THE OPPORTUNITY 
 FOR RELIGION 
 
 HARRY F. WARD 
 
 F- 
 
 ^' "' 1 
 
 1 
 
 BR 
 479 
 .W37 
 1919 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
tihrary of t:he t:heolo0ical ^tminavy 
 
 PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER 
 
 BR 479 .W37 1919 
 
 Ward, Harry Frederick, 187: 
 
 1966. 
 The opportunity for religic 
 in the present world 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 
 FOR RELIGION 
 
THE OPPORTUNIT 
 FOR RELIGIO 
 
 IN THE 
 
 PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRY F. WARD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE WOMANS PRESS 
 
 1919 
 
COPYRIGHT, 191 9, BY 
 HARRY F. WARD 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 1 7 
 
 II 21 
 
 ni 45 
 
 IV 56 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 
 FOR RELIGION 
 
 I 
 
 Of the much writing impelled by the Great 
 War, that which deals directly with religion 
 is a very small proportion. Of this, by far 
 the greater part is concerned with the prob- 
 lem of personal faith and conduct, or with 
 the effect of the war upon religion and the 
 churches in the days to come. There is 
 another phase of the subject that calls for 
 consideration. What opportunity does the 
 world crisis offer for religion to lead human- 
 ity into a better way of living.? The answer 
 to that question should point the path of 
 duty for the religious individual, and upon 
 the answer which the churches make to that 
 inquiry their future will most certainly de- 
 pend. 
 
8 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 The war has developed the demand and 
 opportunity for the reconstruction of society. 
 Practically all the social forces are now massed 
 in a mighty struggle to determine in what 
 kind of a world and in what manner hu- 
 manity shall live for a long time to come. 
 Religion is one of these forces. How is it 
 mobilized and to what end? Is there any 
 spiritual imperative that religion can bring 
 to bear upon the present world situation.'' 
 Is it able to translate its ideals into collec- 
 tive conduct, to give content to the duties 
 it has been teaching.? These are the ques- 
 tions that demand an answer, for the final 
 test of all religions is in the field of social 
 action. By what they have to contribute 
 to the welfare of humanity, is their ultimate 
 worth to be determined. 
 
 Of course when we speak of religion, it is 
 organized religion that is meant, and more 
 particularly the leaders of organized religion. 
 The term "church" is not adequate for our 
 purpose. It needs to be remembered that 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 9 
 
 organized religion to-day comprehends not 
 only the churches, but also a number of 
 other agencies for religious instruction and 
 propaganda. It needs still more to be re- 
 membered that in the modern world there 
 are large religious forces, actual and poten- 
 tial, without the bounds of all organized 
 religion, which can be mobilized and brought 
 to bear upon the present situation by an ad- 
 equate religious statesmanship. Such forces 
 are particularly to be found in the world of 
 labor. 
 
 The mind of the race is beginning to see 
 what the heart of mankind has long felt — 
 that there is no hope for humanity save in 
 the working out of world-democracy, and 
 world-democracy will never be developed 
 unless a common religious dynamic operates 
 among all peoples, of which humanity shall 
 become increasingly conscious and to which 
 it shall increasingly yield its allegiance. 
 
 A unique element in the present situation 
 is the extent to which mankind is conscious 
 
lo OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 that an hour of destiny has arrived. The 
 fateful hours of the past were not known to 
 many of those who Hved in them. They 
 were revealed afterward to the historian. 
 But the people of to-day have eaten plenti- 
 fully of the tree of knowledge. The laws of 
 the physical universe, the history of the 
 human race, the causes of social progress and 
 decay — these are all an open book before this 
 generation. The control of nature and of 
 human society is now in the hands of the 
 common people to an extent unimagined 
 by even the leaders of the past. Not blindly 
 as did men of other days do we take the 
 road. We are not walking in darkness. 
 
 The knowledge of the possibilities that 
 hang upon the outcome of this day is not 
 merely the property of the wise men of the 
 universities. All over the earth the plain 
 people are taking the destiny of the race into 
 their hands. This issue will not be decided 
 by a few leaders gambling with the lives 
 of the masses. The '* silent masses'* are 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION ii 
 
 everywhere becoming articulate. The voice 
 of the weaker and more backward peoples is 
 heard. Their interests are now to be con- 
 sidered. The Orient takes its place be- 
 side the Occident. Japan and China enter 
 into the family of nations with power. The 
 common people of India get unto themselves 
 self-government. Never before have so many 
 peoples been consciously joined together in 
 the choosing of their future. It is indeed 
 mankind deciding its destiny. 
 
 Yet it is still true that in every laud large 
 numbers of people are not conscious of the 
 issue of the hour and many more are only 
 partially enlightened concerning it. These 
 are often the so-called *' better class" of 
 people. In this fact lies one opportunity 
 and duty for religion. As it makes a man 
 conscious of his moral choices, so must it 
 make the nations conscious of the results 
 that will follow their decision. Its educa- 
 tional and preaching processes can be used 
 to that end. There is a penalty in store for 
 
12 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 the priests who let the people perish for lack 
 of knowledge, who suffer them to be led as 
 sheep to the slaughter, by their own igno- 
 rance and prejudice, the wiles of selfish lead- 
 ers, and the influence of a designing press. 
 The fact that the people have the power to 
 decide is no guarantee that they will make 
 a deliberate decision. Professor George A, 
 Coe has pointed out the difference between 
 the action of a crowd and of a deliberative 
 group. It is the duty of religion to develop 
 the people into a deliberative group, that 
 they may decide their own fate and the fate 
 of the future intelligently, with a full knowl- 
 edge of the whole situation and of all the issues 
 involved in it. 
 
 The people must be brought to see life 
 whole. At present they see it only partially, 
 and usually from the standpoint of self- 
 interest. One of the tragedies of the hour is 
 that those who seek human welfare honestly, 
 see only one side of it. This blinding of 
 vision by self-interest has determined the 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 13 
 
 policy of religious and labor groups which 
 were pledged to seek the good of all humanity. 
 How much has their action been determined 
 or will it be determined by some secret, half- 
 recognized hope of advantage to themselves ? 
 How much is their point of view determined 
 by the environment and training of their ' 
 class interests? Religion should help men to 
 rise above such narrow ground. It should 
 give them knowledge of the whole situation 
 and lead them to consider the interest of all. 
 If the world is left in this hour of emergency 
 to depend upon self-interest, it will be left to 
 the mercy of an unreliable guide, for self- 
 interest generally leads only to the satisfac- 
 tion of immediate needs and desires. It is 
 always difficult to see the larger and longer 
 self-interest of following the ideal, to perceive 
 the good that comes to one's self by seeking 
 the good of others. Yet to get men and 
 nations to seek this larger self-interest, to 
 act for the good of the whole, is one of the 
 special functions of religion. 
 
