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OUTLINES OF SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
OUTLINES 
 
 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE, D.D. 
 
 PRESIDENT OF BOWDOIN "COLLEGE 
 
 Nefa gotft 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND LONDON 
 
 1895 
 
 r 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, i8g5, 
 By MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 NottBooS $teB3 : 
 
 J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Idealism and theology, originally joined to- 
 gether in "the Gospel according to St. John," 
 were put asunder through the estrangement of 
 the Greek and Latin churches. The Greek church 
 put a metaphysic in the place of religion, and paid 
 the penalty in spiritual sterility. The Latin church 
 put authority in the place of reason, and paid the 
 penalty in intellectual barrenness. Protestantism 
 has inherited the Greek formulas without the phi- 
 losophy which gave them meaning, and the Latin 
 distrust of reason without the authority which 
 made dogmatism effective. The remedy lies in a 
 reunion of vital religion with rational theology. 
 
 The time has not come for writing this new the- 
 ology. The returns from psychology and soci- 
 ology, on which it will depend, are not yet in. 
 A man however may blaze a path, even though 
 he lacks the materials and the capacity to build a 
 road. This little book aims to point out the log- 
 ical relations in which the doctrines of theology 
 will stand to each other when the time shall come 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 again for seeing Christian truth in the light of reason 
 and Christian life as the embodiment of love. 
 
 I have called it Social Theology, because the 
 Christianity of Christ and his disciples was pre- 
 eminently a social movement, and because we 
 are looking at everything to-day from the social 
 rather than the individualistic point of view. In 
 ethics, in economics, in sociology, in politics, we 
 no longer treat man as capable of isolation. Units 
 homo, nullus homo. Man is what he is by virtue 
 of his relations to that which he is not. In these 
 special sciences we try to solve the problem of 
 the individual by putting him into right relations 
 with„the forces and persons about him. Christ 
 came to place man in right relations with God, 
 with nature, and with his fellow-men. The modern 
 man translates the Greek ■yjrvy^ij by life rather than 
 soul. The preservation and enrichment of life, not 
 the mere insuring and saving of the soul, is the 
 function of religion which appeals to men to-day. 
 And at this period of transition the adjective 
 " social " serves to call attention to the shifting of 
 emphasis from the abstract and formal relation of 
 the isolated individual to an external Ruler, over 
 to man's concrete and essential relations to the 
 Divine Life manifested in nature, history, and 
 human society. 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 A few paragraphs of this book, amounting to 
 twenty or thirty pages, have appeared in pub- 
 lished sermons and addresses, and in articles in 
 the Andover Review, the Outlook, the Century, 
 and the Forum. The greater part, the relation 
 of parts to each other, and the interpretation of 
 each part in the light of the whole, is entirely 
 new. 
 
 For valuable suggestions and criticisms upon 
 the proofs, my thanks are due to Professor Egbert 
 
 C. Smyth, of Andover Seminary ; Professor George 
 H. Palmer, of Harvard University ; and Professor 
 
 D. Collin Wells, of Dartmouth College. 
 
 With the exception of the first and last chap- 
 ters I have avoided the technical philosophical 
 discussion which theology always invites. In 
 dealing with the grounds of belief in God, in 
 the first chapter, I have found it impossible to 
 treat the subject at all without assuming some 
 familiarity with the results of metaphysical in- 
 quiry. And yet the presentation there made is 
 the merest summary of the idealistic position. In 
 the last chapter also I have introduced a summary 
 of the idealistic objections to asceticism, hedonism, 
 socialism, and promiscuous charity. The general 
 reader is advised to skip both these chapters. 
 Yet it was impossible to omit them from the book 
 
PREFACE 
 
 without leaving it logically very incomplete. For 
 after all metaphysics must be the Alpha, and 
 ethics the Omega, of any theology which is 
 rooted in reason and fruitful in life. 
 
 WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE. 
 
 Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me., 
 January 21, 1895. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Part I. Theological. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i. The World and the Self — The Father .... 3 
 
 2. The Real and the Ideal — The Son 39 
 
 3. The Natural and the Spiritual — The Holy 
 
 Spirit 71 
 
 Part II. Anthropological. 
 
 4. Sin and Law — Judgment . 89 
 
 5. Repentance and Faith- — Salvation 112 
 
 6. Regeneration and Growth — ■ Life 149 
 
 Part III. Sociological. 
 
 7. Possession and Confession — The Church .... 175 
 
 8. Enjoyment and Service — The Redemption of the 
 
 World .... ..... 215 
 
 9. Abstraction and Aggregation — The Organization 
 
 of the Kingdom . .... 233 
 
Part I 
 THEOLOGICAL 
 
SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE WORLD AND THE SELF THE FATHER 
 
 There are three stages in the spiritual develop- 
 ment of man. The first stage is world-conscious- 
 ness; in which he is engrossed by the stream of 
 sensations which come pouring in from the great 
 world without. The second stage is self-conscious- 
 ness; in which he goes forth with eager ambition 
 to subject this outward world of men and things 
 to the forms of his understanding and the service 
 of his will. The third stage is God-consciousness ; 
 in which, unsatisfied with self and the world, he 
 devotes the matured powers of reflection and self- 
 determination to the unselfish service of objective 
 and universal ends. The first stage is the state 
 of nature. The second is the plane of science, 
 art, business, politics, and culture. The third is 
 the sphere of religion. 
 
 These stages are not mutually exclusive. They 
 3 
 
4 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 are rather distinguishable aspects, different de- 
 grees of maturity, of the one indivisible life of 
 man. The higher include the lower. The later 
 take up into themselves the significance of all 
 that has gone before. Science and art fare ill if 
 they ignore the solid ground of sensuous fact. 
 Religion degenerates into an empty form, a use- 
 less and mischievous superstition, if it fails to 
 make close connection with the science and art 
 and business and culture of the age. 
 
 The first of these stages need not detain us 
 long. Psychology tells us there is no pure sen- 
 sation in adult life. Sensations are mere signs 
 which we at once work up into perceptions. Sen- 
 sations are only the raw material of the world our 
 thought constructs. The world pure and simple, 
 apart from the unity and coherence which it re- 
 ceives from the mind which thinks it, is no world 
 at all. It is a chaos, not a cosmos. It is, as Pro- 
 fessor James says of the object of the baby's 
 consciousness, "one big, blooming, buzzing Con- 
 fusion.'' 
 
 The notion that there is a world unrelated to our 
 intelligence, which yet makes impressions on the 
 blank white paper of a passive intellect and drops 
 ready-made ideas into the previously empty cabi- 
 net of a merely receptive mind, is a relic of phil- 
 
THEOLOGICAL 5 
 
 osophical superstition which Kant's Critique of 
 Pure Reason has demolished ; and the last vesti- 
 ges of which modern psychology has swept away. 
 The world we know and talk about, the only world 
 we can conceive and think, is a world which the 
 mind creates for itself out of the materials which 
 sensation brings. One might as well say that the 
 cloth which comes out of a factory is the exclu- 
 sive product of the bales of cotton that are 
 dumped into the picker-room, as to claim that 
 the world as we know it is the exclusive pro- 
 duct of sensation. What the card and the jenny 
 and the loom do to the raw cotton, that the 
 forms and categories of the understanding do to 
 the raw material of sensation. As the cloth is 
 the joint product of the material and the machin- 
 ery, so knowledge is the joint product of sensation 
 and the mind which reacts on it and works it over. 
 The world of mere sensation, therefore, is not the 
 ultimate reality. 
 
 No less disastrous than the effort of the mind 
 to treat the world as ultimate reality is the 
 practical attempt to make it the object of our 
 devotion. At some time or other, we all try 
 the experiment. We go out into the world ex- 
 pecting to find there, ready-made and fitted to 
 our forms, the happiness we crave. But, like the 
 
6 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 prodigal, we soon discover that perpetual feasting 
 ends in feeding swine. The world was not made 
 to order to gratify our wants Of itself, it will not 
 even supply our physical necessities. Nor do our 
 fellowmen stand waiting to receive and execute 
 our orders. " And he began to be in want ; and 
 no man gave unto him," is the pitiful plight in 
 which Nature leaves those who cast themselves 
 blindly upon her bounty. We cannot be satisfied 
 with the husks, which give such perfect satisfac- 
 tion to the swine. The reason is that we are more 
 than they. It was "when he came to himself," 
 that the prodigal determined to return from the 
 far country. As Caflyle has explained it, " Man's 
 unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his great- 
 ness ; it is because there is an infinite in him, 
 which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury 
 under the finite. Will the whole finance ministers 
 and upholsterers and confectioners of modern Eu- 
 rope undertake in joint-stock company to make 
 one shoeblack happy ? They cannot accomplish it 
 above an hour or two ; for the shoeblack also has 
 a soul quite other than his stomach ; and would 
 require, if you consider it, for his permanent satis- 
 faction and saturation, simply this allotment, no 
 more, no less ; God's infinite universe altogether to 
 himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every 
 
THEOLOGICAL 7 
 
 wish as fast as it rose. Always there is a black 
 spot in our sunshine ; it is even, as I said, the 
 shadow of ourselves." Carlyle's shoeblack and 
 Jesus's prodigal are brought up at the same point ; 
 the unsatisfied, infinite self. 
 
 This incapacity of the finite and fleeting world 
 without to satisfy the spirit within, is the half- 
 truth of pessimism and the secret of its charm. 
 
 " We demand 
 Of all the thousand nothings of the hour 
 Their stupefying power ; 
 Ah, yes ; and they benumb us at our call ! 
 Yet still from time to time, vague and forlorn, 
 From the soul's subterranean depth upborne 
 As from an infinitely distant land, 
 Come airs and floating echoes, and convey 
 A melancholy into all our day." 
 
 The quest of pleasure in outward things defeats 
 itself. Cyrenaicism teaches suicide. If man's 
 ultimate relation is to blind and unconscious na- 
 ture, then Schopenhauer is right when he exclaims : 
 " Desires are limitless, claims inexhaustible, and 
 every satisfied desire gives rise to a new one. No 
 possible satisfaction in the world could suffice to 
 still its longings, set a goal to its infinite cravings, 
 and fill the bottomless abyss of the heart. Happi- 
 ness always lies in the future, or else in the past, 
 
8 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 and the present may be compared to a small dark 
 cloud which the wind drives over the sunny plain ; 
 before and behind it all is bright, only it itself 
 always casts a shadow. The present is therefore 
 always insufficient ; but the future is uncertain, and 
 the past irrevocable. Nothing at all is worth our 
 striving, our efforts and struggles, all good things 
 are vanity, the world is bankrupt at all ends, and 
 life is a business which does not pay expenses." 
 
 Neither intellectually nor practically can we rest 
 in mere world-consciousness, and accept the world 
 as the ultimate reality. We must turn next to 
 ourselves. Intra te quosre deum. 
 
 The world within the mind of man, the world as 
 thought makes it, the world of human science and 
 art and history and politics, is throughout an ordered 
 world. All things are firmly bound together by 
 indissoluble laws ; so that a change at one point 
 involves a compensating change in everything 
 even remotely connected with it. Every act that 
 takes place here implies corresponding reaction 
 everywhere. What I do now is at once the 
 product of all my past, and a determining ele- 
 ment, however slight, in all my future. This 
 oak tree now before me, owes its size and shape 
 to thousands of oaks and acorns that have gone 
 before ; to the soil that feeds its roots ; to the 
 
THEOLOGICAL 9 
 
 upheaval, denudation, vegetation, and decay, which 
 formed that soil ; to sunshine and storm ; to 
 measureless cycles of clashing meteors and dif- 
 fused fire mist and glowing earth and cooling 
 crust out of which sunshine and storm were born. 
 This man upon the street derives his present 
 being from countless generations of men and 
 women who bridged for him the gulf between 
 the savage and the civilized estate ; to number- 
 less animal forms which in the struggle for exist- 
 ence won the right of his superior structure to 
 survive ; to liberties secured on ancient battle- 
 fields and institutions inherited from unremem- 
 bered days ; to parents, friends, teachers, books, 
 influences, ideals, inextricably blended in the 
 seamless robe which we all wear and call envi- 
 ronment. 
 
 This world of our thought is one. All things 
 in it stand to each other in reciprocal rela- 
 tions. Each thing must take its definite place 
 by the side of other things in space; each event 
 must take its precise position before and after 
 other events in time ; each quality must be bound 
 up with and dependent upon other qualities under 
 the conception of substance which we put upon 
 groups of qualities in order to hold them together 
 in our minds ; each change must be the correlate 
 
IO SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 of other changes according to the law of cause 
 and effect, whereby we maintain for our thought 
 the identity of the world in the midst of its un- 
 ceasing transformation. 
 
 Thus the world of our own thought, which in 
 fact is the only world we know and can talk 
 about, proves to be a world built up by the 
 activity of our own minds, which reduce the 
 uncoordinated data of sensation to unity and or- 
 der by imposing upon them forms of perception 
 and laws of relation which are inherent, not as 
 formulated propositions, but as modes of opera- 
 tion, in the rational nature of the mind itself. 
 That the world of our thought is one ; that it 
 is an ordered world ; that it is a coherent system 
 of rational and reciprocal relations; and that this 
 unity and rationality of the world we think is 
 due, not to the raw material of sensation dumped 
 into a passive and receptive mind, but to the 
 reaction of an active intelligence which con- 
 tributes out of its own nature the forms and 
 categories by which it reduces the manifold of 
 sensation to the unity of reason, — this, in brief- 
 est possible form, is the positive outcome of the 
 Critique of Kant. 
 
 The order and rationality we find in nature, 
 then, is not material, but mental : it is not im- 
 
THEOLOGICAL I [ 
 
 printed on our senses from without, but is imposed 
 upon sensation from within. And, we must rec- 
 ognize, even at this preliminary stage in the dis- 
 cussion, that, as Herbert Spencer has said, "This 
 necessity we are under to think of the external 
 energy in terms of the internal energy, gives 
 rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic aspect 
 to the Universe. " The world is the great mirror 
 in which our reason sees itself reflected. Of so 
 much Kant makes us sure. Is that all? Can 
 we stop here? Is the intelligence by which 
 we interpret the world simply our intelligence ? 
 Can we rest satisfied in a merely subjective 
 idealism ? 
 
 The raw material, the sensations themselves, 
 we certainly did not create. Kant had to admit 
 an external source from which these sensations 
 come. He, however, placed this source of sen- 
 sation in "things in themselves," out of all pos- 
 sible relation to the mind of man, which can 
 merely receive sensations, but is unable to go 
 behind the immediate returns sensations give. 
 Kant thus prepared the way for the agnosticism 
 of Herbert Spencer. And when Mr. Spencer 
 tells us that " amid the mysteries which become 
 the more mysterious the more they are thought 
 about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, 
 
12 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 that man is ever in presence of an Infinite and 
 Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed " ; 
 and then adds that, "The power manifested 
 throughout the Universe distinguished as mate- 
 rial, is the same power which in ourselves wells 
 up under the form of consciousness " ; and then, 
 having gone so far, stops short with the decla- 
 ration that we can know absolutely nothing of 
 this Power of whose existence we are sure, he is 
 simply translating Kant's inaccessible source of 
 phenomena into his own Unknowable Background 
 of the universe. 
 
 Kant and Spencer leave us with a world which 
 is essentially mental ; a world which our own 
 minds alone cannot explain ; and the certainty that 
 there is something beyond which does explain this 
 world with its " spiritualistic rather than material- 
 istic aspect." 
 
 If the source of phenomena merely gave us sen- 
 sations and nothing more ; if one mind could inter- 
 pret these sensations in one way, and another could 
 interpret them in another ; if there were no reason 
 in the world except that which the individual minds 
 of men impose upon it ; if there were no such thing 
 as verification of the opinion of man by the objec- 
 tive witness of nature ; if there were no objective 
 standard to which all finite minds are compelled to 
 
THEOLOGICAL 1 3 
 
 conform ; if there were no valid and immutable 
 distinction between truth and falsehood, between 
 science and fancy, between proved theory and 
 probable hypothesis, — then indeed the position in 
 which Kant and Spencer leave us would be final 
 and ultimate. 
 
 These very things, however, it is the peculiar 
 achievement of modern science to have established. 
 We can verify our subjective notions by appealing 
 to the test of objective experiment. We make 
 predictions ; and nature fulfils our expectations to 
 the minute. We recognize an established body of 
 scientific truth which we have discovered, not cre- 
 ated ; and which no man may deny without thereby 
 banishing himself from the society of the intelli- 
 gent. We accept a standard of objective truth ; we 
 acknowledge that there is one system of thought- 
 relations, common to all thinking minds ; and we 
 judge a given proposition to be true or false accord- 
 ing as it falls within or falls without this one sys- 
 tem of rational relations. 
 
 In the crises of development, when new truths 
 are declared and new standards of duty are pro- 
 claimed, this divine background of truth comes 
 to the front. When Copernicus declares in oppo- 
 sition to the unanimous opinion of mankind that 
 the earth moves around the sun, what gives him 
 
14 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 confidence in the truth of his assertion ? If it 
 is merely his opinion, it cannot maintain itself 
 against the opinion of mankind. If the opinions 
 of finite minds are the ultimate source of truth, 
 then neither the opinion of Copernicus nor that 
 of his opponents is certainly true. Both are 
 merely probable. And of the two theirs is more 
 probable than his. The ground of the astrono- 
 mer's confidence is that there is a rational rela- 
 tion of things, as infinite reason, in which the 
 revolution of the earth around the sun always 
 was, is now, and always will be, an inseparable 
 and undeniable element. Into that thought 
 Copernicus has entered. He is prepared to show 
 that with his doctrine of the revolution of the 
 earth, all other astronomical facts fall into har- 
 mony ; without this doctrine, all other facts 
 remain in confusion and contradiction. As Coper- 
 nicus said : "By a close and long observation 
 I have at length found that, if the motions of 
 the rest of the planets be compared with the 
 circulation of the earth, and be computed for the 
 revolution of each, not only their phenomena will 
 follow, but it will so connect the orders and mag- 
 nitudes of the planets and all the orbs, and even 
 heaven itself, that nothing in any part of it 
 could be transposed without the confusion of 
 
THEOLOGICAL 1 5 
 
 the rest of the parts, and of the whole uni- 
 verse." This thought, which is common to him 
 and to his opponents ; this thought, which is 
 common both to the minds of all thinking men 
 and to the forms of the external order; this 
 rational and universal relation of things, which 
 is the basis of the ultimate agreement of all can- 
 did minds with each other, and the guarantee 
 that their united judgment is in agreement with 
 the facts, — this is the only rational ground of 
 the confidence which the scientific discoverer 
 has in the new truth which he declares. If 
 there were two natural orders, he might be 
 talking of one, and his opponents of the other. 
 If there were no objective rational order, both 
 he and they might be amusing themselves with 
 fancies equally true because equally subjective ; 
 but equally false because nothing could be found 
 to which either could be proved to correspond. 
 
 The facts which we have been considering 
 demand some explanation. The fixed relations in 
 which all objects of our thought stand to each 
 other are not of our own making. This coherence 
 of all the forces in the world, in such a way 
 that we cannot think of a change in one element 
 or member without thinking corresponding and 
 compensating changes in the whole, is no device 
 
1 6 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 of the subjective mind of the individual beholder. 
 This unity of all the forces and facts of the 
 world in an organic whole of reason we dis- 
 cover, but do not create. The universality of 
 law, the verification of hypothesis, the fulfilment 
 of prediction, the established body of science, 
 the objective validity of truth and its distinc- 
 tion from error, the necessity of all finite minds 
 to think alike on all subjects which, like mathe- 
 matics and demonstrated science, admit of perfect 
 clearness and distinctness, — these facts require 
 for their explanation a common ground of unity 
 between nature and the mind of man ; a bond 
 and basis of intelligibility between different minds ; 
 a supreme source and standard of truth authori- 
 tative over all finite minds. Such a ground of 
 unity, and bond of intelligibility, and source and 
 standard of truth can be found in nothing short 
 of the Absolute Thought, the Infinite Spirit, or 
 God. 
 
 As the uniform order of physical events, and 
 science which is its mental equivalent and corre- 
 late, reveals the Absolute Mind ; so the developing 
 order of human society, and morality which is its 
 subjective counterpart, reveals the Universal Will. 
 
 When Socrates preaches moral doctrine con- 
 trary to the conventional Athenian tradition, why 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 17 
 
 should he die rather than renounce his voca- 
 tion? If it is a mere question of individual 
 preference, all Athens is more likely to be right 
 than a single individual. Socrates affirms that 
 it is not his private opinion which he is setting 
 forth, but an absolute and eternal right of which 
 he is the mouthpiece. How does he know this? 
 Because with his doctrine he can see the facts 
 of the moral life, as one harmonious whole. 
 Without it he sees that these facts contradict 
 each other ; and he is prepared to manifest 
 these contradictions to any one who will con- 
 sent to answer his questions on these points. 
 It was because of his confidence in a right not 
 of his own making or choosing, that he refused 
 to abandon his teaching. Hence his boldness. 
 "If you say to me, Socrates, this time we will 
 let you off, but upon one condition, that you 
 are not to inquire and speculate in this way any 
 more, and that if you are caught doing this 
 again you shall die, — if this was the condi- 
 tion on which you let me go, I should reply : 
 ' Men of Athens, I honour and love you ; but 
 I shall obey God rather than you, and while I 
 have life and breath I shall never cease from 
 the practice and teaching of philosophy.' For 
 I do believe that there are gods, and in a far 
 
z g SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 higher sense than that in which any of my ac- 
 cusers believe in them." 
 
 At first sight the customs and institutions of 
 different ages, races, and nations seem as conflicting 
 and chaotic as Che forces of nature seem to the 
 unscientific mind. Yet while the specific customs 
 and institutions of society are undergoing perpetual 
 change, the great purpose at which these seem- 
 ingly inconsistent and actually conflicting prin- 
 ciples and practices are aiming is constant and 
 unvarying. That purpose is such an adjustment 
 of the several members of society to each other 
 that out of their united action there may result a 
 harmonious social order in which each individual 
 shall be at once the servant and the lord of all. In 
 the beginnings of society this purpose is indeed 
 hidden underneath intolerable burdens of usurpa- 
 tion and tyranny ; and the course of social evolu- 
 tion is marked by oppression, corruption, and the 
 betrayal of the common interest by those whom 
 inheritance, or power, or wealth, or popular elec- 
 tion have constituted its guardians and defenders. 
 And yet the fact that we recognize these things as 
 wrong, and the fact that by revolution and rebel- 
 lion, by agitation and reform, society has succeeded 
 in correcting these abuses and dethroning these 
 usurpers, shows that underneath all the injustices 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 19 
 
 and wrongs it has endured there has been ever 
 present, as the silent judge and the omnipotent 
 avenger, the social ideal of a society in which each 
 individual is at once end and means to every 
 other. 
 
 And if we turn from the outward social ideal to 
 the inner moral standard, or conscience, we find 
 even clearer evidence of the presence of a Will 
 higher than our own. Morality is something far 
 deeper than the prudential regulation of personal 
 conduct for private advantage, although such 
 prudence is an important and essential element 
 of morality. In the deeper moral experience we 
 come face to face* with a "categorical impera- 
 tive." We recognize that the doing of duty is 
 what makes us men. We feel that to be false 
 to duty is to violate our inmost nature, and to be 
 unworthy of a place in the world in which we live. 
 This sense of responsibility for conduct is the 
 fundamental instinct of the race. 
 
 Now the contents of this moral ideal are drawn 
 from and correspond to the requirements of the 
 social order of which we form a part. To be a 
 good member of society, -and to have a clear con- 
 science, are the outer and inner aspects of one 
 and the selfsame thing. You can distinguish 
 these two aspects in thought, but you can no more 
 
20 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 separate them in fact than you can separate the 
 convexity of the outside from the concavity of the 
 inside of a circle. And yet, while drawn from and 
 dependent upon the outer social order, the moral 
 ideal is always transcending this order. The good 
 individual owes all his goodness to the society in 
 which he has been reared ; and yet he feels called 
 upon to give back to that social order services 
 and standards which tend to make it better. In 
 a word, while the ideal of human life is embodied 
 and preserved in society, it is developed in the 
 consciences and advanced by the efforts of indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 This constant correlation 6f the outer order 
 of society and the inner ideal of conduct requires 
 some common ground as its explanation. As the 
 correlation of physical facts with human science 
 involves an Absolute Mind expressed in nature 
 and progressively unfolding himself to the advanc- 
 ing science of man ; so this correlation of the 
 social order and the moral ideal involves a Univer- 
 sal Will embodied in the progressive evolution of 
 the social order, and revealed in the ever-expanding 
 ideal of the moral life. And as the impulse toward 
 scientific discovery rests on the belief that the 
 science which we know is only a fragment of the 
 infinite science as it exists in the Absolute Mind ; 
 
THEOLOGICAL 21 
 
 so the impulse to moral reform springs from an 
 implicit faith that the social institutions and moral 
 standards prevalent at a given time are but arcs of 
 the infinite circle, stages in the eternal process by 
 which the Universal Will is realizing his purpose 
 in society, and reproducing his likeness in the 
 hearts of men. 
 
 Again, just as the possibility of error is proof 
 positive of the reality of truth, and of an absolute 
 basis of truth in the Infinite Mind ; so the con- 
 sciousness of wrong is the infallible witness of the 
 reality of right, and of its eternal ground in the 
 Universal Will that makes for righteousness. If 
 I were the only being in the universe, then my pri- 
 vate caprice and fancy would be supreme. To be 
 sure, one impulse of mine even then might come 
 into conflict with another, and I should discover 
 that this isolated self is more than the sum of 
 its particular states. But whatever should give 
 me permanent satisfaction would therefore justify 
 itself as right ; because by hypothesis there would 
 be no other interests with which it could conflict. 
 Why is it then that I am dissatisfied, ashamed, 
 conscious of guilt, when I have done something 
 which seems to perfectly promote my interests as 
 an individual ? Because I am more than an indi- 
 vidual, and am conscious of the claims of other 
 
22 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 beings upon me. But how comes it to pass that 
 these other beings, and society which is the organ- 
 ization of the interests of these other beings, have 
 a claim upon me ? To be sure, they, and society as 
 their agent, may punish me if I offend them. But 
 this guilt and shame and sense of ill-desert, though 
 historically originating in experience of actual 
 punishment, has come to be a far deeper senti- 
 ment than mere fear of external penalty accounts 
 for; and there are many wrongs I can commit 
 against society of which neither the law nor public 
 sentiment will ever take the slightest notice. And 
 yet I feel condemned. I feel that these other 
 beings and their interests belong to me and are 
 part of my own proper interest. This conscious- 
 ness of wrong, this sense of guilt, is the persistent 
 witness to the fact that in our inmost being we 
 are one with those whose rights we have disre- 
 garded, and a member of that social order whose 
 laws we have disobeyed. The consciousness of a 
 limit is the knowledge of that which transcends 
 the limit. The confession of guilt is the acknowl- 
 edgment of obligation. The insufficiency of the 
 private self is the revelation of the identification 
 of self with society. 
 
 Here, through the attempt to break the bond 
 which binds us to our fellows, we discover how 
 
THEOLOGICAL 23 
 
 strong it is, and how impossible it is for us to cast 
 it off. This bond which binds all men together, 
 making authoritative for each the rights of all, can 
 be nothing less than the Universal Will which 
 holds all beings as the objects of an impartial in- 
 terest and an equal devotion. The progressive 
 and purposeful order of society ; the correlation of 
 the social order and the moral ideal ; and the im- 
 possibility of escaping even by wrongdoing from 
 the bond that binds the individual to society con- 
 stitute the evidence from the social order and the 
 moral ideal of the existence of the Universal Will. 
 
 These lines of thought preserve what is valua- 
 ble in the substance, while they avoid what is inade- 
 quate in the form of the traditional proofs of the 
 existence of God. As demonstrations of the exist- 
 ence of a Being anterior to creation and external 
 to the world, these proofs are fallacious in method 
 and illusory in result. As expositions of imma- 
 nent causality and immanent teleology and imma- 
 nent rationality in nature and in man, they all 
 contain elements of truth. 
 
 The cosmological argument for a first cause is 
 unsatisfactory ; for it rests on an unwarranted pro- 
 jection of an analogy which, just because it is 
 true of interdependent finite phenomena, is by no 
 means sure to hold true of the relation of phe- 
 
24 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 nomena as a whole to an external source. And 
 even if we could prove such an external first 
 cause, it would be of little use to us ; for such an 
 extraneous source of phenomena either is mani- 
 fested in the effect, in which case he is more 
 than the mere cause ; or else he is not mani- 
 fested in the effect ; in which case he at once 
 vanishes into the thin air of Mr. Spencer's Un- 
 knowable ; or at best remains " the Great First 
 Cause, least understood." 
 
 The argument from design is nearer the truth ; 
 but at best can give but half the truth. The de- 
 signer is limited by the materials he works with ; 
 and we can never be sure that the plan which we 
 discover is precisely the plan he had in mind. 
 That there is an "immanent purposiveness " in the 
 world, all our aesthetic and moral experience in- 
 deed attests. But that an external will impressed 
 this or that stamp upon it at this or that moment 
 in time, we cannot assume. The moral argument, 
 in so far as it bases belief in God on the hope of 
 righteous retribution, whereby the evils of this 
 world shall be righted in the next, is an inference 
 from the absence of justice here to its existence 
 elsewhere; and carries no conviction. Still less, 
 according to the general interpretation of the onto- 
 logical argument, are we justified in leaping from 
 
THEOLOGICAL 25 
 
 the requirements of our accidental notions to the 
 necessities of things. 
 
 The cosmological argument is right in its recog- 
 nition that interdependent finite phenomena must 
 have a Ground ; but it is wrong in placing that 
 Ground back somewhere in time. The physico- 
 teleological argument is right in its recognition of 
 purpose ; but is wrong in thrusting that purpose 
 outside of the world. The moral argument is 
 right in affirming retribution ; but it is wrong in 
 postponing that retribution to a remote future. 
 The ontological argument is right in affirming 
 that the Infinite and Absolute is a necessity of 
 thought ; but is wrong in assuming that there is a 
 world of reality other than the world of thought, 
 to which the conditions of thought may or may 
 not apply. These arguments are all stages of a 
 single process by which man has sought to con- 
 fess the dependence of all things upon an Abso- 
 lute Ground ; the participation of all beings in an 
 Infinite Purpose ; the obligation of all men to an 
 Eternal Will ; the presupposition in all thinking 
 of a Universal Reason. 
 
 What then is the logical character of our belief 
 in such a Being ? We cannot prove it by deduc- 
 tion ; for there is nothing greater from which such 
 a Being might be deduced. No major premise 
 
26 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 can be found which will warrant so vast a conclu- 
 sion. Neither by induction of an indefinite num- 
 ber of particulars can we arrive at an infinite being 
 which includes them all. No mere aggregate of 
 particulars can constitute the universal. 
 
 Is the belief in God then merely a working 
 hypothesis, as President Schurman is content to 
 call it ? No. An hypothesis, as its etymology 
 signifies, is something which we put under facts, 
 in order to explain them. The Absolute Mind, 
 however, is not something which we put behind 
 nature and the mind of man to explain their agree- 
 ment. It is there of itself. It is presupposed in 
 the facts. It is the source of science and the 
 foundation of morals. Were there no Absolute 
 Mind, there could be no science ; were there no 
 Universal Will, there could be no firm basis for 
 morality. Science and morality, however, are real, 
 patent, indisputable facts. Therefore, that with- 
 out which these facts could not be, must exist. If 
 you have two mountains, you must have the valley 
 between them, which by their very nature the moun- 
 tains require as the condition of their own exist- 
 ence. If you have two bones which fit into each 
 other, you have absolute proof of the prior exist- 
 ence of the whole animal body, with its other 
 bones, its flesh and blood, its heart and lungs, its 
 
THEOLOGICAL 27 
 
 nerves and muscles, without which these two 
 bones, related to each other as they are, could 
 not have come into being. Given the fact of these 
 bones, and the organic relations between them, 
 and the existence of the organism is not mefely 
 a hypothesis. It is a certainty. If the bones are 
 facts, the body of which they were members must 
 have been a fact as well. 
 
 The world and the self, and their correlation in 
 science, are related members which fit into each 
 other perfectly, and yet which are incomplete 
 in themselves, and require One Infinite Reason 
 for their explanation. The social order and the 
 moral ideal again are likewise two mutually con- 
 ditioned members, which presuppose for their 
 rational interpretation an Absolute Will. The 
 partial science of a given age is the witness and 
 prophecy of an absolute standard of truth, a com- 
 plete circle of knowledge, by which its propositions 
 are judged to be true, of which its fragmentary 
 discoveries are arcs and elements. The progres- 
 sive moral order is likewise the gradual unfolding 
 of a righteous purpose from which its institutions 
 derive their stability and its precepts their author- 
 ity. Since the truths of science are not subjective 
 fancies, but are stubborn facts ; since the laws and 
 institutions of morality are not the products of 
 
28 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 individual caprice, but eternal realities ; therefore, 
 the Absolute Reason and Eternal Righteousness 
 which they reveal and presuppose must also be 
 real, actual, objective ; must exist. 
 
 God is not a mere hypothesis which we put 
 under the facts ; as subjective idealism claims. 
 He is the hypostasis, in the literal meaning of the 
 term, who stands under the facts, and gives them 
 the reality they have. What the skeleton is to 
 the constituent bones; what the solar system is 
 to the included planets ; what the family is to 
 its members ; what the nation is to the citizens ; 
 all that and more God is to every truth that 
 man thinks after him and every law his universe 
 ^contains. He is in all and through all and over 
 all. He is immanent in each individual mind and 
 each particular atom. Yet as an organism is more 
 than the sum of its parts, God is transcendent in 
 the sense that all particulars are but incomplete 
 and fragmentary revelations of his mind and will. 
 
 This fundamental intuition that the mutually 
 related, interdependent, finite facts of the world 
 and the self involve as their necessary presup- 
 position and only possible explanation the Abso- 
 lute and Infinite, which cannot be cast in 
 syllogistic form simply because it bears witness 
 to the universal major premise on which all formal 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 29 
 
 reasoning rests, assures us that God exists. Does 
 it tell us anything about him ? Have we any right 
 to identify the Absolute of philosophy with the 
 God of religion ? Does this line of thought justify 
 us in calling him a person ? 
 
 The whole cannot be less than its parts. The 
 organism cannot be inferior to its constituent 
 members. The infinite cannot exclude anything 
 the finite contains. Now self-consciousness, per- 
 sonality, is the crowning glory of man, the highest 
 of finite beings. Hence the Infinite Being whom 
 all finite things and finite thoughts and finite 
 beings presuppose cannot be less than self-con- 
 scious and personal. He includes all the thoughts 
 and acts of finite persons in the unity of his larger 
 thought and will ; either approving or condemning 
 them. He is as personal as we are ; for in him 
 we live and move and have our being. He is 
 more of a person than we are ; for the progressive 
 thought of man is ever taking up into its science 
 more and more of that body of truth which con- 
 stitutes his eternal thought ; and advancing civili- 
 zation is steadily enlarging and improving the 
 social structure which is the embodiment of his 
 unfolding will. 
 
 There are limits to human personality, as there 
 are limits to human stature and human strength. 
 
30 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 But as God's omnipresence includes the space 
 occupied by our bodies, without being limited to 
 the outlines of our forms ; as God's omnipotence 
 includes the strength of horses and oxen, without 
 being confined to those modes of manifestation ; 
 so the divine personality includes all that is posi- 
 tive in human personality, without being confined 
 within the narrow limits of human finitude. As 
 Lotze says, "Perfect personality is reconcilable 
 only with the conception of an Infinite Being ; for 
 finite beings only an approximation to this is 
 attainable." Paulsen and Pfleiderer express the 
 same thought when they say that God cannot by 
 any possibility be infra-personal. If we take the 
 personality of finite beings as the standard, it 
 would be more correct to say that He is supra- 
 personal. God is all that we know of personality ; 
 and vastly more which we cannot comprehend. 
 But since the unknown is to us the unmeaning, 
 the most appropriate and the perfectly justifiable 
 representation of his nature, is personality as we 
 know it in ourselves. This is, to be sure, not the 
 whole truth : but it is a genuine part of the truth ; 
 the most valuable aspect of the truth ; and the 
 one which best serves our practical spiritual needs. 
 The thought of God as Infinite Spirit is thus 
 warranted by philosophy and justified by religion. 
 
