JAN 18 1922 BV 4010 .W537 1921 Williams, Charles David, 1860-1923. The prophetic ministry for 1- r\r\::i\r THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY FOR TODAY jrt^g^ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA. Ltd. TORONTO The Prophetic Ministry for Today BY / ^'i^lOi •> -^^H [CHARLES D. WILLIAMS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 All rights reserved PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OP AMERICA Copyright, 1921 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and printed. Published October, 1921 FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY NEW YORK CONTENTS PAGE I. The Modern Minister — A Composite . . 7 II. The Prophetic Succession .... 26 III. The Prophetic Inheritance .... 45 IV. The Prophetic Message for Today . . 67 V. The Prophetic Program for Today . o 87 VI. Critic— Reformer— Prophet . . . . II2 VII. Prophet and Priest I34 VIII. The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment . 157 Personal Foreword I FEEL that there is due to the readers of these lec- tures, if there be any, a word of explanation already given to the hearers of them, as to the conditions under which they were written. The good ladies of a certain church society in my diocese publish annually a calendar of the church year. On the calendar is a motto or text, intended to inculcate the strict economy of time. But instead of being placed over the months and weeks and days, it has, with singu- lar felicity, been put over the picture of the Bishop which supposedly adorns one corner of the calendar. The text is, ''Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost." There could be no watch-word more necessary or motto more applicable to a modern Bishop. He is a man "scattered and peeled," "troubled about many things," distracted with various and often mutually variant occupations. He must be a man of affairs and many affairs. He is expected to fulfill many functions. He is primarily a business man, an administrator and executive. Particularly he is the "trouble man" of a large corporation. All the "church quarrels" gather about his devoted head. He has the responsibility for everything that goes wrong, often without the authority to set any- thing right. He serves as a lightning rod to carry off the accumulated wrath of the ecclesiastical heavens. He is constantly called on to act as a judge and should have a judicial temperament. He is also a "travelling man," The Prophetic Ministry for Today a kind of ecclesiastical "drummer" or salesman. He is even sometimes in demand as a social ornament to say- grace at banquets, make after-dinner speeches, adorn the stage at public meetings, and minister to the aesthetic needs of conventional society at fashionable weddings, baptisms and funerals. In the midst of all this distraction and dissipation, he is expected to find time and mind to be a preacher and a teacher, a scholar and a leader, and above all, a man of prayer and a man of God ! I never realized so fully the handicaps my office and occupations imposed upon any careful and scholarly work as wh^n I set myself to the most serious task of preparing these Lyman Beecher lectures for whose delivery I had the great and deeply appreciated honor of being chosen. All I could do was to "gather up the fragments" of my scattered mind and broken time and the fast fading reminiscences of a slight but obsolescent scholarship, achieved in a day when I had a "study" and could read books. I offer the results with apology as a "feast of broken meats." They represent at least a somewhat ex- tended experience and deep convictions, if not profound scholarship. I hope my readers will be as generous and indulgent as were my hearers and excuse the evident defects of the work out of consideration of the nature of my calling and occupations. I have not attempted to change the style of direct ad- dress to the more literary form of the written word, but present the lectures practically as they were delivered. THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY FOR TODAY THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY FOR TODAY I The Modern Minister — A Composite I HAVE chosen for my general subject, "The Pro- phetic Ministry for Today," I begin with an attempt at a portrait of the "Modern Minister." That pic- ture, as I see it, is a synthesis of various faces. Four groups of texts suggest themselves as illustrating the four faces which enter into that synthesis. Jeremiah 1 :19. "Then the Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth." Jeremiah 20:9. "Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name. But His Word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay." Malachi 2:7 "For the priest's lips should keep know- ledge and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts." Titus 1 :5. "For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldst set in order the things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee." Ezekiel 33 :32. "And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument ; for they hear thy words but they do them not." You have all seen a composite photograph. You know how one is made. A series of faces or figures is thrown upon the same sensitive plate, each image being exactly superimposed upon the last. The resulting picture is the 7 8 The Prophetic Ministry for Today composite of the group. It assembles into one the most saHent characteristics and recurrent features of the indi- vidual faces and gives as the outcome the type of the class. It is fascinating to study such a picture, to look now from' the individual faces to the composite, gathering up the component features here and there and summing them up in the common synthesis ; and again to look from the composite to the individual faces, analyzing the synthesis and tracing its separate elements back to their original sources. For the composite is at once "all and in all." Now it seems to me that the Christian minister, as we have him today, is a kind of composite photograph of several historic figures that have preceded him. And I propose to take up in this lecture in a most brief and sketchy way, that fascinating study of synthesis and analysis ; to point out certain historic elements of strength and of weakness that enter into the make-up of our min- istry, to indicate elements of power that ought to be emphasized and cultivated and elements of weakness and degeneracy that ought at least to be subordinated and, if possible, eliminated. Four historic figures I would sketch briefly as con- tributing characteristic features to the make-up of the modern minister: 1. The Hebrew Prophet. . 2. The Hebrew Priest. 3. The Apostolic Administrator or Executive. 4. The Greek Sophist or Rhetorician. The first three contribute elements of worth and power in descending or decreasing order. The last injects an element of essential weakness and degeneracy. I. At once the basal and the noblest figure in this syn- thesis is the Hebrew prophet. Now the Hebrew prophet, The Modern Minister — (A Composite) 9 as we all know, was not simply a predicter of future events, as he has very popularly been represented. He was rather a preacher than a predicter, a forth-teller than a fore-teller. He was a messenger, an ambassador, an in- terpreter between God and man. He was charged with a burden, a word of the Lord which he must deliver. Examine the writings of the prophets, and you find the element of prediction comparatively very small. The books are for the most part volumes of sermons; and when prediction does come in, it is generally conditional — the announcement of the inevitable issues of certain courses of moral conduct or action, chiefly on the part of the nation, if these courses are persisted in to their natural culmination. The prophet was always essentially a preacher. And, like Paul before Felix, he reasoned "of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." His field was broad. All questions that involved right- eousness and justice were his themes. He dealt with the problems of social, political and commercial ethics even more than with those of merely individual and personal morals. But he was not a professional preacher. He was never ordained to his office or function. He be- longed to no guild, class or caste. With the exception of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who were of priestly lineage, he was a layman, as was Amos the shepherd and cultivator of sycamore figs, or Isaiah the statesman. Indeed the figures of the prophet and the priest frequently stand opposed to each other in most pronounced antagonism throughout the Old Testament. The prophet derived his authority from no ecclesiastical commission but directly from the mission of God himself. It was the :iuthority, not of the Church, but of a God-inspired per- sonality. The burden of the Lord had been laid upon his spirit and the word of the Lord upon his lips. And that "word became in his heart as a burning fire shut up 10 The Prophetic Ministry for Today in his bones, until he was weary of forbearing and could not stay." He must utter it or be consumed by it. His only qualifications were the sensitive conscience, the open mind, the pure heart and attentive spirit which always make the fit interpreter and transparent medium between God and man. He had no salary and took no tithes, fees or gifts, at least in his later and finer developement. He was gener- ally a man of the people and derived his support from his own toil. He had no church or pulpit. He delivered his sermons at no set time or place. But whenever or wherever the Divine afflatus visited him, then and there he unburdened his soul. Whenever and wherever the Word of the Lord came upon him, then and there he spake it, whether in the temple-courts, the palace of the king, the market place and streets of the city, or the fields of the country- side. He was no man-pleaser, pandering to the passions of the masses or catering to the prejudices of the classes. He was the servant of Jehovah and he spake in the fear of the Lord. He was a flaming, incarnate conscience, set on fire from on high; often esteemed the enemy of the settled order or accepted disorder of church, society and state, and for that reason, winning for himself frequently persecution and sometimes martyrdom. He spake simply and only from God to man, when he was moved by the Holy Ghost and "as the Spirit gave him utterance." H. The Hebrew priest was an official. He was trained for the office. He bore the Church's commission. He was duly ordained. He had professional and ecclesi- astical functions to perform. He carried out the ritual. He offered the sacrifices and presented the oflferings to God on behalf of the people. But at least in his later development, he also had a didactic as well as a sacerdotal The Modern Minister — (A Composite) U function; he was teacher as well as priest. He filled the place afterwards specialized by the rabbi. In general probably his teaching was chiefly confined to matters purely ecclesiastical. He gave instruction as to the proper sacrifices to be offered, the proper rites and ceremonies to be observed in connection with the public fasts and feasts, the observance of holy days and also the technically religious requirements of the individ- ual life. His theme was religiousness rather than right- eousness, and sometimes he made religiousness a substi- tute for, rather than a means to righteousness. But gradually that teaching seems to have acquired a moral, ethical and spiritual character. Especially as in later Jewish history, the fitful impulses of prophecy slowly died out, the priest stepped more and more into the prophet's room and fulfilled as far as he could the prophetic function, not by the delivery of occasional messages under the Divine afflatus but by regular moral and spiritual instruction. He was the man of knowledge and authority rather than of inspiration. This is Malachi's description of the ideal priest of his day. "My covenant was with him of life and peace. I gave them to him that he might fear me, and he feared me and stood in awe of my name. The law of truth was in his mouth and unrighteousness was not found in his lips. He walked before me in peace and uprightness and did turn away many from iniquity. For the priest's lips should keep knowledge and they should seek the law at his mouth. For he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts." His function was rather the guidance and regulation of life by rule and precept than the inspiration of it by Divine impulses. These two functions of the Old Testament prophet and priest are plainly blended in the Christian ministry as presented on the pages of the New Testament. St. Paul makes much of the gift of prophecy in the first Epistle 12 The Prophetic Ministry for Today to the Corinthians and in his Hst of the offices of the min- istry in Ephesians "prophets" stand next to apostles. I, These Christian prophets of the apostolic Church were I probably what we might call preachers on impulse and If loccasion, men who spake not on fixed themes at appointed bmes and places, stated preachers in settled pulpits, but unordained, unprofessional laymen, brethren of the con- gregation, who spake as the Spirit gave them utterance, much as the early Quakers did. It would be difficult, I think, to find a distinctly sacerdotal trace anywhere in the New Testament pre- sentation of the Christian ministry, even though you searched the record with microscopes. The word ''priest" is never used in connection with that ministry. The Christian minister is the "apostle" as sent by Christ, the "prophet" as the inspirational preacher of righteousness, the "evangelist" perhaps as custodian of the tradition of the oral gospel, the "pastor," the "teacher," the "presby- ter or elder," a term borrowed from the Jewish syna- gogue to indicate an administrator of affairs but never the "hiereus," the "sacerdos," the "priest." And yet is there a priestly function inherent in the very nature of that ministry. The Church of Christ has sacraments to administer, and he who administers sacraments is necessarily to that extent a priest. And sacraments are in the Church and given by Christ because they are deep-rooted in the nature of things and in the needs of the human soul. We live in a sacramental world and we possess sacramental natures. The heart craves such expressions of the spiritual life, and whenever the sacra- mental element is banished from or belittled in religion, that heart rises in protest. That was one meaning of the Oxford movement; it is the secret of the development of ritualism, and one basis of the strength and growth of the Roman Church. This is the reason, too, why The Modern Minister — (A Composite) 13 much of our popular Protestantism, its very soul often starved for lack of the sacramental life, is surely and widely reacting from the barrenness of its pseudo- spiritual simplicity and seeking a richer and more posi- tively sacramental ritual and cultus. But in still another sense the Christian minister is a true successor of the Hebrew priest. He is not a lay- man like the Hebrew prophet called of God occasionally to deliver His message to His people. He is an official of the Church. To the mission of God, such as the prophet had, is added the commission of the Church. ■ She formally appoints and ordains this particular prophet of God to her regular ministry. She puts into his hands her sacraments to administer, her ritual to perform, and more than that, her doctrine to teach. He has a dis- tinctly didactic function as had the Hebrew priest. To the impulsive inspiration of the prophet is added the acquired equipment of knowledge, learning, training, and the formal gift of authority which together consti- tute the accredited teacher, such as every organized institution and every advanced civilization demand. This is exactly the conception of the priest in Malachi's description, "He whose Hps keep knowledge and at whose mouth the people shall seek the law." Communions which stress historic continuity and sacra- \ mental values are apt to emphasize the priestly aspect of the ministry at the expense of the prophetic. The so-called free or independent communions are apt to develop the prophetic to the exclusion of the priestly. Both elements are of value and it is hoped that the longed-for unity of the Christian Churches may accom- plish a true synthesis. And so in the minister of the Christian Church coalesce these two figures which stand out distinct and often mutually antagonistic on the pages of the Old 14 The Prophetic Ministry for Today Testament, — the prophet with his mission from God and the priest with his commission from the Church. There- fore it is, just because she would so dehberately combine the prophet and the priest, that, in the communion to which I belong, before the Church lays her hands of authority upon anyone seeking her ministry, before she gives her commission to the candidate for "holy orders," she seeks first the proof of his mission from God and asks, *'Do you think in your heart that you are truly called according to the Will of our Lord Jesus Christ; do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office and ministration to serve God for the promoting of His glory and the edify- ing of His people?" HI. Another set of functions appears in the apostoHc ministry of the New Testament for which no exact counterpart can be found in the Jewish Church, unless it be in the elders of the later synagogue. In his list of the gifts of the Spirit for the edification of the Church, St. Paul mentions ''helps and governments." They are apparently the gifts of the organizer, the man of aflfairs, the administrator and executive. These functions seem to have been variously shared or divided among different officials of the apostolic Church. Now it is the "apostle" who exercises rule and governance. Now it is the apostolic delegate or commissary such as Titus who was "left in Crete to set in order the things left undone by the apostle himself, — appoint or ordain elders (or presbyters) in every city" for the administration of the affairs of the local congregations. And now it is the so-called "deacons" or almoners who take the charge of the charities of the Church off the apostles that they may be relieved from the necessity of serving tables and give themselves to the more spiritual functions of prayer and the ministry of the Word. The Modern Minister — (A Composite) 15 It sometimes seems to me that the modern Bishop derives more directly from these seven "business mana- gers" of the book of the Acts than he does from the apostle. I believe there is a respectable theory among scholars which traces his descent to these administra- tors or almoners of the early Churches. Certainly he is frequently so immersed in affairs, so absorbed in the petty mechanism and routine of administration, that he has little time for scholarship or opportunity to develop that spiritual leadership which the Church needs and ought rationally to find in him. And certainly also the features of his ancestor or predecessor, the apostolic "man of affairs," stand out most saliently in the modern minister, particularly the successful and efficient pastor or rector of that most popular and most modern form of ecclesiastical organization, the institutional church. The gift that qualifies him for his office is the gift of "helps and governments," of administrative and execu- tive ability. That gift is at a premium in the modern church market. And a most valuable and needed gift it is in the ministry. A most necessary and useful func- tion does the efficient organizer of religious activities serve in the Church and in the community. He links and harnesses the spiritual forces and energies of religion to the largest service of the commonweal. To quote another, "He strives to develop the latent powers and abilities of all the members of his parish, young and old. He organizes its activities and relates them to the progress of Christianity throughout the world. He brings it into contact with the community at any point where such contact will help every man to a better chance for all good things. He discerns opportunity in the community for enterprises, vitally religious in char- acter and large enough in their dimensions to enlist the enthusiastic personal effort of the gifted laymen of his 16 The Prophetic Ministry for Today church, who are accustomed to leadership in the large undertakings of business and professional life in the world. And all the educational, social, ethical and reli- gious interests of the community appeal to him. He not only preaches the Gospel, but he is also the leader of his church in the application of the Gospel to the life of the community." All this is well and good. It is above praise. But there is danger in it. It is the danger of the over- emphasis upon the gift of "helps rnd governments" to the neglect of the nobler, more vital and more spiritual functions of prayer and the ministry of the word, even the cultivation of personal religion in himself and his people; the danger that the prophet and the priest shall be merged and lost in the mere man of affairs, who finally degenerates into a busybody, absorbed in "much ado about nothing." In many a parish the people are perplexed by trivial over-organization and exhausted by the whirl of incessant and sometimes insignificant activities, while their souls are starved for the bread of life, because "there is a famine of the Word of God" in the parish. For the Church is a flock as well as a force, and often "the hungry sheep look up and are not fed" but driven to death. A parish which begins by running on wheels, by and by contents itself with the mere running of wheels and finally runs to wheels alto- gether. And the spirit of the living creature is not always in the wheels, as it was in the prophet's vision. One of our Bishops was in the habit of calling such a parish "the Church of the Holy Fuss." It might be called "The Church of the Sacred Wheels." Perhaps no warning is more needed by the average so-called successful church of today than this, — that the gifts of administration are valuable or even legitimate in the Church only as they eventually and efficiently The Modern AIinister — (A Composite) 17 direct the vital forces of essential religion to the up- building of the moral and spiritual life and character of men and women, to the "edification of the body of Christ," and the moral and spiritual uplift and better- ment of the community; and that in the face of the ideal minister of Jesus Christ, the features of the prophet and even of the priest of God always predominate over those of the mere man of affairs. IV. But the lineaments of still another face appear in our composite photograph of the modern minister. Another element of baser strain has entered into the make-up of the ministry of today. And according as that element prevails, so is the moral weakness and spiritual degeneracy of that ministry. Perhaps that element finds its most striking historic development and expression in the Greek sophist or rhetorician, from whom we all unconsciously inherit, though there are traces of his features in the later Hebrew prophets. Sometimes the prophets were eloquent in the delivery of their messages. And the people frequently enjoyed the delivery more than they heeded the message. There was a double danger in that. There was a temptation to the prophet to sink into a mere rhetorician and ora- tor, to become a public entertainer rather than a messen- ger and ambassador of the Lord. And there was a tem.ptation to the people to consider themselves religious merely because they "enjoyed sermons" instead of be- cause they "obeyed the Word of the Lord" which came to them thereby, (which, by the way, is a condition not altogether unknown today). Ezekiel gives us a graphic picture of such a state of things in his day and it is quite modern in its atmosphere and feeling. Listen to his words and you can almost hear the chatter of a modern fashionable congregation on its way to church to hear a popular preacher, an eloquent divine. God says 18 The Prophetic Ministry for Today to his prophet, "Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people are talking about thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, 'Come, I pray you and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord !' " (Which was but a cant way of saying, "Come and let us hear the eloquent Rev. Dr. Ezekiel preach in the synagogue on Chebar Avenue.") "And they sit before thee as my people and they hear thy words — but they do them not — for their mouth showeth much love." There were flattering compliments given to the preacher after service. "But their heart goeth after their covetous- ness. And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument, for they hear thy words but do them not." And so even in ancient days the prophets of the Lord had to meet that temptation of degenerating into rhetori- cians, orators, and public entertainers. But that temptation reached its climax when the Christian Church emerged into the Greek world. And here I must acknowledge my deep indebtedness to the English scholar. Hatch. In that Greek world there had been a race of philosophers, who like the Hebrew prophets, were concerned chiefly about righteousness and spake directly and mightily to the hearts and con- sciences of men. But they had been succeeded, in what may be called the "sub-philosophic" days, by a degen- erate tribe of sophists and rhetoricians who were con- cerned chiefly about popularity and spake only to the itching ears and curious fancies of the people. The sophist was a professional. He belonged to a recognized guild or class. He wore clerical clothes on the street and clerical vestments in the pulpit. He was an adept in his art. He was trained in rhetoric and oratory, familiar with literature, and became a master The Modern Minister — (A Composite) 19 of pulpit craft. He went about his trade in a most busi- nesslike manner. When he had fixed upon his location he got into the best society, established his reputation as a conversationalist and a "mixer," and then he "hired a hall," set his days and hours and sent out his cards of invitation or his crier through the streets and assembled his audience. And he reaped the full reward he sought for his labors when he won their applause and their drachmas. Sometimes a popular sophist received fees such as a modern prima donna gets for a single night's performance. Listen to this address of Epictetus to a sophist of his day and you can easily imagine a stern old Hebrew prophet talking to a modern "eloquent divine." "The truth is, you love applause. You care more for that than for doing good. And so you invite people to come and hear you. But does a philosopher invite people to come and hear him? Is it not that as the sun, or as food, is its own sufficient attraction, so is the philosopher his own sufficient attraction to those who are benefited by him ? Does a physician invite people to come and let him heal them? Imagine what a genuine philosopher's invitation would be. T invite you to come and be told that you are in a bad way, that you care for everything but what you should care for, that you do not know what things are good and what things are evil, that you are really unhappy and miserable/ A nice invitation that! And yet if that be not the result of what the philosopher says, he and his words alike are dead. Musonius Rufus used to say, Tf you have leisure to compliment me, my teaching has been in vain.' Accord- ingly he used to talk in such a way that each individual one of us who sat there thought that some one had been telHng Rufus about him; he so put his finger on what he had done, he so set the individual faults of each one of us clearly before our eyes. The business of ex- 20 The Prophetic Ministry for Today hortation is to show people not simply what they like or want but what they really need. But to show this, is it necessary to place a thousand chairs and invite people to come and listen, and dress yourself up in a fine gown and describe the death of Achilles! Tell me, who after hearing one of your discourses ever became anxious or reflected upon himself? Who as he went out of your lecture-room said, 'The philosopher put his finger upon my faults. I must not behave in that way again.' You can not. The utmost satisfaction you get is when one man says to another, 'That was a beautiful passage about Xerxes.' And the other replies, 'No, I liked best that about the battle of Thermopylae.' " This is a sophist's sermon. Listen to just one other quotation. It is the confession of a popular preacher of ancient days, one who won for himself the title of Chrysostom, "the golden-mouthed," and yet one who strove to be a true prophet of God. They are words most modern in their flavor. "There be many preachers who make long sermons. If they be well applauded, they are as happy as if they had obtained a kingdom ; if they bring a sermon to an end in silence, their despondency is worse, I may say, than hell. It is this that ruins churches, that you seek not to hear sermons that touch the heart, but sermons that will delight your ears with their intonations and the structure of their phrases as if you were listening to singers or lute-players. And we preachers humor your fancies instead of trying to cure them. We act like a weak father who gives his sick child a cake or an ice or something nice to eat just because he asks for it, and takes no pains to give him what is good for him. And when the doctors blame him, says, T could not bear to hear my child cry.' "That is what we do when we elaborate beautiful The Modern Minister — (A Composite) 21 sentences, fine combinations and harmonies to please and not to profit, to be admired and not to instruct, to de- light and not to touch you, to go away with your applause in our ears but not to better your conduct. Believe me, I am not speaking at random. When you applaud, I feel at the moment as it is natural for me to feel. I will make a clean breast of it. I am delighted and over- joyed. And then when I go home and reflect that the people who have been applauding me have received no benefit, and indeed that whatever benefit they might have received, has been killed by the applause and the praises, I am sore at heart, I lament and fall to tears. I feel as if I had spoken altogether in vain." How profoundly true to the experience of the modern preacher of any parts or popularity and how keenly searching to his conscience is this confession of John, "the golden-mouthed," the "eloquent divine" of ancient Constantinople. Does not every such preacher know how grateful, exhilarating, even intoxicating, like a draught of champagne, are the flattering compliments that come after service, and how subtly insinuating is the temptation to be satisfied with them for the moment? And then come the depression and disgust when one feels that the sermon which was honestly intended to quicken the callous conscience, bind up the broken heart and inspire the heavy spirit, has all ended in a momen- tary gaping admiration at a futile and passing display of rhetorical and oratorical pyrotechnics ! Woe unto the preacher who gets to be content with this reward of his labors ! For surely this is the anti-climax in the' development of the Christian minister, the lowest bathos to which he can descend — when the solemn prophet of the Most High, the flaming and incarnate conscience of the community, the interpreter and ambassador of the Christ of God, has finally degenerated into a popular 22 The Prophetic Ministry for Today entertainer, who turns the pulpit into a religious vaude- ville stage and becomes an ecclesiastical song and dance artist ! Hebrew prophet, Hebrew priest, apostolic administra- tor, and alas, too often Greek sophist and rhetorician, — these are the four historic figures which coalesce in that photograph, the modern Christian minister. These are our spiritual ancestors from whom we inherit, consciously or unconsciously. What our ministry shall become in spiritual power and efficiency depends wholly upon which of these ele- ments in it we emphasize and cultivate and which we subordinate and suppress. That power and efficiency depend upon a due and proportionate combination. I beseech you first of all, let us watch and pray against that most subtle, most persistent and insistent tempta- tion of the preacher, that temptation which if yielded to most surely and fatally debases him and his ministry, the temptation to play the part of a public entertainer. If we have any gifts that shine and attract, let us remem- ber they are not plaques and pictures to hang on our walls and then call in the world to admire. They are our tools of service. Let us thank the Lx)rd for them, keep them sharp and shining as befits efficient tools, and use them to the utmost of our ability for the converting of sinners and the comifort and edification of the saints and the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God on earth and then forget them absolutely in their use. If the Spirit have endowed us in any degree with the gift of ''helps and governments," the faculty of adminis- tration and organization, let us thank God for that, cultivate our gift diligently and consecrate it to spiritual service. There is ample opportunity for its right and noble use in the legitimate work of the Christian Church and the Christian ministry. Only let us beware lest The Modern Minister — (A Composite) 23 our ears grow satisfied with the mere clatter of the machinery we have built and the bustle of the activities we have inspired and think therefore that God's work is being abundantly done. No work is God's work that does not finally issue in the moral uplift and spiritual edification of the individual or the community. Let us take heed lest the spirit of ourselves and our ministry be exhausted in the mere whirling of the wheels we have started, and the soul thereof caught and ground up in them. There will be moments of high exaltation in our minis- try, "times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord," when we feel that we have been touched by the Spirit of the Lord, that God has charged us with a message that we must deliver, for His "word burns like a fire in our hearts, shut up in our bones and we cannot stay." Then we preach, not because we have to say something, — Sunday has come and the pulpit waits for us and the people expect a sermon, — but because we have some- thing to say. God has given it us, and we must utter it to His people. We can cry out with Paul, "Necessity is laid upon me. Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel !" Then, in however imperfect literary form or even stam- mering utterance we may preach, we speak as prophets; people will know it and be touched, inspired, uplifted thereby. But no man can be a prophet regularly twice a day for fifty-two Sundays in a year, or even forty! On the dead levels and ordinary occasions of our ministry we must rely on our priestly office and ministrations, and on our didactic functions. "For the priest's lips should keep knowledge," the knowledge that is derived from the patient and diligent study of the Word Written, the tried and tested doctrine and discipline of the Church, the spiritual experience of the saints, the wisdom 24 The Prophetic Ministry for Today of the wise and the visions of the seers; knowledge that comes through patient scholarship, knowledge that is wholesome and reasonable, sweet and sane, and "is profit- able for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- struction in righteousness"; knowledge, that is, which avails for the rule and regulation and cleansing of life, if it does not always uplift and inspire Hke the prophet's burning message. Most of our sermons will probably be priestly rather than prophetic. And there is also the priest's function in the reverent leading of the people's worship and the faithful adminis- tration of sacraments. Let us despise it not in compari- son with the more dramatic and personal function of the preacher. For often worship and sacrament will carry into souls messages and inspirations which we could not give through any spoken word of our own, however prophetic. But above all let us cultivate and develop the prophetic element in our ministry. Let the spirit of the prophet fuse into oneness and inspire with its spiritual vitality all the other offices and functions of our many-sided ministry. For it is the supreme and essential, the basic and noblest element in it. And the prophetic gift and spirit can be cultivated. The prophet became the friend of God, not simply by natural endowment or by super- natural inspiration, but by diligent self -discipline. He was the man who had so sensitized his conscience and purified his heart and attuned his spirit to the Spirit of God that he was worthy to be admitted into the Divine intimacy and companionship, and so became a fit messenger and interpreter, an open and transparent med- ium between God and men. There is a beautiful phrase in Isaiah's prophecy which describes the method of prophetic inspiration. "The Lord God uncovered mine ear and I was not disobedi- The Modern Minister — (A Composite) 25 ent." It is the picture of a friend going to his friend, pushing back the long hair from over his ear and whisper- ing therein his confidences. If we shall thus sensitize our consciences, purify our hearts and attune our minds to the mind of Christ, He will admit us into His fellowship and friendship. He will make us His intimates and confidants. He will whisper into our ears, through our own spiritual ex- perience, messages for His people. A great preacher, who knew what true preaching is, if anyone ever did, defined it as "truth through personality." It is truth realized and vitalized through our own personal experi- ence, and then delivered to our fellowmen, yet without any of that ostentatious display of the purely personal which is always a betrayal of sacred trust, and some- times an indecent exposure of the spiritual personality. Let us preach the truth we have realized and felt for ourselves through our own experiences, preach it boldly and wholly, apply it fearlessly to the conscience and heart not only of the individual but also of society; yet keep the experiences as a sacred secret between ourselves and God. This is the message of the prophet of Jehovah and the servant of Christ as described in the words of the Master : "What I tell you in darkness that speak ye in light, and what ye hear in the ear, in the closet, that preach ye upon the housetops," II The Prophetic Succession THE "Apostolic succession" is a familiar phrase in the literature of theology, particularly in the language of ecclesiastical polemics. Over-stressed, magically interpreted, it becomes an absurdity of super- stition, the alleged conveyor of manual or digital grace. Underestimated, it becomes the matter of superficial and often senseless jibes and jests. Duly estimated and rationally interpreted, as a principle applied habitually everywhere else in human affairs, it has its large values, I believe, as an assurance of the regularity of the author- itative commission of the ministry and the continuity of the historic church, and, as such, it seems to many, perhaps the majority of Christians, the basis of organic unity and order in a divided and chaotic Christendom. But there is another succession, vastly more important. It is the only assurance of the reality of the mission of God in our ministry. It is the one secret and source of all spiritual vitality, power and efficacy in that ministry. And that is the "prophetic succession." I have said that the prophetic element is at once the basic and noblest element in our composite ministry. It was the Hebrew prophet who was developed into a Christian preacher. Upon him, trained and prepared for the task, was laid this new burden of the Lord, the proclamation to a world of sin, -doubt and sorrow, of "the unsearchable riches of Christ," "the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation," with its "certain 26 The Prophetic Succession 27 faith, its reasonable, religious and holy hope," and its abounding consolations. Let us glance back today to that picture gallery of the Old Testament and trace in the portrait of our common ancestor, the Hebrew prophet, the Hneaments, particularly the essential and nobler lineaments, of our family likeness. Let us estimate the spiritual values of our heredity and the inheritance it carries down to us. Etymology may help us a little — a glance at early Hebrew history may help us more. The word ''prophet" comes, as you know, from the Greek "prophetes," which may mean, as I have said, either a "foreteller" or a "forth-teller," or better, "one who speaks on behalf of another." Popular usage has almost exclusively emphasized the first meaning. The study of Greek origins and the actual character of Hebrew prophecy stress the second meaning. One pic- ture from ancient Greece may throw light upon the origi- nal significance of the word and upon the function of the prophet in Greek religion. The scene is the cave of Apollo at Delphi. The pythoness or priestess of the god sits upon her tripod over a hole in the floor whence issue intoxicating gasses as the modern scientist would say, the afflatus and inspiration of the deity as the devout worshipper believed. Under that influence the priestess breaks forth into ravings, incoherent babbling utterances. By her side stands the "prophetes" or prophet who translates this gibberish into the counsel or knowledge which the worshipper seeks. This is the oracle of Apollo. So to the Greek the prophet was the "fortli-teller," the messenger of the gods — the interpreter of the mind and will of deity. The Hebrew name for the prophet, nabi, is of doubt- ful origin. The root from whence it is derived may 28 The Prophetic Ministry for Today signify simply "to mutter or utter in a low tone," and thus to "give information" or, as seems to some scholars more likely, "to be surcharged, and so to bubble over, to pour forth." One is reminded of Jeremiah's experience, "His Word v^as in mine heart as a burning fire, shut in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing and could not stay." The "nabi" seems to combine the two functions of the pythoness and the prophetes. He was both the immediate recipient of the Divine afflatus or inspiration and also the translator thereof, the interpreter of the mind and will of the deity. Let us turn now from dry etymology to take a glance at the more interesting story of the origins of Hebrew prophecy. The fascinating stories of the Books of Samuel and the Kings are rich in material for such a study. That material is all the more valuable because it is so inci- dental — not a deliberate and detailed setting forth of the origin and growth of Hebrew prophecy, but simply a mass of allusions and asides, "obiter dicta." I do not begin with the elaborate cults and systems of Leviticus and Deuteronomy or even the fully wrought out and finished story of the Exodus with its commanding figure, Moses, the man of God. I am forced to believe with our best criticism that these books are shaped out of and informed by a later development and experience, or at least illumined by the light thereof. For the genu- ine genesis of Hebrew prophecy we must look to these stories of Samuel and the Kings. We must not be of- fended if we find the fair lily of Hebrew prophecy which came to its bloom in the great Unknown, rooting in the muck and mire of the crude ignorance, superstition and magic of the dawn ages of history. Among the early Hebrews, as among all primitive The Prophetic Succession 29 peoples, and some moderns, the first and natural ap- proach of deity to man was sought not through the rea- son or conscience but through the emotional nature, and particularly through what we have learned to call in our modern psychology, the subconscious mind or subliminal self. We are never far from that bog of ancient supersi- tion and we are constantly slipping into it. Many a modern sect like the "Holy Rollers" and many a popular revival find more evidence of the Spirit's power, presence and inspiration in the rhapsodical and even orgiastic than in the moral and spiritual, surer assurance of conversion in an emotional debauch than in the amendment of life, the transformation of character or the change of heart. And even our most advanced modern cults, sought eager- ly by those for whom the Christianity of Christ has grown tame and uninteresting, if not too exacting in its moral discipline, substitute the psychic for the truly spiritual as the manifestation of the Divine. This, it seems to me, is the common characteristic and funda- mental error of such cults as spiritualism. Christian Science and theosophy. The inevitable result is a gradual misplacing of the accents of true religion, taking them off the moral, ethical and spiritual and setting them on the mysterious, magical and psychic, and consequently there almost always ensues a loosening of the fibres of conduct and character in their devotees. But let us go back to the early Hebrews — it is not a far cry. It is an era of transition, as we are fond of saying, such as the world is passing through now. An old order has disappeared. The new order has not yet emerged. A horde of wandering tribes have conquered a new land and established themselves in their new home. But all is confusion, chaos, anarchy. There is no con- scious national life or unity, for there is no clear or 30 The Prophetic Ministry for Today commanding leadership, political or religious, about which that national consciousness may gather and integrate. "Every man did that which was right in his own eyes, for there was no king in Israel." A strange ferment spreads through the mass. It is a time of religious ex- citement or hysteria, as such periods are apt to be. Cer- tain more sensitive or excitable spirits gather into groups and establish themselves in lonely places in coenobitic settlements like monasteries. Samuel himself is the "abbot" of one of these monsteries. Here dwell the prophets and sons of the prophets. They roam through the land, raving, dancing and howling, very like the dervishes of the East today. Their frenzy or mania is contagious, like that of a negro camp meeting or Holy Roller gathering. When the cool, "common- sense," practical Saul, herdsman, warrior and leader of men, meets a band of these prophets, even he catches the fever of their frenzy, tears off his clothes and wal- lows on the ground. As among all primitive peoples, insanity is reverenced as an evidence of inspiration, and "madman" is an accepted epithet for the prophet. When the messenger of the prophets visited Jehu, his compan- ions inquire quite naturally "Wherefore came this mad fellow unto thee"? Even Samuel, the one clear figure that emerges from the murk and the mass with a high vision and purpose, shares their methods and modes of expression. For is it not written that when the Philis- tines came up against Israel, the people said unto Samuel "Cease not to howl unto the Lord for us," so the Hebrew reads, though the English version has euphemized it into "cease not to cry unto the Lord for us." Elisha in- vokes the Divine afiflatus by musical excitement as the Indian medicine men beat their tom-toms or the Egyptian dervishes play their flutes for the same purpose. The prophet is dull, he has no oracle to deliver. "Bring me The Prophetic Succession 31 a minstrel," he commands, "and it came to pass when the minstrel played, the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha" and he spake the word given him. Everywhere we find evidence that the early prophetic inspiration was rhapsodical and even orgiastic. It came through the emotional and the psychic nature, the sub- conscious mind or subliminal self, and not through the conscious reason or conscience. That form of inspira- tion survived even to Christian and Apostolic days. It turned the meetings of the Corinthian church into pandemoniums of senseless sound like that of musical instruments struck at random with no distinction of notes, so that none could "tell what was piped or harped." It gives the explanation of the gift of tongues as referred to in 1 Cor. And as we all well know, the rhap- sodical and orgiastic notions of inspiration still sur- vive in many modern sects and religious movements and the purely psychic in the most "advanced" modern cults. They are still at the stage of early Hebrew prophecy. And as with the nature of the prophet's inspiration, so it was with the prophet's function and service. Both stood on the same low plane. "He that is now called a prophet (nabi) was before time called a seer (roeh)" declares a significant utterance in 1 Sam., "a clairvoyant" we should put it today. He found lost property and took fees for his services, and sometimes the fees were small. Saul and his servant have only the fourth part of a shekel of silver to offer the seer that he may be induced to show them their way as they search for the strayed asses. He is a fortune- teller and diviner. He finds springs of water, perhaps with his witchhazel rod. Like the Roman augurs and haruspices, he accompanies in troops kings as they go forth to battle and foretells the issues of the conflict by "the going of the winds in the tops of the mulberry 32 The Prophetic Ministry for Today trees/'the entrails of victims and the like. His god is a wily, tricksy, humorous god, not above deceiving his prophets and their royal masters by sending forth "lying spirits." The seer's aid is sought in sickness and mis- fortune. And, as is witnessed by the strict prohibitions and severe penalties enacted in the later Levitical legis- lation, he has commerce with familiar spirits. He is a necromancer and a medium. He holds seances and gets messages from, discarnate spirits by means that corres- pond to modern crystal gazing, table tipping, rappings and automatic writing. For much that is most modern is but a reversion to primitive type. Such was our common ancestor, the Hebrew prophet, in his early beginnings. His inspiration meant an abdica- tion of reason, will and consciousness, and a passive sub- mission to hysterical emotional seizures and psychic possessions or obsessions. He was like an aeoHan harp swept by stray breezes. His function and ministry were concerned, not with the moral, ethical and spiritual, the guidance of life and conduct, the upbuilding of charac- ter and the cause of righteousness, the Kingdom of God, but chiefly with the mysterious and magical. Such the functionary of religion whether prophet, priest or oracle, continued to be in most other religions — such as the Greek, Roman and Eastern cults. The moral and ethical were the concern of a race of philosophers who had little connection with religion, indeed were often skep- tics, apostles of reason and interpreters of conscience, rarely and slightly conscious of any Divine mission or inspiration, as for example was Socrates with his mysteri- ous "daimon." But Israel developed no distinct race of philosophers, moral or social reformers or ethical culturists. Even her wisdom literature is not a bare moral philosophy or system of ethics. It is all fused and transfused, not The Prophetic Succession 33 merely with a passion for righteousness, but with a sense of God. Her wise men were consciously *'men of God," interpreters of His mind and will. It was preeminently so with her prophets. Never were there such moral philosophers and ethical teachers as the prophets of Israel, save the chief of them all, Jesus Christ. Their standards and ideals will never be surpassed. Their penetration and discernment can never be exceeded. Never were there such soci al reformers. But they were primarily, preeminently and always men of God, suffused and possessed with God-consciousness, messengers of the Most High, interpreters of the Divine mind and will, with a burden of the Lord laid upon them and "a, word of the Lord which burned like fire in their hearts" which they must deliver. It is that which gives their message a vitality, a quickening, lifting, inspiring power which no mere moral philosophy or system of ethics can possess. It is a far cry from the feeble pipings of the snake charmer's flute in the hands of the dancing, howling, dervish of Samuel's day to the grand diapasons, the organ like tones of the Great Unknown, the Second Isaiah, as he sings his far visions of a world-wide reign of righteousness and peace in the universal Kingdom of God. The sense of Divine inspiration, of God-conscious- ness, of God-possession, has not diminished. It has in- creased, deepened, intensified. An Isaiah, Jeremiah or Hosea is far surer of the will and word of God than the wizard and sooth-sayer of the primitive days. The difference is this — the early prophet is, as I have said, an aeolian harp, passive, swept by chance breezes, sup- posedly divine — the later prophet is the master musician penetrating with awe and joy the mind of the Great Composer, entering into the rational, sympathetic and spiritual fellowship of His purposes and meanings, and then interpreting all with His best and most highly 34 The Prophetic Ministry for Today trained abilities through the finest instrument he can develop in his own reason and conscience. The process is traceable. Out of the murky mass of the early rhapsodists emerges the figure of Samuel, the political reformer, the man with a clear vision and de- finite purpose. He will set up a theocracy, a Kingdom of God in Israel, though like many religious reformers and enthusiasts, he identifies too closely the reign of God with the personal rule of His servant, the reformer, preacher or priest. Then follows an Elijah, the religious reformer, who lays the foundation of a supreme un- swerving and undivided loyalty to Jehovah, the God of Israel, as the only enduring basis of the Kingdom. Both were prophets of the deed rather than of the word. They relied on external rather than on internal means. Samuel seeks the Kingdom in political organization; Elijah would convert to religious conformity by drought, storm and fire from heaven. Then comes a turning point in the story of Hebrew prophecy. The prophets of the deed are succeeded by the prophets of the word. That turning point is wonder- fully suggested in that sublime story of EHjah's experi- ence at Horeb. The broken, despairing man of God stands at the cave's mouth on the lonely mountain. The storm, the fire, the earthquake pass by, but God is none of them. Then comes the still small voice and Elijah covers his face for he knows that Jehovah is come. That is the final and supreme revelation and manifestation of God, not in such outward miracles and forces as Elijah had de- pended on hitherto, but in the still small voice that speaks to conscience, heart and soul. "Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord." The prophet is henceforth no longer an external reformer but a spiritual regenerator. His is the ministry of the word. He stands ever in the presence of kings as a The Prophetic Succession 35 flaming incarnate conscience, like Nathan before the sinning David, or Elijah confronting the cowardly, despic- able Ahab in Naboth's vineyard. Then follows that "goodly fellowship of the prophets" of the word, appealing to and pleading with, wooing and sometimes storming and thundering at the soul of a whole people, that Israel may "walk in the light of the Lord," enter into rational and loving fellowship with their God and so set up His Kingdom throughout the world. That is the development, roughly sketched, of Hebrew Prophecy. How was it wrought? I should say in brief by the substitution of the rational and spiritual for the psychic and emotional in the conception of the prophet's in- spiration, and the moral and ethical for the magical in his mission and function. It was the exaltation of the noblest qualities of personality, the things that make real personality — the supremacy of the reason and the sovereignty of the will, — and then the fusing of these qualities by a supreme passion for righteousness as the will of an all Holy God, so that the prophets become the fittest and finest instruments and media for His messages and revelations to men. Perhaps a scene in the Christian Church at Corinth may furnish us a summary or cross section of the develop- ment of Hebrew prophecy. The church is pervaded by a group of prophets very like that company of howling, dancing dervishes who dwelt with Samuel at Naioth. They indulge in orgies of emotional hysteria or psychic inspiration. They pour forth the Divine afflatus in in- coherent ravings. The apostle, as I have said, compares their utterances to the sounds of musical instruments, struck at random "without distinction of notes, so that none can tell what is harped or piped." Paul comes into that pandemonium of chaos and confusion to restore 36 The Prophetic Ministry for Today order. He does it by the establishment of two principles. First, he asserts the supremacy of the reason, the understanding. "I thank my God I speak with tongues more than ye all. Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding that I might teach others also than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." And then second he utters that sublime bit of inspired common sense. 'The spirits of the prophets are subject unto the prophets." It is the declaration of the sovereignty of the will, the personality, the man. The prophet can be really God-mastered only in proportion as he is self-mastered. He must stand at attention with all his noblest and best developed powers and faculties held consciously, deliberately and wilfully in control, ready to be used to the uttermost by the spirit of God. There in brief is the story of Hebrew prophecy. The supremacy of the reason is emphasized and in- sisted upon everywhere in later Hebrew prophecy. Isaiah stands in the presence of the shrewd, subtle, cun- ning politicians of Jud-ah. They think of their God as the mysterious source of certain psychic influences — un- reasoned and unreasoning instincts and impulses that possibly make for an iridescent, impracticable dream of righteousness, justice and holiness, — the ideal. But they had never associated intelligence with God or the men of God. Those old Hebrew politicians thought as "the practical business man" of today thinks — that in- telligence, especially "common-sense," is the exclusive monopoly of the men of the world ; the preachers, the religious generally have no share in it. There is a funda- mental antagonism between intelligence and religion. Isaiah turns upon these men with a short sharp utter- ance like the crack of a whip. "He also is wise" — it might almost be rendered, "He is smart too" — and then proves it by making them "smart" under the keen, The Prophetic Succession 37 searching, stinging irony of his own God-inspired in- teUigence. The intelHgence of God, the understanding of God, the reason of God — it is a Divine attribute fairly set apart, personaHzed and deified in later Hebrew literature, and almost becomes a distinct Divine Person- ality. The "dabar," the "logos," the "Word" or "Wis- dom," of God pleads and wrestles with men, and His interpreters, His spokesmen and prophets are called the "Wise Men." There is no more interesting study than the intellectual analysis of some of the sermons of the greater prophets, their powerful rationality, their com- prehensive grasp of understanding, their range of knowl- edge, their penetrating intelligence, their searching in- sight. And before the intelligence of Jesus, the chief of the prophets, the profoundest mind stands dumb and awe-struck. We are so absorbed ordinarily in the moral and spiritual values of His teaching that we forget or overlook its intellectual quality. But when we consider, for example, the sheer intelligence of His parables, we can say with new meaning, "Never man spake like this man." And then that citadel of personality, the sovereignty of the individual will, is never taken by storm or even invaded by the will of God in the inspiration of the prophets. Rather is that Will of God consciously and freely chosen as commander to enlarge and fortify that citadel. The spirit of the prophet is not the spirit of subjection but of conscious and free loyalty, — not of submission but of intelligent and joyous fellowship. His free will is not submerged in but strengthened and de- veloped by, and then voluntarily and gladly identified with, the will of God. They are strong, masterful men, this "blessed fellowship of the prophets," — God-mas- tered, as I have said, because first self-mastered. And we turn again and lastly to Jesus. Never was a per- 38 The Prophetic Ministry for Today sonality so completely and utterly God-conscious and God-possessed, and yet never was a personality so com- pletely and utterly its own and itself. Jesus never "slops over" if I may reverently use a bit of expressive slang as Dr. Coffin did. He never for an instant, loses control of His calm judgment, intelligence or will. He is always Himself at the highest. Absolutely aware and sure of the Divine inspiration and will. He "speaks with authority" — He uses only the indicative and imperative moods — he declares and commands — He does not de- duce, infer, argue. Yet under the fullest surge and tide of the Divine afflatus, the instrument never trembles. His utterance is His own as much as God's. In the completeness and perfection of a community of wills, He can say, "I and the Father are one." We have gone far afield apparently. You may be say- ing "What has all this talk about the genesis and develop- ment of Hebrew prophecy to do with the Christian preacher of today?" It has everything to do with him. The application ought to have been visible and palpable throughout our study. If it has not been so I fear it will be as useless as usual to "point the moral and adorn the tale" with the customary "Haec fabula docet." In my closing words I can but drive home that application already, I hope, apparent to your minds. We are in the prophetic succession, you and I. If our call to the ministry has been real, we too have had our vision like Isaiah's. We have stood in the Presence and seen God, "high and lifted up, and His glory filled the sanctuary," and yet in spite of His lofti- ness and glory, ay, in ■ spite of His omnipotence and omniscience, He is helpless and dumb without our fel- lowship and co-operation. He can express Himself fully only in human lives and through human lips. The word must still become incarnate if it is to dwell among us. The Prophetic Succession 39 We have heard His voice within, saying "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" And we have risen up in trembling humility and yet resolute consecration to say, "Here am I — send me." We have sought the burning, searching sacrament of absolution, the live coal from off the altar to be laid upon our lips, that they may be made clean and fit to uttter His message. We are men of God, messengers of the Most High — interpreters of the will and mind of God — "forth-tellers" for a God who would be speechless except as He can speak through us. Ay, we are more. We are ambassadors of Christ, charged with the everlasting Gospel, sent to "preach not our- selves but Christ Jesus the Lord." The first essential of our ministry is that we shall be God-conscious, God- possessed men. Let us beware of certain common and fatal misconceptions of our ministry. We are not mere "traditors," banders on of the received tradition, whe- ther it be the "faith once delivered to the saints" or whether it be a finished, orthodox and complete "plan of salvation." Phonographs or parrots would be suffi- cient for that office. We are not even manipulators of the means of grace. Cash registers could be that. We are not political or social reformers. There are plenty of candidates for that task, wise and otherwise. Nor are we mere lecturers on morals and teachers of ethical cul- ture, interpreters of reason and conscience and ex- pounders of the "best that has been thought and said." All such so-called "preaching" is like the sunlight with- out its actinic or chemical rays, illuminating but not vital- lizing. We need the illumination, God knows, but we need above all that mystical, Divine element which fructi- fies in the regeneration of the heart, in transformation of character and the inspiration of life. And that element can be found only in the gift or charisma of inspira- tion, as real and ready and abundant today for all who 40 The Prophetic Ministry for Today fit themselves to receive it as it ever was of old. We must have consciously a message of the Lord, a burden of the Lord laid upon us. It must burn in our hearts as it did in Jeremiah's until we are "weary of forbearing and can not stay." We must cry out with St. Paul "Woe is me if I preach not the gospel." Without that gift the noblest and most learned ministry is spiritually dead. But how shall we attain unto that God-consciousness and God-possession? How shall we receive the charisma of inspiration ? There are many short and easy methods offered, many ready-made patents and specifics. As I have suggested, the ancient bogs of supersti- tion are never far off. There is everywhere today a tempting reversion to the ancient type, which involves a slighting of our noblest faculties, sometimes an abdica- tion of will and reason and a submission to the emo- tional and psychic, instead of the discipline and cultiva- tion of the truly spiritual. It is to be seen in our modern cults. "Develop your pineal gland," says the theosophist, "submit yourself passively to the leading of the experts ; submerge your consciousness and will and you shall get into fellowship with the Mahatmas, the great white brotherhood, which is all of God we can know." "Put yourself through a course of self-hypnosis and auto-sug- gestion by repeating Mrs. Eddy's formulae and jargon" says the Christian Scientist, "and you shall be in com- munion with the Divine mind." "Give it all up and listen submissively to what the other world has to say through tipping and rapping tables, ouija-boards and automatic writing" says the spiritualist. \ And much of our popular religion is not far off from I such methods. Education has been solemnly declared by a certain sect as a hindrance to the operations of the \ Spirit. The less you know and the less mind you have The Prophetic Succession 41 to know with, the better medium and spokesman you are for God. A reformed criminal picked up from the dives, an ignoramus from the streets, even a juvenile prodigy, is apt to be a better expounder of the wisdom of God and the unsearchable riches of Christ than the much contemned graduate of the universities and semin- aries. All the equipment necessary is a fervid tempera- ment and all the training required is the submission of that temperament to certain patent processes of. emotion- al hysteria. "The secrets of the Lord are with the simple," and the simple too often means the simpleton in popular understanding. Is it not written, "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength?" Yes, did not the Master say, "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes." The temptation will often come to you in your ministry to abandon the study and the prayer closet, neglect hard intellectual and spiritual dis- cipline, and run after cheap and easy ways of attaining a reputation for spiritual power, or as I once heard it called, "the pungent power of the spirit." Let me say this to you out of a somewhat extended experience — the ministry has a plentiful supply of babes and sucklings at present, and most of them give no particular evidence of having received any special re- velation or attained extraordinary spiritual wisdom. The'\ prophetic ministry for today demands strong men, the strongest men that can be found. For there will be in your congregations not only "babes to be fed with milk" but strong men and strong women too who need and demand "strong meat," and you must be able to give it. Bring to your ministry your best at its best. The min- istry today requires the finest abilities, the largest equip- ment and the completest training a man can bring to it. 42 The Prophetic Ministry for Today I know of no calling that makes more searching or varied demands. There is no more inane line in our hymnody (and that is saying much) than that in a certain popular hymn, "A broken and emptied vessel, for the Master's use made meet." The Master has no particular use for broken crockery. He needs the finest and most polished human instruments to do His work. There- fore bring to the altar of consecration the best developed and trained mind, the largest knowledge, the deepest thought, the profoundest study and research you can achieve, and He will fuse them; into the fittest tools for His tasks and the best media for His revelations. Above all, remember God wants not simply tools or instruments but men to do His work and men who will be not slaves or even servants to do His bidding, but **fellow workers with God," those who can "think His thoughts after Him" and share His purposes. As I have said before, He wants not an organ but a musician who can interpret sympathetically the mind of the Great Composer. Christ said to the apostles "Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what His Lord doeth, but I have called you friends." Let that be your ideal. Aspire to be a "friend of Christ,'* and fit yourself for that friendship. When Ezekiel gro- velled in the dust before God, the Lord said unto him, "Son of Man, stand on thy feet and I will talk with thee." Learn to stand on your feet, in the presence of God, though you take the shoes off your feet, for the ground on which you stand is holy. Learn to look God in the face. Bring to Him a will, not broken and merged in His, but strengthened and disciplined, that you may share in his purposes as friend does with friend. One last word, and that about your own devotional life. I know full well the hindrances that beset it in our busy and distracted days. I know more the supreme The Prophetic Succession 43 difficulty of prayer, meditation and "the practice of the presence of God." It comes high. It costs much, this devotional life. But it is worth any price we have to pay for it. Without it, the most eloquent preaching and the most indefatigable toil are shorn of all spiritual power. There is no Word of God in the utterance and no power of God in the service. Paderewski said "If I neglect my practice one day I know it, two days, my critics know it, three days my audience know it." Be sure if you neglect the cultivation of your own spiritual life, your own communion with God, your people will know it in the deadness of your ministry, even if they cannot define the cause. And the minister is most apt of all men to neglect the devotional life. He talks so much about it to others that he gets to imagine he has practiced it in the talking about it. Like the church bell, he frequently calls to prayer but goes not himself. I crossed the Atlantic recently on a steamer that car- ried the most powerful wireless apparatus in use. The air was laden with messages from out the unseen. But most of the ships heard but partially. To receive them all required two things, the finest and most powerful instruments possible, and those instruments constantly attuned to the wave length of the sending instrument. God is ever speaking to men. His messages abound everywhere. All hear Him more or less in the voice of conscience. But if you would be a prophet, an inter-j preter of the fuller and finer messages of God to yourl fellows, you must offer Him the finest and fullest spiri-f tual personality you can achieve and then keep that per-j sonality constantly attuned to the mind of God. ' Christ chose twelve men, first to be with Him and then to send them forth. These are the two processes that make the true apostle. The first is ineffective and abortive without the second. A purely individualistic 44 The Prophetic Ministry for Today piety ends in spiritual selfishness and finally grows rancid. But the second is invalid without the first. It is the secret of the spiritual failure of many an otherwise prom- ising ministry. The reality and vitality of your message depends upon the closeness and constancy of your com- munion with Christ. If you faithfully and persistently cultivate the Divine companionship and friendship, men will "take knowledge of you that you have been with Jesus." Ill The Prophetic Inheritance WE of the Christian Ministry have an ancient Hneage. We stand in the prophetic succession. Our spiritual ancestor is the Hebrew prophet. We share with him his mission — to be an interpreter of the will and mind of God — a messenger of the Most High. And I have made bold to say that we may share also his gifts of inspiration, if we bring to God a whole and consecrated personaHty, all our best at its best, our fullest equipment of knowledge, learning, trained and disciplined abilities, fused and focussed by a supreme devotion to the one purpose of our ministry and sensitized for the reception of the Divine message by the diligent, per- sistent "practice of the presence of God." But what is the message of the Christian prophet? What is the burden of the Lord that is laid upon him? What is the Word of the Lord that is put into his mouth? First let us consider what was the message of the Hebrew prophet. It stands to reason that with our spiritual lineage and ancestry, there comes some measure at least of spiritual inheritance. The most casual and superficial student of Hebrew prophecy must admit that the prophet's message was chiefly, if not exclusively, what we should call nowa- days a social message. The prophet had not the remotest conception of our modern notion of religion as a "limited liability" business, concerned only with theology, in the 45 46 The Prophetic Ministry for Today form of creed and dogma, ecclesiology, the government, discipline and cultus of the Church, pious observances, or even with the mystic spiritual life of the individual, much less with his security or salvation in a world be- yond. He had not the discernment to distinguish be- tween personal morality as purely individualistic conduct and social ethics. The two were indissolubly one to him. To him religion claimed not only eminent domain but universal and absolute sovereignty over all human life in all its inter-relations. Z' Consequently he ruthlessly mixed religion with business , industry, commerce and society, and meddled with poli- tics, national and international, and frequently got him- self stoned or sawn asunder for that reason. All the prophets address their message to the nation so continuously and almost exclusively that in the opin- ion of a very respectable school of critics, even in the most apparently personal of the Psalms, it is personified Israel who sings those songs of throbbing penitence, sup- plication, trust, thanksgiving and rejoicing. The later prophets send their voices further, to the outlying nations whom they reckon as instruments of Jehovah's will and purpose, if not the objects of His mercy and children of His love. At last in the imperial vision of the second Isaiah the whole world comes into view as always the rightful, though unconscious and often rebellious, domain of Jehovah and destined finally to become His loyal and obedient kingdom wherein His "will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven." It is only in the poignant plaints of Jeremiah, the expressions of a solitary spiritual experience, that the individual soul comes into clear view in Hebrew prophecy, and then it is a fugitive figure. Perhaps this mass-message of prophetic preaching is due to that mass-consciousness, almost mob-psychology, which characterizes the Hebrew as also almost all other The Prophetic Inheritance 47 ancient peoples. The individual had not yet been born; at least he had not emerged into distinct consciousness. He was always merged in the group. Responsibility and guilt rested not upon the individual but upon the group, the family, clan, tribe, nation. That fact is curiously illus- trated in many Hebrew customs. It governed trans- actions in real estate. The land was the patrimony of the family, clan or nation who held it as feudatories of Jehovah. If any individual owner lost through misfor- tune or death his claim or title, his next of kin must redeem it for the family. It governed even matrimony. If a man died without issue, his next eligible kinsman must marry the widow and raise up seed unto his brother. It is still more aptly illustrated in primitive methods of justice and punishment, especially in the ancient law or custom of ''Goel." Not only most literally were the "sins of the fathers visited upon the children" but the whole family, clan, tribe and nation became involved in the guilt of any individual offending member thereof and it became the sacred duty of the chosen "blood-avenger'' of the injured group to exterminate if possible the whole group to which the offender belonged. But whatever its roots and sources, obscure or patent, the message of the prophet was evidently almost exclu- sively a mass-message. It was addressed to the personi- fied nation or nations or world, rarely to the individual. In the books of the prophets as in the Psalms, even those manifestations of the spiritual life which to us are so intensely personal were to them national. It is Israel that sins, acknowledges guilt, repents, implores forgive- ness, experiences the peace of pardon, is spiritually re- born, trusts, loves and enters into joyous fellowship with God. The message of the prophets was a social message. The reHgion of the prophets was a social religion. 