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 BR 121 .B72 1911 
 
 Brown, Charles Reynolds, 
 
 1862-1950. 
 The modern man's religion 
 
TEACHERS COLLEGE LECTURES 
 ON THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 
 
 Series I 
 
^^/•. 
 
 THE 
 MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 BY y 
 
 CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "the cap and gown," " FAITH AND HEALTH," 
 
 "the young man's AFFAIRS," ETC. 
 
 TEACHERS COLLEGE 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 1 
 
 NEW YORK CITY i 
 
 1911 
 
Copyright, I911, by 
 Teachers College, Columbia University 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PACK 
 
 I Truth and Life 3 
 
 II The Worth of Incomplete 
 
 Knowledge 32 
 
 III A Deepening Experience .... 66 
 
 IV The Practical Use of the Bible . 98 
 V Fellowship through Service . .132 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Through the aid of generous friends, it was 
 possible to arrange for the addresses now 
 included in this volume. Neither the ad- 
 dresses themselves nor the topics with which 
 they deal were arranged for without careful 
 thought and without a definite purpose in 
 view. From both teachers and students alike 
 had come many requests for an opportunity 
 to hear a new and fresh statement of some of 
 the fundamental principles of religion. In 
 the break-up of conventional ideas which has 
 been so marked a characteristic of the gene- 
 ration in which we live, many intelligent men 
 and women have lost the clue to the meaning 
 of religion and to its significance for human 
 life. They have been led hither and yon 
 by strange and often superficial teachings 
 which frequently confused without enlight- 
 ening. These addresses, by a consummate 
 
 ▼ii 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 master of the art of expression and by a 
 religious teacher of vigorous and indepen- 
 dent mind, are offered as a corrective to 
 teachings of another kind. 
 
 It has been the good fortune of Columbia 
 University to be a pioneer in many fields. It 
 has had the courage and the foresight to ad- 
 vance on to nev^ ground when advance was 
 needed and to stand fast by old principles 
 when steadfastness was required. In setting 
 aside a portion of the academic day in order 
 that teachers and students may assemble to 
 listen to these addresses on religious prin- 
 ciples and religious truth, the Dean and 
 Faculty of Teachers College have performed 
 a new and not inconsiderable service. 
 
 There is a fashionable affectation, often 
 offensively manifested, that religion is super- 
 stition, reHgious service idolatry, and re- 
 ligious discussion futile. To those who are 
 so unfortunate as to be in the grasp of an 
 affectation like this, the careful reading pf 
 these addresses is earnestly commended. 
 
 Nicholas Murray Butler. 
 
THE 
 MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
I 
 
 TRUTH AND LIFE 
 
 IN arranging with me for this course of 
 lectures, the Dean of Teachers College 
 indicated clearly and emphatically that his 
 chief desire was "not to have presented a his- 
 tory of religion, or a philosophy of religion, 
 or some particular system of religious dogma 
 or ecclesiastical method." He wished rather 
 "to have set forth in direct fashion religion 
 itself as an experience, as a life— a life to be 
 lived under modern conditions of thought 
 and action." 
 
 I could enter readily and heartily into that 
 desire, for to me the most interesting thing 
 about religion is not the history of it, nor the 
 philosophy of it, nor this or that particular 
 system of doctrine or polity. I am interested 
 mainly in religion as a life, a life to be lived 
 more effectively and joyously because of the 
 stimulus, the guidance, and the reinforce- 
 
 3 
 
4 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 ment which a real religious faith offers. In 
 this first lecture, therefore, I wish to say 
 something to you about truth and life. 
 
 You find men to whom the truth is always 
 a statement to be written out and printed in 
 a book for other people to read. "Here is 
 the truth,'' they say, "study it; memorize it; 
 and in the great day of examination thou 
 shalt be saved." 
 
 You find those to whom the truth is always 
 a tool, the use of which is to be mastered. It 
 can be set to dig or to build, to heal or to 
 plead, to instruct or co preach, and thus made 
 to yield a financial return. "Here is the 
 truth,'' they say, "master the use of it and it 
 will put money in thy purse." 
 
 You find those to whom the truth is always 
 a picture to be framed and hung up for the 
 admiration of beholders. "Here is the 
 truth," they say, "learn to enjoy it as a man 
 of culture and thou shalt be numbered with 
 the elite." 
 
 The abstract, the commercial, and the 
 decorative idea of knowledge, each one takes 
 its turn at the bat ; each one has its way with 
 us at some period of our development; and 
 each one fails to score when the game is 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 
 
 finally reckoned up because each one deals 
 only with that which is secondary. 
 
 The primary office of knowledge is to 
 make men alive. It is designed to send them 
 out alive at more points, alive on higher lev- 
 els, alive in more effective ways. The highest 
 reward for gaining an education comes not 
 in the sense of having more information on a 
 certain subject than your neighbors possess ; 
 it comes not in the fact that now you can go 
 into the market and sell your efforts at a 
 higher figure than uneducated persons can 
 do; it comes not in the privileged possession 
 of that subtle and altogether admirable some- 
 thing we call culture. The highest reward 
 comes in an enlarged capacity to live. If 
 your college course makes you as a person 
 destined to live with other persons more 
 thoroughly, abundantly, and usefully alive, 
 it has done its work. This is primary, be- 
 cause the ultimate value of knowledge lies in 
 its power to minister to life. 
 
 I can best illustrate this in a concrete case. 
 During the last six months we have been 
 reading a great deal in the papers and maga- 
 zines about a man whose name was William 
 James. He is dead, to our great sorrow, for 
 
6 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 he was Professor of Philosophy in Harvard 
 University, and he was a philosopher in a 
 thousand. He merited all that has been said 
 about him. He was a standing rebuke to the 
 definition given of metaphysics by a certain 
 wag. I do not quote the remark approvingly 
 and would not venture to quote it at all were 
 I not a lover of philosophy myself, having 
 invested much time in hard and rewarding 
 study along that line. ''When some man 
 talks about what he does not understand,'' 
 the wag said, ''to a lot of people who do not 
 understand him, about something that would 
 not make a particle of difference to any of 
 them if they did understand it, that is meta- 
 physics.'' It indicates in a rough way a cer- 
 tain popular, though mistaken attitude to- 
 ward certain brands of philosophy. 
 
 William James was an effective reply to 
 that w^hole line of criticism. He always 
 knew what he was talking about. He used 
 the English language in such a way, wath 
 such charm and clearness, that other people 
 understood him. And what he said did make 
 a difference. He used to say with the great- 
 est emphasis, "There is no difference worth 
 discussing which does not make a difference 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 
 
 in conduct,"— that is to say, in life. He gave 
 much of his best strength latterly to what 
 is called "pragmatism,'' and the word prag- 
 matism is simply a technical term to indicate 
 that the "truth works'' and finds its main 
 justification, perhaps, in the fact that it does 
 work and that in the great outcome it is the 
 only thing that will work. The honored 
 Harvard professor was forever striving to 
 bring his philosophy into immediate contact 
 with life and thus compel it to assert its value 
 in terms of improved experience. The pri- 
 mary thing with him was the direct bearing 
 of truth on life. 
 
 Now all this applies with special force to 
 religious truth. Religion has come that we 
 might have life and that we might have it 
 more abundantly. He that hath religion hath 
 life on wider areas and on higher levels. He 
 that hath not religion hath not life. The 
 final word of religion in the best known and 
 most popular of all the parables, the parable 
 of the good Samaritan, was, "This do and 
 thou shalt live." The sublime reaction from 
 the attempt to love God with all the heart 
 and one's neighbor as well as one's self, 
 would be found, the Author of the parable 
 
8 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 said, in an increased power to live. The ulti- 
 mate value of religious truth lies in its power 
 to minister to life. 
 
 We wonder sometimes why the term "ec- 
 clesiasticar' and the term "academic" are 
 uttered nine times out of ten as terms of 
 reproach. "He is merely an ecclesiastic," 
 men say, as if that disposed of him. "His 
 knowledge of the subject is purely aca- 
 demic," they say, as if that were sufficient 
 reason for not entering his name in the trial 
 balance, — it would not affect the result. The 
 church and the school are respectable institu- 
 tions yet "ecclesiastical" and "academic" are 
 commonly terms of reproach. May it not be 
 for the reason that what we sometimes teach 
 from the pulpit or from the chair does so 
 often fail to relate itself in helpful fashion 
 to life that, in consequence, the big outside 
 world where things are done has fallen into 
 a way of stamping much of our output as 
 dry and fruitless ? 
 
 There was once a great Teacher who has 
 come by common consent to be widely called 
 "The Master." His work was a full-page, 
 life-size illustration of the direct bearing of 
 truth upon life. He gave His first lecture in 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 
 
 a little synagogue at Nazareth. He then 
 appeared in the larger temple at Jerusalem. 
 He then went out of doors and stood on the 
 hillside under the open sky. From the record 
 it would seem that four-fifths of all His 
 work was done in the open air. He went 
 there hecause the people were there, the great 
 main movements of life were there, the vital 
 concerns of ordinary existence were there, 
 and He was intent upon relating His truth to 
 the common life. He was unwilling to re- 
 main apart with a little, inner, select circle, 
 allowing the great, main, secular interests of 
 the world go their way untaught, unre- 
 newed, and unblessed by the truths of the 
 religion He came to establish. 
 
 The sentence which precedes the Sermon 
 on the Mount is quite as significant as any 
 sentence contained in the address itself. 
 "Seeing the multitudes. He went up into a 
 mountain and opened His mouth and taught 
 them." That is to say. His teaching was 
 called out by the immediate appeal of life. 
 
 It was the sight of that multitude, not 
 merely so many square rods of human beings 
 such as one might see gathered together on 
 the Fourth of July or on Labor Day, but that 
 
lo THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 array of hopes and fears, of yearnings and 
 longings, of sorrows and sins, — it was that 
 mass of human need which kindled the heart 
 and loosened the tongue of this Teacher pos- 
 sessed of sympathetic insight. Seeing the 
 multitudes and thinking of all that was hid- 
 den away in those many hearts, recognizing 
 the undeclared and unrealized capacity in 
 waiting deep down in the lives of all those 
 people. He was moved to speak. He went up 
 on the hillside and taught them. His message 
 was called out directly by the appeal of life. 
 More than that, when you come to read it 
 you find that the Sermon on the Mount is not 
 a history of religion, nor a philosophy of 
 religion, nor a rigid system of dogma. It 
 shows in every line of it that it took shape 
 and form in the immediate presence of life. 
 His every word bore directly on some neces- 
 sary problem of human life. He addressed 
 Himself to the needs of those who hungered 
 after righteousness, who wanted to obtain 
 mercy, who wished to stand in right relations 
 with their fellows, who longed to know the 
 truth about prayer and eternal life, who 
 desired that they might see God. It may be 
 that this is the reason why He is called "The 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE ii 
 
 Master/'— among all the instructors of the 
 race He stands at the head of the list in 
 relatinc;' truth to life. 
 
 What a tremendous difference it would 
 have made in human progress if all the great 
 religious pronouncements had been thus 
 wrought out in the immediate presence of 
 life! For example, when the Athanasian 
 Creed was shaped up no one was present ex- 
 cept a company of learned, dry-as-dust theo- 
 logians. If they had enjoyed the presence 
 and the counsel of a half dozen clear-headed 
 business men, or a few bright women with 
 their keener intuitions, that celebrated Creed 
 might not have been quite so repellent. 
 
 When the Westminster Confession of 
 Faith was framed, the work was done by a 
 body of mature men shut up for five years 
 within the walls of Westminster Abbey. It 
 is no milk-and-water affair. It undertakes 
 to be the most logical, fundamental, and ex- 
 plicit setting forth of man's relations to his 
 Maker anywhere contained in the great 
 creedal statements of Christendom. The men 
 who made it were wise and learned and 
 godly,— -there is no manner of doubt about 
 that. But when you read their utterance in 
 
12 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 the famous old Confession it does not seem 
 like an instrument framed up in the presence 
 of the real needs of the human heart. 
 
 If a multitude had been present on that 
 occasion also, if some little children even had 
 been playing over at one side or looking up 
 timidly into the faces of their mothers, some- 
 what frightened by the sight of so much 
 theological learning, that section about the 
 damnation of non-elect infants might never 
 have gotten in. If a half dozen boys had 
 been somewhere in sight with the bubble, the 
 promise, and the mystery of healthy youth, 
 those dear old men would have limbered up 
 some of the joints of the Confession in spite 
 of themselves. It was a creed wrought out, 
 it would seem, to satisfy the demands of 
 logic or to match an imposing array of skill- 
 fully selected proof texts, or to express their 
 own metaphysical broodings. It was not 
 framed up to face and to meet the normal 
 and constantly recurring needs of life, and 
 that is its condemnation. 
 
 I have taken this illustration from my own 
 particular line of study because I am more 
 familiar with that, but the same principle 
 holds on many other fields. The truth as 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 13 
 
 some man teaches it in the University and as 
 some students study it may be kilHngly cor- 
 rect viewed in the abstract, or it may be well 
 calculated to be a genuine commercial asset 
 in the increased earning capacity of the man 
 who masters it, or it may be as beautiful to 
 look at as a painting by Turner ; but it does 
 not stand related in any creative fashion to 
 the finer, the deeper, and the more enduring 
 interests of life. No master in Israel has 
 ever carried it out into the presence of the 
 multitude and shown its bearings in such a 
 way as to merit the high endorsement, "This 
 know and thou shalt live''; and that is the 
 condemnation of any such method. 
 
 ^'Knowledge is power,'' but only when it is 
 knowledge in process of being wrought out 
 in terms of life. Men differ widely in the 
 amount of information they carry about with 
 them,— that is altogether secondary, for the 
 information is all there in the encyclopedia 
 when we want it, and mere information is 
 not power. Men differ widely in the amount 
 of technical training they have received, — 
 this has value, but it may miss the thing that 
 is vital; it often does miss it. Real knowl- 
 edge belongs rather to the man trained in 
 
14 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 sympathetic insight, in real grasp and in the 
 habit of concentration. Put such a man 
 down anywhere with a book or a problem, 
 with a piece of machinery or a difficult situa- 
 tion in business, with some exacting task in 
 the work of education, or with some hard 
 moral struggle, and he will know what to do 
 with it. He may or may not be up in that 
 particular line, but his trained and knowing 
 mind will give him capacity for accomplish- 
 ment. He will intelligently set about the 
 mastery of that particular job. His whole 
 habit of steadily relating truth to life, which 
 has become ingrained, will make him com- 
 petent to do, to be, and to grow. 
 
 It was never meant that truth and life 
 should dwell apart, no, not for an hour. The 
 Almighty at the outset joined them together. 
 The Master of all the higher values uttered 
 His confirmation of this principle when He 
 said, "The words that I speak unto you, they 
 are spirit and they are life." *'What God 
 hath joined together let no man put asun- 
 der." 
 
 Some of the later Greek philosophers were 
 wont to speak scornfully of the untaught, 
 unwashed herd. ''What could they make of 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 15 
 
 Plato's 'Republic/ or of Aristotle's Trolego- 
 mena to Ethics'?" they said. They insisted 
 that philosophy was for the select few. It 
 was this separation of sublime truths from 
 the interests of common life which made 
 such men "academic." 
 
 Many of the Hindoo teachers seek only to 
 make a few select adepts, Brahmins of high 
 caste, who may be able to appreciate their 
 subtle notions. "This truth of ours is not for 
 the many," they say. And this serves to ac- 
 count for the wide remove between the 
 quality of India's ability along the line of 
 philosophical and religious speculation and 
 the measure of her ability to live the life of 
 genuine aspiration and useful service. 
 
 The scribes and Pharisees in Christ's day 
 when they saw the common people following 
 Him eagerly and hearing Him gladly, 
 sneered. "Have any of the rulers believed 
 on Him? This people that knoweth not the 
 law are accursed." This was simply a round- 
 about and theological way of saying, "The 
 common people be accursed !" 
 
 Here in our own land, some college gradu- 
 ate, he may be a clergyman or a professor, 
 or he may follow any one of a dozen voca- 
 
i6 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 tions, goes forth perhaps and talks learnedly 
 about that which has no particular relation to 
 the lives of his fellows, using all the technical 
 patois of his own department, throwing in 
 great quantities of Latin and Greek deriva- 
 tives, and then because the people fail to get 
 anything out of it, he decides that "It is too 
 deep for them/' And the people go away 
 wondering why learned men are often so 
 deadly dull. The fault is in the man in that 
 he has not learned the high art of relating 
 truth to life. 
 
 The really and truly great things, standing 
 in the very first rank, not in the second or 
 third, are meant to win their response from 
 the many. The beauty of a rainbow or a 
 sunset, the grandeur of the ocean in a storm, 
 or the quiet peace of some lovely valley, the 
 trees, the flowers, and the singing birds, all 
 these see the multitudes as Christ did and 
 win their response. The cathedral at Co- 
 logne and the Sistine Madonna, the oratorio 
 of "The Messiah," and the overture to 
 "Tannhauser," these are not for the initiated 
 alone ; they too are enjoyed by the multitudes. 
 It is a misguided mind which hides what it 
 has of genuine worth under a bushel of tech- 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 17 
 
 nique and then foolishly believes that it is too 
 great for the world to be able to receive it. 
 The lack is in the man who has not found a 
 suitable channel of expression. Rightly ut- 
 tered, the best that any department of human 
 learning has may win its response from the 
 many by relating itself in some helpful 
 fashion to the inner life. 
 
 Jesus set His face squarely against the 
 notion that religion as He taught it, was a 
 subtle, esoteric, mysterious something to be 
 appreciated only by the chosen few. 'Tf any 
 man,"— cultured and trained he may be, or 
 rude and unlettered, — ''will do the will, he 
 shall know the doctrine.'' His life of trust- 
 ful obedience will increase his spiritual in- 
 sight and render him competent to make 
 voyages of spiritual discovery in his own 
 right. 
 
 "If any man thirst,"— any man, whatever 
 his history or particular attainments, — ''let 
 him come unto Me and drink." However 
 great or meager his individual talent may be, 
 if he is genuinely athirst for a higher life, let 
 him come. He may, he can, take the water 
 of life freely. 
 
 Jesus made special and winsome appeal to 
 
i8 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 those who might feel themselves omitted 
 from the privileges of religion at its best. 
 The stress of their physical toil and the 
 dwarfing effect of severe drudgery might 
 seem to have dulled their spiritual capacity. 
 But Christ said, "Come unto Me all ye that 
 labor and are heavy laden. Take My yoke 
 upon you and learn." If they would enlist 
 openly in His service, they would inevitably 
 find rest unto their souls. It was always His 
 way. His word was a universal word. The 
 sight of the multitude moved Him to utter 
 His best because His truth was meant for the 
 common life. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this at some length be- 
 cause many people have fallen into the way 
 of keeping certain religious convictions apart 
 in a kind of safe deposit vault where things 
 too valuable for everyday use are commonly 
 stored. They know that these sacred con- 
 victions are there. They go in on state occa- 
 sions, Christmas and Easter, perhaps, and 
 look at them. They feel a bit richer because 
 they have such beliefs and sentiments locked 
 up in that place of security. But they have 
 no idea of bringing those religious judg- 
 ments out in the broad glare of day or of set- 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 19 
 
 ting them to work on the field of ordinary 
 action. What a stupid waste of privilege ! 
 
 What difference does it make whether you 
 believe or fail to believe in anything unless it 
 affects your life? What difference does it 
 make whether you regard the story of Jonah 
 as history or as parable unless your position 
 in the matter affects your life ? What differ- 
 ence does it make whether you regard the 
 story of Joshua calling upon the sun to stand 
 still as prose or as poetry, the hard statement 
 of historic fact, or a beautiful reference to 
 the idea that the significant events of that 
 memorable day seemed to stretch it far 
 beyond the limited number of hours assigned 
 to it in the almanac ? 
 
 Or, turning from things trivial to things 
 vital, what difference does it make whether 
 you believe or refuse to believe in the author- 
 ity and inspiration of the Bible, in the unique 
 character and person of Jesus Christ, unless 
 the position you have come to hold issues in 
 an altered and improved attitude of Hfe? It 
 is the same contention made by the professor 
 of philosophy. There is no difference worth 
 discussing which does not make a difference 
 in life. The chief reason why it is worth 
 
20 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 while to study and to strive for carefully con- 
 sidered, well-grounded, strongly held convic- 
 tions as to religious truth is that they do have 
 a direct and powerful bearing upon life. 
 Men are actually transformed by the renew- 
 ing of their minds. 
 
 We are sometimes taunted with the fact 
 that our religious faith in some of its claims 
 cannot be demonstrated. Our faith in a di- 
 vine Providence where all things work to- 
 gether for good to those who are faced right ; 
 our faith in the ultimate and transcendent 
 effects of prayer; our faith in immortality — 
 no one of these claims, it is said, can be sub- 
 mitted to the test of immediate and final 
 demonstration and thus proved beyond a 
 peradventure to all beholders. We cannot 
 go to the blackboard and demonstrate the 
 truth of the Christian position in any one of 
 these matters as we might prove some propo- 
 sition in mathematics. We cannot enter the 
 physical laboratory and establish the truth of 
 these claims as we might demonstrate certain 
 chemical reactions. 
 
 The objection is sound. But neither can 
 unbelief at these points be submitted to im- 
 mediate and final demonstration. The unbe- 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 21 
 
 lievers also are walking by faith and not by 
 sight, albeit their faith is a negative faith. 
 They are not opposing our faith with their 
 knowledge, but simply with a negative form 
 of belief which they have chosen to accept. 
 