THEOLOGICAL 3 1 
 
 Such a conception leaves indeed much that is 
 unknown in the nature and the ways of God. 
 That any reverent view must do. It, however, 
 expressly excludes agnosticism. Any view of 
 God which puts him before the universe in time, 
 or behind it as a cause or force, or outside of it 
 as mere creator and governor, leads ultimately to 
 agnosticism. For knowledge draws its materials 
 from the actual, the present, the immanent. And 
 God must be found and known here or nowhere. 
 The idea of God as Infinite Spirit ; as Absolute 
 Ground of all finite phenomena ; as the Indwelling 
 Self within all finite selves, is preeminently the 
 idea of a known and infinitely knowable God. All 
 our knowledge of nature is so far forth knowledge 
 of God. All natural and moral laws are expressions 
 of the Divine Thought and Will. All our con- 
 sciousness of ourselves ; all the expression of their 
 deeper selves that men have wrought in history 
 and uttered in literature are revelations of God. 
 The source and standard of all accepted science 
 and established institutions, the promise of ever- 
 increasing discovery and the ideal and goal of 
 ever-progressing morality, is God. He is partially 
 known, progressively revealing himself, absolutely 
 knowable. Not toward him as some "far-off divine 
 event," but in him as the present and pervasive 
 
32 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 life, including "all objects of all thought," the 
 whole creation lives and moves. As we know 
 just as much about a curve as we know about its 
 constituent arcs ; as we can construct, symboli- 
 cally at least, the total curve from a very few 
 given points ; so we know as much about God as 
 we know about ourselves and the world. From 
 the facts and implications which the world and the 
 self contain we can construct a representative con- 
 ception, true as far as it goes, of the Absolute 
 Being in whom self and the world are related ele- 
 ments, and of whom they are so far forth the 
 authentic revelation and expression. The most 
 important and significant of the data from which 
 this representative conception must be constructed 
 is the self-conscious personality of man. And any 
 representation of God which excludes this element 
 is not merely inadequate, as all symbolical repre- 
 sentations must be, but it is needlessly inadequate, 
 inasmuch as it deliberately omits from the formula 
 of the infinite curve the most important datum 
 given in the finite arc. The fact that we are per- 
 sons ; that we are incomplete and finite persons ; 
 that we know and recognize our incompleteness ; 
 that we are ever enlarging the sphere of our 
 thought and will ; that such enlargement is possi- 
 ble only in case there is an infinite sphere of 
 
THEOLOGICAL 33 
 
 thought and will into which our own thought and 
 will enters and which it progressively appropriates 
 in the advancing science and civilization of the 
 world ; — this fact is all the evidence we need, the 
 only evidence which the nature of the problem 
 makes possible, of the personality of the Absolute. 
 That in which our personality lives and moves and 
 has its being ; that which is the presupposition of 
 personality in us, cannot be less than personal. 
 That by which we think cannot be unthinking and 
 unthought. 
 
 The conclusion which we have thus reached by 
 reflection upon the dependent, relative, and finite 
 character of phenomena, and especially of our own 
 intellectual and moral experience, has been reached 
 in the history of the race by a very long and 
 gradual process. And yet at the heart of the 
 whole process from first to last we find the recog- 
 nition of the incompleteness of the finite, the 
 dependence of the relative, and the endeavour to 
 . transcend that finitude and lay hold of the ground 
 of that dependence. 
 
 First this ground of dependence is represented 
 to the mind by the promiscuous personification of 
 all sorts of natural objects. With deepening re- 
 flection, the spirit is separated from the object, 
 and thus arises fetichism, or the attempt to control 
 
34 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 the spirits which are supposed to dwell in natural 
 objects. From this the transition to the worship 
 of the spirits of departed ancestors is a natural 
 advance. Increasing knowledge of the larger as- 
 pects and mightier forces of nature led to the 
 worship of great nature-spirits, mythological divin- 
 ities, in which were united the power of nature and 
 the caprice of man. With the progress of civiliza- 
 tion, man comes to be less and less dependent on 
 the crude forces of external nature, and more and 
 more dependent on moral, industrial, social, and 
 political customs and institutions. And accord- 
 ingly at this stage of development he reveres 
 Gods of war, of wisdom, of craft, of love, pro- 
 tectors of homes, guardians of cities, rulers of 
 nations. Next, if we may neglect the side cur- 
 rents of Oriental quietism, comes the recognition 
 of a single World-Ruler who rules in righteous- 
 ness all the nations of the earth ; who is the 
 upholder and vindicator of the one moral order 
 which is common to all mankind. This conscious- 
 ness of the One God was dimly apprehended by 
 a few of the philosophers of Greece ; but in 
 clearest outline and most popular and effective 
 form it was revealed to the Jews. Here was elab- 
 orated a ceremonial, which, if it shared the bloody 
 and barbarous features of surrounding nations, still 
 
THEOLOGICAL 35 
 
 was free from the two greatest defects of the con- 
 temporary religious cults, idolatry and licentious- 
 ness. Here was gradually developed the most 
 just, humane, and merciful moral code the world 
 had thus far known ; and here to a degree far 
 surpassing any other nation the duties of moral- 
 ity were identified with the service of God and 
 enforced by the sanctions of religion. Here too 
 were first heard the clear tones of prophet and 
 psalmist, appealing from the letter of the law and 
 the performance of the rite to the attitude of the 
 heart and the spirit of the life ; and declaring that 
 the true service of God is the just administration 
 of national and social affairs and the merciful 
 treatment of one's fellowmen. Ethical monothe- 
 ism, the doctrine that we depend upon and owe 
 allegiance to One God who is the author and vin- 
 dicator of the moral order and the social institu- 
 tions of the world ; this is the contribution of Israel 
 to the religious life of man. And this doctrine is 
 so true, so final, so beneficent, that, while its ritual 
 is superseded, its code transcended, and all its local 
 and peculiar setting outgrown ; yet by virtue of 
 this eternal truth which the history of the Hebrew 
 race reveals with inimitable freshness and incom- 
 parable clearness, the history and literature of 
 Israel is rightly regarded as the revelation of God. 
 
36 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 This conception of a World-Governor, however, 
 is not adequate to express the intimate identifica- 
 tion of God with nature and humanity. Even 
 government, especially when conceived after the 
 analogy of the ancient monarchies, has an element 
 of externality about it, which fails to express that 
 union of the organism with its members which is 
 the true figure under which we conceive God's 
 relation to the world of men and things. Is there 
 then any relation in which the distinction of per- 
 sonality is combined with the unity of sympathy 
 and purpose ? Is there any sphere in which, with- 
 out destroying individuality, the life of the whole 
 organism is distributed through each of the mem- 
 bers, and gives that unity in the midst of differ- 
 ences which is the essence of social and spiritual 
 life ? 
 
 Yes ; there is one such relation. It is found in 
 the family. The family is the type of a spiritual 
 or social life in which one body is composed of 
 many members. The head and representative of 
 the family is the father. The rule of the father 
 over his family is not the imposition of a law from 
 without ; but is the assertion of the common in- 
 terest of all as obligatory upon the will of each. 
 The father is simply the head and representative 
 of the total interest of the family in which each 
 
THEOLOGICAL 37 
 
 member shares alike. He seeks not his individual 
 will; but rather the good of all the members. 
 The authority of the father is not an arbitrary law 
 or a legal abstraction. It is simply the assertion 
 of the common well-being. 
 
 Now this is precisely the relation in which the 
 Absolute stands to the relative. This is the mode 
 of union between the Infinite and the finite. It is 
 in just this way that the Universal includes the 
 particular. If then we are to express the relation 
 of God to man by the symbol which is least inade- 
 quate and most suggestive of the truth, we shall 
 call him, not Cause, nor Substance, nor Creator, 
 nor Governor, but Father ; as Jesus teaches us 
 to do. 
 
 Still even here we must be on our guard against 
 the material side of this symbol, which would lead 
 us to regard the Father as one individual among 
 or over others. The spiritual essence of father- 
 hood is the comprehensive thought, the sympa- 
 thetic feeling, the devoted will, which makes the 
 welfare of. each member of the family the object 
 of constant consideration, and unchanging affec- 
 tion, and unwearied devotion. God is our Father, 
 because he is the all-embracing thought which 
 includes each thought and action of every human 
 mind ; because he is the holy will which presents 
 
38 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 the ideal of conduct and the demand of duty to 
 every finite will ; because he is the loving heart 
 which finds no human soul alien to itself ; because 
 he is the bond which binds things and thoughts 
 together; because he is the unity in which society 
 and individuals find their common ground and 
 from which they derive their mutual obligation ; 
 because he is the Spirit in whom we live and 
 move and have our being ; who is never far from 
 any one of us, for we are his offspring. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE REAL AND THE IDEAL THE SON 
 
 In the first chapter we saw that all the phenom- 
 ena of nature and all the interests of men are pres- 
 ent to an Absolute Mind who includes them in the 
 unity of one thought, and makes them the objects 
 of one love. To this "personal Absolute whom 
 faith calls God" we gave the name "Our Father," 
 because the family life, and the father as its head 
 and representative, is the best example we have of 
 many individual members held together in the 
 unity of a single spirit. 
 
 Belief in God most people take for granted. 
 And yet the intuitive belief in God is apt to be a 
 half-pictorial representation of a mighty individual, 
 outside of the world, arbitrary in his decrees, re- 
 mote from the daily life and foreign to the habit- 
 ual thought of men. And while it is possible to 
 develop an individualistic theology out of such a 
 figurative conception of an external and arbitrary 
 Being, it is impossible out of such a conception to 
 develop a social theology, which will show the laws 
 
 39 
 
40 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 of moral life and the forms of social institutions as 
 essential expressions of the life of God in men. 
 This belief in an Absolute Mind,, even though we 
 ascribe the name Father and attribute to him 
 a kindly disposition, is only the foundation of the- 
 ology. It answers well enough as an interpreta- 
 tion of nature, but the pantheistic optimism to 
 which it gives rise is a poor defence against the 
 wrongs and miseries, the struggle and competition, 
 of actual life. 
 
 Life presents problems of its own, and brings 
 out the deeper antithesis of the real and the ideal. 
 The plant and animal have within themselves a 
 principle which is different and distinct from that of 
 the inanimate world. Being produced in connec- 
 tion with a definite environment, they are given a 
 fair start ; since unless the environment had been 
 fitted to sustain them they could not have been 
 produced. But nature's nursing period is brief. 
 A new environment quickly follows upon the old ; 
 and to this new environment the original form is 
 not fitted. It must become fit or perish. The 
 chance of becoming fit is offered in the fact of 
 variation and enormous fecundity. In the lower 
 forms of life each individual or pair leaves a mul- 
 titude of offspring; of which no two are exactly 
 alike. Of this multitude those only which by 
 
THEOLOGICAL 4 1 
 
 merit or fortune best fit the changed environment 
 survive. And while what we may call accident 
 plays a large part in determining which individ- 
 uals of any given generation shall survive ; in the 
 course of many generations the survivals due to 
 mere outward fortune are sifted out, and only 
 those which are inherently fitted to the new con- 
 ditions survive and reproduce. Heredity helps on 
 the process of adjustment; though in what man- 
 ner and to what extent is now a matter of dispute. 
 The survival of the fittest is secured by a process 
 of natural selection which is automatic as gravi- 
 tation or chemical affinity. 
 
 Is natural selection a beneficent process ? It 
 certainly involves much suffering, and frightful 
 slaughter. And yet it is difficult to see how any 
 other process could be more merciful. To permit 
 forms to outlive the state of things to which they 
 were originally adapted would be not kindness 
 but protracted cruelty. To give the ground to 
 the less fit in preference to the more fit, would 
 be unjust as well as unkind. Fitness is doubtless 
 purchased at a high price. But unfitness would 
 cost more and be worth less. Given the fact of 
 evolution, and the purpose to develop independent 
 organisms, capable of becoming centres of individ- 
 ual life, it is impossible to conceive how this pur- 
 
42 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 pose could be accomplished better. Short of 
 miraculous creation to begin with, and constant 
 arbitrary interference from without, there is no 
 way by which the price of the perfection of species 
 could be lowered. And although special creation 
 and external interference are phrases which seem 
 to carry meaning ; yet, when put to the test as an 
 explanation of any world-process whatsoever, they 
 would certainly break down under the weight of 
 detail they would have to bear. 
 
 That the less perfect shall perish and the more 
 perfect shall survive, that the real shall be in constant 
 subjection to the ideal, is the inexorable law of nature 
 in dealing with plant and animal, and savage man, 
 and primitive races of men. Though severe, it 
 cannot be called unjust or cruel ; because the ends 
 which evolution is accomplishing could not be had 
 on easier terms. As Mr. Wallace says, "This 
 struggle for existence really brings about the 
 maximum of life and the enjoyment of life with 
 the minimum of suffering and pain." 
 
 As we pass from the conscious animal up to 
 self-conscious man the tragic struggle deepens. 
 Under civilized conditions it becomes not so much 
 a struggle between individuals as between ideals. 
 Yet the essential features of the process are the 
 same. Good conduct at any given time is conduct 
 
THEOLOGICAL ■ 43 
 
 which adjusts man to his social environment. But 
 the social like the natural environment is in a slow 
 but constant process of change. 
 
 " New occasions teach new duties : 
 Time makes ancient good uncouth.'' 
 
 The moment you secure a perfect adjustment, it 
 becomes imperfect ; because the social order to 
 which the original adjustment was made has 
 changed, and what perfectly fitted the old order for 
 that very reason imperfectly fits the new. Hence 
 every moral and social advance has to fight its way 
 not merely against the bad who oppose all order, 
 but against the traditionally good, who believe that 
 the social order is constant, and that what has been 
 the ideal adjustment in the past must remain the 
 ideal of conduct for all time. These conscientious 
 but short-sighted conservatives are always more 
 bitter and powerful opponents of the new ideal 
 than the unprincipled rabble. The worst enemy 
 of the better is the good. It was the constituted 
 authorities, the conservative aristocracy of Athens, 
 not the lawless and irreligious masses, who con- 
 demned Socrates to drink the hemlock. It was 
 the scribes and Pharisees and the chief priests 
 and the principal men of Jerusalem who crucified 
 Jesus. 
 
44 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 Out of this perpetual change, which is the very 
 essence of that process of evolution through which 
 the world is passing, is born the struggle between 
 the imperfect reality and the perfect ideal. 
 
 This conflict always manifests itself in a lower 
 and a higher form. In the lower form it is the 
 conflict between individuals who represent the 
 uneliminated appetites and passions which were 
 essential to an earlier stage of development, but 
 which have been relatively outgrown by the pres- 
 ent stage of civilization, on the one hand, and the 
 law, which affirms the demand of the existing 
 society, on the other. This is the simple conflict 
 between good and bad as we ordinarily see it. A 
 man wants to be as lustful and brutal as he was per- 
 mitted and perhaps even encouraged to be in primi- 
 tive savage conditions ; but the law declares that 
 such conduct is inconsistent with the welfare of 
 the more advanced society of which he is a mem- 
 ber; and punishes him if he violates the higher 
 requirements of this more advanced social order. 
 Here we see the imperfect standards of an out- 
 grown past in collision with the more perfect 
 standards of the actual present. The individual 
 is behind society ; and society is trying to drag 
 him ahead. 
 
 The higher form of this struggle comes between 
 
THEOLOGICAL 45 
 
 the law as the representative of the existing 
 order ; or rather of the order which existed when 
 the law was framed ; and the individuals who see 
 the vision of the better order that is about to 
 be, and demand institutions, customs, standards, 
 duties, liberties large enough to meet the require- 
 ments of the social order that has come into being 
 since the law was made, or stands ready to come 
 as soon as the hard crust of the old order can be 
 broken so as to give the new life room. Here 
 society is behind the individual, and is trying to 
 hold him back. Thus the average good man is 
 equally at war with the bad man who is below him 
 and the progressively good man who is above him. 
 The reformer and the criminal are about equally 
 obnoxious to the man of average goodness and 
 intelligence. The prophets and the betrayers of 
 their country are equally odious and promiscuously 
 stoned. The Saviour is crucified between two 
 thieves. 
 
 The case of the bad man, the problem of sin, 
 will be considered later. The progressively good 
 man requires interpretation. 
 
 Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in his Social Evolution, has 
 brought out with great clearness and force the 
 antagonism between the interests of the social 
 organism and the interests of its individual mem- 
 
46 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 bers ; and has gone so far as to assert that we 
 never can find " any universal rational sanction for 
 individual conduct in a progressive society." He 
 recognizes indeed that such sacrifice of individual 
 to social interests is the most persistent fact of 
 history ; but he explains such conduct by the 
 "ultra-rational sanction" of religion. 
 
 The question all turns on what we conceive to 
 be the essential nature of man. Is he essentially 
 a bundle of animal appetites and passions, sup- 
 ported for a little while by a framework of bone ; 
 wrapped up for a season in a blanket of flesh ; 
 lighted by a flickering candle of intelligence, just 
 sufficient to show him the objects by which he 
 may gratify these animal appetites and passions ? 
 If the appetites are the man and intelligence is 
 his adjunct and instrument ; then indeed the an- 
 tagonism between such an individual and society is, 
 as Mr. Kidd tells us, hopeless and irreconcilable ; 
 and the only hope of getting social conduct out of 
 him is some " ultra-rational sanction " which shall 
 startle him into a wholesome fear of penalties, 
 or shock him into a prudent concern for his fate 
 in the hereafter. 
 
 Such an abstract individual ; such an animal 
 in human form, however, nowhere exists. It is 
 a fiction of the imagination, to which no real 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 47 
 
 being corresponds. XJnus homo, nullus homo. 
 One man alone is no man at all. The very 
 essence of man is determined by his relations to 
 other men and things, and ultimately to the 
 Absolute Ground of all relationships. And reason 
 is the consciousness of these relations ; and in- 
 volves in latent form at least the reverent recogni- 
 tion of that ultimate relation. Reason is the 
 man ; and the physical nature, with its appe- 
 tites and passions, is indeed the essential instru- 
 ment and support of the man, but not his essential 
 nature. If reason and appetite come into conflict, 
 as to some extent they perpetually do, the man 
 who will realize his essential self must sacrifice, 
 not his reason to his appetite, but his appetite to 
 his reason. For this is the better part. Reason 
 is not, as Mr. Kidd represents it, "the most pro- 
 foundly individualistic, anti-social, anti-evolution- 
 ary, and disintegrating of all human qualities." 
 Reason is the common bond that binds mankind 
 together. The service of society is not, as Mr. 
 Kidd assumes, the sacrifice of the individual : it is 
 his gratification and realization. Though labour 
 leaders and socialistic agitators usually appeal to 
 selfishness, yet it is not the selfishness of the 
 working men ; it is their nobleness, their fidelity 
 to what they believe to be a principle, their loyalty 
 
48 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 to their order or union or class, which responds to 
 these appeals, and gives to strikes and labour 
 movements whatever strength they have. It is not 
 individualism but a new manifestation of the social 
 spirit that is blindly struggling for expression in 
 the labour movements of our day. 
 
 Now the good man, whether he is the man of 
 average virtue who sacrifices his private gratifica- 
 tion in obedience to the law ; or whether he is the 
 leader and reformer who sacrifices the good esteem 
 of his fellows and the commendation of the exist- 
 ing society to promote that better adjustment of 
 men and society to each other which is the condi- 
 tion of progress ; — the good man in either case 
 is simply the man who sees a larger sphere of rea- 
 son than the bad man ; who recognizes that this 
 larger reason is the expression of his own true 
 nature and his better self ; and who faithfully iden- 
 tifies himself with the cause of that larger reason 
 wherein he sees revealed the fuller possibilities of 
 his own rational nature. 
 
 If he sees merely a little fragment of the larger 
 truth, and takes that for the whole, and regards 
 it as ultimate, as, for example, was the case with 
 some of the anti-slavery agitators, and is the case 
 with a good many temperance reformers to-day ; 
 then he is merely a moral reformer : and probably 
 
THEOLOGICAL 49 
 
 as he grows older he will grow narrower and 
 harder, and ultimately become one of the most 
 hide-bound of obstructionists. He has merely set 
 one finite bit of truth over against another finite 
 bit of truth ; the fact that his bit is a little bigger 
 than the bit which he opposes makes him a use- 
 ful man as long as the fight is along that particular 
 line ; but invariably leaves him a conceited, soured, 
 impracticable, and useless man after that particular 
 issue is settled. 
 
 If the good man, whether of one type or the 
 other, for both are essentially the same, sees the 
 social interest for which he sacrifices his private 
 gratification, as part of an infinite whole ; if he 
 sees the society of which he is a member, or the 
 social order he is trying to introduce, as a stage 
 in the one continuous process by which men are 
 becoming at the same time more perfect in them- 
 selves and more perfectly adjusted to each other; 
 then he is a religious man, and the victory over 
 one private appetite, or the triumph over one pub- 
 lic wrong, will make him the more eager and stren- 
 uous to attack a new abuse and respond to a new 
 duty. Not until we get beyond this or that par- 
 ticular application of moral and spiritual law to the 
 universal principle of love which is the foundation 
 and fulfilment of the law, not until we reach the 
 
50 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 standpoint of Jesus, do we reach the ultimate relig- 
 ious relation of perfect sonship to God. Morality 
 makes a whole of a small part. Religion makes 
 the part a member of the great whole. Religion 
 is essentially social; and sonship to God and social 
 service are related to each other as the emotional 
 and the practical aspects of the same thing. Un- 
 selfish service of the social order by the individual 
 member is a filial act. It is a revelation of the 
 sonship of man to God. 
 
 What then is sonship ? Who is the Son of 
 God ? The Son of God is he who, in the cramp- 
 ing limitations of space, under the evanescent 
 form of time, with the finite instrument of flesh, 
 and with the partial knowledge which is conditioned 
 by a particular human brain, still sees nature as 
 the expression of an omniscient Mind ; beholds - 
 human society as the unfolding of one universal 
 Will ; recognizes every man as the potential re- 
 production of the thought and will of the Father ; 
 accepts every duty and relationship of life as an 
 opportunity to do the will of the Father, and to 
 bring men to the consciousness of their sonship to 
 God and their brotherhood with each other. Son- 
 ship consists in the perception of the Divine Ideal 
 in every concrete situation ; and the striving to 
 realize that ideal even in the most unideal condi- 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 SI 
 
 tions. It means the healing of the sick ; the com- 
 forting of those in sorrow ; the relief of the poor ; 
 the instruction of the ignorant ; the reproof of the 
 wayward ; the exposure of the hypocrite ; the over- 
 throw of the extortioner ; the forgiveness of the 
 penitent ; the encouragement of the weak ; the 
 succour of the tempted ; the emancipation of 
 the prisoner ; the solace of mourners at the 
 funeral ; the blessing of little children ; the pro- 
 vision for the necessities of old age ; the imparting 
 of courage to do the work of life and serenity to 
 meet the hour of death ; the utterance of truth 
 even when it is most unwelcome ; and the doing 
 of duty even at the cost of life itself. It is 
 the filling of the finite with its infinite signifi- 
 cance ; it is the fulfilment of relations in the 
 light of their absolute ground ; it is the treatment 
 of men in the light of their common sonship to the 
 Father ; it is the doing of duty as the reasonable 
 requirement of God. 
 
 Such is our a priori conception of what the Son 
 of God would be, were he to come into the world. 
 Revelation of this sonship has been progressive. 
 The lawgiver and the prophet have stood a little in 
 advance of their times, and in the name of the 
 eternal reason and righteousness have beckoned 
 their followers step by step toward juster institu- 
 
52 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 tions and more humane ideals. Sons of God they 
 all have been to whom the word of God has come, 
 in so far as they have been conscious that the 
 institutions and standards they have set up have 
 been grounded in an eternal process of develop- 
 ment through which the universal will of God is 
 being unfolded in time and expressed in humanity. 
 Yet even the prophet, though he recognizes the 
 larger reason of which his message is a partial 
 declaration, in so far as he fails to catch the spirit 
 and grasp the principle of the deeper reason and 
 the larger life, remains only half emancipated ; a 
 servant rather than a fully conscious son. The 
 prophet is great ; but not the greatest. As Jesus 
 said of John the Baptist, the burning prophet 
 who at the cost of his life proclaimed cer- 
 tain fundamental duties in the face of oppres- 
 sive power and in the hearing of guilty ears, 
 "Among them that are born of women there is 
 none greater than John : yet he that is but little 
 in the kingdom of God is greater than he." 
 Is this conception realized ? Is there a historic 
 person who corresponds to this definition ? After 
 all the ages of imperfection and laborious prog- 
 ress, has the Perfect come ? Has the Son of God 
 appeared ? 
 
 The consensus of the competent in spiritual 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 S3 
 
 things has been almost unanimous in ascribing 
 this title to Jesus of Nazareth. Not always on 
 the wisest grounds ; not always with the deepest 
 insight ; not always with the clearest conceptions 
 of the consequences which ought to follow such a 
 confession ; the world has accepted him as the 
 Son of God, the incarnation of the Divine Truth 
 and the revelation of the Father's love. 
 
 The a priori conception of what a Son of God 
 should be and the Gospel account of Jesus of Naz- 
 areth exactly coincide. Even if it is urged that 
 the Gospel narrative is itself an idealized por- 
 trayal, that does not destroy its force. Every 
 account of a historical character, by the elimina- 
 tion of irrelevant detail, by the emphasis upon 
 leading traits, by the sacrifice of the insignificant 
 and trivial to the essential and the significant, is 
 and must be an idealization. But the fundamental 
 outlines, even of an ideal representation, must be 
 real. No other character ever lived of whose 
 teaching and life we know so much, who could 
 stand such an idealization without making the in- 
 congruity of the real and the ideal manifest. And if 
 it is urged that the Gospel of John is drawn from 
 a contemplation of the ideal Son rather than from 
 acquaintance with the historic Jesus, still the fact 
 that the plain story of the Synoptics and the ideal 
 
54 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 representation of the Fourth Gospel fit so well 
 together is the strongest possible proof that in 
 Christ we have the union of the ideal and the real, 
 the eternal and the historic, God and man. 
 
 Jesus was tested at all the vital points. The 
 lust of the flesh, the fascination of power, the 
 pride of life, all presented themselves to his youth- 
 ful ambition. And he met them all, not with the 
 greater pride of self-sufficient virtue, but with the 
 filial humility of one conscious of the Father 
 whose commandment he was to obey and whose 
 will he was to do. "Man shall not live by bread 
 alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of 
 the mouth of God." "Thou shalt worship the 
 Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." 
 
 The appeal of innocent childhood, the claim of 
 sickness, the necessities of the poor, the misery 
 of the social outcast, the sadder tale of guilt and 
 shame, all were presented to him ; and he met 
 them all with that tenderness and helpfulness and 
 sympathy and forgiveness which a human father 
 bestows upon his child, and which he declared 
 the Heavenly Father bestows on all his children. 
 
 On the other hand, he met hypocrisy with expos- 
 ure, crafty questions with more crafty refutations. 
 He pricked the bubble of conceit and laid bare the 
 hideous features of pride wherever he found them. 
 
THEOLOGICAL 55 
 
 He held fast to the nothingness of all that is not 
 rooted and grounded in God. " Every plant which 
 my heavenly Father planted not shall be rooted 
 up." He refused to act from motives of personal 
 prudence ; rejecting such counsel with the words, 
 " Get thee behind me, Satan : for thou art a stum- 
 blingblock unto me : for thou mindest not the 
 things of God, but the things of men." He based 
 all greatness on humility and service, and taught 
 that the standard of forgiveness is not finite en- 
 durance but infinite love. " Whosoever shall 
 humble himself as this little child, the same is 
 the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." "I say 
 not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until 
 seventy times seven." 
 
 He scorned flattery ; had none of that self- 
 conscious goodness to which flattery appeals, and 
 which we all despise. A young man once tried it. 
 He came and kneeled to him and called him good. 
 Jesus promptly asked him, " Why do you call me 
 ' good ' ? There is only one who is good, that is 
 God." This passage has puzzled the commenta- 
 tors, intent on making out for Jesus an artificial 
 and ready-made divinity. But rightly understood, 
 it reveals the simplicity and modesty and genu- 
 ineness of Jesus' character as no other text in 
 Scripture does ; and lifts him clear up out of the 
 
56 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 level of ordinary human virtue with its pride and 
 conceit and self-consciousness onto the divine level 
 of a love that is so devoted to its object and its 
 work that it does not stop to think of self at all. 
 
 The way to become conscious of one's own 
 personal goodness, and to impress the sense of it 
 upon others, had been reduced to a very elaborate 
 system in Jesus' day. The Pharisees were mas- 
 ters of this precious and proper and precise good- 
 ness, which knows just how good it is and how it 
 came to be so : and Jesus treated the whole 
 miserable business with contempt ; telling his 
 disciples that if they could not develop a better 
 type of piety than that, he had no use for them. 
 
 Jesus took for his task nothing less than the 
 gigantic work of stripping religion of all its coun- 
 terfeits and superfluities ; of teaching each indi- 
 vidual to revere and love the Author of his being 
 as his Father and his Friend ; of training each 
 individual to regard every other person as his 
 brother, with rights to be respected and interests 
 to be served as generously and faithfully as if 
 they were one's own. Thus he made the service 
 of God so simple and so real that a child might 
 be sure of the heavenly Father's favour as often 
 as he tried to do right and was sorry for having 
 done wrong, and the life of man so noble and so 
 
THEOLOGICAL 57 
 
 sweet that even the humblest might share its 
 highest privileges and holiest joys. He believed 
 in a living God, now working in the world; and 
 he accepted it as his mission to work with him. 
 " My Father worketh even until now, and I 
 work. We must work the work of him that sent 
 me, while it is day ; the night cometh when no 
 man can work." 
 
 He was the friend of publicans and sinners ; 
 measuring his service not by the deserts but by 
 the needs of his fellows ; following the example 
 of the Father who maketh his sun to rise on the 
 evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just 
 and the unjust. He met opposition with deter- 
 mination, endured indignities with serenity, and 
 faced death with courage. When told that Herod 
 desired to kill him and advised to "get out and 
 go hence," he replied, "Go and say to that fox, 
 Behold I cast out devils and perform cures to-day 
 and to-morrow ; and the third day I am perfected. 
 Howbeit I must go on my way to-day and to- 
 morrow and the day following." 
 
 He would have no compromise with fraud and 
 wrong. He found the temple service formal, 
 mercenary, extortionate. It was in the hands 
 of a pontifical clique, an ecclesiastical ring, 
 that had elaborated an expensive ritual, and 
 
58 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 then formed a monopoly in the means for its 
 observance. Out of the charges, commissions, 
 and brokerage incidental to this worship they 
 were making a luxurious living for themselves. 
 By this manipulation of public worship for private 
 profit the chief-priests and their confederates 
 had acquired wealth, and the power and influ- 
 ence wealth knows how to buy. 
 
 This whole system was the exact opposite of 
 that immediate trust in a loving Father which 
 Jesus felt in his own heart, and was striving to 
 impart to men. Conflict was inevitable; and 
 Jesus saw clearly what would be the outcome. 
 On the one side was venerated custom, sacred 
 precedent, established authority, and all the ma- 
 chinery to make authority effective, intrenched 
 in the temple at the nation's capital. On the 
 other hand he stood alone, with his little band 
 of half-trained pupils from an obscure and de- 
 spised province. And yet, knowing perfectly 
 well that attack on the party in power meant 
 death to himself, what did he do ? " And he 
 found in the temple those that sold oxen and 
 sheep and doves, and the changers of money, 
 sitting; and he made a scourge of cords, and 
 cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and 
 the oxen ; and he poured out the changers' 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 59 
 
 money, and overthrew their tables ; and to them 
 that sold doves he said, Take these things 
 hence ; make not my Father's house a house of 
 merchandise." 
 
 We know the consequence. We know how he 
 refused to demean himself before the Roman 
 Procurator, to save his life ; how almost with 
 his last breath he made thoughtful provision 
 for his mother in the home of his best friend ; 
 and died pitying the ignorance and praying for 
 the forgiveness of his murderers. 
 
 Make your conception of what the Son of God 
 should be as high as you please. Put into it all 
 you have known or can conceive of righteousness, 
 and love, and truth, and tenderness, and constancy, 
 and courage ; and you cannot put into it a single 
 trait of moral character, a single quality of spiritual 
 grace, a single principle of social service which has 
 not its counterpart and its embodiment in the 
 Gospel story of Jesus' life and death. 
 
 He did the grandest work ever conceived by 
 man ; he did it in the spirit of gentleness and 
 tenderness to all whom he could help and bless ; 
 he did it in defiance of all that corrupt influence 
 and unscrupulous power could bring against him ; 
 he did it in the serene certainty that it would 
 cost his life. 
 
60 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 If the doing of beneficent work with constancy 
 and courage, in kindness and in love ; if the stren- 
 uous resistance of unrighteous power, even unto 
 blood ; if the faithful witness to the truth in the 
 face of hypocrisy, and fidelity to duty in the hour 
 of death ; — if these are our conceptions of how 
 God would manifest himself in human history if 
 he were to manifest himself at all ; then Jesus 
 has the obvious right to be accepted and wor- 
 shipped as the Son of God ; the authentic revela- 
 tion and perfect incarnation of the divine in 
 human history and human form. 
 
 This title, Son of God, was not the one which 
 Jesus gave himself. In the Synoptic Gospels he 
 does not use it once, although he speaks of him- 
 self as the Son of Man sixty-nine times. It is a 
 title which his life and character drew forth from 
 those who witnessed it and undertook to interpret 
 it. "Truly," says the centurion, "this was the 
 Son of God." So says the Fourth Gospel, in its 
 attempt to give the historic person his ideal and 
 eternal setting. So has replied the faith of eighteen 
 centuries. 
 
 The perfection of humanity is the revelation of 
 divinity. Christ is the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily : all of the divine nature and spirit that can 
 be manifested in human form. Christ is the God- 
 
THEOLOGICAL 6 1 
 
 man. He reveals at the same time how human is 
 the heart of God, and how divine may he the life 
 of man. His divinity is not a remote inference 
 from the fulfilment of prediction and the exhibi- 
 tion of signs and wonders. It is the manifesta- 
 tion of those moral virtues and spiritual graces ; 
 it is the exemplification of those social principles 
 and ethical laws which we all recognize as the 
 principles on which the world is founded and the 
 laws on which society must rest. In revealing 
 the ideal or end toward which humanity is pro- 
 gressing, and in which society will find its ultimate 
 realization, he at the same time reveals the divine 
 purpose which was in the beginning, by which and 
 for which the world was created. What is last in 
 the order of time is first in the order of thought. 
 That the Son realizes the purpose of the Father in 
 the process of time, shows that he was with the 
 Father in the beginning. 
 
 As the whole life and activity of the Son would 
 be inexplicable without the Father, whose will the 
 Son does, and whose messenger he is, so the 
 Father would not be a social and spiritual being, 
 that is he would not be a person, without the 
 eternal Son, or Logos, in whom to take delight, 
 through whom to express his purpose, and in 
 whom to find that relationship of self to not 
 
62 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 self, without which personality is but an empty 
 shadow. 
 
 When we spoke of the Absolute as our Father 
 in the last chapter, it was hardly warranted by 
 the stage of development our thought had there 
 reached. It was an anticipation ; though an an- 
 ticipation which the ancient world had made before 
 Christ came. That God is our Father we might 
 discover by reflecting on our own dependence and 
 relativity. What God is, what fatherhood means, 
 we can only know through the perfect embodiment 
 of his loving will in the person of his well-beloved 
 Son. " No man hath seen God at any time ; the 
 only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
 Father, he hath declared him." 
 
 By virtue of his perfect obedience Christ is God 
 in humanity. He is the Mediator between God 
 and man. He that hath seen me, hath seen the 
 Father. He that receiveth me, receiveth him 
 that sent me. No man cometh unto the Father 
 but by me. My Father and I are one. Things 
 equal to the same thing are equal to each 
 other. Lines parallel to the same straight line 
 are parallel to each other. Contact with a good 
 conductor of the electric current is equivalent 
 to contact with the battery which generates 
 the current. Learning from the perfectly intelli- 
 
THEOLOGICAL 63 
 
 gent and sympathetic and competent pupil is 
 equivalent to learning from the original teacher. 
 All we know of the spiritual nature of God comes 
 to us in its complete form and in its ultimate 
 principle in the person of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The attempt to approach God apart from 
 Christ, to conceive God otherwise than through 
 the expression he has made of himself in Christ, 
 involves either an impoverishment and indefi- 
 niteness in the conception of God ; or else it 
 involves the ascription to him of attributes 
 which Christ revealed, without acknowledging 
 the medium through which the revelation came. 
 The former course is intellectually more con- 
 sistent ; but it is spiritually fatal. After a gen- 
 eration or two this tendency fades out into 
 mysticism, evaporates into pantheism, or shrivels 
 up into hard, dry rationalism. The latter ten- 
 dency is intellectually inconsistent ; but it explains 
 the fact that some of the most devout and earnest 
 Christians of the present day are to be found 
 among those who have dropped from their formal 
 creed the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. 
 
