turn yourselves to God. "In 
 the New Testament," says an authority, "con- 
 version is always represented as man's act an 
 act of which he is capable under the appeal and -^"" 
 influence of the truth." 
 
 It is difficult for men to attach the same spirit- 
 ual importance to acts which they involuntarily 
 perform and those which they deliberately initi- 
 ate. Among primitive peoples an entirely dis- 
 proportionate value is attributed to involuntary 
 acts, such as talking hi sleep, or raving in delirium. 
 Sneezing, for example, is thought so evidently 
 due to a seizure by some spirit that it is commonly 
 followed by a salutation and prayer formula pre- 
 scribed by custom. Something of this same rev- 
 erence for passive states of feeling survives in the 
 popular idea that unusual potency and meaning 
 belong to spontaneous mental events and to 
 ecstatic emotions. 
 
 It is at this point that modern psychology has 
 made some of its most important contributions 
 to the understanding of religion. It recognizes 
 that the soul does experience awakenings, often , 
 intense and transforming, which are truly 1 ^ 
 
 95
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 births, and it recognizes that these new births 
 occur again and again and again. The period 
 of youth is preeminently the time of great emo- 
 tional crises, of conversions, of the attainment 
 of insight and enthusiasm with reference to all 
 racial and social ideals. It is the epoch in which 
 the individual not only naturally becomes reli- 
 gious, but also patriotic and domestic and so- 
 cially enlightened. Under anything like normal 
 conditions, youth responds to the moods of na- 
 ture, and to the appeals of the great institutions 
 of society with a spontaneity and an inner com- 
 pulsion which are among the most impressive 
 and reassuring phenomena of human life. That 
 is the time when men most readily volunteer in 
 the service of their country; when they are willing 
 to enter upon long and arduous apprenticeships 
 for professions and business; when they are 
 capable of stupendous deprivations and labors 
 through romantic attachments; and when also 
 they are most able to be enthralled by the vision 
 of a kingdom of utter love and good will among 
 men. 
 
 This initial experience may be crucial and de- 
 cisive. It may give the set and curve to the whole 
 aftercourse of life. Few persons take up new 
 
 96
 
 REGENERATION 
 
 interests, either ideal or practical, after the period 
 of adolescence. It is notoriously difficult to form 
 intimate friendships after that time. But even 
 in youth these choices are seldom abrupt and 
 momentary. They have been prepared for by 
 gradual development, by ripening of powers, and 
 by cumulative experiences. The records of reli- 
 gious awakenings show the influence of environ- 
 ment, of early training, of temperament and of 
 direct suggestion. They vary as much with refer- 
 ence to the duration of the period of inquiry and 
 suspense, and the manner of final decision, as do 
 the choice of vocations and the formation of life 
 partnerships. It is also a notable fact that a 
 single conversion, however impressive and au- 
 thentic it may seem to be, seldom gives a man 
 complete satisfaction and security. Is not the 
 literature of personal piety full of misgivings and 
 apprehensions concerning the salvation of souls 
 which once thought themselves redeemed, but 
 have later become perplexed and confused? Do 
 they not seek the repetition of the conversion 
 experience, with its renewed sense of the divine 
 presence and comfort? 
 
 When one compares religious life with intellec- 
 tual development or with professional pursuits, 
 
 97
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 the successive stages in all of them seem quite 
 similar. The first essential is the development 
 of interest in a given direction. It is not so im- 
 portant how that interest awakens, if it be genu- 
 ine and vital. It may arise from some other per- 
 son's urgent persuasion, or from a book one has 
 read, or from a character one has admired. The 
 momentous question may be decided in a restless 
 night of anxiety, or during a quiet walk by the 
 seashore, or in a public assembly. There are 
 endless variations of circumstance in connection 
 with the decision to be a lawyer, a mathematician, 
 a Christian. Probably most men could not give 
 any clear account of the beginnings of their deep- 
 est interests. These interests have sprung from 
 familiar associations and have grown strong in 
 a congenial atmosphere without much introspec- 
 tion or conflict. The investigations of such ex- 
 periences show that a painful or ecstatic beginning 
 is no more a guaranty of a successful religious 
 career than it is of a successful legal or scientific 
 career. 
 
 But what is constantly emphasized in all great 
 human characters is that they have continually 
 met crises and tasks which elicited new powers, 
 new manifestations of energy and talent. If the 
 
 98
 
 REGENERATION 
 
 realms of science and art are so vast and so com- 
 plex that they confront the greatest geniuses with 
 new levels and unsuspected areas to be possessed, 
 it might be expected that religion, comprehend- 
 ing, as it does, all the ideal values and relation- 
 ships of life, would also offer to common men and 
 to spiritual geniuses likewise, perpetual regenera- 
 tion and rebirth. In education, a student passes 
 from grade to grade; from grammar school to 
 high school; from high school to college; from col- 
 lege to the university and professional school, 
 with every year opening new fields and demand- 
 ing inner development and awakening. And at 
 its best, life beyond the schools unfolds in epochs 
 and opportunities, which, though less formally 
 discriminated, are equally real and exacting. 
 Religion ought also to be viewed hi a similar per- 
 spective in order that there might be some rea- 
 sonable gradation of spiritual tasks in the f ulfill- 
 ment of which a man might gain the consciousness 
 of mastery and progress. Too many men who 
 have graduated from college still possess only a 
 kindergarten experience of religion. Strong men 
 of affairs, who have made their way into large 
 industries and technical arts, cannot be equally 
 expert in religion without having lived in its 
 
 99
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 atmosphere and shared in its modern growing 
 life. They may not know, for example, what the 
 Modernist Movement is, or the new social re- 
 ligion which is permeating all the churches, or 
 the mighty impetus toward federation and union 
 in all denominations, or the awakening energy, 
 under the stimulus of international contact, in 
 the great world religions. Neither in the realm 
 of personal piety, nor of religious theory, nor of 
 objective charity and philanthropy have there 
 ever been such reasonable and persuasive appeals 
 to all classes of good and vigorous men to be born 
 again into still larger religious life. 
 
 How, then, may we conceive definitely and 
 cogently of this life of the spirit which summons 
 us to perpetual regeneration? There are many 
 ways of formulating it and of bodying it forth in 
 symbol and in deed. I here choose three expres- 
 sions for it, intending thereby to release and stim- 
 ulate our thought of it, rather than to exhibit 
 any set theory or formal pattern. 
 > First, let us conceive the religious life as sym- 
 bolized by Jesus Christ. We think of it, then, as 
 loyalty to the principles He taught and the prac- 
 tice of such graciousness and such heroic idealism 
 as He displayed. We cherish his faith and his 
 
 100
 
 REGENERATION 
 
 buoyant optimism. We see, with Him, a marvel- 
 ous Providence in the laws of nature and in hu- 
 man history. We come to believe so profoundly 
 in the spiritual qualities of human hearts that we 
 see virtues and new moral possibilities in publi- 
 cans and sinners. We pray for them that persecute 
 us. We cultivate love for our enemies. We set 
 before ourselves the kingdom of righteousness and 
 peace and joy, and we forego anxious thought for 
 any external goods or worldly station. 
 
 When we sin, we think of Christ; how it dis- 
 honors Him; how tenderly He forgives us; and 
 how He strengthens our wills for better things 
 ahead. When life goes utterly against us, for- 
 tunes fail, hopes wane, and death waits then, 
 too, we lay hold on Christ, our comforter, our 
 strength, and our immortal life. 
 
 All this and far more is Jesus Christ to the liv- 
 ing heart of the Church. Men naturally think in 
 personal terms, and the personality of Christ for 
 these thousands of years has been the central 
 figure in the moral and spiritual drama of millions 
 of men. When they sinned against other men it 
 was against Him too. When they achieved good 
 works, it was by his help; and when they faced 
 untried ways, He walked by their side. The 
 
 101
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Church has made its ritual around the events of 
 Christ's earthly life, his birth, death, and resur- 
 rection, and its hymns and prayers witness to 
 his living presence in the imagination of the wor- 
 shipers. Therefore, it is the simplest and most 
 natural statement of what is meant by religion to 
 say that it is the life of Christ reproduced in the 
 lives of men. It is affection for Him, obedience to 
 Him, and faithfulness to his spirit. One cannot 
 miss the essential things of religion if he takes it 
 in this way, always careful to appreciate the 
 breadth and richness of Christ's teaching and the 
 continuous development which it enjoins. 
 