14 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 If mankind is to make an intelligent choice 
 in this situation, it must not only know the 
 consequences of its decision, it must not only 
 have in mind the interests of the whole of 
 humanity; it must also see clearly the nature 
 of the choice that is before it. It must know 
 just what it is choosing. The question 
 now before the house of humanity is the 
 prevention of war. But behind war is the 
 philosophy of the state that needs mili- 
 tarism for its support, and behind that is the 
 social system out of which war emerges. 
 
 The ultimate fact behind the recent world- 
 conflict is that the work life of the world is 
 organized around the spirit of greed and 
 conquest. No stable and enduring peace 
 can be created without reckoning with this 
 fact. If mankind would save itself from 
 wasting death by a continued series of con- 
 flicts, it must find a new manner of living in 
 times of peace. It is a choice not simply 
 between two principles of government, but 
 between two philosophies of life. The world 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 15 
 
 must choose between life organized around 
 the principle of strife, and life organized 
 around the principle of good will. The way 
 out of war and its horrors is not by paper 
 pacts merely, but by the creation of a new 
 world. It is not merely a question of new 
 political constitutions or of new forms of 
 social organization; it is also a question of 
 motives and organizing principle. Shall civ- 
 ilization seek property or life, the creation 
 of goods or the development of humanity .f' 
 Shall its organizing principle be strife or 
 love, service or exploitation, the right of 
 the strong, as individuals and a class, to 
 rule, or the duty of the strong to serve ? 
 
 The choice now is between the religion of 
 war and the religion of peace. The religion 
 of war is glorious. It calls out all the ener- 
 gies of life in supreme moments of conflict. 
 But it hurts and destroys. It is the religion 
 of aristocracy. It makes supermen, who live 
 in palaces. And they have many servants 
 all over the earth, who do not live in palaces. 
 
i6 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 The religion of love is more glorious. It also 
 requires courage, endurance, sacrifice. It 
 calls out all the energies of life in a continu- 
 ous conflict with nature and with evil, in a 
 sustained career of service. It does not hurt 
 or destroy, it heals and renews. It is the 
 religion of democracy. It makes not lords 
 but freemen, who choose to be "suffering 
 servants'' and who live not in palaces, but in 
 carpenter shops. It develops a society of 
 producers cooperating together in the pro- 
 duction of economic goods and using them 
 for the development of all the higher values 
 of life, not for a chosen few, but for all the 
 people. 
 
 The tendency of our times is to be content 
 with the mere mechanics of change. Is re- 
 ligion at fault? Then let us see what is the 
 matter with the churches. Let us get feder- 
 ation instead of competition; but that fed- 
 eration, having the same inadequate forms 
 of religious expression, brings yet no new 
 note into the spiritual life. In a day when 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 17 
 
 the present world-order is proving inade- 
 quate for both the practical needs and the 
 spiritual desires of man, those of us who are 
 Christians may well remember that weighty- 
 word of Chesterton that ''the characteristic 
 demand of Christianity is for a new world." 
 To make that new world, religion must now 
 challenge mankind. But if there is to be a 
 new world, then religion, too, must have new 
 forms of expression. 
 
 The need for a new world is a challenge to 
 the will of man, and religion always makes its 
 central appeal to the will. Religious workers 
 in our training camps remarked upon the 
 fact that the outstanding characteristic of 
 the majority of the men was the lack of any 
 definite or conscious purpose. They were 
 living, and apparently were going to fight, 
 without any aim. This fact is a revelation 
 of the nature of our industrial civilization. 
 Its largest conscious motive being the mere 
 production of goods, it leaves the mass of 
 mankind with nothing to do and no motive 
 
1 8 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 in life but to make or earn money and then 
 to spend it. It is the business of rehgion 
 to give Hfe an aim, to fasten its eyes upon a 
 high goal, and then to develop the will to 
 hold the lagging feet in the path that leads 
 thither. In a time when the nations who sit 
 in darkness are seeking for light, when the 
 peoples of the earth are treading together the 
 wine-press of sorrow and suffering and cannot 
 see the way out, it should be the distinction 
 of religion to call the world to a great pur- 
 pose. 
 
 One of the perils of the hour is that religious 
 leaders should uncritically assume that such 
 democratic gains have already come out of 
 the war, that it will inevitably become a 
 great instrument of social progress. But 
 whatever gains have been achieved in the 
 national control of industry, and in the 
 increase of collective action, can easily be 
 used for the strengthening of militarism. Or 
 they can become the tools of a people seek- 
 ing nothing higher than the increase of 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 19 
 material goods. The social gains of war 
 time have yet to become the possessions of 
 all the people, to be dedicated to the spiritual 
 advancement of the whole race. 
 
 To make the choice that will lift humanity 
 to new heights of living requires a great effort 
 of the collective will. Before a new world 
 can be organized mankind must passionately 
 long for it, must definitely set its will to 
 achieve it. Our later philosophers have 
 pointed out that mankind, having the in- 
 tellectual and mechanical tools of progress, 
 yet lacks the desire and the will to create a 
 better way of living. It is the business of 
 religion in this day of opportunity to develop 
 and guide the creative will of mankind to 
 the shaping of a better form of society. 
 
 One of the deepest spiritual facts of the 
 present hour is the growing apprehension of a 
 new world-order. It seems almost within 
 our grasp, yet somehow eludes our eager out- 
 stretched hands. It is the hour of travail 
 for mankind. A new world is struggling to 
 
20 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 come forth and the old order is holding it 
 back. It is an hour of torturing uncer- 
 tainty, but the hour of a great hope. Every- 
 where is the portent of new things, the 
 universal expectation of a great emancipa- 
 tion that has ever marked the beginning of a 
 religious era. 
 
