= =s oe RS a ee 3 ES om ns Ie a ee ma ee PR eae a aren ee Le en of gears a ) —- = nee ee origi Bian ig POS LO ER a BS + Boy ae ee —_ < Pen ig Pe et et a pel a pean A A Pate Ro ge eg = SII aOR iad Cn ey Ri SE td « wi phe: . tt 35 Fast Pe As: a ; or en as a LRT “s a tes pe Trg tes #4 —_ os tye g-* = a LD" SSP ee - i ieee a ek aoa 7 My MAY 5 1032 wy, a SOL aicAL sew\® (Constructive (odernism POSITIVE FACTORS in the SANEST and STRONGEST SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT of the CHRISTIAN ERA. ne Lo wrenee YY, ive BANNER PRESS PRINTERS -:- PUBLISHERS EMORY UNIVERSITY, GA. Copyright 1926 by Lawrence W. Neff All rights reserved. FOREWORD N THIS brief treatise no effort whatso- ever has been made to effect alignment with any specific school of thought or group of propagandists, for reasons stated. Nor is it deemed needful perspicuously to define “Modernism,” which, in so far as it possesses abiding import, will be “Ancientism” a thou- sand years from now, without, however, hav- ing suffered any abatement of its native viril- ity. Its present importance consists in the fact that for the first time since the process of slow strangulation was applied in the supposed in- terest of an authoritative Church and priest- hood, earnest men in ever-increasing numbers are highly resolved to rediscover and recover the actual principles of Jesus Christ and give them their first adequate test as the solvent of social, political and economic problems now be- coming hazardous to civilization itself, in the meeting or avoidance of which problems the conservative and inspirational resources of con- ventional religion are suffering obvious col- lapse. The alternative appears to be Modern- ism or Nihilism. UPROOTING ano REPLANTING I N ITS essence Modernism is the most iL primitive of all the purer forms of religious faith, resting as it does upon the data of per- sonal experience. Its distinctive concept is that of direct access to God, without resort to mechanical, sacrificial or sacerdotal expedients. Originally it represented the intuitive quest of the reverent spirit for an unseen but all per- vading Power, with which some sort of com- munion was felt to be established. This is best delineated in the earlier portions of the Old Testament narratives, and marks the gen- esis of spiritual development along experimen- tal lines. In recurring phases it is recognizable in the turning from outward sanctions and constraints to inward impulsions; the protest of luminous souls against the irksome bond- age of externals; the ascendency of ideals liv- ing and growing over formularies dead and dying. Latterly it may be taken to denote the repudiation of constituted authority merely as such in behalf of deepened devotion to facts and principles which appear to afford clearer insight into the ultimate meaning of Seven Constructive Modernism life and destiny. For these reasons Modern- ism has ever been manifest less as a form than a force, and properly culminates not so much in a fixed system as a perennial forward-urge. Thus viewed, the illustrious succession of Modernists is as ancient as the recorded an- nals of the race, for the reason that in the realm of religion, from the beginning even to the present time, they have done just about all the thinking and writing that was worthy of preservation, save as musty memoirs. Omit- ting individual examples we may mention col- lectively the Hebrew partiarchs and prophets, in contrast with their pagan and priestly con- temporaries; the Founder of Christianity, re- lentlessly hounded and crucified by the rigidly righteous as the arch-enemy of the true faith; the leaders of every great moral and spiritual —as contrasted with ecclesiastical—crusade of the Christian era,—each and all of them rightly regarded as inimical to the established order, which forthwith proceeded to crush them to the utmost extent of its ability. Nor is there substantial ground for mistak- ing the radical and even revolutionary charac- ter of the incipient movement in its present manifestation. Standing self-convicted of re- jecting perhaps half the stereotyped tenets of Eight Uprooting and Replanting conventional orthodoxy, it adds the yet greater offense of asserting and emphasizing the other half with most objectionable insistence. Its moral ultimata will come with as much of dynamic (cf. dynamite) to the respectable orthodoxy of our day as the utterances of Jesus fell upon the dulled ears of his com- placent contemporaries. Now, even as then, the unfamiliar truth will become a stumbling- block to multitudes of earnest but misguided souls who, by their traditions, have made the word of God of none effect. For the upspringing of a firmer faith there must first be a wholesale uprooting of errors and half-truths. This sign is set for the falling and the rising up again of many, and illus- trates forcefully the fact that truth itself is the savor of life or death according to the constitution of the mind which perceives it. Jesus himself overturned the unstable faith of a larger number of individuals than any other has ever done. But there has been many centuries of preparation for this return to vital as contrasted with formal fundamentals, and the prediction may be confidently made that after the tumult and the shouting dies—or even as it is in progress—there will be a quiet, almost imperceptible and altogether irresisti- Nine Constructive Modernism ble return to the truths which are stirring anew the heart of humanity. Modernism in its present status is largely unsystematized and utterly unorganized. These facts sufficiently attest its spontaneous char- acter. In many and widely scattered fields it is springing up blade by blade, as at the approach of spring, with the far fruition of the harvest season hidden from finite vision. Perhaps the movement will long remain predominantly spontaneous and unorganized, in which event it will afford another interesting and instruc- tive parallel to the Christianity of Jesus Christ, — which strikingly magnified the