mm i ¥ I GIFT OF Gladys Isaacson l^°l- Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/churchmodernlifeOOgladrich THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN IS » *J LONDON JAMES CLARKE & CO. 13 AND 14 FLEET STREET !• L^ £i=*» '-. ^ '-'■ Cr(o COPYRIGHT 1908 BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED c . r c GIFT OF GLADYS ISAACSON PREFACE " The time is come/' said a New Testament prophet, " for judgment to begin at the house of God." Perhaps that time ought never to pass, but if, in any measure, the criticism of the church has of late been suspended, it is certainly reopened now, in good earnest. Nor is this criticism confined to outsiders ; the church is forced to listen in these days to caustic censures from those who speak from within the fold. That such self-criticism is needed these chap- ters will not deny. That the church is passing through a critical period must be conceded. But the way of life is not obscure, and it seems almost absurd to indulge the fear that the church, which has been providentially guided through so many centuries, will fail to find it. These pages have been written in the firm belief that the Christian church has its great work still before it, and that it only needs to free itself from its entanglements and gird itself for its testimony to become the light of lv:27844 vi PREFACE the world. Something of what it needs to do to make ready for this great future, this little book tries to show. Through all this study the thought has con- stantly returned to the young men and women to whom the future of the church is com- mitted; and while the book is most likely first to fall into the hands of their pastors and teachers, the author hopes that ways will be found of conveying its message to those by whom, in the end, its truth will be made ef- fective. W. G. First Congregational Church, Columbus, Ohio, December 17, 1907. CONTENTS I. The Roots of Religion .... 1 II. Our Religion and Other Religions . 30 III. The Social Side of Religion . . .66 IV. The Business of the Church ... 76 V. Is the Church Decadent? .... 100 VI. The Coming Reformation .... 126 VII. Social Redemption 148 VIII. The New Evangelism .... 173 IX. The New Leadership .... 199 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE ^ • I %,' I ^l I \' , J > . J 1 J ) > > 5 ., THE ROOTS OF RELtbioU' * ' * ' '' The church with which we are to deal in the pages which follow is the Christian church in the United States, comprising the entire body of Christian disciples who are organized into religious societies, and are engaged in Christ- ian work and worship. This church is not all included in one or- ganization ; it is made up of many different sects and denominations, some of which have very little fellowship with the rest. Among these groups are some who claim that their particular organizations are the true and only churches; that the others have no right to the name. Such is the claim of the Roman Catholic church and of the High Church Epis- copalians. Their use of the word church would confine it to those of their own com- munions. Others would apply the term more broadly to all who profess and call themselves 2 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE Christians, and who are united in promoting the teachings and principles of the Christian religion. The church, as thus defined, has no uniform and authoirit'^ttive creed, and no ruling officers orasse^ibUe^M'ho have a right to speak for it ; it is difficmt,' therefore, to make any definite statements about it. It is possible, neverthe- less, to think of all these variously organized groups of people as belonging to one body. In some very important matters they are united. They all believe in one God, the Father Almighty ; they all bear the name of Christ ; they all acknowledge him as Lord and Leader ; they all accept the Bible as con-NS^ taining the truth which they profess to teach. The things in which they agree are, indeed, ^^ far more important than the things in whicl^ they differ, and it is our custom often to speak ^ of this entire body of Christian disciples as " the church," forgetting their differences and emphasizing their essential unity. This is the meaning which will be given to "the church " in these discussions. The church is concerned with religion. As the interest of the state is politics, of the bank\ "^ ^ finance, of the school education, so the interest J^V y/ r THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 3 of the church is religion. Religion organizes the church, and the church promotes religion. Religion is a fact of the first magnitude. We sometimes hear ministers complaining that the people do not give it so much attention as they ought, but we shall find it true in all Nl countries and in all the centuries that it is one ^ of the main interests of human life. There are few subjects, probably there is no other sub- ject, to which the human race has given so much thought as to the subject of religion. The greatest buildings which have been erected on this planet were for the service of religion ; more books have been written about it than about any other theme ; a large part of the world's art has had a religious impulse ; many, alas ! of the most destructive wars of history have been prompted by it; it has laid the foundations of great nations, our own among them, and has given form and direction to every great civilization under the sun. It is not a churchman, or a theologian, it is Mr. John Fiske, one of the foremost scien- tific investigators, who has said of religion : "None can deny that it is the largest and most ubiquitous fact connected with the exist- ence of mankind upon the earth." * » Through Nature to God, p. 189. 4 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE About the size of the fact there is no dis- puting, but how shall we explain it ? Where did it come from ? The scientific people have puzzled their heads not a little over the question where the life on this planet came from. They cannot make up their minds to say that it came from non-living matter ; and some of them have ventured a guess that the first germs might have been brought by a meteorite from some distant planet. That, however, only pushes the mystery one step further back : how did it come to be on that distant planet ? The origin of religion has furnished a sim- ilar puzzle to these investigators. There are those among them who assume that religion is an invention of crafty men who find it a means of obtaining ascendency over their fellows. That it is all imposture — the pro- duct of priestcraft — is the theory of some 1-5, small philosophers. Such being the case, they o expect that the progress of knowledge will cause it to disappear. To others it seems probable that religious ideas may have originated in the phenomena of dreams. In the visions of the night those who have passed out of life reappear ; this gives THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 5 room for the belief that they are still in exist- ence, and suggests that there may be another world whose inhabitants exert an important influence over the affairs of this world. Ac- cording to this ghost theory, religion is all an illusion. Such crude explanations are, however, not much credited in these days by thoughtful men. It is easy to see that the foundations of religion are deeply laid in human nature. Aristotle told a great truth, many centuries ago, when he said that man is a political animal. That is to say, there is a political in- stinct in him which causes him to organize political societies and make laws; he is a state builder in the same way that the beaver is a dam builder, or the oriole is a nest builder, or the bee is a comb builder. With equal truth we may say that man is a religious animal. The impulse that causes him to worship, to trust, to pray, is as much a part of his constitution as is the homing instinct of the pigeon. This natural instinct is, however, reinforced by the operation of his reason. ^^ Feeling is deeper than thought ; we are moved by many impulses before we frame any theo- ries. But the normal human being sooner or 6 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE later begins to try to explain things ; his reason begins to work upon the objects that he sees and the feelings that he experiences. And it is not long before something like what Charbonnel describes must take place in every human soul : — " Every man has within him a sense of utter dependence. His mind is irresistibly preoc- cupied by the idea of a Power, lost in the im- mensity of time and space, which, from the depths of some dark mystery, governs the world. This power, at first, seems to him to manifest itself in the phenomena of nature, whose grandeur surpasses the power or even the comprehension of mankind." ^ Toward this unknown power, or powers, his thought reaches out, and he begins to try to explain it or them. He forms all kinds of crude and fantastic theories about these invis- ible forces. At first he is apt to think that there are a great many of them ; it is long be- fore he clearly understands that there can be but One Supreme. The moral quality of the being or beings whom he thus conceives is not clearly discerned by him ; he is apt to think them fickle, jealous, revengeful, and cruel; » The Victory of the Will, p. 213. THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 7 most often he ascribes to them his own frail- ties and passions. In some such way as this, then, religion begins. It is the response of the human nature to impressions made upon the mind and heart ^^:>^^of man by the universe in which he lives. These impressions are not illusions, they are * { realities. All men experience them. Something ^,^^^is here in the world about us which appeals to "^ our feelings and awakens our intellects. Being made as we are, we cannot escape this influ- ence. It awes us, it fills us with wonder and fear and desire. Then we try to explain it to ourselves, and in the beginning we frame a great many very imperfect explanations. Sometimes we imagine that this power is located in some tree or rock or river ; sometimes it is an animal ; sometimes it is supposed to exist in invisible spirits or demons ; sometimes the sky or the ocean repre- sents it, or one of the elements, like fire, is conceived to be its manifestation ; sometimes the greater planets are the objects of rever- ence ; sometimes imaginary deities are con- ceived and images of wood or stone are carved by which their attributes are symbolized. These religious conceptions of the primitive 8 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE races seem to us, now, as we look back upon them from the larger light of the present day, to be grotesque and unworthy ; we wonder that men could ever have entertained such notions of deity, and we are sometimes inclined, be- cause of these crudities, to dismiss the whole subject of religion as but a farrago of super- stitions. But these imperfect conceptions do not discredit religion ; they are rather witnesses to its reality. You might as well say that the speculations and experiments of the old al- chemists prove that there is no truth in chem- istry; or that the guesses of the astrologers throw doubt on the science of astronomy. The alchemists and the astrologers were searching blindly for truth which they did not find, but the truth was there ; the fetish worshipers and the magicians and the idolaters were also, as Paul said, seeking after the unknown God. But they were not mistaken in the principal object of their search ; what they sought was there, and the pathetic story of the long quest for God is a proof of the truth of Paul's say- ing, that God has made men and placed them in the world "that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." It -w THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 9 was not a delusion, it was a tremendous reality that they were dealing with. The fact that they but dimly conceived it does not lessen the greatness of the reality. Not many intelligent thinkers in these days doubt the reality and the permanence of re- ligion. Herbert Spencer did not profess to be a Christian believer; by many persons he was supposed to be an enemy of the Christian re- ligion ; yet no man has more strongly asserted the permanency and indestructibility of re- ligion. As to the notion that religions are the product of human craft and selfishness, he says: "A candid examination of the evidence quite negatives the doctrine maintained by some that creeds are priestly inventions."* And again : " An unbiased consideration of its general aspects forces us to conclude that rehgion, everywhere present as a weft running through the warp of human history, expresses some eternal fact." ^ And again : " In Religion let us recognize the high merit that from the beginning it has dimly discerned the ultimate verity and has never ceased to insist upon it. . . . For its essentially valid belief, Religion has constantly done battle. Gross as were the » First Principles^ p. 14. « ^^^ p. 20. 10 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE disguises under which it at first espoused this beUef, and cherishing this behef, though it still is, under disfiguring vestments, it has never ceased to maintain and defend it. It has everywhere established and propagated one or other modification of the doctrine that all things are manifestations of a power that tran- scends our knowledge." * That religion is, in John Fiske's strong phrase, an ^^everlasting reaHty" is a fact which few respectable thinkers in these days would venture to call in question. But, as we have seen, this reahty takes upon itself a gpreat variety of forms. Looking over the world to-day, we discover many kinds of re- ligion. Religious ideas, religious rites and ceremonies, religious customs and practices, as we gather them up and compare them, consti- tute a variegated collection. Professor William James has a thick volume entitled " The Varieties of Religious Experi- ence," in which he brings together a vast array of the documents which describe the religious feelings and impulses of persons in all lands and all ages. It is not a study of creeds or philosophies of religion, it is a study 1 First Principles, pp. 99, 100. THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 11 of personal religious experiences ; of the fears, hopes, desires, contritions, joys, and aspira- tions of men and women of all lands and ages, as they have been dealing with the fact of religion. Not only do we find many different kinds of religion existing side by side upon this planet; we also find that each of these types has been undergoing constant changes in the course of the centuries. To trace the religious development of any people from the earliest period to the present day is a most instructive study. Take our own religion. Christianity is not an independent form of faith. Its roots run down into the Hebrew religion, whose record is in the Old Testament; and the Hebrew re- ligion grew out of the old Semitic faiths, and these again sprang from the ancient Baby- lonian religions or grew alongside of them. So we are compelled to go far back for the origin of many of our own religious ideas. Jesus did not claim to be the Founder of a new religion ; he claimed only to bring a better interpretation of the religion of his people. He said that he came not to destroy but to fulfill the law and the prophets. The New Testament reHgion is 12 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE a development of the Old Testament religion. It is a wonderful growth. When we go back to the old monuments and the old documents and trace the progress of religious beliefs and practices from the earliest days to our own, we learn many things which are well worth know- ing. The central fact of religious progress is im- provement in the conception of the character of God. As the ages go by, men gradually come to think better thoughts about God. Little by little the old crude and savage notions of deity drop out of their minds, and they learn to think of him as just and faithful and kind. The Bible shows us many signs of this progress. The earlier stories about God give him a far different character from that which appears in the later prophets. It was beheved by the earher Hebrews that God desired to have them put to death all the inhabitants of the land of Canaan when they took possession of it; and when they put to the sword not only the armed men of the land, but the wo- men and the little children, they supposed that they were obeying the command of God. They learned better than that, after a while. When Abraham started with Isaac for THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 13 Mount Moriah, he undoubtedly thought that he should please God by putting to death his own well-beloved son ; but before he had done the dreadful deed the revelation came to him that that was a terrible mistake ; he saw that God was not pleased by human sacrifices. That was a great day in the history of religion. Because of that experience, Abraham was able to make his descendants believe the truth that had been given to him, and from that time on- ward human sacrifices probably ceased among the Hebrews. A long step had been taken toward the purification of the idea of God of one of its most degrading elements. This superstition lingered long in other faiths ; probably it survived among our own ancestors after Abraham's day. Tennyson's poem, " The Victim," is a vivid picture of hu- man sacrifice among the Teutonic peoples : — " A plague upon the people fell, A famine after laid them low; Then thorpe and byre arose in fire, For on them brake the sudden foe; So thick they died the people cried, * The Gods are moved against the land.' The priest in horror about his altar To Thor and Odin lifted a hand: * Help us from famine And plague and strife ! 14 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE What would you have of us ? Human life ? Were it our nearest, Were it our dearest, — Answer, O answer ! — We give you his life.' " The Gods seemed to say that the victim must be either the king's wife or the king's child; which it should be, was the terrible question that the king had to answer. The choice seemed to have fallen on the child, but the wife would not have it that he was the king's dearest, and she rushed to her own immolation. The poem reflects the common notion of those dark days, that the angry Gods could only be propitiated by the slaugh- ter of those whom men loved the best. From this horrible idea the Jewish people were dehvered by the insight of their great ances- tor. Dark notions about God still lingered among them, however, and the Old Testament record shows us how they slowly disappeared. Moses and Samuel were good men for their time, but the God whom they worshiped was a very dif- ferent being from the God of Hosea or of the later Isaiah. This development of the idea of God has THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 15 been going on in modern times. It is not long since devout men were in the habit of saying that God's displeasure with the wicked- ness of cities was exhibited in the scourges of cholera and scarlet fever in which multitudes of little children were the victims. Not two hundred years ago the great majority of our Puritan ancestors were believing in a God who, for the sin of Adam, was sending mil- lions of infants, every year, to the regions of darkness and despair. The God of Cotton Mather or of Edward Payson could hardly have lived in the same heaven with the God of Dwight Moody or PhilHps Brooks. The changes which have been taking place in our ideas about God have been mainly in the direction of a purified ethical conception of his character. We have been learning to be- lieve, more and more, in the justice, the right- eousness, the goodness of God. In the oldest times men thought him cruel and revengeful; then they began to regard him as willful and arbitrary — his justice was his determination to have his own way ; his sovereignty was his egoistic purpose to do everything for his own glory. We have gradually grown away from all that, and are able now to believe what Abra- 16 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE ham believed, that the Judge of all the earth will do right. In the presence of a God who, I am assured, is a being of perfect righteousness, who never blames any one for what he cannot help, who never expects of any one more than he has the power to render, who means that I shall know that his treatment of me is in perfect accord with my own deepest intuition of truth and fairness and honor, I can stand up and be a man. My faith will not be the cringing sub- mission of a slave to an absolute despot, but the willing and joyful acceptance by a free man of righteous authority. Now it is certain that the belief of the Christian church respecting the character of God has been steadily changing, in this direc- tion, through the Christian centuries. Enlight- ened Christians have been coming to believe, more and more, in a good God ; and by a good God I mean not merely a good-natured God, but a just God, a true God, a fair God, a righteous God. The growth of this conviction has been purging theology of many crude and revolting dogmas. It is a great deliverance which is wrought out for us when we are set free, in our religious THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 17 thinking, from the bondage of unmoral con- ceptions, and are encouraged to beheve that God is good. It is a great blessing to have a God to worship whom we can thoroughly re- spect. A tremendous strain is put upon the moral nature when men are required, by tradi- tional influences, to pay adoration and homage to a being whose conduct, as it is represented to them, is, in some important respects, con- duct which they cannot approve. All the re- ligions, through the imperfection of human thought, have put that burden on their wor- shipers. Christianity has been strugghng, through all the centuries, to free itself from unworthy conceptions of the character of its Deity, and each succeeding re-statement of its doctrines removes some stain which our dim vision and halting logic had left upon his name. What, now, has caused these changes to take place in men's thoughts about God? What influences have been at work to clarify their ideas of the unknown Eeality ? From three principal sources have come the streams of light by which our religious con- ceptions have been purified. The first of these is the natural world round 18 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE about us. We are immersed in Nature; it touches us on every side; it addresses us vL . through all our senses; it speaks to us every day with a thousand voices. Nature is the great teacher of the human race. She knows everything ; she waits to impart her love to all who will receive it; she is very patient; her lessons are not forced upon unwilHng pupils, but whosoever will may come and take of her treasure. Longfellow said of the childhood of Agassiz, that — " Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying : * Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee. " ' Come, wander with me,' she said, * Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God/ " It is not the child Agassiz alone whom Na- ture thus invited ; to the whole human race, in its childhood, its adolescence, its maturity, she has always been saying the same thing. She has been seeking, through all the ages, to disclose to us all the mysteries of this mar- velous universe. We have been slow learners; it took her a great many centuries to get the simplest truths lodged in the human mind. THE BOOTS OF RELIGION 19 The cave-dweller, the savage in his teepee, were able to receive but little of what she had to give. Yet before their eyes, every day, she spread all her wonders ; with infinite patience she waited for the unfolding of their powers. All the marvels of steam, of electricity, of the camera, of the telescope, the microscope, the spectroscope, the Roentgen rays, — all the facts and forces with which science deals were there, in the hand of Mother Nature, waiting to be imparted to her child from the day when he first stood upright and faced the stars. Slowly he has been led on into a larger un- derstanding of this wonderful universe. And what has he learned under this tuition? What are some of the great truths which have grad- ually impressed themselves upon his mind ? He has been made sure, for one thing, that this is a universe ; that all its forces are cohe- rent ; that the same laws are in operation in i^ every part of it. The principles of mathematics ^ .v^ are everywhere applicable ; gravitation con- ^^^rols-all the worlds and every particle of mat- Y Cj " ter in every one of them, and the spectroscope '^^ assures us that the same chemical elements which constitute our world are found in the farthest star. " On every hand," says Walker, 20 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE " we are assured that the guiding principle of Science is that of the uniformity of nature." It has also come to be understood that na- ture is all intelligible. Everything can be ex- plained. This is the fundamental assumption of science. Many things have not yet been explained, but there is an explanation for everything ; of that every thinker feels per- fectly sure. " Fifty years ago," says Sir John Lubbock, "the Book of Nature was like some richly illuminated missal, written in an un- known tongue ; of the true meaning little was known to us ; indeed we scarcely realized that there was a meaning to decipher. Now glimpses of the truth are gradually revealing themselves ; we perceive that there is a reason — and in many cases we know what that rea- son is — for every difference in form, in size, and in color, for every bone and feather, almost for every hair." * This is the latest word of the latest philo- sophy ; there is a reason for everything. As Romanes says. Nature is instinct with reason ; " tap her where you will, reason oozes out at every pore." ^ If all things are rational and intelligible, » Quoted by Walker in Christian Theism, p. 47. THE ROOTS OF RELIGl 21 then all things must be the product of a tional Intelligence. That conclusion seems iiJ evitable. But we can go further than this. It is not merely true that we can find in the world about us the siofns of an Intellisfence like our own, it is also true that our own intelligence has been developed by the revelation to us of this Intelligence in the world about us. "If," says Walker, "human reason is but ^the reflec- tion in us of the universe outside of us,' then, clearly, the Reason was there, expressed in the universe, before it possibly could be reflected in us. It is our relation to the Universe that makes us rational,^' And again, " Apart fro the Reason expressed in the Universe around him, man could never have become the rational being that he is."^ This, then, is the first great reason why our religion has gradually become more rational. The rationality of the universe constantly pre- sented to our thought has developed a ration- ality in our thoughts about the universe. The mind, like the dyer's hand, is subdued to what it works in. The response of primitive man to the pressure of Nature upon him was a re- » Christian Theism, pp. 40, 42. 22 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE sponse of wonder and awe and fear ; his reli- gion was instructive, emotional; but through the long tuition of the ages, the old nurse has taught him how to use his reason; and he now finds unity where he once found strife, and order and law where once confusion and chaos reigned. His religion has become ra- tional. But what do we mean when we say that man's great teacher has been Nature ? Nature, as we have seen, is instinct with Reason, and the Reason which is revealed in Nature is only another name for God. It is the immanent God, the Eternal Reason, who has been pa- tiently disclosing himself to us in the world round about us, and thus cleansing our minds from the crude and superstitious conceptions with which in our ignorance and fear we had invested him. The second of the sources from which the^ influences have come for the purification of religion is humanity itself. We are told, in the Book of Genesis, that man is made in the image of God ; and the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, on which the entire teaching of Jesus rests, is but a stronger statement of the same truth. It is THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 23 true that we find human nature, as yet, for the most part, in very crude conditions; its divine qualities are not clearly seen. It does not yet appear what we shall be. But we have learned, in our evolutionary studies, that no living thing ought to be judged in the earlier stages of its development; we must wait to see the perfected type before we can make up our minds about it. The eaglet just hatched does not give us the right idea of the eagle, nor does the infant in his swaddling clothes reveal to us the man. So it is with species and races ; if they are undergoing a process of de- velopment, we must wait for the later stages of the process before we judge. The apple is not the crab, but the Northern Spy ; the horse is not the mustang, but the Percheron or the German roadster. In estimating any liv- ing thing, you take into consideration its pos- sibilities of development ; the ideal to which it may attain must always be in sight. In the same way when we think of man, we do not take the Patagonian as the type, but the best specimens of European or American manhood. If, then, we are taught to believe that man is a child of God, we should be compelled to 24 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE believe that it is the most perfectly developed man who most resembles God. We have some conception of the ideal man. Our conceptions are not always correct, but they are con- stantly improved, as we strive to realize them. And in the ideal man we see reflected the character of God. We are sure that a perfect humanity would give us the best revelation we could have of divinity. If we could see a perfect man, we could learn from him more about God than from any other source. Most of us believe that a perfect Man ap- peared in this world nineteen hundred years ago ; and the best that we know about God we have learned from him. More has been done by his life and teachings to purify reli- gion of its crudities and superstitions than by all other agencies. The worst of the crudities and superstitions that still linger in our own religion are due to the fact that the people who bear his name only in part accept his teachings and very imperfectly follow his ex- ample. If we could all believe what he has told us and do what he has bidden us, our re- ligion would soon be cleansed from its worst defilements. The manifestation of the life of God in. THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 25 Jesus Christ we call The Incarnation ; and it was a manifestation so much more perfect than any other that the world has seen, that we do well to put the definite article before the word. /Yet it is a mistake to overlook the fact that / God dwells in every good man, and manifests J himself through him. And whenever, in any /^character, the great qualities of truth and jus- yOp tice and purity and courage and honor and / j kindness are exhibited, we see some reflection / ^ of the character of God. • In many a home the father and the mother, by their faithfulness and kindness and self- sacrifice, make it easy for the children to be- lieve in a good God ; and in every community brave and true and saintly men and women are revealing to us high qualities which we cannot help interpreting as divine. We can- not imagine that God is less just or fair or kind than these men and women are; they lift up our ideals of goodness, and they com- pel us to think better thoughts of him in whom all our ideals are united. Thus it is that our humanity, as glorified by the Word made flesh, and as lifted up and sanctified by the lives of good men and women, has been a great teacher of pure reli- 26 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE gion. We have learned what to think ahout God and how to worship him aright by what he has shown us in the living epistles of his goodness and grace which he has sent into the world, and, above all, in that "strong Son of God " whom we call our Master. The other source from which the influences have come by which religion has been purified, is that divine Spirit who is always in the world, and always waiting upon the threshold of every man's thought, and in the sub-conscious depths of every man's feeling, to enlighten our understanding and purify our desires. To every man he gives all that he can receive of bght and power. To many his gifts are but meagre, because their capacities are small and their receptivity is limited; but there are always in the world open minds and docile tempers, to whom he imparts his larger gifts. Thus we have the order of prophets and in- spired men, whose words are full of bght and leading. In the Bible we have a record of the messages given by such men to the world. In that teaching, rightly interpreted, there is great power to correct the errors and cleanse away the delusions and superstitions which are apt to gather about our religion. We cannot THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 27 estimate too highly the work that has been done by these sacred writings in purifying our conception of God. It is possible, however, to treat this book in a manner so hard and literalistic that it shall become a hindrance rather than a help to the better knowledge of God. The one fact that it brings vividly before us is that fact of progress in religious knowledge which we are now considering. It shows us how men have gone steadily forward, under the leader- ship of the divine Spirit, leaving old concep- tions behind them, and rising to larger and larger understanding of divine things. Any treatment of the Book which fails to recog- nize this fact — which puts all parts of the Bible on the same level of spiritual value and authority — simply ignores the central truth of the Bible and perverts its whole mean- ing- The truth which we need to emphasize in our use of the Bible is the truth that the same Spirit who gave the men of the olden time their message is with us, to help us to the right understanding of it, and to give us the messagfe for our time. Nor is his illumination confined to any guild or rank of behevers; 28 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE the day foretold by the prophet has surely come, when the Spirit is poured upon all flesh, and the prophetic gift may be received by all the pure in heart. The one glorious fact of our religion — a fact but dimly realized as yet by the church — is the constant presence in the world of the Spirit of Truth. If there is anything at all in religion, this divine Spirit is ready to be the Counselor, Comforter, and Guide of every human soul. And we cannot doubt that the steadily enlarging conception of the character of God is due to his gracious ministry. Such, then, are the sources from which have come that better knowledge of God which makes the religion of our time to differ from the reHgion of past generations. And it will be seen that these three sources are but one. It is the divine Reason and Love himself who has been revealing himself to us in the unity and order of nature, in the enlarging life of humanity, in the inspired insights and con- victions of devout believers. What we are looking upon is that continuing revelation of God to the world which has been in progress from the beginning, and which will never THE ROOTS OF RELIGION 29 cease until the world is full of the knowledge of God as the sea is full of water. With this great and growing revelation the church is intrusted. Its business in the world is to take this truth about God, this new truth, this larger and fairer truth, which God himself, in the creation and through the incarnation and by the Indwelling Spirit, has been clearing up and lifting into the light, and fill modern life full of it. This is the truth which modern life needs. Religion is a perma- nent fact, but its forms change with advancing knowledge. There are forms of truth which are suited to the needs of modern life. God himself is always at work preparing the truth for present needs. It is the function of the church to understand this truth, and make it known in every generation. n OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS Our religion is the Christian religion. This is the form of faith which the church in our country is organized to promote. Ours is a Christian country. This is not by virtue of any legal establish- ment of Christianity, for one of the glories of our civilization is that first amendment to our national constitution, which declares that ^^ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Buddhists, Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsees, Jews, are just as free to exercise their respective forms of religion in this country as are the Christians. The gov- ernment neither forbids nor fosters any kind of faith. Ours is a Christian country because nearly all the people of the country are, by birth and by choice, identified with the Christian faith. Still it is true that the freedom extended by our constitution to other forms of faith OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 31 has been claimed by some of their adherents, and we have in the United States a goodly number of groups representing non-Christian creeds. Of these the Jews constitute much the largest number, there being, perhaps, six or seven hundred Jewish congregations in all parts of the country. There are also sixty or seventy Chinese temples, a few groups of Par- sees and Mohammedans, a few hundred com- panies of Spiritualists, and a few scores of societies of Ethical Culture and Free Keligion. All told there are not, probably, among the eighty millions of our people, more than a million and a half who are not either tradi- tionally or nominally Christians. Our contact with the Orient, on our western frontier, is likely, however, to bring us into close relations, in the near future, with other ancient forms of faith. The Christian church in modern life will be compelled to meet questions raised by the presence of Buddhists and Confucians and Mohammedans, and to prove its superiority to these religions. The study of comparative religion has had hitherto purely an academic interest for most of us; in the present century it is likely to become for millions a practical question. Many a 32 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE young man and young woman will be forced to ask : " Why is the religion of my fathers a better religion than that of my Hindu asso- ciate or my Japanese classmate? " The answer, if wisely given, may be entirely satisfactory, but the question must not be treated as absurd or irrelevant. In the face of the great compe- titions into which it must enter, our religion must be ready to give an intelligent account of itself. One of the first questions to be asked when we take up this inquiry is. What is the atti- tude of our religion toward the other religions? Perhaps it is better to put the question in a concrete form and ask. What is the attitude of the Christian people toward the people of other religions? The answer to this question may not be as prompt and confident as we could wish. Many people who profess and call themselves Christ- ians are not so broad-minded or so generous hearted as they ought to be, and they are inclined to be partisans in religion as well as in art or politics ; they think that all the truth and all the goodness are in the institutions with which they are allied, and that all the rest are of the evil one. But such people are OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 33 not good representatives of Christianity. They never learned any such judgment from him whom they call their Master. And we may safely claim that those who have the mind of Christ are tolerant and generous toward those whose opinions or whose religious practices differ from their own. They do not forget that their Master treated with the greatest sympathy men and women whose faiths greatly differed from his own ; that some of those who received his strongest testimonies to the greatness of their faith, like the Roman centurion and the Canaanitish woman, were pagans; that one of his most intimate and gracious conversations on the deep things of the Spirit was with a Samaritan woman, and that his representative hero of practical reli- gion was a Samaritan man whose genuine goodness he placed in sharp contrast with the heathen selfishness of the priest and the Levite of his own faith. No Christian ever learned to be a bigot by sitting at the feet of Jesus Christ. And I think we may justly claim that those who have entered into the spirit of the Christian religion are always gen- erous in their attitude toward those who wor- ship by other forms of faith. 