h.:r? NOV (^ 1916 /it ^^ BR 125 .C3 1906 ^^^^ Case, Carl Delos, 1868-1931 The masculine in religion The Masculine in Religion '> 1916 Byy Carl Delos Case, Ph. D. Pastor of the Hanson Place Baptist Church Brooklyn^ N. Y. PHILADELPHIA Bmerican :©apti0t publication Society 1630 Chestnut Street Copyright 1906 by the American Baptist Publication Society Published June, 1906 ffrom tbc Soctet>e's own pxcea CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE 1. THE Problem Stated 5 II. THE Feminine Note in Modern society . 12 III. EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY . . 22 IV. THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 33 V. THE MODERN VERSUS THE BIBLICAL RELIGIOUS TYPE 46 VI. SOME PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 61 VII. MEN AND THE CHURCH 77 VIII. Men AND THE LODGE 89 IX. MEN AND BUSINESS lOO X. THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST Iio ill THE Masculine in Religion CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM STATED THE subject of sex in education and religion must assume increasing importance as the fundamental differences between the sexes are more clearly recognized. Sex is not a physiolog- ical condition only ; but as the brain is in the closest physiological sympathy with all the organs of the body, all mental activity corresponds to bodily func- tion. Spencer, with his usual evolutionary phrase- ology, states that " just as certainly as they (women) have physical differences which are related to the respective parts they play in the maintenance of the race, so certainly have they psychical differences, similarly related to their respective shares in the rearing and protection of offspring." Sex reaches up through physical to mental and spiritual charac- teristics which essentially differentiate the mascu- line from the feminine. It is almost an impossible task to name the 5 6 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION eternally masculine and feminine elements of the psychical life. The investigation neither of the past nor the present of woman's status will enable us to determine accurately the future relative position of man and woman. Perhaps the variation between the masculine and the feminine has been far more pronounced under the past conditions of civilization than it will be under the future. The best that can be done is to note the trend of intellectual and spiritual life, and foresee, though but dimly, the goal by means of what has already passed into his- tory. It is not a mere poetic fancy that made Tennyson say : For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse. . . Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; The man be more of woman, she of man ; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto noble words. Many modern writers would scarcely accept the first line of this quotation, for to them woman is the past and the future of the race : the past, be- cause she is near to the child who itself repeats the childhood of the race ; the future, because we are to attain again to the childlike simplicity and equi- librium of life. That there is danger of obliterating THE PROBLEM STATED 7 many of the mental sexual differences is also appar- ent. Culture may repudiate nature, against which nature herself may eventually rebel. In the early history of the race, the man and the woman were more alike : physically, since she per- formed many of what to-day would be called the man's duties ; mentally, since whatever education might be given arose from the home or village or tribal association, and the thinking of the man was the thinking of the woman. But as civilization progressed, there came a marked divergence be- tween the sexes. Woman became more and more the laborer of the kitchen or the entertainer of the parlor, and farther and farther withdrawn from the hardening contact with the world. At the present there is a partial return to primitive conditions. The calisthenic exercises of the schools, the athletic pursuits of the more leisurely classes, the better knowledge of hygiene, have produced a more hardy physique ; while the entrance of women into many trades and professions, and the coeducation of most schools and colleges have produced more of mental equality. In this new phase upon which we are entering, the present aim of educators is to obvi- ate any possible minimizing of real mental sexual differences. Any student who grants the existence of es- sential mental differences between the man and woman, although he may not be able accurately to define them, will acknowledge that education 8 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION should closely correspond to these native distinc- tions. It is perhaps an open question whether women should receive the same collegiate train- ing as men, although this is practically given now except so far as vocation may determine special courses. President Eliot, of Harvard, however, has declared that there must be a real, essential, wise difference in the education of the two sexes, al- though no one has exactly discovered what that difference should be ; and with him others agree. In England, either because educational theory is in advance of America, or behind her, the idea is more prevailing that the woman's education should be different, and that too, on the ground that she is mentally inferior to man. Prof. Thomas Case, professor of moral philosophy and metaphys- ics at Oxford, believes that there are intellectual differences between the sexes that make it difficult for a woman to find a place in a virile university. The sytem of education, he maintains, should not be the same both in a woman's and in a man's university. Turning to religion, it is manifest that if the ex- pression and training of the mental life of the woman should be different from that of a man, then the expression and training of her spiritual life should also be different. In Genesis i : 27, which reads : '*And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them," there is at least an intimation THE PROBLEM STATED 9 that for an adequate manifestation of God among finite human beings, there must be both male and female. " Religion," Menzies says in his *' History of Re- ligion," "is the worship of unseen powers from a sense of need." Two elements of a religious life are here included, belief and worship. To these must be added that conduct which corresponds to the idea of God contained in belief, and that atti- tude toward God assumed in worship. There are thus three phases in which the religious life dis- plays itself : belief, worship, conduct. Theoretic- ally, the beliefs of all individuals should be iden- tical, as there is only one truth of which belief is the statement. Practically, belief is modified by one's angle of vision, and one's angle of vision de- pends upon the two factors of environment — the truth presented and the medium of communication and of nature — one's heredity and acquired mental equipment. Beliefs, even though seemingly con- tradictory, are not always absolutely mutually ex- clusive. Worship also varies with belief, tempera- ment, custom. Worship now seeks an elaborate ritual, now a puritanical plainness in an unesthetic building; now bowings of head and knees, now altars and gowns and tapers ; but it is all worship. Conduct does not seem so variable as belief. Yet even here Paul declares that one man can eat meat but another must refrain, and yet both act on religious principle. Conscience as a judge is not 10 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION infallible. It can only judge by the light of the facts and of the law presented to it. Of right actions also, there is a choice of that which shall best satisfy the individual conscience, whether at any moment to give service to others, and what particular service, or to attend to the true interests of self. It is evident that no standard of authority can be presented to an individual which must inevitably be followed in the expression of his religious spirit. Two most interesting recognitions of this fact can be cited. First, is the statement of Pres. Charles Cuthbert Hall, whose lectures in India and special studies in the East fit him to speak authoritatively : " We must realize that an indigenous Christian- ity has appeared in the East. These nations have advanced to the plane of independent religious de- velopment and claim freedom of action for them- selves. The East is on the point of working out its own Christian character. . . We must be con- tent with an Oriental type of Christianity which should be allowed its free development in the liberty that we have claimed for ourselves." Second, is the theory accepted by all modern Bible teachers, that the juvenile type of the Chris- tian life must differ from the adult type, not in being an incomplete and imperfect phase of what it is later to be, but in being the natural expression of a child's mind toward God and man. In the THE PROBLEM STATED II child of from eight to twelve and thirteen, the ac- quisitive feeling, the clannish spirit especially mani- fest among boys, the feeling of justice on the egois- tic side, and other characteristics, determine the religious life of the boy and girl. Equally is the adolescent age a period of specific investigation. Now, if it is clearly understood that there is an Oriental and an Occidental type of religious life, and as clearly understood that there is a juvenile type and an adolescent type differing from the adult, why should it not be equally granted that there is a distinctive masculine and a distinctive feminine type of religious life ? Is there not far more differ- ence between the man's and the woman's religion than between the man's and the boy's ? Is it not time to study the comparative psychology of relig- ion, comparing not simply the child with the adult and the Japanese with the American, but the man with the woman ? CHAPTER II THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY THAT woman has a new place in modern civil- ization no one will deny. As to whether she has changed the complexion of modern life, and if so in what respects and how much, is en- tirely a different matter. The coming of a new partner into an established business may or may not change the character of the business. Never- theless, the former is an indication of the latter. Unless the woman has had a larger opportunity to affect modern life, she cannot in fact have accom- plished it. It needs but a casual observer of modern conditions to notice that the woman has taken her place beside man in almost all of his vocations. Some one, in giving a description of woman, has said that she is man's inferior physically, his equal intellectually, and his superior spiritually. As in- tellectually equal, even though not of the same quality in intellect, she has taken and filled many of the so-called masculine occupations. From 1870 to 1900 there was this increase in the number of women employed in the United States in the various professions and trades : Artists, from 412 to 11,021; authors, 159 to 5,940; clergymen, 12 THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY 1 3 67 to 3,373; journalists, 35 to 2,193; musicians, 5,753 to 52,359; physicians, 527 to 7,387 ; teach- ers, 84,047 to 327,614; bookkeepers, stenographers, etc., 8,028 to 245,517. Other figures are in pro- portion. The most apparent increase is to be found among the wage-earners, where no special course of training is demanded. It has been estimated that there is a total population of women over ten years of age in the United States of over 28,000,000, and that of these more than 5,000,000, or one-fifth, are working for a living ; also, that there are about 14,000,000 women between the ages of fourteen and thirty-five, and that of these over thirty per cent, are wage-earners. The cause need not now be discussed. The facts and their influences are the only subjects of consideration. hi educational fields of activity the question which might be propounded is, not whether the women's college shall exist, but whether eventu- ally some of the men's colleges shall not become women's colleges in order to keep up their requisite number of students. In general education, in the culture-training, women already seem to have a fair start of men. With the club life among women, and the general discussion of topics of art, literature, and science, it does seem a natural conclusion that the time has come, or will come, when many men will cease being intelligent companions for women. Women's education is comparatively new, new at least in the higher grades of learning. In 1820 14 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION Gov. De Witt Clinton said at the opening of Miss Emma Willard's Seminary for Ladies at Water- ford, New York : "As this is the only attempt ever made in the country to promote the education of the female sex by the patronage of the government, as our first and best affections are derived from maternal affections, and as the education of the female character is inseparably connected with hap- piness and respectability abroad, I trust that you will not be deterred by commonplace ridicule from extending your munificence to this meritorous insti- tution." How would a similar statement sound to- day, with the women's colleges (not " female " as Governor Clinton said) East and West, with almost all of our colleges open to women, with many of the coeducational institutions attended by more women than men, with England and Germany coming into line with modern demand.? In the professions the presence of women is not so apparent, but nevertheless manifest. There are now many women doctors. Even in London there is a school of medicine for women which enjoys the unique privilege of having been opened by the present queen of England, on which occasion she was made to say by her spokesman, her husband, that she thought that no one could be so illiberal as not to wish to give women medical education. Hospitals have been founded by women in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and elsewhere. THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY 15 In law there is a constant increase of women practitioners. They go little into the court-rooms, but engage in office practice. Sometimes the way has been opened for a woman, the wife of some lawyer, who on account of the ill-health of her husband has been compelled to assume many of the duties of her husband's practice. But to-day young ladies look toward the law as an inviting field of activity. The first woman of modern times that asked for and obtained admission to the bar was Arabella A. Mansfield, of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, who was admitted in 1869 under a statute provid- ing for the admission of "male white citizens." The committee recommending her said that they felt justified in recommending to the court that con- struction of the law which they deemed authorized not only by the language of the law but by the demands and necessities of the present time and occasion, thus recognizing that new times demand new interpretations of the ancient laws. Emma Barkaloo, of Brooklyn, N. Y., was the second woman to be enrolled as an attorney. Since then the number has constantly increased. It is true that not all who study law intend to become lawyers. Some study for the general knowledge of business and professional life that it gives them ; some, to keep in touch with that which interests their men companions ; some, that they may know more about the laws which they are compelled to obey, even though they do not make them, thus render- l6 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION ing them the equal of the legislators and lawyers with whom, as property owners, they have to do. In journalism women have taken many important positions, even showing their capacity to edit large daily papers. As leaders in great public movements many familiar names might be given. Even in Germany Miss Frances Willard said that she saw a woman preside over a meeting of three thousand men, and that she evidently perfectly understood her duties as chairman, and handled the somewhat turbulent audience with rare tact and generalship, hi the ministry the statistics show that an increas- ing number of women take up the duties of pastor and preacher. Here the prejudice against her seems to remain more definitely fixed, perhaps because the church is generally more conservative than other social organizations, but even here the pros- pects point to a larger field for the ambitious woman. This increasing importance of the position of woman in industrial and professional fields has without doubt created many new conditions in civilization and wrought for her a changed rela- tionship in the social complexity. First, then, can be seen her industrial and financial freedom, which is the emancipation of what has often been the white slave. The Indians of America, before Chris- tianization, made their wives do the work. The Fiji Island princes were accustomed to lay the four corners of their residences upon four women buried alive. In the East Indies there was a custom of THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY \^ burning wives on funeral pyres with their husbands until the English law forbade it. To be sure, we must look deeper for the cause of the emancipation of woman, and this cause is the spirit of Christianity. It needs only to be noted now that the woman who can both earn and spend her money can look her would-be provider independently in the face, and this gives her freedom in financial as well as in other ways. But a more serious change effected by the eleva- tion of women has been the increased independence of women from the demands of home life. It needs the best-developed and best-educated women to be wives and mothers, but education seems to debar many from assuming these responsibilities. Edu- cation does not unfit a woman for matrimony. It does not necessarily, seldom does in point of fact, make her desire to carry around her degrees as a satisfaction to pride ; but it does keep many from marriage because with their education they find fields of activity open to them and, perhaps, also have their ideal of a companion so high that they are with difficulty satisfied. After all, let us be per- suaded that the increased education of women, while it may have prevented some marriages of sentiment, has raised the standard of home life, made a better- trained rising generation, made more mother and wife out of the woman and less of a machine. There is less dependence but more companionship, less of slavery but more of equality ; not less of the B l8 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION housewife who believes that it is well worth while to know how to cook and take care of children, but more of the leader in all that makes home life beautiful. As for the legal position of women, great changes have occurred, and these changes have also reacted upon other helpless classes of society. Susan B. Anthony says that fifty years ago it was not the fashion to give the girls any particular education, and as for her working, it was unheard of. She must stay at home and attend strictly to her house- work and knitting. So, as she had neither money nor education, there was no reason why she should have a chance to vote. At that time, says Miss Anthony, married women had not the slightest legal status so far as property was concerned. To- day in most, if not all the States of the Union, mar- ried women hold their own property, make con- tracts, draw up wills, and have most of the property rights their husbands possess. Still other phases of the new woman's position can be mentioned, but those already named are sufficient to show that woman has taken a new position in the social status. She has accomplished more and been granted more than ever before in the history of the race. Does it follow that the social atmosphere has also changed? The emancipation of the Negro of the South primarily affected the Negro himself, giving him political and industrial freedom and, to a greater or less extent, opening THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY I9 up the trades and professions to him. Can any one say that, as a result of this emancipation, the white South has not also changed ? in fact, the entire nation? The social gap may be to-day as deep as ever or deeper, but there is a new Southern note which differs from the ante-bellum voice and differs to a great extent because there is a free black South. Is it not to be expected that when one-half