ar V 15928 \ s ^ ^ \\ ; BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1S91 ^.Mnki : ; mmk 3f77 Cornell University Library arV15928 Evangelism and social service / 3 1924 031 433 604 olin,anx Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031433604 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE BY JOHN MARVIN DEAN Minister of the Second Baptist Church of Chicago and of the Settlement Work of that Church at Aiken Institute WITH A BRIEF INTRODUCTION BY CLARENCE A. BARBOUR Mr. Dean's Colleague in the Men and Religion Continental Campaign GRIFFITH & ROWLAND PRESS MCMXIII Copyright 1913 by , J. ROWLAND, Secretary Published October, 1913 Zo THAT INCOMPARABLE FELLOWSHIP, MY COMRADES OF "TEAM THREE" OF THE MEN AND RELIGION FORWARD MOVEMENT Fred B. Smith Clarence A. Barbour David Russell Raymond Robins Yutaka Minakuchi John M. Moore John L. Alexander William A. Brown Warren L. Bunger Robert M. Moore EVERY MAN A BOND-SERVANT OF BOTH EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE, THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED FOREWORD It will be a sad day when the church loses its grip upon the great truth that Christ came to save the individual. There is no substitute for that truth. It is as sure that he came to save any one member of the human race, as though there were no other in existence in all the boundless reaches of the uni- verse. That teaching is fundamental. It lies at the root of things. To deny it, to distort it, to neglect it, is false to Scripture and false to fact. The Mas- ter himself, in his earthly life, sought the individual, and a large portion of the record of those three short years of ministry is given to the story of per- sonal interviews in which he was seeking the one sheep that had gone astray. It will be a sad day when the church loses its grip upon the equally great truth that Christ came to save the world, to lift society, to redeem human- ity, to " Christianize the social order." Men have a right to ask, What message has the gospel regarding better homes for the poor? What application has it to the substitution of arbitration for strikes and 2 FOREWORD lockouts in the world of capital and labor? Has it anything to do with the more equitable distribution of profit and loss between employer and employed? Has it something to say regarding the saloon, the brothel, the gambling-house, the sweatshop? What about war? What about the maintenance of burdensome, excessive, and menacing armies and armaments by Christian nations? Has the gospel any message which will affect conditions in our prisons and our asylums for the insane? It is easy enough to prolong the list. Are these questions and others like them outside the range of the gospel? It would be comfortable indeed to believe that nine- teen-twentieths of everything that concerns the com- mon life of the common day is outside the range of the gospel. But it is not true; the gospel of Jesus Christ is as broad and as deep as human need. It touches life at every point, individual and corporate. It regards all the waste places of human life as un-" conquered territory for Christ. Those who regard the religion of the Nazarene as merely a glorified method of insurance for the world to come have grossly mistaken its meaning. It does spell happi- ness hereafter, but that happiness begins to-day. It does lead men one by one into a personal knowledge of Christ as Saviour and Lord, into the personal FOREWORD 3 acceptance of him as such, and into personal service to other individual lives ; but it also emphasizes with tremendous force the solidarity of the race, and its emergence as a race from the horrible pit and the miry clay of evil and devastating social conditions and practices. That was a significant message which Jesus sent to John when that eagle soul was pining in prison, and he asked, " Art thou he that should come, or look we for another ? " and Jesus said to the messengers of John : " Go your way, and tell John the things which ye hear and see ; the blind re- ceive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good tidings preached unto them." I am glad indeed to have any part in the launch- ing of a sane word, such as that of this little book, concerning Evangelism and Social Service, coming, as it does, from a man in whom I so thoroughly be- lieve. He has dedicated the volume to Team Three of the Men and Religion Movement. It was my priceless privilege to be the leader of that " com- pany of friendly workmen." Among them was John Dean — fearless, persistent, indefatigable, intense, humorous, lovable John Dean. There was no rift of discord in the ranks of Team Three in all those 4 FOREWORD memorable months, and the fellowship was one which can never die. Dean, Russell, Robins, Alex- ander, Brown, Minakuchi, John Moore, Robert Moore, Bunger — each has gone to his separate task and to great individual achievement in his chosen field, with the memory of those days warm and strong and constant. No one conviction has taken firmer root in each of us than that embodied in the pages which follow, that the message of the good news of Christ is a unit, many-sided but one, and that the union of Evangelism and Social Service, the salvation of the individual, the salvation of the corporate union of individuals in society, is indispen- sable to the redemption of the race and the coming of the kingdom of our God. CONTENTS Page Author's Apology 6 I. A Better Social Order 9 II. Social Service and the Historic Church 19 III. Social Service and Evangelism Indi- visible 33 IV. Evangelism, Social Service, and the New Rationalism 49 V. The Day for Breadth and Depth 59 AUTHOR'S APOLOGY After waiting in vain for enough leisure properly to prepare a message on " Evangelism and Social Service," I have at length felt compelled to say what lies in my mind in this conversational and unfinished little book. I have not the time to give a larger and more painfully written volume to the public, and if I wait much longer I shall print nothing at all. For the day is already past when an essay on " Evangel- ism and Education " would be in order, and the day will soon be past when it will be necessary to write on my present subject, " Evangelism and Social Service." We shall very shortly awaken to the fact that the gospel of Christ lays upon us the inevitable obliga- tions of both phases of service — and, in fact, that it always has exhibited both of these phases when heartily believed in. Graham Taylor, Chicago's nota- ble citizen, recently said something significant to a group of the leaders in the Second Church, during a conference on our permanent policy as a church in 6 AUTHOR S APOLOGY 7 our great down-town parish. We were just about to open up a settlement work at the " Old Second," under the name of " Aiken Institute," and I had asked him for his point of view. After congratu- lating us upon our plans, he said : " I find in our work at Chicago Commons that we can help a lot of people a little way, or a few people all of the way. Now, we have as our policy the helping of a lot of people a little way, religiously, and the evangelical church ought to stand its ground in these difficult neighborhoods and help some of the people all the way." This puts the matter very frankly. I cannot, however, help but feel that the evan- gelical church can do both of these services. It can, through its settlement activities, help a whole neigh- borhood into better living conditions, and it can so infill these social activities with evangelistic passion as to help many of those thus aided on into the fulness of Christ's redemption. The remarkable Olivet Institute, of Chicago, is frankly evangelistic, and yet is conspicuously suc- cessful in its social work. Our own new work at Aiken Institute has had a similar experience. Let us dare to hold to the whole of the gospel the whole of the time. My dear friend, Raymond Robins, once answered 8 author's apology in my hearing a question propounded by a perplexed minister. " Mr. Robins," said the minister, " how shall we introduce social betterment themes into our Sunday services ? " " / should not attempt to do so" responded Mr. Robins. " Use special week-night gatherings for the discussion of social problems, and save your Sunday services as a time in which to deal with the individual spiritual need of your auditors. If you fail them in this ministry on Sunday you will fail at the most important point." One word more. We need not to be afraid of being frankly loyal to our Baptist doctrines in our social service activities. The more we weave into all our activities these noble doctrines (some call them principles) that have long nourished and blest and guided us, the steadier and more enduring our work will be. But let us do this not as contro- versialists and destroyers, but as witnesses and architects. Your brother in the bonds of redemption, A BETTER SOCIAL ORDER In haunts of wretchedness and need, On shadowed thresholds dark with fears, From paths where hide the lures of greed, We catch the vision of Thy tears. From tender childhood's helplessness. From woman's grief, man's burdened toil, From famished souls, from sorrow's stress, Thy heart has never known recoil. The cup of water given for thee Still holds the freshness of thy grace; Yet long these multitudes to see The sweet compassion of thy face. O Master, from the mountainside, Make haste to heal these hearts of pain, Among these restless throngs abide, Oh, tread the city's streets again — Till sons of men shall learn thy love And follow where thy feet have trod; Till glorious from thy heaven above Shall come the city of our God. — F. Mason North. I A BETTER SOCIAL ORDER THERE is no social gospel. It has been well said that positive statements are far more apt to be true than negative ones. Still I feel justified in this negation. To speak of a social gospel argues that there are various gospels. It is true that the word has several uses in the Scriptures, and that the gospel pro- claimed by John