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THE FUNCTION OF THE 
 
 CHURCH IN MODERN 
 
 SOCIETY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER 
 
 EX-PRESIDENT OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 
 rOKMUtLT PROFESSOR IN ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 msimTTPrsij^i 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 1911 
 
# 
 
 .\ 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published March iqit 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY i 
 
 I. THE MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL 
 
 AUTHORITY 5 
 
 Roman Catholicism and Protestant- 
 ism Contrasted 7 
 
 Effects of the Intellectual Re- 
 vival IN Christianity upon the 
 Authority of Protestantism 14 
 
 The Realization of the Freedom of the 
 
 Bible 21 
 
 The Struggle for Christian Unity 23 
 
 The Apprehension of the Person of 
 
 Christ 31 
 
 The Religious Interpretation of the 
 
 World 45 
 
 V 
 
 235433 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 n. THE MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYM- 
 PATHY 63 
 
 The Reconciliation of Labor 81 
 
 Religious Hospitality 92 
 
 Fellowship the Basis op Modern 
 Missions 106 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE 
 CHURCH IN MODERN SOCIETY 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Of the various ministries through which 
 the Christian Church has from time to time 
 wrought effectively in society there are 
 two, which, if exercised fully and in right 
 relation to one another, may be expected to 
 fulfill in very large degree the function of 
 the Church in modern society, — the minis- 
 try of spiritual authority and the ministry 
 of human sympathy. Modern society as re- 
 lated to the Church is peculiar only in the 
 fact that its demands are very exacting at 
 these two points. Not many things are de- 
 manded of the Church to-day. Probably 
 there was never a period in which fewer 
 obligations were imposed upon it, or when 
 its advice was less frequently sought on 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 matters of current interest and concern. 
 But in view of the intellectual and social 
 confusion of the present times, which we 
 call modern in other respects than in re- 
 gard to time, the original and normal claims 
 upon the Church for authority and for sym- 
 pathy have been greatly intensified. The 
 demand for sympathy seems to be greater 
 than the demand for authority. Society ap- 
 pears to be more concerned about the re- 
 lation of man to man than about the rela- 
 tion of the individual man to his God, or to 
 his own soul. It is doubtful, however, if this 
 appearance altogether expresses the under- 
 lying reality. The cry for bread is always 
 startling, never more so than in days of 
 wasteful plenty; but it is vain to assume 
 that those who have bread enough and to 
 spare are otherwise satisfied. The voice of 
 such as are "striving to reach forward to 
 the new light of the intellect, while not 
 relinquishing the ancient loyalties of the 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 heart,"' is often heard in unexpected places, 
 implying wherever heard "the tragic ele- 
 ment of suffering." But the claims upon 
 the Church for spiritual authority and for 
 human sympathy are alike so constant and 
 so pressing, and they are in reality so closely 
 related, that the Church can at no time allow 
 these essential and mutually supporting 
 ministries to decline or to be separated. 
 The history of the Church proves by too 
 frequent illustration how empty a thing is 
 authority without sympathy, and how weak 
 a thing is sympathy without authority. 
 
 It is the office of this brief essay to urge 
 upon the Church the resumption of that 
 spiritual authority, which has been in meas- 
 ure suspended during the recent period of 
 theological reconstruction, and to urge no 
 less the return to that sympathetic concern 
 in human interests, that fellow feeling with 
 men, the absence of which at certain points 
 
 * Letters to His Holiness Pope Pius X., Preface, p. XV. 
 
 3 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 has caused much alienation from the Church. 
 Doubtless the Church is farther on its way 
 toward regaining spiritual authority than it 
 is toward recovering the alienated classes. 
 The process of theological investigation, 
 criticism, and reconstruction made possible, 
 as well as necessary, by the growth of the 
 scientific spirit, has been going on for nearly 
 a generation. But it is a question if the 
 Church has as yet begun to understand and 
 appreciate the religious significance of the 
 problems involved in the economic changes 
 which have been taking place within the 
 same period, but more manifestly within 
 the past decade. ^ 
 
THE MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 In discussing this aspect of our subject 
 reference will be made altogether to the 
 churches of the Protestant faith, and chiefly, 
 for local reasons, to the churches of this 
 country. The place of the Roman Catholic 
 Church in modern society, especially in this 
 country, calls for very definite recognition, 
 but the discussion of its authority is foreign 
 to our purpose except as an aid in setting 
 forth the authority of Protestantism. In this 
 regard it is becoming more and more neces- 
 sary to the understanding of Protestantism 
 to understand Catholicism. To the average 
 Protestant, the authority of the Papacy has 
 no logical place in modern society. It seems to 
 be an intellectual anachronism. But the fact 
 that it is maintaining and enlarging its place 
 
 5 
 
■\y\^*0m FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 in the most modern of the nations is a fact 
 too evident to be denied, and therefore a 
 fact which ought to be understood. 
 
 Allowing that the growth of the Roman 
 Catholic Church in America is chiefly due 
 to immigration, its growth is the more 
 striking as an example of the holding power 
 of Catholicism under modern conditions. 
 Of course the explanation lies in the distinc- 
 tion which Catholicism draws, and which it 
 seems to be able to maintain, between mod- 
 ern thought and "modernism" — modern 
 thought becoming "modernism " only as it 
 invades the realm of dogmatic religion. The 
 devout Catholic may be modern in politics, 
 in science, and in literature, provided he 
 does not thereby become a "modernist." 
 To what extent the spirit of "modernism," 
 that is, the desire to apply historical criti- 
 cism or any applicable form of scientific 
 analysis to the traditional theology of the 
 Church, is really infecting Catholicism, it is 
 6 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 impossible to determine. The " modernists" 
 of Europe complain of the backwardness of 
 their brethren in this country. This back- 
 wardness cannot be attributed to the fact 
 that American Catholics are untouched by 
 "the liberties and knowledge of the twen- 
 tieth century." More likely the general 
 freedom of thought which the American 
 Roman Catholic enjoys serves to dull rather 
 than to quicken his desire for greater free- 
 dom in his religious thinking. The funda- 
 mental difference between an intelligent 
 Protestant and an equally intelligent Catho- 
 lic centres around the actual use of the 
 right of private judgment. Each uses this 
 right in his own way. The intelligent Pro- 
 testant uses it continuously, never for a 
 moment surrendering it to any outward au- 
 thority. The intelligent Catholic uses it once 
 for all in surrendering it to the authority of 
 the Church. This act of surrendering one's 
 private judgment in matters of faith to the 
 7 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 judgment of the Church may be in itself a 
 supreme act of private judgment, earnest, 
 protracted, and satisfying. To many minds 
 the argument for such a surrender is per- 
 suasive and convincing. " Given the reve- 
 lation of God in Christianity, what more 
 natural than that this revelation should be 
 committed to the Church : and if thus com- 
 mitted, how much better the authorized 
 judgment of the Church in all matters of 
 faith than the judgment of the individual: 
 how much safer the investment of one's 
 religious belief in the Church than if held 
 among one's private securities." 
 
 Doubtless there are many cases in which 
 it is not fully understood at the beginning 
 just how much this acceptance of the judg- 
 ment of the Church in place of the contin- 
 uous use of private judgment really means. 
 Experience alone can show in any realizing 
 sense that it means one thing and one thing 
 only, — submission, absolute and complete 
 8 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 submission. The language, however, of the 
 Roman Catholic Church is perfectly clear 
 at this point, whether uttered in pastoral 
 address or in the formal definition of its 
 authority. " My brethren," says Cardinal 
 Mercier in his Lenten Pastoral of 1908, fol- 
 lowing the Papal Encyclical on Modern- 
 ism, " we have here merel}^ a question of 
 honesty. Yes or no ? Do you believe in the 
 divine authority of the Church? Do you 
 accept exteriorly and interiorly what in the 
 name of Jesus Christ she proposes to your 
 belief ? Yes or no ? If 3^es, then she puts 
 the sacraments at your disposal and under- 
 takes your safe conduct to heaven. If no, 
 you deliberately break the bond that united 
 you to her, of which she had tied and blessed 
 the knot. Before God and your conscience 
 you belong to her no more." ' 
 
 * Lenten Pastoral of Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Bel- 
 gium, in enforcement of the Encyclical Pascendi of Sep- 
 tember 8, 1907, on Modernism : given in full in Mediceval- 
 ism^ a reply to Cardinal Mercier by Father Tyrrell. 
 
 9 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 ■-, Compare with this the language of the 
 Right Reverend Monsignor Vaughan in 
 the more formal definition of the authority 
 of the Papacy. " When Peter speaks ex-ca- 
 thedra he speaks with the infallible author- 
 ity conferred on him by God. And Peter 
 still lives and still speaks in the person of 
 his successor. What he binds on earth is 
 bound in heaven. If he defines a doctrine 
 — let us say the immaculate conception of 
 the Blessed Virgin — what happens? So 
 soon as he defines it, he binds it upon the 
 consciences of all Catholics. They are 
 obliged to accept it."' Such an assertion 
 and acceptance of authority can be under- 
 stood by a Protestant only as he reminds 
 himself of the process of surrender and sub- 
 mission which these assume. More than 
 this, he must also remind himself of that 
 temper and disposition of mind upon which 
 
 » "The Catholic Church: What is it?" By the Right 
 Reverend Monsignor Vaughan, Rome. Hibbert Journal^ 
 April, 1908. 
 
 10 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 a religion of absolute authority is based. 
 Religions of this order endure because the 
 type of mind which supports them persists. 
 The authority of the Papacy survived Pro- 
 testantism, though under the conditions of 
 its survival it lost control of the governing 
 mind of the world. Another conception of 
 religious authority took control of the peo- 
 ples committed thenceforth to the defense 
 and extension of religious liberty. Protest- 
 antism meant more historically, and far 
 more in principle, than the transfer of obe- 
 dience from an infallible Church to an in- 
 fallible Bible. The recent biographer of 
 Karl Marx, in explaining the conversion of 
 the elder Marx from Judaism to Christian- 
 ity, says that " he seemed to have looked 
 upon Protestantism as being something 
 more than the intellectual and spiritual pro- 
 test of religious enthusiasts against dogma 
 and ecclesiastical authority: as being in fact 
 a movement for intellectual freedom and 
 II 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 general progress." ' This view of Protest- 
 antism, though partial, is not superficial. 
 Intense as were the religious demands 
 which made Protestantism necessary, and 
 powerful as were the political forces which 
 gave it so wide a supremacy, the spirit of 
 Protestantism was closely akin to that 
 spirit of intellectual freedom which gave us 
 democracy and modern education. The ad- 
 vance of religious, political, and educational 
 liberty has been in the main an advance 
 through comradeship. Protestantism has 
 come to represent preeminently that part 
 of organized Christianity which lies open 
 to the mind of the world, and which feels 
 most sensitively the intellectual progress of 
 the world, whether the sources of progress 
 lie within or without Christianity. It does 
 not forbid its adherents from entering with 
 sympathetic interest into that " extra-Chris- 
 
 * John Spargo : Karl Marx^ His Life and Work^ PP- 23, 
 24. 
 
 12 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 tian world," in which Mr. Huxley used to 
 say that he and persons of like interests 
 spent much of their time in the investigation 
 of subjects which were " neither Christian 
 nor unchristian." Protestantism stands com- 
 mitted not only to the doctrine of the right 
 of private judgment, but also to the general 
 and far-reaching belief that religious pro- 
 gress is dependent upon intellectual free- 
 dom in matters of religion. It would be 
 cowardly for Protestants to deny any of the 
 legitimate consequences of their intellectual 
 affiliations or of their sympathies with lib- 
 erty. The greatest consequence, as they be- 
 lieve, is religious progress. A consequence 
 which is quite sure to appear in time of in- 
 tellectual upheaval and confusion is a cer- 
 tain loss of spiritual authority. At such 
 times authority waits in part upon the read- 
 justment of faith to the larger and clearer 
 knowledge. 
 
