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( No. 277 1 
 
 THE CRYING NEED OF A 
 RENEWED CHRISTIANITY 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES W. EUOT 
 
 PUBLISHED FOK FREE DISTRIBUTION 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 25 BEACON STREET, BOSTON 
 
£5-6 
 
 The American Unitarian Association 
 
 WAS Founded in 182S with the 
 
 Following Expressed Purpose 
 
 **The object of the American Unitarian 
 Association shall be to diffuse the know- 
 ledge and promote the interests of pure 
 Christianity; and all Unitarian Christians 
 shall be invited to unite and co-operate 
 with it for that purpose." 
 
 (The G£ii£ral Conference qf. Unitarian 
 and Othar'^^hriifrctni^MxiieSy passed 
 the f^'UotAiji^\'^aki»ai> Saratoga, N, 7"., 
 
 **These Churches accept the religion of 
 Jesus holding, in accordance with his 
 teaching, that practical religion is summed 
 up in love to God and love to man.'' 
 
 **The Conference recognizes the fact 
 that its constituency is Congregational in 
 tradition and polity. Therefore, it 
 declares that nothing in this Constitution 
 is to be construed as an authoritative test; 
 and we cordially invite to our working 
 fellowship any who, while differing from 
 us in belief, are in general sympathy with 
 our spirit and our practical aims." 
 
THE CRYING NEED OF A RENEWED 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 An address delivered under the auspices of the Unitarian Churches 
 of Philadelphia, December 29, 1914. 
 
 This meeting is held under the auspices of three 
 Christian Churches of a peculiar sort, belonging to a 
 small denomination called Unitarian, — peculiar in 
 that they have no ecclesiastical organization in the 
 ordinary sense, and also no creed or body of dogmas 
 which members of such churches must accept, or are 
 supposed to accept. Every church in this peculiar 
 body is independent, and, like the church of the Ply- 
 mouth Pilgrims, chooses its own minister, enters, if 
 possible, into such fellowship as it pleases with other 
 churches, and decides for itself upon the charitable, 
 educational, and social work it proposes to carry on. 
 The denomination stands for complete religious lib- 
 erty, for a respectful attitude towards all sincere 
 religious beliefs — Christian or other — and for judg- 
 ing every religion by the amount of genuine twen- 
 tieth-century ethics which finds place in it. This 
 peculiar church invites serious and candid people to 
 unite, in the spirit of Jesus Christ, for the worship of 
 God and the service of Man, but leaves entirely to 
 the individual the decision whether he shall join a 
 church or not. No rite bars the way into this church, 
 no baptism, confirmation, or examination, and no one 
 
 M186574 
 
I t C C C ( 
 
 «! • • • 
 • * « * , 
 
 enters it in hope of reward or out of fear of punish- 
 ment. 
 
 The great churches of . Christendom all possess 
 powerful ecclesiastical organizations, and bodies of 
 doctrine which are supposed to contain already the 
 whole of essential religious truth, and to be unchange- 
 able from age to age, except as the ecclesiastical bodies 
 which govern the respective churches choose to make 
 additions, or to issue new interpretations. All the 
 great Christian churches have instituted rites, rituals, 
 ceremonies, sacraments, and observances which they 
 require their members to accept, attend, or perform, 
 particularly those relating to birth, marriage, and 
 death, the great events in every human life. The 
 creeds and dogmas of these churches contain many 
 conceptions which are not arrived at or deduced by 
 any reasoning process, but are mere products of the 
 human imagination which are accepted by a myste- 
 rious intuition or insight with which neither inductive 
 nor deductive reasoning has anything to do. The 
 Unitarian Churches reject irrational piety, while 
 maintaining to the full wonder, reverence, and awe. 
 