the Baptist and our Lord himself to the Jewish people was mainly a social gospel in that it had to do with national deliverance. Its content was not as full and its message not identical with the gospel later heralded. But ever since Calvary there has been but one gospel — the proclaiming of a re- demption that has to do both with the individual and society, both with the Jew and the nations, both with man's relationship to this world and the world to come. It is not an individualistic gospel. It is not a social gospel. It is the one all-comprehensive gos- pel of the grace of God. But, while there is no social gospel, there is a remarkable present-day emphasis upon the social II 12 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE applications of the redemption of Christ. Under the popular and practical call of " Social Service " the entire evangelical church is being summoned into increased activity in the practical serving of society. This seems to be causing no little alarm amongst thousands of devoted Christians who feel that so much insistence upon the salvation of society may diminish interest in the salvation of the individual man. Some opponents of social service have even found an apparent theological justification for their opposition, and have seen in the present turning of the attention of the church to the solution of prac- tical problems of life, a genuine evidence of the decadence of spirituality such as the Word of God indicates will precede the second advent of our Lord. It was my painful experience to hear from the lips of a noted Bible expositor and evangelical minister, not longer ago than last year, a veritable philippic against that more complete emancipation of human- ity known as the movement toward Democracy. Observe that I spell it here, at least, with the dignity belonging to the word. And he was a min- ister of the most democratic of all the denomina- tions who thus poured out fiery wrath and bitter scorn upon the painfully achieved social progress of the race! But most of our evangelicals who are pretending to be in no manner of sympathy with the present propaganda of social salvation are them- selves almost, if not quite, as guilty as their sup- SOCIAL SERVICE UNDEREMPHASIZED I3 posed opponents in advancing society's betterment. I will particularize on this indictment a little later. Here let me, without attempt at evasion, record my own conviction that the social phase of Christ's gospel, so far from being unduly expounded and overurged, has not received, even yet, its due recog- nition by the regenerated. The relating of the love of God in us to the giving of decent living conditions to the feeble or dependent, the working out of a reasonable equality of opportunity for mind and body and soul, the bringing in of such a democracy as Pentecost prophesied — these are tasks as heaven-given as any that Amos in Tekoa, or even John on Patmos, ever received authority to undertake. More than that, they are inherent in the nature of the gospel, and to deny their authority over the attention and energy and prayer of the redeemed man is equivalent to a denial of the glad tidings of grace. In short, the propaganda of social service has but begun. It must have an infinitely enlarged hearing and cooperation in the coming years. The un- finished tasks ahead of our social workers are stag- gering to contemplate. It is solemnizing to think that there is not yet in the world a single thoroughly Christian community of town or city rank. It is, I admit, possible that there never will be such a social triumph in this dispensation. We find even in communities where a very large proportion of the population are members " in good 14 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE standing" of evangelical religious bodies, an im- mense amount of social ignorance, maladjustment, and even vice. The sad thought is that a large per- centage of this sin and resultant misery is quite preventable, granting a reasonable consecration of brains and energy in the social application of the gospel. In small towns and country centers the lack of elementary social adjustment in the interest of morality and religion is heart-breaking to the man of tender conscience, and a matter of actual aston- ishment to the enlightened student of social life. As to the great cities — and I am writing these words in the very heart of Chicago— their need of a social application of Christ's gospel is becoming known to all who take time to read and think. And yet these civic needs are not fully comprehended, even at this hour. The entrenched and hoary and unspeakable city evils are only beginning to loom up over us in their real dread significance. Their heights of buttressed wrongs and their foundations of corruption and greed are yet to be measured. We have, thank God, almost gotten to the point where we are willing to look plainly at social sins and at the social order itself. We have run a few mines beneath city evils, and have touched off not a few effective fuses. We have made a be- ginning of constructive work of great value. Still the whole task of using redeeming love, bom of the gospel of the forgiven soul, in the interest of social CIVIC TASKS IS good, has had little more than a fair preliminary surveying. To change the figure, the skirmishers are contending sharply, but the battle-line, slowly but surely forming, is yet to make its mighty united forward surge. Shall good men and women call a halt to the increasing momentum of social service? I pray not, in Chicago at least, until the last child of the city has its opportunity for an education, both of body and mind ; not until the swollen profits of our vampire department stores show more plainly in living wages; not until the malignant red lights are quenched and the power of the Brewers' Ring is broken; not until the tired workers are given the seats they pay for in the cars of our dishonest City Railways Company, instead of standing in a pack of their tired fellow workers after a full day's toil in store and factory; not until the dreadful toll of life is stopped on the great railways centering in this city ; not until eager " little tots " can find their way readily to a play-space without having recourse to the deadly boulevards, there to become the victims often of the speed maniac; not until the country girl and the immigrant girl can enter Chicago without peril of a fate worse than death; not until the aged and abandoned and worn-out have provision made for their last days; not until fifty thousand hard-working people now in this city, under the shadow of a great physical fear of losing their pitiful " jobs," no matter how hard they serve at them, are assured by an amended social order of l6 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE a decent support so long as they are willing to render their best service to society! It is positively heart-breaking to know what any city physician or policeman or pastor knows about a great, modern American city. The sorrowful part of it is that the problems are so many and so pressing that the power to think clearly is lost. The burden is there with all its depression, its irritation, and wear. But the enthusiasm and buoyancy that visions a better day is apt to be pressed out of the soul. Let no man who names Christ's name use his influence against the social emphasis of the present hour. The social movement needs all its friends to keep it in right channels, to give it push, to gather up its rightful allies. But its enemies should be only those whose design it is to prey upon humanity. Let the ministry of Christ in particular be on the alert lest their great moral leverage shall be found elsewhere than at the disposal of the Christianizing of the social order so far as that may be possible. Let it be clearly understood that both the times and the timeless gospel alike demand not mere alleviation or amelioration, not mere charity or patching up of social discontent. They both alike call for a general revaluation of organized human relationships and such a reconstruction of the very social order itself as has not yet been even attempted in a great con- certed manner. In fact, I doubt whether the evangelical church A BETTER SOCIAL ORDER 17 has ever before reached the place of vantage in this matter that it now occupies. It has blood still upon it, the blood of its recent martyrs. It has only had a few decades of comparative freedom from stifling governmental hindrances. In America we are ready for gigantic tasks. In England we are well- nigh as ready as here. The blood-bought saints of even Russia and China are getting rapidly to a place where the maintenance of their faith can be in- creasingly accompanied by the applications of their truth. The social tasks of the round world demand the hand and heart of the evangelical church. It is the voice and program of God. I do not look for social perfections, although it is better, as some saint hath well said, " to aim at perfection and miss it than to aim at imperfection and hit it." But I do claim that God is leading us on to more splendid social achievements. If we have gone forward from patriarchalism to the proud citizenship in old-time splendid cities, if we have gone on from citizenship to feudalism, and from feudalism have marched to monarchism, and from thence to nationalism, and from national- ism to the extreme benefits of individualism, shall we not dare anticipate the unveiling of a higher so- cial order still? For many years a Christian saint prayed fre- quently in the prayer services of his church. His prayer invariably contained a queer but understand- able phrase, " Lord, brush away the cobwebs ! " l8 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE This petition in due course of time became very irksome to a second brother, who had on a hundred occasions or more heard it repeated. At length, un- able to endure the matter longer, this second brother himself offered prayer. " Lord," cried he, " our brother