► R E L I G I O U Si 
 EXPERIENCE 
 
 GEORGE PRESTON MAINS 
 
 III 
 
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Religious Experience 
 
 ITS EVIDENTIAL VALUE 
 
 BY 
 GEORGE PRESTON MAINS 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
3>1 
 
 Copyright, 1917, by 
 GEORGE PRESTON MAINS 
 
 v 
 
 APR 25 1917 
 ©CI.A462103 
 

 
 
 
 TO 
 
 JHp jHotfjer 
 
 WHO BREATHED AROUND MY 
 YOUNG LIFE THE ATMOSPHERE 
 OF A GODLY NURTURE, AND 
 WHO, TRANSLATED IN THE 
 NINETY -FIFTH YEAR OF HER 
 EARTHLY PILGRIMAGE, LEFT TO 
 HER CHILDREN MOST PRECIOUS 
 MEMORIES OF A SAINTLY LIFE, 
 THIS VOLUME IS REVERENTLY 
 AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword 9 
 
 PART FIRST 
 
 SOURCES 
 
 I. Source and Scope 21 
 
 II. The Spiritual Sense 41 
 
 III. The Holy Spirit 63 
 
 IV. Conversion 83 
 
 PART SECOND 
 
 EVIDENTIAL VALUES 
 
 V. Christian Character 105 
 
 VI. Spiritual Fruits 145 
 
 VII. Christian Service, 167 
 
 VIII. The Pragmatic Test 191 
 
 IX. The Pragmatic Test (Continued) 213 
 
 X. The Pragmatic Test (Concluded) 231 
 
 Bibliography 255 
 
 Index 259 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This book is written in the conviction that 
 
 God has direct and vital relations with the 
 
 human soul. These relations embrace all that 
 
 is significant or of lasting value in human 
 
 character and destiny. While the fundamental 
 
 grounds of these relations are unchanging and 
 
 abiding, man's knowledge ever grows. This 
 
 means that his very opinions must constantly 
 
 be held subject to revision and change. Dr. 
 
 William Newton Clarke, in his great work 
 
 on theology, has ably stated this mental law. 
 
 He says: 
 
 Nor so long as Christianity is a living thing and 
 not a relic can any statement of doctrine be final. 
 Thought will always be busy with the great themes, 
 and as long as men think they will see new light. 
 Progress is a necessary form of the life of doctrine, 
 each generation adding something to the work 
 of the past, and offering something to the future. 
 Christian doctrine is thus bound to be an ever- 
 moving stream of intellectual and spiritual appre- 
 ciation, and in its movement is its power. The 
 steadfastness and the variability are both due to 
 the fact that doctrine is the expression of a life 
 that never fails. 
 
 "Religious Experience 5 ' is a subject which 
 
 9 
 
10 FOREWORD 
 
 has elicited ages-long discussion. I am im- 
 pressed, however, that there is room for some 
 fresh and modern restatements within this 
 theme. I am quite aware that one writing 
 upon this subject cannot hope to make suc- 
 cessful appeal to all types of mind. There 
 are minds, some quite diverse from others, 
 whose doors are barred to any Christian 
 reality whatsoever. 
 
 The philosophy of Nietzsche, for instance, 
 seems, especially in Germany, to have much 
 following. This philosophy is utterly godless. 
 He rates Christianity as a great curse to the 
 world. He brands it as an "intrinsic deprav- 
 ity." He would install in place of God the 
 "Superman." It is the legitimate mission of 
 the superman to crush and to destroy the 
 weak, that the race may perpetuate only the 
 strong. Without conscience and without sym- 
 pathy, he would enthrone might as the only 
 right. 
 
 I am impressed that the average quiet 
 Christian mind, comfortably housed and soothed 
 in its own faith, may have very inadequate 
 conception of the subtle and corroding skep- 
 ticism that is widely propagated in present- 
 day thought. It is generally admitted that 
 organized labor, representing a great army of 
 citizenship, is, for the larger part, living in 
 
FOREWORD 11 
 
 practical divorce from the Church. An alien 
 and powerful press, largely supported by the 
 unchurched masses, is carrying everywhere the 
 infection of vicious doubt and hate even to- 
 ward Christianity itself. As Professor Thomas 
 C. Hall has said: 
 
 There are weary and rebellious workingmen who 
 are being taught day in and day out that there is 
 no God, that the churches are fooling them, that 
 the ministry is a selfish, money-making, cowardly 
 class institution, and that the only way out is to 
 overthrow all religion and to abandon all churches. 
 
 In any great city, at noonday or in the evening 
 hours, there may be seen gathered at the 
 street corners or at the park sides knots of 
 men listening to harangues of outworn ma- 
 terialism and of a coarse and venomous in- 
 fidelity. Unsalaried messengers, by night and 
 by day, and under the open skies, and for 
 every day in the week, are pressing upon the 
 crowds the teachings of nescience and godless- 
 ness. All this is going on while the church 
 doors are closed, and many of the members 
 of the churches are indulging in undisturbed 
 dreams of moral security. 
 
 In what may be ranked as circles of culture 
 and of privilege, there is a large contingency 
 of mind characterized by agnosticism, or by 
 the fixed mood of worldly indifference toward 
 
12 FOREWORD 
 
 spiritual things. While a scientific material- 
 ism no longer occupies first-class rooms in the 
 apartments of philosophic thought, nevertheless 
 many are still giving to the lessons of nature 
 a construction which excludes spiritual inter- 
 pretation. Among gravely significant numbers 
 of the recipients of high intellectual advantages 
 is to be found a deadly indifference to either 
 the spiritual opportunities and obligations of 
 the present life, or to the demands and ne- 
 cessities of preparation for an eternal life to 
 come. This condition, it is greatly to be 
 feared, obtains in far larger measure than 
 seems to be apprehended in the general thought 
 of the Church. 
 
 While a materialistic philosophy is justly 
 relegated to the past, it is still woefully true 
 that the lure of a practical materialism rests 
 appallingly upon the life of the age. The 
 present passing world was never so attractive 
 to the popular vision, never so bewitching and 
 bewildering in its appeals to life, never offering 
 such tempting service and reward to men, as 
 now. The Mammon-god is widely worshiped 
 in the age. 
 
 It is quite true that not all of these classes 
 interest themselves to institute a formal or 
 systematic opposition to Christianity itself, or 
 to its teachings. They seem to have no awak- 
 
FOREWORD 13 
 
 ened interest in, or serious convictions concern- 
 ing, the claims of the spiritual life. They do 
 not oppose the Church; they simply give it the 
 treatment of a cold and indifferent neglect. 
 The great citizenship of the non-Christian world 
 about us may be divided into two general 
 classes: the one characterized by a spiritual 
 indifference that seems as cold and hopeless as 
 the grave; the other embracing all the camps of 
 active opposition to Christianity, occupying ad- 
 vanced grounds, and using modern weapons 
 and methods that were never outrivaled in the 
 power of a subtle, obstinate, and deadly de- 
 structiveness. 
 
 In the meantime, while it would be fatuous 
 to underestimate, much more so to ignore, the 
 volume and strength of hostile forces, Chris- 
 tianity, in the values of its beneficent mission 
 to the world, has nothing to fear in any com- 
 parison which may be instituted between itself 
 and any or all other forces which would either 
 destroy it, or substitute it by other faiths. 
 Applying the pragmatic rule of Christ, "By 
 their fruits, ye shall know them," to all systems 
 alike, Christianity amply demonstrates its 
 supreme fitness to receive, as above all its 
 rivals, the universal approval and acceptance 
 of mankind. 
 
 The genius of the Nietzschean philosophy 
 
14 FOREWORD 
 
 is to transform man into a destructive wild 
 beast. The incarnation of this philosophy 
 into Prussian militarism has been decisive in 
 plunging Europe into a hell of flame and of 
 indescribable horrors. It seems a fitting sequel 
 to the life of the chief expounder and promoter 
 of this philosophy that he should finally die in a 
 madhouse. 
 
 So far as the great army of labor is concerned, 
 there is no evidence that its acceptance of a 
 materialistic guidance has demonstrated any 
 power to promote among them the fruits either 
 of sobriety, temperance, temporal prosperity, 
 or the spirit of domestic or public peace. It is 
 not to be forgotten that multitudes of the indi- 
 viduals involved are inheritors of Christian in- 
 fluences. They are by all their inheritances 
 law and order-abiding men. They cannot be 
 controlled either by the dictates or impulses of 
 anarchy. Nevertheless, in times of crisis there 
 occurs in their organizations what has never 
 been known to take place under any Christianly 
 governed bodies. In times of tension, however 
 sporadic the instances may be, the labor organ- 
 ization has seemed powerless to prevent the 
 resort by some, at least, of its members to 
 violence, to the destruction of property, to 
 dynamite, and to murder. However much 
 good men may sympathize with the legitimate 
 
FOREWORD 15 
 
 rights and demands of labor — and these rights 
 and demands are many — it seems impossible 
 to show that the social and moral interests of 
 the laboring world, as a whole, have been up- 
 lifted by the methods of godless organizations. 
 
 In the purely materialistic and plutocratic 
 life of the present age there are to be encountered 
 the same indifference, the same enmities to- 
 ward Christianity with which Saint Paul had 
 to contend anciently in his mission to the pagan 
 world. And this modern world-spirit yields 
 the same fruits to civilization as did that ancient 
 paganism to the age of Paul. 
 
 Christianity in the meantime, whatever its 
 faults or failures — and for the very reason that 
 it seeks the moral transformation and uplift of 
 an imperfect humanity, its human history is 
 characterized by both faults and failures — 
 nevertheless more conspicuously to-day than 
 ever before holds before the world the one 
 prophetic, quenchless, and adequate light for 
 the moral guidance of humanity. 
 
 Historically measured, and in frankest ad- 
 mission of the moral imperfections of present 
 world-society, Christianity stands without a 
 rival in working both toward the eradication of 
 moral evil and the creation of ideal human 
 character in the world. Dr. Frank Ballard has 
 so well covered this proposition, that I take 
 
16 FOREWORD 
 
 pleasure in giving the following statements 
 direct from his own pen: 
 
 (1) Whatever be the comparative failure of 
 Christianity, it has done, and is now doing, more 
 toward the two great ends above contemplated, 
 than any other religion. 
 
 (2) It has done, and is now doing, more than any 
 form of irreligion. 
 
 (3) It has done, and is doing, when all the factors 
 of the great problems are fairly taken into account, 
 as much as could reasonably be expected. 
 
 (4) It is now doing more than any other influence 
 in civilization, by way of contribution to the con- 
 quest of ill and the triumph of good. 
 
 A standing wonder, beauty, and fairness of 
 Christianity is that it submits itself at all times 
 and among all races to the plain test of human 
 experience. It stands at all times ready to be 
 judged by its fruits as shown in life and in 
 character. It is to some exposition of these 
 experimental tests that the present work is 
 dedicated. 
 
 For thoughts and facts as set forth in the 
 following pages I am indebted to many sources. 
 Save in a few instances, I have avoided quota- 
 tion marks, indicating direct quotations by the 
 closer type. Nor have I burdened my space with 
 footnotes of credits to special authors. At the 
 close of the volume will be found a list of pub- 
 lications, each of which I have more or less 
 consulted in the preparation of my manuscript. 
 
FOREWORD 17 
 
 My special acknowledgments are due to one 
 work. I have reread with profit, and always 
 with refreshing interest, William James's great 
 work, Varieties of Religious Experience. I do 
 not think I am so much indebted to James for 
 new knowledge as for his fair-minded and 
 masterful methods, his wealth of illustrative 
 incidents, and the vigorous and lucid style em- 
 ployed in his treatment of a great subject. 
 
 The subject into which I have ventured, like 
 a temple vast and many-roomed, is so spacious 
 and rich as greatly to impress me that my work, 
 taken at its best, is but a fraction of a great 
 whole. If the readers of this 1 book gain from 
 its reading a tithe of the profit which I have 
 experienced in its writing, then I shall be 
 amply compensated for any labors expended 
 in its preparation. 
 
 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 
 
PART FIRST 
 SOURCES 
 
I 
 
 SOURCE AND SCOPE 
 
So God created man in his own image, in the image of 
 God created he him; male and female created he them. — 
 
 1. 27. 
 
 God that made the world and all things therein . . . hath 
 made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the 
 face of the earth, . . . that they should seek the Lord, if 
 haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be 
 not far from every one of us. — Acts 17. 24-27. 
 
 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I 
 perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every 
 nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is 
 accepted with him. — Acts 10. 34, 35. 
 
 Religion is so essential to man that he cannot escape from 
 it. It besets him, penetrates, holds him even against his 
 will. The proof of its necessity is the spontaneity of its 
 existence. It comes into being without any man willing it, 
 or any man making it; and as it began so it continues. Few 
 men could give a reason for their belief, and the curious 
 thing is that when it is attempted the reasons are, as a rule, 
 less rational than the beliefs themselves. ... If great his- 
 torical religions which innumerable millions of men, as 
 rational as we, have professed through thousands of ages, 
 be resolved into systems of error and delusion that only the 
 blind deceitfulness of the human heart could tempt man to 
 believe, then it is evident that we dare not use the reason or 
 the conscience which we have so discredited either to believe 
 or to attest, or to justify the truth of our own. In other 
 words, the philosophy that misreads the origin of religious 
 ideas and the history of any religion will not, and, indeed, 
 cannot, be just to the Christian; while he who would main- 
 tain the Christian must be just and even generous to all 
 religions created and professed of men. — Andrew Martin 
 Fairbairn. 
 
 Behind and at the foundation of all religion lies the 
 fact of the soul's vision of the Eternal. The church, the 
 historic faith, the communion of saints, the vital power and 
 permanence of religion — all rest ultimately on the reality, 
 and intensity, and clarity of that vision; on the things that 
 eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, but which the Spirit reveals 
 to the soul in the silence of the secret and inner shrine of 
 the individual life. There is the central source and spring 
 of religion, and there ultimately all its problems must find 
 their solution. — Benjamin A. Millard. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 SOURCE AND SCOPE 
 
 In deciding a general title I have elected to 
 use the term "Religious Experience" rather than 
 "Christian Experience." This does not mean 
 that I do not regard the ideal Christian experi- 
 ence as the highest type of religious experience. 
 The religious experience of the race presents 
 an infinite variety, much of which little lends 
 itself to distinctive Christian classification. 
 But no discussion of religious experience can 
 be adequate which leaves out of consideration 
 the religious life of non-Christian faiths. The 
 literature of the religious life is well-nigh meas- 
 ureless. It opens itself out into realms of fact 
 and suggestion so rich as to challenge largest 
 study. 
 
 It is quite aside from my purpose to attempt 
 any exhaustive survey of comparative religions. 
 A vast volume of primitive phenomena in a 
 work like this can be passed by without men- 
 tion. But no open-minded review of religious 
 thought and experience can fail to make im- 
 pressive both the vastness of the religious 
 
 23 
 
24 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 question itself and the commanding significance 
 of many religious faiths which are not classified 
 as Christian. Doubtless many religious views 
 now in vogue and pleading for acceptance are 
 destined to fail and to fall before the inquisition 
 of reason. The horizon of religious thought, how- 
 ever, will ceaselessly expand. Religious truth 
 which still awaits discovery and appropriation by 
 sane and devout faith will be an ever-growing 
 volume. There is no more obvious duty for 
 the Christian thinker of to-day than to gird 
 himself reverently, and with open and hospit- 
 able mind, for frankest exploration in realms 
 of religious phenomena. From such study de- 
 voutly pursued there can result no detriment, 
 much less a menace, to sane faith. 
 
 No one can intelligently deny, I think, that a 
 great body of reverent thought addresses itself 
 to the age, thought which so far has not famil- 
 iarly uttered itself within the pale of so-called 
 "historical orthodoxy," yet which at core is 
 essentially Christian. It would be a large 
 assumption indeed for any thinker to arrogate 
 to himself a complete possession and mastery 
 of essential Christian truth. The sum of Chris- 
 tian truth, if possible of apprehension, would 
 doubtless be found coextensive with the facts 
 of the moral universe. An inseparable feature 
 of religion, however poor the contents of the 
 
SOURCE AND SCOPE 25 
 
 religion itself, is that the worshiper seeks ad- 
 dress to a being whom he regards as greatly 
 superior to himself. The higher the religious 
 faith, the more exalted will be the being wor- 
 shiped. A fact of increasing impressiveness 
 the more it is explored, is that of a high and 
 reverent Godward attitude which characterizes 
 many of the heterogeneous religious faiths. The 
 larger facts of these faiths, the facts really in- 
 spirational and vital, if separated from their 
 nonessential associations, could be normally 
 incorporated and domesticated in any reason- 
 able system of Christian truth. It should be 
 no cause for wonderment that there are many 
 diverse expressions of religious faith. Even 
 within the pale of credal Christianity there are 
 many diverse views which separate the denom- 
 inations from each other. And, unfortunately, 
 the separating facts are usually the nonessen- 
 tial, the non vital. If such is the situation 
 within the recognized pale of the Christian 
 Church, the diversities of nonconforming faiths 
 should certainly furnish no occasion for sur- 
 prise. But, in the larger measurements, the 
 standing and falling articles of the great ethnic 
 faiths will, at least very many of them, be found 
 closely akin. The central facts of the great re- 
 ligions, when stripped of the burden which igno- 
 rance and superstition have imposed upon them, 
 
26 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 will largely evince a common source. Back of 
 all systems, and diversities of systems, man is 
 universally religious because God is forever 
 inspiring himself into the human soul. 
 
 Man is God's supreme counterpart in the 
 universe. He was made in God's own likeness. 
 God made man for himself. In a sense of 
 divinest significance, he is God's own child. 
 He is endowed with moral, intellectual, and 
 affectional faculties, faculties capable of infinite 
 expansion, that through an eternity he might 
 grow into an ever-increasing knowledge of, 
 into an ever-increasing likeness to, and an ever- 
 enriching companionship with, God. More 
 than to all the physical immensities does God's 
 thought go out to the human soul. Man is the 
 supreme object of God's love and nurture. He 
 is still infantile. This is the way God started 
 him. It is only with childish beginnings that 
 man at his best is at present able to apprehend 
 in any measure the wealth of his Father's love. 
 But this being is in the making for a great 
 future. God values him. God loves him. 
 To promote his intellectual and moral educa- 
 tion God has lifted up around him the staging 
 of the material universe, and has thrown open 
 the portals of endless and widening spiritual 
 vistas. The forces of the moral universe are 
 subsidized for man's glorification. The su- 
 
SOURCE AND SCOPE 27 
 
 preme and unending trsk, so far as this world 
 is concerned, is so to inspire, to educate, to 
 discipline, to develop man, that some time later 
 in the aeonian order he may come to superlative 
 exaltation. It would thus be strangely anom- 
 alous indeed if God should not continuously 
 stimulate and agitate the human soul with a 
 touch of himself. It matters little that in his 
 immaturity man has so little apprehended God's 
 thought. The truth remains that God has 
 kept himself in such unbroken touch with the 
 human spirit that man has never been able to 
 divest himself of the consciousness, however 
 vague, of the divine nearness. The voice of 
 the Spirit has never been altogether silent in the 
 human breast. Man's religious nature, his 
 divinest endowment, has never been permitted 
 wholly to die within him. By virtue of this 
 very nature, and of God's ceaseless moral touch 
 upon his life, man is indeed "incurably re- 
 ligious." 
 
 We need not travel far into the fields of his- 
 toric evidence to confirm the essential and uni- 
 versal religiousness of man. Let it be fully 
 conceded that much of the religious expression 
 of the race is both rudimentary, superstitious 
 and unlovely. It still remains true that a 
 great wealth of noble religious expression has 
 uttered itself outside the pale of credal Chris- 
 
28 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 tianity. It cannot be denied that this expression 
 is often coupled with high intelligence and pure 
 character. It is farthest possible from either 
 my desire or purpose to extol any nonevan- 
 gelical faith above the Christian discipleship of 
 the New Testament, but it would be neither an 
 intelligent, noble, nor candid attitude to ignore 
 or to shun the outstanding values of much 
 religious character whose credal beliefs do not 
 match with the teachings of the evangelical 
 standards. The truth is that a high order of 
 religious life, both in and out of "orthodoxy," 
 is characterized on the part of its representa- 
 tives by great diversities both of belief and 
 experience. The psychology of religious ex- 
 perience in diverse lives is as yet only partially 
 explored. I am unable to resist the impression 
 that many teachers who have acquired recogni- 
 tion as expositors of the faith have too often 
 assigned narrow horizons to Christian truth. 
 It is beyond question that the creeds of many 
 of the denominations are such as to exclude 
 from their fellowship many men of highest 
 thought and purest lives. But is not this very 
 condition one against which Christ distinctly 
 warned his disciples? All the great religions 
 have developed saintly characters. Even pa- 
 ganism, however exceptionally, has its saints. 
 But do not all the saints really belong to God? 
 
SOURCE AND SCOPE 29 
 
 The united ecclesiastical rosters of the world 
 would not be found to contain the names of all 
 the saints. 
 
 If God by his Spirit is dealing with universal 
 man, it ought to be unthinkable that no fruits, 
 except in Christian lands, are being gathered 
 from these divine processes. Such a conclusion 
 would be in itself irrational. It would be a 
 reflection against God. It is a conclusion 
 worthy of an atheistic parentage. To say 
 nothing about the great ethnic religions out- 
 side of Christendom, there are many in Chris- 
 tian communities, men of pure and noble char- 
 acter, who are unable to put themselves in in- 
 tellectual sympathy with the historic creeds of 
 Christianity. Yet what human authority is 
 competent to decide that these men are not 
 really citizens of the kingdom of Jesus Christ? 
 I do not disparage the formulated creed. Most 
 men need credal guidance. It serves as an 
 anchor to hold them in hours of stress and 
 storm. Comparatively few in the great masses 
 do such thorough and competent thinking for 
 themselves as to remove them from the neces- 
 sity of the schoolmaster's guidance. The creeds 
 have served immeasurable values, and are 
 worthy of all historic honor. They are the 
 wrought products of mighty minds, and they 
 have furnished the battle cries of the armies of 
 
30 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 righteousness in periods when the very powers 
 of darkness have leagued themselves against the 
 foundations of Christian truth. The formation 
 of creeds is inevitable both from the nature and 
 needs of faith. We no sooner have an expe- 
 rience than there arises the prompting to give 
 some intellectual accounting of the experience 
 itself. The religious life forms no exception to 
 this law. This is the meaning of philosophy, 
 the meaning of theology. The primitive Chris- 
 tian experience was so unique, so signal, so self- 
 satisfying to its recipient, as to preclude all con- 
 cern about its philosophy. It was simply 
 thought of, and very rightly, as a direct incom- 
 ing of God into the individual soul. Like the 
 blind man whose sight was restored, he only 
 knew and thought that whereas he was blind, 
 he was now able to see. But historic Chris- 
 tianity had not gone far on its journey before 
 it felt the necessity of a frank dealing with 
 philosophy. This conviction accounts largely 
 for the form of Saint John's Gospel. 
 
 We must wage battle neither against theology 
 nor philosophy in themselves considered. Both 
 are the indispensable handmaids of faith. The 
 historic creeds were philosophical and theological 
 necessities of the ages which gave them birth. 
 What we need to remember is that the creeds 
 are not infallible. They are human products. 
 
SOURCE AND SCOPE 31 
 
 They are not necessarily immortal. Rising 
 and advancing Christian thought may out- 
 grow and supersede them. One of the weak- 
 nesses of denominational ism has been an idol- 
 atry of creeds. Creed has been exalted above 
 character. It has too often appeared that if a 
 man were Puritanically orthodox in his intel- 
 lectual creed, lapses in his moral character 
 might easily be overlooked. Men have too 
 easily assumed that if their intellectual beliefs 
 could be religiously approved, they are safe 
 within the fold. This is not the New Testa- 
 ment view. So far as intellectual belief is con- 
 cerned, the very devils are orthodox. They 
 believe, and tremble while they believe. It is 
 this kind of orthodoxy which is receiving caustic 
 and merciless arraignment in current literature. 
 The accepted literary standards of the present 
 are testing the values of Christian character, 
 not by the correctness of a man's intellectual 
 beliefs, but by the fruits of the Spirit as shown 
 in life and conduct. And this is of momentous 
 significance as a sign of clear spiritual vision 
 and of moral demand which are voicing them- 
 selves in the thought of the age. 
 
 However great the function of the intellect 
 as a conservator of sanity in thought, it is worth 
 our while to take note of the fact that the most 
 healthy present-day philosophy does not ac- 
 
32 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 credit the intellect as being the chief fountain 
 source of truth for life. Moral wholeness comes 
 from inward spiritual health. This is some- 
 thing that lies deeper in the nature than intel- 
 lect. This is a quality in character which the 
 most brilliant intellectual processes can neither 
 create nor secure. If one has this quality, he is 
 in possession of something infinitely more val- 
 uable than the mere ability to pursue, however 
 brilliantly, a line of intellectual logic, or to 
 pronounce a shibboleth. Whoever has this 
 quality carries within him essentially the spirit 
 of reverence and of worship. His soul bends 
 its knees humbly before the Most High. There 
 is installed in such a breast the most effective 
 norm of character. No man whose inner 
 motives are shaped by high and worshipful 
 thought can be other than in himself noble. 
 He, whatever his incidental defect of creed, 
 does not himself rest far this side of saintly 
 character. 
 
 Emerson, as also Matthew Arnold, was a 
 devout believer in moral law. He believed that 
 the universe is finally dominated by moral pur- 
 pose. There is a power not ourselves that 
 makes for righteousness. He says: 
 
 The perception of this law awakens in the mind 
 a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, 
 and which makes our highest happiness. Wonder- 
 
SOURCE AND SCOPE 33 
 
 fui in its power to charm and to command. It is 
 a mountain air. It is the embalmer of the world. 
 It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the 
 silent song of the stars is in it. It is the beatitude 
 of man. It makes him illimitable. When he says 
 ' 'I ought"; when love warns him; when he chooses, 
 warned from on high, the good and great deed; 
 then, deep melodies wander through his soul from 
 supreme wisdom. Then he can worship and be 
 enlarged by his worship; for he can never go be- 
 hind this sentiment. All the expressions of this 
 sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion 
 to their purity. They affect us more than all other 
 compositions. The sentences of the olden time, 
 which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. 
 And the unique impression of Jesus upon man- 
 kind, whose name is not so much written as plowed 
 into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle 
 virtue of this infusion. 
 
 Emerson, though honest to the core in his 
 intellectual convictions, was doubtless something 
 of a pagan in his creed. But in moral character, 
 as measured by his life and conduct, he could 
 pass in the social exchanges as a saint. It was 
 of him that his genial friend, Father Taylor, 
 chaplain of the Seaman's Bethel in Boston, said : 
 "Emerson may finally go to hell, but if so, one 
 thing is sure: the atmosphere of the place will 
 change, and population will set that way." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln is a character revered 
 throughout civilization. In nobility of ideals, 
 in Christlike love of men, in sacrificial service, 
 
34 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 in poise of character, in clarity and loftiness 
 of conviction, in purity of life, few, if any, 
 have excelled him. If he had been, as added 
 to his known qualities and deeds, a conspicu- 
 ous church worker, his name unquestionably 
 would be written high in the calendar of elect 
 Christian lives. But was he really less a saint 
 because his name was not written on some 
 church register? It is doubtless highly impor- 
 tant for most Christians to be formally en- 
 rolled in church membership. If for no other 
 reason, most persons, if they would secure 
 for themselves a needed Christian nurture, 
 require the intimate spiritual instructions and 
 fellowships which the Church alone best fur- 
 nishes. Emphasizing all this, it must still be 
 rationally admitted, I think, that formal 
 enrollment in church membership is not a 
 standing or falling condition of vital member- 
 ship in the kingdom of Christ. 
 
 Lincoln had some intellectual difficulties 
 which made impossible his easy acceptance 
 at all points of a credal orthodoxy. But in 
 essential quality, his life, in gigantic stature, 
 and in the whitest light of publicity, stands in 
 history as beautifully Christian. 
 
 To Mr. Henry B. Rankin, intimate friend 
 of Mr. Lincoln in earlier years, we are in- 
 debted for an invaluable record as falling 
 
SOURCE AND SCOPE 35 
 
 directly from Mr. Lincoln's own lips. In a 
 political campaign in which Peter Cartwright 
 was a rival candidate against him for Con- 
 gress, Lincoln had been charged with being 
 an infidel. To this charge he made no reply 
 in his campaign speeches. But to Mr. Ran- 
 kin's mother, Lincoln's personal friend, he 
 made a private statement of his personal 
 faith, conditioning that the statement itself 
 should be in no way used in the campaign. 
 He said: 
 
 I will not discuss the character and religion of 
 Jesus Christ on the stump! That is no place for 
 it. At the time you refer to I was having serious 
 questionings about some portions of my former 
 implicit faith in the Bible. The influences that 
 drew me into such doubts were strong ones — men 
 having the widest culture and strongest minds of 
 any I had known up to that time. In the midst 
 of those shadows and questionings, before I could 
 see my way clear to decide on them, there came 
 into my life sad events and a loss that you were 
 close to, and you knew a great deal about how 
 hard they were for me, for you were, at that time, 
 a mutual friend. Those days of trouble found me 
 tossed amidst a sea of questionings. They piled 
 big upon me, experiences that brought with them 
 great strains upon my emotional and mental life. 
 Through all I groped my way until I found a stronger 
 and higher grasp of thought, one that reached be- 
 yond this life with a clearness and satisfaction I 
 had never known before. The Scriptures unfolded 
 before me with a deeper and more logical appeal, 
 through these new experiences, than anything else 
 
36 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 I could find to turn to, or ever before had found 
 in them. 
 
 I do not claim that all my doubts were removed 
 then, or since that time have been swept away. 
 They are not. Probably it is to be my lot to go on 
 in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through 
 life, as questioning, doubting Thomas did. But 
 in my poor, maimed, withered way, I bear with 
 me as I go on a seeking spirit of desire for a faith 
 that was with him of the olden time, who, in his 
 need, as I in mine, exclaimed, "Help thou my 
 unbelief." 
 
 I doubt the possibility or propriety of settling 
 the religion of Jesus Christ in the models of man- 
 made creeds and dogmas. It was a spirit in the 
 life that he laid stress on and taught, if I read 
 aright. I know I see it to be so with me. 
 
 The fundamental truths reported in the four 
 Gospels as from the lips of Jesus Christ, and that 
 I first heard from the lips of my mother, are settled 
 and fixed moral precepts with me. I have con- 
 cluded to dismiss from my mind the debatable 
 wrangles that once perplexed me with distractions 
 that stirred up, but never absolutely settled any- 
 thing. I have tossed aside with the doubtful dif- 
 ferences which divide denominations — sweeping them 
 all out of my mind among the nonessentials. I 
 have ceased to follow such discussions or be in- 
 terested in them. 
 
 I cannot without mental reservations assent to 
 long and complicated creeds and catechisms. If 
 the church should ask simply for assent to the 
 Saviour's statement of the substance of the law: 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, 
 and thy neighbor as thyself" — that church would 
 I gladly unite with. 
 
SOURCE AND SCOPE 37 
 
 There are many known instances of indi- 
 viduals who have been swayed and molded 
 by high religious convictions and motives, 
 convictions and motives essentially Christian, 
 who nevertheless have not been able to place 
 themselves in convincing sympathy with the 
 credal conditions of church membership. The 
 difficulty may have gone even to the inability 
 of accepting the credal interpretations of 
 Christ's character and mission, yet with their 
 hearts, the instruments through which men 
 believe unto righteousness, these same men 
 passionately embrace Christ's spirit and motive. 
 
 Instances need not be multiplied. I have 
 cited the foregoing cases in illustration of the 
 very truth which Christ himself announced, 
 namely, that the Kingdom over which he 
 presides is something far larger and may be 
 something far different than the entire sum 
 of ecclesiastical organizations. The citizenship 
 of this Kingdom is made up of all who are 
 in vital moral harmony with Christ, and in 
 the final enrollment these in great numbers 
 shall come up from the north and the south, 
 from the east and from the west. 
 
 Whatever discriminating safeguards should be 
 put around these facts in Christian teaching, 
 the facts themselves are entitled to a rational 
 and sympathetic hospitality. While, upon the 
 
38 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 one hand, it is clearly the duty of evangelical 
 thought to sedulously guard itself against 
 error, it is, on the other hand, not less its sacred 
 obligation to be on guard against putting too 
 narrow constructions upon the world-mission 
 of the Holy Spirit in dealing with the hearts 
 and lives of men. 
 
 However preeminently true it is, and such 
 I fully believe to be the fact, that the 
 Holy Scriptures contain the highest and com- 
 pletest record of God's revelation of himself 
 to elect souls, it still remains true that the 
 seat of revelation for all ages and races is alone 
 in the human breast. In its distinctive quality, 
 to say nothing of the special inspiration of 
 prophet and apostle, the book that contains 
 the photographic record of the life, character 
 and teachings of Jesus Christ must and will 
 remain, however challenged, the supreme utter- 
 ance for the highest religion. Yet, in our 
 habitual use of the Bible, it is easy for us to 
 overlook the fact that in its every utterance, 
 both in the Old and in the New Testaments, 
 we realize final validity only as they make 
 appeal to, and find approval from, the moral 
 and spiritual senses resident within us. The 
 moral and spiritual constitution of man is 
 fundamental and remains the same from age 
 to age. However distinctive the message, or 
 
SOURCE AND SCOPE 39 
 
 the purpose for which it is given, it remains 
 true that God reveals himself to men to-day 
 on the same grounds and by the same processes 
 as in any past age. To the soul that is seer- 
 like, consecrated and worshipful, there comes 
 as certainly now the heavenly vision as to 
 Moses or to Paul. Really, the divine reveal- 
 ing ought now to be more richly, more perfectly 
 apprehended by saintly thought than ever 
 before. For many centuries the devout mind 
 of the Church has been perpetually feeding 
 itself upon the spiritual revelations of both 
 the Old and the New Testaments. The teach- 
 ing of the records has received continuously 
 fresh and enlarging interpretation from the 
 experience and knowledge of the Christian 
 generations. The Church, to whom the Holy 
 Spirit is ever showing the things of Christ, 
 is now in possession of a fuller and richer 
 revelation of Christ's character and mission 
 than was ever before apprehended in human 
 thought. And this growth in spiritual knowl- 
 edge will ever continue through indefinite 
 time to come. For Christianity the Bible con- 
 tains the major premise which must forever 
 remain normative and regulative for the spir- 
 itual life. But the inclusions posited in this 
 premise are far larger, more various and preg- 
 nant in meaning, than have ever yet been 
 
40 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 apprehended either by exploring mind or in 
 saintly experience. 
 
 The Church of final conquest will make 
 all its advances under the inspiration of new 
 vision and an ever-enlarging apprehension of 
 Christian truth. This Church will require in 
 its human leadership the inspired seer, the 
 soul with the mystic spiritual vision, the saint 
 who experimentally knows both the rapture 
 of transfiguration heights and the stress of 
 service in the shadowed valleys where demons 
 are vexing the lives of men. 
 
II 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 
 
God is not dumb that he should speak no more; 
 
 If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
 And findest not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor. 
 
 — /. R. Lowell, 
 
 Without thyself, O man, thou hast no means to look for, by 
 which thou mayest know God. Thou must abide within 
 thyself; to the light that is in thee thou must turn thee; 
 there thou wilt find it and nowhere else. God is nearest 
 unto thee and to every man. He that goes forth of himself 
 to any creature, thereby to know God, departs from God. 
 God is nearer unto every man than himself, because he pene- 
 trates the most inward and intimate parts of man and is 
 the Life of the inmost spirit. Mind, therefore, the Light 
 that is in thee. — Peter Balling. 
 
 When we call man a being of spiritual endowments, we 
 mean that he is possessor of the powers out of which mo- 
 rality and religion have been brought forth, and is open to 
 all the possibilities that rationality, morality, and religion 
 imply. By possession of his rational nature he has moral 
 responsibility and religious powers, and is capable of rising 
 to life above sensuous and temporal things, in the fellowship 
 of the eternal. — Doctor William Newton Clarke. 
 
 There remains the greatest of all man's higher senses, his 
 sense of the spiritual. We cannot, in one way, speak of that 
 as a new sense. One would call it the oldest in existence. 
 Assuredly what it stands for is the oldest thing in the uni- 
 verse. And yet, as related to human life as a whole, it may 
 still be regarded as the youngest of the faculties. Man's 
 animal nature is old almost as the world. It derives from 
 all the million years of our planet's animal story. Compared 
 with this, his spiritual quality is indeed a late arrival. It is 
 as yet a mere streak on the top of his nature, a babe new- 
 born amid the ferocious tribe of his animalities. But the 
 babe has all the future before it. That streak of dawn 
 means a long and splendid day to come. . . . The religious 
 feeling, that baffling mystery to the psychologist; with its 
 mystic exaltations, with its attendant phenomena of dreams, 
 of vision, of psychic forces; with its stupendous moral driv- 
 ing power, with its possibilities of all that is exquisite in 
 feeling; with its hints of unimaginable acquisitions yet to 
 be realized; the religious feeling, we say, is of all the senses 
 of man's inner nature the one that carries in it the richest 
 promise. — J. Brierley. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 
 
 Upon the threshold of this chapter I tarry 
 briefly to take note of a faculty which may 
 be named the "psychic sense." Psychic re- 
 search, especially in recent years, has engaged 
 much critical study. It must be admitted, I 
 think, that, after all deductions are made for 
 mistakes of method, or for fraudulent processes, 
 this study has yielded a mass of phenomena 
 worthy of the most scientific investigation. I 
 do not propose here to enter, pro or con, into 
 the merits of this subject. The reality, how- 
 ever, of a vision of things, ordinarily unseen 
 by men, is so well attested from sources both 
 numerous and commanding as to make skep- 
 ticism of the phenomena unreasonable. As 
 competent witnesses to the reality of such 
 phenomena, we might cite the names of James 
 Russell Lowell, William Stead, and Sir Oliver 
 Lodge. These are a few from great numbers, 
 who give direct, and seemingly reliable, testi- 
 mony of experiences with "presences" which 
 belong to the realm of mystery. There is 
 also a large literature relating to experiences 
 designated under the general name of "trance" 
 
 43 
 
44 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 — a state in which the soul seems to have 
 passed out of the body or to be rapt in vision. 
 In the book of Acts it is said of Saint Peter 
 that once "he fell into a trance, and saw heaven 
 opened." Was this experience akin to that 
 of Saint Paul, who in a vision was caught up 
 to the third heaven, himself not knowing 
 whether he was in or out of the body? For 
 the trance experience a multitude of witnesses 
 could be named, among whom are Charles 
 Kingsley, Alfred Tennyson, and J. A. Symonds. 
 There is also a strange borderland of impres- 
 sions which is frequently entered under con- 
 ditions of anaesthesia. In this state voluntary 
 movements are suspended, and the vital func- 
 tions reduced to the lowest action. In passing 
 into this state the mystical consciousness is 
 stimulated in an extraordinary degree. "Depth 
 beyond depth of truth seems revealed" to the 
 subject. William James, a foremost student 
 in this field of phenomena, writes: 
 
 Some years ago I myself made some observations 
 on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and 
 reported them in print. One conclusion was forced 
 upon my mind at that time, and my impression 
 of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. 
 It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational 
 consciousness as we call it, is but one special type 
 of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it 
 by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms 
 of consciousness entirely different. We may go 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 45 
 
 through life without suspecting their existence; but 
 apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they 
 are there in all their completeness, definite types 
 of mentality which probably somewhere have their 
 field of application and adaptation. No account 
 of the universe in its totality can be final which 
 leaves these other forms of consciousness quite 
 disregarded. 
 