 The spirit of creation broods again, this 
 time above the chaos of human relations. 
 In the social unrest of the last generation 
 and now in this world-conflict, there is more 
 than a human struggle. The eternal Power 
 is striving in and with us to bring order out 
 of the anarchy of our political and economic 
 affairs, to accomplish the divine dream of 
 unity in this most difficult of all spheres. 
 In this great hour can religion bring together 
 the will of man and the will of God in a 
 common creative effort? Is it possible to ex- 
 perience a collective incarnation.^ 
 
II 
 
 It is significant that almost every one who 
 writes about religion in the present situa- 
 tion laments sectarian divisions and de- 
 sires more unity. This is a reflection of the 
 world-effort toward a larger degree of united 
 action. It is of a piece with the movement 
 toward political federation and international 
 control. The movement for religious co- 
 operation contains the possibilities of a much 
 larger service from religion to humanity, but 
 it must face the question of the purpose and 
 end for which the churches are to be feder- 
 ated or unified, it must recognize that present 
 forms of religious expression have failed to 
 satisfy so many of those who seek truth at 
 one end of society and of those who struggle 
 for social justice at the other end. Religion 
 must reckon with the fact that the awakening 
 working class in all the industrial nations has 
 
22 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 weighed our present civilization in the bal- 
 ance and found it wanting. They have 
 condemned it not simply because it has failed 
 to provide them with the necessary goods for 
 the development of life, after they have 
 labored to the utmost of their energy, but 
 because it has thwarted their sense of justice, 
 and denied them the satisfaction of their 
 longing after brotherhood. They have con- 
 demned it then on moral and spiritual 
 grounds. They are bent upon the making 
 of a new civilization. They will have no 
 use for any kind of religion which does not 
 lead them in that endeavor, which condones 
 or sustains the present order. If religion 
 is to have any leadership in the future, if it is 
 to meet the heart-hunger of the masses, it 
 must show them a new manner of life. 
 
 In such an undertaking, the search for 
 unity in religion must go farther afield. 
 From the achievement of religious coopera- 
 tion, it must proceed to develop cooperative 
 religion. It must discover the common ele- 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 23 
 
 ment in all religions. It must emphasize 
 those universal aspirations and ideals which 
 will stimulate the joint undertaking for a 
 better world. It must provide the atmos- 
 phere in which world-democracy can grow. 
 There is need not only to mass the common 
 spiritual resources of mankind but also to 
 develop them to their maximum capacity. 
 As the fierce test of war has demanded all the 
 noble qualities of man, so the task of recon- 
 struction, the necessity of creating a new 
 world-order, will require all the spiritual 
 capacities of the race. To raise such ca- 
 pacities to their highest possible power at this 
 present moment is the contribution to the 
 common undertaking demanded of religion. 
 The essential elements of religion were 
 stated long ago in classic form: "Now 
 abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and 
 the greatest of these is love." What de- 
 mands, then, does the adventure that now 
 lies before mankind make upon these, its 
 fundamental spiritual resources.? 
 
24 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 Mankind lives by faith. No step forward 
 in life, individual or collective, is ever taken 
 without it. The will to believe is also the 
 will to create. The faith that cries, "It 
 shall be done," actually removes mountains, 
 achieves the impossible. Such faith is the 
 indispensable condition of progress, because 
 it leads men to attempt the unprecedented, 
 to try the thing for which there is no proof, 
 to dare the thing which never has been 
 done. Donald Hankey found in the trenches 
 that faith was "betting one's life that there is 
 a God." This is exactly the quality that 
 mankind needs for the task that lies before it. 
 To achieve their need and their desire, the 
 nations must risk their lives on the chance 
 that the universe is with them, that the 
 eternal order of things is justice and love. 
 It is both the necessity and the desire of 
 mankind to organize a world without arms, 
 to organize industry within and between na- 
 tions for the service of human need and not 
 for the making of gain for the people of 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 25 
 
 power; and such a world has never yet ex- 
 isted. Already concrete plans to this end 
 have been drafted. They are being soberly 
 considered by responsible authorities, but it 
 is something which never has been done and 
 it will not be done without a great wave of 
 faith throughout the world. The beginnings 
 of a new order of life for mankind depend 
 absolutely upon the generation of sufficient 
 faith to make it possible to risk the first 
 steps. It is always the peculiar duty of re- 
 ligion to develop the faith by which the 
 work of the world gets accomplished. In 
 such an emergency, when new reserves of 
 faith are required, what a challenge comes 
 then to religion! 
 
 Yet the war has struck heavy blows at 
 faith. Facing the hard facts of conflict, 
 the bitter evidence of the ambitions, the 
 jealousies, the self-will of classes and nations, 
 how many among us have less faith in hu- 
 manity than before the war.? How many 
 of those who, when the war broke out, said 
 
26 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 confidently, ''This will be the last," are 
 now saying, ''Wars must always be," are 
 urging their nation to prepare for the con- 
 tinuance of war, are assuming the present 
 order of things as eternal, are repeating the 
 vapid fallacy that "human nature cannot 
 be changed," are evidencing a belief in the 
 total depravity of mankind which they would 
 indignantly reject if it were asserted con- 
 cerning their own individual natures? How 
 many have less confidence that the nations 
 of the earth are amenable to reason and 
 good will than they had before they en- 
 countered the hard reality of war? Yet 
 the construction of an international and 
 supra-national organization that shall order 
 a new way of living for the world must be 
 based upon mutual trust and good will. It 
 requires more faith between men than there 
 was before the war began and very much 
 more than now exists. 
 
 This does not mean faith in a fool's para- 
 dise or faith in a kind of humanity which 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 27 
 does not yet exist, but to retain sanity and 
 clarity of judgment there must be faith in 
 the ultimate possibilities of mankind, in 
 the potential goodness even of enemies. It 
 is because we have not faith in each other and 
 therefore have not faith in God that we con- 
 tinue armaments and competitive industrial- 
 ism. 
 
 When religion addresses itself to the task 
 of generating a faith adequate for the recon- 
 struction of the world, it will face a wide- 
 spread indifference. One of the inevitable 
 consequences of the tremendous drain upon 
 the energies of life by the recent struggle is 
 the exhaustion of idealism. The forces of 
 religion will have all that they can do to 
 prevent a dull and deadly period of material- 
 ism, such as followed our own Civil War. 
 The only hope is that they should now pro- 
 ceed to develop the unrealized spiritual re- 
 serves of those who are not exhausted by the 
 actual conflict. 
 
 Many of the men who went to the front 
 
28 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 found their better selves. They developed 
 unrealized capacities. They know now what 
 they can do in the face of death and the 
 impossible. How shall the men who stayed 
 at home be made to believe also in their 
 better selves and in the possibilities of hu- 
 manity.^ As the men in the trenches have 
 come to feel the pull of comradeship and to 
 know the crowd urge that calls faint-hearted 
 men over the top to die gloriously, so must 
 the people who have never felt the terrible 
 uplifting enthusiasm of battle be led to act 
 together upon their faith, until they also 
 have discovered the powers that are within 
 them and can apply to the making of a new 
 world the same unrealized resources of ideal- 
 ism which have developed the heroism of 
 the battle-field. Theirs it is to live to create 
 the new world for which other men have 
 died. For this more sustained endeavor they 
 will need even a greater faith than that 
 which inspires men deliberately to hazard 
 their lives for an ideal. 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 29 
 
 Jesus lived and died by a faith in the 
 ultimate supremacy of spiritual forces. He 
 risked his life on the hypothesis that they 
 would prove stronger than all the mailed 
 might of the Roman Empire. In what does 
 the majority of mankind trust to-day? In 
 the power of the spiritual forces of love and 
 service or in the power of hard facts, of 
 money and munitions.^ It is a question of 
 relative values. In which will we trust as 
 the controlling forces in the organization of 
 life.? 
 