hath often be- sought thee to brush away the cobwebs. For many years he hath asked this of thee. We beseech thee that thou wilt by thy grace enable him to change the form of his prayer. Let his voice no longer ask that the cobwebs be cleared away, but let his cry hence- forth be, ' Lord J kill that spider! ' " Sin will never be legislated away. It will never be rubbed or scoured from the texture of society. But its black and hideous stains will be wonderfully diminished when the church of Christ shall under- stand its own potency in social salvation. II SOCIAL SERVICE AND THE "historic CHURCH For paralleling all their crimes and woe We in our minds must place a brighter thought, That cities in all times have champions been When men for larger liberties have fought. From out of busy Ur of the Chaldees Came he whom three religions claim their own, And faith was not the child of whispering trees. But sprang from out the pavements of a town. And beauty came from Athens, law from Rome, The first republics of our modern world iWere in the good old Hanse towns of the North, Before whose walls great kings their banners furled. And London was the strength of Cromwell's day, And Paris overthrew the tyrant caste That fed upon the vitals of old France Until it met the city mob at last. Think thou of fair Geneva's sturdy stand. Forget not Ghent in Silent William's day. Nor old Rochelle in good Queen Bess's time, Nor Boston's part in our colonial fray. No, critic of the modern townward trend, Remember that the city brotherhood. While liable to every social ill. Is oft the very soul of social good. Come down, then, in the smoky streets and work To save the civic centers for the right. Make clean their counsels, help enforce their laws. And scorch their sucking parasites with light. Let Christ again do miracles through you Until the very angels looking down May cry, " The God of nature made the fields — The grace of God in man hath made the town." II SOCIAL SERVICE AND THE HISTORIC CHURCH IT would be of keenest interest to the great con- stituency of the evangelical church if some prop- erly equipped historian should give a series of volumes to the world on the history of social well- being as related to the gospel of Christ. A task of no little magnitude! For even to a merely careful reader of the history of the so-called " Christian centuries " it becomes an axiom that the evangelical theology inevitably spurs its adherents to attempt the solution of social problems. No sooner is the New Testament church born on the high-day of Pentecost than it must become a microcosm of ideal brotherhood. Its very birth period exemplifies both a pure and simple doctrine and a pure and fervent social life. The dread judg- ment of God descends with the swiftness of light upon the wretched Ananias, who becomes not merely the first deliberate liar of the apostolic church, but the first betrayer of its brotherliness. The early Christians extended social obligation 21 22 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE over all the ground of human life that they could win from Judaism or heathenism. Only a careless student of the first centuries fails to find a most persistent ideal of social good. The relationships of life were corrected in so far as they were within the power and confines of organized Christian life. To some of us the advent of Constantine the Great upon the scene of religious history is the spreading of an ominous shadow rather than the bursting of a great and dazzling light Constantine forced too great a responsibility upon the Christian church of his day; His policy of favoring Christianity for his own private ends really arrested the spiritual development of the church, and compelled the expenditure of energies not yet genuinely accumulated, and hence necessarily in part borrowed. Yet even this premature and almost fatal triumph of Christianity is a remarkable testimony as to its social significance even in the fourth century. At that remote period, and in spite of the evident depreciation of the quality of discipleship as com- pared to that of the first century, the ability of the new religion infinitely to surpass all others in its practical aspects and in those social institutions that make a religion a state asset, was so marked as to compel its choice by the religiously impartial and politically sagacious mind of Constantine. It was even then a system of belief that could justify itself not only by a divine origin, but by a SOCIAL SERVICE IN HISTORY 23 very human ministry. It created citizens. It pre- sented institutions of immense civic benefit. It promised more and more to be a contributor to the State rather than a beggar from the State. Under all its handicaps, it had justified itself by a ma'rked effect of good upon human society, and alone of the religions prevalent in the empire, it had a genuinely earned social prestige. The Christianity of Constantine's day did not monopolize virtue. Strength of character, and even tenderness and compassion were not so uncommon in the old religions as some historians have taught us. But as a religion, the proscribed sect had made a preeminent contribution to social morals; And yet its chief objective in those ages had pro- fessedly not been the creation of institutions or the betterment of conditions, but the promulgation of a message that primarily and mainly was held to have to do with the individual soul and its need. It would be possible to demonstrate that the polit- ical patronage and State cooperation following Con- stantine's action was mainly disastrous to the spir- itual life of the church. Yet in the centuries in which Christianity was compelled to meet the suc- cessive waves of invasion from the north and east frontiers of the empire, the inherent social values of the gospel were again conclusively proved. It would be very easy indeed to undervalue the ancient civilization of, for instance, the Goths. But it is far easier for us in these days to undervalue 24 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE the difficulties confronting the church as it grappled with the lusty, fearless, impetuous heathenism of the most vigorous and warlike and independent peoples of the world — the Teutons, Slavs, and Celts. It is conceded that while the Roman Empire in the end gave way everywhere before the pressure of those centuries and the glacier-like movement of the peoples toward the south, the new religion con- quered its conquerors, and enriched them with noble social principles utterly foreign to them in past ages. Had the church of the Middle Ages possessed a pure gospel message, had it, in short, possessed a complete, accessible, and generally read Bible, it would have shortened the tortuous march of civil- ization by five hundred years at least. But even with the limitation of a mixed Christianity and a Chris- tianity constantly drawn from its true tasks by the political ambitions of both secular and ecclesiastical princes, its social significance in the Dark Ages is such as to warm the enthusiasm of all interested students of the humanizing forces of the centuries. Ponder the unifying and civilizing influence of a great common faith, and even the value of a com- mon " sacred " language, in ignoring a hundred fron- tiers and as many dialects. Consider this constant attack upon the evils of feudalism and provincial hatreds and jealousies. It is true, indeed, that many church leaders were themselves amazingly narrow; but, on the whole, Christianity was interpreted in a manner that hastened rather than retarded the CHURCH AND STATE 25 nationalization of the peoples. Constructive leaders, whether of tribe or province or nation or people, usually found in the church a willing ally. Hos- pitals, monasteries that were also refuges and hostels, and schools and universities, gradually spread across western Asia, northern Africa, and Europe. Everywhere that Christ was proclaimed the poor and the suffering were not without a measure of defense against the crafty, the greedy, and the powerful. The social activities of medieval Christianity were in fact almost too comprehensive and ambitious. The functions of the State were too often absorbed by the church, and the possibilities of ameliorative and corrective governmental social measures were not rightly developed. The medieval church in some directions attempted a monopoly on social service. It contains an in- structive parable for our own study. There is not a little actual jealousy of the State on the part of some of our religious social workers. It is well to remember the homely axiom that it is better to get ten men to work than to do the work of ten men. But in spite of this mistaken policy of absorbing too often the functions and occupying the very throne of the State, the church of the middle cen- turies, by its wonderful easing of living conditions, its regenerative effect upon the serfs, its check upon rapacious barons and princes, and its general influ- 26 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE ence toward a more humane social order, strongly evidenced the " social inevitableness " of the redemp- tion of Christ's gospel. Our Saviour raised the apostolic church from the dead formalism of Judaism and the deadly corruption of heathenism. The metaphysicians and politicians bound this risen Lazarus with the grave- clothes of State-churchism and scholasticism and sacramentarianism. But even in this stifif and un- comfortable bondage the hindered Lazarus served the social needs of the shadowed centuries with surprising effectiveness. It would seem that the freeing of this Lazarus by the events, first of the Renaissance, and then of the Protestant Reformation, would be accompanied by a great advance in the effective service of society. And, in spite of the vast energy necessarily conse- crated to mere vindication and self-maintenance by Protestant Christianity, this is found to be true. Social conditions were stirred mightily. But now the social contribution