m 
 
 
PRINCETON, N. J- 
 
 BV 601 .W372 1889 
 
 Ward, J. H., 1837-1897. 
 
 The church in modern society 
 
 Shelf.. 
 
THE CHURCH IN MODERN 
 SOCIETY 
 
 BY 
 
 JULIUS H. WARD 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1889, 
 By JULIUS H. WARD. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Ca7iihridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H, O. Houghton & Company. 
 
To 
 
 HENRY CODMAN POTTER 
 
 %i!s\)oj} of laetD gorft 
 
 IN WHOSE EPISCOPATE 
 
 THE CHURCH IS ENTERING INTO ITS PROPER RELATIONS 
 
 WITH MODERN SOCIETY 
 
 T///S VOLUME 
 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 'HPHIS book is intended for the whole 
 -^ Christian family in this country. The 
 comparative study of the truths contained 
 but imperfectly expressed in the terms of 
 different creeds reveals larger agreements 
 than men have willingly allowed ; and 
 when Christianity is interpreted helpfully 
 and constructively in the light of these 
 agreements, the Church of Christ exerts 
 the organic influence in the social life 
 which the national government exerts in 
 the political and economic life of the peo- 
 ple. The collective church has this large 
 and comprehensive work to do, and the 
 aim of these pages is to suggest a way in 
 which it may be done. 
 
 Brookline, Mass., October 2, 1S89. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ¥— 
 
 PAGE 
 
 /. Permanent Institutions / 
 
 //. Church Development before the Reformation i^ 
 
 III. The Church in Modern Life 25 
 
 IV. The Church in Disintegration . , , , ^8 
 V. The Church in the World 30 
 
 Vl. The Inclusive Church 6^ 
 
 Vll. The Spiritual Method of the Church . , 91 
 
 Vlll. The Church in the Family no 
 
 IX. The Church among the People . . . .1^4 
 
 X The Church in the Nation 134 
 
 XL Constructive Unity in Religious Forces . 181 
 
 XII. Unity through Working /igreements . .2/0 
 
THE CHURCH IN MODERN 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Permanent Institutions. 
 
 nr^HE order of the social world begins 
 -*- with the family. At first, the com- 
 munity was the family magnified by its 
 growing relationships. The church was 
 the family enlarged in a spiritual direction. 
 The earliest human society grew out of the 
 fundamental principles and the historical 
 development of these institutions. They 
 represent, under varying forms, the earliest 
 organization of life, and are capable of 
 that modification in growth by which the 
 seed is traced in its expansion and fruit. 
 They are the beginnings of primitive so- 
 ciety, the constituent and permanent ele- 
 
2 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 merits of all society. Under every modi- 
 fication which history records, these three 
 institutions have retained their identity 
 and exerted their legitimate and intended 
 influence. They are divine in their origin 
 and purpose, in the sense that all life is 
 said to be divine. They are found in the 
 earliest gathering of men together, and 
 are structural in the social and spiritual 
 economy of the race. The personal man, 
 after Adam, has his root in the family ; the 
 political condition grows out of the neces- 
 sity for order when men are living in com- 
 munity ; the spiritual life of men, however 
 personal in its inward intention toward 
 God, finds expression in an institutional 
 order which is included in the word Church. 
 In the earliest Hebrew times the family, 
 the community, and the church had their 
 essential potency and meaning in a single 
 household. The functions of each insti- 
 tution existed in distinct germs, but were 
 often exercised by one and the same per- 
 son ; and when they were separated, it was 
 
Permanent Institutions. ^ 
 
 not felt that their relative bearing had 
 been changed. Humanity was a unit 
 under a threefold manifestation, and this 
 was not more apparent in the Hebrew de- 
 velopment, of which the record has been 
 definitely preserved, than in the Gentile 
 developments which existed side by side 
 \yith that of the Hebrews. It is one of 
 the structural features of human history, 
 that, under all governments and among all 
 races, the family, the body politic, and the 
 ecclesiastical order have found their places. 
 With great changes and modifications they 
 have constantly retained their prevailing 
 types, whether the light of God's presence 
 in the world has been clearly recognized, 
 as among the Hebrews, or partially hidden 
 under superstitions and corruptions, as 
 among the rival race-growths of the East. 
 It deepens the sense of continuous order 
 and of the constant unfolding of the life 
 toward freedom to find that these institu- 
 tions, which are fundamental in human 
 society, do not change in their essential 
 
4 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 character as the centuries go by. They 
 are modified by the movements in the 
 affairs of men, but they are the same in 
 structure that they have ever been. It is 
 the tendency of the time to see only the 
 individual existence, to regard life in piece- 
 meal, to secure the wellbeing of one man. 
 Democratic society is a mass of units, and 
 the struggle is toward the points where 
 one man shall prevail ; but the moment a 
 general average is reached in the personal 
 or political or ecclesiastical life, it is found 
 that the ancient institutions of the world 
 reappear and claim their own. They re- 
 appear, not singly, but together. If the 
 church is disregarded, the state loses its 
 tone and the family its complementary sup- 
 port. If the state is enfeebled, the church 
 struggles as with an unnatural burden, and 
 the personal education of the family through 
 the state is interfered with. If the family 
 life is neglected, the state is not reenforced 
 with good citizens, and the church is com- 
 paratively powerless. The great changes 
 
Permanent Institutions. 5 
 
 in history are connected with the rise and 
 fall of these institutions. They are so 
 closely related that society is touched as a 
 whole whenever either of them is interfered 
 with. This is freely acknowledged, but in 
 the practical operation of institutions upon 
 individual life it is often disregarded. The 
 family is allowed to do its work without 
 this assistance of the church ; the church 
 and the state are neutral or hostile ; each 
 pursues its own way as if it had nothing to 
 do with the other. As there is in every 
 well-ordered life an unrealized ideal to 
 which the imagination appeals for the en- 
 thusiasm and the courage that carry one 
 through the rough passages of experience, 
 so there is a theory of the relation of divine 
 institutions to one another which is neces- 
 sary to the harmonious and simultaneous 
 development of all the iaterests of human 
 society ; and it is in and through their 
 essential unity and interdependence that 
 social and spiritual advancement are to be 
 reached. 
 
6 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 The solidarity of human forces is a belief 
 that is taught by a study of the processes 
 of history. This is not always brought out 
 by the historian. The progress of the 
 state has usually been the theme of the 
 historical writer, while its educational, 
 social, and ethical life have been treated as 
 if they did not exist. Buckle was among the 
 first in our own day to enlarge the historical 
 view, and the sociological studies of later 
 date have brought within the range of his- 
 torical writers the sum of the influences 
 that have controlled the life of the people 
 for a given period. History can no longer 
 be the tracing of a single dominant idea in 
 its process of development. It must be 
 the tracing of the combined working ideas 
 of the world as they have influenced so- 
 ciety, and these working ideas are found 
 in the central institutions that have pre- 
 vailed from the beginning. They have not 
 always had equally free play ; but what has 
 been realized in the social development of 
 other ages has come, not through the 
 
Permanent Institutions. y 
 
 family education and the personal life of 
 the individual alone, not through the con- 
 trol of the state in the form of personal 
 despotism alone, not as a result of the 
 ethical development through which the 
 higher beliefs of men have modified human 
 action, but through their combined yet 
 often unequal action upon mankind. The 
 movement of the world has been slow, 
 infinitely slow, but it has been a solid 
 movement toward human freedom. This 
 freedom is not the predominance of any 
 one idea or element ; it has been the fruit 
 of their combined energy in lifting man up 
 to a higher ideal of society. Exclusively 
 regarded on the ecclesiastical side, it has 
 been the realization of the kingdom of God 
 in the world ; regarded in the light of 
 common human experience, it has made 
 mankind sharers in the redemptive agencies 
 of a power that works for righteousness in 
 society at large and is called the Church 
 of Christ. The freedom that exists in the 
 world to-day is not physical, social, ethical, 
 
8 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 or spiritual so much as it is the enthrone- 
 ment of life upon a higher plane. It is the 
 realization of the meaning of the City of 
 God among the citizens of the world. It 
 is the enlargement of life through the 
 family, the state, and the church, in their 
 combined influence upon the individual 
 man, and in the direction which they give 
 to society. There has been a growth in 
 modern life which has been described as 
 the development of individual liberty. 
 The family, working freely, has been the 
 home of the citizen, of the state, and of 
 the earthly City of God, but the combined 
 operation of church and state was for 
 many centuries to suppress the individual 
 in order to magnify the two institutions 
 which have been employed to build up his 
 life in freedom. The growth of modern 
 society has been in the direction of the 
 emancipation of the individual at the ex- 
 pense of both the state and the church. 
 The problem to-day is to restore the 
 family, the state, and the church to their 
 
Permanent Institutions. p 
 
 natural functions as central institutions 
 for the organization, protection, and guid- 
 ance of human life. The freedom of the 
 individual has been secured through a 
 process of evolution in which humanity 
 has passed from childhood to maturity. 
 The voice of the whole people is to-day 
 that voice of God which was once thought 
 to be heard in the commands of the king. 
 The state in America and England has the 
 precedence of the family and the church 
 in the direction of society, and the work 
 before the people is to place the church 
 and the family on an equal footing with 
 the state. The gradual transfer of au- 
 thority from the head of the tribe to the 
 people of the tribe, — the transfer of the 
 rule from Abraham to the children of 
 Israel, — is the description of the process 
 that has culminated in the democratic 
 commonwealth ; but this large and free 
 political and social existence is endangered 
 in two directions. It is accompanied by 
 the diminished influence of the family and 
 
JO The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 by the frequent ignoring of the ethical and 
 spiritual influence of the kingdom of God. 
 They exist ; but their organic character, the 
 part they play as institutions in the mould- 
 ing and elevation of individual life, is 
 weakened by a mistaken conception of the 
 basis upon which social and political free- 
 dom rest. The family and the church need 
 to be restored to the place which the state, 
 to a certain extent, holds in public opinion. 
 They are the natural supporters of the 
 state. The strength of our political life is 
 in the industrial, social, and spiritual edu- 
 cation of the people. The public school 
 stands midway between the family and the 
 church, and educates the people the best 
 when both of these institutions inspire its 
 work. 
 
 The problem at any period in the history 
 of the world has been only different in 
 form from that which is before the Amer- 
 ican people. The problem to-day is the 
 relation of the three fundamental insti- 
 tutions, which have always expressed the 
 
Permanent Institutions. // 
 
 fullness of human and divine agency among 
 men, to the necessities of modern society. 
 Columbus discovered what he called the 
 new world, and modern society almost had 
 its beginning with that event. People 
 who are here to-day find themselves in a 
 world which is as new to its past as the 
 world which Columbus first saw was new to 
 his fellow-Europeans to whom he carried 
 the fact of his discovery. There is a new 
 feeling about the things which have been 
 accepted. The scientific method takes 
 nothing for granted, and the historical 
 method slowly satisfies those who feel that 
 the foundations of social and spiritual life 
 are to be laid anew. The enlargement of 
 existence, and the presence of forces which 
 are changing the key-note from hour to 
 hour, have given the impression that the 
 institutional life of men is to be begun 
 anew ; and in this conviction it is felt that 
 the family and the church are not the 
 important factors that they have shown 
 themselves to be in history. It is from 
 
12 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 this point of view that it is wise to study 
 our social development. What are the 
 conservative and constructive agencies 
 which are to control and guide the miscel- 
 laneous life of the hour ? How is the old 
 to be adjusted to the new? How shall 
 the family preserve its integrity ? How 
 shall the state maintain its freedom ? How 
 shall the church be the family of God 
 among the people? Civil society is the 
 field in which these ancient and permanent 
 institutions are to find their adjustment to 
 the working life of the people, and the 
 Church of Christ has the duty of entering 
 this field and making fresh conquests for 
 God and humanity. 
 
T 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Church before the Reformation. 
 HE Church of Christ is singled out 
 
 in history as the institution which in 
 its various forms has contributed most to 
 the direction of the world. It has ruled 
 in human affairs for two reasons : it has 
 claimed that the future life is determined 
 by one's present conduct, and it has stood 
 for the righteousness that is necessary 
 alike in the family and in the state, if so- 
 ciety is to discharge its highest ethical 
 functions. It has had a supernatural sanc- 
 tion, and it has proved itself the best prac- 
 tical scheme for the regulation of conduct. 
 This twofold appeal to men always existed 
 and must be as operative in the future 
 as in the past. It is, in effect, a twofold 
 sanction. Much has been naturally made 
 of the divine authority of Christianity, and 
 
14 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 of the church as the organized form of 
 society through which its principles have 
 been transmitted and its benefits secured, 
 — too much has perhaps been made to 
 keep the harmony that should subsist 
 between its three permanent factors. It 
 is an ideal state of society where the divine 
 sanction is the supreme reality, and where 
 religious motives universally prevail. The 
 actual state of things in the world is the 
 ordering of Ufe as conditioned by the two 
 motives of future happiness and present 
 convenience. The church, or what has 
 stood in the place of the church, has had 
 in earlier ages the sanction of divine au- 
 thority more compactly asserted and main- 
 tained than it is insisted on now. The 
 Jewish Church was essentially a theocracy 
 in which every son of Israel had his im- 
 mediate relation to God. Every heathen 
 substitute for the church has aimed to give 
 a divine sanction to the operations of life. 
 The pure theism of the early religions was 
 immensely expanded in its human relation- 
 
The Church before the Reformation. 75 
 
 ships by the advent of Christ, who revealed 
 the brightness of God's glory and was the 
 express image of his person. It was the 
 Christ who gave all the old religions a new 
 meaning, as if the dim visions had suddenly 
 burst out into open day. It was the effect 
 of the Incarnation that the divine authority 
 of Christianity was most emphasized at its 
 beginning, but it was greatly assisted in 
 its identifications with human life by the 
 embodiment of Christian principles in prac- 
 tical conduct. The church took the shape 
 in the world which Christ is believed to 
 have intended ; and the tracing of the form 
 which it assumed through successive gen- 
 erations, in the processes of history, is the 
 record of its contact with civilization, and 
 of the way in w^hich the one has acted and 
 reacted upon the other. 
 
 The history of the church has usually 
 been written as if it were the only divine 
 institution in the world. It has been re- 
 garded as the only leaven of society. The 
 family and the state have been regarded as 
 
1 6 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 institutions which perpetuate corruption, 
 while the church alone keeps society pure 
 and maintains the integrity of the social and 
 the political order. The mistake that has 
 been made is in their separation, in urging 
 the claims of the family and the state as 
 infinitely lower than that of the church. 
 It was natural to make this mistake, be- 
 cause the church is concerned with two 
 worlds, the one that is and the one that is 
 in process of being. It grew out of the 
 undue insistence upon the authoritative 
 sanction of the church as a divine insti- 
 tution and of the conviction that a man's 
 spiritual interests exceed in importance 
 his interests as a member of society. The 
 larger principle is expanded in the say- 
 ing, *' He that loseth his life for My sake 
 shall find it." But there has ever been, 
 and there is to-day, the purely ecclesiastical 
 way of looking at the church, — exalting its 
 organization, its authority, its succession 
 of ministers, its traditional faith, the va- 
 lidity of its sacraments, as if its virtue 
 
The Church before the Reformation. ly 
 
 was in these apart from their relation to 
 men in the form of spiritual ministrations. 
 In one quarter the ecclesiastical authority 
 has been exalted into a fetich ; in another, 
 dogmas have taken on doctrinaire forms 
 until the things insisted on as necessary 
 to salvation often acquire the character of 
 theological fictions. It is a long way to 
 clearness of view when the supernatural 
 neither in ministrations nor in belief takes 
 a place that is out of harmony with the 
 other factors of human development. The 
 supernatural is not to be denied in the 
 revelation of the truth to the human con- 
 sciousness, nor in the Personality of our 
 Lord ; but the supernatural element in the 
 earlier history of our religion has been di- 
 minished in its power to move life to-day, 
 and the purpose of improving humanity 
 has come more and more into view. It is 
 comparatively easy to assume much about 
 the spiritual, or divine, authority of the 
 church, and to regard any other sanctions 
 of a working Christianity as unworthy of 
 
1 8 The Church in Modem Society. 
 
 attention ; and here ardent religionists have 
 often gone beyond their Hmits. And for 
 this reason there has arisen a repulsion 
 from spiritual authority which has largely 
 entered into the judgments of men. The 
 sanction of the church which carries most 
 weight with thoughtful persons is its prac- 
 tical efficiency as one of the working fac- 
 tors of society. It is better understood 
 and appreciated as a reality than as a 
 divine power. As one of the perma- 
 nent elements that enter into the contin- 
 uous life of humanity, it no more loses 
 its higher spiritual character when it is 
 mainly valued for its human uses, than the 
 family and the state are shorn of their 
 divine authority when they are regarded 
 only with reference to the ends which they 
 serve. Each depends upon the other for 
 functions which impart strength to society, 
 and each has its sanction in its necessity 
 to the welfare of humanity. The church 
 has always maintained, along with the 
 assertion of its divine character, close re- 
 
The Church before the Reformation, ig 
 
 lations with the state and with the family. 
 It has worked through both, and has itself 
 been shaped and modified by both. In 
 the patriarchal and Jewish dispensations, 
 the family and the state were overshad- 
 owed by the theocracy, but they were still 
 the two arms by which the Hebrew Church 
 built up life within the Jewish nation and 
 sustained social and political order. If it 
 transcended the limits which would be 
 allowed to-day, it did no harm where life 
 was still narrowed to the knowledge and 
 doing of few things. At the beginning 
 of the Christian dispensation, Christianity 
 stood outside of the world and asked to 
 be admitted. Its claims to be listened to 
 had to be vouched for. The family and 
 the state, as permanent factors of society, 
 had been organized without its sanction, 
 though not without an institution intended 
 to serve its purpose, and did not feel the 
 need of its assistance ; and yet there was 
 the vacant place in the social order which 
 the religious element in neither Greek nor 
 
20 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 Roman civilization could fill, and which 
 Christianity supplied with wonderful ra- 
 pidity when it gained leverage in the world 
 and began to control the lives of men. 
 Though it entered society through the 
 members of Caesar's household, it did not 
 stop until it had ascended Caesar's throne. 
 The early history of Christianity is the 
 record of a continuous conflict between 
 the social and spiritual forces in each gen- 
 eration. The natural law of the family 
 and of the state is not in accord with the 
 Christian ideal of what these institutions 
 should be. The church with its credentials 
 in its hands is forcing its way to the head 
 of civilization, and is engaged in recon- 
 structing the social and religious beliefs 
 of men at every step. It is not surprising 
 that paganism colored Christianity, that 
 the pagan idea of the family and the state 
 found recognition in the church, and that, 
 in the absence of the individual freedom 
 of modern life, the family should become 
 shriveled and the monarchical element in 
 
The Church before the Reformation. 21 
 
 the state should gain the ascendancy even 
 in the church. The relation was too close 
 for the results to be otherwise. The pict- 
 ure of apostolic Christianity in its sim- 
 plicity, in its freshness, in its beauty, is 
 imperfectly realized after the church has 
 entered upon its world-career and under- 
 takes to maintain spiritual purposes with 
 carnal weapons. Not that families are not 
 Christians, or that the state is not under 
 spiritual control ; but the freedom of each 
 is lost through a form of society in which 
 liberty of action for the individual has not 
 been secured. When the church has con- 
 trol, it is too often Caesar's hand that 
 carries the pastoral staff, and the social 
 conditions are unfavorable for the natural 
 action of Christian principles. It is diffi- 
 cult to see the situation as it really was, 
 because the materials for its reconstruc 
 tion have been overweighted and put out 
 of sight by a purely ecclesiastical view 
 of Christianity, and because the church, 
 when it gained through the Papacy the 
 
22 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 control of western civilization, had joined 
 hand in hand with elements that carried 
 it far away from its free and natural in- 
 fluence upon society. It is easy to infer 
 that, with Christianity in the form of des- 
 potic authority, and with the integrity of 
 the Christian family constantly threatened 
 by monachism and the living in commu- 
 nities, the free and natural development of 
 human society in its distinctive elements 
 was greatly interfered with up to the 4;ime 
 of the Reformation. What the church 
 accomplished was the holding of vital 
 truth and the maintenance of its heredi- 
 tary and apostolic organization ; it failed 
 because it absorbed into itself the func- 
 tions which belong to the state, and took 
 its tone too much from the secular power. 
 The family was ignored. The individual 
 was felt neither in the church nor in the 
 state as a personal element. The history 
 of those times makes much of individuals, 
 but they were persons bent upon working 
 through the church or the state for per- 
 
The Church before the Reformation. 2^ 
 
 sonal ends, and do not fairly represent the 
 free and natural action of institutions upon 
 society. 
 
 One needs to study history with large 
 sympathies for the imperfect development 
 of great and fundamental ideas, if he is not 
 to lose his faith in the divine movement 
 of the world. The two institutions which 
 should have advanced in peace and unity 
 from the beginning — the church and 
 the state — have been at war with one 
 another since the conversion of Con- 
 stantine, chiefly because the prerogative 
 of the church in spiritual affairs had been 
 claimed as its right in secular life, and in 
 this conflict the spiritual movement of the 
 world had its opportunity constantly de- 
 layed. The progress of society satisfies 
 no theorist ; but in a large view of the 
 order of events, there is, if not the ideal 
 result, such an advance, or such an open- 
 ing of new features, that the working 
 hopes of humanity are encouraged and 
 maintained. And this is the outcome of 
 
24 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 the period during which the Christian 
 Church Hved through the transition from 
 the ancient world to modern life. You 
 can trace, if you will, beneath the enor- 
 mous mass of details, the imperfect and 
 restrained operation of the family, the 
 state, and the church, — none of them 
 free, none of thern willing to trust the 
 others, yet each compelled to accept some 
 modus Vivendi and wait for better days. 
 
T 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Church in Modern Life, 
 
 HE modern world begins with the 
 Reformation, with the outburst of 
 intellectual and spiritual life that had 
 long been waiting its opportunity. The 
 Reformation itself was a twofold move- 
 ment : it took the direction of spiritual 
 independence, but it was quite as dis- 
 tinctly political as it was spiritual. The 
 world had outgrown the church's interpre- 
 tation of it and insisted that the church 
 should allow a larger and different expan- 
 sion of the social and spiritual needs of 
 men. The state felt the necessity of as- 
 serting its independence of the church. 
 The original institutions of society were 
 making their strongest efforts since the 
 primitive davs to give an increased free- 
 
26 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 dom to individual life. The consciousness 
 of the civilized world was thoroughly 
 awakened ; but the interest in the family, 
 which had long been choked by its more 
 powerful rivals, the church and the state, 
 was not aroused in the same degree. The 
 contest of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries was mainly the struggle between 
 the church and the state to establish the 
 precedence of the one over the other. 
 Sometimes the one led, sometimes the 
 other, but the effort was always an attempt 
 to reach a result for which the world was 
 not quite prepared. A study of the his- 
 tory of the collective church since the 
 Reformation reveals this widening of the 
 too close embrace of the church and state 
 during the Middle Ages, and the assertion 
 of a freer, more expansive, more truly in- 
 dividual life, which has made a sphere for 
 itself in civil society. In other ages man 
 was a member of the family, of the state, 
 of the church, and expressed his individ- 
 uality through this membership ; but since 
 
The Church in Modern Life. 2y 
 
 the Reformation he has more and more 
 asserted his personality, his conscious self- 
 existence, his right to think for himself. 
 It is this largeness and freedom of move- 
 ment which is specially expressed by the 
 modern meaning of the term civil society. 
 This was not unknown to the Greeks, and 
 before the Reformation it existed where- 
 ever the people had gained industrial or 
 commercial freedom ; but so soon as men 
 began to enter into a larger sense of their 
 individual rights, they sought a common 
 sphere in which to exercise them, and civil 
 society is this sphere in modern life. So- 
 ciety has been mainly dominated since the 
 Reformation by hostility to institutions 
 which fetter one's personality and restrict 
 his freedom. A large number of the re- 
 ligious movements that grew out of the 
 Reformation made this principle the basis 
 of opposing the institutional order of so- 
 ciety and of gaining larger liberty for the 
 individual. The political parties in the 
 state have proceeded mainly upon the 
 
28 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 same idea. It has been difficult to main- 
 tain the principle that society is based 
 upon permanent institutions. Not to mul- 
 tiply illustrations, and confining attention 
 to the church alone, there has been a wide 
 departure from that intense spirit of organ- 
 ization that pervaded every element of so- 
 ciety in the Middle Ages, and protected, 
 while it restricted, the movements of men. 
 The individual man has been determined 
 to have his own way in all things, and 
 the aggregate of the life of the people has 
 brought the state and the church alike to 
 a point where their permanent relations to 
 the common welfare are often overlooked 
 by the people at large. There has been an 
 entire revolution since Wy cliff e breathed 
 the spirit of a Christian freeman into the 
 church life of England, and Luther spoke 
 out of his inner consciousness in Ger- 
 many. 
 
 It is necessary to give this point a 
 larger statement than the simple noting of 
 the fact, because it covers the whole 
 
The Church in Modern Life. 2g 
 
 ground of the modern church. PoUtical 
 and religious movements have been closely 
 allied in the history of mankind. This is 
 as true of the ancient as of the modern 
 world. The tendency in both church and 
 state for the last three centuries has been 
 strongly toward individual liberty, and the 
 drift in religion has been toward a demo- 
 cratic church in a free nation. The 
 authority of institutions as privileged or- 
 ders is now constantly denied, and there 
 is a profound distrust of whatever is 
 weighted by traditions. There is a view of 
 life that justifies these radical positions. 
 You cannot measure modern life by the 
 rules that fitted an entirely different state 
 of society. The old life of the world must 
 cast off its ancient habit if it is to meet 
 the conditions of the new day, and this is 
 what democratic society has done in the 
 last century and is doing in this ; but 
 while the surface movement has been of 
 this sort, there has been a far different 
 movement beneath the visible order. So- 
 
50 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 ciety thrives and survives like the strong 
 oak of the pasture because it strikes its 
 root deep down into life. It cannot exist 
 without the economic laws or the institu- 
 tional order. The instincts of nature and 
 the dictates of right reason alike preserve 
 the conditions by which the life of men is 
 dependent upon permanent organizations. 
 It is here that the conservative view of 
 society justifies itself and institutions are 
 seen in their bearing upon personal char- 
 acter. There must be a political check 
 upon pure democracy, if government is 
 not to drift into anarchy. There must be 
 an ecclesiastical check upon pure volun- 
 taryism in religion, if the church is not to 
 lose its title to authority and reverence 
 among men. 
 
