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BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER

THE GORHAM PRESS

Copyright, 1918 by Richard G. Badger

All Rights Reserved

Made in the United States of America

The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.

FOREWORD

These little sermons were preached by the author in the First Congregational Church of Boise, Idaho, during the late winter of 19 16-19 17. At their conclusion the earnest wish was expressed by the members of his Religious Education Com- mittee, at the head of which stood Dr. E. O. Sis- son, Commissioner of State Education, that they should be published.

This has been done In the earnest hope that some who have failed to find bread In much of official creeds and platforms of Christianity, may at least be encouraged to continue to look to Christ himself for food.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Changing Ideas 9

II Changeless Ideals 21

III Getting Rid of an Excommunicated

God 34

IV The Use and Misuse of the Bible . . 44 V The World, the Flesh, and the Devil 56

VI Times, Sacraments and the Man . . 65

VII Just Being Good 75

VIII The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 86

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CHAPTER I

CHANGING IDEAS

THE Impression that the golden age lies to the rear is one of the persisting fallacies of all time. Tennyson was true to human nature when he observed that

"The past will always win A glory from its being far, And orb into the perfect star We saw not when we moved therein."

In many quarters it is still more popular to eulogize one's ancestry than to emphasize one's posterity. This opinion, in the minds of people, that we have somehow run by the millennium with- out knowing it, is due largely to the fact that we have lost a good many orthodox anchors. But these disquieted souls are oblivious of the equally patent fact, that each age forges its own anchors. Different times grow different opinions as in- evitably as different zones grow different plants.

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The supreme business of the church is not to cherish a deposit of truth once delivered to the saints, but to cultivate the garden where the tree of truth grows. Christian dogma never yet has expressed truth fully, — it has approximated it, and this will continue to be the method indefinitely. Thinking about life and living out life do not stand in opposite armed camps. Though the former never fully explains or accounts for the latter, it will never cease to hold the attention of men. The deeper we think, the closer we come to God, who is supreme Mind. "We think God's thoughts after Him."

Religion in the twentieth century will have dif- ferent ideas about the world and itself than had religion in any other century.

I. Its Universe is Vaster. The area wherein its God once moved was "a right little, tight little," comfortably compact and precisely measurable uni- verse. On a waste of waters floated the earth. Over it arched the solid convex firmament. Above the firmament was another waste of waters. In the firmament were windows, and in the earth were doors, and when the windows above and the doors below were opened, the rain fell and the waters rose. From east to west, a little journey, ran the sun each day, like a "strong man, delighting to run a race." In his brief span he measured the entire heavens. Thus the earth was

Changing Ideas il

the centre of the solar and siderial movements. And "above the circle of the earth" sat the an- thropomorphic God. To him men looked up, — a static God, permanently resident in a static heaven. From it he made occasional excursions to see what men were doing. To it men aspired to climb, building a tower until God in self-defense brought their work to naught by a babel of tongues. Thus theology was built out of a geo-centric universe, a static heaven, an anthropomorphic and architect God, — and the whole scheme, God and all, was not much bigger than the scroll on which men wrote it down.

But long ago Copernicus smashed this universe to bits when he demonstrated that the earth went round the sun, not the sun round the earth. Later, the telescope infinitely enlarged the boundaries of the universe until Our brains reel under the con- cept of immensity. We envy the nonchalance with which men of science casually tell us that light, traveling 186,000 miles a second, takes three and a half years to reach us from Alpha Centauri, the nearest of the fixed stars. And if we have the patience to calculate how far distant this star lies from us, we are then asked to compute the distance of the farthest star, the light from which, starting when King Solomon built his temple, is just arriv- ing on this earth.

The theology of orthodoxy, however, is not

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built on these facts. It still sets up its localized heaven and hell, its limited universe of space, its architect and anthropomorphic God. And yet heaven is not above the earth, nor hell beneath, for there is no up nor down in the universe, but only out. God is not a builder retired from busi- ness, who in definite and measurable manner by rule of thumb constructed a compact and delimited celestial system once upon a time; for the system is not yet made, and is never the same from mo- ment to moment, and no one can comprehend the bounds thereof, for it has no bounds. These earlier notions of cosmogeny, celestial geography and the sporadic activity of deity have passed away from the realm of educated thought; but they remain embedded in the dogmas of ecclesi- asticism.