potencies of germination and minified the routine of organ- ization—only to have the process reversed and the perversion perpetuated by his immediate followers, to whose mistakes the Acts and Epistles bear abundant testimony. As a return to vital sources, Modernism | may be confidently counted upon to propa- gate major principles of growth and relegate minor rules of conduct. | The reproach that Modernists as a group do not maintain close formation is more than half praise. Meticulous consistency is a character- istic vice of small minds operating in narrow compass. The men who have teen at grips Ten Uprooting and Replanting with great and portentous truths which will powerfully affect the whole future of human- ity have not as yet taken the time or trouble to be conspicuously consistent among them- selves. Nor did the writers of the narratives which constitute our Bible. Consistency is still well able to take thought of itself and to dis: pense with cajolery. Certainly there is no such circumstantial agreement among Modernists as to lend coun- tenance to the oft-heard charge of a dark con- spiracy. In fact, one is led to suspect that they are not even keeping prudent watch upon one another. By way of personal confession, I read an average of scarcely one heretical vol- ume in half a dozen years, and give no more than casual notice to any one of the so-called liberal periodicals of the day. The spirit of the time is of significance only as it is related to the spirit of the timeless. Interest attaches more properly and more profoundly to the slow but perceptible and inevitable maturing of divinely implanted truths than to the pe- culiarities of this or that particular specimen, whether peradventure wheat or tare. For me the sowing-time extended through more than a decade, beginning and concluding with the reading of a wide variety of books Eleven Constructive Modernism on religious subjects; embracing also a period of years devoted to the intensive study of tech- nical theology under instructors of unques- tionable ability and character, some of them then and afterward under mild suspicion of heresy. With a distinctly scriptural back- ground acquired in an early environment of the traditional type and something of the sci- entific spirit which comes of peering through the microscope to observe the sequence of phys- ical phenomena, I have been content for some years past to let the seed-truths spring up and grow night and day, I knew not how, bring- ing forth fruit according to laws of the spir- itual harvest. Very similar to my own has been the ex- perience of a multitude of others who have made the quest of God their controlling in- centive. Confidence in the outcome is height- ened for me by the consideration that during nearly twenty years of rather intimate asso- ciation with students preparing for the minis- try I have scarcely known one of more than mediocre ability who failed to develop either marked sympathy or a measure of enthusiasm for the tenets of Modernism, as was virtually inevitable. A few I have known to take alarm | as soon as they felt the leaven working within Twelve Uprooting and Replanting their minds, resulting in their speedy departure and sensational tales that infidelity was being taught. One prudent father of my acquaint- ance succeeded in persuading his son to enter the active ministry immediately upon com- pleting the regular college courses, expressing a deep repugnance for modern ideas of relig- ion and thereby leaving the young man utter- ly unfitted to deal with them intelligently or effectually. Just here is much or most of the significance of what is termed the revolt of youth, refusing to run from every bogie conjured up in its behalf, and alas! the source of much or most of the irreligion which has , resulted from an honest but purely supereroga- tory choice between new facts and old falla- cies. It would be not impossible, perhaps even not difficult, to enumerate the fundamental principles of constructive Modernism in a doz- en or a score of concise statements bearing a general resemblance to the planks of a political platform, but I resist the temptation at pres- ent in the hope of clarifying and enforcing them as they arise in the course of orderly discussion, possibly to be epitomized at its conclusion. Thirteen THE REQUIREMENT ORR EALTIEY: II NE OF THE TW0O inexorable de- O mands which constructive Modernism makes upon the prevalent systems of religious thought is that of rigorous reality, as con- trasted with specious superstition, gushing gen- erality or metaphysical meandering. The very first essential of wholesome religion is reality, whereas the peculiar and characteristic curse of tortuous theology has ever been unreality. Obscured in some measure by the dust of current controversy, this fact becomes obvious in the long perspective of history, from the time when fanatical partisans flayed each other figuratively and literally over an iota subscript, indulged in the intellectual gymnastics of scholasticism, presently pounded each other to pulp over the mode of baptism and otherwise proved their religion orthodox by apostolic blows and knocks. Then end is not yet. My outstanding im- pression of the preaching of the last thirty- odd years is that of inapplicability to immedi- ate conditions. In the earlier portion of the period mentioned the staples of discussion were the devious deductions of dogmatic theology based for the greater part upon such passages as are found in the earlier chapters of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, issuing in the Seventeen Constructive Modernism amplification and alleged elucidation of themes entirely orthodox but dead as Adam’s brindle ox. Regularly, once a year, during the revival season, the preacher descended to the level of ordinary comprehension, resorted to exhorta- tions and ’rousements, enabling him to report a substantial ingathering of members. At the present time in this section of the country it is all but impossible to find a mature man or