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 guaranteed permanent employment to these people: we paid them their wages while they worked for us, and that is the end of our obligation 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 redeemed 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, 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 prelude 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 constantly revivified by the spirit of religion.

The Sermon on the Mount is often conceived 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, trusting 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 central 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 manifested in his life. It was because he was filled 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 sociology can solve all the problems of our modern life. If sociology be sufficiently expanded, this may be true; for a truly scientific sociology 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 religion is at the heart of it, and that right relations 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 Christianization of the social order, the more strenuously we must maintain that she is powerless to do this work except as her life is fed by faith and prayer. The redemption of the social order is the greatest task she has undertaken, 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 spiritual 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 it brings. It is a fact—one has to make the sad admission—that religious people, professedly 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 so 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."[27]

We may hesitate to say that when the passion 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 aim must always include both the Godward and the manward 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 recent 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 adequate 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 existing social ills is a great revival of religion, and this is true. But the revival of religion 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 identifies the interests of each with the interests 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 relations with his neighbors. Nothing but religion will do this for any man, and the religion 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 recognize the truth that, while the root of their religion is faith in God, the fruit of their religion is love for men. It will drive home the fact that the religion which does not hinder a man from being a boodler or a grafter; which permits a man to enjoy religion 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 lives 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 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, Rest on us from above.

"Yea, 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 redemption 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 suffering. 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 suffering. "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 the church to enforce the Christian morality. The price that she must pay for the redemption of society is heavy because of her own neglect. But 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 plundering 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 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 redeemed, 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 failures 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 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 sayest, 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 mayest 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 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 vision 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 obligation, 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 transforming 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 inculcating 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 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 constitution, to refrain from establishing, by law, any form of religion; but they have also covenanted together to promote the common welfare. This puts the responsibility for social conditions upon the whole people, and the Christian people are among them. They cannot avoid the obligation to apply Christian principles to social conditions. Power is theirs to be used in Christ's name and for the promotion 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 present situation is so clearly outlined by a recent writer that we may welcome a liberal 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 peasantry of Galilee following him about with their poverty and their diseases, like shepherdless sheep that have been scattered and harried 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, 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 impregnable intrenchments of vested wrongs, and the long reaches of time needed from one milestone of progress 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 disciples, 'Ye are the salt of the earth; ye are the light of the world,' he expressed the consciousness 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 realize that it required any faith on his part to inaugurate the kingdom of God and to send out his apostolate.

"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 slothfulness, 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."[28]

The time is ripe for such an apostolate. The old type of evangelism has plainly had its day. Strenuous efforts are put forth to revive 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, 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 leading denominations has either ceased or is greatly retarded; the Sunday schools and the young people's societies report decreasing 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 conditions; 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 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 human being of fifty years ago was stirred, by pictures of the terrors of hell and the felicities 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 symbols 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 admonition. "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 meaning than this. A presentation of the gospel which makes the welfare of the individual central does not grip the conscience and 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 recognize it as the commanding motive; and a religious appeal which is based upon considerations 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 redemption is bound up with the redemption of the society to which he belongs; that he cannot 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 pressing 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 buildings, 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 consciously 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 enjoyment.

The response of those invited shows the nature of the invitation. It indicates that the church has been putting a great deal of emphasis on the attractions which it has to offer. 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 entertainment 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 evangelism 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 everlasting 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 undertaking 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, suspicious, 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 fellowship Jews and Gentiles. But that was a pastime compared with the herculean labor intrusted 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 fusing them into one nationality. No task of the same dimensions was ever undertaken by any people; but this is ours, and we must perform it. It is the task of the nation; but the church of Jesus Christ is charged with the business of furnishing the sentiments and ideas by which alone it may be accomplished.

It means, secondly, the pacification of industry. The contending hosts of capital and labor must be brought together, and constrained to cease from their warfare and become friends and cooeperators. 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 condition of things is simply irrational. All warfare is illogical and unnatural. Human beings are not made to live together on any such terms. They are made to be friends and helpers 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 business. The trouble with business is simply covetousness. The insatiable greed of gain is the source of all the dishonesties, the oppressions, the spoliations, the trickeries, the frauds, the adulterations, the cutthroat competitions, the financial piracies, the swindling schemes,—all the abuses and 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 civilization that the church must assail with all the weapons of the spiritual warfare. "Covetousness 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 superstition 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 foresaw 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 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 accomplished 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 propagates social vice. But there are animal propensities 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 bondage 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 covetousness. But the love of power also plays a part in the debauchery of citizenship; and the central 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 individuals, but the interest of the whole community that the corrupt politician sacrifices upon the altar of cupidity or ambition; and when a man has learned to turn the one great privilege 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 treachery 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 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, perhaps, 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 consists 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 profusion 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 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 social functions are spending matches; our feasts invite to satiation; our funerals are exhibitions 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 civilization it seems faint and far off, but it is making 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 artificialities and extravagances the soul is enfeebled and belittled, and the national vigor 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 meagreness of the anchoretic regimen; we shall have beautiful homes and abundant pleasures; but we must learn to make our spiritual interests 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 modern 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; 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 nothing 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 omnipotence; that she can do all things through Christ who strengthened her. She will see and understand that her progress is not made by seeking the line of least resistance: some such worldly wisdom as this has been her undoing. 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 evangelism. 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 looking, 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 oppression, 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 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 demonstration 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 divisions, and fling away her encumbering traditions, 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 greatness 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.

It will tell the world, as it has always told the world, of forgiveness and hope, of comfort 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 better 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.