48 The Prophetic Ministry for Today And what were the intent and content of that message and religion? Manifestly the commanding vision of Hebrew prophecy now discerned dimly and partially, now flashing out in imperial splendor, is the vision of "the kingdom of God on earth." Samuel conceives of Israel as a theocracy of which he and his sons were to be the agents and viceroys. Elijah insists that that theocracy shall be a monarchy. He will tolerate no divided allegiance either to under gods or rival gods. He was a heno-theist if not a monotheist. "If Baal be god, follow him. But if Jehovah be God, follow Him." There is as yet little evidence of any clear moral or ethical accent or content in the message of these early prophets of the deed. The kingdom is to be God's — God-centered. It is not clear yet that it is therefore to be a kingdom of righteousness. The discovery of Jehovah as the god with a character, whose chief concern is righteous- ness, is probably a later and gradual achievement of Hebrew prophecy. With infinite patience God shines into the hearts of His chosen interpreters and messengers. But the light comes through windows of colored glass, each pane stained and dimmed, not only with the personal passions and infirmities of the herald but with the pas- sions and infirmities of the age and times. But clearer and clearer grows upon His servants the vision of the God of infinite holiness and with it kindles that zeal for righteousness which became the characteristic and con- suming passion of Hebrew prophecy and Hebrew reli- gion. Its fundamental message is Godlikeness or Godli- ness. "Be ye holy, for I am holy, saith your God." The kingdom of God must be the kingdom of universal righteousness. It is interesting to note in passing that according to the story of Exodus, perhaps a later reflection on earlier The Prophetic Inheritance 49 facts, it was a labor movement which first ethicized and moralized the prophetic conscience — that great struggle for industrial and social justice so graphically and ably set forth by a previous lecturer on this foundation. Possibly many a modern prophet in the Christian min- istry might profitably quicken and sensitize his lethargic and conventionalized conscience and acquire a new passion and inspiration in his preaching, if he would get into sympathetic understanding with some of the labor move- ments of today. For whatever may be justly said of labor's mistakes in practice, the main spirit and ideals of the modern labor movement are often in closer touch with the spirit and ideals of the Christ than much of our conventional and fashionable religion. For instance, a great Christian seer and prophet has said that the war 'irogram of the British labor party is the most Christian document of the times. It was the tyranny and injustice of kings which Nathan and Elijah confronted like accusing angels. It was the commercial dishonesty and industrial oppression of his day which called forth the thunders and lightnings, the inspired wrath of Amos, the herdsman. It was the social rottenness of his people which broke the heart of Hosea and turned his message into incoherent sobs. Isaiah ''meddled with politics" all his life until he was sawn as- under. In Micah's elliptic speech, broken by passion, as George Adam Smith says, "pinched peasant faces peer between all his words and fill the ellipses." Jeremiah fiercely contends for the emancipation of the serf and the slave, laments the corruption of priest and ruler and announces doom upon a corrupt church and state. The priestly churchman, Ezekiel, sees a glori- fied hierarchy, centering in a supernatural temple, ex- tending its beneficent life-giving dominion over all the 50 The Prophetic Ministry for Today earth, but it is simply his ecclesiastical version of the com- mon prophetic vision of the kingdom of God with its universal sway of righteousness. And finally the mes- sage reaches its climax in the ^'imperial vision" of the great unknown who beholds like the seer of Patnos, a heavenly city, a celestial civilization "descending from God out of heaven to take possession of the earth." The prophetic message then is always and everywhere a social message. It deals with society rather than with the individual. Religion is construed as essentially a com- munity concern, first of the family, then of the tribe, then of the nation, and finally of the nations. The sin it condemns and the righteousness it commends are social sin and social righteousness. Its final and supreme vision and goal are the Kingdom of God in this present world wherein the will of God shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Down the Christian ages spreads this vision of the Kingdom of God. The prophetic fire catches certain outstanding institutions, movements and men, and they fiame out with the zeal of the ancient seers. Augustine in his "Civitas Dei" pictures Christianity as a new civic order rising upon the crumbling ruins of the Roman Empire. Savonarola in Florence, Calvin in Geneva, and John Knox in Scotland, attempt to set up again Samuel's theocratic rule of the prophet or preacher. The mediaeval Roman Church and the Puritan movement, diametrically opposite and antagonistic to each other in many respects, are identical in this : both conceive of themselves as Divinely endowed with a social and even political mission; they are to set up the kingdom of God in all the affairs and relations of men, a Christian state, national and international. The one follows the vision of Ezekiel and would establish the reign of the hierarchy, the supreme rule of the priest ; the other follows Samuel The Prophetic Inheritance 51 and would set up the theocracy of the prophet, the supreme rule of the preacher. Each results in an equally intolerable tyranny, for neither priest nor prophet can safely be trusted with practical government and political power. He is too apt to confuse his self-will with his conscience. The established Church in England, Ger- many, and elsewhere conceives itself as the religious aspect of the state. And now the ancient vision has touched anew the mind of modern Christendom. It has quickened into life and power that characteristic outbirth of the twentieth cen- tury, the Christian social conscience. Multitudes of pulpits thunder with denunciations of social sin, wrong and injustice, and preach the social gospel. Commissions are appointed by various ecclesias- tical bodies to study the relation of Christianity to all the problems and questions of the day, and issue their reports, declarations and platforms as to the Church's duty in such matters, many of them sufficiently radical to distress sadly the upholders of the settled order or ac- cepted disorder which rules the business and industrial world, and alarm the champions of so-called 'Vested rights" which is often but another term for "invested wrongs." For instance, the Interchurch World Move- ment gives birth to a commission which investigates a strike in the greatest industrial organization in the world and uncovers intolerable conditions, injustices and tyrannies in that organization; and forthwith the move- ment dies in that child-birth, perhaps because the pos- sessors of large wealth are naturally not willing to sup- port a movement which so directly attacks the possible sources of their income. And so everywhere is heard the pious sigh or the indig- nant demand for a return to the "simple gospel," the 52 The Prophetic Ministry for Today dear old gospel of our grandfathers and particularly of our grandmothers. And what is this simple gospel to which we are so earnestly exhorted to return? It is, for the most part, a certain version of modern popular Protestantism which would completely cut off the entail of our prophetic inheritance. It makes the gospel purely individualistic and religion exclusively personal. Christianity is con- cerned only with the individual soul. Its business is solely to save souls. That phrase, "the salvation of souls," has two interpretations. One is eschatological. It con- cerns security in the world beyond. It often degener- ates simply into a system of life assurance and perhaps fire insurance for a future existence. A nobler inter- pretation makes salvation ethical and moral. It means the building up of the individual soul in character "to- wards the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." But in either case it is utterly individualistic. Its only possible eflfect on society is indirect. The busi- ness of the social reformer is to make a better world for people to live in. The business of religion is to make better people to live in the world. And if we make better people we shall have a better world. Regenerate and inspire with Christ-like motives every man, woman and child, and we shall have Christian families, homes, business, industry, politics, national and international, and so in the end a Christian world, a kingdom of God on earth. The millenium will have arrived and Christ will rule everywhere. But the approach to that vision and goal must be exclusively through the individual. Religion has a strictly confined application and the church is a "limited liability" corporation. They are concerned only with the personal, moral and spiritual life of the individual. Let us consider briefly the usual argument for the The Prophetic Inheritance 53 "simple" or exclusively individualistic gospel. Jesus Christ, it is declared, completely reversed the program of the prophets. They dealt with the mass. He dealt with separate souls only. They addressed their message to society. He spoke directly to the personal conscience and will. He brought the peace of pardon to the guilty and repenting sinner, a new trust in the love of the Father to the despairing. Through faith He endowed the broken-willed with a power from on high which made them victors over the world; He gave the sordid and selfish a new vision of the meaning of life as the self-sacrificing service of God and men; He brought the lonely into a new sense of fellowship with God and His saints: He illumined the eyes of the dying and the hearts of the bereaved with the light of a blessed here- after. There His mission stopped. When asked to settle a disputed inheritance, He replied indignantly, **Man, who made Me a judge or divider over you," and warned against covetousness. So saying He shook Himself free from all entanglement with merely material questions. He was not concerned with the kind of coat a man wore, the kind of house he lived in or the kind of food he ate, but only with the kind of man he was. He would enable men to be independent of circumstances, to put first things first. "The life is more than meat and the body than raiment" and, by implication, the soul more than all else put together. Therefore Jesus could have taken no interest whatsoever in what we call industrial or social problems which concern themselves primarily with material things. He was no social reformer. He would not meddle with business. He steadily refused to put himself at the head of any popular political movement, though solicited again and again to do so and though he had ardent political reformers and revolutionists, like Simon the Zealot, 54 The Prophetic Ministry for Today among His followers. He was no political reformer, least of all a revolutionary. He would not meddle with politics. He dealt with the single soul and let society alone. He discovered the individual and confined Himself to the individual. He preached the "simple Gospel." So runs the argument and it sounds strong. But certain suspicions start up at the very beginning of our consideration of this statement. How did Jesus manage to get Himself crucified, if He confined Himself solely to the spiritual welfare of in- dividual souls? How did it happen that He shared the comimon fate of the prophets, — persecution and martyr- dom, — if He did not share in any wise the mission and message of the prophets? The "simple gospel" of today provokes no antagonisms or even criticism among the privileged classes. It wins their condescending patron- age and often their generous support as the securest bul- wark of "things as they are" against disturbance, where- as the first followers of Jesus were described as "these men who turn the world upside down" and Jesus Him- self was accused of being an agitator. "He stirreth up the people." He was always most uncomfortable to those same "privileged classes" in church and state and was finally put out of the way by them. And how is it also that Bouck White and his ilk can construct an equally specious argument from the words and acts of Jesus, proving that He was a labor agita- tor, social reformer and political revolutionist? Cer- tainly St. Luke's version of our Lord's teaching with its frequent and fiery denunciations of unearned and unrighteous wealth and promises to unearned poverty, and its "magnificat," the birth-song of political, economic and industrial democracy, gives some ground for such an argument, unless all these utterances be comfortably The Prophetic Inheritance 55 explained away as interpolations from some Ebionitic source. Let us go back to the record. The first thing there which strikes the most casual reader is that the constantly repeated and dominant note of Jesus' utterances, the main burden of His whole message, is conspicuous by its absence from the "simple gospel" of today. The preachers of the "simple gospel" are always talk- ing about "saving souls" as the one end of religion. Jesus has little to say about saving souls. The salvation of souls is a by-product in a larger process. Indeed a man can save his soul only as he forgets it in a bigger inter- est. To translate quite literally one of his sayings : "He that will save his soul shall lose it, and he that will lose his soul for my sake and the gospel's shall find it." And what is His gospel ? Always, invariably, continu- ously it is the gospel of the Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven. Those phrases are re- iterated to the point of monotony. "The Kingdom" is the word of the Lord that burns like fire in His heart, the burden of the Lord that is laid upon Him. "The King- dom" is the one aim and purpose of His mission. It is the object and goal of all Christian aspiration, prayer, labor and sacrifice. It is the treasure above all price, hid in the field, for joy of finding which the discoverer is willing to sell all that he has. And yet we almost never hear that phrase from the lips of the preacher of the simple gospel, particularly the popular revivalist. His whole message is, "save your soul," a doctrine of supreme selfishness, all the worse for being a pseudo-spiritual selfishness. "The kingdom of God," the "kingdom of heaven," — what confusion and havoc of thought that phrase has wrouglit among preachers, theologians and ecclesiastics. Popularly we posit it in the hereafter. It is paradise 56 The Prophetic Ministry for Today or heaven and we pray **Lord, bring us into thy king- dom when we die." But Jesus always posits it in this present world and prays "Thy kingdom come," that is, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Ecclesiastically we identify it with the visible church, with all its rites, sacraments, rules, canons, hierarchy and government, whereas it is most difficult to prove from the gospels that Jesus ever thought much about any form of ecclesiastical organization, and still more diffi- cult to prove that He founded such an organization. The only loop-hole for the introduction of such a sup- position is the blessed silence of the forty days after the resurrection wherein, according to St. Luke, He spake "to His disciples of the things concerning the Kingdom of God," and He is therefore declared by some to have drawn up a complete plan with detailed specifi- cations for the ecclesiastical organization of the Catholic Church, with its full hierarchy of bishops, priests and deacons and possibly a liturgy and a code of canons. But I can not think that He talked of "the things concerning the kingdom" in any other wise or fashion than He talked of them in His parables and teachings while He dwelt among men in the flesh. Theologically the kingdom has been subliminated into that state of mystical inward peace in the individual soul wherein every "thought of the heart is brought into capti- vity to the glad and loving obedience of Christ." Thank God, that form of the kingdom is a blessed reality of Christian experience, and it is the root, origin and source of every and any form of the kingdom that can be valid. But its exclusive claim to the whole term goes to pieces when we re-read the proof-text on which alone it is supposed to rest. It is not "the kingdom of God is with- in you," but "the kingdom of God is among you." What then is the kingdom of God, the dominant note The Prophetic Inheritance 57 of Jesus teaching, the burden of His message, the object of His mission and the commanding vision and ultimate goal of Christian faith, aspiration and endeavor? It can not be defined. It is too vast, subtle, spiritual to be cast into and contained within any rigid form of human words. But at least this must be evident to the blindest. It involves social implications of illimitable reach and ap- plication. To quote a recent Lambeth report, — "Any definition of the kingdom of God must assuredly contain the ideal of 'human life according to God's intention'." It means, as -Bishop Gore has said, "All human society reformed (or as I should say regenerated) until it shall be according to the will of God." Our Lord's own words put it more completely and succinctly, "Thy kingdom come," that is, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." I submit that this is the vision of the prophets and of the seer of the Apocalypse raised to the nth power, the celestial civilization descending from God out of heaven to possess the earth, the universal soveieignty of God's will of righteousness and love. Yes, Jesus set before Him the same goal toward which the prophets pressed. He saw it in infinitely clearer and completer form. The urge of that vision was upon Him constantly. He felt it and responded to it as no prophet ever did. It was the one theme of His teaching, the supreme end of His mission. Yet did He never sink into the mere social reformer, much less into the political revolutionist. He refused to be judge or divider in particular questions. He declined to head any popular movement for the overthrow of the existing order and the substitution therefor of some new form of society, political, industrial or economic. I cannot construe Him in any way as an agitator or 58 The Prophetic Ministry for Today revolutionist, not because of lack of concern for the end, but because of His sure vision of the only means effec- tive for attaining that end. He saw that what human life and society needed was not so much reformation, new forms in which to express and organize themselves, as a regeneration, a new heart and spirit. And only the knowledge, recognition and obedience of the will and love of God could bring about that regeneration. Therefore His whole attitude toward all social problems was characterized, as Dr. Peabody has so well put it, "by the view from above and the ap- proach from within." He was concerned not about methods but about motives, not about policies but about principles, not with the machinery, (that is the rightful business of reformers and statesmen), but with dynamics, the rightful business of the prophet and man of God. For this reason, because of His "view from above and approach from within," He deals with the whole problem with surer touch and with infinitely more effec- tive power than all the reformers and revolutionists his- tory has known. Reformers and revolutionists pass, each effecting his little change in the outward structure of society whereby it may come into somewhat closer con- formity to the vision and plan of a kingdom of God on earth, whereby its ideal of justice and righteousness may be a little more closely approximated. But Jesus remains "the same yesterday, today and forever," uttering those eternal verities and everlasting principles upon which every true reformer must staad, if he is to have any footing, anv "pen sto," to accomplish his work, breathing into all true servants of humanity the spirit which alone can sustain them in their warfare and toil. The pro- gress of humanity towards its God-appointed goal o^yes more to Jesus Christ than to all other seers and champions of that cause put together. They all rest consciously The Prophetic Inheritance 59 or unconsciously upon Him. Even the most blatant scoffer at the Christian Church will often quote Jesus as the authority for the ideal, if not for the method, of his reform. There is enough social dynamite in the utterances of Jesus to blow to bits every tyranny and oppression, every wrong and injustice however hoary with age and but- tressed with custom and ancient privilege, under which humanity groans. Only the gospel of the kingdom norm-\ ally works like leaven rather than like dynamite. It I generally changes society by evolution rather than by/ revolution. It is constructive rather than destructive. ./ But there are not wanting in it the seeds of revolution. The former Russian and Turkish regimes recognized that fact and large portions of the New Testament were deleted by the censor before the book was allowed to circulate in the vernacular. Wherever Christian mis- sions have carried the teaching of Jesus, as in China and Japan, there have followed always movements of political and social reform. And the leaders of these movements have been for the most part educated in Christian mis- sion schools. And in nominally Christian lands, it is the Christian conscience which is the active element in the new social conscience of the day. This is the ferment working steadily in the universal discontent of the world today and it will not rest until the Kingdom of God be come. Let me illustrate Jesus' view from above and approach within. He refused to lead any insurrection or revolution against the imperialism of the Roman government, or the ecclesiasticism of the Jewish hierarchy, oppressive as those despotisms were. But He said to His disciples *'Be'ye not called Rabbi, for one is your Master even Christ and all ye are brethren. And call no man your 60 The Prophetic Ministry for Today father upon earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven. Neither be ye called Master, for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you sfhall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Before such words the pompous claims and titles of ecclesiastical hierarchies fade into foolishness and futility. Or again, "They that are accounted to rule over the heathen, lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so it shall not be among you : but whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister. And whosoever will be chief est, shall be ser- vant of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many." No political democracy had existed in the world up to that time, for even the so-called democracy of Athens was an aristocracy based on a slave class. Nothing but autocracies were known in church or state. And yet in these words are contained all the seed-principles, the very dynamic of democracy everywhere and always. They set forth the ideal, the very raison d'etre of democracy. The very nomenclature of democracy is derived therefrom. In an autocracy the ruler is sovereign, the citizens are subjects. In a democracy the citizens are sovereigns as brethren in one commonweal or common wealth, and the office holders are supposed at least to be executives of the popular will and servants of the com- mon well-being. The ideal of democracy is the suprem- acy of service as the rule of autocracy is the supremacy of authority and force. Out of that ideal of Christ have sprung all the political democracies of history and out of it shall come, I be- The Prophetic Inheritance 61 lieve, eventually a real democracy in industry and society at large. Or again take St. Paul who caught the spirit of his Master. He faced chattel slavery in perhaps its worst form. He did not stir up a slave war or insurrection. He even exhorted slaves to be "obedient unto their masters according to the flesh" and sent back one fugitive slave to his Christian owner. But he bade the slaves remember that they served one Master even Christ, yea, that they were Christ's free men, and the masters remember that they also had "a Master in heaven with Whom was no respect of persons," that they were Christ's servants. And he sent back the runaway slave with this message to his owner "Receive this man no longer as a servant but as a brother beloved both in the flesh but especially in the Lord." Before such principles chattel slavery could not stand and it has disappeared wherever Christianity has gone. Or again Paul declares "There is no longer Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scy- thian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." There is the Christian basis for the new international- ism that is surely dawning upon the world today, the new conception of the unity of humanity in all races and peoples. Upon that foundation must all future leagues and covenants of the nations be founded if they are to stand. "Like a mighty army moves the Church of God" in His eternal warfare with the evil wherever it is to be found. Every Christian soldier is enlisted in that war- fare and his concern is not less but more than that of the mere reformer, for he is consciously fighting the Lord's battle under the orders of the Captain of his salvation. Though his weapons be spiritual and not carnal like those of the revolutionist, nor political like 62 The Prophetic Ministry for Today the reformer, they are not therefore less but more effec- tive. It is the gospel of the kingdom that is committed to us by our Master and His apostles. And that kingdom means nought less than the universal sovereignty of God's will of righteousness and love. That sovereignty will brook no artificial limitations. It cannot be confined to the individual or personal life and shut out of any realm of the common life, whether it be business, industry, soci- ety or politics, national or international. It claims uni- versal dominion and will be content with nought less. The Church and her ministry can recognize no limited liability. We can not confine ourselves to the pieties of observance, the proprieties of personal behavior, or even the mystic spiritual experience and life of the individual soul. Whatever question or problem concerns righteous- ness, justice and the Will of God, or the well-being, phys- ical, mental, moral and spiritual, of any children of God, (And what question or problem does not? Every one has an ethical or moral core or axis), — that, so far as it does concern these vital and Christian issues, is our ques- tion and problem with which we are bound to deal under our commission from our Master. The gospel may be "simple" in its underlying and elementary principles, but it is infinitely varied and complex in its practical applica- tions. And we have to deal with all. We are fellow workmen with God in the upbuilding of that structure of human life and society which is to be His temple and abiding-place. Two things are necessary to the rightness or "righteous- ness" of any structure, — sound materials and good archi- tecture, the putting of those materials together in right relations. Both are our concern in the building of this temple of humanity for the indwelling of God. We have our gospel to the individual. Society is built The Prophetic Inheritance 63 up of individuals. Personal character is the material which enters into its construction. We must see that that material is sound. But we are also concerned with the architecture, else however sound the materials, it can not be a fitting abode for the Spirit of God, yea, it can not even stand. We may not be able, or be called upon, to draw the plans or write out the specifications for that architecture. That is the business of experts. But we are bound to insist that they shall be drawn on right principles. Or to change the figure, society is the "grand man," to use Swedenborg's phrase. It is intended to be, like the Church, the body of Christ. It is our business to treat "with the wholesome medicines of the Word" the indi- vidual members of that body, that they may be healthy and capable of right functioning in the service of the whole. But if the general circulation be so diseased that it poisons the individual members, it is not enough to treat the members with specifics after the manner of quacks. We must do our best to cleanse the general circulation of the whole body. It is a dual gospel, this gospel of the kingdom which is committed to us. It has its message to the individual and it has its message to society. We can neglect neither. The most critical and difficult business of our preaching is to keep our accents duly balanced and proportioned. Will and environment, personality and conditions, these are the two forces that make character, one by inward inspiration and effort and the other by outward pressure and subtle influence. The social reformer generally and the preacher of the social gospel often over-stress and over-emphasize the power of environment, sometimes to the destruction of all sense of personal responsibility, the unravelling of the very fibre of character and the undermining of the will 64 The Prophetic Ministry for Today itself. Under the influences of that false accent, men throw the blame for their moral failures and disasters upon things and forces outside of themselves. They lose all sense of the reality of personal sin. As Aaron said when rebuked by Moses for setting up the golden calf : 'T took the gold the people gave me and put it into the fire and there came out this calf." So we say when brought face to face with our sins, our caricatures of character : 'T am not responsible. I took the gold of my heredity and put it into the fire of my circumstances and there came out this calf." We must remember that we have a faith to give to men which can make them conquerors over their circum- stances, victors over their world. If the business man says, as he often does say, *T can not act on Christian principles in my business. The system will not allow it. I should go to the wall if I tried," it is our duty to say to him, "Then go to the wall as your Master went to His cross. You can not do otherwise if you are a Christian." When the workingman says, as one said to me once, "If we could attain to the living standards and conditions we are seeking in our labor movement, we should all be honest and moral and you preachers would be without a job. But in the conditions that surround us, you can't ex- pect anything of us but debauchery and drunkenness, dis- honesty and slackness in duty," it is our business to say, "We can and do expect better things of you, if you have the grace of God in your hearts. You can if you will say with the great apostle, T can do all things, even conquer my circumstances, through Christ who strength- eneth me inwardly. * " But on the other hand we know that there are circum- stances and conditions especially about children and those adults who are still children in will and mind, circum- stances and conditions in which it is almost as impossible The Prophetic Inheritance 65 to grow a decent, not to say a Christian, character as it would be to grow an American beauty rose in the ash can at your back door. Then it is our duty to rise up and deal with that environment. It is our business to make salvation possible and then appeal to the will and conscience of the man, to make it actual. Even the most confirmed preachers of the simple or individualistic gospel were fiercest in the fight for prohibition, because they recognized in the saloon and the liquor trade a source of frightful temptation too strong for the weak wills of men. Are rank injustices, less than Hving wages and unspeakable living conditions Hke those of the steel indus- try against which the workers themselves ro.se lately in mad protest, — are such conditions any less fatal to the possibility of decent, not to say Christian, living and homes and family life than the saloon? If so, is it not equally our business as ministers of Christ to concern our- selves about the industrial problem ? In fact, the common 1 neglect of the social environment by preachers of the j ^ purely individualistic gospel is largely responsible for the ' Ai degradation of many communities as well as the wrecking i of multitudes of souls. A survey of certain rural portions > of Ohio was made lately. The startling discovery was made that certain over-churched regions showed the worst records for tuberculosis, illiteracy and illegitimacy. They were swarming with travelling evangelists and wan- dering revivalists. They were burned over periodically with protracted meetings and religious hysteria. They had plenty of ''soul-saving." But they had never heard "the gospel of the kingdom." They had no wise settled pastors and congregations who concerned themselves about wholesome recreation for the young, just industrial conditions for the workers, the community spirit, the general moral and Christian tone of society. Yes, the gospel has a dual message, to the individual 66 The Prophetic Ministry for Today and to society. It has a double accent and emphasis. It is our business to keep those accents balanced and pro- portional. The Bible begins with the story of a solitary man in a garden face to face with God. So religion begins with the life of God in the individual soul. The right rela- tions between that soul and God must ever be the primary concern of our ministry. But the Bible ends with the vision of a heavenly city, a celestial civilization descending from God out of heaven to take possession of the earth. That was the goal of the prophets and of the Christ. That is the end and issue of the Gospel of the Kingdom. Toward that vision we must ever lift the eyes of our people and urge their steps. IV The Prophetic Message for Today WE stand in the prophetic succession. We are called to be "men of God," messengers of the Most High, interpreters of His will, ambassa- dors of Jesus Christ and His kingdom, and God will so use us, if we fit ourselves for His use. We are heirs of the prophets. We enter into the heri- tage of their fundamental and persistent message, the social applications of religion. Jesus Christ did not cut off the entail of that inheritance. Rather did He enlarge and deepen the common message of the prophets into His full Gospel of the Kingdom. The question that confronts us now is: What is the prophetic message for today? What ought to be the special emphases and objectives of modern prophetic preaching? What should be its domi- nant notes ? If ever the prophet were called on to give the largest interpretations of the will of God and make the widest applications of His message, it is today. If ever the Christian Church were challenged to recall and fulfill in its broadest terms her original Divine commission, which is her only reason for existence, viz., to "disciple the nations" and to "save the world" instead of merely to disciple individuals among the nations and save souls out of the world, — it is today. Many eyes are looking to her and her gospel as the only hope in the midst of a rocking and reeling civiliza- tion, a disillusioned, despairing and all but ruined world. Q 68 The Prophetic Ministry for Today "They that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places. Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in." Surely that is the paramount mission of the Christian Church today. Can she fulfill that mission? That is the challenge of the day to her. To meet that challenge is the supreme task to which you and all the prophets of this generation must address yourselves. This is the "age of reconstruction," we say. Now reconstruction implies previous destruction. And surely that destruction is apparent enough. It is practically universal. The international order lies in ruins. The present social and particularly industrial system among all peoples is shaken with a common and mighty discon- tent which threatens its very existence. There is an uni- versal upheaval among the masses of the proletariat, the mud-sills upon which our civilization is built, and the whole structure trembles and totters. No words fit the present situation of the world since the great war like those terrible denunciations of judg- ment which fell burning from the lips of the ancient Hebrew prophets. We are seeing with our own eyes the lurid pictures of a Zephaniah actualized. We are hear- ing a Jeremiah crying, 'T will overturn and overturn and overturn, saith the Lord." It is the voice from heaven saying, "Yet once more I shake not the earth only but the heavens also," and that word, "yet once more," signi- fieth the removing of the things that are shaken as of things that are made, that the things which can not be shaken may remain. It is a day of the Lord, a day of judgment, a coming of the Christ to test and to prove. It is no wonder that a pre-millennial craze and second adventist madness have spread like an epidemic among The Prophetic Message for Today 69 the more literally minded and ignorant masses of the Christian church. Only they are looking to the near future for what is about them in the actual present. This advent has arrived. The Lord is already come and is seated in judgment upon our v^hole v^orld order. That order is palpably condemned and doomed. We are living in one of those supreme crises of history when the long, slow processes of the world's life focus to a burning point and bring on their own judgment. And the message that ought to ring in the ears of the Christian Church today is one of rebuke and exhortation. "Why stand ye gazing up into heaven" in supine, idle expectation of some stu- pendous Divine miracle of either universal destruction or universal restoration? Turn and address yourselves with all your energies to your God-appointed task of rebuilding on sure foundations. Some twelve or thirteen years ago I made my first visit to Winchester Cathedral, England. Those who have seen it know that it is one of the most impressive structures in Great Britain, and indeed in Europe. Huge, low-lying, massive, it looks as solid and enduring as the everlasting hills that surround it on every side. But just before my visit, ominous cracks and fissures had been discovered in its walls. The whole structure was threatened with imminent collapse. Expert engi- neers and architects were called in consultation. The more superficial and facile recommended certain make- shifts only, wise and necessary to meet the temporary emergencies — props here and flying buttresses there to shore up the bulging walls, tie-rods and girders to bind them together. But fortunately there was called in a radical, in the best sense of that much abused word, — one who went to the root of things and whose motto was "thorough." He sank deep shafts beside the walls, down beneath the low- 70 The Prophetic Ministry for Today est strata of the foundations. And he found that the whole cathedral had been set upon an underlying bog, or swamp. The early builders had flung trunks and boughs of trees into this morass and upon these confi- dently laid their foundations. But gradually through the centuries the waters from the Surrounding hills had seeped into this cup-like valley and turned the swamp into a veritable lake. The situation demanded radical remedies. And I saw men in deep sea diving suits, with pumps to furnish them air, going down from the dry land into these shafts through the underlying waters, to dig down to the solid clay or rock beneath the foundations and put in great masses of concrete as sub-foundations ; and now the great structure stands solid and secure. It seems to me that we have here a parable of our modern civilization, its present condition and its supreme need, — a need which only religion, in the fullest sense of the word, can meet. We must restore the moral and spiritual sub-foundations of human society, if it is to stand solid and secure. What we call modern civilization is almost wholly the creation of the 19th century. That century was one of the great epoch-making centuries of history. In it more discoveries of the secrets of physical nature, her vast hidden and mysterious resources and forces, were made than in all the centuries preceding it. It has to its credit more inventions whereby those forces were harnessed to the service of our physical life and material well-being. Comforts, conveniences and luxuries were multiplied in- calculably for such as had the means to command them and for the general public as well. Probably more mate- rial wealth was created in that century than in all the ages since history began. Steam and electricity alone utterly transformed the face of human society. They turned our civilization almost wholly into an industrial The Prophetic Message for Today 71 civilization. Everywhere it bears the industrial mark. It is concerned chiefly with the making of things. The multiplied and accelerated means of transportation stimu- lated trade and commerce until they became the com- manding and all-absorbing interests of the vast majority of able and ambitious men. And then we stood off and admired the work of our hands. We gloried in it. Undoubtedly it was the climax of human history, the crowning achievement of human- ity, — ^this splendid, magnificent civilization of ours. Greece with her art, literature and philosophy, Rome with her laws and science of government, ay, Judea with her faith and her God, paled into insignificance beside this splendor of material achievement. It looked solid and secure for. eternity. No doubts ever entered our heads as to its possible permanence. If anybody presumed to suggest such a doubt, we shouted him down as did the mob at Ephesus — "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." "Great is the industrial and commercial civilization of the 19th century." It was our Tower of Babel. Its top reached to the heavens, if there were any heavens. But we forgot our foundations — those moral and spir- itual basic principles without which no structure, whether of individual life and character or of a world civilization, can stand secure and solid. We were so dazzled by the sudden and overwhelming influx of light on things seen that we were largely blinded to the things unseen and eternal. We were so absorbed in material values that we lost our sense of moral and spiritual values. Art and literature waned. Their stock was low in the world's market. The servants of the idea and the ideal, of thought and of beauty, became a kind of third estate in modern society. Artists, Hterary "fellers," professors, were sometimes pityingly patronized but generally con- temptuously ignored by the lords of industry and com- 72 The Prophetic Ministry for Today merce, the only ''real and virile men." They were reck- oned as parasites, not producers. They ornamented the edifice of our civilization like stucco work. They con- tributed nothing to its structure. That was the work of the men who dealt with things. Education, once