liiiiipiii'if ?is 5*:'¥'S^- 
 
 The CHURCH 
 AND THE CROWD 
 
 Kichard 
 Wallace 
 Ho^e 
 
 
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 OCT 18 1919 
 
 S 
 
 BV 600 .H7 1917 
 
 Hogue, Richard Wallace. 
 
 The church and the crowd 
 
 "A 
 
THE CHURCH 
 AND THE CROWD 
 
THE CHURCH AND 
 THE CROWD 
 
 AN INTERPRETATION OF THE 
 ANSWER OF THE CHURCH TO 
 THE CHALLENGE OF THE DAY 
 
 BY 
 RICHARD WALLACE HOGUE, D.D. 
 
 ^^ OF punici^ 
 
 V 
 
 New York Chicago Torokto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 LOKDON AND EdIKBURQH 
 
Copyright, 1917, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
TO 
 M. B. H. 
 
 AND 
 
 B. C. Y. H. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It is generally recognized that the " Common Peo 
 ple " of His day gave an eager hearing to the message 
 of Jesus Christ. It is generally conceded that the 
 " Common People " of to-day have scant respect for 
 the message and no regard for the leadership of the 
 Church. They do not look to organized religion for 
 either guidance or help. Worse than that — they do 
 not look to it for anything. They look upon it as 
 at best negligible and at worst hostile to their funda- 
 mental needs and rights. Some of their leaders have 
 made out a strong case against the Church as the sub- 
 sidized apologist for the privileged class on whose 
 support it depends. They hold that the Church is 
 the champion of property rights against human rights. 
 This view is also shared by not a few of the foremost 
 intellectual leaders and social workers of to-day. 
 
 Moreover, an ever larger number of honest-minded 
 men and women within the Church are seriously ask- 
 ing such questions as these : " Has organized re- 
 ligion not only forfeited its leadership but lost the 
 message of its Founder? If so, or if not, will the 
 Church make good her mission and her message ? 
 Will the real redemption of humanity come through 
 
 7 
 
8 Preface 
 
 forces and in channels outside the organized 
 Church ? '^ 
 
 This little volume is an attempt to help answer 
 these questions, an effort to aid the Church to meet 
 the challenge of to-day as her Founder met the chal- 
 lenge of His day. His mission cost Him His life 
 and the Church must make ready to lose her very life 
 in fearless and sacrificial service. There is no other 
 way. The challenge of humanity to the Church of 
 this generation is marked by a note of finality. 
 There is no time for delay, no excuse for hesitation, 
 evasion or compromise. The Church must answer 
 the Call of the Crowd. As a contribution to that 
 answer this volume is offered by one whose convic- 
 tions have been wrought by experience into his heart 
 and conscience and whose life is pledged to the Min- 
 istry of the Church and the service of the " Common 
 People." 
 
 Baltimore, Md. H. W. H. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 11 
 
 I. The Challeitge 
 
 11. The Commonwealth and the Common 
 Crowd 
 
 III. The Call to Ee-Inteepret . 
 
 IV. The Call to Readjustment 
 
 V. Is THE Church Afraid? 
 
 VI. The Call to the Ministry . 
 
 22 
 34 
 44 
 57 
 70 
 
THE CHALLENGE 
 
 THE morning mail brought two letters to the 
 Rectory which were seemingly as unrelated 
 as the two writers. Each writer was un- 
 known to the other and they were in entirely separate 
 spheres of life-work. The first letter was from a 
 young clergyman successfully engaged in a work the 
 interest and importance of which had been recognized 
 by the secular press as well as by the Church papers. 
 His letter was an earnest request for an introduction 
 to laymen of large means who might be led to con- 
 tribute to the support of a splendid humanitarian 
 and religious institutional work under the auspices 
 of the Church. The other letter was from a man of 
 note in the world of scholarship, whom sickness had 
 brought to the border of death and to whom the 
 deeper issues of life had an ever deepening meaning. 
 His motive and spirit in writing were those of a 
 friend and not a critic. He writes out of seasoned 
 convictions, in a sympathetic spirit and with a de- 
 sire to help rather than hinder the influence and 
 work of the Church. Speaking of a remarkable re- 
 cent book, he says : " There is a fresh way of put- 
 
 11 
 
12 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 ting the case for faith that interests me after the 
 conventional approaches I've had from Clerics and 
 others." Again speaking of the Church's policy: 
 "It is too cautious and correct. It should discuss 
 more candidly the questions men are really concerned 
 about and disagree about ; for instance, how far the 
 Church can and should go in dealing with civic ques- 
 tions." 
 
 Now can there be any logical link between these 
 two letters ? The work of the young clergyman is 
 widely known and is located in a state the chief 
 city of which is abounding in wealth, much of which 
 is possessed by laymen of his church. Why then is it 
 necessary to seek help from those of a far distant 
 state ? How comes it that literally thousands of un- 
 dertakings and institutions of the Church are con- 
 stantly suffering from meager support and peren- 
 nially appealing for funds while large numbers of 
 laymen with bank accounts running into millions 
 pay slight heed to these appeals? Yet from num- 
 bers of these and other laymen go forth gifts of 
 large sums to public benefactions, general benevo- 
 lences and secular institutions. Can it be true that 
 these men feel as the writer of the second letter feels ? 
 
 Is it a fact that the "conservative, conventional, 
 cautious and correct " attitude of the Church, through 
 vested clergy and leading laity, serves to discount or 
 counteract the appeals of the Church? Is there a 
 " freshness and freedom and fairness " lacking in 
 
The Challenge 13 
 
 the atmosphere created by the " Clerics '' which 
 serves to repel many of the very men whom the 
 Church most needs ? Do they view this ^' Church 
 Atmosphere " with a very honest feeling that it is a 
 close, confining, stifling atmosphere — not like that 
 created by Him who said : " I came that ye might 
 have life and that ye might have it more abun- 
 dantly ? " Do they feel that we are preaching what 
 a modem writer has termed a "muffled Gospel/' 
 that we have neither the training nor the courage to 
 cope with questions of civic righteousness ? Do they 
 find just reason for remaining outside the sphere 
 of the Church's activities and influence in their con- 
 viction that her activities are circumscribed and her 
 influence is hampered by her own self-imposed limi- 
 tations and self-absorbed influence? Do they feel 
 that we are more anxious to save tradition than to 
 serve humanity, to prove that Christ was a Church- 
 man rather than that the Church is Christlike ? Do 
 they see that we hold aloof from large issues of the 
 day, that we haven't breadth of vision or a grasp of 
 life at large, that we are too " cautious and correct " 
 to venture upon problems about which men disagree 
 but with which they are vitally concerned ? 
 
 These questions constitute a challenge to the 
 Church. They merit an honest and unevasive an- 
 swer. More than one answer can be given and is 
 being given; from the searching self-analysis de- 
 manded of the Church by the author of " The Ee- 
 
14 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 proach of the Gospel " to the splendid interpretations 
 of the Church by a Phillips Brooks, a Rausenbusch, 
 a Bishop Spalding and a Bishop Williams. 
 
 More and more the Church is recognizing the vital 
 relation between a nation's government and the physi- 
 cal, moral and spiritual needs and rights of that 
 nation's people. If it be our country's supreme 
 need and our God's supreme purpose that the King- 
 dom of men shall become the Kingdom of God, it 
 cannot be unless and until those who serve in the 
 Kingdom of God serve also well and worthily in the 
 Kingdom of men. Opportunities for the Church 
 to render her service in the world come for the most 
 part in the indirect ways of influence, teaching and 
 spiritual power. Too often these are thwarted, di- 
 verted or defeated by the injustice of laws and the 
 unrighteousness of ruling classes. When the Min- 
 istry of the Militant Church — each in his own con- 
 viction of duty — resolves to do battle in God's and 
 His people's name against the powers of injustice and 
 unrighteousness, then and not till then will the 
 Church's mission and message be free to reach, lib- 
 erate and redeem those whom she is commissioned to 
 serve. Then will her honest critics and her delib- 
 erate foes see that she is not deaf to humanity's great 
 common needs nor afraid to lift her voice and exert 
 her influence in all practical fields of service. 
 
 Then only will the minister have full recognition 
 and his own people and all others know that his ordi- 
 
The Challenge 15 
 
 nation does not set him apart from men but charges 
 and consecrates him to do his part by men, that while 
 he is not above helping the humblest he can not con- 
 sent to be below leading the strongest ; that he has a 
 duty which no other duty can destroy and a right 
 which no other man shall deny to " render unto 
 Csesar the things that are Cesar's,'' by his money, his 
 voice, his vote and his espousal of every cause that 
 cries for justice and every movement that makes for 
 righteousness in every field of human endeavor. 
 
 From the black-bound cover of the Book of old to 
 the living conscience of the Church to-day comes the 
 call of God^s prophet : " Spare not ; Lengthen thy 
 cords and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt 
 spread abroad on the right hand and on the left." 
 Let us recall to whom these words were addressed. 
 It was to a kingdom insecure of sufficient support. 
 It was to a people whose leadership was unaccept- 
 able and whose power was unrecognized by the world 
 outside. Beneath the apparent futility of such a 
 promise to such a people rests an eternal principle. 
 To those beset by baffling problems and struggling 
 beneath heavy burdens there is but one way to light 
 and life and victory. It is not the path that leads 
 back behind the ancient walls — within the inner cita- 
 del of self-security, self-protection and self-absorp- 
 tion. It is outward and onward, into the field 
 of larger vision and more abundant labors. Thus 
 will fresh courage be gained by the resolution to 
 
16 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 strengthen the hands of all who are weak and new 
 light will be thrown on our problems bj the effort 
 to lighten the way for others. 
 
 Lengthen the cords of that truth which sets men 
 free from the bondage of the bigotry that in exclud- 
 ing others isolates and excludes itself. Lengthen 
 those cords of love which extend God's tabernacle 
 over every temple where praying men worship the 
 common Father. Lengthen those cords of service 
 which stretch beyond the individual in his needs to 
 society in its sins, beyond selfish interest in our own 
 affairs to Christlike passion for " all men every- 
 where." Then shalt thou see clearly the only just 
 cause for strengthening the stakes of thine own 
 church. For of the Church as of men it is eternally 
 true that to lose itself in sacrificing service is the 
 only way to gain its place and find its power in 
 Christ and over men. 
 
 " Go forward ! " was the command of Hoses to an 
 army standing baffled between the approaching 
 enemy and the impeding waters. " Go ye ! " was 
 Christ's command to the bereft and bewildered men 
 who were to form His coming Kingdom. These are 
 supremely the commands to be heard and heeded by 
 the Church of to-day. Thus shall we find our hold 
 on truth grow strong by the uplifting influence of 
 the truth as seen by other men. Thus shall we see 
 our disturbed or discouraged councils made calm and 
 sure by the consciousness of seeking first the welfare 
 
The Challenge 17 
 
 of His Kingdom — His whole Kingdom. Thus shall 
 our consciences be quickened, our motives purified 
 and our hopes enlarged by the life that brings the 
 liberty of a larger love and the power of a wider 
 usefulness. Thus alone shall we gain power through 
 unselfish service. 
 
 We can not pretend to " honor the King " of all 
 mankind unless we give abundant proof that we " love 
 the Brotherhood " of all men. We can not hope to 
 promote the principle of rightful conservation by 
 the practise of perpetual conservatism. Let those 
 who will accept the prophet's full message and so 
 bring to pass his splendid prophecy in this our day : 
 " Thou shalt spread abroad on the right hand and on 
 the left ; and thy seed shall possess the nations." 
 
 The burden of forcing denominational ambitions 
 and ecclesiastical regulations at this time upon the 
 Church is a serious matter. We should not be com- 
 pelled to bear with it when weightier matters are 
 waiting for our attention and unsolved problems of 
 far deeper moment are demanding solution. The in- 
 ternal problems alone of the Church are many and se- 
 rious. If any doubt this let them ask our busy and 
 burdened bishops, with exhausted funds and in- 
 creasing demands, many of them compelled to lay 
 aside the calling of chief pastors to become business 
 executives. Ask the rank and file of the ministry 
 and they will render a terrible but true story of in- 
 adequate support, crippled work, weak departments. 
 