34 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE They cannot forget that all these people whose creeds and rites differ so greatly from their own are children of our Father, and that they can be no less dear to him than we are; and it is therefore hardly possible for them to imagine that he can have left them without some revelation of saving truth. They approach, therefore, the religious beliefs of other peoples with open minds, expecting to find in them elements of truth, and desiring to put themselves into sympathetic and cordial relations with those whose opinions differ from their own. As has been said, not all those who are known as Christians have this tolerant tem- per, because there are many who are known as Christians who have but dim notions of what it means to be a Christian. It was once the pre- vailing assumption that all religions were di- vided into two classes, the true and the false; that ours was the true religion and all the others were false religions. That the heathen were the enemies of God was the common be- lief, and it was a grave heresy to insinuate that any of them could be saved without re- nouncing their false religions and accepting the true rehgion. This was the basis upon OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 35 which the work of foreign missions was long conducted, and there are still many who bear the Christian name who have not yet reached any other conception. But the church in modern life is learning to see this whole matter in a different light. Our best modern missionaries decline to take this attitude in dealing with men of other re- ligions. They do not regard the heathen as outside the pale of the divine compassion ; they seek for points of sympathy between their own beliefs and those of the people to whom they are sent. From no other sources have come stronger testimonies to the sympathy of religions. We must not, these veteran mis- sionaries insist, assume that our religion is the only true religion, while all the others are false religions. We may well assume that all human forms of faith are more or less imper- fect — our own as well as theirs, and invite them to a candid comparison of the differing systems. If our own is really superior, if it meets universal human needs more perfectly, we ought not to fear such a candid compar- ison. But we must be ready to see and ap- prove the good that is theirs, if we wish them to accept the good that is ours. 36 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE This is not admitting that there is no dif- ference — that one religion is as good as an- other ; we should stultify ourselves by making any such admission. But it is a willingness to recognize truth and goodness everywhere, and to rejoice in them. And we must show that we are not afraid to take from the many truth which has been revealed to them more clearly than to us. If we believe in the universal father- hood and the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit, we must expect to find, in every form of faith, some elements that our Christianity needs. In fact Christianity, through all its history, has been appropriating truth which it has found in the systems with which it has come in con- tact, and it is one of the glories of Cliristianity that it has the power to do this. A great Christian scholar has just published a book entitled " The Growth of Christianity," in which he shows how this has been done. He finds that " just as Jewish morality was ennobled and beautified by the teaching of Christ and yet made an essential element of that teaching, so the philosophy of Greece, the mysticism of Asia, and the civic virtues of Rome were taken up by the Christian rehgion, which, while remaining Christian, was modi- OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 37 fied by their influence. This process cannot fairly be called degeneration, but growth, such growth and development as is the privilege of every truly living institution." ^ It is true, as one critic suggests, that in taking in these foreign elements Christianity not only made some important gains, but also suffered some serious losses. Greek philo- sophy and Asian mysticism and Koman legal- ism are responsible for certain perversions of Christianity, as well as for enlargement of its content. We have great need to be careful in these assimilations ; some kinds of food are rich but not easily digested. But it is, as I have said, a chief glory of Christianity that it pos- sesses this assimilative power. It is the natural fruit of faith in the divine fatherhood. We ought to be able to believe that God has some revelations to make to us through our brethren in other lands, as well as to them through us. It is the possession of this power which fits Christianity to be the universal religion. It has already given some striking proofs of the possession of this power. We have had, once, upon this planet, a great Parliament of Religions, in which the representatives of all 1 New York Independent, September 12, 1907. 38 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE the great faiths now existing in the world were gathered together for comparison of behefs and experiences. It was, perhaps, the most important religious gathering which has ever assembled. The presiding officer, in his opening address, thus described its import : — " If this congress shall faithfully execute the duties with which it has been charged, it will become a joy of the whole earth and stand in human history like a new Mount Zion crowned with glory and making the actual beginning of a new epoch of brotherhood and peace. " In this congress the word ^ religion ' means the love and worship of God and the love and service of man. We believe the Scripture ' Of a truth God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that f eareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him.' We come together in mutual confidence and respect, without the least siu*render or compromise of anything which we respectively believe to be ttuth or duty, with the hope that mutual ac- qyaintance and a free and sincere interchange o views on the great questions of eternal life all I human conduct will be mutually benefi- cial. OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 39 "The religious faiths of the world have most seriously misunderstood and misjudged each other, from the use of words in meanings radically different from those which they were intended to bear, and from a disregard of the distinctions between appearances and facts, between signs and symbols and the things sig- nified and represented. Such errors it is hoped that this congress will do much to correct and to render hereafter impossible." Such was the purpose of this parliament, such the spirit which prompted the calling of it, and found utterance in its conferences. It was surely a notable and beautiful thing for the adherents of these dissimilar faiths, whose ordinary attitude toward one another has always been suspicious and oppugnant, to come together in this friendly way, seeking a better understanding, and emphasizing the things that make for unity. And whose was this parliament? Which religion was it that conceived of it, and made provision for it, and set in motion the influences that drew these hostile bands into harmony? It was the Christ- ian religion which gave us this great endeavor after unity. And it is highly improbable that such a movement would have originated in 40 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE any other than a Christian country, or among the followers of any other Leader than the Man of Nazareth. It was the natural thing for the disciples of Jesus to do ; and while many men of the other faiths yielded to this gracious influence, and were thus brought under the power of the bond that unites our common humanity, it is not likely that any of them would have taken the initiative in such an undertaking. We may hope that this is not the last par- liament of religions ; that in the days before us such manifestations of the unity of the race will not be uncommon. And we are sure that the leaders of all such endeavors will be found among the followers of the Prince of Peace. Here, then, we find one clear answer to the question with which we started. The Christian confessor who is confronted with the question " What reason have you for thinking that the religion of your fathers is better than any other form of faith?" may answer, first, "It is better because it cares more for the unity of the race than any other religion cares ; be- cause it believes more strongly in the essential brotherhood of all worshipers ; because it OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 41 teaches a larger charity for men of differing beliefs, and more perfectly realizes the sym- pathy of religions. It is far from being all that it ought to be, on this side of its develop- ment ; many of its adherents are still full of bigotry and intolerance and Pharisaic conceit ; but these are contrary to its plainest teachings, and all its progress is in the direction of larger charity for men of all religions. Already, in spite of its failures, it has shown far more of this temper than any other religion has exhib- ited; and when it gets rid of its own sects and schisms, and comes closer to the heart of its own Master, it will have a power of drawing the peoples together which no other reHgion has ever thought of exercising." I have spoken of the fact that Christianity claims to be a universal religion. That was the expectation with which its first messengers were sent forth. They were bidden to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. There has never been any other thought among the loyal followers of Jesus than that the day is coming when every knee shall bow to him and every tongue confess him. This expectation of universahty is not shared 42 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE by all the religions of the earth. Many of them are purely ethnic faiths; they grow out of the Hves of the peoples who adhere to them ; it does not seem to be supposed that any other peoples would care for them or know what to do with them. The old Komans had a saying, " Cujus regioy ejus religio " — which means, Every country has its own religion. The ear- lier Hebrews had the same idea ; they thought that every people had a god of its own. Jeho- vah was their God ; Baal was the god of the Phoenicians, and Chemosh was the god of Moab. They believed that Jehovah was a stronger God than any of these other deities, but they did not seem to doubt their existence or their potency. Even the prophet Micah says : " For all the peoples will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of Jehovah our God for ever and ever." ^ The later prophets gained the larger conception of universality ; they believed that there was but one supreme God, and there- fore but one religion, to the acceptance of which all mankind would at last be brought. The narrower conception of religion as, a national or racial interest has, however, pre- * Micah iv, 5. OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 43 vailed and still prevails among many peoples. The Hindu religion, which numbers many mil- lions of votaries, has no expectation of becom- ing a world religion. Indeed, it could not well entertain any such expectation ; the system of caste, on which it rests, makes it necessarily exclusive. It has no missionary impulse ; its adherents are content with a good which they do not seek to share with other peoples. The same thing is true of many of the minor faiths. Now it is manifest that religions which do not expect to be universal are not likely to ex- ceed their own expectations. " According to your faith be it unto you " is as true of systems as of men. And none of us is likely to be strongly drawn to a faith which has really no invitation for us, no matter how stoutly it may maintain its own superiority. No religion which has only a tribal or racial significance can make any effective appeal to our credence. The note of universality must be struck by any religion which claims our suffrages. There are certain great living religions which make this claim of universality. Juda- ism and Parseeism have both entertained this expectation, but the fewness of their adherents at the present time indicates that the expecta- 44 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE tion is but feebly held. The three living faiths which aspire to universal dominion are Bud- dhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity.^ Each of these hopes to possess the earth. Each of these is strong enough to enforce its claim with some measure of confidence. Recent estimates give to Buddhism 148, 000,000 of followers, to Mohammedanism 177,000,000, and to Christianity 477,000,000. Mohammedanism has been rapidly extending its sway in Africa during recent years ; Bud- dhism is not, probably, making great gains at the present time. If any form of religion is to become uni- versal in the earth it would appear that it must be one of these three. If any of us wishes to exchange the religion of his fathers for another faith, his choice will be apt to lie between Buddhism and Mohammedanism. What claims to our credence and allegiance could either of them set up ? It would not, for most of us, be an easy thing to turn from the faith of our fathers to * I do not include Confucianism, because it is, primarilj, a system of ethics or sociology rather than a religion; and also because it seems to have no missionary impulse, and no ex- pectation of universality. OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 45 any other form of faith. The ideas and usages to which we have been accustomed all our lives are not readily exchanged for those which are wholly unfamiliar. Rites and cere- monies and customs of other religions, which may be intrinsically as reasonable and reverent as our own, strike upon our minds unpleasantly because they are unwonted. It would, there- fore, be somewhat difficult for us to put our- selves into a mental attitude before either of these great religions, in which we should be able to do full justice to its claims upon our credence. Yet if we could gain the breadth of view to which the disciples of Christ ought to attain, we should be compelled to admit that each of these great religions has rendered some im- portant service to mankind. What those services have been can only be hinted at in this chapter. Of Islamism, Bishop Boyd Carpenter testifies that it " has been, and still is, a great power in the world. There is much in it that is calculated to purify and elevate mankind at a certain stage of history. It has the power of redeeming the slaves of a degraded polytheism from their low groveling conception of God to conceptions which are 46 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE higher ; it has set an example of sobriety to the world and has shielded its followers from the drink plague which destroys the strength of nations. And, in so far as it has done this, it has performed a work which entitles it to the attention of man and no doubt has been a factor in God's education of the world." ^ Of Buddhism even more could be said. In the words of Mr. Brace : — "Sometime in the sixth century before Christ there appeared in Northern India one of those great personalities who in a measure draw their inspiration directly from above. . . . When he says, ^ As a mother at the risk of her life watcheth over the life of her child, her only child, so also let every one cultivate a boundless good-will towards all beings, . . . above and below and across, unobstructed, without hatred, without enmity, standing, walking, sitting, or lying, as long as he be awake let him devote himself to this state of mind ; this way of living, they say, is the best in this world ' — when these words come to our ears we hear something of a like voice to that which said, ' Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden.' From a thousand > Permanent Elements in Religion, p. 143. OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 47 legends and narratives we may gather that to Gotama the Enlightened (the Buddha) the barriers of human selfishness fell away. To him the miseries of the poor, the slave, the outcast, were his own ; the tears which men had shed from the beginning, ^enough to fill oceans,' were as if falling from his eyes. The great pang of sorrow, piercing the heart of the race, inconsolable, unspeakable, struck to his own heart. For him the sin of the world, the unsatisfied desire, the fierce passion and hatred and lust, poisoned life, and he cared for nothing except for what would change the heart and remove this fearful mass of evil." * The character of Gotama as it emerges from the reek of tradition is one of the noblest in history, and while the religion of which he was the leader has been defiled by all manner of corruptions and superstitions, it has borne much good fruit in the life of many peoples. It would be easy to point out the radical defects in both these religions ; let me rather call attention to some of the distinguishing peculiarities of our own faith. 1. The God whom Jesus has taught us to believe in, is a far nobler object of affection 1 The Unknown God, p. 228. 48 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE and trust than is ever presented to the thought of the followers of Mohammed or of Gotama. He is our Heavenly Father, infinite in his purity, his truth, his kindness, his compassion, his care for all his children. Now it is true that the central and funda- mental difference in religions is that which concerns the character of the deity. The best rehgion is that which worships the best god. And when we compare the Christian concep- tion of God with the Buddhist conception or the Mohammedan conception, we cannot fail to see which is the highest and the purest. A brilliant Japanese scholar, discussing this subject of the relative values of religions, was asked if, in any respect, the Christian religion was better than the Oriental religions, and he promptly answered ; " Yes ; the Christian con- ception of God as the Heavenly Father is higher and better than that of any Oriental religion.'* If that is true it settles the whole question. It is, perhaps, inaccurate to speak of Bud- dhism as having any conception of God. " The very idea of a god as creating or in any way ruling the world," says one authority, "is ut- terly absent in the Buddhist system. God is OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 49 not so much as denied, he is simply not known." Buddha taught men to be compassionate to one another, but he did not teach them to look above themselves for any divine compassion. It is true that they now venerate him, and even pray to him ; for the human soul will pray, — its instinct of dependence, its craving for fellowship with something higher than itself will prevail over all theories ; but this prayer must be somewhat incoherent, for the wor- shiper believes that Buddha has no longer any conscious or personal existence. And there is certainly no conception in his mind of any such fatherly relation with any Power above himself, who loves him and cares for him and knows how to help him, as that which Jesus has revealed to us. The Mohammedan Deity is indeed a person, but he is a relentless, omnipotent Will. The worst phases of the old Calvinism — those which have disappeared from Christian thought — are the central ideas of the Mohamme- dan creed. God is represented in the Koran as fitful and revengeful, as arbitrary and de- spotic ; he is a very different being from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2. The religion of Jesus emphasizes, as no 50 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE other religion has done, " the redemptive prin- ciple in its idea of God." It does not hide the fact of moral evil as the source of all our woes, but it shows an eternal purpose in the heart of God to save man from sin, even at the cost of suffering to himself. This is the mean- ing of redemption ; it is the salvation of men through a divine self-sacrifice. No such reve- lation of the love of God as this has ever been made to the world, except through the life and teachings and death of Jesus Christ. No wonder that when it is simply and clearly pre- sented to men it wins their hearts. A Chinese woman, listening to a recital of this redemptive work of God, turned suddenly to her neigh- bor and said, " Did n't I tell you that there ought to be a God like that ? " We shall look in vain through the scrip- tures of the other religions for any such con- ception of the relation of God to men. Men must save themselves by their own endeavors ; they must obey or they will suffer ; perchance by their own suffering they may be purified : but that God should stoop to earth and stand by the side of sinning and suffering man, and save him by suffering with him, is a truth to which none of them has risen. OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 51 3. Christianity, above all other faiths, is the religion of hope. It not only kindles in our hearts the hope of overcoming the sin which is our worst enemy, but it conquers in our hearts the fear of death and opens up to us the prospect of unending and glorious future life, in the society of those most dear to us. Mohammedanism also permits us to hope for future blessedness, albeit its representations of the life to come are not always such as to purify and elevate our thoughts. Buddhism, on the contrary, though it tells us that we may be reborn many times, assures us that each reappearance in this world will be attended with suffering and struggle ; from which, if we continue to walk in the true path, striv- ing more and more to conquer our desires, we may at length hope to be delivered ; but the blessedness which comes at the end of all this struggle is simply f orgetf ulness : we shall lose our identity and be remerged in that fount of Being: from which at first we came. Existence is the primal evil : to get rid of ourselves is what we are to strive for ; salvation is our dis- appearance out of life, our absorption in the ocean of unconsciousness. This is the best that Buddhism has to offer us. Not many of 52 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE us, I dare say, will wish to exchange for this the Christian hope. There are many other characteristics of the Christian faith on which it would be interest- ing to reflect, but these three great elements are sufficient to enable us to form our judg- ment as to its comparative value. No religion which in these particulars is inferior can ever draw the world away from the leadership of Jesus Christ. And it ought to be clear to all who can comprehend the needs of human nature that while these other faiths, in view of the great services they have rendered to mankind, are not to be despised ; and while it is probable that the world, until the end of it, will be indebted to them for contributions which they have made to our knowledge of the highest things ; yet there is no good rea- son why any one who has been walking in the light that shines from the life and teach- ings of Jesus Christ should wish to turn from his way into the ways of Mohammed or Gotama. It is not by any happy accident that Christ- ianity is growing far more rapidly than any other form of faith, and now vastly outnumbers every other ; it is not a strange thing that the OUR RELIGION AND OTHER RELIGIONS 53 lands in which it prevails are far more pros- perous and far more powerful than the lands in which other religions prevail. It is winning the world. It is winning the world because its interpretation of life is a truer interpre- tation than any other religion has offered; because it meets and supplies the deepest wants of men more perfectly than any other religion meets and supplies them. The great evolutionary law is at work here, as everywhere. There is a struggle for exist- ence among religions, as among all other forms of life. The law of variation has had full play in all this realm ; human nature has produced a great variety of religious ideas and forms, and natural selection is doing its work upon them. The fittest will survive. And the fittest religion will be the religion that ministers most perfectly to human needs; that makes the best and strongest men and women ; that rears up the most fruitful and the most endur- ing civilization. Everything visible within the horizon of our thought to-day indicates that the religion which will survive — the permanent religion, the universal religion — will be the Christian religion. 54 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE It will gather into itself the best elements out of every other form of faith, but the con- structive ideas will be those which have found most perfect expression in the teachings of Jesus Christ. m THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION We have found in our previous studies that religion is a central and permanent element in human nature, and that Christianity bids fair to be the permanent form of religion. But the readers of these pages are constantly meeting with those who would admit both these statements, yet who are disposed to deny or ignore the value of the church in modern society. They believe in religion, they say; they even believe in the principles of Christ- ianity ; they may go so far as to say that they believe in Christ; but they do not believe in the church. What they seem to object to is organized religion. They appear to think that it ought to be diffused, somehow, like an at- mosphere, through the community. We hear Christians talk, sometimes, about " the invisi- ble church ; " that is the only kind of church which these objectors are disposed to tolerate. Institutional religion is the special object of their distrust. 66 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE Some of the more radical among them oppose religious organizations, not because these organizations are religious, but because they have an antipathy for all forms of social organization. It does not take an open-eyed onlooker long to discover that social organiza- tions of all kinds are infested with many evils. Social machinery is never perfect in its con- struction or operation. It is always getting out of gear; there is endless friction and clatter and confusion ; it takes a great deal of trouble to keep it moving, and its product is often of poor quality. When men get together and try to cooperate for any purpose, by orderly methods, they are always sure, be- cause of the imperfection of human nature, to do a certain amount of mischief. Often their organization tends to tyranny ; freedom is un- duly restricted ; selfish men get possession of the power accumulated in the organization, and use it for their own aggrandizement ; it becomes, to a greater or less extent, an instru- ment of oppression. Thus government, which is normally the organization of political society for the protection of liberty and the promotion of the general welfare, sometimes becomes, as in Russia, a grinding despotism despoiling the THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 57 many for the eDrichment of the few. Thus, in our American politics, we have the machine, which is simply the perversion of party organ- ization, and which in many instances has become, under the manipulation of greedy and conscienceless men, an evil of vast pro- portions. Looking upon these abuses with which po- litical organizations of all kinds are always encumbered, some men propose to abolish all forms of political organization. This is an- archism, of which there are two varieties, — the anarchism of violence, and the anarchism of non-resistance. Czolgosz represents one type and Tolstoy the other. For the anarchism of violence we can have only detestation and horror; to the anarchism which expects to abolish laws by ignoring them and suffering the consequences, we must extend a respect- ful toleration. Nevertheless the anarchism of Tolstoy offers us a programme which is hardly thinkable. For we are made to live and work together; and if we work together effectively we must have rules and working agreements, methods of cooperation, and these, whatever name we may give them, will have the force of constitutions and laws. The great cooperations, 68 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE on which the welfare of society depends, in- volve social organization. Even if the form which this takes should be largely economic, it would have political force and significance. Man is a pohtical animal; it is his nature to live politically ; and, as Horace says, you may drive out nature with a pitchfork, but she is sure to come back. And the same weaknesses of human nature which infested the old forms of organization would be found in the new ones, unless human nature itself were regen- erated. Those who would destroy political society on account of its abuses are, therefore, guilty of the same foolishness as that of the man who burned his house to get rid of the rats. Doubt- less the rats all escaped and were ready to enter, with reinforcements, into the new house as soon as it was builded. The same reasoning applies to ecclesiastical anarchism. Those who, because of the defects of church organizations, would abolish the churches, are equally unpractical. For it is not only true, as we saw in our first chapter, that rehgion is a primal fact of human nature, it is equally true that religion everywhere has a social manifestation. The same impulse THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 59 which moves men to worship, draws them to- gether in their worship. Any deep or strong emotion makes human beings congregate. Just as a flock of sheep huddle together when they are frightened, so men, when deeply moved for any cause, seek one another. As the impulse of religion is one of those by which men are most deeply moved, it always brings them together. So long as religion keeps the form of fear it produces this result ; when fear is succeeded by more grateful emotions, and men begin to have some sense of the goodness of the Power they have been blindly worshiping, then their gladness and gratitude bring them together. Religion, therefore, in all lands and ages, has been a social interest ; indeed, it has been the strongest of the bonds uniting human beings. To demand a religion which should have no social expression is to fly in the face of nature, and forbid causes to bring forth their normal effects. Wherever there is religion men will be associated, and their worship and their work will be carried on under forms of social organ- ization. Anarchism is no more thinkable or workable in religion than in politics. If this is true of religion in general, it is 60 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE eminently true of the Christian religion. The characteristic note of Christianity is its empha- sis on the social relations. In this it simply exhibits what we may call its scientific temper, its tendency to keep close to the facts of life, to give the right interpretation to nature and to human nature. A modern sociologist * tells us that " the sole point of view, aim and goal of Jesus, in all his teaching and by impHcation of all his acts, was social. The divine Father whom he pro- claimed was social — a Being whose one attri- bute was love." When we say that " God is love," this is what we mean. He delights in companionship, and finds his happiness in the relations which unite him with his creatures. Since his own supreme good is in these recipro- cal affections and services, we cannot imagine that he could expect us to find our good in any different way. If we share our Father's nature, we must seek our happiness where he finds his. The blessedness of fife must therefore be in our social relations. Such is the teaching of Jesus. Such is the essence of Christianity. While, therefore, every religion by its very nature tends to bring men together, Christ- » Professor D. M. Fisk. THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 61 ianity lifts the social impulse into the light and sanctifies and transfigures it, making it not merely a concomitant of religion but the heart of religion. The effect of this revelation was seen in all the ministry of Jesus. Where- ever he went the people flocked together. " Great multitudes followed him." Into the wildernesses, up to the mountain tops, across the stormy lake, they made their way; it was a day of great congregations. It was because they wanted to be with him, of course ; but when they came to him they came together, and one of the things he sought for them was that they should like to be together. That was surely a lesson that they learned of him ; for as soon as he had gone they began to gravitate together. Every day they met, sometimes in the temple courts, sometimes in their own homes, for praise and prayer; every evening they par- took together, in little groups, of a simple meal, in memory of him. Their religion, from the start, manifested a marked social tendency. Indeed, we might give it a stronger word, and say that, in the beginning, it was socialistic; it seemed to threaten a complete reconstruction of the industrial order. For " all that believed were together, and had all things common; 62 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE and they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, as every man had need." ^ Just how far this communistic experiment was carried it is difficult to say, but it is evi- dent that the disciples felt that their religion ought to permeate and control their entire social life. And there has never since been a day when the social side of religion has not been recognized and provided for. The very impulse which is kindled in their hearts when they are brought into association with Christ, brings men together. Communion, fellowship, these are the first words they learn. It has been so from the beginning. One of the great Christians of the apostolic age admonished his converts against " forsaking the assembling of themselves together," and that admonition has always been heeded. No other religion has brought people together so constantly and in so many ways as Christianity has done. Christian people are always getting together, to pray together, to sing together, to partake together of the sacraments, to listen together to the teaching of the pulpit, to study the Bible together, to take counsel together about their work, to unite their efforts, in manifold ^ Acts ii, 44, 45. THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 63 cooperations, for the upbuilding of the King- dom. They have even come to beheve — and they are profoundly right about it — that it is a good thing for people to come together just for the sake of being together, even when no distinctly religious business assembles them. To establish and promote pleasant and ami- cable social relations between human beings is a Christian thing to do. It is a sign of the progress of the Kingdom, and a preparation for it, when men and women enjoy meeting one another for no other reason than that they like to be together. It is a condition of the manifestation of the love which is the fulfilling of all law. The stranger, as many languages testify, is apt to be the enemy. The chief reason why he is dreaded and hated is that he is not known. Acquaintance allays sus- picion and promotes sympathy and kindness. Not the least of the services which Christ- ianity has rendered to the world may be seen in what it has accomplished in bringing hu- man beings together socially. Setting aside its purely religious function, it has done, in Europe and America, more than all other agencies put together to promote acquaint- ances and neighborly relations among men. It 64 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE has done, as we shall see by and by, far less than it ought to have done in this direction ; its failures in this department of its work have been manifold and grievous ; but after all this is admitted, it must still be affirmed that it has done most of what has been done to socialize mankind, and no other institution or agency is entitled to throw stones at it because of its deficiencies. When, therefore, those who read these chap- ters hear the criticisms and cavils to which I referred at the beginning, they will know how to reply to them. When they hear an argument which as- sumes that the church is worse than useless because all social institutions are worse than useless, they may answer that the reasoning is unsound, because it repudiates the deepest facts of human nature ; that social institutions, the church among them, are natural growths as truly as the cornfields and the forests. When they hear any one maintaining that he believes in the principles of Christianity but not in the social organizations which em- body these principles, they may well reply that the principles of Christianity naturally and inevitably embody themselves in forms of THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 65 social organization ; that you could no more prevent it than you could prevent light from breaking into color or spring from coming in May ; that, as a matter of history, the growth of Christianity has been signalized by a mar- velous development of the social sentiments and habitudes which must find expression in some kind of social cooperation ; and that, as a matter of fact, after all necessary deduc- tions have been made, the church has been a powerful agency in developing that temper of likemindedness which makes civilized society possible. There is still another cavil to which it may be needful to refer. It is based on the notion that religion, after all, is a purely individual affair ; that it concerns only the relations be- tween the soul and its God ; that therefore public worship is not only needless but un- seemly. Prayer is sometimes described as " the flight of one alone to the only One ; " and it is sometimes contended that any other than private prayer is a violation of all the higher sanctities. If this were true, of course the church would be an anomaly or an imposition. And while there are not many who would urge this argument unfalteringly, some such notion 66 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE as this may be found lying at the bottom of a good many minds. The words of Jesus, in the sixth chapter of Matthew, are sometimes quoted in support of this criticism upon public worship : " And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypo- crites ; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father- which seeth in secret shall recompense thee." * But we must learn to interpret the words of Jesus as meeting the occasion on which they were spoken ; and before we base any generalizations or rules of conduct upon them, we must bring together all that he said and did which bears upon the case in hand, and try to arrive at some meaning which shall in- clude and explain it all. When we treat the utterances and acts of Jesus after this manner, we shall find that no such deduction as that which we are considering can be drawn from them. » Matt. vi. 6, 6. THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 67 We discover, in the first place, that he him- self did not always pray in secret ; for several of his prayers made in public places are re- ported for us. Moreover, he told his disciples that when even two or three of them were gathered together in his name, he would be in the midst of them. The implication is that they would be in the habit of gathering to- gether in his name, and that there would gen- erally be many more than two or three of them. The only form of prayer which he has left us is manifestly intended primarily, not for secret worship, but for social worship. The pronouns of the " Lord's Prayer " are all in the plural number : " Our father who art in heaven ; " " Give us this day our daily bread." For solitary prayer these phrases are not suitable. When he went away from his disciples he left them a great promise of the manifestation to them of that Spirit which had been given without measure to him ; and he bade them tarry in Jerusalem until that promise should be fulfilled. Accordingly they assembled, about one hundred and twenty of them, in an upper room in Jerusalem, and " continued 68 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE steadfastly " in prayer together for many days. The response to this prayer was that out- pouring of the Spirit by which the apostolic church was inspired, and equipped for its work. Saint Peter told the disciples that this was the gift of the ascended Christ, — the fulfillment of his promise to them. If this was true, it can hardly be conceived that he disapproved of the common prayer in answer to which this gift had come. Nor can any reasonable interpreter of his words and deeds imagine that he intended his admonition in the sixth chapter of Matthew to be taken as a prohibition of public worship or of social prayer. Those words were simply a reproof of ostentation in worship. The Phar- isees, whose conduct he is castigating, " loved to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they might be seen of men." It was a private and personal