the high priestess of culture, to a con- siderable degree sank into a mere hand-maid to industry, "a hewer of wood and drawer of water." We banished the humane and cultural from many of our educational courses and institutions. We put our chief emphasis upon the technical. We wanted a wholly practical train- ing for our boys and girls, a bread and butter education, not an education that should develop their tastes, still less one that should discipline and form their characters, but simply one that should turn them out efficient tools and instruments for making things, producing wealth. Efficiency, not culture or character, was the paramount end of education, — craftsmen, not men, its output. And as for religion, it fell largely into "innocuous desuetude." It was handed over for the most part to women and chil- dren, or those spiritual dillettantes, — mystics, dreamers and saints who revelled in pietistic indulgences, or those fools of God, — the servants of the ideal and humanity. It could be of no serious concern to the practical man. He dealt with realities — things. He had no time for iridescent dreams. Visions belonged to visionaries. The "business man" was king. He climbed to dominant posi- tion throughout the whole social order. We all stood in awe before his omniscience and his unerring judgment. He told us all where to "get off" and we meekly got off. The commercial conscience was supreme. The church was given its charter and place. It was to be a strictly "limited liability" corporation. The sphere of religion was carefully and exactly delimited. It was to have nothing whatsoever to do with politics, industry The Prophetic Message for Today 7Z or business. These were foreign realms that did not and could not acknowledge the sovereignty of the Christ and where the law of His kingdom could not run. Religion was to deal with sentiments and emotions and look after the minor moralities of strictly personal be- haviour and conduct, perhaps also the home and family life (as if these could be isolated from the common life and a system of effective quarantine be established against the contagion of an evil and Godless world outside their walls). Especially was it to concern itself with charity, alms-giving, beneficence and rescue and relief work. It was to be the ambulance and hospital corps that should take care of the victims of our social and industrial system. That was practical religion. Yes, it should run ambulances at the foot of the cliff. But by no means should it attempt to set watchmen at the brink of the precipice to keep any from falling over. It was to mop up the floor but by no means attempt to turn oflf the spigot. It was to deal with consequences solely, not seek out and remedy causes. Individual behaviour in personal relations, charity, alms giving, relief and rescue — these were its concern, but never a word was it to utter about justice and righteousness in the larger rela- tions of life, least of all about a possible Kingdom of God, a heavenly civilization on earth. Above all it was to busy itself with "saving souls." Said the practical men of the world to the preachers of religion: "Keep the attention of the masses absorbed in contemplation of the world to come and they won't bother about the alleged wrongs, injustices and sufferings of their present world. Tell them everything will be made up to them in heaven. That will keep them quiet and submissive. Religion, thus administered, is an excellent bromide and soporific. It may prove a good moral police force. It is the bulwark of law and order. You run the 74 The Prophetic Ministry for Today next world and we will run this. You look after men's souls and we will manage everything that concerns their bodies, their whole life here. That's a fair proposition. That is a workable partnership with a due division of responsibiHty. On these conditions we will patronize and support the church liberally." Is not that a fair picture of the average business man's conception of the place and function of religion in life? And to its everlasting shame be it confessed, the Church for the most part, accepted contentedly that arrangement and entered willingly into that partnership, the official, ecclesiastical church. And religion decayed. It was shorn of its power and dignity. It lost respect. It fell into contempt. Multitudes deserted the church both among the masses and among the classes. It was not the rationalistic philosophies of the 19th century with their mechanistic interpretations of life and the universe that most deeply and surely undermined Christian faith. Those were passing phases of thought, already obsolescent. It was not the perpetual warfare between science and theology. Above all, it was not the new science of Biblical criticism. That has proved a servant of faith, incalculably enriching her treasure- house. It was the practical materialism of the age. It was the dominant commercial conscience. It was the business man's rule with his business standards and judg- ments. It was that which created a sordid, mephitic atmosphere in which the soul could not breathe. Above all, it was the accumulating horrors of human misery, wrongs and injustice that grew out of our social and industrial system, and the apparent indifference of con- ventional religion thereto, which made multitudes give up their faith in a good God, a God who cared, — ay, in any rationality in the universe. It was that also which The Prophetic Message for Today 7"^ made it a desperate struggle for all who felt and thought to keep their grip on any faith in a Heavenly Father. Meanwhile if religion had no function in politics or business, if moral and spiritual values could not be quoted or considered in the commercial market, on what should we build our social, industrial and international system? The answer came swift and sure, ''enlightened self inter- est." Into the morass of materialism and greed which was frankly recognized as underlying our whole civiliza- tion, industrial and international, the builders of our modern society, particularly our social philosophers, econ- omists and statesmen, flung here and there a few doc- trines and considerations of "enlightened self-interest" and upon these they laid confidently the foundations of the whole system. Upon such grounds they rested entirely their hope for the stability of the whole structure. For example, the recognized and accepted philosophy of industry was frankly and unashamedly selfish and materialistic. Only selfish and materialistic desires could possibly give sufficient motive power for the great achieve- ments demanded of industry. Altruistic or idealistic mo- tives were too weak to be trusted. The quest of beauty might be sufficient to inspire the artist in his work, the search for truth the scientist and philosopher, the service of humanity the reformer, teacher and physician, and the service of God the preacher. But to try to run industry and production with such motive power would be like hitching your factory to a child's paper wind-wheel. No, the only thing that would keep labor up to its maxi- mum of efficiency was the frantic struggle for existence, to keep body and soul together. Industry depends upon the margin of unemployment. The great mass of the jobless, who struggle on the crumbling edge of starva- tion, is its reservoir of power. It is the fear of falling into that abyss of starvation which alone will inspire the 76 The Prophetic Ministry for Today toiler to do his utmost, and upon his utmost depends the production society needs. The captain of industry is in business solely and supremely for what he can get out of it, and the most he can get out of it, for himself, profit and power and the zest of the game. Service is purely incidental — a necessary means to these ends. But it must be kept strictly in its place as a means. It must never be allowed to assume the place of the supreme and para- mount end as it does with the idealist in the professions. That would ruin business. "All the traffic will bear" is good business; the least and cheapest service for the largest returns in profits and dividends is the only rule of success. And competition — competition without let or hindrance between these unbridled greeds is the only life of trade. The Manchester school, for long the most potent power in modern economic and industrial states- manship, proclaimed the doctrine of ''laissez faire"! — ^"let alone" — "hands off" — no interference in business by gov- ernment, and, of course, absolutely none by religion. Moral forces, humane considerations, ethical ends, ay, human wills had no more place or effect in the operation of the laws of economics, industry or trade than they had in the operation of the laws of gravity or chemical affinity. When Lord Shaftesbury introduced his legislation for regulating factories and particularly mines, with a view to introducing some elementary principles of common humanity into industry, particularly to prevent the exploit- ation of women and children, he met the most violent and determined opposition among the most enlightened and intelligent economists and statesmen of the day, and also to the shame of religion and the church, be it con- fessed, from almost the whole bench of Bishops in the House of Lords. And all legislation for industrial re- form since, from the simplest requirements of safety The Prophetic ^Iessage for Today 17 devices for the protection of life and limb up to the more radical enactments that aim at a nearer approach to social and industrial justice — all have met the same determined opposition from the same sources. **Let alone — hands off." Let the competition of individual greeds and selfish motives be unrestrained. Out of their clash will develop some rude and tolerable form of jus- tice, and it is the only justice attainable or practicable in the social or industrial realms. Any other line of action will turn out to be an impertinent and disastrous inter- ference with a most delicate and complicated mechanism. We must rely solely on enlightened self-interest. The employer must estabHsh reasonably tolerable conditions, hours and rates of wages or he will not secure loyal and efficient labor. The laborer must give reasonable return in service or he can not keep his job. The profiteering merchant can not long fleece the public without losing his trade. "Let alone — hands off" and the sacred, omnipotent, all-pervasive law of supply and demand will bring all these individual greeds to a common basis and order of enlightened self-interest. Was not that the accepted and unquestioned industrial philosophy of the 19th century? It was likewise its accepted and unquestioned interna- tional philosophy. The chief function of the state was to protect, develop and foster the industrial and commercial prosperity of its citizens, incidentally and secondarily to secure justice and develop art, culture, education and religion. Most of its foreign diplomacy served one end chiefly, — to secure sources for the raw materials required by industry, mar- kets for its finished products, colonies to furnish both, and favorable trade relations with other nations — "a place in the sun" — if not commercial domination through- 78 The Prophetic Ministry for Today out the world. To this end statecraft was dedicated and for this purpose large armaments and armies and navies were created. Ninety-three cents out of every dollar of taxes in enlightened America goes to pay for wars, past and future, — only seven cents for all the other purposes of government. If a few sensitive seers here and there trembled with apprehension at the rapid intensification and growth of these insatiable material and commercial greeds and the enormous piling up of armaments, and saw ominous visions of the inevitable world crash and the possible fall of civilization itself, they were promptly reassured or at least gagged with this blessed doctrine of enlightened self-interest. It was also an effective soporific for the multitude and "a sure refuge and hope" to the leaders in the political and commercial game. It was our only but our impregnable security. With war made so terrible and destructive by modern equipment and methods, no nation would dare lightly or wantonly to start a conflict. Enlightened self-interest would restrain it. Above all, with a world-wide international trade and finance established, depending on delicately poised and balanced and closely interwoven material interests among the business men and corporations of all nations, of course war became more and more impossible. No war lords would dare disturb that sensitive commercial system. So we all shouted, ''Great is the power of enlightened self- interest," and settled down in our fools' paradise. But even under the ordinary strains and stresses of peace, cracks and fissures began to appear in the walls of our splendid structure, that industrial system and world order which constituted our boasted massive and magnifi- cent modern civilization. There were the accumulating horrors involved in the very nature of our industrial system. There was the ■ The Prophetic Message for Today 79 exploitation of women and children to get the cheap labor necessary to large profits and dividends, undermin- ing the motherhood and the home life of the race and imperilling its future. There were the intolerable condi- tions of factories, unsanitary surroundings, unguarded machinery, dangerous and disease-breeding occupations which jeopardized the health of whole communities and even peoples. The stunted, anaemic, mentally and mor- ally undeveloped masses produced inevitably by our in- dustrial system were startlingly disclosed by the examina- tions imposed by draft laws among all the warring nations. At first the majority had to be rejected as unfit for service until our necessities compelled us to take any material, however far below the standards. There was the unen- durably long confinement, the perilous and exhausting employment, such as the twelve-hour day and seven-day week, with weekly or bi-weekly shifts of twenty-four to thirty-six hours, which still confessedly prevail in our leading American industry, a system which can only brutalize and bestialize men, if it does not madden them or kill them outright. There was the growth of the modern slum, both in cities and in rural districts about mines and mills, such as the forty miles of hovels about Pittsburgh revealed in the survey of a few years ago. Here are inevitably bred the hordes of savages and bar- barians who must, unless remedy be found, foment the revolutions that shall destroy our civilization. There was the iron law of wages which tended steadily to reduce the standard of living below a decent animal existence, the overplus allowed ruthlessly to perish or become a charge upon public charity. Business itself lives on charity in all periods of unemployment. Labor become a commodity, not a great group of living sentient human beings with rights and claims, aspirations and ambitions, "men who loved and hated and had children," but simply 80 The Prophetic Ministry for Today a mass of the raw material of industry like cotton or pig iron, to be bought in the cheapest market, used up in the processes of manufacture and the remnants thrown carelessly into the scrap-heap. Humanity was dehu- manized. Even the sacred law of supply and demand did not operate, as it was confidently declared it would, to produce a rude justice out of the clash of conflicting selfish inter- ests. The rudeness was palpable and apparent enough, but the justice was invisible, if not non-existent. Artifi- cially manipulated by the combinations and devices of both the active participants in the conflict, capital and labor, that law of supply and demand became a highway- man's club or pistol, used to rob each other and especially the public. Generally it was held in the hands of the powerful and privileged and employed to beat down the helpless mass of labor into abject submission to the demands of capital and extort from the innocent public "all the traffic will bear." Or again, in the hands of strong combinations of labor and especially in periods of scarcity in the labor market, as during the war, it was used equally ruthlessly by labor to extort from capital and through capital from the public behind it, all the wages that could be squeezed out with the least possible production and most inefficient service rendered in return. In both instances the innocent by-stander, the public, suf- fered most as the victim of the profiteers of both sides, and the machinery of industry was well nigh wrecked. Above all, the contrasts between unearned wealth and unearned poverty grew constantly deeper and more glar- ing. Wealth, wanton and ostentatious, rotted the souls of its possessors, and poverty, helpless and despairing, either left its victims sodden and hopeless or drove them to the madness of violence and anarchy. The scum, sometimes called the "cream" of society, and its dregs, The Prophetic Message for Today 81 are much alike in their characteristic sins. In both ahke the moral fibre, the very m'oral constitution of society, was attacked. Such is the plain record of the 19th century industrial system as he who runs may read it. The facts and statistics are overwhelming. "Enlightened self-interest" evidently was not working as efficiently as its advocates confidently asserted it would. So it was also with our world order. There was the balance of power, weighted and counter-weighted with enormous armaments, as deHcate as a pair of chemical balances to be kept under a glass case, yet exposed in the open to the blasts of furious unrestrained racial hatreds and ambitions and national commercial greeds and rival- ries. At every recurrent crisis nervous and distracted diplomatists flew hither and thither to conferences to adjust the balance, compromise the differences, and apply the infallible remedy, "enlightened self-interest." But the international situation grew steadily more ominous and threatening. Christian seers and prophets here and there discerned the signs of the times and pro- claimed them. But they were unheeded. It was Fred- erick William Robertson who in the early fifties, when the doctrine of enlightened self-interest in international trade and finance was first set forth as the insurance and secur- ity of world peace, — it was then that this Christian preacher proclaimed with all the assurance of a Hebrew prophet, "We are told that what chivalry and honor could not do, personal interest, enlightened self-interest, will do. Trade is to bind men into one family. When they feel it their interest to be one, they will be brothers." Then he prophesied, "Brethren, that which is built on selfishness cannot stand. The system of personal self-interest must be shivered into atoms. Therefore we who have observed the ways of God in the past are waiting in quiet but awful 82 The Prophetic Ministry for Today expectation until He shall confound this system as He has confounded those which have gone before. And it may be effected by convulsions more terrible and more bloody than the world has yet seen. While men are talk- ing of peace and the great progress of civilization, there is heard in the distance the noise of armies gathering rank upon rank, east and west, north and south, and rolling towards us the crashing thunders of universal war." There was the prophetic message for the day. But, as I have said, it was unheeded. The cheerful optimists of the day daubed up the widen- ing cracks in our heathen industrial system and pagan world order with their untempered mortar of "enlight- ened self-interest." Others, less superficial, went a bit deeper. They put in tie-rods, girders and set up props and shores and flying buttresses. For industrial, social and economic legislation came into vogue in the latter part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th. Statutes were passed for the regulation of child labor and woman labor, of factory conditions, safety appli- ances, the prevention of occupational diseases, old age and unemployment insurance. Even minimum wage laws were proposed. And individual corporations here and there ventured on experiments of welfare work and even of profit-sharing and industrial democracy. In the inter- national sphere Hague tribunals were instituted; the Peace Palace set up, disarmament proposals were made, "scraps of paper" innumerable were plastered over the widening breaches of international commercial rivalries. That is, the old doctrine of "laissez faire, hands off — let alone" was definitely ab^indoned and specific steps were taken towards legislative interference with both business and international policies. For it had grown evident even to the blindest that unless something were done the structure of civilization could not stand. But few thought The Prophetic Message for Today 83 of looking to the foundations of the whole world order. For the most part in all our legislation we tinkered with the superstructure. Only here and there, in some isolated Christian pulpit, did the voice of some lonely prophet and seer give such radical warning and counsel as Robert- son gave. But that voice was either contemptuously ignored, or, if possible, rudely stopped. It was only a simple-minded preacher — a bit touched in his brains — out of his sphere, impertinently meddling with business and politics. And then suddenly, in a moment, broke the great world storm, long brewing in the very heart of our civilization, but which only a few seers had discerned. It took the rest of the world with utter surprise. The rains descended and the floods arose and the winds blew and beat upon the house we had builded on the sands of materialism and "enlightened selfishness" and it tottered to a fall. The Lord came in judgment and uttered in tones of thunder, from the east even unto the west. His sentence of condemnation upon our whole civilization of splendid greed and power, our industrial system, our commerce, our trade, our world order. Today the whole system of international relations lies in ruin, and the industrial order in every land is rocking and reeling under the sudden letting loose of the long suppressed discontent and wrath of the suffering masses. Is not the world situation today an imperative challenge to the Christian church, if she has a prophetic ministry? Others may offer devices of social reform like industrial democracy, or international organization such as the League of Nations, to shore up and bind together our tottering civilization. Wise and necessary such devices may be. But it is the church's business to be radical and go to the roots of things, to proclaim the principles upon which alone civilization can stand secure, the motives 84 The Prophetic Ministry for Today which alone can make such devices effective, the atmos- phere in which only they can function. Is it not time for the Christian church to rise up at once in bitter penitence for her own past neglect and in righteous wrath at her contemptuous exclusion and repression by the "wise men" of this world, and say unto them : 'T will break the evil compact to which I have passively consented and I will break my own cowardly silence. I have let you run this world after your selfish heathen philosophies and systems until you have run it to ruin. I will now deliver the burden the Lord hath laid upon me — His word that burns like fire in my bones — 'Look to your foundations, for other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, even Jesus Christ.' He that buildeth on any other ground, his house shall fall, as God hath proved to you in such a drama of judgment as history can not parallel. Unless you Christianize your industrial system, it can not last. Unless you Christianize your world order it cannot endure." Is not that the prophetic message for today? Even men of the world are beginning to listen for it and demand it. The most noted financial expert and statis- tician of the day says: "The whole business and indus- trial situation today depends fundamentally on right mo- tives and the Church is the only institution for generating right motives. Therefore, let every business man get behind the church and strengthen it. It is our only hope." Herbert Hoover says: "Nothing less than a spiritual revival can save the industrial situation." Perhaps the vision that inspires these utterances is superficial. Per- haps they are spoken more in the fear of the things that are coming on the earth than in the fear of the Lord. Perhaps the Church and her religion are still regarded chiefly as a bulwark of conservatism, a sup- porter of existing law and order, to keep secure the The Prophetic Message for Today 85 sacrosanct system of things as they are, rather than as "a repairer of the breaches and a restorer of foundations." Still there is a groping after the reality. And, thank God, there are signs of the Church's awak- ening to the vision and answering the challenge the times set before her. The lonely voices of the isolated seers of the past are being combined into choruses of official utterances on the application of Christian principles to the industrial world order. By way of evidence, read for instance (for I mention them almost at random) the findings of the Commission on the Industrial Situation, appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the reports of the Lambeth Conference on Christianity and Industrial Problems and Christianity and Interna- tionality Relations, the declarations of the War Council of Roman Catholic Bishops, and its social welfare com- mission, the social platform of Canadian Wesleyans and the Canadian Presbyterian General Assembly, the social creed of the Federated Council of the Churches of Christ, the report of the Commission of the Interchurch World Movement appointed to investigate the late steel strike, etc. The volume of the great chorus is constantly in- creasing. Watch the movements for giving our divided Christendom a common voice, that the united Church may utter her common mind and deliver a whole gospel to a whole world. The war revealed the ultimate disaster and futility of our disunion. Established churches were carried along like barnacles on the ship of state and free churches in their petty denominationalisms were swept like chips in her wake of narrow, selfish patriotisms. The only Chris- tian body that had any international organization was the Roman Communion, which proved itself utterly without either moral courage or leadership under the great test. New world alliances for international friendship, world 86 The Prophetic Ministry for Today federation and world conferences on unity and other like movements are preparing the Church to focus her scattered moral forces upon a wrecked industrial system and a shattered world order, that, lifted above the absorp- tions of both narrow nationalisms and petty denomina- tionalisms, she may proclaim with the authority of a united voice the whole gospel and the whole prophetic message of Jesus Christ to a whole but distracted world. It is in such a day you come to your prophetic min- istry. May you not only preach boldly your own individ- ual prophetic message for this day of crisis as the Lord shall lay His burden upon you and put His word into your heart, but may you help still further to sensitize this awakening social conscience of the official church. And may you add your full measure of influence and impulse to these great movements for the unification of her world- wide power and gospel, that she may fulfill her Divine commission as the Repairer of the Breaches and the Re- storer of the Foundations of our shattered and imperilled civilization. It may seem an impossible task for a feeble church "scattered and peeled," despised and condemned. But let us rest on His promise who said, "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." V The Prophetic Program for Today A more christian civilization THE prophetic message for this day of recon- struction, we have seen, is a persistent and in- sistent proclamation of those fundamental moral and spiritual principles which have been so com- monly forgotten and neglected in the materialistic absorptions of our modern civilization, but upon which alone any order of life, individual, industrial, social, national or international, can endure the tests of the constantly recurrent judgments of experience and his- tory. So only can the church by her prophetic minis- try fulfill her mission "to raise up the foundations of many generations." Her task is to build upon these foundations a more Christian civilization — a more Christian "kultur" — to use the term Germany has worn trite and made opprobrious ; and that means a more Christian industrial, social, national and inter- national order. That at once raises a question. Is not our present civilization a Christian civilization. We have long and commonly called it is so. And when the great disaster befell, many were the clamant voices of the critics who proclaimed that Christian civilization had broken down, and therefore Christianity had failed. A suffici- ent answer was given in the pungent reply of Ches- terton, "Christianity has not been tried and found ^7. 88 The Prophetic Ministry for Today wanting. It has been found difficult and not tried." Yes, we can defend Christianity against that accusa- tion of failure. But we can not defend the Christian Church and her prophetic ministry. The Church did fail and her failure was colossal and fatal. And she failed for two reasons, — first, for lack of vision. She did not discern her full mission, the full reach and application of her gospel. She was intent only on "saving souls" and making saints here and there. She had not attempted to "disciple the nations" and "save the world," that is, to make civilization Christian. And second, because of her unhappy divisions. A church, broken into fragments by national and denom- inational divisions, could not deliver a whole gospel or apply the principles of that gospel with an author- ity and power which should command attention or even respect. Consequently our civilization, like Daniel's image, rests on feet "part clay and part iron"; it is partly Christian and partly frankly pagan. As such it is bound to crumble. Our task is to make a partly Chris- tian civilization more Christian. There stand in the face of this task three "impossi- blists," to coin a word which must carry its plain mean- ing. One is the blind individualist, the conventional Christian, who does not see the task at all. Another is the pessimist who resorts, as pessimists always do, to the apocalyptic and eschatological. He is the second adventist or the premillenarian. He faces the task and gives it up. It is hopeless to human vision and by any human means. Even human co-operation is useless. Only a miracle of Divine intervention can accomplish anything. The Lord must come Himself with His attendant angels to destroy utterly this present hope- The Prophetic Program for Today 89 lessly rotten world order and establish *'a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." All we can do is to wait, with eyes upon the skies, for His coming. The third "impossiblist" is the impracticable ideal- ist, the visionary, the man with a panacea, who has his own plan of the heavenly Jerusalem, the celestial civili- zation, with complete specifications down to the last gold brick in the pavements thereof. He keeps his eyes fixed on that far goal, that perfect ideal, and sees nothing between. He expects to attain it somehow by a "tour de force," a human miracle, an immediate leap or flight. He will consider or take none of the practical steps on the long path that reaches from our present position to that perfect state. Now the idealist is indispensable. For the ideal is the light of all our seeing. It illumines the path by which we must proceed and progress. Unless we have some dim vision at least of our goal, we shall never arrive anywhere. Jesus dealt preeminently in ideals. He was always giving "counsels of perfection." But we must be practical idealists as He ever was. The skilful pilot knows his port, "the haven where he would be." But he tacks this way and that, following the windings of the only possible channel and making use of every wind and current which will carry him towards his final goal. So Lincoln wrought. To change the figure, the engineer of Christian reconstruc- tion must work as the construction engineer of the railroad who rebuilds a condemned bridge, piece by piece, without interrupting traffic or, if possible, delay- ing a single train ; or as the architect at Winchester who did not dem'olish and rebuild de novo, but set his new foundations under the walls of the existing structure. For we must advance by evolution and not 90 The Prophetic Ministry for Today by revolution. The immediate question for us is, as Dr. Coffin has put it, "not what can be achieved in the centuries or the millennium that lies before us, but what can be practically accomplished in the next five or fifty years of our own ministry." I have therefore phrased our prophetic task not as "the Christianizing of our civilization," its complete and ideal conforma- tion to Christ's vision of a Kingdom of heaven on earth, — that is the ultimate goal — ^but a more Christian civilization, a civilization in certain immediate aspects and along certain practicable lines more closely ap- proximated to that ideal. What is the present practical and concrete program that lies immediately before us? There are two outstanding problems which challenge our civilization in this day of reconstruction. They challenge also the Christian church for the interpreta- tion and application of her gospel thereto. One is the creation of a new international order which shall secure, or at least make more possible, permanent peace between the peoples of the earth ; and the other is the creation of a new industrial order which shall end or at least mitigate the perpetual conflict and strife from which labor, capital, and the public, most of all, sufifer today. Let me illustrate my theme by some practical appli- cations to these two challenging opportunities. Universal peace — it has been the dream of the prophets. The vision is spread fair upon the pages of Isaiah and Micah. It is the ideal and goal of the Christian religion. And the nearest approach towards that goal and ideal ever made in the realm of practical statesmanship is without doubt the proposition to establish a league of nations. It has been so recognized by the Christian church throughout the world today. By official utter- The Prophetic Program for Today 91 ances nearly every branch of that church has set its seal of enthusiastic approval upon the plan. Already the league has been set up, has been func- tioning successfully in many fields for the reparation of the havoc made by war, shows signs of growing vitality, potency and permanence and gives promise of increasing efficiency. The large majority of the civilized nations of the earth have accepted member- ship in it. Only Germany, Russia, Turkey and the United States are outside — a sorry company for us to be in. The league cannot be a full success until we take our due place in it, and I believe we shall, as soon as time has cooled down our partisan passions, our personal jealousies and hatreds, and when also we have recovered from our present slump of reaction, with its narrow selfish nationalism, with its Prussian slogan, "America first," '*Amerika uber alles," and have regained our characteristic and natural national ideal- ism. Doubtless the present league is very imperfect — all things human are. But it is capable of amendment as all things human are. What are the duty and mission of the Christian church and her prophetic ministry in the presence of this challenging opportunity? It is not our function to advise or counsel concerning the constitution or mechanism of the league. That is the business of ex- perts. But I believe it is our duty, with all the force we can summon to advocate and urge in our pulpits and out of them the principle of the league, its estab- lishment and the entry of our own nation into it at the earliest possible opportunity. For this is a matter which rises far above the plane of petty party politics into the realm of the Christian ideal. It is our mis- sion also to inculcate and establish so far as we can those fundamental moral, spiritual and Christian prin- 92 The Prophetic Ministry for Today ciples upon which alone such a league can stand secure, and to create the moral and spiritual atmos- phere in which alone it can function. For the league is but an instrument, a machine. But who are to wield that instrument and run that ma- chine? If the familiar brand of European diplomatists with their selfish commercialistic national ambitions, their tricky policies and secret treaties, or if the equally familiar breed of American politicians, God save us, for only He can, league or no league. The success of the league depends upon statesmen of vision and of the largest good will who will instinc- tively and habitually put the well-being of the world above narrow and selfish nationalism, — in a word. Christian statesmen — and only religion can produce such statesmen, and only religion can create such a public opinion, establish such political standards and sensitize such a public conscience as shall demand such statesmen for such tasks. Again, — we are living in the poisonous aftermath of the war and still breathing its atmosphere of hatred. There is the hatred of vengeance and fear like that of France, the most pitiable and forgivable of all. But there is still a remnant of what might be called con- scientious hatred, religiously cherished by many leist they lose the capacity for righteous indignation — *'lest we forget." Surely it is the duty, the privilege and the opportun- ity of the Christian church in all lands persistently and insistently, in season and out of season, to preach down hatred and to preach up the Christian doctrine of forgiveness and reconciliation. The late Lambeth Conference set a notable and practical example in this direction by unanimously pleading for the admission of Germany to the league at the earliest possible opportun- The Prophetic Program for Today 93 ky. No league, however perfect, can function at all in an atmosphere of hatred. And again it is peculiarly the function of the Church to preach a true, spiritual internationalism. She alone can do it. For in the first place in spite of the fact that she is still broken into fragments by national and denomina- tional divisions, she is practically the one v^orld-wide and international organization on earth today. The ties of ''one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all," still bind together into spiritual unity, however loose as yet, Christian brethren of all names and all races. It is our business to develop, strengthen and vitalize those ties until they become living bonds, the nerves and arteries of the one body of Christ. And in the second place she alone has the real gospel of true spiritual internationalism. Has she not been proclaiming for nigh these two thousand years, "There is no longer Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, but Christ is all and in all?" Is it not a fundamental principle of her gospel that all men are brothers under the universal Fatherhood of God and therefore all nations and races are members of the one Divine fam- ily of humanity? Selfish considerations of mutual financial interest or mutual fears and advantages can bind the nations together into an unstable precarious union, ready to fly apart at the slighest provocation. Only spiritual and vital unities can realize and create the one body of humanity. And w^e need not fear the loss of the precious values of nationalism with its patriotism and development of our particular national and racial genius and ideals. The loyalties of life need not quarrel. The lesser loyalties need not antagonize the larger, but 94 The Prophetic Ministry for Today all can mutually strengthen each other. The better a family man one is, the more he loves and cherishes his own home and domestic life, the better citizen he ordinarily is, for the larger stake he has in the com- munity and the more devoted he is to its welfare. Exactly so, — the more conscious a nation is of its characteristic ideals and national values, the more it has to contribute to the fund and capital of the com- munity of the nations. "Into the celestial city the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor." So shall it be with a true internationalism. None are called on to give up or surrender, but to develop and contribute. And we have a peculiar opportunity for cultivating that true internationalism here in America. America is the laboratory of such an internationalism, the melt- ting pot of the world. In every city and town, ay, al- most in every village and parish, we are confronted with that problem and it is a challenge to the Chris- tian church and her ministry. It is not the dull, stupid and often fatal business commonly called "American- ization" to which we are summoned. That often means teaching "the stranger within our gates" to despise his own birth-right and inheritance and accept an often grossly materialistic commercial order as the most glori- ous civilization on earth. And this process of so called Americanization is frequently characterized by an in- sufferable arrogance born of a pitiful national conceit rather than a true national pride, a settled conviction that we have all to bestow and nothing to receive, that we are to do the uplifting and they are simply grate- fully to consent to be uplifted. It is a deadly business. The Christian program' must be utterly different from that vulgar ordinary program. It begins with the human approach, the simple friendly brotherly The Prophetic Program for Today 95 attitude. Those people are not simply tools to be ex- ploited in the upbuilding of our industries, the in- crease of production or the enlargement of our bigness in population and then flung aside. These are our ordinary commercial, social and industrial approach and attitude towards the foreigners, further poisoned with social contempt We label them "Hun- kies" and "Dagoes," use them and forget them. But to the Christian these are "men and brethren" not only "in the flesh" but often "brethren beloved in the Lord," sharers in a common Christian faith and call- ing. And there must be also an appreciative estimate of the precious values they have to contribute to our common civilization. They have fully as much to give to us as we have to bestow upon them. Even the humblest of them is frequently more richly endowed with certain cultural and spiritual values than many a common vulgar American, — inheritances, instincts and acquirements in music, art, poetry, idealism and mysticism, which we often sadly lack and sorely need. It is our part humbly and gratefully to receive and cherish the gifts they bring us. It is only by such a human and friendly approach and by such a real and just appreciation that social prejudices can be broken down and inter-racial brother- hood and a true spiritual amalgamation can be realized in this melting pot of America. And the Christian spirit alone can accomplish it. If we achieve such a Christian inter-racialism here, its consequence and contagion shall spread throughout the world in a mighty impulse towards Christian inter-nationalism. Yes, Christian America can and ought to lead in the establishment of that spiritual internationalism without which no league of nations or any other politi- cal device can function successfully for universal peace. 