18 The ChurcH and the Crowd 
 
 insufficient equipment, insolvent and unsound foun- 
 dations, delayed progress, life-and-death struggle 
 against bankruptcy, as revealed beneath the outward 
 existence of thousands of parishes. Ask the aged 
 and disabled clergy whose pitifully small stipends 
 are neither regular nor sufficient. Ask the Mission 
 Boards and they tell us a story of deficit, of borrow- 
 ing and begging in order to do the minimum of work 
 now done and of how the Kingdom of God is leav- 
 ing vast fields unoccupied and vast multitudes un- 
 reached. Yet within the Church's fold, among her 
 accepted and official rulers, rest uncounted, untold 
 and unconsecrated millions. Is it not an impelling 
 and consuming task to consecrate this age of hoarded 
 power, of vast wealth and terrible poverty? Men 
 are demanding from the Church the full message of 
 her Master's teaching and life. With her rests the 
 great Spirit-born power that shall make men glad to 
 spend and be spent in order to do God's will and 
 save God's world. 
 
 And what of those other vast fields calling for 
 righteous readjustment and redeeming service, — 
 fields ripe for the harvest while the laborers spend 
 their Master's time in regulating details and em- 
 bellishing ritual? What right have we in the face 
 of conditions which threaten the very life of the 
 Church and of humanity to be thinking of ourselves ? 
 " For every idle word we shall have to give account." 
 Can't we seem to hear St. Paul as he says : " When 
 
The Challenge 19 
 
 I was a child I spake as a child/ ^ etc., " but when I 
 became a man I put away childish things " ? Can't 
 we see the foolishness as well as the waste and the 
 wrong of taking up God's time and our day in such 
 contentions ? If we do not see it, others do — great, 
 true men and women who are claiming that their 
 chief inspiration to service is found outside the 
 Church. Men are demanding to know which is the 
 more important: to change our form of worship or 
 the world's moral condition; to quote the doctrinal 
 disputes of a few ancient " Fathers " or to champion 
 the disputed rights of multitudes of modern children, 
 to bring back their lost childhood to millions whose 
 free and grateful hearts will learn to say again " Our 
 Father " and whose liberated prayers and lives will 
 help to save the Church which has helped to save 
 them ? This land of ours is to be — its real rulers 
 and righteous citizens mean that it shall be — in 
 profound reality as it has been in professed name — 
 an openly, aggressively, prevailingly Christian land. 
 The Christian nation shall not be divorced from 
 the Christian Church. The day is coming — inev- 
 itably coming — when we shall no longer speak of 
 the forces of the Kingdom of God at work within the 
 Eepublic but of the forces of the Republic at work 
 within the Kingdom of God. 
 
 That this is our rightful hope and that it should 
 inspire our relentless energies, our united efforts and 
 our sustaining prayers has become more and more 
 
20 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 the established conviction of the greatest and worth- 
 iest leaders of Church and State. It is the funda- 
 mental faith of all whose hearts are free from par- 
 tizanship and bigotry. It has become the determined 
 purpose of all who count themselves, their talents 
 and possessions, their party and their church, as 
 servants of their fellowmen and their God in the 
 name of Him who said : " I came not to be minis- 
 tered unto but to minister." 
 
 Then will men realize our right and our mission 
 to lead the forces which are striving to bring the 
 kingdom of men into the Kingdom of God. Then 
 will the Church be seen not looking backward to an- 
 cient history but moving forward into new life. 
 Then will we no longer appear as a house divided 
 against itself, intent upon family quarrels, but as a 
 Kingdom aflame with zeal and awakened to right- 
 eousness, forcing the chains of oppression and forg- 
 ing the bonds of brotherhood, that all men every- 
 where may be brought into the Family of the one 
 God and Father of us all. 
 
 There are grave dangers ahead for the Church that 
 essays to answer the challenge of the world — the 
 call of the crowd — to-day. There is the danger of 
 losing the support and winning the opposition of lay- 
 men whose power is their wealth. There is the dan- 
 ger of the incompetent leadership of the uninformed 
 and the unbalanced. There is the danger of dealing 
 with the effects and not the causes of human ills and 
 
The Challenge 21 
 
 injustices. There is the danger of identifying evils 
 with persons rather than conditions, with individuals 
 rather than systems. There is the danger of sub- 
 stituting panaceas for principles, of being side- 
 tracked by passing reforms, of making " entangling 
 alliances " with programs and parties. 
 
 But all of these and other dangers are as nothing 
 beside the danger of the greatest modem schism, that 
 of separating life into the sacred and the secular, the 
 spiritual and the material. 
 
 " With politics, so far as they have to do with the 
 strife of parties and the rivalry of candidates, the 
 Church has no concern. But with politics — the 
 moral aspect of the life of the state — she must deal 
 frankly and fearlessly. When she evades or neg- 
 lects this office of public prophecy, when she gives 
 her strength to theological subtlety and ecclesiastical 
 rivalry and clerical millinery, and stands silent in 
 the presence of corruption and indifferent to the 
 progress of reform, her own bells will toll the death 
 knell of her influence -— her sermons will be the 
 funeral discourse of her power, and her music will 
 be a processional to the grave of her lost honor. But 
 when she proclaims to all people without fear or 
 favor, the necessity of a thorough-going conscience 
 and a divine law of righteousness in every sphere of 
 life, the reverence of men will cover her walls with 
 praise." ^ 
 
 1 Van Dyke. 
 
II 
 
 THE commo:nwealth anb the 
 
 COMMOIST CKOWD 
 
 WHE!N" Jesus was asked if it were lawful 
 to render tribute to Csesar there were 
 among those who awaited His reply 
 some who wished His answer to ignore or deny the 
 claims of Caesar. And why? For the same reason 
 that to-day there are Christians who seek the sooth- 
 ing message of man's general relation to a far-off 
 God and shun the stirring call to the Christian's 
 practical duty in the affairs of the world. They are 
 the class that would have the pulpit — as the Phar- 
 isees would have had the Savior — refuse to touch 
 practical problems, the class that loves to hear much 
 of the sins of Pharisee and hypocrite of old and 
 little of the sins of Pharisee and hypocrite in the 
 pew to-day, the class that praises beautiful word 
 painting of ancient customs and criticizes fearless 
 analysis of modern conduct, the class that prefers 
 an indefinite and indistinct gospel to a definite and 
 difficult gospel, the class that to-day — as a whole — 
 would seek to silence the rousing denunciation of 
 
 John the Baptist, condemn the bold rebuke of St. 
 
 22 
 
Commonwealth and Common Crowd 23 
 
 Paul and change the Savior Himself into the 
 dreamer and theorist that He refused to be. As 
 He was forced, so are His messengers to-day com- 
 pelled to remind His people that the gospel is two- 
 fold, that " thou shalt love the Lord thy God ^' is 
 but one-half — nay, that he speaks falsely who claims 
 the love of God in his heart when the love of God^s 
 children everywhere is not evidenced in his deeds. 
 
 This world to which God bids us render service 
 is in the last analysis no other than the people who 
 inhabit the world. In one sense obedience to the 
 law is meant; in a higher sense service to those for 
 whose welfare the community exists. The motive — 
 the heart of duty — is deep unselfish interest in the 
 people who constitute the country, state and com- 
 munity. 
 
 History clearly sets forth the disastrous results of 
 the Christian church's failure to take her part in the 
 movements and struggles of the world. On the one 
 hand is shown an asceticism that leaves the world in 
 undisturbed licentiousness and weakens itself by soft 
 seclusion and spiritual self-indulgence. On the 
 other hand there stands the rioting world meeting 
 with gay derision the impotent denunciations of the 
 cloistered soldiers of the Christian army. Turning 
 to those other chapters of history we see the splendid 
 records of influence and uplift where the Church 
 and the men of the Church have entered the field — 
 from the influence that compelled Constantine to lift 
 
24 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 the Christian cross to the head of his heathen king- 
 dom to the influence that impels the thanksgiving 
 proclamation of the President of these United States. 
 It has been a story of lights and shadows, defeats 
 and conquests, weakness and strength, heroes and 
 false leaders, traitors and martyrs; but it has not 
 been the scene of degradation and stagnation that has 
 marked the Church's failure to give intelligent in- 
 terest and consecrated service in the battle of human 
 events. The strong warnings and glorious results of 
 the past force the Church to recall to-day the sig-nifi.- 
 cant truth that " God so loved " — not the separate, 
 self-righteous Christians — but " the world,'' that 
 " He gave His only begotten Son " and that He sent 
 His Son into the world " not to condemn the world 
 but that the world through Him might be saved." 
 
 That must be the active, unceasing attitude of the 
 Church and her people. 
 
 Time forbears a sketch of the fascinating and cru- 
 cial periods of the past when secular and religious 
 history met face to face and mingled learning and 
 power and prayer ; when hero and saint marched side 
 by side ; when statesman in politics and scholar from 
 pulpit sounded the same strong message ; when chaos 
 and crime and error and ignorance gave way before 
 the only right union of Church and State, a unity of 
 lofty purpose, of single-hearted souls and fearless 
 leaders in concord of spirit and harmony of action. 
 The need of taking our part is too urgent and wide- 
 
Commonwealth and Common Crowd 25 
 
 spread to permit a lingering on the lessons and strug- 
 gles of the past. 
 
 Suffice it to saj that, as even Gibbon admits of 
 Home, the nations and races that have perished have 
 done so through the lowering of national morality 
 and that the Church as moral guide and teacher is 
 absolutely necessary in the daily v^ork of the world 
 for which the Master lived and died. ISTever before 
 were its influence and activity more imperatively de- 
 manded than in the life of this nation at this time. 
 
 " The Son of God goes forth to war " — with the 
 sword of the spirit bathed in love. This is the chal- 
 lenge and the call of the Battle Hymn of the Church. 
 It was never so full of hope and power as to-day. 
 The harvest was never so great and the laborers were 
 never so ready to respond to leadership. The spirit 
 of unrest is abroad. The forces of discontent are 
 growing more powerful and more determined every 
 day. The works of evil are being uncovered. The 
 rule of injustice is being disputed. Men are giving 
 ear to the cry of the submerged and the oppressed. 
 The contest is on between the Doctrine of Dividends 
 and the Doctrine of Human Rights, between the Gos- 
 pel of Greed and the Gospel of Love and Justice. 
 Where will the Church stand? Shall the Church 
 take the lead — without temporizing or compromis- 
 ing? Shall the Church maintain an exclusive at- 
 titude or assume an inclusive spirit? Shall the 
 Church stand apart as the sanctuary of dead tradi- 
 
26 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 tions or go forth as the army of the living God? 
 Shall the Church lose her power by seeking to save 
 herself in silence and selfishness or shall the Church 
 save her life by losing herseK in service ? Shall the 
 Church be a safe shelter for the sanctified few or a 
 strong deliverer for the oppressed multitudes ? 
 
 To those who believe that the Church is here, not 
 as a passing institution but as an essential and in- 
 creasing force, what shall be the position of the 
 Church in this day ? Shall the Church not only jus- 
 tify its existence but exercise and amplify its in- 
 fluence ? Will the Church not only quicken the con- 
 science and answer the needs but gain the full confi- 
 dence of the people ? If so, with what message and 
 in what spirit ? Why is the chuech heke ? 
 
 The Church is here ; not as a pulpit to preach in- 
 frequent truths to passing congregations, leaving 
 them to f orgetfulness or at best to the waste and in- 
 effectiveness of individual effort, but as an army of 
 compact forces, with the efficiency of unity, the im- 
 pact of a body and the power of a united advance 
 against the tremendous forces of wrong and evil. 
 
 The Church is here; not as an organization apart 
 from society and gov3rnment, waiting upon the wants 
 of the few who seek its strength and consolation ; not 
 as the voice of one crying in the wilderness as though 
 the Christ had not yet come, but as the Kingdom 
 established to serve and to save society — not by the 
 limited method of sending reborn men to serve so- 
 
Commonwealth and Common Crowd 2T 
 
 ciety but with the Christ-given mission to make a 
 reborn society serve men ; not solely to set the King- 
 dom of God to work in the kingdom of men but to 
 set the kingdom of men at work in the Kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 The Church is here; not as a close corporation 
 controlled by clergy and church officials, but as a 
 commonwealth of equal responsibility to all, grant- 
 ing to every adherent full franchise in its affairs and 
 full voice in its uncensored councils, keeping the 
 widow's mite and the publican's prayer where the 
 Master left them, in the place of highest honor and 
 as the ideal for our attainment. 
 
 The Church is here; not as the jealous possession 
 of orthodoxy and the breeding ground of bigotry, but 
 as the welcome home of every vital truth, the com- 
 mon ground of fellowship with all who serve hu- 
 manity, eager to enlist with all who stand for Christ, 
 glad to learn of all who hold fresh truths, willing to 
 share with all whatever truth she holds; with no de- 
 sire — and no right — to an attitude more exclusive 
 or a fellowship less inclusive, to a spirit less unsel- 
 fish and to service less comprehensive, than the teach- 
 ing of her Founder justifies and the life of her 
 Savior inspires. 
 