prayer, oflFered in a public place, to advertise the devotion of the worshiper. With our pri- vate and personal prayers the public has no concern ; it is a manifest indelicacy to thrust them before the public ; the place for them is the secret chamber. Individual sins and sorrows and needs we all have, and when we THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 69 talk with our Father about them we ought to be alone with him; but we have also common sins and sorrows and needs, and it is well for us to be together when we talk with him about them. It is therefore a gross perversion of these words of Jesus to quote them in condem- nation of acts of public worship. His entire life and the example of all those who were nearest to him, as well as the testimony of the best Christians in all the ages, unite to render such a notion incredible. If I have succeeded in answering the cavils which seek to discredit the church as a social organization, and especially as an agency for the maintenance of social worship, let me go on to suggest some positive reasons for the existence of such an agency. Such an opportunity as the church offers for social worship is essential to the mainte- nance of religion. Religious feeling the expres- sion of which was confined to the relations between the individual and his God, would become self-centred, egoistic, and morbid. If there were no praying but secret praying, if the social element were eliminated from prayer and praise, faith would take on ascetic forms, devotion would become rancid, sympathy would 70 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE be smothered, and the character of the wor- shiper would be hardened and belittled. There is a place and a time, as we have seen, for private devotion; probably many of us make far less use of it than would be good for us ; but any attempt to shut our religion into the closet would be suicidal. It would mould there. To keep it fresh and wholesome it must be taken out into the light and air ; the winds of heaven must blow through it ; our desires must mingle with the desires of others; our voices must join with their voices; we must leam to think of the needs, the strug- gles, the sorrows, the hopes that are common to us all, to put ourselves in other people's places when we pray, to feel that our religion is a bond that binds us to our kind. There is a kind of prayer which we could only use in the closet, — intimate, personal, deal- ing with matters of which no one else has any right to know. But there is another kind of prayer for which there is no other place than the great congregation ; a prayer in which many pleading hearts unite ; in which the sym- pathies and hopes and aspirations of a thou- sand worshipers are blended. Such a prayer, if some one can give it voice, is something far THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 71 higher and diviner than ever ascended from any secret shrine. It is true that the prayer of the great assem- bly does not always find a fitting voice. It is sometimes arid and formal ; it is sometimes palpably insincere and perfunctory, alas for our human disabilities and infirmities! The power of the leader to forget himself, to gather up into his heart the common needs of those who are listening, and jiour them out before God, is sometimes wanting. Not seldom we may find ourselves wishing for those forms of prayer, sanctified by centuries of use, in which the Christian church, in all the lands of earth, has made known its requests to God. These are always dignified and reverent ; every truly devout heart may find utterance for some of its deepest needs in the petitions of the Book of Common Prayer. But most of us have heard prayers in the sanctuary which lifted and kin- dled us as no written prayers could ever do. If the leader of the devotions could be " in the Spirit on the Lord's day ; " if he could forget himself; if the simplicity which is in Christ could take possession of his thought, if he could look over the company round about him before he closed his eyes, and with a swift 72 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE glance could glean out of that field of human experience some inkling of the trials, the per- plexities, the griefs, the struggles, the tragedies of the lives there before him, and with a great, fervent, energizing ^ prayer could carry them all up to God, there would be something in that which would convince all who were listen- ing that the highest form of prayer is not secret prayer, but social prayer. Nor is it an uncommon thing to hear, even in humble pul- pits, prayer which effectually meets this great demand. It goes without saying that, for the highest forms of praise, we must have the conspiring voices of the great congregation. We cannot let loose the hallelujahs in the closet ; that would be almost as unseemly as to pray on the street corner. If the Bible is any guide as to the forms which our worship should take, praise must constitute a large part of it. And praise is mainly a social act. Even the preaching gathers much of its im- pressiveness from the congregation. The mes- sage which stirs the hearts of five hundred worshipers would make much less impression upon any one of them if he heard it alone. ^ James v, 16. THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 73 It could not be given to him alone, as it is given to the five hundred; that is a psycho- logical impossibility. There is something in it when the five hundred hear it that is not in it when the single auditor hears it, and that something is, far and away, the best thing that it contains. All these considerations show that public worship is essential to the vigorous mainte- nance of true religion. The elements which it supplies to religion are vital elements. Let no man imagine that by reading the Bible and good books at home, and by worshiping in his closet, or, as some are fond of saying, " in God's first temples," the life of religion can be successfully maintained. It never has been maintained in that way, and it never will be. When men forsake the assembling of them- selves together for worship, there is no more reading the Bible and good books at home, and no more praying in the closet, much less in the woods. Single individuals might, if the reli- gious atmosphere of the community were kept vital round about them, continue to enjoy reli- gion. Invalids are often forced to deprive them- selves of social worship ; but if they are there in spirit, something of the benefit finds them. 74 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE But a community which deliberately abandoned social worship would be a community in which no private worship would long be maintained. If, then, we agree that religion is an essen- tial element in the life of mankind, we must see that it is necessary that some institution should exist which shall make provision for social and public worship. The Christian church undertakes primarily to fulfill this function. It has other large and important relations to society, of which we shall speak further on. But this is its first concern. I hope that it has been made evident in this discussion that it is a very important func- tion. I hope that those who read these pages may be able to see that if we are to have any religion in our land, the kind of work which the church undertakes to do cannot be neg- lected. That the church is not doing this work as well as it ought to be done is true enough ; we shall have all that before us pre- sently; but the vital necessity of the work is not therefore disproved. The work would be better done if those who now hold aloof, be- cause they see its defects, would put their lives into the business of mending them. There are very few men and women, after THE SOCIAL SIDE OF RELIGION 75 all, in our modern society, who do not say, without hesitation, that we must have churches; that it would not do to let them die ; that they are essential to the social welfare; that, im- perfect as they are, they supply a need which every one can recognize. They have no hesi- tation, either, in admitting that if there are to be churches, somebody must belong to them, and share the responsibility for their mainte- nance. But when the question is asked, " If somebody must, why must not you?" a good many of them are not able to give a very clear answer. Very often the excuse that is set up is some form of theological dissent. But that is not, in many cases, a serious barrier. It might shut some men out of some churches; but there are great varieties of creeds, and the conditions of membership in some churches are so simple that no really earnest man is likely to feel himself excluded. If it is essential that the work of the church be done, and if the reader of these pages has not convinced him- self that he is exempt from the common human obligations, then he can find, if he is in ear- nest, some church with which he can conscien- tiously ally himself, and in whose work he can bear a part. IV THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH We have seen that religion is a social fact; that religious feeling creates social organiza- tions, and is preserved and promoted by them. God is love, and love is social attraction ; the children of God, who are made in his image, must find in their hearts a tendency to get together and worship and work together. We find here a reciprocating action. An apple seed produces a tree which in its turn produces apples with seeds. So the religious impulse organizes the church, and the church cultivates and propagates religious impulses. The point to be emphasized is that religion, and especially the Christian religion, is insepar- able from social forms ; that its natural result is to bring human beings together in coopera- tive groups. It is the business of life to organize matter ; there is no life without organization ; the in- organic is the lifeless. These are facts which should be borne in mind by those who approve THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 77 of the religious life but object to religious organizations. If religion is life, it will create organic forms. In our last chapter we showed how worship, in its highest expression, is essentially social, and how impossible it would be to maintain it without the aid of institutions having the same essential purpose as the Christian church. Let us turn our thought now to the other great function of the church, the regeneration of human society. Religion cannot be kept alive without alli- ance with the social forces ; the social forces cannot be kept in healthful operation without the aid of religion. Neither blade of a pair of shears will cut without the other. You cannot raise corn without seed, and you can only get seed from corn. Religion is not an ultimate fact. When men are religious just for the sake of being reli- gious, their religion is good for nothing. Re- ligion is for character. Its end is gained when it has made us good men and women. Reli- gion is for service. It finds its justification in the work that it can do in making a better world of this. Jesus gave us the truth about it when he said, " The Sabbath was made for 78 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE man and not man for the Sabbath." And he carried the truth forward to a larger applica- tion when he said, "I came not to judge the world, but to save the world." " 7b save the world." That was the errand of the Christ ; that is the business of his church. It is not merely to save a certain number of people out of the world, and to get them safely away to another world ; it is to save the world. There is no danger of giving to this phrase too wide an application. We are entitled to the expectation that this salvation is to have a large scope ; that it is to include the earth and all its tribes of life. When we speak of mak- ing a better world of this, we ought to mean the physical world as well as the social world and the moral world. It is a true insight of faith which makes the poet say : — "The world we live in wholly is redeemed; Not man alone, but all that man holds dear : His orchards and his maize : forget me not And heartsease in his garden, and the wild Aerial blossoms of the untamed wood, That make its savagery so homelike; all Have felt Christ's sweet love watering their roots : His sacrifice has won both earth and heaven. Nature in all its fullness is the Lord's. There are no Gentile oaks, no Pagan pines ; THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 79 The grass beneath our feet is Christian grass ; The wayside weed is sacred unto him. Have we not groaned together, herbs and men, Struggling through stifling earth-weights unto light, Earnestly longing to be clothed upon With one high possibility of bloom ? And He, He is the Light, He is the Sun That draws us out of darkness, and transmits The noisome earth-damp into Heaven's own breath, And shapes our matted roots, we know not how. Into fresh leaves, and strong, fruit-bearing stems ; Yea, makes us stand, on some consummate day. Abloom in white transfiguration robes." This vital sympathy between man and his environment is never lost sight of by the great prophets. The redemption of man must mean, as they clearly see, the redemption of the world in which man lives. When the drunk- ard is reformed, the house which he inhabits puts on a new face and there are flowers in- stead of weeds in his garden. Isaiah knew that when his people were redeemed from their captivity, the wilderness and the parched land would be glad and the desert would re- joice and blossom as the rose. That wonderful passage in the eighth chapter of the Romans shows how strongly Paul had grasped the old prophetic idea; he beholds the whole creation humiliated and disfigured by its share in man's degeneration, and waiting 80 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE to be delivered with man from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. That expectation is yet to be realized. It is an essential part of the Christ- ian expectation. It is part of what redemption means. True, it is that by the selfishness and thoughtlessness of man large portions of the earth's surface have been despoiled ; mountains have been denuded of their forests ; fertile lands have been worn out, and fruitful fields have become wildernesses. But we are begin- ning to reverse this tendency, and now many a wilderness is being reclaimed, arid plains are green with corn, and the forests are creep- ing back upon the hillsides. As men become socialized, as they learn to cooperate for the common good, as some sense of their social responsibility gets possession of their minds, we shall see this process extending ; the waste of the common resources of the earth will cease ; deserts will be visited by the life-giving water ; swamps and jungles will be subdued ; the earth, in many regions now uninhabited and desolate, will be made to bring forth and bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 81 All this is the natural result of the quicken- ing in human hearts of the social sentiments, by which they are drawn into closer coopera- tion for the common good ; and this quicken- ing of the social sentiments is the work that Christ came to do, and the work that his church will be doing, with all her might, as soon as she fully understands what is her busi- ness in the world. The redemption of the physical order will be the result of the socialization of mankind. It is an integral part of the work that Christ came into the world to do. It is part of what he meant when he said that he came to save the world. When we realize this, we get some idea of the scope of the redemption which he proclaims. It is not a superficial or a senti- mental thing that he proposes ; it takes hold of life with the most comprehensive grasp ; it proposes to redeem not only man but his en- vironment. It is not, however, the redemption of the physical order to which Christ primarily ad- dresses himself. He begins in the spiritual realm. He begins with the individual. His first concern is to reveal to every child of God the great fact of the divine Fatherhood, 82 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE and to bring him into filial relations. His "whole programme for humanity rests on this simple possibility of realizing the Fatherhood of God. If this can be realized, everything else will follow. If any man is in the right fihal relations with his Father in heaven, he cannot be in wrong social relations with his brother on the earth. If he is in harmony with God in thought and feeling, he must think God's thoughts about his neighbor, and the law of love will be the law of all his conduct. No man can love the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with heart and soul and mind without loving his neighbor as himself. Heartily to believe what Jesus has told us about the Father, and fully to enter into fel- lowship with him, is to put ourselves into such relations with our fellow men that every duty we owe them will be spontaneously performed. In a society composed of men who were thus in harmony with God the only social question for each man would be, " How can I best be- friend and serve my neighbor ? " That the religion of Jesus begins here, in the heart of the individual, cannot be ques- tioned. And it must never be forgotten that there can be no sound social construction THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 83 which does not build on this foundation. But it is well to remember also that here, as every- where, a foundation calls for a building, and is useless and unsightly and obstructive with- out it. The foundation of Christianity is the reconciliation of individual souls to God, and the establishment of friendship between these individual souls and God; but what is the structure for which this foundation is laid? It is the establishment of the same divine friendship among men. That is the building for which the foundation calls. If the build- ing does not go up, the foundation is worthless. If the building does not go up, the foundation itself will crumble and decay. The only way to save a foundation is to cover it with a building. Fault might be found with the figure, but the fact which it imperfectly illustrates is be- yond gainsaying. The right relation to God, which Jesus alwavs makes fundamental, can- not be maintained except as it issues in right relations with men. Here is the apostle John's blunt way of putting it : " If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar ; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen. And this commandment have we from 84 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE him, that he who loveth God love his brother also." The commandment is, in fact, only the state- ment of a logical necessity. How could any human being enter into a loving communion with that gieat Friend whose love is always brooding over our race, who is seeking to do us good and not evil all the days of our lives, who is kind even to the unthankful and the evil, — and not be a lover of his fellow men and a servant of all their needs ? It is evident, therefore, that a religion which has no room in it for social questions cannot be the Christian religion. The social question is the one question which Christianity — gen- uine Christianity — never ceases to ask. The first thing it wishes to know about your reli- gious experience is, how it affects your relations with your fellow men. It insists that your re- lations must first be right with God, but in the same breath it declares that there is no way of knowing whether or not your relations are right with God except by observing how you behave among your fellow men. Faith is the root, but faith without works is dead, be- ing alone ; and works concern your human relations. THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 85 These principles enable us to determine what is the business of the church. Its busi- ness is to foster and propagate Christianity, and Christianity exists to establish in this world the kingdom of heaven. The church is not, therefore, an end in itself ; it is an in- strument ; it is a means employed by God for the promotion, in the world, of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is not an ecclesiastical establishment; it includes the whole of life, — business, politics, art, educa- tion, philanthropy, society in the narrow sense, the family : when all these shall be pervaded and controlled by the law of love, then the king- dom of heaven will have fully come. And the business of the church in the world is to bring all these departments of life under Christ's law of love. If it seeks to convert men, it is that they may be filled with the spirit of Christ and may govern their conduct among men by Christ's law. If it gathers them together for instruction or for inspiration, it is that they may be taught Christ's way of Hf e and sent out into the world to live as he lived among their fellow men. Its function is to fill the world with the knowledge of Christ, the love of Christ, the life of Christ. That is what Christ 86 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE meant by saving the world. The world is saved when this is true of it, and it is never saved till then. The work of the church is success- ful just to the extent to which it succeeds in Christianizing the social order in the midst of which it stands. If by means of its ministrations, the com- munity round about the church is steadily becoming more Christian; if kindness, sym- pathy, purity, justice, good- will, are increasing in their power over the lives of men ; if busi- ness methods are becoming less rapacious; if employers and employed are more and more inclined to be friends rather than foes; if poli- ticians are growing conscientious and unselfish; if the enemies of society are in retreat before the forces of decency and order; if amuse- ments are becoming purer and more rational; if polite society is getting to be simpler in its tastes and less ostentatious in its manners and less extravagant in its expenditures; if poverty and crime are diminishing; if parents are be- coming more wise and firm in the administra- tion of their sacred trust, and children more loyal and affectionate to their parents, — if such fruits as these are visible on every side, then there is reason to believe that the church THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 87 knows its business and is prosecuting it with efficiency. If none of these effects are seen in the life of the community, the evidence is clear that the church is neglecting its business, and that failure must be written across its record. Even though it be true that large numbers are added to its membership, that its congre- gations are crowded, its revenues abundant, its missionary contributions liberal, and its social prestige high ; yet if the standards of social morality in its neighborhood are sink- ing rather than rising, and the general social drift and tendency is toward animalism and greed and luxury and strife, the church must be pronounced a failure : nay, even if it be believed that the church is succeeding in getting a great many people safely to heaven when they die; yet if the social tendencies in the world about it are all downward, its work, on the whole, must be regarded as a failure. Its main business is not saving people out of the world, it is saving the world. When it is evident that the world, under its ministration, is growing no better but rather worse, no matter what other good things it may have the credit of doing, the verdict is against it. This judgment rests, of course, against the 88 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE collective churcli of the community or the nation, rather than against any local congre- gation. It may be that there are a hundred churches in a city, and that ten of them are working efficiently to leaven society with Christian ideas and principles, while the other ninety are content to fill up their membership lists and furnish the consolations of religion to the people who make up their congregations. The church of that city would probably be a failure, but the ten congregations which had accepted Christ's idea of the church and were striving to realize it could not be charged with the failure. They would have done what they could to prevent it. If the rest had been working in the same way, the results would have been different. The point on which attention must be fixed is simply this, that the test of the efficiency of the church must be found in the social con- ditions of the community to which it minis- ters. Its business is to Christianize that com- munity. There is no question but that the resources are placed within its reach by which this business may be done. If it is done, the church may hope to hear the commendation, " Well done, good and faithful servant ! " If THE BUSINESS OF THE CHUECH 89 it is not done, no matter how many other gains are made, the church must expect the condemnation of its Master. It must not be gathered from this argument that the church in modern life is a failure. There may be discouraging signs, reasons for solicitude ; but it may appear, after all, that the signs are on the whole encouraging. We are not maintaining that the social tendencies in modern society are all downward ; far from it. We are simply pointing out that it is only by observing these tendencies that we can judge whether or not the church is fulfilling its mission. It is greatly to be feared, however, that many of the churches of the present day fail to apply this test to themselves. Their social responsibility is by no means so clear to them as it ought to be. Indeed, there are not a few among them that spurn it altogether, declar- ing that their business is to save souls ; that the condition of the social order is no concern of theirs. There is some reason to believe that phrases of this kind are often used without due con- sideration of their meaning. What is meant by the saving of a soul ? Is not the one sin 90 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE from which souls need to be saved the sin of selfishness? Is not the death that threatens the souls of men, from which we seek to res- cue them, simply the result of the violation of Christ's law of love ? What is salvation but bringing them back to obedience of this law ? And this law finds expression in the social order — can find expression nowhere else. It is the law of our social relations. What possible evidence can you have that a soul is saved until you see it entering into social relations and behaving properly in them ? It is to be feared that these very simple truths are not always so well understood as they should be. There is a notion that salva- tion is something metaphysical, or legal, or sentimental ; that it consists in the belief of certain propositions or the experience of cer- tain emotions. But all this is delusive and puerile. If it is with the heart that man be- lieveth, he " believeth unto righteousness ; " that is the destination of his faith ; and unless his faith goes that way and reaches that goal, there is no salvation in it. Righteousness is the result of saving faith ; and " he that doeth righteousness is righteous" — none else. Righteousness is right relations — first with THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 91 God, and then with men. And no man can have any evidence that he is in right relations with God except as he finds himself in right relations with men. The message of Christianity, we often hear it said, is to the individual. Yes, it is; and what is the message of Christianity to the in- dividual ? The first thing that it tells him is that he is not, in strictness, an individual, any more than a hand or a foot or an eye or an ear is an individual ; that he is a member of a body ; that he derives all that is highest and most essential in his life from the life of humanity, to which he is vitally and organi- cally related; that no man liveth to himself; that his good is not, and can never be, an ex- clusive personal good, — that it is in what he shares with all the rest. The doom from which Christianity seeks to save the individual is the doom of moral individualism ; the blessed- ness into which it seeks to lead him is the blessedness of love. Thus it appears that even these cant phrases by which the church sometimes tries to fence itself off from the world into a pietistic re- ligiousness that has little or nothing to do with life, all point, when you get their real 92 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE significance, to a relation between the church and the social order so close and vital that any attempt to sever the bond must be fatal to the life of both. The church is in the world to save the world; that is its business; and it can never know whether it is succeed- ing in its business unless it keeps a vigilant eye on all that is going on in the world, and shapes its activities to secure in the world right social relations among men. In what manner the church is to carry for- ward this work of Christianizing society is a practical question calling for great wisdom. It may not be needful that the church should undertake to organize the industrial or politi- cal or domestic or philanthropic machinery of society. Its business is not, ordinarily, to con- struct social machinery ; its business is to fur- nish social motive power. It is the dynamic of society for which it is responsible. But the dynamic which it furnishes must be a dy- namic which will create the machinery. Life makes its own forms. And the church must fill society with a kind of life which will pro- duce such forms of cooperation as shall secure the prevalence of justice and friendship, of peace and good- will among men. It may not THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 93 be required to look after details, but it must make sure of the results. If the results are secured, if society is Christianized, if the social order is producing a better breed of men, if the business of the world goes on more and more smoothly, and all things are working to- gether to increase the sum of human welfare, then the church may be sure that the life "which she is contributing to the vitalization 01 society is the life that is life indeed. But if the social tendencies are all in the other direction, then she should awaken to the fact that the light that is in her must be darkness, and that the responsibility for this failure lies at her doors. It is the recognition and acceptance of this responsibility for which we are pleading. That the church, in all the ages, has very imper- fectly comprehended this responsibility is a lamentable fact. What the social aims of Jesus himself were, most of us can fairly understand. The Sermon on the Mount indicates to us the kind of society which he expected to see es- tablished on the earth. He never defined the kingdom of heaven, which he bade us seek first, but he described it in so many ways that we know very well what manner of society it 94 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE would be. But the church which has called itself by his name has but feebly grasped the truth he taught. As a late writer has said : ** As soon as the thoughts of a great spiritual leader pass to others and form the animating principle of a party, or school, or sect, there is an inevitable drop. The disciples cannot keep pace with the sweep of the Master. They flut- ter where he soared. They coarsen and ma- terialize his dreams. . . . This is the tragedy of all who lead. The farther they are in advance of their times, the more they will be misunderstood and misrepresented by the very men who swear by their name and strive to enforce their ideas and aims. If the followers of Jesus had preserved his thought and spirit without leakage, evaporation, or adulteration, it would be a fact unique in history." ^ That his disciples held fast so many of the ideas and impulses he imparted to them, and that they have been turned to so large account in the reconstruction of the social order, is matter for profound thankfulness. But much of this has been indirectly wrought; the Christ- ian elements which appear in the industrial ^ Rauschenbusch: Christianity and the Social CrisiSf pp. 93^94. THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 95 order of to-day are largely of the nature of by-products. It can hardly be said that the church of Jesus Christ has ever, in any age, consciously and clearly set before herself the business which he committed to her hands. She has always been putting the emphasis somewhere else than where he put it; she has always been doing something else instead of the great task which he began and left her to finish. It is the great failure of history — the turning aside of the Christian church from the work of Christianizing the social order, and the expenditure of her energies, for nineteen centuries, on other pursuits. The writer from whom I quoted devotes a very interesting chapter to the reasons why the church has never attempted the work of social reconstruction. He shows that it would have been almost impossible in the early Christian centuries for the Christians to have undertaken any work of social reform ; if, un- der the rigors of the Roman despotism, they had meddled with politics, they would have lost their heads. Then they began to look for a miraculous return of Jesus to set up his king- dom in the world, and they waited for him to reconstruct the social order. That expectation 96 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE held them for a thousand years. When it failed, they turned their thoughts to heaven, and "as the eternal life came to the front in Christian hope the kingdom of God receded to the background, and with it went much of the social potency of Christianity. The kingdom of God was a social and collective hope, and it was for this earth. The eternal life was an individualistic hope, and it was not for this earth. The kingdom of God involved the social transformation of humanity. The hope of eternal life, as it was then held, was the desire to escape from this world and be done with it." And this led to the ascetic tendency, which made men think this world not worth mending. Then came in the paganizing influ- ences of the Middle Ages, which made ritual the supreme thing and paralyzed the ethical motive; and then followed the controversies about dogma, which deadened the life of the church, until finally the great ecclesiasticism was developed, and the church, instead of being the instrument for the Christianization of the world, became an empire in itself, sepa- rate from the world, arrogating to itself all the honors and powers of the kingdom of God. "By that substitution," says Professor THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 97 Rauschenbusch, " the church could claim all service and absorb all social energies. It has often been said that the church interposed between man and God. It also interposed be- tween man and humanity. It magnified what he did for the church and belittled what he did for humanity. It made its own organiza* tion the chief object of social service." ^ This is only a hint of the process by which the church has been deflected fron^ its course, and hindered from undertaking, with con- scious purpose and consecrated power, her own proper work. She has done many other things, some beautiful and excellent things, but the one thing she was sent to do she has not done. It is only in our own time that she has begun to get hold of the true conception of her business in the world. That the church is here to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, to concentrate her energies upon realizing the kingdom of God in the world, now begins to be evident to men of insight ; and there is a loud call upon her to bestir her- self and take up this work so long neglected, and give to it all her energies. That is the 1 Page 182. 