The Church and Modern Life by Washington Gladden
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Washington Gladden >> The Church and Modern Life
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of the book.
The Church and Modern Life
By
Washington Gladden
1908
Preface
"The time is come," said a New Testament prophet, "for judgment to begin
at the house of God." Perhaps that time ought never to pass, but if, in
any measure, the criticism of the church has of late been suspended, it
is certainly reopened now, in good earnest. Nor is this criticism
confined to outsiders; the church is forced to listen in these days to
caustic censures from those who speak from within the fold.
That such self-criticism is needed these chapters will not deny. That
the church is passing through a critical period must be conceded. But
the way of life is not obscure, and it seems almost absurd to indulge
the fear that the church, which has been providentially guided through
so many centuries, will fail to find it.
These pages have been written in the firm belief that the Christian
church has its great work still before it, and that it only needs to
free itself from its entanglements and gird itself for its testimony to
become the light of the world. Something of what it needs to do to make
ready for this great future, this little book tries to show.
Through all this study the thought has constantly returned to the young
men and women to whom the future of the church is committed; and while
the book is most likely first to fall into the hands of their pastors
and teachers, the author hopes that ways will be found of conveying its
message to those by whom, in the end, its truth will be made effective.
W. G.
First Congregational Church,
Columbus, Ohio, December 17, 1907.
Contents
I. The Roots of Religion
II. Our Religion and Other Religions
III. The Social Side of Religion
IV. The Business of the Church
V. Is the Church Decadent?
VI. The Coming Reformation
VII. Social Redemption
VIII. The New Evangelism
IX. The New Leadership
The Church and Modern Life
I
The Roots of Religion
The church with which we are to deal in the pages which follow is the
Christian church in the United States, comprising the entire body of
Christian disciples who are organized into religious societies, and are
engaged in Christian work and worship.
This church is not all included in one organization; it is made up of
many different sects and denominations, some of which have very little
fellowship with the rest. Among these groups are some who claim that
their particular organizations are the true and only churches; that the
others have no right to the name. Such is the claim of the Roman
Catholic church and of the High Church Episcopalians. Their use of the
word church would confine it to those of their own communions. Others
would apply the term more broadly to all who _profess and call_
themselves Christians, and who are united in promoting the teachings
and principles of the Christian religion.
The church, as thus defined, has no uniform and authoritative creed, and
no ruling officers or assemblies who have a right to speak for it; it is
difficult, therefore, to make any definite statements about it. It is
possible, nevertheless, to think of all these variously organized groups
of people as belonging to one body. In some very important matters they
are united. They all believe in one God, the Father Almighty; they all
bear the name of Christ; they all acknowledge him as Lord and Leader;
they all accept the Bible as containing the truth which they profess to
teach. The things in which they agree are, indeed, far more important
than the things in which they differ, and it is our custom often to
speak of this entire body of Christian disciples as "the church,"
forgetting their differences and emphasizing their essential unity. This
is the meaning which will be given to "the church" in these discussions.
The church is concerned with religion. As the interest of the state is
politics, of the bank finance, of the school education, so the interest
of the church is religion. Religion organizes the church, and the
church promotes religion.
Religion is a fact of the first magnitude. We sometimes hear ministers
complaining that the people do not give it so much attention as they
ought, but we shall find it true in all countries and in all the
centuries that it is one of the main interests of human life. There are
few subjects, probably there is no other subject, to which the human
race has given so much thought as to the subject of religion. The
greatest buildings which have been erected on this planet were for the
service of religion; more books have been written about it than about
any other theme; a large part of the world's art has had a religious
impulse; many, alas! of the most destructive wars of history have been
prompted by it; it has laid the foundations of great nations, our own
among them, and has given form and direction to every great civilization
under the sun.
It is not a churchman, or a theologian, it is Mr. John Fiske, one of the
foremost scientific investigators, who has said of religion: "None can
deny that it is the largest and most ubiquitous fact connected with the
existence of mankind upon the earth."[1]
About the size of the fact there is no disputing, but how shall we
explain it? Where did it come from?