 Without question the churches of the 
 
 13 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 Protestant faith have been passing through 
 a period of serious intellectual disturbance, 
 with a consequent loss of authority. The 
 authority which rests upon experience and 
 upon service has not been lessened. But 
 spiritual authority is not normal and com- 
 plete when it lacks the full indorsement of 
 the mind of the Church. The mind of the 
 Protestant Church has been for a gener- 
 ation in a state of inquiry rather than of 
 affirmation at certain vital points of faith. 
 Most immediate in its bearings upon au- 
 thority has been the inquiry, under the 
 application of the principles of historical 
 criticism, into the doctrine of sacred Scrip- 
 ture. Less immediate in its bearings upon 
 authority, but in some respects more far- 
 reaching, has been the inquiry into the 
 method of the divine working, including 
 miracles, considered in the light of the the- 
 ory of evolution. And very influential in the 
 way of reaction upon theological opinion 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 and belief has been the closer study of men 
 under the conditions of modern civilization, 
 and the wider and more intelligent ac- 
 quaintance with the human race. It is not 
 too much to say that the conception of God, 
 the interpretation of the person and work 
 of Jesus Christ, the motive of missions, have 
 been modified by the more intimate know- 
 ledge of humanity. 
 
 I have already intimated that the process 
 looking toward the reestablishment of the 
 spiritual authority of the Church is well 
 under way. As I proceed to consider re- 
 sults more in detail, I shall insist that the 
 process is so far advanced that the Church 
 is now justified in reasserting its spiritual au- 
 thority. It would indeed be a happy conclu- 
 sion of the questionings, searchings, discus- 
 sions, and even controversies of the Church, 
 if the generation which has heard all these 
 should yet hear the voice of the Church in 
 some compelling reaffirmation of its faith. 
 
 IS 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 This is not necessary. If need be, more than 
 one generation can afford to spend and be 
 spent in that search after truth which can 
 alone give reality to religion. My insist- 
 ence, however, is that the intellectual strug- 
 gle through which the Church of this gen- 
 eration has been passing is fast nearing its 
 natural and legitimate conclusion in the re- 
 assertion of spiritual authority. There can 
 be no severer spiritual discipline than that 
 involved in the search after truth. There 
 can be no greater relief to the believing 
 mind than that which comes from discard- 
 ing errors, however essential these may 
 have seemed to be to faith. There can be 
 no consciousness of spiritual power pos- 
 sible to the Church more real or inspiring 
 than that which comes through the testing 
 of its intellectual humility, honesty, and 
 courage. The consciousness of the Church 
 
 — this is the supreme fact of Protestantism 
 
 — is the chief source of power in the exer- 
 
 i6 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 cise of spiritual authority. External proofs, 
 which are accessible to all, gain their mo- 
 tive power from those who have actually 
 incorporated them into faith. The sensi- 
 tiveness of the world to the vitality, or bet- 
 ter the freshness of this faith, cannot be 
 overestimated. Whenever the intellectual 
 faith of the Church, for any reason what- 
 ever, grows stale, the external evidences of 
 Christianit}^ have little authoritative value 
 among men. Whatever the process may be 
 which reinvigorates the faith of the Church, 
 by that same process the evidences of 
 Christianity are brought nearer to the un- 
 derstanding of men and to their consciences. 
 The authority of Protestantism cannot reach 
 far beyond the assured consciousness of the 
 Church in matters of faith, a consciousness 
 born out of its spiritual experiences, but re- 
 invigorated from time to time as it passes 
 under the tests of the enlightened reason. 
 This assurance of faith may be, as it 
 
 17 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 doubtless has been, of the same degree of 
 power in all believing ages, but the point 
 of belief varies like the point of view. Be- 
 lieving men of different generations see 
 " eye to eye," not because they look from 
 the same point, but because looking from 
 their respective points of vantage they dis- 
 cover the like spiritual realities. Looking, 
 for example, toward Christ from the needs 
 and aspirations and achievements of their 
 differing times, they alike see that in him 
 which is "the same yesterday, to-day, yea 
 and forever." It is of the very genius of Pro- 
 testantism to take advantage of the natural 
 approach of each age to the unchanging 
 truth in Christianity. Believing that God is 
 in his world as well as in his Church, it 
 does not hesitate to use the environment of 
 faith in the interest of faith. 
 
 What are the gains to faith from the more 
 recent changes in the apprehension of re- 
 ligious truth, which, as they are appropriated 
 i8 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 by the Church, ought to increase the con- 
 sciousness of its spiritual power, and give 
 a more confident assertion of its spiritual 
 authority? 
 
 First of all, Protestantism now has in hand 
 a Bible which it can hold in consistency 
 with its own well-defined principles. A 
 Bible exempted from the tests of historical 
 criticism is not a Protestant Bible. It is in- 
 consistent to the last degree to affirm the 
 right of private judgment in respect to the 
 interpretation of Scripture, and at the same 
 time to deny the right of private judgment 
 in respect to the origin and historical order 
 of the Scriptures. From the Protestant point 
 of view it is as necessary to ask what the 
 Bible is, and how it came to be, as it is to 
 ask what the Bible means. It is as reverent 
 a thing to reinvestigate the authenticity of 
 Scripture in any of its parts as it is to re- 
 examine and revise the text of Scripture. 
 Indeed, if textual criticism is justifiable, 
 19 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 much more in every way is historical 
 criticism. 
 
 The argument against the examination 
 into the origin of the Bible, because such an 
 examination tends to create confusion in the 
 minds of believers, has its own answer in 
 the experience of Protestantism regarding 
 the exercise of the right of the individual 
 interpretation of Scripture. What are the 
 many divisions and sub-divisions of Protest- 
 antism, which constantly point the moral 
 for the advocates of an infallible Papacy, 
 but the outgrowth of the different interpre- 
 tations of Scripture, or the over-emphasis, 
 as in the case of the Papacy itself, upon some 
 one text of Scripture ? As Protestants we 
 believe that on the whole the liberty of pri- 
 vate interpretation has been profitable to 
 religion in spite of the temporary cost to the 
 unity of the Church. The temporary cost, 
 I say, for it is a most significant fact that 
 the historical criticism of the Bible, in break- 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 ing down the literalism of denominational 
 beliefs, has contributed more than any one 
 cause toward the recent advance in Chris- 
 tian unity. A Bible set free from the last 
 bondage to literalism, no longer the bulwark 
 of divisive ecclesiastical dogmas, but now 
 become the simple and natural vehicle for 
 the supreme revelation of God to men, has 
 already begun its great constructive work 
 in the Church, of which the chief sign is the 
 growing concentration of faith among Chris- 
 tian believers. The first result of this intel- 
 lectual revival of Christianity has been the 
 apprehension of Christianity in its whole- 
 ness. It has brought out the one aim and 
 purpose of the Bible in true proportion. 
 The separating tenets of the sects have been 
 relegated to their proper place. The belief 
 which makes a man a Christian has been 
 magnified above any or all beliefs which 
 make him this or that kind of a Christian. 
 Here lies a most appreciable gain to faith. 
 
 21 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 The new conception of the Bible is giving 
 a new conception of Christianity, larger, 
 simpler, and more unifying. Incidentally, 
 it is very much to have gained a Bible which 
 can be held in complete harmony with the 
 principles of Protestantism, open at every 
 point to fearless but reverent inquiry; but 
 the essential gain to faith, and therefore to 
 the spiritual authority of the Church, lies in 
 the change of emphasis from the external 
 to the internal authority of the Bible. It is 
 the spirit of the Bible reaching complete ex- 
 pression in the person, teachings, work, and 
 sacrifice of Christ, that is becoming the rule 
 of Christian faith and practice, displacing 
 the rule of that literalism, which, by giving 
 equal authority to all parts of Scripture, neu- 
 tralized in so large degree the authority of 
 Scripture as a whole. As Dr. George A. Gor- 
 don has recently remarked with much signi- 
 ficance, " When Jesus comes into history a 
 new perspective of the Bible is needed." 
 a2 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 Another gain to faith, contributing per- 
 haps more directly to spiritual authority, is 
 to be seen in the growing realization of 
 Christian unity throughout Protestantism, 
 and even throughout Christendom. For the 
 first time for centuries multitudes of Chris- 
 tians, irrespective of any local designation, 
 really believe and feel that the Church is 
 nothing less, to borrov;r the inspiring saying 
 of Erasmus, than " the congregation of all 
 men throughout the whole world who agree 
 in the fiaith of the Gospel." So far as the 
 sense of this universal fellowship obtains, 
 there goes with it the consciousness of spir- 
 itual power. The ordinary speech or action 
 of the individual believer, in whom this new 
 consciousness is dominant, rises into the 
 dignity and repose of spiritual authority. 
 
 There is an authority, far greater at times, 
 
 born out of an entirely different experience. 
 
 The individual, standing, so far as he knows, 
 
 absolutely alone, conscious only of his iso- 
 
 23 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 lation in his testimony to some compelling 
 truth, may stand for the highest type of au- 
 thority. Most of the authoritative move- 
 ments of the Church have had their origin 
 in these individual and isolated experiences. 
 Gradually the contagion of some steadfast 
 witness to an unrecognized truth has created 
 a witness-bearing body of believers. Many 
 of the protesting Christian communions 
 arose in this way. But when a protesting 
 truth has been acknowledged, and has found 
 acceptance according to its value, the pro- 
 test has fulfilled its office. It then becomes 
 untimely and therefore ineffective. The 
 spiritual equivalent of the protest can then 
 be found only in a deeper and more vital 
 grasp upon the common faith. 
 
 Whatever occasion may arise in the im- 
 mediate future requiring the protest in the 
 service of truth, it seems to be clear that 
 spiritual authority now lies, not in the iso- 
 lated and unacknowledged truth calling for 
 M 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 witnesses, but in the fundamental and uni- 
 versal truth of Christianity to be appre- 
 hended more seriously and joyfully under 
 the consenting fellowship of "all men 
 throughout the whole world who agree in 
 the faith of the Gospel.'' The danger of 
 insincerity and formality lies to-day in the 
 narrowness of dissent or in the pride of ar- 
 rogant assumption. Every distinctive body 
 of Christians may be allowed and expected 
 to remain loyal to its own traditions, but the 
 grand loyalty, to be demanded of all alike, 
 is loyalty to that conception of Christianity 
 which can be realized and exemplified only 
 in a vital Christian unity. 
 
 Reference has been made to the effect of 
 the historical criticism of the Bible in break- 
 ing down the barriers which have been 
 created and maintained under the rule of 
 literalism. Its effect in this regard cannot 
 be overestimated. But criticism, it is to be 
 remembered, is altogether an intellectual 
 
 ^5 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 process. The immediate results are de- 
 structive. Sometimes the process seems to 
 be over-destructive. Doubtless the histori- 
 cal criticism of the Bible seemed at first to 
 many to be needlessly destructive, and its 
 results too far negative. The positive side 
 of its work appeared later, as has been in- 
 timated, in opening the larger view from 
 the Scriptures and in revealing the essen- 
 tial truth which they set forth in right pro- 
 portion to its environment. But neither the 
 removal of barriers, nor the enlargement 
 of view caused by the new understanding 
 of the Scriptures, can fully explain the sud- 
 den and swift tendencies in all the churches 
 toward unity. The " flowing together " of 
 heretofore separate currents of religious life 
 is the most striking phenomenon in the re- 
 ligious world of to-day. There seems to be 
 no limit to the practical combinations which 
 are being effected between the different de- 
 nominations. The spirit of cooperation is 
 26 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 becoming the dominant spirit in the conduct 
 of missions at home and abroad — more 
 marked even abroad than at home. Very 
 significant in this respect was the recent 
 World Missionary Conference at Edin- 
 burgh, made up of twelve hundred delegates 
 from all the Protestant missionary bodies in 
 the world, speaking and working in perfect 
 harmony in a ten days' session, and conclud- 
 ing with the appointment of a Continuation 
 Committee to carry out so far as practical 
 the suggestions of the Conference, and to 
 prepare at the fitting time for another like 
 gathering. " Perhaps the greatest and most 
 comprehensive impression," said Dr. Arthur 
 H. Smith, the missionary statesman of China, 
 in reviewingthe Conference, "was the open- 
 ing and steadily expanding vision of a pos- 
 sible reunited Christendom which many of 
 us have perhaps been unconsciously rele- 
 gating to the spaces of eternity." 
 
