a Inte belt state! : ratte SRR ETD abana : isan es te See bia) Sree Peay dtp: ee aca tt ; SM x eS vince asei : Ss wv Met te s : sa sts ee oe Rie ? <> Pie wy ei x hig eek Ro s ERS. Me eae * oe i ; ; és che ‘ iy 7 A Ge a rors : Le a 4 ere woes Pl & ae Sip aS zs ~. See Lx = Se ot! ese Tee eS ve Nye rere: NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH SHERWOOD EDDY oy . 4 es ae % . NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH WHAT SHALL I BELIEVE IN THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLOGY AND THE NEW SCIENCE > 4 NO ¥ 9 1926. ~ en OgioaL sew BY SHERWOOD” EDDY xew G9) vor GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1926, By_GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH WaT ee PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS PAGE OTE WOE ot ioe eae eee tials LUN Ua nN ou aS Tie vii CHAPTER PE PLEIN E,W GLEE NGG aie ee ur ena hai 13 The Triumphs of Modern Science............ 13 Science/and ‘Religions oun kos sida ey oe Bole 2 25 BLVOMItON yee Wiech e sce Deal LHe nar Mean a2 FROLALIVILY cee cick Dal Sicitalet iota sia se es ot eemnca gee 40 Li LAEONEW | PSYCHOLOGY ooo s See 51 Behaviorisin Geese te eee eee ne 51 Pav choanalysisyo sec iki Vales eh eke eee te 78 Mine KoCStall OCHO ess scares select ates 90 III. ANEW DISCOVERY OF GOD............... 98 PRIN ACUEE ic ache ee Ce ta ih saute Pe 114 BPIVEATE erates Sart oo awh are Be 118 BE POXDCTIEN CE el wins eines eae to ater ald 127 hie tae NEW VIEW. OF. THE BIBLES oo. oe. 132 Vanier tio CLRISTIANITY 2.00 20 ee ues 166 Its Sources in the Old Testament.............. 167 Meta’ OF CHrISty (2. sted Tummy SINS bi 170 ine Contribution. Of bal veces coc uie coe aia 182 The Oriental Mystery Religions.............. 189 VI. THE NEW REFORMATION................ 194 eneNeed 17 The INAHOM Moe eae anion el ecute 196 mh mecd: tn the Coirch eee an etal o 205 The Character of the Reformation............ 220 i Ni KY, nM; oan FOREWORD After thitty years of work the writer had the privilege of a sabbatical year. He felt the need of catching up with the new science, especially in the possible implications of relativity. He wanted time to study and evaluate the new psychology, especially in the applications of behaviorism and the Freudian schools. He needed time for reading in the new currents of thought in philosophy and theology. Accord- ingly the academic year 1925-26 was spent in Columbia, Teachers College and Union Theological Seminary in the center of some of the new movements of thought. Toward the close of the year the suggestion came of sharing some of the results with many who had not the privilege of such a sabbatical year, nor the good fortune of studying in such a center, nor access to the books in the libraries of New York. The field covered in this short volume is obviously too wide for thorough and exhaustive work in any one depart- ment. The book lays no claim to originality. It is rather an attempt to gather and share thoughts from a hundred other volumes, each of which treats some special subject more adequately than can be attempted here. The author’s views are personal and unofficial and do not represent those of any other individual or organization. The author’s thanks are due to many friends for reading portions of the manuscript. He hesitates to mention some of them lest it should seem to make them responsible for any of the errors or shortcomings of the book. His grateful thanks are due to Dr. Otis Caldwell and Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, the joint authors of “Science Remaking the World,” for their suggestions on the chapter on the New Science; to Dr. Gardner Murphy, Dr. E. C. Lindeman and Dr. Goodwin Watson for their valuable criticisms on the New Psychology, and also to Professor Harrison Elliott for help in the final Vil vill FOREWORD revision of this chapter; to Professor J. H. Howson for suggestions on the chapter on the Discovery of God; to Professor Frame on the New View of the Bible; to his colleague, Mr. Patrick Malin, for help in revising the entire manuscript, and to Miss B. W. Parker for correcting the proofs. As in the King James and Revised Versions pronouns referring to God or Christ are not printed in capitals. A bibliography for further reading on each of the chapters is included at the end. Some of these books are available in the free loan library of the Fellowship for a Christian Social Order, Room 505, 347 Madison Avenue, New York. New York, 1926, The author acknowledges permission to quote from Behaviorism by J. B. Watson, published 1924, by W. W. Norion & Company, Inc. fest | A ee NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Cuapter I THE NEW SCIENCE THE TRIUMPHS OF MODERN SCIENCE Modern science constitutes a new challenge to faith. Let tis consider this challenge in the light of the brilliant achieve- ments of the new science, its history, its relation to religion, and the specific problems presented by evolution, relativity and the new conception of matter. If the nineteenth century was “the wonderful century” of invention, the twentieth bids fair to be the super-century of discovery. Alfred Russell Wallace contrasts the great inventions of the nineteenth century with all preceding ages. He maintains that there were twenty-four epoch-making new discoveries between 1800 and 1900 and only sixteen of equal importance in all preceding history. In the following table the practical inven- tions are noted first, and the theoretical discoveries follow. EPOCH-MAKING DISCOVERIES Preceding Ages Nineteenth Century Practical Inventions Practical Inventions 1. The Use of Fire 1. Railways 2. The Mariner’s Compass 2. Steamships 3. The Steam Engine 3. Telegraph 4. The Telescope 4. Telephone 5. Barometer and Ther- 5. Lucifer Matches mometer 6. Gas Illumination 6. Printing 7. Electric Light 8. Photography 9. Phonograph 10. Rontgen Rays 11. Spectrum-analysis 12. Anesthetics 13. Antiseptics 1 Alfred R. Wallace, “The Wonderful Century,” p. 154. 13 14 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Theoretical Discoveries Theoretical Discoveries 7. Arabic Numerals 14. Conservation of Energy 8. Alphabetical Writing 15. Molecular Theory of 9. Modern Chemistry Gases 10. Electric Science 16.' Velocity jot" bagny 11. Gravitation Earth’s Rotation 12. Kepler’s Laws 17. Uses of Dust 13. Differential Calculus 18. Chemistry 14. Circulation of the Blood 19. Meteoric Theory 15. Finite Velocity of Light 20. The Glacial Epoch 16. Geometry 21. Antiquity of Man 22. Organic Evolution 23. Cell Theory; Embryol- osy | 24. Germ Theory of Disease Almost every year of the new century has witnessed some major discovery or invention. The following is only a partial list. Recent Dtscoveries 1901 Planck’s quantum theory of energy. 1901-03 DeVries theory of mutation. 1902 Rutherford proved emanations of radium. 1903 Orville Wright flew first heavier-than-air machine. 1904 Electron tube first used in radio. 1905 Einstein’s special theory of relativity. 1905 Establishment of vitamines as conditioners of health. 1907 First commercial wireless across Atlantic. 1908 First experimental evidence of atomic theory. 1908 Minkowski’s conception of a four-dimensional world, linking together space and time. 1909 North Pole discovered by Peary. 1909 Millikan measured charge of electron. 1912 South Pole discovered by Amundsen. *From “Science Remaking the World,” Caldwell & Slosson, intro« ductory table. THE NEW SCIENCE 15 1910 Madame Curie isolated metallic radium. 1915 Einstein’s general theory of relativity. 1920 Measurement of Betelgeuse proved existence of giant stars. 1919-1922 Confirmation of prediction of Einstein’s theory that light bends in passing the sun. 1924 Confirmation of Einstein’s prediction that lines in the spectrum of the sun are shifted to the red. 1925 Millikan investigates cosmic rays from space. When the writer went to India in 1896 he had never seen an automobile, but on his recent return from Europe he flew from Berlin to London, breakfasting in Berlin, taking lunch in Hamburg, tea in Amsterdam and dinner in London. At the moment of writing two flights have been made in one week to the North Pole. By wireless we speak around the world in a few relays and a missionary in Africa can now hear the evening concert in London by radio. Great Britain now communicates with Uganda and her other African colonies in one-quarter of a second. Science has condensed our world into a neighborhood, the various parts accessible one to the other by travel in less than one-tenth the time of a generation ago, and by the communication of thought in an instant. And yet while it has shrunk our world it has expanded our universe a thousand times. In the field of biology the scientist has named over twenty- five thousand backboned animals and over two hundred and fifty thousand backboneless animals. Following Mendel, DeVries and others in “creative evolution,” the scientist is producing new species of animals and plants every year and transforming our agriculture. He counts the body’s four billion white blood corpuscles and twenty-five trillion red blood corpuscles, each of which is a complex world in itself. He weighs the half ounce of gray matter in the higher cortex of our brain where we do our thinking and takes a census of its 9,200,000,000 separate nerve cells numbering over five times the population of our earth. “And each cell is a com- plex, intricate, living unit often like a busy telephonic ex- 16 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH change, receiving calls and bringing one part of the body into communication with another. How glibly we talk of a ‘single cell’; but a cell is a little world in itself.”2 Of all these multiplied millions of cells in the human body not one is neglected. By a wonderful system they are kept supplied with food, water and air in proportion to their need, with no neglected slum areas. The secret service of the chemical messengers or “hormones” keeps the whole body regulated and coordinated. Even the humblest of creatures is a world of wonder in itself. As Walt Whitman said, “A mouse is miracle enough to stagger Sextillions of infidels.” Everywhere in this complicated and highly organized uni- verse there is, as Lotze said, “the unity of an onward- advancing melody.” In astronomy we are laying our hands upon the stars. With the naked eye we can see only four thousand stars, with a large telescope several hundred thousand, with a photographic plate in the greatest telescopes, several hundred millions. Some of the stars have been measured, weighed and analysed. No sooner did Laplace say that we should never know the composition of the heavenly bodies than “science invented the spectroscope, by which the exact com- ) position of the sun is better known than the interior of our own earth. We first discovered helium in the sun, then found it on the earth and filled our balloons with it. Our delicate instruments can measure the heat of a candle at a distance of fifty-three miles, or of a star at countless millions of miles. Man can now see 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away, or a million light years, to the “new” universe recently identified by the Harvard Observatory. You can find it in the star catalogue number N. G. C. 6822.2 Yet the light of *J. Arthur Thomson, “Science & Religion,” p. 121. *E. E. Slosson, “Keeping Up With Science,” p. 15. Other facts in this chapter will be found in “Science Remaking the World,” “Crea- tive Chemistry,’ “Chats on Science,” and “Sermons of a Chemist,” by E. E. Slosson. J. Arthur Thomson’s “Outline of Science,” “Science and Religion,” and “The System of Animate Nature’; “Science, Religion and Reality,” by Lord Balfour and others; A. N. White- head’s “Science in the Modern World.” THE NEW SCIENCE Le this “new” universe that reaches us tonight left it a million — years ago. At the moment of writing the Harvard Obser- vatory announces another new star, ten million times brighter than our sun, ten million light years away. It is a brand-new star, the result of a terrific explosion which occurred ten million years ago, though the light has only just reached us traveling at the rate of seven times round the earth in a second.” Science has turned from its conquest of the stars to that of the inner world within the atom. As Bacon said, we have discovered “the secret motions of things.’ It takes a billion billion molecules of hydrogen to make a tiny speck of one one-hundred-and-fiftieth of a pound, yet the scientist can weigh, measure, count and analyse not only the molecules but even the atoms as accurately as the giant stars. Dr. Robert Millikan of the California Institute of Technology studies the atom by the spectroscope, and then brings us his photo- graphs revealing the astronomy of the atom, as the astronomer does of an eclipse.” He finds each atom composed of electrons, or negative particles of electricity, whirling about the protons, or positive particles of electricity, with almost the speed of light. Just as the location of the planet Neptune was calculated and predicted by Professor Adams before it had been seen, so Dr. Millikan on Bohr’s theory calculates the radius of each orbit of these electrons in the ratio of the squares of the numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. He then locates and verifies by photographs the orbits of the electrons.* Just as the astrono- mer predicts the moment of an eclipse and the return of a comet after many years, as Halley’s comet returned on time in 1910, so the physicist sets up his spectroscope, photographs and verifies the motions of the inner world of the atom. 1N. Y. Times, May 20, 1926. Star catalogue N. G. C. 4303. 2“The Stripped Atom,” Scribner’s, May, 1926, p. 477. Prof. Harkins of the University of Chicago has photographed the evidence of the building up of a heavier atom from lighter ones, showing proof of the uniting of two atoms to make a third. ®Dr. Millikan calculates the wave length of radiation that an electron should emit as it changes its position to an orbit nearer the nucleus, and then verifies his prediction by means of the spectroscope. 18 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Some of these electrons when shot out of an atom move at nine-tenths the speed of light which travels 186,000 miles, or more than seven times round the earth, in a second. Yet this is not too fast to elude the scientist. He makes the most accurate observations of these divisions of atoms, which themselves are ten thousand times smaller than the tiniest particles discernable under the microscope. The electron is the smallest thing known in the world yet the scientist can measure its diameter as one five-thousand- billionth of an inch. It would require 5,000,000,000,000 electrons side by side to measure one inch. Each one “weighs” about one eleven-octillionth of an ounce. Pro- fessor Tournier D’Albe calculates the number of electrons in the human body as 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,- 000,000. But this is a mere fraction compared to the num- ber of electrons which, according to Professor Millikan, pour through a common sixteen-candle-power electric light every second. He says that counting at the rate of two electrons a second, it would take the whole population of Chicago 20,000 years to count the number that pass through) the ordinary electric light in a single second. We are in a living universe not one particle of which is still. The scientist counts the electrons, “strips” them off, or adds them to the atoms of the principal elements and brings us the photographs of this wonderful subatomic world, which exists in every particle of matter and of our own bodies. In the sphere of health modern science has conquered smallpox, reduced typhoid, destroyed yellow fever over wide areas, and is advancing in the conquest of tuberculosis and other diseases. It has discovered the friendly germs which destroy the bacteria causing some of our diseases, and we are perhaps on the way to conquer all disease on our planet. A century ago a poor peasant boy, Pasteur, was born in France. In the University of Paris it is not the statue of Napoleon that you see but that of this peasant youth who revolutionized our world by showing that diseases are caused by microbes. Pasteur was at first a poor student in chemistry and struggled with ill health for twenty-seven years after his THE NEW SCIENCE 19 first paralytic stroke. Today science is able to make our milk safe; we are free from many scourges and have conquered chicken cholera, anthrax, rabies, and other diseases because of him. As the one who developed the use of antiseptics and sterilization, Pasteur became the father of modern surgery, and millions now living owe their lives to him, perhaps includ- ing ourselves. Our industry, agriculture and almost every branch of science and every area of human life owe him a debt of gratitude. Yet Pasteur is typical of thousands who toil in science, in a passionate search for truth, for the making of a better world. The medal presented to him on his seventieth birthday bore the words, “To Pasteur—France and Humanity Grateful.” Edison was a backward pupil sustained only by his mother’s faith. Since his first patent in 1868 at the age of twenty-one, he has taken out more than fourteen hundred for his inventions in the last fifty-eight years. The scientist today by his aid measures the heat from distant stars. Thanks to him we can now send sixteen messages at a time on the telegraph he perfected. We daily talk over his com- pletion of Bell’s telephone, we listen to his phonograph, read in the light of his incandescent bulb, attend his motion picture show, use his storage battery and profit in many other ways by his contributions to our common life. Booker Washington found a promising Negro student in chemistry. He could offer him no well-equipped laboratory for his experiments but only the old barren hill upon which Tuskegee was built. It was waste land of sand and clay pur- chased at fifty cents an acre. Out of this sand, the now celebrated Professor Carver has produced some eighty-five chemical and commercial products ; from the clay he has pro- duced over two hundred. The barren soil yielded at first only two products, peanuts and sweet potatoes. Out of the former Professor Carver has made over a hundred products, and from the sweet potato a hundred and twelve. Many of these doubtless have great commercial possibilities and utili- ties as yet unsuspected for human life. This is true of every ounce of matter in the earth. When we have broken up the 20 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH atom and released the incalculable stores of energy which are imprisoned there, available for our use, it will usher in a new age which will make our era of coal and steam almost as primitive as the stone age seems to us today. With a pound weight of radioactive substance we can release as much energy as from a hundred and fifty tons of coal. Or we can take this pound of radioactive substance in another form and make it do the work of a hundred and fifty tons of dynamite for construction or destruction. With a few pounds weight we could blow up any city in the world, or we could harness this power and begin to build a better and more humane social order. Well may Professor Soddy of Oxford say, “I trust this discovery will not be made until it is clearly under- stood what is involved. And yet it is a discovery that is sooner or later bound to come. Conceivably it might be made tomorrow.” At this moment in California and else- where “‘a combined attack financed and equipped on a huge scale is being launched on the problem of the structure of matter.” Not only every living organism but every ounce and atom of matter is, as Walt Whitman said of the mouse, “‘miracle enough” for the wonder of us all. Take one of the humblest of substances like coal tar, a waste, a nuisance, the last by-product of the gas and coke industry. Dr. Slosson has shown us some of its uses.1_ Fifty years ago a London school boy named Perkin, working at home on his Easter vacation, failed in an experiment, but found some black, sticky stuff in his beaker. His discovery of the first coal-tar dye in 1856 soon led to 925 more dyes to add beauty to our world. Next the chemist began to learn from the flowers and produced millions of dollars worth of the finest of perfumes from this evil smelling tar. Next it yielded a number of chemicals to cure our various diseases, and fertilizer for our farms. Out of this same tar already 200,000 distinct organic compounds can be made. | From this same substance that produces the most delicate *“Science Remaking the World,” p. 50. THE NEW SCIENCE 21 perfumes came the high explosives used in the war. Next the chemists produced from this black waste, indigo, the royal purple, and the red dye, alizarin. Enough has been saved on this last little-known substance “to pay for all the university laboratories of the world.” Out of this black mass were dis- covered the chemicals that in nature “furnish a large part of the beauty and pleasure of the world, of the flavors of its fruits, the perfumes of its flowers, the colors of its plants.” The staining of its dyes enabled Koch in 1882 to discover the bacillus of tuberculosis and the following year the germ of cholera. Then followed the typhoid fever germ and the serum to prevent it. After 605 failures salvarsan was dis- covered to cure millions of innocent sufferers of one of the worst scourges of the world. Next followed the discovery of the cause of diphtheria, then hookworm, which was sapping the energies of eighty per cent of the inhabitants of some tropical regions. One of the last coal-tar products, “Bayer 205,” reported as a sure cure for sleeping sickness, was offered by the Germans to trade for all their lost African colonies. And this is only one of thousands of products of black coal-tar. Yet Dr. Slosson assures us that “coal-tar is not peculiar in its ability to contribute to man’s needs. There are dozens of other forms of waste that might be made as valuable lying around loose.” And all this from the “new science” in the youth of our blundering, adolescent world which has not yet begun to learn to live.t Surely here is a challenge to faith if we have eyes *The triumphs of the nineteenth century will pale before the greater discoveries of the future. Hudson Maxim, the scientist, pictures our world fifty years from now. It will be a day of almost universal air travel made safe by automatic equilibration; we shall have our own aerial limousines. Great cities will rise half a mile in height as we go up in express elevators to the parks and playgrounds and artificial lakes and landing platforms for airplanes above. With speaking, stereoscopic motion pictures, all events of importance will be visible as they occur at distant points on the globe. With as much power in a tiny gram of lead as in the burning of 3,500,000 tons of coal we shall release what we need of the power locked in every molecule of matter, freeing us from excessive physical labor. We shall end the disgrace of the idle rich and the unemployed poor both of which are unnecessary. We shall master all disease germs and the 22 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH to see the unfolding ministry of science in the years to come. But, as in the case of coal-tar, we may use our knowledge as an explosive to destroy humanity, or as a means of exorbitant profit for a privileged few, or to minister to the healing and health, the beauty and fragrance and joy of human life. The brief space of a single chapter does not permit even the most superficial examination of the few areas we have touched upon, showing the conquests of modern science. Even this glance makes it evident, however, that there is a new science and that it brings incalculable consequences. Already Einstein has added a fourth dimension to our world. But more important than all its inventions is the spirit of invention itself which, as a master key, science has placed in our hands to unlock the secrets of nature. There is a new spirit which science has brought us.* The History of Scvence Early science had its beginnings in the practical affairs of men as they sought to become acquainted with their sur- roundings and to utilize the forces of nature. Learning their first science from the continent of Asia, the Greeks separated the scientific from the religious elements in life and began to develop an ordered knowledge of natural phenomena, soon only two causes of death will be accident and old age. Criminals, defectives and degenerates will be weeded out of society. For war we shall substitute judicial processes. We are only at the dawn of our young, adolescent world. “Success Magazine,’ December, 1925. * Prof. Whitehead points out that more important than any isolated discovery of the new science were the new ideas introduced into theoretical science as the basis of our modern world view. Among these are 1. the idea of continuity, showing that physical activity pervades all space; 2. the idea of atomicity, finding and utilizing the atom in chemistry, the cell in biology, the organism in disease and its cure, and the electron in physics; 3. the doctrine of the conservation of energy, showing the permanence underlying all change; and 4. the doctrine of evolution providing for change and progress and the emergence of new forms of life, as we witness the impressive spec- tacle of all creation on the march. The four ideas combined not only made possible “an orgy of scientific triumph” but are bringing about “the entire transformation of human habits and human men- tality.” See A. N. Whitehead’s “Science and the Modern World,” pp. 141-147, 300. THE NEW SCIENCE 23 after 600 B. C. By 440 B. C. Democritus had developed his theory of atoms, as an attempt to make the universe intel- ligible. We must look to Aristotle (c. 340 B. C.) as the father of the sciences. He was a real naturalist, he grasped a coherent cosmic theory and mapped out in broad outline the sciences for later development. Aristotle’s work was followed by the geometry of Euclid (c. 300 B. C.) and the experiments of Archimedes beginning the exact science of mechanics (287-212 B. C.). The brilliant beginnings of unfettered philosophic thought and scientific investigation of the early Greeks were not fol- lowed up. More than seventeen centuries after the rise of Greek thought, Europe in 1500 knew less of science than in the days of Aristotle or Archimedes. The scientific awaken- ing began about three centuries ago. The period between 1500 and 1700 witnessed the gradual transition to a new scientific attitude. We might take 1543 as the date of the birth of modern science when the two great books of Coper- nicus and Vesalius were published, or 1600, when Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for his modern views. Ten great names seem to stand out as makers of freedom in the modern world of science. Roger Bacon 1214-1294 Kepler 1571-1630 Copernicus 1473-1543 Descartes 1595-1650 Bruno 1548-1600 Newton 1642-1727 Francis Bacon 1561-1639 Darwin 1809-1882 Galileo 1564-1642 Einstein 1879- + Aristotle (384-332 B. C.), as perhaps the world’s greatest meta- physician, was at once the culmination of Greek speculative philosophy and the forerunner of modern science. The mere enumeration of his principal works, which were lost to the world for 187 years, shows the range of his knowledge. He wrote upon physics, metaphysics, religion, law, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, meteorology, natural history, botany, zoology, anatomy, medicine, mechanics, ethics, politics, physi- ology, psychology, poetry and literature. For two thousand years (c. 350 B. C—1i650 A. D.) the fundamental bases of his system of physics remained unshaken, as follows: Matter is continuous. It is made up of the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The earth is a sphere, fixed as the centre of the universe, which is spherical. The stars and planets move with uniform velocity i in con- centric circles around the earth. The universe is finite. This gave 24 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Roger Bacon, the English Franciscan monk, makes the first insistent demand for “experimental science.’ He was twice sentenced to imprisonment because of his scientific theories.” Copernicus, devout canon of the church and astronomer, pub- lishes on the day of his death his new theory of the heavens which places the sun and not the earth at the center of the universe, and lays the axe at the root of medieval science. For ten thousand years of human thought the earth had been counted the center. Now man was on a second-grade planet encircling a slow-moving, second-grade sun, launched on an incalculable adventure in a vast universe. Bruno, who dared to apply the philosophical implications of Copernicus, after some years in prison was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. Francis Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning” and his “Novum Organum” shine out as the beacon lights of this seventeenth “century of genius’ that made the modern world. He, more than any other, turned the world from the subjective, deductive speculation of the study, to objective, inductive experiment at the very heart of nature. Galileo gave the new world the telescope and microscope and demonstrated from the leaning tower of Pisa the laws of falling bodies which overthrew the classical, Aristotelian view of the universe and “attacked the incorruptible and unchangeable heavens.” Isaac Newton, mathematician of Cambridge, made the greatest of all scientific generalizations up to that time, in his theory of universal gravitation, his laws of motion, and his extension of the order of nature to show that the law of the heavens was also the law of the earth, that the moon and the falling stone are bound by one common law. Darwin followed with the second great scientific generalization of human thought in the the first complete and coherent view of the universe. At one time, supported by Alexander the Great, Aristotle had over a thousand workers gathering facts for his scientific investigations. ‘Science, Religion and Reality,’ pp. 101, 102. *He forecasts the steamship, automobile, aeroplane, telescope, etc., as follows: “There may be made instruments of navigation without men to row them, as great ships to brooke the sea, .” . . also chariots that move with unspeakable force without any living creature to stirre them. Likewise an instrument may be made to fly withall, if one sit in the midst of the instrument, and do turn an engine, by which the wings, being artificially composed, may beat the air after the manner of a flying bird. . . . But physical figurations are far more strong; for by that may be framed looking glasses . . . perspects may be so framed, that things far off may seem most nigh to us.” As this was written in Latin some seven hundred years ago, it is no wonder he was counted mad. THE NEW SCIENCE 25 principle of evolution, which placed the key of permanent progress in man’s hand, Einstein, in our own day, has made the third great generalization in the principle of relativity which we shall later examine. Science and Religion The better to understand the new science as a challenge to faith let us ask, What is science, what is religion, and what is the relation between the two? We shall find that science and religion are the two most powerful factors in human life. They are man’s two principal approaches to his en- vironment, his two major experiences with it. As J. Arthur Thomson points out, science is a kind of knowledge reached by methods of observation and experi- ment, registration and measurement. It comes to include all systematised, verifiable, and communicable knowledge based on the data of experience. As it faces the facts and problems of life science always asks four questions: “What is this? How does it work? Whence is this? How has it come ta be as it is?” Science shows an immediate world of intelli- gibility, order and continuity, but it never inquires into final meanings and ultimate purposes. Science rests upon at least three premises or principles which cannot be proved by the reason and for which limited human experience furnishes insufficient data for inductive demonstration: 1. The existence of the world as an objective fact independent of our experience; 2. the rationality of the universe and of our own minds, involving the possibility of reliable intercourse with nature and of practical results obtainable thereby ; 3. the uniformity and universality of law. 7 “Science and Religion,” pp. 4, 12, 35. Science always “deals with judgments to which universal assent is obtainable. It is a consciously progressively increasing body of knowledge and doctrine. The only tests of validity that it can accept are the tests of experience. An essential process of science is the drawing up of general laws from the results of observation.” “Science, Religion and Reality,” p. 117. According to Einstein, “Science, whether natural or psychological, has as its object the coordinating of our experiences into a logical system.” Science is prevailingly descriptive while religion is inter- pretive. Science asks, “What is this and how does it work?” Re- ligion asks, “What does it mean, what is its spiritual value and end?” 26 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Thus science rests on the three undemonstrable premises of objectivity, rationality and universality.* Modern religion like science rests upon similar premises: 1. The reality of a spiritual world, of a source and ground of the visible universe, that is, the reality of God; 2. the rea- sonableness and reality of man’s religious capacities and experiences and the possibility of intercourse with a God who responds to personal relations; 3. the reality of a Kingdom of God, of the possibilities of faith and hope and love ina universal spiritual order. It is not always remembered that both science and religion rest ultimately upon foundations of faith. Both must start with unverifiable hypotheses which must be tested out in experience. Both must adapt themselves to a changing world. It is true of both science and religion as Huxley said, “New truths begin as heresies and end as superstitions.’ The veri- fication of truth in both is limited and relative. Neither can prove any ultimates or finalities. The realization of these common limitations should make both science and religion charitable toward each other. It should teach a humility far removed from dogmatism. The whole of truth is not monopolized by any one point of view. Though we believe that both have access to reality, science deals with abstractions, symbols, numbers or equivalents rather than with reality itself. Science gives us descriptive “counters” or shorthand reports rather than reality. Thus we do not know what matter or electricity are. Both mean to us only ways that energy has of behaving. We never ex- perience matter directly but only our own sensation of it. We do not see matter, we only know the physical sensation reported in our own brain. We do not hear sound, but only * Professor Aliotta of Naples says, “The sciences in fact start from certain undemonstrable principles, which we accept freely because only by accepting them is practical life possible. . . . The postulate of the uniformity of the laws of Nature . . . is an undemonstrable principle which has been doubted by certain philosophers, by Hume, for example. Yet generally speaking, all men believe in it because if that principle is not admitted practical life is impossible.” “Science, Religion and Reality,” p. 170. THE NEW SCIENCE 27 the sensation conveyed along the auditory nerve. We never touched, handled or grasped matter, but know only our own sensation made by this external force or resistance. Professor Eddington gives a fine illustration of the limi- tations of science. Suppose an examiner in physics sets a problem to calculate the time of descent of an object on an inclined plane as follows: “An elephant slides down a grassy hillside,” etc. Now the elephant is irrelevant to our problem. We merely take its weight on the scale at two tons. For the grassy slope we substitute an angle of sixty degrees and the coefficient of friction. The watch will measure the time of descent as sixteen seconds and the problem for physics is soon solved. But we have merely derived an abstraction from three other abstractions of a scale-reading, the coeffi- cient of friction and the reading of our watch. What single reality have we grasped? Have we really grappled with the problem of matter, the meaning of gravitation behind the reading of our scale, the meaning of life in the elephant, or of mind or of man himself as represented by the investi- gator? At every point reality eludes us and we have nothing left but an abstraction of the readings of our instruments. Thus science never yields ultimate reality. To final questions of why, whence, whither, to ultimate questions of meaning and value, it can give no answer. “Where then is boasting? It is excluded.” Both science and religion are founded on faith. They deal with the little known, the vast unknown; the finite fraction seen, the infinite unseen. The Conflict Between Science and Religion Since science and religion are both relative and not abso- lute, since both are developing and both imperfect, it is natural that there should be conflict between them, especially in their early stages. Dean Inge maintains that to this day “there is a very serious conflict, and the challenge was pre- sented not in the age of Darwin but in the age of Copernicus and Galileo”’ some four hundred years ago. He believes it was the fratricidal wars of religion that made the fatal rift between religion and science. A part of the sad record of 28 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH that conflict will be found in the two massive volumes of President White’s “History of the Warfare Between Science and Theology.” For considerably more than a thousand years the word of the Church was authoritative and final in all realms of life, including astronomy, geology, geography and other sciences. In 535 A. D. the monk Cosmos wrote his “Christian Topog- raphy” maintaining that the world was a flat parallelogram whose length was double its breadth. In 1560 the theologians succeeded in suppressing an Academy for the Study of Nature at Naples. Bitter was the persecution received by Kepler, Descartes and Newton. Father Caccini insisted that “geometry is of the devil,’ and that “mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies.” Chemistry was looked upon as one of the “seven devilish arts.” “For over a thousand years surgery was considered dishonorable.” Inoculation was counted a “diabolical operation.” In Scot- land this practice was referred to by a group of ministers as “flying in the face of Providence,’ and “endeavoring to baffle a Divine judgment.” In Boston it was said that inocu- lation is “an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite.” Even for John Wesley “giving up witchcraft” was “in effect giving up the Bible.” For some seventeen hundred years belief in devils and demon-possession was a cardinal doctrine of the Chris- tian faith. Based upon the command, “Thou shalt not suffer * When Copernicus’ dectrine was verified by the crude telescope of Galileo the church issued an edict forbidding the circulation of “all books which affirm the motion of the earth.” Cardinal Bellarmin in opposing Copernicus said that “his pretended disccvery vitiates the whole Christian plan of salvation.” Father Lecazre declared, “it casts suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation.” Father Melchior Inchofer was of the opinion that “argument against the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth moves.” The Catholic Church was not alone in this attitude. “All branches,” said President White of Cornell University, “of the Protestant Church—Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican—vied with each other in de- nouncing the Copernican doctrine as contrary to Scripture; and, at a later period, the Puritans showed the same tendency.” eS ee ee THE NEW SCIENCE 29 a witch to live’! thousands of innocent persons accused of witchcraft were put to death. Giordano Bruno was hunted from land to land, imprisoned and tortured for six years, then burned alive on February 17, 1600, and his ashes scattered to the winds. The onslaught was then centered on Galileo. After a courageous struggle, as a broken old man of seventy, Galileo was forced to recant and repudiate his “heresies.”* Throughout his remaining days he was subjected to continuous persecution and abuse. Not until 1822 did the Catholic Church give permission to teach “the motion of the earth.’ But we may well ask which was the more pathetic, Galileo’s trial in the seventeenth cen- tury or the Scopes’ trial in Tennessee in the twentieth? The anti-evolution laws of Tennessee have been followed by similar legislation in Florida, Mississippi and Oklahoma, and by the action of the State Text Book Commission of Texas. *Exodus 22:18. ?The sentence of the Inquisition runs as follows: “You have believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the centre of the world and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move and is not the centre of the world; and that an opinion can be held and defended as probable after it has been decreed contrary to the Holy Scriptures. . . . It is our pleasure that you be absolved provided that, you abjure, curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic Church. . . . We condemn you to the prison of this Holy Office. . . . We order you during the next three years to recite, once a week, the seven penitential psalms.” Luther thus denounced Copernicus: “People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is, of course, the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy, but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.’ Calvin asked, “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of Holy Scripture?” After Servetus, the leading naturalist of his day, has escaped from a Catholic prison, Calvin was responsible for his being burned at the stake. The indictment against Servetus specified that he had described the Holy Land as rather sterile instead of flowing with milk and honey. He also held other unsound views. “So they burned Servetus in the city square; and the war was on, the three hundred years’ war between evidence and authority.” Campanella was imprisoned for twenty- seven years and detained three more in the chambers of the Inquisition, 30 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH If the churches, Protestant and Catholic, had the power which they possessed at the time of the Inquisition, does any one doubt that many liberals would meet the same fate as Galileo and Bruno? We do not disguise the fact that the new science is a challenge to faith. As far as we can see, one must accept either a medieval or a modern view of the world. Thousands have found the solution of the difficulty in maintaining a vital religious faith while making the transition to the modern viewpoint. They would take the Bible as Galileo suggested, not as a scientific authority, but as a moral and spiritual guide. They are then able to accept both the progressive spiritual revelation of the Bible culminating in Jesus Christ, and also the findings of modern science. If one rejects the findings of modern science it should be clearly recognized what is involved. Here history throws light upon our problem as it was raised by Copernicus and Galileo nearly four hundred years ago, when they challenged the classic theory of Aristotle and what was supposed to be the orthodox scriptural view. The present conflict between science and theology is only the last of at least five great issues that have arisen between them. 1. The first was between the conceptions of a flat or a spherical earth. Those who maintained the inerrancy of Scripture contended that there was no warrant for a round world. Augustine held that the belief that there were dwellers upon the other side of the earth was contrary to the Bible. Then Columbus, although bitterly opposed by the ecclesiastical authorities, made his great experiment in his voyage across the western ocean. Finally the fleet of Magellan completed the circumnavigation of the globe, and modern science was vindicated against a literal interpretation of certain texts of Scripture in the mistaken belief that the Bible was intended as an infallible guide in matters of science. 2. The second controversy was as to whether the sun or the earth was the center of our solar system. Many church leaders and those who held to a literal interpretation of the Scripture bitterly opposed the theory that the earth moved 4 — - - THE NEW SCIENCE dl around the sun. Copernicus’ theories were condemned by the Inquisition. He held his views in secret for thirty-six years because of the opposition of the ecclesiastical leaders. In 1610 Galileo proved that the theory of Copernicus was right. As we have seen he was condemned for “blasphemy and atheism” for saying that the Scripture was not a scien- tific authority, but a moral guide. He was imprisoned by the Inquisition for ten years and refused burial in conse- crated ground; but though he was compelled to recant upon his knees, the earth moved just the same. Science was vin- dicated, and the outworn medieval theory based upon a literal interpretation of the Bible not only went down to defeat, but estranged many from the faith. 3. The third great issue came with the discovery of the law of gravitation by Newton, based upon Kepler’s laws. The discovery was condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities as “natural law.” The theologians opposed Newton in his day just as they did Darwin at a later period. One result of this blind opposition to the law of gravitation was the wide growth of skepticism during the eighteenth century under Voltaire and others, which might have been avoided by a more reasonable faith in harmony with the discoveries of science. Again the literalists lost the battle, and thousands were alienated from the Christian faith by their mistaken and fruitless opposition to science. 4. The next controversy was between the exponents of the discoveries of geology and the supporters of the conven- tional orthodox chronology established in 1650 by Archbishop Usher. Dr. Lightfoot of Cambridge maintained that crea- tion had taken place 4004 B. C., on October 23, at nine o'clock in the morning. The followers of this supposed Scriptural view bitterly opposed the discoveries of geology which traced back the history of the earth through millions of years, showing that the antiquity of man was far greater than the orthodox system of chronology had maintained. Again modern science won, and ecclesiastical orthodoxy was defeated. Once again many were driven from the faith. 5. The fifth issue is the question of evolution. As in the 32 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH four preceding issues, theology has crystallized around an outworn scientific view. Darwin’s original theory of natural selection has been found inadequate to account for all the facts, but the theory of evolution has been supported by an overwhelming mass of evidence which we shall proceed to examine. In all the five great conflicts between science and theology, orthodox theologians believing in a literal interpretation of Scripture have opposed science. In each case they have not only been defeated, but thousands have been estranged from religion who might have been held if confronted with a rea- sonable faith, fully in harmony with modern science. The Theory of Evolution One of the most crucial questions both for science and religion is the theory of evolution. There is room here for honest difference of opinion. ‘To begin with, all who are Christians may start upon common ground—‘“In the begin- ning, God.” ‘Together we believe that the world is his and he made it. The question is, was it made suddenly or gradually? The two theories of special creation by divine decree and that of gradual evolution are almost equally old. Both were held by the ancient Greeks several centuries before the Christian era. It was not until the sixteenth century that certain ecclesiastical leaders adopted the former view as authoritative. If, as Mr. H. H. Lane in his “Evolution and Christian Faith’ points out, gravitation be only the divine mode of sustentation, and evolution the divine mode of crea- tion; if evolution is God’s way of working in nature, and Christianity his way of working in the spiritual world; if we are all agreed that it is God’s world and that he is in the whole process from beginning to end, cannot equally earnest Christians agree to differ as to whether the world was created in a moment of time, in six days of twenty-four hours each, or through a long and noble process of gradual development ? Putting all theories aside, let us first examine the facts in the case and then see which theory best fits these facts. Apparently there is widespread evidence of ordered change THE NEW SCIENCE 33 in nature, so that it might almost be said that “nothing is constant but change.” And this change seems to have been continuous and progressive according to certain laws, from the simple to the more complex structures, and from lower to higher forms of life. We observe this progressive develop- ment in several realms. 1. In the inorganic realm in the making of worlds. Before our very eyes today we see the heaviest of the ninety-two elements disintegrating and being transformed into simpler elements ; and apparently the spectroscope reveals the reverse process going on in the younger stars which show only a few of the lighter elements, but which are perhaps building up all the ninety-two elements, most of which we find in the older stars or suns. The record of the rocks beneath our feet apparently shows the fashioning of the earth by slow processes in strata, which contain fossil remains of life which gradually rose from lower to higher forms. And these processes seem to be continuing today and may be read by modern geologists as the successive chapters of a book. By the fossil remains of plants and animals we can almost date the strata of successive ages. By the layers of deposit in the Baltic Sea we can count the exact number of years since the last ice age, just as we can tell the age of the great redwoods in California by the annual rings which register the tree’s growth. The clear record of the rocks shows that there is a gradual progression age by age to ever-higher forms of life. Many groups of animals reached their climax ages ago and became extinct. New groups arise at the close of a geologic period when vast climatic changes take place; these become the dominant groups of the next period. One increasing purpose is recorded in the successive chapters of the record of the rocks. 2. Much clearer than the inorganic is the record of ordered progress of orgamc life. Instead of a few fixed and per- manent species separated in watertight compartments, we see a process apparently advancing from matter through life to consciousness which culminates in man. In the older and lower strata of the rocks we find imbedded the remains of 34 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH simpler forms of life, which were slowly creeping upward from vegetable and lower animal forms to fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, later mammals, the higher primates and finally man. We here see racial movement in a definite direction, producing some two hundred and fifty thousand species of backboneless animals and later twenty-five thousand species of backboned animals, gradually advancing in differentiation and integration to ever-higher forms of life. We see these intergrading with links between many of the species, and with the change of climate or environment we see species now changing before our eyes. We see this gradual development recorded and preserved in hundreds of perfect specimens, as in the case of the horse or the elephant. For instance, in the rocks of an early geologic age we find fossils of eohippus, the first horse, about eleven inches high, with five long toes fitted for running through the deep marsh grass of that era. As the climate becomes drier, the grass shorter and the earth harder, we find these now useless toes gradually disappearing. We next find a slightly larger animal with four toes on the front feet and three behind. Gradually the toes grow smaller, shrink and are lost, and we have left only the middle toe with its developed nail or hoof; but behind there are still tiny vestiges of some others. You can place a hundred skeletons of the horse in a row, differing each from the other only slightly, rising in height from eleven inches to the swift race horse and heavy draft horse of today, about sixty-four inches in height, or six times the height of the first horse. The fossil record of man is a little less com- plete than the horse, but more complete than many species. The oldest remains are about half a million years old. Now we may either suppose that God by special creation intervened in succeeding ages to create a hundred slightly differing kinds of horses, each in turn dying out, or that a continuous process similar to that going on in our breeding farms today has been in operation. Which seems the more probable? In either case we may believe that God has been equally at work, in the one by intermittent special creation, in the other by continuous process through natural laws. Which method is he using in the universe today ?* _ *On the island of St. Helena today there are one hundred and twenty-nine species of beetles. Of these, all but one are found nowhere else. Do we conclude that God specially created one hundred and twenty-eight species specially for this island alone? The evi- dence of geographical distribution points to evolution at every point. THE NEW SCIENCE 35 3. Let us note the development of the individual, in man and animal. No one emerges fully formed, but each develops from a single cell. Before birth each life reads like a con- densed recapitulation of the racial story of the past. You can hardly tell the early embryo of a shark, a chicken and a man apart. Long before birth all three have gills for breath- ing under water, a long tail and the blood circulation peculiar to the fish. Before birth these gradually disappear in the human embryo, which at one stage is covered with a kind of dark fur. Although all these disappear the gill-slits remain in the higher animals throughout life, though they are never used before or after birth. There are a hundred and eighty vestiges, like our appendix, that are of no use to us now, which are in fact often a danger or cause of death, but which had a functional use in a previous ancestral form of life. Similar‘vestiges are found in the now unused hind limbs of the whale and of the python, the thumb of the bird, and the splint bones of the horse. Only one theory seems to fit all the facts in the case and that is accepted by practically all scientists, modern physicians and those who have carefully studied biology.t That is the theory of gradual development, or evolution.? If they hold this theory, Christians need not believe that they are de- scended from the monkey, but from God, who has been immanent in all life, slowly developing from the monad to the moral person, from the single cell to man. However, “the real dignity of man consists not in his origin, but in what he is and in what he may become.” If now the Biblical record is taken literally as actual history and exact science, how can it be reconciled with the facts in the case? In the first chapter of Genesis, we have a world * Prof. J. B. S. Haldane of Cambridge says, “No competent biolo- gist doubts the reality of evolution.” * The scientist J. Arthur Thomson in his Yale lectures “Concerning Evolution,” in the “Outline of Science,” and “Science and Religion,” defines evolution as “a continuous natural process of racial change in a definite direction whereby distinctively new individuals arise, take root and flourish, alongside of or in place of the originative stock.” “Concerning Evolution,” p. 187. 36 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH apparently created out of nothing in six literal days of twenty-four hours each with its morning and evening, with no hint on the part of the writer of geological ages. We have vegetation created before the sun and stars. In the second chapter and following we have a wholly different account of creation in a different order, not in six days but in a day. Woman is made out of the rib of a man. A serpent talks with the woman and tempts her. We have in the Old Testament the conception of a flat earth and its four corners. Heaven is a place above and hell a place below the earth, which is apparently always conceived as the center of the universe around which the sun revolves.1 The “firma- ment’’ is a solid dome above. Job says, “Hast thou with him spread out the sky which is strong and as a molten looking glass?”? At many points there is a flat contradiction between Scripture and modern science if we do not follow Galileo’s warning and take the Bible not as a scientific author- ity but as a moral guide. This old world-view was gradually shattered by the new sci- ence. Astronomy showed our earth as one of the smallest of the planets, revolving around our sun as one of the smallest of the stars in a vast universe. Later, geology and kindred sciences pushed back the six days of creation to a record of more than six hundred million years of evolving life upon our planet. Biology next traced the development of man as part of a vast * The teaching regarding the universe that was held in the ancient and medieval world is still given in some conservative quarters. Wilbur Voliva, overseer of Zion and head of the Christian Apostolic Church, has completed the fixing of the dimensions of the flat world, the existence of which is now taught in the Zion schools. The sky is a vast dome of solid material from which the sun, moon and stars are hung like chandeliers from a ceiling. The edges of the dome, he explained to the congregation at Shiloh Tabernacle, rest on the wall which surrounds the flat world. “That is the plain teaching of the whole word of God,” Mr. Voliva said. “The firmament above our heads is a solid structure and the stars are points of light, that is all. They are not worlds, they are not suns. So-called science is a lot of silly rot, and so is so-called medical science and all the rest of their so-called sciences. The sun is a small body about forty miles in diameter and located only 3,000 miles from the earth,” that is, about as far as New York is from San Francisco. Zion, Illinois, Feb. 1 1922. Quoted from “Facing the Crisis,” p. 115. *Job 17:18. Genesis 1:6-8, 14-17. THE NEW SCIENCE 37 evolution of life from simple to complex forms, Historical criticism subjected the Bible to the same scientific examination as all other books and showed its progressive historical develop- ment, comparing with its accounts the similar stories of creation, the flood, etc., found among the nations surrounding the Hebrews. The study of comparative religions discovered whole ranges of truth in other faiths. Next came “the revolt of the modern conscience” against supposedly divine decrees condemn- ing to eternal punishment multitudes of men even before their birth, together with the great bulk of mankind who had never had the opportunity of hearing the Christian message. We may have lost a man-made tradition devised in the childhood of the race, but have we not gained a view of God and the universe for nobler in its sweep and finer in quality? As Henry Drummond said, “The idea of an immanent God, which is the God of evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional wonder-worker who is the god of our old theology.” Evolution has been the master key to unlock the portal to the modern world. The able but tentative work of Darwin has had to be revised. The fact of progress or evolutionary development will remain, though Darwin’s theory to account for the fact by natural selection based on the struggle for existence needs to be supplemented by other factors, some of which he mentioned and others which have been disclosed by later research. Many of Darwin’s followers at first laid too exclusive emphasis upon the biological element of nutri- tion and the struggle for life. A complementary aspect of evolution, the struggle for the life of others, or the mutual- aid principle, needs to be stressed as it has been by Drum- mond, Kropotkin, Benjamin Kidd and others. This has great significance for the higher values of life and has contributed powerfully to the aesthetic, the altruistic, the cooperative, the moral and religious life of man. The World of Atoms Professor Millikan in “The Electron,” Bertrand Russell in his “A B C of Atoms” and other modern writers have enabled us to look into the astronomy of the atom just as the astronomer with his telescope shows us the solar system. In fact, each atom proves to be a little solar system in itself 38 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH with a sun and planets. The sun is the nucleus of the atom, the planets are the electrons. The atom of hydrogen, as the lightest and simplest of the elements, is composed of a nucleus consisting of a single proton (or unit of positive electric charge) and one electron (or unit of negative electric charge) revolving around it. The protons and electrons are the bricks or building stones of the universe. For all the elements consist merely of negative and positive charges of electricity in various com- pounds. Matter is thus nothing but electricity, or stabilized energy. Bohr showed that the electrons revolve in orbits.* In the laboratory of the stars these heavier atoms are prob- ably now being built up out of the simpler electric charges. The heavier radioactive elements are in unstable equilibrium and in disintegrating are giving off terrific quantities of energy. We can now list the elements from hydrogen with one electron, helium with 2, lithium 3, beryllium 4, boron 5, carbon 6, nitrogen 7, oxygen 8 revolving electrons, etc., up to iron with 26, gold 79, lead 82, radium with 88 revolving electrons, and uranium, the heaviest element, with 92. Take the gram of radium which American scientists pre- sented to Madame Curie. It is shooting off every second three different discharges of electric energy. 