THE LARGER FAITH
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Honor of the Church
The Modern Man's Religion
The Main Points
The Master's Way
The Story Books of the Early Hebrews
The Strange Ways of God
Who Is Jesus Christ?
THE LARGER FAITH
BY
CHARLES R. BROWN
Dean of the Divinity School
Yale University
THE PILGRIM PRESS
BOSTON CHICAGO
Copyright, 1923
By SIDNEY A. WESTON
Printed in the United States of America
THE JORDAN & MORE PRESS
BOSTON
contents
The Point of View
3
I.
The Baptist Church ....
11
II.
The Congregational Church .
. 29
III.
The Church of the Disciples .
. 49
IV.
The Episcopal Church ....
• 67
V.
The Lutheran Church . . .
. 89
VI.
The Methodist Church . . .
. 105
VII.
The Presbyterian Church . .
• 123
VIII.
The Roman Catholic Church .
. 141
IX.
The Unitarian Church . . .
. 163
X.
"The Unity of the Spirit  . .
. 181
Appendix
. 191
THE POINT OF VIEW
The Point of View
This modest little volume is not an attempt at a
Church History, nor is it a study in comparative
sectarianism. It is an appreciation. It was written
primarily for young people who are not firmly set
in their own denominational preferences — they
want to know the special features in the work of the
various sections of the Universal Church. It was
written in the interest of that better understanding
and more intelligent good will among the many
branches of the Church of Christ which will aid in
replacing the spirit of rivalry and antagonism with
the spirit of cooperation for the gaining of those
ends which belong to all who follow the Master.
Our total Christianity is a very large affair.
 Like a mighty army moves the Church of God.
It is not all Infantry nor all Artillery nor all Cavalry
nor all Air Service nor all Ambulance Corps. Each
one of these arms of a common service has its own
particular field of usefulness, yet the army is one.
In view of the fact that Christianity is a large
and diversified movement for human betterment,
it is good for every man, now and then, to get out
of his own special corner of the field and take a
look at the army as a whole. It is good for him to
feel something of the swing and movement of these
3
The Larger Faith
far-flung, variously formulated efforts to have
righteousness bear rule. It will lift him out of that
pettiness and meagerness into which the best of
men fall at times and bestow upon him something
of the breadth and bigness, something of the sym-
pathy and catholicity of spirit which belong to
joyous citizenship in the Kingdom of God.
It is well for any individual Christian occasionally
to take some other man's gait. There are bodies
of Christians which move habitually in a regular
and dignified walk — the Presbyterians for example
in the general quality of their church life have
learned to  walk and not faint. There are others
who occasionally strike a good round trot, others
less conventional in their methods are accustomed
to pace, while some zealous people even break into
a splendid gallop.
Well and good! If they are only headed right,
God be praised for this variety of movement!
And for the man who on the whole strongly prefers
his own particular gait, it is desirable that for an
hour he should catch some other man's mood and
movement — he will come back to his own place
in the procession, a more limber, a more likable and
a more useful Christian.
The purpose of these chapters is not in any sense
controversial. If I could not find anything to
write about except to make a series of ill-natured
attacks upon my fellow Christians in those other
camps, I should certainly lay down my pen at once.
4
The Point of View
There are better uses for paper and ink than to
employ them in sectarian controversy. The devil
is too much in evidence these days for Christians to
be fighting each other when they might be fighting
him.
The newspapers make much oftentimes of  the
divisions of Christendom, but they know not what
they say. The divisions on the face of them are
many, too many, but the agreements are more
numerous and ever so much more significant. The
deeper meaning of the divisions themselves lies
in the fact that each group of Christians, which has
any sort of right to be, has made some special and
distinctive contribution to "The Larger Faith.
There are narrow-minded bigots and sectarians
who do not view the matter in this way. They are
so taken up with the beauties of their own little
cob-houses of doctrine, polity and ritual that they
have no admiration left for anything outside. They
have no real appreciation of the great cathedral-
like structure of Christian faith and worship and
service, with its nave and choir, its added transepts
and out-reaching chapels* representing a long and
varied process of growth.
But we may rejoice to believe that there are not
many of these precious bigots left and they do not
count for much even in their own sects. The
theology, the polity and the worship of any one
branch of the total Church are not sufficiently
roomy to include all the facts of human nature,
5
The Larger Faith
to say nothing of drawing a complete circle around
the divine love. In the chapters which follow I
wish to stand in the presence of that larger Chris-
tianity which may well command the esteem and
the allegiance of all our hearts.
I shall consider briefly nine of the leading
branches of the Christian Church in this country,
the Baptist, the Congregational, the Disciples, the
Episcopal, the Lutheran, the Methodist, the
Presbyterian, the Roman Catholic and the Uni-
tarian Churches. I have simply arranged them in
alphabetical order without any attempt to catalogue
them in chronological fashion or with reference to
their respective importance.
There are other branches of the Church not
named here which would naturally come in for
sympathetic consideration. The Reformed Church
and the United Brethren have had an important
and an honorable part in the religious development
of America. But the general method and contribu-
tion of the Reformed Churches have been so similar
to those of the Presbyterian Church, and the
methods and contributions of the United Brethren
so like those of the Methodists, that I have not
here undertaken the separate treatment of either
one. The Universalist Church rendered a vital
service in modifying a harsh and arbitrary doctrine
of future retribution (so widely held at the time the
protest was made) and in giving courage to those
who would cherish  the larger hope, but again its
6
The Point of View
point of view and prevailing spirit have been closely
akin to those of the Unitarian Church. In any
exhaustive account of the religious forces of the
nation, there are still other churches which would
demand thoughtful consideration, but I have
selected the nine which are named above, because
they are the best known and because in my judg-
ment each one has made some distinctive contribu-
tion to  The Larger Faith.
If we can undertake this excursion through these
varied fields of Christian effort in the spirit of
intellectual hospitality, we shall bring back, I
trust, stirrings of sympathy, fairer judgments and
refreshing outlooks upon other quarters of the
infinite heaven of religious reality which will
broaden and inspire us for a finer, fuller service
of our common Lord.
7
THE BAPTIST CHURCH
Chapter I
The Baptist Church
The name  Baptist  as applied to a particular
branch of the Christian Church dates back to about
the year 1664. It was used to designate a certain
body of Christians as indicating the peculiar empha-
sis they laid upon the mode and upon the proper
subjects of baptism. They insisted that the literal
meaning of the Greek word Baptizo is "to dip,
and that inasmuch as baptism by the immersion of
the whole body in water was common^ if not uni-
versal, in Christ's day, this mode is the one accept-
able mode of administering that sacrament. They
also insisted that the church should be composed
only of regenerate believers; and that only people
sufficiently mature to make conscious acceptance
of Christ as their Saviour could therefore be rightly
admitted to the church through the ordinance of
baptism. They did not practice the baptism of
infants according to the usage of the larger part of
the Church of Christ.
I shall not stop to discuss either of these claims.
I feel, as the Baptists themselves feel, that baptism
with water is of little importance as compared with
the baptism of the Spirits It was John the Baptist
himself who said,  I indeed baptize you with
water  — that was all he could do —  but One
cometh after me, mightier than I, whose shoes I
II
The Larger Faith
am not worthy to bear, He shall baptize you with
the Holy Ghost and with fire. I crave for myself,
as all Christians do, a fuller baptism of the Spirit
that was in Him.
There are thousands of people, both in the Bap-
tist Church and out of it, who believe as Dean
Stanley did that in the first century the mode of
baptism which was common if not universal may
have been by immersion; and they believe
also that the departure from that mode, which
occurred very early and which has come to prevail
so widely, may represent for colder regions where
different styles of dress obtain,  the triumph of
convenience and good taste over a literal attach-
ment to ancient custom. I am not undertaking,
however, to argue the differing claims as to the mode
or the subjects of baptism, but rather to indicate
the distinctive contribution made by each body of
Christians to our total Christianity.
I
The special contribution of the Baptist Church
seems to me to lie in thtee directions: — first, in
their intense loyalty to personal conviction. Our
good friends in the Baptist Church believe that
Jesus Christ was baptized by immersion in the
river Jordan. They believe that the early Chris-
tians were thus baptized by the apostles. Many
of them regard it as essential even in this far-off
land and time, that every believing Christian sjiould
12
The Baptist Church
be baptized in the same way. Because of their
loyalty to this conviction they stand ready to make
the necessary sacrifices in maintaining that mode.
This loyalty to conviction becomes oftentimes a
serious handicap. In a warm country like Palestine
where many of the people lived near running
streams, where the loose outer garments could be
readily laid aside without unseemliness, the custom
of immersion was one thing. In colder countries
where water must be artificially heated in tanks
or where people in the country must go to ponds
or to streams and in the winter season cut holes
through the ice in order to perform this rite in that
way, and where the style of dress is such as to
involve much inconvenience and discomfort, im-
mersion is quite another thing.  Well and good,
the Baptists say—  even though we find ourselves
in many cases compelled to overcome a measure of
reluctance on the part of thousands of people to
that mode of baptism, we believe it to be right and
we gladly accept that difficulty.
However the rest of the Christian world may
differ with them as to the importance of that
particular mode of baptism, we cannot but admire
their intense loyalty to conviction. I have been
present at baptisms in country places where the
candidates were driven several miles from their
homes in the coldest weather, where a hole had
been cut through the ice and where believers were
immersed in freezing water and were then com-
13
The Larger Faith
pelled to drive several miles to the nearest house to
secure a change of clothing. The physical discom-
fort was accepted as a matter of course in no spirit
of complaint but as an opportunity for bearing
witness to their faith in Christ.
Let that same loyalty to conviction, that same
tenacity of purpose, extend to matters more vital
than the mode of baptism, as indeed it has in large
measure extended among the Christians of that
faith, and one can see what a power for good it may
become! Let loyalty to conviction be directed
to the consecration of one's powers to Christian
service, to the devotion of one's means to benevo-
lence and to the development of a sincere attach-
ment to the church of one's choice, and it becomes
at once a mighty influence for good!
The Baptists emphasize the sacredness of the
individual conscience. This lies at the root of their
refusal to baptize children. The helpless child must
not be carried into the church and there baptized
by sprinkling (or by immersion, for that matter,
which would equally offend their sense of right).
We must wait until the conscious moral life of
this child has taken shape and has made its own
choice as to the mode of baptism, until it has made
a personal decision as to the whole question of
Christian worship and service.  Everyone of us
shall give an account of himself to God, is a
favorite text with the Baptists, and their very
insistence upon the right and obligation of individ-
14
The Baptist Church
ual judgment in all matters of religion has helped
to develop that intense loyalty to personal convic-
tion. It has been a great asset to the cause of
democracy throughout the world — the right of
every man to think for himself and decide for
himself upon his course of action, ready at whatever
cost to obey the voice of conscience within his own
breast.
II
The second contribution may be found in the
simplicity of their creed. For more than a century
the Baptists had no formulated creed. They sim-
ply referred believers to the Bible as the only
standard of faith and conduct. Even now they
have no authoritative creed statements or symbols.
What is known as the  New Hampshire Confes-
sion of Faith  is widely published throughout the
North, and another known as the  Philadelphia
Confession of Faith  is current through the
South. But these statements are for instruction
rather than for enforcement. They are not binding
in the sense that the Thirty-nine Articles of the
Episcopal Church or the Twenty-five Articles of the
Methodist Church or the Westminster Confession
in the Presbyterian Church are binding upon the
teachers of religion in these bodies. The creed of
the Baptists is the Bible, and they have not under-
taken to formulate its teachings in any authorita-
tive creed statements.
15
The Larger Faith
Two of the points which come in for special
emphasis in this church are indicated in one of
their favorite texts —  He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved. He that believes, not
certain creed statements contained in the Thirty-
nine Articles or in the Westminster Confession;
he that believes on Christ, in His gospel, in His
purposes for the world, and is ready to bear witness
to that belief in baptism, shall be saved. The
inner attitude of the moral nature toward Christ
and the open confession of that attitude in baptism
are the two essentials for salvation. As compared
with the elaborate dogmas of some branches of the
Christian Church, there is among the Baptists
great simplicity of creed.
The working out of this principle can be seen in
such an institution as the University of Chicago.
It is one of the very few great Universities (aside
from the Universities of the Roman Catholic
Church) which is under denominational control.
It is a Baptist institution. It was founded and
handsomely endowed by a well-known Baptist
layman, Mr. John D. Rockefeller. Until very
recently it was required that its President should
be a member of the Baptist Church and it still
requires that three-fifths of the members of its
governing Board shall be members of that
communion. But when we come to its various
Faculties, including the Faculty of the Divinity
School, we find a wide range of church affiliations
16
The Baptist Church
allowed and a great variety of theological beliefs
sincerely cherished and openly taught. There is no
creed but the Bible and the interpretation of the
Bible according to each man's understanding of it
leaves room for a large amount of personal liberty.
The very simplicity and comprehensiveness of
this basis has given the Baptist Church a certain
facility in securing and utilizing men of striking
personality and of unconventional methods as
ministers of their faith. Take two men, well known
to our own generation, — one on this side of the
water and one on that — Charles H. Spurgeon of
London, and Russell H. Conwell of Philadelphia,
both of them famous Baptist preachers.
Spurgeon preached to more people than any other
man of the Nineteenth Century. He preached to
seven thousand of them Sunday after Sunday in
his own Tabernacle in South London. On the
 Day of Humiliation  at the time of the Indian
Mutiny he preached in Crystal Palace to twenty-
four thousand people and his marvelous voice
(without any aid from the recently invented
amplifiers) enabled them all to hear his message.
His sermons were printed in pamphlets and in
book form, and are being printed yet, although he
has been dead for more than thirty years; and the
circulation of them has extended into millions of
copies. He was in no sense a scholar — he knew
almost nothing about the critical study of the Bible,
or of church history, or of philosophy. But  he be-
17
The Larger Faith
lieved what he believed, and for the man whose
main business it is to produce faith in other men
this is more valuable than all technical scholar-
ship. He proclaimed Christ and Him crucified
with wonderful effect.
He was unconventional — he would joke in the
pulpit and shock the taste of his more sensitive
hearers. When preaching about hell and certain
other doctrines he would indulge in language so
extravagant that we would scarcely credit it did
we not find it in print in volumes published under
his own supervision. But he knew the common
people and they knew him. He won thousands
of them to Christian life and service. He ac-
complished results in which every thoughtful
Christian rejoices. His later life was clouded by
his feeling that the Baptist denomination was
becoming too liberal in its views on the fall of man,
the atonement, the inspiration of the Bible and
the fate of the wicked, and consequently he with-
drew from the Baptist Union. During the latter
part of his ministry he and his church stood alone,
but his bow abode in strength, and his power of
appeal was mighty.
Russell H. Conwell, whose lecture on  Acres of
Diamonds  has been given some eight thousand
times, earning for him a large amount of money,
which he has promptly put back into the philan-
thropic work of his own church and of his college
for working people, has been one of the most
18
The Baptist Church
striking figures in the modern pulpit. His work in
the Temple Baptist Church in Philadelphia, espe-
cially in the educational and social facilities offered
to young men and young women unable to go to
college, has been greatly blessed. He has been
recently honored by the award of a service medal
given to him as  the most useful citizen  in the
City of Brotherly Love. I could name many other
outstanding figures in the Baptist pulpit but these
two may serve to illustrate the principle named
above.
Ill
The third contribution made by the Baptists
has been in their strong insistence upon the entire
separation of Church and State. This separation of
civil and religious authority mfiy seem to many
people in this country like one of those things which
goes without saying. It has not always been so
and it is not so now —  the more's the pity  —
in many other lands. It is for the good of both
Church and State that they should move along dis-
tinct lines — lines which may indeed stretch out
in the same general direction toward human well-
being but they should not be made identical nor
should either attempt to rule the other.  Render
unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's  but
only the things which are Caesar's — this has been
the steady contention of the Baptist in all lands and
in all times.
19
The Larger Faith
Roger Williams, one of the early Baptist heroes
in this country, was driven out of Massachusetts,
not because he believed in immersion or because of
any special religious tenets he held. At that time
he was not even a Baptist for he was not immersed
until after he went to Rhode Island. He was driven
out because of his extreme individualism in insisting
upon the separation of Church and State. As soon
as he landed in this country he stirred up trouble
by urging the Christians of Massachusetts to join
in an act of public repentance for having com-
muned with the Church of England, which was a
state church. He wrote against the Massachusetts
Patent, claiming that the king of England had no
right to grant land to the colonists. He censured
the Colony for requiring oaths from citizens on the
ground that to exact an oath from ah unregenerate
person involved the sin of taking God's name in
vain. He denied any power to the civil magistrate
in matters of religious faith.
This was not acceptable to the people of Massa-
chusetts Bay at that time. They still maintained
a close relation between Church and State. Thus
Roger Williams became what Theodore Roosevelt
called  an undesirable citizen, and he was invited
to leave as a troublesome agitator. He went to
Providence, was there immersed, became a Baptist
and founded Rhode Island, the first state in the
Union to guarantee entire religious freedom.
It was a protest sorely needed in that day.
20
The Baptist Church
Massachusetts had passed laws against Baptists
because of their attitude touching these matters
in 1644, had imprisoned them in 1651 and banished
them in 1669. This was religious persecution by
civil authority, which the Baptists have always
opposed. New York did the same thing and so did
Virginia. The Protestant churches of Zurich,
Switzerland, having just won their own liberty
and still in dread of Rome, nevertheless passed an
ordinance that any minister administering the rite
of baptism by immersion should be drowned —
with some idea of poetic justice perhaps, making
 the punishment fit the crime. They actually
executed that sentence against one Felix Mantz,
a Baptist minister, by drowning him in the lake of
Zurich.
As late as the year 1863, the new code of the
State of Georgia provided in Section 1376 that
 it should be unlawful for any church or society
to license any slave or free person of color to preach
or exhort or otherwise officiate in church meet-
ings. This aroused the Baptists of that state.
They declared in a written communication to the
State Legislature that this was seizing by force the
things that are God's and rendering them unto
Caesar. They insisted that the State of Georgia
was undertaking to dictate to the Almighty what
color his preachers should be. And they announced
that even with such an enactment before their eyes
they would ordain negroes to the ministry if they
21
The Larger Faith
were godly men. They then proceeded to ordain
twoj and the protest of those southern Baptists
became so effective that the offending section was
repealed at the next session of the Legislature.
The Baptists have been ready to go all lengths in
their insistence upon the entire separation of
Church and State.
In England at this hour John Clifford, a Baptist
minister, is one of the forces to be reckoned with
politically. He is a great tribune of the people, a
voice for the non-conformist conscience of Great
Britain. He supported Gladstone, opposed the
Boer War, fought the brewers when they lined up
with the Lords to oppose temperance legislation,
which was sadly needed. He opposed the Educa-
tion Act and allowed his own private property to
be taken away from him by the Government rather
than pay taxes collected by the State to support
church schools. He urged the dis-establishment of
the state church on the ground that the civil
authorities have no right to impose upon the people
the burden of supporting any form of religion by
public taxation. He helped in the triumph of the
Liberal Party in 1906, representing the people as
against  the interests  and the hereditary aristoc-
racy. When I was in England I heard him speak
repeatedly at great public demonstrations in Hyde
Park and elsewhere and I could understand how
in that land of tradition, of class feeling, of close
connection between Church and State, he had
22
The Baptist Church
become a mighty influence for good by his steady
insistence upon this fundamental Baptist principle
of entire separation of civil and religious authority.
It was no less a man than Maeaulay, a warm
friend of the aristocracy and a strong supporter of
the Established Church, who said, "There were
many cultivated minds in England during the lat-
ter part of the Seventeenth Century but there were
only two great creative minds. One of them was
the author of Paradise Lost, and the other was the
author of Pilgrim's Progress. The author of
Paradise Lost was John Milton, a man born and
reared in the Church of England. The author of
Pilgrim's Progress was John Bunyan, an untitled
Baptist preacher. His book became and has
remained for more than two hundred years a
genuine classic for the whole English-speaking
world.
The history of the Baptist people in regard to
missionary effort has been a curious one. When
the idea of sending missionaries to foreign lands
was first suggested, it split the church. The anti-
missionary party said,  If God wants the heathen
converted he will convert them without our help.
Because of their extreme Calvinism they insisted
that the efforts of the missionary societies would be
 an unjustifiable encroachment upon the divine
sovereignty, for God by his eternal decrees had
determined from all eternity who should be saved
and who should be lost. And the Baptists who
23
The Larger Faith
held this view were split off and became a separate
denomination.
But the missionary spirit grew and  the mis-
sionary Baptists  were the first in England to
organize a missionary society and in 1793 William
Carey went out to become one of the noblest mis-
sionaries in the history of India. In 1812 Adoniram
Judson, who was a Congregationalist, was sent out
by the American Board of Foreign Missions in
that church but he changed his views on baptism
during the voyage and upon reaching Calcutta was
immersed and became a widely known and honored
missionary of the Baptist denomination in Burmah.
The world-wide, generous interest of the Baptist
people in missionary enterprises has been a leading
note in their church life for the last hundred years.
Have we not great need of these fine qualities
for which the Baptist Church has been conspicuous?
We have seen the liberties of free men, and the
great cause of democracy threatened by the resolute
attack of a mad military caste which undertook
the subjugation of a whole continent in its own
interest. In that government the individual was
sacrificed to the State. He was not  free to think
and act, free to look at fact, free to come and go 
— he was only a blind and submissive cog in a
machine whose wheels turned at the will of its
self-appointed supervisors. Under that regime
when one button was pressed the clergy danced;
24
The Baptist Church
when another button was pressed by the proper
official the university professors danced; and when
another button was pressed the state-employed
servants of mercantile interests made their obei-
sance. It was a fearfully effective and menacing
system.
That whole method jars upon the man reared in
this atmosphere of freedom.  Stand fast, there-
fore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you
free! Be not entangled with the yoke of bondage.
Ye have been called unto liberty, only u^e not
liberty for an occasion to the flesh but by love
serve one another.