96 The Prophetic Ministry for Today Again, there is the challenge of the industrial situa- tion. It is an universal and identical problem through- out the world. Everywhere the disillusionment that followed close upon the heels of the war, the crushing disappointment of all the high hopes and ideals which inspired them to take up arms and sustained their unparalleled endurance, has thrown the masses into ominous reaction. Everywhere restlessness and dis- content, sometimes sodden and despairing but more often mad and reckless, are upheaving the very founda- tions of our industrial system and our social order. The world was to be made safe for democracy, uni- versal and permanent peace were to be established, opportunity and equity were to be opened to the small- est nations and the commonest men, — and behold wars rage, conflicts between peoples and classes deepen and the old order continues with its tyrannies and oppressions. The masses everywhere are in revolt, sullen and smouldering, or flaming and passionate. Every intelligent thinking man, especially every one familiar with history, must be aware that we face one of those secular and world-wide social movements that every now and then sweep through human history. As in the middle ages, there was the irresistible rise of the merchant and financier, the tradesman and in- dustrialist, until the feudal rule of kings and nobles was swept away or faded into a mere shadow of a form, and the present domination of the business man over the modern world was established, so now we are witnessing a similar movement. The masses of workers, the proletariat, are rising, here slowly and there suddenly, but everywhere surely, to assert and make good their claim to their rights and their place in the common life. There are two extreme positions confronting each The Prophetic Program for Today 97 other in this movement. In Russia the autocracy of the privileged and powerful has been overthrown, but at the same time all the ideals of democracy seem to have been abandoned and a triumphant but, I believe, tem- porary autocracy of the proletariat (a minority at that) has been established. It cannot last, I am firm- ly convinced, into the world even of the near future. In America we seem to be witnessing the opposite extreme. If we may trust the propaganda of many of our manufacturers' associations, the deliberate plan of many of our captains of industry is to seize the oppor- tunity afforded by business depression and industrial unemployment to crush once and for all the ambitions and aspirations of labor, right or wrong, smash all its organization, reduce it to a mere horde of helpless in- dividuals, and then maintain impregnable the sacro- sanct system of "things as they are," the absolute autocracy of the privileged and powerful, wherein all, from the President of the Republic to the commonest laborer, must submit to the dictation of a constantly concentrating obligarchy of financiers and captains of industry, the invisible government. The open shop movement, or so called American plan, looks to many like a transparent camouflage to cover this purpose, and has been so declared in certain official utterances of various ecclesiastical bodies. It is a most dangerous position and policy to take, fully as dangerous as that of Russia. It is like sitting on the crater of a volcano about to erupt, attempting to suppress an earthquake, or putting weights on the safety valve just when the hottest fires are kindled under the boiler. American labor, though sometimes unreasonable in its demands, often narrow and tyran- nical in its organizations and still more frequently badly and dishonestly led, has on the whole been con- 98 The Prophetic Ministry for Today servative. It has confined its attention to technical questions of hours, wages and conditions. It has never adequately studied economic principles and never ven- tured into the political field. Repression and suppression w^ill certainly drive it into economic and political action, (a not altogether undesirable possibility) and may further drive it into the madness of radicalism, which God forbid. This will bring revolution instead of evolution. There is a way out which we shall all finally be compelled to take — Russia and America alike — and that is the substitution of some workable constitu- tional democracy in industry for either the autocracy of the proletariat or the autocracy of the privileged and powerful, a just sharing of the products and profits of industry between capital, labor and the public, and a due allocation of authority and power in the deter- mination of the policies and the conditions of industry among those who invest money and brains and those who invest life and labor, and also to the government which represents all the rest of us, whose welfare and very existence are now constantly imperilled by the persistent quarrels of the two greedy partners in pro- duction. England is already making sporadic experiments on a nation wide scale in this direction of industrial democracy. For example, there is the organization of the building trades into local councils and a national trade parliament, each composed of equal numbers of employers and employees. In America similar schemes are being tried out in individual industries by far- seeing, open-minded employers and corporations. And the reformers on every side are busily drawing up plans and specifications for such an industrial democracy. The Prophetic Program for Today 99 What are the office of the Church and the function of her ministry in the face of such a problem and opportunity? Again I answer, — noit to attempt to ad- vise or counsel as to the details of plans and organiza- tion, not to try their hand on the construction of the machinery. That is the business of experts. But it may be our duty and privilege to stand boldly for the principle of industrial democracy. It is inspired by the mind and spirit of the gospel of which we are stewards. And it is certainly our business to inculcate and establish as far as we can those moral and spirit- ual principles upon which alone industrial democracy can stand stable and secure, and to create the moral and spiritual atmosphere in which alone it can func- tion. As I see it, there are three outstanding principles which alone can give power and success to any system of industrial democracy — indeed which alone can make it possible. First there is the simple but absolutely indispensable temper or attitude of good-will. The promise of peace came on the angels' song on Bethlehem's plains to "men of good will." That was the very first note of the message of Christianity. And peace in any realm of life can come to men of good will only. Where there is such good will on all sides alm^ost any system and order can be worked passably, though some are better expressions of good will than others and consequently will work better. And no system however perfect will work without good will. Industrial democracy absolutely depends both for its inception and its effectual working upon such good will on both sides. And it is the primary business of Christianity to create good will. President Hyde sums up the whole Christian message in the phrase "the gospel of good will." That must be its primary mes- 100 The Prophetic Ministry for Today sage and mission in the present imperfect industrial and social order if it is to be tolerable at all. That must still more be its message and mission if a more Christian order and system are to be established. We must have men of the largest, patientest good will among our captains of industry, our men of re- sponsibility, power and leadership in the industrial world. Particularly at this critical epoch we need men at the top with open minds and sweet reasonableness, men who shall face squarely the situation, recognize that we are surely confronted by a changing order and adjust themselves rationally, sanely, and if possi- ble, sympathetically thereto ; above all, men who shall appreciate the just and righteous aspirations and ambi- tions of labor and meet them at least half way with "'the grace of congruity." But the present temper and mind of many of our industrial leaders, at least of those who are most blatant in the present propaganda of organized capital, seem to be just the opposite of good will, open-mindedness and sweet reasonableness, though, thank God, there are many noble exceptions. This is a reproach to the Church and her ministry. We have many of these men, perhaps the majority of them, in our congregations, and if our preaching and teaching and worship have not induced and pro- duced in them this simple first principle of elementary Christianity, then our work has been a failure and our religion of no effect. But there must be good will on the other side also, a recognition by labor of the difficulties of the employ- er's position in the flux of a changing order, a sensitive discernment of his good will and sweet reasonableness, whenever evidenced, and a willingness to meet it half way with open mind, trust and co-operation. And good will here is naturally rarer to find and The Prophetic Program for Today 101 harder to cultivate than on the other side (though some of the recent utterances of several of our labor leaders and the policies they have set forth show more of that spirit than is evidenced in most of the propa- ganda of the other side). I say good will is naturally rarer to find and harder to cultivate in the ranks of labor, first, because there is generally a lower sitand- ard of intelligence and education ; and second, because of an ingrained suspicion, instinctive and deep-rooted, sometimes seemingly irrational but often the slowly ripening and bitter fruit of a long experience of in- justice and even deception. It is peculiarly difficult to cultivate that spirit and temper in American labor union circles, first because its policy has been so nar- row and technical. It has lacked the breadth of view, the clearness of vision and the comprehensive econo^ mic and political grasp that have specially character- ized British trades unionism, particularly the labor party. And also, because in this country labor organi- zations have been almost exclusively confined to mere- ly manual laborers. The intellectuals have been largely shut out. There has been no union of brain and brawn such as is found in the English labor party. And particularly the Christian element has been con- spicuous by its absence. In England professional men, teachers, physicians, statesmen, publicists and ministers are found in abundance in the ranks of the labor party. People like Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and the whole Fabian group are among its leaders. And as for Christian influence, the platform of the British Labor party issued during the war bears ample testimony to that. Its very language is saturated with the phraseology of St. Paul's epistles and of the gos- pels, and its fundamental principles are distinctively Christian. 102 The Prophetic Ministry for Today The absence of the intellectuals and of Christian leaders from the American labor movement is due tlo itwo causes. There is fault on both sides. As I have already suggested, there has been narrowness, intolerance and bigotry on the part of labor, an unwill- ingness to recognize any work as labor which is not actual manual toil engaged in material production or service. And also there has been indifference on the parit ol intellectuals, and particularly Christian leaders, toi- wards the essentially spiritual ideals underlying the whole labor movement and a consequent aloofness therefrom. Only here and there pioneer souls like Stelze have gone into the movement. That is a shame- ful reproach to the Church and her ministry. American labor is assuredly going into the economic and the political field. It will probably form the nucleus of the new panty so' sadly needed in this crisis when both of the dominant parties have so evi- dently gone to seed, if not fallen into decay, and are today without any real principles, issues or leader- ship and particularly without hospitality or even toler- ance for any progressive or forward-looking minds. If the new party is to be a rallying ground and refuge for true liberalism, it must have intellectual leader- ship. And if it is to make for peace and progress and a true industrial democracy, it must have the Christian temper and spirit of good will and reasonableness. That is one of the greatest challenges that confroilts the Church and her ministry today. That, then, is the first and the absolutely essential contribution which our Christianity must make towards a more Christian industrial order — the temper and atmosphere of "good will." It is only in that temper that any approach tO' the solution of our prob- The Prophetic Program for Today 103 lems can be made from either side, and it is only in that atmosphere of good will that any system of indus- try can function, to serve and produce for our needs. So far all Christians and even social reformers, re- actionary, conservative, liberal or radical, would go with us, I suppose. But we must go farther if we really follow Christ. If the industrial order lis tO' become "more Chris- tian," yes, if it is even to produce enough to serve our needs, ay, as I believe, if it is to stand and continue at all, co-operation in service must somehow be sub- stituted for competition for profits and wages as its paramount end and motive. Competition as honest rivalry and honorable emulation may be praiseworthy, may even be the "life of trade." But competition as a "scrap for the swag" is fatal to all concerned, especi- ally the public. It is a perpetual wonder and miracle that the people are fed, clothed, warmed, transported and served at all in our present system, when the com- mon factors, labor and capital, spend so much of their time, mind and energy, not in the processes of produc- tion and service, but in quarreling over the loot. Com- pute the costs of strikes and lock-outs and you will be amazed that industry can still go on working and pro^ ducing with that crushing burden upon its back. Under the stress of the war the whole competitive system confessedly broke down. It was utterly un- able to meet the demands of the tremendous crisis; and the government was forced in large measure to eliminate competition for profit and enforce by law co-operation in common service. The needs of peace are just as vital and far more continuous than the needs of war. It is the business of religion to preach continually to both combatants the old trite sermon, "Sirs, ye are 104 The Prophetic Ministry for Today brethren" and it may become the business of g^overn- memt to take both parties by the scruff of their necks, knock their heads together and preach in sterner tones, "Ye are fellow-servants of the common-weal, and the commonwealth cannoit and will not longer endure your overweening lordship nor yet your perpetual strife. You are 'not drafted to fight each other for supreme domination but you are under bonds to serve us." And that brings me to my last point, the crux of the whole problem of a more Christian civilization, — the supremacy, ay, the paramountcy of service as the motive of all activity and of all life. If there is to be any real democracy in industry, it must be founded on that Christian and Gospel prin- ciple of the (supremacy of service. But the chief enemy of this service motive, — that which practically destroys it — is the mercenary motive, which makes profits, wages, dividends, the supreme end and purpose of all activity. The two motives aTe essentially irreconcilable. Jesus put that fact uncom- promisingly when He said, not "ye must not," but "Ye can not serve God and mammon." The emphasis is on the "and." Tested by that test, by far the larger part of our civilization, particularly our whole com- mercial and industrial system, is frankly and unasham- edly pagan and heathen. The other and smaller por- tion of our social order is already redeemed and Christianized at least in its acknowledged standards and professed ideals, however it may fail in individual instances to attain those standards and achieve those ideals. It is entirely a question of the order of an occupa- tion or life, — what things it puts first, the hierarchy of its motives, — ^as to whether that occupation or life is Christian or heathen in spirit and character, whether The Prophetic Program for Today 105 it belongs to the Kingdom of God or whether it is "of the world worldly." Jesus established the infalli- ble test when He said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and the righteousness thereof, and all these things (food, drink and raiment, the material basis of mere living) shall be added unto- you." Judged by this standard, whatever occupation or life puts first as its supreme end and objective and finds therein its supreme motive, the service of beauty, truth, right- eousness or human need, and regards the material returns for such service as means to that end, — coal under the boiler to keep the wheels going, — that occupa- tion or life is Christian in spirit and character. It is in the right Christian order. Whatever occupation or life seeks first the material returns of service, whether as profits, dividends or wages, and makes service a mere means to that end, that occupation or life is heathen in spirit and character. It has inverted the Ghristian order. It has things just upside down. It is inot a question of what you do, but of the motive with which and the spirit in which you do whatever you do. Under this test the boundary line between the King- dom of God and the Kingdom of Mammon is readily traceable. There are certain occupations and pursuits, certain whole planes or regions of our social order that fall more or less naturally into the Christian realm, and others into the worldly realm. It is not a ques- tion to be determined by individual instances, but by prevailing and accepted standards. There are some in every sphere who rise above the established and oo'n- ventional sitandards of their sphere and others who fall below. But the standards remain and determine at least the ideal of the sphere. Dr. Walter Rauschenbush in his great book, "Chris- 106 The Prophetic Ministry for Today tianizing the Socifal Order" has set forth a masterly exposition of this theme and illumined it with a wealth of illustration. To that great book, probably familiar to most of you, I must refer you. I can in the brief time remaining to me only summarize in a few hasty sentences some of these illustrations. The mercenary or profit motive once ruled in the primitive family group. Polygamous wives were breeding mares. Sons and daughters were profitable live sitock, raised respectively for the wiar market and the labor or marriage market (the last practice seems to be not wholly obsolete today in some families). And the father or sheik was the sole stockholder or monop- olistic owner of the trust. Compare the Christian family of today. The law of love has driven out the law of profit. Polygamy has given place to monogamy. The despotism of man, fortified by custom, law and economic possession, has passed into approximalte equality between husband and wife. Children are no longer rated sim.ply by the standard of eco'nomic valuation, sO' that the crippled, the weak, and even female infants are exposed to death as they frequently are in heathen lands. They are rated according to the standard of human oir personal values, so that the tenderest, most solicitous care is generally bestowed upon members which have the least economic worth. Based on equal rights bound together by love and respect for individuality, governed under the law of mutual helpfulness, ex- hibiting economic co-operation and a satisfactory com- munity of interests, instead of the old exploitation by its head, the family today furnishes the most natural home and congenial atmosphere for Ch^nstian life and fellowship. The ideal Christian family is the puresit and highest manifestation of the Kingdom The Prophetic Program for Today 107 of God yet realized on earth, by no means excepting the Church : and it is the microcosm, the working model of what the social order, of what civilization itself would become, could the profit motive be sub- ordinated and the motive of mutual service be estab- lished in its rightful supremacy, — that is, if civilization were Christianized. We recognize instinctively and naturally that the mercenary motive utterly spoils certain professions and vocations. The artist must be inspired solely or chiefly by the love and service of beauty. If he seeks primarily material reward, he produces only cheap chromos, trade posters or that unspeakably grotesque and demoralizing art, the comic supplement. We sus- pect the physician who advertises. We set him down as a quack and are generally right in our judgment. Why do we so instinctively form this judgment? Be- cause the true physician is supposed to be actuated primarily by devotion to his science and human ser- vice. The commercialized practice of medicine is a deadly evil, as we all recognize. The scientific investigator pursues truth for its own sake and its human values. Agassiz, tempted into commercial life by glittering promises of great mate- rial rewards but saying, *T have not time to make money," is an echo of Jesus in the wilderness spurning the offer of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, saying "Get thee behind me, Satan." And the teacher or preacher who should confess that he took his job wholly or chiefly for the sake of the salary, would be adjudged guilty of profanation of the ideal of his calling and high treason thereto, if he were not first committed to an imbecile asylum for entering such a profession with any anticipation of making money therein. Yes, in all these professions 108 The Prophetic Ministry for Today and vocations we have esitablished the supremacy of the ideal motives, beauty, truth, human service, "the Kingdom of God and the rightness thereof." Individual derelictions from the established standards serve but as a foil to bring out those standards in bold relief before the common judgment. But in business, commerce, trade, industry, ithe primacy of the mercenary motive is commonly recog- nized without even a question. It is openly, frankly and unashamedly confessed. Why does a man go into business? Why to make money, of course. For what else should he be in business? Why does the laborer work? Why for wages, of course. Service rendered to society is incidental, the means to that end. And often the rule in both classes is the least possible service rendered for the largest returns attainable. I When shall we awake tO' the fact that the mercenary j motive spoils the making of pig iron, the running of I railroads or the digging of ditches as surely and as I fatally as it does art, literature, medicine, science, teaching or the very preaching of the gospel itself? When shall we recognize that this primacy of the profit motive is the chief source of all the dishonesty, graft, tyranny and oppression that characterize so largely our commercial and industrial systems? This question is the supreme challenge to and the crucial test of our social gospel and prophetic ministry today. Whether or not we have a clear and commanding vision of the Kingdom as the goal of the gospel is determined by our aJttitude towards this question. As Dr. Coe has put it, "Is a system in which one works for wages and another for profits fundamentally Christian, anti-Christian or neutral? Are its motives Christian? What is the effect upon character of the re- peated exercise of its motives? What is the actual The Prophetic Program for Today 109 outcome as respects the relations of man to man? Here we are concerned with the meaning and value of life. Our question leads straight back to Christ and straight forward to any vision that we dare to indulge concerning the coming of the Kingdom of God. It is not answered by any position we may take upon such special problems as hours of labor or pre- vention of industrial accidents : much less can any talk of a fair wage so' much as touch it. It is the great parting of ways for the Christian ethics of society. The ministry must take upon this question an open stand that is definitely Christian or lose its soul !" But how shall the primacy of the mercenary or profit motive be disestablished in that heathen portion of our social order — industry, trade, commerce, business, — and the supremacy of the service motive set up, that our civilization may become "more Christian?" Socialism suggests a way. It proposes to construct by law and statute an entirely new social and econo- mic system ; to abolish the capitalistic constitution of industry and commerce and substitute some form of collectivism not yet clearly defined, to eliminate the profit motive entirely by abolishing private property at least in large degree. Thus it would put co-opera- tion for service in the place of competition for profit. Socialism of some sort may be the final form of society at which we shall eventually arrive. We seem to have been drifting rapidly in that direction lately, especially under the pressure of war necessities. More and more regions of our business and industrial world which wxre once in private hands and under the law of private gain have become socialized and govern- mentalized and organized for public service. The edu- cational system and postal system are illustrations. The express business is following through the parcels- 110 The Prophetic Ministry for Today post. And behind it press in the same procession the telegraph and telephone, the railroads and all public utiHties, perhaps also certain of our great monopolized and trustified industries. How far the process will go no one can yet predict. And we must all confess that the regeneration of individuals, one by one, will never bring in the per- fect society, the Kingdom of God. We need for that a new system, one that shall foster, aid, and inspire individual righteousness instead of discouraging and suppressing and all but making it impossible, as our present system confessedly does. Socialism may be sketching some of the lines for this new system of society, the oudines of the ground-plan of the new Jerusalem, the City of God. But even if our civilization should be completely socialized, it would not thereby be Christianized. It might become a materialistic Utopia without being in any sense a Kingdom of God. And unless it be Chris- tianized, it will lapse into a heathenism far more de- graded and cruel than our present system. And our last state shall be worse than the first. The social aim of religion and the Church is quite distinct from, and far profounder than, that of socialism. Socialism approaches the problem from without and below. It deals with machinery and forms. It seeks reformation, that is, the reforming or reshaping of the outward plan and fabric of our civilization. Christianity and the Church, so far as she represents Christianity, like their Founder, approach the problem from within and above. They seek not a reformation only, but a regeneration. They labor and pray and preach and strive not simply for a new form for soci- ety but a new heart, a new conscience and mind in society. Without these, the most perfect social, econo- The Prophetic Program for Today 111 mic, and political system would be as an engine with- out steam, ay, as a beautiful body without an animat- ing soul, doomed to death and decay, or possibly that same body possessed by a demon. You cannot have even a successful and workable socialism without socialized men and women and a general social conscience and public opinion. With such socialized men and women and with such a regnant social conscience, almost any system can be worked. And if the present system proves unfit to the new spirit, that new spirit will work out its own system. That system may turn out to be socialism as our socialists have planned it and again it may not. It may be something vastly better. But with that new heart and conscience, with that new socialized spirit alone is religion concerned. As we have already seen, certain regions and realms of our civilization have already been lifted out of the slough of commercialism, have already been inspired with the ideals and standards of the Kingdom, even in the midst of our present constitution of society. Why may not the same thing be possible for business, commerce, and industry? Here is the call of the new social conscience of the day. And in that call rings a supreme challenge to our prophetic ministry. Whatever system be established in our industrial and commercial realms, we can not be content or silent until the supremacy of service be set up and rule therein. Thus and thus only can our social order be Christianized. Thus and thus only can "the Kingdoms of this world'* become the ''Kingdom of our Lord and His Christ." VI Critic — Reformer — Prophet THUS far in the course I have dealt with the message and mission of the prophetic ministry as a whole, both in the general character of that message and mission and also^ in their particular applica- tions to the times in which we live. Now for two lectures I would turn to our individual ministries and consider the question as to how we are personally to deliver that message and fulfill that mission, each in his particular field of service. I would speak especially today of the mind, temper and spirit of the true prophet of God. There are three distinct ways of approach to those great social problems with which it is our business, as heralds of the Kingdom, to concern ourselves — three dis- tinct attitudes towards them. The first is that of the mere social critic. He some- times has his use — as a kind of gad-fly to sting torpid consciences into sensitiveness. But generally he is worse than futile, for he often stings the victims of his criticisms into the blindness of rage rather than into sensitiveness of conscience, and he is generally destructive rather than constructive. The second is that of the would-be social reformer, who should be, but frequently is not, the expert, the wise and thoroughly equipped economist, sociologist, indus- trialist, and statesman, who knows how to set up the machinery through which alone a true social or industrial order can operate. 112 Critic — Reformer — Prophet 113 And the third is that of the prophet who deals with the dynamics rather than the mechanics of the problem, the moral and spiritual principles that must underlie any true social or industrial order, the motives which alone can inspire its right working, the atmosphere in which alone it can function. The last, of course, is our only true role, though many preachers of the social gospel essay or get entangled in one or both of the other roles. Jeremiah once, perhaps on a blue Monday, sighed, "O, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place for wayfaring men that I might leave my people and go from them"; and then he proceeded to arraign and denounce in his characteristic fashion the social sins of Judah. As George Adam Smith has keenly observed, the prophet is not longing for solitude in some hermit's cell or anch- orite's cave. The word he uses means a Khan or cara- vansery — an inn on the highways — the trunk lines through the wilderness — a public house thronged with travellers and guests for a night, a "lodging place for wavfaring men." That is, Jeremiah is longing for hotel life! Now a hotel is an ideal study or work-shop for a mere social critic. It is a kind of watch-tower where he may observe society from a safe coign of isolation. He may look on at its life without being a partaker thereof. He may fling his gibes at its foibles and aim his shafts at its sins without any sense of common responsibility and guilt or of any obligation for constructiV-e or remedial service. I should think that "peacock row" in the Waldorf-As- toria, in the days when it was the fashionable hostelry of New York, would have been a favorite resort for the problem or society novelist seeking material or atmos- phere. He could mentally photograph and record for his pages its vulgar ostentation, its beefy, flabby, overdressed 114 The Prophetic Ministry for Today and underdressed women (as Wm. Morris says, "Not clothed like human beings but upholstered like arm- chairs"), its coarse, hard, sensual men, its inane talk — and then present these as a true picture of society as it is. He could sharpen his epigrams, envenom them with his caustic wit, indulge in a perfect riot and orgy of sar- casm, and then collect his royalties for a most enjoyable, amusing and popular Hterary entertainment. That is all the usual problem novel is. Something like that Jere- miah was longing for — to be a social critic, a problem novelist rather than a prophet of God. But as a prophet he belonged to his people and they belonged to him. He was one with them in an indissoluble spiritual soHdarity. He bore the burden of their sins on his very soul in the redemptive travail of his prophetic mission. And that burden was breaking his heart. He saw the vision of their ideal as the people and Kingdom of God. The word of the Lord, the message of repentance and salvation, burned in his bones like a consuming fire. It was a constant agony, a daily crucifixion, — this mission of a prophet to, and saviour of, his people. He longed to shake off. the burden, to loosen the bonds of that spiritual solidarity, to get rid of the burning word and the intoler- able mission. He would stand aloof and apart from his people and from the corridors of a Khan, a hotel, watch in isolation the passing procession of life. Then he could unburden his heart and be at ease. Then he could hurl his denunciations with a kind of grim satis- faction and even joy. This is the most subtle and persistent temptation which besets the preacher upon whose soul God has laid the burden of the social gospel, the gospel of the Kingdom. It has spoiled and wrecked many a brave and zealous ministry of the Word. The minister can live the broadest, deepest and most Critic — Reformer — Prophet 115 human life possible to any man, or he can live the nar- rowest, most professional and isolated life possible to any man. His vocation offers him peculiar opportunities in the one direction and brings him peculiar tempta- tions in the other. All depends upon whether he takes his opportunities and realizes them, or whether he yields to his temptations and becomes their victim. Every call- ing, trade or profession has, of course, its strong tendency towards a professional or class consciousness. It natur- ally secretes and crystallizes a professional or commercial code of ethics, a system of taboo and etiquette which is likely to become a substitute for the fundamental and vital principles of morality and righteousness. But still more it is apt to confine its votaries to a certain limited range of human associations. The business man, for instance, knows best, and sometimes only, those with whom he daily deals, his associates in trade, industry and com- merce. The herd instinct gets him. He shares their points of view in all things, he thinks their thoughts, he accepts without question their standards. We fault the socialist for preaching class consciousness to the work- ing masses, the proletariat. But there is no class con- sciousness which in intensity, exclusiveness and petrify- ing power can compare with that established by long habit of life among the master class. That class acts instinc- tively and as a unit on almost all occasions and questions. In this narrow realm of human association, the average business man is rigorously shut. He meets the same set of men in the office, at the club and on 'change. Even when he goes into society for recreation, amusement or human intercourse, he still meets the same men and their women who are of the same type, only more so ! Outside this narrow circle lie the great crowds of the common folk, "the people," the plain ordinary men and women who "love, hate and have children," who toil and 116 The Prophetic Ministry for Today play, laugh and weep, sin and struggle, bear burdens and do mean and noble deeds, that is, the great mass which best and most fully expresses our common humanity. But when the average business or. society man comes to the edge of his narrow circle of ordinary associations, he finds a great gulf fixed, so that they who would pass from thence to him can not, neither can he really reach or touch them. The mutual antagonisms and suspicions between employers and employees and the system of military discipline and officialdom sometimes established in business or industry often constitute an impassable wall between the two groups on either side; and as for social distinctions, they often turn classes into castes. The most earnest and human, those who most desire to get into sympathetic human touch with their kind of all stations and positions, often stand helpless before these barriers. The society woman serving tea to the shop girl at a church social, with an officiously patronizing conde- scension and the "smile that won't come off," the employer slapping the man at the lathe on the back and calling him by his first name, trying to be "hail fellow well met" with him — are they not pathetic exhibitions? They are earnest and well-intentioned, perhaps really longing and yearning to break the insulation and establish the real contact. But for the most part no vital spark of real human fellowship passes from one side to the other and both parties are conscious of the failure. The relation is strained and artificial just because it is conscious. To be natural and human, it must be unconscious. Now just here is the minister's incomparable advan- tage and opportunity. There is no calling, trade or pro- fession, save possibly the physician's, which gives such a chance to the right kind of a man to establish natural, human points of contact and sympathetic understanding with all "sorts and conditions of men," as the Christian Critic — Reformer — Prophet 117 ministry gives. If a man does not cease to be a man when he becomes a minister (as some, alas, do), if he keeps his naturalness and humanness, if he does not let his professionalism, his "cloth" become an insulation, — social distinctions, class-consciousness divisions, and above all antagonisms and suspicions melt away into thin air and leave him an unbroken vision of a common hu- manity with a common human nature, — yes, common sins, needs, joys and sorrows. There is no life, save as I have said, that possibly of the physician, which can so readily break through all limitations, crusts and con- ventions and so naturally, unconsciously and humanly, interpenetrate and intermingle with the common human mass as the Hfe of the minister who is a "human" as well as a "divine." If he has a real church and not a mere "ecclesiastical social club," he has gathered about him, and ministers to, men and women of every position and kind. His pastoral work and social life carry him everywhere. He has free entree upon an established basis into what is technically called "society" and he knows both its occasional and many finenesses and its pitiful and often despicable weaknesses. He associates freely with the men of wealth, of power and position in the business world. He knows their limitations of view and of judgment, their frequent lack of Christian vision and spirit, but also their equally frequent nobility of mind and temper and wistful longings and aspirations after a more Christian and human social and industrial order. He knows the lowly, — sometimes "holy and humble men of heart," sometimes men low in their ideals, bitter in spirit, unreasonable and cantankerous in mind, passionate, poisoned and prejudiced in temper. He has equal access to and welcome in the mansions on the avenues and the tenements in the slums. And if he be a true minister of Jesus Christ, imbued with the mind and spirit of his 118 The Prophetic Ministry for Today Master, you can discern no difference in his attitude of mind, method of approach, or manner of conversation and dealing when he calls in either home. Like his Master, he passes from grade to grade in society without any consciousness of the transition. Jesus never fawned ; Jesus never patronized. To Him a man was always a man and nothing more, no matter what his position or possessions, and thank God, never anything less, no mat- ter how low he had sunk in the social scale or conventional estimate. He approached every human being with the same delicate, sensitive and instinctive reverence for the infinite value, dignity and inherent possibilities of the human soul. And so will every true minister of Christ. The congregations under my care as Bishop, whenever a charge becomes vacant, will frequently send me word, "Please send us a mixer." The word has become an offense unto me. It suggests some sort of an agricultural implement for getting the fertilizer into the soil or a bread machine for mixing the yeast with the dough. Too often it connotes in popular understanding a somewhat loud-mouthed and vulgar talker, a "slapper-on-the-back" and "caller-by-first-names" without reserve, manners or dignity, who sometimies by such methods temporarily "gets" the man of the street. It often matters not to some vestries and congregations whether their minister be intellectual or spiritual, educated or godly, so he be a "mixer." But the word has a real and worthy meaning land I know of no exact substitute for it. The true (prophet and preacher must be a "mixer." He must mingle with human life, all the human life he can touch and reach — mingle with it naturally and humanly until he has a sympathetic understanding of it all, its whole range of weakness and strength, of needs and sins and sorrows, as well as of virtues, aspirations and joys. The true minister must feel with the heathen poet, "I count Critic — Reformer — Prophet 119 nothing human alien to me." In that sense of the word, Jesus was the greatest "mixer" the world has ever seen. It is only such a "mixer" that can be the true prophet.