woman who professed conversion or joined the church outside of dog-days. With myself it was midsummer campmeeting time, between laying-by and fodder-pulling, after the strait- est dictates of orthodoxy. This was and is the fault of antecedents rather than of the particular individual or group. Ministerial acceptability then as now resided largely, if not chiefly, in the knack of imparting an impression of profundity by dex- trous manipulation of high-sounding phrases, buttressing belligerent orthodoxy with ostensi- bly conclusive scriptural citations and play- ing upon the erotic emotions with a fine fren- zy of impassioned oratory. One of the’ most melancholy and far from infrequent specta- cles is that of the eloquent preacher who fails to get his bottled eloquence successfully un- corked and emits a sermonic fizzle. Needless Eighteen The Requirement of Reality to remark, the profundity rings hollowly, the ostensible orthodoxy often bespeaks intellec- tual indolence and the lachrymose ebullitions are home-brewed. Such alleged preaching, once generic, now has its habitat chiefly in the South, with steadily diminishing influence. May it diminish increasingly, unless, as one is led to fear, its place is to be taken by the esthetic essays, political polemics and sociologi- cal soliloquizings which pass for preaching in some other sections. Either way, most ser- mons nowadays tend undeviatingly to dullness, and it would appear about equally difficult one place or another to be reasonably assured of hearing a deliverance which might be ex- pected to impart a ripple of intellectual im- pact, produce a sense of spiritual elevation and fortify moral resolution. Upon the psychological and ethical reaction of the minister, more often than otherwise a man of lofty motives, it is painful to dwell. Normally the stress may be expected to issue in the type of professionalism which makes this vocation one of the least religious. There is occasion for misgiving and depression in the candid and confidential way in which eld- erly ministers sometimes speak of the lost radiance of their earlier career, and very often Nineteen Constructive Modernism their silence itself is more revealing than _ speech. Aiming always at regularity—‘track- ing the track,” as one of them phrased it in my hearing—repeating platitudes, pushing pre- scribed programs, threshing out the theological straw whose dust has about suffocated spir- ituality, fostering feeble faith which was never robust enough to doubt, administering sooth- ing syrup instead of iron tonic,— these are ex- ceedingly poor substitutes for proclaiming eternal spiritual verities that make men wise unto salvation. In sharp contrast with this debilitating course of procedure is the quiet, courageous and properly reverent quest of truth that marks the better manifestation of the spirit of our own time, which is rightly associated with and under weighty obligation to research in the natural sciences, whose subject matter is the handiwork of God himself. The very willingness to follow any assured or predomi- nantly probable clue to its ultimate ascertain- able source and culmination is an evidence and actual form of faith in the natural or super- natural order more: meritorious than mere blind credulity. If it were indeed necessary, as some of the deluded devotees of decadent orthodoxy have so vociferously affirmed, to Twenty The Requirement of Reality make definite choice between the two methods of approach to truth, we should hardly be dis- posed to lament for the feeble hearts and lame brains incidentally lost to the cause of ad- vancement. Modernism lives in the realm of reality and breathes the pure atmosphere of veracity. It offers hospitality to any and all truth from any and all sources, and makes emphatic denial of the premise that under any condition conceiv- able or inconceivable one positive truth can in any particular contradict, though it may su- persede and displace, another. For it every ascertained facts stands as a landmark upon the eternal thoroughfare of progress, and the timorous throwing of a mantle of concealment over it effects nothing else than the contriving of a perilous stumbling-stone. Modernism fully shares, and actually antic- ipated, the conviction which is now making a quick and thorough conquest of scientific thought that the ground of the universe is spiritual rather than material, as so long as- sumed and blatantly asserted. The supposedly inert, unoriginated and indestructible stuff which is the staple of science has been chased in nympholeptic leaps from planet to sun, from sun to system, thence to constellation, cosmos Twenty-one Constructive Modernism and macrocosmos; in the opposite direction through all the successive mazes of molecule, atom, ion, electron and microcosmic surmise to the infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed, endowed with obvious in- telligence, which inevitably means—God. The undevout scientist of today, having first or- phaned himself, is at the point of losing all his remaining family. If, in such spiritual setting, the proper and scientific study of mankind is man, assuredly the fact of paramount interest and importance concerning him must needs be a spiritual fact, which is both the luminous conception of Jesus and the logical contention of Christianity. It follows that a radical change to true corre- spondence with the spiritual environment is the consummate experience, and this means exactly—conversion. Although there are as many and reliable data concerning this spirit- ual rebirth as can be marshalled in any field of research, be it said to the everlasting shame of obsolescent science that it has ineptly ig- nored or openly sneered at spiritual phenomena just as verifiable and now becoming recognized as immeasurably more significant than the most familiar physical phases, thereby both stultify- ing and discrediting itself and entailing the Twenty-two The Requirement of Reality penalty of unscientific bias. Yet every decade has produced men who