 The beauty of our faith is that it can be 
 successfully lived. It works, and it works 
 better than anything else offered. Life be- 
 comes more livable, more inspiring, more 
 effective when it is caught and held in the 
 grip of a great confidence in an all-embrac- 
 ing Providence which is steadily serving the 
 higher interests of the race and will ulti- 
 mately vindicate its course at the bar of 
 reason and conscience. Life is more livable 
 and more enjoyable when we believe that we 
 have power to enter into the shaping of the 
 more important spiritual events of the uni- 
 verse through faithful and persistent prayer. 
 Life is more livable when we live it by the 
 power of our confidence in an endless life. 
 Our faith can be lived, and when it is thus 
 carried into the presence of the multitude 
 and applied to the fundamental interests of 
 Hfe, it works. 
 
 It is exceedingly important that those who 
 are to give the best strength of their lives to 
 
^2 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 the work of teaching, should feel that they 
 are standing on firm ground at this point. 
 When Bronson Alcott, the Boston transcen- 
 dentalist, was living in the town of Concord, 
 he strolled one day into the village school. 
 According to the custom then prevailing in 
 country districts, he was asked to make some 
 remarks. He stood up, looking at the chil- 
 dren inquiringly with that genuine interest 
 he felt in whatever was human— and I sup- 
 pose the average schoolroom yields about as 
 many bushels to the acre of pure unadul- 
 terated human nature as any field to be 
 found. The children were also eyeing him, 
 wondering what he was going to say, and 
 presently beginning to wonder if he intended 
 to say anything. Suddenly he burst out, 
 "What did you come here for?" The boys 
 and girls exchanged looks of surprise, whis- 
 pered and giggled a little, and then the an- 
 swer came back from one of the bolder 
 spirits, — "We came to learn." "To learn 
 what?" the philosopher asked. Again they 
 pondered, and reflected upon those particular 
 aspects of pedagogical experience which had 
 impressed them most, and the answer came 
 back, "To learn to behave." 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 23 
 
 Out of the mouths of babes and urchins, 
 you know, out of those simple, fearless, child- 
 like minds which say just what they think, 
 the world adds to its stock of truth. Going 
 to school, and the whole pursuit of knowl- 
 edge for which the schoolroom stands, has 
 several ends in view, but the one central and 
 controlling principle in it all is "to learn to 
 behave." 
 
 By that I do not mean the transformation 
 of the ordinary school exercise into a kind of 
 preaching service. I do not mean the intro- 
 duction of even so much of the spirit of sec- 
 tarian propagandism as might creep through 
 the crack under the door. I mean that the 
 everyday business of teaching children to 
 read and write and add up columns of fig- 
 ures ; I mean that the task of teaching them 
 history, literature, geography, and science 
 should be held firmly within the grasp of a 
 definite moral purpose. The end in view in 
 our whole pursuit and disbursement of learn- 
 ing is to send out men and women better 
 equipped to behave wisely, honestly, and use- 
 fully. The high task of education carried on 
 in the schoolroom, or in the college, or in that 
 larger university outside where term time is 
 
24 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 all the time, is to translate and transmute 
 truth into life so that people may behave 
 well. 
 
 In that address Jesus gave to the multitude, 
 it is significant that the first word uttered 
 was not a word of reproach, ignorant and 
 faulty though the people were for the most 
 part. It was not a word of duty, much as 
 they needed instruction on that point. It was 
 a word of high privilege; it was the word 
 "blessed,'' or as we translate it now more 
 accurately, the word ''happy." The whole 
 world was seeking happiness and Christ took 
 hold of that universal desire in His first 
 word. He honored that desire for happiness 
 by striking that keynote in the first sentence 
 of His Charter Day address. He then pro- 
 ceeded to direct the minds of the people to 
 those sources where real and permanent hap- 
 piness would be found. It did not spring. 
 He said, so much from possessions or 
 achievements as from a certain inner quality 
 of life. He did not say, "Happy are the 
 rich," or, "Happy are the successful." He 
 said rather, "Happy are the gentle, the 
 merciful, the aspiring, the pure hearted. 
 Happy are they that hunger and thirst after 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 25 
 
 righteousness, who go about making peace." 
 He bade men, therefore, seek first a certain 
 disposition toward God and toward their fel- 
 lows if they would find happiness. 
 
 We spend so much time and strength in 
 changing and improving the tools and the 
 general machinery of life and then forget 
 oftentimes to change and improve those who 
 are to operate the machine. If we should 
 take the sickle Ruth used when she gleaned 
 after the reapers in the fields of Boaz, and 
 lay it down beside one of those combined 
 harvesters and threshers used in California 
 and in the grain fields of the northwest, we 
 might feel that we had made tremendous 
 progress. But if we should take Ruth her- 
 self and place her beside the wives and 
 daughters of the men who make those har- 
 vesters in the factories and operate them in 
 the fields, it might seem that our progress in 
 the more important line of manufacturing 
 human values was not a thing to be cele- 
 brated with international expositions. All 
 the outside things are the tools and ma- 
 chinery of life, and they are secondary. That 
 which alone is primary is the quality and 
 disposition of the life within. 
 
26 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 In one of his little books Henry Van Dyke 
 refers to three ideals in education : the deco- 
 rative, the marketable, and the creative. The 
 man with the first thinks it is a fine thing to 
 go to college. It gives one an air of dis- 
 tinction. It enables him to belong to the 
 University Club in the city where he lives. 
 It enables him to refer to "my class" and to 
 "the good old days" at Columbia or Prince- 
 ton, at Harvard or Yale, at Stanford or 
 California. He may even register himself in 
 his own mind as a "dig" and go in for a Phi 
 Beta Kappa Key, with the idea that it will 
 unlock doors closed to other men. And be- 
 cause he is a university man and a graduate 
 he feels that he possesses a rare and culti- 
 vated taste in music and art, in literature and 
 philosophy. He thinks of his education as a 
 highly decorative appendage to his own life. 
 
 The second man has no use for all this. 
 Privately, he looks upon the decorative fel- 
 low as a cultivated freak. He himself is 
 thoroughly practical. He has his mind on 
 the main chance. He is one of those "no 
 nonsense about me" men. He selects his col- 
 lege and chooses his courses with one eye on 
 the catalogue and the other eye on the cash 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 2.-] 
 
 book he expects to keep by and by. He thinks 
 of himself as a tool to be ground and sharp- 
 ened so it will cut where other tools fail. He 
 is very contemptuous in his attitude toward 
 the study of dead languages or of philosophy. 
 "What good will all that do me when I get 
 out into the world of business?'' He means, 
 what good will it do his bank account, for he 
 still thinks that a man's life consisteth in the 
 abundance of the things that he possesseth, 
 a certain eminent authority to the contrary 
 notwithstanding. He wants an education, 
 not for the purpose of living, but for the pur- 
 pose of making a living, which is a very dif- 
 ferent matter. He has the marketable idea 
 of education. 
 
 If any of you should stop on either of those 
 two rounds of the ladder, your professors 
 here would be ashamed of you. The found- 
 ers of this noble university, in such event, 
 would feel that you had disgraced it. H you 
 allow your pupils to fail to recognize the real 
 bearing of truth upon life, you ought to be 
 cast out of the synagogue of learning. 
 
 The only adequate ideal in education is the 
 creative ideal. This do, this know, and thou 
 shalt live ! The reward for reading books lies 
 
28 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 not in the information gained or in the ideas 
 acquired, but in the mental stimulus afforded, 
 in the power we gain to read more books and 
 better ones and, by and by, to think for our- 
 selves and produce ideas of our own. The 
 reward for doing your duty lies in the power 
 you gain to keep on doing it and to do it bet- 
 ter. The reward for meeting and mastering 
 any hard situation in life lies in the power 
 acquired to meet and master other still 
 harder situations, and to aid your fellows in 
 that same high task by your sympathetic in- 
 sight and useful experience. The creative 
 ideal of education, the perpetual ministry of 
 truth to life, is the only one which proves 
 satisfactory. 
 
 And to go one step further, it is that truth 
 which has been wrought into life and finds 
 there habitual expression, which becomes 
 effective in the teacher of youth or in the 
 preacher of righteousness, or in the service 
 rendered by any one to the deeper needs of 
 his fellows. 
 
 When St. Francis of Assisi established the 
 order which bears his name, a young man, 
 who thought quite as highly of himself as he 
 ought to have thought, came and joined. 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 29 
 
 The youth was eager to become a famous 
 preacher, and the simple lessons assigned to 
 him in the monastery and the somewhat 
 lowly duties imposed upon him were most 
 trying to his patience. But one day St. 
 Francis came to the young man and said, 
 "My son, let us go down into the village and 
 preach.*' The invitation was accepted with 
 great alacrity, for the young man was fairly 
 bursting with religious eloquence which he 
 longed to pour out upon the people. 
 
 The two men went down into the village. 
 They passed the time of day with a few ac- 
 quaintances and neighbors as they met them 
 on the street. They stopped at the market- 
 place and made some purchases for the 
 monastery, chatting in friendly fashion with 
 the market men. They made a few brief calls 
 on some families where sorrow or sickness 
 had come. They spoke to a tradesman about 
 employment for a promising boy who lived 
 near the monastery. By and by, when they 
 had discharged these and other similar 
 errands, all of them utterly devoid of any 
 interest to the young orator, the good St. 
 Francis turned his face toward home. 
 
 "But, my father," the young man cried in 
 
so THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 dismay, "when are we going to preach?" 
 "My son/' repHed St. Francis, "we have been 
 preaching all the time." The truth wrought 
 out in terms of life and finding expression in 
 those simple, ordinary relations and occupa- 
 tions which make up the bulk of our human 
 experience, investing them with new mean- 
 ing and giving them a finer quality, becomes 
 the highest form of message which men ever 
 receive. 
 
 The word made flesh, dwelling among men 
 in simple, homely fashion, full of grace and 
 truth, is ever the word which has power. The 
 truth which has become flesh, muscles, nerves, 
 vitality, competent to serve the needs of 
 others with grace, is ever the effective instru- 
 ment in all useful ministry. 
 
 Religion shorn of all those accidents which 
 sometimes fasten upon it has been defined as 
 "personal devotion to the will of God as it 
 stands revealed in Jesus Christ, finding ex- 
 pression for its aspiration in worship and for 
 its sense of obligation in obedient service." 
 And, viewed after this vital fashion, it is im- 
 possible for any one to come to his own 
 highest self-realization or to meet fully his 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 31 
 
 responsibility to the generation in which he j 
 Hves, without reHgion. i 
 
 Personal religion lifts a man out of the 
 pettiness and isolation of his own little pri- 
 vate efforts into the sense of participation in ; 
 an august moral enterprise. It lifts him into ' 
 the sense of fellowship with an Infinite Being : 
 in His resistless advance toward a superb f ul- : 
 fillment. It enables the religious man to say ■ 
 at every step of the way, "I am not alone, the | 
 Father is with me." And each man's beliefs 
 and purposes, his habits of action and his j 
 ultimate aspirations should be made adequate | 
 to grasp and to retain this splendid form of 5 
 experience. 
 
II 
 
 THE WORTH OF INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE^ 
 
 IN the last lecture I sought to indicate that 
 the main office of truth is to minister to 
 life ; and that truth wrought out in terms of 
 life and finding habitual expression in those 
 activities which make up the bulk of our ex- 
 perience, is the truth which becomes most ef- 
 fective in serving human need. 
 
 But the moment we begin to deal with re- 
 ligious truth we are made aware of the incom- 
 pleteness of our knowledge. We are not in 
 the realm of finality as we might be in pure 
 mathematics or in formal logic. Our knowl- 
 edge is limited and when we begin to push 
 out along those lines of inquiry which seem 
 to invite our advance, we find that knowledge 
 speedily impinging upon a great world where 
 
 lA portion of the material in this chapter appeared in my 
 little book "The Cap and Gown," published by Pilgrim 
 Press, Boston, and is here utilized by their kind permission. 
 
 32 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 33 
 
 we do not know. We are broug-ht face to 
 face with an undiscovered country not 
 mapped out as yet and apparently incapable 
 at present of being accurately surveyed. We 
 repeat the experience of those men of old 
 "who feared as they entered the cloud." We 
 suffer confusion because we see spiritual 
 reality through a glass darkly and in that 
 mood of uncertainty we sometimes forget to 
 act upon the light we actually enjoy. 
 
 We can scarcely estimate the value of the 
 service rendered to religion and especially to 
 Bible study by a certain brilliant English 
 essayist. His major study was not religion 
 and his attitude toward the faith once deliv- 
 ered to the saints was commonly regarded as 
 unfriendly. But in his little book, "Litera- 
 ture and Dogma," Matthew Arnold brought 
 out over and over again with his marvelous 
 skill and effective expression the helpful 
 truth that the statements of the Bible touch- 
 ing great spiritual realities do not undertake 
 to be exact and final. The language is "fluid, 
 passing, poetic," rather than mathematically 
 and scientifically exact. 
 
 And in all religious speech when we come 
 to deal with such august themes as God and 
 
34 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 prayer, duty and redemption, immortality 
 and a final judgment, our expressions are as 
 it were ''thrown out" at these sublime real- 
 ities confessedly too great for perfect com- 
 prehension or exhaustive definition. In a 
 word, the Bible is literature and not scientific 
 dogma. Our religious knowledge at its best 
 shades ofif into infinite spaces where our 
 plumb lines do not touch bottom. 
 
 It is good for every thoughtful person 
 called to live his Christian life in quarters 
 where the principle of organic evolution is 
 frankly and fearlessly accepted, where liter- 
 ary and historical study has greatly modified 
 the popular feeling touching the original 
 documents of Christian faith, where the study 
 of psychology has made this human nature 
 of ours seem a new and more puzzling phe- 
 nomenon—it is good for any such thoughtful 
 person to read, mark, learn, and inwardly 
 digest the full implication of Matthew Arn- 
 old's contention. He may at first feel as if 
 the foundations were slipping out from 
 under him, but if he will persist, he will find 
 his mind cleared and his heart reassured as 
 to the abiding worth of such knowledge as 
 we do possess touching spiritual reality, 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 35 
 
 stopping though that knowledge does a long 
 way this side of completeness. 
 
 He was a wise man in religious matters 
 who said, ''We know— "and then added mod- 
 estly, — ''in part/' This was not a statement 
 emanating from some indifferent agnostic 
 who, because religious questions are difficult, 
 insists that he does not know anything about 
 them. It was not the statement of a defiant 
 .infidel who, because he does not understand 
 everything about religion as he would like to, 
 declares that neither he nor any one under- 
 stands anything about it. It was not the 
 statement of one of those hesitai dng ind iyjd- 
 uals who are always trying to steer a safe 
 course somewhere between yes and no, be- 
 tween the right of it and the wrong of it, who 
 are never quite sure whether there is a God 
 or not, but prefer to leave it an open question, 
 with an ill-defined notion that the truth lies, 
 perhaps, about halfway between the two 
 claims. 
 
 This man who said, "We know, in part,'' 
 was not an agnostic nor an infidel nor a hesi- 
 tator. He knew certain things. He was 
 sure of them. He was ready to say so right 
 out in meeting and to stand up and be cut in 
 
36 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 two for them if need be. "I know whom I 
 have beheved''— he felt no uncertainty on 
 that point. It is a long step toward useful 
 faith to know 'Svhom" one has believed, even 
 though he remains uncertain as to just what 
 he believes at some points. "I know the 
 grace of our Lord Jesus Christ"— and this 
 spiritual energy inwardly experienced had 
 changed him from a narrow, bigoted, perse- 
 cuting Pharisee into a man able to write the 
 best hymn on love to be found in print. 
 When you read that hymn which opens 
 "Though I speak with the tongues of men 
 and of angels and have not love, I am be- 
 come as sounding brass or a tinkling cym- 
 bal," you can think of nothing better— and 
 the author of it embodied the spirit of it in 
 his everyday life. "I know that all things 
 work together for good to them that love 
 God"— and in his particular case "all things" 
 included a great deal of hardship and perse- 
 cution, of disappointment and sorrow, but he 
 never wavered in his faith that some wise 
 purpose was being furthered by it all. This 
 and much more he knew. "In part we know," 
 was the way he would have placed his em- 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 37 
 
 phasis and the actual content of his knowl- 
 edge was large indeed. 
 
 He makes his statement as an honest, mod- 
 est, reasonable man face to face with those 
 spiritual realities which are too great for 
 perfect comprehension or final statement. 
 His knowledge of them was considerable, but 
 in his judgment they bulked greater than all 
 our human knowledge of them. He must 
 have realized when he said this that he was 
 himself a man of no mean attainments. He 
 wrote something like one third of the New 
 Testament with his own hand. He has prob- 
 ably done more to shape Christian thought 
 than any other one save Christ Himself. He 
 had in his own life been caught up into the 
 third heaven, whatever that may mean— it 
 points, undoubtedly, to some extraordinary 
 spiritual experience. He was the most effec- 
 tive missionary of a new faith the world has 
 ever seen. He was a man of marvelous reach 
 and grasp : yet face to face w^ith those great 
 realities, God and duty, prayer and redemp- 
 tion, immortality and the final judgment, he 
 frankly confesses that the returns are not all 
 in ; that the last word has not been said and 
 
38 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 cannot now be said; that the full apprecia- 
 tion of these high values has not been 
 reached. He had the quality of intellectual 
 honesty and modesty. He would have 
 counted it wrong to assert more than one 
 feels to be true. He would have shrunk 
 from assuming a thoroughness of knowledge 
 and a confidence of faith which were not his 
 own, even as he would have shrunk from 
 stealing some other man's clothing that he 
 might appear the more richly appareled. 
 
 We are glad to find these words on the lips 
 of this great disciple; they are reassuring. 
 They match our own mood. They bring 
 cheer to those of us who have been consid- 
 erably troubled by the limitations of our own 
 religious knowledge and by those remainders 
 of uncertainty which hang upon our spirit- 
 ual horizon like low-lying clouds. They fit 
 into the temper of this modern time of ques- 
 tioning and unrest so much in evidence on 
 the college campus, in all university circles, 
 and in the critical portion of the world gen- 
 erally. 
 
 The words of this intellectually honest 
 man suggest that finality in religious belief 
 is more difficult than some of the earlier gen- 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 39 
 
 erations in their simplicity supposed. As a 
 matter of fact, one does not find those once 
 famiHar words "Finis" or "The End'^ 
 printed on the last page of a book so com- 
 monly as in other days. Even where the au- 
 thor may have said his entire say in several 
 volumes, each one as bulky as a volume of 
 the Britannica, he knows that there is more 
 to be said. He leaves the way open without 
 trying for a moment to block it by writing 
 down "The End." 
 
 We are conscious, some of us painfully so, 
 some of us joyously so, that we have not 
 reached the terminus on any of the great 
 trunk lines of religious inquiry. We are 
 scattered along at various way-stations, 
 thankful for the part we know, grateful for 
 the progress made, but confessing with the 
 apostle of old that we have not attained, that 
 we are not already made perfect either in 
 practice or in theory. But if we have caught 
 the spirit of that apostle, we are bent on 
 using the part we know that we may press 
 toward the mark for the prize of the high 
 calling of God. This, you may say, is the 
 dominant mood of the really aspiring ele- 
 ment in that cautious, critical, inquiring tern- 
 
40 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 per so prevalent in modern life. We are, 
 therefore, grateful for the word of this mod- 
 est, reasonable man who, with all his unusual 
 store of spiritual experience, said quietly, 
 "We know in part/' 
 
 If we are to use language at all in giving 
 expression to our own religious life or in 
 endeavoring to communicate it to others, we 
 must do it as Arnold said, in a literary rather 
 than in a dogmatic way. The larger portion 
 of it will be language which suggests rather 
 than defines. We shall employ many terms 
 which serve as poetic symbols of certain 
 transcendent realities standing over against 
 them rather than as the exact mathematical 
 equivalents of those realities. 
 
 And our knowledge of those realities will be 
 confessedly incomplete. If we had succeeded 
 in drawing a hard and fast line around the 
 being and character of God, He would by 
 that very fact cease to be to us the Infinite 
 One. He would be defined and limited by our 
 own exhaustive knowledge of Him. ''We do 
 not knov/ anything about God unless we first 
 know that we cannot know Him perfectly." 
 If there were nothing more in prayer or in 
 the great process of moral recovery wrought 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 41 
 
 out in what we call redemption or in our ex- 
 pectation of the life eternal than could be 
 stated in black and white, then those com- 
 manding interests would be at once com- 
 pressed within limits which would rob them of 
 much of their present helpfulness. We can- 
 not put into precise definitions the great truths 
 of religious life as we might do with some 
 proposition in trigonometry. *^It doth not 
 yet appear what we shall be" or what those 
 spiritual forces may be made to yield, or 
 what shall be the full significance of the 
 great consummation for which we hope and 
 toward which we patiently move. It doth 
 not yet appear what any of these in their 
 final outcome shall be— it is enough to know 
 that this quest for ultimate achievements 
 which elude exact and final statement will 
 make us 'like Him." We shall in the con- 
 summation be like the highest our minds can 
 now conceive. 
 
 In speaking to you, then, regarding the 
 worth of this incomplete knowledge let me 
 consider in practical fashion tw^o or three 
 fundamentals in our religious thinking. 
 Some of you may have been disturbed as to 
 the doctrine of Providence. You have been 
 
42 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 told on high authority that God reigns and 
 that He does all things well. When times 
 are good and things are coming your way, 
 you actually believe it. You see that the way 
 of the transgressor is hard, as it should be. 
 You see that the way of righteousness seems 
 on the whole to be the way of peace and 
 honor. You share in the comfortable per- 
 suasion that all things taken together in their 
 completeness and final outcome are working 
 a net result which will be good for those who 
 are faced right. 
 