98 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE meaning of the cry, " Back to Christ," which we are hearing in this generation. It means that the church needs to get into sympathy with its Leader and Lord, to try to understand his social aims, and to understand what he meant when he bade us seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Two or three practical suggestions may be ventured here to those who have followed this argument. We have seen that, since religion is a per- manent need of human nature, and since the church is indispensable to the maintenance of religion, it becomes the duty of good men and women to ally themselves with the chiu'ch and help to make it efficient. But there are churches and churches. We cannot help noting, as we look over the community, some churches which at least dimly understand their business, and some which obviously do not. Some of us may be connected by birth or confession with churches that do comprehend their true function. If so, let us rejoice in that fact, and give our strength to the support of such churches in their work. It is, far and away, the most important work that is being done in the world at the present day. If we THE BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 99 can have part in it, we ought to rejoice in that privilege. We may be connected with churches which do not understand their business. Possibly we may think that the best thing for us to do is to come out of them, and seek fellowship with churches more enlightened. Let us think two or three times before we decide upon this. Perhaps the best thing we can do is to stay where we are and use our best endeavors, modestly and patiently, to bring our own church to a realization of its responsibilities. We may not be identified with any church. If we are not, then it is clearly the part of wisdom for each one to find the church which seems to him to understand its business best, and to give the strength of his life to making its life vigorous and its work ef&cient. IS THE CHTTRCH DECADENT? The assertion is often made that the church is an effete institution ; that its usefuhiess is past ; that it is sinking into innocuous desue- tude. That assertion has been current for a thousand years — perhaps longer ; there have been many periods in which it was urged much more confidently than it is to-day. This fact would suggest caution in pressing such a judgment. Wise physicians do not hastily pro- nounce the word of doom. They have seen too many patients return from the gates of death. Men and women who, in their younger days, appear to have a slender hold on life, often reach a vigorous old age. The same thing is true of institutions. It is not prudent to assume that because they are ailing they are moribund. The Christian church, as we have seen, is far from being in perfect spiritual condition. Some of her symptoms are disquieting. But even as we often have good hope for our IS THE CHURCH DECADENT?,.,,, li[Jl friends when their health is impaired, anil find that there are good reasons for our hope, so we need not despair of the recovery of the church from the morbid conditions which we acknowledge and deplore. That the patient has a good constitution and surprising vitality is indicated by the experience of nineteen cen- turies. More than once, through this long lifetime, she has been in a worse way than she is to-day, but she has rallied, and returned to her work with new vigor. At the beginning of the sixteenth century her case seemed to be desperate ; but heroic remedies were used, and while the cure was far from complete, and did not reach the root of the malady, there was at least a partial recovery. In England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and in America at the end of the same century, the symptoms were alarming ; but she lived through those critical periods, and has done better work since than ever before. That the work of the church has been sadly misdirected ; that she has often put the em- phasis in the wrong place ; that while she has been doing many things that were worth doing she has largely left undone the main thing she was sent to do, was made plain by our 102, THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE study in the last chapter. And there can be no doubt that this misdirection of her energies, and this failure to exercise her strength in normal ways, have resulted in many morbid conditions, some of which she has partly over- come, but from some of which she is still suf- fering. With the disorders from which the church has suffered in past generations we need not now concern ourselves. But the weaknesses and ailuients of the present time demand our attention. We must know what they are that we may help to cure them. That responsibility rests upon us all. If the church is to be made whole, it must be by the intelligent and nor- mal action of the men and women who are members of the church. We must know, to begin with, what health is, and what is dis- ease ; we must have some clear idea of what would be the normal condition of Christian society. Men sometimes mistake conditions of dis- ease for conditions of health. In cases of ner- vous breakdown, patients are often spurred on, by the malady itself, to work when they ought to rest. The less able to work they are, the harder they work. They do not know that IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 103 this restless activity is a sign of disease, they think it is proof of abounding vitality. And there are many ways in which morbid condi- tions tend to propagate themselves. The in- stinctive impulses of an invalid are not safe guides. Yet there are many cases in which, even if the man is not his own medical ad- viser, he must have an intelligent idea of what ails him, in order that he may be able to fol- low medical advice, and adopt the regimen which leads to health. His reason must be summoned to discern and resist his morbid impulses, and keep himself in the ways of life. Equally true is it that if the church, which is the body of Christ, is out of health, the men and women who are the members of that body must know what ails them, and how to supply the remedy. And when they summon their reason and seek to have it divinely en- lightened, they are likely to discover that many of their worst disorders are conditions which they have been cherishing ; that some of the things they have been most proud of are ills that they must pray and work to be rid of, 1. The first and the worst of the church's infirmities is unbelief. In one of the moments 104 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE of vision, when the long obscuration of his light in the future centuries was revealed to him, Jesus sadly wondered whether, when the Son of Man came, he would find faith on the earth. The pathetic query has always been pertinent. Faith is the vital force of Christ- ianity, and the weakening of that vital force is the prime cause of all its disorders. ^ The unbelief which brings enfeeblement and decay to the church of Christ is not, how- ever, the kind of unbelief which the church is most apt to reprove. There is, doubtless, in the church of to-day some weakening of faith in the historical facts of the Christian religion, and in the central doctrines of the Christian creed. Science and criticism have rendered incredible some state- ments which once were universally accepted. Considerable revision of theological belief has been found necessary, and it is probable that in this process the hold of some upon the cen- tral verities has been relaxed. It may even be that the theories of some Christian confessors respecting the person of Christ have been modified, so that his human- ity is more strongly af&rmed than once it was. To some persons this change of empha- IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 105 sis may seem to be a serious form of unbe- lief. Admitting all tliis, however, these intellect- ual changes are not the principal cause of the enfeeblement of the church. These changes, however we may regard them, have affected but a small minority of the members of our churches ; the great majority of them con- tinue to hold substantially the same theologi- cal opinions that they have always held. The trouble with the church is not chiefly a lack of faith in the creeds, it is a lack of faith in Christ. And it is not a lack of faith in the metaphysical theories of Christ's person, but a lack of faith in the truth of his teaching. It is an unbelief in which the most orthodox people are quite as much involved as those who are considered heretics. The central question is not, after all, what we think about the nature of Christ. There is good reason to believe that none of the twelve apostles held, during the life of our Lord, opin- ions which would be regarded as orthodox concerning his person. They believed that he was a great Prophet, a revealer of God ; nay, they believed that he was the Messiah, the long promised King, who was to set up his kingdom 106 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE in this world. Of this they had no doubt. This was the belief that Jesus himself sought to fasten in their minds; and when he had drawn from Simon Peter a confession of this faith he cried out, "Blessed art thou, Simon son of John ; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." It was this faith in him as Lord and Ruler of men, as the Founder in this world of a king- dom of righteousness and peace, on which, as he declared, his church should be builded. Siich faith as this these twelve men had. They would have found it difficult, probably, to assent to the Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed ; but they believed in Jesus as Lord and King, and they beHeved every word of his Magna Charta found in the Sermon on the Mount ; and they were ready to do what they could to establish that kingdom in this world. It is just here that the faith of the church is lacking. It believes the Nicene Creed, but it does not believe the Sermon on the Mount. It believes what men have said about Christ ; it does not believe what Christ himself said. It does not accept the practical rule of life which he has laid down. It does not beheve that the Golden Rule is workable in modern life. It IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 107 does not believe that it is feasible to love our neighbors as ourselves. It does not believe in the kingdom o£ heaven as a present possibility. It expects that Christ will come, by and by, in person, with miraculous power, to revolution- ize society, and that after that it will be prac- ticable to follow the law of love, in all our human relations; but, for the present, we must let the law of competition control all our practical affairs. Of course it is not often that the teachings of Christ are directly controverted ; they are generally ignored, or passed by, as "counsels of perfection " which we are to admire rather than obey. But we sometimes find arguments in which disbelief in the teachings of Jesus is distinctly justified. In a late volume, one of the great leaders of the German church elabo- rately contends that we cannot follow Jesus in his social teachings. " Our attitude toward the world," says Herrmann, " cannot be that of Jesus; even the purpose to will that it should be so is stifled in the air that we breathe to-day. The state of affairs is very clearly described by Naimiann, who says with truth : ^ Therefore we do not seek Jesus' advice on points connected with the management of the 108 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE state and political economy.' But when he goes on to say : ' I give my vote and I canvass for the fleet, not because I am a Christian, but because I am a citizen, and because I have learned to renounce all hope of finding funda- mental questions of state determined in the Sermon on the Mount,' we can detect a fallacy. He regards as painful renunciation what ought, on the part of the Christian, to be a free, de- cisive, and voluntary act." ' Naumann repudiates, rather regretfully, the counsels of Jesus about economic and civil af- fairs, but Herrmann says that he does it light- heartedly, because he has found out that these counsels are not applicable to existing condi- tions. It is evident that these counsels must be rationally applied, — the spirit and not the letter of them is the essential thing ; but what these teachers mean is more than this. How far they have departed from the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount is indicated by the words already quoted. The reason why Nau- mann does not seek the advice of Jesus in questions of public concern is that he is de- ^ The Social Gospelf Hamack and Herrmann, pp. 216, 217. IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 109 termined to give his vote and influence for the German fleet ; and Herrmann is following the same impulse when he characterizes the call for the disarmament of the nations as a " noble folly." It is evident that the reason why these teachers feel that the way of Jesus is impracticable is that they are fully committed to the ideas of German imperialism. To con- ceive that nations could dispense with war is a " noble folly." And, for the same reason, they conceive that any attempt to substitute cooperation for competition in the industrial world would be disastrous to modern society. The morality of strife outranks, in their judg- ment, the morality of service and sacrifice. The law of Jesus may be permitted to hold some subordinate place ; it will be found use- ful in mitigating the savagery of strife ; but as the regulative principle of the industrial order it is not to be considered. The attempt of these German theologians to frame a philosophical refutation of the Sermon on the Mount gives us something of a shock; but, practically, this has been the ^attitude of the church in all the generations. The hopeful sign is that it does now give us a shock to have the doctrine badly stated. 110 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE Through a large part of the Christian era the teaching of Jesus with respect to strife has been flouted by the church. The bitterest and most wasteful wars have been religious wars. The disciples of the Prince of Peace saw no incongruity in the settlement by the sword of such questions as whether Jesus Christ was of the same substance as the Father or of a similar substance ; and whether the cup should be administered to the laity in the Eucharist or only the bread. The Thirty Years' war in Europe was a religious war. Roman Catholic theories still maintain the right of the church to enforce its teachings by the sword. All these facts show how far, through all its history, the church has departed from the teaching of Jesus. When our German theolo- gians set themselves to prove that the Sermon on the Mount is no sufficient guide for pub- lic affairs, they have the whole history of the church behind them. Nevertheless they might have noted that the drift, for the last few centuries, has been in the direction of the teaching of Jesus. It is hardly conceivable that Christian nations should go to war to-day for the settlement of points of doctrine. Three hundred years ago IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? Ill the whole church thought that necessary ; to- day a very large part of the church would think it horrible and monstrous. It is not very long ago that the church believed in the settlement by force of disputes between individuals. The wager of battle was supposed to be a proper and Christian way of determining the guilt or innocence of an accused person. To most of the great Christians of the fifteenth century the proposition to dispense with that would have seemed a " noble folly/' just as the pro- position of general disarmament now seems to some twentieth century Christians. But the church has learned that there are better ways of settling personal quarrels than the wager of battle ; and it is likely to learn, after a while, that there are better ways of settling international and industrial difficulties than the way of war. The church is beginning to see that the way of Jesus is not, after all, so impracticable as it has always been supposed to be ; it is beginning to discern the truth that the law of service is a stronger law than the law of strife. One of these days we shall find the church of Jesus taking its stand on the Golden Rule as the practical rule of every- day life, and insisting upon the organization 112 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE of the industrial and the political order on the basis of good-will. When that day comes we shall have a right to say that the church believes in Jesus Christ. When that day comes it will be evident to all that the main cause of the church's enfeeblement through all these centuries has been her unbelief. And we shall marvel that it took her so long to find out what might there is in meekness and what force in gentleness ; and that it was so hard for her to understand that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God stronger than men. 2. The second of the church's chronic in- firmities has been orthodoxism. Perhaps it was the recoil of her unbelief in Christ that sent her over into the intellectual prostration of orthodoxism. Orthodoxy is defined as correct belief. But when we ask what is correct belief, orthodoxy answers : " That which is generally believed to be correct." Its demand is, therefore, con- formity to current opinion. It assumes that essential truth has been sought out, registered and certified once for all and finally : this you must believe, and you must believe nothing other or more than this. Of course, then, belief IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 113 must be stereotyped and stationary. There can be no growth of doctrine ; no new light can break forth from God's holy word. " Orthodoxy begins/' says Phillips Brooks, " by setting a false standard of life. It makes men aspire after soundness in the faith rather than after richness in the truth. ... It makes possible an easy transmission of truth, but only by the deadening of truth, as a butcher freezes meat in order to carry it across the sea. Orthodoxy discredits and discourages inquiry, and has made the name of free thinker, which ought to be a crown and glory, a stigma of disgrace. It puts men in the base and demoralizing position in which they apol- ogize for seeking new truth. It is responsible for a large part of the defiant liberalism which not merely disbelieves the orthodox dogma, but disbelieves it with a sense of at- tempted wrong and of triumphant escape. It is orthodoxy and not truth which has done the persecuting. The inquisitions and dungeons and social ostracisms for opinion's sake belong to it." ' It is evident that when for loyalty to the truth is substituted loyalty to a prescribed * Essays and Addresses ^ p. 194. 114 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE statement of truth, the entire moral order is subverted. Truth for me is what justifies it- self to my reason and insight ; to that my choices must conform ; by that my conduct must be guided. To accept statements to which my judgment does not assent, which are repugnant to my reason, because others seek to impose them upon me, is in the highest degree immoral. " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind," is the apostolic maxim. Every honest man wants to know what is true, and seeks to have his character and his conduct conform to the truth. But orthodoxy insists that he shall limit his acceptance to fixed and definite statements prepared for him by others. Freedom of investigation is denied him. The limits are set, beyond which his thought must not range. If there is truth outside of the boundaries of orthodoxy, he must not reach out after it ; if he does, he shall suffer the consequences. For there always is a penalty for heresy. Those who diverge from the orthodox stand- ards are always exposed to some measure of censure or discredit. In former days the stake or the gallows was the penalty. John Huss IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 115 and Michael Servetus, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were put to death on the demand of orthodoxy. It was not because they were not lovers and seekers of truth; it was be- cause they decHned to assent to the statements which authority sought to impose on them. Orthodoxy has found a great variety of meth- ods of enforcing its demand ; in recent times it does not often resort to physical coercion, but it never fails to use some kind of pressure. Those to whom orthodoxy is dearer than truth have ways of their own, even now, of making uncomfortable those to whom truth is dearer than orthodoxy. Thus it is that the progress of truth has been greatly impeded. " Ye shall know the truth," said Jesus, " and the truth shall make you free." "Ye shall know," says orthodoxism, "only the truth that has been prescribed and ticketed by authority ; ye shall be taught what is orthodox, and orthodoxy shall keep you safe and sound." The entire attitude of the mind is changed, under this demand. It is no longer that of free inquiry, of open-minded search for truth; it is that of passive assent, of unreasoned submission to authority. Just to the extent to which orthodoxism 116 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE succeeds in forcing its demand is progress rendered impossible. There have always been brave men to whom truth was dearer than orthodoxy, and to them we owe all the gains the church has made. " The lower orders of the church's workers, the mere runners of her machinery," says Bishop Brooks, " have al- ways been strictly and scrupulously orthodox ; while all the church's noblest servants, they who have opened to her new heavens of vision and new domains of work, — Paul, Origen, Tertullian, Dante, Abelard, Luther, Milton, Coleridge, Maurice, Swedenborg, Martineau, — have again and again been persecuted for being what they truly were — unorthodox." * The temper of coercion, physical or moral, which is an essential element in orthodoxism, always produces, in those who do not submit to it, the temper of resentment and rebellion, which largely characterizes what is known as liberalism. Those who are thus flung off into opposition are in no mood to examine fairly the truth that there is in orthodoxy. Their mental attitude is apt to be quite as unfavoi> able to the discovery of the truth as that of the other party. Between those who af&rm, ^ Essays and Addresses, p. 189. IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 117 with the threat of the withdrawal of fellow- ship, and those who deny, with the sense of injury and oppression, the truth has a poor chance for itself in this world. The enfeeble- ment of the church, in all the generations, has been largely due to this cause. What orthodoxism produces when it has free course and is glorified, may be seen in the Greek church. More than any other branch of the Christian church the Greek church has put the emphasis upon orthodoxy. The nat- ural and inevitable result has been that that church has destroyed itself and the nation whose life it has dominated and blighted. It is the Greek church that has led Russia to its doom. And it is orthodoxism that has made the Greek church a blind leader of the blind, and has plunged nation and church into the ditch together. Truth, not orthodoxy, is the sovereign mis- tress of the human intellect. What I must know, for my salvation, is not what every- body says, but what is true. There is old truth — truth that has nourished the lives of men in many generations ; let me cling to that and feed my soul upon it. There is new truth — some fuller outshining of the great revelation 118 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE of God, in nature or in human nature ; let me hail that light and walk in it. It is often useful for me to know what others have believed and now believe. Not to be influenced by the consenting voices of the great and good of the past would be childish egotism. But it is always needful that my mind should be open to new truth and that I should be free to seek it. Orthodoxism restricts this right and disparages this privilege, and in doing this it has greatly weakened the Christian church. Several other sources of weakness must be treated much more briefly. 3. Sectarianism is not the least among them. To a large degree it is the product of orthodoxism. Men who venture to think for themselves are driven forth from the fold of the faithful and compelled to organize in sepa- rate groups. Sometimes they are not driven out, they go out and slam the doors behind them. The seceders often claim a superior or- thodoxy ; their separation from the fold is an act of judgment on those they leave behind. The responsibility for these divisions some- times rests more heavily on those who go out, and sometimes on those who stay in. On the IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 119 one side or the other, often on both sides, pride of opinion is a main procuring cause. Sometimes men go out because they desire to hold fast in peace the truth which they have found, and sometimes they are thrust out because they will not permit those who are within to hold fast in peace the truth which is their inheritance. The ambition of leadership also figures largely. Men who are not able to control the church to which they belong are often tempted to lead away a faction in which they may be more conspicuous. Satan, according to the Miltonic mythology, was the founder of the first sect ; and his philosophy was that it was better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. The leaders of many of the sects have had a similar inspiration. It would not be true to say that all schisms have sprung from selfishness : they have often originated in a larger vision of the truth, and their testimony, which has cost them many sacrifices, has enlarged the thought and en- riched the life of the whole church. It must, however, be admitted that selfish- ness, in the forms of ambition and pride of opinion, has had more to do with the multi- 120 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE plication of sects than love of the truth or loyalty to the Master. The existence of such numbers of organizations, differing from one another only in the most trivial particulars, cannot be reconciled with the plain principles of Christian morality. There is no justification, in reason or conscience, for the existence of so many sorts and kinds and classes of Christ- ian disciples. Even if we could admit the wisdom of the larger divisions, what excuse can be offered for the endless subdivisions? What possible need can there be for thirteen different kinds of Baptists, and twelve kinds of Mennonites, and eleven kinds of Presby- terians, and seventeen kinds of Methodists, and twenty-three kinds of Lutherans ? Could any rational man maintain that these multitu- dinous variations on a single string represent distinctions that are useful ? The rivalries and competitions which these sectarian divisions promote are the scandal and the curse of Christendom. The sectarian procedure habitually and brazenly sets aside the Golden Rule and pushes partisan interest, with very slight regard for fairness or equity. Churches are all the while doing to other churches what they would not hke to have IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 121 other churches do to them. " Every church for itself, and the angels take the hindmost," is the sectarian motto. The competition which exists in the ecclesiastical realm is almost always cutthroat competition ; it destroys pro- perty and crowds out rivals with merciless purpose. No argument should be needed to show that the existence of such a spirit and ten- dency in the church must cripple its power and impede its growth. The sect spirit is the antithesis of the Christian spirit ; the sectarian propaganda is an attack upon the fundamen- tal principle of Christianity, which is unity through love. The superior loyalty of every true Christian is due to the kingdom of God. *^Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness ! " What makes a man a secta- rian is the fact that he loves his sect more than the kingdom of God, and is willing that the kingdom of God should suffer loss in order that his sect may make a gain. Sectarians are doing this very thing, all over the land, every day. How great have been the injuries suffered by the Christian church through the existence of this antichristian spirit of sect it would be 122 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE difficult to estimate. How alien it is to the spirit of Jesus Christ one does not need to point out. It is simply amazing that the fol- lowers of him who prayed, in his last prayer, that his disciples might all be one, in order that the world might believe in his divine commission, should imagine that they can be pleasing Christ while they persist in these childish divisions. Some sense of the shame and sin of secta- rianism has, of late years, been getting pos- session of the mind of the church, and the tendencies toward unity are stronger now than the tendencies toward division. Splits and se- cessions are rare in these times ; movements toward unity are multiplying. All this is hopeful, but many generations of toil and sacrifice will be required to recover for the church the ground she has lost by the ravages of sectarianism. 4. Only one more cause of the enfeeble- ment of the church can be mentioned here ; that is her too close reliance upon the prin- ciples and forces of the material realm. She too often forgets whence her help must come ; she is too willing to go down to Egypt for her allies instead of trusting in the Lord of IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 123 Hosts. She cannot always understand that she is safer and stronger when she puts her entire reliance on moral and spiritual forces ; when she refuses to sacrifice truth for the revenues of the rich or the friendship of the strong. The church is prohably suffering more from this cause at this day than she has ever suf- fered in any former period. She lives in the midst of the abounding marvels of the mate- rialistic civilization ; she sees how much is accomplished through the use of material forces ; and the spirit of the time gets into her brain and blood, and she begins to think that money and the things that money can buy are the most essential conditions of her growth and usefulness. Therefore she makes such friendships and adopts such policies as will bring to her the revenues she thinks she must have for the prosecution of her work. And thus her vision is dimmed for the truth she needs to see, and her arm is weakened for the work she has to do. No influence so insidious as this, and none so fatal, has ever assailed the Christian church. She is passing through her greatest tempta- tion. It is Mammon who has taken her up 124 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE into an exceeding high mountain and shown her the kingdoms she wants to conquer and the glory she hopes to win, and is saying to her ; " All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me ! " May God grant her the grace to answer : " Get thee behind me, Satan; I hear the voice of one who said : Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." That the church has suffered serious in- jury and enfeeblement from the causes we have considered, — from her lack of faith, from her subjection to orthodoxism, from the ravages of sectarianism, from her entangle- ments with Mammon, no one can deny. But that these evils are tending to increase is not evident. There is reason rather to hope that they are all on the wane, unless it be the last. That the church is far from being in perfect spiritual condition we will all admit. But that she is growing worse rather than better we need not believe. Most of these maladies are of long standing, but they are less acute now than once they were, and there is better hope of recovery. Above all, we may say that the church knows to-day what ails her better than IS THE CHURCH DECADENT? 125 she ever knew before, and that she may there- fore more intelligently proceed to apply the needful remedies. What kind of treatment is called for will be the subject of the next discussion. VI THE COMING REFORMATION It would be instructive to study the attempts which the church has made, in past genera- tions, to escape from the evil conditions into which she has fallen. For she has been con- victed more than once of her sins of omission, of the perversion of her powers, and the misuse of her opportunities, and has bestirred herself to cast off the yokes that were oppress- ing her, and the bands that were impeding her progress. It cannot be said that she has ever yet become fully conscious of her radical defect. She has never quite clearly discovered that her enfeeblement and failure are primarily due to the fact that she has been neglecting her real business in the world, or making it a secondaiy concern. When she gets that truth fully before her mind, and that conviction upon her conscience, we may hope for better things. There was, however, one epoch in her his- tory when she came very near making this THE COMING REFORMATION 127 discovery. That was the period of the Reform- ation in the sixteenth century. What happened then is full of interest for us in these days ; it throws a flood of light on the problems with which we are dealing. We have been taught by the historians of the Reformation to think of that event as mainly a theological crisis, as an intellectual revolt against certain doctrines imposed by the church upon the faithful, or a rebellion against the stringency of ecclesiastical disci- pline. That issues of this nature were deeply involved in it is true ; but these were by no means the only causes of that uprising. It was largely a social and economic movement. It was, in its inception, less a reaction against bad theology than a revolt against unchristian social conditions. What weighed most heavily on the people who started the uprising that we call the Reformation was not theological error and confusion, it was their poverty, their servitude, the miseries and wrongs of their daily life. They knew something of the Christ of Nazareth, and they could not believe that he meant to leave them in that condition, and therefore they began to have a dim sense of the truth that the church which bore his name 128 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE was misrepresenting him, and needed to be reformed. This was the source of the move- ment known as the Keformation. It was, there- fore, a sharp reminder to the church that she had wholly forgotten her main business in the world. One of the latest of the histories of the Re- formation, that of Dr. Thomas M. Lindsay, brings this truth into clear light. His chapter on " Social Conditions " gives us a vivid sketch of the economic and social forces which were operating at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. It was the time of transition from the old system of home production and home markets to the era of world-wide commerce. Under the old system, industry had been largely regu- lated by guilds, and there was a fair measure of equality; while trade, though not exten- sive, was regulated by civic leagues. But the end of the fifteenth century brought the great geographical discoveries and the be- ginning of a world trade. "The possibili- ties of a world commerce," says Dr. Lindsay, " led to the creation of trading companies ; for a larger capital was needed than individual merchants possessed, and the formation of THE COMING REFORMATION 129 these companies overshadowed, discredited, and finally destroyed the guild system of the mediaeval trading cities. Trade and industry became capitalized to a degree previously un- known. . . . This increase of wealth does not seem to have been confined to a few favorites of fortune. It belonged to the mass of the members of the great trading companies. . . . Merchant princes confronted the princes of the state and those of the church, and their presence and power dislocated the old social relations." ^ This enormous increase of wealth mani- fested itself in every form of senseless luxury. Of refinement there was little ; pleasures were coarse, indulgence was beastly. " Preachers, economists, and satirists," says Dr. Lindsay, " denounce the luxury and immodesty of the dress both of men and women, the gluttony and the drinking habits of the rich burghers and of the nobility of Germany. We learn from Hans von Schweinichen that noblemen prided themselves on having men among their retainers who could drink all rivals beneath the table, and that noble personages seldom met without such a drinking contest. The ^ A History of the Reformation^ vol. i, pp. 85, 86. 130 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE wealthy, learned, and artistic city of Niirnberg possessed a public wagon which every night was led through the streets, to pick up and convey to their homes drunken burghers found lying in the filth of the streets." ' Such were the manners of the house of mirth at the beginning of the sixteenth cen- tury. It might be supposed that when luxury was so riotous the poor would have plenty, but that is never the case. Profusion at the top of the social ladder means poverty at the bottom. The world has never yet been so rich that waste did not work harm to the neediest. Even if the poor had been actually no poorer in these flush days than they had been when manners were simpler, the glaring contrasts would have been maddening. But multitudes of them were, no doubt, not only relatively but positively poorer ; the destruction of the guilds of labor, the displacements in industry, had left great numbers not only of the peasantry and the artisans but also of the poorer nobles in practical destitution. The organization of society was giving strength to the strong and weakness to those of no might — thus exactly reversing Mary's prophecy of what her royal 1 Ibid. pp. 87, 88. THE COMING REFORMATION 131 Son should bring ; and those who were thus dispossessed and scattered felt, and had a right to feel, that the social organization under which such things could be done was anti- christian. " While," says Dr. Lindsay, " the social tu- mults and popular uprisings against authority, which are a feature of the close of the Middle Ages, are usually and rightly enough called peasant insurrections, the name tends to ob- scure their real character. They were rather the revolts of the poor against the rich, of debtors against creditors, of men who had scantly legal rights or none at all, against those who had the protection of the existing laws ; and they were joined by the poor of the towns as well as by the peasantry of the country dis- tricts. The peasants generally began the re- volt and the townsmen followed, but this was not always the case. Sometimes the mob of the cities rose first and the peasants joined afterwards. In many cases, too, the poorer nobles were in secret or open sympathy with the insurrectionary movement. On more than one occasion they led the insurgents and fought at their head." ^ 1 Op. cit. p. 96. 132 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE The uprising against the church was due to the fact that the church, instead of being the friend of the poor, had become their social oppressor. Through all these social mutter- ings runs the outcry against the priests, and this was not because the priests were teaching a false theology, but because they were grind- ing the faces of the poor. Not only in Ger- many, but all over Europe this cry was heard. " The priests," says an English reformer, " have their tenth part of all the corn, meadows, pasture, grain, wood, colts, lambs, geese, and chickens. Over and besides the tenth part of every servant's wages, wool, milk, honey, wax, cheese, and butter; yea and they look so narrowly after these profits that the poor wife must be accountable to them for every tenth eggf or else she getteth not her rights at Easter, and shall be taken as a heretic." ^* I see," said a Spaniard, " that we can scarcely get anything from Christ's ministers but for money ; at baptism money, at bishop- ing money, at marriage money, for confes- sion money, — no, not extreme unction with- out money ! They will ring no bells without money, no burial in the church without money; so that it seemeth that Paradise is THE COMING EEFORMATION 133 shut up from them that hath no money. The rich is buried in the church, the poor in the churchyard. The rich man may marry with his nearest kin, but the poor not so, albeit he be ready to die for love of her. The rich may eat flesh in Lent, but the poor may not, albeit fish perhaps be much dearer. The rich man may readily get large indulgences, but the poor none because he wanteth money to pay for them." ^ This revolt against priestly oppression was by no means, however, an irreligious uprising. It was characterized by intense religious feel- ing, with which, as Dr. Lindsay says, " was blended some confused dream that the king- dom of God might be set up on earth, if only the priests were driven out of the land." Among a populace so ignorant it was, of course, in- evitable that the social revolt should take on fanatical forms. Wild zealots arose, drawing the multitude after them, and inciting the people to revolution. Hans Bohm, a wander- ing piper, had visions and went forth as a preacher of righteousness, railing against priests and civil potentates. True religion, he declared, consisted in worshiping the Blessed * Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution^ pp. 57, 68. 