The Church and Modern Life Part 9

3. Our religion is Christianity. With the other religions of the race it is destined to be brought into closer and closer comparison and compet.i.tion, and that religion will survive and become universal which most perfectly explains the universe and provides for the wants of the human soul. All the indications are that the religion which survives will include the essential elements of Christianity.

4. All religions are rooted in the social nature of man, but Christianity, more than any other, is a social religion. It depends for its culture and propagation upon the social forces. Some form of social organization, like the church, is necessary to the life of religion.

Worship, to be sane and salutary, must be social; and the life of Christianity can find expression only in such cooperations as those for which the church provides.

5. As the life of religion is nurtured in social worship and service, so its fruit is gathered in the transformation of society. The primary function of the church is the Christianization of the social order. The business of the church is to save the world by establishing here the kingdom of heaven.

6. The church has very imperfectly performed this function. It has but dimly discerned and but feebly grasped the social aims of Jesus. It has tried to do a great many other things, some of them good things; but the one thing it was sent to do it has largely left undone.

7. A new reformation is therefore called for, and that reformation must accomplish what the reformation of the sixteenth century failed to accomplish,--the restoration of the social teachings of Jesus to their proper rank and dignity. As the reformation of the sixteenth century brought the individual to Christ as a personal Saviour, so the reformation of the twentieth century must bring society to Christ as a social Saviour, and must make men see that there is no way of living together but his way.

8. The church is therefore called to the redemption of society. But the work of redemption to which it is called is not a reconstruction of economic or political machinery; it is the quickening of the social conscience, and the reenthronement of justice and love in the place of selfishness and strife as the ruling principles of human society.

9. For the redemption of society a new evangelism is needed. The new evangelism will not emphasize the interest of the individual; it will rather emphasize the truth that the individual can only be saved when he identifies his own welfare with the welfare of his fellow men. And it will not try to win men by offering them ease and safety and comfort, but rather by showing them how tremendous are the tasks before them; what a mighty work there is to do in delivering this world from the bondage of corruption and selfishness; what hardship and toil and sacrifice are needed; but how sure the victory is for those who are able to believe the word of Jesus Christ and follow, whole-heartedly, his leadership.

Such are the characters and conditions under which the church of Jesus Christ presents herself in this new day to modern men. Her record is far from flawless; it is the necessities of logic, not the facts of history, which make her infallible. She has blundered along through the centuries, missing much of the work she was sent to do, and staining her garments not seldom with the soilure of greed and the blood of the innocent; but through all these generations the patient love of her Lord has been chastening her, and through many wanderings and stumblings she has come down to this hour. The light upon her candlestick has often grown dim, but it has never been wholly extinguished; the fire upon her altars has burned low, but it is still burning. She has not done all that she ought to have done, but she has done a large part of all that has been done to enlighten, to comfort, and to uplift humanity. And the discipline through which she has pa.s.sed gives some indication of the work she has yet to do. It is not credible that a wise Providence should have kept her alive so many centuries, and should have made so much use of her in the establishment upon the earth of the kingdom of heaven, and should have led her into a constantly increasing knowledge of Himself, if he had not meant to make her his servant in the great work now waiting to be done.

Her hour has come, and her task lies before her. It might be urged that she ought to have been better fitted for her work before she was called to undertake it; but that is not G.o.d's way. We get our preparation for great work in the work itself. We are called from the sheepfolds to lead the armies of Israel. We are sent out with a few loaves and fishes to feed the mult.i.tude. Our powers are developed and our resources are multiplied by using them. And though the church is far from having the equipment she needs for the redemption of society, the power and the wisdom will come when the work is bravely undertaken.

To whom, now, does this great enterprise of social redemption make its strongest appeal? It ought to appeal to all good men and women. It ought to enlist the powers of those who are in the meridian of their strength.

The men whose vision has been widened and whose wills have been invigorated in the great undertakings of industry and commerce ought to find in this proposition something worthy of their powers. It ought, also, to stir the hearts of those who have labored hard and waited long for the coming of the kingdom to hear a great voice saying, "Now is the accepted time: behold! now is the day of salvation!" To many of those who have not much longer to live life never seemed a thing so fair as it is to-day.

But this great appeal ought most strongly to lay hold upon the hearts of the young men and women of this generation. The enterprise is mainly theirs. If the new reformation comes, they will lead it on. If society is redeemed, it will be by their toil and sacrifice. If the church ever learns its business, it will be under their tuition. And it must be by their voices, chiefly, that the new evangel will be proclaimed.

