tihtavy of 'the t: heolo0ic«l ^kmimry 
 
 PRINCETOK • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Kenneth L. I'axwell 
 
 SV4-0 I O 
 
 .L^8 
 
\CtHHET« L. hVAKLWtUL 
 
NOV 81974 
 
 
 AL St^ 
 
 The New Opportunities 
 of the Ministry 
 
 FREDERICK LYNCH 
 
 Author of*' The Enlargement of Life ^'^ **/s Life 
 Worth Living y' «« The Peace Problem^'' etc. 
 
 With Introduction by 
 
 PROFESSOR HUGH BUCK 
 
 of Union Theological Seminary 
 
 New Tork Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Cofnpany 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1912, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
Dedicated to the 
 memory of 
 
 Frank Osborne Lynch 
 
 who was called home while prepaHng 
 for the mijtistry, the opportunities of 
 which he clearly saiv and eagerly desired 
 
Introduction 
 
 THE subject of this book is surely one 
 of greatest importance. If the Ufa 
 of a nation does not consist in the 
 abundance of the things it possesseth, no 
 material progress will make up for loss in the 
 deeper regions. We cannot afTord to forego 
 the influence which an institution like the 
 Church has exerted in past generations. 
 This means a demand for leadership suited 
 to the age in which we live. It is not so 
 much quantity that is needed as quality, men 
 of intellectual and spiritual attainment who 
 will be fit for the new opportunities. 
 
 The appeal is naturally made to the best 
 of our college men, who are sincerely seek- 
 ing to offer their lives to great purposes. 
 Fortunately the student ranks are full of such 
 men, and it only needs that they should see 
 the vision and be not disobedient to it. The } 
 big tasks always attract big men, and too 
 often the ministry has appeared small in com- 
 parison with some other lines of work offered 
 to highly-trained youth. It is probably true 
 that of late years the best brains in America 
 5 
 
6 Introduction 
 
 I on the whole have not been going into pro- 
 
 ■ fessions like the ministry and teaching. This* 
 
 has been partly of necessity, with a continent 
 to subdue and exploit, with great engineer- 
 ing feats and great commercial enterprises 
 calling for leaders. The time has surely come 
 when the unequal balance must be redressed. 
 We cannot conserve even the gains of civili- 
 zation unless some heed is paid to the call of 
 this book. 
 
 Mr. Lynch has amply proved his case, 
 which is to present the opportunities afforded 
 by the modern ministry. Men who want to 
 make the most of their lives must consider 
 the claims in the various branches of religious 
 work. The immense need for leadership in 
 education, in scholarship, in social adjust- 
 ment, in missionary enterprise, which Mr. 
 Lynch establishes, itself constitutes a call to 
 some men. Phillips Brooks shortly before 
 his death said that the next twenty years 
 would offer greater opportunity for the Chris- 
 tian minister than any other like period in 
 history. I think this little book proves the 
 contention, presenting some of the needs of 
 our time that must be met if we are to make 
 true progress. Some of the finer spirits who 
 read it will surely learn from it a nobler con- 
 ception of personal duty. 
 
Introduction 7 
 
 There are movements of our time which 
 show the essentially religious character of the 
 age, such as the movement towards church 
 unity, the great missionary movement, the 
 international peace movement, which are all 
 Christian in spirit and motive. The whole 
 community also is being pervaded with a new 
 sense of social duty. Nowhere in the world 
 are these and similar movements more living 
 and more wide-spread than in America. No- 
 where also are there arrayed greater forces of 
 antagonism and keener problems for our 
 Christian civilization. The largest need of 
 to-day is a supply of men who will grasp the 
 new opportunities of the ministry as a sphere 
 of work and will lead the Church in her 
 ever- widening service. The various types of 
 that service are well brought out in this 
 book, and the urgency of the need is empha- 
 sized. We want men who are prepared to 
 undertake some heroic tasks, men of insight 
 and of outlook, of courage and of consecra- 
 tion. The broad and forceful appeal of this 
 book will surely not miss its mark. 
 
 Hugh Black. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 
 New York City. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Young Men and the Ministry 
 
 II. The Older Opportunities , 
 
 III. The New REi^iGious Education 
 
 IV. The New Biblical Scholarship and the 
 
 Minister .... 
 
 V. The Challenge of the New Paganism 
 
 VI. The Combating of the New Atheism 
 
 VII. The New Social Gospel 
 
 VIII. Missions and the Call for Statesmen 
 
 IX. The Challenge of the New America 
 
 X. The Restoration of a United Church 
 
 XI. The Enlarged Ethical Opportunity 
 
 XII. The New Evangelism . 
 
 XIII. The Minister for To-day , • 
 
 II 
 
 20 
 27 
 
 36 
 44 
 54 
 61 
 
 73 
 
 81 
 
 90 
 
 106 
 
 112 
 
 122 
 
YOUNG MEN AND THE MINISTRY 
 
 PRACTICAL and organized religion 
 rests upon the churches for its being. 
 Without strong churches it would 
 wane. Perhaps even religion itself would 
 gradually pass if all our churches were to be 
 closed, for religion rests more on common 
 worship than we realize. Where there is no 
 common worship, and no preaching of the 
 truth, even humanitarian instincts pale and 
 philanthropic service ceases. An indication 
 of this can be seen in the fact that those peo- 
 ple who cease attending church, with a few 
 notable exceptions, soon cease serving man. 
 In most cases the Sunday automobile soon 
 displaces the teaching of the class of children. 
 Our religion, our reform, and our service of 
 humanity, rest ultimately upon the firm 
 foundation of worshipping assemblies in- 
 structed in the truth of God. And for such 
 churches the ablest and most prophetic men 
 are needed in our day. 
 
 But from every side there rises the wail 
 that the attendance at the theological semi- 
 II 
 
12 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 naries is falling off. And from churches 
 comes the cry that not only are there not 
 enough able men to fill the pulpits, but not 
 enough of any kind. Even the Roman 
 Catholic Church is getting desperate over 
 the decreasing number of candidates for the 
 priesthood, and almost every denomination 
 has echoed the complaint with more or less 
 emphasis. Seminaries that once had one 
 hundred students now have only twenty-five. 
 And sometimes a careful study of seminary 
 catalogues shows that some of these are tak- 
 ing special courses and not preparing to be 
 actual pastors of churches. 
 
 At the same time the complaint is made 
 that many of the best and brightest of our 
 college men are not even considering the 
 ministry. This does not mean that the six 
 men out of the class of two hundred are not 
 among the ablest, but that the other fifty 
 able men are not turning towards the ministry 
 as a profession. The next class from Yale, 
 to mention only one large university, will 
 probably not send ten men into the ministry, 
 while it will send sixty into the law and cor- 
 respondingly large numbers into teaching, 
 business and medicine. One cannot help 
 viewing this with alarm, although perhaps 
 the facts have been somewhat exaggerated. 
 
Young Men and the Ministry 13 
 
 It is interesting to seek the causes of this 
 decline in candidates for the ministry. Much 
 has been written upon the subject, and most 
 of it is far from the point. Some have said 
 that it is because of credal tests, and because 
 the Church clings to an old attitude towards 
 truth, while the colleges pursue a new and 
 opposite way. The churches pose as guard- 
 ians of a truth already revealed, and close their 
 doors to the unending quest or the discussion 
 of the modern revelation of God, whereas the 
 college approaches all truth in the scientific 
 spirit, which is equally ready to abandon the 
 old or the new, or accept the old or the new, 
 if it can be proven. The answer to this rea- 
 son is twofold. In the first place, the de- 
 nominations which have a practically free 
 pulpit are suffering as much from the dearth 
 of ministers as are the most orthodox sects ; 
 and in the second place, the average senior 
 in college has never thought his way through 
 to any such weighing and balancing of the 
 facts. He is generally much of a boy. An- 
 other reason often given is that the young 
 men of to-day are not sure of any religious 
 truth. The mental atmosphere of the college | 
 
 shakes their belief in the old truths and gives ^ 
 
 nothing positive in their place. They desire 
 to serve man, but have no gospel to preach. 
 
14 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 Dr. Lyman Abbott once referred to this fact 
 in connection with his residence at Harvard 
 University as college preacher. He said 
 that many of the students who came to him 
 wished to render Christian service, but did 
 not want to preach, as they did not feel sure 
 of the Christian doctrines. They were sure 
 of the Christ life but not of the Christ mes- 
 sage. Here again there are facts that make 
 this reason at least only partially true ; for in 
 many of our colleges it is those very men 
 who have been most active in college in 
 teaching Bible classes and speaking at mis- 
 sion halls, who do not choose the ministry as 
 a profession. Yet there is doubtless some 
 truth in this contention. 
 
 The real reasons are to be found in other 
 directions. There are three influences at 
 work which are the chief agencies in turning 
 young men from the ministry. The first is 
 the pull of other professions upon men who 
 once would have naturally turned towards 
 the Church. There have come into being in 
 the last fifty years a number of professions, 
 which ofiFer large fields of Christian service, 
 without the seeming restraints of the min- 
 istry, and demand less creative work. There 
 is the great Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation movement. There is the univer- 
 
Young Men and the Ministry 15 
 
 sity settlement. There are the great philan- 
 thropic institutions. In New York there 
 is a School of Philanthropy to fit men for 
 service regardless of creed, and without the 
 task of preaching before them. Then too, 
 the teaching profession has risen to as high 
 a rank as the ministry, and has become 
 as permanent a work. It is attracting hun- 
 dreds of young men who once would have 
 turned to the ministry. There are many 
 other avenues of service opening which our 
 fathers never knew. All of these are calling 
 for our best college men. 
 
 The second reason is the temptation to seek 
 careers and large incomes that certain pro- 
 fessions and businesses are offering in our 
 cities to young college men, who have al- 
 ready been toliched by the materialism of the 
 age. The materialism reaches back into our 
 colleges. The senior used to study philos- 
 ophy, and then thought of the ministry, which 
 is the office where one helps men shape a 
 worthy philosophy of life — a philosophy based 
 on idealism. Now he studies insurance, bank- 
 ing, commercial law, and politics, and looks 
 forward to business or law as his career. 
 Sometimes it seems as though more than half 
 of any large college class turns towards law 
 and business. Law is the straight road to po- 
 
l6 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 litical office and large incomes. The cost of 
 living has gone up. Standards of living are 
 much higher. But worst of all, the interest 
 in religious things has been crowded out of 
 many of these young men by the great domi- 
 nance of business and the industrial life of our 
 day. Things are much more real to them than 
 thought and ideals. Many have become so 
 atrophied that there is no response to things 
 of the spirit. If any one disputes this he has 
 only to go to one of our great universities for 
 a week and see what subjects are uppermost. 
 The universities are not helping here as they 
 should. Most of them seem reluctant to say 
 anything about religion, or to have anything 
 to do with it. With one or two exceptions 
 no large university is doing anything offi- 
 cially to turn the minds of its students towards 
 the Church. 
 
 The third reason is that the Church and the 
 ministry have come to be looked upon with 
 a sort of contempt by many college men. 
 This is pardy due to the world's attitude ; it 
 is pardy due to the Church itself. The world 
 has become so dominated by material terms, 
 so accustomed to think and feel under the 
 sense of things, that it has lost power to 
 rightly value spiritual qualities and ideals. 
 It rather despises ideals. It calls the minister 
 
Young Men and the Ministry 17 
 
 impractical, a sentimentalist, a dreamer. He 
 does not get down to the level of men and 
 get results. Consequently he is put off one 
 committee after another, and business men, 
 that is, ''practical" men, are substituted in 
 his place. The college man sees this. He 
 sees the minister seemingly becoming more 
 and more discounted. He does not seem to 
 hold the commanding place the lawyer and 
 business man, and especially the college presi- 
 dent, hold in the community. The student 
 is not old enough to reason through this and 
 see that it is largely only seeming, and at 
 any rate but a sign of the times which will 
 soon pass. 
 
 With this there has been so much self- 
 depreciation by the Church and the ministry 
 themselves that it has greatly added to this 
 unexpressed feeling in the collegian's mind. 
 Every other minister he hears tells him how 
 he can serve God in some other profession 
 just as well. Then some minister minimizes 
 the office in his hearing, claiming for it only 
 the place of a first-class organizer or admin- 
 istrator, and even apologizing for sermons. 
 No young man is going to devote his life to 
 preaching sermons after hearing two or three 
 ministers joke about them. The truth is 
 that if we want the best young men for the 
 
l8 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 ministry, every minister must magnify the 
 office to the utmost and claim for it the su- 
 preme place, which is its rightful place. And 
 the Church must make more claims for itself. 
 It must take more pains to seek young men 
 for its ministry, and, above all, young men 
 must be taught how great and wonderful an 
 institution it is and may become. It is time 
 the Church awoke and saw that every young 
 man in its congregations and schools receives 
 instruction as to its greatness, power, and op- 
 portunity. Is there a church in any com- 
 munity that is actually engaged in any way in 
 securing the best young men for the ministry ? 
 There are a few ministers doing this, but very 
 few. But whose care is it if not that of the 
 Church ? 
 
 It is because this hesitancy to enter the 
 ministry exists, and because there is some- 
 thing of a feeling in the minds of many col- 
 lege students that the ministry does not offer 
 the opportunity that once it did, nor so great 
 opportunity as the other professions, that the 
 author wishes to address a few chapters to col- 
 lege students to show them that the Church 
 never offered such superb and splendid op- 
 portunities of service as she does to-day ; that 
 the pulpit never presented such commanding 
 opportunity for great hearts and prophetic 
 
Young Men and the Ministry 19 
 
 minds as to-day it offers ; that the ministry 
 never challenged the bravest and most de- 
 voted men as it does to-day ; and that no pro- 
 fession presents quite such scope for large 
 leadership and full development of manhood 
 as the ministry offers at this day and hour. 
 He also hopes that many ministers reading 
 these pages will be confirmed in the calling 
 they have chosen and may more zealously 
 devote themselves to training young men of 
 promise to be prophets of the Lord. 
 
11 
 
 THE OLDER OPPORTUNITIES 
 
 IN the introductory chapter the author 
 called attention to the evident reluc- 
 tance of many of our brightest young 
 men to enter the ministry, and gave what 
 seemed to him the chief reasons for that 
 hesitancy. In this chapter, before proceed- 
 ing to show the new and enlarging scope of 
 the minister's office, he wants to say that 
 even those tasks and opportunities which 
 have always accompanied the minister's 
 office, offer still larger scope for lasting and 
 ] fruitful influence, as well as for personal 
 j enrichment, than any other profession or 
 occupation open to him, not even excepting 
 that of the editor. For the editor, while he 
 reaches more hearers than the preacher, 
 lacks the power which personality adds to 
 words, and misses the opportunity to enter 
 into close, friendly relationships, which is 
 the secret of all greatest influence. 
 
 The two functions which have always been 
 associated with the preacher's office have 
 been those of teaching and pastoral visita- 
 
The Older Opportunities 21 
 
 tion. Let us speak of the teaching first. 
 The Christian Church began with the ap- 
 pointing of twelve men to go into different 
 sections of the world to preach and teach. 
 They were to tell good news everywhere 
 they went, proclaim the birth of some new 
 force that had entered into humanity with 
 transforming power, declare liberation to all 
 who were bound by chains of their own or 
 of others' forging, and show them the author 
 of this remarkable message. This was their 
 preaching. Then they were to continue to 
 instruct those who remained to listen, in 
 the truths which Christ had spoken. These 
 truths were that God is love, fatherly in His 
 nature, and that His will was good-will 
 towards all men ; that He freely forgave the 
 repentant man ; that the brotherly and co- 
 operative disposition was the only true basis 
 of relationship between men ; that true right- 
 eousness was in a new and beneficent dis- 
 position, rather than in a formal obedience 
 to rules and laws; that happiness came 
 from purity, mercy and service rather 
 than from insistence on rights, or getting 
 many things ; that the purpose of Christ was 
 to establish God's kingdom on the earth ; that 
 He had come from God to lay its deep foun- 
 dations and that God called all men to work 
 
22 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 in partnership with Him in the rearing of the 
 beautiful city, whose foundations are right- 
 eousness, joy and peace. These first twelve 
 ministers went everywhere preaching and 
 teaching these things. No men in history, 
 with the exception of their own Master, have 
 had the shaping of civilization in their 
 hands as had these men. Modern civiliza- 
 tion is the product of these men and their 
 successors. The influence of kings or states- 
 men or great warriors has been little com- 
 pared with the transformation wrought in 
 the world's history by these preachers of 
 the Gospel and teachers of the Christian 
 ethics. Practically all of the great move- 
 ments and reforms now coming to fulfillment 
 in the world had their origin in this preaching. 
 From that day to this there has been an 
 unbroken line of these preachers. They 
 have carried this same message to every 
 land and taught this same truth in every 
 hamlet of Christendom. It has been their 
 work that has turned pagan lands into 
 brotherhoods, that has lifted men out of 
 beasthood into manhood. It has been their 
 words that have liberated both the souls and 
 bodies of men. It has not been emperor nor 
 warrior that has freed men from slavery, 
 but preachers — men like Luther, Knox and 
 
The Older Opportunities 23 
 
 Beecher. When again and again the dark- 
 ness of paganism seemed about to be sv/eep- 
 ing Christianity and virtue out of Europe, it 
 was the preacher who saved men from its 
 withering blasts — such men as Augusdne, 
 Chrysostom, Peter the Hermit, Bernard, St. 
 Francis, Savonarola and Wesley. So it has 
 always been. It has been the words of 
 preachers, of the humble as well as of these 
 great ones, which, in every hamlet, have in- 
 spired men to service and noble living, 
 brought them to follow the Lord of all true 
 life, freed them from doubts, fears and super- 
 stitions, sustained them in the face of dis- 
 couragement and nourished them in all true 
 manliness. 
 