Let every man be true, the Baptist Church
would say, true to the voice within, true to his
personal convictions of right and wrong, true to the
American spirit of separation between Church and
State, true to God, that he may enter into the full
inheritance which belongs alike to every child of
the Most High.
25
THE CONGREGATIONAL
CHURCH
Chapter II
The Congregational Church
The Congregational Church is my own church.
I was not born so — my father was a Methodist
and my mother until after her marriage was a
Presbyterian. But when I came to choose for
myself, I felt that I would be happier and more
useful in the Congregational Church which for
thirty-odd years has been my spiritual home.
I have written in cordial, sympathetic terms of the
strong points in the other churches and of the con-
tributions they have made to our total Christianity.
In writing of my own church it would be neither
fair nor honest did I not speak in the same frank
way of its excellences. I trust that I may do this
not in the spirit of boasting but in open recognition
of any contribution which this church has made
to  The Larger Faith.
The Congregational body takes its name from
the fact that all power is vested in the  congrega-
tion  of the local church. Any company of Chris-
tian believers associating themselves together for
the worship of God and the service of man consti-
tute, according to this view, a complete church..
This single congregation standing alone, acknowl-
edging only Christ as the Head of all the Churches,
29
The Larger Faith
is competent to formulate its own creed, to arrange
its own mode of worship, to elect and set apart its
own officers, pastor, deacons and the like, to man-
age its own affairs as to sacraments, benevolences
and other matters of church life, to receive and
dismisjs members, by the vote of the congregation.
It does all this looking to no outside authority
whatsoever, bishops, presbyteries, conferences or
assemblies, but only to such guidance as may come
by the Spirit of the unseen Head of the Church.
All earthly authority inheres in the congregation,
and consequently such a church is called a  Con-
gregational Church.
I
The four main contributions which this branch of
Christ's Church seems to have made to our total
Christianity are these —
in a pure democracy. Its form of polity is  govern-
ment of the people, by the people and for the
people. It trusts the people to manage their own
spiritual affairs. It trusts any group of Christian
people, large or small, rural or urban, simple or
cultured, who have been led to organize themselves
under the leadership of Christ into a Christian
church.
The whole idea of dependence upon some set of
officers placed over them to tell them what they
shall believe in their creeds, what they shall say in
their prayers and their other forms of worship, who
30
The Congregational Church
their pastor shall be and how he shall be set apart
to that office, is foreign to their method. They
would no more accept it than they would accept
the idea that domestic life needs some such official
supervision.  We are a family in the Lord,
they say —  One is our Master, even Christ, and
all we are brethren. We acknowledge no other
authority, save Christ as the Head of the Church,
in questions of creed, ritual, ministry or service,—
all these matters are to be determined by each
church family for itself.
 From within outward, from beneath upward,
is the direction of life, Dr. Storrs once said,
 in the spiritual no less than in the physical world.
To undertake to reverse this process in church
life seems to us as unreasonable as trying to set
a growing tree on its branches instead of its
roots. Power goes up, not down, all governments
deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed.
One can readily understand how such a form of
church government came to be. It was a protest
against the monarchical spirit in religion. The
principle of local self-government indicated that
the unit of sovereignty in religious matters should
be the local congregation of believers. The Con-
gregational polity, therefore, is not monarchical
in that it refuses to be governed by bishops. It is
not a representative form of government in that it
declines the rule of elders. It is a pure democracy
31
The Larger Faith
in that it commits all power directly into the hands
of the people.
Whatever is done in therCongregational Church
is done directly by the vote of the congregation.
If a pastor is to be called, if some young man is
to be ordained to the ministry, if a change is to be
made in the creed, if any innovation is desired in
the ritual or the forms of worship, if a new member
is to be received, if a member is to be dismissed to
some other church, if money is to be given in
benevolence, if anything whatsoever which pertains
to church life is to be done, no outside authority
has anything to say in the matter. In every one of
these instances the initiative is taken by the con-
gregation. The pastor has no authority to issue
a letter of transfer to a member desiring to unite
with another church, as would be the case in the
Episcopal or the Methodist Church — this, too,
must be done by the vote of the congregation, and
the letter of transfer will be signed by the Clerk of
the Church.
In the Congregational Church the pastor himself
does not belong to a separate class. He is not a
member of a conference, as the Methodist pastor is,
or of a diocese as the rector in an Episcopal Church
is, or of a Presbytery, according to the usage of the
Presbyterians. He is a member of the church he
serves, uniting with it by letter from the church
with which he was last connected, like any other
member. He is pastor, not because he belongs to
32
The Congregational Church
a separate priestly or preaching order, but by
virtue of his election to that office by the votes of
his fellow members of the congregation.
It is the idea of the New England town meeting
incorporated into church life. It is pure democracy,
in that authority is not handed down from above,
nor delegated to certain chosen representatives,
but retained throughout in the hands of the people
themselves. It is a form of polity which is shared
by the Disciples of Christ and by the Baptist and
the Unitarian Churches, but the Congregationalists
were the first to practice it, and they have placed
upon it peculiar emphasis.
It is their belief that the earliest churches of
apostolic times enjoyed this simple form of govern-
ment. We do not find in the New Testament any
one central authority controlling all the churches,
but each congregation proceeding upon its way with
the words,  It seemed good to the Holy Ghost
and to us, as a sufficient sanction for its action.
We find references to  the church at Jerusalem,
 the church of Antioch,  the churches of Asia,
and  the churches of Cilicia, indicating the com-
mon usage. In similar fashion the Congregational
people do not ordinarily use the term  The Con-
gregational Church  as comprising all the people
of their faith — they speak of  The Congrega-
tional Churches, for each congregation is a church
in itself. In committing all authority as to creed,
ritual, and government into the hands of the local
33
The Larger Faith
congregation, they assert their confidence in the
value and efficiency of pure democracy. In these
recent years when God seems to have been saying
with renewed emphasis,  I am tired of kings 
one can see at a glance the value of this particular
contribution to  The Larger Faith. 
II
The second contribution lies in their intellectual
breadth. The Congregational attitude in matters
of belief may be indicated by these familiar words,
—  In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty;
in all things, charity. We would not place a man
in a Congregational pulpit who was an atheist,
or one who denied the validity of those principles
of right living contained in the words of Christ,
or one who set at naught what are universally
regarded among Christians as the eternal verities
of the spiritual world. But upon the basis of cer-
tain great fundamentals we build a church life
which is characterized by large intellectual hospi-
tality. We have had among our laymen, and in
our ministry, men of very conservative views —
Joseph Cook, a kind of arch-defender of old-
fashioned orthodoxy, was to the day of his death a
Congregational minister. We have also men of
exceedingly liberal and radical opinions — Lyman
Abbott, editor of the Outlook, was an honored and
useful Congregational minister. John Robinson
urged the Pilgrims when they were about to sail
34
The Congregational Church
for America, to  believe that God had much more
light to fall from His Holy Word, and they tried to
live with their eyes and minds open for that fuller
light.
We find it more easy to maintain this theological
hospitality because we have no formulated articles
of religion or creed statements, which are univer-
sally binding as are the Articles of Religion, or the
Westminster Confession in the Episcopal, the
Methodist and the Presbyterian Churches. Each
local congregation formulates its own creed. If
the pastor is in agreement with the creed of his
own church, and if his teaching is acceptable to
that congregation to which he ministers, no outside
authority can disturb him.
Touching things fundamental, we maintain a
general consensus of belief among our churches,
sufficient for harmony of action, by the second
principle of our polity, known as  the fellowship
of the churches. Each church is expected to live
on terms of fellowship with its sister churches.
In the decision of vital questions each church is
encouraged to ask counsel from other churches, and
in turn to give such advice when it is sought by
neighboring churches through what are known as
 Ecclesiastical Councils. It is understood, how-
ever, throughout, that this relation is advisory and
not mandatory. Thus the churches living in
fellowship with one another maintain an adequate
doctrinal agreement among themselves, each one
35
The Larger Faith
formulating and adopting its own particular creed,
to secure that harmony of action which has been
ours for centuries.
We strive to exhibit this breadth, not only in
questions of doctrine, but in matters of Christian
usage. We prescribe no form of worship, as certain
other branches of the Church do. If any congrega-
tion wishes to adopt a full-orbed liturgical service
as the church served by W. E. Orchard in London
has done, with prayers, collects and lessons all
prescribed, it has that privilege. If some other
congregation wishes to observe the utmost sim-
plicity, it enjoys the same liberty. We prescribe
no fixed form for any of the Christian rites — we
leave the mode of baptism to the conscience of the
candidate. In my own ministry I have sprinkled
hundreds of people, and I have also immersed
a goodly number, who preferred that mode of
baptism.
We build no barriers, doctrinal or otherwise,
around the Communion Table. We cordially
invite  all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in
sincerity and truth  to commune with us whatever
may be their church affiliations or their particular
theological beliefs. In matters of doctrine we are
happy in having men of conservative temper
among us — we do not wish to make them uncom-
fortable because of their conservatism. We are
happy in having liberals — we believe that wher-
ever they are sincere followers of Christ, the Church
36
The Congregational Church
He founded should be roomy enough to make them
also at home. As we view it the ultimate test of
Christian discipleship is not theological theory,
but love and devotion to the Master—  By this
shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye
love one another.
Ill
The third contribution may be found in the
special emphasis laid upon education by Congrega-
tionalists everywhere. I am not intimating that
the Congregational Church stands alone in this —
all branches of the Church stand for intellectual
training, but its contribution to the work of higher
education in this country was the earliest and has
been in certain ways the most remarkable. The
Pilgrim Fathers, a little company of empty-handed
people in a new and wild country, landed at Ply-
mouth in 1620. They were compelled to labor  in
hunger and cold, in weariness and painfulness.
Yet in exactly sixteen years from the time they
landed on that bleak coast, out of their penury,
they founded Harvard College, the oldest and
perhaps the most influential institution for higher
education in America.
The Congregationalists founded Harvard and
Yale, Bowdoin and Dartmouth, Williams and
Amherst, Oberlin and Beloit, Grinnell, Washburn,
Carleton, Colorado, Whitman, Pomona and other
colleges to the number of fifty-six in the United
37
The Larger Faith
States — a number out of all proportion to their
size as a denomination, for they are not one of the
larger sects. For the higher education of women
the Congregationalists founded Wellesley and
Smith, Mount Holyoke and Mills Colleges, that
women might be the intellectual companions and
associates of men in all the wider interests of their
lives. They began this work of higher education
primarily that they might have an educated minis-
try, but they did it likewise that young men and
maidens might receive their training under the
stimulus and guidance of Christian ideals.
The one man who has influenced the theological
thinking of experts in this country more than any
other, the man who ranked as the greatest theolo-
gian of the Eighteenth Century in any country,
Jonathan Edwards, was a Congregational minister
at Northampton, Massachusetts. The two men in
America who did more, perhaps, than any other
two who could be named to influence the popular
mind to accept more reasonable and more helpful
views of Christian doctrine, Horace Bushnell, with
his emphasis upon Christian nurture, and Henry
Ward Beecher, in his mighty protest against the
more awful aspects of Calvinism, were both Con-
gregational pastors.
Because of this emphasis upon the value of
college and seminary training this denomination,
although one of the smaller sects, has produced a
splendid list of great preachers in America —
38
The Congregational Church
Beecher and Bushnell, William M. Taylor and
Richard S. Storrs, Lyman Abbott and Theodore T.
Munger, Washington Gladden and Amory H.
Bradford, George A. Gordon and Charles E.
Jefferson, S. Parkes Cadman and Frank W. Gunsau-
lus! They have been great preachers, reaching the
ears, the minds and the hearts of the many by the
power of their message conveyed, as it has been,
through the medium of trained and consecrated
personality. The very quality of our church life
freed from the trammels of officialism and mechan-
ism has encouraged the development of strong,
stimulating, independent personality — and this
coupled with an emphasis upon training through
education has forwarded the growth of preaching
of a higher order.
The Congregational Church has been a teaching
church. It has sought to lead men to know Him
who said,  I am the truth, and ye shall know the
truth and the truth shall make you free  from that
which hinders life. It has produced a long list of
noble and useful educators — Mark Hopkins at
Williams, of whom Garfield said,  Mark Hopkins
at one end of a log and myself at the other would be
college enough for me Timothy Dwight, Noah
Porter and Theodore Wolsey of Yale, Austin
Phelps and Edwards Park of Andover, Charles
G. Finney of Oberlin and William J. Tucker of
Dartmouth, William Dewitt Hyde of Bowdoin,
Daniel C. Gilman of Johns Hopkins, Cyrus North-
39
The Larger Faith
rup of Minnesota, James B. Angell of Michigan,
Mary Lyon of Mt. Holyoke and Alice Freeman
Palmer of Wellesley,— all of them Congregational-
ists. If yOu would find their monuments, look not
in some place of cold marble — look at the lives
which caught from them the spirit of noble living
and of useful service.
The two most widely read religious pferiodicals
in this country, the Outlook and the Independent,
were both founded by Congregationalists and both
of them for many years had Congregational minis-
ters as their managing editors.
The same emphasis on education has enabled
this branch of the Church to produce an unusual
number of great hymn writers — Isaac Watts and
Philip Doddridge, who set the praise of the fathers
to music, were both Congregationalists. In more
recent years Ray Palmer, whose  My Faith Looks
up to Thee  has been sung everywhere, Timothy
Dwight, Leonard Bacon and Washington Gladden
have contributed hymns which now belong to the
universal Church. Lowell Mason, who for eighty
years gave his strength and taste to the improve-
ment of church music in such a way as to be called
 the father of American church music, was a life-
long member of the Congregational body.
It has been a teaching church and while it may
have lacked some of the warmth and fervor of the
Methodists, while it may have been less tenacious
of its doctrinal positions than the Presbyterian
40
The Congregational Church
Church, it has effectively construed the religious
life in terms of education, seeking to lead men to
know the truth which makes men wise unto salva-
tion. Time would fail me to tell of all of the less
famous colleges and academies established by the
people of this church, north, south, east and west,
each gathering its pupils to confer upon them those
benefits which belong both to the life that now is
and to the life which is to come.
IV
In the fourth place, this Church has been notable
for its missionary spirit and zeal. The first mis-
sionary organization in this country to send the
gospel to non-Christian lands was the  American
Board of Foreign Missions, which resulted from
the Hay Stack prayer-meeting at Williams College
more than a century ago. The American Board
remains to this day in the personality of its mission-
aries and in the high quality of its work one of the
leading missionary societies of the world. The
largest gifts per capita for the work of foreign mis-
sions for many years were made by the Congrega-
tionalists, excepting only that little group of Chris-
tians known as Moravians, whose warm and gener-
ous missionary zeal has exceeded that of any other
church in Christendom.
And some of the most useful and famous mis-
sionaries in the foreign field have been of this faith.
In many lands their work has been nothing less
41
The Larger Faith
than epoch-making — John Eliot, the apostle to
the Indians and Cyrus Hamlin in Turkey, Hiram
Bingham of Hawaii and Robert A. Hume of India,
Arthur H. Smith of China and James H. deForest
of Japan, men with the hearts of saints and the
minds of statesmen! They wrought righteousness
and obtained the promises, subdued kingdoms and
put to flight armies of evil. As a result of their
labors, men have seen the Kingdom of God coming
with power in many a land.
This Church was the first to organize a foreign
missionary society and the first also to organize a
home missionary society for the evangelization of
our own land. The work of the home missionary
is less romantic and picturesque but he has gone
to the lumber camps, the mining towns and to the
lonely communities in the midst of the great wide
ranches to make known to men the good news of
life eternal. We had an  Iowa Band  which
came out from Andover Seminary and their names
are written across the moral life of that great state
in the Middle West to stay. We had a  Yale
Band  in the State of Washington and they carried
the finest traditions of that honored university to
engrave them upon the eager, restless life of the
great Northwest. The Spirit said  Go, and
they went — and all those regions which have
profited by the labors of cultured, consecrated men
rise up to-day and call them blessed.
The Congregational Church was the first to
42
The Congregational Church
undertake the education of the freedmen at the
close of the Civil War — a comparison of statistics
a few years ago showed that it had put more money
at that time into Christian schools for the negroes
of the South than all the other denominations
combined. It was the first to introduce Christian
education in Utah, making it a potent instrument
there to offset the influence of Mormonism.
Its scholars have taken high place in making
translations of the Scriptures into foreign languages
for missionary work. Hiram Bingham reduced to
writing the entire language of the Gilbert Islanders
in Micronesia and made a translation of the entire
Bible for their instruction. John S. Chandler
utilized his seven years of training at Yale and his
thorough knowledge of the vernacular to compile
the standard Lexicon of the Tamil language for
the people of southern India. Twenty-seven
languages in all, have been reduced to writing by
missionaries of the American Board and one hun-
dred and eighty translations of the Bible into other
tongues have been made by their hands and brains
for the extension of the influence of the gospel of
Christ.
With all its intellectual breadth (which has some-
times disturbed our more conservative brethren),
with all its apparent lack of close-knit organization,
the missionary spirit of the Congregational body
has been so real and so warm that it has been an
evangelizing church. How many of the great
43
The Larger Faith
historic revivals and of the mighty leaders in wide-
spread religious movements have come from this
branch of Christ's Church! Jonathan Edwards
more than any other man was responsible for  the
great awakening in the Eighteenth Century.
Charles G. Finney of Oberlin was the one man who
did more than any other to promote the religious
awakening which came in the decades preceding the
Civil War. Dwight L. Moody was regarded as the
most successful evangelist in the last third of the
Nineteenth Century. In noble evangelism it would
be difficult to name three men who have accom-
plished more for our country than Edwards,
Finney and Moody, all of them lifelong Congrega-
tionalists. The work of these men was not mere
noise and froth, creating a nine-days' wonder by
eccentric, sensational methods and then leaving the
community cold. It was the honest, effective
enlisting of men and women in the open, active
service of Christ. Of that sort of evangelism we
cannot have too much.
This branch of the Church has furnished other
widely known religious leaders — Francis E. Clark,
founder and head of the Christian Endeavor
movement, has been all these years a Congrega-
tional minister. R. J. Campbell of London while
he remained a Congregationalist led one of the
significant religious movements of the Twentieth
Century. However we may disagree with some of
his theology, or disapprove some of his peculiar
44
The Congregational Church
methods, he was a force to be reckoned with. Other
leaders whose later work may seem less satisfying
illustrate the power of this branch of the Church to
develop leadership. Benjamin Fay Mills, for
many years a most successful evangelist, was
ordained as a Congregational minister, and for a
long time was a member with us. Mrs. Mary
Baker G. Eddy, the founder of Christian Science,
was the product and in early life a member of our
branch of the Church. Its missionary spirit and its
intellectual breadth have combined to give the
Congregational body a certain genius for the
development of widely influential religious leaders.
Its men and women, strong and free, constantly
compelled to manage their own affairs, have had a
way of moving to the front.
It has shown the same missionary zeal in all the
great Reforms. The real beginning of the tern-
perance movement in America which has now taken
shape in the form of an Amendment to the Federal
Constitution, dates from a series of sermons
preached against the evil of intemperance in New
England by Lyman Beecher at a time when tippling
was common both with the ministers and the laity
of the evangelical churches. In the early agitation
against slavery few more conspicuous figures are
to be found than those of Henry Ward Beecher,
Leonard Bacon and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The
first social settlement to transplant living Chris-
tianity into the less favored section of a large city
45
The Larger Faith
by sending a group of cultured men and women to
live there was the Andover House in Boston —
now the South End House — taking its name
originally from the fact that Andover Theological
Seminary stood behind it. One of the most useful
men in that work today is Graham Taylor in the
Chicago Commons, a professor in one of our Semi-
naries. The earliest  Institutional Churches 
to achieve success along the line of a more varied
form of service to the community, were Berkeley
Temple in Boston, the Tabernacle Church in Jersey
City and the Fourth Congregational Church of
Hartford. Washington Gladden, Raymond Rob-
bins and other well known Congregationalists have
been leaders in the high task of making thorough,
intelligent application of the principles of the Ser-
mon on the Mount to the social and industrial
conditions under which men live. In every form
of good work that same missionary zeal, cherished
and handed on, has found useful expression.
The real essence of Congregationalism is not to
be found in a certain type of church polity, nor in
an authoritative creed statement, for it has none,
nor in a prescribed form of ritual, for its modes of
worship vary widely — the real essence of the
Pilgrim faith is to be found in a certain sense of
freedom and of fellowship in the Spirit of Christ.
One is our Master and in serving Him we are all
brothers.
46
THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES
Chapter III
The Church of the Disciples
In the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, in
the north of Ireland, two men lived, father and
son, Thomas Campbell and Alexander Campbell.
They were Presbyterian ministers, belonging to
that section of the Church known as "The Seced-
ers. They were deeply religious men and, possess-
ing in generous measure the qualities of leadership,
they were destined to play a large part in an
important religious movement here in this newer
section of the world.
Thomas Campbell had been educated in Glasgow
University and in Divinity Hall. He was scholarly,
lovable, devout, and preeminently a man of peace.
His home was a center of religious instruction and
devotion, and his parish is said to have been the
most exemplary in that whole region. He saw the
evils of a narrow sectarianism, and he was earnestly
desirous of promoting the spirit of Christian unity.
He was in frail health at that time and in the
hope of gaining physical benefit, he emigrated in
1807 to the United States. He brought with him
his credentials as a Presbyterian pastor and at a
meeting of the Synod in Philadelphia, he was
cordially received and recommended to the Presby-
tery of Chartiers, located in western Pennsylvania.
Here he was assigned to a field of labor and began
49
The Larger Faith
his active ministry in this country as a pastor of
The Seceder Church.
He found in that new community numbers of
excellent church people, some of them long cher-
ished friends from his native land. He entered into
joyous fellowship with them, ministering to them in
spiritual things. He was sent on a missionary tour
through western Pennsylvania to preach the gospel
and to administer the sacrament to the scattered
Seceders in that thinly populated region. He found
communicants of other Presbyterian bodies who
had not been enjoying the privileges of the Lord's
Supper. His heart went out to them in ready
sympathy and he openly invited them all to partici-
pate in the communion services.