 The period at which this meeting takes place, is, in 
 many respects, the most awful and momentous in the 
 history of the world. More than 300,000,000 of 
 people are involved in the most cruel and savage War 
 that has ever been waged, — a War in which the re- 
 cently-won powers of Man over Nature are all turned 
 with an administrative efficiency greater than the 
 world has ever before seen, to the most active and 
 
8 
 
 persistent destruction of life and property, of the 
 capital laid up by the industry and frugality of many 
 previous generations, and of the good will which had 
 begun to develop between nation and nation. The 
 War has demonstrated that, while mankind discovered 
 and is using the marvellous new powers of light, heat, 
 and electricity for purposes of immense beneficence, 
 governments called Christian are capable of using 
 these same powers, acquired for beneficent ends, in a 
 manner which spreads death, desolation, and sorrow 
 among 300,000,000 of the human race, availing them- 
 selves for these horrible purposes pf some of the finest 
 moral qualities which inhere in the helpless multi- 
 tudes. Moreover, during fifty years past. Christian 
 nations in Europe have given their best efforts to de- 
 vising and storing up the means of making war in the 
 most destructive manner and on an unprecedented 
 scale. The present holocaust has been planned delib- 
 erately with the utmost intelligence and foresight, 
 and is being carried on with terrible efficiency by the 
 nation which is chiefly responsible for it — a Chris- 
 tian nation like all the other nations involved except 
 Turkey and Japan. This is the immense moral cat- 
 astrophe of these times. It has taken place in spite 
 of much progress made within a hundred years past 
 in many parts of the world in popular education, 
 humane literature, and public liberty, and of a wide- 
 spread, sjanpathetic desire on the part of the more 
 fortunate men and women to serve and help the less 
 fortunate. 
 
In nineteen hundred years the Christian institu- 
 tions of religion, in other words, the highly-organized 
 churches of Christendom, have not only been unable 
 to accomplish anything effectual towards preventing 
 the frequent occurrence of war, but have often incited 
 to war each its own nation or its own race, and have 
 made hotter the patriotic fires which blaze up in war- 
 time. Every ruler concerned with the present War 
 calls upon God to give victory to his arms ; every one 
 of them believes, as firmly as David or Joshua or 
 Saladin did, that the Lord is on his side ; and each 
 people is putting up eager prayers to its national 
 God which cannot be granted without denying the 
 equally fervent prayers which go up from its adver- 
 saries, and is giving thanks for victories for its side 
 which are cruel defeats for the other. Moreover, 
 there come from the churches to-day no effective 
 influences towards peace, but only delusive consola- 
 tions and vague wishes and petitions, the granting of 
 which by the God to whom they are addressed would 
 only perpetuate the present horrijjle state of Europe. 
 Who could imagine that the chief teachings of the 
 founder of the religion which these nations and 
 churches profess were — love God and thy neighbor, 
 and treat all men as brothers. Clearly neither nations 
 nor churches have ever been truly Christian. 
 
 It is a fitting time, therefore, in which to seek the 
 reasons for the inefficiency of the great Christian 
 churches in promoting the moral and physical welfare 
 of mankind on this earth, whatever they may claim to 
 
do in respect to human happiness in another. The 
 first explanation is that institutional Christianity 
 departed early from the teachings of the founder of 
 the religion, and copied in its structure the authori- 
 tative and hierarchical arrangements, and in its 
 doctrine the materialism of the Roman world. There 
 emerged from the early centuries after Christ two des- 
 potic churches, each of which undertook to rule the 
 minds and hearts of men, and did rule for many 
 centuries and masses of the European peoples. The 
 Protestant Reformation made a serious breach in the 
 Roman Church, and brought in some new liberty 
 — civil as well as religious — but Protestantism 
 remained a highly authoritative religion ; for within 
 well-organized Protestant denominations the author- 
 ity of the inspired Bible replaced for the common 
 people the authority of the Roman hierarchy, the 
 authoritative interpretation of the Bible being sup- 
 plied by small groups of men learned in the theology 
 of the times. Not till the Pilgrims set up in 
 Plymouth their Free Church in their Free State, 
 did the Christian world contain a fairly successful 
 example of instituted civil and religious liberty. The 
 Pilgrim Church and State set up standards of which 
 America, at least, has never lost sight ; but within 
 seventy-five years many of the Pilgruns' liberties 
 were lost or impaired; so that the compact signed 
 in the cabin of the Mayflower, and John Robinson's 
 doctrine that more light and truth were still to break 
 forth from God's Word, became little more than a 
 precious and fragrant memory. 
 