of the human race in civilized lands have reached a new status, that this half, the feminine, shall have given a feminine touch to all subjects, a feminine hue to all fields of endeavor, and have given us, even though we are more or less unaware of it, a feminine art, literature, education, and religion? Can we detect this note in education, for exam- ple? The feminine influence may be subtle and still be apparent. A single quotation will suffice, and especially that it is particularly luminous. It is from Susan E. Blow as she writes on " The Sur- prises of Experience" in the *' Kindergarten Re- view" of March, 1902. After noting the changes in the tone of literature since many women have become writers and a majority of women readers, changes in which obscenity has been eliminated and harshness diminished, and in which, however, literature is being deprived of its virility and, to a certain extent, of its integrity, and is prone to sub- stitute a sentimental idea of what ought to be for a candid recognition of what is, she says : 20 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION A similar influence is traceable in education and particularly in the kindergarten, it has produced the perennial smiler, from whose smile, critics aver, the child flees in terror. It has produced indirect and sentimental forms of address and appeal. It condemns all stories which recognize in little children the possibility of wrong-doing. It has an inordinate desire to call everything by a fictitious name. It does not want children to look at Froebel's shadow-pictures. It is afraid of soldier games. It dreams that life is beauty and does not know that life is war. It claims that the blind preferences of the un- formed child shall determine his education, and caricatures Froebel's most important dictum by following with unintel- ligent passivity wherever he may lead Hence it delivers its victims to the school with enfeebled will, arrested intellect, and greatly increased caprice and waywardness. But what can we say of religion? Is the femi- nine note to be discovered here.? Woman has gained, without doubt, a new importance in this phase of life. Certain offices in the church are still held by the male sex, but the churches of to-day would be shorn of their power should the women fail in their devotion. Higher education is not even yet widespread among women, and in fact there are no statistics to show what has been the result of education upon woman's faith. Yet it appears to be true that a growing knowledge of scientific conclusions produces the same results upon a wom- an's faith as upon a man's. To the mind of that man who has changed opinion to assured belief, who has thought his way out through his problems to sanity of faith, there will be no regret for the stronger faith which results to the woman through THE FEMININE NOTE IN MODERN SOCIETY 21 study. Woman responds as does man to the changed tendencies in scientific and critical studies and to the new movement of social and intellectual emancipation. Nevertheless, woman is still feminine, and the grave question must be asked. Has she made Chris- tianity and the Christian life distinctively feminine? Is there a feminine note in religion as in education, depriving it of virility, prone to substitute a senti- mental idea of what ought to be for a candid recog- nition of what is? with an inordinate desire to call everything by a fictitious name, dreaming that life is beauty, not knowing that life is war, enfeebling the will, arresting the intellect, and greatly increasing caprice and waywardness? CHAPTER III EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY ON the first inquiry, the most clear recognition of the changed condition of the Christian ideal is seen in the absence of men from the churches. The question has been fully dis- cussed in newspapers and brochures and it is not necessary to repeat the various arguments here. The absence, however, should be noted to show that a man has either an environment which makes it more difficult for him to come to church, or a nature which cannot find complete satisfaction in the modern presentation of Christianity, presum- ably both. This fact of male absence from the church has been recently denied, but the state- ments are misleading. It is true that in certain churches there are as many men as women and often more, but that is not true of all churches. The statement is only another proof of the lack of a virile ministry in most pulpits with its prominence in a few. It is also true that there is an increasing number of male students in the colleges who are Christians, an enlistment of 30,000 students in Bible study, and a stronger Christian tone in ath- letics. This again is due to the initiative of the 22 EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 23 Y. M. C. A. movement, which is a plea for a muscular and a masculine Christian life. There are about 20,000,000 Protestant church- members to-day in the United States. About 13,- 000,000 of these are women. Seventy-five per cent, of the boys leave Sunday-school during the adolescent age. Mr. C. C. Michener, in connec- tion with the Association, reports that, in the coun- try, one in two young men go to church regularly, one in three occasionally, and one in fourteen not at all; in the city, one in four regularly, one in two occasionally, and one in seven not at all. This is one of the most encouraging reports given to the public. In a recent year, the minutes of a prominent denomination in Massachusetts gave the totals of male membership in 198 churches. These churches had 33,885 members, or an average of 170 to each church. The total male membership was 10,543, or an average of a little over fifty-three to each church. This makes it plain that of these churches only about one-third were men. These figures were gathered largely from the rural districts where there are generally more male members in propor- tion to the entire membership. In regard to the Catholics, the reports are much the same. The '* Catholic Telegraph " once said that at the same communion rail there are everywhere ten young women for one young man. The cause of this condition should be discovered and, if possible, remedied. There is one place to 24 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION study the subject at first-hand, and that is in the Sunday-school. Here the transition from devotion to disaffection can be noted. The boys of the kindergarten, primary, and junior departments, are present. During the intermediate period the process of disaffection occurs. Can it be suggested that a main cause is the failure to substitute the masculine for the juvenile type of instruction and discipline.? The juvenile type has many points of similarity to the feminine and the transition is easy from one to the other, but the growing boy finds his needs unsatisfied and his new life only hampered by a wrong mold. But leaving statistics and descriptions, there are other more manifest testimonies to the presence of the feminine ideal. First, there is the plea heard here and there, sometimes indefinitely and with wavering terminology, and sometimes with clear understanding of the need, for a masculine type of religious life. As a specimen of a clear appeal can be quoted these words from Pres. Benjamin Ide Wheeler: " The real cause of manless churches lies in the fact that the church has been for ages culti- vating the female side of religion. As the form of woman is marked by grace and beauty and flowing outlines, and the form of man by ruggedness and strength, so all those thoughts or conceptions or at- tributes of the spirit which conform to beauty may be called female, and those which are akin to strength male." EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 25 A still more striking appeal was made by Captain Mahan in a recent address to the cadets at West Point on the presentation by the American Tract Society of Teachers' Bibles to the members of the graduating class. He was quoted as saying : " The masculine, military side of religion as por- trayed in the Bible is too often overlooked, because women are more religious than men. In its pre- cepts and typical men Christianity finds in the military calling its most vivid illustration and fer- vent appeals. Christ came not to send peace, but a sword. The good men of the Bible are a line of heroes, courageous in action, patient in endurance, obedient, subordinate, counting gain but loss so that the ends of God their general, of Christ their captain, be achieved. They loved not their lives unto death. . . The essential character of the good Christian and the good soldier have much in com- mon. They are more closely allied than those of any other calling. War realizes in an extreme form the conflict of all life, and even in peace the de- cisive military virtues are essentially Christian vir- tues. Suffer, then, no man to despise in your per- son the one profession or the other." Another evidence of the presence of the feminine note in religion is seen in the regret on the part of many writers of the domination of the religious life in the Middle Ages by men. It is true that man has been the prophet, priest, and king, the preacher and deacon, the theologian and ecclesiastic. In the 26 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION ancient temple, the court of women occupied the eastern part of the temple enclosure, but was not, as might be supposed to-day, for the exclusive use of women. Women had not an exclusive use of any part of the sacred enclosure. But nearer to the sacred rites and ceremonies of the temple, en- closing the holy place was the court of Israel, into which the women could not go. From their en- closure they could view from a greater distance the fire of sacrifice and the smoke of incense. At Macon, France, where to-day is a school for the higher education of girls opened some fifteen years ago, a council once met to decide whether women had souls. In view of these facts, Bishop Lawrence, of Mas- sachusetts, recently averred that the whole realm of theology has, until the present generation, been interpreted to us by men. Who knows what a dif- ferent theology we might have had in the past if women's minds had been at work on the problem } Would Mariolatry have taken the form it did ? Would Calvinism have captured the intellect of Protestantism .? Would any man have dared to say that hell was paved with souls of infants ? A more extended discussion of this subject occurs in a book of J. Brierly, B. A., on ''Ourselves and the Universe," in which occurs a short chapter on " Sex in Religion." While he emphasizes the need of an inquiry into the difference between the sexes as a cause of variation in institutions, theologies, EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 2^ and varied activities, yet he feels that the history of Christianity has lacked the touch of a woman's nature. The male ecclesiastic, imagining religion to be an affair of dry intellect, a formula to be ground out of his logic- mill, succeeded in making it anti-human. . . The mother side of humanity would never have constructed the fire of medievalism. . . Nothing has been made clearer than that the attempt to build religion out of elements purely masculine is a blunder for which the outraged nature of things will always take a full revenge. One doubts whether the Middle Ages were en- tirely so masculine as these writers report. When man repudiates dogma to-day more than woman, it is scarcely consistent to make the domination of man the source of it in the past centuries, unless a distinction is made in the kind of dogma. It is too much to assume that logic and reason are matters purely masculine. It is also too much to take it for granted that the woman's heart always displays the mother's love in association with others. Some of the severest hatreds and bitterest jealousies have been woman's. On the other side, there can be seen feminine elements in the past within the her- mit life, the monastery system, and various forms of worship. Nevertheless, it may be granted that the type of Christianity which could produce the crusades, was distinctively masculine. Perhaps it would be far better to recognize the variableness even in femininity and masculinity. 28 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION In the male there is and should be secondary fem- inine traits ; and in the female secondary masculine traits. There is such a thing as too much mascu- linity for men, and too much femininity for women. What these writers protest against is the too great masculinity of the Middle Ages, while now we should equally protest against the too great fem- ininity of the present age as far as religion is con- cerned. We want to retain all that is good of the past. The ** reserve" of the individual and the nation as in business, marks the progress. Much done in each century of history is but scaffolding as it is in the day's work of the individual. The individual must take with him from childhood all that ** reserve" which childhood has accumulated for him. He can say that now that he is a man, he has put away childish things ; but he must still know that of the childlike disposition it was said : "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." The race too must conserve its past. The pendulum must not swing too far. \n casting off the narrow and constraining masculine elements, the Christian life must not become all feminine. The masculine it- self must be progressive. The same proportion of masculine qualities cannot satisfy our standards to- day as it did yesterday. The increasing mastery of the manliness of Christ will push up our ideal of manhood as the centuries roll on. Thank God for the feminine. Look and see how here and there the departure of selfishness, EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 29 the growth of courtesies, the prevalence of love, the emphasis on the delicate, the practical use of knowledge to the betterment of life, the exaltation of home both in itself and its relationship to society, there can be seen the touch of women, which like the touch of a woman's hand on a sick man's pillow, reveals the delicacy of woman's nature. Let the feminine exist primarily in woman and secondarily in man ; and let the masculine continue primarily in man and secondarily in woman. But the third and most important evidence of the over-emphasis of the feminine type of Christianity is the clear appeal for the feminine ideal. Mr. Brierly, for example, in the chapter before referred to, says: "It is the woman's nature, more in- timately than man's, that expresses the innermost soul of religion," and here he pleads that it is in a region beyond reason, in the sphere of intuition, of feeling, of aspiration, that religion finds its peren- nial spring. ** It is because along that side of its nature humanity most quickly and most surely feels the quiver of the infinite that woman must inevit- ably in the future be recognized as arch-priestess of religion." Religion is not, then, equally for all, and one part of humanity finds it especially easy to be religious, and the other part has by nature no primary claim on the religious life. Man reaches the religious life chiefly by proxy. Religion is natural to woman and often unnatural to man, the more so the more masculine he is. 30 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION An open confession, though not so intended, of the failure of this conception of a feminine religion is found in a remarkable paragraph by Dr. James Stalker, published in the Chicago "Standard" of October 14, 1899: Nearly every one would feel that a woman atheist was more unnatural than a man making the same profession of skepticism ; indeed, to the unsophisticated such a being would appear a monster. On the other hand when woman becomes decidedly religious, she becomes most truly herself. When a strong man becomes religious, there is frequently in his ap- pearance, for a time at least, the suggestion of something un- natural ; it looks as if nature were being held down by main force, and the effects of the struggle and the scars of the fight are too manifest to be altogether agreeable. But in the oppo- site sex nature and grace combine so perfectly as to be indis- tinguishable ; grace shines as nature heightened and glorified. That is, by her nature religion is natural to woman, and by his nature unnatural to man. She becomes more of a woman, but he seems to become less of a man, in becoming a Christian. A still more pronounced emphasis on the feminine type is to be found in two articles by George Mathe- son, M. A., D. D., published in the " Biblical World ** of July and August, 1898, on " The Feminine Ideal of Christianity." Doctor Matheson declares that the history of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is the history of the struggle between two ideals — the masculine and the feminine. Christ^s conquest of the world is the conquest of the male by the fe- male element — the seed of the woman bruising the EVIDENCES OF A FEMININE CHRISTIANITY 3 1 head of the serpent. Christ is himself a feminine power, the apotheosis of the feminine ideal, and his era is the one in which the feminine or passive type shall be exalted. It is but justice to Doctor Mathe- son to say that he shows that the passive virtues must not be confounded with merely negative vir- tues, as is the prevailing tendency. He beautifully says that there are three genders of virtues as there are three genders of sex — masculine, feminine, and neuter. The masculine is power to do ; the femi- nine is power to bear ; the neuter is the inability to exert any power. By the Beatitudes we learn that the virtues called passive are to become the most powerful influences in the government of men, and the feminine type is to displace the reign of masculine power. With this strong statement of the case, should be put the famous phrase of the late T. De Witt Talmage, D. D., which he made the title of a ser- mon, " The Motherhood of God "; and the declara- tion of Laurence Oliphant that the hope for women lies in the recognition by man of the divine femi- | nine principle in God. Let these weighty arguments for the present stand. The cause of a feminine Christianity could not be more strongly presented, and they reveal the present status of Christianity and the religious life. With a few eddies, the current has been toward ^ the goal of femininity. In its sweetest and best expression it makes man say : 32 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION Nature made thee To temper man ; we had been brutes without you. Angels are pahited fair, to lool< like you : There's in you all that we believe of heaven, Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, and everlasting love. CHAPTER IV THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES IT was a woman — George Eliot — who wrote that a man's mind — what there is of it — has always the advantage of being masculine, as the smallest birch tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm, and even his ignorance is of sounder quality. The statement is true except in relation to the com- paratives "higher" and ''sounder." There is a masculine quality and there is a feminine quality of mind, though the exact characteristics of either can- not be named with absolute certainty. One writer can say that " An ideal typical male is hard to de- fine, but there is a standard ideal woman " ; but most men would prefer to say that the typical ideal woman is a variable quantity. Both ideals are also changing. The man of a century ago has not ex- actly the same standard as the one of to-day. Note, by way of illustration, the change of the ideal Amer- ican personality from Washington through Lincoln to the present president of the United States. Woman too has a different ideal before her to- day. Both physically and mentally her training has changed. A distinction must be made between the incidental qualities of her nature due to her C 33 34 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION environment — her narrow and routine life witli conventional laws and limitations of body and mind — and those more fundamental qualities due in history to her wife's relationship and mother's heart. Not that her essential characteristics are to be based solely on her physical function and the mental traits necessary to the fulfilment of wife- hood and motherhood. In the economy of the kingdom of God, personality is of true worth in and of itself, and the worth of the soul cannot be stated merely in terms of