The Church and Modern Life

The Church and Modern Life.

by Washington Gladden.

Preface

"The time is come," said a New Testament prophet, "for judgment to begin at the house of G.o.d." Perhaps that time ought never to pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sing 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.

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 a.s.semblies 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sume 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tution 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 surpa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sions.

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 superst.i.tions. 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 G.o.d. But they were not mistaken in the princ.i.p.al object of their search; what they sought was there, and the pathetic story of the long quest for G.o.d is a proof of the truth of Paul"s saying, that G.o.d has made men and placed them in the world "that they should seek G.o.d, 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 a.s.serted 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, const.i.tute a variegated collection.

Professor William James has a thick volume ent.i.tled "The Varieties of Religious Experience," in which he brings together a vast array of the doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments 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 G.o.d. As the ages go by, men gradually come to think better thoughts about G.o.d. 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 G.o.d give him a far different character from that which appears in the later prophets. It was believed by the earlier Hebrews that G.o.d 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 G.o.d. They learned better than that, after a while.

When Abraham started with Isaac for Mount Moriah, he undoubtedly thought that he should please G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d of one of its most degrading elements.

This superst.i.tion 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d whom they worshiped was a very different being from the G.o.d of Hosea or of the later Isaiah.

This development of the idea of G.o.d has been going on in modern times.

It is not long since devout men were in the habit of saying that G.o.d"s displeasure with the wickedness of cities was exhibited in the scourges of cholera and scarlet fever in which mult.i.tudes of little children were the victims. Not two hundred years ago the great majority of our Puritan ancestors were believing in a G.o.d who, for the sin of Adam, was sending millions of infants, every year, to the regions of darkness and despair.

The G.o.d of Cotton Mather or of Edward Payson could hardly have lived in the same heaven with the G.o.d of Dwight Moody or Phillips Brooks.

The changes which have been taking place in our ideas about G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d who, I am a.s.sured, 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.