 What greater task can any man render 
 humanity to-day than tell it those things, 
 teach it those truths, and lift it to those 
 heights? And yet this is the opportunity of 
 the preacher to-day as it has always been. 
 There confronts him every week a large 
 group of men who have practically the same 
 needs as the men who hung upon the words 
 of Paul or John. There remains the same 
 need of the transfiguration of humanity to 
 save the state. Who has this opportunity as 
 has the preacher? To what other man do 
 hundreds come every week to be taught? 
 
24 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 The author has to seek his audience, the ed- 
 itor has to send his paper far and wide, the 
 tractarian has to distribute his pamphlets ; 
 but to the preacher, if he has a true message, 
 the people come. And what a large, im- 
 measurable, varied scope of influence is be- 
 fore the preacher as he faces those five hun- 
 dred people. The teacher meets a few of one 
 age or rank from week to week, and is con- 
 fined to teaching his one subject — that often 
 having little relation to the deepest hu- 
 man needs. But the preacher faces almost 
 every need known to man in that morning's 
 congregation. Before him is every age, 
 every temperament, victims of every sin, dis- 
 couraged men and perplexed men, men who 
 are slaves of materialism and of greed, agnos- 
 tics, lonely ones, those just beginning life, those 
 just ending it. What opportunity is there any- 
 where on earth, or what service equal to that 
 now facing the man in the pulpit — to lift all of 
 that mixed multitude, that crowd of men out 
 of harmony with God, up on to the high levels 
 of the soul, up into the world of the spirit, up 
 to idealism again, putting them again into 
 tune with the Infinite, sending them forth 
 brave, hopeful, new men to face a new world. 
 But this is the eternal opportunity of the 
 preacher. Even if the ministry offered no 
 
The Older Opportunities 25 
 
 more than this older opportunity, it is still 
 greater than any other we know. 
 
 We shall not mention here all those other 
 functions which the ministry has always ex- 
 ercised so splendidly in connection with its 
 preaching-, such as the leadership in great 
 movements, the writing of widely read books, 
 the inception of new forms of the kingdom 
 of God, the directing of the larger work of 
 the denominations, for we want to take them 
 up later in connection with their newer as- 
 pects. But we want to say a word here 
 about that other older function of the minis- 
 ter's work — pastoral visitation. There is a 
 tendency in our day to belittle it. Some men 
 think it beneath real manhood and joke about 
 ministers spending afternoons gossiping. But 
 this is not the real work of the pastor and it 
 is the smallest part of it. His work is to be 
 the friend of men — and most men need be- 
 friending at some time in their lives. There 
 is no nobler office, neither is there one that 
 touches it in influence — this befriending of all 
 men. The pastor begins with the boys and 
 girls and may become their most desired 
 companion. He is the adviser of the young 
 men and young women as they face life. He 
 finds the bright boys and sends them to col- 
 lege, or to the right trade. There has been 
 
26 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 nothing more praiseworthy or more rewarding 
 than the life of the Scotch pastors in this re- 
 gard. The universities have always been full 
 of talented boys they have discovered in 
 every glen and hamlet and whom they often 
 have tutored in Latin and Greek themselves. 
 Every walk of life and every profession, 
 in Great Britain and America, is adorned by 
 these boys, and they are among the leaders 
 of the world's thought and progress. The 
 stories of the Scotch writers, especially those of 
 Ian MacLaren, Barrie, and Crockett, are replete 
 with instances of the remarkable influence of 
 these country pastors. There is an unparal- 
 lelled sphere of influence in this comradeship 
 with boys and youth. Strong men come to the 
 pastor with all their hopes and fears. Those 
 who have no friend find in him a friend of 
 the friendless. By friendly conversation with 
 young men he determines their whole atti- 
 tude towards men and their philosophy of 
 life. No one has just the same opportu- 
 nity of befriending men that the pastor has. 
 No one can thus so modify the spirit and life 
 of a whole community. It is hard to con- 
 ceive of men more influencing any locality 
 than Kingsley did Eversly, or than Baxter 
 did Kidderminster, or than Keble did Hurs- 
 Sy, or than George Herbert did Bemerton. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE NEW RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 
 
 IN the preceding chapter the author called 
 attention to some of the older opportuni- 
 ties of the ministry and showed how 
 they offered opportunity worthy of the ablest 
 men and a scope of influence offered by no 
 other profession. In this chapter he wishes 
 to begin the consideration of some of those 
 newer opportunities which ought especially 
 to challenge the attention of young men 
 who want to put their lives where they will 
 count for most in the uplift of the world. He 
 does not mean to infer that the ministry has 
 not been doing splendidly for a century some 
 of the things mentioned here. It is only that 
 science has so revolutionized all our methods 
 of thinking and our approach to the old 
 problems that they have become practically 
 new. Also some new problems have arisen, 
 peculiar to our own time, which are vaster 
 in their scope than any the fathers knew, 
 because we have come upon a more complex 
 civilization and a greatly expanded world. 
 Hardly any problem is local any longer. 
 27 
 
28 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 Neighbourhood has become world-wide. 
 These facts change the whole face of old 
 problems as well as introduce new ones. 
 There has also been great change of emphasis 
 in recent years on things which have always 
 been part of the churches' task. The result 
 has been that the minister faces a group of 
 new problems which demand the wisdom of 
 a statesman, the training of the most scien- 
 tific education, and the moral passion of a 
 prophet. And the fact that all the theological 
 seminaries have not yet adjusted their cur- 
 riculum to properly train the ablest men to 
 meet these new conditions makes the chal- 
 lenge come with even stronger appeal to 
 brave men. 
 
 One of the most outstanding of these new 
 opportunities is that of being a pioneer in the 
 modern religious education movement. The 
 Church has always been interested in 
 religious education. Catechetical classes 
 were of very early origin. Young converts 
 were grounded in the Christian doctrine. 
 Luther laid greatest stress on the religious 
 training of children, and he insisted that it 
 be of the most thorough sort. In Germany 
 to-day, practically every child in the nation 
 is taught religion at the same time that he is 
 taught arithmetic. In our own country the 
 
The New Religious Education 29 
 
 Sunday-school has become an integral part 
 of every church and has acquainted millions 
 of children with the Bible, and led them into 
 the church, and awakened in their hearts the 
 desire to follow Christ in the serviceful life. 
 These Sunday-schools have differed from one 
 another greatly, according to the ability and 
 interest of the pastor, and especially accord- 
 ing to his alertness to the new educational 
 science. But in even the worst managed 
 Sunday-school the pupil learned something 
 of the Bible and always ran the chance of 
 coming under the spell of some helpful or 
 beautiful personality among his teachers. 
 Along with the growth of the Sunday-school 
 there has come into being a great educational 
 literature devoted to the study of the Scrip- 
 tures. Most of this literature has consisted 
 of quarterlies and teachers' aids, following 
 the lessons of the International Committee. 
 Here again these have been good, bad, and 
 indifferent. Practically all scholars are to- 
 day feeling that the choice of lessons was 
 not always wise and that it was impossible 
 to teach infants and grandfathers the same 
 lesson in the same way. The International 
 Committee has gone so far as to introduce 
 graded lessons, but much yet remains to be 
 done. Many of the lesson helps have utterly 
 
30 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 disregarded results of modern scholarship — 
 even those which have been universally 
 accepted. Yet there has been a great deal 
 of religious education going on. 
 
 But meantime, while the Sunday-school 
 has in many instances remained in its 
 methods just where it was fifty years ago, 
 there have been such strides in educational 
 science in the day-schools and colleges that 
 one can hardly keep pace with the advance. 
 The whole educational theory has been trans- 
 formed. The text-books have been rewritten 
 from an absolutely new point of view. The 
 schools have been carefully graded from 
 the kindergarten to the university. New 
 methods of teaching have been introduced. 
 One who attended school forty years ago 
 would hardly recognize a school of to-day as a 
 school, were he to visit it. The teachers have 
 received the finest training. In our great 
 cities no one is allowed to teach who has not 
 had a long discipline in teaching. There 
 are regular colleges for teachers, where, after 
 having received their academic degree else- 
 where, they go to study how to teach what 
 they have learned. A great educational 
 science has sprung up with an enormous 
 literature. Every university has its chair of 
 pedagogy. But most interesting of all, the 
 
The New Religious Education 31 
 
 best young men of the nation are giving 
 their lives to this new educational move- 
 ment. Not only are they entering it as 
 teachers, but every community now desires a 
 superintendent of schools trained in the new 
 science. 
 
 During the last twenty-five years — perhaps 
 more — the most prophetic men in the Church 
 have recognized the fact that there was this 
 new science of education and that for the 
 Church to ignore it meant ultimate suicide 
 to her whole educational work. It would 
 not be long before the very children them- 
 selves would notice the vast difference be- 
 tween the methods and the teachers of the 
 two schools they were attending. But more 
 than that, these men saw that the new edu- 
 cational methods were a step in advance, 
 were a great gain, that they were a part of the 
 progress that all science was making. They 
 saw that the children were receiving great 
 gain from these highly-trained teachers, and 
 carefully chosen lessons, adapted to their 
 minds. One sign of it was a new interest in 
 the schools on the part of the children. As 
 a result of this, these men — such men as 
 President William R. Harper, Dr. Erastus 
 Blakeslee, and Prof. Frank K. Sanders — 
 began to agitate the introduction of the new 
 
32 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 educational methods into the Sunday-schools 
 and pastors' classes. The result has been a 
 complete revival of interest in religious edu- 
 cation. Dr. Blakeslee began issuing Sun- 
 day-school lessons based on the new educa- 
 tional science, and rendered an inestimable 
 service to the whole Church. The Religious 
 Education Association came into being and 
 at its conferences the leading educators and 
 prophetic ministers have made most valuable 
 contributions to the new science. The Inter- 
 national Lesson Committee has begun to 
 grade its lessons and to adapt its courses to 
 the varying needs of the schools. A litera- 
 ture of religious education has come into 
 being, and the theological seminaries, in 
 some instances, are devoting much attention 
 to training young men to teach religion. 
 
 The movement is rising and growing rap- 
 idly. The churches are awakening to the 
 fact that the religious education of the child 
 is the most important task it has upon its 
 hands. It is devoting more and more time 
 to the Sunday-school. The science of relig- 
 ious education has been born. It will grow 
 as rapidly as the new education has grown 
 in the colleges. The Church must have the 
 best the college has. The Sunday-school is 
 going to be reorganized until it will compare 
 
The New Religious Education 33 
 
 favourably with the best public school in the 
 city in its appointments, grading, teaching, 
 and methods. Its teachers are going to be 
 carefully chosen and have some training in 
 imparting knowledge and in child psychol- 
 ogy. Every Sunday-school will have a 
 teachers' library of the growing literature of 
 religious education. 
 
 But it is all new, and here is the point : 
 this movement calls for the wisest and ablest 
 leadership — as able leadership as the new 
 science has had in the public schools and 
 colleges. The churches will soon be clam- 
 ouring for men capable of coming into the 
 parish and putting the Sunday-school on the 
 most modern and scientific basis. Parents 
 themselves are going to demand that the 
 Church be as efificient in its teaching of re- 
 ligion to their children as the grammar 
 school is in teaching them geography. 
 What an opportunity for the college man 
 who wants to undertake some new and pio- 
 neering task, and exert a commanding in- 
 fluence ! And if the human element of 
 ambition enters in a little, no field offers a 
 greater opportunity for eminence than this 
 of religious education, because it is so new, 
 and so few have entered it. But what a 
 challenging task to go into a parish and take 
 
34 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 a Sunday-school of five hundred pupils and 
 fifty teachers and put it on the basis of the 
 best boys' school or public school of the 
 nation ! What an inspiration to meet these 
 fifty teachers every week and instruct them 
 not only in the results of the best Biblical 
 scholarship but also in the latest educational 
 science ! What a pleasure to see such a 
 school, as religious, too, in its spirit, as was 
 the old, graduating all its senior classes into 
 the Church, year by year ! 
 
 But the young minister's work in the new 
 religious education will not stop here. For 
 soon the Church is going to take much of the 
 money it is now spending on quartette choirs 
 and other things, and put it where it will do 
 infinitely more good for the kingdom of God 
 — on the thorough religious education of the 
 children. 
 
 The Sunday-school is not enough. The 
 pastor himself, and his assistant pastors will 
 meet every child weekly and instruct him in 
 church history, Christian doctrine, the heroes 
 of the faith. Christian ethics, in the things the 
 Church to-day is accomplishing both at home 
 and abroad, and in the meaning of the Church 
 which he is soon to join. Practically every 
 child in the parish will be won for the Church 
 and the higher life, when the Church turns to 
 
The New Religious Education 3^ 
 
 this thing. And it is turning. Here is a 
 superb opportunity for the best trained col- 
 lege men to change the whole character of 
 a church and make it a great university of 
 religion where every child shall become as 
 thoroughly grounded in all that pertains to 
 religion as he is in the history of the United 
 States. And why not have classes also for 
 the adults, in religious history and the appli- 
 cation of Christianity to modern social prob- 
 lems, and especially in the Bible ? The au- 
 thor cannot conceive of any present opening 
 offering more opportunity for leadership than 
 this. 
 
IV 
 
 THE NEW BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND 
 THE MINISTER 
 
 FOR over fifty years the storms have 
 raged about the Old Testament. The 
 findings of geology first disturbed our 
 fathers, because they seemed to discredit the 
 Biblical story of creation. The earth was 
 created not in seven days, as Genesis averred, 
 but by a long process covering perhaps many 
 millions of aeons. Animals lay petrified deep 
 under the mountains ages before the first 
 creative day of Genesis. Then came Darwin 
 with his theory of evolution, and this seemed 
 to completely sweep not only the Bible, but 
 God Himself, out of existence. Not only was 
 man not created in the mechanical fashion of 
 Genesis, but it was doubtful if he was created 
 at all. He might be a spontaneous emana- 
 tion of the universe. Anyhow, he was a 
 product of a long evolution, a process of 
 growth from the first cell of life up to the per- 
 fect man. It is perhaps impossible for us 
 moderns to realize what a blank universe 
 faced many Christians when the facts of evo- 
 lution were announced, or through what a 
 36 
 
Biblical Scholarship and the Minister 37 
 
 maze of perplexities they had to walk. 
 Everything seemed to have been shaken. 
 
 Almost at the same time, the new his- 
 torical science arose, and investigations in 
 Egypt and the East revealed an antiquity of 
 civilization dating far back beyond the be- 
 ginning of the Biblical cosmogony. Hardly 
 had the Church recovered from these shocks 
 before the new Biblical scholarship began to 
 influence England, Scotland, and the United 
 States. It came from Germany and was 
 called the " Higher Criticism " — that is, the 
 criticism or study which dealt with the con- 
 tents of the book itself, as distinguished from 
 the '' Lower Criticism," which dealt simply 
 with textual questions. This new scholarship 
 swept Great Britain and America like a flood. 
 Books from the German were translated faster 
 than men could read them. In Scotland, 
 Robertson Smith adopted the views and soon 
 they reached the ears of the people. In Eng- 
 land, Coleridge and Thomas Arnold and Dean 
 Stanley followed in the footsteps of the Ger- 
 mans, although a book from Bishop Colenzo, 
 of South Africa (written independently of 
 German scholarship but arriving at the same 
 conclusions), had greatly stirred all England 
 before this. In this country such men as 
 Washington Gladden, Theodore T. Munger, 
 
38 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 and Newman Smyth popularized these new 
 views. 
 