 The Unitarian objection to the doctrine of the 
 divinity of Christ is forcibly stated in the fol- 
 lowing passage from a sermon by the Rev. J. T. 
 Sunderland, on the subject, "Was Jesus God ? " 
 
64 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 " A God pinched and compressed into the limit 
 of our finite humanity, becomes thereby of neces- 
 sity a very meagre and small God. Jesus, born as 
 a babe, and in a few years dying ; during his boy- 
 hood growing in knowledge as you and I do ; after 
 he was a man sometimes disappointed ; trying to 
 accomplish ends, and again and again failing be- 
 cause of opposition ; declaring that there were 
 some things that he did not know ; — furnishes a 
 picture of a God so meagre, so inadequate, so like 
 the little gods that the heathen believe in, that 
 we instinctively push it aside, and demand for our 
 worship something infinitely higher and larger — 
 lifted wholly out of the category of this finiteness." 
 
 At first sight this line of objection seems irrefut- 
 able. It seems to reduce the belief in the divinity 
 of Christ to the most absurd product of childish 
 credulity. Apparently, the believers in the divin- 
 ity of Christ are guilty of imposing on God the 
 most cramping and confining of limitations. 
 
 In reality, the objector himself is subjecting the 
 conception of God to the most serious and fatal of 
 all limitations. He is denying to God the power 
 of appearing in finite form; of revealing himself 
 in terms of humanity. A God thus incapable 
 of self-revelation would be the most impotent and 
 useless being conceivable. He would be no God 
 
THEOLOGICAL 6$ 
 
 at all. He would be merely the unknowable 
 abstraction of agnosticism. We have no predi- 
 cates, save such as we draw from our finite 
 experience. God must be known in terms of 
 nature and humanity, or else he cannot be 
 known at all. As Professor Andrew Seth has 
 said, "We speak most truly, and most in accord- 
 ance with the real nature of things, when we 
 characterize the Absolute in terms of the best we 
 know." Jesus Christ is the best we know or can 
 conceive of moral and spiritual excellence. There- 
 fore, either Christ must be the revelation and 
 incarnation of God to us, or else God will be to 
 our thinking a mere name ; and his attributes 
 will all resolve themselves into sesquipedalian 
 negations. 
 
 The true Infinite does not dwell remote and 
 inaccessible, in some immaterial realm of pure 
 ideas, like that with which Plato endeavoured to 
 solve the problem of the rationality of the universe. 
 Goethe is right when he says, "Wer grosses 
 will muss sich beschranken konnen." Greatness 
 depends on definiteness and limitation. As Goethe 
 says again: 
 
 "Willst du ins Unendliche schreiten, 
 Geh nur im Endlichen nach alien Seiten." 
 
 The only Infinite we can conceive is to be found in 
 
 F 
 
66 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 the symmetrical fulfilment of finite relationships. 
 We seem to be paying the highest compliments 
 to God when we try to " lift him wholly out of the 
 category of this finiteness." The difficulty is that 
 when we have gone through the list of these doubt- 
 ful and negative compliments, there remains nothing 
 definite, or conceivable, or knowable, or lovable, or 
 worshipful, to which our thought and devotion and 
 worship can direct itself. In our excessive polite- 
 ness we have bowed our God out of the universe. 
 In denying him the possibility of manifestation in 
 the limitations and finitude of humanity, we have 
 reduced our conception of him to that abstract 
 being which is the same thing as nothing. 
 
 Unitarianism has been of immense service as 
 a critic of the extravagances and excrescences of 
 orthodox tradition. In performing this service it 
 has, in great measure, made the fatal mistake of 
 accepting the deistic conception of God. Unita- 
 rianism has helped to save others : itself it cannot 
 save. Between acceptance of the incarnation 
 and agnosticism there are several way-stations 
 where the practical worker may tarry and the 
 devout spirit may rest. But between these two 
 positions there is no permanent and enduring 
 philosophical foundation on which one can rear 
 a consistent and positive conception of a personal 
 
THEOLOGICAL 67 
 
 God. One might as well try to see the sun by 
 closing his eyes to the rays of light which pro- 
 ceed from it ; one might as well try to get at the 
 thought of an author by refusing to read the book 
 he has written ; as try to think of God's spiritual 
 nature in other terms than those which are ex- 
 pressed in the personality of Christ. 
 
 Belief in the divinity of Christ does not rest on 
 such narratives as the accounts of the " Gospel of 
 the Infancy," introduced into the opening chapters 
 of Matthew and Luke ; and is entirely independent 
 of the question whether we interpret these narra- 
 tives as fact or fancy, poetry or prose. Any attempt 
 to base the belief in the divinity of Christ on the 
 miraculous is sure to alienate multitudes of honest 
 minds ; who will thus be led to regard it as simply 
 one among the many deifications of saints and 
 heroes with which the legends of antiquity abound. 
 
 The greater portion of the signs and wonders 
 which the Gospel narrative attributes to Jesus, 
 are much more credible now than they were 
 twenty or thirty years ago. We see that they 
 involve of necessity no violation of law ; but sim- 
 ply the introduction of higher forms of force. 
 The law of gravitation is not violated when chemi- 
 cal affinity lifts up what gravitation tends to pull 
 down. The law of chemical affinity is not violated 
 
68 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 when the vital force in the root-hair of a plant 
 breaks apart what chemical affinity tends to hold 
 together. Physiological law is not violated when 
 mental influences produce results the exact oppo- 
 site of what physiological conditions alone tend 
 to produce. The phenomena of hypnotism ; the' 
 various forms of mental therapeutics ; and many 
 other phenomena which psychical research is 
 bringing to light, render it impossible to deny 
 that a unique personality might heal physical, 
 mental, and moral disease, and even appear after 
 death to the sight of those who had intensely 
 loved him. Yet just in proportion as the credi- 
 bility of signs and wonders is increased, their 
 evidential value is diminished. The argument for 
 the divinity of Christ from prophecy and miracles 
 is absolutely destitute of cogency for the repre- 
 sentative modern mind. Miracles are at best 
 merely the scaffolding or decoration, not the 
 foundation and substance of Christian faith. 
 Ten times the miracles ascribed to Jesus, sup- 
 ported by ten times the evidence, would not be 
 sufficient to convince us that Nero was the Son 
 of God. 
 
 The divinity of Christ is merely a question of 
 the agreement of two conceptions : the conception 
 of the spiritual character and will of God; and 
 
THEOLOGICAL 69 
 
 the historic narrative of the life and work of Jesus 
 Christ. That the Father is greater than the Son 
 is evident. But that in the moral and spiritual 
 points in which the two can coincide they agree ; 
 this is all that the believers in Christ's divinity 
 affirm. If there is an essential spiritual attribute 
 known to us of God which Jesus did not embody 
 in his life and express in his teaching ; if on the 
 other hand there is a single authentic trait or prac- 
 tice in the character and life of Jesus which falls 
 below our ideal of divineness of character and con- 
 duct; then, indeed, we shall have to agree that 
 Jesus is merely a man like other men, not only in 
 natural endowments but in spiritual attainments. 
 
 If, however, these two conceptions coincide ; if 
 Father and Son are correlative terms ; then to 
 ignore or to deny the divinity and Sonship of 
 Christ is to deny God ; or at best to substitute for 
 the concrete and personal revelation he has made 
 of himself in history some vague abstraction of the 
 philosophic mind. It is to go back to Paganism 
 without the charm of its mythology ; or to em- 
 brace positivism with the most precious fact in 
 history eliminated, and the most attractive per- 
 son in the race dethroned. It is to return to 
 the vagueness and generality in which our first 
 chapter left us. 
 
70 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 The supra-personal God of philosophic specula- 
 tion will never win the heart and mould the will 
 of the masses of mankind to the finer issues of 
 the spiritual life. He who is to rule the human 
 heart must be himself human ; touched with the 
 feeling of our infirmities ; tempted in all points 
 like as we are. Such a Lord and Master, such a 
 Son of God, the world has found in Jesus Christ. 
 Shall we not, as Robert Browning says : 
 
 "Call Christ, then, the illimitable God?" 
 
 "The very God! think, Abib ; dost thou think? 
 So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too — 
 So through the thunder comes a human voice 
 Saying, ' O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
 Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! 
 Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine, 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
 And thou must love me who hast died for thee.' " 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL THE 
 
 HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 By nature man is the descendant of unnumbered 
 animal ancestors, who have been slowly trans- 
 formed through successive eons of geological time. 
 Physically he is but a slight relative modification 
 of the highest apes. Mentally he depends upon 
 an essentially similar, though much more complex 
 brain and nervous system. All his physical appe- 
 tites and passions are common to him with the 
 lower animals. 
 
 One power, however, which they lack he has. 
 As Locke puts it, " Brutes abstract not." To 
 single out the essential principle from its acci- 
 dental embodiment ; to deal with general ideas ; 
 to see things in their relations to each other as 
 distinct from their relations to the. individual per- 
 cipient ; to become identified with a wide range 
 of objective interests ; to transcend one's own 
 petty individuality, and live as a conscious mem- 
 ber of a social whole ; this, as Romanes has 
 
 71 
 
72 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 conclusively shown, beyond its faintest instinc- 
 tive anticipations is impossible to the animal 
 and is the exclusive prerogative of man. 
 
 Yet, while possible for man, this larger life is 
 not natural ; in the sense that it is the course 
 toward which his impulses urge him. It is not 
 the line of least resistance. For reason in its 
 highest form is a late acquisition of the race; 
 while the animal appetites and passions have tens 
 of thousands of years of heredity behind them ; 
 and many of them were the conditions of survival 
 by which the race was saved from extinction in 
 earlier stages of the struggle for existence. 
 
 To be sure there is a second principle, which 
 Professor Drummond calls the struggle for the life 
 of others, developing side by side with the strug- 
 gle for individual life. Yet the altruistic or re- 
 productive principle in the animal is as blind 
 and instinctive, as little ethical and consciously 
 rational, as is the egoistic principle. It is ulti- 
 mately grounded in the physical necessity which 
 compels a growing cell to divide in order to secure 
 wall-surface sufficient for its bulk. And though 
 this reproductive principle is the soil in which 
 the social virtues have been nourished, yet it is so 
 far from being sufficient of itself to support them 
 that in man the most selfish and cruel and loath- 
 
THEOLOGICAL 73 
 
 some of his vices spring from the abuse and 
 perversion of this very function. 
 
 Making all due allowance for instinctive altru- 
 ism, and the altruistic anticipations wrapped up 
 in reproduction and maternity, the fact remains 
 that it is natural for each individual to look out 
 for number one. Looking out for the interest 
 of number one may, indeed, involve gratifications 
 of appetite, indulgences of passion, which benefit 
 number two and number three ; but such inci- 
 dental benefits are to be credited to the benefi- 
 cent tendency of things rather than to the social 
 virtue of the individual. Call it with Darwin 
 the survival of tendencies once necessary in the 
 struggle for existence, but no longer so ; call it 
 with Kant the bad principle in human nature ; 
 call it with Calvin total depravity and original 
 sin ; call it with the refined selfishness, or with 
 the vulgar meanness ; call it with the Bible sin ; 
 the fact remains that the principle of life with 
 which we all start out and which we find it 
 easiest to follow is a tendency to assert the 
 interest of the individual as against the interest 
 of others and of society, whenever the two in- 
 terests conflict. 
 
 As we saw in our last chapter; Mr. Kidd is 
 right in his assertion that there is no rational 
 
74 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 sanction for social conduct, provided you assume 
 that the individual is complete in himself. And 
 that is precisely the assumption which nature is 
 constantly prompting each one of us to make. 
 
 Our interminable line of animal ancestry, and 
 the fact that each child reproduces in himself the 
 main features of historic evolution, give to the 
 selfish, individualistic principle the start to begin 
 with, and the inside track throughout the entire 
 course of the moral race. "That is not first 
 which is spiritual, but that which is natural ; then 
 that which is spiritual." The raw material of life 
 comes to us in the form of sensuous impulses ; 
 which in themselves are neither good or bad ; 
 but may become either, according to the uses 
 that we make of them. 
 
 Now the outcome of such a state of nature 
 in which each man should do what unrestrained 
 nature prompts, would be intolerable. We should 
 have a state of internecine strife. As Hobbes, 
 who has most clearly depicted the consequences 
 of unrestrained nature, declares, possession would 
 be precarious, life insecure, and the whole life 
 of man would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, 
 short." Some other principle must come into life 
 than the raw' material of selfish impulse, if life 
 is to be tolerable, and society is to endure. 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 75 
 
 Over against the natural stands the spiritual. 
 By virtue of his reason man can transcend the 
 immediate impulses of his animal nature ; he can 
 represent to himself the interests of others as equal 
 to his own in reality and worth ; he can merge 
 his private self in the larger life of society, and 
 compel his natural impulses to obey the dictates 
 of reason and serve the wider interests which 
 reason represents. The spiritual life, therefore, is 
 the realization of reason ; while the natural life is 
 the gratification of appetite. In the eye of reason 
 selfishness is an illusion. Selfishness says these 
 keen appetites and hot passions of mine are the 
 things of supreme moment in the world. They 
 alone are urgent, vital, peremptory. Reason says 
 there are thousands of beings whose appetites and 
 passions are of just as much consequence to them 
 as mine are to me. Furthermore, reason points 
 out that the promiscuous gratification of appetite 
 and passion would bring but a short-lived and pre- 
 carious pleasure, while it would inflict permanent 
 and irretrievable pain. All this even the hedonist 
 admits. Reason, however, goes a step further, and 
 declares that it has pleasures of its own. Reason 
 demands that its own ideal of a harmonious and 
 mutually helpful social organism shall be made 
 real ; and it declares that the consciousness of 
 
J6 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 being a worthy member of the social organism is 
 of itself a nobler and higher satisfaction than the 
 poor, petty, sensuous indulgences which it bids us 
 sacrifice. Spirit is reason realized in personality. 
 The spiritual life is the universal life ; the life 
 determined by reason. 
 
 The spiritual first presents itself as the merely 
 prudential. Natural impulse aims only at the im- 
 mediate present. Reason soon discovers that the 
 gratification of separate impulses in successive 
 moments conflict. A happy to-day may be bought 
 too dearly if it brings a wretched to-morrow. A 
 frivolous and rollicking youth may not be worth 
 the premature and disconsolate old age it invari- 
 ably brings. Reason demands that to-day and to- 
 morrow, youth and old age, shall be so related to 
 each other that the outcome shall be a consistent 
 and satisfactory whole. Reason presents the ideal 
 of the whole of life as the standard by which to 
 test the worth of each constituent part. This 
 substitution of the happiness of a . lifetime for 
 the pleasure of the moment, this rise from the 
 Cyrenaic to the Epicurean view, is the first stage 
 in the spiritualizing of life. 
 
 The maxims of Theognis, the proverbs of Solo- 
 mon, the counsels of Benjamin Franklin in Poor 
 Richard 's Almanac, are literary expressions of this 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 ;; 
 
 spiritual stage. It will repay us to examine care- 
 fully what is involved in this first effort of reason 
 to regulate life. My immediate present appetite is 
 all that nature or sense presents to me at this par- 
 ticular moment. To-morrow is not real to-day. 
 Old age is not an actual fact present to the sen- 
 suous experience of the youth. To-morrow and 
 old age are not facts of sense, but ideal representa- 
 tions of reason. They do not exist in the actual 
 world which sense now presses upon me. They 
 are parts of the larger world in which reason tells 
 me this sensuous present is but a single and rela- 
 tively unimportant fragment. Reason, therefore, 
 bids me subordinate this fleeting and fragmentary 
 present to the total and abiding life. Reason bids 
 us treat the moment, not as an isolated self-suffi- 
 cient thing, but as an element in a larger whole. 
 It bids us rise from the temporal to the eternal 
 point of view. It bids us treat the ideal future as 
 of equal worth with existing present fact. 
 
 Now we have only to carry this same process 
 one step farther to get the ultimate spiritual life. 
 Add the absent in space to the absent in time ; 
 make what is actual in the experience of people 
 outside of us in space as real and regulative a con- 
 sideration in our conduct as what is inwardly pres- 
 ent in our own personal experience ; and we have 
 
78 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 the insight which shows our individual lives as 
 members of the great life of the world. Then 
 from the point of view of reason we shall behold 
 our little selves as they really are ; members of the 
 one great life of society. To recognize that my 
 neighbour is as real as myself is the second stage 
 of the spiritual life. Professor Royce has put this 
 matter very clearly. " Thy neighbour is as actual, 
 as concrete, as thou art. Just as thy future is real, 
 though not now thine, so thy neighbour is real, 
 though his thoughts never are thy thoughts. If 
 he is real like thee, then is his life as bright a 
 light, as warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee ; 
 his will is as full of struggling desires, of hard 
 problems, of fateful decisions ; his pains are as 
 hateful, his joys as dear. Take whatever thou 
 knowest of desire and of striving, of burning love 
 and fierce hatred, realize as fully as thou canst 
 what that means, and then with clear certainty 
 add : Such as that is for me, so it is for him, noth- 
 ing less. In all the songs of the forest birds ; in 
 all the cries of the wounded and dying, struggling 
 in the captor's power ; in the boundless sea, where 
 the myriads of water-creatures strive and die ; 
 amid all the countless hordes of savage men ; in 
 the hearts of all the good and loving ; in the dull, 
 throbbing hearts of all prisoners and captives ; in 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 
 79 
 
 all sickness and sorrow ; in all exultation and hope ; 
 in all our devotion ; in all our knowledge, — every- 
 where from the lowest to the noblest creatures and 
 experiences of our earth, the same conscious, burn- 
 ing wilful life is found, endlessly manifold as the 
 forms of living creatures, unquenchable as the fires 
 of the sun, real as these impulses that even now 
 throb in thy own little selfish heart. Lift up thy 
 eyes, behold that life, and then turn away and for- 
 get it as thou canst ; but if thou hast known that, 
 thou hast begun to know thy duty." 
 
 The third stage of the spiritual life is the neces- 
 sary complement of the second. For these other 
 wills of whose reality reason and reflection make 
 us aware, are in competition and conflict. Just as 
 the isolated appetites of the individual conflict 
 with each other, and can be solved only as they 
 are subordinated to a permanent ideal of life as a 
 whole ; and as this individual ideal could be found 
 only in relation to the other wills with whom we 
 stand in social relations ; so the individual wills of 
 men are in strife and antagonism; and that strife 
 can be harmonized only as we rise to the point 
 where we can see them in the light of the one 
 universal will. To give everybody just what they 
 want is neither possible nor desirable ; even after 
 you have come to appreciate what their wants are. 
 
80 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 To give them what is best as distinct from what is 
 most desired, is the spiritual problem. And this 
 involves having an ideal of their social relations 
 and social condition. The ideal is social. It is 
 universal. It carries us back to the universal 
 thought and will; and shows us that what we 
 found to be a necessity of thought is an equally 
 imperative necessity for conduct. 
 
 The spirit of social service is the Holy Spirit. 
 The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ; for if 
 there were no absolute and eternal thought and 
 will binding all men together in the unity of one 
 conception and one purpose ; then it would be 
 "ultra-rational," absurd, to live a life in which 
 the social good should be the aim of individual en- 
 deavour. The Holy Spirit is the realization of the 
 will of God in the life of humanity. The Holy 
 Spirit also " proceeds from the Son," as the later 
 creed rightly affirms ; for without the example and 
 inspiration of one to whom the Spirit was given 
 without measure, and who embodies the perfec- 
 tion of the Father's will and manifests the com- 
 pleteness of the principle of social service, the 
 reproduction of the divine life among frail, finite 
 men would have been feeble, fickle, and fragmen- 
 tary. The Holy Spirit is Christ multiplied into 
 individuals, and reproduced in institutions. The 
 
THEOLOGICAL 8 1 
 
 Holy Spirit is the fellowship of the many brethren 
 among whom Christ is the first-born. 
 
 The Holy Spirit is equally divine with the 
 Father and the Son ; and with them is to be wor- 
 shipped and glorified. The same reasoning which 
 makes the Son equal to the Father in all spiritual 
 things, makes the Holy Spirit equal to both. 
 Jesus said not only, " He that receiveth me receiv- 
 eth him that sent me " ; but also, " He that receiv- 
 eth you receiveth me." If the purpose to establish 
 in humanity a kingdom of love and mutual good-will 
 is the essential thought and will of the Father ; 
 then he who came to make that purpose actual in 
 history by his teaching, his example, and his inspi- 
 ration — in other words, the Christ — is also divine, 
 for he is the embodiment in outward fact of what 
 God is in inmost thought. And if the revelation 
 of this thought and the doing of this will makes 
 Christ divine ; then the life of every individual 
 man who receives this thought into his mind and. 
 makes this purpose the object of his will becomes 
 therein a recipient of the life and spirit of God ; 
 a temple in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. And 
 the Spirit of God dwelling in the hearts and lives 
 of men is no less divine than the thought and will 
 which this Spirit embodies ; no less divine than 
 the historic person through whom in its fulness 
 
82 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 and completeness this same thought and will first 
 became manifest. 
 
 The Holy Spirit is the thought of God, the life 
 of Christ, reproduced in those who obey God and 
 follow Christ. As Jesus promised his disciples, 
 "He shall be in you." And God in man is in no 
 wise inferior to God in nature ; God unfolding his 
 thought and working out his purpose through in- 
 dividuals in time is not inferior to God abiding 
 in his perfect thought throughout eternity. 
 
 Yes : the Holy Spirit is of the same essence as 
 the Father, as the old creeds profoundly teach. 
 If this is meaningless jargon to modern ears, it 
 is because we have missed the intimate relation 
 in which God stands to man and man to God. 
 As Dr. Bushnell said a generation ago : " We 
 think of the Holy Spirit as of some impersonal 
 force, some hidden fire, some holy gale, not such 
 a Spirit as, living in us, keeps the sensibilities 
 even of Gethsemane and the passion in immediate 
 contact with our inmost life." The Holy Spirit is 
 the meeting-point between the actuality of God 
 and the possibility of man. Just in so far as we 
 rise above the crude, selfish impulses of our imme- 
 diate animal nature, to that precise extent does 
 God come down into us, and make his abode with 
 us. And the indwelling God, the self-transcend- 
 
THEOLOGICAL 83 
 
 ing life of social service, is the presence of the 
 Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives. To deny 
 the divinity of the Son and the Spirit, is to 
 reduce the conception of God to that of a 
 blank, self -identical nonentity ; to banish him 
 from the whole course of history and the entire 
 sphere of reality ; and to leave man without 
 reliable guidance or personal inspiration in the 
 spiritual life. In place of a living, growing con- 
 sciousness of a personal Father, a personal Mas- 
 ter, a personal Companion ; such a denial drives 
 man into a blind acceptance of unverified tradi- 
 tion ; a perfunctory observance of unintelligible 
 rites; or a rationalistic reliance upon cold hard 
 crumbs of finite fact, to give to life its lost sem- 
 blance of an infinite significance. 
 
 In succeeding chapters we have considered the 
 Father, the Son, and the Spirit as distinct objects 
 of thought, reached by distinct lines of reflection. 
 The Father is the Absolute Ground of the phe- 
 nomena of nature and the progressive movement 
 of history. The Son is the incarnation of the 
 divine in humanity and the champion of the ideal 
 in its conquest of reality. The Holy Spirit is the 
 Helper and Comforter without whose presence our 
 aspiration to overcome the appetites of our nature 
 would be irrational and our efforts vain. 
 
84 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 These three are one. Unless there be a Father 
 whose thought and will include the right relations 
 of all beings to each other, there can be no Son, 
 who finds it his meat and drink to do the Father's 
 will. Unless, on the other hand, there be a true 
 and real and eternal Son, through whom this will is 
 done, the will of the Father remains nothing but a 
 pale, unsubstantial shadow, hovering in the back- 
 ground of speculative thought. The Father mani- 
 fests himself through the Son ; and the Son exists 
 in the Father. 
 
 Unless there be an eternal Son, who embodies 
 the perfect ideal of human life, no Divine Spirit, 
 conscious of oneness with the Father, can dwell 
 with men ; but all our moral aspiration and social 
 endeavour would remain a blind striving after the 
 unknown and the unattainable. And on the other 
 hand, unless such an indwelling of the Spirit be 
 possible to us, then Christ becomes an unintelligi- 
 ble projection into history of an alien being. 
 
 Each is interpreted through the other. The 
 evidence presented in the first chapter for the 
 being of God must have seemed to the thoughtful 
 reader inadequate, inconclusive. So it is. Only 
 through the Son do we know the Father. The 
 Spirit in ourselves is the only infallible witness of 
 his existence. And all our subsequent study of 
 
THEOLOGICAL 85 
 
 the working of the Spirit in the hearts of men and 
 in the institutions of society will be the confirma- 
 tion of the evidence which in the first chapter 
 could be presented only in its abstract, metaphysi- 
 cal form. Theology is a circle. Each part of it 
 tells something about all the rest. We might 
 begin almost anywhere : but in any case we 
 should find the first steps difficult ; for until we 
 have seen the whole circle we cannot rightly 
 appreciate the necessity and significance of any 
 part. The divinity of Christ, taken as an isolated 
 proposition, is incapable of proof. Unless we 
 bring to our interpretation of the person of Christ 
 the conception of the Father's loving will for all 
 his children on the one hand, and the conception 
 of the Holy Spirit prompting us to social service 
 on the other hand, we cannot form a worthy con- 
 ception of Christ as the Son of God. And in 
 like manner, the Holy Spirit will never be to us 
 anything more than a name signifying something 
 mysterious, a mere "Ghost," as the English re- 
 visers insisted that he shall continue to be called, 
 until we recognize the life of social service in 
 ourselves as, an embodiment of the eternal love 
 of the Father, and as a reproduction in us of the 
 life of his well beloved Son. 
 
Part II 
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SIN AND LAW JUDGMENT 
 
 It is impossible to separate God from man, 
 or man from God. They are correlative terms. 
 Hitherto we have been considering God as his 
 relation to man discloses him. Henceforth we 
 shall consider man as he is determined by his 
 relation to God. Already we have seen that 
 man is a relative, finite, dependent being. In 
 that fact as such no evil is involved. But a finite 
 being endowed with self-consciousness and free- 
 dom, is capable of attempting to assert his inde- 
 pendence ; and to set up his own finite being as 
 self-sufficient. Again we saw that in the progress 
 toward the perfect it is possible for man to carry 
 forward survivals of lower stages of development 
 into higher stages; and so to transform a primi- 
 tive virtue into a present vice. Again we saw 
 that impulses, appetites, and passions which are 
 harmless and even beneficial from the natural 
 standpoint of the individual, are inconsistent with 
 the social well-being, which it is the essence of 
 the spiritual life to recognize and further. 
 
 89 
 
go SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 These are all aspects of the fall to which a 
 finite individual, placed in the midst of a social 
 order which is constantly changing, is liable. 
 This assertion of the finite against the Infinite, 
 of past permissions against present ideals, of 
 the individual interest against social well-being, is 
 sin. Its specific forms are as numerous as the 
 relations in which man stands ; as various as the 
 lines on which society is advancing ; as multitu- 
 dinous as the points at which individual and 
 social interests touch. It is the province of 
 ethics to trace out in detail the special forms of 
 virtue and vice which result from the fulfilment 
 or the violation of these relations. Religion is 
 concerned with the single principle which is 
 common to all the particular cases. 
 
 All self-assertion of the individual against the 
 social order, and against God as the author and per- 
 fecter of the social order, is sin. Sin is the attempt 
 of the individual to set himself up as the lord of his 
 little world ; when it manifests itself as pride and 
 vanity. Sin is the clinging to antiquated customs 
 and inherited rights, and traditional views, after 
 they have ceased to represent existing facts and 
 promote social well-being ; when it takes the form 
 of bigotry and hypocrisy. Sin is the attempt of 
 the individual to take advantage of the imperfect 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 
 91 
 
 institutions, or the imperfect knowledge, or the 
 unequal opportunities of his fellows in order to 
 make private gain out of their loss ; when it takes 
 the form of meanness and dishonesty. Sin is the 
 willingness to secure something for myself with- 
 out rendering society an equivalent. Sin is the 
 disposition to make in my own favour exceptions 
 to the just and impartial law of God. Sin is the 
 disposition to treat other people as means to our 
 own ends ; instead of recognizing both others and 
 ourselves as alike means and ends in one common 
 social order. 
 
 Sin is an original principle in human nature. 
 By virtue of our finitude we must be conscious 
 of our own private desires, before we can be 
 equally alive to the desires and claims of others. 
 The "good " child who always minds when he 
 is spoken to ; who always observes the proprie- 
 ties ; who never gets angry ; who never makes 
 too much noise ; who never fights, will not 
 make the strongest type of man. Real good- 
 ness is good for something. Real regard for 
 others implies intense likes and dislikes of one's 
 own. And the boy who does not assert his 
 own rights and fight his own battles when a 
 boy, will be unable to protect the rights and 
 fight the battles of others when he is a man. 
 
92 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 The servant of others must first have served 
 himself. The development of the child is a re- 
 production of the evolution of the race. Had 
 there been no tiger in our ancestors, we should 
 not be civilized men to-day. Our mild virtues 
 would have stood us in poor stead in the fierce 
 struggle for existence which our savage ancestors 
 fought out for us in the primeval forests. Our 
 altruism rests on the deep and obscure founda- 
 tion of their fierce egoism. Had our ancestors 
 been of gentler temper, we should not have been 
 at all. 
 
 The doctrine of original sin does not find favour 
 with that sentimental mood which just now hap- 
 pens to be dominant in religious thought ; but the 
 modern historical conception of human evolution 
 brings it out tenfold more clear than when it was 
 proclaimed by lonely seers like Kant and Calvin 
 and Augustine and Paul. Sin is the most univer- 
 sal, the most stubborn, the most cruel, the most 
 ineradicable element in human nature. 
 
 The correlate and corrective of sin is law. Law 
 is the formulation of rights. Law is the declara- 
 tion of the conditions of social well-being. As sin 
 is the destruction of the interests of society and of 
 other individuals, in Order to secure the immediate 
 gratification of the sinner at the social expense ; 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 93 
 
 so law is the assertion that the social interests of 
 the community must be conserved at the cost of 
 reasonable and necessary sacrifice on the part 
 of individuals. The law, therefore, " is holy, just, 
 and good," because it is simply the affirmation of 
 the common good as against the private encroach- 
 ments of individuals. When once the law is de- 
 clared, sin takes the form of disobedience. " Sin 
 is lawlessness." "Sin is the transgression of the 
 law." 
 
 Law assumes two forms : the ceremonial and 
 the moral. In early times these two are blended 
 in one system. Later they are separated. At 
 first both are supported by civil authority. Later 
 the ceremonial is greatly reduced in scope ; and is 
 compelled to rest on social sentiment and personal 
 conscience for its sanction and support. And 
 even the moral law, in its higher requirements and 
 subtler applications, ultimately appeals to the 
 same sources for its sanction. The moral law lays 
 down the particular things which must be done, or 
 must not be done, in the interest of the social 
 order. The ceremonial law, on the contrary, 
 confines itself to prescribing or prohibiting those 
 things which promote or retard the cultivation of 
 the social spirit in general ; and reverence for God 
 as the upholder of the social fabric. 
 
94 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 The ceremonial law is peculiarly liable to cor- 
 ruption ; as the requirements of this law are 
 artificial and arbitrary. They are valuable so long 
 as they are recognized as symbolical of the atti- 
 tude of reverence to God and service to man : 
 but they are worse than worthless ; they are mis- 
 chievous and perverse, as soon as this, their sym- 
 bolical significance, is lost, and they are regarded 
 as having virtue and value in themselves. Every 
 religious system in the process of time accumu- 
 lates in its attic a heap of this worn-out ceremonial 
 rubbish ; and a reformation is needed every few 
 generations to sweep it out, and take a fresh start 
 with new and vital symbols. Protestantism ac- 
 cumulates this stock of faded millinery and worn- 
 out garments as fast as Catholicism. The only 
 difference is that Catholicism has been accumulat- 
 ing longer; and has a more intense aversion to 
 the necessary periodical house-cleaning than the 
 Protestant sects : and that Protestantism is prone 
 to treasure up antiquated conceptions of truth 
 rather than obsolete expressions of worship. 
 
 Hence it often, happens that the deeper and 
 truer service of God and the social good demands 
 the destruction and overthrow of the ceremonial 
 requirements. Isaiah and Jesus, Luther and Knox, 
 were compelled to tear down ceremonial observ- 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 95 
 
 ances which had degenerated from original helps 
 to actual obstructions to the religious spirit they 
 were meant to foster and the social service they 
 were intended to promote. 
 
 As we have already seen, even the moral law, 
 though to a much less extent, is subject to a 
 corresponding degeneration. Acts which are per- 
 missible and even praiseworthy in one stage of 
 development are prohibited and condemned in an- 
 other. As long as the worth of the human indi- 
 vidual as such remained relatively unrecognized, 
 slavery was relatively permissible ; and the wisest 
 philosophers and the justest lawgivers of the an- 
 cient world accepted slavery as a necessary human 
 and therefore a warranted divine institution. But 
 the advancing recognition of the dignity of human 
 personality made the indignity of slavery increas- 
 ingly manifest ; and thus what had been permitted 
 as relatively right became prohibited as absolutely 
 wrong. Where protection and support was as 
 much as women could expect, and where the per- 
 petuation of the family was as much as men 
 thought of, polygamy and concubinage were not 
 inconsistent elements of social arrangements, and 
 not incompatible precepts of a genuinely benefi- 
 cent law. But when the personal affections were 
 deepened, and intellectual affinities began to be 
 
g6 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 appreciated, and spiritual union came to be de- 
 sired, and the infinite worth of the human soul 
 came to be recognized ; then what had been per- 
 mitted to the hardness of primitive hearts was 
 prohibited by the tenderer requirements of softened 
 and civilized souls. Hence a Socrates and a Jesus 
 may find their higher duty in opposition to the 
 imperfect morality, as well as in disregard of the 
 ceremonial observances of their times. 
 
 And yet in so doing they do not destroy but 
 rather fulfil the spirit of the law whose letter 
 they abolish. For as the law has its sole justifi- 
 cation in a form of social good which it upholds, 
 so they are justified in overthrowing it, provided 
 they can show a greater good, more adapted to the 
 requirements of their times, which they establish 
 in its place. 
 
 Law is not ultimate ; but is the imperfect and 
 temporary means to a permanent and ever-enlarg- 
 ing social good. Below the law no man may fall 
 without sin. Above it the prophet and reformer 
 are often compelled to rise, in order to reach 
 higher forms of good than the law has recognized ; 
 and to lift the law, by their example and precept, 
 to the level of the new and larger good. In the 
 sight of the law such persons are sinners, equally 
 with the criminals who break the law in their own 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 97 
 
 private interest. The difference, however, is world- 
 wide. The culpable sinner hates the law and 
 breaks it because it affirms the social and denies 
 his private good. The prophet and reformer breaks 
 down the letter of the ancient law because he finds 
 it has become the excuse for selfish practices and 
 private indulgences, and he desires to put in its 
 place a law which will lift life to humaner levels, 
 and bring man nearer to his God. 
 
 Law originates in opposition to sin ; and in its 
 early form is confined to the prohibition of irrev- 
 erent and unsocial conduct. The Ten Command- 
 ments are the nucleus of such a code. The form 
 in which this code was delivered was doubtless 
 much more natural than the literal interpreta- 
 tion of the Old Testament narrative has led 
 men to suppose. The date of the completion of 
 this legislation was doubtless centuries later than 
 tradition has assumed. The process of formation 
 was doubtless far more gradual than orthodox com- 
 mentators have been willing to admit. 
 
 Yet if God be a Spirit ; if the moral progress 
 of the race be an object of his thought and a pur- 
 pose of his will ; then this legislation, by whom- 
 soever it may have been promulgated, howsoever 
 it may have been developed, whensoever it may 
 have been completed, is nevertheless a genuine 
 
98 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 revelation of the thought, an authoritative declara- 
 tion of the will of God. For it proclaimed in no 
 uncertain tone, and far in advance of the moral 
 attainments of the age, the conditions essential 
 to the maintenance of social well-being. What is 
 social is spiritual. What is for the good of man 
 is for the glory of God. The Mosaic law was social 
 and beneficent. Therefore the Mosaic law is the 
 revelation of the Spirit, the declaration of God. 
 
 The contrast between sin and law brings judg- 
 ment. Judgment is simply the declaration of the 
 fact that sin and law are irreconcilable. There is 
 nothing arbitrary or artificial about it. It is not a 
 remote future event. It is a present reality. As 
 soon as an act is performed, it is either lawful or 
 unlawful ; it either promotes or injures the social 
 good ; and judgment is the perception of that fact 
 by God, by the man who has performed the act, 
 and by all who come to know the act and see 
 it in its true relations. The conscience of the 
 individual and the verdict of society both are 
 reflections and expressions, more or less perfect, 
 of the absolute judgment of God, whose thought 
 includes the act in all its bearings and relations. 
 