 But about the time you have gotten your 
 doctrine of Providence all snug you may wit- 
 ness some occurrence like this. Here in your 
 own circle of friends a young Christian^ 
 mother dies ! She was an ideal daughter, a 
 devoted wife, and the beautiful mother of 
 children who loved her and needed her com- 
 panionship more than they needed anything 
 else on earth apparently. But with a whole 
 community of people, perhaps, praying for 
 her recovery she died, while just around the 
 corner a group of rascals, who are making 
 the world* worse rather than better, lived on, 
 flourishing like so many green bay trees. 
 Then somehow your doctrine of Providence 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 43 
 
 I 
 receives a hard shock. It does not seem to j 
 
 be quite so clear that_all things, even to the ^ 
 
 falHng of a sparrow or the numbering of the j 
 
 hairs of our heads, are ordered by the rule ; 
 
 of a wise and good God. j 
 
 What shall we say ? We know that situa- 
 tion as we know the whole mystery of human \ 
 existence, only in part. We know the useful- 
 ness of that fair young life here, we do not ] 
 know to what further and perhaps higher ; 
 service it has been called there. We see what 
 has been interrupted here, we do not see i 
 what has been taken up further on. We do ^ 
 not know the_ ultimate effect of this stern | 
 sorrow upon that household compelled now ,; 
 to regird all their powers as they walk in the j 
 shadow of a great bereavement. We do not j 
 even know God's ultimate purpose for those ' 
 rascals who lived on— the returns are not all j 
 in for them either. We know in part, but ] 
 the part we know, taking human life broadly, - 
 is so reassuring as to the wisdom and justice ] 
 of the divine character evidenced in His deal- ' 
 ings with us that we are willing to trust God 
 and wait. We walk on not by sight, but by ■? 
 faith. .^JJ 
 
 Ships in Norway entering the great fiords \ ' 
 
44 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 sometimes sail so close to the cliffs that one 
 can stand on deck and almost lay his hand 
 on the face of the rock. When one captain 
 was asked about the peril of it, he said, 
 *There is no danger. That which is in sight 
 indicates what is out of sight. The slant 
 above the water line indicates the slant below. 
 We are perfectly safe." 
 
 The general slant of God's dealings with 
 men, taking the facts as we know them in 
 the total impression they make on our minds 
 as to His wisdom and justice, is such that we 
 find ourselves prepared to trust Him below 
 the water line of our knowledge. Therefore, 
 when we cannot in some difficult situation 
 make out His ultimate purpose and meaning, 
 we fall back upon our confidence in His 
 moral integrity. 
 
 As to our faith in the divine integrity it 
 has seemed to me that serious and observant 
 men should not long remain in doubt. It is 
 a faith which rests upon a wide induction of 
 fact vaster by far than my own experience 
 of His dealings with me or my own observa- 
 tion of those facts which come within the 
 range of my personal vision. It is like re- 
 peating an axiom to say that the creature 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 45 
 
 nowhere rises above the Creator, the stream 
 is never higher than the source. If men at 
 any time, anywhere show themselves good, 
 there must be goodness in the Creator of 
 those men, goodness in the force or forces 
 lying back of them, name those forces as you 
 will. 
 
 And if the stream of human goodness has 
 been widening, deepening, flowing more 
 strongly as the ages have come and gone, 
 this seems to point back to character and 
 purpose in the One who set the stream flow- 
 ing in the first place. Goodness in man 
 argues goodness in God while badness in 
 man does not argue badness in God, because 
 sane men everywhere regard goodness as 
 normal and badness as an abnormal thing to 
 be overcome and cast out. 
 
 And look at the swelling tide of human 
 goodness as it flows down through the ages, 
 gathering force and volume as it comes upon 
 its victorious w^ay! Look at Livingstone, 
 laying down his life to carry light into a 
 dark continent, spending himself freely for 
 those whose lives were then unspeakably re- 
 pulsive! Look at Lincoln, counting not his 
 life dear if he might serve the cause of the 
 
46 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 Union and the interests of his brothers in 
 bonds! Look at Jane Addams, not holding — 
 her intelHgent and cultured life apart for 
 selfish enjoyment with those of her own 
 class, but investing it with a free hand for 
 the help of those impeded lives which find 
 themselves on Halsted Street, Chicago! 
 Look at the vast array of human goodness as 
 it masses itself in saints and seers, in heroes 
 and martyrs, in teachers and mothers, going 
 forth not to be ministered unto but to min- 
 ister and to give their lives for the better- 
 ment of the race! Look at it and then ask 
 yourself if you can believe for one moment 
 that all this goodness originated itself, per- 
 sisted and increased in opposition to the will 
 of the Creator or in the face of His moral 
 indifference or in the absence of any crea- 
 tive goodness in Him ! The claim on the face 
 of it would seem unspeakably absurd. This 
 wider induction of fact begets a profound 
 faith in the moral character of God. 
 
 Heroes and martyrs in every age of the 
 world have been laying down their lives for 
 a principle. The true mother everywhere 
 cares for her sick child, counting not her 
 own pleasure, her comfort, or even her life 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 47 
 
 dear if she may save her child. The poor 
 dog attached to his master goes to the spot 
 where he saw them lay the body and whines 
 ''for the touch of a vanished hand, for the 
 sound of a voice that is still." 
 
 H-as the Creator of such moral integrity 
 in those heroes and martyrs kept none of it 
 for Himself ? Has He, out of the ages gone, 
 out of the brute life of our sub-human ances- 
 tors, produced such surpassing devotion in 
 the heart of the mother with no devotion in 
 His own heart toward His helpless child? 
 Has He instilled such faithful affection in 
 the very dogs that perish, but failed utterly 
 to share in that love Himself ? It is unthink- 
 able! 
 
 These forces which produce all these high 
 qualities of life, attachment to the right, de- 
 votion to the helpless, faithful affection for 
 those we love, are universal forces. They 
 are in the last analysis divine forces. When 
 we look at the results accomplished, at the 
 fruit which the great tree of universal forces 
 yields, we cannot but believe that there is 
 moral character at the heart of this system 
 of energy. Therefore, reassured by our faith 
 in the moral character of God, when we can- 
 
48 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 not see we trust, remembering that as to the 
 full significance and final meaning of many 
 a strange experience, "we know in part." 
 Thus our confidence in what we call the doc- 
 trine of Providence becomes to us a strong 
 and defensible tower to shield us in the time 
 of storm. 
 
 Take also the matter of prayer and the 
 way it enters into the formation of character 
 and the shaping of events ! We know be- 
 yond a peradventure that prayer registers a 
 definite and wholesome influence on the life 
 of the man who pra3^s. Those who loudly 
 assert that virtue and vice are as purely 
 physical products as sugar and vitriol, that 
 all right action and wrong action can be ac- 
 counted for on material grounds, have not 
 made out their case. They have not begun 
 to make it out. In the face of the present 
 claim made by so many eminent philosophers 
 and scientists that ultimate reality is sentient 
 mind or spirit, the contention of these mate- 
 rialists becomes daily more feeble. 
 
 There is something unseen, mysterious, 
 but real and powerful, which impels certain 
 people to love the unlovely, to make sacrifices 
 for the thoughtless and the ungrateful, to 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 49 
 
 stand firm in the path of duty when it is any- 
 thing but tlie hue of least resistance. The 
 love of right, the sense of obligation, the 
 habit of adherence to principle, all these are 
 as real as granite. Yet the forces which 
 make them strong are spiritual forces and 
 these spiritual forces receive constant rein- 
 forcement from the h^ibit of prayer. 
 
 This part we know. We have seen the 
 hearts of_men turned from anger to love, 
 from sinful to holy purpose, from weakness 
 to high resolve by prayer. We have seen the 
 Jiome life made sweeter because each day the 
 members of a household come together and 
 kneel before God, confessing their faults, 
 asking His guidance and allowing that which 
 is true and right within them to grow 
 stronger by its sense of communion with 
 Him who is altogether true and right. Any 
 reasonable man in any part of the world 
 would feel that his life, his property, and his 
 family would be altogether safer in a com- 
 munity where men prayed habitually than in 
 one w^here they only used the name of God 
 profanely. This part we know about prayer. 
 
 But as to the ultimate and transcendent ef- 
 fect of it, as to the final philosophy of those 
 
50 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 mysterious actions and reactions which take 
 place when we kneel before Him, as to the 
 precise way in which the finite spirit may be- 
 come a co-laborer with the Infinite Spirit in 
 the shaping of events, I freely confess that 
 there is a great deal which I do not under- 
 stand. I must in the nature of the case rec- 
 ognize the incompleteness of my knowledge 
 just as I recognize it when I think of the 
 ether or of those waves of motion which 
 make possible the wireless telegraph, or of 
 those mysterious rays which pierce through 
 what we had learned to call opaque, reveal- 
 ing that which was hidden. 
 
 I know in part touching this wonderful 
 exercise we call prayer, but the part I know 
 is so attended by beautiful and beneficent re- 
 sults that I want my prayer for the coming 
 of God's kingdom, for the doing of His will 
 on earth, for the gift of bread sufficient for 
 the day's need, for forgiveness and deliver- 
 ance from evil — I want that prayer to go up 
 winging its way to the throne of the Unseen 
 backed by all the faith and hope and love I 
 can put into it. And I am not troubled by 
 the fact that I cannot in mathematical fash- 
 ion demonstrate all the grounds of my confi- 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 51 j 
 
 ' ~~~ " i 
 
 dence or predict with scientific certainty the 
 resuUs of my petition, for, Hke the apostle of 
 old, I know in part. 
 
 How narrow, unreasonable, and dogmatic lA^ 
 unbehef sometimes shows itself! Here is a 
 young man who, intellectually speaking, be- | 
 longs to the newly rich. His recently ac- ] 
 quired knowledge does not set easily on him ; 
 as yet. He says in haughty fashion, *'I will 
 never accept anything which I cannot prove. , 
 I will not participate in any religious exer- j 
 cise which my intelligence does not thor- j 
 oughly understand and endorse.'' All this, at I 
 first glance, might seem like a bit of that | 
 fearless intellectual honesty and candor which j 
 are rightly held in such high esteem in j 
 university circles. But it is not that; it is ' 
 only a bit of unconscious yet none the less 
 humorous *'bluff." 
 
 We are not to participate in anything g^ 
 which our intelligence does not thoroughly 
 understand and endorse? It might be well 
 to scrutinize that assertion. Here you are 
 down town on a dark, cold night. You see 
 / an electric car approaching and you wish to 
 feach your home. Not one in a hundred of 
 you, not one in a thousand of those who use 
 
52 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 these cars could, if his hfe depended upon it, 
 explain how it is that a certain invisible form 
 of energy transmitted along that wire can 
 in that ordinary street car be transformed 
 into motion carrying it swiftly along, and 
 into light making it possible for you to read 
 your evening paper, and into heat making 
 you thoroughly comfortable as you ride 
 home. And if you should be privileged to 
 hear the best explanation attainable given to 
 it by some man of science, you would still be 
 compelled to walk by faith and not by sight 
 for you would recognize the fact that he, 
 too, was throwing out his words in literary 
 fashion at realities confessedly too mysteri- 
 ous for perfect comprehension or exact defi- 
 nition. 
 
 But how foolish you would be to decline 
 the help of that mysterious force which 
 moves, heats, and lights the street car simply 
 because your knowledge of all that is in- 
 volved in those processes stops a long way 
 this side of completeness ! How foolish you 
 would be to refuse the help of the car and 
 plod along through the darkness and the 
 sleet, arriving at home an hour late for din- 
 ner ! Hear, then, the parable of the trolley 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 53 
 
 car! Make your own application of it to 
 forces spiritual ! 
 
 Take the question of the future life . 
 There is a great deal here which we would 
 like to know. What are our loved ones, who 
 have gone on, doing now ? Are they the con- 
 scious witnesses of the blunders and failures 
 we make here? How^is right rewarded and 
 wrong punished in that other world when 
 the two are so intricately interwoven here? 
 No man is so white a sheep but that there 
 are occasional patches of goat about him 
 here and there. No man is so bad but that 
 there is some good in him if we "observingly 
 distil it out." And what of the final out- 
 come? Can the good people of the world be 
 happily content if the sinful souls they loved 
 are in conscious pain, or even if those sinful 
 souls have been remorselessly wiped off 
 the slate of existence? Is it, indeed, too 
 much to hope that God's persuasions to 
 righteousness, being infinite, may prove at 
 last irresistible and so in every case suc- 
 cessful? 
 
 Dare we say it and feel it and act upon it? 
 
 '' Oh ! yet we trust that somehow good 
 Shall be the final goal of ill, 
 
54 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
 That not one life shall be destroyed, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void 
 
 When God hath made the pile complete." 
 
 Thus men and women, who have loved and 
 lost those who have passed out of this world 
 without a sign of genuine repentance or of 
 saving faith, have queried ever, A child can 
 in five minutes ask more questions touching 
 the future world than all the philosophers 
 and theologians on earth can answer in as 
 many years. 
 
 We must remain for the present content 
 with knowledge confessedly incomplete. We 
 cannot measure off the streets of the new 
 Jerusalem in kilometers. We cannot avail 
 ourselves of any full description of its at- 
 tractions or of its dangers in any kind of 
 Baedeker. We cannot undertake to lay out 
 any detailed program of God's dealings with 
 the good and the bad people of earth in all 
 the unending years. Nor is there the slight- 
 est obligation resting upon us to make an 
 attempt at the construction of such a pro- 
 gram or at the composition of such a geog- 
 raphy of the future world. 
 
 We know in part and the part we may feel 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 55 
 
 reasonably sure about is something like this : 
 I feel a profound confidence that we shall live 
 on after death. The grounds of my hope are 
 many. Here are the four main considera- 
 tions on which my personal anticipation 
 rests. The mass of unreason and injustice I 
 would have left upon my hands, unexplained 
 and unexplainable, if I should undertake to 
 deny the truth of immortality, is one. I can- 
 not help believing that the great book of life 
 will read right when we read it through— 
 and that calls for more chapters than we find 
 in this present world. 
 
 The all but universal and persistent desire 
 of men for a future life is another ground 
 for faith. Somehow the integrity of the uni- 
 verse is such that it does not develop in men 
 normal, widespread, and persistent desires 
 unless standing over against them some- 
 where there is the corresponding satisfaction 
 for those desires. 
 
 "It must be so, Plato, 
 Thou reasonest well ; 
 Else whence this pleasing hope, 
 This fond desire, 
 This longing after immortality?'* 
 
c6 THE AlODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 The fact that the clear visions and bright 
 hopes of the best poets and prophets the 
 world has known have been so largely on the 
 side of the life eternal, means much. The 
 seers have sung, and the prophets have ut- 
 tered their highest anticipations by the power 
 of an endless life. 
 
 The words and the attitude of firm confi- 
 dence on the part of that supreme figure in 
 history, Jesus Christ, mean still more. He 
 saw clearly, spoke wisely, lived divinely. I 
 cannot believe that here He reared His ex- 
 pectation and ours upon a fundamental mis- 
 take. He did not argue about immortality 
 or seek to establish it by the citation of proof 
 texts; He moved habitually in the strength 
 of His consciousness of the life eternal. 
 
 Reason, experience, the best in literature, 
 and the attitude of the One who has taken 
 the moral government of the world upon His 
 shoulder as none other ever has, all stand so 
 strongly on the side of positive faith that I 
 feel confident of an unbroken life. The terms 
 and conditions of that life I must leave to 
 Him who planned it. 
 
 As to the fmal judgment, I know this: I 
 see that righteousness and love are useful 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 57 
 
 and beautiful here— they will be useful and 
 beautiful anywhere; and the clearer the light 
 in which they are brought to stand, the more 
 their glory will be revealed. I see that sin 
 and selfishness are mean and hateful here— 
 they will be mean and hateful anywhere ; and 
 the clearer the light in which they stand, the 
 more their hatefulness will be manifest. 
 
 What shall be the final fate of evil, I do 
 not undertake to say. There is no necessity 
 for me to outline a comprehensive program 
 for the endless future. The clear prospects 
 of the life to come where righteousness and 
 love shall have their freer chance to be and 
 to do, where sin and selfishness shall meet 
 with more awful rebuke in that light where 
 there is no darkness at all, these are sufficient 
 to stimulate right action and to give effective 
 warning to those who would identify their 
 lives with any manner of evil purpose. As 
 to the rest, we may, in view of the incom- 
 pleteness of our knowledge, safely leave it to 
 the wisdom and the justice of the Eternal. 
 
 We frankly confess that we know in part 
 — it is all we can do. But the worth of this 
 incomplete knowledge springs from the fact 
 that while we know in part, the part we know 
 
58 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 is the part we habitually use. We wish we 
 knew more ; we hope to know more some time 
 but, meanwhile, it is the act of wisdom to 
 utilize such knowledge as we do possess. 
 In almost any direction, unless it be pure 
 t mathematics or formal logic, our knowledge, 
 even in the sophomore year, stops a long way 
 this side of completeness. No man knows 
 the length and breadth, the height and depth 
 of his wife's love for him if she is a good 
 woman. Some part of it he knows ; but that 
 wondrous affection she might show in some 
 emergency, nursing him through a long ill- 
 ness, or sharing with him some painful ex- 
 perience, or bearing with him some heavy 
 burden, he cannot know until the time comes 
 for the extraordinary manifestation of that 
 affection. But the part of the strength and 
 beauty of that woman's love which he knows, 
 is the part he uses. It ministers to his happi- 
 ness and makes him feel every day in the 
 year that he ought to be a better man to be 
 worthy of it. And this is the attitude for the 
 reasonably religious man. Those great reali- 
 ties, God and duty, prayer and redemption, 
 immortality and the final judgment, are too 
 great for perfect comprehension; but he 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 59 
 
 knows something- of them and the part he 
 knows is the part he uses. 
 
 Next door to my home in CaHfornia were 
 two Httle neighbors, boys of three and five. 
 They were close friends of mine and they 
 taught me much. Their father was a physi- 
 cian, a busy, useful, Christian man. The 
 boys understood their father's life in part. 
 They knew that he was a doctor and that he 
 visited sick people to make them well; but 
 as to the methods he employed and the 
 remedies he used, they knew nothing at all. 
 They knew in a dim sort of way that he made 
 the money which paid the bills and kept them 
 in a home of comfort; but as to his financial 
 investments and prospects for the future, 
 they knew nothing at all. They knew that 
 along with the hearty good-will he felt to- 
 ward everybody hejoved their mother and 
 them supremely; but as to how he came to 
 love that particular woman, or how they were 
 born of that love, or how far that love might 
 go in defending and providing for them, 
 they never concerned themselves for one 
 moment. They knew their father's life 
 in part. 
 
 But here again the part they knew was the 
 
6o THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 part they used. They Hved in their father's 
 house; they sat at his table and ate what he 
 provided for them; they greeted him with a 
 shout when he came in from his work. They 
 obeyed him and trusted him and thought he 
 was the best man in the world. They climbed 
 up into his lap and talked to him endlessly, 
 not about his practice, but about their own 
 small affairs, their tops and marbles and 
 wagon— as he wanted them to do; he met 
 them always on their own ground and dealt 
 with them in the terms and interests of their 
 own lives. Thus my two little friends lived 
 and grew, knowing their father's life in part. 
 "Except ye become as little children ye 
 shall in no wise enter in!" Except you be- 
 come as little children in the house of your 
 Father whose total life transcends your com- 
 prehension of it, whose plans and purposes 
 for you are vaster every way than your un- 
 derstanding of them, ye shall in no wise enter 
 His kingdom. But if you take the part you 
 know and use it, acting on it, living by it, 
 following where it leads, you will make ad- 
 vance as surely as my two small friends are 
 doing, growing up toward their manhood 
 knowing their father's life in part. 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 6i 
 
 How plain Christ made the duty of using 
 the near and the famihar if we would under- 
 stand the more remote ! He may have real- 
 ized that religion would speedily become 
 encrusted with misconceptions, making it dif- 
 ficult for plain people to get at the vital ele- 
 ments in it. He may have known that men 
 would write big, dull books about it which 
 no one would want to read. He may have 
 foreseen that learned men would talk about 
 it, using for the most part technical, incom- 
 prehensible phrases in such a way as to con- 
 fuse the people. At any rate, He made His 
 own teaching simpler than that of any one 
 whose words stand here recorded. 
 
 He stood once at midnight talking with a 
 thoughtful man regarding certain aspects of 
 the religious life. He was speaking of the 
 new birth, the emergence of a new life fresh 
 and full of promise. ''How can these things 
 be ?" the man said. "How can a man be born 
 when he is old?'' The creative action of the 
 Infinite Spirit upon the individual moral life 
 was to him an inexplicable mystery. 
 
 Just then the wind rustled the leaves over- 
 head and Jesus said, "The wind bloweth 
 where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
 
62 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, 
 and whither it goeth/' 
 
 We cannot tell why the wind blows one 
 day from the north and we have cold, an- 
 other day from the south and we have heat, 
 and another day from the east and we have 
 rain. We cannot explain many of the mys- 
 teries connected with the wind or how it is re- 
 lated to all the other forces in the universe. 
 But a man who is a fisherman can put up the 
 little sail of his boat and fill it with this mys- 
 terious wind. He can sail out on the broad 
 ocean and come home at night with a boat- 
 load of fish to feed the hungry. The wind 
 that fills his sail he knows even though the 
 origin, the destiny, and the relationship it 
 sustains to the other forces of the universe 
 are all unknown to him. And, like a man of 
 sense, the part he knows is the part he uses, 
 as he relates it helpfully to the needs of his 
 personal life. 
 
 So is every one who is born of the spirit, 
 led by the spirit, used by the spirit! He 
 knows the life of the Infinite Spirit in part, 
 but the part he knows is the part he uses as 
 he relates that part in helpful fashion to the 
 needs of his own life. 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE 63 
 
 When we start in after that common-sense 
 fashion, it is a straight course. The boy be- 
 gins his study of mathematics not by stand- 
 ing speechless and helpless before the mys- 
 teries of differential calculus. He begins by 
 learning to count, one, two, three, four, five, 
 six, seven, eight, nine, ten. He goes ahead, 
 moving along that plain path until with those 
 same ten figures he may be computing the 
 courses the planets take or measuring the 
 distance of the fixed stars. 
 