 I am induced to mention these various 
 phenomena because they seem to indicate a 
 multiform susceptibility, potentiality, of the 
 soul for psychical experiences from which the 
 ordinary, perhaps the normal, life of men seems 
 excluded. These susceptibilities, however they 
 may be finally classified, or validated, would 
 seem to indicate that the human soul, if it 
 could only make connections, might become a 
 free citizen and explorer of perhaps innumer- 
 able realms which now lie mostly beyond the 
 range of observation. They suggest at least 
 that the soul is a marvelous entity, a some- 
 thing of illimitable possibilities, a something 
 which may very well be akin to divinity. 
 
 For the purposes of this writing I do not 
 at all identify what I have termed the "psychic 
 sense," whatever it may be, with the "spiritual 
 sense." The latter is a racial possession, a 
 something certain of manifestation in all high 
 religious experience. 
 
 Unfortunately, it has not been, until very 
 
46 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 recently, common to philosophy to accord 
 much place or validity to the religious sense. 
 This sense has been much treated as though 
 it were the offspring of outgrown superstitions. 
 By some schools of philosophy it has been 
 contemptuously dismissed as though it were 
 the creation of a priestcraft, a kind of voca- 
 tion invented for the purpose of furnishing a 
 livelihood for a school of men skilled in jug- 
 gling with human hopes and fears. The serious 
 advocates of such thought have simply, if at 
 all, put themselves into history as purblind 
 observers of the universe. Their thought- 
 product is in no worthy sense to be even men- 
 tioned as philosophy. 
 
 The phenomena of religion have increasingly 
 forced recognition for themselves. No philos- 
 ophy worthy of the name is now indifferent to 
 their claims. Our modern libraries abound in 
 works devoted to the psychology of religion. 
 William James, Borden P. Bowne, Edwin D. 
 Starbuck, George A. Coe, Edward P. Ames, 
 William E. Hocking — all American writers — 
 are a few among many who have furnished 
 illuminating studies in this vital field. 
 
 The modern psychologists, quite generally, 
 enter their protests against the method of the 
 old philosophy which mapped out the human 
 mind into "Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will," 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 47 
 
 each a water-tight compartment susceptible 
 of being independently examined by itself. 
 The normal mental life, however various and 
 complex its functioning powers, is one. Man 
 exercises the same faculties in his religious 
 thought and activities as in his vocational 
 pursuits. His religiousness means that he gives 
 a special direction, emphasis, and application 
 to religion of the same mental totality which 
 he gives to other objects which may engross 
 his energies. The quality of the object pur- 
 sued is the decisive thing. If one's mentality 
 is absorbed in selfish greeds or in low ambi- 
 tions, his very character itself will take on the 
 qualities which he pursues. As a man thinketh 
 in his heart, so is he. Fortunately, the qual- 
 ities of motives are so well understood that 
 none need mistake as to the effect of an en- 
 grossing affection on character. 
 
 So far as the spiritual sense is concerned, it 
 would seem to matter little what philosophy 
 may decide as to its genesis. All agree that 
 this sense is potential in universal human nature. 
 It is equally agreed that of all motives which 
 transform and uplift character none is so 
 morally dynamic as the motives of a high 
 religious faith. A psychology which could 
 trace the genesis and evolution of the spiritual 
 sense would not thereby detract in the slight- 
 
48 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 est from its moral significance for human life. 
 The spiritual sense is to be philosophically 
 reckoned with. It is primal in human nature. 
 The magnetic needle points not more certainly 
 to the pole than does this sense to a divine 
 source. Without its activity man can have 
 knowledge neither of God nor of a spiritual 
 universe. Sadly, the vision of this sense may 
 be greatly obscured. Its accompanying con- 
 ception of the character of God may be very 
 unworthy. But if the soul is to have any 
 inspiration, any revelation, in spiritual things, 
 these can come to consciousness only at the 
 seat of the spiritual sense. The spiritual sense, 
 as, indeed, the faculty of conscience, is sub- 
 ject to education. It is the function of Chris- 
 tian teaching, from whatever source, to carry 
 light and truth to the spiritual understanding. 
 "The entrance of thy words giveth light." 
 "If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole 
 body shall be full of light." But the spiritual 
 sense is the eye of the soul. It is the cleansed 
 vision of this sense that enables the pure in 
 heart to see God. 
 
 Science asserts that the laws of nature are 
 absolutely reliable. Eucken has repeatedly 
 stated that if reason does not reside in the 
 whole structure of the universe, it cannot be 
 found in any single spot. The order of the 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 49 
 
 world about us is not a lie. We live in a sys- 
 tem where aptitudes are met by correspond- 
 ences. If for the eye there is light, if for the 
 reason truth, then man is simply mocked if 
 for the spiritual sense there is no responding 
 God. It would be egregiously absurd to de- 
 clare that we live in a system which makes 
 infallible response to our physical senses, to 
 our appetites, to our reason, and yet totally 
 refuses response to our conscious moral and 
 spiritual needs. This would be a proclamation 
 of incapacity against the universe. It would 
 be to destroy by one stroke the foundations 
 of both philosophy and science. If we live in 
 an honest universe, we may implicitly rely 
 upon an ample correspondence to man's high- 
 est and most imperative needs — the needs of 
 his spiritual nature. The moral law, which 
 was to the great philosopher Kant a standing 
 wonder, is not a cheat. Man's moral constitu- 
 tion is not a lie. The only answer to the 
 infinite in man, to the irrepressible and undy- 
 ing hunger of his soul is — God. 
 
 The subject considered is one of great grav- 
 ity. It should be approached in a spirit of 
 the utmost open-mindedness, candor, and rev- 
 erence. It is due to say that recent psychology 
 has effected marked revisions in the traditional 
 views of both inspiration and revelation. The 
 
50 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 prevalent, or popular, view of these subjects 
 has been that God's touch upon man's spiritual 
 life is by some outward, miraculous, or phenom- 
 enal manifestation, rather than by a process 
 purely of inward illumination. I do not forget 
 the outward historic processes by which God 
 has furnished object-lessons of himself and of his 
 purposes, that thereby men might be schooled in 
 the methods of Providence. Of this method of 
 divine education I shall speak elsewhere. 
 
 The fact now to be emphasized is that God's 
 spiritual revelations of himself, the inspirations 
 through which the clearest vision of himself 
 is secured, are those which have their seat and 
 operation solely within the human breast. As 
 the ear can have no hearing save by the en- 
 trance of sound, the eye no vision save by 
 the entrance of light, so the spiritual sense 
 can have no perception of God save as it is 
 itself touched by divine illumination. This is 
 only to say that the spiritual organ in man is 
 inoperative, without function, save as evoked 
 in response to spiritual stimuli. But, if the 
 spiritual sense is the organ through which God 
 finds entrance into, and expression of himself 
 within, the soul, it is clear that the soul itself 
 is a sacred temple into which God enters, 
 that he may give inspirations and revelations 
 from himself. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 51 
 
 The fact of divine processes in history, the 
 fact of the inspired records in the Sacred 
 Scriptures, the supreme fact itself of Jesus 
 Christ as portrayed in the New Testament — 
 these apparently outward facts in no way 
 invalidate the human soul as the one seat of 
 divine inspiration. The record of revelation, 
 voicing itself either in history or in the Scrip- 
 tures, can secure no appeal, receive no re- 
 sponse, until it finally utters itself in the 
 inner courts of the soul. It was a saying of 
 George Fox that "Though I read of Christ 
 and God, I know them only from a like spirit 
 in my own soul." Not even God can make a 
 single spiritual revelation of himself save as 
 within man there is an awakened and illu- 
 minated spiritual response. The man with a 
 dormant spiritual sense is one who would stand 
 mute, dumb, and unseeing in the face of a 
 flaming Sinai or a pleading Calvary of divine 
 manifestation. 
 
 It hardly needs restatement that the spir- 
 itual sense is God's one door of approach to 
 the universal heart. The scientific unity of 
 the world nowhere more certainly holds than 
 in the universally homogeneous character of 
 man's moral and spiritual constitution. God 
 deals spiritually with all men. A measure of the 
 Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. 
 
52 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 It does not follow that all peoples, certainly 
 not at the same periods of history, should be 
 possessed of equally clear spiritual insight. 
 Even members of the same family, reared in 
 a common environment, often show great dis- 
 similarity in acuteness of perception. This 
 does not prove that fundamentally they have 
 dissimilar constitutions or faculties. So, how- 
 ever much nations and races may differ in 
 grasp upon certain conceptions, this is no 
 proof of fundamental dissimilarity in the phys- 
 ical, mental, and moral constitution of the 
 race as a whole. As to alertness of spiritual 
 apprehension, much may depend upon both 
 racial heredity and environment. Renan, in 
 an eloquent passage, extols the spiritual genius 
 of the ancient Hebrews. In his philosophy 
 he seeks to account for this genius on the 
 ground of national habit and environment. 
 The great seers of ancient Israel, living in the 
 white sunlight and under the starry skies of 
 Syria, whatever the deeper causes, proved 
 themselves exceptionally responsive to the 
 Divine Presence. They, as no other ancient 
 characters, evidenced both susceptibility and 
 hospitality to the loftiest moral inspirations. 
 
 We must hesitate, however, to conclude that 
 Israel was the only ancient people with whom 
 God was distinctively dealing. If God exer- 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 53 
 
 cises any providence over the world, we do 
 well to inquire as to the scope of the prov- 
 idential purpose. All of God's dealings in 
 history look toward the finality of a perfected 
 humanity. The kingdom of God in the earth, 
 both in the making and its completed form, 
 will involve many other factors than those 
 which we are accustomed to classify as dis- 
 tinctively spiritual. God's perfected world 
 will be characterized by law, art, intellectual 
 enlightenment, universal education, social and 
 industrial justice, human brotherhood, and by 
 all conditions which must contribute to the 
 weal and purity of society. A final and perfect 
 civilization was from the beginning in God's 
 diagram. For the fulfillment of this program, 
 God seems to have assigned a division of 
 labor among the nations. Let the Hebrew seer 
 remain unchallenged as the supreme moral 
 teacher of his times. It will still remain true 
 that he was very far from contributing all 
 the elements requisite to God's ideal of civil- 
 ization. Indeed, in many of the highest things 
 the Hebrew was a laggard. In philosophy 
 and art he holds no rank with his Grecian 
 contemporaries. In the art of government and 
 in the creation of civil codes he is utterly over- 
 shadowed by the Roman. The Jews have been 
 scattered throughout civilization, yet their con- 
 
54 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 tribution to world-statesmanship among the 
 nations has been well-nigh a negligible quantity. 
 They have a superficial reputation of being 
 great financiers, but the fact is that a dozen 
 American financiers could be named who have 
 amassed sufficient wealth to buy out the en- 
 tire Jewish world. In music, while the Hebrew 
 has given to the worshiping world a first 
 song litany, yet in the production of great 
 oratorios and symphonies, the classical master- 
 pieces of music, the Hebrew is nowhere to be 
 mentioned in comparison with the great Italian, 
 German, and even English, composers. In 
 inventive arts, the arts that have multiplied 
 human productivity a thousand fold, the Jew 
 figures very little. 
 
 Yet, we must not be guilty of the imper- 
 tinence or the pedantry of minifying the place 
 of the Hebrew in the great complex of civiliza- 
 tion. On his brow we may reverently and 
 justly place the crown of moral leadership for 
 mankind. Even though small among the 
 tribes of earth, he has made contributions to 
 the world's spiritual uplifting greater than the 
 mightiest. He holds, and will forever hold, 
 unrivaled and secure place as the prophet and 
 proclaimer of the highest inspirations and 
 hopes for humanity. The writings which were 
 born in his inspired soul will remain to the end, 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 55 
 
 and superlatively, matchless religious classics 
 for mankind. The contributions to civiliza- 
 tion of great moral personalities as made by 
 the Hebrew race stand unapproachable by the 
 representatives of all other peoples. The 
 Hebrews gave to the world Moses, Elijah, 
 Isaiah, John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul. 
 If the Hebrew race were now to become ex- 
 tinct, mankind, with the brightest forecasts 
 which we may make for its future, will never 
 reach a point of development at which it will 
 not be compelled to look back to Hebrew 
 history for its finest moral ideals, and for its 
 matchless spiritual teachers. 
 
 The Hebrew compels the moral historian 
 to stand among the Judsean hills, and thence 
 to cast his measuring lines for the spiritual 
 significance of history. The Hebrew stands 
 in the moral center of the divine drama of 
 the world. Nevertheless, we must not dis- 
 credit our own judgment, nor needlessly im- 
 poverish our own vision, by assuming that he 
 alone has been the object or the instrument 
 of God's providential dealings with the world. 
 All the races and sons of men are in God's 
 providential vision. In seeking any assessment 
 of the divine dealings with the human race 
 we must put ourselves on guard against any 
 attempt to confine the entire meaning of 
 
56 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 providence in some pocket of a narrow creed. 
 In reaching, even proximately, an adequate 
 point for measuring the scope of God's grace, 
 we must, if needs be, familiarize ourselves with 
 the conception that God is, and always has 
 been, working for a world-humanity. The 
 spiritual sense, common to the race, is the 
 universal ground of appeal both for God and 
 his messengers. The message of the preacher 
 is effective only as he awakens this responsive 
 sense. This same spiritual sense, universal in 
 the heathen world, is the one door of entrance 
 and of hope for all missionary effort. The 
 Holy Spirit himself waits with his illuminating 
 presence at this very door for admission to 
 every human life. 
 
 Historically, we know only too sadly how 
 crude, how beclouded, how seemingly hope- 
 less has been the response of the great masses 
 of mankind to God's higher thought and pur- 
 pose. Like a luminous mountain, with ever- 
 enriching revelations as it is ascended, God's 
 redemptive purpose has been set up in the 
 midst of men. And yet how few, even of 
 saintly minds, have climbed to the most in- 
 spiring heights ! But God is neither discouraged 
 nor balked in his purposes. The infantile 
 moral helplessness and ignorance of the race 
 is no surprise to him. It is in the presence of 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 57 
 
 such beginnings that he ordains all the prophetic 
 processes which are to ultimate in the final 
 splendors and triumphs of his kingdom among 
 men. It is needless to advocate any special 
 theory of evolution. The perfected theory of 
 evolution has not yet been written. But we 
 must not quarrel with history. A sure lesson 
 of history is that God is dealing intellectually 
 and morally with the race by evolutionary 
 processes. This is asserted by all the records 
 of human advancement. All knowledge is 
 gained by the exercise of faculties which 
 initially are undeveloped and unknowing. But 
 how slow has been the march of knowledge! 
 For immemorial ages the earth has remained 
 an unexplored storehouse of laws and materials 
 dynamic for human uses. Such arts, sciences, 
 philosophies, and inventions as have thus far 
 come into service have been secured only at the 
 price of infinite and buffeting toils of mind. 
 The fact, however, of most astounding signi- 
 ficance is that the light of knowledge so far 
 gained only serves to indicate infinities of fact 
 yet to be explored. 
 
 Now, if such is God's method in dealing with 
 man's intellectual and inventive attainments, 
 as relating to his material and temporal life on 
 the earth, why should we look for a prompter 
 process in the attainment of that knowledge 
 
58 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 and experience which pertain to the higher 
 spiritual life? It is an obvious historical fact 
 that the progress of the race in spiritual knowl- 
 edge and character has at best lingered on slow, 
 difficult, and toilsome pathways. Even now, 
 in large areas, as measured by human im- 
 pression, the promise of man's spiritual trans- 
 formation and final exaltation seems little 
 better than a hopeless dream. It would indeed 
 be such if we had to reckon without God. 
 But he from behind what is to us "the dim 
 unknown" is "keeping watch above his 0™." 
 He is infallibly engineering the world to what 
 may be the far-off but sure event of his per- 
 fected kingdom. It cannot be that the great 
 prophets and poet-seers of the ages are mis- 
 taken in their vision. Browning, without illu- 
 sion, saw the dark and forbidding things of life. 
 He had faced the specter of doubt. But never 
 once was his faith eclipsed, nor his courage 
 daunted. He felt sublimely confident of his 
 own future. He said: 
 
 If I stoop 
 Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
 It is but for a time; I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast; its splendor, soon or late, 
 Will pierce the gloom! I shall emerge one day. 
 
 It was Browning who put his own prophecy 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 59 
 
 of man's perfected future into the lips of a 
 medieval mystic: 
 
 For these things tend still upward, progress is 
 
 The law of life, man is not man as yet. 
 
 Nor shall I deem his object served, his end 
 
 Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth, 
 
 While only here and there a star dispels 
 
 The darkness, here and there a towering mind 
 
 O'erlooks its prostrate fellows; when the host 
 
 Is out at once to the despair of night, 
 
 When all mankind alike is perfected, 
 
 Equal in full-blown powers — then, not till then, 
 
 I say, begins man's general infancy. 
 
 ... So in man's self arise 
 
 August anticipations, symbols, types 
 
 Of a dim splendor ever on before 
 
 In that eternal circle life pursues. 
 
 For men begin to pass their nature's bound, 
 
 And find new hopes and cares which fast supplant 
 
 Their proper joys and griefs; they grow too great 
 
 For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade 
 
 Before the unmeasured thirst for good; while peace 
 
 Rises within them ever more and more. 
 
 Such men are even now upon the earth, 
 
 Serene amid the half -formed creatures round 
 
 Who should be saved by them and joined with them. 
 
 The great laureate voices his faith, a most 
 optimistic and prophetic faith, in man's per- 
 fected future in many a glowing verse. He had 
 the vision at least of God's infinite patience, of 
 his unthwartable purpose to bring man, even 
 though it should require aeonian ages, to final 
 perfection. 
 
60 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 Dawn not Day! 
 Is it shame, so few should have climbed from the 
 dens in the level below, 
 Men, with a heart and a soul, no slaves of a 
 
 four-footed will? 
 But if twenty million of summers are stored in 
 the sunlight still, 
 We are far from the noon of man, there is time 
 for the race to grow. 
 
 Red of the dawn! 
 Is it turning a fainter red? so be it, but when shall 
 we lay 
 The Ghost of the Brute that is walking and 
 
 haunting us yet, and be free? 
 In a hundred, a thousand winters? Ah, what 
 will our children be, 
 The men of a hundred thousand, a million sum- 
 mers away? 
 
 Again : 
 
 Where is one that, born of woman, altogether can 
 
 escape 
 From the lower world within him, moods of tiger, 
 
 or of ape? 
 Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning 
 
 Age of ages, 
 Shall not aeon after seon pass and touch him into 
 
 shape? 
 
 All about him shadow still, but, while the races 
 
 flower and fade, 
 Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on 
 
 the shade, 
 Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices 
 
 blend in choric 
 Hallelujah to the Maker: "It is finished. Man is 
 
 made," 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 61 
 
 The question will be raised, "What can be 
 the relation of such a philosophy to the incar- 
 nation? 3 ' If Christ was the eternal Logos in- 
 carnate, if the Christ of Syria was really God 
 manifest in the flesh, then for his working and 
 effective ministry in the world there is no need 
 to set historic limits. Himself said, "Before 
 Abraham was, I am," Christ's mission with 
 human destiny is eternally operative. He 
 alone, as the Lamb slain from before the foun- 
 dations of the world, always has been and 
 always will be the Divine Redeemer of men. 
 Christ has been present in the world with all 
 races and in all ages to meet the spiritual needs 
 of men. This doctrine was taught by Origen, 
 Augustine, and Luther, and by innumerable 
 others. Canon James Maurice Wilson has 
 stated it as follows: "Christ's redeeming work 
 did not begin when he was born in Bethlehem: 
 it had begun as the Word of conscience, the 
 Word Very nigh' to man, in all ages. That 
 which is universal in man was manifested, con- 
 centrated, in the historic revelation of Christ. 
 In him the universal subjective became the 
 unique objective revelation. But in all time he 
 was the Light which lighteth every man." In a 
 sense divinely true, though not nominally his- 
 toric, Christ has always been, and always will be, 
 a redeeming and saving Presence in the world. 
 
62 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 The greatness of Jesus Christ passes by in- 
 finite measurements human comprehension. 
 Saint Paul was sanely right when he declared 
 that "by him were all things created, that are 
 in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and 
 invisible, whether they be thrones, or domin- 
 ions, or principalities, or powers: all things 
 were created by him and for him." Christ's 
 mission is both cosmic and seonian. He is 
 working the worlds and the ages to a divine 
 program. The exaltation of man is eternally 
 central to his purpose. He will neither weary 
 nor suffer defeat. Eternity is his theater, 
 and the inexhaustible resources of the moral 
 universe are at his command. It matters not 
 that sin, ignorance, superstition, and all the 
 brood of moral ills which these beget, entrench 
 themselves against him. Against sin he will 
 oppose God's holiness; against ignorance, divine 
 enlightenment; against superstition, scientific 
 knowledge; against all moral ills, the salvation 
 of God. Unfalteringly he will widen his conquest 
 until all knees of things in heaven and of things 
 in earth shall bow to his sovereignty, and he 
 shall be universally acclaimed as King of kings 
 and Lord of lords. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
Spirit, who makest all things new, 
 Thou leadest onward: we pursue 
 
 The heavenly march sublime. 
 'Neath thy renewing fire we glow, 
 And still from strength to strength we go, 
 
 From height to height we climb. 
 
 To thee we rise, in thee we rest; 
 We stay at home, we go in quest, 
 
 Still thou art our abode. 
 The rapture swells, the wonder grows, 
 As full on us new life still flows 
 
 From our unchanging God. 
 
 The whole of human nature must be included in its various 
 relations to that Divine Being who is not mere Intelligence, 
 mere Power, mere Beneficence, but the Highest Life of all, 
 the only real and complete Personality in the universe. He 
 possesses a personal life in its unimaginable perfection and 
 has intrusted his high gift in a measure to some of his crea- 
 tures, that they may continually press forward toward its 
 fuller realization. The Divine Spirit is at the same time 
 God over all human spirits, around them and within them — 
 each word to be maintained with equal weight and strenu- 
 ousness. To apprehend, maintain, enjoy, and extend that 
 many-sided relation constitutes the true life of the finite 
 spirit through all its history. — Dr. W. T. Davison. 
 
 We are discovering now that God is not only the source 
 and object of the religious feelings, but that he also is a 
 musician, an artist, a mathematician, the Creator and giver 
 of all beauty, and that in seeking perfection in these direc- 
 tions we are seeking him. It is a false conscience which 
 would shut up our religious interests to the narrow ground 
 of a few elementary ideas. This is to put them in charge of 
 a kitchen garden when their true role is to govern a universe. 
 — J. Brierley. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 "Christianity is a religion of the spirit; 
 that is to say, it finds its new world in a super- 
 sensible, invisible kingdom. It believes in a 
 purely spiritual God as the Source and Sus- 
 tainer of all reality, so that the renewal of life 
 which it demands is preeminently spiritual in 
 kind. Nature, as the creation of God, revealing 
 his splendor through all her works and ways, 
 and praising him with a thousand tongues, has 
 to subserve the aims of spirit." 
 
 This statement, by one who is perhaps the 
 world's greatest living philosopher, must be 
 accepted, so far as it goes, as truly representing 
 the Christian view. The Holy Spirit, in Chris- 
 tian thought, is God, God everywhere working 
 in his world. The ideal Christian life is the 
 largest, divinest, and most perfect life possible 
 to man. But of this life the Holy Spirit is 
 the Begetter, the Sustainer, the Inspiration 
 and the Guide. The Christian bears the name 
 of Christ; he is Christ's disciple, a citizen of 
 Christ's kingdom. He is ruled by Christ's 
 
 65 
 
66 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 spirit. His chief aim is to be Christlike and to 
 do Christ's will. The mission of Jesus Christ 
 and of the Holy Spirit are one. The mission 
 of the Holy Spirit is, in all divine resourceful- 
 ness, to 'serve the kingdom of Christ. In 
 general uses the names of Christ and of the 
 Holy Spirit are interchangeable terms. Dis- 
 missing all technic of theological definition, the 
 Holy Spirit is the ever-living, immanent, and 
 omniscient Christ, the Christ who controls all 
 moral forces in the interests of his kingdom. 
 
 Always, in treating of divine character, we 
 need to guard ourselves against narrow con- 
 ceptions. Common Christian thought ascribes 
 to the Spirit the offices of Convincer of sin, 
 Pardoner of the penitent, Regenerator and 
 Sanctifier of the believer, Bestower of grace, 
 Inspirer, Sustainer, and Comforter of the 
 Christian in burden-bearing service and in all 
 of life's turbulent experiences, and, at the last, 
 a Divine Presence dissipating for him the 
 shadows of death with the radiance of immor- 
 tal hope. This diagram, if it were all, would 
 be worthy of God. It is a diagram which 
 only a Supreme Divinity could fill. But all 
 this, with its unmeasured import, represents 
 but a fraction, however great, of the Spirit's 
 mission to the world's life. 
 
 The mission of the Holy Spirit relates itself 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 6? 
 
 creatively and vitally to man's entire being. 
 The thought of the historic Church, to an 
 overshadowing degree, has been occupied with 
 the relations of the individual soul to God. 
 The Church has laid not too much, but too 
 exclusive, emphasis upon the value of salvation 
 for the individual. Salvation for the individual 
 from the "wrath to come" has been hitherto 
 largely central in the teaching and efforts of 
 the Church. This particular emphasis should 
 never be withheld. But it has never been a 
 chief teaching of New Testament Christianity 
 that its exclusive mission is to save the indi= 
 vidual soul. 
 
 Man is made preeminently for two relation- 
 ships: the one with God, his Maker; the other 
 with man, his fellow. The Holy Spirit has a 
 vital relation to every part which man sustains 
 in these imperative connections. Man is God's 
 counterpart, endowed with the potentialities of 
 intellect, of insight, of affection, of will, of con- 
 science. He is made a worshipful being, po- 
 tentially capable of unlimited moral and spirit- 
 ual apprehension. Upon him there is laid ab- 
 solute divine demand for response from his 
 every faculty. His relations are both individual 
 and social. His highest life must realize itself 
 in both self -development and service. The 
 Holy Spirit sweeps the entire scale of the human 
 
68 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 soul. Man is like a musical instrument, with 
 infinite possibilities of expression; but perfection 
 of expression is realized only when in all his 
 faculties he responds to the Master's touch. 
 In the measure only of this response can a man 
 come perfectly into the experience of the 
 Christian life. 
 
 What shall we say about the intellect as 
 related to the Christian life? God is the great 
 Thinker. Among the marvels of creation is 
 the intellectual endowment of man. He has 
 capacity for thinking his way into the measure- 
 ments of God's own thought. The very en- 
 dowment of the intellectual faculty is full 
 proof that God himself is both honored and 
 served by the normal uses of the human mind. 
 In stressing man's duty to love God with all 
 his heart it seems sometimes to be overlooked 
 that God requires absolute consecration of 
 "Mind and Soul," as well as of heart. Many 
 most vital questions can secure final decision 
 only in the court of intellect. Intellect is the 
 inquisitor and discoverer in fields of scientific 
 and philosophical truth. Man himself, how- 
 ever infinite in faculty, however baffling the 
 unexplored mysteries which still may remain 
 within him, comes to his best self-understand- 
 ing only in the light of those microscopic and 
 mental processes by which he ever seeks self- 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 69 
 
 explanation. Let it be admitted that intellect 
 does not yield all the criteria of truth, and that 
 there are many mysteries which philosophy fails 
 to explain; yet, eliminate the intellectual 
 faculties, and human life, so far as we can see, 
 would be reduced to a meaningless medley. 
 
 Man, as artist or critic, is made to reflect the 
 divine mind. It is a teaching of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures that God inspires the artificer for 
 cunning workmanship. Is it unreasonable to 
 assume that the Divine Spirit unveils the 
 beauties of nature to the vision of the artist, 
 that he touches the soul of the composer to 
 finest harmonies, or that he inspires the imagina- 
 tion of the poet for creative work? Who shall 
 tell us that these values are born without a 
 divine parentage! The artist truly responds 
 to the Spirit's call when he consecrates his 
 talent to noble uses. 
 
 God made the mind for critical investigation. 
 In the exercise of this function it has gathered 
 and stored for human uses, culture, and power, 
 all the world's wealth of knowledge, science, 
 art, history, philosophy. God has isolated no 
 department of his own work from the search 
 of man the thinker and critic. It would seem 
 by some to be judged a presumption and sin 
 that man should assume critically to investigate 
 claims long associated with religious thought — 
 
70 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 claims which may be held as of sacred purport. 
 Not a few seem to think that the Hebrew and 
 Christian Scriptures are of a character so 
 sacred as to make it a presumption and sin that 
 any attempt should be made to subject them 
 to critical study. To subject their origins, 
 their environments, their historical, literary, 
 and grammatical structures to critical investi- 
 gation would constitute in itself a sacrilege. 
 
 God has not seemed to regard any other works 
 of his creation in this way. He has peopled the 
 far spaces with innumerable worlds. But, so 
 far as yet discovered, a very chief service of 
 these worlds is that they have served to mag- 
 nify, to glorify, the mind of man. However 
 far off and unapproachably sacred to the thought 
 of some other generations these worlds may 
 have seemed, the modern man has demonstrated 
 a capacity for annihilating their distances, 
 measuring their orbs, analyzing their substances; 
 and in doing this he has given indubitable 
 proof of his kingship in the universe. He has 
 given demonstration that a single human mind 
 capable of building its track of thought through 
 the void may justly be accounted as of greater 
 worth in the sight of God than all the dumb 
 worlds in space. God has never chided man 
 for the attempt critically to study the structure 
 of the material universe. 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 71 
 
 An inspired apostle has designated the human 
 body as the very "temple of the Holy Ghost." 
 It ought not to require much imagination to feel 
 the sacredness of the human body. It is a 
 vital mechanism worthy of a divine creation. 
 It surely is something not to be profaned. But 
 profanation of the body is its physical abuse, 
 the failure to observe the sacred laws of health, 
 its prostitution to lust, to drunkenness, to 
 gluttony. The body, however divine its func- 
 tion as the temple of the Holy Ghost, is never 
 profaned by a reverent study of its mechanism. 
 The scientific knowledge of the human body 
 has discovered and illuminated the vital con- 
 ditions of health, has prepared the foundations 
 for all the beneficent ministries of enlightened 
 medicine and surgery. The critical mastery of 
 its physiology has yielded immeasurable values 
 to human life. 
 
 Not unakin to the protest which has been 
 raised against a critical study of things regarded 
 as sacred in nature is the religious protest 
 entered against a critical study of the Sacred 
 Scriptures. The true function of criticism is 
 to ascertain intrinsic truth, truth fundamental 
 and vital in the situation. It is difficult to see 
 how such a process can work harm in any realm. 
 In so far as criticism is corrective, revisionary, 
 it may necessitate the abandonment of old, and 
 
72 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 the acceptance of new, views. This doubtless, 
 in some cases, will result in mental disturbance 
 and dislodgment to those who have been 
 grounded in traditional interpretations. Such 
 is a price always to be paid for the world's en- 
 larging knowledge. Mental dislodgments, how- 
 ever, are not the worst things to happen in the 
 world of thought. Christ himself was a great 
 disturber of the traditions of his time. Mental 
 dislodgment was a common symptom manifest 
 under the influence of his teaching. He did 
 not hesitate to take entire responsibility for the 
 consequences. 
 
 When a morbid condition inheres in the 
 physical system, it is eminently desirable that 
 its causes should be removed, however drastic 
 the process required. In the matter of intel- 
 lectual health it may happen that mental 
 morbidity is the result of a mind overloaded 
 with devitalized, unassimilable traditionalism. 
 This condition may, in instances, be so far 
 advanced as to be incurable, hopeless. In any 
 event, it cannot be helped by any process of 
 mental quackery. Some, unfortunately, will 
 suffer mentally from a failure ever to come in 
 contact with helpfully corrective sources. In 
 the meantime it would be helpful if all men 
 could be reminded that the history, the liter- 
 ature, and the grammar of all the books of the 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 73 
 
 Bible, when most perfectly ascertained, are not 
 synonymous with, and are never to be substi- 
 tuted for, a saving personal faith in Jesus Christ. 
 Personal religion is one thing; biblical criticism 
 quite another. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the entire Church, 
 especially its Protestant section, is awaking 
 to the high values accruing to Christian thought 
 from a reverent and competent criticism of the 
 Bible. This process has already saved the 
 Bible to much of the world's best intellect. 
 The time is not far away when the secured 
 results of a reverent criticism will be happily 
 domesticated in the common Christian thought, 
 and when all will rejoice in a vast securement, 
 correction, and enrichment of Scripture knowl- 
 edge such as only a reverent and enlightened 
 criticism can yield. In the meantime the pro- 
 test, and sometimes the vehement denuncia- 
 tion, indulged by good people against the ap- 
 plication of critical study to the Bible, doubt- 
 less arises from lack of appreciation of the 
 normal and legitimate critical function with 
 which God himself has endowed the human 
 mind. There still lurks widely in popular 
 thought an old-time and essentially disreputable 
 suspicion that in some way intellectual culture 
 is a foe to spirituality. Erasmus, a foremost 
 scholar of his day, indulged in the bitter gibe 
 
74 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 that "Our theologians call it a sign of holiness 
 to be unable to read." The Nonconformist 
 minister of whom Brierley tells us, who had 
 never allowed himself to study German because 
 "German religious thought was so unsettling," 
 stands, it is to be feared, as a type of a mental 
 survival which unfortunately is far from extinct 
 in our day. It seems an ironical anomaly of 
 the times that, while in all the professions and 
 standard industries there is a constant looking 
 for new knowledge and new appliances of in- 
 vention, in a considerable section of theological 
 thought ignorance is still at a premium. Of 
 course this state of thought would naturally 
 linger with that type of mind which contents 
 itself with the belief that all spiritual truth 
 has been delivered once for all. The assump- 
 tion of a final, complete, and stereotyped 
 revelation, however irrational in itself, would 
 suggest the possibilities of mental restfulness, 
 and might prove itself well adapted to the 
 mentally indolent. The assumption is against 
 history, against experience. It is false. The 
 Christian mind, under the inspiration and 
 illumination of the Divine Spirit, is an ordained 
 path-finder into ever new fields of experience 
 and truth. The Holy Spirit quickens mental 
 insight just as certainly as he works in any 
 other faculty of the human soul. 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 75 
 
 But man is far more and other than a being 
 simply of heart, of conscience, of will, or of 
 intellect. He is preeminently a social being. 
 He stands related to a world of his fellows. The 
 real significance of his life grows out of his social 
 relations. Society is the school in which his 
 individuality comes to expression, in which his 
 powers find development, the school which 
 brings to him self-discipline and training for 
 service. Were it conceivable that by any means 
 a child could grow from infancy to full physical 
 stature without social environment, such a 
 person could represent only the most rudi- 
 mentary development of character. It is the 
 reaction of other lives upon the child, in the 
 home, in school, in society, through which 
 alone his powers come to the full. And here 
 we have presented to us the great world-school 
 of man's religious obligation, of his spiritual 
 opportunity. As society puts its building and 
 shaping hand upon the individual, so in turn 
 the individual puts his own creative touch upon 
 the lives that are about him. 
 
 The dynamic logic of this situation has 
 forced the Church to enlarge its conception of 
 the function of Christianity in the earth. The 
 individualistic conception of salvation for the 
 life to come can no longer monopolize Christian 
 thought. Christ's own idea, that upon which 
 
76 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 he laid so continuous emphasis in the announce- 
 ments of his kingdom, namely, that of the moral 
 renewal and reconstruction of human society 
 in this present world, is now, though late, 
 claiming its rightful place in Christian convic- 
 tions. Viewed in historic retrospect, it is 
 astonishing how modern is this apprehension 
 in Christian thought. Through modern eyes 
 alone have we come to see that the whole large- 
 ness of this conception was clearly anticipated 
 in the thought of Jesus. Most of the Christian 
 centuries have passed with all too little practical 
 embodiment of God's world-plan in the working 
 diagram of the Church. The vision of Chris- 
 tianity to-day, as never before, is one of world- 
 outlook. The heart of Christianity throbs 
 with universal sympathy. This temper is 
 Christian, but as a living force in civilization 
 it is newborn. 
 
 By the dominant statecrafts and theologies 
 of the past this temper was little felt. To 
 most classic ancient thought the outsider was 
 regarded as an enemy whom it was right to 
 destroy. The spirit of tribal animosities has had 
 long survival in the historic creeds. For the 
 larger part of the Christian centuries a majority 
 of the Church has believed that even God has 
 reprobated vast numbers of the human race. 
 Catholics and Protestants have glared at each 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 77 
 
 other in the spirit of mutual hate. Even the 
 Protestant denominations, dwelling in the same 
 communities, have been so dogmatic and nar- 
 row as each to concede little to the Christian 
 status of the other. 
 