The young men and women who have had the patience to read these chapters have been invited to consider some large and serious themes. It has been a.s.sumed that they did not care for kindergarten talk, nor even for the ethical plat.i.tudes to which youth are apt to be treated. There has been no talking down to them; they have been asked to sit where Jesus sat, among the doctors in the temple, to hear and answer questions, and to consider, with the rest of us, our Father's business.

All this tremendous work of social reconstruction about which we are talking must be done, and most of it must be done by them. It is to be hoped that they will be able to see the urgency of it, and to feel that it is something worth their while.

Those of us who have been permitted to come in contact with the more thoughtful young men and women of this generation, especially those in the colleges and the professional schools, have been made aware of a deepening conviction among the best of them that the kind of prizes for which the mult.i.tude are contending are not of the highest value. Great revisions have been taking place, during the past few years, in the estimates of success. Many careers which, but a little while ago, seemed enviable, now appear much less alluring. And while this change of att.i.tude is far from being universal, there is a goodly number of young men and women scattered through all our communities whose souls are kindled with social pa.s.sion, and who are asking not so eagerly how they may succeed as how they may serve. To these we have a right to look for leadership in the work of social redemption.

Many phases of this work will appeal to them. In education, in philanthropy, in journalism, in literature, in art, they will be called to serve; many philanthropies will invite them; the organization of industry upon cooperative lines will offer some of them a vocation, and the government will be upon their shoulders.

But what they are asked to consider here is the claim of the church upon them. That claim need not conflict with any of these other vocations, unless, indeed, the work of the Christian ministry should offer itself to their choice. That possibility, by the way, is well worth thinking of. Some of them, let us trust, will keep it in mind for further consideration. If the business of the church is what we have found it to be, and the new evangelism is such as we have outlined, the Christian ministry must offer to any man whose heart is on fire with social pa.s.sion a great opportunity. But for the present let us note the fact that upon those who are not to give their whole lives to the work of the church, the church has a claim, which they ought seriously to consider.

Whatever their callings may be, in whatever fields they may be laboring, the church will need their loyal service, and they will need its goodly fellowships and its inspiring cooperation.

The church which ought to be, and must be, is not for some of us, but for all of us. Even as the state is the political commonwealth to which all citizens belong, so the church is the spiritual commonwealth in which all souls should be included. The interests for which the church provides are the common human interests; it never can be what it ought to be, or do what it is called to do, until it gathers all the people into its fellowship. And therefore these young men and women to whom the future is intrusted must find their places in the church. The church needs them; it cannot fulfill its function without them; and we have seen that its function is a vital function; that it furnishes the bond by which society is held together.

The church is G.o.d's agency for leavening society with Christian influences; and these young men and women by whom the social order is to be reconstructed will be in the church. Its leadership will be committed to them. They will have the shaping of its life. Its life will need much reshaping, and that will be their work. What will they make of it?

1. They will make it, what it has always been, a place of worship; the shrine of the spirit; the home of Christian nurture; a school of instruction; a fount of inspiration; a seminary of religion; the meeting-place of man and G.o.d.

Attempts have been made in recent years to organize churches--or, at least, a.s.sociations which should take the place of churches--in which religion should be dispensed with; in which there should be more or less of ethical instruction and of charitable cooperation, but no recognition of any connection between this world and any other. That is simply a reform against nature, and it will never prosper. For, as Professor William James has taught us, in a great inductive study, the sum of all that is known about religion warrants us in saying:--

"(a) That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe, from which it draws its chief significance;

"(b) That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end;

"(c) That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof ... is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world."[29]

These are the indubitable conclusions of modern science; and the proposition to ignore the deepest fact of human experience will not be entertained by the young men and women of the present day. The church, under their leadership, will be a worshiping church, a praying church.

It will keep itself in close relations with that unseen universe from which its help must come. It will be a channel through which the divine grace will flow into the lives of men. And it will also be, what it has always been, a school as well as a shrine, a place where the teacher searches out and unfolds the truth and the prophet proclaims the message that has been given him.

2. Under its new leadership the church will continue to be a minister to human want and suffering. The charitable work which has always been emphasized in its administration will not be neglected, but it will take on a new character. There will be less almsgiving, and more of the kind of help which saves manhood and womanhood. The young men and women who are called to this leadership will understand the worth of souls--that is, of men and women; and they will be careful lest, in their relief of want, they undermine the character. Above all, they will feel that while it is the business of the church to care for the poor, its first business is to cure the conditions which breed poverty.