This action gave offence to the stricter party
in The Seceder Church. Mr. Campbell was brought
before his Presbytery to be questioned and a vote
of censure was passed condemning him for the
practice of a more inclusive fellowship of Christians
at the table of the Lord. He appealed to the Synod,
hoping that the vote of censure would be revoked.
The Synod reviewed the case, and while it found
some irregularities in the action of the Presbytery,
the vote of censure was affirmed. This was the be-
ginning of the separation of the Campbells from the
Presbyterian Church where they had been reared.
Thomas Campbell's withdrawal from the Seced-
ers did not interrupt in any way his labors as a
minister of Christ. While the churches of his former
50
The Church of the Disciples
faith were not open to him, he preached in private
houses, in groves and wherever opportunity might
offer. In this way a considerable number of people
who sympathized with his spirit and method were
brought into a certain fellowship of Christian effort.
A conference was arranged in a private house near
Washington, Pennsylvania. Mr. Campbell opened
the meeting with prayer, invoking the blessing of
God and the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit
upon their deliberations. Growing out of this con-
ference there came, at a meeting held later on the
head waters of Buffalo Creek, in August, 1809, the
formation of what was known as  The Christian
Association of Washington.
The organization of another sect or denomination
of Christians did not at that time lie within the
minds of these earnest people. They were not de-
taching themselves from the churches to which they
owed allegiance. The general purpose of the move-
ment was expressed in what is known as  The
Declaration and Address  written by Thomas
Campbell himself, which came to be the magna
charta of the Disciple movement. The instrument
is too long to be quoted here in its entirety, but
the spirit of it has been accurately summarized by
William T. Moore in his  History of the Disciples
of Christ.  Our desire for ourselves and for our
brethren would be, that rejecting human opinions
and the inventions of men as of any authbrity, we
might cease from further contentions, returning to
51
The Larger Faith
and holding fast by the original standard, taking the
divine Word alone for our rule, the Holy Spirit for
our teacher and guide to lead us into all the truth,
and Christ alone for our salvation, that by so doing
we may be at peace among ourselves and follow
peace with all men and holiness without which no
man shall see the Lord.
Upon the basis of this  Declaration and Ad-
dress  the leaders of the movement continued
their work. Men and women were being won to
Christ and believers were being built up in faith
and hope and love. In spite of the emphasis upon
Christian union, however,  The Christian Associa-
tion of Washington  was gradually taking shape
as a separate church. Thomas Campbell was
grieved when he was accused of starting another
religious denomination at a time when sectarianism
was even more of a hindrance to the work of Christ
in the world than it is today. He insisted that no
such purpose was in his heart, that his whole aim
was to heal the divisions of Christendom rather
than to multiply them. And in line with that
determination he decided to apply to the Synod of
Pittsburg for membership in the Presbyterian
Church. He wished to disclaim in the most positive
way any intention of starting another sect.
He therefore made formal application in October,
1810, for  Christian and ministerial communion 
with the Synod of Pittsburg. He appeared before
the Synod and gave a clear, frank statement of his
52
The Church of the Disciples
own religious position. His application was care-
fully considered and was denied. The Synod made
answer in these terms, "It was not for any immoral-
ity in practice but for expressing his belief that
there are some opinions taught in our Confession of
Faith which are not founded in the Bible, for declar-
ing that the administration of baptism to infants is
not authorized by scriptural precept or example,
for encouraging his son to preach the gospel without
any regular authority and for opposing creeds and
confessions as injurious to the cause of religion,
that the Synod deemed it improper to grant his
request.
Just at this time Alexander Campbell, the son
of Thomas Campbell, entered actively into the
further development of this movement. He came
from Ireland to the United States in the year
1809. He approved of his father's course and he
threw himself earnestly into the work of making
the principles announced in the  Declaration and
Address  widely known.
Alexander Campbell was a man of less concilia-
tory spirit and much more aggressive than his
father. He moved about through the states of
West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky
and engaged in theological debates and in pro-
claiming his convictions with incisiveness and
vigor. In his celebrated debate with Robert Owen
 he spoke for twelve hours with only such slight
interruptions as were demanded for rest and refresh-
' 53
The Larger Faith
ment. He engaged in a mighty discussion with
Archbishop Purcell in the city of Cincinnati over
the respective positions of the Disciples movement
and the Roman Catholic Church. He conducted
a debate with Nathan L. Rice of the Presbyterian
Church in Lexington, Kentucky, which extended
through eighteen days, taking up the general sub-
ject of baptism, of conversion and sanctification
and the tendency and influence of human creeds.
He started a new monthly magazine called  The
Millenial Harbinger  to contend earnestly for
what he believed to be  the faith once for all
delivered to the saints. He belonged to the
church militant and he waged an aggressive and
incessant warfare against what he regarded as
human error and sinfulness.
How far away from that whole mood and method
have we moved in these days, Presbyterians,
Methodists, Baptists, Disciples and everybody
else! The Christian world rests its weight in these
days, not so much upon the proper formulation of
theological belief, as upon the expression of spiritual
impulse in useful action. It places its emphasis not
so much upon the particular opinions men cherish
as upon the utterance of their convictions in kindly
service. It would be well-nigh impossible to induce
the great leaders of any of the Churches to engage
in these times in such extended discussion of their
theological differences and it would be altogether
impossible to induce the patient people to listen
54
The Church of the Disciples
to such presentations for twelve hours, to say
nothing of lending their ears to such contentions
for eighteen days. The first and great command-
ment is not  Thou shalt know  — it is  Thou
shalt love. On the love we show for God and for
man hangs our whole case.
Early in his ministry in this country Alexander
Campbell became acquainted with Margaret
Brown, whose home was in Brooke County, West
Virginia. Their friendship soon ripened into affec-
tion and in 1811 they were married by a Presby-
terian minister. They made their home on Buffalo
Creek at the site of the little town of Bethany.
Here Alexander Campbell lived for half a century!
Here Bethany College was established and he
became its first and honored President, holding
this position to the close of his life! Here his
curious octagonal study, entirely detached from
the rest of his house, stands to this day! Here he
was buried in that beautiful cemetery which has
done so much to make Bethany one of the shrines
and sacred places for all the Disciples of Christ.
I
The distinctive contributions made by the
Disciples to our total Christianity seem to be:
First, an intense denominational consciousness!
It would be difficult to name any other branch of
the Protestant Church which has such a definite,
loyal, close-knit, insistent feeling of fellowship.
55
The Larger Faith
In a somewhat more limited sense than that
intended by the Master, his words may well be
applied to this portion of His Church,  By this
shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye
have love one to another. The Disciples love one
another, work for each other, protect each other
and seek in countless ways to advance one another's
interests.
This spirit where it is not wisely directed may
easily have the defect of its virtues. It may lead
to a narrow or bigoted clannishness. It may
permit or even encourage the spirit of proselyting
from other communions which are not held in the
same high esteem. It may show itself unmindful
of that fraternal consideration suggested by the
Master where he gave his own gracious recognition
to other sheep which are not of this fold.
But this is not a necessary part of that intense
loyalty to one's own faith. Where can we find a
more consistent, winsome and effective promoter
of the spirit of Christian unity than Peter Ainslie,
one of the outstanding leaders among the Disciples,
for more than twenty-five years the honored and
successful pastor of that great church of their faith
in the city of Baltimore?
This profound denominational consciousness and
this intense loyalty to the people of their own com-
munion have gone far in enabling the Disciples to
demonstrate the fact that a religious body can
remain united and efficient without the aid of any
56
The Church of the Disciples
man-made creed. Their basis of agreement in hav-
ing no creed statement but the Bible has been
called  A rope of sand. But by their steadfast
adherence to Christ, their basis of union has been
anything but fleeting sand — it has been like the
house of the wise man which was built upon the
rock of obedience to the great Head of the Church.
The deep denominational consciousness of these
Christians has served to hold them together in a
splendid unity of purpose.
II
The second distinctive contribution would lie
in the constant maintenance of an active evangelis-
tic spirit. There are other branches of the Chris-
tian Church, the Methodists, the Baptists, the
United Brethren, which have shown throughout
their history a healthy spirit of evangelism. But
with them it has been more often a thing of times
and of seasons. There have come periods of
refreshing, seasons of blessing, special revival
efforts, when multitudes of those who were in
process of being saved were added to the Church.
The Disciples maintain almost without interrup-
tion the purpose, the methods and the achieve-
ments of evangelistic effort. It is their custom at
each service on the Lord's Day to  open the doors
of the church, as they say, to give opportunity
then and there at the close of each service for any
persons present to declare by coming forward their
57
The Larger Faith
desire to confess Christ and to become members of
His Church. The minister in preparing and in
preaching his sermons, the people in praying for
the divine blessing to rest upon the service in which
they are engaged, have it constantly in mind that
the hour will find its climax in the invitation for
those who would find peace to their souls to take
their stand on the Lord's side. This very expecta-
tion strengthens the faith of pastor and people alike
in the power of direct appeal.
This is one reason why this branch of the Church
has grown so rapidly. It was celebrating its cen-
tennial anniversary in this country only yesterday,
yet it has already enrolled upon the list of its
members more than a million and a half followers
of Christ. It is not a static but a dynamic church.
It would have men come to a knowledge of the
truth, and at once declare it in action. It is forever
saying,  Behold I set before you this day a blessing
and a curse, life and death. Therefore choose
life. And its word is with power. It has written
a noble record of steady and effective evangelism.
Ill
The third distinctive contribution may be found
in the emphasis which the Disciples place upon
apostolic custom. The famous dictum of Thomas
Campbell, "Where the Scriptures speak we speak,
where the Scriptures are silent we are silent,
was as he insisted a direct return to what was
58
The Church of the Disciples
apostolic. He discarded the practice of infant
baptism, not upon any claim that it could not be
employed to the edification of the church, but upon
the ground that no clear instances of bringing
infants of days to the apostles to be baptized could
be found in the Bible.
He insisted upon baptism by immersion only,
not upon the grounds of taste or of convenience or
of the spiritual impressiveness of the rite adminis-
tered in this particular way — he insisted upon
immersion solely upon the ground that this was the
mode of baptism practiced in the church of the
apostles. He and his son had not been so baptized
when they first became the leaders of the new move-
ment, and it was an impressive scene when upon
that memorable day in June, 1812, Thomas Camp-
bell and his wife, Alexander Campbell and his wife
and sister, with three others, were immersed in
Buffalo Creek by Elder Luce of the Baptist Church.
It is the firm belief of the Disciples that in the
early Church the taking of bread and wine in the
name of Christ at the Lord's table, was a stated
observance in the worship of every Lord's Day.
It has proved to be a potent means of fellowship.
 The meeting together once a week around the
Lord's table and remembering His sacrificial death
for their sins has had a comforting and a strongly
uniting influence on the Disciples. In the presence
of the emblems which show forth the sufferings
and death of their divine Lord, they have found an
59
The Larger Faith
irresistible bond of union and a cementing power
which can come from nowhere else.
In the choice of a name they have shown the
same attitude. This branch of the Church was
popularly known for a long time as  The Camp-
bellite Church. This was not acceptable to the
Disciples themselves, however great might be
their appreciation of the service rendered by
Thomas and Alexander Campbell. They would
not have their church bear the name of any man.
There were many among them who favored the
idea of having their denomination known simply
as  The Christian Church  but wiser heads
among them recognized that this would savor of
arrogance and bigotry, as implying that the rest
of us who follow Christ are not Christians. They
would accept no name, however, which was not
scriptural and apostolic. The legal name of this
branch of Christ's Church therefore stands as  The
Disciples of Christ.
The very name is an asset in itself.  The disci-
pies were first called Christians at Antioch.
The  disciples "! The word  disciple  comes
from the Latin word  discere, to learn. The
learners, the pupils, those who have by their own
choice and act placed themselves directly and per-
manently under the tuition of the Master, are called
Christians. The church is a place, not for finished
scholars in the art of living, not for post-graduates
who have already taken their doctors' degrees in
60
The Church of the Disciples
goodness — the church is a place for learners and
pupils, those who become as little children that
they may enter the kingdom of Heaven. At
Antioch and everywhere the people  called Chris-
tians  are the pupils of Him who is  the way and
the truth and the life.
This same emphasis upon apostolic method has
influenced the Disciples in defining the true object
of faith.  I know whom  — not what but whom
— "I have believed and I am persuaded that He
is able to keep that which I have committed unto
Him. The man who knows  whom  he has
believed is a man of faith, even though he may not
feel quite sure as to what he believes at every point.
He can move ahead serene and undaunted by the
power of his faith.
 Dost thou believe on the Son of God?  was
the question addressed by Jesus Himself to the
inquirer. It was not,  What do you believe? 
And the inquirer's answer was,  Who is he, Lord,
that I might believe on him?  The Disciples
have steadily insisted that there is a vital difference
between faith and opinion. Faith is the mood, the
bearing, the response of the soul to Christ, giving
substance to all the great things which are hoped
for. Opinion is a state of mind while faith is an
attitude of heart. From first to last the  faith 
enjoined upon men in the gospel of Christ is per-
sonal rather than doctrinal.
The absence of carefully formulated creed state-
61
The Larger Faith
ments has allowed and encouraged a goodly meas-
ure of intellectual liberty among the Disciples.
The conservatives and the liberals alike are "called
Christians  because they are the pupils and follow-
ers of the Lord Christ. Alexander Campbell him-
self, though he lived and died before the modern
methods of historical Biblical interpretation had
been introduced, in many ways anticipated the
Higher Criticism in his insistence upon  Dis-
pensational truth. He spoke of the  starlight
age  and the  moonlight age  and the  sunlight
age  in spiritual insight. He drew a firm line of
demarcation between the law and the gospel, the
old dispensation and the new. He placed a very
different appraisal upon the Old Testament scripf
tures from that accorded to the New Testament.
 We are not under Moses, he would say,  but
under Christ. To his scholarly, discriminating
mind the claim that  the whole Bible is the infal-
lible word of God from lid to lid and all alike
inerrant, Leviticus or Luke, Judges or John,
would have been abhorrent. He believed that in
the Bible as elsewhere it is first the blade, then the
ear and then still later the fully ripened corn.
The Disciples do not object to the publishing
and interpreting of the teaching of the Scriptures
as they may bear upon any subject whatsoever
of faith or duty for the purpose of instruction and
education. They protest against the use of any
such statements as a condition of fellowship. "It
62
The Church of the Disciples
must be apparent to anyone that it is unreasonable
to require children or men of undisciplined mind to
subscribe to abstract statements laboriously pre-
pared by trained thinkers as conditions of member-
ship in Christ's Holy Church. They would have
all men stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ,
through their personal trust in Him, has made them
free.
When the Disciples celebrated their Centennial
in 1909 in Pittsburg, the crowning feature of the
whole Convention was the communion service held
in the afternoon of the Lord's Day. The sacrament
was celebrated in Forbes Field and thirty thousand
communicants assembled to partake together of the
Lord's Supper. In the whole history of the Protes-
tant Church it was in all probability the largest
communion service ever held. One hundred elders
served at the tables and five hundred deacons
served the great congregation with the bread and
the wine of remembrance. The elders led in the
words of thanksgiving and the voice of the people
in praise and prayer was like the sound of many
waters. When the vast congregation arose and
lifted their hearts in devotion, as they sang together
those words from  Nearer My God to Thee, it
was a time of blessing and honor and glory and
power and wisdom and might. It was an impres-
sive fulfillment of that great word of our Lord,
 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men unto me.
63
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH
Chapter IV
The Episcopal Church
The full legal title of the Episcopal Church tells
us something of its character and of its history.
The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States of America! This title distinguishes it from
that Church which acknowledges the supremacy of
the Pope at Rome — it is a  Protestant  Church.
It is a church governed by bishops — an  episco-
pal  church. It is likewise a branch of a still older
church, the Church of England — it is The Protes-
tant Episcopal Church  in the United States of
America.
It is a long and somewhat awkward title. Many
attempts have been made by the General Conven-
tion to have the name changed. Some of the loyal
adherents of this communion have wished to drop
the word  protestant  on the ground that the
Episcopal Church is a part of  The Holy Catholic
Church. There are others who would have been
glad to have it called  The American Church.
But this has been opposed by the broader-minded
Episcopalians on the ground that such a designa-
tion would seem bigoted, inasmuch as the Episcopal
Church is neither the oldest nor the largest nor
perhaps the most widely useful of all the Churches in
America. To call it  The American Church 
67
The Larger Faith
would be claiming for it altogether too much. It
remains, therefore, The Protestant Episcopal
Church.
I
Now the three main contributions made by this
Church to  The Larger Faith  are in my judgment
these: First, the value of system.  Let all things be
done decently and in order, that is to say, with
good taste and in some systematic way. This is one
of the fundamental principles of that communion.
In the Episcopal Church nothing is left at loose
ends or dependent upon some snap judgment taken
on the spur of the moment. It has its three orders
of ministers, bishops, priests and deacons with
the duties and privileges of each order carefully
defined. It has its wardens and vestrymen among
the laity. Its many societies are all carefully
organized. It understands fully the importance
of sound method.
In the conduct of its worship, the individual
minister is not left to work out his own personal
preferences or perhaps his ill-considered eccentrici-
ties. The Church puts into his hands  The Book
of Common Prayer, indicating exactly what he is
to say when he is leading the devotions of his
people. Here are the Scripture lessons which are
to be read, chapter and verse, on each day of the
year! Here is the Church Year with the Gospel
and the Epistle for each Sunday, outlining a kind
68
The Episcopal Church
of general program for the minister's sermons!
Here is what the choir is to sing — the singers are
not left free to introduce, as some choirs unhappily
have done, any piece of pious doggerel set to
religious rag-time or some love song with sacred
words put to it. Here are the Te Deum, the
Venite, the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Nunc
Dimittis and all the other offices of the church,
holding the music of worship up to a high and
dignified standard!  Let all things be done
decently and in order, — and nothing is ever
done in any other way in the Episcopal Church.
The Church Year itself, following in its lessons
the main events of Christ's life, is a fine illustration
of the value of system. When the first of December
comes, the season of Advent leads the people to
think about the power of the Scriptures, the value
of the ministry and the preparation for the coming
of the Messiah. Then the Christmas season leads
them to think upon the nativity of Christ, the
mystery of childhood, the duty of parents, the
dignity of human life, as taught by the doctrine of
the Incarnation. Then comes Epiphany and they
follow the Wise-men with their gifts and the larger
appeal of Christ's message.
Then later in the Church Year comes Lent, with
its teaching of self-denial, of humility, and of
separation from worldly pleasures for the deepening
of the devotional life. Then comes Palm Sunday
with the Triumphal Entry of Christ into the cities
69
The Larger Faith
of men, with the assertion of his Kingship over all
their varied interests. Then comes Good Friday
when the people are summoned to stand before
the Cross, witnessing the glory of sacrifice and
meditating upon the reconciliation there accom-
plished between God and man. Then Easter with
the triumph of good over evil, of life over death!
Then forty days later Ascension Day, bearing
its witness to the widening influence of Christian
truth as it emerges from a local into a universal
faith! Then ten days later, Whitsunday, com-
memorating the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost! Then Trinity Sunday and all the
 Sundays after Trinity  calling upon men to
worship God in the fullness of His being.
Now that noble outline of lessons and prayers
will help to save any minister and congregation
from becoming narrow and lopsided. It prevents
the minister from playing all of his religious music
on a single stop like a bagpipe or all on one string
like a jew's-harp. It helps him to become something
like a full-toned church organ with its various stops.
It aids him in declaring by his teaching  the
whole counsel of God, in place of dwelling all the
time upon one or two particular themes which
happen to engage his special interest. When we
witness the narrowness of certain pulpits, we could
wish that some larger plan might be there intro-
duced instead of trusting everything to the subjec-
tive impulses and the miscellaneous choices of
70
The Episcopal Church
John Smith. There is a distinct advantage to be
gained by the establishment of a more varied and
adequate outline for the instruction and inspiration
of the people who represent so many different
moods and temperaments, such varied forms of
capacity.
In the Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church
nothing is left to chance impulse or the extempo-
raneous output of some man who may, or may
not be, possessed of judgment and taste. Here it is
in black and white! Here is exactly what is to be
said, and all that is to be said, at the baptism of a
child or at the confirmation of a believer or in cele-
brating the sacrament of the Lord's Supper! Here
is what is to be said at a marriage ceremony, or in
the visitation of the sick, or at the burial of the dead!
Here is the proper form of sound words to be used
at the laying of a corner-stone, or at the dedication
of a church, or at the ordination of a minister,
or in family prayer! It is all laid down in system-
atic fashion so that all may know in advance exactly
what is to be said and sung and done.  Decently
and in order  — both of these points are strongly
emphasized in this branch of the Christian Church.
This constant emphasis upon system and conven-
tion is one reason perhaps why this Church does not
attract nor develop in its ministry so many men of
striking personality as would be the case in other
branches of the Church. It does not tend to encour-
age the development of strong, original and attrac-
71
The Larger Faith
tive preachers. Phillips Brooks, whose inheritance
and earlier training, by the way, were Congrega-
tional, was one of the greatest preachers of the
Nineteenth Century in this country, but he stood
almost alone in his own communion. There was
no other preacher in the Episcopal Church in that
day to be named with him.
The four clergymen who did so much to make the
Episcopal Church strong and useful beyond any
other single Protestant church in the city of New
York, Bishop Potter and Doctors Rainsford, Hunt-
ington and Greer (later Bishop Greer) were none
of them extraordinary preachers. They were men
of unusual ability in organization and administra-
tion. They enlisted the interest of men of large
means; they organized a vast body of workers and
they pointed the way of advance in serving the
spiritual needs of that great city, with the vision of
statesmen. All this has high value — it belongs
naturally to that branch of the Church which has
laid such emphasis upon the value of system in
Christian teaching, worship and service.