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 calling you to service and to sacrifice. But we are going to build here in this world the kingdom of heaven. We know that it can be done: we know how to do it, and the glorious 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 evangelism, 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 nature. It is a fact as central and all-pervasive in the social realm as gravitation is in the physical realm. It is no more likely to become antiquated or obsolete than oxygen or sunshine. 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 operation 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 survive and become universal which most perfectly explains the universe and provides for the wants of the human soul. All the indications 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 social forces. Some form of social organization, like the church, is necessary to the life of religion. Worship, to be sane and salutary, must be social; and the life of Christianity can find expression only in such cooeperations as those for which the church provides.

5. As the life of religion is nurtured in social worship and service, so its fruit is gathered in the transformation of society. The primary function of the church is the Christianization of the social order. The business of the church is to save the world by establishing here the kingdom of heaven.

6. The church has very imperfectly performed this function. It has but dimly discerned 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.

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 redemption of society. But the work of redemption to which it is called is not a reconstruction 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 evangelism 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 identifies his own welfare with the welfare of his fellow men. And it will not try to win men 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 presents 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 to have done, but she has done a large part of all that has been done to enlighten, to comfort, and to uplift humanity. And the discipline 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 kingdom 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 sheepfolds 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.

To whom, now, does this great enterprise of social redemption make its strongest appeal? 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 salvation!" 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 redeemed, 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 young men and women who have had the patience to read these chapters have been invited to consider some large 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 reconstruction 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 something 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 professional 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. Many careers which, but a little while ago, seemed enviable, now appear much less alluring. 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 journalism, in literature, in art, they will be called to serve; many philanthropies will invite them; the organization of industry upon cooeperative 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 consideration. If the business of the church is what we have found it to be, and the new evangelism is such as we have outlined, the Christian ministry must offer to any man whose heart is on fire with social passion a great opportunity. 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 seriously to consider. Whatever their callings may be, in whatever fields they may be laboring, the church will need their loyal service, and they will need its goodly fellowships and its inspiring cooeperation.

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 commonwealth 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 human 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 we have seen that its function is a vital function; 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, associations which should take the place of churches—in which religion should be dispensed with; in which there should be more or less of ethical instruction and of charitable cooeperation, but no recognition of any connection between this world and any other. That is simply a reform against nature, and it will never prosper. 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;

"(b) 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 material, within the phenomenal world."[29]

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 praying 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 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 is reason to fear that many of them are little better than oligarchies; that some of them come near to being monarchies. The new leadership 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 upholstery and decoration, of ecclesiastical millinery 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 standards 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 England by one of the greatest of English preachers.[30] "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 thousands of English homes the mere show of things is the goal of a restless and feverish ambition. Everywhere we seem to be loitering 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 misinterpreted as grace itself. We are obtruding our badges and ribbons, our soldier's dress without 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 recognize it.

We are dealing here with the very heart of the trouble in our national life, and the problem is one which must be solved by the present 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 cynical dishonesties and the brutal spoliations which have come to light in the realm of high 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 revulsion. 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 ostentation 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 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 promising fields. It is properly denominational extension. 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 business of university extension is not the planting 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 extension for which the new leadership will stand. Its aim will be to make a vital connection between the Christian church and every institution 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' association, 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 social aims of Jesus, of organizing society upon the principles which he laid down, is offered to the young men and women of this generation. 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, and then to extend this life into industry and commerce and politics and art and social diversion, 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 tremendous 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 preachers say, "that there are so many people in all our communities—some of them very good 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 Christianity 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 relations, 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 illustration 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 somewhat 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 instrument might be, the solitary performance of the part assigned to it would be the dryest possible business. You could not convert any man to the love of orchestral music by any such process. But if he could hear all the instruments 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 Christianity at work in human society. In considering only the individual application of it, its whole meaning and significance would be hidden 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 evangelism 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 responsibility are thus put upon them. It is the most heroic enterprise to which the sons of men have ever been called.

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 believe 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 light of hope shining in many eyes; we shall hear the din of strife changing to the songs of cheerful 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."



Footnotes



[1] Through Nature to God, p. 189.

[2] The Victory of the Will, p. 213.

[3] First Principles, p. 14.

[4] Ibid. p. 20.

[5] First Principles, pp. 99, 100.

[6] Quoted by Walker in Christian Theism, p. 47.

[7] Christian Theism, pp. 40, 42.

[8] New York Independent, September 12, 1907.

[9] Micah iv, 5.

[10] I do not include Confucianism, because it is, primarily, a system of ethics or sociology rather than a religion; and also because it seems to have no missionary impulse, and no expectation of universality.

[11] Permanent Elements in Religion, p. 143.

[12] The Unknown God, p. 228.

[13] Professor D. M. Fisk.

[14] Acts ii, 44, 45.

[15] Matt. vi. 5, 6.

[16] James v, 16.

[17] Rauschenbusch: Christianity and the Social Crisis, pp. 93, 94.

[18] Page 182.

[19] The Social Gospel, Harnack and Herrmann, pp. 216, 217.

[20] Essays and Addresses, p. 194.

[21] Essays and Addresses, p. 189.

[22] A History of the Reformation, vol. i, pp. 85,86.

[23] Ibid. pp. 87, 88.

[24] Op. cit. p. 96.

[25] Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution, pp. 57,58.

[26] Op. cit. pp. 327, 328.

[27] The Philosophy of Religious Experience, by Henry W. Clark, pp. 234-236.

[28] 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.

[29] The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 485.

[30] Dr. J. H. Jowett.

THE END