 This higher criticism called for a prac- 
 tically new Bible. It said that Genesis was 
 not strict history but only poetry ; that the 
 historical books showed signs of many au- 
 thors; that the laws of Israel were a prod- 
 uct of growth and national legislation, as 
 were the laws of any land ; that the Psalms 
 were the hymns of the Jewish Church, and 
 came from many sources and were written 
 by many men ; that the prophecies were the 
 sermons of Israel's great lay preachers ; that 
 many of the books were of much later date 
 than had been supposed ; above all, that both 
 the revelation and morality of the Old Testa- 
 ment were progressive, and that the authority 
 of any part of the Bible must be determined 
 by its place in this progression. Again the 
 whole Church was thrown into confusion, a 
 turmoil from which it has only just emerged. 
 But through all these shocks and blows, these 
 perplexities and chaotic times, the people have 
 come safely, and the Christian faith is more 
 firmly grounded than ever. It is seen by 
 everybody that a theory of inspiration need 
 not affect the divine content of the Bible— 
 that God speaks in many ways. In every 
 church men sit, hearing the divine message 
 
Biblical Scholarship and the Minister 39 
 
 of the Book, some of whom still hold the old 
 theories, some of whom glory in the new. 
 Evolution, it is now seen, has not taken God 
 from us, but has, if anything, increased our 
 wonder of Him, by showing us the infinite 
 and colossal scale on which He works. 
 Through all these changes the Church has 
 come safely ; largely because of the able lead- 
 ership of wise and scholarly ministers who 
 have neither been swept off their feet by every 
 new wind of doctrine nor resisted all that was 
 new because it was new, when it had light to 
 throw on God and truth. 
 
 The battle over the Old Testament has 
 been fought and settled. Any new view of 
 its authorship or of its inspiration disturbs us 
 no longer. We read the new theory and 
 calmly leave it to the scholars to debate it, 
 not greatly concerned as to the outcome. 
 For, after all, we know that Christianity does 
 not rest on any one attitude towards the Old 
 Testament — indeed, does not rest on the Old 
 Testament at all fundamentally, but upon 
 Jesus Christ and the Christian experience. 
 So it is not a matter of life or death or of 
 faith or awful doubt, if David did not write 
 every Psalm, or if the prophecy of Jonah be 
 a parable, composed, as Jesus composed His 
 parables, to point a great religious truth. 
 
40 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 But when one comes to the New Testa* 
 ment it is a very different thing. When one 
 begins to attack that he seems to attack the 
 very pillars on which faith rests, to pierce 
 the very heart of Christianity, to break vio- 
 lently into the home of the soul. Even the 
 least tampering with it creates alarm. To 
 take away a miracle gives pain like the cut- 
 ting off of a finger of one's hand. Cast 
 doubt upon one story in it and you cast 
 doubt upon all of it. Begin to emasculate it 
 and where will we stop ? The miracles are 
 so interwoven with the gospel story that, 
 take them out, you take out half the religious 
 teaching of the Gospel, for do they not, most 
 of them, stand as real revelations as well as 
 supernatural incident ? Yes, it is an entirely 
 different thing when one begins to throw 
 doubt upon the absolute veracity of the 
 Gospels or to question even the most super- 
 natural event of the Epistles. The Church 
 will tremble when that comes. Great dark- 
 ness is in store for many people. It is even 
 now beginning. 
 
 The New Testament is going to be sub- 
 mitted to just the same searching, impartial 
 and scientific examination by the great 
 scholars of the world during the next 
 fifty years that the Old Testament has re- 
 
Biblical Scholarship and the Minister 41 
 
 ceived during the last fifty years. This is as 
 sure as anything can be. The signs are 
 everywhere. Mrs. Ward's ** Robert Els- 
 mere " is an instance of the far-reaching 
 conclusions that are being put forth already, 
 for Mrs. Ward has simply novelized, so to 
 speak, the results of much German scholar- 
 ship. But " Robert Elsmere " sweeps all the 
 supernatural from the New Testament till no 
 vestige of the miraculous is left. '* Robert 
 Elsmere " was read by thousands and every 
 pastor knows how many perplexed souls 
 came to him after reading it. The ink is 
 hardly dry in two recent books by two of our 
 most eminent thinkers, which, while not deny- 
 ing the existence of the miraculous in the 
 New Testament, are written to show that 
 neither the divinity of Christ, nor the in- 
 spirations of His teachings rest upon the 
 miraculous. The witness of experience and 
 the transformations wrought in humanity are 
 so much greater evidence that miracles are 
 superfluous. It is buttressing the greater by 
 the less to bring them in. The two books 
 are "Miracles and Supernatural Religion,'' 
 by Dr. James M. Whiton, and ** Religion 
 and Miracle," by Dr. George A. Gordon. 
 As we said, neither of these books denies the 
 existence of miracles. But they might just 
 
42 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 as well, if they carry their main point, which 
 is the needlessness of miracle to support the 
 divinity of Christ and His teaching. For 
 miracles are so hard to believe. The moment 
 they are not imperatively needed to support 
 Christ's divinity, they will be dropped. Now 
 these books have had a very wide reading 
 and have perturbed many people, as every 
 editor and pastor knows. But they are only 
 a beginning. They are coming fast from 
 Germany. In England the "Virgin Birth" 
 is questioned every week. Prof. Benjamin 
 W. Bacon's books on " New Testament Criti- 
 cism " are as radical as Professor Driver's or 
 Canon Cheyne's *' Introductions to the Old 
 Testament" were. All the foundations are 
 surely going to be shaken. The Church 
 may as well face the fact at once. 
 
 What will be the outcome of this critical 
 study of the New Testament, we do not 
 know. It may be that the older positions 
 may be made firmer than ever. It may be 
 that the miracles may remain among the 
 things that cannot be shaken. It may be 
 that there will be some change of attitude as 
 there undoubtedly has been towards the Old 
 Testament. But, whatever may be the re- 
 sult, many in the Church are going to be 
 sorely perplexed and have got to be most 
 
Biblical Scholarship and the Minister 43 
 
 wisely led. There never was greater 7ieed in 
 the ministry than there will be for the first 
 half of this new century for preachers ofwide^ 
 deep, thoroiigh scholarship. There must be 
 men in our pulpits who shall be capable of 
 grasping both old and new vigorously, un- 
 biasedly, impartially, and who through all 
 change or seeming change can keep the faith, 
 and lead their perplexed people through the 
 shifdng sands to the firm land — whether 
 back to the shore from whence they have 
 drifted or to new lands, does not matter 
 here, but to the things that remain, that can- 
 not be shaken. What an opportunity this 
 offers to the young man who not only wants 
 to be a great scholar, but who desires also to 
 have large part in shaping the philosophy of 
 the new century ! And where can greater 
 service be rendered than in leading the pres- 
 ent age through the confused views of New 
 Testament criticism to the solid rock, as 
 Munger and Smyth led the last generation 
 through the Old Testament criticism in ** The 
 Freedom of Faith" and " Old Faiths in New 
 Light " ? 
 
V 
 THE CHALLENGE OF THE NEW PAGANISM 
 
 THE great question of the age is 
 whether the Christian philosophy of 
 life or the Epicurean is to prevail. 
 Or, in other words, is the world of the spirit or 
 the world of the senses to dominate our lives. 
 The Epicurean philosophy has a great follow- 
 ing in our land to-day, and, especially in 
 some of our great cities, it is attracting so 
 many devotees that it is creeping into the 
 churches themselves. The name is not used 
 Half the people who hold the philosophy 
 would not know the word if one mentioned 
 it. But all their thought and Hfe is ordered 
 by the old Epicurean, pagan teaching. It is 
 simply this : that life is for self-enjoyment, not 
 for altruism, service or sacrifice. Any man 
 who lives simply for what enjoyment he can 
 get out of life is an Epicurean. He may not 
 have vile or beastly habits. That is no neces- 
 sary part of the philosophy. These things may 
 not give as much pleasure to some men as a 
 symphony. Whatever brings the most joy 
 44 
 
The Challenge of the New Paganism 45 
 
 in life is the golden fleece to be eagerly 
 sought. 
 
 One cannot live long in any city without 
 realizing that this philosophy of life has great 
 hold upon fully half the people of the city. 
 They begin the labour of the day with no 
 thought of its being a divine opportunity to 
 render some service. It is only a hard task 
 whereby one wrests all the money one can 
 from other people and then escapes as soon 
 as possible, unless the money-making itself 
 becomes a greater joy than what it can pur- 
 chase. When evening comes — or if there is 
 money enough to live without work, when 
 the day comes — the first thought is not, can 
 we render any service this evening, or make 
 some one else happy, but how can we find 
 most satisfaction for ourselves. This satisfac- 
 tion may be very respectable ; but it is all self- 
 centred, it is Epicureanism. So there comes 
 the theatre, the opera, the concert, the dinner at 
 the brilliant restaurant, the card party, the mo- 
 tor ride, the yachting trip, for the respectable, 
 and the gratification of appetites and evil de- 
 sires for the vicious. Of course, these respect- 
 able pleasures are perfectly legitimate for any 
 one at times, and even helpful. But when 
 they become the chief and only concern, as 
 they are for half the people, they are pur« 
 
46 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 and simple paganism, and almost a worse 
 enemy of Christianity than viciousness itself. 
 We said that it had crept into the churches. 
 When a man, although he attends a church, 
 and is an enrolled member, puts more thought 
 and time on the gratification of his own 
 worldly desires than he gives to the service 
 of man, he is more Epicurean than Christian. 
 Christianity is to live towards the world as 
 nearly as possible as Christ did. When a 
 man spends most of his money on a beautiful 
 home, and rnost of his income on pleasures, 
 and most of his enthusiasm on games and 
 sports, and devotes 7nost of his time to those 
 who will return good things and good times 
 to him, and then gives only Sunday morning 
 to church, and only the fag end of his enthusi- 
 asm, if any of it, to service, and only one or 
 two little gifts of money, mere trifles com- 
 pared with what he spends on himself, to 
 Christ, he is not a true Christian in the New 
 Testament sense of that term. He may be 
 respectable and keep the Ten Commandments. 
 But this is not Christianity. Christianity is the 
 passionate devotion of all one is and has to 
 Jesus Christ. The Christian lives not pri- 
 marily for himself, but for the kingdom. One 
 need hardly say that this pagan class is legion 
 in our modern life. One need only open his 
 
The Challenge of the New Paganism 47 
 
 eyes to see how mad the nation has gone 
 over sports and games and rich dinners and 
 theatres. Enough money was spent on din- 
 ners in gorgeous restaurants on New Year's 
 Eve in New York to have supported the Pres- 
 byterian Board of Foreign Missions half of 
 one year. There are members of rich 
 churches who spend five hundred dollars on 
 one dinner party who do not put even a five 
 dollar bill in the box when the offering for 
 foreign missions is received. 
 
 But not only is there this great wave of un- 
 conscious Epicureanism upon us, this putting 
 the quest of pleasure, comfort and enjoyment 
 first, but there is an increasing and powerful 
 school of writers who are preaching this doc- 
 trine as the true philosophy of life. They tell 
 us that the sacrificial ideal of Christianity is 
 both abnormal and impossible of attainment. 
 They question the fact that the world has any 
 claim upon us, and openly advocate the life 
 that follows the so-called natural instincts, 
 and puts rights before duties, gratification 
 before service, and self before sacrifice. One 
 has only to look into the great pile of modern 
 novels on the book-stall to find this gospel of 
 self running through them all. Even families 
 may be ruined that the soul (oftenest it is the 
 body) may have its rights and find the rose 
 
48 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 of joy. Every other play in the theatre 
 gathers about this point. Our modem trage- 
 dies are based on the insatiable desire for the 
 one thing upon which the soul has set its 
 heart. Our modern literature knows no al- 
 truism, and how rarely one finds a book or 
 play in which real sacrifice is preached as 
 both the fulfillment of life and ultimately its 
 chief joy. This gospel of paganism is 
 preached so subtly that many come under 
 its sway and yield to it before they are aware 
 of its utterly unchristian character. 
 
 Along with all this there is another phase 
 of the same thing— the absorption in business 
 of every other man in our great cities, and 
 even on our farms, to such an extent that the 
 Church is being more and more crowded out 
 of his thought, and Christian service out of 
 his practice, and the life of the spirit out of his 
 soul. It is nothing short of pitiful to watch 
 this process going on in our great citieSo The 
 writer has had unusual opportunities to meet 
 men in the large cities and large churches. 
 His observations have led him to conclude 
 that in some instances the economic system 
 is at fault, while in many others it is the man 
 himself. There are thousands of men who 
 are so in the grasp of our modern, strenuous 
 business, where the competitive order holds 
 
The Challenge of the New Paganism 49 
 
 sway, that when night comes they are too 
 exhausted to either think or read. They 
 turn to amusement and unnatural excitement 
 and soon lose all interest in the life of the 
 soul. When Saturday comes, they seek the 
 country, and Sunday becomes a day of sport 
 and outdoor life in summer, and sleep in 
 winter. It was only last spring that a certain 
 New York pastor was told, while he was sup- 
 plying the pulpit in one of the great suburbs 
 on a beautiful spring Sunday, that a quar- 
 ter of the congregation was away motor- 
 ing ! 
 
 Then there is the other group, who have 
 become so engulfed in business that it has be- 
 come a passion, and the worship of God has 
 been supplanted by the great god, " Success." 
 Often this passionate pursuit of gain has 
 been accelerated by the desire, or seeming 
 necessity, of maintaining a standard of living 
 equal to that of their richer friends. The re- 
 sult is not only a heart out of which has been 
 crowded all religious life, but a heart so 
 atrophied by absorption in things and by 
 engrossment in wealth that it has lost even 
 the power to respond to the ideal and to the 
 spiritual appeal. The very words, " the life of 
 the soul," are meaningless to it. The *' world 
 of the spirit " is as foreign to its comprehen- 
 
50 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 sion as is the planet in the skies. These men 
 read no more the great books of life and 
 power. Poetry means nothing to them. 
 Idealism has no charm for them. The old 
 church life has become nothing but memory. 
 They take no interest in the great reform 
 movements of the day. They no longer have 
 the largeness of men who are absorbed in 
 the great movements in which God is moving 
 over the earth. What spiritual aspiration, 
 as well as reading, exists in the family is all 
 in the v/ife's name. The conversation is of 
 business. 
 
 Then there is the fact that half the nation 
 seems to be going mad over sports. There 
 is an intoxication over games as marked 
 as the intoxication from liquor. A business 
 man recently remarked that half his clerks 
 were so drunk with baseball that they could 
 do no satisfactory work. And it is all second- 
 hand, abnormal sport. The crowds watch 
 others play and exercise. They play only by 
 proxy. They watch and bet. Great crowds 
 of men are putting infinitely more enthusi- 
 asm into sport than into church or into their 
 home or civic life. The women are closely 
 following. Even the colleges seem some- 
 times to be more interested in athletics 
 than in scholarship. If one questions this 
 
The Challenge of the New Paganism 51 
 
 general drunkenness over sport, let him no- 
 tice that his newspaper gives only one sub- 
 ject in all creation a whole page daily — and 
 often two — namely, sport. It is for sport 
 that the extra editions are published. But 
 sport as an end in life, a complete absorp- 
 tion, is Epicureanism pure and simple. If 
 the fever goes on spreading as it has, it 
 means before many years a race of men de- 
 void of all moral enthusiasms, and all mental 
 qualifications for wrestling with great things. 
 How hard it is even now to find great men ! 
 Sport is even stealing our Sundays and 
 beginning to drag young men from churches 
 to the ball grounds. 
 
 But this wide-spread and rapidly growing 
 Epicureanism and absorption in the world is 
 the great menace not only to the Church, but 
 to our manhood and to the nation. 
 
