NOV 1 1913 BR 121 .D5 1913 Dickinson, Charles Henry, 1857- i The Christian reconstructio of modern life THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION OF MODERN LIFE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO V x^'* NOV 1 1913 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION OF MODERN LIFE BY / CHARLES HENRY DICKINSON "^tva fork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1913 All rights reserved Copyright, 1913, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1913- tlTo ^^ WSiift PREFACE The object of this book is the spiritualizing of the social passion. The undertaking has grown from the conviction that this mightiest force of our time can attain its reconstructive purpose only as it is conscious of its own implicit spiritual quahty, and becomes The Christian Reconstruction of Modern Life. Experienced readers will perceive my obligations to prominent scholars and thinkers. Lest the rela- tively inexperienced should suppose that positions famihar to progressive scholarship are eccentricities of the author, special obHgation is acknowledged to Eucken and Bergson, and to pragmatism in the ideal and spiritual apprehension learned, however imper- fectly, from the lips of its most acute interpreter, John Edward Russell, beloved teacher, revered friend. The conceptions concerning the Old and New Testa- ments are those derived from the reverently fearless scholarship of which the regnant example is Heinrich Julius Holtzmann: upon his new grave Christian learning has laid its wreath of immortelle and passion flower. To the leaders of the brotherhood and sister- viii PREFACE hood of the social passion who shall compute the in- debtedness of us all! I trust the book will reach those to whom its pur- pose is most congenial: not scholars alone, as the studious of my own vocation, but also the like of those whose eager faces have kindled the inspiration of the preacher's message. Among these are ilUterate men and women, to whom dreary shibboleths would have meant nothing, being nothing, but to whom the spiritual depths of the social Gospel were translucent; and discipHned minds, whose faith, long outraged by traditionalism, acknowledged a Christianity given back to thought and heart and life; and flaming eyes of youth in glad amazement at what Jesus would have their lives be. It is a cause of regret that in a few passages it has been necessary to employ allusions not familiar to all, in order to avoid wearisome epi- sodes that would be much more confusing. Yet even in these infrequent paragraphs regard has been kept for those who entreated, "Write the spiritualizing of the social Gospel in words not too hard for us." Not by technical learning are vitalities understood, but by breadth of interest, and intensity of purpose, and enthusiasm of aspiring service. Calhoun, Alabama, June 14, 1913. CONTENTS PART I The Radical Division in Modern Life Chapter I. The Two Inheritances 3 II. The Two Obligations 14 III. The Source of Our Civilization 25 IV. Modern Hellenism 38 V. The Rights of Our Civilization as against Christianity 58 VI. The Right of Christianity as against Our Civilization 74 PART II Jesus and Modern Life I. The Two World-Conquests 107 II. The Historic Realization of the Semitic Principle. . 125 III. The Separateness of Jesus from Aryan Civilization 162 IV. The Task of Civilization 185 V. The Task of Jesus 214 VI. Jesus' Accomplishment of His Task. . 242 VII. The Reconstructive Energies 277 VIII. The Spiritualizing of the Social Passion 291 Index 317 PART 1 THE RADICAL DIVISION IN MODERN LIFE THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION OF MODERN LIFE CHAPTER I THE TWO INHERITANCES The modern world's divergences from the Christian religion are results of an original and fundamental difference between our civilization and Christianity. The reason of these estrangements cannot be that science has opened a new universe, unknown to the ages of faith, and that processes of thought and tests of reality have suffered change. Nor are radical departures from our religious consciousness caused by the awakening of new personal and social interests, and by the establishment of different standards of value from those which directed unsophisticated desires to their celestial goal; for belief in the infinite is not unfavorably influenced by the enlarging knowl- edge of the finite, and life in God is not hostile to normal unfoldings of thought and action in any realm. 3 4 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION But the patent separations express the unyielding fact that Christianity is not a development of the civilization which is our Hellenic inheritance, but came to it from without. And this fact is not an historic accident, but the manifestation of a difference between our religion and our civilization for which there is no superficial synthesis. The agreeable phrase, Christian civilization, juxtaposes terms un- fused. Civilization is not Christian by virtue of ac- knowledging contributions, however great, from Chris- tianity and its revered founder, and least of all can Christianity pronounce it such unless it has accepted the universal dominance of the fundamental Christian principle. The Semitic Jesus has no original part in the Hellenic culture, which, transforming the contri- butions of previous civilizations, and absorbing in its progress every potency it encounters except His, is to-day unprecedentedly stimulated by forces new, but most germane to its developments. Ever more dissonant to its conquering march through the world and the times, sounds His voice, never to be silenced : Change your estimates, desires, purposes, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Beside our religious and our cultural inheritance, there are our racial descents, various, uncertain. But these became significant only when our religion or THE TWO INHERITANCES 5 our civilization found tliem material to work upon, disposition to mould. We express Athens and Galilee according to our heredity, but of Athens and Galilee we are expressions. The opposite natures of these forces were detected from the beginning of their contact with one another, by noblest representatives of the classic culture. The ethical statesmanship of Aurelius and the spiritual aspiration of Plotinus opposed Christianity as an unassimilable intrusion. To them especially the Christ is he who casts upon the earth the sword of destruction against every purpose but his own. The victory of the Galilean seemed to defeat the obligation of the Hellenic-Roman civilization to renew itself from its sources, for the transforming of new peoples and the reconstruction of ancient nations. The adoption of Christianity was to them the be- trayal of humanity; as it always is, in very truth, for any other aim than Jesus' transcendent ideal. Every rebirth of our civilization has involved strained relations with Christian beliefs, sentiments, institutions, and aims. FamiHar instances are the medieval anticipation of the renaissance, the renais- sance itself, the era of the enlightenment, the move- ments which we connect with the French revolution, the awakening of any young soul to the world and life 6 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION in it. It is not merely that at such times certain ecclesiastical tyrannies must be shaken off and super- stitions cleared away, and that new arrangements have to be concerted between the expanded secular life and the faith which it revises; but the cleavage appears between our two inheritances. And this notwithstanding faith's advantage from the advance of culture, and civilization's gain from the ener- gizings of faith. For the enlivening of any element in man's nature stimulates the whole. The enfranchise- ment of any power, with its openings of new realms, necessitates ethical interests and problems, which, by an unfailing historic law, become conscious of their spiritual implications. In epochs of secular advance religious interests need not wait the pendu- lum's backward swing. The inevitable sequence of an age of idealism from a period of realism is not by the force of reaction, however exclusive may have appeared the dominance of the secular. If in our own time rehgion seems covered, it Hes deep. Therefore the futility of stimulating the rehgious by repressing the secular. It is no less evident that upheavals of the great spiritual deep fling tidal waves of human mastery upon every shore. Yet these interworking arousements bring to light the sharper contrasts, in the clarified self-consciousness of both Christianity THE TWO INHERITANCES 7 and our civilization. The differences become ever more acute with the mightier self-assertions of powers that have not yet found their synthesis, which these rivalries reveal as humanity's inevitable task. The mutual oppositions of our two inheritances are manifest in the turbulent history of our religious thought. Its movement has been only partially the unfolding of the powers of a self-consistent spiritual life, continually surmounting stages of incomplete self-consciousness, — a process whose grapplings with avowed enemies, or whose resistances to inertia, retrogression, foreign intrusions, like Gnosticism, are elements of the development. But the record is, in large part, the attempt to unite Christianity with thoughts which belong to our civilization. Touched by criticism the unstable compound explodes. The toil has not been profitless. It has demon- strated the necessity of a faith unencumbered by such theology. It has gained some apprehensions of the spiritual heritage, which has indeed been its chief concern; the untheological work of the great theolo- gians survives: we repeat the creeds for that in them which is not dogmatically credal. The misguided labor has yet maintained a confidence in the ultimate synthesis of all life and thought. But faith has been distorted in attempts to blend it with the philoso- 8 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION phies which are outgrowths of our culture, while philosophy has been so degraded that genuine think- ing has repudiated its historic ministries to faith. As faith's handmaid, ancilla fidei, philosophy is a menial. When physical science became dominant, attempts to express Christianity in its terms failed to amuse men long. When social interests are su- preme, a Christianity of the social consciousness is possible only when the social consciousness of our civilization is transcended. In vain does the conserva- tive direct us back to the historic creeds and their theologies. Those attempts to mediate between our Christianity and civilization are not one whit more congenial to Christianity because alien to modern thinking. Yet the nobler demand for the uniting of Christian faith with present conceptions is essentially the same as that of the antiquated dog- matist, and advances to a new stage of failure to bind together our different inheritances. These considerations do not necessarily bring our faith into hostility to any normal human power or legitimate impulse of man's self-realization; but they accept the importance of the fact that our religion and our civilization have different sources. They arouse a more active hope of that unity of the human spirit in all its powers which can be vital, permanent, THE TWO INHERITANCES 9 and implicitly universal when every element of life is set free to develop itself to its utmost. Human powers "meet at their summits," and each must have free course that all may be glorified together. Nor is there involved even a provisional antagonism. Each power of humanity in the measure of its coming to itself apprehends its relations with its fellows, and becomes confident of the ultimate attainment of the unity progressively realized. No less significant of the different origin and nature of each inheritance is the inveterate conflict between the Christian spirit and ecclesiastical organizations borrowed from political institutions. These seculari- zations result in rivalries between the church and the state, the school, society generally. Modern studies of the New Testament, with their reverent purpose to separate Jesus from whatever in the tradition is none of His, find in Him no intimations of such constructions. Power of the keys, for one apostle or for all, prescriptions of church discipline, rite of baptism or eucharist, the very name church or any equivalent word, we find to have been thrust back upon the Master by the supposed necessities of a later generation. Nor are these things legiti- mate unfoldings of His purpose, or supplies of His omissions. It is not the fact that Jesus, whether lO THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION because He expected the immediate destruction of the world or for any other reason, left His fellowship of divine love with no recourse but to copy secular institutions. Celestial principles of ministry and mutual sacrifice are sufficient to organize this fellow- ship, if only His followers had grace and wit to use them, and these excellencies can direct their own con- cretions for life in the world, that the world by the united task of this fellowship may be saved. Sub- jections of service avail more for the building up of the body of Christ than do assertions of quasi-poHtical authority. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, amid the swift secularizations of the church within a century after Jesus' ministry, looked back wistfully, for all his churchmanship, to an ideal of Christian organiza- tion caught from the more spiritual of his apprehen- sions of his Lord, and truly imagined that Jesus washed the disciples' feet and wiped them with the towel wherewith He was girded, and then translated His deed into the organizing of His disciples in a love to one another like His love to His own. What forms of organization might have been un- folded in that spirit of Jesus it is idle to speculate: what effective unity may be brought to pass by fol- lowing out His leadings is our pressing business. In- calculable has been the historic service of the church. THE TWO INHERITANCES ii and incalculable its mischief, and the separate sources of benefit and injury are evident. Great promise of the normal unfolding of the Christian fellowship in unity of love, and aggressiveness of the meekness which makes no secular claim, is in the inevitable separation of church and state, the breaking of ecclesiastical shackles, the rebuffs of ecclesiastical interferences, the impatience, both within the church and without, of its polities, the dislike of the very word church because of its unspiritual connotations, the futile outcomes of efforts to unite competitive Christian bodies by arrangements of polity or creed which have no effectiveness for spiritual union, the dis- regard of her self-assertions, the condemnation passed upon her that she is not a servant to wash the feet of humanity. In these animosities and disorganiza- tions is evident the world's longing for the truly spiritual brotherhood, to be life and source and direc- tion for all that men have to do. In oriental civilizations the process is beginning, to express in their own terms the Christianity which is invading them. By these efforts also will appear profounder conceptions of Jesus and His Gospel. And there will be demonstrated no less clearly that Christianity is not of Japan and China, even as it is not of Italy and Germany. If ever the world's civiliza- 12 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION tions, the new and the renewed, fuse into one magnifi- cent efl&ciency, presumably under the leadership of our own culture, then the different source and nature of the rehgion of Jesus will be still more evident, and the problem of reconciliation and unity even more imperative. The clearing away from Christianity of the dog- matisms and ecclesiasticisms resulting from our in- heritance of culture, involves the issue between the Christian religion in its clearest attainable self- consciousness and our civilization. Upon this issue depends the maintenance, not of religion, but of Christianity. Religion of some sort must ever hold the leadership of humanity: the dominance of the spiritual is in the very nature of human action. For religion means ultimate aims, basilar principles, quickening spirit. Religion signifies that wholeness of life to which every special development, however assertive of its autonomy, tends at length. Even the denial that life can find unity, direction, and perma- nent energy, is a religious denial; nor can it ever be final, since it is pronounced by no other impulse than that which must ever continue the search. But whether the religion to which our civilization can give itself shall be a religion of different source and nature, a religion which therefore demands to revolu- THE TWO INHERITANCES 13 tionize the inmost heart of it, and to reconstruct every outworking of it, or a rehgion developed from our civilization's own implications, — this alternative, not to be avoided or compromised, requires a candor, solemnity, and earnestness no less courageous than when one stood between the Roman emperor's altar and the lions. CHAPTER II THE TWO OBLIGATIONS All but unique in history is our double inheritance. Civilization and religion develop generally as one, out of savagery and barbarism incapable of funda- mental distinctions. No radical separation of the spiritual from the secular was attained by the increas- ing differentiations, with resultant rivalries, as be- tween king and priest, for wealth and power. As human activities unfold a presiding deity is insepa- rable from each. As these pursuits become organized the gods of them acquire their several degrees of dignity, and their mutual relations in the enlarging reahns of art and thought and statecraft. Only the religious realm, lacking distinct self-consciousness, has no deity of its own. The tendency to monotheism is to the god of the nation. This stage reappears in contemporary reversions to barbarism. The divinity fervently invoked by a modern nation in war time, is not discriminated from the nation in its military obsession: murder, lust, and rapine are very properly consecrated to this deity, and to it descend the 14 THE TWO OBLIGATIONS 15 victorious Te Deums. What is now anomalous was of old normal. In this temper Asshur is both nation and god. If a permanent confederacy or empire is formed, or if several peoples find themselves in possession of a common civihzation, the deity expands to occupy the larger field. The completion of the process is the identification of God and the world. If the develop- ment is interrupted by the acceptance of a foreign rehgion, the new faith comes undifferentiated from its civilization; therefore the Mohammedan conquests did not produce a parallel to our situation. Buddhism in its mission fields has been too pliant to the culture it encountered, and also too remote from life, in its own essential negation, to inflict a stress like ours. Nearly everywhere except in Christendom there is the growth of an apparently single inheritance. National catastrophes, disintegrations of empire, downfalls or exhaustions of civilization, and infectious disillusions with the world drag down religion and culture indiscriminately into hopeless demoraliza- tions. Yet at such epochs the two strain apart. Religion may flee from the bankrupt world and from the desires, evaluations, and aims of life in the world : its deity is then the god of the religious life, or rather is the religious consciousness itself, since all else 1 6 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION is renounced and denied. But this escape from the world is no recourse to those whom conditions or inner limitations force to acknowledge the actual. Their spiritual inheritance, which had been undis- tinguished from secular interests now degenerating, is proven insufficient. Then, if no other civihzation with its religion imposes itself, the expatriated soul is open to a foreign gospel, which, however originally involved in a different culture, appeals as relatively unmingled spiritual, for the distinct spiritual need. Such a religion the Roman decadence sought, and Christianity was the richest of the spiritual goods accessible. The Northern barbarians indeed received their culture and their faith as one, but they were twain, and must at length declare their difference. The ancient civilization asserted itself with increasing power, all the more vitally because not as an imita- tion of the past, except in a transient phase of the renewal, but with new energies and original resources productive of other forms. The compHcations and conflicts of our double inheritance are upon us. This strangely inevitable path Christendom has trodden almost alone. Yet along this path the whole world must be led, and guides of humanity are we. Whatever the results of the contact of East and West, it is evident that THE TWO OBLIGATIONS 17 from the vast development of the secular, the whole world over, the religious is falling away, the funda- mental differentiation has arrived. Delusive is the conception of Christian missions as the imparting of an alleged Christian civilization. The inner contradictions of that phrase are more evi- dent to those for whom it is a novelty, and who regard our culture from outside. The hope of the triumph of Christianity in non-Christian lands depends upon our ability to distinguish its spiritual nature from our secular heritage. When the Oriental scornfully alleges the defects, oppressions, and abominations of Western civilization, even in contrast with his own, the Christian answer is not extenuation, or attempt at refutation, but, "Not of our civilization are we ambassadors." It must indeed be a Christianity that uses all attainments of Western culture for its ministry of divine love to body, mind, soul, and social regeneration, but it need not claim that these tools are of its own forging, and it must use them for a purpose transcendent of their nature. It must actively trust the power of the spiritual to subdue all things to itself, but what the forms of these things may be in the secular realm, it leaves for other forces to determine. For the sake of its imperative missionary obligation 1 8 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Christianity must become conscious, in the regions it calls its home, of its innermost nature, its unmingled spirituality. The work of the Christian thinker to penetrate our religion's deepest being, where its relations to all else are discovered, the toil of the scholar into the origins of Christianity, to strip them of every intrusion and misleading tradition, are the urgent obUgation of the fullness of Christianity's missionary era. And because religion and secular life must be made one, it is for us to learn, both in the recesses of the soul and in devoted service es- pecially to the old new lands, the final synthesis which can be attained only by fathoming the depths and testing the conquering energies of the spiritual life, that our two inheritances, now open to the world's appropriation, may be fused in the unity of the spirit. Ancient Israel presents a significant parallel. That is to say, similar conditions are to be evaluated in the two stages of our religion. The legend of the covenant on Mount Sinai between Jahveh as name previously unknown and therefore deity be- fore unworshiped, and Israel to whom Jahveh then first disclosed Himself, may not estabhsh a foreign source for the historic origin of the faith of the chosen people: other ancient lore of theirs contradicts the kernel of this tradition. But the indubitable THE TWO OBLIGATIONS 19 import of the story is that Israel's religious inheri- tance was found to be in contrast with the Canaan- itish influence, which might else have made this people rudest of the rude exemplars of the Babylonian- Phenician culture and religion in one. Through the centuries following the settlement in Palestine, the God of a distant Arabian desert contended with the undifferentiated civilization and worship of South- ern Syria. Jahveh was in the deepest sense a war-god, leading the spiritual potencies of His people against mightier enemies than chariots and horsemen. It was this double inheritance that came to fiercest disruption with the great prophets. Their signal failure to create a civilization of their own — for their attainments were in the religious realm — was the greatest advance possible at that stage. Through all Pharisaic scholasticisms and against all pagan intrusions their achievement remained entire: the vindication, for Jesus' fulfillment, of a religion dis- tinct from any form of secular progress, and therefore competent to rule the uttermost developments of culture, to which it is ever transcendent. Our situation, so anomalous and perplexing, may awaken in us a certain envy of other times and climes, which have kept a comparatively undifferentiated sim- plicity of life, — as for instance the Hellenic harmony 20 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION and symmetry. When we are called to weep over the miseries of humanity in its less complex stages, we may be reminded that the relative absence of this misery of ours left larger scope for natural buoy- ancy. Thus the sorrows of our own time assume a deepened pathos. Upon the wealths that have descended to us is imposed, as a heavy inheritance tax, a double burden to all life and thought. It is inconvenient to be heir of all the ages. We are tempted to surrender a part; and in that choice the necessity of living at all compels the alienation of the religious bequest. So multitudes unify life; often to find intenser strifes outbreaking in the sections retained, with terrible avengings from the excluded realm. Yet the situation presents the fundamental, in- evitable duality, come to its clearest expression thus far. From the beginnings of humanity two natures have striven within us: thus the human comes into being. From the beginning of human thought there have been inflowings from sense beneath, and from the ideal above. Two masters have always demanded to be served, the importunate body and the inexorable soul. To ignore this internal division is to relapse to the brute; to accept the ever increasing complication, not merely as between body and soul, but along all ranges of thought and life, is progress manward. To THE TWO OBLIGATIONS 21 gain the unity beyond possibility of disruption is self-realization. We are distracted between brain process and thought process never in contact, ever parallel; between mind and matter, all the more opposed to one another when matter is conceived to be in mind, and thought itself is dissevered between the organizations of sense impressions and the organ- izing power. We are perplexed by materiaUsm always confuted by an idealism never able to make its own claim secure; by science excluding consideration of the superphenomenal without whose postulates it cannot say its first word. We demand that God shall be un- contaminate by the visible and tangible and we find the universe a void except as God is its fullness. The aspirations without which life has no meaning are mocked by the grim and trivial necessity of daily bread. The soul that strains to escape sense is de- pendent upon that intractable beast to carry it up the heights. That which one is all but compelled to call the dualism of the modern consciousness has its roots in our nature and grows with our growth. Thanks to Galilee and Athens, the profound cleavage of human- ity's inner life has come to a manifestation clear enough for patience and courage to face. The sep- arateness of Christianity from the other inheritance fulfills at least one condition of reaUty, as our be- 2 2 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION wildered minds have always encountered it. The variance unto the uttermost may perhaps disclose the secret of all harmony and worth and joy. Christian theology has obscured this inner contra- diction by another, sin; so deriving Hfe's fundamental task from a radical perversion. But the appearance of a superior moral earnestness here is illusive. For the consciousness of the abnormality of sin is weak and formal except when sin is perceived to be divergence from the normal task; and patience and fortitude to unite the bases of life depend upon accepting this obligation as the supreme moral endeavor. This task in its intensity was the redemptive mission of the holy Jesus. The supreme moral good can be nothing less than the complete manhood, maintaining, fulfilling and uniting all potencies of our nature. To refuse the task is the fundamental sin against one's own soul and humanity and whatever divineness possesses them. To accuse our nature of irreconcilable dualism is a blasphemy against oneself which denies itself in its very conception. Only the unity of a man can pro- nounce him what he is, and cannot pronounce him radically dual. The attempt at such utterance sets the contrasted elements into a fundamental relation and indissoluble wholeness. Let not life attempt THE TWO OBLIGATIONS 23 that which rational thought repudiates, the practical denial of either hemisphere. Nor can there be division of life into separate compartments to be occupied alternately. Then the man is not at home in either. He loses both; for then the secular loses significance and the religious loses content. A religion which is apart from anything to be thought or felt or achieved denies itself and disappears. Yet any superficial reconciliation the depths of life convulse and rend asunder. Here are religious interpretations of science that is not science, and scientific formulations of religion that is not religion. Here are reductions of the ethical to an intellectual of no worth, and reductions of reason to an ethic that has lost its place in a rational universe. Here are those transferences from realm to realm, by which the power transferred loses the citizenship of its essential nature; the spiritual becomes superstition, retrogression, savagery, idiocy, or aims alien to religion corrupt it into the hypocrisies which aroused Jesus' supreme scorn. To live soberly and achievingly is to accept the two inclusive essentials of life, distinguishing each in its own function, yet determining that the higher shall give to the lower in its still untrammeled action, perennial energy, ultimate significance, and direction 24 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION to the supreme goal. If Christianity proves thus sufficient for life, Christians we will continue to be: the Christian is the man who realizes such power in the Christian faith. No easy task is appointed him: its arduousness is its inspiration. CHAPTER III THE SOURCE OF OUR CIVILIZATION The assertion of the rights of both our civilization and Christianity does not necessarily involve mutual antagonism. It may be a friendly suit to test the claims of each, for common advantage. The process seems to go steadily against our faith. Its ancient claims, asserted by the church as volunteer solicitor, to eminent domain over every realm of human con- duct, are disallowed. Hence unseemly arrogance of the successful litigant, and on the other side resent- ments of defeat. Yet it is not improbable that the very liberation of secular forces may awaken in them a more conscious need of an energy deeper, and an aspiration higher than are in themselves; while loss of the world to tyrannize may open the spiritual vision to celestial expanses, which shed rain and sunshine upon all that has been given to the children of men. Other powers have experienced loss of ancient privilege with gain of influence. Philosophy has been driven from her insolent Hmitations of psychology and the other sciences, to become the science that 25 26 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION tests, estimates, and unites the unprescribed dis- coveries of them all. Economics, pushed into its place by insurgent social disciplines, is consulted in social questions beyond its former purview. The sphere of the state, restricted by individual rights, is regulative of vast new fields. Much of the energy of our time is remuneratively expended upon the mutual limitations of the departments of human activity, with the result of relating them more fun- damentally, for the increased effectiveness of each. So it may be with this task, in which the other dis- criminations culminate. The work can be better done without exultations, rages, or panics on either side. In their unprejudiced delimitations of nature and function, Christianity and civilization find their re- spective possessions exposed to a common enemy. The foe is barbarism, equally hostile to rehgion and culture, hypocritically masking its opposition, and bringing to each gifts pregnant with destruction. It is inveterate antagonist of all man's higher faculties. An apostle of culture has named its champions after enemies of our religious inheritance: "This uncir- cumcised Philistine that defieth the armies of the living God." Barbarism is insensibility to culture as inheritance. It dotes on the word modern, which connotes to it, THE SOURCE OF OUR CIVILIZATION 27 not new conditions to be subdued to perennial aims, not challenge of fresh fields for the continuous Kfe of humanity to possess, but disconnection. It prates of modern science, modern education, the modern spirit, about half a century old, as if the first toot of a locomotive were Gabriel's trump of doom to history, and song of the morning stars to a new creation. For its heart is set on things, its mind upon the phenom- enal knowledge of things, and its energy upon the discovery and ownership of things: new things, there- fore a new age, a new world, a new mankind! But civilization, culture, is inheritance, the contin- uous, progressive inner life of the spirit of humanity. It is vital fire passed down the times from soul to soul, by loyal torch-bearers. Things are chaos till spirit relates them. Spirit is inheritance of an unbroken life. Civilization, culture, the former synonym con- noting creative power, the latter ideal value, consist in significancies and ends which are not of today or yesterday, and which may grow in secret, or rise again from tombs vainly sealed. Whatever their unexpected emergings, their source is far away and their currents continuous. Civilization is the unfolding of the re- sistless force within mankind, and is mighty to subdue all newly discovered conditions and all newly won attainments to its own developing nature, pressing 28 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION on to fulfill life and joy and worth long prophesied. Things new or old are nought to it, unless vitally- possessed. Of first importance is the possessor, humanity's indissoluble life, inward spiritual power essential, perennial, inexhaustible. As Christianity must again and again turn back to its springs of living water, so must our civilization renew its connection, equally vital, with the original force of its self-attainments and world-conquests. As the founder of Christianity knew the secret of life in the invisible, so the Greek genius awoke to the full- ness of the soul's life in the visible world. That discovery developed and organized itself into the Hellenic-Roman civilization, the classic culture, classic as culture, Roman as viewed from without, Hellenic as felt within. The origin of many things in modern civilization is elsewhere, but here is the assimilative force that makes such additions elements of culture, here is the only fountain-head of that which can be civilization to the Western peoples at least. Life in its thrill of responsiveness to ever fresh appeals from earth and sky, event and object of de- sire, in its buoyant acceptance of the challenge of the thing to be penetrated with man, this is the joyous energy of our inheritance. Unlike the Oriental and the representative of our own barbarism, the fathers THE SOURCE OF OUR CIVILIZATION 29 of our culture were not overwhelmed by the undis- tinguished mass of things, but they would selectively elevate into a possession of the human spirit whatever seemed to them capable of such appropriation, as fast as spirit could refashion it. So their imagination heightened the expanse of Heaven into the counte- nance of Zeus, radiant serenity; and light and sound and form, contributed by the world to discriminating perception and plastic hand and ordering thought, were completed in Apollo's supreme artistry. The soul, because conscious of its increasing ownership and mastery, passed by, for the time being, that which it could not humanize, confident that further develop- ments of latent power would win larger conquests of whatever might appear in the soul's march through the world. Therefore the confidence of inexhaustible discovery, invention and subjugation. It is an en- franchised manhood both in its appropriations and its provisional renunciations. It is the opposite of the modern barbarism, which is crushed by accumulation of things unusable, and whose phenomenal acquaint- ance with the external surpasses the acquisitiveness of the life within. Out of this self-restrained mastery of the world, this frank appropriation of just so much as the soul can use, were formed the order, organization, pro- so THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION portion and harmony of that ancient life, which is both remote from the aspect of our time, and also congenial to the still conscious inner impulse, our inalienable heritage. We long for their vital joy, rap- turous abandonment to that which can intensify sense, and also clarify thought and invigorate purpose. We are put to shame by their repugnance to the un- discriminating brutishness which is insensible to the associations that both refine and heighten natural pleasure. We would regain the sanity of their refusal of mystical contemplation that engulfs the mind in the object, as does animalism also. This is not the contemplation of Aristotle, and not in this sense is even Plotinus to be understood. Not theirs the insolent aims which presume impracticable tasks, essay ideals unrealizable. Here is the combined buoyancy and self-restraint that keep the spirit unsated, ever young, yet free from the extravagances of youth, and fortified against its sentimental sadness and the disillusions which else youth prepares for its own destruction. It is a joy of action that finds ardent, rational satis- factions in the tasks of self-realization and conquest of the world. When it dreams betimes, beside some clear-flowing brook along its way, it plays with no unformed fancies, but with the realities which it has made its own. Theirs was the progressive humanizing THE SOURCE OF OUR CIVILIZATION 31 of the world and self, the secret of unfeverish, serene delight, with the inner Hfe as master, yet ruling its domain constitutionally, according to the nature and laws thereof. The representative of this culture does not shut his eyes to sorrow, dwells in no fool's paradise. His un- shrinking vision apprehends that the soul does not attain itself without fortitude and the arduous ex- perience which brings this virtue into exercise. Keen is his responsiveness to the tragic. Yet he would admit the evils of hfe only as they deepen its harmony and serve the soul's conquest of itself and whatever it encounters. And when he must endure the weight of more mysterious ills he is not without resource. He ascribes the invincible woes to that which is remote from the human spirit, incommensurate with it. He externalizes them, commits them to the domain of inhuman, irrational necessity, which, however terrible its injuries and spoliations, must not be suffered to obliterate the fair city where the human spirit is lord. Of this ancient culture art is consummate and per- vasive, consummate because pervasive. Persistent is the determination so to possess oneself and so to dominate all things that the spirit shall be expressed in them, and realize itself in the expression; so to order the republic of the self-harmonized soul that all 32 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION the elements of life shall move together as a graceful dance and stately procession of beautiful forms. The ethical, which is symmetrical, and harmonious with reahty, is moral beauty. As moral beauty it unfolds a realm of social rights and obligations, symmetrical, harmonious, where men capable of such artistic citizen- ship may live in the fellowship of a state that co- ordinates human interests, and unites its personal constituents in an inclusive aim and devotion. In politics and ethics especially, the defects of our ancient culture are suggested. But it is not the in- evitable defects which we have to preserve. Nor can their limitations upon personality, which are dis- closed by our Semitic inheritance, condemn our civilization as such, though the necessity is thus in- dicated of that which is more than civilization. Their cultural limitations generally, even the subordination of personality to the state and their forms of slavery, were enfranchisements, historically conditioned, from greater repressions. Our limitations are to be over- come by the power in which they advanced. Their reflective thought invaded realms beyond the reach of fashioning hand or the reciprocal actions of men, and gave its own order to its objects, yet in accordance with their natures, as apprehended by the sane judgment. This conquest knows its metes THE SOURCE OF OUR CIVILIZATION 33 and bounds. Their philosophy found itself when it turned from attempts to construe the universe, and bent serene, intense brows to the task of normalizing human life, retaining as much of the cosmological as served this purpose. The thinker, finding beneath the human that which is intractable, admits in matter an irrational residuum; and also acknowledging the inmost secret of the universe to be untraceable, reverently withdraws from things too high, and be- tween the abyss and the summit, organizes within far flung limits that ever expand downward and up- ward, his exquisitely penetrated world of rational satisfactions, intellectual harmonies, his hfe free, rich, beautiful, of well-ordered, self-restrained buoyancy of soul. We look back not upon an ancient dream of what human life may be, but upon an actual accomplish- ment. Though their achievement was inevitably beset with crudities and resistances, — as the mon- strous imaginings of myths descended from barbarism never ceased to haunt their faith in the younger gods — yet only in one realm of high and positive values has there been surpassed the Hellenic approximation of life to its ideal. Jesus attained a task, to which He summoned His disciples, where all contradictions can be surmounted, all limitations to the human spirit 34 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION transcended. Only a toil beyond the twelve of Her- akles can be fulfilled. Jesus fathomed and solved that inner contradiction of the soul against itself which the Greek's very ideal refused to face. Jesus makes his home the innermost sanctuary of His father's house. From this citadel, against whosoever does not strive to enter, issue continually the destroyers of any lower organization of life. All the greater marvel then is the Hellenic approximation of Hfe's interfusion with its ideal. This achievement of theirs, against assaults from every side, comes to us not as a formula, nor an aim of effort merely, but as vital, personal influence, comparable in some respects with that of the Galilean. The personal power, the spiritual influence of our inheritance of civiHzation, is not for a favored few of these later days. The Hellenic culture is not aristocratic, as certain of its advocates mistake it. The actual exclusions were enforced, not desired. The ancient leaders of this culture felt themselves to be not exceptional, but representative. Their distinction grew from the common soil, and was promptly recog- nized in most cases by their contemporaries as an expression of the general consciousness. Contrast the influence of Homer then, not only as religious teacher but as cultural power, and the influence of even Shakespeare (the Bible and its derivatives are THE SOURCE OF OUR CIVILIZATION 35 in another category) in the common thought and Hfe of the modern world. Contrast what the name of Plato meant generally then and the meaninglessness to nearly all but specialists, of the names of Kant and Hegel today. Our popular philosophers are those who deny philosophy in Plato's sense of it, as ideal and cultural. Then the man of creative genius felt the call to live most deeply into the life around him, to become the most social of men, even as the statues of gods and heroes glorified public places, and to give back in finer and larger expression, the goods he had received from the general artistic and intel- lectual consciousness. Our class limitations of culture would be to the Greek the grossest of our barbar- isms. Today the beloved of the gods feels the doom to dwell apart, and to sound his message as against the tumult of the tides. Yet beneath the uncouth restlessness, feverishness, confusion of our modern life, remains the soul responsive to this heritage essentially democratic, universally human. To speak, either in gratulation or regret, of the decay of this spirit of world-conquering buoyancy, of rationally restrained self-development, of artistic symmetry of life, is to renounce civilization itself. That has not decayed, which, at every mighty asser- tion of human powers, rises in new forms, creative 36 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION potencies, protean adaptiveness. The general con- sensus of the modern world regards as a superficial eccentricity the assigning of the date of its birth to any other epoch than the renascence of the Hellenic culture. Not the appearance of new conditions, or the combinations of them, not one or another of the new discoveries or organizations of discovery in thoughts or things, marks off our modern world from medievalism, but the resurrection of that ancient, perennial modernism, which is the life element of all the cultural attainments of the last four centuries. To the Hellenic spirit every forward step of human- ity must turn for the understanding of the advance, for the harmony of the later expansions of this original potency, for sane and untrammeled joy of achieve- ment. The very reactions find themselves dependent upon some element of it, which draws them at length to its essential. The age of the enlightenment re- ceived from that clear dawn of intelligence the dry light of rational thinking, which was then the urgent need. The stiffening constrictions of that age were broken through when Winckelmann and Lessing groped for the more vital elements of Hellenic dis- tinction, when insurgent Gothic romanticism be- came fruitful from Faust's union with Helena, and the followers of Kant blended both his revolution THE SOURCE OF OUR CIVILIZATION 37 of thought and the turbulent demands of that time with the spirit of Plato, and through the political life of Christendom the Hellenic freedom asserted itself, working out toward Hellenic rationalities and harmonies. Into one's own age indeed one must Hve. Its peculiar, inevitable aims and problems must be appropriated in serviceable masteries. Yet all must be suffused with our civilization's original, but vitally- expanded and applied interpretation, regulation, aim and value of life. Whatever else we have in- herited, conquered, and accumulated, save the great competitive inheritance, is body for this soul. Here is the unifying of our possessions in that which gives them worth. CHAPTER IV MODERN HELLENISM Our time's normal differences from the origin of our civilization testify to the power of the Hellenic genius, both to produce new forms, altering the aspects of cul- ture, and to possess new races. It is because of those undying men that we live in a new world, of which they knew but a little part of the Kttle part we know; in a new universe, whose physical center is displaced from earth to we know not where, but whose spiritual center they have discovered in the human soul. The inventions that have changed the conditions of living are applications of the scientific spirit which they won. The social problems, which confront us as a devouring Sphinx, are to be overcome by out- workings of their conceptions of human organization. Because the present is an unfolding of their life and thought it would be disloyalty to them to try to reproduce the antique forms. The fair shapes which we are to behold in nature, whose rationally har- monious existence they felt, must be more deeply humanized than Oread and Triton. 