The scientific people have puzzled their heads not a little over the
question where the life on this planet came from. They cannot make up
their minds to say that it came from non-living matter; and some of them
have ventured a guess that the first germs might have been brought by a
meteorite from some distant planet. That, however, only pushes the
mystery one step further back: how did it come to be on that distant
planet?
The origin of religion has furnished a similar puzzle to these
investigators. There are those among them who assume that religion is an
invention of crafty men who find it a means of obtaining ascendency over
their fellows. That it is all imposture--the product of priestcraft--is
the theory of some small philosophers. Such being the case, they expect
that the progress of knowledge will cause it to disappear.
To others it seems probable that religious ideas may have originated in
the phenomena of dreams. In the visions of the night those who have
passed out of life reappear; this gives room for the belief that they
are still in existence, and suggests that there may be another world
whose inhabitants exert an important influence over the affairs of this
world. According to this ghost theory, religion is all an illusion.
Such crude explanations are, however, not much credited in these days by
thoughtful men. It is easy to see that the foundations of religion are
deeply laid in human nature. Aristotle told a great truth, many
centuries ago, when he said that man is a political animal. That is to
say, there is a political instinct in him which causes him to organize
political societies and make laws; he is a state builder in the same way
that the beaver is a dam builder, or the oriole is a nest builder, or
the bee is a comb builder.
With equal truth we may say that man is a religious animal. The impulse
that causes him to worship, to trust, to pray, is as much a part of his
constitution as is the homing instinct of the pigeon. This natural
instinct is, however, reinforced by the operation of his reason. Feeling
is deeper than thought; we are moved by many impulses before we frame
any theories. But the normal human being sooner or later begins to try
to explain things; his reason begins to work upon the objects that he
sees and the feelings that he experiences. And it is not long before
something like what Charbonnel describes must take place in every human
soul:--
"Every man has within him a sense of utter dependence. His mind is
irresistibly preoccupied by the idea of a Power, lost in the immensity
of time and space, which, from the depths of some dark mystery, governs
the world. This power, at first, seems to him to manifest itself in the
phenomena of nature, whose grandeur surpasses the power or even the
comprehension of mankind."[2]
Toward this unknown power, or powers, his thought reaches out, and he
begins to try to explain it or them. He forms all kinds of crude and
fantastic theories about these invisible forces. At first he is apt to
think that there are a great many of them; it is long before he clearly
understands that there can be but One Supreme. The moral quality of the
being or beings whom he thus conceives is not clearly discerned by him;
he is apt to think them fickle, jealous, revengeful, and cruel; most
often he ascribes to them his own frailties and passions.
In some such way as this, then, religion begins. It is the response of
the human nature to impressions made upon the mind and heart of man by
the universe in which he lives. These impressions are not illusions,
they are realities. All men experience them. Something is here in the
world about us which appeals to our feelings and awakens our intellects.
Being made as we are, we cannot escape this influence. It awes us, it
fills us with wonder and fear and desire.
Then we try to explain it to ourselves, and in the beginning we frame a
great many very imperfect explanations. Sometimes we imagine that this
power is located in some tree or rock or river; sometimes it is an
animal; sometimes it is supposed to exist in invisible spirits or
demons; sometimes the sky or the ocean represents it, or one of the
elements, like fire, is conceived to be its manifestation; sometimes the
greater planets are the objects of reverence; sometimes imaginary
deities are conceived and images of wood or stone are carved by which
their attributes are symbolized.