were at once scientific specialists and spiritual seers, and their tribe steadily increases. In particular, the new psy- chology is emerging as a notable ally of the new theology. For the sake of final consistency, if for no other reason, constructive Modernism must in- creasingly emphasize spiritual values, which implies simply the utmost importance of re- ligion and the utter impotence of mere nega- tion. New and hidden meanings emerge from the pungent and solemn query, “What shal] a man be profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own life?” With this stupendous conviction at heart, its votary becomes as the man finding treasure hid in a field, and for joy thereof, going and selling all he has to procure it; or the merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and finding one of great price, surren- dering all other possesions to make it his own. Traditionalism, on the other hand, caught a glimpse of the treasure and hastily departed to publish the fact abroad, afterward returning to find it vanished and its own latter state worse than the former. Not more, but vastly less, of consequence attaches to discovery of spiritual truth than to what one subsequently Twenty-three Constructive Modernism does about it. The age-long and inescapable indictment of organized religion is wrenched emphasis of values. Modernism in its better manifestations is simply Traditionalism that has awakened from its troubled slumber at the touch of reality, and has set itself, a bit feverishly it may be, to the task of working out at one and the same time a life and a philosophy of life which are worthy our magnificent opportunity as fellow- workers with God in a redemptive program of illimitable outreach. The ground of confidence in such truth as it has apprehended, and the only assured hope of continued progress, is found in the assump- tion and assertion that the human reason has an inherent affinity for and pre-adaptation to truth, much as the lungs and other physical organs exhibit unique prenatal fitness for their several functions. All these forms of activity persist as mere potentialities until, in the ful- ness of time, they are pushed forward by an invisible urge, which seems to say, “Breathe or suffocate. Think or forfeit the power of thought.” All alike are developed and disci- plined by proper use, and alike become more fit through right functioning. We steadfastly affirm that the conscious human personality is Twenty-four The Requirement of Reality not the waif of chance, marooned upon some remote and uncharted shoal of the cosmos to wander in hopeless bewilderment through deepening darkness to ultimate unmerciful dis- aster; but that instead it is a legitimate off- spring of the Infinite, heir of a glorious in- heritance, at home in one of its Father’s many mansions, amid an environment infinitely fa- vorable to normal and progressive develop- ment, entrusted even now with powers and potencies hazardous far beyond the danger- point if misdirected and yet beneficently pro- phetic of the eventual attainment of godlike at- tributes that overreach reason and consign even the most opulent imagination to the poorhouse. Twenty-five ‘ \ , ry i 5 cu oA? Aes / , \ } x ‘ tt } +: j . 1 ‘ H 4 ‘ ! | uf i 1s \ r! Py Pe 4 4 ’ ¥ si * q cr 8 vu ‘ 1 Pus 0 Gs 4-5 Pade aie nah! lta a F . #6) L) i : T» ) 5 Umi mihi Ne K es ine = NA tat { | } ei) tua : re { A is 24/0 ‘ ' y) PAeUR ENO Ptah aly i : ae, 9g Ag St ee ¥ a ar | , 1? —- Die Wet i 2 / nie i ¥ MY if 4h ie y REE i ME Mane 6 i Oy Loe? ey ‘ bs Oe eS ve vi ' A 4 ‘ i Hl re ‘ ray. ‘Gh ot % is A ‘ Ne ; j f ‘ ? et irk: | y ae ae { Fy 7 ; 4] iy ‘ pu ny i) 8 (SG | : : ‘ } ' 1) ; : SERA AAA : , ¢ é at - ; vy ‘t ee 1 : f (ohana ih ae va Fh | ie ee ‘ t m aA f f . soleil oe i) “NE Claas ee i T ‘ i fj yy a A ‘ s 4g P Pas , ¥ Uy it Be ; , Natt i vil Rie r j 7 = PA: i oe } e4 -* Ghee ‘ ‘ ' ei PALEY ite a) sie A Oye ial “' irs f PP x 5 Po F a“ x se nn) ( e's . THE REQUIREMENT OF RIGHTNESS Il OT LESS notable than the intellectual quickening since the advent of the sci- entific method of investigating truth has been the moral and spiritual rebirth under the practical though pitiably inadequate appli- cation in all social relationships of the hu- manistic principles of liberty, fraternity, equal- ity. This has wrought in effect the resurgence of virile Christianity, and gains rather than loses impressiveness by reason of the fact that it emerged most definitely from the lawless- ness and bloodshed and militant disbelief which immediately preceded, attended and followed the cataclysm we term the French Revolution. Not less significantly, in its subsequent stages it has prevailed largely outside the fold of .or- ganized religion and very often in hostility to it. There is grave reason to fear that a mis- taken zeal to avoid the very appearance of evil in this guise may have impelled the Church to embrace and hug to its bosom the reality thereof. When the human personality has become possessed of the passion for justice and right- eousness it is worse than folly to say, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.” The only alternative to freedom of intellectual inquiry and supremacy of the moral consciousness is Twenty-nine Constructive Modernism the bald denial of any place to either and both. Herein the Roman Catholic Church alone is consistent, and it is not surprising that in the quest of spiritual tranquillity many eminent men have been driven to commit both their intellect and conscience to its sovereign custody. When Martin Luther entered upon his spectacular career he lifted the lid from Pan- dora’s box and smashed it to splinters. Along with the resultant moral revulsion at the satur- nalia of licentiousness and covetousness per- petrated and condoned by the papal regime, and logically consequent upon it, was the inference of individual freedom in interpret- ing the scriptures—a prerogative previously monopolized by a chosen few theologians under the tutelage and imprimatur of Holy Church. That Luther could