 The judgment of sin brings condemnation. 
 God's thought includes impartially the good of all 
 his creatures. God is no respecter of persons. 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 
 99 
 
 Sin, however, is the sacrifice of the good of others 
 and of society to the fancied good of the individual 
 sinner. Sin is in its very nature, selfish, mean, 
 and contemptible. God's condemnation is his 
 clear perception of how contemptible sin is. The 
 reflection of that absolute judgment of God in 
 the mind of the individual, or conscience, brings 
 shame and humiliation and remorse. It is the 
 conviction that we have done a mean and con- 
 temptible thing. We may have enjoyed doing it 
 when we thought merely of our own selfish inter- 
 est ; our own private gratification. But when we 
 come to see it in its larger relations ; when we 
 come out of the darkness and illusion of our blind 
 and petty selfishness ; when we see the wrong it 
 has done to others ; when we see how hideous it 
 looks in the daylight ; when we get found out, and 
 see how others despise it ; when we look at it as 
 it is in itself ; when we look at it in the impartial 
 way in which God looks at it : then we are over- 
 whelmed with guilt and shame. The only refuge 
 of the sinner is concealment. Sin is ever sneak- 
 ing and cowardly. It loves darkness rather than 
 light, because its deeds are evil. He that doeth 
 the truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may 
 be manifest that they are wrought in God. 
 
 An excellent test of character is this willingness 
 
IOO SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 to be tested by the light. Art thou willing to be 
 known for just what thou art? Wouldst thou 
 welcome inspection in the inmost recesses of thy 
 heart? Wouldst thou enjoy the companionship 
 of spirits who could see and read the secrets of 
 thy soul? Wouldst thou be comfortable if thy # 
 body were transparent glass, revealing in perfect 
 clearness the thoughts and imaginations and 
 desires of thy mind? Then thou art guileless 
 and guiltless. Then the omniscient Judge is not 
 dreadful to thee, but welcome. Then thou art 
 sinless and perfect. Then the spirit-world would 
 be to thee a delightful home. 
 
 With this test before us, it is hardly necessary 
 to lay down in dogmatic form the doctrine that all 
 men have sinned and come short of the glory of 
 God. In the clear, white light of such a judgment 
 all stand condemned ; all mouths are stopped. 
 
 And yet to such a judgment-seat we must all be 
 brought. Before it even now we all stand. The 
 crude, coarse imagery of hell-fire and artificial tort- 
 ure disturbs the minds of men no more. But the 
 certainty that "there is nothing covered that shall 
 not be revealed," this impending and indeed act- 
 ually present judgment by revelation, is no creation 
 of dogmatic theology ; no fiction of the hortatory 
 imagination ; no artificial projection of mediaeval 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL ioi 
 
 horror. It is certain as thought, universal as 
 reason, as old as creation ; and never set forth 
 more clearly and forcibly than by Plato, at the 
 close of the Gorgias. In these days, when the 
 Christian teaching on this point is regarded by 
 sentimentalists as harsh and irrational, it is well 
 worth while to recall the words of this ancient 
 philosopher, uttered four centuries before the 
 Christian era. 
 
 " Listen, then," Plato represents Socrates as 
 saying, "to a very pretty tale, which I dare 
 say that you may be disposed to regard as a 
 fable only, but which, as I believe, is a true tale, 
 for I mean, in what I am going to tell you, to 
 speak the truth. Now in the days of Cronos 
 there was this law respecting the destiny of man, 
 which has always existed, and still continues in 
 heaven, that he who has lived all his life in justice 
 and holiness shall go, when he dies, to the islands 
 of the blest, and dwell there in perfect happiness 
 out of the reach of evil ; but that he who has lived 
 unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of 
 vengeance and punishment, which is called Tar- 
 tarus. And in the time of Cronos, and even later 
 in the reign of Zeus, the judgment was given on 
 the very day on which the men were to die ; the 
 judges were alive, and the men were alive ; and the 
 
102 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 consequence was that the judgments were not well 
 given. Then Pluto and the authorities from the 
 islands of the blest came to Zeus, and said that 
 the souls found their way to the wrong places. 
 Zeus said: 'I shall put a stop to this; the judg- 
 ments are not well given, and the reason is that 
 the judged have their clothes on, for they are 
 alive ; and there are many having evil souls who 
 are apparelled in fair bodies, or wrapt round in 
 wealth and rank, and when the day of judgment 
 arrives many witnesses come forward and witness 
 on their behalf, that they have lived righteously. 
 The judges are awed by them, and they them- 
 selves, too, have their clothes on when judging; 
 their eyes and ears and their whole bodies are 
 interposed as a veil before their own souls. This 
 all stands in their way ; there are the clothes of 
 the judges and the clothes of the judged. What 
 is to be done ? I will tell you : In the first place, 
 I will deprive men of the foreknowledge of death, 
 which they at present possess ; in the second 
 place, they shall be entirely stripped before they 
 are judged, for they shall be judged when they 
 are dead; and the judge too shall be naked, that 
 is to say, dead ; he with his naked soul shall 
 pierce into the other naked soul as soon as each 
 man dies, he knows not when, and is deprived of 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 103 
 
 his kindred, and has left his brave attire in the 
 world above, and then the judgment will be just.' 
 
 "This is- a tale, Callicles, which I have heard 
 and believe, and from which I draw the following 
 inferences : Death, if I am right, is in the first 
 place the separation from one another of two 
 things, — soul and body ; this, and nothing else. 
 And after they are separated they retain their 
 several characteristics, which are much the same 
 as in life ; the body has the same nature and 
 ways and affections, all clearly discernible ; for 
 example, he who was a tall man while he was 
 alive, will remain as he was, after he is dead ; and 
 the fat man will remain fat ; and so on. And if 
 he was marked with the whip and had the prints 
 of the scourge in him when he was alive, you 
 might see the same in the dead body. And, in a 
 word, whatever was the habit of the body during 
 life would be distinguishable after death, either 
 perfectly, or in a great measure and for a time. 
 And I should infer that this is equally true of 
 the soul, Callicles ; when a man is stripped of the 
 body, all the natural or acquired affections of the 
 soul are laid open to view. And when they come 
 to the judge, he places them near him and in- 
 spects them quite impartially, not knowing whose 
 the soul is : perhaps he may lay hands on the soul 
 
104 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 of the great king, or of some other king or poten- 
 tate who has no soundness in him, but his soul is 
 marked with the whip, and is full of the prints of 
 the scars of perjuries, and of wrongs which have 
 been plastered into him by each action, and he is 
 all crooked with falsehood and imposture, and 
 has no straightness because he has lived without 
 truth. Him the judge beholds, full of deformity 
 and disproportion, which is caused by license and 
 luxury and insolence and incontinence, and de- 
 spatches him ignominiously to his prison, and 
 there he undergoes the punishment which he 
 deserves. 
 
 " Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of 
 these things, and I consider how I shall present 
 my soul whole and undefiled before the judge in 
 that day. Renouncing the honours at which the 
 world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and 
 to live as well as I can, and, when the time comes, 
 to die. Follow me then, and I will lead you 
 where you will be happy in life and after death : 
 and do you be of good cheer, for you will never 
 come to any harm in the practise of virtue, if you 
 are a really good and true man. The best way of 
 life is to practice justice and every virtue in life 
 and death." 
 
 This same fact of an ever-present judgment 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL I OS 
 
 Fichte brings out in a very searching passage 
 in which he shows us how we may anticipate 
 its verdict upon ourselves. " Tell me what direc- 
 tion thy thoughts take, — not when thou with 
 tightened hand constrainest them to a purpose, — 
 but when in thy hours of recreation thou allow- 
 est them freely to rove abroad ; tell me what 
 direction they then take, where they naturally 
 turn as to their most loved home, in what thou 
 thyself in the innermost depths of thy soul find- 
 est thy chief enjoyment, — and then I will tell 
 thee what are thy tastes. Are they directed 
 towards the Godlike, and to those things in nature 
 and art wherein the Godlike most directly reveals 
 itself in imposing majesty? — then is the God- 
 like not dreadful to thee but friendly ; thy tastes 
 lead thee to it, it is thy most loved enjoyment. 
 Do they, when released from the constraint with 
 which thou hast directed them to a serious pur- 
 suit, eagerly turn to brood over sensual pleasures, 
 and find relaxation in the pursuit of these? — 
 then hast thou a vulgar taste, and thou must 
 invite animalism into the innermost recesses of 
 thy soul before it can seem well with thee there." 
 The profoundest test of character, however, is 
 that given by our Lord, in the twenty-fifth chap- 
 ter of Matthew. There the principle of separa- 
 
106 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 tion between the sheep and the goats is shown 
 to be simply genuineness and fidelity in social 
 service. "Then shall the King say unto them 
 on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, 
 inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the 
 foundation of the world : for I was an hungered, 
 and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and ye 
 gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took 
 me in ; naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, 
 and ye visited me : I was in prison and ye came 
 unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, 
 saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, 
 and fed thee ? or athirst, and gave thee drink ? 
 And when saw we thee a stranger and took thee 
 in ? or naked, and clothed thee ? And when saw 
 we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 
 And the King shall answer and say unto them, 
 Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it 
 unto one of these my brethren, even these least, 
 ye did it unto me. Then shall he say also unto 
 them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye 
 cursed, into the eternal fire that is prepared for 
 the devil and his angels : for I was an hungered, 
 and ye gave me no meat : I was thirsty, and ye 
 gave me no drink : I was a stranger, and ye 
 took me not in ; naked, and ye clothed me not ; 
 sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 
 IQ7 
 
 shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when saw 
 we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, 
 or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not min- 
 ister unto thee ? Then shall he answer them, 
 saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye 
 did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not 
 unto me." 
 
 A man's relations to his fellow-men deter- 
 mine his relations to Christ and to God. For 
 the will of God, the life and work of Christ, has 
 for its end and aim the well-being of men, who 
 are the children of God and the brethren of 
 Christ. Hence our serviceableness to our fel- 
 low-men is the exact and infallible measure of 
 our acceptableness to God. No ritualistic, or 
 ceremonial, or ecclesiastical, or doctrinal, or pro- 
 fessional substitute can be found which will in 
 the slightest degree take the place of this sim- 
 ple, straightforward Tightness of relation with 
 our fellow-men. Religion is the larger aspect, 
 the universal form of our social relationships. 
 For God is not a Being alien to men and re- 
 mote from the world. God is the Father of all 
 men ; the Spirit in whom we all live and move 
 and have our being. And therefore our attitude 
 toward God cannot be different from our atti- 
 tude toward pur fellow-men. Judgment, there- 
 
108 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 fore, is based on social considerations. This 
 was the first principle of the teaching of Jesus. 
 He makes social sincerity and social service 
 everywhere the test of religious recognition and 
 religious worth. "I say unto you that every 
 one who is angry with his brother shall be in 
 danger of the judgment ; and whosoever shall 
 say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of 
 the council ; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, 
 shall be in danger of the hell of fire. If, there- 
 fore, thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and 
 there rememberest that thy brother hath aught 
 against thee, leave there thy gift before the 
 altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to 
 thy brother, and then come and offer .thy gift." 
 "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your 
 heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if 
 ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will 
 your Father forgive your trespasses." 
 
 Life to-day is not so simple as was the life of 
 those to whom these precepts were addressed. 
 The administration of charity and justice, the 
 conduct of business, the adjustment to our in- 
 finitely complex economic and social conditions, 
 render it frequently a very difficult matter to see 
 just how this principle of fraternity and charity and 
 mutual service should be applied. Even with the 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 109 
 
 kindest and most generous intent, we are liable to 
 go sadly astray. And we are so entangled in the 
 meshes of social arrangements not of our own 
 creating or our own choosing, that often what we 
 would we cannot do, without purchasing a par- 
 ticular good at the cost of much general harm. 
 The principle, however, is as clear now as it was 
 in Jesus' day. And according to that principle no 
 man can be acceptable in the sight of God, no man 
 is righteous in the nature of things, who know- 
 ingly and willingly permits any man or woman, or 
 any class of men and women, to suffer privation, 
 or degradation, or oppression, or neglect, or injury, 
 or insult, of which directly or indirectly he is the 
 cause, or of which, directly or indirectly, without 
 disregard of nearer duties, he might contribute to 
 the cure. This socially serviceable disposition is 
 the one spiritual quality which has absolute worth 
 in the sight of God. He who has that has God. 
 For that is what God is. God is love. By this 
 principle husband and wife, father and mother, 
 brother and sister, son and daughter, are judged 
 in the home. By this principle the carpenter is 
 judged at his bench ; the merchant at his counter ; 
 the manufacturer in his factory ; the teacher in his 
 school-room ; the lawyer in his office ; the physi- 
 cian at the bedside ; the citizen upon the street ; 
 
IIO SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 the statesman in the legislative hall ; the ruler on 
 his throne. Just in so far as in and through 
 these concrete relationships the world is better for 
 our being in it, so far and no farther do we receive 
 the divine approval. Just in so far as through our 
 laziness, our wilful ignorance, our thoughtlessness, 
 our unkindness, our inconsiderateness, our envy, 
 our pride, our avarice, our lust, our cruelty, our 
 timidity, our cowardice, our indifference, the bur- 
 den of any fellow-man is more heavy ; the sorrow 
 of any human heart is more bitter ; the wrongs of 
 any social class are more intolerable ; and the in- 
 justice of any institution is more cruel for any 
 word or deed that we have either said and done, or 
 left unsaid and undone, to that extent we are 
 guilty before God, and stand under his righteous 
 condemnation. 
 
 God's judgment consists in bringing a man face 
 to face with his own character. It is not a remote 
 event in the dim and distant future. It is a fact 
 here and now. The decision turns upon a prin- 
 ciple which we can understand perfectly clearly : 
 and which we can apply, each to himself. So 
 simple, so searching, so just, so inevitable, is the 
 judgment of God. Into the final outcome of this 
 judgment we will not here inquire. It is sufficient 
 for the present that we see that it is a reality. 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 1 1 
 
 Our next subject will be the way of salvation. 
 And if judgment is the revealing of a man's real 
 character, as determined by his social spirit, then 
 the salvation which is to deliver him in this judg- 
 ment day must be real and social too. No legal 
 fictions, no logical contrivances, no theological 
 schemes, will meet the case. The man who is 
 to be judged righteous before that bar must be 
 righteous. Is it then possible for man, sinful and 
 guilty as he is by nature and by his own volition, 
 to present before God a face that has no trace of 
 shame ; a spirit from which every stain of guilt is 
 really washed away ; a soul against which no fel- 
 low-man can bring a valid charge ; a heart that 
 has no slightest fear of being known by God and 
 men precisely as it is ? Is salvation, like judg- 
 ment, a fact so real, so definite, so reasonable, so 
 conformable alike to the character of God and the 
 nature of man, that we may be just as clear and 
 sure of salvation as we are of judgment ? That 
 will be the subject of the following chapter. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 REPENTANCE AND FAITH SALVATION 
 
 If sin and law and judgment were ultimate and 
 final facts, man would be lost beyond all hope of 
 redemption. If every act became part of an 
 irrevocable character ; if we stood under a hard 
 and fast system of rules and regulations ; if every 
 violation was visited with its appropriate condem- 
 nation ; if there were no possibility of change ; 
 no way of escape; no room for mercy, then the 
 outlook for the individual and for the race would 
 be dark and foreboding. And yet sin and law and 
 judgment are stubborn realities: they cannot be 
 toned down, or smoothed over, or explained away. 
 If there is any redemption or salvation or de- 
 liverance, it must redeem and save and deliver us 
 out of these very evils ; out of the grip of sin ; out 
 of the clutches of violated law; out of the teeth 
 of just condemnation ; out of the jaws of our own 
 remorse and guilt. 
 
 Fortunately, character, especially in its earlier 
 stages, is not a fixture. We can change our mind. 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 
 "3 
 
 We can repent. Appetite and passion may be too 
 strong for us in the moment of temptation. We 
 may yield, and do at their imperious dictation the 
 wretched act, of which the moment after we are 
 heartily ashamed. But this very fact of shame is 
 the prophecy and witness of better possibilities. 
 It is evidence that we are more than mere creat- 
 ures of appetite and passion. If the act con- 
 demned is our act, the act of condemnation is our 
 own act also. And in this act of condemnation 
 we take sides with God against the base act which 
 we ourselves have done. 
 
 We may go farther, and repudiate the act. We 
 may say, " Although I did it, I will never do the 
 like again. The base act, to be sure, is the ex- 
 pression of what I was. It does not express what 
 I now am, and what I am determined to become." 
 
 When one sincerely repents, he is on the sure 
 way to deliverance. He has already gone over to 
 the side of the law ; and the only question that 
 remains is whether he will be accepted. As Paul 
 says, "But if what I would not, that I do, I con- 
 sent unto the law that it is good. So, now, it is 
 no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in 
 me. For I delight in the law of God after the 
 inward man : but I see a different law in my mem- 
 bers, warring against the law of my mind, and 
 
114 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 bringing me into captivity under the law of sin 
 which is in my members. So then I myself with 
 the mind serve the law of God ; but with the 
 flesh the law of sin." 
 
 The law of God and the law of my mind in this 
 case are at one, and both are arrayed against the 
 law of sin which is in my members. Reason is no 
 longer the slave of appetite, but has become, in 
 purpose and endeavour at least, the free servant 
 of God. 
 
 Repentance, however, is only the first step 
 toward salvation. It is not enough to repudiate 
 the evil we have done. We must lay hold of the 
 good we have not yet attained. And this appre- 
 hension of an unrealized goodness, is faith. Man 
 can no more keep evil out of his heart by repent- 
 ance and resolution not to sin again, than he can 
 drive the air out of a room with a fan and keep it 
 out by shutting the door. Spirit, no less than 
 nature, abhors a vacuum. The chamber that is 
 merely empty, swept, and garnished, speedily 
 becomes the abode of seven other spirits more evil 
 than that which was first cast out. The mind 
 must have something to think about. The will 
 must have some motive. The heart must have 
 some object of devotion. 
 
 Faith is the recognition of the Father's right- 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 
 US 
 
 eous will as the ruling principle of conduct : it is 
 the acceptance of Christ as the supreme object of 
 affection and devotion : it is the reception of the 
 Spirit as the inspirer and the guide of life. 
 
 Faith, therefore, in the religious sense of the 
 term, has primarily nothing to do with doctrinal 
 creeds. Faith is a personal relation ; not an intel- 
 lectual conviction. He who believes in the Father, 
 the Son, and the Holy Spirit has all the faith 
 that is needful for salvation. Out of this personal 
 faith in God, there will indeed develop new hopes, 
 new aspirations, new fellowships, new activities. 
 And the grounds and principles of this divine life 
 may very properly be precisely stated and logically 
 formulated. Such statements and formulations of 
 the laws and facts of the spiritual life are creeds. 
 And these creeds, if they are faithful to the facts 
 and true to experience, are valuable aids to the 
 spiritual life. Yet we must be on our guard 
 against putting the creed in the place of the 
 person, and confounding intellectual assent to a 
 series of propositions with spiritual faith in the 
 living God. 
 
 Belief, in the purely intellectual sense, is inde- 
 pendent of our wills. Belief in this sense is the 
 harmony of a given proposition with all the pre- 
 viously accepted propositions which make up the 
 
Il6 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 contents of our minds. What a man believes in 
 this sense depends on his early training, his 
 inherited prejudices, his intellectual environment. 
 The proposition which harmonizes with all the 
 other propositions in his mind he must believe. 
 He cannot help it. The law of intellectual gravi- 
 tation compels him to believe it. The proposition 
 which does not harmonize with the conclusions 
 already established in his mind he cannot believe. 
 Trying to believe it will do no good. Saying that 
 he believes it will do much harm. It is simply 
 impossible to believe it without intellectual sui- 
 cide. And neither the wiles of Satan nor the 
 grace of God can make it credible. 
 
 People who were trained a generation ago and 
 people who are trained in the critical methods of 
 the library and the experimental methods of the 
 laboratory to-day cannot think alike on historical 
 and scientific questions. To endeavour to impose 
 on the eager and earnest student of to-day the 
 unscientific and uncritical formulations of preced- 
 ing ages is an insult to reason : and he is war- 
 ranted in slamming, the doors of his intelligence 
 at the first approach of the dogmatic inquisitor. 
 Blind belief is little better than blind unbelief. 
 Both are sure to err. 
 
 That the world reveals one spiritual princi- 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 117 
 
 pie ; that history contains one ideal character ; 
 that human life is at least partially pervaded by 
 altruistic motives ; these fundamental facts no 
 candid citizen of a Christian community can 
 consistently deny. And these three insights, 
 rightly interpreted, give a Father in heaven to 
 worship; a Son of God to follow; a Holy Spirit 
 to revere in the hearts of others and welcome to 
 our own. One who sees and welcomes so much 
 as this is intellectually able to make confession of 
 his faith in the only formula the New Testament 
 prescribes. Other truths are, indeed, desirable for 
 instruction and edification. But to make more 
 than this an intellectual test of spiritual fitness 
 for acceptance with God and fellowship with the 
 Christian community is an unwarranted imperti- 
 nence. It proceeds on the assumption that belief 
 in something more than Father, Son, and Holy 
 Spirit is essential to salvation. Such zeal for the 
 amplification of intellectual belief is an unwitting 
 confession of lack of vital faith in God. 
 
 Neither is faith to be confounded with feeling; 
 or measured by the amount of emotion that accom- 
 panies it. Some feeling, of course, there must be 
 in connection with Christian faith. We cannot 
 see the difference between right and wrong, be- 
 tween the purity and kindness and generosity and 
 
Il8 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 love of Christ, and the uncleanness and brutality 
 and cruelty and hatefulness of sin, and remain 
 utterly unmoved. We cannot stand in the midst 
 of the mighty, world-historic conflict, where on the 
 one side multitudes of men and women are being 
 betrayed and maltreated and plundered by the 
 sin of others, and degraded and polluted by sin in 
 their own hearts ; and on the other side thousands 
 and tens of thousands of the best and noblest men 
 and women the world has produced are banded to- 
 gether in the name of Christ in the endeavour, first, 
 to banish sin from their own hearts and lives and 
 then to banish it from the hearts and lives of 
 others, and so remove it from the world ; — we 
 cannot stand emotionless between these contend- 
 ing hosts. We cannot fail to feel some drawing 
 out of our hearts toward Christ. Deep in the 
 real nature of every rational being there is a 
 sound core of loyalty to what is right and true. 
 This profound response and unswerving alle- 
 giance to what is just and true and kind and good, 
 and to Christ as the supreme embodiment and 
 historic champion of truth and goodness in the 
 world, is all the emotional accompaniment that 
 is essential to the reality of faith. This deep re- 
 sponse of the whole nature may not make so 
 good a showing on examination ; but the most 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 19 
 
 silent and imperceptible turning of the depths 
 of our moral nature toward duty, and toward 
 God as the author of duty and the defender of 
 the right, is worth more than whole tempests of 
 froth and foam on the heaving surface of emo- 
 tional excitement. 
 
 The great question, after all, is not, Have I a 
 love for Christ of which I can be conscious all 
 the time ? That way lies discouragement, de- 
 spondency, despair. Faith must lead the way to 
 love. And the question of faith is, rather, Have 
 I Christ ? Whether with little emotion or with 
 much, am I resolved that what work I do shall 
 be done in his name ; what influence I have shall 
 be cast on his side ; however cold and dead my 
 emotions may become, however weak and blunder- 
 ing my efforts may prove, such as I am, I will be 
 his? If we are thus resolved to serve him, we 
 already believe in him ; and we shall come to love 
 him in due time. 
 
 Faith again is not to be confounded with works, 
 nor measured by them ; though works are the 
 ultimate and inevitable fruit of faith. Faith lays 
 hold on the ideal ; and our works come far 
 short of that. Faith is the deeper principle. 
 Ideals are more significant than facts. The 
 idealism of the heart rather than the ritualism 
 
120 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 of the hands is the true expression of the real 
 self. 
 
 So here again the great question is not, What 
 have I done ? but, What am I trying to do ? Three 
 men are on a mountain-side. The first is only a 
 few steps from the base : the second is half-way 
 up : the third is within a few steps of the summit. 
 Which of these men is nearest the summit? "The 
 third, of course," says every superficial observer, 
 judging by works alone. Let us look deeper at 
 the minds and hearts of these three men. The first 
 has his face set resolutely toward the summit, 
 and is determined to press forward until it shall 
 be reached. The second man is undecided, look- 
 ing sometimes up and sometimes down. The 
 third has seen enough already and is thinking of 
 descent. Once more, which of these three men 
 is nearest the summit ? The third is farthest 
 from it of them all. Whether the second will 
 ever reach it you cannot say. The first man is 
 nearest of them all, for his mind and will are on 
 the heights already and in due time will bring 
 his body there. 
 
 Thus faith is mightier than works. The ideal 
 is more potent than the real. Aspiration is more 
 significant than achievement. As repentance is 
 the repudiation of the actual bad, so faith is the 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 12 1 
 
 identification with the ideal good. Faith is, first, 
 the acceptance of the ideal presented from with- 
 out in Christ ; but it is at the same time the 
 promise and potency that the ideal shall be real- 
 ized and the image of Christ reproduced within 
 ourselves. As repentance cancels the past, so far 
 as we can do it ; so faith affirms the future, so far 
 as that lies in our power : and both alike appeal 
 to God to ratify our repentance by forgiveness 
 and to confirm our faith by its acceptance. 
 
 This appeal of man to God is prayer. Does 
 God listen to our appeal ? Does God answer 
 prayer ? 
 
 Here we are at once confronted by the objec- 
 tion of popular science. We are told that all 
 things are governed by uniform and necessary 
 laws. There are no lawless forces in the world. 
 In the heavens above, in the earth beneath, in the 
 waters under the earth, the scientist sees law. 
 Law has governed the evolution of plant, animal, 
 and man. Laws of ethics, economics, trade, art, 
 are unfolding themselves before our eyes. We 
 all know that our plumbing must conform to the 
 laws of sanitation ; our carpentering to the laws of 
 geometry ; our bridges to the laws of physics ; our 
 navigation to the laws of trigonometry ; our con- 
 duct to the laws of ethics ; our business to the 
 
122 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 laws of trade. And we are not so simple as to 
 suppose that by rash petitions for special interfer- 
 ence with these laws of nature we can avert the 
 consequences of disregarding them. We carry no 
 check-book on the bank of omnipotence which 
 enables us to get just what we ask for by simply 
 making out the checks and presenting them in 
 proper form. There is no room for partiality and 
 favouritism within this universe of law. Therefore, 
 says the scientist, there is no place for prayer. 
 
 Law, indeed, is uniform. No sane man dreams 
 of changing it. Yet our wishes, expressed to our 
 fellow-men, accomplish results. It is a law that 
 certain bacilli, preying upon certain tissues in cer- 
 tain conditions, cause death. When, in these 
 conditions, I call in a physician I do not ask him 
 to change that law in my behalf. I ask him to 
 bring to bear other laws. I ask him to introduce 
 into the problem the action of certain chemicals 
 upon the infected tissues. The introduction of 
 these new forces changes the conditions, and the 
 result of the changed conditions is my recovery to 
 health. No law has been abrogated or broken. 
 The physician brought not less law, but more. 
 This is the sphere in which will operates. It is 
 not in the power of God or man to turn a bullet 
 from its path, or a flash of lightning from its 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 
 123 
 
 course, or a bacillus from its prey, by contradict- 
 ing the laws which govern the action of these 
 forces, any more than it is in the power of either 
 God or man to make two mountains with no inter- 
 vening valley. It certainly is in the power of man 
 to determine to some extent whether the action of 
 the bullet, the lightning, or the bacillus shall be 
 so combined with other forces as to bring life or 
 death to man. And what is possible with man is 
 not of necessity impossible with God. The scien- 
 tific objections to the utility of prayer do not 
 touch the real point, which is not whether special 
 sequences are invariable or not, but whether the 
 coordination of these special sequences is under 
 the control of rational will or of blind chance. 
 
 That there is room in the world for the effective 
 action of human intelligence without interference 
 with any law whatever, is a fact established by 
 every act of forethought which man performs. 
 That God can answer prayer, if there be a God, is 
 as little doubtful as that my neighbour can grant a 
 favour if he hears my request. To deny the possi- 
 bility of answer to prayer is equivalent to denying 
 freedom to man and denying personality to God. 
 Between freedom and fate, between a personal 
 God and blind chance, between faith in prayer and 
 trust to luck, we must choose. It is only the 
 
124 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 short-sighted and superficial mind that can find a 
 resting-place between these two opinions. That 
 the Father gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask 
 him involves no greater psychological difficulty, 
 and encounters no stronger scientific objection, 
 than that human parents give good gifts to their 
 children. 
 
 The new psychology is teaching us that the one 
 stronghold of freedom is the power of self-directed 
 attention. Attention determines motive, motive 
 determines act, and acts seal our doom. Whether 
 we give more or less attention to an object deter- 
 mines the part that object shall play in our 
 character and life. Now, in general terms, the 
 well-being or the misery of our lives, in theo- 
 logical terms our salvation or our damnation, 
 depends upon whether those laws of life which 
 are the conditions of well-being are observed or 
 disobeyed. In the more obvious and superficial 
 sense salvation is by works. The deeper question, 
 however, is, What determines a man's works ? 
 What makes him obey or disobey these laws ? 
 Here is the test. One man relies exclusively on 
 his past experience, his acquired training, his 
 established habits, to guide him when particular 
 cases of conduct arise. Another man habitually 
 recognizes the presence of the Infinite Spirit who 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 2 5 
 
 rules the world by righteous laws ; habitually 
 gives thanks for the beneficent fruits of this 
 divine working in the world, and as habitually 
 surrenders his own will to become the instrument 
 of the divine will in so far as that can find expres- 
 sion in his individual conduct. Is it not clear 
 that the second man will have the continuous con- 
 scious presence of the Infinite Spirit with him to 
 a greater degree than the first man ? Is it not 
 clear that the second man will be found reverently 
 conforming his life to the divine laws in those 
 sudden emergencies which come to us all ; while 
 the first man will more frequently be caught nap- 
 ping and will react from passion and caprice, 
 rather than from obedience and reverence for the 
 divine law ? 
 
 The laws of individual well-being are divine. 
 But the laws of social well-being are, if we may 
 so express it, more divine. That is, they take 
 precedence of the others when the two conflict. 
 The cholera germ, the tiger, the savage, fulfil 
 the laws of their individual being. Civilized 
 man is called upon to do more. Not the laws 
 of his individual well-being alone, but the laws of 
 social well-being as well are entrusted to his care 
 and keeping. Profoundly apprehended, these two 
 laws are doubtless one. Yet this profound 
 
126 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 apprehension of the identity of individual and 
 social interest is just what is hard to secure 
 and maintain at the moment of action. To the 
 natural man these laws seem of very unequal 
 urgency. God's will includes them both. And 
 the man whose will is constantly and habitually 
 offered in prayerful surrender to the will of God 
 cannot fail to acquire a settled disposition to give 
 due weight to social obligations as against private 
 interests, which would be lacking to the same man 
 were he withdrawn from this spiritual fellowship 
 with God. The general disposition will find expres- 
 sion in particular acts; and the answer to his habitual 
 prayers will come in the fruitfulness of righteous 
 deeds and holy influences which could have gone 
 forth only from a mind and heart constantly united 
 by prayer to the thought and will of God. 
 
 In things so subtle as the relations of motive 
 to act, of character to conduct, it will be as impos- 
 sible to trace precise sequences of cause and effect 
 in the majority of cases as it is to find the particu- 
 lar rays of sunshine and drops of rain and atoms 
 of fertilizer again in the particular kernels of the 
 ripened grain. The farmer who should boast of 
 his ability to trace such connection would be set 
 down for a fraud, and the man who should' expect 
 him to do it would be regarded as a fool. 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 127 
 
 Nor is the answer to prayer due simply to the 
 reflex action of his own effort upon the man who 
 prays. The God of Christian faith; the God 
 revealed in Jesus Christ, and manifested in the 
 continued presence of the Holy Spirit, is not a 
 purely transcendent being, outside of the world 
 and i-emote from men, like the gods of Epicurus, 
 who "repose on blissful seats, which never winds 
 assail nor rain-clouds sprinkle with their showers, 
 .nor snow falling white with hoary frost doth 
 buffet, but cloudless ether ever wraps them round, 
 beaming in broad diffusion of glorious light. For 
 nature supplies their every want, nor aught im- 
 pairs their peace of soul." The immanent God, 
 revealed in history, and present in human society 
 to-day, is by his very nature "a prayer-hearing 
 and a prayer-answering God." Prayer is not a 
 mere petition projected into empty space. Prayer 
 is communion. It is fellowship. Prayer lays hold 
 on God ; apprehends afresh the mind of Christ ; 
 opens the heart to receive the Holy Spirit. The 
 attempt to cheat God by using him as a means to 
 the gratification of our private whims and ca- 
 prices is doubtless futile. God is not mocked. 
 Eliminate from prayer all its spiritual signifi- 
 cance and reality ; reduce it to a mere device 
 for getting what one happens to want by simply 
 
128 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 going through a verbal form : and then it is easy 
 enough, without much show of scientific learn- 
 ing or any invocation of the aid of natural law, to 
 demonstrate that such prayer is futile and absurd. 
 That prayer can be seriously discussed on this 
 low plane ; that men of sense can impute to other 
 men of sense such crude and childish notions of 
 spiritual things, reveals the sad pass to which 
 deistic traditions have brought the religious think- 
 ing of our times. 
 
 Prayer which makes immediate, particular, mate- 
 rial things the end, and God simply the means of 
 getting them, fails as it deserves to. It does not 
 come into communion with God. It is not prayer. 
 And it is not answered because it is not prayer. 
 
 Once recognize that prayer is the communion 
 of man with a living God, revealed in Christ and 
 present in the world as the Spirit inspiring every 
 worthy form of social life, and then it becomes 
 perfectly evident that every prayer must bring its 
 appropriate and objective and positive and helpful 
 answer. When I read a book, and get information 
 from it, I do not attribute that information to the 
 reflex influence upon myself of the effort which I 
 put forth in the act of reading. In reading I put 
 myself into communication with the mind of the 
 author. When I talk with a friend, and am made 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 129 
 
 better by it, I do not credit my improved condition 
 to the reflex influence of my own effort at conver- 
 sation. Prayer is communion with the thought 
 and will of God. And the answer to prayer is 
 from him ; not from ourselves. The man who 
 communes with God will grow to be like him. 
 The man who takes his perplexities and problems 
 and temptations to God in prayer will receive 
 from God light and help and strength, which he 
 could receive from no other source. 
 
 Answer to prayer belongs not to the realm of 
 magic and miracle ; but lies clearly within the 
 sphere of causality and law. Prayer lifts the 
 desires of the individual up into their larger rela- 
 tions to the will of God : and it brings them back, 
 purified by contact with his holy and higher pur- 
 pose, and strengthened and confirmed by his appro- 
 val and sympathy. 
 
 When Peter and Zacchseus and Nicodemus 
 came to Jesus when he was on earth, confessed to 
 him their sins and shortcomings, their perplexities 
 and doubts, they went away from the interview 
 wiser and better men. Christ is not dead. His 
 Spirit is not withdrawn from the world. In the 
 Holy Scriptures, in Christian institutions, in the 
 hearts and lives of his followers, in the teaching 
 of the church and the training given by Christian 
 
130 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 parents to their children, Christ is a living pres- 
 ence, a positive force in the world to-day. Prayer 
 is the communion of the spirit of man with this 
 ever-present Spirit of Christ ; and is as real and 
 objective a communion, and brings as real and 
 definite an answer, as did the communion of the 
 early disciples with their Master when he was 
 present with them in the flesh. 
 
 The current misconceptions of prayer are chiefly 
 due to an excessive emphasis upon mere specific 
 petition, and a corresponding neglect of the ele- 
 ments of thanksgiving, praise, fellowship, and 
 communion. Petition for specific and definite 
 material benefits occupies as subordinate a place 
 in true spiritual prayer, as the prediction of pre- 
 cise future events occupied in Hebrew prophecy. 
 Intimate and intense appreciation of the spiritual 
 purposes of God did incidentally enable these 
 ancient seers to forecast the trend of national 
 affairs and the tendency of historical development. 
 And in like manner loving surrender to the will of 
 God and the mind of Christ not infrequently 
 carries material as well as spiritual blessings in 
 its train. If we seek first the kingdom of God 
 and his righteousness, many other things will be 
 added, unto us. But if we seek these other things 
 first, we miss the kingdom and the righteousness, 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 131 
 
 and with the loss of these we lose also the mate- 
 rial blessings which these carry in their train. 
 