6 
 
 The first explanation, then, of the impotency of the 
 Christian churches as regards the prevention of war 
 is that they were all organized with too much author- 
 ity and too little libej-ty in them. They never believed 
 in God's way of developing the best and most effec- 
 tive human character — the way of liberty to sin, in 
 order to the development of self-control. The Chris- 
 tian ascetics avoided fleshly temptation by mortify- 
 ing the flesh ; the monks and nuns fled from the world 
 altogether. The first duties of the common people in 
 religion were obedience to the priest and the obser- 
 vance of the rites the priest prescribed. Men and 
 women should be compelled to believe whatever the 
 Church dictated, and should be held to the authorized 
 beliefs and practices of the church by custom, tradi- 
 tion, and hallowed associations. The churches have 
 not relied on the essential dignity of human nature 
 and the human love of freedom for the uplifting of 
 the race, but, on the contrary, on man's tendency to 
 sin and his fear of the consequences, and on his too- 
 frequent degradation in this world and his hope of 
 salvation in another, — a salvation obtainable only 
 through the vicegerents of God on earth. Not believ- 
 ing in liberty, the churches have habitually supported 
 autocratic government, and that climax of autocracy — 
 military discipline for purposes of conquest. 
 
 The second explanation of the impotency of the 
 Christian churches to prevent war, or promote peace, 
 is to be found in the unethical quality of some of the 
 doctrines of the Christian churches, as crystallized in 
 their dogmas and creeds. The official creeds of the 
 
great churches of Christianity, and many parts of the 
 Scriptures contain conceptions of God's nature and of 
 His action toward the human race which are intoler- 
 able to the ethical mind of the nineteenth and twen- 
 tieth centuries. The creeds of the evangelical churches 
 are, as a rule, built on the " fall of man " as described 
 in the story of the Garden of Eden, the absolute cor- 
 rectness or trustworthiness of the story itself being 
 assumed on the ground that its author was inspired 
 by God himself. The conduct attributed to God in 
 that story would be wholly unworthy of any man 
 whose standards of conduct accorded with the average 
 sentiments about right and wrong of civilized people 
 to-day. God in that story is unjust, mean, and cruel; 
 yet the story, taken as a narrative of facts, has been 
 made the foundation of the official creeds of all the 
 great Christian churches. 
 
 Man fell from a superior state of innocency into a 
 condition of sin and misery. Nevertheless, he peopled 
 the earth with creatures like himself, degraded and 
 wretched. But this result was unsatisfactory even to 
 barbarous ages, when considered as the work of God, 
 and means of redemption and ultimate salvation had 
 to be devised and formulated. Hence came the 
 practice of propitiation or expiation by sacrifices — 
 human sacrifices at first in Israel, but later burnt 
 offerings of beasts and birds ; and finally the Chris- 
 tian church discovered in the scriptures a vicarious 
 atonement for the sins of the world by the Son of 
 God, incarnated for a brief residence on this atom of 
 an earth, in this insignificant solar system among the 
 
8 
 
 countless myriads of celestrial bodies. The Lamb of 
 God was sacrificed for the sins of the world ; and so 
 some small proportion of the human race was rescued 
 from eternal torment to justify by their eternal hap- 
 piness, so far as they might, the original creation of a 
 feeble race tricked into sin. The creeds of the great 
 churches differ as to the proportion of the race really 
 rescued by the vicarious atonement through Jesus 
 Christ ; but they all agree in making this vicarious 
 atonement necessary to the salvation of any proportion 
 of the human race. 
 
 In these days, the whole conception of one being — 
 human or divine — suffering, though innocent, for 
 the sins of another, or of innumerable others, is re- 
 volting to the universal sense of justice and fair deal- 
 ing. No family, no school, and no court would 
 venture to punish the innocent, when the guilty were 
 known, in order that the guilty might escape punish- 
 ment. Any human father would be outraged by the 
 suggestion that he had ever dealt, or could so deal 
 with his children ; and yet every member of the great 
 Christian churches is supposed to believe that God 
 deals in that way with the human race ; and that the 
 victim offered up for the redemption of a portion of 
 the human race was, in a peculiar sense, the son of 
 God. How incredible it is, that the religious institu- 
 tions and doctrines, which resulted from the perver- 
 sions of the real teachings of Jesus by the pagan 
 world, should have been so completely and fundamen- 
 tally inconsistent with the ethics of those teachings ! 
 
 Before the Christian churches can be expected to 
 
be efficient in the promotion of human welfare, and 
 particularly in the bringing of peace on earth, they 
 must purge themselves of such doctrines as these. 
 It is not enough to say in defense of the churches 
 that many church members in good standing no 
 longer believe these shocking doctrines ; they should 
 be eliminated from the published standards and 
 confessions of the churches. 
 