not always constrain cer- tain other men equally educated and equally conscientious to agree with all his interpreta- tions is not in the least surprising. At any rate he may be written down as the outstand- ing forerunner of Modernism, and very few Roman Catholics will be found questioning his clear claim to the distinction. But he signally failed to free himself and his following from the consummate doctrinal curse of Christianity, Thrity The Requirement of Rightness inherited from Paul and Augustine, which task fell to succeeding generations. John Wesley prided himself upon the scrip- turalness of his teachings, but in asserting and emphasizing the freedom of the human will and repudiating the monstrous doctrines of election, predestination, foreordination, he went directly counter to the weight of scrip- tural authority outside the utterances of Jesus himself as recorded in the first three gospels. The plain man who reads the famous passages in the writings of St. Paul, ranking theologian of Christianity, cannot escape the conclusion that he held tenaciously to these tenets, how- ever much he tended to abrogate them in preaching an unlimited atonement; likewise there appears to be little if any question upon the point among the scholars who are most familiar with the documents in the original language. Yet their major premise is an odious insult to the conscience, degrading God to the moral plane of the human father who would bring children into involuntary existence, cast them off cruelly to struggle against impossible odds, force them into careers of crime and then devote all his energies to sending them to the gallows. Rigid Calvinism thus dispenses with the Devil by putting God in his place. Thirty-one Constructive Modernism Dr. Samuel Johnson, contemporary of Wesley, declared that commonsense never made any man believe it, and now we may add that a sense of common justice and even decency is enough to make any right-minded man in- stantly and indignantly reject it, however scrip- tural. Thirty years ago in the far west I heard the question debated by two ministers, Meth- odist and Baptist, and the thrill of an utterance quoted, though disapprovingly, by the former has never wholly passed from me: “I beg leave to differ with St. Paul.” At the time it startled and even shocked me, but my sus- ceptibility to shock has considerably dimin- ished. At present it appears that only two Protestant denominations of repute in the United States even nominally hold to predes- tination, all others having expressly repudiated it. These two operate exclusively in the South, and representative men of both communions declare that even here the doctrine is virtually abandoned. In the same class of rejected teachings we may mention a few of many—such as literal, inerrant and equal inspiration of each and ew ery part of the sixty-six books constituting the Bible; innate depravity of mankind; a legal or mechanistic plan of salvation from eternal pun- Thirty-two The Requirement of Rightness ishment; imputed guilt or innocence; various penal and substitutional theories of atonement —with any and all other hypotheses which do violence to moral sanctions and make salvation a quibble or dodge rather than the imparta- tion and nuture of the divine life. For myself, the deliberate decision was reached long years ago, and is since intensified rather than abated, to make the crucial test of any teaching its conformity or disconformity to the prompt- ings of a conscience unreservedly committed to follow divine guidance. Nor could conscience continue to function truly upon any other con- dition. The present pitiable plight of the Church, in the eyes of thoughtful and earnest observers, has arisen directly from a settled disposition to compromise as between conscience and ex- pediency. Fearful of requiring any radical de- parture from conventional attitudes and prac- tices, thereby subjecting its claim of super- natural endowment to a definite test, it has chosen rather to lower its moral and spiritual standards to unobjectionable levels, “putting the bars so low anybody can jump over them,” as the revivalists phrase it. By consenting to make itself conformable it has effectually for- feited its powers to transform. Purposing to Thirty-three Constructive Modernism become inclusive, it is only thoroughly incon- clusive. Never before in the annals of Chris- tianity were so many persons so well disposed to indorse Jesus Christ or so ill disposed to follow him. Never were there so many who said “Yes” with their lips and “No” with their lives. Never were so many of the same mem- bers in good standing in both the Church and the penitentiary, despite their uncanny clever- ness in evading the latter. Organized religion never had more of fuss or less of force than at the present time. Modernism increasingly rejects and repudi- ates the type of engrafted piety which brings forth upon its various branches all manner of fruit, good and evil. In its contemplation the spiritual laws which are revealed as subsisting in our relationships to God—no less real and operative than those which hold planets in their ordered orbits—are the patterns of lesser laws which pervade with beneficent sway every re- lationship of man to man, whether political, economic, social, or other; and no access or ex- cess of fervor in hymns and prayers wafted heavenward can suffice for the lack of common honesty and humane liberality exercised earth- ward. The pull of the Golden Rule is deemed Thirty-four The Requirement of Rightness ultimately as inescapable as the pull of gravi- tation. As in the former dilemma relating to the reliability or unreliability of the human rea- son, we reach the analogous conclusion that while the conscience is primarily a mere bundle of potencies awaiting development and direc- tion, eventually it becomes the sole and sufh- cient arbiter of spiritual values for the indi- vidual. Apart from its monitions one may formally assent to or dissent from any moral proposition, but such act is