38 MODERN HELLENISM 39 The Englishman who sacrificed a bull to Poseidon showed himself as barbarous as an Athenian of Pericles' day demanding human hecatombs to Diony- sos Zagraios, or monstrosities of Arcadian shrines to desecrate the Parthenon. Not the philosophy of Plato nor even the esthetic of Phidias are what we seek, but the force which formed these idealisms and the developments from them. The arid learning of just Greek things, philological and archeological, takes the life out of our inheritance, invaluable as are such patient studies when genuine scholarship gives its investigations to the service of advancing culture. That which calls itself modern paganism, whether self-satisfied or disillusioned, stiffens itself in their ethical and religious limitations, against which they contended, and may become one of the eccentric degeneracies of our time. The spirit of civilization, as of religion, outgoes its creations, and whoever, elects to stay in the things created loses the spirit which is their life and worth and joy. The most truly modern developments are Hellenic. Yet they are not sufiiciently aware of their nature to accomplish their implicit purpose. They need invigoration from the fountain-head of our culture. Our science, for example, is Hellenic in its passion 40 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION for exact fact, to be gained in freedom from any external consideration. But the scientific temper and method which we unscientifically fancy the dis- tinction of our age, is famihar to comparatively few. In extensive tracts it has to fight a desperate battle, as in pontics and religion, against grotesque scruples, prejudices, and self-interests which are self-delusions. Its weakness against its adversaries is because it does not know the truth comprehended by those pioneers of the actual, that the attainment of any fact has its importance as a step toward the understanding of the cosmos, and that the limitations, which every scientific investigation accepts, are justified only because the limitation is necessary to the end which science faithfully seeks by provisionally disregarding. In the loss of this consciousness, our enormous gains of instruments, methods, discoveries, and masteries of nature leave our science fragmentary, often in- significant, and beset by internal strifes. It can win mankind, as well as unite its own forces, only in that larger consciousness, to be implicit yet unintrusive in every scientific procedure; for then science has at its disposal both the passion for the universal and the esthetic delight in the harmony of things, and wins man's heart and aspiration for the most arduous intellectual toils. Our science will remain ineffective MODERN HELLENISM 41 as long as it mutilates and atrophies manhood's most vital impulses. Science without culture is barbarism. Characteristically Hellenic is the perception, hardly surmised by multitudes of students of the physical world, that the object of knowledge is not a world separate from man, and cannot be, but is the permea- tion of the data of sense by thought, the transforma- tion of the formless into that which is purely human, the translation of the assumed material into soul, while the actual nature of things is, as far as obser- vational science goes, not even a problem; as the fathers of our culture were content to win the human from the presumably irrational, which they left not unrecognized, but unregarded. Of their spirit also is the corollary, that whatever our intelligence may appropriate and transform is for man's enlargement, has its end in his well-being and development, and science is the inventive and reconstructive minister to human worth and beauty and joy. The unfolding of the universe accessible to man is man's inner un- folding, continual appropriation and completion of the world by soul. The opposite temper, so prevalent in our day, the groveling worship, in the name of science, of a fancied something that is external and mechanical, as if mechanism were not a provisional 42 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION invention by the human intellect for the appropria- tion of the world, is our most revered barbarism. Science, when faithful to its source, finds its con- quest of the world an invitation into the most ex- quisite of the Hellenic mysteries. As the world reveals rationality within the range of intellectual demands, so feeling and will are projected there, and nature, so far as accessible to soul, becomes a cosmos of living beings, vitally responsive to normal imagination. Natural science is not merely the investigation of nature. It is man's investigation of nature. The task excludes indeed every unnecessary postulate, is ob- livious for the time being of every question that may precede or follow, ruthless of result favorable or un- favorable to human values. But just by these self- restraints, man the investigator asserts his manhood, and sets all things under his feet. In this procedure the method is more Hellenic than we have recognized, and needs to be made still more Hellenic. The Greeks taught the human race inductive and analytic think- ing. Their short-comings in such thinking were lacks unavoidable, in the beginnings of science, of the data and instruments of analysis, induction, and experi- ment. Modern science, with all its enlargements and rectifications of their procedures, works by no novum organum. The instrument of knowledge which bears MODERN HELLENISM 43 that name was the repudiation of medieval for classic method. But the correction was partial, and before there could be the expected progress in science, the inductive genius which was recovered from the Greeks had to be supplemented by their scientific imagination, their genial power of rational hypothesis for induction to work upon. Of the scope and regulation of this principle we have still much to learn from them. If our inheritance of culture decays this power must decay, and the science which disregards the Hellenism upon which it unconsciously depends must become exhausted, or at least be turned into less serviceable courses. It is our duty to regain the Greek comprehension of the relation of science to other potencies of the soul. Urania dwells not apart from Terpsichore, The muses nine, each in the unrestricted freedom of her task, form one exquisite sorority, one rhythm of beauty, one harmony of exultant greeting to the consummate source of light. The humanizing of our science in the service of social conditions is in the Hellenic conviction that all things are to be learned and mastered for the develop- ment of the human. To the Greek, human life meant social life. The social passion is both Hellenic and Christian. But its problems must be regarded as 44 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION fundamental interests of our inherited culture, if the final, Christian unriddling of them is to find practical applications. The Hellenic social inheritance, unrecovered by the renaissance of the fifteenth century, has but just come to rebirth. Our anti-social monsters seek to devour it in its Heraklean cradle, and its earhest task is to strangle them. The genius of that elder day con- fronts our barbaric luxury and lust of Persian things; our bigness, with insolence of being big; the toil of the many unremunerated by the beautiful and ra- tional; the all but absence of a public life of festal character, amid noble creations of art continually impressing the minds of all; the dull, hard, squalid joylessness of those who are caught in the grinding wheels of our industrialism. Our inheritance in- dignantly demands a universal social life that shall be free, rich, beautiful, of well-ordered, self-restrained buoyancy of soul. It is possible to recover the elements of our heritage while missing the life of it. The parts are of value only in their vital unity. The man of culture sees life in this wholeness. He has grasped the essential of the inheritance, whether he is so fortunate as to learn it from its original forms, most representative and plastic, or as it appears, no less genuinely, in its MODERN HELLENISM 45 derivatives. The light of it exposes the crudenesses and barbarisms that beset our present conditions, the shameless purposes that deny inner values and de- form every institution. From his eyes fall the scales of an alien traditionalism, from his limbs drop the fetters of repressive convention, from his nerves pass the fever, fret, and restlessness, the devastating curse of modern life. He enters luminous amplitudes. All the more of value is disclosed to him in the legit- imate developments of our time. He appreciates them as from that abiding source of good, penetrates their essential worths, knows why they are, how they came to be, and what normalities they may serve. He is efficient above other types, master of his own time. But he loses the favor of the Olympians if he desires to recover the universal inheritance just for himself, or for a class; if he seeks it in his own exceptional fortunes, not in his participation, sympathetic and efficient, in the common lot. Then he becomes false to the democratic, universal nature of this good, and also false to more austere obligations from another source. To know this heritage vitally is to see that its inmost spirit claims to be the spontaneous joy and enfranchised progress of the common people. For they are Hellenic of heart. This is the goal to which they are striving, though often by ways that lead 46 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION nowhither. They respond to the presentation of this ideal; therefore the man of culture penetrates this heritage of life with conscious purpose broadly to impart it, and to direct its resurgences to a life of men generally, which shall be free, rich, beautiful, of well- ordered, self-restrained buoyancy of soul. The chaos of industrial strifes must turn to this ideal for direction. The implicit demand of the world's toilers, in their intensifying rage, is not, as calumniators of humanity blasphemously assert, de- bauchery and lust, nor the smug creature comfort of the bourgeois Philistine, whom the craftsman abhors; not any external condition nor rhetorical abstraction; but just real Hving in the world, life of the only civil- ization possible to the Occident at least. By this aim reformatory social energies are unified. By this as the first test, are to be judged the proffered social remedies. Do they regard conditions merely or the heightening of life? By this as the first test, present conditions must be estimated. Are they producing and distributing wealth for the interior wealth of every kind of man? How far are they capable of securing equal and abundant access to this physical and mental good, that demands, compels, and utilizes conditions, which are important to it as conditions and only as conditions? MODERN HELLENISM 47 From one social extreme to the other this funda- mental reconstruction is necessary. At the baser extreme it is so difficult to inculcate that it may have to force its way there; because there the barbarisms are not regarded as enemies to be overcome, but are rapacities to be gratified, distinctions to be inhumanly vain of; and because counterfeits of culture delude minds perverted by blatant successes and debauched by ignoble exploitations; so that our civilization may be forced to reassert itself from the social depths. Yet all contributors to civilization, from laborer to capitaHst, may find the implicit object of their striving in an industrial organism of mankind made possible by the Hellenic aim. In the energy of this inheritance, ministry to the common people unites with their own groping as- pirations. There is the growth of the city beautiful, its beauty most militant among the warrens of pov- erty. There is the passion to bring the vital worths to the most destitute, not only through decorous en- vironments, but also through music and plastic art, through athletic exercise and rhythmical recreation, through various introductions to the world of wider thought and more deeply apprehended loveliness. In these beatitudes the Christian compassions and ideals are indeed supreme inspiration, yet the Hellenic 48 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION alliance is essential, clearly to think out and prac- tically to work out that ministry in which the two inheritances are at one. Our inheritance of culture is belligerent against every human limitation and distress. Conditions that make impracticable anything but brutishness, accursed exploitations of these conditions, criminality with obscene privileges of self-propagation, war in field or mill or market-place, against nation or class or woman or child, intemperance and every other bestiality, prostitution's flaunting hell, will disappear only when our civilization is so urgent of its own worth that it can no longer endure them. As the social interactions, that grow continually closer and wider, no longer permit the more favored to put these evils out of sight, though they exist in an oriental city or an African wilderness, civilization cannot endure to con- tinue along with them, but must indefatigably enter- prise against them. The finest aims clarify and in- tensify themselves in the conflict. As the redemptive mission of Christianity is conditioned upon the deep- ening realization of her celestial nature, so civilization, in its warfare both preventive and curative, must ever learn more deeply the developing power of her in- heritance. The public school, the school of the people, the most MODERN HELLENISM 49 evident at least of the instruments of our culture, is becoming more aware of its heritage. Its sins against civilization have been grosser than its trangressions against Christianity, alleged by ecclesiastical enemies. Its iniquities include the rampant Philistinism of its mechanical drudgeries and soulless repressions of individuality. The recognized need of vocational training, under present industrial conditions, tends against these barbarisms, in its stimulation of personal powers for social ends. Yet the movement is pregnant with individual repressions and social demoraliza- tions unless directed by the conviction that every man's vocation, manual or other, must be united with universal interests; that the personal instruments of progress need largeness of life to accomplish their special functions in the world's tasks; that men cannot be efficient hands unless they are clear brains, joyous hearts, and magnanimous purposes. The best of our pubhc school teachers, those obscurely greatest educators of our time, are seeking to combine the necessities of a stern industrial system with the broader interests, which can make the present form of that regime endurable, and lead society to human- ized conditions. Their type of education, in its com- bination of the practicable and the ideal, with its acceptance of the requirements of a transient phase 50 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION of social progress, and its transformation of them into opportunities for the development of the universally human, extends its enterprise beyond children and youth into every age, especially among the newer elements of our population. As the beneficent results appear, the burden of resourceless compassion is lifted from our hearts. It is changed into the inspiration of social benefit, to those especially who suffer disillusion upon our shores, who endure barbarous repressions of freedom, gladness and beauty, by the coarsening and blighting materialism of our industries. In these disinherited their heredity abides, its forces spring up invincible against the most obdurate repressions, and the hearts of the lowly respond to the finer things. It is a might- ier struggle than Marathon, this conflict between modern barbarism, baser satraps than Artaphernes at its head, and the spirit of our inheritance of civili- zation, asserting itself in the Hellenic heart of the people. Their victory must indeed be fought out by industrial, commercial and political forces, in alli- ance with the healings and inventions of science, but by these powers as humanized by the immortal genius of our culture, and directed not to material things except as instruments of the enfranchised soul. MODERN HELLENISM 5 1 Culture, like religion, when disappointed in its normal leadership may spring up from the heart of the people. Yet this impulse comes to fruition when the normal leadership is shamed back into its proper work. As religion organizes itself into an institution, the church, so civiUzation has its representative insti- tution, the university. In the American system of higher education the university includes the college, whether formally and locally related or not to the more imposing body. As the church must endure pitiless inquisition into its stewardship, so the univer- sity stands ever accountable for the administration of our cultural inheritance. CiviHzation's Judgment arraigns the university first, as religion's judgment begins at the house of God. The unillumined by rehgion are the judges of the one: the disinherited of culture form the tribunal of the other. The university is not to be blamed for assigning a less prominent place than formerly to the humanities. This change is of the classic spirit in its subordination of every realm to the expanding life of man. The aims of the curriculum must be broadly vocational, rather than cultural in the separative, contemplative, and aristocratic connotations of that word. For these practical and vital aims belong to our civilization's original energy. SpeciaHzation serves culture by 52 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION preparing each man for his own function in the social order. The enormous expansion of things to be known enforces the self-restraint of intellectual mod- esty, which is not the least valuable element of our inheritance. But the American university in general deals too much with detached things, too little mindful of their mutual relations, their functionings in unity of thought, enjoyment and purpose, separated from which they are barbarisms. A university does not deserve its name by teaching everything possible, but only when it teaches each thing as in the universal, in the symmetry of the one culture. University faculties have sloughed off superficial pretenders to a straggling scholarship. But this gain is canceled when there appear in their places men of a scholarship as spurious, which is ignorant of its relations, therefore ignorant of its own signifi- cance. Such persons may have their use in contrib- uting certain materials to be vitalized by real men; but at best they are Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the children of the inheritance. Their aloofness from wider interests tends to bring the professorial title into popular disrepute, while no man is more honored by all than he who devotes specialized knowledge to the general progress. To the perverted specialization, religion is either unin- MODERN HELLENISM 53 fluenced by thought, or there issue from these men, not the searching criticisms made by their broader colleagues, but superficial and indiscriminate assaults upon faith. Such teachers stamp their barbarism upon their pupils. Of institutions so infected it is said, "They impart education, but not culture." The last half of the judgment is correct. Such influence reinforces the vulgarities of an age whose material progress has commercialism as its obverse. Higher education in America especially has become to multitudes of students the means of that which is pronounced success by the crowd in its baser moods. To this degeneracy the loyal rep- resentatives of culture in our faculties are indignant witnesses. Said one of the most revered teachers of his generation to a former pupil: "It is not now as when your class, in so large a proportion, gave itself to the fundamental questions of life and mind for their own sake. The commercialism of the time has infected, permeated student life. The college course is generally regarded as the way to commercial success. Against such enemies one has to champion the soul." With the most barbaric of contemporary barbar- isms many a college and university has contracted entanghng alliances. Learning's title to the world's 54 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION wealth is the subHmely beneficent use of it. Because of the university's material contributions alone, the silver and the gold are hers, and the cattle upon a thousand plains. This claim is most respected when sustained with unimportunate dignity. For the university to accept its orders from wealth is only less shameful than for the church to grovel before plutocracy. Plato's Academy would have accom- plished little for mankind if Tissaphernes had been president of the board of trustees. It is unfortunately incorrect, however agreeable, to say that institutions of learning financially dependent upon the makers of monopoly are unaffected by their patrons' judgments, tastes and aims. One proof to the contrary is the complaisant silence of many colleges, universities, and their faculties, before the current economic and social issues that involve plutocratic interests. They leave the defense of our civilization's most precious rights to those less qualified for the task, and serve the honors of culture to her deadliest enemies. As the church must be church miUtant against spiritual evil, so the true university is university militant against the hosts of barbarism. Heavy is the responsibility of the American uni- versity, for the conflict between civilization and bar- barism has its storm-center in our land. We have MODERN HELLENISM 55 seen the fair beginnings of an idealistic national litera- ture overwhelmed by the stolid, squalid realisms of the last half century. Now the elastic forces of culture are rising again, notably in the plastic arts and philosophy. Of still deeper significance is the growing conscious- ness of learned men, that the goods of intelligence, rational pleasure, and ideal aim must win the life of the people; and the response is especially hopeful in the newer elements of our population. In this dignity of lowly ministry the American university may find her cultural, ethical, and spiritual redemp- tion. The imperative of our age is a new Renaissance, as much deeper and more inclusive than that of the fifteenth century, as different in its forms to be wrought by new conditions and by the unfolding of problems unprecedented. Not a Renaissance of art or literature merely, but conscious fusing of every activity and potency into vital unity, greater power, broader scope, nobler aim, unanticipated conquests over nature, vaster organizations of human life, amehorations out of the discipline of centuries, plastic accumulations of experience; all for the more abundant inheritance of life free, rich, beautiful, of well-ordered, self-restrained buoyancy of soul, to be mankind's universal Hberation, as both the original 56 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION democratic genius and the social passion of our time require. This impulse will indeed revive classical studies, by methods less scholastic, directed less to the re- stricted discipline of a set of mental faculties, more to the invigoration of the universal sympathies, interests, and powers. But the classic revival must not be narrowly construed in any wise, nor limited to a favored detachment. The true Hellenism can also be learned from its modern developments, nor is there a single enforced specialization in which it is not revealed. It is the permeation of every task, pleasure, achievement, and organization, with the immortal genius of their source. In this renewal of humanity all may unite whose hearts have been divinely touched. In tasks most limited and obscure there may be efi&cient alliance. The man of culture is he who comprehends his work in its relations, and so masters it as to make it a vitally related component of our inheritance of civilization; and in a universal culture votaries are needed in every work from highest to lowliest. And as, in reUgion, many are Christians who are ignorant that their life is of Christ, so in culture many walk with the risen and immortal spirit of Plato, their eyes holden, but hearts burning within them as he talks MODERN HELLENISM 57 with them by the way. To these also may be made known the power, which shall then send them forth exultant, to proclaim that the ancient Hfe is risen again, to be the unmonopoHzed heritage that redeems, transforms, completes, and harmonizes every secular task, and natural pleasure, and world-completing impulse of advancing humanity. The two great inheritances are at one against the common enemy, at one in their insistence upon the soul. In this mutual recognition, many of their former antagonisms are allayed, though for a sterner competition for the leadership of humanity. Through a part of their course at least, our civilization and Christianity walk together, and their institutional representatives move on shoulder to shoulder up the heights. As the university is converted from its detachments, to the organism of culture, and to the accordance of all her disciplines in that harmony, she becomes more receptive to the absolute unity which our religion claims to be. Yet in the alliance of our two inheritances lies peril to each. The rights of our inherited civilization as against Christianity, and the right of Christianity as against our civiliza- tion, must be adjudicated, that neither may incur detriment, and that each with clear self-consciousness may find the other in the unity indissoluble. CHAPTER V THE RIGHTS OF OUR CIVILIZATION AS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY The most important competitions are between evolved historic forces; not between things or in- stitutions; not between nations or races or other divisions of men, the outHnes of which change con- tinually, as their interests shift and merge; not be- tween principles in the abstract, but between prin- ciples in their abiding concretions. The fundamental rivalry of our time is not between classes, as rich and poor, nor between generalizations and categories, as science and religion, sacred and secular, labor and capital; but between the two great inheritances, in the one or the other of which every interest finds its significance and impUcit aim. To phrase the basal competition as between good and evil is only formally true. Good and evil are abstractions too, till they come to reality in living issues. When, through dis- ciplinary processes, the latent good in human causes asserts itself, then these causes are ready to have S8 CIVILIZATION VERSUS CHRISTIANITY 59 their rivalries adjusted, for the supreme realization of concrete good. The beginnings of order, reasonableness, and pur- pose dawn upon our blindly controversial time, when we see that humanity is now groping after that life in the world which is Hellenic in origin and nature. Much discipline is needed to make the aim clear. This is what men seek, if their rages shall find their own meaning, by ill-considered strikes and labor riots, by Utopian dream and anarchistic destructiveness. This is the cause of revolts against the church, as actually or supposedly obstructing the currents of life. Hence come atheisms. Heaven-defying blas- phemies, assaults upon the foundations of social order and personal character. In such a charity is to be interpreted the irreligion and license among the world's toilers. Every repression of these im- pulses, whose antisocial expression belies their na- ture, and must for their own sake be repressed, every attempt to cheat them of their impHcit desire, to misdirect them, to keep them in impotent isolation from one another, postpones their discovery of the aim that purifies them, and of their legitimate alle- giance which unites them under their invincible standard. When this implicit purpose is compre- hended, the two inheritances, confronting one another. 6o THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION may see the ground of warfare annulled, and arbitra- tions of patient wisdom may discover for both the uniting cause, end, and energy. But how is a division of rights possible between these two forces? In no realm can either concede the other's monarchy without violating its own funda- mental impulse, without disloyalty to the normal interests it holds in trust. There is nothing so secular that our rehgion does not demand to infuse it, nothing so religious that our culture can forbear to assert itself in it. "Business is business," "One world at a time," "Jesus of Nazareth, what have we to do with Thee!" — these exclusions are as impossible for Chris- tianity to tolerate, as the ecclesiastic's demand for an authority above reason is repugnant to the ac- cumulated forces of our civilization. All such de- limitations, in individual assertions, or social relations, or national or international affairs, are continually obliterated. All such concessions rouse fiercer aggres- sions. The answer is evident: it is a division not of field but of function. In every realm of act and thought each power has its own right to maintain, its own nature to unfold; in a word, its own function. Attempts at dehmitation of realm are natural enough. These are the divisions obvious to super- CIVILIZATION VERSUS CHRISTIANITY 6 1 ficiality. What so simple as that two powers which have difficulty in adjusting their respective claims should part company, Abraham for the Hill Country, Lot for the cities of the Plain! From what inunda- tions of complexities is one safeguarded who divides himself into water-tight compartments! What a rehef to have either our faith, our agnosticism, or our atheism let alone! Smug the satisfactions of the fortunate individual, the superior social class, the prosperous nation, the generation that keeps its favorite complacencies from intrusions of fact and reflection. How are churchmanship and statesman- ship simplified! Famihar analogies assist, — state and national boundaries, houselots, divorce laws. These parcellings, with their favorite distinction, the rehgious and the secular, pass for clear thinking. They are futile attempts to exclude thought; and across the boundary lines, into the vacuous domains, all forces of thought and life rush to fierce encounters. But the distinction of function in every realm of life has advantages as welcome to f orcefulness as they are repugnant to mental and moral indolence. In such distinctions one may really think and live, one's whole being impKcitly operant every moment, in every detail of action, according to the due measure of every functioning. Function works with function 62 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION in subordinations, organizations, and leaderships of life, which is then fundamentally and progressively harmonized. According to the thoroughness of the division of function is the efl&cient cooperation of all the powers of the one soul, the one humanity. What are the functional rights of our civilization as against Christianity, in the various realms where both operate? Most common has been the assertion made in be- half of science to exclusive appropriation of realm. Hopeless self-contradictions have resulted. The claim has been forced to restrict itself to physical science, with attempts to extend this domain, often with the assumption that the physical covers all that is to be known. But science has no test of its own to distinguish the physical from aught beyond, except in the sense of limiting its own undisturbed procedures, nor can it afl&rm that there is nothing beyond, nor pronounce upon the ultimate nature of anything it works upon. From no field which has been unscientif- ically claimed for its exclusive possession is science able to exclude the poetic recognition of Hfe in nature, responsive to life in the human soul, nor the vision that the Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork, nor that distinc- tively Christian view of the world of which the deepest CIVILIZATION VERSUS CHRISTIANITY 63 expression is in the words of Jesus: "Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father." Here is a purely Christian conception of the all-inclusive power, with a relation to its work that is Christianly conceived, and that involves a distinctively Christian attitude to this power and its creatures. Whether one or all of these conceptions can be maintained, is a question which our science can neither answer nor silence. The rights to be accorded to science are not of realm but of function. The right of any function is not diminished because it is related to others, and works with them to the construction of soul, humanity, universe. When the exclusive claim of science to any realm is surrendered there is ample recompense in the extension of inviolable privilege into all realms, for in every field observations must be taken, facts collated, classified, and reduced to continuous processes, with- out help or hindrance from any prejudice or any worth. The function of science extends into every variety of religious experience and into every historic manifesta- tion of the spiritual. Its critical analysis has its place beside the dying saint's rapturous vision, beside Stephen seeing the Heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, beside Jesus Himself in his profoundest overwhelmings by the 64 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Father's love. It sentinels His tomb, cross-examines the witnesses to His resurrection, weighing the evi- dence without regard to the passionate hopes and fears that await the verdict. It has no faith nor un- behef; it is indifferent to moral interests, insensible to the doom or destiny of soul, humanity, or universe. Indispensable is this implacable investigation in every realm, where it delivers results which must be ac- credited without reserve, for evaluation by other functions. The right of science in Christianity, often confused with the warfare between science and sundry dogma- tisms, opens a still deeper functional cooperation. The right of free investigation into the world as it is, is introductory to an Hellenic freedom of action in the world as it is found to be. It is impossible to derive the whole range of our ethic from Christianity. Inquiry into the origin and nature of Christianity makes evident the fact, that its founder did not contemplate any such social con- ditions as those of our time, with their pecuhar de- mands upon conduct. He dwelt in a circle of interests not directly related to the ethical field of modern Ufe. The attempt to fulfill the importunate obligations of existing conditions by immediate appHcation of the teachings of Jesus, must either distort the latter, or CIVILIZATION VERSUS CHRISTIANITY 65 leave the vast complication of modern life a moral anarchy. But the ethic which we inherit from the founders of our culture was formed in a civilization essentially the same now as then, genetically one in all its evolving course. The principles are at a different stage of development; their applications are for a different aspect of civilization; but the principles in their present form are normally unfolded for a world of culture similarly conceived. Yet the free functioning of our cultural ethic cannot be an exclusive appropriation of the field of conduct. For there are moral issues of our day no more antici- pated by the founders of our civilization than Jesus and His disciples forecast its issues of another range. The spiritual consciousness inherited from Jesus, different from our cultural consciousness in ends, grounds, and informing principle, connotes a radically different moral consciousness, end, ground, and in- forming principle, for every element of activity out- ward and inward. In every field of modern action, in every personal self-realization, in every service and sacrifice, we are in a world unprophesied by either Hellenic or early Christian. Unless one or the other of the great inheritances disappears — an issue which the deeper study of them will show to be impossible — there must be the free functioning of both ethical 66 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION inheritances in the unity of that which vindicates it- self as the supreme good. Philosophy as the intellectual construction of reality has rights which cannot be affected by any form of religion, or by anything outside the intellectual construction itself. Its processes are as independent as the methods of the special sciences. But we no longer expect to grasp reality by the mere explication of these processes. The data of philosophy include all developed Hellenic attainments and interests, secular and religious, and in respect to these its con- structions are both regulative and subordinate. Philosophy extends also over all that belongs to our unfolded Semitic religious experience, including Chris- tianity and the founder of Christianity. No claim made in behalf of the religion of Jesus can raise it, as revelation, above the reach of our cultural philoso- phy, or sink Christianity, as irrationality, beneath it. The philosophy of religion cannot permit its subject-matter to hmit the methods of investigation, as developed from the Hellenic fathers of clear and well-ordered fundamental thinking. But these meth- ods, regulative and inclusive of all the attainable religious experience of mankind, seek and serve the reality of that experience. Along these obvious lines our inheritance of philosophy finds the rights CIVILIZATION VERSUS CHRISTIANITY 67 and limits of its exercise with respect to Chris- tianity. When we inquire into the right of our inherited civilization in the religious life, we face a different condition from that which our culture meets in science, conduct, and philosophy. For these, in themselves considered, are either elements of life or reflective constructions of it : religion is hf e's wholeness, includes and energizes ail. In no rehgious experience can two ultimate rehgious principles tolerate one another. One religion may receive thoughts and achievements from another, but it does so in order to change them radically, to set them to a use transcendent of their original aims. The all-inclusive is all-exclusive. A reUgion which does not assert its absoluteness forfeits the right to be considered. Syncretism is a self- contradiction. The syncretistic overtures of Oriental religions to Christianity are invitations to a suicide pact. The attempt to form a religious consciousness from the elements of various rehgions is the surrender of religion to that other power which undertakes the synthesis, and is the denial of religion's very nature as Ufe in its completeness. The character of each religion so manipulated is caricatured, for every religion that can offer itself to the world asserts itself as universal principle, all-pervasive Spirit, absolutely 68 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION jealous God. Yet the freest search is by no means precluded into the nature of religion, in order to attain religion's final principle, which may or may not be identical with any existing faith. These reflections become concrete when the self-witness of Christianity is regarded. Christianity must be either entirely accepted or entirely rejected in its essential nature. It repudiates any syncretistic concession. Whatever contribution it accepts (and it claims all things) it receives that it may transform. Just for these reasons our cultural inheritance has its inviolable religious rights. Its primal right is to have its own religious claim considered. For we in- herit in our civilization, as truly as in our Christianity, a religious conception of the universe, a religious wholeness of thought and being. Our civilization has endured because it is not fragment but vital organization. Thus our culture and Christianity are in sharpest mutual antagonism in the religious realm, therefore in all realms. And unless some spiritual consciousness deeper than either conquers both (and this is all but inconceivable, for no such consciousness has germinated in the Western world, to which the deepest Oriental faiths are in opposition) there can be no peace between these twain till one destroys the other or transubstantiates it. CIVILIZATION VERSUS CHRISTIANITY 69 The essential nature of the religion of our cultural inheritance can be best comprehended in its funda- mental contrast with Christianity. To that our course of thought has not yet come. But the re- flections already made disclose a single, persistent religious consciousness, fundamentally, implicitly uni- versal, unfolding in the whole range of our Hellenic- Roman civilization. We recognize this one vision in the elder poets of Greece, in her dramatists, and in the thinkers of all her schools, however divergent. We perceive that this religion, even in its finest forms, is the explication of that which lay deepest in the hearts of the people. If aspirations of a different na- ture seemed to enter a universe otherwise conceived, as by Plato or Plotinus, these are either extravaga- tions, from which the Hellenic spirit returned, or they are pronounced, by a deeper appreciation, to be the larger unf oldings of the Hellenic genius and essentially true to its nature. The modern revivals of the an- cient culture, begun in secularities however absorbing, or exploited by the church, unfold their own inevitable religious consciousness. It Is a frivolous assertion, unworthy the eminent dis- ciples of an imposing religious genius, that Christian- ity is the only religion which the world can consider seriously, that the only alternative is Christianity 70 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION or no religion at all. Such an assertion, to be fair, must compare the essential spirit of Christianity with the essential spirit of other faiths. For religious competitions are between ultimate principles, as energizings of life in its completeness. They are rival- ries of universe against universe. They are competing organizations of all that is. Against such a Christian- ity such a Buddhism will assert itself in vain, unless the Occident experiences at length the Orient's universal disillusion. But against the inmost spirit of Chris- tianity there is persistently competitive a religion essentially of the spirit in which the fathers of our civilization worshipped reverently and lived achiev- ingly. This religion can be powerfully affected by Chris- tianity and yet remain essentially anti-Christian. Surely no devout soul that has learned of Jesus can fail to be profoundly influenced by Him. But it is possible in all honesty to accept many things from Jesus' life, teachings, personality, unfolding of His historic influence, and yet to put them to the service of a life and aim essentially different from His. Multi- tudes do this unconsciously; many, better instructed, with a clarifying of definite intent; up to those who know and teach a religion which gratefully receives from Jesus purity, devotion, and compassion, beyond CIVILIZATION VERSUS CHRISTIANITY 71 the devout pagan of the olden time, but turned to that universal conception, that inclusive aim of life, for which the Galilean did not live and die. This is a "modern paganism" which is the opposite of the fleshly and hideous decadence which usurps that title. This Hellenic life, free, rich, beautiful, of well- ordered, self-restrained buoyancy of soul, a life deepened, broadened, disciplined personally and soci- ally by the experience of centuries, possessor of vast wealths which include visions, joys, energies of the founder of Christianity, and developments from Him, cannot be excluded from any realm. It is a life that permeates all interests; it is religious therefore in its action in all realms. Brought face to face with a radically different spiritual consciousness it right- eously asserts itself in competition, nor can it concede a single one of its own attainments, nor limit their scope. Its unlimited freedom scorns an authority external to the human soul. Inalienable are the rights of an exultant vision of a world good and beautiful, its goodness and beauty to be realized by humanity's self-attainments and world-conquests; right of re- sponsive joy to every invitation of earth and sky, with awakenings of nobler gladness by the challenge of resistances to be overcome, exploited, and per- meated by the soul; right of resolute action in all 72 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION conflicts and problems, as these unfold, to subjugate every condition to human progress; right of the invincible spirit of youth, intensifying and deepening to the last day of mortal life, and expectant of new worlds of conquests yet to be. Against every repression and limitation these forces rise with indignant mastery. Against every bribe of Heaven or threat of Hell, they are as Shelley's Prometheus before the futile wrath of Zeus. Against every voluptuous soHcitation of faith the temptress, to find security and rest in her caressing arms from the problems, strifes, and agonies of real living, they are as Orpheus rendered insensible to the song of the sirens by his own mightier harmonies. The only religious appeal except its own to which this spirit can listen must accept the critical acumen of its historical investigation and rational analysis, and welcome its demand to hve. When an appeal that fails of these requisites is made in the name of Christianity, we must reject it, oppose it, destroy it, for the truth's sake, and for the sake of men, who hve by the truth, estimating any apparent or incidental loss of character and spirituality to be of small ac- count against the higher good. A Christ that does not fulfill this hfe in every range of its functioning cannot be the Lord of life. To accept that Christ CIVILIZATION VERSUS CHRISTIANITY 73 is to pass into condemnation. The Christianity which the religious demands of our cultural inheritance may consider must not only welcome their freest energies, but intensify, complete, and perfect them. Yet a Christianity which meets only such impera- tives is a Christianity of which this spirit has no need. For that which would then be ofifered to it is within its own implicit possession. Why not man- fully unfold itself, not beggarly receive from another? Thus we are brought to the ultimate demand which our cultural inheritance makes to Christianity. Chris- tianity is challenged to open to it a new universe, before whose glory the spirit of our civilization falls in contrite confession of its own insuflSciency and need. If in this new spiritual universe, above the attain- ment of our Hellenic inheritance in its uttermost un- foldings, our civilization, newborn, may fulfill itself by denying and transcending itself, then Christianity is able to subdue us utterly, and Jesus is enfranchised humanity's eternal leader and Saviour. CHAPTER VI THE RIGHT OF CHRISTIANITY AS AGAINST OUR CIVILIZATION Christianity's first right is the right to be itself. However intertwined its history with the develop- ments of our civilization, it keeps an underlying con- sciousness of ineradicable difference. When civiliza- tion becomes most enfranchised from the interferences of our religious inheritance, triumphantly asserts its own rights, and is confident of self-sufficiency, so that an age of brilHant cultural progress seems ready to say to Christianity, "I have no more need of thee;" then the Christian spirit most radically asserts itself, un- folds its powers from its own source, and differentiates itself most clearly from the competitive inheritance. Least favorable to Christianity are the times of its imperious intrusions into the functions of civilization. Its conquest of the Roman Empire, its medieval dom- inations, Protestant state churches, theocracies of Geneva and New England, were gains of the world in which it all but lost its own soul. Dethroned from its usurpations, exiled into its native wilderness, it 74 CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 75 may again find its Lord and itself. Though in the search there are wanderings and perplexities, losses and distresses, yet the compulsions of the pilgrimage are redemptive disciplines, that will never suffer Christianity to be merged into the cultural achieve- ments which it is its purpose to transform. The mightiest renascence of our inherited culture forced Christianity to the most vigorous renewal of its self- assertion against the world. This search makes its way into the depths of the inner life, summoned by the needs, guided by the affirmations fundamental to personality. If the essential or ground of Christianity is sought in any external authority, as the ecumenical creeds, the church, the Bible, Christ as external authority, or in any combination of such externalities, whether any or all of these are conceived to be above reason, or somehow assessors with reason, the dominant re- Ugious tendency of our time refuses to follow. Or if it be alleged that the demand of the inner life is for such authority, the assertion is a contradiction in terms, for spirit cannot depend upon anything external to itself without renouncing itself. Such a Christian- ity pronounces its inferiority to the cultural inher- itance. For the latter's impulse is not to thoughts and aims of the past as external standards. Our inherit- 76 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION ance of civilization affirms itself the progressive spirit of humanity. Especially does our civilization's reli- gious impulse emphasize personality, the inner spirit- ual universe and the indwelling God. Christianity can compete only by asserting itself to be humanity's profoundest spiritual self-realization. Thus far Christianity and our civilization in its religious strivings are at one. What distinguishes them? Simply this: that Christianity's inner king- dom is the center of Jesus' religious consciousness, the sanctuary of Jesus' spiritual Hfe. Whether a religion which is not this be regarded as greater or less than this, it is not Christianity. It may belong to the competitive inheritance, none the less so for its reception of Christian influences. On the other hand, the religious aspirations of our cultural inheritance become Christian, whatever they call themselves, by whatever ways they fulfill themselves, whatever their separations from Christian organizations and institu- tions, the moment they accept Jesus' religious con- sciousness and enter the sanctuary of Jesus' spiritual life. But at this point there seems to be encountered a contradiction, which our cultural religion is in a posi- tion to urge, between a religion of the inner life and the religion which identifies itself with an historic CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 77 occurrence. The question is also involved, whether any expression of the spiritual made in the course of an historic development can in any sense be final. There- fore we have continual attempts at constructing a Christianity without Jesus as its essential, or a Chris- tianity whose Christ is construed as other than the Jesus of history, whatever the devices employed for relating the two. A deeper spiritual insight ceases to call such a religious consciousness by the Christian name. Only in the inner depths of the spirit, it is urged by many of those who refuse such compromises, do we find God, and our own selves, and the spiritual universe. "His witness is within." And also, it is contended, here alone is certainty. How can we be sure of that which comes to us through variable re- ports of fallible witnesses, or rather, through those who distort their testimony? What would befall us, if, making faith dependent upon Jesus, He becomes too indistinct for faith to grasp! Conceive Christ, if you will, it is said, as the ideal formed by religious imag- ination out of the aspirations of humanity; but do not confuse that ideal with the external, the temporal, the uncertain. Surely our spiritual relation to the historic Jesus must pass if it signifies a religious consciousness less certain, inward, and eternal than these objections 78 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION demand. But against them is a consideration most congenial to the spirit in which these objections are made. It is the Christian assertion, which Christian experience presents as its conviction, that Jesus is not the creation of our highest religious ideals, but the creator of them. This indicates the possibility of a deeper religious inwardness than any other, involved in the identification of our religion with Him. Something of the historic Jesus we may know, and that which we may know of Him may be the inner- most spiritual possession. A thorough historic agnos- ticism is complete agnosticism, which as such cannot assert itself without denying itself. There is no knowl- edge which is not historic knowledge. Historic is each man's knowledge of himself. No immediate impres- sion has any significance save as it is compared with a previous impression, which then gains significance, and the two are included in what can only then be called experience. Thus experience begins. Identi- fication is essentially historical. To lose one's own history is to lose oneself. To lose one's own religious history is to lose one's spirit. Out of an historic ex- perience comes the development of self, including that which pronounces our deepest spiritual affirmations, in their unity, immediateness, and certainty. Our history is our spirituality. CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 79 In this historic self-knowledge we distinguish the certain, which is indispensable to our innermost being, from the less intimate elements of our experience, with their confusions of places and dates, and their blur- ring contours. Yet these elements contribute to the clearness of the inward historic certainty. In propor- tion as we maintain and recover them, clarify and relate them, does the inwardness of the experience grow in power to form itself. The more distinct and inclusive our memory of these the better able are we to distinguish the incidental from the important, and the more masterfully do we unify and unfold our spiritual life in its contents and tasks. Those lives are most significantly self-grasped which find centers of energy in their historic unfoldings. Those personalities most realize themselves who live in the dawn and growth of a great love, of an arduous obligation accepted and loyally adhered to; and above all, as the Christian confesses, in the transforming commencement and the transcendent developments of that faith in Jesus which makes His endeavor our battle. His victory our overcoming. The history of each self is formed in the history of other men and of humanity. Every personal con- sciousness is a social consciousness, each personal history is wrought in relations with other personalities. 8o THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION If we conceive a human being shut out, from the be- ginning of his existence, from conscious intercourse with other human beings, that would not invahdate his social nature, formed from other men, nor the social quality of his personal history, which is the development of that social nature; it would keep rudimentary his intellectual, moral, and spiritual powers. Each man's significant history is intensely social, especially when he concentrates and individual- izes his interactions with others into a normal and in- tense self-consciousness. Poor and shallow is the rehgious life of every man who keeps it relatively un- social, unhistorical. Deep religious experiences are for those alone who seek to make their own the reli- gious attainments of mankind's great past and arduous present, and to live the mightiest spiritual life by entering most deeply humanity's historic life. This aim is not, to receive such attainments as if they were abstractions from the historic struggles which won them, but to absorb into our own history the historic search, struggle, and passion of the achieving souls. The truth that is separated from this historic movement loses vital meaning. We re- ceive from our fellow-toilers their spiritual toil, which is their innermost being, and our personal history then becomes one with theirs. Therefore great spiritual CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 8 1 movements are historic movements. A religious tem- per like that of the Enlightenment, loosening itself from history, loses itself in superficialities, till, out of the depths, the historic life of the human spirit reasserts itself. And the great developments of this vaster life group themselves about the great historical experiences of mankind, births of political freedom, consummations of spiritual discovery, about the su- premely achieving souls, above all about Him who walked in Galilee and died on Calvary. By these historic victories men live. In the supreme historic personalities is the life of the human spirit. There is no depreciation here of that type of historic investigation which traces the relatively mechanical connections and organizations of historic phenomena. These have their place, contributory and subordinate to the his- toric Hfe of every man in the historic life of humanity. This historic experience, which each individual shares, has certainty as forming the inner and historic personal life of mankind. History's witness is within. Here we find again the distinction between the es- sential and the incidental, and also the contribution made by the latter to the former. The less certain things serve the clearness and scope of the inward historic certainty. In proportion as critical and con- structive historic science recovers, elucidates, and con- 82 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION nects them, does the inwardness of humanity's ex- perience gain power to energize us, and the more masterfully does humanity grasp and unfold its spiritual Hfe in its contents and tasks. Thus the modern critical reconstruction of Jesus' life, in fear- less independence of traditionalism, is demanded by intense evangehcal conviction. Many results must indeed always be provisional. Even of reported words and deeds of His which are inwardly characteristic of Him, we may not be sure whether they were spoken and acted by Him, or were merely onflowings of His thought and expressive of His life. Those things con- cerning Jesus without which He would not be Jesus are in the realm of inward historic certainty. The provisional recoveries, clarified and connected to- gether into an ever closer approach to the essential personaHty of Jesus, are an invaluable contribution to that inward historic experience of Him as an abiding energy, which Christianity affirms the central energy, of humanity's spiritual Hfe. Historic humanity, and each soul in it, can most deeply possess its inward spiritual certainty as it finds its historic Hfe-center. Whether Jesus is that, can be determined only by a deeper study than these preliminary considerations attempt. Our contention at this point is simply that Christianity does not CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION St, necessarily fail in that inward spiritual conviction, which is its primal test, by identifying itself with the spiritual consciousness and task of the historic Jesus. And the Christian confession is not to be disregarded, nor its significance, that Jesus is not the creation of human ideals, but the creator of the supreme of them; none the less so for taking into Himself humanity's ideal strivings and new-creating them in unity and power. Also, if the central principle of the spiritual life can be attained at all, it must be attained at some epoch of history, which may be that of Jesus. Our own time cannot arrogate to itself such discoveries, in exaltation of itself against another age past or future, whether by claiming to find that secret, or by determining that it cannot be found. The implications of that principle must indeed ever unfold, be formu- lated ever more clearly, applied ever more widely, continually beyond any prevision. But whenever that principle is historically realized as center of humanity's inimitably unfolding life, there is man- kind's innermost sanctuary and source of power. In this reception of Jesus into the depths of the soul, there are two amazing things. One is Jesus, the other is the result of accepting Him. But the inward acceptance itself is natural and famiHar. 