 There is no peril ultimately more destruc- 
 tive of the religious life than worldliness, 
 even when it does not take the form of vice. 
 The Church lives on the passion of its mem- 
 bers, and religion thrives only in the ages of 
 idealism. And, worst of all, immorality soon 
 comes in the wake of spiritual indifference. 
 The great need of this age is a rebirth of 
 idealism. Some one must awaken the world 
 to the fact that the soul is made for the world 
 
52 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 of the spirit, not for self, nor pleasures, nor 
 bonds and stocks. Some one must show it 
 that even a healthy, happy, outdoor life, if ab- 
 sorbed only in self, forgetting the service of 
 the world, is not Christian, but only the 
 old pagan religion. Here is the opportunity 
 and challenge of the gifted college man. 
 (For it is going to take gifted men to accom- 
 plish these things.) The college man is an 
 idealist by nature. He believes that life is 
 not meant for bread alone, but for deep senti- 
 ment, lofty aspiration, and the service of 
 mankind. He has been living with the great 
 and noble souls of all ages and has caught 
 their enthusiasm for the world of the spirit. 
 He has seen that nations perish when men 
 forget the soul. He has found that man is 
 at his true and highest point only when he 
 visits the Mountain of Transfiguration with 
 Jesus. He scorns to become immersed and 
 enmeshed in the paltry things of the world. 
 The Church now needs such men above 
 all others. She needs them more than she 
 needs administrators, or orators. She needs 
 men who can week by week make the world 
 of the spirit so attractive that men will want 
 to leave even their comfortable homes and 
 motor cars to have some part in it. She calls 
 for men who can persuade these respectable^ 
 
The Challenge of thfe New Paganism 53 
 
 self-centred (if not always selfish) men that 
 service is the only fulfillment of manhood 
 and in the end brings most satisfying joys. 
 She needs so very much just now great, 
 gifted men who can convince this commercial 
 age that money and success won at the sacri- 
 fice of the soul turn eventually into dust and 
 ashes, while it sears the owner in the process. 
 There is a greater call for young men than 
 ever, who can persuade the youth of our 
 time to put pleasure simply on the basis of 
 recreation and make their passion and pur- 
 suit the service of the kingdom of Christ in 
 some of its commanding phases. For great 
 movements of the Spirit are abroad in the 
 world ; lofty dreams of ancient prophets are 
 coming to fulfillment. Happy the young 
 men and maidens who take part in these 
 sublime fulfillments of God. It is for the 
 minister to call youth and manhood, and 
 even age, from bondage to the world, up 
 into the world of the Spirit, where ideals 
 hold sway — not things. It is a great oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
VI 
 
 THE COMBATING OF THE NEW ATHEISM 
 
 ATHEISM assumes a different form in 
 every century. Haeckel denies the 
 very existence of a God. With Vol- 
 taire it is not a denial of the existence of 
 God, but a cynical criticism of everything 
 men have ever said about Him. With Hume 
 it is a denial of revelation. With Spencer it 
 is not a denial of a Power within or behind 
 the universe, but a denial of our capacity 
 to know anything about it. The atheism of 
 our own day is different from any of these ; 
 but, if anything, it is more deadly. It is an 
 out and out materialism. There is no such 
 thing as spirit. The universe is matter, and 
 had its origin in matter. Nothing is trust- 
 worthy which cannot be substantiated by the 
 senses — that is, the five senses. What we 
 call spiritual sensations are merely results of 
 stimulation of the nerves. Love is simply a 
 sudden rearrangement of nerve centres, just 
 as is seasickness. Patriotism is an intoxica- 
 tion much resembling that produced by 
 champagne. Our heroic moments are times 
 54 
 
The Combating of the -New Atheism 55 
 
 of over-stimulation. Gods and spiritual be- 
 ings are simply hallucinations of the brains 
 of childlike men. Prayer — well, it is still a 
 remnant of the fear that we have brought 
 from savagery, which impels us to call on 
 the fancied supernatural beings. The uni- 
 verse is comprehended in oxygen and hydro- 
 gen. The highest aspirations of man are 
 simply emanations of the brain, as vapours 
 emanate from water when they are freed by 
 fire. 
 
 All this being true, of course, the whole 
 ethical and moral life shifts to another basis. 
 In a theistic and spiritual view of the uni- 
 verse, ethics are the fruit of religion. God 
 is a loving Father. He has made us His 
 children. Let us therefore love Him and re- 
 ceive His love in return, and let us behave 
 with the dignity and righteousness becoming 
 sons of God and heirs of immortality. He 
 has revealed Himself and His will. Let us 
 conform our lives to His character and His 
 commands. He has shown us true manhood 
 by sending the divine man, Jesus. Let us 
 live as the brothers of the Lord ; let us be 
 friends of Christ. But now all this is gone. 
 We are but sticks and stones endued with 
 remarkable intelligence. Back of the universe 
 is neither love nor light. The only basis for 
 
56 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 ethics is the welfare of the individual, or of the 
 whole community, if the race can rise to it. 
 But it never does rise to it if it forgets God. 
 Love never yet grew strong when its source 
 was a pool of water. Under this materialis- 
 tic theory of the universe it loses its fine aroma 
 and becomes coarse and animal. Those 
 higher aspirations of the soul, which nothing 
 can awaken but a good and worshipful God, 
 are lost, and our ideals become of the nature 
 of the earth, of which we are only a part 
 All our ideals are lowered to the level of be- 
 ings who look downward for origin and 
 destiny rather than upward. Soon our 
 whole social life becomes coarse. Soon vice 
 becomes natural. For, if we are only ani- 
 mals, we will ultimately live as animals. 
 
 Of course, there is no such thing as 
 immortality. Mr. Haeckel, Mr. Blatchford 
 and others poke fun at immortality. Mr. 
 Haeckel even doubts if some men would like 
 to meet their mothers-in-law again after 
 death. Only recently, in one of our great 
 universities, an eminent German scientist 
 proclaimed that death ended all, for the 
 brain and the soul were only one and the 
 same. Therefore, when the brain was decom- 
 posed, that was the end of the soul. This 
 denial of immortality is, of course, wrapped 
 
The Combating of the New Atheism 57 
 
 up in materialism. But let us not forget the 
 issue of it for man. When man discovers he 
 is not immortal he soon hauls his ideals 
 down from the stars and hitches them to 
 electric lights. The great inspiration to 
 divine living is the consciousness of divine 
 origin, nature, and destiny. If we come 
 trailing clouds of glory, we live by glory. If 
 we come trailing only clouds of dust, we live 
 by dust. 
 
 Now, it is unfair to call any age an age of 
 doubt, or an age of pessimism, or a material- 
 istic age. This is not a wholly materialistic 
 age. There are great souls in it, and a 
 million men are cherishing their sonship in 
 God, and most of the great scientists are 
 holding a theistic interpretation of the uni- 
 verse. Such men as Sir Oliver Lodge and 
 Prof. William James have been asserting that 
 all is spirit ; that even matter is more than the 
 matrix of spirit. It is spirit finding realization. 
 And we have Henri Bergson in France and 
 Professor Eucken in Germany preaching a 
 sublime idealism as the only fit and large 
 enough thought world for the soul of man. 
 But, on the other hand, this materialism has 
 permeated our institutions and society to an 
 alarming degree. Hardly a university but 
 has materialists upon its faculty, men to 
 
58 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 whom chemistry explains everything— God, 
 love, and the human soul. Our bookstores are 
 full of its literature. Haeckel's ** The Riddle 
 of the Universe" has sold by the hundreds 
 of thousands. Socialism, in some quarters, 
 seeks nothing above a world where no hunger 
 is. Success in business becomes almost the 
 acme of human striving. In our great cities 
 many men are under the dominance of things. 
 Great buildings, long railroads, huge corpora- 
 tions, bridges hung high in the air, vast 
 engines — these assume highest place and 
 shut out the vision of the skies. Where our 
 fathers sang hymns we talk bonds and stocks. 
 Our music is the rumble of traffic. No great 
 poet sings. Who would read him if he did ? 
 So far has this materialism gone that a 
 new school of atheists has sprung up, who 
 not only deny Christ, but deny His teachings 
 and all those sanctions of morality that have 
 grown up through ages of Christian experi- 
 ence. The books of Neitzsche, which cast 
 superb scorn on the Sermon on the Mount 
 and much of the Christian ethic, have had a 
 great influence in Germany, as the nation is 
 beginning to find to her cost. To Neitzsche, 
 the gospel of altruism, sacrifice, and forgive- 
 ness is abnormal, unnatural, and sentimental. 
 He would enthrone power as Lord of life and 
 
The Combating of the New Atheism 59 
 
 make self the one great end. In France 
 there is a blatant materialism being preached 
 in journal and book, which even praises that 
 which any child of God instinctively abhors. 
 It has reached England and America, and 
 while not loudly proclaimed, finds its way by 
 a subtle infusion into the minds of youth. 
 It is not uncommon to find it in our plays 
 and books. Suderman's " Song of Songs " 
 was sold by the thousands of copies in the 
 United States. There is a disposition among 
 some of our very prominent men to consider 
 the Sermon on the Mount visionary and 
 harmful. It will not hold good as a working 
 theory of life. 
 
 The end of all this is either chaos or death. 
 And they are one and the same thing. 
 Unless there can be infused into our society 
 a new faith in God, and immortality as the 
 real and abiding fact of the universe, the out- 
 look for humanity is indeed dismal. The 
 greatest need of our time is for the prophetic 
 man who can make God and the human soul 
 the most real and supreme factor in hu- 
 manity. It matters little — some, of course, 
 — how many administrators and executive 
 geniuses we have in our pulpits. The chief 
 thing our churches need is great, prophetic 
 men of God — men who are stewards of the 
 
6o New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 mysteries of God, men who have talked with 
 God and can go out into a materialistic age 
 and radiate spiritual qualities in the very 
 midst of the world of things. There never 
 was such an opportunity in the ministr}^ as 
 there is to-day for the man who believes in 
 the reality of the soul, and knows the capacity 
 of the soul for God, and who knows that 
 humanity will never be permanently satisfied 
 with anything less than the everlasting yea. 
 The tide is turning that way, as we hinted. 
 We believe, as Rev. Reginald J. Campbell 
 recently said, that the world is even now be- 
 ginning to be dissatisfied with things. A 
 hunger for the things of the spirit is coming 
 upon it. Perhaps the great revival is close at 
 hand. We believe we feel the first faint whis- 
 perings of the mighty wind of God. Happy 
 that man who, with prophetic soul, can help 
 lift this age up out of the slough of materialism 
 into the world of the spirit, where love and 
 sacrifice shall again become the law of life, 
 and where men shall walk again with God, 
 and where honour and purity shall consume 
 vice and lust, where the home shall be sacred, 
 where poets again shall sing, and all the 
 earth be filled with the knowledge of the 
 Lord. 
 
VII 
 
 THE NEW SOCIAL GOSPEL 
 
 FROM the beginning, the chief concern 
 of the Church has been the establish- 
 ment of right relations between indi- 
 vidual souls and God. Its history has been 
 largely the history of personal religion. It 
 began with the making of converts, one by 
 one, from paganism and from the Jewish 
 Church. After Christianity had become the 
 state religion of practically all of Europe, its 
 chief mission became the nurture of its chil- 
 dren in personal religion and the redemption 
 of men from the evil of the world. Its great- 
 ness has consisted in its superb ministry to 
 human souls. It led its children face to face 
 with God. It presented Christ to the alien- 
 ated soul as the hope and Saviour. It com- 
 forted the sorrowing, the despondent and the 
 doubting with the eternal Word of God. It 
 inculcated an ethic for the individual that 
 created a practically new type of man. It 
 has made saints in every age. It has called 
 millions to follow Jesus Christ in the sacrificial 
 life. It has taught all men the way of joy 
 6i 
 
62 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 and peace. It has made the Gospel of im- 
 mortality a real power in myriads of souls. 
 When the spiritual life has ebbed low it has 
 engendered great revivals of religion. But 
 they have always been revivals of personal 
 religion. It has led little children, one by 
 one, into the kingdom of God and inculcated 
 in them the power to live by faith, which is 
 the highest achievement of the human soul. 
 In these later years it has sent out mission- 
 aries again, as it did in its first years, to con- 
 vert the heathen. This missionary work, 
 until quite recently, has also been exclusively 
 to individuals. 
 
 This work the Church has done superbly, 
 and by it she has veritably changed all hu- 
 man history. By this work with individuals 
 alone she has transformed the face of the 
 world, created a new civilization, permeated 
 society with a new spirit, created a holy at- 
 mosphere amidst the foulness of the earth. 
 For every Christian becomes a light which 
 lightens the world wherein he moves. Every 
 Christian is a leaven which leavens the lump. 
 And the Church must ever pursue her evan- 
 gelistic work with holy zeal. For personal 
 religion is the foundation on which a renewed 
 society must ever permanently rest. Our 
 souls cry out for the living God, and the 
 
The New Social Gospel 63 
 
 Church must ever make Him real to us. The 
 mysteries of this life gather about every soul, 
 and he must be led into the light of day. 
 Each one of us has sinned, and the Church 
 must ever lead us to the fount of cleansing, 
 and proclaim to us — each one by himself — 
 the forgiveness of our sins. It is a lonely 
 world for millions of souls, and the Church 
 must ever preach to individuals the Father- 
 hood of God. Social righteousness can never 
 be lasting until the units that compose society 
 have consciences that reflect the will of God, 
 and moral natures that are both pure and pas- 
 sionate. Yes, the Church must continue to 
 minister to the personal needs of every soul, 
 and lead men as persons in that worship and 
 prayer that endues us with divine power. 
 
 But in these later years the Church has 
 rapidly been realizing that another task calls 
 her with equally commanding voice, namely, 
 to redeem the evil world as well as evil men ; 
 to redeem the city as well as its citizens ; to 
 build a holy temple in the earth for holy men 
 to live in. She has not merely to keep men 
 pure and unspotted in a loathsome world, but 
 make the very world itself pure and spotless, 
 as far as may be. She is to redeem society, 
 its laws and sentiment and customs and in- 
 justices, as well as lifting men out of its evil 
 
64 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 clutches. Hence has arisen the new enthu- 
 siasm for humanity equal to the old passion 
 for men. Hence has come the social gospel 
 which is now become equally the Church's 
 message with the Gospel for human souls. 
 Of course, the Church has never entirely neg- 
 lected it. She attacked the gladiatorial games 
 in ancient Italy, and a universal evil fell be- 
 fore her anger. She attacked human torture 
 in the days of Thomasius, and the diabolical 
 machines rusted away. She attacked feudal- 
 ism, and before her new gospel of liberty the 
 castles crumbled on their hills. She spread 
 the gospel of the brotherhood of man, and 
 out of her preaching sprang democracies and 
 at least the beginning of that struggle for 
 justice and equality which is the chief feature 
 of our modern life. She protested against 
 slavery, and out of her gospel of the sonship 
 of all men, regardless of colour or capacity, 
 came the emancipation of serfs and slaves. 
 But never has this been her chief mission or 
 a mission coequal with her ministry to single 
 souls, until our own day. 
 
 To-day the social mission of the Church 
 has become so much her conviction that it' 
 holds equal place in her work and purpose 
 with her evangeUstic task. (The two are 
 never contradictory, but are complementary 
 
The New Social Gospel 65 
 
 each to the other.) The signs of it are every- 
 where about us. The Men and Religion 
 Forward Movement, for instance, has made 
 the larger portion of its program the cleansing 
 of politics, the purification of business, the 
 securing of economic justice, the abolishment 
 of the saloon and the abolishment of indus- 
 trial servitude. The various brotherhoods of 
 the churches have set social reform before 
 them as their chief task. The Federal Coun- 
 cil of the Churches of Christ has created 
 commissions on social service and on peace 
 and arbitration, and is devoting much of its 
 energy to the healing of the breach between 
 capital and labour. The denominations have 
 themselves created many similar commis- 
 sions. The leading religious books to-day 
 deal with these great social problems, seek- 
 ing ways whereby Christianity may be ap- 
 plied to their solution. The same change 
 has come over the pulpit of the land. All 
 this means that the task of the Church is 
 now not only to lift men out of evil condi- 
 tions but to transform the very environment 
 in which men have to live. 
 
 The most significant thing about the great 
 National Christian Conservation Congress of 
 the Men and Religion Forward Movement, 
 held in Carnegie Hall in April, 191 2, was 
 
66 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 the continued emphasis on the new social 
 gospel, the insistence that the Church of the 
 twentieth century has got to redeem society 
 as well as individuals in it, institutions as 
 well as their members. One paragraph from 
 the Report of the Commission on Social 
 Service so clearly puts the new obligation of 
 the Church that I quote it at length : 
 
 ** Jesus came to create a new earth wherein 
 righteousness would dwell. His aim was 
 health — whole bodies and whole minds and 
 whole consciences and whole souls. He 
 came as a physician specially concerned with 
 the sick : * I came not to call the righteous 
 but sinners.' The world was plagued with 
 the disease of selfishness, and it was His 
 task to bring health to its victims. The 
 story of His life is full of accounts of His 
 personal contacts with sinful individuals — . 
 Zacchaeus, the woman of the city (a sinner), 
 Nicodemus, the rich young ruler, the Samar- 
 itan woman, and many more. They were 
 the sick who had need of a physician, the 
 lost whom He came to restore to health and 
 to their normal relations and functions in 
 God's great world-household. 
 
 But we must remember that Jesus was 
 also the transformer of social conditions, the 
 Founder of a divine social order. The phrase 
 
The New Social Gospel 67 
 
 oftenest on His lips was the kingdom of 
 God. He proclaimed a new era of justice, 
 kindness and faithfulness in which men 
 should dwell together in family relations 
 under the fatherly control of a God like 
 Himself in character, a social order in which 
 Zacchaeus would not be tempted to become 
 extortionate, nor the passionate woman se- 
 duced to harlotry, nor Nicodemus made self- 
 complacently cultured, nor the wealthy young 
 man mastered by his possessions, nor the 
 Samaritan woman ruined by the home- 
 wrecking ideals and conditions of a Sychar. 
 Jesus had the purpose of creating a new 
 humanity as He worked along both lines of 
 service. He sought to change society by 
 transforming individuals and making them 
 salt and light and leaven to preserve and 
 illuminate and alter the community; He 
 strove to render the conversion of individ- 
 uals unnecessary by establishing a new social 
 order of love in which they would be moulded 
 from birth into sons and daughters of the 
 .Most High. The process of individual sal- 
 vation works from inside a single heart out 
 upon a world that is to be redeemed ; the 
 process of communal salvation regenerates 
 social conditions in order to shape aright the 
 lives of individuals. . . . Along with the 
 
68 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 task of saving lives, the Church must follow 
 its Lord in attempting to transform social 
 conditions which destroy men's lives. It 
 must scrutinize every social institution and 
 arrangement in the light of its Lord's Spirit 
 to detect sources of selfishness which undo 
 its work and produce sinners. It cannot be 
 content with teaching a young man that, 
 like Jesus, he must come not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister, and then send him out 
 into a business world where he is told that 
 every man is for himself first, last, and al- 
 ways; or into a civic life where politicians 
 appeal to his self-interest and bid him vote 
 from a platform from a selfish patriotism that 
 looks to the enrichment of his own country 
 irrespective of its effect on some other nation. 
 It confronts the existing social order, as that 
 is expressed in government or in industry or 
 in the treatment of the criminal, or in educa- 
 tion or in any other phase, with its Christlike 
 social order, and points out discrepancies and 
 contrasts." 
 