 The sermon of Bishop Brent of the Phil- 
 ay 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 ippines in Westminster Abbey soon after 
 the meeting at Edinburgh was equally sig- 
 nificant as giving a glimpse of the unifying 
 sentiment which is at work in the Anglican 
 Communion. In discussing relative spiritual 
 values from the perspective of missionary 
 service in the Philippines, he made the fol- 
 lowing contrast: "To one coming as I do 
 from the vast Orient, where great questions 
 compel our whole attention, questions which 
 threaten our very existence, the matter of 
 ritual seems a very subsidiary affair. There 
 are two classes of people in the world, those 
 who gesticulate and those who do not. It 
 is largely a matter of temperament — those 
 who gesticulate are the ritualists, those who 
 do not are the non-ritualists. The subject 
 is unworthy of much attention. Fairness 
 recognizes that the City of God is a city of 
 magnificent distances. Its height and length 
 and breadth are the same — limitless ; in it 
 are great extremes, not contradictory, but 
 28 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 complementary. He who lives at one ex- 
 treme reaches his largest liberty when he 
 can visit the opposite extreme without los- 
 ing his way. If, however, he goes only with 
 abuse on his lips and missiles in his hand, 
 in God's name let him keep to his own cor- 
 ner of the city. It is not safe for himself 
 or others to walk abroad. The beauty and 
 proportion of the city are spoiled when you 
 narrow its boundaries. It is of the essence 
 of unfairness to read out of the city a fellow 
 citizen because he lives in a distant street 
 with which you are not acquainted." 
 
 It may seem too impracticable a matter 
 for notice to refer to the incorporation of 
 the " Christian Unity Foundation," having 
 for its ultimate aim the formal union of all 
 Christians throughout the world — of the 
 Protestant Churches, of the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church, and of the Greek Church. But 
 who knows how to measure those yearnings 
 and anticipations which so often precede 
 29 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 the change of the impossible into the pos- 
 sible? The plain fact is that there is a 
 growing expectation at the heart of Chris- 
 tendom in regard to the unity of the visible 
 Church. Formal and structural unity may 
 not be desirable. The unity of mutual re- 
 cognition and of cooperation between all 
 parts of the Church may be the better re- 
 sult. But the end sought for is coming to 
 be more than a sentiment. There is a glow- 
 ing belief, rising at times to a prophetic 
 sense, that the Church has arrived in the 
 order of truth at the understanding and de- 
 claration of the truth of the Kingdom of 
 God. This belief, in so far as it is enter- 
 tained, is giving to the Church of to-day the 
 consciousness of its place in the historic 
 succession. The full realization of this be- 
 lief would give the Church a place beside 
 the Church of the Reformation, or of any 
 earlier distinguishing period. For the ac- 
 ceptance of each new truth in the divine 
 30 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 ordering carries with it the exercise of the 
 appropriate Christian virtue. In the order 
 of the great Christian virtues, — faith, hope, 
 and love, — it is the last which awaits an 
 exemplification like that which attended 
 the experience of hope in the early Church, 
 or the experience of faith in the Church of 
 the Reformation. 
 
 A still greater gain to faith, in the way 
 of spiritual authority, is to be found in the 
 more intimate relation of Christian thought 
 to the person of Christ. In referring to the 
 present relation of Christian thought to 
 Christ as more intimate, I do not affirm 
 that it is clearer or better defined. In many 
 respects it is distinctly less clear and well 
 defined. The more modern conception of 
 Christ lacks altogether the definiteness of 
 the metaphysical statements in regard to his 
 person. The language in which nearly all 
 modern writers on the person of Christ 
 take refuge is — " The uniqueness of Jesus " ; 
 
 31 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 a very indefinite, and for any of the really 
 defining uses of speech a most unsatisfac- 
 tory term. But in the very indefiniteness of 
 the term, as it has come into common use, 
 one may detect the present effort of faith 
 to detach the thought of Christ from the 
 formal and rigid abstractions of the early 
 creeds, and to make him more accessible 
 to those who would think of him in per- 
 sonal terms, each in his own way and ac- 
 cording to his own desires. No one who 
 compares the synoptic gospels with the 
 Pauline epistles can deny the Christian lib- 
 erty of idealizing the person of Jesus. In- 
 spired though the idealization of Paul may 
 have been, it is none the less the expression 
 of his own personal need, trust, love, and 
 devotion, — in fact, it covers the whole 
 range of his quickened imagination and 
 emotions. The greater Christian souls in 
 succeeding ages have taken the like liberty. 
 Each of the more vital Christian ages has 
 32 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 had in a very real sense its own Christ. 
 Some have tried to put their Christ into 
 their creeds, others into their prayers and 
 hymns. Whatever has seemed most true, 
 most necessary, most to be believed in, or 
 to be hoped for, in God, most to be longed 
 after and striven for by man, has been, ac- 
 cording to the varying spiritual standards 
 of the time, set forth in the vision of Christ. 
 The vision may at times have been dis- 
 torted, but it has always reflected the best 
 there was at every time in the struggles and 
 hopes of humanity. 
 
 According to this liberty of idealization 
 as applied to the person of Christ, much of 
 the present thought about him is employed 
 in the transfiguration of his humanity. To 
 many, standing in this transfigured presence, 
 the lines between the human and the divine 
 soften and fade away. The perfect human- 
 ity of Jesus becomes the complete expres- 
 sion of his divinity. To such minds also the 
 
 33 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 humanity of Jesus becomes the assurance 
 and the guarantee of the divine in man. 
 Then we, too, are the sons of God. 
 
 In interpreting this conception of Christ 
 it is not necessary to accept its limita- 
 tions, or to adopt the logic of its conclusion. 
 Back of every really Christian conception 
 of Christ there are always vast reserves of 
 faith. The faith of our age draws, far more 
 than it is conscious to itself of drawing, upon 
 the faith of all the ages. I have listened to 
 sermons on the human Christ couched in 
 the language of reverent homage or of pas- 
 sionate adoration, as if inspired by the the- 
 ology of the Nicene Creed, or by the mys- 
 ticism of the mediaeval church. Logically 
 the premise did not seem to carry so high 
 a conclusion. When Harnack says, as re- 
 ported by Professor Evans in the " Congre- 
 gationalist" of September 3, 1910, "If we 
 hold fast unconditionally that Jesus was a 
 man, it remains true that God has made this 
 34 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 Jesus Lord and Christ for mankind, and 
 that faith in him has created and still cre- 
 ates sons of God," there are many Christians 
 who would prefer to read the title to their 
 sonship in a closer relation to God. An 
 earlier statement of Richard H. Hutton, 
 then editor of " The Spectator," is in this 
 regard more assuring. " We are told by it 
 (the Incarnation) something of God's abso- 
 lute and essential nature, something which 
 does not merely describe what he is to us, 
 but what He is in Himself. If Christ is the 
 eternal son of God, God is indeed and in 
 essence a Father; the social nature, the 
 spring of love, is of the very essence of the 
 eternal being; the communication of his 
 life, the reciprocation of his affection dates 
 from beyond time, belongs, in other words, 
 to the very being of God." . . . [This truth] 
 " is first proclaimed to us to save us from 
 sin, strengthen us in frailty, and lift us above 
 ourselves; but it could not do this as it does, 
 
 35 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 did we not know that God was, and his 
 love was, and his fatherly life was, apart 
 from man, and that it is a reality infinitely 
 deeper and vaster than the existence of his 
 human children." ' We are, that is, sons of 
 God, not because of a relation of fatherhood 
 established in our behalf, but because the 
 relation always existed in Him, to be made 
 known to us by Jesus Christ, by whom also 
 it was to be made available for us, even in 
 our sin. 
 
 But who may question the logic of devo- 
 tion, or measure its carrying power into the 
 regions of faith ? The faith in Christ which 
 is born out of present conditions is not largely 
 metaphysical, much less controversial, but 
 rather interpretative, and all the more real 
 because unconsciously interpretative of the 
 feeling of humanity toward him. It is the 
 spontaneous tribute of that humanity which 
 
 * Richard Holt Hutton, The Incarnation and Principles 
 of Evidence^ pp. 29, 37. Pott & Amery. (1871.) 
 
 36 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 has been created in and through him dur- 
 ing the Christian centuries. If humanity 
 finds itself nearer to God, so that the deep- 
 est sense of the human reaches more and 
 more into the consciousness of a divine ca- 
 pacity, it is Christ who is recognized as the 
 inspirer of this far-reaching consciousness. 
 Hence the ardor and glow of the new faith, 
 and above all its contagious loyalty. Its au- 
 thority lies not in definitions of the nature 
 of Christ, nor in logical deductions from the 
 Scriptures concerning his person, but in the 
 interpretation of the feelings of men toward 
 him, their desire to honor him, to obey him 
 as master, to follow him as leader, to fight 
 his battles with unrighteousness and sin, to 
 take part in the establishment of his king- 
 dom on the earth. 
 
 If there is a growing insistence upon the 
 humanity of Christ in the practical faith of 
 the Church, it is because men find them- 
 selves drawing near to him under the ur- 
 
 37 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 gent incentives of human needs, both per- 
 sonal and social, and because their ideals of 
 service have no satisfying realization short 
 of his sacrifice. And if in like manner in- 
 sistence is placed upon the humanity of 
 Christ in any attempt to define his nature, 
 to reconstruct the doctrine of his person, it 
 is because men think they see in him the 
 perfect oneness of the human and the di- 
 vine. In no sense is the conception of Christ 
 most characteristic of modern thought or 
 faith, a revival, either by intention or in 
 spirit, of any merely humanistic theories of 
 his person which have had their day in past 
 theological controversies. That view of him 
 rather has been fixed upon which seems to 
 reveal him in his nearness to men, which 
 invites intimacy in the diviner forms of ser- 
 vice, and which best accords with the Chris- 
 tian optimism of humanity concerning its 
 own future on the earth. Whatever may 
 prove to be the shortcomings of this con- 
 
 38 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 ception of Christ, these are not to be found 
 in the spirit and purpose which animate 
 those who hold it. Its spiritual authority 
 lies in the sincerity in which it is held, and 
 in the increasing response which it awakens 
 among all who have at heart the saving of 
 their fellow men. 
 
 A bold exception to the otherwise univer- 
 sal feeling throughout Christendom toward 
 Christ must be noted in the rising cult domi- 
 nated by the philosophy of Nietzsche and 
 his disciples. Its attack upon Christianity 
 is original, in that it is an attack upon hu- 
 manity as interpreted by modern demo- 
 cracy. Christianity is a "curse" because it 
 takes sides with the underpart of humanity. 
 That were better eliminated. Sympathy, 
 charity, pity are obstructive virtues in the 
 progress of the race. The average man de- 
 lays the coming of the superman, the sur- 
 vivor in the struggle for existence, the goal 
 of mankind. The Christ of humanity is the 
 39 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH . 
 
 chief hindrance to progress, because he 
 haunts the world with the idea of saving 
 men, and so burdens the race with the mul- 
 titude who, for the final result, were better 
 unsaved. This is an absolutely fair attack 
 upon Christianity and logical to the last de- 
 gree. It reaches to the heart of the whole 
 issue in which the future of Christianity is 
 involved, passing by all questions about the 
 authenticity of its sources, all questions of 
 Christian theology, all questions about the 
 person of Christ. It aims at the spirit of 
 Christianity. Its contention is with those 
 who believe that this spirit was embodied 
 in Jesus of Nazareth, and who in his name 
 do their saving work in humanity. The 
 various tenets of the Christian faith are not 
 matters of interest. 
 
 It is refreshing to have the issues con- 
 cerning Christianity thus set forth and de- 
 fined. Here is the real issue. The defiance 
 of this philosophy, its very blasphemies (in 
 40 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 the ears of Christian believers) can be par- 
 doned to its clearness, directness, and cour- 
 age. It is so definite and practical that it 
 can be understood by workingmen at their 
 tasks as easily as by the " intellectuals." In- 
 deed, it is the basis of a recent discussion 
 between two writers on the staff of two pop- 
 ular newspapers — the one a socialist, the 
 other an individualist. The philosophy of 
 Nietzsche in interpreting itself gives the 
 best possible interpretation of present-day 
 Christianity. It sweeps the ground of minor 
 issues, and makes perfectly clear what it 
 now means to be " with " Christ or " against " 
 him. 
 
