Division 
 
 Section 
 
 i 
 

The Religion of 
 Our Lord 
 
 Being Addresses delivered at the Garrick Theatre, Chicago, 
 during Holy Week, 1923, and at the Pabst Theatre, 
 Milwaukee, during Passion Week, 1923 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RT. REV. C. P. ANDERSON, D.D. 
 
 Bishop of Chicago 
 
 MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 
 MILWAUKEE, WIS. 
 
 A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. 
 LONDON 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Religion and Civilization 
 Religion and Race 
 Religion and Politics . 
 Religion and Business . 
 Religion and the Church 
 
 . 3 
 . 11 
 . 20 
 . 31 
 . 41 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/religionofourlorOOande 
 
Lenten Noon-Day 
 Addresses 
 
 of 
 
 The Rt. Rev. C. P. Anderson, D. D. 
 
 Bishop of Chicago 
 
 GARRICK THEATRE 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 Holy Week 
 19 2 3 
 
These addresses are affectionately 
 dedicated to the memory 
 
 of 
 
 The Right Reverend Charles D. Williams, D. D 
 late Bishop of Michigan, 
 whose loyalty to Jesus Christ led him 
 to claim all the kingdoms of this world 
 for his Lord and Master. 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 Religion and Civilization 
 
 HERE is only one subject to which I can 
 
 X invite your consideration during this Holy 
 Week. It is the religion of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. It is the same subject upon which, un¬ 
 der various forms, for many years past, I have 
 been making Holy Week addresses to which you 
 have so graciously listened. 
 
 This week I shall speak about the Christian 
 religion in its bearings on our civilization, our 
 business, our politics and our various social re¬ 
 lationships. Let me set you at ease, however, at 
 the outset, by assuring you that I shall not dis¬ 
 cuss “business or politics.” The Christian reli¬ 
 gion is my theme, but it is the Christian religion 
 in business, in politics, in those social contacts 
 which make or mar the beauty and joy of living, 
 and which determine the strength of our allegi¬ 
 ance to our religion and our God. In the very 
 forefront of everything I shall say will stand 
 the commanding figure of Jesus Christ, Who 
 claims for His own many regions in which His 
 religion is not taken seriously by His followers, 
 or in which it is not allowed to penetrate. This 
 is the confession of faith with which I start. This 
 is the platform on which I shall ask you all to 
 stand, that there is no sphere of human conduct 
 or contact from which the Christian man can 
 exclude Jesus Christ as his Lord, master and 
 
 +--+ 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
guide. Let us today apply that principle to some 
 of the affairs that go to make up our civilization. 
 
 It used to be said, partly in jest and partly in 
 earnest, that religion had nothing to do with 
 business or politics. Those who said it in jest 
 were frequently in earnest. Those who said it 
 in earnest were frequently intolerant and dog¬ 
 matic about it. This demand for the exclusion 
 of religion from spheres which were regarded as 
 secular, was generally accompanied by a demand 
 for the simple Gospel. By the simple Gospel was 
 probably meant the salvation of a man’s soul 
 through the merits of Jesus Christ and through no 
 merits of his own. That is an essential part of 
 the Gospel. It is essential because it exalts Christ 
 and abases oneself. The preciousness of that 
 simple Gospel cannot be over-estimated. It is a 
 wonderful thing for a man to be able to say, 
 “Save me, O Lord, and I shall be saved.” It is 
 not the whole Gospel, however. It is not the 
 main Gospel. It is not the primary Gospel. The 
 primary Gospel is:—“God so loved the 
 world that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
 whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
 but have everlasting life.” The whole world is 
 the object of the love of God and the subject of 
 His redemptive acts. You and I come in on it 
 because we accept for ourselves what is available 
 for everybody. It is because God loves every¬ 
 body that He loves you and me. “Thy Kingdom 
 come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
 Heaven”—that is the goal of the Christian Gos¬ 
 pel as expressed in our Lord’s own language of 
 
prayer. “The kingdoms of this world are become 
 the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; 
 and He shall reign for ever and ever.” That 
 means, if it means anything, that we shall bend 
 all our energies towards bringing it to pass that 
 the nations of this wprld recognize the sover¬ 
 eignty of Jesus Christ, that the governments of 
 this world operate under His sway, that industry 
 conducts itself in accordance with the moral law 
 of the Kingdom of God, that commerce conforms 
 to the Christian rule, that society has certain 
 standards of decency and propriety which can be 
 designated as Christian, and that our civilization 
 shall become Christian in its structure, its cul¬ 
 ture, its ethics and its loyalties. That means in 
 turn that the Christian religion is concerned with 
 every field of human activity and that its busi¬ 
 ness is to operate in these fields. 
 
 It won’t do any longer for a man to say:— 
 “Religion is a private matter between me and 
 God,” (and he often puts the “me” first). Re¬ 
 ligion is, of course, fundamentally something 
 between God and me. “Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
 and with all thy mind.” This is the first and 
 great commandment. This is the foundation. 
 The second commandment is like unto the first. 
 “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This 
 is the superstructure. Because religion is a cer¬ 
 tain kind of relationship between God and me, it 
 is a similar kind of relationship between my 
 neighbour and me, between my church and me, 
 between my country and me, between my city and 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 me, between my employer and me, between my 
 employee and me, between my landlord and me, 
 between my tenant and me, between my customer 
 and me, between my enemy and me, between the 
 Jew and me, between the Negro and me, between 
 the Turk and me, between everybody and me. 
 The relationship of God to the human race is de¬ 
 fined in terms of love. Therefore, love must be 
 the basis of the relationship between me and my 
 neighbours. “If God so loved us, we ought also 
 to love one another.” 
 
 Have you ever noticed the parallel between a 
 man’s business philosophy and his religious phil¬ 
 osophy? Religious individualism, which made 
 the individual rather than society, the center of 
 the whole scheme of things, grew up side by side 
 with a form of industrialism, which made the 
 rights of the individual rather than public wel¬ 
 fare, the center of the scheme of things. Both 
 have flourished, but both are running on the 
 rocks today. On the other hand, the conception 
 of religion as something corporate,—as a society, 
 a church, a kingdom,—goes hand in hand with 
 the recognition of corporate moral obligations on 
 the part of governments and with some kind of 
 mutualism or collectivism or partnership in the 
 realm of industry. These seem to have the future 
 in their hands. The man who says that religion 
 is a private affair between God and him is the 
 same man who goes on to say that his business 
 is a private affair between his conscience and him. 
 Under that philosophy the employer of men 
 might say:—“The wages that I pay, the seven- 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 day week that I require, the twelve-hour day that 
 I exact, the little children whom I employ, the 
 profits which I make, the dividends which I de¬ 
 clare, the liberties which I give or withhold, the 
 civic officials with whom I wickedly connive,— 
 these are private affairs between me and my 
 conscience. Hands off.” And the man who is 
 employed might say:—“The quality of service I 
 render, the character of the work I do, the hours 
 I shirk, the fraudulent labor I cover up, the 
 sabotage I cause,—these are my private affairs. 
 Hands off.” Both are wrong. These are not 
 their private affairs. Neither religion nor busi¬ 
 ness is anybody’s private affair. A man can no 
 more say that his business is his own private 
 affair than he can say that God is his own private 
 God. 
 
 Think how much time men spend, and rightly 
 spend, over business and politics. Business and 
 politics largely regulate and control our fortunes, 
 our salaries, our incomes, our homes, our schools, 
 our streets, our parks, our playgrounds, our food, 
 our air, our water. These are things that people 
 talk about, think about and worry over. These 
 are spheres wherein character is made or un¬ 
 made, wherein souls are saved or lost. Has re¬ 
 ligion nothing to do with such things? If not, 
 it has nothing to do with the things upon which 
 people are spending nearly all their waking 
 hours, and in the handling of which the quality 
 of their Christian discipleship is determined. If 
 religion is not a determining factor in such mat¬ 
 ters, it is because it has allowed itself to be 
 
 L 7 ] 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
driven up into a little corner where it is con¬ 
 fined exclusively with some kind of ecclesias- 
 ticism or other-worldliness which have little to 
 do with the building up of the Kingdom of God 
 on the earth. Thus it is that the Christian Church 
 is weak where it ought to be strong. It has been 
 shoved back into an ecclesiastical corner of the 
 universe. Back there it is let alone. Back there 
 it lets people alone and does not trouble their 
 consciences. Yet such is the perversity of human 
 nature, that the men who insist on keeping reli¬ 
 gion apart from the daily affairs of men, despise 
 the Church for her isolation and lack of leader¬ 
 ship. “No religion is Catholic which does not 
 claim the whole of the life of every man and of 
 all mankind—domestic, industrial, commercial, 
 national, international and ecclesiastical for God.” 
 