134 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE Virgin, but the priests were thieves and rob- bers, the Emperor was a miscreant, " who sup- ported the whole vile crew of princes, over- lords, tax gatherers, and other oppressors of the poor." He predicted the coming of a day when the Emperor himself would be forced, like all poor folks, to work for days' wages. The people flocked by thousands to hear him preach, but his day was brief. They burnt him at the stake, but multi- tudes venerated him, and made pilgrimages to the chapel which had been the scene of his triumph. The "Bundschuh" revolts which broke out in Elsass and spread through Swit- zerland and Germany were of a similar charac- ter. Then came years of famine, which deep- ened the popular disquiet, and which help to explain the fact that " on the eve of the Reformation the condition of Europe, and of Germany in particular, was one of seething dis- content and full of bitter class hatreds — the trading companies and the great capitahsts against the guilds, the poorer classes against the wealthier, and the nobles against the towns." These were the social conditions in the midst of which Luther appeared. It was on this turbulent flood of social unrest that the THE COMING REFORMATION 135 Reformation was launched. When the great reformer's voice was heard, denouncing priestly misrule and hierarchical tyranny, these were the people who listened, and they interpreted his words by their own experience. If his quarrel was largely with theological or ecclesiastical abuses, theirs was mainly with industrial inequalities, but it seemed to them that he was fighting their battle. Indeed, his brave words gave fit utterance to their hopes. For, as the historian reminds us, Luther's mes- sage was democratic. That must have been its character if it was, in any proper sense, a return to "the simplicity that is in Christ." ^^It destroyed the aristocracy of the saints, it leveled the barriers between the layman and the priest, it taught the equality of all men before God, and the right of every man of faith to stand in God's presence, whatever be his rank and condition of life. He had not confined himself to preaching a new theology. His message was eminently practical. In his * Appeal to the Nobility of the German Na- tion ' Luther had voiced all the grievances of Germany, had touched upon almost all the open sores of the time, and had foretold disasters not very far off. Nor must it be for- 136 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE gotten that no great leader ever flung about wild words in such a reckless way. Luther had the gift of strong, smiting phrases, of words which seemed to cleave to the very heart of things, of images which lit up a subject with the vividness of a flash of lightning. He launched tracts and pamphlets from the press about almost everything, written for the most part on the spur of the moment, and when the fire burned. His words fell into souls full of the fermenting passion of the times. They drank in with eagerness the thoughts that all men were equal before God, and that there are divine commands about the brotherhood of mankind of more importance than all human legislation. They refused to believe that such golden ideas belonged to the realm of spirit- ual life above." * When, therefore, the religious reformation was fairly launched, a great uprising of the poor people speedily followed. It seemed to them that the return to Christ meant, for them, the breaking of yokes and the enlargement of opportunity, and they proceeded to claim for themselves some portion of the liberty that belonged to them. Their demands, as voiced * Op. cit. pp. 327, 328. THE COMING REFORMATION 137 in their " Twelve Articles," were by no means extravagant, from our point of view. The abuses of which they complained were fla- grant, the rights they claimed were far less than are now, even in despotic Russia, fully granted to the humblest people. And they protested most earnestly that they " wanted nothing contrary to the requirements of just authority, whether civil or ecclesiastical, nor to the gospel of Christ." It would, however, have been unreasonable to expect that such people would confine their protest within the bounds of law and order. It was, in fact, a revolution, and it discerned no way to its goal but the way of violence. That, indeed, is the path that most of the seekers after liberty have felt constrained to take. What was Luther's relation to this uprising? It cannot be said that he had kindled the flame, but he had fanned it to a conflagration. And yet when it began to rage, he found him- self unable to control it. It had come to pass, in the exigencies of the warfare he was wag- ing, that his allies were the German princes. Only through them, as he believed, could he hope to win the fight he was making against 138 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE the Roman hierarchy. If he put himself at the head of the peasants* movement he would alienate the princes, and it seemed to him that the Protestant cause in Germany would be stamped out in blood. And therefore, after vainly attempting to quiet the insurrection, with whose principal aims he had confessed himself in sympathy, he turned upon the peas- ants in almost savage wrath, and in his tract "Against the Murdering, Thieving Hordes of Peasants," he urged the princes to crush the insurrection. " In the case of an insurgent," he says, "every man is both judge and execu- tioner. Therefore, whoever can should knock down, strangle, and stab such pubUcly or pri- vately, and think nothing so venomous, per- nicious, and devilish as an insurgent. . . . Such wonderful times are these that a prince can merit heaven better with bloodshed than another with prayer." The princes followed Luther's counsel, and the peasants' uprising was put down with relentless severity. Thus ended in blood the movement which promised to make the church the champion of social freedom. It seems, as we look back upon it, a tragical issue. What these poor people asked for was really only a THE COMING REFORMATION 139 crumb or two from the table of the lords of privilege ; they thought that the brotherhood taught by Jesus warranted them in expecting itj and they seemed to hope that the church of Jesus Christ, when purified from formalism and superstition, would support that expecta- tion. It must have been a bitter disappoint- ment to them. And it is a sorrowful reflec- tion that the great hero of the Reformation fell, in this matter, so far below the Christian ideal. Doubtless his strenuous repugnance to re- volutionary methods was a good trait in his character; but surely revolutions are some- times justifiable, and it looks, at this distance, as though this one was as nearly so as most of those that have succeeded. If Luther had put his great heart and mighty will at the head of this movement which he confessed to be most righteous, it might have succeeded, and Protestantism, in its beginnings, might have made a firm alliance with those whom Jesus Christ recognizes as his representatives in the earth. But it was hard for him to be- lieve that the poor of this world, chosen to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, were stronger allies than the German nobles. He 140 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE thought that he must have the support of the princes, and he turned his back on Christ's poor. It was a melancholy conclusion, not only for Luther but for the cause which he repre- sented. "It is probable," says Dr. Lindsay, " that he saved the Reformation in Germany by cutting it free from the revolutionary movement, but the wrench left marks on his own character as well as in the movement he headed." One wonders whether success won at such cost is worth having ; and whether, if he had gone down with the peasants in their struggle for freedom and opportunity, the sacrifice would not have brought a larger and fairer Reformation. It was the coming reformation to which your attention was called, and we have kept our eyes for a long time upon the past. But this history has been uttering, through the entire recital, its own prophetic word. Condi- tions have greatly changed since the sixteenth century ; but we are still confronting the same issue which forced itself upon the church in the days of Luther. Many of the disabilities and wrongs under which the common people "were sufEering then have been removed, but THE COMING REFORMATION 141 the poor are still with us, and the cries of millions of overworked, underfed, pale-faced men and women and children have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. There ought not to be any poor people in this coun- try ; if it were a thoroughly Christian country there would not be. If there were those who because of mental or physical defect were un- able to care for themselves, we could easily provide for their wants, and in the exercise of such compassion we should find an abundant reward. If there were those who because of idleness and vice were indisposed to provide for themselves, we should find a way of inspir- ing them with a better mind. But, if this were a thoroughly Christian country, there would be no wilHng workers dwelling anywhere near the borders of want. There are resources here which are ample for the abundant supply of all human needs ; if ours were a completely Christianized society, the needs of those who were able and willing to work would be abun- dantly supplied. We are often told that this is already done ; that there are no poor in this country save those who are either incompetent or indolent or vicious. If that could be proved, the ques- 142 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE tion would still remain whether the incompe- tency and the indolence and the viciousness may not, to a considerable degree, be the effects of causes for which society is respon- sible, and which, in a thoroughly Christianized society, would not be permitted to exist. But it cannot be proved that poverty is wholly the fault of the poor. The fact is that a very large number of those who are doing the world's work to-day are receiving less than their fair share of the wealth they produce. It is true that there are many laborers who earn large wages. Compactly organized labor unions have been able to secure a favorable distribution of the product of their industry. But we are often reminded that but a small percentage of the laborers of this country are organized ; and the wages of those thus un- protected are often lamentably small. Many attempts have been made to find out what is the average wage of the average work- man ; our census reports contain very care- fully prepared statistics. I have taken pains to go over some of these, and here are the results. In the textile trades, with 661,451 work- ers, the average weekly wage of all workers is THE COMING REFORMATION 143 $6.07 ; of men over sixteen, $7.63 ; of wo- men, $5.18 ; of children under sixteen, $2.15. In the iron workers' trades, with 222,607 workers, the average weekly wage is $10.46. In the boot and shoe trades, with 142,922 workers, the average for all is $7.96 ; for men over sixteen, $9.11 ; for women, $6.13 ; for children under sixteen, $3.40. In the men's clothing trades, with 120,950 workers, the average for all is $7.06 ; for men, $10.90 ; for women, $4.88 ; for children, $2.61. These weekly wages are obtained by divid- ing the annual wage by 52. Often the weekly rate is much higher, but for many weeks the workers are unemployed ; the only fair estimate is that which is based upon the annual wage. Have we any right to be content with con- ditions like these ? Is the average wage of the average worker, as it is here indicated, all that he ought to ask ? Should society wish him to be content with such an income? Sit down yourself and figure out just what it would mean to be obliged to maintain a family of four or five on such a stipend as is indicated in any of these trades — even those best paid. Find out how much should have to go for 144 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE rent, and how much for food, and how much for the plainest clothing, and how much for doctor's bills, and school books, and street-car fare, and how much would be left, after that, for books and church contributions and the wholesome pleasures which we ought to count among the necessaries of life. Life can be maintained on such an income, but is it the kind of life that we wish our fellow men to live ? And is there any need that life, for the humble laborer, should be reduced in this rich land to its lowest terms ? With the mar- velous productiveness of fields and mines and forests and waters, with the immense develop- ment of machinery, by which the wealth of the nation is multiplied, might we not have an organization of industry and a method of distribution which would give to the army of manual toilers a much larger average income? That is the question they are asking, and it calls for a candid answer. Their needs are not as dire as were those of the German peasants of the sixteenth century, but they are real and serious needs. Now, as then, a tremendous industrial revolution has dislocated industries and demoralized and impoverished many ; now, as then, the concentration of capital in great THE COMING REFORMATION 145 companies has destroyed small enterprises and left many who were once thrifty stranded and discouraged ; now, as then, glaring contrasts in condition excite the resentments of the needy ; now, as then, the propertiless are won- dering whether this is the kind of thing that the church has been looking for when she has prayed that the kingdom of God may come. And there is a feeling now, as there was then, among the millions of the toilers, that the church which assumes to represent Jesus Christ needs to be reformed, in order that through its testimony and its leadership the kingdom of God may come. It is sadly true that there are many among these toiling millions who are embittered against the church, who have no faith in it, and no expectation that any good will come out of it ; but the great majority are not hos- tile to the church ; at worst they are indifferent, and this indifference is due to their belief that the church no longer represents Jesus Christ. Toward him there is often a pathetic outreach- ing of hope ; if the church would come back to the simplicity that is in Christ and would plant itself on the Sermon on the Mount, it would quickly win their loyalty. And I can- 146 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE not help feeling that now, as in the sixteenth century, there is in the minds of the toiling millions " a confused dream that the kingdom of God might be set up in the land," and that the time is ripe for it. Nor can I deem it pos- sible that this great expectation of the multi- tude will now be disappointed. The church of this day must be able to see that this call of the poor and the humble is the call of its Master. It is with the weak and the needy that he is always identified; service of them is loyalty to him ; neglect of them is scorn of him. It is his own word. The coming reformation will be signalized by a great change in the attitude of the church toward the toiling classes. It will not turn its back on them, as it did in Luther's day ; it will not maintain toward them an attitude of kindly patronage, as it has done in our day; it will recognize the fact that its welfare is bound up with them ; that the barriers which separate them from its sympathies and fellow- ships must be broken down, at whatever cost ; that it must make them beHeve that the church of Jesus Christ is their church ; that it needs them quite as much as they need it ; that it is a monstrous thing even to conceive that a THE COMING REFORMATION 147 church of Jesus Christ could exist as a class institution, with the largest social class in the community outside of it. The coming reformation will consist in the awakening of the church to its social respon- sibilities. It will see more clearly than it has ever yet seen, that those who pray that the kingdom of God may come, and who are re- sponsible, as citizens of a republic are respon- sible, for the answering of that prayer, must see to it that justice and liberty and opportu- nity are established in the land. The church of Jesus Christ, with a passion that is born of loyalty to its Master, must set itself to the task of realizing, in the social order, the prin- ciples of his teaching. That was what the peasants of the sixteenth century called upon it to do ; and for answer it turned and smote them to the earth. It will not repeat that blunder, which was nothing short of a crime. It hears the same call to-day, and when it obeys, as obey it must, it will save its own life and that of the nation with whose destiny it is put in trust. vn SOCIAL REDEMPTION The New Reformation will be wroughc out with weapons that are not carnal. One of the lessons that the church has learned, in the nineteen centuries of its history, is that it must keep itself free from all suspicion of entangle- ment with physical force. That statement needs qualification. It is not universally true. The Greek church, as we have seen, is still fatally involved in political complications ; the Roman church, while forced to abstain from the use of the temporal power, has maintained its right to use it ; and other state churches, as those of England and Ger- many, retain some hold upon the political arm. But we are speaking of the church in our own country; and of the American church it is true that it has ceased to rely upon the power of the state. The entire divorce which our con- stitution decrees between the government of the church and the government of the state has become, with us, a settled poHcy, which we SOCIAL REDEMPTION 149 do not wish to disturb. It is doubtful whether intelligent Roman Catholics in the United States would be willing to have this condition changed, and no other Christians would for one moment consent to it. What the church does in the way of im- proving social conditions must, therefore, be done by purely moral and spiritual agencies. Society is not to be Christianized by any kind of coercion. The church cannot use force in any way, nor can it enter into any coalition with governments that rest on force. " It is not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord," that the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. It is as irrational to try to propagate Christianity by coercive measures of any de- scription, as it would be to try to make plants grow by applying to them mechanical pres- sure. Nor can the church undertake to dictate or prescribe the forms of industrial society. Its function is not the organization of industry. It would not wisely attempt to decide between different methods of managing business. It would not, for example, be expedient for the church, at the present time, to take sides 150 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE in the controversy between collectivism and private enterprise. The Socialists declare that the wage system, based on private capital, tends to injustice and oppression ; the advo- cates of the existing system contend that Socialism would destroy the foundations of thrift and welfare. The church cannot be the umpire in this contest, nor can it take sides with either party. Questions of economic method are beyond its province. Its concern is not with the machinery of society, but with the moral motive power. Or, it might be truer to say that it seeks to invigorate the moral life of men, and trusts that reinforced life to make its own economic forms. Its business is to fill men's minds with the truth as it is in Jesus, and to make them see that that truth applies to every human relation ; and it ought to be- lieve that when this truth is thus received and thus applied, it will solve all social problems. When employers and employed are all filled with the spirit of Christ, the wage system will not be a system of exploitation, but a means of social service. Here is an employer of many hundreds of men, at the head of a very large business, which is rapidly increasing. This is not an SOCIAL REDEMPTION 161 imaginary case. This employer is a man of flesh and blood, and he is in the very thick of the competitive melee; he is using the machinery of the wage system, but he is gov- erning all his business by the principles of Christianity, and the business is thriving in a marvelous way. This does not mean that the manager is piling up money for himself, for he is not : he is living very frugally, and is adding nothing to his own accumulation ; but the business is growing by leaps and bounds. The increasing profits, every year, are dis- tributed in the form of stock among the laborers who do the work, and the customers who purchase the goods. The men who do the work are buying for themselves beautiful homes in the vicinity of the factory ; in a few more years they will own a large part of the stock of the concern. This manager is not getting rich; but he has the satisfaction of seeing his business prospering in his hands ; he is helping a great many men to find the ways of comfort and independence, and he insists that he has himself found the secret of a happy life. It is evident that if all em- ployers were governed by the same motives, the wage system would be an instrument of 152 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE philanthropy. Whether this man is a church member or not does not appear, but he is certainly a Christian ; he has learned the way of Jesus, and is walking in it. If the church could inspire all its members with this kind of social passion, all social questions would be solved. And this is the church's business — to inspire its members with this kind of social passion. Without this spirit in their hearts, no matter what the social machinery might be, the outcome would be envying and strife and endless unhappiness. We have had the inside history of some of the many communistic enterprises that have come to grief, and all of them have been wrecked by the selfishness of their members, most of whom were seeking for soft places, and shirking their duties, — each trying to get as much as he could out of the common- wealth and to give in return for it as little service as possible. These contrasted cases show that the machinery of the wage system cannot prevent the exercise of brotherliness, and that the machinery of communism will not secure it. No kind of social machinery will produce happiness or welfare when selfish men are running it ; and no kind of social SOCIAL REDEMPTION 153 machinery will keep brotherly men from be- having brotherly. We are often told by Socialists that the present regime of individual initiative and private capital tends to make men selfish and unbrotherly, while the tendency of Socialism would be to make men unselfish and fraternal. If the church were sure that this is the truth, she would be inclined to throw her influence on the side of Socialism. But, on the other hand, it is urged that Socialism tends to merge the individual in the mass, to destroy the vir- tues of self-respect and self-reliance, and to weaken the fibre of manhood. If the church were sure that this is true, she would be con- strained to pause before committing herself to the socialistic programme. She knows, in fact, that there is truth in both these contentions. That the individual- istic regime has bred a fearful amount of heartlessness and rapacity is painfully evident ; that such socialistic experiments as have been tried have weakened human virtue appears to be true. Under which regime the greater damage would be done is not yet quite clear. Therefore the church cannot commit herself to either of these methods. The best work 154 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE she can do, at the present time, is to inspire men with a love of justice and a spirit of ser- vice. She must rear up a generation of men who hate robbery in all its disguises ; who are determined never to prosper at the expense of their neighbors, and who know how to find their highest pleasure in helping their fellow men. If the Christian morahty means any- thing, it means all this. A church which re- presents Jesus Christ on the earth must set before herself no lower aim than this. And a generation of men whose hearts are on fire with this purpose may be trusted to fill the earth with righteousness and peace, whether they work with the machinery of the wage system or with the machinery of Socialism. There are many good men, outside the church as well as within it, who believe that the existing social order can never be Christ- ianized; that it must be replaced by a new social system. But most of us are still cling- ing to the belief that the existing social order can be Christianized, so that justice may be established in it, and good-will find expression through it. That it has been sadly perverted we all confess ; we acknowledge with shame that it has become, in large measure, the in- SOCIAL REDEMPTION 156 strument of injustice and oppression. But we believe that it may be reformed, so that it shall represent, in some fair degree, the king- dom of God. The redemption of the social order is, then, the problem now before us. Can it be accom- plished ? President Roosevelt thinks that it can, and those who stand with him and sup- port him assume that the existing competitive regime can be moralized and made to repre- sent the interests of equity and fair dealing. If this can be done, nothing more is needed. If it cannot be done, the existing regime must make way for something better. The convic- tion that it can be done is finding expression just now in the vigorous efforts that are being made to amend and strengthen the laws which restrain plunderers and oppressors, so that opportunities may be equalized and the paths to success be kept open for men of all ranks and capacities. This is simple justice, and for this the church of God must stand with all the might of her influence. That she has been derelict in the discharge of this duty must be confessed. If she had kept the charge committed to her, the in- equalities and spoliations now burdening soci- 156 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE ety would not be in existence. For although it is not the business of the church to furnish to the world an economic programme, it is her business to see that no economic programme is permitted to exist under which injustice and oppression find shelter. The right to reprove and denounce all social arrangements by which the few prosper at the expense of the many is one of her chartered rights as the in- stitute of prophecy. A church which fails to exercise this function is faithless to her pri- mary obligation. That the church has incurred heavy blame because of the feebleness of her testimony against such wrongs must now be confessed, and the least she can do to make amends for this infidelity is to speak now and henceforth, with commanding voice, against all the cor- porate wrongs that infest society. It may be that by her testimony the magistrates will be strengthened so to enforce the laws that ag- gressors shall be restrained, and freedom and opportunity secured to all ; and that thus the existing industrial order may become, so far as law can make it, the servant of justice and good-will. This is the first step toward social redemp- SOCIAL REDEMPTION 157 tion. The reenthronement of justice is the primary obligation. John the Baptist must speak first. The conviction of social sin is the beginning of social righteousness. The church has a great work to do in awakening the pub- lic conscience to forms of injustice which are so involved and concealed that our attention is not fixed upon them. Professor Ross re- cently announced a volume with the title " Smokeless Sin." ^ It is an illuminating word. The deadliest of the evils which are oppress- ing the community to-day come under this category. They are hidden from the public view. They assail you from ambush and you are helpless. The deadly missiles smite you on every side, but there is no revealing flash by which you can locate your foe. The social order is so complex that wrongs of this nature are easily perpetrated. Many of the transactions by which we are wont to profit are veiled in- justices. They are of a nature so subtle and indirect that the law has not yet defined and forbidden them. Those who suffer these in- justices are at a distance from us, and there is a network of legal and commercial relations between ourselves and them ; we know that they will never confront us and call us to ac- ^ The book is published under the title Sin and Society. 158 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE count ; it is safe for us to do wrong, and we keep on doing it until our consciences are dulled, and we are not able to see that any wrong has been done. The fact is, that such a complex social sys- tem as ours needs for its safe administration a kind of conscientiousness far higher and finer than that which men needed for honest living fifty years ago. Unless our minds are trained to see the right and wrong of very in- tricate transactions ; unless our ethical imagin- ation is sensitive enough to discern the nature of far-reaching and wide-spreading social re- lations, we shall constantly be profiting by the injury of our neighbors. It is the business of the church to train the consciences of men for the moral problems that confront them, and this work has been but indifferently done. The first step in the redemption of the social order is the education of the Christian conscience to discern these smokeless sins. It is with evils of this char- acter that the nation is now in a life and death grapple ; the church ought to be able, by its testimony, to lend effective aid in this conflict. The nature of the testimony needed may be indicated by a typical instance. SOCIAL REDEMPTION 159 Not many years ago a very prosperous manu- facturing company was doing business in a thriving American village, giving employment to fifteen hundred men and women, many of whom had purchased homes, in the expectation of having permanent occupation and liveli- hood. It was known to be a well-paying busi- ness ; its stock, which was in few hands, was not in the market. Suddenly a project of reorganization was announced, and stock amounting to five times the value of the property was placed upon the market. It was eagerly taken, for the reputa- tion of the company was very high. With the proceeds of this sale of securities the managers made themselves very rich men. It was not necessary for them to do business any longer. Indeed, they could not have continued to pay dividends on the amount of stock which they had sold ; they had never expected to do any such thing. What they did was promptly to close the business. The price of the stock dropped immediately to the neighborhood of zero, millions of values were canceled, and thousands of investors were made to suffer loss. But the direct consequences were seen in the village whose prosperity was suddenly 160 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE destroyed. Fifteen hundred men and "women were deprived, at a stroke, of employment and livelihood. In many homes there was destitu- tion and hunger ; hundreds of men were com- pelled to seek employment elsewhere, sacri- ficing the homes whose value had been greatly reduced; businesses that depended on the patronage of the mill hands were ruined; churches were paralyzed ; families were scat- tered ; discouraged men fell into ways of dis- sipation ; young women were led into the paths of shame. All this was done under the forms of law, and yet it would be hard to find in the annals of crime an instance more flagitious. And the men who did this thing were church members — members in good standing, leading mem- bers of an evangelical church. Nor does it appear that they suffered any discredit in the church to which they belonged, and to whose revenues they continued to contribute out of the plunder by which they had impoverished and ruined so many. The church had not suf- ficient moral sense to reprove and denounce this iniquity. What is worse, the church had not had enough moral sense to make these men see beforehand that such an act was infamous. SOCIAL REDEMPTION 161 Undoubtedly they would have promptly justified themselves. "Such transactions," they would have said, " are occurring every day ; what the law does not forbid, and what everybody else does, cannot be wrong. The property was ours, and we had a right to put our own price on it, and sell it for what it would bring. The business was ours, and we had a right to do what we pleased with it, to keep it running or shut it down when we got ready : it is a free country : do you think you can compel a man to go on doing business when he prefers to quit ? We never guaran- teed permanent employment to these people : we paid them their wages while they worked for us, and that is the end of our obHgation to them." Some such answer they would, no doubt, have made to any one who called in question their conduct ; and by such an answer they would have revealed the failure of the church to which they belonged to bring home to them their social obligations. The existing social order can never be re- deemed unless a fire can be kindled on the earth in whose clear shining light such deeds as these can be seen in all their deformity, 162 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE and in whose purifying flame such excuses as these will be utterly consumed. We must have laws to make such wrongs impossible ; but behind the laws must be the moral insight and the social passion which shall make them effective, and it is the business of the church to furnish these. When this is done we shall have made a good beginning in the work of social redemption. But it will be only a beginning. The work of John the Baptist comes first, but one mightier than he must follow. The voice of one crying in the wilderness is but the pre- lude of that larger revelation which is made upon the mountain top. To bring home to men the obligations of the law, and to show them wherein they are failing to obey it, is the first duty of the church in the present crisis ; but it is the gospel with which she is primarily put in charge. Clearer teaching about social morality is fundamental, but the great need, after all, is the vitalization of morality. The moral code, no matter how accurate may be its precepts, tends to become a dead letter, unless it is con- stantly revivified by the spirit of religion. The Sermon on the Mount is often con- SOCIAL REDEMPTION 163 ceived of as purely ethical teaching, but the heart of it all is religion. The revelation of the Fatherhood of God is the light which shines through all these words and furnishes the motive of all this morality. If we do the things here commanded, in the way that Jesus expects us to do them, it is because we know ourselves to be the children of our Father in heaven, living in his presence, rejoicing in the great love wherewith he has loved us, trust- ing in his care, seeking his kingdom, doing his will. The church which represents Jesus Christ in the world will never forget that its business is the leavening of society with the life of Christ ; but neither can it forget that the life of Christ can only be maintained by constant communion with the Father. That the spiritual life of Jesus himself was thus maintained, the record makes clear. The cen- tral fact of his experience was his living union with the Father. We talk of " the practice of the presence of God ; " Jesus was the only man who has ever perfectly realized it. And no one who knew him ever failed to see that it was the Father's kindness and compassion and grace and truth that were being mani- fested in his life. It was because ho was filled 164 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE with all the fullness of God that he imparted to those who received him the spirit of good- will, the passion for social service. The church which represents him in the world will need, for its social service, the same inspiration. Unless its life is fed from this fountain, its stream will soon run dry. There are those who seem to think that socio- logy can solve all the problems of our mod- ern life. If sociology be sufficiently expanded, this may be true ; for a truly scientific socio- logy would have to explain how men came to be social beings, and what is the bond that unites them. If it finds that their relation to a common Father is the fundamental fact of their existence, then it would know that reli- gion is at the heart of it, and that right re- lations with God are the spring and source of right relations with men. But a sociology which ignores this primary fact has in it no redemptive power. The more earnestly, therefore, we contend that the business of the church is the Christ- ian ization of the social order, the more stren- uously we must maintain that she is power- less to do this work except as her life is fed by faith and prayer. The redemption of the SOCIAL REDEMPTION 165 social order is the greatest task she has under- taken, and she needs for it a strength that can only come from conscious fellowship with God. If she ever needed inspiration, she needs it now. If there ever was a time when she could dispense with the divine guidance and grace, that time is not now. The churches which desert the places of prayer, and think to substitute the wisdom of men for the power of God, are not going to give much aid in this struggle. " It must be claimed," says one, " on behalf of the passion for God, that where it exists it will — automatically, as has been said — set charity, love, all sweet graces of philanthropic activity, into quick and ceaseless play. . . . If the emphasis of religious thought be made to fall upon the idea of life, this cannot fail to be; for to have the divine life is to be possessed of and to give out the divine love. . . . The regeneration of human society is found to come from the dominance of spirit- ual passion, even though it be not the first thing on which spiritual passion is set; the saint will be — just because he is a saint — a philanthropist too, since a true sainthood must number love among the graces of character 166 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE it brings. It is a fact — one has to make the sad admission — that religious people, pro- fessedly spiritual men and women, have been and still are in some cases eaten through and through by selfishness ; these are those who, so that they can declare heaven to be their own, have no care for the present hell in which 80 many of their fellows spend their days and years. But that is not because they are too deeply immersed in the passion for God, — it is because they have not really immersed themselves in its flood. And in claiming for a Godward passion the regulative and supreme place among the elements of life, we do but secure a fuller tenancy among those elements of a manward love ; for the nature which sets itself to receive the whole of God will, ere it knows it, and as an automatic effect of the new life it wins, give itself to its brethren in their need. For God is love, and he must dwell in love who dwells in God." * We may hesitate to say that when the pas- sion for God is the only thing aimed at it is bound to result in social regeneration ; there are too many facts which prove the contrary. * The Philosophy of Religious ExperiencCf hy Henry W. Clark, pp. 234-236, SOCIAL REDEMPTION 167 The aim must always include both the God- ward and the man ward obligations; the first and the second great commandments are of equal rank; what needs to be insisted on is the impossibility of divorcing them. The church which seeks the redemption of society cannot, then, dispense with its religion. Nothing has been made plainer, during the re- cent exposures of social decay, than the fact that our social morality must have a religious foundation. Even the man on the street is ready to concede that no righteousness is ade- quate for the present emergency but that which springs from faith in a righteous God. And nothing is more needed, at this hour, than the deepening of men's faith in the great religious verities. It is often said that the only cure for exist- ing social ills is a great revival of religion, and this is true. But the revival of reliofion which is needed is not the kind which the churches are most apt to seek. The religion which needs to be revived is not that which puts the sole emphasis on the safety and welfare of the individual, but that which equally exalts the social welfare ; which iden- tifies the interests of each with the interests 168 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE of all; which makes men see and feel that no salvation is worth anything to any man that does not put that man into Christian re- lations with his neighbors. Nothing but reli- gion will do this for any man, and the re- ligion which fails to do this is a spurious Christianity. A great revival we shall see, one of these days, which will have this character. It will bind together the two great commandments of the law, and make men feel the weight of both of them. It will compel them to recog- nize the truth that, while the root of their re- ligion is faith in God, the fruit of their reli- gion is love for men. It will drive home the fact that the reHgion which does not hinder a man from being a boodler or a grafter ; which permits a man to enjoy rehgion while fleecing his neighbors by crafty schemes of finance or artful legalized robberies ; which allows the love of gain to triumph over truth and honor and brotherly kindness; which sits serene and complacent while social classes make war on each other, and children's Hves are consumed by grinding toil, and women are forced by want into the ways of shame, and the enemies of society are set free to make gain by the SOCIAL REDEMPTION 169 ruin of human souls, is a religion which is not worth having. It will insist that a religion which is rightly described as the life of God in the souls of men, would begin in the house of God itself, and kindle there a consuming flame before which such iniquities could not stand. Perhaps it would set men to saying — they might not feel like singing — Thomas Hughes's great hymn : — " O God of truth, whose living word Upholds whate'er hath breath, Look down on thy creation, Lord, Enslaved by sin and death. ** Set up thy standard, Lord, that we Who claim a heavenly birth May march with thee to smite the lies That vex thy groaning earth. « We fight for truth, we fight for God, Poor slaves of lies and sin ! He who would fight for thee on earth Must first be true within. ** Thou God of truth, for whom we long, Thou who wilt hear our prayer. Do thine own battle in our hearts, And slay the falsehood there. ** Still smite ! still burn ! till naught is left But God's own truth and love ; Then, Lord, as morning dew come down, Best on us from above. 