 As a consequence of this new social con- 
 viction the Church is addressing itself to a 
 hundred great problems of social redemption 
 which were almost outside of its province 
 fifty years ago. She will still reclaim the 
 drunkard, and will even more earnestly train 
 
The New Social Gospel 69 
 
 her children to self-control, but at the same 
 time she will make an uncompromising fight 
 against the saloon until temptation to drink 
 is removed and the saloon's whole nefarious 
 influence is quenched. She will fight for 
 such possible living conditions for all people 
 that they shall not be urged to drink by half- 
 nurtured bodies, diseased and anaemic blood, 
 nor impelled to the saloon by barren and dark 
 tenements in which no cheerfulness is pos- 
 sible. She will still try to reclaim the woman 
 of the street, and is doing remarkable work 
 for these women in some cities, although 
 only reaching ten out of ten hundred, but 
 she will also make a wise and thorough 
 study of the whole problem of social evil 
 and endeavour by legislation and creation of 
 popular sentiment to somehow abolish pros- 
 titution while at the same time she saves its 
 victims one by one. She will open mis- 
 sionary schools in congested districts and 
 build settlement houses, that she may reach 
 and teach the little working children of the 
 poor, and erect hospitals where she may care 
 for them as by the thousands they become 
 victims of child labour ; but at the same time 
 she will work unceasingly until by just laws 
 and by common conviction every child is 
 guaranteed its right to sun and air, educa- 
 
7© New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 tion and play, and health enough to start 
 life on a sound physical foundation. She 
 will continue to preach personal righteous- 
 ness to the millionaires in the pew, and 
 justice and mercy to the mill owners and 
 employers of labour, and she will carry the 
 Gospel to the poor and oEev them cheer and 
 hope in their poverty, but she is going to do 
 much more than this in the next fifty years. 
 She is going to make a thorough and com- 
 plete study of the whole problem of capital 
 and labour, the relationship of employer and 
 employee, and is ultimately going to con- 
 ceive an economic system where, by co- 
 operation, these embittering strikes and lock- 
 outs will become things forgotten, and where 
 the very causes of poverty will so be abol- 
 ished that we shall no longer have the poor 
 with us always, and all men shall together 
 praise God for His supplying, through these 
 new labours of the Church, their daily bread. 
 She is going to build hospitals for the tender 
 ministry of the sick, but at the same dme she 
 is going to insist upon such homes for the 
 people that tuberculosis is not the certain 
 consequence of their occupancy. 
 
 So with all the great problems that stand 
 between us and the kingdom of God, she 
 will rescue the victims of all injustices as 
 
The New Social Gospel 71 
 
 long as the evil lasts, struggling to the end, 
 but her twentieth century task is to be the 
 creation of new earths after the pattern of 
 God's new heavens. She will speak with a 
 voice that all the nations shall heed : ** There 
 can be but one standard of righteousness in 
 the kingdom of God." Every group of men, 
 every company, every combination, every 
 city, every state, every nation, must bring 
 all its actions under the same rule of honour, 
 justice and altruism that now prevails among 
 individuals in the kingdom. At last even 
 nations must act towards each other as two 
 Christians act towards each other under the 
 law and in Christ's Church. Need one stop 
 to say what an opportunity all this opens to 
 the young man who wants to have some 
 part in the transformation of the world ? 
 Has not every sentence I have written here 
 been a call to such leadership as the Church 
 has never offered before, and better than 
 anything else the world ofTers now ? For 
 do not be misled. It is the Church that 
 has been doing these things and who always 
 will do them. There are societies innumer- 
 able for the accomplishment of each reform. 
 But back of them is the Church vitalizing 
 them, supporting them, interesting the Chris- 
 tian congregation in its endeavours, pointing 
 
72 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 the way to action, prophetically conceiving 
 the ideal for which all are striving, forever 
 the architect of the city of God. Tliere 
 never was such need of wise young men full 
 of a passion to take the oppressor's hand ofi 
 God's little children and set the innumer- 
 able prisoners of greed and brute powers 
 free. There never was a time when young 
 men of prophetic vision and capacity for 
 generalship could find such scope for their 
 highest enthusiasms and greatest capacities 
 than the ministry offers in these days of the 
 new social gospel. Already there is a splen- 
 did communion of these men — such men as 
 Kingsley, Maurice, Guthrie, Gladden, Taylor, 
 Rauchenbusch, Mathews, Whiton, Steiner, 
 Stelzle, Campbell, Strong — time would fail 
 us to mention the hundreds more. But what 
 men these are ! How they have led the 
 Church out into a new vastness of en- 
 deavour I What prophetic idealism under- 
 lies all their conviction ! What great days 
 of kingdom building have they introduced 
 for the Church ! Who would not rejoice to 
 belong to such a group of men ? 
 
VIII 
 
 MISSIONS AND THE CALL FOR STATESMEN 
 
 THE missionary activity of the Church 
 has reached vast proportions and 
 passed so far beyond the early 
 stages of simply preaching the Gospel to the 
 Eastern races that it calls for leaders equal in 
 capacity to those who preside over govern- 
 ments. The first foreign missionaries went 
 into India, China, and Japan simply as Paul 
 went to Corinth : to carry the message of 
 Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world. 
 Their efforts were largely expended in mak- 
 ing converts. The preaching was personal, 
 and much of it was done in face to face con- 
 versation with single souls. Of course, other 
 things quickly followed. After a church had 
 been gathered together a school was founded. 
 But the chief aim of this school was the at- 
 taching of the children, one by one, to the 
 Church, and the leading them to accept, as 
 individuals, the Christian faith. This work 
 was successful, beautiful, and is a lasting 
 monument to the apostolic consecration of 
 the early missionaries. But their very suc- 
 73 
 
74 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 cess led them out into large enterprises which 
 soon passed beyond the conversion of indi- 
 viduals into the sphere of social, and even 
 national, ministration. The missionary who 
 came out to convert a few men to Christ 
 found himself developing a hospital system 
 in China, or heading the famine relief work 
 of India, or advising governments how to 
 found colleges and school systems and indus- 
 trial institutes and thus not only playing the 
 single part of a minister of the Gospel, but 
 also responding to demands that called for 
 statesmanship. 
 
 To-day all this has grown until the mis- 
 sionary movement has become the very im- 
 partation of a whole civilization. The mis- 
 sionary goes to India not only to preach the 
 Gospel to a few souls but to transform India 
 itself into a civilization based on Christian 
 principles and ethics. Missions have become 
 great centres of light and learning, even 
 of democracy and constitutional reform. 
 From the mission centre, with its church, 
 schools and colleges, goes out an influence 
 felt by the millions who have not yet pro- 
 fessed themselves Christians. The untabu- 
 lated results of missions have to be consid- 
 ered in our time as well as those capable of 
 being reduced to statistics. The by-products 
 
Missions and the Call for Statesmen 75 
 
 are as great as the direct results. More and 
 more the East is calling to the West for the 
 fruits of Christianity, as well as the original 
 Gospel. In its eagerness it wants Christian 
 civilization before it has had time even to be- 
 come Christian. Missions have thus become 
 great world movements of one civilization 
 upon another. The missionary has become 
 the mediator of the West to the East. He is 
 more and more becoming the interpreter of 
 the best and most fundamental of each civili- 
 zation to the other. One who followed the 
 proceedings of the great Ecumenical Coun- 
 cil of World Missions at Edinburgh must 
 have been impressed with this from the be- 
 ginning to the end. It is admirably ex- 
 pressed in Dr. Robert E. Speer's best vol- 
 ume, ** Christianity and the Nations " (the 
 Duff Lectures for 19 10). Even governments 
 are beginning to take missionaries into their 
 councils. It is becoming no uncommon 
 thing for emperors and rulers to consult them 
 on affairs of state. Foreign nations are seek- 
 ing their aid in the establishment of new so- 
 cial, political and economic orders, as well as 
 the new educational systems. They act as 
 the right hand men of the governors of prov- 
 inces. President Taft has borne remarkable 
 testimony to their aid in his work in the 
 
76 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 Philippines. They are becoming the great 
 peacemakers. It was a missionary, Dr. J. 
 H. DeForest, of Japan, who did most to pro- 
 mote friendly relations between Japan and 
 the United States when evil-minded men 
 tried to arouse enmity. It is the missionary 
 who more and more represents his govern- 
 ment in the East — more than does even the 
 ambassador who often knows little of the 
 people to whom he has been sent. The am- 
 bassador's first act is generally to send for the 
 president of the mission college, or pastor of 
 the mission church. Who can measure the 
 influence of such Christian colleges as those at 
 Constantinople and Beirut ? Not a few im- 
 partial men have said that much of the new 
 democratic movement and the new idealism 
 dawning in Turkey has had its origin in these 
 schools. The new republic of China is turn- 
 ing to the Christian colleges for the young 
 men who are to hold commanding office in 
 the new nation. India and Japan have insti- 
 tutions of equal influence throughout their 
 provinces. 
 
 But what has been is as nothing compared 
 to what is to be. The great days of the East 
 are before it. Such transformations are going 
 to come over China and Japan as can hardly 
 yet be foretold from the great steps taken. 
 
Missions and the Call for Statesmen 77 
 
 China, for instance, has 400,000,000 souls. 
 She has been living in a quiescent dream of 
 mere existence, undisturbed by ideals, am- 
 bitions, or the interference of outside nations. 
 Her wars and revolutions have been confined 
 to one or two spots, great parts of the nation 
 hardly knowing what has happened. But the 
 spirit of the Republic has spread throughout 
 the whole nation. The mighty being is awake 
 and a new thrill of expectation is passing 
 through her expansive breast. This century 
 will see her take her place among the nations, 
 as Japan is already taking hers. What will 
 be her ideals ? Will she come into the con- 
 cert of nations filled with the kindly spirit of 
 world-unity that is now seeking to find its 
 way among the governments, or is she to come 
 with iron fists raised, weighted with arma- 
 ment and armies, and enter upon that period 
 of rapine and plunder out of which other na- 
 tions are slowly passing ? Is she going to 
 follow chiefly after the mammon which the 
 older nations have been seeking, or is she to 
 be a people with ideals, a belief in the world 
 of the spirit, which the best men in Western 
 lands are urging upon their nations ? Is she 
 going to be a nation of atheists and material- 
 ists or is Christianity to have free scope there 
 to infuse its life and health into all her 
 
78 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 thought and action ? The answer to all these 
 questions depends upon the missionary and 
 the Christian teacher more than upon any 
 one else. He is there, right on the spot 
 He ought to be there, and will be, in greater 
 numbers soon. To him will the new China 
 turn for guidance and leadership as she has 
 already turned. The great century of mis- 
 sions is to be this twentieth century. 
 
 All this calls for statesmen — statesmen to 
 go and statesmen to stay at home. States- 
 men to go — that is, the young man whom the 
 Eastern nations are calling to come out to 
 them as pastor of the Christian churches and 
 president of colleges has got to be bishop of 
 vast areas of awakening life and thought, 
 where old orders are changing, giving place 
 to new, where, out of the slumbering dust of 
 time strong men are rising, with eyes intent 
 on new worlds, and with a fine idealism being 
 born within once dormant hearts. Much of 
 the direction of the new order will fall upon 
 him. He will have not only to preach to 
 congregations, but be also a whole theolog- 
 ical seminary in himself, to train native pas- 
 tors and teachers in his own expanding field. 
 He will have opportunity — yes, the necessity 
 will be upon him, — of wiping out abuses and 
 superstitions and transforming the whole com- 
 
Missions and the Call for Statesmen 79 
 
 munity into a part of the kingdom of God. 
 Indeed, the call of missions to-day is for 
 great statesmen. No task offers sublimer op- 
 portunity to the young man who wants to 
 undertake some new, original and pioneer 
 work. He will be given a territory as large 
 as one of our states, and be told to transform 
 it morally, socially, economically, even polit- 
 ically, if it is, as in all probability it is, corrupt 
 from ruler to lowest subject. 
 
 Equally the missionary endeavour calls for 
 statesmanship in the clergy at home. The 
 new missionary movement cannot be run by 
 narrow men. There must be men of the 
 statesmanship capacity at the head of our 
 churches. We do not mean merely in the 
 secretaries' offices. We mean in the pul- 
 pits. We need ministers who can present 
 missions to the Church in such prophetic, 
 commanding outlook that all men will see in 
 them the opportunity and task of the twen- 
 tieth century. We want men who are large 
 enough to see, and make others surely see, 
 that Christianity is absolute or nothing ; that 
 it must be the religion of all men or of no 
 men ; that its ethics are universal or else false, 
 for no ethics will endure which are not for all 
 men. There is no hope for any ethnic, tribal, 
 departmental, Western or Eastern, Northern 
 
8o New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 or Southern religion. Real religion can only 
 be one. Christianity, if it is for us, is for 
 all people. Therefore, we must give it to all 
 people. And the Church wants young men 
 to come who, seeing this, can insist that the 
 missionaries take to the nations the great uni- 
 versal, eternal, absolute truths of our religion, 
 and not those thought products or those ex- 
 periential fruits of it, which are peculiarly 
 Western. Let us send the Gospels, and from 
 them let the East frame its own theology. 
 Let us lead the nations to Christ, and 
 then leave them to define His person as Peter 
 and Paul defined it, without any help, after 
 they had known Jesus. Let us show them 
 the Father, and leave them to write their own 
 prayer-book. There are wonderful opportu- 
 nities for ministers in the missionary emprise 
 of the twentieth century. 
 
IX 
 
 THE CHALLENGE OF THE NEW AMERICA 
 
 THE minister of fifty years ago faced 
 an entirely different situation from 
 that which confronts the minister of 
 to-day. He was pastor in a town largely 
 composed of families native for several gen- 
 erations to America, and, except in a few 
 factory towns and cities where the Irish had 
 appeared, Protestant and with Protestant as- 
 sociations. His problems were great, but 
 they were simple. He had a task demand- 
 ing great ability, but it was not a complex 
 one. Indeed, hardly any task could be more 
 exactly defined than his. It was to instruct 
 the congregation from the pulpit, to teach 
 the children the Bible, to be the friend of all 
 the families of the parish, to convert the sin- 
 ners, and to improve the moral welfare of 
 the town. Everybody knew him and he 
 knew everybody. What made his task 
 simplest of all was that everybody in the 
 parish had grown up under the same tradi- 
 tions and in the same circumstances as 
 8i 
 
82 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 himself. Consequently he understood them 
 through and through. 
 
 But it is only in parts of England and 
 Scotland that such a pastorate is open to the 
 modern minister. He enters, no matter 
 where he may go in our land, into a parish 
 that is as complex in its make-up as an in- 
 ternational congress of races, and presenting 
 problems which have never before confronted 
 either the church or the pastor. It is not 
 only that the Irish Roman Catholic is there. 
 He at least spoke English, and had grown 
 up under a semblance of free government. 
 But it is that there is an Italian settlement 
 right behind the church, with several hun- 
 dred Italians, Roman Catholic and free 
 thinking together, speaking no English and 
 understanding none, and knowing nothing 
 of Republican government or Democratic 
 ideals, full of superstitions and with a very 
 childlike apprehension of religion. Adjoin- 
 ing it are other races of other tongues — 
 Hungarians, Bohemians, Slavs of all varie- 
 ties, Russians, Greeks, French Canadians, 
 every nation and every tongue. And then, 
 as if to make the problem seemingly inex- 
 plicable, in our cities are three million Jews. 
 And most of these Jews do not know the 
 commonplace vocabulary of Christianity; 
 
The Challenge of the New America 83 
 
 Paul is as foreign a name to them as is Men- 
 cius to a Christian. Sometimes a few of 
 this great number go to their own church or 
 temple. Most of them do not, and this 
 great foreign element is very largely a free 
 thinking and unreligious multitude, if not ir- 
 religious. There are two hundred and fifty 
 thousand Italians in New York and very few 
 of them ever go to church. The Jews are 
 not attending the temple in any greater num- 
 bers than are the Italians the church. 
 