84 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION It is nothing less than the innermost of Jesus that we are to receive; not His formulations of faith to determine our thinking, not His expressions of faith in conduct or precepts of conduct to constrain our action. Such acceptances of Jesus are in danger of accepting as His, words that He did not say and ac- tions that He did not perform. But even if we could have certainty in these respects, such acceptances of Jesus are in principle rejections of Him. They are externalizations of life, which He sought to renew inwardly. It is Jesus' innermost Spirit which has power to new-create the soul in His spiritual liberty. Only in this perception may we be able to see that all His acts and words, thoughts and feelings, struggles and victories, are of this essential in Him. It is this ever deepening search of the innermost of Jesus that makes our life His increase of living in us, a search that penetrates to Him through all that the reports of His words and deeds present to us, and calls into its service every development of faculty and experience. Then we become by His power new-created men in a new-created spiritual universe. The essential of Jesus is His own spiritual life in His actual attainment of it. Every departure from that renders Christianity empty and powerless, till irresistible inner forces sweep us back from vain in- CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 85 ventions concerning Him, to His real self. The calam- itous substitutions began early in Christian history. In apostolic days, against Jesus stood the Messiah who was expected from a realm external to humanity. As men dreamed of the external future Christ, so they fancied the preexistent Christ, external to humanity. Into this dogma the alleged miraculous birth was taken, as testifying to His fundamental separateness from men. Then the Christ became to the church's Hellenized conceptions, the Logos, to whom the so- journing of a few years in the flesh was an incongruous episode, and whose saving power could be directed only to apotheosize men, that is, to dehumanize them. Then He was exiled into the Nicene trinity, where, to vast sections of Christian thought, He has remained. He has become priest and victim of a superfluous ceremony of reconcihng God to men. He has been sacramentally paganized. Or the Christian mystic, longing to recover Jesus, has sought Him in imagin- ings at once too psychical and too esoteric, which separate Him from the central place and creative power of the inner Hfe. A recrudescent Platonism has conceptualized Him into "the essential Christ," or "the ideal Christ." In consequence of these separations, the formative power of the Christian Ufe has had to be sought 86 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION elsewhere than in Jesus, and sought in vain. One result is the phenomenon of an hesitant Christianity to which Jesus is only incidental; for those vagaries, passing out of fashion in the world's thought, leave nothing to fill the void. The departures from the real Jesus, with His abiding moral and spiritual power, which is His real presence in renewed humanity, have indeed been efforts to express His infinite value to men. But these efforts, due in part to the aHen influence of our Western civilization, reached the opposite of their intent. They removed Him from that inmost being of human life, where we may receive from Him the grace to look up to God with His confiding filial devotion, into the faces of our fellow- men with His redemptive brotherhood, and out upon the world with His mastery of it to the soul's eternal purposes. Those efforts have been solicitous to save the divinity of the Saviour. This assertion Christianity must pronounce essential to the absolute sufficiency which as a reHgion it must claim for itself, the salva- tion being of Jesus; but they failed of their intent by losing this salvation's origin, nature, and power. With wavering faith in Jesus Himself, they have gone out to conceptions of Him which His character and mission repudiated. CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 87 Yet genuine Christian faith, wiser than its creed, has ever opened the human spirit to the inflowing of Jesus' concrete personaUty. In our day especially, Christian thought is sweeping on to the real Jesus. If the present tendency is too much occupied with the events of His career and the details of His teach- ing, and too little with His personal remoulding of humanity, yet through the attainment of anything that belongs to Jesus, the religious consciousness penetrates to the reality of Jesus, to His spiritual life of sonship, brotherhood, victory over the world, and finds Him the new-creative energy of men. The return of thought to the real Jesus has been led by the faith, that the hfe which hveth in us is the hu- man hfe formative of human Hfe as God would have it lived. The Hfe that Jesus lived in the flesh, that we may Hve that Hfe in the flesh, may be found to include all the essentially reHgious strivings, aspirations, and visions of mankind, as an individual Hfe alone can really include them. His representativeness does not detract from His originaHty, but is His originality; for aU these spiritual powers He united in that faith, devotion, love, hoHness in one, which made a person- ality distinct and individual, and which does not overwhelm other personalities, but draws them up 88 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION continually into that spiritual realm where He is Lord. The spiritual life which He imparts, while inclusive of religious values generally, has always a distinctiveness new-created from the originality of Jesus. When Christianity ceased to be an historic novelty, when it became domiciled among men, in innumerable contacts with other interests, the uniqueness of its fundamental principle became the more evident. The consciousness of the internal difference deepens in times when the confessors of Jesus are repeatedly drawn away to those religious conceptions, activities, and aims, which are of the general religious experience of mankind, and when Christianity is tempted to conform itself to the religious tendency of the hour, for then Christian life and thought irresistibly re- assert themselves from Him in the freshness of a rediscovery. The incessant change in the forms of Christian thought and action, as historic changes impose unprecedented demands, makes the wonder greater that never in this continuous flow is its deter- minative current mingled with other floods of the spirit, except as it transforms them into its own impulse. The illimitable unfoldings of this life reveal the inexhaustibleness of its historic origin. Therefore whether men came into the convictions CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 89 of the Christian religion from lives debased or noble, self-centered or serviceable, they testify to a funda- mental revolution; they confess themselves new crea- tions in a world where old things have passed away by becoming new, where to their illumined vision opens that which eye had not seen, nor ear heard, neither had it entered the heart of man. The initia- tions of Christian experience are not infrequently catastrophic, clashings of spiritual universes, and this may be whether the revolution is from life-purposes large or mean, from conceptions materialistic or ideal. Yet such dramatic revulsions are not necessary to vindicate the uniqueness of Christianity. More convincing is the manifestation in a Christian life that unfolds with the general unfolding of human faculties, in clearer and deeper consciousness of dis- tinctive nature derived from Jesus its original. The inwardness of Christianity is the acceptance of the spiritual universe of Jesus. The inquiry of the disciples is, "Master, where dwellest Thou?" Its search is to come and see where He dwells, and there to abide with Him. The life derived from His life will indeed express itself in forms that He never con- templated, in actions and organizations that He never forecast, to penetrate and subdue realms of which He had no knowledge. But in all these transformations 90 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION the innermost vitality is the heart of the actual, the historic Jesus. The increase of faith for which the disciples must pray, is that increase of faith in Jesus which appropriates His faith. It is He that saves, not any construction of Him, which, presuming to make Him greater, makes Him less, or may lose Him altogether. It is this personal Jesus who also evokes a personal confidence, love, loyalty, devotion, which Christianity alone possesses, and which makes its confessors more than conquerors through Him that loved us, and which renders Him, in the unsearchable depths of His personal life, accessible even to the most ignorant and to the little child, in a power that unfolds all men's inner life into His likeness. But an objection seems to arise in the Christian experience itself, an objection similar to that which we have considered, but urged from another view- point. This faith in the Jesus of history may appear to separate our faith from its object. He lived far away and long ago, but that power which is to form the spiritual universe within us must be in immediate touch with us. Therefore men have substituted for the historic Jesus the ''ideal Christ," suggested by the Man of Galilee, or imperfectly expressing itself in Him and passing on. Or men have announced the discovery of a "living Christ," to take the place CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 91 of the historic Jesus. Christian mysticism seeks to sublimate the historic, to wrest its absorbing object away from the distant and the past. And the experi- ence of simple hearts that are increasingly conscious of their Lord's presence, and who declare with interior conviction *'the Christian Hfe a friendship with Christ," may easily make the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels only prehminary to the indwelling Christ. In favor of this objection to the identification of Christianity with the historic hfe of Jesus, it must indeed be acknowledged, that the demand for the immediateness of the personal power that new-creates our spiritual being is of the essential of religion, that unless Christian experience has this immediateness in ever deepening realization, its Lord becomes "A dead fact, stranded on the shore Of the oblivious years." And it is also to be admitted that a current answer to this difficulty is most unfortunate in its expression at least. We cannot be satisfied with the answer that faith has a power to conceive its object as present, while in reality it is long ago and far away. But both the objection and the answer, which is suggested by the fear of an unethical and enervating type of mysticism, fail to see the inwardness of faith's posses- 92 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION sion in the actual personality of Him who of old walked in Galilee. Our knowledge of Jesus, as of every other, is me- diated by that which is in space and time. But of no man is our knowledge phenomenally originated, by inference from sense experience. So all thinkers acknowledge, whose views are not limited to sense experience. We know our fellowships because our personality is social in its nature. Whenever any sense experience suggestively mediates to us a personality, then personality meets personality in the unity of the inward spiritual universe. Spirit is where it ener- gizes,— an affirmation confirmed by every soul that loves. And this is no less certain of men of the past than of contemporaries. Spirit is when and where it energizes, — an affirmation confirmed by every soul that lives in the power imparted by a great soul. Whatever the relations of personality to time (and its relation to space is not any more restrictive) person- ality is not constricted by time in any wise. Time is for the soul, not the soul for time. Whatever person- ality's use of time, it is use of it. And the presence with us of one who energizes within us is the presence of his actual, historic personality, not of some other thing. This is most clear in the mighty personahty of the CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 93 actual Jesus. All that we learn about Him, as we say, takes us to the inmost soul of Him, unless we are con- tent to make Him an external authority or standard. They who saw Jesus and heard and touched Him were no nearer to Him spiritually, that is, really, than we may be today. Not so near indeed, for they did not know the essential of Him as well as we may know it. It is not that the words and actions of Jesus pass with undiminished power down the centuries and across far spaces of land and sea: between the innermost spirit of Jesus and our spirit there are no centuries, no spaces of land or sea. The assertion of the tran- scendence of soul to the phenomenal order is made whenever the inspiration of a great soul, by whatever mediations brought to us, kindles our souls into new life. And this is most evident, when, from a reported word of Jesus, from a record of His service, from our constructive insights into the organizations of His words and deeds, we experience His very power pos- sessing us. His very life arising within us. Yet humble faith and obedient love entreat a re- sponse, even as they are conscious of an indwelling. The Fourth Gospel, whose message of Jesus' life in His disciples is severely ethical and spiritual in spite of its metaphysic, has not only the words "I in them," but also, "They in Me." It is not for us to formulate 94 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION His heart of inexpressible tenderness who dwells in the innermost life of God forevermore. But as love has the inalienable conviction that those holy ones de- parted, whose character and vision we have incom- pletely made our own, still care for us with affection which puts to shame our infrequent thought of them, so, but yet more vitally, must it be with Him whose redemptive power is the immediate salvation of every believer. It is very truth that "the dead live when we think of them;" true, beyond the wan fancy of a dreamy subjectivism, to every man who has begun to know the ethical actions and reactions of the inner life, the indivisible realm of souls. The saved cannot be more deeply conscious of the Saviour than He is conscious of the least of the saved. In that conscious- ness is our deeper life. This does not change, but deepens the significance of the historic Jesus, for He is the same Jesus who is ever mindful of His own. In the historically evangelical conviction is formed the sane Christian mysticism, which refuses to de- grade its ethical and spiritual fellowship with its Lord by any sickly fancies pertaining to the realm of sense, and allying themselves with a belated conceptualism. Or when we feel or express what Jesus is to us in imaginative terms of the lower order, we must be careful to remember that they are but symbols, by CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 95 which the ethical and spiritual life of Jesus in us must suffer no detriment. Where the presence of Jesus is, in moral and spiritual power, there may be also, to certain temperaments, or to attainments new or deep of His moral and spiritual life, normal reflections of that immediateness in forms which it is not lawful to utter. The ecstatic trait of Jesus has its place in the disciple. But to those who seek such experiences for emotional gratification it must be said, "That way madness lies," — a madness infecting moral judgment and spiritual integrity. The Christian aim is, that the ethical, spiritual power of Jesus shall consume all that is not of Himself, and create His own life within us, and make us, in all holy and serviceable living, instruments through which His own redemptive task may strive on. The historic, the real Jesus is all the ideal Christ we need. It is this Jesus who is ever with His own, and more profoundly indwelling presence there need not be and cannot be; while we await patiently that fulfillment which is not of a different order, though of an incomparably higher range: "I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." Thus Christianity need be none the less religion ot the inmost spiritual life for identifying itself with Jesus. Nothing more than this assertion is sought to 96 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION be established at this point, in these preliminary con- siderations. It has indeed been impossible to speak of the identification, essentially characteristic of the Christian faith, in any other language than that of humbly exultant certainty. But there is implied no desire to force that conviction upon critical reflection. With the same limitation of intent we turn to the second test which Christianity must meet. Does its identification of itself with the historic Jesus prejudice the following claim, which it must make in order to be considered at all: the claim to be the vital principle of humanity in humanity's widest scope and furthest unfoldings, to be humanity's reahzing, energizing, and completing power. In passing from one's inner self to the life of human- ity we are not leaving one realm for another. We are intuiting the inner personal life more clearly and feel- ing it more intensely. In the depths of its own per- sonality every soul finds other souls in inahenable fellowship. The impossibility of accounting for our knowledge of our fellowmen by inferences from sense impressions, necessary as these are to stimulate and mediate that knowledge, connotes the inner com- munity of men with men, the spiritual nature of unions of thought and aim and love. Personality is socially realized because social in its nature. Essen- CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 97 tial to the inviolable center of each personality are receptions, outflowings, and communions of life with life. Without these self were blank and nothing- ness. There can be no limit to this internal, essential fel- lowship. My own self I must seek in every man the world over, in every rational being the spaces through. No man of the past is dead to me. From every soul of the future my soul must be revivified. Every enmity is my variance with myself, agony of self- disruption. Every righteous conflict with another is only for love's sake. In every aloofness I forsake my- self. Every indifference to another is suicidal. With every antagonist I must be reconciled, and that in the depths of his spirit and mine. Here are inviolable personal reserves, spiritual self-preservations of souls that will not meet souls in any depreciations of per- sonal dignity and holiness. The self-attainment is by self-imparting, which presses on to bear all burdens, to suffer in every misery, to expose itself to every injury, to reconcile, to redeem. These fellowships of life wherein I gain and give myself are with men in their communions with men, in a fellowship with universal spiritual life most individ- ually, personally intuited, conceived, felt and willed. The more deeply my soul is stirred, the more do I 98 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION penetrate this boundless fellowship, this all-inclusive unity. Of this, few are distinctly conscious, for few have discovered their own innermost being, yet this unity is the ground of every human relation and the premonition of its perfecting. It is a humanity to be achieved, a spiritual universe in its becoming. From every soul to every soul, in every touch of soul on soul, there is the summons of unconditioned love, however vague or inarticulate: "I am thine and thou art mine, for the innermost of personality is thine and mine. Descend thither, find thyself, that thou and I may find one another, and all men, and mankind, and all who are yet untraced in the endlessness of souls at one." This universal unity of human fellowship, individ- ually realized in the innermost of the soul and the spiritual order, does not transfer us into a realm of abstractions. Here is unmingled concreteness. We have to do with realities, not concepts ; with immediate life, not with translations of it into thought; with ex- perience, not reflection, save as reflective, conceptual, generalizing thought makes the reality clearer, so becoming an element of it. All the unity that has been wrought or is to be accomplished is in the actual living of real men. The whole process is of living personalitieSj attaining themselves and one another CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 99 in historic work and play, struggle and achieve- ment. There is no antinomy of the historic and the ideal. In this real drama all other rational creatures are included, else they would not be in rational relation with us; for the ground of rational relation is this personal social self-realization; and we have learned to repudiate the possibility of anything out of rational relation with us. It is but a step to the transforma- tion of everything that is, down to the simplest exist- ence and through all the stars and star mists, into this one personal universe, achieving itself in vital relations of a universal social life. Nor can this truly historic endeavor of all things ever be sublimated into a different kind. Forever this spiritual universe, which we now call humanity, is simply vital, historic experience, whose higher forms indeed we cannot forecast, any more than we can trace the forms below us, but whose concrete historic quality is essential. Therefore there is no separation from this fellowship, no change into another order, for those to whom all physical seemings are overpassed. Nor is conscious- ness of individuality dimmed when we see that the final unity and sufficient power is the energy of the omnipotent ordering, the all-penetrating love. For it is just this immanent divine which makes the con- lOO THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Crete unity of beings and their unfoldings wherein He worketh. Of this history, concrete, actual, for it can be nothing less, Christianity affirms that Jesus is the central energy. Our present argument is not that a central energy is essential. Our argument is not, at this point, that Jesus fulfills the requisite conditions for this power, if it is essential. But we urge that there is no disparagement to the deepest, the most spiritual conception of humanity, when the Christian confession is uttered (and here again there is forced upon us the language of humbly exultant certainty, which we would not force upon any man): "From Jesus I receive the vision and energy for my eternal task in the one historic life, in the universal spiritual order. From Jesus I receive it, not from any 'essen- tial' or 'ideal Christ,' I receive it from Jesus in His doing of this historic task; and since it is received from Him and not from another source, I proclaim Him sufficient and essential for the task of every man." All this history of humanity self-realized is indeed in God and God is in it all. But God cannot be in it, save as He is in its limitations and struggles, or rather — that we may not fall into unreal abstractions — in every limited and struggling soul. And God's central, unifying energy in it, we may look for in a soul that CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION loi is limited, that struggles, and achieves the task of personality in humanity, a task whose real nature our study has yet to seek. When and where this soul does its individual work, fulfills its personal task, makes no difference, if only it is when and where it may be accessible to all souls. The possibility at least of the immortality of all souls is requisite, that this soul's accomplishment may reach them all, and that they may complete this soul's influence upon them, each in its own individual- ity and its endlessly unfolding inward fellowships with other souls; but this requisite is given in the affirmation of concrete, spiritual humanity. That which this soul accomplishes must, in its in- fluence upon others, its Hfe in others, be unfolded as variously as there are persons to live and works to do. Christianity affirms that the power of humanity's self-realization is a man individual, historic, who attained fife's essential energy and peace, whence He pours out regenerative direction and competency upon all who will receive Him, for the realization of an harmonious spiritual universe; and that this man in His task, fulfilled in and through the limitations of time and place and circumstance, inheritance and temperament, through moral struggle and spiritual growth, is the center of God's redemptive working. I02 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION The right of Christianity to present itself to the competitive inheritance as identifying itself with Jesus of Nazareth, is all that is contemplated at this point. In the depths of personality the right main- tained itself. In that inner life in its universal social realization the right maintains itself. And no less must it be considered as we toil along life's dusty roads, with the carpenter of Nazareth. As we enter with Jesus life's penetralia, we feel ourselves endued with a transforming power, that goes back with us new-created men to new-create whatever confronts us. The distinctiveness of this spirit is manifest in its leaving the externals of life unaffected, save by revolutions working to the sur- face from depths transformed. Eccentricity of con- duct, fantasticalness of opinion, aloofness from any human interest, are repugnant to it. They caricature Christianity into an external thing in competition with other external things. The disciple of Jesus speaks no unctuous phrase, affects no holy tone. He receives genially whatever forms of truth and beauty are set before him by the successive phases of history. He comes eating and drinking, guest equally gracious in house of Pharisee or Publican, most at home in the huts of the lowly. He is frankly man of the world in accounting nothing human CHRISTIANITY VERSUS CIVILIZATION 103 foreign to himself. In humanity's battles he fights in the high places of the field, appreciative of all loyal alHes, though they be ignorant of the cause and unconscious of the great protagonist. He is child with every child, keeps unquenchable the hope and passion of youth, exults in the heat and burden of the day, which he would mitigate to men's power to endure, receives into his reverent sympathy the pathos and majesty of old age, yet is ever conscious of the eternal beneath life's transiencies. He rejoices with them that rejoice, and with a higher joy. He weeps with them that weep, in redemptive sorrow. Dear to him are men's household words, for he knows their derivations from the supernal ten- derness. He receives all things into mind and heart, from the heights of the sky, from the primordial star mist, from every mysterious origin and ex- pansive strife of life in every form, and transforms them into his own nature. There is no beauty that is not his deeper delight, no passion that is not his intenser flame, and over against every experience of gain or loss, success or disillusion, he flings wide an entrance into the myriad-portaled city of the soul. Jesus' acceptance of the common possessions of man- kind is because He knows Himself to be of a spirit which is able to subdue all things to itself. This is I04 THE CHRISTI.\N RECONSTRUCTION the divine breath that broods upon the waters of our social chaos. This is the transforming Hght upon the void and desolation and darkness of human conditions. This is the effectual word that creates the spiritual universe, which shall be when all the forms of things have passed. Thus far we have been occupied with the radical division of modern life between the two inheritances, the Aryan and the Semitic. The nature of each in- heritance remains to be considered. Only by such an inquiry can we hope to find their mutual relations; and only in this way is attainable that unity of Hfe which is the deepest longing of our time. PART SECOND JESUS AND MODERN LIFE CHAPTER I THE TWO WORLD-CONQUESTS The Aryan genius is world-appropriating: the Semitic genius is world-transcending. The difference between our civilization and Chris- tianity grows in significance, as we observe their separate developments from diverse origins, find ourselves engaged in competitive obligations and con- fused between mutually opposing endeavors to reach a unity of life. The situation has made us suspect that we are involved in one of the deepest problems, if not the final problem, in forms more perplexing than have beset any previous age. Surely the question that confronts civilized man and Christian man is not, whether we are to conquer the world or be conquered by it. Civilization as such, and Christianity in its assertion of the soul, proclaim that it is man who must conquer. In this affirmation they are at one, and by this affirmation they discern their common enemies. But they sepa- rate in their determinations of the nature of the con- quest. It is the appropriation of the world by the 107 io8 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION human soul, says culture; the affirmation is most clear and vigorous in the Hellenic fulfillments of culture. Not so, says Christianity; the soul conquers the world only as it makes itself independent of even an appropriated world. All thoughts, desires, and interests, which either contestant deems of value, range themselves under the one or the other of these principles. Later times than ours may see this distinction more clearly: no time, it would seem, can feel it more distressfully. From this rift in our own age opens the interminable problem, which each age, as each individual, must solve for itself. We stand before two distinct prin- ciples, each claiming to be supreme. We contemplate two mutually exclusive ends, each of which presents itself as final. By the perception, choice, and reahzed outworking of the one or the other of these alterna- tives, must all elements of life be determined, every task accomplished, every condition rectified, and every human potency liberated. If the one by which the soul's victory over the world is to be gained allows the other any scope, it must be as contributory to the unconcessive higher principle and aim. The conquest of the world by humanity! All things put under the feet of man, who is crowned with glory and honor! This impulse directs us to the pregnable summits of THE TWO WORLD-CONQUESTS 109 the universe. Above every height towers the human soul. But is it the appropriative or the transcendent power that has the right to say, I have overcome the world? World-appropriation involves world-completion. Nothing in the world comes and gives itself into man's hand. Passive acceptance of a good, were that con- ceivable, makes it a blank. A generation which in- herits a wealth that it does not continually recreate goes bankrupt, smitten with penury of soul. We appropriate anything only by completing it from our own selves. Every psychical action upon sense im- pression strives to complete as it appropriates. Every external datum awaits our fiat. This primal neces- sity stimulates the human spirit to follow along this path, to infuse ever more of itself into its appro- priation of the world, to complete all things into beauty and order. To complete the world, the spirit must in that labor complete itself, to the uttermost self-development and self-mastery, for its domination and perfecting of all things. Because the world yields to the elaborations of this impulse, we delight in it, as an artist delights in his own creation, and as God rejoices in the works of his hands. Because the world resists, we dehght in it still more, with the joy of a conquest in which our powers expand; unless we may no THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION find at length that the resistance is too strong for us. That misgiving the Hellenic genius thrust resolutely away, though never unaware of it, in order to enter and possess realms which are less the gifts of the gods than the soul's own achievements, a world worthy to be possession and delight of self-attained humanity. World-appropriating and world-completing is the principle of our inheritance, from the splendid origins of our civilization. The first descriptive word sufiices: to appropriate is to complete. World-transcending implies world-destroying. The world has lost value to the soul that has risen above it. "Heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou of earth's wheel:" though the cup was fashioned on the wheel. There is need of sobriety here, lest in essaying to surmount the world we attain the void, lest losing the world we lose instead of find our own soul. The soul that knows its transcendent destiny is indeed dependent upon flesh and sense and all their elaborations, for its dis- cipline and development. If it ignores them, as do the mystics who lack humihty, it sinks into a nothing- ness from which no new creation can arise. Yet it is in opposition to the world that it realizes itself, and THE TWO WORLD-CONQUESTS iii v/^hatever the world contributes to this self-realiza- tion is to be transformed into spiritual quality, and as world quality ceases to be. If it should be found that everything acquired by the Aryan genius may be thus directed and transubstantiated, the transcendent aim would be none the less, but all the more evidently, world-destroying: nor in such use of its means is this principle postponed, obscured, or compromised. World- transcending and world-destroying is the prin- ciple of our Semitic inheritance. The first descriptive word sufiices : to transcend is to destroy. The principles bear racial names, because the fore- most representatives of each principle are respectively of the Semitic and the Aryan race. These principles are not abstractions or generalizations, but are con- crete and historically militant. The most valuable contribution of each race to humanity is its working out of the one or the other principle, which is thus its characteristic genius, its essential quality. Not that either principle confines itself to either division of mankind, or that any accident, as of mixed blood, would necessarily be important. There has never been a normal man of the Aryan family who has not felt the impulse to assert the soul enfranchised from the world: to every Semite the world has often pre- sented itself as his heart's desire. This complexity 112 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION is in the earliest traceable manifestations of the human spirit. The two tendencies grow together with human growth. Each has been dependent upon the other. Each contributes to the other's energy. The soul that would appropriate the world must stand above it in mastery. Otherwise the world has no significance. The soul that would transcend the world must have the world to develop the soul by, through opposition and transformation. Else the soul has no content. But it does not follow that each of these tendencies has equal rights, as in a synthesis where each may pursue the united aims of both. Such prevalent com- promise is but dimly conscious of the principles in competition. The two principles, vague and con- fused, tend to mutually exclusive self-assertion, ig- noring which most men are left to antagonisms of a life divided against itself. There is flung upon the earth the sword that rends asunder. No man can serve these two masters and attain an undivided, con- centered and self-reaHzing manhood. The alternative becomes most significant when we find that our attitude to the world, either to appro- priate it or to transcend it, determines the soul's con- sciousness of itself, of humanity, and of God. These words, world, soul, humanity, God, connote all but inextricable confusions of human thought. THE TWO WORLD-CONQUESTS 113 Each blends with the others, loses itself in the others. The word world is the vaguest of them, because the world is the most difficult of access, and it com- plicates the other conceptions almost beyond hope of solution. When we seek to obliterate its confusions by saying, The world as world is not, everything is soul; then its remonstrant persistency seems to answer, The soul is not, and humanity is not, everything is world. We attempt to lift the world up into God, and fear lest we have dragged God down into the world. The world is we know not what, except that it is the distracter, perhaps the destroyer, of the spirit- ual universe. What help may we gain from that to determine the nature of the other three mysteries? The difficulty gives the answer. The world is that which the soul has to overcome. In this progressive overcoming the soul gains the realities of the spiritual universe. Whatever we affirm of the soul, humanity, and God, is vague and imperfect prophecy, whose rudimentary value is dependent upon our partial attainments in the conflict with that which ever opposes. All preliminary definitions of reality are tentative, confused and self-contradictory. Complete definition would be infinite realization. If we could say our eternal yea and nay in the perfect utterance of 114 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION its meaning then our warfare would be accomplished. There are indeed overwhelming spiritual convictions won in the progress of the strife. In these we antici- pate our triumph and reinforce our struggle. The constant opponent itself we declare to be in the spirit- ual universe, which is the all in all, for indeed against that opposition the soul becomes conqueror. But the world is spiritual only to the soul that makes it so, and only by the strife that makes it so is our kingdom won. Here is the business of every man, and his all- inclusive business. This is the one historic toil of humanity. We may let the world conquer us if we will. But if we choose to be men we must be men engaged in conquering the world. Only then can there be for us, soul, humanity, God at all. But in the world-conquest there is disclosed the great alternative, whether by appropriating the world or by transcending it, we may attain soul, humanity, and God. The attitude to the world determines, first, what the soul is. Modern thought emphasizes the relation of consciousness to its object, discerns the accom- paniment of the physical organism to every mental action, acknowledges the futility of the attempt, by any means mystical or magical, to withdraw the soul from the world. The intensifying of this emphasis has led from morbid introspection, empty speculation, THE TWO WORLD-CONQUESTS 115 and the self-centering which is self-devastation, out into observation and science, wholesome objectivities, and an ethic of practical aims. The soul knows itself, feels, realizes itself, in the measure of its awakening to the world. There has developed in our time the conception of the soul in terms of activity, with thought as means to action, and itself of the nature of that which it serves. Thus in its encounter with the world, the soul gains itself, and becomes more clearly self-cognizant, self-feeling, and self-determining. And the world which it encounters is increasingly subdued to mental distinctions and organizations, is made the means of realizing the more abundant life of man. But there break in upon us great Semites, and some- thing in our inmost self forbids to evade or to repulse them. "The world passeth away and the lust for it." They do not mean simply that each man has to die, that enjoyment decays with the decay of physical powers, or that the possession of worldly goods is subject to accident. But they are pronouncing judg- ment upon the world in its relation to the soul; that its appropriation cannot be the soul's end. They are affirming of the soul that its nature and destiny are not to be found in the appropriation of the world. Yet the world that passeth away is substantial antagonist. They call the soul to arms against it, Ii6 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION but not to the appropriative conquest of it. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul!" The Semitic prophets are not like the Aryan Buddhas, who bid us withdraw from the world, retreat from the strife. They keep us in the midst of secularities. Their complete Gospel is for those who are most constrained by physical neces- sities, that in the world we may assert the soul against the world, by its transcendence of the world. Again, humanity is determined by its relation to the world. This means more than that the decisive personal alternative extends to all men. Humanity connotes vital interrelations of men, organizations unto a life that embraces all men, and which confronts the alternative, humanity's conquest of the world by appropriating it or by transcending it. That humanity is determined by its relation to the world is, in its popular interpretation, one of the most famiHar conceptions of our time. The most brilliant achievement of science is agreed to be the tracing of the order of nature up into man, or the tracing up of mankind, not out of this natural order, but as the most complete unfolding of the natural order that is known to us. This discovery has more than theoret- ical interest and interpretative significance. It dis- covers the innumerable bonds that unite us with the THE TWO WORLD-CONQUESTS 117 physical world. Along these vital connections it finds remedies for disease, cooperative adjustments to vast physical forces, applications of inheritance and variation, rectifications of a life which turns from barren speculations and presumptuous desires, en- largings of a life that sanely acknowledges nature its mother and the world its home. We lose much of this advantage if we seek to restrict evolutionary con- tinuity to physical organizations. The discovery makes its beneficent way into mental elaborations of sense, into vital feeling and normal aims, into harmo- nious political and social organizations, that is, into the progressive constructions of a broader and hap- pier humanity. In this epochal discovery humanity is determined by its relation to the world. The result is the mighty reinforcement of the Aryan resolve, to subject the world to the spirit of humanity by the appropriative and completive world-conquest. Our spiritual affirmations welcome the furthest possible extensions of the physical into the life of mankind, for thus is heightened our estimate of that in our humanity which physical evolution does not account for, and which is not derived from it, however closely intertwined with it. Else every significance and worth is swept away, including significance and value to be pronounced upon the physical process Ii8 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION itself, or the denial of its significance and value. Our age is awakening to this perception, that the further the natural evolutionary process extends into the organization of each life and of humanity, the higher must be the nature of the spiritual which is beyond that process and which is the final determiner of it, and the more extensive and intimate must be man's conquest of it. The consummate achievement of natural science thus far is to become the awakener of spirit, the mighty instrument of personal self-realiza- tion, the unfolder of interior worths. It is more clearly impossible than before to consent that the world shall conquer the soul. In this higher sense then, humanity determines itself by its relation to the world. This reassertion of the human spirit by the very power which seemed about to overwhelm it, is kin- dling the prophets of humanity to affirmations of more sublime unfoldings. Humanity's task engages the world more broadly and closely, the task of an un- precedented world-conquest and a larger self-realiza- tion. There is nothing in earth or sky which the aggregating forces of humanity need deem mightier than its own rediscovered self. These forces become more deeply conscious of their unity as man combines with man, power with power, in the conquest which is to be won by all mankind for all mankind. The new THE TWO WORLD-CONQUESTS 119 energy, grasped first by lonely thinkers, now gaining companionship, and impatient for its poets and artists, who will appear to express it when it is felt more deeply in the heart of the common people, is already imparting a general buoyancy, now in its beginnings. By the rectification of every repressive condition, by the breaking of every chain, by the subjugation of realm after realm, force after force, the one life of man- kind, humanity, forms itself by the union of souls in their great task. So each personality finds its stronger and more joyous self in the self-realization of humanity by its appropriative conquest of the world. This awakening is accessible to the Semitic prin- ciple, if only Christianity, in the day of its opportunity, will free itself from repressive traditions, clarify it- self from obscurations, and assert itself without com- promise in its essential simplicity and power. The Semitic evangel comes with austere criticism and com- pletive inspiration. Humanity is to the Semitic genius the kingdom of God, a militant conception which belongs purely to the world-transcending con- quest. Current interpretations of this phrase in the other sense are its denial. Its realization of humanity is in the accomplishment of mankind's spiritual potencies in holy love. The world is essential to it only in its task of transcending the world. In the I20 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION passing of the world the spiritual fellowship abides, with its fulfillment of every soul. Every Aryan conquest of the world, and every Aryan progress of knowledge of the world and of power over it, the Semitic spirit uses in its contest of different quality. All the works of the competitive inheritance it directs to the transcendent purpose. What shall it profit humanity if it shall gain the whole world and lose its own soul? Finally, the soul's attitude to the world determines its consciousness of God. This consciousness is im- plicit in the other two which we have regarded. In this consciousness we are penetrating the depths of the others. Absolutely religious, directed Godward, in Him and for Him, is either conquest of the world by the human soul. Not that our consciousness of God is derived from the world. The Heavens declare the glory of God only to him who has beheld that glory in the Heavens of the soul. The whole earth is full of His glory only to the soul that He has filled. Experience of the world leads to experience of God, only by awakening a spiritual consciousness which is not of the world, and which cannot be drawn from the data of sense and their organizations by mental processes. Even when this different apprehension asks the world to reecho THE TWO WORLD-CONQUESTS 121 its affirmations, the answer is given in the various and conflicting voices of a world which must first be con- quered by the soul, and the overcoming of which is the revelation of God in it. The world affirms spirit only so far as spirit conquers it. The attempt has failed, to evolve the religious con- sciousness of mankind from man's experience and interpretation of the world. This experience has awakened a deeper experience, and every religious interpretation of the world, whether attempted by savage or civilized men, has applied a consciousness which came forth from a sublimer mystery to explain the perplexities of a lower range. The view is winning an ever wider assent, that at the root of mankind's religious development is a consciousness of God, vague indeed and unpurified. We need not be surprised to find in crude peoples, along with bewildered animisms and gross totemisms, some gropings after the power unique and creative. Conscious rehgion began when this consciousness began. This movement is found to manifest itself further back than we had supposed possible, and its origins are implicit in human con- sciousness from depths beneath our imagining. This is the ineradicable power that draws men out of the superstition which ever seeks to pervert it. It is this implicit faith which endued the early prophets of 122 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION humanity with incalculable energies, and which ever sweeps up from profundities of the human spirit at the crises of individuals and humanity. The soul's attitude to the world determines what our consciousness of God shall be, but the attitude is assumed by the soul as conquerer of the world. The philosophy of religion has only recently ap- proached an adequate recognition of the place of the world in the conception of rehgion, adding this relation to that between God and the soul, at the same time giving to the word soul its personal-social meaning. Yet the venerable definition of religion, whose many variants only restate the original terms, "The soul's union with God," has not yielded to another with the world added, but has unfolded the significance of the word union: in relation with the world is the soul's union with God achieved. Now that the soul is con- ceived in terms of action, its union with God cannot be regarded as fundamentally contemplation, or feeling, or any intellectually monistic or esthetically mystical absorption of the soul in God. It is a union ethical, essentially spiritual, as originated by the holy, infinite, and eternal One, and answering back to Him. It is the union of doing His will. It is the union of the servant with his Lord, wherein service attains the perfect freedom. It is the union of the son with the THE TWO WORLD-CONQUESTS 123 Father, perfected in the prayer, "Thy will be done." In this union contemplation and feeling are present but subordinate. This is the divine union of the whole man of us, and of humanity organized for its divine task. The field of this task is the world. The task is the conquest of world by spirit. The ethical, spiritual union with God is its inmost meaning. From Him, in Him, and unto Him, we overcome the world. This religious conquest of the world is either world- appropriating or world-transcending. The former as well as the latter is religious, and so proclaims itself when conscious of itself. The Hellenic divinities were gods of men's tasks, and with impulse to unite themselves in one divine will, for the accom- plishment of the supreme organization of world-em- pire. For men to attempt works which were not of the will of the gods, by powers not of their inbreathing, was insolence, sin at its extreme, incurring remediless destruction. The classic philosophy is religious. Its ethical transformation unfolded itself, in faithfulness to its inner nature, unto receptiveness to a deeper spirituality. The very phrase, Genius of our Civili- zation, bears this reUgious character, and they who imagine that our inheritance of culture has lost this quality, know not what spirit they are of, nor what is most significant in our civilization's present un- 124 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION foldings. There is still aflame the intense religion of God in His appropriative world-conquest through the human soul. The Aryan, in his Hellenic consumma- tion, differs from the Semite not in being less reli- gious, but in that his religion is determined by the appropriation of the world, in the power of deity, to work out divine ends. To learn the Semite's religious conception of the task of the transcendent world-conquest, and his ser- vice of God in the world, whereby he attains union with God, we turn from these introductory formal consid- erations to historic realizations. In this field of con- crete and vital competition the Semitic distinctions from the Aryan world-conquest become clear. CHAPTER II THE HISTORIC REALIZATION OF THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE Thus the human spirit, when it rises above life's lower ranges and becomes aware of a world to be subdued and of itself as world-conqueror, stands at the parting of the ways, and must overcome either by appropriating the world or by transcending it. The paths, all but indistinguishable at their entrances, lead to goals a universe apart, yet the vast regions which each has to traverse must become one kingdom of the soul. This is the inclusive historic process, necessary to humanity's self-attainment, if humanity shall ever succeed in attaining itself. For from the supreme adventure, the two great hosts, or detach- ments of them, may turn back at any stage of the progress. Each advance is haunted by the impulse to choose the other. The different purposes are con- fused with each other. It is hard for either to win a clear self-consciousness. Yet the two aims of world- conquest gradually work out their distinctiveness and separateness. In two races, the Aryan and the Semitic, the two principles are respectively stronger 125 126 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION than in any other, and these races are therefore com- petitors for the leadership of mankind. Through confusions, unfaithfulnesses, temporary obliterations of purpose, each tends to define itself in the one or the other of history's radical oppositions, whose complete explications are indispensable to the final historic synthesis. Other races contribute elements of the great alternative, which become significant when received by the races which best represent, respectively, its terms. It is the Aryan genius which is world-appropriating, the Semitic which is world- transcending. The Aryan finds himself in our Hellenic civilization. Semitic powers issue in Christianity. As Aryan and Semitic respectively, our civilization and Christianity may be understood genetically and universally. The racial names thus applied have larger mean- ings than that of physical descent. There are blend- ings of races, which it is now the fashion of some to exaggerate in reaction from racial antipathies. There are interchanges of influence so strong that men who are physically of one race have the spirit of the other. One's birth into civilization or religion is not of blood alone. He is Aryan who has the mental traits which are, as a matter of fact, generally associated with Aryan physical descent; and "They are not all THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 127 Israel who are of Israel." One may lose one's birth- right, or voluntarily exchange it for the other. More significant than the alleged descent of Jesus from the seed of David, is the uncertainty whether He had more of Hebrew or Aramaean or Greek blood in His veins. He was typical Semite because He chose to be. To Semitic influences He opened His whole soul. One need be none the less Hellenic if one is MongoUan, African, Malayan, Indian, especially if one is con- scious of inheriting elements which are to be added to the Hellenic culture; nor need any man be less Christian for non-Semitic blood. No race is shut out from full citizenship in either city of the soul. Aryan and Semitic signify two currents of historic influence; the racial names are appropriate, because the out- workings have been in general along racial lines or from racial representatives. Yet the racial terms lose their pertinence the moment we cease to make their chief connotations mental and spiritual. Primitive Semite and precultural Aryan show only slight