 It is right here too that we discover the weak 
 point in our civilization. Everybody is saying 
 that world civilization is in a bad way. I hate to 
 join in this lugubrious dirge. I should prefer to 
 have you call me almost anything except a pessi¬ 
 mist. Nevertheless the facts just now seem to 
 be on the side of the pessimist. Our civilization 
 seems to lack salt. It lacks the ingredient which 
 would make it savory. It is sick, even if busi¬ 
 ness is beginning to look up in the United States. 
 It is sick all over. The sickness is taking the 
 form of a corporate insanity. The insanity is 
 taking the form of an obsession. The obsession 
 is taking the form of a belief that somehow or 
 other everything is going to come out all right 
 whether you and I and others do anything about 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 it or not. The greatest delusion of the twentieth 
 century is the belief in the inevitability of prog¬ 
 ress regardless of what men do. That belief 
 seems to be based on an erroneous valuation of 
 evolution, science and invention. Evolution tells 
 the story of downs as well as ups, of extinctions 
 as well as survivals. The best does not always 
 survive. The best of the human race does not 
 survive in war times. Sometimes the worst 
 seems to survive. “The germ that killed Alex¬ 
 ander the Great at the age of thirty-two” is still 
 alive and doing its deadly work. The germs that 
 wrecked the world’s greatest civilizations in the 
 past are still alive in the twentieth century and 
 doing their deadly work. Retrogression under 
 certain conditions is as inevitable as progress un¬ 
 der opposite conditions. As for science, nothing 
 can be more thrilling than its story of marvellous 
 accomplishment. It is wonderful. It is thrilling. 
 But we have seen the discoveries of science, es¬ 
 pecially in the department of chemistry, turned 
 to man’s destruction. Progress depends not so 
 much on the discoveries of science, which have 
 possibilities of evil as well as good, but on the 
 uses to which those discoveries are put. So it is 
 with our inventions. It depends on what we do 
 with them. One can fly to hell as easily as he 
 can fly to heaven in an aeroplane. One can send 
 hate over a radio as easily as love. Notwith¬ 
 standing all our science and inventions which sur¬ 
 pass those of any former age, our age has not 
 produced a poet equal to Homer, a philosopher 
 
 [ 9 ] 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
* 
 
 4 
 
 equal to Aristotle, a mind equal to Plato, a spirit 
 equal to St. Paul. 
 
 In a word, there are no automatic forces at 
 work in the world which guarantee progress to 
 the human race if the human race is determined 
 to go backward instead of forward. There are 
 no subterranean physical forces which operate 
 mechanically in compelling people to go forward 
 or backward in spite of themselves. What is 
 progress? It seems to me it is the ability to re¬ 
 ceive and transmit truth, beauty and goodness. 
 Anything that makes for truth anywhere, for 
 beauty anywhere, for goodness anywhere, makes 
 for progress. Anything that makes for lies, for 
 ugliness, for badness, makes for retrogression. 
 
 Truth, beauty and goodness are the character¬ 
 istics of God, Jesus Christ is their greatest expo¬ 
 nent. He is their greatest exponent in every age 
 and in every civilization. I cannot therefore 
 think of progress in our age and civilization apart 
 from Jesus Christ. For progress today we cer¬ 
 tainly do not need more war, more hate, more 
 strife, more bitterness, more covetousness, more 
 avarice; but more truth, more beauty, more 
 goodness, more love, more justice, more right¬ 
 eousness, more of those things that lie at the 
 heart of the religion of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Therefore, I conclude that there is none other 
 name given under heaven whereby the civiliza¬ 
 tion of the twentieth century can be saved than 
 the name of Jesus Christ. 
 
 * - * 
 
 I 10 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 Religion and Race 
 
 I S POKE to you yesterday about religion and 
 civilization. Let me speak to you today 
 about religion and race. It is a more diffi¬ 
 cult subject. One of the missionary prayers of 
 the Church with which many of you are familiar 
 begins thus:—“O God, Who hast made of one 
 blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face 
 of the whole earth.” That prayer is based on 
 a part of the speech that St. Paul made to the 
 Athenians on Mars Hill. In that speech, how¬ 
 ever, St. Paul made an important statement 
 which has not been incorporated into the prayer. 
 St. Paul said:—“God hath made of one blood all 
 nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the 
 earth, and hath determined the times before ap¬ 
 pointed, and the bounds of their habitation.” In 
 that one sentence he utters three pregnant truths. 
 First, the oneness of the human family regard¬ 
 less of nationality, race or color. Second, the 
 right of each race to live its own separate life 
 without molestation in its own habitations and 
 within its own boundaries; and, third, the fact 
 that that right has divine sanction and approval. 
 
 The highest welfare of the whole human race 
 may be best brought about by each race living its 
 own separate life, rather than by an attempt to 
 blend incompatible races through intermarriage 
 or through an economic admixture. For in- 
 
 ■f-V 
 
 [ 11 ] 
 
►f*-di¬ 
 
 stance, it may well be that America and Japan 
 can both render their greatest service towards 
 human progress by living apart, rather than by 
 any social or industrial amalgamation of these 
 peoples. There seems to be a religious as well 
 as a political sanction for such immigration laws 
 as would protect the ability of each race to ren¬ 
 der its own service in its own way. 
 
 St. Paul goes further, however, and says that 
 these racial distinctions are for a definite pur¬ 
 pose. That purpose was “that they should seek 
 the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, 
 and find Him, though He be not far from every 
 one of us; for in Him we live and move and 
 have our being.” Just as each race makes a 
 unique contribution to human progress which 
 would probably be lost if the race lost its identity 
 in the crowd; so also the special contribution 
 while each race makes to the fullness of men’s 
 knowledge of God, through the development of 
 its own spiritual genius, might be forfeited in a 
 general mixup of all mankind. The Hebrew 
 race rendered extraordinary service to all man¬ 
 kind. That service might have been forfeited if 
 this race had become merged with the surround¬ 
 ing nations. Think of the wonderful contribu¬ 
 tion that the Greek race made to the Christian 
 Church in the formative period of its existence, 
 a contribution which seemed to be contingent 
 upon its separateness. Think of the service ren¬ 
 dered by the Roman Empire in giving to the 
 Christian Church its own genius. Think of what 
 China and Japan and India and Africa may yet 
 
 •I-------+ 
 
 [ 12 1 
 
* 
 
 do for the enrichment of Christian knowledge 
 and experience when each consecrates its own 
 unique genius to the service of Jesus Christ. 
 Races which are clearly differentiated in struc¬ 
 ture, color and pedigree can apparently render 
 their greatest service to mankind by separately 
 developing their own aristocracy and finding their 
 own spiritual expression; whereas the cross¬ 
 breeding of such races may produce the vices of 
 both and the virtues of neither. 
 
 At any rate, the contacts of incompatible races 
 have always been a source of trouble. That 
 trouble has often led to riot, massacre and 
 slaughter. The causes of the friction lie deep 
 down in ethnic differences, in religious convic¬ 
 tions, in inequalities of economic skill; but it 
 often happens that some comparatively inconse¬ 
 quential thing, which is easily avoidable, is the 
 immediate cause of riot and destruction. 
 
 Not long ago I was going by boat from 
 Smyrna to Constantinople—from Smyrna which 
 is now in ruins and which has been the scene of 
 so many massacres, to Constantinople, which for 
 centuries has been the center of political intrigue. 
 I was on the upper deck looking down at the 
 bow of the boat. It was jammed with people of 
 many sorts. It was about sundown. A Moham¬ 
 medan took off his coat and spread it on the 
 floor and began to say his evening prayers. It 
 seemed to me that he took up more space than 
 the crowded condition of the boat warranted. A 
 Greek Christian stepped on his coat. It seemed 
 
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 [ 13 ] 
 
T 
 
 * 
 
 to me that he did it deliberately. Whereupon the 
 Turk ceased his prayers and flew at the throat 
 of the Christian. Whereupon other Christians 
 came to the rescue of their fellow Christian. 
 Whereupon other Turks came to the rescue of 
 their fellow Turk, and there was a riot on board 
 ship, requiring all the authority of the boat’s 
 officers and crew, with the assistance of some of 
 the passengers, to quell. If that had taken place 
 on land it might have led to a massacre, and yet 
 it started with a little thing. 
 