 A further gain to faith, not directly as 
 a source of authority, but of more value 
 as vitalizing the religious atmosphere, is 
 the new sense of the reality of a spiritual 
 world. The reaction from materialism has 
 been positive as well as negative. The 
 lesser reaction is seen in disappointment, 
 41 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 dissatisfaction, and disgust with its moral 
 results. The greater reaction is beginning 
 to be seen in a revaluation of the things of 
 the spirit. Another psychology on deeper 
 foundations and with vastly broader range 
 is in the process of development. It is not 
 too much to say that the study of mental 
 and spiritual phenomena divides the field 
 of academic interest and research with the 
 study of physical phenomena. Physical sci- 
 ence itself can no longer be quoted, if indeed 
 it has ever been rightly quoted, in support 
 of a purely materialistic conception of the 
 universe. The authority of the senses has 
 been strictly delimited to the field within 
 which the senses can act. This limitation 
 of the range of the senses was brought out 
 very vividly in the simile introduced by Sir 
 Oliver Lodge in his address before the Brit- 
 ish Association at its recent meeting at 
 Sheffield. Materialist man was his simile; 
 indeed, all men in a greater or less degree 
 42 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 might be compared to a dog in a picture 
 gallery. The dog lacked the power to see 
 the more important of the truths presented 
 to his eyes. He could investigate but not 
 appreciate what was before him. " It was 
 through our senses," said the speaker, " that 
 we became aware of the universe. But they 
 also limited us and determined the kind of 
 information that we received. We often for- 
 got that. We thought we saw the universe 
 in the only possible way it could be known. 
 If we had other senses the universe would 
 look quite different. Our senses happened 
 to tell us about matter. Imagine beings 
 whose senses told them about ether, and ig- 
 nored matter. Their point of view would be 
 quite different, and their statements incon- 
 sistent with ours. Yet both would be true 
 as far as they went." 
 
 Here is a pretty wide and clear open- 
 ing for the faith of the mystics. Keble 
 does not venture far within when he sings 
 43 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 (with the change of but a word in his 
 lines), — 
 
 Two worlds are ours : *t is only (sense) 
 Forbids us to descry 
 The mystic heaven and earth within 
 Plain as the sea and sky. 
 
 Much of the best philosophic thought in 
 the interpretation of spiritual phenomena is 
 becoming positive and far reaching. " The 
 world interpreted religiously," says Wil- 
 liam James, " is not the materialistic world 
 over again, with an altered expression : it 
 must have over and above the altered ex- 
 pression a natural constitution different at 
 some point from that which a materialistic 
 world would have. It must be such that dif- 
 ferent events can be expected in it, differ- 
 ent conduct must be required. . . . The 
 whole drift of my education goes to per- 
 suade me that the world of our present con- 
 sciousness is only one out of many worlds 
 of consciousness that exist, and that those 
 44 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 other worlds must contain experiences 
 which have a meaning for our life also: 
 and that although in the main their experi- 
 ences and those of this world keep discrete, 
 yet the two become contiguous at certain 
 points, and higher energies filter in. By 
 being faithful in my poor measure to this 
 one belief, I seem to myself to keep more 
 sane and true. I can of course put myself 
 into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and 
 imagine vividly that the world of sensations 
 and of scientific laws and objects may be all. 
 But whenever I do this, I hear that inward 
 monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, 
 whispering the word 'bosh'! Assuredly 
 the real world is of a different temperament 
 — more intricately built than physical sci- 
 ence allows." ' 
 
 "The world interpreted religiously . . . 
 must be such that different events can be 
 
 * William James, The Varieties of Religious Experiences 
 pp. 578-579. 
 
 45 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 expected in it, different conduct required." 
 In this pregnant sentence lies the germ of 
 a rational belief in miracles. The religious 
 interpretation of the world does not mean 
 a blind resort to a vague supernaturalism. 
 Who can measure the elasticity of nature? 
 Who will dare deny room for the natural 
 operation of forces which elude the ordi- 
 nary watch of the senses ? Who will dare 
 deny the natural operation of hidden forces 
 which may at times come out into the open 
 and declare themselves to the senses? 
 Doubtless the miracle would be of little ad- 
 vantage to-day to faith. In the judgment of 
 Jesus its evidential value, even in his time, 
 was of secondary account. The proof of 
 himself was in himself. "Believe me that I 
 am in the Father and the Father in me — or 
 else believe me for the very works' sake." 
 But he did not hesitate to put forth "mighty 
 works " when that kind of working seemed 
 the more intensely natural to the men of his 
 
 46 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 time, and therefore more convincing. Be- 
 cause " our senses happen to tell us about 
 matter" more acutely than has ever been 
 the case in the experience of man, shall we 
 make their specialized use in this direction 
 the test of any past or future action to which 
 they may have been or may yet be trained? 
 Are we commissioned because of our expert 
 knowledge of matter to standardize the re- 
 lation of the material to the spiritual world ? 
 Will the ages of greater spiritual enlighten- 
 ment which are yet to come acknowledge 
 this age of the highest known material de- 
 velopment as the age of spiritual authority? 
 In other words, is this the age to settle once 
 for all the question of miracles ? 
 
 These questions are pertinent to our dis- 
 cussion, and yet in asking them I am con- 
 scious that they do not fairly represent the 
 underlying and emerging spirit of our time. 
 That I believe to be rising toward the 
 religious interpretation of the world. It is 
 
 47 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 wonderful how quickly and how efficiently 
 the spirit in man asserts itself against any 
 and all materialistic interpretations of the 
 universe. Man has never allowed any usurp- 
 ation of his place in the order of the world. 
 Whether after the manner of the East he 
 withdraws himself from matter, when it 
 would overcome him, holding himself su- 
 perior and apart, or after the manner of the 
 West, upon every accession of material 
 force he straightway proceeds to subju- 
 gate and control, it is still the same spirit 
 asserting itself in superiority or in mastery. 
 There is, however, another manifestation 
 of the spirit in man in its attitude toward 
 the material world, quite different from the 
 contempt of the East or the utilitarianism 
 of the West, namely, its ability to make it- 
 self at home in an enlarging physical uni- 
 verse. Something of this appeared when 
 modern astronomy revealed a new relation 
 of man to the universe of space, but for that 
 
 48 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 revelation the mind of man had been reason- 
 ably prepared. Day after day, and night after 
 night, he had been apprised of other worlds. 
 The theory of evolution set forth a new re- 
 lation of man to the universe of time. This 
 revelation came as a surprise to all, and as a 
 shock to many. The average mind had not 
 been prepared for this story of ages upon 
 ages in the making of the earth, and in the 
 development of life upon its surface, much 
 less for the tremendous conclusions drawn 
 from it affecting man himself. The opening 
 of an illimitable past in the life of the earth 
 was a far more appreciable and bewildering 
 extension of man's environment than any 
 previous enlargement of the physical uni- 
 verse had been. It seemed to let the human 
 mind into the inmost secrets of the working 
 of the Almighty. Nothing in the vastness 
 of the creative plan ever produced so great 
 a moral effect as the new knowledge of the 
 minuteness, the orderliness, the infinite pa- 
 49 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 tience involved in the method of procedure 
 in the development of life on the earth. Re- 
 ligious thought passed through the succes- 
 sive stages of confusion, antagonism, and 
 reflection into a serious investigation of the 
 actual, phenomena of life, especially of the 
 relation of the spiritual in man to the phy- 
 sical; with the final result, already inti- 
 mated, of the assertion of man's spiritual 
 supremacy. The religious mind has become 
 naturalized in this larger world of time, and 
 finds itself more at home in it than it could 
 ever have hoped to be in the universe of 
 space; for that could only proclaim the 
 power and glory of a transcendent God, 
 while this reveals the nearness, the patience, 
 the forethought of the immanent God. 
 
 In setting forth the gains to Christian 
 faith from the present intellectual revival in 
 Christianity, there has been no intimation 
 that these gains are to be understood as re- 
 constituting Christianity. Christianity has 
 
 SO 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 never been made over by any generation, 
 not even by that which gave us the Re- 
 formation. The unchanging truth at the 
 heart of it is always vastly more essential 
 and significant than any of those changes in 
 the apprehension of it which come through 
 the necessary readjustment of the intel- 
 lectual faith of the Church to the more en- 
 lightened reason. Nothing is more to be 
 deprecated than such a term as the " New 
 Religion," when reference is thereby meant 
 to some special development or application 
 of Christianity. Christianity came into the 
 world once for all, a new but abiding spir- 
 itual power, making itself known through 
 its revelation of God and its interpretation of 
 humanity, and making itself felt through its 
 sacrificial attitude toward the human race. 
 The spirit of Christianity is not an improv- 
 able quality judged by any known ethical or 
 spiritual standards. The Church has not yet 
 realized, in faith or in practice, the meaning 
 
 51 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 of its revelation of God, or of its interpre- 
 tation of man. We have learned by expe- 
 riences, both bitter and joyful, through our 
 denial of it and through our acceptance of 
 it, that there is but one way to the heart of 
 the world, — the way of the cross. 
 
 Neither is it to be inferred from the in- 
 sistence which has been placed upon the re- 
 sults of the intellectual revival in Christian- 
 ity that these results will have a sufficient 
 outcome and expression in some Christian 
 Apologetic. Such an outcome, if at all com- 
 parable with some of the Apologies of other 
 times, would indeed be welcome, but it is 
 not necessary and would not in itself be suf- 
 ficient. The larger and sufficient outcome 
 must appear in spiritual authority; and spir- 
 itual authority makes its appeal, not only to 
 the reason, but to the whole man. Reason 
 always has the right to block the way of au- 
 thority when authority becomes unreason- 
 able. It would be a sad anomaly if truth 
 
 52 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 could prevail against reason ; prevail, that is, 
 against one of its chosen instruments. On the 
 other hand, spiritual truth can never make 
 headway through the reason alone. Reason 
 rightly demands satisfaction, and satisfaction 
 includes quickening and inspiration. When 
 this high end has been accomplished, reli- 
 gion is prepared to assert its authority over 
 the conscience and the emotions, — the two 
 constants in the moral objective of Chris- 
 tianity. When once Christianity has been 
 set free (this is the not infrequent intellect- 
 ual task of faith) from the bondage of liter- 
 alism, from the narrowness of the divisions 
 and sub-divisions of the Church, from the 
 unrealities of a merely traditional belief, and 
 above all, from the benumbing influence of 
 materialism in any of its subtle forms; and 
 when once the Church has been brought 
 back (this also is the intellectual task of 
 faith) to the clear apprehension of the un- 
 changeable spirit of Christianity, of its abid- 
 53 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 ing truth, and of its unalterable method — 
 then the ministry of spiritual authority has 
 free exercise among men. If the intellectual 
 faith of the Church, or better, its apprehen- 
 sion of Christianity, is clear, convincing, 
 satisfying, stimulating to the Church itself 
 and really Christianizing, there is little need 
 of reasoning with the world. The world is 
 ready at any time for the application of real 
 Christianity. The getting ready, so far as 
 this is an intellectual process, belongs to 
 the Church in its own behalf, far more than 
 in respect to the world. 
 
 The authority of the Church has, of 
 course, its direct and immediate objective 
 in the conscience. Nothing vital is reached 
 until that is reached. Authority is not es- 
 tablished until it is established in the moral 
 sense. Due account must be taken of the fact 
 that the moral sense of men, both in individ- 
 uals and in communities, is constantly under 
 appeal from other sources than the Church, 
 54 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 and quite apart from the incentives or sanc- 
 tions of religion. There are times, for exam- 
 ple, when the press is as strenuous in its 
 moral appeals as the pulpit, but with this dif- 
 ference. The press is for the most part im- 
 personal, the pulpit is altogether personal. 
 Personality plays an important part in moral 
 appeal, not so much because of the voice, 
 and eye, and presence of the speaker, as be- 
 cause of the opportunity to identify and ver- 
 ify the appeal. Who makes the appeal, and 
 in whose interest? What are the motives ? 
 A journal of thoroughly established consist- 
 ency, even if the management is not known 
 personally, may have great moral influence; 
 but if there is a suspicion regarding any 
 journal that it is insincere, or " interested," 
 in its advocacy of a moral cause, its influ- 
 ence is next to naught. It is not simply the 
 question of what is said, but of who says it. 
 The press is fast coming under the rule 
 which Aristotle laid down for the orator, — 
 
 55 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 "Your influence over your hearers will 
 depend upon what your hearers think of 
 you." 
 
