Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/gospeloffellowshOOwill The Gospel of Fellowship THE COLE LECTURES Christianity and Progress . By Harry Emerson Fosdick. The Foundations of Faith . By John Kelman, D.D. A New Mind for the New Age . . By Henry Churchill King, DD., LL.D. The Productive Beliefs . By Lynn H. Hough, D.D. Old Truths and New Facts . By Charles E. Jefferson, D.D. The North American Idea . By James A. Macdonald, LL.D. The Foundation of Modern Eeligion By Herbert B. Workman, D.D. Winning the World for Christ By Bishop Walter R. Lambuth. Personal Christianity . By Bishop Francis J. McConnell. The God We Trust . . By G. A. Johnston Ross. What Dees Christianity Mean? By W. H. P. Faunce. Some Great Leaders in the World Movement By Robert E. Speer. In the School of Christ . By Bishop William Fraser McDowell. Jesus the Worker ....... By Charles McTyeire Bishop, D.D. The Fact of Conversion . By George Jackson, B.A. God’s Message to the Human Soul By John Watson (Ian Maclaren). Christ and Science . By Francis Henry Smith. The Universal Flements of the Christian Eeligion . By Charles Cuthbert Hall. The Eeligion of the Incarnation By Bishop Eugene Russell Hendrix. 1922 1921 1920 1919 1918 1917 1916 1915 1914 1913 1912 1911 1910 1909 1908 1907 1906 1905 1903 CHARLES DAVID WILLIAMS i860 1923 The Cole Lectures for 1923 delivered before Vanderbilt University The Gospel Fellowshi % / THE RT. REV. CHARLES D. WILLIAMS, D.D. Late Bishop of Michigan DELIVERED BY THE REV. SAMUEL S. MARQUIS, D.D. Formerly Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Detroit, Mich. New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1923, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London : 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street THE COLE LECTURES THE late Colonel E. W. Cole of Nashville, Ten¬ nessee, donated to Vanderbilt University the sum of five thousand dollars, afterwards increased by Mrs. E. W. Cole to ten thousand, the design and con¬ ditions of which gift are stated as follows : « The object of this fund is to establish a foundation for a perpetual Lectureship in connection with the School of Religion of the University, to be restricted in its scope to a defense and advocacy of the Christian re¬ ligion. The lectures shall be delivered at such inter¬ vals, from time to time, as shall be deemed best by the Board of Trust ; and the particular theme and lecturer will be determined by the Theological Faculty. Said lecture shall always be reduced to writing in full, and the manuscript of the same shall be the property of the University, to be published or disposed of by the Board of Trust at its discretion, the net proceeds arising therefrom to be added to the foundation fund, or otherwise used for the benefit of the School of Re¬ ligion.” PREFACE THE Cole Lectures for 1923 have some unusual features which call for special mention. Dr. Marquis, in his introduction to the volume, has explained the very generous way in which Bishop Williams consented to give his lectures in 1923 instead of 1924. The death of Bishop Williams, one of our great Christian prophets, makes these last words of his deeply im¬ pressive. This is especially true as Bishop Will¬ iams seems not to have been unconscious that in these lectures he was making his final plea for those in behalf of whom he had spent his life. A prefatory word, however, must be added regarding the extraordinary service which Dr. Marquis has rendered in presenting and preparing for publication the five lectures which came from Bishop Williams’ pen. Long years of intimate fellowship had qualified Dr. Marquis to perform this sacred office with remarkable insight and ap¬ preciation. Vanderbilt University and her friends desire, also, to acknowledge very special indebtedness to Dr. Marquis for consenting to prepare the lecture on “The Fellowship Among the Churches,” which 5 6 PREFACE appears as the fifth of the published series. Dr. Marquis was not disposed to have this lecture appear in the series along with those of Bishop Williams. The very high merit and the vital quality of this lecture, as well as its essential place in the series as planned by Bishop Williams, led to the urgent insistence that it should appear as an integral part of the Cole Lectures for 1923. Those intrusted with the direction of the Cole Foundation send this volume forth with a sense of gratitude to Dr. Marquis too deep for words, and with an earnest conviction that the message of the book is none other than a message of God Himself to our times. O. E. Brown, Dean, Vanderbilt School of Religion. Vanderbilt University, August 8th, 1923. INTRODUCTION S an introduction to this book, I can think of nothing more fitting than a brief and simple statement of the circumstances un¬ der which it was written. Bishop Williams had agreed to deliver the Cole Lectures in 1924. He had chosen his theme, laid out an extensive course of reading bearing upon it, and had set to work, on the assumption that he had two years, or rather the leisure hours in that period, in which to finish his task. Then unex¬ pectedly came the request that he deliver his lec¬ tures a year earlier than the date agreed upon. This he generously consented to do, and so short¬ ened, by a whole year, his time for preparation. But his time for work was to be still further shortened by death. Of this there is reason to believe that he was not altogether unaware. De¬ pressed by a sense of mental and physical exhaus¬ tion, he worked on during those last months with¬ out rest. He not only had upon him “the care of all the churches” of a great diocese, but, be¬ cause of his boundless sympathy, he was friend and pastor to hundreds who sought his help and counsel. Those who came to him were by no 7 8 INTRODUCTION means restricted to membership of his own com¬ munion. Strangers and foreigners of every creed, and of no creed at all, were daily bringing to him their problems. Into his understanding heart there flowed a constant stream of human want and perplexity, and out of it there flowed a healing stream of help and encouragement. In addition to this, he was a prophet with a message which an eager public was always demanding an opportunity to hear. And so he worked on feverishly, incessantly, the meantime writing, as he could find the op¬ portunity, in a race against death. The end came before the Bishop had finished his task. After his death, the first four lectures contained in this volume were found among his papers, — evidently the first draft of them labori¬ ously written out by his own hand. He had had no time for their revision or preparation either for delivery or publication. This fell into the hands of others keenly conscious of the fact that their willingness to serve is far greater than their ability. These first four lectures are in his spoken style — a style, as all know who have heard him, often marked by a torrential flow, a tumultuous sweep of language ; thundering with denunciation of social wrongs; flashing with stinging rebukes directed at those guilty of social injustice; burn¬ ing with a withering scorn of those who, behind INTRODUCTION 9 a show of personal piety, attempt to hide their contempt of the laws of social righteousness. One sees in him here the spirit, the courage and the righteous indignation of the ancient Hebrew Prophet. His sympathies were with the poor and oppressed whose cause he never ceased fear¬ lessly to plead in the presence of the rich and mighty. It is possible that here and there he makes use of the prophetic license in the em¬ phasis he places on bad social and industrial con¬ ditions and in the rebukes he aims at offending social and industrial leaders. But it has never been the function of the prophet to speak smooth things. The first four lectures are printed as he wrote them. The last lecture was compiled from ma¬ terial which he had previously written upon the subject. On the fifth lecture, “Fellowship Among the Churches,” he had written only a page or two of notes. The writer of that lecture makes no claim to have developed and presented the Bishop’s thought on the subject therein presented. Samuel S. Marquis. St Joseph’s Rectory, Detroit, Michigan, July 19, 1923. CONTENTS LECTURE I The Need and Nature of Fellowship . LECTURE II Fellowship Between Races . . . . LECTURE III Fellowship Between the Nations . LECTURE IV Fellowship in Industry . LECTURE V Fellowship Among the Churches . LECTURE VI The Fellowship of the Mystery . . . 13 . 43 . 80 . 113 . 155 . 191 LECTURE I THE NEED AND NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP A WORD of explanation, if not of apology, seems required at the beginning of these lectures. It is due to the speaker, to the hearers, and the readers — if there shall be any — and to those who have so highly honoured me by inviting me to deliver this series. That ex¬ planation touches the lecturer, the nature of the lectures and the circumstances under which they have had to be written. First as to the lecturer. He is no scholar either by temperament or equipment. Indeed, he can hardly be called a student. The nature and conditions of his calling forbid any aspira¬ tions in this direction. One looks with awe at the combination of erudition and administrative ability which so often characterises the English Episcopate. Certainly such a combination would be nothing short of a miracle in the American Episcopate with the practical American tempera¬ ment set in the midst of the drive and rush of American life and the variegated and multitudi- 13 14 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP nous demands which beset a bishop on every side. Consequently these lectures are not the fruit of long and painstaking research and investiga¬ tion. They have not been wrought out of a scholar’s labours but rather born out of an ordi¬ nary observer’s convictions and intuitions. This fact should disarm beforehand a good deal of criticism. And lastly these lectures are a premature birth. They were due in the spring of 1924. The lecturer was leisurely laying out quite an extensive course of reading on the subjects chosen, reading for which two summer vacations promised some opportunity, when last November an S O S call flashed over the wires. The lec¬ turer who had been appointed for this year saw before him a crowded calendar (probably no more crowded than my own) and prudently with¬ drew his promise to deliver the lectures. Where¬ upon I was implored to step into the breach. Having less of a reputation to be sacrificed, and less wisdom and prudence than the appointed speaker, and being a bit more reckless if not more amiable, I consented. Therefore whatso¬ ever defects in the way of superficial treatment and inadequate preparation are to be charged to the debit side of my account, should be balanced by an equivalent credit in the form of weak will¬ ingness to serve in an emergency and save an embarrassment. NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 15 I have taken as my theme “The Gospel of Fellowship.” It has been suggested by the find¬ ings and reports of the Lambeth Conference of 1920. These findings and reports are, so to speak, my text. To them I shall refer frequently, and from them I shall quote freely. Let me say, by way of explanation, that the Lambeth Conference is a gathering of all the bishops of the Anglican communion throughout the world, assembling, usually, once every ten years at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of the English Church. They meet, not for legislation, for they have no canonical authority for legislation (each branch of the communion being entirely independent and autonomous), but for mutual counsel in all things concerning the Kingdom of God on earth. Sometimes these Right Reverend gentlemen think, speak and act as ecclesiastics in all ages and all cults have always done, and I suppose always will do. They busy themselves with, and absorb themselves in, the technicalities of ec¬ clesiastical machinery, and the minutiae of or¬ ganisation and dogma — the mint, anise, and cummin of conventional religion. And again they are lifted by their world-wide experience and their concern for the Kingdom above all the narrow limitations of professions, ecclesiastical conviction, class, and even of nations and races, l6 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP and catch glimpses of an universal vision, as wide as humanity and as deep as the purposes of God. Ht is then that they become Christian world-statesmen and wise physicians of the soul of humanity. It seems to me that on occasion they were so lifted at their last conference, and the reports and findings give evidence, here and there, of such spiritual exaltation and vision. We met at the supreme crisis of modern his¬ tory, — perhaps of human history up to the pres¬ ent time. That crisis did not reach its culmina¬ tion in 1914 with the outbreak of the World War, but it is now rapidly approaching such a culmination in the poisonous aftermath of that war. The war was not its cause but the occasion of its revelation, as the rock in the stream does not make the swift current but betrays its mad force in leaping waves and gathering foam. In¬ deed, the war was the consequence, not the source, of the many evils that now stand re¬ vealed in its lurid glare. Hidden forces of hu¬ man greed for gain, lust for power, commercial jealousies between nations, bitter hatreds be¬ tween races, sometimes purely instinctive, some¬ times the natural fruit of arrogance and exploi¬ tation on the part of the strong toward the weak, religious and sectarian conceit and self-assertion, — these hidden forces had subtly spread the lines of incipient cleavage throughout all the relations of men, industrial, social, national, international, NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 17 and interracial, — even throughout organised re¬ ligion, the one bond that should bind all men together in the family of God, — aye, in the very body of Christ Himself. The final explosion, like a terrific blow, simply accomplished the frac¬ tures already prepared. We live, to-day, in a world all but wrecked. To many competent and well balanced observers the very foundations of its order seem to be crumbling. Civilisation itself is imperilled. All the structures which men have builded so pa¬ tiently throughout the ages of history, the famil¬ iar “systems” in which they have dwelt so se¬ curely, are trembling, if not tottering. The fer¬ vid language of apocalyptic utterance naturally and fittingly describes the situation: “Nations in distress, the sea and the waves roaring, men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking for the things that are coming upon the earth.” It is no strange thing that an epidemic of Second Adventism and Premillenarianism has spread over the Christian world, particularly in Amer¬ ica; that fanatics and fundamentalists have abandoned the central purpose and aim of the Christianity of Christ — to save the world and set up a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth — have dropped the weapons of their warfare and the tools of service and are waiting passively for the great cataclysm that shall end the present dispen¬ sation and burn up the world, hailing with glee i8 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP each sign of the approaching dissolution — an at¬ titude which seems to me the negation and stulti¬ fication of all real and vital religion. In such a situation the Lambeth Conference met. The members thereof proceeded first, as wise physicians of the soul, to make a diagnosis of the case. That diagnosis, while patent and obvious to the spiritual insight, seems to me cor¬ rect and to go far deeper than the diagnosis of¬ fered by statesmen, politicians, diplomats, busi¬ ness and industrial experts, or even the average social reformer. They declared that we are liv¬ ing in a world of broken relationships. Every¬ where the human order is dislocated. Races, va¬ rieties in the one family of humanity, for cen¬ turies and ages isolated each from the other, have been brought more or less suddenly to¬ gether by the spread of exploration, the invasion of the wEite race into the habitations of the darker races, by the quickening of transportation and communication and by the enormous ex¬ pansion of world commerce. But juxtaposition has not made for harmony, but quite the opposite. Like two cats tied together by the tails and flung over a clothesline, the nearer they get together the worse for both. Instinctive race antipathies, re¬ ligious antagonisms, and, above all, the jeal¬ ousies of race-pride wounded to the quick by the commercial exploitation of the weak by the strong — all these mutual repulsions have been developed NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 19 and deepened until, to-day, we are threatened by a worldwide interracial conflict beside which our international strifes may seem petty and incon¬ siderable. Nations, which ought to be members one of an¬ other, often bound together by innumerable ties, racial, cultural and religious, have developed an exaggerated individualism. Often they are arti¬ ficial creations, groups of peoples naturally dis¬ severed in language, culture, blood and religion, but insecurely hammered and welded together into an unreal unity, a manufactured entity. But nevertheless one and all have been characterised by narrow and fanatical patriotisms and nation¬ alisms. These patriotisms and nationalisms, in¬ flamed by the rivalry of international commercial greeds and manipulated by cunning masters of finance and greedy monopolists of trade, with their subservient slaves, the diplomatists, have been the fruitful sources of most modern wars, particularly the last one. In the philosophy of this narrow nationalism and fanatical patriotism the state exists solely for itself; it has no pur¬ pose or obligation outside itself. It is conse¬ quently supermoral, above all laws of God or man. It can do no wrong. It is an end in itself, whose sole mission is self-realisation, self-fulfil¬ ment, self-aggrandisement. And so the super¬ state, like the super-man, runs amok to its goal of world domination, trampling the rights and 20 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP the lives of all weaker peoples in the ruin of conquest by brute force. This is individualism run mad. 'Is it not time when, in the language of Lam¬ beth, we must proclaim “it is our Christian duty to recognise that already all the nations, advanced or backward, child races or ancient civilisations, are each of them, children in the great family of God? Statesmen, thinking for their nations, no less than for individuals, must lay hold of the truth that we are ‘members one of another’ and that no national policy can be Christian which ignores the needs and rights of other nations. Neither markets nor territory nor cheap labour must, in the future, dictate national policy, but only the principles of justice and the rights of all. If we really want peace we must set our faces decisively against the vested interests which, in the past, have so often stood behind govern¬ ments and vitiated their action.” We turn to the realm of industry, and every¬ where all over the world, in every land, the same ominous condition is evident. The whole system is in unstable equilibrium. It is rocking on its foundations. In a time when beyond all others the world is needing production to clothe its in¬ numerable naked and feed its hosts of starving, industry is simply not producing. It exhibits only a very small percentage of efficiency. The machine does not work and, here and there, shows NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 21 signs of breaking down utterly. Who can cal¬ culate the waste of strikes and lockouts? They threaten sometimes our very existence. “We are confronted to-day,” as the bishops say, “with a world-wide upheaval and embittered antagonism in social relations, the course of which no one can foresee. We seem to be involved in an internecine conflict between capital and labour in which each aims for an exclusive supremacy.” Again we are driven back to the same diagnosis, broken relationships, a dislocated order. The divine and rational order in industry is plain. It is a co-operation of all for the ser¬ vice of all, whereas now we have competition of each for private advantage. It is again indi¬ vidualism run mad, and individualism is but a slightly longer way of spelling selfishness. Self¬ ishness or self interest (piously hoped to become enlightened) is the only motive which our ortho¬ dox economics has hitherto recognised as the sufficient motive power of all industry on either side. Capital will work for profits and dividends only, the largest without limit that it can gain, by fair means or foul. Labour will toil for wages only, the biggest that can be extorted by the law of supply and demand. Service is to both pro¬ ducing factors the by-product of the process. The rule is generally the least service for the largest return, “all the traffic will bear.” And the result is the present universal warfare with 22 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP its inevitable waste and inefficiency, its peril to the public, its wreck and ruin. We turn to the Church. In Zion we should find peace and source of peace in all the other re¬ lations of life. And yet the Christian Church, to-day, has ignominiously failed in this, her essen¬ tial mission as a peacemaker. She failed utterly to sustain in the slightest degree world peace when the great war came on, and she failed be¬ cause of her “unhappy divisions.” She had no united voice to proclaim the fundamental prin¬ ciples of her Lord. In every nation the Estab¬ lished or National Church was attached like a barnacle to the ship of state, and the Free Churches were swept along resistlessly in the wake of that ship. Most of us, clergy and laity alike, lied vociferously, and, it may be, sincerely, at the behest of the military and political yell- leaders in the universal propaganda of interna¬ tional and interracial hate, deemed necessarv to keep the fires of war burning, and the fighting spirit up to the highest pressure in the steam gauge. And now the challenge comes to us, sin¬ gularly enough from a warrior — General Tasker Bliss: “If another war comes” (and another world war with the present intensification and multiplication by science of the instruments of destruction will depopulate whole areas almost instantaneously) — “if another war comes,” he says, “the responsibility for every drop of blood NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 23 shed and every dollar of wealth wasted will be upon the Christian people — aye, the Christian ministry in every land. They can stop war if they will.” Perhaps it is an unjust, an exag¬ gerated challenge, but, coming whence it does, it ought to induce deep searchings of heart in the Christian Church. The Church has equally failed to affect in any appreciable degree the universal and fatal strife in the industrial realm. She is for the most part an entirely negligible factor to both parties in that conflict. They never think of her. She is quite generally wholly out of touch with labour. She does not know, or seem to care to know, the great human aspirations and ideals that inform and inspire that movement fundamentally, however grossly misunderstood and misled the movement may often be. She has been too often the sub¬ servient tool or the silent parasite of the other class who, for the most part, support her. If, now and then, she ventures to assert some obvious Christian principle and apply it pertinently to the strife, she is told to “mind her own business” and threatened with non-support. What is the reason for this manifest failure of the Church? I believe it is chiefly because of an overdone individualism both in her doctrine, her message, and also in her practical work and organisation. We have confined ourselves almost exclusively to the salvation of individual souls, 24 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP ethically or eschatologically — salvation to indi¬ vidual morals and character or to eternal bliss. We have lost Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God on earth, the social gospel which He per¬ sistently preached. And we are rent asunder by our denominationalisms, our insistent empha¬ sis upon particularistic, individualistic interpre¬ tations of doctrine, practices of discipline, and peculiarities of cult, polity and organisation. Religion is ineradicable, for the human heart is incurably religious. And Christianity is eter¬ nal, for it fits perfectly, like the right key, all the complicated needs of human nature. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” But I am convinced organised Christianity, to¬ day, stands at a supreme crisis. It is a crisis of life or death. Unless our divided churches, di¬ vided nationally and denominationally, can catch the vision of some supreme cause, the essential end and purpose of the religion they commonly confess, a vision that shall unite them above all their differences, perhaps make them forget their differences, in one all-absorbing passion and task • — unless we can catch such an unifying vision, the Church, as now organised, is doomed. And that supreme vision is that which was the light of all Jesus’ seeing, the theme of all His teaching, the end of His life and death — the Kingdom of NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 25 Heaven on earth, the disciplining of all the na¬ tions, and the saving of the world. If the Church does not see that unifying vision, the present organisations of Christianity may go to pieces and its spirit reincarnate itself in other forms. This, then, is our diagnosis tested and proved in every sphere and plane of human life and activity. The disease from which humanity is suffering to-day, the disorder which threatens the very existence of civilisation, perhaps of the world order itself, arises from broken relation¬ ships, the dislocation of right order. What is the remedy? Our Right Reverend Fathers sum it up in one word — Fellowship. What is fellowship? Before we try to define the term let us take a brief retrospect, a bird’s- eye view of the story of human development. Such a study may prove the best introduction to our theme. As I read history, I see three distinct eras in the development of human society. We have passed through two of these eras. We are on the verge of the third, or else on the verge of a col¬ lapse of civilisation and a reversion to earlier types of society. These three eras might be called the era of the mass-development, the era of the development of the individual, and the era of the development of fellowship. If we were mediaeval mystics we 26 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP should call these three eras the dispensation of the Father, the dispensation of the Son, and the dis¬ pensation of the Spirit. If we read the story of human development, or if we take a cross-section of the various peo¬ ples of to-day, we find that the primitive tribe is always characterised by a mass consciousness. fIt inspires all their customs, traditions and methods of action. Even such matters as responsibility, guilt and punishment, to us moderns so utterly individual and personal, in the primitive tribe be¬ longed to the mass. If one member of a fam¬ ily, or tribe, suffers a wrong or injury, the wrong or injury is reckoned as done to the whole group, and, as among the early Hebrews, the next-of-kin is appointed as blood avenger to exact the due penalty or reparation on behalf of the whole group, and the whole group to which the offender be¬ longs is held responsible. Vengeance is inflicted on or penalty exacted from all alike, even chil¬ dren and babes at the breast, yea, the yet unborn are involved in common responsibility and guilt. The individual has not yet arrived. Personality is not yet realised. As I have said before, the mass-mind or mob-spirit controlled everything. Even the absolute autocrat which such a system demanded, was but the incarnation of that mass- mind or mob-spirit. He could do little, individ¬ ually, against its taboo or inhibitions. Social solidarity was dense, and individual initiative and NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 27 energy were suppressed. The personal was merged in the impersonal. The Roman Church, particularly in the Middle Ages, with its denial of the right of private judg¬ ment, its suppression of the freedom of con¬ science, and its rigorous subjection of all alike to the mass-mind and the tradition of ecclesiastical organisation, is an illustration of the survival of that primitive stage in the religious realm; and the Holy Roman Empire, which survived in ideal, at least, long after its reality had gone, which existed indeed in name till the downfall of the Hapsburg dynasty, obliterating as it did all dis¬ tinctions of nationality and race, and reducing the world of people to one homogeneous lump of humanity, is an illustration in the political realm. In this development the social forces utterly dom¬ inate and, indeed, crush the individual. It is often said that Jesus Christ first discov¬ ered the individual. He picked the soul of man out of the mass of humanity and set him face to face with God, endowed with a new sense of per¬ sonal responsibility and inspired with a new power of personal faith and hope. “The liberty where¬ with Christ hath made us free” includes the freedom of conscience, the right to the untram¬ melled pursuit and discovery of the truth, the chance for self-expression and self-realisation. All that is doubtless true. And what Christ and His religion have won for the individual, the al- 28 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP most unlimited enhancement of personal values and enlargement of individual liberties, these cannot be estimated too highly or guarded too sacredly. But there is another side to Christ's teaching and religion, and that its chief aspect, which we have almost utterly ignored in modern times. It is His conception of a Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven on earth, a higher synthesis which preserves all these personal values and individual liberties and yet fuses them in a supreme social vision. But of that we shall speak later. The modern mind, especially since the Renaissance and the Reformation, has seized avidly upon this doctrine of individualism. Upon that philosophy it has laid almost its whole stress. In its revolt against the tyranny and absorption of the mass it has exalted the individual into soli¬ tary pre-eminence. In its one-sided emphasis upon personal values, and individual rights and liberties, it has largely lost all consciousness of social responsibilities and values. Let me illustrate : In the realm of religion the right of private judgment and the freedom of the individual conscience have been firmly established. They are inestimable gains which must be guarded and preserved at all costs. But, without the social sense, without the spirit of tolerance with its agreement to differ on the indifferent and to co¬ operate in the essentials, that is, without the spirit of fellowship, Protestantism is rapidly disinte- NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 29 grating organised religion itself. Any one who starts a new sect, makes another division or rent in the body of Christ, on questions of doctrine or discipline however minute and even ridiculous, prelapsarianism or subterlapsarianism, the use of hooks and eyes or of buttons on clothing, wash¬ ing two feet or one foot in the rite of foot¬ washing — any one who makes a new sect is not only free to do so, but is commended and glori¬ fied. The story is told of a Scotsman who kept adding to his creed and diminishing thereby his following, till some one asked him, “How many are in your church now, Donald ?” He answered, “They’s naebody but mesel’ and me brother, Sandy.” “Well,” was the rejoinder, “I suppose you are now absolutely sure of the pure orthodoxy of your church.” “Weel,” was the response, “I’m nae sae sure o’ Sandy.” And with its loss of the social sense in practice, Protestantism, until lately, had lost almost en¬ tirely the social gospel of the New Testament. Its gospel became exclusively individualistic. Its one aim was to “save souls” either ethically or eschatologically. When the individual soul was assured of escape from hell fire and admission to eternal bliss, or when the individual character was freed from the sins that wreck lives and built up into purely personal virtues of private conduct and behaviour, the job of religion was completely done. Protestantism had lost completely that 30 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP commanding vision of all Christ’s seeing, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, the celestial civil¬ isation set up in this present world. This same individualistic philosophy, which was the characteristic outbirth of the Renaissance or the Reformation, also affected the whole realm of political organisation and relations. The old conception of the Holy Roman Empire, though it survived largely as a shadow and a dream only, still had a sense of the solidarity of all mankind. It held under its common sway peoples of every race, culture, language and religion. But under the new philosophy of individualism, that solidarity has been more and more broken up into fragments called nations. That philosophy fostered the intense, narrow, fanatical spirit of nationalism so characteristic of modern times. The state, often an artificial creation, composed sometimes of elements diverse in language, blood, religion and culture, loosely hammered together under one administration — the state thus made became an absolutely isolated unit, an insoluble element in the common mass of humanity, as I have already said, “an end in itself, supermoral, above the laws of God and man, without any ex¬ ternal obligations or responsibilities to other na¬ tions, seeking supremely its own ends of com¬ mercial and territorial aggrandisement.” This kind of nationalism is the most fruitful source and inevitable cause of war. Whether we can NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP SI meet that peril by substituting for or supplement¬ ing this narrow nationalism with a new fellow¬ ship of the nations — each not giving up but each contributing to the common weal its own particu¬ lar gifts of national culture and ideals — this is the supreme question and the crucial problem in the realm of international relations to-day. And, lastly, the effects of that individualistic philosophy are most visible and have been most potent in the realm of industry. Mediaeval industry, under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, had some social vision. The trade-guild, while undoubtedly often ruth¬ less and over-reaching in its relations to other guilds, still made some provision for the mutual relations and individual rights of all concerned in that trade. It protected the consuming public by the fixed fair price, by its severe penalties against “the utterance of false goods,” by its legally established standards of quality. It pro¬ tected the merchants or manufacturers against un¬ fair competition among themselves, by prevent¬ ing the “cornering of the market” by any indi¬ vidual or group, the monopolising of natural re¬ sources or raw materials or even finished prod¬ ucts. It required that each merchant should share with all others any favourable opportunity or bargain that came to his knowledge. It fixed by law the fair wage both for journeymen and ap¬ prentices. 