 Let us come now by a single flight from 
 Smyrna to Chicago. You and I live in a polyglot 
 and cosmopolitan city. Some forty-five langu¬ 
 ages are spoken by our fellow citizens. Nearly 
 all the nationalities of the world are represented 
 here and many of the races. We have white and 
 black and yellow, we have Jew and Gentile. 
 Between those races there are natural incompat¬ 
 ibilities. Those incompatibilities poison the at¬ 
 mosphere, take the sweetness out of life and 
 easily lead to riot and massacre. Is there any¬ 
 thing that can intervene to prevent friction be¬ 
 tween the incompatible elements of our citizen¬ 
 ship? I hope you are interested, brethren. I 
 am coming now to a matter of vital religion in a 
 sphere where you and I very rarely practice it. 
 When I was consecrated a Bishop, the question 
 was put to me:—“Will you maintain and set for¬ 
 ward, as much as shall lie in you, quietness, love 
 and peace among all men?” I have been trying 
 to do it throughout my ministry. I am trying 
 to do it now. I love Chicago. I love it so much 
 
 ■!-+ 
 
 [ 14 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 that I should like to render it some service. If I 
 can say anything this morning that will soften 
 acerbities, which too often find a lodgment in 
 Christian breasts, I shall be doing something for 
 my God and my city. 
 
 Is there, I say, anything that can counteract 
 racial incompatibilities and head off trouble in 
 the contacts of the different races and peoples 
 that make up our citizenship? Science tells of 
 ethnological differences, history tells of combats, 
 philosophy throws up its hands in despair. There 
 is only one thing which claims to have the power 
 to make unlike people live together in peace and 
 harmony. That one thing is the religion of 
 Jesus Christ. Listen to what Saint Paul says, 
 “But now ye also put off all these: anger, 
 wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communica¬ 
 tion out of your mouth. Lie not one to an¬ 
 other, seeing that ye have put off the old man 
 with his deeds; and have put on the new man, 
 which is renewed in knowledge after the image 
 of Him that created him; where there is nei¬ 
 ther Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircum¬ 
 cision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but 
 Christ is all, and in all. Put on therefore, as 
 the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of 
 mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meek¬ 
 ness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, 
 and forgiving one another, if any man have a 
 quarrel against any; even as Christ forgave 
 you, so also do ye.” That is the Christian re¬ 
 ligion as applied to our race contacts. It has 
 never been tried on a large scale. It has been 
 
 *-*• 
 
 E 15 ] 
 
tried on a small scale. It has worked wherever 
 it has been tried. During the war when men’s 
 passions and prejudices were at white heat 
 there were groups of people representing dif¬ 
 ferent and conflicting nationalities and races, 
 which were continually meeting, without any 
 unpatriotism, in perfect love and harmony, be¬ 
 cause they had put on the mind of Christ Jesus 
 which overleaps the racial and national barriers 
 which have been erected between men. 
 
 I have only time to apply this in two dif¬ 
 ferent directions. What should be the attitude 
 of Christian men toward the Jew? There are 
 millions of them in this country and there are a 
 lot of them in Chicago. What should be your 
 attitude as Christian people? Certainly you 
 ought not to be Jew-baiters or propagators of 
 race hatred or promoters of discord and envy. 
 Certainly your Christian profession makes you 
 peacemakers to the utmost of your ability. The 
 Jewish people are one of the greatest peoples 
 that the world has ever produced. It was in 
 their language that the moral law of the King¬ 
 dom of God came down to us. Their sacred 
 scriptures are a part of our Scriptures. Our 
 Saviour was born of that race. They are our 
 spiritual forefathers. From their loins we are 
 sprung. They have adorned all of the great 
 professions. They have exhibited extraordi¬ 
 nary skill in art, literature, science and philan¬ 
 thropy. What ought to be your attitude to 
 people like that? Convert them if you can by 
 all means. Convert them if you can, but you 
 
 *1-* 
 
 [ 16 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 will never convert them by calling them bad 
 names, by knocking them down, by stirring up 
 trouble, by showing your animosity. If you ever 
 do convert them you will do so by excelling them 
 in charity, intelligence, benevolence and phi¬ 
 lanthropy. Let secular organizations of Gen¬ 
 tiles and Jews do what they will in the way of 
 social exclusiveness, it seems to me that the re¬ 
 ligion of Jesus Christ, the universal Man whom 
 no race can monopolize, ought to beget in you 
 and me a cosmopolitanism and catholicity that 
 will recognize merit wherever we find it, and 
 the spiritual ability to encompass in our affec¬ 
 tions all the children of God. 
 
 What should be the attitude of the white 
 Christian in Chicago towards the black Chris¬ 
 tian? This is a practical matter. This is a 
 sphere wherein we can practice our Christian¬ 
 ity. There are about one hundred and ten 
 thousand Negroes in Chicago. The number has 
 doubled quite recently. They were brought in 
 here by industry. They were exploited by poli¬ 
 tics after they got here. They came in a rush. 
 They upset real estate values and social equil¬ 
 ibrium. White people got angry. Black people 
 got heady and strutted. They used words. 
 Words led to a riot. In that riot fifteen white 
 men and twenty-three black men were killed. 
 One hundred and seventy-eight white men and 
 three hundred and forty-two black men were 
 injured. Law and order were broken down. 
 Hoodlumism reigned. The militia had to be 
 called in. Each side blamed the other. There 
 
 •!-* 
 
 [ 17 ] 
 
i 
 
 * 
 
 was blame on both sides; but there is one thing 
 for which white people ought not to> blame 
 black people. Blame industry, if you will, for 
 its social iniquity in bringing masses of black 
 people into a white city without providing 
 houses for them. Blame politics, if you will, 
 for appealing to their lowest passions and preju¬ 
 dices after they came here; but let not white 
 men blame black men for doing what white 
 men have always done, namely seek opportun¬ 
 ities for advancement. 
 
 The Negroes of Chicago are making remark¬ 
 able progress. They operate over thirteen 
 hundred places of business, several high-grade 
 social centers, one first-class hospital, sixty-five 
 churches, which are worth over two millions of 
 dollars. They spend a quarter of a million dol¬ 
 lars every year in maintaining their churches. 
 They have thousands of bank depositors and 
 they have deposited millions of dollars in white 
 men’s banks. Isn’t all that to their credit ? And 
 ought not white people to take an attitude of help¬ 
 fulness instead of an attitude of hostility to¬ 
 wards these people? Of course the white race 
 is the dominant race. We have the right to in¬ 
 sist that minority races, whether black or yel¬ 
 low, will adjust themselves to this fact; but a 
 superior race which fails to treat an inferior 
 race in a superior manner forfeits its claim to 
 superiority. 
 
 I said a moment ago that a great many trou¬ 
 bles arose through little things which could be 
 
 •i -* 
 
 [ 18 ] 
 
easily avoided. The report of Governor Low- 
 den’s commission on the race situation in Chi¬ 
 cago has many interesting things to say, but 
 it is especially interesting in pointing out how 
 little things make big troubles. The Negro 
 wants schools for his children, he wants his 
 alleys kept clean, he wants equal pay for equal 
 service, he wants to be permitted to join the 
 union. He objects to the press spelling the 
 word “Negro” with a small “n.” He objects to 
 being called “nigger.” I think his objections 
 are well-founded. At any rate, here is a sphere 
 where the people of this polyglot city, in which 
 it would be easy at any moment to start a flame 
 by scratching a match, have a chance to prac¬ 
 tice their Christianity. Let us remember that 
 all the people are the children of our God and 
 are our brothers and sisters. Let us remember 
 that they are the people for whom Christ Jesus 
 died. Let us remember that many of them are 
 the representatives of races which have ren¬ 
 dered extraordinary service to mankind, that 
 some of them are backward races which show 
 a capacity for development. Let us cut out of 
 our vocabulary such words as Sheeney, Dago, 
 Nigger, Polack, Wops. Let us remember our 
 religion. Let us remember that in Jesus Christ 
 there is neither Gentile nor Jew, black nor 
 white, but all are one in Him. 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 Religion and Politics 
 
 1 SHALL speak to you today about religion 
 and politics. I ought perhaps to say relig¬ 
 ion in politics, for of course religion is the 
 subject that is under consideration. I shall take 
 it today into a region where it is a good deal of 
 a stranger. Politics is that department of human 
 life into which religion rarely penetrates, and in 
 which consequently there is so little hope of the 
 realization of one’s political ideals. “Good gov¬ 
 ernment is the hardest of all problems, and it has 
 never yet been solved. Political history is an al¬ 
 most unrelieved tragedy.” The tragedy is due 
 in part to the fact that religion and citizenship 
 rarely keep company. 
 