 But it is possible also to define religion in quite 
 different terms. One may say it is the acceptance 
 of the standards and ideals of his family, of his 
 teachers, and of the great characters of the day 
 in which he lives. Many persons formulate their 
 highest values in that way. They appropriate the 
 practical precepts and moral principles, without 
 the phraseology or forms of piety. There are 
 doubtless excellent members of all churches who 
 maintain this matter-of-fact attitude. They may 
 have little capacity or taste for forms or for doc- 
 trinal statements. There are certainly numerous 
 excellent Christians who have no musical knowl- 
 
 102
 
 REGENERATION 
 
 edge or skill, and it is conceivable that similarly 
 many lack that vivid imagination and emotional 
 power which the fullest use of symbolism and 
 ritual involves. If, then, some individuals protest 
 that their religion consists in doing the best they 
 can to live a good life, according to the standards 
 of the best men about them, that cannot lead 
 them far astray. It is only necessary that they 
 take themselves seriously in that position, and 
 feel some moral urgency and responsibility for the 
 actual realization of those ideals. No matter how 
 adequate the theoretical formulation of religious 
 standards may be, it is essential that they appeal 
 to the will and thus lead on from one achievement 
 to another. It is more important hi religion that 
 a man follow vigorously whatever ideals he may 
 possess, provided they are live and growing ideals, 
 than it is that he have superior theories of life 
 without the will to pursue them. For when a per- 
 son begins to take life seriously at any point, it 
 has a marvelous way of leading him on and on 
 through birth after birth, into fuller participation 
 and into larger relationships. 
 
 A third possible statement of religion is that it 
 emphasizes the spiritual qualities of all the great 
 constructive interests of society and seeks to 
 
 103
 
 organize them into an impressive and inspiring 
 unity. Religion is thus viewed as the deepest 
 reality in science, in art, and in social relationship. 
 The chief concern of science is the discovery 
 and presentation of the truth; the great object 
 of art is the vision and expression of beauty. 
 The saving quality of business is integrity; the 
 great quest of industry is efficiency, and the 
 one essential of social organization is good will. 
 Wherever men are engaged upon the great fun- 
 damental human interests, they are occupied 
 with the vital things of religion. It is only in the 
 vicious and whimsical and purposeless activities 
 that religion does not appear, for it cannot exist 
 together with the inconsistencies of evil wills, or 
 with the caprice of insincere hearts. Religion, at 
 its best, exalts the truth of science, the beauty of 
 art, the integrity of business, the industry of labor 
 and the companionship of love. It seeks the full- 
 ness of life. Unlike science or art or industry, it 
 cannot be content with a part or with a fragment 
 of the whole. It demands all of these together in 
 a living organic unity of social action. And this 
 unity is nothing forced or artificial. It is a na- 
 tural unity which all human life craves. It is the 
 oneness of family life, and it is the group con- 
 
 104
 
 REGENERATION 
 
 sciousness of the patriotic and loyal community 
 taken as a whole. It is the function of religion to 
 promote and symbolize this unity. The more spe- 
 cialized men's pursuits become, the more impor- 
 tant is it to make clear the interdependence of 
 all individuals in the common life and to attract 
 each separate, solitary person into the fellowship 
 of the ideal community. 
 
 In some such ways may religion be conceived, 
 as loyalty to Jesus Christ, as fidelity to the inher- 
 ited social tradition at its best, and as devotion 
 to the inner spirit and meaning of special pursuits, 
 taken in their natural implications. In all of these 
 conceptions there is presented an ideal to be pro- 
 gressively realized by the ceaseless renewal and 
 development of one's nature, and of the social 
 order itself. This process need no longer be 
 thought entirely unaccountable or mysterious. 
 It takes place in ways which are more and more 
 brought into relation with all experiences of intel- 
 lectual enlargement and of the strivings of the 
 will. So far from being exceptional, such awak- 
 enings are normal phenomena of all live and eager 
 minds. In the natural course of events every in- 
 dividual is subject to many influences which offer 
 him entrance into new life. By attention to these 
 
 105
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 and to the stirrings of his soul within him, he may 
 learn how to take advantage of them for the re- 
 finement of his spiritual nature and the attain- 
 ment of a more Christ-like stature. 
 * The great lif e of Nature often draws men into 
 moods and impulses where new and better worlds 
 are made more easily accessible. The poets 
 know how to convey the qualities of such mo- 
 ments. Thus one writes: 
 
 "Perchance we first time really see a flower! 
 
 Some inward grandeur unsuspect makes cry! 
 Or other's nobleness enchains our view! 
 
 In such exquisitely informing hour 
 Earth's old futilities pass downcast by, 
 
 And life on sudden takes eternal hue." 
 
 ^ . Or, again, it is a great unselfish life silhouetted 
 against some vast human need. Such was the in- 
 fluence which transformed Stanley when he found 
 Livingstone in the heart of Africa. Stanley said: 
 "For four months and four days I lived with him 
 in the same hut, or in the same tent, and I never 
 found a fault with him. I went to Africa a preju- 
 diced man against religion, and the worst infidel 
 in London. To a reporter like myself, who had 
 only to deal with wars, mass meetings, and polit- 
 ical gatherings, sentimental matters were quite 
 
 106
 
 REGENERATION 
 
 out of my province. But there came to me a long 
 time of reflection. I was out there away from a 
 worldly world. I saw this solitary old man there, 
 and I asked myself, *Why does he stop here? 
 What is it that inspires him?' For months after 
 we met I found myself listening to him, wondering 
 at the old man carrying out the words, 'Leave all 
 and follow me.' But little by little, seeing his 
 piety, his gentleness, his zeal, his earnestness, and 
 how he went quietly about his business, I was con- 
 verted by him." 
 
 In conclusion I mention one of the most potent 
 and penetrating influences for moral purification 
 and renewal the influence of a company of peo- 
 ple brought together and dominated by an ele- 
 vating appreciation and a noble purpose. It is 
 experienced at times in listening to a great orches- 
 tra. The musicians have lived through the day 
 quite as other men, worried by little practicalities, 
 teaching difficult pupils, meeting creditors, rack- 
 ing their minds for some increment of comfort on 
 the morrow. Individually, they bear the shifting 
 fortunes of fate as best they can, often with dis- 
 appointed ambitions, with doubts of themselves 
 and of the world, with occasional half-holidays 
 and their fitful joys. But now they are parts 
 
 107
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 of the orchestra. They are lifted out of them- 
 selves by the theme of the symphony and are 
 carried by the very harmony they create into an 
 ideal world of beauty and mystery. And that di- 
 viner world opens also, in some measure, for all 
 who hear what the musicians feel. Fatigue and 
 ennui, selfish cares and petty apprehensions are 
 forgotten. For the time, the hard lines relax and 
 one of the great "melting moods" radiates as by 
 one impulse through all hearts. 
 
 Something like that is often achieved for us by 
 religion. It gathers our weak and wavering hu- 
 man natures around the ancient altars of faith 
 and aspiration. It sounds out the great notes of 
 forgiveness, of encouragement, of divine com- 
 panionship and spiritual renewal. It elevates 
 the symbols of sacrificial love and of immortal 
 hope. The invisible and eternal things, at other 
 times often obscured and forgotten, are now 
 brought near and made real again. Every man 
 who sincerely yields himself to the influences of 
 these hours of worship feels himself quickened and 
 ennobled. In such moments the gates of new life 
 open and we are born again.
 
 RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE
 
 RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 
 
 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that 
 is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the 
 midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 
 Gen. m, 9. 
 
 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was 
 there the tree of life. Rev. xxn, 2. 
 
 IT is significant that in the first and last books 
 of the Bible, the tree of life has a central place. 
 It stands in the midst of the Garden of Eden and 
 of the heavenly paradise. Religion throughout 
 its history is just the quest for life sometimes 
 life on a physical plane, in basket and in store, in 
 flocks and fruits of the field, but also at times 
 life which is more than meat. In early Hebrew 
 tradition, Abraham moved out from his ancestral 
 place into a far country, seeking a freer and 
 richer life. Moses, summoning the tribes of Is- 
 rael, led them toward a more fruitful country, 
 toward a land flowing with milk and honey. 
 Jesus leads onward in the same great quest 
 and from his heart bursts the cry: "I have come 
 that ye may have life and have it more abun- 
 dantly." 
 