 Religion is challenged to make mankind 
 to-day believe in itself and in God as it never 
 has done before in its history. Otherwise its 
 faltering feet may turn down the path that 
 leads to destruction. If religion folds its 
 hands and preaches the counsel of despair, if 
 it does but echo the voice of the market- 
 place, crying that the ideals of humanity and 
 the laws of God are both unrealizable, then 
 indeed has the day of death begun to dawn 
 for the peoples of the earth. The supreme 
 
30 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 tragedy of a community or a nation is when 
 its religion is merely the defender of the 
 existing order, when the only God that the 
 people are called to worship is the "God of 
 things as they are." Life moves forward 
 only when religion proclaims the things that 
 ought to be and challenges the will of the 
 people to make them be. If the collective 
 will of mankind is now to be directed to the 
 making of a new .world, all the teaching 
 agencies of religion must continually pro- 
 claim the vision of "a new heaven and a new 
 earth." If now this should be made con- 
 crete in terms of disarmament and world- 
 wide economic cooperation, the nations would 
 soon come to believe these measures possible. 
 If the people can be made to see, they will 
 rise and follow the vision. 
 
 To make faith effective there must be 
 added to it — hope. Hope brings faith down 
 to the ground. It possesses insistency and 
 immediacy. It looks to the near accomplish- 
 ment of that which faith leads the will to 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 31 
 
 attempt. It believes not simply that the 
 Kingdom of God will come sometime and 
 somewhere, but that it will come even upon 
 the earth as in heaven and that its beginning 
 will be now. It believes that a different 
 social order is not only possible, but is within 
 reach. 
 
 Loss of hope is one of the inevitable ac- 
 companiments of war, for hope belongs with 
 the vitality of youth, and the world is now 
 war-weary and old. An American student 
 at the French front commented upon the fact 
 that the French soldiers are prematurely 
 aged. "They have lost their youth," he 
 says; ''they sit like old men and talk con- 
 stantly of the good days they have seen in 
 the past." The world faces the task of 
 reconstruction with much of its youth gone 
 and with much that remains prematurely 
 exhausted and aged. It is a less hopeful 
 world; will it be a less moral, a less idealistic 
 world.? If our civilization is not to become 
 prematurely impotent, the springs of youth 
 
32 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 and hope must be restored. To those of 
 middle age and past, Bertrand Russell brings 
 a great word concerning "the young men 
 who have died through our fear of life. . . . 
 Their very ghosts have more life than we. 
 . . . Out of their ghosts must come life and it 
 is we whom they must vivify." The genera- 
 tion now coming to manhood must be given 
 more than the natural hope of youth. "It 
 is necessary to create a new hope; . . . only 
 a supreme fire of thought and spirit can 
 save future generations from the death that 
 has befallen the generation we knew and 
 loved." ' 
 
 One of the outstanding qualities of the 
 Christian religion is its perennial youthful- 
 ness and hope. It refuses to despair before 
 the entrenchments of evil, no matter how 
 strong they be. It shouts its triumph in 
 the very face of death. Christianity has a 
 social gospel, and the social gospel refuses to 
 acquiesce in the triumph of evil upon the 
 ' Russell, "Why Men Fight." 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 33 
 
 earth; it believes that humanity can and will 
 go on to perfection; it insists that the ideals 
 and principles of Jesus which express and 
 identify the ideals and aspirations of hu- 
 manity and the eternal purposes of God shall 
 yet be embodied in human living. 
 
 One of the continually recurring tenden- 
 cies of religion is to transfer its faith to the 
 hereafter. When evil has seized control of 
 this present world, then the people of re- 
 ligion look for some future deliverance. So 
 Israel, when great heathen powers were grind- 
 ing her between their iron jaws, transferred 
 her religious hope from the present to the 
 hereafter. So the early Christians, sup- 
 pressed by imperial Rome, looked away from 
 the pomp and power of the scarlet woman 
 upon the seven hills to the Christ coming 
 from the clouds in glory to set up his reign 
 upon the earth. The same tendency appears 
 in this present time. In the presence of sin 
 so vast, calamity so overwhelming, as this 
 world-war, multitudes of Christians are tak- 
 
34 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 ing refuge in the theory that the world is evil 
 and must therefore either be destroyed or 
 purged by the second coming of Christ to 
 reign in power. As a demonstration of faith 
 in the presence of world-catastrophe this is 
 magnificent, but it is not religion. It aban- 
 dons hope for the redemption of an evil 
 world at the very time when the largest 
 steps in the process of world-redemption are 
 within reach, if only the faith and will of 
 man can be joined with the eternal purpose 
 and power of God. 
 
 The duty of religion in a time like this is 
 plainly to increase the hope of mankind. 
 This it can do by pointing out that the 
 present situation is neither fate nor destiny, 
 but the consequence of the ignorance and 
 selfishness of man, the result of the teaching 
 of false ideals and the organization of life on 
 a wrong basis. Religious teaching can point 
 out the responsibility for this and all other 
 wars by analyzing their causes. It can en- 
 courage humanity to hope for the abolition 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 35 
 
 of war by showing the degree of control over 
 the spirit of aggression which man has ac- 
 quired through long years of social advance. 
 It can point out how in former times in- 
 dividual men continually faced each other in 
 arms and suspicion as the nations now do. 
 It can show the progress that the nations 
 have made in arranging peaceful methods 
 to settle their disputes. It can show the 
 development that has been made since the 
 war began in the joint control of the eco- 
 nomic causes of war. It can point out the 
 spread of the desire and determination to 
 make an end of this com.mon enemy of the 
 race. Lest mankind should now stop short 
 of this desired goal and even of its possible 
 achievement in the present situation, there 
 must be a concerted effort to strengthen the 
 hope of men. 
 