 Prayer is as welcome to God as it is indispen- 
 sable to man. For God does not work without 
 means. He does not thrust reforms upon the 
 world before the world is ready to receive them. 
 The desires and petitions of individual hearts and 
 united congregations are the signs by which the 
 Spirit recognizes the fulness of time for a spirit-i 
 ual and social advance. 
 
 Prayer, of course, is not a substitute for effort. 
 Indeed the chief form in which answer to prayer 
 is manifest is increased effort on the part of our- 
 selves and others ; and renewed courage and con- 
 fidence in the utility of effort. Prayer is always 
 possible. Work is not. God is always near ; 
 though others be far away. Work meets delays 
 obstacles, discouragements. Prayer moves in the 
 sphere of pure, unobstructed will. Hence, while 
 all other forms of expression are outwardly con- 
 ditioned, intermittent, fitful ; prayer is steady, 
 patient, persistent, and never despairs. 
 
 Prayer is the appointed means by which the will 
 of the individual becomes emancipated from its 
 finitude and isolation, and becomes consciously 
 united to the large and noble purposes of God. 
 It is spiritually the most elevating, intellectually 
 
132 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 the most broadening, socially the most expanding, 
 morally the most quickening, practically the most 
 profitable exercise in which man can engage. 
 And when once we have emancipated ourselves 
 from the deistic notion of a far-away God ; when 
 once we have learned to think of him as real 
 with at least as much reality as the wills of men 
 and the forces of society, we shall recognize that 
 answer to prayer, provided that it really is prayen 
 is just as certain and inevitable as that an ade- 
 quate cause must produce its appropriate effect. 
 
 God rules the world by law ; and those laws are 
 inexorable. The physical consequences of sin — 
 the disease, the poverty, the pain — follow as inva- 
 riably as fire burns and water flows. The social 
 consequences also the sinner cannot escape. The 
 man who has lied will be despised ; the man who 
 has stolen will be distrusted ; the man who has 
 been cruel will be hated ; regardless of his subse- 
 quent repentance. The world, except it be trans- 
 formed by the Spirit of Christ, is as hard and 
 merciless and relentless to the sinner as is nature 
 herself. 
 
 In early times men naturally interpreted God 
 in terms of their own moral ideals. And their 
 gods were cruel, arbitrary, and unforgiving beings. 
 It is a late stage of human development which 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 3 3 
 
 begins to question, " Tantcene animis ccelestibus 
 ircef" 
 
 Even Christianity has found it hard to believe 
 the full gospel of its Master on this point. And it 
 has borrowed its conceptions of the divine govern- 
 ment more from the civil governments of the an- 
 cient world than from the parables and precepts 
 and actions of its Lord. As long as the Greek or 
 Roman could trace even-handed justice in archon 
 or emperor, they had such reason to be thankful 
 that to have asked for more would have seemed an 
 impertinence. And consequently they thought 
 of God as a world-governor, and ascribed to him 
 justice as his highest attribute. For justice in 
 matters political and social was the highest ideal 
 of the ancient world. 
 
 But since the revolutions in America and France, 
 the rise of constitutional liberty in England, and 
 the spread of democratic doctrine everywhere, men 
 have come more and more to recognize that right 
 derives its content and meaning from the good 
 which lies beyond it as its end and aim ; justice 
 is compelled to justify itself by the proof of its 
 beneficence ; and the right of human kings and 
 lords is respected only in so far as it promotes 
 the well-being of their subjects and dependents. 
 What wonder, then, that this same tendency and 
 
134 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 spirit, applied to theology, appeals from the justice 
 to the love of God, and calls him no longer Gov- 
 ernor but Father, as Jesus taught men to do. 
 
 The conception of the Father to which we were 
 led in our first chapter, as the absolute thought 
 which holds all things and all men in their true 
 relations, shows that he must condemn sin ; for 
 sin is the flat contradiction of that truth which the 
 divine thought perceives and of that order which 
 the divine will affirms. To condemn a sinner, 
 because of his sin, to more misery than the direct 
 consequences of his sin involve ; to keep him in 
 condemnation and punishment after he had re- 
 pented of his sin, and was trying to overcome it, 
 would be the act not of a Father but of a brute ; 
 not of a God but of a devil. It would be an act, 
 not of truth and light and love, but of falsehood 
 and darkness and malignity. A being capable of 
 that could not command even the respect of the 
 average man to-day ; much less obtain the worship 
 of the holiest and best. This belief in the mercy 
 and forgiveness and grace of God is not a piece 
 of sentimentalism, which argues that because we 
 would like to be forgiven, therefore God must do 
 it. It is a transparent truth of reason ; which 
 affirms that the confounding of the man and his 
 act, in spite of repentance and aspiration and en- 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 3 5 
 
 deavour to do better, would be an act of blindness 
 unworthy of short-sighted man, and therefore im- 
 possible to the omniscient God. It is grounded 
 not on what we would like to have done to us ; but 
 on what we ourselves would be willing to do to an- 
 other. We believe in the mercy of God, because 
 we cannot worship in God what we despise in men ; 
 because we cannot exclude from our thought of 
 him what is best and noblest in ourselves. 
 
 The grace of God is so transparent and self- 
 evident a principle to-day that the marvel is that 
 any one can doubt it. It is only the savage, and 
 the civilized man who has drawn his conceptions 
 of God from a semi-barbarous antiquity, who 
 denies it. 
 
 Yet we owe this revelation of the grace of God 
 to noble men like the authors of the second por- 
 tion of Isaiah and of the book of Jonah, who first 
 proclaimed it to the hard hearts of unbelieving 
 men. We owe it, above all, to Jesus Christ, who 
 revealed it in the compassion and pity and for- 
 giveness with which he met all forms of penitence 
 and faith ; who taught it in the matchless para- 
 bles of the unmerciful servant and the prodigal 
 son, in the precept " Until seventy times seven," 
 and in the petition, " Forgive us our trespasses 
 as we forgive those that trespass against us " ; 
 
136 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 who sealed it by the prayer upon the cross, 
 "Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do." This revelation of forgiveness and 
 grace is the central and crowning message of 
 Christianity. " For the law was given by Moses ; 
 grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." 
 
 God cannot change. As Christ revealed him, 
 so eternally he is. The time can never come 
 when God will refuse forgiveness to a repentant 
 soul. That souls may sink so low and become 
 so dead as to find no place for repentance is, 
 indeed, possible and probable. But that God 
 should sink so low as to find no place in his 
 heart for forgiveness, — this is simply inconceiv- 
 able. God cherishes to the last his gracious 
 purpose of redemption ; and stands ready to 
 welcome with open arms and robe and ring 
 every returning prodigal, who in any far-off 
 time or place shall find himself morally and spirit- 
 ually able to leave his sin and shame behind him, 
 and come back to his Father and his home. 
 
 In all grace and forgiveness there is a wondrous 
 mingling of suffering and joy. There is more 
 trouble and labour involved in seeking and finding 
 the one lost sheep than in guarding the ninety 
 and nine that went not astray. And yet there 
 is more joy over the recovery of the one, than 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 3 7 
 
 over the security of all the rest. The life of 
 Christ, as the supreme manifestation of the grace 
 of God, was of necessity a life pre-eminent in 
 suffering and sorrow. For in sympathy and pity 
 and helpfulness and love he took upon himself 
 the infirmities and sorrows, the guilt and sin of 
 the men to whom he ministered and of the world 
 he came to save. Had he been less faithful to 
 the truth, less eager to reveal God's saving grace 
 to men ; he might have lived an untroubled life 
 in the midst of a select circle of admiring dis- 
 ciples. But it was the sick not the whole whom 
 he sought to heal ; the sinner and not the right- 
 eous whom he came to save. And in loyalty to 
 this divine mission of grace, in fidelity to this 
 human service of sympathy and love, he exposed 
 himself to the envy and jealousy and avarice and 
 hypocrisy and malignity and hate of which the 
 world was full and underneath which humanity lay 
 crushed and bruised and bleeding. " Surely he 
 hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. 
 He was wounded for our transgressions, he was 
 bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of 
 our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we 
 are healed." 
 
 All this he bore, not to offer a ransom to the 
 devil, nor, what is the modern equivalent of that 
 
1 38 ■ SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 ancient theory, to appease an angry God. All 
 this he suffered, not to vindicate the majesty of 
 the divine law, or to uphold the dignity of the 
 divine government. For neither the law nor the 
 government of God are so feeble and so in need of 
 external props as these theories assume. All this 
 he endured simply because it is in the nature of 
 love to identify itself with its object. To love a 
 good man is to rejoice in and share all the glory 
 and the gladness that his goodness sheds about him. 
 To love a bad man is to suffer with and to share all 
 the shame and pain his badness brings upon him. 
 God loves bad men. Christ came to bring God's 
 love to a wicked world. And that is why he was 
 compelled to live a life of suffering and die an 
 ignominious death. 
 
 Thanks to the love of the Father, thanks to the 
 grace of Christ, every man who in sincerity repents 
 of his sins and looks to God for help to live the 
 righteous life is sure of immediate acceptance and 
 complete forgiveness. He will still suffer much 
 from the avenging laws of a violated nature ; for 
 a long time he will suffer more from the suspicion 
 and hatred of hard human hearts ; but from the 
 moment he truly repents and gives his heart to 
 God for forgiveness and guidance and control, he 
 is admitted with the full privileges of sonship into 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 39 
 
 the household of faith and the family of God. 
 From that moment he is a child of the Father, a 
 friend of Christ, and a candidate for the life of 
 the Spirit. 
 
 By grace, through faith, based on repentance, 
 we receive the assurance of salvation. We do 
 not save ourselves. There is in man the capacity 
 for the divine life, an ability to respond to the 
 divine ideal when once that is presented. But 
 unless this ideal comes home to man, rousing and 
 quickening this capacity into life, the soul remains 
 dormant awhile, and then succumbs to decay and 
 death like an unplanted, unsunned, unwatered 
 seed. The presentation of the divine ideal there- 
 fore is the efficient cause of man's salvation. 
 God's effectual calling precedes man's successful 
 choosing. It is by the winsomeness and attrac- 
 tiveness of the divine ideal, presented to our wills 
 and accepted by them, that we are saved. How, 
 then, is the presentation of this divine ideal made 
 to man ? The depth and breadth of any system 
 of theology may be tested by its answer to that 
 question. 
 
 The divine ideal of human life, the Logos, the 
 Holy Spirit, has never been without witness in 
 the world, and is not far from any one of us. 
 Every natural object is the creation and expression 
 
140 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 of the Eternal Reason ; every righteous law and 
 beneficent institution of society is the embodiment 
 of the Divine Spirit ; and every fellow-man is in 
 his inherent capacity and dignity the image of 
 God. 
 
 The call of God, the presentation of the divine 
 ideal of human life, consequently may come 
 through any or all of these its manifold embodi- 
 ments. It is not a ghost-like apparition, robed in 
 a shroud of mystery, entering unannounced some 
 secret presence-chamber of the soul, when all the 
 doors of sense are closed, and all the avenues 
 of reason are barred by superstitious fear and 
 bolted by blind credulity. 
 
 The call of God is the outward, visible, tangible 
 appeal of the divine goodness and glory and love 
 and truth, as it comes home to man's heart 
 through the love of father and mother, the noble- 
 ness of brothers, the tenderness of sisters, the 
 sweet charities of family and home, the purity 
 and gentleness of woman, the honour and bravery 
 of man, the call of country, the majesty of law, 
 the grandeur of mountain and sea, the glory of 
 sunlit clouds and starry skies, the solemn rites of 
 temple service, the spoken word of pious exhorta- 
 tion, the attitude of silent prayer, the written 
 Book of special revelation, — the old, old story of 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 141 
 
 the words and deeds, the life and death of him 
 who was at once Son of man and Son of God. 
 
 In these voices of nature and humanity, whereby 
 we are called away from the selfish, sensual, sinful 
 life, God is present in different degrees of fulness 
 and completeness. Response to any one of these 
 calls is a step toward salvation. And the degree 
 and fulness of the salvation thereby attained is 
 proportioned to the degree and fulness of that rev- 
 elation of the divine to which the response is 
 given. The love of father, mother, wife, and child, 
 the love of nature and of native land, devotion to 
 science or to art, are of divine origin, and have 
 divine potency to lift man out of that exclusive 
 selfishness which is the soul of sin. 
 
 Yet they reach and redeem only parts of the 
 man. They do not take the whole man on all 
 sides and in all relations, up into that blessed life 
 of love which is salvation. The salvation wrought 
 by these agencies, though real as far as it goes, 
 is incomplete. The man who feels the noble 
 stirrings of human affection in his breast is not 
 wholly dead in trespasses and sins. Nor have we 
 therein the guarantee that he has entered wholly 
 into life. Life and death may be striving together 
 in him, and the issue may still be doubtful. Re- 
 sponse to one of these divine voices does not in- 
 
142 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 sure a like response to all the rest. It is at most 
 a ground of hope. And yet, how often is that 
 hope betrayed ! Have we not seen men so alive 
 to natural beauty that they could seize and make 
 immortal the fading glory of a sunset, who were 
 yet so far dead to the diviner beauty of the human 
 heart that they could betray to lasting wretched- 
 ness and shame a woman's trusting love ? Have 
 we not seen a devotion to wife and children truly 
 divine, existing in the same breast with fiendish 
 treachery toward business associates and heartless 
 betrayal of creditors ? Have we not seen patriot- 
 ism and pollution, zeal for a great cause and con- 
 tempt for humble men, the love of truth and the 
 hate of duty, stamped on the same features, ani- 
 mating the same heart, and struggling for control 
 of the same life ? 
 
 Just so far as one is faithful to these human 
 loves and duties, his soul will be ripened and ex- 
 panded by them into fuller love and larger life, 
 and receptiveness for more of God. In so far as 
 he is false, and betrays any of these human claims, 
 to that extent the forces of death are gaining over 
 the powers of life within him. 
 
 That man alone who, not by the hearing of the 
 ear nor by the speaking of the lips merely, but by 
 the assent of his heart and the devotion of his will, 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 143 
 
 has made Jesus Christ his personal ideal ; who has 
 made Christ's law of love his principle of life ; who 
 day by day strives to follow him, and asks and 
 receives forgiveness for all wherein he falls short 
 of that divine ideal ; — that man alone is sure of 
 salvation here and now, always and everywhere. 
 
 Not that his life is lifted all at once to the level 
 of his ideal, As we shall see in the next chapter, 
 the divine life is a slow and gradual growth. " We 
 are saved by hope." And yet the intelligent and 
 whole-souled acceptance of Christ and his grace, 
 by faith and love, is the promise and potency of a 
 complete and perfect triumph over every form of 
 selfishness and sin, and an abundant entrance into 
 eternal life. For sincere devotion to him means 
 that his ideal becomes our ideal ; his life our life. 
 And since his ideal and life is nothing less than 
 the comprehensive will of God and the complete 
 devotion to the service of man, it follows that 
 every true disciple of Christ is in principle and at 
 heart faithful to every duty, loyal to every rela- 
 tionship, devoted to every cause, friendly to every 
 person, the supporter of every institution in and 
 through which the divine goodness is made mani- 
 fest to men; and will continue faithful to whatever 
 new forms of goodness and love the future may 
 unfold. 
 
144 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 The raw material of appetite and passion, the 
 primitive instincts of self-preservation and self- 
 assertion, are not all at once worked over into 
 spiritual gifts and Christian graces. Repentance, 
 faith, and grace bring God and man into right 
 relations ; and thereby give complete assurance of 
 ultimate salvation. The actual working out of 
 this union is the function of the Spirit, and will 
 form the subject of the following chapter. 
 
 The thought of God as an arbitrary, external 
 Ruler created artificial difficulties in the way of 
 the divine forgiveness which required equally arbi- 
 trary and artificial schemes for their reconciliation. 
 When once we grasp the thought of God as the 
 Universal Will whose aim is the well-being of all 
 his children and the development of the perfect 
 social order, then instantly we see that the free 
 grace of God, and the full forgiveness of every 
 repentant and contrite heart, is not an afterthought 
 and a contrivance of the divine ingenuity, but is 
 a necessary outcome of the divine nature. It is 
 impossible for God not to forgive a sinner the 
 instant he repents ; for not to forgive is not to 
 love, and that is impossible with God. An unfor- 
 giving spirit is the one unforgivable sin in man ; 
 and surely we cannot attribute that to God. God, 
 indeed, hates sin with bitter, uncompromising hate ; 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 145 
 
 but that is because sin is injurious to the men 
 whom God loves, and is inconsistent with that 
 social ideal of mutual helpfulness and good-will 
 which he is seeking to develop among men. But 
 the moment a man renounces his sin, he at once 
 becomes acceptable to God ; both for what he is 
 in himself, and for the social service he is now 
 for the first time prepared to render. As Pro- 
 fessor Royce has expressed it, " The One WilJ must 
 conquer. The one aim is stern to its steadfast 
 enemies, but it is infinitely regardful of all the 
 single aims, however they may seem wayward, that 
 can at last find themselves subdued and yet real- 
 ized in its presence, and so conformed to its will. 
 All these rivulets of purpose, however tiny, all 
 these strong floods of passion, however angry, it 
 desires to gather into the surging tides of its in- 
 finite ocean, that nothing may be lost that con- 
 sents to enter. The One Will is no one-sided will. 
 It desires the realization of all possible life, how- 
 ever rich, strong, ardent, courageous, manifold such 
 life may be, if only this life can enter into that 
 highest unity. All that has will is sacred to it, 
 save in so far as any will refuses to join with the 
 others in the song and shout of the Sons of God. 
 Its warfare is never intolerance, its demand for 
 submission is never tyranny, its sense of the excel- 
 
146 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 lence of its own unity is never arrogance ; for its 
 warfare is aimed at the intolerance of the separate 
 selves, its yoke is the yoke of complete organic 
 freedom, its pride is the perfect development of 
 all life. When we serve it, we must sternly cut 
 off all that life in ourselves or in others that can- 
 not ultimately conform to the universal will ; but 
 we have nothing but love for every form of sentient 
 existence that can in any measure express this 
 Will." 
 
 From the social point of view sin is deadly : be- 
 cause it is selfish and anti-social. Law is stern 
 and remorseless : because it is the indispensable 
 condition of social well-being. Judgment is search- 
 ing and severe : because every trace of selfishness 
 and insincerity must be sifted and burned out of 
 human hearts before the perfect society can come. 
 And on the other hand, from this same social 
 point of view, the true penitent is absolutely sure 
 of immediate acceptance with the Father : because 
 his penitence is the renunciation of his anti-social 
 attitude. His feeble faith and faint aspiration is 
 at once clothed in the garments of that perfect 
 social righteousness which he now accepts as the 
 ideal of character and the aim of conduct. His 
 eleventh-hour service is equally rewarded with the 
 longer labour of those who have borne the heat 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 147 
 
 and burden of the day : because the spirit of ser- 
 vice and not the length of labour or the quantity 
 of work is the essential test of fitness for the new 
 life on which he enters, and the divine society of 
 which he becomes a member. The grace of God 
 is as full and free as his judgment is searching and 
 severe. The salvation of the man who repents is 
 as sure and certain as is the condemnation of the 
 man who persists in selfishness and sin. The rea- 
 son why men are called on everywhere to repent, 
 or change from the selfish to the social spirit, is 
 the assurance that there stands waiting to receive 
 them this nobler life of social service and this 
 divine society of unselfish servants of God and 
 their fellow-men. This was the gospel with which 
 Jesus redeemed the world, when "he began to 
 preach, and to say, Repent ye ; for the kingdom 
 of heaven is at hand." 
 
 It was not the promise of immunity from 
 individual punishment in another world with 
 which he won frightened adherents to his cause. 
 It was by the immediate presentation of the 
 nobler life and the social spirit, by the establish- 
 ment of a society founded upon service, and a 
 kingdom rooted and grounded in love, that he 
 saved men from selfishness and sin and im- 
 parted to the world a new and eternal prin- 
 
148 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 ciple of life. The entrance of that Holy Spirit, 
 and the development and realization of that 
 divine life will be the subject of the following 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 REGENERATION AND GROWTH LIFE 
 
 Even faith and grace leave God and man, though 
 reconciled, still external to each other. God is the 
 object of faith ; man is the object of grace. The 
 union of God and man in a new life remains to be 
 accomplished. This is the work of the Spirit, the 
 Lord and Giver of Life. The entrance of the 
 Spirit is regeneration. 
 
 Without regeneration there can be no spiritual 
 life. " Except a man be born anew he cannot see 
 the kingdom of God." It is, however, a serious 
 error to confine the Spirit's working to any mode 
 of procedure, to expect it to be clearly denned in 
 time, or to demand that the individual shall be 
 explicitly conscious of the process. The new 
 birth may come as suddenly as a flash of light- 
 ning out of the midnight dark. More frequently, 
 however, it comes as gradually and imperceptibly 
 as daylight breaks upon the sleeping world at 
 dawn. It may be occasioned by the burning 
 words of preacher or evangelist at an evening 
 
 149 
 
150 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 meeting.. It may be due to the silent influence 
 of a father's example and a mother's love, ex- 
 tended over all the years of childhood and youth. 
 It may manifest itself as a sudden revulsion from 
 one's whole past, and a break with all one's old 
 associations ; or it may be simply the fuller recog- 
 nition of the significance of early training, and the 
 more conscious acceptance of established princi- 
 ples of conduct. It may be accompanied by almost 
 any shade of feeling from agony to rapture ; and 
 its practical expression may be anything between 
 greater kindness and considerateness in the home 
 to the most arduous foreign mission. " The wind 
 bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the 
 voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, 
 and whither it goeth ; so is every one that is born 
 of the Spirit." 
 
 As we have already seen, it is a serious mistake 
 to regard the Holy Spirit as a mysterious force, a 
 hidden fire, a heavenly dew, a holy gale, coming 
 down only at special times and places, and then 
 withdrawing for a season to his secret habitation. 
 We have learned to recognize the presence of the 
 Holy Spirit in every heart in which the seeds of 
 the Gospel have fallen and borne fruit ; in every 
 home where Christian principles are cherished 
 and observed ; in the power of Christlike person- 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 5 I 
 
 ality which fathers and mothers have over chil- 
 dren ; ' which teachers exercise over pupils ; which 
 pastor exerts over people ; which friend has over 
 friend. And if the Spirit be thus diffused and 
 omnipresent ; then we should expect his working 
 to be no less varied and multiform. 
 
 Regeneration is the beginning of the process 
 by which the raw material of sensuous impulse 
 and natural appetite is worked over into moral 
 virtue and spiritual grace. It is the entrance of 
 God into man, through which the Spirit of God 
 comes to dwell in us as a perpetual presence ; the 
 abiding secret of all our peace, and the permanent 
 source of all power. 
 
 The Spirit is, in his very nature, not individual- 
 istic, but social. The life of God in man must be 
 a universal life. The Spirit of God is the Spirit 
 of love. And the manifestation of the Spirit is 
 chiefly in and through the institutions and practi- 
 cal relations of society. The third part of this 
 book will be devoted to the social expression 
 which the indwelling Spirit makes in his outgoing 
 life. 
 
 Here we are concerned only with the begin- 
 ning. It is self-evident that if there is to be a 
 life of the Spirit in man, the beginning must be 
 made. " Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye 
 
152 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 must be born anew." The reason why the abso- 
 lute and universal necessity of regeneration is not 
 more generally recognized, is that we have looked 
 at the spiritual life as too individualistic. Now 
 selfish and individualistic goodness, if there were 
 any such thing, might conceivably be attained 
 without the Spirit's aid. But social goodness is 
 the very life of the Spirit ; and to be without the 
 Spirit and to be without the life of unselfish social 
 service is the same thing. 
 
 If we turn away from abstract selfish concep- 
 tions of virtue, and consider the concrete relations 
 in which men stand to each other in society, we 
 shall see at once that without regeneration there 
 can be no true and worthy social life. Take the 
 family, business, science and art, social intercourse 
 and the state. In each of these spheres regenera- 
 tion is an absolute necessity to the realization of 
 its ideal. The principle of life which we derive 
 from nature, and with which we all start out, is one 
 that must be abandoned and destroyed, and a new 
 principle or, rather, the Holy Spirit, must take its 
 place, before a man is fit to be husband and father ; 
 before he can be an honour to any craft or business 
 or profession ; before he can deserve the name of 
 scholar ; before he can adorn any circle of society ; 
 before he can be a true and loyal citizen of any state. 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 
 153 
 
 First : the family. No man can be rightly mar- 
 ried who is not therein born anew. This is simply 
 another way of saying that no man can be rightly 
 married without love. For what is love, if it be 
 not the death of the private exclusive self, which 
 cares for none but self, and the birth within one 
 of a newer, larger, richer self, which includes the 
 being and welfare of another in the aims, interests, 
 and affections which he calls his own. And this 
 new life of unselfish love is ever the life of God ; 
 the indwelling of his Spirit. 
 
 Hence it is no metaphor, but plain, literal fact, 
 that the well-married husband and wife are born 
 anew ; and that except a man to this extent be 
 born anew he cannot see the beauteous and blessed 
 kingdom of family and home. He that climbeth up 
 some other way is a thief and a robber. Whether 
 that other way be the brutal way of gross passion 
 and cruel lust ; whether it be the base way of 
 deliberate self-seeking for wealth and family con- 
 nections ; whether it be the giddy way of thought- 
 less haste and sentimental glamour; or whether 
 it be the vulgar way of " the low-loving herd," who 
 are fond "of self in other still preferred"; that 
 other way, whatever it be, is sure to be thorny, 
 treacherous, and troubled, and the end thereof is 
 misery and woe. 
 
154 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 As long as two individuals retain their natural, 
 separate selfhood ; as long as each seeks his own ; 
 as long as each regards the other as means to his 
 own ends, these individuals are unfit to be united. 
 And the closer the bond that binds them, the 
 more violently will they chafe against its fetters. 
 Only those who are lifted by the Spirit into a new 
 life of self-forgetful love can find the blessed life of 
 harmoniously wedded souls. 
 
 Second : labour and business. Honest industry 
 and just commerce are the foundations on which 
 rest all the amenities of life, the sanctities of 
 home, the higher forms of social intercourse, and 
 intellectual and political activity. Now it is not 
 natural for man to do his work or go into busi- 
 ness with any such conception of the social 
 significance of his vocation as an artisan, or of 
 his high calling as a business man. Men are by 
 nature lazy. It is natural for the working man to 
 shirk ; and to try to get the largest possible pay 
 for the least possible expenditure of effort ; regard- 
 less of the worth or worthlessness of the product 
 of his work. The natural attitude of men toward 
 business is that of swine toward a trough. It is 
 natural for a man to get out of his .business as 
 much as he can, regardless of how he gets it, or 
 whom he takes it from. 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 5 5 
 
 Work done in this natural way is slavish and 
 degrading. Business done on this natural plane 
 dwarfs the heart, deadens the sympathies, and 
 shrivels the soul. Except some idea of industry 
 as a social function enter into and possess a man ; 
 except he resolve to do good work whether his pay 
 be large or small ; except the sacredness of the 
 human interests that depend upon business appeal 
 to him ; except the heroic ideal of business integ- 
 rity lay its authoritative hand upon him ; except 
 he be ready to maintain the costly right against 
 the profitable wrong at all hazards ; in a word, 
 except the larger interests of the industrial world 
 be reflected in his individual breast ; except the 
 Spirit of service and justice animate his soul, he 
 cannot expect to find anything to his credit on the 
 books of God. 
 
 Third: science and art. We all know too 
 well the natural approach to these things ; the 
 delight in our own smartness ; the pride in what 
 we know ; the ambition to win fame by some 
 bold stroke or dashing performance. And yet 
 we all know well that no true work was ever 
 done in such a state ; that nothing good or true 
 or beautiful ever came from man or institution 
 or nation where such an atmosphere was preva- 
 lent. We know what mean jealousies and petty 
 
156 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 strifes and bitter animosities such an attitude 
 engenders among poets, painters, preachers, musi- 
 cians, orators, scientists, and statesmen. We 
 know, or ought to know, that nothing but false- 
 hood and folly, hideousness and hate, can ever 
 be the outcome of such an animus. 
 
 The man who will write lines that shall be 
 remembered, or speak words that men shall 
 heed, or do work that shall endure, must quit 
 trying to be smart. He must care little for 
 the fate of his private, pet hypothesis who will 
 extend the domains of real science. He must 
 seek no short cut to fame who will depict on 
 canvas or carve in stone real facts of nature 
 in true forms of thought. 
 
 So radical, so searching, so comprehensive, 
 must be the change from the seeking of selfish 
 satisfaction to the service of truth and beauty, 
 in him who will be scholar and artist. The 
 seed of the natural, private self must fall into 
 the ground and die, before the better, higher self, 
 born of the Spirit, can put forth the beauteous 
 flowers of poetry and art, and mature the pre- 
 cious fruit of science and philosophy. 
 
 Fourth : social intercourse. Here again the 
 natural attitude is one of subtle, but none the 
 less real, self-seeking. The natural man is bent 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 57 
 
 on making a good impression. He seeks not 
 so much to give pleasure as to win the con- 
 sideration and flattery which is the reward of 
 giving pleasure. He fawns upon the rich and 
 frowns upon the poor. He makes distinctions 
 for the sake of distinctions, and is the upholder 
 of an artificial aristocracy and caste. We all 
 have seen the bitter fruits of this social self- 
 seeking. Wherever it exists we find society 
 honeycombed with bitter enmities and base sus- 
 picions ; the heart all eaten out of it by burning 
 jealousies and mutual distrust ; the soul con- 
 sumed with suppressed hate and hidden grief ; 
 the surface all crusted over with artificial form 
 and ostentatious rivalry. 
 
 Only when the Spirit of love enters, putting 
 self last and others first, and generously devot- 
 ing talents, beauty, wealth, position, and accom- 
 plishments to the increase of happiness and the 
 upbuilding of character in as wide a circle as 
 kinship of spirit and community of interest can 
 reasonably include, — only then are these gifts 
 reclaimed from corruption ; only then is society 
 justified and its members blessed. 
 
 Fifth : politics. There are two seemingly op- 
 posite, but radically identical attitudes toward 
 politics, which it is equally natural to take. The 
 
158 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 indifferent man trusts that things will go about 
 right any way ; he sees that he will make enemies 
 and lose customers if he meddles with politics ; 
 and so he lets politics alone. 
 
 The ambitious man sees that with a little 
 ready wit and a fluent tongue ; by spending a 
 little money and doing a little dirty work, he 
 can establish claims upon his party, which sooner 
 or later will be rewarded with office and emolu- 
 ments, patronage and power. Neither of these 
 natural attitudes is patriotism. Patriotism is a 
 fruit of the Spirit, which nature cannot evoke ; 
 still less maintain. And that is why the mainte- 
 nance on any considerable scale of a pure and 
 devoted patriotism in times of peace and plenty 
 has ever been the unsolved problem of repub- 
 lics ; the unfulfilled duty of multitudes of other- 
 wise estimable and honourable men. A Spirit 
 higher than his own individual nature must come 
 into a man ; making him see in city and state 
 and nation a sacred worth, a social claim, a divine 
 authority, so high above the pettiness of his pri- 
 vate interests and personal ambitions that rivalry 
 between them is impossible. 
 
 In each and every sphere of social life a man 
 must become in spirit, attitude, and aim, an en- 
 tirely new creature, before he can realize the ideal 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 
 159 
 
 of that sphere. What is true of the parts is true 
 of the whole. Into social life in its broadest and 
 highest significance ; into the kingdom which in- 
 cludes all these separate spheres, no man can enter, 
 except first the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of self- 
 forgetful and unselfish service, the Spirit that 
 recognizes objective and universal interests as its 
 own, enter into him. "Verily, verily, I say unto 
 thee, Except a man be born anew, he cannot see 
 the kingdom of God." 
 
 The man who has been born of the Spirit sees 
 life, in all its departments — home, business, 
 study, society, and politics — as one rounded and 
 organic whole of which he is a conscious and 
 co-operating member. One Father's thought em- 
 braces this total life of man. One Filial Will is 
 seeking realization in all its several departments. 
 One Spirit animates it all. Before this all-em- 
 bracing thought of the Father ; this all-conquering 
 will of the Son ; this all-pervading life of the 
 Spirit, the regenerated man lays down all mean 
 and petty aims that are peculiar to himself as a 
 private, particular individual ; %nd receives into 
 himself as the substance of a new life the larger 
 thought, the higher will, the purer purpose which 
 he has found in God. Thus by the mighty trans- 
 forming power of the Spirit, received and wel- 
 
l6o SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 corned into the heart of man, he passes from 
 death to life, from strife to peace, from bondage 
 to liberty, from the minding of the flesh to the 
 minding of the Spirit, from identification with 
 the merely natural will of his petty private self 
 into identification with the glorious will of him 
 who is the Institutor of the family, the Law- 
 giver of business, the Source of truth and beauty, 
 the Ideal of good-will and lovingkindness, the 
 Founder and Judge of nations, the Creator of 
 the world, and the Father of our spirits. 
 
 As the new life begins in a new birth, not in 
 an individual act, so its continuance is a gradual 
 growth, not an artificial manufacture. Here we 
 see the great difference between morality and 
 religion. Morality undertakes to manufacture 
 character : religion plants the seed, cultivates it 
 patiently and faithfully, and waits for it to grow. 
 The spiritual nature in man is a plant of slow 
 growth. You can get quicker returns by the ar- 
 tificial method of self-conscious moralizing. But 
 to put out and keep out all lust, covetousness, 
 malice, indolence,* jealousy, falsehood, pride, and 
 selfishness ; and to fill the life and keep it full of 
 purity, generosity, energy, gentleness, meekness, 
 kindness, and love ; that, or any considerable 
 approximation to it, by the moral method of culti- 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL l6l 
 
 vating one by one the separate moral virtues, is a 
 sheer impossibility. The task is too vast ; the foe 
 too subtle ; the will of man too weak and too incon- 
 stant. The natural self is a veritable Hydra. For 
 every vice you cut off two spring up afresh. The 
 bad principle within us, as ascetics and subjective 
 moralists ever have found and testified, is strength- 
 ened by our attacks and consolidated by our blows. 
 Morality points us in the right direction. We all 
 owe our first steps in righteousness to this strict 
 pedagogue. But it can take us such a little way ; 
 it stops so far short of the goal ; and then the 
 virtue it does attain is so self-conscious, so cold 
 and formal, so akin to pride and so liable to the 
 fall that always follows pride ; that those who have 
 tried this method of a formal, legal, artificial self- 
 righteousness most faithfully have been the first 
 to acknowledge its shortcoming. 
 
 Just because the transformation wrought by the 
 Spirit is more deep and fundamental than that 
 wrought by morality, it is more obscure in its 
 working, and more slow in producing visible re- 
 sults. The regenerated man will not be made per- 
 fect all at once. And yet from the beginning his 
 salvation is assured. Though temptation will still 
 press hard upon him, though sins will still beset 
 his path, though his falls will continue to be 
 
1 62 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 many, yet he will have strength to resist, grace 
 to repent, power to rise above it all. In the face 
 of his worst failings and shortcomings he can 
 say, " It is no more I that do it, but sin which 
 dwelleth in me." In other words, it is not the 
 new true self which he is resolved to be, not the 
 self which he has received from God and which 
 henceforth is to be the inmost centre of his be- 
 ing; it is the old, renounced, repudiated self that 
 sins. It is the not yet arrested momentum of 
 habits that are in principle abandoned ; it is the 
 poisonous fruit still clinging to the branches of 
 a tree which has been plucked up by the roots, 
 which still mars the outward life with sin and 
 shame. But from all present and permanent 
 identification of heart and life with the repu- 
 diated evil, the birth and growth within him of a 
 new life gives him complete deliverance, assured 
 salvation. 
 
 The growth of the spiritual life is largely hidden 
 and unconscious, like the growth of a seed. "So is 
 the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed 
 upon the earth ; and should sleep and rise night 
 and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, 
 he knoweth not how." 
 
 Psychical research has been revealing curious 
 facts of late. Things once thought miraculous, 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 163 
 
 like the stigmata of the cross on the bodies of 
 mediaeval saints, can be duplicated to-day wher- 
 ever the hypnotizer can find a patient sufficiently 
 susceptible ; careful experiments go far toward 
 establishing the ability of peculiarly sensitive per- 
 sons to read, without the aid of ordinary sensuous 
 symbols, the contents of another mind. The fact 
 that there may be in the same body, and con- 
 nected with the same brain, two distinct selves, 
 each ignoring the presence of the other, each in 
 a way complementary to the other ; which take 
 turns in occupying the field of consciousness, one 
 self sleeping while the other wakes, one express- 
 ing itself through the voice in speech while the 
 other expresses itself through the hand in writ- 
 ing, — these, and a host of similar facts, once 
 denied and ridiculed, are coming to be accepted 
 data of psychology. 
 