evolution. The physical differences between the sexes com- prise many secondary characteristics which are tokens of varying mental life. The size of a man's brain is uniformly about ten per cent, larger than the woman's, larger than the mere difference in size of body can account for. Sir J. Crichton Browne informed Romanes that the gray matter of the female brain is shallower than that of the male, and also receives a proportionally smaller supply of blood ; and that as these differences date from an embryonic period of life, he concludes that they constitute a fundamental sexual distinction and not one that can be explained on the hypothesis that the educational advantages enjoyed by either the in- dividual man or by the male sex generally through a long series of generations have stimulated the growth of the brain in the one sex more than the other. The difference between the quantity and quality of brain matter indicates a difference of mental THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 35 power, though what this difference is must be merely a matter of observation. The quantity of brain matter is no indication of the lack or excess of mental ability, and the quality of brain matter can be determined by no one. hi this observation of feminine mental differences, reference may be made to such books as ** Adolescence," by Pres. G. Stanley Hall ; " Man and Woman," in the Contemporary Science series by Ellis ; and such magazine articles as *' Mental Differences Between Man and Woman " in the " Nineteenth Century," May, 1887, by G. J. Romanes ; and " Sex in Mathe- matics," in the " Educational Review," June, 1895, by Prof. Davis E. Smith, of the Michigan State Normal School. It may be said at the start, that the man's mind is naturally more inductive, the woman's deductive. By what some have called intuition she generalizes quickly, but more often on the basis of insufficient facts, and so pays less attention to inconsistencies. She also is not, or has not been, of a creative genius. Woman takes truth as she finds it, while man wants to create truth. She excels in mental reproduction, but lacks on the whole originality. In religion, women have founded but a few sects ; and these, except in one or two instances of little moment, though this meager record must be chiefly explained by the absorption of ecclesiastical author- ity and training by the man. On the other side, the woman's perceptive powers 36 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION are much more keen than the man's, and this on account of the greater refinement of her nerv- ous organization. This leads in turn to rapidity of thought which often seems like intuitive in- sight. The male mind moves more slowly and the conclusions are more deliberate, but the woman's mind is more quick to perceive and swifter of action. Hall has these sentences : " Woman has rapid tact to extricate herself from difficulties. . . In quick readiness, when the sense of a paragraph is to be grasped in a minimum time and with equal knowledge of the subject, woman excels in quick apprehension of wholes. . . Her logical thought is slower, but her associations quicker than those of man." There is no doubt, be it said again, that much of this mental peculiarity is due to previous racial his- tory and present lack of educational advantage. It must be remembered that woman made her ap- pearance in the educational world only about a half- century ago, when Antoinette Brown entered Ober- lin College. Yet Professor Smith is able to show that of 10,000 examinations in New York State, sixty-three and six-tenths per cent of the young men passed and fifty-nine and two-tenths of the young women, though of those who did pass, the average was the same, thus proving that there was practically no difference in the grasp of such a men- tal discipline as mathematics. In 1900, Alice Free- man Palmer said ; THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 37 Twenty-five years ago we were all sure — I was sure — that when women began in large numbers to go to college, and were free to choose, they would turn mainly to languages and literature ; to history, fine arts, music ; the esthetic side of life. I thought of their sympathy, their imagination, their affection, and I expected they would excel in the humanities. I never foresaw that they would turn impassioned to pure mathematics, to physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy. Yet that is the evidence of twenty-five years. In the realm of emotions, women are certainly j\ superior. There are individual exceptions among women to this rule as in almost all other traits, and many women who themselves are examples of emotional extremes, deny the fact. Unfortunately, an emotional disposition is made the proof of lack of intellectual power. But it is only the misuse of emotion, not the abundance, which is to be depre- cated. The theory of Professor James, of Harvard, . is that the bodily changes follow directly the per- ception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion ; that is, the physical disturbance of the heart, blood- vessels, viscera, and muscles, are not the conse- quences but the cause of the emotion. Granting this, it follows that there is sure to be more emotion in women, not primarily because they are mentally more volatile, but because of a higher nervous organism which responds more readily and to a greater degree to the exciting causes. This is what Ellis probably means when he explains that the (j emotionality of women can never be brought to the li 38 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION male standard, because of the physiological differ- ences which in turn are connected with many secondary sexual differences, like the tendency of women to anaemia, etc. There is of course an excess of nervous excita- bility in some women by reason of environment, and in all women by means of heredity ; but such is not the normal condition. Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, of Chicago, goes so far as to say that the idea that woman is born to nervous and hyster- ical conditions is wrong. Give growing girls plenty of exercise and fresh air and there will be fewer nervous women. Yet it is an accepted fact that hysteria, the symptoms of which are a weakness of the nervous system, showing itself by a ten- dency to over-action and irritability, morbid sensi- bility and mental anxiety, is much more common to women. Romanes declared that judgment with women is more frequently exercised from the side of the emotions ; Hall, that their vaso-motor sys- tem is more excitable, they are more emotional ; Professor Coe in his ** Spiritual Life," that two of the best established general differences between the male and the female mind are these : first, the female mind tends more than the male to feeling ; second, it is more suggestible. It is a somewhat newer method of describing woman's peculiar make-up to ascribe to her sug- gestibility. To be subject to suggestion, is simply to be subject to hypnotic influences. Any medical THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 39 writer or experienced hypnotist can present the same conclusions in regard to women. Hypnotism is due to decreased control of the higher nervous cen- ters and an increased activity of the lower centers. Allied to hypnotism is hysteria on the one side, and, on the other, catalepsy, ecstasy, and somnambu- lism. In ecstasy or trance, visions are often seen and these can be recalled in the waking hours. Ellis, who treats this subject fully, gives the result of an investigation made by Prof. Henry Sedgwick, who examined 17,000 persons in regard to halluci- nation, and found that 656 men and 1,033 women of the number affirmed that at some time in their life they had experienced an hallucination. Ellis concludes that women respond to stimuli, psychic or physical, more readily than men. On the basis of these facts, it is fair to conclude that women are more often hypnotized ; that they go in flocks, and in social matters are less prone to stand out with salient individuality ; that with them influence is more potent than argument. Ellis declares that even in trivial matters the aver- age woman more easily accepts statements and opinions than a man, and in more serious matters she is prepared to die for a statement or an opinion, provided that her emotional nature is sufficiently thrilled. However, in suggestibility as in mere emo- tionality, it is certain that a woman's nature can be modified. The woman of a century ago who could more easily faint on occasion, could also see visions ; 40 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION but now she either does not have so many, or does not confess them when she does have them. Hal- lucination is not nearly so common among the civi- lized as among the uncivilized, among the educated as among the ignorant. Emotion is, to a large degree, a question of control, and this control can be perfected by training. It is with special reference to woman's intellec- tuality, emotionality, and suggestibility, that three other feminine characteristics can be named. The first is, that while man dwells more in the abstract, woman dwells more in the concrete. The child to her is a concrete object of love and endeavor. Per- haps this is what John Stuart Mill had in mind when he said that the general bent of her talents is towards the practical ; but more prob- ably he was noticing the confined sphere of activity and common household duties to which women were necessarily limited. It is well known that Herbert Spencer felt that woman has suffered from an earlier cessation of individual evolution necessi- tated by nature's preparation for maternity, and therefore lost what are the latest products of human evolution — the power of abstract reasoning, and that more abstract of the emotions, the sentiment of justice. Woman, at least, sees more vividly the things near-by, and the universal is generally conceived by her, if conceived at all, through the medium of the few individual persons and things of her common experience. THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 41 The second added characteristic is woman's af- fectionate disposition. Woman loves more deeply than man, and without love or the return of love, there is little that can satisfy her nature. There are few women brave enough to work their way to a distant goal in the face of complete indifference. Mrs. Annie Besant, with all her leadership, shows the feminine desire for an object of devotion far more than she realized when she said : " Looking back over my life, I see that its key-note, through all the blunders and blind mistakes and clumsy follies, has been the longing for sacrifice to some- thing felt as greater than self." Women are pre- \ eminently affectionate, sympathetic. By virtue of this affectionate and sympathetic disposition, women are also altruistic. They are ' ready for long-suffering and self-denial. They begin with the child in the arms ; they forget not the outcast of the streets. They have been prominent both in quiet ministrations at home and in such public reforms as remove dangers from the tempted and distress from the weak. They are self-forgetful and unselfish more than man, and show in all the broader relationships of life some- thing of the self-sacrifice that they have had as wife and mother. A fourth characteristic is conservatism. This is ) in part an intellectual attitude, but is also a quality of emotionality, love choosing a concrete object and wanting no other. Woman lives in the known 42 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION and in tlie past, and therefore her influence is for stability with the disadvantage of a lessened varia- bility and individuality. She has especially to do with the task of preserving every acquired good with the disadvantage often of perpetuating error and preserving meaningless custom. No sweeter expression of this characteristic, as well as two others, could be found than that of Pres. Caro- line Hazard, of Wellesley College, in the "Sunday- school Times " of June 23, 1900 : There are three ways in which women are preeminent: they are the binders together of society ; they are the beauti- fiers of life ; and they are the preservers of morals. That is, women must stand for conservatism, for grace, for purity. . . They are the great conservative force in society. Not only are traditions handed down by them, but they have to hold the more headlong processes of thought in check. Naturally a woman falls back on her experience. . . A woman must be trained in a very liberal school not to have conservatism degenerate into obstinacy. After saying that a woman is less original, more emotional, more suggestible, whereby it can also be said that she is less abstract in thought, more affectionate, altruistic, and conservative of customs and morals, the point is reached where it can be said that woman is anabolic, and man katabolic. No one can accuse woman of lack of courage ; in fact, in the power of endurance, she is uniformly superior to man ; but her courage is more of a fortitude which submits to an inevitable burden. THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 43 She does, as Professor Lombroso shows, bear pain and operations better than man, but she is less aggressive and independent. Her love of sym- pathy, her acceptance of insistent ideas, her con- servative bent, her lack of originality, are all allied to her dependence and lack of force. The man has courage, pluck, robustness, leadership, will- power, firmness, decision, determination. He de- lights in competition and rivalry. He is a born fighter. So Madame de Stael said that men err from selfishness, women because they are weak. He has the tenacity of purpose to overcome ob- stacles ; she has more fear and timidity. He con- quers new territory ; she cultivates the old. He overcomes by force ; she by love. If in this comparison of the volitional element in the masculine and feminine natures, the woman seems to appear to disadvantage, it is but another proof of the awakening of the masculine ideal, and also of the failure to discriminate between the relative value of both ideals in the appropriate sex. The woman loves strength in the man. The more virile he is, even sometimes rough and cruel, the more he attracts her. On the other side, the man loves beauty, grace, and gentleness in the woman. It is our error that we have often carried both our masculine and feminine ideals to an extreme. It is true that at times and in certain localities there has arisen the exaltation of the non-personalized woman, like every other woman in the one special trait. 44 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION that she is frail and dependent, clinging and lifeless. In Europe, it is more difficult than in America for the woman to differentiate herself from her asso- ciates. Unfortunately, the Bible is supposed to be an accessory to this assassination of feminine per- sonality, and the classified woman is supposed to be the obedient, unthinking, subservient wife and daughter. Again, taking the woman's physical relationship to man as the basis, and with her natural mental and moral relationship to him added, it is not too much to agree with Spencer that in the evolu- l tionary process there has been a fit adjustment of i behavior, an ability to please, a love of approba- tion, an ability to disguise feelings, and an admira- tion of power. The female has always robed her- self in attractive beauty, hi her is the consumma- tion of the artistic sense. Naturally, a woman is more artistic than scientific, though oftentimes in woman, as occurred in Darwin, the love for poetry and music is dwarfed. She is a good musician to reproduce, but not to create. She is a good painter, for she imitates well. She is a good actress, for her artistic sense allied to her strong emotionality enables her to identify herself with her part. She is a good speaker, though so far she has not been able to excel in lengthened reasoned discourse. Whatever pertains to harmony, beauty, charm, she can claim as her own ; and she is a subtle critic of that which adds to the useful, the ornamental. THE MENTAL SEXUAL DIFFERENCES 45 Such is woman, emotional, suggestible, affec- tionate, conservative, dependent, artistic, moral, a siii generis. As an adult has no moral right to judge a child by adult standards, so the man has no right to judge a w^oman by masculine standards. At the best, she is the refiner, conserver, and beau- tifier of life. **A woman," says George Eliot, ''ought to produce the effect of exquisite music." She was like A dream of poetry, that may not be Written or told— beautiful exceedingly. CHAPTER V THE MODERN VERSUS THE BIBLICAL RELIGIOUS TYPE THE modern type of the religious life is feminine. No better proof can be given than the preva- lent representation of heaven in which a man is only inserted in obedience to biblical exactness, and then is made to appear as nearly feminine as possible. This is more remarkable when many women leaders feel that Christianity does not do justice to them. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton rebels bitterly against the so-called Christian les- sons of woman's inferiority in the scale of being and her subjection to man. The Old Testament, she says, represents her as a marplot in creation, an afterthought, the origin of sin in collusion with the devil, cursed of God in maternity, and marriage for her made a slavery. Nevertheless, practically, the woman has reigned in her subjection, and the hand that has rocked the cradle has ruled the world. The woman who could train the boy in the home has been able to give him a feminine ideal of religion. That woman is more emotional is manifest in the importance attached to emotional elements in relig- ion. The investigations of writers like Starbuck 46 MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 47 have repeatedly shown that men become Christians oftener for rational, women for emotional reasons ; and it is on the emotional element that the strongest emphasis has been placed in the popular religious appeals. Examine a modern prayer-meeting, and it will be seen that the test of the value of the meeting is in the extent and quality of the feeling produced. The joy, peace, and happiness are a proof that God is present, as he is not supposed to be with the cold, hard-headed business man who is computing his accounts. Not in the action of the will or the intellect is God primarily manifest, but in the emotions. Revivals have been most successful when most feeling has been manifest. There is danger of repudiating emotion in religion ; it has its place. But it must not usurp the place of the will and intellect ; and that it has is an example of the over-feminization of the religious life. Then again, woman is more suggestible, and this characteristic is a standard of religious experience generally. Prof. George Albert Coe, in his book on " The Spiritual Life," has given the results of an extended examination on this subject, and he shows that those who are easily hypnotized, the suggestible, are the very individuals who have these striking phenomena of the Christian life, often called religious experiences. Now woman is more affected by external influences than man, gives way to example and precept, and is more subject to hallucination and striking experiences. 