\ It is only such that can preach the larger gospel, the| gospel of the Kingdom — ay, it is only such that can safely be intrusted with that gospel. It costs much to be such a "mixer." It cost Jesus the travail of His life and in the end His cross. To enter into the solidarity of all human life, to bring into it the vision of the ideal, the will and the Kingdom of God, and all that vision involves for the personal life and the social order — and then to meet constantly the moral stu- pidity and spiritual blindness of the average man and woman of all classes, to encounter perpetually their utter lack of response to the vision, their wilful ignorance, — ay, to be hurt to the very quick of his soul by their selfishness, meanness, hardness, sometimes apparent devil- ishness, — ah, that lays upon the heart a constant burden that is like to break it ; it makes the minister a "partaker of the sufferings of Christ," the travail and toil, ay, the agony of His redemptive work. It costs to be a true prophet of the Kingdom. But it is worth the cost. There is the opportunity of the minister to live the widest, deepest, humanest life possible to a man. But there on the other side is his temptation to live the narrowest, shallowest, most artificial and exclusive of lives. He may become the professional ecclesiastic, the "man of the cloth," and sometimes the "cloth-man" with no blood in him, red or blue; the automaton who goes through the motions of pious proprieties and etiquette and the conventional round of ecclesiastical performances and deals in cant phrases ; the kind that is usually caricatured on the stage and in cheap novels. But he is too obvious a figure to need much serious warning against him. 120 The Prophetic Ministry for Today But there is also the minister who habitually views life, not from the center of the~arena, but f rom the sid e lines, whether from the boxes or the bleachers. He has no first-hand knowledge or experience of the game or conflict by actual participation therein or by personal contact and association with the players and contestants. He sits among the idle spectators, and generally in a position, either deliberately or unconsciously chosen, which gives him but partial views, distorted, out of the perspective of the whole. Like Balaam, the hired prophet, he takes his stand at the bidding of his patrons, now on this point of view and now on that, when he may see but the "uttermost part of the people" but cannot see them all — that he may curse those he sees with a right good conscience. For he is a curser by profession. That is the rnain business of social critics who pose as prophets of the social message — it can hardly be called a social gospel for it consists chiefly not in good news, the vision of a new, ideal order, but in the denunciation of the existing system. It may be the proletariat or the plu- tocracy which is the object of their wrath. In the present mood of extreme conservatism and reaction which so largely possesses American business and politics today, when the campaign for the open shop is on (which appears to many but a slightly camouflaged movement for the breaking up of all labor organizations, reducing labof to a horde of helpless individuals at the mercy and dicta- tion of the employing class and crushing all labor's ambi- tions and aspirations, good, bad or indifferent), at such a moment great are the rewards of divination for the pro- fessional cursers of the masses. Fulminate vigorously against them from your pulpit (you can do it safely, for they probably have few or no representatives in your pews), and you will have your sermons published and widely circulated, perhaps new pews rented at higher Critic — Reformer — Prophet 121 prices, an increase of your congregation by new attend- ants from among "the best people"; your finances will prosper, possibly your salary be raised or a call will come to a "larger field," that is, to a wealthier and more fashionable "ecclesiastical club" which pays a higher salary. You may even be invited to dinner in a magnate's mansion, put your feet under his mahogany above the salt, grow familiar with the "seats of the mighty" and get "entree" to the most exclusive circles of financial society. There are Balaams who go further and deliber- ately "hire out" as regular diviners and cursers to the Balaks of political campaign committees or manufactur- ers' associations. But there are also Balaams who are, sometimes con- sciously, but generally unconsciously, in the service of King Demos. To be sure, Demos has few shekels to give and no fat positions. But he has flattery, reputation and glory to bestow. The professional curser of the plutocracy stands out in the limelight as a tribune of the people, a champion of the oppressed, a mighty warrior and captain in the warfare for justice and righteousness. And subtler than all these coarser rewards of divination, more appealing to more refined and earnest souls, is the easement of conscience, the unburdening of the heart, the satisfying sense of having fulfilled one's whole mis- sion as a prophet of the social gospel in the mere utter- ance of denunciations. Unfortunately the minister's calling lends itself all too readily to isolation from the main current of the common life. The minister can easily make his study his castle. Securely fortified there, he can select such intellectual pabulum, such books and current literature as best agree with his mental digestion and tastes, perhaps his preju- dices, and when he does venture out, he can choose such human associations as are most agreeable and con- 122 The Prophetic Ministry for Today genial. He sets himself upon his heights of Baal whence he can see but ''the utmost part of the people," the autocracy of the plutocrats and their sins; he can not see all the people, especially the proletariat and their sins, and then proceeds to conjure with his divinations. He forges his thunderbolts during the week in his study, and then he launches them from the absolutely impregnable citadel of the pulpit. He knows there can be no return fire as there is in the open forum. There is no answering back to the pulpit except according to the book as in the Episcopal Church. His weekly course is a beaten path between the study and the pulpit. He knows not the big highways of life where all the people travel. And the burden and sum of his message are apt to be criticism, denunciation, cursing. There is no positive vision of a nobler order, no setting forth of the constructive princi- ples of that order and consequently no inspiration to high endeavor. No one really looks to him for light and lead- ing, but only heat and thunder. At best he is simply a shrieking whistle or an exploding safety valve which lets off the surcharge of social wrath, that otherwise might j burst the boiler. The prophet of the Kingdom degenerates ^into a common scold, and bye and bye his people get i tired of him and finally get rid of him. Forthwith he poses as a martyr along with the prophets of old. He even thinks he is sharing the cross of His Master. God forbid that I should imply or suggest that all modern martyrs and cross-bearers are like this. There are plenty of them who are genuine, and the conflict now imminent and deepening will doubtless call for more. But some at least who reckon themselves in their ranks are simply public nuisances whom the public has finally disposed of. Such is the prophet of the Kingdom who degenerates into the mere critic, the problem novelist, the hotel guest Critic — Reformer — Prophet 123 who views and gibes at the passing procession of hfe but takes no part therein, the common scold. Another temptation of the prophet is to play the role ^ of the practical social reformer. I do not mean that the prophet should never give his influence or lend a hand to such practical social reform as commends itself to his judgment when such reform is actually inaugurated. But the preacher or prophet is generally ill-fitted to design the machinery itself or even run it, and when he attempts it, he generally makes a mess of it. And further, when he devotes himself entirely to such work and makes the burden of his message the proclamation of some partic- ular scheme of social reorganization, becomes the preach- er of a nostrum or panacea, he has left the center of the situation where all the springs of inspiration lie under his hand and lost himself in "the details of the periphery," as I heard it once phrased. He has deserted the power-house to run a lathe in the factory. He has abandoned his proper sphere, the sphere of spiritual dyna- mics, to engage in social mechanics. The temptation is besetting and alluring. The course it beckons to looks so rational and reasonable. It calls from creeds to deeds, from words to action. Are we forever to be men of mere speech? Shall the whole output of our lives be simply a mass of words that fade quickly, if not instantly, out of the memories and minds of our few hearers? Can we not, and shall we not, do something to leave our indelible mark, our sign manual, upon the changing fabric of the social order ? There are many who have yielded to the temptation. There have been estabHshed here and there labor churches, single tax churches, socialist churches, and the like, and I presume now we shall have churches of the Holy Industrial Democracy. But if you will follow the history of these cases you 124 The Prophetic Ministry for Today will find that almost invariably such ministers gradually fail in spiritual power and leading among the people, and more than that, many, if not most, of them finally lose their personal Christian faith, their vision and grasp of spiritual realities, and ultimately desert the ministry altogether for the field of practical politics or social agitation. May I be pardoned a personal allusion by way of illus- tration? I know full well the pressure of this temptation to desert the post of the prophet and devote oneself to the tasks of the practical social reformer. For am I not a single taxer, a convinced disciple of Henry George? If you have met any of the species, you know the type. No movement for social reform, not even the most idealistic form of socialism, has at its heart a more consuming moral passion, or before its eyes a fairer, more fascinating and inspiring vision of a redeemed and ideal society than the single tax movement. Consequently its disciples are votaries and devotees, inspired with the spirit of prophets and martyrs. To many of them single tax has become a religion, and the only religion they know. Whether there be a God or no they may not be sure, but they are sure that Henny George is His prophet, God or no God. Consequently the single taxer is apt to be the most intense if niot fanatical of all reformers, insistent and persistent in season and out of season. Let him once get hold of you and, like the ancient mariner with the hurrying wedding guest, he fixes you with his glitter- ing eye until he has told his whole tale. He simply knows that he has, if not the panacea for "all the ills flesh is heir to," even the measles, at least the basic principle upon which alone any equitable distribution of wealth, the products of labor and industry, can be established and consequently the primary means for Critic — Reformer — Prophet 125 the relief of the oppressed, the abolition of injustice and the opening of opportunity to the dispossessed. If his theory be not the complete solution of all prob- lems, it can at least untie the knot in the end of the string which must be untied before any of the knots higher up can be dealt with. Now in many of these convictions I share to a large degree. And there come in my ministry moments of depression and despondency, when the Church seems so slow and stupid, so torpid and blind — just a great cumbrous, dead ecclesiastical machine; — and its saints look like Pharisees and scribes, absorbed in dogmatisms and formalities, or else narrow, wooden' personal pieties and proprieties, questions of etiquette and good form rather than of real righteousness and vital godliness, and particularly utterly oblivious to the clamant wrongs and sins of society and utterly unconscious of, if not hostile to, Christ's commanding vision of a Kingdom of Heaven, a celestial civilization upon earth. I say there come these moments of de- pression and despondency when I am sorely tempted to abandon the Church and her ministry and fling myself with whatever little ability and energy I may have into this particular practical social reform. At least there I might do something instead of merely spending my very soul in words, futile and fruitless exhortations, pointing to visions w^hich nobody sees but the visionary, *'the mad seer." I might give a little push towards the goal along a practicable and open path. I might make some definite impression, however small, upon the structure of society, touch, however slightly, somewhere the plastic and changing order towards a closer conformity to the ideal of the Kingdom. I am sure that temptation comes in greater or less degree to every minister who has the 126 The Prophetic Ministry for Today social vision, whatever be his particular conception of practical reform, and many, as we have seen, yield to it. Perhaps therefore my own experience and method of dealing with that experience may be of some slight avail to such tempted ones. I have always in such moments of despondency tried to bring myself resolutely back to a sense of my "high calling of God in Christ Jesus." I am called to be a prophet, not a mere reformer, and the objective of the prophet is regeneration — a new heart, miind, spirit and will in men and society, not simply a new form and shape for the structure of the social order. I must deal with motives, not methods ; principles, not policies ; spiritual dynamics, not merely economic mechanics. And there- fore while on the public platform I have always claimed my full right and liberty as a man, and as one who has made some slight study of practical economic and social problem's, to expound and commend my particu- lar method of reform, I have never preached the single tax from a Christian pulpit. I do not find it set forth as an essential part of that Gospel of which I am appointed a steward. In the pulpit I stand as a ■messenger and interpreter of God, His will and His word, and an ambassador of Christ, a herald of His Kingdom. There I must plead and strive with the souls of men, ay, agonize and cry aloud, **'if that I may by any means" sensitize their torpid and callous consciences, kindle in cold and indifferent hearts a consuming passion for the largest righteousness, open blind eyes to Christ's vision of a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and then send them out to find it, and build it, with the conviction that inspired the crusa- ders — "It is the will of God." One may find his way by the radical reforms of socialism, or single tax, an- other by what may seem to him the more reasonable Critic — Reformer — Prophet 127 and practicable method of gradual amelioration of social conditions. But all shall be of one mind, one spirit and one will, pressing towards the goal of the Kingdom. The Church and the pulpit must be the power-house and dynamo, the preacher the fireman if not the engineer, and then let economic experts, polit- ical and social technicians design and run the lathes in the factory that shall turn out the tools and forms for rebuilding society. To sum up the distinction between the social re- former and the prophet: The prophet must see whole and steady. He must not so lose himself among the trees that he fails to see the forest. He must not be so absorbed in the details of practical reforms that he loses vision of the King- dom. He must stand with and follow His Master, and, in all the complications of the problems that con- front us, share His "view from above and approach from within." I can not repeat it too often. His I concern is with motives, not methods; principles,] not policies; dynamics, not mechanics. Above all, he' must keep alive and paramount in his own heart and the hearts of his people that which the social reformer so often loses but which is the very Divine energy and guarantee of the whole process, without which it must eventually fail or end in a mere pig^s paradise of physical comfort and well-being instead of a Kingdom of Heaven on earth, — viz., faith in God. He must preach and proclaim a living God — a God who cares, a God who wills, ay, a God who labors and strives and agonizes together with us in and through all our human aspirations 'arid struggles, not only to bring each one of us to the "perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," but to bring the whole travail- ing and groaning creation to that new birth, described 128 The Prophetic Ministry for Today in such mysterious terms, "the manifestation of the Sons of God," "the glorious Hberty of the children of God," "the glory that shall be revealed," — which can mean nought less than Christ's vision of the Kingdom. To get men to trust in such a God, to rest, refresh and recreate themselves in Him in their moments of despondency and despair, to share His purposes and His will of righteous- ness and to labor unceasingly without haste and without waste for those purposes and that will as fellow workers with God, absolutely sure of the final issue, whatever the present failure, because He is with them, — that is the chief function of the prophet in the regeneration of society and the establishment of the Kingdom. It may often seem a slow, indirect and unpractical function beside the direct, immediate and palpable aims, efforts and sometimes results of the social reformer. But it deals with the very vital spring and dynamic of the whole strug- gle and process without which they must lose their sus- taining inspiration, their hope, and above all, their ideal. So much for the critic and the reformer as contrasted with the prophet. Now what is the prophet and what is his function ? I have already suggested both by compari- son. I can only in closing sum up these suggestions. He cannot be a spectator on the side lines — a hotel guest who jibes at the passing procession of life in the corridors — a mere social critic, problem-novelist — least of all a com- mon scold. He must realize his oneness in the solidarity of all that is human. He must not be content to bestow merely his pity upon the sufferings of the oppressed, nor his scorn and denunciations upon the sins of the oppres- sors. He must be inspired by compassion, sympathy in the full deep sense of those words, so commonly used sup- erficially. Com-passion, sym-pathy, — those pregnant Latin and Greek words, — they both mean literally, suffering together, enduring together, sharing in a common travail Critic — Reformer — Prophet 129 of pain and agony. Compassion — sympathy — in this full- est and deepest sense — they are the distinguishing note of the Christian's God, the object of his faith and worship. The gods of Olympus may sit on their high peaks of isolation and gaze with indifference or "inextinguishable laughter" upon the toil and travail, the sins and the sor- rows of humanity. But the very meaning of the incarna-| tion is that our God has forever identified Himself with all humanity. He became not merely "a man" but Man ; He entered into the soHdarity of humanity; He knew our griefs and carried our sorrows and bore our sins; He took upon Himself in His work of redemption the whole crushing burden of human sin and its consequent suffer- ing. And that vision of God is older than the Gospels. It is the Great Unknown who sings of his God, "For He said, 'Surely they are my people, children that will not lie,' so He was their Saviour. 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 and carried them all the days of old." Mr. H. G. Wells started out to discover a new God as a sub- stitute for the unsatisfactory God, particularly the Trinity of the Christian faith. He did the job to his own satis- faction in "God, the Invisible King" and "The Undying Fire." He found a compassionate God, a champion God, a sharer in all the common aspiration and struggle, ay, the travail and toil of human progress. He seems to me simply to have rediscovered the Second and Third Per- sons of the orthodox Trinity but has not had the courage and vision to take the daring leap of Christian faith and identify this companion God, this God of compassion and sympathy, with the First Person, the Father, the "Veiled Presence" as the heart of all things. We affirm that it is this God who is the heart and soul of the universe. And the prophet, the interpreter of such a God must be 130 The Prophetic Ministry for Today godly, — that is, Godlike. Not otherwise can he speak for, interpret or reveal Him to men. He can not stand aloof from human Hfe and ease his heart in criticism and de- nunciation. He must know all life from the inside. He must, so far as he can, enter completely into the heart of all human experience. He must, like his Master, know the griefs, carry the sorrows and bear the sins of his people — ay, those sins must become his distress and agony, not simply the easy objects of his scorn and wrath and the targets of his denunciations. While he may strive with his fiery invectives to sting and burn callous consciences into sensitiveness, he must still love the sinner while he hates the sin. The spiritual havoc and ruin in the souls of the selfish, greedy, hard oppressors of society must be to him as great a grief as the misery and suffer- ing of the oppressed, and that is impossible to the mere critic and scold. ^ Ah, it costs to be the prophet of such a God, the God of com-passion and sym-pathy, the champion and companion God, the Saviour revealed in Jesus Christ — it costs infinitely. The burden of the Lord laid upon the spirit of His servant is sometimes a heart-breaking, soul- crushing burden. But it is only by the travail and toil of such vicarious suffering that either souls can be saved or society redeemed and the Kingdom of God set up on the earth. And the prophet can not be a mere social reformer. As I have said before, the business of the reformer is re- formation, re-shaping. His concern is with the necessary changes in the outward fabric and order of society, if it is to function smoothly and effectively. The business of the prophet is regeneration, the change in the spirit of society if it is to function justly and righteously. The one manipulates the "details of the periphery," the tech- nique and mechanics of the process. The other speaks Critic — Reformer — ^Prophet 131 to heart, conscience and will, the springs and sources of spiritual dynamics. The business of the reformer is the practical adminis- tration and execution of laws and statutes, methods and systems. The business of the prophet is the spiritual, interpretation and inspiration of the whole process. His supreme function is vision. The prophet is the seer. He must see things whole and see them steady in the light of the eternal and make others see his vision. For "where there is no vision, the people perish." The ordinary reformer naturally and frequently degen- erates into a confirmed materialist. There is no more sodden materialism, for example, than that which char- acterizes much of our popular socialism. The dynamic it trusts to is economic determinism. The goal is a state of society where everybody shall have plenty to eat and to drink and to wear, a mansion on the avenue to live in, a limousine to ride in and a free theater to go to. The prophet sees the ideal society as the Kingdom of Heaven in this present world, where the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven, where His justice and righteousness reign and His law of love has forever abol- ished the law of greed and selfishness. Above all must the prophet keep before men the vision of God, — not the serene transcendent God of the old theology, who sent His Son into the arena of the human struggle and Himself stayed at home in the security and isolation of heaven, viewing from the far impregnability of the celestial ramparts the swaying of the strife and the agony of the combatants — but the imminent champion, companion God, whom Mr. Wells has tried to interpret to us and succeeded so partially, whom Isaiah pictured long ago, the conqueror from Edom with garments dyed red in the blood of the conflict, the hero-God, passionate and compassionate, aspiring and inspiring, who leads 132 The Prophetic Ministry for Today His hosts to battle and shares it with them — ay, the God within the soul, the unfailing spring of inexhaustible strength, unquenchable hope and indefatigable patience, "the undying Fire." If we are to make men see the vision of such a God, it may be necessary to give up some of our old-fashioned orthodox conceptions of an immediate and magical omni- potence. But the gain in the sense of Divine sympathy and inspiration, and the consciousness of Divine indwell- ing and strength is worth the small sacrifice of formal orthodoxy. And the unshakeable trust, begotten of that consciousness of a companion and champion God, in the ultimate and complete triumph of righteousness and love, gives a clearer, more reasonable and nobler conception of moral omnipotence, the only kind of omnipotence that can deal with the free but rebellious wills of His children. I do not see how the godless reformer can keep up the fight for social justice and righteousness. H the whole conflict is but a chaotic clash of blind forces and equally blind human greeds and passions, there is no hope of ultimate victory and no ground for the warrior to stand on. But if each individual soldier in his small corner of the field can realize that he is a member of an innumer- able army with the Lord God of Hosts as Captain and Leader, if he can sense his small and particular struggle as but a skirmish in God^s eternal warfare with the evil, if he can believe that behind all this apparently chaotic conflict is a Divine plan of campaign, and sustaining it, the power of a moral omnipotence, then he can fling him- self into the fight with the crusader's shout, "It is the will of God." Then he can "endure as seeing Him that is invisible." No failure can break his ultimate and confident hope. "Truth may lose many a battle but never a campaign." No accumulation of disappointments can wear out his Critic — Reformer — Prophet 133 persistent patience. He fights with the "elan" of certain victory. "For this is the victory that overcometh the world — even our faith." And the paramount function of the prophet is to inspire in men everywhere that faith. VII Prophet and Priest TWO figures stand out in sharp contrast and often in mutual antagonism on the pages of the Old Testament. As I said in my first lecture, they are reconciled in the ideal of the Christian Church as set forth on the pages of the New Testament. They must be reconciled in the practical work of the Christian Church today, if she is to fulfill her full mission, and they must also be reconciled in the individual ministry of each of us if he is to ''make full proof of his ministry." Those two figures are the prophet and the priest. At the risk of some repetition of what I have already said in my first lecture, let us glance briefly at the two figures, their missions, methods, points of view and the mind or spirit which inspires them, respectively. The prophet is an individualist with a largely social mission and message. That is, he has an individualistic background with a social outlook. He stands alone with God. He receives his message, not by tradition or authority, but by direct inspiration. The burden of the Lord is laid upon him. The Word of the Lord burns in his bones like fire. He is not an ofificial of an institution. He is a man of God. He has a mission from the Lord but no commission from the Church. Whenever and wherever the Divine afflatus falls upon him, then and there he speaks "as the spirit gives him utterance." Yet, as I have said, his outlook is social though his background be individualistic. He rarely deals with the 134 Prophet and Priest 135 individual soul, except it be to convict the conscience of a guilty king whose sin involves the whole social fabric. His message is chiefly to society — the nation, the church, the world. His commanding vision is a redeemed peo- ple, not a saved soul here and there — a regenerate society, and ultimately a world wherein the will of God shall be done on earth as it is in heaven, — that is "the Kingdom of God." His aim is reconstruction but he frequently begins with destruction. His motto is, "Behold, I make all things new." He has little respect or concern for the old, especially as crystallized in custom or tradition. He recks little of human authority because he is conscious of a Divine authority. He is often the enemy of the settled order or accepted disorder of society. He turns the world upside down because to him it is wrong-side up. He is apt to be more of a revolutionist than an evolutionist. Progress to him proceeds by cataclysms or seismic convulsions rather than by the slow orderly pro- cess of gradual substitution and edification. The rotten bridge must be destroyed and a brand new one built in its place, rather than the old one reconstructed bit by bit without interrupting traffic. He has little concern for and often little conception of the vital principle of historic continuity. Yes, the prophet has his natural limitations, the "defects of his virtues." But he is an absolutely indispensable element in the life of society and the soul. An old theological professor once said, "Heretics are the salt of the church, but it requires so much vitality to be a heretic and alas, I have not enough vitality left to be an effective heretic." Even so, prophets are the salt of society. Without them society would stagnate and rot, at least it would become petri- fied and paralyzed, "fixed in an eternal state." 