 Despite the failures and unworthiness of even the 
 best, despite her own mistakes and her people's im- 
 perfections, the Church still keeps the Christ before 
 the world and " though with a scornful wonder, men 
 
28 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 see her sore oppressed," neither the treachery of false 
 prophets within nor the power of evil without shall 
 prevail so long as the Church's " one foundation is 
 Jesus Christ her Lord." 
 
 Is there a growing recognition of the necessity of 
 righteousness ? Is there a general movement toward 
 brotherhood? Is there a public demand that the 
 law shall become the protector of human rights and 
 the embodiment of social justice? An affirmative 
 answer is justified by evidence strong and abundant. 
 It begins with the children's court in city halls 
 and extends to the senate chamber of the nation's 
 capitol. It is evidenced by the co^ntless organiza- 
 tions constantly at work to create laws for the safety, 
 welfare and moral uplift of the people. There is 
 not an orphan child, nor an overworked shop girl, 
 nor an underpaid employee, whose cause is not that of 
 strong organizations of men and women of all classes. 
 The opening of each session of State Legislature and 
 ISTational Congress witnesses an ever enlarging in- 
 fluence of the voluntary champions of justice and 
 right. 
 
 The day is coming — and coming soon — when the 
 political boss will vacate his room in the state capi- 
 tol and his place will be taken by non-partizan leaders 
 of every good cause. The hour has come when the 
 best men and the best women must not be ashamed 
 in the presence nor afraid of the threats of those 
 who deny their right to challenge the control too long 
 
Commonwealth and Conmion Crowd 29 
 
 held by representatives of vested interests against hu- 
 man rights. It is well to count the cost of the strug- 
 gle with those whose money and lives are invested in 
 wrong. But it is also well to mark the present ad- 
 vance and note the increasing power of the forces of 
 right. 
 
 It is well to recall the time when drunkenness was 
 the daily indulgence, gambling the nightly recrea- 
 tion and bribery the unrebuked practise in legislative 
 halls of state and nation; when there was not one 
 law against child-slavery, white-slavery or wage- 
 slavery ; when the crimes of colossal corporations went 
 unpunished and the smallest offenses of an unpro- 
 tected waif brought inhuman punishment by unjust 
 laws ; when every prison was a foul purgatory ; when 
 only the rich received the advantage of education and 
 the protection of the law. To-day the drunkard 
 stands disgTaced in decent society and debarred from 
 almost every avenue of business. To-day gambling 
 and bribery are high crimes. To-day the toiling 
 child, the betrayed girl and the ignorant laborer find 
 the swift protection of a great government and the 
 saving sympathy of a strong people. To-day the 
 courts are convicting corporations and throwing pro- 
 tection around the innocent guilt of little children. 
 To-day prisons are opening their darkened cells for 
 light and cleansing, leading their inmates out into the 
 open toil that gives health and the clear sunlight that 
 restores sanity. To-day the rich are finding their 
 
30 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 riclies to be less of a false protection and more of a 
 tremendous responsibility ; less the sole inheritance of 
 the few and more the rightful share of the many. 
 
 We do well to reflect that while every policeman 
 who hunts for crime must open his records to the 
 public reporter, there are no agents employed to dis- 
 cover or chronicle goodness. It is well to bear in 
 mind the great silent strength and steady growth of 
 the forces of good, despite the sins whose stains we 
 see, the enemies whose opposition we feel and the 
 cynics whose doubts we encounter. A mighty rev- 
 olution is going on around us to-day. A profound 
 and complete change is being made under our very 
 eyes. Many of us may live to see it through. The 
 welfare of multitudes of people is being wrought out 
 on a vaster scale than ever before. It is a spiritual 
 struggle, for it is moving through the hearts and 
 minds and consciences of those who are set to the 
 task of bringing in the Better Day. Let us thank 
 God that it is coming in this way, for on no other 
 foundation can human welfare rest secure. And 
 what is the Church's part? Hers is the supreme 
 part, for above all the world's institutions the Church 
 stands for the things of the spirit, without which men 
 degenerate while they prosper and die while they 
 live. 
 
 In the first place the multitudes now deprived of 
 their rights will not come into their own until the 
 public heart shall feel their wrongs and the public 
 
Commonwealth and Common Crowd 31 
 
 conscience shall adjudge their rights — and the 
 Churcli must bear the message which will reach that 
 heart and the Church must furnish the power which 
 will quicken and guide that conscience. 
 
 There are three great motives that must move the 
 Church to lead and mold the coming era of brother- 
 hood and justice. The first is to maintain her own 
 honor and insure her own power. If we do not 
 speak and act now, if we can not show the just cause 
 of all who suffer injustice, then when the change 
 comes our message will be rejected and our efforts 
 despised. 
 
 The second great motive that must move the Church 
 at this crisis is the essential welfare of humanity. 
 Without the Christian bond of brotherhood, material 
 conditions may change but men will still be divided 
 into ruling classes and struggling masses. Without 
 the Christian message of love infused into the very 
 heart of this mighty coming change, the forces of 
 labor and the people of poverty may get what they 
 want, but it will be bred by a violence and born of a 
 hatred whose bitter fruits will be the heritage of chil- 
 dren yet unborn. Already the Church has the tre- 
 mendous task of lifting the deep class hatred so wide- 
 spread to-day and in its place planting the standard 
 of the welfare of all. Already the Church has the 
 impelling mission of transforming the social selfish- 
 ness that separates into the spirit of service that 
 knows no difference between brother and brother and 
 
32 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 makes no divisions in the common family of the God 
 and Father of all. 
 
 And the third motive for the Church to give her- 
 seK at this time is the simple motive of loyalty to 
 her Founder. The Friend of publicans, sinners and 
 outcasts ; the Champion of the lowest and the least ; 
 commanding us to love our neighbor as ourselves, 
 zealous for the bodily well-being of all who suffered, 
 full of human compassion, unashamed to do the low- 
 liest work and unafraid to die the lowest death, Jesus 
 the world's Kedeemer is our Challenge, our Example, 
 and our Power. 
 
 I would summon attention to one among the fast 
 multiplying signs of the stirring of the social con- 
 science of the Church. Both the source from which 
 it comes and the language by which it speaks make it 
 worthy of profound reflection on the part of those who 
 " profess and call themselves Christians." 
 
 " Whereas, the moral and spiritual welfare of the people de- 
 mands that the highest possible standard of living should 
 everywhere be maintained, and that all conduct of industry 
 should emphasize the search for such higher and more human 
 forms and organization as will generally elicit the personal 
 initiative and self-respect of the workman, and give him a 
 definite personal stake in the system of production to which 
 his life is given, and 
 
 Whereas, injustice and disproportionate inequality as well 
 as misunderstanding, prejudice and mutual distrust as be- 
 tween employer and employee are widespread in our social 
 and industrial life to-day: 
 
 Therefore be it resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, 
 
 That we, the members of the General Convention of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Chureh, do hereby affirm that the Church 
 
Commonwealth and Common Crowd 33 
 
 stands for the ideal of social justice and that it demands the 
 achievement of a social order in which the social cause of pov- 
 erty and the gross human waste of the present order shall be 
 eliminated; and in which every worker shall have a just re- 
 turn for that which he produces, a free opportunity for self- 
 development and a fair share in all the gains of progress. 
 And since such a social order can only be achieved progres- 
 sively by the effort of men and women who in the spirit of 
 Christ put the common welfare above private gain the Church 
 calls upon every communicant, Clerical and Lay, seriously to 
 take part in the study of the complex conditions under which 
 we are called upon to live, and so to act that the present preju- 
 dice and injustice may be supplanted by mutual understand- 
 ing, sympathy and just dealings, and the ideal of thorough- 
 going democracy may be finally realized in our land." i 
 
 1 Extract from resolution passed by the General Convention 
 of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, Octo- 
 ber, 1913. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE CALL TO EE-INTERPEET 
 
 THEEE is need to-day to face and to interpret 
 two false forms of belief as to purpose and 
 mission of the Churcli. They are found in 
 the teachings of some of the Latin Fathers who 
 molded the thought of the Church after the Apostles' 
 day. Gradually they became general until they gov- 
 erned the Church of the Middle Ages. In many 
 quarters they prevail to-day. They have carried with 
 them a train of unfortunate effects. 
 
 The first is that the Church was founded solely to 
 furnish salvation in eternity. Heaven and the Here- 
 after formed its main thought. Church membership 
 had as its underlying purpose to insure for future 
 safety. The Church stood as the old testament ark 
 — a protection against eternal judgment, to come like 
 ■flood of old as the great final catastrophe. Her mis- 
 sion was to lead men along the narrow path, single- 
 file, the eye of the soul seeing only the distant goal 
 of a far-off redemption. 
 
 The second false interpretation was to make a sharp 
 
 division into the sacred and the secular, not only as 
 
 separate from but hostile to each other. Ignoring 
 
 34 
 
The Call to Re-Interpret 85 
 
 the obvious application of the Incarnation of the 
 Divine Christ in human form and life — they set 
 the divine against the human. The highest purpose 
 of the Church was to keep herseK holy. Her chief 
 mission was to define and dispense doctrines for the 
 faithful, to formulate and furnish a creed solely as a 
 chart for steering the sanctified soul safely through 
 a world that was wholely secular and inherently 
 wicked. God's one dwelling place was the Church, 
 whose functions and ministry alone had the right to 
 be called sacred. 
 
 Our purpose is to make a constructive contribu- 
 tion — a definite addition to clearer faith and truer 
 lives and higher thinking in the Church to-day. If 
 we begin by directing thought to past errors in belief 
 it shall be because of their continued effect upon the 
 modern church, because they have a practical bear- 
 ing on the purpose and a vital message to the mis- 
 sion of the Church to-day. We shall think of these 
 false beliefs as the basis of false standards and the 
 source of false lives. The relation of belief to life is 
 inseparable. What we think not only dictates what 
 we do but governs what we leave undone. This re- 
 lation was frequently brought out by Christ and the 
 Apostles. " Take no anxious thought." " Whatso- 
 ever things are pure, etc., think on these." What lay 
 behind the allegiance of the disciples ? — belief in 
 Christ. " Whom say ye that I am ? " 
 
 Making allowance for the exceptional, the vast 
 
86 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 body of evil lives and the great sum of human crimes 
 are of men without belief in right things. It may be 
 due to ignorance, environment or wilful refusal to 
 accept. How then did the two false beliefs of 
 medieval Christianity divert its purpose and mark 
 its mission ? They polluted the course of the Church 
 and corrupted the conduct of the clergy. They do 
 so to-day — though to less degree — and will until 
 we unlearn much and learn more. 
 
 Heaven and eternity must be rightly related to 
 life. This does not mean a discarding of the right- 
 ful hope of Heaven as the home eternal. It does 
 not mean a denial of the just and inevitable conse- 
 quences of deliberate sin and wilful wrong doing. 
 It does mean the putting away of the falsely su- 
 preme (and supremely false) conception of gain- 
 ing Heaven and escaping Hell as the sole purpose of 
 our being put here by Almighty God. This must be 
 done to correct both the internal hypocrisy and the 
 external blunders and outrages which over-run the 
 Church's biogTaphy and stain the pages of secular 
 history. 
 
 These are evidenced in the present hymnology, 
 despite the drastic revision of recent years. How 
 dare we sing " Weary of earth " while professing to 
 believe Christ's word " I am come that ye might have 
 life " and at the last " Father, I pray not that thou 
 shouldst take them out of the world." Or, take St. 
 Paul's splendid utterance, while under the pain of 
 
The Call to Re-Interpret 37 
 
 the thorn in the flesh and under the hatred of former 
 friends : " To me to die is gain but to live is Christ." 
 Heaven as an awarded prize hereafter and not as an 
 attainable possession here — to what further did this 
 belief lead ? It led to the disregard of the funda- 
 mental fact of the Christian faith — the loss of self 
 in the service of others. It culminated in the con- 
 sternation of those who cried " Lord, when saw we 
 thee ? " — so intent on saving themselves, so absorbed 
 in the search for the way to Heaven. 
 