1. Every second it is bombarding surrounding space with 145,000 billion alpha particles, or helium atoms, moving at 12,000 miles per second or twelve thousand times the speed of the Big Bertha projectiles in the late war. 2. It is pouring out like a machine gun 71,000 billion lighter beta particles, or electrons, at ten times greater speed than the alpha particles, at a velocity of almost 186,000 miles, or about seven times round the earth, ina second. 3. It is pouring forth gamma waves, like those used in radio, only of shorter wave-length, at the *See Haas “The New Physics,” p. 101 for the list of the 92 ele- ments. According to the periodic law, the elements are arranged in a scale of ninety-two places. Eighty-eight of these have already been discovered and we know the exact atomic weights of the four missing elements that will complete this series. é THE NEW SCIENCE 39 rate of thirty billions per second.1_ The first particles shoot right through glass and through hundreds of thousands of other atoms unhindered, showing that all these atoms fromi hydrogen to lead are mostly empty space. It is the energy of the electricity that makes them seem hard and solid. After the heaviest element, uranium, has shot off one alpha particle, it becomes another element, protactinium. After it has ejected three, it has become radium, and when it has shot off five more it has become lead. Radium changes one 2500th part in a year, so that Madame Curie’s gram will operate powerfully for 2500 years. According to some authorities, uranium lasts eight billion years. The heat given off by one gram of radium is 300,000 times greater than that produced by the burning of one gram of coal. This is the secret of the energy poured forth by the sun. \ Dr. Millikan has succeeded in stripping off the outer electrons of a number of elements like carbon, nitrogen and. oxygen. If lead could be stripped of a few of its outer electrons it would leave gold. But this precious gold would be of small value compared to the power we could generate if we could extract and harness this subatomic energy. So terrific is this power that a tiny bit of lead, of a gram’s weight, could lift a million tons a hundred yards. To stop one revolving electron would require eighty horsepower, although the mass of the electron is 1800 times lighter than the atom of hydrogen. If you could knock out one electron from each atom in a glass of water it would wreck the earth. We can watch in the laboratory the growth of radium, and then of lead, out of uranium, and photograph the track of the projectiles which are being emitted. The electrons on occasion jump from one regular orbit to another, giving out energy as light as they pass to an inner orbit, or receiving it to pass to an outer orbit. One of the most unexpected discoveries of modern science is that the energy so radiated or absorbed is measured in definite units called quanta. The weights of the atoms are whole numbers. They advance by definite units. Every- *R, A. Millikan, “Science and Life.” 40 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH where there is order and system. The quanta take us down to the smallest quantities known to science, relativity takes us to the largest. Eddington, the Cambridge astronomer, suggests that there is probably an exact relation between the circumference of the universe, the greatest length in nature, and the radius of the electron, the least length in nature.* Whether we view the vast spaces and regular orbits of astronomical bodies, or the equal wonder of the little microcosm of the atom, can we not say with Darwin that the intellect refuses to look upon the universe as the work of chance? If, ‘“‘God’s in the atom, all’s right with the world,” from the electron to the limits of the ordered uni- verse, does not the new science constitute a challenge to faith? Does it not make a positive contribution to religion? The new world of the atom has ended the old materialism. We are dealing no longer with “dead matter” but.a living universe. Like the stars in their courses, the atoms seem to sing, “the hand that made us is divine.” What Is Relativity? Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879. He belongs to the same race as Jesus of Nazareth, Moses and Isaiah; as Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Heine, Disraeli and Bergson; the race that has contributed most in the moral and spiritual sphere to the enrichment of human life, and, with the Greeks, | * Here are some calculated diameters in centimeters: Solar system 74,800,000,000,000. The earth 106,000,000. An atom .000,000,004 An electron .000,000,000,000,07 The distance from the earth to the sun is 93,000,000 miles; the mass of the sun is 330,000 times that of the earth; the diameter of the sun is 864,000 miles; the diameter of the earth 4000 miles. Our sun is classified as a “dwarf,” or small yellow star containing 48 chemical elements, as shown by the spectroscope, or more than half of those found in the earth. Helium was discovered in the sun in 1868, on the earth in 1895. _QOur nearest known star, Alpha Centauri, is at 275,000 times the distance of our sun, or 4.3 light years. The giant Betelgeuse has a diameter 300 times that of our sun, and is 210 light years away. The whole universe is found to be composed of essen- tially the same atoms. It is a cosmos, a unity. “The Contributions of Science to Religion,” pp. 58-104. THE NEW SCIENCE 41 most to human thought. He was deep in higher mathematics at the age of twelve and at eighteen had conceived the out- lines of his theory of relativity. After a professorship in Zurich and Berlin, he received a modest salary of $4,500 just to think. In 1905, while a humble engineer in the Swiss Patent Office, he announced his special theory of relativity, when he was only twenty-six years of age, and in 1915 his general theory. At the beginning of the war he refused to sign the manifesto of the German scholars denying all charges against Germany and finally had to go to Switzerland where he continued to think, as Kant had done at Konigs- berg, unswept by war and revolution. Since it was a false report that he said there were only twelve men in the world capable of understanding one of his latest papers, it is undoubtedly true only a very few could. Since the writer and reader of these lines would not be included in this favored circle, we are not ambitious to rush in where angels fear to tread, but only to see if we can understand some of the implications of Einstein’s theory in very simple language. Let us take an illustration. Let the reader as an observer stand where he is and face north. Take an iron bar a foot long, weighing one pound, and move it from right to left, one foot in a second. What has happened and how would you describe this simple event? You answer that the bar has moved one foot from right to left, or from east to west. That is true—relatively. But it is a most inadequate descrip- tion of what has taken place. To begin with, the bar was moving in four other ways and directions that you did not observe, but because they were not relative to you, you did not notice them. 1. During the second you moved the bar one foot, from east to west, the bar itself was flying through space in the Opposite direction, as the earth revolved on its axis, at the rate of some 1400 feet a second, or about a thousand miles an hour. If so, did the bar move, as you said, one foot to the west or 1399 feet to the east? 42 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 2. At the same time the bar was moving, with yourself and the earth, around the sun 98,000 feet during that second, or at the rate of nearly 70,000 miles an hour. But this motion was neither east nor west. 3. During the same time the bar was moving through space, with the earth and the whole solar system, at the rate of twelve and a half miles a second,’ following the sun in its orbit toward the constellation of Canis Major. Yet you were unaware of these motions, you did not even grow dizzy, nor feel a breath of air against your cheek. You thought you were “‘standing still”—relatively, compared to the earth, you were. But all these motions of the bar were compara- tively slow. Let us notice the motion of the bar itself. 4. The whole bar which appears to you as solid is a whirling mass of protons and electrons, moving with terrific speed. Each electron in the bar moved during that second over 7,000,000 feet, or seven million times the one foot that you moved the bar. The bar you thought was hard and solid is nearly all empty space, even the “hard” nucleus of each atom occupying less than one ten-thousandth part of the atom. Yet so regular is the motion of this stabilized energy of the bar that it seems solid. The new science tells us that there is nothing in the bar but electricity in motion. Before taking up any further motions of the bar we might pause to ask if your description of the event of moving the bar one foot in a second was adequate or “true.” Now suppose you step upon a moving train and throw the bar out of the window, relative to you it will fall backward to the ground, but relative to an observer on the ground it * Our sun is travelling 1214 miles a second, about a million miles a day, or four times the distance from the earth to the sun in a year. In 25,000 years it will have travelled 9,300,000,000,000 miles. We shall then behold a different landscape of the heavens. Yet ours is relatively a slow sun. Some suns are traveling sixteen times as fast. The second nearest known sun to ours will have circled round the ar Nice in 130,000 years. E. Slosson, “Keeping Up With Science,” THE NEW SCIENCE 43 will fall forward. This is another illustration of the fact that motion is relative. Suppose you enter an aeroplane. If you could increase the speed to 161,000 miles per second, your bar, which you said was a foot long, would measure, according to Lorenz, just half a foot. At this speed the bar would now weigh not one pound but two. If you could increase the speed to 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light, your bar would have no length at all but its weight or mass would be infinitely great.2 According to these ideas it is no longer true under all circumstances that a foot is a foot and a pound is a pound. The weight, the mass and the size of an object all depend upon its velocity. Relativity now shows us that all motion is relative. So also are space, time, mass and size. There is no such thing as absolute space. If you took everything out of space, it would have no meaning. To explain how these things could be true, Einstein ad- vanced his celebrated theory of relativity, first as a partial statement, now known as “the special or restricted theory of relativity” and later in a more comprehensive statement, called “the general theory of relativity.” Einstein’s first revolutionary proposal, contained in a paper of four or five pages, related to bodies at rest or in uniform motion, and not to accelerated bodies. Hence it is called the “restricted theory,’ and may be stated thus: “All unaccelerated frames -of reference are equivalent for the statement of the general laws of physics.” That is, the statement of the laws of nature is the same for all observers who are at rest or in uniform motion. These laws of nature are observed relations between the object and the observer. That is, the statement of the laws of nature need not be modified if the observer and the iron bar are both at rest, or both moving with uni- +The statements we have made about relativity so far, are common ideas of physics, consistent with Newtonian conceptions. Now we come to some novel ideas which would surprise Newton. *“QOutline of Science,” Vol. IV, pp. 1036-1039. Everything is rela- tive to something else. As Mark Twain said of the street in Damascus “which is called straight,” it is so because, while it is not as straight as a rainbow, it is straighter than a corkscrew. Thus all our knowledge is relative and not absolute. AA NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH form speed, but if either is accelerated, then modifications must be introduced. Not satisfied with a theory that was restricted to unac- celerated frames of reference, Einstein continued his inves- tigations till he announced the general theory of relativity which may be stated in twelve words, but its comprehension will not be “accelerated” without mathematical training. “All Gaussian systems are equivalent for the statement of general physical laws.”? According to this theory of Einstein’s space and time are no longer absolute and independent, but we are in fact living in a world of four.dimensions. You can locate an event, or your iron bar, from right to left, up and down, forward and back, and, sooner or later, in time. Really to locate it we must consider its position in space, with regard to some frame of reference, and also the instant when it was there. That is, it needs four quantities to locate it, three in space and one in time. We live in a conventional world which is largely the creation of our minds. The real world is “a four dimensional space-time continuum.” According to Einstein, our ordinary conceptions of space which are embodied in Euclid’s geometry are valid only where no “gravitational field” exists. But Einstein shows that’ gravitational fields arise in the presence of matter as though matter twisted or bent space, like a weight pressing down the surface of a rubber balloon, making corrections necessary in the mathematics of Euclid, and the physics of Galileo and Newton. * Einstein uses the system of curved coordinates proposed by the mathematician Gauss, not the three Straight lines we have been accustomed to. If a body is left free Euclid said it would stand still; Newton said it would move in a straight line; Einstein says it will move in a curve through space-time. Einstein found a world of rela- tions, but under it an absolute world of which physical phenomena are the manifestations. The progress of science is toward the demate- rialization of matter. Einstein shows that there is something in the nature of an ultimate entity in the universe of which matter is one manifestation. As Eddington says, “All through the physical world runs that unknown content, which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness.” “Space, Time and Gravitation,” p. 200. THE NEW SCIENCE 45 Einstein now informs us that gravitation is not a property of matter but of space, that it is not a force as Newton sup- posed, but is due to a warp in space; that the more matter is present the more space is curved; that space is finite but unbounded ;? that mass is latent energy, and that mass and energy are convertible and interchangeable. Some astrono- mers now believe that the light of the stars and the sun comes from the actual annihilation of matter, the material of these bodies being transformed into radiant energy. Einstein offered three tests of his theory of relativity. He predicted that the orbits of the planets would deviate from Newton’s law, that light would be deviated in a gravi- tational field, or bent as it passed near a mass like the sun, and that under certain conditions spectral lines would be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. All three pre- dictions have been confirmed. The irregularity in the motion of the planet Mercury is accounted for by Einstein’s theory. Astronomers who have observed eclipses in Brazil, Africa and Australia confirmed his second prediction, while Dr. C. E. St. John confirmed the third at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Among the three great generalizations of modern science by Newton, Darwin and Einstein, the last is the widest yet attempted. Some count it “the profoundest single achieve- ment of the human mind.” Relativity unifies the laws of nature. It surpasses in boldness all previous theories. It introduces a revolution in science comparable to that of the Copernican system of the universe. Greek philosophy was subjective; Victorian science was objective; Einstein is showing us how to unite the two. It will take many years to appreciate the full significance of relativity, to apply it and orient ourselves to it. Lord Haldane in his “Reign of Relativity” points out some of the first implications of the theory. The first lesson we may learn is that of kumility. We know in part and all our knowledge is relative to our own limited standpoint. * Haas, “The New Physics,” p. 152. Slosson, “Easy Lessons in Einstein,” p. 6. 46 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Dogmatism, boasting, pride should have no part in our lives. As Huxley pointed out, we should sit down before every fact, and indeed before all life in the teachable spirit of the little child. What room is there for pride? How much do we know? What can we prove? Again, relativity should teach us tolerance. Others have their viewpoint; they see another side of the shield. Their partial truths may supplement ours. Truth in terms of one order is not a sufficient guide in another. Science cannot be dogmatic about religion nor religion about science. Our little knowledge is a dangerous thing. We ever tend to bisect life into a dualism between subject and object, matter and mind, time and space, the true and the false, good and evil, right and wrong in absolute antithesis. Our dogmatic ultimatums always propose an exclusive either-or. For illus- tration, who was right and who was wrong regarding the motion of the earth at the trial of Galileo? Galileo said the earth moves and the sun is fixed; the Inquisition said the earth is fixed and the sun moves; Newton, with an abso- lute theory of space, said both the sun and the earth move. Einstein shows that any one of the statements is equally true according as you define rest and motion relative to the observer. At the time of the trial Galileo’s statement of the facts was the more helpful, but it was not absolute truth. So in the whole controversy between science and religion, between nations and parties, between men who have out- lawed, excommunicated, and condemned one another throughout history, it is seldom that any individual or party is wholly right and the other wholly wrong. If I know only in part, and therefore imperfectly, and my opponent knows some other part, how do I know that my part is wholly true and his wholly false? The narrower the field of vision the more we are tempted to dogmatism, but relativity should teach us all tolerance. Which was right in the Civil War, the North or the South; the principle of the Union or of state’s rights? One was right prophetically, the other historically. The issue was *See A. N. Whitehead’s “Science and the Modern World,” p. 263. THE NEW SCIENCE AY relative to the geographical location, the interests and view- point of the participants. Who was right in the World War? Always “our side,” of course. Who is right, the conservative or the liberal? The conservative is only an old liberal and the liberal a young conservative. Who is right, the fundamentalist or the modernist ; he who would conserve eternal truth from the past, or he who would seek new truth in the future; he who would preserve the heritage of yester- day, or he who would apply it to changed conditions today ? Probably in part both are right and both wrong. Tolerance would teach them the understanding of sympathy and coop- eration against a common foe instead of seeking to destroy one another. As Oliver Cromwell said, “My brethren, by the bowels of Christ I beseech you, bethink you that you may be mistaken.” Conclusion Finally, if science and religion are two parallel activities of the developing human spirit, if both have emerged from the crudest beginnings out of ignorance and superstition, if both have limitations, science as largely descriptive and religion as chiefly subjective, if both rest upon undemon- strable premises and must proceed upon a basis of hypothesis or faith, is it not evident that, while there may be conflict upon the lower levels, there may be mutual understanding and cooperation as both emerge from the dogmatic period. Science and religion need each other. If divorced, a mate- rialistic science and an unscientific, reactionary religion are positive menaces. Acting together, a humanized science and a scientific, spiritual religion can lead mankind to the enrich- ment, organization and integration of life, in a developing, cooperative process. There is inevitable conflict between dogmatic religion and rationalistic science, between an unscientific belief and an unbelieving science. But rightly understood, between true science and vital religion there need be no conflict. We do not believe that science and religion are two alternative and mutually exclusive views of the world, nor that they can be 48 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH so delimited and widely separated that they never meet and therefore never conflict. They do meet and overlap. Further, at some points they apparently conflict. This need not be a disaster. Some of the greatest discoveries in science have been the direct result of failure. Columbus failed to reach India and was interrupted by the discovery of America. The failure of the Ptolemaic led to the Copernican system. Perkin’s failure to find quinine revealed the hidden wealth of coal-tar products. The failure of Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsey to obtain the same weight of their respec~- tive nitrogen products led to the discovery of argon and a new conception of chemical theory. The failure to find radium obeying our “laws” of the “fixed” elements revo- lutionized our whole conception of matter. If, as Coleridge said, “all truth is a species of revelation,’ we need not fear apparent contradictions. Science instead of being an enemy may become the ally of religion. Professor Shailer Mathews points out in the “Contributions of Science to Religion” that the new concep- tion of matter has ended the old materialism. Astronomy is forcing us to believe that the ultimate activity of the universe is infinite. Everywhere this activity works under the form of laws. Science everywhere assumes and discloses ration- ality which implies mind. “There must be intelligence in an intelligent universe.” Science steadily shows us processes and tendencies. As Professor Conklin of Princeton says, “There is a universe of ends as well as of means, of teleology as well as of mechanism.” Nature includes human person- ality and “there is nothing from which human personality could be derived unless it be that activity which constitutes ultimate existence.” There must be that in the environment which can evoke personality. “It is impossible to think that personality could evolve from the exclusively impersonal.” As each animal must correspond with its environment in order to live, the spiritual life of man must correspond with its source, with the spiritual environment which we believe to be God. Thus science will increasingly give richer con- THE NEW SCIENCE 49 tent to our conception of God, of man and of nature.’ Prof. Elwood says, ‘““A new hope has come into the world—that science may unite with religion in the work of redeeming mankind.” Dr. Millikan, the distinguished physicist, as an earnest Christian states what he believes to be the true relation between science and religion. He maintains that the conflict is only between two different species of ignorance, “there is actually no conflict whatever between science and religion when each is correctly understood.” Some men in both camps are still dwelling in the jungle, living by instinct and impulse, by inherited loves and hates instead of reason, “Medical science certainly is full of jungle dwellers, as is shown by the existence of such a scientific anomaly as sects in medicine.” There are many in the camp of religion who would pass laws that certain subjects should not even be studied, when they have never themselves dared to study the scientific subjects concerned. Dr. Millikan gives a long list of devout scientists who were men of deep religious faith from the great Newton to Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, Pasteur and a large number of living scientists. Many of them would say with Lord Kelvin, “If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find it not antagon- istic but helpful to religion.”* Dr. Millikan’s book closes with a significant statement signed by forty-five distinguished scientists, public men of affairs and religious leaders, as follows: “A Joint Statement Upon the Relations of Science and Religion By a Group of Scientists, Religious Leaders, and Men of Affairs “We, the undersigned, deeply regret that in recent con- troversies there has been a tendency to present science and *See “Contributions of Science to Religion,” pp. 351-422. ?“Science and Life,” p. 45. His biographer says of Kelvin, “It pained him to hear crudely atheistic views expressed by young men who had never known the deeper side of existence.” 50 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH religion as irreconcilable and antagonistic domains of thought, for in fact they meet distinct human needs, and in the round- ing out of human life they supplement rather than displace or oppose each other. “The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the laws, and the processes of nature. The even more important task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the con- sciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. Each of these two activities represents a deep and vital function of the soul of man, and both are necessary for the life, the progress, and the happiness of the human race. “Tt is a sublime conception of God which is furnished by science, and one wholly consonant with the highest ideals of religion, when it represents him as revealing himself through countless ages in the development of the earth as an abode for man and in the age-long inbreathing of life into its con- stituent matter, culminating in man with his spiritual nature and all his God-like powers.” 1Signed by Religious Leaders: Bishop William Lawrence, Bishop William Thomas Manning, Bishop Joseph H. Johnson, Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Dr. James I. Vance, Dr. John D. Davis, President James Gore King McClure, President Clarence A. Barbour, President Ernest D. Burton, President William Louis Poteat, President Henry Churchill King, Dr. Robert E. Brown, Bishop Francis John McCon- nell, Dr. Merle N. Smith, Dr. Peter Ainslie, Dr. Herbert L. Willett. Scientists: Charles D. Walcott, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Edwin Grant’ Conklin, James Rowland Angell, John Merle Coulter, Michael I. Pupin, William James Mayo, George David Birkhoff, Arthur A. Noyes, William Wallace Campbell, John J. Carthy, Robert A. Milli- kan, William Henry Welch, John C. Merriam, Gano Dunn. Men of Affairs: Herbert Hoover, James John Davis, Elihu Root, David F. Houston, Frank O. Lowden, John Sharpe Williams, Rear Admiral William §S. Sims, Harry Bates Thayer, Julius Kruttschnitt, Frank Vanderlip, Henry S. Pritchett, William Allen White, Victor F. Lawson, John G. Shedd. Crapter II THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY Psychology as a science is an attempt to study human personality by scientific procedure. Before the development of experimental methods psychology was more largely specu- lative. Psychological experiments were at first conducted in the laboratory where reactions could be tested. At present the emphasis is upon the study of human personality in the situations of actual life. There are obvious difficulties in securing scientific conditions in real life and many claim that psychology can only be a pseudo-science. Most psychologists feel, however, that, while it is not yet an exact science such as physics or chemistry, where the elements of the experiment may be entirely controlled, yet reasonably accurate, objective and measurable results may be obtained. Many psychological measurements are more accurate and reliable than are those involved in medical science. In order to deal with these objective and measurable fac- tors a number of psychologists have insisted that we must shift the emphasis from a study of the mind, which requires introspection, necessarily subjective and inexact, to an exami- nation of behavior. They claim that by subjecting human beings to varied and controlled environmental conditions and discovering the resulting responses or behavior which the stimuli of these situations secure, it will be possible scientifi- cally to determine many things regarding human behavior. Ordinarily the term “behaviorist” is applied to one school of psychologists headed by John B. Watson. As a matter of fact, however, other psychologists also, who insist that our only certain knowledge of human beings is confined to their overt acts, are in their emphasis “behaviorists.”” The “‘intro- spectionists,” on the other, hand, emphasize the study of the mind through introspective processes. Behaviorists assume that there is no sharply defined line between the behavior of higher animals and man. Consequently Thorndike and others 51 §2 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH have given large attention also to the study of animal psy- chology. To the behaviorist, personality is a hierarchy of “S-R bonds,” or stimulus-response reactions. That is, to the stimuli of environment responses have been made which have built up in the nervous system bonds which connect the responses to the stimulii. The nervous system is thus con- structed like an automatic telephone exchange system, where a certain stimulus, like the ringing of a bell, connects by bonds, like telephone wires with central exchanges, a certain stimulus with a certain response. These are joined together in behavior series or “patterns,’ so that a given stimulus will set off a series of connected responses. John B. Watson finds no place for consciousness or purpose in his system. The actions of animals or men are simply these series of mechanical responses which have been developed. Once a stimulus sets a series off, automatically it goes on to completion. Others take the objective behavioristic approach of “dynamic psychology.” They hold that it is not primarily the environment, but the purpose, drive or “mind-set” of the individual which determines the readiness of the “S-R bonds,” and what the behavior series will be. They recog- nize both purpose and consciousness, but agree in their skepticism of any scientific results obtained from the study of personality except through the study of behavior. Another group of psychologists, including Freud, Ranck, Jung and Adler, belong to the psychoanalytic school. These psychologists say that you cannot understand the behavior ' or overt acts of an individual unless you know the drives that are behind these acts, and the past experience of the indi- vidual in the repression of and conflict between his strong native desires. Freud has placed his chief emphasis upon sex as being the most pervasive and dominant force in the shaping of personality. Ranck holds that the struggle from dependence to independence is even more basic. Others place larger emphasis upon the ego or self-striving elements in human nature. | If these strong native drives do not find normal expression in the development of the individual, or if there are conflicts THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 53 between them which are not resolved, then abnormal be- havior develops. If it cannot secure it in normal ways, human nature will find a way of securing what it wants and avoiding what is undesirable by extra-normal expression. “Complexes” are behavior patterns, or habits, which have been built up, in the same way as other habits, but where there was strong emotion in repression or conflict between native drives involving sex, dependence and ego-expression. These psychologists say that unless you know something of these emotional habits which an individual brings to a situa- tion and which influence his conduct, you will not have full knowledge of his responses or be able to understand his behavior. They assert that early experience is most potent in shaping the individual, because it is in the family circle and in relation to parents that the first strong impressions are made. Consequently they would look back to early child- hood for the beginnings of the emotional habits which influence behavior in adult life. If a person is over-sensitive, has a bad temper, is prudish about sex, or tries unduly to lord it over others, they would maintain that such habits began in early childhood relation- ships and have become emotionally set as a part of the per- sonality, so that responses of this sort have become automatic and are irrational. Psychoanalysis is a technic for substi- tuting rational insight for these irrational, blind and often self-defeating emotional habits. The so-called Gestalt psychology, coming chiefly from the work of Kohler and Koffka in Germany, has brought two new emphases. Kohler in his study of animals gives extended evidence to prove that the higher animals show not the chance development of behavior through crude trial and error at- tempts, but that apes and other animals give evidence of the recognition of ends and the conscious employment of means to reach them. This evidence Kohler would oppose to the insistence of many behaviorists that animal reactions are non-purposive and have grown up merely through trial and error attempts to meet environment. The Gestalt group also has conducted experiments which they claim show that the response to a stimulus is a response 54 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH to a total situation rather than being subject to analysis into more minute stimulus-response bonds. Something specific stands out but only in relation to the whole setting as a background. They use the term “configuration” to describe this total situation. The Gestalt psychology, therefore, sup- plements the analysis of other schools with an emphasis upon synthesis in human behavior. We may find that these schools of psychology, in their natural and necessary concentration upon some special aspect of human behavior, supplement one another in their contri- butions to our fuller understanding of human nature and conduct. We have already noted that the name “behavior- ism” has come in popular thought to be associated with the more extreme of that group of psychologists who are giving their attention objectively to the study of behavior. Since this is the school concerning which there is most feeling among religious leaders, we will give more detailed attention to it. Without assuming any previous study of modern psychology on the reader’s part, we shall, as far as possible, avoid technical terms. Some of the more technical material will be found in the footnotes. We must at the outset, however, clearly distinguish be- tween a system and its personal representatives, between behaviorism and certain behaviorists. The objective study of human and animal behavior was as necessary, as fruitful, as inevitable as the experimental and objective method in every other science. As a method of study behaviorism has doubtless come to stay. But all individual behaviorists have not. It may be almost as fatal if Christians line up against “behaviorism” as a method, as it was for the Roman Church when it took its stand against the Copernican astronomy, and for fundamentalist Protestants when they rejected the evidence for evolution. The sun moves and the Inquisition could not stop it; nature evolves whether we like it or not; and the fruitful study of behavior will prove one of the great advances of modern science no matter what opposition develops. That does not blind us to some of the natural extremes of the early exponents of an adolescent science. Behaviorism is probably in the first of the three tradi- THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 55 tional stages, through which most new movements pass, of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. It is doubtless destined to play a large part in the synthesis of the study of human behavior. The two schools of introspectionists and behaviorists natu- rally define psychology quite differently. To the first it is the study of the mind; to the second a study of bodily behavior.t. The latter group would discard altogether con- cepts of “mind,” “will,’ “perception,” “attention,” and all other words denoting anything “subjective.” They would confine psychology to the scientific study of behavior, or activities of the human being, while other psychologists would include a study of both consciousness and behavior. Following the work of Thorndike and others, Watson’s studies in animal behavior suggested to him that psychology could be immensely simplified and made an exact science if man were regarded as merely a higher animal and his out- James would say, “Psychology is the description and explanation of the states of consciousness as such.” ‘Thorndike says, “Behavior, then, is not contrasted with, but inclusive of conscious life.” With the dawn of thought in the Greek mind the beginnings of psychology arose out of the practical necessities of life and finally developed a “theory of the soul.” Psychology as a science may be said to date from Aristotle, in the fourth century B. C. For the next twenty centuries rational psychology continued as an armchair specu- lation upon the origin, nature and destiny of the soul. The long period of inertia ended with Francis Bacon (1620). He turned the attention of men to experience and nature. John Locke (1690) and the English associationists, Hume and Hartley, despairing of an answer to ulti- mate metaphysical questions, began to investigate the problems of consciousness based upon a study of the senses alone. During the last century psychology has undergone another revolution. No longer a mere department of general philosophy, it has gradually become a specialized and empirical science. Weber, Fechner and Wundt in Germany turned from the speculation of the easy chair to the experi- mental research of the laboratory. William James (1842-1910) may be regarded as the father and founder of scientific and social psychol- ogy in America. The work of G. Stanley Hall, of Lester F. Ward and James Mark Baldwin also laid foundations for the new psy- chology. As men analyzed their experience they found it could be studied from either of two viewpoints, the content of experience, or the act of experiencing. This difference of emphasis and of object early led to the separation of two schools in psychology under the names of structuralism and functionalism. It led later to the division between introspectionists and behaviorists, 56 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH ward behavior as purely the mechanical reaction to stimulus received from the environment. For illustration, if one cross his right knee over the other and then sharply tap the tendon below the right knee-cap, the right foot will instantly jerk forward. This is a simple reflex action, or response to a stimulus from without. Watson suggests that all life is simply a series of reactions, of behavior simple or complex, in response to stimuli or situations. The consistent “behaviorist” seeks simplicity and objec- tivity. He therefore projects the theory that every action is simply a response to some stimulus from without, that nothing exists in the universe but matter and force, that the body and brain with the entire universe is purely a mechan- ism. By that theory he hopes to reduce psychology to an exact science of pure determinism, calculable, predictable, dependable. He hopes to do away with all awkward impon- derable and incalculable factors of free will or purpose, of consciousness or mind, of philosophy or religion, and to make psychology a simple and exact science like physics or chem- istry. He starts with this theory as a method of study and then tries to account on this basis for the whole of life so far as psychology is concerned. Every action of animal or man would then be a mechanical reflex response to a stimulus. Mind would be simply the way the body behaves; physical and chemical reactions would be the only reactions. Without attempting to give a continu- ous quotation we shall let Dr. Watson state his position in his own words, from his “Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology.” Behaviorism seeks an accurate knowledge of adjustments and the stimuli calling them forth, in order to learn general and particular methods by which behavior may be controlled. Psy- chology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science, which needs introspec- tion as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics. The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered on the same plane. It can dispense with consciousness in a psychological sense. In his last book, “Behaviorism,” two elements are notice- THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 57 able throughout. There is, on the one hand, objective evi- dence from his scientific, inductive study of human behavior. Side by side with this there is an attack upon all psychology which lies outside the narrow sphere of his own scientific school, and an exposition of his own interpretation of per- sonality and of life which includes an attack upon all philoso- phy and all religion. These two elements will be seen in ~ the following quotations: Before beginning our study of “behaviorism” it will be worth our while to take a few minutes to look at the conventional school of psychology that flourished before the advent of beha- viorism in 1912—and that still flourishes, All schools of psy- chology except that of behaviorism claim that “consciousness” 1s the subject matter of psychology. Behaviorism, on the con- trary, holds that the subject matter of human psychology is the behavior or activities of the human being. Behaviorism claims that “consciousness” is neither a definable nor a usable concept; that it is merely another word for the “soul” of more ancient times. No one knows just how the idea of a soul or the supernatural started. It probably had its origin in the general laziness of mankind. Medicine men have always flourished. Behavior has always been easily controlled by fear stimuli. If the fear element were dropped out of any religion, that religion could not long survive. This fear element was variously introduced as the “devil,” “evil,’ “sin” and the like. One example of such a concept is that there is a fearsome God and that every individual has a soul which is separate and distinct from the body. This dogma has been present in human psychology from earliest antiquity. No one has ever touched a soul, or has seen one in a test tube. In 1912 the behaviorists reached the conclusion that they could no longer be content to work with intangibles and unapproach- ables. They decided either to give up psychology or else to make it a natural science, They dropped from their scientific vocabu- lary all subjective terms such as sensation, perceptions, image, desire, purpose, and even thinking and emotion as they were subjectively defined. We can observe behavior—what the organ- ism does or says. Saying ts doing—that is, behaving. Speaking overtly or to ourselves (thinking) is just as objective a type of behavior as baseball. Can I describe this bit of behavior I see in terms of “stimulus and response’? By response we mean that system of organized activity that we see emphasized any- where in any kind of animal. Almost from infancy society begins to prescribe behavior. 58 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH At birth only two stimuli will call out fear, a loud sound, and loss of support. At the instant you show a child an animal and just as he begins to reach for it, strike a steel bar behind his head. Repeat the experiment three or four times. The animal now calls out the same response as the steel bar, namely a fear response. We call this, in behavioristic psychology, the condt- tioned emotional response—a form of conditioned reflex. We can set up conditioned responses in animals or children. What methods shall we use systematically to condition the adult? With what system of changing stimuli shall we surround him? I am going to ask you to accept the behavioristic platform at least for this series of lectures. Behaviorism takes the whole field of human adjustments as its own. The behaviorist wants to control man’s reactions, to be able to predict and to control human activity. To do this he must gather scientific data by experimental methods. Behavioristic psychology has as its goal to be able, given the stimulus, to predict the response—or, seeing the reaction take place to state what the stimulus is that has called out the reaction.+ At the close of his first chapter Dr. Watson states that introspective psychology, functional psychology and_ all philosophy are “gradually disappearing, and becoming the history of science.” Ethics is giving place to experimental ethics based entirely upon behavioristic methods. Sociology is merging into behavioristic social psychology and into eco- nomics. Religion is “being replaced among the educated by experimental ethics.” Psychoanalysis, “based largely upon religion, introspective psychology and voodooism, is being replaced slowly by behavioristic studies.” After several chapters on the physiology of the human body, Dr. Watson says in his chapters on “Are there any human instincts?” There are then for us no instincts. Everything we have been in the habit of calling an “instinct” today is a result largely of training—belongs to man’s learned behavior. There is no such thing as an inheritance of capacity, talent, temperament, mental constitution and characteristics, From now on man for us is a whole animal. When he reacts he reacts with each and every part of his body. There are heritable differences in form, in structure. The mere presence of these structures tell us not one thing about * “Behaviorism,” pp. 3-18. The quotations are not continuous and for obvious typographical reasons the breaks between them are not indicated. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 59 function. The behaviorist recognizes no such thing as mental traits, dispositions or tendencies. All by hypothesis had equal chances at birth. Grant variations in structure at birth and rapid habit formation from birth. Every human being is put together differently, Differences in early training make man still more different. Give me a dozen healthy infants and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select. We have no sure evidence of inferiority in the Negro race. The truth is society does not like to face facts. Man is built of certain materials put together in certain complex ways, and as a corollary of the way he is put together and of the material out of which he is made—he must act (until learning has reshaped him) as he does act. Regarding the Emotions he says: There are three different forms of response that can be called out at birth by three sets of stimuli. I call these responses “fear,” “rage,” and “love.” They form the nucleus out of which all future emotional reactions arise. These unconditioned stimuli with their relatively simple unconditioned responses are our starting points in building up those complicated conditioned habit patterns we later call our emotions. Our emotional life grows and develops like our other sets of habits. You have already grasped the notion that the behaviorist is a strict determinist—the child or adult has to do what he does do. The only way he can be made to act differently is first to untrain him and then to retrain him. It is our own fault, then, that individuals go ‘“‘wrong.” Man’s emotional life is built up bit by bit by the wear and tear of environment upon him, Hitherto the process has been hit or miss. Now we can build up emotional reactions in an orderly way. On Manual Habits he says: The higher we go in the animal series, the more dependent the organism is upon learned behavior. Greater development in three systems of habit forever differentiates man: (1) The number, delicacy and accuracy of visceral or emotional habits, (2) the number, complexity, and fineness of his laryngeal or verbal habits, (3) the number and fineness of his manual habits. The baby learns to manipulate objects and even its own bodily parts literally by the sweat of its brow. With early basal habits of reaching and manipulation established, the infant begins his mastery of the world. It seems to be a human failing to stop improving at the lowest economic level that enables an individual to get along in his group. People are lazy. James was right when he said that most people do not learn after thirty, but there 60 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH is no reason for it except that most people after thirty have explored the mysteries of sex and are getting food and water. The behaviorist never uses the term “Memory.” Instead of speaking of memory, the behaviorist speaks of the retention of a given habit in terms of how much skill has been retained and how much has been lost in the period of no practice. Regarding talking and thinking Watson says: Habits exercised implicitly behind the closed doors of the lips we call thinking. Man both talks and thinks with his whole body. The human has a verbal substitute within himself theoretically for every object in the world. Thereafter he carries the world around with him by means of this organization. Thought is in short nothing but talking to ourselves. The evidence for this view is admittedly largely theoretical. “Meaning” is just a way of saying that out of all the ways the individual has of reacting to an object, at any one time he reacts in only one. “Memory” is really the functioning of the verbal part of a total habit. “Thinking” is largely subvocal talking—provided we hasten to explain that it can occur without words. In his final chapter on Personality he says: Our personality is but the out-growth of the habits we form. Man is an assembled organic machine ready to run. I define personality as the sum of activities that can be discovered by actual observation of behavior. The situation we are in domi- nates us always and releases one or another of these all-powerful habit systems. In general, we are what the situation calls for. Attention is merely the complete dominance of any one habit system, be that a verbal system, a manual habit system or a visceral one. The only way thoroughly to change personality is to remake the individual by changing his environment in such a way that new habits have to form. He thus closes his work on Behaviorism: J am not asking for “free love.’ I am trying to dangle a stimulus in front of you, a verbal stimulus which, if acted upon, will gradually change this universe. For the universe will change if you bring up your children, not in the freedom of the libertine, but in behavioristic freedom—a freedom which we cannot even picture in words, so little do we know of it. Will not these children in turn, with their better ways of living and thinking, replace us as society and in turn bring up their children in a still more ideal way, until the world finally becomes a place fit for human habitation? THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 61 The word behaviorism is used in two quite different senses and consequently leads to great confusion. Jé¢ may mean either a system of psychology based on an objective method of study, or a metaphysical theory of existence. As a method of study of animal and human behavior there can be no scientific objection to it. Though not the only method, it is probably the most exact, fruitful and promising of all methods of investigation. But as a mechanistic dogma or metaphysical theory, as an unproven assumption of thorough- going materialism, it is an unscientific and unwarranted inva- sion into fields that lie quite beyond its province. It is entirely legitimate to take a purely mechanical hypothesis and see if all life can be accounted for upon this basis, but behaviorism cannot, upon the basis of its confessedly meager results in one restricted sphere, dogmatically affirm a uni- versal philosophy of life. Behaviorism as a method of study is compatible with any theory of philosophy or religion. A man may be a behaviorist in method and in philosophy hold either a mechanistic or spiritual interpretation of life. Or he may be an introspectionist, and be either a mechanist like Titchener or an animist, believing in the soul, like McDougall. Benefits of Behaviorism as a Method With behaviorism as one method of study we are in full sympathy. Let us seek briefly to appraise some of its results. Watson admits that it is as yet little more than a promise of experimentation; nevertheless its day has been brief but brilliant. In the line of the great advances in psychology marked by such names as Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Darwin, Wundt, James and Freud, we may rank psychoanalysis and behaviorism as the two most important developments in psy- chology during our generation. Both need criticism, sifting and supplementing, but both have come to stay, and both have already made large contributions to life. We are not greatly alarmed over the prospect of perma- nent loss from the negative and destructive tendencies of extreme behaviorism. Individuals will unfortunately be misled, but in the end the backward swing of the pendulum may move the hands of the clock as fast as the forward 62 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH swing. Hume’s destructive philosophy led to Kant’s awak- ening. Kant’s negative work shattered many idols but drove men to seek more solid foundations. So even the temporary extremes of behaviorism in the first flush of its new enthusiasm will only drive us to a more practical and pragmatic emphasis on behavior, which is always healthy. Behaviorism has already made permanent contributions to psychology in its simplicity, accuracy and objectivity. In this science these were deeply needed. As a method of study behaviorism was long overdue in psychology. Other sciences had previously entered the field of objective experimentation, divorced from the influence of subjective factors.1 The work of Thorndike and others has made valuable contributions to our understanding of human life. Most people are vaguely aware of new methods by which children learn to read, write, figure and spell in half the time which was taken by former generations. Scores of changes in the methods and content of education are but the first fruits of a new ap- proach. The study of behavior responses reduces the misfits in school and college. Children and adults once classed as queer or hopeless, or impatiently blamed upon heredity, are now being re-conditioned to lives of successful and happy adjustment. As a method it will doubtless make many contributions to education. But as the only method, or as a philosophy of life, it would probably be fatal to many of the higher interests. Behaviorism has done some of its best work on instincts. Watson’s study of babies has been painstaking and fruitful. His co-workers may yet show us how to drive away the curse of fear from childhood. Behaviorism has also taught us much in self-knowledge and self-mastery. There is already a wealth of psychological knowledge of human nature that would be of priceless value if known and applied by the *'The objective method of study began, not with Watson, but with Weber in Germany in 1825. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 63 great mass of men and women. Most fruitful of all behavior- ism as a method has enriched, and will increasingly enrich, nearly all branches of science and of human life. Professor Dewey believes that our time has witnessed one of the most profound revolutions in philosophical thinking since Plato. He believes that we owe much of this reconstruction to the new psychology.* Advertising is now being built on the basis of the scientific appraisal of the behavior it arouses. Professor Harry Elmer Barnes shows the fruitful interrelation of “Psychology and History.” The effect of the behavioristic method is well shown in Allport’s objective studies of public opinion.? In “An American Idyl’” the work of Carlton Parker on behavioristic lines made clear how the I. W. W. and similar movements are the inevitable revolt of the working class where inhuman conditions prevail. In such studies we find no academic introversion, no hair-splitting discussion of the faculties of consciousness, but a practical application of psy- chology to human behavior. It is here that behaviorism has already made and is likely to make one of its most fruitful contributions. In the field of morality and religion we have nothing to fear and much to gain if behaviorism as a method of study is rigorously applied to the test of practical behavior. We have no fear of turning from an authoritarian to a rational ethics provided all the factors and relationships of life are taken into account. Professor George M. Stratton believes that “Psychology leaves religion living, with new means for its great work, and with fresh confidence in the naturalness and the need of the religious life.’’ 1 Dewey says, “The Behavioristic movement transfers attention from vague generalities . . , to the specific processes. . . . It empha- sizes the importance of knowledge of the primary activities of human nature. . . . It radically simplifies the whole problem. . . . This provides the possibility of a positive method for analyzing social phenomena.” ‘Psychological Review,” 1917, pp. 270-271. 7F. H. Allport, “Social Psychology,” pp. 308-396. *Journal of Religion, January, 1923. 64 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Religion always faces the danger of escaping from the test of behavior. It may be conceived or practiced as pri- marily a matter of doctrine or correct opinion, as assent to formulas and shibboleths, as medieval superstition and obscurantism, as priestcraft and ceremonial, as prosaic literal- ism and hair-splitting legalism. In all such cases the be- haviorist may well remind us of the challenge, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven.” “Everyone therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock.”* This is good behaviorism and it is true religion. Behaviorism will help both philosophy and religion to keep their feet on the earth, however much their vision may be in the clouds. : As a method of study we welcome the advent of behavior- ism. ,It should be not an enemy but an ally. It may help to recall us from barren and selfish religion conceived as credal assent, to vital Christianity as a way of life. As a fruitful method of study we ask not less behaviorism, but more. From barren introspectionism, from academic intellectualism and from sentimental emotionalism, we need the deliverance which the new objective psychology can give us. Behaviorism as a Philosophy Having noted with cordial approval some of the achieve- ments of behaviorism as a method of study, let us examine it as a philosophy of life. In this section we shall use the word “behaviorism” in a purely mechanistic sense. Psy- chology, whether as a study of behavior or of consciousness, while it may furnish valuable data in its own field, is obvi- ously not a philosophy or a total explanation of things. It cannot “attempt to give a reasoned conception of the universe and of man’s place in it.” Psychology is a science and has the limitations of a science. It was to get away from the 1 Matt. 7:21, 24. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 65 unprofitable and insoluble problems of introspectionism and intellectualism that certain psychologists proposed to concen- trate on the study of behavior. Yet almost immediately we find some of them plunging into unwarranted philosophical speculation. Speculation is, of course, always legitimate so long as it does not dogmatically profess to be science, when it has gone far beyond its facts and findings. Facing man and nature, the world within and without, the mind has ever been driven, when it passed beyond simple dualism, to interpret one in terms of the other. Either it moved from within outward and interpreted all life in terms of mind, as akin to man’s own nature; or it moved from without inward, and endeavored to interpret all life in terms of mechanism. One gives the unity of idealism, the other of materialism. Perhaps it was natural that in keeping with the spirit of the time, America should view the machine as the all-sufficient category to explain life. It might prove profitable to recall, however, that every machine we know implies mind. It is an instrument of purpose, a means to accomplish an end. It is conceived, made and operated by a purposive mind. We have to start even the so-called “self- starter.” The very perfection of such a mechanism, for instance, as the Ford car and plant implies a creative person- ality behind it. To behaviorism as a mechanistic philosophy we object on the following grounds: its unproven assumptions, its glaring omissions and its dogmatic denials. First, then, we object to its unproven assumptions. We are asked to assume, explicitly or implicitly, that the universe of matter and force is one vast mechanism and that there is no such thing as mind, thought, consciousness, purpose, motive or intelligent end, either in man or the universe. No mind ever thought, conceived, planned, created or evolved the whole or any part of this universe. But, as Professor Henderson of Harvard shows in “The Fitness of the Envi- ronment,’ there was not, literally, one chance in countless billions that the world, left to itself, would be fit to sustain life. Any one or two conditions altered would have prevented 66 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH the orderly development of life on the planet. Yet we are asked to believe that this marvelous reciprocal fitness of the environment and the organism was not the work of intelli- gent purpose. We are asked to assume that the whole sweep of inorganic and organic evolution over millions of years shows no whit of intelligence or design. We are asked to assume that out of an inorganic world of unintelligent mechanism has evolved that which the behaviorist refuses to call mind, thought, and consciousness. We are asked to. believe that the writings of a Shakespeare, the symphonies of a Beethoven, the creations of a Phidias or a Raphael were the result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms or the inevi- tably determined working of a material machine in which these men played no part in thought, feeling, or will—indeed the very use of such terms we are told is an “old-fashioned” habit of “superstitious persons.” We are further asked to assume that a purely mechanistic physiology will some day work out in terms of physics and chemistry a complete expla- nation of all processes whether physical or “mental.” Before recognizing as valid these and other sweeping assumptions, we are compelled to ask whether the meager findings of behaviorism have warranted them. Mr. Watson, in the first chapter of his book on “Behaviorism,” says, “I am going to ask you to put away all your old presuppositions and allay your natural antagonism and accept the behavior- istic platform at least for this series of lectures.” If one is asked to put away his “old presuppositions” merely to try a series of experiments in behaviorism as a method—yes, by all means; but if it is only to make a new set of sweeping assumptions of a mechanistic philosophy of life which Wat- son states in his first lecture, one might reply like Alice in Wonderland, ““There’s no use trying, one can’t believe impos- sible things.” The behaviorist might urge with the Queen, “Try again; draw a long breath and shut your eyes. ... Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” * Quoted from J. B. Pratt’s “Matter and Spirit,” pp. 163, 164. See also pp. 112-118. Everett Dean Martin speaks of the mechanist’s theory as “a pure assumption dragged into science from the realm of THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 67 Secondly, we object to behaviorism as a mechanistic philosophy on the ground of its glaring omissions. After arbitrarily delimiting its field to a portion of the facts, by an over-simplification it ignores or denies whole areas of life and experience, and these among the most important. Even in the restricted field of behavior, if it deals only with externals can it ever know the total act, when divorced from its motive, feeling, intent, purpose and end? Fortunately the behaviorist is not consistent here, for the whole conduct and interpretation of his experiments in outward behavior are only intelligible in the light of his own introspection or interpretive thought. He himself jumps when burned by a lighted match. Yet he knows pain in himself or rightly inter- prets it in others only from introspection or inward feeling. The behaviorist may attend a conference of philosophers or scientists discussing the implications of consciousness. He says, ‘“We have to throw the whole of philosophy over to start with. Philosophy has got to go; it is mere verbosity. Thinking is only an activity, chiefly of the chest and throat.’ But we cannot throw the whole of anything over to start with, if it is only to accept an unproven alternative philosophy.? The omissions of behaviorism and the incompleteness of its data as the basis for a mechanistic philosophy are found even in the lower ranges of animal behavior. The investi- gations of H. S. Jennings in the “Behavior of the Lower metaphysics. . . . We... marvel that men can hold it so tena- ciously in advance of greater knowledge than we possess. And even though we should succeed in pointing out logical and causal connec- tions among all things, would we not even then have only one possible view of the world—one among many?” “Psychology,” p. 36 1 Private lecture by J. B. Watson, New York, 1925. 2 As President King says, “It needs squarely to be said that there is a type of behaviorism that tends directly to a materialistic philoso- phy and that therefore cannot be harmonized with an ideal or religious interpretation of the world. . . . The whole of reality, the whole man, registers its inevitable protest against making the mathematico- mechanical view of the world the only view . . . against trying to make a part, not the whole of man, the standard; in other words, against ignoring the data which come through feeling and will, emo- tional, esthetic, ethical, and religious data, as well as those judgments of worth which underlie reason’s theoretical determinations.” H. C, King, “Seeing Life Whole,” p. 34. 68 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Organism” shows a persistent method of spontaneous, varied behavior for which we have found as yet no satisfactory physical or chemical explanation. Driesch in his ‘Vitalism” shows the intelligent behavior of even lower organisms in the restitution of functions and the regeneration of organs after injury, which no mechanism that we know possesses. No machine can repair itself after an accident, as organisms do. J. Arthur Thomson shows in the “Outline of Science” that “no one has ever shown what the chemical and mechan- ical changes are by which thought and feeling are produced. Mechanism, as applied to mind, remains a mere hypothesis, an hypothesis, it may be added, to which philosophy gives no support.’ The gaps and omissions of behaviorism as a ground of mechanistic philosophy, are more marked when we rise to the higher inielligence of man. Not all man’s actions are simple repeated reflexes. Higher human action is purposive, it is varied, it chooses between alternatives and when balked in one, tries ever new ways of overcoming an obstacle or of solving a problem. Man’s behavior is often unpredictable. Professor Dewey maintains that we do intervene in the course of events, making possibilities actual. In his review of Whitehead’s ‘‘Science and the Modern World,” he says: “At the present time psychology is also aping the manners of physics, and with the consequence, as far as the influence of an influential school is concerned, of mechanizing educa- tion and social relations—in the precise sense in which Whitehead shows that mechanism has collapsed in physics itself. It is one of the tragedies of that professionalized specialism of science which Mr. Whitehead reveals and criticizes, that the human sciences are always adopting and *“Qutline of Science,” Vol. II, pp. 545-547. Kohler in his studies on “Intelligence in Apes” objects to “a dogmatic behaviorism which narrows its own world of realities, problems and theoretical possibili- ties as if knowing beforehand what kind of things can occur in an exact world.” He found that his chimpanzees solved their problems not by trial and error. The correct activity began abruptly from a stage of deliberation. The animal suddenly grasped the principle of a situation and showed a genuine type of intelligent behavior. “Psychologies of 1925,” pp. 135, 155. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 69 using in the sphere of psychology, education and human relations, materials and methods which the more advanced physical sciences are abandoning. If the psychological school which claims to be the only genuine “Behaviorism” could read and digest the physical ideas which this book sets forth an immense amount of misleading and confusing intel- lectual activity would be saved the next generation.’ If all behavior were purely mechanical, uninfluenced by thought, motive or purpose, it would rob action of its mean- ing. What is the significance of the behavior of Socrates in drinking the hemlock apart from the thought-content of his philosophy, the value of his courage, the motive of his voluntary sacrifice, the end of the achievement of human freedom? We may agree with the behaviorist that man’s slightest movement is a process, more involved, more subtly and beautifully balanced and checked than that of the world’s most perfect invention. And yet is all “the glory that was Greece” to be cheapened to a series of complicated automatic reactions of nickel-in-the-slot machines? Let us note the greatest of all the omissions of mechanism in that which the behaviorist refuses to call thought. There sits a young man, buried in thought, named Einstein. In the realm of science and mathematics he finally works out what some hold to be “the profoundest single achievement of the human mind,” the hypothesis of relativity, which is revolu- tionizing human thought, forcing the revision of the geome- try of Euclid and of the physics of Newton. But Watson assures us that when Einstein was thinking, it was only “sub-vocal talking.” In the mechanism called Einstein instead of simple knee-jerks there was only a highly compli- cated series of purely physical, chemical or muscular changes taking place in his body. Professor Lovejoy of Johns Hopkins speaks of the “paras dox of the thinking behaviorist.”? According to Watson, when we think nothing happens from first to last but dis- “New Republic,” Feb. 17, 1926. # Philosophical Review, 1922, Vol. 13, p. 135. 70 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH placements of muscle fibre. Professor Lovejoy points out that the behaviorist is a human organism whose thinking should be exhaustively described in terms of laryngeal muscles, but who in fact thinks of external objects, which thinking is not accounted for by his laryngeal muscles. The “owareness” of the investigator disproves his claim that no such phenomenon as awareness is found. Thus the behavior- ist’s procedure is vitiated by his failure to take account of himself. However much he may confine his observations to external behavior it is his own thought process that sets the problem, purposefully pursues his defined end, interprets and “controls” behavior, and builds his mechanistic philosophy by rationalization out of the result, all the while using what he refuses to recognize or name as thought. At every stage he is using tools whose existence he denies both in himself and in his subject. If thinking were only what Watson claims it to be, would not knowledge be impossible to man? The behaviorist not only omits thought but the most highly intelligent behavior which shows a foreknowledge of events, which takes into account the distant and the unseen, past, present and future. Intelligent behavior involves the delib- erate, conscious, calculating use of imagination and reason, dealing with ideals and possibilities which have as yet no material existence but which are most potent in determining future behavior. Watson also denies that there are any mental images. All images and ideas as well as mind are eliminated. “I should throw out images altogether,” writes Watson. Bertrand Russell points out that in denying the reality of images Watson “has been betrayed into denying plain fact in the interest of a theory.” Such was the consensus of opinion at the Oxford Congress of Philosophy.1. In a flash one can recall a whole cathedral or landscape or mathematical diagram or a color without a word, explicit or implicit. Mozart at the completion of a great com- position could both see and hear the whole production in a * “British Journal of Psychology,” October 1920. J. B. Pratt says, “The English psychologists who participated, without a single excep- tion, put themselves on record as unalterably opposed to any attempt to identify consciousness with behavior. To these English thinkers the proposal seemed preposterous.” h THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 71 moment of time.t So there flashed in an instant of inspiration upon Sir William Rowan Hamilton the whole solution of the complicated problem of the quaternions.2, But according to Watson no mind has the power of vision or imagery; there is only a mechanism functioning in explicit or implicit physical behavior. Is not this an over-simplification by an omission that leaves out the deepest significance of life itself? Dr. Seba Eldridge, in his thorough examination of all the principal mechanistic and vitalistic theories discussed in his “Organization of Life,” shows that while there are physico- chemical processes in the body accompanying psychical states, life cannot be accounted for entirely in mechanistic terms.® The mechanist proposes to account for everything in physicos , chemical terms. Undoubtedly some sort of physical action is involved in all thought processes, but can it account for such processes? How can we account for the solving of a problem in mathematics in chemical terms? Or, let us take a case of *“The unelevating humor of reducing thrilling music to the brushing of horse hair against catgut is apropos of the over-simplification evinced in some quarters.” “Behavior and Psychology,” p. 96, #In outward behavior he was talking to his wife but “an under- current of thought was going on” which suddenly erupted in the discovery of the memorable equations by a flash of inspiration. This is perfectly intelligible on the basis of the Freudian unconscious but not on the basis of a prosaic stimulus-response mechanism. ®To describe the physical action involved is not to explain how it happens that physical matter has these wonderful properties. To describe the process of thought is not to account for it. Dr. Eldridge says: “Inference, meaning, judgment and other cognitive processes, together with feelings, emotions, desires, memories, anticipations and purposes, constitute genuine causal factors in the behavior of organ- isms . . . and these causal factors cannot be completely identified with any or all of the chemicals and energies constituting the organism on its physical side.” “A type of non-physical causality has been demonstrated, and a most important field for it delimited.” Dr. Eldridge finds that a distinct category or categories of factors are operative in all mental processes which direct the responses of the organism as a whole. The cultivation of art, the speculative contem- plation of nature, our conceptions of space, time, logical and mathe- matical entities, and the pursuit of the so-called higher interests generally have not been, and presumably can never be accounted for by purely chemical or physical factors. Dr. Eldridge proceeds to show how Bergson of France, Driesch of Germany and J. B. S. Haldane of England oppose mechanistic theories as utterly inadequate to account for human behavior and creative evolution. Seba Eldridge, “The Organization of Life,” pp. 216-221, 392-452. See also “Emergent Evolution” by Lloyd Morgan. “~~ 72 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH an abstract mental judgment.” For illustration, thirty years ago the writer faced the question of the decision of his life-work before going to India. India was a country he had never seen nor heard from on the other side of the earth. It was nota case of simple physical stimuli and sensory elements. ' Into one abstract judgment, after a year of study, he had endeavored to assemble 1. an estimate of India’s past history of two thousand years in its spiritual quest, the present need of its three hundred millions—economic, medical, social, moral and spiritual—and the future possibilities of its great races; 2. a balancing estimate of possibilities of a conjectural life- work in America; 3. an estimate of one’s personal qualifica- tions and disqualifications, with a, consideration of one’s natural desires for wealth, ambition, home, country, etc.; 4. a summary of the advice or information from a score of friends, a score of books and a mass of miscellaneous information; 5. the play of memory, imagination, sentiments, ideals, moral standards, social motives, spiritual aspirations; concepts of space and time, past, present and future; the persistent control of thought, feel- ing and purpose—all finally culminating in a single complex judgment and decision to go to India. The author’s whole life turned upon this moment’s decision. He spent four years in intellectual preparation, and then fifteen years working among the students of India to carry out that purpose, In the thirty years since that decision, through all the continuous change of scene, circumstance and environment, there has been preserved the identity of self-consciousness, the recurring memory of that moment’s decision, and the persistent purpose to carry out the ideals and aims there determined upon. Now, can the mechanist account for the hundred abstract factors, the thoughts, senti- ments, purposes and rational judgment of that decision by the chemical movements of certain molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, etc.? Can anyone in his right mind claim that he has done so? Dr. Eldridge points out the failure of many scientists to recog- nize the hypothetical character of the basic assumptions upon which they work. Unconsciously many convert these assump- tions into metaphysical dogmas standing for infallible truth and then hold in contempt other scientists who question “these assumptions.” “Their attitude is due to downright ignorance and the illiberality of mind that goes with it. . . . We find progress hampered by dogma, the outlook on reality limited, activity routine and sterile to a degree.” Professor Coe says “a mind is a dynamic entity manifesting itself in its states and its functions, not made up of them, and not capable of compo- Sition after the mechanical manner.” *“Outline of Christianity,” Vol. IV, p. 121. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 73 Having regard then to philosophical behaviorism’s over- simplification of all the complex richness and variety of life, reducing it to a bare series of “S-R bonds,” or stimulus and response reactions; and recalling its glaring omissions of an adequate explanation of even animal behavior, of higher intelligence in man, of free choice among alternative possi- bilities, of consciousness and thought, of mental images, feel- ing and emotion, of imagination and of memory—in short, of all the rich variety and fulness that make up the higher ranges of life, do we not need here the warning of John Dewey given in another connection? “All cheap short cuts which avoid recognition of basic causes have to be paid for at a great cost. . . . They perpetuate the domination of life by . . . superficiality and evasion.”? Thirdly, we object to mechanistic behaviorism on the ground of its dogmatic denials. Among other things, strict mechanists deny the existence of purpose, or human freedom. Watson says, “It is the business of behavioristic psychology to be able to predict and to control human activity,” and again he says, “The behaviorist is a strict determinist—the child or adult has to do what he does’’* This he maintains is equally true of the saint or the criminal, of Jesus or Judas, of George Washington, the patriot, or Aaron Burr, the traitor. We should not praise the one nor blame or punish the other. No mental, moral, spiritual or volitional factors operated in any of these cases. “Every human action is a mechanical reflex response to a stimulus.’® William James in the “Dilemma of Determinism” distinguishes between old-fashioned, absolute “hard determinism,” “‘soft deter- + John Dewey on Couéism in the “New Republic,” Jan. 24, 1923. ?“Behaviorism,” pp. 11, 144. But compare “Psychologies of 1925,” p. 203. *Prof. K. S. Lashley, of the University of Minnesota, maintains that while behaviorists differ as to whether the facts of consciousness (1) exist and are capable of treatment, (2) exist but are unsuited to scientific experiment, or (3) do not exist; all behaviorists agree in the “conviction that a complete description and explanation of behavior can be given in terms of the physio-chemistry of bodily activity . . ., to me the essence of behaviorism is the belief that the study of man will reveal nothing except what is adequately describable in the con- cepts of mechanics and chemistry.” “Psychological Review,” 1923, Vol. 30, p. 238. 74 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH minism,” and indeterminism. He defends the last as his own position.t The hard determinist is a fatalist. He believes that the universe controls us absolutely, and the ultimate forces in the universe are blind and unconscious. The soft determinist believes that the world is orderly and causally related. In so far as we can determine things we are a part of this causal chain. In so far as we are determined, it is not mechanically from without, but from within, by what we are, by our own habits, desires and sentiments. Though often obscure and hidden from us, conscious beings are governed by laws as definite as uncon- scious beings. | James thus states his own position of indeterminism: Some- times we are free and sometimes we are not. Determinism professes that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. The future has no ambiguous possibilities. Determinism, in denying that anything else can be in its stead, virtually defines the uni- verse as a place in which what ought to be is impossible. I cannot understand regret without the admission of real, genuine possibilities in the world. The indeterminism I defend, the free-will theory of popular sense based on the judgment of regret, represents the world as vulnerable, and liable to be injured by certain of its parts if they act wrong. In moral respects the future may be other and better than the past has been. The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence. Suppose two men before a chessboard—the one a novice, the other an expert player of the game. The expert knows all the possible moves, and he knows in advance how to meet each of them. The victory infallibly arrives, after no matter how devious a course. . . . His world was safe; no matter how much it might zigzag he could surely bring it home at last. The great point is that possibilities are really here, Whether it be we who solve them, or he working through us. Determinisms, suppress by their denial that anything is decided here and now; all things were foredoomed and settled long ago. If it be so, may you and I then have been foredoomed to the error of continuing to believe in liberty? McDougall in his chapter on Volition in “Social Psychology” would probably be classed by James as a “soft,” or modified, determinist, He defines volition as “the supporting or re-enforc- ing of a desire or conation (striving) by the co-operation of an impulse excited within the system of the self-regarding senti- ment.” He admits that there may be. as James says, moral *“The Will to Believe,” pp. 149-183. *“Social Psychology,” pp. 234-255. To quote McDougall with approval upon the question of freedom is of course not to endorse his theory of instincts nor his ideas on race superiority. ; THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 75 “action in the line of the greatest resistance.” Action is the outcome of one’s own nature and mental constitution. The will, or the organized self in action, may re-enforce the weaker motive by an effort of attention, which is the essential form of all voli- tion. It may hold an idea at the focus of consciousness, identi- fying one’s self with some desired end which is held in view. It may combine a strong self-regarding sentiment of self-respect, with an ideal of conduct, summoning the determining motive that I, the self, shall do right. Thus we may add to the energy of the higher but weaker motive, that it may prevail over the lower but stronger, more primitive motive. We may thus build up a fixed, consolidated habit. It is normally true that a man does what he is; past character, or habit, determines present conduct. But it may also be true that a man is what he does; present action may help to determine future character. A man is thus not the puppet of blind fate from without, but acts accord- ing to laws largely determined from within. Fortunately the “soft” determinist leaves room for alternatives of choice, and therefore for moral responsibility. In justice to many behavior- ists, it should be said that while they would not use McDougall’s subjective terminology but would define their position in objec- tive terms, they are not “hard,” fatalistic determinists automati- cally controlled from without, but “soft” or modified determinists who believe they can practically “control” behavior from within. If the strict behaviorist is a “hard” determinist or fatalist and is compelled to do what he does as much as a Ford car or a gas engine to which personality is compared, he may scientifically “predict” behavior as in physics or chemistry. But in that case, how can he “‘control” behavior? It is true that he can change the habits of a child by changing the outward stimulus in the environment, but how can he do this without his own intelligent, purposive thought? Is the behaviorist himself an outwardly determined mechanism, or is he free to control and “make anything he wishes” out of these plastic subjects? Does not such language and behavior imply purposive activity? How can he control behavior, condition and recondition, unmake and remake habits without it? We agree with his practical freedom rather than his theoretical denials. While not agreeing with his mechanistic theories, we must recognize the possibilities there are of controlling human behavior and the extent to which our methods of training 76 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH tend to predetermine attitudes and conduct. Race prejudice, religious bigotry, the servility of the servant class, these and other attitudes and practices have been determined by the environmental conditions under which individuals have grown up. Freedom is an achievement. There are many dogmatic religious leaders who would be willing to join with Watson in trying by the training of children to set, so they cannot be changed, the exact beliefs, attitudes and practices which will control them throughout life. In short, freedom or bondage, determinism or free choice are both practically pos- sible to human nature. That the universe is mechanical no one can deny, but that it ts ONLY mechanical no scientist can affirm. Wherever there is matter there is mechanism; but wherever there is mechan- ism there is law. We believe that it will be found in the end that wherever there is law there is mind.* There is certainly evidence of mechanism in nature. Man also begins his life in dependence. He is not born free. But gradually he wins a measure of “‘freedom,” in his personal and social life, in practical control of nature, in political organization, and finally in philosophic speculation. The weight of Greek history on the whole was for freedom. The Hebrews also held that man was free and responsible—‘Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” The two greatest and freest peoples of antiquity believed in freedom because they had won it. We believe that men are directly conscious of freedom in *The mechanist falls into what Munsterberg describes as “the fallacy of psychologism,” treating his psychological findings as final for man and the universe. Within his narrow field as a psychologist Munsterberg was a determinist, but he recognized that this was only one area and aspect of reality. As a philosopher he believed in free- dom. Lotze seeks to show “how absolutely universal is the extent and at the same time how completely subordinate is the significance, of the mission which mechanism has to fulfill in the structure of the world.” ‘Nowhere is mechanism the essence of the matter; but’ nowhere does being assume another form of finite existence except through it.’ “Microcosmos,”’ Vol. I, pp. 16, 399. There is good precedent for determinism as an hypothesis. We have only to recall the names of Spinoza, Hume, Bacon, Spencer, Leibnitz, Schopenhauer, Nietzche, and many more. ; THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY %7 experience.t We do not claim that choice is entirely inde- pendent of heredity and environment, of habit, capacity, opportunity, motive—of all that we are. But, “partly fated, partly free,’ we believe that we have some real power to control behavior, to direct attention and often to act in either of two possible ways. We see mechanism but we believe that we experience purpose. We are conscious of 1. two alter- natives presented to us, 2. the choice of one as an end in view, 3. the experience of the end attained in accordance with the choice made. We believe that we were free to choose either alternative. We believe that between the idea of the end in view, and the experience of the end attained, there. intervened a means, a cause, an agent, an actor. And we believe that we ourselves were just these. We think that purpose is expressed in mechanism. We make machines and “control” them. But we do not believe that we are ourselves merely machines. Machines are made and controlled; it is men who make and control them. Kant says, “It is quite certain that we cannot cognize, much less explain organized beings . . . according to mere mechan- ical principles of nature.” Will the mechanist maintain that this whole process of endeavoring to prove that the will is free is a purely predetermined mechanism of necessity that we are compelled to make in just this way? Is not the very argument for freedom an instance of it? Vernon Kellogg says, “How little, how restricted, seem the explanations of the mechanist- biologists and the behavioristic psychologists of some of the simpler phases of human physiology and psychology, in the face of the glorified capacities of mankind in the fields of social organization, of art and literature and mathematics, and logic and religion! It is in the realm of what science doesn’t know that lie all these human capacities which really distinguish and define the very thing that humanness is.” We can give a reason for the faith in freedom that is in us. We would point to “creative evolution” and the appearance and development of mind in nature; to history and the solid fact of the growth of liberty in all realms of life; to the apparent * Whether as indeterminists or “soft” determinists they follow in a great succession who hold some hypothesis of freedom—Piato and Aristotle; Descartes, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel; Locke and Berkely; Eucken, Bergson, James, Royce, Schiller, and Rashdall; Carlyle, Emerson and an unnumbered multitude; in fact, the vast majority of common men. 78 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH experience of causation and man’s belief that he is immediately conscious of freedom; to the psychology of attention and appar- ent self-direction; to the experimental evidence of the laboratory ; to the experience of effort; to the testimony of rational specula- tion that thinking humanity has not been persistently deluded; to the sense of responsibility in the feeling of innocence or guilt for the deed done which might have been otherwise; to the satisfaction or remorse, the joy or sorrow embodied in enduring character; to society’s praise or blame of a supposedly free agent ;—in short to the total experience of life as an open challenge, a hazardous invasion, a glorious adventure in a living universe. With Sallust the libertarian we would believe that “every man is the architect of his own future.” Freud and the Psychoanalytic Schools Behaviorism as a method of study of outward conduct has thrown new light upon human nature; psychoanalysis has turned a searchlight upon the working of the mind within. The functioning of the mind may be either normal or abnormal. A study of the abnormal has shown that it is only an extreme and unbalanced development of the normal, and this helps us to understand the working of the healthy mind. The man in our generation who has probably made the most unique contribution to the understanding of the mind is Professor Sigmund Freud, a Vienna physician. Charcot and Pierre Janet of the physiological French school had suc- cessfully treated mental disorders. Freud studied under these masters and began the treatment of mental cases by hypnotism with some degree of success. Under hypnosis the patient could often recall his forgotten past, disclosing the cause of his disorder, and receive suggestion from the physician that would lead him back to normal behavior. By the “cathartic method” of a mental house cleaning or of opening up the emotional flood gates the patient would often be able to get out of his system the source of his complaint and become readjusted to normal life. But there were many patients who refused to be hypnotized or with whom this ; * We are indebted throughout this section to Prof. H. H. Horne’s ‘Free Will and Human Responsibility.” THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 79 treatment failed. Freud then discovered the more natural and successful method, by the free association of ideas, of enabling the patient to recall incidents from his past, espe- cially from childhood, which were found to be the source of later abnormal development. Freud works upon the hypothesis of emotional causation as mental determinism: Every word-slip and error in speech has a definite cause. Freud’s technic of free association encourages the patient to reveal his whole self and speak freely of whatever comes to the mind. In order to disclose the cause of the disorder in a life often emotionally unbal- anced, the patient is encouraged by the doctor to recall, and as it were relive his past, and to reveal his unfulfilled desires. These are often discovered in the patient’s dreams. Freud maintains that the dream always represents the fulfilment of a wish, often a concealed wish, repressed from conscious- ness while the patient is awake. The dream may reveal a desire that goes back to an unsatisfied or perverted childhood experience, though its material may be drawn from events of the preceding day. The dream seeks to satisfy the patient’s wish in symbols by a series of dream pictures, thoughts and actions, like a moving picture film. So also the day dream represents realization in fantasy of what one has not been able to attain in reality. Jung believes that primitive man thought in this fashion and that the patient’s dreams reveal the primitive, instinctive and forgotten in life. The dream is egoistic; the dreamer is the central figure satisfying his desires which have been unrealized in actual life. This disclosing of the past, this revelation of depths in one’s self unrealized or unsatisfied, forgotten but still con- trolling behavior, led Freud to develop a theory of the uncon- scious. This of course is an unproved hypothesis. The older psychology overemphasized conscious perception and the reasoning process. Freud believes that the power of con- scious reasoning was a later development in civilization. It played a small though important part on the surface of mental life, But below that lay the vast fundamental, non- 80 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH rational and often unconscious activities of the real self.* Here were the instincts, emotions and desires, the drives and urges that, like the lava in the volcano, might erupt into conscious activity. Our waking conscious life is but a small fraction of our real selves. We are seldom what we think we are. There at the base of our being are relics of the animal, the savage and the child. And these are not feeble survivals like the vestigial appendix, but the live and surging passions, desires and instincts that furnish the drive and dynamic of all our life. Man’s mind is not primarily intellectual, but volitional. His whole nature is geared, not primarily for thought, which is a rare and difficult and later acquisition, but for action. Man is not so much a thinking, as a feeling, striving animal. Action is more often instinctive than rational. Whether we recognize it or not it springs from instinct and is a purposive striving toward a goal. Our inherited instincts are the chief raw material in the formation of character, in cooperation with the influence of environment. They are charged with emotional energy and give strength to the passions and power to the “will.” The will is the organized self in function, it is character in action, or the self in movement. Thus the will is conceived, not as a separate faculty or entity, but a function or activity of the organized self.” Our desires may find expression that is spontaneous and uncontrolled, or they may be expressed through remote and *In this brief treatment we shall let the “unconscious” represent that of which the individual is not aware without discussing its nature psychologically. Freud says, “The psychic processes are in themselves unconscious, and those which are conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of the total psychic life. . . . There are processes of the nature of feeling, thinking, willing and there is such a thing as uncon- scious thinking and unconscious willing.” “A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,” p. 7. We shall not attempt in this brief chapter to give an adequate account of the system of Freud and other con- flicting schools but rather the later developments of Freud’s theory by McDougall and the eclectic school of emotional psychology repre- sented by such writers as Tansley, Hadfield and Crichton Miller. It is only fair to say, however, that this is not Freud. His followers and foes frequently run Freud’s terminology and thought into their own molds, and use him for their own ends. *See Dr. J. A. Hadfield, “Psychology and Morals, ” p. 70. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 81 abstract intellect. They may be diverted to higher channels useful to society. In this case we have the behavior of the saint, patriot or social reformer, but the drive from the unconscious is there and powerfully operating. The unconscious contains all the forgotten experiences and desires that cannot be recalled at will; it may be man’s archaic heritage, his natural self which has been outgrown or left behind as incompatible with his later civilized develop- ment. It seems to be made up of the physiological memories of whatever has influenced him, perhaps since conception, but probably at any rate since some time before birth. The unconscious may be your servant. It may wake you in the morning at the proper time, or enable you to get off at the street or station desired, even when your conscious mind is occupied with your reading. Or, the unconscious may be your master. It may explode in animal or savage or childish behavior, in emotion, in passion, in unsocial activity. But servant or master, the unconscious is there. Freud probably more than any other man has helped us to under- stand the unconscious. For him an instinct is a blind urge that will seek to find expression in a wide range of outward behavior. — The Freudian finds many instincts in man but believes most of them have a common root in the basic urge of sex. He would group most of the others under the ego instinct. This begins with the satisfying of hunger and develops into striving for self-protection, self-development, seif-realization, etc. Others would add the herd instinct, or man’s desire to associate with and seek the approval of his social group. Now these primitive, dominant instincts are often in con- flict. To gratify one’s sex desires brings him into open warfare with the customs of the group, and with himself, conflicting with the demand of self-respect and other ideals. *Freud says, “Instinctive impulses which one can only call sexual play an uncommonly large role in the causation of nervous and mental diseases. . . . Civilization was forged at the cost of instinct satis- faction. The sexual impulses are sublimated, i.e., they are diverted from their sexual goals and directed to ends socially higher. But the result is unstable. The sexual instincts are poorly tamed.” “A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,” p. 8. 82 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH This strife of instincts means mental conflict or civil war within the mind, as, for instance, between self and society, sex and religion, sex and the herd, patriotism and the family and so on. The human soul has been the seat of age-long moral conflict. A classic example is found in Paul’s struggle, recorded in Romans, between good and evil, the new man of reason and the “old man” of instinct and habit. To avoid the pain of this conflict the urge of one of the instincts must be gratified; the other must be repressed from action and from obtruding clamorously in thought where its presence is disturbing. The conflict is not often fought out to a finish but one of the instincts is suppressed, ignored, or imprisoned as it were in the unconscious. Though repressed into the unconscious the instinct may still be alive and active. It may form there a “complex.” A complex is a system of emotions and ideas left in the mind by a conflict of the primary instincts. If the desire is iso- lated, repressed, imprisoned in the unconscious, it then becomes a complex which seems to try to escape or demand satisfaction, either in the waking or sleeping, in the conscious or unconscious life.* Two conflicting desires cannot both be satisfied. Repres- sion of one or the other must take place. Every such repres- * According to Dr. J. A. Hadfield, of London, our instinctive emo- tions are grouped around objects and ideas. If we consciously accept these they become our guiding sentiments; if we unconsciously accept them they go to make up our dispositions; if we reject and repress them we call them complexes. These lie below the organized self but emerge in dreams, in nervous disorders or abnormal conduct. A nervous or physical breakdown is frequently caused by a conflict between two instinctive impulses. These complexes may result in “objectification” where we hate and preach against our own sins of which we are unconscious, or “overcompensation” where we lean over backward to the other extreme, or they may emerge in tempta- tion which is the objectification of our suppressed evil, or, conscience which is the voice of our repressed good. Our disorders may be 1. organic, with a physical cause, or 2, functional from a conflict of the mind, or 3. moral diseases due to unconscious repressed complexes, or 4. “sins” from the conscious choice of the self, from the acceptance of a low ideal. Religion, in one aspect, is man’s craving for com- pleteness, while “conversion” results in the reorganization of his emotional life. Happiness is found in the harmony of the instinctive emotions. It depends not on uncontrolled self-expression but on true self-realization. “Psychology and Morals,” pp. 43-52. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 83 sion involves conflict. If it is successful it is solved to the satisfaction of the individual. But usually repression is either not successful or results in compensatory conduct, at times unwholesome. Where the ordinary expression of an instinct is either for the present undesirable, as in the sex instinct of young people before marriage, or is no longer socially useful, as in fighting, then it may find an outlet in some other way. This is called sublimation and means the temporary or permanent satisfaction of an instinctive desire in other than the ordinary expression, but in a way which is constructive and socially useful. It is the foregoing of an immediate gratification of a primitive desire in ways person- ally or socially harmful, for a nobler, richer and more lasting satisfaction on another and higher level of life more useful to society. An illustration of sublimation might be found in Florence Nightingale, denied marriage, finding satisfaction for her sex and maternal instincts in the creation of a new system of nursing in the Crimean War. For the most part sublimation is unconscious. Analysts tell us that it cannot be had by force of will. The new and higher activity must seem of worth, of interest and appeal intrinsically. It is chosen for its own sake. Not perhaps for years will the struggling person be aware that the new interest has replaced the old. But these native drives may find direct expression in the finest ways. So sex relations may become not the gratifica- tion of lust on a mere physical basis but the mutual giving of the whole personality in the deepest love. Sex as a great pervasive part of life furnishes the source and drive of the purest love, of manhood, womanhood, fatherhood, mother- hood, parental care, heroism, sacrifice, service, chivalry, the love of beauty, of art and of much that is highest in morality and religion. Socrates’ challenge, “know thyself,” needs to be applied to the unconscious as well as to the conscious, to the inward urge as well as the outward behavior. If the repression of an instinct is unsuccessful it is like a festering sore discharging its poison into the system, or to change the figure, it is like a seditious prisoner plotting escape by unlawful means, 84 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Freud finds hunger and love, or the ego and sex instincts, as the basic urges which insure self-preservation and the propagation of the species. For the positive aspect of the sexual instinct Freud uses the hypothesis of the libido, by which he means sexual hunger, or the basic desire of life. Freud holds that abnormal behavior and specific diseases arise chiefly from the sexual function in its repression or perversion, in conflict with the ego instincts. The primitive demands of the sex life seem to threaten the individual’s self-respect and self-preservation. When denied and re- pressed their dynamic urge may substitute other satisfactions or abnormal expressions by circuitous paths. These “owe their origin to a conflict between ego and sensuality” and are compromises in which the unconscious finds partial satisfac- tion. Around the repressed longings, systems of associated senti- ments and ideas are built. They are spun as a tangled web in a “complex” which centers in some suppressed desire. If this desire finds no normal expression in outward behavior, and if it is not successfully sublimated in some higher activ- ity, it begins to seek an outlet in other ways. It may mani- fest itself in dreaming, at night or by day. It may seek fictitious escape in a world of unreality, or find escape in other ways, such as nervous breakdown. The dream is often an expression of a wish sustained by the purposive desire of “nstinct; it gives expression to the repressed; it follows the primitive type of the thinking of the savage in symbol and imagery; it often gives expression to sexual desires in dis- guised forms, since the subject has been forbidden appearance in public consciousness.? Dreaming may serve as a safety valve for repressed tendencies, but day-dreaming is a step toward the abnormal. If it becomes excessive it may take the place of real achieve- ment, it may blur the sense of reality, it may lead to making the unreal seem real in creating a fictitious world, or finally lead to irrational or immoral conduct. Instinct unsuccess- “Freud says, “Dreams are the removal of sleep-disturbing psychic stimuli by way of hallucinated satisfaction.” “General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,” p. 110. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 85 fully repressed may find outlet not only in dreams but in abnormal conditions and behavior. Vague fears and anxie- ties may possess the mind. One becomes anxious about his employment, his support, his health, his family, his reputa- tion, success or ambition. In shell shock the patient’s unad- mitted fear of being a coward may have resulted in physical paralysis to prevent this disgrace.’ Repressed desires may lead to the segregation of the con- demned attitude or complex in the “dissociation” or separa- tion of the personality. One may develop two or more selves as a Dr. Jekyl, the social worker, and a Mr. Hyde, the criminal, and thus lead a double life in public and in private. Or the disintegration of his personality may set in. These and other types of abnormal behavior may result from the unsuccessful repression of conflicting wishes. In such conflicts the unconscious may build up a “mechanism of defense” to protect oneself from the recognition of tenden- cies in one’s nature which are obnoxious. Many persons dare not know themselves. All kinds of behavior may have the unconscious motive of building up a defense against a feeling of inferiority or an “inferiority complex.” Or the unconscious may construct a “mechanism of compensation,” or over-compensation, as when Theodore Roosevelt in oppo- sition to his physical weakness in youth developed his later ageressive pugnacity. Again, the unconscious may develop a “mechanism of escape’ by constructing fictions, or ideals or utopias to satisfy the mind when it finds no rest in the world of the actual. Countless utopias, pagan and Christian, have promised some millenium or heaven as the only escape from hard reality. Or one may seek escape in “rationalization,” the finding of fictitious reasons to justify conduct determined by the * Hadfield shows that in a shell shock hospital, the men who are paralyzed, blind, deaf or dumb are suffering from disorders which, though physical in their symptoms, originate not in the body but in the mind, in disorders due to the disturbances of the emotions. The breakdown is the result of conflict between the sense of duty and of self-preservation. Physical and mental symptoms are often due to defects in character. Moral problems often lie at the root of these disorders. The psycho-physician helps the morally sick. “Psychology and Morals,” pp. 1-7. _ ' 8¢ NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH unconscious. This is very common both in philosophy and in our daily life. Thus we “rationalize” our hate and killing in war time by a hundred excuses furnished by an eagerly believed propaganda about “Huns,” or a philosophy that makes our conduct justifiable and heroic. Thus men de- fended slavery and every other evil that they wished to maintain. The conduct is instinctive or unconscious, the “reason” is afterward manufactured to order by the con- scious mind. Most of our “principles” are the rationalizing of instincts formed in childhood. So we rationalize and excuse manifold wrongs in our personal conduct or the exist- ing social order, just because it satisfies our instinctive desire, or is a habit or conventional custom. In short, we act chiefly from personal impulse and social custom, and then “ration- alize” our conduct, but we do very little independent, rational thinking. As Emerson says, “The hardest work in the world is to think.” Almost our whole American educational system from kindergarten to college is planned to produce safe repe- tition and “rationalization” rather than rational thought. One of the many results of the new psychology is its teaching us to understand human nature and expose its illusions. In the treatment of patients by psychoanalysis Freud goes upon the basis that every symptom is a distorted expression of a repressed wish-complex, buried or banished in the unconscious by the mechanism of repression. He maintains that when the process of repression is reversed and the com- plexes are brought into the light of consciousness and fused in the main body of the personality, the abnormal manifesta- tion ceases. Freud early abandoned the method of treatment by hypnosis for that of “‘free association,’’* where the patient is asked frankly to relate the various thoughts that spon- taneously come to his mind. This involves an account of the patient’s symptoms, his early life, and his dreams which may reveal the unconscious gratification of repressed wishes. Feelings which the patient holds for another person usually undergo a “transference” toward the physician. The per- ? Free association is now discounted by some Freudian practitioners, who deal primarily with emotional transference in present situations. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 87 son’s early love for and dependence upon his mother, or his conflict with and opposition to his father may be transferred to the analyst. The patient may have his conflict with his father turned into opposition to anyone in authority, or he may make any friend or religious worker or the physician a father or mother or love substitute. The patient may transfer to the physician the feeling of gratitude, affection, hatred, fear or jealousy.* If the patient lives over again the repressed emotions, feeling them in connection with an actual person like the physician, the latter may at the right time break this bond and enable the patient to gain full insight into the buried conflicts and achieve release from them. He is thus helped to make the transfer from dependence on the physician to independence. The practice of this Freudian theory is obvi- ously a very delicate and dangerous operation.” It is a dangerous thing to deal with the emotional problems of others when one is not himself free. It is especially hazardous to deal with members of the opposite sex under a system so largely involving sex, and calling for confession, or at least self-revelation by free association, with the lia- bility of the “transference” of affection to the analyst. One practitioner records in the ‘““New Republic’ the “Confessions of an Ex-psychoanalyst.” He tells how he enjoyed having people fall in love with him and lording it over them.* The 1S. Freud, “Collected Papers,” Vol. I, p. 293, Vol. II, pp. 344-364, Vol. III, p. 139. E. Jones, “Papers on Psychoanalysis,” p. 330. ? Some psychoanalysts who do not closely follow orthodox Freudian practice would seek other methods of readjustments for the patient such as “facing the problem,” “resolving the conflict,’ “harmonization of purposes,’ “re-education,” “reconditioning,” “sublimation,” “reins tegration of personality,” “strengthening of the will,” “habit forma~ tion,’ “building up of character,” etc. *One psychologist, as an opponent of psychoanalysis, writes, “Who knows whether there is a subconscious mind, or a complex, or # libido? At present they have nothing but a group of concepts cone noting subjective phenomena, plus an empirical method which some times succeeds. At a meeting of the Academy of Medicine last year psychoanalysts admitted they could claim only a small percentage of successes. The method of transference seems to me to be filled with grave problems. One of my best friends, a young minister, is being divorced by his wife. She is to marry her psychoanalyst because 88 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH priest in the confessional, the minister, the teacher and the individual worker are all liable to the same danger in greater ot less degree. Freudian Dangers and Values The first possible limitation or danger in Freud’s system is the too exclusive emphasis upon sex. He makes it the equivalent of almost the whole instinctive and emotional life in a “pansexuality.”’ He felt forced to do this by the situa- tions be found among his patients. Though this is undoubt- edly a dangerous overemphasis it is probably not so dangerous as the morbid conspiracy of silence, ignorance and evasion with which conventional society has too long ignored the basic normal fact of sex in human life. Probably Freud’s is an unconscious over-compensation for our criminal neglect. It must be remembered that sex is probably the most perva- sive and dynamic of any aspect of personality and that Freud does not use sex in a restricted sense but as denoting the entire emotional love outlet of the personality which is essen- tially a part of sex. Another error, especially in his earlier writings, is found in his lax use of terms without clear definition, his sweeping generalizations based on insufficient data, his often crude and fantastic illustrations, and his inconsistencies of state- ment. His aim is always practical and he is negligent or impatient of academic accuracy. He often seems to be an artist rather than a scientist. Woodworth maintains that “psychoanalysis gives us a narrow and one-sided psychology, utterly lacking in perspective.” This is doubtless true as it is likewise of extreme behaviorism and introspectionism. Added to the above mentioned limitations of Freud and his followers, psychoanalysis has suffered, as have all reli- gions and cults, from the character of some of its repre- sentatives. Some quacks have brought it into ill-repute; of a negative transference. I have known of three such cases. I would much rather put my faith in people who view life objectively, than in those who go off on subjective sprees. Nothing has yet been demonstrated about the unconscious.” *“Journal of Abnormal Psychology,” 1917, p. 194. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 89 as they have at times all medicine. Some have turned liberty into license in the gratification of the sex instinct. Another fault of the Freudians is their sectarian tendency to become a “closed coterie.’ Some of Freud’s followers seem to be almost guilty of hero worship. A symposium in the Psychological Review of May, 1924, on the “Contribution of Freudism to Psychology” empha- sizes many of the values of psychoanalysis. With all his limitations Freud has added a new dimension to psychology. He has also given it a new vocabulary suited to the wider range of investigation.1 Psychoanalysis has been a challenge and an inspiration to psychology itself, and has awakened a new interest in the public. It has turned from an abstract and academic investigation of momentary fleeting states of consciousness to a practical interest and object. It has not only cured thousands of seemingly hopeless cases among abnormal patients but it has given us a better understanding of the normal man. Psychoanalysis has given psychology a new center, starting not with an outward stimulus or situation or action, but with the person as the chief factor in the case. It has at this point an advantage over extreme behaviorism in having recovered this dynamic center for psychology. It has turned from purely impersonal mechanistic patterns, to the purposive, volitional and dynamic. It has enlarged and enriched our conception of human personality. It has diverted us from atomistic and intellectualist abstractions to an integrated dynamic conception of the whole man. It has suggested a healthy self-criticism and candor and equipped us better to understand human nature. It has shown us our hidden dangers and how to overcome them, which a facile over- simplification of outward mechanistic behavior ignores or pedantically denies. It has given a larger content to psy- chology, reclaimed the forgotten and unrecognized of the * The old psychology spoke in terms of faculties, of sensation, per- ception, imagination, reasoning, memory, sense organs, affective states, etc. The “new” speaks of complexes, conflict, rationalization, projec- tion, compensation, r@pression, regression, identification, symbolism, dream, wish-libido, the unconscious, etc. 90 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH past, and the whole realm of the unconscious. McDougall says, “I believe that Professor Freud has done more for the advancement of psychology than any student since Aris- totle.’’t Several followers of Freud have departed from him, cor- recting or supplementing some of his limitations and short- comings. Dr. C. G. Jung has increasingly repndiated Freud’s “pansexuality” and has enlarged the unconscious by including all the instinctive bases of our mental life. He avoids the fallacy of the “pleasure principle” and bases man’s purposive strivings in his instinctive nature. For him the libido is the general basic urge or elan vital; it is not confined to sex. Its two principal manifestations are the sexual and nutritive. The instinct of power also plays an important part. Jung leaves the remaining instincts vague and undefined. Dr. Alfred Adler also departs from Freud in making sex subordinate and giving first place to the ego or self-regarding tendencies. He holds that the desire for power as a compen- sation for organic inferiority is the most fundamental element of our nature. Every bodily or mental attitude roots in a striving for power. From the desire for superiority or godlikeness arise neurotic disorders. Ranck, one of Freud’s pupils and one of the greatest living analysts, has shown the basic problems involved in the adjustment from infantile dependence to the responsibility of adults. The Gestalt Psychology We turn now from three schools, the introspectionists, the behaviorists and the psychoanalysts, to a fourth, the Gestalt. The first gave too exclusive attention to subjective conscious- ness, the second to outward behavior, the third to the sub- conscious instincts. Man is not all mind, or body, or sex. The introspective Gestalt school reminds us, even more than behaviorism and psychoanalysis, that man is man, a unit, a whole. From the time of Locke for more than two centuries psychology has been too largely an analytical mosaic which *“Outline of Abnormal Psychology,” p. 8. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 91 had lost its unity. The most significant thing in psychology today is that it is turning from atomism to think of the organism as a whole. In 1912, the year that Watson began to teach behaviorism, Wertheimer in Germany first announced the Gestalt theory. He was followed by Koffka of the University of Giessen and Kohler of the University of Berlin. The word “gestalt’’ is taken in the sense of configuration, or pattern, or unity. The leaders of this school were dissatisfied with the old atomistic psychology with its hair-splitting distinctions, with the artificial “faculties” of the mind, the minute analysis which dissects details only to miss the significance of the whole. The Gestalt, or configurationist school, has broadened the scope of experimental psychology and extended the field of scientific experiment to the more complex forms of expe- rience. Kohler of the Gestalt school, in his “Mentality of Apes” based upon long experimentation, arrives at practically the same conclusions as R. M. Yerkes of Harvard in his “Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes: a Study of Ideational Behavior.” The long study of Kohler on the chimpanzee shows that this animal has two great lacks, the technical aid of speech, which can name, classify, accumulate and share experience; and mental images which so aid man in his thought. Despite these fatal handicaps the chimpanzee apparently went beyond mechanism in intelligent conduct. It consistently showed insight, strong feeling, and purposive behavior. It overcame and surmounted obstacles by round- about methods, successfully used tools, made implements to accomplish its ends, intelligently handled and manipulated objects, collected and built them together to reach its end, 1The word in German means shape, form, frame, appearance, character, configuration, or outline of a whole figure. All behavior is conceived as a constant series. of Gestalten, or configurations. Instead of the simpler reflex of the behaviorist, this school thinks of a larger unit of action involving the whole organism. It deals with complete actions, mental and physical, instead of the abstract isolation of either inner states or consciousness or outward behavior. 