32 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP But with Protestantism came untrammelled in¬ dividualism. With Calvinism came modern capi¬ talism. Its slogan was freedom and liberty, — freedom for the individual, liberty for self-realisa¬ tion and self-fulfilment. All regulations melted away. Fixed prices, fixed standards of quality, fixed profits, fixed wages, — everything fixed, all restraints and regulations were swept away, and the field left wide open to the strongest com¬ petitor. The science of modern orthodox eco¬ nomics was born, which maintains practically that you cannot regulate or control anything in indus¬ try. The whole realm is under the inexorable and unalterable law of supply and demand. Every phenomenon in industry is as much fixed and fated by that law, as every phenomenon in physics is by the law of gravitation, or every phenomenon in chemistry by the law of chemical affinity. Social obligations, moral and ethical principles — above all, religion — have no more place, function, or power in industry than they have in physics or chemistry. The one motive that can drive industry, aye, the one motive that is adequate to produce what the world needs, is selfishness, the desire for gain, either in the form of profits, dividends, or wages. To try to substitute any altruistic motive, like that of service, is as futile as to hitch a child’s paper windmill to the running of a factory. It is hoped piously that selfishness may become NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 33 enlightened, and that out of the clash of these enlightened competitive greeds some rude form of justice and tolerable system for human living may be hammered. But, meanwhile, the doc¬ trine of the Manchester School rules, laissez-faire, hands off, “don’t throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery — no sentiment, especially no re¬ ligion, in business.” The law of supply and demand fixes prices at “all the traffic will bear.” The iron law of wages fixes wages at the lowest level at which the work¬ ers can be induced to live, reproduce and produce. Unrestricted competition, except as it is restricted by artificial combinations for the enhancement either of profits or wages, is the rule. “Every man for himself and the devil take the hind¬ most.” Service is the by-product, profits the end; just enough service to secure the largest possible returns. The result is a free-for-all fight in which the battlefield is strewn with victims. The few among the employers and capitalists succeed, • — but succeed enormously in the congestion of wealth and the monopolisation of power — the many go* down in failure, — I believe about ninety per cent. Labour struggles on the crumbling edge of existence, often in intolerable living con¬ ditions. The public is daily imperilled in the strife. The waste occasioned by strikes, lock¬ outs, and sabotage, both on the part of employers and labourers, is incalculable. Production is in- 34 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP sufficient for the world’s demands and necessities, and the whole system of industry, aye, civilisation and the world order, are in danger of a complete break-down. Thus, in every realm of human relations, we are suffering to-day from an overdone individ¬ ualism. What is the remedy? \I am convinced that it is not a return to the old “mass-formation” — though many eyes are looking longingly that way, — particularly in industry toward the mediaeval guild system — but the hope is in an advance all along the line towards the new era of fellowship. What is fellowship? Let us make a brief study of the contents of the word. It is essen¬ tially a religious or spiritual term. There is a great, rich Greek word, which, with its deriva¬ tives, fairly dominates the literature of the New Testament, — particularly in the book of the Acts and in the Epistles, — and which seems to me to express more fully than our rather limited and shallow English word “fellowship” the thing we are after, and which we supremely need to heal the breaches of our broken world. That word is Koinonia. We translate it sometimes “fel¬ lowship” and sometimes “communion,” — as, for instance, in the phrases, “the fellowship of the Holy Ghost,” or “communion of the Holy Spirit.” And those phrases probably mean pri¬ marily the fellowship or communion between men NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 35 inspired by the Spirit, rather than “immediately fellowship or communion with God in the Spirit,” though they involve both. There can be no last¬ ing or stable “communion or fellowship” between men in any sphere of their relationships which is not on the spiritual plane and inspired by the Spirit. Material interests are always divi¬ sive. Spiritual interests only unite, and there are commanding spiritual interests and ends in every sphere of human life and activity, how¬ ever superficially materialistic that sphere may apparently be. It is only as these spiritual inter¬ ests and ends dominate that sphere that there can exist that fellowship or communion which we so imperatively and supremely need to-day. Fellowship or communion is to be set over against two opposites of which it is the true syn¬ thesis. These two opposites might be called the mass conception and the individualistic concep¬ tion, which I have just been illustrating histori¬ cally. The mass conception makes of any asso¬ ciation of men a homogeneous lump, as it were, of humanity. The individualistic conception makes of every such association a merely arith¬ metical aggregation of separate and isolated units. Neither term is truly social. In any mass movement or action the individuals composing it do not contribute in any real way intelligence, conscience, or even will to the out¬ come. They are either swayed by that curious £6 THE gospel of fellowship psychological phenomenon, the mob-spirit or the mass-mind, or they are manipulated and used by some one or more strong intelligences or wills through autocratic domination. It is the merg¬ ing of individuality and personality of each mem¬ ber in a common impersonal mass. The individualistic conception implies, as I have said, an aggregation of separate personali¬ ties, and the only possibility of common action is the enforcing of the will of the majority. But fellowship means the association of in¬ dividual personalities, each contributing his par¬ ticular measure of intelligence, conscience and will to the common action, but all, however dif¬ fering in convictions, methods and views, fused together by certain common dominating interests and ends. The personality of each is not obliter¬ ated by, or merged in, the mass. Rather, by reaction are all its particular qualities developed as the characteristic savours and fragrances of every flower are brought out by the dew and sun¬ shine. But there comes out of their fellowship a common mind which is very different from the mob-mind. Fellowship is not a sentimental thing, a mere fusion of emotions at white heat. It is rather a union of wills, intelligences and con¬ sciences. Even fellowship with God is not the passive absorption of the human personality into the divine as the mystic makes it. It is a de¬ liberate union of our wills with the will of God NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 37/ in His divine purpose whereby we become co¬ workers and partners with Him. Such fellowship among men is the soul of democracy. Without it, democracy cannot ex¬ ist. Autocracy, of course, is the opposite of democracy, and its denial. But mass-action, in¬ spired by the mob-mind, is equally not democracy. Neither is the bare rule of the majority democ¬ racy. Sir Henry Maine once ridiculed democracy as the mere arithmetical aggregation of unit individuals, a counting of noses, and if there were one more nose, even if it were a snub nose, on one side than on the other, that determined the issue. Democracy was the rule of the one snub nose. Professor John Dewey replied in that admirable monograph, now unfortunately out of print, “The Ethics of Democracy/’ in which he maintained that democracy was not an arithmetical aggrega¬ tion of individuals but a vital organism of wills, A man’s votum or will may be exactly equiva¬ lent to his ballot, the piece of paper he casts into the voting booth to indicate his choice of candi¬ dates or policies, or it may have a force, a power, an influence, many times that ballot. Theodore Roosevelt’s votum , or will, his decision or choice in political matters, probably carried with it a million ballots, while John Jones’ votum, or vote, was represented by just one solitary ballot. Now mingle all these minds and wills together 38 THE gospel of fellowship in the atmosphere of a genuine fellowship, with a free and open opportunity for discussion of facts and exercise of influence, and there will issue the common mind and will which are the real meaning of democracy. Each individual mind and will will be stimulated and developed as well as modified by, and adjusted to, every other mind and will, and the outcome represents each and all just in proportion to the values and forces of the individual component members of that fellowship. Such a democracy and fellow¬ ship may be illustrated by the familiar parallelo¬ gram of forces in physics. Here is force A measuring a thousand units in one direction, force B of five hundred units in another, force C of five units in another. Draw the parallel lines and construct your parallelogram, and the com¬ mon mind and will will move on the diagonal of that parallelogram. This is the age of democracy, and democracy means such fellowship as I have tried to describe. We need such a democracy of fellowship among the races that each may contribute its peculiar gift of culture and character and power to the common wealth of humanity. We need such a democracy of fellowship among the nations, for only so can we substitute the arbitrament of reason for the arbitrament of force, and secure lasting peace and human development through the “parliament of nations, the confed- NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 39 eration of the world.” We need such a democ¬ racy of fellowship in industry wherein employers, employes and public shall be effectively and pro¬ portionately represented, for only so can we put co-operation for the common service in place of the present mad competition for private advan¬ tage, and thus establish social peace and well being. We need such a democracy of fellow¬ ship between the divided and often warring mem¬ bers of Christ’s body, for only so can the Church proclaim with a united voice the gospel of her Master and set up His Kingdom on earth, — aye, only so can organised Christianity continue to exist. Everywhere our paramount need is the realisa¬ tion of fellowship. But how shall it be achieved ? There are great and far-reaching schemes proposed, Leagues of Nations, the various varieties of socialism, plans for the wholesale democratisation of industry, and federations of churches for common action, with farther-reaching attempts at organic unity in faith and order. These all deserve our study and our support, according as their merits com¬ mend themselves to our judgments. But I am convinced that real fellowship must be reached in another way. It cannot be imposed mechan¬ ically from above on those below, or from with¬ out on those within. It must spring up from below from the hearts of the people. It must THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP 4° grow from within. It is a thing of the spirit and not of external devices. And to that end we need everywhere the formation of voluntary groups, united in devotion to common causes, who shall act as ganglia, nerve-centres of fellowship in our sadly divided body of humanity, centres of salt and leaven, which shall gradually permeate the whole mass with their own spirit of fellow¬ ship. Such are the international associations of the men of science, art and literature throughout the world, for science, art, and literature know no race or nation. Such are the great trade and labour unions with their international gatherings for various purposes. Just now these give more promise of the prevention of war than any other associations. Such are the councils of employ¬ ers and employes and the public which are work¬ ing out the spirit of co-operation as well as plans for industrial democracy. Such are the many as¬ sociations of earnest men and women of all faiths and communions for various religious, social and international purposes, like the World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches, or the little Church League for In¬ dustrial Democracy. The more of such groups we can have, the better. They practise the art of fellowship among themselves and spread it by contagion. Let me outline, briefly, the method of one NATURE OF FELLOWSHIP 41 such voluntary group of fellowship. It reveals the method of cultivating fellowship and its char¬ acteristic development. They are all Christians and all interested in the interpretation of the es¬ sential truths of Christianity into terms that shall meet the needs of to-day and the understanding of the modern mind. They are of various voca¬ tions, — theologians, teachers, pastors, scholars, scientists, and women who are just women. They have various views and convictions, but a common cause. They meet for a week of re¬ treat and conference to lay out the plan for their work and to assign subjects to individual writers. After some months they meet for another such week to read over and criticise the work so far accomplished. After another interval they meet for another such week for final revision. In all these periods of mutual counsel they have devotional exercises together, intellectual discussion, and social intercourse and recreation. The mind of each is quickened and deepened as well as modified and adjusted by contact with the minds of others. There issues something quite different from the arithmetical addition of separate minds. It is a tertium quid , a chemical result, perhaps as different from any or all of the contributing minds as water is from the oxy¬ gen and hydrogen which compose it under the electric spark. That electric spark is fellowship — fellowship, 42 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP as tHey express it, “in work and play, in prayer and jest.” If such groups of men and women, interested in the great common problems of world politics and humanity, of industry and religion — if such groups could be formed to develop such fellowships in work and play, in jest and prayer, we should find our problems clarifying, our breaches being healed, and the spirit of fellowship spreading everywhere. And behind and beneath all these other groups, there is one fundamental fellowship which is the final source and origin of all others, their one sufficient inspiration and sustenance — that is the fellowship of religion in its most essential sense, above all the religion revealed in Jesus Christ. I have in this lecture suggested my theme. In the succeeding lectures I shall apply that theme as follows: Fellowship between Races, Fellow¬ ship between Nations, Fellowship in Industry, Fellowship among the Churches, and, finally, the Fellowship of the Mystery, rooted in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, revealing the love of God and realised in the Communion of the Holy Ghost. LECTURE II FELLOWSHIP BETWEEN RACES IN one of our large cities there is a technical high school in which noonday luncheons are served at cost to the pupils. There appeared one day over the door of the dining-room this sign — “Sheenies and Niggers wait until your Betters feed.” This sign was put up by the so- called “white” pupils, themselves a mongrel mixture of many races. That day the Negro and Jewish pupils formed an alliance. In a school fight they “cleaned up” the mongrel whites and established their claim to respect, and equal rights and privileges. I be¬ lieve such a combination between Jews and Ne¬ groes is taking place in New York politics, and bids fair to run through all our large cities. It is hard to think of two races more diverse in traditions, culture, customs, in fact everything, than the Negroes and the Jews. Yet a common experience of contempt, arrogance and tyranny on the part of an alleged “superior” race, is mak¬ ing them allies. It is said that “politics makes 43 44 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP strange bed-fellows.” So do race-hatreds and race-strife. In that story is set forth concretely, in minia¬ ture, the gravest peril that besets modern civilisa¬ tion to-day. An exaggerated race-conscious¬ ness, expressing itself in contempt, exploitation and tyranny on the one side, the side of those that claim to be the superior races, the whites, and deepening resentment and hatred on the part of the so-called inferior races, the darker races, this overdone and diseased race-consciousness is everywhere undermining the foundations of mod¬ ern civilisation. Particularly it threatens the long-established supremacy of the white or west¬ ern civilisation. Fellowship between the races has become, to-day, the article of a standing or a falling world order. Whether race characteristics are due simply to heredity, to blood, or whether they are the gradual development and outgrowth of environment, cli¬ mate, habitat, with their consequent manners and modes of life, custom, culture and tradition, this is an academic question for anthropologists and ethnologists to discuss, and, if they can, to settle. Certainly such facts as the vast difference in char¬ acteristics, progress, civilisation and culture be¬ tween the modern Hungarian and the Turk, said to be of the same blood and race, would seem to lay the emphasis on environment. The difference between the two peoples seems to be owing to BETWEEN RACES 45 Christian culture and Mohammedan culture. But as I have said, this is an academic question for experts. The universal fact which we must face practically is this race-sense, or race-con¬ sciousness, and out of it grow those inexplicable and ineradicable instincts, race-pride and race- antipathy, the unreasoning and often unreasonable conviction in each race of its own superiority to all others, and the equally unreasoning and un¬ reasonable prejudice and even hatred of all others. These are practically universal. They are in¬ stincts, I repeat. They have their roots in the psychic, rather than in the rational. They can neither be reasoned into human nature nor rea¬ soned out of human nature. They are there, that is all we can say, and apparently impreg- nably and ineradicably there. Perhaps the most typical illustration of race- pride, if not race-conceit, is to be seen in our own race. — the white race, particularly the Anglo- Saxon variety of it. We are absolutely sure that we are the supreme race of the world and of history. We stand at the acme, the summit of human development and of human civilisation. Many of us cannot imagine any stage of progress beyond. Our motto is “ne plus ultra.” To question or cast any doubt upon this racial su¬ premacy of ours, is like questioning or casting a doubt upon a mathematical axiom, like two and two make four, or the shortest distance be- 46 the gospel of fellowship tween two points is a straight line. It reduces us to a blank mental confusion. We conclude, charitably, that the doubter has simply lost his mind. Our instinctive attitude toward all other races is, perhaps, primarily not that of antipathy but rather of patronising arrogance mingled with kindly contempt. We feel no hatred against them, ^Indeed, they are hardly worthy of our hatred. We even graciously condescend toward them as we do toward children, the weak-minded, the helpless and the poor, provided they know their place and keep it. And that place is the place of acknowledged inferiority, grateful de¬ pendence, and humble docility. On what grounds rests this vaunted superior¬ ity of the white race and civilisation? In one realm, it must be acknowledged, we have estab¬ lished securely our claim to superiority, if not to supremacy, and that is the material realm. We have made more discoveries of the resources and forces of physical nature than all the other races. We have devised more inventions whereby those resources are converted into material wealth and those forces harnessed to the service of our physi¬ cal life, though the Chinese may dispute this claim in a few particulars, such as the invention of gunpowder, printing and the making of tex¬ tiles, particularly silks. We have conquered space and time by steam BETWEEN RACES 4 7 and electricity. We have explored the secrets of the universe in the natural science of physics, chemistry and astronomy, though in the last two, particularly, we received large inheritance from the east, and we excel all in the application of science to the diagnosis and healing of disease. Hitherto, we have stood supreme in the infernal art of war. We have devoted the skill of our science to the invention and fabrication of the instruments of destruction and we have held a frightful supremacy in this region. We have learned how to use and organise force for the conquest, subjugation and control of other races. On these grounds we rest our claim to supe¬ riority and supremacy and feel secure. None can dispute those claims, and many of us do not see beyond, perhaps because we do not care to look beyond, or because we have little sense of other, and, perhaps, higher values. But when we come to the development and use of the human mind and intellect, and the expres¬ sion of the human spirit in such forms as art, lit¬ erature, philosophy, we must yield the palm to ancient Greece, which stands in these regions on a height seemingly unattainable by us. In subtlety of thought, and penetration into intel¬ lectual and particularly spiritual realities, we are far inferior to the best East Indian mind both ancient and modern. And as to the supreme art of living, it is a 48 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP mast debatable question whether with all our multiplications of material comforts and wealth, all our knowledge and mastery of the physical universe, we have increased the sum of human happiness or even the average well-being of hu¬ manity. The ancient Greeks were undoubtedly a far happier people than the mass of Americans or Englishmen. Sometime, we shall look back upon our modern industrialism with its ruthless greeds, its concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few and of misery in the lives of all, particularly the dispossessed, its sordidness and cruelty, its atrophy of all sense of the higher values of life, its incapacity for clean and high joys — sometime, I say, we shall look back upon this vision with all the horror with which we con¬ template the horrors of Dante’s Inferno or the old orthodox hell. Some of us look upon it thus now. And as to religion, with its sense of moral values and visions of spiritual realities, we have been always notoriously deficient, even poverty- stricken. The ancient, Teutonic religions which Germany tried to revive in the late war, were fit for such use only. They were savage, bestial, cruel beyond words, destitute of any moral or spiritual values. We have had to import all our moral systems (except our survival of mediaeval chivalry) and quite all our religious and spiritual philosophies from the East, from the despised dark races. The three prevailing religions of the BETWEEN RACES 49 world, Buddhism, Mohammedanism and Judaism with its noble daughter Christianity, all came to us from the wise men of the East. How much in our arrogant assumption of superiority do we realise our incalculable debt in the past to these so-called inferior races? How much do we ap¬ preciate the inestimable racial gifts and graces in which they excel us to-day? An Eastern pre¬ late recently most aptly and truly compared the relation of the East to the West, the white man's burden if you please, to a sturdy blind man (the West) carrying on his shoulders a lame man of keen sight. We have the strength, they have the vision. We need each other. But in the rudeness of our conceit, we have habitually despised their gifts. Even our early missionaries (reimporting into the East a re¬ ligion originally born there and much distorted and petrified by our Western literature) have often contemptuously and indiscriminately swept aside all the great spiritual values of native phi¬ losophies and religions as real superstition and pure heathenism, the inventions of the devil, forgetting that God hath not left Himself with¬ out witness in any age or among any people, that His light lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And as for our explorers, travellers, conquer¬ ors, governors and, above all, our capitalists, traders and merchants, they have trampled ruth- THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP 50 lessly upon things too precious for their limited understanding, namely, sensitive racial pride and self-respect. They have ignored or condemned philosophy, poetry, religion, art, which they were too crude to appreciate. They have often be¬ haved like the proverbial bull in the china shop. We have run amok through civilisations perhaps in many aspects finer than our own. Meanwhile, what is the attitude of these darker races towards us? What is their esti¬ mate of us ? Few of us stop to ask that question. Perhaps many of us never think of it. It is too absurd a question to ask. Of course, they must recognise our superiority. If they do not, so much the worse for them. Yet it is good for us to “see oursel’s as ithers see us.” The vision may surprise us overwhelmingly. The Eastern mind — Indian, Chinese, even Japanese — regards us, on the part of the common people, mostly with in¬ tense hatred and contempt, and sometimes among the cultured with quiet but bitter amusement. The masses of the Chinese are quite as convinced of the unquestioned superiority of their civilisa¬ tion over ours, as we are confident of the su¬ periority of ours over theirs. They regard us as heathen, pagan and barbarian, if not savage, as much as our ignorant people so regard them. Their common name for us is “foreign devils.” Our chief characteristic to their refined and cul¬ tured people is our bad manners. Perhaps a BETWEEN RACES 51 most insignificant and, indeed, ridiculous detail will shock our sensibilities and wound our pride most. An educated Chinese gentleman being urged by an American inquirer to declare frankly what to him was most offensive about a white man, after long importunity said most reluctantly at last, “It is the way you smell. To us you have the odor of death, the smell of a corpse.” It may be just as well for us to remember, when we turn up our noses at a joke over the odor of the oriental or the darker races, that we may be just as offensive in this particular to them, though they may be too polite to express themselves as frankly, or shall we say as rudely, as we do. These are simply illustrations of the instinctive inter-racial antipathies, psychic rather than ra¬ tional, and these natural antipathies are immea¬ surably sharpened and intensified by religious an¬ tagonisms, commercial rivalries and jealousies, and above all by the bitter resentment over the commercial exploitation, social contempt, and mil¬ itaristic tyranny and oppression of the stronger races toward the weaker. These facts constitute the world's most omi¬ nous and threatening peril to-day. They present the chief, indeed the paramount, problem which we must face in the immediate future. That problem divides into two: The race problem in the world and the race problem in America. 52 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP It is almost wholly a modern problem, this race problem. For centuries, and for ages, the races had been practically isolated and insulated from each other. To be sure, there was the constant shifting to and fro of populations in the early ages, the ebb and flow of tribal ventures in migration and con¬ quest. Alexander’s conquest carried Greek, the then Western civilisation, to India and left there some monuments and memories. Then came, in the Christian era, the threat of the West by the East, when the Moslem invasion engulfed all Christian North Africa, swept over Spain and battered at the barriers of France. And, later, came the counter movement of the Crusaders for the recovery at least of the holy places of Pales¬ tine, and then the Turk swept up to the very gates of Vienna and threatened, for a while, to turn the West into the East. But all these move¬ ments left little permanent impression. The two worlds, the East and the West, the two civilisa¬ tions, the Oriental and the Occidental, were left practically intact in their integrities. The East was still the East and the West the West. India sat undisturbed, absorbed in silent meditation on the mysteries of the universe. China slept in placid peace and self-complacency behind her great wall. Korea until yesterday was a hermit nation. Japan lived till 1853 in a flat four-square world, aware only of the existence of Korea, BETWEEN RACES 53 China, and India. And the vast interior of Africa was still marked unknown or unexplored territory in the geographies some of us studied in our schooldays. It was still “the dark continent/’ Adventurous travellers like Marco Polo took per¬ ilous journeys into the Far East and brought back fabulous tales. Venetian merchants carried on an intermittent trade with Araby and India. Pioneers of the Cross, Jesuit missionaries, pene¬ trated the “land of Simiens” and left perma¬ nent traces on its history. But for all that oc¬ casional and fleeting contact, East was still East and West was still West. Each was practically hermetically sealed against the other. Then came the great typical movement of mod¬ ern times, the advance all along the line of the West upon the East. It was chiefly a commercial invasion with out-runners and pioneers in the form of the explorers and investigators of science and the missionaries of religion. In India it was frankly and wholly commercial from the start. Commercial wars between French and English interests swept over the country until the Eng¬ lish triumphed and a mercantile company actually seized and ruled, for its own profit, that vast peninsula. Political administration and govern¬ ment came in later to remedy the intolerable evils of commercial exploitation. The history of the British occupation of India is a story of mixed results. It exhibits some of the finest illustrations 54 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP of even-handed justice, in administrative, benevo¬ lent despotism, the noble lifting and bearing of the white man’s burden, mingled with as ruthless a commercial oppression and exploitation as the world has ever known. Poor, passive, phlegmatic China became the un¬ resisting prey of Western greed. Her living mem¬ bers were lopped off and appropriated, “zones of influence” were established in her very heart, where her sovereignty was ignored and nullified, her trade seized and carried on for the profit of foreigners, her resources milked into their pail, even her non-Christian conscience violated by “Christian” England in the war that forced the opium trade upon her. Only brave little Japan retained some measure of self-respect and self- sovereignty as she took over, and made her own, the methods of the new Western civilisation. The slave trade, with its unspeakable horrors, was the first “beneficent” touch of Christendom upon heathen Africa. And later its vast unknown in¬ terior, opened largely by science and religion, ex¬ plorers and missionaries, became forthwith the prey of commercial greed. British, Dutch, Bel¬ gians, French, Italians, Germans, used its material resources and its human populations without con¬ science for their own aggrandisement. The dia¬ mond mines, the rubber plantations, the vast agri¬ cultural domains, all cry aloud to heaven for ven¬ geance on the Christians, on behalf of the helpless BETWEEN RACES 55 heathen. There is no more hideous story in his¬ tory, in some respects, than this story of the in¬ vasion of the East by the West, this primary im^ pact, we might almost call it collision, of the so- called Christian civilisations with the non-Chris¬ tian civilisations, or barbarians. It is relieved, here and there, by alleviation of human suffering through famine and disease by the applications of Western science, and above all it is shot through and through with the romance of Christian Mis¬ sions, with their liberation from superstitions, their uplift to nobler planes of morals, their inspirations with new faith and hope, of great masses of the peoples who beforetime sat in darkness and the shadow of death. But the com¬ mercial, diplomatic, militaristic, and, to a great degree, the political aspects of the story, are a practically unmitigated record of selfish greed, and ruthless exploitation and oppression. 'And now a latest chapter has been added to the record by the publication of the King-Crane report on the Near East, a report hitherto sup¬ pressed, even by the United States Government. Therein it is revealed, that at the very moment when the common peoples of all the allied nations were being hypnotised by the presentation of noble ideals into unprecedented toil and sacrifice, while their soldiers — our boys among them — were fighting and dying in a war that was to end war, make the world safe for democracy, estab- 56 THE GOSPEL OF. FELLOWSHIP lish righteousness and peace on earth, self-de¬ termination for the weaker peoples and justice for all, at that very moment the conscienceless cun¬ ning diplomats of Britain, France and Italy, were sitting about a council board in Paris — a gambling table it might better be called — with the lives of millions, the future, nay, the very existence of whole peoples, as the stakes, com¬ placently playing the game of intrigue. They fooled the people with high-sounding preach¬ ments in public, and in the secrecy of the cham¬ ber of conspiracy they played the real game. They plotted, manoeuvred, deceived and fought for the only objectives of the war which were real and worth while to them. They arrived at their results by secret treaties, “gentlemen’s agreements” forsooth, which they did not dare present to the world for fear of the consuming wrath of the public. They were allotting the prizes bought with the sacrifice of their peoples and the blood of their sons, especially were they carving Turkey and the Near East. Italy was to take the Adriatic and the ^Egean Italian lakes with vast territories in Asia and Africa, France was to gain Syria and other provinces, England was to have the oil of Mosul and Mesopotamia; and then the dogs — the little peoples like Greece (and by the way to do the dirty work of the final conquest) and the Balkan States, must pick the bones of Turkey, BETWEEN RACES 57 The unspeakable Turk doubtless deserves all the curses he gets for his misrule, tyranny, op¬ pression, and above all, his massacres of the mixed Christian populations under his sway. But he is not wholly without justification in his defence of his national ideals and very existence against the devilish designs of the Christian nations of Europe — at least no “holy” war can be declared against him at present. Such is the present situation in race relation¬ ships. Isolation and insulation are gone forever, henceforth the peoples of the earth are to be mixed and mingled. Steam and electricity, trade and commerce, as well as science and religion, are shrinking the world. We all have to live to¬ gether in a house constantly growing smaller. Juxtaposition, contact in every relation of our common world life is inevitable. But juxtapo¬ sition, contact, does not bring harmony and fel¬ lowship. It may bring just the opposite. The instinctive race antipathies of the East against the West, sharpened by religious antag¬ onisms and above all inflamed by the arrogance, contempt and even exploitation and oppression, practised by the white race towards the darker races, these are manifest in deepening resent¬ ments and smouldering hatreds everywhere among these peoples. Why have not these smouldering passions burst into flame to kindle a wide-world conflagration? 