 Christ had defined Himself as the Way, the Truth 
 and the Life. Their conception did not reach be- 
 yond the way — and they gave it the barren inter- 
 pretation of a literally narrow way — so narrow that 
 they failed or feared to go aside — to venture over 
 into the wayside. They dare not get out of the path, 
 no matter what was beyond its borders. It might be 
 the one stranger, beaten and bruised and robbed. It 
 might be hungry multitudes. So intent on their race 
 to Heaven they did not take time to remember His 
 condemnation of the priest who passed by on the 
 other side — his own safe side. They forgot that 
 Jesus cut short a divine discourse to feed the multi- 
 tude on whom " He had compassion.'^ Pursuing the 
 upward path to Heaven they could not hear down 
 below the cry of little children — oppressed, neg- 
 lected, over-worked. They did not know that they 
 were leaving a Christ behind with the children whom 
 He supremely loved. They were too absorbed to 
 
38 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 recall His divine verdict on " whomsoever should put 
 a stumbling block in the way of one of these little 
 ones." And the outcome of this false attitude was 
 to make the Church a monastery shut out of the world 
 instead of a Kingdom at work in the world. It bred 
 that monasticism called christian but totally foreign 
 to Christ. Their way has been termed " an attempt 
 to overcome the world by running away from it." 
 It uttered pious platitudes to the elect and pronounced 
 dogmatic damnation upon the non-elect. It set aside 
 Christ's command to the Church " Go ye and save — 
 now " ; and substituted the command " Come in and 
 be safe hereafter." 
 
 To the enslaved and oppressed it dealt out promises 
 of a future redemption, with no effort to bring about 
 that rightful and real redemption from wrong and in- 
 justice without which God's universe is made to ap- 
 pear His perpetual mistake and His open shame. 
 The Church was governed by men who prophesied 
 smooth things to those who accepted her plan of sal- 
 vation. She filled her theology with theories of the 
 devil and definitions of Hell hereafter, while she per- 
 mitted the devil to go unchallenged and Hell to hold 
 carnival in the business corruption, the military car- 
 nage and the social cruelties of the practises she failed 
 to correct and the castes she helped to create. Thus 
 did the Church throughout a phase of false belief and 
 a period of false prophets. Thus would the Church 
 again to-day divert her purpose and delay her mission 
 
The Call to Re-Interpret 39 
 
 if the bigot should gain her rule and the conservative 
 control her conscience. There are those now who see 
 in Christ the accepted way but not the reforming 
 life. There are those who would purchase their final 
 heaven at the price of other men's living hells. There 
 are those who seek the Church as the ark of their 
 own safety, or even the mark of their own respecta- 
 bility, unmoved by the dangers that engulf and the 
 disrepute that degrades their fellow-men. There are 
 those who would hold the Church aloof from the 
 reformation of laws that corrupt and the reclamation 
 of society's victims who cry aloud for redemption 
 from social wrongs. God grant them a swift con- 
 version of heart ere they enter that life where the 
 ^' last shall be first." God give them a clearer, wider 
 vision of the real business of the King, ere He calls 
 them to account. 
 
 " Three hundred thousand church-spires raised to 
 the glory of Christ ! Three hundred million human 
 creatures baptized into His service ! * I trust the 
 Almighty to give the victory to my arms ! ' ' Let 
 your hearts beat to God and your fists in the face of 
 the enemy ! ' 'In prayer we call God's blessing on 
 our valiant troops ! ' God on the lips of every poten- 
 tate, and under the hundred thousand spires prayer 
 that twenty-two million servants of Christ may re- 
 ceive from God the blessed strength to tear and blow 
 one another to pieces, to ravage and burn, to wrench 
 husbands from their wives and fathers from their 
 
40 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 children, to starve the poor and everywhere destroy 
 the works of the spirit ! ^ God be with ns to the 
 death and dishonor of our foes ' — that God who gave 
 His only begotten Son to bring on earth peace and 
 good- will toward men! 'No creed can stand against 
 such reeling subversion of its foundation. After this 
 monstrous mockery, beneath this grinning skull of 
 irony, how shall there remain faith in a religion 
 preached and practised to such ends ? When this war 
 is over and reason resumes its sway our dogmas will 
 be found scored through forever." ^ 
 
 We are called to hear to-day the vastest cry of 
 human anguish that ever ascended to the throne of 
 the Father. We are called to witness the greatest 
 warning ever given to a people who love peace and 
 honor the flag of freedom. We are called to look 
 more humbly into the face of God, whose universe 
 men have mutilated and whose heart humanity has 
 hurt. We are called to come closer to the Christ 
 who rises more superbly than ever as the One su- 
 premely strong. We are called to pray more con- 
 stantly " Lord God of hosts be with us yet, lest we 
 forget," to fit ourselves for the reawakened day when 
 " The tumult and the shouting dies, The captains and 
 the kings depart." We are called to reject the ex- 
 ploded theory that the surest road to peace is that 
 guarded by the biggest army and the best navy. It 
 is a call and a challenge away from these things. It 
 
 1 Galsworthy. 
 
The Call to Re-Interpret 41 
 
 calls us beyond tlie birth of our independence won by 
 arms back to tlie doctrine of our interdependence won 
 by the williiig sacrifice of the Son of God. It chal- 
 lenges us to make choice between God and Csesar, if 
 need be between Christ and Country. It calls us to 
 " seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteous- 
 ness." It bids us remember Euskin's warning that 
 " God will put up with a good deal but not with a 
 second place." It reminds us, as Kipling in vain 
 reminded his own Kingdom: 
 
 " Fair is our lot, O goodly is our heritage, 
 
 Humble ye my people and be fearful in your mirth; 
 
 lor the Lord our God most High He hath made the deep as 
 dry. 
 
 He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth. 
 
 Yea though we sinned, though our rulers fell from righteous- 
 ness, 
 
 Deep in all dishonor though we stained our garments' hem; 
 
 O be ye not dismayed, 
 
 Though we stumbled and we strayed; 
 
 We were led by evil counselors, the Lord shall deal with them. 
 
 Keep ye the law, be swift in all obedience. 
 
 Clear the land of evil, build the road and bridge the ford; 
 
 Be ye sure to each his own, He shall reap what he hath sown, 
 
 By the peace among our people let men know we serve the 
 Lord." 
 
 Every mother made childless, every wife whose 
 husband is torn from her side, every babe forced to 
 become fatherless — every heart that bleeds and 
 every sob that chokes in Europe's vast domain of 
 human anguish is a call and a challenge to all who 
 confess the Eatherhood of God and profess the 
 Brotherhood of Man. A call and a challenge to 
 
42 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 what ? ISTot to the frantic fervor that would turn our 
 Democracy into a military camp, l^ot to the false 
 philosophy that might makes right, that God is on the 
 side of the physically strongest. It is not the white- 
 book of diplomacy but the red blood of human suffer- 
 ing that makes its appeal to us as Christians. It is 
 not English King nor Prussian Emperor who should 
 have a hearing in America to-day. It is the cause of 
 humanity against the cause of inhumanity. It is 
 the call of the people who belong to life and to whom 
 life belongs. It is the hosts of men marshaled to 
 wholesale murder, mistaking the madness of passion 
 for the majesty of patriotism. It is the multitude 
 of happy and united homes broken beyond recognition 
 and restoration. 
 
 A splendid thing is signified by the almost uni- 
 versal discarding of the usual literature idealizing 
 war, exalting death, depicting the glories of the bat- 
 tle-field. We have gone beyond all this. We have 
 learned that useless death is a crime against God, 
 nature and human life. We shall learn that war 
 cannot be idealized, since it is the substitution of the 
 primeval instinct of beast and savage for the ideal 
 of reason and law and love. We shall learn that 
 there is nothing necessarily heroic in shooting a 
 human being, whether under the contagious fervor 
 of battle or the private motive of revenge. We shall 
 learn that to die is not necessarily noble — nay, is 
 frequently ignoble — that a man will face death for 
 
The Call to Re-Interpret 43 
 
 the sake of robbing an express train, of making a 
 record in mountain climbing or breaking a record in 
 an automobile race. 
 
 And so we are seeing a fundamental change in the 
 very phraseology about the war which argues a funda- 
 mental change of heart, a finer conception of life and 
 a higher hold of conscience. It is the hospital that 
 ministers to life, and not the machine gun that 
 destroys life; it is the nurse with the red-cross band 
 and not the warrior with the blood-stained sword; it 
 is the cry of defenseless women and innocent chil- 
 dren and not the might of the iron monarch ; it is the 
 plea of devastated homes and demolished art and not 
 the praise of the inventor of powder and lead ; it is 
 peace and not war ; Christ and not l^apoleon — it 
 is these that every hour more surely establishes in the 
 mastery of the ages to follow. We are called to 
 search our own hearts, to face conditions in our own 
 land, to name no man a patriot who is ready to go to 
 war but not ready to pay honest taxes, who stands for 
 the rights of his country and evades the laws of his 
 commonwealth, who will fight the danger of oppres- 
 sion from across the seas and feeds on the oppression 
 of those under him in business, who prates of justice 
 in the abstract and practises daily injustice. 
 
IV 
 
 THE CALL TO EEADJUSTMENT 
 
 T 
 
 < ' r ■ ^ HE first shall be last and the last first." 
 There is a peculiarity about the language 
 of the Great Teacher. Into almost every 
 sentence that He uttered may be read a significance 
 more lasting than its literal meaning. After two 
 thousand years of profound study, of critical and 
 reverent scholarship and of interpretation by the pul- 
 pit of every age, we have not as yet understood, much 
 less exhausted, the full meaning of His sayings. 
 Life alone is the full interpreter of His words. 
 
 We shall not take His words here for their obvious 
 meaning and in their familiar interpretation. Be- 
 neath them rest a deeper meaning and a wider force 
 than that of a final distant judgment, when the great- 
 est here shall be among the least there, the lowest 
 shall be the highest, the last shall be the first. In 
 this world now, in your day and mine, in these 
 present lives of ours, this principle is at work. It 
 is not an arbitrary upsetting and overturning of 
 things by an over-ruling Providence, but simply a 
 
 righteous readjustment and restoration of the things 
 
 44 
 
The Call to Readjustment 45 
 
 which we have permitted to be wrested from their 
 proper places. We have been slow to learn that 
 nothing can remain permanently out of its place in 
 this world which belongs to the God of Law and Eight 
 and Love. All too slowly have we adopted the old 
 adage that ^^ nothing is settled until it is settled 
 right." 
 
 A man may place unrighteousness first, may even 
 give his whole life over to it, but somehow and some 
 time righteousness will regain and retain its usurped 
 dominion, though to win it must crush his biggest 
 ambition and destroy his dearest idol — though he 
 lose his life before he can gain it, though the struggle 
 last through this and on into the other life. The 
 world may repudiate first things, the human race may 
 lose its first child-like purity and faith, mankind may 
 set up false gods of Intellect and Pride and Force, but 
 these things will give way and the first shall resume 
 their place; the human race shall be redeemed and 
 God will claim again His own, though it be necessary 
 to bring the Son of God Himself to spend His life on 
 earth and lose it on a cross. 
 
 In his book on " The Marks of a Man '' Kobert E. 
 Speer says: "James Chalmers was what he was, 
 because as a lad of twelve a single obscure unnoticed 
 influence had gone across his life. I suspect," says 
 Mr. Speer, " that, if at the end we look back over our 
 lives, we shall see that the thing which has determined 
 our career has been some inconspicuous and obscure 
 
46 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 and unnoticed incident, so inconspicuous maybe, that 
 it slipped entirely out of our memory." First among 
 those things, then, where the demand for readjusts 
 ment comes is the lesson of giving more frequent 
 heed to the little and apparently commonplace, as 
 being among those things which will some day force 
 their way to the place from which we have sought to 
 keep them, and will at last prove to be among the po- 
 tent influences and telling opportunities of our life. 
 It is for us to beware lest we miss their meaning and 
 lose their reward. Acting under the generous im- 
 pulse, let us be unafraid and unashamed to give and 
 to respond with the best within us in those small 
 spaces of time, those brief opportunities, crowded 
 hours and hurrying chances which we all too gener- 
 ally underestimate or overlook. 
 
 Another realm in which men practise this hazard- 
 ous and hurtful reversal of things is the realm of 
 failure and success, the thing and the man, the end 
 and MEANS. What is our attitude toward failure 
 and disappointment? How frequently sensitive 
 pride or bitter mortification usurp the place of a 
 consecrating humility, an enlightened reawakening 
 and an ennobling resolution! How we need to see 
 that the things which we fail to grasp and conquer 
 in misfortune are just the things which shall be our 
 undoing in good-fortune. Take for instance, a life 
 where a right and strong ambition is hampered by 
 poverty and held back by unfavorable environment. 
 