 As opposed to all this, a great change has 
 come in these very modern days. A vital and 
 balmy springtime is advancing upon the world 
 of Christian thought. The full, strong note 
 of a growing harmony is borne upon the spiritual 
 atmospheres of the times. Christian thought, 
 with clear vision and unmistakable emphasis, 
 is coming to view the whole human race as the 
 field of God's redemptive work. Humanity is 
 a solidarity, one brotherhood. The race as a 
 whole can reach its highest levels only as all its 
 peoples and tribes are lifted to the enlighten- 
 ments and fellowships of brotherhood in Jesus 
 Christ. It is this vision that furnishes inspira- 
 tion for all the phenomenal and prophetic move- 
 ments of modern missions. This vision is rap- 
 idly creating in all the Church a new sense of 
 the value of Christian unity and of cooperation 
 in the work of Christ's universal Kingdom. The 
 broadest-minded Christians of the day are en- 
 thusiastic volunteers in the army of the new 
 unities. To the keenest spiritual sense of the 
 times a narrow, and divisive sectarianism is be- 
 coming a thing of increasing abhorrence. 
 
?8 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 But God's voice, speaking through the spir- 
 itual sense, does not summon the thought of 
 men simply to the larger spiritual unities, nor 
 to the far fields of evangelical opportunity. He 
 makes upon every man personally, and for the 
 entire scope of his activities and influence, an 
 uncompromising demand for ethical living. 
 The inner motive of business must be that of 
 honest dealing. The man of superior privilege 
 must absolutely take no ill-advantage of his 
 less favored neighbor. The rich must be a real 
 brother of the poor. In the handling of his 
 treasure he must be sensitively responsive to 
 his obligation as a steward of Christ. Each 
 man, in his sphere, must feel the responsibility 
 of service. To each, in the social organism, 
 there is alotted some special sphere of duty 
 which he alone can best fill. Service is the 
 binding law of the Christian life. To the 
 obedient it furnishes a supreme reward both of 
 usefulness and of joy. It was to Christ both 
 meat and drink to do the will of his Father in 
 heaven. 
 
 When the individual, in his personal life, in 
 the home, in society, in civic relations, in all 
 relations, lives ethically after the ideal Christian 
 standard, there will be a new standardization 
 for the whole life of the community. This 
 would mean both in business and in the State, 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 79 
 
 no more soulless corporations, corporations 
 exercising an unscrupulous use of power for 
 selfish and unjust ends. It would mean the 
 ethical administration of public office, the 
 absence of graft from politics. It w^ould mean 
 the merciless uprooting and exorcism from 
 society of evil traffics, of traffic in intemper- 
 ance, of organized ministries to lust, of every- 
 thing that works ill to the social organism. It 
 would mean opportunity for childhood, justice 
 to the poor, the practical installment every- 
 where of just standards of human worth. This 
 field is one of infinite suggestiveness. It is as 
 broad in its claims as man's capacity for 
 thought and service. It is in all this unlimited 
 field, in its every last and minutest section, that 
 the Holy Spirit makes demand upon human 
 life. When we speak, then, of Christian ex- 
 perience, it is manifestly something, both in 
 its ideal and normal scope, far broader than 
 has as yet been very generally realized either 
 in the conception or practice of the ordinary 
 religious life. To be a Christian, in Christ's 
 sense, is the loftiest realization possible to 
 man. 
 
 The age is indebted to Rudolf Eucken for 
 much clear and exceptionally powerful state- 
 ment of spiritual truth. In his volume Can We 
 Still Be Christians? he seems to take somewhat 
 
80 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 dubious views of the present world-states of 
 Christianity. Taking into full view the great 
 advances of modern civilization, in learning, in 
 wealth, in the bewildering multiplication of 
 inventive appliances ministering to the luxury 
 of life, he still vividly shows that unless mankind 
 shall come under the governance of some higher 
 spiritual principle, such as that idealized in 
 Christianity, then, notwithstanding all of its in- 
 tellectual and material wealth, the human race 
 awaits only the doom of moral bankruptcy 
 and hopelessness. 
 
 The Christian faith owes much to Eucken 
 for his clear showing of the world's helplessness 
 without some supreme spiritual guidance such 
 as that which he clearly concedes is found more 
 perfectly represented in Christianity than in 
 all other sources. Yet from a careful effort 
 to understand him, I can but be impressed that 
 Eucken himself fails in apprehension of an 
 adequate measurement of the genius, adapta- 
 bility, and sufficiency of Christianity for fully 
 meeting the moral and spiritual needs of 
 humanity. The spirit of Christianity has been 
 too narrowly measured. When seen in its 
 all-inspiring perfection it cannot fail to demon- 
 strate itself as the supreme Light, Hope, and 
 Salvation of the race. Christianity will succeed. 
 It can have no final rival. If, apparently, it 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 81 
 
 has in any sense proven a failure, such apparent 
 failure is best accounted for on Lessing's 
 basis that Christianity as a system of world- 
 moral government has never yet been fairly 
 tried. 
 
 On an unlimited scale does the Holy Spirit 
 deal with the interests of human life. On such 
 a scale only can the significance of the ideal 
 Christian experience itself be measured. The 
 high values of such experience touch infinite 
 areas. 
 
IV 
 CONVERSION 
 
If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things 
 are passed away; behold, all things are become new. — 
 2 Corinthians 5. 17. 
 
 The students most hostile to the claim of orthodox Chris- 
 tianity willingly concede the importance of the fact of con- 
 version in the life of the early Church. The transitions in 
 personal life are so numerous and so well marked that they 
 cannot be overlooked. The critic is forced to concede the 
 fact of these spiritual phenomena and their moral genuine- 
 ness. He may think the early believers deluded, but he can 
 find no explanation which will account for the spread of 
 Christianity and for the endurance with which it lasted 
 through the fires of persecution other than the transforma- 
 tion wrought in the inner life of the believers in Chris- 
 tianity. The critic will not deny that the early believers 
 in Christianity were from the ranks of ordinary people like 
 ourselves, and that through the influence of their belief they 
 became transformed into marvels of moral persistence and 
 endurance. — Bishop Francis J. McConnell. 
 
 It is a fact of experience that whenever we submit utterly, 
 affectionately, irreversibly to the best we know, at that in- 
 stant there flashes through us with quick, splendid interior 
 unexpected illumination, a Power not ourselves. It is a fixed 
 natural law that when the soul yields utterly to God, he 
 streams into the spirit, giving a new sense of his presence 
 and imparting a strength unknown before. — Joseph Cook. 
 
 As we proceed farther in our inquiry we shall see that 
 what is attained is often an altogether new level of spiritual 
 vitality, a relatively heroic level, in which impossible things 
 have become possible, and new energies and endurances are 
 shown. The personality is changed, the man is born anew. 
 — William James. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CONVERSION 
 
 The term "conversion/' in the Christian 
 sense, has been declared to represent the 
 greatest moral event in human experience. It 
 means the turning of the soul's vision toward 
 the face of God. It is an experience which can 
 come only from the surrender of will and heart 
 to the Divine Spirit. Its processes, like the 
 dawn, may come without observation; but 
 they really mean for the individual transforma- 
 tion of the spirit, the birth of a new moral 
 springtime in the soul, the dating of a new 
 spiritual life. Conversion often announces it- 
 self in an inrush of divine joy, an illuminating 
 ecstasy, an inexpressible sense of spiritual eman- 
 cipation. It is something distinct from all 
 previous experiences, as though the soul had 
 come newly into a transfiguring and rapturous 
 life. If conversion really means a new-found 
 harmony of the soul with God, a harmony 
 wrought by the inworking Spirit, bringing 
 forgiveness, illumination, a new joy, unwonted 
 spiritual strength to the life, then indeed 
 
86 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 conversion must rank as a superlative event in 
 the moral history of any man. It means the 
 merger of a human soul with the life of God. 
 
 A wide historic view must teach us that the 
 phenomena of conversion have not always 
 been confined to historic Christendom. And 
 if the view, as previously expressed, of the 
 omnipresent mission of the Holy Spirit as 
 enlightening every man that cometh into the 
 world, is true, then, under the ministry of the 
 same Holy Spirit, moral transformations, or 
 conversions, may occur among all races and 
 under all religious systems. 
 
 Manifestly, experiences so wrought are bereft 
 of vital advantages which attend conversions 
 in an atmosphere of Christian instruction and 
 example, but that outside the Christian com- 
 munity there should be found no spiritually 
 transformed characters would be a gratuitous 
 and sinister assumption. No less a conspicuous 
 and sound theologian than Dr. William Newton 
 Clarke teaches that: "To Christian philosophy, 
 every upward movement of the human mind 
 suggests that Christ, in his universal relation 
 to humanity, may be able to pour his new life 
 into open hearts, even where there is complete 
 ignorance concerning the fact of his history 
 and work." 
 
 The present discussion, however, will be 
 
CONVERSION 87 
 
 confined to illustrations found within the limits 
 of historical Christianity. The narratives of 
 the Old Testament are richly suggestive in 
 phenomenal incidents as relating to conversion. 
 When we enter the New Testament we find 
 great stress laid upon both the necessity and the 
 actual experience of conversion as initial to the 
 Christian life. It radically connects trans- 
 formation of both character and conduct with 
 conversion. This change is set forth under 
 such figures as: "a translation out of darkness 
 into marvelous light"; "being born again, born 
 from above"; "redemption from all iniquity"; 
 "passing out of death into life"; "turning from 
 the power of Satan unto God"; "a new crea- 
 tion"; "putting off an old, and putting on a 
 new man"; "becoming children of God"; 
 "having Christ dwelling in the heart by faith"; 
 "dying and rising again." 
 
 Such are a few of the vivid figures of the New 
 Testament picturing conversion and its fruits. 
 Their import is unmistakable. There can be 
 no weakening of their meaning. Their color 
 is both vivid and enduring. 
 
 Our present intellectual mood is one fruitful 
 of religious psychology. The psychic phenom- 
 ena of the religious life are being profoundly 
 searched, defined, and classified. This process 
 should prove no menace to faith. Our confi- 
 
88 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 dence in a divine relation to the souPs conver- 
 sion need not in the least be jarred. The 
 processes of conversion, however divinely ef- 
 fectuated, doubtless conform to the constitu- 
 tional laws of the soul — laws which God himself 
 originally ordained. All that psychology can 
 do is, from its acquired knowledge of mental 
 laws, to trace processes in conversion. But 
 this is by no means to assign or to define the 
 Cause, or causes, of conversion itself. Psy- 
 chology is only one department of philosophy. 
 All that all philosophy can do at its best is to 
 give orderly classification to processes that may 
 be apparent in whatever field of nature. Phil- 
 osophy when it enters upon the task of defining 
 or of assigning law to the action of the ultimate 
 Cause is as impotent as a child. No philo- 
 sophic vision is keen enough to trace the visible 
 path along which God moves in his creations 
 of life and of soul. What is true in the higher 
 realm of spirit is just as true for workers in all 
 departments of physical science. All that 
 science can do is to discover, and to trace if it 
 may, orderly processes in nature. That in- 
 visible and omnipotent Cause which ordains 
 these processes is one which forever transcends 
 the vision of science. It would seem that the 
 scientist, in whatever field, ought to be among 
 the most reverent of men. His pursuits are 
 
CONVERSION 89 
 
 always on the borderland of the Infinite Mys- 
 tery. 
 
 It would doubtless be good for a working Chris- 
 tianity if all its teachers and preachers were 
 versed in psychology. This would render im- 
 possible many stupid blunders now committed, 
 and it would redeem the life of the Church from 
 many scandals of intellectual absurdity. But 
 it would still remain that beyond the border- 
 land of all psychological exploration the Chris- 
 tian faith sees infinite room for the divine 
 working. However familiar one may become, 
 then, with what William James has pronounced 
 the "peripheral and central" regions of mind, 
 the ideas and feelings lying near the periphery 
 being frozen and inoperative, while those at the 
 center are hot and alive; and of how at con- 
 version the peripheral ideas and feelings change 
 places with the central, thus silencing old ideas 
 and feelings, and at the heated center bringing 
 to life and expression ideas and feelings hitherto 
 voiceless — whatever one may think or believe 
 about all this, he is no nearer accounting for di- 
 vine causes in conversion than at the beginning. 
 Indeed, William James himself suggests that 
 these very conditions which he describes may 
 be the channels which God himself has ordained 
 as his approaches to the soul. 
 
 Philosophy is quite powerless to yield to us 
 
90 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 highest satisfactions in our attempts to explore 
 spiritual experiences and their causes. Life is 
 more than philosophy. For the Christian life 
 we shall find no so reliable rule as that prag- 
 matic rule announced by our Lord, "By their 
 fruits ye shall know them." This utterance 
 of Christ is valid for the highest ranges of ex- 
 perience. As tested by this criterion, Christian 
 conversion has proven itself as of the highest 
 significance and value in human history. The 
 very universal range of its phenomena carries 
 its reality beyond all rational skepticism.. The 
 reality of Christian conversion has been indubi- 
 tably attested through the centuries by un- 
 numbered millions of witnesses, multitudes of 
 whom represent the most competent minds of 
 the race. The expression of this experience 
 has voiced itself through all ranges of human 
 ability, from the highest genius down to men of 
 the most ordinary mentality. But, as we would 
 judge of the quality and possibilities of music 
 from the productions of highest musical genius, 
 so in summoning witnesses to demonstrate the 
 practical values of Christian conversion we may 
 very properly call upon those not only intel- 
 lectually most competent but whose personal 
 Christian experience has reached the highest 
 levels. In passing, it should be clearly stated 
 and definitely emphasized that Christian values 
 
CONVERSION 91 
 
 in character are not always coupled with 
 intense, nor necessarily with very conscious, 
 emotional experience. Doubtless both tem- 
 perament and mental habit have much to do 
 in deciding emotional action. While it is true 
 that religious experience stirs the emotional 
 soul, no mistake could be more mischievous 
 than to assume to measure the values of re- 
 ligious character by the emotional test. The 
 most vital condition to Christian character is 
 an intelligent surrender of the will and affec- 
 tions to the divine will. This may occur 
 without great emotional accompaniment. But 
 wherever this has taken place a new life is 
 installed in the heart, and the unemotional 
 subject of that life may be most soldierly 
 heroic and loyal in all essential qualities of 
 Christian character. 
 
 In summoning witnesses to the divine fact 
 of Christian conversion, the case of Saul of 
 Tarsus should not be omitted. The narrative 
 of his conversion is fairly plowed into the 
 structure of Christian history. Paul has been 
 called a visionary and an epileptic, and, there- 
 fore, an unreliable witness. But, as Professor 
 Borden P. Bowne once suggested, "Saint Paul 
 may have had a fit on the road to Damascus, 
 but it has been the only known fit to be fol- 
 lowed by such mighty historical consequences." 
 
92 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 In the light of "historical consequences" such 
 criticism as the foregoing stands out in naked 
 absurdity. The fact is that Saint Paul was 
 one of the most dynamic characters of all 
 history. He was a man of superlative gifts, 
 rich in culture, of towering ambitions, of im- 
 perial will. While still young he attained to 
 commanding position in the Jewish nation. 
 His Pharisaical zeal was unlimited and appar- 
 ently unquenchable. Highly moral in life, 
 conscientious to the last degree, his convictions 
 were rock-firm. He was ready to oppose to 
 the death those whom he believed to be enemies 
 of the true religion. He was the trusted and 
 zealous emissary of the Jewish Church. To 
 no man of all his people was there promised 
 a more brilliant career. 
 
 But suddenly one day something happened 
 in his life. There came to him a revela- 
 tion in a light so blinding as to smite 
 him to the earth. He both saw the face and 
 heard the voice of Jesus, whom he was 
 persecuting. There was flashed into him 
 the consciousness that he was fighting 
 against God. From that moment he turned 
 his back upon all his previous life, upon his 
 friends, his ambitions, his worldly possessions 
 and prospects. From that moment, with a 
 changed spirit, he entered upon a new life. 
 
CONVERSION 93 
 
 He gave himself as a very slave to Jesus Christ. 
 His new life, from its very beginning, was 
 marked by an amazing series of physical hard- 
 ships, suffering, privation, and peril. His was 
 an unbroken exemplification of the highest 
 character, tempers, and conduct. In the face 
 of all obstacles he gave himself in unstinted 
 sacrifice, that he might preach Christ to all 
 men. No persecution could daunt his courage, 
 no hardship quench his zeal. In physical 
 weakness and in strength, in privation and 
 want, in plenty and in hunger, in season and 
 out of season he wrought with unabating ardor 
 to fulfill the calling given him of Jesus Christ. 
 He never succumbed to discouragements. He 
 commanded the secret of a holy joy amid the 
 most depressing environments. His spirit rose 
 in sublime fortitude in hours of severest trial. 
 He was a gentleman, a great lover of men, 
 thoughtful of others when himself in want — 
 and all this always. 
 
 One day, under the escort of a Roman 
 guard, he was led forth from prison to the 
 headsman's ax. He neither murmured, nor 
 was he fearful. His fortitude failed not. His 
 last remark was one of exultant confidence 
 that death was to him the gate to triumphant 
 coronation. Thus there passed into history a 
 moral Colossus, a man whose thought has 
 
94 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 swayed the Christian centuries, one whose 
 very example has been an inspiration to high 
 fortitude and endeavor for martyrs and saints 
 for two millenniums. The career of Saul of 
 Tarsus, both as persecutor and apostle, is 
 indelibly written in history. His Christian 
 conversion, the superlative moral heroism of 
 his entire after life, culminating at last in mar- 
 tyrdom, have never been explained on natural 
 grounds. They form a history of a human 
 life such as we could expect only from the 
 continuous girdings and support of Divinest 
 inspirations. If God, by his Spirit, were not 
 distinctively in this life, then we may as well 
 at once abandon all claim to spiritual values 
 as evidenced in what we know as "Christian 
 conversion." 
 
 Later, but still in the early centuries, there 
 is furnished one other preeminent instance of 
 phenomenal conversion. In the ages from 
 Paul to Luther, there appears no more illus- 
 trious name than that of Augustine. He was 
 born in Numidia just after the middle of the 
 fourth century. He was highly educated, thor- 
 oughly at home in the foremost philosophical 
 thought of his times, a man of enormous na- 
 tive powers. He entered upon a brilliant 
 career as rhetorician and advocate, the pro- 
 fession of which he practiced successively at 
 
CONVERSION 95 
 
 Tagaste, Carthage, Rome, and Milan. His 
 early intellectual life wavered between a pro- 
 nounced skepticism and a sort of philosophic 
 faith. He was withal a libertine, thoroughly 
 under the thrall of sensuality. But, with all 
 his waywardness, he was never able to escape 
 the holy example of his Christian mother — 
 Monica. In his Confessions he relates as clearly 
 as Saint Paul had done before him the strug- 
 gle that went on between his higher and lower 
 selfhood. His conscience urged him to right- 
 eousness of life; his lusts held him in bondage. 
 Time and again he made promise of reform, but 
 the allurements of the flesh kept him irresolute. 
 
 One day, when in his garden behind his 
 lodgings in Milan, he seemed to hear a voice 
 which said to him, "Take and read." This 
 was repeated three times over. He opened 
 the Bible apparently at random, and his eye 
 fell upon these words of Saint Paul: "The 
 night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us 
 therefore cast off the works of darkness, and 
 let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk 
 honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and 
 drunkenness, not in chambering and wanton- 
 ness, not in strife and envying. But put ye 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not pro- 
 vision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." 
 
 The passage searched him as by a lightning 
 
96 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 flash. He made instant surrender of soul. 
 From that moment his life, with unwavering 
 consecration of its tremendous forces, was 
 dedicated to a new career. He developed a 
 religious genius of the highest order. He lived 
 the life of a saint. Eucken characterizes him 
 as the "single great philosopher on the basis 
 of Christianity proper the world has had." 
 While he professed himself interested only "in 
 God and the soul," his thought, like a search- 
 light, shot out into all questions that per- 
 tained to human life. Harnack, in substance, 
 says of him: 
 
 In point of fact, the whole development of Western 
 life, in all its phases, was powerfully affected by his 
 teaching. This, his unique ascendency in the direc- 
 tion of the thought and life of the West, is due in 
 part to the particular period in history in which 
 his work was done, in part to the richness and 
 depth of his mind and the force of his individuality, 
 and in part to the special circumstances of his 
 conversion to Christianity. He stood on the water- 
 shed of two worlds. The old world was passing 
 away; the new world was entering upon its heritage; 
 and it fell to him to mediate the transference of 
 the culture of the one to the other. It has been 
 strikingly remarked that the miserable existence 
 of the Roman empire in the West almost seems 
 to have been prolonged for the express purpose of 
 affording an opportunity for the influence of Au- 
 gustine to be exerted on universal history. 
 
 From that day of his conversion Augustine 
 
CONVERSION 97 
 
 lived the life of a great Christian. His theol- 
 ogy and philosophy, more than those of any 
 other man who has ever lived, with the possi- 
 ble exception of Saint Paul, has ruled the 
 thought of the Church. The genius of his 
 mind and heart has very largely decided the 
 course of Christian history even down to our 
 own times. The Christian life of Augustine, 
 not less than that of Saint Paul, must be 
 accredited to the sovereign incoming and abid- 
 ing of God into the soul of a great human 
 genius. 
 
 I have specially emphasized the cases of 
 Paul and of Augustine, because of the im- 
 perishable celebrity of these men. Philosophy, 
 though sometimes unsympathetic, has been 
 compelled to take full note of their religious 
 history. But by no means, in the discussion 
 of this subject, is one under the necessity of 
 confining himself to exceptional characters. 
 The student of the phenomena of Christian 
 conversion is embarrassed by the very wealth 
 of his material. One standing on the cliffs 
 might as well undertake to count the number- 
 less waves of the sea, as to attempt a sum- 
 mons of all competent witnesses to this Chris- 
 tian experience. The succession of these 
 witnesses has been unbroken through the cen- 
 turies, and their numbers have formed an 
 
98 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 ever-growing and countless army. Conversion 
 is a standing moral miracle in history. Its 
 operation has by no means been confined to 
 the wise and the gifted. It has found a chief 
 ministry of regeneration and illumination among 
 the common and unlettered, among the way- 
 farers and toilers of mankind. Christ himself 
 pronounced beatitudes upon the meek, the 
 poor, the persecuted. 
 
 It awakened the scorn and ridicule of the 
 haughty and exclusive circles in the classic 
 civilizations that in the ranks of early Chris- 
 tianity "not many wise men after the flesh, 
 not many mighty, not many noble" were 
 enrolled. But there dwelt in this gospel which 
 so appealed to poor and ordinary men an up- 
 lifting and transforming power so mighty as 
 morally to face that ancient world toward 
 new ideals. Christianity rapidly spread over 
 the Roman empire, and its own ideals were 
 widely substituted for the classical philos- 
 ophies. While making its appeals to all strata 
 of society, Christianity carried in itself an 
 uplifting, a creative and inspiring, power which 
 no pagan philosophy, no imperial edicts, could 
 successfully withstand. It was a power which 
 turned that ancient "world upside down." 
 Christianity has always shown a marvelous 
 power for uplifting, illuminating, ennobling the 
 
CONVERSION 99 
 
 common man. From its humblest social ranks, 
 many of its illustrious workers have been 
 lifted to the glory of apostolic careers. But 
 this innumerable army of witnesses — all, both 
 great and small, larger and less — has come to 
 the Kingdom through the portal of Christian 
 conversion. 
 
 What are some of the evidential values of 
 conversion and of the religious experience to 
 which it is the introduction? When it comes 
 to the downright proof of any moral ques- 
 tion rational logic is frequently unequal to 
 the situation. Religion is more a matter of 
 life than of logic. Life reports itself through 
 experience, and leaves logic to take care of 
 itself. Still, if religious experience is to validify 
 itself in practical values for life, it is a necessity 
 of reason that the criteria of such experience 
 should fall within rational rule. In an attempt 
 to state the conditions and limitations under 
 which rational validity can be given to expe- 
 rience, I know of no one who has more suc- 
 cessfully or conclusively accomplished this 
 task, than Professor H. Bisseker, of Richmond 
 College, London. That this writer may speak 
 for himself, I quote here in full the four criteria 
 which he lays down: 
 
 We would suggest four effective tests of the 
 validity of an inward experience: 
 
100 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 1. It must be in harmony with reason, and must 
 fit naturally into the general framework of our 
 knowledge. It may, of course, transcend the limits 
 of knowledge which unaided reason has yet attained, 
 but it may not contradict reason. 
 
 2. It must accord with man's own inner con- 
 stitution. All contact with truth will help forward 
 man's self-realization, and every step toward full 
 self-realization implies a nearer approach to the 
 unification of the self. An inward experience, 
 therefore, which claims validity must tend to in- 
 ward harmony of personality, and help to unify life. 
 
 3. If the experience be of an ethical or religious 
 character, it must, further, be in agreement with 
 the highest moral sense of the race, and action on 
 the assumption of its validity must carry a man 
 further morally than action based on theories less 
 true. Applied universally, it must be such as 
 would secure universal progress. 
 
 4. It must be capable of becoming universal. 
 That which is ultimately true can scarcely be 
 accessible only to a limited esoteric circle. Hence 
 an inward experience that would justify its validity 
 to others must be such that each who fulfills the 
 needful conditions shall be able to attain it in all 
 its essential characteristics. 1 
 
 As this writer proceeds to say: "These 
 criteria may be accepted without a single 
 reservation in the realm of religious experience." 
 Under the fourth test our author calls just 
 attention to a difficulty which might to some 
 minds query the acceptance of this test. As 
 has already been noted, the phenomenal, or 
 
 1 See The Chief Corner-Stone, Dr. W. T. Davison, editor, 
 pp. 225ff. 
 
CONVERSION 101 
 
 emotional, experience in conversion is far from 
 uniform in different subjects. It has been a 
 matter of serious concern to many sincere 
 minds that they have never been able to 
 realize in their own experience a duplication 
 of certain emotional phenomena to which others 
 have joyfully testified in their conversion. 
 Many have sought for a like experience, and 
 it has been a grave disappointment to them 
 that they have found it not. At this point 
 seemingly certain types of religious experience 
 do not seem capable of universal attainment. 
 We may not forget, however, that the validity 
 of religious experience must have final attesta- 
 tion on ethical rather than on emotional tests. 
 "And there it can securely rest. For the main 
 outline of evangelical experience — the change 
 in the direction of the will, the exercise of 
 faith in the power of Christ, the resulting 
 transformation of both mind and heart, and 
 the consequent moral progress, steadily ad- 
 vancing toward the fullest self-realization — 
 this, without doubt, is possible to all." 
 
 All souls that struggle to aspire, 
 All hearts of prayer by thee are lit. 
 
 The remaining chapters of this study will 
 be devoted to inquiry as to some of the evi- 
 dential values of religious experience. 
 
PART SECOND 
 EVIDENTIAL VALUES 
 
V 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 
 
The dear Lord's best interpreters 
 
 Are humble human souls; 
 The Gospel of a life like theirs 
 
 Is more than books or scrolls. 
 From scheme and creed the light goes out, 
 
 The saintly fact survives: 
 The blessed Master none can doubt 
 
 Revealed in holy lives. 
 
 — John G. Whittier. 
 
 For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteous- 
 ness and truth. — Ephesians 5. 9. 
 
 That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, 
 without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse 
 nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world. — 
 Philippians 2. 15. 
 
 There are multitudes of men and women in out-of-the- 
 way places, in backwoods, towns and uneventful farms, who 
 are the salt of the earth and the light of the world in their 
 communities, because they have had experiences which re- 
 vealed to them Realities that their neighbors missed, and 
 powers to live by which the mere "churchgoers" failed to 
 find. — Professor Maurice Jones. 
 
 The supreme question for modern civilization is the forma- 
 tion of character. Of what use are our material advance- 
 ments if they leave only a dismal emptiness within? Of 
 what use carrying the people at sixty miles an hour if they 
 are fools when they get into the train and fools when they 
 get out? Of what use our latest telegraphy if it flings across 
 the world no better news than of commercial frauds, of 
 society intrigues, of the follies of the rich, and the discontent 
 of the poor? You may start your common schools, and train 
 your children into clever devils — to thieve better, to lie 
 more plausibly. You may teach them to read, that they 
 may saturate their minds with filth. Any education that is 
 not first and foremost a training in character is only a 
 preparation for villainy's more effective service. — /. Brierley. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 
 
 The word "character" is old. In form it 
 is almost a direct transferrence from the Greek. 
 It originally stood for the tool of the stamper, 
 as also for the impression made, as in the 
 stamping of a coin. It stood for an identity, 
 for a distinctive marking of values. It came 
 in course of time to take on other meanings. 
 Webster has given the following, which well 
 defines its modern uses: "The sum of qualities 
 or features, by which a person or a thing is 
 distinguished from others; the aggregate of 
 distinctive mental and moral qualities belong- 
 ing to an individual or a race as a whole; the 
 stamp of individuality impressed by nature, 
 education, or habit; that which a person or 
 thing really is; essential peculiarity; kind; sort; 
 nature." 
 
 The distinctive emergence of the word 
 "character" into moral uses is perhaps more 
 due to Kant than to any other writer. He 
 taught that moral character alone is character 
 in the true sense. His view is that what is 
 
 107 
 
108 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 commonly called natural character, including 
 physical quality, native disposition, and tem- 
 perament, is merely what nature has made a 
 man. Moral character is something which a 
 man makes for himself. The factors which 
 enter into the making of a man's natural char- 
 acter have been well indicated by Principal 
 Fairbairn. He names six factors: "race, fam- 
 ily, place, time, education, and opportunity." 
 These factors contribute to a man all that 
 simply natural conditions can furnish. "The 
 most that the natural view expects from a 
 man is that he be equal to the sum of all the 
 conditions concerned in his making. If he 
 transcends them, then we are landed either 
 in an insolubility or in the recognition of an 
 unknown factor which may be named personal 
 genius, but can hardly be described as normal 
 or according to law. In any case this appeal 
 to an undiscovered or incalculable cause differs 
 only in name from the appeal to the super- 
 natural." 
 
 Moral character, in the Kantian sense, is 
 moral inwardness. This kind of character 
 comes only from an habitual, purposeful train- 
 ing of the will and conscience in accordance 
 with the demands of an enlightened under- 
 standing. Character thus means a structure 
 built by disciplinary processes in conformity 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 109 
 
 to morally ennobling ideals. It remains true, 
 however, that character built after the most 
 rugged order of self-discipline, may still be 
 very far from Christian. Disciplined character 
 was conspicuously developed in the schools 
 of ancient Stoicism. Kant himself was much 
 influenced by Stoical ideals. 
 
 Real character, good or bad, is the outcome 
 of cumulative processes. Ideals allure the 
 mind. The alluring fruit is plucked and tasted. 
 The taste begets appetite, desire. Appetite 
 creates demand for repetition, indulgence. Re- 
 peated indulgence begets habit, fixity; and this 
 means the shaping of the soul into molds 
 which habit forms, character, the setting of a 
 life in the direction of its destiny. Whether 
 this direction is toward good or ill will de- 
 pend upon the quality of the shaping ideals, 
 those invisible forces which give finality to 
 the controlling habit. All high and valuable 
 character is a product of slow growth, growth 
 toward a definite goal. It is something to be 
 shaped by intelligent purpose, nurtured in 
 watchfulness, self -discipline, self-denial, and al- 
 ways urged on by diligent effort. It is not a 
 thing of mere chance or of spontaneous growth. 
 Pestalozzi once said: "Toadstools may easily 
 spring forth from a dunghill when it rains; 
 but human dignity, spiritual depth, and great- 
 
110 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 ness of character do not grow out of routine 
 even when the sun shines. " It thus appears 
 that moral character, character of a kind to 
 command the approval, the esteem, and the 
 emulation of men, is a prize for which a price 
 must be paid, even the price of eternal vigilance. 
 
 With all this, when we come to study the 
 claims for, and the grounds of, distinctively 
 Christian character, we pass to a new realm 
 of thought and experience. With no undue 
 claim, and with no irrational assumption, it 
 is to be asserted that Christian experience is 
 realized only in a spiritual environment with 
 which a nonspiritual, or agnostic, philosophy 
 has no qualification for dealing. It was funda- 
 mental in the teaching of Saint Paul that the 
 merely natural man cannot know the things 
 of the Spirit, for they are to be spiritually dis- 
 cerned. However difficult to philosophic reason 
 may seem this doctrine, however audacious its 
 challenge to the pride of intellect, it rests 
 vitally at the very foundations of Christian 
 experience. 
 
 The Christian religion, as no other historic 
 faith, calls for a direct, conscious, and vital 
 relationship of the individual soul to God. 
 It means really an indwelling of God in the 
 life of the soul. Its fundamental assumptions 
 are: that for man as a sinner God has insti- 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 111 
 
 tuted an effective redemption from sin; that 
 upon the penitent soul the Divine Spirit sets 
 the direct seal of pardon; that in the pardoned 
 soul there is wrought a moral regeneration, 
 begetting within that soul a new, divine life; 
 that to the soul thus newborn God specifically, 
 distinctively imparts himself. It is a function 
 of the Spirit to bring to this soul a sense of 
 its adoption into God's spiritual household, a 
 comforting sense of pardon for sin, a luminous 
 consciousness of a new life begun in God. 
 All this initially. In all the after Christian 
 life the Holy Spirit is to companion himself 
 with the life of the obedient believer. He 
 abides with this soul as Illumination, Inspira- 
 tion, Moral Reenforcement, Sanctifier, Guide; 
 so that within the life there are richly and 
 increasingly begotten the fruits of the Spirit, 
 such as "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
 tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." 
 Of course this is a radical program. It is a 
 program so removed from the experience of 
 the natural man, that Saint Paul frankly de- 
 clares that to such it may seem foolishness. 
 But nothing less than this, Christianity de- 
 clares, is God's purpose to be experimentally 
 realized in human life. This program im- 
 periously and uncompromisingly insists that it 
 shall be tested upon its own conditions. It 
 
112 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 must be tried by its own laws. It yields to 
 no jurisdiction of unsympathetic criticism or of 
 alien philosophy. It requires absolute surren- 
 der and obedience of soul. Its initiates enter 
 the luminous life only through the narrow 
 portals of repentance, obedience, faith. Christ 
 said, "If any man will do his will, he shall know 
 of the doctrine." 
 
 It ought to be profitable to glance briefly 
 at the biblical ideals of the godly character. 
 Central among the precepts of the Old Testa- 
 ment is the demand for "goodness." "Depart 
 from evil, and do good." Men are held respon- 
 sible for moral distinctions: "Woe unto them 
 that call evil good, and good evil; that put 
 darkness for light, and light for darkness; 
 that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" 
 "Trust in the Lord, and do good." "He hath 
 showed thee, O man, what is good; and what 
 doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
 and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 thy God?" In the later historic developments 
 of the Hebrew religion less and less stress 
 was laid upon the outer and ritual performances 
 of worship, and an increasing emphasis was 
 laid upon the hidden motives of the soul. Jer- 
 emiah, the prophet of spiritual vision, placed 
 Israel's ideal in the period when God should 
 make a new covenant with his people, putting 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 113 
 
 his law in their inward parts, and writing it 
 in their hearts. 
 
 In the New Testament we discover that 
 Jesus adds both extension, depth, and clear- 
 ness to the prophetic conception of the godly 
 character. The goodness of God is with him 
 absolute. He also sees in men infinite possi- 
 bilities of goodness. He places upon his follow- 
 ers the most imperative and exacting demands 
 for goodness. With him all values center in 
 motives. The heart must be first pure before 
 the life can yield good fruits. Not that which 
 is without, but that which is within, defileth 
 the man. From an evil heart proceed the 
 evils of life. By their fruits ye shall know 
 them. A good tree cannot bring forth evil 
 fruit. Christ's moral mission with men deals 
 regeneratively at the very seats of the soul. 
 Righteousness and goodness must be centrally 
 enthroned before the life can move out on the 
 highway of Christian character. The pecul- 
 iarity and perfection of Christ's system is that 
 he not only presents in himself the perfect, 
 the flawless, example of goodness, but, as we 
 have already emphasized, he perfectly imparts 
 his own Spirit to all who fully give themselves 
 to him. He came that he might give power 
 to men to become the sons of God, even to as 
 many as should believe on his name. 
 
114 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 No teaching could be more definite, clear, 
 or radical than the pronouncements of Saint 
 Paul upon the new life in Christ. To him the 
 Christian life is a life exalted and separate in 
 the world. Its subjects are distinct from all 
 other characters. "That which is born of the 
 flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the 
 Spirit is spirit." The spiritual life is begotten, 
 is born, from above. The Spirit of God him- 
 self witnesses to the sonship of his own spiritual 
 children. We "know that we abide in him 
 and he in us, because he hath given us of his 
 Spirit." Paul makes a sharp discrimination 
 between those who are obedient and those 
 who are disobedient to Christ Jesus. The 
 former he describes as the "children of light," 
 the latter as the "children of darkness." The 
 children of light are those who walk in the 
 Spirit, and they are known by their charac- 
 ters, "for the fruit of the Spirit is in all good- 
 ness, and righteousness and truth." Again he 
 says: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, 
 longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek- 
 ness, temperance: against such there is no 
 law." Thus, in two distinct statements, the 
 apostle presents "goodness" as one of the 
 fruits of the Spirit. It would seem that no 
 terms more expressive than those used could 
 be employed to set forth the kind of character 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 115 
 
 which is expected of the Spirit-guided man — 
 "all goodness, righteousness, and truth." 
 