92 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH and even chose correctly between photographs ninety out of a hundred times.* Professor Koffka in his “Growth of the Mind” makes a valuable criticism of extreme behaviorism. He shows the danger of Thorndike’s analysis of human behavior as a mere chain of reflexes.2 He maintains that science should not refuse to evaluate factual material of any sort, for true science involves a fair facing of all the facts in a given field. An outward act of behavior may be purely automatic, but the reasoned description of it has a significance beyond mechanism. Koffka places emphasis not upon individual stimulus-response bonds but upon the total situation with its total complex response. The methods and findings of the Gestalt school are already being fruitfully applied in practical life. Miss M. P. Follett in her “Creative Experience’ makes suggestive applications of its principle of integration: “When differing interests meet, they need not oppose but only confront each other. The confronting of interests may result in either one of four things: (1) voluntary submission of one side; (2) struggle and the victory of one side over the other; (3) compromise; or (4) integration. . . . The best way out is always when someone invents something new.” Professor Burnham in “The Normal Mind” has worked out a valuable synthesis of the Gestalt and other schools applied to our present educational and social life. He shows that from the very first of a child’s mental development the process is from wholes to parts. The child exhibits its *To reach a high objective the chimpanzee Sultan “lays the heavy box flat underneath the objective, puts the second one upright upon it’; and after failing to reach it, seeks a third box, places it on the other two, and climbing carefully reaches the objective after long and patient effort of purposive behavior. The chimpanzee begins with something like an inventory of the situation and uses insight in “a complete solution with reference to the whole lay-out of the field.” Kohler, “Mentality of Apes,” pp. 142-198. ‘Psychologies of 1925,” pp. 145-160. *“The nature of mental development . . . is not the bringing together of separate elements, but the arousal and perfection of more and more complicated configurations in which both the phenomena of consciousness and the functions of the organism go hand in hand.” Koffka, “Growth of the Mind,” pp. 16-20, 90-97, 113-173, 356. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 93 highest form of integration in conscious attention. It de- lights in expending energy in motor reactions involving the whole organism. To child and adult the most disintegrating influence is uncontrolled emotion. Among other causes of disintegration of personality are failure in one’s work, failure to be understood, disparagement of the personality, injustice, reflection on one’s honor and slights to one’s self-respect. If genius is freedom from ordinary inhibitions, says Profes- sor Burnham, we must seek to free and develop the whole personality in education and government. The Gestalt school shows that identity is a fact of person- ality as well as change. In practical life we know men whole, rather than by analysis. Unity and consistency mark the developed man. To understand a man we must know not only his reflexes but his driving interests and sentiments and their organization. In a word we must follow analysis by synthesis; we must see life whole if we would know it truly. Has not this been the besetting lack of psychology for the last half century? Conclusion We are glad for the contribution of each of the four foregoing schools of psychology that may help us to make a synthesis in order to view man as a whole. The chemist by analysis may tell us that water is nothing more than H,O, or two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. But there are countless atoms of hydrogen and oxygen in the world that are not water. A molecule of water is something more than three atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. There is a new entity, a new unity, a new creation. Analysis shows the parts, but only synthesis the whole. The whole is often more than the sum of its parts. The physiologist may point out that this man’s body is made up of a hundred and fifty pounds of flesh and bones. The introspectionist points to *See Burnham’s “The Normal Mind,” pp. 677-686. “Journal of Abnormal Psychology,” 1924, p. 132. See also Geo. Humphrey in “Journal of Educational Psychology,” October 1924, p. 401; H. Helson in “American Journal of Psychology,” April 1926, p. 189; J. R. Cantor, “Journal of Philosophy,” 1925, p. 234. 94 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH the elements in his mind, the behaviorist to his animal-like behavior, the Freudian to the sex and other unconscious urges. Even if we combine them all the result falls far short of the reality. A symphony is something more than the sum of its notes or phrases in isolation. It is a unity, it is created by the composer who is a unity, performed by the cooperation of personal units and can be appreciated only as a whole, by a whole person. By all means let us analyze, construct our octave, our technic of composition and per- formance. But let us not imagine that this is music, or that the dissection of the morgue is life. The old psychologist saw man as a combination of facul- ties. The behaviorist sees a bundle of conditioned reflexes, the Freudian sees sex complexes, but we may use the con- tributions of these various approaches to understand more thoroughly personality as a whole. We maintain that the parts of a unified act can only be understood in the light of the whole, behavior in the context of intelligent purpose. Psychology now becomes the study of the whole data of con- sciousness and behavior, their relations and the laws of their formation and change. Because man is a unit he has a passion for unity. The scientist seeks for one law underlying particulars, the philoso- pher has a horror of pluralism or dualism and a passion for monism. ‘The mind shows a tendency to unite, consolidate and simplify. The characteristic of the normal mind is integration, mental unity or wholeness. The child begins with the perception of wholes, not parts, and proceeds from wholes to parts as belonging to the whole. The astronomer groups his constellations, the mathematician his diagrams, the genius discovers a clue to reality in some newly discov- ered unity, such as the law of gravitation, evolution or relativity. Concentration upon each of the special fields of psychology has proved fruitful. But a synthesis or integration seems now to be needed to supplement the valuable results of analysis of the various schools. If we regard these four schools—introspectionists, behaviorists, analysts, and con- gifurationists—not as each, or all, teaching the truth, the THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 95 whole truth and nothing but the truth, but as tools for our use, as means of experimentation for getting at the facts, as invaluable supplementary contributions, we shall then be in a position to evaluate and profit by them all. It was natural that in the first flush of every discovery it should be too exclusively emphasized. For ourselves, we shall let one neu- tralize the other so far as their exclusive claims and one-sided sectarian emphasis are concerned. But we shall let each supplement the others as we endeavor to utilize both analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, the study of mind and body, introspection and behavior, the conscious and unconscious, the part and the whole. The idea of the whole self brings us to the problem of personality. The self is gradually built up out of experience in the interaction between the individual and society. It is a social product. The self is not born whole as a complete personality, but as a bundle of potencies, as a potentiality of selfhood. Place the child of the saint or philosopher alone in the jungle and it never becomes a person but an animal. Only society personalizes man. The self is never an isolated atom, or separate fact. We know ourselves in relation to other selves. The child first looks out on the world as a “big, buzzing, blooming confusion,” upon fixed things, and moving things called persons. The latter begin to train and mold him with their “mores,” customs or morals. Born a helpless babe, the child has yet the promise of personhood. It begins to use the “old brain” of the past heritage, as does the new born animal. Gradually it develops the use of the conscious “new brain” and its cortex of higher activities. It slowly becomes an organized self by the formation of habit. The self is unconsciously integrated and organized around its master motives as selective agencies. The child is not born with a ready-made conscience but is socially conditioned and taught what is right and wrong. He does not inherit ideas but the capacity for ideas and activity. His self-consciousness is developed only in association with other selves. His social life becomes incarnated in his personality. No one is self- made. Alone, man is only an animal. Personality is the 96 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH resultant from the interaction of individuality and society. The growth of self-determination in freedom will mean the harmonizing of all inner energies and outer determining factors. When the organized self has been gradually built up and integrated, personality becomes “the key to reality.” “The undivided self is the citadel of the integrated personality.” We come thus to the core of the self, not as a transcendent or separate soul substance, but as a true person. We now find not only a bundle of functions, but a functioner. We conceive a person to be more than an “event,” more than a system of events. More than mechanism, a person is a vital organism. ‘‘A person is a complex, experienced as belonging to a center.”* However vast and intricate this flowing com- plex of experience, there is a central identity maintained throughout constant change. For this experience is always centered in self-consciousness which joins and unifies it as a whole. This self-consciousness reduces a disordered chaos to an ordered cosmos. It somehow binds in one intelligible whole thinker and thought, functioner and function, con- sciousness and behavior, subject and object. I seem to myself to be a self-conscious subject-object, an I-Me. I ama person who at once thinks and can survey his thought. I bind in one conscious moment my survey of the long past, my expe- rience of the fleeting present, my anticipation of the multi- form and undetermined future. A thing, an event, a machine — or an animal cannot do this, but only a human self. Yet I am not lost in the universe. The pivotal center of conscious- ness remains. Always there is a principle of unity, the background of a united whole. I am not merely a flowing mass of sensations and experienced events, nor an idle spectator of the passing film of outward things. I am a creator. With all my limitations, I plan, choose, determine; I accept or inhibit. I start the so-called “self-starter,” I ride on the controlled explosions of energy, I guide the steering wheel of life. I drive directly or circuitously and persist- “Dr. Brightman, “Lectures on Consciousness,” quoted by Earl Marlatt in “What Is a Person,” Boston University Bulletin, No. 15, to whom we are indebted here. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 97 ently to my end. Personality is the sum total of what I am. It is the totality of myself as a center of conscious experience. Everywhere I utilize mechanism in my body-machine and the universe; but everywhere I transcend it. There ever remains the irreducible “I.” As Marlatt says, “A person is an organic whole of reality—a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm—consisting of a psycho-physical complex, organ- ized about an equally active, rational, dynamic center, and capable of carrying, creating and perpetuating values.” I may not grasp such words or their full meaning, but I di- rectly experience myself. Iam! And I am aware! What is aware? That irreducible center, that dynamic unit and entity revealing itself in its states and functions but not made up of them, that self that is a whole of experience which has never yet been disproven nor explained away—-Personality. Cuapter IIf A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD THE NEED OF GOD Do not the signs of the times point to the imperative need of a new discovery of God? In our opening chapter we observed the brilliant achievements of the new science which has placed almost incalculable forces in our hands. These forces may be used for destruction unless we can gain the spiritual control which will make a new humanity capable of using the new science for the highest ends. Our study of the new psychology showed, with all the rich store of knowl- edge of human nature which it has made available, that many of its leading advocates are offering hungry humanity a stone in place of bread in their philosophy of materialistic mechanism. This negative hypothesis supported only by the most meager results, without prospect of adequate evidence, is actually undercutting the potential faith of many today. It would seem that these need the self-validating experience of an irrefutable discovery of God. Our chapter on the new reformation shows that all great spiritual awakenings in the past were occasioned by or con- sisted in a rediscovery of God in terms of contemporary need. We endeavor to show that the situation in the nation at large and in the churches in particular imperatively calls for a new discovery of God in our own day. The inter- national situation reinforces the same demand. In Russia we have the first instance in history of a consistently main- tained government with an official creed of atheism. This is not in a brief chaotic period such as followed the French Revolution; nor in some obscure academic corner of the world. It is in a vast consolidated empire which is boldly challenging the whole social order of “Christian” civilization. If we pass from the field of science and psychology, and from the national and international situation, we shall find 98 A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 99 the deepest need of all in our own individual lives. Beyond all disputes concerning dogmas and creeds, denominational and party strife, scientific or philosophical theories is not the supreme demand of the hour the rediscovery of Reality and of the Source of life and power which may be made available to meet the deep spiritual needs of our time? There is need also that we submit without reserve or qualification all our belief to the most searching and critical analysis and sweep away any outgrown accretions of dogma and superstition, that we may get down to the bedrock of reality and build anew a firmer and truer structure in our religious and social life. Either-Or If we endeavor to face the ultimate problem of human existence as to the nature of reality, or of the source and ground of life, it would seem that if we are to think clearly three successive pairs of alternatives present themselves to us. 1. Either, there is a God, or, there 1s no God. 2. If such there be, God is personal, or, God is impersonal. 3. The attitude of the individual will be characterized by the will to believe, or, the will to disbelieve. This does not mean, of course, that a man can or should believe whatever he wishes, apart from the evidence. It means the will to test, to find and to follow the truth at all costs. In this realm of religion, however, vast issues are at stake. There is probably in most of us, consciously or un- consciously, an emotional bias for or against each of these alternatives. Therefore it will be practically impossible for anyone to maintain himself on the theoretical razor edge of absolute neutrality or complete indifference. Each will find himself in a position where, whatever his “rationalization,” he is practically for or against the idea of a God, of a per- sonal God, and of the demands of vital religion upon him.? 1 As in everything else, we have all been socially conditioned, favor- ably or unfavorably, for or against religion. For instance, the Russian Communist after five centuries of oppressive Czarism, reject- 100 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH In Professor James’ classic essay on “The Will to Believe” he, of course, does not imply that in blind credulity we should try to believe anything we wish. Two hypotheses, however, both equally tenable, but neither demonstrable, may be presented to us. James shows that the call to decision between them may be an issue either living or dead; either forced or avoidable; either momentous or trivial. The question of God is a genuine - option that is forced, living and momentous. It makes a tre- mendous difference to life and conduct. Moral questions are imperative and cannot wait for sensible proof which is not available. “If your heart does not want a world of moral reality your head will assuredly never make you believe in one.” On many issues faith creates its own verification. Whether in science or religion, we often act on an hypothesis which is afterward validated in experience, or else a negative result forces us to revise our hypothesis. According to James, science says that things are; morality says, some things are better than others; religion says, the best things are the more eternal and we are better off now if we follow the best. Not one of these propositions for science, morality or religion can be theoretically demonstrated in ad- vance, but they can be acted upon and progressively validated or invalidated in experience. In the meantime, it is better in all fields to act upon the positive, the more promising and, adequate hypothesis. Better risk the chance of error, than the loss of truth. Faith does not consist in trying to believe something we know is not so. It is rather a scientific venture in action by which we try to transform a reasonable probability into a certainty of personal experience. Where the intellect cannot prove or disprove either alternative we are free to believe and act upon any living option or adequate hypothesis that promises a solution to the imperative problems of life. “In all the im- portant transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark.’”’* The Significance of God It matters profoundly how we act upon the above alter- natives, for as we have seen, the issue is living, it is momen- tous and it is forced. I must do something. To disbelieve, ing what was all too often a caricature of religion with its monstrous social injustice, and naturally associating the only religion he knew with reaction, superstition and oppression, was inevitably prejudiced against the whole idea of God and religion. He may think he has rejected it upon purely rational grounds, whereas his emotional “set” against it is overwhelming. *Wm. James, “The Will to Believe,” pp. 3-31. A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 101 to postpone or to suspend judgment is perforce to act mean- time upon one hypothesis or the other. I act either as if there were, or as if there were not a God. At the switch two tracks begin to separate by a very slight angle but one may soon lead east and the other west, one toward and the other away from the sunrise. To show the difference that this choice makes in life, in outlook, attitude, action and result, let us take two typical statements from among a count- less number that might be chosen, from a man with a will to disbelieve and from another with a will to believe; one from a man who sadly takes the negative and the other from one who triumphantly takes the positive hypothesis. The quotations are merely intended to show that it profoundly matters which view we take and which hypothesis we test. We quote both writers with deep respect and sympathy. The negative position can hardly be better stated than by Bertrand Russell in “A Free Man’s Worship.” This out- look implies “That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins . . . Brief and powerless 1s Man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built: undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary 102 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.” * The fine mind and spirit of the writer and the beauty of the style do not hide but only accentuate the stark reality and the ghastly implications of this negative alternative. Let us place in sheer contrast with this the outlook on life by another who does believe in God,? “Be of good cheer: for I believe God ... We know that all things work together for good to them that love God . . . Now what follows from all this? If God is for us, who can be against us? The God who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, surely he will give us every- thing besides! What can ever part us from Christ’s love? Can anguish or calamity or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword? No, in all this we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am certain neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, no powers of the Height or of the Depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to part us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord . . . For the sons © of God are those who are guided by the Spirit of God. And when we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is this Spirit testifying along with our own spirit that we are children of God; and if children, heirs as well, heirs of God—for we share his sufferings in order to share his glory. Present suffering, I hold, is a mere nothing compared to the glory that we are to have revealed . With all my labours, with all my lashes, with all my time in prison I have been often at the point of death; five times have I got forty lashes (all but one) from the Jews, three times I have been beaten by the Romans, once pelted with stones . through labour and hardship, through many a sleepless night, through hunger and thirst, starving many a time . . . for I am strong just when I am weak... AS sorrowful yet always tejoicing !” Let us note that, though neither can prove or disprove by logic, each of these two men is equally assured in his own ~ mind. Mr. Russell says, “All these things if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. . . . Only on the firm *Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship (Mysticism and Logic) ,” New York, 1918, p . 46 ff. Italics are ours. * Quotations from The Aiea Paul, Moffatt’s translation, Acts 28 :25, Romans 8 :14-39, A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 103 foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.” Contrast the assurance of the other warrior: “I know whom I have trusted, and I am certain he is able to keep what I have put into his hands till the great Day. The last drops of my own sacrifice are falling ; my time to go has come. I have fought in the good fight; I have run my course; I have kept the faith. Now the crown of a good life awaits me . . . and not only me but all who have loved and longed for his appearance.’ The one builds on the foundation of “unyielding despair,” the other of triumphant faith and hope and love. If it should be said that our second illustration is drawn from the classic past, from a man who did not have to face our modern problems, then as one among many let us take a modern student, a tennis champion and prominent in three other branches of athletics. His plans for a life work have fallen in ruins about him, he has just lost an eye. Yet with- out even losing his fine sense of humor, he writes: “Life has become so beautiful, so much more than my capacity to respond. Tomorrow I go into the city and I'll meet thousands of folks all more worthy than I am yet I cannot believe they are as happy. Oh, for a chance to know how to bring peace and love and kindness and meekness into these unhappy lives— to unshackle them and let them out into the freedom of pure love. I believe there isn’t a heart beating that doesn’t yearn for purity and love, for a God to whom to trust everything. Why, I couldn’t be discouraged; I have lost an eye, but what of that in the face of what has been gained? My life is no longer mine. It is here for some purpose and the most I can do is to find that purpose and throw my life into it. There is nothing but happiness in this world unless we are looking for reasons to be hurt. It will be October before I can have my artificial eye. I’ve asked them to put in it ‘a spark of human kindness,’ ” & In this chapter we shall abandon the effort at theoretical demonstration and follow the way of experimental discov- ery. We feel that this method is true to human nature and 1“A Free Man’s Worship,” p. 46 ff. 22 Timothy 1:12, 4:6-8. * Letter from Robert Rugh of Oberlin, 1926. 104 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH experience; it is endorsed by the testimony of history. How many have been convinced by all the centuries of philosophic “proofs”? Yet multitudes of men have discovered God ‘for themselves by the simple method of friendship. Men in every age and under all conditions of life, men in all religions and with no religion, men who began as agnostics, atheists, or materialists of various kinds, have entered into this joyous and triumphant experience which is capable of repeated verification. For illustration, we recall many instances among Russian and other Slavic students who because of their situation had lost all faith and hope. The writer was present at the first conference held by Czechoslovak students after the war. Five centuries before, their national leader, John Huss, had been burned at the stake. Their Bibles had been burned, their language forbidden, their schools closed, their liberties denied, and religion had been so long connected with tyranny and oppression that the majority of the students had turned from all organized religion, whether Catholic or Protestant. Many had become atheists. At this student conference we began to study a book that many of them had never read, which because of their preju- dice we called “the book of John Huss’—the New Testa- ment. Man after man entered into a new experience in the fresh discovery of God. In the middle of the conference, however, the students called out one of their popular leaders who cut from under some of them all hope or faith. The atheists rallied and seemed triumphant. The students left the meeting to go to their afternoon field sports and swim- ming. One of them sank and was drowned. They came back with the dead body of their comrade. Because of their prejudice they would enter no church, Catholic or Protestant, and would have no priest nor minister for the funeral. The writer was asked to make a few remarks standing in the dust of the road before they removed the body. Over that _ open coffin we asked those atheists, “What have we here? Is there merely a hundred and fifty pounds of flesh—with no soul, no God, no life beyond, no hope for this boy? Is A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 105 there no hope for his sorrowing parents, no hope for us? Or, is there a God, a life beyond, a larger life into which this boy has perhaps already entered?” There was a letter, unfinished, found in the pocket of his coat on the shore. The boy had written, ““We have caught a new vision at this conference. A great task awaits the students of our land. I see no hope for the world but the love of Christ. I must be a better man. There is a new life for me. It is pos- sible...” Here over that open coffin we saw the “great divide,” the final issue—God, or no God. Was he capable of responding to personal relations or incapable? Had they the will to believe or to disbelieve? In the closing meeting every student spoke. The majority took their stand for God. They wrote the name of God and Christ into their constitu- tion. They applied for membership in the World Student Christian Federation. They had kindled again the fires of faith where five centuries before John Huss, their patriot- martyr, had been burned at the stake. On another occasion we were having meetings among the. he, students in Russia. One of them who was about to commit suicide, after attending one of the meetings, wrote the following letter: “I am a medical student troubled by doubts and passions. I had lost all faith and saw no meaning in life. I decided to put an end to my days by suicide. Once I loved God, in my infant recollections, but afterwards all went downwards in my life. I ceased to pray and to believe in him. Day and night I thought of committing suicide. I considered it to be cowardly but could not conquer myself. I gave up books and study. On the 25th of January I left my room-mate for the last time, saying: ‘Good-bye; tomor- row I will cease to exist.’ A life without meaning, without aim, without eternity, with nothing but human pleasures, was disgusting to me. I saw the notice of your lectures on ‘A Rational Basis for Religion,’ ‘The Meaning of Life,’ etc. I went, and on returning, I went to sleep for the first time during the last two months without thoughts of suicide. I now read the Gospel daily and am again able to pray. I do not know what the future will be, but now I desire again to NY 106 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH live. In any case, I shall prolong my life for the next three months to make the test of Jesus Christ by reading the Gospels again as you asked us. Pray for me.’ The last we heard of this student she had found the meaning of life and was on her way to relieve the peasants of Russia in the famine-stricken area. For thirty years and more we have seen students and others who followed this method discover God for themselves out of the midst of doubt, scepticism, failure and sin. All through the centuries is not this the method that has yielded results, the method of discovery? We Already Know God—In Part , Before proceeding upon our quest of the discovery of - God let us pause for one thought. If there be a reader of these lines who is in doubt, or who thinks he has not found God, may we put to him this question? Are you so sure that you have not found him? Perhaps you know God already but do not know his name. If God is not an object of perception, you need not expect to come suddenly upon him, as you might catch a workman at his task. You will not find him as a residuum in your test tubes nor at the end of your microscope or telescope nor at the conclusion of an argument. For God is not so much the conclusion of one argument as the necessary ground of all. He is like the sun. “He is the one object in the world at which we cannot steadfastly gaze, yet in the light of which we see everything else.” No, you will never suddenly come upon God—nor upon yourself. You will find no objective proofs of either the self or its Source, apart from the body and nature. God and the self are both too intimately near to be seen or objec- tively experienced, like the eye that cannot see itself save in some material reflection that interrupts its vision. Prac- tically all the means of life are mechanistic and material; all its ends and higher values are unseen. Even some of the most important things in the material world are not only A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 107 invisible, like the air, electricity, gravitation, energy, but have never been directly experienced. Now let us raise the question whether you do not already know God and are perchance in invisible contact with him at every point in your life. We have not reached the point of inductive definition, but let us suppose that God may be all that there is of Reality; that he embraces all the true, the good, and the beautiful; all life, all personalities in con- scious freedom. Suppose that personalism and pantheism are but two sides of one shield of reality; that nature is but the living garment of God, a sacrament that we share with God, and that all the universe is not merely a mechanism but an organism—the organ of God. Suppose that each person is but a unit cell in the infinite organism of life, a center of consciousness, a personalized manifestation of a God who is himself personal or supra-personal. Suppose that God is no whit less than we are at any point but infinitely more, that God is in our best, meeting us, surrounding and supplementing us, grounding us in the Reality in whom we live and move and have our being—a God adequate to the universe and answering to our fractional and fragmentary need. This would indeed be an hypothesis of hope. Perchance it is not too good to be true. But if it zs true, then such a God we know already in just the proportion that we know life itself, for he is the Source of all life. If there were not something of nature in us we could not know nature. If we were not personal selves we could have no conception of other selves. If there were not something of God in us we would have no means of recognizing him. In self, nature, persons, God, we may find that there are but four steps to God, and yet that he is in each step, the beginning and end, the author and finisher, the continuous Source of all our life. As Pascal said, “Thou wouldst not seek me hadst thou not already-found me.” This came to Sabatier “like a flash of light . . . the solution of a problem that had long appeared insoluble.”* 1Quoted by W. E. Hocking, “The Meaning of God in Human Experience,” p. 147. 108 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Many a man has had some unfortunate experience in the past and has rejected some caricature of religion. He has reacted from bigotry, superstition, or obscurantism; from irrational or immoral views of God. In rejecting half-truths he has perhaps been true to his best. Though he cannot yet believe in God, because it seems too good to be true, or because mechanism seems to claim the field, or because of some complex or past prejudice, yet he does the best he knows. In seeking to choose good against evil, truth against falsehood, beauty against disharmony, he is, however, uncon- sciously, recognizing a universal quality, an absolute value, a relation to reality and a loyalty to the truth of things. If so, on the basis of our hypothesis, he is in so far true to God. Or, let us suppose that he is true to humanity. He is living with a passion for justice for the needy and exploited, for the suffering poor. If so, and if our hypothesis be cor- rect, whether he knows it or not his passion for humanity is at bottom a passion for God. And this at the very point of the deepest need of life, that is, of God himself. “He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen cannot love God whom he hath not seen.” And conversely, he that loveth his brother whom he hath seen, is thereby loving God whom he hath not seen. Far more than the praises of his attributes, God must crave help for needy humanity as his chief problem. The most touching service that could be rendered to a great man would be to his crippled child, if he had one. “Inasmuch as ye did it to these least ye did it to Me.” Dr. Parkhurst tells of a blind girl who when told of God said, “I did not know his name, but J know him.’ There are doubtless many that thus know God already. In our daily life we are forced into contact with reality—perhaps it is Reality, with God in it or behind it. We face truth and error, and all unknowing we may choose Truth. We struggle between good and evil, and in our victory we have chosen the Good. We see beauty over against ugliness, deformity, disharmony, and choose Beauty. We cannot alter the principles of mathematics, or the law of gravity or of chemical affinity; we cannot create water as we wish; A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 109 but only as we obey, and combine H?O according to the law of their combination. Thus, in the unchanging laws of the universe we come up against the Absolute. We begin to divide 3 by 7 in mathematics and we can never finish. In our geometry, in astronomy, everywhere beyond the limits of our little finite we are in touch with a seemingly limitless Infinite. We begin our little life with the particular “TI,” “me,” and “my,” but in ever-widening circles of expanding experience, in ever larger generalizations, we find ourselves launched on the adventure of a vast and boundless universe and we pass from petty particulars to the Universal. We begin our infant life with complexity and chaos in a “big, buzzing, booming confusion,” but we finally discover a trend to order and progress and integration. Our chaos becomes a cosmos, our multiverse is found to be a universe, and we are driven on toward some ultimate Unity. The infant is born in a seeming world of things. But some of the things move and take shape and beckon us out till we become ourselves, and see other selves, in a world of persons until, beyond a world of lifeless mechanism, we reach Life and stand before the miracle of Personality. Thus step by step we learn to walk, and letter by letter we learn to spell the first meanings of our world until we learn a Name—that name is—God.1 How Do We Find God? However I may interpret them, I face certain apparent realities in my experience. I am aware of Nature, I am aware of myself, I am aware of other selves. I experience a world of things, I experience myself, and a society of persons. Each presents a problem and an alternative. What is a thing, what is a person, and what is the relationship of the self, things and persons to one another? Is there any source or unifying principle in the universe? Let us call * Bishop Temple says, “Communion with the eternal is probably not quite unknown to any human being. Whenever a man feels the con- straint of moral obligation, he is in touch with the Eternal; for the maxim ‘because right is right to follow right’ is no creation of Time.” “Christus Veritas,” p. 41. 110 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH this possible source God. We shall start with no formal definition that would set limits and bounds to the word “God.” For the present, until inductively we have discovered something of its nature, we shall let the word God denote the source of life. Let us frankly recognize at the outset that while there is much evidence, there is no final proof or disproof. We face the problem of nature, of the self, of persons and of the possible source of all, God. Not one of these four can be proved or disproved by science or philosophy or religion. If anyone would deny this let him attempt to convince a single doubter by his alleged “proofs,” be they positive or negative. No ultimate reality can be demonstrated, each must be discovered. Not one can be deductively determined, but each may be inductively discerned in experience. If a thing can be discovered, if it is immediately known in experi- ence, if it is subject to repeated experiment and is socially verifiable, if it becomes a tested ground of practical life, philosophical “proofs” become as superfluous as they are impossible. Let us then in turn test each of the above four— nature, self, persons and God. Let us begin with nature. We found in the first chapter that science rests upon certain undemonstrable premises of objectivity, rationality and universality. No scientist can prove the existence of the world with which he is working. But does he lie awake nights fearing that the world may not be there? Does he, with a will to disbelieve, demand “proofs” that nature exists before he will make his first experiment? No, consciously or unconsciously, with a will to believe, he assumes the fact of the world and starts his experiments. His hypothesis, or faith, is validated by each cumulative experiment, and becomes the more certain ground of his ever-widening experience. He leaves the philosopher to do the doubting and attempt the “proving” of the self or of nature. He is not even interested in the discussion. He is too sure of himself and of his daily experience with nature to doubt the reality of either. The same is true of any man with a vital experience in religion. A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD Lil We turn next to the self. I cannot prove what I am, but I know that I am. “I think, therefore I am.” As James says, “There is but one indefectibly certain truth ... that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.” Twenty- five centuries of philosophy have not proved that the soul exists, and there is not the slightest probability that twenty- five centuries more of philosophy alone will do so. But we know in practical experience this immediate certainty of self. Whether determined or not, in apparently purposive con- trol men have built enduring characters from Aristotle to Einstein, from Jesus of Nazareth to his most humble follower of today. Philosophy and psychology cannot give nor take away the self. It cannot be demonstrated but it can be discovered, integrated, realized, known. It is the same with persons, or other selves. No one has ever demonstrated the reality of another person. We cannot prove the existence of our own mother or father, wife or husband, child or friend. But do we need or demand such proof? Philosophy did not give us our mother and our friends by demonstration, and it cannot take them away. A person may be as invisible as God is said to be. We cannot see the mind, the character, the self of the other; only certain physical manifestations to our physical senses. Yet who seriously doubts the existence of his mother or his friend? The Laws of Friendship Friendship is not made by demonstration but by discovery, the process is not one of logic but of love, or the desire of persons for one another, leading finally to the full sharing of life. Prof. J. H. Howson shows the conditions of human fellowship, or the principles of friendship, which may have an exact analogy in the discovery of God, if he is found capable of responding to personal relations. An ideal friend- ship is based upon common interest, common trust and the common sharing of life.t 1President King finds a four-fold basis for an ideal friendship: 1. Integrity, breadth and depth of personality, 2. some deep com- munity of interests, 3. mutual self-revelation and answering trust, and 4. mutual self-giving. Perhaps we may learn to know God just 112 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Friendship originates in the discovery in another person of an appreciation which we ourselves have. The discovery of such an appreciation makes another person “real” to us and when two or more persons discover in one another a community of appreciation, they become real to one another in a sense of fellowship. The perception of this common appreciation is made possible through the physical manifestation of language, gesture and action. The objective reality of a friend is verifiable if the perception of the community of interest is capable of scientific testing. All friendship is built upon faith and must proceed one step at a time in a confidence that begets answering trust. As I take time to get acquainted I come to know a person, as I know a trustworthy person faith in him grows and this faith calls out response. Thus we advance by faith in answering trust and by mutual discovery in self-disclosure. Faith, in friendship, involves the belief in its objective valid- ity, growingly validated by intercourse. The critical faculty may examine the basis of the friendship and the community of interest upon which it is based, but when two persons fall in love there may be such a strong feeling of fellowship, such an overwhelming sense of the reality of the friend and delight in the friend’s presence, that the critical perception of the com- munity of interest may be entirely lost sight of, and one may, as it were, lose one’s self in the deepening discovery of another person. The self and the person loved become equally real. The depth and intensity of the friendship will depend upon the character of the appreciations shared, as its breadth and richness will depend upon their variety and extent. The con- stancy of the friendship will depend on the permanence of the common interest, upon the ability to communicate and share new interests and upon their ability to grow together in the ever- widening experience of life. It must be progressive as life itself is progressive and not static. There may be a real sense of fellowship based upon a single shared value, especially if the interest is dominant, but for full friendship there must be a full sharing of all the interests of life. Perfect love is com- plete mutuality or the full sharing of life. There may be, however, an unequal friendship as between parent and child, or God and man. The child cannot know all of the parent’s life, but the relationship will depend not upon complete knowledge but upon full sharing, not upon intellectual understanding, but upon community of interest. as we find a friend. Our friendship may grow as naturally and joyously as does a human friendship, and we may advance into the full realization of an intimate relation as close as, or closer than, that with our nearest human friends by exactly the same four-fold path. A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 113 We shall now seek an answer to our first two questions: is there a God and is he capable of responding to human relations? We shall advance the hypothesis that there is a God accessible to his friends, who may be found, after the analogy of human friendship, by the full sharing of interests. We shall ask what his interests are which we must share and how we may increasingly discover him by the sharing of these interests. The Method of Discovery In the quest of the discovery of God we begin just as we would upon the threshold of any science, or of a human friendship. We endeavor to start without prejudice, without the constraint of any external authority, and build from the ground up. We begin with the most probable or adequate hypothesis, test it, revise it in accordance with further dis- covered facts and, after verifying it in experience, draw the legitimate conclusions. Without begging the question or trying to believe anything in advance, let us take the hopeful hypothesis that there may be a God, and that he may be capable of responding to personal relations. If we act as if there were a God, let us see if life responds and validates such an hypothesis or whether a negative result invalidates it. We cannot have an absolute dualism and an impassable gulf fixed between a source of blind, impersonal force, on the one hand, and a conscious, purposive intelligence on the other. Either the self and nature are both solely mate- rial; or the self and its Source are both of the stuff that purposive intelligence is made of. If man really has con- sciousness, then it is logical to ascribe consciousness to the cosmos, for we would not expect the part to be greater than the whole, the effect greater than the cause, man greater than God. If there be a God at all, he cannot be less than man at his best, though he may be infinitely more. In the discovery of God we start with the self. We must start at the only point of which we may be sure. Faith is. life’s self-declaration; reason’s business is to interpret it. 114 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH We must believe in ourselves as real before we can believe in nature, man or God. The normal path of experience is from within outward. Man may start with his own con- sciousness and project it outward to interpret the universe after the analogy of himself. In so doing he starts with the surest and highest that he knows. Or he may reverse this earliest, most instinctive and natural process. He may project from without inward, from material and mechanical nature to the self and try to interpret himself as merely a material mechanism of response to external stimulus. Either is an unproved act of faith. Here, as everywhere, we are forced to an “either-or.” Either self is a thing and the universe merely a material thing; or else the self is a person and the universe a cosmic consciousness. Both are either mechanism or organism, blind force or purposive intelligence, ultimately impersonal or personal. We have resolved to start, however, with the positive and hopeful hypothesis of a cosmic consciousness capable of responding to personal relations with a purposive, personal self. As we begin with the hypothesis of an intelligent self in a kindred, intelligible universe, let us go forward to see whether or not we can discover God in the great areas of life where others have found the end of their quest—in nature, in man, in a world of values, in persons of spiritual genius, and finally most important of all, in personal experience. 1. The Discovery of God in Nature Multitudes of men have discovered an experience of God in nature. The artist cannot tell nor paint the ineffable which he sees in Beauty. The poet sees “a Presence which is not to be put by.” The husbandman finds something more than earth and sky. The scientist often feels like Newton, “I seem to be a little child picking up the pebbles on the seashore of eternity”; or like Lord Kelvin, “forced by science to belief in God.” The philosopher has often found God in nature. The common man has felt that there was something beyond the visible, as one writes, “I have A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 115 never seen a high mountain or the ocean or any other vast and beautiful sight, without a strengthening of my belief in God.” Thus nature speaks to many of something within or beyond the visible. The very first fact of human experience is the physical universe. We are born into and are a part of a visible world that obtrudes upon our senses with inescapable insistence. The longer we study it with microscope, telescope or spec- troscope, the more its wonder grows upon us. ‘The solid fact of the universe challenges us for an adequate explana- tion. It stirs us by the infinity of its magnitude, by its millions of light years. It amazes us by its complexity and yet more by its system and order. From the infinitely minute mathematical orbits of the electrons within the atom, to those of the infinitely distant heavenly bodies, all moves with apparent rationality and universality in one system of law. By its invariable reliability it gives us a dependable platform upon which to stand. As we have seen, Professor Henderson of Harvard has pointed out in “the fitness of the environment” the apparent definite and minute pre-adaptation of the physical world as the dwelling place of life. He shows that there was not literally one chance in a billion that a blind, material universe would be fit to sustain life and produce an ordered and progressive evolution upon the planet. Professor E. G. Conklin of Princeton agrees that, “The possibilities are almost infinite to one against the conclusion that the order of nature, the fitness of the environment, and the course of progressive evolution with all its marvelous adaptations are all the result of blind chance. ... In short, science reveals to us a universe of ends as well as of means, of teleology as well as of mechanism, and in this it agrees with the teachings of philosophy and religion,”* 1 Charles Darwin reverently adds his conviction, “If we consider the whole universe the mind refuses to look upon it as the outcome of chance—that is, without purpose or design. . . . The theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in God.” “Life and Letters,’ Vol. I, pp. 304-307, “More Letters of Darwin,” II, p. 395. Thomas Huxley also found himself “utterly unable to conceive the existence of matter if there is no mind to feature that existence.” 116 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH If the universe is everywhere rational and intelligible, there must be intelligence behind it. If mind has been evolved from it, it must be involved in it. If all is law, all must be intelligence. Our very terms of “law,” “nature,” “system,” “organization,” “evolution,” “universe,” betray the conviction that there is plan everywhere. If a newspaper brings an intelligible message to my mind, I cannot believe that the type set itself, or that it was a work of chance. Do not the works of a Shakespeare require nothing less than Shakespeare to account for them? What then does the universe require to account for it? Does it not speak with one voice to the open heart and to the ear that is not deaf as to Julian or Norwich, “See! I am in all things. See! I lift never mine hand from off my works, nor ever shall!” Thus the man who has discovered God in nature “has a confi- dence in the universe and an inner joy which the other does not know—is more at home in the universe as a whole, than other men,’”? If we begin to read this open book of nature, does it not speak to mind and heart and will? There may be some of its chapters hard to understand, which we shall have to con- sider later under the problem of evil, but does not nature speak an intelligible message to the mind? There is meaning here. The geologist, the physicist, the chemist, the biologist, the astronomer are beginning to spell out some meanings in the opening chapters of the book. Everywhere there is integrity and rationality. From its finest filaments to its farthest reaches it is one tissue of ideas and relations, so vast and so orderly that it seems to point not to blind chance but to Mind? * Pratt, “The Religious Consciousness,” p. 35, quoted by Evelyn Underhill, “The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today,” p. 16. * Dr. James Martineau writes: “What have we found by moving out along all the radii into the infinite? That the whole is woven together in one sublime tissue of intellectual relations, geometrical and physical—the realized original, of which all our science is but a partial copy. That science is the crowning product and supreme expression of human reason . . . Unless therefore it takes more mental faculty to construe the universe than to cause it, to read the book of nature than to write it, we must more than ever look upon its sublime face as the living appeal of thought to thought.” A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 117 Nature speaks also to the heart. We are a part of nature and it is a part of us. “It stirs every emotion of our souls, it is a million-stringed harp which wakes and responds to all the feelings of our complex emotional nature.’ In its emergent evolution we find mother love appearing and the struggle for the life of others. Whoever has found the miracle of answering love in another life, whoever has found his own heart expanding with growing affection has found that, whatever its source, here in the heart of nature is Love. And nature speaks of power which may perchance imply purpose and will. We found that the new science revealed incredible power in every atom of the boundless universe. And yet this power is not running wild in chaos, but from each electron in its mathematical orbit, from each element in the periodic scale of its atomic weight, to the calculable motions of the heavenly bodies, these vast forces are mar- velously balanced and controlled. The power is not greater than the control. For illustration, if through a lifetime of consistent effort we see a Wilberforce with purposive striving working toward the abolition of slavery and the freedom of humanity, what do we conclude? Does such behavior indi- cate a mere fortuitous concourse of atoms, the haphazard of blind force, the necessity of blind fate, or does it reveal power under the control of purpose? And if we see, stretch- ing over hundreds of millions of years, the consistent and cumulative working of creative evolution producing the in- telligence, affection and purpose of man and embracing a thousand movements like that of Wilberforce, why should we have the will to disbelieve either its boundless power or that “one increasing purpose runs” through all? Finally, if man is an intelligent, loving, purposive indi- vidual unified in self-consciousness, is it not at least possible that the microcosm of the individual reflects the macrocosm of the ordered universe? Why should others not seek and find what Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning, with the poets, artists and seers of 118 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH all time, have ever sought and found—the discovery of God in nature? May we not see a Presence that disturbs us with a joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. 2. The Discovery of God in Man The clue to the nature of God may be discovered in man. If, according to our hypothesis, there is a God who is re- vealed in nature, we would expect him to be most adequately known not by the lowest but by the highest in nature, which is man. Indeed there is no possible way to interpret God save by the analogy of one of the two aspects of our experi- ence, its highest aspect, mind, or its lowest, matter. Mature thought forces man to resolve his apparent dualism. He must believe that two separate islands clasp hands beneath the sea and are only two manifestations of one solid earth beneath. But on the surface he knows them as two, and on the surface of life his apparent experience is of two kinds, of matter and of mind. Presumably either the ultimate reality is akin to the lowest that he knows, matter and force; or to the highest, intelligence and personality. All man’s. ultimate values are personal. Man can only infer by the projection of his present limited experience. Frankly, his method must be either materialistic or anthropomorphic. Even when a Nietzsche utterly rejects the conventional system of ethics he can only conceive of a super-man. He cannot even imagine a third thing utterly foreign to his experience. God may be either a super-force or a super-Mind. But if the universe be anything more than a mere mechanism of matter and force, its source can only A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 119 be personal or supra-personal; it must include all that is best in personality as man knows it. Man could do no other than make his god in his own image, writ large. But frequently he has projected into his conception of God his worst as well as his best. Browning’s Caliban imagines his god Setebos cruel, vindictive, arbitrary, and jealous like himself. As he tears his crabs limb from limb so would his god tear him. Many men in our own day project into their conception of God all their own selfishness. He becomes the chief.stay of their social order of special privilege and injustice. Was it not the method of Jesus to discover God in man’s best? Would not a man, he says, give to his importunate friend who needed bread, and what man would not give to his child necessary food? If ye then being evil give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the best to you? If a shepherd seeks his lost sheep, if a woman seeks her lost coin, if a father receives back his lost son, how much more will a heavenly Father seek and receive his own? Jesus discovered God in humanity. That is one reason why his message is so human and so true. God usually educates men through men. We recognize him most clearly when we see him transforming human char- acter and incarnated in human life. As Augustine says, “one loving spirit sets another on fire.” Thus the great unortho- dox, contemporary, Spanish mystic Unamuno says, “I believe in God as I believe in my friends, because I feel the breath of his affection, feel his invisible and intangible hand, draw- ing me, leading me, grasping me. . . . I have felt the impulse of a mighty power, conscious, sovereign and loving. And then before the feet of the wayfarer, opens out the way of the Lord. . . . How do you know that the man you see before you possesses a consciousness like you . . . be- cause the man acts toward you like a man. And in the same way I believe that the Universe possesses a certain conscious- ness like myself, because its action toward me is a human *Luke 13:1-11, 15:1-32. 120 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH action, and I feel that it is a personality that environs me. . Itis the Universe, living, suffering, loving, and asking for love.’ Why then should not we also press on where multitudes of men in every age have made the increasing discovery of God in man? 3. The Discovery of God in Values Man is forced to face not only an outer world of fact but an inner world of value. All sensation forces upon man the outer fact; all thinking involves value. Explain it as we may, the experience of the race has gathered around man’s three-fold quest in his hunger for the true, his sense of obli- gation to the good, and his longing to realize the beautiful, in the harmonious exercise of function and the joy of satis- faction in the effort to make life whole. Man’s appreciation of value grades him in the scale of being and measures all his progress. He hungers for truth as the end of his intellect. He craves in beauty some satisfying object that shall corre- spond to his aesthetic nature.? But his appreciation of value centers in his moral sense of obligation. Modern psychology shows that there is no separate, in- fallible monitor or judge called “conscience.” Our ideas of right and wrong are socially conditioned by the customs of | our group impressed upon us. Our sense of duty is always relative and imperfect. Nevertheless, after a total study of a situation, once convinced of what is right or wrong, there is a feeling of absolute obligation to do the right. “We *M. de Unamuno, “The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples,” pp. 194, 195. So in all lands and in all religions God has been dis- covered in man. The Sufi poet cries, “O soul, seek the Beloved; O friend, seek the Friend.” Kabir in India can say, “From the beginning until the end of time there is love between me and thee: and how shall such love be extinguished?” Quoted by E. Underhill in “The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today,” pp. 8-11, 46. * No true artist dishonors his art by making it chiefly a mere means of private gain. Yet he is not justified in following it for its own sake unless beauty has a meaning in the universe, apart from the subjective emotion it arouses in men. He feels that in his devotion to beauty he is somehow loyal to the truth of things. Man’s pur- suit of beauty is a witness to his appreciation of an invisible reality. The same is true in his loyalty to truth and duty. A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 121 needs must love the highest when we see it,’ and we needs must do it. The voice of duty is what our best self and the whole universe behind it bids us do. There is an inward source of vital power that insists that the moral interests shall be preserved at all costs. This moral sense may be developed and sensitized or it may be hardened, atrophied or destroyed. There is such a thing as physical blindness to the world of fact, and there may be a spiritual blindness to the world of value. By an over-simplification life may be emptied of its higher values and reduced to its lowest physical terms of mere matter and force. Life may be cheapened and degraded by negation until finally, as Fichte puts it, man has elected to be a thing and not a person. Or, life may be realized in the quest for its higher values. Professor Burtt completes his study of the “Metaphysical Foundations of Physics” with the conclusion, “no moral motivation comes to the average human mind by thinking of its world as ultimately matter. Rather it is when men are persuaded that their ideas and ideals are as real and efficacious as anything in the world.’ To cheapen life merely to the limits of the material and temporal may lead to the careless “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die,” or to the cynicism of despair. But to discover with Kant not only the fact of the starry heavens above but the value of the moral law within, leads to the wonder of worship and to the indomitable hope of spiritual achievement. Man does not so much create subjective values as he discovers what is already there in the heart of the uni- verse, as the external stimulus of his own response. As we seek the true, the good and the beautiful, we find them. Reality responds. The universe discloses itself to the man who is true to the ultimate values. He that seeks shall find, because there is something there to be found. The right key fits the lock. If the universe were mere mechanism and if the fittest survive, we would expect that those who live upon this theory would live the best life. If on the other hand the ultimate fact of the universe is not * “Metaphysical Foundations of Physics,” p. 330. 122 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH mechanism but purpose, if the values of the true, the good and the beautiful are absolute and are united in a perfect Mind and Heart and Will, then the recognition of value will get the best response of reality. Somehow the universe backs these values. Evil tends to disintegrate and destroy itself. The good abides and increas- ingly possesses the earth because the universe sustains the moral values. In so far as we are true to our best and realize the values of life, we do not merely infer that there is a God, but we are in so far discovering God himself. The values of the true, the good and the beautiful unite in the one absolute value of Love. Only in so far as we learn to love can we realize life. Only by love can we really ever know another individual and only by the full sharing of our lives, as an advancing faith meets an answering response, can we ever know the ultimate source and ground of all Love. If we postulate the possibility of a good God we shall discover him increasingly in our best, until we find in the end that all around us there is an ocean of beauty and life and love in God. 4, The Discovery of God in Persons of Spiritual Genius Has not the chief method of human progress in all branches of knowledge been the discovery of new truth by a leader and the sharing of the discovery in personal experi- ence by others? Occasionally some man of genius makes a supreme discovery which all may share. Thus Aristotle becomes a pathfinder in philosophy. Thus Phidias stands at the creative summit of the plastic art. He gathers and expresses all that was finest in Greek sculpture before him and leaves a standard of incarnate beauty and an inspiration for all who follow him. Thus Bach incorporates what is best in German music and makes possible Beethoven and all who follow him. Newton discovers certain great laws in science and the experience of the human race is enriched. Homer influences and inspires all Greek writers, as Dante discovers the possibilities of Italian and Shakespeare of \ | A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 123 English literature. So in the moral and spiritual sphere among many prophets and seers, moral teachers and founders of religions one stands preéminent in the discovery of God. As his greatest follower described him, he became “The eldest in a vast family of brothers.” We need begin with no theological theory or definition of his person. Somehow men in his presence discovered God for themselves. In some way, without argument or demon- stration, men caught the contagion of his faith. Apparently without effort or design he so introduced men to God, not by way of information but personal acquaintance, that ever after he becomes the supreme reality of their lives. Men not only through him entered into a new experience, but they discovered in his life a deeper interpretation of the character of God. God is not a word to be defined but a reality that can be known only in experience. We cannot imagine a man defining his wife. Nor can we conceive of Jesus defining God as in the creeds, “immaterial substance, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” Instead “as the track- ing out of a concrete life, a Man, from Nazareth to Calvary, made of Christianity a veritable human revelation of God.” “Christ, Who in a human life, a human heart, Didst show the world, and showest still the world, The very heart and life of God himself.” “We praise thee this day For the music and laughter and joy Of thine own eternal life: For the heart overflowing with gladness Because it has thee: For the zest and delight of the humblest life lived on earth That is kindled aflame with the friendship of God.”? God could not be contained in words but the world had waited for a human life that could reveal him, for a good- * Hoyland, “The Fourfold Sacrament,” p. 115. 124 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH will that without’ reserve could suffer all for the common good; for a human heart that could love its enemies and show Love incarnate. Henceforth, unless a human life had utterly surpassed the divine, men had to enlarge their defi- nition of God to include at least all that Jesus was. They believed they had looked upon “the portrait of the invisible God.” They conceived that in some way “Jesus was God here; and God is Jesus everywhere,” that the spirit that was manifest in him is the spirit that is at the heart of the universe." 7 The recognition of God in man has solved the ultimate problems of life for many as for Browning, “T say the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in this world and out of it, And has, so far, advanced thee to be wise.” Once at least a man lived a whole life in the light of his faith in God. While he does not evade the sterner realities of life, he eliminates from the conception of God all that is not ethical. He attributes to him all that human judgment can approve as all-good, the eternal Goodness that embodies the supreme ideal, yet who comes into the closest relations with men. Men are to aim to be perfect, even as their Father in heaven is perfect. The whole significance of his life was God. He first came into Galilee proclaiming “the good news of God.” And this experience of spiritual discovery through him did not cease with his death. For some reason it was greatly augmented after it. Paul, who had never seen him, entered into a fuller *If God must include all that is best in man, including Jesus, then he cannot be less than personal. Thus Lotze points out that “perfect Personality is in God only. To all finite minds there is allotted but a pale copy thereof; the finiteness of the finite is not a producing condition of this Personality but a limit and hindrance of its de- velopment.” Professor Borden P. Bowne comes to the same con- clusion in his Theism: “On all these accounts we regard the objections to the personality of the world-ground as resting on a very superficial psychology. Proper personality is possible only to the Absolute.” A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 125 experience of God than any of the twelve that were with him during his life time. Centuries later Francis of Assissi catches more of his spirit than any of his disciples up to the time of his death. Separation in time and space proved no barrier to the discovery of God, who is as accessible today as in the time of Jesus. Quite apart from any theory, the simple human record of his life and teaching has proved the means of introducing men in every age to the secret of the discovery of God for themselves. Jesus himself “lived and had his being in the sacred Scriptures.” As recorded in the first gospel alone some fifty-eight times he quotes from seventeen different books in the Old Testament. These were the fresh springs from which he drank. And with all the added wealth of his own life and teaching we may enter into the enlarged con- ception of the Source of all life, as “the God and Father of Jesus Christ” in the New Testament." Let us take any typical passage in the record. “Anyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again but anyone who drinks the water I shall give him will never thirst any more; the water I shall give him will turn into a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’? One may read such a passage as mere words upon a printed page, or he may subject them to the exhaustive study of historical criticism, or to theo- logical speculation as to some theory of the person who uttered them, without any spiritual result whatever. On the other hand by an experiment he may himself enter into the discovery of God. It was in November, 1897, that the *Mr. C. A. Beckwith points out some of the reasons for the necessity of a new discovery of God in our own day. There is need of a restatement of our idea of God in the light of the changed views in all departments of human interest. We must take into account the new scientific spirit, the new psychology, the new view of the Bible, and the modern conception of authority. We face a new world view in the light of evolutionary development. There has been an advance from a static to a dynamic conception of reality; we are in a living universe in process of becoming. The new social emphasis in religion also necessitates a redefinition of God. Finally we must redefine God in terms of our understanding of Jesus Christ. See “The Idea of God,” pp. 5-36. ? John 4:14. Moffatt’s translation. 126 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH above passage became the means of spiritual discovery for the writer such that, for him, God became forever the central reality of all life. During all the years since, the simple record of the New Testament in which these words are found, coupled with prayer, has proved the chief means for the deepening and enlarging of this experience of God. The admonition to Augustine in the fifth century, “Take and read,” has proved for multitudes the means by which they have found this satisfying experience of God of which he speaks, “Thou hast made us for Thyself; and the heart is restless till it rests in Thee.” Here in the heart of religion and the progressive choice of the moral will is the only pragmatic solution of the prob- lem of evil. It is the unsolved problem of our common humanity. Men have asked for twenty-two centuries, since Epicurus: does the failure lie in the fact that God would prevent evil but cannot, or that he can prevent it but will not? We would reply that in our judgment the trend of events in- dicates, not that he cannot or will not, but that God IS over- coming evil through the cooperation of man’s moral education. If physical evil is only the raw stuff of which character is made, and the world as Keats held is not a vale of tears but “the vale of soul-making”; if the only ultimate evil springs from man’s moral will, then the solution must be found there. If evil is the fragmentary, the morally incom- plete, its solution will only be found in man’s moral effort. Men have ever felt that there is a contradiction between the natural and the mora! order, between the actual and the ideal, between what is and what ought to be. The gulf is bridged and the contradiction is solved only in a free will choosing the good. The missing link is supplied when a human will cooperates with the divine will which is working out a moral purpose in a developing world. Evil cannot be explained away but it can be done away, in the overcoming of evil by good.* *The problem of evil is dealt with at length in the author’s “Suffering and the War,” pp. 1-90, which will be sent free upon application to any one seriously troubled by this question. Address 347 Madison Ave., New York City. A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 127 5. The Discovery of God in Personal Experience The Kingdom of God is within. Here if anywhere God must be found. Though the world be flooded with light, none can reach the individual save through his own eye. Though the wide universe be full of good, none can come to him save by his own inward response. First and foremost all depends upon an inward attitude. It is not the great in intellect but the pure in heart who see God, not by way of arbitrary reward but by the working of an inevitable psychological law. Obedience becomes the organ of knowledge and inward response the condition of expanding experience. We are here at the crux of the whole question of the discovery of God. It lies in the moral pre- requisite of faith. Jesus used this method of appeal to experience. To him life was a unity grounded in the moral will. “If any man willeth to do, he shall know,” We may choose to “tune in” our radio to the cheapest jazz, or we may adjust the wave lengths of our spiritual life to the higher harmonies. We shall find that life is flooded with the true and the good and the beautiful for those who are in tune with the spiritual. We make our own world. By our moral response we may discover God and live and move and have our being in a spiritual universe. Or we may seek to live by bread alone, in a world of materialistic mechanism. The whole direction of our life will spring from our moral choice. If, upon our hypothesis, there is a God at all, a God adequate to the needs of the world and capable of responding to them, then the very universe is a fabric woven with purpose. If we weave our woof through the warp of God’s will, we shall achieve patterns of undreamed beauty and harmony. If there be a God at all we can live fully only as we share his purposes. If God is a working God we shall discover him as we seek to be fellow workers with him in his tasks. If he is not real to us we shall probably find it is due not to incorrect thinking but to unreal living. If, paralyzed by doubt, one cannot take the next step in 128 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH belief, let him take it in action. Let him act as if there were a God and see the result. Faith, as Donald Hankey believed, is betting your life that there is a God. It is taking a chance upon your belief and backing that hazard by action. In the midst of doubt many a man has found God by undertaking a task that lay beyond his own strength. If we do the duty that lies nearest to us, in so doing we may unconsciously be doing the will of God. If any man will do he shall know. If there be a loving God what kind of service would he desire for suffering humanity? In undertaking such service we may be meeting God half way by the doing of his will. Ideally, work may be a sacrament in which we share in the free creative activity of God, as we become fellow-workers with him in the service of our fellow men. In such service we may discover God, as did Firdusi the Persian poet, “No one could tell me what my soul might be. I searched for God, and God eluded me. I sought my brother out, and found all three— My soul, my God, and all humanity.” We come now to the final answer to our three pairs of alternatives—either there is or there is not a God; either God is personal or impersonal; either the attitude of the indi- vidual will be characterized by the will to believe or the will to disbelieve. Since there is no absolute proof or disproof, though much evidence in support of the positive hypothesis of hope, since complete indifference or neutrality is impos- sible, since multitudes of men testify that they have fulfilled the conditions and found God in experience, are we ourselves willing to make the experiment ? Dr. L. P. Jacks in his “Religious Perplexities” helps us in solving our doubts by his bold grappling with the problem of evil and his frank admission of the seriousness of our difficulties. He writes in substance as follows: As Carlyle was never tired of repeating, the ultimate question which every man has to face and answer for himself is this: “Wilt thou be a hero or a coward?” There is a coward and a hero in the breast of every man. Religion is a power which A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 129 develops the hero in the man at the expense of the coward. Thenceforward the man’s reason becomes the organ of the new spirit that is in him, no longer fettered to the self-center. Faith is nothing else than reason grown courageous—reason raised to its highest power, expanded to its widest vision. There is such a thing as the will-to-disbelieve. It is im- pervious to all appeals. We can find grounds for doubting our own identity, for doubting the multiplication table, for doubting the fundamental axioms of thought—if we are determined to find them. However sceptically inclined a man may be, there comes a point where he suspends his will- to-disbelieve in favor of the proposition that Truth (and perhaps Beauty and Goodness also) is better than the. opposite. He is not dismayed at finding himself in a universe which puts him under no compulsion to believe in God, Free- dom, Duty and Immortality. He finds his own nature as hero exquisitely adapted to the nature of the universe as dangerous—on that side the ringing challenge, on this the joyous response; man and the universe engaged together as loyal confederates in the task of creating a better-than-what- is. On the surface of things there is discord, confusion and want of adaptation; but dig down, first to the center of the world, and then to the center of your own nature, and you will find a most wonderful correspondence, a most beautiful harmony, between the two—the world made for the hero and the hero made for the world. The only final mode of ascertaining whether or not such a God exists is by experi- ment, standing or falling by the issue, and resorting to the methods of argumentation only to confirm or elucidate the results so obtained. Christianity began in something that happened, in a deed that was done, in a life that was lived. Thus Mr. Jacks points the way to a practical solution of our difficulties. It is found not in a way of thought, but in a way of life. The libertine or the drunkard cannot appreciate Bach, or Raphael, or Jesus, or the character of a pure woman. He does not have the moral prerequisite of faith, The man who does not humbly obey the physical laws of the universe will 130 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH not discover the secrets of science. And he who does not make the earnest response of the moral will, will not find the spiritual reality of life in the total harmony of the true, the good and the beautiful which is God. All about us men are failing not merely for lack of clear thinking but for lack of right living. Men are not enough in tune with the spiritual to discover it; they are not pure enough in heart to see God; they are not enough morally in earnest to find him. The root cause is the maladjustment of the moral will to the will of God. Faith in God then, is not an invitation merely intellec- tually to believe; nor is it a sentimental affirmation. It is a moral challenge, a challenge to be done once and for all with petty shams and selfishness, a challenge to see life as a struggle and to resolve to spend and be spent in it, a struggle that men and women and little children may have life and that the will of God may be done on earth. To those who accept the challenge God increasingly reveals himself. But we must take time to stay persistently in the presence of the best. As Dean Inge shows, if we spend sixteen hours a day with things and not five minutes in the presence of the spiritual, things will seem two hundred times more real than God. But the door is ever open, and he who seeks shall find. Let us seek God in nature and we shall find him there— not merely things, or matter or mechanism, but the God whom all nature reveals. Let us seek him in man. For if at the center of the universe there is this principle of love, then only those who look with the eyes of love will see the truth of things, and will see him at work in his world. To have faith in God will mean to have faith in men, to look at men and women as he does—the poor and the prodigal, our neighbor and the foreigner. Only as we discover God in man shall we find the Father of whom they are children. Let us seek him in the inner values of life in whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are good, whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. We shall find the source and sum and end of all the values united in a God who is Love, Let us seek him as he has spoken in times A NEW DISCOVERY OF GOD 131 past through the prophets and men of spiritual genius. But especially, if we may judge by results, we may discover him in Jesus and in following his way of life. To spend an hour, or any serious portion of it, each day in the presence of Jesus as his life and teaching are revealed in the records; to fasten on the mind and heart each day the spirit, the ideal, that was realized in him and then daily morally to respond to the fresh discovery of new truth, will be to find—God himself. Finally in our own hearts, if they be pure, if they be humble, if they hunger and thirst for God, we shall find him within. The words of Plotinus are still true for every one of us: “Yonder is the true object of our love, which it is possible to grasp and to live with and truly to possess, since no envelope of flesh separates us from it. He who has seen it knows what I say, that the soul then has another life, when it comes to God, and having come possesses him, and knows when in that state that it is in the presence of the dispenser of true life and that it needs nothing further.” “Where,” says Jacob Boehme, “will you seek for God? Seek him in your soul, which has proceeded out of the Eternal Nature, the living fountain of forces wherein the Divine working stands.” For our age, as for every age, the supreme question of life is that of such spiritual dis- covery. For those who are as yet strangers to him, and for those who already know him in part, our life-long quest must be an ever fresh and deepening discovery of God. *Quoted by E. Underhill, “The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today,” pp. 2, 3. Cuaptrer IV THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE A PROGRESSIVE REVELATION By the new view of the Bible we mean simply the position held by the consensus of modern scholarship after a century of painstaking research. The word “Bible” in its Greek original meant simply “The Books,” a collection of many separate rolls of the gathered writings of the Old and New Covenants. The Koran claims to be the immediate word of God, he himself being prevailingly represented as the speaker, “sending down” from a great archetypal book in heaven, in one fixed, final and authoritative deliverance, his complete revelation upon religion, law, politics and all life, sacred and secular. The Bible, on the other hand, is a library of sacred literature of sixty-six books, or rolls, writ- ten by some two score of widely differing authors, who wrote during more than a thousand years of Jewish history, in far-separated localities and differing schools of thought. It is the most human book in the world; for it was lived before it was written. It contains snatches of early songs and sayings, primitive cosmogony and folklore, prose and poetry, history and law, psalms and proverbs. But widely scattered as are these writings, representing divergent ideas and dif- ferent moral levels, one increasing spiritual purpose seems to be discoverable throughout. We soon observe evidences of a principle of gradual, progressive revelation, correspond- ing to the slow education of the race. Some might have imagined that the Bible should have been dictated by God in complete uniformity at one level of inspiration. Such a book, however, would have been unintelligible to primitive man. But if, without any preconceived theories, we simply examine the Bible itself, it immediately becomes evident that, although there are occasional reversions, on the whole there is progress, almost as from darkness to light, or from 132 THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 133 faint dawn to the full blaze of noonday, as we pass from the low moral levels of primitive times to the spiritual heights of the New Testament. If anyone doubts this progressive element let him turn first to such a passage as the last three chapters of Judges, with its polygamy, concubinage, adultery, sodomy, violation, superstitition, the slaughter of men, women and children, savage destruction and revenge. Then compare Jesus’ teach- ing, let us say, in the fifteenth chapter of Luke, where God as Father seeks each child as does the shepherd his lost sheep, and receives him as a father his prodigal son. Under the legal conception of God in the Old Testament he is represented as demanding the immediate death by stoning of a poor man who gathered a few sticks on the Sabbath day. When the Pharisees, under the same legal scriptural conception, objected to the disciples plucking a few grains of wheat, Jesus replied, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.’ Is it a different God who is speaking, in one passage as a bloodthirsty Moloch-like legal taskmaster, and in the other the God and Father of Jesus? Or is there a fuller realization of truth by progres- sive revelation, from an imperfect to a more perfect concep- tion of the same God? What the earlier priests enjoin the later prophets condemn. Can the Bible be understood with- out the key of progressive revelation? The failure to possess this key has led to the justification on the authority of Scrip- ture of some of the most savage, pagan and cruel practices’ of history; from polygamy, slavery, witchcraft and the inqui- sition of former times, to the justification of war in our own day. The Bible contains the record of the world’s greatest relig- ious race in its discovery of God, and is practically our one source of the knowledge of Jesus, The rediscovery of the religion of Jesus is one of the deepest needs of our day. *Numbers 15:32-36; Mark 2:23-24, 27-28. See E. E. Slosson, “Sermons of a Chemist,’ p. 60. Compare 2 Kings 2:23-24 with Luke 23:34. In the one little children are cursed and slain by an angry God, in the other Jesus cries, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” See Psalm 109:9-12 and Matt. 5:44, 134 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Jesus was able so to share his experience of God with a little group of disciples that they became men who soon “turned the world upside down.” After he was put to death his followers seemed suddenly to share his life in greater fullness. They began to introduce men to this experience of God, instructing them verbally concerning Jesus as Messiah. Following his brief ministry and tragic death, in the over- whelming experience of this new life, informally Peter had stood up to explain it. The expansion of the explanation there begun was continued in the writings of the New Testa- ment. As Peter, James, John and others, one by one were removed by death, and as the number of the new converts multiplied so rapidly that it was difficult to instruct them, the need became imperative to commit the oral tradition to writing so that it could be shared with the widening circles of the followers of Jesus in cities like Antioch, Ephesus and Rome. The Letters of Paul First of all, Paul began to write letters to correct, instruct and encourage his converts that they might more fully share this new experience. When he wrote his first letter to his converts in Thessalonica, about 50 A. D., it was already two decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, but some twenty years before the first gospel was written. Jesus had been crucified about 30 A. D., or the year previous, and Paul’s conversion had taken place shortly afterward. Twenty long years had passed in the ripening of his character and message before he wrote his first letter. Paul had just visited Thessalonica during his first months in Europe. His successful work in winning converts had so aroused the Jews that he had to leave the city to prevent violence and was never able to return. While working at Corinth, near by, he writes to these converts a friendly informal letter, right out of his heart, to strengthen and encourage them and answer their doubts and difficulties. A second letter soon followed when he heard that some had misunderstood the first letter, thinking that the Day of the THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 135 Lord had already come. These two short letters, with the Epistle to the Galatians, were the first beginnings of Chris- tian literature. Paul no more thought of writing “Scripture” than do we when we write to our friends. When he hears that the Judaizers had appeared in his rear, upset his Gentile converts in Galatia and tried to induce them to keep the Jewish Law, upon the alleged authority of some of the apostles in Jerusalem, Paul writes, white-hot, his great defense of liberty to the Galatians. He shows that the essence of the good news of Christianity is righteousness only by faith in Christ, and complete release from the orthodoxy of the majority who were still in legal bondage to the Jewish Law. In the decade between 50 and 60 A. D, the bulk of Paul’s letters were written to meet the temporary needs and special circumstances of his converts and the churches from Thessalonica to Rome. But such was the man and such were his messages that they have proved the: greatest letters ever written. They so live that if you tear them they almost bleed. Though we are separated by cen= turies and continents, they so live that to this day they quicken the same life that was in Jesus, in Paul, and in the disciples of Corinth or Ephesus. Before he had finished his letters he had written a quarter of the writings which several centuries later were gathered together in the New Testament. The epistles of Paul constitute practically a gospel, and that, not the fifth, but the first gospel. Indeed, evangelical, orthodox Christianity is drawn more from Paul than from any of the four gospels, for he is its chief interpreter. The Gospels Four historic events are the focal points of the writings of the New Testament. The epistles of Paul arise out of the missionary evangelization of the Gentile world about 32-62 A. D.; the early gospels follow the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A. D.; the Apocalypse and certain epistles are occasioned by the sufferings under the persecution of Domitian, 81-96 A. D.; other writings answer the rise of the early sects and 136 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH heresies.1 The premier place in the New Testament is given to the gospels. The word means the “good news” of the Christian message. These gospels were of relatively late origin, as there was no early occasion for them. While the original apostles as authorities were still living and the early Church was waiting in daily expectation of the early, visible advent of the Messiah, there was no occasion to write a history which would be blotted out by this expected con- summation, The early disciples were Jews whose tradition had always treasured the words of each great teacher, but had recorded no life of any prophet, being as indifferent to biographical interest as was Paul. Fortunately for us, both Greeks and Romans were deeply interested in biography. With the fall of Jerusalem the base of Christianity shifted from its first Jewish center to Rome, the great capital of the Gentile world, to which all roads led and from which they radiated. With the early death of James, Peter, and other eye witnesses, the church of Rome perhaps demanded some authoritative record of the Master’s life, as Clement of Alexandria suggests.2, Some believe that Mark was writ- ten first in Aramaic and later translated for the Roman Church. Mark had not only been a companion of Paul and Barnabas, but the friend and perhaps the Greek interpreter of the Aramaic-speaking apostle, Peter, and had possibly himself seen the Lord.* This first gospel seems to be based for the most part on Mark’s draft of Peter’s reminis- cences. It is written in rugged, vivid Greek, often colloquial and crude, not in the Jewish, Biblical style of Matthew, nor with the literary art of Luke. Luke’s primary preface throws light on the origin of the gospels. Notice the three periods of development from the apostles or “the original eye-witnesses,” the “many” later writers like Mark, and finally Luke as an “historian.” “Many writers have undertaken to compose accounts of the * Goodspeed, “The Story of the New. Testament,” p. 8. 2 Streeter, “The Four Gospels,” pp. 496-497. ® Acts 13:13, 15; 37-40, Mark 14:51. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 137 movement which has developed among us, just as the original eye-witnesses who became teachers of the message have handed it down to us. For that reason, Theophilus, and because I have investigated it all carefully from the begin- ning, I have determined to write a connected account of it for Your Excellency, so that you may be reliably informed about the things you have been taught.”? Three strata seem to be observable in this statement: 1. The apostles, who delivered the oral tradition. According to Dr. Moffat, Luke’s statement seems to imply that none of the written narratives were drawn up by original eye- witnesses. 2. “Many” who had later written this tradition of the words or life of Jesus for the members of this growing movement. 3. Luke, as an historian or evangelist dealing with these written documents, and probably with living witnesses whom he had come in touch with at Jerusalem, Caesarea and Antioch, writes them down in “a connected account” in historical form. Finally. instead of the original witnesses independently writing down from memory, we have four gospels, each based on other written documents, recording the tradition of the earlier eye-witnesses and often borrowing or quoting freely from one another. According to B. H. Streeter of Oxford, “A variety of considerations suggest that originally the gospels were local gospels circulated separately, and authoritative only in certain areas. The tradition which assigns Mark to Rome, and John to Ephesus may safely be accepted. That connecting Luke with Greece and Matthew with Palestine is perhaps no more than conjecture; Matthew may with greater proba- bility be connected with Antioch,’”? 1 Goodspeed’s Translation of Luke 1:14. ' ?“The Four Gospels,” pp. 1-9. Streeter quotes Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, c. 185 A. D., showing the later tradition when all the church had adopted the four gospels. “Matthew published his written gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter and Paul were preaching and founding the church of Rome. After their decease Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also transmitted to us im writing those things which Peter had preached; and Luke, the attendant of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel which Paul had declared. Afterward, John, the disciple of the Lord, who 138 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH The First Gospel There is general agreement and close interdependence among the first three “synoptic” gospels. A century of indefatigable scholarship has resulted in the consensus of opinion that Mark is the original and basic gospel of the three. Matthew reproduces nine-tenths of the subject matter of Mark in almost identical language; and Luke copies more than half of Mark. While Matthew and Luke differ in their opening and closing accounts of the life of Jesus, the moment they come to Mark’s material they follow his gospel closely, using the majority of his actual words. Mark’s original arrangement is often topical rather than historical, sayings and incidents being grouped by similarity of subject matter rather than by chronological sequence; yet the relative order of incidents and sections in Mark is in general closely fol- lowed both by Matthew and Luke. Mark’s roughness of style and grammar and his preservation of early original Aramaic words are omitted and many of his blunt phrases likely to give offense are frequently toned down or left out.* Mark preserves for us many priceless details which are also reclined on his bosom, published the gospel while residing at Ephesus in Asia . . . It is impossible that the gospels should be in number either more or fewer than these. For since there are four regions of the worid wherein we are, and four principal winds . . . it is natural that it should have four pillars.” 1 Streeter, “The Four Gospels,’ pp. 151-161. Mark contains 661 verses; Matthew reproduces the substance of 600 of these. Mark’s style is diffuse, Matthew’s is succinct. Matthew employs fifty-one per cent of the actual words used by Mark and Luke fifty-three per cent. Matthew omits only ten per cent of the subject matter of Mark, while Luke omits forty-five per cent. Thus Matthew 24:15, 16 is copied almost word for word from Mark 13:14, includ- ing the original author’s comment, “Let him that readeth understand.” The words attributed to Jesus, “Let him that readeth understand,” seem to indicate the employment of a document by both writers, as Jesus would have said, “Let him that heareth understand.” “Mark reads like a shorthand account of a story by an impromptu speaker— with all the repetition, redundancies, and digressions of living speech. And it seems to me most probable that his gospel, like Paul’s epistles, was taken down from rapid dictation by word of mouth. Matthew and Luke use the more succinct and carefully chosen language of one who writes and then revises an article for publication.” “The Four Gospels,” p. 163. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 139 of the utmost interest to us today, but which were omitted by the other gospels as uninteresting to the church of that time. The gospels were written probably in this order: Mark, Luke, Matthew, John; but in the western church they were published in the official order of Matthew, John, Luke, Mark, placing what was in their eyes the least important last. Practically all scholars now give the first place histori- cally to Mark, as giving us the most vivid and most accurate picture of the life of Christ.t According to Moffatt, Mark’s gospel was written just after the destruction of Jerusalem in 7/0 A. D., while Streeter would place it just before that date.? Mark is concerned with the deeds of Jesus rather than with his words. Like Paul, he conceives the gospel to be attachment to the person of Jesus rather than the good news of his message. He writes with a strong colloquial style, with loose grammatical construction and rough phraseology. With vivid circum- stantial imagination and many “extra-touches’ which mark impressions of an eye-witness, his descriptions are often very detailed with repetitions, duplicate sayings and collo- quialisms which Matthew and Luke omit. According to Mark, Jesus is a preacher and healer, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. There is a frank recognition of Jesus’ human limitations and frequent reference to his miracles of healing and his power over evil spirits. Mark *Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia during the first half of the second century, tries to defend Mark against criticism in his day as follows, “This also the presbyter said, ‘Mark, who was Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, all that he recollected of what Christ had said or done. For he was not a hearer of the Lord, nor a follower of his; he followed Peter, as I have said, at a later date, and Peter adapted his instructions to prac- tical needs, without any attempt to give the Lord’s words systematic- ally. So that Mark was not wrong in writing down some things in this way from memory, for his one concern was neither to omit nor to falsify anything he had heard.’ ” 2 Streeter would date Mark about 65 A. D. and Matthew about 85. By 90 A. D. Mark and Luke are known in Rome; after 119 the three synoptics; from 170 A. D. all four gospels. Thirty-five or forty years elapsed after the crucifixion before this first life of Christ was written. Carried out from Rome and shared with other churches, Mark’s gospel was the first and most widely circulated of the four and most influenced the later gospels. 140 . NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH evidently writes for an audience outside Palestine, such as would be found in Rome, with explanations of Jewish customs, phrases and names unfamiliar to Gentiles.? The only discourse of Jesus which Mark records at length is that concerning the “last things’? in Chapter 13. Most scholars agree that he is here quoting from a written source or “Little Apocalypse,” consisting of a mixture of early Christian expectations of the end of the age and genuine utterances of Jesus himself. The gospel ends abruptly at 16:8. Moffatt’s translation records two attempts to com- plete the unfinished gospel, one of which we have in our Authorized Version. If the gospels are read in any harmony, it will almost invariably be found that when three accounts occur in parallel columns, Matthew and Luke have closely followed and copied Mark. Where Matthew and Luke only appear in parallel columns, it will be found that in some two hundred verses they are in close verbal agreement, and scholars are now generally agreed that they are both copying a common written source of the sayings of Jesus, now lost to us. This source was formerly called the “Logia,” or the “Double Tradition,” or the “Second Source.” It is now usually referred to as Q, from the German Quelle, meaning source. “Q” was evidently very ancient, consisting of one or more collections of the sayings of Jesus, probably gathered together during the decade 50-60 A. D. while Paul was writing his epistles, and some time before the gospel of Mark was written. It consists of the important sayings of Jesus, with an occasional narrative to introduce the teaching.? *Mark 3:17, 5:41, 7:3-4, 34, 10:46, 15:42, etc. ? According to Dr. Moffatt the document Q includes an account of the baptism of John, the temptation, the sermon on the mount, the healing of the centurion’s servant, John’s message to Jesus, a group of parables and the seven woes to the Pharisees, etc., as follows, Matt. 3:7-12; 4:3-11; 5:3-12, 13-17, 20-24, 25-30, 31-48; 6:1f£; 7:1-12, 15-23, 24-27; 8:5-13, 19-22; 9:13a; 10:54, 17-38; 11:2-19, 20-30; 12:5-8, 11-13, 25-45; 13:14-15, 16-17, 24-29, 33-35, 36-43, 44-52; 15:12-14, 23-24; 16:17-19; 17:19-20; 18:3-5, 10, 12-14, 15-20, 23-35; 19:6-12, 28; 20:1-16; 21:14-17, 31b-32, 28-3la; 22:1-10, 11-14; 23:1-39; 24:10-12, 26-27, 37-41, 42-44, 45-51; 25 :1-30; 26 252-54. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 141 Thus there were two principal written sources for Matthew and Luke, the lost collections of the sayings of Jesus care- fully reproduced in both Matthew and Luke, and the acts of Jesus recorded in the gospel of Mark. Matthew appar- ently had a document not used by Luke, consisting chiefly of discourse material, including the long discourse on the parables, the Kingdom, and material concerning the “last things.” Luke also, in addition to Mark and Q, had separate sources written and oral. Matthew's Gospel A close study of the book of Matthew as we have it today reveals the fact that it is an anonymous gospel, written in Greek, based upon earlier documents. These documents include Mark, its basis for the life of Christ, QO, or the collected sayings of Jesus used by both Matthew and Luke, and a third source to which Luke did not apparently have access. Papias, c. 140-160 A. D., writes, “So then Matthew composed the Logia (sayings) in the Hebrew language, and everyone interpreted (or translated) them as he was able.” In Papias’ day there were apparently already various Greek versions of Matthew’s collection of the sayings of Jesus in Aramaic. If the writer of our first gospel incorporated an Aramaic document of the sayings of Jesus by Matthew, it would account for the attachment of his name to the gospel by a later tradition. The writer’s effort to give prominence to Matthew in the gospel* would be natural if he knew that the apostle was the author of one of his sources. The fact President Burton of the University of Chicago believed there were several of these source documents, including a Galilean docu- ment describing the early ministry about Capernaum and Nazareth, and a later Perean document extending from Luke 9:51 to 18:14, and 19:1-28. According to Harnack, about one-sixth of Luke and two-elevenths of Matthew are drawn from this priceless compilation of the say- ings of Jesus. These sayings of Christ were originally written in Aramaic and composed in Palestine. During the centuries it is the portrait of Jesus as given in these sayings that has remained in the foreground of the church’s thought. * Matt. 9:9, 10:3, etc. Matthew is the only apostle, besides the two pairs of brothers, of whom any incident is recorded. 142 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH remains that the gospel is anonymous and that the writer is at almost every point dependent on Mark for his historical material, upon written documents for the sayings of Jesus, and has access to little oral tradition. Professor Burkitt of Cambridge says, “The gospel according to Matthew is a fresh edition of Mark, revised, rearranged and enriched with new material; the gospel according to Luke is a new historical book, made by combining parts of Mark with parts derived from other documents.” Professor Streeter of | Oxford believes the gospel of Matthew was written for some important local church, probably Antioch, not later than SouAr Dd, Jerusalem, which fell on September 4, 70 A. D., had been destroyed some time before,” yet the early expected end of the world had not come. The writer of this gospel saw the Jewish nation rejecting its Messiah while the Gentiles throughout the Roman world were rapidly accepting him. Which was right, the Jew or the Christian? The gospel was not failing, but the Jewish capital of Jerusalem had fallen, making the keeping of the ceremonial law of the temple now impossible. The writer sees here a sign and a message to the Jewish nation. He is a loyal Jewish Christian who believes in the law and the prophets and has accepted Jesus as their fulfillment. The book of Matthew as we now have it stands out in “massive unity” and unfolds, from the Jewish standpoint, the life of Jesus with consummate literary power. Jesus is conceived as the Messiah of his people, trained under the Jewish Law, yet already the head of a world-wide church which transcends legal Judaism. He is “greater than the temple,” the giver of a new Law, which transcends the old. Matthew combines Jewish particular- istic exclusiveness with a wider catholic outlook. He writes an apology or defense of Christianity and an interpretation of early Christian history. It is a manual of Christian instruction. It is a biography with a purpose, a life of the 1 Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VI, p. 338. * Matt. 22:6-7. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 143 Jewish Messiah, the first formal book of Christian literature, “the first historic apology for universal Christianity.” While Mark writes for Roman Gentiles, this writer, whom we shall call “Matthew” by tradition, sees Jesus descended from the Jewish Abraham, of David’s line, proclaimed Mes- siah at his baptism. In five great sermons, inserted in Mark’s historical material, the Messiah sets forth the aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven. The law and the prophets, represented by Moses and Eli ah, testify as to the importance of his coming death. It is only in Matthew’s account that Christ is “not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and who bids his disciples “go not into the way of the Gentiles.” But the Kingdom will be taken away from the Jews because of their rejection of Christ, and given to the Gentiles.1_ Matthew’s gospel is filled with Jewish quotations, often from the Hebrew or Aramaic version. The writer, like James, conceives Christianity as the new law and his aim is to teach men to “observe all things whatsoever Jesus commanded.” His point of view is that of Peter’s recon- ciliation of the extreme Gentile liberty of Paulinism with the primitive Jewish Christianity of the original apostles. This gospel more than any other emphasizes the apoca- lyptic element of the early visible return of Christ within the life-time of the men then living. When Jesus referred to the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple, of which there should be left not one stone upon another (which did take place in 70 A. D.), our writer copies Mark down to and including the question, “When shall these things be?” But unlike Mark and Luke he adds, in his overwhelming interest in the last things, ‘and what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world?’ He is now in diffi- culties when he says, “This generation shall not pass away till all these things be accomplished”; “There be some of them that stand here which shall in no wise taste death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom”; and “Ye 1 Matt. 21:43, 10:5 15:24. 144 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH shall not have gone through the cities of Israel (on this preaching tour) till the Son of Man be come.”* The gospel of Matthew, with a prologue and epilogue, falls naturally into five portions, each containing narrative and discourse material. Each of these five portions ends with the rubric or refrain, “And it came to pass when Jesus had ended . . .” etc.?. The writer is apparently a Jewish Christian who brings out of his treasure “things new,” which he has found in Christianity, and “things old” from his earlier experience of Judaism (13:52). Mark is the main narrative source of the writer, and he treats this document with veneration, yet with freedom. Mr. H. B. Sharman describes the literary principles of Matthew.?® “t, Within those narrative portions of his documents where chronological or geographical data were absent or were vague, to group those events that were related through having a com- mon geographical center. “2. To combine the several accounts of his documents when they seemed to record the same event or discourse, especially when the material presented any considerable body of the words of Jesus. “3. To group the saying of Jesus on a single theme, even to the extent of taking one phase of the theme from one document and another from another. “4. To condense the narratives of Mark where they were especially full of secondary details. *Cfi. Mark 13:1-4, Matt. 24:3, 34; 10:23, 24:14. Bishop Gore says, “There was certainly, I think, a mistake somewhere. St. Matthew with his ‘immediately,’ 24:29, must be interpreted as mean- ing that the great day would follow the destruction of Jerusalem as a separate event without any considerable interval. And, in the sense intended, this certainly did not occur .. . Plainly we can- not rely upon having the precise words of Christ, and we seem to detect contrary tendencies in St. Matthew and St. Luke—in St. Matthew to accentuate everything apocalyptic in our Lord’s words, and in St. Luke to minimize. . . . ‘Of that day and that hour knoweth no one . . . neither the Son, but the Father’ . . . ‘It is not for you to know the times or seasons,’ . . . These last two sayings mean, I think, unmistakably that our Lord gave no teaching at all upon the time of the end. He left it wholly vague and indefinite.” ‘Belief in Christ,” pp. 151-154. See. 7°28) 11 0s) 133532 19:1) 2620: ny B. Sharman, “The Teaching of Jesus About the Future,” page 9. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 145 “c. To change the order of thoughts within a section of one document when necessary to the effecting of a junction with matter from another document. “6. To make the Pharisees the source or the object of such unfavorable criticism as the documents leave indefinite in source or object. “7 To enlarge quotations already made from the Old Testa- ment, and to insert additional ones at other points in the history. “8. To modify the apparent rigor of hard sayings. “9. To eliminate references to anger or other apparently con- demnable moods in Jesus.” While Mark is more external and is absorbed with the activity of Jesus, Matthew is interested chiefly in his sayings. His order is frequently topical. Luke’s History Luke, like Mark, makes no claim of being an eye-witness. Writing to Theophilus, probably some Christian official of the Roman empire, he endeavors to compile an accurate, chronological and orderly account of the life of Jesus. Luke as historian is an editor, or compiles from previous sources. He writes with literary finish, with wide and versatile vocabulary, in fine Hellenistic Greek. He has an eye for the dramatic and personal elements. He is catholic and cosmopolitan, and has wide sympathy for the Gentiles, for women, and for the poor. He often emphasizes both the authority and tenderness of Jesus. He gives prominence to prayer, to the work of the Holy Spirit, to thanksgiving, to the love of Jesus and to the universality of the gospel. Matthew apparently arose in the more Jewish and Luke in the more Gentile wing of the church. While both usually agree when they follow Mark, or when they draw from the same “Second Source,” apart from these, as in their accounts of the infancy, the passion and the resurrection, they draw from different traditions and are divergent in the extreme. Apparently Matthew and Luke drew from several of the same written sources but neither saw the writing of the other, and the cycles of tradition current in the churches where they worked seem to have been widely removed from one another. Rome seems to have been the church for which the Acts 146 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH was written. The important history of the Christian move- ment in Alexandria is ignored, Antioch is soon dropped, and the interest centers in the onward march of Christianity from its position as a Jewish sect in Jerusalem to a world religion centered in Rome. Luke’s writings may have been intended to present Christianity favorably to the Roman officials and the Gentile world, as Matthew’s gospel was an apology to the Jew. They refuted Nero’s association of Christianity and crime and show that Christianity was not a Jewish but a uni- versal religion. According to Streeter, {ake was apparently written after the fall of Jerusalem, as he manifestly modifies Mark’s lan- guage to fit this event, probably about 80 A. D., shortly before Matthew and the Acts. Luke’s gospel is not anony- mous in the sense the other three are, as his preface implies that his readers knew his name and his connection with the apostles. Streeter concludes, “We thus arrive at the quite simple conclusion: the burden of proof is on those who would assert the traditional authorship of Matthew and John and on those who would deny it in the case of Mark and Luke,* The Fourth Gospel When we pass from the unity of the three synoptic gospels to the fourth we have moved into a new world of thought. We here face the central and crucial book of the New Testa- ment. To be appreciated, the book must be viewed from two standpoints, the historic and the religious. A close study of its contents reveals the fact that historically at many points it stands apparently in contradiction to the first three gospels; yet religiously it supplements and completes them and is per- haps the greatest religious book ever written. It has been to the church in all ages what it was to Clement of Alex- andria in the third century, “since bodily things had been exhibited in the other gospels, John inspired by the Spirit, produced a spiritual gospel’; and to Luther in the sixteenth *“The Four Gospels,” p. 562. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 147 century, “the precious and only gospel, far to be preferred above the others.” Let us remember that, apparently, the author is not trying to write history. He “spiritualizes” or allegorizes it through- out. He sees in every outward event a parable with inward meaning. Every outward miracle is to him a “sign,” as is every word or act of Jesus. Thus he pictures the simple surface meaning of a well of water to satisfy physical thirst, and a springing fountain of life within the heart to satisfy humanity’s need. The same is true of the author’s use of light for the blind, bread for the hungry; of birth, marriage, life, death, and all other outward physical facts with an inward spiritual meaning. The whole gospel is, as it were, a parable. The author shows little interest in history as such, but much in its philosophic significance and spiritual meaning. Huis work should be read not as a prosaic record of fact but as a spiritual interpretation. He is the world’s great mystic. His work is a manual of devotion. A greater than the fisherman son of Zebedee is here. It may not be easy for the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon to understand his viewpoint, for we are closer in temperament to the prosaic Mark. But his appeal to the Orient, the mystic, the idealist is immediate. The author is not so anxious to record what Jesus did say to the Jews in Galilee, as he is to find what he really intended; what he would have said to the Gentiles of a later generation in Ephesus, in Asia and in Europe. Mark comes nearer to reproducing the temporal acts of Jesus, Matthew endeavors to record his words, “John” strives for his eternal meaning. He believes that Christ himself is speaking “in the Spirit” through him. It is he who sees that God is in man, and man in God. More, perhaps, than any book in the Bible, this gospel was lived before it was written. The writer is concerned not so much with a historic woman by a well, who may be a real or a symbolic person, but with the eternal fountain of living water within, that, through Christ, has quenched his own soul’s thirst and is continuing to do so every day in Ephesus. Save for the central fact of the incarnation, he is concerned not 148 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH so much with any temporal incident in time as with eternal truth that may be experienced in every age afresh. Let us now examine this book from both the historic and religious viewpoints. We must remember that it is anony- mous; it lays no claim to having been written by an apostle. We shall find that its abiding spiritual value is due not to its particular date or particular authorship but to its intrinsic spiritual truth, its divine inspiration, and its power to enable men in every age to find life and find it abundantly. The synoptic writers are so close to the events that they some- times do not see the wood because of the trees; the fourth gospel sees the eternal significance of the life of Jesus in perspective.? We shall find that historically the first three and the fourth gospels could not have been written by the same apostolic group. The synoptics are Jewish, John is Greek; the synoptics bear the stamp of the first century, John of the second; the former are broadly historic, the latter phi- losophical and religious. If this statement seems extreme and unbelievable let us note the contrasts between the two. If the fourth gospel is the true historic picture, what then becomes of the other three? On the other hand, if the first three are taken as historic, the fourth still remains both natural and inestimably valuable, if written in Ephesus by a Hellenistic Jew, say between 95 and 110 A. D. In the first three gospels Jesus speaks prevailingly of God, in the fourth the message is centered in himself. In the first three his Messiahship is a secret revealed only to the twelve late in his ministry ;? in the fourth it is proclaimed from the *Edward Caird in a fine passage says, “It is not that regretful memory exaggerates the virtues of the friend who no longer is there to refute our idealism with the limitations of mortality. It is that the conditions of life half conceal from us what they half reveal, and that the immediate perception of all the details of the moment obscures the meaning of the whole. And thus it is often death that gives the right focus, from which alone each part can be seen in its proper proportion and relation to the others.” This is the gift to the world of this great writer who completes the work of the apostle Paul in this field, to perceive that God was there in this truly human life. ? Mark 8:27-29., THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 149 beginning and argued with his enemies in almost every chapter In the first three he is a real man tempted in all points as we are, from the wilderness hunger to the agony in the garden. In the fourth these temptations are absent; he is a supernatural being who knows all things and needs no information from any man.? In the first three gospels the miracles are usually works of mercy; in the fourth they are “sions” to manifest his glory and prove his divinity. In the synoptics he faces the future and his speedy second coming on the clouds of heaven; in the fourth he has come already by the Spirit into the hearts of his followers after his resur- rection and no future coming is portrayed. Here he faces not a future coming but the past, saying repeatedly, “I came down from heaven”; “before Abraham was I am”; “the glory that I had with thee before the world was,” etc., which he never says in the synoptics. In the synoptics his whole message centers in the Kingdom of God; this is absent in the fourth gospel,*? and instead he prevailingly speaks of eternal life as a present possession in the heart of the individual. In the first gospel salvation is a moral process in a life of obedience realized in following Jesus, in loving God and one’s neighbors, etc. In the fourth men are saved by a miraculous new birth, they are born of water and the Spirit in baptism; they eat his flesh and blood in the sacrament of a later church. Salvation is now conceived as the imparting of the divine nature under the Greek conception of God as essence or substance, while Jesus is the object of faith lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness. This is a Pauline con- ception quite different from the Jesus of the synoptics who calls men to keep the commandments and come and follow him.