The Call to Readjustment 47 
 
 How rarely does there come at such a time a convic- 
 tion that these very detaining and harassing condi- 
 tions are seeking to contribute their invaluable les- 
 sons. They call to sacrifice, to gratitude for un- 
 recognized blessings, to full appreciation of the fun- 
 damental goodness and protection of God. They 
 plead for a wider sympathy with all others of that 
 vast number who are held back, circumscribed and 
 thwarted in their endeavors. Unless we place the 
 lessons of loss, privation and denial above their sting 
 and pressure, unless appreciation of these lessons be- 
 comes a thing deeply rooted in grateful heart and 
 enlightened mind, the very restoration of health or 
 wealth or joy sweeps aside our good but shallow reso- 
 lutions. Unless in poverty and under restraint we 
 grip the principle of self-mastery and conquer the 
 .spirit of self-indulgence, there will be left no power 
 to master ourselves under better circumstances, no 
 fellowship with humanity, and no joy of generosity 
 when our lives are lifted to the freer, fuller and more 
 fortunate lot. 
 
 The Christian's first contest is with self. His ob- 
 jective ambition is secondary. Therefore if it fail 
 — he will not fail. He shall learn that some times 
 "the work may be a failure, but the worker 
 stronger, the thing may not have been accomplished 
 but the man may be a more accomplished man.'' All 
 the force of a burdened, broken and brief life rests 
 behind these words of a great American preacher: 
 
48 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 " If failure has taught jou that it is not how many 
 tools a man has, but how well he works with what he 
 has that interests God, if failure has taught you that 
 manhood is worth more than money, that money 
 without manhood is contemptible, eternal bank- 
 ruptcy; that the circumstances of life are only its 
 scaffolding, within which the true temple of a Christ- 
 like character is to be built — then you should thank 
 God with full heart for your teacher." 
 
 Are we placing some objective ambition, some 
 mark of popular esteem or outward success first, and 
 permitting our principles, our characters and our 
 lives to follow into whatever devious paths our 
 diverted energies may lead ? Or are we giving first 
 place to the manhood of us, the soul within us and 
 the God above us, and holding popularity, ambition 
 and success subject to nobleness of life and righteous- 
 ness of standard, cleanness of conscience and fulness 
 of service ? 
 
 Again ; in the interpretation of the world's calami- 
 ties, disasters and distresses how prone men are to 
 displace the simple, salutary and sane in their ex- 
 planations, and to bring forth the involved, the un- 
 reasonable and the unjust — to place last things first. 
 We have made some progress here. !N'o longer do 
 men view disaster or epidemic as of old. These 
 things once ascribed to the wrath of the gods, and 
 later to the anger of the one God, are now interpreted 
 by man as the results of his own negligence of God's 
 
The Call to Readjustment 49 
 
 great protective laws. And so we meet epidemic 
 and offset calamity by wise provisions, diligent teach- 
 ing and faithful prevention. Yet with the example 
 of Home's burning, in the distant age of Nero, we 
 have waited to our day to put our responsibility in 
 this concern where it belongs; and even then it re- 
 quired the tragedy of an Iroquois Theater, a Slocum 
 disaster and a Titanic tragedy to teach us that we 
 have no right to subject ourselves or others to great 
 danger and then charge to God's account the suffer- 
 ing caused by our heedlessness, stupidity or selfish- 
 ness. We are learning here to put first things first, 
 and no longer to place the loving Father of His own 
 human race under the indictment of malicious power 
 or capricious cruelty. We are beginning no longer 
 to judge God as at best an inexorable judge, ready 
 to sentence His erring children to eternal woe. At 
 last we are learning that the highest and truest, the 
 only real and the only lasting motive for our service 
 of God is the knowledge of God's unceasing and 
 eternal love for the world, inspiring and lifting that 
 world to love of God. We are at last beginning to 
 realize what the great Parrar preached; that "God 
 created us, not to destroy, not to torment, not to take 
 vengeance on, but to save and to save to the utter- 
 most from sin, from corruption, from that true 
 Gehenna, which is not a burning prison, but a pol- 
 luted heart ; that Hell is a temper, not a place, that 
 so long as we are evil and impure and unloving, so 
 
50 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 long where we are is Hell and where Hell is there 
 we must be." 
 
 You remember the story of the demons in the 
 Gadarenes who protested against the approach of the 
 healing Christ. The demons of selfishness and 
 greed have imprisoned the souls of vast numbers of 
 Christian men and women. Sometimes the prison 
 is a stock market, sometimes a small office, some- 
 times a factory, sometimes a nation. When the 
 gospel of Christ seeks entrance to drive out selfish- 
 ness and restore to sanity and self-mastery they cry 
 out like the Gadarene demoniacs " What have we to 
 do with Thee ? " " Let the Church hold to the Gos- 
 pel " they say. What they mean is to let the Church 
 withhold the full Gospel. Again they cry " Let the 
 Church administer the sacraments," blind to Christ's 
 condemnation of those who take the sacrament as a 
 substitute for service, a false appropriation of the 
 supreme symbol of unselfishness, sacrifice and dedi- 
 cation to serve others. " Let the Church preach 
 Christ and Him crucified ! " Let her do so and she 
 will not repeat an indictment two thousand years 
 old. She will picture to our lives of social selfish- 
 ness that scene of material conflict where the Master 
 announced that " Man shall not live by bread alone." 
 She will make the central text of her preaching the 
 command, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
 seH." 
 
 She will repeat His parable of industrial greed 
 
The Call to Readjustment 51 
 
 where a certain man recounted his accumulated pos- 
 sessions and laid plans for their increase. She will 
 point to His story of warning to every age and every 
 individual in the eternal parable of Dives and 
 Lazarus. She will recall His praise of a certain poor 
 widow. She will repeat the sermon He preached 
 with the whip of small cords. She will sound 
 men's ceaseless struggle to get and to save the Sermon 
 on the Mount. " Take no anxious thought for the 
 things of self." " Seek ye first the Kingdom of 
 God." She will paint in every office of industry and 
 every home of selfishness where Christ is left outside 
 the portrait of the apostate apostle who sold his 
 Master for more money. She will make it the por- 
 trait not of Judas the hero of the hurrying crowd, 
 the successful speculator in blood, but of Judas alone 
 with his remorseful soul and his money. She will 
 point to the fact that even one capable of doing this 
 sought to annul the bargain, and failing, threw down 
 the money and took his own life as not being worth 
 living. She will challenge every professing Chris- 
 tian to answer this question: 
 
 " O did we live the Christian Creed, 
 Did we feel the blade of human need, 
 Would millions of men be underfed 
 And others surfeited with bread? 
 
 " Not till the meanest has his place 
 In the onward march of the human race, 
 Not till the lowest has his right 
 To love and honor and food and light: 
 
52 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 No man a master and none a slave 
 
 Shall the world be saved as He meant to save." 
 
 The truthful preaching of Jesus Christ is just 
 exactly what the modern business world needs to 
 apply to itself. It is just what every one of us needs, 
 however small our possessions. If " money " and 
 " property " and " business " are terms used to in- 
 terpret, it is because they are the terms into which 
 men have packed that selfishness and cruelty and un- 
 brotherliness which contradict and impede the Gos- 
 pel of Christ. The blame is not on the Church that 
 preaches but on the men who make such preaching 
 necessary — even in the twentieth century of Chris- 
 tianity. " The social menace of our day is the direct 
 responsibility of those who have enthroned the mam- 
 mon of selfishness in the place of the Fatherhood of 
 God as the providence of progress." God sent the 
 world's Redeemer to redeem ; just that and all that — 
 and it means to redeem not only all we are, but all 
 we own or use or make, from the crime of injustice 
 and the tyranny of selfishness. !Not alone as a com- 
 fort and compensation to the poor and unblessed but 
 as a warning and a way of redemption to the well- 
 to-do and the blessed comes Christ's message to-day : 
 " Man shalt not live by bread alone." 
 
 Jesus Christ is the Savior of all society or His 
 own teachings are false and His whole life is a fail- 
 ure. On all sides we are facing the challenge that 
 " until the Church undertakes Christ's mission of 
 
The Call to Readjustment 53 
 
 social redemption it but trifles and toys with the 
 problem of the world's salvation." Not alone in the 
 funeral service over the dead but above the tragic 
 greed of living men we need to pronounce the truth 
 that " we brought nothing into this world and it is 
 certain we can carry nothing out." As Christ used 
 His own material temptation for a tremendous 
 spiritual lesson, so He uses the material powers of 
 to-day to fulfil a divine end. That end can be 
 plainly seen by those who have " eyes to see." The 
 very selfishness of mammon is teaching the reality 
 of our responsibility. It is teaching it by increasing 
 the problem of poverty which is stirring the hearts 
 of the people, rousing the forces of unrest and filling 
 the world's printing presses with works on social sci- 
 ence and industrial reforms. 
 
 We are catching the first notes of a movement that 
 will soon become so fundamental and universal that 
 no individual or class can escape. We are seeing the 
 first beginnings in the nation's income and inherit- 
 ance tax; in great national gatherings to study and 
 defend human rights above property rights; in the 
 volumes on social and industrial justice pouring 
 from the press ; in the rising tide of human sympathy 
 whose first expression is social service and whose 
 final purpose is fundamental and comprehensive jus- 
 tice. It is seen in the masses of men in brotherhoods 
 and the forces of the class conscious in organized 
 battle with the powers of unearned and unbrotherly 
 
54 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 privilege. It is at his own peril if any man or class 
 of men seek to live selfishly and to preach selfishness 
 in the day that is now upon us. " There is nothing 
 hidden that shall not be revealed" and that soon. 
 Ashamed and self-condemned will those men stand 
 who are found seeking sustenance and strength from 
 the hard stones of material possessions. They will 
 know themselves even as they are known and they 
 will not dare to call themselves Christians — without 
 knowing also that they stand condemned and re- 
 jected of men as well as by Jesus Christ. That day 
 will not come to its close without struggle between 
 man and man, between a man and his own contend- 
 ing selfishness. Happy and wise are they who enter 
 the struggle without delay and without compromise, 
 on the side and in the power of the Christ who waged 
 the conflict in the wilderness and won the final vic- 
 tory through His own crucifixion. It will mean 
 crucifixion of some sort to every one. Which shall 
 it be for us — the crucifixion of the highest or of the 
 lowest — of our real selves or of our cultivated self- 
 ishness ? Let us not deceive ourselves for, as another 
 puts it " Fearful things may yet come to pass upon 
 the earth, while storms of social strife may hide the 
 face of God awhile from human faith, but as the sea 
 of historic troubles beats upon the systems of man, 
 it will carve out new harbors of hope for the worn and 
 hopeless and bear the race to new continents of 
 promise. And through the fiercest storms of human 
 
The Call to Readjustment 55 
 
 passions, there will come that same Jesus who stilled 
 the waves of His native sea, to speak the commanding 
 word that shall hush the social strife in the sea of 
 perfect justice." 
 
 " Till about 1870 individualism had the advantage in this 
 conflict; but near the middle of the century collectivism began 
 to gain on individualism, and during the last third of the 
 centuiy collectivism won decided advantages over the opposing 
 principle. 
 
 " During precisely this period of growing collectivism the 
 churches gained on the population at a slackening rate. It 
 is not the actual growth of the churches which is significant 
 in this connection, but their growth as compared with that 
 of the population; and during the last half of the nineteenth 
 century the rate of gain of the Protestant churches in the 
 United States was only one-fourth as great as during the 
 first half; during the twenty years from 1880 to 1900 it was 
 only one quarter as great as it had been during the preceding 
 thirty years; while during the ten years from 1890 to 1900 it 
 was only one-third as great as during the preceding decade. 
 That is, during the last ten years of the century the rate of 
 gain on the population was only one-sixteenth as great as 
 during the first half of the century. We must not be sur- 
 prised to learn therefore that from 1900 to 1910 there was 
 no gain whatever on the population; and each year since then 
 there has been a slight loss. 
 
 " This significant phenomenon is not peculiar to any com- 
 munion or to any country in Christendom. The relaxing hold 
 of the churches on the people not only in this country but in 
 Great Britain and in Continental Europe was observed as 
 early as the middle of the nineteenth century. From 1851 to 
 1891 attendance on the Presbyterian churches of Scotland de- 
 creased 180,000. That is, while the population increased 39.3 
 per cent, in forty years, church attendance decreased 22.4 per 
 cent. Similar facts might be given from England, also from 
 the Continent. 
 
 " The industrial revolution, during the past generation, has 
 been greater in Germany than anywhere else in Europe and 
 the famous Dr. Stocker of Berlin declares that ' nowhere has 
 
56 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 so great a part of the people broken with the Church. 
 Protestantism is sick, sick unto death.' On February 22, 1914, 
 less than two per cent, of the population were in attendance 
 at the churches of Berlin and Charlottenburg ; and of those 
 present three quarters were women and children. 
 