differences, the importance of which appears less, the closer they are scrutinized. In early stages generally of similar evolutionary grade, the resem- blances now engage our ethnology more than the differences, — so of custom, religion, or social institu- tion. The idiosyncracies which seemed most marked 128 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION are found to be comparatively superficial impressions made by different environment. It is the expressions which differ: the quality expressed is much the same from jungle and steppe to pole. The tasks, aims, and reflections are alike when under like conditions. The early phases of religion surprise us by their homogeneity among all peoples. The alleged im- plicit monotheism peculiar to the primitive Semite has gone the way of the dogma of a primitive monothe- istic revelation preserved by a Semitic people. But these early likenesses do not affect our historic sense of the great alternative, nor of Aryan and Semite as representatives of its two determinations. For the alternative is of humanity's more developed life, when the consciousness has beome relatively clear that there is a world to be conquered and a human spirit strong to conquer it. Below this stage, though with strange anticipations of its separative problems, are barbarisms, frequently recrudescent in later developments. Mankind journeys on as it were together, a spiritually undifferentiated multitude, though expressing itself in various speech, leaving many stragglers in its track, till the survivors of the march enter together the realm of world-conquest, and there find the parting of the ways. When, later, an influence spreads from some THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 129 center of development, sudden and wonderful are Aryan or Semitic acceptances of Aryan or Semitic leaderships. Those lands of the Macedonian or Roman Empire which were predominantly Aryan, were regenerated by the Greek genius, though in the decline of its reproductive power. No less remarkable, when the unfavorable conditions are considered, was the response of the Northern barbarians to the senescent Greek spirit, its impartations confused, in many respects neutralized, by alien Christianity. These peoples took advantage of the decay of their cultural original, to develop new powers of world- appropriation, which found themselves more and more germane to the Greek, less and less accordant with Christianity. Today how marvelous the awaken- ing of the Slavic nations, how swift their advance, the moment their soul is set free from the prison-house of tyranny and ecclesiasticism, to hail the radiance of the Aryan god of day! The Greek influence upon Semitic peoples, notwithstanding all their spas- modic discipleships of Greek philosophy and art and their imitations of European manners, betrays its superficiality by falling away at every shock. But the Semitic world of Mohammed's day, at a dawn of the consciousness of world-conquest, devoted every energy to the most exclusively transcendent 130 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION conception of deity that has ever smitten the heart of man. The Mohammedan constraint has been mighty upon populations neither Aryan nor Semitic. Its Aryan disciples, save where the Aryan spirit has passed into its negation, have wrought their character- istic changes upon it, and Aryan renaissances, in proportion to their vigor, subdue it to the Aryan quality. The influence of Semite and Aryan upon other races is suggested by the world-wide awakenings of our day. To the Japanese and Chinese, the Semitic ideal, the Christian evangel, seems remote, and the Aryan genius congenial. As these peoples rise out of lower stages of undifferentiated culture and religion, stages whose influence may prove less persistent than we supposed, they join the Aryan advance. It may be that a chastened Christianity will be forced for a long period to seek its conquests among lowlier peoples, many of whom we are abandoning to the propaganda of a Semitism inferior to our own re- ligious inheritance, and will learn her Lord's exultant thankfulness to the All-father, who has hidden the mysteries of His kingdom from the wise and prudent and has revealed them unto babes. The impassive- ness of India to Occidental ways, so far as India is Aryan, is a phenomenon of a different order. For THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 131 there the Aryan genius has passed beyond us of the West, into a phase to which our less developed Aryan- ism makes slight appeal. The materials of the Hellenic civilization, which is the chief representative of the Aryan progress, are from Semitic sources. The Babylonian culture, which we are forced to call Semitic, instead of Sume- rian, because it presents itself to us as the culture of the ancient Semitic world, was full-formed before the earliest historic settlements of Greek peoples. From Semitic origins came thoughts and forms to the custodians of Aryan progress. This fact, which seems to contradict the historic significance of the funda- mental distinction between the Aryan and the Semitic principles, indicates that a Semitism strong enough to propagate its distinctive principle is forced to work out its own nature, faces an arduous task of historic self-realization. When historic imagination transports us to an ancient city of the Babylonian plain, we are in the heart of that which seems world-conquest by appro- priation of the world. The primal energy is supplied by unintermittent exploitations of natural forces. That which were else barren steppe must be trans- formed into Eden, by harnessing Euphrates and Tigris to irrigation work, and through the necessity 132 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION of that conquest power is created in the human spirit for larger appropriations of the world. Vast are the procreant floods drawn as from these rivers to water all the Paradise of man. The intensity of that ancient secular life flames in our faces, from their memorials of dehght in the world, of passionate love, ambition, and hate. From such impulses to appropriate the world grew arts and literatures, legal systems, political institutions, irresistible strategies, ethical organiza- tions of life. All was indeed in the names of the gods, who were patrons of their cities, leaders of their armies. The pride of Babylonia, and of Assyria, continuator, ally, and competitor, expressed itself in colossal buildings to the glory of deity, yet the spirit of even their cultus seemed predominantly of this world. The gods, though public functionaries, in that age when the religious and the secular were undifferentiated, are, in their inner natures, deistically remote from men. Though the Babylonian mythology springs from the conflict with barren soil and tumultuous flood, the life of the gods, elementally turbulent, is lived apart. From their starry habitations, their watery expanse, their mountain of the North, few and difficult are the paths which human aspiration may climb or divinity descend. Even the dehcate feet of Ishtar, who is THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 133 riotous with the luxuriance of the agricultural year and languishes with its recurrent barrenness, grace no ways of men, but wander among the demonic powers of the lower world. Into the void between the divine and the human rush all conceivable demons ; and while formal deference is paid the most high gods, the actual supernatural interest is magic and incantation, that hostile powers may be propitiated to assist, or intimidated to let alone, human interests which lie this side the dusty grave. This material culture dominated Western Asia for at least three millenniums of magnificent self- assertion, against invasions which it either beat back or subdued to its own nature. Into this focus of civilization the nations were drawn, and out of it they passed renewed, transformed. Panbabylonian is the world's earhest recoverable civilization immemo- rial. Babylonian are materials, forms and thoughts of the Hellenic culture. In many elements of life we also are men of Babylonia. Their mighty rivers, yoked to human use, shall fructify the soil of secular harvests perennially. That word Panbabylonian has more of secular than of religious significance, not- withstanding that their myths of the gods became folklore of Israel, and their beliefs are inscribed on the first pages of our Bible, are resurgent in the last 134 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION book of the New Testament, affected prophetic con- ceptions and the thought of Jesus. Though songs of the spirit breathed from their intense hearts, and their greatest poem known to us, The Epic of Gil- gamesh, is tragedy of disillusion both with the present Hfe and spiritual aspiration, the influence of Baby- lonia is far from originative of Israel's manifesta- tion of the Semitic spirit. Against Babylonia and Assyria, the precursors of Christianity waged their fiercest warfare for the world-transcendence of the human spirit, and overcome in triumphs not of earth and time. Yet this Semitic civilization, from which the consum- mate Aryan derived materials, forms and thoughts, impresses us^ the more we study it, as of a different nature from the Aryan, with a difference not of de- gree but of kind; not a lower stage of continuous evolution which needs only to set free resident forces, not an implicit prophecy to be fulfilled when other historic conditions appear. The impulse to world- appropriation was intense, but this was an impulse, welhng up from the undifferentiated depths of human desires. Not the impulse, however developed and manifold, but the genius of world-appropriation, is distinctive. How far does the soul assert itself in this appropriation? How far does the world-appropriation THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 135 become world-completion by the human that trans- forms its objects, vitalizes, rationalizes, and organ- izes them? The ancient Semite accumulated materials, forms, conceptions, and forces of civilization, for the Aryan to change into another genus. The limitations of Babylonia and Assyria, their pauses, failures, retrogressions, and disasters, do not in themselves prove that essential unlikeness, yet they seem to be characterized by the absence of a power which was to be manifested in the Aryan race in the days of its opportunity. Our discoveries of Baby- lonian exploits, literary, plastic, or mechanical, of their institutions, legal, industrial, and political, are so recent that our dazzled eyes fail to discern clearly the innate deficiencies in comparison with Hellenic-Roman creations. Their inability to con- ceive in general more than one type of government, their incapacity to rule subject peoples, the very continuance for ages of a civilization of which the earliest representatives known to us are all but as typical as the latest, the final failure of recuperative power, substantiate Hegel's judgment, that we have here mass, instead of organism self-moved. The difference between Babylonianism and Hellen- ism may be thus expressed: the former was pushed on, the latter was led on. The great tasks which 136 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Babylonia accomplished, and Syria and Phenicia as influenced by Babylonia, originated in necessities which must be met if men would live at all, and were forced on further along the path of impulses common to civilized and uncivilized men. The barren plain must be irrigated; the great rivers must be harnessed. When conditions apparently adverse proved to be most favorable to increase of population, cities grew like the incredible harvests of the land of the two rivers. Comfort, luxury, and power came as it were of themselves, with their inevitable contrasts of exploitations, oppressions, and tyrannies; and the swarming hordes and divergent conditions must be regulated at least. By a similar necessity, lusts of wealth and power must be gratified. The inevitable developments awake inevitable responses in human hearts, ever sensitive to Joy and sorrow, ever passion- ate to live. But none of the stimulations, even in the Phenician cities, seems to outrun the forces that push it on. Nowhere do we find that which thrills Hellenic life, a spirit that leads men on faster than any neces- sary tasks and natural demands can impel them, and in new ways; the genius of an advance spontaneous, creative, and synthetic, employing indeed given materials of civilization, yet possessing original uses of them. This power alone is competent to the task THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 137 of appropriative world-conquest for the unfolding spirit of man. In that ancient Semitic civilization there are inti- mations at least of the world-transcending path. Its gods are transcendent. Though nature deities necessarily, they tended to associate themselves with those aspects of nature which seem to be separate from the ordinary course of things in man's immediate environment. They were gods of the mysterious waters, especially of those above the firmament, gods of the inaccessible stars. When connected with man's world, although the inevitable sense of human dependence upon deity recognizes the graciousness of the supreme benefactors, it is their destructive- ness, terribleness, and aloofness that make the stronger impression. Therefore the Babylonian myths, prev- alent in the Semitic world, were not incongruous forms for the severer of the religious conceptions of Israel. The transcendence of deity, unethically conceived and out of fellowship with human life, leaves men to run riot in the physical, and instigates propitiations monstrous and obscene, more degenerate in Syria and Phenicia than in the source of Semitic life. Yet in our recoil from uncouth forms of the transcendent conceptions of deity, it is necessary to recognize that 138 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION even these forms have a part in man's transcendent conquest of the world. The call to world-transcendence can be uttered by a deity even cruelly transcendent. Though the holiness which says, "Be ye holy, for I am holy," is first conceived as physical separateness from the world, and as compatible with earthly passion, yet the possibility has been opened of the recognition of a moral separateness in God, an ethical holiness which summons human aspirations to spiritual communion. From a Semitic deity dwelling apart from His worshippers in a wild sky that flames above a mountain wilderness, from the God most Semitically inaccessible, whom it is death to approach, whose nature is destructive vengeance, placable at the caprice of a will unaccountable, — it is from this Jahveh, more than from the fairest of the divine humanities of Greece, that ethical regenerations of the transcendent world-conquest can unfold, when men's troubled vision has pierced the clouds and darkness of their early imaginings, to the justice and judgment which are the foundation of His throne. Even in Babylonia, the religious consciousness to which deity is remote, and which renounces hope of the world to come, since devoid of a divine fellowship with assurance of eternal worth, is yet a consciousness of the transcendent in another order of being, and THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 139 thither ineradicable impulses aspire. Therefore the Gilgamesh epic and the later hymns are significant of the deeper implications of ancient Semitism. In that epic, humanity, at its utmost of heroism, stands beneath a Heaven too high for hope, and is oppressed by divine powers which are insensible to human longings. The most splendid accomplishments are continually brought to futility and sorrow. The quest of immortal life has been achieved only once by a child of man; when grasped by another, after ago- nizings that exhaust the possibilities of manhood, an ineluctable fate snatches it away. Yet the chastened heart of an humbler singer, as he chants the divine majesty, may find itself not far from the transcen- dence it adores. Small as is the amount of such utter- ances recovered by us, they bear witness to the pres- ence, in a civilization so materialistic, of a Semitic genius sufficient, when it finds itself, to win the spirit- ual leadership of mankind. Semitic influence upon the fetichism, totemism, and animism of Egypt wrought strange commin- glings, sometimes glorious transformations. But the intractable elements of the civilization and religion of the Nile kept Egypt relatively apart from other history. The influences attributed to her appear to be reflections of non-Egyptian qualities given back 140 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION with strange Egyptian modifications, rather than im- partations of that which is distinctive, and therefore most secretive, in the genius of that unfathomable people. The Semite entered the straight path to his goal, when a gathering of Arabian tribes found their chief deity in a natural phenomenon that impressed them as most apart from the rest of nature and most de- structive; whether lava-smoke, as seems the more probable, rent with flaming explosions, or roaring, gleaming thunder-cloud, into which the original impression seems to have been changed by later con- ceptions. That wild worship could have contributed little to the development of religion had it not been swept into a convergence of historic forces, through which those detonations still utter the words of the Eternal. To the unendurable glories of that sanc- tuary came a people with powers set free, by recent escape from oppression, for man's conquest of the world. Wonted to a cultivable soil, they were greedy of another. They also sought a God to lead them thither, for the gods of their accustomed worship had been left behind in Egypt, and they found in the mountains of Paran that irresistible terror: Jahveh is man of war, Jahveh of the hosts of Israel! A tradition of a numen of the desert whom the nomad THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 141 ancestors of some of them had served in ancient days, identified this newly accepted deity with that dread power which had been relinquished when his worshippers migrated into the possessions of other gods. None the less was the acceptance of Jahveh a new experience, a spiritual birth, a conscious ac- ceptance of a deity as the exodus of their history, as the creative potency of that which must become a national self-assertion. The deliberate choice of Jahveh at such an historic crisis unconsciously changed the fundamental conception of Him and transferred Him from nature to history. The new faith rose above the worship of the mountain clans who origi- nally revered Jahveh, in that it required a covenant offered by the prophetic representative of that deity. In the fact of such a covenant, in however vague form, were ethical and spiritual potencies inexhaustible. Led by Jahveh of Hosts the tribes turned to their fierce invasions of Palestine. In their behalf He left His shrine, and another sufficient sanctuary could never be found for Him. He could not be domesti- cated in His new conquests. After every victorious demonstration of power, He is back again in His ter- rible mountains, whence repeatedly at the entreaty of His people He sweeps northward like an over- whelming storm; till in the course of centuries His 142 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION remote dwelling-place rises into a Heaven that mounts beyond the stars, whence He descends at His people's need in fearful wrath against His enemies. Whatever images they made of Him were symbols obviously insufficient. Whatever traits of human weakness they attributed to Him His lightnings consumed. Other deities which they worshipped as lords of their new lands could not stand in His presence. God of fearful reprisals, flaming jealousies and furies un- accountable. Yet His vast grace was as untraceable. Not by any natural connection, but by His own favor- able will, is Jahveh their God. To Him they rightly ascribed their deliverance from Egypt, when as yet they knew Him not, except that their redemption was in His name, with mighty hand and stretched-out arm, before whom the Egyptian pantheon abased it- self. Thus the religion of Jahveh was in germ a reli- gion of redemption. God of inexhaustible redemptive will and power, His ways not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts, God who transcends the physical and the natural human, for man's transcen- dent conquest of the world. A rehgious genius of the first order was necessary for the beginning of Israel's religion. Moses stood nearer to primitive conceptions than any other of the great prophets of humanity known to us. Above THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 143 the mists of the Mosaic legends towers the man who had made his own direct and personal covenant, at Jahveh's gracious and terrible initiative. His cove- nant God, whom he had found expressed in a natural sublimity which was to him supernatural, was essen- tially derived, not from any experience of the world, nor from any element of human life as involved in the world, but from that incalculable power which rises from unfathomable depths of the human spirit at the crises of history. This man who spoke Jahveh's will, standing apart from the world and other men, in fellowship with that awfulness, was able, because of this isolation, to sway men and events to Jahveh's most hidden purpose, and was the leader of mankind into ethical and spiritual communion with God. He was the pioneer of a spiritual faith that strove incessantly to disentangle itself from the confusions of deity with His works and to exalt the conception of the divine into the pure spiritual. It was an ethical religious consciousness expressed in the thought of a constitutive relation between God and man, which was virtually underived from anything but God's will to institute the relation and man's faith to accept it. Through such faith came unlimited power to organize human life. The law was given through Moses. It was a law whose essen- 144 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION tial character was grace and truth, unfolding into deepest experiences of the divine righteousness, faith- fulness, and loving-kindness. In the Jahveh whom Moses declared, was implicit the God of Elijah, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Jesus. This divinity of the mountain wilderness, apprehended so dimly and through manifestations accessible to a religious consciousness so primitive, is sufficient to exalt mankind into the transcendent victory over the world. Even there the fundamental difference was disclosed between the Aryan and the Semitic concep- tions of the divine Spirit. God flooding with Himself earth and sky and human Hfe upon the earth and be- neath the sky, — -that is Aryan: God separate from the world and from human life as involved in the world, creating a new spiritual life in man for the spiritual realm where God is all in all,— this is Semitic. Religious tendencies furthest apart are easily con- fused with one another, because both lack the dis- tinguishing quahties with which we are most familiar. The Semitic essential of early Israel is the opposite of the Indian mysticism, which we may discover to be the inevitable outcome of the Aryan genius. The world-transcending impulse does not flee from the world nor try to ignore it. The world is the spirit's mighty antagonist, in the encounter with which the THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 145 spirit realizes itself. Nor can this religious conscious- ness regard the spiritual as the final abstraction of a world untranscended ; nor as a negation, which has meaning only in contrast with an actual which the negation is impotent to overcome. To the Semite the spiritual life is inexhaustible and organized concrete- ness, Kingdom of God; who is the living God, fulness of life. In this divine kingdom, this spiritual universe, the human spirit unfolds toward an infinity of personal life, whose reality becomes intense in proportion as the lower order of sense and its organizations is tran- scended. The Semite's spiritual pilgrimage must be begun by all but barbarous tribes. In the tribal organiza- tions, and when the nation was achieved, soon to be divided, but ever one in deepest tendency, religion is sohdaric instead of personal. Mighty spiritual forces, working through a series of events explicable by nothing else than their result, must overcome this Hmitation and set free the life of personalities in spiritual unions. The self-realization of the Semitic spirit against oppositions that seemed to make the task impossible constitutes the significance of the history of Israel. Impossible seemed the continuance in Canaan of the religious consciousness of the wilderness. The 146 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION danger was not the loss of Jahveh's name, but the obhteration of His difference from the divinities of the Canaanite shrines, among whom He became indeed, to the thought of most of His worshippers, chief Baal, absorbent of the qualities of the Baalim. As long as hostilities were chronic between the Arabian intruders and the civilized peoples established in the land, a distinction was evident between the gods of the latter and the destroyer who rushed up from His flaming mountain sanctuary. But when, by conquest and alHance, Israel and Canaanite became one blood, and inveterate local customs became forms and thoughts and life of the composite folk; when the legends, rites, and religious conceptions of the ancient shrines were consecrated to His name; when foreign influences of the same nature as the Canaanite were allied with political poHcies; then the imminent loss of the dis- tinctive conception of Jahveh aroused the prophetic reactions, which unfolded His transcendent ethical and spiritual implications. The spontaneous growth in historic times, of reli- gious legends of the first rank, indicates the historic emergence of mighty spiritual forces, original insights, and enlarged truths. In the Elijah legend, Jahveh's lonely champion returns to the mountain sanctuary, to renew there the basilar strength of his convictions. THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 147 for racked soul and apparently resultless mission. Around his cave flashed and roared the mountain- rending volcanic phenomena, which had separated the ancient nature god from the accustomed order of the world. But to the maturer prophetic conscious- ness Jahveh is no longer in even earthquake, storm- wind, and flame. Now He is evident in that wherein pure spirit may abide, in the voice inaudible which speaks from beyond the world to the human spirit lifted above the world, — Jahveh's almighty, transcen- dent thought and will. The prophetic stage of Israel's religion has its deepest significance in its reahzation of the Semitic consciousness of God, the transcendent Spirit who lifts men into His own spiritual universe. His own eternal life. This divine transcendence is the opposite of deistic, for here is the consummate union of the divine and the human. Nor is there an irreconcilable division between the physical and the spiritual, since the spiritual is to subdue and transform all things to itself, and in the spiritual all reality finds its ultimate nature. The final monism is to be wrought out in the transcendent spiritual. The wisdom of high thought, the sublime and affect- ing beauty, the devotion and steadfast faith of the great prophets, their consuming indignations, their 148 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION tenderness of divine love, their redemptive social passion, their contempt for titanic world powers, which are but Jahveh's instruments for purposes beyond secular imaginings, — all these spiritual vic- tories, however mediated by historic conditions and expressed in traditional limitations, are not of the world, nor of man as a creature of the world. The statesmanship of the prophets has received too indis- criminate eulogy. Above all human praise indeed is their vision of history as the unfolding of a redemptive purpose, their derivation of law and institution from the eternal righteousness, by which alone national life is to be judged; their passion of social righteous- ness, their founding of national strength and well-being upon conditions of common life, ethically estimated; their hate of luxury and exploitation as disruptive of the state; their inclusion of compassion and love in social morality; their preference of the many to the few, of the weak to the strong. These principles are constitutive of the state, universally indispensable, and of inexhaustible application. But practical statesmen the prophets were not. They confused spiritual ideals with practical considerations neces- sarily relative and transient. Their intrusive solu- tions of historic issues miscarried, because they took into account only aims not of the earthly order and THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 149 forces separate from the secular. Their immediate application of transcendent spiritual considerations to national exigencies was impossible. Jesus' oppo- site procedure was not a retrogression, but an advance along the way to the attainment of the supremacy of the spiritual over all human affairs. However craven and mischievous King Ahaz' alliance with Assyria against the combined assault of Syria and the Northern Kingdom, Isaiah's recommen- dation to wait for Jahveh's interposition failed to offer a practical alternative. The unaccountable deliverance from Sennacherib, if it can be called deliverance, should not prejudice the indefatigable resourcefulness of King Hezekiah, in spite of the prophet's remonstrances, to preserve the integrity of his kingdom. One must stand on Jeremiah's spiritual height, to regard his course through the Chaldaean invasion as anything but supine and treacherous. The most obvious thing about their predictions is unfulfillment. Assyria did indeed conquer Northern Palestine and the Syrian peoples, as they said it would, though they made a mistake in regard to Tyre. But the reason they gave for the conquest, the immorality and impiety of the conquered, had small place in the historic nexus. Simply Assyria was too strong and too I50 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION determined. Isaiah's insistence upon the inviolability of Jerusalem was terribly disproved. Their vision of a glorious restoration of Israel has nothing in common with the stragghng return from Babylon — if even that is historic — and the petty fortunes of the Jewish com- munity. If it is urged that the predictions were ful- filled in a figurative sense, that is to maintain the unfavorable judgment. The sublimities of the prophets are revealed only 7 to one who acknowledges their incapacities. Then we exchange Aryan for Semitic tests. In time of darkest tragedy they made the eternal God the dwelling place of the expatriated human soul. They imparted the vision of the righteous God, and of the ethical and spiritual communion of the human soul with Him. They found their way and mankind's way to the spiritual order above the physical, with power to reahze itself against the world, which it makes the servant of the higher purpose. They advanced the Semitic task of the transcendent con- quest -of the world. The psalmists that followed them completed them. Genuine development of prophetism are the clearer voices of the transcendent spiritual, calling up to itself the spiritual nature which we are. No departure from the religion of the prophets, but its clarified and consummate expres- THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 151 sion, is the Old Testament's most spiritual utter- ance: Who is mine in Heaven? Nothing on earth but Thee I desire. Flesh fails and my life; But Jahveh is my life's power, and my home forever. This faith has to contend with inflexible oppositions. It must also surmount its own limitations, which were, notably, the political, the legalistic, and the eschatological. The political, not the particularistic, was a limita- tion of the prophets. They broke through, in prin- ciple, national exclusiveness, which closed in again with Judaism. In the intense patriotism of prophetic Israel universalism was early germinant. The God who rules all things from above, God of all nations, though they know Him not, does not limit his grace, any more than His power, to the destinies of the heir of Abraham. The first of the known prophets whose message is preserved in writing sees in his vision of judgment unreheved — for the consoling close of the book of Amos is not his — the annihilation of the chosen people, but does not imagine that in this catastrophe the purpose of the Most High can fail. Universal are the ethical principles by which Israel is judged, 152 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION and universal must be their working. The hopes of other prophets, which pass beyond the judgment, to Israel's conversion and restoration, are assurances of a world-renewal in which all mankind may partici- pate. But the limitation is, that spiritual salvation is bound up with poHtical organization. It is Israel, Moab, Egypt, Assyria, which are to be judged and saved. To the prophets, as to the ancient world in general, the personal unit, to speak in modern phrase, was not the individual but the state. Therefore their spiritual ideals were confused with provisional ends, to the detriment of both. The tragic separation of their spiritual experience from the fleshliness of the people, which they could not illumine, and the stultification of their prophecies of the restored nation, forced religion to seek its sanctuary in the individual soul, in which awoke personal powers, aspirations, and assurances of life eternal. From this spiritual center, to be yet more perfectly attained, radiates the spiritual humanity independent of political forms. The political limitation was followed by the legalis- tic. The political organization lost its significance with the loss of political liberty. The expectations of the prophets of the exile must be postponed to another world-order. The national hopes changed to personal THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 153 aspirations of great souls. But a refuge more accessible than the kingdom of the spirit was required for daily needs and common minds. The timorous religiosity of disillusioned Judaism built protective, separative walls, out of materials which the prophets had dis- carded, cultus and rite and rule — poor stuff, but what else was available? — and they left their mean con- structions open to the sky. Within these confines, as many a psalm bears witness, unquestioning obedi- ence to Jahveh's statutes found something of the joy of free divine companionship. Yet in these observances a religion of redemption degenerates to a rehgion of law. The transcendence of deity receives indeed fresh emphasis from legalism, in faithfulness to the Semitic tradition, but it is not a transcendence that calls up the transcendent spirit of man into world-conquering divine fellowship. In the sublime invitation, "Be ye holy, for I am holy," the repeated word has now two different meanings. The transcendent God is irrec- oncilably apart; so the theology of Judaism conceives Him. The motive for the keeping of a law which is not identified with the life of the divine Spirit in the human spirit, must be a reward external to the realiza- tions of God's life in man. Such recompense consists of the lower goods. 154 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Incessant are the demands upon the supreme law- giver for payment in wealth and length of days and many children and satisfied desire upon one's enemies. When these requisitions are honored there is uncon- trite assumption of merit; when withheld, discontent and envy, unfilial importunity of self-centered prayer; in either case, ingenious inventions of new legahsms, scrupulous formalisms, and unctuous hypocrisies. These lusts of material things lack the Aryan magna- nimity of world-conquest: the pauperized soul begs a world unappropriated, uncompleted. To the more tender consciences the withholding of these favors was the source of dolorous introspections. If recompense has been denied, must not desert be absent? It is the purest hearts that bewail secret sins in the Hght of God's countenance and mourn over years con- sumed by the divine wrath. Against such morbid humiliations the healthy sense of radical integrity asserts itself, sometimes in assurance of ultimate vindication, yet how long delayed; sometimes in the challenge of the right of the All-holy to cite His neces- sarily imperfect creature before the throne of absolute perfectness; sometimes in fearful doubts of the moral order of the world. Yet through these paths of death- shadow, the ineradicable Semitic aspiration may find its way to the beatific vision, where it abhors itself THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE ' 155 and repents in dust and ashes. Here are also the meek of the land, too simple-hearted for such self- tormentings, who make no claim upon the world, happy just to do God's commands. These souls stand at the threshold of the spiritual universe, over whose portal is written, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Legalism must at length seek its recompense in the age to come, since payment is so uncertain in this. The third limitation of the Semitic principle in Israel is other-worldliness. This hope of the glorious future connects itself with the ancient prophecy of the day of Jahveh, when, by His almighty act, right- eousness is awarded complete triumph over the earth. But the vast prophetic vision becomes as rigidly dogmatic as the legalism which appropriated it, and assumes shapes as fantastic as are legalistic demands for recompense when extended into the end- less and pronounced by higher aspirations to be for- ever incapable of satisfaction. Suddenly out of Heaven flaming judgment and ineffable bliss shall descend upon the world. Those who have died in faithfulness to the law shall rise from their graves, to share this redemption with the righteous who have not tasted death, and possessing bodies no less intact, for the physical delights of what is still the earthly order. 156 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION The Semitic spirit seems to end in the denial of its essential nature. Faihng of its transcendent possibil- ity, it threatens to sink into its only alternative, the apotheosis of the physical and earthly. Yet certain of Semitism's finer elements survived even here. Le- galism itself kept its ignoble expectation clear of illicit sensuaHties. The ethical nature of the prophetic affirmation still asserted itself. The kingdom of God, coming without human cooperation, from the All-holy, must be a gift worthy of the transcendent giver. But divine power in the human soul, as almighty as this irruption of final judgment and redemption is con- ceived to be, is indispensable, if the supernal hope is to become purely spiritual. The course of this perplexed religious development was beset with irreconcilable oppositions. Israel's hardness of heart to the spiritual implications of the religion of Jahveh was not exaggerated by prophet and psalmist, by Jesus and His apostles. The Aryan is less intractable to the Semitic spirituality than the Semite himself may be when unfaithful to his Semit- ism. For the impulse of the former is to seek a world- conquest in noble developments of soul. That con- quest, no less than the Semitic endeavor, embraces ideals, devotions, ethical and spiritual aspirations, and between the possessors of these qualities, though THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 157 they follow divergent paths, for different ends, there arise mutual reverence and premonition of final alliance. But the Semite who rejects his birthright falls below the amenities and harmonies of Aryan life. The modern Jew is an inveterate Semite of Semites, his Semitism stiffened by unspeakable Aryan injus- tices, which still continue in undiscriminating hate and brutal misconception. With all his power in the Aryan world, he is a stranger and a sojourner in it, as all his fathers were, and a destructive force against it, except when, transcending it, he summons it to mag- nificent fulfillments. Still his spiritual genius and devotion manifest themselves in flaming ideals. For human liberty, in forms that seem to ignore historic possibilities, Jews are radiant martyrs. These men are the prophets of a bewilderingly ideal reconstruction of society, though they often proclaim it as a material- istic evangel. Against social conditions that repress the spirit, they, even when they repudiate the spirit, are humanity's consummate rage. The true children of Abraham, reverent heirs and custodians of the uni- versal promise, rise into magnanimities of vision and service, and from that Heaven they shed compas- sionate blessing not only upon the unfortunate of their own people, but upon mankind, and in their homes and hearts we find, not the grace and worth 158 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION of the Aryan, but transcendence and transformation of our best. Their spiritual leaders are consecrated to the development of their religious inheritance to its universal implications. They find themselves in the congenial presence of the Man of Nazareth. It is they who can understand Him as the Aryan cannot, without their interpretation of the supreme Semite and human. In their growing appreciation of their own Jesus there may be found at length the synthesis of the two leaderships of humanity, the domination of Aryan civilization by higher spiritual forces, and its direction to transcendent ends. In this task the Semitic genius must be left unhampered by Aryan interferences, which have always obscured the Master. For His Name's sake let these men stand apart as long as they will, from the Church, with which the organizing power of Jesus' spiritual brother- /, liness shall at length unite them, and forever apart '' from the dogmas which have perverted His Gospel. Islam also discloses the original and ineradicable Semitic quality. It is a Semitism more undeveloped than perverted; its attainment of faith in the one transcendent deity is separate from its other quahties, as Allah is separate from man's life and world. It is a religion of law rather than redemption, but its legalism lacks the ethical dignity of the Jewish legaHsm, be- THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE 159 cause, unlike that, it has not descended from redemp- tive conceptions, which in Judaism affect the lower forms. It cannot rid itself of the savageries of the desert, nor of worse vices which result from perverse imitations of Aryan civilization. Yet none of its in- humanities can obscure the spiritual glory and self- propagating energy of its supreme affirmation, "There is no god but God." It lives in a brutal world, which it projects into the hereafter, but it sees the pure sky. From its unpolluted Heaven divine refreshings may yet descend upon the lands which it has devastated. Monotheism is prophecy of the eternal life in man, and in many personal experiences within Mohammed- anism that prophecy has been fulfilled. But with Semitic obduracy, which is the obverse of Semitic faithfulness, it resists the fulfillments of its implicit prophecy, and opposes Semitic Christianity even more fiercely than it has battled against Aryan civil- ization. Recent events raise questions which before have seemed to be without pertinence: Will Islam change its attitude toward Aryan civilization? Will it recognize its own premonitions of Semitic Christian- ity? Against the oppositions and in alHance with the favoring forces manifested in every stage of Semitism, the Man of Nazareth fulfilled His mission. The i6o THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION limitations that beset His inheritance of the prophetic religion of Israel formed a large part of the conditions of His task. How that task was fulfilled under such conditions will be considered in a later chapter. We observe now, in anticipation, how exquisitely and mightily human was His simple-hearted acceptance of prophetic nationalism, of legalism, and of the eschatological hope of His people. He preserved the values of these limitations and thus freed Himself from them. First of patriots. He was so absorbed in seeking the lost sheep of the house of Israel that He grudged every moment which His sympathy was forced to sacrifice to a Gentile need. He was content to leave the salvation of those outside Judaism to forces which, without His intentional participation, would bring heathen multitudes from East and West and North and South to recline with the redeemed of Israel in the Kingdom's high festival. Yet His devotion to His fellow-countrymen was that compassion for universal human necessities, that recognition of universal human potencies, which brings the whole world to his feet. He was dutiful child of the law, loving each statute because it came to Him as His Father's command. His will accomplished itself in union with the all-holy will. Unquestioning obedience unfolded its redemp- THE SEMITIC PRINCIPLE i6i tive trust and love. Thus was attained for Himself and His disciples the liberty of the glory of the sons of God, and all thought of external recompense passed into the union, in character and life, of faithful Son with infinitely loving Father. The Kingdom that descends from Heaven by God's unallied power, was to Him catastrophe so imminent, that the expectations of the New Testament writers seem, in comparison with His certainty, faint echoes of a hope deferred. So close was that advent that it became immediately realized in Him, descended into His soul, an absolutely spiritual possession, God's eternal Hfe for him and all who will receive it from Him, and with power of the transcendent world- conquest, to lead to spiritual consummations, to trans- form by spiritual forces, every man and the life of mankind. CHAPTER III THE SEPARATENESS OF JESUS FROM ARYAN CIVILIZATION In comparison with the Semite's arduous and lonely path, the Aryan progress is that of a magnificent army, fighting its way along valleys rich, genial, beautiful. It is not this advance which Jesus had in mind when He spoke of the broad way that leadeth to destruction: the Aryan progress had no place in His thought. This is no path of ease; this also has to be conquered. Forces of barbarism continually oppose, and, when de- feated, break into guerrilla bands. Many are the traitors in the ranks, who exploit mankind's common conquests, which have beneficent uses only as they are common possessions. Numerous are the desertions to the enemies of civilization. Multitudes, having accomplished stages of the way, refuse to go farther, settle down ignobly in places that seem good to them, and it is their fate to be overwhelmed by the barbar- isms that hang on the rear of civilization no less than they resist its front. Superb have been the victories of the host, but disheartening its defeats; nor is there 162 THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 163 certainty of final conquest, for there are deadlier enemies than are apparent; and men cannot be sure that the possessions won shall fulfill their promises of worth and joy. Yet these seem pusillanimous dreads, continually discredited by the evident gains. Every territory acquired yields supplies for further adventure. Forces seemingly inexhaustible utilize every victory, rise indomitable after defeat. Reinforcements pour in : the Hellenic genius is vanguard and strategist, but it is allied by every Aryan power, and by men of other blood who receive its spirit. No small part of our present confidence is the gift of the new historic science whose special contribution is to reveal additional Aryan potencies for the Hellenic genius to direct, that we may know and use whatever proves itself effective for the Aryan's appropriative and completive con- quest of the world. One of the great historic disasters is the loss of the Persian genius in a direct moulding influence upon the developments of Aryan civilization. The Greek en- countered a Persia perversely Semitized, decadent, and barbarized, both insolent and insidious against the culture which gained self-consciousness by opposing the colossal antagonist. Few Greek thinkers recog- nized in the archenemy the quality akin to the Hellenic 1 64 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION genius. The Greek civilization was forced to oppose Persia, beat it back, overwhelm it, establish itself in the other's place, treat it as alien, for the sake of its own integrity. After the Macedonian conquest the remainders of Persian influence seemed infectious rottenness. Wonderful as was the all but conquest of our civilization by the Mithra worship, the depth and permanence of that influence must not be ex- aggerated. The later resurgences of Persian force and beauty, which ought to quahfy our judgment of it under the Achsemenidae, were apart from the main current of history. It is the Semite who has preserved for Aryanism this valuable element of it. The eschatology of Judaism and original Christianity, involving a cos- mology and a philosophy of history, leaving no part of life unaffected, fashioning practical views and aims, was from Persian sources, though modified by Baby- lonia, and transcendently semitized by Judaism and Jesus. So that today our ethic and religion are largely Iranian, a juster term than Persian, and connoting alliance with our civilization, not barbaric opposition. The Iranian energy demands to be taken back from the Semitic influence which has so strangely preserved it for us, and to be recovered from the transcendent to the appropriative world-conquest. THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 165 The Greek views the world, so far as conquerable, as a world of essential harmony. To gain the inner principle of that harmony, to organize the world thereby between the inaccessibles above and the im- practicables beneath, this is the Greek's world- conquest. The Iranian's fundamental conviction, however difficult the tracing of its ramifications and developments, is the all but absolute disharmony of the world. Good and evil, physical, ethical, and spiritual, clash everywhere. Evil is not, as to the Greek, the unorganizable, but an organism only less symmetrically formed than the empire of the good. Incessant is manhood's strife, against serpent and wild beast, noxious plant and insect, diseases and their demons; against night and soHtudes and every evil spell; against moral and intellectual darkness, re- pressive conditions, evil men, evil institutions, and the malign angels of them all; against a bad god, with half the universe on his side. The interminable spaces are a truceless battlefield, where the hosts of the world- ruler of this darkness charge the celestial armies of the good God. Every servant of the good fights right at his post in the far-flung alHance for the victory that is to be. Thus spake Zarathustra. The Iranian's militancy needs Greek leadership. One must know what one fights for. The goal of its 1 66 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION warfare is the Greek culture, with its harmonizing of the physical, the intellectual, the esthetic, the ethical, and the spiritual, in the appropriation and completion of the world by the human soul. But the goal itself is dynamic, not static: there are always new worlds to conquer for the soul that expands to conquer them. The Greek genius needs the Iranian energy, which refuses to accept as final any incarnation of the spirit of world-conquest, and judges the soul's attainments its deadliest enemies, because deadening. It is revolutionary, inconoclastic, the antagonist of every classicism. It refuses to abide in any industrial regime, political organization, esthetic expression, philosophical construction (pragmatism is Iranian) or in any assumption of ethical or religious finahty. Into every determinism it flings freedom, and into every monism, differentiation. It snatches the human spirit out of every necessitated evolutionary process, thus denying that necessity is fundamental in the process; out of every subservience to natural law, whose absolute mechanical fixity it contradicts, out of subjection to any law that is not the free self-expres- sion of the human soul, and elastic for growths of soul. It goes forth conquering and to conquer. Yet all its warfare is constructive when it finds its normal alliance with the Greek genius. It is forever militant THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 167 because it will not rest in any incomplete appropria- tion of the world. It surges up today against re- pressive social conditions, against political and in- dustrial organizations in which the potencies of every man lack equal and unrestricted opportunity. It rages against every scholasticism, ecclesiasticism, and traditionalism. It is civilization militant. It is altogether Hellenic because it is the energizing of the Hellenic spirit. This moral consciousness rejects the imposition of any decalogue from above, that is, from without. It is too ethical to accept any closed ethic. Righteous- ness is not taken from dictation, but character fights out new visions and realizations of the good. There can be no Hellenic concession to the physical, no yielding of the soul to the external. The ethical is not that harmony of the soul in all its elements and with the world without, which the Greek would have on too easy terms. Conscience stands at the soul's inviolable portal with drawn sword, refusing to recog- nize a friend till the countersign is given. The Iran- ian Puritanism is conscious of the inner strife, the traitors within the citadel. The passions are not, as in Plato's too indiscriminate parable, unruly steeds, to be subdued to reason, the charioteer, but among the passions are beasts of prey, to be slain. The inner 1 68 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION conflict is the fiercer; but this insight escapes the sudden disillusion of a soul that finds itself wretchedly chained to a body of death and cries out, "Who shall deliver me!" This human dignity is conscious of its own indefeasible powers of righteousness. This ethical religion is a religion of redemption, but self- wrought. Its premise is not moral helplessness. None the less is it religion, aware of the divine right- eousness as constitutive of the essential of manhood. Therefore this ethic is allied with God for the warfare against everything in the universe that is not accord- ing to His will. The present mood of our fundamental thinking seeks the Iranian mihtancy. Occidental metaphysic, necessarily Hellenic, has been too Hellenic: it has lingered in a phase which the unfolding of the Hellenic inheritance has outgrown, yet has tried to ignore the residuum which the Greek sanely acknowledged. Its assumption has been the unity of all things as an intellectual principle, not as ethical attainment with intellect as interpreter. Therefore its dominant thought has been too quietistic, too satisfied that what- ever is is good, — or else irremediably bad — and that the things we know not now we shall know hereafter as having always had their place in the harmonious whole. THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 169 Therefore men with the world's work to do leave the philosophers to their ingenuities. Thought and life are dissevered, as they were not of old, when thought and life were of the same mood. Intellectual- is tic monism paralyzes the most urgent practicalities; its deterministic ethic pronounces itself unethical. Our teachers have taken too lightly the bridging of the gulf between the spiritual and the mechanical. Adventuring across from what they have flung out from either side, we fall into nescience. Too facile has been their reduction of the irrational to the rational, their uniting of the good and the evil, — which is yet not somehow good. Kant was more serious, but he was Iranian and Hebrew, as well as Greek, and they have not all been Iranian and Hebrew and Greek who have presumed to speak in his name. The Hellene has indeed formulated the fundamental questions, and the tools of constructive thought are wrought in the forges of Hephaistos. But the contemporary Iranian vision of the universe looks forward, not back, and moves as conscious of the primal motion. Our deepest consciousness is not of assimilative in- tellect, but of transforming, creative will. All things are one to the energizing will that makes them one. We know two gods, Ahriman and Ormazd, two kingdoms, of Hell and Heaven; it is conflict that is lyo THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION universal. Can the synthesis be fought out on this line, even if it takes forever? There is a growing determination to attempt it. If this path becomes an impasse, there is one recourse, the Semitic principle. Every element of the Aryan civilization completes itself in a religious conviction, and the noblest of these faiths is the Iranian, in our present consciousness of its nature. It is the religion of the divine alliance for the divine purposes. Its heroic devotion is not of the Semitic kind. What the modern Iranian wants of God is not grace, but reinforcements of his native powers. His kingdom of salvation is not of an order essentially higher than the Hellenic. With religious in- tensity he grasps the Aryan principle of world-conquest by the appropriation and completion of the world. The Semitic Bible he finds congenial in its militant earnestness, but the names of the gods must be frequently interchanged. It is the jealous serpent that says, "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, lest ye die." Against an infernal sword the servants of Ormazd beat their way to the tree of Hfe. There are fruit-trees of which man must not eat, but they are to be incontinently cut down. Not of the evil seed of Cain is the genealogy of those who discover the arts of civilization and develop the secular powers of humanity, and it is Ahriman who THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 171 brings the flood to destroy their works. The Iranian adopts the calendar of the saints who subdued king- doms, wrought righteousness, waxed vaHant in fight, turned to flight entrenched armies of ahens. The David who did not write the Psalms is the man after his own heart. He does not suppose that the meek inherit the earth. On the crumbhng walls of Jeru- salem he fights to the end against Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah, and their god. His Messiah wrests from Caesar the stolen coins and effaces the imperial image and superscription, and announces Himself the divider of the inheritance which man has withheld from his brother man. Into this Gospel resonant voices trans- pose the message of Jesus, and ingenuous youth ac- cepts it as Christianity. Hellenic-Roman is our civilization, though hospi- table to every Aryan element. It seems more Roman when we regard external constructions, more Greek to those whose chief interest is in vital joys and values. Rome's task was to make permanent constructions for the Greek soul and body to live in. When our Roman inheritance has lost the Greek, the result has been formahsm, aridity, lifelessness, and decadence into corruption. At such times men have longed for the water of Hellenic wells, for whose general avail- ability Roman aqueducts must be constructed. 