170 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE " Tea, come ! thus tried as in the fire, From every lie set free, Thy perfect truth shall dwell in us And we shall live in thee." It is hardly needful to say that the redemp- tion of the social order will not be wrought out without sacrifice. " The redemption of the soul is costly," says the Psalmist. No man is rescued from moral degradation and death without suffering and sacrifice. Those who are saved are more often saved by the suffering of others in their behalf than by their own suffer- ing. But the price of a soul is apt to be high, and love is sometimes able to pay it. The redemption of society from the welter of selfishness and brutishness and cruelty into which it is now plunged will be a costly undertaking. The church is here, as Christ's representative, to take up this work ; and it must not expect to accomplish it without suf- fering. " It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord." If the church is Christ's servant, she must not expect to find any better way than his way of saving the world. It is true, as we have seen, that the present deplorable conditions are due to the failure of SOCIAL REDEMPTION 171 tbe church to enforce the Christian morality. The price that she must pay for the redemp- tion of society is heavy because of her own neglect. Bat it must be paid. There is no other way of salvation. Thus it appears that the church which bears the name of Jesus Christ has come to its testing time. It finds itself in the midst of a society whose tendencies are downward. Mammon is on the throne ; the greed of gain is eating the heart out of commercial honor ; reputations are crumbling ; confidence is rudely shaken ; the most cynical schemes for plunder- ing the multitudes are daily brought to light; social classes stand over against each other distrustful and defiant; the house of mirth resounds with the mad revelry of the wasters, while the purlieus are noisome with poverty and vice. Can this society be redeemed ? Can this all- ruling commercialism be held in check, and this reign of plunder be overthrown, and all this seething selfishness and heartlessness and suspicion be made to give place to good-will and kindness, to trust and truth, to faith and honor ? It will never be done without a vast expenditure of sacrificial love. "This kind 172 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting." Is the church ready for this struggle ? Is she -willing to put forth the effort and pay the cost which is required for the redemption of society ? VIII THE NEW EVANGELISM Those who have followed these discussions from the beginning will not be inclined to hesitate in answering the question with which the last chapter closed. That society can be re- deemed, and that the church can and will purge herself from the things that defile her beauty and corrupt her powers, and gird herself for the redemptive work assigned her, is the faith of every loyal Christian. The grievous fail- ures of the church we cannot deny and must not palliate ; it is of the utmost importance that she be brought face to face with them, and be made to see how far short she has come of her high calling. Such criticism she has received from the beginning. The seven churches of Asia were sharply called to account by the beloved disciple ; their faithlessness and neglect were unflinchingly brought home to them. The churches at Ephesus and Sardis and Laodicea had as hard things said about them as have been said in these chapters of 174 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE the churches of this generation, and probably deserved them no less. We cannot doubt that that clear-eyed witness, if he were confronting the church of the twentieth century, would be constrained to say : " I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. . . . Because thou say est, I am rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing ; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked : I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou may est become rich; and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eye- salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I reprove and chasten ; be zealous therefore, and repent." In every generation such chastisement has been needed ; the need is no greater to-day than in past generations, and the chastening love no less. What Lowell says of this country, many a Christian believer has been constrained to say of the church : — " I loved her old renown, her stainless fame ; What better proof than that I loathed her shame." But this keen sense of her shortcomings is THE NEW EVANGELISM 175 not inconsistent with an unfaltering faith in the recovery of her integrity and in her final triumph. And those who have read the history of the Christian church with sympathetic vis- ion can hardly doubt that her brightest days are still before her. For while it must be admitted that she has neglected, hitherto, her great work of social redemption, it cannot be said that she is more neglectful of it now than she has been in past years ; the truth is that she is nearer to the recognition of it to-day than she has ever been. Derelict as she is to her primary obliga- tion, it must yet be said that a consciousness of that dereliction is beginning to make her uneasy, and that has never before been true of any large portion of her membership. Since the earliest centuries the possibility of trans- forming the social order by purely spiritual influences has scarcely dawned upon her. So long as society was feudalistic or aristocratic, the problem seemed to be beyond her reach ; she might hope to improve society, by incul- cating kindness and charity, but hardly to reconstruct it upon new foundations. The advent of democracy has brought home to her her social responsibilities. Here in 176 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE America, more than anywhere else, the nature of her social obligation has been revealed. Here the fact cannot be disguised that the people are the sovereigns, and that social as well as political relations are under their direct control. The sovereign people have pledged themselves one to another, in their constitu- tion, to refrain from establishing, by law, any form of religion ; but they have also cove- nanted together to promote the common wel- fare. This puts the responsibility for social conditions upon the whole people, and the Christian people are among them. They can- not avoid the obligation to apply Christian principles to social conditions. Power is theirs to be used in Christ's name and for the pro- motion of his kingdom. To see that society is furnished with right ruling ideas, and organized on Christian principles, is their main business. And while there are many by whom this obligation is still but feebly felt, yet there is a goodly number of those in whose minds the leaven is working, and to whom the nature of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish is being clearly revealed. That this number is destined to grow very rapidly we may reasonably hope. THE NEW EVANGELISM 177 The present situation is so clearly outlined by a recent writer that we may welcome a Hberal quotation : — ^^The first apostolate of Christianity was born from a deep fellow-feeling for social misery, and from the consciousness of a great historical opportunity. Jesus saw the peas- antry of Galilee following him about with their poverty and their diseases, like shepherd- less sheep that have been scattered and har- ried by beasts of prey, and his heart had compassion on them. He felt that the harvest was ripe but there were few to reap it. Past history had come to its culmination, but there were few who understood the situation and were prepared to cope with it. He bade his disciples to pray for laborers for the harvest, and then made them answer their own prayers by sending them out two by two to proclaim the kingdom of God. That was the beginning of the world-wide mission of Christianity. " The situation is repeated on a vaster scale to-day. If Jesus stood to-day amid our modern life, with that outlook on the condition of all humanity which observation and travel and the press would spread before him, and with the same heart of humanity beating in him, 178 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE he would create a new apostolate to meet the new needs in a new harvest time of history. " To any one who knows the sluggishness of humanity to good, the impreguable intrench- ments of vested wrongs, and the long reaches of time needed from one milestone of pro- gress to the next, the task of setting up a Christian social order in this modern world of ours seems like a fair and futile dream. Yet^ in fact, it is not one tithe as hopeless as when Jesus set out to do it. When he> told his dis- ciples, ^ Ye are the salt of the earth ; ye are the light of the world,' he expressed the conscious- ness of a great historic mission to the whole of humanity. Yet it was a Nazarene carpenter speaking to a group of Nazarene peasants and fishermen. Under the circumstances at that time it was an utterance of the most daring faith, — faith in himself, faith in them, faith in what he was putting into them, faith in faith. Jesus failed and was crucified, first his body by his enemies and then his spirit by his friends ; but that failure was such an amazing success that to-day it takes an effort on our part to reahze that it required any faith on his part to inaugurate the kingdom of God and to send out his apostolate. THE NEW EVANGELISM 179 " To-day, as Jesus looks out upon humanity, his spirit must leap to see the souls responsive to his call. They are sown broadcast through humanity, legions of them. The harvest field is no longer deserted. All about us we hear the clang of the whetstone and the rush of the blades through the grain and the shout of the reapers. With all our faults and our slothful- ness, we modern men in many ways are more on a level with the mind of Jesus than any generation that has gone before. If that first apostolate was able to remove mountains by faith, such an apostolate as Christ could now summon might change the face of the earth." * The time is ripe for such an apostolate. The old type of evangelism has plainly had its day. Strenuous efforts are put forth to re- vive it, but their success is meagre. It is easy by expending much money in advertising, by organizing a great choir, and employing the services of gifted and earnest men, to draw large congregations; but the great mass of those who attend these services are church members, — the outside multitude is scarcely * Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis^ pp. 414-416. The volume is one that no intelligent student of present-day Christianity can afford to neglect. 180 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE touched by them. Those who are gathered into the church in these meetings are mainly children from the Sunday schools. There may be evangelists who, by an extravagant and grotesque sensationalism, contrive to get the attention of the non-churchgoers, and who are able to report considerable additions to the churches; but the permanence of these gains is not yet shown, and we have no means of enumerating the thousands who, by such clownish exhibitions, are driven in disgust from the churches. The failure of the modern evangelism is not conjectural : the year-books show it. The growth of membership in several of our lead- ing denominations has either ceased or is greatly retarded; the Sunday schools and the young people's societies report decreas- ing numbers; the benevolent contributions are either waning, or increasing at a rate far less than that of the growth of wealth in the membership. It is idle to blink these condi- tions ; we must face them and find out what they mean. This slackening and shrinkage is not a fact of long standing ; it represents only the tendencies of the past twenty years. We hear rather frantic demands for a return THE NEW EVANGELISM 181 to the old methods of evangelism, but that is a foolish cry : — " The mill will never grind With the water that is past." The old appeal, which fixed attention upon the interest of ^the individual, has lost its power. It is not possible to stir the average human being of this generation, as the average hu- man being of fifty years ago was stirred, by pictures of the terrors of hell and the felici- ties of heaven. These conceptions have far less influence over human lives than once they had, — less, doubtless, than they ought to have; for there are realities under these sym- bols which we cannot afford to ignore. But the fundamental defect of that old appeal was the emphasis which it placed upon self-interest. *^ Look out for yourself ! " was its constant ad- monition. "Think of the perils that threaten, of the blisses that invite ! Do not risk the pain ; do not miss the blessedness ! " To-day this does not seem a wholly worthy motive. At any rate, it is below the highest. Men feel that the religion of Christ has a larger mean- ing than this. A presentation of the gospel which makes the welfare of the individual central does not grip the conscience and 182 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE arouse the emotions as once it did. For the conception of human welfare as social rather than individual has become common; that " great fund of altruistic feeling," which, as Mr. Benjamin Kidd tells us, is the motive power of all our social reforms, is constantly stirring in human hearts ; and although there are few whose lives are wholly ruled by this motive, there are fewer still who do not recog- nize it as the commanding motive ; and a re- ligious appeal which is based upon considera- tions essentially egoistic does not, therefore, awaken any large response in human hearts. If the church wishes to regain her hold upon the people, she must learn to speak to the highest that is in them. A man's religion must consecrate his ideals. A religion which invites him to live on a lower plane than the highest on which his thought travels cannot win his respect. And therefore the new evangelism must learn to find its motive not in self-love, no matter how refined, but in the love that identifies the self with the neighbor. It must bring home to the individual the truth which he already dimly knows, that his personal re- demption is bound up with the redemption of the society to which he belongs ; that he can- THE NEW EVANGELISM 183 not be saved except as he becomes a savior of others; nay, that the one central sin from which he needs to be saved is indifference to the welfare of others, and a willingness to prosper at their expense. The time has come for the church to take an entirely new attitude in offering men the gospel. It has been too well content with press- ing the personal advantages of religion, with trying to lure them into discipleship with baits addressed to their selfishness. It has been inventing attractions of all sorts, — fine build- ings, sumptuous upholstery and decorations, artistic music, brilliant oratory ; it has thought it possible to enlist men by pleasing their tastes and gratifying their sensibilities. So far has this gone that the average churchgoer con- sciously justifies his presence in church or his absence from it on the ground of pleasure. If it pleases him enough, he goes; if not, he reads the Sunday paper or goes out with his automobile. It is a simple question of enjoy- ment. The response of those invited shows the nature of the invitation. It indicates that the church has been putting a great deal of em- phasis on the attractions which it has to offer. 184 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE We can hardly imagine such replies to be made by those who were invited to listen to the preaching of Jesus or his apostles. They did not suppose that it was a question of enter- tainment that they were considering. They knew that it was a summons to service and sacrifice. That, beyond all doubt, was the nature of the appeal of the church in those earliest centuries, when it was marching over Asia and Europe, conquering and to conquer. It was not baiting men with soft cushions and pictured windows, with coddlings and comfits ; it was calling them to hardship and warfare, to ignominy and ostracism ; the words of the Master to which it gave emphasis were not mere metaphors : "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." The call of the cross has never failed. The power of God and the wisdom of God are in it. And it is time for the church to take up this heroic note and sound it forth with new power. This is the new evangehsm for which the world is waiting. It is not a call to be " carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease ; " it is not an invitation to the sentimental soul to " sit and sing herself away to ever- THE NEW EVANGELISM 185 lasting bliss ; " it is the clarion of battle ; it is the challenge to an enterprise which means struggle and suffering and self-denial. The redemption of society is the objective of the new evangelism. How vast an under- taking this is was indicated in the last chapter. Let us look at it a little more in detail. How much does it signify, here and now, in the United States of America ? It means, first, the reconciliation of races. One thing that must be done is to take this chaotic mass of dissimilar, discordant, suspi- cious, antipathetic racial elements and blend them into unity and brotherhood. The first Christians had a task of this nature on their hands ; they had to bring together in one fel- lowship Jews and Gentiles. But that was a pastime compared with the herculean labor in- trusted to us, — the bringing together of whites and blacks, of Caucasians and Mongolians, of scores of groups divided by the barriers of language, of religion, of custom, and fus- ing them into one nationality. No task of the same dimensions was ever undertaken by any people ; but this is ours, and we must per- form it. It is the task of the nation ; but the church of Jesus Christ is charged with the 186 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE business of furnishing the sentiments and ideas by which alone it may be accomplished. It means, secondly, the pacification of in- dustry. The contending hosts of capital and labor must be brought together, and con- strained to cease from their warfare and be- come friends and cooperators. It is absurd to suppose that the war of the industrial classes can continue to be waged, as at present, each seeking to overpower the other. Such a con- dition of things is simply irrational. All war- fare is illogical and unnatural. Human beings are not made to live together on any such terms. They are made to be friends and help- ers of one another. The elimination of war is the next step in industrial evolution. And it is the business of the church of Jesus Christ to speak the reconciling word. She has the word to speak, and when she utters it with authority it will be heard. It means, thirdly, the moralization of busi- ness. The trouble with business is simply cov- etousness. The insatiable greed of gain is the source of all the dishonesties, the oppres- sions, the spoliations, the trickeries, the frauds, the adulterations, the cutthroat competitions, the financial piracies, the swindling schemes, THE NEW EVANGELISM 187 — all the abuses aod mischiefs which infest the world of commerce and finance. Against all these forms of evil the church must bear her testimony ; but the root from which they all grow is the love of money, and it is this central and seminal sin of modern civil- ization that the church must assail with all the weapons of the spiritual warfare. " Cov- etousness is idolatry " — so St. Paul testifies ; and a grosser or more debasing idolatry has never appeared on earth than the worship of material gain. Unless the bonds of that super- stition can be broken, the race must sink into degradation. It is the one deadly enemy of mankind. And the church of Jesus Christ is called to lead in the battle with this foe. Against no other social evil was the testimony of Jesus so trenchant and uncompromising. Nothing more clearly evinces his unerring vision of moral realities than his judgment upon this encroaching passion. In his day it was an evil almost negligible compared with what it is to-day. It was because he fore- saw the conditions which prevail to-day that his words were so hot against the rule of Mammon. The church is face to face with the danger which he discerned, and she must 188 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE meet it in his spirit and with the energy of his passion. To make men see the hatefulness and loathsomeness of this greed of gain is the first duty of the church. When that is accom- pHshed the worst evils of the business realm will disappear. It means, fourthly, the extirpation of social vice. When covetousness is conquered, the procuring cause of much of this kind of evil will be cut up by the roots. The greed of gain is the motive which breeds and propa- gates social vice. But there are animal pro- pensities to which these incitements make their appeal ; and some way must be found of quickening the nobler affections, so that the spirit shall rule the flesh and not be in bond- age to it. To fill the thoughts and wishes of men with something better worth while than the joys of animalism is the radical remedy for these degradations. And the church ought to be able to supply this remedy. The redemption of society means, in the fifth place, the purification of politics. The dethronement of Mammon will go a long way toward this also ; most of the corruptions of our political life spring from the love of money. Graft is the first-born of covetous- THE NEW EVANGELISM 189 ness. But the love of power also plays a part in the debauchery of citizenship ; and the cen- tral sin of using men as means to our ends is exhibited here on a stupendous scale. This is the vocation of the boss and the briber and the political machinist ; and a deadlier way of destroying manhood it would be hard to find. It is not only the interest of other indi- viduals, but the interest of the whole commun- ity that the corrupt politician sacrifices upon the altar of cupidity or ambition ; and when a man has learned to turn the one great privi- lege of service and sacrifice which citizenship offers into an opportunity of private gain, he has sunk about as low as man can go. What more urgent task has the church upon her hands than that of making men see the treach- ery and infamy of this kind of conduct ? And unless men can be made to see it and feel it, what hope is there for free government ? Can anybody imagine that democracy can long endure if the ruling motive of the citizen in his relation to the commonwealth is a purpose to get as much out of it as he can and give it as little as he can ? All political reforms which leave the citizen in this state of mind are futile. There is no salvation for a democracy which 190 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE does not change the direction of the motive in the heart of the individual citizen. And this is the business of the church. Without this, social redemption is impossible, and there is no other agency which even proposes to accomplish this. And, finally, the redemption of society means the simplification of life. Here, per- haps, we strike more nearly than anywhere else at the heart of the whole problem. The bottom trouble of the world in which we live is the enormous over-multiplication of our wants. In the multitude of ministrations to our senses, the life of the spirit is overlaid and smothered. Jesus said that a man's life con- sists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses ; it is this elementary truth which the world has ceased to believe. For the most part our life is in our things ; our happiness depends on them^ our desires do not often rise above them. The complexity, the artificiality, the profu- sion of our belongings absorbs the larger part of our interest. The energies of invention are mainly directed to the creation of new wants. As the resources of the earth are developed, life takes on an accumulating burden of cares THE NEW EVANGELISM 191 and conventions and superfluities. We read, with a wonder which is a thinly disguised admiration, the stories of the extravagances of the people of the whirlpool, but most of us are jogging along after them, wishing that we could get into the swim ourselves. Our houses are cluttered with adornments ; our so- cial functions are spending matches ; our feasts invite to satiation ; our funerals are exhibi- tions of extravagance. This thing has been growing by leaps and bounds, and the time has come when we are fairly swamped by the abundance of the things which we possess. Nay, it can hardly be said that we possess this abundance ; it possesses us : — " Things are in the saddle And ride mankind." In recent years the cry has been rising for a simpler life. It is a voice in the wilderness ; in the din and clatter of our complex civiliza- tion it seems faint and far off, but it is mak- ing itself heard; it begins to be evident to all thoughtful people that we must somehow manage to get away from these entanglements of sense and live a freer life. In these arti- ficialities and extravagances the soul is en- feebled and belittled, and the national vigor 192 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE is lost. If we want to save our nation from decay we must learn to live a simpler life. And this change will not be wrought out by evolutionary processes; it means revolution rather; not by violence, we may trust, but certainly by choice, by effort, by struggle and resistance we shall turn back these tides of materialism, and lead the current of our national life into safer channels. We are not going to strip our lives bare of beauty, or to consign ourselves to the meagre- ness of the anchoretic regimen ; we shall have beautiful homes and abundant pleasures ; but we must learn to make our spiritual inter- ests supreme, and not suffer our thought to be blurred and our faith enfeebled and our love stifled in the atmosphere of modern materialism. Such, then, are some of the phases of that great work of social redemption which now confronts us. Other aspects of the work, not less serious, might be presented, but these are some of the outstanding needs of mod- ern society. Certainly it is a tremendous work. To reconcile hostile and suspicious races ; to pacify industrial classes ; to moralize business ; to extirpate social vice; to purify politics; THE NEW EVANGELISM 193 to simplify life ; — all this is an enterprise so vast that we may well be appalled by the thought of undertaking it. But this, and no- thing less than this, is the business which the church has in hand. For which of these tasks is she not responsible ? From which of them would she dare ask to be excused ? To what other agency can she think of intrusting any of them? Nay, this is her proper and peculiar work. For this is she sent into the world. In truth, the one thing that the church needs to-day is to envisage this task, — to take in its tremendous dimensions ; to comprehend the overpowering magnitude of the work that is expected of her. It is this revelation that will rouse her. Never before, in all her history, has such a disclosure of her responsibility been made to her. And the enormity of the obligation will set her thinking. It will dawn upon her after a little, that it is for just such tasks that she is called and commissioned ; that the achievement of the impossible is the very thing that she is always expected to do ; that the strength on which she leans is om- nipotence ; that she can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth her. She will see 194 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE and understand that her progress is not made by seeking the Hne of least resistance : some such worldly wisdom as this has been her un- doing. She will learn that it is only when she undertakes the greatest things that she finds her resources equal to her needs. This is the heroic note of the new evangel- ism. The work of making a better world of this is a tremendous work, but it can be done. It can be done, because it is commanded. If there is a God in heaven, what ought to be done can be done. To doubt that is to deny him. And there is one way of doing it, and that is Christ's way. For all this manifold, herculean labor on which we have been look- ing, there is no wisdom comparable with his. He said that he came to save the world, and he is going to save it. He has waited long, but he knows how to wait. The day of his triumph is drawing near. This world is going to be redeemed. This social order, so full of strife and confusion, of cruelty and oppres- sion, of misery and sorrow, is going to be transformed, and the love of Christ shed abroad in the hearts of men will transform it. We are not going to wait another thousand years for our millennium ; we are going to THE NEW EVANGELISM 195 have it here and now. This is the gospel of the new evangelism which it has taken the church a long time to learn, but which she is now getting ready to proclaim with demon- stration of the spirit and with power. We must not hide from ourselves the fact that some great changes will need to take place in her own life before she can give effect to this great evangel. She must heal her divi- sions, and fling away her encumbering tradi- tions, and greatly deepen her faith in her Lord and Leader. Above all, she must simplify her own life. She cannot bear witness, as she must, against the deadly influences of our modern materialism, until she utterly clears herself of all complicity with it. This means, in many quarters, a radical change in her administration. When the church has thus envisaged her task, and comprehended its magnitude, and when, with her heart on fire with the great- ness and glory of it, she has laid aside every weight and the sins that so easily beset her, and has girded herself with the truth as it is in Jesus, and has set the silver trumpet to her lips, she will have a gospel to proclaim, to which the world will listen. 196 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE It will tell the world, as it has always told the world, of forgiveness and hope, of com- fort and peace, of the help and guidance that comes to the troubled soul in believing in Jesus. It will speak, as it has always spoken, of the rest that remaineth, and of the great joys and companionships of the eternal future. But it will have something more than this to tell. The kingdoms of this world — this will be its message — are becoming the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. It is not an event to be awaited, but to be realized, here and now. Nothing is needed but that men should believe the word of Jesus Christ and live by it. We do believe it, and we mean to show our faith by our works. We believe that by simply living together as Jesus has taught us to live, we can make this world so much bet- ter than it now is, that men shall think heaven has come down to earth. We believe that the race question and the labor question and the trust question and the liquor question and the graft question and all the other questions will find a speedy solution when men have learned to walk in the way of Jesus. And we call you to come and walk with us in that way. THE NEW EVANGELISM 197 It is not a smooth and thornless way. It is a toilsome and painful way. It is the way of the cross. It means hardship and struggle and suffering. Such intrenched and ingrained iniquities as now infest our society will not be overcome without conflict. We are not calling you to a pastime. We are not offering you riches or honors or sensual joys. We are call- ing you to service and to sacrifice. But we are going to build here in this world the king- dom of heaven. We know that it can be done: we know how to do it, and the glori- ous thing we have to tell you is that you can have a share in it. Look forward with us to the day when — " Nation with nation, land with land, Unarmed shall live as comrades free. In every heart and brain shall throb The pulse of one fraternity ; " New arts shall bloom, of loftier mould, And mightier music thrill the skies. And every life shall be a song When all the earth is paradise, " — and come and help us to bring that glad time. The Leader whom we follow knows the way, and the future belongs to Him. That is the message of the new evangel- 198 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE ism, and when the church learns to speak it with conviction, and to make it good in her life, she will find that the gospel has a power that she has never even imagined it to possess. IX THE NEW LEADERSHIP These discussions have failed of their purpose if they have not made a few things clear. Let us restate them : — 1. The roots of religion are in human na- ture. It is a fact as central and all-pervasive in the social realm as gravitation is in the physical realm. It is no more Hkely to become antiquated or obsolete than oxygen or sun- shine. It is an interest which no intelligent person can afford to ignore. 2. Like every other living thing, religion grows. It is not outside the sphere of opera- tion of Him who said, " Behold ! I make all things new ! '' It is subject, continually, to his wise economy of renewal. 3. Our religion is Christianity. With the other religions of the race it is destined to be brought into closer and closer comparison and competition, and that religion will sur- vive and become universal which most per- fectly explains the universe and provides for 200 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE the wants of the human soul. All the indica- tions are that the religion which survives will include the essential elements of Christianity. 4. All religions are rooted in the social nature of man, but Christianity, more than any other, is a social religion. It depends for its culture and propagation upon the so- cial forces. Some form of social organization, like the church, is necessary to the life of re- ligion. Worship, to be sane and salutary, must be social ; and the life of Christianity can find expression only in such cooperations as those for which the church provides. 5. As the life of religion is nurtured in social worship and service, so its fruit is gath- ered in the transformation of society. The primary function of the church is the Christ- ianization of the social order. The business of the church is to save the world by establish- inc^ here the kino^dom of heaven. 6. The church has very imperfectly per- formed this function. It has but dimly dis- cerned and but feebly grasped the social aims of Jesus. It has tried to do a great many other things, some of them good things; but the one thing it was sent to do it has largely left undone. THE NEW LEADERSHIP 201 7. A new reformation is therefore called for, and that reformation must accomplish what the reformation of the sixteenth century failed to accomplish, — the restoration of the social teachings of Jesus to their proper rank and dignity. As the reformation of the sixteenth century brought the individual to Christ as a personal Saviour, so the reformation of the twentieth century must bring society to Christ as a social Saviour, and must make men see that there is no way of living together but his way. 8. The church is therefore called to the re- demption of society. But the work of redemp- tion to which it is called is not a reconstruc- tion of economic or political machinery ; it is the quickening of the social conscience, and the reenthronement of justice and love in the place of selfishness and strife as the ruling principles of human society. 9. For the redemption of society a new evan- gelism is needed. The new evangelism will not emphasize the interest of the individual ; it will rather emphasize the truth that the individual can only be saved when he identi- fies his own welfare with the welfare of his fellow men. And it will not try to win men 202 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE by offering them ease and safety and comfort, but rather by showing them how tremendous are the tasks before them ; what a mighty work there is to do in delivering this world from the bondage of corruption and selfishness; what hardship and toil and sacrifice are needed ; but how sure the victory is for those who are able to believe the word of Jesus Christ and follow, whole-heartedly, his leadership. Such are the characters and conditions under which the church of Jesus Christ pre- sents herself in this new day to modern men. Her record is far from flawless; it is the necessities of logic, not the facts of history, which make her infallible. She has blundered along through the centuries, missing much of the work she was sent to do, and staining her garments not seldom with the soilure of greed and the blood of the innocent; but through all these generations the patient love of her Lord has been chastening her, and through many wanderings and stumblings she has come down to this hour. The light upon her candlestick has often grown dim, but it has never been wholly extinguished ; the fire upon her altars has burned low, but it is still burning. She has not done all that she ought THE NEW LEADERSHIP 203 to have done, but she has done a large part of all that has been done to enlighten, to com- fort, and to uplift humanity. And the dis- cipline through which she has passed gives some indication of the work she has yet to do. It is not credible that a wise Providence should have kept her alive so many centuries, and should have made so much use of her in the establishment upon the earth of the king- dom of heaven, and should have led her into a constantly increasing knowledge of Himself, if he had not meant to make her his servant in the great work now waiting to be done. Her hour has come, and her task lies before her. It might be urged that she ought to have been better fitted for her work before she was called to undertake it; but that is not God's way. We get our preparation for great work in the work itself. We are called from the sheepf olds to lead the armies of Israel. We are sent out with a few loaves and fishes to feed the multitude. Our powers are developed and our resources are multiplied by using them. And though the church is far from having the equipment she needs for the redemption of society, the power and the wisdom will come when the work is bravely undertaken. 204 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE To whom, now, does this great enterprise of social redemption make its strongest ap- peal? It ought to appeal to all good men and women. It ought to enlist the powers of those who are in the meridian of their strength. The men whose vision has been widened and whose wills have been invigorated in the great undertakings of industry and commerce ought to find in this proposition something worthy of their powers. It ought, also, to stir the hearts of those who have labored hard and waited long for the coming of the kingdom to hear a great voice saying, " Now is the accepted time : behold ! now is the day of sal- vation ! " To many of those who have not much longer to live life never seemed a thing so fair as it is to-day. But this great appeal ought most strongly to lay hold upon the hearts of the young men and women of this generation. The enterprise is mainly theirs. If the new reformation comes, they will lead it on. If society is re- deemed, it will be by their toil and sacrifice. If the church ever learns its business, it will be under their tuition. And it must be by their voices, chiefly, that the new evangel will be proclaimed. THE NEW LEADERSHIP 205 The young men and women who have had the patience to read these chapters have been invited to consider some laro^e and serious themes. It has been assumed that they did not care for kindergarten talk, nor even for the ethical platitudes to which youth are apt to be treated. There has been no talking down to them ; they have been asked to sit where Jesus sat, among the doctors in the temple, to hear and answer questions, and to consider, with the rest of us, our Father's business. All this tremendous work of social recon- struction about which we are talking must be done, and most of it must be done by them. It is to be hoped that they will be able to see the urgency of it, and to feel that it is some- thing worth their while. Those of us who have been permitted to come in contact with the more thoughtful young men and women of this generation, especially those in the colleges and the pro- fessional schools, have been made aware of a deepening conviction among the best of them that the kind of prizes for which the multitude are contending are not of the highest value. Great revisions have been taking place, during the past few years, in the estimates of success. 206 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE Many careers which, but a little while ago, seemed enviable, now appear much less allur- ing. And while this change of attitude is far from being universal, there is a goodly number of young men and women scattered through all our communities whose souls are kindled with social passion, and who are asking not so eagerly how they may succeed as how they may serve. To these we have a right to look for leadership in the work of social redemption. Many phases of this work will appeal to them. In education, in philanthropy, in jour- nalism, in literature, in art, they will be called to serve ; many philanthropies will invite them ; the organization of industry upon cooperative lines will offer some of them a vocation, and the government will be upon their shoulders. But what they are asked to consider here is the claim of the church upon them. That claim need not conflict with any of these other vocations, unless, indeed, the work of the Christian ministry should offer itself to their choice. That possibility, by the way, is well worth thinking of. Some of them, let us trust, will keep it in mind for further consid- eration. If the business of the church is what THE NEW LEADERSHIP 207 we have found it to be, and the new evangel- ism is such as we have outlined, the Christian ministry must offer to any man whose heart is on fire with social passion a great oppor- tunity. But for the present let us note the fact that upon those who are not to give their whole lives to the work of the church, the church has a claim, which they ought seri- ously to consider. Whatever their callings may be, in whatever fields they may be labor- ing, the church will need their loyal service, and they will need its goodly fellowships and its inspiring cooperation. The church which ought to be, and must be, is not for some of us, but for all of us. Even as the state is the political common- wealth to which all citizens belong, so the church is the spiritual commonwealth in which all souls should be included. The interests for which the church provides are the common hu- man interests ; it never can be what it ought to be, or do what it is called to do, until it gathers all the people into its fellowship. And therefore these young men and women to whom the future is intrusted must find their places in the church. The church needs them ; it cannot fulfill its function without them ; and 208 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE we have seen that its function is a vital func- tion; that it furnishes the bond by which society is held together. The church is God's agency for leavening society with Christian influences; and these young men and women by whom the social order is to be reconstructed will be in the church. Its leadership will be committed to them. They will have the shaping of its life. Its life will need much reshaping, and that will be their work. What will they make of it? 1. They will make it, what it has always been, a place of worship ; the shrine of the spirit; the home of Christian nurture; a school of instruction ; a fount of inspiration ; a seminary of religion ; the meeting-place of man and God. Attempts have been made in recent years to organize churches — or, at least, associa- tions which should take the place of churches — in which religion should be dispensed with ; in which there should be more or less of ethi- cal instruction and of charitable cooperation, but no recognition of any connection between this world and any other. That is simply a reform against nature^ and it will never pros- THE NEW LEADERSHIP 209 per. For, as Professor William James has taught us, in a great inductive study, the sum of all that is known about religion warrants us in saying: — "(a) That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe, from which it draws its chief significance ; " (6) That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end; " (c) That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof ... is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or ma- terial, within the phenomenal world." ^ These are the indubitable conclusions of modern science ; and the proposition to ignore the deepest fact of human experience will not be entertained by the young men and women of the present day. The church, under their leadership, will be a worshiping church, a pray- ing church. It will keep itself in close relations with that unseen universe from which its help must come. It will be a channel through which the divine grace will flow into the lives of men. And it will also be, what it has always been, a school as well as a shrine, a place where the * The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 485. 