 " The Roman Catholic Church in Europe has in large 
 measure lost her influence. The French Government has 
 broken with her; Italy defies her; Portugal repudiates her 
 and even Spain has left her. 
 
 *' The same remarkable change is taking place in the Greek 
 Church of Russia. 
 
 " The pagan world is not exempt from this cosmic move- 
 ment. Wherever modern thought and the influence of the new 
 social spirit have gone, all individualistic religions — Islam, 
 Buddhism and Brahmanism — have been loosening their hold. 
 
 " All this is not occasion for alarm but for congratulation ; 
 not a sign of retrogression but of progress. All pagan re- 
 ligions and Islam are individualistic in spirit as well as form; 
 their object is to prepare men for the other life; they will, 
 therefore, gradually disintegrate as the new social spirit and 
 the conditions of the new collective civilization prevail. The 
 Christianity of Christ is social in spirit, though it has been 
 fettered by an individualistic interpretation. Its social spirit 
 is its vital principle which has kept alive amid adverse con- 
 ditions. It is now struggling to free itself from its ancient 
 bondage and to gain liberty to grow in the favorable soil 
 which the new civilization is creating all over the world." i 
 
 1 Josiah Strong. 
 
IS THE CHUKCH AFEAID? 
 
 * * A MAI^ was walking througli the woods in 
 
 l\ 
 
 springtime. The air was thrilling and 
 throbbing with the passion of little 
 hearts, with the love-wooing and the parent pride of 
 the birds. But the man never noticed that there 
 was a parent bird in the woods. He was a botanist 
 and was looking for plants. 
 
 " A man was walking through the streets of a citv, 
 pondering the problems of wealth and national well- 
 being. He saw a child sitting on a curbstone and 
 crying. He met children at play. He saw a young 
 mother with her child and an old man with his grand- 
 child. But it never occurred to him that little chil- 
 dren are the foundation of society, a chief motive; 
 power in economic effort, the most influential teach- 
 ers, the source of the purest pleasures, the embodi 
 ment of form and color and grace. The man had 
 never had a child and his eyes were not opened. 
 
 "A man read through the ISTew Testament. He 
 felt no vibration of social hope in the preaching of 
 John the Baptist and in the shout of the crowd when 
 Jesus entered Jerusalem. He caught no revolution- 
 ary note in the Book of Eevelations. The social 
 
 67 , 
 
58 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 movement had not yet reached him. Jesus knew 
 human nature when He reiterated : ' He that hath 
 ears to hear, let him hear.' " ^ 
 
 Shall the Militant Church he content to save the 
 separate soul and afraid to withstand the systems of 
 organized evil? 
 
 Is it the Church's duty to protect the ninety and 
 nine as well as to save the one ? Shall we make the 
 Church a haven for the few who seek her shelter and 
 refuse to rescue the multitude on whom the Master 
 had compassion ? 
 
 We Americans talk of the suffering and the bru- 
 tality which challenged us to war. Do we forget the 
 tragedy and suffering for which we are responsible 
 at home, under the very spires of our churches ? 
 
 Let those who dwell on the terrible waste and cost 
 of war answer their responsibility for hours of waste, 
 opportunities lost, money extravagantly expended or 
 selfishly extorted not only in the face of widespread 
 poverty but from the labors and lives of the poor 
 themselves. 
 
 Let those who talk of war's cruelties see to it that 
 none suffer through their cold and calculating pur- 
 pose of gain and advancement in business, politics 
 or ecclesiastical preferment. Four colossal and 
 costly cathedrals are in process of erection or comple- 
 tion in four Eastern cities within five hours reach of 
 one another. In those same cities the extent of ig- 
 
 1 Rauschenbusch. 
 
Is the Church Afraid? 59 
 
 norance, poverty and preventable disease is beyond 
 calculation. Under these conditions is not the 
 Church robbing God's poor in God's own name ? To 
 build a ten million dollar cathedral in the presence 
 of slums and widespread poverty is not a tribute but 
 an insult to Jesus Christ. 
 
 Let those who comment on the loss of life in war 
 think of the thousands in their city, perhaps in their 
 employ, who have lost all of life save drudgery and 
 poverty and ill-paid labor. 
 
 The evils of war follow the hot passion of angered 
 nations. What of the evils before our faces — under 
 our hands — where the innocent and helpless are the 
 victims of our cowardice, our greed and our selfish- 
 ness? 
 
 1^0 thinking man denies that moral issues are in- 
 volved in economic laws. They are more often 
 rooted in immoral economic soil. Shall the Church 
 permit multitudes to feed on the things that poison 
 body and soul, fearful lest she stain her sacred hands 
 with the secular ? It is not so much a question of the 
 Church's right as of the Church's duty. It is not a 
 matter of polity but of principle. It is not optional 
 — it is mandatory. Jesus Christ did not refuse to 
 express Himself when the economic and the secular 
 were intruded into the realm of the moral and the 
 spiritual by the " money-changers " ; nor did He rest 
 content solely with expressing His views. He took 
 up the " secular " piece of twisted cord intended for 
 
60 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 " economic use " and with it whipped His condemna- 
 tion into their consciences. He not only drove home 
 His truth — He drove out their traffic. He not only 
 broke forth into righteous anger — He broke up their 
 unrighteous business. 
 
 The Church does not hesitate to enter the province 
 of the secular in order to secure her own property 
 rights. The Church is constantly dealing with eco- 
 nomic problems which affect the support of her minis- 
 try and her institutions. If she does these things 
 for herself and her own interests and is unwilling to 
 do as much for human welfare, she stands openly 
 convicted of utter selfishness. How much more 
 earnestly and valiantly must she contend when 
 human life is unjustly overtaxed, when men and 
 women are crushed under unjust systems and little 
 children are robbed of their birthright of health and 
 happiness and liberty ? 
 
 And the modern minister ? It is possible for him 
 to be comfortable in the petty life of social servility 
 to the so-called " leading members " of his parish. 
 It is possible for him to keep an undisturbed heart 
 by living in the charmed and charming circle of the 
 well-content. He may not feel the heart-ache of the 
 many if he rest his feet beneath mahogany tables and 
 feast frequently in the homes of plenty. 
 
 But if he seek to follow the path His Master made, 
 his heart will surge with a mighty sorrow at the 
 sight of the Jerusalem of to-day that does not know 
 
Is the Church Afraid? 61 
 
 its King, that serves lesser gods for greater profits, 
 that replaces the sign of the cross with the dollar- 
 mark, that gives more to recreation than to religion, 
 more to self-indulgence than to human service, more 
 to current fashions than to the eternal Christ ! 
 
 Practical Brotherhood and not Patronizing Benev- 
 olence is the way of approach out of the present 
 crisis. It is our new opportunity to learn an old 
 lesson — as old as the answer to the question of Cain : 
 " Am I my brother's keeper ? " The day has come 
 when men shall be taught that the contribution for 
 charity does not " cover the multitude of sins '' com- 
 mitted by competition and greed. 
 
 The hour has struck when industry and capital 
 must take to themselves the command " Thou shalt 
 not steal " and then return a pittance of the stolen 
 profits in benevolences. The time is here for the 
 man who professes religion to burn into his con- 
 science this message of God ! " What doth the Lord 
 require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy and to 
 walk humbly with thy God '' — remembering that 
 doing justice comes first. 
 
 The final solution will not come until we forge our 
 industrial system, as well as form our individual 
 lives, by the precept of Jesus Christ : " Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbor as thyself " ! The hearts of the 
 heavy-laden and the growing forces of discontent 
 eagerly await the answer of the Church. The God 
 of Justice and the Lord of Love — They also wait. 
 
62 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 MARY PHAGAN PASSES JU3XJMENT 
 
 " You care a lot about me, you men of Georgia, now that I 
 
 am dead. 
 \ou have spent thousands of dollars trying to learn who mu- 
 tilated my body. 
 You have tilled the columns of your newspapers with the story 
 
 of my wrong. 
 You have broken into a prison and murdered a man that I 
 
 might be avenged, 
 But why did you not care for me when I was alive? 
 I was but a child, but you shut me out of the daylight. 
 You held me within four walls watching a machine that 
 
 crashed through the air. 
 Endlessly watching a knife as it cut a piece of wood. 
 Noise fills the place — noise, dust and the smell of oil. 
 I wish some of the thousands of dollars that you spent on the 
 
 trial might have kept me in school. 
 A real school — the kind you build for the rich, 
 I worked through the hot August days 
 When you were bossing the girls or shooting birds. 
 Or lounging in doorways cursing the nigger; 
 And you never paid me enough to buy a pretty dress. 
 Why did you despise me living and yet love me so now? 
 I think I know. It is like what the preacher told me about 
 
 Christ: 
 People hated Him when He was alive, 
 But when He was dead they killed man after man for His 
 
 sake." 1 
 
 The Church must teach that selfish accumulation 
 and self-indulgence can find no atonement in the 
 substitution of spasmodic subscriptions to charity. 
 There is no charity in the act of a corporation that 
 discharges or underpays employees in order to amass 
 profits and out of these profits contributes a check to 
 help the needy. Their " way of business '' is one of 
 the main causes of poverty and unemployment, l^o 
 1 Mary White Ovington in the New Republic. 
 
Is the Church Afraid? 63 
 
 private exponent of daily injustice can be made a 
 saint bj his response to the pressure of a public ap- 
 peal. The problem of the unemployed will never be 
 solved until the rights of the employed are settled; 
 until the worker becomes a partner in the business of 
 which he is a part. 
 
 The aroused public conscience will not feed on the 
 false philosophy of the comfortable conservative who 
 meets every such crisis with the old cry that the 
 thriftlessness of the poor is responsible for their ig- 
 norance, poverty and unemployment. What has 
 made them thriftless ? There is abundant and scien- 
 tific proof that poverty and unemployment are among 
 the first causes of final thriftlessness. The facts will 
 prove as another source the underfed bodies and 
 *^ deadly discouraged " lives of vast numbers of work- 
 ers. The conscience of the community will not toler- 
 ate the spirit of the self-righteous who calmly charge 
 Almighty God with the crime of an arbitrary division 
 of His people into the fortunate and favored and the 
 unfortunate and wretched. 
 
 There are those who propose the expediency of 
 delay until things become normal ; the waiting for a 
 calm and a "more convenient season." Against 
 them stands the verdict of the past. All experience 
 proves that invariably reaction and inaction set in 
 when the normal succeeds the abnormal; that the 
 time to regulate is when things are irregular; that 
 one day of uncorrected evil may fill to over-flowing 
 
64 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 the cup of misery in the lives of many, that a " more 
 convenient season " breeds a callous conscience and 
 a negative conservatism. All history shows that hu- 
 manity has paid heavy penalties for the price of post-:, 
 ponement; that the object-lesson of a present crisis is 
 essential to all great reforms ; that human rights and 
 liberty have never been won by academic discussion ; 
 that periods of high enthusiasm and noble passion 
 have started the upward movements and molded the 
 mighty men of history. This is a fact — a living, 
 vital, pleading human fact : — For every modern 
 Dives there are literally thousands in the state of Laz- 
 arus. And here is the next outstanding and condemn- 
 ing fact : In the center of all this poverty is abun- 
 dance of wealth — in the hands of the few. Within 
 the vast circle of human struggle, of want and suffer- 
 ing, they hold their huge bank accounts, transact their 
 " Big Business " and live in ever enlarging luxury. 
 The fear of facts is moral cowardice. The sup- 
 pression of truth is spiritual suicide. The repres- 
 sion of liberty of speech is the foundation of injus- 
 tice and the origin of anarchy. With the recognition 
 of these truths the Church must begin. To those who 
 seek the sanction of the sacred, she will give the motto 
 of the Master : " Ye shall know the Truth — r and 
 the Truth shall make you Free." She will find her 
 texts standing out on almost every page of the Bible. 
 She will find her message in the answer compelled - 
 from God by the guileful question of guilty Cain: 
 
Is the Church Afraid? 65 
 
 " Att] I my brother's keeper ? " It is the corner- 
 Btone of the Law of the Propliets. It is the heart of 
 the Gospel of the Christ who connnanded : " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself " and whose final 
 judgment is '^ Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto 
 the least of these ye have not done it unto me." 
 