172 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Rome is the least ideal and spiritual expression of the Aryan world-conquest. For that reason Rome should be studied in its prosaic religion, to show the Roman's deficiency in these quaUties by their absence in the realm most congenial to them. The homely workaday divinities of husbandries and household drudgeries, the solid, respectable, parochial old gods, gave themselves to their duties with such minute painstaking as to become actually absorbed in them. The attempt to identify these objects of worship with Hellenic deities was as absurd as Christianity's efforts to express its spiritual universe in terms of the Babylonian cosmogony. The old-fashioned nu- mina kept to kitchen and garden while Apollo and Aphrodite were entertained in the atrium. The Roman religion still remained Roman, the binding back of each secular affair within its proper Hmitations. It is the religion of that divine immanence where the divine is so at home in things that it has no distinct meaning of its own. When the city Rome united secular interests, the city became the chief god. Under this deity the ancient divine regulators of affairs enlarged and consolidated their labors. So when the city became the organizer of the world of civiHzation, not by the realization of an ideal passion but by the forcings of a THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 173 plain necessity. When power came to be centralized in a permanent dictatorship, the emperor was object of worship, but in the same old material fashion. The cult of the emperor was not a Greek importation, but a self-consistent Roman development. Its form was suggested by the Greek apotheosis, but its substance was the recognition of the center of political power as supreme in the actual world. It was at once a political device and a straightforward state- ment of facts. The emperors who were worthy to represent Rome were all the more plain everyday men for being deified. If the Eastern provinces failed to understand, their misapprehensions were of use. But a secularity greater than the imperial combina- tion of offices is supreme in things as they are. It is to Roman law that greater deference is to be paid, law not as descending from celestial realms, but worked out meticulously and exhaustively to arrange actual conditions, practicable poHtical and social institu- tions. As rights of person and property, as contracts, governmental functions, and international relations, the old Roman gods continue with sober dignity, receiving the same kind of recognition as when they bore the names of lane and market place and processes of husbandry. This was the outcome, the victorious outcome of the 174 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION conflict between the Roman spirit and the ideals and demoralizations which assailed it. We speak too in- discriminately of Rome's decline and fall. Through all assaults of those whom she conquered and of those who conquered her, the gods of things as they are maintained themselves against both the gods of things as they ought ideally to be and the gods of things as riotous desires would have them be. Laws, rights, obligations, order, indispensable to all human values, in constructions as vast as the united realms of human endeavor, must be attributed to the Roman part of our civilization. Whatever structural elements we have received from Teutonic or other sources have been builded in by the Roman master-builder. Not from Rome indeed is the consciousness of law as absolute sanctity affirming the inviolability of justice on the earth. These Greek and Hebrew conceptions the Roman genius has accepted in part and utihzed, but the impulse of its task was not of them. The Roman genius tends rather to balancings and com- promises, in which the higher worths may be com- promised. Yet the Roman quahty has built the strong house for civiHzation to dwell in, out of mate- rials dug from the earth, as ensuring more substantial results than to watch for the radiant temple of human- ity to descend out of Heaven. The ordering of things THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 175 by ideal principles and aims is Hellenic; the ordering of things by their own practicabilities of mutual ad- justment is Roman. In every phase of the life of mankind, including plastic art and music, to which Roman technicalities are indispensable, and in every individual life, the j&ner things are preserved only as those patient drudgeries establish them, and appoint to every right and value scrupulously computed metes and bounds, rules and prescriptions and restrictive constitutions, which only knaves and madmen seek to break through. The Aryan genius of world-conquest is strangely qualified when Celt and Goth are lifted to participa- tion in it. The Celt contributes mystery. The world which the human spirit is to appropriate and complete is extended over the fields of dream. The Greek had his dreams, but with a difference. That intense Hellenist, John Keats, describes the most exquisite of the Greek myths as "dream within dream." It is dream when celestial beauty, adored as aloof and passionless, descends to the longings of the shepherd sleeping in a vale of Latmos. It is dream when at the opening of "Lamia" the invisible loveliness of the earth becomes palpable by a secret spell, while these consummations are of moonlight and "green recessed woods." But the Greek's languorous hauntings by 176 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION that which is too sweet for being take the elements of dream from clear perceptions of the actual and form them by powers of rational thought. Different is the secular dream-world of the Celt, not to speak now of his spiritual mysticism. It is a world of "Magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." Here is the Celtic dream-world in its irrationality, dread, infested by alien powers, where the human spirit, entranced by lures exquisite and terrible, wanders defenceless and amazed. Just beyond such verse open spheres of music, where thought is drowned in floods of objectless longing and recoil; music in- choate, until a deeper power of the human soul asserts mastery over it, with Hellenic clearness and Roman attainment of technical skill; a power which is most wonderful in this, that it still keeps that dream-world into which the Greek never entered. The mastery of music reveals the Gothic genius. The Goth is Iranian and Celt: a visionary Iranian, a Celt determined to realize his dreams, indomitably pursuant of the ideal. Celtic-Gothic is Romanticism, which is not the superficial fashion of an eccentric epoch, but a force pervasive of Occidental civilization from the moment when Gothic and Celtic peoples THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 177 participated and contributed. It is what Goethe perceived: Faust who seeks the embraces of Helena; and from that union springs the Aryan world's glorious new deity, doomed so soon to die; for, as Goethe saw, one sufficient to be the eternal life of civ- ilization must descend from other realms. The passion of the Romantic spirit is to break through not only Roman institutionalism, but also the limits which the Hellene accepted for his life free, rich, beautiful, of well-ordered, self-restrained buoy- ancy of soul. The conflict between Romanticist and Classicist takes innumerable forms. This impulse needs Hellenic and Roman control beyond Hellenic limitations. Else it becomes monstrous, insolent, insane, and bathetic. But it is Hellenism grown con- fident of indwelling power to appropriate and com- plete all things for the ends of the spirit, to work out the world, in every possibility of its unfolding, to that which God would have it become. For it is religion of the divine alliance and of human devotion to the divine purposes. Essentially religious, but not Semitically religious, with increasing consciousness of the magnitude of its task, this spirit opens itself to divine powers of world- conquest. In the name and by the power of God, it traverses the depths of the earth, bridles the tides of 1 78 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION sea and ether, elevates human conditions to their perfecting. Art is its interpreter, essaying to pene- trate form with spirit; its prophet, to declare that the universe shall be spirit's incarnation. For this is no temporal and partial task, since it has been under- taken in alliance with the Infinite. The world has disclosed before us illimitableness, but the soul flings back into their imperious faces the challenge of the stars, conscious that the soul is more masterful than they, and that even they, in God's time enough, shall be given into its hand. To translate into pedestrian prose the beat of Victor Hugo's pinions up to the sum- mits of things, thus defied: "If ye are mystery, I am mind. Ye know that the soul is strong and fears nothing when God's breath bears it on. Ye know that I will go even to the blue pilasters, and that my tread does not tremble on the ladder that mounts to the stars." The Aryan has indeed learned from the Semite thus much of the greatness of the soul, but this soul- task is not Semitic, but Aryan. Then with face radiant of the infinite task the Aryan spirit turns in exultant sovereignty to the lowhest detail of this universal world-appropriation and world-completion, singing at its bench while it shapes each day's portion of the glory and praise of the Most High. The leadership of our civilization has not become THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 179 any less Hellenic for these reinforcements and others. The principle of the Aryan civilization was possessed by the Greek, and it is his genius which imparts it. He has taught these new forces their own nature. Our culture is more Hellenic now than at the Renaissance, because it is now less a copying, more an expansion and assimilation. Our civilization and Christianity are more clearly evident as the fundamental division in modern life, these historic unfoldings emphasizing the separateness of Jesus from Aryan civilization. This separateness is encountered at the very out- skirts of Jesus' thought and work. To Him the world, under Satan's dominion, is not to be appropriated and completed; its catastrophic destruction is at hand. Between God's kingdom and Satan's kingdom there is absolute antagonism, and beside these two king- doms there is no other. The world is not part Satan's and part God's, that human powers may ally them- selves with the nobler protagonist to fight out its redemption. The catastrophic issue is by God's un- assisted power. Persian indeed in part is the historic origin of such conceptions, but altogether Semitic is their meaning to Jesus. These convictions of His are neither to be over-emphasized nor under-stated. It is equally unhistorical to ascribe to Him all the escha- tology of the Synoptic Gospels, and to fail to recognize i8o THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION that it all had a vital relation to His announcements. It is equally irrational to modernize these thoughts and to ignore the universal within them. But the neces- sary emphasis is this, that such convictions are in no wise related to the Aryan genius. They are expressive of the transcendent world-conquest. Through them the way may be found to the innermost Semitic spirituality, but not to Aryan principles. They must not be disregarded in favor of a Christianity Hellen- ically conceived. Evidently our Christian apologetic misconceives both Christianity and the Aryan civilization when it attempts to derive the progress of the latter from the excellence of the former. This is the familiar paean of the light breaking upon the decadent darkness of the Roman Empire. The fall of the Empire under Chris- tianity is left to a less exalted strain. Such discords are drowned in the songs of the morning stars as they lead new peoples into the blessings of Christianity. Recurrent themes of the symphony are the enfran- chisement of woman, sometimes from the restraints essential to the glory of womanhood, the passing of one or two of the forms of industrial slavery, the struggles for political liberty, the improvement of a moral sense which forces some abominations to be practised less openly than classic taste permitted; THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION i8i above all, the new conception of humanity as the equality and brotherhood of the children of God, an ideal insufficiently expressed in present social condi- tions, frenetic militarisms, or responsibilities incurred with suspicious readiness by Christian nations in the alleged behalf of their pagan and Mohammedan sisters. This apology extols the beneficent work of the church in the Middle Ages, as among the Albigenses, sets Puritanism to its music somewhat nasalized; and is carried away by its enthusiasms to celebrate all im- provements of human conditions, elevations of moral sense, and enlargements of life in the world, as Gesta Christi, though we see not yet all things put under Him. That Christianity has exercised a large influence upon the progress of civilization is generally conceded, and also that this influence has been on the whole more beneficial than mischievous. Yet the alleged causal connection is difficult to find within the scope of this current apologetic, since the supposed cause and effect are not of the same genus. Our civilization contains mighty moral and spiritual forces of its own, which have the right to claim for their develop- ments much that Christianity claims. Where the two seem to work together to good results it is im- possible to distinguish how much is due to our culture, i82 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION how much to our religion, and difficult to prove in most concrete instances that the part of the latter is not negligible. Or the influence of Christianity may be simply a stimulus to our other inheritance, to awake Aryan potencies. And much of the in- fluence of Christianity, as this argument traces its unfoldings, has been for evil, frequently for mon- strous evil. It is a question whether this apologetic, as traditionally argued, can establish its claim beyond controversy at any point. The classic age was better than this glorification of Christianity represents it, and the course of the Christian era worse. Economic conditions seem to have been the direct cause of the fall of the Roman Empire, and for these and other evils Christianity prescribed no remedy. The Church that educated the nations darkened mind and heart, till Hellenism's new dawn, which the church largely obscured. From the shackles of those so incomplete emancipators, Lutheranism and Calvinism, the human spirit is struggling to get free. The cross of mankind's redemption has been the fruitful occasion of repressive ecclesiasticisms and of atrocities enormous, unthink- able. Swinburne's Hues, "Before a Crucifix," do not overstate the facts. If it is urged that such evils are not due to Christianity, but to its perversions, this argument is compelled to reckon the perversion in THE ARYAN CIVILIZATION 183 the actual historic influence: malign outworkings of culture are also due to perversions of culture. Favor- able comparisons of Christian with non-Christian lands are also comparisons of lands of the Hellenic culture with lands barbarous, or of another type of civiliza- tion. It would be an academic futility to argue that our Occidental progress might have been as great without the influence of Christianity. Christianity has been present. It would be as academically futile to maintain that there could not have been greater progress in certain directions without Christianity. Who knows what other beneficent secular powers have been precluded by the institutions and forces which this argument conceives as representing our religion? There are few nobler tasks than to emanci- pate culture from the Hmitations and repressions which bear the name Christian, and to permit the de- velopment of civihzation's own untrammeled powers. The argument is reconstructed when we consider the different natures of our two inheritances, and that Jesus and the religion that keeps His spirit are not for man's appropriation of the world, but for man's transcendence of the world. Then the alleged direct causal connections between Him and the accomplish- ments of our civilization fall away. These potencies are relieved of an interference which He never as- 1 84 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION serted; and He is vindicated from a purpose which He never intended. He, in His separateness from the Aryan civilization, is not the servant of these things. The distinction reveals the actual and historic influence of Jesus and His religion upon the Aryan culture. The tasks of our civilization have been confronted with the Semitic principle and are unable to repudiate it. The spirit that attempts the Aryan conquest of the world has been taught that for this conquest it must stand above the world. The soul is transcendent of that which it would appropriate and complete. This becomes more evident with the modern enlargings of the task, but is always essential to the thorough undertaking of the task. To appro- priate and complete, one must transcend. But this is to find the aim of the task in soul that transcends. The radical division in modern life becomes its funda- mental perplexity and strife : the Aryan asks the indis- pensable alliance of the Semitic spirit, to appropriate the world; but the Semitic spirit repudiates the Aryan purpose, denies the Aryan principle. CHAPTER IV THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION Life is task in the civilization in which one finds oneself. It is task by the principle and aim of the civilization of which we are. No man has the right even to consider the exchange of this obligation for another. Against whatever argument or claim, we must be true to the immediate loyalty. Whether success or failure awaits us, we cannot do otherwise than give ourselves to the work next our hand. To do that with enduring determination is success in our own souls at least, though nothing else comes of it. The service of the present age moves in a large un- selfishness. For into the task of this phase of our civilization enters the glorifying, energizing social passion, with the sublime hope, that men personally self-attained in their relations with one another, in their interpenetrations of one another, with reorgan- ized conditions of life, may effect in greater measure than ever before humanity's appropriative and com- pletive conquest of the world. The social passion has summoned the Christian i8s 1 86 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION consciousness to the task of civilization thus magnani- mously conceived. That which seems to be the dominant Christian ambition of our time is to incar- nate Jesus' righteousness, wisdom, beauty and love, in organizations of law, science, art and social relations, making the world the body of Jesus' soul. The new social consciousness hailed Him social Saviour. His Church flung herself into social ministries. His prophets flamed with the social evangel. The tired eyes of the nations looked up to see their redemption drawing nigh. Verily Jesus is the social man. He is unquenchable fury against every wrong of man to man, in His conception of manhood. He is the in- carnate democracy of all men's equal and supreme right. He is the power to unify all men, and to Him a man does not exist as a man if he rejects mankind's supreme unity. It is indeed the soul of humanity that He would save, — the only soul in any man which He thinks worth saving; but His salvation is all the more evidently the salvation of just the soul. The fundamental division of modern life is most evident in the distinction of His social passion from ours. This social difference is felt increasingly. When generally recognized, the final rupture will impend between Christianity and our civilization. Whatever Jesus' credentials, whatever His nature, whatever the THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 187 glory and blessedness to which He invites, whatever the penalty for rejecting Him, our work comes first, and He is our Christ only as he is Master of the work. It is not that the rash hope of constructing from the teaching of Jesus a new regime, collectivistic or in- dividuaHstic, proves as superficial as unintelligent: we look to Him, not for schemes and external organi- zations, but for the formative principle and energy of them. It is not that Jesus' expectation of the im- mediate destruction and reconstruction of all things hid from Him the social development of the ages that bear His name; the catastrophe which He looked for might be for the estabhshment of that kingdom of humanity for which we long. But the expectation which inspired Jesus expressed another hope than ours. His teaching and ministry were not directed to the object of our endeavors. The solution is in Jesus. It is in the heart of our culture responding to Him. We have not known what spirit we are of. Our civilization's final aim, unconsciously because so deeply implicit, is not the appropriation of the world but its transcendence. This is not a principle of a different order, for civil- ization to give place to, but the principle of civiliza- tion itself, Aryan or any other, but most clearly of the civilization most advanced. It is not something else, 1 88 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION for civilization to work up to and then efface itself, but was present when the higher interests first emerged from barbarism; a power latent far below its earliest cultural manifestations. It is not confined to the higher elements of culture, but pervades it all. Every appropriation and completion of the world, wrought by the soul that refuses to be conquered by the world, is intrinsically the transcendence of the world by the human soul. In so far as tasks separate themselves from this their essential aim, they deny themselves and lose themselves. Jesus, who is realization and central impartive power of spiritual humanity, is revealer, director, and inexhaustible energy of all that men have to do. To learn that this is the implicit task of civilization, we must turn where the conquest of the world begins and is achieved, to the depths of the toiling soul. Here we find the fundamental division in the life of our time. The determination to conquer the world by appropriating it, and the aspiration to conquer the world by transcending it, constitute the final strife in every man and the life of humanity. Be- neath the distinction of conquering the world and of being conquered by the world, there opens the dis- tinction which the Semitic Jesus saw most clearly, distinction in the world-conquest by the soul. That THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 189 which has seemed to the Aryan the consummate task, the final victory, humanity's self-attainment and self-perfecting, has brought us only to the en- trance of the spiritual universe; our most arduous fields are still before us. If we choose to stay in this preliminary of manhood when the further advance is revealed to us, we return in principle to the inferior stage. Our world-conquest by world-appropriation is then the world's victory over us, for then we re- pudiate the power which alone can conquer the world. We submit ourselves to things if we fail to recognize the revelation of what we are. The Aryan genius has received many intimations of this achievement which lies beyond its clear vision, has felt unappeasable dissatisfactions, not only with its accomplishments, but also with its hopes and aspirations. It has not been able to evade the sus- picion, that the problem of life is not solved even when the vision seemed most alluring of a world subdued to the human soul and of a soul victoriously appropri- ating and completing the world. But in the Semite these premonitions have become potencies. It is he who has announced that even the world-conquering manhood must die, and that there must come to Hfe a manhood of radically different aims and energies; a new spiritual Hfe in a new-created universe of I90 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION spiritual values; a life that seeks no flight from the world, but whose conflict with the world is to win spirit's transcendence of the world. Two words which we have used frequently now deepen their meanings. The world has been regarded by us as that which is in opposition to the human soul, and this practical definition, suited to action, we shall still find sufficient for the practical purposes which alone occupy us; but the world as in opposition to the soul now includes all that which opposes the soul in its world-transcending purpose. And the spirit, expressive of that which is soul's fundamental and universal, now means to us that which asserts and realizes itself in the world-transcending conflict. The world which towered so vast before us, now lives mightily within us, and spirit finds itself engaged in the most interior strife, and here it has to realize itself from the faintest beginnings of itself. It is nothing less than this spiritual manhood which is awakened in us even from the earliest sense im- pressions. It is this power, however unconscious of its supreme task, which unifies them into a world-order, organizes them that it may transcend them, seeking ever its own quaHty, as not from them derived. Even here it is striving for norms and powers of action which, surmounting the utilities of increasing pleasure THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 191 and decreasing pain of flesh and sense, press on to inviolable sanctities in attainments of its own being. In spirit's very construction of the world it reaches beyond its constructions of sense impressions, however complex or abstract, into universal thought wherein alone these things are true. In forming a world of beauty whose delight is in the accordances of things, it seeks the vital intensity and harmony of its own unfoldings. In its rudimentary formations of its world, the powers of this spiritual Hfe expand in clarifying consciousness of the spiritual infinite, beset with whatever antinomies; they penetrate the indwell- ing hfe of the eternal. From its earliest contacts with the elements of its world, its task is the transcendence of the world. The relation of resistant world to germinant spirit becomes closer in these deepened meanings of each. The world is not a reaUstic conception for ideaHsm to contemn. It is not apart from us, nor an intrusion into us, but internal order of thought and Hfe. Its final relation with that which we conceive as somehow, provisionally without, it does not belong to our plan to amphfy, except that nothing must be permitted to conceal from us the world's essential inwardness. When one thinks of it as extending beyond the in- dividual self, the world is an inner life in humanity, 192 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION and may well be within all rational being. Thus the contest between world and spirit is the very closest, as intense as confused. Because the world is within us, organized by spirit itself (for no conception of its self-organization can make it more than appearance) the difference between that which is thus wrought upon and that which works upon it is given only rudimentarily, to be grasped only by the self-develop- ment of the shaping power. As spirit and world are inwardly together, this relation discloses that in ultimate nature they are one: "The only possible antithesis of spirit is itself spiritual." They are to be clarified into one by the reahty which spirit is, mighty to subdue all things unto itself, affirming its world- transcending task, its world-destroying task, of trans- forming all that is beneath itself into its own nature, that as opposing world the other may cease to be. In spirit's interblendings with the world it gains itself from the world and against the world. Perplexed, distracted, it asserts itself and its universaHty, the infinite spirit witnessing with our spirit, that we are one with that One in inahenable nature and final goal. This indissoluble relation between the world and the spirit brings to thought contradictions seemingly irreconcilable, to hfe conflicts incessant. Spirit's ethical nature forbids it to leave the problem un- THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 193 solved, the strife unfought. Therefore it looks its fellow in the face, resolute indeed to compel all that may be transmuted into the spiritual, yet scorning any compromise of its own quahty, any restriction of its own universality, and forcing its way through encounters as of wrestlers interlocked, hot breath of each in the other's face. Thus are the spirit's powers developed, its kingdom won. For the spirit is real as realizing itself. It is our own because we must fight for it. Innermost self, because in fundamental mysteries we must search for it. Closest because far away, hearth-fire beyond the spaces: there our being centers. With its confusions to be made radiance, with its self-constraints in which alone is liberty, with toil and pain of the insatiable war against the world, and the secret of peace dawning in the strife, — in comparison with this which we choose to be nature and aim of us, nought is, save as spirit may gain itself thereby. For the spirit's own sake, the world thus inwardly understood must be given the freest scope in its own range, must be developed to the utmost of its poten- cies. So in every man, so in the life of humanity. For in conflict with the world spirit realizes itself, and there must be conflict with the world which develops itself to its completeness, in order that militant spirit 194 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION may reach its own full stature. Therefore to each task in the world is accorded its own aim, impulse, and law. And labors organize themselves by the aims, impulses and laws of these provisional wholes. Only in such emancipation can the tasks of a man or a civilization gain the coherence and significance which render them usable by the transcendent purpose. Spirit demands for its own sake the untrammeled freedom of the world's tasks. It develops itself by confronting the actual world-order as strict scientific method learns it, and as that order's own impulses unfold it. The spiritual is itself task, not completeness which can command things to adjust themselves to its own finished scheme. It has no formula for their procedures or conclusions. All must be free, elastic, adventurous, in that order in which and from which and against which spirit realizes itself. Yet in no realm can it be content with any ultimate purpose but its own. It asserts that conditions of life can have no significance except for the life to which they minister, and that life has no significance except in values and ends which, because values and ends, are of the spiritual. It can- not restrict the other without limiting itself, a state- ment historically demonstrated. Its assertion of it- self is challenge and inspiration for every power of civilization, every beauty and glory of the world, to THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 195 evolve itself. Every spiritual idea, ferment, person- ality, has been a quickener of culture, and that which spirit evokes it must not flee from nor leave uncon- quered. An undisciplined optimism may conceive spirit's affirmation of itself under the similitude of the sun-god who smites the clouds of night into splendors of his rising. But no divinities of light are we. We con- front our task bewildered, darkened, sore-oppressed with weaknesses and miseries and sins. Therefore we turn away from every spirituality that is overweening, self-confident. We reject as in- sufficient for our labors that ideahsm so called, which assumes the self-realization of spirit as attained in its bare self-assertion, and proceeds with an undisturbed construction of the spiritual universe. All is spirit, do we say? Nothing is spiritual for us until we have made it so. And what thought, what vital energy have we sufficient for the task ! Therefore we repudiate any spirituality that is not of a lowly and contrite heart. We pronounce insuffi- cient every energy which is not redemptive, both of the world to be overcome, and first of all redemptive of our own spiritual being, which must deny itself in every worth and claim in order to be of worth and power. Therefore our leaders cannot be even the 196 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION greatest of the Hellenes and their pupils of modern times, who are ignorant of the evangel that for our world-conquest we must first in our inmost spiritual life die and rise again. Those great souls are still in- volved in the world, none the less though they stand on its radiant heights, and their leadership is not beyond that genius of world-appropriation and world-completion, by which the world is not over- come. Yet the spirit within us, confronting its warfare in the conscious weakness which alone is receptive of the sufficient strength, and in the fear which alone is capable of indomitable courage to the last, finds it- self in a universal human alliance. The self-sufhcient spirituahty declaims loftily to one's fellowmen who, from whatever fault or virtue, deny the spiritual, or are unable to afhrm it: "Whether you have a soul or not, I have." Arrogance toward men is never hu- mility toward God. And while every latent force in humanity is requisite, the battle becomes the dubious perquisite of the few, overbold. This assumed spirit- uality denies the spirituality essential, however latent, in man as man, in every man as belonging to human- ity, and in this denial denies spirit in its deepest meaning. It becomes an individual self-sufficiency contrary to spirit's universal and therefore sacrificial THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 197 nature. In this inhuman pride stood the pneumatic Gnostic, separating himself from psychical men. Here are select companies of professors of religion, parading along the heavenward way. Here are also many champions of the deeper thought, the finer feel- ing, the purer life, who are alienated from the multi- tude. Here are those to whom affirmation is easy, oblivious of the possibility that in the souls which deny there may be an affirmation more ethical and veracious. But the man who recognizes in every man, as in himself, the germ of soul, calls, not from a height, but eyes level with eyes most downcast, hand extended to hand most soiled: "Brother-soul, because brother- man, by the affirmation which is in our denials, by our spark unquenchable in many floods, by the holi- ness persistent and inalienable through every pollu- tion, fight in alliance with us all, the battle of Him who overcame." Therefore we lift up hands of prayer to the Spirit almighty, in confession without a plea, in the entreaty of utter helplessness. Then the self-assertion and self- centering, which is the deadliest enemy of spiritual manhood, because, standing nearest, it strikes at the heart, finds the impenetrable shield interposed. Not for ourselves do we conquer, but for the Infinite who sent us, whose we are, and in whom we lose and find 198 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION ourselves, and unto Him be the glory of the vic- tory. Then to our weakness comes His strength, which is perfected in our weakness. When we are overwhelmed with our insufficiency we assert the transcendent conquest of the world. For such asser- tion is the declaration of the Infinite and All-holy, who will have His purpose accompKshed in us and through us, that we may attain His life eternal. Nothing less than this power is in human endeavors to achieve their self-realization by the transcendent world-conquest. The transcendent answer is given no less clearly in the "Everlasting No" to any incitement to find satisfaction in the world, even in the finest forms of its appropriation. This negation goes deeper than the resignation born of the conviction that the world refuses to serve us; it is we who refuse. This answer is given by those whom humanity recognizes as its representatives, the witnesses of things unseen and eternal, of whom the world was not worthy. Theirs is the sublime scorn of gaining the whole world at the cost of any good which is the soul's own. In this self-denying self-affirmation the leaders of mankind have laid down the earthly life, in cruci- fixion of themselves to the world, and of the world to themselves, having accomplished previous toils and THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 199 sufferings which were a continual dying to the lower self, while the life they Hved in the flesh was lived by faith in the supreme devotion. But the very quahty of such men has been par- taken by every man who has given "the last full measure of devotion." For no sacrifice is offered merely that the world's goods may fall to those for whose sake the sacrifice is made. That would be a poor return for the utmost that man can do for his fellowmen. Then the spirit that makes the sacrifice would stoop to an end beneath itself. For nothing less than spirit is capable of sacrifice, whether made by man or brute, since sacrifice is by its nature a world- transcending act. However bhndly, unconsciously, or with whatever mingling of lower impulse, one can give oneself only to spiritual worths and ends. This repudiation of the world is shared by every action which is of the nature of that utmost which men can do and are continually doing. Every offering of love, every aspiration after holiness, every asser- tion of righteousness for righteousness' sake, manifests the better man in every man, the real humanity which is transcendently spiritual. This repudiation of the world stultifies the world's utmost claim. That which invites us to appropriate and complete it is impermanent. 200 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION "They melt like mists, the sohd lands; Like clouds they shape themselves and go." The constellations have the doom of perishableness written in their very radiance. If the earth, with the systems in which it has its place, is the living garment of deity, as was declared by a complacency from which our generation is disillusioned, it is but a vesture to be outworn and folded away. If we assume the end- less conservation of material elements — an assump- tion which may betray its provisional meaning when it is analyzed — these can be of conceivable import only in their organizations which change and pass. If we suppose that the spirit's task is to appropriate and complete world after world and universe after universe, that work must be either a series of futilities or for the self-realization of spirit. There is no such thing as "to stamp the perishable with imperish- able worth." That were an intolerable separation of worth and being. We can win eternal worth to our own souls only by the overcoming of the perish- able. We reach the heart of the inconceivability when we reflect that spirit, though realized by us in a relation to the temporal, is itself not of time. No analysis of the conception time — simplified of late by noble philosophies of the self-attaining spirit — is needed to THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 201 make this clear. It is enough to say that the spirit distinguishes the order of its own life from the suc- cessiveness of the world. What this innermost order is, in its complete emancipation from the other, we know not yet in its completeness, for it is to be attained. We know that its origin and nature are no more from that which we may call the temporal order of the world, than from its spatial order. If we use the same word, time, for both, it is in a deepen- ing consciousness of different significancies. That difference is indicated in the word eternal. Most welcome to this self-consciousness of eternity are the failures to find anything beyond perishableness in our physical organization. Because spirit is not of time, the end and object of its working cannot be any- thing or all things in the scope of even indefinite time. The growing consciousness of the irrationality of the world as world, makes irrational the conception of man's task as the world's appropriation and com- pletion. To accept the smug old theodicies of "the best of all possible worlds" has become more intoler- able than to face in their most fearful shapes the irre- ducible misery and aimlessness. This disillusion is casting an ever darker shadow upon the life of our age. It paralyzes titanic efforts, and evokes a deeper 202 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION thought, a gentler compassionateness, and a mightier redemptive passion. The picture has often been painted too darkly; there is more in creation than a groaning and travailing in pain together until now; but a vast residuum remains unillumined. As long as we judge the world, as indeed it presents itself to be judged, according to its attainments of its ends as world, the judgment must be: these ends are not attained; nor if they are attainable, have they sufficient worth to justify themselves, even if we forget their cost. For spirit to make its world-conquest the appro- priation of that irrationality, even when completed by the spirit unto the furthest consummations and organizations of the world's own goods, would be the repudiation of all that the spirit can pronounce good. How the problem of the world's inherent irrationality is to be solved, we are not now consider- ing, except that the only possible solution is the spirit's own unfolding to the transcendent world- conquest. The Aryan genius, unless it surmounts itself, fails to include the whole of life. For there are elements of Hfe which are not to be completed, but to be changed beyond any completion of themselves even by that which is above them. The characteristic Hellenic phase of culture, and our inheritance of it, deal too THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 203 much with favored persons and peoples and with epochs of conscious advance. Sorrow, pain, and death are for the opposite of world-appropriation: they are not for world-completion. Foul shapes of disease, the physical aspects of mortahty, the actual loss from flesh and sense of one very dear or of a heart's desire, remain what they are in their sphere. They are in- deed to be resisted by science and other powers which work within that order; but such triumphs remain ever incomplete. Though the imagination of hope pictures a humanity at length triumphant over these enemies, though an undaunted romanticism ideally aspires to realms of being in which only the good remains, yet the power which is evoked for this conquest, unless the hope is a confessed fantasy, is the spirit in its transcendent self-affirmation, and the significance of the interminable war is that spirit is to be realized thereby. Neither now nor in the far future have grief and anguish and disillusion any possibility of justification except when compelled to the spirit's furtherance. Here are indeed spiritual transformations of the lower order, but they have not the world for aim and object. Victory unknown to the Aryan genius at its height, yet involved in the impulse which is in its depth, is a human soul standing above every evil of 204 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION the natural order, transmuting every suffering and loss, defeat and disaster, into thought and holiness and faith and love and essential joy. So in civiliza- tion's overwhelmings, humanity has grasped that which history's mature judgment pronounces best. Only in this insight have we even the beginnings of a theodicy of human life and of the universe, a rudi- mentary theodicy which need not assume to explain the shapes of that which is to be overcome nor their genesis, but holds the certainty that the good is supreme because of the unfolding power of its over- coming. These dark realms the Semitic genius alone illumines. It enters them unafraid, for in them it is confident of supreme vindication. These austere initiations reveal to us that in our joys no less, and in our evident accomplishments, worth is the seeking of the spirit's own, the denial of the lower order in the lower self, that death of ourselves to the world and of the world to ourselves whereby the spirit comes to realization. For this dark part of the actual is only a part. To suppose indeed that sorrow is only the foil to joy, shadows in a picture to accentuate the lights, clouds to disintegrate white glare into myriad-colored splen- dors, dissonances resolving into harmonies that so please the more, — such reconciliations may suffice THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 205 for those who have never faced life's ills with the indignant sympathy which is growing in the heart of our age. But the compassionateness intensely minis- trant to the suffering within reach, and brooding back and on with the Buddhas along humanity's hard paths, and down to all sentient life, and out into a universe of strife connoting pain, must not lose the resource and wholesomeness of vital joy. In this realm may not the Aryan principle make its home and accomplish its service? Beauty and the rapture of it, flooding up from nature into art that consummates delight in the world, all but too intense to be endured, these things are for every man who has not shut them out. There are hours of life so exquisite that no disaster or continuous pain can take them from us. Still they abide even in torture and against the face of death. In the inalienable preciousness of them men have dared the terrors of the pit, confident that all the devils are too weak to wrest from us a memory of bliss that has become the soul's very element. No Semitic austerity can take from us these essentials of ourselves. Are these the bounds which the Semitic principle may not pass? They may seem so if we enjoy too little, not when we drain the brimming cup of joy. We need not fear too great happiness, nor seek to moderate the thrill 2o6 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION of it; for intensities of delight sweep, like the upward rush of mighty music, into the spirit's realm. Spirit alone can give the crown of joy, being alone competent to pronounce and create worth, and to receive happi- ness into a permanence where it unfolds its uttermost potencies. This austerely consummate test awaits each seeming good : is the innermost Ufe richer for it? Is it capable of being changed from every form of flesh and sense? Is it raised above all their elabora- tions to be a constituent of enlarged spiritual hfe? The ethical test which every pleasantness encounters is nothing less than this: can that which I enjoy be transformed into spirit whose nature is holiness? Poor is the happiness of any man who is content to meet amenities with a challenge less rigorous. The world of beauty and joy exists altogether for the tran- scendent principle, whose energy is destructive of the world, for when taken into the spiritual the world as world is no more. Of this transcendent ethic is the test of the permanence of any joy. Whatever is not transformed into the spiritual fades with the enfeeblement by time of the vividness of reproduced impressions; and this impermanence extends to the organizations of them. There can be abiding quaHty only by transmutation into spiritual excellence. Nothing in the lower order is too glorious to yield THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 207 to this power of destructive transcendence. "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, that knowledge no longer exists; so that if any man is in Christ he is a new creature: the old things passed; behold, the new have come into being." What eyes saw and ears heard and hands handled has been hfted into the eternal life that He is, and that we are in Him. So of all the beauty and grace of those dear to us, of whom the world was not worthy. That which they gave us remains ours, not by our dwelling upon faces that we shall see no more, voices whose music has ebbed into gulfs of silentness; but in the inmost being of us they are whom we know no more after the flesh; and our transformed possession of them leads us on in wondering certainty, unto our "closing with them soul in soul." Therefore, like the hero of the Hebrew myth, we are wrestlers till the breaking of the day against all that is in the world, against its joy no less than against its sorrow, and most mysteriously is God engaged in that wrestling, and the victory is a new name, as of Israel, for a new manhood, which achieves to see the face of God. To the happy and to the unfortunate, to those whom the world meets with its goods, and to those whom it confronts with its evils, and to each man in the alternations of his fortunes, there is the 2o8 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION same task, humanity's one battle, to transform all that encounters us into that which we are fundament- ally, even into that which we have to realize. Every- thing in the world, of whatever aspect, summons us, not to appropriate and complete it, but to transcend and destroy it, by the attainment from it of our spiritual being. This implicit purpose of our culture is evident when we regard the chief historic currents, Iranian, Roman, Celtic, and Gothic, which unite in the flood of the Hellenic civilization. It is not simply that our cul- tural forces organize the lower order of life, with reference to which the spirit realizes itself. Then those who are engaged in such tasks would find them- selves only indirectly related to the spiritual, and the greater part of all men's lives would be divided from Hfe's deepest meaning. These cultural forces possess a deeper worth. Each of them, and all in their Aryan unity, implicitly set for themselves the task of the transcendent principle. The Iranian mihtancy cannot stop short of the ultimate opposition, the consummate strife, and in this warfare the spirit is protagonist, contending for nothing less than ends universal and eternal, to realize itself to the uttermost. Every militancy finds here significance and energy. THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 209 Roman constructiveness works by law and unto law. This Roman element seems the least ideal of the forces of our civilization. It meticulously works out con- structions of things as they are. The heirs of Rome appear of all men least aspirational. Yet in this plodding fidelity to mechanical tasks the deeper prin- ciple is evident. Law as declaring what is, can impose no obligation except as unveiling that which ought to be. Unless its drudging actuality is ethical reality, no reason and no aim can constrain, direct and enforce anything in the organization of society or in individual conduct, and the Roman constructiveness builds con- tinually a house upon the sand. But its implicit ethic is nothing less than that Ought which is inviol- able, infinite, eternal. Every utilitarian ethic, in- dividual or social, assumes the transcendently spir- itual principle, or is a contradiction in terms. Then the elaboration of our tasks regards the actual none the less, and is an adjustment none the less exact of the real relations of things as they are, yet all are for the eternal purpose, the universal ordering. The Celtic and the Gothic open themselves most directly to the Christian faith. The Celtic mystery is implicitly the ever-haunting sense of the infinite. And of this nature is the Gothic realization of the Celtic premonition. God has set eternity in their hearts. 