 There can be no doubt as to the distinctive 
 and positive teaching of the New Testament 
 as to the standards of Christian character. 
 If this teaching is true, then Christianity in- 
 stalls a new order of moral life in human 
 society. We are forced to believe that God 
 himself has undertaken through Christianity 
 the building of a new spiritual kingdom in 
 the earth, a kingdom the ultimate purpose of 
 which is the spiritual transformation of man- 
 kind. Preeminent among the qualities of 
 citizenship in this kingdom is that which 
 Christ and Saint Paul both so distinctly em- 
 phasize — "goodness," righteousness, saintliness 
 of character. So much for biblical ideals. 
 How, then? Are all the demands of the Bible 
 for a distinct righteousness of character Utopian 
 and impracticable? Are all the high ideals of 
 the New Testament for the individual and 
 for civilization only absurd and foolish dreams? 
 Let us ask twenty centuries of Christian his- 
 tory to give us answer. 
 
 The most persistent, transforming, and up- 
 lifting single force in civilization for the last 
 two thousand years has been the Christian 
 religion. Let it be admitted that in many 
 periods of its history its essential power and 
 
116 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 purity have been much neutralized by the 
 intermingling in its life of alien and worldly 
 elements. Nevertheless, Christianity in its en- 
 tire course has borne on its bosom the world's 
 weal. Its history has been attended by all 
 the reforms that have proven of value to 
 human society. Wherever it has prevailed it 
 has created a high standard of social morality, 
 has begotten among men a helpful sense of 
 human brotherhood, has invested the life of 
 the poor with an atmosphere of sympathy and 
 of hope, has inspired the noblest ministries 
 of benevolence for the unfortunate and the 
 needy. It has exalted everywhere the ideals 
 of human worth by presenting God as the 
 Father of all souls, and by holding before all 
 men the possibilities of a glorified immortality. 
 Throughout its history Christianity has been 
 the creator and always the promoter of every 
 good which has ministered to the social, intel- 
 lectual, and moral life of mankind. Historic 
 Christianity took its rise in a most forbidding 
 world, a world in which government, religions, 
 castes, traditions, social and moral customs, 
 all of which would seem to be invulnerable 
 to the new faith, were leagued against it. 
 The Roman world had wondrously gathered 
 into itself at this time the great laws, philos- 
 ophies, and religions of mankind. Regnant in 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 117 
 
 all lands from the Euphrates to the Pillars of 
 Hercules, Rome was now more cosmopolitan, 
 especially in its philosophy and religion, than 
 had ever been true of any preceding civiliza- 
 tion. Herself the most legally imperial of 
 governments, highly jealous of her prerogatives, 
 her heritage was rich in ideals of the most 
 perfect art, in philosophies the greatest to 
 which human thought had ever given birth, 
 and in her Pantheon she had domesticated 
 the most diverse religions. Her general atmos- 
 phere was favorable to large freedom of thought. 
 But, notwithstanding her unlimited dominion, 
 her vast heirship of intellect and of art, and 
 the wide latitude of her religious hospitality, 
 this Rome was effete and dissolute. There 
 inhered in her communities all extremes of 
 wealth and of poverty, of luxury and of wretch- 
 edness. Her society was caste-ridden. For the 
 slave and the poor, the haughty aristocrat 
 had no more regard than for so many beasts 
 of burden. Rome was the mistress of the 
 world, but in the very height of her power 
 her most privileged life was cynical, faithless, 
 dissolute, blase, hopeless. 
 
 If we were to consider alone the moral and 
 social conditions of this pagan world, they 
 were such as to make seemingly impossible the 
 success of a new religion founded by a Galilsean 
 
118 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 Peasant, himself born in an ox-shed, and 
 meeting death at last by crucifixion. The 
 peasant would be despised, and his crucifixion 
 would be accepted as a brand of deepest crim- 
 inality. But if to all this we add the fact that 
 Christianity in its very nature carried the 
 most open challenge and rebuke against the 
 cherished traditions and social customs of this 
 powerful world, it can appear no less than a 
 veritable miracle of Almightiness that it could 
 have secured for itself any standing whatso- 
 ever in that Roman world. To the philosophic 
 mind the preaching of the cross was foolishness. 
 To the imperial vision the proposal to estab- 
 lish a new spiritual kingdom among men was 
 an absurdity. To the powerful and the haughty 
 it was unthinkable that a religion having such 
 an origin could really bring any ministry to 
 their deepest needs. Its social standing was 
 too humble and despised to command for it 
 any favor, much less a welcome, in fashionable 
 circles of that imperial age. Christ unhesitat- 
 ingly began, and carried on, his ministry among 
 the poor. This in itself was an affront to the 
 ruling social life. For a long period it was a 
 contemptuous taunt against Christianity that 
 it recruited its subjects from the slaves and 
 outcast populations, from those whom society 
 branded as sinners and harlots. Moreover, 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 119 
 
 Christianity moved under standards on which 
 were inscribed ideals of a new and divinely 
 inspired character. It called for the highest 
 and purest moral conduct in the life of its 
 subjects. Its very program awakened against 
 it the intense ridicule and resentment of the 
 age to which it came. 
 
 Another historic element of opposition to be 
 duly considered, is that which arose in the 
 Hebrew community. The Hebrew religion had 
 a large place among the faiths tolerated in 
 Rome. Christ himself was a Jew. But his 
 method called for such radical departure from, 
 such revision and enlargement of, the out- 
 standing things in Hebrew usage, as, if he 
 were to succeed, to result in the very displace- 
 ment of the Hebrew religion itself. Naturally, 
 Christianity early drew to itself intense opposi- 
 tion from the Jewish community. The inevi- 
 table outcome was that the official power of 
 Judaism employed itself in promoting the most 
 violent opposition to the Christian faith. 
 
 The outcome of all was that a religion 
 which at first seemed of so obscure and con- 
 temptible an origin as to command for itself 
 only a judgment of scorn and ridicule, yet, as 
 for mysterious reasons it continued to grow% 
 finally drew to itself the most formidable and 
 destructive persecution which could be devised 
 
120 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 by the inventive genius, or carried into execu- 
 tion by the seeming omnipotence, of the Roman 
 empire. The ordeal of fire and blood, an 
 ordeal of torture and of cruelty as inspired by 
 official fury, which thus tested the very life 
 of early Christianity, is something which sur- 
 passes the power of our imagination to picture. 
 
 The fact to be emphasized is that there was 
 some prophetic inspiration, some moral quality, 
 inhering in the faith of those early Christians 
 that made them invincible against all human 
 opposition. After the Roman authorities had 
 done their worst, Tertullian could say to them: 
 "All your ingenious cruelties can accomplish 
 nothing; they are only a lure to this sect. 
 Our numbers increase the more you destroy us. 
 The blood of the Christians is their seed. . . . 
 We are a people of yesterday, and yet we have 
 filled every place belonging to you — cities, 
 islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very 
 camp, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, 
 forum. We leave your temples only. You 
 count your armies, but our numbers in a 
 single province will be greater." 
 
 In the year A. D. 30, about the time of the 
 crucifixion, the followers of Christ may have 
 numbered about five hundred. By A. D. 100 
 the disciples had increased to five hundred 
 thousand. By A. D. 311, when the fires of 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 121 
 
 martyrdom had died out and the arms of the 
 executioners were palsied from overuse, the 
 long orgie of human butchery having exhausted 
 itself, the Christians numbered thirty million, 
 and a Christian emperor sat upon the throne 
 of the Caesars. At the close of the entire tragic 
 series it was the testimony of Tertullian that 
 Christians had been persecuted more on ac- 
 count of their religion than for all other causes. 
 We are to emphasize the fact that they were 
 persecuted because of their outstanding char- 
 acter, because of the austere purity of their 
 morals, because of their unswerving loyalty 
 to their convictions, because of their firm and 
 open nonconformity to what they regarded as 
 forbidden usages, yet usages thoroughly domes- 
 ticated in the social and moral life of the 
 age. All this was made a ground of capital 
 offense against the Christians. 
 
 And what finally were the offenses of these 
 Christians? They utterly refused to join in 
 the deification of the emperors. They would 
 not take a pagan oath. They would not join 
 in the rites of pagan worship. They were, in 
 many cases, opposed to military service. They 
 gave no countenance to the bloody games of 
 the amphitheater and kindred spectacles. In 
 their very multiplicity, they became a menace 
 to the faiths of polytheism throughout the 
 
122 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 empire. A complaint that Celsus made against 
 them was that they were "men walling them- 
 selves off and isolating themselves from man- 
 kind/' He charged them with disloyalty to 
 the state, and as impairing the solidity of the 
 civilized world by their departure from the 
 common belief. To many of the charges of 
 Celsus the Christians would, indeed, have to 
 plead guilty. They did abstain from the faiths 
 and rites of paganism. They were bound in 
 all conscience to stand by the demands of 
 their faith, a faith which from its very nature 
 was out of harmony with, and which must 
 enter its protest and denial against, much of 
 the ruling customs and faiths of the age. 
 
 The history of these early Christians is 
 indeed marvelous. It can be accounted for 
 on no basis of creed or of organization. Chris- 
 tianity had both creed and organization. But 
 the real and only secret of its persistence and 
 growth was in the life of God as experienced 
 in the souls of men. This life proved itself 
 invincible in the face of all opposition. Its 
 influence, wherever felt, was transforming. It 
 created a new motive and a new character 
 wherever it entered into the life of men. Justin 
 Martyr, the cool-headed philosopher, eloquently 
 says that everywhere in the wake of Chris- 
 tianity were to be found "slaves of sensuality 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 123 
 
 who had become pure in morals, the avaricious 
 and miserly who gave themselves in generous 
 ministry to those in need, and the revengeful 
 who had learned to pray for their enemies." 
 He attributes all this to the grace of Jesus 
 Christ as experienced in the lives of these 
 men. Origen testifies to great numbers of 
 persons who through the same grace were 
 recovered from licentiousness, injustice, and 
 covetousness. 
 
 In considering the power of Christianity to 
 transform, and to give new characters to, 
 sinful and bad men, it seems well-nigh invidious 
 to cite single instances. The reformation and 
 salvation, the installment into right living, of 
 abandoned and otherwise hopeless men is the 
 standing miracle of Christianity. It was the 
 sneer of Celsus and of Lucian, the classical 
 satirists, that Christianity exploited itself in 
 the reformation of slaves, of thieves, and that 
 it sought its trophies among the very off- 
 scourings of human society. The fact which 
 robs the sneer of its sting is the ages-long 
 demonstration which Christianity has furnished 
 of its power to lift the representatives of these 
 very classes into pure and saintly character. 
 Neither history nor philosophy any longer ne- 
 glects nor scorns to give candid attention to 
 this class of phenomena. 
 
124 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 Gibbon's prepossessions were not favorable 
 to Christianity. We are hardly prepared to 
 expect from him fair treatment for even the 
 Christian name. But prejudiced historian 
 though he was, he says, "The primitive Chris- 
 tian demonstrated his faith by his virtues." 
 Speaking of the emperor, Constantine, he says: 
 "Under the manifest inadequacy of pagan 
 philosophy to reform the morals of the people, 
 he might observe with pleasure the progress of 
 a religion which diffused among the people 
 a pure, benevolent, and universal system of 
 ethics, adapted to every duty and every con- 
 dition of life; recommended as the will and 
 reason of the supreme Deity, and enforced by 
 the sanction of eternal rewards and punish- 
 ments." 
 
 Lecky, the famous historian of European 
 morals, says: 
 
 There can indeed be little doubt that, for nearly 
 two hundred years after its establishment in Europe, 
 the Christian community exhibited a moral purity 
 which, if it has been equaled, has never for any 
 long period been surpassed. Completely separated 
 from the Roman world that was around them, 
 abstaining alike from political life, from appeals 
 to the tribunals, and from military occupations, 
 looking forward continually to the immediate ad- 
 vent of their Master, and to the destruction of the 
 empire in which they dwelt, and animated by all 
 the fervor of a young religion, the Christians found 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 125 
 
 within themselves a whole order of ideas and feel- 
 ings sufficiently powerful to guard them from the 
 contamination of their age. 
 
 Doctor T. R. Glover, in his great work The 
 Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman 
 Empire, declares of the early Christians: 
 
 They were astonishingly upright, pure, and hon- 
 est; they were serious; and they had in themselves 
 inexplicable reserves of moral force and a happiness 
 far beyond anything that the world knew. They 
 were transfigured, as they owned. Some would 
 confess to wasted and evil lives, but something 
 had happened, which they connected with Jesus, 
 or a Holy Spirit, but everything in the long run 
 turned upon Jesus. . . . That Christianity retained 
 its own character in the face of the most desperate 
 efforts of its friends to turn it into a philosophy 
 congenial to the philosophies of the day was the 
 result of the strong hold it had taken upon innu- 
 merable simple people, who had found in it the 
 power of God in the transformation of their own 
 characters and instincts, and who clung to Jesus 
 Christ, to the great objective facts of his incarna- 
 tion and his death upon the cross, as the firm founda- 
 tion laid in the rock against which the floods of 
 theory might beat in vain. 
 
 William James, clear-headed and cool-hearted 
 as a philosopher, thought it worth his while 
 to give distinct and exhaustive study to this 
 very field. He certainly cannot be charged 
 with any special leaning to "evangelical ortho- 
 doxy," nor with overbias toward traditional 
 
126 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 creeds. It is all the more interesting to note 
 his open-minded and high valuation of the 
 facts of Christian conversion. However seareh- 
 ingly he may have traced the psychology of 
 the process, he does not deny the divineness 
 of its cause, nor its permanent values for 
 character and life. He has gathered many 
 remarkable instances of Christian conversion. 
 From these, I cite one, not simply because 
 of its typical character, but especially for the 
 reason that its subject came somewhat inti- 
 mately under my own observation. The 
 experience of Mr. S. H. Hadley is related as 
 follows: 
 
 One Tuesday evening I sat in a saloon in Harlem, 
 a homeless, a friendless, dying drunkard. I had 
 pawned or sold everything that would bring a drink. 
 I could not sleep unless I was dead drunk. I had 
 not eaten for days, and for four nights preceding 
 I had suffered with delirium tremens, or the hor- 
 rors, from midnight till morning. I had often said: 
 "I will never be a tramp. I will never be cornered, 
 for when that time comes, if it ever comes, I will 
 find a home in the bottom of the river." As I sat 
 thinking I seemed to feel some great and mighty 
 presence. I did not know then what it was. I did 
 learn afterward that it was Jesus, the sinner's 
 friend. I walked up to the bar and pounded it 
 with my fist till I made the glasses rattle. Those 
 who stood by drinking looked on with scornful 
 curiosity. I said I would never take another drink, 
 if I died on the street, and really I felt as though 
 that would happen before morning. Something 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 127 
 
 said, "If you want to keep this promise, go and 
 have yourself locked up." I went to the nearest 
 station house and had myself locked up. 
 
 I was placed in a narrow cell, and it seemed as 
 though all the demons that could find room came 
 in that place with me. This was not all the com- 
 pany I had either. No, praise the Lord; that dear 
 Spirit that came to me in the saloon was present 
 and said, "Pray." I did pray, and though I did 
 not feel any great help, I kept on praying. As 
 soon as I was able to leave my cell I was taken 
 to the police court and remanded back to the cell. 
 I was finally released, and found my way to my 
 brother's house, where every care was given me. 
 While lying in bed the admonishing Spirit never 
 left me, and when I arose the following Sabbath 
 morning I felt that day would decide my fate, 
 and toward evening it came into my head to go to 
 Jerry McAuley 's Mission. I went. The house 
 was packed, and with great difficulty I made my 
 way to the space near the platform. There I saw 
 the apostle to the drunkard and the outcast — 
 that man of God, Jerry McAuley. He rose, and 
 amid deep silence told his experience. There was 
 a sincerity about this man that carried conviction 
 with it, and I found myself saying, "I wonder if 
 God can save me?" I listened to the testimony 
 of twenty -five or thirty persons, every one of whom 
 had been saved from rum, and I made up my 
 mind that I would be saved or die right there. 
 When the invitation was given, I knelt down with 
 a crowd of drunkards. Jerry made the first prayer. 
 Then Mrs. McAuley prayed fervently for us. O, 
 what a conflict was going on for my poor soul! 
 A blessed whisper said, "Come"; the devil said, 
 "Be careful." I halted but for a moment, and 
 then, with a breaking heart, I said, "Dear Jesus, 
 
128 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 can you help me?" Never with mortal tongue can 
 I describe that moment. Although up to that 
 moment my soul had been filled with indescribable 
 gloom, I felt the glorious brightness of the noonday 
 sun shine into my heart. I felt I was a free man. 
 
 the precious feeling of safety, of freedom, of 
 resting on Jesus! I felt that Christ with all his 
 brightness and power had come into my life; that, 
 indeed, old things had passed away and all things 
 had become new. 
 
 From that moment till now I have never wanted 
 a drink of whisky, and I have never seen money 
 enough to make me take one. I promised God 
 that night that if he would take away my appetite 
 for strong drink, I would work for him all my life. 
 He has done his part, and I have been trying to 
 do mine. 
 
 This is a very wonderful narrative. But 
 from years of observation of Samuel H. Hadley, 
 
 1 can personally testify to the fact that he 
 lived a pure and highly useful Christian life, 
 dying at last in the most vivid triumphs of 
 the Christian faith. 
 
 Harold Begbie, in his Twice Born Men, a 
 book which has had a multitude of readers, 
 gives a photographic description of several 
 equally striking cases. Browning, in Ned 
 Bratts, has invested such a biography with 
 his own poetic genius. The foregoing citations 
 from the general fields of history and philos- 
 ophy are sufficient to indicate something of 
 the impression which the demonstrated power 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 129 
 
 of Christianity to transform and to morally 
 uplift human character has made upon the 
 great reviewers of the world's deeds and 
 thought. Before, however, taking leave of the 
 definite, and exceedingly important and fruit- 
 ful, subject of this chapter, it will be profitable 
 for us briefly to review some of the larger 
 fields in the history of modern Christianity. 
 
 The character-product attributable alone to 
 the indwelling of God's Spirit in the human 
 soul has been a distinct, rich, and continuous 
 phenomenon in all the Christian ages. History 
 fairly stated seems not more definitely to 
 testify to anything than to the fact that Chris- 
 tian character is a product of God's indwelling 
 and in working Spirit in the soul of man. To 
 deny this would be to leave the regenerative 
 work of Christianity an outstanding enigma. 
 To deny this would be to classify Christianity 
 itself as a superfluous thing in the world's 
 history. To deny this would be, in the light 
 of the obvious and gravest moral needs of 
 the race, to shut away from human view any 
 just ground of hope for a regenerated and 
 transformed spiritual future. 
 
 In all periods of its highest life, and of its 
 most signal moral conquests, the Church has 
 most emphasized the doctrine and experience 
 of the Spirit in the life of the believer. In 
 
130 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 the first two and a half centuries it was not 
 formulated creed, not ecclesiastical organiza- 
 tion, not political cohesion, but the witnessing 
 and testifying life of the Spirit that fed and 
 fanned the quenchless fires of the faith. As 
 has been emphasized, the Church of this 
 period faced the concentrated scorn and ridicule 
 of the world; its appointed and unavoidable 
 path lay through an inferno of persecution 
 and martyrdom, the very story of which has 
 appalled the heart of subsequent ages. Yet 
 the spirit of this Church was invincible, and 
 its storm-swept path is signalized and made 
 illustrious by the great saints and confessors 
 who form an unbroken succession in its history. 
 The period of the Reformation is distinctly 
 luminous by its insistence upon the presence 
 and work of the Spirit in the lives of men. 
 In our casual reflections upon this great period 
 a few names, such as Wycliffe, Huss, Calvin, 
 Zwingli, and Knox, naturally occupy the fore- 
 ground of our thought, and perhaps to the 
 exclusion of a multitude of lesser characters 
 who wrought vitally in this world-crisis. The 
 Reformers, the Reformation itself, were gravely 
 handicapped by dogmas and traditions which 
 centuries of ecclesiastical domination had im- 
 posed upon human thought. The Reformation, 
 however great and beneficent in itself, left 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 131 
 
 in popular belief large areas of error from 
 which the Christian thinking of future ages 
 alone could work complete emancipation. The 
 Reformation is not to be belittled. It was 
 an epoch in which the moral levels of the 
 world were visibly raised. It was a great 
 emergence in which large sections of the Chris- 
 tian Church left behind them Egyptian bond- 
 age, and went forth into territories of new 
 intellectual and spiritual liberty, territories rich 
 in the prophecy of a new progress for man- 
 kind. 
 
 But the one great discovery of the Reforma- 
 tion, the one thing which gave it chief sig- 
 nificance, was its proclamation of the Divine 
 Spirit in his relations to the life of the indi- 
 vidual soul. Luther himself, like many of the 
 greatest spiritual teachers, was lifted to a new 
 level and to a new vision, by what for his 
 whole after-career was an epoch-making spir- 
 itual revelation. As a typical confession of 
 his faith he once wrote: "No man can under- 
 stand God or God's Word unless he has it 
 revealed immediately by the Holy Ghost; but 
 nobody can receive anything from the Holy 
 Ghost unless he experience it. In experience 
 the Holy Ghost teaches us in his own school, 
 outside of which nothing of value can be 
 learned." 
 
132 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 In relation to the distinctive doctrines and 
 experiences of the Spirit, no single movement 
 is perhaps more instructive than that of 
 Methodism. John Wesley, the recognized 
 founder and leader of the Methodist move- 
 ment, was highly educated, strictly moral, 
 conscientiously religious. In type his mind 
 was highly philosophical. John Snaith has 
 said of Wesley: 
 
 In some respects he was much superior to Hegel, 
 in others he was much inferior. If Hegel and 
 Wesley could have been blended into one person, 
 such a person would have been near the stature 
 of the apostle Paul. At any rate, it only requires 
 the logical philosophy of the Spirit as unfolded by 
 Hegel infused into that of Wesley, or Wesley's into 
 that of Hegel, to have a philosophy of the Spirit 
 as nearly perfect as possible. 
 
 Yet, up to a given period, Wesley was 
 almost entirely lacking in that definite power 
 which afterward transformed him into the peer- 
 less evangelist of the Christian ages. After 
 long and, what appeared to be, fruitless en- 
 deavor, he was one day startled by the direct 
 question, ''Does the Spirit of God bear witness 
 with your spirit that you are a child of God?" 
 To this question he gave solicitous attention 
 and study for about two years. Under what 
 would appear very simple circumstances, as in 
 a revealing flash, he suddenly felt his "heart 
 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 133 
 
 strangely warmed." He says: "An assurance 
 was given me, that He had taken away my 
 sins, even mine, and saved me from the law 
 of sin and death." This experience was epochal. 
 It dated for John Wesley the beginnings of 
 an evangelical career which ranks him hardly 
 second to any of the great workers of the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 Wesley was now thirty-five years of age. 
 He lived to the age of eighty-eight years. 
 It is not too much to say that in the remaining 
 fifty-three years he lived in a broad arena, 
 and in the most open publicity, the life of a 
 saint. He died the most noted man in England. 
 He was revered, honored, and loved as no 
 other man of his day. The great emphasis 
 of his religious teaching was upon the regen- 
 erating and witnessing mission of the Holy 
 Spirit in the soul of the believer. He was the 
 chief leader and organizer of a great spiritual 
 movement. To-day, to say nothing of the 
 generations of Methodists dead, many millions 
 of living witnesses are enrolled in those dis- 
 tinctive communions of which he is the recog- 
 nized founder. As in all large aggregations of 
 human nature, Methodism in parts may have 
 been characterized by limitations, weaknesses, 
 and faults. But, in the sum of its life, covering 
 a period of more than one hundred and seventy- 
 
134 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 five years, it has furnished to the world a 
 great army of exemplary Christian lives, and 
 has increased the calendar of saints by many 
 names worthy of the best traditions of the 
 apostolic age. The soundness of the spiritual 
 interpretation of such regenerative movements 
 as were led by Wesley is sufficiently evidenced 
 by the fact that they never arise save under 
 the dynamic of high spiritual inspirations. 
 Such movements can be accounted for only 
 by the incoming of the Spirit of Pentecost upon 
 the lives and hearts of the community. 
 
 In connection with any sane and safe teach- 
 ing concerning the Spirit's transforming and 
 character-forming mission, there are several 
 facts to be guarded and emphasized: 
 
 First. It would be a one-sided and essen- 
 tially false view to lay a chief stress upon the 
 power and value of Christianity as simply 
 the transformation and the making of good 
 characters out of bad and apparently aban- 
 doned men. Origen long ago declared that 
 the greater number of those found in the 
 churches are "converted from a not very 
 wicked life," rather than from those "who 
 have committed the most abominable sins. 5 ' 
 Timothy, Paul's "beloved son in the gospel," 
 was from infancy responsive to the highest 
 moral influences. The prevailing fact is that 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 135 
 
 among the really most valuable Christian 
 characters — the men and the women most 
 firmly grounded in the faith, most deeply ex- 
 perienced in spiritual things, in whose lives 
 there are most perfectly developed the Chris- 
 tian graces, and who are the most radiant 
 examples of settled trustfulness of soul, peace 
 of mind, and of Christian fruitfulness, qualities 
 which best attest the rule of the Spirit over 
 the life — a great majority of all these have 
 not come from the ranks of outbroken sinful- 
 ness, but are to be numbered among those who 
 from earliest life have been reared in a healthy 
 moral and social environment. I can have no 
 doubt that goodness in any life is a Spirit- 
 nurtured growth. The fruits of the spiritual 
 heritage are of wide distribution. It would 
 be a moral tragedy of society were this not 
 the fact. Any child born and reared in Chris- 
 tian atmospheres must, by virtue of this very 
 fact, be forever different in character and 
 quality from what would be possible in the 
 absence of such environment. Lives are made 
 better or worse by virtue of good inheritances. 
 If the heir of such inheritances willfully sins 
 against his birthright, his perversion of char- 
 acter thereby becomes the more treasonable 
 and tragic. On the other hand, in the measure 
 in which his life conforms to the better ideals 
 
136 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 of his inheritance, by so much is he worthy 
 of approbation. When a mere lad, with as 
 yet no developed ability to think my way 
 discriminatingly through the subject, I was 
 mentally disturbed by a statement more than 
 once made by zealous circuit-riding pastors, to 
 the effect that a man of moral life was a far 
 greater obstacle to the Kingdom than an 
 outbreaking sinner. This kind of teaching 
 seemed to me, even then, like putting a pre- 
 mium upon a bad life. Such teaching is a 
 moral heresy. Its assumption is thoroughly 
 unethical. The man who from elect motives 
 leads an upright life is far nearer the kingdom 
 of God than is at all possible to the profane 
 and abandoned sinner. Men of high motives 
 should be a common heritage to the Chris- 
 tian community. Children trained in Christian 
 homes should by reason of that very fact be 
 the most valuable recruits of the Church. 
 
 Second. To justly judge the validity of a 
 work of grace in the life of the individual, due 
 regard must be had to several features, such 
 as environment, habit, temperament, mental 
 and moral capacity, of the person concerned. 
 There are some characters in whom, when 
 apparently divine grace has wrought at its 
 best, there still inhere rugged and uncouth 
 characteristics which seem inborn in the indi- 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 137 
 
 vidual. It does not follow that some lives 
 in which have really been wrought miracles 
 of grace will appear more, or even as, perfect 
 outwardly as do some other lives which seem 
 to have been quite fully shaped by natural 
 inheritance, temperament, or acquired culture. 
 Apropos to this subject, James makes a quo- 
 tation from Emerson and then makes his own 
 rejoinder. Emerson says: "When we see a 
 soul whose acts are regal, graceful, and pleasant 
 as roses, we must thank God that such things 
 can be and are, and not turn sourly on the 
 angel and say: 'Crump is a better man, with 
 his grunting resistance to all his native devils.' '' 
 "True enough," says James, "yet Crump may 
 really be the better Crump, for his inner dis- 
 cords and second birth; and your once-born 
 'regal' character, though, indeed, always better 
 than poor Crump, may fall far short of what 
 he individually might be had he only some 
 Crump-like capacity for compunction over his 
 own peculiar diabolisms, graceful and pleasant 
 and invariably gentlemanly as these may be." 
 The transforming grace of the Spirit, however 
 deep or wonderful its work in the soul, never 
 utterly obliterates or transcends the native 
 lines or limitations of individuality. Some 
 men have great capacity, large culture, and 
 fine harmony of temperament. The Spirit 
 
138 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 harmonizes with these qualities, beautifies them, 
 and lifts them into their best expression. An- 
 other person is not built on this scale. He 
 may suffer not only from natural limitations, 
 but from defects of habit. Even divine grace 
 can work only on such foundations as it finds 
 in the individual. But when the man of one 
 talent, and of crippling limitations, is saved, 
 he is saved for all he is worth. He is saved 
 with a great salvation. To him his spiritual 
 conversion will always remain the greatest 
 fact in his moral history. 
 
 Third. In assessing the values of Christian 
 experience it is to be remembered that not all 
 subjects have a uniform, or a like phenomenal, 
 experience either in conversion or in the after 
 developments of character. As a matter of 
 observation, men seemingly come into the 
 Christian life under a great variety and di- 
 versity of phenomenal expression. We have 
 already seen that this presents no real ground 
 of difficulty. The religious motive appeals to 
 the deepest life, and is from its very nature 
 adapted, when in full action, to stir profoundly 
 the emotions. 
 
 This motive, when it has a clear hearing, 
 makes imperious demands upon the entire 
 personality. It is not strange that in the 
 hour of crisis it should prove an agitating 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 139 
 
 presence in the entire field of consciousness. 
 But this emotional action will be far more 
 pronounced in some cases than in others. The 
 phenomenal expression will depend much upon 
 the native temperament and aptitudes of the 
 individual. In some natures the emotions will 
 voice themselves like the breaking forth of a 
 pent tide. In other cases the calm will and 
 the introspective interrogation will hold emo- 
 tion in abeyance, and, whatever happens, 
 even though the processes of profound moral 
 change are going on in the soul, the movement 
 is quiet and wanting in outward, or phenom- 
 enal, expression. It has taken many spiritual 
 workers a long time — and even now the lesson 
 is not well learned — to make due discrimination 
 between what may be only phenomenal and 
 that which is vitally essential in spiritual con- 
 version. The essential thing is that the soul 
 be in the attitude, and without reservation, of 
 complete self-surrender to the sway of the 
 Spirit. It cannot even reach this attitude 
 without the preliminary aids of the Spirit 
 himself. Rut when this condition is realized, 
 the seeking, the soliciting, Spirit enters the 
 life to work the most momentous moral events 
 in the soul. This is the supreme thing. Are 
 the emotions stirred? This is normal. But 
 if, without emotion, there is the quiet discern- 
 
140 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 ment of dawn, the touch of a new springtime, 
 the sensing of a new moral life, in the soul; 
 this too is normal. 
 
 Ignorance of spiritual laws has led to much 
 infelicity of spiritual teaching, amounting often 
 to a quackery of method, in the insistence 
 that a certain type of emotional experience is 
 essential as evidence of Christian conversion. 
 Great numbers of the best Christians have 
 been needlessly troubled at this point. In- 
 sistence upon this standard or criterion of 
 entrance upon the Christian life, has amounted 
 in many cases to an infliction of cruelty upon 
 most sincere seekers after the true way. A 
 true psychology must declare this sort of 
 teaching, so far as professional aptitude is 
 concerned, as discreditable as maladroit sur- 
 gery. 
 
 The emphasis of the Christian life is to be 
 put upon its ethical quality. The real Chris- 
 tian is one who is obedient to Jesus Christ. 
 He is a doer rather than a feeler. It was 
 Christ's meat and drink to do the will of his 
 Father in heaven. In his final valuation of 
 his followers it is the doer of God's will whom 
 he approves. Christ would not leave Peter 
 in the reverie of a transfiguration, but took 
 him down into the valley where devils were 
 to be cast out of men. Whatever be the emo- 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 141 
 
 tional register, whether sustained excitement is 
 present or absent, the man who has accepted 
 the mastery of Jesus Christ, is one in whom 
 the Divine Spirit is developing the fruits of 
 righteousness. There will reign in his soul 
 the serenity of a man at peace with God. The 
 real need is the mind which was in Jesus Christ. 
 If one have this mind, and practice it, the 
 religious emotions may safely be left to take 
 care of themselves. This man, as by an un- 
 failing gravitation, is borne ever forward toward 
 a perfecting Christian character. 
 
 Fourth. The testimony of Christian charac- 
 ter, as that also of experience, attains its 
 highest evidential values, not from sporadic 
 individual cases, but from the massed con- 
 sensus of the Christian life. Christianity is 
 historic. Its Kingdom has had a continuous 
 and increasing growth through the centuries. 
 Its citizenship, with an unbroken continuity 
 of thought and expression, has, through all 
 ages, spoken in one spiritual language. The 
 Christian inspirations have uttered themselves 
 among all races and in all generations, begetting 
 everywhere in human hearts and characters 
 the same moral response. The songs of Chris- 
 tian experience have, the races over and the 
 ages through, voiced themselves as in the 
 harmonies of a universal symphony. Mingled 
 
142 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 with the individual consciousness, now and 
 then, there may have arisen phenomena both 
 illusory and worthless. But, when all allowance 
 is made for ephemeral and dreamlike illusions 
 of the occasional individual, these will not be 
 found to impair in the least either the sig- 
 nificance or the value of the universal Christian 
 experience and testimony. As to the significance 
 of these there can be no ignoring and no mis- 
 understanding. 
 
 The phenomena of the Christian experience, 
 and the distinctiveness of the Christian charac- 
 ter, are too cosmic to admit of either historic 
 or philosophic denial. In this relation, the 
 central and dominating fact to be emphasized 
 is that the religious consciousness of Jesus 
 Christ is the regulative norm of Christian 
 consciousness for all ages and for all peoples. 
 The Christianity of Christ is historically and 
 abundantly demonstrated to be morally cre- 
 ative, transforming, uplifting, altruistic, hope- 
 inspiring, as no other, and not all other, re- 
 ligious faiths. Christianity, therefore, carries 
 in itself the prophecy and the pledge of its uni- 
 versality. The future moral perfection of 
 mankind is to be realized only by the final 
 dominance in civilization of the Christian 
 character. 
 
 Fifth. We must not confound the psychology 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 143 
 
 of religious experience with the ultimate Cause 
 and Source of this experience. Psychology has 
 profoundly searched the phenomena accom- 
 panying Christian conversion and the subse- 
 quent development of Christian character, and 
 has reached valid analyses and assessments of 
 these phenomena. But this is no more to 
 say that psychology actually accounts for, or 
 does away with the necessity of, the distinctive 
 divine causality and action in Christian con- 
 version than that the botanist who classifies 
 plants and analyzes their structures thereby 
 explains the vital principle of their develop- 
 ment. Psychology is a great clarifier of knowl- 
 edge. It exposes delusions and eliminates false 
 factors of faith. It reduces the processes of 
 experience on their human side to rational 
 clearness and credibility. It so philosophically 
 illuminates our emotional experiences as to 
 leave no intelligent excuse for either juggling 
 with, or giving false interpretation to, these 
 experiences. God has given to the human soul 
 its distinct constitution. If the soul is a harp, 
 God's play upon this instrument must move 
 within the limits of its laws. It is the legit- 
 imate function of psychology to study and to 
 know the laws and possibilities of the instru- 
 ment. But when the great Player brings 
 forth the harmonies of celestial music, psy- 
 
144 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 chology has no right to forget that the Player 
 is God. 1 
 
 1 The mode of treatment in this chapter has developed a 
 considerable variety of statement. To facilitate review, I 
 have thought it well to indicate the topics of the chapter in 
 the order of their treatment, as follows: 
 
 (1) The term "character," its historic significance. 
 (2) Christian character the result of a Divine process in the 
 soul. (3) Biblical ideals of character. (4) The general an- 
 swer of history as to the validity of these ideals. (5) Chris- 
 tians were persecuted because of their exceptional morals. 
 (6) Both historian and philosopher now freely acknowledge 
 the validity of both the Christian conversion and the Chris- 
 tian character. (7) Testimony of great spiritual periods in 
 the Church, such as the Reformation and the Wesleyan 
 Revival. (8) In a measured survey of the phenomena of 
 Christian conversion and the subsequent development of 
 Christian character, several important facts need to be care- 
 fully guarded and duly emphasized: 
 
 (a) It would not only be an inadequate, but a thoroughly 
 false, view to confine the morally transforming and uplifting 
 power of Christianity to simply bad characters. 
 
 (b) In the attempt to measure the apparent effects of 
 divine grace upon character, due regard must be had to the 
 qualities of the individual concerned: such as his heredity, 
 temperament, habit, mental and moral capacity, etc. 
 
 (c) Not all subjects of Christian conversion have a uni- 
 form, or a like phenomenal, experience. Emotional phe- 
 nomena furnish no valid criterion as to the genuineness of a 
 work of grace in character. 
 
 (d) The testimony of the individual may not necessarily 
 be accepted as a final authority for the spiritual life. The 
 value of such testimony must finally be measured by its 
 agreement or disagreement with the general consensus of 
 Christian experience. 
 
 (e) While it is the proper function of psychology to inves- 
 tigate and assess the mental and emotional processes at- 
 tendant upon Christian experience, psychology, in no sense, 
 either substitutes or accounts for the Cause and Source of 
 Christian experience itself. 
 
VI 
 SPIRITUAL FRUITS 
 
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuf- 
 fering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: 
 against such there is no law. — Galatians 5. 22, 23. 
 
 We ourselves have observed crowded together in one day, 
 some suffering decapitation, some of the torments of flames; 
 so that the murderous weapon was completely blunted, and 
 the executioners themselves, wearied with slaughter, were 
 obliged to relieve one another. Then we were witnesses of 
 the truly divine energy of those that believed in the Christ 
 of God. They received the final sentence of death with 
 gladness and exultation, so far as even to sing and to send 
 up hymns of praise and thanksgiving until they breathed 
 their last. — Eusebius. 
 
 Joy is more conspicuous in Christianity than in any other 
 religion, and in the Bible than in any other literature. 
 Psychologically, joy is the index of health, resulting from 
 the adequate engagement and the vigorous and harmonious 
 exercise of the powers; it is the sign that the soul has found 
 its object. — Dr. O. O. Findlay. 
 