58 THE gospel of fellowship Why have not these gathering forces risen in re¬ volt against white domination? Two things have hitherto restrained them and delayed the catastrophe. One is the lack of any solidarity, any capacity for a common will or concerted action among the darker races. The other is their conscious inferiority to the white races in the knowledge and use of the forces which physical science has discovered and har¬ nessed to human service, particularly to the ser¬ vice of destruction in warfare. But these two restraints are rapidly dissolving. The East is swiftly mastering Western science. To-day, Japan equals and, perhaps in some par¬ ticulars, excels many of the Western nations in her knowledge and use of science for all purposes, particularly the uses of warfare. Moreover she has already proved her new armour. This little David among the nations boldly challenged the great Goliath of the West, the behemoth of the peoples, Russia, and won an astounding and complete victory. The news of that victory ran like wildfire throughout the Far East. It thrilled the hearts of Chinaman, East Indian, Turk, Armenian, alike, It kindled a new and fierce hope in their breasts. The dark man had met the hated white on his own chosen field of contest and had triumphed over him! What possibilities and prospects of self-respect, freedom, independence, aye, domina- BETWEEN RACES 59 tion that event opened to them ! The stir is felt everywhere. China is agonising in the throes of a new birth. When a new, united People issues from the womb, it will be perhaps the strongest nation on earth, both in resources and in the native vigour of its people. India is in revolt from one end to the other against the hated white domination and, apparently, the British govern¬ ment knows no better way of dealing with that revolt than shutting up thousands of the finest, most devoted of the native patriots in jail. Egypt has received her independence. It will not be long before British control is relaxed over both Meso¬ potamia and Palestine. I venture to prophesy that the day is not far off when, in a large degree, she will withdraw from India. Britain is getting tired of acting as the world’s police. She has too many problems at home, and no white nation is ready to step into her place and assume her burden. The Turk, a little while ago beaten, crushed and bound hand and foot with the treaty of Sevres, has returned victorious into Europe and dictates to the frightened Allies his terms, some of them terrible and ruthless towards the mixed Christian peoples under his misrule. There is an ominous uprising of the whole East against the West. And, meanwhile, the Western nations, the so-called Christian peoples, are absorbed in internecine strife among them¬ selves, a kind of civil war which bids fair to rob 6o THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP them of the last vestige of hegemony they had won throughout the world. What shall be the final issue of this present chaos of conflicting race instincts and ambitions? He would be a bold prophet who should venture to predict its details. But we have analogies in history which sketch an outline of possibilities, if ever we will learn from history. The Roman Empire and civilisation, ap¬ parently as impregnable and permanent as the contrasting hills of the Eternal City, went down before the barbarian flood from the north. For¬ tunately that barbarian host was already impreg¬ nated with Christianity and we had the modern, somewhat Christian civilisation as the outcome. But, to-day, white domination and Western civ¬ ilisation are threatened with a new inundation, and it carries with it few elements that promise the resurgence of anything like a Christian world order. This is the color scheme of the world to-day. Over two-thirds yellow and dark, less than one- third white — which hue shall finally prevail? Is that question to be decided by a world-conflict that shall make the recent World War seem like a mild, family altercation? If so, it will be the supreme tragedy of human history. It will be a Kilkenny-cat affair, and remember there are twice as many yellow and dark cats as white, and they are rapidly developing just as long and sharp claws. This is no hysterical, panic-inspired BETWEEN RACES 6 1 picture. It is a plain statement of fact which we face, whether we see it or not. What is the way out ? What is the remedy for this desperate situation? Only one thing, and that is a new understanding and fellowship be¬ tween the races, East, West, dark and white. And that fellowship can come from but one source, — -religion, and in its most fundamental and essential meaning. Fellowship is the pri¬ mary meaning of the word itself. Religion is the bond that binds, not only the human soul to God, but the bond that binds together men and peoples and nations and races as members of one family under the universal Fatherhood of the One God, Creator and Father of us all. Most ethnic religions are rooted in, and foster, race-conscious¬ ness, though there are in many, dim adumbra¬ tions of human universalism. But Christianity supremely and constantly stands for the unity of mankind. It proclaims boldly “God hath made of one blood all nations (or races) of men for to dwell on the whole earth.,, While other peoples were declaring proudly that their ancestors were autochthonous, sprung from the soil of their native lands, while all other peoples had separate and inferior ori¬ gins, the Hebrew creation story traces simply all peoples and tongues and nations to one primeval pair and one origin, the dust of the earth shaped by God’s hand, inbreathed with His breath of 62 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP life and made His image. It is an astounding fact that among a people whose race instincts were the narrowest and most exclusive and whose race-antipathies were the most intense, those great preachers, the prophets, always insisted on this unity of a common humanity. They denounced constantly with withering severity the Jew’s claim to exclusive Divine election and favoritism. The whole book of Jonah, so pitifully misread as a fish story, is a gentle but searching satire on race bigotry and intolerance. The vision of the Psalmist and of the great seers of Israel, beholds a city and kingdom of God that gather into one Divine commonwealth of equal right and privilege, ruled by mutual love and bound to¬ gether in brotherhood, all peoples and tongues and races. And that conception comes to its cli¬ max in the mission of Christ to disciple the nations, save the world and set up the Kingdom of Heaven, the celestial order on earth, wide as the world and long as eternity. The unity of humanity which religion seeks is far more than a mere mass-conception, lit rests not on mere unity of physical origin and nature. The “one blood” is not sufficient to bind men and races to¬ gether in real brotherhood. You cannot, on this basis, argue or reason away instinctive and psy¬ chic race antipathies. Nowhere is that argument put more cogently and eloquently than in Shy- BETWEEN RACES 63 lock’s defence of the common humanity of the Jew: “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, af¬ fections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same dis¬ eases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?” Yes, the argument of the one blood is cogent and conclusive. Yet note the conclusion. It leads not to fellowship but to cumulation in mutual hatred and vengeance. “If you wrong us, shall not we revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example ? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.” And the tragic story of anti-Semitism confirms the conclusion. The “one blood” creates no sense of brother¬ hood, and material interests always divide. Fel¬ lowship can be realised on the spiritual plane only. Mass-consciousness, the sense of a common phys¬ ical human nature, will never beget the spirit of a common humanity. 64 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP Fellowship is never an inevitable fact, based on other physical or material facts, it is never an irresistible conclusion of academic syllogisms or scientific arguments. It is a high, difficult, spir¬ itual art which must be diligently practised and laboriously established. It demands insight and vision, and it costs service and sacrifice. Therein lies the indispensable office and function of re¬ ligion in the world’s race problems. It is only as each of us deliberately and wilfully lays aside his own race conceit and arrogance, rids himself of his reasonless, instinctive antipathy against his fellow-man on the mere ground of his racial blood ; it is only as we strenuously divest ourselves of these race prejudices and clothe ourselves in the humility of a common humanity and then consider his native gifts and graces, as great and precious in their sphere as ours are in ours; it is only as we realise that these racial characteristics are complementary to each other, that they are to be shared, mutually, and not set over against each other in jealous comparisons or even antagonism ; it is only as we realise that the colour scheme of the world itself is but the spectrum of variant hues and that only in the blend of all can be found the white light of a real and whole humanity — • it is only thus that we can practise and achieve that high art of human brotherhood. And the spirit and power of such an art can be found only in religion, and, I should add, supremely in BETWEEN RACES 6S the religion of Christ. That is the meaning of the Apostle’s great declaration : “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncir¬ cumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all.” But how shall that fellowship be practised and achieved in the intercourse between races ? There is only one way — by sharing our best gifts each with the other. We of the West can sit humbly at the feet of the Oriental and learn from him his sense of artistic and spiritual values. We can get much of incalculable worth from his philosophies and even his religions. And we, in our turn, can share with him our physical sciences and our practical arts and above all the supreme religion which we originally inherited from him and which will only reveal its full spiritual mean¬ ing and power as it is reappropriated and rein¬ terpreted by him. Fellowship in science, fellow¬ ship in education, fellowship in mutual service, these are the bonds that alone can bind us to¬ gether. One such venture as the Rockefeller Foundation in China does more to insure the se¬ curity of western civilisation and the world or¬ der and peace than all the armaments, armies, navies, and warships put together, for they only imperil the whole status of humanity while such services incarnate and create human brotherhood. If we could spend a tithe of what we put into instruments for mutual destruction into instru- 66 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP merits of mutual service in the realms of science and education, the future of the world and the human race would be assured. And all this mutual sharing and service find their finest and fullest expression in modern Christian Foreign Missions. Time was, when Foreign Missions meant in large degree what they still mean to the average, ignorant layman of to-day, and what they are commonly inter¬ preted to mean in our comic papers and often in our public press. Fanatical bigots, religious en¬ thusiasts, men and women of one book and often one idea, ardent sectarians and denomina- tionalists overran the world, saving souls from a future hell by patent processes or “accomplish¬ ing the number of the elect” that the literal Second Coming of the Lord upon the clouds might be accomplished. Such missionaries were often entirely unsympathetic with, and even in¬ tolerant of, all the ancient philosophies and re¬ ligions of the peoples to whom they went. To them, everything but their brand of orthodox Christianity was rank superstition and heathen¬ ism. There was no truth or reality anywhere save in their particular “plan of salvation,” sys¬ tem of theology, or cult, or rite, or ceremony. They had no human interests outside their tech¬ nical task. Physical disease, mental darkness, social wrongs, made no appeal to them. They were absorbed in their one job, the saving of souls BETWEEN RACES 6* from hell-fire. Such missionaries have wrought much spiritual havoc along with much good that is above praise. But, to-day, the wisest and best Christian mis¬ sionaries in non-Christian lands study sympathet¬ ically and reverently the philosophies and reli¬ gions of the people to whom they minister. They appreciate the intellectual, moral and spiritual values they find therein. They account them all as revelations and inspirations of the Spirit of truth that leadeth into all truth, gleams and out- shinings of the one light “that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” They find through them larger interpretations and deeper enrich¬ ments of the fundamental and essential truths of Christianity, which it shares in large measure with all religions. Out of such contacts, alone, can come the full understanding of the continu¬ ous and universal Revelation of God to man, which is everywhere and always one and the same. They also have supremely the social vision. The purpose of religion is to save the world, not simply to insure individual souls, here and there, against hell-fire or assure them of heavenly bliss hereafter. Everything that makes for human welfare and betterment — physical, mental, moral, spiritual, individual, social, industrial, political, agricultural, educational, religious — every such thing is the concern and interest of true religion. 68 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP We have, to-day, in our missionary hosts, teach¬ ers, physicians, nurses, agricultural and industrial and commercial experts, as well as pastors, preachers and evangelists. It takes them all to carry the full message of the Gospel and the full values of a really Christian civilisation. Through schools and universities, through hospitals and agricultural and industrial experiment stations, through every agency available, we are striving to put the best we have developed in our Western Christian civilisation at the service of our breth¬ ren of other races, at the same time that we are earnestly and humbly seeking to understand and profit by the best they have to teach and share with us. Christian Foreign Missions of this kind (and most missions to-day are of this kind) I do not hesitate to affirm have become literally “the ar¬ ticle of a standing or falling civilisation, aye, of a standing or falling world order.” Unless we share our best with each other, we shall in¬ evitably share our worst. We shall be one in common calamity if we will not be one in mutual service. Missions which shall interpret the races to each other, missions which shall establish mu¬ tual understandings and the highest and finest in our several civilisations, philosophies and re¬ ligions, missions which shall share mutually the best we have to contribute to each other, these alone can inspire the spirit and knit the bonds of BETWEEN RACES 69 fellowship between peoples of diverse blood, and such fellowship alone can solve the ominous dif¬ ficulties and avert the threatening and fatal perils of the race problems in the world. ([ can barely touch in closing the other branch of my theme, the race problem in our own coun¬ try. It divides into two distinct heads : The Negro problem and the Immigrant problem, pre¬ sented by the “stranger within our gates.” The facts we have found and the principles we have applied in our study of the world’s race problem, are, to a large degree, equally patent and applicable here in our own land. The Negro problem is in no sense a sectional or regional problem. In extent, of course, it is more concentrated and crucial in the South, though we have increas¬ ing coloured populations in most of our north¬ ern cities. In responsibility we share alike. Per¬ haps our Puritan forefathers of New England should carry the heavier end of this load of re¬ sponsibility for they were possibly more active in the slave trade which originally brought this problem upon us than were their contemporaries in the South. Slavery was practised originally throughout our country. It died out in the North because it proved economically unprofitable. It continued in the South because the larger preva¬ lence of agriculture and the climatic conditions proved more favourable to its development. But 70 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP the sin of slavery was our common sin, now ex¬ piated in the blood of the Civil War which finally abolished the external forms of chattel slavery, though it did not touch that wage slavery which, in our modern industrial developments, is often fully as bad and is considered by many in some of its aspects as possibly worse. Anyhow, however this responsibility may be allotted, here is the problem: Millions of black folk rushed in a few generations from savagery through slavery into the responsibilities and priv¬ ileges of a civilisation which it has taken the white races centuries to develop and adapt them¬ selves to. On the whole, the race has shown an ability for adjustment which is little short of marvellous when all the conditions are consid¬ ered. They have responded to their opportuni¬ ties with eagerness and their leading spirits have made a progress that is unsurpassed, perhaps un¬ equalled, in the history of slave populations. The stories of Hampton and Tuskegee read like romances. It is little wonder that among the masses of the cruder, ruder, and more ignorant, perhaps most of them without any adequate opportunities, ineptitudes ' and incapacities to respond to the standards of our white civilisation should be found. Here is tKe crux of the problem: It is too often met, not with sympathetic study and un- BETWEEN RACES 71 derstanding, but with mere race prejudice and race antipathy of the most irrational kind. I know I reflect the best minds of the South as well as of the North when II say that our record of mob- violence and race-riots, as prevalent in the North as in the South, which has branded the whole American people in the eyes of Europeans as semi-barbarous if not semi-savage, is a horror and an intolerable shame to every right-minded American. It must be ended at all costs. It can be ended by one thing only, the spirit of fellow¬ ship whose only final and adequate source is our religion. It goes without saying that statutes must be passed and enforced, drastic laws, if necessary, which shall put an absolute stop to all mob-violence and lawless use of force, which, apart from the race problem altogether, are too commonly characteristic of the American peo¬ ple to-day. But beyond that, in a region where law does not run, the region of voluntary human relations, the realm and plane of the spirit, we need and must have the bond which only religion can create, a Christian fellowship, far above the shallow questions of social equalities, going far deeper than the superficial realm of social inter¬ course (you might have the empty form of such social equality and intercourse without any real fellowship, and both races could equally loathe such form), a fellowship which should interpret each race to the other in mutual understandings 72 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP and in mutual sharing of the best each has to give for the welfare and development of the other. ,We can give them education, technical and cul¬ tural, an ethical religion, a sympathetic under¬ standing and willing helpfulness, and, above all, an even justice before the law, and they can give us a spontaneity of joy and cheer in mere living, a spiritual insight and imagination in religion in which they often excel us, as well as incalculable economic values. Such fellowships are being worked out to-day, I understand, by associations of leaders of both races throughout the South. There are eight hundred counties so organised. And it is to such efforts that the best minds and hearts in America look hopefully and prayerfully. It is the spirit of Christ alone which can make such efforts ef¬ fective and their resulting fellowships real. If St. Paul were writing, to-day, he would add to his dichotomies of Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, bond and free, another division, black and white, and declare “all are one in Christ Jesus.” One word in closing as to the stranger within our gates — the immigrant. It seems as if God had made America a kind of experimental sta¬ tion, a laboratory for the solution of this inter¬ racial problem for the world. If we can establish Christian fellowship between the polyglot races within our borders, the problem of international BETWEEN RACES 73 and inter-racial relations throughout the world ought to be more easily worked out on the basis and the lines of that successful experiment. But it must be admitted by all competent observers that we have not so far worked it out very satis¬ factorily. The foreign populations in our large cities, and even in rural districts, dwell more or less by themselves, in separate colonies, often isolated and insulated by the continued use of their native tongues, the observance of their racial customs and traditions and, it is to be feared, frequently by the maintenance of and adherence to their na¬ tional or racial ethical and social standards. They stand out like insoluble and unassimilable lumps of irreducible metal in our “melting pot.” Such communities or colonies are frequently sources of social peril. They breed criminals, the police tell us. They are hot-houses for the cultivation of wild and radical programmes, our conservative citizens assert. They pull down the American standard of living, our American labour leaders complain. Whatever truth there may be in these allega¬ tions (and that there is some, if not much truth in them, we must all admit) the explanation is simple but not often understood. Consider the case of the immigrant, a stranger in a strange land : i. He is stripped, at the start, of all the re- 74 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP straints and props of social custom, tradition and environment which do so much for the best of us to keep us straight and up to the requirements of the prevailing moral standards. Let me illus¬ trate : Here is a young man from the country or small town who makes his first visit to a great city. Nobody knows him, and he knows nobody. He is a mere number in the hotel's books. He is plunged into the solitude of the crowd, the lone¬ liest of all solitudes. The thought occurs to him, “Here is my chance. If I strayed from the straight and narrow path at home, everybody would know it. It would be the talk of the town or the countryside. I would lose my reputation and social standing. I would violate the ac¬ cepted standards, and, worst of all, I would break the peace of my home, if not the hearts of my family. But here, nobody knows me. I can do what I choose, and none will heed. I will see life. I will enlarge the bounds of my experience. I will explore undiscovered territory. I will satiate my curiosity. I will paint the town red.” Is not this the story of many a man stripped for the first time of the ordinary social restraints and props of conventional behaviour ? Here are millions of strangers in a strange land, in the solitude of the crowds, torn up by the roots from their native soil, stripped of the age-long traditions and customs that surrounded them from birth, having lost their old social BETWEEN RACES 75 conventions and standards and found no new ones ; church, community, often family and home gone, for many of them are single men. Is it any wonder that they often lose their moorings and are driven by gusts of passion and carried by the new ideas of strange life about them to moral shipwreck? Then consider his experience. Frequently, he is mercilessly exploited by our industrial sys¬ tem, eagerly seeking cheap foreign labour. He is a mere tool to be used, perhaps used up, in its process and then thrown carelessly into the scrap heap. No one cares for his soul, his personality. Even his own countrymen who have come here before him and learned something of the lan¬ guage and customs of the strange land, fre¬ quently use their superior knowledge to prey upon him most ruthlessly. We all know what padrones do to their own people. 'If an immi¬ grant has a family and sends his children to the public schools, these children are often socially ostracised by native born American children, or children one degree removed from foreign birth. The finger of contempt is pointed at them. They are called “dagoes” and “hunkies.” By-and-by, perhaps, the home itself begins to break up. The children acquire a smattering of our language and customs, particularly the “smarty” Americanisms of the streets, and they turn with contempt on the father and mother who 76 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP persist in their queer foreign ways. And so the process goes on. Is it to be wondered at that life grows confused, loses its stability and its victims are driven to recklessness or else to an ingrowing association with those they still understand, their own people ? What is the remedy? Americanisation is the common reply. And yet the ordinary process of Americanisation is frequently superficial and fu¬ tile, and worse than that, often insulting and degrading to the self-respect of the foreigner and his rightful race-consciousness and pride. For in what does it consist? Frequently, just in giving a smattering of the English language and teaching the foreigner to wave the flag, sing The Star Spangled Banner , and repeat parrot-like certain shibboleths of conventional, patriotic cant. Or else, as is commonly the case, the American- iser assumes without question that America has all to give to, and nothing to receive from, the stranger within her gates. The foreigner is to receive all the privileges and bring no corre¬ sponding contribution. He is to be “uplifted” and we are to do all the uplifting. There is no fellowship, no sympathetic understanding, no spiritual contacts, no sharing of gifts or service. Is it not high time that we, conceited, self- contained, arrogant Americans, should recognise that these strangers that flock to our gates come many of them bearing precious gifts, gifts often BETWEEN RACES n that we sadly lack and deeply need? I speak not now of the physical contributions of their labour to our industrial production and material wealth, though where would America be to-day, economically, if it were not for the enormous contributions of so-called foreign labour? But I speak of intellectual, literary, artistic contribu¬ tions, moral and spiritual values. Often the humblest and commonest of them have gifts in them, gifts in which America is characteristi¬ cally poverty-stricken. Such recognition would do much to strengthen the foreigner’s personal, family and racial self-respect, and upon that foun¬ dation rests in large degree the stability of life, homes and personal character. Jane Addams tried an interesting experiment in this direction at Hull House, Chicago. She found the superficially Americanised children in the foreign families of the district losing respect for their queer, foreign parents. She held an exposition of arts and crafts at Hull House. And when the children found that their parents could execute work which won the admiration of the best Americans, they recovered their respect for their parents. Upon our social settlements, our Young Men’s Christian Associations and Young Women’s Christian Associations, above all upon our churches, rest largely this great responsibility and task of fostering and developing the spirit of 78 THE gospel of fellowship mutual understanding and fellowship, of sharing our best among the many racial varieties of our polyglot America. Voluntary groups can do much in this direction. Particularly can our col¬ leges and universities render large service, espe¬ cially those situated in large cities or centres where the race problem centres and presses. Such groups can watch legislation and secure protection for the weak, helpless and ignorant against the oppression of our ruthless industrial system and also the social contempt of our some¬ what arrogant Americanism and too conscious white or Anglo-Saxon superiority. Above all, they can act as ganglia, nerve centres of fellow¬ ship, in the sympathetic system of our divided body political and social. Yes, America is, as I have said, in the Provi¬ dence of God, the laboratory and experimental station for the solution of that paramount prob¬ lem of the near future, inter-racial relations. And if we can develop here a true and real inter¬ racial fellowship, the problems of inter-racial and international harmony and unity throughout the world ought to be easier of solution. The Amer¬ ican of the future may cease to be the exclusive type of one race inheritance (he has long ago ceased to be exclusively Anglo-Saxon) and com¬ bine, in himself, the best inheritances of many races. He may become the representative of a united and common humanity, a son of man. At BETWEEN RACES 79 any rate we shall have taken a long step toward that day of consummation when “the kings of the earth and their peoples shall bring their wealth,” the best each nation and race have to offer, into the city of God, the celestial civilisation, the kingdom of heaven on earth, towards which the prophets and seers and, above all, the Christ have ever hoped and prayed and striven. LECTURE III FELLOWSHIP BETWEEN THE NATIONS THE nation is comparatively a late arrival in the history of the human race, authori¬ ties tell us. There are suggestions and pos¬ sibly primitive types of it in early human times. But in its present form it is largely the outbirth of the Middle Ages, and has reached its climax of development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And now, it shows signs — some, among whom I place myself, would say gives promise — of being possibly merged or federated in a larger organisation of our common, human race. The earliest forms of human association were doubtless those of the family, enlarging into the clan and the tribe, ruled by the “old man” or strong man of the group, then possibly in patriarchal fashion by the chieftain or sheik, possibly, in some instances, with a council of elders. Such organised groups of nomads wan¬ dered over the earth in search of pastures new, of booty, loot or captives, subduing weaker groups. Then came mass aggregations under con- 80 BETWEEN THE NATIONS 8l quest. The great empires, claiming more or less universal dominion over all the known tribes of mankind, sweep down the vast vistas of history, the dim and misty Hittite Empire in the dawn- ages, the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Per¬ sian, Macedonian, Roman, these are the out¬ standing names most familiar to us, but how many other rules of force over differing peoples they represent we know not. They are all alike in this — they rest on pure force, not on the wills of the peoples. They overpass all natural boun¬ daries, mountains, rivers, seas. They hold in¬ discriminately under their sway people of all languages, cults, traditions, cultures, religions, bloods and races. There is no homogeneity about them, no unity of ideals or standards among their subject races. Apparently Rome alone attempted to establish the reign of universal law, defining and protecting common rights, though, for the most part, she restricted jealously her citizenship to the members of one race and largely to the inhabitants of one city. Then came the break-up of the empire by the incursion of the barbarians, then its revival, in some measure of its former power, under Charle¬ magne. It lingered long, that dawn of universal empire, a shadow of its former glory, finally a mere name, Roman Emperor, given to the ruling representatives of the House of Hapsburg, and the titles of the Emperors of Germany and Rus- 82 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP sia, “the grin without the cat,” And now even the grin is gone! Napoleon the First came nearer establishing the old idea of a universal empire than any one else in modern times, but that iridescent bubble soon burst. And now has arrived the nation in the place of the tribe or the empire as the modern political organisation of peoples, the outbirth, as I have said, of the Middle Ages, originally a merger of feudal factors under a central royal power, functioning furiously in all the mediaeval conflicts, specially in the Thirty Years’ War, but perhaps reaching its climax in the nineteenth cen¬ tury and now beginning to show signs, promise of possible transformation into larger confedera¬ tions that shall conform more closely to modem economic and commercial needs and the develop¬ ment of the human race. “What is a Nation?” Renan has a brilliant essay under that title, which seems, to me, to ap¬ proach at least the most satisfactory answer to the question. A nation is not necessarily, or even primarily, delimited and determined by natural geographical boundaries, though these have their effect in de¬ termining and developing the national conscious¬ ness and life of a group of peoples. High moun¬ tains and broad rivers are hard to cross, and broad plains are naturally habitable and easily traversable, consequently topography has its BETWEEN THE NATIONS 83 strong influence in fixing the habitat and close relationship of human beings. And yet nations overflow mountains, rivers and even seas — witness the British nation — and still preserve intense national consciousness and loy¬ alty. And, on the other hand, nation is divided from nation by invisible artificially created boundary lines stretching across broad and easily passable plains. A nation is not determined by the possession and use of a common language, though this is perhaps the strongest external bond of unity, because it is the most efficient means of the intercommunication of thoughts and ideas, which are the real bonds which bind men together. Hence the vigorous efforts of the former Russian and German imperialisms to compel alien races within their jurisdiction to learn and use exclusively the language of the dominant race. That was a most effective means of nationalising and subjecting, if not of assimi¬ lating them. Hence also our strong insistence upon the learning of the English language by all our immigrants and especially their children. It is the most effective approach to what is called Americanisation. And yet the Swiss people are one of the strong¬ est and most compact little nations on the face of the earth, though they speak three different languages. On the other hand, the British and American peoples speak the same language and 84 the gospel of fellowship yet in some respects there are no more distinct nationalities than these two nations exhibit. And unfortunately sometimes, particularly on the American side, our nationalities are apt to be¬ come antagonistic. It is not unity of religion, though that helps. Wherever religious cult pre¬ vails predominantly, as in Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Mohammedan countries, perhaps the ties are a bit closer than between groups of variant faiths. Yet Germany, England, and espe¬ cially our own United States, have found out how to form folk of differing creeds into a unity of national spirit. •It is not even the possession of a common government that makes a nation, though such political expression of national solidarity is es¬ sential to the best functioning of national life. But Austria-Hungary possessed one, or at least a dual government, but it was a miscellaneous, mechanical mixture of variant nations, who fell apart at the first opportunity. On the other hand, the Poles, though for a century ruthlessly torn asunder and divided like spoils among three governments, the Russian, Austrian and German, have maintained their national consciousness and spirit at white heat. And the Jews, though for nearly two millenniums without a home, a capital, a government, or any political expression or form, individually citizens or subjects of every nation in the civilised world, still maintain an intense BETWEEN THE NATIONS 85 national as well as religious and racial con¬ sciousness. A common government makes a state but not necessarily a nation. As Renan says, nationality is a thing of the mind, the will, the heart, the spirit, not of any externals whatsoever. A nation is a group which cherishes common standards, ideals, aims, pur¬ poses, expressed perhaps in curious traditions and customs. It is cemented most strongly, intensified and fixed, by a common experience of struggle, labour, conflict for the establishment, defence and maintenance of those common ideas. It is built, finally, on a common will of the people and can be maintained strongly and successfully only by a daily plebiscite. It lasts only as long as the will of the people sustains it. That is the meaning of democracy. Nationalism is a faith, a religion. Consequently nations are no more fixed, un¬ changeable entities than are religious denomina¬ tions. They are constantly breaking up into smaller independent factions, or uniting in larger fusions. The modern tendency seems to be in the latter direction. In the Middle Ages there were literally hundreds of national states in Eu¬ rope, each claiming independent sovereignty. At The Hague Conferences there were only fifty- nine nations in all the world claiming independent sovereignty, — a number slightly increased by the attempted but uncertain settlements after the re¬ cent World War as the basis of self-determina- 86 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP tion of peoples. This fact seems to give promise of larger fusions and federations in the future. How shall we, to-day, in the light of history and modern development, appraise the value of na¬ tionalism and its manifestation in the individual, the spirit of patriotism? What are their func¬ tion and office? What is to be their future? To criticise either is to-day, I know, as danger¬ ous as to touch the Ark of the Covenant. Na¬ tionalism is enshrined in the very holy of holies in the average modern mind, and patriotism is the supreme virtue, beside which all the fruits of the spirit and the graces of Christian charac¬ ter are insignificant. That is the natural and in¬ evitable temper of peoples who have just emerged from a great war. To question either is utter blasphemy. Still, I am persuaded, the risk must be taken. To detract in the slightest measure from the su¬ preme significance of those worthy and holy nationalistic ideals for which each nation in its degree undoubtedly stands, to diminish or even question their incalculable value as spiritual con¬ tributions to the development and welfare of their own people and even of the human race, to decry the venerable and beautiful traditions, cher¬ ished in the hearts of the several peoples, and in which their ideals find form and expression — that is farthest from my thought. Nationalism