extraneous and has no other effect than to produce confusion worse confounded. Upon the particular point this position is in essential accord with the teaching of the Quakers concerning the “in- ner light,” and the remark is heard with in- creasingly frequency that this group is more nearly than any other representative of the re- ligion of the future. Illuminism is based upon the hypothesis, substantiated to the complete satisfaction of many, including myself, that conscience is be- stowed by the Creator, possessing inherent af- finity and pre-adaption for perceiving moral verities no less naturally than the bodily organs function and the reason operates in its proper sphere. Very similarly conscience is first man- Thirty-five Constructive Modernism ifested through potencies, pushed forward by an invisible force, increasingly directed by free personality toward right or wrong devel- opment, which former result is worth the whole soul’s tasking and which latter is trag- edy unspeakable. It follows that in the func- tioning of conscience idle curiosity is an in- sult and indifference a crime. Acute sensi- bility to good and evil corresponds to the fluctuations of a delicate instrument for meas- urement of weight, space or time, and is equally amenable to abuse and deterioration. In daily affairs of life it is the one unfailing monitor, and in the form of profound convic- tions of right and wrong provides the real groundwork of practical religion, quite apart from creed. It is a bit surprising how religi- ously many persons live with atrocious theo- logical dogmas, which phenomenon bears tes- timony to the fact that moral verities are self- attesting and normally dominant. These and many other considerations war- rant the inference, which Modernism frankly accepts and confidently asserts in contravention of Traditionalism, that mankind is not fallen but ascending—not disallowed or disinherited of God, but slowly and painfully led onward, with many stumblings and backslidings, into Thirty-six The Requirement of Rightness the glorious liberty of perfect sonship. It af- firms that religion, being innate, will grow up naturally in the heart if it is not crushed into deformity, in which event it will continue to grow unnaturally; that the religion of Jesus Christ, given to help lift a rising race, im- presses no alien influence upon human nature, but instead supplements its normal powers, be- ing ideally adapted thereto and perfectly ar- ticulated therewith; that the habitual attitude and individual act of reverent obedience opens the windows of the soul just as surely as dis- obedience closes them; that the heaven within and the heaven yet to be are alike dependent upon right relationship to salutary environ- ment, whereas wilful maladjustment begun here and logically projected into the hereafter if conscious identity is to persist augurs a hotter hell than Dante or Jonathan Edwards ever im- agined. Thirty-seven SCRIPT URAL MODERNISM IV F MODERNISM should ever attempt to JL displace or destroy the Bible it would tac- itly make all needful preparation for its own obsequies. With equal wisdom a loco- motive engineer would engage in a conspiracy to undermine the mighty bridge upon which his train was expected to cross a mountain gorge. The present state of nervous tension among nearly all classes of passengers bound for the promised land is due chiefly to the ap- prehension that the few Modernists on board entertain overt designs upon the celestial causeway, while the latter group assert merely that their fellow-travelers insist upon making a permanent sojourn thereupon, instead of passing onward to the sweet fields beyond the swelling flood. Almost any constructive Modernist would assent cheerfully to the dictum propounded in the opening sentence of the Epistle to the He- _ brews—the one and only explicit and compre- hensive statement of the character and scope of divine revelation to be found in all the scriptures—that God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, has at the end of these days spoken unto us through his Son. As a graphic delineation of the pro- Forty-one Constructive Modernism cess of partial and progressive revelation un- der widely diverse conditions—the measure of the revelation being limited always and only by the receptivity of the human agent—culminat- ing in the perfect revelation of Jesus Christ, made possible by his perfect receptivity and responsiveness, this passage would be very dificult of improvement. Viewed simply and sympathetically as a trustworthy record of the spiritual experiences of those who have sought and found God more truly than any others have done, and to whom God revealed himself in the fullest measure of their knowledge and capability, subject also to all their existing limitations of every de- scription, the Bible is beyond all comparison the most priceless volume in the possession of the race—a treasure-trove of truth without which we would soon revert to spiritual pau- perism. It is therefore deserving of the most undivided attention and vigorous thinking which we can bestow upon it, with no place, however, for the false valuation and ignorant veneration so generally elicited, whether through devious design or mere intellectual in- ertia. In addition to declaring the loftiest spirit- ual principles mankind has ever known, and Forty-two Scriptural Modernism illustrating the manner of their operation in the pulsing life of those sanguine souls who now aspired and now yielded to insidious temptation, walking sometimes in the gorge of gloom and anon upon the heaven-kissing hills—apart from exhibiting all this with an artlessness beyond art and a convincingness that forestalls attempted proof, the Bible em- bodies in many portions direct revelations of the essential nature of God and man of which no more than the faintest intimations have ever come through any other medium of history or literature. At its very threshold, in the gray morning light of history, we are startled by the audacious announcement