II. Its Time is Infinitely Extended. The idea of a definitely ascertained date on which things began to be, is a prime essential of the doctrines of orthodoxy. Man emerged from nothingness upon a certain day, 4004 years before Christ. All the vast, complex, and differentiated life of this planet has been crowded into this brief 5900 years since that time. Races, nations, literature, the arts and sciences, civilization, culture, — all these have been born and cradled and reared and many of them have died and been buried within this all too short span. Now the very brevity of this

Changing Ideas 13

world process necessitated a scheme of special and instantaneous creation. Six thousand years were not long enough for gradual growth. God must start some things at maturity. As Athene sprang full-armed from the head of Zeus, so biological species and ranks and orders leaped fully de- veloped from the earth. Yet, although we know that the longevity of great trees and the testimony of fossiliferous strata, the accumulated sediment of rivers and the logic of the growth of society, all point to an immeasurably longer time of human habitation, and organic and inorganic develop- ment on this earth, than the paltry 6000 years allowed by the theory of fiat and special creation, the conception of a definitely begun, a something- out-of-nothing-made, and a short careered universe still keep their tenacious grip upon orthodox theology. The longevity, if not the infinity of the time processes of creation, has not sufficiently im- pressed the minds of the makers of the doctrines of orthodoxy, to lead them to reject the obsolete and discredited, for the true and proven.

III. Its Man is Nobler. More significant are the changing ideas about man. Original sin and total depravity have been the twin mill-stones about the neck of humanity.

''In Adam's fall We sinned all,"

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was more than a nursery jingle, — it was a por- tentous doctrinal announcement of doom. From this oracular version of an ancient Semitic legend has come a whole theology of pessimism and human helplessness. It created for itself a termin- ology abounding in such words and phrases as "total surrender, our lost estate, moral inability, worthless worms, broken and empty vessels," and it magnified God's grace into everything, and whittled man's grit down to nothing.

To-day men believe that they are saved, not by being supplanted by God, but by being supple- mented by him. Otherwise creation would seem to have been a waste of God's time. They hold that if Adam tainted the race, God has had plenty of time since to make it wholesome. They assert that what man needs is not surrender but discovery. They believe that humanity, raised to its highest potentiality, is divinity. In brief: that salvation consists in true self-expression through God-contact, not in self-repression through God- usurpation.

Yet a single glance through the pages of the present day theology of orthodoxy will convince one that its doctrines are still deduced from the discarded premises of "depravity and fallen estate," and that it is still sceptical of the ability of man to do very much for himself, despite the fact of his divine kinship.

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Once, also, and not so long ago, man was a duality or a trinity. Body warred against spirit, and flesh against soul. Or mind and soul and body were engaged in Internecine strife. From this idea came asceticism, and the hurtful practices of flesh- mortifications and flagellations, for the sake of the emancipation and exaltation of the enslaved spirit. This dichotomy and trichotomy of the person has done Its injurious work upon the body of Chris- tian thought for centuries, and to-day its baleful effect Is felt in every organ. Squarely antagonistic to this Is the truth of this age, that personality Is a unity. So nicely blended are the elements of body and spirit that what helps and hurts the one, helps and hurts the other. The properties of the bodies are not devilish, bastard, and hostile to the properties of the mind. They are rather the legitimate Instruments of the real person, the self- knowing and self-directing ego. Modern psychol- ogy, as all really know, insists upon the closest and most Intimate relation between the interacting body and mind.

But the theology of orthodoxy is still permeated with the doctrine of man's duality or trinity, with the cognate thought of the opposition of the one to the other. Paul's dictum of a "warring to- gether of flesh and spirit" has been twisted out of Its figuratively spiritual meaning, and has been given a literal metaphysical construction which the

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words do not warrant.

