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 THE CHURCH’S TASK IN THE 
 
 NEW AGE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM PALMER LADD, M. A., B.D., 
 DEAN OF THE BERKELEY DIVINITY SCHOOL 
 
 BEING THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED IN MIDDLE- 
 TOWN, CONNECTICUT, ON THE DAY OF SS. SIMON 
 AND JUDE, OCTOBER 28TH, A. D. 1918 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
THE CHURCH’S TASK IN THE NEW AGE 
 
 As the war draws to an end we become increasingly aware that we 
 are approaching a new era in the life of the nation, and indeed in the 
 history of our civilization. The old world into which we were born 
 and in which we grew up, the social, economic, and political world of 
 the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the world we have been 
 so familiar with and habituated to, is in a state of decline and fall. It 
 is still with us indeed. Except in Russia, the stress and emergency of 
 the war has kept it together. In this country, so little racked as yet 
 with the misery of the great conflict, it preserves with much success its 
 former outward appearance. But here and everywhere its inner vital¬ 
 ity is sapped. Its friends speak in whispers. A fatal end impends. It 
 is about to pass from the scene forever and be reckoned, as the soldiers 
 say, a “casuality.” 
 
 As Christians and as Churchmen we do not need to bewail its demise. 
 It was not a Christian world. It was without understanding, dull in 
 conscience, shallow in heart. It was mad with the love of what the 
 New Testament calls the root of all kinds of evil. The material luxury 
 it sought and cultivated is the enemy of the things of the spirit. It 
 was deaf to the appeal of the cross, uninterested in the missionary 
 enterprises of the Church, unresponsive to the Christian appeal for 
 brotherhood and social justice. Above all, it was too content with 
 itself to be in any sense a Christian world. We will not regret its death 
 and we can turn with courage and alacrity to the task of creating in its 
 stead a new world which shall be not only better but of a better kind. 
 
 This is all of course only figurative language. There are in life no 
 clean-cut endings and beginnings. The periods and epochs into 
 which the historian divides human progress have no actual existence. 
 Nowhere shall we reach the end of the old or the beginning of the 
 new. The new has, in fact, already come. We are living already in a 
 new world, with its new hopes and fears, its searching questionings, 
 and imperative call to action. 
 
Our whole national outlook has changed with the tide of recent 
 events. With what rather languid interest we were once accustomed 
 to read of European discussions over spheres of influence in northern 
 Africa, or of the rival constructions of strategic railways in Asia, or of 
 the periodic bomb-throwings which so often accompanied the peregrin¬ 
 ations of the royalties of the old world! Now even the dullest can un¬ 
 derstand how such things have plunged our peace-loving nation into a 
 great war. We can no longer sit apart from the nations as listless 
 spectators of their affairs. The old policy of careless isolation has 
 broken down. We have suddenly become active participators in the 
 politics of the world, and have taken an important place in the family 
 of nations. 
 
 A short time since how little did we regard the lives and interests of 
 the strange colonies of European folk which were to be found in the 
 great industrial centres of this and other states! Now, even the undem¬ 
 ocratic have been aroused by the shock of the war to take up with 
 energy the task of the “Americanization,” as it is called, of these our 
 foreign-born fellow citizens. We are acquiring a new and more humane 
 conception of our civic duties of every sort. We are almost daily startled 
 at the strides that we find can be taken without protest toward the 
 transformation of selfish, long-established habits. We welcome govern¬ 
 ment regulation of the details of our daily lives, the management of 
 our food, drink, clothing, transportation, and, what is more, we are 
 voluntarily responding to government appeals and submitting ourselves 
 to regulations of various kinds. Some are learning for the first time 
 that sacrifice and service are an integral part of life. Most important 
 and significant of all is the splendid enthusiasm with which the young 
 men of the nation have responded to the call to military service, a 
 response which is at once a break with the old and the promise of a 
 new and better order, wherein so fine a spirit shall find some worthy 
 field for its expression and exercise. 
 