 The influence of the Reformation is 
 here deeply, felt. The whole output of 
 modern life has been the assertion of a 
 principle which is destructive to the inte- 
 grity of social order, and yet it is this 
 principle of order which is perhaps more 
 
The Church in Modern Life. ^i 
 
 precious than any other in the estimation 
 of men. The material and personal gains 
 of life spring from the incentives that come 
 to one and act as spurs to the powers 
 within him ; but they fail to make the most 
 of a man, unless, as the head of a family, 
 as a citizen, and as a servant of God, he 
 is in his place in the institutions which 
 have been organized in the world for the 
 preservation and purification of society. 
 The weakness of modern life is in its 
 severance from the permanent sources of 
 power, which are expressed in family edu- 
 cation, in intelligent citizenship, and in the 
 Christian idea of character. There can be 
 no substitute for these in any form of so- 
 ciety, and the danger in the free develop- 
 ment of present life is that what is per- 
 manent in the ordering of society shall be 
 overshadowed by individual theory and 
 experiment. The family is not sufficiently 
 developed ; the tendency of the church 
 is to become a club-house ; the state is 
 the prey of politicians ; the church cannot 
 
^2 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 work freely and to advantage unless the 
 family and the state are in harmony with 
 its purpose ; and it is in reaching out to a 
 reconciliation between what is permanent 
 and what is experimental that the spiritual 
 regeneration of society is to find its ful- 
 fillment. This is the task that is before 
 the Christian Church in every nationality 
 where it has ancient or recent foothold. 
 It is as imperative, in its demands, in the 
 older civilization as in the new. It is to 
 become a working factor in free society, 
 not supreme as in the Middle Ages, not 
 overborne by the state as often during the 
 last two centuries in England and in Con- 
 tinental Europe, not an incipient and per- 
 mitted power as in the first Christian days, 
 but gaining the consent of the best minds 
 and leading the thought of the world, be- 
 cause it teaches and preserves the tradi- 
 tions of the past and expresses the free 
 convictions of men, endowed with liberty, 
 in such a union that the continuous order 
 of Christian thought is transmitted, with 
 
The Church in Modern Life. ^^ 
 
 its full power to sustain and guide the ex- 
 pansive and intensive life of the individual 
 man. 
 
 The modern church in the United States 
 must first be studied in its historical de- 
 velopment. The religion of this country 
 has been characterized as "a common- 
 wealth of sects." The American colonies 
 represented the various dissenters of the 
 German and English reformations, no less 
 than the English and Roman parts of the 
 historical church ; and with all the attempts 
 to establish a state religion in the different 
 provinces, the result was a formal separation 
 of the church from the state, whose union, 
 under varying relations in Christian history, 
 has been the chief source of contention at 
 the great centres of civilization. But there 
 has never been in America an authorized 
 form of religion. One ecclesiastical body 
 has ruled in one section, another in another ; 
 but universal consent has been given to 
 none. The church has been in the con- 
 dition of organized schism from the begin- 
 
y. The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 ning. The unity has not been that of 
 creed or poHty, but the unity of baptism 
 into the body of Christ. The principle of 
 the Reformation, that the church is the 
 product of a consensus of opinion gathered 
 from the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures, 
 has given one sect as good authority as 
 another, and each one has struggled to 
 obtain the largest following possible. Even 
 the historical churches, like the English 
 and the Roman, and possibly the Moravian, 
 have stood upon the same footing in the 
 thought of the people. The effect has 
 been, that, while society was controlled by 
 the rigid views of the reigning sect, there 
 has been an outward conformity to reli- 
 gious institutions ; but when the ecclesias- 
 tical regime lost its hold upon the com- 
 munity, the church, so called, stood only 
 for an idea, an opinion, not for institutional 
 order, not for social construction, not for 
 a conception of God's relation to the world, 
 which is coextensive with the active com- 
 munity and with the whole of humanity. 
 
The Church hi Modern Life. ^^ 
 
 The church in America to-day resembles 
 the English colonies in this country in 
 their conscious lack of power to organize 
 society upon a basis that included the 
 interests of all the people. Political neces- 
 sity, after the Revolution, constantly aided 
 by the efforts of statesmen, from Hamil- 
 ton to Webster, at length rooted in the 
 thoughts of men the idea of nationality, 
 and the country now feels the fructifying 
 vitality of the nation as a political institu- 
 tion ; but no such unity of thought and ac- 
 tion has been reached in the organization 
 of our ecclesiastical life. The great defect 
 of the German Reformation — that it or- 
 ganized society, not by expanding the ex- 
 isting church (as was the case, to a degree, 
 in England) to the dimensions of the in- 
 creased meaning of life to the individual, 
 but by breaking loose from the church to 
 create new organizations to do the work 
 that could have best been done by reform- 
 ing agencies within, which were partially 
 secured in the Council of Trent, and might 
 
^6 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 have been vastly better secured if Luther 
 and his companions had been present at 
 its deliberations — has been multiplied 
 until it is the existing hindrance and ob- 
 stacle of Christianity in every American 
 town and village. The defect is in the 
 inadequacy of the thing that exists in the 
 place of the church to control the spiritual 
 life of the whole people ; and until an 
 organization is reached which brings to- 
 gether all Christian agencies in a given 
 community under an administration that 
 represents ecclesiastical economy and the 
 true conservation of forces, our religious 
 societies, of all names, will continue to 
 fail, as they have heretofore failed, to do 
 for the community what they aim to do 
 for the individual. The existing organi- 
 zations do not express the power of the 
 working church of primitive days in our 
 industrial, social, and ethical life. Christ 
 is not acknowledged in his place in the 
 institutions which God has planted in the 
 world for the preservation and purification 
 
The Church in Modern Life. 57 
 
 of society. The weakness of modern life 
 is in its severance from the natural strength 
 that comes from the family education, from 
 an intelligent citizenship, and from the 
 Christian idea of character. There can be 
 no substitute for these fundamental and 
 permanent forms and institutions. 
 
 The survey of our American denomina- 
 tional development from this point of view 
 leads to instructive conclusions. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Church in Disintegration, 
 
 nr^HE chief characteristic of the church 
 ■^ in the Middle Ages was that it in- 
 cluded the industrial, social, and political 
 interests of the community under spiritual 
 direction. The life of the period was far 
 less expansive than the same life is at the 
 present day, but the interests to a degree 
 were the same which they are now. The 
 church by special legislation and parochial 
 provision met the common necessities of 
 the community without going outside of it- 
 self. The place of the collective Christian 
 organizations in democratic society to-day 
 is in the strongest possible contrast with 
 their rank in the old institutional order. 
 The special agencies which the church once 
 controlled are now largely beyond its pale, 
 and are mostly without religious direction. 
 
The Church in Disintegration, ^g 
 
 The church has parted with its social 
 jurisdiction. The hospitals, the provident 
 societies, the relief associations, the friendly 
 orders, the reformation of criminals, are 
 more often outside of the Christian churches 
 than under their control. If the church is 
 still associated with the state in this work, 
 it is as one of the agencies in a field 
 which in monastic England and in the 
 old Gallic Church was wholly within the 
 confines of ecclesiastical authority. The 
 increase of the work of this sort is due to 
 the great and universal development of 
 individual power in modern society. The 
 church has not kept pace with this de- 
 velopment. The Roman communion has 
 intended to do this ; the Anglican body 
 has kept it in view ; the different Prot- 
 estant organizations have maintained the 
 theory that nothing which concerns the 
 life of society is outside of the scope of 
 Christian treatment ; the view of social order 
 in the Middle Ages is still substantially held 
 in theory ; but it is seldom that the Chris- 
 
40 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 tian Church is found dealing to-day in a 
 large and organic way with the benevolent, 
 educational, or social interests of the com- 
 munity. The life of men has come to be 
 so much outside of the ecclesiastical en- 
 vironment that the world has pushed the 
 church out of its old centre, and built up 
 all sorts of organizations to do its work of 
 reformation and renewal. It is difficult to 
 realize that the church was ever anything 
 more than it is in our American towns 
 at the present day; and yet even in our 
 cherished localities, the attempt was made 
 hardly more than two centuries ago to 
 organize the community on such an eccle- 
 siastical basis that the spiritual power 
 should have the supremacy in all depart- 
 ments of life. It was the attempt to make 
 the church autocratic by taking away 
 the freedom of the individual in a com- 
 munity where the people were politically 
 the makers of the state, and the individual 
 was the social unit. 
 
 It was not a long step to a revolt from 
 
The Church in Disintegration. 41 
 
 this order of things, and, when it came, it 
 meant the defeat of the collective church 
 in the element of social power. All Prot- 
 estant bodies since the Reformation have 
 felt the influence of the revolt of the in- 
 dividual from obedience to religious rule. 
 The harmony between social and spiritual 
 order on the one side and the liberty of 
 the individual as a member of society on 
 the other has not been cultivated. The 
 Christian societies lost their central place 
 when they broke away from the national 
 church or the Roman obedience, in the 
 old world ; and in the new, the collective 
 church, though it began in England as the 
 ruler of society, was so arbitrary in its 
 rulings that it interfered with social and 
 personal liberty and could not be toler- 
 ated. It did not allow free scope to the 
 individual under the general direction of 
 Christian institutions. The result was 
 that at an early day the line was drawn 
 between religion and society ; and the two 
 elements which find their mutual strength 
 
42 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 in union were hopelessly sundered and 
 have ever since been kept apart in our re- 
 ligious development. It was the Puritan 
 who drew this vicious line between the 
 church and the world, and alienated the 
 social from the religious life. In Eng- 
 land and France the national church has 
 done much to transmit the social integra- 
 tion of religion with life, so that the separa- 
 tion has not been so marked as it is in a 
 country where national religious institu- 
 tions do not exist. It is not to be denied 
 that the Christianity of this country is an 
 immense power; it is here simply pointed 
 out that from the beginning it has 
 missed one of the prime elements of influ- 
 ence in the social world. It has not been 
 homogeneous with our political or social 
 life. It has been a continual contest be- 
 tween two separate views of Christianity — 
 the institutional presentation of truth and 
 the regeneration of the individual ; and this 
 contest is to-day, what it was one or two 
 hundred years ago, the dividing line in all 
 
The Church in Disintegration. 4^ 
 
 our efforts to bring the Christian Church 
 into the central position where it can do 
 for modern society what it did for the 
 average man and woman of the Middle 
 Ages, when monastic and other Christian 
 institutions were scattered all over Eng- 
 land and Western Europe. 
 
 The collective church is separated to-day, 
 as it has been since the Standing Order 
 was overthrown in New England, from the 
 secular interests of life. This separation 
 is one of our national traditions. It is not 
 only separation, but division. The differ- 
 ent denominations compel the maintenance 
 of different organizations. This develops 
 the separatist principle with reference to 
 one another. The support of these estab- 
 lishments draws the Christian members 
 away from the central interests of society 
 and commits them to the support of eccle- 
 siasticism. This naturally intensifies the 
 national religious weakness of separating 
 things sacred from things secular, so that 
 there is little direct help to be derived 
 
44 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 from the Christian societies toward im- 
 proving the moral life of the people. In 
 many things our present ecclesiasticism 
 works directly against the interests which 
 Christian persons should be anxious to 
 promote. Both in our towns and in our 
 ! villages the maintenance of rival parochial 
 organizations withdraws from the commu- 
 nity much of the influence of the most 
 worthy people, who feel obliged to work 
 for their parishes instead of looking after 
 the real prosperity of the whole family of 
 God in the community. 
 
 The practical operation of Christianity 
 in this form is to separate into cliques per- 
 sons who ought to be in earnest coopera- 
 tion with each other. They cannot have 
 as their first aim the good of the whole. 
 Their very attitude toward the community 
 is wrong ; they are not free to do what the 
 large heart prompts them to undertake. 
 The conception of the Christian rehgion 
 that is in practical operation is a contra- 
 diction of the state of things which Chris- 
 
The Church in Disintegration. 4^ 
 
 tianity is intended to produce. The people 
 are divided into cliques who do separate- 
 ly what should be done by the collective 
 church in the community with the spirit 
 of one man. Different religionists define 
 their positions with reference to one an- 
 other and exalt dogma above the interests 
 of the whole population. The tendency 
 is to narrow their views, to contract their 
 range of thought, to prevent the church as 
 an institution from being identified with 
 the secular welfare of the people ; and this 
 is where the Christian life of the country 
 is most seriously checked at the present 
 time. It is the welfare of the denomina- 
 tion, not the welfare of the entire Church 
 of God, which receives attention, and so 
 far as this spirit prevails, it is partially an- 
 tagonistic to the influence which Christian- 
 ity ought to have upon towns, villages, and 
 neighborhoods. It is impossible for the 
 pastor of a congregation in a town or vil- 
 lage to do for the citizens what he might 
 do if the people were entirely under his 
 
46 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 parochial charge. Hostihty or at least 
 rivalry exists between two or more sepa- 
 rate organizations, and things are not seen 
 from the central point of unity. The Chris- 
 tian Church has come to represent a .cer- 
 tain religious order rather than an inspir- 
 ing principle. 
 
 Where there is no national church, it is 
 not easy to supply its place. Where the 
 church is not central in society, it is not 
 at the point where it can do the most for 
 the social and personal amelioration of the 
 people. The difficulty with our organiza- 
 tion of religion is that it does too little for 
 social interests. It aims to do more for a 
 man in the next life than it helps him to 
 perform in the life that now is. The need 
 of the working church is greater than men 
 recognize, and this cannot be at its best 
 where those who meet together are not 
 agreed, and willing to cooperate in essen- 
 tial things. The narrowness of the differ- 
 ent bodies which constitute the Church of 
 Christ in the United States is a o:reat 
 
The Church in Disintegration, 47 
 
 dr^.wback to their usefulness. Their work- 
 ing principle is opposed to comprehension. 
 They have a creed which is narrower and 
 more definite within certain limits than 
 the complete statement of the facts of 
 Christianity, and this acts as a limit to the 
 work which they aim to do. Each sepa- 
 rate organization has something less than 
 the force and strength of the whole Church 
 of Christ. This is acknowledged in its 
 very name, as well as in the details or omis- 
 sions of its creed. It often represents an 
 opinion about the Christian religion rather 
 than the full substance of that religion. 
 This is inevitable from the very condition of 
 things, and the deficiency in the creed is 
 responsible for the lack of comprehension 
 which still further alienates the church 
 from the social activities of the people. 
 This is deeply felt 'as a serious deficiency 
 in the Christian forces of England by men 
 like Dr. James Martineau, who sees in the 
 exclusiveness of its range of action the 
 failure of the existing church in Great 
 
48 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 Britain to meet the demands of the reli- 
 gious life of the nation. He would secure 
 such a federation of the present religious 
 forces that the conception of the working 
 church should be coextensive with the 
 thought and spirit and activity of the en- 
 tire people. This would go far to restore 
 Christianity to the place which it held in ; 
 the earlier ages, when it was the religion of j 
 the entire nation, not of cliques, some of ] 
 which hold to one part of the faith and j 
 some to another. 
 
 The combination of our American Chris- 
 tian organizations in such a way that the 
 strength of each shall be felt in the in- 
 creasing comprehensiveness of all is the 
 method of escape from the serious limita- 
 tions which now stand in the way of their 
 usefulness. The national mark of our re- 
 ligion is that it does not control society. 
 The religious element is absent from the 
 common life of the people. What social 
 and common life most need is a larger 
 recognition of spiritual purpose. The 
 
The Church in Disintegration, 49 
 
 nation has not yet recovered from the 
 dividing line, introduced by the Puritans, 
 which separates practical Christianity from 
 the broader activities in which every citi- 
 zen is expected to find his sphere of work. 
 The general conception of the Christian 
 Church is based upon this line of distinc- 
 tion and manifests itself in a thousand 
 modifications of current thought and life. 
 Nothing like the English method of opera- 
 tion is possible here, because in this coun- 
 try all religious societies are equal in 
 power and opportunity ; but the gradual 
 change of view in looking at the situation, 
 so that the things held in common shall 
 become more prominent, and the points of 
 divergence shall recede into their proper 
 insignificance, seems to be leading to that 
 larger purpose and experience through 
 which all these bodies are to be delivered 
 from the limitations of their Greeds and 
 their methods. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Church in the World, 
 
 ^ I ^HE difference between the church 
 -*- and the state in modern society is 
 that the state still deals with humanity as 
 a whole, while the church has no juris- 
 diction over a large portion of the people. 
 The church is an organization within the 
 state, not coextensive with it. And yet 
 the influence which the church has always 
 had in controlling the moral and spiritual 
 interests of society is more needed now 
 than it was when institutions were all-pre- 
 vailing and the freedom of the individual 
 had not been secured. When the family 
 life is not protected, it is difBcult to se- 
 cure the education necessary to make the 
 good citizen ; when the state fails to edu- 
 cate its members in the duties of citizen- 
 
The Church in the World. 5/ 
 
 ship, the nation is unable to protect its 
 interests ; and when the church has no 
 influence over a large portion of the 
 people, it is difficult to maintain the con- 
 stant appeal to the conscience of men 
 which secures the supremacy of moral 
 rights and keeps fresh their sense of duty 
 to one another. The state simply regu- 
 lates existing conditions; it does not in- 
 troduce a new view of present life. The 
 church, on the other hand, represents the 
 ethical and spiritual motives which give 
 moral power to the state and impart moral 
 and spiritual tone to society. It bases 
 its authority not on what the individual 
 is compelled to concede to others for the 
 sake of the common weal, but on the 
 brotherhood of men and their mutual de- 
 pendence on one another. It represents 
 the moral ideal of human society, and its 
 aim and purpose is to introduce that ideal 
 into the world-order. Though its aim is 
 moral, where that of the state is political 
 and economic, it derives its authority not 
 
52 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 only from the consent of the governed, 
 but from the Divine Person whom it rep- 
 resents ; it is influential only so far as its 
 teachings and principles are accepted by 
 individuals or by the community. And 
 yet without this insistence on moral and 
 spiritual sanctions, the state feels the 
 absence of that authority, coordinate with 
 itself yet distinctly spiritual, which relates 
 the unseen God to the social world in 
 which his purposes are recorded in the 
 processes of history. 
 
 In our own time the state has " slowly 
 broadened down from precedent to pre- 
 cedent," until it is a government '*of the 
 people, by the people, and for the people." 
 The church has not followed to the same 
 degree the tendency to spiritual democracy, 
 though it must always find its sphere 
 through the agency of the people in order 
 to fulfill its mission among men. The 
 problem before the Christian Church to- 
 day is whether it can maintain its spiritual 
 prerogative and be as truly the ministrant 
 
The Church in the World. 5^ 
 
 to the unguided multitudes of our day as 
 it was the guide and inspiration of the 
 thousands who first believed in Christi- 
 anity and felt the inspiration of the new 
 convictions of life and duty which it gave 
 to them. This problem presses hard upon 
 those who are seeking the solution of 
 our industrial and social difficulties. The 
 breaking away of the individual from the 
 institutional restraints of another age has 
 resulted in placing people, in a religious 
 point of view, outside of the general cov- 
 enant relation with the church by baptism, 
 which, if it did not impart to them per- 
 sonal righteousness, at least maintained 
 the feeling of relationship to a great re- 
 ligious order, which was not without some 
 general influence upon their lives. They 
 now simply stand up in the social ranks, 
 entirely ignoring the work of an institution 
 which, regarded even in a worldly point of 
 view, is the complement of the state in 
 regulating the life of society. Speaking 
 generally, the church to-day is an insti- 
 
5^ The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 tution maintained by those who are able 
 to support it. In democratic society it 
 derives no advantage from the state and 
 asks no favors, but stands aside from 
 the rush of political and industrial inter- 
 ests and deals by consent with the un- 
 worldly element in life. The day has for- 
 ever passed when the threats of excom- 
 munication can make men tremble. The 
 power of the church as a spiritual cor- 
 poration armed with extreme penalties 
 has been lost and is not to return. Its 
 strength is no longer in its penalties, 
 but in its relations of service to the uni- 
 versal brotherhood of men. It is the 
 collective church which is here spoken 
 of, not this or that section of it ; and this 
 collective church stands in a peculiarly 
 transitional relation to modern society. 
 In our free and individual life, it is 
 impossible to maintain its supremacy 
 along the old lines of procedure, and 
 there is a general halt to see what it is 
 best to do. Different families of Chris- 
 
The Church in the World, ^^ 
 
 tians have worked out different results ; 
 some have verged to the extreme of de- 
 mocracy in their methods, and others still 
 cling with great tenacity to a style of 
 thought and methods of work which re- 
 strict their influence chiefly to special 
 classes of people. Amid these divisions, 
 the narrowness of the sect has the power 
 to restrict the range of thought and keep 
 our different organizations of Christianity 
 from seeing the situation in the large. 
 It has been remarked that American re- 
 ligious bodies have shown less power to 
 adapt themselves to the changed con- 
 ditions of modern society than the mother 
 churches in Europe from which they 
 sprang. This is undoubtedly true, and 
 the greatest weakness of our collective 
 Christianity to-day is that the leaders of 
 its different sections have too little ca- 
 pacity to rise to a clear view of the po- 
 sition in which Christianity stands to the 
 whole American people. There is no 
 national religion corresponding, in breadth 
 
^6 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 of view and in elasticity of methods, to our 
 national government, and men see, for the 
 most part, only so far as the limits of 
 the sect with which they are connected. 
 This prevents the adaptation of our re- 
 ligious methods to the needs of the people 
 as a whole, as an integral portion of man- 
 kind. The organization of our religious 
 life is too narrow for its proper expansion. 
 It is found that our government, though 
 not changed in its fundamental principles, 
 is constantly changing in the stress brought 
 to bear upon this or that part of our gen- 
 eral system, and the same process is going 
 on irresistibly in the ecclesiastical life of 
 the people. There is an appeal to a con- 
 stantly growing conception of life. It is 
 the free expansion of this life which the 
 churches, wedded to methods of work 
 or conceptions of doctrine which have 
 served their purpose, are too slow to 
 appreciate ; and it is here that the great 
 gap is found to-day between the Ameri- 
 can church and American life. Until 
 
The Church in the IVorLi. 57 
 
 the church in the person of its leaders 
 rises to the conception of its duty to give 
 a fresh social conception to Christianity, 
 a conception which manifests insight into 
 the present ordering of life and displays 
 the mastery of its conditions, the masses 
 of the people must continue to feel that 
 for all their higher interests the different 
 religious societies can do them little good. 
 When the whole world is entering upon 
 a new development of industrial and com- 
 mercial possibihties, it stands to reason 
 that neither the church nor the state can 
 occupy the same position that they held 
 a century ago. The state has changed ; 
 it responds with alacrity to the convictions 
 of the people ; but the church, because it 
 deals, not with the temporalities of the 
 people, but with their spiritual condition, 
 has made the mistake of separating in its 
 thought and management the industrial 
 and social from the moral and spiritual 
 life. The line of separation may be im- 
 aginary, but it exists in the class or club 
 
5^ The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 idea as the basis of church action, and 
 in prejudices to this end which are not 
 easily eradicated from the minds of those 
 who have nothing to gain in a worldly 
 sense from ecclesiastical connections. The 
 church is in the world, if it fulfills its 
 mission, not to help those who have most 
 present advantages, but to leaven society 
 not less than the lives of individual men 
 and women with the mind and the spirit 
 which were in Jesus Christ. It is this 
 large and free and modern conception of 
 the Church of Christ which is yet to be 
 fully realized among us. It is here that 
 the broader Kingdom of God is to be 
 begun. 
 
 The Church of Christ is to-day all that 
 it ever was in its essence, in its spiritual 
 functions, in its possession of the spirit 
 of the living God. The individual, in 
 the growth of his sense of personality, 
 in the possibilities of his greater personal 
 development, in his mastery of the world 
 beyond himself, is more than he ever was. 
 
The Church in the World. ^9 
 
 This individual is the representative of 
 the forces in the world which are yet to be 
 controlled and elevated by spiritual means, 
 and the Church of Christ is still the chief 
 instrument by which the moral regenera- 
 tion of society is to be effected. How shall 
 the church be reinforced to meet the just 
 expectations of those who believe in its 
 instrumental power ? How shall it re- 
 ceive back into its fold the children of 
 those who have broken away from its 
 sanctions and discipline ? How shall the 
 conscience that anticipates and maintains 
 justice be restored to the social and in- 
 dustrial life of the community ? How 
 shall the toiling millions be made to feel 
 that there is anything in life but a toil- 
 some journey from the cradle to the grave ? 
 Is the Christian Church to command the 
 situation, or are the people connected with 
 religious societies to be one company, 
 and the persons who have lost all hope 
 of any betterment of life through the 
 church to form another ? These questions 
 
6o The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 are asked, not by the careless and unthink- 
 ing, but by those who survey the religious 
 interests of the people in their national 
 significance. It is one thing to reckon 
 the host of Israel and count numbers as 
 prosperity ; it is quite another to bring 
 the Ark of God into the centre of the 
 host where its presence shall reanimate 
 all men with the convictions for which it 
 stands. 
 