So, too, man was once thought to be inspired through a kind of temporary soul-dispossession or suspended animation. His individuality was dis- carded for the time being. He was literally "not himself." He fell into a kind of holy swoon and saw visions and heard voices. Or he became a mere automaton, — a pen-point in the hand of the Almighty. He was an amanuensis, and wrote what God dictated. Now this was a quite logical deduction from the doctrine of man's total de- pravity. Of and by himself, man could not think or know or do one true or holy thing. Hence God had to pour him full of revelation, as a cup is poured full of water. Man had to guard against mixing up any ideas of his own with the ideas of God. He could be God's private secretary and take down at his dictation what he uttered, — no more. As a passive channel through which the wisdom of the Almighty might trickle, he was a success now and then. As an interpreter of truth through the medium of his own unenlightened in- telligence and personal experience, he was a de- lusion and a snare.

Now, however, it is believed on the best of evidence that inspiration means raising a man's individuality to its highest terms, not reducing it to the vanishing point. The portion of truth which each man utters is colored and characterized by

Changing Ideas 17

the peculiar temperament and prepossessions of the speaker. Moral and religious predispositions will affect the quality of his message to this extent, — that they will give to that nugget of truth which the speaker has found, that quality of alloy which is inevitably associated with his fallible nature. As the water takes its color from the soil through which it flows, so the utterance of truth takes its hue from the individuality of the speaker who is its mouthpiece. New psychology does not deny revelation, it denies the old mechanical "suspended animation" ideas of the method of revelation. It finds the channel of communication between the individual and God in that sensitive submerged self, the sub-conscious, upon which the mind of eternal Truth plays as a musician upon his instru- ment. Even as the musician can express only im- perfectly, according to the limitations of his Instru- ment, the thought of the composer, so can the Ideal of truth be mirrored forth but dimly and partially. Man does not passively record the picture of God like a sensitive photographic plate, but actively takes the phase of truth which he has found, and gives It shape and color and expression as it passes through the seething crucible of his thoughts.

IV. Its Processes are Inductive. Long ago men abandoned a priori methods of investigation. Bacon showed the folly of starting with a theory and then hunting for facts to fit the theory. Ex-

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perlences are the final test. We begin with them, and out of them we derive our principles of thought and action. We examine the universe and find in it order, system, unity, and regularity. We conclude, therefore, that there is a mind and will behind this cosmos, and we call this mind and will, "God." Once men would have begun with an idea about God, which they had excogitated from metaphysics, or logic, or fancy, and would have bent the facts to fit the theory, no matter what resulted to the facts.

The inductive process is more widely operative than we suspect. There is not a cherished conven- tion or institution which is not being weighed in the scales of induction. Do the facts of life, the needs of humanity, the large axiomatic and in- dubitable verities, intuitively known, warrant these same conventions and institutions? If not, must they be merely modified, or swept aside in totof The church, the state, the marriage relation, the home, the school, — these time-honored institu- tions, cherished and enriched by Christianity, must defend themselves against a growing clamor of criticism. If these institutions will minister to the fundamental needs of social man, if they will in- crease his vitality, dignity, and happiness, then they will stand. But if, in our highly complex and rapidly socializing civilization, these ancient con- ventions, like lumbering stage-coaches, will not

Changing Ideas 19

carry mankind safely and swiftly along the high- way of life, then they must be superseded by other vehicles more adapted to the time. Thus we start, not with an a priori theory about the inviolability and everlasting sanctity of these Institutions upon which we have built our modern world, but rather we start with experiences, aspirations, Intuitions; and rigidly Insist that these shall be conserved by the habits and conventions of society. Even If this method of Induction should be highly Inconvenient to religious practices, it undoubtedly has come to stay, and theology ought to make the most of it. But it is quite evident that the method of ortho- doxy is to make the institution — the church, the Sabbath, the sacrament, marriage, home and the like — the primary and paramount thing, whether the needs of a modern world are met adequately by them or not.