has its indispensable use and service in fostering, BETWEEN THE NATIONS 87 defending- and maintaining these national cul¬ tures and contributions. I would not interfere in the slightest with that use or service. I could not, if 1 would, add one note to the uni¬ versal resounding chorus in praise of patriotism. It is perhaps, saving only the love motif, the chief theme of most of our literature, art and drama. Nor would I introduce one discordant note into that chorus. Patriotism is the consuming pas¬ sion of the popular heart, the moving cause of the incalculable service, sacrifice and heroism which irradiate and glorify the records of history and the story of human life. God forbid that I should dim one ray in the haloes that justly rest upon the heads of those real patriots who have toiled, suffered, fought and died for those supreme ideas and ideals — those paramount hu¬ man values of liberty, justice, democracy, of which their nations were to them the visible and tangible incarnation. Having paid this entirely sincere tribute to true nationalism and real patriotism, I want to say forthrightly and perhaps flatly that, to my mind, a blind and exaggerated patriotism and an over¬ weening and ignorant nationalism are to-day the greatest, the most ominous and most imminent perils that beset the peace of the world, the wel¬ fare of humanity and the very existence of civil¬ isation itself. For horrible examples of blind and mad patriot- 88 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP ism our minds instinctively revert to the Germans during the late war. We remember their fanat¬ ical war-cry Deutschland iiber alles, their arro¬ gant claim to supreme kultur, their insane con¬ viction that a divine mission was laid upon them to impose that kultur by force upon all other peoples, who were all alike weaklings and rude, ignorant barbarians beside God’s supermen of the Teutonic race, that all dolichocephalic or long¬ headed humans belonged to their blood and all brachycephalic or short-headed, that is all the rest of mankind, could find their salvation only in meek submission to German tutelage and rule. We recall their insane Hymn of Hate. It all sounds like the ravings of a lunatic asylum. And yet it was the carefully inculcated and assidu¬ ously cultivated spirit of a really great and noble nation. That was the approved type of German patriotism. And it is by no means the monopoly of the German. It is characteristic, in varying degrees, of every people and nation. It is patriotism ac¬ cording to the popular notion. The average Englishman makes a catalogue of nearly all possible human virtues, and then calmly prefixes to them the adjective “ Anglo- S axon.,: 9 He assumes that honesty, fair-dealing and truth¬ fulness are his sole possession, and that justice and liberty were invented and patented by him. Therefore, world dominion, world-wide imperial- BETWEEN THE NATIONS 89 ism is England’s divine mission. Britannia must rule the waves. She must, everywhere, assume the White Man’s Burden and incidentally the diamonds of South Africa, the oil of Mosul, the wealth of the Indies and all the other acciden¬ tal accretions that cling to that burden. She, alone, can uplift the down-trodden, free the oppressed, civilise the barbarous, and Christianise the heathens. The average British mind is often singularly obtuse to the point of view and reasoning of any other mind, and oblivious, if not unconscious, of any other national virtues than those that are native and indigenous. And we, above all peoples, need to pray the prayer : “0 wad some power the gif tie gie us To see ourselves as ithers see us.” Americanism is often to the foreigner a syn¬ onym for crass materialism, greed, the supreme exaltation and domination of the money motive and money power, over-weening self-conceit and arrogance, unrestrained boastfulness and often excessively bad manners. And yet to us it is the sum of all virtues. We have recently had a veritable epidemic of one hundred per cent Americanism, stimulated by war hysteria. To entertain the notion that our Constitution, that divine and infallible docu¬ ment, might be amended, or our institutions and 90 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP our machinery of government improved, was to become suspect ; to criticise ourselves and suggest that we might learn something from other na¬ tions, was to approach dangerously “high trea¬ son.” An Iowa school teacher was arraigned before a local judge on the charge of having in her teaching referred favourably to certain prac¬ tices and institutions of a foreign nation. She was solemnly warned by the judge that “foreign nations, governments and institutions should never be mentioned in the presence of American children save in terms of censure !” To be open- minded, progressive and liberal in view and thought means sometimes to incur the epithet of Bolshevist. To be truly patriotic you must always assume that your country’s claim, in every controversy, is of course right and her cause im¬ peccable. To entertain a doubt is to be false to your loyalty. At any rate Decatur’s famous toast expresses the essence of patriotism : “My country, may she be right, but my country right or wrong.” And Carl Schurz’s substitute smacks of treason : “My country, when right to be kept right, when wrong to be set right.” Thus loy¬ alty to a fallible human institution is set above loyalty to our highest ideals of truth, righteous¬ ness, and justice, which is finally subversive of all morals. Our ordinary processes of Americanisation do not mean an assimilation whereby the best in each BETWEEN THE NATIONS 91 group is appropriated by the other: it is often a forced conformation of the foreigner to fixed and immutable, because perfect type, the accepted American type. We are frequently blind to, or even contemptuous of, the precious gifts which the stranger within our gates brings with him, gifts we often sadly need in our civilisation. And, finally, in the recent red hysteria that one hundred per cent Americanism burst out in a blind fury of persecution. Every foreigner was a suspect. “ Agents provocateurs” were employed by the Department of Justice, fake communist societies were formed by them, ignorant, simple minded aliens lured into them, incriminating evi¬ dence manufactured and fastened upon them, arrests without warrant made, examination by torture practised, imprisonment with¬ out trial, trial without counsel for the ac¬ cused common, the ordinary safeguards of the law denied. And so on ad infinitum et ad nauseam* , Besides the constitutional rights, free¬ dom of speech and right of assembly were prac¬ tically suppressed for all. It is the darkest page in the history of America, worthy of the Czarist regime in Russia. And yet it was all done in the name of a one hundred per cent Americanism. In fact, when one studies these perversions of patriotism to be found among all nations one is tempted to agree with Samuel Johnson’s famous dictum: “Patriotism is the common refuge of 92 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP scoundrels.” At any rate, one recognises the truth of Renan’s famous declaration, which I rudely translate from his perfect French: “I often say to myself that an individual who should have the vices held as virtues in the case of a na¬ tion, who should cultivate self-conceit and boast¬ fulness, who should be jealous, egotistic and quarrelsome to the limit, who could not brook denial without drawing his sword, such a person would be the most intolerable of men.” And yet as Sumner of Yale once truly said: “Those qualities only make a nation truly great which make a man great.” And among these qualities surely are self-restraint, modesty, will¬ ingness to admit the possibility of being in the wrong, and to submit to argument and the ar¬ bitrament of reason. And yet all these when applied to the case of one’s country and her claims are considered pusillanimity and the utter failure of patriotism. Peoples inspired by such patriotism can do naught but war to the finish, whenever a difference occurs between them. Again the philosophy of nationalism has been car¬ ried of late to the’ final pitch of unreason. Ger¬ many once more has been the chief offender. But she has probably but expressed more frankly, if not brutally, than the rest of us the prevailing though sometimes half-unconscious national phi¬ losophy of most peoples. Those spiritual heirs BETWEEN THE NATIONS 93 of Machiavelli — Nietzsche, Bernhardi, Treitschke and their ilk, derived from their master in un¬ broken apostolic succession certain fundamental conceptions of the state which they diligently in¬ culcated in the German popular mind. The State is an end in itself. It can have no consideration outside of itself. Its one obliga¬ tion is self-preservation and expansion. It has no other duty. Its one means is force. It is super-moral, above the laws of God or man. The divine right of kings has become the divine right of states. As the king could do no wrong, so the state can do no wrong to-day. Consider¬ ations of justice, the rights of others, particularly the weak, are intolerable limitations and restric¬ tions. They become sins when they interfere with the Divine mission of the state to expand and extend its power and kultur. There can be no such thing as international law or principle which regulates the intercourse and inter-relations of sovereign states. For these imply a restriction of sovereignty. And unlimited sovereignty is the very essence, the soul of the state. To admit any limitation of that sovereignty from outside is to commit state sui¬ cide. All history is simply a “trial by battle” between such sovereign states for supreme domi¬ nation. And the super-state must be left unlet and unhindered to drive to that goal regardless 94 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP of the alleged rights of humanity or the weaker peoples she may trample under her feet in her destined course. Such a philosophy of nationalism and of the state has been innate and implied among all peo¬ ples since nations came into existence, though none have declared it so brutally and frankly or carried it so inexorably to its logical conclusions as have these representatives of modern Germany. Now such a philosophy can result in but one thing — perpetual international war until one nation establishes its temporary claim to universal sov¬ ereignty only to go down again before some su¬ perior power, or else civilisation and the whole world order are irretrievably wrecked. Since the birth of the modern nation in the Middle Ages, almost all our wars have been instigated and inspired by that philosophy and spirit of an overdone nationalism. After the primitive intertribal conflicts, the first great wars were dynastic, arising out of the ambition of conquerors to establish their family trees upon thrones of partial or universal empire. Then came the period of religious wars, when groups contended “for the faith once delivered to the saints” as each group conceived that faith. Then followed the era of nationalistic wars, the struggle of conflicting jealousies, hatreds and ambitions of sovereign states, notably in the Thirty Years’ War which all but wrecked civ- BETWEEN THE NATIONS 95 ilisation and reduced Europe to barbarism, cul¬ minating in the recent World War which has had the same result on an even larger scale. And behind this fierce irrational nationalism lurks, to-day, a still more sinister force which often camouflages itself under the guise of patriotism and uses the old nationalism as its propaganda. And that is the rivalries of com¬ mercial groups in the various peoples and coun¬ tries. Commercial greed is the real inspiring cause of most modern wars, though they justify themselves to the common people in the high- sounding phrases of national honor and patriot¬ ism; it is the desire for sources of raw material and market for finished goods, for colonies which shall furnish vast, natural resources and masses of that other most valuable commodity, cheap human labour. And so while our boys were dying on the high places of the field in a noble war to end all war, and make the world safe for de¬ mocracy and secure in it permanent peace, the politicians and diplomats around the council table were with one hand playing the game of secret treaties whose prizes are oil wells and coal fields, while with the other they ostentatiously waved the banners of high ideals. The recently pub¬ lished Crane-King report, so long suppressed, exposes such a situation, if indeed it needed to be exposed. It is becoming the common knowledge of the common people. And that is our best 96 THE gospel of fellowship ground for the hope of ending war to-day. And there is another, not often taken account of, that war is not, only a crime to-day, the su¬ preme crime, but it has become an anachronism, for its chief cause, the narrow, bigoted, divisive nationalism of the past, has no longer a function to serve or an excuse for existence. Like the vermiform appendix in the human body, it is a belated survival, it has outlived its original pur¬ pose and service and needs a surgical operation to cut it out. The simple truth is that politics has lagged behind all other human interests and re¬ lationships with the rapid development of inter¬ course, inter-communication and transportation between lands, peoples, labour, trade, finance, com¬ merce, science, literature, religion, — all the great interests and activities of the human race have be¬ come ideally and practically international. They know or recognise no boundaries whatsoever. Neither seas, mountains, races, languages, can contain them; least of all those artificial, invisible lines laid down upon the maps between people and people. Only politics maintains the fundamen¬ tally unreal divisions and fosters the irrational prejudice and antagonism between peoples and peoples of the one human family. And politics must quicken its lagging pace, join in procession and face the demand of the times and the logic of history, a real internationalism. Steam and electricity, finance and trade, are BETWEEN THE NATIONS 97 forcing the nations closer and closer together. But unless we have a mitigation of our bitter na¬ tionalistic prejudice and our bigoted patriotism, that means disaster. War — war — war, tribal wars, dynastic wars, religious wars, nationalistic wars, and now most degraded of all, commercial wars, masquerad¬ ing under the shining garb of patriotism, a devil clothed like an angel of light — these have been the supreme curse of the race since human history began. It is estimated that from 1496 B. C. to 1861 A. D., out of the 335 7 years, there were 3130 years of war and 227 years of peace, that is thirteen years of war to one year of peace. And the time since has not bettered the propor¬ tion much, if any. A warless world, how passionately the great heart of common humanity has yearned for it in all ages, the most persistent hope against hope of the great masses who never got anything out of war but misery, bereavement and death! How it burns in the souls of the Hebrew prophets, — Isaiah who makes a huge bonfire of all the arma¬ ments and war-like equipment of his day in an¬ ticipation of the birth of the Prince of Peace upon whose shoulder shall J>e the government of the people; and Isaiah and Micah alike, perhaps both expressing the common longing of their day, in their vision of the time when nation should not lift up sword against nation, neither 98 the gospel of fellowship learn war any more; when the lion should lie down with the lamb and a little child lead them ; when the earth should be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea! How that hope leaps to the fulness and perfection of its glory in Jesus’ commanding ideal of a King¬ dom of Heaven upon earth, a celestial civilisation in this present world, when the will of God should be done by men below even as it is by angels above! How it sings in the souls of the great race religions, Persian, Chinese and Hin¬ du ! How it has enkindled the great souls of all peoples, even the pre-Christians, Homer, Euripi¬ des, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Plutarch, and Zeno among the Greeks, Plato in his T imceus and Critias, his picture of the world state in Atlantis , the stories among the philosophers; Ovid, Lu¬ cretius, Virgil, Probus, Cicero, Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius among the Latins! How it flames out in the hearts of the Church fathers and later in Augustine’s City of God , Thomas Aquinas’ relig¬ ious philosophy, poets like Dante in his DeMon~ archia, ecclesiastics like Marsiglius of Padua and Peter DuBois, scholars like Erasmus! How re^ ligious sects have made it the central principle of their doctrine like the Mennonites and the Ouak- ers and the Doukohbor! When the modern na¬ tions first came into conscious existence there arose that great line of statesmen and Jesuits, working when it was darkest, long before the BETWEEN THE NATIONS 99 dawn, insisting that underneath the perpetual strife of independent and clashing state sover¬ eignty there was already in the ideal realm a natural and God-established “family of nations” which could express and realise itself on a man- established “society of nations.” These were the fathers of the new science of international law, the jus gentium or natural law of humanity and the jus intergentes, the positive law of human society. They were Roman Catholics, Protes¬ tants, Jews, those of no professed faith, out of every nation under heaven. Legano and Belli and Gentilis, among the Italians, Bruno the Ger¬ man, Vittoria, Ayala and Suarezi, Spaniards and the last a Jesuit. And the line culminates in the chief of them all, Grotius, the great Dutchman, disowned, im¬ prisoned and exiled by his own people, toiling amidst the havoc of the Thirty Years* War with its consequent relapse into barbarism of a large part of Europe, when no ray of promise was visible anywhere, yet with sweet, gentle but in¬ domitable spirit, refusing tO' abate his hope one jot. The jus gentium or natural law of humanity should find its expression in the jus intergentes or the positive enactments and statutes of the peo¬ ples, and bring in the mitigation of war and the approach toward permanent peace. And behind these outstanding individual voices of great souls we can hear everywhere and al- IOO THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP ways like a deep, sad undertone, a vast accom¬ panying chorus, the passionate but almost hope¬ less yearning of the common masses. So the song of peace, or, rather, the prayer for peace, has come down the ages. Is there any hope for its answer ? I believe there is to-day, dark as the immediate outlook is with poor, crazed France and sullen Germany, the insolent Turk, the mad Russian, and the group of petty, little, jealous nationalities threatening the world’s precarious peace on every side. I believe there is because the hopes of the few have become the passionate determination of the many, particularly the toil¬ ing masses called labour among many peoples. Labour is acquiring new power among all na¬ tions, and it is determined to use that power to enforce peace if possible. Much had been gained in the region of inter¬ national law and agreement up to the outbreak of the late war when Germany, for the moment, seemed to shatter the whole painfully wrought structure to its very foundations. But much re¬ mains upon which to build anew. Certain fundamental principles of right and justice as to international relations, both in war and peace, had been admitted by the leading civ¬ ilised states. A real international law had begun to develop. Pro-treaty-making conferences had been seized and made to establish certain con¬ ventions between all states. Then the nations BETWEEN THE NATIONS IOI had come to see that it was possible to limit state sovereignty in the interests of the common weal without committing state suicide. Though there were conventions and certain treaties, the prin¬ ciples of arbitration, the substitution of the ar¬ bitrament of reason and law for the arbitrament of force, were established. It has had a re¬ markable growth, far greater than the ordinary man or even the ordinary student of history and international affairs realises. Then there have been great voluntary assemblies of representatives from all nations, not occasional before the con¬ clusion of a war and the making of a treaty but summoned for the specific purpose, which estab¬ lished rules for the mitigation of the horrors of wars, the treatment of the wounded and sick, and of prisoners, the establishment of the inter¬ national Red Cross, etc. Then came the two Hague conferences, the first voluntary associa¬ tion of nations for the purposes of peace since the association of the Greek city states in the Achaean League. The list of actual accomplishments of the two conferences may seem comparatively meagre but it established the principles of a vol¬ untary association of the nations for the purposes of peace, strengthened respect for international law, made rules for the more human conduct of war (if war can ever be human) and gave prom¬ ise of a permanent judicial tribunal before which nations should place their causes and adjust their 102 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP differences. Apparently the first blow of Ger¬ many’s mailed fist shattered the whole achieve¬ ment. The rules of warfare so carefully estab^ lished were largely ignored first by Germany and then perforce by the other side and the hope of an international tribunal seemed to vanish into thin air. But out of the wreckage of the war, born in its travail pangs, has emerged the great¬ est possibility and promise for the fulfilment of the world’s age-long hope history has ever known, the League of Nations. I am not here to define or defend every detail of the present plan of the League. It is a first attempt to put into concrete, workable form a supreme ideal, and of course first plans are always tentative and amendable. But I am here to say, with all the force I can put into the statement, that this League of Nations is the greatest op¬ portunity ever offered in human history to take the longest stride ever taken towards that con¬ summation for which the ages have been waiting and a war-cursed humanity has been travailing in agony even until now, the Christian hope and promise, “peace on earth, goodwill among men.” And it is the present humiliation of all true and intelligent Americans — will be the shame of all future Americans who shall read the history of this day — that our own nation has been chiefly responsible — not for the waiting of that hope — for it cannot be thwarted — it is God’s purpose BETWEEN THE NATIONS IO3 and shall be accomplished — but for its unnecessary delay. We, more than any other people, have hampered the efficiency of the new machinery and withheld the dynamic, the power which we, above all others, could have given. We have chosen to stay outside the “concert of the nations’' in the strange and discordant company of Soviet Russia, barbarous Turkey and excluded Germany. Put the blame where you will, on the alleged narrow-mindedness of the obstinate proponent who could not take counsel with others (a piti¬ fully small excuse for a supreme sin of omission) or, where I believe it more truly belongs, on the pitiful, pettifogging politics of the day, the jeal¬ ousies and hatreds of partisanship and personal antagonisms, the fact remains, America, like Simon Peter, stands by the fire and warms herself while the world’s great tragedy goes on. Once in a while we will open the door a crack and throw out a sop of charity to appease the clamour, but we will not take our place in the family of nations. We prefer to hug our exclusive privi¬ leges and prosperity. But in spite of our dereliction the League has gone on. None who have not studied its record seem to realise the great and efficient work it has done, seriously crippled as it is by the non-par¬ ticipation of the strongest nation on the earth to¬ day. It has stopped incipient wars. It has set¬ tled vexed questions that might have caused 104 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP armed conflict. It has dealt successfully with! international labour questions. (Perhaps there is our chief rub. We Americans do not want labour questions touched by any save our autocratic employing classes.) It is constantly at work on such great burning moral and social problems as the international white slave, opium and drug traffic. And its correspondence and inquiries on these subjects have often, if not generally, been ignored and unanswered by our State Depart¬ ment lest we be implicated in some fashion in that dreadful League! Such in barest outline is the record of accomplishment of the present League of Nations, handicapped as it is by our rejection and beset by the nervous prostrations of all Europe in the poisonous aftermath of the war. But let us turn, in closing, from this League to the consideration of the league idea in gen¬ eral. Will any league be effective? Is, indeed, any league possible? The stock objections are familiar. I can touch on only a few of the most salient and frequently offered. Any league, any concert of nations, is plumb against human nature, and human nature cannot be changed. Men are fighting animals. It is an ineradicable instinct of human nature to settle things by force. Individuals, nations, races, have always fought, and always will fight. To op- BETWEEN THE NATIONS 105 pose that instinct is like opposing a law of nature, you can only smash yourself in the collision. To attempt to substitute arbitration, or the common judgment of courts or leagues in the settlement of disputes between nations, is like attempting to substitute levitation for gravitation in the realm of physics. It can’t be done. I should like to suggest that man is a reason¬ ing animal as well as a fighting animal, and his progress in individual as well as social develop¬ ment has been marked and measured exactly by his substitution of reason for brute force. Can it not be done in internationalisms as it has been so largely done in all the other relations of humanity? And that human nature cannot be changed, is a flat denial of our deepest faith, our religion. It is the fundamental postulate of Christianity that human nature can be changed, transformed, regenerated, reborn, made new. That is what conversion means. And conversion is a proved fact with a long record of innumer¬ able instances. “Ah!” but the objector replies, “that may be true with individuals but not with nations. You cannot correct or change the hu¬ man nature of nations whatever you may do with individuals. Therefore your only method is to regenerate all individuals one by one and when that is achieved, when every man, woman and child is a real genuine Christian, then we shall have peace between all, but not until then.” io6 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP But there are multitudinous instances of whole¬ sale conversion through the steady pressure of a changed environment as well as of individual conversion through the inward operations of the spirit Look at civilisation itself with its sub¬ stitution of law-courts, police, in place of brute force for the settlement of all differences between individuals, groups or corporations. Once all disputes were settled by physical strength. It was not so long ago' when a point of honour be¬ tween gentlemen could be satisfied only by pis¬ tols and coffee for two. Now such things are practically unknown in civilised society. A fight is so rare that it produces headlines. Reason and law have almost universally taken the place of brute force inside all civilised nations. Can they not reign and is it not high time they did reign between nations? The first proponent of law, police and courts to settle disputes between indi¬ viduals doubtless met the same objection, “You cannot change human nature.” But it has been done in the one region, and it can be done in the other. But a league would mean the limitation of national sovereignty, and the limitation of such sovereignty is equivalent to state suicide. It is fundamentally distinctive of the very idea and existence of a nation. Yet we all surrender some portion of our personal sovereignty by submitting to law and courts, and we feel no invasion of BETWEEN THE NATIONS 107 our personality therein. The vast majority of us are most thankful and make that surrender because of the immense gain of security and op¬ portunities for self-expression and self-develop¬ ment in all other ways. We have not to spend all our energies and thought on the defence of our rights or the preservation of our lives. The al¬ ternative is unthinkable, — the return to the rule of the biggest bully with the strongest fist and weightiest club. We are still in almost exactly that state of savagery in our international rela¬ tions. It is, at least according to the German, and indeed the commonly accepted philosophy of international relations, it is still the biggest bully among the nations with the strongest mailed fist and weightiest armaments who1 will and ought to dominate. What opportunity for national self-expression and development would be open to every people by the substi¬ tution of law for force, even to the United States which now spends ninety-three cents out of every dollar of taxes on wars, past, present and future! We recognise that no individual can be en¬ trusted with the right to decide absolutely as to the merits of his own claims in any controversy. He must submit to the disinterested judgment of his peers. Us a nation, far more egotistic, ir¬ rational, and purely instinctive in its thought and action, to be more trusted in such matters than 108 THE gospel of fellowship an individual? Can it judge fairly and justly as to its cause, especially in times of popular hys¬ teria and under the sway of demagoguery and propaganda than an individual? Should it not also submit that cause to the disinterested judg¬ ment of its peers? But how shall such judgments have sanction, how shall they be enforced? The method of economic pressure suggests itself at once. In these days of absolute interdependence in finance, trade, commerce and every other common hu¬ man interest and activity, such means would be enormously effective. And no nation, however strong, would dare attack a neighbor if the massed judgment and massed power of all the other nations stood against it. For I believe in the use of force, but force of the right sort and for right ends. Let me quote Krehbiel’s admirable statement: “Martial force is exercised by the interested party in his own behalf; it is competitive and seeks to impose its own will, which it identifies with the right, upon its adversary by violence if necessary.” Police force is not exercised by the interested parties to the dispute, but is force exercised by the agents of a co-operating society. Its function is, not to help one of the disputants to impose his conception of right on the other (as was the case in the old alliances for the balance of power) , BETWEEN THE NATIONS 109 but to see that each is protected against the other and that both are obedient to society. War is the condition which exists when social groups, known as nations, employ martial force. Obviously one may be opposed to war and yet sanction other kinds of force. Militarism is the religion of martial force. Pacifism repudiates martial force (and martial force only) and de¬ mands the extension of police force. It is not content to pronounce peace desirable but approves its sincerity by labouring for conditions, which, according to its lights, make for peace. In that sense, and that sense only, I am a con¬ vinced pacifist, but one who would not only talk and labour for peace, but fight for peace if neces¬ sary. And if we had a world police force in¬ stead of innumerable national military forces we should have little fighting to do. And, lastly, any league means eventually a world super-state. Well! I am not excessively frightened by even that bugaboo. A United States of Europe or even a United States of the World, is a far more tolerable prospect than the present universal anarchy of utterly independent and often antagonistic nations. It is possible. We have proved that federations can be made. The Swiss Federation of various languages; the United States composing thirteen most quarrel¬ some colonies into one great union with nice dis- no THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP criminations between States Rights and Federal Powers, and above all what used to be called the British Empire, but now is popularly termed “the federation or league of British democracy,” each with as independent a state sovereignty as any nation, but held together by a bond of loy¬ alty stronger than any external or legal bond. Germany thought that association a house of cards, doomed to fall at the first breath of war, because, as Bismarck said, “Germany could never evaluate the imponderables.” But when Germany struck that house of cards, she found it a veri¬ table rock of Gibraltar. May we not hope that such “imponderables” may one day bring the day when “the war drums throb no longer and the battle flags are furled, in the parliament of nations, the federation of the world.” But I do not look forward to a super¬ state. That would be a return towards man or¬ ganisations of the early world empires. Rather do I hope for and confidently expect a new fel¬ lowship among the nations. This fellowship shall sacrifice and oblit¬ erate none of the individual kultur, ideals, or tra¬ ditions of the separate nations but rather cherish and develop them, and unite them in the common weal and service of all, in which none shall be called to surrender, give up, any of the things it counts precious or are of any real value, but con¬ tribute them to the common fund of the common- BETWEEN THE NATIONS III wealth. The best and most loyal citizen of any city is he who loves and cultivates most diligently his own home and family life, indeed loves and cultivates them after such a fashion that they never feel the touch of the law or suffer in¬ vasion by the police-power of the community. He has the largest stake in the community and will be most zealous and devoted to its mainte¬ nance and defense. So I look forward to a fel¬ lowship of the nations in which each people which cherishes and cultivates most earnestly its own real national spirit, its own true patriotism, its own best values shall be at the same time and for that very reason the most loyal and zealous mem¬ ber of the common society and family of hu¬ manity. As Renan puts it — pardon again my crude translation — “By their diverse gifts often op¬ posed the nations serve the common cause of civilisation! Each sounds one note in the great concert of humanity, which, in the summing up, is the highest ideal reality we may attain. Iso¬ lated from each other, they play ineffective parts. They make only jangling discords. But all their dissonances of detail would disappear in the grand ensemble. Poor humanity, what thou hast suffered, what tests await thee still! May the spirit of wisdom guide thee to save thee from the innumerable dangers with which thy way is strewn.” 