 The historical Christian churches were early made 
 partners with empires, monarchies, and baronies, in the 
 control and oppression of the masses of mankind, and, 
 the governments being maintained by force, the 
 churches became, in general, supporters of the mili- 
 tary regime. This was natural enough, because the God 
 of the Christian churches, like Israel's God, was com- 
 monly thought of as Lord of Hosts, God of Battles, 
 Successful Invader, and Glorious Conqueror. These 
 martial attributes of God were described with glow- 
 ing fervor in the litanies, ascriptions, and thanks- 
 givings of the churches. Joshua's God was the most 
 ruthless of destroyers. Not so destructive, however, 
 as the German Emperor's God to-day ; because he 
 evidently lacked the power to destroy everything that 
 he wished to destroy: "And the Lord was with 
 Judah ; and he drave out the inhabitants of the moun- 
 tain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the 
 valley, because they had chariots of iron." Some of 
 the Canaanites successfully resisted the Lord of the 
 Israelite hosts ; but in these later days the Belgians 
 could not successfully resist the Lord of the German 
 hosts. This conception of God is hideous, cruel, and 
 
10 
 
 insane; and no Christian church which tolerates it 
 can be efficient in the promotion of human welfare 
 and happiness. 
 
 Not only is the God of the great Christian churches 
 often a War God, but the Christian life itself is often 
 represented in Christian hymn and preachings as a 
 battle. The Christian fights against Satan and the 
 powers of evil, — he goes forth to war against the 
 evils and wrongs of his day : " The Son of God goes 
 forth to war, a kingly crown to gain" — meanest of 
 motives. The saint wears armor, the armor of the 
 mediaeval battle-field, and the archangels and the 
 knights set upon the dragons and fiends, and slay 
 them with swords. A large part of the imagery of 
 Christian literature is drawn from the work of 
 soldiers and armies. " Onward Christian soldiers, 
 marching as to war" is to-day one of the favorite 
 hymns of the Protestant churches. In the annual pro- 
 cession of the Corpus Christi in Vienna, three bodies 
 take common part, each with great magnificence, — 
 the court, the army, and the church. This is the hab- 
 itual association which has gradually undermined 
 the capacity of the Church to advance in modern 
 Europe the cause of justice, mercy, and liberty, 
 and hence of peace and good-will. 
 
 The Christian nations have, however, attained since 
 the middle ages to a civilization which seems to 
 modern men in Christian lands higher than that of 
 the non-Christian nations, except in the prevalence of 
 international war and fighting in general. For at least 
 six hundred years the Christian nations have fought 
 
11 
 
 oftener and harder than the so-called heathen. With- 
 in the past two centuries all the great wars have been 
 fought on Christian soil by Christian soldiers. This 
 recognized superiority in general civilization, however, 
 is not chiefly due to the churches, but to other influ- 
 ences. The chief beneficial result of the Crusades was 
 a remarkable development of Mediterranean commerce 
 between the East and the West. The period which 
 we call the Renaissance was the period of a remark- 
 able revival of classical learning, and particularly of 
 the Greek literature. The discovery of America 
 brought about an immense increase of commercial 
 adventure and of Occidental wealth; while the 
 religious enthusiasm which accompanied the discovery 
 was the source of hideous cruelties and barbarities. 
 The Reformation was not a normal product of the 
 Roman Church but a rebellion and schism within that 
 church, one consequence of which was an increase of 
 civil and religious liberty in Europe. In the eighteenth 
 century began the great series of scientific discoveries 
 due to the adoption and successful use of the inductive 
 philosophy and method ; and for the last one hundred 
 and fifty years it has been natural and physical science 
 which has been the main contributor to the increasing 
 material welfare of mankind. Science has won its 
 way in spite of the opposition of the principal Chris- 
 tian churches ; and that opposition did not cease until 
 within the memory of men now living ; indeed, it still 
 breaks out from time to time. And now, within the 
 last five months, the worst War of all recorded time, — 
 worst because of its wide extent, the fury with which 
 