136 The Prophetic Ministry for Today Vitality, power, inspiration, vision — these are the qual- ities and the gifts of the prophet. He is the channel of ever new and fresh influxes from on high, and these are the sources and springs of all progress and growth. The priest has a social background and frequently a more or less individualistic mission. He is an official of an institution, the ecclesiastical organization. He conforms to its standards. He accepts and wields its authority. He runs its machinery. He is bound fast in historic continuity to the past by a nexus of tradition and custom. These bonds may be made either living arteries that carry down the moral and spiritual values of the past, the inspiration and vitality of its experience, or dead ligatures that fetter all rightful freedom. The priest's message is the message of a corporate authority. It is the teaching and judgment of the Church which commissions him. Again that message may be interpreted as the expression and crystallization of the common spiritual consciousness and conscience of the body of believers, the communion of the saints, the sum- mary of the revelations that have come through the life and experience of the Church. As such it may become at once the stimulus of the torpid conscience and soul of the individual believer and also the corrective of the idiosyncracies of his one-sided and partial moral judg- ments and spiritual experience, the errors of the personal equation. Or that message may be made hard and fast dogma and arbitrary authority which suppress the free- dom of the reason and the liberty of conscience. And the priest's mission was largely to persons instead of to crowds as was the prophet's. He dealt with state ceremonies and public worship, but also with individual consciences and souls. He was a father-confessor, a casuist and spiritual director. Men brought to him the Prophet and Priest 137 tales of their guilt and the burdens of their hearts along with their sin-and-trespass-offerings. Often his method of dealing with sin was mechanical and formal, but often also, we must believe, vital and real. Eli, the high priest, for instance, notices the distress of one sorrowing woman and first rebukes her supposed sin and then comforts her real sorrow. The priest was a guide in the way of righteousness, a teacher and preceptor in the art of right living and fellowship with God. Often, doubtless, his casuistry was formal and meticulous, but often also genuine and spiritual. For under most conventions and precepts, customs and observances, which are the secre- tions of a long and common spiritual experience, lie, more or less latent or patent, conscience and principle and spiritual wisdom which the true priest may make real and vital. So Micah interpreted the office of the true priest. "The priest's lips should keep knowledge and they should ask the law at his mouth. For he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts." Out of the priest alone comes the pastor. The lonely, solitary, isolated prophet could never be the ancestor of the shepherd of souls. The priest has his palpable limitations, the defects of his virtues. They are so common as to be commonplaces. They are stressed so often and so strongly from the solemn pages of the Old Testament to the glib talk of the modern curb-stone philosopher, that they call for but bare mention and not explication. He is apt to set the letter and the form above the spirit. His precepts sometimes hide principles rather than reveal them. Convention and custom, ceremony and observance, take the place of con- science. ReHgiousness is made a substitute for right- eousness rather than a means thereto, as in modern days churchianity for Christianity. Especially he is often such a friend of the past that 138 The Prophetic Ministry for Today he becomes a foe of the future, the inveterate enemy of progress. His rule is apt to be, "What's new is not true and what's true is not new." He is the champion of con- servatism, the "stand-patter" in all ages. It was perhaps a "priestly" scribe who put immediately after our Lord's prophetic utterance, "No man putteth new wine into old wine skins," the sarcastic interpolation, "and no man having tasted old wine desireth new, for he saith the old is better," or as the Greek word might be translated, "the old is good enough," the motto of the "stand-patter" always and everywhere. From the unmitigated rule of the priest in religion, politics or society come always, paralysis, petrifaction and decay. But the priest has his incalculable values, his immeasur- able and indispensable use and service everywhere, if the priestly temper, office and function be rightly and reason- ably developed and balanced. He alone can build up and administer the organizations and institutions of religion; and while organizations and institutions may become the intolerable tyrants of the spirit, they are the indispensable and efficient instruments of the spirit for the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God. The prophet is frequently too far ahead of the column to be a leader of men. The priest may lag in the rear. He may become mere ballast and brake. But on the other hand, if he be possessed of or even touched with the prophetic spirit, he may be just far enough ahead and yet just close enough in touch to be the most effective leader. He may at once interpret and inspire the common con- science and common spiritual experience. He may make conscious of itself, and at the same time lift, that public opinion which so potently moves and rules the masses of men. He is the true conserver of values. When the wind and the fire and the earthquake of prophecy have. Prophet and Priest 139 swept over an age, a people, a church or a congregation, we need the true priest with the prophetic sense to gather up the scattered values, old and new, and build them into an habitation of the new and yet old spirit. For such a priest is the scribe of the Kingdom, "bringing out of his treasures, things new and old." He alone can bring the future into touch with the past and weld them into a vital unity. He can assess the values of both, reject and select, and out of such chosen materials set up that order of "use and wont," of custom and convention, if you please, — of established precept and settled principles in which alone either souls or society can grow strong and wholesome. And above all, he alone, as we have seen, ordinarily applies to the edification of individuals, of consciences and souls, what the prophet preaches to the crowds. And so I sing the praise of the priest, the true and ideal priest. He has an indispensable and invaluable contribution to make to our composite ministry. Prophet and Priest — they stand for radicalism and con- servatism, the spirit of progress and the principle of edi- fication, both absolutely necessary to a wholesome and strong society, church or individual ministry. A friend of mine aptly illustrated the comparative values and rela- tions of these two elements after this fashion : Radical- ism is the growing power of the tree — Conservatism is the bark. Given a tree all growing power with little bark and you have the cotton-wood, lush and lusty but spongy and porous, of no value as timber. Given a tree all bark and little growing power and you have the gnarled, knotty spindling sapling of no use for any purpose. But given a mighty vitality with a tough, hard, close bark, and you have the oak, the monarch of the forest. If you want an illustration of prophecy run wild, go to Hyde Park in London under the shadow of the Marble 140 The Prophetic Ministry for Today Arch. There any one who has a soap-box, a gHb tongue and an alleged idea, particularly a nostrum, may orate to his heart's content to such as he can get to listen to him. There is enormous stimulation in the process, per- haps some inspiration and formation of public opinion that shall eventually become effective. But one feels, after listening for a while as if he were in a whirlwind, a sirocco, a sand-storm, or present at the tower of Babel. And the resultant would seem to be more a confusion of tons,ues than an effective crystallization of public opinion. If you want a specimen of priest-craft in its extreme form, go to a Christian Science meeting, where the ''readers" (not preachers or prophets, mark you) are not trusted to express a single idea or even utter a word of their own. Their message is all set down for them, the ipssissima verba, in the unintelligible jargon of the "faith once delivered to the saint," or in the commentaries thereon sent out with the authority of the central hierar- chy, and the liquescent minds of the quiescent hearers are poured into and set in the prepared and fixed mould. Of course ultramontane Romanism with its petrifying touch upon souls and society alike, and yet its enormous effi- ciency gives the classic example of the priestly ministry at its climax of power and development. And on the other hand, extreme Protestantism, with its unbridled liberty of prophesying, its utter freedom of private judg- ment and even personal revelation, unmodified and uncor- rected by any modest and reasonable comparison with the standards of the common and historic Christian con- science and experience, inevitably crumbles into frag- mentary sectarianism and gives us a rank growth of fanatical, absurd, sometimes unethical and even unmoral, "isms." We have our "two-seed-in-the-spirit Baptists," our "one foot and two feet Dunkards," our "hooks and eyes Amish" and "button Menisse," our Holy Rollers and Prophet and Priest 141 so on ad infinitum et ad nauseam. Protestantism with its one-sided emphasis on the prophetic element in its min- istry has given us many precious gifts, the freedom of the conscience, spiritual initiative, high moral standards and public opinion. It has inspired most of what is best in our western civilization. But it also disintegrates the moral and spiritual forces of our common Christianity into clashing, wasteful, jealous and often contemptible denominationalism, if not individualism, and threatens Christendom itself with dissolution. It is another aspect of the eternal contrast between the efficiency but tyranny of an authoritative autocracy and the liberty but ineffi* ciency of an individualistic democracy. If Christian unity is ever to come, and the Christian Church be enabled thereby to proclaim her whole gospel with compelling authority and so bring to bear upon the problems of the world her united moral and spiritual force, she must learn somehow to reconcile the priestly and the prophetic and conserve the values of both. But it is of this problem in our personal and individual ministries that I would especially speak. Here is a young preacher with the prophetic tempera- ment. He "dreams dreams and sees visions" until he is persuaded that he is a seer. He has a special revelation from on high, a burden of the Lord laid upon him, a word of the Lord that burns like fire in his bones. Per- haps it is a new ground plan and elevation of the King- dom of God, with all details and specifications, a new vision of the heavenly Jerusalem. He will reconstruct society according to the will of God. He flings himself with consuming zeal and fervor into a perfect whirlwind of prophetic ministry. And like all such whirlwind min- istries, it gathers up all that is loose and unattached and makes for a time a great show and noise. He draws about him other like souls, fanatics and visionaries for 142 The Prophetic Ministry for Today the most part, and they constitute his congregation or church. To them he prophesies Sunday after Sunday, but hardly "according to the proportion of the faith." But one message is thundered from that pulpit, the burden of the Lord that has been laid upon the preacher. His sermons are like the variations of a fugue which, after all has but one simple underlying theme. There is no "declaration of the whole counsel of God." Bye and bye he cannot distinguish between the message of the Lord and his own opinions. He becomes self-cen- tered rather than God-centered. And there is no pastoral ministry, house to house and soul to soul. "The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, but swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw." There is no edification, no building up "towards the perfect man, towards the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." There comes first perhaps a break from the general body of believers to which the preacher and people once belonged. The prophet must stand in isolation and inde- pendence if he is to have full freedom for the proclaiming of his peculiar message. He starts a new sect of one congregation. There follows almost inevitably another break from historic Christianity itself with its full-orbed completeness of doctrine. Bye and bye all that is dis- tinctly Christian fades out and the church becomes the church of the Holy Single Tax or this or that brand of social reform, and at last the whole iridescent bubble bursts, leaving not so much as a spot of wetness on the sea. Have we not all seen prophetic ministries that started out with brilliant promise and ended in such sad and complete disaster ? On the other hand, here is a young man of devotion and faithfulness, perhaps of ability and talent, whose theological pantries have been well stocked by some orthodox seminary with canned goods, especially the Prophet and Priest 143 condensed "milk of the word," all bearing the union label of his sect. All his sermons are dilutions of this stock, orthodox soups made according to the recipes laid down in his denominational cook-book. He never thinks for himself. It were heresy to do so. He never expects, and consequently never receives, a fresh inspiration. "The word of the Lord is precious." Therefore, it is all safely locked up in the treasury of the Bible, securely shut up between the Hds of the One Book, with possibly subsi- diary strong-boxes in the commentaries of the orthodox theologians, the decrees of the councils, or the other depositories of the "faith once delivered." There is no open vision. He looks with suspicion upon all modern scholarship. He expects no "new light to break forth from God's word." He consecrates himself devotedly to and labors unceas- ingly in his pulpit and his pastoral ministry for the "saving of souls," according to the accepted plan of salvation. He stands stoutly for church going, prohibi- tion, Sabbath observance, and perhaps stoutly against smoking, card playing and dancing. These are his ten commandments and eight beatitudes rolled into one. He trains his people diligently in the pieties, proprieties and respectabilities of those prudential, personal and self-re- garding virtues which save a man's skin and reputation as well as his soul. He exhorts and inspires his people to give liberally to technical charities and particularly to denominational causes and missions. He builds up per- haps a strong church, solid as concrete, petrified in un- swerving loyalty to fixed standards and in the convictions of accepted dogmas, and often makes it as efficient as a successful business corporation. But "where there is no vision, the people perish." They lose spiritual vitality and initiative, the broad out- look upon the Kingdom, the capacity for generous, self- 144 The Prophetic Ministry for Today forgetting service and sacrifice for the cause of the King- dom, the social message and vision of Christ Himself. They lose all those noble expansive instincts and interests which really make and constitute a Christian soul. They degenerate into "model Christians" perhaps in the dic- tionary sense of the term, "small imitations of the real thing," They tend to become professional Pharisees. and hardened saints whom Christ found to be more diffi- cult to deal with and more hopeless than hardened sin- ners. Social reformers, and the prophets of a more Christian order, know that there are no greater obstacles in the path that leads towards their goal, the very vision of the Christ Himself, no blinder, more obstinate antag- onists of that supreme ideal, than these "blocks of hard- ened saints" who make up some of our most orthodox and strongest churches. Such a minister is the typical priest in his extremest and most pernicious development, no matter how ultra- protestant the body he belongs to and the theology he professes. These two are contrasting examples of the prophet and the priest at their worst — gone to seed. As I have said, if we are to make "full proof of our ministries," we must learn to combine and reconcile the two func- tions, the prophetic and the priestly, at their best. So far, in these lectures, I have been emphasizing and stressing the prophetic aspect and function of the Chris- tian ministry, and I would not diminish that emphasis and stress in the least. It is the most vital and spiritual element in your ministry. Cherish and cultivate it. Hold yourself open and keep yourself sensitive to ever fresh and new revelations from on high. Expect the vision and prepare yourself for it and it will come to you. Accept the burden of the Lord as He lays it upon your conscience and soul, the Word of the Lord Prophet and Priest 145 which He kindles in your heart. Deliver it boldly and bravely, though you have to stand alone against the world. Proclaim the whole counsel of God as you are given to see it, the social message, the gospel of the Kingdom as well as the gospel for the salvation and edification of the individual soul. "Quench not the spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things," even those that are most venerable in common and long acceptance. Be ever ready to attack any wrong or falsehood, however hoary and impregnably fortified by custom and tradition. That is the spirit and function of the prophet, and we need prophets in the ministry, if the church is to ful- fill her mission, ay, if she is to continue to live. But "hold fast that which is good" in things old as well as new. Do not let the prophet in you degenerate into the mere iconoclast and perhaps the spiritual anarchist. Be constructive in your ministry. There is need for the destructive every now and then. The ground must be cleared of ruins and rubbish before the new edifice of truth or life can be set up. But the main objective which must be held steadily before the vision is the constructive, the erection of the new order to be an habitation for the new spirit. Above all, do not let your particular burden or message degenerate into a mere "idee fixe," born perhaps as much of your own prejudices, passions and half-baked notions, with a dash of pride in your own intellectual and spiritual superiority, as of the spirit of the Lord. Jonathan Edwards once shrewdly remarked that the saints can not always distinguish between their consciences and their self-wills. Be willing modestly and reason- ably to compare your particular message with the great consensus of the common Christian conscience and spirit- ual experience, and, if necessary, to modify and correct that message thereby. That is the rational use of the 146 The Prophetic Ministry for Today authority of the Church. It is a reasonable recognition of the fact that perhaps the collective and crystallized wisdom of the saints and the ages is at least as wise as your wisdom. By such means restrain and regulate the prophetic impulses that "o'er you surge and swell." There is nothing more dangerous than the utterly unre- strained prophet, who yields without question or rational self-control to every supposed inspiration, come whence it may. Remember St. Paul's wise dictum, ''The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." "Hear the church," is generally good counsel, especially for the "mad seer." Beware of unnecessary isolations. Sometimes you may be called to stand alone against the world, even the world of your fellow believers, for a truth or a principle which you are convinced is of God. If so, you must stand for it and if necessary die for it. That is the business and calling of a prophet. But I am persuaded many of our cherished and possibly proud isolations are unneces- sary. If we went deep enough, we should find the under- lying unities that bind us fast and close to our brethren. The differences are in modes of expression and methods of application, and not in principle. Cultivate all those possible unities. You must be in touch with the column if you are to be a real leader. Especially you must, so far as possible, be heart and soul in and of the church, if your ministry is to be most fruitful and efficient. Therefore cultivate and strengthen first your unity with the past. Cherish and reverence the historical con- tinuity of the faith and its guardian, the Church. That is the chief reason why I, if you will pardon again a per- sonal allusion, infinitely prefer the ancient historic creeds of Christendom, the so-called Apostles' and the Nicene, to all modern inventions in the way of creedal statements. This is not a c^^ed-making age; we have lost the art Prophet and Priest 147 and when we attempt It, we generally make a bungle of the job. The modern creed tries to be scientific and psy- chological, philosophical and metaphysical, and succeeds in being only awkward, fixed and stilted and impossible. The ancient creed was simple, historic and factual for the most part and therefore adapts itself readily to free- dom of interpretation. The modern creed fits the mood and temper of some particular denomination, congrega- tion or individual believer, and these only for the time being. Like the clothes of a rapidly growing child, it must be constantly altered, a gusset put in here, a skirt or trouser-leg lengthened there, and especially patches put over holes and worn places until it becomes unsightly and unwearable. A creed to me is not a fence to keep straying feet within the beaten paddock of orthodoxy. It is a banner to follow. And a£ Republicans, Democrats, and even Socialists, in time of war follow with the equal enthusiasm of a genuine patriotism the common flag of their country, though they dififer widely in the interpreta- tion and application of the ideals for which that flag stands, so may liberals and conservatives, high, low and broad, declare with common voice is their joyous loyalty to the symbols of their common faith, however they differ in their particular interpretations and applications. And these historic creeds are to me like ancient battle flags, torn and tattered in many a strife and conflict for the common cause. When I say them, I feel Hke draw- ing my sword as the Knight Templar does when he says them. For I am at that moment consciously at one with an innumerable host of prophets, apostles, martyrs, doc- tors and humble unnamed and unknown saints in all the ages who have stood for these same eternal verities. I am in the same ranks, elbow to elbow with my comrades, in that great army of God. I am one with them all in our common and essential loyalties however we may differ 148 The Prophetic Ministry for Today in our particular and personal interpretations. For "fixity of interpretation" is not "of the essence of the historic creeds," the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America to the contrary notwithstanding. Liberty of interpretation within the limits of reason and essential loyalty alone can make those creeds vital and possible. For instance, when I say "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible" the ancient believer and the modern literalist may think of a God, sitting upon some central throne of the universe who moulded balls of fire and flung them into the skies to be suns and moons and stars, and then stooped down to fashion a mud image of a man and breath into it the breath of life; and having finished His job, on the sixth day, wound up the clock, set the ma- chinery going and ever since has been watching the wheels go round, with an occasional intervention to patch up breaks. I may think of an imminent God, forever acting through the processes of life and evolution, the eternal creator and sustainer of a vital universe, the cause and origin and the sustaining Hfe and power of all that is. But we both believe alike in the "Father and Creator." One believer may accept literally the stories of the Infancy as told by St. Luke and St. Matthew. Another may stand with St. Paul and the author of the Fourth gospel, who apparently knew nought of these stories of the virgin birth, or if they did, made no mention and took no account of them. But both may believe with full con- viction in the unique revelation made through Jesus Christ, "the Word made flesh," "the express image of the Father, full of grace and truth," "conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary." When he said "He descended into Hell," my ancient brother may have thought of a literal underworld, the abode of the shades, Prophet and Priest 149 which the crucified Christ visited, to preach to and con- vert the long dead who otherwise could not have heard His gospel of salvation. I may be declaring my glowing and joyous conviction that "Christ leads me through no darker rooms than He went through before," that my Lord and Saviour hath explored the utmost limits of possible human experience and outgone them; that into whatever depths we may be called to go, the Divine Love has gone deeper, and ''underneath are the everlast- ing arms." "Yea, though I make my bed in hell, lo. Thou art there also." When he declared, "I believe in the resurrection of the body" (and he said "this flesh"), the ancient believer was simply asserting his trust in the continuity of personality beyond death as against the dreary unsatisfying doctrine of transmigration or reincarnation, a mere scientific doc- trine of the conservation of energies, as taught by the gnostics. To the ancient believer personal identity was connected inseparably with the body. To me "the body of this flesh" may be but the constantly changing clothing and instrument of the spirit, which alone is the real per- son, — a covering and tool to be cast aside for better ones when the great change comes. But I believe intensely with my ancient brother in the continuity of personal identity as the only satisfactory immortality, and there- fore I can say heartily and sincerely the same words which mean after all the same thing to us both. There- fore, I cherish and rejoice in the ancient historic creeds because they put me in close and vital touch with my brothers, the believers of all ages, the loyal soldiers in the great army of Christ, the communion of saints. This is but an illustration. This is the method many of us have found of realizing the historical continuity of our common faith and our vital unity with the past, through the living bonds of the ancient creeds. You 150 The Prophetic Ministry for Today may have another method. The important thing is to cherish and cultivate that sense of unity with the past, for with it comes a great and indispensable inheritance and inspiration. But above all develop and strengthen all possible unities with your fellow-believers of the present. If there is one message which above all others the Christian Church needs to heed today, it is this message of unity. Particularly our divided Protestantism, with its constant tendency to further disintegration, needs it. This mes- sage of unity is today the "article of a standing or falling church." Because of the lack of such unity, because there was no common voice to declare the whole gospel of the Christ, because there was no common organization to concentrate the moral and spiritual forces upon the task of Christianizing our civilization, national and interna- tional, because the Christian Church was split up into im- potent fragments by narrow nationalisms and pitiful de- nominationalisms, — for these reasons largely the great disaster has swept over the world, all but wrecking the whole fabric of our world order. To repeat Chesterton again, "It is not that Christianity has failed — it has not been tried." But the church has failed, miserably failed to realize and apply her common Christianity, and she has failed by reason of her divisions. And if she is ever to be even partially capable of the great task of recon- struction which challenges her today, she must achieve some effective unity. We are reaching out towards that goal in federations of churches and conferences on faith and order. But it must first be a chief concern and task of our individual ministries. In union is strength. In isolation is failure. The priest stands for union, the pro- phet too commonly for isolation. Beneath the sharp and sometimes jagged peaks of our particular opinions lie the deeper levels, the high table lands, where we realize Prophet and Priest 151 the oneness of our common faith. Let us cultivate to the utmost those unities that bind us first to our brethren in our own particular communion and then to our brethren of all names and connections who share the common Christian heritage. And then let us never neglect that personal pastoral ministry which is ever the function of the priest. Let us never be beguiled by the bigness of our problems and the wideness of our vision in the social gospel into forget- fulness or heedlessness of the needs of the individual souls committed to our charge. So many prophets of the Kingdom are guilty of just that neglect. It is the fatal failure in many an able and devoted ministry. The solitary soul seems insignificant beside the great tasks of social regeneration which we conceive to be laid upon us. It is lost in the mass or the class or overlooked in our rapt vision of the far goal, the Kingdom of God on earth. Let us ever remember that Jesus' ministry was pre- eminently a ministry to individuals. With the burden of the salvation of the world ever upon His soul, with the mission of "discipling the nations" constantly before His eyes, with the vision of the Kingdom commanding all His seeing, He never overlooked a single soul, however insignificant. He ever approached society through the concrete individual as every eflFective ministry must. His best sermons were preached to individuals, the ignorant sinful woman at the well, the timid ruler, slink- ing into his lodgings at midnight; and they are sermons that deal with the largest issues and have changed the thought and life of the world. No need was too small for Him to give His best to it. At the faintest cry of the humblest sinner He would stop in the hurry of His busiest day or under the urgency of His largest task, to give all the time, attention, thought, all, in a word, of Himself 152 The Prophetic Ministry for Today that the case demanded. And that has been true in its degree of every great ministry. Never let the prepara- tion of great sermons, the absorptions of large public service or the fascinating interest of big mass problems tempt you to neglect the humble, faithful but obscure round of your pastoral ministry, soul to soul. Here the prophet must never crowd out the priest. A due and rational respect for authority, the humble and reasonable willingness to test and, if necessary, correct, our one sided idiosyncracies by comparison with the common conscience and spiritual experiences of the saints, a cultivation of the unities which bind us to the past in the historic continuity of the faith and to our brethren in the present in the fellowship of the church, a right loyalty to and estimate and use of the institution, the organization, through which the spirit must function if it is to be effective, a reasonable churchmanship and the faithful pastoral ministry to the individual soul — these are the priestly elements and values that must be cher- ished and cultivated in our prophetic ministry, if we are to "make full proof of that ministry." There is one function of the priest which I can only touch in closing but which ought to have a whole lecture at least, if not a whole course to itself, and that is the function of public worship. I am more and more con- vinced that public worship is the chief characteristic, if not the paramount business, of the church and her minis- try. Perhaps it will be the only function left when society reaches the ideal state and "the Kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our Lord and His Christ." Apparently, according to the seer of the apocalypse, it is the chief business of heaven. The Church and her ministry have through the ages undertaken many functions and rendered many ser- vices now no longer recognized as having any relation to Prophet and Priest 153 the religious institution. The church was the original home of medicine and monks and priests were the only physicians. But now the medical profession has taken over that service. The church was the mother of educa- tion and priests and monks the only scholars and teachers. But the state has largely assumed that task. And it goes without saying that the Church was the original fountain of charity and beneficence, and the clergy the first good Samaritans. But hospitals and asylums, relief and charity, are now mostly public concerns and func- tions. Modern social service largely sprang from the church and was inspired by her ministry. But social set- tlements and movements today are largely secular, some- times too much so when they have lost their primal religious spirit and motivation. On the frontier and in mission fields, the church still largely fulfills all these functions and renders all these services. Even so, the time may conceivaby come when the func- tion of preaching will no longer belong peculiarly to the church and her ministry. It does not exclusively so be- long today. Everybody is preaching, even politicians now and then. In any great crisis "the Lord gives the word and great is the multitude of the preachers." Our late war experience illustrates that fact. The time may not be far distant when we shall have no settled and regular preachers in each church, for "all the Lord's people shall have become prophets." Then we shall call to the pulpit from Sunday to Sunday those who are recognized as having some special message for social uplift and guid- ance or some particular inspiration for the spiritual life. We may turn to the Quaker use. Remember the prophet was originally not an officer of the church but generally a layman with a special call or message. He may revert to type, and we shall no longer have a regularly ordained and recognized prophetic ministry. 154 The Prophetic Ministry for Today But the priest will remain, especially as the leader of public worship. That is a function which the church can never surrender. It is her exclusive business and final reason for existence. I believe there is no art or service more needed and more neglected in modern life than the art and service of public worship. This is com- monly reckoned an irreverent, unspiritual and materialis- tic age and yet multitudes of men, men whom you would least suspect of it, are secretly and often unconsciously hungering in their heart of hearts for that sense of God's presence and reality, his "worthship" which can be realized only in a true public worship. They go to church seeking the satisfaction of that heart-hunger and find only the mechanical rendering of a ritual and liturgy meaningless to them, or the frequently skimped, barren gauche and often vulgar and irreverent extempore prayers of our Protestant churches, but no real worship, and they leave the church rarely to return. The art of worship — there is nothing that needs and demands more earnest and rational study and cultiva- tion today. Protestantism has been particularly neglect- ful of it. Protestantism appeals for the most part only to the intellect and the emotions through reasoned dis- courses or hot appeals and exhortations. Romanism, with all its empty formalities and superstitious cere- monials, has been truer to human nature and its needs. For Roman Catholic worship appeals to the whole man through all his senses — through the eye, in stately cere- monial, symbolic objects and acts and sacred pictures — through the ear, in the most magnificent music ever com- posed — through the touch, in contacts with sacred relics and even the very beads that slip through the fingers of the devout worshipper — even through the nose, in the subtly suggestive fragrance of incense — ^^and through the taste, in sacrament administered — and it all has its Prophet and Priest 155 right and worthy effect. I have seen many a simple peas- ant or workingman, or perhaps most frequently work- ingwoman, kneehng before a tawdry shrine or ugly image, passing her beads through her fingers with an utterly rapt expression on her face, completely absorbed in rev- erent contemplation and devotion, and completely oblivious of the external world with all its distracting noises and sights. However ignorant, crude, supersti- tious her worship, she was conscious of the unseen and eternal. I have rarely seen such a sight in a Protestant church. The ordinary Protestant congregation is care- less and indifferent, distracted and irreverent. The wor- shippers are often self-assertive in their very postures even in the presence of God, sitting or lounging or politely bending their heads. I believe modern psychology is going to teach anew the values, and demand a fresh interpretation and more rational cultivation, of the old instinctive forms and ceremonies of Hturgy and ritual that have come down the ages as a most precious part of our common Christian inheritance. Because they have been abused and have degenerated into empty forms and magical ceremonies, we have lost the sense of their immense inherent values and inspirations. By scorning and abandoning them in our Protestant reaction, we have often "poured out the baby with the bath water." Nothing that has been born out of a deep, long and widespread spiritual experience can be dealt with in so summary and wholesale a manner without irreparable loss. The day is coming when we shall re-value and re- cultivate this lost art of worship, when we shall summon all the arts, music and painting and sculpture, and all the aids of stately ceremonial, noble liturgy and worthy sym- bolism, to make men conscious of the presence, reality and glory, the "worth-ship" of God, through public worship, 156 The Prophetic Ministry for Today thereby to inspire awe and reverence, faith and trust. And men shall go away from such worship shrived, cleansed, uplifted and inspired more than after hearing our most eloquent sermons. Modern psychology, with its law of suggestion and its teaching of mass-impression, gives us hints of how such a worship may be developed. I think it would be well if we had a department in every seminary which should teach the art of worship, so far as it can be taught, in connection both with modern psychology and ancient liturgies and rituals. In the meantime it is the bounden duty of every min- ister to bestow as much thought and care upon his pre- paration to lead the devotions of his people, to conduct and inspire their worship, as upon his preparation for his pulpit. For here the priestly office is at least as im- portant as the prophetic. VIII The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment DR. Henry Van Dyke delivered two notable courses of lectures. One was entitled "The Gospel for an Age of Sin," a gospel evidently needed in every age, for every age is an age of sin ; and another entitled *'The Gospel for an Age of Doubt," a gospel which is possibly more applicable to some eras than to others. We have had our so called "ages of faith" (perhaps some would call them rather ages of credulity) as in mediaeval times, and we have had our eras of searching and not altogether unwholesome skepticism, such as the 19th century. Both gospels are of course needed today. But nei- ther sin nor doubt, though each is prevalent and dead- ly enough surely today, is the outstanding character- istic, the dominant note of the immediate times in which you and I live and preach. That outstanding characteristic, that dominant note, as it seems to me, is disillusionment, with all its natural and spiritually disastrous consequences. I would speak to you today, therefore, on "The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment." I call it a "day," rather than an age, for I hope it will prove a passing mood rather than a permanent state, if the church and her ministry can grasp their message, their gospel for the day and preach it effectively. But while it does last, this mood of disillusionment is most serious, oppressive and appalling. It is practically 157 158 The Prophetic Ministry for Today universal. It pervades all peoples and possesses all classes. It dims vision and paralyses effort. It is peculiarly disheartening to all idealists and reformers. Only the blind materialists, particularly the profiteers, are untouched by it. To all others a night of gloom whose darkness may be felt seems to have spread like a pall over all the earth. If I took a text for the gospel for this day of dis- illusionmenit, it would be that despairing cry of his times which the psalmist voices, "Lord, who will show us any good," with its resolute antiphon which wins its way back to hope again on the wings of prayer, "Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us". That is the answer of the seer and prophet, the man of God, to the despairing idealist and re- former. The messenger of the Lord alone has the answer to this mood of pessimism and he must give it. "All my fresh springs are in Thee, O Lord." For "with Thee is the fountain of life and in Thy light shall we see light." If ever a day needed a gospel, the good news of the Kingdom of God on earth, with all its fresh springs of hope and endeavor, its un- failing and inexhaustible sources of inspiration, its indefatigable faith and unquenchable joy, its irrepres- sible yet rational optimism, it is this day in which we live. "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Just now vast masses of people are wiilthout vision, grop- ing in a murk of bewilderment and despair. It is the primary function and business of the prophet to see visions and to give vision. For the prophet is first of all the seer. "In Thy light, and in Thy light alone, O Lord, can we see ligiht." I believe that religion, the Christian religion, is the only final refuge of o^ur distracted age. The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 159 We are steadily driven towards that refuge by the focussing pressures and necessities, ay, by the alter- native disasters of these turbulent times. Even busi- ness men, who are immersed in material concerns, are feeling and declaring that fact, though they often know only a partial, conventional and utterly inade- quate type of religion. The crucial question is, shall the Church and her ministry apprehend and preach the kind of a gospel which the day demands? Do we understand and can we interpret to these times our Christ and His message? Disillusionment, — that, as I have said, is the char- acteristic temper of our times. It is the natural con- sequence, the bitter fruit of the shattering experience of the world war with its poisonous aftermath. When the maelstrom of that world-war fell upon us, there came with it an unprecedented fervour, a perfect passion of high idealism which seized all peoples. "The Lord gave the word. Great was the company of the preachers." The devil gave the word also, for great was the company of preachers of hatred, propagandists who appealed to the lowest and basest passions. The bitter dregs of their wicked work still fester and ferment among us, producing that hysteria of panic-fear, unreason and repression that still pre- vails, particularly in the United States. But for the most part our preachers were preachers of righteous- ness. And chief among them was our President Woodrow Wilson. Whatever criticisms, just or un- just, of his administration (and I have my own), and wihatever bitter partisan or pefrsonal haitreds now becloud his name, and however we may have turned upon him in wrath as we have turned upon all ideal- ists, I am convinced that he will stand out in the perspective of history as the greatest seer and prophet, 160 The Prophetic Ministry for Today if not the greatest woirld-statesman of our age. Many of his state papers will live as long as our national history lives. They will be declaimed by the school boys of the future. Particularly his definitions and declarations of the moral aims of the war will stand with Washington's Farewell Address and Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, as long as they stand. He proclaimed that we were fighting tO' crush "That Thing" the incarnation of brute force, which threatened to trample under foot and ravage all the precious hard-won values of ages of struggle and so destroy our civilization. We were fighting to make the world safe for democracy. We were fighting to make an end of war, to substitute the arbitrament of reason for the arbitrament of force. We were fighting for the rights of small nations to self-deter- mination and security. Yes, and as many of us felt, we were fighting also for the rights of small men. Labor should get equity and justice and the masses of the common people should come to their own. The old reign of greed and commercialism in international relations with its tortuous diploimacies land its secret treaties should be abolished. And with it should go, we trusted, the tyranny of greed and commercialism in the industrial world. We were fighting for right and liberty and freedom everywhere. In fact we were fighting for a "new wiorld wherein should dwell righteousness." Multitudes of voices took up that message and carried it around the world. It rang from every pul- pit. It was preached to armies in camps and on the