 Now, when new facts do not fit into old the- 
 ories, there is only one thing to do. We must 
 make new theories large enough to give these 
 new facts room. That is just what psychology 
 is doing to-day. To explain these facts we are 
 compelled: to assume that the self is more than 
 we are conscious of. As Mr. F. W. H. Myers 
 has expressed it, there is a subliminal conscious- 
 ness, so deeply buried that ordinarily we are not 
 
1 64 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 aware of its existence. Only when the flow of 
 our ordinary consciousness is arrested or diverted 
 does this deeper consciousness manifest itself. It 
 is in this buried consciousness that all these 
 powers inhere for which the upper or ordinary 
 consciousness has no place and of which it can 
 give no explanation. According to this view, the 
 spirit or soul of man floats in nature like a solid 
 in a liquid. A part only of the solid object is 
 visible. The other part, and usually the larger 
 part, is hidden beneath the surface. The self of 
 which we are conscious is only one section, per- 
 haps a small section, of the total self. 
 
 " Below the surface-stream, shallow and light, 
 Of what we say we feel — below the stream, 
 As light, of what we think we feel — there flows, 
 With noiseless current strong, obscure, and deep, 
 The central stream of what we feel indeed." 
 
 If, now, psychologist and poet are right ; if a 
 large part of each man's self is below the thresh- 
 old of his own consciousness and beyond the 
 reach of his own observation, it behooves us in 
 all our practical concerns to take account of this 
 subconscious self. 
 
 It is not the infinitesimal fraction of spiritual 
 truth that we have apprehended already ; not the 
 poor, petty experiences that we have gone through ; 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 165 
 
 not the filthy rags of a righteousness with which 
 we have succeeded in clothing ourselves, that con- 
 stitute the worth of our religious life. It is the 
 truth, not that we have gotten hold of, but that 
 has gotten hold of us with such power that, though 
 we know but little of it, we are sure there is 
 infinitely more, and we surrender our minds to its 
 gradual reception ; it is the experience, not that 
 we have had, but that we are sure we might have 
 and ought to have, and which we invite into our 
 life by habits of consecration and devotion ; it is 
 the conduct, not which we have wrought out as a 
 finished achievement, but which we plant far in 
 advance of present attainment as our ideal and 
 goal, and vow never to cease our aspiration and 
 endeavour until the ideal shall be real and the goal 
 is won, — these are the deep and real grounds of 
 Christian confidence. In other words, we are 
 saved, not by retrospection, nor yet by introspec- 
 tion, but, as Paul says, by hope ; by faith and not 
 by works ; by aspiration toward what we shall be, 
 not by satisfaction with what we are ; by the con- 
 fession of Christ, not by the profession of our own 
 religion ; by the reception of the Spirit, not by any 
 merit in our natural selves. 
 
 Two practical conclusions follow obviously from 
 this recognition of the unconscious growth of the 
 
1 66 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 religious nature. First : we must make sure that 
 we plant the seed of truth deep in the soil of mind 
 and heart. When we plant seed in the ground, we 
 cannot see it grow at first. We must have faith 
 in what we cannot see. We must leave the seed 
 to grow of itself. But we must plant it, to begin 
 with. We must know that it is there. The ground 
 does not bring forth fruit of itself. The sower 
 must cast seed into the ground. And this is a 
 conscious process. This is left for each man con- 
 sciously to do for himself. The winds of heaven 
 will sow all sorts of weeds and tares. The good 
 seed must be selected and planted by the hand of 
 man. 
 
 Here, then, is the great question for each thought- 
 ful mind to ponder : Have I planted the seed of a 
 worthy character in my own heart, and am I 
 watering it, and keeping the weeds down, day by 
 day ? Notice, please, that the question is not 
 whether the plant has grown to any particular 
 height, or whether the fruit is ripe upon its 
 branches. That is a minor matter. The question 
 is simply whether I have consciously committed 
 my heart to God ; whether I have taken Christ as 
 my Lord and Master, my standard and ideal; 
 and whether day by day I am opening my heart 
 in meditation, in aspiration, in communion, to him 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 167 
 
 and to the gracious influence of his Spirit ? It is 
 not a great thing, not a hard thing, to do. There 
 is no possible excuse for waiting. The simplest 
 creed, the slightest stirring of feeling, the feeblest 
 genuine determination to do right, is all one needs 
 to start with. This seed of a sincere acceptance 
 of Christ as Lord, once planted, and faithfully 
 watered and cultivated by systematic habits of 
 devotion, will spring up and grow, and blossom 
 into noble character and splendid usefulness. 
 
 Having once received the Spirit, having planted 
 the seed, we may trust this good seed to do its 
 work in its own time and in its own way. Above 
 all things, let us not pull it up by the roots every 
 now and then to see how it is growing. Let us 
 remember that we have just two things to do : to 
 plant the seed, and to keep it provided with proper 
 nourishment and care. And we may rest assured 
 that if we do our part the seed will do the rest. 
 We need not be impatient for the fruit. It will 
 not come all at once. For a long time after plant- 
 ing we shall see no visible signs of even the plant, 
 to say nothing of bud and flower and fruit. That 
 is the time when young Christians who have not 
 pondered our parable fall into dejection and de- 
 spair. They have planted the seed, and it has 
 not come up. They have nothing to show for it. 
 
1 68 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 They have given their hearts to Christ, and he has 
 given scarcely a token of recognition. They have 
 no sure creed that they can proclaim ; no experi- 
 ence that they can relate in meeting ; no manifest 
 change in deportment to which they can point 
 with pride as evidence of their conversion. Well, 
 if the parable is tFue ; if there is a deeper self than 
 that which appears upon the surface, this, far from 
 being an occasion for regret, is evidence that the 
 seed of a true Christian character is growing in 
 just the humble, quiet, natural way in which God 
 would have it grow ; in just the way in which 
 Jesus tells us that it must grow, if it is to be a 
 vigorous, healthy plant, and bear sound, sweet 
 fruit at last. Silently and slowly, but steadily and 
 surely, the truth that God's service is our first 
 concern, the feeling that Christ's character is our 
 supreme ideal, the determination that our life shall 
 be lived in the Spirit of love which he imparted to 
 the world — these ideals, principles, and aspirations 
 are gradually transforming our ways of thinking, 
 our currents of emotion, our springs of action. 
 Let the good work go on. We must keep near to 
 God by study of his Word, by submission to his 
 will, by fellowship with those who are seeking to 
 know and serve him. But we must think as little 
 of ourselves as possible, and not stop to take ac- 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 69 
 
 count of stock of our spiritual attainments. The 
 Bible does not tell us that we shall walk all the 
 way by sight. It does not promise quick and 
 visible returns for every investment. Have we 
 really learned, with all our orthodoxy of creed and 
 confession, the one great lesson, so simple yet so 
 essential, that we are saved by the slow transfor- 
 mation wrought within us by a cherished faith, not 
 by the sudden exhibition of accomplished works ; 
 and that the source of our salvation is the Christ 
 whom we gradually appropriate by love and trust, 
 and the Holy Spirit whom we receive ; not our 
 own power to repeat a creed, or lead a meeting, or 
 accomplish a reform ? 
 
 Of course, in due time faith will produce appro- 
 priate works ; the grown stalk will bear fruit after 
 its kind. Yet here, too, we must have much 
 patience with ourselves. We must not expect the 
 ripened and perfected fruit all at once. Our first 
 works will be failures and defeats ; our second, 
 blunders and mistakes ; after that we may expect 
 such partial and moderate success as invariably 
 crowns fidelity and constancy and courage. Does 
 this seem a gloomy and depressing prophecy ? It 
 is merely a modern version of the words: "The 
 earth beareth fruit of herself : first the blade, then 
 the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." 
 
170 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 If the seed of a sincere and sustained desire 
 and purpose to follow Christ is really planted in 
 our hearts and watered by daily prayer and medi- 
 tation, we may trust God implicitly ; trust the 
 seed's inherent power; trust the fertility of our 
 own deeper nature ; and wait patiently for God to 
 do his work. We shall fail; we shall err; we 
 shall sin ; and for a long time our new purpose 
 will manifest itself chiefly in overtaking our faults 
 after they are committed ; and that, we saw, is 
 penitence. By and by our new God-given pur- 
 pose will grow stronger and gain upon the in- 
 grained habits of selfishness and sin ; and then 
 there will come many a bitter struggle into life. 
 In the end we shall conquer; and then our di- 
 vinely implanted life will get the start of the old 
 and dying impulses of crude, selfish, and sensual 
 desire ; then the matured product of our long- 
 buried faith will be manifest in a character con- 
 firmed in righteousness, and a conduct visibly 
 consistent with the spiritual standard so long in- 
 visibly cherished. 
 
 Then the wonder will be all the other way. At 
 first we wonder that a man who has confessed 
 Christ, and is honestly trying to follow him, can 
 give so little evidence of it in conduct. This 
 makes us critical and censorious of others, dis- 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL 1 7 1 
 
 heartened and despairing about ourselves. When, 
 however, we look on the mature and developed 
 Christian, when we see such serenity in bereave- 
 ment, such patience in trial, such fortitude in 
 sorrow, such supremacy over appetite, such self- 
 control in passion, such fidelity to the costly right 
 against the profitable wrong, such loyalty to 
 searching and unwelcome truth against easy and 
 accepted error, such sympathy with the weak and 
 suffering, and such fearless opposition to oppres- 
 sive wealth and unrighteous power, then the won- 
 der is all the other way, and we ask, How can 
 such strong and sweet and noble character consist 
 with frail human nature ? The answer, however, 
 is not far to seek. Long ago, in the days of seed- 
 time, there was sown in this soul the tiny seed of 
 an earnest aspiration to become more and more 
 like Christ. For weeks and months the seed lay 
 buried, giving little or no outward proof of its 
 presence, and even its possessor doubted at times 
 whether it were actually alive. Then came the 
 early years of failure and defeat ; then the years 
 of sore temptation and bitter conflict, when the 
 old self and the new fought desperately for the 
 supremacy. And now the new life has so com- 
 pletely conquered that the Spirit of Christ has 
 become a second nature, putting forth the fair 
 
172 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 leaves of appropriate conduct, and bearing the 
 precious fruit of Christian character. Then we 
 understand the meaning of another closely re- 
 lated parable which tells us that the kingdom of 
 heaven is very small in its beginning, but very 
 great in its final outcome. It is like "a grain of 
 mustard-seed, which, when it is sown upon the 
 earth, though it be less than all seeds that are 
 upon the earth, yet when it is sown groweth up 
 and becometh greater than all the herbs, and put- 
 teth out great branches, so that the birds of 
 the heaven can lodge under the shadow thereof." 
 
Part III 
 SOCIOLOGICAL 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 POSSESSION AND CONFESSION — -THE CHURCH 
 
 Having gained the life of the Spirit, it might 
 seem as if nothing remained for man to do but 
 to keep it. Yet if we have apprehended this life 
 aright we have seen that it is something which by 
 its very nature refuses to be kept. God is the 
 universal thought and will whom no finite mind 
 can possibly contain. He is the whole of which 
 our thoughts and purposes are but partial and 
 fragmentary reproductions. And only by con- 
 stant enlargement and perpetual endeavour can 
 we keep in communion and fellowship with him. 
 Christ is the moral and spiritual ideal ; never 
 perfectly realized in us, and only by ceaseless 
 striving can we retain our hold on him. The 
 Spirit is the life of God and Christ in humanity ; 
 and only by the continual outgoing of sympathy 
 and service can we share his blessed life of love. 
 
 Faith, hope, love, all the graces and qualities of 
 the spiritual life, are social. They lead the indi- 
 vidual out of himself into relations with others. 
 
 •75 
 
176 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 Theology shows us God as implied in the rational 
 and moral nature of man. Anthropology shows 
 us man turning from sin in penitence, laying hold 
 on Christ by faith, and received into the divine 
 life by regeneration. Sociology shows us the union 
 of God and man expressed in divine institutions, 
 wrought out by human service, and embodied in a 
 universal life of love in which the will of God is 
 accomplished through the instrumentality of man. 
 
 The life of the Spirit, as we saw in the last 
 chapter, resembles a seed. To keep a seed is to 
 kill it. It must be planted. It must be placed in 
 vital relations with the great forces of nature. 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of 
 wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by 
 itself alone ; but if it die, it beareth much fruit. 
 He that loveth his life [or his soul] loseth it." 
 " If any man would come after me, let him deny 
 himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow 
 me." From the unprofitable servant who hid the 
 talent it is taken away. The spiritual life is not a 
 possession which the individual can enjoy off in 
 a corner by himself. Unless he gives it unselfishly 
 to others, and shares it generously with the world, 
 it withers and shrivels to nothingness in his hands. 
 
 The more vital and practical expressions of the 
 spiritual life will be considered in later chapters. 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 1 77 
 
 The formal manifestation of the spiritual principle 
 concerns us here. 
 
 The first duty of the man who has the spiritual 
 life is to acknowledge it. If a man is ashamed of 
 it, it is a sure sign that he has not got it ; or at 
 least that he has it in a very unworthy and dis- 
 torted form. No man can be ashamed of God, 
 who has a worthy conception of his nature. No 
 man can be ashamed of Christ, who has caught 
 the faintest glimpse of the real nobleness of his 
 character. No man can be ashamed of the spirit- 
 ual life, who has entered ever so little into the 
 secret of its divine unselfishness. 
 
 A friend whom we are unwilling to acknowledge 
 publicly as our friend, is no friend at all. 
 " And I say unto you, Every one who shall 
 confess me before men, him shall the Son of 
 man also confess before the angels of God : but 
 he that denieth me in the presence of men 
 shall be denied in the presence of the angels 
 of God." This is not a hard saying, pointing to 
 a time in the far future when the offended Christ 
 will pay back in their own coin those who have 
 had the audacity to slight him. The man who 
 refuses to confess Christ is lacking in the first 
 principles of Christlikeness. He is either blind 
 and cannot see Christ's character and worth ; in 
 
178 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 which case Christ could pity, but scarcely could 
 confess him as already his follower and friend. 
 Or else he sees and is ashamed to own it ; and 
 then he is a coward, whom no amount of confes- 
 sion by Christ, even if such confession were possi- 
 ble, could ever make respectable and presentable. 
 
 It is a maxim of psychology that "all mental 
 states are followed by activity of some sort." 
 Whoever has a worthy conception of God and the 
 divine life must do something about it. He may 
 confess it like a man ; he may conceal it like a 
 coward. Between these two there is no middle 
 ground. "He that is not with me is against me ; 
 and he that gathereth not with me scattereth." 
 Christ repudiates all weak-kneed, half-hearted fol- 
 lowers with the curt remark that they are " not fit 
 for the kingdom of God." Such unseasoned salt 
 he tells them is " fit neither for the land nor the 
 dunghill : men cast it out." 
 
 The confession of Christ is not confined to the 
 declaration of individuals. It finds its permanent 
 and corporate expression in the church. The 
 church is the organized and visible witness to 
 Christ. It is the company of those who own him 
 as Lord and Master, unite in the worship of the 
 Father whom he revealed, and devote themselves 
 to the service of the world he came to save. 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 179 
 
 The church is not in itself the kingdom of God. 
 It is the training-school for it. The kingdom of 
 God is realized in actual service of the world, in 
 costly sacrifice for men ; in the heat of the con- 
 flict ; and in the joy of achieved victory. The 
 church is the institution where the life of ser- 
 vice is systematically cultivated ; where the princi- 
 ples of the kingdom are systematically taught • 
 where the motives of loyalty are systematically 
 inculcated. 
 
 Dr. Gladden has happily compared the relation 
 of the church to the kingdom of God with the re- 
 lation of the brain to the body. He says, "The- 
 kingdom of heaven is the entire social organism 
 in its ideal perfection ; the church is one of the 
 organs, — the most central and important of them 
 all, — having much the same relation to Christian 
 society that the brain has to the body. The body 
 is not all brain ; but the brain is the seat of 
 thought and feeling and motion. A body without 
 a brain would not be a very effective instrument 
 of the mind; society, without those specialized 
 religious functions which are gathered up in the 
 church, would not very readily receive and incar- 
 nate and distribute the gifts of the Spirit of God. 
 
 " And yet the brain is of use only as it furnishes 
 to all the other organs and parts of the body feel- 
 
l8o SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 ing and motion. The life and health of the brain 
 are found only in ministering to the whole body. 
 Exactly in the same way is the church related to 
 all the other parts of human society. Its life is in 
 their life : it cannot live apart from them ; it lives 
 by what it gives to them ; it has neither meaning 
 nor justification except in what it does to vitalize 
 and spiritualize business and politics and amuse- 
 ment and art and literature and education, and 
 every other interest of society. The moment it 
 draws apart, and tries to set up a snug little eccle- 
 siasticism, with interests of its own, and a cultus 
 of its own, and enjoyments of its own — the mo- 
 ment it begins to teach men to be religious just 
 for the sake of being religious — that moment it 
 becomes dead and accursed ; it is worse than use- 
 less ; it is a bane and a blight to all the society in 
 which it stands." 
 
 The church is the inspirer and director of social 
 service. The primitive church undertook not only 
 to inspire and guide, but actually to perform a 
 large amount of social work. The institutional 
 church attempts to do that now. In both cases 
 the assumption of such work has been justified 
 by the circumstances. Where the social machin- 
 ery for the care of the sick, the training of the 
 young, the feeding of the hungry, the clothing 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL l8l 
 
 of the naked, and the employment of the unem- 
 ployed is lacking, as it was in the days when the 
 church was founded, and as to a great extent it 
 is in sections of our large cities to-day, then it is 
 the duty of the church in its official and organized 
 capacity to practise as well as to teach ; to per- 
 form as well as to direct these social services. 
 
 Yet, these are undeveloped and abnormal con- 
 ditions. The more developed a community be- 
 comes, the more specialized become its organs. 
 Then charity, the housing of the poor, education, 
 penology, are turned over to organizations and 
 institutions especially designed to perform these 
 particular services ; and the church is left free to 
 do its special work of cultivating the social spirit 
 and keeping alive the altruistic and reverent dis- 
 position. The church continues to be responsible 
 for the efficient performance of these social activ- 
 ities ; but it exercises its power chiefly in the 
 moulding of the institutions and the inspiring of 
 individuals who do the actual work. 
 
 There is, indeed, great danger that the church, 
 when so largely relieved of actual "service, will for- 
 get to cultivate the spirit of service, and become a 
 dead and fruitless cumberer of the ground. This, 
 however, is the danger that all great opportunity 
 involves. The college, with its four years of 
 
1 82 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 leisure, has a magnificent opportunity to train 
 young men for service. And yet, we all know 
 that this very opportunity is perverted into an 
 excuse for idleness and a preparation for worth- 
 lessness by a certain proportion of every college 
 class. The church, like the college, must accept 
 the greater opportunity, with its accompanying 
 risks. A certain proportion of churches are 
 doubtless mere cumberers of the ground. Yet 
 that by no means disproves the importance of 
 the really useful churches as trainers of men for 
 service and self-sacrifice, for the worship of God 
 and the upbuilding of man. No more useless and 
 worthless and pitiful and contemptible creature 
 walks the earth than the mere ecclesiastic, who 
 strives to build up his church as an end in itself. 
 They are the successors of the scribes and Phari- 
 sees and chief priests who were so odious to Christ, 
 and who brought about his crucifixion. Jesus 
 ranked them below publicans and harlots ; and 
 there are ecclesiastics in nearly every communion 
 to-day, who are less genuine and frank and honest 
 and disinterested than the gambler and the rum- 
 seller whom they denounce. If 6ne of the twelve 
 was a traitor, we must not expect perfection in 
 any line of apostolical succession. The church, 
 like all human institutions, holds its treasure in 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 183 
 
 earthen vessels. But there is no more reason to 
 abandon or despise the church on account of the 
 frailty and insincerity and pretentiousness of some 
 of its representatives, than there is to renounce 
 allegiance to city or state or nation because alder- 
 men are sometimes rascals and legislators have 
 been influenced by bribes. That there are good 
 priests and bad priests ; sensible clergymen and 
 foolish clergymen ; laymen who are sincere and 
 laymen who are insincere, may be more lamentable 
 than the fact that there are intelligent physicians 
 and quacks ; honest lawyers and dishonest lawyers ; 
 competent teachers and incompetent teachers. 
 But neither the profession of the ministry or of 
 law or of medicine or of teaching is thereby dis- 
 credited. 
 
 The clear recognition of the function of the 
 church as the school which trains and educates 
 mankind in the spirit of social service makes clear 
 the duty of the individual to take his place in the 
 church, and the duty of society to generously 
 support it. A man may contrive to secure a fair 
 secular education apart from the secular schools 
 and colleges. Yet in neglecting these established 
 educational institutions, he places himself at a 
 great disadvantage. The self-educated man is 
 very apt to be narrow and one-sided ; and out of 
 
184 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 touch with the thought and interest of the 
 educated world. And even if he succeeds in 
 thoroughly educating himself, his independence of 
 the school and the university is rather apparent 
 than real. For even then he must read the books, 
 enter into the thoughts, share the interests of the 
 learned world. And these writings, thoughts, and 
 interests are produced and developed and main- 
 tained almost wholly by the institutions of learn- 
 ing and the men whom these institutions train. 
 So that even the self-educated man receives all 
 the substance of his education indirectly through 
 the established educational institutions ; and dif- 
 fers from the regular graduate of these institu- 
 tions only in that he has received the influence of 
 the schools at second hand. 
 
 In precisely the same way all members of the 
 Christian community owe their highest ideals and 
 most generous principles directly or indirectly to 
 the church. The upright and virtuous man in a 
 Christian community who stands apart from the 
 church gets his spiritual education from the 
 church at second hand. Through fathers and 
 mothers who have been rooted and grounded in 
 Christian character ; through ideals and standards 
 which have been laboriously erected by centuries 
 of Christian sacrifice; through laws and institu- 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 1 85 
 
 tions which are founded upon Christian principles ; 
 these self-righteous despisers of the church owe 
 whatever superior virtue they possess to the un- 
 recognized influence of this great school of virtue. 
 Individuals here and there may live upright, 
 virtuous, and truly Christian lives outside of the 
 church ; just as individuals here and there develop 
 genuine scholarship outside of the universities. 
 But for effective influence in cultivating the 
 virtuous disposition in others, and promoting the 
 social spirit in the community at large, the man 
 who stands apart from the church in a merely 
 individualistic righteousness is almost as useless 
 as the soldier who refuses to join a company or 
 regiment or army, but shoulders his individual 
 musket and starts out to fight his country's battles 
 on his own account. Society without the organ- 
 ized education in virtue and kindness and love 
 which the church affords would be as helpless 
 against the disintegrating forces of avarice and 
 lust and selfishness and sin, as a city without 
 police to protect it against crime, or a nation with- 
 out an army to defend it against a foreign foe. 
 
 There are two modes of reception into the 
 church. The one presupposes Christian training 
 in the home and the community ; and simply con- 
 firms the character and faith already formed by 
 
1 86 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 this long process of Christian education. The 
 other assumes that all that is not consciously 
 Christian must be totally depraved ; and demands 
 individual profession of faith and conscious experi- 
 ence of grace as a condition of admission. The 
 former method affords the broader basis of mem- 
 bership ; and has the great analogy of the state's 
 reception of its citizens upon its side. The latter 
 method secures a higher average of piety and zeal 
 in its membership : but it does this at the cost of 
 excluding a large number of men who, while 
 practically Christian in the purpose and tenor of 
 their lives, do not wear their hearts upon their 
 sleeves, and hesitate to make public profession 
 of the more sentimental aspects of their per- 
 sonal faith. This relegation of multitudes of the 
 strongest, most efficient members of the commu- 
 nity to a secondary place, as members of the par- 
 ish but not members of the church, because they 
 have not at some stated time become intensely 
 conscious of a great and sudden spiritual change, 
 and because they fail to express their faith in 
 public prayer and pious exhortation, is the great 
 weakness of churches of the Congregational or 
 individualistic type. Democratic in their internal 
 organization, they set up a sort of intellect- 
 ual or emotional aristocracy as the condition of 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 1 87 
 
 admission. It is the churches which are organ- 
 ized on the Episcopal principle which have the 
 most democratic basis of fellowship ; and gain 
 the strongest hold upon all sorts and conditions 
 of men. 
 
 Membership in the church is the privilege of all 
 who accept the will of the Father as the rule of 
 their lives ; who acknowledge Christ as the revealer 
 and interpreter of the Father's will ; and who re- 
 ceive the Spirit of love as the substance of the new 
 life in which the will of the Father and the exam- 
 ple of the Son is to be reproduced in themselves. 
 Beyond this essential spiritual faith and trust and 
 love, no assent to elaborate articles of intellectual 
 belief should be required. If belief in God and 
 confession of Christ and reception of the Spirit is 
 not sufficient to form a bond of union between the 
 members of a church, no assent to creed or profes- 
 sion of dogma will make good that deficiency. 
 Reliance on the efficacy of a creed for this purpose 
 is virtual distrust of the Spirit. 
 
 Creeds indeed, as we have already seen, have 
 their place. Just as nations and states need con- 
 stitutions, written or implied ; just as political par- 
 ties need platforms ; so the church needs some 
 formulation of its principles and some expression 
 of its purpose. Such creeds or confessions, how- 
 
1 88 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 ever, should be regarded as the general sense of 
 the majority, not as binding upon the conscience 
 of the individual. 
 
 A theological creed must in the nature of things 
 always be more or less behind the times. Just 
 because it is the conviction of the many, it cannot 
 adequately represent the maturest convictions of 
 the most competent few. A creed is valuable as a 
 conservative force to preserve what is precious in 
 the thinking of the past. When, however, it is set 
 up as a barrier to the progressive thought of the 
 present, it is mischievous and pernicious. Then 
 belief in a dead creed is substituted for faith in the 
 living God : and the church relapses into stagna- 
 tion and decay. 
 
 The Bible is the church's most precious heritage. 
 The Bible is the history and literary expression of 
 the life of God in humanity. As such, it is the 
 product of the Holy Spirit. It is inspired. There 
 are points of resemblance and points of difference 
 between the inspiration of the Bible and the inspi- 
 ration of other true and noble writings. In all 
 genuine speech the truth uttered is something 
 larger and deeper than the immediate creation of 
 the individual speaker's mind. Unless the larger 
 thought of the community and the deeper truth of 
 nature and life come into him and demand utter- 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 1 89 
 
 ance through him, he can have nothing of impor- 
 tance to communicate, and has no right to speak. 
 Yet the inspiration of the Bible is deeper and 
 clearer than this inspiration which is common to 
 all honest literary men. It is the added inspira- 
 tion of love and worship and service, which in very 
 different degrees gives to the Sacred Scriptures 
 the peculiar charm and authority they have. 
 What Matthew Arnold says of the difference 
 between the inspiration of Socrates and the inspi- 
 ration of Jesus is true in a general way of the 
 difference between the inspiration of the Bible 
 and the inspiration of the average good book. 
 " Socrates inspired boundless friendship and 
 esteem ; but the inspiration of reason and con- 
 science is the one inspiration which comes from 
 him, and which impels us to live righteously as he 
 did. A penetrating enthusiasm of love, sympathy, 
 pity, adoration, reinforcing the inspiration of rea- 
 son and duty, does not belong to Socrates. With 
 Jesus it is different." The authority of the Bible 
 rests on no external props and arbitrary claims. 
 It proves its own inspiration and authority by its 
 power beyond all other books to quicken and sus- 
 tain the life of the Spirit. The response of the 
 Spirit in the reader is the witness to the presence 
 of the Spirit in the writers and their words. For 
 
I QO SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 the power to beget holy and unselfish living, the 
 power to inspire brave and faithful service, the 
 power to impart enthusiastic and devoted love to 
 God and to one's fellowmen ; — this is ever the 
 prerogative of the Holy Spirit ; the infallible 
 proof of the presence of the Lord and Giver of 
 life. 
 
 The Bible represents the high-water mark of the 
 spiritual life. It is pervaded by that first glow of 
 spiritual enthusiasm which animated the hearts of 
 those to whom the revelation of the Father first 
 came with a freshness and simplicity which can no 
 more again be equalled or surpassed than the epics 
 of Homer, or the statues of Phidias, or the naivetioi 
 childhood. Its broad foundation in the most intense 
 and ideal of national histories ; its genuine reflec- 
 tion of the profoundest experiences of the human 
 heart ; its realistic reproduction and at the same 
 time its ideal interpretation of the life of the 
 Master, and its presentation of the straightforward 
 letters of the greatest apostle, combine to make a 
 single book composed of many documents of which 
 Professor J. R. Seeley, surely no partial judge, has 
 truly said, "The unity reigning through a work 
 upon which so many generations laboured, gives it 
 a vastness beyond comparison, so that the greatest 
 work of individual literary genius shows by the side 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 
 
 191 
 
 of it like some building of human hands beside the 
 Peak of Teneriffe." 
 
 The church may honour the Bible, just as a man 
 may show his faith in a nugget of gold, in either 
 of two ways. He may say, " This is gold ; and 
 because it is such a precious thing I will not trust 
 it in so dangerous an element as fire, for fear that 
 the precious thing might suffer harm." Or he 
 may say, " This is gold ; and because it is gold I 
 will not hesitate to trust it to the flames ; for fire 
 can do pure gold no harm." The church may say 
 of the Bible, "This book is God's gift to men; and 
 therefore no honest criticism shall be allowed to 
 touch it." Or it may say, "This book is a treas- 
 ury of messages from God ; and therefore the 
 more critically it is tested and the more honestly 
 it is examined the brighter will its real jewels 
 shine and the more precious will the whole be- 
 come." 
 
 Nothing short of the most artificial and perpet- 
 ual and superfluous exercise of miraculous power 
 could possibly have kept a book written in different 
 ages and in different literary forms; employing the 
 most various materials ; weaving together poetry 
 and prose, legend and chronicle, statute-books and 
 love poems, epics and lyrics, oral tradition and 
 idealized interpretation, fact and fiction, precept 
 
192 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 and parable, from accumulating a good deal of 
 incidental rubbish in the process of composition, 
 compilation, and transmission. Reverent appreci- 
 ation of the Bible as our ultimate literary expres- 
 sion of the life of the Spirit does not compel one 
 to accept blindly or to interpret literally every nar- 
 rative or statement it contains. Here, as in all 
 ancient history and literature, criticism has a great 
 sifting process to perform. And the more search- 
 ingly and thoroughly this is done, the more val- 
 uable and reliable will the book become. It is a 
 very timid and feeble faith in God, amounting 
 really to downright unbelief, which fears that 
 honest criticism of the Bible can either dis- 
 credit the book or lead to distrust of its Author. 
 Criticism will not take God and the divine life 
 from any man who has once gained the stand- 
 point of spiritual faith. Those to whom spirit- 
 ual things are merely matters of tradition and 
 hearsay doubtless may have the insecurity of 
 their position revealed to them. But this would 
 not be a permanent misfortune. If a man's faith 
 is not in God, but in some dogma or tradition or 
 institution, the sooner he discovers it the better. 
 An institution whose essential life is so internal 
 and spiritual as that of the church is in especial 
 need of some outward and visible symbols by 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 1 93 
 
 which its inner purpose may be visibly expressed. 
 The church has two such symbols or sacraments : 
 baptism, and the Lord's supper. 
 
 Baptism is the seal and symbol of regeneration ; — 
 the putting away of the natural, selfish, individual- 
 istic life, and the reception of the life of the Spirit. 
 The original method was doubtless, as a rule, that 
 of immersion. In a warm climate, among peoples 
 who live much out of doors, this is the natural and 
 convenient method. In cold climates, on the other 
 hand, where indoor life is habitual, sprinkling is 
 the method which common-sense approves. The 
 amount of material employed in a purely symbolic 
 act is a matter of indifference. A signature to a 
 note does not depend for its validity on whether 
 it is written with a quill in bold John Hancock 
 fashion, or is traced most delicately with a fine 
 gold pen. 
 
 The extension of the rite to infants is not 
 direptly sanctioned in Scripture, except by impli- 
 cation, as children may be assumed to be in- 
 cluded in the household. It is not logically 
 deducible from the spiritual significance of the 
 rite. And yet it sprang up out of an instinct 
 of the parental heart which we can scarcely be- 
 lieve that he who said " Suffer the little chil- 
 dren to come unto me, and forbid them not," 
 
194 SOCIAL- THEOLOGY 
 
 would rebuke or repress. Little children have 
 always been a puzzle to the logician and the 
 theologian. They are not logical ; and their the- 
 ology is very crude. But if Christian parents 
 desire to solemnly dedicate their little ones to 
 God and the divine life, in anticipation of the 
 ratification and confirmation which maturity will 
 bring, there surely can be no serious objection; 
 and the bonds that bind the child's heart to Christ 
 cannot be too early formed. 
 
 As baptism marks the renunciation of self and 
 the world as the determining principles of con- 
 duct, the Lord's supper is the symbol of com- 
 munion with Christ and his followers as the 
 inspiration of the new life. There is nothing 
 magical or miraculous about this most simple and 
 natural of rites. Christ is present in the elements 
 just as the writer of a letter is present in the 
 writing. The reading of the letter is the recep- 
 tion of the writer's mind and heart. We receive 
 Christ in the bread and wine just as we receive 
 a friend when we clasp his hand. All communion 
 between persons must be by symbols. As Pro- 
 fessor Dewey says in his Psychology, "The first 
 step in the communication of a fact of individual 
 consciousness is changing it from a psychical fact 
 to a physical fact. It must be expressed through 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 1 95 
 
 non-conscious media — the appearance of the face, 
 or the use of sounds. These are purely external. 
 The next step in the communication is for some 
 other individual to translate this expression, or 
 these sounds, into his own consciousness. He 
 must make them part of himself before he knows 
 what they are. One individual never knows 
 directly what is in the self of another; he 
 knows it only so far as he is able to reproduce 
 it in his own self." 
 
 Jesus, in instituting the Lord's supper, has 
 simply made universal the communication of his 
 sacrificial love. He has made the bread and wine 
 forever, and to all who receive it, the symbol and 
 expression of the life he lived and the death he 
 suffered in love to all mankind. In itself it is 
 mere bread and wine. Translated by the intelli- 
 gent and devout recipient into terms of the love 
 and sacrifice it is intended to express, it becomes 
 the bread of life and the wine of love to as many 
 as receive it in this faith. Being an objective in- 
 stitution, coming at stated times and places, it is 
 independent of the wayward caprice, the fickle 
 mood, the listless mind of the individual. And so 
 it calls us back from our worldliness, deepens our 
 penitence, quickens our love, and intensifies our 
 consecration ; and, above all, identifies us with the 
 
ig6 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 great company of our fellow-Christians, as no 
 mere subjective devotion and private prayer could 
 ever do. 
 
 Jesus recognized the truth that everything spir- 
 itual, if it is to become a permanent force in prac- 
 tical life, must be embodied in outward and visible 
 and tangible symbols. And at the same time he 
 has guarded as far as possible against the super- 
 stitious perversion of his symbols by choosing the 
 most simple and universal elements and the most 
 common and natural of acts to be the vehicles of 
 his grace. 
 
 The Sabbath, Good Friday, Easter, and Christ- 
 mas are among the days which the church has 
 reasonably and rightly claimed for its own spiritual 
 purposes. As such they have sacred associations 
 for those who share the Christian faith. Of these 
 sacred days the Sabbath, by virtue of its frequency, 
 its universality, and its associations with regular 
 and systematic worship, is by far the most impor- 
 tant. The Sabbath is as fundamental to the church 
 as is election day to the state, or pay-day to indus- 
 try. All Christians welcome this day as the great 
 opportunity for the free and full expression of their 
 faith and hope and love ; and the extension to 
 others of the blessings which they themselves 
 enjov. Abstinence from needless work, and the 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 1 97 
 
 release of others from all unnecessary labour, is 
 essential to the best uses of the day. The civil 
 authorities may rightly be invoked to secure for 
 as many as possible opportunity for worship and 
 rest and refreshment upon the Sabbath. Beyond 
 the prevention of whatever interferes with the 
 rights of others the church cannot wisely go in the 
 attempt to dictate to those who do not share its 
 faith the manner in which they shall spend the day. 
 The Sabbath was made for man ; not man for the 
 Sabbath. And the improvement, of the Sabbath 
 through the improvement of man, rather than the 
 improvement of man through the enforced improve- 
 ment of the Sabbath, is the more hopeful line of 
 effort. Productive industry, except in cases where 
 processes are of necessity continuous, or where 
 materials cannot be left without serious waste, 
 should be prohibited on the Sabbath ; not only in 
 the interest of the church, but in the interest of 
 that common humanity which it is the purpose of 
 the church to serve. The Sabbath is the working- 
 man's best friend ; and it should be the aim of the 
 church to secure for him the largest possible im- 
 munity from toil upon that day. The observance 
 of the Sabbath should be joyous, free, and uncon- 
 strained. In this as in everything, the man who is 
 filled with the Spirit ; the man who seeks to make 
 
I98 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 his life effective in social service, may do whatever 
 he pleases on the Sabbath ; and whether he stays 
 at home or goes abroad ; whether he fasts or 
 feasts ; — whatever he does will be right and 
 appropriate, because it will be prompted by love 
 to God and love to man. On the contrary, any 
 observance of the day which is not grounded in 
 this glad recognition of the goodness of God and 
 the fellowship of man, whether it be gay or 
 gloomy, riotous or repressed, is injurious to man 
 and dishonouring to God. Worship, rest, and 
 refreshment ; worship that includes thoughtful 
 regard for the rights and needs pi one's fellow- 
 men ; rest that restores and invigorates the 
 powers of body and of mind for service in the 
 days to come ; refreshment that binds the family 
 closer together in common joys and mutual inter- 
 ests and heartfelt sympathies, and lifts the indi- 
 vidual out of the isolation of his merely animal 
 existence, — these are the social purposes which 
 the Sabbath is instituted to subserve. 
 