of Christianity becomes more largely a mental one. The Bible is offered, and the mind of the race is called into a stimulating arena. The rate of mental action is increased greatly; the common man receives the( blessing of a new intellectual world ; the beginnings of our great movements for popular education take shape under such men as Comenius of Moravia and Melancthon of Germany. The corruptions accumulating in Christianity ever SOCIAL PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 27 since Origen began allegorizing and Constantine be- gan patronizing, are now carefully examined, diag- nosed, and, in large part, remedied. Civil and religious liberty are now dimly seen to be inherent in the nature of the gospel. These are social principles of vast potency, and, once released, gather to themselves a goodly com- pany of related social principles as well. The towering and autocratic system of Calvinism takes sudden, almost miraculous form, and makes all earthly distinctions so shrink in comparison that men's minds are even prepared for the challenging of existing governments and the abolition of great systems of class and caste and privilege. The chosen of God feared not the chosen of earth. The Bible has been called by a prominent mate- rialist "the most democratic book in the world." Its release and circulation begins at once to grind down the mountains of haughty, entrenched human distinctions, and thus begins the grading of the road for the march of democracy. The activities of the Reformation developed a tremendous social dynamic, and stored power and inspiration freely used ever since in making a way for freedom and equality. Wise students will al- ways rank the sixteenth century as second only to the first century in social significance. Both periods seemed to fill mighty reservoirs, from which we have drawn not only the refreshment of a per- sonal, spiritual religion, but such immeasurably 28 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE vitalizing and even revolutionary social principles as the equality of all men in the mind of the Creator and " the sufficiency of the soul in religion." Pure democracy was the birth of Pentecost. It was recovered, in principle at least, by the Refor- mation. It will some day be approximated in human society around the globe. And it will be main- tained only by an open Bible, and a Bible in which our confidence remains undiminished. Even the French Revolution — ^which I hold was a force containing infinitely more good than evil — with its apparent detachment from Protestantism, obtained its program and inspiration, and explosive too, from America and England, and thus borrowed what those two countries had in turn received from Luther, Wycliffe, and Calvin. In light of the fact that the great majority of the Revolutionary leaders and soldiers in our Amer- ican history were of Calvinistic training, John Cal- vin has been called the founder of the American government. But it is equally to his credit that he, an expatriated Frenchman, protected from his own race by a Swiss frontier, should, after all, have reached Paris in the end by way of Phila- delphia and London. But Calvin was only one illustration — ^the greatest, possibly — of the awakening shock of the Reforma- tion upon the mentality of the sixteenth, seven- teenth, and eighteenth centuries. The growing ranks and the multiplying institu- SOCIAL CONTRIBUTION OF THE REFORMATION 29 tions of the men of the unchained Book banished once and forever the ages of dreams and com- placencies. To think is a social service. The evangel, given the wings of the press, chal- lenged the mental possibilities of man. The social contribution of the Reformed Churches is too vast and rich to be described in a single appreciative sentence. In addition to all energies needed for self-assertion, the new or recovered doc- trines radiated civil reforms of startling thorough- ness. The social and intellectual transformation of barbarous Scotland, the titanic energies developed in puny Holland, the regal influence of the secondary city of Geneva, and the dramatic moral, social, and political, as well as military triumphs of England under Cromwell — all these are vivid lessons on the social resources of the gospel no less than re- minders of the power of a pure evangelism. Wherever the Reformed Churches were made wel- come, the lot of the people was an improved one socially. Wherever the Reformation was suppressed in blood, the state of society not only showed no improvement, but soon gave evidence of actual decadence. And then, once safely established in northern Europe and Great Britain and America, the puri- fied gospel rose to its ultimate social meanings, and began that heroic attack upon a whole planet's sip and maladjustments and ignorance and misery that we now call the Modern Missionary Movement. It 30 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE is worth while in passing to remember that Germany and Denmark and Switzerland first contributed their heroes and martyrs for this profoundly significant advance. England followed, and America will have the honor of eventually surpassing her sister nations in the significance and extent and practical nature of her contribution. The indissoluble relationship of the work of " Social Service " to the gospel of the grace of God is nowhere so clearly or extensively demonstrated as in this Modern Missionary Crusade. To avoid the necessity of more than a sentence on this point, let me simply suggest the perusal of some such book as " Christian Missions and Social Progress," by Dennis. The case is complete and sweeps the mind to one unalterable conclusion, namely, that the grace of God imparted through Christ's redemption creates of each intelligent recipient a social servant. It is possible to do social service without a heart- knowledge of Christ, but it is apparently impos- sible to have a heart-knowledge of Christ and not do social service. When we add to this fact of the " far-flung bat- tle-line " of Christian missions in its deadly grapple with the hoary entrenched social wrongs of the non- Christian world, the splendid, steady, cumulative advance of the evangelical church in the " home- lands " upon such social evils as slavery, intemper- ance, and mammonism, we are justified in a feeling of profound thankfulness that at length in the end AN AVAILABLE GOSPEL 3 1 of the ages, the full social resources of the gospel are about to be utilized. The gospel is now more fully understood and more widely and wisely applied than in any other previous age. The church now has the experience and achieve- ment of other ages to warn, guide, and inspire it. The gospel will be called upon to do increasingly difficult and delicate tasks as it goes on into the future, but it will always be found to contain within itself the necessary social wisdom and dynamic for the victorious completion of its undertakings, and it will always be in its untrammeled future what it has proved to be even in its seriously hindered past, the one great guarantor of social advance and the guardian of the true happiness and progress of humankind. Ill social service and evangelism 'indivisible A mighty Fortress is our God, A Bulwark never failing; Our Helper he amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing; For still our ancient foe Doth seek to work us woe; His craft and power are great, And, armed with cruel hate. On earth is not his equal. Did we in our own strength confide Our striving would be losing; Were not the right Man on our side. The Man of God's own choosing; Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he; Lord Sabaoth is his name, From age to age the same. And he must win the battle. And though this world, with devils filled. Should threaten to undo us; We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim — We tremble not for him; His rage we can endure. For lo ! his doom is sure, One little word shall fell him. That word above all earthly powers. No thanks to them, abideth; The Spirit and the gifts are ours Through him who with us sideth. Let goods and kindred go. This mortal life also; The body they may kill ; God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever. — Martin Luther (Hedge). Ill SOCIAL SERVICE AND EVANGELISM INDIVISIBLE THERE are two reasons, therefore, for a belief in social salvation. The first reason is found in the nature of social necessities; man cannot be treated apart from the treatment of his relationships. The second reason is found in the nature of the divinely revealed gospel; its history demonstrates that it inevitably attacks social evil and rebuilds social life whenever it is even partially released for the task. Now evangelism, even in the restricted sense of winning men one by one to repentance and faith, is the guarantee of sbcial service. It is, then, quite surprising to note the more or less deliberate attempt in these days to divide Chris- tian men into two camps, the one bearing the blazon of evangelism, the other the banner of social serv- ice, and Christian leaders should stoutly resist this movement. Not to believe in both is to believe properly in neither. As already indicated, the Christian host has al- ways, particularly in so far as it has stressed con- 35 36 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE version and regeneration, been active in social serv- ice. Each generation of disciples has had its great movement of attack upon society and its contribu- tion to a better social order. One generation won for the world the right to the Scriptures with all the mental and spiritual release implied in that access. Another generation resolutely attacked slavery, and finally made it an outcast. Still another generation of evangelicals formed line of battle against the liquor habit and traffic. In all these social movements the converted, regenerated men of the hour were not a perfect unit, but their unity in the redemption of Christ guaranteed a final rough unity of