 This is the parish that is calling to young 
 college men to come over and help it. It 
 is perhaps the hardest task to which the 
 minister or any one else has ever been 
 called. Sometimes we feel that it offers 
 more problems than the foreign field. But 
 on its solution depends the future of Amer- 
 ica. Its imperativeness as well as its op- 
 portunity for genius ought to be weighed 
 by our young men more than its complexity 
 and seeming impossibility. It is the great 
 challenge of the day in America. It is to be 
 the testing point of the Church. Indeed, 
 in some of our cities, the test is now so 
 severely upon the churches that many believe 
 that the great trial of Christianity is here. 
 Can Christianity conquer this new America, 
 as it did the old ? Can the Christian Church 
 
84 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 transform this seething pot of Jews and 
 Slavs and Latins into Christians, convert 
 the Jew and redeem the former Christian? 
 Sometimes the issue looks doubtful. In 
 many instances the Church runs away to the 
 old conditions — to a homogeneous suburb of 
 people of Puritan or Dutch or British ances- 
 try. If she stays, she often ministers to her 
 native congregation, which gathers twice a 
 week within her walls and neglects the great 
 foreign population behind her back walls. 
 But if the Church cannot accomplish this 
 stupendous redemptive task her day is 
 doomed. For Christianity is accepted as the 
 ultimate and universal religion because of its 
 claims to transform all civilizations and re- 
 solve all situations into the kingdom of God. 
 If it fail here it will fail everywhere. But, — 
 and we say this after careful thought, and 
 echoing the feelings of other students of 
 modern problems,— unless a great, devoted, 
 consecrated, noble, brave, capable and re- 
 sourceful band of young men, ready to live 
 even the sacrificial life, shall grapple with 
 this new church problem in the new America, 
 the failure of the Church will soon be upon 
 us 
 
 But what a challenge it is ! How it calls 
 to the big, brave soul, the soul that wants to 
 
The Challenge of the New America 85 
 
 move in large scope and grow by varied ex- 
 perience into spiritual and mental gianthood. 
 See what the problem is : The young minis- 
 ter enters his parish. First of all, he has sev- 
 eral months' sociological and psychological 
 work before him, to merely understand. 
 He must learn all the antecedents of these 
 foreigners — their customs, home life, tastes, 
 temperaments, points of view, philosophy of 
 life, previous religious experience, present at- 
 titude towards religion. He must somehow 
 come to be their friend, and get into their 
 home without their mistrusting him. He can 
 talk with and through the children, for they 
 soon learn English, but in some parishes the 
 pastor might well learn Italian or German or 
 French. 
 
 After he has come to know them and has 
 won their confidence, he has a threefold task 
 before him. He must teach the children the 
 Christian religion. It will not be difBcult to 
 get the children to the church. There will 
 be some difficulty in persuading the average 
 church to admit Italian, Hungarian, Polish, 
 and Slovack children into the Sunday-school 
 rooms, so strong is class spirit even in 
 churches ; but this is a part of his statesman- 
 like task. These children can be very val- 
 uable to the minister who is big enough to 
 
86 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 undertake these tasks. They can all sing 
 like song-birds. Ten Italian children will 
 sing with more effect than thirty Americans 
 — and they need little rehearsing. Then 
 there is the second problem of making good 
 American citizens out of all these young men 
 and old. Here is a splendid opportunity for 
 the minister to get into his first contact with 
 these immigrants by offering them lecture 
 courses on American history, American polit- 
 ical organization ; above all, on American 
 ideals. Lectures following the general out- 
 line of President Nicholas Murray Butler's 
 lectures before the Scandinavians on "The 
 American As He Is," would be of infinite 
 value to every immigrant who comes to stay. 
 But this young minister's great task still re- 
 mains undone. He is to win the allegiance 
 of these men to Jesus Christ. This will tax 
 his powers to the utmost. These men will 
 not come to church, so he must carry the 
 Gospel to them. Many of them have been 
 reared in a conception of religion quite dis- 
 tinct from the evangelical faith. Many of 
 them have deep-rooted prejudices against 
 the Church. Many of them have become ad- 
 dicted to habits not consonant either with 
 Christian ethics or the American standard of 
 morals. When he comes to meet the Jews 
 
The Challenge of the New America 87 
 
 he finds he has got to begin away back where 
 Paul began. They have no Christian as- 
 sociations or antecedents on which to build. 
 Perhaps he has got to adapt the Gospel to 
 their conditions and preach it in a quite dif- 
 ferent form from that in which he preaches 
 it to those who have been reared in Roman 
 Catholicism. But all this great, heterogene- 
 ous crowd has got to be shepherded and led 
 to Jesus Christ, else what is to become of the 
 nation? These things alone are enough to 
 engage the powers of the finest youth of the 
 nation. 
 
 But the work is not yet done. The task 
 of this nation is to weld all this heterogeneous 
 mass into a perfect unity. She has to take 
 Germans, Scandinavians, Latins, Slavs, twenty 
 nations and races, of every lari-guage, every 
 temper, every colour, every philosophy, from 
 every kind of government, and make out of 
 them one nation — the perfect America, homo- 
 geneous, unified, with one ideal, one destiny. 
 In the accomplishment of this the nation 
 must show the world how all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men, from every nation, can dwell 
 together in peace. She has as great a lesson 
 to teach the world as had Palestine or Rome. 
 If Palestine taught the world of a righteous 
 God demanding righteousness in His chil- 
 
88 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 dren, and if Rome taught the world political 
 organization, so America is ordained of God 
 to teach the world the brotherhood of man. 
 But unity and brotherhood rest on religion, 
 are its direct and natural product, can be 
 born no other way. It is the Church, after 
 all, that has got to do this for the nation. 
 The school and college may help, but they 
 cannot do it. Brotherhood and spiritual 
 identity rest not on geography, but on the 
 Bible. Here is the call to our young men 
 seeking some great and commanding voca- 
 tion. The ministry never had such oppor- 
 tunity in any previous day for both service 
 and distinction as these tasks offer. 
 
 In closing this chapter I should like to re- 
 mark that so true is all this I have been say- 
 ing that our theological seminaries have been 
 revolutionizing their curriculi to meet the new 
 conditions. Sociological problems, especially 
 those of capital and labour, and those of im- 
 migration, are assuming prominent places. 
 In some schools the problem of ministering 
 to the foreigners is given especial attention, 
 with special faculties and courses. Prof. 
 Edward A. Steiner urges the sending of those 
 who are to minister to the foreigner for 
 sojourns in the land from whence they came. 
 He himself took five young men who were to 
 
The Challenge of the New America 89 
 
 serve the Slavs in the coal mining regions for 
 a half year's residence in Slavic lands. We 
 believe that more and more the young clergy- 
 man will want to learn some of these foreign 
 tongues that he may speak directly to these 
 people. The problem is so difficult that it 
 needs broad-minded, determined men. It is 
 almost an indictment of our present whole 
 training for the ministry that it is practically 
 impossible to find men capable of adapting 
 the Church to the foreigner. We need a class 
 of ministers of great ability, trained especially 
 for this vast undertaking. 
 
THE RESTORATION OF A UNITED 
 CHURCH 
 
 THE remarkable movement towards 
 church union which is manifesting 
 itself in our time has its origin in 
 four new convictions — the first, that the things 
 on which we are divided are the lesser doc- 
 trines, while the things we hold in common 
 are the essentials of the faith ; the second, 
 that denominationalism contradicts the prayer 
 of the great Head of the Church, that we 
 might all be one ; the third, the conviction 
 that Christianity cannot conquer the pagan- 
 ism of Christian lands and the heathenism 
 of foreign lands unless it can attack it with 
 united and harmonious forces ; and the 
 fourth, the conviction that denominational- 
 ism is sinful in its waste of energy, resource, 
 and money. 
 
 The causes of much of the denominational- 
 ism of the world have been such questions as 
 modes and times of baptism, who was eligible 
 to the Lord's supper and who was not, 
 whether the Lord's supper is a sacrament or 
 90 
 
The Restoration of a United Church 91 
 
 a memorial, whether the grace of God was 
 meant for all or for a few elected ones, 
 whether the Church should be democratic 
 or imperial, have bishops anointed from 
 above — that is, by the hierarchy — or have 
 bishops anointed and ordained from below — 
 that is, by the people, — which is the difference 
 between the Episcopal Church and the inde- 
 pendent churches. Of course, there have 
 been greater and more fundamental ques- 
 tions than these at issue in some schisms 
 of the Church, as in the creation of the 
 Protestant Church, where the issue was be- 
 tween a selected priesthood or a priesthood 
 of the whole body of believers. But even 
 here one cannot say in our day that the 
 doctrine of the priesthood assumes the 
 same importance as the doctrine of God. 
 Gradually there has been a growing and 
 universal emphasis in all denominations on 
 other doctrines than these. It is equally ap- 
 parent in all denominations. It is the em- 
 phasis on the fatherhood of God ; the son- 
 ship of all men in God ; the end and aim 
 of religion ; the acceptance of Jesus Christ 
 as the Lord and Master of one's life ; the 
 consequent brotherhood of man ; the assur- 
 ance of forgiveness through Jesus Christ ; 
 the love and service of humanity as the test 
 
92 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 of discipleship ; the establishment of Christ's 
 kingdom on the earth as the supreme task 
 of the Church. These are the things all 
 churches are preaching to-day. But these 
 are the things all churches hold in common. 
 No denomination has ever been created on 
 any of these great fundamental doctrines. 
 More and more the churches are feeling that 
 these are the things that make a Christian. 
 The result has been that all denominations, 
 preaching more and more the same truths 
 and Gospel, have become more and more 
 alike, and also these other divisive things 
 have assumed less and less importance in 
 their eyes. It would be difficult to tell from 
 the preaching whether one was in a Baptist, 
 Presbyterian, Methodist, or Congregational 
 church on any Sunday morning in New 
 York. 
 
 The movement of the whole Protestant 
 Christian Church during the last fifty years 
 has been from the emphasis of the creeds 
 and many doctrines which the creeds em- 
 body towards the personal attachment to 
 Jesus Christ and the following of Him in 
 the sacrificial life. There has also been a 
 growing apprehension of His supreme pur- 
 pose as the founding of a society upon the 
 earth which should live in unity as His fol- 
 
The Restoration of a United Church 93 
 
 lowers and have as its law His one principle 
 of love. The result has been that among all 
 denominations the feeling has been growing 
 that our divided and often contentious con- 
 dition is a betrayal of His purpose, and a 
 pain in His heart forever. The following of 
 Him should be higher than any other test. 
 Those who follow Him should be one. 
 
 While the force of Christianity has been 
 separating itself into forces^ the forces of 
 evil have been uniting into a combined 
 force. The very success of Christianity, 
 even with a divided Church, has driven the 
 evil forces of the world to combine and unite 
 for the supremacy of the world. However 
 this may be, before Christendom lies the 
 great Eastern world. Its transformation for 
 Christ is a gigantic task for all Christians 
 combined. In recent years Eastern relig- 
 ions have awakened and become aggressive. 
 Particularly is this true of the most virile of 
 them all, Mohammedanism. All mission- 
 aries are agreed, as were all the delegates 
 at the great Edinburgh World Missionary 
 Conference, that the task is hopeless and the 
 exertion futile with a divided Church. 
 
 Nowhere has the imperative necessity of 
 union at home, if we are to Christianize 
 these abroad, been better stated than in Rob- 
 
94 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 ert E. Speer's statesmanlike book, ** Chris- 
 tianity and the Nations." He says: "The 
 objects which the missionary enterprise seeks 
 include and require the unity of the Christian 
 Church. Let us consider first some of the 
 conditions which indicate that such Christian 
 unity on the foreign mission field is desirable 
 and necessary. In the first place, the mag- 
 nitude, the difficulties, and the urgency of 
 the task which is before us demand the most 
 fruitful and effective use of all our resources. 
 We have to secure the evangelization of a 
 thousand million of our fellow creatures ; 
 that is, to carry spiritual truth, the most diffi- 
 cult of all truth to carry truly, to two-thirds 
 of the human race, and to seek to persuade 
 men, not only to embrace this truth, but to 
 place their characters under the transforming 
 influence of the Lord of it. The task con- 
 templates changing the opinions of men, not 
 upon impersonal questions or matters of ma- 
 terial self-interest, but upon religion, of which 
 men are ever most reluctant to think exactly, 
 or indeed, really to think at all ; and not the 
 opinions of the open-minded only, but those 
 even of the ignorant and prejudiced with 
 whom religious traditions are, if possible, 
 even more inveterate than with the enlight- 
 ened. And the work involves not only the 
 
The Restoration of a United Church 95 
 
 change of men's opinions, but also the revo- 
 lution of their character, new principles of 
 action displacing old and producing a new 
 fruitage of deeds. And further, it is not to 
 suffice to try to do this in individuals only. 
 That is fundamental, but through that and 
 beyond that, it is proposed to introduce the 
 new principles into society and to drive out 
 as far as may be all that is alien to the king- 
 dom of God and that will not be naturalized 
 in it. And this work is to be done, not in 
 any one land, nor in any one language, nor 
 in any one set of conditions. It must be 
 done in all of the non-Christian lands, among 
 all types of races, from the savage up to 
 the peoples proud of civilizations long ante- 
 dating ours, and made less accessible by their 
 hate and contempt for us, and by the mate- 
 rialism of the commercial civilization with 
 which we have approached them. It must 
 be done in many scores of languages, which 
 have not only to be mastered, but in many 
 cases to be expanded in order to express the 
 truth which is to be conveyed. . 
 
 *' The task is too difficult and too urgent 
 for any one section of Christians to hope 
 to accomplish it alone. As the late Bishop 
 of London wrote to Mr. W. H. T. Gaird- 
 ner, when he enquired of him in 1898 as 
 
96 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 to the propriety of participation by the An- 
 glican students in the work of the World's 
 Student Movement : * No one religious body 
 can undertake all the work that is to be 
 done.' Where no body of Christians can do 
 the work alone, its aloofness from the rest 
 with which it might do it is indefensible, un- 
 less, indeed, the work is not important or 
 urgent. . . . There are, moreover, great 
 forces astir throughout the world which will 
 not wait for their permanent die and stamp. 
 If we do not seize them in this generation 
 and claim them for God, they will set and 
 harden in permanently atheistic form. The 
 magnitude of the missionary enterprise, the 
 difBculties, and the urgency of the task, for- 
 bid all waste and inefficiency, and demand 
 unity. ... In the second place, the 
 elementary needs of the peoples we are to 
 reach call primarily for what is fundamental 
 and essential in Christianity. The great evils 
 of the world are the elementary moral evils 
 of impurity, inequality, and hopelessness. 
 The world does not know the character of 
 God, and therefore it is unclean ; the world 
 does not know the love of God, and there- 
 fore men are not brothers ; the world does 
 not know the life of God, and therefore men 
 despair alike of the present and the future. 
 
The Restoration of a United Church 97 
 
 And these three things : the character of 
 God, and the love of God, and the Ufe of 
 God, are not the things on which we dis- 
 agree. They constitute the great fundamen- 
 tal and elementary things in Christianity, 
 and it is for these and not for any of the 
 points about which we are at variance that 
 the world primarily calls. It wants Christ, 
 and that is all. ... In the third place, 
 the definiteness of the missionary aim pro- 
 vides for unity. That aim, as has been re- 
 peatedly pointed out, is the establishment 
 of strong national churches which shall be 
 self-propagating, self-supporting, self-govern- 
 ing, the naturalization of Christianity in the 
 national life of the different non-Christian 
 peoples. ' The aim of all missions in India,' 
 says Professor Christlieb of Bonn, 'should 
 be to create an independent Church in the 
 future, neither Episcopalian, nor Presby- 
 terian, nor Congregational, but the outcome 
 of the national spirit. For, now that people 
 are coming over to Christianity in masses, 
 the question as to the formation of a Protes- 
 tant National Indian Church must become 
 ever more and more a burning one.' It is 
 sometimes alleged that even if we accept 
 this view at home, the native Christians 
 themselves will not endorse it, that they dis- 
 
98 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 avow our ideal and are conscientious denomi- 
 nationaiists. There have been instances of 
 this, but they have been exceptional. In 
 many fields the great mass of native Chris- 
 tians do not know of these different denomi- 
 nations. They are Christians or believers in 
 Jesus, and while they may know the difference 
 between Protestant and Catholics, they are 
 entirely capable of amalgamation in one 
 common evangelical Christian Church. Na- 
 tive Christian leaders are sometimes opposed 
 to such a movement because they prefer to 
 be supported by foreign funds, and they 
 realize that these are more certain of con- 
 tinuance in subsidized denominational native 
 churches. When all the native Christians 
 unite, it means self-support and the whole- 
 some exercise of control by the body of 
 native lay Christians. Some native agents 
 do not relish this, but the best men do. 
 They have seen the right ideal and they are 
 working for it. Missionaries should help 
 them. The best are eagerly doing so. The 
 Bishop of Lucknow spoke plain words on 
 this point at the Bengal Church Missionary 
 Conference in 1882: *Yes, brethren, let us 
 not deceive ourselves in this matter ; the sin 
 and shame of the disunion which exists 
 among native Christians rest almost entirely 
 
The Restoration of a United Church 99 
 
 with us European missionaries. It is we 
 who are guilty ; we do not conciliate our 
 brethren, and have often carried ourselves 
 stiffly and as though we had a monopoly of 
 the grace of God ; and the nonconformist mis- 
 sionaries have needlessly perpetuated their 
 sectarianism and imposed it upon their con- 
 verts in this heathen country, where often 
 the original cause of difference has no exist- 
 ence.' 
 