Evolution — which is another way of saying that organic life, individual and social, becomes differentiated through forces operating and in- herent within each body rather than through spe- cial acts of creation and modification exerted from without the body — Is known to-day to be the method of progress. It Is all the more regrettable, therefore, that evolution is anathema maranatha to the theology of orthodoxy, and that those who wear its sign and own its sway may not hope to enter the portals of an officially accredited evan-

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gellcal faith.

Honestly to recognize changing Ideas, and to adjust the timeless principles of religion to the temporary thought-forms of the day so that re- ligion may not be a thing apart, antique, and mis- understood. Is the heroic task of the Christian world. Truth Is a matter of all times, and has resources for all needs. From whatever point of compass the wind may blow, the mariner uses the same rudder to steer him to the desired haven.

"New occasions teach new duties.

Time makes ancient good uncouth, He must upward go, and onward. Who would keep abreast of truth.''

CHAPTER II

CHANGELESS IDEALS

AN idea is passive, an ideal is active. An ideal is an idea in motion, accomplishing some- thing,— that has the power to make the one who cherishes it its disciple, defender, crusader. An ideal is able to recruit men, set them to work, arouse energy. An ideal is an idea dynamized and magnetized. An idea is the object of men's con- templation; an ideal, the object of their convic- tion. The former is a picture to view; the latter, a motive to drive. Men hold the idea of knowl- edge, and about it they speculate, argue, discuss. They may admire and exalt it, but not follow it. But men hold the ideal of knowledge, and for it they will sacrifice health and comfort, toward it they will struggle with grim determination, and in comparison with it they will count all earthly riches and treasure as mere dross.

This being so, it follows that a man is worth his ideals, not his ideas. The former persist, the latter change. The latter touch the periphery of a man, the former become immanent in his moral

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consciousness. If religion seems open to convic- tion on the charge of failing to meet ideas, she be- comes vindicated as exalting Ideals. So long as she inspires men to seek ends, rather than to think on means, so long will she be invincible.

There are three ideals at least which religion has never lost, and which, as religion, she never can lose. These ideals, it is true, sometimes have been repudiated by pseudo-religion, dogmatism, and ecclesiastlclsm. But the life of genuine re- ligion depends upon them, and to them the truly religious man will cling. They are :

I. Sincerity, an ideal affecting the Integrity of a man's soul.

II. Loyalty, an Ideal affecting a man's rela- tion to God.

III. Unity, an Ideal affecting a man's relations to his fellows.

I. Sincerity. There Is only one thing more disastrous than dishonesty toward others, and that is dishonesty toward oneself. Unless one Is absolutely sincere with his own soul he cannot be sincere with others. Jesus found an appalling amount of insincerity being palmed off as genuine piety. He was compelled to call the respectable hypocrites of his day by some harsh names in order to do justice to his feelings, and to them. "Whitewashed sepulchres" and "dirty cups and platters" were some of the richly deserved epi-

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thets which he applied to them. This he did, primarily, because they were trying to fool people. They began by fooling themselves, and ended, of course, by fooling most everybody else.

The need of sincerity was never more urgent, largely because the demand of society, politics, ec- clesiasticism is "conformity." In college life a man who breaks with sacred tradition "queers himself." In politics, a man who leaves his party is disciplined. In society, a man who defies custom is ostracised. In ecclesiasticism, a man who re- nounces orthodoxy is banned. Seldom is the ques- tion raised: "If these excommunicants are sin- cere, should not their opinions be tolerated, even respected?" Conformity is not a sure prophylac- tic. Sincerity is. A tainted community will be dis- infected more quickly through heresy than through orthodoxy, if perchance the former is sincere and the latter not.

The very life of religion depends upon sincerity. It is not going to be a child's task to preserve this life. The official creeds are barnacled with doctrines which many honest men must repudiate. Yet there are those who conform to these creeds who cannot sincerely believe them. This seems a monstrous charge to make. But facts bear out this assertion. Those who hold holy orders in one of the historic churches of Christendom must agree that "divine grace can come to man only

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through the medium of an unbroken apostolic suc- cession." This means that in no other way, save through the sacrament of Holy Communion ad- ministered by a priest in that particular church, can the good, healthy life of God get into a man. Yet one who speaks from an intimate acquaint- anceship with the church in question, and who speaks uncontradicted, says: "Everybody knows that there are numbers of Anglican clergymen who do not beheve that the charismatic gift is de- pendent upon an unbroken apostolic succession. . . . Everybody knows also that no layman, not even a non-conformist minister, can take orders in the Anglican church without submitting to that ec- clesiastical ceremony by which he professes his be- lief in that doctrine."