 All citizens might well be grouped under 
 three heads. First, the bad citizens who make 
 no bones about it; second, the religious citizens 
 who either keep out of politics because they are 
 so unholy, or else demand an impractical Utopia 
 in the clouds; third, practical good citizens who 
 work and struggle and even fight for the realiza¬ 
 tion of their ideals but who are governed never¬ 
 theless by the principle that when they can’t get 
 what they want they get what they can. The 
 bad citizens who go into politics and the religious 
 citizens who keep out of them because they are 
 bad, are probably about equal in number. It so 
 happens, however, in the world of practical pol- 
 
 •i - h 
 
 [ 20 ] 
 
itics, that the religious citizen who keeps out of 
 politics because they fall short of his ideals, fits 
 in admirably with the plans of the bad citizen 
 who has no ideals at all. That puts a heavy re¬ 
 sponsibility on those who cannot be classified 
 with the bad citizens on the one hand, and who, 
 on the other hand, make no claim to any high de¬ 
 gree of heavenly-mindedness. On a former oc¬ 
 casion, when I was speaking from this platform 
 on city politics, I carried you back to that politi¬ 
 cal classic, Plato’s Republic. Let me recall the 
 reference for it brings me to the heart of our 
 subject. It is a dialogue between Socrates and 
 Glaucon. Socrates contends that every wise 
 man will desire moral growth. “He will not then 
 engage in politics,” says Glaucon. “Not in his 
 native land perhaps, unless some Divine event be¬ 
 falls, but in his own true state he will,” replies 
 Socrates. To which Glaucon answers, “You 
 mean the state which we were just working out 
 
 on paper.for of course it exists nowhere on 
 
 the earth.” “Quite true,” rejoins Socrates, “it 
 exists nowhere on earth, but in heaven a pattern 
 is laid up for whoever desires to see it, and see¬ 
 ing it to make it his home.” This is St. Paul’s 
 teaching also. St. Paul was a Roman citizen. He 
 set much store by it. On two occasions he ap¬ 
 pealed to the civil law, though without satisfac¬ 
 tory results. He summed up his doctrine of 
 Christian citizenship in these words:—“Our cit¬ 
 izenship is in heaven.” “We are fellow-citizens 
 with the saints and of the household of God.” 
 Here are two of the world’s master-minds, Plato 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 and St. Paul, who still represent the last word in 
 politics. Their political creed may be stated in 
 this way:—“I believe that I am a citizen of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. I believe that as such, my 
 political duty is to do everything in my power 
 towards reproducing here on the earth that per¬ 
 fect political state which would obtain in a per¬ 
 fect world.” 
 
 This too is the teaching of Jesus Christ. “Thy 
 will be done on earth, as it is done in Heaven.” 
 He taught us to “render unto Caesar the things 
 that are Caesar’s.” That is a simple, but far-reach¬ 
 ing statement to which only an infinitesimal por¬ 
 tion of Christian people have paid any attention. 
 That is why the word politics has become a syno¬ 
 nym for treachery and corruption. But this is not 
 the whole of our Lord’s teaching, however. Just 
 as Christ based our duty towards our neighbors 
 on our duty towards God, so He based our duty 
 towards the state on our duty towards God. 
 “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s 
 and unto God the things that are God’s.” Men 
 will never do the former until they learn how to 
 do the latter. “Thy Kingdom come.” There is 
 the foundation of Christian politics. The King¬ 
 dom of God is in the process of becoming. You 
 and I are members of that Kingdom of God 
 which will last forever. At the same time we 
 are citizens of a political democracy which may 
 not last for a century. As citizens of a political 
 democracy which has no guarantee of per¬ 
 manence except in so far as it is imbedded and 
 embodied in the Kingdom of God, we are to live 
 
 *--p 
 
 [ 22 ] 
 
* 
 
 +■ 
 
 and act and work and vote like citizens of the 
 Kingdom of God. That seems to me to be the 
 Christian doctrine of citizenship. I want to 
 apply it to some practical political affairs in 
 our own time. 
 
 Political history is very largely a history of 
 wars. In the early days wars were ostensibly 
 aggressive in purpose. Later on, as men’s con¬ 
 sciences became more acute, the story of war has 
 too often been the story of the skill by which 
 Machiavelian diplomacy and political propaganda 
 hoodwinked the people into believing that their 
 particular wars were for spiritual integrity, even 
 though in fact they may have been wars of 
 acquisitiveness. 
 
 In our time when all the parts of the world 
 have been drawn so close together, wars are so 
 world-wide in their reach, so dysgenic in their 
 effects, so eliminative of the healthiest and the 
 strongest of the race, so incalculably destructive, 
 so provocative of that hatred and strife which 
 undermine civilization, that if there is to be an¬ 
 other hundred years of history like the last hun¬ 
 dred years, the human race will become fright¬ 
 fully deteriorated and our civilization will col¬ 
 lapse. Notwithstanding that fact, which no 
 thoughtful man will deny, the war germs are just 
 as busily at work today as they have been at any 
 other period of history. The world has appar¬ 
 ently learned nothing from the last war in which 
 all parties to it were more or less paralyzed. 
 Europe would be a hotbed of war today if it had 
 
 * - 
 
 [ 23 ] 
 
* 
 
 the tools. It would be an easy thing to provoke 
 a war between the Ufiited States and Japan or 
 between the United States and Mexico. 
 
 What is going to be done about it? Is there 
 any way that these war germs can be extermi¬ 
 nated for the safety of civilization? Is there any 
 way of taking war out of the hands of govern¬ 
 ments and politicians and financiers and putting 
 it into the hands of the people? Is there any way 
 of substituting spiritual force for physical force? 
 What are you and I going to do about it ? I can 
 only speak for myself, and if I use the pronoun 
 I beyond the realm of good taste it is in the hope, 
 that by articulating my own position I can help 
 you to formulate yours even though you reach 
 different conclusions. 
 
 It seems to me that the time has come when 
 we should put a fresh valuation on war and de¬ 
 termine beforehand what our attitude is going 
 to be concerning it. Speaking for myself, I am 
 not a pacifist. There have been wars and there 
 may be wars in the future when the highest serv¬ 
 ice that a man can render is to offer up his life 
 to what he considers to be the higher life. I have 
 carefully reflected upon the last war. I still be¬ 
 lieve that we went into it under the pressure of 
 a moral necessity and that we chose the higher 
 of two courses. A drove of sheep might pass 
 unanimous resolutions in favor of vegetarianism. 
 Those resolutions would not count for much, 
 however, if a pack of wolves happened to be 
 close by. So long as there are wolves in human 
 
 *-* 
 
 [ 24 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 society we may have to treat them in the only 
 way that the wolf can understand. There may 
 be in the future, justifiable wars for innocence, 
 for the weak, for backward peoples, for the 
 downtrodden and the oppressed. On the other 
 hand, wars of acquisitiveness and conquest, wars 
 for markets, for mines, for oil wells, (and they 
 represent most of the world’s wars) are wars of 
 an entirely different character. If another war 
 of such sort looms up on the horizon in your 
 lifetime or mine, I hope that we shall have the 
 perspicacity to see through the lying political 
 propaganda by which it is sought to persuade us 
 that a war for conquest is really a war for spir¬ 
 itual integrity, and, that, recognizing the cam¬ 
 ouflage, we may by the grace of God be able to 
 resist it and take the consequences. It seems to 
 me that this is the Christian position. It is 
 Christian because it represents a willingness to 
 give up one’s life for the Kingdom of God’s 
 sake and an unwillingness to take by force what 
 belongs to somebody else. There are a good 
 many millions of Christians in the world. If ten 
 per cent of the Christian people of the United 
 States and England and France and Italy and 
 Germany were to take some such a position as 
 here indicated we would soon substitute brains 
 for brawn, conference for conflict, spiritual force 
 for physical force. In the last analysis, it is only 
 by some such determination as this, on the part 
 of Christ-minded people, that wars of aggres¬ 
 sion will cease and the day begin to dawn when 
 
 *- ----- — - * 
 
 [ 25 ] 
 
4 
 
 “The war drum will beat no longer and the battle 
 flag be furled 
 
 In the parliament of man, the federation of the 
 world.” 
 