1 12 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP It is a supreme function of education and re¬ ligion, of the school and the Church, to-day, to cultivate and inspire in our own nation that spirit of wisdom. LECTURE IV FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY IT must be evident to every thoughtful ob¬ server of the times we live in, particularly if he has an intelligent understanding of history, that we face to-day one of those secular social movements which every now and then sweep through the human world. There was, for instance, such a movement in the Middle Ages. Gunpowder had unhorsed the knight and made the impregnable castles of the feudal nobility of little avail. Printing had spread knowledge widely among those who could read. Armed with these weapons, physical and spiritual, the bourgeoisie, the middle class, arose, destroyed many ancient institutions and orders of life, and established its supremacy in the modern world. Kings, emperors, nobility first faded into empty forms and shadows and now have been practically abolished in the world of to-day. Priests and popes lost their unquestioned au¬ thority. There is freedom of mind for the scholar, the scientist, the investigator, and free¬ dom of conscience for everybody. The liberty THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP 1 14 of prophesying is unrestrained. Anybody can preach any doctrine, however absurd, and win followers, provided only he does not transgress the law of decency or the common order. In the economic, industrial, and even political realm, this movement has made the business man, especially the successful business man, supreme. He has hitherto been an unquestioned autocrat in his own business. He has dictated the policies of government and international relations. Trade and commercial interests make war and peace. The “invisible government” permeates and oper¬ ates the political machinery in every country. “Money talks” and money decides. We have gradually emerged out of political imperialism and feudalism into the reign of the money mo¬ tive and the money power. Even social aris¬ tocracy is to-day but the symbol of wealth. But we have not yet arrived at real democracy. Our present system is, according to many, but a thinly- veiled plutocracy. The bourgeoisie rules. This is the final outcome of the social revolu¬ tion of the Middle Ages. And, now, plainly a new social revolution is preparing. There is a ground-swell developing, a tidal wave rising, among the toiling masses — the proletariat, if you will — the world over. Everywhere are indus¬ trial unrest and social discontent. They have long been incubating — through centuries. But they have been enormously stimulated by the FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 115 experience of the recent World War and its con¬ sequences. The long-cherished hopes of the masses were first raised to a supreme, if not fanatical, pitch by the declaration of the moral ends and ideals of the war, on the one hand, as set forth by true statesmen and prophets of wide vision, and on the other as skilfully used by in¬ sincere politicians, demagogues and propagan¬ dists to fan the fighting spirit into flame. President Wilson, with his Fourteen Points, be¬ came, to the masses of Europe, at least, the Moses who was to lead them out of their forty centuries’ wandering in the wilderness, if not the Messiah who was to usher in the new day of the Lord and set up the kingdom of heaven upon earth. This was the war that was to end all war; it was to make the world safe for democracy — de¬ mocracy everywhere, in the industrial as well as the political realm. The League of Nations was to substitute the arbitrament of reason for the arbitrament of force, not only in the political disputes between nations, but also in the indus¬ trial and economic disputes between classes in every nation. Great hopes were staked upon its department of labour. The League of Nations should establish peace on earth, good-will among men, of all nations and all classes. Such were the hopes of the masses. They mounted on eagles’ wings. Then came the crash of the great disillusion- n6 the gospel of fellowship ment. 'A treaty was made, under the manipula¬ tions of the wily diplomatists, the three-card monte men of the ancient regime, which em¬ bodied all the supposedly discarded motives and methods of the past — commercial greeds, inter¬ national hatreds and jealousies, and the doctrine that “to the victor belong the spoils.” It can ensure but one thing — not permanent peace, but perpetual war. The unforgivable crime of Ger¬ many was the starting of the war. The unpar¬ donable sin of the Allies was the breaking of their pledged word and the imposition of a per¬ fidious treaty, and the two are about equal in guilt. Then came the poisonous aftermath of the war, with its hideous suffering and semi-starva¬ tion among most of the peoples involved, and the universal cynicism and despair among all. This experience has deepened, intensified, and embit¬ tered the prevailing industrial unrest and social discontent the world over. And, to-day, these forces are armed with weapons newly- forged among many peoples, dur¬ ing the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — the widening, if not deepening, of popular education, the ballot in the hands of practically all through universal suffrage, the rapid growth and strength¬ ening of labour organisation everywhere, the de¬ veloping sense of increasing power in the hands of the masses. Such is the situation we face FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY ii 7 to-day everywhere in the realm of industrial and social relations. Positively the most dangerous element in such a situation is the ultra-conservative, the Bourbon reactionary, who knows no methods of meeting it save the ancient and oft-discredited method of mere repression and suppression. He simply puts weights on the safety-valves just when the hottest fires are being kindled under the boilers, and then is amazed and outraged at the ensuing and inevitable explosion. He sits firmly on the lid till he is blown up and then wonders what has happened and why it happened ? He turns vague unrest and discontent into rabid radicalism and produces revolution. And we have possibly more than our proportionate share of such ultra-con¬ servatives and Bourbon reactionaries in America, — for America, in spite of her progressive spirit in material achievement, is one of the most back¬ ward of nations in social adjustment and reform. A brilliant English writer has remarked that the average Englishman is perfectly aware that he faces, to-day, a changing order. He only hopes that the present system may last his life-time. But the average American is unaware that the present order of things can change in the slightest degree. To him it is as Divine, eternal, un- amendable and unchangeable as the solar system. And let me add that the English with their char¬ acteristic pragmatism and common sense, ration- Il8 THE gospel of fellowship alise radicalism, and with their genius for com¬ promise and adjustment are apt to turn the de¬ structive torrents of revolution into the orderly channels of social and industrial evolution. And that is true conservatism. The Bourbon en¬ dangers the rights he holds most dear, particularly the paramount and sacrosanct right of private property simply by damming up the popular dis¬ content and unrest until they break out in devas¬ tating floods. The sane liberal, the true progressive, the reasonable reformer, digs sluices for those pent- up forces and directs them to the more efficient irrigation of the fields of commonweal and the driving of the wheels of production. But the critical and indeed crucial situation which con¬ fronts us demands something more than compro¬ mise and adjustment, which are all that most sane liberals, reasonable reformers and rational progressives can give us. Some who pose as such are mere social quacks — “healing the breach of the daughters of my people lightly, crying ‘peace, peace’ when there is no peace,” and can be no peace until all fundamental unrighteousness is reached and righted. They treat the surfaces of our several disorders with salves and emollients. They do not diagnose the disease. We need to¬ day real and rational radicals, and by that phrase I mean not single-tracked enthusiasts and fa¬ natics, obsessed with the logic of their academic FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 119 theories, but patient and wise students and in¬ vestigators who shall probe to the roots of our popular discontent and unrest, discover their final causes and devise boldly effective remedies, cost what they may. Now, I hold no diploma as a social diagnos¬ tician. I do not claim to be an expert either in sociology or economics (though the present oc¬ casion gives me the opportunity and the tempta¬ tion to pose as such, for an expert has been defined as an ordinary man away from home), but there are certain things which are plain to the simplest and most amateur observer. Among these is the fact that the root-cause, I may say the tap-root cause, of all social unrest is the glaring inequalities and iniquities of the present distribution of wealth, the product of human in¬ dustry. Consider a few statistics from a survey of our own favoured land, where the masses are still probably better off than in any other country. As to property, one hundred and eighty men own one-quarter of the wealth of America (Newell L. Sims’ “Ultimate Democracy”). Two per cent of the population possess about sixty per cent of the wealth, while at the bottom of the scale, sixty-five per cent, or the majority of the popula¬ tion, own only five per cent of the wealth — that is, two millions possess more than the remaining one hundred and more millions. Some individuals 120 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP have as much as have a thousand of the less fa¬ voured, some as much as a million, and some more than two millions (Prof. King, University of Wisconsin). As to income — forty-six per cent of our national income goes to wages, fifty-three per cent to profit, interest and rent. Only fifteen per cent of the people own any income-producing securities of any sort. Only three per cent own enough to pay an income tax. Less than a million and a half pay an income tax on $3,000, or more, annually. Twenty-one million families dividing the present available income of the country would average $2,330 each. But in actual fact, 152 persons receive an income of over $1,000,000 a year; 369 persons an annual income of from $500,000 to a million; 1926, from $200,000 to $500,000; 4945, from $100,000 to $200,000; and a total of 254,000 of the rich with incomes from $10,000 to over a million re¬ ceive seven billions of the total income of the peo¬ ple. On the other side, only 842,000, or approxi¬ mately three per cent, receive over $5,000 a year; twenty-seven millions, or sixty-four per cent of the workers, receive less than $1,500, and four¬ teen millions, or thirty-three per cent, receive less than $1,000 (National Bureau of Research). Both in Britain and America, one-tenth of the people own nine-tenths of the wealth, and nine- tenths of the people own one-tenth of the wealth. Take the concentration of control. One cor- FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 1 21 poration monopolizes a large part of the steel production, another of the oil. Eight railway groups control two-thirds of the mileage of our railroads. Two hundred men have most of the privately owned timber of America. About one hundred families control the railways and four¬ teen basic industries of the country. One great financial group controls three hundred and forty- one directorates in one hundred and twelve cor¬ porations with a capital of twenty-two billions (Justice Brandeis). During the last twenty- five years, the large estates of over a thousand acres have grown from 30,000 to more than 50,000, while the number of tenant farmers is steadily increasing. “Latifundia perdiderunt Romam,” * wrote the ancient Latin historian. Perhaps a future American historian shall write the same epitaph over the grave of free and prosperous America. These are simply scattered facts gathered al¬ most at random, but from trustworthy sources, as to the distribution of wealth in the most pros¬ perous country of the world where, admittedly, the material conditions of the masses are the best on earth. What must the facts be among less privileged peoples? Now clothe these dry bones of facts with hu¬ man flesh. Make these statistics move and have * Large estates destroyed Rome. Pliny the Elder, xxix, 18:6. 122 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP being in terms of human living. There are a few thousand of our people wallowing in luxury undreamed of since the world began. There are millions forever struggling on the crumbling edge of bare existence and slipping over constantly in unnoticed numbers. And, morally, these con¬ ditions are as bad for one class as for the other. Unearned wealth destroys initiative, energy and the sense of moral responsibility, as we see so frequently in the scions of wealthy families. Unstinted luxury rots souls, and, on the other hand, “the destruction of the poor is his pov¬ erty.” What chance have the 60,000 employes of the Steel Corporation, working twelve hours a day, seven days a week, with twenty-four to thirty- six-hour shifts every other week? What chance have such slaves of the machine to be even hu¬ man? How can you talk education or preach religion to such human beasts of burden? Mil¬ lions are denied practically all opportunity for mental and spiritual development because their whole thought and energy are absorbed in the one problem of keeping body and soul together. The haunting spectre of ever-recurrent unem¬ ployment fills them with a constant fear which drives out all joy and peace and makes it im¬ possible to think of anything higher than get¬ ting and keeping a job. Women are driven to the factories so young FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 123 as to prevent all right preparation for wifehood, motherhood and home-making, and subjected to such strain as unfits them for these highest func¬ tions of their sex. 1,750,000 children who ought to be at play and school, getting ready for life, are at the machine — and in the machine, being ground up body, mind and soul, simply to make the rich richer. And to keep up the margin of unemployment upon which our present system of industry abso¬ lutely depends, a million or so must always be below the line of self-maintenance, subsisting on the public charity which thus becomes a necessary factor in the support of industry. When one thus sees the problem in terms of human life, it ceases to be a purely industrial or economic problem. It becomes a human, moral, aye, a religious problem with which we are all directly concerned. Two questions immediately present themselves : First: Is this distribution of wealth and of the products of industry just and equitable? Do all the few rich earn their wealth and income by an equivalent of service rendered to society? And do all the poor earn their poverty by in¬ efficiency, laziness, immorality and the like? And, secondly : Is such a distribution conducive to the best moral health of the individual and the well-being of society? The answer is, to all thinking people, an obvious 124 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP and inevitable negation. But, it is commonly said, how are you going to help it? The dis¬ tribution of wealth is as inevitably fixed by the natural laws of society as the distribution of mountains and valleys, seas and rivers is by the laws of the physical world. And industry is as surely fated by cause and effect as is physics or chemistry. It is all an outcome of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. That was the discovery of Malthus (I am sorry to say a clergyman of the Anglican Church), years before Darwin. You recall his familiar theme, “Human population constantly tends to increase faster than the means for its subsistence increase. Consequently, population continually presses on the limits of subsistence, and the over¬ plus must perish that the rest may survived The natural corollary, vigorously argued, is that the fittest survive — the strongest, most ef¬ ficient, the cleverest, the shrewdest, and it is even maintained the most intellectual and moral — these climb to the top. The rest, the lazy, inefficient, ignorant, physically or mentally weak, the shift¬ less and immoral — these are crowded to the wall and trampled underfoot. We cannot change that law. We should not wish to change it, for it is the urge of all human progress and the better¬ ment of the species. The doctrine finds economic and industrial expression in the wages-fund theory. There is just so much money to be paid FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 125 out in wages in industry. The more hands de¬ manding employment, the smaller the share of each; the fewer the applicants, the larger the share of each. This is the law of supply and demand, which is as inexorable in the realms of industry as is the law of gravitation in physics, or of chemical affinity in chemistry. So what are you going to do about it? I should answer that if we were mere animals, brutes and beasts, there would be nothing we could do about it. But, being human, men with minds and wills, and presumably consciences and hearts, there is much, incalculably much, that we can do about it, if we will. We can do much about production — that is chiefly a matter of brains. And we can do more about distribution — that is a matter of brains and also still more of heart and conscience and will. As to production, is it true that population is always pressing upon the limits of subsistence so that the struggle for existence is inevitable? Must man forever fight his brother to get enough to live on? That is true perhaps in the jungle and the forest as between beasts. I do not be¬ lieve that it need be true at all as between human beings. In the first place, many doubt whether the population of the globe has materially in¬ creased in many centuries. We have no ancient censuses or statistics to go by. But we know that regions once teeming with countless multi- 126 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP tudes are now sparsely populated and barren. The population has simply moved elsewhere or perished. Some peoples show an increase and others a decrease, and a declining birth rate is still, not a satisfaction, but a cause of alarm to a nation. And also observe, the more cattle in a pasture, the less grass for each beast. But man knows how to make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before. By irrigation and dry-farming he makes the hitherto barren desert blossom as the rose. The more beavers in a creek, the fewer fish. But man can by pisci¬ culture breed fish and stock streams. He can reforest. He can renew and enrich the soil on which he grows crops, and the possibilities of intensive agriculture have not been touched yet. vSuppose we improve and cheapen our methods of extracting free nitrogen from the atmosphere — where is the limit of our possibilities of produc¬ tion? So with all the forces and resources of nature we depend on. If coal shows signs of exhaustion, we shall levy on the white coal — the streams and rivers — we shall harness the tides and solar energies for light, heat and power. We are just beginning to get hints of inexhaust¬ ible powers in nature not yet brought into the service of man. There are practically no limits discoverable to what science can, and may do, in increasing production. Even in our present stage of development, it FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 1 27 is not the limited possibilities of production that impoverish and sometimes starve the majority of mankind. There is more than enough to go around already, if the machinery of production were fully and efficiently worked. It has been calculated that the present known resources of the globe, efficiently worked and justly distributed, would support a population five or six times as great as the world has to-day, and that each worker could in seven years of five-hour days earn enough to support him a life time. The difficulty, I repeat, is not with the limited possibilities of production. Take, for instance, modern machinery. It has increased production " many thousand times over that of the old handi¬ crafts. Human population has not increased in anything like the same ratio. Machinery ought to have liberated man for higher things, yet it has made us all, particularly the workers, its ab¬ ject slaves. It ought to have warmed, clothed, fed and housed us all beyond our desires and dreams, and yet multitudes starve and freeze while resources are untouched, machinery rusts, and willing hands are idle. It is doubtful whether the invention and application of ma¬ chinery has really increased even the material welfare and physical comfort of the average man of to-day. The situation reminds me of a prophecy made years ago about Detroit, the metropolis of the automobile. It was confidently 128 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP predicted that with the increased speed and car¬ rying capacity of automobiles over horse-drawn vehicles, far fewer vehicles would be required for service and the congestion of the streets would be relieved! And, to-day, it is at the risk of your life that you try to cross a side-street in Detroit. So machinery was to free and enrich us all by its enormously increased productivity, while in fact it has riveted the shackles of slavery upon us and left the poor still deeper in their poverty. Take the coal situation. There is more coal mined than we need — too many mines operated, too many miners working. Therefore what? Prices are exorbitant — in some regions coal cannot be had at any price, and many shiver and industries are stopped because there is too much coal. Sabotage is constantly practised by both sides in our industry — probably far more by employers and capitalists than by labourers. Factories are temporarily shut down or permanently closed, production habitually limited, but the markets become glutted and prices go down, and yet everywhere there are people who need the goods, workers ready to make them, and materials to make them out of. Too many shoes, therefore people must go barefoot. Too much food, there¬ fore people must go hungry. Too much wool and cotton, therefore folks must lack clothes — and so on and on. Is it not enough to drive one in- FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 129 sane? Could not a committee from Bedlam de¬ vise a more rational and efficient system ? No; the difficulty is not with the limited pos¬ sibilities of production. Population has not yet begun to press upon the limits of possible sub¬ sistence anywhere, if the resources of the earth and the production of the world were more ef¬ ficiently developed and pooled for all lands. Even with a system of industry confessedly not fifty per cent efficient, with its enormous wastes through strikes, lock-outs and recurrent unem¬ ployment, its lack of psychology, of human ap¬ peal to motives of the workers, even with such a lame system, we can produce enough for all our needs. The chief fault lies somewhere else. Our present method of competition of each with all for private advantage, with its one mo¬ tive of greed for individual acquisition, is respon¬ sible for most of our poverty and want, and for the misery and inhumaness of all concerned, rich and poor alike. Scott and his fellow-explorers in the Antarctic observed one day a flock of sea¬ birds fighting over the carcass of a freshly-slain seal. There were ten times enough in the car¬ cass to gorge them all. But they fought each other for the first and biggest chance, until the carcass was frozen so hard that no bird could get his beak or talons into it. You recall Tolstoy’s parable of the banquet. The Heavenly Father prepares a feast for all 130 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP His children. He sets the table and loads it with His bounty, and then opens the door to the wait¬ ing crowd. They rush in pell-mell, maul and knock each other about. The strong seize all each can carry and more than he can eat, and retire to their corners, too busy glowering over and defending their possessions even to enjoy them. The weak are crowded to the wall and trodden underfoot empty-handed. Everything is wrecked and nobody is satisfied, and when the fight is over, the crowd retires wretched and hungry. Again the patient Heavenly Father sets the table and prepares the feast and opens the door, only for a repetition of the old story. That seems to me a fair picture of our present economic and industrial order, so-called. You may say that is human nature, you can¬ not change it. Selfishness and greed are its in¬ nate and ineradicable ruling instincts and they cannot be uprooted or even modified. I deny that. They have been modified in the home and family life, in the learned professions, in polite society. And they can be everywhere, if there is assurance of justice and opportunity for all. >If we are only beasts, then the law of the jungle is inevitable — the law that now rules the world of humanity. But if we are men, men with reasons, wills, hearts and consciences, we may rise to the recognition of and obedience to a higher law here as we have in so many other regions of FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 131 human life. That is what the masses are feeling everywhere to-day. That is the source of the prevailing industrial unrest and social discon¬ tent. Men are realising everywhere that there can be, aye, there is already, enough to go around in this feast of life, that the fault is not with the niggardliness of nature or the Heavenly Father, as you choose to put it, not with the ignorance and greed of men, not with an inscrutable Providence, but certain very scrutable human arrangements and systems. What is the answer to the problem ? I believe it can all be summed up in one word — fellowship, fellowship in production and fellowship in dis¬ tribution, a fellowship that expresses itself prac¬ tically in the supremacy of the service motive over the profit motive and the substitution of the co-operation of all in the service of all in the place of the present mad competition of each with every other for private advantage. Such ideals for the reorganisation of industry are growing into more and more commanding power among the intelligent and thinking leaders of the masses. The vision of the possible and necessary reorganisation of industry along these lines is becoming clearer and clearer before their eyes. It is uniting this class at least in a new and fervid fellowship of ever-increasing power. It is the final motive and urge of most labour movements and organisations the world over 132 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP whatever sordid motives, incapable and dishonest leadership, ignorant and absurd policies and methods, may sometimes, even often, first catch the eye of the investigator. The superficial ob¬ server sees only these glaring defects on the surface. He does not discern the informing and inspiring spirit which lies at the heart of the whole movement and which, I believe, will domi¬ nate it. Perhaps a hasty sketch of one typical labour- movement will illustrate what I mean. I refer to the English Labour Movement. It was born out of the agony and travail of the early nineteenth century. Never had the con¬ dition of the toiling masses in Great Britain sunk to a lower level, than in the first third of that great century. There were many contributing causes I can barely touch, and refer you to other authorities for verification. Mediaeval Catholi¬ cism had exercised at least a mitigating influence on social and industrial conditions. The guild system, while local and jealous, still secured to the public some assurance of honest goods and fair prices, to the merchant protection from unre¬ strained competition and for the worker made a living wage the first charge on industry. But with the Renaissance and the Reformation came a flood of individualism. It is said that modem Capitalism was born with Calvinism. Under FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 133 these and other purely economic influences, the old guild system melted away. The hard economics of modern times estab¬ lished itself and proclaimed its laws, as inevitable and inexorable as those of physics, the law of wages and the wages-fund, of diminishing re¬ turns, of supply and demand, etc. The Malthu¬ sian philosophy reigned supreme. Were there misery, poverty, starvation? They were due to an inscrutable Providence which had fixed these laws as inexorably as those that swing the stars in their orbits. You could not regulate industry in the interests of human welfare any more than you could regulate an earthquake or a tempest. Moral principles, ethical considerations, social motives, above all, religion, had no place in the system. To inject them was to throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery. Covetousness and greed, ambition, in a word selfishness was the only mo¬ tive strong enough to drive the stupendous ma¬ chinery and turn out the production the world needed. To depend on any altruistic motive like service to the common weal were as futile and absurd as to depend on a child’s paper windwheel to drive the machinery of a great factory. Sel¬ fishness would gradually become enlightened and out of the clash of its unrestrained individual competition, would be hammered out some rude, tolerable form of justice in industrial relations. *34 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP But the prevailing doctrine was laissez faire— “hands off,” no attempt to restrain or regulate for social welfare. Individual initiative and free¬ dom were the priceless and inalienable rights of industry and the one urge of all its progress. The strong man must be free to run his course unlet and unhindered. Did wages sink below the level of subsistence? They were eked out by grants from parochial charity funds and therefore they sunk still lower. Industry fattened, as it still does to-day, on pub¬ lic charity which maintained its cheap labour and necessary margin of unemployment. The rapidly increasing enclosure of the com¬ mons took away from the rural poor their one small chance of relief by access to natural re¬ sources. The industrial revolution, with its substitution of power-driven machinery for the old handi¬ crafts, utterly destroyed the old domestic system of industry with its human and personal rela¬ tions and contacts, herded the workers in jerry- built homes, slums surrounding the vast factory buildings, worked them unlimited hours for un¬ regulated wages, under the control of distant and soulless corporations whose only interest was dividends and production, and whose only liaison officers were managers with the one responsibil¬ ity, to increase production and dividends. The natural and inevitable results ensued. FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 135 Rural labour starved until twice insurrections flamed throughout all England. In mines, half- naked and sometimes pregnant women were hitched like beasts of burden to cars laden with coal, and toiled for fourteen, fifteen and more hours a day. Little tots, carried on the shoulders of their fathers to the mines, spent the same long hours in the terrifying darkness of the pits, with nothing to do but open and shut doors for pass¬ ing cars till often they became imbeciles. Or¬ phan asylums turned their children, even under eight, into the factories, under contracts that re¬ lieved the public a little of their bare subsistence, and then these tiny waifs worked till they dropped or starved. Working-men had no protection whatsoever as to wages, hours or conditions. In the presence of such a tragedy the public conscience was largely lethargic, drugged by the splendour of the new material prosperity. The Church was for the most part silent, or actually approved the existing conditions. A few noble souls, fighting a terrific battle with all respectable society arrayed against them, started that factory and industrial legislation in which England, sec¬ ond only to Germany before the war, has led the world. But the chief defence, indeed, the final and only salvation of the oppressed masses, was found at last in a new movement among themselves. It was the movement of labour organisation. It I36 THE gospel of fellowship met furious opposition and resistance at the start. It was a crime punishable by law for one labourer to> speak to another about the possibility of pre¬ venting a cut in wages. And to effect any sort of an association, even for benevolent or educa¬ tional purposes, brought fines, imprisonment and even exile from courts presided over sometimes by clerical magistrates. The first seven rural la¬ bourers who formed an association in Devonshire were deported to a distant penal colony. But the “blood of the martyrs is ever the seed of the Church.” Persecution strengthens and propa¬ gates most idealistic and religious movements. And the labour movement in Great Britain was conceived and born in religion. Its first leaders were largely drawn from the ranks of Wesleyan lay-preachers. As Arthur Henderson says, “It is saturated with the principles of practical Chris¬ tianity and can never get away from them.” That is the distinguishing characteristic of the English movement, differentiating it largely from others, particularly the Continental, which is so largely materialistic and even anti-religious. So the movement grew — slowly, with much conflict, up to 1850, then more steadily, until finally, during the World War, it practically doubled its numbers. To-day, about six millions of the labourers of England are strongly or¬ ganised in trade-unions — that is, sixty per cent, roughly, of all English labour as contrasted with FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 137 the United States, where only about fifteen or twenty per cent is organised. What has trade unionism done for the masses in England ? The material conditions of English labourers are not, we must frankly admit, as good as those of the American, but that is due to the fact that natural resources are not so completely monopolised here as they are in the older and smaller country, though the process of monopo¬ lisation is rapidly going on here. But the po¬ litical and economic status of English labour is vastly better than that of his American brother. Trade unions have enormously stimulated and advanced legislation for factory and industrial regulation in the interests of the well-being of the masses. They have practically established universally the practice of collective bargaining. They have secured a large measure of industrial democracy in certain industries. They have given labour some degree of control over wages, hours and conditions. They have put labour in a position of influence and power almost un¬ paralleled in any other country, as witness the hearings of the Royal Coal Commissions, when labour practically won its contention, member¬ ship in the Cabinet of the Government during the war. And labour has not lost its original vision and idealism. I attended its great Congress at Car¬ diff in 1921. For a week a thousand representa- 138 the gospel of fellowship tives of 6,000,000 workers sat and debated. Technical questions were quickly disposed of and the interest of the great assembly was con¬ centrated on such commanding ideals as world- peace and the means to it, the League of Nations and the Washington Conference, on education for the masses and their equipment for their coming task. I know of no assembly of manufacturers, employers, or business men which has exhibited such paramount concern for the great ideals and causes of human welfare. Labour has also gone into business for itself in the Co-operative Movement. The motives that drove it into this field were two : 1. An economic motive. The pressure of the cost of living is always heaviest upon the poor. The rich can buy goods of the best quality in large quantities at relatively low prices. The poor must take the cheap and shoddy stuff at rela¬ tively high prices because they can buy only in small quantities — coal by the bucketful, tea by the quarter-pound. 2. A moral or religious motive. We are taught by our religion to be straight, truthful, honest, to put service above self. We go out into a commercial world where self-interest always comes first, and we are taught often to admire cunning, shrewdness, even to the point of dis¬ honesty and oppression. Urged by such motives, a little group of seven FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 139 weavers set up the first co-operative store in Rochdale, Lancashire, in 1845. Its capital was one pound. But its principles were far-reaching : 1. Any one could become a stockholder who could invest one shilling. Nobody was permitted to invest more than two hundred pounds. 2. Each stockholder should get the current rate of interest on his amount invested. 3. No stockholder should have more than one vote, whatever his investment. No* one, and no small group, should be able to corner the stock and control the business. 