of the inherent kinship and spiritual likeness of the human and the divine. A millennium afterward, in the midst of the earlier dispensation, we find the depicture of man as made but little lower than God—not the angels, as erroneously translated—and crowned with glory and honor. At the consummation we look upon Jesus exalting the unspoiled humanness of childhood as the fittest earthly type of heavenly- mindedness, and in answer to the charge of blasphemy declaring (John 10:34) the es- sential divinity of humanity. Throughout the greater portion of the scriptures the dominant Forty-three Constructive Modernism motivation is that men shall make actual and present their potentially divine sonship. A more inspired or inspiring summons could not be conceived, and to suppose either that it shall be outgrown or shall ever fail to awaken the ardent enthusiasm of nobler souls is about equally gratuitous and absurd. Revelation emerges even more clearly in the reading of the scriptures than in the writing, upon a principle somewhat analogous to that which identifies the phenomena of sight and sound not with the agency from which they appear to proceed, but with the eye and ear that function in response to the respective stimuli. If the tenets of faith be conceived as once for all delivered unto the saints now de- ceased, it was for the express purpose of being apprehended increasingly by those coming af- ter them. Revelation is degraded if it be un- derstood as anything less than deep calling unto deep—the actually infinite communica- ting itself to the potentially infinite. It is no less true now than when written nearly twenty centuries ago that the letter of the scripture kills and the spirit of the scrip- ture imparts spiritual life. Given to men as a clue to guide them through the labyrinthine maze of ignorance and immaturity to fuller Forty-four Scriptural Modernism knowledge and larger liberty, the same scrip- tures are capable of being made, and in fact are more often than otherwise made, a bond which fetters the spirit in darkness. One might even encounter, some difficulty in dif- ferentiating between the present excessive ven- eration of our spiritual forefathers, the usually holy men of old through whom God spoke in the divers portions and manners aforemen- tioned, and the veneration of physical ances- tors which stamps the Chinese people as pa- gans. The quest of God in the Bible is a subtle form of idolatry; the quest of God through and beyond the medium of the experiences of other men as reliably recorded in the Bible is at once reasonable and scientific, provided we observe the same reactions in ourselves as they report having found. It follows that their chief if not sole value for us is in their like- ness rather than their unlikeness to ourselves. This is pre-eminently true of Jesus Christ, though the emphasis has been shifted all but invariably to the superhuman valuations of his personality, despite his favorite and habitual characterization of himself as the son of man, which would plainly appear to anticipate and counteract this very tendency. Forty-five Constructive Modernism Concerning the future appraisal of the Bible and estimate of its authority by the construc- tive Modernist a few trenchant statements may be made, without present opportunity to discuss or defend them: He will rely implicitly upon those teachings which can be verified in his own experience, and no other. He will staunchly refrain from accepting as true anything therein which he would feel compelled to reject elsewhere. He will steadfastly believe that God is just as ready to reveal himself to his waiting chil- dren as he has ever been; that the only con- clusive evidence of his having ever spoken to men is that he still speaks to them; that the word of God to the individual is final for the individual. Forty-six CHRISTIAN MODERNISM vw hy t #F, Oa j iy a¢ f i 4 Pi lal P te f ’ ‘ Ls ha erat coe J i nde : i) Par a PLP re j FiAr “a i‘ ] + A ’ , a pw i i? i) ; opayg a“ a) ae ry : 1 a Rit - ‘s 4 Te ee Oa a ; pa pul “in ity ee ld Ki reek) eae A WORD Taare in j be i jj y V VENTUALLY Modernism will stand G and would fall with Jesus Christ. The speediest and surest method of deter- mining its own destiny is to stake everything upon him—not upon his deity, which, however true, is a metaphysical abstraction eluding finite grasp and defying even definition; nor upon his mysterious control of the forces of nature, which is about equally a help and a hindrance to understanding his character and mission—but instead upon the perfection of the personality of Jesus himself, who becomes to us immeasurably more than prodigy or sign; who makes all other recorded miracles credible but trivial; who, bearing his own witness with- in the soul, imparting the benediction of his own present blessedness and the perennial power of triumphant living, throws all hearsay evidence out of court as incompetent, irrele- vant and immaterial. Traditionalists, miscalling themselves Funda- mentalists, despite their fine facility in missing all the final fundamentals, through the centu- ries have made the momentously melancholy blunder of resting their cause upon external evidences—more specifically the infallibility of the scriptures and the authority of the Church, each in turn representing a progressive de- Forty-nine Constructive Modernism clension from the proper plane of spiritual certitude. Upon the former point it may be confidently asserted that their emphasis is as obviously wrenched as their fears are fatuous. The foundations that rest upon sand cannot be stabilized by their most frantic efforts, and those that rest upon the rock stand in no need of their puny props. The truths and values that are as a city set upon a hill can not be hidden and exclude exploitation. Much as a gigantic redwood towers above a scrub-oak thicket, the essential truths are superior to their incidental setting, and most of all the incar- nate Truth overtops the four fragmentary nar- ratives of that marvelous career which