48 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION Women are converted oftener in the revival meet- ing ; men oftener alone. Worldliness has been charged upon the church because the old-time revival seems to have died out except in isolated cases. It is rather true that man has asserted his nature, has become less suggestible, and where his conversion was awaited on the revival type he has remained outside of the fold of the church. The present trend of religious thought is to em- phasize the personal relationship of the believer to Christ. A woman has a more intimate relationship with Christ ; while with a man, even though he look on Christ as a personal friend, there is more intellectual content to his conception and more de- votion to the heroic found in Christ. Both are cor- rect relationships, but the formulation of belief is a necessary condition of the masculine mind. A man becomes entangled in the intellectual difficul- ties of religion, and when he works his way through to his own satisfaction, it is generally by thought and with a definite idea of the personality of Christ. When he thinks of God he combines in God those attributes which he must ascribe to the Deity. With woman, religion is more concrete, faith more personal, love more emotional. To-day dogma, even by man, is repudiated, but that is due to that feminine conservatism which has held an outgrown dogma, the nomenclature of a long-past philosophy. Men think to-day more than they ever have thought before, only they want fact not fancy. They build MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 49 Up theoretical systems with as much zest as ever, only they want legitimate premises. The name *' dogma " is tabooed, but the masculine mind which once demanded dogma still demands it, and is still producing it. The altruistic sentiment of woman is the ideal of society, though not always the practice. But altru- ism may be too sentimental. The curse of all charity is indiscriminate giving. It may be love, but it is not wisdom for the mother to yield her better judgment to the whims of a son. There is too much of the sentimental altruism in religious teaching to-day, and the ruggedness of the law has been smoothed away to the freedom of license. There is an altruism that is allied to chivalry, and this is masculine. The word "chivalry" is ety- mologically the same as the word cavalry, and in the Italian and Spanish the same word does service for both ideas. Chivalry is martial, and is the dis- play of soldierly aggressiveness in behalf of the weak. ** The only chivalry worth having," sweetly writes Louisa M. Alcott, "is the readiness to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of age, rank, or color"; but that altruism which discards punishment, ban- ishes hell, winks at lax habits of morality, makes church discipline a farce, public justice a fiasco, and social purity an abnormality, may not be woman's desire, but it is the result of a feminine altruism. Woman is dependent, and the modern religious D 50 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION life is far too much a self-abnegation that makes the Christian lose his independence, cultivate only meekness, and subdue his natural assertiveness. Self-sacrifice carried to an extreme has begotten a race of would-be martyrs, and obedience to Christ is made synonymous with the loss of manhood. The passive virtues are exalted beyond proportion. Woman's natural religiousness is so far conceded that the religious life is made to include just those characteristics which she possesses, and man is so much by nature farther away that the path back to God is a longer one, and is only to be traversed by denying what God has made him. It is of the same piece of argument that the intellect is made the instrument of confusion and doubt, and the "heart " (/. e., not the whole of man's self, but his emotions) the sole faculty of knowing God. The more intel- lect, therefore, the farther a man is from God, and the greater obstacles in the way of his return. It would be a pity, indeed, for us to say that since woman has the gift of trusting and loving and the sense of dependence, she is more easily guided into the true path, for thereby it would be necessary to say that God created man naturally incapable of exercising the religious faculty, if indeed he has one. The Bible does say, " Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of God," but it does not say, "Except ye become as women, ye cannot enter the kingdom of God." Woman has a love for the beautiful, and here MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 5 1 again we find the feminine trait exalted in the church. Sermons must be rhetorical and oratorical, pleasing to the artistic sense. There is more "seeming" than ''being," too little of rugged simplicity in the statement of eternal truths. Log- ical thought is not so acceptable, but beautiful de- scription especially adapted to produce emotions is much desired. Women are more attracted by ap- pearances, more fastidious, more subservient to social rules, which rules aim to cultivate good form. The other parts of the church service, especially the music, must be in strict accordance with the artistic sense. Ruggedness, masculinity, is not de- sirable. No wonder Professor Starbuck found that girls express a pleasure in religious observances more frequently than the boys by a ratio of seven- teen to seven, while, on the contrary, boys express a distinct dislike for them more often than the girls by a ratio of twenty-one to nine. Men like a feminine woman as the counterpart of themselves ; but they do not like a feminine service which is supposed to be an expression of their own mascu- line nature. They are not women, and cannot act like women. Now the biblical conception of the Christian's life is not so one-sidedly feminine. There are many passages which indicate the aggressive and masculine character of the Christian life. Paul's martial comparisons are to the point. A soldier is to be obedient and disciplined, but he must also be 52 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION courageous and energetic. He must put on the whole armor of God ; and, while it is true that all but one of the implements of warfare are defensive, yet the soldier is to have skill and strength and vigor in using his sword. The masculine type has, indeed, been connected with cruelty, but this is the excess of power and not its rightful use. In other biblical representations the circumstances under which admonitions have been given have not always been clearly recognized. That Paul com- manded the Corinthian women to keep silence in the church is clearly recognized to-day in the North, at least, as a temporary adjustment to social rules. The reader of the Gospels can see how much of what even Christ said was uttered in view of the Pharisaic and Sadducean prejudices. Christ preached to his times, as did Paul and every Old Testament prophet. He was the Son of Man, but he was an Israelite and spoke his truth for the help of Jewish disciples and the instruction of a Jewish audience. The Beatitudes, for example, are an eternal statement of the way of blessedness, but they are not inclusive of all Christian qualities. They were uttered in view of the mixed Jewish audience under the domination of Pharisees in whose life and in whose teachings was a lamentable lack of the passive virtues. Take again the word **love," used so often in the command to love God and to love man. The modern word "love" may simply mean affection MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 53 mingled with sentiment, and be a matter of attrac- tion not choice. But the Greek word has a higher meaning. It includes the trend of the whole being toward the object of choice, and is based on high moral grounds. An objector declares that he can- not love his neighbor ; he is not attracted. But a Mackay can say in the heart of Africa that he loves his people. A study of the twenty-first chapter of John, with the variation in the Greek word "love," at least has some bearing on this topic. There is a love which is mere infatuation and emotion ; but there is a love which is the going out in unselfish devotion of a man's heart. Medieval art has always pictured John as a fair youth whose face was sweetly feminine and whose bearing was a combination of grace and modesty. But the real John was a different character. The three instances before the crucifixion in which he is prominently mentioned are : First, his request that fire might be brought down upon the Samaritans for their inhospitality to the Master ; second, the for- bidding of the outsider from casting out demons in Christ's name ; and third, the request to have a seat next to Christ in the establishment of his kingdom. It is true that on each occasion John was rebuked ; yet not for his aggressiveness, but for the method of expression. He was told in fact that Christ's cup should be his cup and Christ's baptism should be his baptism. John grew sweeter as the years rolled on ; but he who could write. 54 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION "Love one another," also wrote, " I write unto you, young men, because ye are strong." In I Cor. i6 : 13 is a favorite text for men, but it means more than the surface rendering indicates. The four words, " Quit you like men," are a trans- lation of but one word in the Greek which is formed by taking the word which in the Greek means a man as contrasted to a woman, and making a verb out of it in the imperative mood. This is the only place in the New Testament where it is used, but it occurs also in the Septuagint of Josh, i : 6, where Joshua is told to be strong. The word is not the generic term **man," and so does not mean that we should live as human beings with the due use of reason, will-power, and conscience, although this would have made a worthy admonition ; but it is an appeal to the man to live as a man should ; in other words, it tells him to be manly, not effeminate. How often has the verse on losing one's life been quoted, and how often has the emphasis been not on the finding, but on the losing. That which is lost is not the self ; that is saved. The losing is but a preparation for the finding. Self-denial is not the end of life, but the taking up of one's mission — the cross — which is God's will as embodied in service to mankind. The Bible wants self-denial, not self-abnegation ; and that not for itself, but for the consequent self-realization, self-perfection, self- expression. MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 55 There are few passages oftener misinterpreted when quoted than Phil. 2 : 12, 13 : " So then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my ab- sence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling ; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure." The simplest and sometimes the accepted inter- pretation of the verses is that we are to work " out " in the external life what God works ** in " the internal life ; but this does not correspond to the exact meaning of the words in the verses. The words ** work out " mean to effect, to bring about a certain result. They emphasize that permanence of effort, that constant endeavor, that bring, as their consequence, salvation. The word *' own " in "work out your own salvation," does not mean the human achievement as opposed to God's assist- ance, but to the aid furnished by Paul's presence. Paul found that the Philippian members were depending upon him, and not exulting in the bound- less spiritual resources within themselves. He ex- horts them that whether he himself is present or absent, to work out their own salvation. There is more inherent power in the Christian than in all human pillars of support. ** Be strong and show thyself a man." But what is the ground for encouragement ? This, that within us God himself is effectively operative. He it is who enables us to work out our 56 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION own salvation. To achieve this salvation God be- stows two blessings, the first being the desire, the taste, the inclination, the wish, yes, the purpose, the resolution to do God's will. This, however, may not be sufficient. The wish may be a blasted hope and the resolution may fail of execution. The prodigal may resolve and yet never go to his father. "For to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. For the good which 1 would, I do not : but the evil which I would not, that I practise." God, therefore, adds to the first bless- ing a second and indispensable blessing, the power and ability as well as the inclination and resolution to achieve. Two essential principles are enunciated in this Philippian passage. First, salvation is an achieve- ment. Salvation is presented to us in the Bible in two aspects — as a state immediately entered upon at the time of conversion and as the goal of life for which we hope (i Thess. 5 : 8), and which is to be revealed to us in the last time (i Peter i : 5). Sometimes this final state of salvation is repre- sented as God's gift. The transformation *' into the same image from glory to glory " with the goal of being like Jesus is " from the Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3 : 18). '' He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. I : 6). Sometimes it is represented as an achievement. We are to " attain " unto the resur- rection of the dead ; to " overcome," to " strive to MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 57 enter in," to win the '' prize." Salvation is not a mere condition, it is an attainment. But the second essential principle enunciated in the verses is that salvation can only be an achieve- ment through the divine reinforcement. "I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me " (Phil. 4 : 13), *' striving according to his working which work- eth in me mightily " (Col. i : 29). " I labored more abundantly than they all : yet not I, but the grace of God which was in me " (i Cor. 15 : 10). And so many other passages. In the attainment of righteousness and the subju* gation of sin, four solutions have been proposed. First, self-redemption by the natural powers inher- ent in human nature. Such is Kant's view, that as a nature perfectly pure can fall by its own will into evil, so a man in a depraved state can return to strength and purity again as he forms for himself a lofty ideal and lives within the pale of an ethical community, that is, the church. A second view is that upon our subjection to God we henceforth become the harp to be played on, the piece of clay to be molded, the stone to be placed in the temple wall. We do nothing, God does all. But we are not God's slaves ; we are his freemen. God wants men, not machines and automata. The third view presents a certain method of di- vine and human co-operation. We do what we can to help ourselves, and when our natural or redeemed powers reach a limit, God assumes the burden at 58 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION our request. The longer we live and the stronger we grow the less we need God's interposition. Every divine rescue is practically a miracle, since it is non-naturaL God's assistance is a deus ex machind on the plan of the Greek tragedies, where gods always appeared when the plot was inex- tricably involved and human ingenuity and re- sources hopelessly at loss. The great defects of such a view are that every divine act of assistance renders a Christian less a man, and as the penum- bra of the miraculous is regarded as God's particu- lar domain with the circle ever growing smaller with zero as a limit, faith is gradually dispensed with, and the religious life becomes an increasingly self- sufficient life. Is there a fourth view of the religious life ? See what the needed elements are. One is that of the freedom of the will. Salvation cannot be salva- tion if it makes slaves of men, for the highest type of the Christian is that of the noblest freedman. Christ said : '* Because I live, ye shall live also," that is, in a separate and a worthful existence. The goal for which I am striving is a will so ethi- cized as to choose moral ends not perforce, but of freedom ; and yet it can never be ethicized unless every good act is an expression of the human as well as the divine will. The other element to be considered is that of the indwelling Christ, to be able to say with Luther : " Jesus Christ lives here " ; or with Augustine as MODERN VERSUS BIBLICAL TYPE 59 he escapes his old companion : " I run because I am not I " ; or Paul : ** I have been crucified with Christ ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me : and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith " (Gal. 2 : 20). God does all ; man does all. Beyond mere fellowship is Christ's vital union with the individual heart, whereby God's presence gives us energy to realize our own endeav- ors, not by enslaving, but by enfranchising the will, invigorating it, energizing it, vitalizing it, until we reach the truest freedom of the fulness of God's indwelling ; until with Augustine we can say : **We will, but God works in us the willing; we work, but God works in us the working." Thus and thus only shall we escape the failure of the Galatians who, having begun in Spirit, thought to be perfected in the flesh. Thus and thus only shall faith, by which alone we render available to our- selves the motor power of God, be more and more indispensable through life. Will is not an instru- ment separate from ourselves which we can use as we will ; it is ourselves acting. God's act, therefore, cannot be our act ; and if will and personality are to be free while at the same time God aids us, it must be by the undercurrents of life whose sluice- way we open through the exercise of faith. Such is faith, and a more masculine act cannot be conceived. It is not to be a slave that God calls man to himself, but to exercise his will-power. Thus the modern and the biblical conceptions of 6o THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION the Christian life do not agree. The one is pre- vailingly feminine ; the other is both masculine and feminine. It will be no easy task to reintroduce the masculine ideal, but this is prerequisite to the rejuvenation of the life of the church. It will come, but not until the Bible is better understood and a true philosophy of the Christian life is formulated. CHAPTER VI SOME PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION NOTHING in Christian thought needs revision more than the idea of the supernatural. It certainly is not something of thought or energy which is appropriated by us without the natural powers of mind and soul. If the super- natural which comes to us is not also natural, there is no development in belief or character. If we understand God's revelation, it is through the powers that we possess, vitalized, it is true, by the Spirit of God. If the growth in grace is from the Spirit, the habits are our own. Religion has been regarded far too much as an intruder, an alien which has to be naturalized. It is considered to be an addition to life, a sort of hot-house production, an effusion of weak natures, as Nitzsch says, a de- formity, an excrescence, a warping of nature, instead of being only a certain type of life, and that the most normal. Sometimes this idea of the unnaturalness of the Christian life reaches the extreme found in the society of Plymouth Brethren which had its origin in 1827 and received its name from Plymouth, Eng- land, which was the center of its endeavors. They 61 62 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION affirmed that every child of God had two natures, the new being produced, not out of, but in addition to the old, a new entity ; the old nature, which was once the self, but now so no longer, still existing. The new nature is sinless, but the old nature is irre- claimably bad and is to be destroyed at death or at the Lord's second coming. According to this "shifting of selfhood," the man could sin and still be sinless, for the act could be imputed to the old nature. This doctrine, of course, is both bad psychology and bad biblical exegesis. On the other side, there is also danger of making the Christian life only natural and including in the " natural " the excess of all passions. Edwin Checkley, writing on "A Natural Way of Physical Training," says that the significant thing in connec- tion with the brute creation is that they have no athletics. The lion keeps his marvelous strength without extraordinary effort, and so with other beasts. If we are to take any special lesson from the lower animals, it must be that the best strength is that produced by natural habits. This is in general true of the body, although even the bodily structure is changed by mental and moral habits. But it is not altogether true of the spiritual nature. " Natural " does not, therefore, mean to live accord- ing to the instincts, desires, motives, passions, that first make themselves felt. We have in human nature that hereditary taint which reaches back through a long ancestral line. But the word PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 63 " natural " here means that living which is nor- mal and best fulfils God's ideal for us as he has constituted us. Man was made in the likeness of God (Gen. 5 : i), and Adam in turn begat a son in his own like- ness (Gen. 5 : 3). This image was not lost in the fall, for "whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed : for in the image of God made he man." That image meant at least, will, intelligence, affection, personality, moral powers, including the power of knowing God. To live in accordance with the image of God implanted within us is to act not abnormally but normally ; it is to be true to ourselves. The Christian life is an at- tempt to restore that image, the second creation fulfilling the first, and so making a normal man. Sin is an intruder. To think of sin as natural is to lose the battle. Hell is not an arbitrary punish- ment of God. Animalism is not the original dis- position of man, and the sinless man is the only true man that the world knows. Christ was the perfect revelation of God in the only substance that can perfectly represent the divine, the human. Christ's human life must not be underestimated. He grew physically, mentally, spiritually, fighting temptations, meeting suffering, learning obedience, trusting, praying, the perfect normal man. There was nothing abnormal about him. Now the Christian life is the Christ life. The goal for each believer is to be transformed into his 64 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION image, to be like him, to be a full-grown man in Christ Jesus. Human nature was capable of re- ceiving Christ and it was in human nature that his life was lived. What he did once he is repeat- ing. There is a reincarnation for all, for man and God are kin. This is why, when a man sees Christ, he finds what corresponds to the best within him. The religious life has been far too narrow and one-sided. The doctrine of God's immanence has not permeated Christian belief and practice. There are supposed to be two kinds of life's activities : first, the so-called religious, Bible reading, praying, attend- ing church services, and doing church work ; second, family, social, business, and political duties, and the pursuit of art, literature, and science. Here are seemingly opposing interests. Those of the one class seem to be fostered only at the expense of the other. How shall we obtain equilibrium of interest } How shall we secure unification of life ? One of the false methods is to banish altogether the worldly interests, forgetful of the prayer of Christ : ** I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil one." This was one of the methods of classical heathenism. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, imitated a beggar with staff and scrip, so as to avoid all of those desires that fetter, attempting to be self-sufficient and independent of everything — marriage, society, politics, wealth, PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 65 honor, enjoyment. Such was the false conception of the true life presented as an offset to the culture of the day, both ideals incomplete and one-sided. The modern heathenism attempts often the same goal. The rule of Buddhism is, *' Having abandoned these things, without adopting others, let men, calm and independent, not desire existence," which in- stead of being the complete, is the narrowest possible life, not expansion in the ocean of life, but the extinction of life altogether. The Christian church has always been harassed with the same solution of the problem, though less to-day than formerly. Basil the Great, a Greek father of the fourth century, thought that the only way to escape the world, the flesh, and the devil, was to retire to a retreat. In a letter to a friend, he said, however: ''Although I have left behind me the diversions of the city as a cause of innu- merable evils, I have not been able to leave myself." Cowardice is a poor substitute for faith. To-day, though we have abandoned the hermit ideal, we often think of these other interests as necessary evils or pleasant diversions, from which heaven will at last set us free. We leave both in- terests in suppressed conflict in this life, establish- ing a perplexing dualism. There is no solution, but only a compromise, a truce, until we can lay down our burdens and ask the Lord to forgive us. This dualism is expressed chiefly in four ways. In regard to time, we declare that the Sabbath or Sun- E 66 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION day is a holy day to be given to the service of God, while the six days belong to us. We hear many complaints of the desecration of the Sabbath. Per- haps the chief reason is that we have too much of the desecration of Monday. Men have given up largely the idea that there is a magical virtue in the observance of the Sabbath and therefore have chosen to observe it as they please. We have not fully learned that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. When the week from Monday to Saturday is used for the Lord, there will be no difficulty with the proper use of Sunday. Our difficulty is that we have failed to unify our life. The same mistake is noticeable in our treatment of the church building. We frequently speak of coming into the presence of God as we enter the church or begin a service. The man who has not been in the presence of God before he enters the building is not apt to enter God's presence by going into a building simply because it has been dedicated to the service of God. We are much accustomed to apply all the references of the ancient temple to the modern church building. Yet Christ declared that neither in Gerizim nor Jerusalem should men worship the Father. Wherever a man prays, there is his temple. The grass may carpet his chancel, the trees be the columns, the sky the dome, but there is his cathedral if he prays in spirit and truth. Paul declares, "Ye are the temple of God." Not the church building as such, but the person himself PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 67 is the abode of the Shekinah of God, and all places are holy places to the Christian. The same mistake is made in regard to money. The one-tenth is supposed to purchase immunity for the nine-tenths. But all money belongs to God, and evidently the money spent for the pur- chase of food, of clothes, of enjoyment, should be expended as conscientiously as the money spent for church and missionary work. It is also supposed, though less and less so to- day, that the sacredness of the office renders the person of the minister especially sacred. Ministers seem to have a better opportunity of living the consecrated life. They are doing nothing but re- ligious work, and do not seem to have the same problem that their parishioners have. A young man asked President Stott, of Franklin College, hidiana, how long he would have to stay in college before he could be called *' Reverend." He did not recognize that the title did not make the man, nor that all men should be reverend. All, not the ministers alone, are called to be kings and priests, and all are to be witnesses of God. The words, ** Go ye into all the world," were given not only to the apostles who did not leave Jerusalem when the first persecution drove the disciples out, but to all believers. The object of living is the establishment of the kingdom of God, and that kingdom means not only the reign of God in the individual, but that all 68 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION relationships of life — family, social, industrial, political, institutional, ecclesiastical, shall also be Christian. When God spoke to Christ : ** Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," shall we not say that he referred not only to the act of obedience in being baptized, or to his pre-in- carnate resolution to come to earth, but to his faithfulness during thirty years in shop and home, carefully performing all duties ? He could attend the wedding festivities of several days' duration, and assist in furnishing refreshments, thereby manifesting forth his glory. Mary was not praised merely for sitting at Jesus' feet, nor Martha blamed merely for working in the kitchen. Martha needed a unifying principle of life. Sitting at Jesus' feet in stated prayer may not always be right. Even the Joshua who prays before God hears the not al- together reassuring words : " Get thee up ; where- fore art thou thus fallen on thy face." Action, not words of prayer, were needed. Faith can be used in business. When Christ was awakened by the fearful disciples his first question was not, **Why did you not row.?" or, Why did you venture out with such a boat ? " but "Where is your faith?" It is possible to obey such commands as these: ''And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col. 3 : 17) ; and, "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 6g glory of God " (i Cor. lo : 31). It is declared in Exodus, the thirty-first chapter, that the workers in metals and in stone, and the carvers in wood for the tabernacle, worked with the understand- ing and inspiration of the Spirit, and Zechariah says that **in that day " the words ** Holy to the Lord " shall be found upon the bells of the horses in the streets as well as upon the miter of the high priest, and the pots in the kitchens at Jerusalem shall be holy unto the Lord. Prof. E. H. Johnson, in ** The Highest Life,'* tells of a boy who was often seen to withdraw to his closet and friends took it for granted that he was very pious. Years afterward, it turned out that the boy who had heard that the Christian ought to be much in prayer, used often to kneel down in a dark clothes-press, half smothered by the hanging garments and agonize before God be- cause he could not enjoy it. A few years rolled by and he found himself away from home and at school. The old problem was before him and he wondered how he could truly love God and not spend all his hours in reading the Bible and at prayer. At last his distress became unbearable and he told the head master, who only said : ** God does not wish you to spend all your time reading the Bible and praying. He has placed you in school ; he wants you to study." And the young man was comforted. He had only learned that a man can reach God through a book, through man- 70 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION Ual labor, through social intercourse, as through specific prayer. As God is in his world, making all holy, so he is also in man himself, making every faculty divine. There are no religious compartments of the mind divided off from others. The faculties by which one worships God on Sundays are the same by which the daily work is done on Mondays. The spiritual nature is simply the mind devoted to spir- itual things. Theosophy makes the man composed of seven parts, one only of which is the spark of Parabrahm, and therefore divine. One modern view, sometimes definitely stated, generally tacitly assumed, is that through the instincts, impulses, and feelings, we become aware of God. Porphyry stated that during the six years which he spent in intimate companionship with Plotinus, the latter experienced union with God only four times ; that is, communion with God is experienced only in such ecstatic and emotional absorptions as Charles Kingsley so vividly described in Hypatia, whose heroine tries by the subjection of self to be wafted away into the arms of Apollo. Theoso- phy affirms that after many incarnations human beings at last " enter into the eternal and final all, and become an integral part of the great abyss of the impersonality called God." According to this, we shall become most divine in the very extinction of that divine image which God has given us to develop. PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION ^\ Buddhism presents a similar ideal in its Nirvana, reached by the eightfold path — right view, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right liveli- hood, right effort, right mindfulness, right rapture — until the ability to say ** This is I" and "This is mine " is lost. Against all this, Christianity says that we shall be in the fullest possession of God, not in some ecstatic experience, but as we act and grow naturally in consonance with God's will. We meet God, we are coworkers with him, we have fellowship with him, not simply through the feelings, but through the will and intellect. It is not only when we have love, joy, and peace that we have God, but when we are studying his world or putting forth energy in achievements. The man with ** nervous instability" and ** exalted emo- tional sensibility " should not set the standard for those who have force and will-power, keen percep- tion, and logical powers. A gentleman of Peoria, 111., told the author that when he was a boy he came home to his stepmother shaking with the old- fashioned fever and ague. He was met with ** Goodness, have you got religion ? " The person who seldom has emotion is not less religious than the naturally excitable. There is no reason to suppose that regularity in Christian experience is against God's personal movement in our lives, any more than that God is not in the regular laws of nature. It makes the ordinary life atheistic to recognize God only in the emotions. 72 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION A man cannot be forced to a life of virtue. We need not be told that character is a product of self- activity. If a higher type is therefore to be pro- duced, the self must be active. It is said that hypnotism weakens the will of the hypnotized. Certain, at least, that which another forces me to do is not my own act. What if we do gain great victories over the enemy and endure the thorns of life, if we do it by a power not our own } Not until we embody our deeds in ourselves and act from an inherent power sustained by God have we added to our own character. It is not how much we do, but how much we become. That apple tree may be beautiful with its green leaves and perfectly formed fruit. It is a better specimen than one ordinarily sees in nature. It is the prod- uct of skill, for it is manufactured, from the painted bark to the rosy-tinted fruit. Which would show God's power the more, to set up sticks for trees and glue leaves to them, or for God to be im- manent in the tree until the tree's life shall obtain, as it were, a character } The redness of the rose is not superimposed by the sun, but comes from the rose's own heart, and yet the redness would not be inlaid upon its petals without the sun's assistance. We realize our fullest life by supernatural in- fluences, but these are naturally mediated. Faith itself is concerned more with the intellect and will than with the emotions. Faith is the as- sent of the intellect and the consent of the heart. PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 73 It is a choice made upon certain probabilities. The man with the withered hand obeys the command and raises his hand and by this exercise of the will, new strength is given to the arm. The angel came to Gideon with the salutation : ** Hail, thou mighty man of valor," and yet the eleventh chapter of Hebrews includes Gideon with the heroes of faith. It was when the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon that he blew the trumpet. Faith is courage. One thing more can be said about this normal human life, that it is a development of one's own personality. The church has suffered by a same- ness of type, and all are supposed to start the same, feel the same, think the same. The busi- ness of the church ought to be to treat every con- vert as a gardener treats a hybrid, in which the plant is studied at every stage and tested with vary- ing soils and climates. We are traveling heaven- ward, but although all pictured angels look alike, it is to be hoped that heaven will not be a dead level of eternal sameness. Regeneration, or the com- munication of a new life, does not mean that the new life of all is the same in quality and quantity. Regeneration is the " origination in man of a holy bias or disposition, by virtue of which he begins to exercise normally all his spiritual powers." It does not change his personality except by the origination of this holy bias ; and those personal characteris- tics which constitute individuality are, as far as 74 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION they are moral, but to receive a new impetus by regeneration. Nature is our instructor. No two roses are alike ; every pansy is a fresh study. Like the tree which transforms its nutriment into the oak or palm by the invisible law of conformity to type, so a person grows as he incorporates the right material into his nature. The kindergarten has started the educa- tional tendency, but now everywhere educators are insisting that individuality must be preserved. In the kindergarten the child's nature is simply guided and obstructions are removed. The purpose is to develop what distinguishes each child, every song and exercise being chosen with relation to this pur- pose. Some one has said that Plato, Milton, Ed- wards, Napoleon, and John Howard, possessed to a great degree the faculty of imagination. But this, united with other peculiar powers of each one's mind, made one a philosopher, another a poet, another a theologian, another a soldier, and another a philanthropist. The question may be asked, if all our individu- alities are to have a distinct development, how can we all reach the same goal of being like Jesus ? Dorner beautifully represents humanity by a gap- less but ever-growing circle, and just as each point in the circle has its own relationship to the center, shared by no other point in the whole circumfer- ence, so each human being bears a different rela- tionship to God. God does not deal with us as PRESUPPOSITIONS OF SEX IN RELIGION 75 the Israelites supposed that Jehovah dealt with them as members of an elect race and not as dis- tinct persons. Each child in a large family enters into a peculiar relation with its father. So each one of those who trust in Christ, finds something in him that meets his own specific needs. Jesus is myriad-sided. A center of relationship is to be found in him for all of the mighty circle of humanity. In the words of Dr. George Dana Boardman, making the last speech at the Chicago Parliament of Religions : " Jesus of Nazareth is the universal Homo, the essential Vir, the Son of human nature. Blending in himself all races, ages, sexes, capacities, temperaments, Jesus is the arche- typal man, the ideal hero, the consummate incar- nation, the symbol of perfected human nature, the sum total of enfolded, fulfilled humanity, the Son of mankind. . . Zoroaster was a Persian, Confu- cius was a Chinaman, Gautama was an Indian, Mohammed was an Arabian, but Jesus is the Son of man." Mere imitation destroys individuality, but Christ's life is creative of a new spirit. Not homogeneity we want, but variety in unity. We can all follow the same Christ, but preserve what we are as far as this is moral and human. The Christian life is not a self-effacement ; it is an affirmation of God in the life. As such it is the realization of the true man in the individual. The bearing of the ideas of this chapter on the 76 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION progress of thought of the whole book is manifest. The man as well as the woman is called to live the Christian life. Yet he is not asked to be excep- tional and eccentric, but to live the normal, natural life of a man. He is not adding something incon- gruous to his life, but is restoring his life to the norm according to which he was originally created. He is not less a man, but more of a man, by being a Christian. He finds that however busy he is, God is to be found in a business transaction as in prayer, in fact, that this is prayer ; and in creating and in achieving he is coming into actual fellowship with God. He learns that all places are holy, all money sacred, all men divine, and all men God's. He finds too, that God is in him when he uses his intellect as when a flood of emotions pours over his soul. He becomes aggressive, knowing that God surcharges his will with energy. He exercises his masculine powers, knowing that these are divine. He does not belittle his personality, but believes that there is a place for him in the kingdom of God. He finds in Christ his perennial friend, perfectly adapted to his own nature. He may grant to woman that intuition, feeling, and aspiration which give her a certain type of religion, and make cer- tain religious exercises more natural to her ; but he believes that he too has been made religious, that he too can come near to God, and companionship with Christ can come in thought and volition as in emotions. CHAPTER VII MEN AND THE CHURCH THE questionnaire method is often, if not always, misleading. It is almost impossible to make the examination thorough enough, and cer- tainly it is not feasible to expect exact results by a compilation of statistics. Oftentimes the very suggestion that a correspondent offers is the answer all would make if they were sufficiently self-ana- lytical, or could give voice to the unobserved trend of society. Yet