4. There should be no profit to any individual or group of individuals, but each should receive a rebate on his purchases from the profit of the whole business. Established on those simple principles, the movement has grown until, to-day, it has more than four million members, representing with their families probably twelve or fifteen millions of people. It did a business in 1920 over its retail counters of one billion dollars and in its wholesale department of five hundred million. It clothes, feeds and sustains perhaps fifteen or twenty per cent of England’s population. Its machinery carried England through the stress of the war, when the public sustenance was threatened. It finances through its banks the labour movement quite generally. It insures against fire-loss, sickness, old age and unemploy- 140 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP ment. And it is growing steadily. It has just launched a new movement of co-operation among producers, the National Buildings Guild. As it itself is purely a co-operation of commerce, it has its schools for training in the methods, spirit and ideals of co-operation and it is characterised by the enthusiasm and fervour of a religion. Labour has gone into politics. Its representa¬ tion in the House of Commons has steadily in¬ creased from one in 1895 to one hundred and forty-two in 1922, and most Englishmen antici¬ pate a Labour Government in the near future, and nobody is particularly frightened by the pros¬ pect. It issued during the War its platform, or program of policies, characterised by Bishop Brent as the most Christian document of the war. It stands in international relations for the League of Nations, the substitution of the arbitrament of reason and law for the arbitrament of force in the settlement of international disputes, for the use of economic pressure rather than military force to bring any recalcitrant nation to that tribunal, for open covenants openly arrived at, and the abolition of secret diplomacy, secret treaties, and partial alliances to establish the bal¬ ance of power. It presses disarmament. It calls for the settlement of commercial disputes between peoples, the one most fruitful cause of war, by law before international courts instead of by arms on the field of battle. FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 141 In inter-colonial matters, it would set up a league of British democracies, each self-determin¬ ing and independent, but bound together by that strongest of all bonds— loyalty to the ideal of de¬ mocracy, in the place of the present Imperial British Empire. In domestic matters, it would take taxes off production and put them on privilege, on na¬ tional resources, on land-values, on incomes and inheritances, and spend the proceeds, not on mili¬ tary establishments, but on public sanitation, health and education. It would nationalise cer¬ tain key-industries, such as coal and transporta¬ tion, buying out the present owners and running the business through boards of experts responsi¬ ble to the public. It would focus the co-opera¬ tive movement wherever practicable, and it would regulate all necessarily privately owned and capi¬ talistic enterprises in the interest of the common weal. It would free and democratise credit. It is a noble program, which appeals to the Christian conscience. And it is getting ready for its task. It has its experts in every field, schol¬ ars of the highest standing, preparing carefully the details of its policies. And it is training the masses of its constituents through carefully pre¬ pared courses of popular education. It realises, in Frank Hodges’ words, that democracy is in¬ evitable, democracy in industry as well as in poli¬ tics. But woe be unto us if it be an uneducated 142 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP democracy! Therefore, the chief emphasis of the Labour Movement must be put on education, on training for its task. I have dealt at some length with this British Labour Movement because it is typical and il¬ lustrative of what is going on in our modern world. It brings before us in concrete form some of the issues of the new “social revolution” which we are called on to face. It voices articulately some of the fundamental demands which inspire the social discontent and social unrest of the day. In every country and nation such movements are sweeping through the masses, steadily gath¬ ering numbers and power. Labour governments are ruling in most of the new Republics of Eu¬ rope. Labour holds the balance of power in England and, by the confessions of all intelli¬ gent observers of each party, will probably soon take the reins of government. The labour- farmer vote in the United States is rising to as¬ cendancy. It holds the balance of power in our national Congress to-day. These are facts that must be faced. They ring' a challenge in our ears which we must an¬ swer. Simply to set our old theories of class privilege and domination on the beach, like King Canute, and forbid the tide to rise any further, is to risk being overwhelmed by the swelling waters. To dam them up by attempted suppres- FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 143 sion and repression is to bring on a destructive flood of radicalism and revolution. We must adjust ourselves to a visibly changing order. And the situation requires more than mere adjustment and compromise. It demands nothing less than a change of base in industry and business generally, in the motives that drive them and the methods of carrying them on. As the Lambeth Conference put it, “A fundamental change in their spirit and working.” The situation demands, first, a revision of our conception of the rights of private property. I know that here I am touching the sacred Ark of the Covenant and I may be blasted by the divine wrath of the privileged possessors. To the mod¬ ern business man, as to Tennyson’s Yorkshire farmer, the very hoofs of his horse sing the per¬ petual song — “Property, property, property.” Property is the sacred citadel of all rights, the holy of holies, inviolable, the aegis that protects all other rights, law, order, civilisation itself. As an American judge lately stated it — “There are three sacred and inalienable human rights — life, liberty and property, and the greatest of these is property.” I doubt if St. Paul would recognise and admit this paraphrase of his great saying ! But, nevertheless, the situation demands a care¬ ful revision of, and an intelligent discrimination 144 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP in our current conceptions of the rights of prop¬ erty. He who shuts his eyes to1, and refuses to make such a revision and discrimination is more dangerous than the radical. He imperils the thing he holds most dear — all private property. He who intelligently discerns and defines the real right in all alleged rights, best protects all the rights that have the right to stand. Once there was an acknowledged right of prop¬ erty in human beings, slaves, serfs, wives, con¬ cubines, and children. We have abolished that right and thereby enormously strengthened the security of other real rights. So, to-day, the real advocate of rightful property will best serve his cause by acknowledging and surrendering some so-called vested rights which are really invested wrongs. Two principles H would stand for: 1. Human rights must always take precedence of property rights of any sort. A man, any man, the humblest human being, with his right to life, liberty and self-development, must always be worth more than a wedge of the gold of Ophir. That principle must, in the future, be the determining factor in society’s regulation of the rights of private property. They must be distributed and administered in such fashion as will best promote human welfare, the largest good of the greatest number. 2. Bishop Gore has made a keen distinction between property for use and property for power. FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 145 The one is property actually invested and em¬ ployed for purposes of production and service. Such property alone is properly capital. Capital is an absolutely necessary tool and instrument. It should be in the hands of those who' can best and most efficiently use it for the common weal. These may be the skilled and capable cap¬ tains of industry and servants of the common good, and they may be comparatively few. In such cases private property and ownership are necessary for the common weal, and ought to be defended and maintained. But the use of such a tool and instrument must be watched and kept true to its purpose, the largest good of the great¬ est number, not the biggest profit possible for the individual possessors. And the co-operative movement the world over, is proving that the ability to use capital as an efficient tool of production and service, is not so exclusive a monopoly of a few gifted super¬ men as we have hitherto imagined. There is a large amount of such ability distributed among the masses of common men, which can be focused most efficiently on the tasks of production and service. Such co-operative use of capital de¬ mands recognition and fostering protection and cultivation. But there is also property for power. Such were the mediaeval monopolies in certain necessi¬ ties of life, like salt, granted by kings to favourites THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP and mistresses. Such are the modern monopolies in the natural resources of the earth whence all wealth must be drawn, such as ore, oil, coal, water-power, and the like, the site- values of land in centres of population, wholly created by the congestion of that population, and not at all the product of the individual’s skill or toil. Such property simply enables its possessor to get something for nothing, to live by owning and not by earning, to tax the public for his private benefit, to skim the cream off the products of the producers, while: he himself lives in idleness. These are parasitic incomes and constitute the mass of our unearned wealth. They may be held and enjoyed by idlers, imbeciles and idiots in perpetuity. They are an intolerable burden bound on the backs of the actual producers, shackles and fetters upon their limbs. Such property for power should be abolished by absorption through taxation into the public treasury, the common wealth. The old apostolic maxim, “If any man will not work, neither shall he eat,” is good, economic law. Every man should be compelled to contribute to society in exact proportion as he draws from society. This abolition of property for power, is, I believe, the primary problem in any equitable distribution of wealth. It is the knot in the end of the string, which must be untied before we can get at any of the knots higher up. And then comes the FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 147 supreme, the paramount task. It is nought less than a change of base in our whole system of industry. That change of base affects two things — the motive of industry and its method. The final motive of all industry, as commonly recognised to-day, is self-interest. We live in an acquisitive society. Its end is profits, divi¬ dends, wages, power for the individual — the utmost that can be extorted. If we would Christianise industry, we must change the base of motive. We must turn an acquisitive society into a functional society. The paramount motive must be service to the common weal. Now, profit is the end, and service an incident, a by-product. The Christian order is service, the end, profits, the means to that end, as much profit as is necessary for the best function¬ ing of service, and as large and real service as can be wrought out of the means. This is a complete and radical reversal of the present mo¬ tivation of industry. And, second, co-operation of all with all for the good of all must be substituted for the com¬ petition of each with every other for private gain and advantage. Do not say the dream is an impossible one be¬ cause human nature is unchangeable, lit is a fundamental postulate of the Christian faith that human nature can be changed — aye, regenerated, and the alteration of environment is a potent !48 THE gospel of fellowship factor in that change and regeneration. Chris¬ tianity has already effected that regeneration in large realms of our common life. It has Chris¬ tianised, at least in ideals and standards, whole institutions, professions and vocations. Take the family, for example. Once it was practically commercialised. Wives were breeding mares, sons were raised for the war-market and daugh¬ ters for the labour and marriage markets, and the patriarch or father was the autocrat, a cor¬ poration sole, for whose profit and power the whole family existed. To-day, the family is Christianised in all Chris¬ tian lands, at least in its ideals and standards, and it is Christianised in precisely these two funda¬ mental aspects. Its supreme, paramount motive is the service of all by all instead of the profit or private advantage of any one individual, and its method the co-operation of all in that com¬ mon service of the common weal, instead of the competition of each with each for individual pelf, power or pleasure. We would not tolerate, to-day, in education the motives and methods that prevail in the com¬ mercial and industrial worlds. Imagine, if you can, the teachers in our public schools or the members of the faculties of our colleges and uni¬ versities competing with each other for the larg¬ est individual share possible in the public educa¬ tional funds of the incomes of endowments! FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 149 Salaries, all too small, are simply the means to the service of education, the training of our youth for life, and co-operation for those ideal ends is the accepted rule. In the practice of medicine we suspect the physician who advertises. We are apt to write him down as a quack. Why? Because service to science and the public health is supposed to be his only legitimate and honourable motive, and his emoluments simply the means of maintaining that service. No physician or surgeon dares patent and hold for his private profit any dis¬ covery that promotes the efficiency of his pro¬ fession or serves the public safety and health. Yes, we have established the Christian law in standards and ideals at least in vast regions and realms of our common life — service the end, and fellowship, co-operation the means. Is it hopeless to dream therefore of so Christianising the, at present, pagan realms of industry and business ? Can we not turn an acquisitive society into a functional society? How shall we go about it? Here I must confess myself a Christian opportunist. I see clearly the end, the goal to be reached. But I have no panacea to offer, no immediate and magical recipe to offer, which shall instantaneously and completely transform industry from the pagan to the Christian base. Here we must follow the path of practical ex¬ perimentation by experts. X5o THE gospel of fellowship I have little confidence in wholesale methods. Communism has proved itself a disastrous failure. Russia has worked that experiment out to the ultimate failure, and is now abandoning it. The labour movement the world over, especially in England and America, is turning from it. Syn¬ dicalism offers no fellowship or co-operation of all for the good of all, but only another class monopoly and domination, which would be infi¬ nitely worse than the present, bad as that is. Socialism in its two variations, state and guild, is trying out interesting experiments, and there is a tremendous drift that way. Personally, I dread its machine-made order and regimentation, and its possible suppression of individuality, though the present system also fatally suppresses the individual. But our only defence against socialism to-day, if we do fear it, is somehow to prove that our present system can be so funda¬ mentally changed as better to serve the individual and common welfare than the glowing and se¬ ductive offers of socialism promise. Undoubt¬ edly we are in for large experimentation in the direction of socialism. And we should keep an open mind towards all in those experiments that prove themselves serviceable to the common weal. But I do not believe that any theorist living has discovered the final form of a redeemed society. It may take elements from all our theories, but FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY I SI it will be different from, and I hope better than, any one or all of them. Meanwhile, most hopeful experiments are be¬ ing made from the other side — the side of the employing class. The parentalism of welfare work is being largely abandoned. It will not meet the needs of the situation nor satisfy the aspirations of the masses. They want, not char¬ ity, but justice, not patronage, but democracy. And many experiments are reaching out in the direction of that fundamental social justice and industrial democracy. They run all the way from Arthur Nash’s sim¬ ple application of the Golden Rule through profit- sharing, industrial partnership in the determina¬ tion of rules, hours, conditions, the establishment of constitutional law in the place of the autocracy of the employer or anarchy of opposing organised capital and organised labour, as in the case of the relations of certain clothing industries with the amalgamated clothiers’ union, with its covenants and courts of arbitration, up to systems of pure industrial democracy. There are scores and hun¬ dreds of such experiments going on, especially here and in England. It is like the construction of a tunnel. The social reformers are boring in from one end, and the enlightened employers from the other. Some day they will meet, and a better, more workable, 152 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP more Christian system of industry will be estab¬ lished. It is the duty of all interested in that consummation to study intelligently and with open mind the experiments and theories being tried out, and give the utmost of his aid when¬ ever opportunity offers, and his judgment com¬ mends. Meanwhile, let us keep ever before us the vision of a Christianised order of industry. As I see it, it is characterised by these essential notes, the supremacy of the service motive over the profit motive as its driving power, and the substitution of the co-operation of all with all for the com¬ mon weal, in place of the competition of each with each for private advantage. No fairer or more adequate picture of that ideal can be imagined than that set forth in St. Paul’s apologue of the body of Christ and its members. In that body there is no dead uniformity of func¬ tion, position or honour. Each member has its place and service, some lowdy, some lofty, as measured by the commonly accepted standards. But they are all fused into unity, first by absolute mutual interdependence in the service of each other and the one body of which they are all equally members ; and second, by a common sym¬ pathetic nervous system. There can be no arrogance of high position. “The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee.” Neither can there be any despair FELLOWSHIP IN INDUSTRY 153 of low position. “The foot cannot say, because I am not the hand, I am not of the body/' All are equally necessary, and the measure of dignity and honour is precisely the measure of usefulness of function and of the worth of service rendered. The less comely parts have frequently more abundant honour because they render the more abundant service. Such a society could easily dispense with, and probably will, its idlers and parasites, however esteemed they may be to-day, but it will cherish chiefly its actual producers and servants whether they be horny handed toilers or efficient captains of industry. And then there shall be a sympathetic nervous system knitting into community of sensation our now sadly divided society. We shall no' longer, for instance, ignorantly curse the coal miner when he strikes and then ignore the almost daily tragic record of his supreme sacrifice, wherein he is constantly laying down his life that we may be warmed and served. “For there shall be no schism in the body, but the members shall have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, even the lowliest and most remote, all members shall suffer with it; or one member be honoured, even the highest, for service rendered to all, all the members shall rejoice with it.” That is the Christian vision of an ideal so- 154 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP ciety, functional rather than acquisitive. That is what fellowship means to the Christian. “Ye are the body of Christ and members in particular.” God speed the realisation of that vision. LECTURE V FELLOWSHIP AMONG THE CHURCHES * I KNOW in a general way what the writer of the preceding chapters thought upon this subject. My knowledge is based, however, more upon what he did than upon what he said. To live in fellowship with all in whom are to be found the mind of Christ and the will to do His will, regardless of ecclesiastical and theological differences, he regarded, not only as a duty, but as a great privilege. And he did it to an extent beyond that which I have ever known any other man to do. He was loyal to his Church. He never sought fellowship with men of other communions through compromise, or by giving the impression that he held lightly or loosely the things for which he was supposed to stand. He was eager to give his best to others, and in return to receive their best from them. He believed that it is only through fellowship among the Churches that the misunderstandings and prejudices which are keeping them apart *By Samuel S. Marquis, D.D. 155 !56 THE gospel of fellowship are ever to be done away. It is only through fellowship as a medium of exchange that each will be able to receive from all the rest that which will round out its own life and worship and in the end fit it for a place in a larger communion worthy of the name of the Church of Christ. The title which he gave this chapter is sig¬ nificant. It was his intention — judging from the few brief notes which he had jotted down — to deal here with the subject of Church Unity. But his approach to that subject was to have been through fellowship. Before organic, doctrinal, or any other kind of unity may be even thought of, there must be established fellowship among the Churches. First things must be done first, and fellowship among the Churches must precede unity. But there was, as he saw it, a step even before this. Leading to fellowship among the Churches there must first be established a fellowship in friendly, unofficial groups of men coming to¬ gether, not to discuss matters of religion, nor to lay out a plan for unity, but to render an im¬ mediate service to' society in the name of the common Master. He refers to these groups as the leaven which is to leaven the whole lump. More significantly he calls them ganglia, nerve centres in our divided body of humanity. Permit me to restate what he said in his first lecture in regard to this matter. AMONG THE CHURCHES *5Z “Gur paramount need,” he declares, “is realisa¬ tion of fellowship.” And then he goes on to ask, “How shall it be achieved? There are great and far-reaching schemes proposed, Leagues of Nations, various varieties of socialism, plans for the wholesale democratisation of industry, fed¬ eration of churches for common action, with farther-reaching attempts at organic unity in faith and order. These all deserve our study and sup¬ port according as their merits commend them¬ selves to our judgments. But I am convinced (italics mine) that real fellowship must be reached in another way. It cannot be imposed mechanically from above on those below, or from without on those within. It is a thing of the spirit and not of external devices, and to that end we need every¬ where the formation of voluntary groups united in devotion to common causes who shall act as ganglia, nerve centres of fellowship in our sadly divided body of humanity, centres of salt and leaven which shall gradually permeate the whole mass with their own spirit of fellowship.” Out of this fellowship within small groups de¬ voted to service he believed there would come in time a wider, more comprehensive fellowship among the churches, and on this in turn would rise ultimately a Church united in the common task of establishing a new social order, the King¬ dom of God on earth. 158 THE gospel of fellowship So far, it is his idea that I have been trying briefly to present. How he would have developed that idea, I do not know; and not knowing how he would have proceeded I will not attempt to give even an outline of that which, in my opinion, he would have said, or to build up out of my own imagination the structure which he might have reared on the foundations laid down. From this point on I must proceed in my own way with the understanding that he is not to be held ac¬ countable for anything I may say. I shall ad¬ vance ideas with which, it is my opinion, he would not altogether agree. Death has sealed his lips so that if I were to presume to speak for him he never could correct any wrong impres¬ sion I might leave. Therefore, for what follows, let it be understood that I alone am responsible. The proper symbol of the visible Church of Christ, to-day, is the cup of fellowship broken into a multitude of fragments. There it lies as it fell from the hands of the Church drunk with the power of this world, the blood it contained — symbol of brotherhood, service, and sacrifice — spilled upon the ground and trampled under foot by men mad and raving at one another about creeds and holy orders and forms of ecclesiastical organisation. And now that the orgy is passing and the Church is coming to herself, she discov¬ ers that she is paralysed, helpless before the great AMONG THE CHURCHES 159 tasks which confront her, an object of scorn and derision, a jest and by-word in the mouths of her exulting enemies. And the Church is ashamed of herself. That is the one outstanding, hopeful sign in this whole deplorable business. It begins to look as if she will repent and return to the Master whom, in her pride, ignorance, worldly ambition and selfishness, she has been crucifying all these centuries. In the night in which He was first betrayed, Christ took the cup of fellowship, and when He had blessed it, He gave it to His disciples. They took it and made it the supreme symbol of their brotherhood. They passed it from one to an¬ other. Time went on, and the Brotherhood grew. Into it came men of every nation, men who had misunderstood and hated one another because of differences in nationality, race and religion. But the cup of fellowship passed from lip to lip; they drank from it, and in drinking forgot the things which had divided them, and lived together in the unity of His spirit, the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Years went by in which the Brotherhood met its trials and temptations. But the bond of unity — fellowship in Christ, devotion to Him and the thing for which He stood — held. It was strained to the breaking point at times by those to whom theories about their Master meant more than the Master Himself, and to whom interpretations of !6o the gospel of fellowship Truth meant more than the Truth. There have always been such, perhaps always will be, but the world is finding them out, is becoming very weary of them, and is learning to ignore them. But finally the Church was led up into the wilderness to meet a new temptation. Hitherto despised and persecuted, it suddenly awakened to find itself politically recognised and the recipient of the allegiance and flattery of an emperor. Per¬ haps the conversion of Constantine was genuine. But the man who made of the Cross an imperial symbol and a military standard could not, so it has always seemed to me, have seen very far into what was in the heart and mind of the Man of Nazareth, nor have sensed very deeply the mean¬ ing of the Cross on which He was crucified. I am inclined to think that Constantine’s sudden espousal of the Church was not altogether devoid of political sagacity and purpose. The signs of decay were in his Empire. He needed a new, strong bond to hold it together. He looked about, and his eyes lighted on this hitherto despised and yet feared Christian Brotherhood. There it was like so many ganglia of fellowship in the crumbling body of the Empire holding to¬ gether men of all races and classes, high and low, rich and poor, bond and free. Its unity and sol¬ idarity, in spite of the doctrinal differences which had begun to show in it, were impressive. It was the one and only bond in sight which might be AMONG THE CHURCHES j6i made to do political service and hold the Empire together a little while longer. He would enlist its aid and in turn give it the use of his sword in its effort to maintain its unity — so it has seemed to me. But be this as it may, the fact remains that Constantine took the Church up into an exceeding high mountain and showed her the kingdoms of the earth. A vast empire, the whole of the known world, lay spread out at her feet. That she could have, if only she would consent to add to the spiritual forces which held her together those secular forces which bind the peoples of empires into one. lit was the vision of a great partnership — the union of sword and spirit. What could not be achieved if it were to be en¬ tered into? Here was the world literally throw¬ ing itself at the feet of Christ. So it seemed. But in addition to itself, the world also offered its sword. Without that it would not give itself up. It was a great temptation. The Church fell. It took the world on its own terms — might, majesty, dominion and power, sword and all. Gradually the inward bond of fellowship which had held the Church together gave way, and there were substituted the outward bands of secu¬ lar organisation, law, authority, and enforced submission, with the result that there followed a constrained artificial unity of life, and a simu¬ lated unity of belief. THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP 162 Fellowship, such as bound the Church together in the beginning, is a centripetal force, lit draws toward a common centre. Secular forces which seek to compel unity invariably work in the op¬ posite way from that intended, that is, they be¬ come centrifugal. They keep things in bounds for a time, just as sitting on the safety valve keeps for a time steam in the boiler that would otherwise get away. And just as sitting on the safety valve ends in a sudden outward movement of that which is within, in an explosion, so is any organisation, secular or religious, bound to go to pieces in time, if the principle of unity in it is suppression rather than expression. The church managed to sit on the safety valve for a thousand years after the Empire went down. Then the explosion came. It was inevitable. It was due not to external forces, but to internal pressure. God so made the mind and conscience of man that in order to function properly they must be free, and the church or state that sits too long on the mental or moral safety-valve of its people, is going to go to- pieces. And the longer it sits there, the more terrific the explosion when it comes, and the greater the number of fragments to which it will be reduced. The Church went to pieces, the lines of fracture following first the boundary lines of nations and peoples, and then continued along other lines, political, intellectual, AMONG THE CHURCHES 163 and temperamental, until the Church lay a mass of fragments. And at that time the cup of fellowship, which had long since lost its original meaning, was also broken. Christian fellowship for a time at least disappeared from the earth. My Roman brother will not put his cup to my lips, and I will not put mine to his until after he has renounced his allegiance to the fragment of the Church to which he adheres. And the same unbrotherly attitude existed till recently — still exists in some instances — among the Protestant communions in their re¬ lations to one another. And SO' the broken cup of fellowship, whose fragments have been fashioned into many little, unbrotherly, exclusive, sectarian cups, is the sym¬ bol of the Church as it stands before the world to-day. A divided Church is a contradiction of the very Gospel which it claims to* exemplify, and for the preaching of which it "claims to< hold a divine commission. It is worse than that, being a libel on the name of Christ whose supreme and cen¬ tral aim was the establishment of a new order, a Kingdom of God on earth, the divine distinguish¬ ing characteristics of which were to be unity and fellowship. Instead of standing for unity and fellowship, love and service, the Church has come o be only another name for division and strife. 