 And now must we not face the difficult but extremely important 
 question, how shall the spirit of the Church respond to the new spirit 
 in the nation? How shall the Church change with the changing age? 
 For the fact that the Church will continue to preach its everlasting 
 
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gospel, to teach its doctrines and administer its sacraments, to train 
 men in faith and love and duty, need not blind us to the fact that it 
 must adapt these things to the new needs of the time, and bring out of 
 its treasure things new, as well as things old. “The Church changes’’, 
 says Newman, “that it may remain the same.’’ It has changed in 
 every age. Change is one of the marks of the true Church. We are 
 bound to ask ourselves, then, what ought the Church to undertake to 
 do in the face of the new needs and new opportunities in the national 
 life? What ought to be its policy and programme? 
 
 For some help towards answering this question may I ask you to 
 look back with me at the history of the Church, and to consider for a 
 moment how it has, in fact, fulfilled its mission in the changing order of 
 the civilization of Western Europe. 
 
 When the Christian Church began its career in the world a great 
 Empire was in possession. It looms in the background of the New 
 Testament picture. Caesar Augustus sends out a decree that the whole 
 world shall be taxed, Pontius Pilate governs Judea, Claudius banishes 
 Christian Jews from Rome, the Apostle Paul, a free-born Roman 
 citizen, is taken across the Mediterranean to make his appeal in Rome 
 before the judgment seat of the Emperor Nero. 
 
 Within this great Empire, so prosperous, so successful, and invincible, 
 imposing its rule on the whole civilized world and giving peace and 
 order to the nations, the Church grew into being; a small, voluntary 
 society, made up in large measure of the humble and the poor, organ¬ 
 ized on the principles of democracy, filled with the spirit of brother¬ 
 hood, seeking a heavenly not an earthly kingdom. Ignored at first, it 
 spread both in adversity and prosperity. It became the rival of the 
 empire, and, when the empire fell, the Church lived on, gathering to 
 itself the best traditions and hopes of mankind. 
 
 In the mediaeval period there fell to the Church what it had in the 
 earlier period despised, a kingdom upon this earth. It took up the 
 burden of civilization which the Empire had dropped. It threw itself 
 into the stream of the world’s life. It acquired property and learned 
 to defend it. In a time of confusion its bishops were constrained to act 
 as civil magistrates and administrators. Reaming and the arts survived 
 
under its protection. Men’s minds as well as their persons and posses¬ 
 sions owned its sway. All humanity and all human life became its 
 province. Every social activity, art, science, literature, trade, industry, 
 politics, war, passed within the dominating influence of the all-power¬ 
 ful Church. At its head was a pope. And we shall hardly understand 
 or do justice to the mediaeval papacy unless we are willing to see it at 
 its best and to understand how it was lured on by the splendid ideal of 
 a unitary state, a “league of nations” if you will, ruled by the best, a 
 divine gospel, and a vicar of the Perfect One, a servant of the servants 
 of God. These were the ages of faith, and the supreme act of faith 
 was the Church’s faith in itself, so stupendous that it did not hesitate 
 to put through the torture of the Inquisition those who dissented from 
 its rule, in order that they might be relieved of the tortures of eternal 
 damnation. 
 
 In the modern period, which begins with the outbreak of the Protes¬ 
 tant reformation, the Church loses its unique and privileged place. 
 The nations become independent of the Church, and one after another 
 of the various human activities which were once the nurslings of the 
 Church pass out of its control. In the Protestant world corporate 
 religion falls into discredit, and an individualised religion takes its 
 place. Subjective experience becomes all-important. If the dominant 
 note of the early period of the Church was that of a kingdom in heaven, 
 and of the mediaeval period that of a kingdom on earth, the last period 
 has, in general, sought its kingdom within the mind of man. In the 
 modern period, too, with the advent of natural science, has come the 
 painstaking study of the Church’s scriptures and of its traditional 
 doctrines, resulting in a more adequate understanding of the essentials 
 of the Christian faith. And the Church has in some degree, we may 
 hope, risen out of the ignorance and worldliness which in the middle 
 ages so greatly neutralized its efforts for good. 
 
 We are living to-day at the beginning, perhaps, of another great age 
 in the life of the Church. Can we relate our hopes for this new age 
 to the Christian tradition of the centuries past? How shall we do so? 
 