We find the same principle in their creed state-
ments. In the Baptist Church, as we saw, there
are no authoritative creed statements. The Bible
is their creed and large liberty is left to individual
interpretation. In the Congregational Church
each local church formulates and adopts its own
creed. But in the Episcopal Church these matters
are not left to the judgment of some local church or
72
The Episcopal Church
of some individual minister. The Thirty-Nine
Articles of Religion, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene
Creed, and the Catechism tell the Episcopalian
what he is to believe. Here are the articles of his
faith set forth in definite terms all serving to main-
tain the idea of system and method in religious
conviction! Let all things be done in order, this
church says, in worship, in the reading of the
Scriptures, and in shaping the ideals which are vital
to character. It steadily asserts the high value of
system.
II
This church makes a further distinctive contribu-
tion in emphasizing the importance of good taste.
 Let all things be done decently  as well as in
order. Worship the Lord  in spirit and in truth,
but worship him also  in the beauty of holiness.
Let there be a clear sense of the artistic values in
this spiritual ministry!
God is a God of righteousness, but He is also a
God of grace. He has filled the whole earth with
beauty, — rainbows and sunsets, dewdrops and
twinkling stars, lovely valleys and glorious moun-
tains, as well as wheat fields, potato patches and
apple orchards! In that section of the earth which
is untouched by the hand of man beauty pre-
dominates over utility, — there are many more wild
flowers than there are wild fruits or wild vegetables.
God is a lover of beauty and He has placed deep
73
The Larger Faith
within the hearts of His children the capacity for
admiration. He has made woman, the very sum-
mit of his creation, the loveliest object upon which
the eye of man can rest. The leaders of worship
in this church call upon the people to worship this
Lover of beauty in the beauty of holiness.
The Episcopal Church stands beyond any other
for good taste in religion, for decorum in worship
and for graceful architecture. The church buildings
of no other denomination in the various cities of the
land show such good proportions and such fine out-
lines as do the churches of this faith. The place of
worship of an Episcopal church may be inexpensive
in some small community, but it will have a
churchly look. The exterior as well as the interior
will suggest the thought of worship. You will know
at a glance that it is not a place to play billiards
or to buy groceries or to find a moving picture show.
The Episcopal church has set itself resolutely
against the habit of fitting up churches with opera
chairs or decorating the walls as one might deco-
rate a restaurant or a ladies' parlor in a fine hotel.
All this has had and must have an important
influence upon the inner life. It is not a mere
matter of aesthetics, it is a matter of devotion.
It develops a habit of mind which has immense
significance. The Episcopalians do not go to church
as a rule so much to hear eloquent sermons or to
be entertained by some splendid music — they go
to worship and bow down before the Lord, their
74
The Episcopal Church
Maker. Every one of them has put into his hand
at the door of his pew a Prayer Book, indicating
that he is there not merely to be preached to, but
to pray on his own behalf. And when you enter an
Episcopal church any day of the week, Sunday,
Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, you will find
there an atmosphere of worship, of aspiration, of
yearning for fellowship with the unseen. All this
has high value for the development of the religious
life.
This habit of good taste shows in their liturgy.
These aids to worship are not only systematic,
covering almost every conceivable form of human
aspiration, they are also beautiful. I have used the
Episcopal Prayer Book for thirty odd years inti-
mately and many of its prayers I know by heart.
Let a man open his Bible and, as he begins to read,
utter that prayer which is appointed for the Second
Sunday in Advent:  Blessed Lord who hast
caused all holy scriptures to be written for our
learning, grant that we may in such wise hear them,
read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them that
by patience and comfort of thy holy word we may
embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of
everlasting life which thou hast given us in our
Saviour Jesus Christ. It puts him in the mood
to read his Bible aright.
Let him begin the day, if he will, with that Col-
lect which stands at the beginning of the Com-
munion service:  Almighty God, unto whom all
75
The Larger Faith
hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom
no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our
hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit that we
may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy
holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And when he comes to the close of the day and
gathers his family around him for evening prayer
before they lie down to rest, let him end his devo-
tions with that prayer of St. Chrysostom:
 Almighty God who hast given us grace at this
time with one accord to make our common sup-
plications unto thee, and dost promise that when
two or three are gathered together in thy name
thou wilt grant their requests, fulfill now, O Lord,
the desires and petitions of thy servants as may be
most expedient for them, granting us in this world
knowledge of thy truth and. in the world to come
life everlasting.
We find in these and in other sections of their
liturgy the,very acme of good taste, the perfection
of literary form. The Book of Common Prayer
can be set alongside of the King James version of
the Bible and Shakespeare. We find also a rich
fund of spiritual devotion. When we hear some
man praying awkwardly and ungrammatically
perhaps, or still worse oratorically, we long for the
chaste and reverent simplicity of the ritual. When
some man begins to pray and then ceases to pray
(although he keeps on talking with his eyes shut,
in a kind of general harangue to the Lord about his
76
The Episcopal Church
favorite hobby, presenting arguments for some
pet conviction of his own, but losing the sentee of
direct personal, devout address to God) we wish
that he had in his hand some competent guide for
his public petitions. I would not advocate the
surrender of what is called  voluntary prayer,
where a minister voices the needs of those he would
lead in prayer in words of his own choosing. Where
this is well done I believe its immediate helpfulness
may rise above that of all fixed liturgies. But
where it is done in thoughtless or slovenly or
oratorical fashion, it becomes an offense to taste
and conscience alike.
This contribution of good taste is no light matter.
We want men to be upright in heart — that lies
at the foundation of everything. We want a man
to be just, true and clean. But if he is also cultured
and well mannered, so much the better! His
strength of conviction and his devotion to principle
are all very well — we cannot get along without
those fine qualities, — but if you are coming into
any kind of close contact with him, if you are going
to marry him for example, then you would also
like to have him well bred and refined.
The Episcopal Church in its whole method of
nurture and of culture undertakes to accomplish
just that. It says,  Blessed are the gentle, for they
shall inherit the earth. It seeks to develop gentle-
men and gentlewomen. The saturative influence
of good architecture, of tasteful interiors, of good
77
The Larger Faith
stained glass, where the colors do not eat each other
up, of a finely framed liturgy, of noble music and
of the spirit of decorum in worship — all this
exercises a refining influence upon even the rudest
nature which in the course of years of such devotion
finds fruitage in qualities of mind and heart which
have high value.
This is one reason perhaps why the Episcopal
Church has more influence upon the actors and
artists of the country than all the other churches
put together. The  Little Church Around the
Corner  in New York, where so many theatrical
people, so many artists and authors have been
married and buried, is of course an Episcopal
church. The Episcopalians have been more gener-
ous patrons of the theatre and of the arts than have
been some of the other bodies of Christians, but
their mode of worship and their general method are
most attractive to those who are constantly striving
for the artistic. The Actors Church League has
been a great influence for good in promoting higher
standards of conduct on the stage. Let all things
be done righteously indeed but beautifully and
artistically as well! Along this line of good taste,
the Episcopal Church has made an important con-
tribution to our total Christianity.
Ill
This church has also a high sense of the historic
values. The word  Episcopal  comes from the
78
The Episcopal Church
Greek word  Episcopos, one who overlooks,
oversees, that is to say, a bishop. The Episcopal
Church is a church governed by bishops and
these bishops attach great importance to what
they call  the historic Episcopate. They be-
lieve that something of the Episcopate can be
traced back through the long history of the Church
to the time of the -Apostles, that their clergy-
men are ordained by bishops, who in turn were
ordained by other bishops, who in turn were
ordained by other bishops, and so on back to the
days of Peter and Paul. And some of them, who
have the poetic temperament rather than the minds
of exact historians, like to think that a certain
mysterious grace has been handed down in this
way from Christ through his apostles and from his
apostles through this long line of bishops to the
ministers of that church, rendering them more
competent to administer the sacraments than are
the ministers of religion who do not stand in this
direct line of Apostolic Succession.
It is a lovely pictufe, interesting if not altogether
verifiable. I shall not stop to discuss it, for the
purpose of these chapters, as I stated at the outset,
is not controversial. I have never been able to
find very much about bishops in the New Testa-
ment, except in the sense that all their ministers
were bishops, that is to say, leaders and overseers
of the flock of Christ.
I have never been able to discern any peculiar
79
The Larger Faith
or exceptional usefulness attaching to a man
merely because he was ordained by a bishop. His
usefulness as a minister of Christ seemed to depend
upon his physical and his mental, his moral, his
social and his spiritual makeup. His efficiency
was determined by the measure of his gifts, by the
degree of his consecration to God and by the readi-
ness of his sympathy with the needs of his fellows.
Oftentimes these fine qualities are possessed by a
man who was ordained by a bishop, and just as
often — rather more often in fact, because so many
more men are ordained by other methods — they
are possessed by men who were ordained by groups
of elders or by the laying on of the hands of a few
fellow pastors.
This sense of historic values leads the Episcopal
Church in the United States of America to maintain
close and cordial relations with the Church of Eng-
land. Its bishops attend the Lambeth Conference
of Bishops in London. Its clergymen are frequently
invited to preach in the pulpits of the Anglican
Church. Its first bishops were consecrated by
English bishops. Its Prayer Book is modelled
after the book of Common Prayer in the Anglican
Church. And the Anglican Church has historic
relations with the Roman Catholic Church, from
which it broke away at the time of Henry VIII.
Henry, partly because of his quarrel with the
Pope over his domestic affairs, and partly in a spirit
of sturdy independence, which had already become
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The Episcopal Church
a national trait, decided to throw off the rule of
the Papacy. Thus the Church of England became
independent of the authority at Rome. But
through its stately cathedrals and its noble liturgy,
both of which are older than the Protestant Refor-
mation, the Anglican Church has kept that sense
of contact with the past. And by its close relations
with the older Church, the Episcopal Church in
America has kept alive that same high sense of
historic values.
We find this same sense of a vital touch with the
past in its Prayer Book. Here in  The Book of
Common Prayer  used in every Episcopal church
are the Psalms of Israel, the ancient hymns of the
Jewish Church, the finest expressions of the devo-
tional spirit among the Hebrews! Here are the
words of Christ and of his apostles in the Gospel
and the Epistle for the day! Here are the liturgic
forms of the early Church, the Venite, the Magnifi-
cat, the Benedictus, the Prayer of St. Chrysostom
and all the rest! Here are prayers and collects
taken from the Greek and Latin churches of
medieval days! Here are choice bits of liturgic
expression from the best devotion of all time!
The Prayer Book is like a great Cathedral, reaching
back to Solomon's Temple and the songs of David,
holding within it all those contributions of deep
piety, of fervency of spirit and of fine phraseology.
When we use it, we join with ancient saints, with
the churches throughout the world and with all our
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The Larger Faith
fellow believers in humbly and heartily voicing in
noble words our common worship of Almighty God.
This high sense of historic values has enabled
the Episcopal Church successfully to avoid division
in its own ranks. It is a church which is by no
means all of one mind. It has its  high church
party  and its  low church party  and its
 broad church party. But however these men
may differ in conviction at many points and in
practice at many more, they all manage to move
along together in the unity of the spirit and in the
bond of peace.
The Methodist Church in this country was
divided over the question of slavery. In 1845 it
was split into two large churches, the Methodist
Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal
Church South. These two branches of one great
church have remained apart to this hour. They
are identical in polity, in their adherence to the
Twenty-five Articles of Religion, in the whole
spirit and method of their work. They have
adopted a common hymnal, so that the two
churches sing God's praise Sunday after Sunday
out of the same hymn-book. But they remain
apart, divided by a question which all but divided
our country in those fateful years of 1861-5.
The Baptist Church and the Presbyterian
Church were likewise divided over the question
of slavery and by sectional strife. But the Episco-
pal Church, while the meetings of its General
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The Episcopal Church
Convention were interrupted during the Civil War,
was never divided. When the war was over the
General Convention met again in 1865 in Phila-
delphia, the City of Brotherly Love; the Southern
bishops took their places again beside the Northern
bishops and everything went on as before. That
deep sense of their historic past served to bring all
sections together at the close of the war and it has
served at all times as a splendid bulwark against the
spirit of division.
Here then are elements in that larger faith which
have value for us all! The worth of system and
method in religious worship and service, the value
of good taste and decorum in that refinement of
life which belongs to character at its best and that
sense of historic values which serves to link us up
with all that is good in our past.
In this newer country where so much has been
left to ill-considered choices made on the spur of
the moment, in this land where rough and ready
people, bent upon those material achievements
necessary to the development of a new region,
sometimes forget all that is due to taste and artistic
sense, in this land where everything is fresh and
unworn, where the sense of contact with the past
is much less felt than would be the case in an
older country like England, Italy or France, the
Episcopal Church has been performing steadily a
high office in the unfolding of our national life.
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The Larger Faith
May I speak of yet one other service which the
Episcopal Church has rendered to the people in
this fair land, by the aid she has given in maintain-
ing a warm and real sympathy between that branch
of the English-speaking race which lives on the
other side of the water and that branch which has
its home on this side. Here are two great English-
speaking democracies, put in trust, as we believe,
with certain political and religious ideals, which
have entered vitally into the shaping of our civiliza-
tion!
There are just two ways for nations to deal with
each other — one is on the basis of military force,
upon the principle that might may usurp the place
of right, and that any nation may undertake to
impose its will upon other nations, if it possesses
the power. That way lies ruin, as we have seen in
these nine fateful years of painful history since the
summer of 1914.
The other method is by the enthronement of
the principle of public right as the governing ideal in
all national and international affairs. It is to this
latter idea that the great English-speaking race
stands openly committed. An imaginary line divides
us on our northern boundary from territory
belonging to the most powerful empire in the world.
More than a hundred years ago we entered into an
agreement with that people that no frowning fort
should mar that boundary line and that no
war-ship from our shores or from theirs should
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The Episcopal Church
trouble the peaceful waters of the Great Lakes.
The agreement has been scrupulously observed.
The great idea of public right enthroned in their
hearts and in ours has served to keep the peace
and to settle all the differences which have
arisen for more than a century. So may it be ever!
The Church which has aided mightily in the mainte-
nance of that friendship between those who speak
a common tongue and live in a fine sense of agree-
ment as to their moral purposes and political
methods, deserves the gratitude of all mankind.
85
THE LUTHERAN CHURCH
Chapter V
The Lutheran Church
We stand at a long remove in miles, in time and
in mood from the situation where Martin Luther
nailed his Declaration of Independence to the door
of the Church in Wittenberg. The main principles
which found expression in the Protestant Reforma-
tion have to a great extent been taken up into the
common consciousness of the modern world. And
in making those principles familiar and operative
the Lutheran Church has borne a significant and
honorable part.
The Protestant Reformation was a great religious
movement and it was also in the broadest and best
sense political. It voiced a profound dissatisfaction
with the existing order which had spread over an
entire continent. It involved a sharp break with
that mighty organization which had come to
dominate in its own interest not only the religious
life but the wealth and the learning, the social life
and the governments of Europe. It was a move-
ment which called for the coming of a new heaven
of religious thought and of a new earth wherein
should dwell a finer and less legalistic form of
righteousness. It was one of  the days of the Son
of Man. Those who had eyes to see saw again the
veil of the Temple rent in twain from the top to
the bottom.
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The Larger Faith
When Protestantism stood up to challenge the
right of a mighty system to rule the lives of men,
it had emblazoned upon its shield the promise of a
new method and a new spirit for all who would fear
God and work righteousness. Its four main princi-
pies were these:
1. The right of direct and immediate access to
God for every soul, with no sort of priestly media-
tion or ecclesiastical barrier blocking the way. "He
is not far from any one of us, and  whosoever
will may come.
2. Its doctrine of grace, as opposed to the idea
of salvation by penance or by observances or by
advances made from some treasury of merit under
priestly control or by  works.  By grace are
ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves 
for Eternal Life is  the gift of God.
3. The authority of the Scriptures — not the
decrees of councils, nor the words of popes, nor
the traditions of the elders, but the mind of Christ,
as it lies reflected supremely upon the pages of
the New Testament, was to be the court of last
appeal.
4. The right of private judgment, which carries
with it by implication all that is contained in our
modern program of political and spiritual democ-
racy. Every man by virtue of the fact that he is a
man has the same God-given privilege of judging,
of interpreting, and of applying these truths of
Church and State to his personal needs and to the
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The Lutheran Church
needs of the social order, which belongs to every
other man.
How full of promise were those four main ideas
of the Protestant Reformation! In our day and in
our own section of the Christian world they have
become the commonplaces of thought and practice.
But in that period when priestcraft had, success-
fully overlaid the minds of men with burdens
grievous to be borne, the proclamation of these
fundamental truths caused the heart to leap.
They made clear the fact that the religion of
Jesus Christ is not a mere history of something
sacred and beautiful, which happened long ago for
our advantage. It is not an elaborate system of
artificial observances imposed upon us by external
authority. It is not a collection of theories about
things quite removed from the daily secular
interests of men. The religion of Jesus Christ is a
mode of life upon which any soul anywhere may
enter immediately by the grace of God for his own
eternal good and for the benefit of all those who are
touched by the hand of his influence.
The Protestant Reformation stood out also
against a false asceticism which had maneuvered
itself into a privileged place of sanctity. This
was in some measure due to the wholesome human-
ity of Luther himself who insisted that  the Chris-
tian life should be humble and devout but buoyant
and joyous, as well. It was due even more to the
fact that it took its standards and its spirit from
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The Larger Faith
the original source. The gospel of Christ is not
in the main a gospel of cutting down and lopping
off, a gospel of|'giving up and of going back to sit
down in somber expectation of some better satis-
faction in the world to come. The gospel of Christ
is a gospel of life. It offers a program and a dy-
namic for brave, manly, full-fledged, useful, joyous
life.  This do, it says, as its Author said at the
start,  and thou shalt live. It comes that men
may have life and have it more abundantly.
The Protestant Reformation was indeed a
 protest against existing errors and abuses.
But it had also its own positive program for the
lives of men. It would have said in those days
that no man is a Protestant simply because he
denies the final authority of the Pope or refuses to
attend Mass, or declines the intimate experiences
of the confessional. He is only a Protestant when
he is putting his full strength into living the life of
a responsible citizen in the Kingdom of God,
answerable only to his Maker, and sustained by his
sense of fellowship with all those who show the
spirit of the Master.
Therefore the faith of the Protestant offered
to the souls of thousands of men, puzzled and
wearied by a system which had brought them
neither peace nor strength, a splendid promise of
that life which is life indeed. Within fifty years
of the time when Luther faced the Diet of Worms
it had won a magnificent success. In England and
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The Lutheran Church
in Scotland, in Sweden and in Denmark, in Prussia,
in Saxony and in the Netherlands, it had triumphed.
In all the other countries on this side of the Alps it
seemed to be on the very edge of victory. It came
with all the promise of a new day for northern and
western Europe.
How far has that promise been fulfilled in its
actual performance? It is a melancholy fact for
us that in those first fifty years, Protestantism
gained in many sections of Christendom its highest
ascendancy. It gained an ascendancy which on
divers fields was speedily lost and never again
regained.
Its earlier victories over an easy-going, corrupt
Church were rapid and decisive. But there came a
counter-reformation when the advances of the
Protestant faith were checked and held by another
quality of church life which had in it the rigor and
the vigor of Ignatius Loyola. Then tire rapid
victories of Protestantism came to an end. And
when Protestantism itself became rich and proud,
it had no longer its former strength of appeal. As
it was in the first century, so it was in the seven-
teenth, and so it will be ever. It is the movement
which is  lifted up from the earth  by discipline
and self-sacrifice, which draws men to it.
Many a religious movement has shown itself
magnificent in protest, and then has become
ineffective when once the protest was accepted and
the hour had struck for wise, constructive action.
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The Larger Faith
The Unitarian reaction against an impossible
orthodoxy and the Christian Science movement as
a protest against materialism, have shown them-
selves strong in criticism — they have not been
equally strong in that statesmanship which can
develop and carry through large policies of con-
structive effort.
It was easy for men to draw back from pardons
and indulgences, from magical rites and from
artificially imposed ceremonies. It was easy for
them to insist that bread was bread and wine was
wine, over which no priest had any more trans-
forming power than the unordained laymen. But
the hard test came when the call was made for that
clear-cut, positive, spiritual energy demanded for
the renewal and direction of the lives of men and
of nations.
No form of religion can live and thrive by what
it denies. It can only live and thrive by what it
affirms and incarnates. The habit of mind which
is critical rather than constructive, the faith which
is merely pallid and feeble in the distaste it shows
for some of the foods upon which the souls of men
are fed, the whole mood which is more intent upon
the limitations of its rivals than upon the excel-
lences it can show in its own militant bearing —
no one of these is destined to conquer. The nega-
tive mood has never been able to hold its own
against the highly organized and resolute Church
of Rome, to say nothing of winning that harder
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The Lutheran Church
and more honorable victory in subduing the world,
the flesh and the devil.
One of the reasons why Protestantism has not
been more successful in fulfilling that early promise
is to be found in the fact that it has never been
quite brave enough to deal with this human life of
ours in its entirety. The Roman Catholic Church,
with its seven sacraments reaching out through all
the main crises of human life from the baptism of
a newborn babe to the last unction for the dying,
with its openly proclaimed or covertly held belief
in the temporal sovereignty of the Church, with its
steady reach for the control of the forces of educa-
tion and with its confessional projecting the power
of the Church into the most intimate relations of
daily life, has undertaken the spiritual supervision
of man's entire career.
I covet for our Protestant faith some of that
same imperialism. I would not see the State or the
school, the home or the place of trade controlled
by the Church, but I would that all these interests
might be brought into obedience to the spirit of
Christ. Has the Protestant Church been bold
enough to accept for itself openly the entire pro-
gram of the Kingdom of God on earth? Has it set
itself resolutely to the renewal of this entire fabric
of civic, commercial and social life after the method
of the Master? The saving of privileged souls
here and there out of the moral wreck is not enough.
The careful nurture of the descendants of those
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The Larger Faith
fortunate beings who came over in the Mayflower,
the habit of attacking human want piecemeal by
petty charities, the making of a fair show in the
flesh by some hopeful measure of rescue work on
mission fields, does not appeal to the moral imagina-
tion of the masculine half of the race; and it is
losing its power with the more patient part of our
population.