164 THE gospel of fellowship There is an ever-increasing number of men in the churches who are becoming more and more ashamed of their divisions. The yearning for one great household, in which the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be exemplified as well as taught, is increasing. We are becoming keenly aware of the fact that our divisions are hampering the spread of the Kingdom at home and abroad. No right minded man can feel any great enthusiasm in converting the heathen to this or that par¬ ticular kind of denominational ecclesiasticism, creed or worship. We are coming to see that making disciples of the nations for Him is one thing, and making disciples of this or that little group within the nations for this or that particu¬ lar fragment of the Church is quite another. It may in the end prove a hindrance rather than a help in attaining the great objective. Certainly we are doing much that must ultimately be un¬ done. Our divisions are wasteful of time, energy and money. Thousands of communities are over¬ churched and religiously undernourished. The two, as a rule, go together. The divided Church, from a business point of view, is the most ridicu¬ lous institution on earth. It is no wonder that its financial problem is always uppermost. It is a marvel that intelligent men continue to support it at all in view of its wastefulness through du¬ plication of effort and investment. AMONG THE CHURCHES 165 The very fact that we have so many denomina¬ tions is, in itself, the best evidence we have that no one of them is by itself able to minister to all sorts and conditions of men. The divisions into which we are fallen should be proof sufficient to any sane man that uniformity in belief, order, and form of worship is impossible, even if it were desirable, and that fellowship in Christ, in which allowance is made for wide differences in creed, organisation, and expression of worship, is the only basis of unity. But that which shames us more than anything else is that our divisions render us impotent in the face of the great social, moral, and political prob¬ lems which confront us in this age. The Church speaks with no certain voice, because it has no one voice with which to speak. Having many minds and wills, it can bring no one thought and will to bear on the great issues of the day. The influence of the Church in the World War was practically nil. Ht stood by and helplessly watched the nations spring at one another’s throats. Here and there, some fragment of the Church put up a weak protest which was drowned in the thun¬ der of the guns, or contemptuously brushed aside by the leaders of the warring nations. It was given to understand that war is a game for skilled politicians, not for inexperienced ecclesiastics. Any talk of peace, or the expression of any thought other than that the war was a holy war 1 66 THE gospel of fellowship with right and humanity all on our side, we were told would weaken the morale of the people at home and the troops at the front. And so the Church, having no mind or will of its own, did as it was told. Divided and arrayed against it¬ self, it stood back of both sides of the battle line. Having no voice of its own, it spoke with two voices, one blessing what the other cursed, and the other cursing what the one blessed. Up to' the throne of God went these two voices of the Church, each declaring its cause to be just, and each asking that God would confound and bring to naught the efforts of the other. No wonder the heathen world looked with scorn and contempt on a Church which had been coming to it preaching peace and brotherhood, but which now stood divided against itself and speaking impassioned words of encouragement to men who were using the most devilish and destructive means for destroying each other ever devised. Shorn of power, the Church stood with neither will nor voice in that most terrible hour in the world’s history. The War was planned and fought just as if there had been no Church of Christ in the world. It made not the slightest difference except, perhaps, in one particular. It may be due to the influence of the Church that certain works of mercy were carried on. It got out the ambulances and picked up the human AMONG THE CHURCHES 167 wrecks which war leaves in its wake. This the Church helped to do, and came, after a while, to regard this as about all it could do, or all it was ever meant to do. Weak and fearful, it performed another func¬ tion. Together with a ham-strung press it helped put over the propaganda the war lords and poli¬ ticians decreed should be put over. This it did on both sides of the battle line, the one side con¬ tradicting the other. Both could not have been telling the truth. As a matter of fact, both sides for the sake of morale at home and in the trenches, and in the name of patriotism, con¬ sciously or unconsciously lied. And on both sides of the line the divided Church denounced the men who dared stand up in the pulpit and speak the mind of Christ. And so long as it continues in its present divided, helpless condi¬ tion, so long will the Church do the bidding of the powers of this world. Only when it finds its voice and will in the unity of fellowship will it begin to make the in¬ fluence of Christ felt in the councils of the nations. Then, and not till then, will the world come to see that the most radical book ever written is the New Testament, and that the greatest foe of this present order is the man who believes, not in this or that fragment of a broken Church, or in this or that creed or system of theology, 1 6 8 THE gospel of fellowship but who believes in a very personal and intimate fashion in Jesus Christ and the things for which He stood. We speak of the divisions in the Church as a sin. Speaking superficially that is true. When one comes to look more deeply into the matter, however, he finds that it is not true. We often speak of the eruptions that appear on the skin as a disease, whereas these eruptions are but the symptoms of a much deeper seated disorder. So with our divisions. These are not the root sin or disease which must be eradicated, but only the symptoms of it. Remove the cause and the symptoms will disappear of themselves. The real sin back of our divisions, and of which our divisions are but the surface manifestations, is the sin which the Church committed when she gave up fellowship as the basis of her unity, and substituted therefor the impossible principle of unity — the unity of faith and order maintained by a combination of ecclesiastical authority and secular power. There is the root sin in the mat¬ ter. There is the seed of the divisions which came later — which were bound to come and in the long stretches of history are to be regarded as a blessing, in the sense that pain is a blessing when it comes as a warning of a disease which is slowly but surely robbing us of our life and strength. But be all this as it may, the fact that con¬ cerns us apart from all theories as to how it came AMONG THE CHURCHES 169 to be, is the fact of our divisions. We know that they are the ugly, repulsive eruptions of a deep- seated, destroying disease, and we are ashamed of them. And we are becoming quite sensitive as to our appearance. We know these sectarian eruptions on the body of the Church are not becoming. They are proving more and more offensive to an increasing number of people. We would be glad to be rid of them. And right here we need to pause and consider just what it is we really do want. The danger is that we attempt a cure by attacking the symp¬ toms rather than the disease. The danger is that we shall be content with some surface treatment of our divisions, some method of salving them over so as to make them less conspicuous, while leaving the real root of the disease untouched. All sorts of surface remedies are proposed. Rome knows and offers but one panacea — submis¬ sion to her authority. The Anglican thinks of himself as living in a sort of half-way house built across the road, with the front and back doors wide open. Under his roof he would like to play the role of the generous host, meeting as it were at one grand ecclesiastical reception and home-coming Rome on the one hand, and the dissenting Protestant bodies on the other. Each could enter his house, as he conceives it, with but slight sacrifice of his social standing and ecclesias¬ tical prerogatives. Just who would come into the 170 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP Anglican half-way house through the front door, and who' would be expected to come in through the rear, is not made clear in the invitations. Rome has politely and positively declined the invitation. The Protestant denominations are still reading the invitation, and occasionally sug¬ gesting that some change in the phraseology of it might make it possible for them to accept it. Meantime, others are suggesting that inas¬ much as unity under Rome or Canterbury is not even a remote possibility, some sort of an as¬ sociation or federation should be entered into with a view to rendering a service which other¬ wise could not be rendered by the divided Church at this time. These invitations have met with encouraging response. Others are suggesting that the way to solve the problem is to find the greatest common divisor of what each holds as essential in belief and wor¬ ship and make that the basis for a sort of unity based on universal compromise. Others seem to be disposed to let the disease of schism run its course. In that case one of two things will happen. The weaker churches will go to the wall, and we will have in the end a Church that has survived because it has proved itself worthy. Or else there will come about a natural process of amalgamation and assimila¬ tion, leading ultimately to an organic unity. Those Churches most nearly related will come to- AMONG THE CHURCHES 1 71 gather first. Small centres of unity will thus be formed which in turn will come together until finally, much as one shuts up a telescope, all that which has been drawn out by schism will have returned within the fold of the largest and most powerful group. It does not matter which road to unity we travel, or which guide we follow, the barriers to be met and overcome are practically the same on all roads. In the first place one will find in addition to those to whom the question of unity is a mat¬ ter of indifference that there are thousands who really prefer things as they are. They believe that division, in that it engenders rivalry and competition in the spread of the gospel, is a good thing. There are also the difficulties to be overcome which grow out of the fact that some demand a liturgical service, while others find spiritual up¬ lift and satisfaction only in the non-liturgical form of worship. Some depend almost entirely on the spiritual nourishment of the sacraments, while others feed almost entirely on the written and spoken Word of God. Some emphasise creed, while others lay all the stress on conduct. Some want to feel that they are guided by the authority of a ministry that has come down from the Apostles, while others 172 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP demand liberty of thought and conscience and prefer to trust to the guidance of the Spirit which, as they believe, is not limited in its operations to the historic episcopate, or to any particular kind of ecclesiastical organisation, or to any fixed creedal track, or to any particular sacra¬ mental theory or practice. There are many other obstacles of less importance. The most formidable of all the barriers to Church Unity seem to me to be man-made. I would say, therefore, that the way leads round them, not over them nor through them. I wish to speak more in detail of some of these. First, perhaps the biggest barrier of all is in ecclesiastical organisation and orders. We are met here with the claim of Rome and Canter¬ bury that the plan for the organisation of thej Church was definitely outlined by Christ Him¬ self, and that the orders of the ministry therein were set up and empowered by Him, and that any other form of organisation or ministry is not valid, and, therefore, cannot impart the blessings of Christ and His religion. To that I would say, in the first place, that Jesus came preaching the Kingdom, or order of God on earth. The Kingdom was the central theme in all His teaching. 'It was this that He came to establish, and not a church in the sense that we have come to understand the meaning of that term. That there should have come some AMONG THE CHURCHES 173 kind of organised effort on the part of His disci¬ ples to carry on His work for the realisation of the Kingdom, was inevitable. This He seems to have taken for granted. If He was interested in having any particular kind of organisation car¬ ried out, we have no evidence of it. If He gave any directions as to the offices to be created there¬ in, their functions, and their grades with respect to power and authority, there is no record of it. So far as He ever indicated, His followers were to be bound together in a simple and democratic fashion. The family, to judge from His own words, was His model rather than the Empire or the Jewish Church. His disciples were to live together as brethren. They were not to have lords and masters to rule over them. Rank, if any, was to be determined by the amount of service a man rendered his brethren. If any man would be great, let him become so by be¬ coming the servant of all. The disciples were not only to go into all the world and preach the new social order based on the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, but they were to exemplify the relations which were to exist in that new order in the relations which they held toward each other in the Church which was to be regarded as tentative and preliminary to the Kingdom. Gradually the Church took in the minds of Christ’s followers the place of the Kingdom. m THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP Instead of being the means to an end, the Church became an end in itself. Instead of being sent to work out the salvation of society here and now, it came to regard itself as sent to save to a future life the individuals who joined its ranks. The social vision and the Kingdom receded, and the salvation of the individual and the Church, considered as an end in itself came to the front. The relation of the Church to the Kingdom I may illustrate in this way: Across the street from where I am now writing stands a beautiful temple erected for Jewish worship. A little more than a year ago there came some workmen and built upon the corner of the lot where the temple now stands, and which was then vacant, a little temporary structure. A few days later ex¬ cavations for the foundation of the temple began. It was then that I learned the character of that first little, temporary wooden building. I ob¬ served that every morning men were lined up at one of its windows seeking employment. I learned also that inside that temporary building were kept the plans and specifications of the greater structure yet to come; that it was here the architect met his superintendents and foremen and explained to them, the plans of the building; that it was here that problems in construction, kinds of material, and men for special jobs were discussed. As I looked out of my window one day at the AMONG THE CHURCHES 175 larger building taking shape, and the little wooden building, now dwarfed and insignificant in ap¬ pearance standing by it, I said to myself, “The relation of the Church to the Kingdom is the same as that of the little temporary building to the temple rising beside it. The little building is not an end, but the means to an end. So the Church. The Church is the house to which the workmen of the Kingdom come for orders. Here they are hired in to work for the King. Here they meet the great Architect and get from Him the vision of the Kingdom they are to build. Here they study plans and specifications only to go out and build their visions into reali¬ ties. ” How foolish it would have been for those work¬ men to have stopped with the workshop ; to have said, “This is all the master-builder wants us to do; let us beautify and adorn this little temporary building and make out of it a guild hall for our¬ selves, and let it go at that.” Yet that is what we have done with the Church. We have made of it a substitute for the bigger thing — the Kingdom. We have made the Christian employment office and chart-house an exclusive little guild hall. Here, in our eager¬ ness to save ourselves, we have forgotten all about the commission to go out and save society through the new order of Christian Brotherhood. I cant help thinking that if we thought more THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP of the Kingdom and less of our little sectarian workshops, we would be more likely to get to¬ gether on the big and main job. I think we would make less of our little religious trade unions and the tools with which we work, and put more emphasis on the kind and amount of work each is doing for the building of the King¬ dom. If I think I have better tools with which to work than a man who comes from some other ecclesiastical tool house, the way to prove it is not tO' waste time arguing the matter, but to go out and work side by side with him on the King’s building. If my way and my tools are better than his, he is going to find it out in the fellow¬ ship of common labour in the Kingdom. And as for membership in the Church based on acceptance of this or that particular theological belief — perhaps the closed shop in industry is all right, but of one thing I feel very sure, and that is that Jesus Christ never meant the closed shop idea should prevail in the building of the Kingdom. The employment manager on the building of the temple across the street did not ask a man applying for work to subscribe to some particular theory of mechanics before hiring him in. And personally I think our theological tests worked on men seeking admission to the ranks of those who are working to build the Kingdom are about as absurd, for the most part, as asking a man to state the law of gravitation and that AMONG THE CHURCHES 177 governing the velocity of falling bodies before allowing him to go to work on a building. We keep alive our divisions because our own individual explanation of some fragment of Truth means more to us than the whole Truth itself. We have the idea that if a man does not accept our explanation of a fact, he is denying the fact. If facts did not persist in spite of our different explanations of them there would be very few, if any, left. Two men are looking at a light. One holds to the theory of emanation in explaining how the eye receives its sensation of light. The other stands for the wave theory. How foolish for one to say to the other, “If you deny my theory of light, then you do not believe the light is shining.” The other may truthfully say, “I do not deny the light. I see it, as you do. I know it is there. I walk by it.” So we say to millions of men who want to work with us for the Kingdom, “We forbid you doing so until you subscribe to the creed, rules and regulations of our little ecclesiastical trade union. It is not enough that you believe the Truth. You must subscribe to our theories about it.” We will come to the unity we long for when we make fellowship the basis of it; when we see that the Church of Christ must be big enough and broad enough and Christ-like enough to hold all who are able to meet His test for admission — that is, to all who are doing, or are honestly try- jy8 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP mg to do His will, and who want the assistance which one finds in working in fellowship with others at a common task. Does the rebuke which Jesus administered to St. John, when the latter rather boastfully told of forbidding one to cast out devils in the name of Jesus because he did not belong to the disciple group, mean nothing to us to-day? Cannot we see that the stinging reproof which Jesus ad¬ ministered to the lawyer in the parable of the Good Samaritan also applies to us? Here is a Jew in distress. One of his own priests, and then one of his own Levites, come and look upon him and pass on. Then comes a man of that hated sect, a Samaritan, a man all wrong in his beliefs, churchmanship, and all the rest, and min¬ isters to him in trouble. And Jesus forced the admission from the man who had flouted the re¬ ligion of that Samaritan all his life that the Samaritan, regardless of his creed, was a true son of Abraham and a doer of the will of God. I hold that any group of men have a right to form a religious organisation and lay down the con¬ ditions on which a man may obtain membership therein. They have a right to call such an or¬ ganisation Roman, Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, or Methodist, or by any other name that is de¬ scriptive of its peculiar tenet of belief, but they have no right to call it by the name of Christ if AMONG THE CHURCHES 179 they require as a condition of membership that which Christ Himself would not require. We say that we want a Unity that is Christian, but we have injected into the term “Christian” so much that was not there in the beginning and left out so much that was, that we cannot agree as to the exact character of the thing we want. What is a Christian? ils he a man living out in his individual life and social relations the will of Christ? Is he a branch to' be judged by the fruit he bears, or must he in addition to that be joined to Christ through some particular kind of theo¬ logical limb? Personally II think they should be admitted to the fellowship of Christ’s religion who love Him, are drawn to Him by His character and the great ideal of the Kingdom for which He stood. They are His disciples who are striving to do His will, who are filled with His passion for service, and who1 put, not the Church, but the Kingdom of God first. The unity of fellowship, resting on the will to do His will, is the only unity that I can see, big enough to be called Christian. No unity based on faith and order and ecclesiastical organisation can be made inclusive enough to allow for that diver¬ sity of religious life, thought, and expression which must be given the religion of Jesus if it is ever to' meet the needs of all. !8o the gospel of fellowship As to the orders of the ministry in the early Church, they would have been none other than they were if they had followed a natural process of evolution. Each order arose to meet a need, and was not, so far as the evidence goes, insti¬ tuted simply to< conform to a previously worked- out plan of organisation. Had there been no need for the services of the seven deacons in the Church of Jerusalem I cannot conceive of their having been selected and set apart as an ecclesias¬ tical ornament, or to complete a prescribed form of organisation. If anything is clear, it is that they were called to meet a human need. Had there been other needs as pressing as those which called for Apostles to spread the knowledge of the Kingdom throughout the world, or which called for overseers or bishops to administer the affairs of the Church in any given city or district, or which called for elders to teach, and social ser¬ vice workers, deacons and deaconesses, to min¬ ister to the poor and sick, I think there would have been other orders developed to meet these needs just as divine in their institution as those which already existed. There is a value attached to the historical continuity of the Church’s form of government which I can appreciate. The necessity for organisation I can see, but I cannot conceive of the life of the Church and the opera¬ tion of the Spirit of God so tied to any order as to make it impossible for that life to continue, AMONG THE CHURCHES 181 and that Spirit to work, if that particular form of organisation does not exist. The essence of the Church of Christ does not inhere in any par¬ ticular form of government. The fruit of in¬ valid orders, so-called, proves that. I am planting my garden. On the other side of the fence is my neighbour also planting his garden. He comes of a long line of gardeners. He comes over to the fence once in a while to tell me that he has inherited an agricultural gift, power, and authority which is absolutely neces¬ sary to the proper planting of vegetables. Things planted by a man without his special gift, power, and authority, will not grow. Talking that way about plant life, we are tempted, of course, to call him a lunatic. But when he talks that way about the spiritual life, we call him a theologian. At any rate, I do not take time to discuss the matter with him. I observe that while 1 am putting a lot of time and labour into preparing and en¬ riching the soil, he is trusting to certain prescribed ways of planting, certain ritualistic ways of put¬ ting in the seed to bring him results. The only way, as I see it, to test his claim, is for me to plant my garden in my way, and let him plant his in his way. And so we plant. I observe that the same sun that shines on his side of the fence shines on mine. Rain falls on both gardens from the same clouds. My corn breaks through the ground at the appointed l82 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP time, just as his does. He takes a look over the fence at my corn and pronounces it weeds. That does not particularly worry me, for I reason that you cannot make a stalk of corn a weed just by calling it a weed. I cultivate my garden, using methods unlike those used by my neighbour. Again he takes the trouble to inform me that corn hoed by an hereti¬ cal and schismatic hoe will not produce anything. Again I do not regard it a matter for an argu¬ ment. The harvest will tell. The harvest comes. My corn is as high as his. It may be a trifle higher on the average. The ears on the stalks are as numerous and as well developed as those on my neighbour’s corn, across the fence. I modestly suggest to him that meth¬ ods of planting corn should be judged by their results. He turns his back on me and says, “What you have there is not corn. It can’t be. It was not produced according to the ancient traditions and customs handed down in my fam¬ ily. Besides, you are not one of us. You are not in the line of agricultural succession.” Jesus said, “By their fruits ye shall know them,” and I think this applies to churches and orders of the ministry as well as to figs and grapes. And this little parable of the com in the two gardens illustrates my thought in regard to orders and ecclesiastical organisations. (If my neighbour and I had not gotten at the AMONG THE CHURCHES 183 outs over the theory of raising corn, and instead had agreed to take down the fence between us and cultivate the ground which it caused us to waste; if we had worked together, each learning from the other and each giving his best to the other; if we had dropped the idea of personal rivalry and competition and had worked together to produce better corn than either had ever done before, you would have had a parable expressing my idea of the way Christian fellowship based on devotion to a common cause is going to bring the Chris¬ tian Unity we want. Rome questions the validity and spiritual effi¬ ciency of Anglican orders. The Anglican in turn questions the orders of his dissenting brethren. But the test of a ministry, whether it be of God or not, is, as I see it, in the spiritual fruit it pro¬ duces. What other test can there be? The continuity of the true, inward spiritual life of the Church has never been broken. It has sur¬ vived in spite of the breaks which have come in the form of the Church — its organisation and orders. It has not been confined to those churches which possess the historic episcopate and whose organisation is of a particular traditional kind. It has not followed any fixed creedal track, or any one form of worship, or any par¬ ticular sacramental theory and practice. The real continuity of the Church of Christ is to be found in the fellowship of those loyal to Christ, loyal 184. THE gospel of fellowship to His ideals of individual and social righteous¬ ness. Upon Protestantism has been placed the blame for the divided Church. That, as I have pointed out above, is not true. The blotches on the skin of a child are not the cause of the disease called measles, but the effect of it. Protestantism with its divisions is but the reaction against a false principle of unity introduced into the Church cen¬ turies before the actual break in the body of the Church came about. But there is a sense in which Protestantism is responsible for the perpetuation of the division which came. The trouble with Protestantism is that it started to gO' somewhere, became satisfied with itself after taking a few steps, and stopped. Protestantism is suffering from an arrested development. It achieved but a partial reformation. The choice between Rome and Protestantism is not a choice between error and truth, but a choice between two evils. All reform movements are exposed to the danger of assuming that they represent the last step in progress. Protestantism very early in its career came to regard itself as the final stage in religious and ecclesiastical evolution. It is far from that. The distance which Protestantism has travelled, that is, the distance between it and Rome, is far less than the distance between Prot¬ estantism and the ideal Church, whose bond of AMONG THE CHURCHES ^5 unity is fellowship among those who are walking in the light as He is in the light. Protestantism carried along with it many things it should have left behind — Rome’s arbitrary methods and principles : Rome’s way of making tests of membership in Christ’s Religion : Rome’s ecclesiastical spirit of tyranny. It made subscrip¬ tion to creeds, and conformity to forms of wor¬ ship, and forms of ecclesiastical government the conditions of membership within its fold, just as Rome had done. But the hope for unity lies in Protestantism. It can lead the way if it will go on and complete its reformation, now so long arrested, and make fellowship in Christ the basis of membership in the Church. There are indications that it has al¬ ready entered upon this further stage of its de¬ velopment. I have before me an article of recent date which makes reference to the signs I have in mind. Commenting on the broadening of views among all faiths in England, Mr. Frank Victor says: “ Already there have been exchange of courtesies between the established church and dis¬ senting bodies which would have been held incon¬ ceivable before the war, for a dissenting (Metho^ dist) minister has presided at a service in Dur¬ ham Cathedral, a Baptist minister has preached in Canterbury Cathedral, and many Church of 1 86 THE gospel of fellowship England dignitaries have accepted invitations to free church pulpits. “Careful analysis of the situation gives it an interesting origin. It is believed by certain students to have grown out of the close association between Anglican and dissenting ‘padres’ or chaplains during the war. “Before the war it was ‘almost a mortal sin for such to hold converse together.’ But in war time they joined hands and worked with all their hearts and muscle, and of tentime at the cost of life itself, not only together, but in partnership with Roman priests and wholly non-denomina- tional Salvationists for the saving of the soldiers’ souls — and bodies. These men, returning, have shown a great impatience with the narrowness of the old creedism. “This means more to Englishmen than most Americans will understand. Within the memory of living men, Church of England devotees and clergy often regarded free church, or ‘dissenting’ believers, that is, those who> did not subscribe to the particular creed of the Church of England, as lost souls and dangerous even to nod to on the streets. “Of course the Roman Church still denies com¬ munion to non-Catholics, but there is a broad¬ ening of view among the priesthood as notable as that obvious among Church of England men, and innumerable instances of very real cordiality AMONG THE CHURCHES 187 and co-operation between Protestant and Catholic clergy are of recent, post-war record. The feel¬ ing, once almost full of something close to enmity, now is that of good fellowship in the doing of good works.” The author of this article quotes Dr. Charles Brown, one of the best known men in the Free Church, as saying, “We gratefully acknowledge that we have come into a better atmosphere, purer and sweeter. The better people of all Christian churches regard the old attitude as wrong and un-Christian.” And to this he joins the statement of the Bishop of London. “It is impossible,” says the Bishop, “that we should go back again to the old, bad and bitter spirit.” Unity through fellowship is possible. Unity through authority and submission, or through subscription to a common creed and body of doc¬ trine, is not possible. And if it were, it would not be desirable. For in the light of past experi¬ ence such would not furnish a true basis for last¬ ing unity. Unity in doctrine under the pres¬ sure of authority carries in it the seed of dissen¬ sion and division. The day of the regulation of thought by authority has passed. The Church or state that attempts to hold its ground by for¬ bidding men to think has about as much chance to succeed in its undertaking as the old lady had of keeping the tide of the ocean back with her broom. THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP 1 88 Men are no longer willing to be kept in the dark with the assurance that a paternal ecclesias¬ tical organisation will lead them safely through it, but they are demanding that they be brought out into the light that they may walk as free men therein. The Church is awakening to the realisation that what it once regarded as its theological as¬ sets have become liabilities. There is no market for doctrine, but a great demand for individual and social programmes of living. There is no short-cut to unity. It will never come as the result of a holy canonical, creedal, or organic device worked out in conferences and con¬ ventions. We will enter into unity through fel¬ lowship in service, and we will enter into the fel¬ lowship of service only after we have come more under the spirit of Christ than we are at present. And unity is not going to be found by turning back and retracing our steps over the historical trail we have made. The unity we seek, and the only unity that will last, lies before us, not behind. The emphasis will have to be shifted from the question, “What must my church give up?” to the question, “What has my church to give to the new and larg'er Church?” for in the Church born of fellowship there will be more of va¬ riety of thought and worship, not less. It will be a living, growing, changing thing, not a dead and finished and changeless thing. There will be AMONG THE CHURCHES 189 no custodian standing at its door demanding that men give over to him their liberty of thought and conscience. Nature abhors sameness. She revels in variety. The distinguishing characteristic of abundant life is its flexibility as to form and modes of expression. Our craving for religious unity is instinctive. It has a psychological basis. Our dreams of unity will last as long as the race endures, and we will never be at rest until we find it. The religious life cannot long survive in isola¬ tion. It requires not only the expression of it¬ self in service of others, but it demands as neces¬ sary to its very existence that assurance and reinforcement which comes from association and fellowship with others who are also seekers after God. If occasion require, a man may stand alone as a witness to his faith in Christ, he may pray alone, and alone sing his song in the night, but it is when his voice is merged in the prayer and song of a united visible as well as invisible Church that he finds deepest assurance of the presence and reality of God. The commission of Jesus Christ to His disci¬ ples was clear and concise. They were to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. These disciples were to be governed and held together by one law — love and service. Walking in the light of His life they were to find fellow¬ ship one with another. Love and fellowship are 190 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP inseparable. They were to be the bonds of unity in the new Christian society. Wherever groups of disciples formed they were to be as ganglia in the old order. Gradually they were to change the old into the new, and the new social order bound together in the fellowship of love and service would be that which He came to establish — the new social order, the Kingdom of God on earth. LECTURE VI THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY THE Epistle to the Ephesians, from the third chapter of which these words are taken, might be called the Epistle of the Fulness. That word — pleroma — occurs four times in its six chapters, more frequently than in any other book of the New Testament. The subject of the epistle might be stated in its own words, “the fulness of Him that filleth all in all,” and its ob¬ ject in those other words from the same epistle, “that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God,” and “until we all come . . . into a com¬ plete manhood, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” And that fulness characterises its style and its language. It is so surcharged with the fulness of thought, experience and emotion that it bursts all bounds o'f grammatical rule and order. The writer piles one magnificent phrase upon another, Pelion upon Ossa, and from that height his lan¬ guage pours in torrents. It is broken by side issues that suddenly project into his thought and the interruption is sometimes utterly forgotten 192 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP and the statement left unfinished; or it is re¬ sumed again after a long digression, as in the present chapter, where he begins a prayer, “for this cause,” and then suddenly goes off into a long and ecstatic excursion among the mysteries, only to resume at the 14th verse, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Syntax is blown into the spray of loose impossible constructions by mighty gusts of sudden emotion. Figures of speech roll up in confused clouds of mist. The climax is reached in this wonderful third chapter. Its dominating word is “mystery.” That word oc¬ curs twenty-seven times in the New Testament — in the gospels three times, which reduce to one, for the three instances are reports by the three synoptics of the same saying — four times in the Book of Revelation, and twenty times in the Epistles accredited to St. Paul, — six times in this one epistle and three times in this one chapter. Evidently this word mystery, together with that other word fulness, strikes the keynote of the apostle’s message. For him it sums up the gos¬ pel. “He made known unto me the mystery”; it is the charge and trust of the ministry — we are “stewards of the mysteries of God.” It is the very constituent principle of the Church. The Church is the “fellowship of the mystery.” The Fellowship of the Mystery — that phrase gives us the subject of this lecture. FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 193 First, we must try to find out the meaning of that word “mystery.” We must utterly divest our minds, at the start, of the modern connota¬ tions of the term. With us it is associated with mists and mistiness. We have coined an adjec¬ tive from it — “mysterious.” It connotes the in¬ explicable and unintelligible. That which lies beyond the comprehension or even apprehension of the understanding is called a mystery. In the language of the New Testament and of the times and circumstances in which the New Testament was written, the word has an entirely different meaning. It comes from a verb signify¬ ing “to whisper” — to tell in low tones into the ear. It is a secret revealed. It may be a per¬ fectly clear, intelligible, comprehensible truth or statement, but the point is, it is a secret revealed. The word probably comes from the vocabulary, the uses and practices of certain Greek societies or associations, like the Eleusinian Mysteries. They were like a glorified college fraternity or Masonic order. The principles and truth they stood for, together doubtless with certain pass¬ words and signs, were communicated, “whispered into the ear” of the initiated after religious cer¬ emonies, and processes of preparation and puri¬ fication, such as vigils, fastings, and symbolic rites. These whispered communications, these revealed secrets, were the “mysteries.” The meaning of the word becomes plain. The 194 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP “Gospel,” the “Good News,” was the secret whis¬ pered by God into the ears of the initiated of this new fraternity, the disciples and the “friends” of the Christ, the communion of the saints or “dedicated ones,” and so they became “The Fel¬ lowship of the Mystery,” which is the soul and essence of the Christian Church. Only there is this supreme and radical difference between the Greek mystery and the mystery of the Gospel. The Greek mystery was esoteric. The Gospel mystery is exoteric. The Greek fellowship was exclusive. The fellowship of the Christian mys¬ tery is designed to be all-inclusive. Its secret is a secret that belongs to the world, and must be communicated to all mankind. The command is — “Go ye into all the world and preach the gos¬ pel to every creature — disciple all nations.” In the end this secret must be whispered in the ear of every living soul till all men become members of “the fellowship of the mystery.” What is the Gospel — the Christian mystery? I know not where it is more simply summarised than in the familiar words which so often slip over our minds without making any impression upon them — “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all.” It might be para¬ phrased “In the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed the love of God, making the fellow¬ ship of the Spirit.” For that phrase, “the fel- FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 195 lowship of the Holy Ghost,” I believe, means, not so much the fellowship or communion with God through His Spirit (though it includes and indeed roots in that), as it means the fellowship of Christian believers and initiated one with an¬ other in their common bond — the gospel — the re¬ vealed secret of God, under the inspiration of the Spirit. It is the fellowship of the mystery ef¬ fected by the power of the Holy Ghost. To resume — The whole