Will any one doubt that there are large numbers of worshipers who in their hearts honestly ques- tion the truth of the assertion that Jesus was "con- ceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary," and yet who glibly patter the Apostolic Creed each Sunday? Even in the articles of faith of the so-called more liberal churches, there are items referring to the infallibility of the scriptures, the metaphysical nature of the Trinity, and the substitutionary method of the atonement, which should be expunged in the interest of strict hon- esty. "The world will little note nor long re- member" any creed the adherents of which are

Changeless Ideals 25

with reason suspected of holding it with certain strong mental reservations, or disingenuous ex- planations. "Let your speech be yea, yea; nay, nay;" said the great Master of sincerity, and added, "whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." And the implication may be as strongly in the direction of creeds that mean exactly what they say, as in the direction of a speech unadorned by expletives.

The prime business of a Christian is to as- semble the facts of life; mobilize the experiences; marshal the intuitions; then examine them with honesty, humility, and a mind hospitable to truth; heat them all with the fire of a pure enthusiasm, fusing them together for a great and unselfish pur- pose; and then, whatever the result may be, to hold to it. Let a man "will to believe." Let him bring to bear all the desire to be orthodox that he may. There will be unique occasions when what appears from the seething caldron is not the con- viction which he had anticipated. There will be times when the bland egg of creed may hatch an ugly duckling. And all the orthodox barn-yard fowls may cackle at him that he has got an "unde- sirable barn-yard citizen," and with many a cruel peck they will banish him from the domestic pre- cincts. But he knows that though it be not a prop- er duckling, it has a right to lie on the straw and sail on the pond. And some day, in the slow turn-

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Ing of the wheel of time, It will prove to be a glori- ous swan.

Let Christianity beware of compromising with sincerity for the sake of orthodoxy.

II. Loyalty. The religion of the twentieth century will insist upon that heart-attachment to the eternal God which shall save men. Nothing short of that kind of loyalty will avail. It was the only loyalty that counted with Christ. He em- phatically asserted that there was no law greater than allegiance to God with heart and mind and soul and strength. This puts all of a man in inti- mate contact with God. In feeling, in thinking, in aspirations, in his physical powers, even, he is to be an unswerving partisan of the Almighty.

Now loyalty, as a virtue, is not unknown to the theology of orthodoxy. But it is the minor and subordinate loyalty to sacraments, formulae, rituals, institutions and dogmatic infallibles. All these may be short of God. In point of fact, they generally are. The proof of this is found in the refusal of orthodoxy to abate its creed one jot or tittle in the face of radical and sweeping modi- fications of men's ideas of God. The rigidity of orthodoxy convicts it of disloyalty to the very principle about which it claims to be most ortho- dox. In utter loyalty a man may break with a theology. What happens? He is damned by the adherents of that theology. And for what? For

Changeless Ideals 27

disloyalty to the theology without reference to God. He who doubts this, easily may make the test. It win be necessary for him merely to ex- press his opinion that the Ideal of the Kingdom Is Independent of any belief In the total Inerrancy of Scripture, the substitutionary nature of the atone- ment, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection, the metaphysical trinity, the observance of the sacraments of baptism and the Supper, a spatial and material heaven and hell, and a membership In an evangelical church. Startling results will be sure to follow. Honestly believing all this, this same belief will not be "counted unto him for righteousness." His shrift will be short and his excommunication long. He has been disloyal to orthodoxy, — what matter about his loyalty to God?