 The boy begins his study of literature not 
 by feeling depressed in the presence of 
 'Taradise Lost'' or "Sordello." He begins 
 by learning his letters, a, b, c, etc., and by 
 learning the simpler combination of those 
 letters into words which designate objects 
 and acts familiar to him in his daily life. By 
 and by, through the use of those same 
 twenty-six letters, he is making his way 
 through ''Hamlet'' and "Macbeth," or is 
 walking with Emerson and Hegel across the 
 fields of philosophy. 
 
 In every situation in Hie progresses made 
 not by taking the more distant and difficulty 
 problems first, not by being appalled and dis- 
 couraged over the amount that we do not 
 
64 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 know ; progress is made by taking the part 
 we know and by relating that to our own 
 Hves in such a way as to make it the instru- 
 ment for gaining fuller knowledge. And 
 this is just as true in religion as in other 
 fields of thought and action. "If any man 
 will do, he shall know.'' And in his doing 
 let him deal first with those things which are 
 near and familiar, for in that way his insight 
 and understanding become more competent 
 to deal with things remote. 
 
 I wish I might persuade any student who 
 has never entered into an open, joyous. 
 Christian life to just begin. In your work 
 as a teacher you will need the great stores of 
 help which this will open up. The task of 
 education at its best is not to impart infor- 
 mation or to give technical training to special 
 faculties in the pupil— all this is only sec- 
 ondary. The primary thing is to shape and 
 enrich and mature that august thing we call 
 "personality.'' Education which stops short 
 of that is not living up to its privileges. In 
 the formation of personality genuine religion 
 is an element which cannot safely be left out. 
 
 In connection with this religious life of 
 which I am speaking in this course of ad- 
 
INCOMPLETE KNOWLE.-^GE 65 
 
 dresses, there may be many things .vhich you 
 do not understand nor, perhaps, believe. We 
 will put them aside for the moment, not ig- 
 noring them, but merely postponi^^ig their 
 consideration. Take the part you kri\)w ; the 
 moral imperative of living the best life you 
 see— and no finer life than that of a true 
 Christian can be named; the need of some 
 competent guide and helper — and none bet- 
 ter than Jesus of Nazareth has thus far ap- 
 peared; the sure benefits to be obtained by 
 trust and obedience to the Highest you rec- 
 ognize; the helpful reactions v^hich come 
 steadily through prayer and the reading of 
 the Bible ; the manifest advantage of cherish- 
 ing the hope of a future life and of facing 
 squarely upon the fact that what a man sows 
 he reaps. 
 
 All this you know ! Let the part you know 
 be the part you use. If you will take what 
 you know, act upon it, build it into your own 
 experience, follow where it leads, you will 
 be treading the path which will bring you to 
 the place where you will know even as you 
 are known. 
 
 ^t-XfxJt'^ 
 
 ^ ^^ ; /- C Cfci» 
 
V 
 
 ' ^ III 
 
 A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 
 
 IN a clever magazine article, written by a 
 man of affairs about a year ago, this 
 statement was made: "Five men comprise 
 Europe, these five and no more, — King Ed- 
 ward of England, William Hohenzollern of 
 Germany, Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the 
 throne of Austria, Monsieur Isvolsky, Min- 
 ister of Foreign Affairs in Russia, and 
 Merry del Val, manipulator of the political 
 influence of the Vatican ! There used to be 
 two others, but one of them— Von Biilow by 
 name— has passed into that obscurity from 
 which few statesmen ever return; and the 
 other, long a sinister figure on the shores of 
 the Bosphorus, is now a prisoner in a Saloni- 
 can Villa." These five men comprise Europe, 
 the writer said, because it lies within their 
 power to control policies which will shape 
 the history of the years that lie ahead. 
 
 66 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE (yy 
 
 I do not undertake to pass upon the valid- 
 ity of his statement. It probably sacrifices 
 something in accuracy in order to be epi- 
 grammatic — most epigrams earn their living 
 by that sort of self-sacrifice. I quote the 
 statement as indicative of the fact that there 
 are in any period of history a few pivotal 
 men upon whose influence may turn the 
 course of movements mighty and far-reach- 
 ing. 
 
 In similar fashion you will find in any 
 body of teaching a few key-words which 
 seem to unlock the doors of the whole mean- 
 ing contained there. In Christ's teaching 
 there are four such words. If I should suc- 
 ceed in holding them before you this morn- 
 ing with something of their full import so 
 that you would never forget them, I should 
 feel that I had rendered you an important 
 service. They might become to you like the 
 four cardinal points of the compass in your 
 spiritual voyaging and, held clearly in view, 
 they would help you to orient yourself in any 
 part of the world or in any phase of personal 
 experience which might arise ; and thus they 
 would enable you to lay out a straight course 
 toward the haven where you would be. 
 
68 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 The four words are not addressed primar- 
 ily to a man's powers of perception or of be- 
 lief. They are addressed primarily to the 
 will. They are meant to include the assent 
 of the intelligence and to enlist the deeper 
 emotions of the heart, but on the face of 
 them they call upon every man not so much 
 to believe or to feel as to act. And if any 
 man will act upon them, he will speedily dis- 
 cover within himself certain sublime reac- 
 tions. The net result will be what I have 
 called a constantly deepening experience. 
 Let me name them to you, and I think you 
 will agree with me that they are the four 
 great words in the Christian message. 
 
 The first one is the word "Come.'' It in- 
 vites the movement of the inner life toward 
 that which is central, fundamental, vital. 
 How often you find that word upon the lips 
 of Christ. ''Can any good thing come out of 
 Nazareth ?" men asked ; can the Messiah, for 
 instance, come out of Nazareth ? His answer 
 was not an argument or a citation of proof 
 texts, but an invitation. "Come and see." 
 Come and test these Messianic claims for 
 yourselves. Put them to the proof of expe- 
 rience. 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 69 
 
 He stood there, the supreme manifestation 
 in history of that divine helpfuhiess which is 
 not far from any one of us, for in it and hy 
 it we Hve; He stood there calHng upon men 
 to come to Him and by looking into His face, 
 by hearing His words, by witnessing His 
 deeds, by taking up the immediate influence 
 of His personahty into their own hves, to 
 decide whether or not any good thing had 
 come out of Nazareth. It was through per- 
 sonal experience that men were to decide 
 whether or not the Messiah of the ages had 
 so come. ''Come and see"— it was the call 
 to a deeper form of experience. 
 
 Jesus was always saying that. "If any 
 man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." 
 If any man feels that his spiritual nature is 
 becoming dry and unfruitful like some arid 
 field, let him by an act of will, by taking and 
 holding a new attitude toward the central 
 source of spiritual impulse, enter anew into 
 personal fellowship with the divine helpful- 
 ness. His inner life will there drink, as some 
 thirsty field in the San Joaquin valley in 
 California drinks from the Merced River 
 flowing bank full because it holds the melting 
 snows from the high Sierras. 
 
70 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest." The 
 rest named here was no idle surcease from 
 toil. Real rest is never merely that — it means 
 a renewal of power, an invigoration of all 
 the finer energies for further and more effec- 
 tive effort. This is what Christ promised in 
 that deeper experience to be gained by enter- 
 ing into a profounder sense of fellowship 
 with Him. If any life, wearied and heavy 
 laden, feels that the will has gone lame, that 
 the conscience is dulled, that the moral vigor 
 is unequal to the demands made upon it, let 
 it come unto Christ and He will give it re- 
 newing and invigorating rest. In fellow- 
 ship with Him men develop a sense of 
 poise, of balance, and of adequacy to their 
 tasks. As the days are so the strength 
 becomes. 
 
 "Come and dine," He said on one occasion 
 to a boatload of men. They were cold, for 
 it was in the early spring when the wind 
 blows chill across the Sea of Galilee. They 
 were hungry, for they had been fishing all 
 night. They were discouraged, for that 
 night they caught nothing. They were men 
 who had been unfaithful to duty. The leader 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 71 
 
 of the group had turned his back upon his 
 best friend, another had denied the truth of 
 that friend's statements, and they had all 
 shown themselves unreliable. In that hour 
 when they were cold, hungry, discouraged, 
 and at fault, Christ went to them, not with 
 words of denunciation or of reproach — the 
 word upon His lips was one of gracious in- 
 vitation. "Come and dine,'' He said, point- 
 ing to the fish broiling and the bread toasting 
 upon the bed of coals. After He had fed 
 them He addressed Himself to the deeper 
 needs of each man, saying, "Lovest thou 
 me?'' And when He had won a satisfactory 
 response. He sent them out to feed the sheep 
 and to nurture the lambs of His flock. His 
 first word to that boatload of discouraged 
 men was a word of gracious invitation. 
 
 I need not cite further instances. This at- 
 titude toward human need runs like a warm, 
 red thread all through Christ's message. He 
 was steadily inviting the movement of the 
 individual life toward that which is central, 
 fundamental, vital. He was one who had 
 the right to say "Come." When we take the 
 essential qualities of His life and hold them 
 sacred, esteem them divine, lift them to the 
 
72 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 supreme place in our thought, we are not 
 misled. If any man has seen Him, he has 
 seen the Father. Here was one who could 
 call Himself ''the Son of Man," the heir of 
 all that is essentially human, the epitome of 
 all that we include in our thought of man in 
 capacity and in prospect. 
 
 He is to-day competent to stand at the cen- 
 ter of the whole movement for moral ad- 
 vance and say ''Come." We never find Him 
 pointing men away from Himself as the 
 poets and the prophets, the pastors and the 
 evangelists, are wont to do. He says 
 "Come," and the acceptance of that invita- 
 tion, the movement of the individual life to- 
 ward Christ in thought, in aspiration, in 
 confidence, and in the habit of obedience, be- 
 comes inevitably prophetic of the highest 
 good known to human experience. 
 
 It is the call of the laboratory method. 
 The scientific man does not stand outside the 
 door and out of his own inner consciousness 
 or from the hearsay of the street develop 
 a priori theories as to how certain chemicals 
 or certain forms of life should act and react 
 under given conditions. He goes into the 
 laboratory and, taking the materials into his 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 73 
 
 own hands, makes experiments for himself. 
 Then he knows — he speaks no longer from 
 hearsay or in speculation; his utterance is 
 grounded in actual experience. 
 
 The scientific man in religion does not 
 view the subject from across the street, or 
 from the seat of the scornful, or from the 
 last pew in some dimly lighted building. He 
 accepts the invitation of Christ and enters 
 the laboratory. He will know for himself 
 what religion may be made to mean to his 
 own inner life. He moves toward that which 
 is central, fundamental, and vital that he 
 may experience for himself the necessary 
 reactions. 
 
 He takes the four Gospels and reads them 
 and rereads them. He gets the image of 
 that life, the flavor of that teaching, the 
 sense of the influence of that person upon 
 other persons, deep down into his own inner 
 consciousness. He seeks to imbibe that spirit 
 and to reproduce according to the measure 
 of his capacity the essential qualities of that 
 character, and to experience at first hand the 
 help there to be found in resisting tempta- 
 tion, in mastering difficulty, in bearing bur- 
 dens, and in standing firm in the path of 
 
74 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 moral obligation when it is not the line of 
 least resistance. He is not speculating or 
 listening to hearsay; he is making experi- 
 ments in his own right. 
 
 It is the only way to gain that knowledge 
 of the truth which yields power. The child 
 learns to walk not by hearing lectures on the 
 subject but by walking, with many a faulty 
 step and tumble. The boy learns to speak by 
 speaking, with much bad syntax and ill-con- 
 sidered rhetoric at first. Men learn to play 
 golf by playing golf, with bad strokes innu- 
 merable at the start, tearing up the soil and 
 breaking their sticks, that the later satisfac- 
 tion of a splendid drive may be theirs. Men 
 learn to know the presence of God and to 
 enjoy the help of all these spiritual realities 
 by practice. The best of anything cannot be 
 adequately described. It is impossible even 
 to frame a transcript of it which can be 
 handed about in words. It must be experi- 
 enced at first hand in order to be known. 
 
 You may recall that prison scene in "Adam 
 Bede." Hetty had been condemned to death 
 for the murder of her child which was born 
 in shame. She was to be executed the next 
 day. The night before, Dinah Morris, a re- 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 75 
 
 ligious mystic, went to the unfortunate girl 
 in the jail. She had a warm heart of wo- 
 manly sympathy as well as the open vision 
 of things unseen. The guilty woman clung 
 to the innocent one and cried like a child. 
 "You won't leave me, Dinah. You '11 keep 
 close to me." "No, Hetty, I will not leave 
 you, but there is Some One else in this cell 
 besides me — Some One close to you." 
 "Who?" replied the frightened girl, for the 
 cell was dark and Hetty's eyes were holden. 
 "Some One who has been with you through 
 all your hours of sin and struggle. And to- 
 morrow, when I cannot follow you, He who 
 is with us now will be with you then." It 
 was a strong, clear statement of spiritual 
 reality, but it was all Greek to poor Hetty. 
 Even Dinah Morris could not convey to the 
 inexperienced soul the sense of the divine 
 presence. The great things in life cannot be 
 described — they must be felt at first hand. 
 The word "come" stands of necessity in the 
 very forefront of Christ's message. 
 
 The somewhat hackneyed revival appeal, 
 "Come to Jesus," may be the emptiest sort 
 of phrase. It may mean only the light- 
 hearted adoption of a certain theological the- 
 
ye THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 ory according to which the acceptance of a 
 certain scheme of salvation centering in Him' 
 will change one's eternal destiny. It may be 
 only a sentimental appeal, not addressed to 
 the real moral nature and never finding the 
 man's will. It may only stir those emotions 
 which lie near the surface as the waters in 
 some shallow pool are stirred to their depths 
 by every passing breeze. 
 
 But, rightly understood, that well-worn in- 
 vitation, "Come to Christ," may have tre- 
 mendous significance. It may mean the gath- 
 ering up and the organization of all the 
 materials of one's life into a Christian system 
 of activities and the directing of them to cer- 
 tain moral ends which find their highest his- 
 torical manifestation in Him. It may mean 
 the high resolve to so direct all the energies 
 of one's being toward that quality of man- 
 hood found in Him as to make the whole life 
 a quest for sound and reliable health, for 
 mental clearness and efficiency, for moral 
 vigor, and for the fine spirit of unselfish de- 
 votion. If those words are given their full 
 content, then it is a majestic summons. And 
 that great word *'come," the movement of 
 the inner life toward that which is central. 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE ^7 
 
 fundamental, and vital, is the first key-word 
 in the Gospel. 
 
 The second great word in the Christian 
 message is the word "Follow.'^ It under- 
 takes to make the continuous movement of 
 the life an advance along lines not identical 
 but rather parallel with the line of movement 
 in His own life. He found men fishing. 
 "Follow me," He said, ''and I will make you 
 fishers of men." He would utilize the capac- 
 ity developed in that familiar, accustomed 
 toil for the gaining of higher ends. He 
 would make them competent to take and hold 
 this finer form of value. In the familiar 
 terms of their own calling, by a new use of 
 those very faculties by which they had been 
 earning their bread, He would transform 
 their function in society into something 
 of vastly greater worth. 
 
 He would render them able to ''launch out 
 into the deep," into thoughts, aspirations, 
 and activities which lie far below the surface. 
 He would send them out beyond the shallows 
 where they had been investing their strength, 
 and there they would be made competent to 
 do business in great waters. Thus they 
 would find themselves able to offer better re- 
 
78 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 turns from their labor to meet the needs of 
 their fellows. ''Follow me," He said, "and 
 I will make you effective on deeper levels of 
 being." 
 
 He was orderly in His procedure. It meant 
 much, as we have already seen, for a life to 
 come to Him in genuine fashion. It would 
 mean still more for that life to follow, to 
 face in the direction where He faced, to 
 keep step with Him in the advance made 
 toward a great fulfillment, to feel itself a 
 living, moving part of the vast spiritual en- 
 terprise which bears His name. The soul of 
 the individual enters into its essential dignity 
 by holding such an attitude toward God, by 
 being found in such relations to other lives, 
 by maintaining such a personal bearing in 
 its own profounder aspirations as always to 
 be counted in as a "follower" when the Chris- 
 tian forces are reckoned up. The word "fol- 
 low" is a term of great significance in the 
 Christian message. 
 
 When the rich young rule^ came to Christ 
 asking what he should do to inherit eternal 
 life, Jesus, knowing the unutilized potencies 
 of that well-endowed, well-equipped life, said 
 to him frankly, "Sell and give and follow 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 79 
 
 me." The young ruler was directed to 
 make it the habit of his life to translate 
 holdings into impartings. He was to con- 
 vert possession into service. He was to 
 do this not merely in the coarser, easier 
 matter of giving money, but in the use of all 
 those qualities of mind and heart which 
 caused Jesus to love him as He looked upon 
 him. 
 
 Sell and give and follow Him ! This was 
 to be the general method. "H any man will 
 come after me, let him deny himself, and take 
 up his cross,"— not "my cross," but "his 
 cross," which might involve sacrifice of an 
 entirely different sort from that witnessed 
 on Calvary ! "Let him deny himself, and take 
 up his cross, and follow." In ordinary prac- 
 tice the Christian man must be faced as 
 Christ was, making it the rule of his life to 
 subordinate the small things to the great, 
 personal gratification to a higher usefulness. 
 Thus he mingles and blends his own indi- 
 vidual energies in his particular field with 
 those of the Eternal Spirit who goes every- 
 where, not to be ministered unto but to min- 
 ister and to give itself for the moral recovery 
 of many. 
 
8o THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 In the face of this moral imperative to be 
 faced right and to be moving in the same 
 general direction w^ith the highest we know, 
 Christ brushed aside a great many things as 
 unimportant and irrelevant. When His dis- 
 ciples began to speculate as to what this man 
 should do and what that man should do, as 
 to what would happen to them in the next 
 fifty years, or as to the possibility of some 
 one tarrying on earth until Christ should 
 come again, Jesus said to one of them almost 
 sharply, ''What is that to thee? Follow thou 
 me/' 
 
 You can ask a thousand questions in as 
 many minutes which do not admit of any 
 immediate and final answer. You can find 
 a thousand people who are not doing their 
 duty as you may conceive of duty. You can 
 pile up around you queries and problems of 
 a religious sort until you stand in them chin- 
 deep and helpless. What is all that to you, 
 if you are not following the best you have 
 ever seen or heard or felt as in any wise pos- 
 sible to you? This obligation is fundamental. 
 
 It was the transparent honesty of the au- 
 thor of that little book "In His Steps" or, 
 "What Would Jesus Do?" rather than any 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 8i 
 
 special literary skill which carried it up to a 
 circulation of something like two millions of 
 copies. The author took the words of Christ 
 seriously and endeavored to apply them di- 
 rectly to the needs of modern life. The ethi- 
 cal soundness of his main contention, how- 
 ever, may be questioned. 
 
 "In His steps"— not always! Our lines 
 of life may lie parallel with His, but they 
 may not be identical. We may be called to 
 traverse certain fields of activity which He 
 never entered. In that case we shall be mak- 
 ing steps of our own— it may be toward the 
 same general goal. The letter of slavish imi- 
 tation would kill many useful and necessary 
 forms of activity where the spirit of a pur- 
 pose thoroughly sympathetic with His would 
 serve to make those activities more com- 
 pletely and usefully alive. 
 
 By simply reading these brief, discon- 
 nected narratives we do not know exactly 
 what Jesus would do under modern condi- 
 tions. He never married— most of us live or 
 are to live in family relations. He was never 
 engaged in any trade or business during the 
 period covered by these narratives— most 
 men and women are compelled to give the 
 
82 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 bulk of their time and strength to some secu- 
 lar occupation. He seems to have owned no 
 property; we never read of His giving 
 money to any one although He was con- 
 stantly surrounded by human need. With us 
 the right use of money is one of the most 
 serious obligations of the moral life. He was 
 the subject of a monarchy which ruled His 
 native province in arbitrary fashion, allow- 
 ing the people no privileges of participation 
 in civic affairs, while we are the responsible 
 citizens of a free Republic. We cannot, if 
 we would, follow in His steps because the 
 work cut out for us carries us of necessity 
 into paths He never trod. We can ''follow" 
 in the sense of facing squarely the great 
 imperatives which ruled His life and in seek- 
 ing to reproduce the spiritual quality of His 
 service in terms of our own employment. 
 
 The third word introduces a new and more 
 dynamic element. Christianity is not a more 
 searching code of commandments than that 
 associated with Sinai ; it is not a mere system 
 of ethics more perfect than those of Confu- 
 cius. It does not aim merely to induce men 
 to keep a better devised set of rules than 
 were ever known before. It is a gospel 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 83 
 
 rather than a code. It is not legal, it is evan- 
 gelical. In its whole method the emphasis is 
 placed upon inwardness. It provides for a 
 naturalness, a spontaneity, a sense of liberty, 
 and an abiding joy, which hard and fast 
 obedience to the best code attainable would 
 never secure. Therefore, the third great 
 word in the Christian message is the term 
 "Abide." This summons points to that sense 
 of vital union between the human and the 
 divine which is secured by a deeper experi- 
 ence of reality. 
 
 "Abide in me and I in you," He said in 
 that supreme hour in the upper room. "The 
 branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it 
 abide in the vine— no more can ye." It is 
 only when the branch maintains an unbroken 
 and vital sense of union with the parent vine 
 that it bears fruit. By that sense of union 
 it bears fruit night and day, it scarce knows 
 how. The mighty vine lays hold of the uni- 
 versal forces, the soil and the sunshine, the 
 rain and the dew, and then it sends the pulsa- 
 tions of its own energy into every branch 
 and the branch bears fruit. Cut the branch 
 off, allow it to cut itself off, were it possessed 
 of this power through some opposing will of 
 
84 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 its own, and its ability to expand, to bear 
 fruit, to live at all, would be gone. No more 
 can men live, expand, and bear fruit as they 
 were meant to do, except they abide in Him. 
 