 From the early period we can and must revive something of that 
 passion for brotherhood and fellowship which characterized the first 
 
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Christian communities. We must recover, too, the unity of organization 
 which was the necessary embodiment of that spirit of brotherhood and 
 fellowship. We must conquer our unchristian sectarian rivalries and 
 divisions and exemplify within ourselves the Christian principle of 
 neighborly love before we can ever advance to large conquests against 
 the powers of evil in the world without. 
 
 We shall not underestimate our inheritance from the modern period. 
 We may hope to retain its respect for conscience, its appreciation of 
 the worth of the individual and of the subjective elements in religion, 
 its zeal for truth. 
 
 But to-day are we not looking for some larger conception of religion 
 than that which has prevailed so widely since the days of L,uther and 
 Calvin? In the Church as in the nation the need is for something more 
 uplifting and compelling than even the best form of individualism. 
 We seek the conversion of individuals, yes; but how impotent is the 
 converted individual in an unconverted society! Individual penitence, 
 yes; but a collection of penitent individuals will never make a regener¬ 
 ate society and what we really need is whole nations, cities, com¬ 
 munities, Churches, penitent, and doing works meet for repentance. 
 
 So we are brought back, are we not? to face the task which con¬ 
 fronted the mediaeval Church, and to desire nothing less than the 
 redemption of society itself. Recognizing that individual redemption 
 can become effective only in a redeemed social order, our ambition 
 must be to win acceptance of the gospel by society no less than by the 
 individual. We shall desire to bring our religion to bear on all the 
 social activities of the modern world, and to labor for a new politics, a 
 new trade, a new industry, a new art, literature, and science, permeated 
 through and through with the Christian ideal. The mediaeval Church 
 grievously failed; and this was in part, certainly, for the reason that it 
 never frankly faced its task. We, too, may fail; but at least we can 
 frankly avow our purpose, and can set ourselves consciously, and, if we 
 will, with devotion and hope, to the task of building up here on this 
 earth in our own time a veritable kingdom of God. 
 
 If we look toward the political sphere, we must needs see in the 
 present international situation an inspiring challenge to Christian effort. 
 
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Our country has come to a moment of extraordinary opportunity. The 
 thoughtful Christian believer cannot doubt that God has chosen this 
 people as truly as of old he chose the Israelites for a work of peculiar 
 service to the nations of the world. “We fight,” says President Wilson, 
 “without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for our¬ 
 selves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples.” We know r 
 this to be true; our motives are pure. We are free from many of the 
 age-long prejudices which afflict peoples less young than ourselves. 
 Our resources in money and in other sorts of wealth are immeasurable, 
 and for the most part untouched by the war. We are, in fact, in a 
 position to work effectively for a peace settlement on the principles of 
 charity no less than justice, and for an era of good-will following 
 peace. National animosities and rivalries have been beyond measure 
 sharpened and embittered by the war; they will not quickly subside. 
 On the other hand friendships have been formed and tested and 
 deepened. We face a day of decision. Are we to build our new 
 national and international politics on the friendship and go on to 
 greater friendships, or on the rivalries and go on to a round of unend¬ 
 ing rivalry? It is a question. But there ought to be no question as to 
 the Church’s mind, and as to the side on which the whole impact of its 
 influence should be brought to bear. Nor can there be any doubt 
 that the influence which the Christian Church could exert would be 
 decisive, and fruitful of enormous good. 
 
 Our people have made sacrifices during the war for our allies. We 
 have done it in order to win the war. But when the danger is past, and 
 enthusiasm dies down, what shall we do? How about the restoration of 
 shattered towns and devastated provinces? How about the feeding of 
 hungry friends and enemies? How about the war debts of the nations 
 which fought for our liberties long before we entered the war? Shall 
 our rich fortunate country come to the rescue as a Christian brother 
 and bear all it can of the common burden, or shall we hug our wealth 
 and draw back into a selfish national indifference to the misfortunes of 
 the old world? What shall the Church do to inspire the nation to great 
 adventures in helpfulness, to a chivalrous spirit adequate to the needs 
 of humanity? This is our day of decision. It is a time, certainly, for 
 
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the Church to revive all its traditions, and they are many and glorious, 
 which identify it with works of friendliness and reconciliation and 
 unification, a time to cultivate that pure religion which is so potent a 
 force in destroying the barriers between nations, which ignorance and 
 indifference, sloth, pride, and prejudice so readily and effectively build. 
 