These religious conceptions of the primitive races seem to us, now, as
we look back upon them from the larger light of the present day, to be
grotesque and unworthy; we wonder that men could ever have entertained
such notions of deity, and we are sometimes inclined, because of these
crudities, to dismiss the whole subject of religion as but a farrago of
superstitions. But these imperfect conceptions do not discredit
religion; they are rather witnesses to its reality. You might as well
say that the speculations and experiments of the old alchemists prove
that there is no truth in chemistry; or that the guesses of the
astrologers throw doubt on the science of astronomy. The alchemists and
the astrologers were searching blindly for truth which they did not
find, but the truth was there; the fetish worshipers and the magicians
and the idolaters were also, as Paul said, seeking after the unknown
God. But they were not mistaken in the principal object of their search;
what they sought was there, and the pathetic story of the long quest for
God is a proof of the truth of Paul's saying, that God has made men and
placed them in the world "that they should seek God, if haply they might
feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us."
It was not a delusion, it was a tremendous reality that they were
dealing with. The fact that they but dimly conceived it does not lessen
the greatness of the reality.
Not many intelligent thinkers in these days doubt the reality and the
permanence of religion. Herbert Spencer did not profess to be a
Christian believer; by many persons he was supposed to be an enemy of
the Christian religion; yet no man has more strongly asserted the
permanency and indestructibility of religion. As to the notion that
religions are the product of human craft and selfishness, he says: "A
candid examination of the evidence quite negatives the doctrine
maintained by some that creeds are priestly inventions."[3] And again:
"An unbiased consideration of its general aspects forces us to conclude
that religion, everywhere present as a weft running through the warp of
human history, expresses some eternal fact."[4] And again: "In Religion
let us recognize the high merit that from the beginning it has dimly
discerned the ultimate verity and has never ceased to insist upon it....
For its essentially valid belief, Religion has constantly done battle.
Gross as were the disguises under which it at first espoused this
belief, and cherishing this belief, though it still is, under
disfiguring vestments, it has never ceased to maintain and defend it. It
has everywhere established and propagated one or other modification of
the doctrine that all things are manifestations of a power that
transcends our knowledge."[5]
That religion is, in John Fiske's strong phrase, an "everlasting
reality" is a fact which few respectable thinkers in these days would
venture to call in question. But, as we have seen, this reality takes
upon itself a great variety of forms. Looking over the world to-day, we
discover many kinds of religion. Religious ideas, religious rites and
ceremonies, religious customs and practices, as we gather them up and
compare them, constitute a variegated collection.
Professor William James has a thick volume entitled "The Varieties of
Religious Experience," in which he brings together a vast array of the
documents which describe the religious feelings and impulses of persons
in all lands and all ages. It is not a study of creeds or philosophies
of religion, it is a study of personal religious experiences; of the
fears, hopes, desires, contritions, joys, and aspirations of men and
women of all lands and ages, as they have been dealing with the fact of
religion.
Not only do we find many different kinds of religion existing side by
side upon this planet; we also find that each of these types has been
undergoing constant changes in the course of the centuries. To trace the
religious development of any people from the earliest period to the
present day is a most instructive study.
Take our own religion. Christianity is not an independent form of faith.
Its roots run down into the Hebrew religion, whose record is in the Old
Testament; and the Hebrew religion grew out of the old Semitic faiths,
and these again sprang from the ancient Babylonian religions or grew
alongside of them. So we are compelled to go far back for the origin of
many of our own religious ideas. Jesus did not claim to be the Founder
of a new religion; he claimed only to bring a better interpretation of
the religion of his people. He said that he came not to destroy but to
fulfill the law and the prophets. The New Testament religion is a
development of the Old Testament religion. It is a wonderful growth.
When we go hack to the old monuments and the old documents and trace the
progress of religious beliefs and practices from the earliest days to
our own, we learn many things which are well worth knowing.
The central fact of religious progress is improvement in the conception
of the character of God. As the ages go by, men gradually come to think
better thoughts about God. Little by little the old crude and savage
notions of deity drop out of their minds, and they learn to think of him
as just and faithful and kind.
The Bible shows us many signs of this progress. The earlier stories
about God give him a far different character from that which appears in
the later prophets. It was believed by the earlier Hebrews that God
desired to have them put to death all the inhabitants of the land of
Canaan when they took possession of it; and when they put to the sword
not only the armed men of the land, but the women and the little
children, they supposed that they were obeying the command of God. They
learned better than that, after a while.