 "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in 
 you,'' as settled principles of action, as deter- 
 mining ideals, "ye shall ask . . . and it shall 
 be done." The upthrust of your life in re- 
 quest, the outreach of it in service will ac- 
 complish your desire. You will go forth 
 with the strength of ten because your heart 
 is pure and your aspiration true through that 
 sense of union with Him. 
 
 A single grain of dust at the point of con- 
 tact will turn back a current of electricity 
 and leave the room dark or withhold power 
 from the machine. A single grain of con- 
 scious, wilful, deliberate evil at the point of 
 contact between the soul of man and the 
 Spirit of the Eternal will defeat the benefi- 
 cent purpose of the Master. Abide in Him; 
 keep the way open, the point of contact clear, 
 the sense of union real, and your whole 
 moral effort will be made effective. 
 
 I said at the outset that the four great 
 words were addressed mainly to the will; 
 that they involved action. This word "abide" 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 85 
 
 may seem to have reference rather to a pas- 
 sive and quiescent attitude. But it is a liv- 
 ing, moving, accompHshing Christ with 
 whom we have to do. When His spirit would 
 advance with you to that higher mode of life 
 for which you were intended, you cannot 
 "abide" if you lag behind. When He would 
 summon you to some nobler service and ally 
 Himself with you more profoundly in the 
 rendering of it, you cannot "abide" if you 
 decline that service. The kingdom of God is 
 "a going concern"; it is not static, it is a 
 thing of life. The man who walks with God 
 must keep moving. His inner life cannot be 
 static ; it must advance, keeping step with the 
 divine purpose. If you would abide, you will 
 be compelled to act steadily and nobly. 
 
 It is in the maintenance of this sense of 
 union with the Eternal that prayer finds what 
 is to me its greatest value. I believe in prayer 
 because I believe in God. If I can hear, He 
 can. If I can make reply, He has the same 
 power. If I wish to make reply when my 
 child speaks, how much more shall He, the 
 perfect moral being. 
 
 I believe in prayer because Christ be- 
 lieved in it. He was too wise to waste His 
 
86 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 time uselessly. He spent whole nights in 
 prayer. He had more to say about prayer 
 than any other one whose words stand re- 
 corded in holy writ. It is significant that the 
 perfect man was thus a man of prayer. Hu- 
 manity at its best prays. When men for- 
 sake the example of Christ, thinking they can 
 do better, they go farther and fare worse. 
 It is so regarding this habit of prayer. 
 
 I believe in prayer because of what I see 
 when I turn to the long and broad lines of 
 human experience. Men always have prayed 
 — it seems to be one of the persistent habits 
 of our race. The fact that it is so wide- 
 spread and has so long endured indicates that 
 it has utility. When you find a fin on a fish 
 or a wing on a bird, or what is popularly 
 known as an "instinct" in an animal, you 
 know that it has some use or it would not be 
 there. Useless organs disappear or become 
 rudimentary. The very persistence of this 
 habit of prayer raises a strong presumption 
 that such an exercise of one's powers is both 
 rational and useful. 
 
 With this persistent habit of the race in 
 mind it is instructive to recall the testimony 
 of a distinguished evolutionist. In his little 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 87 
 
 book, "Through Nature to God," John Fiske 
 says that in nature we have found it to be 
 true that "Everywhere the internal adjust- 
 ment has been brought about so as to har- 
 monize with some actually existing external 
 fact. The eye was developed in response to 
 the outward existence of radiant light, the 
 ear in response to the outward existence of 
 acoustic vibrations, the mother's love came 
 in response to the infant's needs. If the re- 
 lation established in the morning twilight of 
 man's existence between the human soul and 
 a world invisible and immaterial is a relation 
 of which only the subjective term is real and 
 the objective term is non-existent, then, I 
 say, it is something utterly without precedent 
 in the whole history of creation." If the 
 capacity of man for fellowship with God 
 through prayer were real only at our end of 
 the line and unreal at the other, then it would 
 be an utter break in the whole method dis- 
 covered in the ascertained uniformities of 
 nature. "The lesson of evolution therefore 
 is that through all these weary ages the hu- 
 man soul has not been cherishing in religion 
 a delusive phantom, but in spite of seemingly 
 endless groping and stumbling, it has been 
 
88 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 rising to the recognition of its essential kin- 
 ship with the ever-Hving God." 
 
 But when I would find the deepest assur- 
 ances as to the value and efficacy of prayer, 
 I look within. The heart is renewed, the 
 affections are purified, the aspirations are 
 lifted higher, the lame wiU is made strong, 
 and the immediate sense of union with the 
 invisible spirit of good, that is to say of God, 
 is deepened by prayer. 
 
 This I know as I know that fire burns, that 
 water slakes thirst, that good food satisfies 
 hunger and renews strength. I am not specu- 
 lating nor speaking from hearsay; I come to 
 you with knowledge gained by the laboratory 
 method. I would not limit the value of 
 prayer to its ascertainable reactions upon the 
 life of the man who prays. While I feel the 
 incompleteness of my knowledge touching 
 any final philosophy as to the precise way in 
 which the finite will becomes co-laborer with 
 the Infinite Will in the shaping of outward 
 events, I have confidence that it is so. But 
 these experiences of personal benefit in those 
 blessed and persistent reactions which are 
 constantly coming to the soul of the man who 
 offers genuine and expectant prayer as one 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 89 
 
 of the normal expressions of his deeper self, 
 are clear beyond any peradventure. 
 
 In these days when we stand amazed at 
 the results accomplished by certain invisible 
 forces, the Roentgen ray, wireless telegra- 
 phy, the bearing of mental suggestion upon 
 the healing of functional disease, we should 
 not be reluctant or grudging in our judgment 
 as to the possible efficacy of prayer. It was 
 not a recluse, a pietist, or even a clergyman, 
 it was a man trained as a chemist and for 
 forty years the distinguished president of 
 Harvard University — it was President Eliot 
 who said, "Prayer is the transcendent effort 
 of human intelligence." He felt that a man 
 stands in his noblest attitude before God 
 when he summons the best that is in him into 
 action and bends all the energy of affection 
 and will toward the attainment of some holy 
 end through prayer. It is a force to be reck- 
 oned with in this world where the unseen 
 so often lords it over the seen. It would be 
 difficult to picture our human nature as en- 
 tering more fully by any act into the sense of 
 its own surpassing dignity and worth. 
 
 We need not be disturbed by the fact that 
 we have not reduced the possibilities of 
 
90 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 prayer, to be realized within and not in de- 
 fiance of the great uniformities of God, to 
 an exact science. We have not reduced to 
 anything Hke an exact science the influence 
 of a mother's love upon her children, or the 
 effect of a good name upon a man's prospects 
 of success, or the physical benefits of a cheer- 
 ful habit of mind. We have not reduced to 
 an exact science the forces at work in a 
 wheat field— they are too intricate for hu- 
 man intelligence. Perfect intelligence could 
 determine in advance just how many grains 
 of wheat in each bushel cast into the soil 
 would grow and exactly what the harvest 
 would be, but no man can tell. Perfect intel- 
 ligence could tell why certain prayers seem 
 to succeed and others fail, but such complete 
 intelligence regarding all the forces to be 
 considered is not within our reach. 
 
 But even though in all these fields our 
 knowledge stops far short of completeness, 
 enough is known to encourage continued ef- 
 fort. Mothers love their children; a right- 
 minded man guards his good name ; sensible 
 people promote health by good cheer; and 
 farmers continue to sow their wheat in con- 
 fidence that they will reap. In like manner, 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 91 
 
 thoughtful people keep on praying, assured 
 by the words and the example of Christ ; and 
 still further assured by an ever-increasing 
 volume of religious experience, that prayer 
 works out its own beneficent results. And 
 one of the most beneficent results lies in that 
 maintenance of a sense of union between the 
 human and the divine. 
 
 "Abide in me !" You are not alone in the 
 quest for character, in the desire to serve 
 your own generation, in the wish to grow 
 toward your own completeness. You are not 
 alone— the Father is with you. You may be 
 walking some busy street, or grappling with 
 some intellectual problem, or facing a room 
 full of restless pupils, or fighting hard in 
 some inward moral conflict — it matters not, 
 the Father is with you and by the habit of 
 prayer you may come to maintain unbrokenly 
 that sense of sweet and exalted fellowship 
 which brings a mighty sense of reinforce- 
 ment to all your powers as you learn how to 
 abide. 
 
 The fourth great word in the Christian 
 message is the word "Go"; it indicates that 
 all these finer experiences are to find expres- 
 sion in far-reaching action. It looks out 
 
92 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 with eager expectation upon the broad field 
 of kindly and competent service. 
 
 Jesus says to every obedient man at a cer- 
 tain stage of his experience, "Come," and the 
 man comes; and at another stage He says, 
 ''Go," and the man goes. ''Go home to thy 
 friends, and tell them how great things the 
 Lord hath done for thee." "Go work . . . 
 in my vineyard." "Go to the lost sheep of 
 the house of Israel"— they were sent first to 
 men of their own race and nation. "Go," He 
 said at last, "ye into all the world, and make 
 known the good news to every creature." 
 And straightway His followers went out 
 teaching men whatsoever He had com- 
 manded them, enrolling them as disciples 
 under the tuition of a nobler method of life, 
 and washing their lives clean as they bap- 
 tized them into that name which stands for 
 the manifold helpfulness of God. 
 
 The experience which had been deepened, 
 enriched, and matured by coming to Him, by 
 that movement toward what is central; 
 which had been developed by following, by 
 facing all its activities in harmony with the 
 great advance for which He stood; which 
 had been steadied and reassured by its sense 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 93 
 
 of union, was now to find fuller expression 
 in moving out upon all the fields of service it 
 mighfadequately cover. It was to "go." 
 
 Impression must precede expression else 
 there would be nothing to express. The in- 
 take must come first in order that there may 
 be a store to draw upon when we would give. 
 But unless the cycle completes itself, the life 
 enriched by the profounder experiences I 
 have been discussing finding its outlet in 
 wholesome usefulness, there will be stagna- 
 tion and death. 
 
 'Treely ye have received''— and then be- 
 cause the life was enriched by what it had 
 received, the other words inevitably follow — 
 "freely give." If the last injunction is dis- 
 regarded, it is only a question of time until 
 the capacity to freely receive will be gone. I 
 shall speak in a later address more directly 
 touching this whole matter of service and I 
 simply refer to it here. But this word ''go" 
 indicates that every life must develop by find- 
 ing expression in useful activity. 
 
 These are the four great words of the 
 Christian message. Come, Follow, Abide, Go. 
 What more is there to be said than is here 
 suggested when we group these words 
 
94 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 around the commanding figure of one who 
 has taken the moral government and leader- 
 ship of the world upon His shoulder as none 
 other ever has ? They cover the ground. 
 
 They indeed represent a certain cycle of 
 experience. The last comes back upon the 
 first. The command to "go" does not mean 
 that the man ceases to "come'' or to "follow'' 
 or to "abide." It does not involve for a mo- 
 ment any separation of his life from the 
 source of the original impulse, but only a 
 closer union. Men came to Christ, absorbed 
 His spirit, were made ready to follow, be- 
 came strong through abiding in His love and 
 then they went out into all the world to re- 
 produce His influence according to the meas- 
 ure of their ability. And, lo! they found 
 that He was with them more than ever and 
 would be always, even unto the consumma- 
 tion of the age. Come, follow, abide, go— 
 they form a perfect cycle ! 
 
 When Christ stood at the well, listening to 
 the rude banter of the woman who was 
 amused because a Jew asked a Samaritan for 
 a drink, when the Jews had no dealings with 
 the Samaritans, He suddenly recalled her to 
 the tragedy of her own situation by saying, 
 "If thou knewest the gift of God, . . . thou 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 95 
 
 wouldst ask." There she was, face to face 
 with the greatest spiritual opportunity which 
 had ever come to her unfortunate hfe. If 
 she had eyes to see, she could look into the 
 face of the Eternal. If she had ears to hear, 
 she could hear some of the noblest words 
 which ever fell from human lips. If she had 
 the will for it, she might drink the water of 
 life freely. 
 
 But she was blind and deaf to all this at 
 the outset. The well was deep and in her 
 poor understanding of the finer things in life 
 she had nothing to draw with. She spent 
 those moments in idle banter and in quibbles 
 about theology, discussing the contention be- 
 tween the Jews and the Samaritans as to the 
 proper place w^here men ought to worship. 
 "If thou knewest the gift of God,'' Jesus 
 said, "thou wouldst ask." The deeper expe- 
 riences of life were there within reach, but 
 she was neglecting them. 
 
 The indictment which will be brought 
 against many of the men and women in our 
 own day, I feel, will not be that they were so 
 dull and stupid as not to know of anything 
 better than the weak, thin, flat lives many of 
 them are living. This is not the fact. They 
 all realize in some moment of thoughtfulness 
 
96 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 that there is something better than this poor 
 quahty of being they habitually show. Some 
 of them in earlier years were living lives 
 more worthy of their best powers. Some of 
 them still find their hearts hungry for 
 righteousness and their souls athirst for the 
 living God. But they have been thrown into 
 intellectual confusion perhaps by certain 
 modern conceptions which are dominant, and 
 they have not taken the time to readjust and 
 to straighten it all out. Some of them, by 
 the sharp pace of modern life and the appar- 
 ent necessity for giving attention to so many 
 interests, have allowed the deeper things to 
 be crowded out and thrust to one side. Thus 
 they have allowed themselves to slip back in 
 their own ideals, habits, and resolves. They 
 have become listless where they should be 
 spiritually energetic. They lack the dispo- 
 sition to ask and to act in such a way as to 
 possess themselves of the best gifts of God. 
 
 In that high hour when Christ met His 
 disciples for the last interview in the upper 
 room He wished to bestow upon them a new, 
 a more potent, and a more truly inward equip- 
 ment for their work. He had shown them in 
 His own life a matchless example which 
 
A DEEPENING EXPERIENCE 97 
 
 would never fade out of their minds. He 
 had given them His own exalted teachings 
 and neither they nor we will ever forget how 
 He spake as never man spake touching the 
 deep things of life. But now He would give 
 them that without which His example and 
 His teaching would be comparatively un- 
 fruitful. 
 
 He drew them around Him in intimate fel- 
 lowship and ''breathed upon them/' as if He 
 would impart unto them life out of His own 
 more abundant store of life. And as He did 
 this He said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." 
 The word He used for ''receive" indicated no 
 mere passive attitude on their part. It was 
 the Greek word "lambano," which means 
 "take." By your own active faith, by the 
 clasp and retention of your own high resolve, 
 by the insistent claim of your deepest self, 
 "take" this deeper experience of the divine 
 help ! This is the method by which that gift 
 of God is ever to be received. It comes in 
 response to the spirit of initiative on our 
 part. And it comes to lead our minds into 
 all truth and our hearts into an ever-deepen- 
 ing experience. 
 
IV 
 
 THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 IN that well-known vision recorded in the 
 last book in the Bible a mighty angel ap- 
 peared. He was clothed with a cloud. He 
 wore a rainbow on his head. His face shone 
 like the sun because of the radiant interest 
 he felt in the work he was called to do. He 
 stood ready for the widest usefulness, his 
 right foot upon the land and his left foot 
 upon the sea. 
 
 And in his hand, as the main instrument 
 of his power, as the chief agent by which he 
 was to accomplish the moral ends he had in 
 view, he held, not the sword of military con- 
 quest, not the coin of a far-reaching com- 
 merce, not the swinging censer of some po- 
 tent ecclesiasticism casting its spell upon the 
 hearts of men by the use of ceremony— he 
 held in his hand a little book, open. He ex- 
 pected to achieve the results he had in mind 
 
 98 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 99 
 
 by the instruction, the persuasion, and the 
 moral appeal of the truth. 
 
 You can hardly find a more suggestive 
 picture of the general method of this century 
 in which we live, or a clearer indication as to 
 our main reliance, than this ancient picture 
 where the messenger from on high came 
 upon the scene holding in his hand a little 
 book, open. 
 
 We do not know what kind of a book it 
 was— the narrative does not state. I have a 
 feeling, however, that in all probability it 
 was not a trigonometry. It was undoubtedly 
 a good book ; it was probably the best book 
 on which the angel could lay his hand. It 
 was certainly a book calculated to relate it- 
 self in definite fashion to the needs of human 
 life. This fact of itself gives us a significant 
 hint. 
 
 It was a little book, not a ponderous tome 
 repelling the ordinary reader by its size ; not 
 a musty, leather bound octavo, so laden with 
 ancient erudition as to be of interest only to 
 some specialist with technical training. It 
 was a volume convenient to hold,— he had it 
 in his hand. It was a book readily accessible 
 to those who, from compulsion or from 
 
loo THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 choice, measure out the time allotted to that 
 sort of reading sparingly. It was, thus, a 
 book within the compass of the average 
 interest. 
 
 It was a book not nearly so large, I fancy, 
 as that complete volume which contains all 
 the canonical scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testaments. The ordinary Bible with its 
 sixty-six separate books could hardly be 
 called "a little book." This more compact 
 volume which the angel held in his hand as 
 he made his approach to the moral life of the 
 race comprised, perhaps, only the more vital 
 and essential elements in the scriptures. It 
 presented these elements standing out clear 
 and free from those ancient and partial re- 
 mainders which for busy people have only a 
 remote historical interest. The little book 
 contained, we may believe, a compact state- 
 ment of spiritual realities freed from the in- 
 evitable deposits left by the ruder practices 
 of antiquity, and freed from those local and 
 temporary elements which must of necessity 
 recede through the gradual cancellation 
 wrought by the process of spiritual develop- 
 ment. You may say that this little book 
 might represent to us the net result of that 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE loi 
 
 wise, patient, and discriminating- scholarship 
 which undertakes to set forth in briefer com- 
 pass and in clearer phrase God's message to 
 our race. 
 
 The little book was open, wide open. It 
 invited on the face of it the fullest, freest 
 scrutiny of its actual contents. There was 
 to be no peeping nor squinting in the study 
 of it ; no hiding of the seat of intelligence in 
 the sand, ostrich fashion, under the vain pre- 
 tense that no difficulties had confronted the 
 men who had undertaken the hard task of 
 discovering and bringing out the divine mes- 
 sage in that varying literature composed by 
 authors so widely removed in time, in tem- 
 perament, and in task. 
 
 In the gradual compilation of this little 
 book from the best to be found in that larger 
 literature of sixty-six books, which taken as 
 a whole averaged lower in actual worth, the 
 defective moralities and imperfect insights 
 which belong naturally to the raw period of 
 any people's history, had been faced frankly 
 and then fearlessly relegated to the back- 
 ground even though they were found pref- 
 aced by a "Thus saith the Lord." 
 
 The drift toward form and legalism from 
 
102 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 which not even that people chosen for its 
 spiritual primacy among the nations had 
 been free, had been appraised and accorded 
 its rightful significance. The law of growth 
 according to which neither mountains nor 
 valleys, rivers nor forests, languages nor in- 
 stitutions nor religions ever spring suddenly 
 into being by some arbitrary and omnipotent 
 ''Let there be,"— this law of growth had been 
 fully recognized. And now with the out- 
 come of this patient, discriminating study at 
 his command the divine messenger stood, 
 well equipped for moral service on sea and 
 land, with that vital, usable element of holy 
 writ held in his hand as a little book, wide 
 open. 
 
 I am speaking here in parables as you are 
 all aware. I am claiming a full measure of 
 that liberty which goes with this particular 
 literary form. In more direct phrase, I 
 might say that in our Bible we have a heav- 
 enly treasure. But we find that treasure 
 shaped and restricted by the fact that it is 
 contained and entangled in a curiously 
 wrought earthen vessel. The treasure itself 
 is sufficient to make men wise unto salvation 
 and to furnish them thoroughly for all sorts 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 103 
 
 of good work, but it lies securely, and some- 
 times obscurely, imbedded in a genuinely his- 
 torical process. 
 
 In that this process is historical, rather 
 than a magical something lying to one side 
 and lacking all connection with other move- 
 ments of thought and life in that period 
 when it made its appearance, the shameful 
 immoralities of Lot and Samson, the cruelty 
 and treachery of Jael and Jezebel, the harsh 
 Song of Deborah, and the cynical unbelief of 
 Ecclesiastes, inevitably appear. Those im- 
 perfect moralities and defective insights 
 frankly recorded in the Old Testament, and 
 sometimes claiming for themselves divine 
 sanction, belong there as naturally as the 
 blade belongs to a certain stage of develop- 
 ment in that process which leads at last to 
 the full corn in the ear. And it is the high 
 office of modern Biblical study to discover 
 and to disentangle those elements which are 
 merely local, temporary, and incidental from 
 those other elements which are universal, 
 abiding, and essential. It is in the interests 
 of an honest and defensible faith, and of a 
 consequent increasing usefulness for the real 
 content of this literature, that thoughtful 
 
I04 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 men are scrutinizing its every part and en- 
 deavoring by competent scholarship to place 
 our confidence in its permanent value upon 
 foundations which stand sure. 
 