* In the synoptics, save for one or two notable individuals, his audience is always and only Jewish; in the fourth gospel 1 John 4:26; 6:52 to 12:50. *John 1:42, 47, 48; 2:24; 4:16, 29, 32; 10:18; 12:27-34; 13:1, etc. *Save one or two insignificant references in 3 i ea eae b 36, “Mark 10:17-31. Luke 10:25-37. John 3:3-5; 6 53, etc. 150 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH the writer is thinking of the Greeks of Ephesus, while “the Jews” are enemies who had rejected him in distant Palestine. Jesus is made to say, “as I spake unto the Jews.”* To whom else had he ever spoken? In the synoptics Jesus is a miracle of wonder, half understood and variously interpreted, as a Son adopted at his baptism; in John he is a parable fully and and finally interpreted in terms of the central truth of the incarnation. In the former he is prevailingly the “Son of Man,” a mystery, a problem to be interpreted—“Whom say ye that I am?” In John he is the Greek Logos, the pre- existent Son of God who became flesh on earth. In the first and third gospels he is miraculously conceived and born of the virgin Mary. In the fourth, while he is the very incar- nation of God, no virgin birth is mentioned and he is spoken of as the “son of Joseph.’ In the first three gospels Jesus is busy casting out demons. In the fourth there are none. In the first gospels Jesus’ vocabulary is naturally Jewish throughout, in John it is largely Greek. The author thinks in dramatic contrasts in terms of a dualism of light and darkness, love and hate, flesh and spirit, God and the Prince of this world. In the former gospels the prodigal is still God’s son in a far country; in the fourth his enemies are “children of your father the devil,” who will die in their sins if they do not hold a certain view of his person.® These constitute only a fraction of the differences between the two in doctrine, in viewpoint, and in vocabulary. But the contrast is equally great in the discrepancies in historic events. It is scarcely too much to say that there are almost none on which they agree. In the synoptics Jesus’ whole ministry, which lasts perhaps a year, is placed in Galilee, save for the last week in Jerusalem; in John it extends to some three years and centers in Jerusalem in repeated visits. In the first gospels the cleansing of the temple was his last crucial public act and led swiftly to his death; in the fourth gospel it is almost his first act. According to John the crucial 1 John 7 :13—15. _* John 1:45; 6:42. See Appendix “Doctrine and the New Reforma- tion” for full discussion of the virgin birth. * John 8:24, 44, etc. But compare 3:16. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 151 miracle of his life which led to his death was the raising of Lazarus; while in the first three even the name of Lazarus is either unknown or never mentioned.* In the earlier records John the Baptist is a rugged, fearless prophet of impending doom; in the fourth he is an apologetic “voice” who bears witness to the Lamb of God, to con- vince in Jesus favor the followers of the sect of the Baptist in Ephesus. According to the first three gospels Jesus was crucified on the day of the Jewish feast of the Passover, on the fifteenth of the first Jewish month, Nisan; according to John, who was probably correct in this particular instance, it was on the day before the Passover, on the fourteenth Nisan.?_ According to Mark his one cry upon the cross was “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ John leaves out such signs of human frailty; instead men fall to the ground when he speaks to them at his arrest.® Thus, in theology, in vocabulary, in viewpoint, in the message and the historic picture of the life of Jesus which it presents, the fourth gospel is at wide variance with and often in irreconcilable contradiction to the first three. What are we to conclude from this discrepancy? If it were con- fined to one or two events like the cleansing of the temple we mnight try to “harmonize” them and say there were twa such events. The difficulty is that none of the gospels hint at two such incidents, and if we adopt this expedient we should have to make two events in almost every case of discrepancy. There is no explanation if we say the four gospels were all written under the direction of the same group of apostles, when Matthew and John flatly contradict each other at a hundred points. But all becomes clear if we accept the following hypothesis. Let us suppose that a Hellenistic Jewish Christian in Ephesus had either received the story of Jesus’ life from one of the twelve, perhaps the Apostle John, or in early life had himself been a witness of some of the events of Jesus’ 1 John 2:13-22; 11:1-16; Luke 10:38—41. ? John a :28 ; 19: 14; Luke 22:15. * John 8 3-6, 152 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH ministry. He had meditated long upon the significance of Jesus in the light of his own experience and is able to make a synthesis of the synoptic tradition of Jesus’ earthly life and the Pauline experience of the risen Christ. To the Alexandrian Greek and Stoic philosophers, the Logos was at once the immanent reason and the uttered Word of God. This writer says that Jesus is the eternal Word made flesh. In terms of these new categories of thought he retells the whole story, interpreting the inner significance of Jesus’ life. In accordance with the “I” style then common in Ephesus,* he puts into the mouth of Jesus the whole body of his teach- ing as he understands it in terms of the life in Ephesus and of the Greco-Roman world of that day. Far removed from provincial Jewish technicalities, the whole thought is intel- ligible and makes a universal appeal in every age. Now there was just such a man in Ephesus between 95 and 110 A. D. in the Presbyter, or “Elder” John.? Harnack, Streeter, Moffatt, B. W. Robinson and others are inclined to think this Elder John was the author of the gospel, and that it could not have been the Apostle John, who, according to Papias, writing about 140 A. D., suffered a martyr’s death apparently before 70 A. D. The gospel is written in Greek, while John the son of Zebedee was an Aramaic-speaking, Galilean fisherman. According to Streeter we have no evi- dence that the authorship of the book was ever attributed to the apostle John before the third century. Perhaps it will be safest to say that this Elder John, or some other Hellen- istic Christian in Ephesus like him, wrote the fourth gospel. *Deissmann, “Light from the Ancient East,” II, 3, E, quoted by B. W. Robinson in “The Gospel of John,” p. 25. *“Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, writing about 140 A. D., says, ‘And again, on any occasion when a person came in my way who had been a follower of the Elders, I would enquire about the discourses of the Elders—what was said by Andrew, or by Peter, or by Philip or by Thomas or James, or by John or Matthew, or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and what Aristion and the Elder John, the disciples of the Lord, say.’ Aristion and the Elder John, it appears from this, were in the unique position of being ‘disciples of the Lord’ who ranked after the Apostles themselves as depositories of au- thentic tradition. Presumably they must at least have seen the Lord in the flesh.” Streeter, “The Four Gospels,” p. 18 2 THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 153 Had it been by the Apostle John it would have been at once received by the churches everywhere. In actual fact, how- ever, it met with much opposition and was not acknowledged by the church in Rome until the close of the second century. The writer of the gospel frankly states that he has selected only certain material for a special purpose and that his definite object is not, as in the case of Luke, the writing of an accurate history, “but these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.’* He felt the living Christ had many things still to say, as the Spirit would guide into ali the truth, and that he was speaking through him. It is just such a gospel as Paul would have written. But whereas Paul determines to know only the risen Christ, the fourth evangelist, to meet the Gnostic heresies of his time: which emphasized Christ’s deity but practically emptied his life and death of all reality, grounds the work of the living Christ in the humanity of the historic Jesus. He is thus the connecting link between the synoptics and Paul. To Mark, Jesus is a historic person; to Paul he is the invisible Lord; to John he is both. The whole gospel might be regarded as an amplification of the text, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.’”’ Jesus is the revelation of God. There is some evidence to show that the stories told by John of the life of Jesus had been used by him repeatedly in presenting the gospel in private conversation and public discourse in Ephesus. The chapters read like a series of sermons.? The writer’s Greek categories, such as the Logos, John 20:30-31. ? Note in Chapter 2 his sermon on marriage, with the contrast between wine and water, or, the Christian religion and its rivals; Chapter 3, a sermon on the new birth dramatized about Nicodemus ; 4, the water of life represented in the woman at the well; 5, on sickness and health, and the man beside the pool; 6, on the bread of life, and the parable of feeding the five thousand; 8, 9, blindness and the light of the world, illustrated in the blind man; 10, the good shepherd and the sheep; 11, death and resurrection, illustrated by Lazarus; 12, sacrifice and glory, illustrated in the cross; 13-17, the last discourse of the Living Christ. ‘These sermons originally preached by John in Ephesus have become the most popular and 154 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH are illuminating to his particular audience but they are also limiting conceptions. There is a certain relativity in all language. The Jewish conception of a warlike Messiah or an angelic being did not perfectly fit Jesus; neither did the Greek philosophic concept of the Logos, though it helped men to conceive of a being who was other than God and yet partook of his nature. Jesus transcended both terms. But John here makes the transition and transplants Christianity from Jewish to Gentile soil. Hitherto the church had been speaking to a Greek world in a Jewish vocabulary. Hence- forth the gospel was in a universal language. In America today this writer would doubtless find fresh terms, more intelligible to us. But his object would still be the same, not to write events “in order,’ or philosophy or theology in fixed and final orthodox terms, but that we might have life, and do the same works and “greater works than these.” . James and the orthodox Judaizers were the con- servatives in their day. Both Paul and John were counted dangerous radicals when they sought to state the eternal truth in ever fresh ways that men might rediscover the life eternal, which is ever fundamental and ever modern. Throughout the gospel it is evident that the writer is facing the hostility of the Jews. He is also trying to win over the followers of the sect of John the Baptist, which persisted well into the third century.1_ Chiefly, however, he is trying to win Greek converts from the mystery-religions and other faiths. He is also confronting the Gnostic sect who believed in the deity but not in the real humanity of Jesus, for he insists on his full humanity. The Jewish Chris- tians were looking for the speedy second coming of the Messiah but this presented great difficulty to the Greeks, so with consummate tact, saying nothing of a visible bodily second coming, he places the emphasis on the fact that Christ has come already by the Spirit, and that men have already ‘the most widely read religious literature in the world.” B. W. Robinson “The Gospel of John,” p. 55. This is probably the best single modern volume on the gospel for the average minister or layman. * Cf. Acts 18:24, 19:7. John 1:19-28. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 155 passed out of death into life. The universal appeal of Jesus is made throughout both to the Jew and the Greek. The fundamental ideas of the gospel are that God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus, who is the Word of God incarnate in humanity ; that he imparts life to all who receive him by faith; that through faith men may enter into union with Christ and have his life imparted to them and repro- duced in them. Revelation If we pass from the fourth gospel to the book of Reve- lation, we again enter a new world of thought. It differs from the gospel of John more than that does from the synoptics. To understand it we must know something of the apocalyptic literature which had sprung up during the century before and the century after Christ. In an age of pessimism and hopeless despair, occasioned by the rule of pagan nations, especially of Rome, men turned to God with the prayer and the prophecy that he would intervene to slay the wicked, reward the faithful, and establish his righteous reign by force. The book of Daniel in the Old Testament and Revelation in the New are characteristic of this literature. In 164 B. C. under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes the writer of Daniel comforts the Jews by the assurance that God will intervene to save his people and speedily bring in the end of the age. More than two centuries later, the writer of Revelation, during the latter period of the reign of Domitian (81-96 A. D.), promises the same hope of deliverance to persecuted Christians. The church was threatened with the pagan cult of Caesar-worship, the emperor claiming the title “Lord and God.” While gladly ready to pray for him, the Christians refused to worship the emperor. In consequence persecution had broken out. Some had suffered martyrdom and one who called himself John was banished to the island of Patmos. He believes he has a clear revelation of the ultimate triumph of God’s cause. He writes to his fellow Christians in the seven churches on the mainland near Ephesus his great 156 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH message of comfort. God reigns! Righteousness will surely triumph; evil will be destroyed and disappear; God’s King- dom will come and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. This is his message of inspiration, hope and confidence in a day when it was desperately needed. The book was undoubtedly at the time, and has been repeatedly since, an untold help to believers who were discouraged in days of darkness or persecution. All the events prophesied in the book “must shortly come to pass.” Several times the word is repeated, “Behold I come quickly’? This is the opening and closing refrain of the book. The events were to take place in that generation. The writer speaks of Rome as Babylon, remembered in the sight of God in “the fierceness of his wrath,’ soon to be destroyed. He would have been surprised if he could have foreseen that Rome would become the capital and chief center of the Christian church and that Christ’s cause would triumph not by a sudden miracle of force but through long ages of discipline and moral suasion. In common with other apocalyptic books the language is highly symbolic. The book runs in cycles of seven. Accord- ing to Dr. Moffatt, the seven seals represent the certainty, the seven trumpets the promulgation, and the seven bowls the actual execution of doom upon the world.’ John was a common name in Palestine and the author does not claim to be an apostle. It would seem that the vocabulary, the style and the theological ideas are so far removed from the fourth gospel that both could not have been written by the same person. Moffatt shows that the blend of Hebraic and vernacular Greek is utterly defiant of grammar. “No book in the New Testament with so good a record was so +See Rev. 1:1; 22:6, PREV. 220,105 "3:11; CU RM: SAlpeaat RU Aa * Rome is the “beast with the ten horns and seven heads.” ‘The head is the emperor and those who worship him bear the mark of the beast. In the apocalyptic language of the day the beast’s number 666 spells the words “Nero Cesar.” Nero’s rule of infamy had lasted from 54 to 68 A. D. and there was a widely current rumor that he was to return as the agent of Satan, he whose “death- wound was healed.” Rey. 13:14-18, THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 157 long in gaining acceptance.” After the period of persecution passed, there was a widespread distaste for the book in the early church, and it was especially alae among the Syrian and Greek churches. It is with the theology of the book that we are especially concerned. There are parts of great beauty, as in its vision of the redeemed at the end. It is strong in faith, strong in hope, but not in love. Jesus is introduced as the lion and the lamb, but the former predominates. The book combines the Jewish, Davidic, conquering, military Messiah, who triumphs by bloodshed and rules by force, with the Christian idea of a sacrificial Savior. God is a majestic, enthroned figure, but not the Father in touch with his children and knowing the sparrow’s fall. God’s love is never mentioned, save that Jerusalem is regarded as the “beloved city.”? “The great teachings of the divine Fatherhood, the universal brotherhood, the spiritual Kingdom, scarcely appear, but in their place we hear hoarse cries for the day of vengeance, and see the warrior Christ coming to deluge the earth with blood.” Is it the same Jesus who prayed for his enemies, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and who bids us love our enemies, who now welters in blood ? Ts it the same spirit cf Stephen who cried for the forgiveness of his persecutors, that animates the martyrs of this book who now thirst for vengeance ?? At a hundred points the teaching of Jesus in the gospels is here contradicted. The book has done great good and has been a comfort to many, yet it is also to be feared that “Inquisitions, intolerance and ignorance have thrived on it. . . . We must confess that we cannot go to it for our ideas of geography or astronomy or the teaching of Jesus. The makers of the New Testament canon understood this. They debated long whether to include the book. . . . John’s apocalypse yet has a great value permanent for religion. It is this: Righteousness shall finally conquer; evil must be fs eo 4 20:9. Christ’s love for Christians is mentioned in Rev. 2 Rev. 6 5. 10. 158 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH punished and eventually disappear before the ever-coming Kingdom of God.” ? The wide difference in viewpoint and teaching between the Revelation and the gospel of John, between the fourth and the first three gospels, between Paul and James, and many other writers of the New Testament, is reproduced in the diversity and liberty of thought among the early Christians of the first century. Only later, when the creeds had been formulated and correct doctrine under ecclesiastical control had been substituted for Jesus’ way of living, was a single hard and fast orthodoxy of belief insisted upon. In the beginning, where the Spirit of the Lord was there was liberty. Have we still that liberty today? More than three centuries ago, as we have seen, Galileo urged that we should go to the Bible not as a scientific authority but as a moral guide. And even as such a guide the letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life. We should go to the Bible not as a storehouse of proof texts but as a moral and spiritual guide that must be interpreted by the Spirit. What controversy, bitterness and misunderstanding might have been avoided, what inquisitions and persecutions and divisions might have been escaped, if we could have grasped the spirit of Jesus, the liberty of Paul, the counsel of Galileo. There is spiritual vision and inspiration in Revelation for those who can read it in this spirit. But can we take it as literal prophecy? If so, did the statement, “I come quickly,” and the doom of the world that “must shortly come to pass,” mean more than nineteen centuries? If so, may it still mean more than that period in the future? Has there been literal fulfillment? We read, “Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Children no longer obey their parents. The end of the world is evidently approaching.” This is not the latest word of premillennial prophecy. This is the in- scription on an Assyrian tablet now in the museum at Con- stantinople. Its date is 2800 B. C. It was written 4,726 ee A. Hawley, “The Teaching of the Apocrypha and Apocalypse,” p. 165. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 159 years ago, or long before Abraham was born. And for the last four thousand seven hundred years men have been say- ing that the end was at hand, that it was literally coming “speedily.” Dean Hodges well says, “The Bible is a dangerous and dynamic book, radical and revolutionary, essentially demo- cratic, and puts all our conservatisms in peril.”* If we ask how we are to interpret this library or sacred collection of books, we may take Jesus as our example and as the test and touchstone of the whole. The Old Testament was his own Bible. He lived and had his being in the Scriptures, yet he was never guilty of bibliolatry. In his controversy with the Pharisees over eating with unwashen hands, he says that nothing without can defile a man, thereby contradicting Levi- ticus XI and Deuteronomy XIV. He thus substitutes an ethical for a ceremonial principle of cleanliness. He refuses to accept the regulation of Deuteronomy concerning divorce as on too low a plane. He says that Moses’ regulation was due to hardness of heart, to moral immaturity. He thus shows that a progressive revelation of God’s will was con- ditioned by the moral perception of the hearers. In the Sermon on the Mount when he shows that he comes not to destroy but to fulfil, in each case he opposes a quotation from the law with his “I say unto you.” The con- flict was between the absolute authority of an external law and the immediate intuition of God in the individual. In place of “hate thine enemy,” he substitutes “love your ene- mies,” thus challenging the Old Testament and a universal human instinct. He takes his stand against the imprecatory Psalms and the general attitude of the Old Testament to enemies.2, As Bousset says, “Later Judaism developed a genius for hate.” Jesus was constantly “correcting, supple- menting, spiritualizing, universalizing’”’ the Old Testament.’ In his light the whole Bible must be read and under the *“How to Know the Bible,” p. 348. 7Psalms 90:6; 137:8, 9; 140:9-10; 1 Sam. 15:3, 33; Ex. 17:14; Deut. 7:2; Esther 9:5-16; 2 Kings 1:9-15, etc. ® See “The Constructive Revolution of Jesus” by Samuel Dickey, pp. 39-65. 160 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH guidance of the Spirit who is promised to guide us into the truth. Lord Balfour writes, “Taking for illustration the collec- tion of ancient books held sacred in the West, they inquire whether we are really to believe that the work of creation was accomplished in six days, that, life, human and sub- human, was almost exterminated by a flood, that springing afresh from the surviving remnant, mankind repeopled the earth. . . . Evidently summaries of this type treat the Bible as if it professed to be a textbook of cosmology and history, with the advantage over other textbooks of being inspired and therefore infallible. . . . Inspired, in the opinion of the present writer, the Bible certainly is. Infal- lible in the sense commonly attributed to that word, it cer- tainly is not.”* Undoubtedly if we study the Bible from the modern view- point, a frank facing of all the facts does constitute a chal- lenge to faith, But thousands of Christians have made this transition to the modern view and have found a reasonable, joyous, victorious faith. It may affect our conventional beliefs and traditions but not God’s eternal truth. The same Jesus who pointed out shortcomings and mistakes of the past, made men confident that “when he the Spirit of truth is come he shall guide you into all the truth.” Let us go for- ward not in fear but in faith. We shall find this marvelous book, not a letter that killeth, but under the guidance of the Spirit a very fountain of living water to quench the deepest thirst of our hearts. The closing challenge of Revelation is still true for this book and for the Bible as a whole, “Let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst, come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” The writer on the barren island of Patmos knew this eternal, inward, spiritual fact, that the world would not recognize then and will not now. That perennial fountain of life is springing to quench our thirst today. Here is a new chall- enge to faith. Space forbids our dealing with each book in the New 1+“Science, Religion and Reality,” p. 9. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 161 Testament. We must content ourselves with the following summary showing the chronology of the principal books and events. The dates in some cases are only approximate or conjectural. We have tried to follow the consensus of opinion of the best modern scholarship.* Chronology of the New Testament 6 B. C. The Birth of Jesus. 60. Colossians, Philemon, 27 A. D. Baptism of Jesus. Ephesians, Philippians. 29 or 30. The Crucifixion. 64. 1 Peter. 30 or 35. Conversion of 70. The Fall of Jerusalem; Paul. The Gospel of Mark. 50. 1 and 2 Thessalonians. 80-95. Luke and Acts. 52 (or 48). Galatians. 80. Hebrews. 52-54. land 2 Corinthians. 85-90. Matthew. 54. Accession of Nero. 96. Revelation. 56. Romans, Arrest of Paul. 95-115. John, 1, 2, 3 John. 150.2 Peter, The Roman Emperors Julius Caesar 100-44B.C. Titus A. D. 79-81 Augustus 31B.C-14A.D. Domitian A. D. 81-96 Tiberius A.D. 14-37 Nerva A. D. 96-98 Caligula A.D.37-41 Trajan A. D. 98-117 Claudius A. D.41-54 Hadrian A. D. 117-138 Nero A.D.54-68 Antoninus Civil Strife A. D. 68-69 Pius A. D. 138-161 Vespasian A. D.69-79 Marcus Aurelius A.D.161-180 Chonology of the Old Testament? 1, Before 1000 B.C. Pre-Monarchic Period. Oral accounts of Abraham, Moses, etc. War march songs, proverbs, riddles, oracles, etc. *See Moffatt’s “Introduction,” XVIf. Moffatt’s “Historical New Testament,” 79f,. Principal A. J. Grieve in Peake’s one-volume atone On on the Bible,” p. 657. Streeter’s “The Four Gospels,” . 150. “Outline of Christianity,” vol. I, p. 394. Ps Following Bewer’s “Literature of the Old Testament.” 162 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 2. c. 1000-910 B. C. The time of David, Solomon, Jero- boam I. Poems, narratives and laws: the Book of the Covenant (Ex. 20:23-23:19) : The “Cultic Decalogue” (Ex. 34). 3. 900-700 B.C. The Ninth and Eighth Centuries. Elijah and Elisha (1K. 17-19; 2K. 2-8; 13:14-21). c. 850 B. C. THe JAuwist or YAHwistT History, J, the first of the four basic documents of the Old Testament. Moses had given the fundamental principles in the Decalogue and Book of the Covenant (Ex. 20:23-23:19) concerning monotheism and social morality. About 850 B. C. appeared the first Hebrew historian. He prevailingly uses the word “Jahweh” for God, spelled phonetically “Yahweh,” which was the real pronunciation of “Jehovah.” Hence he is called the Yahwist. He writes the first comprehensive history ever written, long before the Greek historians. He begins with the story of creation, now found in Gen. 2:4 to 4:25, “in the day” when Yahweh formed man out of the dust, placed him in Eden, made woman out of his rib, and founded the family. He tells the story of man’s fall, of Cain and Abel, of early giants and demigods, of Noah and the flood and man’s sinfulness. Then follows the promise to Abraham of the chosen people, the story of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph and the deliverance from Egypt; of Moses, Joshua, the conquest of Canaan and finally David’s glorious reign. Throughout, this great writer sees history as the working out of God’s purpose.* c.750 B.C. Tuer Erontst History, E. About a century after the Yahwist’s history a prophetic writer influenced by Elijah, and about the time of Amos, wrote a history of man and the Jewish people from the point of view of the northern Kingdom of Israel, as the Yahwist had from that of the Judean southern Kingdom. Because he avoided the proper name “Yahweh” until the time of Moses, and uses the Hebrew word “Elohim” for God, this anonymous writer is * The original story of J is in Gen. 2:4b4:25; 5:29; 6:1-8; 7:1-15, 7-10, 12, 16b, 17b, 22£; 8:2b, 3a, 6-12, 13b, 20-22; 9:18-27; 10:8-19, 21, 24-30; 11:1-9, ete. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 163 called the ‘‘Elohist.”” Without the vast sweep of J, E begins with the story of Abraham. There is a distinct advance in his theological and ethical views. E corrects the bad impres- sion left by J of Abraham’s deceit regarding Sarah, left in Pharaoh’s harem (Gen. 20:1-17). He retells beautifully the story of Joseph, of Moses, of the conquest of Canaan, of the Judges, of the theocratic monarchy of Saul and David. E is a wonderful moral teacher who sees a progressive revelation of God in history, as a means of religious instruc- tion. Later the accounts of J and E were combined in one narrative. c. 750 B. C. Amos, the first literary prophet, the messen- ger of social righteousness, and of the moral character of God. c. 745-735 B. C. Hosea, prophet of the mercy and love of God. 738-700 B. C. Isaiah proclaims the faithful, universal God of all. 4. The Seventh Century. 621 B. C. DEuTERONoMy PUBLISHED, D. In a time of superstition, witchcraft and the worship of Baal and Asherah, and of human sacrifices to Moloch, the prophetic party, as followers of Isaiah, stood for exclusive, ethical, spiritual monotheism centering in a united worship in one sanctuary at Jerusalem (Deut. 12:2-7) uniting the prophetic and priestly views. The anonymous master-mind who wrote Deuteronomy believes he is giving the people the principles of the religion of Moses. There is a moral advance in social values, in the treatment of slaves, of woman, the family, the administration of justice, the value of the individual, and the conception of God and man. Israel is to be like God and to love him with the whole heart (6:4-9). The new book was placed in the hands of King Josiah, who at once began a reformation with the cleansing of the temple (2 Kings 22 f.), based upon this authoritative book, which now became the chief authority of Israel’s religion. c. 627-626 B. C. Zephaniah. c. 615 Nahum, 626-585 Jeremiah, the teacher of personal religion. 164 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 5. The Sixth Century. 600-590 B. C. Habakkuk. 593-571 Ezekiel. The Holi- ness Code (Leviticus 17-26). 546-539 Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah Chaps. 40-55), the prophet of the vicarious Suffering Servant. c. 500 B.C. Tue Priest Cope, P. One of the four great documents of the Hexateuch, by a priestly writer; formal, precise, dry; combining history and law, teaching that salva- tion is by correct ritual and sacrifice. He begins with the majestic story of creation in Genesis 1, leading to the priestly climax of the institution of the Sabbath of complete rest. He follows with the story of the patriarchs, circumcision, the passover (Ex. 12:1-14), the exodus, laws of the sanc- tuary, and the origin of all rites and institutions and sacri- fices ; the ceremonial being to him more important than the moral law. Salvation, which in Amos and the prophets was by righteousness, is here by ritual. The law was a heavy yoke to many. The code was adopted in solemn assembly under Ezra (Neh. 8-10).? The four books were united in one historico-legal work, JEDP, as the basis of Israel’s religion; completed about BOUL ai har 6. The Fifth Century. c. 460 B. C. Malachi. c. 400 B. C. Joel. The Book of Ruth. Nehemiah and Ezra. 7. The Fourth Century. Earlier Proverbs. Job. Isaiah, chaps. 24—27. 8. The Third Century. c. 300-250 B. C. Chronicles. Esther. Song of Songs. Jonah, Ecclesiastes. 9. The Second Century. Completion of the Psalter, as a canonical hymn book which had grown after the manner of our modern hymnals, 165- *Gen. 1:1-2:4a; 5; 6:9-22; 7:6, 11, 13-l6a, 17a, 18-21, 24; 8:1, Za, 3b-5, 13a, 14-19; 9:1-17, 284; 10: va 20, 226, olfs Tks 10-27, 311: 12 Ab, 5: 10; 6a, 11b, 12a; 16: la,\.3, 15f; 17; 19 20; 21:1b, 2b, 3-5; 23 aes :7-1la, eae etc. THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE 165 164. Daniel. Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria (175-164 B. C.), endeavored forcibly to Hellenise the Jews. He looted the temple, killed the people, razed the walls, forbade Sabbath observance, stopped the sacrifices, erected an altar to Zeus in place of the altar of burnt-offering and sacrificed swine upon it. Matthias, with his five sons, under the great Judas Maccabeus, led a revolt, recaptured Jerusalem, cleansed the temple and freed the people. In January, 164 B. C., or in the previous month, the writer of Daniel prophesies against the “little one,” Antiochus, and expects the end by the inter- vention from God in 164 B. C. (Dan. 9:25-27.) c. 400 B. C. The Canon of the Law fixed after Ezra, containing “the five books of Moses.” c. 200 B. C. .Canon of the Prophets closed; Joshua, Judges, Saul, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve. c. 100 A. D. The Canon of the Old Testament finally closed with “The Writings” or Hagiographa, including the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentation, Eccle- siastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles. It was a long time before Daniel was included in the canon, as it met with much opposition. The Christian church finally took over the Jewish scriptures, incorporating them in their Bible, CuapTer V WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? What is Christianity? Is it a matter primarily intellectual, of correct opinion and right belief; is it an emotional experi- ence; is it adherence to a moral code; is it fundamentally sacramental, a way of salvation by certain prescribed cere- monies and sacred rites; is it a question of membership in some true church; is it a social system for improving human conditions and relations? Or, is it a way of life embracing all of these elements—intellectual, emotional, moral, sym- bolic, esthetic, ecclesiastical and social? Is it following Jesus’ way of life, in the love of God and man? Again, is Christianity static or progressive? Is it a cast- iron framework of fixed rules, a closed system, a faith finished and completed; or is it a progressive revelation culminating in Jesus and in his living principles, capable of endless expansion and of ever-fresh application? Is it continually open to the discovery of new truth, and is it still true, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth?’ Is the religion of Jesus a kernel of truth overlaid by successive husks of dogma, ritual and ecclesiasticism? Or is it the germ out of which the church has necessarily and legitimately devel- oped, as the oak from the acorn, drawing its nutriment from _ the soil of the ever-changing environment in which it grew? “The truly evangelical part of Christianity is not that which has never changed, for in a sense, all has changed and has never ceased to change, but that which in spite of all external changes proceeds from the impulse given by Christ, and is inspired by his Spirit, serves the same ideal and the same hope.’ Perhaps we can best answer the question as to whether SACS. (a 41s Ghn v1O<12;> La * Loisy, “The Gospel and the Church,” pp. 17, 277. 166 WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 167 Christianity is static or progressive by an inductive study of its sources, and an examination of the origins of our present-day religion. There is a sense in which we are debtors to the past as heirs of all the ages. We are like the householder who brings forth out of his treasure things new and old, in the daily fresh discovery of new truth and in the sharing of the treasures of human experience of the past. A study of the past reveals the fact that what we now call Christianity is drawn from several sources: Old Testament Judaism, the Jesus of the Gospels, the work and writings of the Apostle Paul, the Graeco-Roman civilization, and the oriental mystery-religions of the first century. Let us briefly examine each of these in turn. Old Testament Sources To the Judaism of the Old Testament we owe the incal- culable debt of ethical monotheism. Instead of finding the Bible one book teaching at a dead level the same truth throughout, we found it rather, as its name implies, a library, recording the progressive revelations of ever-higher ranges of truth as men were able to attain them. Some of the earliest conceptions of God in the Old Testament are ele- mental and mixed with pagan and polytheistic elements. A survival of early polydemonism, for instance, is found in the two scapegoats, one for Jehovah and the other for the demon Azazel. The sons of God are represented as entering into polygamous marriages with the daughters of men.? Primi- tive man tended to make his gods in his own image. While to early Israel Jehovah was the Lord of lords, they did not deny the reality of the gods of the surrounding peoples, of Baal, Asherah, Moloch, and Dagon. But gradually in this atmosphere of myth and legend, of folklore and tradition, of polytheism and idolatry, men with a deeper experience of God proclaimed new truths. We *Lev. 16:7-10, Revised Version. We are deeply indebted through- out this section to Professor Bewer in his “Literature of the Old Testament in its Historical Development,’ and to Basil King in “The Discovery of God.” 2 Gen. 6:1-7. 168 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH can trace the advancing thought of God in certain great forward steps which are recorded in the Old Testament. Each of these is connected chiefly, though not exclusively, with the name of a prophet. 1. With the name of Moses, according to our records, we connect the thought of God as the One, the only God. To the exclusion of all idols and of the worship of other gods the chosen people were called to the worship of Jehovah. This ethical monotheism became the foundation of spiritual worship, of moral human relations, of a higher civilization, and was finally enunciated in the command, ““Thou shalt have none other gods beside me.” “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”+ To Judaism we owe this first combination of monotheism and morality, an incalculable gift to humanity. Only those who have lived in lands where polytheism and idolatry constitute the basis of life, with their inevitable results in ignorance, superstition and diverse and harmful moral standards, can realize the value of this cornerstone of all civilization. 2. Amos gave the world the conception of God as right- eous, and ushered in a new era, one of the greatest spiritual epochs in all history. About 750 B. C. at a time of social corruption, of the revelry of the rich and the oppression of the poor, this plain shepherd, like a lay carpenter who was to follow him centuries later, suddenly appeared at a harvest festival in northern Israel to proclaim the moral character of Jehovah and to insist that his chief requirement was not sacrifice to himself but social justice to men.? He is the first prophet of righteousness, and lifts man to a new conception of God. 3. Hosea, about 754-735 B. C. reveals a God of love and mercy, as he comes to realize these qualities in his tragic experience with his unfaithful wife. Even in her shame 1Deut. 5:7; 6:4. 7“T hate, I despise your feasts . . . but let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Amos 5:21-25. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 169 he must love her still: “even as Jehovah loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods.” So in his bitter experience the love of God is realized and incarnated in the suffering prophet. Joining mercy and righteousness, he refines and spiritualizes religion: “I desire loving kindness and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” 4. Isaiah, 738-700 B. C.,1 “the most majestic of the prophets,” becomes the representative of God to his genera- tion by revealing Jehovah as faithful, universal, the God of all. In the year that King Uzziah died, 738, he saw the vision of holiness that changed his life. In the face of captivity and the doom of his nation he rises by faith to the conception of a faithful God who will yet save a remnant of his people to carry out his purpose; not as the tribal God of Israel, but as the universal God of the whole earth. If Amos sees the height of his righteousness, and Hosea the depth of his love, Isaiah grasps more of the width and sweep of God’s purpose for the world. 5. Jeremiah, c. 626-585 B. C., in his own individual experience first realized Jehovah as the God of the individual, the God of personal relations, and religion as a matter of the soul. He incarnates his own message and is a forerunner of the Man of Sorrows as he spiritualizes religion for all time. In an age of prosperous materialism, he stands alone against the world. Later, as he faces the failure of the nation, the breaking of the law, and the destruction of the temple, he discovers the individual’s responsibility and the possibilities of personal communion with God, in direct access to him. He calls for individual repentance and faith. He points to “a God who is near” with whom a man may speak as friend with friend. Despairing of the nation, he turns to the individual and declares a New Covenant written on the hearts of men. With the “great unknown” Second Isaiah who was to follow him, he marks the spiritual height of the Old Testament. 1 As in this instance several of the dates given are only approximate. A fuller list will be found in the chronological table at the end of the preceding chapter. 170 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 6. The Second or Deutero-Isaiah, c. 546-539, so called because the writings of this great prophet of the Exile were later affixed to the book of Isaiah, reveals the very heart of the God of the vicarious Suffering Servant. Utterly unlike Isaiah, the prophet of doom and of the coming captivity of Jerusalem two centuries before, this great comforter and prophet of hope during the Babylonian captivity, whose messages are recorded in Isaiah 40-66, begins with his call: “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.” He proclaims the unity and universality of God as against all man-made idols. His characteristic message is embodied in the portrait of the “Suffering Servant” of Jehovah, picturing the innocent suffering of the nation of Israel for all nations, which was to prove the type of the highest ideal in all religion, realized finally in Jesus of Nazareth—a “light to the Gentiles that thou mayest be my salvation unto the ends of the earth.” Thus from the lowliest and humblest beginnings and from the first faint dawn in a great darkness, the light of the promised Sun of Righteousness breaks at the close of the Old Testament. The Fact of Christ In estimating our debt to the past and asking what is Christianity, let us turn from Judaism to Jesus. Starting with no theological presuppositions, let us take him as we find him. There suddenly appears a young prophet in Gali- lee, who, four and a half centuries after Malachi, steps out of the silence of his carpenter shop to call all men to be his brothers and the children of the one Heavenly Father. Like Amos, the shepherd-prophet who dramatically challenged the nation in northern Israel; not unlike Jeremiah or John the Baptist, who called the people to repentance, Jesus sud- denly Iaunches, in less than three years, the greatest spiritual movement in history. Without writing a word himself, this peasant carpenter has somehow stimulated the greatest volume of literature known to the world, and the book which contains the record of his life has become, not only the best- *Is. 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53 :12. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 171 seller of all time, but the only approach to the world’s uni- versal book. From the first it seemed there was something incalculable and unique about him. Can we attempt to evaluate our debt to him? 1. Jesus gathered, centered and simplified, not only Juda- ism, but religion for all time, in the single universal essential of righteous love. He polarized religion to the love of God and man. He united in one indivisible, vital organism of truth, the divine and human, the mystical and the moral, the personal and the social, communion and service, inflow and overflow. Implicitly and explicitly, he cut away a laby- rinthine forest of non-essentials, of limitations, hindrances, traditions and evils, and set man free from all enslavement and entanglement for the great adventure of life itself. The Pharisees had reduced the burdensome law to six hundred and thirteen fine points, with the scrupulous tithing of mint, anise and cummin, and all the conflicting interpre- tations of hair-splitting casuistry. This young carpenter- rabbi, in the face of the official authority of the Scribes, the enormous influence of the Pharisees, the patriotic popular nationalism of the Zealots, the awe of Moses, the super- human voice of the Law and the Prophets and the dead weight of the tradition of the past, pierces to the heart of reality in immediate spiritual intuition, with his “I say unto you.” He liberates and frees all who dare follow him from enslaving legalism, literalism, dogmatism and ecclesiasticism. He is overawed neither by the law, the sabbath, nor the temple. He bursts the bonds of narrow nationalism, race prejudice and privilege. He challenges the power of unjust wealth and its lucrative traffic in the temple courts. By implication he arraigns the whole war system in refusing to resort to destructive force, committing his cause to the sole principle of love that never faileth. He simplifies all life in the single principle of holy love. 2. Jesus experienced and revealed God as Father. The word “God” was almost as old as man, and “Father” is found in various contexts before Jesus’ time.t Some scholars main. BCT sels tls 2 19. 65516. 172 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH tain that there is little that is new or original in his teaching. But if the teaching is read in parallel columns with that of his Jewish background in the light of their context and content, the striking difference is seen. A perusal of Thomas Walker’s “The Reading of Jesus,” or the parallels traced by recent German scholars or by Mackintosh, shows that per- haps two-thirds of his recorded teachings can be found either in the Old Testament, the Apocrypha or the Talmud, and were a fresh and forceful restatement of the best in Judaism. But, as Dr. Walker concludes, “It does not seem possible any longer to deny the originality of the mind of Jesus. He stepped out in advance of the mind of his time—he left the teaching of the Judaism of his day behind him... . For the origin of these things in his teaching which began a new movement in religion one must turn to his own marvelously resourceful personality.”+ With marvelous insight he pierced to the heart of spiritual reality and out of the depth of his own unique experience of God gave a new creative content and a wealth of meaning to terms that were old. His originality was not so much in word or thought or expression, as in introducing men to a new experience of God and a new way of life realized in love. He was new. So new that the face of all the world is changed for men who have caught and shared his secret. Can devotion frame any richer title than “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus?’ No volume of words and *See Mackintosh, “The Originality of the Christian Message.” Dr. Klausner, as a Hebrew, says in his recent life of “Jesus of Naz- areth,’ “There is a new thing in the Gospels—Jesus gathered to- gether and, so to speak, condensed and concentrated ethical teachings in such a fashion as to make them more prominent than in the Talmudic Haggada and the Midrashim, where they are interspersed among more commonplace discussions and worthless matter. Even in the Old Testament .. . this teaching is yet mingled with cere- monial laws . . . which also include ideas of vengeance and harsh- est reproval.” He continues, “There was yet another element in Jesus’ idea of God which Judaism could not accept. Jesus tells his disciples that they must love their enemies, since their ‘Father in heaven makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good’ . With this Jesus introduces something new into the idea of God . . . In the Jewish conception of God the wicked are not worthy that God’s sun should rise upon them.” ' “Jesus of Nazareth,” pp. 379,389. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 173 phrases can exactly describe the content Jesus gave to the word Father. His whole life is a commentary upon the word. Can faith at its boldest go farther than to say that God is like Jesus? Is there not a sense of inadequacy or almost blasphemy in applying such a comparison to any other? Can we say that God is like Moses, David, Jeremiah or Paul? According to Jesus, the God of universal, sov- ereign will, is a Father of utter goodness. He who created heaven and earth cares for little children, loves his enemies, seeks every wayward son as a shepherd his lost sheep and welcomes him home, like the prodigal, to the uttermost love and full joy of sonship. Jesus was the first to perceive the full implications of such fatherhood, to live a whole life in this unshaken belief, and to make this faith so creative and contagious that not only his immediate followers, but men in every age could share his experience and validate his faith in God as Father. 3. Jesus so shared his passion for humanity that he enabled men to realize the incalculable value of the individual man and the brotherhood of all. He had such faith in the spiritual nature, the infinite worth and the boundless possibilities of human personality that he saw it not as cheap and transitory and debased, but sub specie eternstatis, with the potency of life abundant and eternal. Because of his faith in God, he believed in man. He staked the issues of his Kingdom upon common men. His most daring faith was in the hope- less. He was the loyal friend of sinners. The publican, the harlot, the leper and the lost were softened by his love and quickened by his faith in them. From the thief on the cross to Jerry Macaulay, the criminal and the social outcast have through him found a new faith in themselves and the dynamic to realize a new manhood. Jesus showed us, to use Dean Inge’s recent phrase, that “the personality of every man and woman is sacred and inviolable.” This has increasingly permeated the convictions of common men everywhere. Take for illustration the recent manifesto of a group of leaders of the British Labor Party: “It is our conviction that statesmanship will fail and political pro- 174 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH grams will prove futile as a solvent of social troubles unless they embody the spirit and practice of Christ. . . . We proclaim our belief in the gospel of Christ as the final truth concerning the relationships of men one with another. We ask everyone who reads this manifesto to join in a crusade of spiritual regeneration, and to apply the test of the Chris- tian spirit to all industrial policies and political programs whatsoever.” Bernard Shaw, the satirist, voices the same sentiment when he says, “I see no way out of the world’s misery but the way which would have been found by Christ’s will, if he had undertaken the work of a modern practical statesman.” The lowest man takes on new value when he becomes “the brother for whom Christ died.” Even’the hungry, the thirsty, the foreign stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned criminal are seen in the light of infinite values and of divine worth when men see that the service they render to needy men they are rendering to Christ and to God who gives infinite value to all. Robert Louis Stevenson utters the same faith in the com- mon man, even the degraded and fallen, which has tended to permeate all life since Jesus proclaimed his worth: “It matters not where we look, under what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality; by camp fires in Assiniboia ... in ships at sea... simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave to drown, for others; in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments without hope of change in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neigh- bors, tempted perhaps in vain... . Ah! if I could show you this! If I could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 175 souls! ... Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with inconquerable constancy: surely not all in vain.”* But the highest dignity Jesus gave to man was not so much by what he taught as by what he was. He had broken the moral molds of cramped humanity. Henceforth men might look up to the distant attainment of “a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” He became the standard for a new creation in a new type of moral manhood. 4. Jesus has given the world its highest moral standards. He pierces through the vast mass of Jewish tradition slowly accumulated on the authority of Scribes and Pharisees, he brushes aside the authority of the Mosaic ceremonial code and penetrates below the multitude of fixed rules and statutes of moral legalism to basic ethical principles. He founds all life on the four cornerstones of the divine Father- hood, the supreme value of the individual human personality, the universal sweep of human brotherhood, and the fulfil- ment of life in love, expressed in service and sacrifice, in a social order of the Kingdom of God on earth. In these all the law and the prophets are fulfilled, and all life realized. Mosaic rules may suffice—for an exclusive Jewish national- ism. But the spacious and expansive principles of Jesus are timeless, as applicable in the twentieth century as in the first, and doubtless they will be as applicable in the fortieth as in the twentieth. Love and brotherhood can never be out of date. In many details, openly or secretly, even his own followers have not accepted his standards, as, for instance, in his super- resistance to evil and his turning the other cheek to the violent. The majority of Christians feel that if his principles and example are fully followed at this point they will not work successfully. They feel that they must in the last analysis resort to military preparation and destructive defensive warfare. But let any honest Christian place himself before Jesus on this very issue and ask whether the fault lies in the ethical standard of Jesus, or that of the world today. Does there not arise at least a lurking suspicion that after nineteen centuries of boasted *“Pulvis et Umbra,” p. 293. 176 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH progress it is only our own lack of faith that prevents our rising to the heights of his moral sublimity? As a fair test, suppose we read again a section more assailed than perhaps any other part of his teaching, the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount. Let us measure ourselves by his beatitudes: humility, purity and love; or, right relations with God, in our own character, and with our fellow-men. Let us examine him who comes not to destroy but to fulfill, in the five test cases which he offers: 1. No hatred, contempt or con- demnation for any human being, but reverence for the per- sonality of every man as brother. 2. No look or thought of lust for any woman, but reverence for her as sister. 3. No arrogant swearing, false or otherwise, but such a reverence for God and truth that all human intercourse shall be lifted into the sunlight of clear moral integrity. 4. No revenge, even though it be the natural demand of legal justice, but the over- coming of evil by good and of hatred by love. 5. No hatred of friend or enemy, but love even of your enemies that you may be sons of your Father whose nature is righteous love and noth- ing else. You must therefore aim to be morally perfect, com- plete, well-rounded in love, like your heavenly Father himself. Does not Jesus himself stand at the moral summit of the centuries? Is not his the purest moral consciousness of all history? Is it not true that “almost every advance toward a larger justice and brotherhood has been due, in past cen- turies, to his influence, and in the new perplexities which have beset the world men are looking to him, more than to any other, for safe direction ?’”? 5. Jesus centers his teaching in the ideal of the Kingdom of God. He took over the hope of a Messianic age current among his people, but purified, spiritualized and universal- ized it. His conception is far removed even from that of John the Baptist, who sees immediately the axe laid at the root of the trees which are to be hewn down and cast into the fire. The Messiah is to burn the chaff with unquench- *E. F. Scott, “The Ethical Teaching of Jesus,” p. xii, and “The First Age of Christianity,” pp. 98-102. Dr. Klausner thus concludes his “Jesus of Nazareth’: “Jesus is, for the Jewish nation, a great teacher of morality and an artist in parable. He is the moralist for whom, in the religious life, morality counts as everything . . . In his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code,” p. 414. % WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 177 able fire and men are to flee from the wrath of his coming. To Jesus, in his first five parables on the Kingdom, it is already present as steadily growing seed or silently spreading leaven, though slowly progressing toward a future consum- mation. Jesus’ view of the Kingdom implies the moral organization of mankind, and the final sovereignty of love in all the relationships of life. It involves a new social order which is at once a Kingdom of God and a commonweal of men. For him the Kingdom is at once personal and social, present and future, divine and human, ideal and real. It is a possible and practicable social order which ultimately can come only from God, yet which men can receive and coop- erate with, as they pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” Mr. H. G. Wells, naming the six greatest men in history and including Buddha, Asoka, Aristotle, Roger Bacon and Abraham Lincoln, places Jesus alone at the summit. “The permanent place of power which he occupies is his by virtue of the new and simple and profound doctrine which he brought—the universal loving Fatherhood of God and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is one of the most revolutionary doctrines that have ever stirred and changed human thought. . . . The world began to be a different world from the day that doc- trine was preached.” ? Jesus nowhere outlines the details of the Kingdom, yet as an actual matter of fact, has it been Plato’s Republic, Moore’s Utopia, Bacon’s Atlantis, or Jesus’ conception of seeking first the Kingdom of God by doing to others as we would be done by, that has furnished the supreme moral, spiritual and social hope of mankind? As Washington Gladden suggests, has he not planted a social standard on the further side of twenty centuries which bids kings, lawgivers, prophets and statesmen march on with all their hosts till they attain it? 6. The fact of Jesus’ death and its results. Men have differed widely throughout the centuries as to the interpre- tation of Jesus’ death. They have passed from a crude » Matt. 13 :1-33; Mk. 4:26-29. *The American Magazine, July, 1922, p. 14. 178 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH pagan conception of a jealous and angry tribal God demand- ing the punishment of an innocent victim, like a Shylock who must have his exact pound of flesh, or a cruel Kali so much human blood. They have outgrown the idea of a ransom as a “pious fraud” played by God upon the devil, to whom man belonged. Some have seen in Jesus’ cross the fulfilment of the cosmic law of sacrifice. They have seen in it the con- vergence of two streams of history in man’s long search for God, and God’s long search for man, Like the scarlet thread that runs through the cordage of the British Navy, they have seen this thin red line of sacrifice running through all life. From the grass at our feet, the grain of wheat that falls into the ground to die that it may bear much fruit, from birth in pain, from the slow evolution of a mother, from the death of the martyr, prophet, patriot and saint, to the final con- summation of sacrifice in the cry, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’ many have seen this one increasing purpose fulfilled in his death. But all men’s theories and theologies have never been ade- quate to explain the sheer fact of Christ’s death and its stupendous results. In simple fact, Jesus died, and in experi- ence the lives of men were changed. In the deepest thoughts of their hearts, staining their literature and coloring all their religions, men had known the fact of sin in the sense of guilt, of pollution, of bondage. They now know the experience of forgiveness, of cleansing, of freedom. Between the two experiences, poles apart, men saw the fact of Jesus’ death, explain it as they would. For the sense of guilt there was forgiveness, for the feeling of pollution, cleansing, for the fact of bondage, freedom. Amid a chaos of conflict, of insolent evil and thwarted good, of the problem of pain unsolved, of right unrewarded and wrong unpunished, the Jew looked to the last judgment for the final vindication of God. But as men stood before the cross of Christ they saw a better way, not of sin punished but borne, not of hatred rewarded but overcome by love, not of evil destroyed but converted to good. Perhaps the cross was God’s way, not of annihilating evil in anger, but of turn- WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 179 ing the other cheek to it in long-suffering love. Men looked up at the stars and dared to believe God could do anything he would. They looked at the cross and dared to believe he would do anything he could. In nature they saw God’s power, in Jesus’ sacrifice his love. Outlasting a thousand theories, some of which we shall later refer to, the fact of Jesus’ death remains as man’s possession and inspiration. 