 What about the political responsibility of our 
 country toward world affairs? Now please do 
 not think that I am availing myself of this plat¬ 
 form to take a sideswipe at any political party. 
 I hope I am above that. You are not interested 
 in my politics. If you are, I am an unhappy 
 Republican. That, however, is neither here nor 
 there. We are thinking today about Christian¬ 
 ity in politics. Let us get hold of our Christian¬ 
 ity first, and let our Christianity get a good hold 
 on us. The reason why people do not get a 
 good grip on their political duties is because 
 they have not got a good grip on their religion. 
 
 We started out this morning by saying the 
 Creed:—“I believe in God.” Yesterday we saw 
 that the God in Whom we believe is He Who 
 made of one blood all the nations that dwell 
 upon the face of the earth. We said this morn¬ 
 ing:—“I believe in Jesus Christ.” Christ is the 
 Light of the whole world and not of any one 
 nation. We said:—“I believe in the Holy Cath¬ 
 olic Church.” Its mission is to cover the world. 
 No nation has a monopoly of it. When a Chris¬ 
 tian man gets hold of those three ideas he must 
 think in world terms. He must think in terms of 
 the whole. I do not see how a real Christian 
 man can be little or local or petty or provincial. 
 He must be cosmopolitan. He must act poli- 
 
 * -- * 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 tically as one who has in mind the whole world 
 which God loves and which Jesus Christ came 
 to save. Nothing that is human can be foreign to 
 him, for he has learned that if any part of the 
 world suffers, our whole civilization suffers. 
 
 It may prejudice my case to use an illustra¬ 
 tion with which you will probably not agree. I 
 shall not press it, but it belongs to my subject. I 
 dislike the use of the national flag in our churches 
 except, perhaps, on special national occasions. I 
 remember well, on the occasion of my first visit 
 to Europe many years ago, being shocked at see¬ 
 ing the tattered flags of war hung up in the ca¬ 
 thedrals of England, France and Germany. It 
 did not seem to me then and it does not seem to 
 me now that the House of God is the place to 
 hang up emblems which mark the time when one 
 group of Christians left another group of Chris¬ 
 tians lying dead on the battlefield. When I say: 
 —“I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,” I am 
 thinking of something to which all nationalities 
 belong. They are all our Christian brothers. Be¬ 
 cause the Church is universal, it seems to me 
 that its emblems should be universal. The cross 
 on which Christ died for the world, the lights 
 which proclaim that He is the light of the world, 
 the font which symbolizes the “one baptism for 
 the remission of sins” throughout the world, the 
 bread and wine of the Eucharist—the symbols of 
 the food of the souls of the people of the whole 
 world—these seem to me to be the appropriate 
 emblems of the universal Church of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Well then, our religion being what it is, it 
 
 * - 
 
 I 27 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 ought certainly to affect our politics. It would be 
 a mighty poor religion if it didn’t. If your relig¬ 
 ion does not make any difference to your poli¬ 
 tics you have good reason to be ashamed of 
 both your religion and your politics. Our re¬ 
 ligion, being a world religion, which touches the 
 whole human family, is bound to come into con¬ 
 flict with our politics, which are frequently par¬ 
 tisan, petty, local and selfish. In that case which 
 is to govern us? Is our religion to be debased 
 by our politics, or our politics to be ennobled by 
 our religion? If our religion is in control, then 
 anything that squints in the direction of human 
 fellowship and international brotherhood, any¬ 
 thing that looks in the direction of partnership 
 instead of strife, of intelligence instead of con¬ 
 flict, of love instead of hate, of spiritual force in¬ 
 stead of physical force, will have our support, re¬ 
 gardless of the political party from which it 
 emanates. If our allegiance to our religion is not 
 greater than our allegiance to any political party, 
 then the less we say about our religion the better. 
 
 The greatest enemy to political progress is the 
 man of mature years who boasts of his un¬ 
 deviating allegiance to his political party. No 
 political party has ever earned the title to such 
 allegiance. The man who makes this boast must 
 have many things on his conscience of which he 
 is ashamed; for he has been the cheap tool of 
 corrupt and unpatriotic politicians. Partyism, or 
 the substitution of the part for the whole, has 
 been the bane of politics. The independent voter 
 is the only hope of political progress, for he 
 
 *—--* 
 
 [ 28 ] 
 
* 
 
 holds the balance of power and makes sinners 
 tremble. How can we escape the slavery of party 
 politics except by giving our allegiance to some¬ 
 thing higher ? As citizens let us claim the liberty 
 wherewith Christ has set us free and in the exer¬ 
 cise of our freedom, serve politics by bringing 
 civic duties up to the level of religion instead of 
 allowing politics to drag our religion down into 
 a sewer. 
 
 Much is said about Americanization in our 
 time, perhaps too much. In many ways we need 
 to un-Americanize ourselves before we begin to 
 Americanize the foreign-born. The open disre¬ 
 gard for law, the conspicuous lawlessness, the 
 shocking disregard towards those in authority 
 which characterize average Americanism are 
 things which we hope the forthcoming citizens 
 will not learn. If, however, by Americanization 
 is meant a knowledge of the American Constitu¬ 
 tion, and the importance of civic duties, then the 
 more we Americanize both ourselves and others, 
 the better it will be for all of us. 
 
 As I speak we are in the midst of a mayor¬ 
 alty campaign. All the candidates seem to be 
 good men. All are making good promises. 
 Party politics have nothing to do with the case. 
 It looks as though there ought to be better days 
 ahead. Make up your minds now to support the 
 man who is elected until or unless you have sub¬ 
 stantial reasons for doing otherwise. So many 
 think that good citizenship consists of knocking 
 down a man as soon as he is set up. It doesn’t. 
 
 *-+ 
 
 [ 29 ] 
 
•i --*• 
 
 It consists of holding him up unless and until 
 he knocks the rest of us down. Clearly we must 
 get education out of politics or else put some 
 religion and decency into politics. Clearly we 
 must keep the police out of politics or else put 
 some religion into politics. Clearly we all must 
 keep in mind our Christian teaching—that our 
 citizenship is in heaven—and think and speak 
 and act and vote like citizens of the Kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
 [ 30 ] 
 
Religion and Business 
 
 T ODAY my subject is religion in business. 
 Most of the men who come to these meet¬ 
 ings, and many of the women, are engaged in 
 business. You come here from nearby stores 
 and banks and offices and factories where you 
 are engaged in making, buying, selling and dis¬ 
 tributing. It is not necessary to catalogue your 
 businesses; it is enough to say that you are en¬ 
 gaged in business. 
 
 For what purpose are you engaged in busi¬ 
 ness? What is your underlying motive? What is 
 the goal that you are endeavoring to reach ? 
 Those questions would doubtless receive a va¬ 
 riety of answers. Yet a straightforward answer 
 from that very elusive person whom we call the 
 average man would probably be something like 
 this:—“I am engaged in business for the pur¬ 
 pose of making money. I must have money. I 
 have to make a living. I need money for food, 
 clothes, rent, taxes, insurance, doctors, dentists, 
 books, travel. I need money for church, charity, 
 philanthropy. Business is business. Charity is 
 charity. Religion is religion. They are all good 
 things, but don’t try to mix them up. I am not 
 in business for love, I am out for the purpose of 
 making money.” 
 