alignment. Our own generation of saints is now completing the tasks handed down to us, maintaining earnestly our hard-won ground. We are pressing the tem- perance battle. We are completing the evangeliza- tion of the world. Wie are carrying the flag of Christian democracy into the last forts of abso- lutism and State-churchism. In addition, we are thrilling all along the line to a call for an attack upon the ramparts of mammon. The social order must be changed. The same injustice and intolerance found in slavery or in the papacy is found in the present workings of capi- talism. We have no choice but to expose the anti- Christian thing. We must not compromise with its evil principle. We must " be ready unto every good work." It is not the will of Christ that our cities EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE ONE 37 should be built with slums in one quarter and boulevards in another. It is not his will that sump- tuous stores should flourish upon profits made out of the underpaying or the Overworking of clerks. It is a horrible thing that we should be silent when a thousand perversions of justice and oppressions of the poor and feeble occur daily in the city and national life. But injustice is as much the product of ignbrance as of sin. We must scorn the evil, but we must patiently pave the way for the advance of society by our redoubled effort to teach, illuminate, evan- gelize, and unselfishly lead and serve. Annuncia- tion, not denunciation, is our program. It is good to be a prophet if we remember the constructive work of the prophets. The great reformers of Israel were indeed reformers. Our Christian obligation, then, is to look with anointed eyes upon the evils of the time, and valiantly undertake the drudgery of their removal; mainly, however, in the method of a young Bona- parte who conquered absolutism in Piedmont and Lombardy by organizing representative republics, supplanting the antiquated by rallying men to a new ideal of government. Men have said that evangelism is the whole and social service but the part. But it is as true to say that evangelism is but a part of social service. They are fundamentally one. He who does not evan- gelize, winning his fellows to Christ as earnestly 38 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE as he can, robs society of its main opportunity to advance. He who thinks his whole duty done when he has thus influenced his fellows to Christ has narrowed and discredited evangelism. Let no man divide us. We all believe in that Saviour who has his designs both upon the man and the man's relations to his fellows. We should, every one of us, cheer and follow both the banner of evangelism and the banner of social service, for in the plan of God they are both moving side by side at the head of the advancing host of God upon earth. It may be that we shall be led to specialize in the one phase or the other. But we must have a genuine and thorough appreciation for our brother- leader in the other phase. Shall the infantry of evangelism sneer at the artillery of social service? Shall the artillery planted to shell entrenched wrong forget that its line of advantage in its attack on social sin is held by the infantry of evangelism, and that its guns would be silenced and captured were it not for the supports? The plain fact is that evangelism and social service are of the nature of the gospel and so much contrary to the natural man that they should settle into a friendship born of common persecutions. If some social worker bemoans to me the lack of response on the part of the church to some sorely needed social propaganda, I can quickly match him EVANGELISM NOT PROPERLY RECOGNIZED 39 with an earnest evangelist, who finds the passion for soul-saving in some communities almost non- existent. Ecclesiastical pride and formality have often made the way of evangelism hard. Even great educational institutions on evangelical foundations have sometimes been so short-sighted and narrow- visioned as to attempt a virtual ostracism of soul-winning methods and messages. Few even of our evangelical seminaries have a thorough course on the principles, history, and methods of evangelism. The history of evangelism is largely a history of lay movements. The incarnation of the Bible in the common man, unversed in ecclesiastical politics and unstarched with a religious learning more philo- sophical than evangelical, has often given birth to great evangelistic movements that really constituted a rebuke to religious leaders and a reconversion of the nominal church. Evangelism has never had a universal consent on the part of church leaders, and never will have. It is too democratic and too vigor- ous in its attack upon church sins. Its own per- versions and weaknesses occur to our minds, but its opponents have mainly been those who have been more religious than Christian. The vastly beneficial effect of the great revivals of history, and the remarkable showing of the modern evangelistic churches as distinguished from those more formal in their method, is a sufficient answer to 40 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE the depreciation of evangelism too often heard in pres- ent-day responsible circles. Too many social work- ers seem to conceive of the church as a fixed number of perfectly equipped Christians who are standing in complete readiness to undertake social battles and fail to do so only because of the lack of interest. The church, in reality, is fighting for its own exist- ence with every new generation, and a very large proportion of its energies must ever be given to recruiting and instructing its converts. During the American Civil War, at a time when there were over two millions of soldiers in uniform on the Northern side alone, the Federal forces were not able to bring into actual action in a given battle- field one-tenth of that number. The obligations of recruiting new soldiers, of caring for sick ones, of exchanging for captured ones, of hunting up de- serters, of training raw levies, of evolving proper leadership, of suppressing enemies other than those in the open field, and of holding ground already gained, weighed so heavily upon the government of the hour that it did well to get a tenth of its troops into any advance movement. So the Baptist churches (to use a denominational illustration) in the United States must spend an immense amount of spiritual energy in recruiting, training, caring for weak brethren, reclaiming the lapsed, and properly holding ground gained in the past, as well as in advancing upon the social wicked- ness of the hour. Evangelism in politics, in military SOCIAL VALUE OF EVANGELISM 4I service, "or in religion is too profoundly vital both as principle and method to be undervalued, save by those whose minds incline to be careless. And then, to assume another angle in our discus- sion, it is interesting to find Charles G. Finney a leader of the Abolition Movement, and Dwight L. Moody a founder of schools, coffee-clubs, and Young Men's Christian Associations, as well as an active organizer of the Christian Commission of Civil War days. It is of significance to study the social effect on the hard-drinking backwoods dis- tricts of the evangelistic work of Knapp and other soul-winners and sin-denouncers. John Wesley was a faithful evangelist and a trainer of other evan- gelists. He would have scorned any commission that confined itself to social reforms and did not make a direct attack upon the individual's sins. Yet his work was of the first importance in the social" evolution of England. He created " dry districts " in old England that have never sold liquor since. He demanded that the popular sin of smuggling should be considered a bar to church-membership. He was interested in things that made for the wel- fare of the body and mind as well as the spirit. Yet he did not call his gospel a social gospel. At eighty-five years of age Wesley writes his last letter to Wilberfbrce, encouraging him in his fight against slavery. Whitefield's interest in reform and philan- thropy is well known. The famous involuntary con- tribution of Benjamin Franklin, the Deist, was made MODERN EVANGELISTS 43 and John McNeil, and the inseparables, A. J. Gor- don and Arthur T. Pierson, were men who made their messages felt in ever-widening circles. Let us remember that it was the Gordon whom careless critics have called a " mystic," whose voice rang as clearly for the Union in Boston as the more famous Beecher's did in Brooklyn, It was Gordon too, who suffered arrest to aid the citizens of Boston win back their ancient right of free speech on Boston Common, and it was he again who long ago advo- cated equal suffrage when it was no sure ticket to public favor so to do. These men about Moody were evangelists and evangelistic pastors. But they were sturdy world- citizens as well. What good, moral cause has not received impetus from Gipsy Smith, and J. Wilbur Chapman, and Biederwolf, and Francis, and Riley, and J. Q. A. Henry ? They, and men like them, have developed institu- tions for the uneducated, the outcast, the victims of liquor and morphine. They have made thousands of social pariahs and social parasites into real social assets. They have strengthened and sweetened the whole fife of the civilized world by their loyalty to a world-wide gospel with all its social implications. I feel sad indeed, when I hear young faddists, equipped with a weak, self-evolved, or professor- derived, semi^rationalistic philosophy, starting out in their chosen career of helping society by careless D 44 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE depreciation of these men of God and true servants of the people. Perhaps General Booth and the Salvation Army give us as good an illustration as any obtainable of the dependence of social betterment upon the de- voted winning of the lost to Christ. Sociology owes not a few of its very terms and principles, not to speak of methods, to the experiences of these radical