12 
 
 it is prosecuted, and the destructive power of its new 
 implements, — brings unheard-of-misery upon the 
 human race ; and the Christian churches are helpless 
 to prevent it, or even to mitigate its horrors. The 
 effective organizations for such pitifully small relief 
 as can be given are for the most part not religious 
 but secular. The care of the wounded falls on 
 men and women trained in natural and physical 
 science, and possessing manual skill and the spirit of 
 service. The effective works of mercy are performed 
 not chiefly by representatives of the churches or by 
 religious partisans and zealots, but by men and women 
 who understand how to get food to the starving, to 
 bring firs1>aid to the wounded and carry them quickly 
 to hospitals, to prevent fevers and infections, to purify 
 water supplies, and to treat lock-jaw, gangrene, and 
 frostbite. The effective advocates of peace and good- 
 will among men in this horrible convulsion, produced 
 by a nation which believes in discipline, ruthless force, 
 and the domination of the strong over the weak, are 
 not the priests and ministers of traditional Christianity, 
 or the performers of rites and ceremonies, but the 
 teachers of public liberty as the indispensable source 
 of the highest efficiency in individual or nation, and of 
 public justice and righteousness developed under free 
 governmental institutions which train men to self- 
 control in freedom under law. 
 
 The great European War is fundamentally a con- 
 flict between freedom and democracy on the one side, 
 and the rule of hereditary monarchs and a military 
 class on the other, that rule being maintained by 
 
13 
 
 appeals to love of country and national pride, and 
 enforced by a stern discipline which leaves nothing 
 of liberty to the individual. In this strife the Chris- 
 tian Church as a whole is divided, each national 
 church supporting its own nation ; and by inheritance 
 and tradition each national church supports the war- 
 making power, no matter how cruel, deceitful, and 
 faithless that power may prove to be. In short, the 
 established and conventional churches manifest little 
 power to promote either love to God or love to the 
 neighbor. ^ 
 
 Is this ineffective condition the final issue of the 
 teachings of Jesus Christ, or is it only the result of 
 the structure of the institutions, and the quality 
 of the doctrines in which those teachings have been 
 embodied and set forth? To this question a great 
 many men in all the nations of Europe and America 
 reply that such a discussion has no interest for them ; 
 that they have not only rejected the traditional dogmas 
 of established Christianity, but that they have no 
 interest in discussing them ; that the vital movements 
 of the human spirit have taken more promising direc- 
 tions; and that they are concerned not with the Chris- 
 tian churches, but with the new powers which make 
 for liberty, enlightenment, and progress. Multitudes 
 of these men say that they are ready for any sort of 
 social service ; and at this moment multitudes of them 
 in France and England are showing by their voluntary 
 acts that they are ready to suffer and die in the cause 
 of freedom ; while other multitudes, equal in number, 
 permit themselves to be driven to wounds and death 
 
14 
 
 in the cause of effective discipline, force, and domina- 
 tion. On both sides, millions of men are exhibiting 
 extraordinary self-sacrifice and devotion, natural fruits 
 of the spirit of Jesus Christ ; but most of these heroes 
 have not consciously derived these lofty sentiments 
 from the Christian churches, but are moved by the 
 common loves of family, home, and country. 
 
 For two generations the men that have been doing, 
 and are now doing the work of the world have, in large 
 measure, withdrawn from the organized churches, 
 or maintain but a nominal connection with them, — a 
 connection, however, which often includes consider- 
 able payments to the churches on behalf of their 
 wives and children. Educated men as a rule, in 
 both Europe and America, have ceased to be influ- 
 enced in their opinions or their actions by the dogmas 
 of the churches, by the rewards churches offer, or by 
 the punishments they threaten. Sunday has become 
 a day for physical rest, for outdoor refreshment, for 
 attention to the family, or for the enjoyment of music, 
 — sometimes at the church, but oftener at the club, 
 the park, or the concert hall. With trifling excep- 
 tions, the church is no longer the centre of social 
 recognition, or of social enjoyments for the multitude. 
 The granges and trades-unions, the neighborhood 
 houses, and. the numerous beneficial societies provide 
 in many communities the needed opportunities for 
 social intercourse which church meetings used to 
 provide. In former times the Christian churches 
 were the almoners for the poor and desolate ; and the 
 chief works of mercy were carried on by men and 
 