 What does society most need to-day.? 
 The industrial revolution is scarcely more 
 marked than the political revolution. 
 There is an unmistakable unwillingness 
 to go to the past for antecedents or for 
 authority. The thought of every man is 
 occupied with the work of reconstruction, 
 and there is no sphere of life or thought 
 which escapes this ordeal. The religious 
 interests of the community are under the 
 same movement, and what is called the 
 "new theology" is nothing more than the 
 adaptation of abiding truths to the changed 
 conditions of thousfht. The church moves 
 
The Church in the IVorld. 6i 
 
 last because it is naturally even more in- 
 stitutional in its character than the state, 
 slower to receive new ideas, and more 
 powerful to hold society steadfast to what 
 is of permanent obligation. All the ele- 
 ments of society are in motion to-day, but 
 the political and industrial attract most at- 
 tention because they are most immediate 
 and affect the greatest number of people. 
 The first need of such a time as our own 
 is that moral principles shall have unim- 
 paired influence. This is a simple point to 
 make, but whoever has watched the devel- 
 opment of the industrial issues between 
 the capitalists and the workmen whom they 
 employ will have noted that every question 
 between them involves a moral principle. 
 The one party is attempting to take ad- 
 vantage of the other. The state may in- 
 terpose as arbitrator, but though in its 
 evolution it is as a whole a moral agent 
 and is endowed with moral personality, it 
 is only commissioned to act under the 
 forms of law, and these forms are the only 
 
62 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 expression of moral purpose with which 
 the state is directly concerned. The gov- 
 ernment is an arrangement for the regula- 
 tion of liberty. The inspiration and up- 
 lifting of society comes from another quar- 
 ter. The moral purpose comes from in- 
 dividuals ; but its solidarity is not secured 
 through single individuals, no matter how 
 valuable their moral qualities may be, but 
 through the aggregate or corporate pres- 
 entation of their influence in the forms of 
 institutional life. To illustrate : the re- 
 ligious society in a particular village may 
 contain perhaps half-a-dozen individuals 
 who have great personal influence ; but 
 their weight as individuals is one thing, 
 and the influence of the Christian organ- 
 ization which absorbs their moral weight 
 and converts it into institutional power for 
 righteousness in the community is im- 
 mensely greater and more powerful. This 
 is the difference between personaUty and 
 institutional power. This is the vantage 
 ground of the Christian Church as an 
 
The Church in the World, 6^ 
 
 influence in the present changes of society. 
 If the permanently valuable elements of 
 our social order are retained, it will be 
 because the direct and indirect forces of 
 righteousness which go forth from the 
 aggregated Christian organizations of the 
 land have acquired the institutional power 
 to prevail over the looseness and weakness 
 of individual life. 
 
 There is more than the need of moral 
 principles. There is the need of a larger 
 estimate of the value and meaning of life, 
 which comes not from the sense of justice, 
 though it has this sense behind it, but 
 from a recognition of each man's right to 
 live and enjoy a fair share of the rights 
 and privileges that are the common inher- 
 itance of all. The relations between man 
 and man are not elevated enough to secure 
 this result ; you are not sure of it ; the 
 state, though divine as an institution, does 
 not emphasize the divine sanctions of so- 
 cial action. But when the Christian motive 
 of kindliness is introduced and Christian 
 
64 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 brotherhood is felt to be the model of so- 
 cial order as God would have it, life takes 
 on a new character and the world is a good 
 place to live in. It is Christianity felt in 
 the community as a permanent institution 
 of society which adds this grace to life. 
 The moral atmosphere of a town or city is 
 the impression which is produced by the 
 general influence of the church among the 
 people. The closer the church is connected 
 with the interests of the community the 
 stronger is the impression it makes ; and it 
 is this influence, the action of the church 
 upon the family and upon public opinion, 
 and their combined action upon the in- 
 dividual, which is chiefly to impart cheer 
 to the great company of bread-winners in 
 the slow evolution of new relations be- 
 tween capital and labor. The state admin- 
 isters justice as between man and man. 
 The church appeals to the conscience and 
 kindles the sense of right and wrong ; 
 it stands between both parties, as often 
 allied with the one as with the other, but 
 
The Church in the World. 65 
 
 never the antagonist of either ; it has the 
 difficult task of obtaining recognition for 
 an authority which is the highest influence 
 in life, and yet has no power to compel 
 direct assent or obedience to its injunc- 
 tions ; it deals with immaterial forces, and 
 its influence is often strongest when its 
 direct authority is least. The touch that 
 is to renew the hopes of men and again 
 make life delightful is the touch of the 
 Church of Christ, the touch of a helping 
 hand among the poor, the touch of kindli- 
 ness of heart in dealing with one another, 
 the touch of a keener sense of what can be 
 done for humanity at large, the touch of a 
 relation in which the forces of a divine 
 love are felt in the ordinary circumstances 
 of life. 
 
 To sum it all up in a sentence, it is the 
 ethical relation of the church to the com- 
 munity which is most powerful to-day ; it 
 is the influence which changes society 
 while it changes the individual. And this 
 result is not reached by the usual instru- 
 
66 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 mentalities, because they are not ethically 
 adequate for the work expected of them,- 
 The church is apt to be formalized, and its 
 methods are too much the methods of a 
 past generation. The successful method 
 is that which deals with the present con- 
 victions of men and women as to the social 
 pressure in daily life, and is able to carry 
 their hopes and thoughts to a higher level. 
 Wherever this method — which is not a 
 stereotyped method but depends upon the 
 kind of sympathy that different neighbor- 
 hoods need — has been employed, the re- 
 sponse has been immediate and gratifying. 
 There is no time like one of profound social 
 and industrial agitation in which to put 
 truth before men with the hope that it 
 may take root in their hearts and bring 
 forth fruit in their lives. The formal 
 things of the church, however important in 
 themselves as the conservators of spiritual 
 order, are not like the ethical power of the 
 spirit of life. The work of the church is 
 to change and renew lives, and this is to 
 
The Church in the World. 6y 
 
 be accomplished through its general rela- 
 tion to society and through its special re- 
 lation to individuals. But its work is not 
 confined to its own members. It has the 
 world as its field, and its formative work 
 in the entire round of human effort is the 
 sphere in which the call is now most 
 urs^ent. It is for this reason that the 
 chronic disturbances in industry have the 
 deepest ethical interest. They are the re- 
 sult of slow changes in the general struc- 
 ture of society; they are the evolution of a 
 new industrial order ; they are the result 
 of economic forces which are as yet im- 
 perfectly estimated. What they imply 
 may be an advance for the race, but the 
 advance like all progress will be by spiral 
 lines, not rapid, not always assuring, not 
 equal to human wishes, but waiting on the 
 command of the Divine Ruler of men. 
 The advance, the enlightenment, will be 
 the gradual perception, amid great and con- 
 tinuous disorder, of the essential and true 
 brotherhood of men under a common 
 
68 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 Father. It is the church as the guide and 
 inspiration of humanity which is most 
 needed to-day, and it is this character of 
 the church which is now brought forward 
 where its work is most successful. The 
 demand is that the ordinary life of men 
 shall be improved, and it is felt that in 
 some vague way, though the world is full 
 of the manifestations of human kindliness, 
 the church is able to secure this improve- 
 ment and renewal. The church has long 
 been the pet of the higher classes and the 
 luxury of the few ; it is felt alike within 
 and without its confines that the time has 
 come for its broader identification with 
 all the interests of life. The ethical work 
 of the future will be this identification. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Inclusive Church. 
 
 nr^HE realization of the presence of God 
 -*- in the forces of the world is one of 
 the difficulties which human experience 
 has done little to remove. It seems often 
 easier to see God in nature than in the 
 processes of life. The evidence of a per- 
 sonal Deity is demonstrated in nature by 
 the witness of mind directing what men 
 call law ; but in the sphere of the moral 
 and social world, where the will of man 
 has to do with the ordering of life, where 
 the complexity of existence hides the sim- 
 plicity of action, it seems as if God were 
 out of sight, and the convictions of society 
 go far to conceal his presence. In the 
 sphere of secondary causes it requires 
 some effort to go behind their action and 
 realize the direction of God in the world ; 
 
JO The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 and yet the higher life of every man is 
 based upon the immanence of God in our 
 daily life. Human actions are right or 
 wrong as they are in harmony with or con- 
 tradict the ultimate standard which in the 
 last analysis is believed to be the will of 
 God. Human events seem for a genera- 
 tion to be in the hands of human leaders, 
 and we see the marks of their grasp of 
 things; but in the space of two or three 
 generations the order of events and the 
 action of ideas upon the social life are 
 seen to be under the control of a higher 
 law of continuity than that of human de- 
 sign. Men lose their hold of affairs, but 
 God never relaxes his grasp ; and in the 
 long avenues of history men note that 
 One who is unseen has builded better than 
 they knew. Human consciousness is the 
 great centre of appeal for the unity of im- 
 pressions, stronger or weaker in different 
 persons, which recognize the presence of 
 God in the life of men. There are few 
 well-developed minds that do not in some 
 
The Inclusive Church. yi 
 
 way acknowledge this presence and wait 
 upon its manifestations. Much as the 
 world is run by the power of will and by 
 rnaterial forces that are under the control 
 of will, there is a consciousness, not born 
 of superstition, which recognizes the divine 
 movement in human society. It is not ob- 
 trusive, but like the music of the spheres 
 it is heard and felt when it is listened for 
 and noted. Elijah heard the still small 
 voice when he found that there was noth- 
 ing in the raging of the elements that had 
 preceded it ; and he heard it partly be- 
 cause his mind and heart were prepared 
 to listen for it. 
 
 The practical inference from this large 
 consciousness that God is ordering human 
 society after a plan not fully disclosed to 
 mankind, is that his presence is specially 
 revealed in the moral and spiritual agencies 
 which control the direction of life. God 
 is revealed in the family as the agency 
 not only for the propagation of life but 
 for the training of life according to the 
 
y2 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 best light that our experience affords. 
 The household in which we spend our 
 earliest years is the training school in 
 which our first impressions are fixed, and 
 in which they are most firmly rooted. 
 This is a natural school ; it is a part of 
 one's birthright. But it is only one of the 
 agencies by which the life of the individual 
 is controlled. The civil and industrial 
 and political sphere, which is considered 
 as the totality of the state in its relation 
 to personal life, is the complement of the 
 family training and constitutes the field 
 in which one finds his place and useful- 
 ness. This has its material side, as also 
 has the family ; but in its higher character 
 the state is a moral and even a spiritual 
 organism, through which God acts upon 
 civil society and educates mankind for 
 their several duties. The church, as dis- 
 tinguished from the family and the state, 
 is exclusively a moral and spiritual agency. 
 It is concerned with the moral and spirit- 
 ual direction and education of mankind. 
 
The Inclusive Church. 7^ 
 
 Whether you take close or large ideas 
 of its functions in human society, it is 
 nothing less than an agency, like the state 
 and the family, which is universal in its 
 oversight of Hfe and in its spiritual pur- 
 pose toward mankind. While God is 
 everywhere and no one escapes his ob- 
 servation, there is a closer sense in which 
 God is in his church and has committed 
 to it certain large interests pertaining 
 to the welfare of mankind. Take the 
 Church of the Jews for an illustration. 
 This was a church coextensive with the 
 nation, protecting its moral and spiritual 
 interests, and constantly dealing with the 
 people as a race under covenant relations. 
 There is a largeness about the Church of 
 the Jews which aptly shows how the in- 
 stitutional life of the people was repre- 
 sented by it. It is always the national 
 body. It cares for the interests of the 
 people as a race. It furnishes our best 
 example in history of the way in which 
 the race-consciousness of a remarkably 
 
^4 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 spiritual people was controlled by religious 
 instrumentalities. Ewald has brought out 
 this feature of the theocracy strongly in 
 his " History of Israel," and whoever 
 studies the Old Testament with ordinary 
 attention will realize it for himself. The 
 church and the state were almost identical 
 in the Jewish theocracy, but the illus- 
 tration shows in what sense the Christian 
 Church becomes a living force even in 
 a modern community when it acts upon 
 society as a corporate whole. In Chris- 
 tian history there are many instances in 
 which the church has had a controlling 
 power over great peoples and given them 
 a unity in their development under the 
 forms of civil society which they could 
 not otherwise have reached. Where a 
 race or a nation has come under the lead 
 of a comprehensive spiritual organization, 
 there has been a corresponding largeness 
 of purpose or design ; and in a formal way 
 God is said to dwell with these people 
 through his church as well as in their in- 
 
The Inclusive Church. ' y^ 
 
 dividual hearts. There is something im- 
 plied in the formal church which is less 
 implicitly expressed in the world outside. 
 The church is the sphere of man's spirit- 
 ual education. It is represented by hun- 
 dreds of parishes, reaching to every col- 
 lection of individuals throughout the land, 
 coming down through the methods of 
 doing spiritual work in these parishes to 
 the individual mind and conscience, and 
 working the personal regeneration of man- 
 kind. It is a great organization of in- 
 strumentalities, which not only affects 
 society in the large, but penetrates like 
 the sunlight into the darkest recesses of 
 humanity. It is not discharging its func- 
 tions successfully when it is simply an 
 ecclesiastical organization which covers a 
 certain territory, or when it exerts its 
 power in a formal way in upholding moral 
 and spiritual agencies in the country ; it 
 needs the complement of personal expe- 
 rience of the message of God through 
 Christ to the individual soul before it can 
 
y6 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 be said that the church has measured the 
 true reason of its power. All compre- 
 hensive ideas of Christianity need to be 
 supplemented by the personal relation in 
 which the soul stands to God before they 
 can operate with the warmth and strength 
 that belong to them. The comprehensive 
 church is nothing more than the Chris- 
 tianity which is before the country in the 
 aggregate, but when considered in its com- 
 prehensive form or in the totality of its in- 
 fluence it stands out quite differently from 
 what it seems in the light of its divisions. 
 The one thing that has been missed in 
 our own country has been this compre- 
 hensive form of Christianity. There has 
 been not only no national organization 
 of religion, but most Christians have never 
 thought or worked outside of the religious 
 cliques in which they were brought up or 
 in which they have found themselves. 
 The church has not been thought of as 
 an institution as grand, as comprehensive, 
 as universal, as all-embracing as our na- 
 
The Inclusive Church. yy 
 
 tional consciousness. It has not been 
 regarded as coextensive with the nation 
 and the family among the institutions by 
 which God permits men to govern the 
 world. It has not lifted its voice in na- 
 tional affairs as the Hebrew prophets lifted 
 up their voices at critical periods in the 
 history of Israel. It has not made itself 
 felt as a unit 'in dictating the national 
 policy on questions in which ethics enter 
 as a national factor. It has not controlled 
 and guided our civilization so as to give 
 a Christian character to the national con- 
 sciousness. It has not carried into the 
 world's life the emphatic convictions of 
 a Christian people. American Christianity 
 is weak to-day because it has no recog- 
 nized voice. There is no national note 
 about it. Whether Protestant or Catholic, 
 it is the religion of specialists, and has no 
 national or race significance. In a certain 
 sense, it fails to carry the weight of God 
 behind it. It speaks for something less 
 than this, when the full weight of God's 
 
^8 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 commission to an authorized church, which 
 is also the church of the people of the 
 nation, is not its charter and its present 
 consciousness. The restoration of this 
 consciousness ; the reaching out to national 
 conceptions of Christianity ; the making 
 of the religion of the people as significant 
 as their politics ; the placing of the em- 
 phasis upon great and central ideas of 
 national morality, of national education, 
 of the national bearing of industrial, eco- 
 nomic, and social questions ; the reaching 
 of something like unity in the general 
 spiritual consciousness of the people, — is 
 the direction in which the immanence of 
 God in human society, and especially in 
 the moral and spiritual agencies through 
 which society expresses itself, takes on 
 the character of nationality. The Church 
 of Christ is but a poor makeshift so long 
 as it comes short in modern society of 
 the greatness and the majesty of the 
 Jewish Church when that organization 
 controlled Hebrew existence. So long 
 
The Inclusive Church. yg 
 
 as it depends upon this or that sectarian 
 and partial exhibition of its capabilities 
 in dealing with the questions which con- 
 cern humanity, so long as it stops short 
 of realizing its progressive power through 
 the devising of liberal things, so long as 
 it fails to hold before the community the 
 greatness and the grandeur of Christian 
 institutions, it will fail to fulfill its divine 
 mission in society. The church to-day 
 in America no longer satisfies anybody 
 who considers its possibilities and com- 
 pares them with its performance. And 
 this dissatisfaction is largely due to the 
 smallness of the conception of what Chris- 
 tianity is ; to the consideration of its de- 
 velopment as a sectarian institution, set 
 to the propagation of certain ideas and 
 not careful to see whether they are in 
 accord with the large conception of Chris- 
 tianity which includes the whole of a 
 nation's existence and interests ; and to 
 the contentment of people with the im- 
 perfect working out of the ideas of social 
 
8o The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 and spiritual uplifting which constitute 
 the concrete power of Christianity in the 
 community. 
 
 The Church of Christ, operative in the 
 affairs of men as the chief agency for 
 righteousness in the world, should express 
 the largest conception of the higher life 
 which it is possible to entertain. In 
 Plato's Republic the ideal state passes in 
 its beautiful form before the eye, and its 
 functions correspond to the perfect life. 
 Likewise in the Christian Church the ideal 
 of what the church in its collective form 
 ought to be passes in view before the 
 mind's eye, and its possibilities of service 
 to modern society are more delightful 
 when traced with the imagination than 
 when they are made to tally with actual 
 fact. The church of to-day has to recover 
 what it has lost since the end of the Mid- 
 dle Ages and the rise of civil society. 
 Then it controlled education, social insti- 
 tutions, the great guilds, the family life, the 
 entire outward existence of men. It had 
 
The Inclusive Church, 8i 
 
 the word of command over social life. 
 Afterwards, the individual man, the repre- 
 sentative of personal Uberty, appeared and 
 broke the spell of this charmed existence. 
 It was then said that the church existed 
 to save the individual soul ; and when the 
 Reformation came, it was the individual 
 soul that men thought of, not the saving 
 of society. The one ought never to have 
 been separated from the other. In the 
 Roman and in the Anglican Churches the 
 one has always been considered as impor- 
 tant as the other ; but wherever pure Pro- 
 testantism has prevailed, the social side 
 of Christianity has been lost to a great 
 extent, because the stress has been laid too 
 exclusively upon the renewal of the indi- 
 vidual soul. The institutional conception 
 of Christian society has been overlooked. 
 Accordingly, Christianity is what you see 
 it' almost everywhere in America, a move- 
 ment bearing the character of a spent or a 
 misapplied or an unwisely directed force. 
 This religious body believes in the univer- 
 
82 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 sality of the atonement ; that organization 
 holds to the speedy second coming of our 
 Lord ; one would put the stress of the true 
 church on a mode of baptism ; another 
 would find the centre of interest in an 
 emotional experience called conversion ; 
 another would rest the salvation of men 
 upon the acceptance of the perfect man- 
 hood of the historical Christ ; another 
 would exalt Luther's dogma of justification 
 by faith to the central place in the Chris- 
 tian system ; still another would throw 
 away the entire Christian Church and begin 
 anew with the teachings of Swedenborg. 
 There is no unity in the conception of the 
 Christian religion in these discordant sys- 
 tems, nothing which raises the enthusiasm 
 of humanity, nothing which heartens one 
 to believe in Christianity itself ; it is an 
 opinion about the Christian religion with 
 an argumentative support derived from 
 the Bible, but there is no power in it 
 to grasp vigorously the issues of life in 
 the community and lead them in large 
 
The Inclusive Church. 8^ 
 
 directions. People become religious, but 
 their convictions are not compacted into 
 regenerative motive power. Religious in- 
 fluence becomes conservative and conven- 
 tional, and the spiritual thought moves in 
 hard and well-worn ruts. There is not 
 enough strength in this conventional 
 Christianity to save it from dying. Par- 
 ishes and ministers go their feeble rounds 
 of routine service, but there is no enthu- 
 siasm in the work, and everything dies 
 like vegetation in a time of drought be- 
 cause there is a lack of vitality in the 
 earth and the air. This condition of af- 
 fairs is familiar to all who have any expe- 
 rience with the different forms in which 
 American Christianity has expressed itself. 
 It is felt that the Christian religion is 
 immensely larger than the common moulds 
 in which it has been shaped and presented 
 to men. 
 
 The condition of things in our own coun- 
 try turns one back to first principles. The 
 Church of Christ needs to be idealized. It 
 
84 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 is more inclusive, more controlling, more 
 comprehensive, more helpful, more educa- 
 ting, more inspiring, more soul-strengthen- 
 ing, than it seems when it is seen in the 
 hard realism of its actual limitations and 
 conditions. It is well to keep the ideal 
 before men in order that they may rise to 
 the conception of ideal manhood, and the 
 same is true of an institution which stands 
 out in human society as the incarnation of 
 the Divine Life. The church is the bride 
 of Christ. It is the pillar and the ground 
 of truth. It is the conservator of the 
 divine movement in the world as it was 
 once expressed in the Hebrew history and 
 as it has been manifested in the historical 
 facts concerning Jesus Christ. It is the 
 institution which first among the Hebrews, 
 and since the nativity of Jesus Christ 
 among the Gentiles, has been the ''light 
 of the world." It is the continuous testi- 
 mony to a power that acts upon the souls 
 of men as the family acts upon their child- 
 hood, and as the state acts upon their 
 
The Inclusive Church. 8^ 
 
 mature life. But in the family and in the 
 state the testimony of the divine life is 
 seen in the course of ordinary nature ; it 
 is the continuous control of life for be- 
 neficent ends. The church undertakes to 
 deal, not only with the social sphere in 
 which men find their field of practical use- 
 fulness, but with the higher life, the rela- 
 tion of the soul to God, the union of man 
 with God, the development of the control 
 of all human life by the recognition of its 
 central source in God, the power breathed 
 into men of being united by spiritual ties 
 with the Christ, so that in reaching his 
 perfect manhood they may reach the iden- 
 tification of the human will with the divine 
 will, which is the source of the perfectness 
 of his own life. Everything in the aim 
 and purpose of the church as the repre- 
 sentative of Christ on earth is to lift hu- 
 manity into some faint human realization 
 of what finds its ideal expression in the 
 life and work of Christ as the Son of Man 
 and also the Son of God. 
 
86 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 We go to Christ, and to what the apos- 
 tles have told us of his plans, for the work- 
 ing ideas of the Christian Church at any age 
 of the world. And as often as reformers, 
 who did not aim at the inauguration of a 
 new dispensation, but only at the restora- 
 tion of what they thought the church had 
 lost in its contact with the state and the 
 family, have returned to the simplicity of 
 Christ's plans for the regeneration of the 
 individual or of society, the blessing of 
 God has attended their efforts. The re- 
 sult has proved the inspiration that exists 
 in the collective church and in its power 
 as the representative of Christ to regen- 
 erate the world. It is this Church, of 
 which the existing divisions of the Chris- 
 tian family are the aggregate whole, which 
 in any nation is the instrumentality for 
 treating men as the children of God and 
 teaching them their relations and duties 
 to him. The church embraces every in- 
 terest which pertains to the individual or 
 social life in the community. It is first 
 
The Inclusive Church. 8y 
 
 of all an instrumentality for bringing the 
 individual into closer relations with God 
 through the remission of sin and the in- 
 spiration of help for a better living. Chris- 
 tianity gave men at the beginning the 
 conception of the duties and the respon- 
 sibilities of the individual. It dealt with 
 man not as a member of the common- 
 wealth, like that of the Jews, but as a re- 
 sponsible being who had his duties to God, 
 as the Father Almight)^ after the simili- 
 tude of his duties to an earthly parent. It 
 magnified the personal element in the in- 
 dividual till it reached the size of the world. 
 It was to make the individual soul what 
 God created it capable of being that Christ 
 became incarnate, and took the lead in 
 human redemption, and triumphed as the 
 Son of God in the resurrection. But this 
 was only the beginning of Christ's work 
 for humanity. What Christ had done for 
 the individual man he was to do for his 
 fellow. Christianity from the start incul- 
 cated the brotherhood of mankind, and be- 
 
S8 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 came as broad as human society. It not 
 only purposed to regenerate the individual, 
 but to change the conditions of life which 
 surrounded him. It has reached out to the 
 state on the one hand and to the family on 
 the other, and has allied itself with all 
 kinds of natural goodness, until it has in- 
 fused its spirit into every form of human 
 society. This has been its twofold mission 
 in the world. 
 
 It is from this point of view that its true 
 position in modern life is to be considered. 
 It is coextensive with the whole of the 
 interests of mankind ; and nothing better 
 shows this than the discovery, in our socio- 
 logical and economic studies of the present 
 day, that all these lower questions find 
 their solution in an ethical principle. 
 Nothing pertaining to the welfare of man 
 can be attentively considered which does 
 not lead up to the Church of Christ as an 
 important factor in the solution of the 
 problem. Our present methods of realiz- 
 ing the power of the church in the world 
 
The Inclusive Church. 8g 
 
 represent certain definite ideas, but the 
 progress of the individual in modern Hfe 
 and the increased complexity of society 
 have brought the Christian Church face to 
 face v^^ith the gravest matters which con- 
 front mankind, and they demand from its 
 leaders, if the church be indeed what they 
 claim for it, that higher direction which it 
 should have as the keeper of the oracles of 
 God. The whole breadth of modern life is 
 the field in which the modern church is 
 asked to expend its energies. It can never 
 again go back to the simplicity of the first 
 Christian centuries, nor to the small ideas 
 of God's ordering of the world which used 
 to pass for an adequate description of the 
 functions of the church in society. It 
 must either advance into the glorious ser- 
 vice and destiny which open out to it in 
 the larger life of men, or recede to an 
 insignificant position among the forces 
 which govern the world. There is an 
 earnest questioning of the powers that be 
 to-day in order to find out what they are 
 
go The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 good for. Nothing is taken for granted, 
 and the combination of the historical with 
 the scientific method is felt in the realm of 
 theology not less than in the study of the 
 processes of history. The question which 
 arises at every turn in our studies of act- 
 ual life is, What shall be done to invest 
 human activity with moral power and pur- 
 pose ? If the Christian Church is what we 
 have been taught to believe it to be, what 
 part shall it have in the new civilization ? 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Spiritual Method of the Church. 
 