evangelists. And it is well to remind ourselves that the almost incredible social influence of the Young Men's Christian Associations of the world has builded itself as a superstructure upon an uncom- promising evangelical foundation. The associations of North America have this very year ringingly reaffirmed the " evangelical test " for voting mem- bership. I have not failed to notice in my nineteen years' ministry as pastor, teacher, and evangelist that those pastors who are most intensely evangelistic are, in the main, the most effective leaders of social right- eousness in their respective communities. I could, out of my own experience, give a volume of in- cidents substantiating this statement. Perhaps it is justifiable in view of the foregoing that I should permit myself here to state definitely my profound conviction that a passion for lost men and a persistent winning of them to Christ consti- tutes the greatest single contribution to the common good. Out of such a passion inevitably springs a will- THE TYPE OF MEN NEEDED 45 ingness — nay, an eagerness — to smite and demolish any and every evil thing. And out of this first-hand dealing with soul-material, there evolves a practical wisdom in human nature of the first value in the erecting of social institutions of an effective sort. The greatest need of the evangelical church of to-day is not two types of leadership — the one a leadership in social applications and the other in in- dividual applications of the one gospel — but an in- creased number of men of the type of Shaftesbury, Mott, Moody, Broadus, Nevius, F. B. Smith, Speer, Marion Lawrance, F. B. Meyer, John Henry Jowett, I. J. Lansing, H. C. Mabie, Len G. Broughton, Chaplain McCabe, Henry Clay Trumbull, and A. J. Gordon, — men very diverse indeed in personality and method, but none of them advocates of a halved gospel; all of them of the same substance in that their adherence was given to no weak or deprived or partial gospel. They have endeavored to be true to the whole profound circle of the one gospel's application. I name these men almost incidentally. There are many other names worthy of a place with theirs. But these illustrate the kind of leadership a great time like unto ours demands — a leadership spring- ing from a regenerated life, and a message com- prising the whole of the wonderful gospel of the grace of God. We are about to possess and to administer the full gospel more widely than ever before in the world's 46 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE history. As we approach this privilege we are hindered by one group of religious leaders, who find themselves able to appreciate the significance of the gospel as to the special needs of to-day only by rejecting the meanings contained in the gospel for yesterday, to-day, and all time. The other group of leaders is loyal to all elements of the gospel that are timeless and yet fails to take advantage of the peculiar resources of the gospel for the needs of the hour now upon us. The correct and only adequate attitude of mind to assume is one of profound appreciation, yea, personal experience, of the changelessness of the gospel, and at the same time one of keen recognition of the peculiar needs and opportunities of our own generation. In each successive age one duty remains ever unchanged — that of winning men and women to our Lord Jesus Christ and the utilizing of their redeemed lives to the highest good of all the race. But each successive age shows to an alert and thoughtful Christian leader a somewhat changed alignment and a special age opportunity. True Christian leadership will never be charac- terized by an attempt to divorce evangelism and social service. What God hath joined together let not religious partisanship put asunder. I have a friend who is famous across the land for his intense and radical devotion to the welfare of laboring men. A thousand stirring battles for INTELLIGENT SERVICE AND THE GOSPEL 4/ better human living conditions have witnessed him at their center. About a year ago he was approached and ques- tioned by a social worker, interested in the same broad social issues, though scarcely possessed of the same flaming spirit of devotion. " Why is it," asked the critic, " that you are identified with an orthodox evangelical movement? You are far too well in- formed and intelligent on social service to be in such an alignment." The reply was both courteous and significant. " And you," said my friend, " are too intelligent to be found properly elsewhere." IV EVANGELISM, SOCIAL SERVICE, AND THE NEW RATIONALISM Faith of our fathers! living still In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword; Oh, how our hearts beat high with joy, Whene'er we hear that glorious word ; Faith of our fathers, holy faith! We will be true to thee till death ! Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, Were still in heart and conscience free; How sweet would be their children's fate If they, like them, could die for thee! Faith of our fathers, holy faith ! We will be true to thee till death. Faith of our fathers, God's great power Shall soon all nations win for thee; And through the truth that comes from God Mankind shall then be truly free. Faith of our fathers, holy faith ! We will be true to thee till death. Faith of our fathers, we will love Both friend and foe in all our strife, And preach thee too, as love knows how, By kindly words and virtuous life. Faith of our fathers, holy faith! We will be true to thee till death. — Frederick W. Faber. IV EVANGELISM, SOCIAL SERVICE, AND THE NEW RATIONALISM DOWN beneath the unhealthy movement of the hour, that would assume to divide the indi- visible content of the gospel and then ask that men should take sides to their credit or discredit, there is discernible a theological explanation. For centuries the evangelical church had battled for self-expression in theology. Out of long ages of repression at last there arose the stately, sub- stantial Confessions of the sixteenth century. They were not without the fault of extrascriptural ele- ments. In particular, scholasticism mingled its pretentious stucco with the granite of the Bible doctrines. But, on the whole, the work was well done, and will never, so long as the Scrip- tures are loved and beheved in, suffer any very radical loss. Phrasing will change, minor amendments be made, additions be rather freely constructed. But the Reformation gave not a temporary house to the Christian thinker, but in large measure a perma- nent though incomplete home. It will have to be 51 52 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE altered to meet future needs, but it will not have to be rebuilt. But the recovered doctrines of the Bible were better stated than lived. Wretched wranglings of political religionists and ecclesiastical politicians made of Bible truth a dreary battlefield. Men who professed anxiety to give proper definition of sanc- tification acted, sometimes, the part of unholy and bitter men. Others who professed great zeal in phrasing the doctrines of salvation by faith, and not by ordinance, gave little evidence that they them- selves were saved men or possessed Biblical faith. No more miserable pages in all religious history are to be perused than those pages of doctrinal squabbling and church politics following the death of Luther. Lutheranism, at least in Germany, became so far as leadership went decidedly too political. Doc- trines were misused as political material. Cunning and unregenerate priests, pastors, and princes played intricate games with religious prejudices and con- victions. Instead of following the recovery of doctrine and its splendid reassertion by a zealous and loving evan- gelism, the Reformation was followed by an era of mental rigidity. This could not last. Unbelieving men of clear and forceful mind grew up in the very church citadels and propagated rationalism. Germany became first a cold-bed of scholasticism, and then a hot-bed of rationalism. Had it not been EVANGELISTIC FAILURES IN THE PAST 53 for the enduring, sturdy, hearty qualities of the German common people with their tenacious grip on Luther's translation of the Scriptures, the whole land might have been swept into unbelief. There is nothing so intellectually provoking as a doctrine announced and valued apart from a corre- sponding human experience. The Reformation seemed at first to exhaust itself in definition, and much of the territory won in the earlier stages, Belgium, Bohemia, southern France, Saxony, a por- tion of Poland and Hungary, went back eventually under the papacy. The failure of the Reformed Churches to evangelize vigorously and passionately, and thus transmute their mighty doctrines into life, led to loss of ground, and finally to an alarmingly general reaction of rationalism. But the great revival of evangelism, particularly under Wesley and Whitefield, and the beginnings of the Modern Missionary Movement by the Danish and German Lutherans, the Moravians and English Baptists, at last promised a full utilization of the splendid Reformation results. And we are now, after the achievement of a progressive century, in a fair way to evangelize the whole planet unless we shall be overtaken and halted by our great past failure. For just as the corrupt and contented Eastern church of the eighth and ninth centuries was pun- ished for its non-evangelistic spirit by the growth near its very heart of the cancerous religion of 54 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE Mohammed, so the evangelistic failure of Protes- tantism in the seventeenth century started an evil growth of unmanly rationalism — a rationalism that would have had a larger justification in our minds by reason of its protest against dead doctrinal adhe- sion, had not its advocates been willing to profess outwardly adherence to those same doctrines for " bread-and-butter reasons," while teaching, in the shelter of the classrooms, or in the pages of books and pamphlets, a system directly negativing