 The context of her preaching will be the life in the 
 midst of which we live, for which we bear inescapable 
 responsibility and to which we make our contribution 
 for good or evil. Her call will be the cry of human 
 suffering, in the face of which her Master never re- 
 mained silent or inactive. She will not be content 
 to discuss the plight but to consider the rights of the 
 oppressed and submerged, the underpaid and over- 
 worked members of her community. They are here 
 now — these women in want and anxiety while we 
 remain in ease, these little children suffering with 
 hunger in stifling and unchanging environment, 
 while we and ours have warmth and food, these multi- 
 tudes compelled to do violence to Christ's command 
 by taking anxious thought for every morrow. 
 
 The situation even before 1914 and the subsequent 
 abnormal world conditions may be simply stated. 
 While mighty vessels bore vast cargoes of food and 
 clothing out to sell for large profits to those of other 
 lands; while our harvests were the most plentiful 
 ever known; while there was abundance of food, 
 clothing, fuel and wealth, yet multitudes were suf- 
 fering for the very necessities of life. To an audi- 
 
66 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 ence of thinking minds and living consciences the 
 situation needs only to be stated. It is all-important 
 that we realize that we are not here as the guardians 
 of a Christian almshouse, moved by a benevolent 
 compassion and a patronizing charity. We are not 
 even here under the compulsion of being our broth- 
 er's keeper. We are here as our brother's brother. 
 
 If our minds are open to the full truth we shall 
 doubtless discover a still heavier responsibility rest- 
 ing on us to solve the terrible situation of our suffer- 
 ing fellow-men. Briefly and bluntly stated, the full 
 testimony of all the underlying facts may prove our 
 guilt. If present conditions are due to the vicious- 
 ness of an economic system by which we profit, the 
 inefficiency or corruption of political conditions which 
 we permit, the culpability of Christian employers 
 and the deliberate detachment of the pulpit from the 
 public welfare, just in so far are we direct factors 
 in the creation of the condition which calls to us. 
 We may find that the unfortunate and suffering are 
 not only our brothers but our victims. Bearing this 
 in mind we shall not only be open to new light but 
 ready for a new conscience. 
 
 Men are prone to find an alibi in the laissez f aire 
 argument that such conditions are the inevitable re- 
 currence of epochs of business irregularity. We are 
 told, that history proves that such epochs have been 
 periodic in the past and will continue to occur in 
 regular cycles. It is the same argument that was 
 
Is the Church Afraid? 67 
 
 once used in the face of periodic epidemics of dis- 
 ease. Imagine the use of this argument to-day in 
 the face of the recurrence of an epidemic of small- 
 pox or yellow fever. But while small-pox is no re- 
 specter of persons, there are those who feel secure in 
 periods of poverty and unemployment. It is by 
 these that the philosophy of a false confidence and a 
 shallow optimism is preached. They ask us to 
 " prophesy smooth things " bid us " take no anxious 
 thought " and remind us that " all's well that ends 
 well." We must not underestimate the power of 
 their campaign of suppression, under the guise of an 
 optimism that is based on self-interest, sustained by 
 solicitude for their own security and fed by the fear 
 of a full disclosure of their responsibility for existing 
 conditions. 
 
 The next fallacy we must face is the honest belief 
 that the present re-employment of many thousands 
 who were out of work in 1914 indicates that the 
 crisis is passed. A great many people sincerely 
 think that the situation is no longer acute. Let us 
 look a little deeper. Take the thousands put to work 
 again after months of idleness. Many of them have 
 made sacrifices and incurred debts that will mortgage 
 their future for years to come. 'Now that they are 
 back at work they live in daily dread of the master 
 stroke or " periodic depression " that any moment 
 may send them back to idleness. From authentic 
 sources we know that many thousands are out of 
 
68 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 health and therefore out of work to-day, that multi- 
 tudes are being aided by the public charities of our 
 cities and that every church and benevolent organiza- 
 tion in the land is being taxed to the utmost. 
 
 Wholly aside from the call of human need, we face 
 the daily increasing danger of enlarging the com- 
 pany of the discouraged which is steadily recruiting 
 the army of the dependents. Before the war Eng- 
 land had a host of 900,000 in the permanent pauper 
 class. How many America has we do not know but 
 when we do learn we shall doubtless stand appalled. 
 If for no other reason we bear a responsibility to 
 check the contribution to permanent pauperism added 
 each day by delay in solving the immediate problem. 
 While capitalists in close conference and labor leaders 
 behind closed doors discuss their separate grievances 
 and plans, it is the Church's splendid opportunity to 
 bring all, capitalists, laborers, students of economics 
 and social experts, to the higher ground of a great 
 and living brotherhood, where a common conscience 
 shall transcend class prejudice and human welfare 
 shall supersede separate interests. 
 
 The time has come for the Church at large to make 
 the welfare of humanity in every sphere and class of 
 life as much her concern as it was of the Master who 
 stopped preaching and fed the hungry bodies of the 
 multitude. We shall ask the Church to answer the 
 question : What would Christ be doing if He were 
 here to-day ? Would He not be with those who have 
 
Is the Church Afraid? 69 
 
 least and suffer most ? Would He meet their suffer- 
 ing with the statement that His Kingdom is not of 
 this world or would He still " have compassion " ? 
 If in ministering to human wants, He found Himself 
 facing the harrier of economic and social injustice 
 would He say to the victim " I am sorry hut my realm 
 is the spiritual and not the secular '' ? If He found 
 the economic rooted in the political, what would He 
 say and do ? I fancy that the next assemhly of our 
 national congress would see a strange Figure rise in 
 their midst — rise to plead for human life and jus- 
 tice, and if they failed to heed His plea of love, once 
 again His hand would wield the scourge of small 
 cords to whip righteous condemnation into recreant 
 consciences. 
 
 They ask not as burdensome beggars, 
 
 As idlers who profit to shirk; 
 
 They seek but their right — yea their justice. 
 
 The right to their full share of work. 
 
 Will we give it — or not? 
 
 Committing no crime, yet they suffer; 
 The treadmill of terror they've trod. 
 They ask but their share from all others 
 Who have more than enough — Just God! 
 Are we Christians — or not ? 
 
VI 
 
 THE CALL TO THE MINISTEY 
 
 THE other day one of our millionaires bouglit 
 a $130,000 set of Dickens. Whatever other 
 deductions may arise in our minds from re- 
 flecting on such an expenditure by such a type of 
 man for a single set of any author's work, one de- 
 duction is incontestible. It is that the dead Dickens 
 is yet alive, more alive than all but a handful of the 
 forty thousand or more living authors of our day. 
 As to the real source of this power over the hearts 
 of the people the verdict at large is voiced by his 
 most recent critic when he says that Dickens had 
 " the key of the streets." 
 
 It has always seemed to me that those who have 
 written on the call to the ministry — and these ap- 
 peals have been very many and often very strong — 
 have not possessed the key to the heart of the young 
 manhood for whom their appeals were written. They 
 have shut themselves in a room with their subject 
 and not mingled freely with their subjects. They 
 have proceeded with their great object, largely un^ 
 lieeding their objectors. The " call '' has received 
 .almost exclusive emphasis, generally resulting in an 
 
 excluding effect. 
 
 70 
 
The Call to the Ministry 71 
 
 The writer lays no claim to possessing the key to 
 young manhood. It is an altogether too elusive 
 thing. The general verdict is that not even a skele- 
 ton key can be manufactured to fit the varied, unique 
 and complicated locks on the doors at the threshold 
 of youth, especially of that miscellaneous variety 
 known as the college student. The nearest approach 
 to such a key is to be found in the keynote of the life 
 of some" one young man, if he be of a representative 
 type. Therefore it is that I would present this ap- 
 peal in the form of an actual conversation with an 
 influential, popular and representative college stu- 
 dent. He was what we may call a " good fellow," 
 with perhaps a little more of the " good " — the 
 genuine — than of the "fellow.'' After several 
 years of thinking that he had been thinking — an 
 epidemic which few escape — he had at last really 
 begun to think. From an ambition to " see life 
 sanely and see it whole " he had risen to a desire to 
 see life deeply and feel its soul, to fulfil his manhood 
 and not simply enlarge his brain-cells. He had 
 looked long and admiringly at the " natural law in 
 the spiritual world " and was beginning uncon- 
 sciously to crave for a glimpse of the spiritual law in 
 the natural world. But we shall let him speak for 
 himself. The dialogue may savor of the Sanford 
 and Merton style, but it is the actual dialogue — it is 
 realism not romance. 
 
 " I have been up against it lately/' he began, '' I 
 
72 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 was raised in a home of religion and to a life of 
 prayer. Recently, I have been trying to overcome 
 some things and to get hold of things worth while. I 
 make my resolutions only to break them. I pray and 
 get no result except the feeling that my prayers are 
 unreal. Now I am asking myself: ' Why not give 
 it all up or why doesnt it mean more to me? ' '* 
 
 " If you didn't feel as you say you feel, you would 
 be of a very low order, lower than the animals, for 
 even among them effort and struggle and persever- 
 ance are required. You would be but a bit of human 
 mechanism and your God but a hired mechanic if a 
 sudden resolution were the means of setting you 
 straight and every set prayer were followed by a set 
 answer. Your very dissatisfaction is the mark of a 
 higher being who must win his way, who grows by 
 every obstacle, is molded by every test, is strength- 
 ened by every fresh temptation. Or it may be that 
 your dissatisfaction is the outcry of your higher man- 
 hood against injustice, neglect and a shallow and 
 spasmodic support. It is at a man's peril if he does 
 not heed this cry — for after all it comes from tbe 
 soul behind the manhood, and the freedom and power 
 of the soul is the ultimate mark of real manhood. 
 You have no right to feed your body and your mind 
 and starve your soul. And you will find no satis- 
 faction in it. Again, your dissatisfaction may be 
 the plea of your life for freedom and equipment to 
 rise to greater power than you have ever thought it 
 
The Call to the Ministry 73 
 
 possible with you. It may be the revolt of your 
 inner self against the outward occupation which you 
 have set for your life-work and in which your powers 
 of mind and heart will be dwarfed and your real 
 manhood remain unfulfilled. You are indeed * up 
 against it/ for you are up against a big thing — so 
 big, so important and essential that you must set 
 yourself deliberately, regularly and patiently to de- 
 velop, equip, and evolve the very biggest and best 
 that is in you. What you need is not to give up the 
 small, spare time now given and throw away the 
 fragments of attention to your higher needs, not to 
 stop praying but to pray more, with more alertness, 
 more purpose and more willingness to win the best 
 of all answers to prayer, the answer of a life so in 
 touch and in accord with the abiding laws and the 
 eternal principles of life that it will of its own mo- 
 mentum surmount transitory obstacles and temporary 
 defeats. You must register in the school of the soul, 
 the university of character — the Church — and then 
 attend classes, not as a stenographer receiving dicta- 
 tion but as a spiritual being receiving inspiration, 
 not as a ^ professor ' of religion but as a ^ confessor ' 
 of your hidden weaknesses and higher hopes, not for 
 minute directions from pulpit but for the divine 
 power of the Christ who to-day as of old enters into 
 the heart of every life that opens itself to His pres- 
 
 ence." 
 
 Well, if I do this and find that it means every- 
 
74} The Church and the Crowd 
 
 thing to me I should feel it my duty to make it mean 
 everything to others. I should then have to go where 
 I can best do this — into the ministry/* 
 
 " You may be committing yourself by that very 
 thought. Forty-nine out of fifty of your fellow- 
 men probably never had the thought. The fact that 
 you have it means something. "What right have you 
 to say that it does not mean just what you have said 
 it may mean ? " 
 
 ''/ have never let myself think of that. In the 
 first place, I have others dependent on me and must 
 get out and make a living sufficient for them.'' 
 
 " So you are sure of making early and sujfficient 
 support in business, law or medicine ? What of the 
 thousands who do not? What of those driven into 
 debt, dishonesty or devious practises in order to win 
 the money which those dependent on it would refuse 
 to touch if they knew the methods that won it ? This 
 is not theory but the statement of everyday happen- 
 ings in the overcrowded occupations and professions. 
 I am not seeking to argue away hardships. There 
 are plenty of them, and often of the hardest, to be 
 borne. But since you feel that you must consider 
 this object first, I only ask you to look at it from 
 both sides." 
 
 ^^ But I'd want to he the best and rise to the high- 
 est place and that wouldn't do. That is a base mo- 
 tive." 
 
 " You are admitting no fault peculiar to the min- 
 
The Call to the Ministry 75 
 
 istry and reprehensible only in the minister. It is 
 a fault so subtly mingled with a virtue — that of 
 rendering the highest and best service — that it must 
 be safeguarded by the noblest motive and the high- 
 est environment. In the ministry you v^ill have the 
 safe-guards without which you may in another oc- 
 cupation become the victim of, instead of the victor 
 over, unworthy ambition, with its attendant corrup- 
 tion of principles and selfishness of heart.'' 
 