 \"\/'HILE the church is an important 
 * ^ factor in civil society, it has a prin- 
 ciple and method which are entirely peculiar 
 to itself. Its aim is to take the individual 
 man at his birth, or at a later period, and 
 make him something which by nature he 
 is not. It exists for the renewal of man in 
 his spiritual functions, for the removal of 
 whatever hinders his advance into purity 
 and holiness of life, for the education of 
 his spiritual aspirations and faculties so 
 that he shall direct his life according to 
 ideas and principles which are partly the 
 accumulated wisdom of men at their best, 
 and partly the truth of God revealed to 
 men through the prophets of old and 
 through his Son Jesus Christ. Its spirit- 
 ual method is the process by which this 
 
g2 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 end is secured. This process is twofold. 
 It is internal and relates to changes in the 
 individual which are purely spiritual ; it is 
 external and has to do with the education 
 of the soul in purity and righteousness 
 and usefulness in the world. 
 
 The work of theology has been to for- 
 mulate the process by which the soul is re- 
 newed, and all the creeds of Christendom 
 essentially agree as to the direct and posi- 
 tive method by which this end is reached. 
 It is necessary to consider what the nat- 
 ural condition of man is before it can be 
 concluded that a certain remedial agency 
 shall be applied to him. It is one of the 
 indirect results of tracing the law of de- 
 velopment in the animal world that the 
 process by which the present maturity of 
 man has been reached has come to be 
 considered as a natural process. Man is 
 not the result of a cataclysm, but the out- 
 growth of conditions which reach far be- 
 yond the primitive history of the race and 
 have to do with the mystery of the origin 
 
The Spiritual Method of the Church, g^ 
 
 of life. The story of the fall of man as 
 told in the Book of Genesis is the Hebrew 
 explanation of the origin of man and the 
 change that came over our first parents. 
 The story of the origin of man and the 
 record of his struggle as the survival of the 
 fittest is not so much a contradiction of 
 the Hebrew record as it is its statement in 
 the facts of nature. The fact of the evil 
 that is in the world is as distinctly revealed 
 in the processes of development as m the 
 cosmogony of Genesis. One condition 
 supersedes another in the natural world, and 
 one condition supersedes another in the 
 spiritual world. The names are different, 
 but the essential fact is the same. The 
 church has given the preference to the 
 Hebrew story of the degeneracy of man 
 in his moral life, and has itself been 
 regarded as the actual process of the re- 
 demption of mankind from a fallen con- 
 dition ; but it has never denied that its 
 whole process was of a positive character, 
 that it aimed to do for the spiritual nature 
 
94 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 of man what Nature has aimed to do for 
 the consummate end of the creation of the 
 world, — the building up of that nature so 
 that its higher life shall correspond to the 
 process by which man himself is believed 
 to have sprung into his present existence 
 from a humbler and less complicated or- 
 ganism. In the one case, the church re- 
 gards mankind as in a spiritual degradation, 
 from which its work is to raise the race ; 
 in the other, mankind is regarded in its 
 totality as subject to the developing pro- 
 cess always at work in human history and 
 specially realized in the coming of the Son 
 of God into the world. The individual 
 man may be approached with truth and 
 righteousness from either point of view. 
 He is a sinner to be redeemed by the death 
 of Christ ; or he is a child of God by nat- 
 ural process, who is to be educated to enter 
 into all that God has made him capable of 
 being and knowing. In fact, he is both. 
 There is no need of changing the tradi- 
 tional theology in order to accommodate 
 
The Spiritvuil Method of the Church. 95 
 
 it the better to the stubborn facts of scien- 
 tific truth. Each is to have fair play ; each 
 is to be regarded as valid in its own sphere. 
 Theology uses one language ; science uses 
 another ; but both are processes ordained 
 of God for the correction and upbuilding 
 of mankind. The essential thing is that 
 neither shall stray away from the plain 
 facts which concern the spiritual renewal 
 of life. 
 
 The church takes the individual man in 
 the state in life in which he is, and pro- 
 poses to place him in the condition of 
 spiritual existence in which he ought to be. 
 The church is the Father's home in this 
 world for the spiritual education of man- 
 kind. Our Lord described its functions 
 when he said of it, under the character of 
 the Holy Spirit who is its life-giving power, 
 that the ** Comforter, when he is come, will 
 convict the world in respect of sin, and 
 of righteousness, and of judgment : of sin 
 because they believe not on me ; of right- 
 eousness because I go to the Father and 
 
g6 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 ye behold me no more ; of judgment be- 
 cause the prince of this world is judged." 
 Here the central fact in the spiritual world 
 is the fact of the Incarnation of Christ, 
 who is in this world to deal as God with 
 the individual soul ; here the central pur- 
 pose is the reaching of personal righteous- 
 ness, as the result of this Incarnation, 
 through the spiritual forces which are left 
 in the world to assist this process ; here the 
 Spirit of God is the witness through per- 
 sonal character that the Christian family is 
 not identified with the prince of this world. 
 The promise that the Christian Church 
 J shall be the collective embodiment of the 
 'truth which God has vouchsafed for the 
 (moral and spiritual control of mankind has 
 not been broken. Whatever Christianity 
 may be, here or there, it is as a whole the 
 supreme agency by which the powers of 
 evil are overcome and mankind are placed 
 in the way of the renewal of spiritual life. 
 It works by a spiritual process, but it is a 
 spiritual process realized in civil society. 
 
The Spiritual Method of the Church, gj 
 
 The Incarnation of Christ is the fact 
 on which the church rests, and it is by 
 virtue of his life and work, and death 
 and resurrection and ascension, that the 
 church has become the authorized repre- 
 sentative of Christ to mankind. It is 
 charged with nothing less than the prac- 
 tical regeneration of the world. This re- 
 generation, if man is a sinful being, with 
 his will predisposed to sinful incHnations, 
 must be first of all a spiritual renewal 
 of the forces of life. Man has always 
 heard the voice of his soul crying out for 
 God, who seemed afar off; but in Jesus 
 Christ God was in man reconciling man 
 to God by a double process — by a repre- 
 sentative man who bore in his own body 
 our sins upon the cross, and by a spiritual 
 Person who illustrated in himself the re- 
 newal of the human soul through the 
 presence in it of divine power. It is 
 difficult to express this communication of 
 life and power through Jesus Christ to 
 the soul of man, because it is a spiritual 
 
g8 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 process acting through natural channels. 
 One is convinced of the spiritual reality 
 only as he has himself an insight into 
 what constitutes a spiritual process. There 
 are two factors in the relation which an 
 individual assumes on uniting himself to 
 Jesus Christ, or in becoming a member 
 of the Church of Christ through the act 
 of baptism. One is the presence of God 
 in Christ, promising the remission of 
 actual sin, the guidance into truth, and 
 the power to do God's will and keep his 
 commandm_ents, which presence is indi- 
 cated in the words and acts of the person 
 who is baptizing ; the other is the person 
 coming of his own free act to surrender 
 his life, so far as he has control of it, 
 into the hands of God, to be his child 
 forever, and asking for the help of the 
 Holy Spirit that this vow of obedience 
 may be registered in heaven. There is 
 no spiritual act that goes so thoroughly 
 to the depths of the human consciousness 
 and searches so truly the hidden things 
 
The Spiritual Method of the Church. 99 
 
 of the heart as the coming to baptism in 
 one's years of full responsibility and sur- 
 rendering the whole nature to the rule 
 of the spiritual powers which Christ has 
 promised as the strength of God for the 
 renewed soul. The things of this world 
 may again crowd down this new life into 
 a small part of one's existence, but nothing 
 can ever conceal the moral grandeur of 
 the surrender of the soul to God or of its 
 renewal through the contact with Jesus 
 Christ, who is to us in this solemn act 
 individually all that he was in the act of 
 his Incarnation to the whole of mankind. 
 It may seem that the baptism of a little 
 child removes this consciousness of self- 
 surrender ; but the smile that used to play 
 on the lips of the sainted Keble when he 
 took the children of his parish in his arms 
 and consecrated them to Christ to be his 
 forever, was the conscious feeling that 
 they were placed within the church, where 
 they would find that what the natural 
 mother was in the family the church would 
 
100 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 prove to be as a spiritual mother in their 
 ethical and religious education. Ethical 
 and spiritual guidance and protection are 
 here provided for. The time for self- 
 surrender has not come ; it cannot come 
 till years of discretion are reached ; but 
 it is an immense gain for the character 
 that one has been given to Christ in his 
 infancy and has been brought up through 
 the perils of youth according to that be- 
 ginning. It means an education in the 
 world but not according to its spirit. If 
 there is any reality in spiritual things, it 
 further means that spiritual assistance is 
 given to the youth to cooperate with the 
 instructions of a Christian family in the 
 formation of a right character. 
 
 This is the normal way of proceeding ; 
 it is the method by which human society is 
 gradually transformed by right training of 
 the individual into Christian society. It 
 brings the fruits of the Incarnation of Christ 
 into intimate and personal contact with each 
 individual soul. This is the method which 
 
The Spiritual Method of the Church. loi 
 
 the teachings of Christ sanction for the 
 regeneration of society, for the reahzation 
 of the Kingdom of God among men. It 
 is the practical attempt to overcome evil 
 in our nature by the operation of divine 
 grace from the beginning of life. It is 
 the control of our nature by a double pro- 
 cess which never ceases until our work in 
 this world is over. It is, on the one hand, 
 an extension of the power of the Incarna- 
 tion into our daily existence ; it is, on the 
 other hand, the rallying of all our strictly 
 human and natural forces to cooperate with 
 the Holy Spirit working within us. The 
 Eucharist, which is the outward and visible 
 sign of the inward and spiritual presence 
 of Christ in the soul, is the realization of 
 the Incarnation through material forms, 
 and marks our faith in him and our in- 
 ward resting upon him. It is one of the 
 methods of spiritual renewal in our daily 
 warfare with the world. It is the visible 
 act by which Christians also acknowledge 
 their remembrance of what he has done 
 
102 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 for them. It is through the Eucharist 
 that the pledge of spiritual renewal in 
 baptism is reaffirmed by ever fresh repent- 
 ance of sin and by ever renewed devotion 
 to the discharge of Christian duty. 
 
 From this point of view it is seen that 
 the method of the church with reference 
 to the individual is to place him where 
 he is the recipient of divine grace within 
 himself and the subject of spiritual en- 
 vironment from without. The Christian 
 Church is a world within the world, and 
 is yet designed to enfold the world in 
 the final conquest of evil within itself. 
 Its results are not equal to its aims, but 
 it is ever aiming to redeem mankind by 
 a spiritual method applied to universal 
 human life. The sacraments mean more 
 or less to individuals as they read more 
 or less into the words of our Lord con- 
 cerning their institution; but taken in 
 their universal acceptance among Chris- 
 tian people, they imply the communication 
 of divine grace to the soul of the individual 
 
The Spiritual Method of the Church. loj 
 
 and the pledge of the one who receives 
 them to a consecrated life. This is the 
 simplest statement possible of what is in- 
 tended by membership in the Church of 
 Christ. Spiritual development is realized 
 very imperfectly when only the sacramental 
 relation is acknowledged, when the possi- 
 bilities of character and personal useful- 
 ness are not considered. Grace for right 
 action comes from God, but power realized 
 in action is the fruit of the will subdued 
 to "the obedience of Christ." The prin- 
 ciple of association enters largely into the 
 application of the spiritual method to 
 actual life. The Kingdom of God is not 
 a company of anchorites established to 
 perfect their own souls by excluding them- 
 selves from contact with their fellow-men. 
 It is a social environment of the individual 
 so that each one is related to another 
 and is strengthened and supported by his 
 association with others. It is also more 
 than this. It is the development of char- 
 acter and purpose and usefulness in in- 
 
!04 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 dividuals, so that they not only see life 
 from a spiritual point of view, but feel its 
 responsibilities in relations to others. The 
 Kingdom of God does not exist simply 
 for the individual perfection of its mem- 
 bers. It is a spiritual brotherhood charged 
 with the responsibility of the regeneration 
 of human society. The commission of 
 our Lord to the Apostles was to go into 
 the whole world and make the fact and 
 the power of the Incarnation known to 
 every person. His parables taught what 
 the church was to be in its relations with 
 civil society. It was as leaven, as the 
 seed growing secretly, as the mustard- 
 seed in its powers of expansion, as the 
 shepherd seeking the lost sheep. It had 
 a mission which was not only given to the 
 Apostles and to their successors, but to the 
 royal priesthood of the laity who consti- 
 tute the household of faith. The mission 
 was the conquest of the world, and this 
 was not more to win men to the following 
 of Christ in their personal obedience to 
 
The Spiritual Method of the Church. lo^ 
 
 his teachings than in the consecration of 
 their sanctified intelligence to the making 
 of society Christian in its atmosphere 
 where they lived. 
 
 It is here that the spiritual method has 
 been most imperfectly expressed. The 
 weakness of human nature has always pre- 
 vented the realization of an ideal church, 
 and yet it is in the contact with society 
 that the conquests of Christianity have been 
 made in the past and are to be made in the 
 future. It is the realization of the individ- 
 ual that he is endowed with influence over 
 his fellows, and that by word and deed he 
 can transmute that influence into changes 
 in their character and in their personal 
 motives, which is the final development 
 of the Christian to his full powers of activ- 
 ity in the sphere in which God has placed 
 him. It is the carrying of divine strength 
 in personal character which has had most 
 influence upon others ; and it is by this 
 method of contact with others, who see 
 by the marks in one of their fellow-men 
 
io6 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 that he has been with Christ, that the 
 spiritual touch is conveyed from man to 
 man in the open field of the world. It is 
 well to regard the church in the aggregate 
 as a divine institution, but its human 
 strength comes from the development of 
 Christian power in the minds and hearts 
 of its members. Its action upon society, 
 whether in the home, in the circle of 
 friends, or in the sphere of public life, is 
 what each one expresses to his fellow of 
 the divine ideal There is nothing short 
 of personal consecration of mind and heart 
 daily to God, and the living with strong 
 leaning upon the arm of divine help, to 
 keep one in the full realization of what the 
 Christian life is in its essence, and to en- 
 able one to manifest it to his fellow-men. 
 The sacraments are the outward and visi- 
 ble pledge of the secret aid that one needs, 
 but the daily sacrament of personal com- 
 munion with God in the chamber of the 
 soul is not to be neglected. Here one is 
 fed as with bread from heaven, according 
 
The Spiritual Method of the Church, loy 
 
 to his need. One who has carried spiritual 
 method to this point in his inward expe- 
 rience may not live a perfect life, but as 
 often as he falls he has the power to rise 
 above his weakness and acknowledge amid 
 greater efforts after holiness his need of 
 increased help from God. The great thing 
 is to keep the mind and heart intent upon 
 spiritual development through the right 
 use of the opportunities of life. God does 
 not expect great things of any one. 
 
 We need not bid, for cloister'd cell, 
 Our neighbor and our work farewell, 
 Nor strive to wind ourselves too high 
 For sinful man beneath the sky : 
 
 The trivial round, the common task, 
 Would furnish all we ought to ask; 
 Room to deny ourselves ; a road 
 To bring us daily nearer God.^ 
 
 The saints have been usually those who 
 found their way to sainthood along the 
 
 1 Keble's hymn, entitled "Morning," in The Chi-istian 
 Year. 
 
io8 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 path of daily duty. The final result of 
 spiritual method, so far as one's usefulness 
 is concerned, is to affiliate with the inter- 
 ests of ordinary life and make them the 
 environment or agencies in forming one's 
 Christian character. It is here that our 
 personality becomes invested with the 
 message that has most weight with our 
 fellow-men. There is a call to-day for 
 Christian character in industrial and social 
 life which can hardly ever have been more 
 imperative. The church stands to-day, as 
 it did in the primitive days, before a popu- 
 lation which feels the need of the patience 
 and hopefulness that Christianity imparts 
 to a broken industrial and social situation, 
 and which longs to see the vindication of 
 principles that spring out of the realiza- 
 tion of human brotherhood in the natural 
 intercourse of life. It is out of the convic- 
 tions which men, touched with the spirit of 
 Christ, carry into their intercourse with 
 their fellows that an adjustment of indus- 
 trial troubles is to be reached in which 
 
The Spiritml Method of the Church. 109 
 
 justice and righteousness are the ruling 
 factors. It is here that the church meets 
 the world and imparts to men, through the 
 personal convictions of its members, the 
 principles which cause peace and good 
 will to take the place of strife and injus- 
 tice. It is here that the spiritual method 
 of regenerated society begins to rule the 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Church in the Family. 
 
 /^^NE of the distinctions between an- 
 ^-^ cient and modern life is that for- 
 merly the family was mainly under the 
 control of the state and the church, while at 
 the present day the family is removed from 
 the direct oversight of both and is allowed 
 to develop in freedom. The day of absolu- 
 tism in church and state has passed away. 
 The family is removed from their restric- 
 tions, and yet with the increase of its 
 freedom of movement it has not better 
 supported the other interests of society. 
 It is a part of a great whole in which the 
 state and the church are, like itself, rep- 
 resentative institutions. The special char- 
 acteristic of the family to-day is that it is 
 an organic part of civil life. The giving of 
 freedom to the individual, since the Refor- 
 
The Church in the Family. 1 1 1 
 
 mation, has helped to restore its primitive 
 character. The principle of English law, 
 that a man's home is his castle, that the 
 father is the head of the household and 
 has both the right of control and the re- 
 sponsibility for action in his own family, is 
 everywhere recognized to-day. The state 
 interferes with the family as little as pos- 
 sible ; the church as ^n institution respects 
 the independence and the integrity of fam- 
 ily life. It is expected that the household 
 will not only be a paternal institution, but 
 will prepare its younger members for the 
 duties of both religious and civil society. 
 The ideal of the home contains both the 
 institutional and the democratic idea. The 
 home to-day in its w^holeness is the unit of 
 society, and the preservation of its whole- 
 ness of operation, of its demand for obedi- 
 ence from its younger members, of the free- 
 dom of relation between its several units, 
 of its security and its openness, is perhaps 
 even more essential than when its opera- 
 tion was confined within a more limited 
 
112 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 ransre of influence. You cannot watch the 
 operation of one family upon another, as 
 they combine to make society, without 
 feeling the larger significance of the fam- 
 ily to-day than before the rise of modern 
 life. The growth of civil society has been 
 the enfranchisement of the individual, but 
 the excessive demands of individual lib- 
 erty have threatened to destroy the integ- 
 rity of the family relation. The history of 
 social life, since the Reformation, has been 
 negatively the record of demands upon the 
 rights of the family. The natural instincts 
 which have preserved it as an institution 
 have alone been able to maintain it as a 
 social unit. In a free government, where 
 the democratic idea prevails alike in church 
 and state, the family has felt the encroach- 
 ment of the demand for personal freedom. 
 Not only have men and women in the mar- 
 riage relation stood up for personal rights 
 against the concessions of the marriage 
 contract, but the individual head of the 
 family has been counted, instead of the 
 
The Church in the Family. 1 1 ^ 
 
 whole family itself, as the social unit. We 
 have forgotten what our laws imply in our 
 desire to make the most of the individual 
 man. The very play of this individual 
 force has encouraged divorce and has stim- 
 ulated independence between husband and 
 wife, between children and parents, to a 
 degree which has materially assailed the 
 integrity of the home. While it has been 
 more and more conceded and recognized 
 that the family is the fundamental institu- 
 tion of society, the forces leading to its 
 desecration have to a great extent silently 
 undermined its vitality. The constructive 
 view of the family and of its positive con- 
 tribution to social order begins at last to 
 be more definitely insisted upon. It has 
 been felt that an element has been lost out 
 of organic social life, and the restoration of 
 the family to the place which it once held 
 in ancient society, and which it largely 
 lost when church and state limited its ac- 
 tion, has perhaps a larger place in present 
 thought than at any time since the modern 
 period in history began. 
 
J 14 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 In European countries, where marriage 
 is largely controlled by tradition, and 
 where freedom of choice between man 
 and woman is restricted, the family has 
 held its ancient place, and its integrity has 
 been less disturbed than in a democratic 
 country like our own. In a free commu- 
 nity the civil aspect of marriage has the 
 lead of its religious character. Without a 
 national marriage law it has been possible 
 to undo in one State what has been done 
 in another, and the result has been in re- 
 cent years that the family has been more 
 corrupted and debased than perhaps any 
 other institution that has to do with the 
 vital functions of society. The demoraliza- 
 tion of the American people to-day is large- 
 ly duq. to the implication, allowed by free- 
 dom of divorce, that a marriage is to be 
 enforced only to the extent of the wishes 
 of the contracting parties. The root and 
 germ of the marriage relation is a contract 
 for life entered into soberly, advisedly, dis- 
 creetly, and in the fear of God, and few 
 
The Church in the Family, 1 75 
 
 and far between must be the reasons that 
 would sanction a separation. The church 
 has been truer to the integrity of the mar- 
 riage contract than the state ; and yet the 
 state has quite as much at stake as the 
 church in the disintegration of the family, 
 and in the breaking up of society which 
 that disintegration implies. The care of 
 children, the division of property, the ties 
 of blood which are thicker than water, 
 are imperiled by the consent of father 
 and mother to live apart, and even the 
 moral character of persons thus separated 
 is enfeebled. It is here that church and 
 state have been robbed in recent times, 
 especially in our own country, of the sup- 
 port which they naturally derive from the 
 social, educational, and moral growths 
 which have their root in the family. 
 
 The question before the American peo- 
 ple is, how the family may be reinforced 
 in its constructive elements ; and its 
 answer lies in the outreach of the family 
 alike to the state and to the church. It is 
 
1 16 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 best to consider each of these in its order, 
 so that there may be no confusion of treat- 
 ment. The state, at this time, will be 
 considered in that relation to the family 
 which is closest to the relation of the 
 church to the same. The state demands 
 that its citizens, composed of individuals 
 either in families or in a position of organ- 
 ized family life, shall be prepared to dis- 
 charge the duties of citizenship. The pub- 
 lic-school system represents the desire of 
 the state to assume that fatherhood of the 
 family which is the preparation of the in- 
 dividual man for civil life. Here the youth 
 of the country are placed " where any per- 
 son can find instruction in any study." ^ 
 This is the largest statement of the sphere 
 of public instruction. It is a statement 
 which is in process of realization on a 
 larger scale in this country than has before 
 been attempted in the history of the world. 
 The free public school is the necessary 
 support of democratic ideas. What the 
 
 1 Ezra Cornell's outline idea of Cornell University. 
 
The Church in the Family. iij 
 
 state assumes, then, in public instruction 
 is to mediate between the family and civil 
 society, and to prepare the members of 
 the one to discharge their duties in re- 
 lation to the other. This view of the 
 public school is inclusive, and it is the 
 only view which can be wholly consistent 
 in a country like our own. The public 
 school cannot be narrowed to functions 
 that are less inclusive than all that goes 
 to make a good citizen. It is supposed 
 that the heads of a family are competent 
 for the position of teachers in which they 
 stand toward their children ; but the state, 
 in its larger view of parenthood, recognizes 
 the duty of complementing the home edu- 
 cation with the wider instruction which 
 fits one to earn his own living and to 
 occupy positions of trust as a citizen. 
 Our American political system grows out 
 of the free life of the American town, 
 and the American town is the result of 
 families hving in freedom, whose children 
 are trained in the common schools. If 
 
1 18 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 the local church in this country should 
 ever be again what it was in the primitive 
 days, coextensive with the political com- 
 munity, so that without interfering with 
 one another the state and the church 
 should be complementary or rather co- 
 inclusive in their relation to human life, 
 the ideal product of citizenship would be 
 reached as it has not been reached else- 
 where. We have the elements here that 
 lead directly to the highest- organization of 
 human society, and it is their proper reali- 
 zation and adjustment that may be called 
 the social and religious problem of the fu- 
 ture. To this end all our present thought 
 upon society and religion converges. 
 