Suppose that the Protestant Church for the last
four centuries in its hymns and in its prayers, in
its sermons and in its lay practice had been stand-
ing more clearly for the principle of equality before
the law, for a more democratic spirit in the control
of our great industries, for a more equitable distribu-
tion of the good things of life between those who
toil with their heads and those who toil with their
hands, for the end of all class legislation and all
plundering of the many for the profit of the few,
for the banishment of that moral degradation
which ensues where the conditions of ill-requited
toil become inhuman, for the removal of race
prejudice and hatred, and for the development of
that quality and measure of national and inter-
national morality which would avert war —
suppose, I say, that we had been steadily exalting
in our Protestant faith that imperialism of the
Christ-spirit in all these relations of the common
life! Would not our Protestantism today be much
further on the road toward the performance of its
early promise?
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The Lutheran Church
In the Saturday evening editions of many of our
metropolitan dailies we find a page given to what
is called in bold letters and in pathetic phrase,
 The Religious World. Heaven save the mark!
As if  the religious world  were a thing apart
from the world described on the front page! A
thing apart from the life portrayed in the real estate
and financial columns, on the pages given to sport,
to labor news, and to social events! Where on
God's green earth is  the religious world  if not
right here where men and women are buying and
selling, marrying and being given in marriage,
struggling and tempted, broken and beaten in the
battle of life!
The man in the street pictures that  religious
world  oftentimes as a little toy section of human
life off to one side where men of peculiar temper-
ament and dress are busy with their  new moons
and their Sabbaths, their incense, and their
stained glass, leaving the great interests of justice,
mercy and truth in secular life to go their way
unblessed and undirected by that spiritual order
in whose service those holy men are supposed to
stand. In so far as we have allowed our Protestant-
ism to fall into that caricature of its real self, we
have no right to expect the performance of its early
promise.
I have written thus at length upon the general
principles involved in the Protestant Reformation
because the Lutheran Church, more than any other
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The Larger Faith
single church in this country, has emphasized and
perpetuated the prevailing religious attitude in that
period of history.  Lutheranism  according to
Doctor Henry Eyster Jacobs of the Lutheran
Seminary in Philadelphia,  is a mode of viewing
and receiving and living the truths of Christian-
ity.
It is differentiated from Presbyterianism which
it resembles at many points in polity and method,
by being highly Christocentric, to use a technical
term, in its theology. Calvinism began with  the
divine sovereignty  and through its doctrines of
 unconditional election,  effectual calling  and
 irresistible grace, worked its way down through
the problem of human salvation. Lutheranism
begins rather with the joyous experience of the
believer in gaining his sense of peace and eternal
salvation through his personal faith in and fellow-
ship with Jesus Christ, the Saviour.  Give me
John three, sixteen, Luther used to say,  ' God so
loved the world that He gave his only begotten
Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life,' and all the rest
may go. The Lutheran Church rests its whole
weight upon the claim that men are saved by grace
through their faith in Christ, as opposed to any
sort of doctrine which looks toward the securing of
the divine favor by  works. The reaction against
a widespread and unworthy use of indulgences in
the Sixteenth Century produced a deep conviction
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The Lutheran Church
as to the insufficiency of  works to secure
salvation.
Lutheranism  places no limitations upon the
extent of the atonement — it was made not only
for all men but for all sins. The only limitation
lies in the fact  that some for whom Christ died
perish through their rejection of proffered grace.
 Lutheranism knows no priesthood but that of
the High-Priesthood of Christ who alone and once
for all made a propitiatory sacrifice for us on the
altar of the Cross. So intimate is the union between
the Saviour and the soul whom He has saved, that
there is no room between them for any order of men
to conciliate that favor of which the redeemed
soul already enjoys the most indubitable proofs.
The very center of its religious confidence and
of its manner of worship for the Lutheran is to be
found in  the Word of God. By the public and
private inculcation of the truths of the Bible, by
catechetical instruction and by the generous use of
Scripture in its liturgy of worship, the Lutheran
Church seeks to make men wise unto salvation and
to furnish them thoroughly with impulse and guid-
ance for every good work.
Luther's translation of the Scriptures into Ger-
man was nothing less than an epoch-making
achievement. Translations of the Bible into
German had been made prior to that time but hav-
ing been made from the Vulgate they were in many
parts stiff and awkward in their modes of expres-
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The Larger Faith
sion. Luther was a scholar in his own right, trans-
lating directly from the Hebrew and the Greek —
and the style of his translation was idiomatic and
readable. He thus rendered a notable and perma-
nent service to the religious life of his country.
The Lutheran Church is a liturgical church and
it exalts the value of the sacraments. But it does
not allow  the outward and visible sign of an
inward and spiritual grace  to interpose itself in
any mechanical way between the heart of the Com-
municant and the Real Presence of the Spirit of
Christ abiding within the soul of the believer.  The
sole value of a sacrament, Luther taught,  is
its witness to the divine promise. It strengthens
faith. It seals or attests the God-given pledge of
union with Christ and the forgiveness of sins.
In his  History of the Christian Church  the
late Williston Walker of Yale University placed this
high appraisal upon the work of the man whose
name is borne to this day by this great branch of
the Church of Christ: —
 Martin Luther is one of the few men of whom
it may be said that the history of the world was
profoundly altered by his work. Not a great
scholar, an organizer or a politician, he moved men
by the power of a profound religious experience,
resulting in unshakable trust in God, and in direct,
immediate and personal relations to Him, which
brought a confident salvation that left no room for
the elaborate hierarchical and sacramental struc-
IOO
The Lutheran Church
tures of the Middle Ages. He spoke to his country-
men as one profoundly of them in aspirations and
sympathies, yet above them by virtue of a vivid
and compelling faith, and a courage, physical and
spiritual, of the most heroic mould.' Yet so largely
was he of his race, in his virtues and limitations,
that he is understood with difficulty, to this day,
by a Frenchman or an Italian, and even Anglo-
Saxons have seldom appreciated that fulness of
sympathetic admiration with which a German
Protestant speaks his name. But whether honored
or opposed, none can deny his preeminent place in
the history of the Church.
With the same robust faith exhibited by the man
whose name it bears, the Lutheran Church of our
own day moves out singing with all its strength,
 A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing.
It inscribes upon its banners those same great
watchwords which have come down across the
ages. Conscious of its direct access to God, heart-
ened to the core by its doctrine of grace, exalting
the Scriptures as furnishing the only true norm of
faith and practice, it seeks to establish its people
for all time in the liberty wherewith Christ has
made them free.
IOI
THE METHODIST CHURCH
Chapter VI
The Methodist Church
In downright practical efficiency it would be
difficult to name a religious leader since the time of
St. Paul who would stand higher than John Wesley.
He got results, wide, lasting and valuable results.
He came of virile stock — his grandfather had
twenty-five children, and his own mother, Susan-
nah Wesley, gave birth to nineteen, John Wesley
being the fifteenth. He was a man of culture and
scholarship as well as a flaming evangelist. He
was a graduate of Oxford and a fellow of Lincoln
College. He read the Latin and Greek classics at
sight and spoke French, German, Italian and a
little Spanish. He was indefatigable in his labors —
in his evangelistic tours he travelled over two hun-
dred and fifty thousand miles, far enough to have
taken him around the globe ten times. He preached
over forty thousand sermons. He was accustomed
to rise at four o'clock in the morning and was busy
all day, oftentimes far into the night. He lived this
strenuous life up to his eighty-fifth year, and when
he passed away at eighty-eight he had been preach-
ing with all his accustomed zeal until six days
before his death. That is the kind of a Methodist
Brother Wesley was, and he has bequeathed a
generous portion of his spirit to the largest Protes-
tant denomination in this country.
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The Larger Faith
He was not without his limitations — as we
travel up and down the world we find men and not
angels. The human race has been put ahead in the
main essentials of its life by men with hearts in
their breasts and with mud on their boots like the
rest of us,
John Wesley shared in some of the superstitions
of his time. He believed in witchcraft. He be-
lieved that hysteria was demoniacal possession.
He was accustomed to decide questions by opening
the Bible at random and taking the top verse on the
page. He preached a rousing sermon, a copy of
which I have in my library, on  The Cause and
Cure of Earthquakes, — if his diagnosis were
correct and his claims verifiable it would have had
great value for the city of San Francisco a few
years ago.
He felt that many of the events in his own life
were the direct results of miraculous intervention,
from the stopping of a headache to the cessation of
a rain storm, that he might preach in the open air.
His familiarity with the Bible was in no sense
critical; he had rather a popular or homiletic
knowledge of it. But he flung himself into the task
of inducing men to forsake their sins and to accept
salvation through Jesus Christ beyond any man of
his age. He did it with a magnificent success, in
which the hearts o,f all Christian people rejoice.
And although he did not sever his own relations
with the Church of England, he started Methodism
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The Methodist Church
upon its world-wide career of Christian usefulness.
 The Methodist Episcopal Church  is the full
name of this branch of Christ's Church. The term
 Methodist  was at first a nickname like the
name  Christian. It was applied derisively to a
group of Oxford students, John and Charles Wesley
among the number, because in their determination
to deepen their Christian life they lived methodi-
cally. They read the Scriptures and prayed and
took communion; they visited the sick, the poor,
the imprisoned, and performed other acts of Chris-
tian service, according to a settled rule and pro-
gram. They were so exact and conscientious in it
that their fellow students called them  Metho-
dists  as distinguished from men who lived by
mood and impulse. They accepted the title, arid it
has come to be the honorable designation of this
great branch of the Church.
The  Methodist Episcopal  Church, because it
too is governed by bishops, like the Protestant
Episcopal Church! The Episcopalians deriy the
validity of the ordination of the Methodist bishops
because the first one was riot ordained by a bishop
who stood in the line of what they like to call  The
Apostolic Succession. But the Roman Catholics
in turn deny the validity of the ordination of the
Episcopal bishops and their clergy, so the honors
are even. The origin of this  historic episco-
pate  is so lost in the twilight of fable as not to
occasion any needful disturbance either in the
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The Larger Faith
minds of those who think they have it, or in the
minds of those who are perfectly content to be
without it.
I
The three characteristic contributions made
by the Methodist Church to our total Christianity
would seem to be these: First, its splendid Chris-
tian zeal. The Methodist Church shows an earnest-
ness and an enthusiasm for the conversion of men,
for the enlistment of believers in active service and
for the extension of the Kingdom of God in frontier
and needy communities beyond any other church.
When an ignorant woman heard John Wesley
preach, she reported to her neighbors, — He
talks as if he was just dyin' to have ye converted.
It was the eaVnest desire of Wesley to reach the
hearts of men and lead them to Christ which led
him tp break away from the dainty religious essay
common to the Anglican pulpit in his day, and to
preach without notes in the language of the people,
that he might move them by his message. It is
that same quality of earnestness which gives fervor
and directness to the preaching of the Methodist
pulpit to this hour. The church stands as a
splendid fulfillment of the Apostolic injunction,
 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of
season; reprove, rebuke, exhort.
It was their zeal which led them to utilize so
largely lay preachers and other untrained men in
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The Methodist Church
their early history. Wesley and his followers
licensed local preachers and sent them to needy
places, where it was impossible to furnish theo-
logically trained clergymen. Their labors have been
abundantly blessed. The old circuit rider who
went from place to place, preaching in school-
houses, in the homes of the people, in tents or out of
doors, wherever a congregation could be gathered,
often had little theological training or literary
equipment. He carried a Bible, a hymn-book, a
copy of the Methodist discipline, and perhaps a vol-
ume of Wesley's sermons in his saddle bags, placing
his main reliance upon the sincerity and fervor of
his own heart as he called upon men to forsake their
evil ways and follow Christ. It was a time when
books were not common as they are now, when
newspapers and magazines were not in general
circulation, and these unschooled men found ready
acceptance for their message. They rendered a
noble service in laying the foundations of the
Kingdom of God out on the frontiers in thousands
of neglected communities.
When I speak of  zeal  I do not mean mere
noise. There are Methodists who have learned to
observe the injunction of the psalmist —  Make a
joyful noise unto the Lord. I do not mean mere
excitement and hysteria, which are sometimes
symptoms of nervous disease rather than of health.
I mean that measure of spiritual warmth and desire
which shows itself effective in moving and changing
109
The Larger Faith
the hearts of men. This genuine zeal has borne
solid and verifiable fruit. It was one of England's
reliable historians who said that in his judgment
 John Wesley and the Methodist revival did more
to save England from the horrors and excesses of
the French Revolution, which worked destruction
as well as renewal among their neighbors across the
Channel,  than any other single influence which
could be named.
In our own country it is widely believed that the
work of those circuit riders and pioneer preachers,
pushing out into all parts of our land and estab-
lishing there the institutions of religion, had much
to do with the development of that moral fiber
which made our country equal to the exacting
demands upon it in the struggles of the Civil War.
Lincoln said one day to a group of Methodist
preachers who called at the White House to pay
their respects to the head of the nation,  The
Methodist Church has sent more prayers to heaven
for the Union cause and more men into the field
and more women into the hospitals than any other
branch of Christ's Church. It has been  a zeal
according to knowledge  — a knowledge of the
human heart and its needs — and it has borne
splendid moral fruitage throughout the English-
speaking world.
This quality of zeal has tended to develop preach-
ing ability in the constituency of this body. The
Methodist Church has produced a great number of
no
The Methodist Church
effective preachers. Some of these have been
notable in the history of our country, — Stephen
Olin and John P. Durbin, Bishop Matthew Simpson
and Bishop Randolph S. Foster, Bishop Thoburn
of India and Bishop William Taylor, a street
preacher in San Francisco in '49 and afterward
conspicuous for his missionary labors in South
America, in India and last of all in Africa. And of
men not sufficiently famous to be noticed in history,
this church has developed a great number of useful
preachers, who, perhaps lacking in the finest literary
finish and in the fuller measure of scholarship, have
shown, nevertheless, by their practical efficiency
in interpreting the Scripture and in bringing help
to men, the power of direct and influential address.
The Methodist Church has trusted to the zeal
of its clergy, and to the warmth and reality of its
own spiritual life, for the maintenance of evangeli-
cal faith rather than to any elaborate creed state-
ments or standards of belief. John Wesley abridged
the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the English
Church into twenty-five and these briefer articles
have constituted the creed statement of the Metho-
dists since the year 1784. They have never been
changed in all these one hundred and thirty-nine
years and by vote of the General Conference in
1832 it was made unconstitutional to propose any
change in the Articles of Religion. The fact that
this creed statement contains only simple, general
references to the fundamental articles of religious
hi
The Larger Faith
faith has saved it from becoming an embarrassment
to this body of Christians.
The Methodist Church has been troubled little
by heresy trials. The earnestness and zeal of the
clergy leave them little time for that speculative
discussion which often engenders heresy and strife.
And it is one of the significant facts of modern
church history, that while their standards are
broad and simple the Methodist Church through-
out the world is in substantial agreement with
itself in the substance of its message; and it has
remained, through all these one hundred and fifty
years, profoundly evangelical in tone.
II
The second contribution lies in its large utiliza-
tion of the emotional nature in the formation of
Christian character.  With the heart man
believeth unto righteousness, more than with the
head! The main appeal, therefore, should be to the
feelings, because people, taking them by and large,
do what they feel like doing. They may not reason
it all out; they may not make it a matter of strict
conscience, but they do certain things or fail to do
them because they feel that way. Not a closely
reasoned argument on the appropriateness and
desirability of Christian life, but the direct appeal
to the affections becomes a most useful instrument
in the hands of men who would lead others to Christ.
We find this emphasis on the emotional life in
112
The Methodist Church
the characteristic warmth and fervor of tbeau
preaching. We find it in the greater prominence
given to feeling in the hymns of Charles Wesley
and of other Methodist hymn writers. We find it in
the heartiness of-^Serr congregational singing, which
is better than that of any other church in America
— the people who sing are the people who feel.
We find it in the hearty responses-in-fehe shape of
-rormd- Amens  wfpch,sometimes come back from
the pew. when the sjpeaicer has made a telling point.
We find it in the outstretched hand and the cordial
welcome awaiting the stranger who strolls into any
Methodist church.
We find it also in their emphasis upon the
doctrine, which they call  the witness of the
Spirit. How is a man to know that he has found
acceptance with God?  The church will tell him,
one group of Christian people says, —  Let him
accept the testimony of the church on that point
as given from the lips of its priest.  The Bible
will tell him, another group replies, —  Let him
stand on the promises as made in God's Holy
Word.  Let his own reason tell him, others
answer; —  if he has met the conditions of salva-
tion, then as a logical result he has found accept-
ance with God.
No one of these replies would satisfy the follow-
ers of John Wesley.  He need not ask the church,
or the Bible, or his reason, the Methodist asserts.
 God will tell him in his own heart. He will feel
113
The Larger Faith
it. The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our
spirits that we are the children of God. The joy
of being saved and of knowing it and of being able
to tell it, has been a leading note in the religious life
of this branch of the Church.
It was a beautiful and a blessed message to bring
to that despondent age to which Wesley preached.
It was a time when the full rigor of Calvinism was
in the saddle and it rode the patient people to their
hurt. It was believed that God by His immutable
decrees had from all eternity determined who should
be saved and who should be lost, and that nothing
that man could do would change those decrees.
The elect would go to heaven, and the non-elect
would go to hell — and that was all there was
about it. This was comforting doctrine to those
who by their own spiritual conceit perhaps, had
decided that they belonged to  the elect. But
as the great majority of people were either too
ignorant or too modest to believe that about them-
selves, it was a most depressing doctrine. They
had an old hymn which they used to sing:
 'Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought,
Do I love the Lord or no,
Am I His or am I not?
It all depended upon those  eternal decrees 
which had been established from the foundation of
the world.
ii4
The Methodist Church
The Methodists never sang that hymn. They
had no place in their system for any such doctrine.
They went everywhere asserting that,  The elect
are whosoever will and the non-elect are whosoever
won't. They insisted that every man who votes
for himself in this matter of salvation is elected.
They had not reasoned it all out. They did not
undertake to combat on philosophical grounds
what the theologians called  predestination, what
the man on the street calls  fate, what the
scientist calls  determinism. But out of the
fulness of their own experience of God's loving
mercy, of Christ's offered redemption and of the
Spirit's witness to their acceptance in their own
hearts, they went about preaching the good news
of salvation.
 The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. Let him
that is athirst, Come. And whosoever will, let
him take the water of life freely. This joyous
message touched, and moved, and renewed the
hearts of the people, — the Methodist Church grew
by leaps and bounds. The joy of their songs, their
testimonies, their inner satisfactions became a
mighty influence in extending that branch of the
Church.  We have not received the spirit of
bondage again to fear, they cried,  we have
received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry,
Abba, Father.
It would be easy to carry the emotional element
in religion to excess where it might result in a
ii5
The Larger Faith
useless, unseemly form of self-indulgence. If we
should fix our attention solely upon the raptures
of religious feeling it might not be easy to distin-
guish sham from reality. Jumping up and down or
shouting so that one can be heard in the next block
has no particular value, even where it is done in a
religious meeting, unless it leads to something.
The final test of anything, feeling, ritual or belief,
is conduct, service, life. The Methodist leaders
have shown wisdom in undertaking speedily to
harness these floods of emotion to some form of
practical effort. When this is done the fervor may
have great significance. The heart has its rights
as well as the head. And in that section of human
interest where the two great commandments are
not  Thou shalt know  or  Thou shall do,
but  Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and  Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself, this emphasis upon the emotional life
shows good statesmanship.
Ill
The third contribution lies in their sense of the
value of organization. I regard the polity of the
Methodist Churchras the best in the world, not-
even excepting the Roman Catholic. The Catholic
Church makes inadequate provision for the growing
spirit of democracy. ^ The Methodist polity com-
bines centralized authority, which is entrusted to its
general superintendents or bishops, with the spirit
116
The Methodist Church
of democracy in making large provision for the
influence and activity of the laity. It is therefore
able to offer a most effective form of church
government.,/
Take this single phase of it — the organization
of their ministers into conferences under what is
known as  the itinerant system. Every preacher
ready for service belongs to some annual conference
which covers a certain geographical area. Once a
year all these preachers meet together in conference
with the Presiding Bishop. The Bishop in con-
sultation with the District Superintendents or
Presiding Elders (who have the oversight of smaller
groups of churches) appoints those preachers to the
places where they shall preach for the next year.
He has absolute power to do this. He could, if
he were a man without sense or conscience, entirely
override the wishes of any preacher or of any
congregation. He may receive information and
advice from whatever source may offer, but the
final decision rests solely with him. In early days
pastorates were limited to one year; then the time
limit was extended to two years, then to three, then
to five. Now it has been removed altogether, so
that a minister may be reappointed to the same
church indefinitely, but always for the period of
one year. No Methodist minister is ever invited or
appointed to the pastorate of any church indefi-
nitely, as would be the case in a Presbyterian or a
Congregational church.
117
The Larger Faith
The system is not without its defects — nothing
human is perfect. The only way to have a perfect
organization is to prevent human beings from
joining it. The system sometimes works disap-
pointment and hardship. A church may not
always secure the pastor it wants, or the pastor
who would be best suited for it. The minister may
not always go where he would like to go and could
go. The bishops are not omniscient, but they de-
sire the peace and prosperity of the churches, and
they desire the highest usefulness of the ministers.
They listen to the suggestions of the laymen who
represent the various congregations, they listen
to the wishes of the preachers themselves, and then
make such appointments as may seem wise and
right. And as a matter of fact the system works
well. Every Methodist church has a pastor all the
time, and every Methodist pastor has a church
all the time. There are no discouraging, disinte-
grating interims when the church is without a
minister.
The changes are made on the whole with little
friction. The task of getting rid of a minister who
has come to be unacceptable to the majority of his
congregation is in other communions oftentimes
an unhappy experience for him and for them.
It may be as painful as having all of one's teeth
pulled. But under the Methodist polity when the
Annual Conference comes the change can be made
quietly, without splitting the church into factions,
118
The Methodist Church
and without painful embarrassment to the minister.
When the Sunday after conference arrives, every
church has again its own pastor and every pastor is
preaching in his own church. It is a system which
works, and that is the best test of any method.