210 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE teacher searches out and unfolds the truth and the prophet proclaims the message that has been given him. 2. Under its new leadership the church will continue to be a minister to human want and suffering. The charitable work which has always been emphasized in its administration will not be neglected, but it will take on a new character. There will be less almsgiving, and more of the kind of help which saves manhood and womanhood. The young men and women who are called to this leadership will understand the worth of souls — that is, of men and women ; and they will be careful lest, in their relief of want, they undermine the character. Above all, they will feel that while it is the business of the church to care for the poor, its first business is to cure the conditions which breed poverty. 3. They will thoroughly democratize the life of the church, making it the rallying place of a genuine Christian fraternity, in which men of all ranks and stations meet on a common level, ignoring the distinctions of rich and poor, cultured and ignorant, and emphasizing the fact of Christian brotherhood. We have churches which profess democracy, but there THE NEW LEADERSHIP 211 is reason to fear that many of them are little better than oligarchies ; that some of them come near to being monarchies. The new lead- ership will discern the importance of making every member of the brotherhood, no matter how humble, a partaker of its responsibilities, and a helper in its services. They will know that the problem of church administration is to make every man feel that he is needed. They will grasp the significance of Paul's figure of the body and its members, and will see that " those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary," and that " those parts of the body which are less honorable " ought to receive " more abundant honor." They will have workingmen in their vestries and their sessions and their boards of trustees. They will show to all the world that they have accepted the word of Jesus : " One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." 4. This means that the life of the church will not only be thoroughly democratized, but greatly simplified. All its administration will take on plainer and less luxurious forms. The splendors of architecture and art, of uphol- stery and decoration, of ecclesiastical millinery 212 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE and music, with which we now so often seek to attract men to the house of God, will be put aside ; and the followers of Jesus Christ will get near enough to him to have some sense of the fitness of things in the ordering of the houses of worship where the Carpenter is the social leader and where rich and poor meet as one brotherhood. Instead, therefore, of permitting the church to be invaded and vulgarized by the luxury and extravagance of the world, they will turn the current in the other direction. The church, under the new leadership, will not take its cue from the world ; it will enforce its own stand- ards upon the world. " Out of Zion will go forth the law." Bitter words were those spoken at a recent meeting of the Congregational Union in Eng- land by one of the greatest of English preach- ers.^ "The common life of the home," he said, " is often a mere vulgar exhibition of the means of living. We try to persuade ourselves that showy living is essential life. In tens of thou- sands of English homes the mere show of things is the goal of a restless and feverish ambi- tion. Everywhere we seem to be loitering » Dr. J. H. Jowett. THE NEW LEADERSHIP 213 and pottering about in the implement yard. Even in our universities we must have showy buildings, though we starve the chairs. All this peril becomes the more insidious when we pass into the realm of the church of God. Why, the ^ means of grace ' are often misinter- preted as grace itself. We are obtruding our badges and ribbons, our soldier's dress with- out the soldier's spirit, our music, our ministers even, — how they look, what they wear, what they do — they are all part of the wretched vulgarity of the modern spirit." The two things are rightly put together. The ostentation of the home, the tawdry luxury and profusion of fashionable society, creep into the church and set up their standards there, and the religion of Christ puts on a costume in which its Founder would never recogrnize it. We are dealing here with the very heart of the trouble in our national life, and the prob- lem is one which must be solved by the pre- sent generation of our young men and women. The social conditions which are depicted for us by close students of the life of our luxurious classes are ominous in the extreme. The cyn- ical dishonesties and the brutal spoliations which have come to light in the realm of high 214 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE finance and big business are the natural fruit of such a manner of life as many of our recent novelists have vividly portrayed. And the wanton extravagance of the House of Mirth would not exist if the majority of the people did not admire it. The outcry against it is oftener the voice of envy than of moral re- vulsion. The cure for this evil, as of most others, is found in public opinion ; and the church must educate public opinion to reprove it, and the leadership of the church will be in the hands of the young men and women of this generation. It will be evident to them that the place to begin is in the church itself. The heartless luxury of the world will not be chastened into simplicity by a church that surrounds itself with splendor and spends money lavishly upon its pleasures. They will know that a church which wishes to reprove the vanity and osten- tation of the outside world must order its own life in such a way that its word shall be with power. 5. Finally and chiefly the young men and women who are to be called to the leadership of the church will feel that their main business is the work of church extension. But they will THE NEW LEADERSHIP 215 give to this phrase a little different meaning from that which it has generally carried. The church extension to which the boards and societies in the church have been devoted is the work of building new churches in promis- ing fields. It is properly denominational ex- tension. Something of this kind will remain to be done in the new day now before us, and our new leaders will doubtless have some part in it. But the church extension which is most loudly called for just now is the extension of the life of the church into every department of human life. It is more analogous to what we call university extension work. The busi- ness of university extension is not the plant- ing of new universities ; it is the projection of the university into the community ; it is the attempt to carry the light and the knowledge and the truth and the beauty for which the university stands down among the people ; to popularize the higher culture and the finer art. That is a most praiseworthy enterprise, a most Christian undertaking. And something very much like this will be the church exten- sion for which the new leadership will stand. Its aim will be to make a vital connection be- tween the Christian church and every institu- 216 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE tion or agency by which the work of the world is done, so that the influence of the church shall be directly felt in every part of our social life. It will consider the church as the nursery or conservatory, whose growths are to be planted out all over the field of the world. It will make the church the central dynamo of the community, connected by a live wire with every home, school, factory, bank, shop, store, office, legislative chamber, employers' associa- tion, labor federation, — with every organ of the whole social organism, so that the light and power which are in Jesus Christ shall be the guiding influence and the motive force of our civilization. This is the work which remains to be done, and for which this present world is loudly calling. It is the work that Jesus Christ came into this world to do, and he will not see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied until it is done. The opportunity of realizing the so- cial aims of Jesus, of organizing society upon the principles which he laid down, is offered to the young men and women of this genera- tion. It will be open to them so to order the life of the church that in its democracy and its simplicity it shall represent Jesus Christ, THE NEW LEADERSHIP 217 and then to extend this life into industry and commerce and politics and art and social di- version, thus bringing all the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of the Christ. It will be their principal task to translate the sermons and the prayers and the songs of Sunday into the life of the shop and the factory and the office on Monday and the other days of the week. That would mean, of course, a tremen- dous overturning in the business of the world ; a radical revision of the ideals and standards of the great majority; a new point of view and a new aim in life for the most of us. But such a peaceful revolution in our ways of life would be far less painful and disastrous than the revolution which our present habits are sure to bring, and it is the only thing which will prevent it. And if the young men and women of to-day will but discern this truth, they may have the honor of leading in the new Saturnian reign. We hear in these days from earnest men many anxious questions why the message of the gospel fails to reach and convince the outside multitude. " Why is it," good preach- ers say, *^ that there are so many people in all our communities — some of them very good 218 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE people — who are not at all touched by our appeal? They do not seem to be interested in what we have to offer them. They do not appear to feel their need of it." To this question more than one answer could be given, but there is one answer which needs to be well considered. One reason is that these men and women fail to discern, in the life round about them, the reality of the thing which we offer them. For Christian- ity is, as we have seen in these studies, not only an individual experience, but a social fact. And while we might not be qualified to judge whether the individual experience, in any given case, is genuine, we could see the social fact, if it were in sight. That social fact would be profoundly interesting to us, and it would be convincing. Nothing else is likely to convince us. In truth, we cannot understand Christianity at all until we see it in operation in society. One man alone cannot give any idea of what it is. As some one has said, one man and God will give us all that is essential in any other religion, but Christianity requires for its operation at least two men and God. In fact, it takes a good many men and women and children, living together in all sorts of re- THE NEW LEADERSHIP 219 lations, to give any adequate exhibition of it. What we need, then, first of all, to convince men of its reality, is a good sample of it, in active operation — a great variety of good samples, indeed. When we have these to show, we can get people interested. It would be difficult, if a very homely illus- tration may be permitted, to enlist the interest of any boy in baseball if you made it with him an individual matter. You might try to train him for any given position on the field, but if he undertook to study it out alone it would not be easy for him to understand it. In fact, it would be impossible. No one could learn the game all alone. The team work is the whole of it. And it would be absurd to expect any one to become interested in the game unless he could see it played. To take a similar illustration from a some- what higher form of art, you would not be likely to succeed in awakening enthusiasm in any one for orchestral music by giving him his individual part of the score to study and play over by himself. No matter what his in- strument might be, the solitary performance of the part assigned to it would be the dryest possible business. You could not convert any 220 THE CHURCH AND MODERN LIFE man to the love of orchestral music by any such process. But if he could hear all the in- struments played together, and, better still, if he could play in with all the rest, that might be inspiring. So you need not expect to convert any man to Christianity unless you can show him Christ- ianity at work in human society. In consider- ing only the individual application of it, its whole meaning and significance would be hid- den from him. The team work is all there is of it. Let him see it in active operation, and it will awaken his enthusiasm. This is, in fact, the essence of the new evan- ■ gelism to which the young men and women of this day are called. Their business will be to take Christianity out into the field of the world and set it at work. It is for this that the leadership is intrusted to them. The church has been a long time coming to this, but it seems at last to be arriving, and the young people of this generation will be summoned to the great undertaking. Surely they may feel that a high honor and a heavy respons- ibility are thus put upon them. It is the most heroic enterprise to which the sons of men have ever been called. THE NEW LEADERSHIP 221 Not all of them will respond to the call. But we may hope that there will be found among them a goodly minority to whom the appeal will come with commanding voice, and whom we may hear answering: "Yea and amen ! The work is ours, and we will not shirk it. It is work worth doing, and it can be done. To make a better world of this is the best thing a man can think of ; and we be- lieve that Christ's way is the right way. It has never yet had a fair trial, and we are bound that it shall be tried. We know that we shall not make ourselves rich or famous in this undertaking ; but we shall see the load lifted from many shoulders, and the hght of hope shining in many eyes; we shall hear the din of strife changing to the songs of cheer- ful labor ; we shall share our simple joys with those who know that we have always tried to make their lives happier, and who cannot choose but love us ; we shall find life worth \ living, and we shall die content." CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A A CATALOGUE OF THEOLOGICAL, ILLUSTRATED AND GENERAL BOOKS PUBLISHED BY JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO PRICES. WITH INDEX OF TITLES AND AUTHORS AT THE END NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS MARKED WITH AN ASTERISK. JAMES CLARKE AND CO.TS 10/6 Net THE POLYCHROME BIBLE A New English Translation of the Books of the Bible. Printed in various colours, showing at a glance the composite nature and the different sources of the Books, With many Notes and Illustrations from Ancient Monuments, Ac, Each volume is the work of an eminent Biblical scholar of Europe or America, and the whole work is under the general editorship of Paul Haupt, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, assisted by Horace Howard Furi^bss. •* Really one of the greatest and most lerions undertakings of onr time. It has been planned on the grandest scale. It is being produced in mapnifi- cent style. . . . The various books are entrusted to the ablest scholars that are alive." — Expository Times. The Book of Ezckicl. Translated by the Rev. C. H. Toy, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Hebrew and other Orienttd Lcuiguages, and Lecturer on Biblical Literature in Harveu-d University, 208 pp. (89 pp. translation and 119 pp. notes). With nine full-page Illustrations (including a Map of Western Asia and 102 Illustrations in the Notes. Cloth, gilt top. lOs. 6d. net. ** They [Joshna and Ezekiel] will be of ^reat use to the careful student. . . . The books include the best resulto of Uie higher criticism." — Birmingham Daily Pott, For other VUumtt in this Series see page 3. 7/6 J. Qulnnes5 Rogers, D.D. : An Autobiography* D«my Svo, Photogravure Portrait and Illustrations, 7s. 6d. " The reminiscences of Dr. Guinness Rogers go back over nearly eighty years. It is hard to open the book anywhers without coming on sometJUing of interest." — Manchester Guardian. A History of the United States. By Johw Fiskk, Lifct.D., LL D. For Schools. With Topical Analj-sis, Suggestive Questions and Directions for Teachers, by Frank Alpinib Hill, Litt.D., formerly Headmaster of the English High School in Cambridge, and later of the Mechanic Arta High School in Boston. With 180 Illustrations and 39 Maps. Crown 8vo, half leather, gilt top, Ts. 6d. Henry Barrow, Separatist; and the Exiled Church of Amsterdam. By F. J. Powicke, Ph.D., Author of " John Norris " and " Essentials of Congregationalism." Medium 8vo, 7g. 6d. net. CATALOGUE OP BOOKS 6/- Net THE POLYCHROME BIBLE The Book of Joshua. Translated by the Rev. W. H. Bvhts^rtt, M.A., Litt.D., Professor of Old Testament Languages and Literature at Hackney and New Colleges, London, formerly Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 94 pp., printed in nine colours (43 pp. translation and 61 pp. notes, including an illustrated Excursus on the Tel-el-Amama Tablets and a List of Greographical Names). Eleven fxill-page Illustrations (one in colours) and 25 Illustrations in the Notes. Cloth, gilt top, 6s. net. The Book of Judsres. Translated, with Notes, by G. F. Moore, D.D., Professor of Hebrew in Andover Theological Seminary. 98 pp., printed in seven colours (42 pp. translation, 56 pp. notes). Seven full-page Illustrations (including a Map in colours and 20 Illustrations in the Notes. Cloth, gilt top, price 6s. net. For other Volumet in tkit Series tu page S. 6/- By S. R. CROCKETT VIda; or, The Iron Lord of Kirktown, Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, gilt top, Gs. " Not a doll page in it. . . . Eemarliably exhilarating and well knit. . . . Never done anything better." — Th$ Standard. Kid McQhie. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, gilt top, Os. " Aa smart and as pat as ever." — TJie Times. " Admirer* of Mr. Croclcett will not be disappointed in ' Kid McGhie.' ** — The Daily Chronicle. The Loves of Miss Anne. Large crown Svo, 416 pp., cloth, gilt top, 6s. " A fine rousing story, comedy and tragedy being admirably co-mingled, and there are some excellent gtudiea of character. A bright, breezy, well- written book, with clever descriptions of country life." — BirmingTiam Post. Flower-0*-the-Com. Large crown Svo, 464 pp., cloth, gilt top, 6s. " Mr. Crockett once more shows his skill in weaving an ingenious plot." —The Times. " The narrative moves briskly, and secures the banishment of dulness with the frequency of adventure." — Newcastle Daily Leader. " Fertile of incident." — Daily Mail. Cinderella. Illustrated. Crown Svo, cloth, 63. " A decidedly pleasing tale." — St. Jamet's Gazette. " Most animated from beginning to end." — Dundee Advertiser. " Will assuredly not lack a kindly welcome on its merits." — Bristol Mercury. Kit Kennedy: Country Boy. With Six Illustrations. Crown Svo, cloth, gilt top, 63. " Mr. Crockett has never given better evidence of originality and dramatic power. . . . There is no doubt that ' Kit Kennedy ' will add to his reiwtatJric xni jKip-.tlarit}-."^ — ManchetUr GuarJunu JAMES CLAHKB AND 00. •» 6/- •The Web of Circumstance. A New Novel. By Isabsl BuBQiN. Largo crown 8vo, cloth boards, illustrated, 6s. ♦The Heart of Jessy Laurie. By Amkli\ E. Barb, Author of " The Bow of Orange Ribbon." Large crown 8vo, cloth boards. Illustrated. 6s. A Lifted Veil. A Novel. By J. G. Stbvknson. Large crown 8vo, 4 Illustrations, cloth boards, 63. The Rise of Philip Barrett. By David Ltaix, Author of " The Land o' the Leal," &c. Crowm 8vo, bevelled boards, gilt top, Cs. " The book is remarkable for the arresting interest of all, or nearly all the charactera. Altogether Mr. Lyall is to be congratulated on an interest- ing story." — Aherdun Free Press. A Popular History of the Free Churches. By C. Silvesteb HoRNE, M.A. Crown 8vo, 464 pp. and 39 full-page Illustra- tions on fiu-t paper. Art vellum, gilt top, 6s. " A vigorous and interesting book by an enthusiastic believer in the Puritan spirit and the need of religious equality." — The Times. The Black Familiars. By L. B. Wauord, Author of " Stay-at- Homes," &c. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, 6s. " . . . ' Black Familiars ' is among the most able and attracUve booki of a very productive leaAOD." — St. James's Uazette. Friend Olivia. By Amelia E. Barr. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 6s. A Rose of a Hundred Leaves. By Ameua E. Barr. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 6a. HaromI : A New Zealand Story. By Bannbrman Kaye. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. " In every sense it is admirably wTitten, the charming description of localities, none the less than the character-drawing and tlie construction of the romance, being most engaging." — Western Daily Mercury. Throusrh Science to Faith. By Dr. Newman Smyth, Author of " The Place of Death in Evolution," " Old Faiths in New Lights," " The Reality of Faith," &c. Large crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 6s. " We commend Dr. Smyth's work to the attention of all thoughtful readers." — Liverpool Mercury. The Rights of Man. A Study in Twentieth Century ProMem.s By Lyman Abbott, D.D. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. " This is one of his best books. It is good tliroughout." — Expository Times. America in the East. By Wiluam Elliot Griffis, formerly of the Imperial University of Japan, Author of " The Mikado's Empire," " Corea, the Hermit Nation," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, with 19 Illustrations, 63. " We need hardly say that tliere is much that is interesting in the book." — Spectator. Rev. T. T. Ljmch: A ^lomoir. Edited by William Whitk. With Portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6«. CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 6/- Our City of God. By J. Brierley, B.A, Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, gilt top, 6s. " We say without hesitation that this is a most inspiring book." — iVestminster GazetU, For other books by J. Brierley, see page 8. Memorials of Theophilus Trinal. By T. T. Lynch. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. The Mornington Lecture. By T. T. Lynch. Thursday Evening Addresses. Second Edition. Cro^vn 8vo, cloth, 6s. 5/- •The Making of Personality. By Bliss Carman, Author of *' The Kinship of Nature," &c. Large crown Svo, cloth boards, 6g. Faith and Verification. With Other Studies in Christian Thought and Life. By Principal E. Griffith- Jones. Large crown Svo, with Photogravure Portrait, cloth boards, gilt top, 6s. The Private Relationships of Christ. By T. Vincent Tymms, D.D., Author of " The Mystery of God," " The Christian Idea of Atonement," &c. Large crown Svo, cloth boards, gilt top, 5s. " Altogether charming. To pass to it from musty problems of meta- phjrsics and the desperate conjectures of criticism is like passinc from th« stuffy atmosphere of a sick-room to the breezy freshness of a summer morn- ing." — Westminster Gazette. Theology and Truth. By Newton H. Marshall, M.A., Ph,D. Large crown Svo, cloth boards, gilt top, 5s. " The book is masterly both in constructive power and in exposition, k . . It is a book which ought to be widely read." — Aberdeen Free Press. Professor Garvie saj-s : " . . . Cordial congratulations to the author for his valuable contribution to the solution of one of the most important and urgent problems of the day." Church, Ministry and Sacraments in the New Testament. By W. T. Whitley, M.A., LL.D. Demy Svo, cloth boards, 5s. Cartoons of St, Marie. By R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. Third Edition. Crown Svo, cloth, Ss. " Certainly reproduce to a degree attained by few preachers the vivid picturesqueness of the Gospel." — The Manchester Gvardian. " This is, we think, the best book Dr. Horton has written." —The British WeeJdy. The Christ of the Heart, and Other Sermons. By Z. Mathek Crown Svo, cloth, 53. " One of the most readable collections of sermons that we have seen for % long time. The style is lucid, limpid, and attractive." — The Independent. Seven Puzzling Bible Books. A Supplement to " Who Wrote the Bible ? " By Washington Gladden. Crown Svo, cloth. JAMES CLARKE AND CC-S 5/- The Incarnation of the Lord. A Series of Discoorses tracing the unfolding of the Doctrine of the Incarnation in the New Testament. By Charles Augustus Bbiggs, D.D., D.Litt. Large crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt top, 5s. " A icicntinc and stimulating examination of the New Testament data on the Incarnation. It will fully sustain Dr. Bripgs'i reputation with tho«« English readers wlio know his previous works." — The Christian World. The Qrowin^ Revelation. By Amoby H. Bradford, D.D. Crown 8vo, cloth, 58. Christianity and Social Problems. By Lyvan Abbott, D.D. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. " They are very carefully worked out and supported by a mass of arpiment which entitles them to the moat respectful attention." — Bristol Mercury. 4/6 Net The Life and Letters of Alexander Mackennal, B.A., D.D. By D. Macfad^'kn. Large crown 8vo, Photocravure Portrait, and Illustrationa on Art Paper. Bound in Art VeUum. 48. 6d. net. 4/6 The Christian World Pulpit. Half- Yearly Voluznes, cloth boards, is, 6d. " A notable collection of the ntteranreg of Trotcfitant preachers on a wide variety of subject* which many people will rejoice to rondor at lei.'«ure." — The Glasgow Brrald. 4/- •The Rosebud Annual for 1909. Tlie Ideal Book for the Nursery. Four coloured plates and one-half of the pagee in colour. Handsome cloth boards, 4s. Coloured paper boards, var- nished, 38. " A veritable treasury of the best of good things." — Liverpool Mercury. Social 5alvati«B. By Washinoton Gladden. Crown 8vo, cloth, 48. •* Dr. Gladden's book Is eminently sane ; his snbjects are not treated in any academic spirit, but are viewed in the light of a long and close experience with the problems dealt with." — The LiUrory World. Tools and the Man. Property and Industry under the Christian Law. By Washington Gladden. Crown 8vo, cloth, 4s. "A calmly written, closely reasoned, and trenchant Indictment of the still prevalent dogmas and assumptions of political economy." — The Speaker. Rulinf: Ideas of the Present A^e. By Washington Gladden. Crown 8vo, cloth, 48. Higher on the Hill. A Series of Sacred Studies. By Andrew Benvie, D.D., Miniflter of St. Aidan's, Edinburgh. Crown 8vo, cloth, 4a. - A. brlHiant piece of writing." — Dundu Advgriiser. CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 3/6 Net ^Sidelights on Relifion. By J. Briebley, B.A., Author of " Our City of God," " Ourselves and the Universe," &c. Large ca'own 8vo, cloth boards, gilt top, 3s. 6d. net. •Messages of Hope. By George Matheson, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., Author of " Thoughts for Life's Journey," &c. Handsomely bound in cloth boards, gilt edges, 3s. 6d. net. ♦Jesus : Seven Questions. By J. Warschaueb, M. A., D.Phil., Author of " The New Evangel," &c. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, gilt top, 3s. 6d. net. •The Evoiution of Old Testament Religion. By W. E. Orchard, B.D. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, gilt top, 38. 6d. net. •Church and Modern Life. By Washington Gladden, D.D., Author of •' Who Wrote the Bible ? " &c. Cloth boards, gilt top, 3s. 6d. net. •My Belief. Answers to Certain Religious Difficulties. By R. F. HoRTON, M.A., D.D., Author of " Cartoons of St. Mark," &o. Large crown Svo. cloth boards, 3s. 6d. net. •The Story of Congregationalism in Surrey. By E. E. Cleal. Demy 8vo, 464 pages, 46 Illustrations on art paper and Map, cloth, bevelled boards, Ss. 6d. net. Thoughts for Life's Journey. By George Matheson, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., Author of " Leaves for Quiet Hours." Handsomely boxmd in cloth boards, gilt edges, 3s. 6d. net. A Working Woman's Life. The Autobiography of Marianne Farningham. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, 3s. 6d. net. The Qospel of Grace. By J. D. Jones, M.A., B.D., Author of " Christ's Pathway to the Cross," &c Large crown Svo, cloth boards, gilt top, 3s. 6d. net. Jesus and His Teaching. By Erich von Schrenk, Mag. Theol. Translated by J. Warschaueb, M.A., D.Phii. Crown Svo, cloth boards, 33. 6d. net. The Atonement In Modern Thought. A Theological Symposium. By Professor Augusts Sabatieb, Professor Harnack, Professor Godet, Dean Farrar, Dr. P. T. Forsyth, Dr. Marcus Dods, Dr. Lyman Abbott, Dr. John Hunter, Dr. Washington Gladden, Dean Fremantle, Dr. Cave, Dr. il. F. HoRTON, Rev. R. J. Campbell, Principal Adeney, Rev. C. Silvester Horne, Rev. Bernard J. Snell, and Dr. T. T. MuNGEB. Cheap Edition. Large crown Svo, cloth boards, 3s. 6d. net. " This Interestinf work. . . . Among the writers are men of great diitiuctiou. . . . Deservea caieful atteatlon."— TAe Spectator. JAMES CLARKE AND CO/8 3/6 Net Friars' Lantern. By G. G. Coxji.ton, Author of " From St. Francis to Dante," " Mediaeval Studies," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, Ss. 6d. net. A Voice from China. By Griffith John, D.D. Edin., Hankow. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, Zs. 6d. net. The Inward Light. By Amory H. Bradford, D.D., Author of " The Growth of the Soul," &c. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, 3s. Gd. not. •■ A work of real •piritnal and intellectual power." — Dundee Advertiter. The Story of the English Baptists. By J. C. Carlile. Large crown Svo, 320 pages, 8 Illustrations on art paper, 38. fid. net. " rossesBcs a freshness and vivacity not always present in ecclesiastical histories." — Scotsman. The Courage of the Coward. By C. F. Aked, D.D., Author of " Changing Creeds and Social Problems." Crown Svo, cloth boards, with Photogravure Portrait, 33. 6d. net. The First Christians; or, Christian Life in New Testament Times. By Robert Veitch, M.A. Crov\-n Svo, cloth boards, gilt top, Za. 6d. net. Dr. Fairbairn expresses himself as " charmed " with the anthor's " know- ledge of the world into which Christianity came ; and his appreciation of the Christianity that came into the world." 3/6 By J, BRIERLEY, B.A. ("J. B. ") •Religion and Experience. By J. Brierley, B.A., Author of " The Eternal ReUgion,** &c. Cheap Edition. Crown Svo, cloth boards, 3s. 6d. The Eternal Religion. By J. Brierley, B.A., Author of " Ourselves and the Universe," &c. Crown Svo, doth boards, 38. 6d. " Well written and helpful." — The Time$. The Common Life. By J. Brierley, B.A. Author of " Problems of Living," &c. Crown Svo, cloth boards, 38. 6d. •* Fluent, but thoughtful, essays on many aspects of life, written from a Christian standpoint — ' Life's Positives,* ' Summita,' ' Rest and Unrest,' Ac." — The Times. Problems of Living. By J. Brierley, B.A Author of '* Our- selves and the Universe." Crown Svo, cloth boards, 3s. fid. •* It is inspiring to come upon such a fresh and suggestive re-statement of the old faiths as we find in ' Problems of Living.' " — Echo. Ourselves and the Universe: Studies in Life and Religion. By J. Brierley, B.A. Tenth Thousand. Crown Svo, cloth, 3s. Gd. " We have not for a long time read a brighter, cheerier, or wiser book." — Daily Nnct. Studies of the Soul. By J. Brierley, B.A. Seventh Edition. Crown Svo, cloth, 33. fid. Dr. Horton says : — " I prefer this book to the best- written books I hav» Ufhted on for a year past." tor oUur bookt by J. BrierUy su pmge i. CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 3/6 ♦The Pearl Divers of Roncador Reef, and Other Stories By Louis Becke, Author of "Tom Wallis," &c. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards. Illustrated. 3s. 6d. ♦Fragments of Thought Gathered on Life's Journey. By C. H. Betts. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, 3s. 6d. A Gamble with Life. By Silas K. Hocking, Author of " To Pay the Price." Large crown 8vo, bevelled boards, 3s. Cd. One of the best stories written by this popular author. Burning Questions. By Washington Gladden. Fourt) Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. Chang:ing: Creeds and Social Struggles. By C. F. Akbix Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. " A brave book." — Th9 Liverpool Mercury. Q. H. R. Garcia. Memoir, Sermons and Addresses. By Rev. J. G. Henderson. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, with photo- gravure portrait, 3s. 6d. net. " We are grateful to Mr. Henderson for having prepared this memorial of 80 daring and original a ministry." — Methodist Times. Gloria Patri ; or, Our Talks About the Trinity. By J. M. Whiton. Cloth, 3s. 6d. God's Greater Britain. With Two Portrait Groups, one show- ing Dr. Chfford and party " in miner's attire." Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. " It should be in the hands of all thinking men." — East Anglian Daily Times. The Christ that Is To Be: A Latter-Day Romance. By J. CoMPTON RiCKETT, M.P. New Edition. Demy 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. His Rustic Wife. By Mrs. Haycraft, Author of " A Lady's Nay," &c. Cloth boards, 3s. 6d. " A fresh and very capable story." — Newcastle Daily Leader. Paxton Hood : Poet and Preacher. With Photographic Portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. Family Prayers for Morning Use, and Prayers for SpeciaF Occasions. Compiled and Edited by J. M. G. Cloth, pott quarto, 3s. 6d. " We cordially recommend the volume to all who share our sense of the value of family religion." — WiUesden Presbyterian Monthly. Industrial Explorings in and around London. By R. Andom, Author of " We Three and Troddles." With nearly 100 Illua- trations by T. M. R. Whitwell. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. Preaching to the Times. By Canon Hensley Henson. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. 6d. ** Sound sense and scholarly solidity." — Dundee Courier. ** Eftmest and eloquent discourses." — The Scotsman. 10 JAMES CLABKE AITD 00.*S 3/6 The Dutch in the Medway. By Charles Mactarlantc, Author of " The Camp of Kefugo," &c. With a Foreword by S. R. Crockett. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. The Quickening of Caliban. A Modern Story of Evolution. By J. CoMPTON RiCKETT, Author of " Christianity in Common Speech," &c. Large crown 8vo, cloth, Ss. 6d, New Points to Old Texts. By J. M. Whiton. Crown 8vo, cloth, 38. 6d. " A volume of sennont to »tartle sleepy beareis." — Watem Homing Nan. Nineteen Hundred? A Forecast and a Story. Bv Marianne Farninqham, Author of " The Clarence Family, &c. Crown Svo, cloth boards, 38. 6d. " ▲ pleaMint and entertaining story and picture of life." ^MethodUt R$coTier. EMMA JANE WORBOISE'S NOVELS Crown Svo, uniformly bound in cloth, Ss. 6d. each. St Beetha*5. ChrysUbel. Violet Vaughan. Millicent Kendrlclc Singlehurst Manor. Robert Wreford's Dauf hter. Overdale. Joan Carisbrolce. Qrey and Gold. 5issle. Mr. Montmorency*! Money. Esther Wynne. Nobly Bom. His Next of Kin. AMELIA E. BARR'S NOVELS Grown Svo, cloth extra, Ss. 6d- each. The Beads of Tasmar. A Border Shepherdess. A Sister to Esau. Paul and Christina. She Loved * Sailor. jhe Squire of Sandal Side. The Last of the MacAllisters. t. ^ , n..-«»^ D>kt.». Woven of Love and Glory. V'f "^^^ 2} ^?"^^ '^'*'*'°'"- Feet of Clay. Between Two Loves. The Household of McNeil. A Daughter of Fife. 7«r oOm books b^ tMii Author $M page$ i and 17. CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 11 3/6 THE MESSAGES OF THE BIBLE Edited by Frank Knight Sanders, Ph.D., Woolsey Pro- fessor of Biblical Literature in Yale University, and Charles Foster Kent, Ph.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and History in Brown University. Super royal 16mo, cloth, red top, 3s. 6d. a vol. (To be completed in 12 Volumes.) I. The Messages oy the Earlier PRorHETS. n. The Messages of the Later Prophets. III. The Messages of Israel's Law Givers. IV. The iMESsAGES of the Prophetical and Priestlt Historians. V. The Messages or the Psalmists. VIII. The Messages of the Apocalyptical Writers. IX. The Messages of Jesus according to the Synoptists •X. The Messages of Jesus According to the Gospel OF John. XI. The Messages of Paul. XII. 1'he Messages of the Apostlfs. Volumes VI. and VII. will appear at intervals. " A new eeries which promises to be of the greatest valne to ordinaty readers of the Bible." — Primitive Methodist Quarterly, " Such a work is of the utmost service to every student of the Scriptures." — The Dundee Adveriis"r. ** The Tolumes in this series are singularly adapted for use in Bible-classes and for the guidance of intelligent readers of the Scriptures who liave not been able to make themselves familiar with modem Criticism.' " -The Examiner. 3/- Net The Personality of Jesus. By Charles H. Barrows. Largo crown 8vo, cloth boards, 33. net. Poems. By Madame Guton. Translated from the French by the late WHiLiAM Cowper, with a Prefatory Essay by D. Macfadyen, M.A. Fcap. 8vo, handsomely bound in leather, 3s. net. The Rev. F. B. Meter writes : " This singiilarly beautiful book, with fta attractive pet-up and ite valuable introduction and notes, ought to prove a welcome gift-book, as it is certain to be tlie companion of many lonely walks and distant journeys." Quiet Hints to Growing Preacliers In My Study. By Charles Edward Jiifferson, Pastor of Broadway Taber- nacle Church, New York. Small crown 8vo, cloth, 33. net. " The work is the outcome of common-sense, thought, and long experi- ence, and as such it ought to commend itself to all aspirants to missionary work, whether in the pulpit or outside." — Bristol Mercury. Episcopacy. Historically, Doctrinally, and Legally Considered. By J. Fraser. Cloth, crown 8vo, 3s. net. It JAMES CLABKS AIO) CiO.'B 3/- ♦The Rosebud Annual for 1909. Th© Ideal Book for the Nursery. Four Coloured Plates and one-half of the pages in colour. Coloured paper boards, varnished, 3s. ; cloth boards, 4s. " An oM favourite, and anyone lookinc throntrh its pasw will see at one* vhy it is a favourite. Not a page opens without discloeins! pictures. A rich fund of enjoyment for the nursery." — Aherdern Free Press. School Hymns, for Schools and Missions. With Music. Compiled by E. H. Mayo Gunn. Harmonies Revised by Elliot Button. Large Imp. 16mo, 3s. EMMA JANE WORBOISE'S NOVELS. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. each. Heartsease In the Family Maud Bollnfbrok* Helen Bury For other books by this Author se4 pages 10 and 17. 2/6 Net •Things Most Surely Believed. By J. D. Jothcs, M.A., B.D., Author of " Tlie Gospel of Grace," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth boar^la, 2s. 6d. net. •Lyrics of the Soul : A Book of Poems. By MAniANNE Fab NiNOHAM, Author of *• Ha^ve^5t Gleanings," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, gilt edgos, 28. 6d. net. •Conquering Prayer, or the Power of Personality. By L. SwKTBKHAM, Author of ** Religious Genius." Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. 6d. net. The Infinite Affection. By Charlbs S. Maofarland, Author of " The Spirit Christlike," &c. Cloth boards, gilt top, 2s. 6d. net. The immanence of Christ in Modern Life. By Frederick R. Swan. With Introduction by J. Bkierley, B.A. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. 6d. net. " Thi» really bcmtiful and fervently Christian book." — Spectator. The New Evangel : Studies in the " New Theology." By Rev. J. Warschauer, M.A., D.Phil. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 23. 