 There remains "the greatest of these — 
 love." Without love, faith may not realize 
 its vision nor hope its purpose. It is not 
 only **the greatest thing in the world," but 
 
36 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 the greatest need of mankind in this crisis. 
 Jesus revealed a God of love. A new com- 
 mandment He gave men, that they should 
 love one another. This was to be the sign of 
 God-likeness and in the doing of it they 
 were to find fellowship with God. He pro- 
 claimed love as the welding force of the com- 
 munity life that was to develop around his 
 teaching. He taught love as the organizing 
 principle of human fellowship. His disci- 
 ples were to concrete it in service to one 
 another, and this was to distinguish them 
 from the Gentiles. His followers have long 
 proclaimed love as the greatest personal vir- 
 tue. They have striven to be made per- 
 fect in love. It is now time for them to 
 proclaim and develop love as the only social 
 force sufficient to bind humanity together in 
 the new world-life that its faith and hope 
 are seeking. In this effort they will be 
 joined by a great company, for good will is 
 the talisman of all modern idealists — the 
 force in which they put their trust. 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 37 
 
 The innate capacity of mankind to love 
 and the extent to which the passion for 
 brotherhood has gripped the heart of man- 
 kind have been amply shown by the war. 
 It was a hard war to make. So far had 
 good will between the nations developed that 
 among the common people the will to hate 
 and to kill had to be cultivated by invented 
 acts of aggression, by exhortations of preach- 
 ers and would-be poets, by the sight and 
 recital of atrocities and by training in feroc- 
 ity. This manifest reluctance to make war 
 is not because the battle spirit of man has 
 atrophied in an industrial civilization. The 
 unsurpassed endurance and heroism in the 
 trenches of men who until recently had never 
 thought of war as a possibility is evidence 
 enough to support the contention of those 
 who maintain that the struggle of civiliza- 
 tion to subdue both nature and the barbaric 
 instincts of mankind will retain all the vir- 
 tues that lie in the battle spirit of the race. 
 It is difficult to make war to-day because the 
 
38 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 ancient dream of shepherds and the Holy 
 Grail of the wise — good will among men 
 — has become a modern social fact of the 
 first importance. Alongside the latent bar- 
 barism brought to the surface by this war must 
 be chronicled a desperate effort to maintain 
 good will, to hold on to the spiritual gains 
 acquired in the slow ascent of man. 
 
 Yet the common stock of good will that 
 is the great social inheritance of mankind 
 has been sadly impaired by the recent strug- 
 gle. The natural recuperation of the spirit 
 of good will among the fighting men after 
 the battle is over is one of the marvels of 
 history, even as the recuperative power of 
 the physical organism when wounded is one 
 of the marvels of nature. But something 
 more will be needed for reconstruction days 
 than natural good will. There will be needed 
 greater cooperative capacity, which is more 
 than the ability to fraternize or to worship 
 together. These forms of association pro- 
 vide no guarantee against the repetition of 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 39 
 
 the present horror, for men have joined in 
 these and still have been dragged unwill- 
 ingly into war to kill each other. What 
 is needed to make good will effective in 
 social cooperation is a definite discipline, 
 both of teaching and of practice, and this it 
 is the function of religion to develop. 
 
 Effective good will is the development of 
 the social process, as well as of the procla- 
 mation of an ideal. It can therefore no 
 more be conjured out of the air for the great 
 task of reconstruction than can the metal 
 that has been shot into the soil of Europe 
 or the lumber that has been splintered in the 
 trenches. There is a long-continuing proc- 
 ess of creation behind the one as the other. 
 To repair the breaches the war has made in 
 international good will is a task as difficult 
 as knitting together the broken economic 
 life of the world. Indeed, the two under- 
 takings are interdependent. In this task 
 of reconstruction it is time to add to our 
 regimen of conservation of economic ma- 
 
40 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 terials a similar effort to conserve our spiritual 
 resources. Unless the world can do this, it 
 will find itself spiritually bankrupt, in its 
 day of greatest opportunity. 
 
 The loftiest expression of good will is the 
 command of Jesus, ''Love your enemies." 
 This teaching is the climax of the endeavor of 
 mankind to establish brotherhood, the cul- 
 mination of a slow development of ethical 
 standards. Only through long periods of 
 social advance did men learn that distrust 
 and hostility toward the stranger without the 
 gates was not essential to loyalty to their 
 own group. Slowly did they discover that 
 the wider the extension of mutual aid, the 
 greater its benefits to all concerned. Finally 
 they sought after world-wide brotherhood. 
 But this goal cannot be attained without the 
 ability to deal in good will with those who 
 are aggressors against the common weal. 
 
 This cannot be done by assuming or re- 
 fusing to assume certain personal relation- 
 ships to other persons. It is a question of 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 41 
 
 the relations between nations and groups of 
 nations. To find out how to love one's 
 enemies becomes a matter of discovering a 
 policy for the nation that shall really embody 
 good will as an active principle and leave no 
 abiding enmity. 
 
 To develop good will between enemies, to 
 eliminate the bitterness and hate of war time, 
 the essential thing is a common purpose, a 
 policy and program of common action. Re- 
 ligion approaches this undertaking with the 
 advantage that it already has under its 
 direction people who had a common purpose 
 before the war. One of the great spiritual 
 tragedies of the war was that it caused the 
 "brothers" and "comrades" of a chosen 
 fellowship to seek each others' lives. They 
 had and still have a common religious pur- 
 pose, but another interest separated them 
 from their common purpose and from each 
 other. It was the need and demand of the 
 state that did this. If this need and de- 
 mand does not coincide with the larger good 
 
42 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 of all mankind, to seek which religion has been 
 calling into a common fellowship the citizens 
 of different states, then the state has achieved 
 a stronger moral sovereignty than religion, 
 and religion stands defeated. In such case, 
 the first task of religion is to recall its own 
 adherents to the common fellowship by re- 
 kindling their loyalty to their common pur- 
 pose. If it cannot do this, how can it ever 
 teach the rest of the world to "love your 
 enemies"? 
 
 Ought not adherents of the same religion 
 in hostile countries to inquire whether they 
 have a common interest which is higher than 
 the interest that separates them.? If their 
 religion has taught them that God must be 
 expressed in a world-wide life of brother- 
 hood, must they not continually inquire how 
 much their national aim is making for this 
 larger good, and thus find out how national 
 pride and self-interest are obstructing the 
 vision of God.? If these religious groups 
 would thus seek together after their com- 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 43 
 
 mon purpose, would they not find a com- 
 mon way for their nations out of their an- 
 tagonism, and thereby develop a common 
 force for reconstruction? The hope of ad- 
 vance for mankind depends upon whether 
 the forces of good will possess the capacity to 
 organize their common passion for brother- 
 hood, to develop into conscious fraternity 
 the ** mutual aid" which has been the prin- 
 cipal factor in social evolution, and to direct 
 it to the chosen end of a world-wide, coopera- 
 tive life. 
 
 This means that religion must call its 
 adherents in every land to a passionate 
 loyalty to its ideal of world-wide brother- 
 hood. In war time the state achieves na- 
 tional solidarity and safety by calling in- 
 dividuals to a sacrificial loyalty. The achieve- 
 ment of the solidarity of mankind requires 
 the continuous expression of loyalty, to the 
 point of sacrifice. Herein is accomplished 
 the supreme religious expression of the indi- 
 vidual. To secure this abundant life of sacri- 
 
44 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 ficial loyalty to the greatest possible cause 
 is the compelling duty of religion. It must 
 ever call the peoples of the earth to follow 
 at any cost the way of love, which is the 
 only way of life. 
 