3. They will thoroughly democratize the life of the church, making it the rallying place of a genuine Christian fraternity, in which men of all ranks and stations meet on a common level, ignoring the distinctions of rich and poor, cultured and ignorant, and emphasizing the fact of Christian brotherhood. We have churches which profess democracy, but there is reason to fear that many of them are little better than oligarchies; that some of them come near to being monarchies. The new leadership will discern the importance of making every member of the brotherhood, no matter how humble, a partaker of its responsibilities, and a helper in its services. They will know that the problem of church administration is to make every man feel that he is needed. They will grasp the significance of Paul's figure of the body and its members, and will see that "those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary," and that "those parts of the body which are less honorable" ought to receive "more abundant honor." They will have workingmen in their vestries and their sessions and their boards of trustees. They will show to all the world that they have accepted the word of Jesus: "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren."

4. This means that the life of the church will not only be thoroughly democratized, but greatly simplified. All its administration will take on plainer and less luxurious forms. The splendors of architecture and art, of upholstery and decoration, of ecclesiastical millinery and music, with which we now so often seek to attract men to the house of G.o.d, will be put aside; and the followers of Jesus Christ will get near enough to him to have some sense of the fitness of things in the ordering of the houses of worship where the Carpenter is the social leader and where rich and poor meet as one brotherhood.

Instead, therefore, of permitting the church to be invaded and vulgarized by the luxury and extravagance of the world, they will turn the current in the other direction. The church, under the new leadership, will not take its cue from the world; it will enforce its own standards upon the world. "Out of Zion will go forth the law."

Bitter words were those spoken at a recent meeting of the Congregational Union in England by one of the greatest of English preachers.[30] "The common life of the home," he said, "is often a mere vulgar exhibition of the means of living. We try to persuade ourselves that showy living is essential life. In tens of thousands of English homes the mere show of things is the goal of a restless and feverish ambition. Everywhere we seem to be loitering and pottering about in the implement yard. Even in our universities we must have showy buildings, though we starve the chairs. All this peril becomes the more insidious when we pa.s.s into the realm of the church of G.o.d. Why, the 'means of grace' are often misinterpreted as grace itself. We are obtruding our badges and ribbons, our soldier's dress without the soldier's spirit, our music, our ministers even,--how they look, what they wear, what they do--they are all part of the wretched vulgarity of the modern spirit."

The two things are rightly put together. The ostentation of the home, the tawdry luxury and profusion of fashionable society, creep into the church and set up their standards there, and the religion of Christ puts on a costume in which its Founder would never recognize it.

We are dealing here with the very heart of the trouble in our national life, and the problem is one which must be solved by the present generation of our young men and women. The social conditions which are depicted for us by close students of the life of our luxurious cla.s.ses are ominous in the extreme. The cynical dishonesties and the brutal spoliations which have come to light in the realm of high finance and big business are the natural fruit of such a manner of life as many of our recent novelists have vividly portrayed. And the wanton extravagance of the House of Mirth would not exist if the majority of the people did not admire it. The outcry against it is oftener the voice of envy than of moral revulsion. The cure for this evil, as of most others, is found in public opinion; and the church must educate public opinion to reprove it, and the leadership of the church will be in the hands of the young men and women of this generation.

It will be evident to them that the place to begin is in the church itself. The heartless luxury of the world will not be chastened into simplicity by a church that surrounds itself with splendor and spends money lavishly upon its pleasures. They will know that a church which wishes to reprove the vanity and ostentation of the outside world must order its own life in such a way that its word shall be with power.

5. Finally and chiefly the young men and women who are to be called to the leadership of the church will feel that their main business is the work of church extension. But they will give to this phrase a little different meaning from that which it has generally carried. The church extension to which the boards and societies in the church have been devoted is the work of building new churches in promising fields. It is properly denominational extension. Something of this kind will remain to be done in the new day now before us, and our new leaders will doubtless have some part in it. But the church extension which is most loudly called for just now is the extension of the life of the church into every department of human life. It is more a.n.a.logous to what we call university extension work. The business of university extension is not the planting of new universities; it is the projection of the university into the community; it is the attempt to carry the light and the knowledge and the truth and the beauty for which the university stands down among the people; to popularize the higher culture and the finer art. That is a most praiseworthy enterprise, a most Christian undertaking. And something very much like this will be the church extension for which the new leadership will stand. Its aim will be to make a vital connection between the Christian church and every inst.i.tution or agency by which the work of the world is done, so that the influence of the church shall be directly felt in every part of our social life. It will consider the church as the nursery or conservatory, whose growths are to be planted out all over the field of the world. It will make the church the central dynamo of the community, connected by a live wire with every home, school, factory, bank, shop, store, office, legislative chamber, employers' a.s.sociation, labor federation,--with every organ of the whole social organism, so that the light and power which are in Jesus Christ shall be the guiding influence and the motive force of our civilization.