 One of the last places in the world to be regarded as a 
 holiday resort was surely the noisome den at Bedford in 
 which Bunyan was confined. But there was rarest holiday- 
 making within. Not in king's palace, nor amid the noblest 
 scenery of our isles, was there such exultation of soul, such 
 vision of beauty, such sense of life and freedom as filled the 
 soul of the lonely prisoner as there rose before him in his 
 dungeon the successive scenes of that great conception which 
 was to make him immortal. To stand on the Delectable 
 Mountains was better than to climb the Jungfrau. Great- 
 heart, Christian, and Faithful formed finer society than the 
 wits of the coffee-houses. To have looked through the gates 
 of the New Jerusalem made cheap the splendors of Paris or 
 Rome. — /. Brierley. 
 
 With an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things. 
 
 — Wordsworth, 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SPIRITUAL FRUITS 
 
 The Gospel, as announced by the angel 
 messengers, was a heralding of "Glad tidings 
 of great joy." Joy is one of the designated 
 fruits of the Spirit. Joy and fortitude are not 
 synonyms. But the qualities which they ex- 
 press keep close company with each other. 
 Joy and fortitude are alike direct products of 
 Christian grace. Saint Paul was a man of 
 superb fortitude. He was equally the apostle 
 of joy. Few pictures are more impressive than 
 that of Paul in prison voicing in his letter to 
 the Philippians the notes of highest joy, and 
 at the same time calmly, heroically, awaiting 
 his own death at the hands of the executioner. 
 A treatise of unique character, yet most rich 
 in substance, is furnished in the writings of 
 the New Testament on the subject of Christian 
 joy. In numerous passages, and representing 
 a great variety of conditions, there is pictured 
 the rise of this joy in the heart. This is em- 
 phasized especially of those who have come 
 newly into the consciousness of spiritual 
 discipleship. 
 
 147 
 
148 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 Christ, foretelling this state, declares that 
 "the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure 
 hid in a field; the which when a man hath 
 found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth 
 and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that 
 field/' A scene following the Pentecostal re- 
 vival represents the converts as meeting daily 
 with one accord in the temple, breaking bread 
 from house to house, and eating their meal 
 with gladness and singleness of heart. The 
 Thessalonian Christians, though in much afflic- 
 tion, received the word with joy of the Holy 
 Ghost. Love, joy, and peace are pictured as 
 inseparable graces wrought by the Spirit in 
 the life of the believer. But hardly, if any, 
 less emphasis is placed in the New Testament 
 on the spirit of heroic fortitude which char- 
 acterized the subjects of the Christian life. 
 The path of the early Christian was not easy. 
 He had to endure hardness as a true soldier 
 of Jesus Christ. The scene of Paul and Silas 
 at Philippi, arrested, scourged in the market- 
 place, their backs lacerated by the thongs, 
 thrust into prison, their feet made fast in the 
 stocks, and yet at midnight singing praises 
 unto God, is one to challenge the vision of an 
 artist. Saint Peter, addressing certain Chris- 
 tians in a period of tribulation, a period that 
 tried their faith so as by fire, speaks of the 
 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 149 
 
 constancy of their faith in Jesus Christ, "Whom 
 having not seen," he says, "ye love; in whom, 
 though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye 
 rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." 
 Thus it would seem that joy and fortitude, 
 with the entire company of kindred graces, 
 held triumphant place in the hearts of these 
 early New Testament Christians. 
 
 If, however, we were confined to the early 
 Church for signal experiences in the Christian 
 life of the high graces of joy, fortitude, faith, 
 hope, we might be forced to conclude that 
 Christianity itself was little more than a pass- 
 ing phenomenon in the world's history. Chris- 
 tian experience in every age has abundantly 
 evidenced, and, it may be measuredly said, in 
 a way nowhere else known, those invincible 
 qualities of soul which are classed as the dis- 
 tinctive fruits of the Spirit. 
 
 As for fortitude, aside from the inspirations 
 of some lofty religious faith, it was perhaps 
 never more perfectly displayed than by the 
 ancient Stoics. The school of Stoicism, founded 
 by Zeno near the close of the fourth century 
 B. C, wielded great influence in the classical 
 world, for several hundred years. This school, 
 while pagan in character, enjoined a high 
 morality. It developed a somewhat distinctive 
 and lofty conception of God, but was essen- 
 
150 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 tially fatalistic in its philosophy. It enrolled 
 among its adherents large numbers of reflective 
 minds who felt the need of acquiring a philo- 
 sophic calm in the midst of nature's inexorable 
 environment. In a world where "Nature is 
 red in tooth and claw/ 5 and where, at best, 
 man is but the sport of the fates, himself 
 weak and helpless in the presence of the in- 
 evitable, it was felt to be of religious value 
 that he should secure for himself a brave, 
 calm, enduring, and resigned spirit. It was 
 a saying of Marcus Aurelius: "Either the gods 
 have no power, or they have power. If they 
 have not, why pray? If they have, why not 
 pray for deliverance from the fear, or the 
 desire, or the pain, which the thing causes, 
 rather than for the withholding or the giving 
 of the particular thing? For certainly, if they 
 can cooperate with men, it is for these very 
 purposes they can cooperate.' 9 
 
 In the days of the later Stoicism, among 
 its most illustrious representatives in Rome 
 were Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. 
 Seneca was a foremost philosopher; Epictetus 
 was born a slave, but a genius; Marcus Aurelius 
 was emperor. These men reached the highest 
 levels of natural morality and heroism. They 
 developed many traits and ideals of character 
 which must forever be outstanding in the 
 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 151 
 
 Christian life. It is interesting in this con- 
 nection to note that Bishop Bashford, in his 
 recent great work on China, classes Marcus 
 Aurelius and Epictetus along with Moses, 
 Isaiah, and Jeremiah, as men each of whom, 
 perhaps unwittingly but no less really, accepted 
 his cross and followed the light which God 
 gave him. However, it must be said of 
 Stoicism, even at its best, that it never reached 
 the high moral plane of the Christian faith. 
 It never acquired the secret of that unyielding 
 fortitude which has borne multitudes of humble 
 Christians in buoyant triumph along the 
 gauntleted path of most inconceivably dread- 
 ful and tragic experiences. Stoicism at its 
 highest level always made room for suicide 
 as a door of retreat from seemingly unendur- 
 able ills. This was the door through which 
 Seneca finally elected exit from the sorrows 
 of his own existence. The Christian ideal 
 has never for one moment tolerated this method 
 of retreat. Stoicism, whatever its attainment 
 of philosophic calm, was never joyful, never 
 exuberant, in spirit. If Stoicism was a re- 
 ligion, it did not voice itself in song. It has 
 been said that "Epictetus announces a hymn 
 to Zeus, but he never starts the tune." 
 
 There has, upon the other hand, been no 
 period of stress, however dire, in Christian 
 
152 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 history which was not efflorescent with tri- 
 umphant song. The Christians, even in perse- 
 cution, were the happiest people of their day. 
 The insufficiency of the most perfect fortitude 
 of Stoicism as contrasted with the Christian 
 type is clearly recognized and pointed out by 
 William James. He says: "Occasionally, it is 
 true, the Stoic rises to something like a Chris- 
 tian warmth of sentiment, as in the often 
 quoted passage from Marcus Aurelius: 
 
 "Everything harmonizes with me which is har- 
 monious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is 
 too early or too late, which is in due time for thee. 
 Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, 
 O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all 
 things, to thee all things return. The poet says, 
 Dear City of Cecrops; and wilt thou not say, Dear 
 City of Zeus? 
 
 But compare even as devout a passage as this 
 with a genuine Christian outpouring, and it 
 seems a little cold. Turn, for instance, to the 
 Imitation of Christ: 
 
 "Lord, thou knowest what is best; let this or that 
 be as thou wilt. Give what thou wilt, so much as 
 thou wilt, when thou wilt. Do with me as thou 
 knowest best, and as shall be most to thine honor. 
 Place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy 
 will with me in all things. . . . when could it be 
 evil when thou art near? I had rather be poor 
 for thy sake than rich without thee. I choose 
 rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, 
 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 153 
 
 than without thee to possess heaven. Where thou 
 art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold 
 there death and hell." 
 
 What the moralist endures by a tense effort 
 of volition, the Christian easily spurns under 
 the action of high religious emotion. "The 
 moralist must hold his breath and keep his 
 muscles tense; and so long as this athletic 
 attitude is possible, all goes well — morality 
 suffices. But the athletic attitude tends ever 
 to break down, and it inevitably does break 
 down even in the most stalwart when the 
 organism begins to decay, or when morbid 
 fears invade the mind. To suggest personal 
 will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with a 
 sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest 
 the most impossible of things." 
 
 "There is a state of mind known to religious 
 men, but to no others, in which the will to 
 assert ourselves and hold our own has been 
 displaced by a willingness to close our mouths 
 and be as nothing in the floods and water- 
 spouts of God. In this state of mind what 
 we most dreaded has become the habitation 
 of our safety, and the hour of our moral death 
 has turned into our spiritual birthday. The 
 time for tension in our soul is over, and that 
 of happy relaxation, of calm, deep breathing, 
 of an eternal present, with no despondent 
 
154 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 future to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear 
 is not held in abeyance as it is in mere moral- 
 ity. It is positively expunged and washed 
 away." "Religious feeling is thus an absolute 
 addition to the subject's range of life. It gives 
 him a new sphere of power. When the out- 
 ward battle is lost, and the outer world dis- 
 owns him, it redeems and vivifies an interior 
 world which otherwise would be an empty 
 waste — this sort of happiness in the absolute 
 and everlasting is what we find nowhere but 
 in religion. ... If you ask how religion thus 
 falls on the thorns and faces death, and in the 
 very act annuls annihilation, I cannot explain 
 the matter, for it is religion's secret, and to 
 understand it you must yourself have been 
 a religious man of the extremer type." 
 
 Explain it as we may, a patient, buoyant, 
 and exultant fortitude, a kind nowhere else 
 fully matched, has characterized the highest 
 Christian experiences in all the ages. The 
 annals of martyrdom abound in instances 
 where Christian fortitude has shown itself 
 invincible and even joyous in the face of the 
 most ingenious tortures and cruelties possible 
 of infliction. When John Huss was bound to 
 the stake, and the fagots were piled ready 
 for the torch, the Duke of Bavaria exhorted 
 him to be yet mindful of his salvation, and 
 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 155 
 
 renounce his errors. Huss replied: "What 
 error should I renounce when I know myself 
 guilty of none? For this was the principal 
 end and purpose of my doctrine, that I might 
 teach all repentance and remission of sins, 
 according to the verity of the gospel of Jesus 
 Christ: wherefore with a cheerful mind and 
 courage I am here ready to suffer death." 
 
 Ridley and Latimer were martyred together. 
 When the lighted torch was laid at Ridley's 
 feet, Latimer said: "Be of good comfort, Master 
 Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day 
 light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, 
 as I trust shall never be put out." There is 
 no need to multiply testimony from scenes of 
 martyrdom. Those who have invincibly died 
 for their faith are innumerable. They arise 
 in history as a great cloud of witnesses. No 
 type of martyrs ever displayed a more in- 
 vincible fortitude than did the Chinese Chris- 
 tians who within the memory of this generation 
 perished in great numbers in the Boxer 
 Rebellion. 
 
 Miss Luella Miner, in her China's Book of 
 Martyrs, relates instances of Christian heroism 
 so thrilling as to stir the very blood: 
 
 Mrs. Yang and her two little girls were captured 
 by the Boxers and carried to a temple. She was 
 urged to renounce her faith and worship the idols. 
 
156 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 Upon her prompt refusal she and her helpless 
 children were slain. A Chinese girl was commanded 
 to burn incense to the gods. She refused, saying: 
 "I cannot burn incense, for I believe in Jesus. I 
 am not afraid, even though you kill me, for I shall 
 go straight to my heavenly Father." Hardly had 
 she ceased speaking before the sword descended. 
 One of the preachers, Ch'en Ta-yung, with his 
 wife and two children were hacked to pieces by the 
 infuriated Boxers. The mother's last words were, 
 "We will all go to our heavenly Father together." 1 
 
 The voice of John Bunyan, even in Bedford 
 jail, was insuppressible. He was offered his 
 liberty if he would consent to cease preaching. 
 His reply was: "Release me to-day, and I 
 will preach to-morrow." John Nelson, one of 
 Wesley's early helpers, was imprisoned in a 
 horrible dungeon located under a slaughter pen. 
 He says, "When I came into the dungeon, 
 that stank worse than a hog-sty by reason of 
 the blood and filth that ran into it from the 
 butchers who killed over it, my soul was so 
 filled with the love of God that it was a par- 
 adise to me." John Woolman, the Indian 
 missionary, tells us that one night, far away 
 from tent or habitation, unable to kindle a 
 fire because of the falling rain, he sat through 
 the long hours under a bush and "found his 
 soul filled with comfort as he meditated upon 
 
 1 Modern Messages from Great Hymns, by Robert Elmer 
 Smith, pp. 152-153. 
 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 157 
 
 God." Tertullian lived in the heated periods 
 of Roman persecution. He not only witnessed 
 many scenes of Christian martyrdom, but he 
 lived under the constant menace of its inflic- 
 tion upon himself. He was a brilliant lawyer, 
 a rhetorician. His professional possibilities in 
 civil life were brilliant. But he sacrificed his 
 professional career, with all its promise, when 
 he became a Christian. In times that tried 
 men's souls, when the arena was red with 
 martyrdom, when he could but know himself 
 as a signal target for destruction, Tertullian 
 walked his path of Christian duty with the 
 loyalty and firmness of a soldier. 
 
 In mentioning the soldier, I am reminded 
 that Christian fortitude and the fortitude of 
 the soldier are not necessarily from the same 
 source. Nor, however akin, are they the same 
 in their motives of manifestation. The forti- 
 tude of the soldier may be most admirable. 
 It has been exhibited on innumerable fields 
 of most trying strife, and has held itself in 
 bravest poise in defeat as well as in victory. 
 Among the wonderful qualities of human nature 
 which have come to transfiguring expression 
 amid the maddening ravages of the present 
 European war, none can be more wonderful 
 than that fortitude which has held multitudes 
 of soldiers in all the armies brave and firm 
 
158 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 under conditions which would seem to defy 
 all human endurance. Who shall say that 
 patriotism is not a divine endowment? It is 
 certainly the mother of heroisms that seem 
 well-nigh preternatural. 
 
 But Christian fortitude, whatever the orig- 
 inal endowment, receives its reenforcements 
 from moral sources. "Men have learned from 
 Christ how to find joy in pain; how to be 
 happy when suffering and dying." And so 
 it has been a common expression of the saintly 
 life that men have manifested a phenomenal 
 fortitude, a spirit of patience and of cheerful 
 endurance, amid what would appear the most 
 forbidding allotments of life. The saint has 
 shown a capacity for sublime cheerfulness, for 
 unconquerable hope, even amid conditions of 
 adversity and illness, of thwarted hopes, of 
 defeated ambitions, of unjust imprisonments, 
 on lonely and trying pathways of duty in the 
 wilderness and in the desert — pathways that 
 have been trodden by the world's superlative 
 heroes, pathways of sacrificial service for hu- 
 manity, pathways leading to dungeon portals, 
 to the stake, to the world's Calvarys — these 
 have all been beaten hard by pilgrims bent on 
 holy quest, and whose fortitude has been in- 
 breathed from sources higher than themselves. 
 
 The Christian life, whatever its material 
 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 159 
 
 environment, is essentially a joyful life. Christ 
 said to his disciples, "These things have I 
 spoken unto you, that my joy might remain 
 in you, and that your joy might be full." It 
 is an observation of widest Christian experience 
 that the soul newly born into the spiritual life 
 seeks to give expression to its unutterable 
 bliss in some note of praise. The inspirations 
 of this new-found bliss have, all along the 
 ages, voiced themselves in great hymns. 
 
 Charles Wesley first entered into the con- 
 scious and great peace of the believer on 
 Whit Sunday, May 21, 1738. On the follow- 
 ing Tuesday at nine in the morning, he began 
 a hymn upon his conversion in which occurs 
 the verse: 
 
 how shall I the goodness tell, 
 
 Father, which thou to me hast showed? 
 
 That I, a child of wrath and hell, 
 I should be called a child of God, 
 
 Should know, should feel my sins forgiven, 
 
 Blest with this antepast of heaven ! 
 
 On the following day, John Wesley, having 
 come into a like experience, was brought by 
 a troop of friends to the room of his brother, 
 where together they sang this hymn with 
 great joy, and parted w^ith prayer. This 
 hymn has been very properly designated as 
 the "Birth-song of the Evangelical Revival." 
 
160 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 Charles Wesley's spiritual joy was a perpetual 
 glow in his soul. Under its inspirations he 
 wrote a great wealth of hymns based on high- 
 est spiritual experiences. I quote one more 
 from his pen. It is hymn 311 in the Methodist 
 Hymnal: 
 
 O how happy are they, 
 
 Who the Saviour obey, 
 And have laid up their treasures above! 
 
 Tongue can never express 
 
 The sweet comfort and peace 
 Of a soul in its earliest love. 
 
 That sweet comfort was mine, 
 
 When the favor divine 
 I first found in the blood of the Lamb; 
 
 When my heart first believed, 
 
 What a joy I received, 
 What a heaven in Jesus's name! 
 
 'Twas a heaven below 
 
 My Redeemer to know, 
 And the angels could do nothing more, 
 
 Than to fall at his feet, 
 
 And the story repeat, 
 And the Lover of sinners adore. 
 
 Jesus all the day long 
 Was my joy and my song, 
 
 O that all his salvation might see! 
 "He hath loved me," I cried, 
 "He hath suffered and died, 
 
 To redeem a poor rebel like me." 
 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 161 
 
 the rapturous height 
 Of that holy delight 
 
 Which I felt in the life-giving blood ! 
 Of my Saviour possessed, 
 
 1 was perfectly blessed, 
 
 As if filled with the fulness of God. 
 
 Philip Doddridge celebrated his own con- 
 version in a hymn which will be long sung in 
 the Church at large as expressing the new- 
 found joy of the Christian convert. The 
 opening verse ^nd the refrain of this hymn 
 are as follows: 
 
 O happy day, that fixed my choice 
 On thee, my Saviour and my God! 
 
 Well may this glowing heart rejoice, 
 And tell its raptures all abroad. 
 Happy day, happy day, 
 
 When Jesus washed my sins away : 
 
 He taught me how to watch and pray, 
 
 And live rejoicing every day. 
 
 Happy day, happy day, ^ 
 
 When Jesus washed my sins away. 
 
 Far more space than can be here afforded 
 could easily be taken in quoting hymns of joy, of 
 faith, of hope, of fortitude, of triumph, exultant 
 hymns that will be sung as long as the Chris- 
 tian ages last. The confident prophecies of 
 Christian immortality have uttered themselves 
 in the great hymns of the Church. When Dr. 
 Ray Palmer lay dying, those who bent over 
 
162 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 him heard him repeating the last verse of his 
 own beautiful hymn: 
 
 "When death these mortal eyes shall seal, 
 And still this throbbing heart, 
 The rending vail shall thee reveal, 
 All-glorious as thou art." 
 
 The great hymns evidence the continuous- 
 ness of the divine inspirations in the human 
 soul. They are the inspired transcriptions of 
 God's revelations of himself to elect men who 
 have pursued him to the very higher levels 
 of the spiritual life. On mounts of transfigura- 
 tion and of immortal vision, God is still speak- 
 ing to his own. 
 
 In this chapter joy and fortitude have been 
 much dwelt upon as typical fruits of the Spirit. 
 We must remember, however, that in the 
 synthesis of the Christian life all the graces 
 of the Spirit are of concurrent and mutually 
 supportive function. Faith, Hope, Meekness, 
 Temperance, whatsoever there is of Good Re- 
 port, and whatsoever there is that is of Virtue 
 — these all, in the symmetrical ministries of 
 grace, blend in the interplay of the soul's life. 
 Faith in the immortal and heavenly life has 
 contributed vastly to the fortitude of the 
 Christian believer. The amazing firmness of 
 the early martyrs was attributed by Celsus 
 and other pagan writers to what was termed 
 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 163 
 
 their "superstitious" belief in immortality. 
 Christ himself taught that we are not to fear 
 man, who, at his worst, can only destroy the 
 body, but, rather, fear God, who can destroy 
 both soul and body in hell. 
 
 Much modern emphasis is laid upon the 
 "eternal life" as a thing of quality rather than 
 of duration. There is obviously a very vital 
 emphasis to be laid upon the quality feature 
 of the immortal life. But all true Christian 
 teaching has always stressed this emphasis. 
 Quality and endlessness have both been at 
 the center of the Christian doctrine of immor- 
 tality. Neither conception is complete without 
 the other. The Christian, if in full possession 
 of his faith, is one who habitually seeks in 
 himself God-likeness. He lives also in this 
 life as one who watchfully plans for an infinite 
 and enduring future. In his thought the 
 highest sanity calls for the subordination of 
 present and fleeting interests to the enduring 
 values of the endless life. In the most worthy 
 sense of the term, a man could not be a Chris- 
 tian and so live as to be forgetful of the vital 
 relations which his present conduct may sus- 
 tain to his unending destiny. If righteousness, 
 truth, honesty, temperance, chastity, brotherly 
 love, charity, sacrificial service for the love of 
 God — if these, and kindred qualities, must 
 
164 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 enter into a true preparation of character for 
 the life to come, then, at the denial of all 
 opposing things, one must plan, at whatever 
 cost, and, if needs be, at the price of severest 
 discipline and self-denial, to make himself 
 rich in these qualities. The scheme of the 
 Christian life, as that of no other life, calls 
 for largest practical reckoning with the motives 
 of eternity. These motives, if heeded, will 
 put a man's feet upon the highest pathways 
 for this present life. They will hold him to 
 a balancing vision of things eternal. It was 
 this vision which gave invincible courage to 
 the Christian martyrs. It was this which 
 enabled Saint Paul, in a career of incredible 
 privation and suffering, to say: "For our light 
 affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh 
 for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
 of glory." It is this vision which has steadied 
 untold thousands in sickness, in poverty, in 
 sorrow. They too have thought of the exceed- 
 ing rewards of the heavenly life: and they 
 have been patient, heroic, even joyful all 
 along the difficult pathways of their earthly 
 allotment. 
 
 It may be that some, under the high stress 
 of conviction, have too little prized the values 
 of earthly good. A mistake is possible even 
 in this direction. God intends the best things 
 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 165 
 
 of this world for his own people. "Godliness 
 is profitable unto all things, having promise 
 of the life that now is, and of that which is 
 to come." This mistake, however if ever 
 made, is not common. Professing Christians of 
 the present age would seem far more in danger 
 of being overcome by the world's passing 
 allurements than they are to make the mistake 
 of not placing proper values upon temporal 
 good. A gold coin can be pressed so close 
 as to shut the entire heavens from the vision 
 of the eye. Christian faith is far-sighted. As 
 the mariner guides his ship on trackless seas 
 by the light of distant stars, so Christian 
 destiny must be guided by the beacons of 
 eternity. To-morrow we leave earth forever 
 behind us. Then that which is before us, 
 that alone, will be of supreme moment. Christ 
 taught clearly the necessity of deliberate fore- 
 cast, the necessity of building upon sure founda- 
 tions, if men would enter into life. 
 
VII 
 CHRISTIAN SERVICE 
 
The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me, 
 
 Because Jehovah hath anointed me to proclaim glad tidings 
 
 to the poor; 
 He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, 
 To proclaim liberty to the captives, 
 And the bursting of the prison to them that are bound; 
 To proclaim the year of Jehovah's favor, 
 And the day of vengeance of our God. 
 
 If God could evolve man and civilization from a world 
 of reptiles, surely it will be a lesser task to evolve an earthly 
 paradise from the world that is. Man's measureless progress 
 in the past is a pledge of future progress. 
 
 "Till upon earth's grateful sod 
 Rests the city of our God." 
 
 — Dr. Josiah Strong. 
 
 The future is lighted for us with the radiant colors of 
 hope. Strife and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and love 
 shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the lesson of 
 priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great musician, is 
 confirmed in the light of modern knowledge; and, as we 
 gird ourselves for the work of life we may look forward to 
 the time when in the truest sense the kingdoms of this world 
 shall become the kingdom of Christ, and he shall reign for- 
 ever and ever, King of kings and Lord of lords. 
 
 — Professor John Fiske. 
 
 If the conception of the kingdom of God came to be the 
 working faith of our modern world, every business man 
 would confront the question whether his business as a total, 
 in the goods it turns out and in the men it employs, is 
 advancing or retarding the reign of God on earth. Our 
 entire business system would be under the condemnation of 
 religion until it was an institutionalized expression of the 
 Christian law of mutual service. If our business men 
 engaged in reorganizing business for that higher end, they 
 could for the first time in history have the same ennobling 
 sense of serving God which a minister, a teacher, or a 
 mother may now have. They are now a disinherited class 
 in religion. They have a religious sense of worth mainly 
 when they are doing something for their church or their 
 philanthropies outside of their business. The kingdom faith, 
 once lodged in a man's mind, compels every man to become 
 a redeemer, and his chief redemptive ministry is through 
 his job. — Professor Walter Bauschenbusch. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHRISTIAN SERVICE 
 
 Christianity means a measureless weal for 
 humanity. Its wealth of inspiration and of 
 ministry, so far from being exhausted, is as 
 yet unexplored. The kingdom of Christ seems 
 slow in asserting its rightful regnancy in the 
 earth. Its practical dominion in civilization, 
 like all great cosmic movements, is of seeming 
 slow development. Its approach to that 
 
 . . . one far-off divine event 
 
 To which the whole creation moves 
 
 is really apprehended only in the vision of 
 the seer. To one who breathes only the sordid 
 spirit of the world, who feels that he must 
 be perpetually on guard against the aggressions 
 of an unscrupulous and grasping selfishness, 
 who perhaps in his own business has been 
 hurt by a conscienceless and destructive com- 
 petition, there comes the easy temptation to 
 pessimism. He may lose faith in Christian 
 goodness, because sorely tempted to believe 
 that Christianity as a practical rule of life is 
 a failure. It is to be feared that too many 
 
 169 
 
170 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 men, men of generally good purposes, are more 
 or less victims of this vicious philosophy, 
 This state of mind is unfortunate. It is mor- 
 ally pitiable. It is a nether view, one im- 
 measurably below the plane of healthy Christian 
 inspirations. 
 
 The Church itself has suffered great scandal 
 from its own professed adherents whose con- 
 duct has given too much justification for this 
 view. There are men enrolled in church 
 membership who attend worship, who give 
 money for the support of Christian institu- 
 tions, yet whose churchianity is no sure guaran- 
 tee of their ethical soundness. They play one 
 role in the church, and quite another in the 
 market place. This kind of thing has occurred 
 with sufficient frequency to furnish to the lips 
 of the scoffer the cynical charge that "Chris- 
 tianity is either a fraud, or it is played out." 
 The spirit in which this charge is made is 
 never admirable. The charge itself is no 
 argument against Christianity. At worst, it 
 only shows that there are either defective or 
 false members in the formal enrollment of 
 church membership, persons in whose hearts 
 and lives the true Christian spirit has not 
 come to enthronement. Christianity, as yet, is 
 far from having come fully to its own in human 
 society. 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 171 
 
 As a corrective of cheap and shallow pes- 
 simism one needs to keep company with his- 
 tory. With all the imperfections and shadows 
 that darken the present civilizations, one 
 cannot traverse the long backward vistas with- 
 out discovering that humanity as a whole 
 now stands on higher moral and spiritual 
 levels, is in possession of vaster realms of 
 intelligence, and is actuated by a nobler benev- 
 olence, than was ever true of any preceding 
 age. Certainly a great moral leaven is working 
 in the forward-moving tides of history. In the 
 so-called Christian civilizations, fine spiritual 
 ideals were never so imperative, there never 
 was such a wealth of organized education and 
 benevolence, never so many agencies minister- 
 ing to human weal as now. Let one take a 
 survey of the pagan nations, and in them all 
 map out the work of Christian missions, ac- 
 quainting himself with the history of these 
 missions, their history of heroic service and 
 sacrifice, their transforming, ameliorating and 
 uplifting ministries, the colonies of spiritual 
 enlightenment which they have raised up in 
 the dark places of the earth — and he must 
 be callous and blind indeed if not impressed 
 that some irresistible and beneficent Power is 
 installing a program of righteousness for the 
 entire world. It hardly need be said that the 
 
172 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 highest existing moral standards, the most 
 luminous education, the largest wealth of 
 scientific acquisition, factors which prophesy 
 the best future for humanity, are all more 
 largely the creation of Christianity than of 
 all other agencies. And in just the measure 
 in which these forces are working most benef- 
 icently they are to be found in closest company 
 with the spirit and mission of the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 All men need to hear the prophetic voice. 
 They need in some way to partake of the 
 vision of the seer. Those by whom the voice 
 is unheard and to whom at best the vision is 
 dim, cannot escape the twilight territories of 
 the spiritual life. For any clear and helpful 
 understanding of what Christianity really is, 
 for a just measurement of its place and achieve- 
 ment in history, vision is needed. Christ is 
 the incomprehensible and immeasurable char- 
 acter of history. At first neglected, maltreated, 
 crucified; later, the scorn of the philosopher, 
 his people the subjects of contempt and ridicule, 
 and finally made victims of fiercest persecution; 
 yet, while institutions and nations have per- 
 ished, Christ has not only persisted, but with 
 an irresistible fascination he is more and more 
 filling the thought of the world. In the later 
 centuries, indeed, in these very later decades, 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 173 
 
 Christ, immeasurably more than any other 
 historic character, has drawn to himself the 
 most critical study of the philosophic and 
 cultured world. His enemies, as in the great 
 drives of modern armies, have hurled against 
 him the most formidable attacks which the 
 most consummately resourceful and hostile crit- 
 icism could devise. It is conservative to say 
 that no man not obviously divine, no cause 
 not invincibly grounded in truth, could have 
 received a tithe of the destructive hostility 
 which has been directed against Jesus Christ, 
 and survive. But, for some reason, Christ 
 continues to live. All weapons forged for his 
 destruction fall shattered at his feet. He 
 emerges from every conspiracy formed against 
 him with character unscathed. When the din 
 of latest controversy has been silenced, and 
 its confusions have cleared away, he stands 
 forth more than ever radiant in the glories 
 of divinity. 
 
 The Church has been adversely criticized, 
 and justly. Its purely human elements have 
 often given it unchristlike expression. Many 
 of its traditions, and some of its beliefs, have 
 not been able to withstand the scrutiny of 
 present-day thought, nor have they been found 
 adapted to present-day needs. But not so 
 Christ. In character, in example, in teaching, 
 
174 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 in revelation, he always stands in advance of 
 the age and of the world's needs. There is 
 no evidence worthy of consideration which 
 would lead us to believe that he himself is 
 losing out in the world's thought. He was 
 never so impressively divine before the vision 
 of mankind as now. His sovereignty over the 
 consciences of men is an ever- widening realm. 
 So far as Christ is concerned, the book of 
 revelation is not yet complete. The Holy 
 Spirit by his inspirations is still taking of the 
 things of Christ and showing them unto men. 
 The Church has a larger vision of Christ to- 
 day than was possible even to the apostolic 
 age. Christ will continue to grow upon the 
 world's thought, his sway will ever widen, 
 until finally in universal acclaim he shall be 
 hailed as Lord of lords and King of kings. 
 
 I have entitled this chapter "Christian 
 Service." This is a great theme. It is in 
 the very nature of Christianity to inspire the 
 spirit of service. A distinctive mark of Christ's 
 activity was that "He went about doing good." 
 He seemingly lost no opportunity to serve the 
 needy. If the value of service is measured 
 by sacrifice, then Christ paid the full price. 
 His life was a continuous offering for the 
 good of others. In the sense of self-indulgence 
 he pleased not himself; but at all times — in 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 175 
 
 hunger, in weariness, in a perpetual divorce 
 of his life from luxuries which minister to the 
 sense — he literally poured out the wealth of 
 his healing sympathy upon human needs. 
 
 No man can receive the spirit of Christ 
 without the prompting to do good. The first 
 question asked by Saul of Tarsus, when smitten 
 on his Damascus way, was: "What wilt thou 
 have me to do?" His first impulse was to 
 render some act of obedience, of service. From 
 the day of his conversion to the day of his 
 death he gave himself to prodigious toils. He 
 exposed himself to untold peril, privation, and 
 suffering, that he might serve those for whom 
 Christ had died. No sooner was the Christian 
 Church originated, than it was characterized 
 by a new and distinctive spirit of charity, of 
 benevolence, of well-doing toward all in want. 
 One of its earliest organizations was a bureau 
 of charities, with a choice of select, devout, 
 and wise men for its administrators. 
 
 It would be untrue to history to deny that 
 there has always been present in society a 
 spirit of altruism. Noble instances of a mutual 
 helpfulness among men abound in pagan his- 
 tory. It would be as false to deny the presence 
 of mutual kindliness in the communities of all 
 races as it would to deny that God's Spirit 
 has been always and everywhere present to 
 
176 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 quicken the moral life of man. A distinctive 
 glory of Christianity is that it laid hold upon 
 the native altruism of the human heart, and 
 quickened it into a new and larger life, touch- 
 ing it with the spirit of sacrifice, and ordain- 
 ing it to new and high careers of service. And 
 so, through all the centuries of its history, 
 Christianity has been characterized by the 
 noblest forms of service for human needs. To 
 this general fact history gives varied and 
 generous testimony. Lecky says: 
 
 There can be no question that neither in practice 
 nor in theory, neither in the institutions that were 
 founded nor in the place that was assigned to it in 
 the scale of duties, did charity in antiquity occupy 
 a position at all comparable to that which has ob- 
 tained by Christianity. . . . Christianity for the 
 first time made charity a rudimentary virtue, giving 
 it the foremost place in the moral type, and in the 
 exhortations of its teachers. Besides its general 
 influence in stimulating the affections, it effected a 
 complete revolution in this sphere, by representing 
 the poor as the special representatives of the Chris- 
 tian Founder, and thus making the love of Christ 
 rather than the love of man the principle of charity. 
 Even in the days of persecution collections for the 
 relief of the poor were made at the Sunday meetings. 
 The Agapse, or feasts of love, were intended mainly 
 for the poor, and food that was saved by the fasts 
 was devoted to their benefit. A vast organization 
 of charity, presided over by the bishops, and actively 
 directed by the deacons, soon ramified over Chris- 
 tendom, till the bond of charity became the bond of 
 unity, and the most distant sections of the Christian 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 177 
 
 Church corresponded by the interchange of mercy. 
 Long before the era of Constantine it was observed 
 that the charities of the Christians were so extensive 
 — it may, perhaps, be said so excessive — that they 
 drew very many impostors to the Church, and when 
 the victory of Christianity was achieved, the en- 
 thusiasm for charity displayed itself in the erection 
 of numerous institutions that were altogether un- 
 known to the pagan world. . . . This vast and un- 
 ostentatious movement of charity, operating in the 
 village hamlet and in the lonely hospital, staunching 
 the widow's tears and following all the windings of 
 the poor man's griefs, presents few features the im- 
 agination can grasp, and leaves no deep impression 
 on the mind. The greatest things are often those 
 which are most imperfectly realized; and certainly 
 no achievements of the Christian Church are more 
 truly great than those which it has effected in the 
 sphere of charity. For the first time in the history 
 of mankind it has inspired many thousands of men 
 and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, 
 and often under circumstances of extreme discom- 
 fort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the 
 single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. 
 It has covered the globe with countless institutions 
 of mercy* absolutely unknown to the whole pagan 
 world. It has indissolubly united in the minds of 
 men the idea of supreme goodness with that of 
 active and constant benevolence. It has placed in 
 every parish a religious minister, who, whatever may 
 be his other functions, has at least been officially 
 charged with the superintendence of an organiza- 
 tion of charity, and who finds in this office one of 
 the most important as well as one of the most 
 legitimate sources of his power. 
 
 The emphasis so long laid upon charity, in 
 
178 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 the sense of almsgiving, has not proven an 
 unmixed good in Christian history. As in the 
 days of Christ, when some followed him on 
 account of the loaves and fishes, so often 
 unworthy characters have attached themselves 
 to the Christian community on account of 
 material benefits received. But even this is 
 not the worst phase in the history. With 
 the very fact of giving itself a false virtue 
 in many cases came to be associated. The 
 very teaching of large sections of the Church 
 has become tainted with the notion that alms- 
 giving is a sort of purchase price paid by the 
 donor for a higher seat in heaven. It is a 
 misfortune that among the consecrations and 
 activities of Christians the mere giving of 
 earthly goods has so long and so widely held 
 large and disproportionate place in the con- 
 ception of Christian duties and privileges. 
 Even now multitudes seem to think their en- 
 tire duty discharged when they have given 
 a modicum of their material prosperity to the 
 causes of charity. 
 
 The real Christian motive is something im- 
 measurably broader and deeper than all this. 
 Divinest and largest inspirations are coming to 
 fruitage in modern Christian life in the awak- 
 ened sense of God's Fatherhood, and of the 
 Divine Sonship and Brotherhood of man. 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 179 
 
 When any man awakens to the fact that he 
 is potentially and rightfully God's son; that 
 all men of all races are, as his human brothers, 
 under God's purchase to this same heritage, 
 there is opened to him a field of motive and 
 of vision as broad as humanity, as high as 
 eternity. This view becomes at once a great 
 leveler of artificial distinctions. It illuminates 
 Christ's practical attitude toward the poor, 
 the unprivileged, and outcasts of society. 
 Stripping each soul from its artificial, and it 
 may be forbidding, garb, he measured its 
 worth alone in the light of its divine possi- 
 bilities. This view, when fairly apprehended, 
 will clothe every human being, no matter how 
 apparently hopeless his condition, with poten- 
 tially infinite values. It leaves absolutely no 
 space for social or caste exclusiveness in the 
 field of evangelistic endeavor. It installs the 
 full-orbed Christian a citizen of the entire 
 world, a brother of all humanity. This is the 
 motor-nerve of Christian missions. The mes- 
 sage of Christianity is for all races. Its great 
 light is for those who inhabit the dark places of 
 the earth. Its message of sympathy and of 
 healing is for the sick, the poor, the unpriv- 
 ileged, the hopeless among all peoples. The 
 apprehension of this view has inspired the 
 most superb moral heroisms of history. It 
 
180 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 was this which made Paul, the first Christian 
 missionary to the Gentile world, morally 
 irresistible; this which has given him imper- 
 ishable place in the admiration of mankind. 
 It was this view which in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury transformed Francis of Assisi from a 
 "merry-hearted and careless fellow," from the 
 spirit of a dude and a worldling, into one of 
 the foremost saints of historv. It was this 
 which prompted him to lay all his wealth upon 
 the altars of the Church, and to adopt Poverty 
 as his bride; this which drove him in tireless 
 ministry to the sick, the lepers, and the poor; 
 this which sent him upon distant journeys 
 to Illyricum, to Spain, and even to Palestine, 
 everywhere preaching Christ, until at last, 
 literally worn and spent, he laid himself down 
 to die. It was this view which transformed 
 Ignatius Loyola from an unbridled libertine 
 into an apostolic missionary of Jesus Christ; 
 this that sent Francisco Xavier on his perilous 
 and ceaseless missionary journeys to Japan 
 and to the Indies. A roll call of the indom- 
 itable founders of missionary empire would 
 present countless names of those whose spir- 
 itual heroism has lent imperishable luster to 
 the moral history of mankind. 
 