 The school question in this country is 
 thus fundamental in its operation. It is 
 so vital to our interests that it is difficult 
 to consider it dispassionately. Our re- 
 ligious conceptions lag so far behind our 
 political beliefs that comparatively few 
 citizens are willing to consider the school 
 question in its higher and moral, if not 
 
The Church in the Family. 1 19 
 
 spiritual, relations. The fear that the 
 church will repeat in America the abso- 
 lutism that has characterized it for fifteen 
 hundred years, is our bugbear. The de- 
 termination that religion shall be taught 
 in a sectarian sense is largely the ruling 
 thought in different denominations. The 
 willingness to consider this question with 
 the breadth and the wisdom that regard 
 society as a whole is largely wanting. 
 The spirit of - each denomination is to 
 seek its own advantage, and not to think 
 and act for the whole of society. When 
 it is remembered that the sum total of 
 Christian membership in this country, or 
 perhaps better, the sum total of active 
 Christians among us, does not include 
 more than perhaps one half of our whole 
 population, and that the families and the 
 children beyond Christian influence are 
 largely dependent upon the public schools 
 for whatever fills out the defects of the 
 home and builds up boys and girls into 
 well-instructed men and women, the ne- 
 
120 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 cessity of moral, if not spiritual, agreement 
 concerning the teachings in the schools 
 that affect character is seen in its right 
 light. We cannot afford, as a people, in 
 reaching a good system of public education, 
 to put personal preferences in place of what 
 is best for the whole of society, and the 
 danger to-day is that one religious body, 
 seeking its own advantage, shall withdraw 
 its moral and spiritual strength from the 
 support of methods which will secure the 
 greatest good to the largest number. It 
 is the seriousness and the imperativeness 
 of the outlook upon American citizenship 
 which impel every honest man and good 
 citizen to disinterested action in this mat- 
 ter. The feeling is deep and strong every- 
 where that the instruction given in the 
 public schools should be reinforced with 
 the moral sanctions which are insisted upon 
 in common life. The question of the au- 
 thority of morals is partly speculative. 
 They may be derived from the will of 
 God, as expressed in what is supposed to 
 
The Church in the Family. 121 
 
 be his revelation to man, but they are 
 also expressed in the accumulations of hu- 
 man experience which are hardly less than 
 the will of God written out in the univer- 
 sal principles of human conduct. The one 
 may be called the divine sanction and 
 the other the natural sanction, but prac- 
 tically they harmonize and are one in their 
 result. We accept them and act upon 
 them, and the sooner our practical agree- 
 ments upon moral instruction which has 
 this basis are allowed or enforced in the 
 public schools, the better will it be for our 
 youth who are in them. To-day, notwith- 
 standing the changes in methods of in- 
 struction by which our schools are brought 
 into contact with the things of actual life, 
 there is no feature of their work which 
 can be more strongly indorsed than the 
 moral strength which men, and especially 
 women, devoted to teaching, impart by 
 practical methods to their pupils. The 
 moral and religious influence which is 
 conveyed almost unconsciously in the 
 
122 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 natural process of instruction cannot be 
 over-estimated, and it is in the encourage- 
 ment given to teachers of high character, 
 and in the freedom of method allowed to 
 them, that the results most important to 
 the family and to American citizenship 
 are to be reached. When this vital work- 
 ing of moral and spiritual truth has free 
 play in a school-room, where every boy 
 and girl enjoys the constant attrition of 
 life with life and of race with race, the 
 lines for the building up of the best citizen- 
 ship may be said to be laid. It is here 
 that public education grapples with the 
 real issues of American life. The family 
 is complemented by the primary school 
 which enlarges its work. The primary 
 school leads the boy or the girl of ripen- 
 ing intelligence, still moving in the atmos- 
 phere of home, to the recognition of the 
 meaning of life outside of it. The gram- 
 mar school is the introduction of three- 
 fourths of our youth to practical life, and 
 unless the principles which enter into 
 
77?^ Church in the Family. 12} 
 
 the construction of character are made a 
 part of the preparation for taking hold 
 of practical things, the kindred points of 
 heaven and home are not established in 
 young life, and something is wanting in 
 public education which is indispensable 
 to public virtue. The demand is that edu- 
 cation shall be intellectual, industrial, and 
 seasoned with character. General Wolse- 
 ley admits that the man who brings intel- 
 ligence and conscience to his work makes 
 the best soldier and the truest patriot ; and 
 principles which lead men to give their 
 best to defend a country are the principles 
 most needed in fitting them to live in it. 
 In this outreach from the family and the 
 state to education which has a moral basis, 
 may be traced the development of the 
 family into a leading factor in civil society, 
 and it is in keeping the state true to its 
 moral duties, without enlisting its aid in 
 specific religious action, that public edu- 
 cation maintains its greatest usefulness. 
 There is no reason why education thus 
 
124 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 managed should not meet and satisfy the 
 rightful demands of religious people. For 
 the purpose which we have in mind as a 
 nation, for the building up of men and 
 women who shall rise to the full demands 
 that can be laid upon them, the public 
 education that is true to the teachings 
 of heaven and of home is the education 
 which every American citizen requires. 
 Departures from this line of action are 
 departures from what is good for the 
 whole of civil society. 
 
 What may the church do to develop 
 and renew the higher life of the family } 
 The church approaches the family in two 
 directions. It deals with its head and 
 with its members as individuals, and it 
 recognizes the institution in its social 
 unity. If the parents are members of the 
 Christian Church by baptism, they repre- 
 sent the twofold institutional relationship. 
 They have duties as individuals in the 
 Christian body, and they stand in a sacred 
 and self-respecting relation to the home as 
 
The Church in the Family. 12^ 
 
 an independent institution. The family 
 in its fullness means children and chil- 
 dren's children to the third and fourth 
 generation, and it is thus that it becomes 
 an organic contribution to society, enter- 
 ing into affiliations with church and state 
 and supporting both. What the state does 
 for its political life the church does for 
 its social and spiritual life. It reaches 
 out to the family as a corporate unit, and 
 it is in and through this institution that 
 its influence is most succes.sfully exerted 
 and its best work done. In the Christian 
 family children are baptized into the life 
 of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost, and are thus members of the body 
 of Christ, to be educated according to 
 their baptismal vows. Thus far the Chris- 
 tian family and the Christian Church have 
 a unity of purpose, and the one finds its 
 sphere in the other. The Christian fami- 
 lies brought together represent the body 
 of Christ in a given locality, and it is 
 their united action upon society which is 
 
126 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 called the Christian movement in the com- 
 munity. They are the light of the world, 
 examples to others, illustrations of the 
 higher type of family and of social life. 
 It was in the early church, as it is in 
 the modern church, the influence of these 
 families, working out Christian principles, 
 which imparted strength to civil relation- 
 ships. 
 
 The duties of the church as a teaching 
 institution to Christian families are not 
 well understood. Every pastor seeks first 
 of all to watch over the members of his 
 spiritual household, their families and their 
 little ones. But the difficulty in the work- 
 ing of the church to-day is not so much 
 in the care of the members of its own 
 household, as in its lack of extensive and 
 intensive influence upon the large portion 
 of society which is beyond its immediate 
 care, and which is to be reached not only 
 through the individual, but largely and 
 organically through the better use of the 
 family. The first thought among Protes- 
 
The Church in the Family. 1 2y 
 
 tant people has been the work upon the 
 individual. Too little consideration has 
 been given to the place of the family in 
 the reconstruction of society. Our re- 
 ligious bodies, divided by imaginary or 
 real differences, have emphasized their 
 differences in social action. They have 
 been prevented, by following out the sec- 
 tarian idea, from working as they might 
 for the good of the community as a whole. 
 They have believed that the regeneration 
 of the individual man would be sufficient, 
 in a constructive way, for the good of 
 society. The stress laid upon conversion 
 has been greater than the stress laid upon 
 Christian education and upon a large view 
 of the relation of the family to practical 
 life, so that the ideas of household training 
 have been too little inculcated, at least in 
 this generation. The Sunday schools have 
 led to the ignoring of religious instruction 
 in the family, and the Christian family 
 has suffered because its regular functions 
 have fallen into disuse. People upon 
 
128 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 whom moral and spiritual responsibilities 
 fall lightly have insisted that their chil- 
 dren should be instructed in duties which 
 they are unwilling to perform themselves, 
 and the contradiction between the influ- 
 ence of the home and the teaching of the 
 Sunday school is a break in the religious 
 order which has been largely fatal to the 
 building up of religious character. If the 
 efforts of the Christian ministry had been 
 directed in the last generation as earnestly 
 toward the Christian development of the 
 family as they have been aimed toward 
 bringing the children of non-Christian fam- 
 ilies into the Christian Church, the tone 
 of whole American communities would be 
 different from what it is to-day. 
 
 To a very great extent the idea of the 
 wholeness of the family has dropped out 
 of the working Christian system. It is 
 not common to hear Sunday instruction 
 about the family. The social duty and 
 the personal duty is insisted upon, but 
 the place of the family in the social 
 
The Church in the Family. 1 2g 
 
 order, the duty of parents to their 
 children, the way in which character is 
 transmitted from father to son and from 
 mother to daughter, the insistence upon 
 the sacredness and purity of family life, 
 are ignored alike in the pulpit, in house- 
 hold visitation, and in the literature of the 
 day. The family has not been treated as 
 an institution, and the church has too 
 often ignored its functions as a social and 
 spiritual force in the community. It has 
 been treated as a concourse of individual 
 units, and the value of a congregation of 
 families for breathing a spiritual purpose 
 into the whole of human life has not been 
 appreciated. The reviving of the church 
 itself as an institution, and the consider- 
 ation of what it may do to increase the 
 efficiency of the family as an organic factor 
 in society, and the looking at individuals 
 more in their relation to institutional work, 
 will put a new face upon the community. 
 The family is the key alike to society and 
 to the individual. Unless the corporate 
 
Tj^o The Church in Modern Society . 
 
 ideas of life are reintroduced, individuals 
 are in relation to one another as grains of 
 sand. They lack coherence, constructive 
 influence, and associated power. 
 
 The neglected field of the church in so- 
 ciety is in its failure to treat people out- 
 side of the church from the family point 
 of view. The individual conversion is not 
 less to be sought for, but the individual 
 Christian should be better educated to dis- 
 charge his duties as a member of society, 
 and especially as one who may organize 
 and guide society through the family. His 
 higher education as a Christian citizen, as 
 one in organic relations with the social 
 order, should also not be neglected. It 
 is in overlooking this kind of education 
 that the teachers in our churches have 
 cut short their own influence. The state 
 values the citizen in proportion to his con- 
 tribution to the social forces ; the church 
 should value the individual, not so much 
 as counting one in its membership, as for 
 his power to organize society through the 
 
The Church in the Family. ijr 
 
 family upon a Christian basis. Every man 
 and woman represents the possibility of 
 organizing society through the family and 
 of being able to guide and direct the life 
 of the next generation. The higher life of 
 the community depends upon the educa- 
 tion of each individual in the organic re- 
 lation of the family to society and upon 
 his personal influence in maintaining it. 
 We have so far drifted away from this 
 conception of the church in its relation to 
 the family life outside of its membership 
 that a large part of the community is treat- 
 ed, from the Christian point of view, at 
 arm's length. The word is not spoken, and 
 the influence is not exerted, where it does 
 the most good. Families are organized, 
 their younger members reach maturity, and 
 new families are organized outside of the 
 existing churches, where for two or three 
 generations, if not more, hardly any influ- 
 ences of the Christian Church are brought 
 to bear upon the family idea. The moral 
 and spiritual responsibility of the parent 
 
/J2 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 for the children is not recognized, and the 
 teaching which the church should bring 
 to the household does not exist. What- 
 ever, in such a case, may be done for an 
 individual member of the family, its higher 
 corporate life is neither aroused nor di- 
 rected. You may go through community 
 after community, through hamlet and vil- 
 lage and town and city, and the absence 
 of the impact of the church in its organic 
 strength upon families is so characteristic 
 as to be almost universal. How can reli- 
 gious societies flourish when neglecting 
 the direction of an institution which is fun- 
 damental to their existence "i How can the 
 grip of the Christian minister be felt in a 
 community, when he does not seek to lead, 
 through the family, its organic life } How 
 can the young, who look to parents for the 
 teaching word of power and guidance, be 
 restrained from evil influences and made 
 to respect Christian organization, when 
 the clergy, who should naturally guide life, 
 do not work through the family .? The 
 
The Church in the Family. i ^^ 
 
 inefficiency here pointed out is due very 
 largely to a radical defect in the inter- 
 pretation of the duty of the church itself. 
 It grows out of the undue stress that is 
 laid upon the conversion of the individual 
 and the undue disregard of the construc- 
 tive relation in which the church stands 
 to the family and to the community. Until 
 the church puts its strength into a broader 
 conception of its legitimate functions in 
 the family, until it takes as wide a view of 
 the family for a religious purpose as the 
 state takes of it for a political purpose, its 
 influence will be like the work of a man 
 with one hand, with the other unused, or 
 paralyzed, at his side. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Church among the People, 
 
 A NOTE of the church is its univer- 
 •^^^ sality. It adjusts itself to all so- 
 cial conditions, and every one has standing 
 room within its limits. It is as compre- 
 hensive in its scope as the whole of man- 
 kind, and though it has never yet ruled 
 the social world, there is nothing in its 
 character to prevent this conquest. The 
 principles upon which the church rests, in 
 its relation to society, are the principles 
 which our Lord, as the leader of humanity, 
 laid down for the conduct of his disciples. 
 These are not in opposition to the natural 
 principles which have grown up among 
 men in the form of mutual concessions 
 for the common weal ; they recognize all 
 natural rights and insist upon lifting them 
 up to the ideal excellence of universal 
 
The Church among the People. 7^5 
 
 righteousness. The teachings of the 
 Christian Church have constructed for 
 mankind a social order which is as yet 
 imperfectly realized in the world, but is 
 in constant process of becoming universal. 
 This ideal standard of order, embodied in 
 the church as a living principle, has been 
 its great distinction as a social institution 
 throughout its entire history. In the 
 earlier Christian ages the social life of 
 the people was controlled by the church 
 against the corruption of the Greek and 
 Roman world; at a later time the same 
 social order in the Middle Ages gave 
 tone and character to civilization ; just 
 before the Reformation the church stood 
 up as the defender of the individual 
 against the nations of the earth; at the 
 Reformation itself the Protestant part of 
 the church allied itself with political in- 
 stitutions in order that the rights of the 
 individual might be more distinctly main- 
 tained in free society ; and even in the 
 Roman Church of those days the great 
 
/ j6 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 Christian brotherhoods and sisterhoods 
 retained under limitations the principles 
 which had been transmitted from the 
 beginning and had given the church the 
 power to control the social world. 
 
 The Christian Church has never been 
 without influence in society ; indeed, here 
 have been the sources of its power. Its 
 contact with society, as well as its control 
 of it, has been a varying element, though 
 it is here that its human strength has 
 been concentrated. But since the Refor- 
 mation there has been a separation be- 
 tween things secular and things sacred, 
 so that the church, with more apparent 
 freedom than before, has seemed to sep- 
 arate itself from society instead of con- 
 trolling it, and to reach serenity of spirit 
 at the expense of its usefulness as a social 
 factor. Dogma has been exalted above 
 charity, and a correct belief has been 
 more insisted on than a saintly life. Civil 
 society, even within our own time, has 
 enlarged its sphere ; there are opportuni- 
 
The Church among the People. i ^J 
 
 ties to do more things to-day than there 
 were yesterday, and human affairs are 
 constantly becoming more and more com- 
 plex. In the meanwhile, what are called 
 the American churches have been in- 
 creasingly specialized away from what 
 is the central function of the Catholic 
 Church, which is to make this institution 
 coextensive with the whole of human life, 
 and comprehensive enough to include all 
 sorts and conditions of men. This spe- 
 cialization of functions is the glory of the 
 undivided church, but the bane of a sec- 
 tion of it. The difficulty with the Amer- 
 ican working church is that it enlarges 
 its special work at the expense of its 
 central functions ; it draws the blood away 
 from the heart and does not return it 
 there to receive new life. The constant 
 criticism of our American Christianity 
 is that in its special forms it is neither 
 broad nor strong enough to do the social 
 work which it undertakes. Its several 
 branches do not control the social world 
 
I ^8 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 or direct social action as the undivided 
 church would. They have neither au- 
 thority nor influence sufficient for this 
 purpose. What the Christian Church in 
 the United States lacks more than any- 
 thing else is the ability to carry weight 
 into life. It lacks the consciousness of 
 mission ; it is not animated by an over- 
 mastering purpose ; its authority is not 
 deferred to in the social world ; in but 
 few instances is there a large and wise 
 outreach to the central things in social 
 life, or such a wise shaping of the in- 
 fluences which direct the lives of men 
 that the collective church inspires them 
 with a consciousness of its mission and 
 with reverence for its teachings, if not 
 obedience to them. The Christian Church 
 among the people of America lacks pres- 
 tige ; it needs distinction, emphasis, the 
 touch of divine grace, the word from God. 
 It is in the world, but not of the world, 
 while its mission is to subdue the world 
 to itself. 
 
The Church among the People. i ^9 
 
 The church is not here so much at 
 fault as are the methods by which the 
 organizations of to-day are brought into 
 contact, or rather kept from adequate 
 contact, with social life. • Light is thrown 
 upon this point by the contrast between 
 the church and the state in the way in 
 which they influence society. The state 
 is at once permissive and restrictive in 
 its action. It allows certain things to 
 be done, and it forbids others. It treats 
 the whole body politic as citizens. No 
 one within the nation can escape from its 
 control or break its laws with impunity. 
 The church, if it were coextensive with 
 the nation and united in its action, would 
 exert the same influence over the spiritual 
 life which the state exerts over the po- 
 litical and economic life of the people. 
 What the state insists on as morals the 
 church insists upon as religion. The 
 drawback is that the church, in its dis- 
 united sections, lacks the power over 
 society which is exerted by the state. 
 
140 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 There is no system of temporal rewards 
 and punishments behind it. It is simply 
 a voluntary agency. Its ban of excom- 
 munication means nothing. It comes 
 into society as ar free, inspiring, and uni- 
 versal influence. It can secure only a 
 voluntary obedience to its principles of 
 right and wrong. It reaches the people 
 mainly on their emotional and moral side, 
 and it is as a moral agency that it carries 
 weight into social life. To individuals it 
 offers a way of personal salvation ; to 
 society it offers a changed environment. 
 There are many theories of social rights, 
 but the position of the church in society 
 does not square with any theory what- 
 soever. It is broader than any theory 
 allows. It looks upon society as a whole ; 
 it refers special actions to the central 
 principles set forth in the teachings of 
 Christ ; and it is also entirely non-parti- 
 san in its action. This conception of the 
 church is higher and broader than our 
 common experience of its action in the 
 
The Church among the People. 141 
 
 communities with which we are acquainted, 
 but it is no higher or broader than what 
 is required, if it takes its place as an in- 
 stitution which bears directly and con- 
 structively upon the whole of human life. 
 Where it has this large significance as an 
 institution, its influence is felt at once in 
 carrying out a higher principle of action. 
 Here it may take the side of the rich ; 
 there it is on the side of the poor ; again 
 it may mediate between the two and 
 show the common ground that belongs 
 to both ; at another time its task is to 
 lead the whole community to a new stand- 
 ard of life ; it can have no one unvarying 
 sense, no uniform policy, no universal rule 
 of action ; it must conform itself every- 
 where to the circumstances which modify 
 the action of a universal principle. The 
 position of justice and righteousness here 
 embodied in what men call the church 
 gives it an influence over the people 
 which comes home to the aspirations and 
 longings of every right-minded man ; and 
 
142 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 it is as an institution in the social world 
 that its claims find glad recognition. This 
 or that local section may imperfectly show 
 what the universal church would do, but 
 when we regard it as impersonating the 
 interests of human society, and allow it 
 to work freely for the protection and 
 growth of individual rights, its authority 
 and influence everywhere command re- 
 spect. 
 
 The church thus active in society be- 
 comes naturally the representative of 
 moral authority in social, educational, and 
 industrial questions. Its authority is not 
 absolute, but it represents that sense of 
 justice and rightness which is latent in 
 the minds and hearts of all men. Per- 
 haps at no previous time has there been 
 a stronger demand for the insistence upon 
 the ideal order which the church would 
 like to establish for the perfecting of the 
 community. The distinctive feature of 
 our own time is that every political, eco- 
 nomic, or industrial question rises dis- 
 
The Church among the People. 14} 
 
 tinctly and inevitably into a moral ques- 
 tion. No man lives unto himself alone ; 
 no movement in society is without its 
 bearing upon the whole of human thought 
 and action ; no questions which divide 
 the industrial world can be justly and 
 fairly settled without carrying men in 
 their final solution up to the plane of 
 Christian principle ; even political conten- 
 tions, always partisan in their inception 
 and development, rise inevitably into great 
 moral issues ; and the relations of capital 
 and labor, whenever seriously discussed, 
 find their solution in the overpowering 
 moral principles which soften the asperi- 
 ties and remove the misunderstandings 
 between the two factors. In the days 
 that are upon us, and in those which are 
 to come, the Christian Church occupies 
 socially a unique position. The oppor- 
 tunity of the church through its clergy 
 and through the living up to its principles 
 is to tell the capitalist not less than the 
 laboring man what he ought to do, and 
 
144 77;^ Church in Modern Society. 
 
 to bring the two parties to see the situa- 
 tion from a more central point of view. 
 Without committing itself to either party 
 and without acting as umpire between 
 the two, it has been possible, wherever 
 the Christian Church has been in healthy 
 and responsive relations to the community, 
 to work successfully for the settlement of 
 industrial disputes. It is here that the 
 Christian Church represents the spiritual 
 guidance of social life ; it is here that it 
 recognizes and maintains the position in 
 the community where the assertion of its 
 functions gives it directing power among 
 the people. Where it is sold out to a 
 class, where a parish represents people 
 chiefly of one kind, where local prejudice 
 is allowed to give color to a congregation, 
 this influence and authority are not mani- 
 fested. The severest thing that can be 
 said against local congregations in all 
 parts of the collective American church 
 is that they are too often under the con- 
 trol of men and women who are without 
 
The Church among the People, 14^ 
 
 sympathy with those who are engaged 
 in a life of daily toil. This is not the 
 fault of the church ; it is the fault of the 
 people who for the time being give par- 
 ticular parishes their local tone and color. 
 All that is needed in any of these cases 
 is to secure different leadership and change 
 the spirit of a particular congregation. 
 
 The Christian Church gains in respect 
 and in usefulness in proportion as it be- 
 comes to society at large what it is per- 
 sonally to the individual in the direction 
 of his inward life. It reaches society by 
 entering into it and organizing its working 
 ideas. This is accomplished, not by de- 
 nouncing its errors so much as by put- 
 ting the salt of a new life into its springs 
 of power, and creating everywhere the 
 conviction that the church is on the help- 
 ing side of every man who tries to live 
 up to the best that is in him. When we 
 treat the spiritual method of the church, 
 we confess to the cooperation of the 
 divine will with the human will in the 
 
14^ The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 making of a new man in Jesus Christ ; 
 when we treat of the regeneration of 
 society and the method by which this is 
 accomplished, it is understood that moral 
 elements not less than spiritual forces 
 enter into the environment of the com- 
 munity and constitute its atmosphere, so 
 that its average tone is raised and men 
 feel it as they drink in the inspiration 
 of the air on a June morning. It makes 
 little difference whether one form of eccle- 
 siastical polity or another is followed in 
 bringing the church into contact with the 
 people. In a country like our own the 
 polity in closest harmony with democratic 
 institutions has the advantage, while that 
 which represents the principle of heredi- 
 tary descent or spiritual succession is often 
 felt to be out of touch with the masses ; 
 but what one polity gains in the sym- 
 pathy of a common method is supplied by 
 the other in treating the whole question 
 of religion with the breadth and simplicity 
 which gather up and sanctify all that is 
 
The Church among the People. 14J 
 
 best in life. Both are alike in their rec- 
 ognition of a common work among the 
 people, which must be controlled by an 
 abounding love for the souls of men, and 
 by such an interest in their personal hap- 
 piness in this world that every possible 
 effort is put forth to make it suitable for 
 them to Hve in. In practical experience, 
 both the monarchical and the democratic 
 church succeed because each recognizes 
 in its own way the spiritual needs of the 
 people and meets them with the wisdom 
 and sympathy that Christ has taught them 
 to use. There are advantages in each form 
 of polity ; and were the advantages of each 
 one used to make up the deficiencies in 
 the other, the power and efficiency of the 
 working church in modern life would be 
 immensely increased. 
 