As the demands of this age are for sincerity in the first place, so It Inevitably follows that if a man's sincerity leads him to break with orthodoxy in the interest of loyalty to God, there shall be nothing but approval for the departure. This demand will result In more flexible creeds, so con- structed as to be adjustable to honest modifications of convictions which occur from time to time. The heresy of the twentieth century is going to be insincerity in the first place, and then, as a corollary, loyalty to a creed which Is disloyal to God. To make it possible for a man to be both

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loyal to God and loyal to creed, will be the stimu- lating task of the religion of this age.

III. Unity. This is the ideal which affects a man's relations to his fellows. In sheer self- defense to-day, the church is putting this in the fore-front of its platforms. The alarming evi- dences of disintegration, so visible on every hand, may be unerringly traced to the schismatic spirit of sectarianism, which has made the church im- potent to mitigate the woes of a world in torment.

But at the very outset a distinction between unity and uniformity should be drawn. Nor is this done in a spirit of casuistry, nor in the inter- ests of an ecclesiastical system. It is not Intended to becloud the issue through logomachy. The argument is not to run thus:

1. The demand is for uniformity.

2. Doing away with sectarianism would mean uniformity.

3. But unity, not uniformity, is the real need.

4. Hence we shall not help matters by interfering.

The argument will run, rather:

1. The demand is for unity.

2. Doing away with sectarianism would mean uniformity, not necessarily unity.

3. A modified sectarianism would mean unity.

Changeless Ideals 29

4. Hence let us modify sectarianism, not

do away with it.

Uniformity is an outward, artificial, and non- vital agreement in method and order. Unity is an inner, spontaneous, and vital agreement in spirit and principle. You may have heterogeneity and lack of cohesion, and yet have uniformity. You may have dissimilarity in form and variety in expression and yet have unity. There may be unity in a democracy of states, differing widely in their several characteristics. There may be lack of unity in a monarchy, all parts of which look and act ahke. For religion to demand uniformity, therefore, would be for it to ask for a stone in- stead of a loaf. For it to demand unity, however, is simply for it to adopt life-saving precautions. If It can have unity by preserving all of the sects, they will be preserved; if It can have unity by destroying some of them, it will destroy them. The prime demand is unity, not uniformity.

A little consideration will convince any honest person that to persist and do its work and cope with hostile forces, themselves united, religion must make a much more serious-minded and reso- lute effort toward unity than it has heretofore made. No half-hearted compromises will avail. There must be sacrifice, the heroic cutting down to the quick, the true unselfish renunciation of cher- ished, but non-essential religious hobbies. The

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liberal will have to surrender some things, as well as the conservative, for the former has gone as far ahead of the procession as the latter has fallen behind. The process is going to be a painful one, and there is going to be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. But it is the only way.

Some churches are ready even now. As a rule, they stand midway between the rear and advance guard. They have announced their willingness to seek a common ground of conviction with other communions. They may not believe that it is necessary to abolish the institutional forms by means of which they work, simply in order to agree in spirit with those who hold other forms. But they are resolved never to allow ritual, rubric, sacrament, polity, or ecclesiastical tradition to stand between them and a good, healthy, sympa- thetic understanding with their neighbor denom- inations. When this spirit appears, unity is not far away.

It may make its approach along any one of sev- eral different avenues. It may come from lands of far suns and alien tongues, where the pagan, for his very soul's sake, must not suspect a divided Christendom. Here the missionary becomes an "Episco-presby-gationalist," combining the best that there is in one polity, with the best that there is in the others. For the untutored savage and the sophisticated oriental alike, it would be a fatal in-

Changeless Ideals 31

dictment against Christianity to differentiate be- tween the various cross-breeds and hybrids of Protestant faith which are on exhibition In the Occident. "Is Christ divided?" would be the more-than-sllencing rejoinder of the object of an evangelizing solicitude, to sectarian invitation. Back to the sluggish and muddled stream of a European and American conventionalized Chris- tianity may yet flow the purer waters of an Asian or African faith in Jesus, quickening and purify- ing the former, not the least evidence of which shall be the birth of the spirit of Christian unity. Or the very urgency of the present world crisis, which has wxU-nigh overwhelmed the church In Europe under the threefold indictment of infi- delity, inefl^clency and Imbecility, may operate to wipe out the schismatic spirit. For generations the established and non-established churches of the British Empire have stood locked in combat, each grimly determined to abate not a jot the classic hostility which they piously have received as a legacy from former generations. To-day the face of the world has changed. The trenches have made strange bedfellows. In the withering fire of death, old controversies have been forgotten. Back from the battle-front come the healing In- fluences. Says a leading spokesman for the non- llturglsts, "relations between Anglicans and Non- conformists are more cordial than they have ever