 William Cary, the converted cobbler, who 
 translated the Bible into languages spoken by 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 181 
 
 three hundred million of Orientals; David 
 Brainerd, who consecrated his talents to carry- 
 ing civilization and Christianity to the savages 
 of the wilderness; Henry Martyn, the brilliant 
 Cambridge scholar, making by his translations 
 the Scriptures, in whole or in part, accessible 
 to one fourth the inhabitants of the globe; 
 not only this, but literally spending himself 
 in Christian labors among the poor in India, 
 until, exhausted by fatigue and wasted by 
 disease, he sank in death at the early age of 
 thirty-two; Robert Morrison in China writing 
 a grammar of the language and translating the 
 Bible into the dialects, waiting undiscouraged 
 seven years before being permitted to rejoice 
 in his first convert; Chalmers in New Guinea; 
 Paton in the South Sea Islands; Livingstone, in 
 Christ-like passion, seeking the salvation of 
 the Africans, forgetting that they were black 
 and remembering only that they were fellow- 
 mortals; and those more recent men, the 
 Butlers, the Parkers, and the Thoburns of 
 India; Griffith John, Timothy Richard, James 
 W. Bashford, and Wilson S. Lewis of China 
 — these men, inspired by the love and the 
 heroism of the cross, have risen to the highest 
 types of Christian character. They rank among 
 the moral altruists of history, great in faith, 
 great in hope, great in action, because their 
 
182 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 own souls were filled with Christ's vision of 
 humanity. Their service, a Christ-inspired 
 service, can never be fully portrayed. 
 
 Sir Alexander McArthur, an eminent English 
 publicist, says: 
 
 I believe the advancement of civilization, the ex- 
 tension of commerce, the increase' of knowledge in 
 arts, science, and literature, the promotion of civil 
 and religious liberty, the development of countries 
 rich in undiscovered mineral and vegetable wealth, 
 are all intimately identified with and, to much a 
 larger extent than most people are aware of, depend- 
 ent upon the work of the missionaries; and I hold 
 that the missionary has done more to civilize and 
 to benefit the heathen world than any or all other 
 agencies ever employed. 
 
 Bishop W. F. Oldham, born in India, and 
 a lifelong observer of missions and missionary 
 workers, writing of the missionaries, says: 
 
 They are revolutionizing society. They are 
 waking ancient peoples from the graves of the past. 
 They are kindling a new passion for freedom. 
 They are breaking the bonds of ancient superstitions 
 and conservative traditions. They are breathing 
 new life into multiplied millions of the human fam- 
 ilies. If there be a rebirth in China — and the 
 pangs of a new life are being felt in India, and the 
 dark places of Africa are being wrested from the 
 dominion of cruelty and lust — if, in a word, the 
 thraldom of ignorance and wrong is being overturned 
 in half the world, the commanding figure behind the 
 whole movement that is doing these things is the 
 humble missionary. 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 183 
 
 I have emphasized missionary service, be- 
 cause the history of this service, in an eminent 
 manner, illustrates those high moral enthusiasms 
 for humanity which are begotten only in the 
 faith and experiences of Jesus Christ. When 
 a man has really entered into Christ's vision 
 of Divine Sonship and of Human Brotherhood, 
 he can no longer entertain a narrow view 
 either of duty or of opportunity in his rela- 
 tions to Christ's kingdom. He must awaken 
 to a sense of true partnership with Jesus Christ 
 in the mission of world-redemption. 
 
 If it be a fact that Jesus is revealing himself 
 with ever-growing fullness to human thought, 
 then, from many standpoints, it must follow 
 that enlarging conceptions of the meaning of 
 Christ's kingdom must enter into the Chris- 
 tian consciousness. There can be no doubt 
 that the Christian world is awaking to a new 
 and greatly enlarged view both concerning the 
 scope of Christ's mission and the agencies of 
 its promotion. In Christianity and the New 
 Age I express perhaps as well as I am able to 
 do my view and conviction concerning some 
 of the promotive factors of the larger ideals. 
 In the chapter on "Modern Prophets" the 
 following characterization is given: 
 
 They are men of high culture, men of vision who 
 have both large insight into and outlook upon life. 
 
184 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 They are patriots, men with a large love of country. 
 They are lovers of their kind, men who see the larger 
 possibilities in human nature, and who ardently de- 
 sire to remove obstacles to progress and to promote 
 the conditions through which all men may come to 
 their best. They are independent thinkers. They 
 are not the hired creatures of either corporate or 
 private interests. They are not partisans. Their 
 vision is not blinded by greed. They are unselfish 
 workers for humanity. They have the courage of 
 their convictions. The most fruitful source of their 
 ideals is the gospel of Jesus Christ. They exalt 
 Christ himself as the supreme Teacher and Exemplar 
 of the new humanity. They dwell in clear atmos- 
 pheres of thought and of observation. The moral 
 qualities of the social, industrial, mercantile, and 
 political worlds are by none more clearly seen and 
 measured than by these. To them in an eminent 
 degree is given to view the evils, the frauds, the in- 
 justices, the oppressions of society as in the very 
 white light of righteousness. Their indignation is 
 aroused against all monopolistic policies, the exe- 
 cution of which means the depression of the social, 
 intellectual, or moral possibilities of the poor and 
 the defenseless. Their sense of human worth is so 
 supreme, their view of God's impartial love for all 
 his children so clear, that, as in the case of their 
 ancient prototype, the word of the Lord is in their 
 hearts as a burning fire shut up in their bones, so 
 that they cannot refrain from lifting up their voices 
 until the Lord shall have delivered the soul of the 
 poor from the hand of evildoers. 
 
 Dr. William DeWitt Hyde, president of 
 Bowdoin College, has recently issued a book 
 entitled The Gospel of Good Will as Revealed 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 185 
 
 in Contemporary Scriptures. The author takes 
 as his type of "Contemporary Scriptures" The 
 Passing of the Third Floor Back; The Servant 
 in the House; Thomas Mott Osborne's Within 
 Prison Walls; An American Citizen, by John 
 Graham Brooks; How Belgium Saved Europe; 
 Dennison's Beside the Bowery; Masefield's The 
 Everlasting Mercy; Riis's The Making of an 
 American and The Battle With the Slums; 
 and Churchill's Inside of the Cup. These 
 selections, which Dr. Hyde has been pleased 
 to designate as "Contemporary Scriptures," are 
 taken from current plays, from chapters of the 
 War, from biography, from poetry, from novels, 
 from discussions as to the duties of citizen- 
 ship and the problem of the slums. 
 
 The subtitle "Contemporary Scriptures" may 
 possibly come with something of shock to 
 some minds. But why? If Christianity has 
 not by this time put its leaven into, and 
 furnished the highest themes for, current lit- 
 erature, then we would have to regard it as 
 having disastrously failed in at least a large 
 section of its mission. Our historians, novel- 
 ists, and poets are the real seers, if we have 
 any, of the modern age. To whom may we 
 look for luminous interpretation of loftiest 
 faith, to whom for vision of the larger applica- 
 tions of Christianity to the broader needs of 
 
186 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 humanity, if not to these elect minds? In 
 any event, it is only a dull ear that fails to 
 hear the prophetic voices of the age; only a 
 purblind vision that fails to discern the rising 
 tide of new and transforming movements which 
 are both challenging and taxing the very 
 genius of Christian leadership. 
 
 The signal word that lies at the heart of 
 the modern Christian demand is — SERVICE. 
 Good will among men is the spirit in which 
 this service is to be fulfilled. The distinctive 
 characteristic of the modern view is not that 
 of alms-giving in the sense of meeting the 
 immediate physical needs of the unfortunate, 
 but, rather, that larger duty of Christian 
 society to remove and to destroy the very 
 insanitary conditions which are the breeders 
 of social misfortune and poverty. Shailer 
 Mathews, one of the clearest visioned of the 
 modern prophets, has recently said: "There is 
 only one great creative enthusiasm in American 
 Protestantism — the gospel of a saved society 
 as well as of saved individuals." Another 
 brilliant modern prophet, the lamented Charles 
 Silvester Home, doing his last work with 
 young men in the school of the prophets at 
 Yale University, said: 
 
 The young preachers of recent years have explored 
 the contents of the word "righteousness" with the 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 187 
 
 enthusiasm of pioneers opening up rich and fertile 
 lands for the inheritance of the future. Something 
 has been happening even within the academic 
 borders of our colleges. Men have been facing life 
 as it is, and bringing it to the light of Christ. The 
 social economist has invaded our quiet sanctuaries 
 of religious thought with his disturbing facts and 
 figures; and our young men have seen visions. The 
 new compulsion has driven them down to the over- 
 crowded areas where the disinherited of civilization 
 make shift to exist; and the result has been that 
 unique personal experience which changes scientific 
 statistics into human facts. Is anyone surprised 
 that a new note can be detected in our preaching? 
 Does anyone marvel that young prophets are fling- 
 ing down their challenge to society; and that features 
 of industrialism which have been too long accepted 
 as inevitable are to-day the objects of fiery arraign- 
 ment by men who are looking at them through eyes 
 which Christ has purged and enlightened? We are 
 beginning to believe things which would have ap- 
 palled our ancestors. We are beginning to believe 
 that poverty need not exist; and that the restric- 
 tions upon human life and happiness, due to poverty, 
 may be abolished. We see in the near future an 
 almost indefinite elevation of the standard of living; 
 and we throw the whole authority of Christianity 
 into the scales in favor of the two great modern 
 ideals, that work shall be equitably remunerated, 
 and that wealth shall be equitably distributed. 
 
 After all, it is not strange. Great causes always 
 create a race of prophets. The watchword of the 
 past century was Freedom. What orators the 
 passion for freedom created in this great land! 
 Aye, and what martyrs for freedom it made ! The 
 watchword of our new century is Justice. It will 
 create as splendid an army of prophets; and it may 
 
188 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 very well be that before the victory is won, men and 
 women will have to buy the new inheritance at 
 great price. But buy it they will, for the master 
 passion in the breasts of our young men is that the 
 will of the Father shall be done "on earth as in 
 heaven." . . . The preacher who is going forth unto 
 the battlefield to-day for the kingdom of God on 
 earth, will enter the fray to hearkening strains of 
 music. The Church of God to-day does not despair 
 of calling into existence a Christian civilization. It 
 refuses to acquiesce in the permanence of those social 
 vices and social wrongs that have intrenched them- 
 selves so deeply even under the visible authority of 
 the cross. There is arising an army of young 
 knights of Christ who have taken sacramental 
 vows that none of their brethren shall have to live 
 in the future under conditions that are fatal alike 
 to physical health and to even a moderate standard 
 of chastity and honor. They have vowed that the 
 cruel exigencies of a merciless competition shall not 
 always kill the truth and self-respect of those who 
 are taken in its toils. They are resolved that the 
 progress of humanity shall be something better and 
 nobler than an unrelieved struggle for existence; and 
 men something diviner than 
 
 "Dragons of the prime 
 That tear each other in their slime." 
 
 Christianity must work itself vitally into all 
 the organism of human society. It must fur- 
 nish finally the practical and controlling ideals 
 of education, of business and political ethics, 
 of home and social intercourse, of the uses of 
 capital. Its ideals of righteousness must be so 
 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 189 
 
 infused in civilization as to bring about a com- 
 pact of peace and good will among the nations, 
 
 When the war-drum throbs no longer 
 And the battle-flags are furled 
 
 In the Parliament of man, 
 The federation of the world. 
 
 The final ideal of Revelation is that of a 
 new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness. The capital city of the new 
 earth is the "New Jerusalem," a holy city 
 which is to come down from God out of heaven. 
 The foundations of this city are to be prepared 
 by a redeemed Church. Spiritually regenerated 
 men, men of largest intelligence and consecra- 
 tion, sun-crowned men, will henceforth be more 
 than ever needed as the upbuilders of Christ's 
 kingdom in the earth. Such are to be the 
 moral regenerators of human society. They are 
 to make the very earth a fit dwelling place 
 for God and his people. This mission calls 
 for a program of service far larger and far 
 more varied than has yet been entertained in 
 Christian thought. This program is such as 
 could be inspired only by the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity. That Christianity has given birth to 
 this conception is signal proof of its own 
 divinity. 
 
VIII 
 THE PRAGMATIC TEST 
 
What we have felt and seen 
 
 With confidence we tell; 
 And publish to the sons of men 
 
 The signs infallible. 
 
 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine. 
 
 Under the inspiring influence of Christ's teaching and 
 example the Christian Church asserted the individual rights 
 of man; recognized the divine image in every rational being; 
 taught the common creation and the common redemption, 
 and the destination of all for immortality and glory; raised 
 the humble and lowly; comforted the prisoner and captive, 
 the stranger and exile; proclaimed chastity as a funda- 
 mental virtue, elevated woman to a dignity and equality 
 with man; upheld the sanctity of the marriage tie; laid the 
 foundations of the Christian family and home; moderated 
 the evils and undermined the foundations of slavery; op- 
 posed polygamy and concubinage; denounced the exposure 
 of children as murder; made relentless war on the bloody 
 games of the arena and circus, on the shocking indecencies 
 of the theater, and on cruelty, oppression, and vice; infused 
 into a heartless and loveless world the spirit of love and 
 brotherhood; transformed sinners into saints, frail women 
 into heroines, and lit up the darkness of the tomb by the 
 bright ray of unending bliss of heaven. — Philip Schaff. 
 
 Although the career of the elder Pitt and the splendid 
 victories by land and sea that were won during his ministry, 
 form unquestionably the most dazzling episodes in the reign 
 of George II, they must yield, I think, in real importance 
 to that religious revolution which shortly before had begun 
 in England by the preaching of the Wesleys and Whitefield. 
 —W. E. H. Lecky. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE PRAGMATIC TEST 
 
 Pkagmatism as a distinct system is one of 
 the younger members of the philosophic family. 
 William James tells us that the term was first 
 introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles 
 Peirce in 1878. Webster's definition of philo- 
 sophical pragmatism is as follows: "The doc- 
 trine that the whole meaning of a conception 
 is to be sought in its practical consequences, 
 and that the purpose of thinking is to develop 
 beliefs which shall serve as general principles 
 of conduct." 
 
 Pragmatism as a philosophy deals primarily, 
 it would be true perhaps to say exclusively, 
 with the facts of experience. Dismissing sub- 
 stantially all abstract theories, all the posits 
 of an arbitrary theology, all logical deductions 
 based simply on premises of academic thought, 
 pragmatism proposes to keep company alone 
 with the facts of experience, and to seek from 
 these facts the truths which shall furnish prac- 
 tical guidance for both faith and conduct. 
 The difference between pragmatism and ration- 
 
 193 
 
194 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 alism is stated as follows: "The one is uncom- 
 fortable away from facts; the other is com- 
 fortable only in the presence of abstractions/' 
 The habit of pragmatism is defined as "the 
 attitude of looking away from first things, 
 principles, categories, supposed necessities, and 
 of looking toward last things, fruits, conse- 
 quences, facts." The theory of pragmatism is 
 that philosophy should begin its teachings 
 about life from the standpoint of experience 
 itself. This is the natural genius of philosophic 
 thought. Practically, men seek to know the 
 meaning of life's experiences here and now, 
 experiences that rise in the very midst of life's 
 activities. Pragmatism assumes that to know 
 this is the key to all problems. The terminal 
 points of life and destiny, the beginning or the 
 end of our being, may not be unimportant 
 subjects of thought; but we are to derive our 
 most truthful and valuable conceptions of these 
 from the facts and trends of life's present 
 experiences. "Interested in no conclusions but 
 those which our minds and our experiences 
 work out together, she has no a priori prej- 
 udices against theology. If theological ideas 
 prove to have a value for concrete life, they 
 will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of 
 being good for so much. For how much more 
 they are true will depend entirely on their 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 195 
 
 relations to the other truths that also have 
 to be acknowledged." 
 
 It is thus hinted that a task for pragmatism 
 is to give coordination to, to find harmony of 
 relationship for, all accepted truths. When 
 truths of experience seem to be in conflict, 
 this must mean either that the inclusive facts 
 have not received full interpretation, or that 
 somewhere there has been a misconstruction 
 of the facts themselves. The lessons from all 
 experience must be found finally to stand in 
 relations of mutual harmony. It is vital to 
 this philosophy that the full and exact mean- 
 ing of the facts of experience as bearing upon 
 life should be understood. Also that the 
 lessons of all facts as interpreted should not 
 be found finally discordant with the larger 
 consensus of life's experiences. Thus it appears 
 that the pragmatic philosophy has much to do 
 to guard securely the territory within its own 
 assigned borders. 
 
 The central teaching of pragmatism is that 
 all of life's values for truth and for guidance 
 are furnished us in the lessons of experience. 
 The value of any assumed fact, whether in 
 the realm of theology or of philosophy, is to 
 be assayed only by its practical effects on life. 
 If a fact or an idea in practical application is 
 found to be beneficial to life, then by so far 
 
196 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 it is true; if otherwise, it is false. "The true 
 is the name of whatever proves itself to be 
 good in the way of belief, and good too for 
 definite, assignable reasons." Such is prag- 
 matism. 
 
 If pragmatism were offered to us as a uni- 
 versal and adequate philosophy of life, we 
 might perhaps wisely hesitate to accept it as 
 such. No less acute philosopher than Rudolf 
 Eucken characterizes pragmatism as an incom- 
 plete and misleading philosophy, a philosophy 
 that furnishes really an unworthy basis for the 
 spiritual life of man. He thinks that prag- 
 matism reverses the essential idea of truth 
 itself. The deepest conception of truth is to 
 be found in the idea that "in truth man attains 
 to something superior to all his own opinions 
 and inclinations, something that possesses a 
 validity completely independent of any human 
 consent; the hope of an essentially new life 
 is thus held out to man, a vision of a wider 
 and richer being, an inner communion with 
 reality, a liberation from all that is merely 
 human. On the other hand, when the good 
 of the individual and of humanity becomes 
 the highest aim and the guiding principle, truth 
 sinks to the level of a merely utilitarian opin- 
 ion." From the pragmatic basis, Eucken sees 
 room for irreducible anarchy in the field of 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 197 
 
 truth itself. His construction is that prag- 
 matism confines its ends to human life, at 
 best to civilization on the broad scale. He 
 doubts whether pragmatism thus yields a 
 philosophy of the highest values. He asks: 
 "Is this life, when taken as in itself the final 
 thing, really worth all the trouble and excite- 
 ment, all the work and effort, all the suffering 
 and sacrifice, that it costs? When we examine 
 this life, with its vanity and show and its 
 inner emptiness, when we consider how it is 
 penetrated through and through by impurity 
 and pretense, does it not seem a fearful con- 
 tribution? Shall the quest after truth be 
 made a means for the preservation of this 
 exceedingly dubious life? We cannot conceive 
 of any belief more hazardous than a faith in 
 life so baseless as this." 
 
 Eucken, nevertheless, sees much to approve 
 in the pragmatic philosophy. He even suggests 
 the desirability that German thinkers should 
 give more attention to this system of thought. 
 There can be no question that pragmatism is 
 receiving large, perhaps widening, attention and 
 indorsement among highly competent thinkers. 
 Dr. Borden P. Bowne, of whom Eucken has 
 written, "Dr. Bowne was a philosopher of 
 America, and as such all America may be 
 proud of him and his memory," was himself 
 
198 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 much of a pragmatist. He was quite in the 
 habit of subjecting speculative and difficult 
 questions to the processes of life itself. Ex- 
 perience is the great solver of life's difficult 
 problems. "How does it work in life?" is a 
 question which Bowne freely used as a test 
 of religious values. Bowne believed fully, 
 however, in the overruling of a Beneficent 
 Spirit in the world, and that the working of 
 this Spirit is historically demonstrated in the 
 actual and wide trends of human betterment. 
 The great historic beliefs born of Christianity 
 are found "contributing toward a higher civil- 
 ization, a nobler moral order, a clearer concep- 
 tion of duty and the greatest good to the 
 race." These beliefs are pragmatically self- 
 proving. Bowne's pragmatism, however, was 
 no simply utilitarian dream. It was founded 
 on the broadest theistic basis, a basis which 
 reverently accepted both the wisdom and 
 beneficence of God's rule in the world, and 
 is, therefore, not subject to the whims of 
 individual interpretation. 
 
 In any event, it may be accepted, pragmatism 
 presents certain valuable criteria to the tests 
 of which we may confidently submit the human 
 values of the Christian faith. The remaining 
 sections of this discussion will be devoted to 
 inquiries, from a few chosen and signal fields, 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 199 
 
 as to the verdict of the pragmatic view con- 
 cerning these values. 
 
 1. Let us first venture into the field of 
 general history. It has been often asserted, 
 and by most competent historical authorities, 
 that the moral world of the Roman age, at 
 the time when Christianity first asserted its 
 strength, was blase. Religiously, with of course 
 noted exceptions, it was a world cynical, faith- 
 less, hopeless, Godless. The nominal gods were 
 numerous. But, if worshiped at all, they were 
 invested with an atmosphere of gross super- 
 stition. There were no great moral compulsions 
 in the polytheistic thought of the age. The 
 strongest philosophers were skeptics. The ex- 
 ceedingly rich, of whom there were many, not 
 only lived under the surfeit and pall of luxury, 
 but they bore themselves with an air of super- 
 cilious scorn and contempt toward the unpriv- 
 ileged life around them. They, for the most 
 part, had no upward spiritual vision, and life 
 itself was made heavy under the cloy and 
 congestion of exhausted pleasures. 
 
 On that hard Pagan world disgust 
 
 And secret loathing fell; 
 Deep weariness and sated lust 
 
 Made human life a hell. 
 
 Human society was a medley. In it there 
 existed all extremes of social condition. Mul- 
 
200 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 titudes were poor, and their life was hopeless 
 and unaspiring. The majority were slaves, 
 and they were regarded as mere cattle, human 
 beings without personality, without rights, with 
 no hope, and no future except to grind and to 
 be ground in the relentless mills of desperate 
 fate. It was a world that coarsely amused 
 itself by the exhibitions of human beings thrown 
 to wild beasts in the amphitheaters, and by 
 duels of gladiators engaged in mortal combat. 
 It was a sensual world. Some luminous excep- 
 tions must be remembered, but for the most 
 part it was a world in which atrocious im- 
 morality both abounded and was shameless. 
 Divorce, the conspicuous index of a frivolous, 
 lax, and immoral society, was prevalent. 
 Woman was held in low esteem. Infanticide 
 was notoriously common. Eucken himself 
 characterizes this as a world of "decadent and 
 perishing humanity," peopled with a race 
 "grown dull and weary." 
 
 It was into such a world as this that Chris- 
 tianity, with its renewing ideals and life-giving 
 power, made its advent. Nothing can be 
 more impressive than the contrast between 
 Rome and early Christianity. Rome was im- 
 perial, all-powerful, world-ruling, seemingly irre- 
 sistible, treasuring in herself the wealth of all 
 historic traditions, philosophies, arts, laws, 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 201 
 
 learning. Christianity took its origin under 
 conditions commonly regarded as contemptible. 
 It grew under the open sky of poverty. It 
 must come to stalwart youth, if at all, only in 
 a withering atmosphere of social ostracism and 
 scorn. When it came to the consciousness of 
 its mission it found itself confronted by officially 
 sanctioned conspiracies of appalling opposition. 
 Its pathway of progress lay through the terri- 
 tory of martyrdom, a territory in which on 
 every hand it had to face the fiery ordeals of 
 the sword and of the stake. 
 
 But Christianity, thus born, and thus out- 
 lawed and criminalized, proved herself morally 
 invincible. She brought a new spiritual sway 
 and a new social life to the empire. In the 
 face of all heathen philosophies and usages, 
 she presented a gospel of high and pure 
 ideals, of uncompromising moral demands. 
 She preached a gospel of helpfulness and 
 sympathy, a gospel of divine healing from sin 
 and its guilt, a gospel of human brotherhood, 
 a gospel inspirational with the promise of a 
 holy and heavenly immortality possible to all 
 men, to the slave as w^ell as to the king, to 
 the poor as to the rich, to the ignorant as well 
 as to the seer. Christianity did not hesitate 
 not only openly to rebuke, but to put itself 
 in positive reversal to, the rooted evils of the 
 
202 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 age. She denounced the wickedness of divorce; 
 presented a standard of divine worth and 
 dignity for womanhood; denounced infanticide 
 as murder; proscribed the brutal games of the 
 amphitheater; taught that the very slave must 
 be treated as a human brother, the legitimate 
 holder of a birthright in God's spiritual family, 
 the rightful heir to all the benefits of a divine 
 redemption. 
 
 Nothing in contrast with the traditional and 
 dominant habits of the age could be more 
 radical, more revolutionary, than this pro- 
 gram of Christianity as thrust into the life 
 of the Roman empire. This program must 
 be humanly anticipated as hopeless, a program 
 indeed impossible unless perchance God should 
 be found reenforcing it with the agencies of 
 his own infinite Spirit. History records the 
 result. Christianity created a new moral em- 
 pire in the old paganism. She brought a puri- 
 fying, transforming, and uplifting faith and 
 hope to the old and dying world. A new moral 
 life, instinct with divinest inspirations for hu- 
 manity, put its captivating lure upon untold 
 multitudes of the poor and the hopeless, and 
 they set their faces toward a new spiritual 
 heritage. The features of this history are too 
 numerous and too various to permit detailed 
 mention. But the history itself stands as the 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 203 
 
 record of what, on the whole, must be regarded 
 as the most marvelous period of moral trans- 
 formation and of social uplift which has taken 
 place in the human ages. This movement 
 grew entirely out of the experiences of the 
 Christian life. From Christian inspirations 
 were begotten the totality of consecration, the 
 quenchless zeal, the dauntless heroism, the 
 altruistic service, the unswerving faith and 
 hope, which resulted in the spiritual conquest 
 of that pagan world. The movement as a 
 whole may have been characterized by a some- 
 what mixed history. Doubtless mistakes, and 
 occasionally alien motives, may here and there 
 have marred its perfection; but it is absolutely 
 certain that all pure Christian action, the 
 kind of action which dominated the history, 
 was itself an unmeasured contribution to hu- 
 man betterment. If a movement is to be 
 judged by its fruits, then a pragmatic philos- 
 ophy can ask for no better proof of the truth 
 of Christianity than is furnished in this history 
 of moral conquest. 
 
 2. The Church, beyond all question, is the 
 loftiest and greatest human organism which 
 Christianity has created. But from the very fact 
 that it is composed of human elements it is ex- 
 posed to the misdirections of human ignorance, 
 human selfishness, and ambitious human rival- 
 
204 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 ries. A mistake quite common in historic 
 statement is to make the Church a synonym 
 for Christianity. The two terms are not 
 synonymous. The Church, which ought to 
 represent the true household of faith, has too 
 often in its counsels, its enactments, and in 
 the very spirit of its conduct shown itself 
 untrue and a betrayer of its Divine Master. 
 Historically, the Church has been much in- 
 fluenced, much affected in tone and color, by 
 the thought and customs of the civilizations 
 through which it has made its way. As I 
 write, my study windows look out upon the 
 beautiful Susquehannah, a river justly famed 
 for its picturesque character. But this river 
 drains wide mountain sheds. In seasons of 
 heavy rains the soils of these mountains are 
 washed down, and they impart to the waters 
 of the river, ordinarily clear, their own colors. 
 So the Church in many periods of its history 
 has been so interfused by the spirit of worldli- 
 ness, so toned and tempered by the thought 
 and customs of its environment, as to leave 
 it only with an impaired and enfeebled quality 
 as the true representative of Christianity. 
 
 It has seemed both a historic and a vital 
 necessity that Christianity all along the ages 
 should in periods reassert its own pure and 
 divine life. No oppositions from without, no 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 205 
 
 perversions from within, have been able to 
 prevent the dynamic uprising, the irresistible 
 assertion, from time to time, of its own native 
 and life-renewing power. Such periods are 
 familiarly known as revivals, or reformations. 
 As in nature, however murky the skies, or 
 however dark and menacing the clouds, even 
 though the change be marked by lightnings and 
 thunders, the storms are driven away, and the 
 sun breaks forth in unclouded splendor; so, 
 every now and then, however vicious the per- 
 version, or however accumulated and dense the 
 obscurities, Christianity has asserted the power 
 to clear its own spiritual skies. 
 
 Such a period was that of the Wesleyan 
 Revival in England. Dr. Cadman has char- 
 acterized this revival as "an almost unparalleled 
 transformation of the English national char- 
 acter effected under the impulse of a revival of 
 Christianity." It is a common agreement of 
 all historians who have treated the subject 
 that prior to this movement the spiritual life of 
 the Church in England was in most lamentable 
 decline. English deism was doubtless a fruitful 
 source of reenforcement to French atheism. 
 The Encyclopedists of France, armed with every 
 weapon of "eloquence, poetry, humor, and 
 satire," deliberately sought utterly to banish all 
 traces of Christian thought from the national 
 
206 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 literature. Their influence swept over the 
 nation "like a sirocco, withering not only the 
 sentiments of religion, but the instincts of hu- 
 manity, and subverting at last, in common 
 ruin, the altar, the throne, and the moral 
 protections of domestic life." This atheistic 
 fury of French thought reacted upon England 
 until its destructive force had wellnigh sub- 
 merged the popular religious sentiment of the 
 nation. English clergymen, both Anglican and 
 Nonconformist, had become practically skep- 
 tical and spiritually inert. They gave chief 
 attention to the shibboleths of systems, to 
 ecclesiastical subsidiaries, while the crying 
 crimes and the perishing moral life of surround- 
 ing communities received from them no arrest- 
 ing voice. The regenerating power of Chris- 
 tianity, as though it were a dead body from 
 which the living soul had escaped, seemed lost 
 to the Church. 
 
 From many contemporary testimonies I quote 
 briefly as follows: Of this period Wesley asks: 
 "What is the present characteristic of the Eng- 
 lish nation? It is ungodliness. Ungodliness is 
 our universal, our constant, our peculiar char- 
 acter.'' "Watts declares that there was a 
 general decay of vital religion in the hearts and 
 lives of men; that this declension of piety and 
 virtue was common among Dissenters and 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 207 
 
 Churchmen; that it was a general matter of 
 mournful observation among all who lay the 
 cause of God to heart; and he called upon 
 every one to use all possible efforts for the re- 
 covery of dying religion in the ivorld" Arch- 
 bishop Seeker says: "In this we cannot be mis- 
 taken, that an open and professed disregard 
 has become, through a variety of unhappy 
 causes, the distinguishing character of the 
 present age. . . . Such are dissoluteness and 
 contempt of principle in the higher part of the 
 world, and the profligacy, intemperance, and 
 fearlessness of committing crimes, in the lower, 
 as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, be- 
 come absolutely fatal. . . . Christianity is rid- 
 iculed and railed at with very little reserve, and 
 the teachers of it without any at all." The 
 great Bishop Butler said: "It has come to be 
 taken for granted that Christianity is no longer 
 a subject of inquiry; but that it is now at length 
 discovered to be fictitious. And, accordingly, 
 it is treated as if in the present age, this were an 
 agreed point among all persons of discernment, 
 and nothing remained but to set it up as a 
 subject for mirth and ridicule." 
 
 Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, in his recent book, 
 The Three Religious Leaders of Oxford, quotes 
 from a publication calling for a "National Re- 
 form of Manners," as follows: "All men agree 
 
208 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 that atheism and prof aneness never got such a 
 high ascendant as at this day. A thick gloom- 
 iness hath overspread our horizon and our light 
 looks like the evening of the world — vice and 
 wickedness abound in every place; drunkenness 
 and lewdness escape unpunished; our ears in 
 most companies are filled with imprecations of 
 damnation; and the corners of our streets every- 
 where the horrible sounds of oaths, curses, and 
 blasphemous execrations." 1 
 
 It was in such an age as this, and in such an 
 England, that three Oxford-educated young 
 men emerged from their cloistered life to inau- 
 gurate one of the great spiritual campaigns of 
 history. John and Charles Wesley, George 
 Whitefield: these men, diversely gifted, were 
 swayed by a common and irresistible impulse. 
 They had come, nearly simultaneously, into a 
 clear and intense experience of the spiritual life. 
 From this experience was dated for each of 
 them his prophetic mission. The love of God 
 transmuting itself into a Christlike passion for 
 the salvation of men burned as a consuming 
 fire in their very bones. In a tireless and re- 
 sistless zeal, they summoned England to re- 
 pentance, preaching the gospel of a divine 
 
 1 For a vivid picture of the social and moral conditions of 
 England in this general period, I refer the reader to Dr. 
 Cadman's.book, pp. 240-258. 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 209 
 
 redemption from sin, urging upon all men of all 
 ranks obedience to the conditions of the trans- 
 formed spiritual life and the blessedness of 
 heavenly fellowship. These men lived the 
 lives of saints, pure in spirit and conduct, un- 
 selfish in motive, unceasing in toil, pouring 
 themselves out in prodigal ministries for the 
 poor, the sinful, and the ignorant; approving 
 themselves as very apostles of a divine salvation 
 to a lost world. 
 
 And what were the fruits of it all? Upon the 
 humble and toiling masses of England, in fac- 
 tories and mines, many of whom were not only 
 ignorant, but profane, intemperate, dissolute, 
 there set in a great tide of new and beneficent 
 life. Under its transforming touch a multitude 
 of the profane became devout of speech, the in- 
 temperate became sober, the immoral pure and 
 clean of life. Hundreds of families that w^ere 
 godless, in grateful remembrance of w r hat had 
 been done for their homes, reared altars of 
 worship. Uncounted numbers took on new 
 and pure ideals for life and conduct. Religious 
 societies were multiplied. Habits of church- 
 going and of public worship became a new 
 order in many communities. The Bible, which 
 had been a neglected and forgotten book, began 
 to be searched by the masses, as containing for 
 them the very words of life eternal. Cleanli- 
 
210 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 ness and comfort, suitable raiment and right- 
 mindedness, superseded the squalor and naked- 
 ness of poverty and the vacant-mindedness and 
 moral paralysis which are the sure products of 
 dissolute living. Such are some of the direct 
 fruits of the Wesleyan Revival upon the plains 
 of England's humbler life. 
 
 In the region of faith and morals this revival 
 introduced a new atmosphere into the national 
 thought. The English Church itself, slow to 
 respond, and slower still to render due acknowl- 
 edgments to the sources, was morally forced to 
 set its face toward new spiritual standards, and 
 to enter upon renewed spiritual ministries. 
 The moral indifference, the spiritual skepticism, 
 the purblind worldliness, in all the high places 
 of England were shaken to the very foundations. 
 The testimony of more than one historian is on 
 record to the conviction that this revival saved 
 England from an experience on her own soil of 
 a destructive social and political cyclone like 
 that of the French Revolution. 
 
 But the moral fountains that found release 
 in the Wesleyan Revival have proved the un- 
 failing sources of spiritual streams which con- 
 tinue richly to flow outward into all the world. 
 Wherever Wesleyanism has gone there has 
 sprung up an unbroken series of beneficent in- 
 stitutions. It has reenforced itself on every 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 211 
 
 hand by the agencies of popular education and 
 enlightenment. It has pioneered great mis- 
 sionary movements, the outcome of which to- 
 day is an ever-widening Christian empire with 
 its seats securely established in the capitals of 
 the world's paganism. Methodism is to-day 
 world-wide. It numbers many millions in its 
 constituencies. Wherever this force has gone 
 it has held high the sanctions of social right- 
 eousness, justice, domestic purity, holiness of 
 personal life. Wherever it has gone it has 
 shown itself implacable to the iniquities that 
 blight human welfare, against political corrup- 
 tion, against business dishonesty, against traffic 
 in strong drink, against the gambling den and 
 the brothel. It has relentlessly denounced 
 evil amusements, amusements of a kind to 
 corrupt the youthful imagination and to deaden 
 the moral sense. The Wesleyan movement, in 
 its distinctive character, has won for itself wide 
 territories which it has peopled with the habita- 
 tions of righteousness and of gladness. It has 
 been the fruitful creator of song which has 
 voiced itself in notes of spiritual triumph and 
 joy. Its life to-day is more than ever prophetic. 
 It carries in its present movements the 
 prophecy of large place among the forces which 
 shall witness the final triumph in all the earth 
 of the beneficent kingdom of Jesus Christ. This 
 
212 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 cause, let it not be forgotten, had its initial 
 inspirations — -and the sources of its sustained 
 and ever-growing power have remained the 
 same — in personal religious experience. Mr. 
 Lecky, referring to Wesley's experience of a 
 "strange heart-warming" in the Aldersgate 
 meeting, says: "It is, however, scarcely an ex- 
 aggeration to say that the scene which took 
 place in that humble meeting in Aldersgate 
 Street forms an epoch in English history. The 
 conviction which then flashed upon one of the 
 most powerful and most active intellects in 
 England is the true source of English" — he 
 might have said of world — "Methodism." This 
 movement has wrought, and is still immeasur- 
 ably working, untold fruits of human weal. 
 There seems nothing for a pragmatic philosophy 
 to say of it, save that it furnishes the most in- 
 contestable proof of the divine character of 
 Christianity. 
 