 Again, consider what it might mean to win the acceptance of Chris¬ 
 tian principles in trade. It is a truism to say that trade as now carried 
 on is war. Conducted under rules, to be sure, and with some regard 
 to public opinion, as all warfare is, with a certain mercy to the non- 
 combatant and to those who are put hors de combat, but in general ruled 
 only by expediency, essentially unfeeling, giving its rewards now to 
 the strongest, now to the possessing and privileged. 
 
 In the present crisis all governments have in an unprecedented way 
 undertaken the supervision of trade and finance, and regulated them 
 for the common good. But after the war what ? The world will be 
 poorer by many billions. There will be a demand for capitalistic 
 effort, and a rush for trade advantage. There will be a temptation to 
 foster monopolies, to favor the few at the expense of the many, and to 
 indulge in new forms of corporate selfishness. It must be the part of 
 the Church to help in the creation of a new standard of business ethics 
 superior to the old. The Church must press home Plato’s question, 
 “ What is justice ?” And it must not be put off with an answer which 
 conforms to existing convention, but does not satisfy conscience, nor 
 fit the realities of life. Business can doubtless be so organized that its 
 rewards shall go less generally than now to the shrewd and merciless, 
 and more often to the generous and public-spirited, and conditions can 
 be secured that will make of a business career an opportunity for altru¬ 
 istic service as promising as the Christian ministry itself. 
 
 Time fails for an exercise of the imagination on the application in 
 detail of Christian principles to the many realms of social activity, 
 to industry and art, literature, philosophy, and education. Industrial 
 problems will certainly press for solution after the war. The situation 
 will not be met by improvement of conditions merely. There must be 
 a new order. The demand of the worker for a life of self-respecting 
 freedom, for the opportunity to exercise individuality and the creative 
 
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impulse in his work, for a larger share in the control, and a larger 
 financial return from the product, of his labor is sure to grow more 
 urgent. The clergy if they are ever to make this Church a Church 
 of the whole people and not the Church of a class simply must become 
 the champions of other interests than those of the wealthy and privi¬ 
 leged. They must give the Church some worthy share in the further¬ 
 ance of the coming industrial democracy. Art to the Christian must 
 cease to be merely the plaything of the rich; it must be, as it was in 
 the Middle Ages, of the people and for the people; the Church has no 
 more honorable tradition than that it has been the patron of the arts 
 and the promoter of civilization and culture. Literature, philosophy, 
 and education can under the touch of the Gospel receive an access of 
 life, and gain a new dignity and usefulness as they take their place in 
 the new order, the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Such is the task that confronts the Church. It is not a small or an 
 easy one. Indeed a programme so large may well seem impracticable 
 or perhaps unattainable for any Church, even one much more enlight¬ 
 ened or Christian than any that exists or is likely to exist in our time. 
 But to the Christian disciple the question should not be how difficult ? 
 but how right? No task need be too large or arduous for a Church 
 with a divine mission, a Church which can be, to use Augustine’s 
 phrase, “patient because eternal.” 
 
 And there is another and peculiar reason why our generation may go 
 on with confidence and hope. We have at our hand a great, hitherto 
 unused, source of power; long known, it is true, in name, and much 
 acclaimed, but little understood, and quite unrecognized in the great¬ 
 ness of its possibilities for good. I refer to Christian education. 
 Upon education and its unused resources thoughtful men to-day are 
 resting their hopes for reforming and rebuilding the world after 
 the war. Upon Christian education, if it be of the right quality, the 
 Church may well rely. 
 
 This brings us to the subject of education for the ministry—which 
 must be the urgent concern, obviously, of any plan of Christian edu¬ 
 cation. The educational institution where we are met is engaged pri¬ 
 marily in the work of training candidates for the Christian ministry. 
 
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And it is the importance of such work to the Church and to society, 
 always great but doubly so in these critical times, that gives a special 
 significance to the exercises of this day. 
 