Ill 
 
 Religion has also a duty other than 
 developing the spiritual resources of mankind. 
 It must lead them to expression. It is faced 
 with the necessity of deciding what policies 
 of national and international action will 
 realize its faith, embody its hope, and give 
 concrete expression to its love. In this hour 
 of choice, when humanity stands in the 
 valley of decision, religion must express 
 itself concerning the next steps for human- 
 ity to take in the direction of the ideals which 
 it has been proclaiming. It must teach 
 mankind not simply duty, but the content 
 of duty. 
 
 The approach to this concrete expression 
 of religion is always twofold. It involves 
 both measures of repression against evil 
 and constructive measures to replace evil 
 
46 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 with good. If a community is to get rid 
 of the curse of alcohol, there must be both 
 the elimination of the organized saloon and 
 the development of constructive social recrea- 
 tion to take the place of the fellowship that 
 has ever gathered around the drink habit. 
 So will it be in the world situation. The 
 making of a better world involves the destruc- 
 tion of giant evils. In order to transfer the 
 heroic religious qualities of war time to the 
 slower and quieter task of social reconstruc- 
 tion, that task must be shown to involve 
 conflict. It must involve the supreme thrill 
 of the shock of battle. An enemy makes 
 men heroes. The necessity of resisting idola- 
 try, slavery, the liquor traffic, has glorified 
 very ordinary people. One of the duties 
 of religion is to identify and reveal the forces 
 of evil, in order that mankind may know 
 against what its toil and heroism should really 
 be directed. 
 
 The spirit of antagonism has a social 
 value. Animated by self-interest, it drives 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 47 
 
 men against each other. Concentrated upon 
 a common foe, it binds men together. In 
 the presence of a common enemy, there 
 develops at once loyalty to a common cause 
 and capacity for common action. The world 
 of labor is continually divided by inter- 
 necine conflicts. There are jurisdictional 
 strikes between different trade unions. There 
 is perpetual conflict between the socialist, 
 the trade-unionist, and the syndicalist. Let 
 some dull-minded and overgreedy capitalist, 
 however, launch an assault upon one of the 
 fundamental rights and liberties of labor and 
 at once they are united against the common 
 menace. How many years of development 
 in the ordinary constructive processes of 
 peace would it have taken to get the Allied 
 Powers to cooperate, as they did under 
 the pressure of a common foe, in the joint 
 administration of their economic life.^ Could 
 the nations but come to see that poverty 
 is their common menace, and that greed is 
 destroying them all alike, they would extend 
 
48 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 this joint administration until the whole 
 world would be bound together in a common 
 cooperative life. 
 
 The two great forces that mankind to- 
 gether must conquer are nature and evil. 
 The one, man must conquer for the means of 
 subsistence, the other for his spiritual de- 
 velopment. In the present circumstance, the 
 evil that is in the world and in man has been 
 dramatically personified in war. War is the 
 common enemy. 
 
 The physical horrors of war are the lesser 
 of its evils. It is the effect of war upon the 
 souls of men and the soul of the world-or- 
 ganism that must be faced. In considering 
 what war does to personality, it must be 
 remembered that personality is a social fact. 
 The most serious consequence of war is its 
 assault upon the growing social personality 
 of mankind, in which alone our individual 
 personalities come to their full realization. 
 In the present state of the world-life, war is 
 indeed fratricidal — not simply because it 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 49 
 
 requires brothers and comrades, pledged to a 
 common cause, to kill each other, but because 
 it turns one part of the social body against 
 the other part. It is the dread disease, the 
 terrible madness that causes mankind to 
 devour its own vitals. 
 
 There are two groups of proposals before 
 the common parliament of humanity, look- 
 ing toward the abolition of war and the estab- 
 lishment of world-order. One comes from 
 intellectuals, who are now managing the af- 
 fairs of the world. They are planning a 
 League of Nations to adjust the disputes of 
 the world and thus to develop a stable and 
 enduring peace. Some of them make dis- 
 armament an essential feature of the plan, 
 but more do not. The other proposal comes 
 from the men who labor with their hands. 
 They are demanding that the nations shall be 
 disarmed and that the economic life of the 
 world shall be reorganized on the basis of 
 cooperation instead of competition, that It 
 shall be developed in friendship and mutual 
 
so OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 aid instead of in strife and war. In these 
 proposals there are two great central facts 
 around which the mind and purpose of 
 humanity needs now to concentrate: dis- 
 armament and economic cooperation. The 
 first steps in these two processes must now 
 be taken if the world is to learn to walk in a 
 new way of life. It is for or against these 
 things that the nations must now choose. 
 
 Religion has long proclaimed a day when 
 the sword should be beaten into the plow- 
 share and the spear into the pruning-hook. 
 That day is within reach. Weary of slaughter, 
 fearful of its disastrous economic conse- 
 quences, conscious of the burden of arma- 
 ments upon the productive energies of 
 humanity, the peoples of the earth are look- 
 ing for a way of disarmament. When the 
 first universal measure is taken to that end, 
 the death warrant of war is sealed. War is 
 collective crime, and armaments are its tools 
 and occasion. They do not make war, but 
 they provide the means for war and they 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 51 
 
 make it inevitable. An ex-premier of Great 
 Britain feels it necessary to appeal to us not 
 to repeat the fallacy they have at such cost 
 disproved — that armaments make for peace. 
 The English Council of Workers and Sol- 
 diers says: "If the nations are not loaded, 
 they cannot explode." Wilfully to continue 
 armaments is to continue the occasion and 
 incitement to international crime. It is as 
 if the drunkard had power to abolish the 
 saloon and willed to continue it. Yet there 
 are those who are now working for the con- 
 tinuance of armaments; some from the mo- 
 tive of profit, others from fear, others from 
 a limited and misguided patriotism. As- 
 suming the permanence of war, they are 
 doing their best to make its continuance 
 inevitable by working for policies which 
 will increase the distrust and suspicion of 
 mankind. At a time when faith needs to be 
 aroused for the great adventure of a warless 
 world they are spreading the deadly narcotic 
 of disbelief. In a day when it is possible for 
 
52 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 mankind to throw off its back the burden of 
 mihtarism they are transmitting paralysis of 
 the will. In this day of supreme oppor- 
 tunity they are revealing themselves as 
 traitors to the commonwealth of man. 
 