16 
 
 women especially commissioned by the Christian 
 Church. Now, secular societies, administered by lay- 
 men, carry on many of the principal movements for 
 the improvement of society, — such as the Civil Service 
 Reform Leagues, the Playground Association, the 
 Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associa- 
 tions, and the Associations for Baby, School, Social, 
 and Mental Hygiene; and many of the hospitals, 
 dispensaries, and asylums, whether supported by 
 taxation or by the voluntary contributions of public, 
 spirited persons, are the works of people whose mo- 
 tive-power is not derived from churches. To be sure, 
 many churches have, of late, taken up some kinds of 
 social work ; but in such labors the churches are as a 
 rule less effective than the lay societies. Even in its 
 function of teaching children what religion is, what 
 right conduct is, and what the motives are which lead 
 to right conduct, the Church has much to learn. The 
 Sunday School does not compare favorably in method 
 or results with the week-day school, even as a teacher 
 of elementary ethics ; for it often lacks sound methods, 
 adequate time, and the support of parents. 
 
 The fundamental trouble is that the Christian 
 churches, as instituted and organized, have relied for 
 centuries on imposed beliefs, rites, sacraments, sym- 
 bols, and observances. Since the latter years of the 
 eighteenth century, it has become more and more 
 difficult to impose beliefs on educated people; and 
 intelligent men have steadily lost faith in mysticism- 
 symbolism, and sacerdotalism, and have come to rely 
 more and more on the careful ascertainment of facts, 
 
16 
 
 the human reason, and the natural sentiments of 
 reverence and love. They have also come to prefer 
 for themselves and their families liberty, independ- 
 ence, and public order founded on agreed-upon law, 
 to obedience, submission^ and order founded on 'dis- 
 cipline administered to the many by the few. With 
 these new tendencies of the human spirit the great 
 Christian churches are not in full accord. 
 
 The great Christian churches have always sup- 
 ported the claim of absolute monarchs that they rule 
 by Divine right; but in the modern world only 
 ignorant or archaic persons accept that doctrine. The 
 mystic has always believed that in some unimaginable 
 way he is the recipient, on occasion, of direct revela- 
 tions from God through faculties or means of percep- 
 tion in himself which are instinctive rather than 
 reasonable ; but the advance in man's knowledge of 
 nature, and in his power to apply to his own uses the 
 natural forces, has made it harder than it used to be 
 for an intelligent man to be a mystic. The thinking 
 person who is enduring a life of suffering now, on 
 this earth, is much less disposed than he used to be 
 to accept as a real consolation another imagined life 
 free from the struggles and pains of the present life. 
 In other words, the consolations and hopes which the 
 Christian churches have heretofore imparted to suffer- 
 ing human beings are to-day far less efficacious than 
 they were in the first eighteen centuries. Neither 
 the heaven nor the hell of the Christian churches 
 appeals to the modern man as it formerly did to his 
 predecessors. 
 
17 
 
 The condition of Europe at this moment is the last 
 and most convincing demonstration that the great 
 churches of Christendom have lost their power to 
 keep Man from sin, to guide him on an upward path, 
 and to make him happy ; for the churches are helpless 
 in the presence of this terrible mass of long-planned, 
 elaborately contrived human sin, shame, ajid suffering, 
 although the mass is shot through by splendid gleams 
 of courage, self-sacrifice, and patriotic devotion. 
 
 The religious state of Christendom to-day is there- 
 fore in need of a genuine revival. Mankind needs to 
 worship, needs incitements to love, reverence, and 
 duty, and a happy spiritual conception of the uni- 
 verse. Without these helps, Man cannot possibly be 
 happy in his family, his labor, or his social order. 
 Without these conceptions of the finite and the infinite 
 values, Man cannot rise in his nature or his life from 
 bad to good, and from good to better. No single per- 
 sonality bom in Christendom — and no class of persons 
 — can reach his best without accepting as his guides 
 in life the fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ, — 
 love God and the neighbor, have compassion on the 
 wronged and the desolate, seek the truth that frees, 
 and worship God in spirit and in truth. To live in 
 this way, it is not necessary to accept any of the 
 dogmas of the great churches, or any part of their 
 symbolism or ritualism. Indeed, much of their sym- 
 bolism, ritualism, dogmatism and ecclesiasticism is 
 inconsistent with essential obedience to the precepts 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 What then is the renewed Christianity which these 
 