 In a few months we shall see our young men by the tens of thousands 
 returning from the trenches across the sea, returning, many of them, 
 we cannot doubt, with the grim determination in their hearts that the 
 sacrifices they and their brethren have made shall not have been 
 in vain, but that the new world they are to have a hand in building 
 shall be fashioned into a different world from the old, and a better one. 
 Many are the forms of service which will lie open before these young 
 men. There will be opportunities unparalleled for business men, for 
 captains of industry, for labor leaders, for philanthropists, for educa¬ 
 tors. Even a commonplace vocation like farming will take on enor¬ 
 mous romance when it may be the means of producing food for a world 
 which during four years has been neglecting plows and pruning hooks 
 for spears and swords, and in consequence, as some think, actually 
 faces starvation. 
 
 Some of these young men will offer themselves for the Christian 
 ministry. They will not be deterred because the task set before them 
 is too great or the Church’s ideal pitched too high. But they will 
 expect, and they will have the right to expect, that the education offered 
 them shall be adequate to the greatness of the task to which they 
 are ready to devote their lives. It is our privilege to plan and to provide 
 for them such an adequate education. 
 
 What, then, could be considered an adequate and worthy training 
 for the life and work of those who will offer themselves for the minis¬ 
 try of the Christian Church ? It may be possible to summarize briefly 
 some of its chief characteristics. 
 
 In the first place, education for the ministry should partake of the 
 qualities of all good education. It should cultivate accuracy in think¬ 
 ing, clarity in expression, appreciation of the true, the good, and the 
 beautiful, discipline of the will, self-knowledge. It should eschew the 
 wholesale, mechanical methods of the modern American university 
 system, so alien and inferior to our English tradition. It should never 
 be deceived into thinking that the classification, evaluation, and 
 
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a gg re gation of subjects and courses has any important part to play in 
 real education, nor should it attempt to force the expanding intellectual 
 life of the eager learner into traditional ways of thought and fields of 
 study which are so often, probably, as distasteful and depressing to his 
 instructor as to the student himself. Good education should encourage 
 spontaneity, freedom, and individuality. It should fit for life. In short, 
 a divinity school, like any other school, would, if it were efficient, 
 somehow contrive to bring the best and most significant things to bear 
 upon the life and thought of the student, it would provide that indi¬ 
 vidual attention which makes for the elimination of faults and the 
 encouragement of all right effort, it would create an atmosphere and 
 environment wherein the student’s powers could develop naturally in 
 their full strength, it would seek to prepare him to become the most 
 useful possible member of the society in which he is to live and work. 
 
 Second, education for the ministry must mean special training in 
 religious devotion and Christian character. The divinity school differs 
 essentially from a university faculty in that it is a Christian school. 
 The divinity school professor in the relation he may assume toward his 
 pupils is quite unlike a professor of medicine or law. He cannot escape 
 the responsibility of being the pastor, guide, counsellor, and friend as 
 well as the class-room preceptor to those whom the Church has com¬ 
 mitted to his care. We may assume that earnest devotion exists in 
 those who seek a training in divinity, but the fresh, warm zeal of the 
 new-comer sometimes, it is to be feared, finds the dissecting method of 
 the ordinary lecture room a chilling and disappointing experience. This 
 may be inevitable and healthy as a beginning, but it should not be the 
 end. The student’s progress through the divinity school course should 
 be a progress in deepening religious conviction and in Christian 
 character. 
 
 Third, it should be, obviously, an education not only in the art of 
 living, but in the arts and occupations peculiar to the ministerial and 
 priestly calling. The ordinand must be trained in the conduct of wor¬ 
 ship, in reading, preaching, and music. He should be trained in pasto¬ 
 ral work and in whatever practical activities may be essential to his 
 professional efficiency. 
 
 12 
 
Fourth, it should furnish a knowledge of the Christian tradition and 
 of Christian truth. This may mean great learning. Ill betide the 
 Church which has no great thinkers and investigators engaged in the 
 pursuit of truth for its own sake, able by their clearer vision to shep¬ 
 herd the multitude into the superior path. The work of creative schol¬ 
 arship belongs more, perhaps, to the theological university than to the 
 divinity school which trains for the parochial ministry. But every 
 training school for the clergy must cultivate that love of the truth, that 
 openness of mind, that patience and humility in learning, which are the 
 fruits of scholarship and science at its best. 
 