 Every institution must have some sort of consti- 
 tution or polity. Every body must have some form 
 of organization and some kind of authority. Polity 
 is a means, not an end ; and that polity is best 
 which binds together the members of the church 
 most effectively for their common work and wor- 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 
 
 199 
 
 ship, and at the same time leaves them most free 
 in the development of their individual characters 
 and lives. A polity is none the better for being 
 ancient and primitive. The apostles in their first 
 attempt at ecclesiastical organization resorted to 
 the crudest conceivable device for the election of 
 an officer ; a device which had been a favourite 
 object of ridicule with Socrates, as it was applied 
 in his day in Athenian politics ; — the election 
 of an officer by lot. If when monarchical ideas 
 were dominant in the state, the primitive church 
 adopted an Episcopal form of government, it does 
 not follow that episcopacy is the best polity in a 
 democratic age. If, on the other hand, the little 
 groups of believers were organized on the Congre- 
 gational plan in the early days when the infant 
 church could count but few adherents, it does 
 not follow that that form of polity is the one best 
 fitted to organize the universal church and to 
 conduct world-wide activities. The organization 
 of the primitive church is an interesting problem 
 for the church historian. The organization of the 
 church to-day is a practical problem which Chris- 
 tian common-sense must settle for itself. What- 
 ever polity will afford the maximum of unity and 
 efficiency with the minimum of machinery and 
 constraint, should be accepted as the ideal to be 
 
200 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 realized as rapidly as historic traditions and exist- 
 ing conditions will permit. 
 
 The church has offices which bear different 
 names in different communions. The most im- 
 portant of these offices is that of the priesthood or 
 ministry. The office of the priest is not quite the 
 same as that of the minister. The priest conceives 
 himself to be the official representative of Christ ; 
 and as such is prepared to hear confession and 
 pronounce absolution. The minister conceives 
 himself to be the herald or messenger of Christ ; 
 and as such preaches and proclaims the message 
 of forgiveness and inspiration ; but refers his 
 hearers directly to Christ for the guidance and 
 grace they need. 
 
 The priest's conception of his function is the 
 more profound and vital : but for that very reason 
 it is the more liable to perversion. It has been 
 fruitful of the most haughty pride, the most 
 extravagant pretensions, the most tyrannical domi- 
 nation, the most mercenary extortion on the part 
 of sacerdotalists who have grasped the power 
 without cultivating the humility and sympathy on 
 which the right exercise of such a high prerogative 
 depends. The minister's conception of his func- 
 tion as chiefly that of preaching is more superfi- 
 cial : but on that account less open to abuse and 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 201 
 
 misconception. Still there is great danger that 
 the preacher will come to regard his sermon as an 
 end rather than as a means; and that in place of 
 what he regards as the idolatry of the altar, he 
 will introduce the idolatry of eloquence and ora- 
 tory. When the sermon thus becomes an end in 
 itself, throwing the service of prayer and praise 
 into the background, preaching degenerates into 
 the hollowest and emptiest of forms, and merely 
 presents 
 
 " a painted ship 
 Upon a painted ocean." 
 
 The conceptions of the priesthood and of the 
 ministry are complementary half-truths. Christ 
 and the Spirit are present in regenerated humanity 
 so immediately and intimately that when the true 
 priest absolves a penitent he therein imparts 
 directly the divine forgiveness. Yet the priest 
 needs to remember that this absolution is no 
 magical performance, but is the expression of 
 sacrificial love ; and he should spare no effort of 
 mind and heart to impress upon the penitent the 
 cost of sacrifice and the depth of love which makes 
 forgiveness possible. On the other hand, hearing 
 is essential to believing. Yet the preacher needs 
 to remember that mere hearing, apart from per- 
 sonal repentance and intimate appropriation of 
 
202 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 grace and actual reception of the Spirit, is idle 
 and profitless. 
 
 The minister, like every true Christian, is a 
 servant of his fellow-men. The minister differs 
 from other Christians simply in that he serves 
 them in the highest way, and ministers to them 
 in purely spiritual things. It is his function to 
 give embodiment and expression to that Spirit 
 of love, fellowship, forgiveness, inspiration, and 
 grace which is the life of society, and is striving 
 for admission to the hearts and homes of men. 
 The office is no substitute for the spiritual life 
 of him who holds it ; though what the office 
 signifies may do its beneficent work in spite of 
 the unworthiness of the incumbent. Yet the 
 richest fruit of the Christian ministry can only 
 come when the Spirit, acting through the officer 
 of the church, is reinforced by the same Spirit, 
 acting through the heart and conscience of the 
 man. Such a priesthood or ministry as that is 
 the highest, purest, noblest, and most blessed 
 form of social service. It is a reproduction of 
 the personal life and a continuation of the 
 spiritual work of Christ. 
 
 The division of the church into sects, which is 
 so marked a characteristic of the present time, 
 represents the extreme consequences of the prac- 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 203 
 
 tical application of that principle of individual 
 liberty and the right of private judgment which 
 was affirmed in the Reformation, and has been 
 reaffirmed in the political revolutions in France 
 and America. Politically that principle received 
 its needed check when the doctrine of secession 
 was defeated in our civil war. Liberty has been 
 sufficiently affirmed ; and the problem of the 
 present is to advance "from liberty to unity." 
 
 The sects have arisen through the differentia- 
 tion of the Christian principle, and the attempt to 
 develop special organs for special forms of work 
 and peculiar types of temperament. God and his 
 truth are very great : man and the average mind 
 of man are very small. The best of us get but 
 partial glimpses of his glory. One sees one aspect 
 of the divine ; another, another. Each has some 
 line of strength ; each some weakness, peculiar to 
 itself. As the colours of the solar spectrum are so 
 many partial reflections of the white light of the 
 sun, so the sects are so many partial apprehen- 
 sions of the one great fact of the love of God 
 manifested in Jesus Christ, and imparted to 
 humanity as the Spirit of a new life of human 
 love. 
 
 None of them is perfect. It is easy to point 
 out defects. The Congregationalist has not a 
 
204 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 sufficiently coherent polity. The Baptist has not 
 a sufficiently broad basis of fellowship. The 
 Methodist has not a sufficiently edifying grasp 
 of the ethical and spiritual principles upon which 
 permanent character must rest. The Episco- • 
 palian has not a sufficiently democratic concep- 
 tion of the sources of spiritual authority. The 
 Unitarian has not a sufficiently definite body of 
 doctrine. The Presbyterian has not a sufficiently 
 receptive attitude toward historical and scientific 
 investigation. The Universalist has not a suffi- 
 ciently keen sense of the responsibilities of human 
 freedom. The Roman Catholic has not sufficient 
 respect for human reason, and the rights of the 
 individual man. 
 
 Yet each of these forms of church has arisen to 
 meet definite needs in the history of Christian 
 thought and life. Each has borne especial wit- 
 ness to some essential element of the catholic 
 faith. 
 
 The Congregationalist has stood for simplicity 
 of worship, clear theological ideas, and the su- 
 preme authority of a rationally interpreted Bible 
 as against all meaningless formalities, all doubtful 
 traditions, all mystical interpretations. The Bap- 
 tist has protested against all cheapening and 
 change in the divinely ordained sacraments. The 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 205 
 
 Methodist has kept live coals upon the altar of 
 Christian consecration in hearts and homes and 
 hamlets, which otherwise would have been dreary 
 and desolate, and the way of repentance open to 
 multitudes of wanderers who without it had been 
 lost. The Episcopalian has preserved the decency 
 and order of dignified worship, and an organic 
 fellowship, in an iconoclastic and individualistic 
 age. The Presbyterian has made clear how love- 
 less a creature man is apart from God ; traced 
 minutely the process by which the grace of Christ 
 gains entrance to the soul ; marked off precisely 
 the stages of the Spirit's conquest ; and so kept 
 right teaching or orthodoxy alive when doubt and 
 unbelief have been widespread. The Unitarian 
 has affirmed the right of free inquiry when others 
 have distrusted the God-given faculties of man. 
 The Universalist has clung to the grace of God 
 when others have made him almost a demon in 
 the severity of his arbitrary rule. The Catholic 
 has held the strong arm of spiritual authority over 
 great masses of men and women, who would have 
 found little restraint or guidance in the more 
 speculative and individualistic types of Protestant 
 religion. 
 
 Sects are evil only when they become sectarian ; 
 that is, when differences of apprehension count for 
 
206 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 more than the object apprehended; when every- 
 thing is spent on fences, while the fields them- 
 selves are given over to weeds and briers. 
 
 Inherited associations are stronger than abstract 
 ideas. The attempt to bring the denominations 
 together by compromise creeds, compromise poli- 
 ties, union houses, and union meetings gives little 
 promise of success. The union of the churches, 
 for the near future at least, must consist in a 
 unity of spirit and a cooperation in work. In this 
 direction there is good ground for hope. 
 
 The first step toward such unity of spirit and 
 work is a geniune and hearty respect for the 
 points of excellence in other forms of church life 
 as well as in our own. In polity, for example, 
 the two fundamental types are the Episcopal and 
 the Congregational. The strong point in Episco- 
 pal polity lies in its recognition that the mind and 
 heart of the church in all lands and ages is a 
 better interpreter of the mind of Christ than is 
 the individual believer and the local church. The 
 strong point in Congregational polity is its asser- 
 tion that the mind of Christ does find expression 
 in the hearts of individual believers here and now. 
 Both these positions are true and important. 
 Both may be carried to extreme and dangerous 
 lengths. Let each respect the other ; let each 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 207 
 
 ingraft upon his own system the good points of 
 the other, and gradually the two extremes will 
 be brought together. We see this tendency 
 already. The Episcopal bishops interfere much 
 less than formerly in the internal affairs of the 
 local churches; and the Congregational churches 
 are giving to their missionary secretaries and 
 the heads of their benevolent societies more 
 and more of the authority of bishops. 
 
 The two opposite types of worship are the 
 Roman Catholic and the Quaker. One makes 
 liberal use of sensuous symbols ; the other limits 
 the expression of worship more or less strictly 
 to extemporaneous speech. Both tendencies have 
 their worth and their dangers. Both are symbolic, 
 as all forms of worship must be. Even extempo- 
 raneous speech uses vibrations of air as the sym- 
 bol of thought and feeling. Why are vibrations 
 of air striking the ear essentially more holy than 
 vibrations of ether striking the eye, or even parti- 
 cles of incense impinging on the olfactory nerve ? 
 Speech is doubtless the more adequate and subtle 
 and universal symbol. But it is just as truly a 
 symbol as the wearing of a vestment, the swinging 
 of a censer, or a posture of the body. Here, 
 again, we may observe the non-ritualistic churches 
 enriching their barren services by the larger use 
 
208 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 of ritualistic elements ; and we may expect a 
 larger recognition of the place of spontaneity in 
 worship on the part of ritualists. 
 
 Thus there is a work in the direction of union 
 which each individual can do within his own 
 denomination ; in casting out the arbitrary, fan- 
 tastic, and divisive practices and doctrines that 
 tradition and bigotry have fastened upon it, and 
 ingrafting upon it the better fruits in which other 
 denominations excel his own. 
 
 If he is a Presbyterian, his first duty is to labour 
 for liberty of thought and the right of investiga- 
 tion ; if a Unitarian, for clear conviction of defi- 
 nite religious truth ; if a Baptist, for breadth of 
 Christian fellowship and emphasis upon essentials; 
 if a Methodist, for rational conviction rather than 
 emotional expression of his faith ; if a Universal- 
 ist, for keener sense of the fateful pregnancy of 
 choice ; if a Catholic, for liberty and local self- 
 government ; if a Congregationalist, for larger 
 recognition of the organic nature of society and 
 social institutions ; if an Episcopalian, for that 
 emancipation from the leading-strings of doubtful 
 tradition and fantastic frivolity, and that reliance 
 upon spiritual realities and practical common- 
 sense of which Bishop Brooks was the conspicuous 
 representative. 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 209 
 
 The extension of itself by missionary effort is 
 always an important branch of church activity. 
 And in tbis work there is the most urgent need 
 of the substitution of cooperation for competition. 
 
 Especially in home missionary work in rural 
 regions such cooperation is essential. However 
 valuable and natural the differentiation of the 
 church into sects along lines of tradition or creed 
 or temperament may be in the city and large 
 town, it is too expensive a luxury for rural dis- 
 tricts to indulge in. In every line of enterprise, 
 the methods best adapted to the city are not 
 'those best adapted to the country. The graded 
 system of schools, which is the glory of public 
 education in cities and large towns, would be the 
 ruin of sparsely settled regions. The district 
 school must teach all grades. The city can afford 
 to have one store for dry goods, one for groceries, 
 one for boots and shoes, one for music, one for 
 millinery. But the country store must keep every- 
 thing, from pins and peppermints to shovels and 
 horse-rakes. The church of Christ cannot afford 
 to spend its money in carrying some special 
 variety of the Gospel to communities which have 
 more varieties than they can support already. 
 Yet that is what we have been doing for years. 
 And, in consequence, we find throughout the rural 
 
2IO SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 regions needless organizations, empty churches, 
 half-paid ministers, wasted strength, scattered 
 resources. We do not find in these communities 
 strong, vigorous churches, uniting the intelligence, 
 the resources, the society of the whole village in 
 uplifting worship, hearty good-fellowship, dignified 
 social life, and aggressive Christian work. 
 
 The duty of cooperation in church exten- 
 sion is imperative from every point of view. 
 We owe it to the contributors who support 
 home missions. The contributions for home 
 missions in the United States for 1890 were 
 $6,717,558.03. At the very lowest estimate one" 
 quarter of this sum (if you could pick out the 
 right quarter, the quarter that went for the sup- 
 port of superfluous churches) would have done 
 more good if it had been cast into the depths of 
 the sea. It was spent not for the building up of 
 the kingdom of God, but for the building up of 
 particular denominations at the expense of and 
 to the injury of the kingdom of God. 
 
 We owe it to the brave and devoted mission- 
 aries who are working to keep the old towns of 
 the East and the new towns of the West faithful 
 to the standards of Christian living. They have 
 responded to the call of the church for volunteers 
 in its most arduous service. Like loyal soldiers 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 2 1 I 
 
 of the cross, they have gone where their com- 
 manders have ordered : 
 
 " Not though the soldier knew 
 Some one had blunder'd. 
 Theirs not to make reply, 
 Theirs not to reason why, 
 Theirs but to do and die." 
 
 Alas ! in this case it is not that some one has 
 blundered. Our whole plan of -founding churches 
 in rivalry and maintaining them in competition is 
 one gigantic blunder. And a large proportion 
 of the men who enlist for missionary service 
 under this system are betrayed into needless 
 sacrifice for a hopeless cause ; needless, because 
 a wiser policy of cooperation would have per- 
 mitted others to do the work which they were 
 sent to do ; hopeless, because there is not enough 
 material for all the labourers to work upon to good 
 advantage. 
 
 In business such blunders bring bankruptcy. 
 In war, such blunders cost officers their commis- 
 sions. We owe it to our noble army of mission- 
 aries, home and foreign, to adopt a policy of 
 cooperation which shall guarantee to every man 
 who enters the service that his life shall not be 
 spent in vain. 
 
 We owe it to the people whom we seek to 
 
212 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 evangelize. It is not of much use to make a 
 man a Republican or a Democrat unless you also 
 make him a patriotic citizen. It is not of much 
 use to make a man a Baptist or an Episcopalian, 
 unless you also make him a Christian. Yet the 
 tendency of the minute subdivision of the church 
 in small towns is to make men sectarians without 
 making them Christians. There is enough that is 
 petty and narrow • in rural life, without introduc- 
 ing into it sectarian rivalry and strife. 
 
 We owe it to Christ and our common Chris- 
 tianity. Christ came not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister. The church should do likewise, 
 or else do nothing. Unless the church can be a 
 benefactor to the spiritual life of a community, 
 unless it can be a leader of its daily work, a law- 
 giver to its business and political morality, a 
 sanctifier of its social life, an educator of its 
 youth in virtue, a comforter of its homes in 
 sorrow, a safeguard of its manhood against temp- 
 tation, it has no business there. Yet under the 
 system of rivalry, these cannot be the most 
 prominent features which the church presents. 
 
 It is as circulators of subscription-papers, as 
 managers of competing festivals and fairs, as orig- 
 inators of rival money-making devices, as centres 
 of oratorical, musical, or ceremonial attractions that 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 213 
 
 these superfluous and feeble churches figure in 
 the public eye. We must adopt the policy of 
 planting strong, self-respecting, self-supporting, 
 community-serving churches where they are 
 needed, in place of the wretched policy of thrust- 
 ing in mendicant, impotent, self-seeking, con> 
 munity-plundering churchlings where they are 
 not needed. The churches should not stand as 
 beggars asking alms alike of saint and sinner, 
 but be a mighty power to help the poor man, 
 be he virtuous or vicious, and to rebuke and awe 
 the knave and the oppressor, whether he be poor 
 or rich. 
 
 Hundreds of abandoned churches, thousands of 
 superfluous organizations, millions of squandered 
 money, hosts- of martyr missionaries, proclaim 
 the need of radical reform. Christian coopera- 
 tion in church extension is no far-off vision of 
 a formal union ; no speculative theory of an 
 ultimate catholic church. It is a plain duty 
 which the churches as they are now con- 
 stituted can and ought to do at once. That 
 the doing of this duty now will lead to large 
 results in the future we may well believe. That 
 it will at once reduce to uniformity the diverse 
 forms of church life which exist to-day, no one 
 need fear. We may, however, speedily bring to 
 
214 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 pass what is more in harmony with the organic 
 life of nature, with the trend of history, with 
 the spirit of our civil government. We may 
 develop, not the unity which is a dead and 
 monotonous absence of difference ; not the 
 Unity which is a shallow and superficial ignoring 
 of difference ; not the unity which is an arbitrary 
 and tyrannical suppression of difference : but the 
 deeper, richer, mightier unity which is founded on 
 difference, and is expressed through the har- 
 monious cooperation of many members in one 
 common life. The dream of an American church 
 may be as idle as the dream of an American 
 empire. Yet, as out of the voluntary conference 
 of independent colonies for defence against a 
 common foe, and the establishment of a mutually 
 profitable commerce, there has grown the union 
 of the United States, with supreme authority in 
 national affairs ; so out of the cooperation of inde- 
 pendent denominations against the common foe 
 of sin and for the establishment of that Christian 
 righteousness which is the common object of 
 them all, may be raised up the united churches 
 of America, clothed with the supreme authority 
 of wisdom and of love, to guide and guard the 
 spiritual interests of the land. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ENJOYMENT AND SERVICE THE REDEMPTION OF 
 
 THE WORLD 
 
 The divine life does not consist in preaching 
 and praying and singing psalms : though these are 
 important and well-nigh essential means of keep- 
 ing it alive and fostering its growth and promot- 
 ing its extension. The spiritual life is composed 
 of solider stuff than cadences and candles, music 
 and millinery ; though these may serve for its 
 decoration and embellishment. If the church is 
 the form ; the family, industry, economics, politics, 
 education, society, constitute the solid substance 
 on which that form must be impressed and in 
 which it must be realized. 
 
 This glorious work of helping to complete God's 
 fair creation ; this high task of making human life 
 and human society the realization of the Father's 
 loving will for all his children ; — this is the real 
 substance of the spiritual life, of which the ser- 
 vices and devotions of the church are but the out- 
 ward form. Each has its value in relation to the 
 
 2I S 
 
2i6 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 other. They ought not to be separated. Yet if 
 we can have but one, social service is of infinitely 
 more worth than pious profession. As Jesus tells 
 us in one of his parables : " A man had two sons ; 
 and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work 
 to-day in the vineyard. And he answered and said, 
 I will not : but afterward he repented himself, and 
 went. And he came to the second, and said like- 
 wise. And he answered and said, I go, sir : and 
 went not. Whether of the twain did the will of 
 his father ? They say, The first. Jesus saith unto 
 them, Verily I say unto you [and it applies to all 
 mere ecclesiastics the world over] that the publi- 
 cans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God 
 before you." 
 
 One of the first-fruits of the Spirit, as Paul tells 
 us, should be joy. The Christian man above all 
 others has a right to enjoyment. The Creator of 
 this glorious world ; the Maker of all things in it 
 beautiful and fair ; the Author of that wondrous 
 volume of truth which science is opening to us ; the 
 Composer of those infinite harmonies which music 
 suggests; the Artist of that inexhaustible realm of 
 beauty which human art aims to reproduce ; the 
 Source of those unfathomable depths of sweet sym- 
 pathy which human friendship and love reveal : — 
 this Infinite Author of all good the Christian knows 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 217 
 
 as his Father and his Friend. Knowing himself 
 to be the child of such a Father, he will be eager 
 to take up his inheritance. He will not despise 
 the joys of sense and flesh. For these are God- 
 given and divinely ordained. As Browning has 
 taught us so grandly, he will see that 
 
 "All good things are ours, 
 Nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh helps soul." 
 
 Like him he will see his ideal in the man who 
 
 "Gathers earth's whole good into his arms." 
 
 With him he will exclaim, 
 
 " How good is man's life, the mere living, how fit to employ 
 All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy," 
 
 A healthy, hearty, grateful enjoyment of this sen- 
 suous nature God has given us follows directly 
 from the fatherhood of God, which is the first 
 article of Christian faith. 
 
 The church has sometimes forgotten this. 
 Shocked by the fearful evils which spring from 
 excess and perversion of sensuous enjoyment, the 
 church has too frequently been afraid of sensuous 
 pleasure. It has sometimes held up as its ideal a 
 gloomy asceticism, a joyless sanctimoniousness; 
 and seemed to demand the crucifixion of these 
 impulses and instincts that beat so wildly in 
 the hearts and flow so swiftly in the veins 
 
218 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 of strong-limbed boys and light-hearted girls. 
 Terrible has been the penalty wherever that blun- 
 der has been made. It has doomed thousands of 
 lovely young women) without as well as within 
 convent walls, to lives of morbid introspection and 
 stolid self-repression. It has driven tens of thou- 
 sands of our strongest and noblest young men to 
 dissipation and destruction. It has given over 
 multitudes of churches to stagnation and anility. 
 And all this has been done in the name of Him 
 who came eating and drinking ; who was present 
 and participating at festivities and feasts ; suffi- 
 ciently free and joyous in his mode of life to give 
 the pretext of truth which every false charge must 
 have behind it, which made it possible for his 
 enemies to call him a glutton and a wine-bibber. 
 As followers of Christ, no less than as children 
 of the Father, we must recognize the divineness 
 of the body ; the sacredness of even sensuous 
 delights. 
 
 The mind too, from the Christian point of view, 
 is divine. And all that ministers to our love of 
 truth ; all that feeds our hunger for beauty of form 
 and harmony of sound; all the objects at which 
 education aims, must be dear to the Christian. 
 For they are all tokens of the Father's love to his 
 children ; they are all means by which we may 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 219 
 
 grow into his likeness, and enter into his thoughts 
 and purposes. Social institutions ; the home, the 
 school, the library, the town, the state, the nation, 
 the farm, the factory, the counting-house; the club, 
 the social circle ; all are ways in which the Spirit 
 of God is moulding and inspiring the life of man ; 
 and in which it is man's privilege to find healthful 
 and rational delight. 
 
 In a civilized and select community, composed 
 chiefly of well-to-do persons, this side of life takes 
 care of itself, and does not need emphasis. But 
 in dealing with uncivilized races, as the American 
 Indians ; or with races just emancipated from 
 bondage, like the negro in America ; or with 
 classes who have lapsed from decency and self- 
 respect like the inhabitants of the neglected 
 quarters of our large cities, the first and the 
 only effective steps toward their moral and social 
 improvement are the inculcation of a desire to 
 hold property ; the capacity for steady industry ; 
 an interest in good pictures and good music and 
 good books ; a regard for personal comfort and 
 personal cleanliness. 
 
 The social settlement and the industrial school, 
 which carries the substance of civilization, rather 
 than the mission which carries the form of evan- 
 gelization, is the effective agency for the redemp- 
 
220 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 tion of these classes. Evangelization without the 
 rudiments of education, and discipline in simple 
 industry, healthful living, and wholesome enjoy- 
 ment, is as useless as the casting of seed upon un- 
 ploughed land. Here and there a single seed may 
 take root and spring up. But the harvest will be 
 insignificant in comparison with that yielded by 
 the more thorough and rational method. We shall 
 never succeed in abolishing the saloon, the gam- 
 bling-room and the brothel, until we provide in other 
 ways the comfort, amusement, and good-fellowship 
 which many who frequent these places do not now 
 find elsewhere. 
 
 Wholesome, healthful, rational enjoyment is the 
 foundation of civilization and Christianity alike. 
 If we do not realize it more clearly, it is because 
 in the circles in which we move it is as common as 
 the atmosphere we breathe. Or if it be wanting 
 in individual cases, the absence of it is instinc- 
 tively and sedulously concealed. The effort to 
 reach those who lack this rational enjoyment is 
 necessary to convince us how essential it is to 
 ourselves. 
 
 This easy-going optimism, though an essential 
 element in the spiritual life, is by no means the 
 whole of it. God is our Father : and that thought 
 makes us glad. God is equally the Father of 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 221 
 
 all ; even of the wretched and the wicked ; and 
 the thought that they know so little of his good- 
 ness, and have entered so little into their inheri- 
 tance, should make us sad. The enjoyment of 
 God's good gifts is, indeed, our rightful privilege 
 as his children. All that is true ; and yet in 
 practical life this truth must be supplemented 
 by a deeper truth, and be modified by a higher 
 law. 
 
 That deeper truth is the existence of evil ; 
 and that higher law is the law of improvement 
 through service and redemption by sacrifice. 
 Highly as he knew how to prize the world's 
 good things, our Lord declares that a man's life 
 consisteth not in the abundance of goods that 
 he possesseth. The same poet who has already 
 sung for us the praises of the sensuous life also 
 writes : 
 
 '• Poor vaunt of life indeed 
 Were man but formed to feed 
 On joy, to solely seek and find and feast ; 
 Such feasting ended then 
 As sure an end to men. 
 
 Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw- 
 crammed beast? 
 
 " Rejoice, we are allied 
 To that which doth provide 
 And not partake, effect and not receive! 
 
222 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 A spark disturbs our clod : 
 
 Nearer we hold of God 
 
 Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe. 
 
 " Then welcome each rebuff 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! 
 Be our joys three parts pain ! 
 Strive and hold cheap the strain ; 
 Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe." 
 
 Service not less than enjoyment is our privi- 
 lege. As Carlyle has taught us with such empha- 
 sis, "Work is worship. All true work is relig- 
 ion. Older than all preached gospels was this 
 unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, forever- 
 enduring gospel : Work, and therein have well- 
 being. All true work is sacred ; in all true work, 
 were it bur* true hand labour, there is something 
 of divineness." "Two men I honour, and no 
 third. First, the toilworn craftsman that with 
 earth-made implement laboriously conquers the 
 earth, and makes her man's. A second man I 
 honour, and still more highly : him who is seen 
 toiling for the spiritually indispensable ; not daily 
 bread, but the bread of life. If the poor and 
 humble toil that we have food, must not the 
 high and glorious toil for him in return, that 
 he have light, have guidance, freedom, immor- 
 tality? — These two, in all their degrees, I hon- 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 223 
 
 our; all else is chaff and dust, which let the 
 wind blow whither it listeth." 
 
 The best things in the world do not come to 
 us ready-made. God has given us the material 
 conditions of a blessed life. In Christ we have 
 the pattern and principle of such a life. Yet 
 the actual work of making life noble and beau- 
 tiful and enjoyable he has left for ourselves. 
 Truth must be searched for with patient toil. 
 Beauty must be wrought out with painstaking 
 devotion. Food and raiment must be wrested 
 from the furrow and woven in the loom. And 
 all our social and political institutions must be 
 fought for on the field .of battle, defended in the 
 forum, and vindicated in the courts. Even our 
 religious faiths must be thought out anew in 
 the soul-conflicts of each generation, or they 
 become mere forms of words, devoid of life and 
 power. As Emerson says, "A thing uttered in 
 words is not therefore affirmed. It must affirm 
 itself, or no form of logic or of oath can give it 
 evidence." 
 
 This readiness and capacity for service is the 
 fundamental test of a man's social worth ; and 
 consequently the best evidence of his Christianity. 
 If we could have but one test of a man's Chris- 
 tianity ; if there were but one question which we 
 
224 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 could put to him, I suppose that question would 
 be this : " Art thou intent on doing with thy might 
 something which God has given thee to do, to 
 make this world where he has placed thee a health- 
 ier, happier, fairer, holier place ? " He whose life 
 is a consistent affirmative answer to that .question 
 is an accepted son of the Father, whatever be 
 the intellectual process by which that sonship has 
 been attained. This is by no means equivalent 
 to the assertion that faith is non-essential, or that 
 church-connection is unnecessary, or that creeds 
 are superfluous ; any more than our Lord's para- 
 ble of the two sons is an argument for disrespect 
 to parents. 
 
 And service involves sacrifice. The world is 
 not merely incomplete, and in need of service. 
 It is deformed and corrupted by sin, and needs 
 redemption. And a large part of one's work for 
 the world has to be devoted, not to the upbuilding 
 of the right, but to the overthrow of wrong ; not 
 to the cultivation of virtue, but to the destruc- 
 tion of vice ; not to the promotion of good, 
 but to the eradication of evil ; not to the culti- 
 vation of health, but to the healing of disease. 
 Here comes in the call for sacrifice. The 
 Christian, like his Lord, must become a bearer of 
 the sins and iniquities of the world ; that through 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 225 
 
 his sufferings the sorrows of the world may be 
 lightened, its darkness dissipated, its sins atoned 
 for and its destruction stayed. 
 
 Make any serious effort to improve the condi- 
 tion and character of men, and you are brought 
 face to face with this hydra-headed monster sin. 
 Try to relieve poverty in a single family, and 
 you find the extortionate and irresponsible land- 
 lord of the unsanitary tenement, the hard-hearted 
 saloon-keeper, the conscienceless "sweater,", stand- 
 ing ready to snatch every penny of your charity 
 from the hands of those you try to help. And 
 if you evade these foes, then your gift falls a 
 prey to the more terrible enemy of the poor man's 
 own shiftlessness and lack of self-respect ; and his 
 poor wife's inability to cook a wholesome and eco- 
 nomical meal, or to spend either his earnings or 
 your gift to advantage. Poverty, intemperance, 
 extortion, irresponsible use of wealth, unhealthful 
 and indecent conditions of life, ignorance, social 
 ostracism, despair, lust, cruelty, laziness, dishon- 
 esty, untruthfulness, are so many different mani- 
 festations of what ethics regards as perversions of 
 .appetites, interests, and instincts in themselves 
 innocent ; but which theology must consider as 
 the phases of the one deadly and destructive 
 principle, sin. 
 
 Q 
 
226 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 Evil and sin confront us as fearful facts. They 
 mar and pervert this fair and goodly world which 
 God has made. And yet they are not positive 
 and enduring forces. Evil is always a negation 
 of good. Wrong is a perversion of what might 
 he and ought to be right. Sin is the missing of 
 the mark of that ideal excellence at which we 
 ought to aim. The measure of the evil of an act 
 is simply the amount of good which it displaces. 
 The sin and wrong and evil of intemperance or 
 licentiousness consists not in the sensuous pleas- 
 ures for the sake of which men practise these 
 vices. The terrible, pitiful, heartrending evil of 
 these vices appears when we consider the good 
 which they displace and destroy. Property wasted 
 and health impaired ; wretched homes and bleed- 
 ing hearts ; weakened wills and deadened sensibil- 
 ities ; loveless marriages and homeless children ; 
 these beautiful things so horribly disfigured ; these 
 tender ties so rudely torn asunder; these sweet 
 fountains of purity and love so foully polluted and 
 horribly embittered ; these goods displaced, per- 
 verted, corrupted, and destroyed, measure the enor- 
 mity and heinousness of these most loathsome 
 and repulsive forms of sin. Sin is a parasite 
 which lives only by destroying that on which it 
 feeds. But though a parasite, it is a mighty one. 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 227 
 
 It has fastened itself upon everything good and 
 fair in all this world. Sometimes the only way 
 to destroy it has been to destroy the men on 
 whom it has fastened itself. That is the way of 
 punishment, and vengeance, and revolution. The 
 better way to destroy it is to identify ourselves 
 in sympathy and compassion with those who bear 
 the burden of guilt and misery which sin inflicts ; 
 to let it fasten itself on us ; to suffer with them ; 
 to bear with them the burden, and perhaps perish 
 under its weight. That is the way of sacrifice, the 
 way of the cross, the way of atonement and re- 
 demption, the way in which Christ walked, and in 
 which he bids us follow. 
 
 True self-sacrifice is never for its own sake ; 
 never for mere show ; never simply to mark off 
 the Christian from the world ; never mere playing 
 martyr. It is a poor pitiful type of Christianity 
 that has to resort to the exhibition of artificial 
 and arbitrary impositions and privations to mark 
 itself off from the world. Self-denial for its own 
 sake ; self-denial that is sour and ascetic ; self- 
 denial that despises the good things of the world 
 and tries to set itself above them, is foolish and 
 false and unchristian. Christian self-denial is 
 always the surrender of a lower for the sake of 
 a higher good. 
 
228 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 Sacrifice that is made in the service of the good 
 and in conflict with the evil in the world; self- 
 denial that is incidental to a larger and truer self- 
 realization ; self-denial which values at their true 
 worth all the world's delights, and still can do 
 without them for the sake of the larger delight 
 of others and the deeper joy of sympathy and 
 love ; self-denial that declines personal indulgence 
 as cheerfully and eagerly and unpretentiously as 
 an athlete throws off his coat to run a race, when 
 there are human needs to be served or human 
 wrongs to be endured and righted ; this is heroic, 
 Christian, divine. 
 
 Vicarious suffering is not an arbitrary contriv- 
 ance by which Christ bought a formal pardon for 
 the world. It is a universal law, of which the 
 cross, of Christ is the eternal symbol. It is the 
 price some one must pay for every step of progress 
 and every conquest over evil the world shall ever 
 gain. 
 
 The redemption of the world means the preva- 
 lence of a healthy, happy, holy, human life. Even 
 in normal or sinless conditions, a large part of the 
 highest enjoyment would be found in mutual ser- 
 vice, but the service would be itself a pleasure, 
 and would involve no costly sacrifice. The pres- 
 ence of sin and moral evil compels us to carry 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 229 
 
 our service to the point of sacrifice. And yet 
 even out of this sacrifice comes the deepest joy. 
 "There shall be joy in. heaven over one sinner 
 that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine 
 righteous persons, which need no repentance." 
 
 The redemption of the world, like the salvation 
 of the individual, is a gradual process. The indi- 
 vidual is saved the moment he renounces sin and 
 surrenders to the will of God, And yet this act of 
 his central will and intelligence does not carry 
 with it all at once the complete conformity of 
 every act to the new principle. 
 
 The world has been redeemed from the moment 
 when Christ came into it; from the moment When 
 love was consciously accepted as the true law of 
 human life. This Christian principle of loving 
 service and willing self-sacrifice for the glory of 
 God and the good of men is the central principle 
 of the clearest thinking and most earnest willing 
 in the world to-day. It is the spiritual principle 
 of the modern world. It is the secret of whatever 
 of constancy and courage and hope and high en- 
 deavour animates the representative modern man. 
 To be sure, it is not always explicitly conscious of 
 the historic source of its inspiration ; it is not 
 always in intellectual sympathy with the formulas 
 in which .the. Christian tradition is expressed. But 
 
230 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 under various names, — altruism, utilitarianism, 
 evolution, science, art, law, public spirit, philan- 
 thropy, reform, progress, idealism, — the character 
 we all admire and, under one name or another, 
 confess as our ideal, is not the hard, narrow, petty 
 self-seeking of the natural man ; but the broad, 
 sympathetic, generous unselfishness which is the 
 essence of Christ's Gospel and the principle of the 
 kingdom which he came to found. 
 