6d. net. " May be studied with advant^pe." — SpeHator. " Dr. Warschauer's belief is not without foundation, and in his do»Ti chapters he has clearly and devotionally stated that belief In a manner which will appeal to a preat crowd in all our churches to-day." — Sheffield Daily Independent, Health in the Home Life. By Honnor Morten, Author of " A Complete Book of Nursing," " How to Treat Acci- dents and Illnesses," &c. Crown 8vo, art leather cloth, 2s. Cd. not. •* The yonnp housewife and mother will find this hook fnvahiaMe. M\ss Honnor llortcn's larpe experience Loth as a nurse nnd as a health lecturer nrder the London County Council enaMes her to make 11. e book thoroiiphly practical, very clear and full in its directions, and wcLnIerfully comprehen- *ive. ... A household fortified by the knowlcdpe Miss Morten gives th(Mild have few uii small doctor's bills."— Cftm^UM World, CATALOGITE OF BOOKS 18 2/6 Net ♦Ungilded Gold; or, Nuggets from the King's Treasury. Selected Passages from the Bible, arranged for Daily Devotional Reading (uniform with " The Pilot "). 384 pages, leather boxed, 28. 6d. net; also silk grain cloth, gilt lettering, red edges, Is. 6d. net. • A book which ought to prove of considerable help . . . th« passages have been selected with much care and spiritual insight. . . . The book is thus one with a purpose, and it deserves a wide circulation." — Lift of Faith. Stories of Old. Bible Stories Retold. By C. D. Michael, Author of " Noble Deeds," *' Deeds of Daring," &c. 4to, 288 pp., cloth boards. Eight Illustrations. 2s. 6d. net. Practical Lay- Preaching and Speaking to Men. By H. Jeffs (Editor of " The Clu-istian World Pulpit "). Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. 6d. net. The Challenge, and Other Stories for Boys and Girls. By Rev. J. G. Stevenson, Author of " The Christ of the Children." 4to, cloth boards, 240 pp. Eight Illustrations. 2s. 6d. net. " A first-rate collection of stories and parables very suitable for Sunday- school teachers in preparing their lessons." — British Weekly. Liberty and Religion. By P. Whitwell Wilson, M.P., Author of " Why W^e Believe," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. 6d. net. Leaves for Quiet Hours. By Geohge Matheson, F.R.S.E., D.D., LL.D., Author of " Words by the Wayside," «fec. New and cheap edition. Handsomely bound in cloth boards, with chaste design in gold, and gilt edges, 2s. 6d. net. Leather, 4s. net. " This is another of those unique productions for which Dr. Matheson ii famous. Tiiere aie few modern teachers who possess the gift of spiritual insight to the extent of the author of this book." — Daily News. The Christ of the Children. A Life of Jesus for Little People. By Rev. J. G. Stevenson. 4to, cloth boards. Twelve Illus- trations. 2s. 6d. net. " It is the very loveliest life of Jesus for children every written by a long way." — Rev. Kingscotb Greenland in The Methodist Recorder. The Pilot. A Book of Daily Guidance from Master Minds. Con- tains nearly 2,000 of the choicest extracts systematically arranged for every day of the year. Printed on India paper and handsomely bound in leather, with roimd comers and gilt edges, 2s. 6d. net. " I thank you for the service you have done the public in the issuing of this little book. It is a splendid collection. Nothing could be more admir- ably adapted to suit the spiritual wants of an age which has little leisure for reflection and much ground for care." — Rev. Georqe Matheson, D.D. Ber Majesty the Queen has graciously accepted a copy of this book. My Neighbour and Qod. A Reply to Robert Blatchford's " God and My Neighbour." By W. T. Lee. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. 6d. net. " A more o\ < rwhelming exposure of Mr. Blatchford's untrustworthiness u a critic of the Bible it would be difficult to imagine." '—The Wdlir^jborouffh A'/w»«. U JAMES CLARKB AND CO.'S 2/6 Net ~ Why We Believe. Papers on Relip^on and Brotherhood. By Philip Whitwetx Wii^on. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. 6d. net. Undertones of the Nineteenth Century. A Prelude and a Prophecy. A comparison of the Relations between certain Spiritual Movementa of the last Century, with Sketches of the lives of some of the Leaders. By Mrs. Edward Tbottbh. Cloth boards, 28. 6d. net. A Popular History of the Free Churches. By C. Silvester HoRNE, M.A. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 464 pp. and 8 full- page illustrations on art paper. Cloth boards, 28. 6d. net. A vigoront and interesting book by &n enthu»ia«tic bHiever In th* Puritan spirit and the need of religion* equality." — The Timet. The New Testament in Modern 5peeclL An idiomatic translation into ever\'day EngUsh from the text of " The Resultant Greek Testament." By the late Richard Franci3 Weymouth, M.A., D.Lit., Fellow of University College, London, and formerly Head Master of Mill Hill School, Editor of " The Resultant Greek Testament." Edited and partly revised by Ernest Hampden-Cook, M.A., formerly Exnibitioner and Prizeman of St. John's College, Cambridge, Cloth boards, 2a. fid. net. Thumb Index, Ss. 6d. Leather. 4s. net. Also on Oxford India paper, Ss. 6d. net. Leather, os. net. " Every intelligent reader of the New Testament should profit by this carefiU and correct translation. Indeed, none can afford to igrore it unless he is able to read with ease the original Greek. It is probably the best n Mem translation." — Examiner. A You •«: Man*5 Religion and his Father's Faith. By N. McGhee Waters. Small crown 8vo, cloth boards, gilt top, 28. 6d. net. •' It is an earnestly relipions and well-written work." — The Scotsman. The Resultant Qreelc Testament. Exhibiting the Text in what the majority of Modern Editors are agreed. By the late Richard Francis Weymouth, D.Lit. Cloth boards, 2s. 6d. net. Harvest Qleanln|:s« A Book of Poems. By Marjannx Far- ninoham. Author of " Girlhood," &c Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 28. 6d. net. " A delightful sheaf of little poems. They are mesjapes of love, of com- fort, of sympathy, of hope, ana of encouragement." — y orthampton Herald. Morning and Evening Cries. A Book of Prayers for the House- hold. By Rev. J. G. Greenhough, M.A. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 28. 6d. net. Job and His Comforters. By J. T. Marshaix, M.A., B.D. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. 6d. net. 5unday Morning Talks with Boys and Qlrls. By Rev. F. H. Robarts. CVown 8vo, clotli boards, 2s. Gd. net. " They have the marks oi siinplicity, directness, and charm." — Captitt Timet. The Baptist Handbook. Published under the direction of th« Council of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland. Paper boards, 2s. 6d. net ; cloth boards, 3s. net. CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 16 2/6 •The Good New Times. By H. Jeffs, Author of " Practical Lay Preaching and Speaking to Men." Crown 8vo, clotb boards, 23. 6d. The Rise of Philip Barrett. By David Lyall, Author of *' The Land o' the Leal," Sec. Cheap Edition. Crovrn 8vo, cloth boards, 2b. Cd. " The book is remarkable for the arresting interest of all, or nearly all, the characters. Altogetlier, Mr. Lyall is to be coiigratukited on au inter- efltiiig story." — Aberdeen Free Press. What Shall this Child Be ? By Whxiam Bbock. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. Cd. Practical Points in Popular Proverbs. By F. A. Beks, Author of " Plain Tallcs on Plain Subjects." With an Introduction by the Rev. Chas. Williams, of Accrington. Crown Svo, cloth boards, 2s. 6d. The Ten CommandmentSr By G. Campbell Moeoan. Pott Svo, cloth, 2s. 6d. " A more readable, practical, and searching exposition of the Decalogue it would be difficult to find," — Leeds Mercury. A Popular Argument for the Unity of Isaiah. By John Kennedy, D.D. With an Examination of the Opinions of Canons Cheyne and Driver, Dr. Delitzach, the Rev. G. A. Smith, and others. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. " A book that will be eagerly welcomed by the thoughtful students of the Scriptures." — IVestern Morning News. The Epistle to the Oalatians. By J. Morgan Gibbon. The Ancient Merchant Lecture for January, 1895. Fcap. Svo, cloth elegant, gilt top, 2s. 6d. *' A clpar, popular, and most effective analysis and application of this ereat epistle, this magna charta of the free Cliristian Church." — C. Silvester Koenb. The Ordeal of Faith. By C. Silvester Hokne, M.A. Medita- tions on the Book of Job, designed as a " ministry of consola- tion to some who are pierced with many sorrows." Fcap. Svo, cloth, gilt top, 2s. 6d. " We have read many productions on this wonderful Old Testament book, but have met with nothinpr we would so gladly put into the hands of the sorrowful and suffering as this little publication." — Methodist Titnts. The Earliest Christian Hymn. By George S. Barrett, D.D. Pott Svo, cloth, gilt top, 2s. 6d. Nonconformist Church Bulldlns:s. By James Cxtbitt. Cloth limp, 2s. 6d. r Will be useful to cbarcb-building «x>niniittetst of »hat«v»rr d«*nonjin»tion.'* 16 JAMES CLARKB AND (X).*S 2/- Net •The Value of the Old Testament. By Bernabd J. SirEix,M.A., Author of "The Value of the Apocrypha," "Gain or Loss?" Ac. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 28. net. •The Purpose of the Cross. By B. G. Collins. Crown 8vo. cloth boards, 2s. net. Atonement and Progress. By Newton H. Marshall, M.A., Ph.D., Author of " Theology and Truth." Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s, net. Authority and the Light Within. By Edwabd Grudb, M.A. Crown Svo, cloth boards, 2s. net. On Seeing Angels ; and Other Papers. By Nicholas Notk- WKLL. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 23. net. Ideals for Girls. Bv the Rev. H. R. Haweis, M.A., Author of " Music and Morals." New Edition, crown Svo, handsomely bound in bevelled boards, gilt edges, 2s. net. ▲ book that all parents should place io the hands of their daughters. The Glorious Company of the Apostles. Being Studies in the Characters of the Twelve. By the Kov. J. D. Jones, M.A., B.D. Cloth boards, gilt top, 28. net. " Many think that a readable sermon is a contradiction in terms. Let them read these pages and discover their mistake." — Examiner. The Model Prayer. A Series of Expositions on the Lord's Prayer. By Rev. J. D. Jones, ALA., B.D. New Edition, cloth boards, gilt top, 29. net. " Mr. J()nes brings a cultured mind, a well-stored memory, and a gift of spiritual insight to the illustration of the Lord's Prayer." — Sunday School Ckronicl*, 2/- 3lmple Cookery. Comprising " Tasty Dishes " and " More Tasty Dishes." Over 500 Tested Receipts. Crown Svo, cloth lK}ards, 2s. A book that should be in every household. My Baptism, and What Led to it. By Rev. James Mountain. Crown Svo, cloth boards, 23. Adrift on the Black Wild Tide. A Weird and Strange Experience in Dreamland, and a Nautical V^ersion of " The Pilgrim's Progress." By James J. Kane, G.T. Chaplain U.S. Navy. Cloth gilt, 23. Early Pupils of the Spirit, and What of Samuel? By J. M. Whiton, Ph.D. New Edition. Crown Svo, cloth, 2s. The Religion of Jesus. By J. Allanson Picton, M.A., J.p, Crown Svo, 23. CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 17 — CLARKE'S COPYRIGHT LIBRARY A New Series of Books by Leading Authors at a Popular Price Grown 8vo, tastefully bomid in cloth boards, 2s. The Loves of Miss Anne. By S. R. Cbockett. Kit Kennedy. By S. R. Cbockett. Cinderella. By S. R. Crockett. Flower-o'-the-Corn. By S. R. Crockett. The Black Familiars. By L. B. Walford. POPULAR EDITION OP EMMA JANB WORBOISB'S NOVELS Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 2s. ; bevelled boards, 2s. 6cl, Husbands and Wive^. Abbey Mill, The. Brudenellsof Brude, The. Canonbury Holt. Chrystabel. Emilia's Inheritance. Esther Wynne. Father Fabian. Fortune's Favourite. Fortunes of Cyril Denham, The. Grey and Qold. Grey House at Endlestone, The. Heirs of Errington, The. His Next of Kin. House of Bondage. ' Warleigh's Trust A Woman's Patience. For other looTcs by this Author see pages 12 and. 10. Joan Carisbroke. Lady Clarissa. Margaret Torrington. Millicent Kendrick. Mr. Montmorency's Money Nobly Born. Oliver Westwood. Overdale. St. Beetha's. ♦Singlehurst Manor. 5issie. Story of Penelope, The. Thornycroft Hall. Violet Vaughan. NEW SERIES OP COPYRIGHT BOOKS Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 2s. A Morning Mist. By Sarah Tytler. A Sister to Esau. By Amelia E. Barb. The Debt of the Damerals. By Bessie Marchant. \ Town Romance; or,On London Stones. By C. C. Andbew3 A Daughter of Fife. By Amelia E. Barr. The Pride of the Family. By Ethel F. Heddle. Unknown to Herself. By Laurie Lansfeldt. The Squire of 5andal Side. By Amelia E. Barr. The Bow of Orange Ribbon. By Amelia E. Barr. The Scourge of God. By J. Blohndelle-Burton. The New Mrs. Lascelles. By L. T. Meade. Miss Devereux, Spinster. By Agnes Gibernh, Jan Vedder*a Wife. By Amelia E. Babb. 18 JAMES CT.ARKE AND CO/8 1/6 Net THE ** FREEDOM OF FAITH** SERIES An entirely New Series of Small Fcap. 8vo Books, 128 pp., hand- somely bound in Green Leather, with chaste design in gold. Price 1 S, 6d. net. The Simple Thinj^s of the Christian Life. By G. Campbell Morgan, D.D. The Widenes5 of God*s Mercy. By F. B. Meyer, B.A. The Letters of Christ. By Rev. Charles Brown. Christ's Pathway to the Cross. By J. D. Jones, M.A., B.D. The Crucible of Experience. By F. A. Russell. The Passion for Souls. By J. H. Jowett, M.A. The Value of the Apocrjrpha. By J. Bernard Snell, M.A. Inspiration in Common Life. By W. L. Watkinson, M.A. Prayer. By Willla.m Watson, M.A. A Reasonable View of Life. By J. M. Blake, M.A, Common-sense Christianity. By C. Silvester Horne, M.A. " There are precious things in every Tolame, and the Series deserves ■ucceae." — Dundee Adverti$er. ♦Chats with Women on Everyday Subjects. By Edith C. Kbnyon, Author of " A Qaoen of Nine Days," &c. Crown Svo, cloth boards, Is. 6d. net. ♦Faith and Form. An Attempt at a Plain Re-statement of Chris- tian Belief in the Light of To-Day. By Henry Varley, B.A. Crown Svo, cloth boards. Is. 6d. net. •The Invisible Companion, and Other Stories for Children, By Edward W. Lewis, M.A., B.D., Author of " The Un- escapeable Christ," &c. Crown Svo, cloth boards, is. Cd. net. The Holy Spirit By R, F. Horton, M.A., D.D. Ooth boards. Is. 6d. net. Who Wrote the Bible ? By Washtnoton Gladden, D.D., Autlior of " The Growing Revelation," &c. New and cheap Edition, 256 pages, cloth boards. Is. 6d. net. " Well named ' A book for the people.' It fulfils its promise ; it is simple, nntechnical, careful without being erudite. It is a reverent booic, too ; a man who believes the Bible to be inspired and the Word of God here explains how it has been handled by modem criticism, and with wliat results. For t)je Intelligent reader int«rest«d in these questions, and wanting a survey of the whole field, it would be hard to find a more suitable book." — The Speaker. Reasons Why for Conjrresfationalists. By Rev. J. D. Jones, M.A.. B.D. Crown Svo, cloth boards. Is. 6d. not^ CATALOGUE OF BOOKS If 1/6 Net •Ungilded Gold; or, Nu^^ets from the King's Treasury. Selected Passages from the Bible, arranged for Daily Devotional Reading (uniform with "The Pilot"). 384 pages, silk grain cloth, gilt lettering, red edges. Is. 6d. not ; leather boxed, 2s. 6d. net. Women and their Work. By Mariannk Farningham, Author of " Harvest Gleanings," " Women and their Saviour." Crown 8vo, cloth boards. Is. 6d. net. 5unny Memories of Australasia. By Rev. W. Cuff. Crown 8vo, cloth boards. Portraits and Illustrations. Is. 6d. net. Christian Baptism : Its Significance and its Subjects. By J. E. Roberts, M.A., B.D. Crown 8vo, cloth boards. Is. 6d. net. William Jeffery, the Puritan Apostle of Kent. A Message and an Appeal to Young Nonconformists. By Chas. Rudoe, with an Introduction by Rev. Dr. Clifford. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, is. 6d. net. Britain's Hope, Concerning the Pressing Social Problems. By JuiXBJ Sutter, Author of " Britain's Next Campaign," &c. Cloth boards. Is. 6d. net. The Eev. R. J. Campbell, preaching at the City Temple, said : — " I have been reading ' Britain't Hope,' the latest work by MiBs Sutter, with the blood tingling through my veins. If you have not read it, 1 should advise you to get it and to do so." " An admirable production, summarising in emphatic language the main ■ocial problems of the day." — Sheffield Telegraph. Seven Puzzling Bible Books. A Supplement to " Who Wrote the Bible ? " By Washington Gladden. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth boards. Is. 6d. net. Burning Questions. By Washington Gladden. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth. Is. 6d. net. Trial and Triumph, By Rev. Charles Bhown. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, Is. 6d. net. Reform in Sunday School Teaching. By Professor A. S. Peaks. Crown 8vo, cloth boards. Is. 6d. net. "The volume is the best and ablest on the subject, and the Professor writes as one who knows. . . . The book la timely and of utmost impor- tance." — Sunday-School I'imea. The Forgotten Sheaf. A Series of Addresses to Children. By Rev. D. J. Llewellyn. Crown 8vo, cloth boards. Is. 6d. net. Let us Pray. A Handbook of Selected Collects and forms of Prayer for the Use of the Free Churches. By C. Silvestbb Horns and F. Hebbkbt Dablow, M.A. Crown 8vo, cloth. Is. 6d. net. " Aa interesting and fascinating volume." — London Quarterly Review, 20 JAMES CLARKE AND CO.'S 1/6 SMALL B00K5 ON GREAT SUBJECTS Pott 8vo, bound in buckram cloth. Is. 6d. each. The Christ Within. By Rev. T. Rhondda Williams. Old Pictures in Modern Frames. By J. G. Greenhouge, M.A The Taste of Death and the Life of Grace. By P. T Forsyth, .M.A., D.D. The Conquered World. By R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. The Making of an Apostle. By R. J. Campbell, M.A. The Angels of God. By John Hunter, D.D. Social Worship an Everlasting Necessity. By John Clif- lORD, D.D. Types of Christian Life. By E. Griffith-Jones, B.A. Faith the Beginning, 5elf-Surrender the Fulfilment, of the Spiritual Life. By James ALartineau, D.D., D.C.L., Second Edition. Sixth Tliousand. How to Become Like Christ. By Mabcus Dods, D.D. Second Edition. The Kingdom of the Lord Jesus. By Alexander Macebn- NAL, D.D. The Way of Life. By H. Arnold Thomas, M.A« The Ship of the Soul. By Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. The Christian Life. By W. M. Sinclair, D.D.. Archdeacon of London. Character Through Inspiration. By T. T. Munger. D.D. Infoldlngs and Unfoldings of the Divine Genius, In Nature and Man. By John Pulsford, D.D. New Edition. The Jealousy of God. By John Pulsford, D.D, Martineau's Study of Religion. By Richard A. Abmstrono. The Art of Living Alone. By Amory H. Bradford. The Supreme Argument for Christianity. By W. Garrett Horder. Reconsiderations and Reinforcements. By J. M. Whiton, l^U.D., Author of " Beyond the Shadow." &o- CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 21 1/6 Storehous« for Preachers and Teachers. A Treasury of Outline Texts and Sermons. By J. Ellis, Author of " The Seed Basket," &c., &c. Cloth boards, Is. 6d. " Cannot fail to prove eerviceable. Exceedingly suggestive, and such as the busy worker will be able to utilise with ease and profit." — The Christian. Words by the Wayside. By George Matheson, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., Author of " Loaves for Quiet Hours," " Thoughts for Life's Journey," &o. New Edition. Oblong, cloth boards, gilt top. Is. 6d. The Comforts of Qod. By Richard Glover, D.D. Fcap. 8vo, cloth boards. Is. 6d. " Every paragraph is pregnant with helpful and comforting thought. We cordially commend this book of consolation to all who are passing through the cloud and the shadow." — Methodist Times. " Will doubtless find many appreciative readers." — Glasgow Herald. Ancient Musical Instruments. A popular Account of their Development, as illustrated by Typical Examples in the Galpin Collection at Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex. By William Lynd. Linen cover, Is. 6d. ; cloth, 2s. " The book la unique, and lovers of orchestral music cannot fail to bo profited and interested by the material offered for study." — Ardrossan Herald. The Church and the Kingdom. By Washington Gladden, Crown 8vo, cloth, Is. 6d. " This most interesting little book is heartily welcome." — Morning Lead'^. " A solid contribution to the literature of Cliristian Science." — Western Daily Mercury. Race and Religion. Hellenistic Theology, its Place in Christian Thought. By Thomas Allin, D.D. Fcap. 8vo, Is. 6d. " The book is crammed with facts and ideas. It would be difficult to find anywhere in the same compass a richer collection of living and sugges- tive thought."—" J. B.," in The Christian World. Short Devotional Services By George Aitchison. Limp cloth. Is. 6d. Thirteen services, compiled chiefly from the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Intended not to supersede but to supplement the usuaJ extempore prayer. The Children's Pace; and Other Addresses to Children. By Kev. J. S. Mavkr, M.A., of Paisley. Fcap. 8vo, cloth. Is. Gd. " Mr. Maver has produced one of the best books of the kind published for some time." — Banffshire Journal. 22 JAMTJ3 CLARKE AND CO.'S 1/- Net The Garrisoned Soul. Meditations on " Peace, Perfect Peace," by C. E. P. Antkam. Fancy cloth, Is. net. " A Bwect little book, full of soothing comfort to the weary wayfarer." — Western Daily Mercury. " It is juBt the iort of book, chaste and beautifr.l, contents and binding alike, that would make a pretty present on a birthday or a Church festival. Its size and its type make it suitable also to send to an invalid. Indeed, ita cheering chapters would to many such, we are sure, act like a tonic, and be au eflicient co-worker with the physician." — Sheffield Teleffraph. Do We Need a New Theology ? By Hakold E. Bbieblkt. Fcap. 8vo, cloth boards. Is. not. " Well adapted to arouse the attention and to guide the thought of ■eekers after truth. The results of wide reading are used to good pur- pose." — Methodist Jitecrd^. Women and thetr Saviour. Thoughts of a Minute for a Month. By Mauansr P'arningham, Author of "Harvest Gleanings," adys Davidson, Author of " Kindergarten Bible Stories," &c. Fcap. 8vo, cloth boards. Is. " The book is simple and practical, and will be found wiggeetive and helpful by teachers." — Sunday School Chronicle. Golden Truths for Young Folk. By J. Ellis, Author of " The Seed Basket," " Tool Basket," " By Way of Illustra- tion," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth boards. Is. " Useful, direct and easily understood set of talks to children." —British Weekly. How to Read the Bible. Hints for Stmday-school Teachers and Other Bible Students. By W. F. Adeney, M.A., Principal of Lancashire College, Manchester, Author of " The Bible Story Retold," &c. New and Revised Edition. Nineteenth Thousand. Cloth boards. Is. " A most admirable little work. We know of no book which deals with this subject so clearly and adequately within so small a compass. It speaks of itself modestly as ' Hints for Sunday-school Teachers and other Bible Students,' but it is one of the very few manuals which are well worth the study of the clergy." — The Guardian. Health and Home Nursing. By Mrs. Lessels Mather, Health Lecturer to the Northumberland County Council. Fcap. 8vo, cloth. Is. A book that should be in every household. Contains chapters on The Care of the InvaUd, Homely Local Applica- tions, Feeding the Invalid, Infection and Disinfection, Care of the Teeth, The Value of Foods, Influenza, its Causes and Prevention, Consumption, its Causes and Prevention, Digestion and Indigestion, Headaches, Home Nursing of Sick Children, What to do till the Doctor Comes, Habits in Relation to Health, The Health of the Town Dweller. A Rcliflon that will Wear. A Layman's Confession of Faith. Addressed to Agnostics by a Scottish Presbyterian. CrowTi Svo, cloth boards, Is. " It is remarkable for it« breadth of thought and catholicity of quotation , and will be found helpful to many who are doubtful as to the practicaJ value of religion." — Church Gazette. U ^AMES CLARKE AND CO.'S — ___^ — — - 1/- Helps to Health and Beauty. Two Hundred Practical Pro- scriptions l)y a Pharmaceutical Chemist. " This little book contain* two hundred practical prescriptions or formulae for preparations for tlie hair, hands, nails, feet, skin, t*eth, and bath, in addition to perfumes, insecticides, and medicaments for various ailments. As far as possible technical lanpuaRe is avoided, and the directions arc clear and concise." — Pharmaceutical Journal. Morning, Noon and Night. By R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. Fcap. 8vo, parchment cover with gold lettering. Is. " Deeply suggestive, and as earnest as its fancies are pleasing and qnahit.** — Dundee Adxef titer. Wayside Angels, and Other Sermons. By W. K. Burfobd, Minister of the Wicker Congregational Church, SheflQeld. Pott 8vo, cloth, la. Tasty Dishes. A Choice Selection of Tested Recipes, showing what we can have for Breakfast, Dinner, Tea and Supper. It is designed for people of moderate means who desire to have pleasant and varied entertainment for themselves and their friends. It is a book of genuine and tested informa- tion. New Edition. Thoroughly revised and brought up to date. 130th Thousand. Crown 8vo, Is. •* No home onght to be without this timely, useful, and practical family friend." — Brighton Gazette. More Tasty Dishes. A Book of Tasty, Economical, and Tested Recipes. Including a Section on Invalid Cookery. A Supple- ment to " Tasty Dishes." New Edition. Price Is. " Every recipe Is so clearly stated that the most inexperienced cook conld follow them and make dainty dishes at a small cost. — Pearson's Weekly. " Tlie recipes given have been carefully tried and not been found wanting." —The Star. Talks to Little Folks. A Series of Short Addresses. By Rev. J. C. Carlflk. Crown 8vo, art vellum, Is. •* No one who reads this book can reasonably donbt that Mr. Carllle is master of the difficult art of catchinpr and euPtaininp the interest of young people. He is wise enough to diepensp "^ith the preacher's framework, texts, introductions, Ac, and at once he arrests attention by a direct question or a brief story." — Literary World. Oliver Cromwell. By R. F. Horton, D.D., Author of " Jolin Howe," " The Teaching of Jesus," &c., &c. Sixth Edition, Nineteenth Tliousand. Is. " Worthy a place In the library of erexy Christian student." — Methodist Peeorder. Rome from the Inside; or. The Priests' Revolt. Translated and Compiled by " J. B." of The Christian ^VoTld. Third Thousand. Fcap. 8vo, price Is. This pamphlet may be described in brief as a record of the new revolt in the French priesthood. Its contents are chiefly letters and addresses from priests and ex-priest«. Tliese, it will be recognised at once, are a testimony of the very first order ns to what modem Rome really stands for in relation to spiritual life, to morality, and to intellectual progress. CAtALOGtJfi O*' BOOKS 48 1/- The Bible Definition of Religion. By George Mathesow, M.A., D.D. Printed on deckle-edged paper, with red bordet lines and decorated wrapper, in envelope. Price Is. " Each of Dr. Matheson's chapters is a prose-poem, a sonata. This is a book to be read and re-read. It is in every sense ' a thing of beauty ' ; it is a veritable ' necklace of pearls.' " — C. Silvester Hornb. The Awe of the New Century. By R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. Fcap. 8vo, Is. Decorated parchment cover and deco- rated margins to each page printed in colours. Gilt top. Each copy in envelope. Second Edition. " A most impressive and delightful little book, displaying all the best qualities of the popular pastor of Hampstead." — I'he Western Mercury. The Sceptre Without a Sword. By Dr. George Matheson. In envelope. Pott 8vo, Is. " ' The Sceptre Without a Sword,' by Dr. George Matheson, is worth reading, and tliat is more than one can say for the vast major ty of booklets now turned out to order. The subject is more important than «jver to-day, when it is the fashion to ignore the root principles of Christianity." —The Echo. " This is a very charming little book — both externally and internally." — Ardroisan and Saltcoats Herald. Our Qirls* Cookery. By the Author of " Tasty Dishes.** Crown 8vo, hnen. Is. " A most artistic-looking little volume, filled with excellent recipes, that are given so clearly and sensibly that the veriest tyro in the culinary art will be able to follow them as easily as possible." — The Lady. " The contents are varied and comprehensive. . . . The directions given are clear and reliable, each recipe having been specially tested." — Dundee Advertiser. The Divine Satisfaction. A Review of what should and what should not be thought about the Atonement. By J. M. Whiton. Crown Svo, paper, Is. By MARY E. MANNERS Crown Svo, Linen Covers, Is. each- A Tale of a Telephone, and Other Pieces. " Narrative pieces, suitable for recitation." — OuUook. " Facile and effective pieces in verse of the sort that tells well on the reci- tation platform. They have a pleasant light humour and a lilt often like that of the Ingoldsby Legends, and should not fail to entertain any reader in a jocular mood." — Scotsman. The Bishop and the Caterpillar (as recited by the late Mr. Brandram), and Other Pieces. Dedicated by permission to Lewis Carroll. Fourth Edition. " The first two pieces are quite worthy of Ingoldsby, and that reverend gentleman would not have been ashamed to own them. The piece* are admirably suited for recitation." — Dramaiic Review. M James clarke a:^ co.»s 1/- Aunt A^ratha Ann; and Other Ballads. Illustrations by Ebnold a. Mason and Louis Wain. " Exeellent pieces for recit-ation from a portilar pen." — Ladj/'t rictori.al. Sunday Afternoon Song Book, with Tunes. Compiled by H. A. Kent^edy and R. D. Metcalfe. Is. net. Words only, 1 2s. 6d. per himdreid net. " The airs have been selected and arraneed nnder the editonihip of Mr. R. D. Met<»lfe, and add »o miiph to the value of the collection that thia edition will easily snpersfde all others and pive the work a new poptilarity with choral societies and others interested in church music." — The Seolsman. Christianity In Common Speech: Suggestions for an Every- day Belief. By J. Compton Rickktt. Demy 8vo, Is. SMALL BOOKS ON GREAT SUBJECTS (Cheap Bound in red Social Worship an Everlast- ing Necessity. By John Clifford, D.D. The Taste of Death and the Life of Grace. By P. T. Forsyth, M.A., D.D. The Conquered World. By R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. The Christian Life. Archdeacon Sinclaib, By Edition) cloth. Is. each. The Ship of the Soul. By Stopford A, Brooke, M.A. Faith and Self-Surrender. By James Martineau, D.D., D.C.L. Martineau's Study of Re- ligion. By KicHABD A. Armstrong. The Kingdom of the Lord Jesus. By Alexandkk A. AIaoslbnvai^ D.D. Gd. England's Danger. By R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. Brioe M. Contents : Romanism and National Decay ; St. Peter and THE Rock ; Truth ; Protestantism ; Holy Scripture ; Purgatory. •• Good flghtinff disconnet. They contend that Roman Catholicism has mined every country in which it prevails, and controvert the leading positions taken by Roman theologians." — i>fo(rman. The Ship's Engines. A Parable. By the late T. Campbell Finlayson, D.D. In velhini cover, 6d. net. Rev. J.H. JOWF-TT pays : — " I am so glad yon are issuing tlie article in the shape of the little booklet. I am sure it will be very helpful to many people, Mid will bring light and leading to many bewildered toula.** CATALOaUE OF BOOKS 27 6d. CLARKE'S SIXPENNY SERIES Demy 8vo, Paper Covers. Violet Vaughan. By Emma Jane Worboisbj The Bow of Orange Ribbon. By Amelia E. Barr. The Fortunes of Cyril Denham. By Emma Jane Woeboisb. Thornycroft Hall. By Emma Jane Worboise. Jan Vedder's Wife. By Amelia E. Barb St, Beetha's. By Emma Jane Worboise. A Daughter of Fife. By Amelia E. Barb. Ourselves and the Universe. By J. Bbieblby. 4d. Net Holy Christian Empire. By Rev. Principal Forsyth, M. A., D.D., of Hackney College, Hampstead. Crown 8vo, paper cover, 4d. net. " Rich in noble thought, in high purpose, in faith and in courage. Every ■entence tells, and the whole argument moves onward to its great conclusion. Dr. Forsyth has put the argument for missions in a way that will nerve and inspire the Church's workers at home and abroad for fresh sacrifice." — London Quarterly Review. The Unique Class Chart and Register. By Rev. J. H. RiDETTE. Specially arranged and absolutely indispensable for keeping a complete record of the scholars according to the requirements of the Meggitt Scheme of Sunday-school Reform. Linen cover, 4d. net. 3d. Net School Hymns, for Schools and Missions. Words only. Compiled by E. H. Mayo Gunn. Cloth limp, 3d. ; cloth boards, 6d. ; music, Ss. 2d. Net The Sunday Afternoon Song Book. Containing 137 Hymns. For use at " Pleasant Sunday Afternoons," and Other Gatherings. Compiled by H. A. Kennedy, of the Men's Sunday Union, Stepney Meeting House. Twentieth Thousand, 2d. ; music. Is. " Contains 137 hymns, the catholic character of which, in the best sens* of the term, may be gathered from the names of the autiiors, wliich include Tennyson, Ebehezer Elliott, Whittier, G. Herbert, C. Wesley, Thomas Hughes, J. H. Newman, Longfellow, Bonar, and others. While the purely dogmatic element is largely absent, the Christian life, in its forms of aspira- tion, struptrle acain«t pin. and love for the true and the good, is well illui- trated."— literory Worli, JAMES CLARKE AND CO.'S Index of Titles PAGE Abbey Mill. The . . .17 Adrift on the Black Wild Tide 16 America in the East . . 4 Ancient Musical Instnunenta . 21 Angels of God, The . . 20 Animal Fun . . .23 Animal Gambols . . .22 Animal Playtime . . .22 Apocalyptical Writers, The Messages of the . .11 Apostles, The Messages of the 1 1 Art of Living Alone, The . 20 Atonement and Progress . 16 Atonement in Modern Thought, The . . . .7 Aunt Agatha Ann . .26 Authority & the Light Within 16 Awe of the New Century, The . 25 Baptist Handbook, The . U Barrow, Henry, Separatist . 2 Beads of Tasmar, The . .10 Between Two Loves . .10 Bible Definition of Religion, The . . . .25 Bible Story, The: Retold for Young People . .15 Bishop and the Caterpillar, The 25 Black Familiars, The . 4, 17 Border Shepherdess, A . .10 Bow of Orange Ribbon, The 10. 17, 27 Britain's Hope . . .19 Brudenells ot Brude. The . 17 Burning Questions . 9. 19 Canonbnry Holt . . .17 Cartoons of St. Mark . . 6 Challenge. The . . . • 13 Changing Creeds and Social Struggles . . . 9 Character through Inspiration 20 Chats with Women on Every- day Subjeota . . .18 Children's Pace. The . .21 Christ of the Children, The . 13 Christ of the Heart, The . 6 Christ that is To Be, The . 9 Christ, The Private Relation- ships of. . . .6 Christ Within, The . .20 Christ's Pathway to the Cross 18 Christian Baptism . .19 Christian Life. The . 20, 26 PAOB Christian World Pulpit, The . 6 Christianity and Social Prob- lems .... 6 Christianity in Common Speech 26 Chrystabel . . . 10. 17 Church and Modem Life . 7 Church and the Kingdom. The 21 Church, Ministry and Sacra- ments in the New Testa- ment . . . . B Cinderella . . . 3, 17 Comforts of God, The . .21 Common Life, The . . 8 Common -sense Christianity . 18 Conquered World. The . 20, 26 Conquering Prayer . .IS Courage of the Coward, The . 8 Crucible of Experience, The . 18 Daughter of Fife, A . 10, 17, 27 Debt of the Damerals, The . 17 DiWne Satisfaction, The . 25 Do We Need a New Theology ? 22 Dutch in the Med way. The . 10 Early Pupils of the Spirit . 16 Earher Prophets, The Messages of the . . . . 11 Earliest Christian Hymn, The 18 Emilia's Inheritance . .17 England's Danger . . 26 Episcopacy . . . .11 Epistle to the Galatians, The . 1 5 Esther Wynne . 10. 17 Eternal Religion. The . . 8 Evolution of Old Testament Religion, The . . 7 Erekiel, The Book of . .2 Faith and Verification . 5 Faith and Form . . ,18 Faith the Beginning. Self-Sur- render the Fulfilment, of the Spiritual Life . 20, 28 Family Prayers for Morning Use . . . . » Father Fabian . . .17 Feet of Clay. . . 10 Fireside Fairy Tale^ . . 22 First Christians, The . . 8 Flower -o'-t he-Corn . r?. 17 Forgotten Sheaf, The . .19 Fortune's Favourite . .17 Fortunes of Cyril Denham. The 17. 27 CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 20 Fragments of Thought , Fnaxs' Lauteru . Friend Olivia Gain or Loss 7 . . Gamble with Life, A Garcia. G. H. R. . Garrisoned Soul, The . Gloria Patri : or, Our Talk3 about the Trinity . Glorious Company of the Apostles, The God's Greater Britain . Golden Truths for Young Folk Good New Times, The . Gospel of Grace, The . Grey and Gold . . 10, Grey House at Endlestone Growing Revelation, The Haromi : A New Zealand Story Harvest Gleanings Health and Home Nursing Health in the Home Life Heart of Jessie Laurie, The Heartsease in the Family Heirs of Errington, The . Helen Bury . Helps to Health and Beauty Higher on the Hill His Next of Kin . .10 His Rustic Wife . History of the United States, Holy Christian Empire . Holy Spirit, The . Household of McNeil, The House of Bondage, The . How to Become Like Christ How to Read the Bible . Husbands and Wives Ideals for Girls . . Immanence of Christ in Modern Life, The Incarnation of the Lord, The Industrial Explorings in and around London Infinite Affection, The . Infoldings and Unfoldings of the Divine Genius . Inspiration in Cornmon Life Invisible Companion Inward Light, The Israel's Law Givers, The Messages of . Jan Vedder's Wife . 17 Jealoxisy of God, The . Jesus and His Teaching . 8 4 22 9 9 22 23 16 7 17 17 6 4 14 23 12 4 12 17 12 24 8 17 9 2 27 18 10 17 20 23 17 16 12 12 20 18 18 8 11 27 20 7 Jesus : Seven Questions Jesus, The Messages ol. Accord- ing to the Synoptista Joan Carisbroke . .10, Job and His Comforters . . Joshua, The Book of . Judges, The Book of , . Kid McGhie .... Kingdom of the Lord Jesus, The . . .20, Kit Kennedy : Country Boy 3, Lady Clarissa Last of the MacAllisters, The . Later Prophets, The Messages of the . Leaves for Quiet Hours . Let us Pray .... Letters of Christ. The . Liberty and Religion . . Life and Letters of Alexander Mackennal, The Lifted Veil, A . . Louis Wain's Animal Show . Loves of Miss Anne, The 3, Lynch, Rev. T. T. : A Memoir Lyrics of the Soul Making of an Apostle, The Making of Personality, The . Manual for Free Church ilinis- ters, A . Margaret Torrington Martineau's Study of Religion 20, Maud Bolingbroke Max Hereford's Dream . Messages of Hope . . , Messages of the Bible, The . Millicent Kendrick . 10, Miss Devereux, Spinster Model Prayer, The More Tasty Dishes Morning and Evening Cries . Morning Mist, A . Morning, Noon, and Night . Momington Lecture, The Mr. Montmorency's Money 10. My Baptism My Belief .... My Neighbour and God . New Evangel, The New Mrs. Lascelles, The New Points to Old Texts New Testament in Modern Speech, The . Nineteen Hundred ? • • TkOM 7 26 17 17 10 11 13 19 18 13 6 4 23 17 4 12 20 6 22 11 26 12 26 7 11 17 17 16 24 14 17 24 5 17 16 7 13 12 17 10 14 10 80 JAMES CLARKE AND CO.'S PAOB Nobly Bom . . . 10, 17 Nonconfonniat Cljurch Build* ings . . . .15 Old Pictures in Modern Frames 20 Oliver Cromwell . , .24 Oliver Weatwood . , .17 On Seeing Angela . , .16 Ordeal of Faith, The . .15 Our City of God ... 5 Our Girla* Cookery . . 26 Ourselves and the Universe 8, 27 Outline Text Lessons for Junior Classes , . 23 Overdale . . . 10, 17 Passion for Souls, The . .18 Paul and Christina , . !(» Paul, The Massages of . .11 Paxton Hood : Poet and PrPflrher ... 9 Pearl Divers of Roncador Reef, The ... 9 Personality of Jesus, The . 1 1 Pilot. The . . . .13 Poems. By Mme. Cuvon . 11 Polychrome Bible. The' . 2. 3 Popular Argument for tlie Unity of Isaiah, A . .15 Popular History of the Free Churches, A . . 4. U Practical Lay Preaching and Speaking to Men . .13 Practical Points in Popular Pro verba , . .16 Prayer . . . .18 Preaching to the Times . . 9 Price of Priestcraft, The , 22 Pride of the Family, The . 17 Problems of Living . . 8 Prophetical and Priestly His- torians, The Messages of . 11 Psalmistfl The Mepsnge." of the 1 1 Purpose of the Cross, The . 16 Quickening of Caliban, The . 10 Quiet Hints to Crowing Preachers in My Study . 11 Race and Religion . . 21 Reasonable View of Life, A . 18 Reasons Why for Congrepa- tionnlist^' . . .13 Reasons Why for Free Chiu-ch- men . . .22 Reconsiderations and Rein- forcements . . .20 Reform in Sunday School Teaching . • . 19 PACK Religion and Experience . 8 Religion of Jesas, The . .16 Religion that will Wear, A . 23 Resultant Greek Testament, The . . . .14 Rights of Man, The . . 4 Rise of Philip Barrett, The 4, 15 Robert Wrelord's Daughter , 10 Rogers, J. Guinness . . 2 Rome from the Inside . . 24 Rosebud Annual, The . 6, 12 Rose of a Hundred Leaves, A . 4 Ruling Ideas of the Present Age 6 School Hymns . , 12, 27 School of Life, Tlie . .12 Sceptre Without a Sword, Tlie 25 Scourge of God, The . .17 Seven Puzzling Bible Books 5, 19 She Loved a Sailor . . 10 Ship of the Soul, The . 20. 26 Ship's Engines, The . . 26 Short Devotional Services . 21 Sidelights on Reagion . , 7 Simple Cookery . . .16 Simple Things of the Chridtian Life . . . .18 Sin^lehurst Manor , 10, 17 Siaaie . . . . lu, 17 Sister to Enau, A . . 10, 17 Small Books on Great Subjects 19, 20 Social Salvation ... 6 Social Worship an Everlasting Necessity . . 2