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been." In accepting an invitation to occupy the pulpit of the leading and most militant non-con- formist church in England, the Dean of Durham, speaking as a high official in the Established church, remarks: "I hold it the plainest duty of the parent church of England to draw closer and make effective for service the spiritual links which unite the divided sections of English-speaking Christendom in an unexpressed but conscious unity."

From another quarter the approach may con- ceivably come. The American clergyman, recognizing the loss of efficiency in the present sys- tem, whereby one minister is required to be an expert in many lines, thereby proving inept in some of them, pleads for such specialization and dif- ferentiation among the clergy, that the one who is most fitted for a certain department of Chris- tian labor may devote his whole time to that par- ticular work. Thus the one who possesses the homiletical gift predominantly shall not be com- pelled to squander his time and ability upon de- tails of administration, teaching, pastoral work, or social service. He shall be a preacher, supremely and exclusively, with the necessary time for study and the fusing of thought in the fires of meditation and feeling. The one who possesses peculiar teaching ability shall devote his entire time to re- ligious education in the church and community.

Changeless Ideals 33

Thus the specialization shall continue. But, by the nature of the case, this involves a more united Christian polity than we have. There must be amalgamation, re-grouping, elimination, a general re-arrangement of Protestant divisions, and a consequent reduction of separate competing bodies in every community if this is to be adopted. Small matters of disagreement in doctrine and polity must be dropped overboard by common consent. Comity and co-operation must be the watchword of the hour. In the Middle-West this scheme is seriously and vigorously advanced by the pastor of a large Baptist church. Asked whether, in the necessary abandonment of cherished views in order to bring about unity, he will be willing to make the form of baptism an optional one as be- tween sprinkling and immersion, he replies: "Whether we Baptists would make concessions in order to bring about the federation I suggest, so far as I am concerned personally, I should say 'yes* with great emphasis, and there are scores and hundreds of younger men in our denomination that feel exactly as I do."

Unofficial Christianity of the twentieth century is to be characterized by ideals, rather than ideas. Up to the present the latter, not the former, have been predominant. Among the most potent forces which will rule Christian men and women in this age will be sincerity, loyalty, and unity.

CHAPTER III

GETTING RID OF AN EXCOMMUNICATED GOD

THERE are two contrasting cries which come up to us out of the heart of the Old Testa- ment. The one is the despairing utterance of a God-fearing man who felt himself deserted by the Almighty in the hour of his crisis, and whose plaintive lament was, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him !" The other was the lofty rhetori- cal question of a soul transfigured,

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit.

And whither shall I flee from thy presence?"

The difference between these two cries, is the difference between the query where God is, and the query where God is not. It is the difference between the faith that God is somewhere, and that he is everywhere. The latter is the word of belief, but the former is not the word of infidelity. Both are expressions of faith at dif- ferent stages of rehgious development. The former means a God detached, remote, per- manently residing apart from his creation, with

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Getting Rid of an Excommunicated God 35

arrivals and departures according to a time- schedule, "subject to change without notice," characterized by interventions and special provi- dences, miracles, and theophanies. The latter means a God at hand, indwelling, permanently residing within his creation, controlling and in- forming it, as a spirit dominates a body, continu- ally expressing his will in the modus operandi of the universe, and so glorifying the natural order, that "every common bush's aflame with God."