 Wherever the masses do not attend 
 church, the question is whether the church 
 itself is in a condition to invite them or 
 to take care of them if they came. Our 
 Lord said : ''If I be lifted up from the 
 
148 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 earth I will draw all men unto me." This 
 promise is always realized when the in- 
 finite beauty and attraction of his life and 
 death, and the inspiring power which he 
 imparts to our own lives, are fairly and 
 truly presented to mankind. The question 
 of most importance to-day is not whether 
 the people are in this or that religious 
 body, but whether our churches, individu- 
 ally or collectively, are so thoroughly con- 
 trolled by the spirit of the Master that 
 the people who are hungering and thirst- 
 ing for the bread of life can be truly fed 
 by resorting to them. Until a great re- 
 form has been wrought in the present 
 relations of the church to society, until 
 the thought of Christian leaders has been 
 greatly widened and their methods admit 
 of greater diversity in practical work, until 
 the largeness and freedom of the whole 
 church are applied to the administration 
 of special sections of it, the people them- 
 selves will not find in the sections that 
 specially appeal to them the divine teach- 
 
The Church among the People. 149 
 
 ing which calls them instinctively to the 
 Master's service. The bringing of the 
 people to the church is very largely ac- 
 complished when the church is prepared 
 to receive them, when its doors are opened, 
 when it reaches out the helping hand, 
 when it asks people low down in life to 
 come up higher, when it stands in the 
 community for making more of people 
 than they were before. The reaching of 
 all sorts and conditions of men is largely 
 a question of method, of adaptation, and 
 of sympathy. In one respect the method 
 of the Protestant churches has improved. 
 The damnatory motives once insisted upon 
 in order to lead people to righteousness 
 of life are now seldom urged. The Chris- 
 tian method, the positive method, the 
 method that increases the meaning of life, 
 the method that strengthens the will to 
 live rightly, begins to be employed, where 
 Christians are thoroughly in earnest, with 
 wonderful efficiency and power. The 
 church itself, when truly understood, is 
 
I ^o The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 as broad in its spirit as the social life 
 of the whole community, and its methods 
 of dealing with individuals should be as 
 flexible as the differences of temperament 
 demand. A great result has been accom- 
 plished when the impression has been 
 created in a neighborhood that the reli- 
 gious organization which appeals to the 
 people is in helpful sympathy with their 
 needs and conditions. When men and 
 women feel that it covers the whole of 
 their life and treats it in such a way as 
 to make it a new life, so that they are 
 inspired by a broader, freer, truer spirit 
 in their homes, among their friends, and 
 in their social experiences, the life of 
 Christ has been renewed in them. The 
 aim of the Christian Church should be 
 not only to renew and spiritualize indi- 
 vidual and family life, but to make the 
 whole of society as nearly as possible the 
 reflection of this sort of life. It is by 
 such a method that Christianity makes 
 the life of men larger, leads them into a 
 
The Church among the People. i^i 
 
 riper Christian experience, unites one class 
 with another by the extension of a kindly 
 spirit among them until each one's life 
 becomes more interesting to himself and 
 more attractive to others, and persons who 
 have had slight opportunity to make much 
 of themselves find that their whole contact 
 with the world is purer, fresher, and better 
 than it was before. Where these condi- 
 tions are established, the community not 
 less than the family and the individual is 
 inspired with a new purpose, and Christi- 
 anity becomes lovely in the eyes of all men. 
 Into details of method in reaching the 
 people it is perhaps not best to go. The 
 points of successful Christian work may 
 be considered under the heads of worship, 
 sympathy, opportunity, and reality ; but in 
 each locality or community the treatment 
 is so special, even under these suggestions, 
 that it could not be successfully treated 
 without making a treatise on pastoral the- 
 ology. The work of the Christian leader 
 to-day is very largely in the removal of 
 
I ^2 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 misunderstanding as to the social position 
 of all the churches. The line of separa- 
 tion which has been allowed in this coun- 
 try to mark off church-members from their 
 friends in the world needs to be taken 
 out of social life ; the patronage which 
 ministers and people often extend toward 
 those who are lower down in life needs 
 to be replaced by the appeal to what is 
 best in all men ; the church ought to be 
 presented not so much as passing judg- 
 ment upon men's sins as offering a method 
 by which they may escape from them and 
 rise above them ; and Dr. Arnold's prin- 
 ciple in governing Rugby School, which 
 was to accept every boy on his best side 
 and for the best that was in him, should 
 be the rule rigidly adhered to by all who 
 hold commissions for helping and keep- 
 ing the souls of their fellow-men. The 
 spiritual lines which seem to divide people 
 into sheep and goats are not so distinct 
 when we go down into the realities of life 
 as they seem to be when they are laid 
 
The Church among the People, 75^ 
 
 down by religious doctrinaires ; and when 
 Christian leaders or teachers go forth 
 among men to arouse in them an attrac- 
 tion for the Hfe which they are capable 
 of leading, they are not often allowed to 
 return from their seed -sowing without 
 bringing the sheaves of the harvest with 
 them. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Church in the Nation, 
 
 'TPHE nation organizes the life of man 
 ^ for civil authority. It is *' the sphere 
 of a realized freedom, in which alone the 
 life of man fulfills itself, and it is to give 
 expression to all that is compassed in life. 
 It moves toward the development of a 
 perfect humanity. Its symbol is the city 
 of an hundred gates, through which there 
 passes not only the course of industry and 
 trade, but the forms of poets and prophets 
 and soldiers and sailors and scholars — 
 man and woman and child in the unbroken 
 procession of the people. Its warrior 
 bears the shield of Achilles, on which 
 there are not only the figures of the mart 
 and sea and field, the loom and ship and 
 plow, but the houses and the temples 
 
The Church in the Nation. 755 
 
 and the shrines and the altars of men, 
 the types of the thought and endeavor 
 and conflict and hope of humanity. The 
 condition of the being of the nation, as 
 the power and the minister of God in 
 history, is in its moral personality ; in 
 this it is constituted in history as the 
 moral order of the world, and for the 
 fulfillment of that order. The assertion 
 of the moral being of the nation has been 
 the foundation of that which is enduring 
 in politics, and has been embodied in the 
 political thought and will which alone 
 have been constructive in the state." ^ 
 The state is to secure justice, maintain 
 order, establish freedom for the individual, 
 furnish scope for social ends, render pos- 
 sible more and more the rule of the people 
 by the people, which means government 
 by mutual consent, and thus represents 
 the nation as the realization of the moral 
 idea in the life of self-conscious freedom, 
 which is the order of the moral world ; 
 
 1 The Nation, by Elisha Mulford, LL.D., pp. 21, 22. 
 
1^6 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 and this is the. working out of the full 
 idea of Hegel, who says : '' There is one 
 conception in religion and the state, 
 and that is the highest of man."^ This 
 comprehensive outline of the province of 
 the nation in the control of civil society 
 has its complement in the way in which 
 the church organizes the whole commu- 
 nity as a people of God who are to be 
 treated and cared for not only as members 
 of a moral commonwealth in which they 
 are to be trained for the duties of citizen- 
 ship, but as inheritors of the kingdom of 
 heaven. Thus the twofold relationship of 
 the church to society, its part in building 
 up the state in the moral forces which 
 maintain a high order of citizenship, and 
 its part in establishing the spiritual re- 
 public of God on earth, has always been 
 maintained ; but too often it has been 
 realized by the domination of the church 
 over the state or the state over the 
 church. The papal theory which ruled 
 
 1 Hegel's Philosophie der Religion^ vol. i. p. 170. 
 
The Church in the Nation, 757 
 
 the Middle Ages and was maintained un- 
 improved down to the Reformation, was 
 the supremacy of the church over the 
 state. The same theory was the Puritan 
 ideal, as partially carried out during the 
 period of the English commonwealth, and 
 more fully established in Puritan New 
 England. Neither in papal countries nor 
 in Puritan New England has it been pos- 
 sible to realize this theory in modern so- 
 ciety ; it did not give to the individual 
 sufficient freedom either as a citizen of 
 the state or as a member of the house- 
 hold of God. The English ideal of the 
 church as coextensive with the nation, as 
 bound up with it so that the one should 
 not act without the consent of the other, 
 is entirely consistent with the develop- 
 ment of the church and state in modern 
 life. It is easy to see that when civil so- 
 ciety had only begun to enter upon its 
 present development, the English Church, 
 which looked after the life of the whole 
 English people, filled a place in their in- 
 
1^8 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 stitutional history and maintained a spirit- 
 ual freedom for the individual which was 
 the counterpart of his moral freedom as 
 an English citizen. The religious institu- 
 tions of the country were rightly coordi- 
 nate with its political institutions. The 
 point in which their relation differed then 
 from what it is growing to be and has be- 
 come to-day in a country like our own, is 
 that a legal connection was then main- 
 tained which has now been diminished into 
 a relation of mutual consent or friendly 
 understanding. In the different European 
 states where the Roman Catholic is the 
 controlling religion, the same tendency to 
 the mutual release of church and state 
 from obligations to each other is to be 
 noted. Church and state must always be 
 two leading and controlling factors in hu- 
 man society, and it is in their working 
 in mutual freedom that the highest aim 
 of each is to be attained in modern life. 
 
 We have reached to-day in the United 
 States that free development of church 
 
The Church in the Nation. i^g 
 
 and state where each is separated from 
 the other in a practically uniform relation, 
 where each is in non-legal but constant 
 intercourse with the other, where the state 
 deals only with the temporal and the 
 church with the eternal issues. Both have 
 to do with society as a whole ; both confer 
 with men as individuals. This does not 
 mean the establishment of an imperiiini 
 in imperio ; it is simply that the spheres 
 of the two jurisdictions are independent, 
 though often inclusive. The state is free ; 
 the church is free ; and it is understood 
 that there are to be no antagonisms be- 
 tween them. The people in this country 
 would not tolerate a closer relation. What 
 the state does for political society the 
 church does for religious society. It is 
 in the largest possible definition of the 
 national position of the collective church 
 toward the spiritual consciousness of the 
 people that the point of view is reached 
 where the work of the church is seen in 
 a right light as a spiritual factor in the 
 
i6o The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 nation. It has the moral consciousness of 
 the nation in its keeping. The country 
 cannot go wrong upon great moral issues 
 without a protest from the collective 
 church. It cannot fulfill its charge, its 
 duty to the individual, without arousing 
 that enthusiasm for the welfare of the 
 community which is the secret and invisi- 
 ble impulse in the Kingdom of God. The 
 church is the realization, in its continuous 
 life, of the religious belief of the Positivist, 
 that all the accretions of wisdom which go 
 to enlarge the sphere of human govern- 
 ment are handed over in succession to each 
 generation, thus increasing the advantages 
 of life in the future. It emphasizes in 
 freedom the spiritual consciousness of the 
 individual and educates it as the personal 
 conscience. The nation is also a moral 
 personality. Dr. Mulford says: "The 
 condition of the realization of personality 
 is the same in the nation as in the in- 
 dividual. This condition in each is the 
 clearness and fullness in which it compre- 
 
The Church in the Nation. i6i 
 
 hends its purpose and is centred in it. 
 The source of strength is, as in the indi- 
 vidual, in working faithfully after the type 
 of its own individuality and in bringing 
 this to its free and clear development. . . . 
 The nation as a moral person is in itself 
 called as a power in the coming of that 
 kingdom in which there is the moral gov- 
 ernment of the world and in whose con- 
 ception there is the goal of history." ^ The 
 nation, like the individual, finds its dev^el- 
 opment in an integral moral life. The 
 church advances />a7^i passti on this same 
 line, but after a spiritual method in its 
 dealing with the whole of human society. 
 It is only as we see the collective church 
 from this point of view that the greatness, 
 the dignity, the responsibility, and the 
 moral grandeur of its functions are made 
 to appear. 
 
 It detracts from the estimate of what 
 may be called a national church that its 
 divisions, in this country at least, are so 
 
 1 The Nation, p. 19. 
 
1 62 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 numerous that it not only presents no 
 collective front, no well-adjusted order of 
 procedure, but is to a great extent a mass 
 of discordant factions warring with one 
 another over distinctions which are be- 
 neath its notice and impair its efficiency 
 as a republic of God. Regarded from this 
 point of view, the fragments of organi- 
 zations that call themselves churches do 
 not unite people and do not build up 
 in them the conception of the Catholic 
 Church in the nation which is here set 
 forth. The disintegration of Christian 
 society through its divisions has previously 
 been discussed. The larger portion of 
 Christian people sincerely lament these 
 separations and note in them a constant 
 waste of spiritual power and strength. 
 The country is overrun with spiritual en- 
 thusiasts and with religious rivalries which 
 make sober people sick unto death of 
 even the name of religion, and amid this 
 confusion they look almost in vain for its 
 reality. Needless as these divisions seem 
 
The Church in the Nation. i6^ 
 
 to be, the time has come when conserva- 
 tive people are intolerant of them. It is 
 to be noted that the come-outers in this 
 country from the established and respon- 
 sible organizations have not only never 
 organized anything to take their place, 
 but have dissipated their spiritual strength 
 in social reforms which, after the best is 
 said of them, are secondary to the power 
 for reform and renewal which the collec- 
 tive church attains. It is further to be 
 noticed that, great as is the tendency to 
 individualism in religion to-day, the only 
 forms of the Christian Church among us 
 maintaining not only the right of way 
 but a strong and steady increase are 
 those which are identified as the histori- 
 cal churches. The great race instinct 
 among the American people may be 
 abused by the licentiousness and prodi- 
 gality of its individual manifestations, but 
 it is too stronsf in its conservative move- 
 ment, and its roots are too deep in the 
 life of society, to trifle always with the 
 
/ 64 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 constructive spiritual life of the nation. 
 Though much in our modern Protestan- 
 tism prevents civil society from being con- 
 trolled by the large principles that take 
 in the general order of things and v^ork 
 for it as a unit, there is a recognition 
 everywhere, too often imperfect, often 
 enunciated by a minority, perhaps more 
 often heard outside the churches than 
 within them, voiced by religious leaders 
 here and there rather than by the officers 
 of the church organization, but on the 
 whole the audible expression of a con- 
 viction which more and more carries 
 weight into life, — that the religion which 
 is worth anything in this country is a 
 religion which aims at the unity of life 
 and deals with the whole of civil society. 
 Nothing short of this is satisfactory. Dis- 
 appointing as things seem on the surface, 
 whether in the country town with its 
 church-bells clanging for discordant creeds, 
 or in the city with its confused religious 
 dialects, — if the whole aim which is im- 
 
The Church in the Nation. i6^ 
 
 plied in this discordant work is taken into 
 account, — the substantial unity of things 
 may be recognized, and the fragmentari- 
 ness of our Christian aim may rightly be 
 regarded as a temporary and transient 
 phase. In the better ordering of Christian 
 society the church must again reassert 
 and maintain the principles of unity and 
 order which have been, humanly speaking, 
 the secret of its strength, side by side 
 with the nation, from the beginning of 
 the Christian system. 
 
 What does the collective church do for 
 the state ? It brings the law of God to 
 bear upon society. The aim of the state 
 finds its end in itself ; it seeks to improve 
 a certain order and hand it down to pos- 
 terity. The church's aim and end is the 
 restoration of man to God ; it is a con- 
 structive purpose ; it does something that 
 legislation cannot do and does not attempt 
 to do. It imparts a higher principle to 
 our present organic life. Illustrations of 
 what the collective church does beyond 
 
1 66 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 what the state does are found in the rela- 
 tion of each to the temperance and the 
 prison reforms. The state punishes the 
 criminal and the drunkard for their overt 
 acts against its laws ; the church under- 
 takes a higher and more radical work ; 
 it would reform both the drunkard and the 
 criminal by increasing their self-defense 
 against temptations, and would plant the 
 principle of temperance not only in the 
 individual mind and heart but in the con- 
 sent of society to diminish if not entirely 
 remove the temptation itself. The state 
 punishes, but the church undertakes to 
 reform and renew life. It helps to repress 
 the natural evil in man, and to this end 
 it exerts authority from man to man over 
 the public conscience. It speaks to the 
 school, the municipality, the legislature, 
 the congress, and when it is fairly repre- 
 sentative in its voice it expresses the 
 moral consciousness of the people, the 
 bonds of righteousness and duty toward 
 God and man, Taken as a whole, the 
 
The Church in the Nation. 1 67 
 
 church in this attitude represents a certain 
 authority. Its voice is Hke that of the 
 watchman telling of the night in the pro- 
 phecy of Isaiah. This watchfulness, in its 
 collective capacity, extends over society 
 like the shadow of a great rock in a 
 weary land. It represses evil ; it stimulates 
 righteousness ; it enforces principles ; it 
 carries its enthusiasm into the community ; 
 it inspires men with the purpose of leader- 
 ship, and makes their voices heard in 
 clarion notes throughout the world. Wher- 
 ever the church in its collective capacity 
 is strong, wherever it speaks with un- 
 diminished emphasis for principles, wher- 
 ever it is heard and felt in civil society 
 in a way that commands obedience, it not 
 only asserts its power upon the whole com- 
 munity and gives tone to its life, but there 
 is a retroactive influence which is felt 
 within itself, and the high pitch of its 
 moral reach becomes a new incentive to 
 its own vitality. The church, at any given 
 day or in any given generation, exhibits 
 
1 68 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 departures from this position of authority. 
 It is in the world and yet not of the 
 world ; its principle is that of St. Paul, 
 that the right thing is to use this world 
 as not abusing it. The highest function 
 of the church is to create the purpose in 
 religious society of using the things of this 
 world according to the best plans, and it 
 is in proportion as this aim is reached 
 that the church as a moral organization 
 has leverage in the community. Here 
 is its great conservative influence. It 
 holds back from wrong ; it maintains 
 moral principles ; it is the living teacher 
 of righteousness ; it is always conserva- 
 tive ; its organization is to hold fast the 
 right things ; it conserves existing good ; 
 it represents the power behind the social 
 order which expresses the law of God. 
 But this is not the only function that the 
 church discharges in the community. It 
 is in its organization a definite ministry to 
 civil society. As an army has its fore- 
 runners to indicate the direction of its 
 
The Church in the Nation. 169 
 
 movement and to pioneer the way, so the 
 church, in its spiritual leaders who see 
 truth singly and in advance of others, has 
 a pioneer company who lead its energies 
 into new fields of conquest from age to 
 age. These pioneers are found here and 
 there, — Samuel among the prophets, 
 Elisha the Tishbite outside, Amos among 
 the herdsmen of Tekoa, men who have 
 divine intuitions, men who hold counsel 
 with God for the people, and whose spir- 
 itual insight and discernment are beacon 
 Hghts to the people of God who tread wea- 
 rily in the dusty pathways of the world. 
 Such men are found in the collective 
 church to-day, and it is in their individual 
 and yet representative utterances that the 
 nation receives rebuke or encouragement. 
 Bishop White and Bishop Alonzo Potter 
 in the Anglican, and Archbishop Hughes 
 and Dr. Brownson in the Roman com- 
 munion, have emphasized the work of the 
 Christian Church in the nation and helped 
 to deepen the kindly relations between the 
 
I JO The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 two. Dr. Lyman Beecher and Dr. Chan- 
 ning in an earlier day, and Dr. Bushnell 
 and Theodore Parker for a later genera- 
 tion, have occupied a similar position, and 
 the present bishop of New York showed 
 himself at the recent centennial celebra- 
 tion of the inauguration of our govern- 
 ment the worthy son of Alonzo Potter in 
 rebuking the ascendency of political cor- 
 ruption in public life. But the church in 
 the United States is simply a coordinate 
 power with the state, having the same 
 field of civil society to work in, but pur- 
 suing its own course and living for the 
 realization of its own ends. Its jurisdic- 
 tion is moral and persuasive, not author- 
 itative or judicial. It controls the nation 
 only as it controls the individuals that 
 constitute the nation. In education, in 
 reform, in the treatment of crime, in the 
 direction of society, in guiding the na- 
 tional conscience, the church is a moral 
 and spiritual factor with no authority be- 
 yond its national majesty and its appeal 
 
The Church in the Nation. iji 
 
 to the individual. The result is that its 
 work lies almost exclusively within its 
 own sphere ; and when it realizes its ends 
 in a large way, it renders its best support 
 to the nation. 
 
 It is difficult to say in a few w^ords what 
 the essential character of the American 
 religion is. It was defined by that knight 
 of the free lance, the late John Weiss, 
 thus : " America is an opportunity to make 
 a religion out of the sacredness of the in- 
 dividual." ^ Of American opportunity he 
 says : '* Its religion and its polity came 
 down together, quite unsuspected by any 
 temporary forms or stages either, and may 
 be found lying together on the site they 
 have reached, whenever we penetrate 
 beneath sectarian and democratic drift." ^ 
 His cardinal point is that " the sacredness 
 of the individual is the basis of American 
 religion." There is to him ''nothing out- 
 side of the individual." This is what the 
 separatist says. The churchman is at the 
 
 1 American Religion, by John Weiss, p. 47. ^ Ibid. p. 56. 
 
iy2 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 other pole, while, between the churchman 
 on the one hand and the separatist on the 
 other, there are a thousand opinions which 
 cover with constant variations the inter- 
 vening space. In this kaleidoscope of 
 changing influences it is difficult to for- 
 mulate the distinctive principles which are 
 giving shape to American religious thought 
 and life. Each one sees from his own 
 outlook and thinks that his point of ob- 
 servation is at the centre. The outlook 
 is so large, and when at last compre- 
 hended includes so many interests, that 
 one shrinks from a dogmatic definition ; 
 and where religious beliefs are in process 
 of change, where the historical standards 
 of the church have been comparatively un- 
 known, where the dogmatic belief of posi- 
 tive Christianity goes no further back than 
 the Reformation, where a present working 
 organization is counted for what it is rather 
 than for its lineage of authority, where the 
 demand is that simplicity of belief and 
 oro:anization shall be the distinguishing 
 
The Church in the Nation. ly^ 
 
 features of church life and creed, it is as 
 if the antecedents of Christianity had been 
 swept away, and all the magnificent contri- 
 butions of its ages of contact with human- 
 ity had been ignored. In European coun- 
 tries the Roman or the Anglican or the 
 Greek churches have been maintained for 
 centuries in different nationalities, and 
 have guided society essentially upon a 
 basis of fixed ecclesiastical institutions, so 
 that the work of Christian organization 
 and of moral direction in this case have 
 proceeded largely through traditional chan- 
 nels. In this country our traditions at the 
 best do not go back further than two hun- 
 dred and fifty years ; to a large extent the 
 fixedness of our leading religious bodies 
 can be traced no further than a hundred 
 years ; and the free development of reli- 
 gious life in American organizations is, so 
 to speak, the work of yesterday. Even so 
 late as a quarter of a century ago, the as- 
 sertion of the integrity of the apostolic 
 succession, and the claim that it secured 
 
1^4 T'/;^ Church in Modern Society. 
 
 the wholeness and continuity of the Chris- 
 tian Church as a divine institution, awak- 
 ened the hostility of those who do not 
 stand by the historical order. It is only 
 within a very short space of time that 
 this permanent factor in ecclesiastical life 
 has come to be understood on its merits as 
 a fundamental fact in church organization. 
 It was felt that the ecclesiastical order 
 of experiment, crystallized into Protestant 
 forms in America, had in it the elements 
 of finality. To-day this confidence in the 
 authority of Protestant religious organiza- 
 tions is slowly disappearing ; and there is 
 going with it a constant elimination of the 
 special theological dogmas of which it 
 was the affirmation. All the churches in 
 America are to-day voluntary and are mov- 
 ing out where they begin to treat men and 
 creeds and even the Bible in freedom. It 
 is not simply that the church-leaders re- 
 fuse to pronounce anathemas upon all who 
 do not belong to their religious society ; 
 even the dogmatic affirmation is not to-day 
 
The Church in the Nation. 775 
 
 asserted as if it were the final word in reli- 
 gion. There has passed over the church a 
 widening of view like that which has passed 
 over the interpretation of the constitution 
 of the nation. Our political institutions 
 have received a fresh interpretation in the 
 hundred years of their existence, and yet 
 we are under the same government. All 
 ecclesiastical bodies and institutions have 
 likewise received a fresh interpretation, 
 and yet each religious organization still 
 maintains its own order and works essen- 
 tially upon its own lines. Not only this, 
 but the solidarity of American religion 
 finds expression to-day in the body of the 
 churchpeople rather than in the ministry 
 which directs and instructs them. The 
 laity have always in Protestant churches 
 been the controlling force ; in Episcopal 
 churches they have divided that honor 
 with the clergy ; in Roman Catholic 
 churches the laity have only just begun 
 to assert their claim to the management of 
 the temporalities of the church. Once the 
 
iy6 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 clergy held the authority, but to-day and 
 for the future, at least wherever demo- 
 cratic institutions prevail, the laity will 
 maintain a position of coordinate authority 
 with the clergy in the direction of eccle- 
 siastical affairs. The individual in Ameri- 
 can religion has been too conscious of his 
 position, and the collective interests of 
 civil society have been too little regarded. 
 The whole church has been too individual 
 and personal in its methods of work. It 
 has shown too little comprehensiveness in 
 its attitude toward the interests of soci- 
 ety. It has sought to make the disciple 
 rather than to fit the disciple for the King- 
 dom of God. It has worked too little by 
 institutions and too much by the single 
 man. Its insularity rather than the inclu- 
 sive and organizing instinct has been its 
 characteristic note, so that to-day, to a very 
 large extent, the interests which are dis- 
 tinctly Christian in civil society, and in 
 which Christianity finds its sphere and free- 
 dom for active work in behalf of humanity, 
 
The Church in the Nation. ijy 
 
 are so largely without the church limits 
 that a Christian man or woman must seem- 
 ingly go outside the church in order to 
 come up to the full discharge of Christian 
 duty according to the opportunity offered 
 in common life. It is here that American 
 religion has been checked in its develop- 
 ment. Its field has been too restricted, 
 and the present confession of Christian 
 leaders is that the sphere in which the col- 
 lective church works must be broadened 
 until it includes influences which reach the 
 whole of civil society. 
 