IX 
 
 THE PRAGMATIC TEST 
 
 (continued) 
 
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole 
 world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in 
 exchange for his soul? — Matthew 16. 26. 
 
 From the Protestant point of view religious individualism 
 is legitimate, and inseparable from every higher form of 
 religion, in so far as it asserts the right and the duty of the 
 individual to enter into direct communion with God, to think 
 freely about religious matters, to join or not to join such 
 and such a religious society, and in so far as it asserts the 
 decisive influence of the great religious individualities on the 
 historic march of religions. Religious individualism, how- 
 ever, runs the risk of weakening religion, when it does not 
 recognize its social past, its origin in beliefs common to all 
 the members of a society and the inevitable connections 
 between the religious society and the political society — con- 
 nections which are beneficial when they are based on respect 
 for the real nature of the two institutions. — Professor 
 Christian Eugene Ehrhardt. 
 
 More and more it becomes apparent that for knowledge 
 and help and hope concerning the deepest things of God 
 and life and destiny we must depend on Jesus Christ or 
 abandon ourselves to apathy or despair. ... A vast body 
 of forces and impulses tend to drag men downward. Men 
 are of the earth by one side of their nature; and the earth 
 draws and claims its own. Hence the sense-life proves so 
 attractive. And many are found who persistently claim that 
 sense-life is all. On this plane selfishness and animalism 
 soon develop; and the strong begin to think meanly of the 
 weak and to oppress the weak; and caste is born; and op- 
 pression and tyranny go hand in hand with animalism for the 
 destruction of humanity. This tendency has been manifold 
 in manifestation, but it is ever the same in spirit, and it is 
 far enough from being finally cast out. And the most 
 powerful agent against it is the life and words of Jesus 
 Christ. He has borne the most effective testimony to the 
 supreme worth of the individual man, and delivered the 
 most effective rebuke to all attempts to degrade him. 
 
 — Professor Borden Parker Bowne. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PRAGMATIC TEST 
 
 (continued) 
 
 3. We may profitably inquire as to the prac- 
 tical values of the Christian ideal for individual 
 welfare. There has been age-long controversy 
 between the constituted authorities of systems 
 and individual rights. In primitive systems 
 the individual was absorbed in the clan. In 
 ancient family and tribal governments the 
 father or the recognized chief exercised despotic 
 authority over individuals and the community. 
 Individualism, in the last analysis, means self- 
 sovereignty, physical, intellectual, and spiritual 
 self -direction. Christianity is eminently an in- 
 dividualistic religion. Christ laid great stress 
 upon individual worth. It can be said that the 
 chief purpose of his Church is to secure, to con- 
 serve, and to nurture individual salvation. 
 
 Christ's uniform treatment of the individual 
 harmonizes with this fundamental view. He 
 was always reverent in his treatment of human 
 nature. He saw in every man, under whatso- 
 ever guise, divine potentialities. There were 
 
 215 
 
216 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 none so poor, so sinful, so abject, and so appar- 
 ently hopeless, as to be beyond the range of his 
 sympathetic and reverent treatment. Christ, 
 in all his relations to humanity, gave not the 
 slightest countenance to the artificial and 
 supercilious distinctions of social caste. In his 
 scales the soul of a slave would outweigh the 
 values of the physical constellations. 
 
 The Church, unfortunately, has not always 
 conserved Christ's measurements of the worth 
 and rights of the individual. The Church of 
 Rome, arrogating to itself the absolutism of the 
 empire, has assumed to assert its own authority 
 as against all values and rights of the indi- 
 vidual conscience and of private thinking. It 
 assumes to hold in custody the very keys to 
 the kingdom of heaven, the gates of which at 
 its own sovereign will it can open or shut 
 against the individual. Throughout much of 
 its history this Church has assumed to dictate 
 the very articles of intellectual belief and of 
 religious faith, to which the individual must 
 subscribe on pain, if he should refuse, of excom- 
 munication from the kingdom of grace and 
 glory. Some of the most appalling chapters 
 in history are those which record the subsidizing 
 by this Church of the secular arm for the in- 
 fliction of torture and destruction upon those 
 whom it has denounced as heretics. 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 217 
 
 The Reformation, even under Luther's lead- 
 ership, effected only a partial release from the 
 abuses which Rome had assumed sovereignly 
 and habitually to inflict against the rights of the 
 individual conscience. But one of the facts 
 on which Luther insisted as fundamental was 
 that moral obligation finally rests with the 
 individual. In his view the only activities of 
 moral value were those volitionally performed. 
 Kant, probably more than any other single 
 philosopher, has influenced modern thought. 
 With him, the view is central that morality is 
 personal, and that its chief function relates to 
 the freedom and dignity of the individual. 
 
 Organization and individualism would seem 
 to be the opposite poles of society. Both 
 should exist without antagonism, each serving 
 the proper functions of the other. The ques- 
 tion is as to the sane coordination of these two 
 factors. Individualism, carried to the extreme, 
 means social and civil anarchy. Organization, 
 government, unlimited by restrictions which 
 conserve individual rights, means despotism. 
 Broadly, the motive of despotism has inflexibly 
 held to the subordination of the individual by 
 the Church or the state. The strife between 
 authority and the individual has been a stand- 
 ing conflict in history. The "Divine Right of 
 Kings" and the "Infallible Church" stand for 
 
218 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 forces which in large part have always with- 
 stood the highest rights of the individual. 
 
 There must be a rational meeting-ground 
 between organized authority and the legitimate 
 rights of the individual. Organized govern- 
 ment there must be. Within rational limits, 
 it is an imperative duty of the individual to 
 loyally support government. The government 
 polices and guards his rights. He enjoys the 
 protection and security of its power. The 
 community is safe and sane under its common 
 rule. Government affords scope for the play 
 of the patriotic instinct. No sane individual 
 will deny obligation to, or withhold loyalty 
 from, an equitable government. The real pith 
 of the question inheres in what is the true 
 function of government in relation to the indi- 
 vidual. The true function of government is to 
 guarantee the orderly ongoing of society. It 
 institutes and authoritatively inflicts penalties 
 against marauders and the lawless disturbers 
 of public and domestic peace. It institutes a 
 great machinery of public service, which it sup- 
 ports by a system of taxation upon the citizens. 
 It creates public buildings for governmental 
 uses, builds public highways, conducts postal 
 systems, supports systems of public education, 
 and institutes many eleemosynary agencies 
 which are supported from the public funds, 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 219 
 
 The ultimate function of government is that 
 of highest service to the common good. In 
 the last resort, this involves the best possible 
 service and protection in the interests of indi- 
 vidual rights and liberties. While author- 
 itatively forbidding interference by the indi- 
 vidual with the rights and duties of others, 
 it guarantees to him protection and scope in 
 the largest legitimate exercise of his own 
 individuality. The individual measures at once 
 both the highest and lowest points of value in 
 the community life. The real value of the 
 community itself is best measured by the 
 quality of the individual units bred in its 
 atmospheres. 
 
 War has been a ruthless destroyer of indi- 
 vidual rights. Its hordes of captives, including 
 men, women, and children, have too generally 
 been subjected to gross indignities and cruel- 
 ties. Slavery is as old as history, but to the 
 slave, even under vogue of the most humane 
 conditions, there were never accorded the 
 proper rights of the individual. While slavery 
 in its older forms has been pretty generally 
 banished from civilization, it still remains true 
 that there inhere in the industrial organisms 
 many conditions decidedly unfavorable to the 
 best development of the individual. The cor- 
 porations are organized for profit-making. 
 
220 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 Upon this end their entire machinery is relent- 
 lessly focused. Thousands of their workers 
 are engaged in routine and most uninspirational 
 pursuits. There is little or nothing in their 
 vocations to kindle ideals or to stimulate to 
 high achievement. These workers must accept 
 such wages as the corporation can be induced 
 to pay. The corporation management itself is 
 essentially selfish. This is the underlying 
 secret of the widespread alienation rife in the 
 industrial world as between capital and labor. 
 It cannot be denied that the dominant condi- 
 tions of the industrial world, as now organized, 
 are not favorable to the highest development 
 of the individual laborer. In so far as this 
 is true, it is obvious that large areas of bus- 
 iness, under existing conditions, are as yet 
 far from being conducted on a Christian basis. 
 That there is so much in modern business 
 methods that tends both to depress and to 
 neutralize the individual toiler is not to the 
 credit of the present civilization. I am quite 
 aware that hard, grasping, and surfeited capital 
 will be disposed promptly to construe and to 
 dismiss all this as the language of an imprac- 
 ticable dreamer. But God in his heaven is 
 as much interested in the poorest laborer in 
 the factory as in any autocrat of high finance. 
 And God's method with the world will finally 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 221 
 
 win such universal approval as to put to 
 shame the motives of conscienceless money. 
 This is God's world, and all the men and 
 women in it are God's children. God made 
 nature bountiful. On the basis of the equitable 
 distribution of nature's products, there should 
 be no starving children, no shelterless families, 
 none who are the abject slaves of overfed and 
 heartless capital. There is a widening prophetic 
 light moving upon the age in which can be 
 clearly seen the coming of a better day for 
 industrial humanity. In God's calendar this 
 day bears definite date, and its dawning is 
 as sure as the coming of to-morrow. In God's 
 larger diagram of civilization humanity is 
 treated as a democracy in which every man 
 inherits the birthright of citizenship. Any 
 agency, be it church, government, plutocracy, 
 industrial despotism, which stands in the way 
 of the highest development of the individual, 
 stands by so much as opposed to the reign 
 of Christ in the earth. 1 
 
 Let us now more specifically ask: What are 
 
 1 This field of fact and thought is too wide for present dis- 
 cussion, and can here only be referred to. A general fact, 
 however, should be guarded. Whatever improvements may 
 come in the equitable adjustments of society, the time will 
 never come when demerit will not reap its own reward; when 
 thriftlessness, intemperance, immorality, and crime will not 
 receive the just doom of outlawry. As long as crime in any 
 form exists in the earth the mills of God's justice will never 
 cease to grind. 
 
222 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 the practical relations of Christianity to the 
 individual? This is not to ask concerning 
 things which can be measured in material 
 values. It is not to ask concerning gold and 
 silver, bank stocks, or wealth in merchandise 
 or lands. It is to inquire concerning God's 
 spiritual program for, his practical spiritual 
 dealings with, humanity. Man is potentially 
 God's child. He is made in God's intellectual 
 image, therefore, capable of thinking God's 
 thoughts. He is endowed with the faculties 
 of a moral and worshipful nature, therefore 
 capable of moral and spiritual fellowship with 
 God. He is immortal, therefore potentially 
 capable of infinite progress in knowledge, of 
 an ever-deepening spiritual communion with, 
 and likeness to, God. Nothing less than this 
 is included in the Christian concept of man. 
 But, if this standard is accepted, it utterly 
 displaces all lesser measurements of human 
 worth. In this high light it is clear that any 
 agency or system, which of choice or delib- 
 erately works detriment to the individual or 
 to the community of individuals for the sake 
 of promoting the selfish ends of another indi- 
 vidual, or a community of individuals, thereby 
 works a hurtful encroachment against the 
 moral order. 
 
 If Christ's program for man is large, he also 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 223 
 
 makes high and exacting demands upon his 
 subjects. The Christian is to live in the pur- 
 pose of perpetual separation from wrongdoing, 
 from purposed sin. He is to cherish inward 
 purity, cleanness of motive at the source of 
 action, at the very seat of desire. Love toward 
 God and toward man must be regnant in his 
 life. He is to be unselfish in relation to his 
 fellows, doing good to all men as he has oppor- 
 tunity. He is to be forgiving in spirit, not 
 returning evil for evil, or injury for injury. 
 He is a sworn soldier of the cross; a joint 
 partner with Christ in a mission of good for 
 all the human world. 
 
 If this scheme should seem to ordinary vision 
 overtopping and impracticable, it is not to be 
 forgotten that no man is asked to realize it 
 in his own unaided strength. As a living and 
 ever-present example there stands One before 
 him whose life was historically a faultless 
 exemplification of the perfect Christian ideal. 
 Corresponding to this outward visible Per- 
 fection, there is assured to the Christian an 
 inward spiritual transformation of life, wrought 
 by nothing less than the direct incoming of 
 God into the life of the individual soul. This 
 divine in-coming brings to the soul reenforce- 
 ment against the assaults of evil temptation, 
 begetting within all holy and benevolent de- 
 
224 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 sires, filial confidence toward God, a stalwart 
 hope of final triumph over sin and death, and 
 of blessed heirship in immortality. We shall 
 reach a true measurement of Christ's estimate 
 of human worth only as we have insight into 
 his regenerative mission for the individual. 
 Christ literally begets in his disciples a new 
 and divine spiritual life. The natural man 
 must be "born again," born from on high, 
 newly begotten by the Spirit of God. This 
 conception is either absurd or it is divine. 
 But it works pragmatically and infallibly in 
 human experience. 
 
 The Socialistic philosophy lays great stress 
 upon the regenerative power of environment. 
 Christ values environment only as it ministers 
 to character. If men are evil in themselves, 
 no environment can save them. A rich environ- 
 ment only gives to men of vicious character 
 and of evil appetites larger opportunity to 
 indulge their evil propensities. Swine are 
 swine even though housed in a mahogany sty 
 and fed from a silver trough. Christ proposes 
 to uplift the human world only on one divine 
 basis. He plans to install the kingdom of 
 God on earth through the consecrated living 
 of spiritually regenerated men. 
 
 Christ's method works in history. If any 
 man is skeptical of this, his skepticism only 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 225 
 
 witnesses to the obscureness of his own vision. 
 Nothing is historically clearer than that mul- 
 titudes of the finest moral heroes of the race 
 have lived and have grown spiritually great 
 and strong under Christian inspirations. On 
 the broadest scale the Christian philosophy, a 
 philosophy which presses upon every soul the 
 vision and sanction of eternal things, has been 
 found equal to the development and main- 
 tenance of highest moral heroism both for 
 the individual and for civilization at large. 
 The men most consciously in partnership with 
 God have always been the peerless prophets 
 of the world's moral progress. 
 
 And now, let us ask, What does Christianity 
 do for the disfranchised man? We have heard 
 much of the slave, of the forlorn poor, of the 
 man from whom opportunity has been forced 
 by a doom to the drudgery of dwarfing toil. 
 It must be confessed that society in its natural 
 processes does very little to brighten and to 
 inspire the lives of these men. Their enforced 
 lot and environment do not in themselves 
 minister to high and cheering hopes. But 
 Christianity does come to all these classes to 
 make them sharers in the divinest destinies. 
 It recognizes no social castes. Its ministries 
 of grace are characterized by no favoritism as 
 between king and subject^ as between master 
 
226 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 and slave. Before the cross of Christ all 
 alike stand on a plane of common peership, 
 all alike are the heirs of equal privilege, in the 
 spiritual citizenship of the Kingdom. 
 
 It is not easy for us to translate into modern 
 thinking what must have been the sense of 
 anomaly and wonder created by Saint Paul's 
 impassioned plea to Philemon in behalf of 
 Onesimus, a runaway slave. Philemon was a 
 high-minded man, and doubtless a warm per- 
 sonal friend of Saint Paul. Onesimus, as a 
 runaway slave, by all the code, merited the 
 most drastic punishment. But in Rome, the 
 great refuge for the social outlaw, he had 
 come in contact with Saint Paul, and had 
 experienced Christian conversion. Under the 
 promptings of a new conscience he felt that 
 he must return to his master. And this is the 
 occasion of Paul's letter to Philemon. How 
 does he write concerning this slave? He calls 
 him his own son, one whom he had spiritually 
 begotten while he himself was in the bonds 
 of his Roman imprisonment. He pleads with 
 Philemon to forgive Onesimus, and to receive 
 him not as a slave but even as a brother beloved 
 both in the flesh and in the Lord. Nothing 
 could be more in contrast with both the pagan 
 spirit and custom of the age than the spirit 
 of this letter. 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 227 
 
 It is well known to every student of Chris- 
 tian history that one of the standing miracles 
 of early Christianity was the spiritual con- 
 version and transformation of the slave. Many 
 of these whose bodies were in physical bondage 
 were born into lives of spiritual freedom and 
 sonship in Christ Jesus. Many of those whose 
 physical lot was that of slaves have left undy- 
 ing names in the hero lists of the early Church. 
 Among those counted as the world's poor the 
 inspirations of Christian experience have made 
 the lives of multitudes pure, lovely, gentle, 
 heroic. Christ never denounced wealth in 
 itself considered. Some of his cherished friends 
 were prosperous in temporal things. But when 
 he would picture the most vivid lesson on the 
 issues of human destiny, he instituted a com- 
 parison between a rich man and a destitute 
 beggar lying at the rich man's gate. The 
 beggar died, and was carried by angels to 
 Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died, 
 and lifted up his eyes in torments. The de- 
 cisive thing in this lesson is not that the one 
 was rich and the other poor, but that the 
 poor man in temper and faith was responsive 
 to the divine will, while Dives, sumptuously 
 fed and royally arrayed, was gross in soul, 
 alien to the divine approach. 
 
 The great revivals of Christianity have been 
 
228 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 responded to by multitudes of the poor. Among 
 these there have been wrought marvelous 
 transformations of character. Their social con- 
 ditions and relationships have been wondrously 
 improved, and under the creative influence of 
 the new life many of the children of the poor 
 have gone forth to achieve for themselves 
 careers of strength and of influence. To every 
 man, however depressed by the doom of unin- 
 spirational toil, Christianity comes with a 
 message of divine cheer. It witnesses to him 
 that he is God's child. It brings to him the 
 moral and inspirational support of unseen 
 spiritual forces. It fills his life with a sense 
 of fortitude and peace inspired from unearthly 
 sources. It assures him that there awaits 
 him a glorified immortality in which he may 
 forever enrich himself from the infinite min- 
 istries of God's grace, glory, and power. The 
 man so inspired becomes a moral hero. He 
 says: "Whatever my present afflictions, they 
 will be brief at the longest, and there awaits 
 me a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
 of glory. So I will not look at the things 
 which are temporal, but at the things unseen, 
 which are eternal." The man whose soul has 
 been warmed by a sense of spiritual fellow- 
 ship with Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, 
 and into whose convictions there has been 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 229 
 
 inspired a confident belief in Christian immor- 
 tality — this man has at command, whatever 
 his material environment, whether he be rich 
 or poor in this world's goods, the basis of 
 highest moral heroism. 
 
 Nothing more clearly disproves the Social- 
 istic claim that material abundance is essential 
 to good character than the multitudes of sweet 
 Christian homes among the world's humble 
 people. Every pastor of large experience 
 knows that among the poor are unnumbered 
 homes idyllic in domestic virtue, homes inspired 
 and made beautiful by the cheer of high re- 
 ligious faith and hope, homes whose members 
 hold to life's central convictions, and face 
 life's duties and conflicts with the fidelity and 
 heroism of the soldier. 
 
 When Saint James would rebuke those who 
 toadied to the rich, but who despised the poor, 
 he taught that they should be no respecter 
 of persons, asking, "Hath not God chosen the 
 poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of 
 the kingdom which he hath promised to them 
 that love him?" Christianity when truly 
 experienced, whether among the rich or the 
 poor of this world, always brings to its sub- 
 jects social, intellectual, and moral values of 
 the highest order. It has morally transformed 
 and beautified more individual lives, has 
 
280 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 brought to these lives a finer social and spir- 
 itual uplift, has imparted to them a rich peace 
 and a firm fortitude, has inspired them with 
 the divinest motives and hopes both for this 
 life and the life to come; and it has done all 
 this in a measure never approached by all 
 the religions and philosophies outside of itself 
 in the world's history. 
 
 Christianity, both by what it has accom- 
 plished, by what it shows itself capable of 
 doing, and by what it pledges itself to do, to 
 meet the moral needs of all individuals and 
 on all planes of human need, presents a history 
 which calls for unanimous commendation by 
 the pragmatic jury. 
 
X 
 
 THE PRAGMATIC TEST 
 
 (concluded) 
 
Plenteous grace with thee is found, 
 
 Grace to cover all my sin: 
 Let the healing streams abound; 
 
 Make and keep me pure within. 
 Thou of life the fountain art, 
 
 Freely let me take of thee: 
 Spring thou up within my heart, 
 
 Rise to all eternity. 
 
 — Charles Wesley. 
 
 Christianity alone has shown that, on the one hand, it 
 meets the needs of the soul of man as no other religion 
 does, and that, on the other hand, it can adapt itself in so 
 doing to varying conditions as no other can. It appears 
 now as the only religion that can properly claim universality. 
 — Principal Alfred Ernest Garvie. 
 
 When I go down to the grave I can say, like so many 
 others, "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say, 
 "I have finished my life." My work will begin again next 
 morning. — Victor Hugo. 
 
 Looked at from the outside we are animals like the other 
 animals, having the human form, indeed, and yet subject 
 to the same general laws as the animal world — birth and 
 death, hunger and pain, labor and weariness. But our 
 Christian faith holds that this is only the outward appear- 
 ance, not the inward, spiritual fact. We are now the chil- 
 dren of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, 
 but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like 
 him, for we shall see him as he is. And thus our life is 
 transformed. W r e are not simply the highest in the animal 
 world, we are also and more essentially children of the 
 Highest, made in his image likewise, and to go on further- 
 more with him; made, as the old catechism had it, to glorify 
 God and to enjoy him forever, growing evermore into his 
 likeness and into ever-deepening sympathy and fellowship 
 with the eternal as we go on through the unending years, 
 until we are "filled with the fullness of God." This is the 
 true evolution. Man is making; he is not yet made. 
 
 "All about him shadow still, but, while the races flower 
 
 and Fade, 
 Prophet eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the 
 
 Shade." 
 
 — Professor Borden Parker Bowne, 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE PRAGMATIC TEST 
 
 (concluded) 
 
 4. Let our final inquiry be as to the suffi- 
 ciency of Christianity to meet the needs of 
 man's spiritual nature. If at the highest 
 point of man's universal and spiritual needs 
 Christianity should prove impotent, then there 
 might well be hesitancy in recommending it 
 to the individual or to the community. Fail- 
 ure, indeed, at any point of spiritual need 
 would disprove its claim as a supreme religion. 
 Such failure has never been shown. Chris- 
 tianity only and rightfully insists for the 
 demonstration of its values upon such con- 
 ditions as every science exacts for itself. The 
 scientific demonstration is reached only by 
 perfect conformity to its conditioning require- 
 ments. Christianity works precisely in the 
 same way. Christ said: "If any man will 
 do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, 
 whether it be of God." 
 
 In the widest practical test, Christianity 
 has abundantly proven itself equal to meeting 
 
 233 
 
234 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 all the moral needs of the individual and of 
 the race. It is scientific in its application. It 
 responds with absolute demonstration in all 
 cases where its own conditions are faithfully 
 met. It thus conforms to the highest demands 
 of reason. Reason accepts, and confidently 
 bases its conclusions upon, demonstrated facts. 
 Christianity openly and universally offers itself 
 to the test of experience. On this plane it is 
 thoroughly scientific in method. 
 
 Christianity works in perfect harmony with 
 the mental and moral constitution of man. 
 It neither seeks the elimination nor suppression 
 of any normal human faculty. It takes man's 
 mental and moral constitution just as it is, 
 illuminating the reason, purifying the motives, 
 energizing the moral faculties, and quickening 
 purpose for the quest of a new life. Thus, 
 while furnishing in itself the superlative moral 
 and spiritual ideals, it also appropriates and 
 utilizes religious truth from whatever sources. 
 While it makes immeasurable moral advance 
 over any other religious system, it is never 
 found in antagonism to the highest moral 
 sense of the race. It makes perfect appeal 
 to the universal religious nature of mankind. 
 Its conditions have been tested by repre- 
 sentatives of all races, and among no people 
 have they been found to fail in fulfillment 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 235 
 
 of promise. As no philosophy, no science, no 
 other religious faith in the world's history, 
 Christianity has experimentally demonstrated 
 its power to satisfy the deepest spiritual needs 
 of universal man. And if on this level it suc- 
 ceeds, it must be accepted as satisfying the 
 most crucial test by which its values can be 
 challenged. 
 
 There never was a time perhaps when in 
 candid philosophical thought the paramount 
 claims of man's spiritual nature were so clearly 
 recognized as now. As wonderful and as 
 fruitful as may be his intellectual genius, this 
 is far from the greatest thing about man. 
 His spiritual nature furnishes the far higher 
 mark of his kinship with the Divine. The 
 human intellect may make itself athletic in 
 grappling with the problems of nature, but 
 there is a hunger in the human spirit which 
 can be satisfied with nothing less than the 
 life of God in the soul. It is coming more 
 and more clearly to be discerned that man 
 as an individual, and man socially, never 
 comes to his best, to his noblest self, save when 
 his life is directed by regenerative motives 
 from within. This alone is salvation, this 
 alone is the secret of most worthful character. 
 
 There is a legitimacy in material satisfactions. 
 It is a good thing to be well fed and well clothed. 
 
236 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 It is pleasant to be housed in capacious, well- 
 appointed, and artistic homes. It is a good 
 thing to be in command of sufficient means and 
 material appliances to meet the physical con- 
 veniences of life. Christianity does not extol 
 poverty as having intrinsic virtue in itself. 
 It does bring unearthly cheer and inspirations 
 to multitudes whose lot is that of poverty. 
 Neither, on the other hand, does it deny 
 attainment of exalted virtues to those who are 
 rich in this world's goods. The supreme diffi- 
 culty in the situation is that the nearby appeal 
 to human nature stands at the door of the 
 senses. The demand for physical satisfaction 
 is imperious. It asserts itself from our earliest 
 history. The multitudes, it may be said 
 human nature in general, are under constant 
 and powerful temptation to seek life's chief 
 satisfactions from material sources. This 
 temptation has asserted itself well-nigh un- 
 checked in many periods of history. Many 
 have installed materialism as a chief good. 
 Luxury has held riot in high places. 
 
 The present, of all periods in history, comes 
 nearest to being an era of universal knowl- 
 edge. Science, art, an omnipresent press, all 
 are lending themselves to a world-democracy 
 of intelligence. Nature, in unprecedented meas- 
 ure, is yielding her native treasures to the 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 237 
 
 increase of human wealth. Vast capitalistic 
 combinations are developing industrial pro- 
 ductivity beyond all the dreams of our fathers. 
 While intelligence and real culture were never 
 so widespread, it is also true that wealth and 
 its consequent luxury were never so prevalent 
 in the world as to-day. The world itself was 
 never so attractive as now. Materialism, with 
 whatever refinements it may keep company, 
 puts a mighty lure upon the age. The multi- 
 tudes, seeing the fatness and the sleekness, 
 the revel of appliance and plenty, enjoyed by 
 the rich, are under exceptional temptation to 
 believe that the world of sense and of pleasure 
 is, after all, the world chiefly to be sought. 
 The canker of this temptation has eaten deeply 
 into the life of the wayfaring masses. It is 
 doubtless true that the laborer never received 
 such compensation for his toil as now. He 
 himself lives a life of greater plenty, a life 
 nearer to the borders of luxury, than any of 
 his predecessors. But the wide exploitation of 
 wealth which he sees around him has made 
 him the most discontented laborer of the ages. 
 He has caught the material infection. He has 
 accepted the belief that if he himself could 
 only be the possessor of wealth, life too with 
 him would be supremely well. 
 
 The wide absorption of the age in pursuit 
 
238 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 of material satisfactions makes it an age diffi- 
 cult of spiritual appeal. The phenomenal 
 development of human power over natural 
 forces, the harnessing of these forces for man's 
 service, and the consequent successful achieve- 
 ment of huge material enterprises — all this 
 has immensely contributed to divert man's 
 attention from himself to the world of external 
 nature. Nature, through science and invention, 
 has so lavishly laid down her wealth at the 
 feet of man as to confuse his vision. The 
 material and outward, with their blinding 
 glamour, have bulked so large as for the time 
 being, at least, to suspend his synthesis of 
 values. The age has vaulted into the saddle 
 and rider and hounds together have plunged 
 into the wilderness in pursuit of the game — 
 Material Success. 
 
 This insanity of materialism is perhaps a 
 part of the inevitable price which this age 
 must pay before it can enter upon a new 
 spiritual era. No age ever had on so wide a 
 scale, and with such prodigal stocks, so great 
 opportunity for testing the utmost values which 
 a pure materialism can contribute to human 
 life. Modern material wealth has mustered a 
 more brilliant revel, and has spread before its 
 guests a far more sumptuous banquet, than 
 were ever possible to any preceding age. But 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 239 
 
 the after satiety and disgust of the revel are 
 proving the same as from all like experiments. 
 In all history the guests have risen from the 
 sating feasts of materialism only to realize 
 that they have been feasted at a Circe's ban- 
 quet. Materialism, with its attendant luxuries, 
 has always brought about the intellectual and 
 moral decadence of the people, has been a 
 foremost promoter of the disintegration of 
 civilization itself. The trend of present-day 
 materialism proves no exception to the historic 
 rule. 
 
 '' Man's material life was never so immense, 
 its achievements never so marvelous, its wealth 
 never so bewildering, as now. But, in it all, 
 there is no lesson clearer than its utter im- 
 potence to bring supreme satisfactions to human 
 life. The vast materialistic resources of the age 
 have utterly failed alike to morally buttress 
 civilization, to install honesty in the business 
 world, to furnish worthy ideals to society, or 
 to satisfy the conscious and deeper needs of 
 the human soul. The charges of graft and of 
 bribery in political life, of injustice and dis- 
 honesty in business relations, the menace of 
 immorality and divorce in circles of wealth 
 and of privilege, were never more rife than now. 
 The human soul awakes to learn anew the 
 lesson that all this bulk and show of material- 
 
240 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 istic resource is powerless to feed its deeper 
 hunger, or to minister to its larger life. The 
 soul's true citizenship can be realized only 
 in the realm of the spiritual. It is made for 
 a career larger than can be confined within 
 material stagings. It inflicts upon itself dis- 
 inheritance and banishment when it elects to 
 remain aloof from divine fellowships. 
 
 This sketch attempts no complete picture. 
 It only aims, however imperfectly, to give a true 
 indication of the nature and effects of a pure 
 materialism in its relations to life and character. 
 It would betray a grossly imperfect as well as 
 unjust measurement of the age to deny the 
 large wealth of sane moral judgment and of 
 noble spiritual character which inhere in its 
 life. Probably in its aggregate life no age in 
 history has ever been so rich in redemptive 
 moral agencies as the present. A highly 
 significant indication is in the fact that, even 
 within a generation, a materialistic philosophy 
 which had been largely domesticated in pop- 
 ular thought, has given place in circles of 
 correct thinking to a philosophy of the spirit. 
 Error is a stubborn thing. One of the sad 
 facts of history is that when it has once be- 
 come rooted it takes a long time to eliminate 
 the poison of a vicious philosophy from 
 the popular mind. A false materialism may 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 241 
 
 still find clamorous utterance among the 
 street and mob orators, but it is safe to say 
 that it no longer has any footing in competent 
 philosophic thought. 
 
 It is significant that both Eucken and 
 Bergson, two men who easily rank among the 
 foremost of living philosophers, each in his 
 own way, hold as basic and central a spiritual 
 view of the universe. These men have not 
 traveled to their conclusions by the same path. 
 Nor are their views identical. Indeed, as is 
 true of all, even the greatest, thinkers, these 
 two men, wondrous and wide as is their vision, 
 are but provincial explorers in the fields of 
 infinite reality. But the fact of real signifi- 
 cance is that their philosophies alike take 
 initiative from spiritual, and not from ma- 
 terialistic, bases. 
 
 Eucken, in incisive and eloquent terms, por- 
 trays the moral failure of the modern material- 
 istic civilization, with all its seemingly limitless 
 resourcefulness, to meet the needs of man's 
 higher nature. He declares that "Modern life, 
 in particular, with its liberation of every force, 
 has brought to the surface so much that is 
 impure, unedifying, and unworthy, and has 
 placed so clearly before our eyes the pettiness 
 and unreality of a merely human culture, that 
 it becomes continually more and more hope- 
 
242 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 less to obtain a satisfying type of life upon this 
 basis and to provide human existence with a 
 meaning and a value. It is being increasingly 
 felt that there is something in man which this 
 immanent type of life does not bring out, and 
 that this undeveloped element is something 
 indispensable, perhaps the best of all!" 
 
 Eucken cogently insists that the only ulti- 
 mate normal life of man, that life for which 
 the best that is now within him constitutes 
 both a prophecy and a demand, that life 
 which alone furnishes the real key and meaning 
 of man's being, can be realized only by "a 
 transforming spiritual culture." Eucken, it is 
 to be remembered, is not in the usual sense 
 an orthodox Christian. But, negatively, with 
 all his knowledge of historic thought, he is 
 able to present no source whence the spiritual 
 regeneration of the world shall come save 
 Christianity. Toward Christianity itself this 
 great mind utters no pedantic or flippant 
 views. He looks upon Christ as an historic 
 Character who has changed the face of the 
 world. In his book Can We Still Be Chris- 
 tians? is this passage: "Our answer is not only 
 that we can be, but that we must. But we 
 can only be Christians if Christianity is recog- 
 nized as a world-historical movement still in 
 flux, if it is shaken out of its ecclesiastical 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 243 
 
 vitrification and placed upon a broader basis. 
 In this lies the task of our time and the hope 
 of the future." 
 
 This passage contains the very philosophy of 
 Eucken concerning the spiritual adequacy of 
 Christianity for meeting the moral needs of 
 mankind. On the one hand, he accepts Chris- 
 tianity as the supreme realization of the spir- 
 itual ideal; but, on the other hand, he seems 
 to fear that the very life and mission of Chris- 
 tianity itself are imperiled under their present 
 forms of expression. I cannot but think that 
 it marks a well-nigh fatal limitation even upon 
 Eucken's grasp of the situation that he con- 
 founds, or at least seems to confound, the 
 ecclesiastical forms of Christianity with the 
 genius and spirit of Christianity itself. Be- 
 tween the two concepts there may be, and 
 doubtless is, a world-wide difference. Ecclesi- 
 astical interpretations, in large numbers, may 
 be thoroughly superseded and become as 
 worthless as an outworn garment. 
 
 The spirit of Christianity is cosmic, ever- 
 creative, always preceding, and always remedial 
 to, the developing moral needs of the race. 
 It is itself the efficient and inspiring soul of 
 the world's moral and spiritual progress. The 
 vital processes of Christianity do not need 
 revision; they do not need defense. They work 
 
244 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 like a leaven in the growths of civilization, 
 constantly securing for themselves a broaden- 
 ing application to man's industrial, educational, 
 social, and moral life. Man's intelligence needs 
 to be continuously quickened and enlarged, that 
 he may have even a proximate appreciation 
 of the vitalizing and increasing functions of 
 Christianity in human affairs. If this view — 
 perhaps he would not give it place — were 
 added to Eucken's conception, then he would 
 stand as a foremost witness to the complete 
 adequacy of Christianity for meeting the moral 
 needs of the world. 
 
 I have sought in this discussion, though very 
 f ragmentarily, to secure a fair and representative 
 impression of the attitude of present-day phil- 
 osophy toward the main question of our pur- 
 suit. The approved philosophy of the age 
 plants itself on spiritual and not on materialistic 
 bases. This philosophy clearly recognizes the 
 supreme dignity, value and needs of man's 
 spiritual nature. It recognizes, as in the case 
 of Eucken, that Christianity, more perfectly 
 than any other known system, furnishes the 
 environment, the stimuli, the moral supports, 
 both for the deepest needs and the highest 
 developments of the spiritual life. Outside of 
 revelation itself we could hardly ask for more 
 satisfactory testimony as to Christian values. 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 245 
 
 Let us come back, then, to listen finally to 
 the voice of Christian experience. In over- 
 whelming consensus this voice testifies that 
 for the penitent sinner is divine forgiveness; 
 in place of the sense of guilt there may be the 
 joy of pardon; for the will weakened and im- 
 paired by sinful habit, moral renovation and 
 spiritual reenforcement; the installment within 
 of new affections, desires, and purposes; a new 
 and wondrous consciousness of reconciliation 
 and fellowship with God; a newly awakened 
 love for, and moral interest in, the welfare of 
 one's fellows. A man when thus made a new 
 creature in Christ Jesus is moved by a Christ- 
 like desire for a like experience for all his 
 fellows. He says in his new-found joy: 
 
 "O, that all the world might taste and see 
 The riches of His grace; 
 The arms of love that compass me 
 Would all mankind embrace." 
 
 We have seen in this discussion, and from 
 many standpoints, how the incoming of the 
 Christian life inspires in the human breast 
 the spirit of good wall and of benevolent pur- 
 pose toward all men. The evidence is universal 
 and overwhelming that the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity, tested by its own intrinsic quality, is a 
 power which works always and only in the 
 highest interests of human welfare. Judged by 
 
246 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 its fruits, Christianity, in its very nature, 
 must be counted worthy of the highest prag- 
 matic sanction- 
 
 5. As a final thought, though one which 
 cannot be considered as merely incidental to 
 the subject, Christianity not only outstrips 
 but climaxes the profoundest human philos- 
 ophies in its confident proclamation of immor- 
 tality. The dream of immortality has through- 
 out the ages haunted the most luminous minds 
 of the race. But Christianity positively crowns 
 immortality as a regal and superlative fact in 
 the universe of moral being. The fruits of 
 immortality as an attained estate cannot, of 
 course, be pragmatically tested. But immor- 
 tality as a faith, in its inspiring and regulative 
 power over human character and conduct, 
 makes legitimate appeal to the pragmatic 
 judgment. 
 