 The far greater difference, however, be- 
 tween the moral appeal from the Church 
 and any like appeal from other sources 
 lies in the fact that the moral objective it- 
 self is really different. It is one thing to 
 arouse public sentiment; it is quite another 
 thing to awaken the personal sense of sin, 
 or even the personal sense of duty. To in- 
 dividualize, if need be to isolate the con- 
 science, to bring the soul into the presence 
 of God, to make men feel, each for him- 
 self, as William James says for us all, that 
 "we and God have business with each 
 other," is the moral prerogative of religion. 
 It is only from within the Church that a 
 Tertullian can say, " Soul, stand thou forth 
 in the midst. I summon thee, not such as 
 when found in the schools, trained in the 
 libraries, nurtured in the academies and 
 
 56 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 porches of Athens. I address thee as sim- 
 ple, such as they have who have nothing 
 but thee, the very and entire thing that thou 
 art in the cross-roads, in the public squares, 
 in the shops of the artisans. I demand of 
 thee those truths which thou hast of thyself 
 carried with thee into man, which thou hast 
 learned to know either from thyself or from 
 the author of thy being." ' 
 
 It is a fair and necessary question to ask 
 whether we have not reached the limit in 
 our advance toward public righteousness, 
 without the support of a corresponding ad- 
 vance in personal religion. Why so frequent 
 relapses in moral reform ? Why does the evil 
 suppressed at one point find vent so easily 
 at another ? Why do " we the people " study 
 so carefully the evasion of the laws which 
 we enact, or neutralize their spirit in the 
 keeping of them? Why does the conscience 
 of the city or of the nation apparently de- 
 
 * Works of Tertullian, De Testimonio Animae^ chapter i, 
 
 57 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 cline in sensitiveness and might with the 
 increase of numbers ? These are questions 
 which have no answer short of a moral 
 reckoning with ourselves as individuals, as 
 moral units in the community, or corpora- 
 tion, or state. It is doubtful if the Church 
 ever had a more open or acknowledged 
 opportunity for the assertion of moral au- 
 thority, or for a more direct advance toward 
 its moral objective in the consciences of 
 men. If the Church can once again teach 
 men how to repent, the nation will evidently 
 enough reap the fruits of their repentance. 
 Public corruption will visibly diminish, as 
 men, semi-righteous men, withdraw from it 
 the support of their personal cooperation 
 or indifference. Who doubts for a moment 
 that if the membership of the Church of 
 Christ in this country were seriously and 
 sensitively honest, our cities and the nation 
 itself would be at least safe from corrup- 
 tion ? All honor to the men who are fight- 
 
 58 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 ing the battles of righteousness from within 
 or from without the Church. But after all, 
 so far as the Church is concerned, is it the 
 Church militant which can do the present 
 business quite so thoroughly as the Church 
 uncorruptible, undefiled, " unspotted from 
 the world"? 
 
 Concerning the other constant, to which 
 I have referred as the moral objective of 
 the Church in the exercise of its spiritual 
 authority, namely, the emotions, we cannot 
 remind ourselves too often or too urgently 
 that the truths of Christianity were de- 
 signed to be felt. Christianity is written in 
 the language of the great emotions. It is 
 the story of the forgiveness, compassion, 
 patience, and sacrificial love of God finding 
 response in the gratitude, devotion, trust, 
 and sacrificial love of the human heart. 
 The generations which have not been pro- 
 foundly moved by the distinctive Christian 
 truths have not been profoundly Christian. 
 59 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 The greatest danger to Christianity, espe- 
 cially in times of intellectual awakening, is 
 that it may become what Dr. Jowett calls 
 a " dry religion." As against such a dan- 
 ger the risks from the more emotional faiths 
 are hardly worthy of mention. The almost 
 inevitable tendency of a religion untouched 
 by emotion is toward complacency, — com- 
 placency in respect to the conventional 
 virtues, or in respect to good deeds of dif- 
 ferent sorts, or in respect to superiority in 
 matters of belief. It is hard to reach a true 
 and abiding humility except through the 
 deeper experiences of the soul. 
 
 The evangelical note is never absent from 
 the real message of Christianity. Christian- 
 ity always wants to be a gospel. It seeks to 
 " find " every man in his need. Very few 
 sail over the many depths of life without 
 going down into some of them — the depth 
 of loneliness, of temptation, of disappoint- 
 ment, of moral weakness, of the sense of 
 60 
 
MINISTRY OF SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 
 
 sin. These escaped, there remains to every 
 man the inevitable catastrophe. From the 
 first struggle of the soul with things which 
 are to be resisted to the final surrender to 
 the inevitable, man needs God, and he may 
 at any moment be apprised of the fact. 
 Christianity is not simply a religion for 
 moral and spiritual emergencies; but if it 
 were not that, always that, and known to 
 be such, it would be too scant and weak a 
 religion for the human race. 
 
 The contagious element in religion lies 
 in the emotions. When religion is not con- 
 tagious it is not thoroughly at work. In the 
 spiritual world the terms of the physical 
 life may be reversed. Contagion is the sign 
 of health. Religion is in a normal stage in 
 any community when it is in the contagious 
 stage. Its vitality is greatest when it over- 
 leaps all obstructions, and spreads its "sav- 
 ing health" among the nations. The su- 
 preme test of the vitality of the Church, the 
 6i 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 supreme measure of its spiritual authority, is 
 found in its missionary attitude. In its deep- 
 est and broadest sense the missionary atti- 
 tude is an emotional attitude. Every man 
 knows the meaning of the love oy the world. 
 That he knows is a matter of the heart. 
 I^ove jTor the world has no meaning that is 
 not in like manner, and to a like degree, a 
 matter of the heart. In the exercise of its 
 spiritual authority, the projective and carry- 
 ing power of the Church lies largely in the 
 depth and breadth of its emotional faith. So 
 Christianity began to spread, and so it has 
 continued to spread. The faith of Paul has 
 been the missionary faith of the Church, 
 and his faith was " logic on fire." 
 
II 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 The ministry of spiritual authority is 
 based upon the apprehension of truth. The 
 ministry of human sympathy is based upon 
 the fellow-feeling with men. Modern so- 
 ciety presents certain alienating conditions 
 under which this ministry of the Church 
 must be exercised. These are of various 
 kinds, as will appear incidentally in the 
 course of the discussion. The most serious 
 alienating condition, however, is one which 
 the Church itself has created. The Church of 
 a great democracy has not kept pace with 
 the growth of the democratic spirit. Natu- 
 rally this condition, because the Church has 
 created it, calls for the especial attention of 
 the Church. It makes it the matter of first 
 concern in the interest of religion that the 
 
 63 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 Church shall recover that contact with the 
 life about it, which it has lost to its own hurt 
 and to the hurt of religion. 
 
 The Christian term for contact is sym- 
 pathy. Sympathy is not pity and it is more 
 than charity. It is the most concrete and 
 sensitive expression of both love and justice. 
 The kind of consideration which it demands 
 of one man in behalf of another is expressed 
 in the personal word, — " Put yourself in his 
 place." It is by far the most difficult of at- 
 tainment of all the outgoing Christian vir- 
 tues. Pity is almost spontaneous, and char- 
 ity in some form and within limits is easily 
 cultivated. But sympathy becomes a hard 
 and reluctant virtue, as any one can dis- 
 cover for himself, when human demands 
 rise above pity or charity. It is easy to feel 
 for, and to act for the man who is down : it 
 is hard to feel with the man who is coming 
 up, especially if he has nearly reached one's 
 own level. Democracy assumes the con- 
 
 64 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 stant and willing exercise of sympathy, sym- 
 pathy for the rising man or the rising class. 
 The poor, the weak, the unaspiring are not 
 necessarily any better off under a demo- 
 cracy than under any other civilized form of 
 society or government. Pity and charity can 
 do their work, leaving the ordinary social 
 classifications undisturbed. But when the 
 ambition to rise begins to take effect, and 
 social discontent becomes widespread, and 
 organized efforts are made to advance, then 
 the demand is for sympathy. If this demand 
 is not met promptly and willingly, the re- 
 sult is alienation, and the creation of a class 
 or classes from below rather than from 
 above. 
 
 The present social fact of most religious 
 significance is the rise of the workingman 
 and his alienation from the Church. Indeed, 
 the rise of the workingman, the organiza- 
 tion of workingmen into a class, and the 
 solidarity of the upward movement;, con- 
 
 6s 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 stitute the most important social, and per- 
 haps political phenomenon of the present 
 day. We are now concerned with the move- 
 ment religiously, for it has become to some 
 a religion, and to many a substitute for 
 religion. All workingmen are by no means 
 socialists. Trade unionism, as originally de- 
 vised and as now generally interpreted, is 
 anti-socialistic in its economic principles. 
 But most workingmen are in sympathy with 
 socialism in its social, and ethical, and semi- 
 religious aims. In so far as socialism offers 
 itself as a substitute for the religion of the 
 Church, it has their sympathy if not their ad- 
 herence. In so far therefore as socialism, in 
 offering itself to workingmen as a substitute 
 for the religion of the Church, wins their 
 sympathy, it ought to receive the careful 
 attention and study of the Church. Far too 
 little thought of any discriminating kind is 
 given by the Church to the religious aspects 
 of socialism, as may be seen by noting two 
 
 ee 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 very common fallacies in the general rea- 
 soning on this subject. 
 
 One fallacy lurks in such reasoning as 
 this: socialism is an economic system; as 
 such it is impracticable; therefore it can 
 have no large influence religiously. 
 
 Socialism is an economic system. It 
 means a definite and complete replacement 
 of any and all existing economic systems. 
 It stands for the substitution of public for 
 private ownership in the means of produc- 
 tion. The economic definition of socialism 
 which has received unquestioned accept- 
 ance is as follows: "To replace the system 
 of private capital by a system of collective 
 capital, that is, by a method of production 
 which would introduce a unified organiza- 
 tion of national labor on the basis of collect- 
 ive or common ownership of the means of 
 production by all the members of society. 
 This collective method of production would 
 remove the present competitive system, by 
 
 67 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 placing under official administration such 
 departments of production as can be man- 
 aged collectively, as well as the distribution 
 among all of the common produce of all, 
 according to the amount and social utility 
 of the productive labor of each." ' The So- 
 cialist Party National Platform (Chicago, 
 May, 1908) declares — "The private own- 
 ership of the land and means of production 
 used for exploitation is the rock upon which 
 class rule is built: political government is 
 its indispensable instrument. The wage- 
 workers cannot be freed from exploitation 
 without conquering the political power and 
 substituting collective for private ownership 
 of the land and means of production used 
 for exploitation." ' 
 
 Government control over certain public 
 utilities, or government ownership of them, 
 
 * Dr. A. Schaffle, T/te Quintessence of Socialism^ pp. 3, 
 4, 3d English and 8th German editions. 
 
 * Cited in Twentietk Century Socialism^ Edmund Kelly, 
 p. 416 (Appendix), 
 
 68 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 so far as it has been attempted, stops far 
 short of socialism. The control or owner- 
 ship, for example, of the means of transport- 
 ation is a very different thing from the direc- 
 tion or ownership of all the means of pro- 
 ductive industry. The productive industries 
 are organized under the initiative, control, 
 and ownership of private capital. Socialism 
 means the reversal of the present process. 
 The ethical reason for socialism is given 
 in the following statement of the theory: 
 " Summarily we may describe it as the 
 doctrine that, whereas the means of pro- 
 duction (capital, with land and raw mate- 
 rial) are as indispensable to every man's 
 existence as his own body, society should 
 secure for all its members an equally free 
 access to them, by disallowing private pro- 
 perty in them. Private property, as it exists, 
 exists solely in virtue of social action, and 
 the motive for that action is social utility. 
 Its aim is to secure for the producer the 
 
 69 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 means of production, so that he who will 
 work may work out his own salvation. 
 Socialists believe this aim to be unrealized, 
 owing to the tendency of capital to con- 
 centration. This tendency divides society 
 into two classes, — a diminishing class who 
 have capital and can work on their own ac- 
 count, and an increasing class who have 
 not, but must sell their services^ capitalists 
 and "proletarians."' 
 