 " God forgive us all, for we are verily guilty 
 concerning our brethren. How should they 
 know, how should they be able to stand 
 out for union against those whom they re- 
 gard as their spiritual fathers ? No, it is we 
 who are to blame, we with our pharisaism 
 and our bigotry and our want of brotherly 
 love. Let us not attempt to excuse or hide 
 our fault, but, frankly acknowledging it to 
 God and one another and our native breth- 
 ren, try to make amends, and before it be- 
 comes too late, begin to strive sincerely and 
 honestly to put away these unhappy divisions 
 and build up the Church of Christ in godly 
 union and concord." 
 
 Thus the salvation of the far-ofT nations 
 waits upon the union at home of the 
 churches of Jesus Christ. But it will take 
 great minds and great souls to consummate 
 
lOO New opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 that union. It is a great task for young 
 men who want to be empire builders. Thus, 
 the exigencies of missions are going to 
 compel church union at home, as it has 
 already been compelled on the field. At 
 home the case is similar. Our cities are full 
 of a great pagan, epicurean, irreligious mul- 
 titude, as well as thousands of evil-doers 
 and criminals. Great hordes of pleasure- 
 seekers, self-centred rich and poor, free- 
 thinking Jews, atheistical groups from old 
 lands, millions of foreigners outside the Amer- 
 ican churches, the theatre and music halls 
 claiming our youth, a powerfully organized 
 liquor interest — all this and more facing the 
 Church in America ! All prophetic — yes, all 
 sensible — men, laymen as well as ministers 
 are seeing that the foes of the Lord are too 
 great to be met by a divided Church, even 
 though the sects have ceased quarrelling and 
 make complimentary remarks to one another. 
 It is either church union or paganism, and 
 we have got to face this fact soon. Indeed, 
 nothing has done more to bring about good 
 feeling between Protestants and Roman 
 Catholics in some of our great cities than 
 the common consciousness that the paganism 
 of the cities could never be stemmed, to say 
 nothing of being overcome, without the har- 
 
The Restoration of a United Church loi 
 
 monious efforts of the two churches, if not 
 the united. What uselessness, what utter 
 absurdity and foolishness for two churches 
 to be fighting each other when a great wave 
 is bearing down upon both. The question 
 \s paganism or Christianity, which is to have 
 our cities ? Paganism surely will win unless 
 all denominations are united against it. No 
 one denomination is great enough to con- 
 quer it, or perhaps even save itself. Many 
 are even thinking that these very exigencies 
 of sure conquest and self-preservation are go- 
 ing to force reunion between the most oppos- 
 ing sects. 
 
 The conviction is growing very fast, espe- 
 cially among the laymen, that the Church 
 has got to adjust itself to the new coopera- 
 tive and unifying tendencies of the day. In 
 our time small businesses are everywhere 
 combining into one great organization for 
 the sake of efficiency. The great sin of our 
 day is waste. Men refuse to contribute 
 money for a church which is competing with 
 five other churches in the community that 
 needs only one and can support only one. 
 One fully equipped and strongly manned 
 church can do more for the kingdom than 
 five weak and struggling congregations. 
 This is turning the minds of many, espe- 
 
102 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 daily in country places, toward church 
 union. 
 
 The writer believes, from the long and care- 
 ful consideration of the four conditions men- 
 tioned above, that church union is mevitable^ 
 and perhaps will come in this century. But it 
 will not come until we get many prophetic men 
 into the ministry ; men who see largely ; men 
 who feel that the great and eternal truths are 
 the only things that count in so great and 
 divine an institution as the Church of the liv- 
 ing God ; men who refuse to measure God 
 or set bounds to His operations by any man^ 
 made ordinances or articles ; men who re- 
 alize that God is so great that no one sacra- 
 ment, ordinance or denomination can contain 
 Him or be sufficient channel for His opera- 
 tion. These are the men we need. When 
 they come, then church union will come 
 quickly. We hope some young men, read- 
 ing these words, will respond and see that 
 here is the greatest opportunity for com- 
 manding leadership in our day. For the 
 encouragement of these men we want to say 
 two things. 
 
 The first is this : Church union is making 
 great strides in our day, because a great num- 
 ber have seen these things. It has gone further 
 in the foreign mission field than elsewhere 
 
The Restoration of a United Church 1 03 
 
 For a long time missionaries in India, China, 
 and Japan, have practiced territorial limita- 
 tion. One territory has been set apart to one 
 denomination, the adjoining one to another, 
 and they have endeavoured not to overlap. 
 For a long time the missionaries of all de- 
 nominations have held frequent conferences 
 together to consider their common task. 
 The federation of churches, and of hospitals 
 and of evangelistic societies of many denom- 
 inations have long existed in the foreign 
 fields, and have worked together. And now 
 real and actual church union is proceeding at 
 a rapid pace. In China there are several 
 colleges maintained by three or four denom- 
 inations, and with representatives of the dif- 
 ferent communions upon the faculties, even 
 in the theological schools. In Amoy the 
 Reformed Church of America, the Presbyte- 
 rian Church of England, and the London 
 Mission unite in one theological college. 
 Plans are now being developed in England 
 for a great Christian university in China, sup- 
 ported and taught by members of all denom- 
 inations. In India, organic union has been 
 accomplished of Congregational and Presby- 
 terian churches of one or two branches. In 
 Japan and Africa there have been remark- 
 able instances. The movement grows rap- 
 
104 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 idly and is going to spur on the movement 
 at home — not the first time missions have 
 reacted on the home church to bless them.* 
 But meantime the movement for union has 
 become great at home. Practically all the 
 Protestant denominations are now federated 
 in the Federal Council of Churches of Christ 
 in America. Through this great Federation 
 the Protestants of the nation speak unitedly 
 on great social and national questions. The 
 Council has secured the federation of 
 churches in different states and cities. It 
 has various commissions, such as the Com- 
 mission on Social Service, and the Commis- 
 sion on Peace and Arbitration, which repre- 
 sent all the churches. It is annually binding 
 the churches more and more closely together 
 in service and this is the way some think or- 
 ganic union will ultimately come. Those 
 who work together after a time learn to pray 
 together. All of the denominations are form- 
 ing commissions on church unity and a 
 movement is now on foot, led by the Com- 
 mission on Faith and Order of the Episcopal 
 Church, to bring all the denominations of the 
 
 i No one should fail to read the remarkable " Report of 
 Commission VIII on CoSperation and the Promotion of 
 Unity " of the World Missionary Conference. It is published 
 by the Fleming H. Revell Company, of New York. 
 
The Restoration of a United Church 105 
 
 world together in a great denominational 
 council. Furthermore, everywhere instances 
 of actual unity are becoming more and 
 more common — in Scotland, Canada, and the 
 United States. This century is going to wit- 
 ness wonderful reconciliations. 
 
 The last word is this : The great day of 
 the Church is before it. It is soon going to 
 forget its ancient quarrels and, allowing full 
 liberty of thought and belief concerning the 
 lesser things, is going to unite on the simple 
 basis of the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the 
 Lord of Life, and His teaching as guide for 
 conduct, and His mind towards man and na- 
 ture as the true philosophy of life, and is 
 then going forward wich an undivided front 
 and an irresistible appeal and an unconquer- 
 able majesty to sweep the old evils from the 
 world and build here the new city of God. 
 Happy that young man who leads in this di- 
 vine and not far-off consummation. 
 
XI 
 
 THE ENLARGED ETHICAL OPPORTUNITY 
 
 FOR nineteen hundred years the Church 
 has been concerned with the ethics of 
 the individual. There have been 
 some notable exceptions, but they are few. 
 Even where the Church has entered the arena 
 of social and political life it has been to define 
 the attitude the individual Christian should 
 take towards society or towards the state — 
 never the attitude one society should assume 
 towards the other, never the duties of one nation 
 to another. When she has sat in judgment it 
 has been upon individuals, not upon nations. 
 The creeds she has written are for individuals, 
 the doctrines she has formulated are for them, 
 the rules of conduct she has prescribed are for 
 persons, her redemptive efforts have been di- 
 rected upon the saving of the individual soul. 
 This work she has done superbly, and she 
 has raised up in every community saints who 
 have been the leaven of society, the saviours 
 of the community, the lights of the world. 
 What progress social bodies have made 
 towards the evidence of the Christian spirit, 
 io6 
 
The Enlarged Ethical Opportunity 107 
 
 and what few instances of Christian practices 
 one nation has bestowed upon another, have 
 been largely due to the impact of these indi- 
 viduals upon the group. 
 
 But in our day a new vision has come to 
 the Church. She has seen that the kingdoms 
 of this world belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 as well as to some people who inhabit them. 
 She has seen that the principles of intercom- 
 munication, which Jesus Christ made final 
 and eternal for individuals, must be absolute 
 and fundamental for the intercourse of groups 
 of men and nations. She has seen that the 
 rules of conduct for one man towards his 
 brother man, the laws that govern his rela- 
 tionships towards him, must also be exactly 
 the same rules and laws that govern the re- 
 lations of one corporation towards another and 
 one nation towards another. She has seen that 
 she is here to redeem nations from their evil 
 ways as she has redeemed men. The Church 
 has just begun gloriously to realize that there 
 can be no double standard of ethics in the 
 universe of God, and that therefore there is 
 but one ethic for men and nations. What is 
 wrong for a man is wrong for a group of 
 men, or for a nation, and conversely, what is 
 right is right eternally and for all men and 
 organizations. If it is wrong for a man to 
 
lo8 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 steal from another man, it is equally wrong 
 for a nation to take what does not belong to 
 it. If it is wrong for a man to kill his neigh- 
 bour, it is just as wrong for one nation to des- 
 troy another nation in God's beautiful world. 
 If it is wrong for a man to cherish revenge 
 towards another man, it is similarly wrong for 
 a nation to revenge itself upon another. If 
 it is wrong for a man to sit in judgment upon 
 his own case, so, too, it defeats justice where 
 a nation insists on judging its own case. If 
 it is right and a Christian duty for a man 
 to practice mercy, forgiveness and charity 
 towards his neighbour, even though he have a 
 dispute with him, so it is right and the duty 
 of a nation to practice mercy and forgiveness 
 towards another. If the fundamental law of 
 Christianity is the right law for a man, 
 namely, that he forget his own rights some- 
 what, for the good of the neighbourhood, or 
 the nation, and sacrifice himself for the well- 
 fare of the whole, then this is the ultimate law 
 for nations. And it will never be the univer- 
 sal law for men until it becomes the law of 
 groups of men and nations. 
 
 The task of the twentieth century is going 
 to be just this application of Christianity 
 to national relationships as it has already 
 been applied to individual relationships. The 
 
The Enlarged Ethical Opportunity 109 
 
 Church is to bring nations under the sway of 
 the Gospel as she has brought men. She is 
 going to redeem nations from their present 
 pagan principles and practices of intercourse 
 to the acceptance of the law of brotherhood 
 under which Christian men already live. 
 She is going to destroy the present dualism 
 of morality and bring men and nations under 
 the one eternal morality of Jesus Christ. 
 Here is the call to the young man who wants 
 to undertake some absolutely new task and 
 one of the greatest magnitude. Perhaps it is 
 the most stupendous new task before the 
 Church, calling, as it does, for a marvel- 
 lous faith in the scope and power of the Gos- 
 pel to overthrow deep-rooted customs of cen- 
 turies — race prejudices, national hatreds, false 
 patriotism, vested interests, militarism as the 
 universal basis of society — -and a statesman 
 like ability to cope wisely with great problems, 
 and to construct a new machinery through 
 which the new ethics may operate for right- 
 eousness, perhaps to federate the nations of 
 the world into a unity as now the states of a 
 nation are organized. There is no place open 
 in all the institutions of the world which of- 
 fers so great an opportunity for the operation 
 of consecrated genius as the Church offers 
 right here, in her task of transforming the 
 
lio New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 ethics underlying the interrelationship oi 
 nations. 
 
 We said that this was to be the task of the 
 twentieth century. Let us say, for the en- 
 couragement of any young man who may 
 have been somewhat stirred by this great 
 opportunity, that not only has the Church 
 seen that this is her new, great task and call, 
 but she has already plunged into it with a 
 zeal that has accomplished wonders. All 
 this modern international movement, this 
 new triumph one sees and hears everywhere 
 of peace and good-will among nations, is 
 only the first manifestation of this new move- 
 ment of the Church to bring nations under 
 the Gospel as she has brought men. Peace, 
 arbitration treaties, world federation, perma- 
 nent Hague courts, parliaments of men, 
 world unity — it is all simply that nations 
 shall treat each other just as good. Christian 
 men act towards each other, and settle the 
 same disputes in the same way. The Church 
 is saying to-day : " Christian men live to help 
 each other, not to hurt and despoil each 
 other. Christian nations should so live ; " 
 and the result is a parliament of nations meet- 
 ing regularly at The Hague to consider the 
 things that pertain to the common welfare of 
 the world. The Church is saying in this cen- 
 
, The Enlarged Ethical Opportunity ill 
 
 tury, ** Christian men long ago learned to settle 
 their disputes without killing each other ; it is 
 time the nations learned the Christian way," 
 and, as a result, the century opens with a 
 Permanent Court of Nations, with the differ- 
 ent governments of the world signing trea- 
 ties, and agreeing to arbitrate their differences 
 before this court. These treaties are rapidly 
 multiplying, and they are becoming more and 
 more inclusive in their nature. The twentieth 
 century has witnessed one hundred of them 
 in the first ten years. The United States has 
 caught a vision of this new task of Christian- 
 ity and is offering unlimited arbitration trea- 
 ties to the various nations of the world. 
 Speaking in New York concerning them, the 
 President of the United States urged their 
 ratification purely on this basis : that Christian 
 nations should act as Christian men. Every- 
 where the movement to lift nations up into 
 the same plane of Christian ethics on which 
 individuals now dwell is gathering momen- 
 tum. Already many ministers have rendered 
 superb service in this movement. Happy 
 that young man who can see the new era 
 dawning and has some part in leading the 
 nations into it, and in preaching the great Gos- 
 pel, " One morality throughout the whole king- 
 dom of men until it is all God's kingdom." 
 
XII 
 
 THE NEW EVANGELISM 
 
 IN the month of April, 191 2, two thousand 
 men, many of them laymen, spent a 
 week together discussing the great 
 theme of Men and Religion. It was an en- 
 couraging sight for those who were leaning 
 to the opinion that men are not interested in 
 religion, and was a promise to many pastors 
 of a genuine revival of religion. Indeed, one 
 of the things this great group of men more 
 often spoke of was a revival of real religion. 
 In almost every meeting the word evangelism 
 was to be heard. But in almost every in- 
 stance it was coupled with the word ** new." 
 The new evangelism along with social service 
 was the dominant note of this significant and 
 remarkable gathering. The Report of the 
 Commission on Evangelism as it stands in 
 book form is intensely interesting, echoing 
 as it does the feeling of the Congress. The 
 noticeable thing about it is, that while it em- 
 phasizes the necessity of winning the indi- 
 vidual soul for Christ, it recognizes that the 
 methods of evangelism may have to be quite 
 112 
 
The New Evangelism 1 1 3 
 
 different from those of former days. There 
 must be a new evangelism to meet the new 
 age. But this new evangelism may be 
 fraught with greater success than ever was 
 the old in its greatest days, and it certainly 
 offers a wider and more alluring opportunity 
 to the young man of to-day than the old 
 could ever have done. 
 