 Ill
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 The deepest thing in all human experience is 
 precisely this craving for self-fulfillment, self- 
 satisfaction. It is this which has stirred the race 
 from its earliest infancy. It is this which pulses 
 now in the life of nations. It is this which makes 
 us labor, suffer, and aspire. This quest for life 
 is the deepest, divinest thing in us, and in its 
 intensest, most ideal form, it is the very heart and 
 soul of religion. Everything religious is to be in- 
 terpreted in terms of this craving. Many people 
 take religion mechanically, externally, institu- 
 tionally, without any understanding of its inner, 
 pulsing spirit. But none of the deeds or doctrines, 
 or forms of worship can be at all understood in 
 their real meaning except as the expression of this 
 will to live, this ceaseless, indomitable instinct 
 for life. In the successive ages of man, in the gi- 
 gantic struggles which history records, it is hunger 
 for the bread of life which throbs at the heart ol 
 primitive and of spiritual religions. 
 
 Consider deeds. The great question which 
 men are always asking is, "What must we do to 
 inherit life," or, "What must we do to be saved?*' 
 The deeds of religion are developed in terms of 
 this desire. In the early Hebrew religion, it was 
 a matter of cultus. One must observe customary 
 
 11*
 
 RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 
 
 rites, such as sacrifice. One must keep the tra- 
 ditions and observe the institutional forms. 
 
 In the time of the great prophets, this mechan- 
 ical, external cultus was held not to be sufficient. 
 Sacrifices and the observation of mere forms of 
 worship were felt to be hindrances and abomina- 
 tions. They asked themselves the simple, heart- 
 searching question: "What does the Lord thy 
 God require of thee, but to do justice, to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" 
 
 When Jesus was asked in his time what a man 
 must do in order to gain life, He gave very simple 
 answers: Love your neighbor, give to the poor. 
 Cultivate gentleness and kindliness, for the world 
 suffers because of selfishness, hatred, and narrow- 
 ness of heart. Life for each and all is to be found 
 in an attitude of neighborliness, of great generos- 
 ity, the giving of the best we possess for others. 
 The disciples were enjoined to go into all the 
 world to tell this message of love and service, in 
 order that men everywhere might be healed and 
 find health and strength. Men were to be re- 
 leased from their prisons, their minds freed from 
 hatred and enmity, and their spirits brought into 
 the kingdom of fraternity and good will. 
 
 What are the earnest people of our time seeking 
 113
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 to do in order to have life? What is the socialist 
 seeking to do? What is the modern man trying 
 to do with all the resources of science at his com- 
 mand? They are seeking just what religionists 
 have always been seeking. They are trying to 
 enter into greater riches, trying to gain health 
 and beauty and a larger use of their powers. So, 
 in the world, here and now, and in coming time, 
 men shall be able to lay hold on vaster and more 
 satisfying treasures of life. The cries of the 
 wounded and distressed are the cries of those who 
 suffer and are broken by ways which are not re- 
 ligious. Sometimes through their own mistakes, 
 and often by the sins of others, they are shut out 
 from life by injustice and ignorance and narrow 
 selfishness. 
 
 The doctrines of religion are also determined 
 in terms of this quest for life. What must a man 
 believe in order to have abundant life? He must 
 believe those things which in his living experience 
 are necessary for guidance, for satisfaction, for 
 the fulfillment of life in manifold and ideal ways. 
 These things change from age to age. An illus- 
 tration may be given in terms of belief about 
 Jesus Christ. In the apostolic age, men had to 
 believe that Christ was raised from the dead; 
 
 114
 
 RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 
 
 that was the great common belief with refer- 
 ence to Him. But it was a faith which involved 
 further and more ultimate conviction. Believing 
 that Jesus had come to earth to lead men into a 
 larger, more adequate life, his resurrection was 
 regarded as a sign that accompanied Him, a sym- 
 bol of his power and of his possession of God's 
 truth. Therefore, belief that Jesus was raised 
 from the dead signified faith in Him as the Lord 
 of life. 
 
 Later Jesus was regarded as the Divine Logos, 
 the Eternal Spirit of the world according to the 
 Greek conception. He was the incarnation of this 
 Logos, a living word of God. 
 
 Again came an age of conflict, and strife, an 
 age when the Church had gained power and was 
 able to command legions of mediaeval knights to 
 fight its battles. Jesus was believed in at this 
 tune as a king, a conqueror, riding upon a charger, 
 sword in hand, gorgeous with emblems and in- 
 signia of power. 
 
 To believe in Christ to-day is to believe in none 
 of these things, primarily, but to believe in Him 
 with reference to what we are now trying to do. 
 How does this age seek life? It seeks life through 
 knowledge, through expert acquaintance with the 
 
 115
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 laws of nature. More than ever before, man sets 
 for himself the task of understanding the world, 
 our human nature, and the scale of our moral 
 values. The supreme need is to know what things 
 are little and what things are great. Therefore, 
 Jesus becomes in this age one who must be be- 
 lieved in as a great teacher, as a man of fresh, 
 moral insight, as a revealer of the kingdom of 
 love and righteousness, and a guide to its fulfill- 
 ment. When we seek knowledge and insight with 
 reference to the laws of nature and the conduct 
 of life, we cannot ask for miracles or for military 
 power, but must seek illumination of the mind, 
 quickening of spirit, arousing of affection and 
 will toward ideal interests. Therefore, Jesus is 
 one who proclaims anew the supremacy of truth, 
 and declares it to the world now, as to his dis- 
 ciples of old. The Church increasingly invites 
 people to believe in Christ with reference to this 
 greatest, most fundamental need at the present 
 time the need of knowledge and of rational 
 ideals of life. 
 
 The same principle may be illustrated by other 
 great doctrines of the Church. Belief in the Scrip- 
 tures at one time involved a belief in many formal 
 statements about the Scriptures, even faith in 
 
 116
 
 RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 
 
 verbal inspiration. For many people, faith in the 
 uniform and equal authority of the different 
 books of the Bible is essential to their belief in the 
 book as an unique revelation of God's will. On 
 the other hand, to increasing numbers of Chris- 
 tians, faith in the Scriptures means faith in them 
 as a body of literature in which is recorded the 
 spiritual experiences of the Hebrew people and of 
 the early Christian Church, struggling to attain 
 life for the race and for the community. Modern 
 belief in the Scriptures is belief in them as an illu- 
 minating record of that great Hebraic quest for 
 life. The Scriptures disclose to sensitive, alert 
 minds the fundamental realities of spiritual ex- 
 perience. In them are many suggestions, many 
 dramatic incidents by which our minds and 
 hearts are quickened in the pursuit of the noblest 
 ideals. There is nothing hard and fast, nothing 
 mechanical or literal about them. They are always 
 revealing the great, urgent need of the human 
 heart for infinite reality. 
 
 It is the same with reference to our belief in 
 God. Some past beliefs in God are so antago- 
 nistic, so repugnant to present views, that to 
 believe them would make us worse than infidels. 
 They belong to faiths upon which the human 
 
 117
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 heart once rested, but which no longer inspire us. 
 To-day, chiefly in the social relations of human 
 beings, such as parent and child, and friend -with 
 friend, we find that idea of God which satisfies 
 our deepest needs and which may be believed in 
 without doing injury to the other things which 
 we know to be true. 
 