 The economic argument for socialism 
 (collectivism) is based upon the tendency 
 of the present competitive system to over- 
 production. Production stimulated by com- 
 petition, multiplied indefinitely by machin- 
 ery and by the exploitation of labor, creates 
 a surplus of goods constantly demanding 
 new markets, a demand which can be met 
 only by commercial expansion ; which means 
 commercial wars, the support of great navies, 
 
 * R. C. K. Ensor, Modern Socialism as set forth by Social- 
 ists^ 2d edition, pp. xxvii, xxviii. 
 70 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 and increased taxation — all of which re- 
 sults in the enrichment of the few at the 
 expense of labor. The remedy for over-pro- 
 duction is the regulation of the product ac- 
 cording to the wants of those who produce 
 it, the assignment of work to each producer, 
 and the distribution of the product in ratio to 
 the determined value of the work rendered. 
 The practicability of the socialistic 
 scheme is utterly denied by the average 
 business man, as by most students of eco- 
 nomics. Many of the evils complained of 
 under the present system are admitted, but 
 the remedy proposed by collectivism is re- 
 jected, on the ground that the abolition of 
 free competition would take away the chief 
 initiative from business, reducing in time 
 the quality of the product, flattening pro- 
 duction to the level of unstimulated wants; 
 on the ground that assigned labor would 
 become enforced labor, introducing a new 
 and arbitrary type of bondage; and on the 
 71 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 further ground that the scheme would break 
 down in administration, owing to the im- 
 possibility of providing through the State a 
 sufficient number of competent administra- 
 tors free from the taint of personal ambition. 
 To the ordinary business mind the ap- 
 parent impracticability of collectivism set- 
 tles the whole question. But not so to the 
 mind of the socialist. At the point of as- 
 sumed impracticability he takes up the ar- 
 gument and urges it with the ardor of reli- 
 gious faith. The characteristic of religious 
 faith is that it is not daunted by the seem- 
 ingly impracticable. It looks forward to 
 new conditions which it expects to create, 
 under which the impracticable, if right, 
 will become practicable. So the socialist 
 strengthens the argument in his own mind, 
 if that be necessary, by the infusion of 
 faith. To understand socialism one must 
 go beyond the argument for it to the faith 
 of the socialist. " The typical socialist of 
 
 72 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 Germany, France, England, and America, 
 the man or woman who gives his or her en- 
 ergies to educating and organizing and dis- 
 ciplining the wonderful world-wide army, 
 ever growing, ever marching forward, un- 
 dismayed by defeat, sure of ultimate vic- 
 tory, already thirty millions strong — the 
 largest army under a single banner the 
 world has ever seen — this typical worka- 
 day, militant socialist does not look upon 
 himself or herself as a patent medicine 
 vender, but as a John the Baptist proclaim- 
 ing with no uncertain sound the advent of 
 a New Order. Such an army inspired by a 
 common faith, even though the faith be a 
 delusion, animated by a common purpose, 
 even though the purpose be incapable of 
 realization, is a force that you as a practi- 
 cal man must reckon with." ' Such an as- 
 
 > Men vs. the Man : a Correspondence between Robert 
 Rives La Monte, Socialist, and H. L. Mencken, Individual- 
 ist, p. 3. Henry Holt & Co. 
 
 75 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 sertion of the socialistic faith shows the fal- 
 lacy of dismissing socialism as a negligible 
 quantity in its semi-religious influence, be- 
 cause of its impracticability as an economic 
 system. 
 
 Another and somewhat like fallacy lies 
 in the very common way of reasoning 
 about socialism to this effect: The insist- 
 ence of socialism is upon the possession of 
 material goods; but the possession of ma- 
 terial goods is not the aim of religion; there- 
 fore socialism is not worthy of consider- 
 ation in its religious aspects. The reply of 
 the socialist to this reasoning is very defi- 
 nite and concrete. It is the argumentum 
 adkominem. Material good may not be the 
 professed aim of religion, nor its possession 
 the chief object of religious endeavor, but 
 it is the dominating incident in the religious 
 life of to-day. The accumulated wealth of 
 the country is largely in the hands of the 
 membership of the Church. If this vast 
 74 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 possession of material good has no value 
 comparable with the spiritual possessions of 
 the Church, let the Church make this fact 
 clear by the subordination of the material to 
 the spiritual, — by renunciation, self-denial, 
 and sacrifice. If the possession of mate- 
 rial good is fitly incidental to the religious 
 life, and if the struggle for its possession is 
 worthy of the strenuous effort of religious 
 men, then let the Church strive to learn how 
 to share it. If the insistence of socialism 
 upon material good is wrong, the reply con- 
 tinues, the Church ought to rebuke this 
 insistence by its practical indifference to 
 material good. To the degree in which the 
 Church allows the struggle for wealth the 
 contention of socialism is justified, that 
 material good is something to be sought 
 and shared. 
 
 In this reply of the socialist, though it be 
 of the personal sort, one can see the fal- 
 lacy of overlooking the practical behavior 
 
 75 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 of religious men in dealing with the very 
 things upon which other men have equally 
 set their hearts, and, as they believe, for 
 less selfish purposes. When a socialist says 
 that he is willing to share his goods, or that 
 he is willing to submit himself, for the bene- 
 fit of others, to a system which will oblige 
 him to share his goods, he has, if he can be 
 taken at his word, the equivalent of a reli- 
 gious motive, if indeed it be not actually a 
 religious motive. It is evident that the way 
 to neutralize the teachings of socialism is 
 not so much by showing its economic im- 
 practicability, as by showing the moral 
 practicability of the present economic sys- 
 tem. Something is wrong, and therefore 
 unsettled, in a system which does not work 
 well morally, in this instance, with due re- 
 gard to human interests. The Church can- 
 not be satisfied with the gross statistics of 
 national prosperity. Its concern is as much 
 with the distribution of wealth as with the 
 
 76 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 making of it, lest the methods of making it 
 may harbor various sorts of latent injustice. 
 I doubt if the Church can hope to make 
 much headway in its practical interpreta- 
 tion of Christianity among those with whom 
 socialism has become a new form of en- 
 thusiasm for humanity, except through a 
 more sane but equally sincere concern for 
 human interests. 
 
 I have already said that socialism in its 
 economic teachings is not representative of 
 labor. Socialism is a challenge to the pre- 
 sent economic system. Trade unionism is 
 a compromise with it. "The average wage- 
 earner," says John Mitchell, "has made up 
 his mind that he must remain a wage-earner. 
 He has given up the hope of a kingdom to 
 come when he himself will be a capitalist, 
 and he asks that the reward for his work 
 be given to him as a workingman. Singly, 
 he has been too weak to enforce his just 
 demands, and he has sought strength in 
 77 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 union, and has associated himself into labor 
 organizations. . . . There is no necessary 
 hostility between labor and capital. Neither 
 can do without the other: each has evolved 
 from the other. Capital is labor saved and 
 materialized : the power to labor is in itself 
 a form of capital. There is not even a ne- 
 cessary, fundamental antagonism between 
 the laborer and the capitalist." ' 
 
 Beyond the ranks of the socialists and 
 the trade unionists lies the vast unclassified 
 army of workingmen, ranging from the 
 most unskilled laborer to the workman who 
 is in a small way a private capitalist. Prob- 
 ably the majority of this vast body of labor- 
 ers are not in the habit of thinking much 
 about the economic aspects of their work. 
 The one characteristic (the only one with 
 which we are now concerned) common to 
 laborers throughout the country, whether re- 
 presenting organized or unorganized labor, 
 
 ' John Mitchell, Organized Labor^ Preface. 
 
 78 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 is a certain indifiference to the Church, or 
 alienation from it. There are doubtless a 
 good many exaggerated statements current 
 on this subject, which can be refuted by 
 reference to exceptional communities or 
 churches, but it is no exaggeration to say 
 that the Church has lost its hold upon the 
 workingman of the country, and that this 
 loss of influence dates from the rise of the 
 workingman through his own efforts, espe- 
 cially through organization. To the degree 
 in which the workingman has been made 
 conscious of himself, made conscious, that 
 is, of his relative position in society, he has 
 separated himself from the Church. Turn 
 which way we will, this alienation of labor 
 from the Church is the background in the 
 religious prospect. 
 
 In considering the cause or causes for 
 
 this state of affairs, the Church ought to 
 
 be very careful lest it shall aggravate the 
 
 matter by offering excuses. There really is 
 
 79 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH . 
 
 no sufficient excuse for this loss of influence. 
 Showing how it may have happened, or 
 actually did happen, is not showing why it 
 should have happened. The plain fact is 
 that at some time the Church began to lose 
 its influence by neglecting a very essential 
 part of its business, and that since that time 
 it has not been sufficiently earnest in doing 
 this essential part of its business to regain 
 its influence. Of course, it requires far more 
 earnestness to regain influence than it would 
 have required to continue to deserve it. 
 The Church lost contact with the work- 
 ingman by failing to understand him, much 
 more to estimate him, by failing to sym- 
 pathize with his ambition and purpose to rise, 
 and by failing to do what it might have done 
 to make a sufficient place for him in the 
 social order. The Church of a democracy 
 failed in its application of the democratic 
 spirit at the critical time and in the critical 
 place. The early insensitiveness of the 
 80 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 Church to the condition and aims of the 
 workingman, the lack of sympathy — the 
 fellow-feeling — with him, gradually led 
 to a state of feeling on his part varying from 
 indifference to alienation. The situation is 
 now very complicated. Of that there is no 
 question. The practical question is, Has 
 it gotten out of the hands of the Church ? 
 Is it too late to recover it with a view to the 
 best results to all concerned ? 
 
 I believe that the answer to this ques- 
 tion lies almost entirely with the laymen 
 of the Church, with Christian business men. 
 The Church, acting through its authorized 
 agencies, may put itself on record in re- 
 gard to matters of common social concern, 
 and by conference and cooperation with 
 labor organizations may accomplish much 
 in bringing about needed reforms. Individ- 
 ual leaders of the Church, whose course 
 has been consistently wise and courageous, 
 may become more and more influential in 
 8i 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 their relations with the leaders of labor and 
 with the masses. Here and there a minister 
 rightly placed in a labor community, and 
 properly equipped for his task, may change 
 local sentiment by effecting changes in 
 adverse local conditions. But any large and 
 effective movement, looking toward the 
 recovery of the workingman to the Church, 
 must come through those who are in close 
 and responsible relations to him, and ought 
 to originate with them. Of course this im- 
 plies the personal element, but it does not 
 mean that individual action, however sym- 
 pathetic it may be, is sufficient. The situ- 
 ation has long since passed by the stage 
 of paternalism. Business men belong to a 
 system under which no man can act effect- 
 ively alone. In other words, the time has 
 come when those who would seek to re- 
 cover the alienated classes within the ranks 
 of industry must give as much attention to 
 the working of the present general eco- 
 82 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 nomic system, as to the details of their re- 
 spective kinds of business. The technical 
 part of this broader work must be intrusted 
 to experts ; but back of all delegated service 
 there is always the opportunity and the de- 
 mand for a supporting public sentiment in 
 the business world, for organized opinion, 
 at times for collective action. 
 
 It is not altogether a bad sign that many 
 laymen of the Church are growing restive 
 under the prominence given by the pulpit to 
 subjects of social concern. " I go to church," 
 said a distinguished la3^man, as recently re- 
 ported in the daily press, " every Sunday of 
 the year. I go in the expectation of hearing a 
 sermon based on the principles that under- 
 lie our faith. I do not go to hear about po- 
 litical economy or to be instructed in polit- 
 ical principles. I go to have my best feelings 
 improved, and to come away with all that 
 is best in me quickened, so that I may be a 
 better citizen in every respect. I therefore 
 
 83 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 recommend to the churches that when they 
 preach to their people, they remember that 
 the people want religion and lots of it, and 
 not political economy." 
 
 In criticism of this kind there is the plain 
 intimation that the pulpit takes advantage 
 of its position to invade the territory which 
 belongs to business men. " Political Eco- 
 nomy," the layman virtually says, " is not 
 your business, it is mine." Without waiving 
 an}^ of his rights, or without replying merely 
 in the way of retort, why should not the 
 preacher take the layman at his word, ut- 
 tered or implied, and force upon him the 
 natural, and, as things are to-day, the highly 
 significant conclusion, "Make political eco- 
 nomy, with all of its present human compli- 
 cations, your business as a Christian busi- 
 ness man. It is to-day the chief part of the 
 business of Christian business men, business 
 of a vastly higher order than the making of 
 money. In the division of duties which you 
 
 84 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 suggest, here is your duty and your respon- 
 sibility. You belong to the Church as much 
 as the minister, and you represent it more 
 widely and more sensitively than he can 
 possibly represent it. Accept your share 
 of the great Christian obligation, now so 
 clearly defined and so honorable, and fulfill 
 its responsibilities in the name of Christ and 
 his Church." 
 
 I doubt if many of the laymen of the 
 Church have fully considered the fact that 
 the existing economic conditions are a chal- 
 lenge to their intelligence. Money-making 
 maybe or may not be an intellectual process, 
 at least there are different degrees of intel- 
 lectual ability exemplified in the act. For- 
 merly, in fact until very recently, the highest 
 intellectual test was the ability to utilize 
 unused material forces, or to promote new 
 and vast enterprises. The incoming test of 
 intellectual ability in business is bringing in 
 a very well-recognized and imperative moral 
 
 85 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 factor. The change is seen in the different 
 use of the term "exploitation." Gradually 
 the term has come to stand for selfish, often 
 for ruthless methods. To exploit now means 
 more frequently than otherwise "to bring 
 out anything for one's own advantage with- 
 out regard to rights or right." The intellect- 
 ual test now puts the emphasis more and 
 more upon the ability to accomplish great 
 ends with due " regard to rights and right." 
 The game of the street is no longer money- 
 making, however large may be the result. 
 That is not the whole game. The whole 
 game includes "right and rights'*'^ — hon- 
 esty and humanity. If the Church is to re- 
 cover its lost relation to the workingman, 
 it must insist that the laymen of the Church 
 who are in business shall learn to play the 
 whole game. 
 