18 
 
 terrible times we are living in cry out for in the 
 midst of tears and heart-breaking sorrows? It is a 
 Christianity which abandons the errors and the un- 
 just, cruel conceptions which the centuries have piled 
 up on the simple teachings of Jesus. It is a Chris- 
 tianity which sympathizes with and supports the aspir- 
 ations of mankind for freedom, — freedom in thought, 
 speech and action, — and completely abandons authori- 
 tative ecclesiasticism and governmental despotism. 
 It is a Christianity which hallows and consecrates 
 birth, marriage, the bringing up of children, family 
 life, the earning of the livelihood, and death, and re- 
 jects all the aspersions on the natural life of Man 
 which Christianity inherited from paganism and 
 Judaism. It is a Christianity which will be the friend 
 and ally of all that is good and ennobling in literature- 
 science, and art, and will avail itself without fear of 
 all the new means of teaching and helping men which 
 successive generations shall discover, and of all the 
 innocent enjoyments and social pleasures, while resist* 
 ing effectively every unwholesome or degrading influ- 
 ence on human society. It is a Christianity which 
 will recognize that the pursuit of happiness in this 
 world is legitimate for every human being, and that 
 the main function of government is to protect and 
 further men in that pursuit by securing to the 
 community health, education, wholesome productive 
 labor, and liberty. 
 
 Do you ask if there exist in the world any ex- 
 emplars of this sort of Christianity? Fortunately for 
 the future of the world, there are to be found in 
 
19 
 
 nearly every Christian communion individuals who 
 illustrate in their personal lives the purity and power 
 of the simple religion taught by Jesus Christ. Many 
 of these persons are quite unconscious of the em- 
 barrassments which the creeds, rituals, dogmas, and 
 discipline of their respective churches would inflict 
 on their candid minds, if they realized, or appre- 
 hended in clear and logical statements, the meaning 
 of the traditional doctrines and rites of their churches. 
 Finding themselves practically free to do justly, love 
 mercy, and walk humbly with their God, they remain 
 in the churches into which they were born, held there 
 by family ties, sweet associations, or conservative 
 sentiment, and inattentive to the inconsistencies be- 
 tween their life of the spirit and the historical doc- 
 trines of the churches to which they belong. They 
 are all exemplars of the renewed Christianity of which 
 there is such crying need; and many of them are 
 active promoters of that renewal. 
 
 The liberal churches of Protestanti&m are, however, 
 the best exemplars of renewed Christianity ; because 
 they have definitely abandoned the official creeds and 
 dogmas of the past, all ecclesiasticism, and almost all 
 symbolism and ritualism. Their membership, modest 
 in number and little disposed to proselytism, consists 
 exclusively of persons who propose to be free, simple, 
 and candid in their religious thought, and in all 
 expressions of that thought. These independent 
 churches lay the empnasis on character and conduct, 
 and are concerned with the tendencies and practices 
 
20 
 
 of their members in daily action, rather than with the 
 beliefs of their fellowship. 
 
 After all, true Christianity is not a body of doc- 
 trines, or an official organization to conduct and con- 
 trol men's minds and wills. It is a way of life. 
 
THE ORIGIN AND CHARACTER 
 
 OF THE BIBLE 
 AND ITS PLACE AMONG SACRED BOOKS 
 
 Being a revised and enlarged edition of 
 
 The Bible : Its Origin, Growth and Character 
 
 Brought up-to-date in every particular and embodying the resul'-.s 
 of the latest scholarship ; with illustrative tables, lists of the bei)t 
 books for reading and study, and several entirely new chapter.}. 
 
 By Rev. Jabez Thomas Sunderland, A.M. 
 
 Author of " The Spark in the Clod," " What is the Bible ? " et ^ 
 
 THERE is no more living or urgent subject now befor* 
 the religious world than that of the higher Biblical 
 criticism and its results. What is the Bible ? What 
 has the best Biblical scholarship, — a scholarship that iji 
 honest, independent and competent, a scholarship that 
 investigates to find out the facts, and then plainly speak* 
 the truth, — to tell us about the Biljle, as to its origin, it5 
 authorship, its growth, its reliability, its real character, its 
 transitory elements, its permanent value ? 
 This book answers these questions clearly, and in the light 
 of large knowledge; fearlessly, yet in an eminently candid, 
 catholic and reverent spirit. At once scholarly and popular,, 
 it is perhaps the best exposition of the new view of the Bible 
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 and less complete form, it has won for itself wide favor both 
 in this country and in England. In its new and revised form 
 it bids fair to be still more useful and popular. 
 While intended primarily for individual reading, it is also 
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