2IO THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION The Hellenic leadership of our civilization cannot keep within the bounds which it prescribed for itself in its original form. The heights above and the depths beneath its chosen kingdom, where it is essayed to live its life free, rich, beautiful, of well-ordered, self-re- strained buoyancy of soul, were ever breaking in and disorganizing that life. Forces from below dragged it down. Forces from above disrupted it still more radically. The vital power which that consciousness possessed before it accepted its disillusion was there- fore brief, and the glories that followed its prime were exquisite fading reflections. Therefore Christianity was too strong for Hellenism, because fulfilling its increasingly conscious need. When reinforced by other Aryan powers, it cannot recover from its early disaster except as it works itself out into the higher principle. The Semitic spirit does not destroy it, but fulfills it, by regenerating it. Its impulse to attain a unity of things, a harmony of life, cannot leave any- thing outside its endeavors without denying the unity and destroying the harmony. Only transcendent spirit, universal because transcendent, is the over- coming of the Hellene's self-contradiction, which re- veals his implicit purpose. Then indeed his organiz- ings and harmonizings of life by ideal forces become realizable. THE TASK OF CRTLIZATION 211 Thus our Hellenic inheritance finds its deeper self and the implicit purpose of all its subordinates, Iranian, Roman, Celtic, Gothic, and any other that history may add. All the elements of their thought, beauty, and power, tend, under the Hellenic hegem- ony, to their freedom and completeness in the tran- scendent world-conquest, in order that spirit, subduing all things to itself, may be all in all. The Sem- itic task is inclusive and consummative of every element in the Aryan civilization and of every power in the developments of humanity. One of the most significant representatives of Aryan civilization was not considered with the others. India contains heterogeneous populations, but most of her culture has been genuinely Aryan. She has renounced the task of civilization. Most Aryan, least Semitic, is this renunciation. India has been unreceptive of Occidental influences because she has reached a stage beyond them ; therefore is she so difficult for the Occi- dent to understand. But our Western culture may come to understand this disillusion of its hopes, this futile result of its endeavors. Every partial paralysis of civilization, frequently recurrent, every over- shadowing of our courage, unveils something of that gloomy mystery, the more as the promise of India's early history is understood, — magnificent, wonderful! 212 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Contemplating that resignation of the world, our Aryan civilization seems to fade, its pride is humbled, its hopes change into despair too wise; human powers sink exhausted and decadent, as availing nothing against an ineluctable mechanism, or a necessitated process, to which all their sound and fury signify just sound and fury. But the task of the spirit redeems the tasks of civilization from such disaster, else in- evitable. Every spiritual attainment has reality, and is cooperant with eternal spirit. Nothing is futile which gives itself to the task of spirit's self-realization. Against the disillusion rises the assured and all- quickening conviction. When the reconstruction has been accepted, our various tasks "all seem as before." In the radical changes the immediate seeming is as before. It is only superficial variances that hasten to manifest themselves in a phenomenal difference. Into the same fields, eating the same bread in the same sweat of face, goes man the toiler, but now to conquer in and from and against the whole world, that one thing precious, his own soul. He must learn exhaustively the world in whose encounter he is to gain himself, in the unhindered developments of the toils which its sternness constrains, or its spontaneities unpel. The assured end gives exultation to these labors, now be- THE TASK OF CIVILIZATION 213 come significant, creates a new glory in nature and the naturalness of human life and in all things which are impressed into the spirit's increase. Nor does the inevitable destruction of all the visible that shall be overcome abate the exultation of our service. For when man the toiler, at the conclusion of the brief ages allotted to human life upon the earth, sees all embodiments of his labors destroyed, as also at death every individual has nothing left of the material good and beauty he has wrought; and when mankind re- turns to the Master of the work confessing, "Lord, I come back to Thee empty-handed, for all that my science and art have constructed are no more, and every form of human organization dependent on them has with them been swept away;" then to humanity, from whom God wants nothing but spirit realized, shall be said again: Thou art My son, the Beloved, in thee I am well pleased. CHAPTER V THE TASK OF JESUS The world-transcending task, which is appointed to our civihzation because imperative upon every man and humanity, was the task of Jesus. He also must win in and from and against the world that one thing precious, His own soul. If He so attained Him- self as to new-create our spiritual manhood by suflS- cient powers for its self-realization, then His central place in humanity and in the unfolding spiritual universe is not less than that which Christianity claims for Him. The redemptive significance of Jesus is to be expressed in terms of the task, in which, for Himself and for the brotherhood of men, He overcame the world. The word task may find its complete meaning in Jesus. Our time is learning to replace static concep- tions by kinetic, to think being in terms of action, so bringing thought into unity with Hfe, to which the inactive is of no concern, not even in life's reposes. This is not a turning back to becoming; it is not merely genetic, evolutionary. For action has no 214 THE TASK OF JESUS 21$ significance to life, and to vitalized thought which serves life, except as action has aim and purpose. These are not to be imagined as dead somewhats outside of action, but are recognized as immanent power of action's own unfolding. Then action is ful- filled in task. Active being finds itself when it finds its world-transcendent task. For humanity's accom- plishment of its task, in our unrestricted conception of humanity, there may be, as we have seen, a central energy, a new-creative power, which is itself a personal task, with all the conditions and limitations under which a human person may accomplish it. The Christian confession, presented to mankind to be the universal confession, is this: Jesus is our Saviour who accompUshed His task and ours; for every member of the humanity through which courses the power that is at the heart of it, actively depends upon that central accomplishment new-creative of the whole. In this view many things which have been declared essential to Jesus disappear, and many things belong- ing to Him which it is becoming customary to consider accidental and transitory, are evidently essential. Everything that belonged to His task, even the ap- parently most trifling incident, or a superstition of His age which He shared and put to use, is of abiding value, because these things are elements of His task: 2i6 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION in and from and against these He accomplished Him- self. And though we have no record of most of these, yet they continue for us in His spiritual personahty, progressively realized from them. On the other hand, all that has been attributed to Him which is not of His task no longer concerns us; for example, His alleged preexistence, membership in the Trinity, place in a plan of salvation. The gain outweighs the loss, since the gain is for our task, and the loss of all that is not for the task is gain. But other apparent values disappear, whose loss seems real. One of these is His authority as teacher. Christian presentations have lately been shifting the stress to the teaching of Jesus. By emphasizing His mastery of the secrets of the spiritual world, the church sought to recoup herself in advance for the losses just indicated, and which she felt unavoidable. Soon it began to be perceived that His authority as teacher must be confined to his specialties, morality and reh- gion. But in these departments He brought forth from His treasures things new and old concerning demoniacal possession, and the speedy ending of the world, and, in all probability, the continuance of the Jewish law till the world's end; all conceived as reli- gious and ethical values, and all with superb inconsis- tencies. Signs of change and growth, corrections in THE TASK OF JESUS 217 His thoughts and the expressions of them, have left traces in the Gospels, whose interest was to smooth away every inconsistency. It would be indeed super- fluous to say, that of all moral and religious geniuses He is more than the greatest; that in spiritual vision and ethical clarity, He dwarfs all others: He speaks not as scribes who repeat what they have learned, but out of an originality that creates, and transforms what it has received into new creations. But these avowals have nothing to do with His alleged inerrancy. A curious phenomenon of our day is the appeal of some worshippers of the teachings of Jesus to historic criticism, beseeching it to allot to the early church those reputed sayings of His whose content no modern man can accept, leaving to His own authorship the words of eternal life. Discriminations of the authentic elements of the reports concerning Jesus are indeed among the most valuable clarifyings of Christianity, and the final inner harmony of Jesus' task is their deepest test, but to undertake them with prejudgment is to bring disrepute upon historic criticism and upon Jesus as needing a perversion of it. The loss of the infallible pedagogy of Jesus is gain to those whose sole concern is life's world-transcen- dent conquest. For it would be a cancellation of this task to have the questionings that belong to it solved 2i8 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION by Him or another. Even to recreate His answers in our own souls is not all that man the toiler and searcher has to undertake. To transform traditional and en- vironing superstition and individual limitation into powers of vision and deed, not externally authorita- tive, but sufficient for us to overcome by, is enough for Him to do, enough for us that He should do. Any- thing beyond that would be less than that. One is true teacher who takes us not so much into his truth as into his search for truth, not so much to the summits of his attainments as into the labor that attains. Or, to speak more accurately, truth itself is not an external something, to the presence of which we may at length hope to come, but is just spirit's self-development. Truth itself is continual task and battle of this self- conquest, which transforms all things into itself. He who sufiiciently empowers us is supreme teacher, whom we reverence not as authority but as energy of our unfolding. Great is the advance of that faith in Jesus which has learned Him as simplest and deepest realization of religion, as we recognize in Him that which the human child may be to the eternal Father, and accept God as He knew Him, the Father of our most child- like, manliest trust and obedience and love. Our danger here is that we take too Hghtly His vital faith THE TASK OF JESUS 219 and our own as learned from Him. We make our own faith too easy if we assume in Him a sonship won and kept too easily. Jesus, filled with the consciousness of sonship by the Spirit of the Father dwelling in Him, going forth into the awful strife wherein He overcame the world,— that is not all He had to do. His fellow- ship with the Father was not static, but dynamic; it was, because it was ever being attained. Here was the hardest toil of His task. In his sonship there is indeed no trace of a time when He was in any act or thought unreconciled to God. But this signifies that He had never failed in the task of bringing into that sonship the most recalcitrant elements of experience, and of winning continuously in and from and against the world the son's deepening life in the eternal. Therefore in this genuine task not all is unclouded confidence of victory, or unwavering vision of the face of God. Triumphant exultation in the grace that is hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes, and that bids the weary and heavy laden come to His rest of soul, alternates with utter weariness under the burden of the faithless and perverse genera- tion. There was the repeated vision of His final triumph, and the heavy questioning whether the Son of Man should find faith on the earth at His coming. There was restfulness in the infinite purpose, the re- 2 20 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION ferring of the evil of every morrow to the Will that shapes all things for His children's good; and there was the agony that attained the prayer, Thy will be done. Even that cry from the cross which we cannot endure to suppose His, is not impossible. The deepest and hoHest fellowship of the human spirit with the Spirit all-holy and all-loving belongs to the task of the tran- scendent overcoming of the world. The emphasis upon the task of Jesus corrects those thoughts of Him which ask too little, as well as those which ask the too much that is too little. The saying, Jesus is our example, appeals by its endeavor to re- place christological dogmatisms by an ethical and serviceable salvation. But the phrase connotes the individuaUstic deism which is ignorant of vital rela- tions and interblendings, and which separates man from man no less than from God. Not so did a Kempis understand the kindred phrase, The Imitation of Christ. One does not become like the hero by copy- ing him. And one does not gain influence by aiming to set a good example. Yet let such criticisms keep the tenderness which fears to cause any man to stum- ble, and the confidence that any earnest approach to Jesus ends by entering His vitalizing power, if only we do not stop when He bids us come further. When my worship of a noble soul's example becomes aware THE TASK OF JESUS 221 that all he does and attains is his toil and strife; when into that interminable struggle of his I am taken; when the powers of his overcoming become mine, that I may overcome, and my life which I had fondly thought might externally resemble his, flows from his into forms not hke his, but with his power to trans- form that which I, in my different time and place, must subdue, then I begin to see how Jesus may be source and center of the supreme task for myself and for all men. Is the moral integrity of Jesus, which is commonly called His sinlessness, consistent with this task? Christ's sinlessness, as the traditional theologies have formulated Christ, is not a difficult conception, when once we suppose that anything whatever can be pred- icated of such a Christ, that He can touch the world and our life at all. Deity — if that be deity — with a knowledge impossible to us, with a nature which renders it like a warrior invulnerable at every point and with a magic sword irresistible, should have no difficulty in preserving itself uncontaminate from that which has no access to it. When it is said of a Christ so formulated, "He was tempted in all points like as we are," and when we hear Him describing His ministry with the men who were closest to Him, ''Ye are they who have been with Me in My tempta- tions," that which is predicated falls away from the 22 2 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION subject so conceived. To think of such a being as anything but sinless is a contradiction in terms. It is another question with a different value, when we confront His task, all the more clearly actual and individual, because the same in nature with that which all men have to accompHsh, and because the center of humanity. Goodness in our humanity is identical with the task. This goodness is not something above the task, to accomplish the task by. It is not something beyond the task, for the task to attain. Goodness is con- tinual attaining. That in which and from and against which the spirit is to be won, and all the limitations and conditions to be thus conquered and transformed, are essential to the goodness which is just this over- coming. It is the task itself which is the exclusion of evil, or rather its destruction. In accepting the historic humanity of Jesus, in which abides a divinity greater and closer than in all the creeds, we do not make His moral integrity impossible. This accept- ance first makes it possible. If we avoid the words perfect and absolute, it is because we shun the sug- gestion of a goodness outside the task, a goodness that would not be good at all. It is preferable to speak of the holy Jesus, with no reservation in that confession. THE TASK OF JESUS 223 Thus the question of Jesus' character assumes a deeper earnestness. Where that earnestness is lack- ing, Christianity is in principle repudiated. The concession, especially when it is a silent evasion, that the founder of Christianity lacks that which any vital faith makes the reason for turning to Him, takes from our humanity and from every soul in it the central energy of its task. Christianity disappears with the fading out of its distinctive conception of sin and its assurance of redemption to the uttermost, which its experience identifies with Jesus. To such an intensity Jesus is either Saviour or He is nothing in comparison. As Saviour He must be sufficient to make holy the central energy of the all-inclusive life task. The explanations and exculpations of sin which men have urged outside of Christianity are excluded from Christianity. And it is the holy Jesus who has made them impossible. Because of His holiness, we know that moral evil is not incompleteness to be outgrown. It is not a necessary incident in a normal process and therefore holding in itself the soul of goodness. It cannot be confused with natural evil, as being ac- counted for, to the relief of our responsibility, by our animal inheritance or our physical organization, by our environment, circumstance, fate, nature, or 2 24 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION moral incompetence. Whatever powers may be exerted by these things of lower than spiritual range, in determining the forms of sin, its source and nature are declared to be a perversity in the self-determining human spirit itself, so declared by the unperverted, the holy Jesus. Hindrances to the good are demands upon the good to realize itself against them; these demands He fulfilled. Sin is contrary to our relation to the eternal holiness and love, wherein He stood. It is against the Father of our spirits, who opens His own self to His children, even as Jesus received Him. Therefore sin is against our own souls which must live in God's holy spiritual life, which was Jesus' dwelling-place. At its least it is our self-disruption, for He continually brought every power and experi- ence into the unity of the undivided devotion. At its culmination it is the annulling of everything normal within us, for it loses relation with Him. Because of our destined fellowship of holy love with our fellow- men, for His task was service and sacrifice, it is chaos of the social order and demoralization of the spiritual universe. The Christian conviction of sin is darkened except as it kneels in the light of His holy task and overcoming. It is the consciousness of guilt, awakened by the holy Jesus, which flings us, without excuse or claim. THE TASK OF JESUS 225 upon the mercy of the eternal hohness, to acknowledge the self -Incurred moral helplessness. We hunger and thirst after a righteousness which shall be God's com- plete redemption of us. Impulse of repentance, ideal of moral attainment, assurance of divinely wrought moral and spiritual salvation, confidence in God's gracious will and inexhaustible power to save, rev- elation of God's own inviting holiness which can be none other than the sacrificial love of the crucified, all these are found in the life, individual, concrete, personal, of Him in whose will and heart and thought, and expressive word and deed, the eternal goodness has its home. Nothing is more dishearteningly dilettante in the flippancies of our time, which may also occupy them- selves with Jesus, than the self-complacent presump- tion of appropriating those elements of His conscious- ness which we flatter ourselves are congenial to us, as His fihal consciousness of God, His enthusiasms of service, while the moral difference between Him and ourselves is disregarded, with the fundamental rela- tion to Him disregarded which is given in that differ- ence. This is to make Jesus like ourselves, instead of striving to be like Him. This is to deny Him by the confession of Him. This is also to lose those elements of His moral and religious consciousness which we 2 26 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION superficially identify in His experience and our own. To know His sonship to the Father we must know our disparity from Him who was ever in accord with the Father's will, while our filial relation is accomphshed in the divine forgiveness of transgressions. This disparity and the others must ever continue, for the forgiveness of sin, with its restoration to the hallowing grace of God, is not an incident of the Christian life, but its abiding source and continually deepening con- sciousness. The spiritual victory of Jesus is the origin of Christianity, the energy of its unfolding, and the strength of its appeal. Considerations bearing on the holiness of Jesus which fall short of the innermost Christian conviction, experience, and redemptive power, may yet clarify this fundamental Christian consciousness and issue in it. They will help to manifest the character of Jesus as the world-transcending task and victory. This service is rendered even by the allegation that such holiness is contrary to human possibilities, and that it denies the very conception of man and is therefore impossible to the man Jesus. Strange confu- sions of thought and moral consciousness are involved in this objection. Such conceptions cannot keep any significance in the words sin and holiness, for both are made at once normal and abnormal. Or when it THE TASK OF JESUS 227 is more vulgarly said : There is no more likelihood of a perfect specimen of humanity than of a perfect specimen of any other species, — this crudely concep- tual argument which begs the question, moves outside the realm of moral values and has no necessary ap- plication to a moral being. Considerations of this nature gain dignity and import when they assume the evolutionary form. To our present fashion of thought it may well seem a contradiction that a perfect char- acter maybe realized in a process — and indeed an early stage of the process — of age-long moral evolution. The Christian answer may forbear to urge the con- fusion here between physical and moral processes. Its answer is: Holiness is not a completed moral attainment, which is indeed an unmoral conception, for in it moral action ceases, but holiness is itself the task and conflict of the transcendent overcoming of the world. To an evolution that denies moral values this answer has no pertinence, but such an evolution has no pertinence, either to Christianity, or to any moral consciousness. Such misconceptions are largely derived from that dogma which, most blaspheming humanity, blas- phemes Jesus. Its evil impression remains, even in those who have repudiated it; and its corollaries are not always perceived to depend upon the discredited 228 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION theorem. In mankind, we are informed, corrupted by the fall, there is total depravity and inability of moral good. Therefore in order that redemption may be, Jesus, mankind's Saviour, is inhumanly divine, as at- tested by His miraculous birth from a virgin,— though it would be better for this scheme if He had not been born at all. The moment the virgin birth is resolved into a legend, and Jesus is believed to be what He declares and presents Himself, then according to this argument the universal human corruption would attach to Him. The cure for these perverse imagin- ings is to learn from Jesus that real holiness which toils and overcomes. Not all the sources of the confusion are so unworthy, though this one continually exerts its influence upon the others, concealing from us, in the name of Chris- tianity, what normal humanity may be. Holiness is not our complete moral attainment, for that can never be. It is not to be judged by its content, but by its will. The moral content of a child's character is very small. Vast realms of moral endeavor are as yet unmoralized. Many impulses are still in their animal stage; moral judgments are not yet appHed to them. Innumerable are the mistakes of action, estimated by the man's clarified moral judgment, which has no application, for it does not yet exist. THE TASK OF JESUS 229 Traditional moralities are accepted without correction or criticism. The child's obedience may be to pre- cepts which he later spurns as evil. His very trust may go out to that which proves to be ethically un- worthy. He hears and questions the doctors of the law, blind leaders of the blind. His love is deceived. Yet if the will of the child is to do the right, as the child's immaturity conceives the right, we call one monstrous who blames that blamelessness and in- humanly refuses to love and revere the childlike holi- ness. Through every stage of His spiritual self-realization, God's child refused the homage due to the consum- mate world-transcendent goodness; "Why callest thou Me good! One is good, that is God." God's child included Himself in the prayer, "Forgive us our debts;" for that strange word is unaccountable, except as spoken by Jesus and for this reason, the contrition of human incompleteness before the demands of God. Jesus united Himself with His brethren, not in their sin, but in uncompleted obligation. And if there be anything historic in the word attributed to Jesus by the Gospel of the Hebrews, when, just before His baptism, He denied any consciousness of committed sin, but would not aflEirm his sinlessness, leaving that to God's judgment, the explanation lies in this direc- 23© THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION tion. The will that wills the good, and increasingly makes the good the content of character, is made per- fect through discipline and suffering. This is the only holiness that can be the central energy of our task of overcoming the world. The holiness of Jesus cannot indeed be completely established by the Gospel records, so long as we keep the Jesus to which they witness in an external relation to our spiritual life. But through these records, and from the actual, the historic Jesus, and in Him, this redemptive power is appropriated which is the final vindication of His holiness. We do not accept the undiscriminating denial that the unclouded holiness of Jesus can be established historically. For history has come to have a different significance to us from that which is connoted in this apparent profundity. From this significance we do not separate His actual life, as the records of it make it accessible. Nor does it seem a very astute reflection that the sinlessness of Jesus cannot be established historically because we cannot summon to our inquisition all His words and actions, all the thoughts and intents of His heart. The presentation made by the Gospels is not all of the final test, but it is a part of the one historic test. His- tory is the significance of events. Even a single event may reveal the doer's essential quality. THE TASK OF JESUS 231 One of the many important considerations in this field is the absence of any trace of repentance in Jesus, with His peerless moral discernment and deHcacy, which were ever centered upon His accomplishment of the eternal righteousness. This is consistent only with the severely-tested consciousness of having always been well-pleasing to the Father. This consciousness is made the more significant by His sane insistence upon His own moral incompleteness in the presence of infinite holiness. For there is intimated no per- versity, nor any break with a sin-stained past, but that His character was formed in very humanness, through moral conflicts in which He continually over- came. With this self-knowledge is historically con- nected the confession by the earliest Christian com- munity, of the divine value of its Lord — however peculiarly expressed — for this conviction arises from the companionship of their apostolic leaders with the holy Master, and its deeper evidence was the moral new-creation in the life of every disciple. In this his- toric unity is contained the experience of any soul in whom the ancient evangel has issued in a new hfe, ever mighty in its dependence upon Jesus, ever con- trite before Him. The importance of the Gospel records in regard to the character of Jesus, is not that they omit any men- 232 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION tion of fault and impute to Him the performance of every duty. Such blamelessness has been attributed by other biographers to their heroes. It is not that Jesus is the teacher of a perfect ethic, even if that claim could be urged without discrimination, for His fundamental significance is not in His teaching. But that which the Gospels disclose is a character that transcends all moral norms not derived from Him, and yet unifies and realizes men's strugglings after good. This character comes with the mission to impart itself, and with the consciousness that it so realizes itself as to be sufficient for the impartation; a goodness either not at all, or all in all. The stammering attempts of the authors of the Gospel to describe Him, the inconsistencies of their presentations of Him, show how far He was above their utmost moral reach, though they lived in the moral power that came from Him. Jesus' character was not, as presented in the three historic Gospels and the historical remainders of the fourth, the goodness of an ideal lifted above the task of realizing spiritual manhood. He repudiated such a goodness. It was not the goodness of one who has already transformed every element of hfe into full- orbed perfectness, though His moral stature might make it seem so. His goal was to be attained. It was THE TASK OF JESUS 233 not a goodness that makes Him an external authority even in the moral realm, which would then disappear. Our problems of life still remain for our own solution. Visions of the good are for our own beholding. Moral attainments are for our own free energizing. The source and center of humanity's moral and spiritual task makes that task our own in every particular and in unrestricted scope. There is presented in the Jesus of the Gospels un- deviating faithfulness to the clarifyings of ethical judgment, with the accumulation of moral power and the continual transformation of all things into the spiritual. And from the unknown years before His ministry no cloud dims His integrity or darkens His joy of pleasing the Holy Father. Yet we must be careful how we classify Jesus in that type of rehgious experience which attains by growth, not by revolution, as in contrast with the religious personality of Paul. Jesus' disposition was such that His moral insight and power, unless they were a holy growth from the beginning, could be attained only by revolutionary catastrophies of unimaginable violence, with effects beyond anything in the great apostle. His temper- ament was of an unparalleled intensity. Catastrophic, soul-shattering, are His moral and religious crises, with results ever afterward evident and ineffaceable: 234 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION witness the crises of His baptism, of that revolution in His mission which tradition expressed by His trans- figuration; witness Gethsemane. Yet there is no trace of the catastrophe of sin and its repentance. That He in His moral and rehgious intensities incon- ceivable by us could have refrained from evidencing such a crisis if experienced, is simply impossible. Such a supposition involves not merely a diminution of the Jesus of the Gospels, or His impediment ; it would be a change of essential quality. It would leave to no act or word of His that quality which makes them His acts and words. Only in that consciousness could His mission be undertaken. A light upon the moral consciousness of Jesus is the doctrine, current in His time, of the sin- lessness of the expected Messiah. This was not a difficult conception to those who attributed sinlessness to Abraham also, and to other heroes of Israelitish piety. But it was a thought which Jesus could not hold lightly. Without the consciousness of having always been well-pleasing to the Father He could not conceive the possibility of being chosen by Him to the office of Messiah. Only in this consciousness could He obey the call in utter humility, in meekness and lowliness of heart, in self-renouncing acceptance of the divine will. Nor need this consideration lose its THE TASK OF JESUS 235 force to those who question whether He regarded Himself as Messiah, though that negative supposition is appearing more and more clearly an anachronism. If He did not formulate His mission, with its personal relation to His Father and to His brethren, in terms of Messiahship, it was because He felt it too deep and holy for that formulation. His was a religious con- sciousness that either accepted and broke through all traditional Messianic conceptions, or else had no need of them. To an historic appreciation of Jesus which refuses to modernize Him the latter supposition is the more difficult, even when other objections to it are disregarded. In either case the unshadowed con- sciousness of moral integrity before His Father was indispensable. The integrity of Jesus knelt before the absolute holiness in a humility without a claim. This moral sanity is in contrast with that lack of confidence in Him which fears to rise from the Christ of dogma to the Jesus of reality, and hesitates to send the im- maculate champion into an actual battle, but would keep his virtue untested. He, leaving the morally complete to the absolutely holy, and thus depending upon it unreservedly, trusted the perfect fatherhood to be satisfied with faithfulness to the task, so long, arduous, sore-beset, of the transcendent world-con- 236 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION quest, whereby He won our spiritual manhood in and from and against the world. Such considerations are not the less important be- cause they cannot of themselves, as external data, produce that conviction of the moral integrity of Jesus which is of final value. We are not persuaded of His moral sufficiency so long as it remains an object of admiration. Its excellence as presented to us may attract us to that which is able to become power within us, but His hoHness can never be sufficiently estimated till we put it to the inner proof. As our knowledge of our fellowmen generally is not inferred from the presented phenomena which mediate it, but is an interior recognition of soul by kindred soul, so with that knowledge in its consummate realization, which is the assurance of the holy Jesus by the inner life energized and penetrated by His historic self. Nor need any man wait for a conclusion from facts as external, before undertaking the world- transcending task in His power. When His task is attempted, or when any ethical element of humanity unfolds its nature unto His task, then His achieve- ment makes us new men for the supreme and inevitable undertaking, with new consciousness of power to accompHsh it. To overcome in His overcoming is to be satisfied with the character of Jesus. THE TASK OF JESUS 237 The Christian conviction of sin is Jesus' creation, and no other contrition approaches its depth and earnestness. It is not a result of His teaching merely, except as His teaching is an expression of Himself. It is not that His moral teaching is reinforced by His character, but His character is the illumination, and His words are mighty because they are of it. The Christian conviction of sin is not the effect of any dogma or of any scheme or plan into which Christ is supposed to enter. All these are perverted render- ings of His new-creative power of all-judging and all- redeeming holiness, and from them we return to Him. The Christian conviction of sin does not precede Him, derived from a teaching of the fall of man, or from any experience, not produced by Him, of sin and its misery. The sense of moral need, worthlessness, and ill-desert is indeed a force that turns toward Jesus, but it be- comes intense to receive His salvation when His holiness develops it, rather creates a new quality within it, even the faith that receives His power to save. This creative power of conviction is just His historic self, in the sense which that word historic attains to one who comes into touch with the real Jesus; not a conception of Him as apart from mankind and human Hfe, and then somehow brought into con- nection with us, but just His character purely achieved 238 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION amid all the limitations of our humanity, and glorious just in the accomplishment of its task, — how glorious, only the ever deepening comprehension of that ac- complishment can make plain to us. His revelation of what we men are includes Himself in its impla- cable light, and finds Him pure light, since He is that light's source. And the soul which is brought under conviction of sin from the holy Jesus, turns for re- demption not to any dogma concerning Him, but just to Him, as life of purity and love. To the Chris- tian experience when it clarifies itself from alien in- trusions, no conception of Jesus is possible which compromises or doubts His holy character. And while this assurance can, from its nature, be complete only in this faith in Jesus, yet every man is open to that evangel, which commends and vindicates itself as the one evangel of a moral redemption where the heart can rest and the spirit strive on forever. Thus Jesus is not an example for imitation, though one who begins there may be brought from example to indwelling power. Jesus is not a teacher whose sayings we accept because He said them, though He leads us into that searching, that unfolding of the spirit which is itself the truth. Jesus is not Son of God without our conflict to attain that heritage; but in faithfulness tested to the uttermost He realizes THE TASK OF JESUS 239 sonship to the Father, with power to make us His brethren. Jesus is not the performer of certain con- ditions prerequisite to our salvation, though His actual life and death and victory over death are the source of our salvation, grace by us unmerited. Our union with Jesus is not to be mystically apprehended, though mystical experiences may, if ethical at heart, express our joy and wonder in the sufficiency for us of His overcoming, and we must learn that His ethical and spiritual indwelling are more inward than all imaginings, deeper than anything given in the world of sense, closer than any space, more immediate than any time. It is in ethical and spiritual relations that a man becomes one with his fellowman, and that the one humanity is formed; and these unities are wrought by the actual achievements of great souls. There have been in history overcomings for millions of lives to conquer by directly. Though the memory of these achievements be lost, and we become ignorant of the powers that have thus lifted humanity toward its summit where men meet, yet these uniting energies do not grow weaker for any distance or any lapse of time; therefore in and from and against space and time they win the universal and eternal. The su- preme victory, the victory of Jesus, is the same in 240 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION nature and operation with these triumphs of the soul, that it may be their consummation. Yet as supreme it stands above the rest, that they may be trans- formed into His victory. His victory sweeps into the heart of every toiler who will receive it, the world over and history through, and out beyond our mortal ranges wherever the task essential to spiritual beings must be performed. This vitalizing source and irradi- ating center energizes the great task which humanity has to accomplish, and unites humanity into the unity of the task. It both completes and new-creates humanity with sufficient powers for spiritual self- realization. It fulfills in its consummate achieve- ment everything that man and other spiritual crea- tions have to do in this world and beyond. Let it be said again, that with this conception of Jesus, this faith in Him, we need not make a distinction, in His mission and message, between the temporal and the eternal, the kernel and the shell, the absolute and the conditioned, something in Him to be kept and something to be cast away; for it is all the one Jesus of the task in which we overcome. We need no longer separate the historic and the ideal, since just the task He wrought is of universal and eternal scope. We are constrained to say, "The Holy Jesus," and holiness is separateness from all except the THE TASK OF JESUS 241 highest that can be, yet we say, "The Holy Jesus," as we think of Him in closest encounter with the world. This combination is possible only if His task, even the task which He makes possible for us, is the world-transcending task. This is the task of which He is the original, taking into Himself all premonitions of it, and vindicating it as alone able to complete every soul and mankind. The Holy Jesus is center and source of humanity new-created by Him. In His overcoming alone can we overcome. CHAPTER VI JESUS' ACCOMPLISHMENT OF HIS TASK Jesus' accomplishment of His world-transcending task, under the conditions and limitations which are essential to it as the central energy of the task of humanity, coincides with the progress of His concep- tion of His Gospel. For His Gospel is His own inner life. Neither life-task nor evangel is complete at the beginning of His mission. Both have to be at- tained together, as one. Only the especially important elements of this process can be touched upon here, and they very briefly. Jesus' first announcement of His Gospel was in substance, "Repent: for the Kingdom of God is at hand." We are to trace first the deepening of the meaning of His demand of Repentance, and then the significance of His promise of the speedy coming of the kingdom of God. The former is the condition of the enjoyment of the latter. The kingdom is to come both for judgment and redemption. It will bring redemption only to those who repent. The word translated repent clearly denotes a complete 242 JESUS' TASK 243 change of conduct and inner life. How did Jesus conceive that change which he demanded? To Jesus, born under the law, its faithful disciple to the last, the repentance to which God offered the benefits of His Kingdom must be the faithful keeping of His law, the ancestral law of Israel. To Jesus the scribes sat in Moses' seat. He grew up as the third evangelist's exquisite story represents Him, in docile and eager reverence toward the law and its expounders. Yet His heart felt more deeply and His eyes saw more clearly the actual religious needs of the lost sheep of the house of Israel; and in Him, handi- craftsman by necessity, man of the people, grew the perception that scribal amphfications of the law simply could not be kept by the poor. It was a physical impossibility; no poor man could observe all these Pharisaic restrictions, bear these burdens too heavy to be borne, and support himself and his dependents. It was a moral impossibility; the obligations to others imposed by God could not be transferred to God as an acceptable sacrifice. His must be a Gospel that could be preached to the poor. He must seek and save the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Not the keeping of the elaborate additions to the law would make the impending kingdom salvation and not judg- ment. But the repentance to a righteousness accessi- 244 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION ble to all sorts and conditions of men, and which makes the impending catastrophe blessing, not doom, must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. This exceeding could not be in outward observance, but must be in a righteousness whereby the law is taken into the inner life. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," in the vision which shall come with the coming of the kingdom. The repentant change must be to a righteousness to which the hateful thought is murder, the lustful glance adultery, a righteousness which is a new moral creation in the springs of life. Outward observances well-pleasing to the Father must be outflowings of love to God in all the powers of heart and will and spiritual energy, and to every man that one can neigh- bor, as to oneself, especially to those who cannot repay, and to those by whom one is hated and de- spised, for here love's genuineness has its test. To that righteousness men must turn in order to receive the blessings of the coming kingdom. Yet by one of those inconsistencies of Jesus which reveal to us that His attainments were of the task, to which limitation and inconsistency are essential, this evangel, which is implicitly the transcending of legal- ism and the penetration of life by a different prin- ciple, seemed to Him to be law's fulfillment as law. JESUS' TASK 245 Still the Mosaic law was law to Him, and His amendments of it were not perceived to be its abroga- tion. Still its forms and ceremonies remained in force. It is probable that He said something like this: "Till Heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle of the law shall fail till all be fulfilled,—" as jot and tittle. Yet from His fundamental demand of repentance the legalistic limitation has in principle fallen away. Even in the assertion of legal traditionalism just quoted, the words "Till Heaven and earth pass" are in contradiction to the temper of His people, to whom the impending redemption was to be the intensifica- tion of the legal system. To him every jot and tittle of the law were soon to pass, with the inferior order to which they pertained. The kingdom of God would bring a higher principle, even as its essential revelation in His own heart had transformed life, and must trans- form it wherever His personal power should extend. That He kept these limitations in His own observance, except when higher considerations obliterated them, and that in His precepts He taught them, offering a salvation transcendent of the law in the name of the ancient law which He made impossible, manifests Jesus to us not as external authority, but as working out in actual conditions, and in limitations of heredity 246 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION and environment, the task that by these things tran- scends them. But this inner life of renewed character must un- fold its religious depths, and to this inner life, spirit- ually apprehended, the blessings of the kingdom are to be given. There is no trace in Jesus of a separation between morality and religion. But with the deepen- ing of the ethical and spiritual into holy love to God and man, the unity is more deeply conceived. The life that dispenses itself to men in sacrificial service ascends to the Father in a child's devotion. These are not two currents, but one flood. But to the religious consciousness of Jesus nothing good goes from man to God which has not first come from God to man. Therefore all that is offered to God and to man as to God can aim at nothing lower than its source and es- sential quality, even God's perfectness, which is most practically conceived as His mercy, forgiveness, and love to our fellowmen, His children. It is this right- eousness which is to win the joy of the Kingdom, rendering the impending catastrophe not doom but blessing. But this righteousness, being unto God, is from Him. It is a righteousness of faith, not in the forensic sense, not as an external and mediated grace, but in a relation to God most vitally and personally ethical. JESUS' TASK 247 Here we have the attainment of Jesus ' ultimate de- mand upon the human soul. The faith into which the repentance has deepened from its legalistic ap- prehension receives the blessing of the kingdom and fuses with the spiritual apprehension of the kingdom. The power of this faith in Jesus' attainment of it, and in His impartation of it, we may see to be the basal energy of his task and ours. The very character and spirit of God is divine love's offer, even to the most sinful who will receive it. The lost son throws himself upon the Father's heart in contrition without a claim. The child for- given and restored lives in the Father's house in stead- fast confidence of the Father's care and in loyal accept- ance of the Father's will. Even the basest receive this Gospel into hearts which it changes, into lives which it renews. The woman that was a sinner washes her Saviour's feet with her tears and wipes them with her hair, for in His holy love the holy love of the Father has come even to her. The thought of merit and re- ward is obliterated. The legalistic impediments fall away from the religion of Jesus, which has become the pure and consummate religion of redemption. Re- pentance, its condition, has deepened into the life of faith, faith dependently receptive and inwardly ener- gized by the perfect holiness and love, our Father. 