revelation made in Jesus Christ is summed up in that one surpassing, ineffable word, “grace,” a word which it is al¬ most impossible to interpret and quite impossible to exhaust. So the Fourth Gospel states the summary of that revelation, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” It is this word “grace” which is chosen to bear practically the whole burden of the revelation made in Christ Jesus. I have said that grace is an almost in¬ definable and a quite inexhaustible word. Per¬ haps we can get glimpses of some of its aspects by a gradual approach. In commercial language we speak of the “three days of grace” allowed in the payment of a note or of a life insurance premium. The word stands for the time allowed beyond the limit of obligation — the over-plus, so to speak, of the law. In that puzzling book, Ecclesiastes, the preacher 196 the gospel of fellowship is struggling with the old, old question, “Is life worth living ?” And, if so, what makes it worth living? He uses a strange and rare Hebrew word which recurs constantly throughout the book like the solemn note of a bell-buoy at sea. It is the word “yitheron.” Literally it means what is left-over— the overplus of life beyond the mere business of living. That is what gives it value. That is what makes it really life as dis¬ tinguished from mere living. The preacher tries out all the values in which men generally seek the worth and joy of life and finds them empty. They are vanity, emptiness. Wealth, it is but “means,” to use an apt and com¬ mon phrase, means to a further end, and mean¬ ingless unless it issues in that end. Pleasure — it is but the lubricant of life, not its object. It grows rancid and smells to heaven if impure. It clogs the machinery if used in excess. Knowledge — it is power; it gives skill, but to what purpose? Unless it finds vent in that further purpose, it becomes weariness to the flesh, aye, it breaks the heart. Passionately, desperately, the preacher searches for this “yitheron,” this “profit” (as we inade¬ quately translate the word), the output and prod¬ uct of life beyond the mere running of the ma¬ chinery of living, and finds it not, except in the rather dull, negative, colourless conclusion, “Fear FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 197 God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Now the Hebrew word “yitheron” dimly adumbrates that ebullient, radiant, effulgent Greek word “charis,” which in the New Testament sums up the character and the revelation of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ illuminates all human life and the face of God Himself with the splendour, the glory of grace — His grace. The sinlessness of Jesus is taken for granted, assumed in the New Testament. It is referred to in passing only once or twice. That which we make so much of did not arrest the attention of the New Testament writers. That was not the wonder of that life. It was the character, the source and the method o:f that sinlessness. It was not attained by asepsis and quarantine from the world, like the sanctity of the ascetic or the monk. It was not negative, icily regular, coldly correct, like the Pharisee’s righteousness, who “walked blameless in the statutes and ordinances of the law.” The wonder of His sinlessness was its positiveness, not its negativeness. When He touched the leper, contrary to the prohibitions of the law, contagion did not assail Him, but from His fulness cleansing flowed out upon the leper. So He went about amidst the sickness of the crowds and streams of healing and health poured into their needs. l9S THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP So it was with His character; it was positive, ebullient, effulgent; it had issues of virtue. He lived in the very depths of a sinful world. He dwelt among the dregs of humanity. He was the friend of publicans and sinners, aye, of the very harlots of the streets. He shunned no con¬ tacts and yet He contracted no stain upon His spotless holiness. He carried pardon, peace, cleansing, new life wherever He went. He in¬ spired new vision, faith and hope in the most broken and despairing lives. He gave to all who had any receptiveness “power to become the sons of God.” The Fourth Evangelist sums it all up in these words: “Of His fulness have we all re¬ ceived and grace for grace.” That may mean grace upon grace in cumulative accretion, or it may mean grace from His “grace- fulness” ac¬ cording to the measure of our graciousness — our openness of receptivity. That, I believe, is the foundation — yes, the meaning of St. Paul’s great doctrine of Justifica¬ tion by Faith and salvation by grace. It is set forth often in “words hard to be understood, which they that are unstable wrest to their own damnation,” as Peter observed. But the great apostle is simply trying to translate that vision, “and we beheld His glory,” into the “tongue wherein he himself was born,” the crabbed, legal¬ istic terminology of the rabbis. He is “Judais- ing the argument.” But its essence is plain. FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 199 The righteousness which is of the law — it is the molten metal of human nature, full of dross and flaws, compressed into regularity of shape, by the restraints and repressions and suppressions of prohibitions and precepts — the mould of the law. The righteousness of faith which springs from grace — it is a regeneration, the implanting of a new principle of life within. It has its imper¬ fections, too, but it has vitality, it has beauty and fragrance, it has the power and promise of con¬ tinual growth — “from glory unto glory” — “to¬ wards the perfect man, towards the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ.” Yea, “of His fulness have we all received and grace for grace.” All this is but a suggestion of what is meant by “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is the life that overflowed all measures of demand, of duty, of obligation, of law, and flowed out into the needs of the world with its over-plus of spir¬ itual vitality. It was the fountain life that kept away the contagion of evil by the outflow of its currents, and carried cleansing, healing and strength into all the human sin and disease and weakness it could reach. As Phillips Brooks has said, “Whenever we stand before Christ, we feel that we are in the presence of a boundless sea o'f mercy, love and power. Whatever words of wisdom come from His lips, whatever deeds of healing from His hands into the waiting needs of 200 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP men, we feel behind them exhaustless resources yearning to pour forth till they shall fill all the hunger of humanity.” There is the patience that cannot be worn out, the courage that cannot be daunted, the faith that cannot fail and that will never give up even the most irredeemable, the hope that cannot be broken, and the love that nothing can quench. Behold, it hangs upon the Cross of Calvary, that grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Around it surges the sea of human sin, wickedness, ingratitude and scorn. They mock Him, they curse Him, they spit their venom in His very face. But as a great preacher has said, “It was as if men, in their madness, flung water at the stars to put out their light, and they went on shining as calmly and beneficently as before.” I would U could put into words a tithe of what I see in that one phrase — the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. All language fails before the vision. You who share the vision sense what I mean. But though this be so, though words fail us, we know how impregnable that vision makes faith; how it lifts faith above the reach of all arguments and the touch of all doubt. The critics may tear the Gospel narratives into shreds, but through all the fragments shines out that one Face which no painter on earth ever painted, which no imagination, however inspired, could ever invent. It is too real, too consistent, for any such origin. There is the seamless gar- FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 201 ment c>f His character which no man can rend asunder. The storms of controversy may rage but we stand unmoved, because “we know Him upon whom we have believed/’ To all hostile arguments we can make one steady, calm answer, “See the Christ stand.” In that vision of the spiritual insight we can share in our degree the assurance of those eye-witnesses who declared so confidently, “That which was from the begin¬ ning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life (for the life was manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us), that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ, and these things write we unto you that your joy may be full.” This is the mystery, the revealed secret, of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. But this is only the beginning of the Gospel. For in the “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” these men found another mystery — the supreme mystery — the revelation of “the love of God.” There could be to them no other explanation of this super-abounding “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It was beyond all human nature. It 202 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP was a manifestation of the Divine nature. It could have no other source or origin. It sprang out of the very heart of God. It was an efful¬ gence of the splendour of God. “We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.” In the face of the Christ they saw the face of God. As Jesus said to Philip, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou then, Show us the Father?” Seven times only is this title, “Father,” ap¬ plied to God in the Old Testament, — four times in the Psalms, three times in the Second Isaiah. These are faint forecasts of the new “mystery,” the revelation of the Fatherhood of God, the first rays of the coming dawn of the Gospel day. The title occurs numberless times in the New Testament, lit is the habitual, practically the only Name Jesus uses for God. And it is taken up in a chorus of jubilation in all the apostolic epistles. It is difficult, practically impossible, for us to realise the transformation that one word wrought in these men’s inherited and instinctive conceptions of God. The remote Almighty, the omnipotent, though righteous Despot, the eternal Lawgiver, the inex¬ orable Doomster, seated upon His throne in the far-off heaven, riding upon the thunder clouds, His chariots, revealed by lightning flashes of His wrath in national catastrophes and the judgments of history, approaching the individual chiefly as FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 203 an inflexible and meticulous Taskmaster — these were the common Hebrew conceptions of Jeho¬ vah, mitigated only here and there by the splendid guesses and glimpses of rare souls, like those of one or two of the psalmists or the Great Seer. Think what it meant to men, saturated with such conceptions as to God, to find the heart of a Father at the centre of life and the universe and to discover the love of God in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And there is no other way into the mystery of the love of God except through the mystery of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is eternally true, as He said, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Apart from Christ, God inevitably fades out to the human mind into a Fate, a Force, a Power not ourselves that perhaps makes for righteous¬ ness, but never a Father. As Browning puts it: “Conjecture of the worker by the work: Is there strength there? — enough: intelligence? Ample: but goodness in a like degree? Not to the human eye in the present state, An isoscele deficient in the base. What lacks, then, of perfection fit for God But just the instance which this tale supplies Of love without a limit? So is strength, So is intelligence; let love be so, Unlimited in its self-sacrifice, Then is the tale true and God shows complete. Beyond the tale I reach into the dark, Feel what I cannot see, and still faith stands.” 204 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP That mystery of the love of God revealed in the mystery of “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” demanded of those to whom it first came, as it demands of us to-day, some revision of our common, conventional and orthodox notions about God, especially as to His omnipotence. He is a changed God. He at least limits His omnip¬ otence in order to share our struggle and our suffering. He becomes the champion God, the Leader in our fight with the evil of the world — aye, the Companion God, who shares our burdens, the God Mr. Wells thinks he has discovered in the “Invisible King,” but whom, long ago, Isaiah glimpsed when he painted that picture of the conqueror from Edom, with garments dyed red in the blood of our strife, or the passionate and compassionate God of that other picture, “In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them ; and He bare them all the days of old.” It is the God who is revealed in His fulness in Christ, and that, too, Christ crucified. That new faith gave these men new victory over the world, as it will give us, if we cherish it. It lifts above the doubts that come with the mystery of iniquity in the world about us or the mysteries of suffer¬ ing in our own lives. These men faced a world far more evil than we know — apparently hope¬ lessly wicked. Their constant experience was FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 205 tribulation and affliction. They daily faced per¬ secution and death. Yet they could sing amidst the fires, “When the burnt offering began, then began the song of the Lord with trumpets.” And why? Because they found in it all, God, the champion and leader of that eternal battle with the evil that must end in final victory; God, the compassionate self-giver, the sharer of the burden and the suffering, aye, the “undying fire” within that must burn to the limits of sacrifice until the soul and the universe should be burned clean. The very Cross which to the worldling was the climax of the riddle of the universe, the supreme mystery of iniquity, became to them the supreme revelation of the Father, the mystery of the love of God. And the results of this mystery of the love of God revealed in the “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” — its effects on life, experience, character, the Church, — what were they? First, an impregnable inward peace, the peace that passeth understanding, which nothing out¬ ward could touch, an inalienable joy which the world could not give nor yet take away. Jesus had said to them under the very shadow of the Cross, “My joy give I unto you and your joy shall be full.” And the literature of the New Testament proves the reality and the fulfilment of that promise. Think of it : here is a literature written by men 20 6 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP who had such a sensitiveness to sin as no others have ever had — facing a world of such wicked¬ ness as we know not of — suffering daily as few have ever suffered — and yet this book is the most jubilant book ever written. Open it almost any¬ where and it sings and shouts with joy. Alas! what has become of it, this “peace and joy in believing” which filled the hearts and lives of those first Christians? (Where can you find it in the life of the average modern Christian, even in our own lives, ministers of Christ though we be?) The splendour of the dawn has long ago faded out into the light of common day, and a dark, dreary day it is with many of us. Faith has become so conventional and formal, an un¬ realised assumption and commonplace, something we hold instead of something that holds and grips and uplifts and possesses us. This is the supreme need in our Christian life and work, par¬ ticularly in our ministry — such a Pentecost of conviction, such a revival of that primitive spirit, such an opening of the clogged springs of our faith, as should flood our lives with peace and joy. Then nothing would seem impossible to us. Then mountains of difficulty would be cast into the sea. Then would we shout that paean of St. Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strength¬ ened inwardly.” But the most striking outcome of this new revelation in the experience and lives of the first FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 207 disciples was the Fellowship — the Fellowship of the Mystery, the Fellowship of the Spirit. That was the new thing that came into the world with Christianity. That was what really hap¬ pened on Pentecost. It was not that the Spirit was then first given. Nay, according to the record, the Spirit was already in the world, resident in all humanity. It was the Spirit that inspired Bezaleel and Aholiab to do cunning work for the tabernacle. And we believe that Spirit is the source of all practical wisdom, even of the skill of the craftsman. It was the Spirit that gave the seer his vision and the prophet his mes¬ sage, who laid upon him the burden of the Lord. It was the Spirit that always has been and ever is the source from whom “all holy desires, all good counsels and all just works do proceed,” and wherever we find the fruits of the Spirit in the heathen, Jewish or Christian worlds, in Chris¬ tian or pre-Christian eras, there we are sure of the presence of the Spirit. No, it was not that the Spirit was first given on Pentecost. But there came then a new and tran¬ scendent manifestation of the Spirit. It was the “fellowship of the mystery,” the “communion of the Holy Ghost.” That was the new spiritual life about which the Church organised as the shell grows about the liv¬ ing animal. That has been ever the soul of which the Church is the body, “the blessed com- 208 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP pany of all faithful people,” “the communion of the saints.” The word that stands for fellow¬ ship — “koinonia” — and its derivatives, variously translated in our English versions, go singing and ringing throughout the Acts and the Epistles. It can almost be said to be the keynote, the theme of the whole apostolic literature. It is the centre and crystallising principle of the Christian life. It is the spring of unquenchable and in¬ effable joy and enthusiasm. It gives meaning to all the rites and sacraments of the Church. Baptism was initiation into the fellowship. The Holy Communion was the bond of the fellowship. There is nothing that has such power for unifica¬ tion as a common ideal. Let two Single Taxers, or Socialists, who are strangers to each other, meet, and instantly they cleave to each other soul to soul. They coalesce like two elements that have chemical affinity for each other. Think then, of the power of the fellowship of the mys¬ tery among the early Christians, the communion of the Holy Ghost. It was, as St. Paul says, “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all.” The new Fellowship of the Mystery, that Com¬ munion of the Holy Ghost, bom at Pentecost, FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 209 wrought miracles in the day of its early power. It bridged impassable gulfs. It bridged the chasms of divergent races and nationalities. That ancient world was divided everywhere with a dichotomy which was thought to be irreconcilable. It was taken for granted. Did it not exist and inhere in the very nature of things? To the Roman all the world was sepa¬ rated into citizens and enemies; to the Greek into Greeks and barbarians; and to the Hebrew into Jews and dogs of Gentiles ; and generally not as much kinship was felt between them as is now felt between man and the lower animals. But in the new fellowship, men of all races and nationalities were initiated by one baptism, gath¬ ered about one Lord’s Table, shared a common faith and hope, served one Lord and owned one Father. Differences of nationality and race were fused and melted by the fire of the mystery and the Spirit into a common brotherhood, and St. Paul could sing, “There is no longer Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” Or, again, “For by the Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, and were all made to drink of one Spirit.” The very sacraments be¬ came the bonds of inter-racial unity in the one Spirit. 210 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP The fellowship bridged the impassable gulf of sex distinction. Woman in the ancient world was a thing — the chattel of man, the instrument of his pleasure or his service. But in Christ there was “neither male nor female.” They were members of one body, equal co-partners in all the spiritual values, interests and service of the fel¬ lowship. To that Christian doctrine alone woman owes her modern emancipation and acquisition of equality — aye, of personality itself; — though the new woman of to-day is sometimes too advanced for the old religion. The fellowship bridged the impassable gulf of class. Slaves, like women, were chattels, de¬ void of personality, even humanity, — tools, to be used or destroyed at will. For the power of life and death was absolute in the hands of the owner and master. But while the new fellowship did not directly or politically attack the institution of slavery, it sapped it of its meaning and reason for existence so that slavery has finally crumbled wherever the new fellowship has gone. The first emancipation proclamation was St. Paul’s letter to Philemon. The apostle indeed sent back the runaway slave to his master, but with a message that utterly abrogated the old relation of owner and chattel, master and slave. “Re¬ ceive him, my son whom I have begotten in my bonds — my very heart — not now as a servant, a slave, but above a servant, a brother beloved, spe- FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 2 II dally to me, but much more unto thee — both in the flesh (the brotherhood of a common humanity) and in the Lord (the fellowship of the mystery of the Spirit).” Slavery could not exist forever in such an atmosphere. The new fellowship begot an enthusiasm of sacrifice, of service and brotherhood such as the world had never seen before, and, alas, has never seen since. It even tried out the first experiment in communism. “All that believed were together and had all things common and sold their pos¬ sessions and goods and parted them to all as every man had need.” It was the very central principle of communism. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The grave economists point out that this ex¬ periment was ill-advised and ended in disaster. Undoubtedly so. I am not advocating com¬ munism. But sometimes I would to God that the modern Church had enough of that ancient enthusiasm of brotherhood to do something rashly imprudent, to make some economical mis¬ take, to compass something splendidly foolish, magnificently unwise and heroically self-sacrific¬ ing. The fellowship turned the scattered flock of Christ the world over into one family. Any Christian setting out on his travels anywhere took with him a letter from his home group, and that assured him of welcome and hospitality 212 THE GOSPEL OF FELLOWSHIP wherever a Christian could be found. He was given support until he could establish his own self-support. Two men, strangers to each other, stood upon the beach. One carelessly drew with his staff a figure of a fish upon the sand. It was the mystic sign and symbol of the fellowship. Instantly he was taken to the other’s heart and home. Where is that spirit of brotherhood to¬ day? It has been chilled out of the Church and has taken refuge in freemasonry and other fra¬ ternal orders. This, then, is the message I have for you to¬ day. The essence, the spirit, the soul of our re¬ ligion is manifested in fellowship, “the fellow¬ ship of the mystery,” “the fellowship of the spirit,” “the communion of the Holy Ghost,” “the communion of the saints.” That is the characteristic note and the constitutive principle of Christianity and the Church in their origin. It is also the acid test of Christianity and the Church to-day. It is the article of a standing or a falling Church — aye, of our very religion. Fellowship alone can save the world, fellowship between classes in industry, in the divided body of Christ, between races and nations in the one great human family. And fellowship can be realised on the spiritual plane alone. It can spring from but one source, the fellowship of the mystery, the love of God, revealed in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ FELLOWSHIP OF THE MYSTERY 213 and ultimating in the communion of the Holy Ghost. If the Church can be awakened to the con¬ sciousness that she is in essence and by her very charter such a fellowship, if she can heal her own breaches and quicken her own deadness in the power and vitality of that conviction, and if through every opportunity that opens she can spread the spirit and contagion of her own fel¬ lowship throughout this fatally divided and hate- poisoned world about her, then, and then only — but then indeed — she can fulfil the whole mission laid upon her, the mission of the Christ Himself, to disciple the nations and save the world. Printed in United States of America STRIKING ADDRESSES JOHN HENRY JOWETT, D.D. God Our Contemporary A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50. Among the pulpit-giants of to-day Dr. Jowett has been given a high place. Every preacher will want at once this latest product of his fertile mind. It consists of a series of full length sermons which are intended to show that only in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ can We find the resources to meet the needs of human life. SIDNEY BERRY, M.A. Revealing Light $1.50. A volume of addresses by the successor to Dr. Jowett iat Carr’s Dane Church, Birmingham, the underlying aim of which is to show what the Christian revelation means in relation to the great historic facts of the Faith and the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts of men to-day. Every address is an example of the best preaching of this famous “preacher to young men.’* FREDERICK C. SPURR Last Minister of Regent's Park Chapel » London, The Master Key A Study in World-Problems $1.35. A fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of the Christian Gospel and its relation to the travail through which the world is passing. Mr. Spurr is a man in tha vanguard of religious thought, yet just as emphatically, as any thinker of the old school, he insists on one Physician able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D.D. Pastor Baptist Temple , Philadelphia „ Unused Powers $1.25. To “Acres of Diamonds,” “The Angel’s Lily,” “Why Lincoln Laughed,” “How to Live the Christ Life,” and many other stirring volumes, Dr. Conwell has just added another made up of some of his choicest addresses. Dr. Conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the ex* perimental knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who having long faced the stark realities of life, has been exalted thereby. GAIUS GLENN ATKINS , D.D. Minister of the First Congregational Church , Detroit, Michigan. The Undiscovered Country $1.50. A group of addresses marked by distinction of style and originality of approach. The title discourse furnisnea a ocutral theme to which those following stand in rela* than. Dr. Atkins’ work, throughout, is marked by clarity of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing. PRAYER, DEVOTIONAL, ETC J. D. JONES , D.D. Author of “St. Paul’s Certainties ” The King of Love Meditations on The Twenty-third Psalm. $1.25. Dr. Jones is one of the greatest of living preachers, and on both sides of the Atlantic, his splendid gifts are fully recognized. The clear, eloquent, and deeply devotional character of his work makes it specially interesting. The meditations literally breathe counsel and enheartenment. LYNN HAROLD HOUGH , D.D. The Strategy of the Devotional Life 75c. Amid the vast life of a great city, the problem of sus¬ taining true spiritual life is a problem of increasing grav¬ ity and difficulty. The “strategy” of the process as Dr. Hough so ably calls it, . is discussed in the pages of his new book, with convincing clarity. HENRY VAN DYKE , D. D. Thy Sea is Great— Our Boats Are Small and Other Hymns of To-day. 50c. A number of new hymns written by a recognized master of true lyrical expression. These verses Dr. van Dyke de¬ scribes as an attempt to give expression to certain present day aspirations not possibly finding utterance before. FRANK W. GUNSAULUS , D.D. Prayers of Frank W. Gunsaulus $1.25. *‘Dr. Gunsaulus was one of the most richly -endowed preachers of his generation, and his prayers reflect a mind and heart wondrously attuned to the harmonies of the Highest.” — Christian Work. /. PA TERSON-SMYTH, LL.D D.C.L. Author of “ The Gospel of the Hereafter” On the Rim of the World 75c “These answers to questions about the hereafter are based on the New Testament. Here is a book that makes for faith and courage and hope and sanity. It was not written to convince unbelievers, but to console and oom- fort Christians whose knowledge is altogether too small on this most vital matter. And this task the author has well perfermed.” — C. B. World. HELPFUL SERMONS 33 — ' n ■ I I . . . 11 JAMES I. VANCE , D.D., LL.D. Paster First Presbyterian Church , Nashville , Ttnn. In the Breaking of the Bread Communion Addresses. $1.25. “A volume of communion addresses marked by deep spiritual insight and knowledge of the human heart. They are well adapted to awaken the spiritual conceptions which should accompany the observance of the Lord’s Supper- suggestions fitted, for a communion occasion. The ad¬ dresses all bear upon the general theme of the Lord’s Sup¬ per and showed marked spirituality of thought and fervency of expression.” — United Presbyterian. TEUNIS E. GOUJVENS Pastor Second Presbyterian ■ - ■ Church , Louisville , Ky, The Rock That Is Higher And Other Addresses. $1.25. An unusually successful volume of discourses of which Dr. Charles S. Macfarland of the Church Federal Council, says: “Contents the intellect because it first satisfies the heart, and commands the incontestable assent of human experience . As I have read it I have found my conscience penetrated, my faith deepened and my hope Quickened.” W. RUSSELL BOWIE , D.D. Rector of St. Paul’s Church , Richmond, Va>. The Road of the Star and Other Sermons. $1.50. A volume of addresses which bring the message of Christianity with fresh and kindling interpretation to the immediate needs of men. The extraordinary distinction of Dr. Bowie’s preaching rises from the fact that to great vigor of thought he has added the winged power of an imagination essentially poetic. JOSEPH JUDSON TAYLOR , D.D., LL.D. Author of "The Sabbatic Question "The God of War," etc „ Radiant Hopefulness $1.00. A message of enheartenment, a word of cheer, for men and women whose hearts have been fearful, whose spirits have been shaken in the turbulent times through which the world has passed in recent years, with which man¬ kind still finds itself faced. In this volume of addresses, Dr. Taylor points the way to comfort amid confusion, to peaceful harborage amid the prevailing jptorm. STANDARD REFERENCE WORKS G. B. F. HALLOCK Editor of “ The Expositor.*1 A Modern Cyclopedia of Illus¬ trations for All Occasions Nineteen Hundred and Thirty-eight Illustrations. $3.00. A comprehensive collection of illustrative incidents, anecdotes and other suggestive material for the outstanding days and seasons of the church year.. The author, well- known to the readers of “The Expositor has presented a really valuable handbook for Preachers, Sunday School Superintendents and all Christian workers. JAMES INGLIS The Bible Text Cyclopedia A Complete Classification of Scripture Texts. New Edition. ’ Large 8vo, $2.00 “More sensible and convenient, and every way more satisfactory than any book of the kind we have ever known. We know of no other work comparable with it in this department of study.” — Sunday Sehool Time 3^ ANGUS-GREEN Cyclopedic Handbook to the Bible By Joseph Angus. Revised by Samuel G. Green, New Edition. 832 pages, with Index, $3.00. ‘‘The Best thing in its line.” — Ira M. Price, Uniu. of Chicago. “Holds an unchallenged place among aids to the inten pretation of the Scriptures.” — Baptist Review and positor. “Of immense service to Biblical students.” — Methodist Times. The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge Introduction by R. A. Torrey Consisting of 500,000 Scripture References and Parallel Passages. 788 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. “Bible students who desire to compare Scripture with Scripture will find the ‘Treasury’ to be a better help than any other book of which I have any knowledge."— -j5L JE. McBurney, Former Gen. Sec., Y. M. €. A., New York. 4. R. BUCK LAND, Editor Universal Bible Dictionary 51 1 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. TPr. CmrG>beU Morgan says: “Clear, concise, compre- hetjaive. I do not hesitate to say that if any student would take the Bible, and go through it book by book with its aid* the gain would he enormous.’*1 BIBLE STUDY f>. WH1TWELL WILSON Author of Ms Christ — Wf Fdrgtt" ’ ^' * The Church. We Forget A Study of the Life and Words of the Early Christians. 8vo, cloth, net The author of “The Christ We Forget” here furnishes a companion-picture of the earliest Christian Church — of the men and women, of like feelings with ourselves, who followed Christ and fought His battles in the Roman world of their day. “Here again,” says Mr. Wilson, “my paint-box is the Bible, and nothing else — and my canvas is a page which he who runs may read.” C. ALPHONSO SMITH , Ph.D LL.D. Head of the Department of English in the U. S. Naval Academy , Annapolis , Md. Key-note Studies in Key-note Books of the Bible i2mo, cloth, net The sacred books dealt with are Genesis, Esther, T@b, Hosea, John’s Gospel, Romans, Philippian3. Revelation. “No series of lectures yet given on this famous founda¬ tion have been more interesting and stimulating than these illuminating studies of scriptural books by a layman and library expert.” — Christian Observer. GEORGE D. WATSON , D. D. God’s Firdt Words Studies in Genesis, Historic, Prophetic and Ex¬ perimental. i2mo, cloth, net Dr. Watson shows how God’s purposes and infinite wisdom, His plan and purpose for the race, His unfailing love and faithfulness are first unfolded in the Book of Genesis, to remain unchanged through the whole canon of Scripture. Dr. Watson’s new work will furnish unusual enlightment to every gleaner in religious fields, who will find “God’s First Words” to possess great value and profit. EVERETT PEPPERRELL WHEELER , A.M. Author of "Sixty Years of American Life," ate. A Lawyer’s Study of the Bible Its Answer to the Questions of To-day. i2mo, cloth, net Mr. Wheeler’s main proposition is that the Bible, when wisely studied, rightly understood and its counsel closely followed, is found to be of inestimable value as a guide to daily life and conduct. To this end Mr. Wheeler ex¬ amines its teachings as they relate to sociology, labor and capital, socialism, war, fatalism, prayer, immortality. \ lucid, helpful book. EVANGELISTIC WORK OZORA H. DAVIS , D.D. President Chicago Theological Seminar Preaching the Social Gospel $1.50. The new book by the author of “Evangelistic Preach ing” is the next book every preacher should read. As a high authority recently said “Every preacher needs _ to read books on preaching and the problems of preaching and should read one such book every year.” It would be difficult to find a book that fits this need better than this latest work of President Davis’. J. WILBUR CHAPMAN , D.D. Evangelistic Sermons Edited and Compiled by Edgar Whitaker Work, D.D., with Frontispiece. $1.50. Strong, fervid gospel addresses, eminently character, istic of one of the great evangelists of his time. Dr. Work has used his editorial prerogatives with pronounced skill. As a result every paragraph is reminiscent of Dr. Chapman, and from every page of the book one seems to hear again the voice and compelling message of one who while living preached to possibly as many people as any man of his generation, who “being dead yet speaketh.” LOUIS ALBERT BANKS , D. D. Author of'1 Thirty-one Revival Sermons'* The New Ten Commandments and Other Sermons. $1.50. Strong, stirring Gospel addresses reflecting the true evangelical note, Dr. Banks’ latest volume, fully main¬ tains his impressive, picturesque style of presentation. Apt quotation, fitting illustration, drawn from literature and human life give point and color to his work, which is without a dull or meaningless page. FRANK CHALMERS McKEAN, A.M., D.D. The Magnetism of Mystery and Other Sermons Introduction by J. A. Marquis, D.D. $1.25 Dr. John A. Marquis says: “Dr. McKean’s sermons are shafts with points, and he hurls them with vigor and sure¬ ness. They will be read with interest, not only for what they are in themselves, but as types of the pulpit ministry that is making the Church of the Middle West.” !