When Abraham started with Isaac for Mount Moriah, he undoubtedly
thought that he should please God by putting to death his own
well-beloved son; but before he had done the dreadful deed the
revelation came to him that that was a terrible mistake; he saw that God
was not pleased by human sacrifices. That was a great day in the history
of religion. Because of that experience, Abraham was able to make his
descendants believe the truth that had been given to him, and from that
time onward human sacrifices probably ceased among the Hebrews. A long
step had been taken toward the purification of the idea of God of one of
its most degrading elements.
This superstition lingered long in other faiths; probably it survived
among our own ancestors after Abraham's day. Tennyson's poem, "The
Victim," is a vivid picture of human sacrifice among the Teutonic
peoples:--
"A plague upon the people fell,
A famine after laid them low;
Then thorpe and byre arose in fire,
For on them brake the sudden foe;
So thick they died the people cried,
'The Gods are moved against the land.'
The priest in horror about his altar
To Thor and Odin lifted a hand:
'Help us from famine
And plague and strife!
What would you have of us?
Human life?
Were it our nearest,
Were it our dearest,--Answer,
O answer!--
We give you his life.'"
The Gods seemed to say that the victim must be either the king's wife or
the king's child; which it should be, was the terrible question that the
king had to answer. The choice seemed to have fallen on the child, but
the wife would not have it that he was the king's dearest, and she
rushed to her own immolation. The poem reflects the common notion of
those dark days, that the angry Gods could only be propitiated by the
slaughter of those whom men loved the best. From this horrible idea the
Jewish people were delivered by the insight of their great ancestor.
Dark notions about God still lingered among them, however, and the Old
Testament record shows us how they slowly disappeared. Moses and Samuel
were good men for their time, but the God whom they worshiped was a very
different being from the God of Hosea or of the later Isaiah.
This development of the idea of God has been going on in modern times.
It is not long since devout men were in the habit of saying that God's
displeasure with the wickedness of cities was exhibited in the scourges
of cholera and scarlet fever in which multitudes of little children were
the victims. Not two hundred years ago the great majority of our Puritan
ancestors were believing in a God who, for the sin of Adam, was sending
millions of infants, every year, to the regions of darkness and despair.
The God of Cotton Mather or of Edward Payson could hardly have lived in
the same heaven with the God of Dwight Moody or Phillips Brooks.
The changes which have been taking place in our ideas about God have
been mainly in the direction of a purified ethical conception of his
character. We have been learning to believe, more and more, in the
justice, the righteousness, the goodness of God. In the oldest times men
thought him cruel and revengeful; then they began to regard him as
willful and arbitrary--his justice was his determination to have his own
way; his sovereignty was his egoistic purpose to do everything for his
own glory. We have gradually grown away from all that, and are able now
to believe what Abraham believed, that the Judge of all the earth will
do right.
In the presence of a God who, I am assured, is a being of perfect
righteousness, who never blames any one for what he cannot help, who
never expects of any one more than he has the power to render, who means
that I shall know that his treatment of me is in perfect accord with my
own deepest intuition of truth and fairness and honor, I can stand up
and be a man. My faith will not be the cringing submission of a slave to
an absolute despot, but the willing and joyful acceptance by a free man
of righteous authority.
Now it is certain that the belief of the Christian church respecting the
character of God has been steadily changing, in this direction, through
the Christian centuries. Enlightened Christians have been coming to
believe, more and more, in a good God; and by a good God I mean not
merely a good-natured God, but a just God, a true God, a fair God, a
righteous God. The growth of this conviction has been purging theology
of many crude and revolting dogmas.
It is a great deliverance which is wrought out for us when we are set
free, in our religious thinking, from the bondage of unmoral
conceptions, and are encouraged to believe that God is good. It is a
great blessing to have a God to worship whom we can thoroughly respect.