248 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION This faith is for every man. It is saving faith for the unfallen, the sinless, no less than for the vilest. It is faith independent of varieties of religious ex- perience. It belongs to the Pauline type no more than to other types. The man driven frantic by curse of unforgiven sin, miserably aware of the law of death in his members, and the calmly aspirational soul, with consciousness of moral dignity, to whom things good and true are natural, find themselves together in this faith. The purity of womanhood, the innocence of childhood, every nobility as well as every sinfulness, accept God's grace with equal humility without a claim, even as Jesus did, and to this faith, in all sorts and conditions of believers, is revealed the holiness of the Father and the misery and horror of sin. This faith is not conditioned by the need of forgiveness, though it brings to light every moral evil within us, however deeply concealed; and as we sinful men humbly accept God's free mercy, there comes the con- sciousness of the pardon which is all peace, all recon- ciliation, the welcome of the lost into the Father's house, new life from the dead, in the love of the Father's heart. Yet this faith must ever be the essential in unfoldings of holy life beyond our earthly premonitions. It is faith of the sinful woman; it is faith of the Master who bade her go in peace, forgiven, JESUS' TASK 249 saved. It is faith for all His brethren, because it is the faith of which He is author and perfecter. It is the energy of His task and ours. Christianity must return to Jesus' faith from all lower faiths, thus appropriating whatever these lower faiths have to disclose of apphcations and outworkings of His faith. Christianity must rise from the faith of Paul to the faith of Jesus, from faith in Jesus 'death, as a postulate of salvation, to faith in the divine salva- tion itself, which is faith in God Himself, and which is most profoundly realized by the faith in which Jesus died. The Pauline faith finds its own nature when it sweeps away every intermediary between God and man, between God coming to save and the soul di- rectly accepting His forgiving mercy. There is for every disciple of Jesus His own direct access to the Father. This faith, wrought out in Jesus ' transcendent con- quest of the world by the spiritual manhood which is God's very life in Him, makes Him the source and center of the new humanity, which is of His faith's creation. His life-task of faith is supreme life-task for us all, and gives life to mankind. To accept the faith of Jesus is most real acceptance of faith in Jesus, for in His faith He is our Saviour. Every element of Jesus' task, wrought in faith, including His limitations of 2 5© THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION thought and teaching and deed, belongs in the source and center of the new humanity. His cross, where He finished faith's earthly task that was given Him to do, is, in a sense not speculative, dogmatic, unethically mystical, but in a significance altogether real, moral and spiritual, the indispensable power of humanity's task of world-transcending realization in God. This overcoming faith goes out in exclusive desire to the salvation which God ofTers. It is hunger and thirst. It agonizes for the highest good. All other desires are annulled by it. A man sells all that he hath for this discovered treasure, this pearl of great price. One's own life weighs nothing against it. The soul detaches itself from every lower good, from every purpose which is not this supreme spiritual end, and from its own life, in recognition that only in its own deeper life can it find itself. Yet these inten- sities are sane and normal, because ethical. Whatever physical excitements or nervous extravagancies may be aroused with them fall away, leaving the inten- sities of a steadfast mind. The faintest beginnings of this faith are recognized and fostered by Jesus, in the all-comprehending tenderness of the Father, not as substitutes for the faith that conquers all things, but because the weakest faith is of a latent omnipotence comparable to the growths implicit in the least of all JESUS' TASK 251 seeds. The bruised reed is not broken, for the all- healing life-power is in it. The smoking wick is not ex- tinguished, but nursed into flame and illumination. Even to these beginnings power is accessible for the utmost of self-renunciation and appropriation of the spiritual universe. The supreme good which faith de- sires inspires faith increasingly. The appeal is of one's spiritual self coming to itself. The proffered good is the heavenly Father's care, the Father's heart, the Father's holy love, all as inner possessions. This good is purely ethical, as God is the alone good. It is ethical life consummately spiritual, God's holy love- life, God himself offering all that perfection can offer to the trust of His child. This hungering and thirsting, seeking, striving, is yet just the reception of that which God gives. There is no inconsistency here. Jesus is not inconsistent in the depths of His religious consciousness. The blessing of the Kingdom is bestowed by that which is absolutely above ourselves, the perfect from the Perfect, the in- exhaustible from the Infinite, and then the unfathom- able good rises from depths of our own spiritual being, which have now become aware that all their springs are in God. From mere grace and mercy, rather out of love and fatherhood, God gives His own holiness, love, and blessedness. All our awakened longings cul- 252 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION minate, when, like a little child oblivious of every- thing but the thing it wants, we hold out our hands, open our hearts, to receive the supreme good as it can only be received, in the faith of a little child. Every condition except the simple receptiveness of faith disappears. Every possibility of human desert or merit is done away. Jesus claims none for Himself. He receives the Kingdom of God as a little child. The gift is wholly of God who gives. Our part is to receive, becoming as httle children with our faith's author and perfecter. So we enter the Kingdom of God, and keep there the child's trusting heart. Jesus' faith is the acceptance of the Father's will in every allotment, it is the enduring of every test, the conquering of every temptation, and the accomplishment of every redemptive mission. All things that we ought to do become the accord of man's will with God's will. So with the duties which must pass, as faith works itself out of their range, such as faithful observance of the Jewish law, ac- cepted as God's requirement; so with duties which belong to abnormal conditions, as duties of the slave, the oppressed; so with duties of individual limitation, of mistake and ignorance. These docilities are one in nature with the enfranchised service of spirits that stand before God's throne, with clear comprehen- JESUS' TASK 253 si on of His design. All unfoldings of the new divine life are in the faith which is nothing less than spiritual manhood fulfilling itself in the infinite Spirit. This faith accomphshes itself in the battle and conquest of the world. Here in the world is its task of self-attainment. It is a world-destroying faith, the unconditional renunciation of that which has been, or else would be, the heart's desire. Daily it stands with loins girded, to take up the cross, to follow the Master of the spiritual life to the utter- most of pain and shame. In all circumstances this readiness is profifered, and every element of life is brought within this renunciation. It is world-tran- scending faith. The lower good drops from the hand that grasps the supreme worth. The loss of life finds life and keeps it. The rejection of the world is exultant joy of the hidden treasure discovered, the incompar- able pearl one's own. Every element of life is trans- formed into the spiritual. In and from and against the world, humanity gains that one precious thing, its own soul; gains it in consecration and devotion, as the will of the father, the life of the Eternal. The command. Repent, and the promise of the impending kingdom of God, fuse together; as the former becomes more than a condition of the promise, and realizes itself as the inner life of faith, beyond 2 54 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION which God's supreme promise cannot pass; and as the good that is promised becomes the blessedness of the inner life. Turning now to the consideration of Jesus' announcement of the kingdom of God, we may see from this side also, that Jesus, in His personal realization of the kingdom, is source and center of the new humanity. This new creation is by His accomplishment of the human task of the tran- scendent world-conquest. We may expect to find in His realization of the kingdom of God greater in- consistencies than are contained in His command to repent, inconsistencies that transform the burning hopes of His people, which were most intense in His loyal heart, into the spirit's self-attainings. The kingdom of God, at hand, impending, con- notes another kingdom, present, governed by the opposite principle, and ruled by God's archenemy. Neither kingdom can endure admixture of the other. The good comes as transcendent catastrophe, to sweep away the evil. The kingdom of God is not yet here: it will come soon and suddenly. The kingdom of Satan is here : yet a little while and it shall not be. Men are not called to work or to fight for the divine kingdom. Though it may come more speedily for prayers and keeping of the law, it is for God to send, and men must watch for it. JESUS' TASK 255 From the variegated and discordant Jewish ex- pectations of the day of the Lord, when God's reign and kingdom should burst upon the earth out of Heaven, the hope which had most appealed to Jesus is not represented by fantastic dreams of grandeur nor by volcanic outbursts of hate against Roman usurpation. In the hearts of the lowly, among whom Jesus was born, the hope of Israel's redemption took such forms as are expressed in the lyrics of the open- ing of the Third Gospel: "That we being delivered from fear under the hands of our enemies, May serve Him in holiness and righteousness In His presence every day of our lives, Because of the merciful heart of our God, By whose compassions the dayspring from on high shall visit us. To shine upon us sitting in darkness and death shadow. To make firm our feet along the way of peace." Out of the moral and religious hope of those who indulged no dreams of empire, and were ambitious for no conditions beyond those favorable to righteous- ness and holiness and undisturbed service of their fathers' God, Jesus poured the beatitudes of the kingdom, upon hungry, suffering, oppressed bodies 256 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION and hearts, that asked only for the deliverance which is suitable to meek lovers and makers of peace. The expectation of Jesus, as reported even in the earliest sources, has been so overlaid with the re- flections and imaginations of the early church, that it would seem impossible to recover His thought were it not for one clarifying phenomenon: that of the frequent representation of His evident confidence in the immediate coming of the kingdom. We may never be able to distinguish completely Jesus' own sayings from later apocalyptic fragments, whose in- trusion is suspected upon many pages of the Synoptic Gospels. Yet criticism has corrected the hoary error that Jesus expected the consummation ages away, while the early church looked for it soon. He anticipating a process of evolution, His followers a catastrophe. On the contrary, He sends His disciples through Israel, warning them away from Samaria and the Gentile settlements of the Holy Land, spurring them on, lest the Kingdom of God should overtake them before this mission is accomplished, and should surprise a people unwarned. And when the expe- rience of His Galilean ministry compelled the Son of Man, in the mysterious purpose of God, to the moral necessity of suffering and dying before He might come victorious, as the prophet had foretold, there JESUS' TASK 257 is no radical change of anticipation. We may picture Him as the Gospels represent Him, with His face steadfast toward Jerusalem, and straitened in spirit until He should accomplish the baptism which was to establish Him on the right hand of Power and to bring Him in the clouds of Heaven. All that is attributed to Him of prediction of delay between His death and the kingdom's triumph is evidently not from Him. Protracted intermission between His first and second comings, intercalation of the Anti-christ, postponements to allow this or that event first to come to pass, have other origins. The New Testament apocalyptic in general is not so much announcement of the end, as explanation of its repeated postponement, till the exhausted apology betakes itself to the grandiose impertinence, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years. With the hope deferred there increased in many currents of the early church chiliasms, sensationalisms, materialisms, and mythologies, which are none of His, though in- evitably tending to be attributed to Him. His own hope, however held and expressed in the forms of His day, was undiminished to the last, notwithstand- ing His deepening thought of the kingdom, because His expectation was consistent with the kingdom's nature as He conceived it, its world-transcending 258 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION and world-destroying spirituality. Therefore there increased in Him to the last, the vivid hope and the passionate urgency of the impending glory and doom of the kingdom of God at hand. Thus were intensified in Jesus those fundamental elements of the Jewish eschatology which were common to most of the differ- ent forms and shades of it. It was to be catastrophic; there was no place for the secular processes of social evolution to which we moderns look for the ameliora- tions of humanity. It was to be from God alone, without human cooperation, save the part which God had ordained and announced through prophecy for that mysterious intermediary, the Son of Man. In such an expectation there might be the most material chiliasms, yet such an expectation might be, for a true Semitic soul, the natural expression of the tran- scendent conquest of the world. That the latter was the result for Jesus is especially indicated in two elements of His anticipation, both characteristic of Him. One is His elimination of the conditions of the present age from the impending order. Redeemed mankind shall be like the angels in Heaven. Such things as wealth and secular ambi- tion have no place in His exalted prophecy. We must interpret in the light of this conviction, and of another about to be mentioned, His vivid pictures of the en- JESUS' TASK 259 franchisements, joys, and triumphs of the new age, though ever mindful of that genial power of fantasy which feels every imagination as a reality. The other element of His hope is the fluidity of its forms. He felt no need of definition. Whether He meant by the kingdom of God the rule of God or the object of that rule, is a question without an answer, because the question has no relation to Jesus' thought. Whatever His soul required for the expression of His deepening consciousness of this supreme redemp- tion He afl&rmed as God's own declaration, God's way of accomplishing His all-holy and all-loving will. Therefore His predictions are poured out with no care for consistency. The kingdom shall come by celestial energies, and by His own power to bind the strong man and to spoil his house. It shall flame upon the world like lightning over all the sky, and it is inward growth in the depths of personality and from man to man, however brief the earthly scope of that development. These are irreconcilable contradictions, except as they transform his sharings of the popular eschatology into world-transcending realization of the personal spirit and spiritual humanity. He saw the dawning of the kingdom realized in His own victory over evil spirits. With the love and power of the future glory already in His heart. He 26o THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION commanded the demons of insanity, of nervous dis- orders (we do not limit His physical cures to these cases) of sin and remorse, to depart from those whom they tormented, on the sufferer's fulfillment, some- times hardly self-conscious, of the conditions of repentance and faith on which alone the blessings of the kingdom could be received. And to our wonder, which is not diminished because we interpret His matchless power according to recognized psychical and physical processes, human body and soul arose whole. The rule of the evil power in the world was evidently broken. By the finger of God the strong man has been bound, and his house is being spoiled. The ecstatic in Jesus, a quality which we have to recognize as normal in Him and ourselves, sees in these works of divine power a universal reference. He beholds Satan as lightning fall from Heaven. From his throne above the world Satan is cast out; he is no longer in a position to resist the celestial forces which may now bring the kingdom of God to earth. But where the powers of the kingdom are, there is felt the presence of the kingdom, and these powers are of the divine Spirit, which enables Jesus to cast out demons, because it is an indwelling righteousness and holiness and love. Ever more deeply in His own heart and in those who follow Him, there is the reali- JESUS' TASK 261 zation of His intensest desires and clearest intuitions of the kingdom's supernal good. The righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees; the response of the human soul to the divine holiness, the pressing on to the final aim of perfection as our Father in Heaven is perfect; the infinite love of the Father becoming love-life among His children; the confession that restores publican and harlot to a child's place; the peace of soul which knows that nothing can be wanting in blessings least and greatest under the Father's care; the attaining of God's good purpose in every life that trusts Him, and sets itself to do His will; man's devoted, minis- tering sonship to the divine fatherhood ; the confidence of prayer and its unfailing answer; the life of the Father in the hearts of men, flaming out in irresistible for- giveness, patience, and redemptive passion; — these are the glories of the kingdom most congenial to Him, these are the infinite goods revealed unto babes. Still He looks forward to their completion in the ca- tastrophe of the great day, and the current forms of the expectation continue, but are essentially trans- formed. The kingdom of God is His own life; there the kingdom is realized. It is the spiritual life of every man to whom He imparts it, and the power of this im- partation is independent of place and time. It is 262 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION humanity's spiritual life flowing from Him. It Ks task and conquest in every life and in the life of man- kind; it is task and conquest in His life, with all the limitations, conditions and accomplishments of task and conquest. The new humanity, of which He is source and center, overcomes the world. The king- dom of the Spirit, the eternal life and blessedness of the Father, are our inalienable heritage. In Jesus' attitude to nature there is a similar spirit- ual transformation in ways less conscious. The world, formulated as under the dominion of evil spirits, was yet, by a beautiful anomaly, God's world to Him. Lonely places, haunted by demons furious to take possession of a human body and mind, were shrines of His all-night prayers, who has consecrated every solitude with the consciousness of the Father's pres- ence. All nature's life and beauty are in the care of the almighty tenderness which reveals in them the grace of God to His human children. No pain or death in nature is apart from the Father and His purpose of universal love. We are reminded of the modern sense of duality in the natural world, which is the scene of incessant struggle for existence, the domain of force and raven- ing, overwhelming us by its all-destroying mechanism, but which is the world of the Barbizon painters, of JESUS' TASK 263 Chaucer's joyousness, of Shelley's rapture. This antin- omy has always existed and will continue, that man may not be satisfied with the glory of nature, but may gain a higher glory from it. To learn the reconcilia- tions of nature with the human soul, and its consum- mations in the splendor and beauty of human life, we must sit at Jesus ' feet, that we may resolve the prob- lems in forms which He did not conceive, for masteries of our own attaining, but learning from Him that spirit may not seek any ends in the lower order, while from the Hlies of the field, from the defensive wings of a sacrificial natural motherhood, from the moun- tains whose secret Jesus discovered, loveliness and majesty are won by the spirit for its own unfoldings, where the sensuous is transformed. Facing nature in its most intractable oppositions also, humanity attains itself by the same spiritual powers, for the same spiritual ends. Through the whole range of man's relation to the natural order sweeps this trans- formation. Here is no Aryan appropriation and com- pletion of the world as world, yet every Aryan devel- opment of insight, skill, and art finds here its freest exercise and highest service. Even in human life, life of evil men crushed by malign powers in an evil world, there is yet reflected to Jesus from every natural relation and normal 264 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION activity the innermost excellence of the Kingdom of God. His intuition that trusts and loves humanity must work out in us our tremendous social problems. He recognized man as in spite of all a spiritual being, innately transcendent of the lower order. His in- creasing failure to win His fellow-countrymen in- creased His appreciation of latent human worth, as such experiences are wont to do in generous souls. Looking deeper than Paul into mankind's sin and loss, He sees no need of adoption into sonship to the Father. Salvation is just a man's coming to himself, his dis- covery that he is a child of God. Doctrines current in His day, of the absence or alienation of a spiritual nature, of a human fall and depravity that requires a regeneration formulated according to these postulates, are foreign to Him. His demand of human renewal He does not formulate as a new birth. A man is to be led not out of himself, but into himself, not beyond the gates of Hfe, but back to the little child. To Jesus' appeal to the truly natural man our nature responds more than to Paul and the Fourth Evangelist, and the resulting convic- tion of sin is both saner and deeper than that which they excite. Nor is the imperative that a man return to his real spiritual self less arduous. Artificial religious experience can be made to order by scores of current JESUS' TASK 265 devices. But the naturalness of the spiritual must be sought in the depths of us, and the way is beset with innumerable intrusions of the world into the inner life. Everything in the childlike spirit is congenial to Him, who loved manhood unsophisticated, life un- spoiled by artificial wants, ambitions, and distrac- tions. Jesus Himself is man in his naturalness, simply what the Father would have His child be. This is no sentimentalizing over the child or undeveloped con- ditions of human life, but the recognition that the spiritual is supremely natural to every man. Not that the spirit finds its purpose in the normal condi- tions and natural relations of life in the world, but from these it realizes itself. Here is the charm and power of the parables, charm in depicting the natural human, power to complete it in the attainment of soul. And the same power gains from human miseries and oppressions the spirit of man. He came as a Jew to the Jews, conscious of no mission beyond them. No quality of Jesus is more obvious than His patriotism. Christianity has mis- represented Him, in so conceiving His universal ref- erence as to obscure His fixed devotion to His own people. In none of its perversities has dogmatism outraged wholesome impulses more deeply. The last full measure of devotion to country is one with His 266 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION devotion who laid down His life in faithful ministry to His own people. Essential to His hfe-task of new- creating spiritual manhood in all its elements, was His attainment, for Himself and all men, of that patriotism of spiritual ends and passion, in which love of country is consummated. His ambition for His nation was that the kingdom of God might be established in it, that His people might possess the Hfe of the spirit, that every energy among them might work to the forming of that spiritual unity of personalities which is a people's real life. By what means the task shall be wrought out for other nations in other times, is a problem with continually new conditions. But the national ambitions must be those which He set before His own people, and the means of their attainment must be so purely directed to His goal that nothing aUen to Him shall be able to infect them. Cosmopohtanism is the outgrowth of patriotism. It is formed in love of country, but only on the condi- tion that love of country pursues His aims. Other national tendencies enkindle international jealousies, oppressions, and wholesale massacres. Jesus' pa- triotism lifts every citizen into that national conscious- ness which is world-wide spiritual brotherhood, and develops each national Ufe in its integrity, that it may fulfill itself in spiritual service to mankind. JESUS' TASK 267 It is in this sense that the current conception must be revised, that Jesus' mission to His own people addressed them not as Jews, but as men. To His mission to Israel as Israel He was faithful to the last. The unfolding of His universaHsm in that mission has left significant traces in the Gospels. There is His amazed confusion at a Gentile's faith, the like of which He had not seen in Israel, There is His resourceless re- joinder to the Syrophenician woman, which indicates, not the Jew's scorn of the Gentile, but the devastating inner conflict between His restricted mission and His unlimited compassion. He would not exceed the field wliich His Father had assigned Him and with which His activities were wholly occupied. Yet just this mission to Israel contained the universal reference which His greatest apostle recognized, in opposition to the eleven whose vision was restricted by their personal knowledge of their Master's self-limitations. Jesus' restrictions of action were not repressions of universal love and hope and prayer. In these He was at one with that infinite compassion, which in ways beyond His direct participation or power to forecast, would bring God's children from East and West and North and South, to recline at the eternal festi- val in fellowship with the noblest representatives of Israel. And at the impending judgment, from which 268 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Jesus' ethical demands and consciousness of the sig- nificance of human life could not omit any man or nation of the present or the past, God will judge Tyre, Sidon, Sodom, the men of Nineveh, the Queen of the South, by the all-comprehending divine righteous- ness. There is no respect of peoples with God. Heathen men who have never seen Jesus' face shall be welcomed into the kingdom prepared from the founda- tion of the world for the blessed of His Father, because they have poured out love and service to humanity's glorious King in the person of the least of his brethren. This alone is a meaning characteristic of Jesus, how- ever confused in the evangelist's telling. Just this faithfulness of Jesus to the national limitations of His task makes Him source and center of the new-created spiritual devotion to country and mankind. Jesus' universalism is contained in His spirituality. To enter that renewed humanity universal, it is nec- essary to grasp Jesus' conception of manhood in its world-transcending task, and to make every thought and act the furtherance of His aim. In this conscious- ness is organized the unlimited brotherhood. The divine fatherhood fills each child with God's own love to all the children of the Father. God's union with our spirits empowers each to be imparter of His love to every other, receptive of it from every other. From JESUS' TASK 269 all others every personality is to attain something of its own, and all these receptions and impartations make each man a more personalized center of spiritual being. All men must be sought for this universal life of the spirit, as God seeks, forgiven as God forgives. The last and least man is essential to every renewed soul. From the united humanity formed by Christ not one of its elements must be lacking. No estrange- ment is permitted in His brotherhood, and every service must be rendered as a function of the supreme service. The all-personalizing, all-embracing love, our Father, beats in the whole, making the universal life individual; beats in each, making the individual life universal. This eternal bond is ethical, not monis- tic or mystical in any sense that obscures the ethical. In the unity every person comes to his infinite personal value. The spiritual unity of mankind is the su- premely ethical task. The essential of Jesus' social ethic needs no modi- fication. It is an ethic whose one purpose is the reali- zation of spirit in the world-transcending conquest. It is not the ethic of world-appropriation. It has no aim in that realm. The alternative is always the spirit or the world. Every impulse that stops in the world is evil. No element of the Aryan ethic continues in force except as it denies itself, transforms 270 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION itself into the purpose to win in and from and against the lower order, for a universal possession, the dis- covered treasure, the pearl of great price. The primal ethical imperative is to choose the ethic of Jesus against every other. Its severity is appalling, repel- lent, impossible, till one sees its practicable simplicity. Jesus' command is as revolutionary as His Gospel, being one with it. How far the traditions of the ethic of Jesus, which are received from the Synoptic Gospels especially, represent His undeniable purpose, is a legitimate question. Whether modifications of His precepts need to be made because of historic changes, for the transcendent world-conquest, is an inquiry made necessary by the ethic itself, which is not an external law but the self-realization of spirit in its freedom. It is one thing to amend Jesus by a principle alien to Him : it is the opposite procedure to unfold His ethic from the very essential of Him. The former course incurs humanity's bitterest disillusion, makes ship- wreck of the task of civilization. His way fulfills the passion for humanity and brings to humanity's unutterable groanings and travailings the redemption which is the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. The new humanity fulfills itself in arduous and lowly ministries. Whatever makes the least pain JESUS' TASK 271 less, the humblest gladness more, is its passion, as much as large service to the deepest needs of men. It is gentleness and courtesy, sympathy of sorrow and fellowship of joy, as well as toil, endurance, and sacri- fice to the uttermost. It is all these not by natural impulse, though it transforms this into its service, but because they whom it serves are spiritual beings, for whom every enfranchisement and enrichment of life works out a spiritual end, so that these ministries are spontaneities of the supreme love. This service is given to whatsoever has life, in lower phases of undeveloped being, for no life that God has made is apart from Him and from us who live in Him. There is every sacrifice to spiritual good; there is no concession of spiritual good for any consideration. That would be unremunerated loss of the only value. In our terrible social conflicts, in our social problems else insoluble, in our stern individual tasks in whatever place in the social order, the one need of our time is that we work for spiritual manhood solely and always, in the thought and by the power of Jesus. The intru- sion of a lower aim defeats even the lower good it seeks. For universal peace, for the conciHations of class hatreds and race antagonisms, for normal con- ditions of life, healings, reformations, ameliorations, whether administered by government and law, by 272 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION science and art, by economies and industries, by keen eyes of compassion and friendly hands of helpfulness, Jesus is the one rational and sufficient energy. The world known as thoroughly as science can learn it, all human powers developed to their utmost, that in and from and against the lower order, humanity re- deemed by Christ may find its own soul. This is revolution of modern life, every act and all combina- tions of action changed in quality and purpose, with change outworking into every detail of form. There is nothing so inevitably demanded by every life-current of our time, else to become stagnant, as the world-transcending Gospel of Jesus. And this Gospel is Jesus Himself in His task, who is faith of our faith and realized kingdom of God. We penetrate even more deeply the universal signif- icance of Jesus in His task, when, with reverent fear- lessness, we follow it into the sanctuary of His inner conflicts, where indeed are the reahzations of all the energies we receive from Him. Two elements of this inner task may be indicated. The Jewish Messianic consciousness was forced upon Jesus by His character and religious experience, by the Baptist's work and prediction, by historic conditions, popular expectations, by His own com- passion and sense of spiritual power, and was necessa- JESUS' TASK 273 rily conceived by Him as the direct call of God. The Messianic title, Son of God, was derived from Old Testament ideas of the representative relation of the king of the chosen people to the divine Father of the people as a whole. Neither originally nor in the developments of Jesus' thought has that title any- thing in common with its later trinitarian history. The consciousness of possessing that title might lead, in Jesus' day, to such extravagancies as are intimated in the story of the temptation, — "If Thou art the Son of God!" But to Jesus the title and the obligations it imposed unfolded those depths and heights of spiritual sonship to the Father, the attain- ment of which is the task of every soul, the fulfill- ment of humanity. Vast the distance between us and His realization of sonship in that obedience, trust, and sacrifice, in that moral and spiritual union with the Father, before which all speculative con- structions of Jesus' nature become insignificant. The difference too great to be called difference compels our contrition before His judgment-seat of filial love, our unqualified dependence upon Him, our unweary- ing aspiration to be like Him, and our trustful ac- ceptance from Jesus of His sonship to the Father, while just by this faith the Father is our all in all. In such a sonship the significance of the royal title is 274 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION manifest: this sonship exalts the soul above the lower order, overcomes the world. Yet the supreme royalty of the title remains His; for He who has put all things under our feet is king of us all. By this inner process, as seems most probable, or by another deeper than we are able to conceive, was wrought Jesus' sonship. The same probability of process, the same certainty of result, are ours, as we follow the inner life of Jesus through another aspect of His self-consciousness. The title, Son of God, implies the designation, Son of Man, a higher name than the other in the expectations of His people. The Son of Man is he who, in the current interpreta- tions of Daniel's prophecy, is to come from Heaven in the Name of the Most High, make an end of this world-age, and introduce the celestial kingdom. It is not necessary to describe the various conceptions of the Son of Man entertained by the contemporaries of Jesus. To Him the consciousness of Messiahship, unfolding in filial relation to the Father, involved this supreme future dignity, whose attainment would appear the only sufficient triumph of the Father's cause, as it had been entrusted to His hands. Con- fident of the success of His mission. He was already, though homeless, rejected, and doomed to a shameful death, the Son of Man. JESUS' TASK 275 His faith in the divine purpose grew deeper and clearer with the apparent defeat of His earthly mis- sion. This faith was undaunted faithfulness to His calling and entire acceptance of the Father's will. The prospect of the death necessitated by that faithful- ness, suggested to Him no expiatory power in His final sufferings. Both of the reports of such a dec- laration, and their parallels, are, in that interpretation, too accordant with later reflection, and too discordant with His faith in the Father's unconditioned willing- ness to forgive, to be attributed to Him. To Jesus the way of the cross led to the immediate coming of the exalted Son of Man in His glory. To us His death is seen to be the consummated task of faith, of the inner achievement of God's kingdom; it is per- fected sonship to the Father and victory over the world. In this completion Jesus is complete source and center of humanity's task of realizing the spiritual life. The power of redemption is eternally His cross. We cannot exclude here, least of all here, any element of the task of Jesus from the significance and power of His accomplishment. The current su- perstitions which He accepted, His impossible ex- pectations, personal limitations, and conditions to which He must be subject as performing a real task, are among its essential elements, and are taken 276 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION up into its realization. The Messianic forms which He appropriated and transcended were accomplished in an evident transformation. When the world lay conquered beneath His feet which had been pierced, when it had become possible for every disciple of Jesus to say, "In Him I am crucified to the world and the world is crucified to me," when the spiritual life of Jesus made heroic the panic-stricken fugitives cowering among the GaHlean hills, and flooded hearts, for which the world were else too strong to be over- come, with power to be more than conquerors through Him that loved us, there was fulfillment before which the blazonries of the Apocalypse grow pale and the voices of its seven thunders die away. CHAPTER VII THE RECONSTRUCTIVE ENERGIES The power of the transcendent world-conquest radiates in all directions from its center, Jesus, to fill the infinitely expanding circumference of thought and being, transforming all into the spiritual universe, and vindicating spirit as the one reality, while spirit learns and realizes itself by this overcoming. Our aim has been simply to find the reconstructive energy of modern life, for the problems and labors that are confronting us. Now that this purpose has been accomplished, though so imperfectly, a few reflections may be made in closing: first, upon the adequacy of this power to fulfill the special obligations of the present phase of history; and, in the final chapter, upon its applications to our modern life. It must be almighty power for universal task. If it were less than almighty for the task, less than univer- sal, it could not accomplish the least detail of that which is given us to do. It could not change a single hovel into a habitation fit for the birth of a child of man. It could not drive a single factory wheel to 277 278 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION the production of something worthy to minister to human Kfe. The meaning of human hfe is revealed in this: that nothing less than the infinite and al- mighty is sufficient for it to work with. Man stand- ing beneath the implacable nebulae, in his pinpoint of space, man among the eons that threaten to engulf his moment of time, is overwhelmed, annihilated; until he learns that everything he has to work upon demands the whole power in and beyond and above all these, and he is one with that which fills and tran- scends them. If the power which presents itself as the highest does not apply directly to each ele- ment of human labor, it is not of that unlimited suffi- ciency. When simple men demand an evangel for daily works and needs, their requisition is the infinite and eternal. When idealists aspire after the highest, it is not the highest unless it mingles itself with the lowliest drudgery, which it transforms into the univer- sal task, God's and ours, of spirit's transcendent self-realization. The reconstructive principle is adequate to all demands of modern thought. No construction of a new metaphysic has been attempted in these pages: such an adventure would require very different pro- cedures. But the germ of a philosophy is in the world- transcending principle. A germinal philosophy is at- THE RECONSTRUCTIVE ENERGIES 279 tained when a man is able to say: I have found my path and the energy that guides. The Semitic secret is the discovery of every Christian, and is discovered as the essential, the all-inclusive. If the fundamental of the true philosophy cannot be found by common men, what advantage in any man's finding it? If hfe's secret, direction, and power (and philosophy either devotes itself to this enterprise or else is the mere gratification of an insignificant curiosity) is not attainable by the lowliest, then a man of this age, living in the social passion of our time, is forced to be indifferent to that which would be the monopoly of a few gifted souls. But if the funda- mental of life, hid from the wise and prudent, is revealed unto babes, then we who share the social passion of the Master may rejoice in His thanks- giving. Life's secret as known by simplest hearts, in the power of Jesus, — if we have become childlike enough to find that, we have found the essential of the true philosophy. And we have found it in His task. His overcoming of the world, His realization of spirit in this toil and conquest. The discovery is to be broadened, clarified, and expressed ever more adequately, by the acutest powers of the human mind, in accord with the continual enlargements of human life, while yet we sit at Jesus' feet or "walk 28o THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION with Him in lowly paths of service." The universal accessibility of this principle signifies that it is the consummation of all normal interests, yet it has nothing of the vulgar, the commonplace, for it is not confined to the range of that which it fulfills. It consummates all the elements of human life by sur- mounting them. It includes them all in the tran- scendent task, thus making them all new, bringing to pass the new-created soul in the new-created uni- verse. And yet — to indicate in a paragraph a thought which would require many volumes to expound — this principle, so accessible, is in accord with the strongest present tendencies of fundamental thinking; accordant with them in the sense of fulfilling them, in the same manner as it fulfills the normal interests and impulses of all men. The motive of philosophy today is the impulse of work to be accomplished by powers which realize themselves in the work, and the evaluations which this conviction renders are in terms of power for the furtherance of the work. Yet little progress can be made until the determination of the direction and the unfolding nature of the work unites energies else wasted and mutually antagonistic. And even when it is nobly said that our work is the development, the achieving of spiritual life, we are still inactively uncer- THE RECONSTRUCTIVE ENERGIES 281 tain, until we know the course which this unfolding of spirit must follow, the conflict by which it must be achieved. Only then can we learn what spirit is, or spiritual life, for it is to be learned in its self-assertions against that which opposes it. Then the ideaUsms, freed from their rigidity, become active and progres- sive. Then the materialisms render service by mar- shaling the oppositions which the spirit must subdue to itself, attaining itself by their subjugation. The Semitic principle — better to say, the task of Jesus— transcendently fulfills our modern thought. It is thus fundamentally the reconstructive energy of modern life. Innumerable problems arise from such assertions. Their answers can be given only by the unfolding of the task of spirit's transcendent world- conquest, of which these problems are essential com- ponents. The assertion of this militant labor involves the challenge to all life and thought to undertake the task. We have acknowledged Jesus to be the central energy of the task. But when the task and the energy that dwells within it are viewed as universal conquest, fulfilled through inexhaustible power, is such a con- fession of Jesus possible, even when we have found His significance to each life that would achieve the world- transcending victory, and His indispensableness 282 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION to humanity which attains itself by His overcoming? Must not Jesus at length pass from this central place, even as the wavering faith of St. Paul conceived His passing? Must not the actual, historic Jesus become insufficient for a task that unfolds inimitably, and be proven the central energy of only a phase of our eternal victory and self-reahzation? Or must we again turn from the real Jesus to the fantastic con- struction of some being of higher cosmic significance, to the irrational conception of an "essential" or "ideal Christ," of a premundane Logos, incompletely expressed in the prophet of Nazareth? Yet if that displacing of Jesus were ever to be, He would be in- completely our Saviour now, and the central energy of the transcendent task would be elsewhere, if indeed it could be anywhere. At present am I not deceiving myself by confessing Him sufficient who is not really so? Even as it is no longer possible to call the earth the center of the universe, is it any more possible to say that one who actually lived thereon is the spiritual center of the task universal and eternal? These difficulties are of a type of thought no longer possible, and disappear when its crudities are exposed. It is imposed upon by the magnitude of the spaces and times of the physical universe, magnitude that may be only apparent, and that is incommensurate with THE RECONSTRUCTIVE ENERGIES 283 the greatness of the soul. And when the universe becomes to us the spiritual universe, it is not to be thought of as a static somewhat, realistically conceived as separate from us and somehow to be brought into relation with us. Our spiritual universe is just the realization of spirit; it is the world-transcendent task and conquest. In its furthest immensities, in its most victorious unfoldings, its reahzation can be nothing else than that power which Jesus is. This energy is the indwelling God. Not God Hellenically conceived as immanent in the world to be appropriated as world, but the spiritual God in whom spiritual manhood lives and moves and attains its being. It is this God whom Jesus recognized as the power of our overcoming. It is this God who has in Jesus His central energy. God is the God of the tasb This ascription is ultimate in its unlimited elasticity. God apprehended as incipiently as we apprehend our spiritual being, which is our spiritual conquest. We penetrate the clouds and darkness which are round about Him, only as we penetrate the clouds and dark- ness of our limitless adventure; God attained through ever expanding conflicts of thought and life; God the mystery unfathomable, the vastness incomprehen- sible, because the immanence of the infinite task, the power of the universal conquest. 284 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION God is God of the task. To ask what God is as outside the task, before it or beyond it, is a question without meaning, for we find nothing outside the task. Our knowledge of God advances as our accom- pHshment of the task advances. It is incomplete as our realization of the task is incomplete. The diffi- culties concerning the relation of God to the world and to our own souls are difficulties given by the task and expHcated as it unfolds. There are unsolved problems as there are unachieved toils. Yet through all the groping of our endeavors we know what the task is which we have to achieve, and this is knowledge of the God of it. The realization of spirit alone gives us God to be experienced and known. Nature is not the origin of our knowledge of Him. He is not proven cosmolog- ically. In and from and against the natural order, spirit gains itself. By the spiritual self-realization in reference to nature God is known, but not from nature except in this reference. Therefore all the mysteries in nature cannot challenge our affirmation of God, mysteries of its confusions, strifes, and woes, creation groaning and travailing in pain together until now, mysteries of its assaults upon the human soul, which it darkens and overwhelms. From these disasters, as well as from nature's glories and its alliances with THE RECONSTRUCTIVE ENERGIES 285 us, we attain the spiritual transformations of it. In all these attainings there is knowledge of God, who is not in the cosmic whirlwind and fire, save as these are learned to be, in their ultimate significance, the divine thought and word and life, into which we find them transformed as we fulfill our task upon them. When in our search for God we turn from nature to the inner life, we must be sure that the inner life is apprehended deeply enough to be adequate to the find- ing of Him. It would be absurd to direct such a search away from the vast Heavens, into the confinements of petty individual thoughts and feeble strivings, even if these are multiplied and united in multitudes of petty and feeble men, thinking and endeavoring to- gether. There is no finding of omniscience in our foolishness, of omnipotence in our futility, of holiness in our impurity. Not in such self-affirmations, but in denials of ourselves, do we find Him. When we have learned that the soul's energies are not to be expended upon the appropriation of the world, but that by crucifixion of ourselves to the world and of the world to ourselves we must give ourselves to the real- ization of spirit in the world-transcending conquest, then we learn the infinite power which is within us, for the eternal toil which is before us. Then the en- franchised spiritual finds in its thought, its heart, and 286 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION its moral struggle, the potency of an endless unfolding. This is the affirmation of God which inwardly unites and implicitly completes all potencies of man and humanity, of world, of all souls in their enlarging alliances of a universe to be spiritually realized. This confession of God involves apprehensions of the divine which pass beyond the scope of this book. Though these conceptions would enhance the reli- gious value of the confession, we have already the God who is infinite power for the universal task. To the God of the task belongs the eternal victory of all- embracing, all-sacrificing love. In all our toils He labors; in all our afflictions He is afflicted. All our achievements are His joy. Every recovery from failure is His redemption of us, and the glory of every overcoming is forever unto Him, He reaps the har- vest of that which He has sown and grown in us, to be laid at His feet, poured into His heart's unselfish blessedness. This is the God of every human soul, of the stars above us, of the dust beneath our feet. And the nature of every being in itself, and in its relations to all else in the one spiritual universe, is spiritual self-realization in the God of the task, who is infinite love, patience inexhaustible, sacrifice with- out limit, victory without end. The truth of this adoration is radiant in Jesus' THE RECONSTRUCTIVE ENERGIES 287 life and ministry, His cross and passion, His eternal life and victory. By the divinity of Jesus, which these pages have indicated, not explored, we mean, not the mythical identification of alleged substance with substance, but the central energy of God's task in His universe of spiritual beings. Therefore our task draws its quality from that sacrifice, its victory over the world from that overcoming. Such as it is in Jesus, is the nature of God's sacrificial working in each one of us. Nothing less and nothing other can God's work be in all things, which are His own, and which without this His action in them, could have no being. From ever- lasting to everlasting, in all His worlds, through His heavens of measureless spiritual length and breadth and depth and height, this which we see in the cruci- fied is the sacrificial, self-emptying toil of God's in- satiable love, down to the lowliest and faintest be- ginnings of that which He wills to raise to His own likeness, and out to the remotest wanderings of souls that have refused to find themselves in Him. To Him belong all the strifes and pains, all the thwartings and repressions, the miseries of the beatings back, the agonies of the strivings on, the continual overcomings in which all the sorrows find their unfathomable justification. It is of his love's infinite perfection that it can be defrauded. It is love's heart that can 288 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION be pierced. The freedom which He ever imparts to us that we may accompHsh a real task in Him, may be turned to the defeat of that which He would be in us and through us. We rob God of the realizations of His own life. Whatever our selfishness and listlessness keep back from the realizations of other lives, we keep back from Him. Yet love has resources against even these obstacles, and Jesus, the center of God's re- demptive energy, is the center of His redemptive suffering, and God sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied. In that unity of the task which God ever possesses, we and all things have our realization, which is eternal, victorious, and attained as we blend our labors, sorrows, and joys with His, for the realizations and redemptions of other souls, into whom we enter with His love and power. It is no Heaven of ease that we anticipate for ourselves and attribute to God, but His toil and sacrifice for all His creatures, in the ever deepening energy of Jesus' cross. In this devotion is all worth, all joy, the inexhaustible bless- edness of the infinitely holy love, our Father. Thus the energies are sufiicient for the spiritual conquest in every range of it, and sufficient for that phase of it which we call the Christian reconstruction of modern life. Corrections and fulfillments are THE RECONSTRUCTIVE ENERGIES 289 involved of the conceptions of religion, of ethics, of Christianity, and of the latter's institutions, beliefs, agencies, and methods. Some of these normalizations have been indicated in our unfolding of the Semitic principle into Jesus' redemptive conquest. And in Him is found the power to direct all the resources of the spirit to their mightiest exercise. We pass to our final thought, the applications of this power to our modern life. A few years ago such an application would seem beset with desperately difficult intricacies. The question, What is that to which our application can be made? — would have seemed unanswerable. With inconceivable suddenness our age has at- tained an issue which includes men highest and lowest, the most learned and the most ignorant. This is the age in which all interests group themselves for or against the social purpose, all impulses form or resist the social passion. It is this social consciousness, felt with a universality, depth, and intensity hitherto unapproached, which makes our age unique and renders it the completive representative of modern life, in unexpected fulfillment of the forces which were released at the Renaissance. All the movements of our time merge in this flood. Every interest unfolds to this absorption. Every power of the age is arrayed 290 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION for it or against it, for this is our all-inclusive battle. It is this social passion which turns us anew to the sources of power, to the reconstructive spiritual energies. Every realization of it must be the further- ance of the spiritual task, must move in the God of the task, the Jesus of the task. For the social passion of our time must know itself as nothing else than the social passion of the Man of Galilee, nothing less than the heart-beat of the Eternal. CHAPTER VIII THE SPIRITUALIZING OF THE SOCIAL PASSION Jesus did not teach two Gospels, one personal, the other social. It is not an adequate statement that His mission has social corollaries or implications, or that we may infer social principles from His life and teachings. His one Gospel is the social Gospel, even as Jesus is the social man and the central energy of the social redemption of the social God. The realiz- ation of spirit by the transcendent world-conquest is the task of humanity united in the divine Spirit, and no one can even undertake the task except in this universal fellowship. Each soul's overcomings are in participation with the self-attainings of all souls, present, past, and future, however distant or as yet untraceable. From this social Gospel of Jesus in its reconstruc- tive applications to the social passion of our time, we select, in closing, the following elements, to be briefly indicated: Jesus' transcendent fulfillments of the developed Hellenic social consciousness; the distinction of His social Gospel from the solidaric 291 292 