 Now let us suppose that this audience was 
 made up entirely of members of the medical pro- 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 fession and that they were to say that they were 
 engaged in that profession for the purpose of 
 making money. Wouldn’t you consider that that 
 was an indignity to their profession? Of course 
 doctors need money the same as other people. I 
 don’t want to be convicted of any silly nonsense. 
 “The laborer is worthy of his hire.” But would 
 not any doctor who is worthy of his profession 
 claim that his purpose in life is to heal the 
 sick, to assuage pain, to save human life, to ren¬ 
 der a service to suffering humanity? In other 
 words, he would interpret his profession in terms 
 of service, rather than in terms of money. Or let 
 us suppose that this audience was made up en¬ 
 tirely of college and seminary professors, and 
 preachers, and that they were to admit that they 
 were engaged in those callings for the purpose of 
 making money. Wouldn’t you conclude that 
 they had lost their wits in selecting those profes¬ 
 sions for money-making purposes, or else that 
 they were unfit for their jobs? If they were fit 
 for their jobs they would say that they believed 
 they had a vocation and that they could render 
 their best service in those particular fields. 
 
 Very well. Why should the average business 
 man demand of the doctor and the professor and 
 the preacher a standard of service, while at the 
 same time he is content to accept for himself a 
 lower standard, namely, a standard of mere 
 money-making? But it may be somewhat un¬ 
 fair to put it in this way, and at this point in our 
 deliberations, our average business man begins 
 to hedge. He will claim that business is in itself 
 
 -I*--—-----——-►£. 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 a service. Of course it is, or if it is not, it 
 ought to be. The business world has not got 
 entirely away from the idea of service, even 
 though it be service for profits’ sake rather than 
 for the sake of service. The word service is 
 incorporated into the name of many business 
 concerns. There are many public “service” com¬ 
 panies. Banks and business houses widely ad¬ 
 vertise that their aim is to serve. They do 
 serve. In the long run they will not make any 
 money unless they serve. Every well-conducted 
 business is a public service. One might go 
 further and say it is a philanthropy. Neverthe¬ 
 less you will agree with me that there is all the 
 difference in the world between being engaged in 
 business for the purpose of service and being 
 engaged in business for the purpose of making 
 money. It is one thing to set out to serve and 
 to make money as a sort of by-product; it is 
 another thing to set out solely to make money 
 and to render service incidentally as a sort of 
 by-product. 
 
 What does our Lord say to the business 
 man, to the man who is stressing and straining 
 to make money with which to buy his food and 
 clothing and to pay his taxes; to the man who 
 is employing all his energy to make profits and 
 to declare dividends? Our Lord says to that 
 man:—“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness; and all these things shall be 
 added unto you.” Our Lord does not here or 
 elsewhere say anything to imply that He be¬ 
 littles the need or the importance of money. 
 
 *- 1 . 
 
 [ 33 ] 
 
t 
 
 -fr 
 
 He does warn us against the dangers of riches. 
 Wealth is a terrible danger. The danger is that 
 its owner may think that it is all for his own 
 pleasure and profit and fail to recognize its obli¬ 
 gations and its extraordinary possibilities for 
 public service. Wealth either makes a man or 
 breaks him. It either lifts him up to the dignity 
 of its responsibilities or else it causes him to 
 shrink back within his shell where his soul 
 shrivels. Our Lord knew perfectly well that men 
 cannot live on air alone. He did not exhort 
 men to seek only the Kingdom of God because 
 they had no need of food and clothing and money. 
 What he emphasizes is the need of proportion. 
 Put first things first. The first things are the 
 Kingdom of God and His righteousness. If 
 these are put first the other things will be added 
 on. If the other things are put first, a man 
 may not get them and at the same time he will 
 lose the Kingdom of God in his fruitless struggle. 
 The chief end of man—of the business man, the 
 professional man, every man—is to glorify God 
 and to serve Him forever. 
 
 Now is it not to some extent true that the 
 business world has reversed the Christian order? 
 Has not the business world created the impres¬ 
 sion that its underlying purpose is to seek first 
 material prosperity, profits, dividends, salaries, 
 wealth—and hope at the same time that the King¬ 
 dom of God will be added on? It does not 
 work that way. As a matter of fact, it does not 
 work that way. We have to take our choice 
 between serving God in the business world or 
 
 *------ 
 
 [ 34 ] 
 
* 
 
 •i— 
 
 serving Mammon. We cannot serve both. If 
 we seek the Kingdom of God first, our Heavenly 
 Father will take care of the rest. But if we 
 seek Mammon first, we shall in all probability 
 not get it; and we shall lose the Kingdom of God 
 besides. “The concentration of all effort and 
 mental energy upon material achievement upsets 
 the spiritual equilibrium of society. It produces 
 contrasts of wealth and poverty, and out of 
 these come envy, jealousy, class hatreds, economic 
 and military warfare, and finally the destruction 
 of the wealth that has been so laboriously created. 
 For no society built on a lie can endure.” Busi¬ 
 ness itself cannot endure if it is built on a lie. 
 If the sole object of business is the making of 
 money and if the principle of service is elimi¬ 
 nated, business itself will go to the wall. In the 
 long run and in the last analysis the permanence 
 and the security of business depend on the char¬ 
 acter of the service which it renders. “Seek ye 
 first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, 
 and all these thftigs shall be added unto you.” 
 
 How can the business man seek God first in 
 his office, in his bank, in his store, in his factory, 
 behind the counter? He seeks God first by seeing 
 to it that he operates his business in accordance 
 with the moral law of the Kingdom of God. 
 That moral law is not a vague abstraction. It is 
 not merely the conscience of any age. It is not 
 a guess at ethics. It is something quite concrete. 
 It is written down. It is immutable and un¬ 
 changeable and woe be to the business house that 
 
 ■*-—-* 
 
 [ 35 ] 
 
. 1 " 
 
 ventures to set it aside. That moral law is found 
 in its simplest form in the Ten Commandments. 
 
 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 
 
 Six days shalt thou labor. One day shalt 
 thou dedicate to rest and to public worship of 
 God. 
 
 Thou shalt not steal directly or indirectly. 
 
 Thou shalt not murder either directly or 
 by process of slow torture. 
 
 Thou shalt not bear false witness about 
 the goods that you make and sell. 
 
 Thou shalt not base your business on ava¬ 
 rice or covetousness, but on the principle of 
 service. 
 
 There is the moral law of the Kingdom of 
 God in language which no business man of in¬ 
 telligence can misunderstand. No one will deny 
 that there are practical difficulties in operating 
 this moral law in the business world. Of course 
 there are. The difficulties must be overcome 
 however, for the moral law cannot be altered to 
 suit our selfish considerations. The difficulties 
 do not arise from the unworkableness of the law, 
 but from the complexities of modern life. We 
 live in a highly organized state of society. Every¬ 
 thing is organized. The individual is being sub¬ 
 merged. As the individual gets lost in the crowd 
 it becomes increasingly difficult to fix individual 
 responsibility. In the meantime the social con- 
 
 •f- b 
 
 [ 36 ] 
 
* 
 
 
 science is only beginning to be. Our problem is 
 to socialize the individual conscience and indi¬ 
 vidualize the social conscience. It is possible for 
 organized society to violate every principle of 
 the moral law under conditions which seem to 
 release the individual from responsibility. It is 
 possible, under our complex life in the twentieth 
 century that the god of industry might be Moloch 
 instead of Jehovah, that men might work or re¬ 
 quire others to work seven days in the week, that 
 men might utterly ignore the worship of God and 
 the day of rest, that they might commit theft on 
 a wholesale basis, that they might conduct their 
 business and their industry in such a way as to 
 murder the finer sensibilities of human nature, 
 that they might misrepresent the goods they have 
 to sell to such an extent that business itself would 
 become honeycombed with lies and fraud and 
 adulteration, that they might establish their busi¬ 
 ness on the basis of avarice rather than service,— 
 all this is possible, and yet under circumstances 
 where the individual takes shelter in the crowd. 
 We say that the nation did it, the state did it, 
 society did it, the corporation did it, the firm did 
 it, the concern did it, everybody did it except 
 you and me. Nevertheless the moral law must 
 stand as the law of business in the twentieth 
 century and become applicable to corporate 
 bodies as well as individuals. Its application to 
 organized society involves such principles as 
 these—a six-day week, for a seven-day week robs 
 both God and man ; one day in seven for worship, 
 rest and recreation, otherwise a man is not at his 
 
 *-f 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 best; an honest day’s work and an honest day’s 
 pay, otherwise there is theft; the protection of 
 little children and child-bearing mothers, other¬ 
 wise the finer sensibilities are killed and human 
 life is permanently depreciated; the rights of 
 men to organize for mutual helpfulness and col¬ 
 lective bargaining, otherwise they are robbed of 
 proper liberty; the right of the firm to protection 
 against waste and destruction, otherwise there is 
 theft again; the right of the public for protection 
 against exploitation and the duty of the concern 
 to give service—these things and such like things 
 are involved in the application of the moral law 
 in our highly organized society. Several of the 
 big businesses of this country have abandoned 
 the old policy of 
 
 “Let him get who has the power 
 And let him keep who can,” 
 
 and are operating on the principles herein out¬ 
 lined. Moreover they are finding that it pays. 
 It is a sound business principle to seek first the 
 Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Defy 
 that principle and in the long run you can look 
 for business ruin. 
 