The limiting of the pastorate to short periods in
the early history of the Methodist Church enabled
it to use large numbers of untrained men, and men
of moderate resources, to the glory of God and for
the good of society. There is no reason in the
nature of the case why a man's ministry in any one
church should be of a certain length, five years, or
ten years, or twenty years — it all depends on
the length of the man. There are men who are
 preached out  at the end of a year or two.
Both preacher and congregation need what the
farmers would call a  rotation of crops. It is an
exacting demand which the pastorate of ten or
twenty years makes upon a man, standing as he
does in the same place twice a week to speak to
many of the same people, touching the truths of
religion. The wise men of the Methodist Church
knew that in the rapid growth of their work and in
the absence of a sufficient number of thoroughly
trained men, they would be able to use ministers
of fewer resources with splendid effect under their
itinerant system.
The Methodists have shown a genius for organi-
zation. Not content with building up strong
churches, they have been fertile in the promotion
119
The Larger Faith
of more extended efforts. The Chautauqua Move-
ment is non-sectarian, but Bishop Vincent of the
Methodist Church was the founder of it, and that
church has furnished its largest support. The
Freedmen's Aid Society for the education and
evangelization of the released slaves has rendered a
magnificent service to the nation. The Epworth
League, which in numbers ranks almost with the
Christian Endeavor Society, as a movement for
the training of young people in Christian life and
service, is exclusively a Methodist body. The
Order of Deaconesses and the Methodist Hospitals
in so many of the large cities have given evidence of
the same spirit of practical efficiency in this branch
of the Church.
By their splendid enthusiasm and zeal, by their
wise and wide use of the emotional element in
human nature, and by their practical, efficient
organization, they have made large and rapid
growth in membership until the Methodist Church
is the largest Protestant denomination in our
country. It was John Wesley who said,  The
world is my parish. He meant it intensively,
as well as extensively, desiring that the religion of
Christ should ally itself with every human interest,
as well as spread into all lands. And that body of
Christians who revere him as the founder of their
branch of the Church has steadily moved ahead in
splendid fulfillment of that great hope.
120
THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Chapter VII
The Presbyterian Church
The claim has been made that  The Presbyte-
rian Church represents more money, more brains
and more piety than any othertonef church in
America. It may have no more money per capita
than the Episcopal Church, but it is a large church,
while the Episcopal Church is one of the smaller
churches. It may have no more brains per capita
than have the Congregationalists, but it out-
numbers the whole Congregational body three to
one. It ranks well with any of the denominations
in its sense of duty, its attachment to high ideals,
and its consciousness of the spiritual world. When
we come to add up its material, its intellectual and
its spiritual resources, it makes a splendid showing.
The word Presbyterian comes from the Greek
word presbuteros, which means  an elder. It is
a church ruled by elders. The ordained ministers
are  teaching elders, and in each congregation
there are laymen elected as  ruling elders. The
pastor with the elders and the deacons compose
the Session, which is the ruling body of the local
church. A number of churches conveniently
located are organized into a Presbytery, which is
made up of all the teaching elders resident within
123
The Larger Faith
its borders and a ruling elder from each congrega-
tion. These Presbyteries are organized into
Synods, which oftentimes comprise entire states.
Above these Synods stands the General Assembly,
made up of ministers and ruling elders in equal
proportions, as the highest governing body of the
church. The Presbyterian Church is a close-knit,
highly organized body standing midway between
the monarchical form of church government by
bishops, and the pure democracy of the congrega-
tional polity.
I
The four distinctive contributions made by this
branch of the Church to our total Christianity seem
to be these: — First, its spirit of conservatism!
It is a cautious, deliberate church. It does not
readily lose its head. It is never easy to stampede
a company of Presbyterians. They are ready in
their own good time to  prove all things, but
they are strongly bent on  holding fast that which
is good.
They are not likely to go off half-cocked in their
hasty acceptance of some new-fangled notion which
turned up only last week. It was a fine old Presby-
terian pastor who once said of a certain religious
pronouncement,  That which is new in it is not
true, and that which is true is not new. The
Presbyterian Church does not propose to be
frightened out of its beliefs because some free
124
The Presbyterian Church
lance has had nightmare. It has the conservative
habit of mind.
Its three main standards of doctrine are the
Shorter Catechism which my own Presbyterian
mother taught me in my childhood, the Larger
Catechism and the Westminster Confession of
Faith. This remarkable Confession was wrought
out by an assembly convened in 1643 in England's
most famous place of worship, Westminster Abbey.
The assembly was made up of one hundred and
twenty-one Doctors of Divinity, eleven Lords,
twenty Commoners and seven commissioners from
Scotland. It continued in session for five and a half
years, holding hundreds of meetings. They met
every day in the week except Saturday, and sat
from nine o'clock until two. Each session was
opened and closed with prayer and one day in each
month was set apart for prayer, when they came
together and continued for four hours in continuous
supplication for the blessing of God upon their
deliberations. The Westminster Confession thus
issued from an atmosphere of earnest devotion.
It was in the time of Bacon and Shakespeare.
The King James version of the Bible had just been
published. It was a period when the English
language was at its best. It was also a time when
Christian men were not satisfied with easy-going
standards of conduct or superficial statements of
belief. The age demanded a creed which would be
an impregnable statement of religious truth, to
125
The Larger Faith
serve as a bulwark against error, as a basis of
ecclesiastical fellowship and as an effective instru-
ment for the religious instruction of the people of
God. The Westminster Confession came forth in
response to that demand.
It is no milk-and-water affair — it is a tremen-
dous document. It undertakes to be the most
logical, fundamental and explicit setting forth of
man's relations to his Maker anywhere contained
in the creeds of Christendom. And when one reads
it with an open mind he realizes at once that it is
designed to build up a massive and masculine type
of piety in the lives of those who give it their
adherence.
It is the great digest of Calvinism, the system
of that man of iron, who stood forth as a theologian
and a reformer in Geneva. It plants itself firmly
on the five points of Calvinism. Human depravity
— man is hopelessly corrupt and has no power in
himself for moral recovery! Unconditional election
— God from all eternity has, by His immutable
decrees, determined that certain men should be
saved! A limited atonement — Christ died for the
elect; He did not die for the non-elect, for that
would have been shedding His blood in vain!
Irresistible grace — in order to make God's decrees
of election effective there must proceed from Him
a moral influence which cannot be successfully
opposed! The final perseverance of the saints —
 once in grace, always in grace, for if a man once
126
The Presbyterian Church
renewed and numbered among the elect should fall
away into sin it would negative one of those
eternal decrees. Upon this form of faith, heading
up in the  Divine Sovereignty  and dependent
for its efficacy not upon the moral preference of the
individual, but upon the assertion of an Infinite
Will, the Presbyterian churches took their stand.
It would be easy to poke fun at some of the state-
ments of belief included in such thoroughgoing
Calvinism — popular novelists, sensational preach-
ers and the secular press have all taken their turn
at this interesting diversion. But  by their
fruits  we judge statements of belief. These great
convictions have empowered men to live nobly and
to die heroically beyond those of any other single
religious creed which can be named. When spiritual
tyranny showed its head in England and in Scot-
land, in Germany, in France and in Switzerland,
men and women of heroic build, fed upon the great
convictions of Calvin, stood up to resist and they
present a magnificent array of martyrs, who sealed
their testimony in their own blood.
It was John Morley, a careful, critical historian,
an outspoken agnostic in his own religious attitude,
who said:  Calvinism has inspired incomparable
energy, concentration, resolution. It has exalted
its votaries to a pitch of heroic moral strength that
has never been surpassed. They have exhibited an
active courage, a resolute endurance, a cheerful
self-restraint, and an exulting self-sacrifice which
127
The Larger Faith
men count among the highest glories of the human
conscience. It is impossible for any thoughtful
man to dismiss such a system with a sneer.
It was John Fiske, the philosophical historian,
standing himself on the border between Uni-
tarianism and agnosticism, who paid this tribute
to the sturdy influence of Calvinism upon the cause
of human freedom:
"It would be hard to overrate the debt which
mankind owes to Calvin. The spiritual father of
Coligny, of William the Silent, and of Cromwell
must occupy a foremost rank among the champions
of modern democracy. In the presence of the awful
responsibility of life, all distinctions of rank and
fortune vanished; prince and pauper were alike the
helpless creatures of Jehovah and suppliants for
his grace. Calvin did not originate these doctrines,
but in emphasizing this aspect of Christianity, in
engraving it upon men's minds with that keen-edged
logic which he used with such unrivalled skill, he
made them feel, as it had perhaps never been felt
before, the dignity and importance of the individual
human soul. It was a religion fit to inspire men
who were to be called upon to fight for freedom,
whether in the marshes of the Netherlands, or
on the moors of Scotland.
The Presbyterian Church has taken that theo-
logical system known as Calvinism and has held
on to it with a tenacity which amazed the Nine-
teenth Century, and will amaze this light-hearted
128
The Presbyterian Church
Twentieth Century, accustomed as it is to say that
it does not care what a man believes, if only he is
sincere. The Presbyterian Church cares. It is
a doctrinal church, doctrinal in its preaching, doc-
trinal in the tone of its periodicals, doctrinal in
requiring theological soundness in its office bearers.
From candidates for admission to the membership
of the church it requires nothing but repentance for
sin, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the consecra-
tion of the life to God — it is exceedingly simple
and broad as to its doctrinal requirement. But
from its ministers and ruling elders it has required,
until recently, assent to the entire Westminster
Confession, and even now its demands are more
exacting than those of any other Protestant denomi-
nation.
We would naturally expect that the most famous
heresy trials of the Nineteenth Century would
occur in the Presbyterian Church. Robertson
Smith of the University of Aberdeen, one of the
most gifted students of the Old Testament in
modern times, was deposed from his chair for
heresy. David Swing of Chicago, one of the most
thoughtful and popular preachers in that busy city,
was compelled to leave the Presbyterian Church
because of heresy. Professor Charles A. Briggs of
Union Seminary was excluded from the Presby-
terian Church for teachings which seemed to con-
flict with the Westminster Confession. Professor
Henry Preserved Smith of Lane Seminary, Cincin-
129
The Larger Faith
nati, was similarly deposed, and the agitation
regarding Professor (now President) A. C. Mc-
Giffert, of Union Seminary, made it seem appro-
priate to him voluntarily to withdraw fiom the
Presbyterian denomination.
Where conservatism does not spring from nar-
row-minded bigotry or from sheer obstinacy, we
honor it. Personally I could no more believe
some of the statements in the Westminster Confes-
sion than I could believe that two and two might
make five. But here is a large, thoughtful, con-
scientious body of Christian men and women, who
do believe that these statements are true and be-
cause of their loyalty to conviction they are pre-
pared to accept whatever difficulties may attach to
insistence upon these standards.
In the everlasting struggle for human progress
we need the conservatives no less than the liberals
and the radicals. We need those men who, by their
very habit of mind, will be sure not to abandon
anything that has value. We need those who,
revering the great accomplishments of the past, are
ready to bring out of their treasures things new and
old — the old as well as the new. And in these days
when great numbers of people do not know what
they believe or why they believe it, it is of great
significance that we have this sturdy, faithful,
conscientious body of Christians bent on holding
fast all that has shown itself good.
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The Presbyterian Church
II
The Presbyterian Church has kept alive a pro-
found sense of the enormity and the ill-desert of
sin. This church takes the moral life of the race
seriously. It has never fallen into the way of
thinking of evil as only  good in the making  or
of saying that wickedness is only  one of the grow-
ing pains of virtue. It would have no sympathy
with that popular preacher of London who claimed
that  the drunkard reeling through the streets in
brutal fashion is after all only engaged in a mistaken
quest for God. It does not believe that the sin-
ner will naturally and easily grow up out of his sin
into the goodness of a saint by a process of evolu-
tion. It believes as the apostle did that  men
have given themselves up to uncleanness through
the lusts of their hearts; that they have become
vain in their imaginations and their minds have
become darkened; that they have changed the
truth of God into a lie and that the wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness. The Presbyterian Church has
the sense of sin.
Have any more terrible batteries ever been
turned upon the wrong-doing of the world than
those of Calvinism! When certain sections of the
Church were granting indulgences on easy terms,
allowing men to clear up their moral accounts with
the Almighty by paying thirty cents on the dollar;
131
The Larger Faith
when other leaders were insisting that the waters
of baptism would instantly wash away whatever
stain or corruption might cling to the moral nature;
when others were speaking gently of the evil in the
world as a kind of childish aberration, the Presby-
terian churches were steadily insisting that sin is
an act of rebellion against rightful authority; that
it is an insult and an outrage to the love of a holy
Father; that it is a heinous and fatal corruption of
the nature, to be cured only by supernatural grace
and divine redemption.
The chief end of man, as they view it, is not to
have a good time or to cultivate one's own powers
or to  evolute  into his own completer self —
 The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy
Him forever. At the very beginning of that finer
quality of life which is not self-centered, but finds
its center in the Divine will, there must come an
open recognition of one's sinfulness. The prodigal
who comes back from the far country must say
first of all,  I have sinned and am no more worthy
to be called thy son.
Is there not cause! We often put rubber tires
on the words we apply to evil in these comfortable
days, lest some evil doer should receive shock or
jolt. Lying is only  prevarication "! Stealing is
 an unfortunate kleptomania"! Lust is only
 the unschooled throbbings of nature  according
to many a modern novel. Graft is not civic treach-
ery and crime, as it once was — it is  one of the
132
The Presbyterian Church
exigencies of business life under the intricate condi-
tions of modern industry.
If we should keep on mixing our colors, by and
by nothing would be wrong! We should have
neither black nor white but only a few indistinct
shades of gray. And when nothing is wrong, when
the power of hating evil is lost, then the race will
become morally bankrupt. All honor to that
branch of the Christian Church which has main-
tained its keen sense of the ill-desert, the enormity
and the infamy of sin against God!
The wholesome effect of this attitude has been
witnessed on many fields. You may recall the
austere morality of Cromwell's Army, unparalleled
in the military annals of the world. Army life is
often a school of vice; it becomes the crucial test
of morals and religion. But the army of Ironsides
became the wonder of the world for its moral
purity no less than for its intrepid valor. They
marched against the most renowned battalions of
Europe, chanting their psalms and relying upon
the Unseen God — and somehow they seemed
never to fail in destroying whatever opposed them.
It is the testimony of Macaulay, of Goldwin Smith,
of John Morley and of other historians, who touch
upon that period of history, that no army has ever
so combined heroism and purity.
"In that camp no oath was heard, no drunken-
ness witnessed, no gambling seen. The property
of man and the honor of woman were alike safe.
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The Larger Faith
No servant girl was compelled to mourn by the
rough gallantry of these red-coats. Not an ounce
of plate was stolen from the shops of the gold-
smiths. All this from Macaulay's  History of
England "! Taine adds,  They raised the national
morality even as they had saved the national
liberty!  This was an army of Calvinists, taking
Scripture texts for their watch-words and counter-
signs, singing the hymns of the faith as their battle-
cries! They cherished a profound sense of the
malignity and the hatefulness of sin, and thus they
trampled temptation under their feet even as they
put their enemies to flight.
Ill
The third contribution of the Presbyterian
Church has been its devotion to the Bible. No
other denomination has surpassed it in attributing,
as the result of painstaking scholarship, such
unique and final authority to the Bible. The head
and front of Dr. Briggs' offending was not so much
that he taught that the Pentateuch was composed
of many and sometimes conflicting documents,
or that the book of Isaiah was the work of more than
one man! It was that he claimed in his famous
address that there were three sources of authority
in religion — the Bible, which was the classic
utterance of the mind of the Lord in literature;
the Church, as the utterance of the Divine Spirit
to be found in the great consensus of human
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The Presbyterian Church
experience and testimony throughout the ages of
Christian history; and Reason, the noblest faculty
in man acting at its best in pronouncing upon the
validity of the claims of religion. The Bible, the
Church and Reason were concurrent sources of
authority according to Dr. Briggs; and this exalta-
tion of two other sources of instruction to the place
where they would share in the unique honor
accorded the Bible became to a large number of
Presbyterians insupportable.
This exaltation of the Bible by the Presbyterians
has not been merely a traditional and sentimental
attitude. The Presbyterian Church has been dis-
tinguished from the first for painstaking and pro-
found scholarship. The Westminster Confession
is not made up of a lot of pious, well-meaning, but
ill-considered platitudes — it is painfully and
rigidly learned. The Presbyterian Church has
had great doctors of the faith — the Hodges and
the Alexanders of Princeton, Shedd and Schaff,
James McCosh and Francis L. Patton, Roswell D.
Hitchcock and Marvin R. Vincent, Francis Brown
and Benjamin B. Warfield. They were men who
had studied the subject; they were competent to
speak. They knew exactly what they believed and
why they believed it, and were not to be badgered
out of it by the flourishes of a few popular novelists
or the flings of some newspaper reporters, who,
theologically speaking, did not know their right
hands from their left. Out of this learning came
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The Larger Faith
those scholars who with one accord exalted the
Bible for its inspiration and final authority.
We may not hold with these men in all their views
but that attitude gave an impetus to Bible study.
It lay at the root of the strong insistence of the
Presbyterians upon high standards of ministerial
education. The Presbyterian Church has shown
itself unwilling to ordain men without college and
seminary training. This exaltation of the Bible has
promoted a thorough ands ystematic study of the
Scriptures in their Sunday schools and in the homes
of their people. It has encouraged all the members
of the church to strive to understand and rightly
divide these words of truth which are the final
source of authority in all matters of faith and
practice. In these days, when critical study and
the purely literary treatment of the Bible have been
unsettling the faith of many and have been lower-
ing the Bible in the estimation of others, this
supreme honor placed upon the Word of God by
this branch of the Church has been of inestimable
worth.
IV
The Presbyterian Church has stood strongly for
the value of an intelligent Christian nurture.
One might indicate a certain difference here by the
words  crisis  and  process. The sacramental
idea of religion makes much of the crisis — the
unbaptized individual is unregenerate, but holy
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The Presbyterian Church
water in the hands of an officiating priest applied
to the child or to the believing adult will enable
him to pass from death unto life. The emotional
type of religion makes much of the crisis — if
there can only come an overturning, overwhelming
crisis in the feelings of the individual, then in that
hour he may enter upon a regenerate life.
According to the other view, religion is to be
phrased rather in terms of domestic life, the Father
bringing up His children gradually into conscious,
obedient, joyous fellowship with Himself. It may
be phrased likewise in terms of education, the
Master of our spirits leading His disciples, pupils,
learners, into self-realization by self-expression in
worship, in service and in fellowship with Him.
Here salvation is a moral process, conducted by the
Spirit of God in the hearts of teachable men.
The Presbyterian Church makes much of this.
By thorough religious instruction in the homes of
its people, it aims to hold its children within the
power of Christian nurture. It maintains that the
ideal is for the child never to know the hour when
he does not live in the love and the service of God.
Family discipline, family prayer, the instruction of
children in the catechism and the maintenance of
the offices of Christian nurture in the home have
been of unspeakable advantage to this branch of
the Church. Its course of action has been a lesson
and an example to Christian people of all com-
munions. It has often held aloof from the sudden,
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The Larger Faith
startling modes of awakening religious interest. It
places its emphasis upon the quieter and in the
long run the more reliable modes of Christian
nurture for the extension of the Kingdom.
This church has rendered a noble service in the
history of our country. It has had great preachers
of the gospel of Christ — John Hall and Theodore
Cuyler, Howard Crosby and Charles H. Park-
hurst, Henry van Dyke and William P. Merrill,
John Kelman and Henry Sloan Coffin, in a single
city! These honored and useful pastors by their
strong preaching and their winsome personality
have made a lasting impress upon the life of that
restless, populous city of New York.
This church has written a noble record in the
work of Home and Foreign Missions — Jessup,
Thompson and Bliss in Syria, John G. Paton in
the New Hebrides and Sheldon Jackson in Alaska,
and many other men highly honored in the field of
Christian effort! It has reared up a splendid body
of intelligent, conscientious and influential laymen.
When we call the roll of Presbyterian presidents,
senators and jurists, we find it a long and worthy
roll of honor. By its conservative temper, by its
sense of the awfulness of wrong-doing, by its devo-
tion to the Bible, and by its emphasis on the Chris-
tian nurture of the child, it has made a distinct and
valuable contribution to our total Christianity.
138
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
Chapter VIII
The Roman Catholic Church
 There never was on this earth a work of human
policy so well deserving of careful study as the
Roman Catholic Church. Its history joins together
the two great ages of human civilization. No other
institution is left standing which carries the mind
back to the days when the smoke of sacrifice arose
from the Pantheon at Rome and lions leaped upon
their victims in the Coliseum. The proudest royal
houses of Europe are but of yesterday compared
with the long line of Supreme Pontiffs in the
Vatican. The Roman Catholic Church was great
and respected before the Saxon had set foot in
Britain, before the Frank had crossed the Rhine,
when Greek eloquence still flourished in Antioch,
when idols were still worshipped in the Temple of
Mecca. And the Roman Catholic Church may still
exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler
from New Zealand shall take his stand on a broken
arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St.
Paul.
These are the words of Thomas Babington
Macaulay, one of the most widely read historians
of the English-speaking race. He wrote them in
his famous essay on Von Ranke's Lives of the Popes.
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The Larger Faith
Make full allowance for the showy rhetoric which
rendered him more admirable as a brilliant essayist
than as a careful, accurate historian, we still have
here a judgment which causes every serious man
who reads it to reflect! The Roman Catholic
Church, as a world-wide, age-long, highly organized
institution must be reckoned with in every land on
the globe. However we may agree or disagree with
some of its doctrines, here is a mighty force in
human affairs, not only ancient and august, but
at this very hour tremendously vital and significant!
I have not space here to discuss its long and
varied history. I have not time to consider its
many doctrines, of which it has more and to us as
Protestants, more incredible ones, than any other
branch of the Christian Church. I shall not under-
take to indicate all of the points at which I per-
sonally would dissent from its positions touching
the work of public education, the place of civil
authority or the intellectual attitude to be main-
tained toward Modernism in philosophy arid
religion. It would take a long time to do that with
anything like thoroughness and the purpose of this
little book is not controversial. I would not widen
but lessen the gulf which hinders the various
branches of Christ's Church from sympathetic
cooperation touching the great main interests
of character and service. I feel much as did a
celebrated Englishman when he returned from
several years of service in India where he had been
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The Roman Catholic Church
aiding in the introduction of a better educational
system— I have lived too long, he said, "in
a land where people worship cows to make much
difference in my treatment of those who worship
Christ in different ways. I am writing these
pages in the hope that I may help some of my
fellow Christians to understand each other better.