7. Through Jesus men have experienced the meaning of resurrection, grasped the hope of life eternal and brought life and immortality to light. In the growing materialism of our age, when the body has been counted more real and enduring than the mind, men have found it increasingly difficult to believe in personal immortality. Jesus himself was spared no depths of shame, desertion, betrayal or death. His fol- lowers, who had deserted him, were dispersed, and his work lay in hopeless ruin about his empty tomb. Yet something happened. The days that followed upon his death witnessed the most wonderful outburst of moral and spiritual energy the world has ever known. However we may explain it, Jesus’ influence was not only not destroyed or lessened after his death, but perpetuated, intensified, multiplied, universalized in an inner experience now available for all men. However we may account for it, multitudes of men in all ages have shared his faith in immor- tality, and have built their faith, not on the noble aspiration of Socrates or the wavering hopes of Plato, but on the solid experience of Jesus risen and alive. Men who had known him intimately, like Peter, in whom all hope had died with Jesus’ shameful death, were convinced that he lived and that they had found new life in him. His worst enemies, like Saul of Tarsus, separated from him by gulfs of hatred or by widening centuries of time and unbelief, entered into this experience of resurrection life. Alike in that age and in this, men have awakened to the throbbing energies of a resurrec- tion morning. They have found a perennial fountain of new life within. It was a life so self-evidencing and spiritually validating that it was independent of the visual evidence of 180 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH an empty tomb or of appearances objective or subjective. It was the very inward life of “this same Jesus.” Finally, however, Jesus’ greatest gift was himself. More important than centering religion for all time in righteous love, more even than the truth that God was a loving Father, more than his enthusiasm for humanity, greater than the proclamation of his highest ethical standards, of deeper sig- nificance than his central message of the Kingdom of God, greater than the isolated fact of his death or resurrection, there remains the all-inclusive fact of Jesus himself. As historic fact, as personality, character, example; as an ideal realized, as the type of a new spiritual species, as “the like- ness of the unseen God’’—as all that he was and is, that escapes language, evades definition, and transcends expla- nation, Jesus remains the chief possession of the race. He is the heart of Christianity. The Meaning of Christ How, then, shall we interpret hime Perhaps we may not be able to do so, like his first followers in their new experi- ence so overwhelming and confused. If so, it will in no way invalidate that experience as a way of life. Perhaps we may have difficulty with the thought-forms and current conceptions of the simple dualism of an earlier age—with its demons and demon-possession, where Satan played a promi- nent part; an age whose people thought it was to end in that very generation in a general cataclysm and a sudden appear- ing amid cosmic catastrophe. All language is relative. We know in part only and our ignorance is abysmal. Jesus does not always seem to fit into our ready-made categories, and often breaks the molds and bursts past the bounds of our thought. His Jewish followers first conceived of him as the “Anointed” who was to bring in a new age, as the Messiah or Christ; yet a crucified criminal and a suffering servant seemed to contradict a term that was applied to a military conqueror who was to be a son of David, their warrior-king. As truly as he was a prophet and more than a prophet, so WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 181 was he a Jewish Messiah and much more, a whole world’s Christ. Greek culture approached God through the conception of the Logos, at once Reason immanent in the world and the uttered Word that revealed his thought. Jesus’ Hellenistic followers seized upon this concept and said Jesus was the Logos, the thought, the revelation, the Word of God. He was the very portrait, the image, the utterance of the unseen source of life. The monotheistic Jew, hesitating to apply the infinite term “God” to the finite human life of Jesus, yet dared to call him at once Son of God and Son of Man. Whatever their theology or philosophy, whatever their race or national background or prejudice, all his followers who had passed from death unto life, from darkness to light and from defeat and hopeless despair to the resurrection morn- ing of an eternal day of glad discovery, passionately called him Savior and Lord. All who had eaten and walked with him in the glad Gali- lean springtime or in the hunted days of dark Judea knew that he was truly man. Yet they felt that he was something more. Somehow God was in that life in a unique way. Such was the ineffable impression that he made upon them, that those men who had eaten and slept with him, had companied with him in every circumstance of failure and heartbreak, felt ever after that in his eyes they had looked into the very heart of God himself. Deliberately in thought, both Jewish monotheists and Greek philosophers placed this crucified carpenter of Nazareth on the very throne of the universe with deity, and summed up their three-fold experience in the familiar watchword, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all: so shall it be!” Whatever the limits of language, and though confessedly we cannot absolutely define either the term “God” or “man,” yet in Jesus’ life the divine and human seemed fully to meet. Ecce homo: ecce deus. In this life, behold man, behold God! Truly and utterly human, is he not unique in his incar- 182 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH nation of the highest that we know of God? Do we not find in Jesus the focus of the divine immanence, the throb of the divine pulse-beat, the likeness of the divine nature? As Archimedes in the new-found enthusiasm of the fresh dis- covery of the lever, could cry, “Give me whereon to stand and I can move the world,” so with this one pivotal life as foundation and fulcrum, we may move our world of nature and of man. One thing we know. In him we have found life. And the measure of this enlarging life is our light. Passionately let us take Jesus as the way. He is our inner secret and he our published joy. Beyond all relative words, Jesus remains. Beyond all our symbols the mystery and cer- tainty still abide—Anointed, Messiah, Christ; Logos, Word, immanent Reason and Revelation; Son of Man and Son of God; Savior and Lord, “my Lord and my God”; God mani- fest and incarnate in a limited and truly human life; crucified and risen, temporal and eternal, human and divine—in the end of our “Quest of the Historical Jesus,” we still say with the beloved physician of the African forest, Albert Schweitzer: “He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same words: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings, which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who he is.” The Contribution of Paul In asking what is Christianity and estimating our debt to the past, we turn from Jesus to Paul. In brief, Christ was Christianity, Paul interpreted it; Jesus lived the life, Paul explained it. Jesus of Nazareth was a man of the country, living in the least of all lands; while Paul of Tarsus, Jeru- salem, Antioch, Ephesus and Rome, was a citizen of the world. His fine Pharisaic Jewish training, his Roman citi- zenship, and his Greek language and culture gave him the WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 183 background which enabled him to interpret Christianity as a world religion.? In a very early document we have an account of the ap- pearance of this remarkable man—“a man of moderate stature, with curly (or crisp) hair and scanty, crooked legs; with blue eyes; and large knit eyebrows; long nose; and he was full of the grace and pity of the Lord, sometimes having the appearance of a man, but sometimes looking like an angel.’”’® The passion, the energy, the utter divine surrender, the rich and tender human friendships of this many-sided man of genius, are well illustrated in the successive chapter headings of Dr. Jefferson’s “Character of Paul’’—“sincerity, sanity, weakness, strength, pride, humility, vehemence, patience, courage, courtesy, indignation, tenderness, breadth and narrowness, sympathy, thankfulness, joyfulness, trust- fulness, hopefulness, love, religiousness, loveableness, great- ness,’ Let us sum up our debt to him in what he, more than any other follower of Jesus, did for Christianity. 1. Paul interprets Jesus, he explains Christianity, he gives us the evangel of the death and resurrection of Christ, he proclaims salvation by faith as the heart of the Christian message. And he does all this out of the heart of his own overwhelming experience. It was his conversion experience on the road to Damascus that revolutionized his whole life, *In Tarsus and Antioch he learned his cosmopolitanism. ‘Tarsus was the center of a famous Stoic school of philosophy, of broad Greek culture, of a Roman garrison, gymnasium, stadium and theatre from which his later metaphors of racing, boxing and soldiering are drawn. Greek was his native speech, though he was prepared for the office of a Rabbi, being a Jew of the liberal Dis- persion. In Gentile Antioch and elsewhere he labored for fourteen formative years with men of all nationalities. ‘He belongs to the Graeco-Roman world, but his background is Semitic, and his re- ligion is Hebrew. He thus stands at the center of things, equipped for the very load he was to undertake, the interpretation of Chris- ianity to the heart of the world.” T. R. Glover, “Paul of Tarsus,” Senn. E. F. Scott, “The First Age of Christianity,” pp. 123-127, 2“The Acts of Paul and Thekla” in F. C. Conybeare’s “Monu- ments of Early Christianity,” p. 62, quoted in Glover’s “Paul,” p. 172. °C. E. Jefferson’s “Character of Paul.” 184 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH as a volcanic psychological upheaval from his subconscious self. He who had stood by at the stoning of Stephen is suddenly transformed into Christ’s foremost apostle.* Troubled in his zealous course, in agony of mind, he had been trying to determine who that crucified Galilean really was. He was hunting his followers, believing under the Law that “he that is hanged is accursed of God.” Suddenly he was met with such an inward revelation of “his Son in me,” and an outward radiance that seemed of such reality, that he was instantly and forever faced with the fact of the risen, living Christ as the chief spiritual force at work in the world. But if God was in Christ, and Jesus was a crucified Messiah, then it involved a transvaluation of all values, and a revolu- tion in his conception of God, of man and of destiny. God then was no longer a Pharisaic Lawgiver, but the Father whose very nature is revealed in the cross. Jesus is not a crucified criminal but the Savior of humanity. Salvation is not man’s slavish attainment but God’s free gift to simple faith. Thus the face of all the world is changed by one look into the reality of Christ. Such is the message of Paul. Jesus had proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God and a life of moral obedience by which men might enter it. It is Paul, chiefly, who thinks out the implications of Christ’s person and work as Crucified Messiah, Risen Lord, Savior, Son of God, human and divine. The emphasis is now shifted from his life and message to the Person of Jesus himself. Paul was thus the first Christian theologian. We must not think of him primarily as a systematic theologian, like Calvin for instance, but as a great Christian throwing out his ideas in the heat of conflict and meeting actual situa- tions by his letters. His theology always roots in his own experience. He bends language to new uses as he lays hold on a hundred new terms, sacred or secular, Hebrew or Greek, Christian or pagan, to express in manifold metaphors the one great central reality of the transformation that had taken place in human experience through Jesus Christ. While *For the accounts of Paul’s conversion see Acts 9:3-7; 22:4-11; 26 :12-19; Gal. 1:13-16; 1 Cor. 9:1, 15:8; 2 Cor. 4:6. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 185 Paul, like Jesus before him, is seeking to expound no hard and fast system of theology, his rich metaphors become the basis of all future systems which are crystallized out of them. Augustine, and Luther, Calvin and Wesley all build upon Paul and draw their systems chiefly from him. It is espe- cially from him that the great doctrines of the atonement, the resurrection and of justification by faith are drawn. It was Jesus who lived the life and died the death. It was Paul who explained it.? 2. Paul, chiefly, separates Christianity from Judaism, un- versalizes it, and organizes the Church with its sacraments throughout the Gentile world. Wellhausen states the bold paradox, “Jesus was not a Christian. He was a Jew.” Cer- tainly he lived and died within the Jewish fold. It is Paul who breaks with Judaism, showing that “Christ is the end of the law.” Gentiles had been admitted at first as exceptions to the Jewish rule. But it was Paul who saw that what had been a “way” within Judaism was in reality a radically new teligion based upon faith instead of legal obedience, not national but universal. Jerusalem under the conservative leadership of James stood for the Jewish type, while Antioch under Paul became the center of the new Gentile Christianity. While Jesus had instituted no formal organization, but pro- claimed the universal Kingdom, Paul now organizes the Church with its simple sacraments.? * Thus Harnack in his “What is Christianity” says, “Paul is the most luminous personality in the history of primitive Christianity . He was the one who understood the master and continued his work. This opinion is borne out by the facts . . . It was Paul who delivered the Christian religion from Judaism ... who con- ceived the gospel as the message of the redemption already effected and of salvation now present . .. It was he who confidently re- garded the gospel as a new force abolishing the religion of the law .. . who gave it a language, so that it became intelligible, not only to the Greeks but to all men .. . Paul brought new forces to the Roman Empire, and laid the foundations of Western and Christian civilization. Alexander the Great’s work has perished ; Paul’s has remained.” “What is Christianity,” pp. 189-192. * Scholars now question the authenticity of the only two uses of the word “Church” attributed to Jesus by Matthew. In Matt. 16:17-19 Simon, whom Jesus here calls Satan, minding not the things of God, is yet entrusted with the keys of the Kingdom of 186 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 3. Paul is the apostle of freedom. Based upon the liberty with which Christ had set men free, Paul clearly sees and maintains freedom from all bondage against the opposition of the majority of Jewish Christians. With courageous dis- cernment, even against Peter and some of the pillars of the twelve apostles, Paul maintains the liberty of Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles, from all bondage to law, and from the whole spirit of legalism. They are free from the enslav- ing conceptions of a legal God, of self-righteous merit, from all exclusive race privilege and prejudice, from all hollow ceremonial and man-made traditions, from endless disputings, contentions and divisions. 4. Paul becomes Jesus’ greatest follower, his mightiest sufferer, the world’s greatest missionary and martyr. Like his Master his greatest gift lay in what he was. He was “the greatest human being that ever followed Jesus Christ and had Christ living in him.’’* His sufferings were colossal and his physical constitution must have been made of iron, with “five inflictions of the thirty-nine stripes of the Jews, three times the Roman beating with rods, three shipwrecks, - . . Weariness and painfulness, watching, hunger, thirst, cold, nakedness, and endless worry.” As a missionary he captured the cosmopolitan centers of the Mediterranean world and “turned the whole world upside down.” “He kindled conflagrations wherever he went. He filled synagogues with commotion, and set cities blazing. . . . The New Testament is a witness to his greatness. He wrote a quarter of it, and a Gentile physician whom he mightily influenced wrote another quarter. . . . The fact is indis- putable that Paul understood the mind of Jesus better than Heaven, binding and loosing on earth and in heaven in the concep- tion of a papal infallibility of a later day. In Matt. 18:16-18 all believers in the church are given this power. Prevailingly Jesus is occupied with the coming Kingdom of God, Paul with the present organization of the church. 1 Galatians 2:11-21, 5:1-6. 2?Glover’s “Paul of Tarsus,” p. 197. Out of the fulness of his own deep mystical experience Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” a hundred and sixty-four times. He exhausts language to tell all he had found in him. >Glover’s “Paul,” p. 173. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 187 did any of the Twelve. . . . He is indeed Paul the Great. His name is above every name except the name of Jesus. Like his Master he was great because he was the servant of all. John Chrysostom wrote a memorable sentence when he said of Paul—‘Three cubits in stature, he touched the Skvecaen The Contribution of Greece and Rome In tracing the sources of present-day Christianity we must now turn from our brief survey of Judaism, of Jesus and of Paul to the Graeco-Roman civilization and the Ori- ental mystery religions of the first century. First of all, our debt to Greece is incalculable. Two streams combined to make the modern world, the Hebrew and the Hellenic. Taken alone the Hebrew has often been severe, puritanical and ascetic. It has frequently tended to bigotry, intolerance and exclusiveness. While the Hebrew alone has thus been narrow, the Hellenic by itself has often been broad but shallow and superficial. Each was needed to supplement the other if we were to see life whole. Our debt to the Jew may be summed up in ethical mono- theism, our obligation to the Greek in the wide word “culture.” The Hebrew gave us depth, the Greek breadth. Jewish thought was carried on the wings of Greek language, the stiff Hebrew yielding to the pliant Greek, as it provided a world-wide medium of ideas, an adequate vocabulary, a rich literature, a universal language. The Jew had severely sought the good, the Greek discovered the true and the beautiful. He found the completion and balance and symmetry of life in the beauty of art and of nature, of man and of God. The Jew taught a stern moral code of grim duty, but the Greek opened up new worlds of thought in philosophy. He freed man for the psychological discovery of himself within, and of the universe without, in the far-flung reaches of free thought. He dared to think. To him we trace the origins of our science, our philosophy and psychology, our politics, * Jefferson, “The Character of Paul,” pp. 370-381. 188 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH our rational ethics. The Jew gave us the “one thing needful” at the spiritual center of life. The Greek taught Paul that “all things are yours’—all true teachers, the world itself, long abandoned by a severe asceticism as severed from the source that pronounced it “good’’; “or life or death, or things present or things to come; all are yours.’ The Jew taught the value of the “soul.” The Greek opened up the possibilities of the whole man in a wide and universal humanism. To the Jew we owe our highest gift of moral earnestness, but to his spirit, also, the intolerance _ of Pharisaic legalism that lingers in us to this day. To the _ Greek, chiefly, we owe the attitude of tolerance, of openness to new truth, freedom of inquiry, and the later formulation of the scientific method. From him we derive our treasured independence and individualism. From the Greek rather than from the Hebrew we learn the appreciation both of nature and of human nature, the wholeness and harmony, the richness and complexity, the fulness and synthesis of life. There are those who scorn this whole world of culture as “secular” or “worldly.” But such was not the spirit of Jesus and of Paul. From Antioch to Alexandria, from Tarsus to Rome, from the ideas of Paul to the Logos or Word of the Fourth Gospel it was Greek thought that shaped Jewish religion. Men like Origen and the early fathers interpreted their whole Christian experience in terms not of Jewish legalism but of Greek philosophy, and in those terms they transmitted it. It became, as truly as Old Testament Judaism, part and parcel of future “Christianity.” For good or ill it was not Jewish or Roman but Greek thought which shaped the creeds of Christendom as we have them today. But many streams contributed to what we now call Chris- tianity. Later, the world needed not only a Reformation of conduct but a Renaissance of thought. And we need both today if we are to know not only the height and depth but the length and breadth and fulness of our faith which claims the whole of life in a redeemed universe of the true, the good *1 Cor. 3:21-23. WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 189 and the beautiful. Thus from the Hebrew we received deep ethical monotheism, from the Greek broad culture. Christianity took over not only Jewish morality and mono- theism, Greek thought and culture, but Roman law and organization. While it received from Rome much that was evil it also learned much that was good. As it faced the disintegrating Gnostic and other heresies, the church was driven to a deeper solidarity, to present a united and organ- ized front. Rome gave the church a wider unity. It main- tained spiritual independence against state-omnipotence. It maintained the ideal of universality. It gave a leadership of great saints from Augustine to Francis. It educated Europe. It held to the ideal of a spiritual world empire. The Oriental Mystery Religions We are well aware of how much both of good and of evil we have received from the Jew, the Greek and the Roman. Until recently, however, it was not so widely known how much both of helpful and harmful influence was received from the Oriental mystery religions. The world had been prepared for the Christian gospel by Jewish monotheism, Greek culture, Roman government and by the pagan “re- demption-religions” of the Mediterranean world which offered men an individual salvation by the aid of a Savior God, or personal regeneration and the hope of immortality based upon a divine redemption. The alluring promise of the latter offered hope to multitudes of common folk. “For over a thousand years the ancient Mediterranean world was familiar with a type of religion known as mystery-religions which changed the religious outlook of the western world and which are operating in European civilization and in the Christian church to this day.’ Before the birth of Christ the world was growing old and men were heart-hungry. The ancient pagan religion of Greece was bankrupt, for it was neither rational, moral nor spiritual. It had been undermined by anthropomorphic mythology, corrupt polytheism, and philosophic criticism. 1S. Angus, “The Mystery Religions and Christianity,” p. 7. 190 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Rome had gained the world but lost its own soul. It had left its simple, early, family religion, and its cold nationalistic cult and flagrant emperor worship offered a stone in place of bread. For centuries the mystery religions held sway about the Mediterranean and were the chief competitors of Chris- tianity in their promise of present salvation and future hope to burdened men. They had sprung from primitive nature-worship which celebrated the rebirth of spring after the death of winter. Myths were conceived to incarnate this annual miracle of the rebirth of nature in a youthful divinity destroyed, but raised to new life and offering salvation to his followers through their partaking of his life. These mysteries offered a religion of allegory and symbolism, of “‘redemption,” or “knowledge” of hidden wisdom, of sacramental partaking of the life of the deity by mystic rites, or enacted in moving drama, of personal salvation, of group fellowship or cosmic brotherhood, and of hope of a blissful life after death. Their appeal was powerful. Among these religions were the Greek revival of Orphism influencing Plato and the great writers of Greece; the Persian worship of Mithra, a powerful competitor of Chris- tianity which spread through Asia Minor and the Roman world, carried along the trade routes by traders, slaves and Roman soldiers; the Egyptian cult of Isis, Serapis and Osiris, the “dead and resuscitated” god, and various other Oriental religions. Some of these cults inculcated a deeper sense of sin, they offered a “new birth,” baptism, and a lord’s supper of feeding on the body and blood of the man-god, divine services, union with the deity, immortality and a mis- sionary witness of enthusiasm.? * An inscription over a grave after Paul’s time reads, “Born again in the baptism of bull’s blood for eternity.” Glover’s “Paul,” p. 152. “The Vatican stands today on the spot where the last sacra- ment of this Phrygian rite was celebrated.” Angus, Mystery Re- ligions, p. 235. According to Edwin Tenney Brewster our religion of today is not, as we suppose, based chiefly on the Old Testament, but is composed of about equal parts of Pharisaism, Stoicism, Neo- Platonism and the common element in all the mystery cults. “The early churchman lifted bodily Isis and the infant Horus for his WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 191 Throughout his missionary journeys Paul came in contact with opponents, inquirers and converts who had been initi- ated into these pagan mysteries. He saw both the evils and the values of their cruder faiths. Their language and ideas were in the air. He had to present his gospel not only to Jews in terms of a Messiah, but to pagans in the language of their mysteries and savior-gods. He used their terms to convey new meaning and richer content. The Colossian and Ephesian epistles are full of their terminology. Paul had to use language his disciples could understand, just as Jesus had to use the terms Messiah and Kingdom in a new sense. But he bends language to his own uses and brings every thought into captivity to Christ. His mysticism is always thoroughly ethical and his whole system centers in Christ crucified. But he becomes all things to all men. Among the terms of these cults which he uses most fre- quently is the word “mystery,” which he employs more than a dozen times as “something kept secret.” He imparts “wisdom” to the “perfect.” He speaks frequently of “spiritual” gifts, and of “spirit,” “soul,” “body,” and “flesh” ; of two natures or a two-fold personality ; of those who have true “knowledge” or are “earthly”; of “revelation,” “trans- formation,” of “form” and “image,” of a “spiritual body,” of “glory,” and “illumination,” and a whole vocabulary of mystic experience.t These Greek terms were much more intelligible and helpful to the majority of his Gentile converts than were the phrases of the Old Testament. But for all the promise they offered to men, the mystery religions perished one by one and Christianity survived. They failed through lack of monotheism, morality and rationality. They were filled with superstition, mythology, Madonnas, and Mithra’s birthday for his Christmas. His Trinity came from Alexandria.” The early fathers of the church were not Jews, but for the most part heathen converted in middle life after their ideas were set. None of them ever gave up his philosophy but added on his Christian faith and wrote it all into our creeds. “The Understanding of Religion,” pp. 127-133. +See H. Kennedy, “St. Paul and the Mystery Religions,” pp. 123- 197, 280-299. 192 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH astrology and magic. The old orthodox religions had pro- posed their thesis, the new mystery religions their antitheses, Christianity offered a higher synthesis of fulfilment of all that the Law and Prophets, the Graeco-Roman and Oriental mystery religions had promised.t Christ was the end for them all. Christianity offered Jesus himself and all that we owe to him, It gave life. In the light of our sources, cannot each one now attempt to answer for himself the question, What is Christianity? How much of our present-day religion do we owe to Juda- ism, to Jesus, to Paul, to Greek thought and the influences of the Graeco-Roman world of the first centuries? How have the later discoveries of natural science, the advance of philosophy and psychology, the fuller realization of democ- racy with its new ideas of authority, an awakening social consciousness and the conceptions of a new social order modified our primitive beliefs? Is Christianity static or pro- gressive? Is there still new truth to be discovered? How many of the views of traditional orthodoxy have been modi- fied by our new knowledge ?? + Gibbon in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” chap. XV, attributes the spread of the Christian faith to 1) the enthusiasm of the early Christians, 2) their belief in immortality, 3) miracles, 4) their high ethical code, 5) compact organization. Angus attributes the victory of Christianity to 1) its intolerance and courage, “there is none other name under heaven”; 2) its universality; 3) its con- quering faith; 4) its vernacular Bible; 5) its satisfying message; 6) its historic Person, a religion centering in Christ, historic, cruci- fied and risen. Others had law, philosophy, creeds, cults and sacra- ments, sacrificial bulls and mythical deities. Christianity had Christ. He was “the realized ideal,” a fact in the field of history, satisfying the “yearnings of the world’s desire.” Angus, “Mystery Religions and Christianity,’ pp. 273-314. See also H. Kennedy, “St. Paul and the Mystery Religions’; S. J. Case, “The Evolution of Early Saeaaa AD: Clemen, “Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish ources.” 2 The following is a statement of the views of traditional orthodoxy made by a recent writer: “The historic doctrine of the Trinity— three persons in one substance; the creation of the world out of nothing in six days by the power of the Almighty; the original per- fection of Adam and his subsequent fall, entailing upon all his descendants the burden of sin and making ‘them subject not merely to physical death but also to punishment in a future life beyond the grave; the existence of hell as a place of ever-lasting torment and WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY 193 heaven as a place of ever-lasting bliss; the need of a supernatural redemption to free men from the eternal consequences of their sin, both original and actual; the provision of this redemption by Jesus Christ who was both God and man—two natures in one person— and who was born of a virgin, suffered, and died that the wrath of God might be appeased and men be saved, and who rose again from the dead; the requirement of repentance and faith in Christ in order to attain salvation; the necessity of a supernatural revelation of God’s will and truth that the way of life might be known, and of divine help that being known it could be followed: the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible; the supernatural origin, preservation, and guidance of the Church; the appointment of the sacraments as means of divine grace—all this and more was believed both by Catholics and Protestants, and it is this common body of theology that constitutes the main substance of historic orthodoxy and is to be contrasted with modern religious ideas.’ A. C. McGiffert, “The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” p. 3. Dr. McGiffert states above the static and traditional view of Christianity, while President King shows the modern view, “A Christian man is a man who means first and foremost to be a disciple of Christ . . . Christ is truly the supreme revelation of God and of the highest life open to men; that is, he can get more light and help from Christ than from any other . . . In him we have the best life, the best ideals and the surest revealer of God, and the greatest persuasive of the law of God; and, therefore, the most precious fact in history, the most precious fact our life con- tains. The Christian man thus counts Christ as veritable Lord of his life . . . He literally lives by Christ, for his highest ideals, insights, convictions, motives, faiths and hopes he owes to Christ.” “Seeing Life Whole,” p. 134, Cuaprer VI THE NEW REFORMATION The history of the Christian church reveals certain periods of spiritual awakening, of religious upheaval or revival, such as occurred, for instance, under Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century, under Martin Luther in the sixteenth, and John Wesley in the eighteenth.1 Such movements, though differing widely in conditions, exhibit certain features in common. 1. Each spiritual awakening began at a time when the national or international situation imperatively demanded moral renewal. In each case the movement was not an iso- lated spiritual phenomenon; it was not solely religious. Always there were powerful economic, political or social factors in the situation, operating both in the cause and in the effect of the reformation. 2. Each movement arose in a time of depression in the religious life. Religion was at low ebb. Abuses, supersti- tions, immoralities, pagan practices or worldliness had crept into the church’s life. 3. In each movement there was an effort to return to the primitive simplicity of early Christianity. In every awak- ening there was in greater or less degree a rediscovery of the religion of Jesus. Each movement represented a protest, a revolt, a reform, beginning within the church itself, but resulting finally in a new departure, a new order, or organi- zation. Every movement began with a small group but widened in scope until it challenged the forces of organized religion of the time, affected the life of the nation and finally became a worldwide movement that still persists. The more than twenty-five thousand Franciscan “little brothers of the poor” working in the world seven centuries after St. Francis, 1A study of Francis of Assisi, Luther and Wesley will be found in three successive chapters in “Makers of Freedom” by Sherwood Eddy and Kirby Page, pp. 63-152. 194 THE NEW REFORMATION 195 the hundred and seventy million Protestants and twenty-five million Methodists today are only the outward and visible reminders of these enduring spiritual movements. The world was in some measure changed, and it is different to this day because of the devoted groups of men about Francis, Luther and Wesley. Do we need a new reformation, a religious revival, or a spiritual awakening in our day? Let us see if there is at the present time any parallel to the conditions mentioned above in connection with the three movements we have noted. Are there grave moral and social dangers in our national life and in the present international situation? Are there operative today powerful economic, political or social factors which would demand or occasion or condition such an awak- ening? Is there need of a spiritual awakening in the churches? Is there need today, as in the time of Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther or John Wesley, of a rediscovery of the religion of Jesus? Is there a call to return to the simplicity and power of early Christianity ? Our brief survey will cover first of all the national and then the religious situation. It is made in no spirit of pessi- mism. The very measure of our need is the promise of possible relief, just as in the darkest hour before the dawn in the great awakenings of the past. If we concentrate for a moment upon these needs, we do not forget that there is a brighter side to the picture. Not only pages but volumes could be written concerning marks of progress and signs of encouragement in the present situation.* It is a great * Science has harnessed nature to minister to man’s need. Industry has made possible the physical basis of the good life for all. Popular education has advanced as in no previous age. Democracy as an ideal has more widely permeated the world. A social conscience has made man more sensitive to the just demands of common humanity. There are the beginnings of a world conscience on the evils of war and, for the first time in history, a generation is seriously demanding peace and devising organizations for arbitration and the judicial settlement of international conflicts. A conscience has been aroused upon the subject of religion. The demand for reform becomes more articulate. Healthily challenged and criticized as never before, men are demanding that organized religion shall put its house in order, 196 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH day in which to live. The very seriousness of the situation is only a fresh challenge to faith. In this spirit of hope let us examine a few of our outstanding problems. Our National Needs 1. The menace of lawlessness and crime. We need not be counted alarmists when the President of the United States, the Vice-President, and the Governor of New York State have all recently spoken so forcefully upon the serious growth of crime in our country.t| The number of deaths due to murder in this country now totals over 12,000 a year or over thirty a day. That means, in proportion to population, we have more than three times as many murders as Italy where the Black Hand has been rampant, twenty times the propor- tion of Quebec and Ontario, twenty-seven times that of Scotland, thirty-seven times that of Holland and over fifty times that of Switzerland. New York has more than six times as many murders as London. Chicago witnessed 563 homicides in 1925, or more than three times the number in all England and Wales. Robbery is a hundred times as prevalent in Chicago as in London. The United States Government has been compelled “to contract for the building of 3,000 specially designed armored cars for use in the mail service.” Our lawlessness in connection with bootlegging and in * Herbert Hoover says, “Our dangers today are not economic or foreign; they lie in the possible submergence of the moral and spiritual by our great material success.” President Coolidge in his Memorial Day address at Arlington in 1925 said, “We have another problem in Law Enforcement. I read the other day a survey which showed in proportion to population we have eight. times as many murders as Great Britain, and five times as many as France. Murder rarely goes unpunished in Britain or France; here the reverse is _ true. The same survey reports many times as many burglaries in parts of America as in all England. If we are too weak to take charge of our own morality, we shall not be strong enough to take charge of our own liberty.” According to the last report from 77 cities in the United States our record of murders per 100,000 of the population has risen to the alarming proportion of 11.1. New York Times, April 1, 1926. See Harry Elmer Barnes’ “The Repres- sion of Crime,” Doran and Co. THE NEW REFORMATION 197 violation of the eighteenth amendment and the Volstead Act constitutes an international scandal. Federal Attorney Buck- ner revealed to the Senate Committee investigating the prohibition situation that the violators of the Volstead Act in New York City constitute an immense army. Complaints numbering over 180,000 annually flood police headquarters. Mr. Buckner estimates the national bootleg trade at $3,600,- 000,000 a year, a sum in excess of the annual budget of almost every country in the world. Prohibition Commis- sioner Haynes reports 177,000 arrests by Federal authorities in three years as a small fraction of the total number of violations of the prohibition law. 2. The break-up of the home, the weakening of the insti- tution of marriage and the rapid increase of divorce. For fifty years the divorce rate in this country has increased about three times as fast as the population. While in 1870 there were 81 divorces per 100,000 of the married population, in 1922 there were 330, or an increase of over 400 per cent. While in 1900 there were 55,751 divorces in the United States, in 1923 there were 165,139. The disintegration of the family as the chief primary social group and the creator of primary moral ideals must mean national moral deteriora- tion. Professor Elwood says, “Divorces have become increasingly common, venereal diseases have doubled and tripled in the population; while free love, temporary mar- riages and polygamy have found ardent advocates.”? 3. The condition of our youth, It is always easy to blame the youth of the day. Age has done so in every generation. Whatever be their faults, we believe in our youth and are confident that they will yet go beyond their elders in attain- ment. What other generation ever had such high-powered playthings, such control over nature, such temptations as *C, A. Elwood, “Reconstruction of Religion,” p. 21. In 1890 there was one divorce ‘for every 16 marriages, in 1923 there was one for every 7.5 marriages, an increase of 125 per cent in 33 years. Though it does not mean that half our marriages fail, Judge Lindsey shows that in our great cities, whereas a few years ago there were one quarter as many divorces as there were marriages in a year, at present the alarming proportion has risen to one half as many divorces as there are new marriages. 198 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH are afforded by the automobile, the moving picture, the radio, increased spending money and leisure? And all this comes just at the period when the whole world is in transi- tion, following the breakdown of conventional moral stand- ards after the war. What other generation ever lived in the aftermath of a world war? Whatever be the faults of youth, we believe that the chief responsibility lies at the door of the members of the older generation who have made or marred the home where youth is reared. However, after making all due allowance for the rising generation, does not the condition of youth as well as of age call for a reformation? Judge Lindsey in his “Revolt of Modern Youth,” after twenty-six years’ experience in the Juvenile Court of Denver with a more intimate relation to the young people of that city than any other man, makes a study of the youth problem. He believes that Denver has a better record than most American cities. He finds, however, that among high school students more than 90 per cent “pet.” Of these, 50 per cent “indulge in half-way sex intimacies that wreck the health and morals alike.” From 15 to 25 per cent of those who thus begin eventually “go the limit.”4 He estimates that there are a million and a half abortions annually in the United States. He shows that the vast majority of the youth are given no healthy sex education either in the home or the church or the school. He traces the trouble to the disintegration of home life, to igno- rance, and to “our parrot system of education,’ which instead of teaching the young to think for themselves, makes them slaves of mass sentiment. They act and think within the limits “of certain shifting codes and traditions which they have created for themselves.” They have departed “en masse from ancient traditions.” Although holding the older generation chiefly responsible, Professor Coe, as a defender of the youth of our day, admits their “craze for excitement ; immersion in the external and superficial; lack of reverence and of respect; disregard for reasonable reticence in speech; conformity to mass senti- *“Revolt of Modern Youth,” pp. 56-64, 107, 286. THE NEW REFORMATION 199 ment—‘going with the crowd’; lack of individuality; living merely in the present, and general purposelessness.”’ 4, Our present industrial order. Conditions furnish a situation in some respects similar to that which made neces- sary the evangelical revival in Wesley’s day. The highly organized industrial system of our machine civilization has, in Dr. Johnson’s phrase, given to some “the means of becom- ing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” It has increased production so that the means of a good life with comforts and even simple luxury might be shared by all. Within the last decade the United States has become the leading industrial nation of the world. But this prosperity has been purchased at the price of the industrialization of much of our life. It has brought unprecedented profits for a few and the dull mechanization of life for the many. It tends to. crush out the higher life of the workers, intellectual, aesthetic and religious. This mechanization of life creates a chasm between owners and wage earners, and also between work and leisure, so that men go out to seek exciting pleasures to offset the dead- ening routine of industry. It tends in many cases to the weakening of family ties, or the break-up of the home. The present industrial system makes possible an enormous concen- tration of power in the hands of a few. The capitalization of the corporations in the United States concentrates the enormous financial power of over a hundred billion dollars. These corporations in 1919 employed 86 per cent of the industrial wage earners of the country. The majority of the workers have no land, no home of their own, no tools, no security of life or employment. The many toil, the few own or effectively control their means of liveli- hood and conditions of life. This reacts upon labor where we often find inadequate leadership, a lack of high idealism, and a tendency to rely upon methods of coercion and force. All this leads to serious unrest and industrial strife. In West Virginia, for instance, over wide areas of the state, the employers generally own the coal beneath the soil, the surface of the ground, the houses of the workers, the 200 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH churches, the schools, the company stores; they practically control the press and the law—everything save the clothes on the worker’s back and his furniture which can be put out into the street at a few days’ notice, according to the terms of the contract which places him almost completely at the employer’s mercy.t No wonder Dr. John A. Ryan, an expert on social conditions in this country, says, “As we survey present conditions and the unmistakable trend of political and economic forces . . . after more than three centuries there approaches a return to feudalism.’ 5. The extremes of unshared wealth and unrelieved pov- erty. America has now become the richest country in the world, possessing approximately one-third of all the wealth and about half of the gold supply of the world. Mr. Hoover reminds us that during the last half century, while our popu- lation has more than doubled, our national wealth has multi- plied tenfold. For sixty years to come other leading nations are obliged to pour their surplus into our treasury in payment of their national debts. According to the report of the Federa! ‘irade Commission in 1926, our national wealth is approximately $400,000,000,000, or more than the combined wealth of Great Britain and France. It is now increasing at the rate of 16 per cent a year. One per cent of the estates in the United States possess 59 per cent of the total wealth.® *See Report of Senate Commission on West Virginia and Win- piel D. Lane, “The Denial of Civil Liberties in the Coal Fields,” pp. 5-46. * La Follette Magazine, March, 1926, p. 41. * Report of Federal Trade Commission summarized by Stuart Chase, N. Y. Times, June 6, 1926. The report of the commission shows that less than one-third of those who died left a house to live in; “we are becoming a nation of tenants.” The average indi- vidual whose will was not probated left only $450. While em- ployees comprise 7.5 per cent of the stockholders of all companies they own but 1.5 of the common and less than 2 per cent of the preferred stock. On the other hand in examining the ownership of natural resources the commission concludes that the facts “indicate a distinct concentration of control in the hands of a few large com- panies.” If it is asked who owns America, the commission shows that already in 1922 six companies controlled one-third of the water power of America; 8 companies control over three-quarters of the anthracite; 2 companies control over half the iron ore deposits and 4 companies control nearly one-half of the copper deposits. THE NEW REFORMATION 201 At the top of the scale we find less than five hundred families possessing from twenty million dollars each up to a maximum of a billion. Some 7,442 families, or one in 3,406, receives an annual income of $100,000 or more. Out of twenty-five million heads of families in the United States only 10,512,716, or less than half, received an income as high as $1,500, or about four dollars a day per family. At the bottom of the scale are some ten millions in poverty.’ di Stuart Chase estimates the average number of unemployed in this country on a given working day as six million. The results of poverty are written in the lives of crushed humanity—crowded tenements, unsanitary surroundings, congested and demoralized family life, sickness, child labor, mothers forced into industry, ignorance and low mentality, untrained and undesirable citizenship, growing class hatred of masses sodden with misery and despair. Let us here mention only one of these concomitants of poverty, which has become a scandal in America, bad hous- ing. In 1919 there were over a million marriages in the United States, yet only 70,000 homes were built. One authority states that “one-third of the people of the United States are living under subnormal housing conditions . and about one-tenth are living under conditions which are an acute menace to health, morals and family life.’’* Gov- ernor Smith’s State Commission on Housing reports that only 3 per cent of the apartments recently built are within reach of 70 per cent of the population, while two-thirds of the families “are afforded no decent place in which to live.’’* 1 National Bureau of Economic Research, Income in the United States, p. 136. 7See estimates of Russell Sage Foundation, Robert Hunter, Pro- fessor Parmelee, and J. S. Penman. *F. E. Wood, “The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earners,” p. 7 “Contrast these conditions in New York, the richest city in the world, with those in Vienna, which five years ago in its starvation probably was the poorest. In that city today 2,600 neat cottages and 30,000 apartments are being built for the poor. Here were commodious apartments with fresh air and sunlight with outdoor playgrounds and an indoor gymnasium, a fountain, a swimming pool filled with healthy, happy children, a hall for recreation and enter- 202 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH In the noisome slums of New York are 270,000 darkened tenement rooms that never see one ray of direct sunlight all - the year round. Here over 600,000 are living in tenements that were built without intelligence and without conscience under a system dominated by the motive of private profit and almost unlimited competition. It is every profiteer for himself and the devil take the poor. An investigation made in one of the poorer areas of New York showed that over 90 per cent of the children were suffering from malnutrition or were not fully normal and healthy in body and mind. As our Federal Commission of Industrial Relations points out, it is from these crushed and distorted bodies and minds that the army of vice and crime which now threatens our national life is recruited. Here in less than two square miles in the slums of the East Side of New York two millions of the poor are herded, while just over the river are thirty-two miles of healthy open space largely unutilized. Thomas Carlyle would warn us today of this stunted dweller of our slums lest “the lamp of his soul should go out. As he sits in haggard darkness, like two spectres Fear and Indignation bear him company,” while his soul lies “blighted, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated.” Here are luxury and poverty side by side in glaring con- trast. In a single year the prosperous in the United States have saved more than ten billion dollars.1 More than half of this was added to the wealth of Protestant church mem- bers who are the most prosperous section of the community.? According to the Secretary of the Treasury, in an average tainments, and a score of other conveniences. These apartments are rented to the poor at from one dollar to two dollars a month. Each apartment costs the city some $1,700. Its economic rent would be about $8.50 a month, but by an equitable distribution of taxes the poor are provided with dwellings within their reach. *Federal Trade Commission Report, New York Times, June 6, * Reinhold Niebuhr in the June “Atlantic Monthly” points out that Protestant nations are at once more honest and more greedy than their neighbors; and that Protestantism is the main root of the modern capitalistic spirit. Europe is so deeply in debt to the United States that she can repay our loans only by reducing the standard of living in the various nations for generations. THE NEW REFORMATION 203 year like 1919, as a nation we wasted in luxuries nearly twelve billion dollars in joy riding and pleasure automobiles, in luxury services, in costly apparel, tobacco, perfumery, jewelry, candy, chewing gum, etc.* 6. The materialism of our age constitutes another call for a new reformation, or a revival of religion. Material things, instead of being the simple means of life, have become its end, its standard of measurement, its god—Mammon. Mr. Bok, as a successful business man, well characterizes our era in his “Dollars Only,” holding up a “Stop, Look, Listen” sign for our times: There was a time when the monasteries, the church or the absolutist monarch ruled the destinies of men. Now, “money is King. Business is our God. Com- merce tules. . . . The captain of industry is . . . the captain of the souls of peoples.’* He concludes, “the fall of the house is not afar off.” By its very nature, our industrial order produces and emphasizes material possessions. It relies upon competition and the spur of the profit motive. It produces the two classes of owners and dependent wage-workers, with the exploitation of the dependent. The age of science that harnessed the forces of nature which might have provided secure and abundant means of subsistence for all the peoples of the earth, has not done so even for the toilers themselves in the most prosperous industrial countries. What was once a brave struggle with nature has been turned into an ungenerous struggle between men. Competition for profit becomes the method and property the end of our industrial life. The human factors, the workers, are organized as means for the material factors as ends. “Things are in the saddle and ride men.” Human- ity becomes the means, materialism the end. All industry, all society, all political action and legislation, are shaped to this end. The effective demand for industrial reform has been successfully averted by the weakening of trade unions in every western country. The abolition of child labor has 1Mr. Stuart Chase in “The Tragedy of Waste” sums up the appalling record of our waste as a nation. “Dollars Only,” p. 4 204 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH been indefinitely postponed and the protection of minimum wage laws for women nullified. Christian employers have “conscientiously” placed barriers across the pathway of reform, just as did the vested interests in church and state, in the Lords and Commons, for a century obstruct every proposal for reform made by Lord Shaftesbury and others in England. The war stabbed us awake with its ten million deaths. Relatively speaking, we all saw and felt it. What most of us do not see or feel is that, not so dramatically or obviously but none the less literally, our present social order in time of peace is causing more poverty, more wounded and crippled lives and more deaths than the world war ever did. This takes place, not so dramatically concentrated in a brief space and time “at the front” under the searchlight of the thrilling reports of our most brilliant war correspondents, but unno- ticed among the forgotten multitudes in lonely tenements where we do not know “how the other half lives.” Most of us know less of the slums of our own city than we know of the real situation in China or Africa. Our daily paper may bring us pictures of the north pole or happenings across the ocean by radio, but it does not tell us of the slums of our own city. Differ as we may in details, is there not overwhelming evidence of the need of reformation in our national life in view of our record of crime and lawlessness, unmatched by any other civilized country today, the increase of divorce, the menace to the most fundamental social institution of marriage and the home, the condition of youth, our mecha- nized industry, our congested wealth and poverty, our profligate waste and our gross materialism? Do not all speak with one voice of our need of a nation-wide reformation ?* *In the summary concluding the pamphlet, “Danger Zones of the Social Order” and in the final chapter of “Makers of Freedom,” we have said, “Let us now gather together in summary form some of the dangers with which our society is confronted, economic perils due to gross inequality of privilege, with extreme luxury for some and dire physical need for many, disgraceful housing conditions in many cities and industrial communities, concentration of vast finan- cial power in the hands of interlocking directorates, widespread in- THE NEW REFORMATION 205 A Reformation of Religion Let us now ask whether the forces of organized religion are prepared to be the chief agency of such a reformation or whether they are themselves in need of reform. The religious reformations of the past arose in times of great spiritual depression out of man’s basic need of vital religion. Because of some fundamental demand of his nature man seems to be “incurably religious.” If vital religion is the most important experience of life, the church is the most important of man’s institutions. It exists for worship, for character and for work. But like all organizations it has its cycles of rise and decline and renewal. There is a periodic need of reform in the state and of reformation in the church. As Hegel well says, the idea gives birth to the institution; then the institution tends to strangle the idea. No organiza- tion faces this danger so much as organized religion. Neces- sarily, as the conservator of value and the bearer of tradition, it seeks to hold fast that which is true. But in so doing it tends almost inevitably to hold the outward form while failing to maintain the inward spirit. A religion that cannot creatively meet the vital need of the times will atrophy. The dustrial strife and violence, the spy system in industry, decreasing ‘supplies of raw materials, increasing foreign competition, the steady growth of class-consciousness, the deliberate stimulation of new physical desires on a great scale by advertising, industrial waste, the dehumanizing effects of monotonous toil in factories and shops, and the rapid spread of materialism; international dangers arising out of the increasing destructiveness and deadliness of modern war, the growth of industrialism throughout the earth and consequent intensi- fication of competition between the various nations for food, raw materials, markets and fields of investment, exaggerated and irre- sponsible nationalism, and the prevalence of militarism; racial perils due to discrimination, exploitation, lynching, and mob violence; political perils due to graft and corruption, ignorance and inefficiency, the denial of civil liberties, indifference of voters, and the magnitude and complexity of the problems requiring solution; moral dangers due to crime and lawlessness, a million drug addicts, two hundred thousand prostitutes, eight million victims of venereal diseases, sordid commercialized amusements, the growth of obscene literature, the deterioration of the home, the increase in divorce, the presence of twenty million children and young people who are not receiving systematic religious instruction—these are some of the perils with which we are confronted.” 206 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH world is strewn with dead religions and effete denominations, When religion loses its creative spirit and substitutes for spontaneous vitality an external authority from the dead past, it becomes an enemy of progress. The ideals of the past become the tyrannies of the present. Outwardly, at least, there would seem to be signs of encouragement in the status of organized religion. The total Christian community in the United States now numbers 48,224,014, of whom roughly twenty-nine million are Protestants and nearly nineteen million are Catholics,? If we look beneath the surface of these statistics, however, it would seem that there is need of a new reformation. Does not an analysis of the situation reveal among others the following outstanding religious needs? 