 It will be seen from this point of view 
 that the church needs to be saved to-day 
 from a too exclusive and too restricted 
 service in a free country. It abides in 
 the use of methods whose utility has been 
 exhausted, and whose effect is to stultify 
 the intelligence of Christian people. There 
 is a tendency to simple individualism in 
 church methods, as there is a tendency to 
 a similar individualism in political meth- 
 ods ; and, in a country democratic alike 
 
iy8 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 in church and in state, there is a rule of 
 mediocrity which dampens the enthusiasm 
 and obscures the hopes and ideals, whether 
 of the church or of the state, which lift 
 men into the higher walks and aims of life. 
 The commonness and vulgarity, the ab- 
 sence of lead and the constant return to the 
 point of start, in our American religion, 
 are its great drawbacks. The attempt is 
 made in politics with some degree of suc- 
 cess to rally around great working princi- 
 ples. The same effort must be made in the 
 collective church if religion as authorized 
 in the gospel of Jesus Christ is to be fresh 
 and vital in the minds and hearts of men. 
 There is a power in a multitude which is 
 not in the individual ; there is a power in 
 the denomination which, behind the leader, 
 makes him its spokesman and gives him 
 authority ; there is a power in the collec- 
 tive church when it works in directions 
 which gather up the interests of the com- 
 munity and deals with them from a cen- 
 tral point of view ; there is a power in our 
 
The Clmrch in the Nation, ' lyg 
 
 Christianity in this country when it is re- 
 garded as the development of a few central 
 principles, and people, burning with the 
 desire to realize the life of the Son of God 
 in the minds and hearts of men, undertake 
 to direct the life of the whole community 
 upon this simple yet comprehensive basis. 
 The defect of American Christianity lies 
 in its individualism, in its hand-to-hand 
 methods, in the narrowness of its religious 
 beliefs, and in its slight grasp of the cen- 
 tral truth of the Incarnation. It has not 
 been broad enough to meet the demands 
 of civil society ; it has not had an organiz- 
 ing influence through institutions upon the 
 whole of life ; it has not connected large- 
 ness of individual method with the springs 
 of power which lie in a concrete, compre- 
 hensive purpose ; it has failed to empha- 
 size the authority, the vitality, the inspira- 
 tion which historical Christianity, from the 
 very nature of the case, communicates as 
 a corrective, as a guide, and as an impulse, 
 to the movements of civil society. In 
 
i8o The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 many respects the American Church has 
 been an inspiration to the American peo- 
 ple, but it has always been directed and 
 advanced upon a plane that is below its 
 catholic inheritance and short of a proper 
 realization of its power. In its own field of 
 activity it has been inferior to the organi- 
 zation of the political life of the nation. 
 Its one chief defect has been that it has 
 refused to see in the whole of modern so- 
 ciety its proper sphere of action, and has 
 not worked in this field with the institu- 
 tional authority which produces the largest 
 and most permanent results. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Constrmtive Unity in Religions Forces, 
 
 T^HE evils that grow out of divided 
 -*- religious work are everywhere felt. 
 The rivalry of churches, their competition 
 for membership, and the worldly side of 
 religious life are the witnesses of a wrong 
 method, and where these features are most 
 pronounced the spiritual interest is largely 
 lost sight of. The question which presses 
 with solemn earnestness upon every can- 
 did Christian mind is whether unity of 
 action can be reached in the Protestant 
 bodies. The Protestant idea is the sepa- 
 rateness of the individual ; the Catholic 
 idea is unity on the basis of the Incarna- 
 tion ; and between these two intervene the 
 affirmations of an historical experiment 
 which has been continued through three 
 centuries. Originally a protest against 
 
1 82 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 the Church of Rome, the Protestant move- 
 ment in modern society has been both po- 
 litical and religious, and has been mainly 
 identified with individual liberty and the 
 growth of civil society. Protestantism is 
 not, at least on its civil and political side, 
 the nesrative movement which the Roman 
 Catholic insists that it is. It is a large 
 and positive factor in the affirmations of 
 spiritual truth which have been wrought out 
 by the Protestant Church in contact with 
 society. The world could never willingly 
 go back to the old order when the Roman 
 Church had control of western Europe, 
 and no reconstruction of churches is pos- 
 sible which does not recognize the gains 
 which have come as much through the 
 spiritual affirmations of the church as 
 through the civil affirmations of the peo- 
 ple in modern life. It is an oversight to 
 think, from the Roman Catholic side, that 
 the dial of human progress can be turned 
 backward through this whole period, and 
 the Papal Syllabus of 1864, which de- 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. i8^ 
 
 nounccd the principles on which social life 
 is now organized, indicated very distinctly 
 that in any possible reconstruction of the 
 Christian order, the Roman Church could 
 have no immediate part. By its consent 
 to that document it took itself out of the 
 field, and yet, in the larger view of Chris- 
 tian unity upon an organic basis, the 
 Church of Rome must be included as a 
 factor. The weakness of the Protestant 
 churches is that their working methods do 
 not carry out properly the spiritual ideas 
 which they communicate as factors in re- 
 ligion and society. The imperfect organ- 
 ization of these religious bodies imparts 
 to them but little power to give weight 
 to their principles. Each of the different 
 societies, affirming something which, at 
 the time of its organization, had dropped 
 out of the current life in the religious 
 community from which it sprang, has left 
 out something in its attempts at organic 
 development which has impaired or limited 
 its distinct affirmations, and should have 
 
184 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 been its complement in the effort to reach 
 the whole of human life. No one likes to 
 say that the different religious organiza- 
 tions which are familiar to us are not 
 Christian in their character and in their 
 influence ; we have no right to think that 
 they are not ; but there is something lack- 
 ing in them to the extent that no one of 
 them could be taken separately as furnish- 
 ing the proper basis of a catholic or uni- 
 versal Church. The Universalists have as 
 their principal tenet the salvation of all 
 mankind in Christ, but this affirmation is 
 not supported by the complementary the- 
 ological truth which makes a good working 
 church. The Baptists claim recognition 
 for devotion and sincerity, but the stress 
 which they put upon the mode of baptism 
 is greater than that which they put upon 
 other essentials in the Christian life, and 
 the result is a one-sided spiritual develop- 
 ment in which important factors of Chris- 
 tianity are omitted. The Unitarians came 
 out of the Congregationalists in protest 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. i8^ 
 
 against a too arbitrary conception of Christ 
 as the Son of God, but in affirming our 
 Lord's humanity they have left out that 
 complementary truth which makes him the 
 Saviour of mankind. The Presbyterians 
 have crystallized their faith around certain 
 religious dogmas which are both affirmed 
 and denied in the Holy Scriptures, and 
 which stand in the way of that simple 
 faith in Christ by which the world is to 
 be transformed into the Kingdom of God. 
 The Congregationalists, who represent the 
 democracy of the Christian world, have 
 stood for the independence of the local 
 church, which is a truth of the first impor- 
 tance, but they have presented Christianity, 
 to use the words of the late Dr. Leonard 
 Bacon, " as a string of onions without the 
 string." The Methodists have organized 
 a system of religious activity which has 
 great and deserved merits, but they have 
 put the whole stress of the working church 
 upon a system of emotional religion which 
 does not of itself build up the mental and 
 
i86 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 spiritual life into a reasonable Christian 
 faith. The Swedenborgians, emphasizing 
 the church in a new form, have insisted upon 
 universal morality with a stress greater 
 than that to be found elsewhere, but they 
 have left out of their work the vital prin- 
 ciple of divine grace. Each of these reli- 
 gious bodies emphasizes a truth so impor- 
 tant that their witness cannot be dispensed 
 with, but each one endeavors to build, so to 
 speak, upon a single point, the superstruc- 
 ture of a complete working church. It is 
 plain that each principle or truth here 
 enunciated has its place in a larger system, 
 but in the absence of its complementary 
 truths, which are supplied where the cath- 
 olic faith is taught, there is the danger of 
 excess, misleading, misunderstanding, to 
 the confusion of Christian ideas; and the 
 result must be more or less manifested in 
 the misdirection of the Christian life. The 
 Anglican Church in its American growths 
 is based upon the fundamental principle of 
 historical continuity and the recognition 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces, i8y 
 
 of the institutional character of Christian- 
 ity, but, as it has been mainly developed in 
 this country, it has quite too little taken 
 the Catholic position to which it is en- 
 titled. It is only here and there that its 
 development has answered to its inherent 
 character. It supplies the basis by which 
 Protestantism may escape from its insular- 
 ity and rise to the comprehensiveness and 
 freedom which are demanded of the Chris- 
 tian religion in a great democratic country 
 like our own ; but it can never expand to 
 a dominating position or meet the demands 
 of a work like this, without the coopera- 
 tion of every religious body in America 
 which maintains any vital principle of 
 Christianity, and by virtue of that princi- 
 ple is entitled to fellowship in the King- 
 dom of God. 
 
 The point is here reached toward which 
 we are struggling with almost insuperable 
 difficulty. All our religious bodies are in- 
 trenched in organizations which have their 
 roots in society and are hedged in by pre- 
 
1 88 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 judices and factions which give them, to a 
 great extent, the vis iiiertiae. They repre- 
 sent the water of the inland lake as con- 
 trasted with the water of the ocean. The 
 still level of the one is quite out of the 
 reach of the constant struggle and free- 
 dom of the other. If the forces of modern 
 Christianity are to be brought to bear upon 
 society to-day, and are to be employed to 
 their full extent in its regeneration, some- 
 thing more must be done than is accom- 
 plished by the present operation of different 
 denominations, however vigorously some 
 of them may be administered. Two things 
 are needed — organic breadth and greater 
 freedom of action. The church must be 
 as broad and inclusive as the whole of the 
 society which it is intended to influence, 
 and its methods must be allowed the free- 
 dom in local action which is demanded by 
 the character and circumstances of the peo- 
 ple who are to be influenced. None of the 
 purely Protestant denominations furnishes 
 the basis on which the whole community 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. i8g 
 
 can be reached. Each addresses a class, 
 but does not influenc'e the whole of so- 
 ciety. The Church of Rome to-day in the 
 United States, though able to reach all 
 classes, chiefly addresses its own followers. 
 The Anglican Church has emerged from 
 comparative seclusion into competition with 
 the great denominations whose career was 
 well begun when its own future seemed 
 uncertain ; but if this communion has 
 waited, like the tortoise, to catch up with 
 Achilles, it has waited to some purpose, 
 and its position to-day as the historical 
 channel of Christianity to the English- 
 speaking people is of grave importance. 
 In numbers or enthusiasm, or in actual 
 agencies of work, it is easily surpassed by 
 other organizations, and it has never yet 
 reached in any large way the virile popu- 
 lation that constitutes the bulk of the 
 American people ; but in its place as a 
 channel of historical and institutional 
 Christianity to the English-speaking peo- 
 ple it occupies a unique position. Le 
 
I go The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 Maistre has said that the Anglican Church 
 has a divine office • to perform in modern 
 religious life. It might do for Protestant 
 people what the Church of Rome has de- 
 clined to do. It might furnish for the dis- 
 membered fragments of Protestant Chris- 
 tianity a rallying point by which their 
 tendency to individualism could be ar- 
 rested, and by which historical Christian- 
 ity, with all its conservative strength of 
 influence, could be applied to the broaden- 
 ing and strengthening of the religious life 
 of modern times. This was said with ref- 
 erence to the place of the Church of Eng- 
 land in modern Europe. It may be said 
 with essentially the same truthfulness in 
 regard to the reaching of constructive 
 unity among the religious forces of the 
 United States. 
 
 In this country the Anglican Church 
 is an institution as broad as the state, 
 and it regards society with as inclusive a 
 purpose as the state regards it. It main- 
 tains the continuous order of the ministry. 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces, igi 
 
 the great Christian traditions, the Christian 
 sacraments, and the idea of the church 
 as the extension of the Incarnation of 
 Jesus Christ throughout the world. Local 
 as it may seem in its work, stripped of 
 whatever may seem adventitious in a state 
 church, it has the same institutional prin- 
 ciple and the same constructive way of 
 looking at the community as a whole 
 which has been the characteristic of the 
 Church of England since its first dealing 
 with the English people. It stands on 
 the principle of transmitting and protect- 
 ing and applying the essential principles 
 of Christianity to human society under 
 the operation of the laws of common life. 
 Its principles are unchanging, but the 
 interpretation of its dogmas may change 
 from age to age, and its methods are con- 
 formable to the demands of the field where 
 its work lies. What the Anglican Church 
 stands for in its larger operation is that 
 it so organizes Christian people in civil 
 society that they work freely under its 
 
192 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 inspiration and guidance till it becomes a 
 proper leavening power in Christian civili- 
 zation. Wherever this communion has 
 worked freely and constructively under its 
 normal principles of action, it has accom- 
 plished two things. It has inspired the com- 
 munity as a whole with a higher purpose, 
 and it has maintained among men the 
 principle of personal responsibility to God. 
 The principal thing to be thought of is 
 that the episcopal organization, when ap- 
 plied to the ordering and development of 
 Christian life, is here what it was in the 
 early church. It is a regulative principle. 
 It approaches society as a whole. It sees 
 the community in the light of the Incar- 
 nation, and it organizes Christian society 
 in such a way that the light of the Incar- 
 nation is diffused through the community 
 at large, at the same time that it is di- 
 rected to the individual mind and heart. 
 In other words, the episcopal organization, 
 regarded simply from the institutional 
 point of view, provides for the freedom 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. 19^ 
 
 and variety of method by which the whole 
 of society may be reached and directed as 
 if the sole aim and purpose of its members 
 were to become inheritors of the kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
 This view has been very ably set forth 
 by Dr. James Martineau in England. It 
 is that the Church of England can, without 
 changing its standards, so extend its prac- 
 tical operation by the principle of inclusion 
 that all existing Christian life and move- 
 ment shall find its rightful place within 
 the national church. There are many 
 practical difficulties, even in England, in 
 the acceptance of such a comprehensive 
 principle ; but if Christian statesmanship 
 is ever to be put in the place of ecclesiasti- 
 cal management, and the practice of right- 
 eousness is to be regarded as important 
 as rightness of belief, it is the way out of 
 present difficulties which seems most rea- 
 sonable and along which the difficulties 
 may disappear as the good of society be- 
 comes more and more the aim and the 
 
ig4 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 end of the working Christian Church. 
 The opposition to the institutional idea 
 of religion, which is the large way of 
 stating the principle of episcopal organi- 
 zation, is too often the fruit of a small 
 jealousy, as if the episcopal clergy, by 
 virtue of their regular orders, cast con- 
 tempt upon the authority of those who 
 minister in other religious societies. It 
 is cruel to draw this inference ; it is not 
 fair to the facts of the case ; the work 
 before Christian men in America to-day, 
 under whatever name or order they may 
 be associated, is too serious for this small 
 jealousy. No one who has given this sub- 
 ject proper attention has the least desire 
 to undervalue the integrity of the work 
 which any Christian minister is doing, 
 whatever may be his authority. It is not 
 in this way that constructive unity is to 
 be reached. The point before one is that 
 a working principle must be adopted which 
 is sufficiently comprehensive to organize 
 the church so that it shall reach the whole 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. 795 
 
 of society, while the freedom of the local 
 church shall be fully protected and main- 
 tained. This principle was adopted by 
 the apostles, not more for the sake of 
 maintaining the historical succession by 
 the laying on of hands than for the dealing 
 with society in such a way that the church 
 could do its work most efficiently. The 
 recognition of this principle is far more 
 important to-day than it was in the early 
 church, because the multiplicity of life to- 
 day is greater, and the application of Chris- 
 tian truth to social conditions is infinitely 
 more diverse. 
 
 Working freely under a large central 
 organization seems to be the only way 
 in which the whole of society may be 
 brought under the control of the Church 
 of Christ. What is wanted is not the 
 denial of the rights of existing churches, 
 but such an organization, like that of the 
 associated charities in London or Boston, 
 that the existing institutions of religion 
 shall properly assist one another in cover- 
 
ig6 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 ing the field where they exist, and in doing 
 their work for the glory of God and the 
 benefit of our kind. When the American 
 House of Bishops issued their famous dec- 
 laration of 1886, in which they acknowl- 
 edged four principles to be essential to 
 constructive unity, and in which they 
 affirm the integrity of the episcopal or- 
 ganization to be something which must 
 be at the bottom of any effective unity 
 among Protestant Christians, they acted, 
 not with the thought of increasing the 
 influence of the Episcopal Church, but 
 under the conviction that the proper or- 
 ganization of Christian society could alone 
 be reached by the adoption of this prin- 
 ciple. How it could be adapted to exist- 
 ing circumstances it was not for them at 
 that time to suggest ; but it was the part 
 of a wise Christian statesmanship to ad- 
 vance this affirmation, and to rise to the 
 conception of the whole of American 
 Christianity under the control of a prin- 
 ciple which, broad in its practical opera- 
 
Constructive Unity in Retigious Forces, i gj 
 
 tion, would recognize the position of each 
 congregation as distinctly and protect its 
 rights as faithfully as they are guarded 
 under its present ecclesiastical direction, 
 reducing the competition that hindered or 
 affected its action, and directing the work- 
 ing of the parish to broader and better 
 aims, while giving to the pastors such es- 
 sential authority, not of a denomination, 
 but of the undivided Church of Christ, 
 that in every city and town and village 
 and hamlet throughout the country the 
 work of Christ would go forward *' in unity 
 of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in 
 righteousness of life." The severest con- 
 demnation of the church to-day is found 
 in its actual operation, in the city, town, 
 and even the country village. It repre- 
 sents the waste, the confusion, and often 
 the destruction of Christian effort amid 
 the rivalries of passing factions which 
 claim to represent the Church of Christ, 
 causing people of the world to stand aside 
 and exclaim, not as the heathen did in the 
 
198 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 apostolic days, " How these Christians love 
 one another ; " but " How effectually these 
 Christian organizations defeat the work 
 of the Christ whom they claim to serve." 
 
 The adoption of the regulative principle 
 which is here suggested as the proper 
 basis of constructive unity involves so 
 much of detail and implies so great a 
 willingness on the part of all Christian 
 organizations to put aside their denials, 
 and not only stand by their affirmations 
 but accept the affirmations of others, that 
 it seems as if the millennium might come 
 before the result here suggested is reached ; 
 but if the organized life of the denomina- 
 tion is disregarded and the feelings and 
 convictions of Christian people at large 
 are consulted, it will be found that Chris- 
 tian society is ripe almost beyond be- 
 lief for such a consummation as is here 
 outlined. Doctrinal distinctions to-day 
 are losing their weight in the desire to 
 bring men to Christ by practical methods. 
 The piety of the hour is the substitution 
 
Constnictive Unity in Religious Forces, igg 
 
 of charity for self-will. Every pastor in 
 our cities and towns and villages finds that 
 his work counts for more in the com- 
 munity, that the work of the salvation of 
 men is more easily accomplished, and that 
 the improvement of society is more easily 
 secured, in proportion to his readiness to 
 work with other pastors for the attainment 
 of a common purpose. The differences 
 between the religious societies are inap- 
 preciable when compared with the untold 
 opportunities for the amelioration of hu- 
 man life and the building up of religious 
 character which are open to those who are 
 willing to improve them. There is an 
 earnestness and a yearning and an appeal 
 alike of the heart and of the head, greater 
 than has before been witnessed, for a new 
 construction of Christian society. The 
 barriers of denominational life seem like 
 an obstacle in the way of the larger unity 
 of practical Christian effort which is de- 
 sirable ; and yet no result that will stand 
 for the next generation and can be re- 
 
200 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 garded as fundamental and permanent, can 
 be reached in which the good common 
 sense of the secular world does not sustain 
 the spiritual hopes and aspirations of the 
 people of God. 
 
 The work here outlined is not to be done 
 in a day, but it is the distinct religious 
 want of our time. The organization of all 
 our churches upon a basis of unity in essen- 
 tials which will make their common work 
 practicable is the constant prayer of all 
 Christians ; and it is more and more possi- 
 ble as each day reveals the spiritual draw- 
 ing together of those who think and feel 
 alike in these things. Only the ecclesi- 
 astical officials and the sectarian organi- 
 zations which support them stand in the 
 way of this coming together. The Epis- 
 copal Church, though it may contribute 
 a vital element to the reconstruction of 
 modern Christianity, has itself to learn a 
 lesson from its associated organizations 
 in this country. The churches are like 
 the individuals addressed by St. Paul in 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. 201 
 
 his Epistle to the Romans. They are 
 members one of another, and to use St, 
 Paul's words, ought to say : " Having gifts 
 differing according to the grace that was 
 given to us, whether prophecy, let us 
 prophesy according to the proportion of 
 our faith ; or ministry, let us give ourselves 
 to our ministry ; or he that tcacheth, to 
 his teaching ; or he that exhorteth, to his 
 exhorting : he that giveth, let him do it 
 with liberality ; he that ruleth, with dili- 
 gence ; he that sheweth mercy, with cheer- 
 fulness. Let love be without hypocrisy. 
 Abhor that which is evil ; cleave to that 
 which is good. In love of the brethren 
 be tenderly affectioned to one another ; in 
 honor preferring one another ; in diligence 
 not slothful ; fervent in spirit ; serving the 
 Lord ; rejoicing in hope ; patient in tribu- 
 lation ; continuing steadfastly in prayer ; 
 communicating to the necessities of the 
 saints; given to hospitality." This is a 
 solution in which the whole of civil society 
 may be brought under the constructive 
 
202 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 direction of the Church of Christ, and in 
 which its entire strength may be applied 
 to the incarnation of spiritual life in the 
 souls of men, for an avoidance of the 
 present waste and confusion of Christian 
 effort. Federation, with concessions all 
 around to the principle of institutional 
 order here enunciated, joined to the rising 
 to Christian statesmanship, the seeing eye 
 to eye, and the willingness to overcome 
 self-will alike in the individual and in the 
 ecclesiastical body, is the immediate step 
 towards constructive unity. 
 
 Dr. Brio-ors, who is a distinsruished Broad 
 Churchman among Presbyterians, has writ- 
 ten an important book,^ in which he aims 
 to show what the drift of Protestantism 
 has been during the last two centuries, 
 especially how far the American Presby- 
 terian Church has departed from the 
 
 1 Whither? A Theological Question for the Times. 
 By Charles Augustus Briggs, D. D. 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. 20 j 
 
 Puritan theology of the Westminster con- 
 fession, and how far a similar departure 
 has been reached in the other Protestant 
 bodies of the United States. Probably 
 no other theologian, unless it were Dr. 
 Fisher of New Haven, could be named 
 who has made so thorough a study of this 
 subject as Dr. Briggs has, and his work 
 deserves attention, because it treats with 
 authority a subject on which it is impor- 
 tant to have something more than vague 
 impressions to guide one. Persons who 
 follow religious opinion in New England 
 are quite conscious of the whither of its 
 religious movements, but are not able to 
 speak for the Presbyterian and the Re- 
 formed churches in other parts of the 
 country. What is to be noted in them 
 all is that they have unconsciously drifted 
 from their old standards, and are moving 
 forward toward a less dogmatic and more 
 comprehensive statement of religious be- 
 liefs. 
 
 The details of this movement are well 
 
204 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 stated by Dr. Briggs from the strictly the- 
 ological point of view. In the first two 
 and the last two chapters of his work he 
 breaks away from his Presbyterian limi- 
 tations, and looks upon the entire Chris- 
 tian Church in this country in its whole- 
 ness and in its unity, and his book is 
 symptomatic of the feeling and thought 
 which pervade every Christian community. 
 Without proposing a method, Dr. Briggs 
 takes such a survey of the existing reli- 
 gious bodies, that, from his point of view, 
 it would not be difficult to show the feasi- 
 bility of a movement for unity which would 
 in a short time reduce the ecclesiastical 
 conflicts in the American churches to a 
 minimum and bring about substantial 
 unity in their methods of operation. He 
 shows that the drift of all these com- 
 munions is away from those features which 
 constitute their difference from one another 
 and toward the opinions which they hold 
 in common. In matters of doctrine near- 
 ly all of them are broadening their faith. 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. 20^ 
 
 The Puritan view of the atonement is 
 passing away ; the Calvinistic decrees are 
 no longer set forth ; the verbal inspiration 
 of the Bible is mainly a belief of the past, 
 and the substantial facts won by the higher 
 criticism will soon be commonly received ; 
 the old doctrine about the last things is 
 fleeing away like the darkness before sun- 
 rise, and is being replaced everywhere by a 
 broader and better statement of religious 
 opinion concerning the future life. This is 
 the gain in the theological world, and this 
 is the summary of what Dr. Briggs sets 
 forth in his timely and significant volume. 
 
 There is another side to this matter, to 
 which Dr. Briggs gives less attention. In 
 his chapter on '* Barriers " he lays down 
 some of the difficulties which now stand 
 in the way of Christian union. The first 
 is the insistence on submission to a central 
 ecclesiastical authority claiming the divine 
 rio-ht of government. The second has 
 been the subscription to elaborate creeds. 
 The third is the insistence upon uniformity 
 
2o6 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 of worship. The fourth is the barrier of 
 traditionaUsm, the set-back of organiza- 
 tions. All these barriers have been raised 
 by existing sections of the Christian world, 
 and at the present time they are all more 
 or less broken down. If Christian union 
 were actually set about, it is believed that 
 the Roman Church, as well as the English, 
 would contrive some way by which the Prot- 
 estant ministry could be legitimated with- 
 out accepting all that is implied in the 
 supremacy of the Pope or in the apostoli- 
 cal succession. The Protestant churches 
 are already willing to recede from their 
 elaborate creeds. The Church of Eng:- 
 land would not do to-day what it did in 
 1662, because the Puritan party then de- 
 manded greater freedom in worship. The 
 difficulties that grow out of the formal 
 ecclesiasticism of Christian bodies are not 
 insuperable, and would easily disappear if 
 any one of them should have the courage 
 of its convictions and make a clean breast 
 of its weakness in isolation from the whole 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. 2oy 
 
 church. The American bishops at Chicago 
 in 1886 almost touched this point of reli- 
 gious heroism in their famous declaration, 
 as Dr. Briggs is at pains to show. The 
 whole issue to-day is like a game of chess. 
 All parties are ready, or nearly ready, for 
 a central move, and are restrained from 
 action because each one is afraid to con- 
 fess its own sins in the face of the Chris- 
 tian world. 
 
 This is the upshot of the treatment of 
 religious movement in which Dr. Briggs 
 expresses his sense of what is now possi- 
 ble in our Christian societies.^ He does 
 
 1 The following passages from his volume show that 
 he is fully aware of the demands of constructive unity : 
 *' If there is anything in a national religion and the unity 
 of the Church of Jesus Christ, it is high time that Ameri- 
 can Protestantism should rise to the situation, grasp the 
 problem, and endeavor to solve it. The ideals of Chris- 
 tian unity and a national religion are rising into greater 
 prominence in American Christianity," (page 168.) In 
 his preface he says : " The barriers between the Prot- 
 estant denominations should be removed and an organic 
 union formed. An alliance should be made between 
 Protestantism and Rjmanism and all other branches of 
 
2o8 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 not so much formulate the plan as state 
 the terms on all sides which would enter 
 into the shaping of such a plan. This is 
 modesty, indeed ; but there is one feature 
 which he conspicuously overlooks, though 
 he comes very near to stating it. It is 
 practically that the liberty of action which 
 he seeks in a comprehensive unity of the 
 different American churches cannot be 
 reached without a system of federation or 
 organic unity, or comprehensive direction, 
 which comes from a central administration. 
 It is here that the halt is most decided. 
 The question is whether the liberty and 
 freedom which are essentials in the Amer- 
 ican Protestant churches can be met by 
 such an enlargement in methods of prac- 
 tical government on the part of the Roman 
 or Anglican churches as would secure to 
 
 Christendom. The Lambeth Conference, in its pro- 
 posals for Christian unity, points in the right direction. 
 The Church of England is entitled to lead. Let all 
 others follow her lead and advance steadily toward 
 Christian Unity," (page xi.) 
 