the church that nourished and sustained them. Perhaps no worse instance of " graft " was ever furnished by a city alderman salaried by a munici- pality only to betray it for his own profit than is presented in a score of European, British, and American universities by a professor who has re- ceived his support from an evangelical foundation only to deny its doctrines in his classes. The cor- rupt alderman has the advantage of not grafting in the name of God. Maeterlinck has all unwittingly given us the picture of this type of religionist in his description of the moth in the beehive. Surely we are acting as stupidly as the bees in this matter ! Let us be thankful that rationalism has had some sincere advocates who paid a heavy price of sacrifice for a mistaken system. We honor them and warn them to deal unsparingly with the men who voice rationalistic doctrines from under the protection of evangelical schools and churches and chaplaincies. Such pitiful temporizers are of no THE MODERN RATIONALISTS 55 value to any intellectual movement. It is sad in- deed to see the modernists attempt to remain in the obsolete system of Romanism rather than coura- geously repudiate it. It is equally sad to see the present theological movement in the heart of the evangelical churches of Europe and Britain and America — a movement that has for its essence a re- pudiation of the inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture and yet prefers to make its home and con- duct its negative propaganda under the very shelter of the system of thought and life it antagonizes. Why is it so foreign to this theological fraternity to march out from the evangelical shelter as boldly as ever the Free Kirk men moved out under Chal- mers from the State Kirk of Scotland, or the old- time Baptists boldly relinquished the prestige of the Pedobaptist positions and undertook, in behalf of pure doctrine, the burden of double taxes, or Ralph Waldo Emerson turned from the Congregational communion when he no longer believed in its ordinances ? I speak of this rationalizing, if not thoroughly rationalistic, theology because it is related to the subject under discussion — evangelism and social service. For when a religious writer or preacher becomes conscious that he is at heart disloyal to the evangelical position and finds his mind uncer- tain on revelation, atonement, justification by faith, and the kindred doctrines of grace, he is very anx- ious, if he is an earnest man, to justify himself and S6 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE occupy his life-opportunity with some worthy en- deavor, and he therefore applauds and exploits so- cial service and specializes in social activities. This was hardly so much the case a generation ago. Then iiien took refuge from their own consciousness of the departing splendor of their former faith in the Word of God by a devotion to a literary career. Pulpits of brilliant semi-rationalists exploited Tol- stoy, Browning, Ibsen, Walt Whitman, and Emer- son. These men did no small service at times in educating the taste of their auditors, and were even able to stir men to nobler living with this secondary gospel. But the present way is somewhat different. The present plan is the espousing of worthy social movements. A man may in good conscience re- pudiate the doctrine of his church, apparently, by consecrating himself to social helpfulness. I am personally glad that this career of social helpfulness in education, politics, and the social application of religion is being eagerly sought by men of uncertain doctrinal conviction. I cannot but lament that men who are capable of so splendid social service should not be able to find the right doctrinal position, and thus have the joy of possess- ing the inexhaustible springs of motive in social betterment which flow from the base of the Rock of Ages. To the true evangelical social service is not a career; it is but a consequence. It is not assumed as a substitute for lost theological conviction, but SOUND DOCTRINE AND SOCIAL SERVICE 57 is an inseparable part of the profound gospel of redemption through the blood of Christ. I am not jealous of any man who anywhere does anything of value to humankind. Surely we can applaud Buddha's reforms in India, and even Mo- hammed's iconoclasm in Arabia. With Livingstone, we can call a blessing upon the Jew or Moham- medan who will help heal any running sore of the world. We shall hear with thankfulness of Uni- tarians, Mormons, Spiritualists, or Rationalists who have struck a good blow anywhere against an evil thing or have laid a stone, however humble, in the construction of a socially beneficial institution. But we shall be wise enough to see the double emphasis contained in the teaching of the Scriptures and the teaching of the Christian centuries, and will not allow our rationalistic friends, even though they wear our own denominational name, to dis- credit the cross of Calvary by attempting to dis- associate from that Sacrifice the beneficent aura of social illumination that it has always worn. If others are admitted to be wise in serving so- ciety for motives apart from the Bible, we shall feel ourselves doubly happy to be in the conflict, both with individual sin and sOcial degeneration, under the direct orders of the Christ of God. We shall be as stubborn as Paul, I hope, in uniting the considera- tion of and the adherence to the lofty doctrines of the inspired Word, with the most devoted and strenuous and cheerful service to our fellow men. 58 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE We will at least allow no modern rationalist to offer to us the opportunity to advance the general good of the race with the proviso that this service be considered as a new and different and higher form of Christianity than that of Paul and John and Peter and James. We shall venture as heretofore to trace the sources of both social and individual salvation far back up into the mighty, majestic heights of the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. V THE DAY FOR BREADTH AND DEPTH O Zion, haste, thy mission high fulfilling, To tell to all the world that God is Light; That he who made all nations is not willing One soul should perish, lost in shades of night. Behold how many thousands still are lying Bound in the darksome prison-house of sin. With none to tell them of the Saviour's dying, Or of the life he died for them to win. 'Tis thine to save from peril or perdition The souls for whom the Lord his life laid down ; Beware lest, slothful to fulfil thy mission. Thou lose one jewel that should deck his crown. Publish glad tidings; Tidings of peace; Tidings of Jesus, redemption and release. — James Walch. V THE DAY FOR BREADTH AND DEPTH THE call of the day can be simply interpreted. It is a call for men of breadth and depth. The church needs such to serve her. Men of breadth are needed; men who will avoid the error of treating a given doctrine of the faith apart from its related truths. The microscopic method is of great value in Biblical study, but the user of the microscope is wofully tempted to ignore the telescope. To illustrate, I sometimes meet a man so wise in individual Scriptures as to believe in the imminent return of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a rich day for any Bible student when that great Bible fact becomes a part of his knowledge and anticipation. But occasionally this man, with the precious posses- sion of the Blessed Hope, fails to see its social sig- nificance. He reads of the moral degeneration that will immediately precede the second advent, and he hastily infers that man is a failure, that in a sense God has abandoned the working out of a perfect social order on this planet, and that there- fore social service is a misuse of Christian energy. 6i 62 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE Why slave to rectify human conditions when the Scriptures, that cannot lie, prophesy a final failure? This man fails to get a telescopic view of Bible teaching. He does not see that each dispensation ends with an ebb-tide of failure and degradation, but that each incoming dispensation is fuller and richer than its predecessor. He does not consider that the social gain, as dispensation follows dispen- sation, far outweighs all losses, and that the march of the elect across the planet in successive genera- tions is destined to culminate in both a dread ca- tastrophe of judgment and a glorious resultant of social redemption. It is true that our Lord will per- sonally establish his kingdom, but only in part will he bring its materials with him. Just as no king of earth has ever erected from imported materials an entirely new government, so Christ Jesus will not lose the spiritual achievements of the centuries, but will build them into his Messianic millennium. He is the David as well as the Solomon of the temple of the kingdom. He is now gathering his qpaterials both on earth and in heaven. ( If we remember the waves on the ocean beach, we shall be helped to a right view. One roller succeeds another roller, until at last the time for the " seventh wave " occurs. This wave, destined to climb farther up in victory over the shore than its predecessors, will be preceded by a veritable uncovering of all the ugliness of the ocean-bed. The whole sea seems to retreat as a preparation, FAITH VERSUS FATALISM 63 showing the winding weeds and slimy rocks and un- couth life of the ooze. Then comes the glory of the great oscillation, and a veritable cathedral of flashing foam builds itself over the uncovered ugli- ness, and moves in majestic might far up above the highest mark yet attained by the tide. Thus the coming dark days of tribulation and re- action will be the prelude, a brief prelude, marking the near approach of the crowning social dispensa- tion under the kingship of Christ. Let us labor on. No effort either of evangelism or social service will be swept away, but be con- served the rather by the events of the