 '^ YeSj that's so, hut I always see the funny side 
 of things, I'd he seeing the comical in the serious, 
 rd he tried for the heresy of irreverence.'* 
 
 " Judging by the clergy you have known, would you 
 say that the ministry is the enemy of humor ? 
 Browning said that for pure delight of real humor 
 he would rather spend an hour in the companionship 
 of clergymen than in that of any other class of men. 
 One of our University professors said to a class of 
 seniors — perhaps because he thought them old 
 enough to understand — that ' humor is the first es- 
 sential of reverence.' I haven't time to explain how 
 true this is and how it is true — think over it. But 
 remember the same principle we saw in the matter 
 of ambition — that the environment of your life will 
 have much to do with the character of your humor, 
 making it vulgar, cynical, satirical, profane, or ex- 
 tracting and revealing its best flavor, destroying the 
 contaminating atmosphere of low-minded suggestive- 
 ness. There are not a few men whose lives have 
 
76 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 suffered from the effect of an atmosphere which has 
 made them the victims of the worst forms — or 
 rather perversions — of humor, in whose lives and 
 therefore on whose tongues and pens, the pure and 
 the divine are objects of degrading witticisms. They 
 are more in number than the two modern writers for 
 a restricted circle, the one of whom was forced by 
 public opinion to cancel lectures in some of our most 
 progressive cities, the other of whom in declining an 
 invitation to America allowed his humor to dictate 
 a sentence which was either an insult to American 
 womanhood or an admission that he was capable of 
 attracting only the demi-monde." 
 
 " That may all he true, hut I know I am not 
 fitted hy temperament, life or talent to he a min- 
 ister/^ 
 
 " Of course you are not fitted. The question is, 
 Are you willing to be fitted ? Long ago there was a 
 youth reared in soft luxury, tongue-tied in speech, 
 who committed murder in a sudden fit of anger. 
 You will agree that he was not ideally fitted to be- 
 come an heroic, eloquent and holy leader of men 
 and minister of God. Yet that is what he did be- 
 come, for the young man was Moses. There was a 
 young man who from early childhood showed in- 
 herent traits of shrewd selfishness and unscrupulous 
 cunning. We have the record of at least two de- 
 liberate transactions in his young manhood which 
 were compounded of cruelty, cheating and lying. 
 
The Call to the Ministry 77 
 
 Yet he became one of the greatest leaders — in char- 
 acter and power — of a great race in one of its 
 greatest periods — for he was Jacob. A ' man of 
 blood ' and a fugitive from the laws and from the 
 society of his day became David, the sweet psalmist 
 of Israel and the beloved king of his people. Saul, 
 the proud Pharisee and bitter persecutor of the little 
 flock of early disciples, became Paul, the despised 
 and persecuted but consecrated and powerful apostle 
 of the little band of Christians, next to his Master 
 the greatest personal force in making Christianity 
 the conquering religion of the world. With the im- 
 petuous nature of the boy and the mercurial tempera- 
 ment of the Celt the man who in dejection denied his 
 captive Lord with an oath became the man who 
 wrought a new life into his old and won at last com- 
 plete mastery over self. The first bold skeptic, who 
 openly doubted the crowning fact of the Savior's 
 life, became the Thomas from whose lips rang the 
 cry ^ My Lord and my God ! ' l^ov are the records 
 of such growth, such change, such developing nobility 
 confined to the history of the Old and 'New Testa- 
 ments. I could give you instance after instance in 
 our own age, from the apparently ordinary business 
 clerk who became a world influence — Dwight L. 
 Moody — to the sensitive, self-conscious college stu- 
 dent whom professors sought to dissuade from the 
 ministry on the ground of his temperament and his 
 impediment in speech, whom humanity loves and 
 
78 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 honors as the great-hearted and golden-tongned 
 Phillips Brooks. The same principle is seen at work 
 all through the rank and file of the ministry, among 
 the lowly and among the exalted, this principle of 
 the ^ little leaven that leavens the whole/ transform- 
 ing character, conquering weakness, increasing tal- 
 ents, mastering motives and inspiring lives. Don't 
 forget a tremendously important factor and prev- 
 alent fact, namely, the no less than amazing power 
 of a calling over a life. Do you really aspire to do 
 the best you are capable of? Are you willing to 
 undertake that preparation and seek that consecra- 
 tion which will make your life count for most? 
 That is the main question, is it not ? " 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so; hut after all a good layman s 
 life counts for a great deal. I can lead a life of un- 
 selfish service and influence outside of the minis- 
 try/' 
 
 "Undoubtedly you can. The question is. Will 
 you? What are the probabilities, considering on 
 the one hand your tendencies and temperament and 
 on the other the engrossing, demoralizing and dis- 
 tracting conditions which you will be in the midst 
 of? Granted that you will be strong and do good, 
 will you be as strong and do as much good when 
 two-thirds of your time will be demanded by your 
 business or profession and a considerable part of the 
 other third will be taken up in planning your work 
 or in rest from it ? Or even if you do accomplish 
 
The Call to the Ministry 79 
 
 much for yourself and others in the higher and bet- 
 ter things, remember the truism that ^ higher and 
 better are often the worst foes of the highest and 
 best.' Will you, then, make deliberate choice of a 
 middle-ground life ? Will you refuse to your powers 
 the highest they are capable of ? " 
 
 '' Bwp^ose I grant all this. I must yet he honest 
 and say that I cant subscribe to the doctrines of the 
 Church" 
 
 "How do you know you can't? Do you know 
 what they are? Can you give me an authorized 
 statement of what they are? It is quite likely that 
 you, as others around you, cannot subscribe to your 
 hasty, superficial and altogether inaccurate concep- 
 tion of these doctrines or to the doctrines of certain 
 denominations and individuals. You may find your- 
 self very much in the position of one of the most 
 gifted authors and literary critics of the day. He 
 was trained in the schools of the great philosophers. 
 After sitting long at their feet, he wrote his original 
 thesis. The conclusion he reached is set forth and 
 defended in one of the most remarkable of modern 
 books. Here is one quotation: 
 
 " ' I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to 
 be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be 
 some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I 
 found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it. 
 When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in 
 the ridiculous position of being backed up by all 
 
80 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 Christendom. It may be, heaven forgive me, that I 
 did try to be original; but I only succeeded in in- 
 venting all by myself an inferior copy of the ex- 
 isting traditions of civilized religion. These essays 
 are concerned only to discuss the actual fact that the 
 central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized 
 in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root of energy and 
 sound ethics.' ■■■ 
 
 " Further, I would suggest that you ask yourself if 
 you know now that you can subscribe to the tenets 
 of the business or profession you intend to make a 
 life work — do you even know what they are ? 
 Can't you see both the inconsistency and the unfair- 
 ness of your attitude toward the very few, the ele- 
 mental and fundamental teachings of the creed of 
 the Church?" 
 
 Here ends the dialogue. After getting into it I 
 was reminded of one or two contentions of other 
 students which I have given as expressed in conver- 
 sation. I have also tried to convey more clearly and 
 fully than I actually did at the time the answers, as 
 I see them, to these contentions. I would now place 
 before young men a few of the positive claims of 
 the Christian ministry which I think valid and capa- 
 ble of being substantiated. I do not hold that these 
 claims are made good by all Christian bodies or by 
 the average type of clergyman. I shall say nothing 
 for mere effect nor omit anything for fear of its 
 
 1 Chesterton in " Orthodoxy," 
 
The Call to the Ministry 81 
 
 effect but speak solely from convictions that have 
 been wrought into my life through the studies and 
 experiences which have been my lot as a minister. 
 
 As it seems to the writer, the Christian ministry 
 offers to the young man a life of the highest and most 
 serviceable ideals, the purest and most unselfish 
 tasks, the strongest and most effective safeguards, the 
 surest and best development of the whole man, the 
 freest and happiest avenues of activity, the most es- 
 sential and most permanent aspects of truth, the 
 clearest and most far-reaching conception of duty, 
 the most harmonious and satisfying relation to the 
 universe, the most creative and least slavish use of 
 the faculties. The Christian ministry offers the 
 most substantial optimism and the most abiding joy 
 of living, the busiest and yet the happiest, the most 
 burden-filled and least burdensome, the most inten- 
 sive and yet the most extensive life. The Christian 
 ministry contains inherently the fewest limitations 
 and the strongest inspiration in meeting the funda- 
 mental needs and hopes of humanity and the eternal 
 purposes of God. The Christian ministry offers 
 the daily companionship of the noblest character 
 of the world, the unobtrusive but ever constant, 
 the stimulating and ennobling friendship of the 
 Christ. 
 
 Even the barest and least argumentative defense 
 of tliese claims would require space far beyond the 
 limits of this little volume. Let us take but one, 
 
82 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 selecting the one most likely to be doubted, the claim 
 that the ministry offers the broadest life. I would 
 make this claim rest on some such outline of defense 
 as this: 
 
 (1) It is broad in that it calls into play the largest 
 number of the most varied talents of the man. (2) 
 It furnishes an outlet for these talents in the broad- 
 est and most diverse realms, such as those of student, 
 teacher, organizer, friend, worshiper, sympathizer 
 and leader. (3) The world permits the widest fields 
 of service to the minister — in addition to his serv- 
 ices to humanity in the capacities above mentioned. 
 More and more in our most progressive cities clergy- 
 men are being found leading movements and direct- 
 ing organizations where society and government and 
 individuals are being led to " render unto Caesar the 
 things that are Caesar's" as well as unto God the 
 things that are God's. (4) The Christian ministry 
 is the broadest life in that it deals with the elemental 
 and fundamental in men, not solely with their dis- 
 eases and their crimes but with their doubts and 
 hopes and needs and powers and joys and faith. 
 (5) It also deals with the big and the elemental in 
 the realm of principles and of thought — with honor, 
 virtue, truth, courage, faith, love, the immortal and 
 the divine. (6) It is broad even in its dealing 
 with the single, individual man in that it includes his 
 feelings as well as his faculties, his spiritual as well 
 as his material welfare. (7) It is limited to no one 
 
The Call to the Ministry 88 
 
 class of people and to no one line of research. All 
 life is its study and all humanity its field. 
 
 Finally, I put the call of the ministry to the young 
 man of to-day as the supreme call of the age — of this 
 age. It is the call of the Christ of to-day, more uni- 
 versally needed by humanity, more hopefully issued 
 by leading men in more spheres of life than ever in 
 any other age of the history of the world. Never 
 before has the world seemed so like one huge, living, 
 moving universal need. Every detail of this picture 
 could be filled in, from the hour when the rugged 
 Anglo-Saxon poet sent a reveling nation to its knees 
 with the prayer, " Lord God of hosts, be with us yet," 
 to the final word in his " religion of the future," by 
 the cultured Unitarian ex-president of Harvard, 
 when he draws his prophecy to a close with these 
 words : " Finally, this twentieth century religion is 
 not only to be in harmony with the great secular 
 movements of modern society, but also in essential 
 agreement with the direct, personal teachings of 
 Jesus, as they are reported in the Gospels. The 
 revelation he gave to mankind thus becomes more 
 wonderful than ever." If you doubt this last claim, 
 study, if you will, all the really big modern move- 
 ments and read some of the big modern writings of 
 the real leaders of the thought and life of your day. 
 Take but one of the unlimited number of tributes to 
 the power of the most far-reaching form of the min- 
 istry — the missionary. Let that tribute be from the 
 
84 The Church and the Crowd 
 
 forerunner and founder of a great school of thought 
 which some of its provincial pupils hold to be a sub- 
 stitute for the creed of the Christian Church. This 
 is Darwin's testimony : " The lesson of the mission- 
 ary is the magician's wand. The success of the mis- 
 sion is most wonderful and charms me, as I always 
 prophesied utter failure." 
 
 Hear the verdict of one of the brainiest and busiest 
 of Christian leaders in the midst of perhaps the most 
 complex and difficult conditions of America to-day, 
 as he speaks to us through those who have come 
 together under his leadership : 
 
 " We come here to speak a positive, victorious note 
 as far as we are concerned, that the faith for which 
 Christ stands in this world is not a receding, but an 
 advancing faith, not a losing, but a coming faith, 
 making and weaving its way among the peoples of 
 the earth to the complete and sure and final victory. 
 Christianity has not served the world as much as it 
 will. The person of Christ is the most powerful 
 single factor in the world to-day, but it will become 
 more powerful as the years pass. The whole world 
 is to be won." 
 
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