 In the fifth place it should give to the candidate for the ministry some 
 knowledge and understanding of the world in which he is to live and 
 to exercise his office. It is here that the traditional divinity curriculum 
 most needs revision. If the Church’s task is to be the redemption of 
 society, the people will expect of the clergy very intelligent and very 
 well-informed leadership. If the Church is to fulfil its mission to all 
 mankind the clergy must be men who can understand, minister to, and 
 win the allegiance of their fellow men of whatever vocation, political 
 creed, financial status, social position, or moral condition. They must 
 understand movements as well as men, and learn to win them in the 
 only possible way, namely, by recognizing whatever in them is true, 
 and by bearing witness to and claiming for the glory of the Christian 
 God and his kingdom whatever in them is beautiful and good. They 
 must make the acquaintance of the bad as well as the good in men and 
 in movements. It is, as a matter of fact, within the best Christian tra¬ 
 dition that the clergy should be men of affairs. Cyprian, Chrysostom, 
 Gregory the Great, Arnold of Brescia, Hugh of Lincoln, John Colet, 
 Vincent de Paul, John Wesley, Charles Kingsley are representative 
 names in the history of the Church. There have been such men in 
 almost every age. There are such among the clergy to-day—men who 
 can read the signs of their time, who can sympathize with the thoughts 
 and feelings of all serious-minded men and women, who can cooperate 
 understanding^ with all forces for good and can thus bring the power 
 of Christ and his Church to bear in fullest measure on their day and gen¬ 
 eration. It is not necessary that the divinity student should take all 
 
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knowledge for his province, but a little learning may easily result in a 
 large sympathy, an access of humility, and a desire for greater knowl 
 edge. Such a result his training should achieve. 
 
 But Christian education means, of course, much more than education 
 for the ministry; and divinity schools may well become places where 
 many others beside candidates for the ministry shall seek counsel, and 
 religious teaching, and intellectual guidance. Education is not some¬ 
 thing only for the young. There is no standing still in the intellectual 
 life, no point where we are beyond the need for fresh stimulus and new 
 outlooks. Reading is an essential part of the well-ordered clerical life, 
 and guidance in reading may well come from a divinity school faculty, 
 whose members have the training and the leisure for acquiring knowl¬ 
 edge which the parish priest does not usually enjoy. Instruction for 
 layreaders, organists, Sunday School teachers, and other parochial 
 workers could also be successfully carried on from the divinity school 
 as a centre. 
 
 And this enlargement of its field of usefulness would greatly enrich 
 the divinity school itself. Those who came to it from the outside 
 would bring the practical knowledge, the sympathy,the spirit of earnest¬ 
 ness and the zeal which it is the privilege of the parish priest and the 
 active Church worker to gather in full measure from their first-hand 
 experience in meeting human needs. Few ethical and practical prob¬ 
 lems are solved by the labor of the solitary thinker. Light upon diffi¬ 
 culties is more likely to come from bringing together the report of the 
 experiences of many lives. The divinity school should be a place for 
 conference and the exchange and supplementing of experiences. Such 
 cooperation between the school and the parish would seem to be an 
 ideal condition for promoting in an effective way the Church’s mission 
 of redemption. 
 
 That the Berkeley Divinity School may live up to the highest ideals, 
 educational and Christian, is, I know, the desire of all who are met here 
 to-day to do it honor. It is not only those who love it who can see in it 
 a favored place. Situated in the oldest diocese of this Church, and in a 
 state supreme in the industrial sphere and crammed with the foreign- 
 born, it cannot escape contact with both the old and the new. Working 
 
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in closest harmony with all diocesan activities, yet completely in¬ 
 dependent of diocesan control, it draws its students year after year 
 from widely separated dioceses, and sends out its graduates to every 
 corner of the land. With a tradition of sane and large-minded church- 
 manship, with a record of devoted service, with the affectionate devo¬ 
 tion of many sons, it may well look forward to a continuance of useful 
 work for the spread in the world of the kingdom of Christ, and to a 
 future which shall be worthy of its traditions, its opportunity, and the 
 needs of the new age. 
 
 SUPPLEMENT TO BERKELEY DIVINITY SCHOOL BULLETIN, DECEMBER, 1918 
 
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