future. Men must be broad enough to see the grand ob- jectives of revelation. The present theological em- phasis upon the Second Coming of Christ is cheer- ing. Only those who have given this pivotal truth its proper place can sweep the centuries with under- standing eyes. I covet for every social worker the steadying comfort as well as the veritable cosmic thrill that comes from the Blessed Hope. Sir Robertson NicoU has wisely said that it would be to the advantage of the church to hear more of His Coming from her preachers. The element of breadth has to do also with the obligations of church history and, in fact, with all human history. Our leaders must furnish them- selves with not only the Biblical material, but the illustrations of Biblical principles in the recorded life of the race. The study of history will not 64 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE necessarily broaden one, however, and the student must beware of becoming entangled in philosophies disguised as histories. It is not reading either the laudatory or prejudiced annals of a military or priestly caste that will give width of sympathy and understanding, but a faithful attempt to follow the life of the race as revealed, almost accidentally at times, in many histories. Ferrero, that modern of moderns, has indicated a proper interpretation of history, and the near future promises a rewriting and new understanding of past centuries. The days of stately but inaccurate Gibbon, of prejudiced Hume, of brilliant but impulsive Macaulay, and of childlike Neander, may well yield to historians who shall be less masters than servants, and shall permit first sources in human documents to speak more fre- quently and directly in their pages. Breadth relates itself especially to the natural sciences in these days. It is of profound interest to me to note that in Spurgeon's Pastor's College the great founder sensed the future enough to provide, in a rather straitened curriculum, a place for natural science. The future modifications in theological statement will not be forced on the church by philosophers. Philosophy is, after all, to the Christian, provided he be a settled man and grounded in the Scriptures, a very secondary mental employment. To him the pragmatism of Henry James, the rhapsodies of Henri Bergson, and even the metaphysics of Plato, THE MINISTRY OF SCIENCE 65 are hardly more than high forms of mental amuse- ment. Philosophy, to be agreeable to the Christian, must agree with the Word of God, and there is no longer any enthusiasm to be aroused by a thoroughly Christian philosophy, for it is too tame to please the jaded scholastics, who prefer to look eagerly into the mental content of each new philosophical novelty- vender for the mere joy of the process and the pro- and-con mental battle that of course follows. But, whereas, to quote Paul Elmer More, philo- sophical science may be " illegitimate and per- nicious," the case is far different with pure science. Science proper has its limitations, but it has a constant and inestimable service to render to religion, and no more healthy and progressive step could be taken by our colleges, and even seminaries and Bible Institutes, than to secure to our future ministers and educators a good acquaintance with the plain and solid sciences that can stand the laboratory. I have attempted to avoid quotation as far as possible, but I cannot resist a few sentences from that great evangelical pastor and social reformer. Dale of Birmingham. He is speaking to theological students : You, I hope, will make it a matter of conscience to avoid the error committed by theologians in past ages, and committed in another form by some scientific men in our own times. As religious teachers, you have absolutely no authority over questions lying within the province of science. At no point in the working out of any scien- tific problem have you, as religious teachers, any right to 66 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE interfere. You have no right to ask for any consideration of the interests of religious faith in the settlement of any scientific controversy. The judges in your law courts would resent as an insult to their integrity any suggestion that they should put the slightest pressure upon the law in order to favor the interests of their personal friends or of their political party. You offer an equal insult to the integrity of scientific men when you betray any wish that in their scientific inquiries they should be influenced by the way in which it is supposed that their conclusions might affect the authority of divine revelation. It is part of their religious duty to settle scientific questions on scientific grounds, and on scientific grounds only. For you to wish them to work under a bias is the indication of a flaw in your intellectual honesty, and a decisive proof of a want of courage and firmness in your religious faith. Breadth will involve too, a serious sharing of the world-wide enterprises of the evangelical church. The position of any minister, or for that matter, any modem Christian, who is not being educated by par- ticipation in the great heroic eflfort now being made to evangelize the world in this generation, is indeed pitiable. It is a task of such varied relationships that its mere consideration is an education to the mind and heart. To be ignorant of the history, the principles, and the present condition of the Modern Missionary Movement is to be unfitted in large measure for effective living in the world oi Christian thought and feeling. This point has been made so often of late that I reluctantly pass it. > The necessary relationship of a truly broad mind to social betterment has already been suggested. FELLOWSHIP WITH OUR LORD (ij Nothing short of a treatise could do this matter adequate justice. And now as to depth. If the call of the hour is for men who are broad in training and sympathy, who are world-citizens, who are keenly concerned in social good and can discern the workings of God in events, the clock of the ages is indicating no less solemnly that the day for depth is not yet past. It will not be enough to serve the church with an illuminated mind. There must be the depth of life that only daily fellowship with the living Christ can provide. For our mental tendencies are ever toward the shallow. We learn only to exult in our knowledge. The luxury of a blush is not felt often enough by us. He who seldom weeps over his own sins be- fore God will even less seldom weep over lost sin- ners. He whose heart is not sometimes hushed with the solemnities and awe of private worship will hardly teach the attributes of God aright, no matter how orthodox his text-book. The extensive tasks of the day, as well as its delicate problems, call for a combination of zeal and gentleness only found in the depths of secret communings. Shepherds are needed. Where shall shepherding hearts be developed ? Roughness, rude- ness, crudeness, narrowness, mere smartness — all these are less likely to be excused to-day than here- tofore. In the brightening light of this alert and keen generation, it behooves us to drop a plummet 68 EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE in our religious experience and even try ourselves whether we be in the faith. We need depth, and we need to descend into the depths. The church of Christ is quivering with the eagerly faced oppor- tunity of its most splendid hour. Shall our contri- bution to her efificiency be that of a life of broadest sympathy and mental culture, yet of deepest con- viction and spiritual communings? Or shall we be amongst those who applaud the one and depreciate or ignore the other? May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ fit us for the glory of his service by that breadth and depth so blessedly symbolized by the Cross of his redemption. May we be baptized into his death, and therefore into a sense of all human conditions. A CREED I believe in Social Service. I believe in Evangelism. I believe that both are inherent in the very nature of the one indivisible gospel of the grace of God in Christ Jesus. I believe in the gospel. 69 A PRAYER Our Father who art in heaven, May the world be so evangelized that in this generation thy name may be hallowed in all nations. May the gods of the heathen abroad and the gods of the new heathenism at home be shattered and vanquished. And may the Lord Jesus speedily return and set up his blessed kingdom so that his program may be completely carried out, his militant will be done, on earth as it is done now in heaven. And in the " little while between " the praying of this prayer and the coming of the King, give us day by day our daily bread. Not my bread, Father, but eur bread. Let none of thy children suffer hunger. And do thou minister to our souls also — ^by for- giving us our trespasses. Not our trespasses against thee alone — ^thbu hast freely forgiven them, or we could not call thee our Father. But forgive us our trespasses against our fellow men, even as we have forgiven them their trespasses against us. We have many of us trespassed against our fellow men by not laboring for human liberty, human equality, and human fraternity. We have profited 70 A PRAYER 71 complacently from an evil social system. We have taken our brother's share of life's blessing and heaven-intended provision. Forgive us our trespasses ! And lead us not into the temptation and perse- cution that will precede the advent of our Lord, for we are too weak to make good confessors, and yet love thee far too much to desire to deny thee. But instead of allotting to us these heavier tests and trials, deliver us from the malignant Evil One, who seeks to vanquish us. Receive us up into the rapture of the saints at the appearing of thy Son from heaven, and build us into the temple of thy eternal purpose. For thine is the coming kingdom And the power to institute and maintain it And the glory that shall radiate from it Forever and forever. Amen. \ \ \ \\ \\ \ ^<^^ \ .N>