 Forms of worship, like deeds and beliefs, also 
 rise in the quest for life and have value as they 
 express it and sustain it. Perhaps the Church, in 
 its practices of worship, may be best understood 
 when thought of as a company of people who are 
 searching everywhere for those things that give 
 the greatest health and power and efficiency to 
 all human beings. Thinking of the Church thus, 
 as a company of people who would like to know 
 what is best to do, and what is the most helpful 
 to believe, inspiration and spiritual health are 
 found in its services. In the work-a-day world 
 we are confronted constantly by failure and by 
 the tragedies of life which break our hearts and 
 humble us to the dust. They cast clouds over us 
 and we cannot see our way. Then we come to the 
 Church and dramatize in imagination the great, 
 vivid, appealing experiences of the race at its 
 best. We sing, "Come ye disconsolate, where'er 
 
 118
 
 RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 
 
 ye languish," as though here, in this moment, we 
 were in close and vital communion with the un- 
 diminished forces and agencies of the spiritual 
 universe. By reaffirming in hymns and prayers 
 and meditations the achievements of the past, 
 and the hopes of our hearts, we are able to see the 
 meaning of life again, to see it steadily and to see 
 it whole. We are able to assess the experiences 
 through which we have come, reverses of fortune, 
 disasters and tragedies, faults and sins, and to rise 
 above them. Through the way of suffering love 
 and new resolves, we come to regard them as 
 incidents, as events which do not count, as things 
 which, at most, only discipline us, and give us 
 more adequate capacity for the finer, more satis- 
 fying things of life. The ritual, stately and re- 
 fined, is precisely the dramatization of these great 
 crucial moments of adventure, of defeat and re- 
 covery in the soul's unresting aspiration. When 
 we sympathetically open our hearts, and go into 
 a place of worship, participate in the spirit of the 
 service, if not always in the literal thought and 
 language, share in the moods that vibrate through 
 the prayers, and follow the minister's words, 
 in their ideal intent, is it not true that we find 
 ourselves back upon the heights where the visions 
 
 119
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 of life come clear and shining, full of fascinating 
 grandeur and sublimity? This state is no mere 
 emotional ecstasy, but a certain, convincing reaf- 
 firmation of the things which the best and greatest 
 minds of the world have found good and beautiful. 
 
 It is just a clearer view of the things which 
 the people who seemed to have least of them af- 
 firmed to be the best. It has often happened in 
 the history of religion that those individuals who 
 have had the most reverses, the least success, the 
 smallest share of material goods, have been the 
 people in whom the spiritual vision was clearest. 
 But at times, also, people surfeited with outward 
 goods, understand, too, these things upon which 
 souls are truly nourished. These are the things 
 which wise parents crave for their children. 
 These are the things to which a man clings when 
 death confronts him. These are the things which 
 are always emerging out of our experience, tran- 
 scending all the levels of cant, of superstition, and 
 of sacerdotalism. These are the eternal values of 
 the divine life in the soul of man. 
 
 Religious services are the means by which con- 
 gregations of people in pursuit of life's ideals take 
 their reckonings. It is like looking at our watches 
 to see what time it is; or employing a compass to 
 
 120
 
 ascertain the direction in which we are traveling; 
 or surveying a map to discern the thoroughfares 
 through which our journey runs. This experience 
 of public religious worship is, in its largest sense, 
 no mere aesthetic indulgence, no mere recreation of 
 mind or heart. It is an unfolding of life, a moving 
 experience of the things upon which our most vital 
 interests turn. They challenge us to the one great 
 adventure in which all the energies and treasures 
 of life are most worthily employed. 
 
 Our life, as it commonly lies before us, is dis- 
 torted. It is fragmentary and inconsequential. 
 Social institutions seem to stand in isolation and 
 to go on independently of each other. People 
 look at educational institutions and say, "Knowl- 
 edge is here." They go to the bureau of charities 
 and exclaim, "Good deeds are here." They go 
 to the drama and say, "The arts are here." It is 
 true that the school communicates intelligence, 
 the bureau of charities administers aid, and the 
 stage is the dramatization of human experience. 
 But none of these is adequate by itself. They 
 need to be brought together, to be unified, to be 
 given organic relation to a total life process. Re- 
 ligion has always sought to achieve such unity 
 and to make it effective, in fact and in symbol. 
 
 121
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 The Church is beginning to fulfill once more this 
 ancient function. It is claiming the august and 
 significant place which it once occupied, but it 
 does so in a new spirit and in ampler fashion. 
 More than any other institution, it seeks to com- 
 bine all ideal interests and to make them vital for 
 individuals of all types and classes. He is not re- 
 ligious who is just intellectual or merely philan- 
 thropic, or exclusively artistic. The religious man, 
 ideally conceived, gathers all these impulses into 
 a living experience, full of intense feeling, noble 
 thought and beautiful expression. 
 
 In the recent holiday season, there were muni- 
 cipal Christmas trees in many places over the 
 country. In some communities, questions arose 
 as to whether these Christmas trees were religious 
 or civic. Churchmen often insisted that they must 
 be regarded as religious, while the civic author- 
 ities contended that they were secular. As a 
 result of such controversy, it may have hap- 
 pened (as so often and so tragically happens) 
 that the good thing itself was made impossible 
 by the contention over it. But these Christmas 
 trees could not be civic in the best sense without 
 being religious, nor could they be most truly re- 
 ligious without being communal. The Christmas 
 
 122
 
 RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 
 
 tree embodies the ideals of community life at its 
 best. It is representative of youth, of cheer, and 
 of good will. It is a symbol of the new civic con- 
 science, of the new ideals permeating the whole 
 people. Were religion divorced from civic and 
 patriotic interests, it would become a meaningless 
 travesty. These two things are one. The aspira- 
 tions which pulse through civic life, toward neigh- 
 borhood and individual welfare, toward more ade- 
 quate living, and more satisfying conditions for 
 all the people of the community, these are the 
 objectives of religion. They express the quest for 
 life, the embodiment of the dreams, longings, and 
 aspirations of our nature, upon which religion 
 founds itself and upon which alone it can keep 
 itself fresh, vital, and significant. 
 
 This ancient yet ever present quest for life re- 
 news itself in our experience to-day and promises 
 a fulfillment such as it has never had before, a ful- 
 fillment in which human aspiration, freer from 
 prejudice and from pettiness and triviality, will 
 rise to a new dignity and express itself in more 
 commanding, satisfying forms of art. Then re- 
 ligion will speak more urgently to men's souls, 
 will inspire them anew, and will gather them into 
 its holy places for refreshment and comfort, for 
 
 123
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 inspiration and hope. To religion, men will con- 
 tinue to turn to know what they ought to do, 
 what they should believe, and to anticipate in 
 imagination the fulfillment of the kingdom of 
 righteousness and love.
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD?
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 
 
 The word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, 
 that thou mayest do it. Deut. xxx, 14. 
 
 THE text belongs to an age when the word of God 
 was not identified with a book or a compilation 
 of books, so much as with the living voice of con- 
 science and aspiration. Although written records 
 existed of which the Book of Deuteronomy itself 
 is a notable example, yet the "word" was pri- 
 marily something spoken. It was vocal and vi- 
 brant. The criteria by which these words of the 
 mind's flowing thought are tested cannot be the 
 same as the criteria usually employed to deter- 
 mine the genuineness of documents. After one has 
 discovered the age of a written record, its author- 
 ship and its literary construction, one has yet to 
 ask its meaning and its value. The words must be 
 made vocal again and allowed to speak to the 
 mind and heart as they did to the first men who 
 cherished them. 
 
 The Bible does not claim to present all truth. 
 Even the world itself could not contain the books 
 necessary for that. Nor is everything which the 
 
 127
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Bible records, true. The earth is not flat and the 
 world is not likely to come to an end soon. The 
 Bible, like all other great collections of books, 
 contains divine words among many which are not 
 divine. It does not distinguish these by any in- 
 fallible marks and we are forced to seek out for 
 ourselves some means of determining their value. 
 We need tests which are applicable, not only to 
 the Bible, but also to the Vedas, to the Koran, to 
 modern literature, and to living oral speech. Our 
 age craves practical, empirical tests which afford 
 the sense of reality even if they yield results which 
 are tentative and incomplete. 
 
 The text itself suggests such a method for dis- 
 covering the true word of God. "The word is 
 very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy 
 heart." This assertion may be taken either as 
 descriptive of something one already knows, or 
 as the means of discovering what is not clearly 
 defined. In the latter case, the meaning is clearer 
 when the sentence is inverted to read: "That 
 word which is nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and 
 in thy heart" is the word. This would mean that 
 whatever word is intimate and vital and com- 
 manding is the true word. There are other texts 
 which are similarly illuminating when inverted. 
 
 128
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 
 
 Take the one which compares the word of God to 
 a two-edged sword. One here gets the emphatic 
 assurance that a word which is quick and powerful 
 and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing 
 even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, 
 and of the joints and marrow, and is a discoverer 
 of the thoughts and intents of the heart, is the 
 word of God. 
 