 If the world does not get disarmament, 
 the sacrifices of this conflict will have been 
 in vain. Men said the Napoleonic wars 
 were to be the last of war. It was an idle 
 dream. It always will be until the will and 
 purpose of mankind is united to achieve 
 disarmament. This is now a possible ac- 
 complishment. Unless it be done, mankind 
 will be enslaved to the economic burden of 
 this war. Neither the forces of labor, of 
 intellect, nor of religion can do their full 
 work for the world if they must carry this 
 handicap in the future. President Wilson 
 has made a measure of disarmament one of 
 his war aims. In timid, hesitating fashion 
 some of the statesmen of Europe have par- 
 tially echoed his words. ''We hope," says 
 one, ''that disarmament will be included in 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 53 
 
 the terms of peace/' And while they hope 
 they fear. Just before his death, at the 
 front, viewing the possibiHty that the war 
 may be settled on the basis of trade, leaving 
 economic competition between the nations, 
 Professor T. F. Kettle wrote: "It will be a 
 victory tainted with ambiguous and selfish 
 ends. History will write of us that we began 
 nobly but that our purpose corrupted. The 
 great war for freedom will not indeed have 
 been waged in vain, that is already decided, 
 but it will but half have kept its promises. 
 Blood and iron will have been once more 
 established as the veritable masters of men 
 and nothing will open before the world but 
 a vista of new wars." ^ The one sure pre- 
 vention of this disaster is to secure disarma- 
 ment. Has the United States, the youthful 
 nation, the faith, the courage, the initiative 
 to lead the old world in this enterprise? 
 What leadership has its religion to offer in 
 this emergency? 
 
 1 Kettle, "The Ways of War." 
 
54 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 To achieve disarmament is a constructive 
 task. It demands new methods of poHtical 
 organization, new forms of deahng with 
 international disorder. It is the task of 
 statesmanship to work out the measures, it 
 is the duty of rehgion to demand that the 
 process shall now be commenced. It is the 
 first general measure around which the inter- 
 national forces of religion can rally as the 
 common shepherds of humanity. If all re- 
 ligious teaching the world over should con- 
 stantly expound the necessity and the possi- 
 bility of universal disarmament, if from 
 every pulpit, in every Sunday-school, in 
 every religious paper, this demand should be 
 persistently reiterated, would not the world- 
 will presently be aroused and made intelli- 
 gent to achieve this great step in human 
 progress.? Disarmament is more than a me- 
 chanical measure. It leaves untouched the 
 economic causes of war, the deep-rooted 
 battle instinct which has to be given ex- 
 pression, but it clears the way for these under- 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 55 
 
 takings. It removes the incubus of fear and 
 suspicion which makes love and cooperation 
 impossible. It is the expression of a great 
 spiritual purpose. It is the beginning of a 
 new way of life. That step taken, the 
 world would not long consent to continue its 
 economic life on the basis of war; its impetus 
 would send mankind on up to new heights 
 of living. The removal of fear will lead to the 
 extension of international relationships in 
 every field, to the removal of all barriers 
 opposing the free interchange of both eco- 
 nomic goods and intellectual and spiritual 
 gains, to the gradual cooperative control of 
 all energies and resources for the fullest 
 possible development of the whole of man- 
 kind. The idealism that has gone into a 
 conflict of destruction will be turned into a 
 competitive struggle of good will and service 
 for the common good of humanity. Un- 
 known capacities of production and coopera- 
 tion, undreamed intellectual powers and spirit- 
 ual resources, will be released. 
 
IV 
 
 When religion attempts the abolition of 
 war, it will find that it must get back of the 
 battle-field. War is a great school-master, 
 and while religion has been busy dealing with 
 things of the past, the facts of the present 
 have been educating mankind. Many of 
 the men who have seen reality in the trenches 
 have gone back of the physical conflict to 
 the organization of the spirit of the war in 
 the daily life of man. They have come to 
 know that we have a social system organized 
 on the principle of conflict, within which 
 the seeds of this death have been developing. 
 They have come to see that what they en- 
 dured in the trenches they have long sufi^ered 
 on the battle-fields of industry in times of 
 peace — privation and pain, wounds and 
 death. Now they are beginning to dis- 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 57 
 
 cover the cause of their suffering and to seek 
 its removal. While the statesmen are talk- 
 ing of arbitration to settle disputes and a 
 League of Nations to Enforce Peace, the 
 working people are talking about the removal 
 of the economic causes of war. In the blaze 
 of a world conflagration they have come to 
 see that back of war is the great fact that the 
 everyday productive business of life is or- 
 ganized on the basis of strife; that it is a con- 
 stant struggle between individuals, between 
 groups, between nations, each seeking the 
 rewards of victory in industrial plunder, in 
 profit and education and luxury. 
 
 If religion is to lead the common assault of 
 humanity against war, it must first under- 
 stand the nature of war. Long ago Adam 
 Smith, the great English economist, taught 
 that war is largely due to the crimes of trad- 
 ers. A general of the United States Army 
 said to a gathering of financiers, "You make 
 the wars; we soldiers only end them.'* A 
 recognized English authority on the Balkan 
 
58 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 situation insists that either of the two recent 
 Balkan wars could have been prevented if 
 the French bankers had been forbidden to 
 finance the combatants ! ^ The same writer 
 later said, regarding the overseas projects of 
 financiers, '*To my mind militarism is in the 
 modern world the conception of life which 
 thinks such adventure legitimate, and organ- 
 izes for this. The worst of the German ex- 
 tremists wanted the Belgian coal fields and 
 the French iron fields; ours happen to want 
 the corn and cotton lands of Mesopotamia." ^ 
 Those who would destroy war must come 
 to know that industrialism has been organized 
 around the same principles and in the same 
 form as militarism. It has massed large 
 armies of workers under the control of ab- 
 solute commanders who brook no challenge 
 to their imperious will and suppress dissent 
 by force. It has been accompanied by all 
 the consequences of war. It has produced 
 
 1 Brailsford, "The War of Steel and Gold." 
 
 2 Brailsford, The Herald, London, May 9, 19 17. 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 59 
 
 famine and pestilence. It has accomplished 
 a vast destruction of life. Armies of cripples 
 are flung off from its advance. It strengthens 
 all the old causes of war, and constantly de- 
 velops new occasions of conflict. It asserts 
 the right of the strong to rule and makes the 
 weak the prey, and the earth the booty, of 
 the mighty. It develops economic imperial- 
 ism in which the great nations compete for 
 trade routes, undeveloped resources, the finan- 
 cial exploitation of weaker peoples. Its policy 
 of *' peaceful penetration" by foreign invest- 
 ment and commercial control is but another 
 term for ruthless, aggressive ambition, is 
 the brutal assertion of the will to power in 
 the economic world, and is the constant 
 provocation to strife. With its external ex- 
 pansion constantly leading in the direction of 
 war, industrialism is also ever impelled in 
 the same direction as a diversion and a means 
 of control for the inevitable social unrest 
 developed within the nation by its policies.^ 
 1 Veblen, "The Nature of Peace" 
 
6o OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 If there is to be a peaceful world, the spirit 
 of war must be exorcised from economic life. 
 