 I have time for only one more thought. It 
 is my misfortune and yours too, that I choose big 
 subjects which must be disposed of in a few 
 minutes even if they end with an anti-climax. 
 The object of business is to make men first and 
 money afterwards. Men must take precedence 
 of money. Human rights come before property 
 
 -------- 
 
 [ 38 ] 
 
* 
 
 •I- 
 
 rights. I can give you an illustration of this 
 which will explain it better than many arguments. 
 This illustration, I am assured, is an event which 
 actually occurred. There was a certain city in 
 which the smoke nuisance had become intolerable. 
 A mass meeting was called to protest against it. 
 Many speeches were made. At last the president 
 of a business concern whose factory was belch¬ 
 ing out enough black smoke to poison the entire 
 neighborhood, rose and used these words:— 
 “Ladies and gentlemen, it may be true that the 
 smoke kills the people, but I would remind you, 
 ladies and gentlemen, that it makes the city.” 
 What is the Christian man’s answer to this? 
 Cities are not necessary to our civilization, but 
 the moral law is. Cities may be a menace to our 
 civilization. They certainly will be if the moral 
 law becomes defunct. The Christian man is 
 obliged to say to a business or an industry of 
 that sort, what our Lord said when the welfare 
 of little children was at stake. Better that a 
 millstone were hanged around the neck of any 
 such industry and it were drowned in the depth 
 of the sea, than that a dollar of dividend should 
 be declared at the cost of human life or at the 
 cost of the violation of the moral law of the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 Here, then, is the program for the Christian 
 man in business. Let service be your motive, 
 righteousness your method, the Kingdom of God 
 
 4----—---* 
 
 [ 39 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 your goal. After that, but not before that, all 
 profits are legitimate and your Heavenly Father 
 is going to give the rewards to the man that seeks 
 the Kingdom of God first. 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
 [ 40 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 Religion and the Church 
 
 T HOSE of you who have followed these 
 Holy Week addresses may have discov¬ 
 ered in them, notwithstanding their con¬ 
 spicuous clumsiness, an underlying religious 
 philosophy and program which are somewhat at 
 variance with current opinion in a good many 
 quarters. We have been thinking about the 
 Christian religion in its bearings on our civili¬ 
 zation, our race relationships, our politics and our 
 business. We have carried religion into spheres 
 where it is a good deal of a stranger, but into 
 spheres nevertheless which Christ claims for His 
 own. We have been taking our stand during 
 this Holy Week on the foundation that there is 
 no department of human life or activity from 
 which the Christian man can exclude Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 I have not tried to conceal the fact that I 
 have been trying to upset one theory and set up 
 another theory in its place. I have been trying 
 to uproot and banish from your minds the theory 
 that the Christian religion belongs only to an 
 ecclesiastical compartment, with doors closed to 
 shut out the troublesome things which burden 
 men’s consciences and wear their hearts out, 
 and in which they need spiritual guidance, even 
 though it be unwelcome. I have been trying to 
 set up in its place the doctrine that religion is the 
 
 ■* --- -* 
 
 [ 41 ] 
 
v----------------i“ 
 
 thing that permeates a man’s whole life and de¬ 
 termines the quality of his acts—in church, in 
 business, in industry, in politics and in all kinds 
 of contacts. A man cannot be a good Christian 
 and a bad citizen. He cannot be a good church¬ 
 man and a bad business man. He cannot be a 
 good Christian and a bad neighbour. 
 
 It may seem that too much labor has been 
 spent in trying to establish something which 
 ought to be obvious; yet much pressure is 
 brought to bear upon the Christian Church in 
 these days, to keep it and its mission and message 
 out of the affairs of men. This attitude must 
 be resisted. No compromise can be made. All 
 the kingdoms of this world must be claimed for 
 Christ. So far we have been thinking about the 
 Christian religion. You may have observed that 
 nothing has been said about the Christian 
 Church. Let us think today about religion and 
 the Church. 
 
 The terms are not synonymous. The Church 
 is the organization behind the idea. You busi¬ 
 ness men understand that. Some of you have a 
 first-rate idea that you want to put into operation 
 in your business. The idea will not make head¬ 
 way by itself. You need a man behind the idea 
 and an organization behind the man. You have 
 a first-rate article that you want to sell. It will 
 not sell itself. You need a man behind the article 
 and an organization behind the man. So it is 
 with the Christian religion. It has its central 
 Person. It has the organization behind the 
 
 v—-- b 
 
 [ 42 ] 
 
* 
 
 * 
 
 Person. Christ is the central figure of the 
 Christian religion. The Gospel is the great idea. 
 The Church is the organization behind the idea. 
 
 There are some men listening to me today 
 who live completely apart from the Church of 
 Christ, but who nevertheless believe in a general 
 way in the Christian religion. You believe that it 
 is the best thing in our whole civilization. At the 
 same time you are standing aloof from the Chris¬ 
 tian Church. In other words, you believe in the 
 idea but you do not believe in putting the organi¬ 
 zation behind the idea. Your position is entirely 
 indefensible. It is a position which if applied 
 to your business, would lead to bankruptcy. 
 The Christian religion probably would not have 
 survived a century apart from the Christian 
 Church which was instituted to promote it. Christ 
 Himself put an organization behind His Gospel. 
 He came to the world and taught men what God 
 was like and what man ought to be like. He 
 taught them God’s loving fatherhood, the duty 
 of human brotherhood, the virtues of truth and 
 justice and good will and righteousness. He 
 made people see the exceeding sinfulness of sin 
 and the only escape from it through the redemp¬ 
 tive love of God. He taught the value of human 
 life, the preciousness of the human soul, the 
 greatness of a man’s spiritual capacity, the dig¬ 
 nity of human service. He drew men to Him and 
 opened up His life to them so that they recog¬ 
 nized Him as the Son of God, and stood ready 
 to forsake all and follow Him. Then He gave 
 them their commission. Go into all the world 
 
 *■......... — b 
 
 [ 43 ] 
 
* 
 
 -fr 
 
 and make disciples. Claim every nation, every 
 race, every color, every kingdom. Baptize them 
 into the kingdom. Teach them the things that I 
 have taught you. Endow them with the spirit¬ 
 ual power with which you yourselves are en¬ 
 dowed. Stand by the incarnate love of God as 
 the eternal rock; and I shall stand by you to the 
 end of the world. The gates of hell shall not 
 prevail against my Church. That was the organi¬ 
 zation which Christ put behind the idea; and if 
 it had not been for the Christian Church you and 
 I would probably not have heard of the Christian 
 religion. If you think the Christian religion is 
 worth while, get into the organization that is 
 promoting it and go to work. 
 
 The Church began as a very small body and 
 it now encircles the globe. In spite of the weak¬ 
 nesses of its own members and the inherent 
 blemishes which are common to human nature; 
 in spite of such persecution and opposition and 
 attack as would have exterminated any merely 
 human organization, it has kept on growing. It 
 is still growing. It is now the greatest organi¬ 
 zation in the world. It has a greater capitali¬ 
 zation (if I may use business terms to business 
 men) than any other organization in the world. 
 It has more stockholders than any other. It has 
 more agents in the field. It has more literature. 
 It has more benevolent and philanthropic insti¬ 
 tutions standing to its credit than any other. It 
 has laid the foundations of our highest civili¬ 
 zation. It has given men new ideas of God and 
 man and home and wife and child and mother 
 
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* 
 
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 and school. It is the best thing in the world to¬ 
 day. Get back of it. Get into it. You will 
 never regret it; for it will give definiteness of 
 aim to your abstract and detached ideas about 
 religion. 
 