 In another passage, it is said that all Scripture, 
 given by inspiration of God, is profitable for doc- 
 trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
 in righteousness. In that form the statement has 
 been the subject of endless theological discussion. 
 It has been agreed that all Scripture given by 
 inspiration should be profitable in these ways, but 
 the question keeps reappearing, What Scripture 
 is really given by inspiration? How much simpler 
 it is to take the predicate of the sentence as a gen- 
 uine definition of the subject. Then it means that 
 all Scripture which is profitable for doctrine, for 
 reproof, for correction, for instruction in right- 
 eousness is given by the inspiration of God. 
 When the Psalmist says, "The entrance of thy 
 words giveth light," we confidently believe him 
 to mean that all light-giving words are divine. 
 Again, he exclaims, "Thy word is a lamp unto my 
 
 129
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 feet and a light unto my path," and we cannot 
 be mistaken if we conclude that whatever illu- 
 minates our way and guides our steps is thereby 
 proved to be divine. 
 
 The inversion of these familiar texts enables 
 us to take our stand within immediate experi- 
 ence and to select as divine that which is best in 
 that experience. The author of Deuteronomy 
 evidently endeavored to impress this fact. God's 
 word is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. 
 It is not in heaven or beyond the sea. The di- 
 vine word is not a mystery which only persons 
 of peculiar gifts may discover. It is at the heart 
 of every man's deepest conviction. You may 
 call it conscience, or the voice of duty, or one's 
 most ideal interest, or one's notion of being a 
 gentleman. It is not the exclusive possession of 
 great men, or of fortunate men, or of learned men. 
 It certainly is not the prerogative of "psychics," 
 or of neurotics, or of ignoramuses. It speaks in 
 every heart. All appeals to the masses presuppose 
 their capacity to hear it. All education strives 
 to quicken the power of the common mind to 
 appreciate it. All religion which is vital and 
 satisfying speaks and understands this univer- 
 sal language. 
 
 130
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 
 
 The text gives a characterization of the divine 
 word by which it may be distinguished and recog- 
 nized. It is intimate and vital; it is warm with 
 the heart's burning passion; it is capable of ful- 
 fillment in noble action. These qualities may be 
 variously paraphrased. Three terms from our 
 daily experience are here selected. They are in- 
 tended to emphasize that nearness and depth and 
 utility of the inspired word which so impressed 
 the writer of Deuteronomy. We may affirm then, 
 that the word of God is serious; that it is sane; 
 and that it is enduring. 
 
 The word of God is a serious word. It is earn- 
 est and important. It cannot be insincere nor 
 idle nor capricious. Small talk and curious gos- 
 sip do not utter it. The serious word concerns 
 our main purposes, the ends and interests with 
 which we feel our deeper selves involved. The 
 lighter moods are natural enough and quite inev- 
 itable. Much may be said in then* behalf. Man's 
 life is not all of a piece. One cannot always 
 be his best and greatest self. There are lesser 
 selves which take their turns. In many moments 
 we are only at play. We assume a r6le. We jest. 
 We play the Devil's advocate. In each charac- 
 ter one hears and speaks the language which 
 
 131
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 that character demands. Nor are these charac- 
 ters confused. Every one knows how to allow 
 for casual remarks at tea-parties and on gala 
 days. But when the hour strikes, the player 
 throws aside the mask and resumes the serious 
 task. He is again in earnest and his will strives 
 once more toward its goal. Now the greater 
 words are demanded. There must be no false 
 commands, nor any failure to respond. Noth- 
 ing but the truth will satisfy. The words spoken 
 by a business man over his desk in his busy hours 
 have the edge and thrust of reality. His person- 
 ality is stamped on them. He must redeem them 
 later. So it is with the locomotive engineer at the 
 throttle. So it is with the physician bending over 
 his patient. Each, at his task, devoutly attends 
 to all that he hears and urgently seeks the truest 
 word which can be found. Such words have struc- 
 ture and stability. When weighed against the 
 drifting images of reverie, they are real and sub- 
 stantial. 
 
 The greater the crisis, the more important words 
 become. When Moses had brought the Israelites 
 within sight of the promised land, he was required 
 to let them go forward without him. He had led 
 them through hunger and plague and war. Many 
 
 132
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 
 
 times they had lost heart and rebelled. How 
 could these wayward, impulsive people be made 
 loyal and courageous for the task before them? 
 The writer of Deuteronomy saw that moment in 
 all its tremulous urgency. He felt that it was of 
 vast and cosmic significance. Heaven and earth 
 were called to witness. It was an occasion of life 
 and death, of blessing and cursing, a moment for 
 the word of the ancient covenant and of the 
 inmost conscience to be recognized as the very 
 word of God. 
 
 In the crises of personal history, also, the se- 
 rious things are said. On the day when the son 
 is leaving home to try his fortunes in the open 
 places of the world, the father yearns to sink a 
 word deep into the boy's heart. It is likely to be 
 the word he heard from his father, which experi- 
 ence has only enhanced and brightened. Or it is 
 the word which good friends speak to each other 
 in the mellow moods of comradeship. The trust- 
 ful, confiding hour in which souls unburden them- 
 selves and hold no reservations is the hour of 
 divine speech. There is a peculiar quality of tone 
 and accent at such moments which baffles all de- 
 scription, but it is the quality known to the heart 
 itself. One sometimes suddenly becomes aware 
 
 133
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 of this deeper note of candor and sincerity in a 
 conversation. At first, there is the casual air, 
 the natural remoteness and austerity which is the 
 conventional habit of civil folk. Without any 
 warning or conscious intent, at the mention of a 
 name or a past event, the real communion of 
 souls sets in. By a strange shift, not unlike the 
 half-pleasant sensation of being lowered quickly 
 in an elevator, the conversation descends to a 
 profounder depth. No extraneous assurances are 
 asked or given. The two souls are sure of each 
 other directly and unhesitatingly. The word 
 they convey and cherish in subdued breath, but 
 with inner abandon, is a word with a divine seri- 
 ousness and charm. In after moments they will 
 remember it. In periods of silence and loneliness 
 that memory will radiate warmth and healing 
 light. 
 
 This depth and intensity of meaning is the reli- 
 gious quality. Nowhere is it profounder than in 
 that crucial moment when the troubled soul, con- 
 scious of its guilt and sincerely penitent, hears the 
 words of forgiveness and comfort. When the 
 child, disregarding his father's will, and, suffering 
 in folly and waywardness, comes to himself and 
 turns back toward the outstretched arms of love 
 
 134
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 
 
 then he begins to know what the word of God is. 
 It is the word of compassion and pity which a hu- 
 man father finds welling up in his heart for the 
 son that was lost and is found. It is the word 
 which reconciles estranged friends. That word 
 works miracles in him who utters it and in him 
 who receives it. No other sign is necessary. It 
 carries its own evidence. The joy which flows 
 from it proves its nature. The peace and power 
 which it brings are marks of its divinity. 
 
 Jesus seemed at times to be amazed at the 
 words of compassion and assurance which He 
 spoke to the wayward and the weak. They were 
 not his own but another's. "The words that I 
 speak unto you I speak not of myself." "The 
 word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's 
 who sent me." That is the natural impression 
 every sensitive mind still receives upon reading 
 the conversations of Jesus at the supreme crises 
 of life. We still cherish what He said to mothers 
 about their little ones; what He said to young 
 men seeking eternal life; what He said to the 
 weary and heavy-laden; what He said to the mul- 
 titudes on the mountain at the beginning of his 
 ministry; and what He said at last from the 
 cross itself. 
 
 135
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 The word of God is a sane and solving word. 
 It is not the utterance of haste or anger. Nor 
 is it the exclamation of the mystic or the eccentric 
 person. Deliberation and consistency belong to 
 it. The divine word gives light. It shows the way 
 and reveals the path. 
 
 On this account, the Beatitudes are divine 
 words. They are guides to happiness and to 
 blessedness. Men crave satisfaction. They seek 
 the way to it. In their confusion and short- 
 sightedness, they ponder over the problem. The 
 books of religion and philosophy are multiplied 
 in the search. Many vain and empty words con- 
 cerning it are spoken by false prophets and by 
 blind guides. These words of Jesus are novel with 
 the grace of simplicity and the charm of solving 
 wisdom. They reaffirm the clearest lessons of 
 experience, namely, that docile and reverent 
 souls possess the means of true power; that eager 
 and hungry spirits gain spiritual satisfactions; 
 that to the merciful, mercy is given and that the 
 pure in heart see God. Christianity is itself good 
 proof of the validity of these sayings, for it has 
 always been most completely satisfying and most 
 successful when it most adequately exemplified 
 these principles. The early Christians often gave 
 136
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 
 
 evidence by their character that they had found 
 solving answers to life's deepest needs. "They 
 were generally quite commonplace and unim- 
 portant people with a treasure in earthen ves- 
 sels. Their message they put in various ways, 
 with the aphasia of ill-educated men, who have 
 something to tell that is far too big for any words 
 at their command. But they were astonishingly 
 upright, pure, and honest; they were serious; and 
 they had in themselves inexplicable reserves of 
 moral force and a happiness far beyond anything 
 that the world knew." 
 