The four main contributions which the Roman
Catholic Church has made to the larger faith in
my judgment are these:
I
First, the inculcation of the habit of worship!
All church people worship God, but Catholics, we
may say not irreverently, have  the habit
beyond any other body of Christians to be named.
The little children as soon as they are able to toddle
up the aisle of the church, to cross themselves
with holy water and to bow before the altar, are
steeped in the habit of worship. When they
become men and women they feel moved to go to
church, not to listen to some eloquent sermon —
they may not know who is to preach, or that any
one is to preach — not to enjoy an elaborate
program of attractive music, but to kneel before
the Lord their Maker and offer to Him the adora-
tion and allegiance of their hearts.
Every Catholic church stands open all day and
every day in the week, inviting the passer-by to
come in and worship. When one enters there may
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The Larger Faith
be no service of any kind in progress, but there are
the symbols of the Christian faith, there is an
atmosphere of reverence and devotion and there
will commonly be found a group of his fellow beings
stopping to unburden and refresh their hearts in
personal worship.
One summer when I was in Italy I visited the
great cathedral at Milan just at sunrise. As I
passed into that magnificent temple visited every
year by tens of thousands of people coming from
the ends of the earth to stand silent and awestruck
before the dignity and beauty of its architecture,
I saw just outside the door a dozen huge market
baskets. They were filled with produce, lettuce,
spinach, radishes, onions — the market women
who owned the baskets were on their way to market
to sell the products of their gardens. And then, as
I reverently moved up near the altar, I saw these
old peasant women to whom the baskets belonged.
Their faces were bronzed, scarred and wrinkled
by hard work and exposure. They had stopped for
a few moments on their way to work to worship.
And these rough, shabbily dressed market women
felt thoroughly at home in that magnificent cathe-
dral. No one save an American Protestant would
have thought of giving them a curious glance.
And when they arose from their knees and passed
out, they had gained a feeling of spiritual refresh-
ment, a new consciousness of the greatness of
human life even under the rudest conditions, an
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The Roman Catholic Church
added sense of their kinship with the Eternal in
whose honor that costly temple of worship had been
reared. And that habit of worship is wonderfully
and beautifully established in the sentiments and
the practice of a great mass of people, more than
two hundred millions of them, who confess alle-
giance to the Roman Church.
It is a vast service to render. It is especially
significant in an age which is deficient in its attitude
of reverence, in its sense of the unseen and in its
readiness to fall down silent and expectant before
the Most High. You may go through the streets
of any city in Christendom and you will see early
on Sunday morning crowds of people on their way
to worship. In most cases no special announce-
ment of the service has been made in any public
way through the newspapers or otherwise, but the
people are on their way to the house of God because
of this ingrained habit of worship. Masses are held
at six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine
o'clock, ten o'clock and congregations of people
attend them. You will find them there in their
pews, on their knees, with their lips moving in
prayer. They are listening for a voice from heaven
to speak peace to their souls. I question seriously
whether this settled habit of worship can be
matched in any other branch of the Christian
Church.
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The Larger Faith
II
The second contribution this church has made
may be found in the habit of obedience to authority.
 Poverty, chastity and obedience  — these are
the three radical vows taken by an army of men
and women in the Catholic faith. They renounce
all claim to private property, receiving only a bare
support. They  belong to the Church  in a very
real sense, to be used by the Church as may seem
to it wise and good. For the sake of the service
which they have undertaken, they refuse the sweet
joys of family life. It is desired by their church
that they should be free from all domestic responsi-
bilities so that they can go or come as their superiors
may direct. And obedience, prompt, unquestion-
ing, unmeasured, to the head of the Order to whose
service they have dedicated their lives, has become
for them the rule of life. This obedience on the
part of great numbers of monks, nuns and priests
of various orders has its influence upon the entire
body of Catholics until that' idea of obedience to
authority has become a leading note in their
religious life.
Now I might not choose that for myself — I am
frank to say that I would not — but I am not so
blind as to fail to recognize the immense spiritual
value it may have in service rendered to the King-
dom. Thank God for the Roman Catholic Church!
Some of its doctrinal positions, — its belief in the
146
The Roman Catholic Church
infallibility of the Pope, in the power of priestly
absolution from sin, in the idea of the actual
sacrifice of Christ in the service of the Mass, in its
belief in the real presence of the body and blood of
our Lord in the bread and wine of the sacrament,
in its conception of Purgatory — it would be impos-
sible for me to accept. I am opposed to every sort
of encroachment by ecclesiastical authority, either
Catholic or Protestant, upon the exercise of that
civil authority which in a democracy like ours
belongs to all people alike. I am opposed to any
interference by church authorities with the work
of public education. But while I differ with my
Catholic friends at many points in my philosophy
of the State and in my convictions touching theo-
logical truth, I thank God for the immense moral
and spiritual influence of that great church.
We have not in these days so many effective
moral forces in the world that we can afford to
think lightly or to speak harshly of any of them.
When we find a mighty organization exercising an
influence, which it is not easy to estimate, upon the
life of the race, making for reverence toward God,
for that righteousness of life which comes from
obedience to his commands and for the prevalence
of spiritual ideals, we may all find here an occasion
for gratitude.
The Catholic Church has at this moment under
its care and direction vast numbers of compara-
tively untaught people in Italy, in Spain, in Austria,
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The Larger Faith
in South America and in Mexico which we as
Protestants simply would not know what to do with
if they were all suddenly to renounce their loyalty
to the Catholic Church and proclaim themselves
Protestants. We have here, in this more enlight-
ened and freer country, vast numbers of people in
our cities, who are better cared for in their present
state of development and with the temper it has
pleased God to give them, under that system which
teaches obedience to authority, than they would be
under that mode of church life which happens to
be my own.
Take it in the service it has rendered at one
particular point, the matter of sobriety! The
Catholic Church has not seen fit to take official
action, as the Methodist Church and some other
churches have done, throwing its entire influence
upon the side of the prohibition of the manufacture
and sale of intoxicants. It has had in its member-
ship numbers of men who were engaged directly or
indirectly in the liquor business. In most of the
Protestant Churches of America you would find
none at all, because such men would be refused
membership unless they made a change in their
business. The Catholic Church in the United
States has in its membership great numbers of
people who grew up in foreign lands where the
whole custom of using alcoholic drinks as a beverage
is very different from the custom which has pre-
vailed among most of the church people in this land.
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The Roman Catholic Church
It is responsible for those people who are under its
care, to be guided into something better.
But it has in its priesthood any number of men
who by virtue of that habit of obedience to author-
ity have rendered a great service for good in the
lives of rough men and women to whom intemper-
ance is a real peril. In my last parish my near
neighbor and good friend Father McNally of St.
Patrick's Church, was an active, enthusiastic
member of the Father Matthew Total Abstinence
Society. He went about among his people, brought
up many of them under very different surroundings
from those which I have known from my childhood,
urging upon them by precept and by personal
example the Christian duty of abstinence from the
use of intoxicants. He accomplished in hundreds of
cases what no Protestant clergyman could ever
have accomplished under the conditions where he
worked. This has to do with but a single virtue.
In keeping alive also the sense of a world unseen,
in promoting the feeling of moral obligation, in
causing men to know that there is open to us all a
definite source of help to aid us in our struggle, the
unique authority of the parish priest among his
people has a value which we would be sorry to
lose from the moral forces of the community.
In mediaeval times it was this spiritual authority
of the Catholic Church which alone showed itself
mighty enough to subdue the turbulent elements
in society, to put a certain check upon military
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The Larger Faith
tyrants and to infuse something of the spirit of
mercy into those who would otherwise have been
the ruthless oppressors of their weaker fellows.
And today in great sections of our modern world
the same work is being done in other terms and
under other conditions — spiritual authority holds
in check certain evil forces before which less auto-
cratic methods might find themselves helpless.
In these three directions particularly one can see
this power at work: it sets itself over against that
materialism which is no closet theory but a base
mode of life; it sets itself against the revolutionary
type of social agitation which would burn and slay
in order to gain its ends; it sets itself against the
spirit of unrestrained self-indulgence, a wild and
reckless Bohemianism which fears neither God, nor
man, nor devil. The Roman Catholic Church
stands with a brave front lifting up before the
people in picture and in statue, in anthem and in
prayer, in public sermon and in the words of the
private confessor, the nobler ideals of the Son of
God. We are not far enough along toward the
Millennium to wish to break in pieces that vessel of
honor even though, to some people, it may seem to
contain so much of wood and of earth. The gold
and the silver of precious spiritual influence are
there.
The length to which this spirit of obedience
will go almost passes our Protestant belief. The
story of the Jesuits, that powerful Order founded
150
The Roman Catholic Church
by Ignatius Loyola, reads like a romance. The
spiritual forces of Protestantism have been
likened by one writer to  local militia, useful
for defence in case of invasion, but incapable of
being sent abroad for the purpose of spiritual
conquest. Rome has her militia in a vast number
of ordinary parish priests in all lands, but she also
has her standing army, made up of forces ready at
a moment's notice to be sent upon any foreign
service however distant or disagreeable or danger-
ous.
If it is believed at headquarters that a certain
Jesuit father in England or America would, be-
cause of his talents or character, be particularly
useful among the Hottentots of Africa or the
Bushmen of Australia, or the Eskimos of the frozen
north, the next week he will be found sailing to that
quarter of the world, the next month he will be
preaching, catechizing and saying Mass among
those same surroundings. The Roman Catholic
Church develops that spirit of obedience to author-
ity which is at once a menace where it is unworthily
used, or a mighty prophecy of spiritual achieve-
ment where it is directed to worthy ends.  What-
soever he saith unto you do it  — this was the
word of Mary, the mother of our Lord, to the ser-
vants at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. It is in
that atmosphere of prompt and unquestioning
obedience that water is turned into wine.
I5i
The Larger Faith
III
The third contribution made by the Catholic
Church lies in its promotion of the spirit of trust in
the unseen. The Roman Catholic Church meets
the human soul at the very threshold of its earthly
experience and offers to provide some satisfying
measure of spiritual direction for every crisis.
This is the meaning of its seven sacraments, where
the Protestant Churches have but two.
Here is Baptism for the new-born babe, the
stated recognition of his spiritual kinship with a
great body of aspiring souls in the Church, and of
his kinship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
into whose triune name the child is baptized.
Here is Confirmation for the child when he
reaches the age of personal, moral decision and is
ready to stand before the world as a professing
Christian, prepared to take his first communion.
Here is the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the
bread and the wine transformed, as they believe,
by the words of consecration into the veritable
body and blood of the Saviour so that the inner
life of the communicant may feed upon Him and
become like Him.
Here is Penance, where the soul in the confes-
sional relieves itself by breathing the story of its
moral failure into the ear of a trusted and merciful
friend, gaining for itself, through the assurance of
human forgiveness an added confidence in the di-
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The Roman Catholic Church
vine forgiveness, and having prescribed for it certain
acts of devotion or of service to be rendered as an
offset to the wrong done.
Here is the sacrament of Orders, the formal
setting apart of a man to a life of religious devo-
tion, that he may become a leader, a priest and a
mediator of spiritual values to his needy fellows.
Here is Marriage, the union in the name of God
of one man and one woman for life; and all honor
to the Roman Catholic Church for its steadfast
and consistent opposition to the inroads which
hasty and easy divorce has made upon the sanctity
and the integrity of the home! The Catholic
Church regards marriage as an earthly copy of the
mystical union between Christ and His Church.
Here at the very end of one's career is Extreme
Unction1, where the soul is finally prepared for its
solemn and mysterious journey into the unseen
world.
Now all these seven sacraments become to the
devout Catholic, outward and visible signs of an
inward and spiritual grace. At all the important
crises of his life and touching all its more vital inter-
ests, the church places before him these symbols
of an unseen economy of divine mercy and help.
By the perpetual recurrence of these rites in the
appointments of his church, the believer may be
maintained in that attitude of trust which gives him
peace.
In these practical days when so many people are
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The Larger Faith
inclined to believe only in those things which can
be seen with the eyes, handled with the hands, or
purchased with money, when the things that are
seen and temporal so often expel from our vision
those unseen things which are eternal, it is good
for one branch of the Church steadily to inculcate
by methods which have shown themselves effective,
an abiding trust in those intangible aids which
mean so much in the gaining of that more abundant
life to which we are called.
No other church has made so much of that
supreme manifestation of the divine mercy toward
sinful men witnessed on Calvary. The Catholics
go to Mass. Good Catholics make all manner of
sacrifices and subject themselves to all sorts of
inconvenience rather than refrain from going to
Mass at least once every week. The Mass is a
visible enactment and repetition of the sacrifice of
Christ on Calvary, according to their belief,
offered in atonement for man's sin. These worship-
pers go there to commemorate afresh the death of
the Son of God and to confide afresh in the great
mystery of divine redemption there proclaimed.
On every altar and in many a Catholic home there
is the Crucifix. The Stations of the Cross (those
pictures which are found in every Catholic church),
indicate the stages in Christ's progress from the
judgment hall of Pilate to Calvary. Now the divine
mercy revealed on Calvary may be to the Jews a
stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness,
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The Roman Catholic Church
but it is the power of God unto salvation to every-
one who trusts. The Roman Catholic Church has
made a most important contribution to "The Larger
Faith by its promotion of the feeling of trust in the
great fundamental offers of the Christian gospel.
IV
The fourth contribution it has made lies in the
marvelous readiness of its faithful members for
sacrifice. This fine quality of life is present in all
Christian churches but the Roman Catholic Church
can show an unusual measure of it. It faces every
man toward the demand for a sacrificial life.
The Pope has a palace. He lives in the Vatican
at Rome, which is a spacious building, containing,
we are told, more than ten thousand rooms. These
rooms are filled with the treasures of art, with great
libraries of books, and with the necessary appoint-
ments for the physical comfort of a large household,
but the Pope has no home.
The priests have their clergy houses but not a
man among them has a home. It takes a woman,
a wife and a mother with her children to make a
home. And ruling out the unfaithful priests to be
found, alas, in every branch of the Church, there
is in the Roman Catholic Church a great body of
pure and true men who have surrendered the hope
of all these joys that they might give themselves in
sacrificial fashion to the service to which they are
called.
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The Larger Faith
It is the very jewel and crown of a woman's life
to love and to be loved by her husband and children,
to busy herself with the furnishing and the ordering
of a home. But here is a vast company of sweet-
faced, quiet-voiced, pure-hearted women sur-
rendering all that for the sake of the service to
which they give themselves. Sisters of Charity,
Sisters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, and all
the rest! Here they are, the teachers of youth, the
friends of the aged and the helpless, the faithful
nurses of the sick and the sympathetic helpers of
the outcast! Like the Son of Man, they go about
doing good.
We see them daily on the streets of every city in
Christendom. Whenever I pass two of them, I
feel like lifting my hat. Here they are, the mes-
sengers of the divine purpose in sacrificial service!
They are the followers of Him who came, not to be
ministered to but to minister and tC give His life
for the ransom of many.
Have you ever read Francis Parkman's histories,
with his a'ccount of the work of those early Jesuit
fathers among the Indians of our own country,
and of Canada? Have you read the story of Father
Damien, among the poor lepers of Hawaii, upon the
Island of Molokai? Have you read the record of
Pere Marquette's work among the red men in the
Northwest and of Junapero Serra among the
Indians in California? The noble self-sacrifice of it
has written a record that brings again before us the
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The Roman Catholic Church
moral heroism of Apostolic Christianity. "I, if I
be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
me, said One who knew what was in man, and
needed not that others should tell him. It was his
own sober estimate upon the power of sincere love
for the souls of men and of the habit of uncom-
plaining sacrifice on their behalf. Whatever may
be one's feeling touching some of , the beliefs and
some of the forms of the Roman Catholic Church,
we will all agree that it has made a splendid show-
ing in that heroic and beautiful self-sacrifice which
suffereth long and is kind, which beareth all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
all things.
I write as a Protestant minister, but I am sure
that I voice the sentiments of hundreds of thou-
sands of my fellow Protestantg when I say that we
would like to cultivate closer and more friendly
relations with this ancient and far-reaching branch
of Christ's Church. They are our brethren in the
Lord. Both they and we are striving for the coming
of the Kingdom of God on earth, which means the
sway and rule of the divine Spirit of righteousness,
peace and joy, in all the affairs of men. I am confi-
dent that the pastor of many a Protestant church
would be happy to welcome to his pulpit one of the
faithful priests of the Roman Catholic Church to
speak to his people the words of eternal life. He in
turn would be glad to speak in any Catholic
Church to which he might be invited, not to change
157
The Larger Faith
the Catholics into Protestants, but to help them
by his message to be more faithful and useful mem-
bers of the church of their choice.
We are glad that in this land of freedom and
democracy the relations in many communities
between the Catholics and Protestants are to such
an extent filled with the spirit of our common Mas-
ter. The influence of such broad-minded Catholics
as the late Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, and
Archbishop Ireland of Minnesota, and other men
of like spirit, has aided greatly in this happier
relation. May their number increase! We are
all grateful for the habit of worship and for the
spirit of obedience to rightful authority, for the
sense of trust in the unseen, and for the capacity for
self-sacrifice which this great church has contrib-
uted in generous measure to our larger faith.
The Catholic Church has been imperial in its
ambitions and in its methods, as would befit an
organization which heads up in Rome. I covet
for this larger faith, made up of the varied contribu-
tions of these many branches of Christ's Church,
that same imperialism. Not that I would see the
State or the public school, the home or the place
of trade ruled by any ecclesiastical organization.
God forbid! But I would that all these institutions
should be brought into obedience to the spirit of
Him who is the Head of all the Churches. Would
God that all these churches in their several ways
might set themselves, not to the mere saving of
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The Roman Catholic Church
privileged souls from the general moral wreck!
Would God that they might set themselves to
the great task of the moral renewal of man's entire
life in its social, economic and political relations!
All these kingdoms of human interest and action
must some time become kingdoms of that mode of
life for which Christ stood. It is for us all to take
hold together  in the unity of the spirit and in
the bond of peace  to achieve that sublime result.
THE UNITARIAN CHURCH
Chapter IX
The Unitarian Church
The doctrine of  the Unity of God  is much
older than William Ellery Channing. It is much
older than the Arians of the Fourth Century who
stood up to resist the stout orthodoxy of Athai;-
asius in the Council of Nicea. Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, Moses, David and Isaiah were all
Unitarians in their thought of God. The vast
Moslem world, whose faith at its inception was
a vigorous protest against the weak idolatry of the
Orient, is to this hour a world of Unitarians —
 There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is His
prophet. We find a multitude of Old Testament
saints, of Moslem believers and of thoughtful men
in all periods of religious history, who would stand
together in saying, "To us, there is but one God,
the Father.
But Unitarianism in its more restricted sense,
as applied to a certain branch of the Christian
Church, dates back in this country to about the
year 1815. Early in the Nineteenth Century a very
considerable group of Congregational churches in
New England separated themselves from the
Orthodox wing of the denomination which still held
to the general system of belief known as  Evan-
gelical. In Boston every Congregational church
except the  Old South  joined in this new depar-
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The Larger Faith
ture. They retained the Congregational form of
polity and in most cases the historic names and the
meeting houses where they had been accustomed to
worship.
The separation came as a thoughtful, con-
scientious reaction against some of the excesses
and some of the teaching connected with  the
Great Awakening. Reason and conscience alike
protested against such doctrine as that found in
Jonathan Edwards' terrible sermon on  Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God. The time was
ripe for some radical modification of the religious
teaching which had become traditional with the
orthodoxy of New England and the Unitarian
movement was the clearest and most influential
expression of that demand.
The liberal party was not large numerically.
The Unitarian denomination today is still one of the
smaller sects. It is a party to be weighed rather
than counted. But it has registered a profound
and wholesome impress upon the religious belief,
upon the literature, upon the philanthropy and
upon the civic purposes of the Nation. No one
who understands its early history and the real
quality of the men who gave direction to its develop-
ment in those days will speak slightingly of the
Unitarian Church.
I
The main contributions which it has made to
164
The Unitarian Church
our total Christianity seem to me to be, First, its
steady insistence upon a reasonable faith! In those
early days when the most rigorous form of Calvin-
ism was to the fore the Unitarian movement had
also its  five points, but very different points
they were from the five points of Calvinism.
1. It stood for the universal Fatherhood of God.
 To us, there is but one God, the Father, they
said, and all these legal, forensic, mediatorial
schemes of salvation must either square themselves
with that fundamental fact or they must stand
aside.
2. It stood for the real humanity of Christ. In
their insistence upon his divinity the orthodox
party had at times obscured the fact that whatever
else Christ may be, He was a man, born of a woman,
tempted in all points like as we are, subject to
the laws of growth, of pain and of death. The
Unitarian stood for the actual humanity of Christ,
not a mask, nor a pretense, but a genuine humanity
which tasted the human situation to the full for
every man.
3. It insisted on the religious function of history,
not only Hebrew history, but all history, as a
revelation of God. The Unitarians boldly affirmed
that God has not left himself without witness in
any land or in any age.
4. It placed the Bible at the center of a vaster
revelation of the mind of the Lord through litera-
ture — the relation of the Bible to other books of
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The Larger Faith
spiritual worth being germinal rather than exclu-
sive of their claims to some measure of inspiration.
5. It insisted that salvation is a moral process
conducted by the Spirit of God in the lives of
thoughtful, obedient and aspiring men — a moral
process, not a legal, mechanical or magical trans-
action, imputing man's guilt to an atoning Saviour
or imputing the righteousness of Christ to un-
righteous men by some sort of theological shuffle.
It was a moral process in which the Spirit of the
living God utilizes not only dogma and sacrament
but other agencies, as well, which may contribute
to the development of character.