 The positive and practical value, then, 
 which modern critical study has for the Bible 
 will be found mainly in these four considera- 
 tions: First, it has closed the debate on cer- 
 tain vexed questions which once troubled the 
 heart of Israel and now trouble it no more. 
 The coarse and, from the present point of 
 view, the senseless attacks upon the author- 
 ity and inspiration of the Bible made by such 
 men as Thomas Paine, Robert G. Ingersoll, 
 and Charles Bradlaugh have now become im- 
 possible. If brought forward to-day, they 
 would not even amuse or entertain or shock, 
 to say nothing of persuading, the average 
 intelligence. It would be so plain that such 
 blows were directed at a man of straw that 
 they would be promptly ruled out of court 
 as incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. 
 The Bible itself is the same book to-day that 
 it was when the attacks referred to upon its 
 teachings brought consternation to the ten- 
 der hearts of many believers, but the whole 
 point of view held by thoughtful people has 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 105 
 
 so changed as to rob such attacks of any 
 measure of force. 
 
 Modern Biblical study has relieved those 
 inadequate moralities of an earlier day, pa- 
 triarchal polygamy, unrebuked slavery, re- 
 taliation of the eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for- 
 a-tooth sort, from the impossible task of 
 doing duty as sanctions for the moral dull- 
 ness and backwardness of certain Christian 
 centuries. It has also relieved those inade- 
 quate standards of an early day from the 
 exacting responsibility of undertaking to 
 serve as veritable expressions of the mind 
 of the Lord. To us they are nothing of the 
 sort. 
 
 Take, for example, that direction given, as 
 the narrative states with divine authority, 
 regarding the law of retaliation. It pro- 
 vided that it should be ''an eye for an eye, a 
 tooth for a tooth, a life for a life." It was, 
 indeed, a word of the Lord for the crude 
 moral life of that early day. An eye for an 
 eye is not an ideal arrangement, but it is 
 better than a head for an eye. It provided 
 for a measured and limited retaliation to re- 
 place that wild, unregulated vengennce into 
 which those barbarous people often fell. 
 
io6 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 Not content with an eye for an eye, they 
 would sometimes in the spirit of vengeance 
 take the Hf e of one who had maimed another 
 by putting out his eye. Not content with a 
 life for a life, they would exterminate a 
 whole tribe when one man of the offending 
 tribe had killed some man in the tribe which 
 sought to retaliate. An eye for an eye, a 
 tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, would 
 mean shameful retrogression for the more 
 highly developed ethical life of our own day, 
 but for the immature life of that primitive 
 people it was a word of the Lord spoken in 
 advance of their current practice and calcu- 
 lated to lead them to a higher level of con- 
 duct. 
 
 You would have to go some distance from 
 the turnpike to-day to hear a sermon in justi- 
 fication of that law of retaliation from any 
 other point of view, or one in defense of the 
 moral quality of the imprecatory psalms, or 
 one with any clear note of approval in it for 
 the cruder doctrine of blood atonement, or 
 one with any expression of real agreement 
 with many of those inadequate moral stand- 
 ards which, to an earlier generation, stood 
 as the very law of heaven. It has been made 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 107 
 
 clear that no further significance attaches to 
 those interesting exhibits of the law of 
 growth than we attach to the preliminary 
 stages in any other process of development. 
 The process is to be judged, not by the crude 
 appearance or the unfinished character of its 
 earlier phases, but by its final outcome. In- 
 deed, all work is to be judged by its tenden- 
 cies, direction, and ultimate form rather 
 than by its earlier and preparatory stages. 
 The Bible is to be judged by the moral con- 
 clusions to which it finally brings us and by 
 those visions of spiritual reality which hang 
 clear and resplendent in our sky when the 
 fogs of an earlier morning have been swept 
 away. 
 
 Modern criticism has relieved us also from 
 the mental squint consequent upon the pain- 
 ful effort to make it appear that every part 
 of the Bible is in strict agreement with every 
 other part. It does not attempt to square 
 the two varying narratives of the Creation in 
 the first and second chapters of Genesis, or 
 to find perfect agreement in the two accounts 
 of the Deluge differing as they do in regard 
 to the length of time the waters were upon 
 the earth and as to the number of clean ani- 
 
io8 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 mals taken into the ark, or to reconcile the 
 divergent statements as to the basis offered 
 for Sabbath observance in the two accounts 
 of the Ten Commandments recorded in the 
 twentieth chapter of Exodus and in the fifth 
 chapter of Deuteronomy. It does not seek, 
 in a hundred instances which might be 
 named, to estabHsh an exact and entire 
 agreement in these varying narratives. 
 
 We have abundant evidence for the exis- 
 tence of different documents, for the influ- 
 ence of varying schools of opinion. We 
 know that the priestly and the prophetic wri- 
 ters in the Old Testament, in narrating the 
 same events, held different points of view. 
 They varied in the placing of their emphasis 
 and in their general interpretation. 
 
 The whole game of hide and seek skillfully 
 played with proof texts, as men have striven 
 and striven in vain to make all the varying 
 sections of this entire literature speak in uni- 
 son, is a thing of the past among the more 
 intelligent Bible students. The efforts of 
 those earnest people who have endured an 
 intellectual agony and bloody sweat, in their 
 attempt to reconcile part with part in the in- 
 terests of some theory of verbal or plenary 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 109 
 
 inspiration, have been practically abandoned. 
 Thoughtful men rejoice that scholarship has 
 arranged these sacred writings in their suc- 
 cessive layers so as to indicate, even to the 
 popular mind, the stages of growth and thus 
 make plain the successive attainments in 
 moral insight and in spiritual power of those 
 men of old. And this view of the Bible fur- 
 nishes us with an adequate defense against 
 a formal line of attack upon its inspiration, 
 which is in no danger of being discredited. 
 
 In the second place, the modern method of 
 Biblical study, by its frank acceptance of the 
 principle of growth, correlates that study 
 with all other study. The great principle of 
 organic evolution, once regarded as the dire 
 enemy of all sound religious faith, as a dan- 
 gerous adversary to be promptly anathema- 
 tized and cast out of the synagogue, has now 
 been welcomed and made at home in the field 
 of Bible study. The earth grew, as we all 
 know, and the processes of development laid 
 bare by modern geology offer us a most fas- 
 cinating field for study. Institutions grow, 
 languages grow, literature and religions 
 grow. Each one of these mighty trees with 
 branches now innumerable was once like a 
 
no THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 grain of mustard seed. In similar fashion 
 the Bible itself grew. It stands before us as 
 the outcome and product of long periods of 
 moral development where men at first groped 
 in thick darkness, and then began to see as 
 through a glass, darkly, and then later, 
 touching some of their duties and privileges, 
 saw face to face. 
 
 "The impregnable rock of holy scripture" 
 is not a happy phrase. It was coined and 
 popularized by one of the foremost Christian 
 statesmen of the last century, William Ewart 
 Gladstone, in the sketch he wrote bearing 
 that significant title, but its associations and 
 suggestions are misleading. The Bible is 
 not a rock. It is not in any sense "a heavenly 
 meteorite," as some pious soul called it, 
 dropped down out of the sky with no earthly 
 history, standing quite apart from the grop- 
 ings and yearnings of men. 
 
 The Bible is rather one of those mighty 
 trees having its roots deeply planted in that 
 common life which is of the earth, earthy; 
 declaring in its concentric rings the story of 
 its slow advance; exhibiting in the shape of 
 its spreading branches, in the color and for- 
 mation of its twigs and leaves, the influence 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE in 
 
 of climatic conditions. The inner life of this 
 useful tree which bears wholesome fruit 
 every month in the year and whose very 
 leaves are for the healing of the nations, is 
 indeed the life of the living God, but the 
 material utilized in its composition was taken 
 from the common soil. The great tree of 
 scriptural truth as it stands before us was 
 formed from the dust of the ground, but the 
 Eternal Spirit, through the profound and 
 unusual experiences of the men who wrote 
 it, breathed into it the breath of His own 
 mighty life until it stands possessed of a liv- 
 ing soul. 
 
 Modern critical study has brought out 
 more clearly this process of development. 
 Israel's entire message to the world, from 
 the ancient Song of Deborah and the early 
 book of the Covenant on up to the Sermon 
 on the Mount and the prayer of Christ the 
 night He was betrayed, has traveled the 
 main road of historical development. 
 
 The New Testament itself opens with 
 what may seem a long, tiresome, and mean- 
 ingless list of proper names. But these dry 
 names furnish us a line of human genealogy. 
 They were intended to throw additional light 
 
112 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 upon the origin of the unique personaHty 
 which the New Testament is to bring to the 
 attention of the world. This effort to trace 
 the human ancestry of Jesus of Nazareth 
 was the painstaking attempt of some Hebrew 
 composing his gospel especially for Hebrews 
 to indicate that some, at least, of the forces 
 which brought the Messiah lay securely 
 imbedded within the history of His own 
 race. 
 
 The truth of God in its entirety comes to 
 us in this organic way. It is not a freak or 
 a fault in the world of spiritual formation. 
 It is not a disconnected phenomenon stand- 
 ing apart in the world of magic. The study 
 of it is to be closely correlated with all other 
 lines of serious research. 
 
 You can see at once the immense gain in 
 interest and in thoroughness which is thus 
 secured for Bible study. Here, also, the sci- 
 entific habit of mind and the principles of 
 literary criticism are to be made at home. 
 Men are taught to notice when they are read- 
 ing prose and when they are reading poetry 
 — the difference is more radical than w^ould 
 be indicated by merely printing one in 
 stanzas and the other solid. The principle of 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 113 
 
 development in the changing content of sin- 
 gle words is to be regarded. 
 
 Take, for example, the use of the word 
 "God." When Deborah praised the cruel 
 treachery of Jael in her warrior's song, she 
 used the word "God." When the priests in 
 Leviticus indicated what they thought would 
 be pleasing to the Almighty in the matter of 
 elaborate ceremonies and bloody sacrifices, 
 they used the word "God." When Isaiah 
 arraigned the people stricken for their moral 
 blindness, calling upon them to forsake their 
 reliance upon vain oblations and useless cere- 
 monies in order to live in a new moral atti- 
 tude where they would "cease to do evil and 
 learn to do well," he used the word "God." 
 When Jesus spoke to the souls of men as 
 never man spoke, bidding them find their 
 highest self-realization by entering into filial 
 relations wdth the Father, He employed the 
 same term "God." 
 
 In our King James version the word is 
 spelled throughout with the same three let- 
 ters and is pronounced with .the .same vocal 
 sounds, but the actual distance traversed in 
 the essential meaning of the word in passing 
 through those different periods which I have 
 
114 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 roughly indicated is almost immeasurable. 
 Modern Biblical study brings this out more 
 clearly and when once we enter into the spirit 
 of it, we no longer think of Bible study as a 
 field of inquiry standing apart. It is a field 
 of intense and vital interest joining hard on 
 to other fields of serious inquiry. It is a field 
 where the principle of development and the 
 general method of an organic evolution are 
 constantly kept in view. It is a field where 
 the same frankness, rigor, and thoroughness 
 which belong to research in those other 
 fields, are welcomed as men strive to know 
 and to do the will of God. 
 
 In the third place, the modern method of 
 Bible study adds immeasurably to the human 
 interest of the book. When once we think 
 of the Bible, not as dropped down from the 
 sky to become the priceless heritage of the 
 race ; not as supernaturally dictated to chosen 
 penmen who but dimly felt the significance 
 of what they were transmitting; when we 
 think of it as the patient record of what was 
 once slowly wrought into the conscious expe- 
 rience of gifted men as they faced duty, 
 grappled with temptation, bore their heavy 
 burdens, and entered at last into the high 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 115 
 
 sense of spiritual privilege, — when once we 
 think of the truths of the Bible as thus in- 
 wrought in the experience of many men 
 varying in temperament, in moral insight, 
 and in spiritual development, we see how 
 many more are the points of contact between 
 this book and our own lives. 
 
 When rightly studied the Bible has a face 
 like our own face, the essential lines, fea- 
 tures, and expressions of this modern life as 
 we know it are suggested and reflected there 
 as in a mirror. The Bible has a face like our 
 own face, now clouded by defeat, now 
 marred by passion, now shining with the 
 sense of spiritual victory. 
 
 The Bible has a hand like our own hand, 
 capable of meeting ours in a genuine, sym- 
 pathetic, and assuring clasp. It has a hand 
 stretched out with an offer of help from a 
 vantage ground gained through moral strug- 
 gles similar to our own. 
 
 The Bible has a voice like our own reach- 
 ing us from lands and times and situations 
 far removed, but none the less an intelligible 
 and assuring voice. It has a voice which 
 speaks somewhere to every man in the tongue 
 in which he was born and in the very mood 
 
ii6 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 where he finds himself in his hour of moral 
 need. It has a voice now broken with its 
 sense of failure, and now ringing clear 
 through the joy of spiritual advance, but it 
 speaks to us steadily in recognizable accents 
 a message from the Unseen. 
 
 This is the sort of Bible study to which the 
 young people of this generation are being 
 invited. The whole method of modern criti- 
 cism has helped to bring the Bible down out 
 of the clouds where well-meant but unveri- 
 fiable dogmas tended to remove it, and make 
 is usefully at home among these oft recur- 
 ring needs of men. 
 
 The human touches in the Bible are all the 
 more striking because of the literary habit 
 of that oriental world. They loved the story, 
 the parable, the warm, concrete picture 
 rather than the colder, abstract form of 
 statement. If the writers of scripture had 
 all been born in New Hampshire, if they had 
 gained their spiritual meat mainly from the 
 perusal of John Calvin's "Institutes,'' if they 
 had belonged to a prosaic generation habitu- 
 ated to the use of a literal, truth-telling 
 kodak or of some phonographic record of 
 every notable utterance; if, in a word, they 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 117 
 
 had lived always in the white light of the 
 absolute definite statement of truth, not half 
 suspecting the lovely varieties of color lurk- 
 ing in these common rays about us, we 
 should have had a very different Bible but 
 a very much less interesting and helpful one. 
 Our task of interpretation might have been 
 easier, but oh ! so much less rewarding. 
 
 The human touches contained in these sug- 
 gestive oriental pictures are the glory of it. 
 The symbols and metaphors dealing with 
 spiritual reality in poetic fashion have more 
 value than many hard and fast statements 
 of truth. The symbol is elastic ; it yields new 
 and enlarging meanings to successive gen- 
 erations of discerning minds and hearts as 
 they, one after another, learn to behold its 
 beauty. 
 
 The old psalmist said, "I will say of the 
 Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress : my 
 God; in Him will I trust. Surely . . . He 
 shall cover thee with His feathers, and 
 under His wings shalt thou trust." "Wings 
 and feathers" belonging to the Divine Being! 
 God shall cover thee with His feathers and 
 under His wings shalt thou trust! The idea 
 would be startling and even grotesque had 
 
ii8 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 not familiarity with these phrases dulled our 
 minds to the strangeness of them. Are we to 
 think of the Almighty then as fashioned after 
 the likeness of some gigantic winged creature 
 of the sky? Not even the most conservative 
 literalist would urge anything quite so ab- 
 surd. It is free, bold, sensuous poetry urg- 
 ing in downright human fashion a ready 
 trust in that protecting care of which wings 
 and feathers are the striking and beautiful 
 symbols. 
 
 We find an abundance of "wings and fea- 
 thers" in holy writ. We find in the Old Tes- 
 tament many books which are intensely 
 human and of great value if these striking 
 figures are correctly interpreted and given 
 their appropriate setting. The book of 
 Esther, containing nowhere a clear moral 
 idea and not having in it from first to last 
 even so much as the name of "God," is none 
 the less a most interesting human document 
 showing as it does how in that far off time a 
 woman's personal beauty and social charm 
 entered into the shaping of events. The book 
 of Proverbs is an intensely human book, in- 
 dicating in its whole moral tone the progress 
 of a shrewd worldly temper among the He- 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 119 
 
 brews as they parted company with their 
 greatest prophets and became the followers 
 of a more material form of success. 
 
 The book of Ecclesiastes is an intensely 
 human composition showing the development 
 of a cynical temper among those men who 
 had become sated with success and pleasure. 
 "That which befalleth the beasts befalleth 
 the sons of men ; as the one dieth so the other 
 dieth. Yea, they all have one breath so that a 
 man has no preeminence above the beast, for 
 all is vanity and all go unto one place." It 
 would be difficult to find a more flat-footed 
 denial of the truth of immortality or a more 
 complete repudiation of the moral superi- 
 ority of men to the beasts of the field than is 
 here contained in holy scripture, but it all be- 
 longs naturally to the history of that period 
 as showing the prevailing temper of its 
 everyday life. 
 
 It is the office of modern Biblical study to 
 indicate these various points of view, to char- 
 acterize these different schools of opinion, 
 and to locate them in the great historical 
 process which brought them into being. And 
 thus such study adds immensely to the human 
 interest of the book and to its usefulness as 
 
120 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 we come to apply its conclusions to the seri- 
 ous business of living". 
 
 In the fourth place, the modern method of 
 Biblical study gives us a sense of perspective 
 which aids greatly in placing our confidence 
 in the unique service it can render on surer 
 foundations. This sense of perspective a'ids 
 us in offering the world with scriptural sanc- 
 tion those moral and religious truths which 
 the best reason and the best conscience of the 
 time can consistently approve. And when 
 once we cast in our lot with this method of 
 study we find also abundant historical rea- 
 sons for laying aside with the most direct 
 scriptural warrant certain theological views 
 which have become more or less discredited 
 on philosophical grounds. 
 
 Let me illustrate this in a concrete way. 
 The whole doctrine of atonement as under- 
 stood for generations was based more largely 
 upon the teachings of the book of Leviticus 
 as to the efficacy of blood in propitiating the 
 anger of an offended deity than upon the 
 finer spiritual insight of the Second Isaiah 
 or upon the matchless teachings of Christ 
 Himself. Yet to-day we are made aware 
 that the book of Leviticus is a somewhat nar- 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 121 
 
 row-minded compilation of official directions 
 for the use of the priests, and that it em- 
 bodies only the limited and exclusive point of 
 view of the ritualistic school of religious 
 opinion. When scripture was scripture, no 
 matter where found, no serious objection 
 was made to the construction of a doctrine 
 of moral reconciliation for use in a Christian 
 dispensation from the material in that an- 
 cient priestly document, but now with a more 
 accurate appraisement of the book of Leviti- 
 cus its value for the substitutional theory of 
 the atonement or for any interpretation to 
 be placed upon spiritual reality has, in the 
 estimation of careful scholarship, undergone 
 a very great change. 
 
 The doctrine of evil was for centuries in 
 ^ihe minds of millions of Christians affected 
 more by the story of the so-called ''fall of 
 man," as contained in the third chapter of 
 Genesis, than by all the teaching of Christ in 
 the four Gospels put together. Yet, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, Christ delivered Hisentiremessage 
 and made His full contribution to the world's 
 store of moral truth without ever referring 
 once in His recorded teachings to that narra- 
 tive of the Garden of Eden. Indeed, after 
 
122 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 we leave the third chapter of Genesis with 
 its story of the man and the woman and the 
 forbidden fruit, we never find that narrative 
 referred to again by any prophet or priest, 
 by psalmist or historian, in all the Old Tes- 
 tament. It is never referred to by Christ or 
 utilized by any New Testament writer save 
 Paul, who, briefly and by way of illustration, 
 makes reference to it some three or four 
 times. And the use of it as a sufficient ac- 
 counting for the presence of moral evil in the 
 world and as furnishing a kind of back- 
 ground for the whole redemptive undertak- 
 ing which culminated in the coming of 
 Christ, is entirely without scriptural war- 
 rant. 
 
 You might call the roll of all the doctrines 
 of religion and you would find that better 
 methods of Bible study are setting them one 
 after another in truer perspective, putting 
 certain claims in the background where they 
 may remain the objects of a genuine histori- 
 cal interest, and bringing to the front those 
 weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, 
 and truth, the great right things which are 
 forever vital. 
 
 This whole method leads to a more intelli- 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 123 
 
 gent and verifiable appraisement of those 
 varied sources. Thoughtful men have be- 
 come impatient v^ith the utterances of those 
 religious promoters who like to say loudly, 
 and sometimes fiercely, "The Bible is the in- 
 fallible word of God from lid to lid ; we be- 
 lieve every word and syllable of it." Men 
 have come to feel that such representations 
 are made, not in the spirit of the love of 
 truth, but in the spirit of the advertiser, con- 
 scious all the while that he is claiming rather 
 more for his wares than the facts actually 
 warrant, but excusing himself on the ground 
 that when the inevitable scaling down takes 
 place in the minds of his customers, the net 
 result will be approximately correct. 
 
 Such an attitude must of necessity be an 
 offense to Him who said, "I am the truth; 
 and ye shall know the truth, and the truth 
 shall make you free." The sort of faith 
 which undertakes to find in the Bible nothing 
 erroneous, nothing defective, nothing out- 
 grown by subsequent development, is not the 
 faith once delivered to the saints for which 
 we are earnestly to contend. I" is a piece of 
 unfounded arrogance which has caused, in 
 my judgment, more unbelief ten times over 
 
124 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 than it has been able to cure. We shall best 
 serve the cause of truth and the cause of 
 righteousness by those methods of study 
 which give us a correct perspective, return- 
 ing to the history of theology those claims 
 whose value belongs entirely to an earlier 
 stage of development and bringing to the 
 front those sublime verities which constitute 
 the word of God to the present life of the 
 race. 
 
 If I may venture to return again to that 
 vision of the seer, I believe that "a little 
 book" such as modern scholarship might well 
 offer us, containing the more vital portions 
 of the Bible and within the compass of the 
 average interest, would have more worth for 
 the layman than this entire literature of 
 sixty-six books, varying as they do so greatly 
 in value. The Bible has been hindered in its 
 actual usefulness by the attempt to force the 
 whole of it upon the attention of children and 
 of busy adults. The Bible is not a single 
 book, but a library of books, a national liter- 
 ature. We do not think of turning an im- 
 mature child out into the whole of English 
 literature as soon as he knows his letters. 
 Little books are provided for his advancing 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 125 
 
 needs, first readers, second readers, third 
 readers, making the way easier and more 
 alluring by these progressive stages which 
 serve to usher him into the presence of the 
 vast literary treasures of the ages. 
 