 Experience is the final test. The words which 
 prove true are of God. "And if thou say in thine 
 heart, How shall we know the word which the 
 Lord hath not spoken? When the prophet speak- 
 eth in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, 
 nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord 
 hath not spoken." 
 
 It is also evident that the word of God is 
 found close to the living needs of the human 
 heart. The word men crave is the one which will 
 be the solvent for their present perplexity and 
 doubt. That is the comforting assurance about 
 the deepest hunger and thirst. Its very intensity 
 is a kind of guarantee that it will be satisfied. 
 
 137
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Sometimes our anxiety is met by the warning 
 that we are anxious about the wrong things. 
 To have the direction of our desires changed is 
 often their best fulfillment. But when the needs 
 are vital, when they are not self-centered or 
 concerned with artificial interests, then they are 
 tokens of truth about to be discovered. Again 
 and again the prophets of modern science have be- 
 sought nature for knowledge and have found it. 
 They have watched and waited, they have delved 
 and tested, they have literally suffered and ago- 
 nized in the search for the cause and cure of dis- 
 eases which waste human life. Again and again 
 they have succeeded, and now sober men of sci- 
 ence look forward to the elimination and destruc- 
 tion of all contagious scourges and plagues. 
 
 Such experiences give man new confidence in 
 his arduous pursuit of wisdom. As he centers 
 his interest upon the great cause of human wel- 
 fare, he gains assurance in the quest for truth. 
 God seems to speak to him with greater clear- 
 ness and with a fuller revelation when he craves 
 knowledge which serves the deepest needs of men. 
 Perhaps it is this which gives such vitality to the 
 movements for social justice, world peace, and 
 universal education. These mount the highways 
 
 138
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 
 
 on which men have always been enveloped by the 
 greatest light. Here they have gamed the highest 
 and most useful revelations. Here they have at- 
 tained sane and solving words, full of inexhaust- 
 ible blessing and satisfaction. 
 
 The word of God is an enduring word. It en- 
 dures not because of any extraneous quality but 
 because of its inherent vitality. It proves itself 
 tune after time in the life of successive generations. 
 It is cherished like all useful things because it 
 commends itself directly to the judgment and ex- 
 perience of men. When Jesus spoke to the com- 
 mon people, they heard Him gladly. His stories 
 went home to their hearts. He spoke as one hav- 
 ing authority. He knew deeply and intimately 
 their needs and what would satisfy them. His 
 sayings have therefore been repeated from friend 
 to friend and from father to son. Disciples of 
 Jesus through the centuries have surrendered 
 their own comfort and endured untold hardships 
 in order to carry his words to the ends of the 
 earth. Any words which have this power to win 
 men to their perpetuation, are worthy to be called 
 divine. For these words have never been profit- 
 able in a worldly way. At first hearing they 
 have not been popular. They have struck at 
 
 139
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 ancient customs and ancestral faiths; they have 
 denounced many forms of personal pleasure; they 
 have imposed burdens and crosses and still men 
 have clung to them and passed them on to those 
 they loved. 
 
 Words which commend themselves in this way 
 to the deep and continuous experience of men 
 show themselves thereby to belong to the body of 
 divine truth. And any words which are heard now 
 for the first time and shall continue to repeat 
 themselves with such wealth of affection and such 
 mastery of men's wills, may thereby be known to 
 be the words of God. If a scientist makes a new 
 experiment in his laboratory and furnishes a clear 
 record of it, he has added to the sum of knowl- 
 edge. He has achieved something which is true 
 for everyone else who is concerned with that 
 problem. In that sense his discovery is absolutely 
 and universally true. And if hi addition to being 
 true, it is also of vast importance to the welfare 
 of mankind, as the discovery of the cause of can- 
 cer would be, then it takes on religious signifi- 
 cance and may be devoutly felt to be the very 
 word of God. 
 
 Those who believe that God still speaks to men 
 are able to find confirmation in many historical 
 
 140
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 
 
 occasions. For at these times, words have been 
 spoken which are so serious, so solving and so per- 
 sistently true to experience that they are thereby 
 judged to be divine. The process of bringing this 
 word to clear expression and full definition is 
 often long and tragic. It was so with reference 
 to human slavery. Men were slow to perceive 
 the truth about it. There are individuals yet 
 who do not recognize it, but there is no civilized 
 nation which has not put itself on record as 
 to what the word of God is concerning slavery. 
 Other revelations concerning social justice are 
 surely being given to those races which are most 
 sincerely endeavoring to find them and to live 
 by them. It is not, then, the mere age of words 
 which proves them. They must also have radiat- 
 ing, social vitality. They must live in the minds 
 of great souls, affording power and satisfaction. 
 Unfortunately not all men strive to attain and 
 utilize the highest forms of truth any more than 
 they strive for the highest works of art. Men of 
 base impulses may deny the truth. Persons of 
 irresponsible wills cannot be the patrons of prac- 
 tical ideals. Those who have no hunger or thirst 
 cannot know the great satisfactions. Only seri- 
 ous men, bearing genuine responsibilities, are ap- 
 
 141
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 preciative of the divine word. They are therefore 
 the ones to whom it comes. They are the bearers 
 of revelation in religion, in science and in social 
 justice. They constitute the successive companies 
 of prophets. Through their search for the light, 
 they gain illumination and they hand on the 
 torch to other eager hands uplifted to receive it. 
 This light, borne forward by loyal souls faithful 
 to the path it shows, is the true and living light 
 of the word of God. 
 
 This word is never to be measured by the par- 
 ticular, external form in which it comes. It may 
 come in a burning bush, or in a dream, or in the 
 beautiful personality of a friend. We are less 
 likely to expect it in some strange experience 
 than were men of old. The commonplace, familiar 
 means of knowledge have risen to the dignity of 
 heavenly messengers. God's truth emerges out 
 of reasoned thoughts and out of disciplined efforts 
 of will. It lies on the open page of many a book. 
 It throbs in the news of the day. Where more 
 clearly may one find the shattered illusions of 
 mere pleasure or the agony of tragic selfishness and 
 greed? Daily life swells with the vast tides of the 
 fathomless sea of the moral universe. Out of its 
 depths come good and ill in bewildering profusion. 
 
 142
 
 WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 
 
 But on every hand are interpreters and guides, 
 keepers of the hard-won knowledge of good and 
 evil. The teacher of little children, the judge of 
 the court of law, the artist at the shrine of beauty 
 each utters the divine word. Friends earnestly 
 conversing, mother and child embracing, lovers 
 radiant with joy, share with each other its infinite 
 glory and power.
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN 
 RELIGION
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, 
 neither do they spin: And yet I aay unto you, That even Solomon 
 in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Matt, vi, 28, 29. 
 
 Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth 
 us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and 
 yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath 
 seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? 
 John, iv, 8, 9. 
 
 THE mystical quality in life and religion is the 
 charm, the glamour, the fresh depth and meaning 
 which the world takes on at times. In these fine 
 days of May, the experience is everywhere trans- 
 piring. Can one look out upon lilac bushes in 
 bloom and not feel the fresh spirit in the world? 
 Can one see children dancing round the May- 
 pole without a sense of buoyancy and of the per- 
 ennial newness of life? This quality is experienced 
 in connection with the commonest things, as when 
 one views athletes stripped for the race; or looks 
 down a long, shady path in the woods, or remem- 
 bers such a path; or sees a sunset, the whole west 
 aflame with the eternal miracle of the fading day. 
 
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 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 As you have gone down a busy street, have you 
 never seen a flock of pigeons with the purple 
 sheen upon their necks? Any day you may see 
 goldfish swimming in clear water. On rainy 
 nights you may see the lamps down an avenue of 
 the city, covering the wet pavement with shim- 
 mering figures of light. Or you have seen the 
 lights along the far-stretching shore as you sailed 
 into the harbor after long absence from home. 
 