 Many references have been made this week 
 to what the new Testament calls the Kingdom 
 of God. The Church is not synonymous with the 
 Kingdom of God. The Church is the executive 
 agency for bringing into this world God’s King¬ 
 dom of righteousness and peace and joy. The 
 Church is the executive committee of the King¬ 
 dom of God. That is not a theological definition, 
 but it will answer as a platform definition of the 
 Church. It is the executive committee of the 
 Kingdom of God. An executive committee is a 
 body charged with the duty of acting for and 
 representing the whole body but remembering at 
 the same time that it is not the whole body. If 
 it were to exalt itself at the expense of the body, 
 it would defeat its own purpose. 
 
 That brings me at once to a weakness in the 
 Church which we must set ourselves to eradicate. 
 We are apt to think too much of the Church as 
 an end in itself rather than an agency of the 
 Kingdom of God. Let me illustrate by taking 
 you back to the beginning of the Church. It was 
 a small group of men. They had big ideas. 
 They had the biggest ideas that ever found lodge¬ 
 ment in the mind of the human race. They set 
 out to conquer the whole world, with those 
 ideas. If there was one thing that characterized 
 
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 the early Church it was its self-forgetfulness, its 
 lack of self-consciousness, its consciousness that 
 it had a mission, a message, a program. So big 
 was the idea, so inspiring the program that they 
 did not stop to think what was going to happen to 
 them or to their organization. What if they were 
 persecuted; what if they were robbed of their 
 possessions; what if they suffered social ostra¬ 
 cism; what if they came into contract with 
 political opposition; what if they were put in 
 jail; what if they were thrown to the lions. They 
 were so possessed with their main mission and 
 their main program that they didn’t stop to 
 think what was going to happen to the Church or 
 to them. In their very self-forgetfulness they 
 found that the Church was growing by leaps and 
 bounds. It was turning the world upside down 
 It was capturing continents. Then a sad thing 
 happened. It became self-conscious. It began 
 to think about itself, its history, its art, its archi¬ 
 tecture, its liturgy, its rites, its vestments, its 
 ceremonies, its doctrines. As it began to think 
 about itself more than the Kingdom of God of 
 which it is the executive agency, it lost power. 
 It lost spiritual power. Then a dozen churches, 
 and later on a hundred churches came into being 
 in the way of protest. Then these hundred 
 churches acquired the same kind of self-consci¬ 
 ousness that they had set out to eradicate. That, 
 it seems to me, is the situation with Christianity 
 in the world today. The Church is too self-con¬ 
 scious. You and I are too self-conscious. We 
 are thinking too much about ourselves and what 
 
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* 
 
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 is going to happen to us. The Church is think¬ 
 ing too much about itself, its structure, its tradi¬ 
 tions and too little of the purpose for which 
 Jesus Christ sent it into the world. Oh that the 
 Church in these days when “men’s hearts are 
 failing them for fear and for looking after those 
 things which are coming on the earth” could re¬ 
 cover her former self-forgetfulness and consci¬ 
 ousness of mission. It is the need of the hour. 
 The Church must refuse to be shut up in a corner 
 or to admit that so-called secular affairs are no 
 concern of hers. When she ceases to take an 
 interest and to make her voice heard in the 
 everyday life of the people, in business and poli¬ 
 tics and race relationship and education and 
 literature, she loses the power to consecrate them 
 to the up-building of the Kingdom of God. Such 
 a program as this may invite opposition and criti¬ 
 cism. The church may be told to mind her own 
 business and to keep her hands off. There may 
 be some persecution; but “he that loveth his life 
 shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for the 
 Kingdom of God’s sake shall find it.” Only 
 through making the larger claims for Christ can 
 we overcome the isolated ecclesiasticism of which 
 the world is justly accusing the Church. 
 
 What is ecclesiasticism? It is substituting the 
 means for the end. It is not the pet sin of any 
 church. One can find it everywhere. You can find 
 it in the silence of a Quaker meeting, in the fer¬ 
 vor of a prayer meeting, in the worship of the 
 sanctuary. The value of a prayer meeting is 
 measured, not by its soothing effect upon the par- 
 
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* 
 
 * 
 
 ticipants, but on the length to which the prayers 
 reach. Do they reach up to God ? Do they reach 
 out into the factory? The value of the religion of 
 the sanctuary is to be measured, not by its beauty 
 and by the immediate comfort which we get out 
 of it, but by whether or not it reaches from the 
 throne of God to the market and the street and 
 the polling booth. You cannot get on without 
 prayer and worship and sacrament and sanctuary. 
 Without them your life will become sordid and 
 commonplace. The sanctuary is meant to be “the 
 power-station of life.” We go to the altar to be 
 the mediums through which the current flows 
 from the altar of God down to the factory and 
 the shop. “To dissociate sacraments and sacri¬ 
 fice and worship from the social and economic life 
 of the people is to pervert worship by divorcing 
 what God hath joined together.” 
 
 I want to take some extra time on this Good 
 Friday to explain how impossible it is for any¬ 
 one’s personal religion to be anything less than a 
 social act. Take one of the most personal and 
 private individual acts which a man can perform 
 in a religious way and see how social it is in its 
 far-reachingness. There is a man here this 
 morning that committed a very flagrant sin last 
 week. He is trying to forget about it, but he 
 can’t. As he listens to me it comes back to him 
 with all the freshness and the vividness of a 
 newly-wrought sin. He is thinking as I speak that 
 he ought to go to confession before making his 
 Easter Communion. It would be a good thing if 
 he did. He would never regret it. He would 
 
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 find that the clouds would open and the Son of 
 God would come to him with the peace that 
 passeth all understanding. And so he is going 
 to a Christian minister to tell his story. The seal 
 will be put on it. Could anything be more 
 private ? Could anything be more personal ? 
 And yet that sin was not a purely personal 
 matter. It involved others. That man’s sin was 
 a sin against God. It was a sin against his neigh¬ 
 bour. It was a sin against society. When he 
 confesses his sin to God, he represents sinful 
 humanity. The minister of reconciliation through 
 whom he approaches God is also a representative 
 person. He represents you and me and the 
 Church and society. He is also God’s ambas¬ 
 sador. The forgiveness is God’s. It is also the 
 Church’s and society’s forgiveness. It is the cor¬ 
 porate act of the whole Church in heaven and 
 earth, welcoming back the sinner that repenteth. 
 So it is that the story of that sin and its cure is 
 the story of the Cross in epitome. It is a divine 
 act, it is a world act, focussed on a single person. 
 And when that man finds the peace of God he 
 will be a new man. He will have ever after¬ 
 wards a love for sinful humanity which will 
 make him bend his energies towards the healing 
 of sinful humanity. 
 
 Some of you are getting ready to make your 
 Easter Communion. Do not imagine for a 
 moment that that act can be confined to those 
 who are immediately present. It is a world act 
 that goes on at the altar even if there are only 
 two or three there. The bread and wine that are 
 
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 placed on the altar are symbols of all creation— 
 of your life, your property, your substance,— 
 which God is asked to bless. The group who 
 gather there are representative of the whole 
 human family. The whole race is represented 
 there. All creation is represented there. Then 
 Christ comes. Christ comes again and again and 
 again; and you find Christ in the Eucharist on 
 Easter morning. But if you find Christ in the 
 Eucharist you will also find Him in the Christian 
 boys who were at the same Eucharist at another 
 altar. You will find Him in the Christian girls 
 who are working in your factories. You will find 
 Him in the young men who are out acting as 
 your agents in business. If you teach that Christ¬ 
 ian boy to do fraudulent work, if you teach your 
 agents to misrepresent the goods that they sell, 
 if you tempt those young women at the factory 
 to sin, do you not see that you are making Christ 
 a party to your sins and crucifying the Son of 
 God afresh? That is what makes the tragedy of 
 Good Friday. The crucifixion of Christ is not 
 something that occurred long ago and stopped 
 there. It is occurring today in Chicago. Our 
 adulteries, our wickednesses, our hates, our blas¬ 
 phemies, our repudiations of the love of God— 
 “they crucify to themselves the Son of God 
 afresh and put Him to an open shame.” 
 
 So I end on this Good Friday where I began 
 on Monday. There is no department of human 
 life from which the Christian can exclude the 
 teaching and example of Jesus Christ. “I, if I 
 be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” In the 
 
 4.-— --—-—— --— -4. 
 
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* 
 
 * 
 
 words of Signor Papini’s “Life of Christ,”— 
 “There never was a time more cut off from 
 Christ than ours, nor one which needed Him 
 more.” 
 
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