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION and its completion of the personal; His social inter- pretation of spiritual failure; His social ideal of re- deemed character. These spiritual fulfillments of the Hellenic social genius are possible because its purpose is not things, but human life. Against barbarism, which is the world's victory over men, in whatever forms things may repress us, or as comforts, luxuries, or aggran- dizements seduce us, our Hellenic inheritance de- mands a life free, rich, beautiful, of well-ordered, self- restrained buoyancy of soul. The fulfillment of this impulse in the transcendent world-conquest becomes all the clearer when the Hellenic ideal is socially interpreted, and its spiritual completions are socially conceived. Jesus' social passion must enter a social movement which is now in its militant stage. There are indeed premonitions of the day when men generally and all human powers may cooperate for social ends. But we must not suffer ourselves to be blinded to present conditions by this anticipation, nor by the selfish hypocrisy that assumes to minister to humanity, as the monopolists divert to social interests a fraction of that which they have abstracted from social good, and serve to rule, under the pretense of ruling to serve. The social wrath of our time arrays itself SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 293 against those who, on a large scale or on a small scale, with insolent exploitation or petty fraud, despoil the human soul and thwart the human task, using new agencies for the same ancient oppression. For self-restraint, guidance, and power, these excoriations must transcend and fulfill themselves in the social indignations of the man of Nazareth. This they may do when they are kindled by the wrongs of nothing less than the human soul. Our intensest anger is not that mouths are hungry, but that insufficient physical nourishment means mind and heart unfed; not that bodies are crowded to- gether in the homeless warrens of poverty, but that then the soul is without air to breathe or room to grow in, and the decencies and dignities owed to manhood, womanhood, and childhood are denied; not that men's shoulders are bowed down by hopeless, aimless labor, but that the soul's power to do its proper task is crushed out of it. And this indignation can demand no less a right for all men than untram- meled growth of power for wisdom and beauty, for joy and love, for righteousness and holiness. The demand is not for things, except as things serve souls, not for conditions, except as conditions further the inner life. Whatever differentiations of work are necessary for 294 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION the cooperant developments of human souls, what- ever accumulations, whatever abilities to direct, what- ever discipUnes and obediences are requisite to this end, a clear-sighted and resolute social passion not only permits them but insists upon them. Such a purpose discerns that industrial and social regimes must continually change with changed conditions, and especially with the continually expanding capacities of human worths and joys, by evolution if it may be, by revolution if it must be; yet harboring no desire for a materialistic Utopia, and seeking not greater ease for the human soul, but freer scope for larger toils. The words: fair, just, equitable, are defined in terms of the inner goals. Every defense else plausi- ble, of existing evil conditions is stultified by this deep passion. Every apology for a child labor that deflowers childhood, for the unsexing or oversexing of womanhood, for toils that narrow the Hfe of the toiler, on the plea that things may be more abundantly supplied or distributed, or that wealth may increase, or for any reason whatever, receives the flaming answer: What shall it profit humanity to gain the whole world and to lose its own soul? But this rage fulfills itself in the transcendent indignation of Jesus against the fraud and greed and injustice of His time and all times, against the rapacity that devours SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 295 widows' houses and lays on men's shoulders burdens too heavy to be borne. For he asserted the right of every personality to be a child of God, and the right of humanity to attain itself in a spiritual fellowship of all-conquering, all-transcending mutual love. One to whom this revelation has been given need not postpone his service till mankind has learned the social Gospel of Jesus, nor work till then in isolation. An important part of his service is indeed to proclaim Jesus' energizing social principle. But he also fosters every impulse of men that sets itself toward man- hood's aim. He accepts, intensifies, and seeks to fulfill everything that makes for increase of soul, that removes repressions to spiritual growth, and that stimulates the inner powers. He enjoys the continual discovery of Jesus' social aim implicit in all men's tasks. He unites himself with every historic progress and leads it along the upward path. He toils patiently, against vast discouragements, that men may know what the transcendent spiritual con- quest is, and how in every farm and factory and market-place and court and legislative hall, in every rectification of conditions, in every efficiency, econ- omy, expansion, and ennoblement of industry, in every growth of science and goverimient, in every unfolding of beauty and joy, in every triumph of righteousness, 296 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION in every deepening of love, and in every appropriation of ideal values, man may win in and from and against the world, that one thing precious, his own soul. Jesus' transcendent fulfillment of the developed Hellenic social consciousness becomes more clear in the distinction of His social Gospel from the solidaric and its completion of the personal. Jesus is the social redeemer because He is the dis- coverer of the individual soul. The solidaric concep- tions of antiquity, which subordinate the individual to the state, which conceive of man as made for in- stitutions or vested rights or for anything less than the attainment of free personality, were indeed con- tinually assailed before His coming, by the growing powers of personal consciousness; yet the essential of this personal freedom could not be reached before Jesus' realization of the world-transcending task, in which personality learns its own spiritual possibihty and fights out its own spiritual being. Here is the discovery of individual manhood, which cannot serve anything lower than the personal. In this discovery is Jesus' discovery of the woman, the child, the common man, of the regenerative potentialities of the criminal classes, of the unlimited possibilities of the lower races, of the universalism of human liberty, of the absolute right of every man to live his own life and to work SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 297 out his own destiny. All these potencies are fulfilled as each personality gains itself from all other person- alities, contributes its very self to all others, and works out for itself and for all others the universal task of the realization of humanity. The distinction of Jesus' Gospel from the solidaric and its social completion of the personal is of funda- mental importance in the directing of the social trends of our age. Solidaric conceptualism and in- stitutionalism beset our social consciousness. Hoary examples are the church when conceptualized and institutionalized as an authority to which thought and life must subject themselves, not conceived as having its value exclusively in the spiritualizing of mankind's task, most divinely, personally, and socially apprehended. The nation also when formulated as existing in a lower right than its service of the utmost development of each and all its citizens. Meaner examples are the political party when followed for its own sake, not for the sake of its ends; the class, aristocratic, bourgeois, or proletarian. It is this solidaric conceptuahsm and institutional- ism which threatens to pervert the social purposes of the toilers. The collectivism which is making such rapid progress in the desires of men, may involve disaster to that individual initiative, energy and 298 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION liberty, upon which depend the hopes of the personal and social realization of humanity. No argument is intended against socialism or for it. From present forms of organization the great task must pass on, and the forms which are to succeed the present regime are to be unfolded as the realization of the task unfolds. The progressive task determines these organizations; organizations existent or con- templated must not constrict the progress of the task. There will be little gain in exchanging one conceptual and institutional solidarity for another. If this should eventuate, or when this impotent conclusion becomes evident, mankind may prefer the ancient repressions, or an unrestrained individualism may sweep away personal and social values, until, despairing of any other issue, we bend our necks to the old burdens, which will seem to have proven themselves inevitable. Or else, as we come to the envisaging of these alter- natives, we shall waver and hesitate, in a resource- lessness capable of little progress, if indeed it may grope on at all. Not by any mutual adjustments of individualistic and solidaric claims may we attain the energy of social progress, but only by the unfolding of that social consciousness in which personal powers and personalities are completed. In its light alone our civilization must determine whether its next SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 299 phase of organization is to be formed on socialistic or other lines. By its power alone can the next devel- opment in the organizations of human life fulfill our longings for a happier and better humanity. An inevitable phenomenon of our social age is the outbreak of individualism, in reaction against both the solidaric traditions and the solidaric tendencies. There is no power in any institution, however vener- able, with traditions however imposing, nor in any solidaric anticipation of a golden age, to resist the demand of a soul to live its own life and freely to achieve itself. Only when this impulse is led on to its social goal, only when the enfranchised task of each spiritual manhood reveals itself in mankind's rational purpose, can there be the hearty acceptance of law and order, wherein are asserted the decencies, amen- ities, and sanctities that serve this social freedom. Against the tendencies that threaten to disrupt our civilization and to reduce it to barbarous chaos, there is but one social energy that can save us. In the light of the anti-solidaric principle of Jesus is revealed not only the irrationality of social eudemon- ism, but also the impossibility of conceiving it. If, by any device, all men should live in the comfort and prosperity connoted by that term, with the enjoy- ment which it intends unrestrictedly to open to all, no 300 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION social aim would be thereby achieved, nor social prin- ciple expressed. Not though the comfort, prosperity, and pleasure were most cooperatively attained and held in an organization which should safeguard the equal privileges of all. For the enjoyment of these things as such is a merely individual enjoyment, which no cooperative means can transcend. Social eu- demonism is a contradiction in terms. Every devotion that is conceived to be for this aim lifts itself, as devo- tion, above the aim and pursues something higher. Therefore every truly social aim transcends this pur- pose, even though it does so unconsciously. And the germ of every such personally social transcendence must unfold in the realization of every life in its blending with every other, in toils and conquests which no man experiences deeply except in that fundamental universality which is the Gospel of Jesus. The solidaric perversions of the social impulse, in the interest either of reaction or of radicalism, are overcome by Jesus' personal-social Gospel. Against all these usurpations is asserted the right of mankind to realize itself by the personal realizations of all its members in their supreme task together. There are no rights of government except in the service of this right, nor of property, nor of vested interests, nor of any institution ecclesiastical or secular. SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 301 This principle, in order to fulfill itself, has to con- sider the Roman element of our civilization, the peculiarly constructive element, with its metes and bounds which only knaves and madmen desire to break through. The one human right must use as its instruments these Roman organizations of the forms of civilization. It must develop all these forms according to the expansion of its own purpose. It must not repudiate or even modify a single one of them now existent except for the evident advantage of that high purpose which they serve, yet never permitting a repressive survival of things that have ceased to benefit, and annulling them so that the man- ner of the change shall be of benefit. Here is the field of the social sciences in their widest action, govern- mental, legal, or economic. These sciences find their unprescribed function and method when directed, each in the proper limitations of its own service, to the one personal-social aim. The revolutionary as well as the conservative nature of this principle must be frankly admitted. The divine right of property shares the ignoble fate of the divine right of kings. Nothing more is owed to vested interests than is due to traditional privilege. Nothing was owed to the despoiled holders of slaves. Society can acknowledge no obhgation to anything that has 302 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION become a nuisance or a menace, or has ceased to be of social value. No reparation can be justly claimed by the church when its property is secularized for social good. The question of socialism is not to be compHcated by any objection of property holders against spoliation. Traditional privilege and vested interest have resisted every human advance, and their remonstrances have always been a hypocritical im- pertinence. When reparation is given, it is for the sake of the steady progress of society, and for no other reason. Yet this revolutionary principle is the most conservative. Regard and reverence are accord- ed to every estabUshed order, to every vested interest, to every traditional observance, in their furtherance of the human task. Since no alteration is permitted except for this reason, there is safety from every rapacity and wantonness and demagogic lawlessness or haste. Every change accomplished through this principle is a universal benefit, in which every man, as a social bemg, receives incalculably more than he surrenders. This principle must always be held in Jesus' high and severe completion of the Hellenic social genius. Nothing can be demanded of any man for any purpose that does not enter into the universal self-realization of spiritual humanity. How shall this all-inclusive spiritual aim be achieved? SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 303 It seeks that social union of developing personalities in which all righteousness is fulfilled, and the means it employs must be altogether righteous in a conception of righteousness drawn from that advancing goal. It seeks that social union of developing personalities in which love is consummated, and only love can attain love's purpose, and love as means must ever test itself by love as consummate end. The methods most congenial to this holy love in its task are not the assertion of rights, but the enthusiasm of duties; not authority, but ministry; not rule, but sacrifice; not the throne, but the cross. To be confident that humanity shall attain itself by these means, and that these means shall occupy every relation of Hfe and every department of labor, inspire all science and art and every widening field of civilization, seems the maddest dream that ever obsessed a human soul. Yet as we look around us and back, these are the mightily efiicient forces, and we are led to doubt the practical value of any other. What powers uncongenial to the spirit can be used for the spiritual end, which is the only end of each socialized soul and of personaHzed humanity? The command of Jesus not to resist the evil man, but to give the other cheek to the smiter, the other mile to the exploiter, the other garment to the de- 304 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION spoiler, — what response to these injunctions is made by those over whom Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, and by the indignant passion that will not suffer man to be robbed of the human soul? We are not explaining away these commands but attributing to them their most inexorable emphasis when we say : This is not the course of one who yields life's ends and purposes, but of one who asserts life's most arduous purpose, and along this path achieves it for Himself and humanity. The significance of these words of Jesus is given by the world-transcending task and conquest, by which humanity is realized and all the potentialities of mankind and each soul are fulfilled. There is no passivity here. Jesus had no passive virtues. To do these sayings of His in servility and fear, or for the sake of ease and quietness, is the crudest violation of them, the complete surren- der of personal worth as He held it, and the rankest treachery to the cause of humanity as he devoted Himself to it. These are the utterances of the world's transcendent conqueror, who faces all that the world may bring against Him, resolute, aggressive, unafraid. We shall learn His way as we grow in the compre- hension of His task. The alternative at every moment is devotion or unfaithfulness to His task. When we have to choose between using force for the mainte- SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 305 nance and furtherance of social attainments that serve His purpose which completes them, or supinely yield- ing them to lawlessness or greed, Christian manhood will fight for these goods in His name. His transcen- dent path, as His transcendent aim, is a long and hard lesson to learn, as both unfold in the midst of new con- ditions, and of new problems which are difficult to bring into the supreme life problem that He solved. Yet it becomes increasingly clear, that everything in the achievement of humanity's great task approves its effective value in proportion as it accords with these strange commands of His, as His ministry and its supernal culmination interpret and confirm them. The greatness of the Gettysburg address is that it is a universe away from any thought of the military glory of that victorious day, while it presents the giving of the last full measure of devotion as the force to render imperishable, government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The impression made by St. Gaudens' Shaw Memorial is in its consummate expression of the implicitly sacrificial nature of our own modern culture, as its superb representative goes forth with those poor black men, not to slay, for that we insist upon forgetting, but to be slain, and above them the sorrowing genius of victory holds the laurel wreath of sacrifice. Through the memories of 3o6 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION those days arises, alas that it should be so dimly, a vision of Jesus, wise and strong to preserve a closer and deeper union, for a world mission more clearly comprehended, and to effect a liberation of the en- slaved to a hfe more free; as He would have gone upon that task in the power by which He of old created the united humanity, and broke the chains that bind the human soul; as He of old accomplished His victory in a sacrificial glory that makes all our incomplete devo- tions fade before His cross. We beseech His forgive- ness that we choose to serve Him so blunderingly rather than renounce His service; for it is not His will that we should take Him or His words for an external authority, but receive them as increasingly illumina- tive power. May there soon come to humanity that knowledge of His world-conquest which can say: Fools and blind that we have ever been not to see that His great purpose is to be accomplished in His great way! The approach to this wisdom is the ever deeper learn- ing of the secret of His cross. It is evident that Jesus' reconstruction of modern life must extend far beyond anything that we are now able to forecast, beyond the imaginings of any current social enthusiasms. Our social passion feels itself in the grasp of a limitless energy, which is working out social goods that transcend our most ardent and SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 307 chastened hopes. The unsearchable mystery of the spiritual task as personally regarded deepens when we feel its social fulfillments. Yet we know it as task leading to accomplishments unknown, as conquest leading to victories now inconceivable. And the in- spiration of this mystery is increased when we ap- proach Jesus' social interpretation of spiritual failure. The identification of salvation with faith in Jesus is the universal confession of Christian experience. This identification is most clear when we apprehend Jesus as social man, central energy of the working of the social God our Father, and author of the salva- tion socially realized in every disciple. This evangel is evident even in the latter part of the New Testa- ment, as soon as we eliminate the incipiently dog- matic and crudely speculative elements of that teach- ing, and cast out from Christianity without remorse the intrusions of revenge and hate. In Paul and his New Testament imitators generally, and in the Johannean writings for the most part, faith in the Saviour is one with love to our fellowmen, for He so loved. Yet we turn back to the synoptic gospels for the clearer presentation of the social nature of faith in Jesus. The issue of the soul's salvation or of eternal loss is in the acceptance or refusal of that loyalty to Jesus in which our faith in Him is most 3o8 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION vital and practical, and in which also our union with Him is one with His sacrificial giving of Himself to men. Everything depends upon this personal devotion to our Lord. The call, "Follow Me," speaks absolute imperativeness, whether this following is to be ex- pressed in becoming one of the company that attended Him, or in any other form of faithfulness to Him against every allurement of the world, every rivalry of other appeals, and through every test of loss or torture or ignominy or terrible form of death. This devotion to Jesus is devotion to Him as He is, and He is the central energy of the transcendent world- conquest in which humanity realizes itself and all souls may achieve their unity. Faith in Jesus sinks to an empty sentiment, a hollow phrase, an extra- neous and irrational condition of salvation, except when Jesus is received as the consummate power of social manhood. In the transcendent human fellow- ship created by Jesus a soul is saved. In separation from it a soul is lost. Faith's fellowship with Jesus is one with the realization of our fellowship in human- ity. Jesus' social interpretation of spiritual failure meets us on every page of these earlier accounts of His mission, and is the undertone of nearly the whole New Testament, in the new insistence upon love, sacri- SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 309 fice, humanity. Perhaps the most overwhelming portrayal is in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Whatever additions to Jesus' thought our criticism removes from this passage and whatever expressions we may modify as representing one of the tendencies of the early church, the central teaching, in all its inexorableness, originates from His spiritual vision. The Jewish imagery must not distract us from the thought, which is this: that any one who accepts a separation between his own fortunes and the condi- tion of any fellowman sunders himself from that unity of humanity in which is all good, and outside of which there is nothing but desolateness and anguish. From the blessedness and compassionateness, where those who have had least and have suffered most are forever comforted, no relief can traverse the great gulf which the fortunate have accepted between themselves and the miserable. This is the inevitable law of eternal loss, incurred by voluntary separation of man from the needs of his fellowmen, by insensi- bihty to the appealing sorrow of the least of our breth- ren. This social interpretation of spiritual failure, this social pronouncement of ultimate doom, flames upon us, the moment it is recognized, from every word and deed of Jesus. No less clear is Jesus' way of escape, 3IO THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION which is ministry to "the least," — the least regarded, the poorest endowed. Only as all the wealth of possession and knowledge, of joy and virtue, is opened to hearts most remote from the worths of life, is there the filling up of the great gulf, the uniting of a man with humanity. Only as these goods are poured out to those from whom no recompense can be expected, and we offer the feast of life to the poor, the lame, and the blind, do we actually unite ourselves with humanity. Anything short of this Hmits us to a class, a segment separate from mankind. Only in devoted ministry to "these least" are we one with humanity in all the sorrows and strivings and common values, whereby we accomplish the social, the univer- sal achievement of the spiritual task. From the doom, the eternal loss, of those who do not thus minister, our modern Hfe must be called back. And the social passion of our day has hidden within it responsiveness to this warning and appeal. The methods by which this salvation is to be wrought are for us to discern in the conditions that now con- front us, and are to be found largely in the develop- ments of our Aryan inheritance; but Jesus' social reconstruction, which is to work itself out in every component of our culture, is so vast that every other social revolution sinks into insignificance beside it SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 311 and promises amelioration and progress only when inspired by His evangel and contained in it. This fundamental of Jesus' Gospel goes far beyond our awakening demands for social equity. For by His principle every man, every institution, every social force, pour themselves forth first of all to the needs of those whose need is greatest. It is indeed the purpose of the house-holder that all his laborers shall be paid equally, but the last must be paid first. In the ministry which is primarily to the last and least, justice and equity find their essential nature and fulfill their implicit purpose. The Hellenic social ideal learns its transcendent aim. Every power of civilization rises to its summit, in the government and the industry and the art and the science which dispense unto "these least," through rectified con- ditions and unrestricted opportunities, the choicest goods, of broad wisdom, of pure intensity of joy, of character consummate in holiness, of the raising of every man to his share of the infinite task of the spiritual self-realization of humanity. This inner re- construction, all-comprehensive, universal, is the implacable issue confronting each man, and most evidently our time. Only as we are attuned to this purpose of Jesus can this age escape inexpressible dis- aster, and each man escape the loss of his own soul. 312 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION The unity of humanity in devotion to "these least" opens yet more radiant heights of social ideal, pro- founder depths of self-devotion. We are social men in Jesus' aggressive realization of union with mankind, when we receive His redemptive passion. Beyond the humblest, whom we must serve as He served them, are evil men, perverse characters, the lost, whom we must save, and seek in the dark mountains of their wandering, if we would save them. To win even the criminal and the harlot by every ingenuity and untiring passion of holy love, to this end we must set our lives if we would live in His life; and this passion must fill the thought and heart and will of our civilization, if it shall be worthy of the title which it has assumed so lightly, the name of Christian civilization. Up into this field, preventing and winning back, our social sciences must enter, and this field is the whole world of lost humanity. All dealings of an illumined Christian state with peoples degraded or morally undeveloped, and with the decadent and intractable elements of its own population, must unite with the confident enthusiasm which sends His ambassadors into desolate regions and down into the lower strata of society, and sweeps into self- denying cooperations every heart that would be in His holy fellowship of universal love. Our redemptive SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 313 passion requires His clear vision of sin, as He beheld scribe and pharisee sunk in a spiritual need which is not less than that of renegade and prostitute. Our redemptive passion sweeps on to all who are outside Jesus' social fellowship, whether they are in dive or palace, in pursuits execrated by society or honored by standards which are not those of His social salvation. These redemptive efforts must be directed upon every lost soul, and must also determine the whole life- current and career of every man, and the direction and energy of every institution and of the entire social organization. From the uniting service to the least and the lost, there opens a still higher social ideal, a still lowlier self-emptying. The intensity of Jesus' emphasis upon the forgiveness of our enemies is the very social heart of His Gospel. Our union with humanity is incom- plete, that is, it is a union with something less than humanity and therefore false to itself, if it cannot pray, "Forgive as we forgive." Jesus' forgiveness, as He read it in His Father's heart and opened it to our Hves, is not limited to a remission of penalty nor to a forbearing of vengeance, but is the purpose to unite the heart of the offender with the heart of the offended, to restore to the holy fellowship of love those who have outraged love. 314 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Because it must be a holy fellowship, the effort of forgiveness is to bring contrition into the soul of the injurer, and that contrition is created by the injured taking the sorrow and burden of the sin upon his own heart. We lead hateful men back to love, the polluted to holiness, in which alone love can dwell, though that endeavor is met with brutal misconception and in- jurious affront. This is not a merely individual labor; all who are in Jesus' social fellowship unite in this restorative for- giveness of every lost soul. As long as one man is in the outer darkness, the whole redeemed humanity unites itself for the salvation of that one, even at the cost, to each loving spirit, of Jesus ' agony and bloody sweat, His cross and passion. And though the action of a free agent cannot be predicted, we may hope and pray that the heart most filled with lust and hate shall open itself at length to the holy love of Jesus and of those to whom His redemptive grace is given in power, and that loving humanity, fulfilled in Him, shall see of the travail of its soul and be satisfied. This united effort of forgiveness may now embrace every social institution and energy. The effort of a civilization really Christian is to bring back to its regenerated life civiHzation's bitterest foes, in high place or low place. The purpose of justice, divine and SPIRITUALIZING THE SOCIAL PASSION 315 human, is to forgive. All law, all statecraft, all political, industrial, and social forces direct them- selves to that unity of heart and task where all class hatreds and national antagonisms are done away, and where men forgiving one another are indeed one. The sign in which Christian civilization conquers may then in very truth be His cross. For the knowledge of Jesus' ideal of redeemed character, we turn our reverent, aspiring gaze to Him, the social man, in whom is the social God. Jesus is so penetratively one with all human needs, that every ministry of ours to the hunger, the thirst, the naked- ness, the loneliness, the sickness, the oppression, of His brethren, "even these least," is done unto Him. His mission is to seek and to save that which is lost. In that mission which flows from the all-forgiving, all-reconciling love of the Father's heart. He set His face steadfastly to Jerusalem, where He was to be crucified. Surely it is only in His power that we can undertake the task so transcendent, the world- conquest of such spiritual victory as His life lays upon us. That power grows in the uniting of our inmost life with Him, who is the one sufficient Saviour of every man, the central force of redeemed humanity, the presence and energy of the all-holy and all-loving Father. 3i6 THE CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION Jesus' world-transcending task and overcoming is the consummation of the social passion, that all-con- suming flame of every man who really lives the life of our day, in which the modern age finds itself. In our unwearying devotion to man and men we must serve nothing less than their spiritual potencies, which are their very being. The social passion, in Jesus' consummation of it, burns away everything but tliis purpose. And for such social ministry we can be sufl&cient only in the deep and holy and sacrificial, the all-pervading, all-spiritualizing faith and fellowship unspeakable of the Son of God. INDEX Abraham, 6i, 151, 157 in Jewish theology, 234 Achaemenidas, 164 Ahaz, relation to prophetism, 149 Ahriman, 165, 169 flf. Albigenses, 181 Allah, transcendence of, 129, 130, 158 Amos, universalism of, 151 Anarchy, aspirations of, 59 Antichrist, 257 Aphrodite, alien to Roman religion, 172 Apocalypse of John, its material- izations, 276 Apocalyptic, Jewish, 155, 156 in thought of Jesus, 162, 254- 260, 272-276 Apollo, nature transformed by art, 29 alien to Roman religion, 172 Aramaean descent of Jesus, 127 Arcadia, Greek superstition in, 39 Aristotle, his supreme good Hellenic, 30 Arnold, Matthew, conception of barbarism, 26 Artaphernes, type of modern plutocracy, 50 Art: Hellenic, 31,32, 43 democratization of, 47 Babylonian, 131, 135 Romantic, 178 as consummating nature, 205 Semitic transformation of, 205, 206 Aryan. See Hellenic genius Asshur, both nation and deity, 15 Assyria: relation to Babylonia, 132 opposing Semitic develop- ments, 134 prophetic misapprehension of, 149 Athens, source of culture, 5, 21 Aufklasrung. See Enlighten- ment B Baal-worship, relation to Jahveh, 146 Babylon, unfulfilled prophecy of return from, 150 Babylonia, 131 ff, 164, 172 its culture and religion un- differentiated, 19 its myths in Christianity, 172 Babylonian hymns, 139 Barbarism, modern, 26, 44-57 317 3i8 INDEX Barbizon school, 262 Bergson, author's obligation to, preface, vii Browning, quoted, no, 212 Buddhism: cultural ineffectiveness of, 15 influence on Occident, 70 distinction from Semitic spirit, 116 universal sympathy, 205 in Indian pessimism, 211, 212 Caesar, representing exploitation, 171 Cain, representing civilization, 170 Calvinism, 183 Canaanites, religion and culture, 19 influence on Israel, 145-146 Celt, element of our civilization, 175, 176 implicit Semitism of, 209, 211 Chaucer, joyousness of, 263 Childhood, exploitations of. See Industrial slavery China, relation to Christianity, II capacity for Hellenism, 130 Christian apologetic, weakness of, 180-183, 284, 285 Christianity, Semitic nature of. See Jesus, and Semitic genius Church, not organized by Jesus, 10, II, 158 its ecclesiasticisms, 11, 182 relation to Jewish leaders, 158 various historic influences of, 1S1-183 Classicism, conflict with Roman- ticism, 177 Creeds, as departures from Christianity, 7, 85, 221, 222, 227, 228, 285 Criticism, New Testament, 9, 63, 64, 82 D David, not author of Psalms, 171 Dionysos Zagraios, 39 "Divine right," 301 E Egypt, 139, 140, 142 Elijah, place in prophecy, 144, 146, 147 Enlightenment (Aufklaerung) , 80 "Essential Christ, The," 85, 100, 282 Eucken, author's obligation to, preface, vii Euphrates, influence on culture, 131, 132 Evolution, 116-119 of humanity, 127, 128 Jesus' place in, 83, 226, 227, 232, 233, 239, 240 Faust (Goethe's) as Gothic, 37, 177 INDEX 319 Forgiveness: as constitutive of humanity, 313-315 See also Jesus' Teachings Fourth Gospel: its appreciation of Jesus, 10 characteristics, 91, 232 quotations and references, 89, 93, 95. 262, 264, 269, 273, 274, 27s, 307, 316 Galilee, our spiritual descent from, 5, 21 Genesis, Book of, quoted, 2, 17 Genevan theocracy, 74 "Genius of our civilization," 123 Germany, relation to Chris- tianity, II Gibeonite, in university pro- fessorships, 52 Gilgamesh, epic of, 134, 139 Gnosticism, in development of Christianity, 7 God: Hellenic conceptions of, 15, 21, 29, 68-70, 76, 77, 100, 123, 124, 144 Semitic conceptions of, 18, 62, 132, 133, 137. 138, 140-156, 192, 195-198, 207, 208, 213, 271, 277, 278, 283-288 Jesus' conception of, 34, 62, 63, 87, 93, 94, 160, 161, 179, 218-220, 224, 226, 229, 231, 233. 235, 243, 244, 247, 248, 250, 251, 252, 258, 261, 266- 269, 273-275, 313 in Jesus, 86, 100, loi, 249, 250, 283, 286-288, 307 and world, 112, 113, 114, 120- 124, 262, 263, 284, 285 Iranian conception of, 165, 168, 170, 171, 208 Roman conception of, 172, 173, 209 Romanticism's conception of, 177, 178, 209 Goethe, his union of Gothic and Hellenic, 36, 177 quoted, 200 Gothic element in our civiliza- tion, 176, 177 implicit Semitism of, 209, 211 H Hebrews, Epistle to, quoted, 221, 249 Hebrews, Gospel of, 229, 230 Hegel, popular ignorance of, 35 his judgment of Babylonian civilization, 135 quoted, 122 Helena, in Goethe's Faust, 36, 177 Hellenic genius versus Chris- tianity: source of our civilization, 3, passim quality of, 28-37 modernization of, 38-57 in science, 39-43, 62-64 in social interests, 43-57, 185- 187 democratic nature of, 34, 35, 47-57, 59 320 INDEX in popular education, 49 in higher education, 51-55 universal range of, 60-62 ethic of, 64-66 in philosophy, 66 and passim religious consciousness of, 67- 73. 75. 76, 96-99, 102, 123, 124 defined as world-appropriat- ing, 107, and world-com- pleting, 109 soul and world in, 114, 115 humanity and world in, 116- 119 soul and God in, 120-124 Babylonian elements in, 131, 133 distinction from Babylonian, 134-137 Iranian genius in, 1 63-1 71 Roman genius in, 1 71-175 Celtic genius in, 175, 176 Gothic genius in, 176 Indian genius in, 211, 212 Romanticism in, 176-179 historic independence of Chris- tianity, 179-183 would appropriate Semitic genius, 184 transcended and transformed by Jesus, 185-213, 277-290, 291-307, 315. 316 Hephaistos, 169 Herakles, 34 Hezekiah, his statesmanship against prophetism, 149 Holtzmann, Heinrich Julius, author's obligation to, preface, vii Homer, ancient popularity of, 34 Hosea, 144 Hugo, Victor, 178, quoted, 178 Humanity, conception of, 96-100 See also Social passion "Ideal Christ, The," 85, 90, 100, 282 "Imitation of Christ, The," 220 Incarnation. See Jesus India: impassiveness to Hellenism, 130, 131 opposite of Semitic genius, 144, 145 Aryan genius of, 211, 212 Individualism, modern outbreak of, 299, 300 Iranian genius: place in our civilization, 163- 171 implicit Semitism of, 209, 211 Isaiah: lack of statesmanship, 149 prophecy unfulfilled, 150 Ishtar, 132-133 Islam. See Mohammedanism Israel, in struggle against the world, 207 See also Semitic genius Italy, relation to Christianity, 11 Jahveh: original conception of, 140 ff transformation of conception, 142 ff INDEX 321 Japan: relation to Christianity, 11 capacity for Hellenism, 130 Jehovah. See Jahveh Jeremiah, 144, 171 Jerusalem, 171 Jesus, as distinctively Semitic: separateness from Aryan civil- ization, 4, 9, 10, 162-184 identification with Christian- ity, 76 historic knowledge of possible, 77-83 historic relation to men's inner hfe, 83-96 critical reconstruction of life of, 82 divinity of, 86, 286-288, 316 orthodox misrepresentations of, 84, 85 inclusiveness of, 87, 88 immediate experience of, 93 ff central energy of humanity, 96-102, 239, 240, 249, 250, 307, 308, 314, 316, passim as Saviour, vid super relation to common life, 102- 104, 263-265 uncertainty of Hebrew de- scent, 127 recognition in modern Ju- daism, 158 consummation of Semitic genius, 159-161 nationalism of, 160, 265-267 legalism of, 161, 162, 243-245 eschatological expectations of, 162, 254-260, 272-276 misconception of historic in- fluence of, 179-183 social genius of, 186, 248, 249, 266-272, 277-316 misconception of social aims of, 186, 187 task of, 185-277 prayers of, 197, 198, 220, 228, 235, 246, 251, 252, 261, 269, 278, 283, 285, 286 limitations and inconsistencies essential to, loi, 102, 214 limitations as teacher, 216-218 limitations of religious con- sciousness, 218-220 ethical limitations of, 64, 65, 221, 222 as example, 220, 221 holiness of, 22S-238 conviction of sin by, 223-226 natural birth of, 227, 228 healings by, 259, 260 parables of, 265, 309, 310 transcendent world-conquest of, 185, 277, 316 as Saviour of other worlds, 281-283, c/., 96-102 transcendent fulfillment of Hellenism, 185-214, 291- 296 incarnation. Sec God in Jesus death of, as redemptive power, 275, 276, 2S6-288, 314-316 resurrection of, 275, 276 salvation by faith in, 307, 308 Jesus' teachings: inconsistencies of, 216-220, 242 as unfoldings of His own inner life, 242 ff 322 INDEX sin. Sec Jesus, conviction of sin by faithfulness to Old Testament, 244 and passim of repentance, 242-253 of God. See God, Jesus' con- ception of of legalistic requirements, 244- 246 of conversion, 246 of faith, 218, 219, 246-253, cf- 307, 308 of grace, 247 of divine fatherhood, 247 ff, and passim of universal salvation, 248, 249 of consecration, 250-251 of childlikeness, 251-252 of dependence on God, 252, 253 of transcendent world-con- quest, 253 and passim of Kingdom of God, 253-276 Jewish eschatology in, 254-260 of Kingdom of Satan, 254 demonology in, 258-260, 262 implicit spirituality of God's kingdom in, 260 ff kingdom realized in, 261-262 of nature, 63, 262, 263 of natural manhood, 263-265 of patriotism, 265-267 of cosmopolitanism, 266-268 of spiritual humanity, 268, 269 of human brotherhood in divine sonship, 268, 269 social ethic of, 269-270 social passion of , 270-272, 291- 316 messianic consciousness m, 272 ff of Son of God, 272-274 of Son of Man, 274-276 of personality socially fulfilled, 296-308 in Sermon on the Mount, 302- 307 of personal immortality, 242, 253, 258, 259, 261, 269, 270, 271, 272, 274, 275, cf. 96- 100 of eternal loss, 242, 243, 307- 31S of prayer. See Jesus Jew, the modern, 157, 158 John, Epistle of, quoted, 207, 307 John, Gospel of. See Fourth Gospel Judaism, 151-157 K Kant: popular ignorance of, 35 relation to Hellenism and Romanticism, 36, 37 Semitic and Iranian qualities of, 169 a Kempis, 220 Keats: Hellenic genius of, 175 Celtic genius of, 1 76 quoted, 175, 176 Lamia (of Keats), 175 Latmos, in Keats' Endymion, 175 INDEX 323 Leibnitz, quoted, 201 Lessing, service to Hellenism, 36 Leviticus, Book of, quoted, 138, 153 "Living Christ, The," 90 Logos, 85, 282 Lot, 61 Luke, Gospel of, quoted, 213, 221, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 242, 243, 244, 24s, 247, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 25s, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 27s, 276, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315 Lutheranism, 183 M / Macedonian Empire, 129, 164 Maeterlinck, 94 Malayan capacity for Hellenism, 127 Marathon, 50 Marcus Aurelius, 5 Mark, Gospel of. Quotations and references, 228, 229, 232, 234, 242, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 308, 310,311, 312,313, 314, 31S Matthew, Gospel of, quotations and references, 63, 123, 155, 228, 229, 232, 233, 234, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275> 276, 303, 304, 308, 310, 311, 312,313, 314, 315 Messiah, 234-237, 273-276 Middle Ages, influence of Church in, 181 Militarism, 14, 15, 181, 304 ff Missions, Christian, 17, 18 Mithra-cult, 164 Mohammed, 129 Mohammedanism : as civilization and religion, 15 Semitic genius in, 129 influence upon Aryan and Semitic peoples, 130 nature of, 158-159 exploitations of, 181 Mongofian capacity for Hellen- ism, 127 Moses, 142-144 Muses, 43 Music, its Celtic, Gothic and Roman elements, 176 Mysticism: unhellenic, 30 Christian, 85, 90-95 N Nature, spiritual transformation of, 263 Nebuchadnezzar, 171 New England theocracy, 74 Negro capacity for Hellenism, 127 324 INDEX "Non-resistance," 303-306 "Novum Organmn," 42, 43 O Olympian gods, as cultural ideals, 45 Oread, as nature imperfectly humanized, 38 Ormazd, 169 Orpheus, 72 Paran. See Sinai Parthenon, 39 Paul, St.: rehgious experience, 248 divergencies from Jesus, 249, 264, 282, 307 quotations and references, 126, 207, 270, 276 Pericles, 39 Persia, as connoting barbarism, 44 ff, 163, 164 See also Iranian genius Personality: See Spiritual life Pessimism, 211, 212 Pharisees, Jesus' graciousness to, 102 legalism of, 243-246 Phenicia in Babylonian culture, 19, 136, 137 Phidias, 39 Phihstine, connoting barbarism, 26 Philistinism in public education, 49 Philosophy: theological perversions of, 30 Hellenic limitations of, 32, ^^ Hellenic humanism, 41 ethic, in Hellenism and Sem- itism, 64-66 safeguarding of, against Chris- tianity, 66 of religion, 66-68, 122 refutation of religion of au- thority, 75-77 of history, 78-81, 92, 96-101 conception of universal hu- manity, 96-100 fundamental definitions of, how formed, 1 13-124 Iranian influence upon, 168- 170 of soul, 188 ff Semitic developments of, 277- 281 See also God, Pragmatism, Spiritual hfe Plato: Popularity in antiquity, 35 relation to Kantian revolu- tion, 36, 37 normal use of, 39 unrecognized influence of, 56 Hellenic limitations of, 69 abuse of, in modern theology, 167 Plato's Academy, 54 Plotinus: opposition to Christianity, 5 essential Hellenism of, 30, 69 Political institutions. See Rome INDEX 325 Poseidon, modern sacrifice to, 39 Pragmatism, preface, vii, 166 cf. also Chapters I and IV of Part Second, and pp. 278- 281 Prayer. See Jesus Prometheus. See Shelley Property, provisional rights of, 301, 302 Prophets of Israel, 147-152 Psalms, Book of, 151 quoted, 63, 151 Publicans, Jesus' graciousness to, 102 Puritanism: Iranian element in, 167 Defects of, 181 R Renaissance, 44, 55-57, 182, 289 Roman emperors, apotheosis of, 173 Roman Empire: Christian misinterpretation of its history, 129, 189 Fall due to economic causes, 182 Rome: significance in our civilization, 171-175, 209 implicit Semitism of, 301 Romanticism, 36, 176-178 Russell, John Edward, author's obligation to, preface, vii Sacraments, not intended by Jesus, 9 Samaria, not included in Jesus' mission, 256 Satan, Kingdom of, 165, 179, 180, 254, 260, 263 Semitic genius in contrast to Hellenic: defined as world-transcending, 107 and world-destroying, no, in world and soul in, 115, 116 world and humanity in, n 9, 1 20 world and God in, 124 ff history of, 1 25-161 Babylonian contribution to, 131-139 Egyptian relation to, 139-140 reahzation in Israel, 140-146 development in prophecy, 146- 151 development in psalmists, 150, 151 political limitation of, 151, 153 legalism of, 153-15S eschatological expectations of, 155, 156 modern non-christian develop- ments of, 157, 158 Mohammedan variation of, 158, 159 Jesus' consummation of, 159- 161. See also Jesus Sennacherib, 149 Shakespeare: general unfamiliarity with, 34 quoted, 95 Shelley, 72, 263 Sin. See under Jesus, and Jesus' teachings Sinai, legends of, 19,140, 146,147 326 INDEX Sirens, symbolizing faith, 72 Slavery, industrial, 48, 49, 50, 180, 292-297 Slavs, responsiveness to Hellen- ism, 129 Socialism, 298 ff "Social eudemonism," 299-300 Social passion, preface, vii as chief characteristic of our time, 3, 185, 187, 289, 290 Hellenic source of, 34, 35, 43- 57 its conception of humanity, 96-104, 1 16-120 in prophets of Israel, 148 in Iranian genius, 171 in Romanticism, 178 in Semitic genius, 213 in Jesus, 186, 243, 263-265, 270-272, 291-316 Solidaric vs. social, 297 ff Spiritual life: conceived as task, 190 intimations of, 190, 191 as transcendent world-con- quest, 191 ff real only as realizing itself, 193 the opposing world essential to, 193 ff diflSculties of its self-realiza- tion, 19s its humility, 195, 196 humanity of, 196, 197, 198, 199 in God, 197, 198 disclosed by impermanence of the world, 199, 200 relation to time, 200, 201 its repudiation of theodicies, 201, 202, 204 its transformations of pain, 202-204 its transformations of pleasure, 204-206 its universal transformations, 207, 208 its transformation of Hellenic genius, 208, 210 its transformation of Iranian genius, 208 its transformation of Roman genius, 209 its transformation of Celtic and Gothic genius, 209 and romanticism, 209 its relation to Indian genius, 211, 212 its relation to common toils, 212 its realization of humanity, 213 See also Semitic genius, a7td Jesus Stephen, St., 63 Simerian, 132 Swinburne, quoted, arraigmnent of ecclesiasticism, 182 Syncretism, irrational, 67 Synoptic, Gospels, historic value and limitation, 179, 180 Syria, 136, 137, 149 Tennyson, quoted, 200, 207 Terpsichore, see Muses Teutonic elements in civilization, dependence on Roman in- fluence, 174 INDEX 327 Theodicy, 201 £f, 284 Theologies. See Creeds "These least," 311-313 Tigris: influence upon civilization, 131, 132 Tissaphernes, 54 Trinity, Nicene, 85 Triton, representing nature im- perfectly humanized, 38 Tyre, nonfulfillment of prophecy concerning, 149 U University, barbarism in, 51-54 Urania. See Muses V Venus. See Aphrodite Vulcan. See Hephaistos W Whittier, quoted, 77, 91 Winckelmann, his recovery of Hellenism, 36 Womanhood, exploitation of. See Industrial slavery World: difficulty of conception, 113 as Opponent of spirit, 113, 114 in conception of soul, 115, 116 in conception of humanity, I 16-120 in conception of God, 120 ff as within self, 190 irrationahty of, 201 flF World-appropriation. See Hel- lenic genius World-conquest. See Jesus, Hellenic genius, Semitic genius World-transcendence. See Sem- itic genius, Jesus Zarathustra, 165 Zeus, 29 Zoroaster. See Zarathustra ' I "'HE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. The Problem of Christianity IN TWO VOLUMES By JosiAH RoYCE, LL.D., Litt. D. Professor of the History of Philosophy, Harvard University; Author of "OutUnes of Psychology," "The Philosophy of Loyalty," "William James," etc. Vol. I. The Christian Doctrine of Life. Vol. II. The Real World and the Christian Ideas. Cloth, i2mo, Set, $3.50 net; carriage extra A work of great importance to all students of religion and philoso- phy and to the general reader who keeps abreast with progress in these fields is Dr. Josiah Royce's "The Problem of Christianity," in two volumes, the first, "The Christian Doctrine of Life," and, the second, "The Real World and the Christian Ideas." Volume I is a study of the human and empirical aspects of some of the leading ideas of Christianity; Volume II deals with the technically metaphysical problems to which these ideas give rise. The two vol- umes are contrasted in their methods, the first discussing religious experience, the second dealing with its metaphysical foundations. They are, however, closely connected in their purposes, and at the end the relations between the metaphysical and the empirical aspects of the whole undertaking are reviewed. The "Christian Ideas" which Dr. Royce treats as "leading and essential" are, first, the Idea of the "Community," historically represented by the Church; second, the Idea of the "Lost State of the Natural Man," and the third, the Idea of "Atonement," to- gether with the somewhat more general Idea of "Saving Grace." "These three," Dr. Royce says, "have a close relation to a doctrine of life which, duly generalized, can be, at least in part, studied as a purely human 'philosophy of loyalty' and can be estimated in em- pirical terms apart from any use of technical dogmas and apart from any metaphysical opinion. . . . Nevertheless no purely empirical study of the Christian doctrine of life can, by itself, sufiice to answer our main questions. It is indeed necessary to consider the basis in human nature which the religion of loyalty possesses and to portray the relation of this religion to the social experience of mankind. To this task the first part of these lectures is confined, but such a pre- liminary study sends us beyond itself. The second part of these lectures considers the neglected phil- osophical problem of the sense in which the community and its Spirit are realities." PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York Social Idealism and the Changing Theology A Study of the Ethical Aspects of Christian Doctrine The Nathaniel William Taylor Lectures for 191 2. Delivered before the Yale Divinity School By Gerald Birney Smith Associate Professor of Christian Theology in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 net; postpaid, $1.37 "It has for some time seemed to me," says Gerald Birney Smith, in the preface to his new book, "that theological scholarship isin danger of pursuing a course which might end in a somewhat exclusive intellectualism. As the progress of Biblical criticism has compelled us to reconstruct our conception of the way in which the Bible is to be used, the appeal to the Bible, which to Luther seemed so simple and democratic a matter, has become hedged in with considerations of critical scholarship difficult for those who are not specialists to comprehend. 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Dr. Near- ing's final presentation of a religion that is really social, a religion the function of which is "to abolish ignorance and graft and to provide for normal manhood and adjusted life toward which society may strive" is particularly suggestive. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York The Church and the Labor Conflict By Parley Paul Womer Author of "Relation of Healing to Law," "A Valid Religion for the Times," "The Coming Creed" Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net; postpaid, $i.6j To supply concreteness to the discussion of the social mission of the church is Parley Paul Womer's purpose in The Church and the Labor Conflict. Dr. Womer believes that in dealing with the relationship of Christianity to industry there has been too much generalization, a lack of deiiniteness and a failure to grapple the fundamental facts of our contemporary social and economic developments. 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