 This quality is also felt in a circle of friends 
 round the hearth, who talk together intimately. 
 If they speak of those who were of the company 
 in other days, the faces come back to memory. 
 The voices, dress, and gestures appear through 
 the vista of years with all the old gracious fas- 
 cination. There is a mysterious, subtle sense of 
 their presence, accompanied by the lifting of the 
 horizon. Many have this sense of presence and 
 vanishing horizons when they gather in places of 
 worship, or when alone they read the fourteenth 
 chapter of John, or the twenty-third Psalm. This 
 is the value of Christ to myriads of men. The 
 thought of Him brightens the world, lightens the 
 burdens, and makes life radiant. He has the effect 
 of a living, beloved companion. In his presence 
 nothing is dull or flat. Routine tasks pulse with 
 
 148
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 
 
 interest and the worn paths gain beauty and 
 splendor. "A devout man," says Thomas a 
 Kempis, ** beareth everywhere about him his own 
 comforter, Jesus, and saith unto Him, 'Be Thou 
 present with me, O Lord Jesu, in every time and 
 place.'" 
 
 Others experience this depth and charm of life 
 most when they commune with God, the infinite 
 spirit, the life of nature, the unworn energy and 
 beauty of the world. To Emerson it was the Over- 
 Soul, " within which every man's particular being 
 is contained and made one with all other; that 
 common heart, of which all sincere conversation 
 is the worship, to which all right action is sub- 
 mission; that overpowering reality which con- 
 futes our tricks and talents, and constrains every 
 one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his 
 character and not from his tongue; and which 
 evermore tends and aims to pass into our thought 
 and hand, and become wisdom and virtue and 
 power and beauty. We live in succession, in di- 
 vision, in parts, in particles. Meantime, within 
 man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the 
 universal beauty, to which every part and particle 
 is equally related; the eternal ONE." 
 
 This is the mystical quality in life and religion. 
 149
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Persons differ greatly with reference to the ob- 
 jects which occasion it and they differ also in the 
 intensity and frequency of the experience. It is 
 susceptible of cultivation, though it seems to 
 come from afar, independently of one's will or 
 circumstance. It is often sought in strange and 
 inaccessible places, although it is available in the 
 humblest home, if love and loyalty dwell there. 
 This quality is especially characteristic of the re- 
 ligious life just because religion is concerned with 
 the deep and intimate experiences. Religion puts 
 little things in a big perspective : views simple acts 
 of the moment under the form of eternity. It, 
 therefore, gives play to the imagination and to 
 the great emotions. Sentiments of wonder and 
 surprise and deep tenderness blend in the mystical 
 feeling. It is more than aesthetic delight, for it 
 suggests the presence of the infinite and the di- 
 vine. Wherever these emotions and this sense 
 of presence occur, the devout heart exclaims: 
 "Surely the Lord is in this place: this is none 
 other than the house of God and the gate of 
 heaven." 
 
 This mystical quality flowers out of all experi- 
 ence which is vital and serves ideal ends. It ac- 
 companies the fulfillment of all deep-reaching, 
 
 150
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 
 
 highly valued interests. The deeds of patriots are 
 aglow with it. The memory of heroes begets it. 
 The whole nation felt it yesterday when the 
 veterans marched and the graves of their com- 
 rades were embowered once more. It is not neces- 
 sary to search for the springs of this wistful, in- 
 spiring elevation of soul beyond and above the 
 real world in which we live. Too often the mystic 
 has made just that vain effort. He has struggled 
 and prayed and disciplined himself to find the 
 infinite apart from everything finite. The whole 
 without parts, substance without form, the uni- 
 versal without particulars, the absolute without 
 anything relative, has often been the mystic's 
 impossible demand. 
 
 In the company of the disciples of Jesus, one 
 heart was fixed for a time, at least, upon that 
 illusion. Philip said to Jesus, near the very end, 
 " Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Jesus 
 never answered any one with a deeper note of 
 pained surprise than when He replied, "Have I 
 been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
 known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen 
 the Father: and how sayest thou then, Shew us 
 the Father?" The God of Jesus is one who is 
 revealed in his children: not one concealed from 
 
 151
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 them. All men are sons of God and every son re- 
 veals the nature of^his father. Some are, indeed, 
 better sons than others, and they show more 
 fully what the nature of God is, but it was the 
 conviction of Jesus that the common man has 
 something divine about him. He is of infinite 
 worth, his soul outweighs all the world beside, and 
 whoever looks upon him sees the very image and 
 likeness of God. The purity of heart, the patient 
 love, the toiling energy of will which we see among 
 the poor and humble, and among the mighty men 
 of earth, are the clear and shining proofs that the 
 divine nature does not hide itself or dwell apart 
 from us. 
 
 And this mystical quality is attainable through 
 the normal powers and functions of our human 
 nature. The traditional mystic discounts the 
 senses, saying these are subject to illusion and 
 therefore cannot disclose reality. The reason, 
 likewise, he abandons because it moves, step by 
 step, to its goal; and because it views a thing al- 
 ways in relation to something else. At most, the 
 senses and the intellect furnish a kind of broken 
 ladder from which a leap is made beyond the do- 
 main of reason. The mystics have, accordingly, 
 been noted for their insistent use of non-rational 
 
 152
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 
 
 means, dreams, trances, hallucinations, and 
 magic formulae, in the old days; and occultism, 
 hypnotism, auto-suggestion, "instinct," "intui- 
 tion," and " feeling," in the present day. Yet in 
 reality the normal processes of intelligent action, 
 of sane social cooperation, and of idealized sensu- 
 ous symbolism furnish far more satisfaction and 
 a more adequate sense of God, and make God 
 more available for well-balanced human beings, 
 than all the devices, asceticisms, and emotional- 
 ism of conventional mysticism could do. 
 
 Man's whole being is involved in every great 
 and satisfying experience. When the notes of a 
 hymn, pealing forth from the chimes at the close 
 of the day, suddenly transport one into a mood 
 of tenderness and peace, that mystical effect 
 involves sense and imagination and the long cul- 
 tural and sentimental associations so dominant 
 over the emotions. It may seem to be an effect 
 quite disproportionate to such a cause and it is 
 doubtless beyond any scientist's or poet's power 
 fully to explain, yet it has transpired through 
 normal means and within a widely familiar field 
 of experience. We do not add to its meaning by 
 ignoring its naturalness or by ascribing it to 
 occult causes. Neither do we lessen its fascina- 
 
 153
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 tion or its reality by a truthful description. 
 Rather do we gain control of it as an event sub- 
 ject to laws and materials. And in controlling it, 
 we may again make the chimes ring and set the 
 old hymn running in a thousand souls, where it 
 wakens, as before, memories and consolations 
 and deep serenity. 
 
 We do not discredit our sense and our wit in 
 order to attain the joys yielded by a sonata or a 
 poem, nor should we suppose it possible to achieve 
 the true blessedness of religion by suppressing 
 or transcending our natural endowments. It is 
 doubtless the old assumption of the essential sin- 
 fulness and depravity of human nature which 
 has led so many mystics to renounce ordinary 
 knowledge as incompetent to deal with actual 
 reality. But now that we think better of our- 
 selves, we have more confidence in our natural 
 powers, especially when these are trained and ex- 
 panded. The miracles of science are so much 
 vaster and so much more verifiable than the mir- 
 acles of magic, that we gain respect for reason and 
 perception and imagination by which science dis- 
 covers its marvels and creates its phenomenal 
 results. It is by means of these natural powers 
 also that the workaday world has been trans- 
 
 154
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 
 
 formed. Just as the artificial lights that man has 
 invented have carried the day into the night and 
 have made fairy gardens out of places of abysmal 
 darkness, so man's more adequate knowledge of 
 the moral laws enables him to extend their con- 
 trol over the world with a new wealth of joy and 
 beauty. 
 