 In similar fashion, to turn a child loose in 
 the whole Bible is to load him with questions 
 and confuse him with problems for which his 
 hour has not yet come. This course also bur- 
 dens the parent or teacher with embarrass- 
 ments needless to be borne. Here are the 
 unclean stories of Lot and Samson and Ab- 
 salom. Here are the shrewd, bitter, skepti- 
 cal statements of the blase author of Eccle- 
 siastes. Here are the cursing psalms where 
 the writer blesses the man who will take the 
 children of his enemy and dash their brains 
 out on the stones. Here are all the imperfect 
 moralities and crude attempts of those an- 
 cient minds to fathom such moral mysteries 
 as are suggested by the terms "hell" and 
 ''devil.'' We do not wish to tell the children 
 any lies and we are not prepared just yet to 
 discuss these questions to the bottom with 
 their immature minds. But when we under- 
 take to teach the entire contents of this liter- 
 ature to immature children, or to older peo- 
 
126 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 pie untrained in the science of interpretation, 
 we speedily find ourselves thus embarrassed. 
 A little book, then, or perhaps three little 
 books, for home use and for general use by 
 all laymen, would be better than the entire 
 literature contained in the sixty-six books. 
 The first might contain the more wholesome 
 stories of the Old Testament, some of the 
 simpler psalms, and some selected passages 
 portraying that moral heroism which wins 
 a ready response from youth. The second 
 might take up the narrative of the life of 
 Christ with His deeds of love and His 
 plainer teachings, leaving out of considera- 
 tion for the time such passages as that which 
 describes the cursing of the fig tree or the 
 sending of the devils into the swine or the 
 mysterious words about an unpardonable 
 sin ; it might also contain some of the longer 
 psalms and some of the finer chapters of the 
 Epistles. The third book might contain more 
 of the psalms, the best of Deuteronomy and 
 Isaiah, and some of the splendid moral ap- 
 peals from the other prophets: it might in- 
 clude also the noble poem of the Creation and 
 the best of the drama of Job, omitting por- 
 tions of the long drawn out speeches of the 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 127 
 
 three tiresome and mistaken men; it might 
 well contain a clear and connected narrative 
 of the history of Israel and the main body of 
 Christ's teachings, together with some of the 
 greatest appeals of the Christian apostles as 
 found in the Epistles. Three such little books 
 made up of selections from the Bible, ar- 
 ranged with some reference to their logical 
 order and to the gradually unfolding needs 
 of the moral life, would be more attractive 
 and more useful to the average layman than 
 the entire canonical scriptures of the Old and 
 New Testaments in a single volume. 
 
 The attempt to induce children or even 
 adults to read the Bible through in course, so 
 many chapters a day, as a kind of tour de 
 force well pleasing to the Lord as would be 
 some devout Moslem's pilgrimage to Mecca 
 in the eyes of Allah, seems thoroughly im- 
 wise. The ten 3^ear old boy who undertakes 
 it may get on fairly well in Genesis and 
 Exodus with their interesting narratives, 
 wondering however at some of the strange 
 recitals he encounters. Fie will have some 
 dismal hours in the dull pedigrees where 
 Abimelech begat somebody who in turn be- 
 gat somebody else. But when he reaches 
 
128 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 Leviticus with its detailed directions as to 
 how the priests were to prepare the sacrifices 
 for the altar and carry on the elaborate ritual 
 of worship in that far off land and time— a 
 portion of scripture about as interesting and 
 rewarding to a ten year old boy as would be 
 an equal number of chapters from "Chitty on 
 Pleading''— he will be inclined to give up 
 once for all his attempt to read the Bible 
 through from Genesis to Revelation. And 
 he had better give it up. The Bible has many 
 pages where the mind and the moral nature 
 of a boy will respond, but he will not find 
 them readily by taking the whole sixty-six 
 books in course. He needs a little book in 
 his hand, open. 
 
 If a man were to start to walk across the 
 continent from San Francisco to New York 
 in course, twenty-five miles a day perhaps, his 
 experience up through the Sacramento Val- 
 ley would be thoroughly enjoyable. He 
 would spend delightful days in the foothills 
 around Auburn and Applegate. He would 
 be uplifted and inspired as he reached the 
 crest of the Sierra at Summit and as he 
 passed on down the other side along the 
 Truckee River. But when he got well out 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE lURLE 129 
 
 into Nevada the dull stretches of sage brush 
 and alkali plain would be depressing. His 
 twenty-five miles a day there would become 
 dull, stale, and unprofitable. He might sup- 
 pose that such a region had some place and 
 use in the universe, but the meaning of it 
 would be as completely hidden from the aver- 
 age man as is the real worth of the book 
 of Leviticus from the understanding of a 
 healthy boy. The patient traveler wearied 
 and bored would be inclined to turn back to 
 California— and he had better turn back. 
 In a complete account of the universe the al- 
 kali plains and sage brush of Nevada would 
 have to go in, but they do not furnish a re- 
 warding place for ordinary people to go for 
 a walk. 
 
 In a complete account of the historical pro- 
 cesses where lies embedded the revelation 
 God has made to men in the Bible, those 
 difficult, wearisome, and confusing sections 
 would all have to go in. It is well for schol- 
 ars to have the entire movement before them 
 as it was, sage brush and all. But for ordi- 
 nary uses, home use, devotional use, instruc- 
 tional use, — as a place for the mind and 
 heart to go and walk for fifteen minutes a 
 
I30 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 day — there are whole stretches of country 
 which are not immediately available. A lit- 
 tle book in the hand, open to every reader 
 without reserve or npolog-y or tiresome ex- 
 planation, would be of more direct service. 
 
 It is a practical question, not a sentimental 
 one. How best can the literature here ready 
 for our use be made to minister to the inner 
 lives and spiritual unfolding of busy people ? 
 Great sections of this literature are never 
 read at all. Other considerable sections of it 
 are never read with any great amount of 
 edification. Many of the most familiar bat- 
 tle-grounds in scripture, such as the narra- 
 tive about Jonah, and the account of Joshua 
 commanding the sun to stand still, and the 
 story of the three men cast into the furnace 
 of fire— many of these famous battle- 
 grounds are upon soil which religious people 
 rarely cultivate with seriousness and from 
 which the spiritual harvests are habitually 
 meager. 
 
 It is for the men who know what they are 
 about in theology and the men who know 
 their way about in pedagogy to join hands 
 and so bring the best of this literature to the 
 attention of busy people, so relate it to their 
 
THE PRACTICAL USE OF THE BIBLE 131 
 
 actual interest, and so induce them to make 
 habitual use of it, that it shall in ever larger 
 measure make them wise unto moral recov- 
 ery and furnish them thoroughly with those 
 reliable impulses and higher sanctions neces- 
 sary for all good work. 
 
 ii 
 
V 
 
 FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 
 
 IN the art galleries and in stained glass 
 windows we find Christ portrayed with a 
 halo round His head. But the men who lived 
 with Him and wrote the four Gospels never 
 speak of any halo. They were simple, 
 straightforward men and there was no halo 
 there. It was more accurate to picture Him 
 with loaves of bread in His hands feeding the 
 hungry, or in the act of putting His hands 
 compassionately on the eyes of the blind that 
 they might receive sight, or as girded with a 
 towel and with a basin of water in His hands 
 that He might wash the feet of His disciples 
 at the close of some long, exhausting day. 
 He did not wear the peculiar halo of a sepa- 
 rate and cloistered saintliness; He wore the 
 humbler badge of some useful form of ser- 
 vice. 
 
 The scene referred to, where He appears 
 132 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICK 133 
 
 with a basin of water and a towel, is most 
 instructive. The loose sandals worn in 
 Palestine leave a large part of the foot bare 
 and during- the dav sand or dust collects. Tt 
 is the custom of the country to offer water 
 and towels when any one enters a home. In 
 the homes of wealth this is done by a servant. 
 
 But Jesus and His friends were poor men. 
 There was no servant at hand to perform 
 that office when they met in the upper room. 
 And when no one of the disciples volunteered 
 to render this service to the Master and to 
 the other disciples that evening at the last 
 supper, Christ Himself rose from the table 
 and did it. It was an act of simple kindliness 
 performed for their physical comfort. 
 
 But it w^as much more than that. The nar- 
 rative in the synoptic Gospels indicates that 
 on their way to the supper the twelve men 
 had been disputing as to which one of them 
 should be the greatest in the new kingdom 
 they believed Christ was about to csta1)lisli. 
 Each one wanted to be Prime Minister or 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer or to hold some 
 conspicuous position. Each one desired that 
 he might sit either on the right hand or on 
 the left hand of autliority. And the twelve 
 
134 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 men had become warm and noisy in urging 
 their selfish ambitions. The great ones 
 among the Gentiles exercised dominion and 
 these twelve Hebrews felt that they too 
 should be princes and potentates in the com- 
 ing kingdom. 
 
 What could the Master do at the last sup- 
 per with a group of men in that mood ! This 
 scene, according to the narrative in the 
 fourth gospel, immediately preceded the 
 matchless discourse reported in the four- 
 teenth chapter. Imagine His saying to men 
 filled to the eyes with pride and jealousy, "In 
 my Father's house are many mansions. . . . 
 I go to prepare a place for you." Pic- 
 ture the effect of uttering in the presence 
 of men fairly bursting with selfish ambition 
 such a word as this, "Greater love hath no 
 man than this, that a man lay down his life 
 for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do 
 whatsoever I command you.'' Pearls before 
 swine, would be putting it mildly ! Therefore 
 He proceeded to wash their feet and by this 
 action which spoke more effectively than 
 words He also washed their minds and 
 hearts, making them sufficiently clean to 
 react under the message He had for them. 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 135 
 
 One man in the group protested. It was a 
 natural, instinctive, honorable protest. The 
 original brings the two terms of the contrast 
 together and thus into bolder relief, "Thou— 
 My !'' "Dost thou wash my feet ?" It was 
 unthinkable ! 
 
 Then Christ said to this reluctant soul, "If 
 I wash thee not thou hast no part with me." 
 If He might not take upon His heart the 
 needs of that other and weaker life, the 
 deeper fellowship possible between them 
 would be impeded. In the act of giving and 
 of receiving service by a helpfulness which 
 becomes reciprocal, the souls of men are knit 
 together as by nothing else. 
 
 Acts of kindness are tendered which can- 
 not be declined wathout loss. If in some 
 other way the child's need of food and 
 raiment, of shelter and education could be 
 supplied without calling upon the father and 
 the mother, it would be a sore loss to them as 
 well as to the child. It is blessed to give and 
 under appropriate conditions it is also 
 blessed to receive. The spirit of utter inde- 
 pendence of all one's fellows is abnormal and 
 blighting. We find that the hearts of those 
 who are associated and organized for a com- 
 
136 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 "mon service are by that relationship knit up 
 into the finest form of fellowship known. If 
 I serve not, I am cut off from fellowship with 
 those whose needs I might meet and I am cut 
 off as well from the fine fellowship of others 
 who also serve. 
 
 I wish to emphasize the mutuality of it. 
 There are those who have learned to give but 
 not to receive. They can serve but they show 
 themselves ugly and repellent when a service 
 they may sorely need is offered them. They 
 stand ready to wash the characters of their 
 neighbors with vigor and thoroughness, but 
 are unwilling to have a like service rendered 
 unto them though they too have faults abun- 
 dant. The only lives which develop normally, 
 becoming well-poised and serene, are those 
 that learn the art of give and take. The 
 weak need the kindly offices of the strong 
 and the strong are no less dependent upon 
 the presence of the weak for their full self- 
 realization. The principle of reciprocity is 
 vital to moral growth. 
 
 "What a world it would be," I once heard 
 a woman say, impatient under certain de- 
 mands made upon her, "if every one would 
 only take care of himself, bearing his own 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICR 137 
 
 burdens, paying- his own debts, overcoming 
 his own temptations, without troubhng other 
 people." What a world indeed— a world 
 none of us would wish to stay in over night. 
 We should have a world of self-sufficient, 
 self-centered individuals standing apart in 
 moral isolation, cold and unsympathetic as 
 so many blocks of ice. What the poets have 
 sung and the prophets have foretold is a 
 kingdom ruled and welded into a whole by a 
 sympathetic spirit. The social ideal which 
 kindles our own hearts is that of a republic 
 of souls free and brave but unified by the 
 spirit of mutual helpfulness. We can only 
 attain unto that by bearing one another's 
 burdens in that mutuality of service which 
 becomes the glorious fulfillment of the law of 
 Christ. 
 
 The utility of associated and organized 
 effort is one of the most significant facts in 
 this modern world. The presence of labor 
 unions means that the individual working- 
 man is no longer compelled to stand alone 
 and helpless before his employer who may be 
 a mighty corporation. By the principle of 
 collective bargaining his personal interests 
 are bound up in a common bundle with the 
 
138 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 interests of a thousand or of ten thousand of 
 his fellows, and their united voice in any dis- 
 puted question comes to be regarded. 
 
 By this principle of association individual 
 workingmen do not go about bidding the 
 bread out of each other's mouths because of 
 pressing personal necessity. The single man 
 does not consent to a lower wage than the 
 man with a family can afford to accept in 
 order to get his job away from him. The man 
 of phenomenal strength and endurance does 
 not for the sake of currying favor with his 
 employer, consent to a length of working day 
 or to a pace in industry which the average 
 man finds impossible. "We stand together 
 and bear one another's burdens in a mutu- 
 ality of service," workingmen everywhere 
 are saying, "by this principle of associated 
 effort." 
 
 And the employers uniting in their agen- 
 cies against frauds, against firms or indi- 
 viduals who habitually fail to pay their bills, 
 against fire and all the untoward incidents of 
 commercial life are illustrating the same law 
 of mutuality in service. Life insurance and 
 fire insurance companies are organized ex- 
 pressions of the fraternal spirit. The burden 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 139 
 
 of fire or of death does not fall upon a single 
 group; it is shared by all those whose pay- 
 ment of premiums has helped to create the 
 fund out of which the loss is relieved. It is 
 the law of life. No man should, and in the 
 long run no man can, live unto himself. We 
 are all by nature members one of another, 
 and the highest self-realization can only come 
 through the acceptance of that fundamental 
 principle. 
 
 Here we find the ultimate warrant for the 
 organization of religious aspiration and ef- 
 fort in what is known as ''the church." We 
 do not claim that some mysterious and saving 
 potency resides in the very structure of these 
 ecclesiastical institutions, actually determin- 
 ing the eternal destiny of men as they become 
 or fail to become enrolled members of the 
 visible organization. The church, whatever 
 name it bears — and I use the term here in 
 the broadest sense as including the Protes- 
 tant, the Catholic, and the Hebrew — is simply 
 a certain section of the religious sentiment of 
 the community organized and ready to take 
 the field for needed action. 
 
 There are those who say that they have no 
 need of the church, that they can be religious 
 
I40 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 at home, quite apart from all public worship 
 or organized effort. And having said this 
 they commonly feel that they have dis- 
 charged their entire obligation tow^ard or- 
 ganized religion. They could teach their 
 own children at home too, but on the whole 
 the public schools and the colleges do it better 
 for the community at large. Viewed solely 
 from the standpoint of personal interest, he 
 would be a foolish man who would turn away 
 from all schools and colleges, universities 
 and public libraries, on the ground that he 
 could hammer out a bit of learning on his 
 own little anvil at home. 
 
 In the last analysis it is a practical ques- 
 tion. How many of those people who do 
 entirely dissociate themselves from the life 
 of the church, habitually spend one hour a 
 week in reading the Scriptures, in prayer or 
 in direct and resolute attention to some fur- 
 ther phase of Christian duty and privilege? 
 The lack of fellowship in the life of aspira- 
 tion commonly weakens the spirit of aspira- 
 tion. The president of Bowdoin College 
 states the principle clearly, "The life of ser- 
 vice revealed by Christ and begotten in us by 
 the Spirit, demands a socially effective or- 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 141 
 
 ganization and expression that those who 
 share this life may be bound closely together, 
 that the enthusiasm of it may be kept alive, 
 and that those who are losing it may be 
 brought to share in its blessings and privi- 
 leges/' 
 
 It is a distinct loss to any soul to lack this 
 sense of union with the great body of aspir- 
 ing men. It must be strange for any one 
 to travel in Europe, visiting the mighty 
 cathedrals reared by religious aspiration, 
 studying the masterpieces of painting and 
 sculpture wrought out under the stimulus of 
 religious emotion, hearing the music of the 
 greatest oratorios or the opera of Parsifal 
 with religion as their theme, and to feel 
 throughout that he is a stranger and a for- 
 eigner in that mighty kingdom where all this 
 was produced. He must be conscious that 
 for some reason he has not become a natural- 
 ized citizen with a recognized domicile in any 
 one of the states which make up the republic 
 of God, standing as it does for so much en- 
 richment in the world's history. The noblest 
 life cannot be lived thus detached. It needs 
 to find institutional expression and institu- 
 tional fellowship. The cultivation of spir- 
 
142 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 itual life entirely apart from any branch of 
 the church, Protestant, Catholic, or Hebrew, 
 is like the task of cultivating patriotism in a 
 man who refuses allegiance to any country. 
 
 I have listened reverently to the service of 
 the Mass according to the Roman Catholic 
 ritual in St. Peter's at Rome ; I have heard a 
 chorus of a hundred men chant the liturgy of 
 the Greek Church in the Cathedral in the 
 Kremlin at Moscow ; and I have heard a rude 
 choir of Indian boys sing the old Gregorian 
 chants in a Russian mission on the west coast 
 of Alaska. I have heard the call to prayer 
 from the minaret and have seen devout Mos- 
 lems prostrate in worship in the Mosque of 
 St. Sophia at Constantinople ; I have watched 
 the tear-stained faces of devout Jews pour- 
 ing out their hearts before that fragment of 
 the old Temple enclosure at the Jews' Wail- 
 ing Place in Jerusalem. I have seen the 
 Buddhist priests leading .the worship of the 
 Japanese in the great Hongwanji Temple at 
 Kyoto ; and I have studied the stolid faces of 
 the Chinese in their Joss Houses in old 
 Shanghai. And although in every case the 
 mode of worship and the language in which 
 it was offered were utterly unlike my own, 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 143 
 
 the essential spirit of what I saw in them all 
 was akin to what I find in my own breast. 
 In that common sense of dependence upon 
 and of kinship with the Unseen, in that deep 
 yearning and longing for a more effective 
 sense of fellowship with the divine, we were 
 all one. I shared with them all this wide- 
 spread and persistent hunger of the heart. 
 And the deepest instinct of my soul would 
 impel me to seek admission into some branch 
 of the church universal which organizes and 
 socializes this aspiration. 
 
 We have laid so much stress upon indi- 
 vidualism in this new country of political 
 equality and unparalleled personal oppor- 
 tunity that we have only partially appre- 
 hended the value of institutionalism. We are 
 beginning to learn more fully that the indi- 
 vidual only realizes himself through combi- 
 nation with other individuals. 
 
 When the Hebrews returned from Bal)y- 
 lon and began to restore the walls of Jerusa- 
 lem "every man built over against his own 
 house." He found his particular respon- 
 sibility at his own door. But in meeting that 
 particular responsibility he had a glad sense 
 that the portion of wall laid up by his hands 
 
144 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 would help to guard the domestic and com- 
 mercial interests of all the other men in the 
 city. And his heart was reassured by the 
 feeling that he in turn would enjoy a more 
 complete safety consequent upon their efforts 
 in wall building. 
 
 It was this sense of connection with and 
 of participation in a larger movement which 
 uncovered to each individual Hebrew a 
 deeper source of motive. When he took up 
 his particular brick, the act seemed insignifi- 
 cant—it was only a bit of burnt clay laid in a 
 certain place. But when the brick went into 
 a wall, relating itself to millions of other 
 bricks, and when the completed wall sur- 
 rounded a city as its main defense, and when 
 that city was Jerusalem, the headquarters of 
 the Hebrew people who have so effectively 
 woven their history into the higher life of 
 the world through their poets, their prophets, 
 and their Messiah born in Bethlehem of 
 Judea, then the simple act of that man taking 
 a brick in his hand was clothed with a new 
 significance. He found his own self-reali- 
 zation, he found the deeper meaning of 
 his individual acts, he found motive and 
 stimulus prompting him to a finer fidelity in 
 the discharge of his particular duty, as he 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 145 
 
 felt his own life organized with that of hun- 
 dreds of other men in that vaster enter])rise. 
 The fact of organization makes the efforts 
 of all and the efforts of each more effective, 
 and it also develops a profounder sense of 
 sympathy. We learn to keep step with the 
 whole company marching in one direction 
 under a common banner. Each man's cour- 
 age is augmented as he touches elbows with 
 his fellows and hears the tread of marching 
 men conscious that he too is contributing to 
 that combined result. Not even the personal 
 assurance of divine help can take the place 
 of that sense of reinforcement which comes 
 when we see the look of interest in other 
 faces like our own face and feel the hand 
 clasp of personal fellowship which brings 
 love within arm's length and becomes an 
 earnest of the combined strength of that 
 army of aspiring men with which w^e are 
 allied. 
 
 '' Who cares for the burden, the night and the 
 rain, 
 And the long, steep lonesome road. 
 When at last through the darkness a light 
 
 shines plain. 
 When a voice calls ' Hail ' and a friend draws rein, 
 With an arm for the stubborn load." 
 
146 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 " For life is the chance of a friend or two 
 This side of the journey's goal. 
 Though the world be a desert the long night 
 
 through 
 Yet the gay flowers bloom and the sky shows 
 blue 
 When a soul salutes a soul." 
 