Constructive Unity in Religious Forces. 2og 
 
 the Protestant bodies their proper develop- 
 ment as institutions without impairing the 
 independence and freedom to which they 
 are accustomed. The case is as broad as 
 it is long, and the question of Christian 
 unity lies here as in a nutshell. A more 
 practical conception of what Christianity 
 is in modern life, and what it has wrought, 
 is needed by both the Roman and the An- 
 glican communions before they can take 
 the organic weakness out of the Protestant 
 churches ; and the conviction, that the 
 freedom of the individual, valuable as it 
 is in the Protestant churches, reaches its 
 best results under wise direction, must be 
 far more universal than it is now, if any 
 such spiritual leadership is consented to 
 in a large way. The problem in the church 
 is like the problem between capital and 
 labor in the field of industry, or the prob- 
 lem in modern civilization, which is to 
 bring into working harmony the upper and 
 the under forces which are the natural 
 complement of one another. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Unity through Working Agreements. 
 
 'T^HERE are two ways of studying 
 -*- Christian unity at the present time. 
 One is the analytical, in which the exist- 
 ing condition of ecclesiastical society is 
 considered, with the effort to make such 
 an analysis of the creeds of churches and 
 such an estimate of their agreements that 
 the work of practical unity may at once 
 f begin. The other is the synthetic pro- 
 I cess, in which the present ecclesiastical 
 ; societies are not disturbed, but are treated 
 as the factors of a more comprehensive 
 view of the relation of the Christian to the 
 secular world. The analytical treatment 
 brings one at once against the snags of 
 deep-rooted controversies, and the hope of 
 a solution of the problem of a restored unity 
 is lost amid the traditional differences 
 
Unity through Working Agreements, 211 
 
 which now form bars of separation. If 
 you trace these differences to their origin, 
 you discover that they grew out of the 
 variations of allowable opinions which in 
 many instances have been precipitated 
 into dogmas that hold the hearts of Chris- 
 tian people within hard and fast lines. 
 They now have the character of an origi- 
 nal part of Christianity, and, like the bar- 
 nacles that have grown on the sides of a 
 ship, are not easily removed. There is 
 little hope of relief from the schisms of 
 Christendom in this direction. The only 
 unity to which men can turn is the unity 
 of spiritual agreements. If Christianity is 
 ever to be the leaven of our civilization, 
 in the sense in which it was the leaven 
 of society in the brightest days of the 
 Holy Roman Empire, it must be a larger 
 factor in the direction of life than it is 
 now. The Holy Roman Catholic Church 
 in the Holy Roman Empire has slowly 
 faded away till it is only the remembrance 
 of a splendid ideal of the relations of 
 
212 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 church and state which was never fully 
 realized. It is impossible to realize it 
 to-day. The men who build castles in the 
 air may work a long time to harmonize 
 the Roman, the Greek, the Anglican, and 
 the Protestant churches so that they shall 
 be of one mind, but they have grown too 
 far apart and have their roots too far back 
 in the history of the race easily to retrace 
 their steps and work together as one fold 
 under one shepherd. The ecclesiastical 
 structure which is to be built out of their 
 mutual concessions in outward forms is 
 not likely soon to be raised. Another 
 point of view must be taken if society 
 is to derive large benefit from Christianity, 
 and its great compulsions are to be better 
 realized among men. 
 
 The unity that is within reach in this 
 world is an ethical and a spiritual unity, 
 not a unity that addresses the outward 
 eye and dwells in a temple made by hands. 
 It is as difficult for Christian people to 
 conceive of unity after this kind as it was 
 
Unity through IVorkhig Agreements, 21 ^ 
 
 for the Jews to believe that the Prince of 
 the House of David was the lowly Naza- 
 rene, the Son of Mary. The main reason 
 why this outward unity is not soon to be 
 realized is that the recognition of the per- 
 sonal element in modern life renders it 
 seemingly impossible. The conception of 
 Christianity which obtained in the early 
 Christian ages, and which is the dominant 
 idea in the Roman Church, has already 
 attended its own funeral. It is the regal 
 idea, the belief that the individual withers 
 and that the world is governed by insti- 
 tutions in which the will of man disappears 
 as a personal force. The regal idea has 
 its place in the church ; the realization 
 of Christianity in modern society apart 
 from institutions which organize life into 
 collective power is like trying to make a 
 rope of sand ; and yet nothing is accom- 
 plished to-day which does not take into 
 account the part which the individual plays 
 as a member of the community. The men 
 who belonged to Caesar's household in the 
 
214 T^^^ Church in Modern Society. 
 
 early church and the men who beheve in 
 Christianity to-day with certain reserves 
 of agnosticism see life from almost oppo- 
 site points of view, and no advance to- 
 wards Christian unity can be made which 
 does not take this difference of position 
 into account. The church is still an in- 
 stitution and acts upon society most be- 
 neficently in its institutional character, 
 but it is composed of persons who have 
 been trained in the atmosphere of modern 
 life and who are able to do their own 
 thinking. The element of authority and 
 the element of free thought and individual 
 responsibility dwell in the same mind and 
 heart. They have to be harmonized in the 
 individual. 
 
 This is the task which presents itself to 
 the modern state as truly as to the modern 
 church. The nation to-day imparts its 
 strength to the people and gives them 
 political unity, but it returns only what it 
 receives from them, though it is returned 
 not in individual influence but in collec- 
 
Unify through Working Agreements. 21^ 
 
 tive power. The church to-day is in one 
 sense nothing more than a collection of 
 people who stand up to be counted as the 
 kingdom of God in the world, but what 
 it is as an organized body, with its tradi- 
 tions and its inheritance of Christian or- 
 ganizations, is something vastly different 
 from what it is to the individual believer. 
 The individual has his place in both politi- 
 cal and religious society, but the individual 
 alone is not the nation or the church. And 
 yet in all our plans of life the individual 
 factor is taken into account, and nothing 
 is accomplished until the individual will, 
 in its collective form, is behind it. Author- 
 ity and reason are the two poles between 
 which the electrical forces of the will are 
 in constant play. Authority in the church 
 is a great factor, but it no longer has 
 dominion over the individual ; and, on the 
 other hand, reason alone is inadequate to 
 maintain the conservative and constructive 
 forces of religion. The two go hand in 
 hand in our best modern life. In all that 
 
21 6 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 belongs to the future of ihe Christian 
 church there are and will be these two 
 factors, authority and right reason. They 
 cannot be separated, and in any changes 
 that are yet to take place they are the 
 factors that cannot be overlooked. The 
 difficulty of realizing Christian unity is 
 that in outward forms one party insists 
 upon the surrender of the reason to author- 
 ity, while the other insists upon the ab- 
 solute authority of reason. The situation 
 is such that formal unity is reached only 
 after such a change has passed over the 
 active religious life of the world as we 
 have no right to expect. The earlier Chris- 
 tian ages witnessed the domination of the 
 church as an institution ; the next step in 
 religious evolution was the individual com- 
 ing to self-consciousness; the third step 
 is to be the union of the two in a larger 
 social development. It is institutional 
 action, modified by the freedom of the in- 
 dividual, which is to mark the future devel- 
 opment of the Christian Church. 
 
Unity through Working Agreements. 21 y 
 
 It is plain that little or nothing is to be 
 expected on the ecclesiastical side. The 
 power of the church in modern society is 
 ethical and spiritual. It is not in a Papal 
 Bull ; it is not in a formal creed ; it is not 
 necessarily in apostolical succession ; it is 
 not in following the letter of Scripture. 
 The strict ecclesiastical relations of the 
 churches to one another will be for many 
 generations chiefly what we see them to- 
 day. What the churches are in the way of 
 help to society comes mainly from the mag- 
 nitude and strength of their agreements. 
 In times past they have mostly empha- 
 sized their differences, their antagonisms. 
 If they should yield to the present desire 
 to magnify their agreements, how many 
 articles of the Apostles' Creed would be 
 denied } If they should come together on 
 the basis of the moral law, how many would 
 be without the fold .? If it should be al- 
 lowed that the '' eternal hope " may be the 
 light of those who had no chance in this 
 world, what ethical comfort would be given 
 
2i8 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 to those who have been better acquainted 
 with the limitations than with the possibil- 
 ities of the present life ! If the eternities, 
 felt alike in law and conscience, come like 
 the shadows of night over every soul with 
 solemn import, what sympathy flows like an 
 electric current through the lives of men 
 most disparate in their moral and spiritual 
 character ! When you look at life on its 
 ethical and spiritual side there is a wonder- 
 ful tenderness of feeling in all men toward 
 the humanity of which each one forms a 
 part. If we are the moral wreck of God's 
 creation, yet what capacities of a God-like 
 order still remain ! No man is without in- 
 terest to his fellows on the moral and spir- 
 itual side. When the Christian churches 
 are looked at in their collective strength as 
 our established agencies for bringing men 
 into the closer service of God, how small 
 and insignificant do their differences ap- 
 pear ! The organization may be closer to 
 the primitive standard in one case than in 
 another, but the body is more than the 
 
Unity through Working Agreements. 21 g 
 
 raiment, and where the fruits of spirit are 
 manifest in Christian character, we are not 
 to measure the institutional order of the 
 church by too strict a rule. When one 
 transfers himself in imagination from this 
 planet to a central position where he can 
 see the revolutions of all the planetary 
 systems and can obtain a relative view of 
 the vast whole, the things peculiar to our 
 own planet sink into insignificance ; and 
 when men rise above the present factions 
 of the universal church and see its opera- 
 tion as a comprehensive and yet personal 
 force impressing itself on humanity every- 
 where, its ethical and spiritual power is 
 such that one loses his thought in trying 
 to express it in terms of language. It is 
 in this higher view, which is as legitimate 
 as the purely ecclesiastical view, that there 
 are reconciliations which do not appear in 
 actual society. The moral and spiritual 
 forces are seen in their collective capacity, 
 and the vast operations of the tendency 
 toward righteousness are taken at their 
 
220 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 true value. In this light, the world is bet- 
 ter than it seems, and there is a substan- 
 tial unity of purpose amid a thousand dis- 
 agreements. 
 
 It will be said that this is a broader 
 view of the kingdom of heaven on earth 
 than the facts will warrant. It is cer- 
 tainly the ideal view, but it is not without 
 important confirmations. It is an attempt 
 to see life in the light of the highest moral 
 constructions, and it is only in this way of 
 looking at the state of righteousness in 
 this world that one can grasp it as a whole. 
 There is something in the glib way in 
 which ecclesiastical experts size up the dif- 
 ferent religious families that is utterly ab- 
 horrent to a spiritual mind. But when the 
 relations of the various parts of the uni- 
 versal church are considered in their prac- 
 tical contact with society, it will be seen 
 that in the next phase of its development 
 the Christian Church must follow lines 
 of action that will increase its agreements. 
 It has already been intimated that the 
 
Unity through WorJAng Agreements. 221 
 
 future growth of the Kingdom of God lies 
 in the general renewal of society. It is not 
 denying its character as a witness to the 
 Incarnation, nor its power as the revealer 
 of Jesus Christ to men, to insist upon its 
 renewing agency in improving the condi- 
 tions of modern life. These social changes 
 are the evidence that the spiritual King- 
 dom of God is becoming coextensive with 
 the life of humanity, and that Christ is 
 taking the place that belongs to him as its 
 head. 
 
 There are two ways in which the col- 
 lective church approaches mankind. One 
 part of its work is to prepare the individ- 
 ual for another world by an act of faith 
 on his part and by a spiritual application 
 of the efficacy of Christ's death to the 
 soul through the sacraments. Through 
 faith or through sacraments, or through 
 both, the individual finds the church the 
 stepping-stone to a renewed life. The 
 appeal to the individual is constant ; it is 
 here that the church takes Christ's place 
 
222 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 and makes its personal efforts in the win- 
 ning of souls. But this is not its whole 
 work. The church is one of the three 
 great institutions of society. It has to do 
 with the family and the state. It is a great 
 factor in our daily life, and the more thor- 
 oughly democratic our civilization becomes 
 the more the conservative institutions of 
 society are appealed to for an influence 
 which was less needed when there was less 
 freedom in human relations. The Chris- 
 tian communities carry weight as ethical 
 and spiritual forces. They have the family 
 under their jurisdiction ; they have the edu- 
 cation of the young under their charge; 
 they are the guardians of public morals ; 
 they are monitors of the state in its exer- 
 cise of protection, in its view of public 
 trusts, in the maintenance of reverence 
 and honor and virtue. As one looks at our 
 American life to-day, the different denom- 
 inations bring to bear upon the congrega- 
 tions which belong to them, ahd through 
 them upon the common society of the 
 
Unity through Working Agreements. 22} 
 
 country, the highest sort of moral and spir- 
 itual influence. They give tone and char- 
 acter to city and town and village. There 
 is no religious society which could well be 
 spared. Collectively, this is the mightiest 
 influence that exists in the modern world. 
 It is seen in the midst of its infirmities ; 
 there is hardly a Christian body that comes 
 up to its ideal ; but there is in the aggre- 
 gate a powerful sympathy between its mem- 
 bers and the great commonwealth of souls 
 upon whom they act in their capacity as 
 fellow-citizens. The peculiarities of the 
 religious body are often more noted than 
 its structural influence, but when it is re- 
 garded as a positive institution it is al- 
 ways found to be a centre of ethical 
 power. The things that differentiate reli- 
 gious people from one another are here 
 expressly ignored because they are merely 
 hindrances to the positive benefit which 
 each denomination communicates to so- 
 ciety ; they do not prevent that sum of 
 influences in daily life by which the 
 
224 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 Christian church blesses and sanctifies the 
 world. 
 
 There can be no doubt that, while the 
 present opportunities of reaching the in- 
 dividual are greater than they ever were 
 before, the difficulty of finding the lives 
 of people preoccupied with affairs is still 
 greater. The old ways of doing religious 
 work are not the ways through which the 
 people are now best reached. All the 
 churches are largely fossilized by clinging 
 - to statements of doctrine and following 
 methods of work which are not in harmony 
 with the ethical and spiritual movement 
 of the people. There is more activity to- 
 day in the churches, but there are also 
 more unchurched people than ever before. 
 The field widens visibly from day to day. 
 You put out your hand and seem to touch 
 all mankind. The religious societies are 
 constantly reporting openings for mis- 
 sionary service which did not exist half a 
 century ago. The industrial life of the 
 people has so changed that men are more 
 
Unity through Working Agreements. 22^ 
 
 open to-day for the institutional study of 
 religion than they once were. There is a 
 flowing together of the forces which con- 
 stitute our civilization. There is the feel- 
 ing that the right must triumph, that the 
 individual is to divide more with his neigh- 
 bor, that the state is to be controlled in 
 its moral action by the presence of a 
 higher power, and that the family and the 
 public school and the political life are parts 
 of a great whole out of which each one 
 is to draw a greater satisfaction. This is 
 often crudely expressed, but it is the under- 
 current of thought that runs through the 
 nation. There is the consciousness that 
 Christianity in its social action is some- 
 thing broader, larger, more human and 
 more divine than it has yet been under- 
 stood to be. There is the conviction that 
 the destiny of man on this earth is more 
 intimately connected with it than has been 
 believed. The conviction grows that the 
 Christian Church is entering in the United 
 States, and wherever else society is free, 
 
226 The Church in Modern Society 
 
 upon a practical development along social 
 and ethical lines which have not before 
 been followed with the vigor that is now 
 possible. The strength of this conviction is 
 such that the religious body which will not 
 work for the highest and broadest interests 
 of humanity, as they are distributed in our 
 social connections, is held to be untrue to 
 the essentials of a Christian Church. It 
 has come to be the aim of the great divi- 
 sions of the Christian family, though it 
 is yet very imperfectly realized, to make 
 our life in this world more nearly the pat- 
 tern of what human life in its best estate 
 ought to be. Ethical and spiritual inter- 
 ests have taken a new position in the con- 
 ception of what constitutes character and 
 what makes happiness. This is felt in 
 the reconstructions of theology, and even 
 more in the ethical reorganization of so- 
 ciety. It is felt in the tumbling down 
 of the ecclesiastical barriers which have 
 divided one company of Christians from 
 another. There is a process going on in 
 
Unity through Working Agreements. 22y 
 
 the churches analogous to that which is 
 felt among the nations. It is everywhere 
 understood that the people are the rulers 
 to-day ; whatever may be the outward 
 form of the government, this is the un- 
 varying fact ; and there is growing up be- 
 tween governments the consciousness of 
 a common life. There is not a day in 
 which the press does not record some 
 fresh evidence of this change. Govern- 
 ments have established international rela- 
 tions ; they hold by the things that make 
 for peace. This is the order of the world. 
 Men are coming to stand upon this po- 
 litical platform everywhere. The nations 
 are as one nation ; humanity is as one 
 man. The commerce between nations, 
 the exchanges of thought and courtesy, 
 the reciprocity of affection which is the 
 outgrowth of the touch of the hand, have 
 established new conditions which furnish 
 the basis for a hi^rher civilization. What 
 has come without observation in the po- 
 litical and social, has also come as silently 
 
228 The Church in Modern Society, 
 
 in the religious world. The leaders of 
 the great established churches may stand 
 as far apart as the antipodes from one 
 another, but they cannot prevent the in- 
 crease of practical sympathy between those 
 who call God their Father and Christ their 
 Saviour. The lines of a broader and better 
 religious life have already been laid down 
 in our common society. The people are 
 a thousand times nearer to one another 
 spiritually than their religious leaders 
 would have us believe. The heart of the 
 Christian Church beats as the heart of one 
 man ; it is more than ever — • 
 "True to the kindred points of heaven and home." 
 It is often said, when the church is re- 
 garded from this point of view. Why not 
 unite at once and work together .^ The 
 vested interests and traditions of our 
 Christian communities prevent this, but 
 they do not forbid and cannot prevent 
 the meeting of brethren of all names on 
 the great free demesne of modern soci- 
 ety, where the yet remaining conquests for 
 
Unity ^ through Working Agreements, 22g 
 
 the human race are to be secured. It 
 seems almost Hke a lack of faith to tell 
 people to go to work along the lines of 
 their affections, instead of first agreeing 
 to believe together ; but the heart has as 
 much to do with the operation of the 
 Christian religion as the head, and where 
 the reason interposes difficulties the heart 
 sweeps them away with a large broom. It 
 is through the channels of cooperation for 
 the industrial, social, and personal im- 
 provement of our fellow-citizens that we 
 are to take steps that lead to the enlarge- 
 ment of personal character and bring 
 people together in righteousness. It is 
 here that the words of the Master come 
 true : " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 
 the least of these my brethren, ye have 
 done it unto me." 
 
 Ecclesiastical unity in the Church of 
 God in this world may or may not be 
 reached in the course of time. It seems 
 far off to-day. It may be, as in so many 
 other things where man plans and God 
 
2}0 The Church in Modern Society. 
 
 disposes, that the divine realization is to 
 be different from what men fondly expect. 
 But there are certain lines of action about 
 which there can be no dispute. If the 
 great denominations of Christendom work 
 in the social field where there is a suffi- 
 cient call for all their energies and secure 
 to us better homes, better schools, better 
 laws, better conditions of life, better en- 
 vironment for the individual, greater free- 
 dom, more healthful action, and the re- 
 moval of an increasing number of the nega- 
 tions and obstacles that are in the way of 
 the free growth of body and soul, there 
 will be such growing love toward men 
 inspired by such love toward God, that 
 all Christians will lose sight of their differ- 
 ences in the discovery that their agree- 
 ments are the sufficient basis on which 
 society in this world can be so organized 
 as to have in itself a foretaste of the satis- 
 factions of the world to come. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adam, the leader of the family, 2. 
 Arnold, Dr., principle of, in 
 Rugby School, 151. 
 
 Bishops, Declaration of Ameri- 
 can House of, in 1886, 196. 
 
 Briggs, Dr., statement of Pro- 
 testant drifts and theological 
 positions in his book entitled 
 Whither, noticed, 202-205; 
 his attitude toward unity, 207- 
 209. 
 
 Christianity, outside the state 
 in its early hisiory, 19, 20; col- 
 ored by paganism, 20 ; perma- 
 nent influence of, 65 ; its com- 
 prehensive form missed in this 
 country, 76 ; a spent force, 81 ; 
 special defects in American, 
 i7g; how it can leaven our civ- 
 ilization, 211 ; not worth any- 
 thing outside of institutions, 
 213. 
 
 Church, its growth from the 
 family, i ; its institutional char- 
 acter, 2 ; why it has ruled, 13 ; 
 Jewish, a theocracy, 14; its 
 history, how written, 15 ; its 
 sanction, 18 ; how developed 
 in America, 33, 35 ; its defect, 
 36; its characteristic in the 
 Middle Ages, 38 ; in disintegra- 
 tion, 39 how different from 
 the state, 50 ; problem before 
 it, 52 ; not changed toward so- 
 ciety as the state has been, 56, 
 57; what it is to-day, 58; its 
 ethical relation to the commu- 
 nity, 65; its successful method, 
 66; its work and method, 66 ; 
 its broader identification with 
 life, 68; sphere of man's spir- 
 itual education, 75 ; its compre- 
 hensiveness, 76; what it has 
 
 to recover, 80; conservator of 
 divine movement in the world, 
 84 ; its aim and purpose, 85 ; 
 its breadth, 86; its position in 
 modem life, 88; spiritual me- 
 thods of, 90-109; related to 
 social order, 135, 136 ; what it 
 lacks in the United States, 137, 
 138; compared in its methods 
 with the state, 139; its place 
 as a moral authority, 142; in 
 the spiritual guidance of social 
 life, 144 ; drawing ilie masses, 
 147-153; development in the 
 nation, 159; in America, vol- 
 untary and free, 174; methods 
 of work too restricted, 177; 
 weakness of Protestant church- 
 es, 183; what each one lacks, 
 185-189; the Anglican, in its 
 American growths, 186; what 
 it supplies to Protestantism, 
 187; the organic breadth and 
 freedom needed to-day, 188; 
 its distinct office, 190-193 ; the 
 working principle of, 194, 195 ; 
 what Episcopal, has to learn, 
 200; regal idea of, 213; what 
 marks its future development, 
 2i6-22i ; growing convictions 
 about the American, 225. 
 Church, Collective, a combina- 
 tion of Christian organizations, 
 48 ; its transitional relation to 
 modern society, 54 ; difference 
 between its factors in Europe 
 and America, 55 ; its place in 
 economic and industrial life, 
 142 ; what it does for the state, 
 165 ; how it approaches man- 
 kind, 221. 
 
 Ewald's History 0/ Israelhrm^'S 
 out strongly Jewish theocracy, 
 74. 
 
232 
 
 Index, 
 
 Family, the beginning of social 
 order, i ; its part in social in- 
 stitutions, 9, id; and church 
 among the Jews, 19; imper- 
 fectlj: developed to-day, 31; 
 how influenced by the church, 
 124-133; idea of its wholeness 
 lost, 128. 
 
 God, how present in the world, 
 69; method of revelation, 71; 
 how knowu in the church, 73; 
 his immanence in society, 78. 
 
 Hegel, definition of religion, 156. 
 
 History, its value in tracing the 
 growth of institutions, 7, 8 ; 
 how it is to be studied in insti- 
 tutions, 23, 24. 
 
 Home, the unit of society, 1 1 1. 
 
 Incarnation, basis of Catholic 
 idea of unity, 18 1. 
 
 Individual man, his sphere in- 
 creased by the Reformation, 
 28, 29 ; his growth faster than 
 that of institutions, 58 ; what 
 the church does for him, 94, 95. 
 
 Institutions, how far divine, 2, 
 5 ; their functions, 3 ; their 
 place in history, 4, 5 ; difference 
 between them and personality, 
 62. 
 
 Keblf, his manner at baptism of 
 children, 99. 
 
 Laity, what their place is in 
 
 different churches, 175, 176. 
 Le Maistre quoted, 190. 
 Leaders, spiritual, 169, 170. 
 
 Man, origin of, 93. 
 
 Marriage in Europe and Amer- 
 ica, 114. 
 
 Martineau. Dr. James, 47; his 
 view of the Church of England, 
 193. 
 
 Modern life, its weakness, 31-37. 
 
 MuLFORD, Dr., his Nation quot- 
 ed, 155-160. 
 
 Nation, its moral character, 161 ; 
 relation to spiritual leaders, 
 169. 
 
 Potter, Bishop, rebukes politi- 
 cal corruption, 170. 
 
 Papal Syllabus of 1864, its ef- 
 fect on Christian unity, 1S2. 
 
 Protestantism, not negative in 
 civil and political hfe, 182. 
 
 Reformation, begins the mod- 
 ern world, 25 ; opposed to the 
 institutional order of society, 
 26-30 ; its principle, 34 ; its 
 great defect, 35. 
 
 Religion, American, defined by 
 John Weiss, 171 ; its great 
 drawbacks, 178; its defect in 
 its individualism, 179; too nar- 
 row for its field, iSo. 
 
 Religion and society, their sep- 
 aration historically traced, 41. 
 
 Sacraments, their personal 
 value, 102. 
 
 School, place of the public, 10; 
 the support of democratic ideas, 
 1x6-124. 
 
 Society, the source of primitive, 
 in institutions, i ; democratic, 
 4; beginning of modern, 11 ; 
 civil, its sphere in modern life, 
 27 ; church's mission to, not 
 yet realized, 58 ;_ its need to- 
 day, 60; institutional idea of, 
 overlooked, 81. 
 
 State, its relation to family and 
 school, 9 ; a moral and spiritual 
 organism, 72. 
 
 Unity, Christian, must recognize 
 institutional character of Chris- 
 tianity, 187 •, what the Angli- 
 can Church contributes to it, 
 190-193; Dr. Briggs _ on, 207 ; 
 reached through working agree- 
 ments, 211; ethical and spir- 
 itual in this world, 212; formal, 
 216; how practically realized 
 now, 22;, 230. 
 
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