 It must be sadly admitted that in many 
 thoughtful circles the belief in immortality is 
 not as vivid now, not as confident, as in some 
 previous times. This situation is accounted 
 for largely by new and absorbing preoccupa- 
 tions which have taken possession of modern- 
 world thought. A new world of material 
 wealth has been thrust upon the human vision. 
 Science has challenged modern thought with a 
 thousand baffling questions, many of them 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 247 
 
 carrying implications of negation against the 
 continuous survival of the soul. As Professor 
 Fosdick has said: 
 
 Another reason for the decline of emphasis upon 
 the importance of the life to come is not so creditable. 
 ... In the present age this life has been made vivid 
 and interesting in an unexampled way. Old isola- 
 tions have been overcome, so that the whole world 
 is now the province of any mind that chooses to be 
 cosmopolitan, and rapidity of communication has 
 made possible world-wide enterprises on such a scale 
 as no previous age has ever known. New knowledge 
 has consumed the thoughts of men, and new avenues 
 of wealth have engaged their ambitions, until the 
 contemplation of eternal destiny has paled before 
 the immediate brilliance of this present world. For 
 men are like auditoriums; they can hold so many 
 occupants and no more; and when the seats are 
 filled and even the "Standing Room Only" sign has 
 been removed, the next comer, though he be a 
 prince, must cool his heels upon the curb. The 
 minds of men have been preempted by the immediate 
 and fascinating interests of this vigorous, exciting 
 age. The fact is not so much that they through 
 reasoned disbelief have discarded faith in immor- 
 tality, as that through preoccupation they have lost 
 interest in anything beyond the grave. 
 
 Preoccupation does not annul facts. A man 
 in a mood of preoccupation may step off the 
 edge of a precipice, but the result is none the 
 less fatal. Pleasure-seekers who ride on the 
 swift river may be all unmindful of the ocean. 
 But the current not less surely bears them on 
 
248 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 toward the heaving tides and the roaring 
 breakers of the not-distant sea. Immortality 
 may remain true though all men should forget 
 the fact. Grant all the mysteries that shadow 
 to the natural reason the question of immor- 
 tality, weigh all arguments which materialism 
 can urge against the fact, still the moral reason 
 forever asserts that if we live in an honest 
 universe, man must be immortal. 
 
 It is not a little significant that many of the 
 greatest authorities in modern science not only 
 find no insuperable obstacles to faith in im- 
 mortality, but they marshal the very facts 
 of science itself in support of such faith. "The 
 fact that men like Sir Oliver Lodge in natural 
 science, Professor William James in psychol- 
 ogy, Dr. William Osier in medicine, have 
 thought it reasonable to cherish hopes of 
 immortality, suggests at once that while im- 
 mortality may not be proved, it certainly has 
 not been disproved." Professor John Fiske 
 boldly says, "The* materialistic assumption that 
 the life of the soul ends with the life of the 
 body is perhaps the most colossal instance of 
 baseless assumption that is known to the 
 history of philosophy." Further, in giving 
 attention to the argument against immortality 
 as based upon the assumption of the mind's 
 dependence upon the body, he says: "How 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 249 
 
 much does this argument amount to as against 
 the belief that the soul survives the body? 
 The answer is, Nothing! absolutely nothing! 
 It not only fails to disprove the validity of 
 the belief, but it does not raise even the slight- 
 est prima facie presumption against it." 
 
 An effective answer to skepticism of immor- 
 tality, be it scientific or otherwise, would be to 
 grant its premise, and then to pursue its logic 
 to the end. This logic would turn the uni- 
 verse into a graveyard. It would veil all the 
 skies of human hope in darkness and sterility. 
 If science teaches anything, it is that nature 
 through incalculable aeons, and at infinite 
 costs, has wrought as with unswerving purpose 
 toward the great objective known as a human 
 personality. This is nature's goal, beyond 
 which it seems powerless to advance. What 
 is the logic of the theory that death ends all? 
 It means that Isaiah and Socrates, Jesus and 
 Paul, Dante, Shakespeare, and Luther, that all 
 the brilliant constellations of human genius 
 lifting themselves above the horizons of history, 
 that all these were born after the birth-pangs 
 of countless ages only, like fireflies, to shine 
 for a brief moment, and then to be extinguished 
 forever in ray less night. This logic turns the 
 universe into a moral chaos, and makes of 
 human life itself an inexplicable and mocking 
 
250 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 enigma. The very thought is intolerable to 
 all noble minds. 
 
 Professor Huxley, when consciously approach- 
 ing old age, wrote to John Morley: 
 
 The great thing one has to wish for as time goes 
 on is vigor as long as one lives, and death as soon as 
 vigor dies, It is a curious thing that I find my dis- 
 like to the thought of extinction increasing as I get 
 older and nearer to the goal. It flashes over me at 
 all sorts of times with a sort of horror that in 1900 
 I shall probably know no more of what is going on 
 than I did in 1800. I had sooner be in hell a good 
 deal — at any rate, in one of the upper circles, where 
 the climate and the company are not too trying. I 
 wonder if you are plagued in this way. 
 
 Nor is there any final satisfaction in the 
 Positivistic teaching that men live in the deeds 
 of good which they bequeath to posterity; 
 that thus they are immortal in the sense that 
 their own good deeds live on in the enrichment 
 of subsequent lives. In the end it is all the 
 same. We come finally, at least so far as man 
 is concerned, to universal extinction, to a worn- 
 out and lifeless universe. 
 
 The rational indications of the undying life 
 of the human soul are many. It may be 
 soberly and measuredly said that not all the 
 skeptical philosophy of the ages has been able 
 to neutralize the force of these indications. 
 As against all arguments, it may be said that 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 251 
 
 the rational constitution of the soul carries in 
 itself the instinctive and inseparable belief in 
 its own immortality. Christianity comes to 
 reenforce and to illuminate these native prompt- 
 ings by conceptions of infinite value. The 
 Christian conception is far other than simply 
 meaning a continued existence. It calls for an 
 infinite program for the soul's moral develop- 
 ment, for its achievements and attainments. 
 It means space and opportunity in which the 
 human individuality, that last consummate 
 product of nature's dateless efforts, is to find 
 forever ceaseless development of its godlike 
 potentialities. This program inspired into hu- 
 man convictions transforms life into a school 
 of moral heroism. It evens up the moral 
 opportunities of being. It goes far with the 
 poor and the unprivileged toward compensating 
 for what often seems the unjust, and even the 
 cruel, inequalities of this earthly life. 
 
 Many a man here does not seem to have a 
 fair chance. Here is one in a factory exhaust- 
 ing his physical energy for every working day 
 in the year in a most monotonous and un- 
 developing employment. There is the poor 
 seamstress supporting herself, and, it may be, 
 her fatherless children, by giving herself morn- 
 ing, noon, and night to the needle until the 
 doleful "Song of the Shirt" works itself into 
 
252 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 her very nerve and fiber. But this man carries 
 in his mental constitution all undeveloped and 
 ungratified the faculties of the philosopher. 
 The poor seamstress has lying within her the 
 latent faculties of poet and prophetess. Physi- 
 cal limitations are for the present putting 
 impassable barriers up around these souls. 
 Their opportunity is yet to come. Immor- 
 tality will furnish the limitless landscape and 
 the theater in which they shall yet develop 
 their powers to the full. 
 
 Immortality, after the Christian type, alone 
 furnishes real scope for the complete ful- 
 fillment of that which is now prophetic in all 
 men. The strongest man at present is rel- 
 atively infantile. The man of largest vision is, 
 at best, nearsighted. Most men are at present 
 hedged in by barriers of inheritance, of narrow 
 education, of untrained faculties, of skeptical 
 habit, all of which bar them from widest 
 outlook upon the universe of their real possi- 
 bilities. We are provincial in our habits. 
 Our beliefs are narrow. We are like dwellers 
 in caves by the seashore rather than explorers 
 of the boundless deep. The wings of our souls 
 are not yet trained for familiar flights through 
 the starry spaces. The sons of God, taber- 
 nacling here in the flesh, have not yet found 
 their spiritual vision. The best are as they 
 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 253 
 
 who look through a glass darkly. God's more 
 glorious universe, the spiritual, has as yet 
 been revealed only in prophecy, in types, in 
 occasional experiences and revelations which 
 have come to elect souls in mountain-top 
 experiences. It will not always be so. For 
 those who toil a day of emancipation will 
 come. The drudgery of life will be lifted away, 
 and the soul, with fully awakened powers, 
 will come to the larger universe of realization. 
 None can as yet measure or describe the 
 meaning or the opportunities of the heritage 
 of immortality for the sons of God. We are 
 living in a physical universe practically infinite 
 in its dimensions and resources. In the sphere 
 of intellectual possibilities the immortality of 
 the soul is paralleled only by the immensity 
 of worlds — worlds all of which are under the 
 common sway of God's scepter, and the study 
 of which it might require an eternity to ex- 
 haust. The great counterpart of this truth is 
 that man has hardly as yet begun to discover 
 the real wealth of his own faculties, of his 
 own possibilities. He shall yet develop the 
 art of discovering every hidden fact of the 
 universe. He shall develop power both to 
 capture and master all truth which may min- 
 ister to his own enrichment. But lying along- 
 side these great truths is that other inevitable 
 
254 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 fact that every child of God must finally have 
 full opportunity for self -development. 
 
 But, however immeasurable the intellectual 
 possibilities of the immortal life, we may not 
 forget that the material universe, immense 
 and marvelous as it is, is but secondary in 
 its values. The real glory of God's greatness 
 is moral. The crowning destiny which he 
 purposes for man is moral. The highest pur- 
 suits and enjoyments of the sons of God will 
 forever be in the realm of the spiritual. And 
 if God has overwhelmed our minds by the 
 discoveries he has made of himself in the 
 physical universe, what infinitely more glorious 
 moral and spiritual revelations may not his 
 sons expect? While eternity moves on, God 
 will forever press new revelations of his own 
 exhaustless glories upon the unfolding vision 
 and receptivity of his children. 
 
 In the light of most saintly and heroic 
 living, it has been abundantly proven that 
 the Christian conception of immortality fur- 
 nishes the loftiest and most inspiring motives 
 for the shaping of character and the govern- 
 ment of life. 
 
 Death is the chilliness that precedes the dawn; 
 We shudder for a moment, then awake 
 In the broad sunshine of another life. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The list of publications herein given represents books, 
 all of which, in more or less measure, have been consulted 
 in the preparation of this volume. 
 
 A Working Faith Harris Franklin Rail 
 
 & ( ffi^3£K2<?SS By } • William Newt - Clarke 
 
 Book of Martyrs Foxe 
 
 Essays J. Brierley 
 
 Browning's Poems. 
 
 Can We Still Be Christians? 1 
 
 Problem of Human Life \ Rudolf Eucken 
 
 Main Currents of Modern Thought J 
 
 Christianity and Labor William Muir 
 
 SHSS^faSoS*} Wa,ter R-chenbusch 
 
 cStrig JLXcaTfsWs } He ^ Barcla ^ Swete 
 
 Dictionary of the Bible James Hastings 
 
 Emerson's Essays. 
 
 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 
 
 History of Methodism, Vol. I Abel Stevens 
 
 History of Christianity John F. Hurst 
 
 Hymnals (Various Church). 
 
 History of European Morals W. E. H. Lecky 
 
 Jesus Christ and the Social "1 
 
 Je^ Christ and the Chris- \ • Francis Greenwood Peabody 
 tian Character J 
 
 Mysticism and Modern Life John Wright Buckham 
 
 My Belief R. F. Horton 
 
 Personality 
 
 The Essence of Religion I t> j t» i t» 
 
 Studies in Christianity \ Borden Parker Bowne 
 
 The Immanence of God j 
 
 Religions of Authority Auguste Sabatier 
 
 SP Sn U turies ef ° rme ^ ° f tLe XVI and XVH } Rufus M - Jones 
 The Christian Religion J. Scott Lidgett 
 
 257 
 
258 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Philosophy of the Christian ") 
 
 Th^Hace of Christ in Modern \ Andrew Martin F airbairn 
 
 Theology J 
 
 The Rise of the Mediaeval Church . . Alexander Clarence Flick 
 
 The Chief Corner Stone W. T. Davison 
 
 The Church in the Roman Empire W. M. Ramsay 
 
 The Assurance of Immortality Harry Emerson Fosdick 
 
 The Working Faith of a Liberal Theo- 
 logian T. Rhonnda Williams 
 
 The Romance of Preaching Charles Silvester Home 
 
 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 
 
 The Psychology of the Christian Life . . Horace Emory Warner 
 
 Theism and Humanism Arthur James Balfour 
 
 The Reconstruction of the Church Paul Moore Strayer 
 
 The Three Religious Leaders of Oxford . . . . S. Parkes Cadman 
 The Conflict of Religions in the Early Ro- 1 
 
 man Empire > . . T. R. Glover 
 
 The Christian Tradition and Its Verification J 
 
 The Gospel of Good Will. . . William DeWitt Hyde 
 
 The Immanence of Christ in Modern 
 
 Thought Frederick R. Swan 
 
 The Quest of the Infinite Benjamin A. Millard 
 
 The Spiritual Life \ Geoiw A Cop 
 
 The Religion of a Mature Mind / George A. L,oe 
 
 The New World Religion Josiah Strong 
 
 The Indwelling Spirit T. W. Davison 
 
 The Philosophy of Spirit John Snaith 
 
 The Rise of Modern Religious 
 
 Ideas Andrew Cushman McGiff ert 
 
 Tennyson's Poems. 
 
 Pragmatism William James 
 
 Principles of Pragmatism H. Heath Bawden 
 
 Psychology of Religious Experience . . Edward Scribner Ames 
 Meaning of God in Human Expe- 
 rience William Ernest Hocking 
 
 In addition to the foregoing cited works, I have consulted 
 several articles in the Cyclopaedia Britannica, as also in the 
 Cyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings. 
 I may volunteer the conviction that the latter work is in- 
 dispensable to any well-furnished ministerial library. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Agnosticism, large contin- 
 gency of mind character- 
 ized by, 11 
 
 Ames, Edward P., cited, 46 
 
 Anaesthesia, state of, 44 
 
 Animosities, tribal, long 
 survival of, 76 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, a be- 
 liever in moral law, 32 
 
 Art, service of, to world-de- 
 mocracy of intelligence, 
 236 
 
 Augustine, referred to, 61; 
 character and conver- 
 sion of, 94-96; life lived 
 by, 97 
 
 Aurelius, Marcus, quoted, 
 150; classed with Moses, 
 151; quoted, 152 
 
 Ballard, Dr. Frank, state- 
 ments from pen of, 16 
 
 Balling, Peter, quoted, 42 
 
 Bashford, Bishop James 
 W., cited, 151; referred 
 to, 181 
 
 Begbie, Harold, referred to, 
 128 
 
 Believer, the graces in life 
 of, 148 
 
 Bible, the supreme utter- 
 
 ance of the highest re- 
 ligion, 38; criticism of, 
 
 73 
 "Birth-song of Evangelical 
 
 Revival," by Charles 
 
 Wesley, 159 
 Bisseker, Professor H., 
 
 quoted, 99 
 Bowne, Borden P., cited, 
 
 46; quoted, 91; referred 
 
 to, 197; pragmatism of, 
 
 198; quoted, 214, 232 
 Boxer Rebellion, fortitude 
 
 of Chinese Christians in, 
 
 155 
 Brainerd, David, work of, 
 
 181 
 Brierley, J., quoted, 42, 64, 
 
 74, 106 
 Browning, Robert, quoted, 
 
 58, 59, 60; cited, 128 
 Bunyan, John, voice of in- 
 
 suppressible, 156 
 Business, the inner motive 
 
 of, 78 
 Butler, William, referred 
 
 to, 181 
 
 Cadman, Dr. S. Parkes, 
 
 quoted, 205, 207 
 Calvin, John, referred to, 
 
 130 
 
 261 
 
262 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cartwright, Peter, referred 
 to, 35, 36 
 
 Cary, William, work of, 
 180 
 
 Celsus, complaint of, 
 against Christians, 122; 
 view of, concerning 
 Christian converts, 123; 
 his explanation of firm- 
 ness of early martyrs, 
 162 
 
 Chalmers, of New Guinea, 
 referred to, 181 
 
 Character, Christian, 107; 
 study of claims for, 110; 
 New Testament stand- 
 ards of, 115; testimony 
 of, 141 
 
 Character, factors entering 
 into, 108; the outcome 
 of cumulative forces, 
 109; biblical ideals of 
 godly, 112 
 
 Children, valuable recruits 
 of the Church, 136 
 
 Christ, pragmatic rule of, 
 13; mission of, 61; great- 
 ness of, 62; a great dis- 
 turber of the traditions 
 of his times, 72; growth 
 of followers of, 120; 
 teaching of, 165; King- 
 dom of, seemingly of 
 slow development, 
 169; the incomprehen- 
 sible and immeasurable 
 character of history, 
 172; activity of, 174; 
 
 scope of mission of, 183; 
 quoted, 233; a Character 
 who has changed the 
 face of the world, 242 
 
 Christian, the, Christ's 
 disciple, 65; duties of, 
 223 
 
 Christians, austere purity 
 of morals of, 121; early 
 history of marvelous, 
 122; Chinese in Boxer 
 Rebellion, 155 
 
 Christian Church, situa- 
 tion within, 25 
 
 Christian experience, ideal, 
 how regarded, 23; prim- 
 itive, nature of, 30; evi- 
 dential values of, 103; 
 assessing the values of, 
 138; phenomena of, 142; 
 Cause and Source of 
 considered, 143; charac- 
 terized by fortitude, 
 154; voice of, 245; Chris- 
 tian ideal for individual 
 welfare, inquiry con- 
 cerning, 215; Christian 
 standard, ideal, dis- 
 cussed, 78, 79 
 
 Christian service, 167 
 
 Christian truth, sum of, 
 24; narrow horizon as- 
 signed to, 28 
 
 Christianity, how rated by 
 Nietzsche, 10; hate tow- 
 ard, 11; systematic oppo- 
 sition to, 12, 13; not fear- 
 ful of comparison with 
 
INDEX 
 
 268 
 
 other forces, 13; opposi- 
 tion to encountered by 
 Saint Paul, 15; charac- 
 terized by both faults 
 and failures, 15; without 
 a rival in good accom- 
 plished, 15; ready to be 
 judged by its fruits, 16; 
 diverse views in, 25; re- 
 ligious expression out- 
 side of, 27; a religion of 
 the spirit, 65; its mis- 
 sion to save the indi- 
 vidual soul, 67; the 
 Church's conception of 
 function of on earth en- 
 larged, 75; vision of to- 
 day, 76; spirit of too 
 narrowly measured, 80; 
 spread of over Roman 
 empire, 98; reforms of, 
 116; cherished tradi- 
 tions rebuked by, 118; 
 Jewish opposition to, 
 119; early life of tested 
 by official fury, 120; 
 power of to transform, 
 123; state of Roman 
 world at time of advent 
 of, 200 ; though outlawed, 
 morally invincible, 201; 
 wickedness denounced 
 by, 202; divine life of re- 
 asserted, 204; divine 
 character of power by 
 pragmatic philosophy, 
 212; great revivals of 
 responded to by the 
 
 poor, 228; moral needs 
 of all individuals met 
 by, 230; sufficiency of to 
 meet needs of man's 
 spiritual nature, 233; 
 not antagonistic to moral 
 sense of race, 234; spirit 
 of, 243; a power which 
 works always in the 
 highest interests of hu- 
 man welfare, 245; a 
 final thought concerning, 
 246 
 
 Christianity and the New 
 Age, quotation from, 183 
 
 Church, the, organized 
 labor living in practical 
 divorce from, 11, 12; 
 general trend of thought 
 in, 12; treated with neg- 
 lect, 13; importance of 
 membership in, 34; in 
 possession of revelation 
 of Christ's character, 39 ; 
 human leadership re- 
 quired by, 40; things 
 emphasized by, 129; 
 great scandal suffered 
 by, 170; adverse criti- 
 cism of noted, 173; char- 
 acterized by a spirit of 
 charity, 175; the great- 
 est human organism cre- 
 ated by Christianity, 
 203; not a synonym for 
 Christianity, 204 
 
 Church of England, spir- 
 
264 
 
 INDEX 
 
 itual life in, at time of 
 Wesleyan Revival, 205 
 
 Church of Rome, arrogant 
 claims of, 216 
 
 Civilization, fruits yielded 
 to, 15; God's larger dia- 
 gram of, 221 
 
 Clarke, Dr. William New- 
 ton, mental law stated 
 by, 9; quoted, 42, 86 
 
 Corporations, object of or- 
 ganization, 219 
 
 Coe, George A., cited, 46 
 
 Cook, Joseph, quoted, 84 
 
 "Conversion," the term dis- 
 cussed, 85, 86; narra- 
 tives of Old Testament 
 relating to, 87 ; New Tes- 
 tament treatment of, 87; 
 processes of, 88; reality 
 of attested by millions 
 of witnesses, 90; a moral 
 miracle in history, 98; 
 evidential values of, 99; 
 remarkable instance of, 
 126 
 
 Creed, formulated, not dis- 
 paraged, 29 ; exalted 
 above character, 31 
 
 Creeds, many men ex- 
 cluded by, 28; worthy of 
 historic honor, 30; neces- 
 sities of ages which gave 
 them birth, 30; not 
 necessarily immortal, 31 
 
 Criticism, true function of, 
 71; acceptance of new r 
 views demanded by, 72 
 
 Cross, preaching of con- 
 sidered foolishness, 118 
 Culture, widespread, 237 
 
 Dante, cited, 249 
 
 Davison, Dr. W. T., quoted, 
 64; cited, 100 
 
 Denominations, Protestant, 
 dogmatic and narrow 
 qualities of, 77; divisive 
 sectarianism in, becom- 
 ing a thing of increasing 
 abhorrence, 77 
 
 Denominationalism, one 
 weakness of, 31 
 
 Despotism, motive of, 217 
 
 Doddridge, Philip, conver- 
 sion hymn by, 161 
 
 Duke of Bavaria, exhorta- 
 tion to John Huss, 154 
 
 Ehrhardt, Professor Chris- 
 tian Eugene, quoted, 214 
 
 Elijah, cited, 55 
 
 Emerson, quoted, 32, 137 
 
 Epictetus, referre" to, 150; 
 classed with Moses, 151 
 
 Era, present, one of uni- 
 versal knowledge, 236 
 
 Erasmus, quoted, 74 
 
 "Eternal life," emphasized 
 as a thing of quality, 
 163 
 
 Evangelical thought, duty 
 of, 38 
 
 Evolution, perfected the- 
 ory of, 57 
 
 Eucken, Rudolf, on reason, 
 
INDEX 
 
 265 
 
 48; indebtedness of age 
 to, 79; referred to, 80; 
 cited, 96; position of rel- 
 ative to pragmatism, 
 196; quoted, 197, 200; 
 moral failure portrayed 
 by, 241; quoted, 242; 
 philosophy of, 243; re- 
 ferred to, 244 
 
 Europe, present state of, 
 14 
 
 Eusebius, quoted, 146 
 
 Fairbairn, Andrew Martin, 
 quoted, 22; quoted, 108 
 
 Faith, nonevangelical, 28; 
 indispensable handmaids 
 of, 30 
 
 Findlay, Dr. G. G., quoted, 
 146 
 
 Fiske, Professor John 
 quoted, 168, 248 
 
 Fortitude, Christian, 158 
 
 Fosdick, Professor, quoted, 
 247 
 
 Fox, George, quoted, 51 
 
 Francis of Assisi, trans- 
 formation of, 180 
 
 Garvie, Principal Alfred 
 Ernest, quoted, 232 
 
 Gibbon, not favorable to 
 Christianity, 124 
 
 Glover, Dr. T. R., quoted, 
 125 
 
 God, relations of, with the 
 human soul, 9; revealed 
 to men to-day, 39; the 
 
 only answer to the in- 
 finite in man, 49; has 
 furnished object lessons 
 of himself, 50; deals 
 spiritually with all men, 
 51; dealings of, in his- 
 tory, 52; perfected world 
 of, how characterized, 
 53; redemptive purpose 
 of, 56; not balked in his 
 purpose, 56; exaltation 
 of man central to his 
 purpose, 62; the great 
 Thinker, 68 ; voice of, de- 
 mands ethical living, 78 
 
 Gospel, the, announced by 
 the angels, 147 
 
 Government, benefits of, 
 218; ultimate function 
 of, 219 
 
 Hadley, S. H., conversion 
 of, described, 126-128 
 
 Hall, Professor Thomas C, 
 quoted, 11 
 
 Harnack, quoted, 96 
 
 Hebrews, the ancient, spir- 
 itual genius of, 52; com- 
 pared with Grecian con- 
 temporaries, 53; states- 
 manship of, a negligible 
 quantity, 54; place in 
 civilization must not be 
 minified, 54; stands in 
 moral center of drama 
 of the world, 55 
 
 "Historical orthodoxy," es- 
 sentially Christian, 24 
 
266 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Holy Scriptures, the, con- 
 tents of, 38 
 
 Holy Spirit, the, 63; ac- 
 cepted as God working in 
 his world, 65; his mis- 
 sion the same as that of 
 Jesus Christ, QQ; offices 
 of, 66; vital relation to 
 man's being, 67; mental 
 insight quickened by, 
 74; deals with interests 
 of human life on un- 
 limited scale, 81; com- 
 panionship of, 111; trans- 
 forming and character- 
 forming mission of con- 
 sidered, 134-143; distinc- 
 tive fruits of, 149, 162 
 
 Hocking, William E., cited, 
 46 
 
 Home, Charles Silvester, 
 quoted, 186 
 
 Hugo, Victor, quoted, 232 
 
 Human body, designated 
 as "temple of the Holy 
 Ghost/' 71 
 
 Human soul, relations of, 
 with God, 9 
 
 Humanity a solidarity, 77 
 
 Huss, John, referred to, 
 130; fortitude of, 154; 
 quoted, 155 
 
 Huxley, Professor, quoted, 
 250 
 
 Hyde, Dr. William De 
 Witt, reference to book 
 by, 184 
 
 Immortality, 252 
 
 Individualism, the oppo- 
 site of organization, 217 
 
 Intellect, vital questions 
 decided in court of, 68; 
 does not yield all the 
 criteria of truth, 69 
 
 Intellectual culture, 
 wrongly suspected of be- 
 ing a foe to spirituality, 
 73 
 
 Isaiah, cited, 55, 151, 249 
 
 James, William, indebted- 
 ness to, acknowledged, 
 17; quoted, 44; cited, 46; 
 quoted, 84, 89; cited, 
 125; quoted, 137, 152; 
 referred to, 193; cited, 
 248 
 
 Jeremiah, referred to, 151 
 
 Jesus Christ, the supreme 
 fact of, 51; quoted, 90; 
 his conception of the 
 godly character, 113; 
 quoted, 192 
 
 John, Griffith, referred to, 
 181 
 
 John the Baptist, cited, 55 
 
 Jones, Professor Maurice, 
 quoted, 106 
 
 Joy, a fruit of the Spirit, 
 147; spoken of by Christ, 
 159 
 
 Kant, referred to, 49, 107; 
 influenced by Stoical 
 
INDEX 
 
 267 
 
 ideals, 109; influence of, 
 
 on modern thought, 217 
 Kingdom, Christ's, nature 
 
 of, 37 
 Kingsley, Charles, cited, 44 
 Knowledge, slow march of, 
 
 57 
 Knox, John, referred to, 
 
 130 
 
 Labor, organized, practi- 
 cally divorced from the 
 Church, 10, 11; accep- 
 tance of materialistic 
 guidance by, discussed, 
 14 
 
 Latimer, Hugh, quoted, 
 155 
 
 Laws, spiritual, ignorance 
 of, 140 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., quoted, 
 124, 176, 192, 212 
 
 Lewis, Wilson S., referred 
 to, 181 
 
 Life, Christian, ethical 
 quality of, 140 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, charac- 
 ter of, 33; intellectual 
 difficulties encountered 
 by, 34 
 
 Livingstone, David, re- 
 ferred to, 181 
 
 Lodge, Sir Oliver, cited, 
 43, 248 
 
 Lowell, J. R., quoted, 42; 
 cited, 43 
 
 Loyola, Ignatius, conver- 
 sion of, 180 
 
 Lucian, attitude of, toward 
 Christians, 123 
 
 Luther, Martin, doctrine 
 taught by, 61; referred 
 to, 94; lifted to a new 
 level by a spiritual reve- 
 lation, 131; cited, 249 
 
 Mammon-god, widely wor- 
 shiped in the age, 12 
 
 Man, God's supreme coun- 
 terpart in universe, 26; 
 religious nature of, 27; 
 faculties exercised by, 
 47 ; moral constitution 
 of, not a lie, 49 ; made for 
 two relationships, 67; 
 relations both individual 
 and social, 67; endow- 
 ment of intellectual fac- 
 ulty of, 68; pre-emi- 
 nently a social being, 75 ; 
 to be a Christian the 
 loftiest realization pos- 
 sible to, 79; Christ's 
 program for, 222; ma- 
 terial life of, never so 
 immense, 239 
 
 Mankind, poor response of, 
 to God's higher thought 
 and purpose, 56 
 
 Martyn, Henry, labors of, 
 181 
 
 Martyr, Justin, quoted, 122 
 
 Martyrs, Christian, cour- 
 age of, 164 
 
 Material satisfaction, le- 
 gitimacy of, 235 
 
268 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Materialism, harangues 
 on, 11; present place of, 
 scientific, 12; rests on 
 the life of the age, 12; 
 lure of, upon the age, 
 237; effects of, in its re- 
 lation to life and char- 
 acter, 240 
 
 Mathews, Shailer, quoted, 
 186 
 
 McArthur, Sir Alexander, 
 quoted, 182 
 
 McConnell, Bishop Francis 
 J., quoted, 84 
 
 Messengers, unsalaried, 
 nescience and godless- 
 ness taught by, 11 
 
 Methodism, world-wide to- 
 day, 211 
 
 Militarism, Prussian, re- 
 ferred to, 14 
 
 Miner, Miss Luella, quoted, 
 155 
 
 Millard, Benjamin A., 
 quoted, 22 
 
 Mind, the, made for criti- 
 cal investigation, 69; 
 the Christian, a path- 
 finder, 74 
 
 Missions, Christian, motor- 
 nerve of, 179 
 
 Moral law, not a cheat, 49 
 
 Moral wholeness, dis- 
 cussed, 32 
 
 Morbidity, mental, cause 
 of, 72 
 
 Morrison, Robert, work 
 and patience of, 181 
 
 Moses, cited, 55 
 
 Motive, the real Christian, 
 
 178 
 
 Nature, laws of, absolutely 
 reliable, 48 
 
 Nature, treasures yielded 
 by, 236 
 
 Nelson, John, quoted, 156 
 
 Nietzsche, philosophy of, 
 10; death of in a mad- 
 house, 14 
 
 Non-Christian world, the, 
 citizenship of divided 
 into two general classes, 
 13 
 
 Oldham, Bishop W. F., 
 quoted, 182 
 
 Onesimus, plea of Paul in 
 behalf of, 226 
 
 Origen, referred to, 61; tes- 
 timony of, 123; declara- 
 tion by, 134 
 
 Orthodoxy, intellectual, ar- 
 raignment of, 31 
 
 Osier, Dr. William, cited, 
 248 
 
 Pagan nations, general ref- 
 erence to, 171 
 
 Palmer, Ray, experience of 
 in death, 162 
 
 Parker, Edwin Wallace, 
 referred to, 181 
 
 Paton, in the South Sea 
 Islands, referred to, 181 
 
 Paul, Saint, cited, 55; 
 
INDEX 
 
 269 
 
 quoted, 62; referred to, 
 97; declaration of, 111; 
 discrimination made by, 
 114; a man of fortitude, 
 147; persecuted, 148; 
 courage of under priva- 
 tion and suffering, 164; 
 the first Christian mis- 
 sionary to the Gentile 
 world, 180; cited, 249 
 
 Peirce, Charles, referred 
 to, 193 
 
 Pentecostal revival, the, 
 148 
 
 Pessimism, a corrective of, 
 171 
 
 Phenomena, religious, 
 frankest exploration in 
 realms of, 24; recogni- 
 tion of, 46 
 
 Philosophy, Nietzsche's, 
 defined, 10; materialis- 
 tic, relegated to the 
 past, 12; Nietzschean, 
 genius of, 13; discussed, 
 88; compelled to take 
 note of religious history, 
 97; socialistic philoso- 
 phy, 224 ; present-day, 
 244 
 
 Positivistic teaching, 250 
 
 Pragmatic test, the, 191; 
 discussion of continued, 
 215; discussion of con- 
 tinued, 12, 33 
 
 Pragmatism, as a distinct 
 system, 193; discussed, 
 194-198 
 
 Press, alien, work of, 11; 
 omnipresent, world-de- 
 mocracy of intelligence 
 advanced by, 236 
 
 Processes, divine, erro- 
 neous conclusions con- 
 cerning, 29 
 
 "Psychic sense, 5 ' consid- 
 ered, 43; not identified 
 with "spiritual sense," 
 45 
 
 Psychologists, protests en- 
 tered by, 46 
 
 Psychology, only one de- 
 partment of philosophy, 
 88; knowledge of needed 
 by teachers and preach- 
 ers, 89 
 
 Race, the, constitution of 
 as a whole, 52; infantile 
 moral helplessness of, 
 56; evolutionary pro- 
 cesses of, 57; discussed, 
 58 
 
 Rankin, Henry B., quoted, 
 34 
 
 Rationalism, 193 
 
 Rauschenbusch, Professor 
 Walter, quoted, 168 
 
 Reformation, period of, 
 considered, 130 
 
 Reformation, the, handi- 
 capped by dogmas, 131; 
 only partial release from 
 abuses of Rome effected 
 by, 217 
 
270 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Relations of God with the 
 human soul, 9 
 
 Religion, an inseparable 
 feature of, 24. 
 
 Religion, Christian, dis- 
 cussed, 110, 111 
 
 Religion, Hebrew, dis- 
 cussed, 112, 113 
 
 "Religious Experience," a 
 subject of ages-long dis- 
 cussion, 9, 10; the term, 
 why chosen, 23. 
 
 Religious faiths, hetero- 
 geneous, attitude of, 25 
 
 Religious life, psychic phe- 
 nomena of, 87 
 
 Religious question, the, 
 vastness of, 23 
 
 Religious views destined to 
 fail, 24 
 
 Revelation, final ideal of, 
 189 
 
 Rich, the exceptional temp- 
 tations of, 237 
 
 Richard, Timothy, referred 
 to, 181 
 
 Ridley, Nicholas, martyr- 
 dom of, 155 
 
 Roman age, at time of in- 
 troduction of Christian- 
 ity, 199 
 
 Rome, cosmopolitan in its 
 philosophy and religion, 
 117; former power of, 
 200 
 
 Saul of Tarsus, conversion 
 of, 91; courage of, 93; 
 
 death of, 93; first im- 
 pulse of after conver- 
 sion, 175 
 
 Science, position of, rela- 
 tive to laws of nature, 
 48; what it can and 
 cannot do, 88; contribu- 
 tive to a world-demo- 
 cracy of intelligence, 236 
 
 Schaff, Philip, quoted, 192 
 
 Scriptures, critical study 
 of, considered a sin by 
 some, 70 
 
 Seneca, referred to, 150; 
 suicide of, 151 
 
 Service, the law of Chris- 
 tian life, 78; the modern 
 Christian demand for, 
 186 
 
 Shakespeare, cited, 249 
 
 Silas, spirit of, under per- 
 secution, 148 
 
 Skepticism propagated in 
 present-day thought, 10 
 
 Slave, the, Christianity's 
 service to, 225 
 
 Smith, Robert Elmer, re- 
 ferred to, 156 
 
 Snaith, John, quoted, 132 
 
 Society, a school for train- 
 ing for service, 75; 
 Christ's, idea of the 
 moral renewal and re- 
 construction of, 76 
 
 Socrates, cited, 249 
 
 "Song of the Shirt," re- 
 ferred to, 251 
 
 Spiritual fruits, 145 
 
INDEX 
 
 271 
 
 Spiritual opportunities, 
 deadly indifference to- 
 ward, 12 
 
 Spiritual sense, the, 43; 
 a racial posession, 45; 
 potential in universal 
 human nature, 47; to be 
 philosophically reckoned 
 with, 48; the organ 
 through which God finds 
 entrance into the soul, 
 50; God's approach to 
 the universal heart, 51; 
 common to the race, 56; 
 
 Soldier, the, fortitude of, 
 157 
 
 Spiritual things, worldly 
 indifference toward, 11 
 
 Starbuck, Edwin D., cited, 
 46 
 
 Stead, William, cited, 43 
 
 Stoic, the, referred to, 152 
 
 Stoicism, ancient, disci- 
 plined character de- 
 veloped in, 109; school 
 of, 149; illustrious repre- 
 sentatives of, 150; pro- 
 vision of for suicide, 
 151; insufficiency of the 
 most perfect fortitude of, 
 152 
 
 Strong, Dr. Josiah, quoted, 
 168 
 
 "Superman," mission of, 
 10 
 
 Symonds, J. A., cited, 44 
 
 Taylor, Father, quoted, 33 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, cited, 
 
 44; quoted, 169 
 Tertullian, quoted, 120; 
 
 scenes witnessed by, 157 
 Thoburn, Bishop James M., 
 
 referred to, 181 
 Trance, defined, 43; 
 
 vision of Saint Peter in, 
 
 44 
 
 Universe, moral, forces of, 
 26 
 
 War, a destroyer of indi- 
 vidual rights, 219 
 
 Wealth, as such not de- 
 nounced by Christ, 227 
 
 Webster, Noah, "charac- 
 ter" defined by, 107 
 
 Wesley, Charles, hymn of 
 on conversion, 159; 
 hymn written by, 160; 
 quoted, 232 
 
 Wesley, John, qualities of, 
 132 ; evangelical career 
 and death of, 133; ex- 
 perience of, 159; quoted, 
 206 
 
 Wesleyan Revival in Eng- 
 land, 205; period of, 206; 
 fruits of, 209 
 
 Whitefield, George, re- 
 ferred to, 208 
 
 Whittier, John G., quoted, 
 106 
 
 Wilson, Canon James Mau- 
 rice, quoted, 61 
 
272 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Woolman, John, experience Xavier, Francisco, referred 
 
 of, 156 t0 > 18 ° 
 Wordsworth, William, 
 
 quoted, 146 Zeno, founder of school of 
 
 World, the, scientific unity Stoicism, 149 
 
 of 51 Zeus, referred to, 151 
 
 Wycliffe, referred to, 130 Zwingli, referred to, 130 
 
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