A tremendous strain is put upon the moral nature when men are required,
by traditional influences, to pay adoration and homage to a being whose
conduct, as it is represented to them, is, in some important respects,
conduct which they cannot approve. All the religions, through the
imperfection of human thought, have put that burden on their worshipers.
Christianity has been struggling, through all the centuries, to free
itself from unworthy conceptions of the character of its Deity, and each
succeeding re-statement of its doctrines removes some stain which our
dim vision and halting logic had left upon his name.
What, now, has caused these changes to take place in men's thoughts
about God? What influences have been at work to clarify their ideas of
the unknown Reality?
From three principal sources have come the streams of light by which our
religious conceptions have been purified.
The first of these is the natural world round about us. We are immersed
in Nature; it touches us on every side; it addresses us through all our
senses; it speaks to us every day with a thousand voices. Nature is the
great teacher of the human race. She knows everything; she waits to
impart her love to all who will receive it; she is very patient; her
lessons are not forced upon unwilling pupils, but whosoever will may
come and take of her treasure. Longfellow said of the childhood of
Agassiz, that--
"Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: 'Here is a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee.
"'Come, wander with me,' she said,
'Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God.'"
It is not the child Agassiz alone whom Nature thus invited; to the whole
human race, in its childhood, its adolescence, its maturity, she has
always been saying the same thing. She has been seeking, through all the
ages, to disclose to us all the mysteries of this marvelous universe. We
have been slow learners; it took her a great many centuries to get the
simplest truths lodged in the human mind. The cave-dweller, the savage
in his teepee, were able to receive but little of what she had to give.
Yet before their eyes, every day, she spread all her wonders; with
infinite patience she waited for the unfolding of their powers. All the
marvels of steam, of electricity, of the camera, of the telescope, the
microscope, the spectroscope, the Roentgen rays,--all the facts and
forces with which science deals were there, in the hand of Mother
Nature, waiting to be imparted to her child from the day when he first
stood upright and faced the stars.
Slowly he has been led on into a larger understanding of this wonderful
universe. And what has he learned under this tuition? What are some of
the great truths which have gradually impressed themselves upon his
mind?
He has been made sure, for one thing, that this is a universe; that all
its forces are coherent; that the same laws are in operation in every
part of it. The principles of mathematics are everywhere applicable;
gravitation controls all the worlds and every particle of matter in
every one of them, and the spectroscope assures us that the same
chemical elements which constitute our world are found in the farthest
star. "On every hand," says Walker, "we are assured that the guiding
principle of Science is that of the uniformity of nature."
It has also come to be understood that nature is all intelligible.
Everything can be explained. This is the fundamental assumption of
science. Many things have not yet been explained, but there is an
explanation for everything; of that every thinker feels perfectly sure.
"Fifty years ago," says Sir John Lubbock, "the Book of Nature was like
some richly illuminated missal, written in an unknown tongue; of the
true meaning little was known to us; indeed we scarcely realized that
there was a meaning to decipher. Now glimpses of the truth are gradually
revealing themselves; we perceive that there is a reason--and in many
cases we know what that reason is--for every difference in form, in
size, and in color, for every bone and feather, almost for every
hair."[6]
This is the latest word of the latest philosophy; there is a reason for
everything. As Romanes says, Nature is instinct with reason; "tap her
where you will, reason oozes out at every pore."
If all things are rational and intelligible, then all things must be
the product of a rational Intelligence. That conclusion seems
inevitable.
But we can go further than this. It is not merely true that we can find
in the world about us the signs of an Intelligence like our own, it is
also true that our own intelligence has been developed by the revelation
to us of this Intelligence in the world about us. "If," says Walker,
"human reason is but 'the reflection in us of the universe outside of
us,' then, clearly, the Reason was there, expressed in the universe,
before it possibly could be reflected in us. It is _our relation to the
Universe that makes us rational_." And again, "Apart from the Reason
expressed in the Universe around him, man could never have become the
rational being that he is."[7]
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