answers from many are valuable as they show the development of public opinion ; and, in addition, here and there, the conviction of an honest mind in the careful consideration of a problem, who does not agree with the majority. It was mainly with the purpose of observing how much the contention of this book had reached the consciousness of the people, thereby offering a proof of its accuracy, that the author, in three dif- ferent pastorates sent out a series of questions, being careful to secure returns from professional, business, and workingmen, part of whom were church-members, and part not. Sometimes the questions were sent out by mail, but more often were delivered personally. In each case, the male 77 78 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION members of the church were enlisted in the can- vass. Hundreds of answers were received in each city and the work of compilation took weeks. Scores of answers, as might be expected, were practically worthless. Many answers were only repetitions in a different form of the questions, and many answers were only begotten of surface judg- ments. But, on the whole, the correspondents showed that earnest thought had been given to the questions presented. Oftentimes there were dozens of men who practically said the same thing, thus reinforcing the opinion. One of these questions was this: **Why do more women than men belong to the church ? " The question is not synonymous with that much- mooted question as to why more women than men attend church, but to the minds of most men, the question was a similar one. By some, the differ- ence noted in church-membership was thought to be due to the different training which women have received in the past. " I do not believe that woman, had she been in the past subjected to the same influences as man, together with larger educational advantages and means of developing intellect, would attend church as freely as man." In the main, however, the phenomenon is attrib- uted to two causes, the difference of environment and the difference of nature. Concerning environ- ment, man feels — such is his answer — that his duties are so confining and exacting, and that he MEN AND THE CHURCH 79 works so hard both mentally and bodily in order to gain the necessities of life, that when Sunday comes, he naturally takes it as a day of rest, and consequently feels no inclination to continue his labors by attending church. It is certain, at least, that absence from church generally means freedom from church-membership, because the man who does not go to church does not give the church-worker an opportunity to bring him into the church. Even if he does become a church- member, he loses the help of church-fellowship by his absence. The other phase of environment which draws men away from the church, is the contact with the world of temptation to which a woman is not sub- ject. " In constant public associations, I believe men are more exposed to the sledge-hammer blows of the adversary and more men go down under them." These temptations are sometimes felt in the very struggle for existence, sometimes in the club life and political associations, and sometimes by contact with more open forms of vice. A man is generally honest enough to keep out of the church, even though his open excuse is different, when his conscience disapproves of any part of his life. Many men, also, take note of the difference in the early training of boys and girls. Whether this is itself due to a mental difference between the sexes, no one suggests. But '* the home and church in- fluence does not extend over so long a period in 80 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION boyhood," and " boys are allowed to run at liberty while young girls are cared for." " The street education of boys prevents naany young men from becoming Christians." " If fathers took the same care of their sons day and night as mothers do with their daughters, there would be many more sons in early life converted to God." By far the larger number, however, refer the dif- ference in church-membership between the man and woman to natural variation of mind and character, though the differences stated are almost multiform. Men are sure that women both love and want to be loved, and since religion is concerned most with love, women are religious. " The church is the casket of God's memorial love." There are, in addition, many more characteristics of a woman's nature pre- disposing her to the church. She is " more sym- pathetic," "more impressible," "sentimental," "superstitious," "sensitive," "desires to talk and hear talk," and one deacon writes : " They are more inquisitive, like to see and be seen, are fond of dress, and thus are attracted to the places where ladies congregate in houses of worship, and are thus brought under the influence of religion." Men, on the other side, are less emotional, more intellectual, philosophical, and therefore skeptical. Yet this difference in mental and emotional make- up may be an indication of woman's superiority. "Women yield more readily to emotions and promptings that are of deeper birth than reason, MEN AND THE CHURCH 8l and that direct the reasoning faculties. They do not make the mistake in believing only that which can be verified by demonstration or experience." A clear distinction between morality and religion is not made by every observer, and yet all recog- nize that the moral person has less to contend with in living the Christian life. Most men feel, even though they know that a man is subject to more temptations, that a woman is naturally more moral than man. The sense of duty may make a woman attend church, where a man is not so influenced. A woman more naturally inclines toward the good and pure. On this point one writes at length : A sense of duty rests more lightly on man than on woman, and consequently if men are to be attracted to church it must be by reason of interest rather than duty, and the interest, of course, must be of that nature which excites their attention. The average man who is not a Christian will not go to church unless he sees practical advantage in so doing. If he can be made to see that his condition in life will be improved by giv- ing regard to spiritual things, he will attend church. Com- monly speaking, he looks upon spiritual birth or growth as something not at all essential to everyday life, acquaintance with which would very likely trouble his conscience and afford no return for his mental disturbance. Another reason why a man is not interested in the church is because the church does not present to him a sufficiently strong motive for the use of his energy. Church work in the majority of churches is not mapped out on sufficiently broad lines to provide work for boys and young men, and F 82 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION especially with the greatest expression outward toward the world, and not inward toward the mem- bers. Men believe in the practical rather than the sentimental. When men are given something worth their endeavor to undertake, they respond as soldiers to the call of battle. One correspondent thinks that if the preachers were women, the present condition might not exist. ** It is woman's nature to look up to, be influenced and led by man." One man has the courage to tell the preachers what he thinks they are doing and says : ** The pulpit has used the gospel to ap- peal to the weakness of the race rather than to its manhood. Women and children are susceptible to emotional appeals." Another question directed to the men was : "What kind of a sermon do men like ? " Natural courtesy caused this question many times to be unanswered. By far the largest number emphasize some phase of plain, practical, everyday topics, ** right to the point," "without varnish," "sensible," "spoken to the hearers, not over them," "simple and direct in expression, eliminating all preludes and inter- ludes," "short, pithy, and to the point," "terse, lively, anecdotal, genial." The Golden Rule is to be presented, and selfishness, which is at the bot- tom of nearly every evil, is to be rooted out. The minister is to preach on " Life : how to live ; the art of living. Character : its formation and growth ; its perfection. Truth: its beauty, util- MEN AND THE CHURCH 83 ity, and satisfactoriness. The sweetest, purest, ennobling thoughts that will freshen the mind and heart, and arouse an ambition for purer, better lives in all of us." The sermons should be '* con- structive, positive, helpful, with no abuse ; that do not tell them how bad they are, but of what they are capable." Many advise ministers to leave dogma out of their sermons. " Dogmatism is the mother of doubt." Yet a moderate amount of theory may be allowed, but the sermons must have liberal views, be free from intellectual density, and not deal with secta- rian questions. Some distinctly repudiate both the political and sensational together with the scien- tific sermon ; others want sermons on current topics. All insist that the sermons must be fresh and up-to-date, not the same sermons that the minister may have written when at school or in former years. It may be readily accepted that the regular an- swer of the earnest church-member is that he de- sires religious subjects and generally with little reference to secular matters. The Bible is a store- house of sermon subjects, and every audience likes to hear the minister "dig out the meaning of the word and see just how we can best use it and apply it to-day." Every sermon should start and end with Jesus Christ and him crucified, Christ, who was, and is, and is to come. Such is man's judgment upon his own relation- 84 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION ship to the church, and it is far more true than the correspondents in general realized, because as indi- viduals they did not have the opportunity of com- paring answer with answer. The appeal they make is for a masculine religion and a masculine church service. It makes little difference how man ought to relate himself to the church ; the fact is, he does not become an active member, and the reason may be in his environment or in his nature, presumably both. One reason indeed, may be but the counter- part of the other. If a man's business and church mutually exclude each other, it is not always the fault of the business. Perhaps religion has not been made broad enough to include the business. Religion has demanded church attendance, prayer, and Bible reading, but not always the touch of God in the daily vocation. Bushnell declared that what we needed to-day was the Christianization of the money-power. That is more true now than in his day, but we need far more the Christianization of all business. It is possible to worship God in a counting-room and praise him in a factory. Re- ligion and secular work must not be divorced. Suppose that there is severe temptation ? Do soldiers want only a demoralizing fort-life ? Presi- dent Roosevelt wisely said in regard to the Spanish- American war, that he felt that a heavier load, a considerably heavier load, was put on those soldiers who were not ordered to the front ; and that in some promotions in the regular army, he promoted MEN AND THE CHURCH 85 certain men who, to their bitter regret, had stayed in office work instead of going, as they so desired, to the field. Their superiors felt that damage would come to the interests of the army as a whole if they did not stay. The Japanese won the admira- tion of the world at once when they were found willing to fight and even die if need be. The rec- ords of Port Arthur will go down in history be- cause men dared run any risk for their country. Men can fight if they are called to fight and the goal is made important enough. It is true that fathers have been derelict in regard to their boys, but it is quite time to acknowledge that a boy can play as a Christian, study as a Christian, work as a Chris- tian. When his chivalrous nature is appealed to, when he exerts strength for right and contends for justice, when he is bound that his side shall win, let him know that these are as much Christian impulses, or impulses that can be turned Christward, as the love, trust, and passiveness of a tamer character. The church is or should be the home of love ; but it is something more. It is a factory to turn out products for a modern civilization ; it is a laboratory in which an expert examination is made of soul life ; it is an arsenal where are found all sorts of armor for warfare ; it is a foundry where is forged the armor for defense ; it is a fort from which the soldiers sally forth to victory. Why should the church life be known only by its mo- ments of rest .? Why should the soft playing of 86 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION ** Home, Sweet Home " be thought more appropri- ate for the Christian soldier than " Rally Round the Flag " ? Let some rugged thought be presented, some military discipline be used, some martial music be played. The good lover is the good hater, and hate means opposition. There are needed in the church both a Christian thought and a Christian activity expressive of its virility. Oftentimes more is expected of the poor minister than he really can perform. One sympa- thizes with Richard Fuller as he says : " I do more visiting than the busiest physician in my town ; I do more public speaking than a lawyer in full prac- tice, and more study than the most diligent profes- sor ; and besides am at the beck and call of every man, woman, and child in my community, whether they have a claim on my time or not." Yet it ought to be granted that with many ministers the same amount of time spent in downright up-to-date thinking, with less search for illustrations, less at- tempt at adornment, and more attention to simplic- ity and perspicuity would give better results. When Mr. Edward Bok who, ten years ago, sounded such a blast on ** The Young Man and the Church," that thousands of ministers and editors sprang to the defense, repeated his challenge last year, it was practically with the same arguments. The young men themselves complain, according to Mr. Bok, that they do not get enough out of the sermons ; they are all theory, words. The minis- MEN AND THE CHURCH 87 ter doesn't know men, and gives himself too much to mere cloister study. There is no vitality in the service. ** The message that is delivered Sunday after Sunday from the average pulpit is vapid and meaningless to the man of affairs of to-day." All this is severe, probably too much so. In no other place but a school would there congregate a body of people twice or more a week throughout a year to hear the same speaker, and when it does occur elsewhere, it is only with a small select gathering and the teacher is not in addition a visitor, pastor, and business manager. Christ did not preach directly on either politics or industry. He refused to say whether tribute should be paid to Caesar ; but he did declare at the same time that if there was an obligation to gov- ernment it should be met. He would not be a judge over an estate ; but at the same time he warned the plaintiff of covetousness. He did not hesitate to un- cover the sefishness and greed and hypocrisy of the Pharisees or to call Herod Antipas a fox. He could and did strike at dishonesty, lust, and crime without the slightest hesitation. And yet he was masterful in thought. He did promulgate dogma, if by dogma we understand the statement of truth and of gen- eral principles under which specific instances may be classified. He was a thinker and an educator, and no meaningless sentences ever escaped his lips nor a statement which was extraneous or contra- dictory to his complete system of thought. 88 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION Men do not find enough to do in the church of that which requires skill and courage. There are too many trivialities forced upon them, too many offices whose duties are mere play. There is too great a contrast between the strenuous business life to which they are accustomed and the lifeless committee work upon petty things to which they are invited. Institutional church work is an invaluable aid to the church in winning the men. Here there is a recognition of the whole man, of his desire to achieve, of his love of fellowship. But even insti- tutional work is not indispensable to success among men. A church service where strong, manly ser- mons are preached and songs sung which are full of vigor and vim ; a Sunday-school where young men are aided in the competition of thought ; a prayer- meeting that is not filled with platitudes and out- worn phrases ; a campaign for men managed systematically by men with as much care as a busi- ness canvass — these are the means of making a virile church. CHAPTER VIII MEN AND THE LODGE TO examine a man's life outside of the church is to discover his needs and his tendencies. Two main questions in the series referred to in the preceding chapter were made to cover this field, allowing to each correspondent the freedom of expression as new ideas were suggested to him. The first question was, " Why do many men prefer the lodge to the church?" The second was, *Ms it difficult for a professional, business, or working man to live a Christian life, and why.? " To this was added a third question, " Other things being equal, which would you prefer to employ, a Chris- tian or a non-Christian? " To the two main ques- tions, at least, almost every man approached had a ready answer. Whether or not all answers were to be taken seriously matters little, providing the men were sincere in their answers, and the author believes that they were. In regard to the first question, " Why do many men prefer the lodge to the church? " the answers were multiform. Some think that the lodges are not well patronized except on banquet nights ; some, that the lodge and church are not competitors, as 89 90 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION each has its own field ; some, that the best lodge- members are the best church-members. Many appeal for co-operation on the ground that they are practically engaged in the same work. The lodge is founded upon the same Bible as is the church, and endeavors to carry out the instructions con- tained therein. It has a broad field in which to labor, for a vast proportion of the membership is without the pale of the church. Visiting the sick, relieving the distressed, burying the dead, and edu- cating the orphans, is an imperative duty enjoined upon the lodges, and it is faithfully carried out. While the churches may be willing to do all this, it is not possible, for their expenses in other directions prevent it. Some answer the question by saying that the lodge is a place of enjoyment and recreation, and has a greater variety of interests than the church. The greater number, however, refer to some ele- ment of mutual help secured in the lodge. A few plainly declare that lodge-members promise to favor fellow-members, other things being equal. Gen- erally reference is made to the assistance given in sickness, either by a sick benefit or the furnishing of a nurse ; and, in the event of death, a death benefit or the face value of a policy paid to the family. This is especially to be commended, be- cause members receive help as a matter of right and not of charity. All lodges do not have insurance features, but all aim to relieve a brother in distress. MEN AND THE LODGE 9! The lodge also becomes the place of sociability and fellowship, so whole-souled that many men think that the church suffers grievously by the comparison. One correspondent, and only one, himself a lodge-member, says that "friendship, fellowship, or charity, which must be held together or prompted by an oath-bound obligation is poor stuff at the best and cold." Many, of course, justify the difference by declaring that they go to church for religion. Many prefer the lodge because it gives them the freedom and opportunity for discussion. At church they must listen to the preacher without the oppor- tunity of putting in either questions or answers. Opportunity is afforded in the lodge for discussing, and hearing intelligently discussed, topics of close interest to men, both in a business and a social way. The topics are of interest to them for the immediate future, while at church they are taught to look into an indefinite and uncertain future. Almost every lodge-member also feels the impor- tance of position and the gradation of offices in the lodge. All officers are elected at stated intervals, and each member has the chance for the honors of any office. Each office is honored with sufficient dignity and responsibility to make it a coveted prize for the member. In the church, for most men, there is no office, and they are expected to be quiet and receive instruction ; or, if there is an office, it is of no importance and burdened with trifling duties. 