 This learning to play the whole game — 
 to include in it the new conception of " right 
 and rights" in the transactions of business, 
 86 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 in the accumulation of wealth, in the pro- 
 motion of great enterprises — is not the task 
 of a day. A great deal which has come 
 in through tradition and through practice 
 must be unlearned. The new conception 
 of "right" denies the theory that the end 
 justifies the means, the waning theory of 
 success; denies the theory that what is 
 gained by evasion of law, or by legaliz- 
 ing a wrong, can be morally right ; denies 
 the theory that charity can cover the sins 
 of business. And the new conception of 
 "rights" requires a sincere and controlling 
 regard for all the human relations and inter- 
 ests concerned in it. It absolutely denies 
 the implication of the old maxim that "busi- 
 ness is business," affirming that business is 
 business only when it takes account of all 
 the human factors involved. Without doubt 
 this conception of business makes business 
 more difficult, but it is just this conception 
 of it which will make it more and more 
 
 87 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 honorable, which is making it more and 
 more honorable. The making of money 
 has ceased to be very much of a distinc- 
 tion. The ease with which one may be- 
 come a millionaire, the greater ease with 
 which once a millionaire he may become a 
 multi-millionaire, does not conduce to the 
 sort of distinction which men most crave. 
 That is always associated in some way with 
 the humanities. There lay, and still lies, 
 the honor of the professions. These are all 
 based upon human relations, the relation of 
 man to man through justice, through mercy, 
 through truth. The rating of a man profes- 
 sionally in the public esteem is determined 
 by the evidence of his loyalty to the prin- 
 ciples of his profession, and by his ability 
 to make it of the largest service to human- 
 ity. No sane man can deny the material 
 benefits which accrue from nearly all the 
 transactions which pass under the name of 
 business. No one well informed can be un- 
 88 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 mindful of the benefactions to society asso- 
 ciated with the names of business men. No 
 one can overlook the moral support to 
 society in the examples of integrity, con- 
 spicuous and inconspicuous, which charac- 
 terize the vast trust-bearing service of the 
 business world. But if business is to become 
 a profession, as I believe it will become, it 
 must be by making the human interests 
 involved in it the first concern. The lack 
 in this regard, the lack, in the final analysis, 
 of human sympathy, has the most direct 
 and appreciable effect in the alienation of 
 the workingman from the Church. That is 
 what it has cost the Church. 
 
 As this alienating process has been going 
 on for a generation we may expect that the 
 work of recovery will be the work of a 
 generation. The work cannot be done by 
 sentiment, it cannot be done through any 
 reversion to paternalism, above all it cannot 
 be done in haste. As Bagehot has pointed 
 
 89 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 out, haste is the vice of philanthropy. " To 
 act rightly in modern society requires a 
 great deal of previous study, a great deal 
 of assimilated information, a great deal of 
 sharpened imagination; and these perqui- 
 sites of sound action require much time, 
 much ' lying in the sun.' " ' There must be 
 much patience, much toleration, much faith, 
 and very much plain speaking; for it is not 
 to be assumed for a moment that prejudice, 
 or violence, or any kind of wrong thinking 
 or wrong doing, on the part of labor, is to be 
 condoned. Movements like that of the Civic 
 Federation, or legislation looking toward 
 conciliation, are suggestive, but no specific 
 is here urged. It has been assumed that the 
 business laymen of the Church are impatient 
 of instruction as to their business relations. 
 No attempt, therefore, has been made in 
 these pages to show precisely how these 
 relations with the alienated classes are to be 
 
 * Bagehot, Physics and Politics^ p. 188. 
 
 90 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 improved. Insistence has been placed upon 
 the manifest need of recovering the alien- 
 ated classes, and upon the application of the 
 intelligence of the business layman to this 
 point as a part of his business. The respon- 
 sibility for such moral adjustments of the 
 economic system as shall remove the pre- 
 sent causes of alienation and distrust on the 
 part of workingmen, has been laid upon 
 the laymen of the Church. A long step in 
 advance will have been taken when the 
 responsibility in this matter has been recog- 
 nized and accepted. Who can doubt the 
 final result, if the laity of the Church, who 
 represent so largely the business of the 
 country, shall prove faithful to the ministry 
 of human sympathy in its application to 
 this most difficult, if not otherwise inacces- 
 sible, task now before the Church ? 
 
 The Church has a further and very abun- 
 dant occasion for its ministry of human 
 sympathy in connection with the distribu- 
 91 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 tion of foreign immigrants throughout the 
 country. Religious hospitality may take 
 either of two forms on the part of the Pro- 
 testant churches. When the religious ante- 
 cedents warrant, the religious immigrant 
 may be given a home in any church of 
 his choice, or he may be aided directly in 
 maintaining his own order of worship. The 
 Protestant churches are by no means remiss 
 in the exercise of this form of hospitality. 
 Far-reaching provision has been made in 
 behalf of those accessible to Protestant in- 
 fluence, through the churches directly, and 
 no less effectively through schools, colleges, 
 and seminaries adjusted to their uses. 
 
 There is another type of religious hos- 
 pitality which can find expression only in 
 a certain sympathetic attitude toward the 
 religious immigrant, whatever may have 
 been his previous affiliations. This means 
 that we ought to be ready to give thanks 
 that the immigrant is usually religious and 
 92 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 that he brings his religion with him. 
 We are the rather inclined to wish, that if 
 he must come, he would leave that behind 
 him. And if by chance we learn that he 
 has in any numbers broken away from his 
 religious environment, or is in revolt against 
 it, we are apt to count that fact altogether 
 in his favor. Whereas the fact to be con- 
 sidered and approved is that the religious 
 life of the immigrant is the best contri- 
 bution which he has made, and in present 
 circumstances the best which he can make 
 to the country of his adoption. Instead of 
 antagonizing it we ought to guard it, not in 
 form but in spirit, and make sure that he 
 transmits it to his children. If we Ameri- 
 canize the children of the immigrant out of 
 the religion of their fathers, leaving upon 
 their minds the impression that religious 
 freedom means irreligion, we are simply ex- 
 changing a possible asset of great value to 
 citizenship for a sure danger and risk to it. 
 
 93 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 Herein consists the chief responsibility of 
 the public schools of the great cities. I sup- 
 pose that the teachers in the elementary 
 schools of the foreign sections of New York 
 and Chicago are doing more than any equal 
 number of persons to determine the moral 
 future of the country. I have reason to 
 believe that they are proving adequate to 
 their task. The name " teacher " is a house- 
 hold word in the new families. The sympa- 
 thy, the trustworthiness, the moral authority 
 of "teacher" is assumed in the home, as 
 well as by the child. Doubtless many a 
 teacher has learned her own lesson of re- 
 spect for the sacredness of things which 
 are sacred. The public school cannot teach 
 religious doctrine; it can, under its limita- 
 tions and because of them, do a greater 
 thing, — it can teach reverence. 
 
 Reference ought also to be made to the 
 work of the social settlement in the assimil- 
 ation of the foreign population in the cities. 
 94 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 This work is much more advanced than 
 that of the public schools. It follows the 
 really domesticated immigrant into his so- 
 cial and civic relations. It helps him to dis- 
 criminate between the good and the bad 
 agencies in the new civilization which he is 
 trying to understand. It introduces him to 
 wider opportunities than he would other- 
 wise discover. Above all, it enables him to 
 utilize himself as a force for the social good, 
 to realize the fact that he has much to give 
 as well as to receive. The work of the social 
 settlement, however, like that of the public 
 school, can only be referred to in the way 
 of illustration, as it cannot fairly be claimed 
 as an agency of the Church, though often 
 originating under its incentives. 
 
 As the tide of immigration is now begin- 
 ning to flow from eastern Europe, another 
 and less familiar type of religious life is be- 
 ginning to appear in our cities. It is esti- 
 mated that there are already nearly half a 
 95 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 million of the members of the Greek Cath- 
 olic Church in this country. The new im- 
 migration introduces new nationalities and 
 races as well as a new form of religion — 
 nationalities and races which seem more 
 alien than any which have preceded. There 
 is very much danger that the Protestant 
 churches will allow the strangeness, and 
 the undesirableness, in some respects, of 
 the new immigrant to affect their under- 
 standing and appreciation of his religious 
 spirit. What if it shall prove that the Sla- 
 vonic race, imbued with the spirit of its own 
 form of Christianity, has a contribution of 
 essential value to make to American Chris- 
 tianity ? Some years ago Dr. George Wash- 
 burn, then president of Robert College, 
 writing on "The Coming of the Slav"' 
 especially in relation to European civiliza- 
 tion, gave the following resume of an ad- 
 dress by a young Slav. " The Latin and the 
 
 ' The Contemporary Review^ January, 1898. 
 
 96 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 Teutonic races have had their day, and they 
 have failed to establish a truly Christian 
 civilization. They have done great things 
 in the organization of society, in the de- 
 velopment of material wealth, in literature, 
 art, and science, and especially in recogniz- 
 ing and securing in some degree the rights 
 of the individual man ; but they have exalted 
 the material above the spiritual and made 
 Mammon their God. They have lost the no- 
 bler aspirations of youth, and are governed 
 now by the sordid calculations of old age. 
 We are waiting the coming of the Slav to 
 regenerate Europe, establish the principle 
 of universal brotherhood and the King- 
 dom of Christ on the earth." Without in- 
 dorsing this statement of the Slav orator, 
 either as history or as prophecy, Dr. Wash- 
 burn proceeded to give the following testi- 
 mony to the Slav peasant — the man who 
 is now appearing among us as an immi- 
 grant. " In his religious character, at least, 
 
 97 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 the Moujik is the most original and most 
 interesting peasant in Europe. He has 
 grave faults and weaknesses, like other 
 men; but his peculiar virtues, his pathetic 
 endurance of suffering, his profound sym- 
 pathy with humanity, his faith in voluntary 
 self-sacrifice, his very dreams of destiny, 
 commend him to the sympathy of all the 
 world. He does not seem to belong to the 
 matter-of-fact world of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. . . . The Moujik has a sublime spirit 
 of self-sacrifice. He will sacrifice anything 
 for what he conceives to be his duty. This 
 spirit of self-sacrifice does not manifest it- 
 self alone in great and exceptional deeds of 
 heroism, but in daily life." 
 
 It is an unseemly thing for a Christian 
 nation which invites and stimulates immi- 
 gration to estimate the immigrant simply 
 by his value as an unskilled laborer. But 
 as the quality of his religious life is in most 
 cases the only other contribution of imme- 
 
 98 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 diate value which he brings, it is for the 
 Church to estimate this quality aright, and 
 to apprise the nation of its value. Evidently 
 there is a growing need of the broader cul- 
 tivation of the art of religious hospitality. 
 
 The opportunity for the exercise of the 
 ministry of sympathy in connection with the 
 incoming of immigrants from the more re- 
 mote and alien peoples of Christendom sug- 
 gests the much wider opportunity for its ex- 
 ercise in connection with the work of foreign 
 missions. It is evident that success in the 
 further prosecution of this work depends 
 more than formerly upon the kind of spirit 
 in which it is carried on. The time has come 
 when the non-Christian peoples, if they are 
 to be reached, must be made to feel not only 
 the ardor and aggressiveness of Christian 
 love but also its fine restraints. It must 
 be recognized more completely that the 
 gateway through which all must pass, who 
 would do good in any way to their fellow 
 
 99 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 men, is humility. So our Lord came to us. 
 "He humbled himself." Unfortunately the 
 great missionary nations of the Protestant 
 faith are not humble nations. The charac- 
 teristics of love which Paul so much exalts 
 are not the characteristics most in evidence 
 in the United States, Great Britain, or Ger- 
 many. " Love vaunteth not itself, is not 
 puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, 
 is not provoked . . . beareth all things, 
 believeth all things, hopeth all things, en- 
 dureth all things." The missionary, how- 
 ever humble he may be in spirit or in prac- 
 tice, is obliged to do his work against the 
 conspicuous background of national pride 
 and arrogance. This grievous inconsistency 
 is becoming so widespread and obstruct- 
 ive that it raises the question whether the 
 Church itself is sufficiently possessed of the 
 divine quality of sympathy to prosecute its 
 missionary work in a becoming spirit. The 
 exercise of sympathy implies the habit, the 
 
 lOO 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN g¥M!>XTH\^ i 
 
 gift. Ungifted persons are apt to be awk- 
 ward and ineffective in their attempts at 
 sympathy. This is not a question of man- 
 ners. Sympathy will somehow declare itself 
 when it is the compelling motive. Is sym- 
 pathy a sufficiently dominant and compell- 
 ing part of the missionary motive in the 
 churches ? Love for the world does not ne- 
 cessarily mean sympathy with men, nations, 
 and races. It may not be simply and in- 
 tensely human. Not infrequently it is asso- 
 ciated with a certain sense of superiority 
 which may be congruous with pity, but 
 which is incongruous with sympathy. 
 