 It is written that where two or three are 
 gathered together in a certain name, that is 
 to say in a certain high mood and for a cer- 
 tain lofty purpose, reinforcements will come 
 ensuring victory. ''Where two or three are 
 gathered together in my name, there am I in 
 the midst." The claim is well supported by 
 the facts of psychology as well as by the high 
 assertions of theology. Powerful reactions 
 come both perpendicularly and horizontally 
 when men are banded together for worthy 
 ends and these reinforcements become deci- 
 sive. Each one feels and shares in the 
 strength of the pack. 
 
 By the association of effort, individual 
 energy is multiplied in a kind of geometrical 
 ratio. "One of you shall chase a thousand, 
 and two shall put," not two thousand as we 
 might naturally suppose but, "ten thousand 
 to flight." This was the promise made of old 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 147 
 
 and it was no mere play upon words or the 
 idle boast of an ungrounded enthusiasm. 
 Any man lined up with other men for some 
 exalted purpose, feeling in himself a gener- 
 ous measure of tlicir allied strength, per- 
 suaded of ultimate victory all the more surely 
 because of a certain contagion of courage, 
 multipHes his own normal strength by five. 
 Thus if one righteous man chases a thousand 
 evil doers, two such men organized for ac- 
 tion may put ten thousand to flight. It is 
 significant that the original twelve apostles 
 went out "two by two.'* This w^as fellowship 
 in service reduced to its lowest possible 
 terms, but it was far and away better than 
 the loneliness of unorganized effort. 
 
 In service there is also developed a new 
 sense of fellowship with the divine. In the 
 life of the One who stands as the supreme 
 historical manifestation of what is godlike, 
 the spirit of service is most conspicuous. *T 
 came not to do mine own will but His." "I 
 am among you as one that serveth." 'The 
 Son of Man is come not to be served but to 
 serve and to give his life for the moral re- 
 covery of many." 
 
 His standard of values was based alto- 
 
148 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 g-ether upon this principle of service. "Among 
 the Gentiles the great ones exercise domin- 
 ion. It shall not be so among you. He that 
 would be chief among you let him serve. 
 The greatest of all is the servant of all.'' 
 Usefulness is greatness and there is none 
 other. 
 
 It follows then inevitably that the direct 
 pathway into fellowship with the divine lies 
 along the line of useful service. The Master 
 who made this word of service flesh, causing 
 it to dwell among us full of grace and truth, 
 identified Himself directly with the need of 
 the world. He felt it so intensely and sym- 
 pathetically as to make it His own. "I was 
 hungry and ye gave me meat. I was naked 
 and ye clothed me. I was sick and in prison 
 and ye visited me.'' He uttered these words 
 not as a glowing figure of speech but as the 
 sober statement of a fact of experience. And 
 when men gave food to the hungry, raiment 
 to the unclothed, and visited the lowliest of 
 those who were sick or imprisoned, they 
 were by those acts of kindness brought into 
 immediate fellowship with Him. "Inasmuch 
 as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it 
 unto me." 
 
FELLOWSHIP TIIROUCilF SI^RVTCF^ 
 
 149 
 
 In view of the fact that our highest con- 
 ception of the divine shows a nature not 
 standing apart in sacred majesty or in pas- 
 sive contemplation of the world's pain, but in 
 active and ceaseless ministry to its need, it 
 is evident that we can best experience a sense 
 of fellowship with the divine through loving 
 service. Not in mystic contemplation or in 
 strivings after spiritual ecstasies, but in the 
 direct consecration of one's best powers to 
 the meeting of human need do we best come 
 to know the presence and the help of God. 
 When any man undertakes to save his own 
 soul by withdrawing from the ordinary secu- 
 lar activities of the world lest he should be 
 contaminated by evil, and spends his strength 
 in seeking rapt communion with the Most 
 High, he loses it. When any man goes into 
 the thick of the fight and invests his life in 
 heroic service to the point where he loses 
 sight of his own immediate personal inter- 
 ests, he finds his life and keeps it unto life 
 eternal. 
 
 The deeper understanding of the doctrine 
 of atonement comes less by theological re- 
 search than by the insight which springs 
 from the life of devoted service. We may 
 
I50 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 be puzzled and confused by some of the 
 learned efforts to accurately appraise and 
 adjust the benefits of Christ's sacrifice of 
 Himself, but as active participants in the 
 work of moral recovery we find a truer 
 method of interpretation.^ ''Nothing short 
 of this experience of earnest service and un- 
 flinching sacrifice for the triumph of God's 
 will and the good of man can interpret to us 
 to-day the meaning of the sacrifice of Christ. 
 Every man 'who has tried to do these things 
 in any degree knows full well that there can 
 be no salvation either from sin or from the 
 misery sin entails on guilty and innocent 
 alike, save by the vicarious sacrifice of some 
 brave, generous servant of righteousness and 
 benefactor of his fellows. The doctrine of 
 atonement is self-evident to every man who 
 has ever fought intrenched and powerful evil 
 or sought to rescue the wicked from their 
 wickedness. While to those who have never 
 touched the fearful burden of human sin and 
 misery with so much as the tips of their 
 dainty and critical fingers the doctrine of 
 vicarious suffering, like all the deeper 
 truths of the spiritual life, must remain 
 
 1 ** God's Education of Man."— ^w. Dewitt Hyde. 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 151 
 
 forever an unintelligible and inii)cnclrable 
 mystery." 
 
 If any man will take upon his own heart 
 his full share of the shame and the wrong in 
 civic life, by seeking to have the principles of 
 equity stand fast and bear rule, he will by 
 that public spirited service be brought into 
 such fellowship with the divine purpose as to 
 understand sympathetically the deeper mean- 
 ing of life. If any pure-hearted woman will 
 take upon her heart something of the burden 
 of shame and sorrow which has fallen upon 
 the less fortunate of her sex by defective 
 training, by false social standards, and by 
 the pressure of inequitable economic condi- 
 tions quite as much as through their own 
 evil choices, she will enter into the deeper 
 meaning of redemption. If any of you shall 
 go into unfavored communities and take 
 upon your consciences a full measure of re- 
 sponsibility for the lives which remain sordid 
 and unaspiring through their lack of the 
 ministry of education at its best, you will in 
 that very task learn the method of moral re- 
 covery through sacrifice. 
 
 I have emphasized the high privilege of 
 fellowship, human and divine, to be attained 
 
152 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 by unselfish service, because I wish to bring 
 out the joy of Christian living under these 
 modern conditions of thought and action. 
 The medieval asceticism and religious morti- 
 fication of the flesh were in the nature of a 
 protest, a much needed protest it may be, 
 against the untrammelled license and coarse 
 indulgence of that period. But in the very 
 nature of the case that mode of life could 
 never be accepted as an ultimate ideal. 
 
 "If thy right hand," the trained and choice 
 faculty, "cause thee to stumble, cut it off." 
 It is better to enter into life maimed than 
 having two hands to make moral shipwreck. 
 It is better to cut the hand off than to steal 
 or to forge with it. It is better to pluck the 
 right eye out than to look approvingly upon 
 evil. It is better to cut the right foot off 
 and sit down the rest of one's days or rely 
 upon a crutch, than to walk with springing 
 step in the path of wrong doing. "Betters- 
 aye, verily, amputation of faculty is better 
 than degradation ! 
 
 If the choice lay entirely between these 
 two options then amputation of the various 
 faculties and interests which cause men to 
 stumble would be forever preferable to deg- 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 153 
 
 radation. But there is a third option— the 
 best choice Hes in that course of action which 
 leads to the consecration of these faculties 
 and interests to worthy use, allowing them 
 to find therein that full self-realization which 
 is their salvation. Degradation, amputation, 
 consecration— the second is always better 
 than the first, but best of all is that conse- 
 cration of faculty to worthy use which yields 
 the full joy of Christian service. 
 
 You will best construe the Christian life 
 under modern conditions as you do it in 
 terms of privilege rather than in terms of 
 hard moral necessity. Christianity is not a 
 new and more exacting set of rules than are 
 found in the Ten Commandments. It is not 
 a more searching system of ethics to become 
 at once the allurement and the despair of our 
 faulty moral natures. The Christian mes- 
 sage is a gospel, a piece of good news, the 
 announcement of privilege which stands be- 
 fore us like a wide open door. 
 
 And duty, under the Christian regime, is 
 not a hard impersonal thing holding the 
 moral nature as in a vise. Duty is the loving 
 sense of compulsion from within which a 
 man feels when in a filial spirit he recognizes 
 
154 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 that his interests and the Eternal Father's 
 interests are all one. His sense of duty im- 
 pels and permits him to say, ''I must be about 
 my Father's business." He asks nothing 
 better than to share in the Father's work and 
 to share in the ultimate reward of it. 
 
 When we thus rightly conceive of it the 
 pathway of duty is no longer a way of de- 
 pressing and hopeless failure, consequent 
 upon the gap between our highest ideals and 
 our actual achievements. It becomes a way 
 of gradual growth where a child by a regular 
 organic process adds cubit after cubit to his 
 moral stature, moving the while up toward 
 the full expectation cherished on his behalf 
 by a benign Father. We are being judged at 
 this hour not by the measure of perfection 
 we are able to show in our actual achieve- 
 ments, but rather according to the purposes 
 which have become fundamental and con- 
 trolling in our lives, according to the long- 
 ings and aspirations which furnish impulse 
 for all our efforts. And therein lies the glo- 
 rious liberty and surpassing joy of the chil- 
 dren of God. 
 
 Duty is privilege. Right character lies in 
 the purpose to enter progressively into the 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 155 
 
 fulness of that privilege. And the highest 
 reward for duty well done springs from this 
 sense of personal participation in an august 
 moral enterprise presided over by the Father. 
 
 It was once my good fortune to hear Fred- 
 erick W. Seward, who was Acting Secretary 
 of State in April, 1865, during the illness of 
 his father, William H. Seward, describe to a 
 small group of friends the last Cabinet meet- 
 ing which Lincoln attended. After the som- 
 ber experiences through which they had been 
 passing for four years this was a meeting of 
 good cheer. Lee had surrendered and the 
 terms offered him by General Grant had been 
 approved. Sherman was pressing Johnson's 
 army so close that its surrender seemed only 
 a question of hours— and that would end the 
 war. All the members of the Cabinet felt 
 that a great load was being rolled away. 
 
 When the business of the hour had been 
 despatched, Lincoln walked to the window 
 which looked toward the South as if he saw 
 in a vision those scenes which had cost the 
 nation so much blood and treasure. 'It has 
 been a hard struggle," he said, half aloud 
 and half to himself, ''but it is about over, 
 thank God." The next night he fell by the 
 
156 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 hand of the assassin. And though his last 
 hours were hours of physical distress and 
 though the noble head was marred by a 
 bullet-hole, there was a look of exaltation 
 upon his face as he lay in state in the Capitol 
 at Washington— Capitol still of the whole 
 United States, his casket draped in the na- 
 tional colors with all the stars together in 
 one common field of blue and now too pure 
 to float above a slave. There was that high 
 look of exaltation upon his face as if he, too, 
 through the faithful performance of duty, 
 through the maintenance of the spirit of de- 
 voted service, had entered fully into the joy 
 of his Lord. 
 
 The greatest thing which life does for any 
 man is to cause him to love. Three things 
 abide, faith, hope, love, and "the greatest of 
 these is love." And we only learn to love j.s 
 we learn to serve. 
 
 On that road from Jerusalem to Jericho 
 three men walked in a never-to-be-forgotten- 
 procession. The priest who came first wa^^. 
 a man who preached about love. He knev.' 
 that the first and great commandment in the 
 law was *Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart'' and that the second was 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 157 
 
 like unto it, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself." But when he saw the wounded 
 traveler at the roadside, bloody, dusty, and 
 half-dead, the disagreeable task of doing 
 something for his relief was too much for 
 the priest. He passed by on the other side, 
 showing that with all his beautiful talk he 
 had not learned to love because he had not 
 learned to serve. 
 
 The Levite who came next was a singer. 
 In the Temple service at Jerusalem he had 
 sung anthems about love as sweet as the 
 songs of the angels. And when he saw the 
 wounded traveler he came and looked on him, 
 but he too passed by on the other side. He 
 could look down but he had not learned the 
 high art of getting down to the place where 
 he could render useful service — and thus he 
 showed himself defective in love. 
 
 But a certain Samaritan as he journeyed 
 saw the wounded man and went to him, pour- 
 ing in oil and wine— a little oil on the band- 
 ages to make them soft, and a little wine 
 down the sufferer's throat to revive him, for 
 he was half-dead. He then got him up and 
 set him on his own beast and took him to an 
 inn and took care of him. This was love. 
 
158 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 This is the man whose portrait is held before 
 us, and when we inquire as to what we shall 
 do to inherit eternal life, we are bidden to 
 ''Go and do likewise." The good Samaritan 
 had learned to love without pretense because 
 he had learned to serve. 
 
 It is in this high privilege of service that 
 we find the strongest motive impelling us to 
 righteousness. The spirit of prudence, a 
 wholesome regard for the approbation of 
 others, the desire for one's own permanent 
 well-being, all these deter men from evil and 
 incite them to good. There is, however, a 
 more powerful incentive than any of these 
 considerations are able to furnish. From the 
 upper room Christ looked out upon the pain 
 and the evil of the w^orld, and thinking of its 
 sore need of such a life and of such service 
 as it lay within His power to furnish. He 
 named that motive which transcends all the 
 rest. "For their sakes, I sanctify myself." 
 He found in an intelligent social sympathy 
 the deepest source of motive. He w^as moved 
 from within to pledge Himself to the highest 
 He saw by the fact that the world about Him 
 needed that type of life beyond all else. For 
 their sakes, I will live this life! 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 159 
 
 It is a irrotive which holds where other 
 motives fail, both as a deterrent from evil 
 and as an incentive to right. When you ap- 
 peal on the ground of self-interest, you may 
 tell some man that if he lives an evil life he 
 will go to hell when he dies. He may laugh 
 in your face and tell you that he does not 
 believe there is any such place— and you can- 
 not instantly demonstrate to him the sound- 
 ness of your claim. You may urge him to 
 become a Christian on the ground that his 
 refusal will entail upon him a certain loss to 
 his inner and finer nature. With a shrug of 
 his shoulders he may inform you that this is 
 his own affair, that if he does suffer loss he 
 will bear it like a man and not whine. 
 
 But let such a man really feel that the well- 
 being of other lives is at stake in the course 
 of action he elects— and no man stands so 
 isolated from other lives he could serve but 
 that this is true— and you have a new and 
 more powerful lever to pry his reluctant con- 
 science into action. Let him feel that some 
 one, a mother, a wife, or a child, a friend, a 
 neighbor, or a pupil, will suffer loss and hurt 
 if he turns from the higher to the lower and 
 he will feel the force of those considerations 
 
i6o THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 which spring into being because of the 
 capacity each man has to serve the lives of 
 others. He may fling away his own chance 
 but the thought of flinging away that portion 
 of their chance to reach the best, for which 
 he stands responsible, gives him pause. 
 
 Here we find the mightiest of all deter- 
 rents against the coarser vices. Gambling, 
 drunkenness, and licentiousness are only pos- 
 sible in the absence of any genuine social in- 
 terest. In gambling the pleasure of one 
 man's gain is always purchased at the pain 
 of another's loss. In legitimate business it 
 is not so. When I buy a suit of clothes from 
 the tailor we are both profited. I would 
 rather have the suit than the money for I 
 cannot go about the streets dressed in a few 
 bank notes. He would rather have the money 
 than the suit for he cannot eat his cloth. But 
 in gambling, the low grade of pleasure in 
 one's own gain is always purchased at the 
 cost of another's pain in losing. 
 
 In the vice of drunkenness the tippler must 
 be made to see that the tickling of his own 
 stomach, the warmth and glow and exhilara- 
 tion which intoxicants bring, are all pur- 
 chased by the loss and pain which must come 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE i6i 
 
 upon those whose hves arc intinialely bound 
 up with his own, through his lack of self- 
 control. 
 
 And in social impurity the man who for 
 an hour of guilty gratification is willing to 
 become one of a class of men who doom a 
 company of weak, vain, misguided girls to a 
 degradation no man would choose for his 
 own daughter or sister, who sentence them 
 to a swift and terrible descent into physical 
 and moral hell — the man who pretends to 
 find pleasure in that is lower than the canni- 
 bal or the beast. The cannibal and the hyena 
 mar and eat only the bodies of their victims, 
 while this devilish contempt for the interests 
 of another life mutilates the mind and heart 
 as well. "For their sakes, even more than 
 for my own sake," the decent man says, "I '11 
 none of it.'' The appeal to high school fel- 
 lows and to college men for clean living can 
 be best made when the form of motive is thus 
 socialized. 
 
 This fine bit of moral experience came un- 
 der my notice not long ago in my own city in 
 California. There was a mother who had 
 undergone a capital operation. She did not 
 rally afterward; the loss of blood and the 
 
i62 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 nervous shock of it brought her to the very 
 verge of death. The surgeons in consuUa- 
 tion decided that she could not possibly re- 
 cover unless something radical was done at 
 once, that indeed her only hope lay in the 
 transfusion of blood from some healthy, 
 vigorous nature. 
 
 The mother had three sons, great, strapping 
 fellows in the heyday of their youth. They 
 at once offered themselves. The surgeons 
 examined them to see which one would be 
 the best subject for that critical undertaking. 
 The examination showed them all sound, 
 clean, and abundantly alive. They were 
 weighed in the balance of severe medical 
 scrutiny and they were not found wanting. 
 Any one of the three would meet the test. 
 If one of them had been tainted by some 
 wretched vice, if his vitality had been low- 
 ered by some wicked indulgence, he would 
 have been cut off from the chance of render- 
 ing that high service to the mother in her 
 hour of need. One of them was selected and 
 the artery of strength was connected with 
 the veins of weakness, and then the heart of 
 the young man, clean in every sense of the 
 word, pumped into that life, which trembled 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 163 
 
 on the brink, a fresh store of vitality. By 
 this transfusion of blood the mother's life 
 was saved and restored. 
 
 What a glorious privilege to be able to 
 shov^ oneself fit to meet the demands of any 
 exacting service. For her sake, for the sake 
 of that other life which I may be able to 
 save in some crisis, physical, intellectual, or 
 moral, I will live the life myself! It fur- 
 nishes the strongest form of motive in the 
 moral field. 
 
 The song of trust and of aspiration has 
 been hushed in many hearts these days by 
 the changing conditions of religious belief. 
 When some man believed in an infallible 
 church or in an infallible book or in some 
 system of doctrine implicitly accepted, faith 
 was easy and he found himself singing. But 
 the study of history and of science, of liter- 
 ature and of philosophy, has changed all this 
 for the man of intelligence. He can no 
 longer take his faith upon the authority of 
 another. He feels impelled to work out his 
 own theological salvation with fear and 
 trembling. And because the task is hard he 
 often feels that he cannot sing the Lord's 
 song in this strange land. 
 
i64 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 Not only changes in theological belief but 
 a changed attitude in regard to man's moral 
 freedom has a tendency to silence the song. 
 "Heredity and environment have us bound 
 hand and foot," men are saying. Man does, 
 not as he chooses, but as he must. Whatever 
 is, had to be and whatever will be, will be, 
 whether we like it or not. This gloomy, pes- 
 simistic determinism is not confined to the 
 dark closets of a few philosophers; it is 
 boldly preached from the housetops and on 
 the street corners. When men thus feel 
 themselves a part of that which is nothing 
 more than mechanism, the song of hope is 
 hushed. 
 
 And the song of aspiration has been si- 
 lenced in other hearts by the changing and 
 advancing ideals in the world of industry. 
 It is being insisted upon, man- fashion, that 
 fortunes shall be won as well as spent or 
 given away by methods which harmonize 
 with the higher ideals in life. It was a clever 
 paraphrase which said, "A new command- 
 ment give I unto you that ye remember the 
 week day to keep it holy.'' It seems impos- 
 sible to many people to reconcile Christian 
 ethics with the present economic conditions 
 
FELLOWSHIP THROUGH SERVICE 165 I 
 
 under which we are compelled to live. And 
 because they are unwilling to sing on Sunday 
 what they do not see their way clear to prac- , 
 
 tice on Monday, they declare their inability ' 
 
 to sing the Lord's song in such a strange ' 
 
 land. 
 
 What shall we say in the face of it all? 
 The task of keeping the faith and of singing \ 
 
 the song of trust has become undoubtedly j 
 
 a different and a harder task. The changed J 
 religious beliefs of the people, the new psy- 
 chology making this human nature of ours j 
 seem a more complex affair, the emergence ' 
 of more exacting ideals in the world of in- , 
 dustry will of necessity modify the song. 
 
 But all this need not, it must not, drown it. 
 The finer discrimination in matters of belief, 
 the deeper sense of all that is involved in this ' 
 
 mysterious thing we call personality, and the j 
 moral heroism demanded in undertaking to ; 
 
 make the six days of labor as holy as the i 
 seventh day of rest and worship, all this will 
 only serve to bring out new notes and finer < 
 accents in the song of the higher life. The \ 
 very difficulty and vastness of the undertak- ! 
 
 ing will serve to make the "attack" of the 
 singers more sharply defined and will add ! 
 
i66 THE MODERN MAN'S RELIGION 
 
 richness and impressiveness to the final vol- 
 ume of praise rising from the lips of men 
 devoted to this bolder enterprise. The song 
 of aspiration v^ill be sung in this changed 
 land and the music of it will help to make it 
 the Lord's land. It will be sung from throats 
 attuned to these richer harmonies and from 
 hearts inspired by the wider vision of pos- 
 sible achievement. Thus through the joy 
 and fellowship of this broader service men 
 will enter more deeply into that form of 
 satisfaction worthy to be called "the joy of 
 their Lord.'' 
 

 Date Due 
 
 
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