92 THE MASCULINE iN RELIGION Many thoughtful men discuss the lodges from the moral and religious side, and frankly say that they offer to their members a real moral and religious standard. They require of them belief in a Supreme Being, and many emphasize the Bible as a guide- book, and all make prayer an important part of their service. Many men, generally members of no lodge, regard the lodge as anti-Christian, if not irreligious ; most, however, say that the lodge does not assume to be a substitute for the church. "When this is true, it is because some men quiet their conscience with respect to religious duty by substituting relations with some body, membership with which usually carries with it a sort of public certificate of morality or respectability." " Lodges and fraternities wear a large moral cloak. The corner-stone of their foundation is the moral law. The freedom of the interpretation of the law attracts and the morality of it soothes their slumbering consciences." "With many, lodges are looked upon as a kind of respectable support against moral weakness ; with others they form an easy method of patronizing morality and expressing the liberty to recross the line when business success demands it, while the moral rule of the church they regard as inexorable." "There is no ques- tion asked as to what a man believes or does not believe." "A lodge imposes no dogma, yet is made comprehensive enough to satisfy all demands." In every reason given by men why many men MEN AND THE LODGE 93 prefer the lodge to the church, can be seen a cor- responding duty of the church. It is true that that organization runs the risk of rapid deterioration that makes pleasure the main object ; but, on the other hand, recreation is a legitimate expression of the religious life. It is scarcely a high ideal for the church to say that since people will secure social recreation anyway, the church will be wise in fur- nishing it. Rather should the church aim to see the need of the whole man, the social nature as well, and then by the social life within the church to set a standard for all social life. He is indeed a melancholy example of the human race, as F. Hopkinson Smith says, who, as a highly successful American business man, opens his daily life with his office key and closes it with a letter for the late mail. The church must not admit enjoyment as a makeshift to win support, but must see that Christ can be served at the proper time in a church social or a young men's game-room as at a prayer-meet- ing. Men of business need and should have pleas- ure and recreation, and the lodge should not need to supplant the church as far as legitimate amuse- ment is concerned. A larger recognition of the need of mutual help should certainly be given in the church. However, the special pleader for the lodge must not forget that every lodge-member pays for what he receives. Every church, in a quiet, unostentatious way, is helping many, and in the large city congregations, 94 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION is paying out thousands of dollars a year for char- ity, while being at the same time the prey of every indigent person in the community. The man who is in health, and who is a good citizen in the com- munity, is the only one in general who is admitted to the lodge. Let him cease paying his dues, unless he is sick or in some severe reverse, and his claim to benefits also ceases at once. The church is a public crib for all philanthropic, charitable, and missionary organizations, and thousands of church- members give money freely with sacrifice, only to be publicly criticized for their generosity. Still, it must be said again, church-members should more clearly recognize the need of mutual help, and thus make the prospective member feel that if once he enters the church there are many to stand by him and help him to a strong, manly life. The church is under a great disadvantage in the matter of sociability. Each member feels that he is not a representative church-member and has no right to take the initiative in a large congregation. Visitors are coming and going, and he knows not always who are members. Even if he does, he does not want to be officious. A lodge is different. The crowd is never present except at the occasional open meeting, and then by special invitation. The thirty or forty at the usual business meeting know one another well. There are no subsidiary organ- izations meeting at different occasions, the members of which are unacquainted with each other. Still, MEN AND THE LODGE 95 the church is not all that it should be. Men need fellowship. They expect it in the church. Men go in droves, and somewhere in the church whose work is adapted to men there should be an oppor- tunity among men for the expression of good fel- lowship. Something like the reputed coat of arms of Thomas Hood should hang up over every church door — a hand, and underneath the words, ** When taken, to be well shaken." A man loves to discuss questions of interest. He is not ready, not at least in America, to accept re- ligious any more than he is political opinions ready- made. There are certain channels in which church thought must stay, and oftentimes it becomes stag- nant and lifeless by its very sluggishness. A man should be given a large share in the interpretation of truth and its application to life, and not be looked upon with manifest disquietude because his views are original. He should be heard in the public meetings of the church, and opportunity be given to the young business man to test his theory by actual experiment. There should be given him in separate organizations an opportunity to discuss all the great moral and religious questions which affect the welfare of church and society. Men want to do something. The church offices seem to be few and oftentimes these are monopo- lized. The Young Men's Christian Association, with its committee work, has created positions for men, all bearing responsibility. A church should q6 the masculine in religion be organized like a business establishment, with a gradation of office and a placing of responsibility, allowing to each a certain initiative for the sake of fresh plans. Give the men something large enough and important enough, and they will do it. It belittles their manhood to make them turn from some weighty business transaction to a petty religious affair. By far the most serious question concerning the lodge is its relationship to religion. It is not an ob- jection to the lodge that it does not teach the Trinity, any more than it is an objection against the public school. The Bible passage, " Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers," applies no more to the lodge than it does to a business concern where a Christian is employed by a non-Christian. If the lodge becomes a real rival to the church, it does it in one of three ways : First, the lodge may give the suggestion that salvation depends upon good works. It teaches a high grade of morality, the statics but not the dynamics of life. The thought may be in many a member's mind, ** This do, and thou shalt live," which is a repetition of the legality repudiated by Paul. Secondly, the lodge with its ritual and rules may be thought to satisfy all the wants of the soul, and especially in the need of worship. This claim has been made, and more than once. Thirdly, there is the explicit teaching that oftentimes justifies the assumption that membership in a lodge is a sure MEN AND THE LODGE 97 guarantee of membership in the grand lodge above. The burial service of every lodge assumes as a matter of course a safe entrance on the part of the deceased into the abode of happiness and peace irrespective of his relationship to Christ. It is a delicate matter to treat, and every minister knows that at times, even on the ground of silence if no other, he is subject to the same criticism as he con- ducts the funeral service of a moral non-Christian. The religious element of the lodge, so universally conceded an important place in prayer, ritual, burial service, and the necessity of believing in a Supreme Being, at least refutes the assumption that man does not care for religion. His religion may be un- trammeled by minute particularizations of thought, but he wants a God above whose providential acts can be depended upon. He wants some form of worship which, without too great limitation, can be the medium of his approach to God. He wants a prayer that not only is a mode of fellowship with God, but a method of appeal for help. He may be engaged in a desperate struggle for existence, but he does not consign in thought the soul of a fellow- traveler to the dust, but wants a continuation of the best of earth's fellowship in a better and hap- pier abode above. This survey of the attractions and advantages of the lodge shows that in all essential particulars the church can satisfy the legitimate demands of a man's religious nature. If there is any doubt any- G 98 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION where about its ability to do so, it is in the depart- ment of mutual help. Insurance is not an essen- tial feature of a lodge, nor could it be introduced with profit into the church organization ; but in both a better spirit of helpfulness and a more practical way of manifesting such a spirit, could be gained. The disciples were not only sent out to preach the gospel, but to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. Christ was anointed not only to preach the gospel to the poor, but to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised ; and John de- clares that we too are the anointed ones, and so our service cannot be far different from Christ's. Christ's miracles were proofs of his power, and authenticated him as a messenger of truth, but this was not the main reason for their display. They were also " acted parables," ** signs " of a spiritual power and a spiritual effect ; but this was not the chief reason that they were enacted. Primarily, they were the natural expression of Christ's com- passion for a suffering humanity. He who could perform miracles in case of need, and did not, cer- tainly did not love. We may not be able to perform miracles, but the same spirit may be in us, and there is the same need as of yore. *' Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world." MEN AND THE LODGE 99 If the lodge satisfies men, the church can do it. It can be a home of enjoyment, a means of fellow- ship and sociability, a place of activity, discussion, and responsibility, a satisfaction to the religious nature, far better than the lodge. In addition it has the advantage of being the very organization founded by Christ himself ; that organization which, with the family and nation, is a main agency for bringing in the kingdom of God. Let the church and men tie to each other. They need each other, and Christ needs both. CHAPTER IX MEN AND BUSINESS "TS it difficult for the professional, business, or I working man to live a Cliristian life, and why ? " Such was a second question sent out to the various correspondents. There is an advantage in answering this question, partly be- cause it shows what kind of a religion a man needs, and partly because it reveals the chasm in most men's minds between business and the customary display of the religious life. The men who declare that ** religion has no place in a man's business ; sterling integrity and honor there," have too strictly separated not only morality and religion, but the religion of the church and the religion of business. Many men do not find that it is more difficult for business men to live a Christian life than any other class of persons. "When we would do good, evil is always present." Dozens of men, however, frankly say, ** Yes " ; but the reason stated varies with the personality of the writer and the hardships of his business. Many men at least write, even though they do not practise the rule, that they ** must get the best of the other fellow and do it loo MEN AND BUSINESS lOI first.'* In some lines of business "I believe it is practically impossible to lead a Christian life and make a success of business." " Competition is fierce ; profits are small ; associates cheat as well as competitors." " The real Christian falls an easy prey to myriad sharks." ** To associate with non- Christians makes the temptation to meet them with their own weapons." The condition, to the minds of many, is not complimentary to a large per cent. of the Christian people who have dealings with business men. " Many church people are unwilling to give a business man a fair chance to make a profit, and are too close in their bargains." Outside of temptation to yield to dishonesty, many see that the Christian's heart is hardened by business. " It is my experience that it would not be difficult for a man to lead a Christian life if the Golden Rule — * Do unto others as you would be done by ' — were universally observed ; as it is very hard to be charitable toward a person whom you know is scheming and planning to take an unfair advantage of you at every turn, and that is some- thing every business man in New York has to con- tend with." Another says that " Contact with the business world deadens their spirituality and dims the vision of Christ, and too honest to play the hypocrite, and too grasping and near-sighted to make the sacrifices, they prefer to remain without." A man too, if he succeeds against the heavy competition 102 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION of to-day, must devote his whole time, energy, thought, and effort to that business. Success brings men into contact with the outside world, with men struggling like themselves, with thoughts like their thoughts, and in time the average man, unconsciously perhaps, takes for his motto, ** Suf- ficient unto the day (this life) is the evil (or good) thereof." He forms a habit early, and that habit grows stronger as he grows older, until he forgets or at least puts off the idea of its being his duty to think and study the questions relating to his Maker and his fellow-men. The working-man, also, has his difficulties in living a Christian life. Sometimes it is unscrupulous em- ployers who make it difficult ; sometimes it is be- cause he does not find himself welcome in the church ; sometimes it is because he has no time for anything but his machine. One may feel thankful that the question of dishonesty does not here seem to form an important difficulty, for none of the correspondents mention this temptation, although several speak of the profane language which many working-men must constantly hear. It would seem, however, that there is a disposition on the part of working-men as well as the business men to get something for nothing. Scores, on the other side, say emphatically, " No, it is not diificult for a professional, business, or working-man to live a Christian life," although generally the answer is made with some qualifica- MEN AND BUSINESS IO3 tion. *' The Christian people in their business relations do show their appreciation of the upright man." "It is, but that difficulty lessens as one grows in the Christian life and learns the fact, hard indeed to learn, that the capital of strict un- swerving Christian integrity, known to be such, pays in the aggregate better and surer for this world and the next." "It is the nominal Chris- tian who gets into hot water all the time." " It is difficult because of the failure of most men to real- ize that steady, honest solidity of purpose is con- ducive to peace of mind ; that a life harassed by the fear of being found out, is intensest misery ; that one may not be dishonest because his neigh- bor is ; that pure happiness is only attained by pure thoughts, upright conduct, and the conscious- ness of living in every way a clean life." To the subsidiary question asked, " Which would you prefer to employ, other things being equal, a Christian or a non-Christian ? " as might have been expected, most of the answers were in favor of the Christian employee. Perhaps the excep- tions, for this reason, are the more worthy of consideration as implying independent thought. ** Does the Christian here mean the church-mem- ber, or one who is like Christ ? The two terms are certainly not synonymous. A man of sense, honor, and correctness of habit, should certainly make the best employee." A unique answer is the one made by an employer 104 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION in a large factory, who says he prefers non-Chris- tians, " because they are generally of greater force of character ; they do not lose sight of earthly duties by keeping their minds fixed on the future life. I find more charity among non-Christians than among the so-called Christians." It is also an employer who says, ** It should be an easy matter for a working-man to lead a Christian life. He goes in the morning to his work, performs it carefully, and returns to his family to spend a pleasant evening free from care. He should read the life of Jesus who placed his divine approval on honest labor." Most working-men probably do not find their life quite so roseate. These difficulties which seem to prevent many men from becoming and being Christians, only reveal again the need of a masculine type of re- ligion for all business, professional, and working- men. To be a Christian is not simply to be a church-member, though all Christians will seek to connect themselves with other Christians ; nor is it to accept so many doctrines, though there will be right belief as well as right conduct ; nor is it simply to attend religious meetings, engaging in the services according to one's ability, although this will be one phase of the Christian life. The man must prepare himself for a battle, and that battle in behalf of the noblest principles. The Christian life includes right conduct — honesty, in- tegrity, purity, charity. We are not compelled to MEN AND BUSINESS 105 live. Man need not live by bread alone, but he should live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. We must have eternal life ; it is not necessary to have temporal life. A man needs the bread of life, but he can spare the earthly bread. Will he have to die } Let him die. A few deaths for religious principles would be the seed for hundreds of new converts. Men do not shirk sacrifice in behalf of great ideas. Let us have a masculine religion. That a healthful business world demands honesty does not belong to Christianity as such. Every man's conscience, Christian or not, makes for up- rightness. That it is hard to be honest is not an objection against the Christian Wfe per se. If Christ had never come, if the church did not exist, there would still be some requirements of honesty. To be a true man needs courage, and to have courage is to be masculine. It is no objection to Chris- tianity that it demands righteousness ; rather does it aid a man by not only presenting a high ideal, but giving him power to reach that ideal. If the man has made up his mind to be a man, and noth- ing but a man, the Christian life is the easiest way of realizing his ambition. There is also to be considered that other reason that makes it difficult for the man of the world to live a Christian life, and that is, that business is too absorbing. A man's work forms for him a certain mood. The big realities of '* money, I06 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION notoriety, and pain " are before him. There is no opportunity for introspection and meditation. Faith, as the assurance of things hoped for, a con- viction of things not seen, seems least possible in the midst of the real world of stocks and bonds, personal and real property, store and office, factory and farm. Absorption in business ! May not a man be completely absorbed in business and still be the most consistent Christian ? What in point of fact is the essence of religion that a man should decide that absorption in business and a Christian faith are incompatible ? The Christian's faith is con- cerned with all daily activity whether it seems to have a moral quality or not. A man's vocation is the field of Christian activity. In laborer's ballad oft more piety God finds than in Te Deum's melody. The new Jerusalem is coming down out of heaven, and it is the Christian's privilege of