 The romance and glamour which the mystics 
 have sought so strangely and nourished so ardu- 
 ously is not so uncommon and so delicate a 
 growth as they think. It springs out of every 
 noble companionship and accompanies all ad- 
 venturous achievement. The mystic of the con- 
 ventional type is apparently under the same 
 illusion as the habitual pleasure-seeker. The 
 search for pleasure is always disappointing when 
 one makes it the main object. Only when he for- 
 gets himself in some objective and disinterested 
 activity does the pleasure-lover find himself ex- 
 periencing pleasure. One must abandon himself 
 to his work, to nature, to other people, in order 
 to be happy. And in like manner, one must trust 
 life, enter into it, battle for it, in order to feel 
 the power and the mystery and the deep satisfac- 
 tions of it. Pleasure does not exist by itself. It 
 is always an accompaniment, an incident, a 
 
 155
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 by-product. We have as many kinds of pleasures 
 as we have interests and activities the pleas- 
 ures of reading, of travel, of friendship, of work; 
 but there is no pleasure in general or in isolation. 
 Similarly, the mystical thrill and ecstasy cannot 
 be made an end in itself. It is a result, an ac- 
 companiment, an incident of all rich and noble 
 living. It is not something men are in danger of 
 losing because they do not seek it. They are more 
 likely to miss it by direct efforts to gain it, as the 
 pitiful history of many mystics proves. Multi- 
 tudes of other religionists without any such 
 agony of introspection, or tumultuous uncertain- 
 ties of spirit, have gone nobly forth to toil for 
 truth and for the gleam of an ideal, and have 
 found their hearts strengthened and quieted by 
 conscious oneness with God. 
 
 Hence it turns out that pleasures come less to 
 the pleasure-seekers than to heroes and patriots, 
 to toiling mothers and brawny laborers. This 
 mystical quality of life is constantly achieved by 
 the plain and patient servant of Jesus Christ, who 
 endures hardness like a good soldier and all the 
 time rejoices in the comradeship and in the vic- 
 tories at hand. In the gospels of the New Testa- 
 ment, the emphasis is placed on the work to be 
 
 156
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 
 
 done, the cross to be borne, the healing of the 
 sick, the cure of minds, the conquest of pride and 
 covetousness and violence. When the sons of 
 Zebedee were brought to Jesus, craving the hon- 
 ors and emotions of distinguished places in his 
 kingdom, Jesus at once centered their attention 
 upon the immediate duties and difficulties. " Are 
 you able," said he, to "drink of the cup that I 
 shall drink of, and to be baptized with the bap- 
 tism that I am baptized with? " It was to the 
 same mistaken ambition that Jesus said, "He 
 that would be greatest among you, let him be the 
 servant of all." Everywhere, as in the Beati- 
 tudes, he made blessedness depend upon purpose, 
 disposition, and deeds. He never put the emo- 
 tional satisfaction forward by itself. He taught 
 men to know the truth, to do the divine will, to 
 love their neighbors. He never feared that life 
 would become dull or stale if they did those 
 things. On the contrary, they would have the sense 
 of the divine presence, and would be conscious 
 of citizenship in an eternal kingdom, destined to 
 rule eventually all the kingdoms of this world. 
 
 It becomes evident that one may appreciate 
 and experience the mystical quality in religion 
 without becoming a mystic, just as one may 
 
 157
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 respect and employ reason without being a "ra- 
 tionalist." There are many analogies of this 
 kind. A man may believe in freedom of thought 
 and cultivate it without being a "freethinker." 
 Many persons believe in socializing industry and 
 politics who are not "socialists." Possessors of 
 sentiment are not all sentimentalists and there 
 is as much contrast between ordinary men with 
 capacity for mystical feeling, and mystics like 
 Suso and Boehme, as there is between men of 
 wholesome sentiment and the sentimentalists. 
 
 But in their extreme and frequently pathologi- 
 cal religious development, the mystics have been 
 characterized by a vividness of feeling and a sense 
 of the infinite worth of life which makes them 
 appear to have discovered the great secret of 
 power and contentment. Many persons are ask- 
 ing to-day for that secret. They crave a more 
 vital, imaginative, and commanding way of life 
 than our new science or our old traditions afford. 
 Proof of this may be seen in the strange temples of 
 Oriental cults which spring up in our cities; in the 
 spread of many faith-cure and psycho-therapeutic 
 types of religion; and in the increase, if not the 
 over-elaboration, of ritualism and symbolism on 
 every hand. 
 
 158
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 
 
 But there is a simpler, more vital, and more 
 adequate way of meeting this need. Emerson has 
 led thousands to its satisfaction. He has accom- 
 plished it for many in the essay on " Compensa- 
 tion" where he shows by the " tools in our hands, 
 the bread in our basket, the transactions of the 
 street, the farm and the dwelling-house," that 
 there is a "ray of divinity" in our life, and that 
 we can discern " the present action of the Soul of 
 this world, clean from all vestige of tradition." 
 And so, he hoped, "the heart of man might be 
 bathed by an inundation of eternal love." He set 
 forth in new parables and proverbs the great con- 
 ception that every act and item of our life bears 
 the nature of the whole. "The world globes itself 
 in a drop of dew." "Ineffable is the union of man 
 and God in every act of the soul . . . forever and 
 ever, the influx of this better and universal self is 
 new and unsearchable. Ever it inspires awe and 
 astonishment." But it is especially in noble ac- 
 tion that man feels the infinite values of existence. 
 "In a virtuous action I properly am," he says; 
 "in a virtuous act I add to the world." It is an 
 interesting illustration of Emerson's appreciation 
 of the moral life as the way of serenity and union 
 with the divine, that he selects from the volu- 
 
 159
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 minous writings of Swedenborg, the mystic, this 
 moral quality. "Swedenborg," he says, "elected 
 goodness as the clue to which the soul must cling 
 in all this labyrinth of nature. . . . Not fate, nor 
 health, nor admirable intellect; none can keep 
 you, but rectitude only, rectitude forever and 
 ever." 
 
 Christianity is fundamentally a matter of the 
 moral life. All sentiment and piety and devotions 
 are as nothing without that. Christianity builds 
 a moral kingdom. It produces the fruits of right- 
 eousness. It creates objective, practical, satis- 
 fying relationships, and summons men to ever 
 widening tasks. It knits together multitudes of 
 believers from the past and the present and forms 
 for the imagination and for the soul's deep affec- 
 tion, the glorious company of the apostles, the 
 goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army 
 of martyrs the holy Church throughout the 
 world. The glory of this great Church is not her 
 age or her wealth or her power, but her living 
 zeal to carry still further into her own life and 
 into the world, her Master's spirit of goodness 
 and love. The Church maintains its most vigor- 
 ous, vibrant life when it is engaged in stupendous 
 tasks. It was lifted out of its provincialism of 
 
 160
 
 THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 
 
 thought and feeling in the last century by the 
 great missionary propaganda which still throbs at 
 its heart. It is being vitalized anew in our own 
 time by its endeavors toward the establishment 
 of social justice and a world-wide brotherhood of 
 man. The Church is offering to risk its institu- 
 tions, its formal dignity, and its set services in the 
 interest of human welfare, and in consequence it 
 is being suffused more deeply than ever with true 
 piety and a sense of the presence of God. 
 
 The promise of the divine companionship is 
 to an active, forward-striving Church. The com- 
 mand and the promise are, "Go . . . and, lo, I 
 am with you alway." It is as though Jesus were 
 saying to the Church yet: Go, teach: build 
 schools and colleges; go, heal the sick: found 
 hospitals and laboratories, and dispensaries; go, 
 love your neighbors : found settlements and peace 
 societies and boards of arbitration and be a friend 
 of man; go, preach the gospel: publish the poetry 
 of love, dramatize the prodigal son and the good 
 Samaritan and reveal to men the cross itself as 
 the proof of the infinite compassion that throbs at 
 the heart of the world, and the divine presence 
 shall be with you, a pillar of cloud by day and a 
 pillar of fire by night. 
 
 161
 
 THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Thus we may dare to hold that life and religion 
 are far simpler and more satisfying than the 
 mystics have believed. The God whom they 
 sought afar and apart dwells near and within 
 nearer than breathing, nearer than hands and 
 feet. And knowledge of this God requires no 
 special sense or second sight. He walks forth in 
 the light of day. The pure in heart see him in the 
 beauty of the lilies and in the soul of man. Wise 
 men read his laws in every fleck of dust and in the 
 distant stars. He is here and now present in this 
 pulsing life we live, the conscience and dream of 
 our souls, the love and light of our hearts. Who- 
 ever has truly beheld the Christ of history, or the 
 ideal Christ in any man, has seen Him. Upon 
 that vision he may rest his faith, and through it 
 he may look out upon the world and find it new 
 and glorious. 
 
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