have come down to us from uncertain sources, as copies of other lost copies, translations of trans- lations, spoken in one language, written in an- other and read in still others, without ante- cedent, date, signature or other authentication than the altogether unique character of their contents, which of itself alone validates the first three, at least. There is the added evi- dence of the labors and the letters of Saint Paul, which have of their own virility disarmed criticism and disbelief, though with no warrant Fifty Christian Modernism for the extravagant veneration which at Lystra the Apostle himself so vehemently disavowed. Reposing upon no such flimsy foundation, but providentially placed beyond the reach of chance and change, the claims of Christianity are supported by two distinct, credible and converging lines of testimony which may be confidently counted upon to defy any future critical or scientific impeachment: First, their historical background, involving the necessity of conceding and the psychological absurdity of denying that Jesus Christ and Saul of Tar- sus, to mention no others, are more surely his- torical personages than Oliver Cromwell and George Washington; second, their abiding power, in that the outstanding principles then proclaimed and applied, with their attendant phenomena, have been and may be abundantly verified in every generation down to the pres- ent, and by each and every individual who will test them fairly, with less of room for error and smaller need of conjecture than any known or suspected physical facts. With reference to the Church as the sup- posed dispenser of gifts and graces, as it has been and is now in contrast with what it was designed and empowered to be, one who is in the most cordial sympathy with its proper Fifty-one Constructive Modernism work must needs speak in words of deeper sorrow than the wail above the dead. Having definitely shifted, almost before the fires of Pentecost ceased to burn, from the realm of the spiritual to that of the formal, with noth- ing more than rare sporadic efforts to regain its lost glory, the Church has long been and is now a congeries of contradictions, collectively incapable of receiving or utilizing any endow- ment of consequence, yet comprising in its individual aspects about all that is worth while in the sphere of human betterment. With its ludicrous and pernicious conception, traceable to priestly influences, of two different classes of adherents, represented respectively by the ministry and laity, one active and the other passive, with different stages and standards of morality—all this in sharp contrast with the clear individual summons of Jesus, himself a layman, to seek the kingdom of God before all else—it is truly a spectacle to make angels weep and disbelievers blaspheme. And now, the very heathen, wiser in their generation than the children of light, have begun to draw the clear and unmistakable distinction between Christianity and Christ which his professed followers have so stupidly and purposely ig- nored. Fifty-two. Christian Modernism Changeless in the midst of change, above fetid fog and moral miasma and all the more transcendent because of them, the commanding and spiritually irresistible figure of Jesus Christ is emerging to the view of myriad eyes long beclouded and peering wistfully for fuller un- veiling. And in him the two indicated de- mands of constructive Modernism are ade- quately and abundantly met. Jesus Christ incarnates reality. No act or gesture or word of intimation of the artificial or theatrical in any degree attaches to his per- sonality. He faced the physical facts of suf- fering and death with never a denial of their verity but instead an assertion and demon- stration of other facts which embraced and overreached them. In dealing with spiritual problems, where theology has been always most deviously confusing he was most crystal clear. Sin and selfishness were realities, but goodness and sacrificial love had power to overcome them. Mankind in general and the punctil- ious churchmen of his day in particular were lost as sheep not having a shepherd, though not “lost” in the distorted significance of Tra- ditionalism; he pitied them and pointed out the plain path which a wayfaring man though a fool need never miss. Fifty-three Constructive Modernism Of his exemplification of the quality of rightness it would appear all but impertinent to speak. His critics and detractors have searched as vainly as diligently for any flaw or foible, and his earnest followers have found riches of joy unfathomable. To walk with him, even stumblingly, is to walk away from sin and selfishness. To become like him is ul- timate attainment, for the measure of any vir- tue is its Christlikeness. To gain his earthly point of view is to achieve triumph out of tragedy, peace out of pain, sight out of blind- ness and purity out of a stain. To catch the resplendent sublimity of his calm survey of the eternal is to know and share the power of the endless life. Constructive Modernism—and with it the Eventual Church—has before it the one defin- ite task of apprehending and exemplifying more truly the spirit of Jesus Christ than has been done before. So only will it serve God in service to his other children. Fifty-four Se eS se aaa se - eS Th 5 ast OE a mp ES : : - : ~ Sj rk ge RE ae ET Po lori d ; a = 7+ 2 See Se ss ol ca = sea * aS Sd * Re oe Bn a ee en i pe ee Oe | PR ee ert ermal . : cam , a : : — ue bee Sa es Se me spas sa acirccliact ee to toe Fight” a a Se eS Sas % pap oe . eee ee Pree Vig Ss aie A ng nani sha serene ae teal ae 7 . AE oh. ga, ee eek 9 ee 8 Roane Sa ee “¢ = - a a at; = Pen a ee =e aa 2 inn Carat ec 5c epee EEO sents pea: = a 4 fe teal —, eas ces tae , oe : ie ee en Wy be . ee Se eS Be Se : sae = NE: RRR ie le - : ; ; : = rc > > a Ws eg ae! gg pO IE pe — = > ie Fee SO ee brid ge MeIT cat ne al ca es at Ame O Aaa Hered Seach gs =~ - a“ ~r. i i : a ’ ae RS Er a} Si a a iia’, ee > antae pean. — > & = pe an aan eee = iT ~~ 41 1012 01235 5105