Granting that the religion of the twentieth cen- tury must conceive of God under the thought forms of immanence, it remains to offer a suffi- cient apologetic in the face of the partisans of the theology of orthodoxy, who may not be acquitted of defending the doctrine of a detached and transcendent God, and therefore one who is more somewhere than everywhere. Now God cannot be both wholly within his creation, and at the same time wholly without it. It would be a contradic- tion in terms and in fact. But just as the true Jesus was within the visible, physical body; so the Almighty is within his creation. If this latter is the vital and prevailing view to-day, it may be de- fended on two grounds : first, our relation to God is a moral, not a mechanical one; second, our rela- tion to him is a natural, not a formal one.

I. Our Relation to God is a Moral, not a Me- chanical One. Our starting point must be the

36 Unofficial Christianity

presence of certain inconsistent and even antagon- istic elements in the world. Sin, evil, suffering, death, — these have to be accounted for without being disloyal to a God who is, by the nature of the case, both all-powerful and all-good. Some, like John Stuart Mill and, more recently, George Bernard Shaw, frankly wash their hands of such a hypothetical God. The former propounds his famous dilemma, — "Either God could have pre- vented evil and did not, — or he would have prevented evil, and could not. If I accept the first, I conclude that he is not all good. If I accept the second, then he is not all-powerful." Having led us into the maze. Mill leaves us there to find our way out, although for himself, he would frankly sacrifice God's omnipotence in order to save his benevolence. Shaw cheerfully chooses the same alternative, also, with this quite Shavianesque sug- gestion, that God himself, with the very best of intentions, is only experimenting and approximat- ing at good, doing the best with the material he has on hand, but impotent to get better results.

Now if the majority of us are constrained to re- ject both of these explanations, what remains? The believer in a non-resident Deity answers that evil has been precipitated into the universe by an all-wise power for inscrutable but good and suffi- cient reasons, and that at certain indeterminate times he will intervene in order to give the unl-

Getting Rid of an Excommunicated God 37

verse a shove toward righteousness, or repair the damage done by the depraved wills of men, or rectify some vagrant tendency In nature. Thus we get the "Interventlonallst" type of Christian, who looks to see Satan bound and cast Into the pit, and who ardently awaits the coming of the great and glorious day when Jesus shall return and set up his Kingdom. In brief, the only logical conclusion to which we are driven if we accept the premise of a transcendent God who Is at the same time both all-powerful and all-good, is the mechanical one. But note where that leads. Goodness Is to be accomplished by God through coercion. God be- comes an infinite arbiter with power to compel his decisions. Man yields because he must; God gets what he wants, that is all. The millennium is to arrive because God produces It, not because man is ready for It. It is a kind of transcendent case of *'mlght makes right."

On the other hand, we are convinced that this Is a moral universe. There is no satisfaction in thinking that God by dint of superior prowess Is going to get what he Is after in the end. In point of fact, man is not made good, he becomes good. For God to arrive from without periodi- cally and by special dispensation repair the uni- verse, would simply mean that he could make men behave themselves, — it would not mean that men were becoming good. Even so, a magisterial

38 Unofficial Christianity

disciplinarian might interfere to compose the vio- lence of a turbulent company, and by dint of physi- cal prowess or direful threat produce an appear- ance of calm. But there can be no real solution of evil until man desires to be right. Omnipotence cannot do more than make men refrain from evil, man must choose to be good himself.

This suggests what really has happened. God, ever with us, ever the indwelling spirit of the visible world, ever has willed good to us. As free spirits derived from him, we are allowed to accept his good intentions or not as we choose. Anything short of that would mean an artificial, toy universe for God to play with. In the clash of wills, hu- man and divine, God's sometimes goes down. "Gipsy" Smith used to say: "God can open the blind eye, or unstop the deaf ear, or paint a lily- bell, or form a dewdrop, or create the trill of the bird-song, or open the gates of the morning without a creak of their hinges, or set an atom swinging in the sunshine, with all its rhythm and poetry, as much as in the movement of a constella- tion; but he can save no man against his will." To become good, man must will to be good. He may overthrow God's good intentions for him. But the end of God's defeat is the beginning of man's edu- cation. The problem of a moral universe is to bring it to pass that man shall choose to follow after good, not that man shall be compelled to

Getting Rid of an Excommunicated God 39

make good. It Is when we