This is the work which remains to be done, and for which this present world is loudly calling. It is the work that Jesus Christ came into this world to do, and he will not see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied until it is done. The opportunity of realizing the social aims of Jesus, of organizing society upon the principles which he laid down, is offered to the young men and women of this generation. It will be open to them so to order the life of the church that in its democracy and its simplicity it shall represent Jesus Christ, and then to extend this life into industry and commerce and politics and art and social diversion, thus bringing all the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of the Christ. It will be their princ.i.p.al task to translate the sermons and the prayers and the songs of Sunday into the life of the shop and the factory and the office on Monday and the other days of the week.

That would mean, of course, a tremendous overturning in the business of the world; a radical revision of the ideals and standards of the great majority; a new point of view and a new aim in life for the most of us.

But such a peaceful revolution in our ways of life would be far less painful and disastrous than the revolution which our present habits are sure to bring, and it is the only thing which will prevent it. And if the young men and women of to-day will but discern this truth, they may have the honor of leading in the new Saturnian reign.

We hear in these days from earnest men many anxious questions why the message of the gospel fails to reach and convince the outside mult.i.tude.

"Why is it," good preachers say, "that there are so many people in all our communities--some of them very good people--who are not at all touched by our appeal? They do not seem to be interested in what we have to offer them. They do not appear to feel their need of it."

To this question more than one answer could be given, but there is one answer which needs to be well considered. One reason is that these men and women fail to discern, in the life round about them, the reality of the thing which we offer them. For Christianity is, as we have seen in these studies, not only an individual experience, but a social fact. And while we might not be qualified to judge whether the individual experience, in any given case, is genuine, we could see the social fact, if it were in sight. That social fact would be profoundly interesting to us, and it would be convincing. Nothing else is likely to convince us.

In truth, we cannot understand Christianity at all until we see it in operation in society. One man alone cannot give any idea of what it is.

As some one has said, one man and G.o.d will give us all that is essential in any other religion, but Christianity requires for Its operation at least two men and G.o.d. In fact, it takes a good many men and women and children, living together in all sorts of relations, to give any adequate exhibition of it. What we need, then, first of all, to convince men of its reality, is a good sample of it, in active operation--a great variety of good samples, indeed. When we have these to show, we can get people interested.

It would be difficult, if a very homely ill.u.s.tration may be permitted, to enlist the interest of any boy in baseball if you made it with him an individual matter. You might try to train him for any given position on the field, but if he undertook to study it out alone it would not be easy for him to understand it. In fact, it would be impossible. No one could learn the game all alone. The team work is the whole of it. And it would be absurd to expect any one to become interested in the game unless he could see it played.

To take a similar ill.u.s.tration from a somewhat higher form of art, you would not be likely to succeed in awakening enthusiasm in any one for orchestral music by giving him his individual part of the score to study and play over by himself. No matter what his instrument might be, the solitary performance of the part a.s.signed to it would be the dryest possible business. You could not convert any man to the love of orchestral music by any such process. But if he could hear all the instruments played together, and, better still, if he could play in with all the rest, that might be inspiring.

So you need not expect to convert any man to Christianity unless you can show him Christianity at work in human society. In considering only the individual application of it, its whole meaning and significance would be hidden from him. The team work is all there is of it. Let him see it in active operation, and it will awaken his enthusiasm.

This is, in fact, the essence of the new evangelism to which the young men and women of this day are called. Their business will be to take Christianity out into the field of the world and set it at work. It is for this that the leadership is intrusted to them. The church has been a long time coming to this, but it seems at last to be arriving, and the young people of this generation will be summoned to the great undertaking. Surely they may feel that a high honor and a heavy responsibility are thus put upon them. It is the most heroic enterprise to which the sons of men have ever been called.

Not all of them will respond to the call. But we may hope that there will be found among them a goodly minority to whom the appeal will come with commanding voice, and whom we may hear answering: "Yea and amen!

The work is ours, and we will not shirk it. It is work worth doing, and it can be done. To make a better world of this is the best thing a man can think of; and we believe that Christ's way is the right way. It has never yet had a fair trial, and we are bound that it shall be tried. We know that we shall not make ourselves rich or famous in this undertaking; but we shall see the load lifted from many shoulders, and the light of hope shining in many eyes; we shall hear the din of strife changing to the songs of cheerful labor; we shall share our simple joys with those who know that we have always tried to make their lives happier, and who cannot choose but love us; we shall find life worth living, and we shall die content."

Footnotes

[1] _Through Nature to G.o.d_, p. 189.