 In so far as Protestantism was taken pos- 
 session of by Puritanism, as in the early his- 
 tory of this country, it grew perceptibly un- 
 sympathetic in tone. The Puritan did not 
 ask for sympathy. Sympathy seemed to 
 him to be debilitating to faith. He preferred 
 to think, to act, and to suffer alone. So he 
 naturally developed a strong, virile, self- 
 
 lOI 
 
i fl^E PUISIGTJON OF THE CHURCH 
 
 reliant, and, at certain points, self-assertive 
 type of religion. His theology was self-cen- 
 tred, in that it bore the distinctive marks of 
 independent thinking. He did not hesitate 
 to think his thoughts through to their logi- 
 cal, and therefore to him their final conclu- 
 sion. The old New England theology did 
 indeed allow so-called " improvements," but 
 only because it was haunted by the idea of 
 perfection. This independence and persist- 
 ence of thought was justified by a willing- 
 ness to take the fortune of beliefs and con- 
 victions. All the greater acts of the Puritan 
 in his religious and political life were due 
 to the sure and quick sequence of duty fol- 
 lowing upon belief. The motive power was 
 always in his beliefs much more than in his 
 sympathies. In his struggles and sufferings 
 for liberty, he struggled and suffered for 
 principles rather than for men. He really 
 loved principles more than he loved men. 
 The passion of his soul worked in that way. 
 
 I02 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 When, therefore, the doctrine — the prin- 
 ciple — of a universal atonement became 
 incorporated into his religious belief, the 
 magnificent sequence of duty was foreign 
 missions. 
 
 The impulse to foreign missions, in this 
 country, did not spring out of the know- 
 ledge of the world. The early missionaries 
 did not know the world of their time, neither 
 did the Church which sent them forth. The 
 world which is to us so human, was to them 
 altogether a theological world. It was a 
 world over which the imagination could 
 brood, reaching the sympathies through 
 preconceived views of human nature rather 
 than through contact with individual lives. 
 Men ever3^where were one and alike, moral 
 units under the bondage of sin, and in the 
 scheme of salvation. Foreign missions could 
 have had no nobler or more impressive 
 origin than under such a vast generalization 
 as was then possible, having its practical 
 103 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 outcome in the idealization of man as a spir- 
 itual being. Every human soul stood forth 
 in its own solitary grandeur, undiminished 
 by the degradation, and un exalted by the 
 glory, of its environment. 
 
 How can the missionary motive be per- 
 petuated under the new realistic knowledge 
 of the world, a world so near and so close, 
 so differentiated by races and nations, so 
 specialized by religions, so individualized 
 by the names and deeds of men which are 
 borne from land to land ? The effect of this 
 new knowledge has not yet reached to the 
 depth of the missionary motive. Curiosity 
 respecting our fellow men has been measur- 
 ably satisfied, at least it has passed over into 
 the more dignified processes of scientific in- 
 vestigation. We are fairly well advanced in 
 the study of races and of religions. The uti- 
 lization of the new knowledge in the interest 
 of trade, measures more than anything else 
 the interest of the more developed in the less 
 104 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 developed nations. We are with one accord 
 " exploiting " the backward peoples. In cer- 
 tain conspicuous instances we have reached 
 the stage of recognition, fair treatment, and 
 cooperation. As civilization spreads, some of 
 the obligations of civilization are accepted. 
 But how far removed are these results of 
 the new knowledge of the world measured 
 by their effect upon the missionary motive! 
 Where is the equivalent of the idealization 
 of the human soul to be found? Or assum- 
 ing that we are not to look for its equivalent, 
 holding it still as indispensable, where are 
 we to look for its supports in our realistic 
 knowledge of men and of their environment ? 
 The new knowledge of the world cannot 
 reach to the depth of the missionary motive 
 except as it goes far enough to awaken the 
 fellow-feeling in the heart of Christian peo- 
 ples, the sense of oneness in sin, the sense 
 of sympathy in struggle and aspiration and 
 hope. There are manifest gradations in evil 
 105 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 mindedness and in evil doing. This has 
 been revealed by our larger knowledge of 
 the world. We can see that we of the more 
 virile Christian peoples have outgrown the 
 lower and more cruel sins of the primitive 
 races, and that we have not attained to the 
 more subtle and refined art of sinning, char- 
 acteristic of the older civilizations. We can 
 see how perilously near we still are to the 
 sins which we have escaped, and also what 
 possibilities of sin lie before us. Our know- 
 ledge ought to give us a very deep and wide 
 sense of the meaning of the fellowship of 
 sin. The missionary motive cannot start 
 from above or outside the experience of 
 this fellowship. If men have no needs or 
 wants commensurate with Christianity, why 
 try to give them Christianity instead of civ- 
 ilization? If we have been civilized only, 
 how can we give them Christianity? The 
 missionary is really the deepest interpreter 
 of humanity who is at work to-day in the 
 io6 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 world. He is doing more than any other 
 sort of man to break through the superfi- 
 cialities of civilization. He is the medium 
 of exchange between men the world over 
 whose conscious needs are the deepest, and 
 whose spiritual aspirations are the highest. 
 For this reason the relative place of the 
 missionary in the Church is rising, and also 
 his relative influence in the world. The 
 world is beginning to recognize and ac- 
 knowledge the effect of his fundamental, 
 because sympathetic, work in human na- 
 ture, as it passes so often beyond results in 
 the individual life into the life of commu- 
 nities and states. It is seen more and more 
 to be of the kind which leads up to con- 
 structive statesmanship. The Church finds 
 in him the most unrelenting foe to preju- 
 dice, — ecclesiastical, national, or racial, — 
 and its most effective leader out of provin- 
 cialism. He is the antidote against the be- 
 numbing effect of an easy and careless toler- 
 107 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 ation, quickening and stimulating the real 
 sympathies of the mind and heart of the 
 Church. In these days of specialized ser- 
 vice, his ministry is that of teaching man 
 to know man, interpreting as well as inves- 
 tigating humanity, helping the Church to 
 keep faith with its own ideals, and thereby 
 helping the world to believe in the necessity 
 and efficiency of the Church. The ministry 
 of human sympathy has its clearest oppor- 
 tunity to-day in the work of foreign missions, 
 and its clearest exemplification in the inter- 
 pretative power of the far-sighted missionary. 
 
 There are other ministries that fall 
 within the scope of the Church, which will 
 be missed in the foregoing treatment of its 
 function in modern society. I should doubt- 
 less accept those which might be added, 
 and agree with the estimate which might 
 be placed upon them. There is the ministry 
 pertaining to spiritual devotion and wor- 
 io8 
 
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SYMPATHY 
 
 ship, the ministry of religious education, the 
 ministry concerned with the protection and 
 development of the family (more than ever 
 resting upon the Church), and the constant 
 ministry of charity both personal and organ- 
 ized: to which some would add the ministry 
 of healing, a very delicate kind of minis- 
 try, to be recalled only in view of the pre- 
 sent deficiency of medical science on the 
 spiritual side, when compared with its won- 
 derful advance on the material side. These 
 are all in and of the Church, its own by his- 
 toric right and by continuous service. But 
 I have wished to put the emphasis upon 
 those ministries which seem to be most ur- 
 gent and imperative — the more urgent and 
 imperative because they have been allowed 
 to lapse in some degree according to the 
 reasons which have been given. There 
 is an unmistakable call for the resump- 
 tion of the ministry of spiritual authority, 
 and also for the recovery of the ministry of 
 109 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 human sympathy. When these ministries 
 shall have been restored to their normal 
 efficiency, it will be a more gracious task 
 to take a survey of the complete function 
 of the Church in modern society: to show 
 how under the separation of Church and 
 State in this country the Church is vitally 
 affecting the State; to show how under the 
 vast increase of moral agencies both individ- 
 ual and corporate the Church remains the 
 great moral agency of society; to show how 
 under the growth of population, and in the 
 midst of rapid changes, the Church has main- 
 tained its relative growth and adjusted itself 
 with greater gain than loss to changed condi- 
 tions; in a word, to take a fair and just meas- 
 urement of the modern Church according 
 to the great dimensions which are visible and 
 well defined, — its length and its breadth. 
 It has been the single object of this present 
 study to measure its depth. 
 
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSEITS 
 U . S . A 
 
MODERN 
 RELIGIOUS 
 PROBLEMS 
 
 Edited by REV. A. W. VERNON, D. D. 
 
 The aim of this series of books is to lay before 
 the great body of intelligent people in the Eng- 
 lish-speaking world the precise results of modern 
 scholarship, so that men both within and without 
 the churches may be able to understand the con- 
 ception of the Christian religion (and of its Sacred 
 Books) which obtains among its leading scholars 
 to-day, and that they may intelligently cooperate 
 in the great practical problems with which the 
 churches are now confronted. 
 
 THE BOOKS PUBLISHED THUS FAR ARE: 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
 
 By G. W. KNOX 
 
 With General Introduction to the Series 
 
 "Admirably written." — Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 " It is surprising how much clear thinking and compact 
 information Professor Knox has put into his hundred 
 pages." — Independent. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO. 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 
 
 Continued 
 
 SIN AND ITS 
 FORGIVENESS 
 
 By WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE 
 
 " No exposition of a theological doctrine has ever brought 
 a deep subject more into touch with real life than Presi- 
 dent Hyde's admirable discussion." — Independent, 
 
 " It is almost needless to say that it is an interesting, 
 very readable book and earnestly recommended to every 
 one." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 THE FOUNDING OF THE 
 CHURCH 
 
 By BENJAMIN W. BACON 
 
 " Like all of Dr. Bacon's work, is thoroughly done." 
 
 Hartford Courani. 
 
 "The sanest and most comprehensive statement of the 
 Christian religion." — St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO. 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 
 
 Continued 
 
 HISTORICAL AND 
 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 By E. F. SCOTT 
 
 " Sets forth clearly its surpassing worth as devotional 
 literature." — Christian Register. 
 
 " Professor Scott has admirably succeeded in presenting 
 such a difficult problem so clearly ; and he brings to the 
 reader a report from a wide field without confusion. . . . 
 It is a clear, interesting, sympathetic study of a great 
 problem." — Boston Transcript, 
 
 THE EARLIEST SOURCES 
 FOR THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 By F. C. BURKITT 
 
 "A brief and frank discussion of the Gospel stories." 
 
 Philadelphia Press, 
 
 "This little volume is really a monument of Biblical 
 learning, and it is only just to the author to say that his 
 scholarly investigation of the entire subject helps to 
 strengthen Christian faith." — Rochester Post Express, 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO. 
 
MODERN RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 
 
 Continued 
 
 THE CHURCH AND 
 LABOR 
 
 By CHARLES STELZLE 
 
 " Mr. Stelzle's * The Church and Labor ' signalizes one 
 of the most vital rapprochements in the moral life of to- 
 day, and it is an important and enduring document in the 
 present-day stage of American history." — Robert A. 
 Woods, South End House, Boston. 
 
 "Of unusual interest and worth is the study of 'The 
 Church and Labor.' ... It shows us social facts and forces 
 as they are seen in the light of the harmonizing and 
 redeeming spirit of Christianity." — Chicago Record- 
 Herald. 
 
 PAUL AND PAULINISM 
 
 By JAMES MOFFATT 
 
 " Deals comprehensively with the Apostle to the Gentiles 
 and his teaching as revealed in the epistles attributed to 
 him." — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 " It is brief, it is luminous, and it has distinction and 
 charm of style." — Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO. 
 
tl\V.?.^t™ °^ 25 CENTS 
 
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 WILL INCREASE TO sS ce„?= PENALTY 
 
 °AY AND TO $i°l ON J„ V ™^ """"TH 
 OVERDUE. '^ '^"E SEVENTH DAY 
 
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