mak- ing a new Jerusalem out of London, or Paris, or New York. Phillips Brooks well declared that the effective and the receptive life are one. Business is the natural expression of religion. It is as natural to be religious as it is to breathe. To leave Christ out of a man's soul is like living with a weak heart. It should seem to us absurd that a man should say that he has no time for re- ligion. *'It is as if the engine had said it had no MEN AND BUSINESS IO7 room for steam. It is as if the tree had said it had no room for the sap. It is as if the ocean had said that it had no room for the tide. It is as if the man said he had no room for his soul. It is as if life said that it had no time to live, when it is life. It is not something that is added to life, it is life. . . . Life is the thing we seek, and man finds it in the fulfilment of his life by Jesus Christ." How we have abused that word ''world." We have made it synonymous with three or four great public amusements and supposed that we were far away from the world because we did not care for any of them. The world is "the aggregate of things earthly ; the whole circle of earthly goods, endowments, riches, advantages, pleasures, etc., which although hollow, frail, and fleeting, stir de- sire, seduce from God, and are obstacles to the cause of Christ." To this world, which is to pass away, we must be crucified. Yet it is possible, and in fact our duty, to use the world, though not to use it to the full, for the fashion of this world passes away. Let the man state his Christian life in business in the threefold biblical way. First, let it be stated in terms of God's will. Christ said : '* Lo, I come, to do thy will, O God." In Samaria he told his disciples that his meat was to do the will of his Father, seemingly remembering that bitter experi- ence of only nine months before, when he said to Satan: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but I08 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." We are to seek first the kuigdom of God and his righteousness. "If my right hand slacked," said Antonio Stradivari, *M should rob God ; for while God is fullest good, he cannot make the violins of Antonio Stradivari without Antonio." The Christian life can also be stated in terms of Christ's life. "As the Father hath sent me, so send I you," gives us the same mission as that of Jesus. We are told to follow him, and he prayed, not because he was trying to give us an example, but because he needed to pray ; he cast out demons by the Spirit of God, as we also must. Christ found that he could be well-pleasing to the Father and work at a carpenter's bench to earn a liveli- hood for himself and his family, and during the same days to increase in favor with God. Joseph Maier, who represented the character of Christ at the Oberammergau Passion Play for three succes- sive decades, declared : " It is not only the greatest honor of my life to represent the character of Christ, but it is for me the most solemn of religious duties." " In his name " means in his spirit, with his aim. All of life's activities can be done equally in his name, whether it is to eat or to pray, to work in the store or in the church. The same principle can also be expressed by our relation to the Holy Spirit. The word "Christ" means the anointed one. Christ in the first MEN AND BUSINESS lOg sermon in Galilee given in his own home church, declared that the Spirit of the Lord had anointed him, evidently recalling the event that occurred two months before, when the Spirit had descended upon him. But John declares that we also have an anointing which abides upon us. We too are messiahs, God's anointed ones, under the direction and power of the Holy Spirit ; and this anointing does not come and go according to the locality in which a man is placed. He is Spirit-filled at busi- ness as when at church. After all, what Christ wants is the man as he is, through whom he is to shine out to the world. Religious duties are not ends in themselves. When John Lewis Shuck, who laid the foundations of the work of the Southern Baptist Convention in south- ern and central China, was a young man, he attended a missionary meeting. A fervent appeal was made and the plates came in heaped with bank-notes, silver, and even gold. But there was a card. An usher remembered who put it in. It simply said, "Myself." It was another example of "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee." God wants the man's self back of his business, and then the business will be but the prism by which God's white light of love, holiness, and truth shall be refracted into the rain- bow colors of Christian graces. CHAPTER X THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST IT was years ago that Thomas Hughes received a communication from the north of England, where at the time had occurred many savage assaults and crimes of violence, in regard to the formation of a new Christian organization. The promoters felt that many Christian young men of the time had separated themselves from the or- dinary habits and life of young men, and had set before themselves a wrong standard, which taught, not that they were to live in the world and subdue it to their Master, but were to withdraw from it as much as possible. Therefore they wanted this new "Christian Guild" founded on quite other prin- ciples. They wanted to revive by their organiza- tion muscular Christianity, in which members must be first of all Christian, but selected as far as possi- ble for some act of physical courage or prowess. It was hoped that branches of the parent organiza- tion might attract the vigorous young men of each district, and so give a higher tone to the sports and occupations of young Englishmen. Thomas Hughes did not see his way clear to identify himself with the proposed organization, no THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST III but he began to engage in a new study of the life of Christ, the result of which is to be found in his "Manliness of Jesus," which has not to-day, for some reason, the wide reading that it deserves. Not on the same subject, but yet rich in material on the topic, derived from an original investigation of the Gospels, is Robert E. Speer's "The Man Christ Jesus." Still the question is comparatively untouched. It was not, then, with presuppositions that scores of correspondents answered the some- what daring question sent to them : " Is the person of Christ attractive to men } " To the question, there was a quite general affirma- tive answer. This unanimity of opinion may possi- bly have been caused by the general condition of public opinion, much the same as when many peo- ple profess an admiration for music because it is supposed not to be good form to dislike it. Here, the stray answers count most. "Yes," is the answer; "to all fair-minded men." "Way above his age in all that pertains to a sub- lime man." "Believers and non-believers com- mend him." " Yes, as a worker, server, and hero." " I never found any one who did not wish he was as good." Some limit this regard to the good or Christian men. To others "there is no form or comeliness in him." " They do not like his perfect life in contrast with their own." One gives this full answer to the question : " It depends upon the man. The more pervading and 112 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION deep-seated the element of honesty is in the man, the more affinity he will feel between himself and the character of Jesus Christ. If a man orders his life in accordance with * No. i,' instead of the Golden Rule, the character of Christ, so far as it affects him at all, will be a reproach to him. There was not an attribute of Jesus Christ that did not re- buke self-seeking, meanness, hypocrisy, dishonesty. Men who are avaricious, men who love money for money's sake, men who love the chief seat in the synagogue, cannot find the person of Christ at- tractive, whatever they may outwardly profess on the subject." Still others believe that Christ would be attract- ive to men if they really knew him, and he was properly presented from the pulpit. Men ** know nothing about him except what they are taught to believe." **Men are so ignorant of what Christ is or what it is to be Christlike. Christian teach- ing, until within a short time, has been an emotional act rather than an appeal to the common sense. Any one whose susceptibilities were touched was received by the church with open arms. A man may resolve to be a Christian in an instant, but years of patient, enduring discipline of self must be persisted in before he can attain even a trifle of self-control and self-renunciation. Love of Christ may begin quickly in the heart, but only after years of toilsome study can the beauty of his life shine forth." THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST II3 Several speak especially of the manliness of Christ as a needed condition of attracting men. ** Yes, when he is preached as a full-rounded man of strength and character, but yet tender and lov- ing and humble. He is too often made to be a weak man by pulpit and painter, too much of the Isaiah Christ. Men love strength and courage and fortitude, and I believe that Christ so lived this life at all times." However, another pushes back the failure to attract men to the Bible itself, and says that, *'as presented in the Bible, he is essentially effeminate." Among other suggestive remarks made, are that he is attractive **as a man," but "they think he was almost too good to be real"; "too impossi- ble." "Not all his teachings are practical. He merely preached sentiment and had a one-sided religion." "Jesus lived nineteen hundred years ago and things have changed so materially since then that to-day we can admire only his mission." " It should be so, but there are so few Christians who are living like Christ. Jesus would be more attract- ive to men if his followers were more like him." Looking at these answers as a whole, it may be said that there are four phases of Christ's life that are attractive to men when properly presented. The first is the human as the counterpart to the divine Christ. It is well to emphasize for men with their struggles that Christ was at times hungry and thirsty, needed sleep and was often weary; H 114 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION that he partook of flesh and blood, and was a fellow-sufferer on earth ; that he was beset with temptation, not only in the wilderness, but through his life, and that from the desert to Golgotha, be- tween baptism and baptism, there was a conflict with Satan ; that there were moments of perplex- ity and deep agonizing and strong crying. A man ought to come into contact with that Christ who grew as he grows, grew in stature, wisdom, and grace ; who learned obedience by the things that he suffered ; who was made perfect through suffer- ings ; who trusted and prayed as a real, dependent, subordinate, human being must. The second phase is the personal as opposed to the theological Christ. There are forensic rela- tionships with God no doubt, but men want reality. Christ cannot be a means to some end beyond him- self and be attractive to men. Atonement, justifi- cation, regeneration — there are two ways of defin- ing them. Better let the legal transactions be held in abeyance, while the personal relationships of Christ to the believer are made prominent. He it was who by a tangible vicarious sacrifice came into the fever-smitten world and took the dread disease of sin upon himself ; he it was who made himself our friend, bound us to him, and vouched for our future to the Father ; he it was who made us admirers and followers of him with a newly be- gotten impulse. That is all. It isn't hard to understand, but it helps a man. THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST 1 15 Thirdly, there is the modern Christ versus the ancient Christ. A missionary once said — he is a returned missionary now; " The Japanese cannot accept our historical Christ ; we must give them the Christ spirit — the essential Christ — and they will in this way come unto the light and truth." Now men need the historical Christ, but they want also, not the present ideal of Christ alone, but Christ himself. We have a twofold process in transmitting Christ's teachings into the language of to-day: we must first put ourselves back into the first century to understand the times of Jesus and to see what he taught ; and, second, we must bring back the principles thus discovered and apply them to the present day. This must theoretically always be done. But practically, day by day, a man has but to say, " Christ sees me ; knows me. What does he want me to do ? " Then, perhaps more than all else, the men of to- day want the masculine Christ as opposed to the feminine. There were two ancient ideas of Christ's physical appearance, one that he was a leper, smit- ten and afflicted of God, the other that he was the perfect type of physical manhood. The first idea passed away, but the second became so warped that in almost all art that to-day is admired, Christ is presented as a most effeminate man. The ideal is esthetic rather than practical. Christ is pictured with long hair parted in the center, with light brown beard, large dreamy eyes, and an expression of Il6 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION meekness and resignation. Perhaps this was the natural tendency of those centuries when the great problem was how to regard Christ as the Son of God ; although even Protestantism, while it did away with the worship of Mary, kept Mary's qualities in the Son. To-day, many causes seem to avail in holding this warped conception of the nature of Christ. It is not so uncommon, even at the present time, to hear the contrast made between God and Christ, mak- ing God the embodiment of justice and Christ of love, in order to justify a theory of the atonement. Whatever the reasons are, the popular opinion thus characterizes Jesus. It is somewhat startling, but after all only a unique example of a popular im- pression, that makes Rev. Phoebe H. Hanaford, a Universalist pastor, write in the Independent of May 7, 1891 : ** The church has long perceived that the tender-hearted pastor best represented the good Shepherd, who 'carried the lambs in his bosom.' Not all men can thus present the Lord. But I think it cannot be denied, that all women, by their very womanliness, when they are called to the ministry, thus represent the great Teacher." But look at Christ from the critical point of view of masculinity, and what is found ? Did he have emotions ? Yes, but they were united with a strong intellectuality. He was not suggestible at all, but was himself the strong master of the minds of others. He was affectionate, but with an inde- THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST II7 pendence and high moral regard that could make him rebuke his best earthly friend. No one could call him a conservative ; and yet he united his religion to the past of Judaism by the law of spiritual succession. He was dependent upon no one, except his Father. He was artistic, for no one knew the charms of nature better than he ; but he was rugged in thought and simple in speech. It is not possible to examine each part of his manly nature, but it is well to note especially the marks of his intellect and will-power. To be pure and to be insignificant in mental ability gives one little power over others. The world has seen in Christ morality triumphant under the skill of in- tellect. Mind is the ballast of godliness. Now Jesus had power to think as well as power to save. His intellectual power makes up a part of the reve- lation of God. Nor was it difficult for him to think great thoughts or build mighty plans which show the sanity of his mind by their persistency for twenty centuries. He was also a practical man of affairs. His plan was not complicated, but it car- ried within it success. For the time being, it was deprecated, but its wisdom is revealed by the fact that it is moving the world to-day. So keen- sighted was he, that he foretold the particular dif- ficulties his disciples would meet down through the progress of the centuries. Here and there some one has written a paragraph or more, appealing for a proper recognition of the Il8 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION manly Christ of sagacity and authority. Francis Greenwood Peabody, for example, in "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," writes : " The traditions of the church ascribe to Jesus almost every other virtue than that of sagacity. He is the type of submission and resignation. His features, as por- trayed by Christian art, represent, almost invaria- bly, a feminine, spiritual, patient personality, not one that is virile, commanding, and strong. He has become the ideal of the monastic and ascetic character, and in many minds would have no con- sideration as a wise guide in practical affairs. A most careful study of the teaching of Jesus leads to quite an opposite impression. He was indeed a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but he was none the less truly a man of wisdom and ac- quainted with human nature. His sanity of judg- ment is as extraordinary as his depth of sympathy. . . . Christian art and reverence, in remembering the prophecy fulfilled in him, * In all their affliction he was afflicted,' has forgotten that other hope of a just and discriminating guide, which was equally fulfilled in him : * The government shall be upon his shoulder : and his name shall be called Wonder- ful, Counsellor'; * and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understand- ing.' The picture of Jesus which Christian art has yet to paint is that of the masculine Christ, a per- sonality who teaches with authority, and whose horizon gives him comprehensiveness of view." THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST II9 Christ had splendid self-control. See him as he conquered out there in the wilderness physical de- mands for the sake of the interests of the kingdom ; as he restrained his eagerness and worked on in obscurity for thirty years ; as he refused kingship, when he was de jure king ; as he never spoke un- advisedly, although the human tongue is a most unruly member ; as he spoke his convictions even when threatened by death. He had moral courage. He would not compro- mise with Nicodemus, or whitewash the lives of the Pharisees, or be fearful in driving out the money-changers by the threat of the lash. He was unmindful of his reputation, and never accom- modated his teaching to suit the times or the au- dience. He was as ready to set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem as if he were going to an en- thronement of earthly glory. He was a patriot ; but a patriot who loved his country better than his own life, and was willing to die for his country even when he himself could not live in his earthly life to share in the final victory. This fine category of manly qualities does not signify that Christ lacked the gentler graces. Speer quotes from Miss Mulock in ''John Halifax, Gentle- man," who speaks of tenderness as "that rare thing — a quality different from kindliness, affec- tionateness, or benevolence ; a quality which can only exist in its perfection in strong, deep, unde- monstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection 120 THE MASCULINE IN RELIGION seldomer found in women than in men." Speer goes on to show that Jesus revealed that tender- ness in his quick thought for others, in his love for little children, in his kindly attitude toward the Samaritans, in his sympathy with widows, in his sympathy with the lonely, in his care for the poor, in his passion for healing the sick and the wretched, in his remembrance of his mother in his last agony. If, therefore, Jesus had the feminine graces, as he certainly did have, they were united with the strong, deep qualities of a manly nature. If he was the "apotheosis of the feminine ideal," he was also the apotheosis of the masculine ideal. He was a hero, and men admire the hero. No wonder that Wendell Phillips made this reply to a group of men in Boston who told him that Jesus was amia- ble, but not strong: "Not strong! Test the strength of Jesus by the strength of the men whom he has mastered ; titans like Cromwell, for example, or Augustine, or Martin Luther I " Test Jesus Christ by the best standards of manhood practised by the noblest men, and taught by the wisest leaders of thought, and Jesus will be found the supremely manly man. Date Due I AP?7 0EC19 1999 f) 1 1012 01009 1496