1. Lack of growth in the church. Can we rest content with mere numbers of nominal Christians without further examination? How far are these statistics for both Catholics and Protestants inadvertently padded? How many of the lists of the local churches are up to date and represent present vital membership? How many of those on the rolls regu- larly attend church? How many of them have enough vital religion to affect their daily lives in real communion with 1Dr. H. K. Carroll in reviewing the growth of Christianity in the United States 1900 to 1925 shows that there have been added to the church 19,500,000 communicants, 72,677 Ministers, 46,159 church buildings. The value of the present 236,964 church buildings is $2,000,000,000. There has been an increase of 1,846 church buildings a year. During the quarter century the communicant members of the churches have almost doubled. Between 1900 and 1925 the mem- bership of Protestant churches in foreign missions fields more than doubled. We are standing at the close of the greatest missionary — century since the apostolic. era. Between 1800 and 1925 the number of foreign missionaries increased from 15,000 to 30,000, the com- municany members from a million and a quarter to three and a half millions, not including several million baptized adherents. More than 500,000,000 Bibles were issued during the last century in 600 languages. About one third of the population of the world today is nominally Christian: Protestants number 170,900,000; Roman Catho- lics 273,500,000; Orthodox Catholics 121,801,000; Total number of Christians, 566, 201, 000; Total Non- Christians, 1,053, 563,000; World’s Population, 1,619, 764, 000. See New York Tribune, April’ 30, 1926, p. 7; The Christian Herald, April, 1926; Garfield Williams in “Out- line "of Christianity” ; World Almanac, 1926. THE NEW REFORMATION 207 God and effective service for men? There was no lack in numbers that crowded the temple courts, or orthodox believ- ers who attended the synagogues in Jesus’ time, yet he said that tax-gatherers and harlots would enter the Kingdom before some of them. There was no lack in millions of nominal Christians and amassed wealth in church buildings amid gross sins and superstitions at the time of St. Francis or of Martin Luther, nor in the churches that closed their doors against Wesley simply because he preached the Christian gospel. What impact are these Christians making upon society about them? No task is more important than that of religious education. Is the church reaching the youth of the nation today? Taking the rising generation as a whole, apparently seven out of every ten children in the country are not being touched by any religious program, Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. According to Professor Walter S. Athearn, “There are in the United States over 58,000,000 people, nominally Protestant, who are not identified in any way with any church, either Jewish, Protestant or Catholic. There are over 27,000,000 American children and youth, nominally Protestant, under 25 years of age, who are not enrolled ‘in any Sunday school or cradle-roll department and who receive no formal or systematic religious instruction. There are 8,000,000 American children, nominally Protestant, under 10 years of age, who are growing up in non-church homes. There are in the United States 8,676,000 Catholic children and youth under 25 years of age. Of this number ... 78.4 per cent are not in religious schools. There are in the United States 1,630,000 Jewish children and youth... of whom 95.2 per cent are not in religious schools.”* In so far as the forty-eight million Christians in the United States represent something more than mere names on a church roll they are supposed to be living witnesses. But let us compare the ratio of new converts to the number of Christians in the year book of the Federal Council of Churches. Each year it averages about one to forty of the “Character Building in a Democracy,” pp. 24, 26. 208 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH total Protestant membership. That is, even including the majority received from the home and the Sunday School into the church, and the people who follow in the wake of the great professional evangelistic campaigns, if takes an average of forty Christians a year to win one addition to the church. Or, to put it differently, it takes one Christian forty years, or a life time, to win one convert. But as a matter of fact, the majority are reached through the home, the Sunday School and the evangelistic campaign. If we omit these and prune our statistics, it would be a most generous estimate to say that it takes a hundred Christians to win one convert a year. And what kind of a Christian is this added member? In how many cases is he a real follower of Jesus and of his way of life? 2. The lack of power in the church. This is more serious than the lack of growth. We must turn from the easier test of quantity to the more searching condition of quality. What special quality of personal life and character is organized religion producing today? ‘The test offered for Christianity by its Founder was one of behavior. It was to be known by its fruits, in character and service. Its light was to shine that men might see. There was to be an unanswerable, ever-present argument of things new as well as old, of what men could “see and hear.’ Christianity was to be judged by its ability measurably to reproduce the life and spirit of Jesus, not pale and ever weaker dilutions, but even “greater works” than at the beginning. Early Christianity could cast out the “demons” of its day and make abnormal and deformed men whole. Can it cast out the demons of the “eee modern world? Mr. Chesterton’s brilliant epigram that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, but has been found difficult and not tried, is true. Why has it not been tried after nineteen centuries? Is it so unappealing to the world, or has the church shown such a caricature of the original that few have wanted to try it? The test of Phari- saism was correct doctrine, but that of Jesus was a way of life. How far have we lived that way of life in business? How far have we Christianized industry? How far is it THE NEW REFORMATION 209: motivated by Christiay service and how far dominated by pagan profit today? To what extent have we Christianized our race relations, our lynching, our attitude to Negroes, to Japanese and other foreigners? To what extent have we Christianized our international relations? In this enlightened twentieth century, to “settle’’ our last international dispute we left twenty-six million combatants and noncombatants dead. 3. Our denominational divisions. To say that there are forty-eight million Christians in America sounds impressive. But we find only one church united throughout the world, and that under an external authority. The Protestant churches in this country are shattered into over a hundred and eighty sects. If these were merely convenient groupings like the Friends, we would covet no mere external uniformity. But our divisions go deeper than that. Almost every con- ceivable doctrine, important or trivial, has been made the basis of some sect. Almost every form, or sacrament, or method of worship has been the occasion of fresh division. Almost every polity or method of church government has been the basis of another denomination. Even where we are agreed upon doctrine, form and polity, we are compelled to perpetuate our humiliating sectional divisions between north and south, under the threat of ecclesiastical leaders that, if Christians unite, the time might conceivably come when some white Christians, somewhere, might have to receive the symbol of the broken body of Christ from some colored bishop or minister. This divided front is maintained abroad, even where the indigenous Christians in mission fields do not understand or desire to perpetuate our denomi- national differences. Our divisions are perpetuated at home in little communities, where waste, overlapping, friction and loss of spiritual power are the result of our propagated sectarianism. How far do our denominations fulfill the prayer of the Master “that they all may be one, that the world may believe”? Just how far does the world believe in our religion as vital? Would the world today have any doubt as to our desperate need of a new reformation? 210 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 4. Party strife and faction. At the hour when we face the challenge of an unprecedented world situation, when there is a crying need for a spiritual revival in the church and the nation, instead of being united by loyalty to a com- mon Lord in the execution of our common task, we find the church today is wasting its strength in internal dissention. Our denominations are divided between “arid liberalism” and “acrid fundamentalism.” What partisanship shall we follow as between fundamentalists and modernists? Shall we choose loyalty to the truth as tested in the experience of the past, or an open-minded seeking of new truth and an application of the best that we know to the changed condi- tions of the present? Why not do both? Why need loyalty to the past make us disloyal to the present? Why should openness to new truth blind us to that which is old? Is not every true disciple of the Master to bring forth daily out of his treasure “things new and old’? It was for these “things new” that Jesus was crucified. Where did he ever make orthodoxy of opinion the test of discipleship when he himself was crucified as the chief heretic of his day? Can we imagine Jesus demanding as his supreme test of those first fishermen by the lakeside, or of the young ruler, or of the twelve on the last night, or of his followers today, whether they believe properly in God as a substance existing in three hypostases, manifested in a Son possessing one person, two wills, a human nature con- substantial with humanity and a divine nature consubstantial with deity; in “two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, invisibly, inseparably” united in correct metaphysical rela- tions? Can we imagine him saying that unless these fisher- men intellectually believed rightly about these things they could not be saved? If this had been his teaching, would the world have wasted time upon it; would it have survived for us even to hear of it? And yet for centuries men have not only died for these things, but have put one another to death for them. They have tried, judged, persecuted and burned at the stake those who differed from them in opinion. Often the issues were upon questions which Jesus had never THE NEW REFORMATION 211 mentioned and were the poles apart from everything for which he had lived and died.* The field is open today to enter a quarrel of doctrinal strife or to follow Jesus’ way of life. The world is growing impatient with both sides in the present controversy. Judged by Jesus’ standard of love, by their fruits, by their results in character and service, by unity such that the world may believe, is either party succeeding? How many arid modern- ists are rational, cold, critical, and destructive with no positive life or dynamic message of good news? How many acrid fundamentalists are harsh, unloving, unforgiving, and often unwittingly untruthful in the misrepresentation of their fellow Christians who differ from them? As in the hour of defeat before the gaping multitude with the sick unhealed, must not both say with the disciples of old, “Why could not we cast it out?’ Does not the whole religious situation today demand, not that we join either party in strife, but that we seek to follow Jesus’ way in love? The new reformation that we seek must be one of love. And that love will be an idle sentiment if it does not include not only the distant pagan, but the near-by Christian. This “is not to say that doctrines do not count, that we can intel- lectually agree with everyone, or that we can slur over all distinctions. But it is to say that love counts even more. In Christ such love will know neither Jew nor Greek, neither Catholic nor Protestant, neither white nor black, neither national nor foreigner, neither fundamentalist nor modernist. Is it not true that Jesus stood for the eternal spiritual funda- mentals? Is it not equally true that he was so utterly modern that it placed him in opposition to all the constituted external authorities of his day? In so far as we are true followers of his, can we not rise above the battle of party strife, deter- mine to understand one another, and even where we ourselves are misunderstood or misrepresented, persistently maintain the attitude which “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things”? 1We have discussed in the appendix “Doctrine and the New Reformation.” 212 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH 5. The unbelief, the scepticism and agnosticism of our time. Even a confirmed optimist, who is not in the least an alarmist, who believes that doubt is often a necessary transitional phase in thought, and who sees in the whole situation a stimulating challenge to faith, cannot be blind to certain dangers of the time. Today literally everything is challenged and questioned—God, man, the soul, the mind, personality, religion, morality, marriage, the church, the state, the social order. Whatever else it is, ours is not an “age of faith.” Doubts are raised in every branch of study and every area of life. We are not now referring to the fact that equally earnest Christians may differ on scientific questions such as relativity or evolution, as to whether God made the world suddenly or gradually. But there is a dog- matic denial of God in many a college classroom, in the teaching of a rationalistic science that is not only irreligious but unscientific as well. And there are even more effective, subtle influences to undermine religious faith. In psychol- ogy, as we have seen, there are many mechanists who deny God, many reverent agnostics who have lost what faith they ence had, and a much larger number of students who are swept away in temporary doubt or settled unbelief because there is no one to help them who combines the modern scientific viewpoint with a vital religious experience. In philosophy many have been led into unbelief by a left-wing pragmatism tinctured with mechanistic behaviorism, by posi- tivism, phenomenalism, or some form of naturalism or mate- rialism. In the ranks of youth some have lost their intel- lectual anchorage or their moral standards and are frankly adrift on uncharted seas. Even in the church, many have lost their faith, The Rev. Thomas Hardy recently stated “The Predicament of Christianity.” He says in substance that since there is no God (apart from nature and man) and no soul, since there is no sin and no Savior from sin, what have we to offer? What indeed for those who have lost their great spiritual heritage of the past? +See the Hibbert Journal for October, 1925, “The Predicament of Christianity.” THE NEW REFORMATION 213 All this may afford a cheap occasion for pessimistic ranting against all modern science. It should be rather a new challenge to faith. Here is a generation which has had to face, as no other generation in history, a new world of thought in every department of science, religion, morals and society. May we not offer to those in honest doubt the humble testimony of a joyous experience that combines the scientific attitude with religious faith? Does not the need of youth and the unbelief of our time constitute a challenge for a new reformation? The Need of Reformation Abroad Let us see if a brief survey of organized Christianity in foreign mission fields as well as at home, indicates a need of reformation. The first effect of the foreign missionary crusade of the nineteenth century was not only the rapid Christianization, but also the westernization of the converts. Missionaries were sent with great enthusiasm from the “Christian” occi- dent to the “heathen” orient. The superiority of our civi- lization was assumed at home and unchallenged abroad. We possessed modern inventions, organization, education and the absolute religion, Christianity. Our apologetic often rested on the beneficial results of our religion to the rich, prosperous and superior “Christian” nations. The mis- sionary crusade that began in 1886 at Northfield took as its watchword “The Evangelization of the World in This Gen- eration.” More than ten thousand students went out to foreign lands as missionaries. A million or more new con- verts were gathered. But we are standing at the beginning of a decade when the whole missionary enterprise is being challenged to its very foundations and when it is forced to pass through a trying period of transition. There are two outstanding features. affecting this transition: 1. the rise of a new nationalism and a revival of indigenous cultures and religions in every foreign land; 2. a searching criticism of our whole western civiliza- tion and of our social order with its conquering and exploit- 214 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH ing militarism, imperialism and industrialism. Let us briefly examine these factors to see if they involve any demand for reformation. 1. The new nationalism. This is noteworthy in every modern section of Asia and Africa. The nationalism of Japan is perhaps the strongest in the world. India under the leadership of Mr. Gandhi, the Philippines, Korea, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria and other lands, are demanding either complete independence or full self-determination. China is typical of other countries. For a generation and more, after having to fight two opium wars, peaceful China retreated before the advance of western imperialism, militarism and industrialism. Some of her choicest ports, islands and por- tions of provinces were seized by foreign powers and “zones” of influence and exploitation were marked out in the remainder of the country. Foreigners fixed China’s tariffs and customs, established their own law courts, took the best ‘‘concessions” and parks in their cities and organized modern industry. Al- though their wages and conditions were better than in most of the Chinese mills, the workers in the factories were among the poorest paid in the world.*. In a strike in one of the foreign mills a Chinese worker was shot and killed. Some students who protested were put in jail. A fresh company of students demanding their release was fired upon on May 30, 1925, ten or eleven were killed and a larger number wounded. The flash of these foreign rifles was the spark that fell in the tinder of China’s new nationalism. The leaders of a whole nation of four hundred millions blazed with the same indignation that char- acterized America in 1776. A nation went on strike, demanding the abrogation of all unjust and unequal treaties that had been imposed upon them. An anti-Christian campaign, as part of a student Renaissance movement, challenged the alleged alliance of organized religion with this hated exploitation of imperialism, militarism, industrialism and capitalism, This new burning nationalism is powerfully affecting not only international relations but foreign mission work in the length and breadth of Asia and is now permeating Africa. 2. The searching criticism of Western civilization. Al- *See survey of industrial conditions in China compared to nine other countries in “The New World of Labor,” by the author, Chapter 1. In one factory, making a profit of 100 per cent a year, little girls of 12 were paid three and four cents a day. THE NEW REFORMATION 215 though the process is painful at the moment, one of the best results of foreign missions may be the turning of the search- light of criticism upon our social order, enabling us to see ourselves through the eyes of the Eastern world. Thousands of foreign students who have been studying in our midst have faithfully reported just what they have found to their respective countries. Take the single item of our race prejudice and race relations. We talk of a “yellow peril.” The orient experiences a white peril that has already seized nine-tenths of the habitable globe, and either conquered or exploited over half of Asia and all but one-thirtieth of the continent of Africa. In city after city of South Africa, the Negro, though he may be an American college graduate, is not allowed to walk on the sidewalks in his own country, but is herded with the cattle in the street. Our practice of lynching our citizens of another race is a positive hindrance te our work in Christian mission fields. It is well known and constantly mentioned in the press of these countries that America is the only nation that descends to this barbarous practice. On the writer’s last trip around the world, he found the news of the latest lynching in this country not only printed in the secular press and the Christian papers of China and India, but also a hideous photograph of the deed in the papers of Japan and a cartoon of our barbarism in the press of Italy. When Dr. Charles Gilkey went to deliver the Barrows lectures recently in India a former Oxford friend said to him, “Gilkey, what are you going to say about the race question?” “Nothing,” said Mr. Gilkey, “I have come to speak about ‘Jesus and Our Generation.’” His British friend replied, “You had better say something and say it in the first ten minutes if you hope to get any hearing for your message. Rightly or wrongly the students of India think of America as a country where they lynch Negroes and insult Indians.” Our race prejudice is only one factor along with many others that constitute the indictment of these foreign lands of our civilization with its industrialism, capitalism, imperial- 216 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH ism, militarism and war. It is these Christian “powers” who constitute the principal armed nations of the world and who, according to Mr. Lecky, Lord Morley, Graham Wallas and other writers, have caused and fought most of the wars of recent centuries.’ The Completion of the Partial Reformation of Protestantism Do we not need with fearless abandon to return to the religion of Jesus? Great as it was, the reformation under Luther went but part way. It began well but halted with a partially reformed Romanism. It departed from one exter- nal authority only to set up another, and dared not commit itself in faith to the complete guidance of the Spirit. For Catholic creeds it substituted Lutheran or Calvinistic con- fessions, for an early tradition it substituted a later one. It ‘was soon as difficult to follow, as Luther had done, right reason, the Christian conscience and the leading of the Spirit, if it involved differing from the new Protestant formularies, as it had been for Luther to depart from the Roman tradition, or for Jesus to break from the “tradition of men” that the Pharisees had set up. As Mr. Niebuhr well points out, we have confidently assumed that our Western civilization is Christian and our Protestantism is the religion of Jesus. Rather our civiliza- tion and our religion are both composite and only partially Christian. Our civilization is partly Jewish and partly Greek. From both we derived good and from both evil. From the Greek we learned the scientific spirit and our one real *Lack of space forbids our dealing adequately with the grounds of foreign missions. Our reproach lies not in our Christian ideals but in our failure to apply them. Have we not a unique contribution to make in the following: 1. God as the loving Father of all men maintained in a consistent monotheism in the presence of polytheism, pantheism or atheism; 2. Christ’s conception of Man, the infinite worth of each individual of every race and the brotherhood of all; 3. the moral standard of the Sermon on the Mount and the New Testament; 4. Jesus Christ, all that he said, all that he did, all that he is; 5. a universal, spiritual, social order, the Kingdom of God. The implications of these constitute the ground and challenge of haciealily Christian service, in the spirit of love as the full sharing of life. THE NEW REFORMATION 217 triumph of the West, the conquest of nature. This conquest would be truly great if it were Christianized and humanized. At present it is congested in undistributed wealth and unre- lieved poverty. From the Roman we learned our law and order, our imperialism in the subjugation of other peoples and the exploitation of their raw materials. Our influence in Asia and Africa might have been wholly beneficial if it had been Christian, human and just. Instead we have aroused the revolt of outraged nationalism across the world. From our ancestors, Teuton and Anglo-Saxon, we in- herited “a fierce energy and marked diligence, an unregen- erate tribalism and race pride, and a high degree of practical intelligence which has revealed itself chiefly in mechanical ingenuity and executive ability.” We have inherited all that comes from the best environment, the most bracing climate, the most fruitful regions of the earth, all that the best “‘Chris- tian” civilization, culture and education could give us, levying on the nine-tenths of the habitable globe which the Christian nations now hold for their favored race. Here again our inheritance might have been truly great had it been Christian, human and just. But our fierce nationalism, our race pride and fratricidal conflicts have rent the world with war. Where then in our civilization, Greek, Roman and Teuton, does Christianity come in? According to Dr. Jacks it was a “smothered religion” almost from the beginning. It con- quered the Greek, the Roman, and the Teuton, only in turn to be partly conquered by them. It Christianized paganism, only to be partly paganized by it. Even today how far have we Christianized industry; or, on the contrary, how far have we industrialized and com- mercialized our religion? How far have we Christianized \ our race relations ; and how far have we racialized and segre- | gated Christianity? How far have we Christianized our international relations and outlawed war by church and state ; and how far have we placed our colleges and our coun- tries on a basis of military preparedness in reliance on force? Force seems such a practical and patriotic thing and love such a foreign sentiment to our Teuton blood. We are like 218 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH the pagan tribe who, when immersed at their baptism to Christianity, held their sword arms above water that their religion might not interfere with their success in battle. Mr. Niebuhr, referring to the Protestant nations, writes, “The world which they have built has given the strong the right to exploit the weak in the name of liberty. Their con- ception of freedom fitted very nicely into the needs of the emerging industrialism and commercialism. . . . This had the effect of submerging Jesus’ distinctive ethics of love... . Thus, Protestantism, which fondly assumes that is it a uni- versal religion, has become not only a religion confined to north Europeans, but confined to the successful classes among north Europeans.” The Reformation gave us an individualism which does not fit the social needs of this age, which because of intimate political and economic contacts has made interdependence more important than independence. While the Reformation destroyed the dualism of medieval ethics and insisted that it must be possible to follow Christ in every occupation, it also impaired medieval sensitiveness to social sin. In so doing it created a new kind of dualism which permits a man to be moral in his private life, in thrift and honesty, but immoral, or at least unspiritual, in his social life. The Reformation represented the victory of the quietistic mystic over the sacramentalist. This was a gain insofar as it destroyed the idea that divine grace was a matter of magic. But the Reformation did not completely moralize grace. It only partially moralized redemption. ‘Thus today it is pos- sible to be “saved” in the Protestant church without being delivered from greed, hatred, fear or a pagan method of life. The modern puritan Protestant may boast that he does not lie, or drink, or smoke, but he often has not the slightest social conscience regarding the wage he pays his employees. He is most scrupulously Christian in the observance of Sun- day and in his personal morality while the standards of his business may be quite pagan. Theologically Protestantism includes both the extreme conservatives who base their religious certainty upon magical THE NEW REFORMATION 219 revelation and extreme liberals who, in their freedom, have lost the vital theism which must always be the basis of dynamic religion. Their liberal Christianity is too pantheistic to be ethical. God is so identified with the universe and with the automatic processes of the world that they have lost the idea of the freedom and holiness of a transcendent God who calls men to a righteous crusade and who is able to furnish the spiritual dynamic for its achievement. ‘Thus there is need of completing the spiritual Reformation of Protes- tantism. Do we not need a whole-hearted return to Jesus from our semi-pagan, social order—our industrial, imperial, military ; Greek, Roman, Teuton; Lutheran, Calvinist, “hun- dred per cent American” patchwork of Christian civilization ? If we survey the religious situation of our time, can any one deny our need of a spiritual reformation? We might at this point divide our readers into those who think a new reformation is necessary and those who do not. Today, as always, there are conservatives and liberals, reac- tionaries and radicals. On the one hand are those who desire to “stand pat,” to keep their privileges, not to “rock the boat’ or to discuss these awkward situations that call attention to human injustice. On the other hand, there are those who are not blind to the facts, who cannot keep silent and must demand radical change. If the social conservatives, as they usually do, block all efforts at gradual evolution, refuse to permit any steps toward more equal and just con- ditions, then the inevitable explosion takes place, the long pent volcanic upheaval comes, the fury of indignant multi- tudes breaks, and we have reformation or revolution.+ The conservative elways blames the reformer for having created the condition which his own injustice has made and perpetuated. He never sees what Lincoln pointed out in *Canon Streeter writes, “The greatest blot on the history of the Church in modern times is the fact that, with the glorious exception of the campaign to abolish slavery, the leaders in the social, political and humanitarian reforms of the last century and a half in Europe have rarely been professing Christians; while the authorized rep- resentatives of organized Christianity have, as often as not, been on the wrong side.” “Christ the Constructive Revolutionary” in The Spirit, 1919, p. 358. 220 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH homely phrase, that “you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Shut safe in his comfortable isolation and never caring or daring to know how the other half lives, or thinks, getting his misinformation second-hand at his club or church, he never knows that the multitude is disillusioned already and refuses to accept the present system of injustice. Indeed he is often so blinded that he does not even see or admit that there is injustice. The Character of the Reformation We believe that a new reformation must have at least three characteristics. 1. It will be true to the scientific spirit and genius of the age. It must be oriented to our new knowledge as well as our old faith; it will be modern, and not a mere repetition of, or return to, something ancient or medieval. It must be truly a new reformation. 2. It will combine vital personal religion and social appli- cation. It will unite personal faith in God and practical service for man; it must meet the religious as well as the national and international situation of our time, just as former awakenings met the needs of theirs. 3. It will have the dynamic of spiritual passion. It will be neither sectarian nor partisan, neither “acrid” nor “arid,” neither destructive nor negative, but constructive, positive and passionate. A genuine new reformation must embody not only the spirit of St. Francis, of Martin Luther and of John Wesley, but the flaming zeal of the apostle Paul and the very spirit of Jesus himself. In short, we believe there can be no reformation worthy of the name that is not at once modern, social and spiritual. 1. The new reformation will be true to the sctentific spirit. It will not do violence to the priceless discoveries of modern science. It will offer no false antithesis between reason and faith. It will propose no divorce of religion from intelli- gence. We have been told by men for whose character we had profound respect, that it is more important to know the Rock of Ages than the ages of the rocks, that they would THE NEW REFORMATION 221 rather have their sons learn their A B C’s in heaven than know their Greek in hell. Who would not? “But why the contrast? Why this constant intimation that intelligence and Christianity are incompatible?’ Why should the study of Greek or the ages of the rocks, of evolution or relativity, of biology or psychology, be fatal to Christian faith? What are we afraid of? Is not all truth God’s truth? Are we now to repeat the mistakes of the past and by a fresh attack on science lose the educated youth of our day? Already literally thousands have lost their faith because of this false antithesis, this fatal conflict. We are left as a result with a science that is materialistic and a religion that is often ignorant. Does not hope lie rather in a sound synthesis? Science has placed in our hands certain master keys to unlock the problems of the future—the scientific spirit, the passion for truth, teachable humility, and tolerance. We hold its keys of the inductive method, the principles of mathematics, the theory of evolution, the principles of energy and of relativity. We have a vast and increasing store of unused new knowl- edge in science, in psychology, in theology. Why should we not come to terms with science once for all? For centuries organized religion has fought a retreating rear-guard action with advancing scierce. The church has attacked the new theories of science and banned its books. Then, when the battle has been lost, and the new scientific theory has been adopted by practically all thinking men, the forces of organ- ized religion have beaten a retreat by night and taken up some new position that is often equally untenable. Where has the church ever officially admitted it was wrong on the issues of the past, concerning a flat world, the Copernican theory, the age of the earth, gravitation, or evolution? Have we not need to come in a genuine spirit of penitence and to make restitution for the past ?? 1Edwin Tenney Brewster maintains that so far as its relation with modern science is concerned the Protestant reformation came two centuries too soon. It belonged to the middle ages, took its stand against the Copernican theory and was on the wrong side of the gulf that separates darkness from light. While it reformed certain 222 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH The new reformation must be true to the new psychology and our increased knowledge of human nature. It will not attempt a mere repetition of an annual “revival,” a yearly emotional spasm, a repeating of shibboleths to save all over again the individual’s own selfish soul. We must relate his life healthily in concrete behavior to practical programs in his community. We should press upon each and ali the question, not only “What must I do to be saved?” but “What must we do to save society ; and how can we lose ourselves in service to find them in vital religion?” The three marks of the new reformation which we need are equally true to the spirit of modern science and to the spirit of Jesus. Truth, obedience, humility, faith; the value of the individual, the social imperative, the principle of sacri- fice, the law of service, the worth of character, the building of a better social order, and a new reformation that shall embrace them all; these are as true to science as they are to religion. At the mouth of two witnesses, science and religion, we are assured of our need of reformation and of the scien- tific demands of the age to which it must conform. 2. The new reformation will combine a personal and social gospel. If we recall our three typical religious awakenings, did not each combine the personal and social?? Was not the com- bination of the personal and social elements in religion due in each case to the pattern which they rediscovered in their Founder? Jesus always combined in winsome symmetry and marvelous balance the hidden silence of the secret place “a outstanding abuses it left the substructure of medieval thinking un- touched. We have need to complete the work left unfinished by the Protestant reformation. “The Understanding of Religion,” p. 129. * Francis combined with his childlike joy in God a practical service for society. The whole world was his monastery and every man without bread or raiment had claim upon all that he had. Luther came from his hours of devotion to the active world of herculean service. Wesley daily maintained the balance between the devotional and the practical aspeets of religion. He was centered in God and personal religion but he launched many of the social movements of his day in education, philanthropy and moral reform. THE NEW REFORMATION 223 great while before day,” and the tireless ministry of service amid the throng and the noise of the market place. His enthusiasm for humanity springs from his yet deeper enthu- siasm for God. His communion with God drives him forth to service for men. Our age has become so spent in feverish activity, so starved upon material husks, that it is now, how- ever unconsciously, hungry and thirsty for a fresh discovery of God. Though it may use other language, its soul is “athirst for God, for the living God.” Is it not historically true that in each of the awakenings of the past there was a fresh discovery of God? The greatest field of undiscovered knowledge is still, not beetles, not stars, not electrons, not human behavior, but God. Unless history belies itself there will be no reformation, old or new, without a rediscovery of God. And there is no hope of reformation that does not bring a rediscovery of man. The artificial separation of life into water-tight compartments is fatal. As we have seen, the false dualism or division between religion and science, the sacred and secular, the personal and social, has impoverished the world. And yet, as truly as there are millions in the world to whom God and religious experience are meaningless names, so the vast majority of Christians today are almost utterly blind to the social implications of the gospel. They have no doubt concerning the splendid rediscovery of the central message of Luther and Wesley of justification by faith. Rather they placidly accept a selfish, personal, pos- sessive salvation, and with the priest and Levite of old, pass by on the other side from suffering humanity. They are “saved” for a future world, but “lost” to any adequate sense of social responsibility in this. Before all are the grim facts of poverty, injustice, a higher percentage of sickness and death, of vice and crime among the poor than among the prosperous; individuals in need, multitudes in want. No sane man denies these facts. No religionist or humanitarian but that admits there is some call for pity or “charity” or some form of help. To live a respec- table life, to believe in Christ, to attend church, to contribute 224 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH to home and foreign missions, to give tithes for charity or relief—all this many of us have done from our youth up. What lack we yet? Let us be concrete and come down to cases. One night the writer went down into the slums of his city. He had become uneasy with the thought of Lazarus at his gate. He was not literally there; the police are paid to prevent that awkward situation. So we visited his tenement. Here were four of the first homes that we entered. 1. The first was that of a poor tailor. He was out of work, and we were reminded that according to the report of Herbert Hoover’s Commission on Waste, the tailors are among the trades that are unemployed a third of every year. There were twelve in the family. Four were sleeping in one bed, three in another, one on a box; the mother was dying in the remaining bed. Unable to work at his trade, the man had Deen out since four o’clock in the morning try- ing to gather mushrooms. He had found only fifty cents worth. Twelve people cannot live on fifty cents in New York City, and his railway ticket had cost him a dollar. He broke down and cried as he saw his hungry children about him, 2. In the second home poverty and unemployment had driven the boy to his first step toward crime. The father and son were both out of work. An automobile was standing apparently deserted on the street. A man offered this boy fifty cents if he would bring him the spare tire. Just as he got it free he was seized by the police and taken off to jail. Our vindictive, pagen penal system will pro’ ably do the rest; and one more will be added to the “crime «= ave.” 3. In the third home poverty had driven a young girl to the very brink of the abyss. She was a beautiful girl. There were tears on her face as we entered. She is working for an employer, perhaps a Christian employer, for $12 a week. The mother and two daughters were making paper flowers as we entered. Altogether they were earning a dollar a day to eke out their slender income. But the family has a debt of two hundred dollars. Hard though they work the debt is THE NEW REFORMATION 225 growing every week. This girl is standing on the brink of the moral precipice where so many of the daughters of the poor have slipped and gone over. 4, As we knocked at the door of the fourth tenement a crippled boy of fourteen hobbled down the dark hallway. A family of eleven were sharing three beds, three or four sleep- ing in each bed, and endeavoring to make ends meet on a total income of some three dollars a day, or $21 a week. All were underfed, four of the children had been suffering with rickets with their bent and softened bones. Here was little Mario. At the age of 3 he could neither walk nor talk. From sheer lack of food he was 50 per cent underweight. His body was distorted and deformed. But the one equipped church in this slum with its shining cross held high in this “city of dreadful night’? has reached out through its staff of workers to lay healing and helping hands on 16,000 chil- dren this year. Today little Mario can walk, he can talk. He is a human being, redeemed because somebody cared. But what are these few who have been helped among so many in need? Here, as we have seen, are 270,000 darkened tenement rooms that never see one ray of direct sunlight all | the year round. Here are over 600,000 living in these wretched tenements. Let us not think that these slums exist only in New York and the larger cities. We will find them in our own city if we begin to examine how the other half lives. Now let us leave the tenements of Lazarus for the homes of Dives. Let us take four typical homes of the rich. These men are not sinners more than the rest of us. They are not responsible for creating the present social order any more than the poor are solely responsible for their unemployment, poverty and crime. We are not here reflecting upon four individuals but upon ourselves. 1. Dives, number one, is a Christian, and that not in name only. He is an active church member and an honored citizen. But the crumbs that fall from the tables of his palatial sum- mer and winter residences would feed many children. His last pleasure trip consumed many tens of thousands of 226 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH dollars. The income from his fortune of over a hundred million dollars could not only supply all his own needs but save the lives of literally hundreds of little children in these slums. His individualistic economics have never taught him that every one of his luxuries definitely adds to the cost of living of the poor. 2. Dives, number two, is a perfect gentleman, a public- spirited citizen, a Christian, personally attractive in an extraordinary degree. By no fault of his own he has suc- ceeded. His thrifty ancestor from abroad landed in this city and prospered in trade. He bought land on Manhattan Island. Several million people moved in on the surrounding land. Lots for which he paid less than $400 are now valued at $400,000; and a farm for which he paid $20,000 is now worth $10,000,000. The family fortune is now valued at scores of millions of dollars. We are not blaming Dives for having prospered. But here are the poor in these dark- ened tenements, nine-tenths of them with no home of their own, no security of life, no adequate chance for their children. This Christian probably never realizes that the unearned increment from renis is a primary factor in the high cost of living and the consequent privation and suffering of the poor. Itis partly for this reason that only 3 per cent of the new apartments in New York are within the reach of 70 per cent of the population. A million of Lazarus’ offspring lie at Dives’ gate—at your gate and mine. Just what do we propose to do about it? ! 3. Dives, number three, is a worthy citizen, a philanthro- pist, a contributor to charity, a patron of welfare work, his praises are sung by leading social writers. He has never fared sumptuously in purple and fine linen, nor failed to work early and late. He gives useful employment to tens of thou- sands of men. Undoubtedly with a clear conscience, for many years he subjected thousands of his workers to inhuman hours of labor, long after others had successfully demonstrated the possibility of a more humane policy. He has successfully resisted all efforts of men to organize to improve their conditions and has refused to recognize repre- THE NEW REFORMATION 22'7 sentatives of their own choosing. He has successfully maintained the spy system in his industry. Although no one individual is exclusively responsible, although skilled work- ers have been well paid, as a net result of the whole system some of the workers testify that life has been mechanized, homes have been broken, and the vast majority of the work- ers are out of touch with organized religion and with the profession of Christianity by the prosperous class. 4. Dives, number four. We were told he was a prominent Christian, and that he was known as “the meanest man in town.” We called at his palatial residence. The mission boards were in debt. We asked him if he would take a foreign missionary under his own board. He pleaded that “charity begins at home.” We then asked if he would give an equal sum to the home missionary society of his church. He pleaded his preference for hospitals. We asked if he would contribute to a hospital in his city then in need. Again he began to make excuses. We left. A few years passed -and we saw the notice of his death. Over twenty millions had been left by a Christian known as the meanest man in town to a son spoiled by his money. Dives number four had entered upon his reward. These four men are not worse than others. The first three are far above the average. They are almost exemplary according to the standards of our time. The fourth is typical also of a class. For, the majority of Christians who have made money seem to be possessed by it and are unable or unwilling generously to give or adequately to share it. These four dwellings of the poor and of the rich are typical. These extremes are far more characteristic of our day than of the time of Christ when he uttered the parable of Dives and Lazarus, when the enormity of wealth unshared in the pres- ence of unrelieved poverty smote upon his sensitive heart. We seem to have grown callous to evils that have become chronic. As Dean Inge writes, “What has decayed among ) us strongly and rapidly is the sense of sin.” Is there not need for a genuine revival of a sense of sin to arouse the conscience of a rich and worldly church to its criminal neg- 228 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH lect and its colossal selfishness? Any such revival must begin with ourselves. We must say with the prophet, “T and my father’s house have sinned.” Ministers and laymen, we are all socially responsible. The prophetic voice must be raised in our pulpits. The minister who sees this social need and remains silent will soon cease to see it. ‘“‘What is not expressed dies.” | Jesus may visualize or dramatize for us a single Dives with Lazarus at his gate. But our present order has built long avenues where generic hundreds dwell whose surname is Dives. Hard by are hundreds of thousands desiring to be fed with the crumbs of privilege that fall from our surfeited lives—men and women who need only plain food, fresh air, the sunlight of God, security of life, regular employment, a living wage, education and development for each child, con- ditions of health, a fair chance for the pursuit of happiness —all that one could mean by “the good life.” “He that loveth rot his brother whom he hath seen cannot love God whom he hath not seen.” Instead of loving our neighbor, or our brother as ourselves we come to care more for every whim of our own, for the provision for every pos- sible physical need and every surfeit of luxury for our chil- dren’s children in countless years to come in their congested inheritance, than we do to supply the hunger and want, or prevent the malnutrition, sickness and daily death of the children of the poor at our very doors. At the very moment while they are dying we go on growing rich in a poor world. As John Ruskin pointed out to his generation, so long as there is cold, or hunger, or want in the land, so long will splendor of dress and luxury of life be a crime. What is it that money does to us? What is the meaning of “the deceitful- ness of riches’? What is this subtle selfishness, this creeping paralysis, this benumbing poison of materialism that the possession of wealth spreads through our veins? What is this curse of unshared wealth? Jesus warned us to sell, to give, to share, to distribute to others, to lay not up for ourselves treasures on earth nor amass selfish wealth. We exactly reverse his command, his example and the spirit of his life. We get ee THE NEW REFORMATION 229 money and in the end the money “gets” us. We grow rich, yet somehow we have become spiritually poor. We have our unshared wealth and the poor their unrelieved poverty. The money blinds us, it blunts us, it hardens us. It is “deceitful,’’ until in the end we deceive ourselves and are not quite honest, even with ourselves. We “talk poor,’ we refuse to give adequately, until we almost come to believe our protestations. The writer thanks God for all the generous Christians he has known. For thirty-five years he has been called upon to solicit funds in public and private, in all the principal cities of America, for charitable and religious causes at home and abroad. He has met some truly generous givers. But in all these years he has known but two or three individuals whose money never “got” them in the slightest degree, who gave adequately and up to the full limit of their ability, without evasion, postponement, excuse or compro- mise; generously, wisely, joyously, consistently year after year. _ We saw the church in Czarist Russia miss its day of oppor- tunity. It identified itself, not with Christ and the people, but too much with privilege and pomp and power, till the fury of indignant multitudes broke upon it. Prince Youssoupoff of the old regime, on his recent visit to America to recover one or two of his Rembrandts, testified incidentally to his personal possession of thirty-seven estates valued at $250,000,000; his jewels, art treasures, etc., bring- ing up his fortune to some $500,000,000. Was this young man worse than others? Was he not a conventionally ortho- dox Christian? Rejecting the caricature of religion too often presented, along with much genuine though ignorant piety on the part of many peasants and priests, the new jeaders of Russia endeavored to do away with what they wrongly conceived to be the abomination of religion. You may stand today in Moscow beside the bier of the embalmed body of a man whom the people believed lived and died for them. He might have had palaces and fortunes. Instead, with the other leaders, he lived simply and cheerfully on two dollarsa day. You may point out, and justly, the glaring 230 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH faults of his system—its class dictatorship, its severe restric- tion of liberty, its frank Marxian materialism, its reacting from an extreme individual to an extreme communal form of government. But the whole mass of legislation that he left and the whole system of life that was organized, with all its glaring faults and errors, were framed with single intent for the masses of the poor peasants and workers, who constituted nine-tenths of the population. No special personal privilege of wealth was sought by those in power. Let us lift our eyes from this silent form of Lenin before which the hushed multitude stand in reverent, passionate devotion, to the quotation above the shrine of the Iberian Virgin where a few peasants are crossing themselves and praying for miracles of healing. The inscription reads “Religion, the opium of the people.” Let us ask ourselves whether Czarist organized religion was not indeed an opiate. What was the matter with religion in Russia that left its selfish wealth unshared and its poverty unrelieved, its slums unvisited, its workers underpaid and denied the right to organize to improve their wretched lot? Did the Christians realize or seriously endeavor to change the monstrous iniquity of the system? Did the church lift up its voice? What is the matter with our religion? Will anything short of a reformation arouse us, a re-formation both personal and social that goes back to the simplicity and sacrifice of the religion of Jesus himself? The multitude in Russia, or in America, would stand more readily before Jesus Christ, the carpenter of Nazareth, than before Lenin, but they will be won by no caricature and by the representatives of no religion that is not sacrificial. They will not accept its spokesmen if they condone or maintain such an unjust social order unchallenged and unchanged. 3. The new reformation must have the dynamic of spir- itual passion. In any age the outward veneer of the habitual state of things as it appears to the callous spirit is always respectable. But if we can look with unaccustomed eyes upon the spiritual condition of the church and the moral situation in the nation, are we not driven to the conclusion THE NEW REFORMATION 231 that nothing short of a reformation is imperatively needed today? Do not the spiritual standards of Jesus and the impli- cations of the Kingdom or family of God require a radical transformation? If we face the magnitude of the task of this needed reformation both in our religious and national life, we are driven to the conclusion that nothing less than a spiritual and social passion which can draw upon a dynamic of incalculable reserves of power can make possible such a reformation. The freezing reason’s colder part, the nega- tives of criticism, the inhibitions of doubt, the paralysis of selfishness have never yet kindled a reformation. Passion is the glowing link which binds together thought and action, when a spiritual dynamic ideal confronts a desperate need. Like an electric current, a spiritual movement is generated which may pour its convertible energy into the light, heat and power needed to accomplish the end. We are in a living universe alive with dynamic power imprisoned in every atom, available upon the fulfilment of certain condi- ‘tions. It is human purpose which discovers, releases and harnesses this power to accomplish its ends. If we study the historic movements of the past it becomes evident that such power was gained not by the spell of magic but by obedience to law. One of the first conditions is human fellowship. Social ends have been chiefly accomplished neither by the isolated individual, nor by the blind action of the mob, but by the cooperative unity of the group. If we separate burning brands from a fire we soon have cold sticks and dead ashes. Combine them, and at the point where they converge these dying embers leap again into fiame. It was a small group associated in fellowship, kindled by a common purpose, that blazed about Mazzini, which realized the twin purposes of nationality and liberty, first in Italy and later in many countries in Europe. It was a little group about Washington, Adams and Jefferson that guided the revolution and created the first American republic. It was a small group in France and later in Russia that, however confused or misguided on certain issues, accomplished for 232 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH good or ill vast results in Europe. Let us note that in every case, whether morally right or wrong, there was a social passion that counted no price too great to accomplish its end. For the leaders in these four revolutions their social purpose had almost the driving force of a religion. Sober or fanati- cal, there was none but would have died for his cause, whether Washington, Rousseau, Mazzini or Lenin. Men have died alike for revolution or reformation, for social or for spiritual passion. Have we not a cause worth dying for that combines them both in one? It is maintained in the volume on “The Spirit” edited by Canon Streeter, that “what happened at Pentecost” was the emergence of fellowship. It is in this active comradeship between person- alities, in the battle for a common quest, that personality itself is transformed.t Men are molded in association, whether with men or God. Isolated individuals are welded into an organism. Companionship leads in turn to coOpera- tion, discovery, light, vision, courage, accomplishment. In almost every great movement a truth is first seen by the individual and incarnated in a life. It is then shared and incorporated by the group. Realized in a social unit, it is carried by a crusade to the church, the nation or the world. The mass of men thus rise by one step to a higher level. Then the prophet or reformer sees the next new truth against the dark background of the social need. But every reforma- tion begins in a group glowing with spiritual or social passion. * Professor Hocking in his “Human Nature and Its Remaking,” says, “As to structure, human nature is undoubtedly the most plastic part of the living world, the most adaptable, the most educable. Of all animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious building forces for most. Consider that his infancy is longest, his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers of habit-making and habit-changing most marked, his susceptibility to social impressions keenest—and it becomes clear that in every way Nature, as a prescriptive power, has provided in him for her own displacement. His major instincts and passions first appear on the scene not as a controlling force, but as elements of play, in a prolonged life of play. Other creatures Nature could largely finish; the human creature must finish himself . . . To anyone who asserts as a dogma that ‘human nature never changes’ it is fair to reply, ‘It is human nature to change itself.’” Hocking, “Human Nature and Its Remaking,” p. 9 ee eS ae eee THE NEW REFORMATION 233 Let us recall the history of reformations. There was the group that Jesus gathered by the lakeside in Galilee. According to the cold calculation of reason, how much could twelve unlettered Jewish peasants have accomplished? Yet we have seen incidentally in this chapter that nineteen cen- turies afterwards five hundred million copies of their mes- sage, in six hundred languages, were carried by thirty thousand messengers to the limits of the world, and shared by five hundred and sixty million followers. With all their faults, millions of these followers hold this message as the chief thing in their lives. Even though the cold rationalist may pity the church or criticize the measure of failure of professing Christians, is it not still true that more would die for this cause today than for any other on earth? Here then at the source is passion and power. However far short these millions fall of living up to his challenging ideal, is it not undeniable that this Man held a burning passion in his heart? A combined spiritual and - social passion and power burned within him: he kindled a fire that nineteen centuries of human history have never yet been able to put out. Smothered or dampened or driven underground, it has broken out again and again. See this passion flame afresh and leap into being as it kindles the group about Paul of Tarsus. Men may differ with his theology but they cannot deny his passion. Beaten, “stoned, persecuted through the cities of the Roman world, what is this drive and dynamic that energizes this wasted frame? From Thessalonica, where the church he founded has never ceased, even to Rome, where they beheaded him, cities in uproar complained, “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.” Shipwrecked, imprisoned, mobbed, stoned, starving, here burned a passion and a power that planted human groups and fellowships across the world that have never wholly ceased in nineteen centuries. These groups have maintained not only their continuity, but the power of renewal and regeneration when- ever the original conditions of revival have been again fulfilled. 234 NEW CHALLENGES TO FAITH Space forbids our examination of the life and achieve- ments of the group in Alexandria about Clement and Origen; that in North Africa led by Tertullian and Cyprian, or about St. Augustine in the fourth century. It was the same flame that leaped up again in the heart of St. Francis in Assissi and in many of the monastic movements. Wellnigh all Italy turned to these “‘little brothers of the poor” when they saw again the life that makes men hunger, and avid to attain. In spite of all the differences in the theological fuel that it consumed, it was the same fire that burned in Savonarola and John Huss, in the groups about Loyola and Xavier in the south as about Luther and Melanchthon in the north of Europe. It was the same life leaping to flame again in the Holy Club, meeting in Wesley’s room in Lincoln College, and later in Newman and Froude in the Oxford movement. The fire breaks out again in the group about William Carey as they carry the torch throughout Asia and Africa, and from the “haystack group” at Williamstown as they go eut to the ends of the earth. It burns again in the heart of Moody and the students at Mount Hermon in 1886 as with splendid effrontery they dare a watchword that embraces “the evangelization of the world in this generation.”