battlefields and to the peoples who stood behind them at home. Nations interchanged accredited heralds and messengers to^ proclaim these moral aims and issues of the war. The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 161 It was these ideals that inspired and sustained the whole tremendous conflict. It was these moral forces that finally won the victory over the most monstrous massing of brute force the world has ever seen. It v/as the battle of Armageddon we felt, the arche- typal struggle between the spiritual and the material, and the spiritual won. Under the pressure of this supreme crisis and the appeal of its high demands, we were all lifted sud- denly to the peaks of idealism and far vision. And right nobly we responded to the call — all peoples and all classes in all peoples, — soldiers on the fields of battle, in unprecedented endurance and heroism, and citizens at home, in an unparalleled devotion to ser- vice and to sacrifice. We poured out unstintingly our treasure and the blood of our sons. Brute force was crushed by the power of moral ideals, and the victory came. And then we waited expectantly for the fulfillment of our hopes. Those hopes largely centered upon that greatest vision ever conceived in the realm of prac- tical statesmanship, that nearest approach ever at- tempted in international relationships towards the goal of the Christian ideal, — The League of Nations. In its "provisions for the promotion of international peace and security" it would end war. With its open covenants it would banish the wiles of diplomacy and its secret agreements, and break the reign of national covetousness and greed. In its labor clauses, it would set up throughout the world a common standard of justice and equity in industry. In its man- datory clauses, it would establish a family of nations, with the strong bearing the burdens of the weak. Surely the new world, to be born out of the travail pangs and agony of the great conflict, was on the 162 The Prophetic Ministry for Today verge of birth. It would arrive at 5 :35 A.M. on Nov- ember 11th 1918, the moment the armistice was signed. The millenium would be here. The Kingdom of Heaven would be set up. Then came the crash. We were dashed from the peaks of vision into the bottomless pit of despair, amidst the debris of broken hopes and wrecked ideals. The millenium did not arrive on time. The subtle diplomatists and unprincipled opportunists of Europe bound and fettered the vision of the idealist, the League, to an impossible treaty replete with unreason and sown with the seeds of future discord and strife. Vengeance, hatred, greed and commercialism seized again the reins of international politics. War still smouldered in the embers of the recent conflict to burst into flame here and there: Famine stalked through the lands of Europe. Bankruptcy, financial and moral, threatened all its peoples. And the masses turned to wrath and despair. In Russia they have abandoned themselves to the madness of anarchy. Everywhere else ferments an universal popular unrest and discon- tent which threaten future revolutions. But worse than the material plig'ht of Europe is, I believe, the spiritual condition of America today. We have fallen sadly as a nation in the estimation of the intelligent and thinking people of Europe. They simply do not mention us today whereas during the war our praise was upon all lips. We have wantonly thrown away our opportunity for the moral and spiritual leadership of the world. We have made "the grand refusal." We have imperilled the world's supreme hope by our declination even tO' make trial of the league and that declination is based largely upon the most unworthy of motives, personal hatreds and partisan prejudices and rivalries as well as commer- The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 163 cial ambitions. We have proclaimed in party cries a policy of national isolation. While we have con- quered Germany outwardly, we seem to have been conquered by her spirit. "America first" sounds suspi- ciously like a translation of "Deutschland uber Alles,'' and it is backed up today by a Prussian system of re- pression and censorship throughout America. And worst of all, we seem, in our present prevalent mood and temper to have slumped from the heights of idealism into the sinks of sneering cynicism and sod- den, sordid materialism. I was speaking to an assembly in New York immedi- ately after the war. I referred to the ideals w^hich had sustained us in the conflict and the opportunities, now presented, to realize them. I was followed by a prom- inent statesman and publicist. He said in effect, "The moral ideals of the war were all right in their time and place. They served to sustain the hopes, energies and endurance of the common masses throughout the struggle. They enabled us to win the victory. But now the victory is won, let us forget as soon as possi- ble those iridescent dreams and turn to practical af- fairs." And he indicated that he meant by "practical affairs" merely business prosperity and commercial aggrandizement ; and his audience, a trade association, applauded him to the echo, rising to their feet in their enthusiasm. I felt as if the voice of our heroic dead would speak in such withering rebuke as Alfred Noyes has since expressed in his noble lines : — "Now in this morning of a nobler age Though night-born eyes, long taught tO' fear the sun Would still delay the world's great heritage. Make firm, O God, the peace our dead have won. For Folly shakes the tinsel on her head, / And points us backward to darkness and to hell, 164 The Prophetic Ministry for Today Cackling, ''Beware of visions," while our dead Still cry, "It was for visions that we fell." In this slump from high idealism into sneering cynicism and sodden, sordid materialism, we are threatened with a regime of reaction with its charac- teristic obscurantism and repression, if such a regime is not already upon us. We are told on high authority that we must have "less politics in business and more business in politics." That apothegm is capable of a sinister interpretation and that interpretation seems to be accepted and put in force today. During the war we found that our system of un- bridled individualistic greed and competition broke down under the tests of the great crisis. It could not meet the tremendous demands of our supreme need. We had tO' put business and industry into a harness of sta- tute and regulation, that their selfish and divergent interests and forces might be compelled to co-operate in the service of the common necessity. Many of us 'have long felt that the demands of peace are as great as those of war, that at all times we need such co-operation for the service of the common weal. But as soon as the war was over, the "harness was taken off" of business and industry. Unbridled greed and competition were again let loose. And now we are to have more "business in politics." "The invisible government," always even in liberal and progressive eras tremendously though secretly active and power- ful, is tO' be more or less established and recognized. Apparently we are in for the reign of the commercial conscience and the rule of the "business man." Now I have the utmost respect for the American business man in his proper sphere, as I have for every expert in the sphere of his experience. No business man in The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 165 the world exhibits so much initiative, enterprise, skill, ingenuity or ability in organization, administration, and executive.. He often has high ideals. But I do not recognize the business man anywhere as per se an authority in the spheres of economic principles, political, social or industrial reform, and particularly in education and religion. And yet today, flattered into a sense of a professional monoply of common sense and even omniscience, he is assuming control in all these spheres. Take the industrial situation by way of illustration. As I said in a former lecture, we are confronted today by one of those secular, world-wide social movements which every now and then sweep through history. As in the middle ages the business man rose inevit- ably to his present position of domination in the mod- ern world, kings, nobles paling into insignificance be- fore him, so now, throughout all nations, the working masses, the proletariat is rising like a tidal wave to claim its place in the world of the future. But the invisible government in America has ap- parently decreed that that movement here shall be ruthlessly repressed and suppressed and the status quo, the present order, shall be maintained at all costs and by all means. Ernest Poole, in his striking novel, ''Blind" (which by the way is more of a sociological study than a novel) describes the present situation in America thus: "I tried to look ahead. I thought of those Gentlemen Hounders, so conspicuous in these days, so self-righteously resolved to clamp down the national lid and see that this damned process of change is put a stop to once and for all. And I wondered if, while still there was time, these men would open their eyes and look back into the grim ironic past. Let 166 The Prophetic Ministry for Today no more radical pioneers be allowed to disturb this peaceful land. They speak as men spoke long ago of Wendell Phillips and his kind . Mob them, lynch them, throw them out! No more of this labor discontent! And as for the League of Nations, this talk of a world- brotherhood, let it be deported too. Let every new thought be kept out of our country that the old may prosper here. "It has been tried, gentlemen, it has been tried. In ancient Rome, in Spain, in France, in Germany and Russia, men of your kind have again and again clamped down the lid. It will never do. Deport our Bolsheviki? As well deport our thermometers. Throw them out of the sick rooms. Damn the things, they scare us so! Go- at the patients with whips instead, in the good old mediaeval style and beat the devils out of them ! But what a dangerous policy. If the patient were normal, gentlemen, the thermometer would not scare us so. But there is fever here, made up of wrongs both old and new, and not only in the slums of our cities and our ugly factory towns but even out on the farms as well, a deep burning discontent. You can't deport it, gentlemen, nor can you by in- junotion force it to dig coal out of the ground. That way leads to civil war." The most sinister feature of this whole reactionary movement, now prevalent in our country, and the one that concerns us most in the exercise of our prophetic ministry, is its policy of suppression of freedom of speech and, if possible, even of conscience and thought. Taking advantage of the hysteria of panic fear which swept over the country during the war, the outcome of a poisoned propaganda, that policy is being put rigorously into effect. It began with the drive on red radicalism, when The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 167 everybody was "seeing red" and discovered a Bolshe- vist behind every bush. Particularly all social re- formers, all critics of the existing order, all prophets of social righteousness or the Kingdom of God, even all liberals and progressives, were branded as "parlor Bolshevists" and described as the most dangerous of all. Large numbers of the "strangers within our gates," aliens who had sought refuge in the trumpeted liberty and opportunity of free America, were arrested by secret process, often without warrant, upon informa- tion obtained and sometimes manufactured by "agents provocateurs." They were often maltreated and even tortured in their examinations, denied the ordinary rights of legal defense, jailed for months without trial, frequently deported without cause. Many of them, as I know from personal examination of one large group in Detroit, were innocent, ignorant and simple-minded foreigners who did not have the re- motest idea what it was all about. Accidental con- nection with an organization whose tenets could be construed into favoring any economic or political heresy, even teaching or studying mathematics or history in the home of such an organization, were ample grounds for deportation. Under that same hysteria of panic-fear thirty-four states and territories have passed so called "Anti- sedition" laws which are used to punish persons for expressing unorthodox economic or political beliefs, thus for the first time in our history going behind the overt act into the realm of opinion and inflicting punishment therefor, thereby, in the alleged defense of our Constitution, violating the whole bill of rights embodied in the first group of amendments attached to that instrument and made an integral part thereof before it was accepted by the states. 168 The Prophetic Ministry for Today Representatives duly and repeatedly elected by the people have been unseated in one legislature for their econo'mic opinions, an act which undermines the very foundations of democracy and representative govern- ment. The public press has been largely prostituted and sold ourt. It is controlled by the invisible goverment, not only in its editorial expressions which may be of comparatively little consequence, but in its channels of information, the Press associations of telegraphic service, so that the facts are deliberately distorted or suppressed. In a certain city not long ago, a meet- ing was held in which many millions of capital sat around the board. How many minds and consciences were there deponent sayeth not, though there were leaders in the business world and the church there. Before this assembly a proposition was laid which received enthusiastic commendation from all present save two ministers who happened to be invited. The proposition was to form an organization to control one million dollarsi of advertising and distribute it among the foreign language press of the country on condition that every article to be published in these journals should first be translated into English and submitted to a board of censors appointed by the organization. And now the assault is turned upon those central citadels of freedom of thought and liberty of speech — the teacher's chair and the prophet's pulpit. Every now and then professors are dismissed from universi- ties for unorthodox economic views by Boards of Trustees co^mposed of business men. One was dis- missed for analyzing the tax returns of a mining company and proving that the corporation had dodged taxes ; another, a prominent member of the legal pro- The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 169 fession, for looking into the causes of a strike and the secret connection between the employing corporation and the state officials. A bill has passed one legislature, estabHshing a board of censors to examine intO' the economic and political beliefs of all teachers in the public schools. The teacher used to have to appear before the Bishop to establish his theological orthodoxy before he was licensed to teach. According to this bill he must appear before the lay pope, the business man and legislator, to prove his poHtical orthodoxy before he is allowed to teach. And lastly comes the assault upon the pulpit. Many voices are saying unto the prophets of today, "Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease before us. Prophesy not unto us right things. Prophesy smooth things." We have our self-constituted ''guardian angels" in such organizations as the "Civic Federation" and various business associations, to watch and to warn. Their officials act sometimes as chief inquisitors for the clergy. If you preach the gospel of the Kingdom or the Christianizing of the social order, the following program is likely to be pursued. First, kindly advisors among your laymen drop in to give you pru- dent counsel. If you go on, perhaps committees of your vestry or board of trustees of the parish or prominent laymen of your diocese, come in to talk things over, to reason and expostulate. Meanwhile, undoubtedly, the secretary of the Civic Federation, the Grand Inquisitor, has posted you, and perhaps you are blacklisted in the trade letters of some manu- facturers' association as a dangerous radical ; and finally, possibly, unless you are impregnably fortified in your position, out you go. The business man of today wants religion. He 170 The Prophetic Ministry for Today wants it earnestly, sometimes frantically. As I said before, he is being driven towards it as his only refuge, and the only security for a tottering industrial order, — driven by the pressures of the necessities and perils of the situation and by the alternatives of disaster that confront the intelligent. He even preaches reli- gion, writes books about the necessity of religion as the only solvent of the problems of the times, exhorts his fellows to get behind the church and support it, and issues calls to prayer. But the religion he wants is frequently what is called "the simple gospel," purely individualistic reli- gion, which concerns itself solely with conventional ethics, saving souls, pieties and proprieties, above all law and order — a religion which will give him hon- est bookkeepers, faithful and industrious laborers, facile tools for his purposes and keep the masses quiet and content. I have been criticised as indiscriminately and un- justly condemning all business men in this and similar utterances. I think it is evident from the context and the language that I am speaking here of the type or composite of the class. Certainly the mass-judgments and class-consciousness of the business man as set forth in the utterances of Chambers of Commerce, Employers' Associations, Bank Letters, etc., and in the talk of the average man of the street, manifest tha/t conception of the meaning and place of religion which I have described. I thankfully recognize that there are hosts of individual American business men who accept the soicial gospel and acknowledge that the principles of Christianity must be applied to indus- trial and commercial systems as well as to individual and personal lives. In such men is our chief hope. The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 171 But there is nothing which the present commercial- ized conscience of America with its regime of reaction and the invisible government of the "business man" — there is nothing which this order more dreads than a real prophetic ministry with the vision of the seer and the courage of the prophet. As a religious journal recently said, "The (old) civilization that is struggling for its life is more afraid of the Gospel than of all the forces of evil put together. The people who love the world as it is are desperately afraid that the Church will apprehend Christ." Occasionally they whistle to keep up their courage. Said the chairman of the executive committee of the Civic Federation the other day, "Many things have happened in the past year to encourage those who resented the shallow sentimentaHsm that is clamoring for the establishment of a new social order" (that is Christ's vision of a Kingdom of Heaven on earth). Yet in spite of his vigilance Mr. Easley admits that there is still danger of the Church's catching that vision, for he adds, "We are not yet out of the woods." For in that same year of reassuring quiet, both a commission of the Roman hierarchy and a commission of the Federation of the Churches have made bold to strip off the camouflage of the American plan and reveal the sinister purpose that lurks at its heart. The Interchurch Commission Report on the Steel Strike has been published; various ecclesiastical organiza- tions have proclaimed the right of labor organizations to collective bargaining, taking their stand practically on the great dictum of a brave judge who said, "There can be no freedom of contract where there is not equal- ity of opportunity on both sides," and there certainly cannot be equality of opportunity on both sides when a horde of disorganized individual laborers faces, each 172 The Prophetic Ministry for Today for himself, great employing corporations organized into close associations. And many utterances of simi- lar import have come from the official organs of the Christian Church. But what about the ministry, the prophetic minis- try! Does not the present situation ring a heart- searching challenge in its ears ! Is the ministry hear- ing and heeding that challenge ! Some of our best friends, members of our calling, critics from our own household of the faith, seem to think we are not. Prof. Coe in a recent article sug- gests that the ministry is breaking down religiously. He supports that suggestion by the record of the ministry in three periods. I shall quote alt length from the substance of the article with my own comments: Before the war — surely in those quiet days of peace the Christian ministry with its thousands of pulpits all over the land in every city, hamlet and rural center, with its scores and hundreds of thousands of sermons a year, — surely the ministry had ample opportunity to make its voice heard and its message clear ! People ought tO' have understood what the ministry, the church, and Christianity itself stood for and what they stood against. And yet the universal testimony of army and navy chaplains shows that the average soldier and sailor had scarcely the faintest idea of the real meaning and message of the Christian revelation. They were dense- ly ignorant not only of the fundamental verities of the Christian faith but also of the outstanding and essential principles of Jesus' teaching and preaching, — His mind and His spirit, what He stood for and what He stood against. They had a vague notion that the ministry, the church, religion and Jesus Himself stood against wick- edness in general and for goodness in general. A valu- The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 173 able notion so far as it went. But what kind of wicked- ness did they stand against and what kind of goodness did they stand for! Well, for the most part, in the average man's mind, the religious or Christian ideas of goodness and badness might all be summed up in a short series of negative, self-regarding and some of them merely sumptuary prohibitions, — "Don't get drunk, don't commit fornication, don't swear, and perhaps don't smoke, chew, dance or play cards." And the end and purpose of it all was to save your skin for this world and your soul for the next. But as for religion standing tor some supreme all embracing posi- tive cause of righteousness, justice and brotherly love, a cause capable of inspiring a complete devotion and consecration, a heroism and self-sacrifice such as the war itself evoked, they never dreamed of it. They did not even connect such a cause with religion in any w"ay; nor did they think of the positive virtues of courage and humility, of service and sacrifice for a comrade or the cause, those peculiarly military vir- tues, as having any relation to religion or the mind and spirit of Christ. Surely the ministry had not gotten the real message of the gospel across to the mind of the average man in the piping times of peace. But you may say, these were outsiders for the most part — men who did not go to church (more shame to us — "the common people heard him gladly." Why don't they hear us gladly? Possibly because we do not deliver His message.) They were not church members and therefore ignorant of what the gospel is. Well, let us take the average church member. What is his idea of What church membership involves? Let me quote Dr. Coe exactly in his interpretation of the mind of the average church member: 174 The Prophetic Ministry for Today "That I am a church member means that I have been converted ; that I beHeve the Christian doctrines ; that I go to church ; that I partake of the bread and wine in Holy Communion; that I abstain from killing, stealing, ly- ing, liquor and fornication; that I am benevolent; that I pray and use the other means of grace ; that I support church enterprises with my money and my labor — is not that a fair inventory of current ideas so far as they are at all definite ! That these ideas are not insignificant goes with- out saying. It is no slight thing to have in a com- munity an organization and a voice that constantly speaks for so much that is good. But Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven was "like unto a man who found a treasure hid in a field" and for joy of that discovery he went and sold all he had and bought that field. Suppose all our church- membership should make a discovery like that, get the vision of the Kingdoim that commanded all Jesus seeing, whatever it means, see in their religion a su- preme objective subsuming in itself all that is real and worthy in life and in the world, a cause worth a life and death investment, — what would happen? The releasing of the vast potential spiritual power now locked up in our churches, the dedication of the enorm- ous wealth invested and represented therein, the con- secration of the ablest, best endowed lives and person- alities in the world, and the world itself would be transformed." But our people see in their conventional religion no such vision as Christ proclaimed in His gospel. And why do they not see it ! Because their seers and prophets have not set it before themi. And why have they not set it before them? Because they have not seen it them- selves. The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 175 Again take the period of the war. Surely, here came a great 'test which should have broken up the crusts of convention, tradition and habit and pierced to the heart of our message. The ministry undoub- tedly did worthy and noble service during the war. They preached up its moral ends and issues to sus- tain the struggle. They stimulated service and sacri- fice, charity and beneficence, to meet the tremendous appeal of human need and suffering. But so did the newspapers. The ministry but followed their lead. They carried comfort and hope to the suffering and bereaved, and chaplains brought to multitudes of in- dividual soldiers and sailors strength to endure temp- tation and hardship. All this was invaluabl ;. But all this others could do and did do. What was the distinctively Christian contribution the Church and her ministry made? Here surely were issues sufficient to stimulate to the utmost whatever there was of conscience in man. Here were moral confusions to be cleared up ; here were temp- tations as vast as empires to be met; here, if ever, the difference between the Kingdom of God and every other aim in life needed to be brought to the fore in men's thinking concerning the future of society. If ever in the history of man a "Thus saith the Lord" was needed, it was needed then. Yet the ministry in general had nothing to offer. A few individuals paused to ask wheither the spirit of Jesus was leading us in the world welter and a few endeavored to weigh in Christian scales the principles upon which our con- temporary society and w^orld order are so bunglingly organized. A few gestures of friendship were directed by ecclesiastical groups towards members of Christian communions in enemy countries. But the masses of the clergy took their cues concerning the great issues 176 The Phophetic Ministry for Today of the times from the same prompters to whom the worldlings who control our newspapers turned for guidance. And now since the war, in this poisonous after- math of the conflict, come still more searching tests. They meet us on every side. For instance, has the Christian ministry generally had anything to say about the treatment of conscientious objectors? Is not that a Christian issue? Has it raised any general or effective protest against the tyranny of the prevailing reaction and obscurant- ism, the repression of freedom of speech and liberty of conscience? Where is the spirit of our pilgrim father's who fled to these shores for the sake of such liberty and freedom and founded a nation dedicated tO' their maintenance? Or again, we face a cofrrimercial and industrial sys- tem that is practically heathen. To our credit, be it said, the official church has grown bolder and bolder in its utterances on certain specific aspects of the problem, "the details of the periphery." It has investi- gated the steel strike. It has spoken for fair wages and hours, the right of organization, collective bar- gaining, etc. But has the ministry ever penetrated to the heart of the question? Let me quote again Dr. Coe exactly, as I did in a former lecture, for this utterance does go to the heart of the main issue before us and it is worth iterating and reiterating : "Is a system in which one works for wages and another for profit fundamentally Christian, anti- Christian or neutral? Are its motives Christian? What is the effect upon character of the repeated exer- cise of these motives; What is the actual outcome as respects the relation of man to man? Here we are. The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 177 concerned with the value and meaning of life. Our question leads straight back to Jesus and straight forward to any vision that we dare indulge concern- ing the coming of the Kingdom of God. It is not answered by any position we may take upon such special problems as the hours of labor or prevention of industrial accidents, much less can any talk con- cerning a fair wage so much as touch it. It is the great parting of the ways for the Christian ethics of society. The ministry must take upon this ques- tion an open stand that is definitely Christian or lose its soul. We have needed guidance on this point, O how sore- ly, for years. Industrialism has developed its logic far faster than our ethical insight intO' the new condi- tions has grown. For many years too, voices have challenged us to face this issue, so that we can hardly plead that we have not had time to find an answer. "And while men slept, an enemy came and sowed tares." Opposing forces are gathering, enormous forces on both sides, to attempt the solution of this fundamental ethical problem by the clash of non-ethi- cal weapons. And the Christian ministry is looking on. We can not plead by way of excuse that we are not technical experts and therefore are unfitted to deal with the problem. It is not a question of ways and means, machinery and organization. That we must leave to the experts in those fields. It is a question of moral and spiritual dynamics, of motives, and that demands the insight of the prophet and the seer." Let me quote just one other critic and I am done, a more positive and flaming critic. This editorial appeared in a recent religious journal, "The Churchman, January 22, 1921 : 178 The Prophetic Ministry for Today "Once only in many centuries does there dawn a day when the voice of the Spirit speaks to the chil- dren of men with such a piteous appeal as God has spoken to His children since the firing of guns ceased on the western front. Out of the agony and ecstacy of the war there rose to the lips of men everywhere an expression of great religious hunger. From the year 1914 to 1918 the cry "A New World" was spoken almost with the passion and yearning with which John the Baptist and Jesus preached the Kingdom of Heaven. Something Divinely beautiful was trembling on the verge of birth. Every clergyman in the land uttered the words as he would utter a prayer. God forced us to put into words the Christian hope of a better social order. "It was natural perhaps when the war was over that the world should relapse into a cynicism of burnt out emotion and weariness, but it was not natural for the ministers of Christ to forget the vision that was bought with the blood of thirty million brothers or more. We all knew what God meant by that phrase "a new world" which He forced on our lips again and again. Did the ministers of Christ forget it? Can we dotibt that we did? There have been some passionate ap- peals in the last few years for a gospel of reconcilia- tion and love, but the pulpit has not spoken them. We have echoed men's fears, fears of Bolshevism, fears of class conflict, fears for national safety. Fear never proclaimed a gospel. What did we love? Clear as a flaming beacon it is written in the gospels what we ought to love. Since the war there has been given to the church the most romantic and chivalrous adven- ture for hum'anity that ever fell to the lot of men. What seared the romance in our hearts? Who have been talking loudest in the last two years? People The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 179 who are afraid. In the Babel of merchants' associa- tions, national civic federations, patriotic societies, not a whisper has been heard that sounded like St. Francis or Loyola. Those who should have uttered the beati- tudes were dumb." These are searching and severe criticisms. Perhaps some may say too severe, even exaggerated and un- just. But let us remember they come fro^m the house of our friends. They are uttered by followers of our own vocation, and we must admit that there is ample ground for them, at least they voice the challenge of our times to our prophetic ministry. Let us answer that challenge in the spirit of those great words spoken by an old apostle to his young disciple, words, it seems to me, that ought to be solemnly repeated at every ordination today as a charge to the new min- ister : "Wherefore I put thee in rememberance that thou stir up the gift which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." A ministry of power, — fthat is the first need of a day of almost universal fear and cowardly subservience thereto, a ministry endowed with the courage and fearlessness that come only from faith, the conviction that one has a burden of the Lord, a word of God, a "Thus saith the Lord," laid upon his lips like the live coal off the altar, a Divine message that burns in his bones like fire and will not let him stay till it be uttered, and that God Himself is behind His Word and will not let it fail. That is the prophet's fundamental motive and dynamic. But also a ministry of love, — not the censorious carping of the detached critic, nor the fulminating thunders of the isolated herald and lord high execu- 180 The Prophetic Ministry for Today tioner of the Divine wrath, anticipating with grim satisfaction the doom and destruction he announces and perhaps like Jonah sulking when they fall not, because his sermons have been too effective and the people have repented. But let us ever deliver our prophetic message in that spirit of love which" is compassion and sympathy in the literal sense of those words, the chief character- istic of our Champion and Companion God who "in all our affliction is Himself afflicted" and fights our battles not simply as our leader but as our comrade in the ranks — ^ay, with the mind and spirit of the Redeem- er and Saviour who so identified Himself with all humanity as Son of man, that He literally carried our sorrows and bore our sins until they broke His heart. Let us speak our "truth in that love" which "suffereth long and is kind, which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things". And if the truth brings us persecution and even the cross as it brought Him, let us face it as He did, saying, "Thy will be done." But often as I see it, it is the manner of our delivery and not the matter of our message that brings us hatred and antagonism. It is not the truth but the lack of love in its utterance that provokes and irritates. Many that imagine that they are persecuted for right- eousness' sake are simply persecuted for their own sakes because they are what they are, egotistical, intoler- ant, without understanding or sympathy, simply ugly in temper and disposition. And lastly, the endowment of a sound mind, — how much it is needed, how absolutely essential it is in a prophetic ministry today, — the capacity for clear, straight, strong thinking, the wide horizons of knowl- edge and backgrounds of information, the calm con- trolling reason and well-poised and balanced judgment, The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 181 not "to quench the spirit and ardor of prophecy," but to give them right direction and effective application. The world is full of half-baked enthusiasts and one-sided fanatics, long-haired men and short-haired women, who have brought the whole race of prophets into disrepute and contempt. In that spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind, we must "make full proof of our ministry" today. We must neglect none of its manifold aspects. It must be an individual ministry — in its preaching, labor- ing "for the perfecting of the saints as well as the con- version of sinners" and for "the edification of the body of Christ till we all and each come unto the perfect manhood unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;" in its pastoral faithfulness counselling the perplexed, comforting the sorrowing, and bringing the peace of pardon and fellowship with God to the penitent; in its priestly ministrations, bringing the real, vital, quickening sense of God's presence and power into men's lives by sacraments and means of grace, and Hfting their souls on the wings of prayer and praise and adoration through the neglected art and practice of worship. But above all we need today the wide horizon of pro- phetic vision, the insistent, uncompromising, unmitigated assertion of the Divine right of our Master to universal sovereignty, that "the Kingdoms of the world must be- come the Kingdom of our Lord and His Christ," that there is and can be no domain of politics, national or in- ternational, industry, commerce, business or society outside of His jurisdiction, where His laws will not run, that there is no aspect of life and no relationship of m-en to which His principles cannot or must not apply. In that spirit we can stand before governors and kings, even the governors and kings of our present "invisible 182 The Prophetic Ministry for Today government" and rebuke and exhort with all boldness and long suffering. In that spirit we can proclaim alike to the trembling and fearful, the passionate and embittered, the sodden and hopeless, in this day of disillusionment, "Behold, we bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to you and to all people." We have a gospel; it is the gospel of God and His Kingdom of Heaven upon earth. We can say to the disheartened reformer and the despair- ing idealist, "Your essential cause is the cause of God, and therefore it cannot fail. Your struggle is but a skirmish in His eternal warfare, and while He may ap- parently lose a battle here and there. He cannot and will not lose the campaign. Your goal is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and it shines sure and certain on the farther horizons. The new Jerusalem, the heavenly city, it shall come down from God out of heaven and take possession of the earth." So shall we send them back to their task and their battle with an unconquerable and all conquering faith, an invincible and victorious hope. It is only such a gospel that can adequately inspire and continuously sustain the aspirations and endeavors of men of good will in these days of darkness and gloom. For "this and this only is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." And it is your high privilege to proclaim that Gospel and inspire that faith without which there can be no salvation for the soul or society, but with which the ultimate triumph of truth and right- eousness is as sure as that God is in His heaven. It is a perilous day in which you go forth into your prophetic ministry, my younger brethren, this day of dis- illusionment. There are lions in the way. There are difficulties and dangers and demands everywhere that will test you through and through. But these difficulties. The Gospel for a Day of Disillusionment 183 dangers and demands are so many challenges and oppor- tunities which make it the most glorious day in which men could be called to that ministry. Marcus Dodds said once, "I do not envy those who have to fight the battle of Christianity in the 20th century. Yes, perhaps I do, but it will be a stiff fight." And let me add, a stiff fight is what the true soldier of Christ loves. God give you vision that you may "both perceive and know what things you ought to do and also grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same." Date Due 9CT 2 f '%i f0f0^ ijJ^iKXi'^***" '9m$iii6^mmi^l, jiiwUi*^^ -^'■Ht'f'l'y ff'"^''