Here are five points — the Fatherhood of God,
the humanity of Jesus, the function of history as a
revelation of God, the germinal relation of the
Bible to a vaster body of sacred literature and the
conception of salvation as a moral process — all
of them reasonable, all of them scriptural, all of
them helpful! They have been so far accepted by
the more intelligent and open-minded branches
of the Church as to seem to many of us common-
place, but time was when it cost many a man the
affection and confidence of his associates in Chris-
tian effort to insist openly upon these five points of
a reasonable faith.
It was a protest sorely needed. The Unitarians
stood out against a doctrine of the Trinity, which
often implied three distinct Gods. They opposed a
view of Christ which slighted his humanity in the
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The Unitarian Church
interests of a certain plan of salvation. They
condemned that narrower view of history which
left great sections of human interest outside the
pale of God's love and care. They put their
strength against that conception of salvation,
which represented it as something outward, legal,
mechanical. They refused to set religion in con-
flict with the intelligence and moral wealth of the
world where these were found not allying them-
selves with the theological positions of Calvinism.
As George A. Gordon of the Old South Church,
Boston, pointed out, their protest at these points
was  tremendous, magnificent, wholesome. It
was reason and conscience in such wise and godly
men as Channing and Dewey, Theodore Parker and
James Freeman Clarke, William C. Gannett and
William H. Furness arraying themselves against
certain theological claims which were neither rea-
sonable nor moral.
It was therefore an ethical no less than an intel-
lectual protest. It would be difficult to name two
men in the Nineteenth Century in whom the moral
sense was more keenly alive than in William Ellery
Channing and James Martineau. It was the
spiritual passion of their own great, warm heatts
which moved them to defend the character of God
against the unworthy implications put upon it by
some of the orthodoxy of their day.
Certain theories of the Atonement represented
God as only allowing His anger against faulty men
167
The Larger Faith
to be appeased by the sufferings of Christ, upon
whom the full penalty of the guilt of the whole
world was visited — it was a frightful doctrine,
unwarranted by the teaching of the Four Gospels.
The claim was made that God in determining from
all eternity by an unconditional election that cer-
tain men should be saved was under no obligation
to respect our rights or interests — this notion
seems to most of us preposterous. Read some of
the current religious literature in the last half of
the Eighteenth Century and you will understand
how some of the choicest spirits this country has
ever produced went out from the larger orthodox
body of Christian believers, impelled by reason,
by a truer knowledge of what the Bible actually
teaches, and by the impulses of their own honest
hearts.
It was a protest overdone in some instances —
when the pendulum swings it often swings too far.
In the minds of certain people God the Father
became grandfatherly, the thought of moral rigor
and disciplinary purpose in His attitude toward
men was obscured. In some minds  the dignity
of human nature  was such that man did not need
a Saviour, did not need forgiveness, renewal, and
strengthened purpose in order to attain. To some
light-hearted people all literature was so full of
what they were pleased to term  inspiration 
that it did not matter whether men's minds were
ever fed upon the great conceptions and aspirations
168
The Unitarian Church
of David and Isaiah, of John and Paul, or of our
Lord Himself — Shelley and Walt Whitman,
H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw will suffice. These
friends speedily reveal the fact that they have been
reared on spiritual gruel altogether too thin to
make them morally robust.
But the Unitarian movement is not to be judged
by its worst but by the main trend and drift of its
influence upon the religious life of the Nineteenth
Century. It was, at its inception, an emergency
movement shaped up with reference to the necessi-
ties of a specific historic situation — it has con-
tinued in a substantial way and it has made good
its protest in the more reasonable and more scrip-
tural positions held today by almost all of the
churches of Christ.
When we come to view it as a movement of
thought and life, we find that Unitarianism repre-
sents not so much a body of churches as "an
individual way of looking at the facts of life and its
problems. It is said that  Boston is not a place
on the map — it is a state of mind. There is
truth as well as humor in that epigram. If some
sort of chemical analysis could detect the  traces 
of the wide influence of those men and women
who for the last two hundred and fifty years have
been speaking and writing in and around Boston,
we would all agree that Boston is a very useful
 state of mind. In like manner Unitarianism is
not so much certain columns of figures in the Year
169
The Larger Faith
Book where religious statistics are compiled —
Unitarianism is  a state of mind, an individual
way of looking at the problems of life which is
characterized by reasonableness.
The influence of this way of looking at things
can be discovered in the entire religious life of this
nation. Thousands of people who once walked in
darkness have seen a great light. Only a small
percentage of them have been enrolled as Uni-
tarians, but the more winsome, reasonable and
creditable message of religion, to which the influ-
ence of this small denomination has so largely
contributed, has won their hearts to an open alle-
giance to Jesus Christ. Even the Salvation Army,
with its  blood and fire  methods and theology,
is a nobler institution today, because it lives and
works in a land where Emerson and Channing,
Lowell and Longfellow have spoken to the mind and
conscience of the nation.
The kingdom of heaven in some of its manifesta-
tions is  like the growth of a grain of mustard
seed, an outward, visible, organized expression
of a finer quality of life. The kingdom of heaven is
also  like leaven, silent, pervasive, contagious,
gradually leavening the whole lump and thereby
rendering it more palatable and useful in meeting
human need. The emphasis of the Unitarian upon
the reasonableness of religious faith has been like
leaven.
i;o
The Unitarian Church
II
The second contribution made by this denomina-
tion lies in the breadth of its culture. When it
claimed that all history had a function as a revela-
tion from God, it summoned the intelligence of the
race to stand in the presence of all lands and of all
ages as on holy ground, putting the shoes from off
its feet as it listened everywhere for accents of the
divine voice. When the Unitarian insisted that the
Bible was preeminently the sacred book, but that
all literature worthy of the name might have some
breath of the divine and share in that saeredness,
he gave a new impetus to the interest which
thoughtful, devout men might feel in the best that
has been said in literature. It has been characteris-
tic of this branch of the Church to stand for a noble
breadth of culture.
It has produced men of letters in numbers out of
all proportion to the size of the denomination.
 Thou Bethlehem of Judea art not least among the
provinces, for out of thee has come a movement of
mind which has exercised a renewing influence
upon the thought of our entire country! How
many of the noblest names in our literature are the
names of Unitarians! Ralph Waldo Emerson was
the pastor of a Unitarian church in Boston. Lowell
and Longfellow, Bryant and Holmes, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Frances Parkman and George Ban-
croft, William H. Prescott, John Lothrop Motley
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The Larger Faith
and John Fiske, Charles Eliot Norton and Thomas
Wentworth Higginson were all Unitarians.
Lyman Beecher, a war-horse of orthodoxy,
once said —  All the literary men of Massachusetts
are Unitarians. All the trustees and professors of
Harvard College are Unitarians. All the elite of
wealth and fashion in Boston crowd the Unitarian
churches. They have, in the last hundred years,
produced a royal company of seers and of singers
whose messages of insight and uplift have made us
all their debtors. It would be difficult to name any
other single influence upon our youth, emanating
from an American mind, which has counted more
or counted for better things than the writings of
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
It was a Unitarian who founded the  Lowell
Institute  in Boston, an endowed lectureship so
well maintained that from fifty to one hundred
lectures are offered free every winter, delivered by
eminent men in this country, and oftentimes by
men from Europe. In my own college days there
I heard James Russell Lowell give six lectures on
the  Early English Dramatists. I heard Richard
S. Storrs lecture in his matchless way on  Bernard
of Clairvaux, and Theodore Roosevelt lecture on
 Civic Reform. The service of this nobly
endowed lectureship to the community can scarcely
be overestimated.
It was a Unitarian who generously endowed the
 Boston Symphony Orchestra, which by his
172
The Unitarian Church
ample provision became the first organization in
this country to present, in a manner which ranks
with the best in Europe, the great musical com-
positions of the masters of melody and harmony.
It was a Unitarian who founded  Cooper
Institute, in New York, which through its popular
appeal and the variety of its activities has become
one of the most useful institutions in that mighty
city in leading the thoughts of the plain people to
higher things. It has been characteristic of the
Unitarian denomination to stand for breadth of
culture, believing that into the redeemed life of the
race,  the kings of the earth, the leaders and
masters of the higher human values, should  bring
their glory and their honor  as into a city that
lieth four-square.
Ill
The Unitarian Church has been conspicuous for
its contribution of a wise interest in philanthropic
effort. This has been no cold-hearted, technical
skill in dissecting the problems of poverty and
crime, of civic wrong and social injustice. Some of
the mightiest of the reformers have sprung from
this branch of Christ's Church, bearing with them
the moral passion no less than the wise judgment
which belongs to this denomination at its best.
The men and the women who waged the earliest
battles for the abolition of human slavery recruited
their ranks in large measure from the Unitarian
173
The Larger Faith
churches. Channing himself, and Theodore Parker,
who made Music Hall in Boston a modern Forum
for the voicing of the public conscience; Charles
Sumner and Wendell Phillips, Gerritt Smith,
Samuel J. May, and Julia Ward Howe were all of
them Unitarians.
In more recent times, in dealing with vice and
crime, in meeting the demands which the charities
and the corrections of the country are making upon
brain and heart, there are few more honored names
than those of Edward Everett Hale and Samuel
J. Barrows. I was a visitor for the Associated
Charities in Boston thirty-five years ago, and at
that time more than half the money and a great
deal more than half the time and wisdom and love
spent in personal service in that humane effort
came from that denomination; although it is one of
the smaller branches of the Christian Church. If
one should appraise the Christianity of any group
of people by the showing they make in embodying
in their lives the spirit of the Good Samaritan or by
the standards named in that judgment scene por-
trayed in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew —
 Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of
these, ye have done it unto me  — he would find
the Unitarians meeting that test in satisfying
measure.
It has been a broad-minded philanthropy. It
was Dr. Samuel G. Howe who gave impetus and
direction to an awakening sentiment in Massa-
174
The Unitarian Church
chusetts for the more efficient care of the blind.
The Perkins Blind Asylum, where Laura Bridgman
and Helen Keller received their training, sprang
out of his efforts. It was Horace Mann who led
the way in broadening the scope of education,
making it include Manual Training for boys.
It was Edwin D. Mead who, more than any other
single man in our country, aroused that sentiment
which opposes increased armaments and urges the
reference of international differences to properly
constituted international courts as a substitute for
the barbarous, burdensome habit of war. It was
Charles F. Dole who was a leader in the work of
scientific temperance agitation, bringing to bear
upon the menacing evil of the rum shop, the best
judgment and largest experience of the nation to
replace the inefficient and intemperate zeal of
certain reformers who only serve to cloud the issue.
It was George T. Angell who aroused the pity of the
country for dumb animals and led the movement
which resulted in the organization of  a society for
the prevention of cruelty. In every form of
philanthropic effort you will find the intelligent
heads and the warm hearts of Unitarians bearing
an honorable part.
In civic affairs the Unitarians have rendered
notable service. The people of California will
never forget the debt of gratitude they owe to
Thomas Starr King, pastor of the First Unitarian
Church, San Francisco, for the far-reaching influ-
175
The Larger Faith
ence he exerted in helping to save California to the
Union, and enlisting her on the side of the struggle
for the liberty of all men. Some of the noblest men
we have had in the councils of our nation have been
men of that faith — Charles Sumner and Senator
Hoar, John Hay, John D. Long, William Howard
Taft, and many others whose names would fill a
worthy roll of honor! The movement for Civil
Service Reform was greatly indebted for the
advancement of its interests to individual members
of this church and to the organized utterance of the
church itself along that line. George William Cur-
tis, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles W.
Eliot, and many another honored citizen stood up
to resist the idea that  to the victor belong the
spoils  — they insisted that  a public office is a
public trust.
Piety and patriotism should go hand in hand.
When intelligent Jews prayed for the peace of
Jerusalem, they did it both as citizens and as
churchmen, for Jerusalem was the capital of their
country, as well as the site of the temple. And in
the Unitarian branch of Christ's Church there has
been throughout an intelligent insistence upon the
sacredness of civic life and the importance of those
duties which belong to citizenship in the Republic.
"One God, the Father — ours no less than
theirs! Many of us cannot accept the estimate
they place upon the person of Christ, nor agree
with certain views they hold touching other matters
176
The Unitarian Church
which seem to us vital. With all the gratitude I
feel for the service they have rendered, I could not
be a Unitarian. But even so, we may well believe
that the agreements are more significant than the
differences. We have, been told on the highest
authority that the vital thing in religion is not the
ability to say,  Lord, Lord!  but the doing of the
will of the Father who is in heaven. In that day
many obedient, aspiring souls, who have differed
widely in their theological interpretations, may
come, moved by one common desire to live in the
vision and service of the highest they saw, to sit
down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the
kingdom of God.
177
"THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT
Chapter X
"The Unity of the Spirit
In somewhat cursory fashion, with no pretense
of thorough, exhaustive treatment, we have passed
in review certain distinctive contributions made by
these various branches of the Church to that larger
Christianity in which we all believe. We have been
happy to find in other denominations elements of
strength and points of excellence which were not
equally conspicuous in our own denominations.
We are glad that these varied notes are being struck
by men of different moods and temperaments, by
men of different tradition and training, to the end
that a fuller, richer volume of worship and of service
may thereby become possible. Let each man stand
up in his own chosen place and say with gladness of
heart,  Other sheep He has which are not of my
fold — them also He will bring, that at last there
may be one flock and One Shepherd.
We have gained in these days a generous supply
of "religious tolerance — we are not fighting
our fellow Christians in other camps as misguided
men have done in the past. But tolerance is not
enough. The very word  toleration  smacks of
offense. I am not happy in having any one  toler-
ate  me and I should feel myself an insufferable
181
The Larger Faith
prig were I to assume an attitude of  toleration 
toward any fellow Christian. We must have
insight, understanding, appreciation.
We can engage in the pleasant, harmless custom
of holding  Union Thanksgiving services  to-
gether when the last Thursday in November comes
but has the Twentieth Century of Christian history
nothing better to show in the way of Christian
unity than that? We need to exchange  the poor
charity of mutual forbearance  for  the benign
consciousness of inward sympathy and active
cooperation.
In the smaller communities in this country the
struggling rivalry of the churches sometimes crowds
out the usefulness of the Church. If we had fewer
churches we would have more Church. As Dean
Hodges once said,  Effective blows are not struck
with extended fingers, but with the solid fist.
We may threaten the devil with the Baptist finger
or the Methodist finger, with the Roman Catholic
finger or with the Episcopal thumb, and he faces
the assault with great serenity; but when our total
Christianity comes to make an undivided assault,
he may be led to meditate upon retreat. We may
in our differing taste as to ritual and polity, in our
varying interpretations of the eternal mystery,
be as distinct as the fingers of the hand. But we
may also in that suggestive and useful variety be
so knit together and held within the power of a
common passion for righteousness, that, in a splen-
182
"The Unity of the Spirit
did  unity of the Spirit, we shall go forth to
conquer.
This finer and firmer unity will not be attained
by an arbitrary suppression of differences, but by
the fuller development of the distinctive contribu-
tions which each branch of the Mighty Vine of
Christian organization is making to the aggregate
result.  Sink deeply into the inmost life of any
Christian faith and you will touch the ground of
them all. The city that hath foundations is
surrounded by walls great and high, but they are
pierced by many gates of entrance, three on every
side. When we enter that city of God, we shall find
that the various guests of the divine bounty,
though fed at separate tables, have all been fed
upon the same bread of life and their lips have all
been touched alike with the same wine of remem-
brance.
 There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken
at the flood leads on to fortune. In that world-
wide struggle for justice, for freedom and for democ-
racy in which we are engaged in these strange, hard
days, the leaders of our Christian forces might well
discern the flood-tide of opportunity! We see the
whole race passing through a profound historical
transformation. We see the current methods of
social and political organization challenged to
justify themselves by the measure of well-being
they can show in the lives of men. There is opened
unto us everywhere a wide and effectual door for
183
The Larger Faith
moral advance. In all this we as Christians are
meant to have a large and honorable part.
In such a time of stress it is difficult to be patient
toward that spirit of sectarianism which blocks the
way. The unity of Christendom seems of less
importance to an ecclesiastical dyspeptic than does
the fact that he and his wife, his son John and his
wife, should be privileged to live under a form of
church polity and usage, constructed in strict
accordance, as he maintains, with some obscure
passage (wrongly interpreted as often as not) in
the Book of Acts. In the presence of the dire need
of the whole earth for spiritual direction at the
hands of those forces for which all the churches
profess to stand, many of these petty differences in
theological theory and in denominational practice
become as trivial as the fact that some good men
have and some good men have not red hair. The
minister of Christ who spends his time on Sunday
defending his own particular mode of baptism, or
expounding some notion of Biblical inerrancy to
the discomfiture of those  higher critics  against
whom he thunders, or exploiting some special theory
of future punishment, is not even fiddling while
Rome is burning. He is not doing anything as
respectable as fiddling. In the presence of whole
continents on fire such a waste of time and of
sacred opportunity is downright wicked.
We learned, as never before, in those fateful
years of war how much larger the local unit, the
184
"The Unity of the Spirit
national unit, or the international unit must be
if it would rieach its highest efficiency in military
action. The local militia held apart from any
vaster force of resistance or attack showed itself
all but valueless. It took the organized and disci-
plined forces of whole nations banded together and
acting in concert to achieve the necessary ends.
How much longer will it take for the children of
light to realize that the local and the national units
in that vaster, nobler Army of God must likewise
be made larger if they would win?
Christianity is not today the mighty cable it was
meant to be, binding the nations to the Throne of
God. It has been frayed out into so many strands
that no single thread or group of threads has in it
the necessary fiber for the strain which that high
task would impose. We are not in our several
communities, nor in the nation as a whole, in a
position to furnish that competent and impressive
moral leadership which the complex life of this
modern world sorely demands.
We need above all else, save only the gracious
enduement of the Holy Spirit, that wise and patient
leadership which will federate these scattered forms
of effort into an imposing and achieving unity.
We need the firm grasp of mighty leaders — not
Bismarcks, who by sheer strength of the churchly
equivalents of  blood and iron  might weld these
rival states of denominational life into an empire
strong enough to defy the world. The mind of Von
185
The Larger Faith
Moltke was not the mind of the Master. We need
rather religious statesmen with the temper and
skill of Abraham Lincoln, who  with malice toward
none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right
as God gives them to see the right, will guide these
sectarian states out of their rivalries into that
willing cooperation which would produce an
imperishable republic of God. That would be
Christian union indeed, and that type of union
would hasten immeasurably the coming of that
Kingdom in which all Christians believe.
The stronger metals can only be welded together
or moulded into nobler forms when they are at
white heat. When the metal is cold it resists and
breaks. In like manner there are human institu-
tions, vast and weighty, which can only be recast
when the material out of which they are formed has
been brought to white heat. In these grave times
when the whole world is in the crucible, may it not
be that God is calling upon us for a new alignment,
a better formation and a more complete mobiliza-
tion of all our spiritual forces for the great task of
world redemption? The dire need is summoning
all the members of the body of Christ to show that
they are one body in Christ, ready to act together
in a finer concert of power.
We have so often associated the word  Catholic
with the Roman adjective that multitudes of
unthinking Protestants are afraid of it. Would
that it might be recovered to its rightful use
186
"The Unity of the Spirit
throughout the world!  I believe in the Holy
Catholic Church  and I belong to it. I pray for
the gathering up of all these fragments of the body
of Christ into the Holy Catholic Church.
It doth not yet appear what form this Christian
unity shall take. No one can say just how this
comprehensive action of our Christian forces may
be secured. Personally I do not believe that it will
come by an amalgamation of all the religious bodies
of the world into one vast, all-embracing ecclesi-
astical organization. The unity of Christendom
will not be outward and mechanical — it will be
 the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
But we know that in proportion as He appears in
all our corporate religious life, the net result will
be like Him.
These are wonderful years and there is much to
be done. The world has been torn to pieces by a
great disaster — it will have to be rebuilt and built
better than it was before the War. Let Christianity
stand up straight — the ceiling is high! Let it
make bare its arms — there is hard work ahead!
Let its eyes sweep the whole horizon — the field of
opportunity is the world! Let it make bold to
attempt the moral renewal of the life of the race —
nothing less than that will satisfy Him whom we
serve! Let it go forward in  the unity of the
Spirit  to write chapters in its future more glorious
than any in its past!
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The Larger Faith
 Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting
sea!
188
APPENDIX
Appendix
When the substance of these chapters was used
in a series of evening addresses in the United
Church of New Haven, Connecticut, the three
hymns sung at each service were selected from
hymn writers belonging to the particular denomina-
tion to be considered that evening.
It is an interesting and significant fact for the
cause of Christian unity that these many hymns,
written by members of these different communions,
were all contained in the Hymnal,  In Excelsis,
in use in the church where the addresses were
given — as indeed they Would be found in almost
any standard hymnal. Doctrinal discussions may
divide us, but we all come together in prayer and in
praise.
The list of these various hymns may be of
interest to those who read this book. It does not
contain any hymns written by the  Disciples of
Christ. Excellent hymns have been written by
members of this communion but being more recent
it did not chance that they were included in the
Hymnal in use at that time in United Church.
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The Larger Faith
BAPTIST.
Softly fades the twilight ray.
I need Thee every hour.
Blest be the tie that binds.
CONGREGATIONAL.
My faith looks up to Thee.
I love thy kingdom, Lord.
O Master, let me walk with Thee.
EPISCOPAL.
O Little town of Bethlehem.
The Church's one foundation.
For all the saints who from their labors rest.
LUTHERAN.
A mighty Fortress is Our God.
0 Sacred Head, now wounded.
Now thank we all our God.
METHODIST.
Love divine, all love excelling.
Jesus, Lover of my soul.
A charge to keep I have.
PRESBYTERIAN.
1 heard the voice of Jesus say.
Go labor on, spend and be spent.
Stand up, stand up for Jesus.
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Appendix
ROMAN CATHOLIC.
Lead, Kindly Light.
Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts.
Jerusalem the golden.
UNITARIAN.
Lord of all being, throned afar.
In the Cross of Christ I glory.
Nearer, my God, to thee.
193