 The presence of this Spirit of love as the accepted 
 and accredited ideal of conduct and character is 
 itself the proof that the world has been redeemed. 
 It is the promise and potency of its complete 
 redemption. The Spirit must do his quiet, 
 silent work for many centuries to come before 
 even present standards of conduct will be univer- 
 sally accepted. And as each form of existing evil 
 is overcome, new spheres of duty, richer experi- 
 ences of love, larger spheres of truth, deeper 
 springs of life, will be disclosed " in the perpetual 
 progress of the species towards a point of unattain- 
 able perfection." 
 
 A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. The 
 lump that has the leaven in it is potentially leav- 
 ened ; although there may be large portions of the 
 mass which the leaven has not yet reached. The 
 world already has within it the principle which is 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 23 1 
 
 destined to make it a heaven. Multitudes of men 
 and women have this principle in their hearts as 
 the conscious Spirit of their lives. Multitudes 
 more have caught the Spirit of unselfish living 
 from others, without recognizing its historic origin, 
 and without being able to give conscious expres- 
 sion to the principle which really rules their con- 
 duct and is moulding their character. Multitudes 
 more still sit in darkness, or stand in deliberate 
 rebellion ; unable or unwilling to welcome the love 
 that lights the world. 
 
 And yet the Spirit's presence in so many hearts 
 to-day, the steady and increasing conquest of the 
 Christ, is the certain prophecy that every nation 
 and every tribe at no distant day shall hear the 
 message of the Christian missionary ; feel the 
 healing touch of the Christian physician ; respond 
 to the voice of the Christian teacher ; and enjoy 
 the blessings of liberty and light and law and love 
 which Christian civilization, though unfortunately 
 it does not send these forces as its advance guard, 
 ultimately carries in its train. 
 
 Doubtless the law of natural selection has still 
 some seemingly severe work to do with the 
 inferior races. It may be that the only differ- 
 ence between Christian and pagan civilization, in 
 their approach to these races, will be the substi- 
 
232 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 tution of a slower and gentler for a sudden and 
 violent extermination. Still, the fact that the 
 higher displaces the lower, and survival turns on 
 fitness, indicates a profound beneficence at the 
 heart of even this seeming cruelty. With races, 
 as with individuals, the dealings of God are on so 
 vast a scale that the side turned toward us often 
 seems to be one of unmitigated harshness and 
 severity. Perpetuated physical inferiority would 
 not tend to permanent spiritual superiority. At 
 all events it is our duty to bring to these races 
 the best we have to offer, in material and mental 
 and social and spiritual things ; and then, if they 
 are able to endure the light, we shall have con- 
 ferred the highest blessing in our power ; and if 
 they are not, we must accept their elimination just 
 as we do that of the incorrigible individual, as 
 a sad but necessary stage of the progress of 
 mankind and the redemption of the world. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ABSTRACTION AND AGGREGATION THE ORGANIZA- 
 TION OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 In the last chapter we saw that egoism, or the 
 selfish enjoyment of the world, though good as far 
 as it goes, is a very imperfect good, and requires 
 the addition of altruism, or the service of others, 
 and even sacrifice for the sake of such service, in 
 order to render it in any degree a tolerable princi- 
 ple of life. Yet altruism is itself incomplete and 
 unsatisfying. Let us examine briefly its short- 
 comings. Here is a man pouring out his life in 
 charity and philanthropy ; organizing right and 
 overthrowing wrong ; preaching sanitation and 
 temperance and justice, and denouncing the un- 
 healthy tenement, the saloon, and the sweater; 
 giving his days and nights to toil and strife and 
 agitation, to feed the hungry, stay the oppressor, 
 and rouse the indifferent. In a word, he is doing 
 with all his might that work of reform and re- 
 demption which Jesus inaugurated, and on which 
 the welfare of society depends. And yet every 
 
 233 
 
234 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 one who has undertaken in any earnest way to do 
 these things knows what a terrible sense of disap- 
 pointment and discouragement and despair comes 
 over one when he stops to think how mighty all 
 these forces of evil are. We find ourselves so 
 feeble and so frail ; our puny efforts seem so vain ; 
 our blunders are so costly ; our negligence is so 
 criminal. No man ever worked hard for a good 
 cause or fought valiantly against an intrenched 
 abuse without at times having this feeling of 
 depression and self-distrust come over him and 
 cast him down. This task of setting the world 
 right is too vast for our puny hands, and the futil- 
 ity of our attempts to accomplish the impossible 
 forces itself in upon our weary souls until we are 
 ready to exclaim with Elijah, as he sat under the 
 juniper tree, " It is enough ; now, O Lord, take 
 away my life ; for I am not better than my 
 fathers." 
 
 Then we need the assurance that we are not 
 alone ; that the battle we are fighting is not con- 
 fined to the brief time and narrow space we oc- 
 cupy ; but that it is a single incident in a grand 
 campaign, and that we are members of one great 
 whole, and our work is part of one great compre- 
 hensive plan. Then we need to know that we 
 belong to God ; that he is with us ; and that in his 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 235 
 
 name we shall ultimately conquer. Such an assur- 
 ance most religious persons gain through pious 
 feeling. To others it must come as a clear in- 
 sight, if it is to come at all. They ask the question 
 whether there is any such unity in the spiritual 
 world ? They insist on seeing life as a whole, or 
 else they refuse to regard it as divine. 
 
 This question whether there be any spiritual 
 unity in the universe, through which our lives may 
 become unified ; any great and glorious whole, of 
 which our lives may form noble and worthy mem- 
 bers, is the fundamental problem of religion. The 
 briefest answer to it would be to refer back to the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and say that 
 the true unity of life is found in union with the 
 living God ; to point out that our weakness and 
 isolation is due to sin ; that by repentance and 
 faith and grace we may escape, and be born anew, 
 and grow into oneness with the life of God. Such 
 an answer, however, would be a mere summary of 
 what has gone before. It would convince only 
 those who have been convinced already. 
 
 Instead of offering this too easy answer, it will 
 be more profitable to take up in this new form the 
 whole spiritual problem afresh, and see whether, 
 in an attempt to find an answer to this practical 
 problem of the spiritual life, we reach the same 
 
236 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 conclusion that we have already reached from the 
 speculative side. Plato in the Republic teaches us 
 that the problem of individual morality is best 
 solved by studying the larger features of the state. 
 In like manner that emotional and spiritual unity, 
 which we crave as the satisfactory solution of our 
 individual lives, is most readily and surely found in 
 the practical unity of organic social life. 
 
 Let us then, in conclusion, consider the funda- 
 mental question of all practical philosophy : What 
 is true unity ? and how may it be gained ? 
 
 There are three ways in which you may try to 
 reduce a mass of material to unity and consistency : 
 the way of abstraction ; the way of aggregation ; 
 and the way of organization. 
 
 The way of abstraction eliminates all differ- 
 ences, strips off all definiteness and determination, 
 until there remains the empty form of pure being 
 which, as Hegel tells us, is one and the same as 
 nothing. 
 
 Stated in this plain formula, it does not seem as 
 though such an unsubstantial ghost could lead any 
 one astray ; much less do positive harm. Yet this 
 pale, colourless nonentity of an abstract unity, hol- 
 low and unreal as it appears in its naked metaphys- 
 ical essence, arrayed in the robes of ethics, sociol- 
 ogy, theology, education, has managed to deceive 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 237 
 
 some of the very elect ; and in the privations of as- 
 cetics, the mutilations of monastics, the monotonous 
 tautology of mystics, the unsubstantial schemes of 
 socialists, the dreary curricula of pedants, has 
 proved its ghostly potency to make the lives of 
 men and women who cherish it as hollow and 
 empty and shrivelled and unreal as itself. 
 
 The attempt to unify life by abstraction leads 
 to asceticism. It is desire, appetite, passion, 
 that leads us astray. Therefore repress desire ; 
 eradicate appetite ; stifle passion, and the difficulty 
 will be removed. Erect self-sacrifice into an end ; 
 self-denial into a virtue ; self-mortification into a 
 duty, and apparently the problem of the moral life 
 will be solved. 
 
 So says asceticism ; whether in the filthy rags of 
 the Cynic ; the plain garb of the Stoic ; the coarse 
 frock of the Franciscan ; or the sombre cloak of 
 the Puritan. By abstracting all principles of dif- 
 ference, you seem to get unity ; by excluding all 
 that can make discord, you think to secure har- 
 mony ; by eliminating the elements of strife, you 
 hope to establish peace. 
 
 Alas ! Not so simple is the solution of our 
 moral struggles. In abstracting difference, you 
 take away the very stuff that unity is made of. In 
 excluding discord, you strike out the very notes of 
 
238 SOCTAL THEOLOGY 
 
 which all harmony must be composed. In elimi- 
 nating the possibility of strife, you remove the 
 very forces which must be the contracting parties 
 to any peace that is worthy to- endure. 
 
 Heraclitus was right. War is the father of all 
 things. It is out of difference that unity is 
 formed ; out of discord that harmony is composed; 
 out of strife that peace is won. And the device of 
 the ascetic is a feeble evasion of the difficulty ; a 
 cowardly desertion of the battle-field. To conquer 
 by running away from the enemy is not victory: 
 and the conceit of the Cynic, the pride of the 
 Stoic, are but pitiful counterfeits of the true glory 
 of the moral conqueror. The cheap virtue that 
 comes of self-contraction ; the empty duty that 
 consists in formal self-assertion ; the hollow pride 
 that is born of self-abnegation, — these are the 
 bitter, sour, disappointing fruits of the futile effort 
 to unify life by abstracting the very substance of 
 which life is made. For it shrivels life to the 
 narrow dimensions of an empty chamber within a 
 hard and hollow shell. 
 
 The method of abstraction in sociology gives 
 us socialism. It has much to say of organization, 
 and deals largely in organic analogies. But it is 
 the organization of imaginary rather than of 
 real men and women. It is organization of the 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 239 
 
 tyrannical military type, rather than the organiza- 
 tion of free spontaneous life. It deals with fancies 
 rather than with facts. Like Wharton, in Mrs. 
 Ward's Marcella, the socialist of this type is false 
 to what is, in fancied fidelity to what ought to 
 be. This withdrawal from the actual for the sake 
 of an ideal is the very essence of abstraction, 
 whether in the asceticism of the moralist, the 
 unpracticalness of the socialist, or the other- 
 worldliness of the religionist. The attempt to 
 give unity to society by treating men and women 
 as abstractions, rather than as the actual beings 
 that they are, is the characteristic mark of social- 
 ism from Plato to the present day. 
 
 Ignore the actual facts of our inconsistent 
 human nature ; assume that men and women are 
 what they ought to be, instead of reckoning with 
 them as they are ; eliminate from them all indi- 
 viduality and independence, and reduce them to 
 the dead level of so many commodity producers 
 and happiness consumers ; and then it is the 
 easiest thing in the world to make them fit ex- 
 actly into the niches you have cut out for them 
 in your abstract socialistic scheme. This abstract 
 man who loves only the abstract woman will be 
 perfectly content with the community of wives 
 in Plato's Republic. The artist who is devoted 
 
24O SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 to art in general will be perfectly satisfied to have 
 his career marked out for him by a central em- 
 ployment bureau. And so on through all the 
 range of definite concrete affections, interests, 
 and enthusiasms which make up the complex life 
 of man. The only trouble is that these men who 
 are equally in love with everybody, and equally 
 fitted for anything, really love nobody, and are 
 absolutely good for nothing. Hegel's saying that 
 being and not being are the same, translated into 
 these social terms, gives the maxim that the love 
 of everybody is the same thing as the love of 
 nobody ; and being good for anything is equiva- 
 lent to being good for nothing. For these 
 abstract, nobody-loving, good-for-nothing beings, 
 socialism would provide an ideal paradise. Actual 
 men and women of flesh and blood, however, pre- 
 fer to find their universal in the individual, and 
 through the straitened gate of a particular af- 
 fection, and the narrow way of a definite devo- 
 tion, find entrance to the deeper love and the 
 larger life. 
 
 Abstract unity in religion presents itself as 
 other-worldliness. " Good bye, proud world, we're 
 going home," is its monotonous refrain. Check 
 the wild beating of your natural heart ; curb 
 the eager ambitions of your carnal mind ; accept 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 
 
 241 
 
 your work as a stern necessity ; assume family 
 and social obligations as a serious duty ; shun 
 pleasure as a deadly snare ; and thus by ab- 
 stracting from life all its normal interests, its 
 healthy enthusiasms and its natural charms, 
 you get a thin, pale, morbid, melanoholy residuum 
 of a religion whose only claim to be called spirit- 
 ual is that it is unnatural, and whose only hope 
 of heaven is its manifest unfitness for earth. 
 The reign of the abstract in religion, however, is 
 happily at an end, except in individuals left over 
 from past generations, and in rural regions which 
 remain unreached by the dominant influences of 
 the hour. 
 
 The way of aggregation has had numerous and 
 able representatives from Democritus to John 
 Stuart Mill. The hard-headed adherents of this 
 materialistic creed see through the transparent 
 emptiness of your pale abstractions, and will have 
 none of them. Particulars are to them the ulti- 
 mate and sole realities, and the only unity they 
 know is the artificial and fictitious unity which we 
 give to them by adding and grouping these par- 
 ticulars together. 
 
 This type of unity stated in terms of pure 
 metaphysics seems innocent and harmless enough. 
 Yet carried over into ethics it means hedonism ; 
 
242 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 in economics and sociology it means laissez faire ; 
 in theology it means agnosticism ; in the intellec- 
 tual life it means chaos and despair. This type 
 of unity has none of the winsomeness and charm 
 of the abstract unity. Cold, hard, soulless, aloof; 
 its weapons are mathematics and formal logic, and 
 its conquests are among men and women of lofty 
 but unimaginative minds ; of sincere but unemo- 
 tional hearts. 
 
 The attempt to unify life by aggregation gives 
 hedonism. Reduce all the rich diversity of con- 
 crete interests, enthusiasms, and affections to the 
 monotonous, flat, insipid, common form of pleas- 
 ure ; then put your precious pleasures in the scales 
 and weigh them ; lay them on the table and meas- 
 ure their length and breadth (hedonists generally 
 forget to mention depth, because there is no depth 
 to pleasure thus conceived) ; then pile up your 
 weighed and measured pleasures into a heap in 
 your own memory and imagination (pleasures are 
 so fleeting that they cannot be held together long 
 enough to constitute a real heap) ; then call that 
 man happiest whose memory retains the biggest 
 heap of pleasures that he has enjoyed, and you 
 have the only consistent moral unity which hedon- 
 ism can impart to life. To be sure, hedonists since 
 John Stuart Mill have sought, in addition to the 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 243 
 
 crude weighing and measuring of Hobbes and 
 Bentham, to introduce tests of quality, and, by 
 strange tricks of logical jugglery, to stretch pleas- 
 ure beyond the sensibilities of the individual, to 
 whom alone it strictly can belong, until it is spread 
 out in perilously attenuated form to cover the 
 whole human race. But these are considerations 
 foreign to the fundamental principle of hedonism. 
 You can greatly improve a knife which has a dull 
 blade and a broken handle by putting in a new 
 blade and a new handle, but you abandon your old 
 knife in the process. And so when you prefer a 
 less pleasure to a greater because it is higher, you 
 have introduced a standard higher than pleasure, 
 by which pleasure itself is judged. And when you 
 seek the pleasure of others you are introducing a 
 motive which derives its dynamic power, not from 
 a present feeling in your body, which in the last 
 analysis pleasure must be, but from an idea before 
 your mind, which is a very different thing from 
 pleasure. Into the subtle refinements by which 
 modern evolutionary writers have tried to stretch 
 without breaking, and to change without destroy- 
 ing, the conception of pleasure as the ultimate unit 
 out of which by aggregation the moral life must 
 be built up, we cannot enter here. 
 
 Consistent hedonism makes pleasure the ulti- 
 
244 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 mate test of the worth of conduct, and makes the 
 aggregate of pleasures the test of the worth of 
 life. And in doing so it sacrifices the spiritual 
 substance of life to its sensuous form ; it inverts 
 the normal relations of means to ends; it throws 
 the noblest aims, the tenderest affections, the holi- 
 est aspirations, the most refined tastes, into the fur. 
 nace ; melts them all down into the crude material, 
 out of which, according to its theory, they are 
 alike composed ; and then tells us that he who can 
 show the largest number of pieces of this common 
 substance cooled down, gauged, weighed, done up 
 in packages, and labelled, is the. happiest, and 
 therefore the best of men. To such intolerable 
 monotony, to such insufferable insipidity, does 
 the materialistic method of mere mechanical ag- 
 gregation reduce the moral life of man. 
 
 The attempt to solve the social problem by the 
 method of aggregation, leads one into the indis- 
 criminate and promiscuous helping of individuals 
 as they are. It seeks to relieve poverty, regard- 
 less of its cause. It tries to find employment for 
 the idle, regardless of the demand for the product. 
 It aims to relieve suffering, without stopping to 
 inquire whether the suffering is beneficent and 
 disciplinary penalty, or accidental and unavoidable 
 misfortune. It attempts to make the greatest 
 
, SOCIOLOGICAL 245 
 
 number of individuals well off, without consider- 
 ing the well-being of the society to which they are 
 related. And, consequently, in adding remedies 
 this method multiplies disease. 
 
 The utter futility of attempting to relieve pov- 
 erty without removing its causes and conditions ; 
 the positive mischief of helping an individual, 
 without at the same time helping him to resume 
 his normal connection with society, is everywhere 
 recognized as the first principle of scientific 
 charity. To disengage the individual from so- 
 ciety is as grave a practical mistake, as to abstract 
 society from the concrete individuals who com- 
 pose it is a serious speculative fallacy. 
 
 The aggregate conception in religion is to-day 
 everywhere enthroned, and is in the zenith of its 
 power. So far from being a saint's rest for the 
 sanctified, the church, according to this view, is 
 to be the centre of the most multifarious activi- 
 ties. It is to be a " workshop rather than a 
 cathedral." The cooking and serving of food; 
 the manufacture and distribution of clothing ; the 
 teaching and training of children ; the instruction 
 and entertainment of young people ; the provi- 
 sion of homes for the homeless and work for the 
 unemployed ; military drill for the boys ; benevo- 
 lent circles for the girls ; countless committees for 
 
246 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 men and numberless ministrations for women ; — 
 these are the characteristics of the typical modern 
 church. It is said that an applicant for admis- 
 sion to such a church, having some difficulty in 
 satisfactorily expressing her religious experience, 
 finally summed it all up in the single sentence, 
 " I want to be like Martha, cumbered about much 
 serving,'' and thereupon was admitted to member- 
 ship at once. 
 
 Now we all welcome this tendency as a needed 
 protest against the other-worldliness which went 
 before it. We all honour the institutional churches 
 which are springing up in the more needy quar- 
 ters of our large cities. Just as in bodily disease, 
 when some of the bodily members are out of 
 order, other members are compelled to do the 
 work of the disabled members in addition to their 
 own ; so in abnormal social conditions the church 
 is called upon to do the work of several social 
 instrumentalities in addition to its own. All 
 honour to the exceptionally located churches which 
 are rising to meet exceptional responsibilities by 
 special efforts and enlarged activities. Yet to 
 erect this exceptional type of church into a stand- 
 ard for the measurement of all churches would be 
 to adopt the aggregate rather than the organic as 
 the type of church work and religious life. 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 247 
 
 The unity that comes through organization is 
 not so easy to define. It transcends space ; almost 
 annihilates time ; defies mathematics, and is the 
 despair of formal logic. The whole is in the parts ; 
 the parts are in the whole. There is an instanta- 
 neous response of each member to the conditions 
 of every other. The whole is more than the sum 
 of its parts, and the internal relationships are so 
 subtle that they cannot be adequately expressed 
 in terms of action and reaction from without. The 
 secret of this organic life is the nervous system 
 which binds each part to every other ; makes the 
 whole responsive to the needs of every part, and 
 every part an instrument for the furtherance of 
 the interests of the whole. The whole gives to 
 the parts whatever meaning and significance they 
 have ; and the parts in turn give to the whole 
 whatever expression and realization it attains. 
 Not in timid self-repression ; not in reckless self- 
 indulgence ; not in nursing an abstract virtuous- 
 ness, nor in hugging an illusive aggregate of 
 pleasures, will man find the unity he seeks. Moral 
 virtue is neither a pale abstraction from all that 
 is attractive, nor a stupid aggregate of undifferen- 
 tiated delights. 
 
 Every appetite and passion of our nature is, in 
 its rightful exercise and normal function, holy, 
 
248 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 humanizing, God-ordained. These natural impulses 
 of ours, which, perverted, lead to such swift, sure," 
 and terrible destruction, are yet the only avenues 
 through which we can come into fullest appropria- 
 tion of the bounties of nature, the beauties of art, 
 the sweet delights of family and home, and the 
 larger life of society and state. Pleasurable though 
 their exercise may be, yet their normal end is not 
 the pleasurable sensations which always accom- 
 pany the exercise of function ; but the wide, rich, 
 blooming fields of nature and humanity into which 
 they lead us, and of which they make us conscious 
 and cooperating members. 
 
 The unity of life which comes from organizing 
 all its throbbing impulses and bounding passions, 
 its rapturous pleasures and exquisite pains, its 
 glorious delights and heroic sacrifices, its homely' 
 joys and its humble duties into the expression of 
 an ever-expanding will, an ever-widening inter- 
 est, an ever-deepening love toward all the good 
 this glorious world contains ; — this is the unity 
 at which the moral life must aim. 
 
 The solution of the social problem by organiza- 
 tion does not offer so obvious and speedy remedies 
 for particular social ills as the methods previously 
 considered. Society must enlarge rather than 
 restrict the freedom of its individual members. 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 249 
 
 And individuals in turn must be bound more 
 closely rather than more loosely to the society to 
 which they properly belong. Society must leave 
 its members free in order to get from them the 
 most effective service ; and individuals must serve 
 society loyally in order to realize their own best 
 individual life. Reform from the side of the state 
 must consist chiefly in preventing one class from 
 taking unfair advantage of the necessities of an- 
 other class. And reform from the side of the 
 individual must consist chiefly in developing the 
 disposition in each to consider the interests of 
 others and of all. Not the forcing upon individ- 
 uals of a better social order; not the rescue of 
 individuals from the evils of the existing order, 
 but the adaptation of society to the actual needs 
 of individuals, and the adjustment of individuals 
 to the actual requirements of society, and thus the 
 gradual improvement of each element through the 
 improvement of the others; — this is the organic 
 unity of society, toward which all practical social 
 reform must tend. As Mr. Kidd has expressed it, 
 " The avowed aim of socialism is to suspend that 
 personal rivalry and competition of life which not 
 only is now, but has been from the beginning of 
 life, the fundamental impetus behind all progress. 
 The inherent tendency of the process of social 
 
250 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 development now taking place amongst us is to 
 raise this rivalry to the very highest degree of 
 efficiency as a condition of progress, by bringing 
 all the people into it on a footing of equality, and 
 by allowing the freest possible play of forces within 
 the community, and the widest possible opportuni- 
 ties for the development of every individual's fac- 
 ulties and personality." Wise social organization 
 is not the suppression of individuality. It is the 
 condition of the most complete individualization, 
 and the richest and fullest development of person- 
 ality. 
 
 Organic unity in the religious life neither with- 
 draws religious spirits from active contact with 
 the world, nor yet does it impose upon the church 
 as such a multitude of special duties and func- 
 tions. It bids the average Christian live in the 
 world in the ordinary relations of father, husband, 
 citizen, workman, neighbour, and friend ; and at 
 the same time bids him make these concrete 
 human relationships the expression of a divine 
 righteousness and a Christlike love. It makes the 
 Christian differ from other men, not in the kind 
 of things he does, nor in the amount of work he 
 undertakes, but rather in the different way in 
 which he does the same things which other men 
 are doing, and in the different spirit in which he 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 2$ I 
 
 fulfils the simple relationships which are common 
 to us all. The highest type of Christian is not 
 the man who withdraws from the world in pious 
 meditation ; not the man who attacks it with the 
 reforming zeal of a John the Baptist, though this 
 is great ; indeed the greatest of the natural vir- 
 tues. Greater, however, than any spirit that is 
 born of woman, or merely natural, is the spirit 
 which comes eating and drinking; makes friends 
 with publicans and sinners ; shares the mingled 
 good and evil of man's common lot, and lives 
 and works patiently and quietly to make these 
 common human relationships a glory to God and 
 a blessing to mankind. It is of these quiet, 
 patient, modest, self-forgetful souls, who do their 
 simple duty in plain, humble, homely ways, that 
 the real solid substance of God's kingdom is com- 
 posed. Unnumbered because, thank God, they 
 are so many ; unnoticed because their piety is so 
 natural, their life so normal, their divineness so 
 human ; these, whose lips are seldom heard to 
 say, "Lord, Lord," and whose left hands know 
 not the doings of the right, — these simple, child- 
 like hearts are the salt of the earth and the light 
 of the world, the redeemers of man and the chil- 
 dren of God. 
 
 It is not by getting away from the world, nor 
 
252 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 by plunging madly into it, that we shall find the 
 unity of life we seek. It is by binding together 
 thought and life ; by making the humblest details 
 of daily duty express the loftiest aspects of our 
 faith ; it is by bringing the universal down to 
 the particular, and lifting the definite up into 
 the infinite, that we shall fulfil the social function 
 of religion. Religion should do for the social 
 organism what the nerves do for the body. It is 
 the function of the nerves to bind all the parts of 
 the body together, and so to place the resources 
 of the whole at the disposal of every part. Attack 
 the lion anywhere, and instantly his powerful paw 
 is upon you and his cruel teeth are in your flesh. 
 That is made possible by the nerve which binds 
 the part you rashly ventured to attack to the 
 brain, which instantly transmits along another 
 nerve the order that outraged dignity shall be 
 avenged. In like manner it is the function of 
 religion to bring to bear upon any given point in 
 the social organism the thought and will of God. 
 
 The disciples once came back to Jesus rejoic- 
 ing over the great things that they had done, 
 exclaiming, "Lord, even the devils are subject 
 unto us." Jesus assured them of continued 
 power ; yet, with that transcendent insight which 
 made each incident in his career a fresh reve- 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 
 
 253 
 
 lation of divine wisdom and truth, he added, 
 "Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not, that the 
 spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice 
 because your names are written in heaven." 
 Not what they had wrought by their individ- 
 ual efforts, but what they were by virtue of their 
 spiritual purpose and relationship — this was to 
 be the deep, abiding secret of their joy. 
 
 The kingdom of God comes not chiefly with 
 observation, nor are its most faithful members 
 heralded in the press and on the platform 
 with "Lo, here," and " Lo, there." It is not 
 in the range of our opportunity, nor in the 
 amount of our performance, nor in the fame 
 of our attainments, but by the completeness 
 with which we organize the simple relations of 
 our every-day life into an expression of all the 
 truth and beauty and goodness we have learned 
 to love, that we gain the true unity of life, ful- 
 fil the social function of the Christian, and main- 
 tain our membership in the kingdom of God. 
 
 The kingdom of God lies not in some remote 
 sphere which can be reached only in another 
 state of existence ; and can be anticipated only 
 by the abstract methods of asceticism, Utopian 
 visions, and other-worldliness. No more does 
 it consist of a blind and meaningless aggregate 
 
254 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 of pleasurable or charitable or ecclesiastical ac- 
 tivities. The kingdom of God is here and now. 
 It is made of just such stuff as human life is 
 made of. It is the coordination and correlation 
 of the appetites, impulses, passions, pursuits, in- 
 terests, affections, and aspirations of man. Happy 
 homes, cheerful school-rooms, faithful work, hon- 
 est trade, wholesome food, healthful dwellings, 
 beautiful parks, beneficent government, public- 
 spirited citizenship, official integrity, good books, 
 public libraries, beautiful pictures, refined social 
 intercourse, vigorous out-door life, abundant rec- 
 reation, — these are some of the positive ele- 
 ments that are essential to the realization of the 
 kingdom of God. And on the negative side, 
 as defences against the forces which are always 
 tending to postpone and defeat the coming of 
 this kingdom, there must be the numerous chari- 
 ties and reforms, the hospitals and asylums and 
 prisons, the police and the courts and the armies, 
 which are necessary to care for the unfortunate 
 and the sick; to restrain the avarice and lust 
 and lawlessness of those who in character and 
 conduct refuse to enter the kingdom and obey 
 its law of love. 
 
 All those who sincerely strive to subordinate 
 their purely personal interests and private pleas- 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 255 
 
 ures to the larger interests and nobler joys which 
 come of conscious participation in the well-being 
 of the social whole, are members of the king- 
 dom. The kingdom of God and the well-being 
 of man are opposite sides of one and the self- 
 same thing. And he who participates in the 
 promotion of human well-being therein partakes 
 of the blessedness of the kingdom of God. 
 
 So simple, so inevitable, so automatic, is the 
 process of admission or exclusion. The gates 
 of the kingdom are wide open day and night, 
 that all who love and serve their fellow-men may 
 enter. And yet the walls of service, the steeps 
 of sacrifice, are so high on every side that no 
 thief or robber, intent on securing its benefits 
 without sharing its generous and sacrificial spirit, 
 can climb up and enter in by any other way. 
 
 Such is the kingdom of God as we know it here 
 and now. What of the future ? There is no way 
 of judging the future save by the past and the 
 present. It is idle to presume to determine the 
 issues of eternity by our interpretation of this 
 or that figurative passage even of Sacred Scrip- 
 ture. Some things are sure. Righteousness and 
 love will be noble and blessed always and every- 
 where ; and the clearer the light in which they 
 are revealed the greater will be their glory. 
 
256 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 Sin and selfishness will be mean and miserable 
 always and everywhere ; and the more transpar- 
 ent the mode of existence and the more mature 
 the development of these traits, the more odious 
 and wretched they will become. To be seen as 
 he is, to be known in his real nature, to have 
 all disguises stripped from his naked spirit ; to 
 have each feature of his selfishness and sin 
 brought out in clear relief against the pure 
 white light of love, so that no associate could 
 be found who should not see and know him as 
 he is ; — ■ this would be the severest penalty the 
 sinner could receive. And this would be the only 
 possible fate of the persistent sinner in a spirit- 
 world where souls should see face to face, and 
 know as they are known. 
 
 Would sinners in such conditions persist in 
 sin, or would they continue in existence if they 
 did ? To this question we must answer squarely 
 that we do not know. Our intensest name for 
 shame is mortification. Disguise and hypocrisy 
 and' concealment is the only resource which 
 makes the life of the mean and selfish man 
 endurable in this world. With this withdrawn, 
 the sinner would not wish to continue in sin. 
 And we can hardly conceive that the Father of 
 our spirits would force on an unwilling soul 
 
sociological 257 
 
 an existence alike abhorrent to God and miser- 
 able for the man himself. The Omnipotent 
 does not stand in need of such artificial, cruel, 
 and sensational devices to maintain the dignity 
 of his law and the majesty of his government. 
 
 Will the righteous survive ? Is immortality 
 assured to the just ? A full discussion of the 
 great question of immortality does not fall within 
 the limits of the purpose of this book. Still this 
 social point of view throws light on some aspects 
 of the problem. Strict proof is impossible. There 
 are, however, the strongest grounds for confidence ; 
 the largest reasons for hope. 
 
 The man who has entered the kingdom and 
 is living a life of unselfishness and love is obey- 
 ing a law which is as eternal and universal 
 in the spiritual sphere as is gravitation in the 
 material sphere. Out of just such spirits as his, 
 living on the same principle on which he is liv- 
 ing, the kingdom of God must always and every- 
 where be composed. The essential life which 
 such a man is living must continue as long as 
 the kingdom of God endures. It must exist 
 wherever God holds sway. The life he is living, 
 the spirit and aim and purpose of it, its love 
 and its devotion, cannot die. Without such sons 
 to do his will, God would cease to be the Father. 
 
258 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 Without such spirits to constitute his kingdom, 
 the King would occupy an empty throne. 
 
 If, then, God'j kingdom shall endure, either 
 his loyal subjects and obedient sons who are in 
 existence here and now, must be preserved in 
 existence, or else beings of the same spiritual 
 purpose and life must be created or developed 
 under other conditions to take their places. An- 
 nihilation of those who have wrought out their 
 sonship to God and their membership in his king- 
 dom through the hard conflicts of earth and time, 
 and the creation of others to take their places, 
 certainly does not seem either an economical, or 
 a just, or a kind mode of procedure. It is incon- 
 sistent with the fatherhood of God. It robs the 
 life of man of its deepest and widest significance. 
 It is not what wisdom, beneficence, and love would 
 prompt us to do to those who ever so feebly and 
 imperfectly had learned to love us. It is incon- 
 sistent with all that we know of the wisdom and 
 love of God ; inconsistent with the clear insight 
 and confident declaration of Christ ; inconsistent 
 with the deepest intuitions and hopes of the 
 human heart. 
 
 Immortality is not necessary as a foundation for 
 religion. There have been and are to-day pro- 
 foundly religious spirits of whose faith this larger 
 
SOCIOLOGICAL 
 
 259 
 
 hope forms no certain part. Even if this little 
 life be all, the life of love is better than the life of 
 selfishness ; the life of service is nobler than the 
 life of sensual pleasure ; God is a more worthy- 
 object even for our short-lived devotion, than appe- 
 tite and passion. Yet while immortality is not a 
 demonstrable fact of science which we can hold up 
 in advance as an inducement for beginning the 
 religious life, it is a confident assurance which 
 grows brighter and brighter with each new ex- 
 perience of the blessedness of love and each fresh 
 revelation of the goodness of God. 
 
 The light of the knowledge of the glory of 
 God in the face of Jesus Christ has come into 
 the world ; and in proportion to our humility 
 and unselfishness has shined in our hearts. 
 Darkness and clouds are round about many of 
 the problems connected with the nature of God 
 and the destiny of man. Christ has brought life 
 and immortality to light ; and the Spirit of 
 Christ dwelling in our hearts gives us an ever- 
 growing assurance that if we are "stedfast, 
 unmovable, always abounding in the work of the 
 Lord, our labour is not vain in the Lord." Out 
 of this deep experience of the present love of 
 Christ ; out of the strong courage with which 
 the Spirit helps us to give our lives unsparingly in 
 
260 SOCIAL THEOLOGY 
 
 social service, there is born the lively hope and 
 the serene confidence that can come to us in no 
 easier way and on no cheaper terms ; — the prac- 
 tical certainty that " he that doeth the will of God 
 abideth forever." 
 
SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 By BENJAMIN KIDD. 
 
 NEW EDITION, REVISED, WITH A NEW PREFACE. 
 i2mo, cloth, $1.50. Also cheap edition in paper covers, 25 cents. 
 
 " The name of Mr. Benjamin Kidd, author of a very striking work on ' Social 
 Evolution,' is, so far as we know, new to the literary world; but it is not often 
 that a new and unknown writer makes his first appearance with a work so novel 
 in conception, so fertile in suggestion, and on the whole so powerful in exposition 
 as ' Social Evolution ' appears to us to be, ... a book which no serious thinker 
 should neglect, and no reader can study without recognizing it as the work of a 
 singularly penetrating and original mind."— The Times (London). 
 
 " It is a study of the whole development of humanity in a new light, and it is 
 sustained and strong and fresh throughout. ... It is a profound work which 
 invites the attention of our ablest minds, and which will reward those who give it 
 their careful and best thought. It marks out new lines of study, and is written in 
 that calm and resolute tone which secures the confidence of the reader. It is 
 undoubtedly the ablest book on social development that has been published for a 
 long time." — Boston Herald. 
 
 " Those who wish to follow the Bishop of Durham's advice to his clergy — ' to 
 think over the questions of socialism, to discuss them with one another reverently 
 and patiently, but not to improvise hasty judgments ' — will find a most admira- 
 ble introduction in Mr. Kidd's book on social evolution. It is this because it not 
 merely contains a comprehensive view of the very wide field of human progress, 
 but is packed with suggestive thoughts for interpreting it aright. . . We hope 
 that the same clear and well-balanced judgment that has given us this helpful 
 essay will not stay here, but give us further guidance as to the principles which 
 ought to govern right thinking on this, the question of the day. We heartily 
 commend this really valuable study to every student of the perplexing problems 
 of socialism." — The Churchman. 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 
 
 5