 It lies within the province of religion to 
 make the people understand that Mars is 
 to-day a two-faced deity. Seen from the 
 front by admiring worshipers he is a glorious 
 figure in shining armor, clean and youthful, 
 straight and compelling, with noble counte- 
 nance; but on the other side, inseparably 
 joined to this fair youth, is the gross and 
 ugly figure of aged Mammon, with his feet 
 upon the neck of prostrate womanhood, 
 gripping little children by the throat with his 
 fat hands. To destroy Mars, Mammon also 
 must be overthrown. Here indeed is a war- 
 fare for religion. As Jesus said, ''Ye cannot 
 serve God and Mammon.'' As long as civili- 
 zation is organized mainly to produce goods, 
 it will continue in destructive strife. When 
 it is organized to produce men and women, 
 to develop the spiritual values of life, it 
 will come to be a cooperation in mutual 
 service. 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 6i 
 
 Will religion accept the challenge of its 
 mighty foe and lead humanity against the 
 common enemy? There came a day when 
 Jesus must needs turn aside from his preaching 
 and teaching, and go to Jerusalem to join 
 the final issue with the chief priests and 
 Pharisees and with Pilate, knowing that the 
 Cross was the end. There came a day when 
 Paul must cease his missionary journeying, 
 and go to Rome, ''not knowing what shall 
 befall me there," to join the issue with the 
 imperial power of the Caesars. Has the 
 day not come for modern religion at any cost 
 to join the issue with the rulers of our civiliza- 
 tion, to call the hosts of humanity to hurl 
 Mars and Mammon from their throne, to 
 rid the earth forever of the curse of mili- 
 tarism and capitalistic industrialism? 
 
 Mars and Mammon being inseparably 
 joined, must be destroyed together. The 
 beginning of disarmament is the death-wound 
 of Mars. The beginning of economic co- 
 operation is the death-blow of Mammon. A 
 
62 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 League of Nations with no agreement con- 
 cerning their economic needs would leave 
 untouched the roots of future conflicts. Or 
 disarmament may mean the joining of the 
 great powers together in a compact of 
 benevolent economic imperialism to exploit 
 together the weaker peoples and divide the 
 booty, with some measure of justice between 
 the spoilers, with none for the despoiled. 
 For them there would be only a little kind- 
 ness and that only as long as they were 
 docile. 
 
 The alternative to such a league of dis- 
 honor is a world-wide extension of the co- 
 operative principle. The Federal Council of 
 Churches of Christ in America has declared 
 for "equal rights and complete justice for all 
 men in all stations of life." This needs to be 
 applied to the nations and races of the earth 
 to the uttermost extent. The same body 
 has also approved the report of its Social 
 Service Commission declaring for "the fullest 
 possible cooperative control of both industry 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 63 
 
 and the natural resources upon which In- 
 dustry depends/' This principle needs also 
 to be extended to the economic relations 
 between nations. 
 
 If religion would sweep away an ancient 
 evil, it must replace it with a newer good. 
 If arms and the glory of war are to be abol- 
 ished, humanity must be brought together in 
 a constructive fellowship of adventure and 
 heroism. There must be developed "the 
 moral equivalent of war." The toil and 
 suffering and fellowship of the battle must 
 be replaced by the toil and suffering and 
 fellowship of the struggle to meet the daily 
 needs of the race. Here religion will find 
 content for its duties and realization for its 
 ideals. It will express itself in such prac- 
 tical questions of statesmanship as the in- 
 ternationalizing of trade routes and water- 
 ways, the joint control of the distribution of 
 raw materials. A religion which seeks the 
 spiritual unity of the race must recognize 
 that it is in the business of economic pro- 
 
64 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 duction and exchange that the greatest de- 
 velopment of cooperative capacity has come 
 to mankind. This has led to his cooperative 
 intellectual and spiritual development. The 
 expansion of economic cooperation will re- 
 lease still greater capacities for mutual ad- 
 vance. Those who seek to impose their way 
 of life upon others by force destroy both 
 themselves and others. Those who join to- 
 gether to share their mutual capacities for 
 the common good enlarge both their own 
 and the common life. The principle of the 
 cooperative national and international con- 
 trol of industry has gone far enough and been 
 successful enough in the present war to make 
 practicable its further extension. 
 
 It is through the development of economic 
 cooperation that the world-family will solidify 
 itself, and the world-order will develop. A 
 league of peace which deals only with po- 
 litical questions is but a paper pact. The 
 workers of the world have gone beyond 
 the intellectuals in that they propose to give 
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 65 
 
 the organized supra-nation some task at 
 once to accomplish, and it is only by action 
 that organisms develop. Moreover, in this 
 they are in actual tune with the facts and 
 needs of to-day, for the business of economic 
 production has now proceeded far beyond the 
 political organization of mankind. Politi- 
 cally we are living in one century and 
 economically we are living in another. The 
 artificial boundaries of the states do not 
 correspond to the facts of economic produc- 
 tion and exchange, any more than they 
 correspond to the ideal of fellowship and 
 the capacity for its enjoyment. There are 
 to-day no independent economic units. These 
 absolute sovereignties, called states, which 
 exist in political philosophy and practice, do 
 not exist when it comes to the interdependent, 
 economic life of the world, which crosses all 
 frontiers. Here is the actual beginning of 
 that world-family life to which religion seeks 
 to call the loyalty of the individual and of 
 the nation. An organization to express the 
 
66 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 
 
 fact of this growing world-unity will find 
 that its authority rests not in any external 
 power, but in its service value to humanity. 
 Just as the nation contributes to the larger 
 life of the individual, so will this world-organ- 
 ization contribute to the larger development 
 of the nations and to the fullest happiness 
 and expansion of mankind. Is the pull of 
 self-interest sufficient to draw mankind to 
 its accomplishment.^ Or does it need the 
 passion of a great ideal to pull the world up 
 to this new order of living, even as the pas- 
 sion to preserve the Union was finally needed 
 to accomplish the final overthrow of slavery .? 
 Will its coming wait for the continuous 
 proclamation by religion of the ideal of 
 world-unity as the very expression of God, 
 until there is massed for its accomplish- 
 ment all the heart-hunger for the Infinite, 
 all the passion for brotherhood, which are 
 but different aspects of "the incurably re- 
 ligious nature" of all mankind? 
 

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