 The older evangelism accomplished great 
 and wonderful things. Some of the holiest 
 days the world has known was when Wesley 
 and Whitefield and Deems and Moody 
 caused a new visitation of the spirit to ap- 
 pear in shops and homes of the whole na- 
 tion. It was these days that caused the 
 smouldering fire to flame up again on the 
 altar of the churches. Its appeal was marked 
 by two outstanding features. First, it wrought 
 upon the emotions, producing an ecstatic 
 state of being, and secondly, it called for an 
 immediate decision ; one without any prepa- 
 ration and without any provision for the 
 future except the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit. As a matter of fact, after all criti- 
 cisms have been given full weight, and their 
 truth often recognized, the results of this 
 evangelization were not only wonderful trans- 
 formations, ** the eternal miracle," but were 
 permanent and abiding to a degree beyond 
 
114 N^w Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 that generally believed. After reading three 
 such books as Prof. William James* " Varie- 
 ties of Religious Experience," E. D. Star- 
 buck's ** The Psychology of Religion/* and 
 Harold Begbie's " Twice Born Men," it is 
 absolutely impossible to ever doubt the abid- 
 ing as well as the transforming effects of 
 many of these remarkable conversions. But 
 at the same time one has to acknowledge, 
 for all the facts are before him, that the older 
 appeal does not meet with the same general 
 response to-day. The surest signs of this, 
 perhaps, is the fact that the evangelist of 
 to-day himself recognizes this truth, and does 
 not depend upon engendering an emotional 
 exaltation of vast multitudes, sweeping them 
 by hundreds into the kingdom of God. The 
 reasons for this change are several, but 
 chiefly these : Our nature is much more 
 complex than was that of our fathers and 
 does not respond to such simple and direct 
 appeals. We have come to somewhat dis- 
 trust the decisions made under the very high 
 pressure of an ecstatic state of mind. Our 
 culture has made us cautious and it has also 
 made us reserved, so that we do not so easily 
 yield to the play of either music or oratory 
 upon our emotions. Again, the average man 
 has come under the spirit of the age and is 
 
The New Evangelism 1 1 5 
 
 more concerned in serving humanity than in 
 saving his own soul. Perhaps he is neglect- 
 ing the culture of his own soul too much, 
 forgetting that after all there is a mystical 
 relation between his soul and God whose joy 
 should not be sacrificed because of the en- 
 richment it brings. But it is true that he 
 does not respond to an appeal to save his 
 soul as once he did. One other reason is 
 that education has so decidedly become the 
 thought habit of the age that we all think, 
 religiously as well as otherwise, in terms of 
 growth and continued process. The life of 
 the spirit as well as the strength of the mind 
 is the result of a continuous education in the 
 things of Christ. 
 
 Now all this need not be discouraging, al- 
 though it has been so to some people. Many 
 are asking why do we not have great re- 
 vivals again as once we did. It is not be- 
 cause men are any less responsive to the 
 Spirit of God, but simply that they do not 
 to-day respond to the same appeal or express 
 their religious life so much in the older ways. 
 There is a new generation with its new 
 temperament and thought habits and it must 
 be won to Christ in its own language and by 
 pathways natural to its feet. Consequently 
 we have a ** new evangelism " and it offers 
 
Il6 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 wonderful opportunities to the man who 
 wants to bring men to shape and order their 
 lives after the pattern of Christ and follow 
 Him in a divine and enthusiastic devotion to 
 humanity. One need only watch the great 
 conventions of men now everywhere being 
 held, laymen's missionary movements, broth- 
 erhoods, leagues, and Men and ReUgion Move- 
 ment, to see the methods of this new appeal 
 and even to watch it in operation. Also the 
 religious literature of the last twenty-five 
 years is a record of the new outlook upon 
 the religious life. The Report of the Com- 
 mission on Evangelization of the Men and 
 Religion Movement and the discussions of 
 the Congress, as well as the stirring within 
 the churches themselves are sure signs that 
 the new evangelism is coming to take the 
 place of the old. 
 
 It offers remarkable opportunities for the 
 man who believes that humanity is worth 
 saving. In the first place it begins with the 
 boys. It says that the best redemption is 
 prevention. It believes that there should be 
 a preparation for conversion and that the 
 converted should be cared for after his re- 
 ception into the Church. Consequently, it 
 is bending its efforts in every way to save 
 the boys. It insists that the boy should be 
 
The New Evangelism 117 
 
 taught religion from earliest years. It also 
 believes that this religious training has its 
 end in character and actual acceptance of 
 the Christian life. What happier or more 
 fruitful work than to take the boys and girls 
 of a parish and instruct them in the Bible, in 
 morals, in manhood, in the great truths of 
 religion, in the real meaning of life ! Such a 
 ministry is superb, for it is doing the greatest 
 work this world ofTers : making men. When 
 all the churches catch the spirit of the new 
 evangelism, and ministers and religious 
 workers turn their attention to the boys and 
 girls, hardly one will escape from the gracious 
 call of Christ. Here, too, the young minister 
 of administrative genius will find great fields. 
 For the Sunday-schools must all be perfected 
 towards the evangelistic goal, and every 
 teacher be made an evangelist. All sorts of 
 organizations, leagues, and societies, must 
 be used — but all conducted for saving the 
 boy for Christ. The Men and Religion 
 Movement did well to put so fine an em- 
 phasis upon the boys. Save them, and your 
 revival is accomplished before it is under- 
 taken. And it is here that the great energies 
 of the Church are to be directed in this cen- 
 tury. We may even have to have ministers, 
 who, like Young Men's Christian Association 
 
1 18 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 secretaries, devote all their time and wisdom 
 to the care of youth. 
 
 The other outstanding feature of the new 
 evangelism is, that as Christ of old appealed 
 to men to follow Him that they might serve 
 humanity, it calls to men not so much to 
 save themselves, as to give themselves to 
 the service of the Lord. This is almost the 
 only note heard in these modern gatherings 
 of men. ** Link yourselves up with the 
 Church and live the Christian life, that you 
 may save other men and save the state." So 
 men are everywhere being won to Christ to- 
 day by being asked to do Christ's work. 
 What a stirring and unselfish appeal the 
 modern minister has to make. He goes be- 
 fore a group of men, living for self and 
 pleasure, and voices the call of the great 
 world : •* Here is the world in the hands of 
 evil men. Injustice prevails everywhere. 
 The saloon has it in its grip. Vice addresses 
 our youth on the very streets. Poverty 
 claims its millions. Disease ravages whole 
 sections because of the greed of property 
 owners. Corrupt governments menace our 
 cities. Little children are degraded by hard 
 labour and improper foods. Gamblers en- 
 tice our youth. Debasing influences are all 
 about them. Capital and labour war with 
 
The New Evangelism 119 
 
 each other. Nation flies at the throat of 
 nation in war. Everywhere Christ's little 
 children are in captivity. Come, oh, strong 
 men, over into this Macedonia and deUver 
 them. Devote your fine manhood to the 
 freeing of the captives, to the breaking of 
 their bonds, to the healing of their wounds, 
 to the saving of them from the enemy, to 
 helping Christ build His beautiful city and 
 to the establishment of the republic of God 
 in the earth." That is the appeal of the new 
 evangelism — to leave our sins and make our- 
 selves holy in Jesus Christ, for the sake of 
 the world. Men are everywhere yielding to 
 this appeal to-day, and a great revival may 
 be upon us if enough young men consecrate 
 themselves to become its prophets. 
 
 And, as a final word, let us remember that 
 one tenet of the new evangelism is that every 
 minister is to be his own evangelist. There 
 are still a few men who can gather great 
 masses together and addressing their wills 
 (for even they use the new method of direct 
 appeal to the will and hold out the life of 
 service as the inducement to follow Christ) 
 move many to accept the life of the spirit. 
 But their numbers and influence grow less 
 and less. If the men of our modern towns 
 and cities are going to be persuaded to lead 
 
120 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 the Christian life it has got to be done by the 
 pastors. Here is the challenge both of the 
 rural districts and of the cities — a challenge 
 which some tell us is not being answered as 
 it should bco Vast areas of our great cities, 
 and large areas of our rural regions are call- 
 ing for hundreds of young men from our col- 
 leges to plunge into the77i as Dr. Grenfell 
 plunged into Labrador, and clean them up. 
 So, too, the preaching of this age will take 
 upon itself a new directness that will call for 
 all the courage and manhood we have. No 
 one has better characterized this preaching 
 than has Rev. W. J. Dawson, D. D., in "The 
 Evangelistic Note," and we quote his fine 
 words here : 
 
 "The pulpit has traditions which are a 
 trammel upon free utterance. Intense and 
 passionate utterance is liable to be misunder- 
 stood ; it is often not welcomed, and it is al- 
 ways deprecated by those with whom decorum 
 counts for more than truth. And yet I be- 
 lieve no preacher is so generally respected in 
 the long run as the preacher who is fearless. 
 I am led to think that in every church, how- 
 ever cultured and accustomed to restraint its 
 congregation may be, there are multitudes of 
 people who would hail with joy the brave 
 voice that spoke in complete disregard of 
 
The New Evangelism 121 
 
 convention. I believe that we ministers are 
 in most instances much too mealy-mouthed 
 in our applications of truth. We do not come 
 to grips with the conscience ; we move, high- 
 poised, on a wide circle round our prey, and 
 never drop with the hawk's swiftness and 
 deadly impact upon it ; and the result is a 
 sense of unreality in our performances, as 
 though the whole affair were a stage illusion 
 of cardboard armies in a mock conflict. I 
 have come to think that the chief cause for 
 the decline of influence in the modern pulpit 
 is the lack of entire plain speaking. We are 
 the slaves of convention. We imagine that 
 because a congregation is cultured and 
 wealthy it knows nothing about sin. For my 
 part I confess that since I have been at pains 
 to understand the constituent elements of my 
 own congregation a very different conclusion 
 has been forced upon me. I know now that 
 I can address no congregation in a great city 
 that is not likely to include the drunkard, the 
 adulterer, the youth of impure life, the woman 
 beset by temptation, the commercial rogue, 
 and the man who draws his revenues from 
 wrong. Face to face with these awful reali- 
 ties of life the speech of the preacher must 
 also be a real thing, or it will be useless." 
 
XIII 
 THE MINISTER FOR TO-DAY 
 
 IN the concluding chapter the author 
 would like to enumerate some of the 
 qualifications demanded of the minister 
 of to-day. He does not pretend that this list 
 is exhaustive. Neither could he say that 
 these qualifications were not necessary in all 
 times. But in the light of what we have been 
 saying, and facing the peculiar problems of 
 our time, these gifts and graces seem of out- 
 standing significance. 
 
 The minister of to-day must, first of all, be 
 prophetic. That is, he should have not only 
 a firm belief in God, but also a belief, based 
 on experience, that God speaks to-day as dis- 
 tinctly as He has ever spoken in olden times, 
 and that the pure and chosen soul can hear 
 His message as did Isaiah of old, and become 
 God's spokesman to humanity, that is, His 
 prophet. Perhaps the one outstanding weak- 
 ness of much of our modern preaching is that 
 it seems second hand. The preacher is sim- 
 ply repeating or interpreting to the people 
 something some one once said about God. 
 
 122 
 
The Minister for To-Day 123 
 
 But when one opens his Bible its voices speak 
 with all the freshness and immediateness of 
 nature speaking to the senses. It is because 
 Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, and the other great 
 preachers of Israel got their message directly 
 from God and spoke for God to the people. 
 This is what makes a prophet, — to speak for 
 God. Paul so realized that this was the one 
 indispensable qualification for a successful 
 preacher that he took pains to say that he got 
 his message of Christ straight from Christ 
 Himself. What this age needs more than 
 anything else is prophets. The age of great 
 preaching will come again when great souls 
 speak face to face with God, and then go 
 from Him with His word for His people. 
 The great value of the Bible is not that it 
 tells us what the prophet said, that we should 
 merely repeat it, but that it is the divinely 
 given way to the realization of similar first- 
 hand experience of God. Jesus Himself said 
 that He was the " way '* to the Father, and 
 prayed that His disciples might enjoy His 
 own intimate relationship with God. The 
 minister of to-day should speak authorita- 
 tively as one who has himself seen God. It 
 is a critical, incredulous and empirical age. 
 It demands, with Thomas, to see the proof. 
 It is not even satisfied with the authority of 
 
124 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 the Bible. If one preaches the love of God 
 to it, it will straightway demand, " How know 
 you God is love ? " The prophet can always 
 say, " I have experienced that love. I have 
 been face to face with God ; " and he begins 
 his message with a '* Thus saith the Lord," 
 or with an *' I know Him in whom I believe." 
 It is a great and holy office, this of prophet, 
 and it calls to young men of great souls and 
 power of vision. 
 
 The minister for to-day must have a firm 
 belief in man. Not an unwarranted belief 
 that man is good and needs only a little cod- 
 dUng and a little persuading to become pure 
 and generous. The average man is not good. 
 He is very vile. He is full of selfishness and 
 secret sins. And much of this talk about 
 the general goodness of humanity is senti- 
 mentality and ungrounded optimism. But 
 man is made for God and religion. Human- 
 ity has the potentiality of Christhood, for 
 came not Christ out of it, and the Christlike 
 disciples ! He was created of God for real 
 manhood, not for reversion to beasthood, or 
 for even respectable selfishness. The race has 
 produced so many thousands of good and re- 
 ligious men, to say nothing of several saints, 
 that this logical truth of man's capacity for 
 God is confirmed by universal experience. 
 
The Minister for To-Day 125 
 
 The minister for to-day must have an un- 
 swerving faith in this capacity of man for 
 God, no matter what discouragements inter- 
 vene, if he is to accomplish any worthy or 
 lasting task. He must believe that some 
 men in every day and every man some 
 day will see that he is a child of God and 
 claim his birthright. He must work for man 
 with a faith that he not only can, but will, 
 respond to the appeal of the highest in him. 
 It is this faith that has made some of the 
 great preachers of our time. 
 
 The minister for to-day must have an abso- 
 lute faith in Jesus Christ. We do not mean 
 that he must hold any particular metaphys- 
 ical theory about the nature of His person, but 
 he must be sure that He is the son of the Fa- 
 ther, and reveals both the nature and the 
 will of God. He must just as unswervingly 
 believe that Christ reveals the final nature of 
 man. If there is no mirror for both Godhood 
 and manhood in the world, the task of the 
 minister is almost hopeless, for a very small 
 proportion of humanity have the capacity to 
 directly apperceive spiritual beings. But let 
 the preacher go forth to-day with the mes- 
 sage that God is Christlike, and that conse- 
 quently man is meant to be Godlike, and he 
 has given the heart of the Gospel to the 
 
1 26 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 world. He must believe in Christ, too, in 
 that he knows once for all that Christ's phi- 
 losophy of life is the true and only one. The 
 world says getting is the end of existence, 
 and that the worry of life is for the protec- 
 tion of one's self and one's property and one's 
 life. This is about the sum and substance 
 of its philosophy. Christ stands directly over 
 against this philosophy of life, and in every 
 word says, Man is here, not to get but to 
 give, and he is sent into the world not to pro- 
 tect himself, but to protect and serve others, 
 no matter at what cost to himself. Life is a 
 mission according to Christ's interpretation 
 of it. The preacher for to-day must thus 
 look out upon life through Christ's eyes ; 
 have, as Paul said, "the mind of Christ;" 
 believe that the sacrificial life is the only nor- 
 mal life of man. This is the presentation of 
 Christ that will win brave souls. 
 
 The minister for to-day must believe in his 
 own times. He must have faith that our time 
 is as holy as was the olden time. He must 
 believe that the great movements sweeping 
 through the heart of society are as much the 
 operations of the Spirit of God as the leading 
 of Israel out of the oppression in Egypt. Our 
 time is full of wonderful quickenings of the 
 conscience of mankind, deep stirrings of the 
 
The Minister for To-Day 127 
 
 human heart, passionate enthusiasms for hu- 
 manity, growing determinations to rid the 
 world of some of its age-long cruelties, highly 
 organized warfares against lingering crimes. 
 There has been a new birth of the social con- 
 sciousness, which is manifesting itself in a 
 sense of the oneness of humanity. A new so- 
 ciety and a new world are rising upon the vision 
 of select souls in every nation. The preacher 
 of to-day must see in this the revelation of 
 God's will and purpose, as of old the proph- 
 ets saw it in the operations of Israel's na- 
 tional life. He must be able to discern the 
 secrets of the times and lead men in the 
 building of the city of God. He must be- 
 lieve that the final purpose of God for this 
 world is, as Christ declared, the founding of 
 the kingdom of God in the earth, and he 
 must see that these enthusiasms of our time 
 are His methods, as well as revelations of 
 the nature of the kingdom. And, above all, 
 he must believe in the Messianic character of 
 his own nation. He must believe that God 
 has raised up and ordained his own country 
 to teach the world some eternal truth, just as 
 He ordained Israel. The truth Israel taught 
 was the righteous God demanding righteous- 
 ness in His children. He has ordained the 
 United States to teach the world the real 
 
128 New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 brotherhood of man. This must be an arti- 
 cle of faith with the preacher of our times, 
 for it is the great truth of the twentieth cen- 
 tury. God has sent to us fifty nationalities — 
 millions of men of every race, language, tem- 
 perament, ideal and habit. He has jumbled 
 them all up together in one great melting 
 pot. In Europe they have hated, fought, and 
 slain each other. Here our nation must 
 transform them into brothers of each other 
 and servants of the Lord. And when the 
 work is done the nation can say to all the 
 nations, " See how possible it is for suspi- 
 cious men of diflerent nations to become 
 brothers in the Lord." This is the joy of the 
 Christian ministry of to-day, that it aims to 
 redeem the whole of life — little children, men 
 and women, nearest neighbours and the mil- 
 lions of the East, commerce and industry, 
 societies and cities, states and nations, until 
 all the kingdoms of the world have become 
 the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ 
 
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